He received an undergraduate degree from the University of Southern . My job as a VC is much more about business strategy, hiring people, managing people, understanding human psychology, understanding market psychology, understanding where the puck is going in terms of technological trends, things like that. You need physics to understand that. Five years ago, quantum information was moving way faster than machine learning. But photons are always moving, and they have a mass when they're actually moving from a relativistic perspective. Shaun Maguire, General Partner, Sequoia Capital, Quantum Information and the Venture Connection. It's like, some parents rule out of fear; some parents rule out of love. It gets us off fossil fuels. It was entertaining. It's actually a directly relevant story, so I'll share it here. Apr 26, 2023. Now at this point I'm maybe a 25 year old or something, I think was when I was coming back to Caltech. 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. You can't have spaceships traveling away in a straight line from a Euclidean geometry perspective. I have a degree from Stanford. That's how I got to know Google Ventures. It's a tautology, but it's also 100% correct. When we make a decision to do something, it doesnt happen unless the whole team is behind the decision. Working with Professor Makarov, I was his only student. ZIERLER: Shaun, I'm curious in graduate school if you interfaced at all with string theorists who of course are convinced that string theory is the likeliest path to developing a theory of quantum gravity. Another was the way black body radiation happens. Institutionally, is Sequoia involved in the quantum information space at all? I think it might be a similar thing with quantum computing. He is a Co-Founder and served as Board Member at Expanse. When I was getting recruited by other funds, Patrick was aware. String theory is one. ZIERLER: And when does Sequoia enter into the mix? People don't quite give credit, but Caltech's own Arnold Beckman in many ways was maybe the first VC. It's funny because John has a veryit's maybe not the style you would think. With my cybersecurity companyI really helped start many companies, but the cybersecurity company onewhich was called Qadium, but then we renamed it to Expansethat's the only one where I was really full-time with my company for many years. Presently, he is Partner at Sequoia Capital. Then that person got mad and left the conversation and left Patrick and me talking. It was still pretty easy for me. I didn't know exactly what to do. Before Sequoia I was at Google Ventures. 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. I'd been at Google Ventures for three years, and I had the opportunity to move to Sequoia which is the best venture capital firm in the world, so it was hard to say no to. It may seem like a really small thing, but it's the only clue we have that there needs to be something new. ZIERLER: Once you started going to group meetings at IQI, what were your impressions? Some of it is subconscious. For months, when I was 13, I couldn't sleep at night because there was a thought experiment I couldn't understand. The field has moved so fast. They were investing in flying carsKittyhawkjust two days ago said that they're shutting down. It's an interesting thing, because I think John changes many people's lives. I don't know, I was learning the rest. Rob is another legend of the field. ZIERLER: What did you see as your primary contributions and conclusions with your thesis research? There's a lot of amazing faculty at Stanford; I'm not trying to knock Stanford. Another example would be: in quantum there's a guy, Yakir Aharonov, as in the Aharonov-Bohm effect. It's not talked about that way, but Shockley Semiconductor was originally a division of Beckman Instruments. When I was 7 years old, he helped me build my first computer. I went to public school in Orange County, California. I had moved from a full-time operating role to chairman, and I was finishing my PhD. MAGUIRE: My job title is I'm a general partner at Sequoia Capital. So, I felt like if I'm ever going to do something in business, I'm never going to get a shot this good, so I kind of had to do that in my mind. I've backed some people I knew from Caltech's companies. 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. Iron Fish is a Layer 1 blockchain that provides privacy guarantees on every single transaction. There are certain shapes that have differentthey have the same eigenvalues, same to the Laplacian, with different geometries. He has a PhD in Physics from Caltech and Masters degrees in Statistics from Stanford and "Control and Dynamical Systems" from Caltech. I personally believe quantum computing is going to be similar to solar. Will you sign this thing for me?" I was born in 1985, so I was always trying to mess around with computers. They lost a lot of money, but the category has been very successful. In high school, I didn't know about the IMO, USAMO, AIME, or any of these things. Patrick called Sequoia and told them they should hire me instead. Because I had come from a math background, I found that yes, I could talk to Alexei. MAGUIRE: My read is John is just testing your commitment. shaun maguire sequoia wifepapa smurf tattoo. It's basically this idea that somehow wormholes and entanglementso wormholes on the general relativity side, entanglement on the quantum sideare very deeply related to each other. I made a lot of my closest friends from Caltech. Can you make time for me?" Look at solar. You want to live up to his name and reputation. I think Bell Labs, one of the key things, they basically had a regulated monopoly. Monad's platform unites security data silos and builds effective security and compliance workflows. Honestly, after getting to the cutting edge of knowledge there, it's weird. I didn't really have much of a formal background in it or anything. Sequoia BitClout was both a sensation and a controversial startup when it launched earlier this year. I feel like that's what happened with string theory. John rules out of love, and you don't want to disappoint him. MAGUIRE: 26 actually. That is basically hyperbolic geometry. John was a huge part in this holographic principle idea. It's really easy to go say, "Admit me; I'm going to work really hard." 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. We had to have a basket of renewables to fight this thing that was starting to happen with global warming. It was when I was at DARPA, that's when I got exposed to quantum information. That paradox really came from AdS/CFT line of thinking, and for these things like anti-de Sitter space, very intuitively, very naivelyto back up one step, you can think of objects in space, for example, any two dimensional surface: it's either got negative curvature, zero curvature, or positive curvature. So, I basically made that decision a long time ago that I wouldn't do it. ZIERLER: Did you get any curveball questions? There's this other thing called holographic entanglement entropy. To answer the question: bachelor's degree from USC, University of Southern California, but there's a lot more to the story. I was walking through the halls, and there was a professor who had a math competition sheet on his doorthis guy, Richard Arratiathe competition was the Putnam competition, which is the North American college math competition. There's two things. Knowde is the marketplace for chemicals, polymers and ingredients. Alexei traveled sometimes, and I think he was very protective of his time in that he wanted you to meet him when he would say, but he would always make time for you. It's a little unusual in that on the company side I was doing it becausethe reason why I was doing the company, in a lot of ways, is I got lucky. MAGUIRE: Of course! Is that relevant to the kinds of things you do on a day to day basis? I had a really horrible experience, to be honest. It was a tiny department. It tied together all of my passions, just all of themblack holes, computers, all of these things. I sent him a picture. Did you have any interface with that world? Basically, I was investing in companies and taking board seats. Michael Moritz. People don't really use that as an example. 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. Anyway, a bit of an aside. MAGUIRE: My job title is I'm a general partner at Sequoia Capital. It became a $110 million program. When did that happen? With computers, it just seemed like the most important technology of the time. There are some videos of this online; it's pretty hilarious. Actually the day I defended, I flew to Israel to get married. We don't need to know the exact algorithms that are going to run. Seed/Early + Growth. In many ways was the core person that drove it in the beginning, if not the core person. 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. Solar starting in the early 2000s2003 to like 2012 got incredible attention both from VCs but also from government subsidies. They've always been more of an R&D firm and government contractor. I also, though, I think a lot of string theorists have gotten a bad rap. He had a couple PhD students that were about my age or a little older who became good friends. When I was nine years old, I became really passionate about the solar system. 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. Aharonov is one of these guys that's always doing things very differently than other people. He was always accessible. It's path-dependent over what happens over the next ten, twenty years. MAGUIRE: I think something that's hard for people to understand about me is that I've always been doing multiple things in parallel my whole life. I took a lot of tough graduate math classes. In other words, the experimentalists joining matter to the theory, did that register with you at all? I think maybe on the postdoc level it had an impact because we started to have a lot more seminars and all of that, that would have people from both experimental and theory world. The way I met Patrick is pretty funny. 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. So, that was one example of something. My PhD is a very toy regime of three-dimensional gravity, two dimensional quantum sidesAdS, three; CFT, two. ZIERLER: [laughs] Shaun, let's establish now some context. I started at Stanford in 2007 and moved to Caltech in 2009. So, I think that's something that's really powerful about Caltech. It was more helpful for being able to do diligence. 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. Physics is very powerful. Growing up, I had a cousin who studied computer science at UCLA, who made a huge impact on me. I try to keep up with all those fields. Shaun Maguire: Sequoia Capital has historically had several types of technology funds that match the size of the companies we've invested in. ZIERLER: As you were surveying all of these ideas, where did you see a niche? Texas A&M (OA) Accomplishments and honors. While decentralization allows for a certain type of consumer protections, Maguire still contends that the rulebook of traditional investor protections shouldnt be thrown out. Honestly, at the end of my PhD I had three full-time jobs. The third was Silicon Valley, where people are making this technology using physics and other things to bring it forward. Could you have gone back? It was basically a bunch of renegade people that just loved technology and didn't want to go work on Wall Street; they wanted to make their career out of trying to build the future the hard way. Bored out of my mind. MAGUIRE: Correct. Was that a connecting point to Sequoia? We would have gotten there later with the different technology. What was some of the work there? ZIERLER: As you got comfortable in the field, where did you see an opportunity to contribute? It was this weird, internal drive. MAGUIRE: Very rarely. This is a true story. I'm not talking about on a physics level. I had to say yes to it on the spot, so I went to DARPA for a year and a half full-time there. The hardware is going to be really valuable. SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches rockets and spacecraft. I would do these thought experiments. He dropped out of MIT. I have a fellowship, so I don't need any funding. With the literature, I am really, really busy. MAGUIRE: I'm actually not so sure about that. Another example is fiber-optic communication, where in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was an incredible amount of venture capital money and government subsidies that went into building fiber infrastructure. 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.
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