Fireside Chat: Marc Andreessen & Sebastian Thrun

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looking at us right now if you come to
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your younger self what is the advice he
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would give to our students so the single
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biggest piece of career advice that I’ve
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ever heard that I realized after the
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fact I was implementing I didn’t realize
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it at the time was Scott actually Scott
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Adams the guy who invented Dilbert easy
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to remember who came up with this piece
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of advice because how many how many
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people invented Dilbert he his his big
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advice was it’s not about any particular
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skill it’s about combining skills right
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the world is becoming an ever more
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complicated place everything is slamming
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together right it feels it used to be
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discrete or not combining do a large
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part to what we’ve been talking about
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and so it’s not about any individual
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skill it’s about come it’s about
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combining skills and then constantly
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layering on new skills and so like the
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great example is you can you can be an
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engineer and you manage your track you
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could be a writer the professional
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writer but what if you’re an engineer
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with writing skills right and then you
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can be the engineer who can then
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actually articulate what engineers do
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which might be helpful or you could be a
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writer right who understands engineering
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culture and you could write books about
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technology right and all of a sudden
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like both of those are like highly
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differentiated skills like those those
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are very special skills and then what if
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on top of that you thread it in
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knowledge of Education and then you have
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the ability to write about technology
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and education and all of a sudden that’s
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a very special thing
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and then basically through the course of
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your life you just keep layering in you
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just keep you keep layering in more and
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more skills we were actually I’ll brag
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on Sebastian you know professor turn
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executive turned entrepreneur right it’s
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like no talk it you know talk about like
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a magical combination of skills right
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there’s there’s no possible professor
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who could keep up with him in business
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and there are very few business people
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who can keep up with them on the
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intellectual side of things and so the
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magic is in the combination and and I
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suspect the world’s gonna get more in
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the direction where combinations are
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going to get much more valuable and the
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people who have the combinations of
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skills of attending on the students take
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more than a degrees that’s good time
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would ask one last question sure how do
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you get rid of fear how do I do what
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fear fear seem so fearless what’s that
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yes that means what’s that mean if ei
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are AR see so much of it is it’s you
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actually actually read a study actually
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read a study area there’s a psychologist
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named Dean Simonton who has studied the
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history of creativity across every
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different kind of creative field art
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music and business and everything and
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his his big conclusion out of the entire
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thing is the people who succeed are the
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people who just keep swinging the bat at
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the ball over and over and over again
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it’s just repeated attempts basically
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people who don’t quit and who keep
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swinging and so just it’s just sort of
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this I don’t know maybe it’s maybe it’s
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my Midwestern background or just
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old-fashioned stubbornness but you know
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it’s it’s very easy to opt out it’s very
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easy to get discouraged and give up but
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if you kind of have the mentality which
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I don’t know where it comes from but
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I’ve got it I’ve got the mentality the
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basically says it kind of doesn’t matter
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how many times you get knocked down the
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key the key thing is to just keep
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getting back up and keep swinging and