MAGUIRE: It's what Stephen Hawking is famous for, but I didn't understand at all the stuff Hawking had done. Some of it is implicit. Shaun is a Partner at Sequoia Capital. I just had to get to the cutting edge. Let me tell you, that's one of the lessons of studying either quantum mechanics or general relativity: your instincts are oftentimes wrong, so you have to actually go do the calculations. Alexei Kitaev. One of the things that's interesting about the journey of being a PhD student is that you work so hard to get to the cutting edge. I came back in 2012. It's funny because John has a veryit's maybe not the style you would think. It wasn't as clear that you'd be able to go to cheaper instantaneous power production than natural gas, for example. Twitter View on Twitter. 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. I think it might be a similar thing with quantum computing. It was a happy accident. Privy makes Simple APIs to manage user data off-chain. Then another fund that was trying to recruit me did a reference call with my friend Patrick Collison. He was a physics major. Shaun Maguire, a crypto partner of Sequoia Capital, one of the venture capital firms most active when it comes to investments in the cryptocurrency space, issued its opinion on the future of many VCs investing in crypto. What were people excited about at that point? But, just by having this incredible profit engine that you can pump into these other ideas, I think there are a lot of similarities. For months, when I was 13, I couldnt sleep at night because there was a thought experiment I couldnt understand. Maybe five years later the physicists will go learn the math required to talk to him. 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. 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. 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. But I think he's testing people's commitment, which I think is a really smart strategy that not enough people do. John asks incredible questions. I have incredible energy, so I've always been doing athletics of some kind, because otherwise I just can't think unless I burn my energy. His portfolio includes Stripe, Opendoor, IonQ, Spinlaunch, Lambda School, Dandelion Energy . I felt like I just had to get to the cutting edge. People would know who he is and know the companies he started. They've always been more of an R&D firm and government contractor. Basically, NASA was doing this programyou could learn ham radio and ask astronauts aboard one of the shuttles, ask them a question in ham radio as they orbit the Earth. 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. 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. They're not that" They're really, really smart, but having that exposure really raises your own personal ambition. Sequoia's Shaun Maguire on competition and conviction in - Yahoo! Founders Fund had flown us to an island off Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I had a pretty good intuition about how to solve them and ended up talking to Professor Arratia. SHAUN MAGUIRE: I'm beyond thrilled to be here. Facebook gives people the power to. The other groups I had been in, they weren't groups. It's hard to say no when DARPA is willing to give you money to go build some really advanced technology with really brilliant people. I originally self-studied quantum mechanics, and I was able to have some intuition. The professors at USC told me I should graduate and go somewhere better, so I went up to Stanford and started grad school there, actually in the statistics department. When I proposed to my wife, I blacked out that day. An Inside Look at Sequoia Capital | Shaun Maguire x Nader Al-Naji It's just how I am wired. I had this strong background in probability, so I went into the math department and started working with someoneNikolai Makarov, who's a legend in mathto do some theoretical probability work. At that moment, he becomes your advisor. One of the most famous ones was the photoelectric effect that Einstein won the Nobel Prize for his explanation of. It's actually a directly relevant story, so I'll share it here. Why Sequoia, Others Bet $40 Million on an Anonymous Crypto Founder Maguire said that more important than decentralization for its own sake, is the ability of users to be able to leave with their identity and data, an effort which should protect consumers from platform overreach. An equivalent thing is in quantum mechanics, people still debate the interpretation around wave function collapse and things like this. I think everyone that's been at Caltech, it has to lower your ego. There's a lot of amazing faculty at Stanford; I'm not trying to knock Stanford. (It turns out space is curved.) 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. In other words, if all of these companies are pouring billions of dollars into quantum computing without anyone really having a truly well-developed sense of what this technology will be used for, is that common? I've also been absolutely fascinated by science. Deep Mind is now owned by Google, so I think that is a good one. There's some technical definition that gives you that, but you can have negative, zero, or positive curvature. It became a $110 million program. I would say that Caltech is more scientific. Honestly, at the end of my PhD I had three full-time jobs. I had never seen one of these. 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.. I've backed some people I knew from Caltech's companies. MAGUIRE: Of course! 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. I was probably taking eight classes a quarter. ZIERLER: Does the comparison hold up insofar as with solar startups, we knew what solar would be good for, right? I was absolutely fascinated by where things come from, how energy works, oil and gas, chemicals industry, things like that, pharma. They lost a lot of money, but the category has been very successful. The crypto category has dealt with plenty of skeptics, some in the venture capital community, who believe that the sectors benefits are being oversold and that the web3 promise of decentralization is just smoke and mirrors. MAGUIRE: 26 actually. ZIERLER: [laughs] Shaun, let's establish now some context. I think there's a second thing. By normal human standards, I'm an introvert. In my opinion, no question. I'm delighted to be here with Dr. Shaun Maguire. My goal with the PhD was just to get to the cutting edge of knowledge in that field, because these things had kept me up in the middle of the night as a little kid, literally, for a long time. Another Sequoia Partner, Michelle Bailhe, said that the firm believes it's still "day one for . But they were talking about quantum computing. See Shaun Maguire's recent investments in Series A Cloud Infrastructure, other investment areas, and co-investors. He was also an interesting, out of the box human, so I found him really exciting. Earlier this year, Sequoia announced a $500 to $600 million sub-fund dedicated exclusively to buying up cryptocurrencies. I don't know what shape or form that will take. There have been these big evolutions, these big jumping points, and I only mentioned some of the ones related to the information paradox. So, I did this and got to ask a question to the astronauts, and that honestly made space really tangible to me. I would almost say in a lot of ways it was similar to Maxwell's demon paradox, which was in the late 1800s. Shaun Maguire. That was the question, and what he meant by that was if you could take boundary measurements around the sounds you'd be hearing on a drum, or the heights of waves moving through a drum, could you uniquely figure out the shape inside? The big bang one issomehow people don't really talk about that. One of the things is Caltech is a very humbling place. So, at that point, I wasn't just a beggar anymore. I like high-IQ founders. I think Bell Labs, one of the key things, they basically had a regulated monopoly. I was so nervous. BCS national champion ( 2013) Sean Maguire (born March 11, 1994) is an American football quarterback. I've also been fascinated by computers, which I would say is slightly different than science. When I was 7 years old, he helped me build my first computer. I just kind of knew this thing, the information paradox, and all of that. But going back a long ways, going back to when I first started at Caltech, I thought I would probably be a professor, but when I went to DARPA, that was the moment when I had to choose between the two. That's another example of something where it didn't make sense with the classical treatment. Prior to GV, Shaun co-founded two companies: Qadium and Escape Dynamics. MAGUIRE: Yeah, I don't think they're racing toward a singular finish line. The founder of Figma is an amazing 30 year old kid who also really loves physics and computers. 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. The Wire Digital is helping global businesses make smarter decisions. My physics passion was in ninth grade. Physics is very powerful. Do you stay on top of the literature? This all happened in a curved space, a Minkowski space. Shaun Maguire Ph.D Profile: Contact Information & Network | PitchBook 2020-2021. When I came to Caltech, I was going to work with Jerry Marsden. He's a professor I believe now at Chapman University, spent the early part of his career in Israel. MAGUIRE: No. Now at this point I'm maybe a 25 year old or something, I think was when I was coming back to Caltech. Caltech means a lot to me. That sort of developed over time? I was lucky enough to work with him. I didn't even know the prerequisites to be in that world, so it took an extra few years. Was that a connecting point to Sequoia? Mark Wise. 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. I had to say yes to it on the spot, so I went to DARPA for a year and a half full-time there. He taught computer science and astronomy. I don't even know some of the things that I know are there, but I'll tell you some of the things that I'm aware of. Just knowing where that edge is, is enough. Feynman is the classic Caltech person. Shaun Maguire Partner at Sequoia Capital San Francisco Bay Area 3K followers 500+ connections Join to view profile Sequoia Capital Caltech Activity Below is a great article in Forbes. r2C is a defensive cybersecurity automation company with an open-source static analysis tool. The goal of quantum gravity is to reconcile these discrepancies. Did you talk to him a lot about these things? So, I went up to the statistics department at Stanford, which is one of the top places in that, and at Stanford is where I fell back in love with physics. It gave me a really deep intuition for that, and that led to a passion for black holes, and I came back to it later. It's a tautology, but it's also 100% correct. Alexei is not going to just go hang out in the hallway at the blackboard doing his work in a public space, inviting people to come up and start talking to him. MAGUIRE: I wouldn't say that Caltech is the most entrepreneurial place. The extroverts are the ones who look at your shoes when you're talking. AMP Robotics is changing the face of recycling with high-speed guided robotics. Sorry, not in ninth grade. Or was this really a sudden career shift from what you might do otherwise with a PhD in fundamental physics? It's Friday, September 23, 2022. The vast majority of the individual solar companies failed, but the whole category has been incredibly successful. It was a crazy thing, but Jerry, in my first year, had a medical complication and died during my first year. It was a good investment for governments. It's almost a minimalist style. I got lucky in that when I was leaving DARPA, we came up with an idea. 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. Subscribe to Chain Reaction onApple,Spotifyor your alternative podcast platform of choice to keep up with us every week. What could quantum gravity actually achieve? I saw these 12 questions and sat down outside his office and started thinking through how to solve these. He showed that in a specific sub-version of string theory, that that holographic principle would hold exactly true, and this result, I think it was in 1998, but in the late 90s became called what's called AdS/CFT, anti-de Sitter space, which is on the general relativity geometry side, and CFT, conformal field theory, which is on the high-energy physics quantum field theory side of the equation. 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. But photons are always moving, and they have a mass when they're actually moving from a relativistic perspective. Do we live in a many worlds thing? He would say, "Be here at this time and place." We say they're massless, because if they were at rest, they'd be massless. In the late 90s, Juan Maldacena had a big breakthrough there. It took a long time. Knowde is the marketplace for chemicals, polymers and ingredients. It was really lonely and solitary. ZIERLER: I meant relative to where it was maybe 20 or 30 years ago, not relative to Stanford of course. Before black holes, a prerequisite to understand them is you have to know some general relativity. It's close enough to the core business that it's a very smart strategic thing to invest in. With quantum computing, I would say there's already a lot of applications that are pretty clear, and then there's also a whole bunch of things that maybe you can't say the precise algorithm, but on the other hand it's pretty obvious quantum computers will be important. I think it's because it's just in some ways it's unknowable. 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. 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. MAGUIRE: My job title is I'm a general partner at Sequoia Capital. I originally joined in the Control and Dynamical Systems Department. Fast forward a few years, and Google Ventures offered me a job that gave me the flexibility to stay in LA and finish my Ph.D. in quantum gravity. Another was industrials. I would say it just doesn't matter. I would say there are two parts to it. MAGUIRE: I was doing the same thing. ZIERLER: In your work on wormholes, just to clarify, are these toy models? So, I didn't really know anyone at Sequoia, but I was getting recruited by other firms. ZIERLER: Finally Shaun, going forward, do you have a fluid view about your relationship with academia? It's going to be fun. As a teenager, he played in the world's top league for the video game Counter-Strikeand got an F in Algebra II. So, that's one thing that is really powerful. (Sequoia will have two board seats at the company, held by Gupta, who focuses on later-stage investments, and Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, whose concentration is on investing in early-stage . 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?