Harry Maguire: What happened? - The Athletic A lot of people, their intuition for space or geometry is that we live in flat space, but if you live on a sphere, that sphere is what we would call positively curved. He had founded this tiny little department called Control and Dynamical Systems. I sold it for a billion dollars, all of that. How did that play out? 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. Shaun Maguire. There's always more to learn, so I'm always playing catch-up. Aharonov is one of these guys that's always doing things very differently than other people. You can listen to the entireinterview with Maguireon our podcast, Chain Reaction. So, they were able to do really amazing work that was not too far away from the core business. There are certain shapes that have differentthey have the same eigenvalues, same to the Laplacian, with different geometries. The third was Silicon Valley, where people are making this technology using physics and other things to bring it forward. Another is just the network of people. Or are you thinking about actual wormholes? When you're looking at light, there are certain ways where light very clearly behaves as a wave, and there are certain ways where it very clearly behaves as a particle. I'm delighted to be here with Dr. Shaun Maguire. Just think of a few examples. I would almost say in a lot of ways it was similar to Maxwell's demon paradox, which was in the late 1800s. 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.. Deep Mind is now owned by Google, so I think that is a good one. In my opinion, no question. I don't really remember any of it. ZIERLER: Awesome. Shaun Maguire, General Partner, Sequoia Capital, Quantum Information and the Venture Connection. What could quantum gravity actually achieve? In a conversation on TechCrunch's new web3 podcast Chain Reaction, Sequoia crypto partner Shaun Maguire talked about the firm's commitment to the sector, regulatory challenges and what plenty. 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. For months, when I was 13, I couldn't sleep at night because there was a thought experiment I couldn't understand. I always had that passion, but I've had the science passion which really started with astronomy. I think maybe on the faculty level it was a bigger deal, because it changed who was on the committees. It became a program. I think it's because it's just in some ways it's unknowable. Patrick called Sequoia and told them they should hire me instead. The actual edge doesn't move that quickly. 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. I could go on and on. So, we became friends. You can register here. I just kind of knew this thing, the information paradox, and all of that. He's a professor I believe now at Chapman University, spent the early part of his career in Israel. The platform lets people buy crypto coins attached. I had to say yes to it on the spot, so I went to DARPA for a year and a half full-time there. It's almost a minimalist style. On the other hand, since I was a little kid, my passion was black holes and space. We live in a space where photons have a mass. It was basically learning, reading papers, talking to lots of people, going to group meetings for a long time. He was also a Partner at GV. I didnt even go to class most of the time1.8 GPA in 10th grade and an F in algebra II. I got A pluses in a lot of my classes. Another thing too, to be very candid for me, I have very broad interests. The third thing to say is physics teaches you a way to think. 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. Maguire focuses on enterprise,. Sean Maguire (American football) - Wikipedia It's incredibly common in the history of technology. You don't know where you're going. When I was 7 years old, he helped me build my first computer. When I came back to Caltech, I had started a company in 2012, and it ended up being a relatively successful company. Then the third major area was quantum information in the 90s, and has now been the glue that has tied many things together. My PhD was basically making a bunch of connections between these ideas. It doesn't matter. MAGUIRE: No. I know that's a long answer. In some ways there's a parallel to the past. 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. I was born in 1985, so I was always trying to mess around with computers. Or did you know in the back of your mind that you'd be doing something besides academia? What I was actually most interested was space. Did you have any interface with that world? Out of the three you mentioned, I think Google is the only one that has a lot of parallels. Jeongwan was just finishing his PhD at that time, and that was a really exciting result that a lot of people were very interested in. It wouldn't have been relevant in a five year time frame, but relevant in a fifteen year time frame. 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. He would say, "Be here at this time and place." There's two things. I had been interested in this field called hyperbolic geometry. Then the next version of that is to tear them down and make them seem like they were too arrogant, like, "Oh, it's not working." ZIERLER: And when does Sequoia enter into the mix? It's like, some parents rule out of fear; some parents rule out of love. When I was getting recruited by other funds, Patrick was aware. That then led to a lot of evolutions over time. Shaun Maguire Investor Profile: Portfolio & Exits | PitchBook 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. AMP Robotics is changing the face of recycling with high-speed guided robotics. He was an amateur astronomer, and sometimes with my friend Brandon, he had like an eight inch telescope, and we'd go look at stuff in the sky. 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. He is a Co-Founder and served as Board Member at Expanse. I got lucky in that when I was leaving DARPA, we came up with an idea. Right now, machine learning is probably the field that's moving the fastest, so right now I'm actually probably spending more time reading the machine learning literature than, say, the quantum information literature. ZIERLER: In your work on wormholes, just to clarify, are these toy models? MAGUIRE: It's what Stephen Hawking is famous for, but I didn't understand at all the stuff Hawking had done. Those are my heroes, my role models, the people that have done things very differently than other people. Michael Moritz. 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. MAGUIRE: I gave you the whole long story, but to give you the very simple story, the simple story is that AdS/CFT has been this really interesting thing in physics the last 20, almost 25 years. I won an NSF Graduate Fellowship and NDSEG Graduate Fellowship, and I kind of in my head had this realization that I was only at Stanford doing probability because that's the thing that I got recommendations for. It was just announced last week that Figma is going to be acquired by Adobe for $20 billion. 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. What was some of the work there? So, I think that's something that's really powerful about Caltech. Shaun Maguire Profiles | Facebook ZIERLER: Does the comparison hold up insofar as with solar startups, we knew what solar would be good for, right? Is this like a common narrative in venture capital? I was a partner at Google Ventures at the time. They're human too. Seed/Early. I was lucky enough to work with him. I sent him a picture. There's this other thing called holographic entanglement entropy. Prior to joining Sequoia in 2019, Dr. Maguire was a Partner at GV, where he led their . As a teenager, he played in the world's top league for the video game Counter-Strikeand got an F in Algebra II. Oskar Painter. 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. It wouldn't be relevant to the business model in a parent company. It was a tiny department. He received an undergraduate degree from the University of Southern . That is basically hyperbolic geometry. Just to give you some examples of people from different domains, in mathematics there's this guy, Bill Thurston, who pioneered hyperbolic geometry. Harry Maguire is the world's most expensive centre-back and captain of arguably the world's most famous football club. Shaun Maguire's transition from quantum information at Caltech to venture capital at Sequoia makes perfect sense only if one appreciates that in rare cases, the pursuit of a PhD is an expression of pure curiosity, totally disconnected from career ambitions. People don't quite give credit, but Caltech's own Arnold Beckman in many ways was maybe the first VC. Shaun, it's great to be with you. Caltech means a lot to me. So, that's one thing that is really powerful. Growing up, I had a cousin who studied computer science at UCLA, who made a huge impact on me. Could you have gone back? And that all comes from a huge amount of money that got poured into a basket of approaches, and those things were all able to compete and evolve. It wasn't as clear that you'd be able to go to cheaper instantaneous power production than natural gas, for example. One thing: I think a lot of the things they were investing in were not related to their core business. Shaun Maguire: Sequoia Capital has historically had several types of technology funds that match the size of the companies we've invested in. MAGUIRE: The point of connection to Google Ventures was simple. Essential Advice for Founders | Shaun Maguire, Sequoia Capital He had a couple PhD students that were about my age or a little older who became good friends. ZIERLER: From your own perspective, do you tend to think of this in somewhat of a horse race metaphor? It was still pretty easy for me. Before black holes, a prerequisite to understand them is you have to know some general relativity. Before Sequoia I was at Google Ventures. . Identified as v4.0.2Now with Pre-Seed Investor Lists FAQ MAGUIRE: I would say, a long time ago, I had to make the decision that I would go in another direction. Do you stay on top of the literature? Subscribe to Chain Reaction onApple,Spotifyor your alternative podcast platform of choice to keep up with us every week. We still don't know much about quantum gravity but we're making some progress. It was when I was at DARPA, that's when I got exposed to quantum information. Bill Thurston was this guy who's workI had just been fascinated by the guy, and I read a lot of his papers. 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. He also serves as Chairman and Advisor at Vise. 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's hard to say no when DARPA is willing to give you money to go build some really advanced technology with really brilliant people. That was the next huge jump in this area. Patrick is a huge lover of physics. MAGUIRE: Honestly, yeah. It's a stable energy source. At Caltech there was this guy, Jerry MarsdenJerrold Marsdenwho is an absolute legend in space physics. So, that became the most exciting thing by far in quantum gravity, and now the field is on a journey to unite the fields even more closely. Shaun to start, will you please tell me your title and institutional affiliation? Or are you a lifer in business and VC at this point? The arc was that Hawking and others had come up with this information paradox that was basically saying that the general relativity and quantum mechanics make different predictions about the end-state of a black hole. When I had thought about itI'm going to tell you, this is the 100% truthful version. Once you get to the cutting edge, it's not that hard to keep up. But as a grad student, especially a social one, you already knew a lot of those people. Moore's law had to keep running for an extra five years, and no one knew how long it would run for. With computers, it just seemed like the most important technology of the time. Ive got to believe that they work incredibly hard in part to make their families proud. When you go and you're around such incredible, brilliant people that go on to do such amazing thingsbeing around so many Nobel Prize winners for example, or knowing that a couple people in your class are going to go win Nobel Prizes, it forces you to say, "Well, if they can do it, what's holding me back? Maybe five years later the physicists will go learn the math required to talk to him. What advice should first-time founders heed? 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. ZIERLER: To foreshadow to what happened next, were you on a trajectory of pursuing an academic career and then some opportunity came up? LayerZero is an omnichain interoperability protocol that enables trustless cross-chain dApp development. It took a long time to get to that point. 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. 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. It led to this overbuilding phase with fiber, which was actually a prerequisite to have all the internet businesses of the next decade built on top of it. It is something I've thought a lot about. 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. I am, not quite as much as you, but I'm also a student of history, and I've been a student of Valley history. It's too far outside of our tools right now, and we really don't know what direction to go. I'll pause. Prior to GV, Shaun co-founded two companies: Qadium and Escape Dynamics. He was also an interesting, out of the box human, so I found him really exciting. It was this weird, internal drive. I was chairman of my company. It wasn't as obvious, but it was obvious there would be certain niche applications of solar. I had some aptitude. I kind of stopped going to school. Iron Fish is a Layer 1 blockchain that provides privacy guarantees on every single transaction. 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 is that Jeongwan Haah had just done this three dimensional error correcting code work, or was just finishing. Gather hosts virtual spaces for work and play. MAGUIRE: Very rarely. I had a really horrible experience, to be honest. Is that relevant to the kinds of things you do on a day to day basis? I feel like that's what happened with string theory. Sequoia BitClout was both a sensation and a controversial startup when it launched earlier this year. I'm probably making this up, but it felt like 20 kids. 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 . 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. One of my deep firsthand experiences that the media often time wants to build people up to tear them down, and I've just seen it. 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. MAGUIRE: I was really into computers as a kid, and really passionate about physics. I would say a bunch of the other prominent, early investors were really more coming from the technical side. There's so much prerequisite knowledge, it takes so long to get to the point where you can actually make a contribution. 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. Facebook gives people the power to. Actually the day I defended, I flew to Israel to get married. 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. Astronomy becomes interest in black holes, which leads to people like John Preskill, you know, legends of the field. 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. To answer the question: bachelor's degree from USC, University of Southern California, but there's a lot more to the story. Everyone was telling mepeople on both sides didn't understand why I was doing both. I think I will definitely have more involvement with Caltech at some point in my life. I could explain the technical definition, but that's neither here nor there. Ive started five companies. His name is Doug Borcoman [?]. A spherical drum makes a different sound than an oval drum, which makes a different sound than a square drum. 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. 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. ZIERLER: That's pretty cool. 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. ZIERLER: So then what happens next? 214. Physics is something I use all the time, because I've invested in a lot of companies that touch atoms. Honestly, after getting to the cutting edge of knowledge there, it's weird. I had never seen one of these. I think what were seeing is a lot of the crypto community is actually coming back in 90% of the situations and realizing that, Oh, actually, the way things were done in the past was actually pretty good and got there for an optimal reason, But 10% is like radically different and you can kind of meaningfully improve the whole system by getting some of those things right.. But they were talking about quantum computing. Mathematicians know a lot of things; I don't think we're yet well-known enough by the physicists. I think that as an investor, it's actually incredibly important. That was one theme. Then I got recruited to work at DARPA by Regina Dugan. I literally couldn't sleep as a kid, I would just think about special relativity. They've always been more of an R&D firm and government contractor. Maxwell's demon was first in the statistical mechanics domain or thermodynamics domain, but it was what first brought the concept of information to physics in a tangible way. But, just by having this incredible profit engine that you can pump into these other ideas, I think there are a lot of similarities. ZIERLER: Shaun, to zoom out from your specific research, what were people talking about with regard to quantum gravity during this time? But once I got there, I got over a 4.0 or whatever in my first year. Sorry, not in ninth grade. Sequoia's Maguire on decision to back social crypto network BitClout - CNBC NFL legend JJ Watt and wife Kealia invest in Burnley From the time I was 9, Ive been obsessed with space. I was fascinated by what made these numbers go up and down. MAGUIRE: It was simply in having a stronger math background than some people. Even within string theory, there are many different branches and ideas. Growing up, I had a cousin who studied computer science at UCLA, who made a huge impact on me. Many would disagree with me, but I actually think it takes away from the quality of research at Stanford. Presently, he is Partner at Sequoia Capital. Our Founders; Our Companies; If Figma grew this quickly, we can grow this quickly." 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. Skip to main content. Shaun Maguire - The Montgomery Summit I think, sure, the volume of companies is greater now, but Caltech had its hand in some pretty legendary companies in the past. Honestly, I kind of blacked out. Do you see Google, Microsoft, IBM, and all these companiesare they racing toward a singular finish line? A few things: one, I think there are many finish lines; two, I think the future is non-deterministic. Shaun Maguire's Investing Profile - Sequoia Capital Partner | Signal You can interpret that as a lower bound of the masses of particles allowed in the space. I think these are actually wormholes, and that's a huge point of disagreement. SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches rockets and spacecraft. Sequoia's Shaun Maguire on competition and conviction in - Yahoo I've also been absolutely fascinated by science. Was he a hands-on advisor? I was the only student in my year that joined that department, the only grad student. I don't want to sell for a billion dollars now, I want to sell for $20 billion. ZIERLER: As you got comfortable in the field, where did you see an opportunity to contribute? Or is it something entirely. It may seem like a really small thing, but it's the only clue we have that there needs to be something new. When did that happen? From the time I was 9, I've been obsessed with space. In that world, there is a deep relationship between the waves allowed in the space and the geometry allowed of the space. MAGUIRE: Yes, I do. 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. Posted By : / how do i access my talk21 email /; Under :eaglestone village lambertville, mieaglestone village lambertville, mi It's funny because John has a veryit's maybe not the style you would think. When I came to Caltech, I was going to work with Jerry Marsden. I didn't know anything about quantum information. The Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire. 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. Shaun Maguire (PhD '18), Quantum Researcher and Venture Capitalist These guys all became my good friends. TipLink enables users to send crypto or NFTs with just a link. Shaun is a Partner at Sequoia Capital. MAGUIRE: We don't know. So, I didn't really know anyone at Sequoia, but I was getting recruited by other firms. 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. He would always offer that. 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. One is people respect John so much that you don't want to disappoint John. Texas A&M (OA) Accomplishments and honors. MAGUIRE: John. John asks incredible questions. I became really interested in the solar system. It's actually breaking in some ways right now via Apple. In some cases, they were wildly misunderstood as kids and have chips on their shoulders. We would have gotten there later with the different technology. We became friends from that. Another is this idea that people have called ER = EPREinstein-Rosen equals Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen. An equivalent thing is in quantum mechanics, people still debate the interpretation around wave function collapse and things like this. shaun maguire sequoia wife It was a tiny department. That was one thing, Alexei. I have a fellowship, so I don't need any funding. One thing that I think is close to Bell Labs from a different direction right now is Deep Mind. I'll trust my instincts when something comes up. ZIERLER: Shaun, a question I've been excited to ask you since I first reached out: with your area of expertise, as a student of history, I wonder if you've ever thought about some of the parallels between, for example, a Bell Labs in the 60s, 50s, 70s, the middle part of the 20th centurythe industrial support for fundamental research and how you might compare that with what Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Honeywell are doing with regard to quantum information today. Lenny Susskind, but actually really, based on a lot of John's ideas as well. But the crypto theme is so unique that we decided to create a dedicated fund (a first for Sequoia, ed.) This all happened in a curved space, a Minkowski space. Levolor Vs Allen Roth Cellular Shades, Assumption Basketball Coach, Grill Burner Holes Up Or Down, Tesla Model 3 Long Range Acceleration Boost Vs Performance, Articles S
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