If you're trying to get to profitability by lowering costs as a startup then you are in a very precarious and difficult position. You need to grow through profitability.

I think the reality is that it's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur, it's never been a better time to work at a startup. You work at a really intellectually free environment, you get to work with people who are like-minded, it's very energetic. It's wonderful.

If you're trying to get to profitability by lowering costs as a startup then you are in a very precarious and difficult position. You need to grow through profitability.

The entrepreneurial struggle is the same at basically every stage in the sense that there's maybe slightly less risk but strategic issues are generally always the same. Now there's so much existential risk from another company either being able to compete or to disrupt you in the same way you're disrupting somebody else, an entrepreneur needs a real steady partner who has the ability to start working with them in the Seed or the A and be credible and value-add with strategic advice, and just be backstopped by so much capital that you can do any growth round or even a public round.

It's OK, by the way, that it takes 10 years for you to make "money." Since when was it that being in your mid-30s to make a few hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars was like egregiously unfair? I think we have to have a sense of perspective here. We're all going to live into our 80s or 90s. So what is everybody in such a rush for?

I think going public should not be a goal and the more that we make it a goal, the less it will be a goal. It's kind of like, I have three young children and when I tell them to eat vegetables, the last thing they will ever do is eat vegetables. I think it's just this weird thing where entrepreneurs have a reflexive negative reaction when people are pushing for it. I think you have to view going public for what it is, which is a transitional moment where you can consolidate mindshare and win at an even larger scale.

If the investors themselves are not sophisticated, if they themselves are not putting a lot of their own money to work, if they themselves don't understand the continuum of capital and how different parts of the capital structures react differently, then they're basically worthless. They're not going to give great advice to these entrepreneurs who then need it. So that is unfortunately the cycle we're in and we have to break the cycle.