Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland and we are here today with Sten Tom Keevy, who is co-founder and CEO of Teleport.org.

Stan, welcome.

Hello.

And Stan was also an EIR here at Andrewson Horowitz for a period, which is where Teleport, I think, was gestated.

Am I correct?

That is true.

Teleport was one of the classic stories of an EIR coming into a VC firm, not having a clue of what to do, which company to join, which one to build, all that.

And mere eight or nine months later, bam, we go out and we found the company.

I will say after Stan left, our kind of dress and fashion quotient went down drastically.

And this is a podcast so you can't see him, but, you know, one day you will and you'll see what I mean.

So, Stan, obviously, we're here in Silicon Valley, and there is this sort of bias in Silicon Valley, and, you know, at the firm as well, that Silicon Valley is the center of the universe. And you and your career, you are at Skype, you're from Estonia. You have, but you went to business school here at Stanford. I mean, you've straddled all these worlds, and you've gotten pulled in by Silicon Valley,

but you know, you have this great perspective on that

Silicon Valley is the center of the universe for some,

but it's not for others,

or you can participate in different ways.

And that seems to be what teleports all about,

and also what, how the changing nature of work is kind of all

about that too. But let's talk about how you view sort of centers of gravity and how people

should think about their own careers and companies in business. Silicon Valley definitely is a

very special place in the world. Like there is no doubt. If you look at the

amazing technology that has come out of this very tiny speck on the globe over the last 40 years

and more recently what has happened in software and the internet moment and all this consumer

...