Is it working right now . Awesome. Again, i kind of skipped over the we are doing three competitions every single day. How many people actually still use fine use vine . Like six of you. Tomorrow we will be doing another one maybe around instagram and maybe one around twitter. Keep your eyes peeled for that. Lots of really cool prizes. I have to be up here in advance for a long time without very much to say. Does anyone have questions . No . Ok. Why is it so cold . Excellent question. The first is that there are a billion bodies in here, and if we did not make it cold, you would complain the other way. No . That is not true . I have been in the district with a busted ac and you guys were mad, like mad mad. So you guys would like to be warmer . Ok, i will spend my time during negotiating and see what i can do and i will come back and let you know what i get with the ac. Do you guys have an optimal temperature . 75, 73 . No . 75 is summer. I will aim for 75. We will get that sorted out asap. Lets focus on these investors. Do you want to her the names again . No . Yeah . Susan said yes. Omar from sequoia. Aileen lee from cowboy adventures. James flapavitt from greylock. [applause] all right. My microphone is live this time. That is great. Ok guys are lets talk about some stuff. First of all welcome to the stage, everybody. You know what i am going to do . Lets do this a little bit. That way i can see everybody. So, one of the things we could talk about, one of the things that is really interesting right now, the issue that we have with hiring engineers in the valley. It is becoming so easy i use easy in quotations because it is a grade. It is becoming so easy for people to get funded, get money start their own thing. The tools are there, the money is readily available in general. So what happens when it is easier to start a company and get funding than it is to hire an engineer . I will take it. Look, i think the one paradoxical but important approach for a ceo running a company in this environment is you have to recognize the people who are working for you the best people who will work for you probably will at some point want to start the company, so you have to actually be focused on how you help them to a college their goals as opposed to just filling a role in your company. Recently i was on the board of a company and the ceo asked me to give a talk to his engineering and product team about how to start a company. The initial thought on how to come in and do that to your team is basically like asking someone to come train your girlfriend how to meet guys in a bar. The paradoxical part of it is if you want to attract and keep awesome people who are really entrepreneurial, you have to make them feel and backup that you are going to support what they want to a cop in the want to a college in their careers. What do you think the dream job for an engineer is right now . You can answer one of your portfolio companies, but if you had to pick one, what would it be . Where is the right place for an engineer who wants to work at a company, not start their own thing yet, where would that be . I think it depends on what the engineering is looking for. A lot of the jobs of the venture capitalists is to be a recruiter and to be a headhunter, and i think in many Different Cases it depends on how early and how much responsibility the engineer wants, and are they going to be thinking about having more of a specific role in a more mature company, or do they want to have a more not impactful but more defining role in terms of the culture by joining an earlier company. If you are joining a company right now like fp right now, it is different than good acts. You are going to have different priorities that are invested in what you are doing. Left shift topics a little bit. Based on the founders of companies acting like little mini tyrants, sometimes they same things that they say things that are insensitive or can be deemed insensitive, or they have a complex about the way they handle their business side that is very mercenary and out there and forward. So these kind of founders, does that matter when you are talking to an investor whether or not you choose to put your money there . Do you see this as a problem down the road, or it doesnt matter because we want somebody who runs a Company First . The person you are investing with, the teams that you are looking to invest in is one of the key factors in making a decision because this is not just a state of you are trying to put your money somewhere and walk away and lets see what happens five years later. You are joining a team and partnering with the company and trying to work with this person, so there demeanor that so there but their demeanor, whether they will come was the goals, whether you think they are driven, all those things factor in a lot. They are primary topics of conversation. I think there is a distinction between someone might someone who might be difficult to work with or someone you might perceive as difficult to work with at certain times and someone who is unethical. I think many great entrepreneurs can be difficult to work with, have this incredible conviction and i am fine working with people who can be challenging to work with. The other sort of quality to look for is, can you say were they successful since they started, but actually someone who is selfaware, is open to feedback and learning, and if they will have a compounded daily, weekly, monthly learning rate, that is the entrepreneurs scale. I think that is an area where investors on the board can help where a lot of these companies especially companies for a long time do not have a head of hr. So some of the bad behavior may be because they are not getting kochi getting coaching, and coaches or investors, members of the board, are not giving them input on the kind of environment that they should be running, the professional that will attract the best talent. That is probably a good thing for the Investor Community to give input and select dictations for what is the best ray the best way to run a company. I think you can create a situation where someone who is not even difficult to work with like, g, maybe i should be more of a jerk. I need to be more aggressive and more rude. It really is not hard to just be a decent leader and a decent person, and i think we should all kind of hope to look for that. There are some people who are harder than others, but in general i think it is important as an idea. Continuing on the culture front, when it comes time to invest in a company, do you consider social good component of a company, whether it contributes back to some of the populace or whether it has a positive impact on Carbon Footprint or Something Like that . Do you count that as a factor . Is it one of your major checkpoints when you are considering investing in a company . I will start with that. I guess what we have come to realize is that actually from a generational standpoint we are seeing that millennials expect a social commitment, and are looking for businesses that have social responsibility being integral to their Business Model to actually be interested in the businesses. So i guess what we would say is we do not see them as being mutually exclusive, but actually the businesses that have social responsibility as art of the Business Models are likely as part of the Business Models are likely i think the reason why it has hit a nerve is because the customer wants to be able to help that maker make their vocation their career. As their bastion as the passion becomes their vocation, we are seeing it with farmers and with creators, backed by fans. I suspect that this question will become less relevant over time and is just going to be part of these Business Models. So if you are talking about cultural things in the valley, there is something we need to talk about. There seems to be an overwhelming abundance of mail founders versus female founders. I do not think we need to belabor that. It is pretty much a fact. We do not need to talk about whether that is true, but the important question is, how do you make the environment more inviting . What is responsible for that disparity, and how do we change that . Fixing the thing onstage here, it would be nice if you could do that, but it is important to think about why. Do you have any ideas about how that might be fixed . I think there are a number of issues that contribute to it. Fundamentally, it starts with Education Around Technology and engineering and other things you care about in the valley. It also has to do with framing of the problem. A lot of times the problem is framed as we do this good thing by bringing more women in. As opposed to something that is actually necessary, because we will all benefit from it. There are actual business outcomes that happen that are negative by net having there is a whole segment of society brought to the ecosystem, and having a real problem, as opposed to a favorite, it will change the perception of people and what they are willing to do to fix it. I think there is a Broad Spectrum of stuff happening in companies from things at the extreme harassment and gender pay gap, which are illegal. I think some people do not realize that those things are actually illegal and that put your company at legal risk. And there are stuff there is stuff that is softer on the spectrum and the culture and people feeling like they are not supported or favoritism or things that people say that our unintended consequences of just feeling uncomfortable or not knowing what are the right things to say. I feel there is probably an opportunity for some kind of a Training Program for something to go into companies to both help them kind of audit where they are in terms of do they have a fair environment, and how do they unpack some of the biased stuff that goes on every day that creates a more uncomfortable environment for people who are not like the majority of employees. I feel like you do not really have the tools yet that we need, but i am hoping that stuff that is coming out every day feels like a new article or a new study or a new example of people who are as the Community Comes together to figure out tools that makes us that that makes a systemic change, the ice bucket challenge, that sort of thing, that will bring awareness but the change but doesnt change the only thing i was going to say to that point to the point of sort of auditing, we do a regular audit of how many of 140 companies that we have have women as leaders or founders . We are at 15 , which is actually surprisingly high, but it is a massive issue. So what we it is further amplified by if you look at my portfolio, most of my customers are women. So there is this massive disconnect. Part of it is obviously thinking ok, can we find a partner that obviously could complement the work that we are doing, and obviously there are a lot of characteristics that make it harder for that something. The other is creating, using those founders to support new founders and new entrepreneurs. It is clearly something that has to be increasingly addressed. One observation inside greylock we have been around as a firm for 50 years, a long time. If you look at the partnership of greylock, several decades ago it was mostly white protestant men in blue blazers. If you look at how the Tech Industry has evolved, over the last couple of decades, most of my partners are now asian indian, and jewish, which mirrors what has happened but still male. We talked about this issue internally. The proportion of women who are founders and ceos, and a portion that are venture capitalists, these two are inextricably linked. The point that danny touched on, having a generation of companies that are women ceos and founders that have large successful outcomes, which is very much coming with a higher percentage, i think will help. There are a lot of factors. I hope james is right. Announcing two female gp not just one but two. I hope that will happen in the next two or three years. I think they will basically get the most attention and the most kudos for making the biggest change sooner rather than later. I think we fixed all that, so it should be all good for tomorrow. So if you how do you tell somebody they are not a good founder . Somebody walks in, they give you their pitch, you hear them out, and they leave and you think to yourself they are not the right person. They did the idea is good, but you are not a good founder. It is a sensitive situation. How do you tell them, dont do this, this is not right for you . I feel like you would be good at this. I would be good at delivering that message . [laughter] i would say that typically what we see is that the most successful founders are product oriented and very instinctual around the Market Opportunity we are going after. So you think about Tim Westergren from pandora playing the piano bar while he is developing this music experience on the side. From a founders experience, a company can emanate from the product. That is a potential disconnect. That said, there are companies that started by folks who on paper do not look like they are out of central casting who ended up being really successful. Several of the folks you are here invest in marketplace businesses. If you look at some of the most successful marketplace businesses, they have founders who are not guys who have done it before, not out of central casting, but they are incredibly resilient, scrappy, aggressive, really running at it and making it happen. It is really hard to spin things and get liquidity. Once you do, it can be hard to kill your business. Our reflex is there are plenty of exceptions and we cannot like i believe this person is scrappy enough to do this, but i would tell them know about this product. But i would like them so much, i want them in my fold. I am saying, you can back somebody who has a great domain expertise and product orientation, or you see situations where someone is not out of central casting but they are working. Maybe the person is better than they appear on the surface and they have the right grit and determination and focus to make a business work. First of all, a couple of things. You should be able to tell someone you are meeting with, who is the founder, and they are not a good founder in the meeting, you do not have to do a good followup. If you cannot tell in the meeting, there is something wrong. The second one that gets difficult is that in a lot of ways, in my case and probably in other folks cases, you are looking for people who are crazy enough to go after their life possibly with an entrepreneurial venture that has the most chances to not succeed. So it is really difficult to find the pattern recognition. But if they are not clearly going to be successful as a founder, then it is quite obvious pretty quickly, and the idea is not enough to actually make a business succeed. So all of a sudden my, clearly of high caliber and intellect but not a founder, i am going back to my headhunting database of all the companies that i am through and pitching them yeah, maybe you need a little more experience working with another company. Maybe you would like to do that before you start on this because here are the five reasons why it is not a great idea or you are not ready to start the company. I think it is dangerous to be that categorical to think that someone is not a good founder. Ideas change, people change. From my own experience, i probably was not a good founder in my first, second, or third. By the fifth one, that worked out. But if someone along the way told me i was not a good founder on the second one, maybe i would have stopped trying. You might want to say, not now. Maybe one more job. Im trying to think of a founder who has not had bumps in the road. The board and the investors should have a relationship with the founder to be able to build so that it is not out of the blue. Where you walk in and say you were doing a bad job. It has to be a constant dialogue of how you are doing, where do you feel you might have blind spots . Do you have a good enough team to accomplish all the stuff you do not want to spend time on or are not good at . How will you help them develop . There are lots of examples of folks i have worked with who do not seem to be great founders, but they wound up building Great Companies. It does not just happen miraculously. You have to work on it. Really quickly what are the top two most Interesting Companies not currently invested in . I would say you bird is definitely one of them. I would have to think about i would say uber is definitely one of them. I would have to think about the second one. Uber and cyranos uber and theranos. Know me. I would probably say another one. Got another one from a . Very good. Thank you all very much. I appreciate it. [applause] i have breaking news, a super important announcement. The ac has been turned down. [applause] i know. I went back there with an iron fist and i said, guys, my audience is really serious about this. We are walking a daily get we are walking a delicate line right now. Quick announcement there are 400 startups out there, and that is just today. They are super important. They are all really cool, and you have the opportunity to vote on who can be plucked and actually participate in our battlefield this afternoon. Voting closes at 3 00, so i encourage you guys during lunch during break if you want to take a walk, check them out, figure out who is your favorite and vote. The website is really long and there is a good chance i will mess it up, but we will have it up on the screens. I dont know why they gave me this to memorize. There should be a short url or something. Our next guest is Elizabeth Holmes from theranos. Please give her a warm welcome. All right, i will call. Thanks. Hey, everybody. I am john schuberthieber. Elizabeth holmes we will have a first round here in which i will get my blood drawn live on stage right now so you can all see what the theranos process will be. We have a licensed phlebotomist who is about to come out and take my blood. If anyone here is squeamish, i urge you to look away while the magic happens. If the magic happens. Come on out, and we will get this taken care of. So move that up here. Get that right there. Im sorry, we will get to the meat of the interview in a couple of seconds. What does this entail . All right. There are files that are coming out for those of you who cannot see what is happening. In a traditional process, i would be rolling up my sleeve, and people would be tapping my veins. There would be all sorts of process, and there would be a big needle. This involves no needle, but a little sort of warming packet that i am getting. I am sorry i am giving you the