Episode Details

When the VC Forbes once called “the most powerful woman in startups” says there's a way to make yourself AI-proof, it's worth listening.

Ann Miura-Ko spent the last two decades deciding which founders are worth betting on. She wrote the first check into TaskRabbit, got in early on Lyft, and teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford.

There are few people closer to what's actually happening in AI, and her read is a hopeful one: AI is coming for the order takers, but anyone can become an order maker.

The order takers, the people whose job is to run down a list and check the boxes, should be nervous. But everyone is opinionated about something — the thing they insist gets done a certain way. Ann's argument is that this is now the whole job: point your expertise at an infinite number of software agents and let them handle the rest.

Connor and Ann get into why you can't train AI to have soul, the difference between what AI lets you do and what you should choose *not* to do, and the "Ann brain" she's built so the technology works for her without her ever handing over the keys.

The conversation is also, fittingly, a deeply human one: her childhood theory of what it means to be rich, and what it feels like to watch your kids leave home, one by one.

CHAPTERS

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Intro — Training AI to have soul
• 00:01:29 Sneaking into negotiations class
• 00:04:23 Is that a world-class effort? — Lessons from a rocket scientist dad
• 00:06:39 The PhD moment — Realizing you're not the best
• 00:07:58 Designing your life around self-expression
• 00:09:23 Starting Floodgate — Pregnant, PhD-ing, and investing
• 00:10:54 From young whippersnapper to wise boomer
• 00:12:25 Measuring success beyond work metrics
• 00:18:42 The pink and blue sweater — What it means to be rich
• 00:21:36 Develop the muscle for giving
• 00:22:46 Being asked to be a co-conspirator
• 00:25:05 Why are you in such a hurry? — The Stanford dropout trap
• 00:27:16 Building a personal AI brain
• 00:30:43 What's mine, what's yours? — The future of AI and IP
• 00:32:25 The five levels of AI adoption
• 00:33:16 You can't train AI to have soul
• 00:44:18 Order makers vs order takers
• 00:46:45 Religion, service, and who you're accountable to
• 00:53:15 Freedom from constraint — Marriage, religion, and the good life
• 00:54:27 Turning 50 — Shedding and what comes next