Michael Moritz on Origin Stories, Exile, and Obsessive Curiosity
Notes de l’épisode
Michael Moritz has written books through every phase of his life: the first history of Apple and an account of Chrysler's near-death while he was a journalist at Time, a study of Alex Ferguson's Manchester United in the middle of his 38 years at Sequoia, and now Ausländer, a family memoir, after leaving the firm. Moritz calls himself a dilettante with too many interests, but listen to him on learning to paint in his 40s, or the questions he would ask a ten-year-old boy in a German village in 1890, and you may decide that unsatisfied curiosity is not a small thing to build a life on. Tyler and Michael discuss his childhood in Wales, where his love for visual arts came from, why he disappointed his Latin teacher, having Thanksgiving dinner with Philip Roth, why children don't interrogate their parents about their history, what he feels visiting Germany and why he now holds German citizenship, how a history major with no technical background talked his way into Sequoia, his unpublished Don Valentine profile, what people underrate about Steve Jobs, obsessives versus dilettantes, why capitalism was more ablaze in China than America, what funding the Booker Prize taught him about his own ignorance, how to improve San nonprofits, how an incurable cancer diagnosis changed his calendar, why Britain's stuck, what he'll learn next, and more.
Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.
Recorded July 21st, 2026.
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Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:04:57 - On living with difficult art
00:09:44 - On Jewish literature
00:13:00 - On why children don't interrogate their parents
00:15:54 - On returning to Germany
00:23:37 - On stumbling into venture capital
00:28:49 - On obsessives and dilettantes
00:33:03 - On supporting the Booker Prize
00:34:17 - On improving San Francisco's nonprofits
00:37:26 - On controlling your own calendar
00:38:43 - On why Britain is stuck
00:40:06 - On what comes next
00:41:10 - Outro