DeSo is a layer-1 blockchain custom-built to scale decentralized social applications. It was this weird, internal drive. Sequoia is a 50 year old venture capital firm based in Menlo Parkone of the preeminent venture capital firms in the world that backed, in their early days, Apple, Atari, Cisco, Oracle, companies like that. Then the next version of that is to tear them down and make them seem like they were too arrogant, like, "Oh, it's not working." Identified as v4.0.2Now with Pre-Seed Investor Lists FAQ There have been these big evolutions, these big jumping points, and I only mentioned some of the ones related to the information paradox. I got lucky in that when I was leaving DARPA, we came up with an idea. That's a global statement about the object for any surface or three dimensional manifold, etc. Shaun Maguire, General Partner, Sequoia Capital, Quantum Information and the Venture Connection. I don't think it's an accident that John's group has been the central node in quantum information over the last 20 years or so. I didn't even know the prerequisites to be in that world, so it took an extra few years. ZIERLER: Does the comparison hold up insofar as with solar startups, we knew what solar would be good for, right? Privy makes Simple APIs to manage user data off-chain. Over the course of three years, maybe once every two to three weeks he'll ask you a question that is almost like the series of questions is taking you on a journey that he wants you to go on, but he doesn't tell you explicitly what journey you're going on ahead of time. I think the key lesson here is that there can be certain industries where almost all of the VCs lose almost all their money on the investments because there's too much competition and the science is moving too fast, but that actually is an important part of getting the future to arrive faster. An equivalent thing is in quantum mechanics, people still debate the interpretation around wave function collapse and things like this. Because I had come from a math background, I found that yes, I could talk to Alexei. My passion, especially coming from that background, was in probability and combinatorics, but really theoretical probability I just found absolutely fascinating. In a conversation on TechCrunchs new web3 podcast Chain Reaction, Sequoia crypto partner Shaun Maguire talked about the firms commitment to the sector, regulatory challenges and what plenty of crypto investors still dont understand. You can listen to the entireinterview with Maguireon our podcast, Chain Reaction. Bill Thurston was this guy who's workI had just been fascinated by the guy, and I read a lot of his papers. When I got to USC, I randomly was walkingI studied math. As an investor and adviser, Shaun has worked with companies building everything from quantum computers to self-driving cars. It's not talked about that way, but Shockley Semiconductor was originally a division of Beckman Instruments. The Boring Company creates safe, fast-to-dig, and low-cost transportation, utility, and freight tunnels. Shaun Maguire, partner at Sequoia Capital, chats with DeSo Founder Nader Al-Naji on a number of topics across crypto, startups, and venture capital.Shaun was. Caltech means a lot to me. My PhD was basically making a bunch of connections between these ideas. I won an NSF Graduate Fellowship and NDSEG Graduate Fellowship, and I kind of in my head had this realization that I was only at Stanford doing probability because that's the thing that I got recommendations for. Prior to GV, Shaun co-founded two companies: Qadium and Escape Dynamics. Ive got to believe that they work incredibly hard in part to make their families proud. SHAUN MAGUIRE: I'm beyond thrilled to be here. I had been interested in this field called hyperbolic geometry. The big bang one issomehow people don't really talk about that. Dr. Shaun Maguire serves as a Partner at Sequoia Capital. I also, though, I think a lot of string theorists have gotten a bad rap. Not completely explicitly, but a little bit subconsciously and implicitly. You want him to respect you; you don't want to disappoint him. ZIERLER: From your own perspective, do you tend to think of this in somewhat of a horse race metaphor? I was fascinated by what made these numbers go up and down. I admire John as someone who's fearless enough to go be at the top of one thing and then jump and do another field where they're a relative novice. . It's hard to say no when DARPA is willing to give you money to go build some really advanced technology with really brilliant people. That then led to a lot of evolutions over time. Jerry was this weird physicist where he had a really elite pedigree, and a lot of people with really elite pedigrees would go into the really cutting edge stuff of quantum gravity, or string theory, or high energy physics in general. Once you get to the cutting edge, it's not that hard to keep up. MAGUIRE: My academic background is pretty unusual. So, they were able to do really amazing work that was not too far away from the core business. I did horribly in high school. Sequoia BitClout was both a sensation and a controversial startup when it launched earlier this year. When I came back to Caltech, I had started a company in 2012, and it ended up being a relatively successful company. Those are my heroes, my role models, the people that have done things very differently than other people. Quantum information not too much. Prior to joining Sequoia in 2019, Dr. Maguire was a Partner at GV, where he led their . MAGUIRE: That was another thing, is that I am athere's this joke at Caltech (MIT does this too): How do you tell the difference between introverts and extroverts at Caltech? [few minutes pause] When you got to the group meetings with John, what were some of the big debates that were happening? At that moment, he becomes your advisor. That happened, and then in 2015 there was this thing called the firewall paradox. I had a really horrible experience, to be honest. MAGUIRE: I never say this, but I guess I'm a doctor. Will you sign this thing for me?" See Shaun Maguire's recent investments in Series A Cloud Infrastructure, other investment areas, and co-investors. One of the things is Caltech is a very humbling place. He never tells you you're stupid. It's incredibly common in the history of technology. But once I got there, I got over a 4.0 or whatever in my first year. ZIERLER: Shaun, do you have a sense of the origin story of Sequoiawhat niche it was looking to fill when it started? I'll pause. Basically, venture capital has become this huge industry, but back in the day when Don started the firm in 1972, it didn't really exist. ZIERLER: Just to clarify, when you came to Caltech, you were already admitted, but it was not certain at that point that you'd be John Preskill's student? I met Patrick at a Founders Fund event many years ago. Shaun Maguire. The Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire. By navigating this website you agree to our cookie policy. Thank you so much. John asks incredible questions. Previously he Co-Founded Expanse which was acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $800M. Where do you see some really new directions? I originally self-studied quantum mechanics, and I was able to have some intuition. Another is that Jeongwan Haah had just done this three dimensional error correcting code work, or was just finishing. I've also been absolutely fascinated by science. What was some of that original work for you? You're not supposed to say that these days, but it was important, because when you have that incredible amount of predictable free cash flow, it makes it really easy to go pump tons of money into the R&D. ZIERLER: Was Alexei accessible? It's a tautology, but it's also 100% correct. DAVID ZIERLER: This is David Zierler, director of the Caltech Heritage Project. I would say a bunch of the other prominent, early investors were really more coming from the technical side. Adam Crafton. Seed/Early + Growth. Sequoia partners and specialists help outlier founders at every stage bend the arc of the possible. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators . I was paying pretty close attention back then. Being able to stay on top of it and having a lot of my friends be the ones pushing it forward, it's kind of enough for me. I don't want to sell for a billion dollars now, I want to sell for $20 billion. I started at Stanford in 2007 and moved to Caltech in 2009. Physics is something I use all the time, because I've invested in a lot of companies that touch atoms. One thing that I think is close to Bell Labs from a different direction right now is Deep Mind. One was the stock market. There are probably a thousand solar companies started in that ten year window and at most two or three of them that are meaningful today. Eventually with where the work went, I didn't know anything at all about quantum field theory or string theory, which I had to learn over the next few years. Sequoia is a 50 year old venture capital firm based in Menlo Parkone of the preeminent venture capital firms in the world that backed, in their early days, Apple, Atari, Cisco, Oracle, companies like that. For a lot of decision making, centralization can be better for certain types of decisions.. I really did the PhD for myself. I literally couldn't sleep as a kid, I would just think about special relativity. There are a lot of candidate theories that fit under that umbrella. Alexei is really introverted. The founder of Figma is an amazing 30 year old kid who also really loves physics and computers. I have a fellowship, so I don't need any funding. I think I will definitely have more involvement with Caltech at some point in my life. I think a lot of people were always too afraid to even ask him. Some of it is implicit. With quantum computing, I would say there's already a lot of applications that are pretty clear, and then there's also a whole bunch of things that maybe you can't say the precise algorithm, but on the other hand it's pretty obvious quantum computers will be important. There's this guy Amir Safavi Naeini who's a professor at Stanford now, and Alex Krause, and Simon Grblacher who's a professor at TU Delft. They've always been more of an R&D firm and government contractor. (Sequoia will have two board seats at the company, held by Gupta, who focuses on later-stage investments, and Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, whose concentration is on investing in early-stage . Could you have gone back? Then I got recruited to work at DARPA by Regina Dugan. I literally emailed John Preskill from Afghanistan. Knowde is the marketplace for chemicals, polymers and ingredients. He just gives you breadcrumbs along the way when you need them. One of the big evolutions in the early 90s was this thing called the holographic principle. I think it's because it's just in some ways it's unknowable. You can register here. Then another fund that was trying to recruit me did a reference call with my friend Patrick Collison. They're human too. So, that became the most exciting thing by far in quantum gravity, and now the field is on a journey to unite the fields even more closely. Because it's an extra three factors of two you had to get. I've also been fascinated by computers, which I would say is slightly different than science. Join Facebook to connect with Shaun Maguire and others you may know. It gets us off fossil fuels. ZIERLER: Shaun, with the entrepreneurial culture at Caltech, I wonder if your work has given you a broader perspective of the kinds of ways Caltech ideas, Caltech faculty and students are involved in technology ventures. A spherical drum makes a different sound than an oval drum, which makes a different sound than a square drum. When I came to Caltech, I was going to work with Jerry Marsden. I was kind of doing both: doing the company and grad school. There was this incredible energy and camaraderie there, and it was addicting, especially for me coming fromI had only been exposed to solitary research before that. I don't know, I was learning the rest. Maguire said that more important than decentralization for its own sake, is the ability of users to be able to leave with their identity and data, an effort which should protect consumers from platform overreach. Maguire focuses on enterprise,. Michael Moritz. Or are you thinking about actual wormholes? MAGUIRE: 26 actually. In some of these other fields, it takes years. The field has moved so fast. I was chairman of my company. MAGUIRE: One of the things that I am proud of in my own life is I've been willing to change course quickly even with limited data when crazy opportunities come up. It's path-dependent over what happens over the next ten, twenty years. There's not one moment in my life where I wasn't doing three or four things, all at a relatively high level completely in parallel. ZIERLER: In your work on wormholes, just to clarify, are these toy models? So thats what youve seen get unleashed with crypto over the last 18 months, we went from it being some people with really, strong positive views, to the whole firm being completely behind it., Why a bipartisan embrace of crypto might never touch Bitcoin. ZIERLER: What's the connecting point from Stanford to Caltech? It wasn't as clear actually, if you go back 15, 20 years, that solar would be able to get to the price levels it's at today. And that all comes from a huge amount of money that got poured into a basket of approaches, and those things were all able to compete and evolve. He taught computer science and astronomy. The way John works, is it's really a Socratic style. MAGUIRE: I was doing the same thing. He had a couple PhD students that were about my age or a little older who became good friends. In many ways was the core person that drove it in the beginning, if not the core person. MAGUIRE: No. Dr. Maguire previously occupied the position of Member of DRW Trading Group and Partner at GV Management Co. LLC. Many would disagree with me, but I actually think it takes away from the quality of research at Stanford. So, I tried to bring some of the hyperbolic geometry ideas into this field. A prerequisite to that is special relativity. Institutionally, is Sequoia involved in the quantum information space at all? ZIERLER: To foreshadow to what happened next, were you on a trajectory of pursuing an academic career and then some opportunity came up? MAGUIRE: I wouldn't say that Caltech is the most entrepreneurial place. Iron Fish is a Layer 1 blockchain that provides privacy guarantees on every single transaction. I jumped in the conversation, because honestly I didn't like the way the guy was talking to Patrick, and Patrick was right. He started mentoring me. The media built them up. As someone who loves quantum information, I'll be thrilled with that. I became really interested in the solar system. I don't even know some of the things that I know are there, but I'll tell you some of the things that I'm aware of. Is this like a common narrative in venture capital? It was a tiny department. It's actually a directly relevant story, so I'll share it here. This anti-de Sitter space, it's like living in a space-time where you're stacking a bunch of negatively curved manifolds on top of each other. MAGUIRE: My job title is I'm a general partner at Sequoia Capital. When I was 7 years old, he helped me build my first computer. I tried to do the John Preskill Socratic method: ask some questions that would reveal the other person didn't know what he was talking about. Where do you see some of the parallels? I don't really remember any of it. But I think he's testing people's commitment, which I think is a really smart strategy that not enough people do. They've lost a lot of the goodwill of public markets. Some of the USC faculty had good connections at Stanford and basically got me in on letters of recommendation.
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