Capital and coauthor of the new leading. Thank you for joining me. Thewrote this book with legendary former manager of manchester united. Hes one of the most revered football, or as we call it, soccer. What drew you to this project as techrnalist turned investors . I always followed united, not a younging fan but as boy. I started to follow them and id follow them through the years. Then, working in Silicon Valley, working hard to help i was veryia, curious about organizations that succeeded for a very long time. Extremelymed at an high level. And particularly, those organizations that had been run one individual. And they just are not there them. St not that many of you both, in your careers, have been tasked with taking makinglued assets and them protestable. We grew up he grew up in grew up in wales. Both of us sort of have an mentality. Also, i think, a fair amount ethic. Big work he is credited with transforming the club into a 3 billion public company. What was key to his success . Are the lessons for men and women in business here . This, or i had done thought about all these topics knowars ago, because i that i certainly would have been far more effective. One is patience. Two is a longterm view. People, developing inside of the organization, people. Arly young and bringing them along, because if youre successful doing that, you build great consistency and loyalty. Instill theier to sort of levels of performance you want. You boil down the traits of a distinctive leader to just two. One is obsession. Two, capacity for dealing with people. Look at jeff or zuckerberg. Or mark these people are obsessed with, at the beginning, the products that they want to build. And then their company. The very successful at buildingreat teams around them. In itsft, for example, heyday had a very stable management team. Been true at apple obviously. You are so wellknown for your time chronicling the early days of apple. And you spent time with jobs. You were in favor with him, out of favor with him. I wonder what you learned by watching steve so closely about what makes a good leader and leader. Es a bad to steve, the product is never good enough, whether it as a computer or a phone or tablet. He was always thinking about the next thing. Distinctives a hallmark of a truly great is nevers that great great enough. Qualitiesere a lot of about steve that are so controversial. Is the jobs model a good one . Im a huge admirer, was a huge admirer, am a huge admirer steve. Its very easy for people to sit and snipe. Psychiatrist or slin slink shrink. I dont think any of us really understand the emotional put up fors of being adoption and how that affects your life afterwards. See aboute also dont steve and im not trying to whitewash the fellow is that was an individual very capable, when he wished, of empathy andt compassion. Steve is the most remarkable person ive met. Curiosity, where did you leave it with him . Unfinished. Terms, butusiness that was about it. The famous time cover story about the machine of the year. You were a journalist at the dawn of the pc revolution. You abouttalk to leaders. Ming brian exemplifies the wonderful traits of a leader. Obsessed with his companies. Him, theres always another hill and mountain to climb. Pushes his team very hard to do the impossible. View of very longterm his business. And hes got a lot of energy, a lot of optimism about the prospects. Hes a fantastic leader. Travis . About travis is somebody that i dont pretend to know well. Hes so controversial. Well, controversial. Have you met anyone who isnt controversial, who has done really interesting things . Having known three decades of valley, dosilicon you think that you have to be arrogant to be successful . Four decades. Four. Excuse me. Lots of leaders make theirons about taking organization in the direction that perhaps isnt wildly the organization. Sometimes it spills over into arrogance. Im different from how i was in my 20s. Bill gates, who is in his 50s, what hedifferent from was in his 20s. Everybody learns a lot in the pursuit. So the understandable energy and sometimes spills over to arrogance in some people in their 20s tends to get softened overtime. You wrote this book before jack dorsey was named c. E. O. Of twitter. You say the only Silicon Valley company that grew from strength in thength was intel first 30 years. So do you think twitter can history . E second in toi think its far better bring a founder back who still feels a real sense of dedication ownership with a company than going outside and hand. Ting a hired jack hasnt been bashful about saying that the product at twitter needs improvement. His strengthere lies obviously. Presumablyduct is consumer satisfaction, and presumably the business will well. E as how do you see this playing out . Does this bubble burst or is there a soft landing . As you said, you grew up in wales. You somehow made it to Silicon Valley. Kid were you, and how did you get here . I got here through no grand plans. To college in britain. And this was the britain of the 19 mid1970s. It wasnt a particularly you were aace if young graduate looking for opportunities. So i came here and was very get a scholarship to come and study here. Againfter that was lucky to get a job at time magazine, who eventually sent me out to a historylley on major. I knew nothing about technologies. And eventually, through a stroke of great luck, a fellow who had started sequoia, don valentine, took a risk on me. What are the qualities that you think you had as a you a goodthat made investor . Im not sure i am a good investor. We always keep making mistakes. The Investment Business, the theure business, some of other businesses that were in at sequoia, its a very humbling pursuit. Think youre good at it, you get chopped off at knees. Journalism, though, was pretty are oftenecause you parachuted into stories that you about. Solutely nothing you have to get your bearings, extremely quickly. To deal with imperfect information. And then you have to have a of view, if youre a journalist, or you make an if youre decision, an investor. Youre trying to read people. Youre trying to gauge sentiment. I found the fact that i had been mind aboutmake up my a confusing set of information, extremely helpful. And horowitz has really that goodd this idea vcs need to be former founders youormer c. E. O. s, of which are neither. I think its very difficult to tell from somebodys background whether or not be successful in the venture business. Have a lot of Company Founders at sequoia. Room for lotsso of other people to succeed as well. Being in the Investment Business is also different from running a company. Us, we are not running the company. Were trying to help these companies as much as possible. And the other thing that people were working very hard on building our own unless youn, because have that at the heart of cannot makeyou consistent investments. You say in the book that the minute you think youre winning, dangerous. Mostequoia may be the successful Venture Capital firm in history. What do you do from within to evolve the firm and stay on the edge . It begins with consistency and showing up for work every day. And i know that a lot of people show up for work every day. Theyre not sequoia. Its true. But it sounds simple. Its easy to start easing, easing back and not working quite as hard. And not seeking the same level of success, not having the same arrogant,tting becoming complacent, believing that youre as good as your clippings, which are never true. We still act like this, in the as goodhat were only as two things. We, the next person that hire to become part of sequoia. Our nextecond is investment. If the headline of sequoias rip, good times during the financial crisis, bet would the headline today . Gravity hasnt been repealed. What do you mean by that . Things eventually will fall down the earth if theyre not properly constructed. So how do you see this playing out . Does this bubble burst, or is landing . Oft its a more rational time 1999, because i dont think theres a sort of universal every company is going to be a massive success and people are a bit more discriminating. Going to become a cropper. Is that a british phrase . What does that mean . Fail. Yll theyll fail . Its the lure of corporate business evolution. If people get too big for their britches, if the companies are poorly, if money is wasted, if the product or service itsnt really fulfill promise, the companies deserve to fail. Latestageected are investments in this environment . Many latestage investments really investments. Theyre just disguised forms of debt. Wellprotected, many of them are wellprotected terms thatthe investors have put around them. The ratchets . Ratchets, the liquidation preferences. These arent really equity investments. Debt. E is that a dangerous trend, these ratchets and the guarantee will get aors certain amount back . If a company doesnt perform, yes. Highrisk pokers. What about the risk of down delayed ipos . It will depend on the performance of each company. Gone through this period where the valuations and the private in the private in excess of what they are in the public market. You have one bucket of bubbling water and another bucket of cool water. As those two if those two theets are commingled, m. V. P. Wiltemperatures will eve. What kind of businesses do think will be the first to go bellyup and what trends do will last . The businesses that will go bellyup are the ones run by reality andeny dont use the money that they wisely and very think there are a whole bunch of cuts to success. The companies that are run prudently, that have got really good discipline about them, that have the right ethical compass top, and also have very distinctive products, those are going to flourish. Lets talk about the on demand economy. About thatuestions model. The one thing we got right we madeb fair, although a lot of horrible mistakes, was thisonsumer demand for service is just through the what young is instacart is finding. Instacart, it doesnt have huge or distribution centers. It doesnt have its own vans, doesnt have all the capital was requirede that to build web van. A workforceanage through these incredibly powerful smartphones. Incumbent on instacart and its wonderful founder to of there that all economics an make sense, which t will. But the company is providing a fantastic service to consumers who just swear by it. Any concern about competition from uber . We always are aware of competitors, particularly ubernies as successful as or amazon. But you cant define yourself by or run afraid, because then youre following. Complicateds a very business that is very difficult company to mimic. Bullish are you now about alibi bab ba and Chinese Companies . I know you were really bullish on alibabas ipo last year. How bullish are you now about alibaba and Chinese Internet Companies . Despite the bedlam that we all read about, ill say will strike you as odd. I dont think anything has changed about china. Underlying consumer demand is very strong in china. The Internet Companies there, their business is very good. Strong, healthy. Its vibrant. Our own know, we built business there over the course of the last 13, 14 years. Robust business. A very robust business, run wonderful people. Accident that 7 of 20 of the most valuable Internet Companies are chinese, because next 20 years, theres going to be far more business the Technology Companies that get started in china and get started in the u. S. Than there has been over the last 20 years. What does Silicon Valley have to learn from china . Im always struck by how eager people running Chinese Companies are to learn about their american counterparts, how frequently they come to the how jammed their schedules are when they come here. C. E. O. s andhe founders of Silicon Valley companies did the same thing in i think we can learn a lot from them. Mobile in particular, the products are different. The services are different. Companyilicon valley aspires to be a global company, china is going to be a very big part of their future. Seeing b start its own chinabased company with a and linkedin as well. What does it take for u. S. Tech china . Es to succeed in we tried not to make the mistakes that we watched others make. And so the first thing that you need to do is go there and admit you know nothing. You need to understand that the market is different. And you definitely dont staff in china with people from america or europe. Understand that theres a very different work ethic in china. Happen to warnin happen to work a lot harder. So its a whole new level of competition. Sequoia is very successful no women partners. What do you think your responsibility is there . We think about it a lot. I like to think and i genuinely believe that we are sex, theirmebodys religion, to their background. Have more different nationalities working at sequoia pretty much its a very setting. Tan the fact that weve embraced embraced india. We operated in israel for a long time. That shows that. Real question i think you might have is, why, for example, women . There more we have many more women working in our China Business than we do business. Why is that the case . I think the issue begins in the schools. And where women, particularly in europe, tendlso in to elect not to study the when theyre 11 and 12. So suddenly, the hiring pool is smaller. So you think its a pipeline problem . Some would say, well, youre not looking hard enough. Oh, we look very hard. A young we just hired woman from stanford, who is peers. It as good as her and if there are more like her, well hire them. To do ise not prepared to lower our standards. Fabulouslye are bright, driven women who are technology,ested in very hungry to succeed and can meet our performance standards, wed hire them all day and night. Step backou took a from daytoday operations. How are you doing . Newe seeing you take on boards. Whats it been like for the last two, three years . Ive enjoyed it. I did so for a variety of reasons. I you know, i talked about, at the time, which we dont need and i act as, i team member. Im not involved in the management of the business at all. In severald companies, some of them very young. Somebody wants some help at sequoia, im more than happy to do it. India, go to china. We have a couple of investments in europe im engaged with. Have a bit of time to do things like write a book, with a man who managed a fantastic soccer team. Yeah. Beachuld be sitting on a right now. I cant imagine anything more boring than sitting on a beach. The vibrancy of life comes around new experiences and being around young people. Whatshats next for, sir sir next for sir Michael Morris . I have no idea. Up. Thing will show really great to have you here thank you brilliant ideas, powered by. The contemporary art world is brilliant ideas. A 21st phenomenon. A Global Industry in its own right. Brilliant ideas looks at the artists at the heart of this. They have a unique power to inspire, astonish, provoke, and shock. To push boundaries, ask new questions, and see the world fresh. Denny. Like simon you may not necessarily understand his work at first glance, but take a closer look and youll come to realize simon denny is one of the most perceptive artists of our time. I want to put things on a stage for a second look and its something people are really simon denny is an artist who i think among a generation looking at life in the digital age. Born in new zealand, based in berlin, now taking the biggest art stages by storm with his thoughtprovoking installations, simon denny helps us make sense of the modern world we live in with subjects such as technology, privacy, and corporate power. He is able to articulate and put together what were all trying to figure out. He does any subject he is interested in. He goes to really push it around, explore it, and reveal to us often overlooked issues. New york, new york. The place to be if youre an artist. Simon denny may just be out of his 20s but hes already made a name here. Now hes back in the city with a mini retrospective at the museum of modern art ps1. I got into art when i was in high school in new zealand and then after that i went to university of auckland and immediately fell in love with art and started having a great time. The fun never stopped. My art work is about tech culture and the way i clang it. So the exhibition is working with six projects ive done in the past. Im trying to summarize those exhibitions in lets say a trade style format so you get kind of a condensed, easy version of six projects. Just sort of a summary of where my interests lie right now. As a first generation digital native, tech culture and its influence on all of us is what fascinates simon denny. The exhibition is a curated selection of his tech work. From berlins startup culture, to power house tech conglomerates, each subject is turned inside out and on its head for closer observation in typical simon denny fashion. I think a big part of the interest in simons work comes from a hunger that we have to think more about tech culture. Lots of his work feels like and uses many of the materials we associate with commerce. Smooth surfaces of plexiglas, commercially printed material, and there is something very unique. I mean, he is one of the few artists who has figured out a way to put these things together that both celebrate the culture that produced them, and yet by bringing them into an art context allows us to look at them and scrutinize them differently and see them for what they are. Also on display is one of simons best known works. Even if youve never heard of it, you would be familiar with its notorious subject. Tech entrepreneur kim dot com. Personal effects of kim dot com might be the thing that got the most media attraction. Kim dot com made his riches from his infamous file sharing website megaupload which also served as a haven for pirated content. In 2012 he was arrested in a dramatic raid in new zealand and had his millions of dollars of worth of assets seized. I was a megauser and suddenly i couldnt access my files and i couldnt watch the tv shows i wanted to watch anymore and then of course a bunch of information was published on this amazing raid which looked like something out of a bond film and then i read this amazing list of the things the u. S. Court of virginia wanted to seize. The first thing that popped into my head was oh, what would that look like if you brought that stuff together . And thats exactly what he did. So for the exhibition we never had the real objects. Theyre obviously still in seizure. I started with the list and i put together kind of standin, surrogates, versions of. We borrowed directly from the artist. For other things like cars we have a bunch of tires. We couldnt put a full mercedes here on the platform so it is great to have some room but then there are other things that are less specific. One of the things on the list is a statue which could look like any number of the statues and weve several generations of predator statues standing in for that device. It kind of changes on the space, on the venue, on the locale. It is a little bit like the distribution of the material he was working with right . When you have streamed content it is not always the hd version right . It is sometimes the degraded, pixelated, low rate version that you get. Like all of simon dennys work the personal effects of kim dot com is more than what it seems. Touching on the larger issue of power and ownership in the world of tech. That is a very interesting subset of, one, a fallen tech entrepreneurs like, collection, plus its given the extra kind of choosing subset of the fact that the u. S. Court of virginia also identified these things from a larger group of kims things. So its the amazing thing, a Regulatory Authority and a tech entrepreneur come together and make a list of the collection. Thats an amazing thing to look at all of these interesting issues that come around kims story like privacy, access to information. Who owns what . Who owns images . Who owns objects . What is sovereignty in a world where that crosses National Borders . I find simons work very interesting because it is very multi layered. It is visually interesting to look at. His choices of what he gives you as what i call clause of what its about are stimulating. So that its not visual in the same way a painting might be which pulls you in but visual in terms of, well, thats really refreshing or that approach is really interesting. Its intelligent without being too dry. So i see my cross as a kind of exhibition maker, as a person that turns interesting, compelling stories into something that reads well in a museum or gallery context. An ideal exhibition for me would be something that you walk into and it is an exciting thing to look at but then if you want to spend the time looking further there are layers of depth you can go into and you can spend five minutes or two days on the same space and get a rich experience either way. Up next, we turn back the clocks to simons time as an art student, and the momentous project where simon found his groove. News artist simon denny is one of the fastest rising artists in the world. Back in new york he celebrated his exhibition. Quite impressive from someone who has only left art school a few years ago. He is 32, which is remarkably young to have achieved this incredible profile, but also he is held in regard not only by critics but he has a massive following among artists. For me that is always a brilliant indicator that someone has a very long career ahead of them. I took a long time to get to what im doing today. I started out like many people do making paintings, landscape paintings in high school. When i went to university i started experimenting in different media like video and sculptor and all these other things, installation, and i guess kind of the body of work that i kind of know and work with today in a way started after or at frankfurt so i kind of started working in that mode when i was there. Was s study in frankfurt an incredibly important part of his artistic development. I think it pushed him very hard. It is a very, very competitive environment there. For him being based in germany berlin is a brilliant place to live for such an incredible melting pot of artistic conversation and influence. Berlin is a place where at that time a lot of artists were living and also interestingly for me it was a place where tech was starting to happen as well. So i guess i was attracted to the fact it was a tech and art crossover city somehow in kind of search of a new identity. I think the change in my work nd in my art coinciding with me leaving germany makes sense in some way like leesk your hometown, and moving someplace with a new language, where i realized i had a position that was not the same as everybody elses and experience which was also not the same as everybody else and being in a really different place like germany made that super clear and that is when i started making different decisions about what i wanted to show and how i wanted to show it. Think a big change for me is actually when i made a timeline about a conference in munich. Here i made a kind of graphic its ine which shows in original form a Graphic Panel summarizing with images and visual representations, graphic representations plus one of the main speakers. Here is john taylor from durning durning talking about how ingenuity will always win and next to that we have him saying my new slogan is hold on tight, europe. Turkey is coming to your rescue. I sort of want to give a summary of attitudes, opinions, voices, images, of the way these people present themselves, the way they think but also the kind of aesthetic feel and experience of what is quite a heady group of days. That considered of 89 separately printed canvases each of which correspond to one of the panels at the conference. The aesthetic of them is derived from the space of digital design. A lap top computer, the ipad, the tablet, the phone. So he has found a way to intersect this kind of ideology that that conference stands for and arrange them into that of an amuse am park or something that corrals people through lines to move through things and did so chronologically. These people have powerful influences in the way the world is going. Like the way i think, the way i communicate, how can i communicate and what am i doing when im communicating i think tech culture is extremely powerful. I think it is really important to look at the people making the decisions. Simon is able to articulate and put together what were all trying to figure out which is how do we cope with so much information, how do we interpret it. How much of it is real. How much of it is what we make up . And i think those are questions that plague all times but especially our times. So this show for me was a turning point because it was in a way a time when all that i was working on and all the processes came together in one neat little package. I had been looking at design, texts, ways to look at people and integrate research, somehow with the time line that i made here for all this data, all of these things came to a point where i felt they were resolved and working in a way which made sense. Im a fan of the idea that you have to push for innovation. Push for risk. Wont do things which be right straight down the middle of what everybody is comfortable with and i think that is real important for the way i work. After the break, simon takes on the biggest art stage in the world. Venice, italy. Fresh from his successful exhibition in new york simon is now here for the biggest show of his career. He is representing new zealand in a twopart installation called secret power at the 2015 venice biennale. Here we are in venice. Im here on business for my exhibitions secret pal and looking forward to walking through on this beautiful sunny day. A dramatic debut indeed. Simon has chosen two public buildings, the library and the busy marco polo airport as his living canvases. New zealand doesnt have a permanent space. That means ive been able to choose two ideal spots for my show. It is two really interesting spaces that deal with knowledge in a different way and access to knowledge in every way, one being an archive and the other a kind of hub. Knowledge is the central theme of his exhibition. Inspired by Edward Snowdens leak, secret power addresses the current debate on privacy and the revelation that new zealand is part of a spying operation called the five eyes alliance. The show is called secret power which is named after a famous new zealand book which introduced new zealand as, particularly to the idea that we were involved in a kind of alliance of people involved in intelligence in western nations and also in the u. S. So its kind of a cultural look at some material thats come up and is of great importance right now i think. So here we are in the beautiful library, which is was built in the renaissance period as a kind of allegory for the benefits of acquiring and keeping knowledge. So its all about the imagery in this library that deck rates the walls and ceilings is all about the value of knowledge. The first part of simons exhibition is directly inspired snowdens leaked n. S. A. Information. It is a deconstruction not of the content but rather the graphics used in the slides. For everybody in particular the Artistic Community snowdens release of this huge amount of slides through the media was a big eye opener for the way the world has interacted with certain parts of government. For me and for a lot of my peers it was also a literal revelation, right . It was like, okay. This is the way that these are important systems visualizes and communicated. So ive tried to look in my exhibition at what this Graphic Design says and how to read it. Simon is a very modern artist interested in visual culture so he is looking to see how the world is represented, then he wants to take those representations, decode them, and recode them into a variety of majestic works that make the rest of us look again at the visual language that surrounds us. Hes worked with brands and now is working with one of the biggest brands of all, the National Security agency. Alongside the graphics from the slides are the works of a former designer at the n. S. A. Some were indirectly commissioned by simon denny while others were lifted directly from his website without his consent. A very important part of the exhibition is that the subjects work was used without his permission. He didnt know what work it was creating for and he didnt know i was going to reinterpret a number of things o know his profile. That was done as a kind of performance, a very important part of the exhibition which makes us think about how it feels to have work that weve done or weve said on the internet used in ways were not sure and are unaware of. The feeling i want to get across is the most helpful ways to think about these issues which i think is important. It documents the evidence of the activity or dangerous material that needs to be controlled. How is designed . Who drew the graphics . What do they tell us . What do they symbolize about the thought processes within the organizationings . Then hes gone to all the trouble of tracking down the article. So he has completely turned our view of what this n. S. A. Material is on its head by treating it as a visual work to e interpreted. I have very strong response to the work. There are aspects of the vish yuliehty and the aesthetics that i struggle with because it is not beautiful. A lot of the work challenges understanding of taste in terms of individuality. But it is so our world. Its the world we wrangle with all of the time. How our world is changing with the digital sort of omnipotence and what area of agency or control do we have within that context . So on that level i thought this was a very urgent project to be ble to show now. Here we are in the second part of the pavilion. At the airport. We just passed through security to come to the air side where the installation is. Im just going to pass through this secured door here and well get to the first half of the twopart installation here in the airport pavilion. Wonderful. Here at the marco polo airport simon transplants images of power from the library into a space where national and International Boundaries collide. I think the airport is a really exciting space for many reasons for this installation but also because one is never fully aware of the processes ta go on when youre entering a space and what keeps us secure and what keeps the city secure, and i think this imagery representing the value of knowledge and power right at that entry point is really an yee vock tiff thing. He has also cleverly used the maze of public and restricted spaces to play with the idea of Public Access to knowledge. Just follow me here. We have here people in the departures. Enter this space without passing through security. That is true of both sides of this installation. You can see the imagery from the other side but you cant access it. So you can see depictions of the value of knowledge and power but you, yourself, cant access that knowledge of value and power until you pass through the Security Check oints. You have to bring quite a lot the exhibit really to appreciate it. Or it could be there is no deeper point and im just making it up. That is the joy of great art. It speaks to you as an individual and you as, with your background. And the reason cant be explained by the artist or by the critic. I would like to put things on that let people look at stuff that they are familiar ith like the media, lake people in power in terms of where a media is going and look a little closer at what those things are. I think simon shows an amazing skill at being able to pick up on very important moments in terms of con testimony tri culture particularly how we understand and interact with technology. His concern is absolutely global so he does any subject he is interested in. He goes full tilt to really ush it around, explore it, and reveal to us often overlooked issues for us to consider which i find incredibly exciting and culturally valuable. A Public Service aspect i hope. Also an entertainment aspect which i really think is great. I do want to put things on a stage for a second look and i think that is something you can do very effectively in this context and something people are ready for. They want answers. The following is a paid advertisement for time life video collection. Flex either. On the battlefield to the white house, from hollywood to the heartland, americas entertainer was bob hope