shaun maguire sequoia wife
It's easy to understand the calculations, but it gave me this really deepthe answer here is that space is not flat, and your intuition for flat geometry is completely wrong. First of all, I don't think it's racing toward the same goal, but even if it was, I don't think anyone knows what that goal is, and I don't even think it's set. Very few VCs made any money on solar. I'll say something that can get me in trouble. But I think he's testing people's commitment, which I think is a really smart strategy that not enough people do. Solar starting in the early 2000s2003 to like 2012 got incredible attention both from VCs but also from government subsidies. John asks incredible questions. ZIERLER: And when does Sequoia enter into the mix? I led the Series A in IonQ, which is one of these first wave quantum hardware companies, which a bunch of people at Caltech knowlike Chris Monroe and Jungsang Kim, the founders of the companywell. But the crypto theme is so unique that we decided to create a dedicated fund (a first for Sequoia, ed.) The founder of Figma is an amazing 30 year old kid who also really loves physics and computers. MAGUIRE: I was at Stanford for a year and a half. While the crypto industry continues to mint new unicorn startups, the rapid cooling of public market tech stocks has threatened to stall growth in the emerging category, which has still proven awfully susceptible to macro conditions. MAGUIRE: I was really into computers as a kid, and really passionate about physics. Moore's law had to keep running for an extra five years, and no one knew how long it would run for. He is also an angel investor. I'll pause. He just gives you breadcrumbs along the way when you need them. 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. I could explain the technical definition, but that's neither here nor there. That's another area where Google has done an incredible job, is machine learning research. Another was the way black body radiation happens. He doesn't tell you where you're going. It was a crazy thing, but Jerry, in my first year, had a medical complication and died during my first year. MAGUIRE: I'm actually not so sure about that. ZIERLER: What was the process from John inviting you to the meetings to actually becoming his student? I didn't even know the prerequisites to be in that world, so it took an extra few years. Shaun Maguire Ph.D General Information. Can the same be said at this point for what quantum information, what quantum computing will be good for? So, I didn't really know anyone at Sequoia, but I was getting recruited by other firms. This other founder was saying some things I don't think are correct and saying it in a really arrogant way to Patrick, and Patrick was pushing back and was correct in his understanding of quantum computation. Anyway, a bit of an aside. ZIERLER: Was Alexei accessible? In some ways there's a parallel to the past. I had literally never done one. Bill Thurston was this guy who's workI had just been fascinated by the guy, and I read a lot of his papers. It's going to be fun. The way I met Patrick is pretty funny. After the fact, I would say my post hoc analysis is that almost anyone that shows up for three to six month, you kind of default become his student. As an investor and adviser, Shaun has worked with companies building everything from quantum computers to self-driving cars. MAGUIRE: It was simply in having a stronger math background than some people. I was absolutely fascinated by where things come from, how energy works, oil and gas, chemicals industry, things like that, pharma. When I first went to John's group, it was like 20 people in the meeting, once a week getting together, people having lunch together during the day sharing ideas, people working on many different topics, working on the future of computing, algorithms for that, hardware for that, working on black holes, working on fundamental quantum mechanics, paradoxes in quantum mechanics, things like this, condensed matter physics. If I were to guess what would happen, I think it will probably lead to a new set of equations that capture nature on a deeper level than we have today. At my job I'm dealing with incredible rate of change, I'm dealing with incredible amounts of data, and physics gives you frameworks to make sense of all this and try to come up with heuristic laws and ways to think about things which are very powerful for investing. View the profiles of people named Shaun Maguire. One of the big evolutions in the early 90s was this thing called the holographic principle. When I was at GV I invested in Stripe. I was probably taking eight classes a quarter. MAGUIRE: My read is John is just testing your commitment. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators . Patrick called Sequoia and told them they should hire me instead. That's a global statement about the object for any surface or three dimensional manifold, etc. Caltech means a lot to me. Or is it something entirely. Is this like a common narrative in venture capital? Founders Fund had flown us to an island off Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I don't really remember any of it. Or are you thinking about actual wormholes? It was unbelievably lonely. Shaun is a Partner at Sequoia Capital. Harry Maguire is the world's most expensive centre-back and captain of arguably the world's most famous football club. I think there are probably actually wormholes, but it doesn't matter for the sake of the work. That is basically hyperbolic geometry. Physics is something I use all the time, because I've invested in a lot of companies that touch atoms. 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. MAGUIRE: That's a great question. 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. shaun maguire sequoia wife https://iccleveland.org/wp-content/themes/icc/images/empty/thumbnail.jpg 150 150 ICC ICC https://iccleveland.org/wp-content/themes/icc . MAGUIRE: My academic background is pretty unusual. Patrick was talking to an extremely famous founder. 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. Or my Caltech title? ZIERLER: Besides John, who else was on your committee? MAGUIRE: We don't know. Will you be my advisor? 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. Do we live in a many worlds thing? The field has moved so fast. Did you know Rob? It's an interesting thing, because I think John changes many people's lives. ZIERLER: [laughs] Shaun, this has been a great conversation. So, when I was doing that one, yes, sure, having the quantum background was really important, and being able to do diligence on the company and trying to figure out what the roadmap would be and what the biggest bottlenecks would be for scaling and things like that. 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? I kind of stopped going to school. So, I don't stay up perfectly, but I do try to stay up with the really big results. Then another fund that was trying to recruit me did a reference call with my friend Patrick Collison. There have been these big evolutions, these big jumping points, and I only mentioned some of the ones related to the information paradox. Biography. I have been really interested in machine learning, and in cryptocurrencies, and in robots, and in space, and in physics, and other things. ZIERLER: Awesome. He started mentoring me. Don had mainly been in sales and marketing. I sold it for a billion dollars, all of that. There's a very similar result in hyperbolic geometry which basically says the eigenvalues that correspond to waves moving in negatively curved space follow these very specific rules, and there's some really beautiful aspect, and there's actually a relationship between those thingsbetween those waves and the eigenvalues that come from the waves, and the geometry in these geometric data. So, if you say, "Hey Alexei, there's something that I would really like to understand that you worked on. When the Figma acquisition happened, it caused a lot of our other portfolio companies to raise their ambition. I think Bell Labs, one of the key things, they basically had a regulated monopoly. Look at solar. It was just announced last week that Figma is going to be acquired by Adobe for $20 billion. Subscribe to Chain Reaction onApple,Spotifyor your alternative podcast platform of choice to keep up with us every week. Because it's an extra three factors of two you had to get. I've been reading your notes from Afghanistan." I would say that Caltech is more scientific. Dr. Maguire previously occupied the position of Member of DRW Trading Group and Partner at GV Management Co. LLC. It's a universal thing across many different fields. I think that for a lot of people that come from a pure physics background, it's hard for them to talk to Alexei because he really is talking as a mathematician. For whatever reason, its their life mission to try to revolutionize the industry theyre going after. For months, when I was 13, I couldn't sleep at night because there was a thought experiment I couldn't understand. It raises your ego in some ways, but it has to lower our ego in others. So, I tried to bring some of the hyperbolic geometry ideas into this field. John was a huge part in this holographic principle idea. We became friends from that. There are certain shapes that have differentthey have the same eigenvalues, same to the Laplacian, with different geometries. That was a very exciting time, so a lot of people both in quantum information and also in high-energy physics, people all came from those two extremes and all came to the same problem. Aharonov is one of these guys that's always doing things very differently than other people. In our conversation, Maguire emphasized his belief that plenty of other funds dipping their toes into crypto are going to pull back when the market grows less frothy, but he believes that Sequoia has already committed to a lengthy relationship with the sector we have permanent intentions., Sequoia is very deliberate with everything we do and we spend huge amounts of time debating every strategy change, everything, we debate every seed investment to sometimes excruciating detail, but it helps us make really good decisions and make decisions as a team rather than as individuals, Maguire tells us. I think Caltech might have produced a comparable number, or maybe even more high-impact companies in the past. It's obvious that for things like material science, when quantum computers are powerful enough, they will play an important role in material discovery. They're not that" They're really, really smart, but having that exposure really raises your own personal ambition. He knows where you're going. Is that relevant to the kinds of things you do on a day to day basis? Sequoia BitClout was both a sensation and a controversial startup when it launched earlier this year. In some ways, one way to view whats happening in crypto right now is its almost like throwing all the old rules out and starting with a blank canvas.. So, that's one thing that is really powerful. Imagine having a relationship between the masses of photons and the shape of space. I think another thing that's very powerful about Caltech is thatit's actually something that we have in common at Sequoiais that Caltech forces you to raise your ambition. I always had that passion, but I've had the science passion which really started with astronomy. 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 pitched everyoneexcept Sequoia, because they had a conflict. One of the most high-profile ones was Global Crossing, which was this company that was the fastest company ever at the time to get a billion dollar valuation. ZIERLER: From your own perspective, do you tend to think of this in somewhat of a horse race metaphor? 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. The only area where I actually knew something was probability, which was an area that I had spent five years or whatever, so that was an area where I knew something. ZIERLER: Did you officially unenroll from Stanford at that point? It was a small event, call it 50 people. He played college football for the Florida State Seminoles. Alexei is a mathematician. ZIERLER: Shaun, coming in in so many ways as an autodidact between the math and the physics, what areas did you have to play catch-up for quantum information, and where did you jump right in alongside your cohort? One of the things is Caltech is a very humbling place. It was purely just my curiosity. I think Stanford is the other extreme, where Stanford in a lot of ways is just like, you go to Stanford because you want to start a company, and it's going to be the stepping stone to starting a company or joining a hot startup. Before, there was too much incompatibility in the languages these fields would use, so it was just hard to even communicate. For what it's worth, I think it's really important for the world to have places like Caltech that are so focused on science. Every week or two, I'd go talk to him, but there was no one else at Caltech I could talk to about the work. I just kind of knew this thing, the information paradox, and all of that. My passion, especially coming from that background, was in probability and combinatorics, but really theoretical probability I just found absolutely fascinating. The firm has made a number of equity investments in crypto startups over the years including Fireblocks and FTX, but while Andreessen Horowitz was early to commit to a dedicated crypto fund in 2018, Sequoia has continued made its equity investments through its general funds. He didn't take me as a student, but he told me to come to his group meetings, so I did. Sequoia partners and specialists help outlier founders at every stage bend the arc of the possible. I think most string theorists have beenmost, not all, some of them have been very arrogantbut the vast majority have been very measured in how they've thought about string theory and the current state of string theory and all that. Stanford does amazing research, but Stanford has a lot of faculty and a lot of money, and I actually think Caltech has higher quality research per capita. I honestly didn't feel like I deserved to be in that world, and I didn't know enough to even know how to get started until I was coming back. There's a lot of amazing faculty at Stanford; I'm not trying to knock Stanford. It was basically learning, reading papers, talking to lots of people, going to group meetings for a long time. In the late 90s, Juan Maldacena had a big breakthrough there. I think, sure, the volume of companies is greater now, but Caltech had its hand in some pretty legendary companies in the past. ZIERLER: To foreshadow to what happened next, were you on a trajectory of pursuing an academic career and then some opportunity came up? Shaun Maguire is a partner at Sequoia, has founded two companies (one in space technologies and another in global internet security) and holds a PhD in physics from Caltech. I can be a little more concreted if it's helpful, but I'd just say in this field, in quantum gravity, it's really hard to do an original contribution without three to five years of having learned the foundations. I would say it just doesn't matter. On the AdS side, that has a very deep relationship to hyperbolic geometry, which is something mathematicians have studied very deeply. Shaun Maguire's Investing Profile - Sequoia Capital Partner | Signal View who can give you a warm intro to Shaun and 30,000+ top startup investors by joining Signal. He had, every Wednesday morning, a group of literally three kids that were interested in these things, so we would go and he would teach us some mathematical problem solving. He was a physics major. It's actually breaking in some ways right now via Apple. You know for the vast majority of compute, you want it to be centralized. It's kind of the same thing. 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. I originally self-studied quantum mechanics, and I was able to have some intuition. Basically, starting in eighth grade, I got really disillusioned with school. because some crypto projects have characteristics and show performance that can't really be measured . In my opinion, no question. What was seen as the holy grail? By normal human standards, I'm an introvert. Shaun to start, will you please tell me your title and institutional affiliation? The way John works, is it's really a Socratic style. I have always, in science, I'm attracted to people that have been out of the box. Actually the day I defended, I flew to Israel to get married. I was a partner at Google Ventures at the time. Now at this point I'm maybe a 25 year old or something, I think was when I was coming back to Caltech. I think everyone that's been at Caltech, it has to lower your ego. Whereas there's some areas, like in combinatorics, where you can door like today in machine learningyou can do original work in three months. It became a $110 million program. I've already noticed in the last week, I've had many founders in our portfolio come to me, and it's raised their ambition. Don Valentine, the founder of the firm, he had been at some of the top semiconductor companies of the past, including Fairchild and National. I did horribly in high school. The actual edge doesn't move that quickly. At the time, a recurring theme through the group is that Kitaev had done a lot of really interesting work and people were trying to understand it continuously. I think it's because it's just in some ways it's unknowable. You want him to respect you; you don't want to disappoint him. Magic Eden is the leading destination for NFT discovery, expression, and ownership across digital cultures. I don't know what shape or form that will take. This firewall paradox really sharply showed that quantum information will play a fundamental role in resolving, in terms of understanding the nuance between general relativity and quantum mechanics, just in a really sharp way. In more recent memory, companies like Stripe, Zoom, Instagram, YouTube, ByteDance in China which created TikTok and many, many other companies across consumer enterprise, hardware, and all these things. By the time I came back to Caltech in 2012 after all this, I had been able to self-study and knew, for example, general relativity on a basic level. In many ways was the core person that drove it in the beginning, if not the core person. I felt like I just had to get to the cutting edge. They're human too. When I came back to Caltech, I had started a company in 2012, and it ended up being a relatively successful company. He said that maybe nature has this weird property that sometimes you know the physics of what's happening in some region of space, maybe all you need to know is what's happening on the boundary of that space. I actually think that with Google, they've lost a lot of the goodwill internally. Then, sometime in tenth grade decided I just had to leave school, so I took this thing called the California High School Proficiency Exam which is a GED equivalency, and left, and went to community college for two years while my friends were finishing high school. It tied together all of my passions, just all of themblack holes, computers, all of these things. MAGUIRE: I think someone doing theoretical work in what I call "hard" fieldsa PhD student doing theoretical work in pure math, or in quantum gravity, or high energy physics, or whatever, those are really hard areas to do original work. 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. Maybe five years later the physicists will go learn the math required to talk to him. Was it related to what he was doing at the time? I had a pretty good intuition about how to solve them and ended up talking to Professor Arratia. She recruited me onto a pretty crazy project related to the war in Afghanistan. So, that was one example of something. Jerry had just done incredible work in understanding our solar system, orbits, trajectories for space crafts, and things like that. One thing that I think is close to Bell Labs from a different direction right now is Deep Mind. 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. Or is it still premature? It evolved over the next ten years with people like Arthur Rock with Intel and others, and it, around the mid-70s, stabilized in the model that we have today. Another was industrials. I didn't know exactly what to do. One of the things that's a flywheel: because Sequoia has so much historical success and so many legendary companies in our portfolio, when our foundersjust as a very recent example, Sequoia had invested in a company called Figma. Could you find him? MAGUIRE: Of course! I think that, to put John in that category, one of the things I always really admired about John is he had changed fields many times and risen to the top of many different fields, like, started off in really high-energy physics, dark matter work, hardcore high-energy physics, and then he moved to Stephen Hawking style quantum aspects of black holes I would say was the second major area. Prior to GV, Shaun co-founded two companies: Qadium and Escape Dynamics. How did that play out? That's kind of the core intuition of behind the holographic principle. 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. They've always been more of an R&D firm and government contractor. Another is just the network of people. These things change over time. I've backed some people I knew from Caltech's companies. This is a true story. Google will do better than say, Meta or Facebook, but Apple has changed the way ad search works recently and made it a lot harder for their competitors, and they're getting a lot of ad market share, so it'll be interesting to see what happens to Google in that context. Robco rethinks how products are made, using modular robot systems.
