Mike Schroepfer: Former Meta CTO on "Why The Best Leaders are Like Music Conductors" | E1158
70Mike Schroepfer (Schrep) is the Founder & Partner @ Gigascale Capital, a new kind of climate-focused investment firm. Prior to Gigascale, Mike was the CTO @ Meta where he scaled products to billions of users, shipped millions of units of consumer hardware, constructed tens of millions of sq ft of data centers, built teams of up to 35,000, and made breakthroughs in AI. Before Meta, Mike led engineering at Mozilla and founded a company acquired by Sun Microsystems.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(00:55) Background
(01:35) Memorable Yes & No Moments
(04:41) Meeting with Sequoia Capital
(07:49) What Makes a Great Board Member
(12:52) Common Destructive Elements in Teams
(18:24) Best & Worst Decisions
(22:36) Lessons from Misprediction
(31:12) Investing in Consumer Hardware & Managing Market Demand
(45:57) The Importance of Cheap & Abundant Clean Energy
(48:33) The Potential of Fusion as a Clean Energy Source
(51:13) Urgency & Rapid Action in Addressing the Climate Crisis
(53:52) The Role of Brazil, India & China in Climate Change
(56:05) Navigating Clean Tech as a Venture Investor
(01:05:47) Quick-Fire Round
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In Today’s Show with Mike Schroepfer We Discuss:
1. Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg and Meta:
What are Schrep’s biggest lessons from Zuck on truly effective leaders?
Why does Schrep believe the best leaders are like music conductors?
What does Schrep mean when he says, “building a company is a game of inches”?
Why does Schrep believe “inertia is one of the most underappreciated forces in company building?”
2. The Future of Energy:
Why does Schrep believe that the “availability of cheap, clean energy is the biggest rate limiter to human progress?”
Does Schrep agree with Sam Altman that energy will be currency of the next decade? Or does he believe Mustafa Suleyman is right and it will soon be free and abundant?
How does Schrep predict the next five years for both fusion and nuclear?
Why does Schrep believe the next few years will be “messy but with huge opportunity”?
3. Investing in Climate: It has to be Profitable:
Why does Schrep believe that markets and not governments or philanthropy will solve the climate challenges we face?
What leads Schrep to suggest that the climate change transition is a $10TRN opportunity for investors?
What is the single hardest element of investing in climate change solutions today?
Why do climate change solutions need to reshape how they market to consumers?
How much capital does it take to build a defensible moat in climate?
4. Schrep: The Man Behind WhatsApp and Instagram: AMA:
How does Schrep reflect on his own relationship to money? How has it changed?
How does Schrep think about what it takes to be a great father?
How did Schrep manage the physical stress and pressure of managing engineering for products that serve billions of people in Whatsapp and Instagram?
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