Aidan Gomez: Empathy and Conviction | The Other Stuff #29

**internetVin** (0:00)
Something I've learned is that when people are willing to push to the extent of something, to push to their limit, to be unreasonably intense about something, to continually take on difficult problems, usually these people are like, they're defined by some kind of experience. Something happened in their lives that made them that way. Something gave them this kind of chip on their shoulder. Something happened that kind of changed their internal world and allowed them to see life in a way that is different from how other people see it. It's just really interesting to me to talk to people and learn what that is. In this episode of The Other Stuff, I had the opportunity to speak with Aidan Gomez, who is a very talented computer scientist and also the CEO of Cohere. In this conversation, I thought we were going to talk about things like the company he's creating in Canada. I thought we were going to talk about the scientific papers that he's worked on. A notable one is Attention Is All You Need. We did talk about those things. One of the things we talked about was this small town he grew up in just north of Brighton, in Ontario, and how that experience growing up there informed his entire life. And it's not just because of the place, it's like a remote place and very, very, very small population, but it's not just because of that, it's because of how his family ended up there and what they were processing at the time.
I think it's a place that represents his family defining who they are and their values. I think it's a place where his family was processing some kind of grief. And I think that experience defined everything about who he is, or a lot about who he is, everything he's done up until this point. And I think it will define everything he does for the rest of his life. It's always really fascinating to talk to people who are not only working on interesting things, but have had these interesting life experiences that shape their, that shape them and what they do and how they see the world. I think we all have this in some way. And I and it was cool to learn from Aidan about his past and the way he grew up. Very, very interesting individual. This was a great conversation. And I think I'm just scratching the surface on who Aidan Gomez is. And I would love to keep talking to him and keep learning and seeing how he processes and thinks about things. I hope you enjoy this episode. Thank you for everything.
First of all, thank you for doing this. Really, really appreciate you.

**Aidan Gomez** (3:13)
I'm so stoked to be here. I've missed Toronto. I've been away for too long. I'm living in London now and the UK.
But I've sort of been watching from the outside what you've been doing, what others have been doing. And I have so much FOMO. It's so fucking cool what's happening here. I miss this city.

**internetVin** (3:40)
Yeah, that's cool.

**Aidan Gomez** (3:41)
I don't know when it changed. My sentiment towards Toronto when I lived here, it was home, it was warm and cuddly. But it was like, you would describe it as like, New York but shitty. New York but worse.
But I don't describe it like that anymore. It's like there's something, there's a bunch of things really starting here and starting to bubble up. And I think you've been a huge part of catalyzing that, inspiring people.

**internetVin** (4:17)
I think with like Toronto, it's like the thing is that, or the thing I started to believe was that it's not as fixed as people think it is. That's the weird thing about it. When you think of a city, you think it's like this kind of like thing you can't adjust. It's this existing cultural idea that you're like participating in, right? And I think the reality is that I think, at least in Toronto, it's like very malleable. I think it's far more malleable than people think it is. And I think I'm also learning that your relationship with a place has less to do with the inherent qualities of that place, the inherent attributes of that place. And it has more to do with like just whether you have like a sense of meaning in that place, whether you have like friends that you can hang out with and crack jokes with, whether there's like a significance to what you're pursuing in that space. Like for me, it's like the like over like money or over like clothes or like a nice car or anything. Like what I want to know personally is like, do you have the capacity to like walk into a random plaza in Mississauga and be like, yo, I know a spot to get Korean fried chicken that you have no idea of. And the Korean fried chicken is really, really fucking good. And not only that, you don't know about this spot. And to me, like that became the top of the hierarchy. You know what I mean? Of like, do you have this ability or not? And I think like if you can shift your, you know, you're like, what is valuable and what is not valuable, then it really shifts your relationship to a place. Right. And I think for whatever reason, we were, I think a lot of people, at least in like the technology scene, right? It's like they were like a kind of hierarchy was being projected on to us. Like this is what is good and this is what is not as good. Not as good. Right. If you're building a startup, you should and you go to San Francisco, this is like good. If you stay here, you know, it's like not as good or something like this.