This video from 'This Week in Startups' discusses key focus areas for early-stage founders, specifically those in "year zero" who are just starting their companies. The host, Jason Calacanis, and guests Amanda Bradford and William Barnes, emphasize prioritizing product development and customer understanding over immediate fundraising. They also highlight the importance of building trust and operating with constraints to foster innovation and efficiency. The discussion draws insights from their experiences with Foundry University in the Middle East and Japan.
Key Takeaways
1
Founders in "year zero" should prioritize building a strong product and understanding their customers before focusing on fundraising.
2
Managing cash flow and keeping burn low is crucial, especially before achieving product-market fit.
3
It is important to get a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) running and show investors traction before asking for capital.
4
Founders can use hacky methods like strung-together screenshots or AI tools to validate product ideas and get customer feedback without significant investment.
5
Finding a narrow niche and tailoring the product and messaging to that specific audience helps in learning quickly and gaining initial traction.
6
When talking to investors, founders should frame their niche approach around sequencing, explaining how they will expand to concentric markets after winning a smaller one.
7
Founders should avoid the "feature death march" by focusing on one or two essential features that truly solve a customer's problem.
8
Relentless focus on reliability and building customer trust is paramount for product success and retention.
9
Embracing constraints, whether financial, geographic, or temporal, can drive innovation and efficiency in startup development.
10
Setting deadlines and limiting scope, like launching in a single city or offering a limited number of matches, can force founders to perfect their core offering.
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0:00
All right, everybody. Welcome back to
0:01
This Week in Startups. I'm your host,
0:02
Jason Calacanis. I am still in Japan and
0:06
loving it. We've had an amazing time
0:07
here launching Foundry University.
0:10
What's Foundry University? If you
0:12
haven't been listening to the program uh
0:13
in the past year, where have you been?
0:15
Number one. Number two, it's a 12-week
0:18
program that we started in the United
0:19
States to help founders who are in year
0:22
zero. In other words, they might not be
0:24
even be incorporated. They might still
0:25
be building their team or finding a
0:28
co-founder. they're in that year zero.
0:30
They know they're going to start.
0:32
They're not sure when. And um as part of
0:35
that program in the United States, uh we
0:38
look for companies that we might want to
0:40
invest in. And then they go on to our
0:42
accelerator or some of them go on to Y
0:44
Combinator, Tech Stars, Antler, all
0:47
these great programs all around the
0:48
world, 500 Global. So it's a
0:50
pre-acelerator. We launched it in the
0:53
fall in the Middle East, specifically in
0:56
Riad in Saudi with our partner Sonobble,
0:59
which is the venture arm of the PIF
1:01
there, the sovereign wealth fund. And
1:02
now we've launched it again here in
1:04
Japan with the greatest partner you
1:05
could ever have, Jetro, which is
1:07
essentially the economic trade group
1:10
here in Japan that is supporting
1:12
founders. And Japan is going through
1:14
such an amazing amazing resurgence. not
1:17
that it ever went away. Uh but young
1:20
people in Japan are looking at startups
1:23
again as a viable career path and in a
1:26
country where they have very low
1:28
unemployment and plenty of jobs
1:30
available. It's a very interesting uh
1:33
moment in time when people will give up
1:35
the security of those jobs to take the
1:38
risk of starting a company and that's
1:39
what we do at our fund. So today we're
1:42
going to talk about what should founders
1:45
in year zero the year you know right as
1:48
they're starting to incorporate maybe
1:51
even launch their product. What should
1:53
they focus on? I'm very lucky to have
1:55
two great friends in Austin. Amanda
1:57
Bradford founded the league. We met
2:00
Amanda I think at the Sequoia Scouts
2:02
program and uh you've been on a bit of
2:04
sbatical. You're non-compete or
2:06
>> resting investing.
2:07
>> Resting investing after selling your
2:09
company to match.com. Yes.
2:11
>> Congratulations on that. So, you've
2:13
taken a company from the cradle all the
2:15
way to the grave. All the way to Saudi.
2:17
>> Hopefully, not the grave, but
2:18
>> not the grave, but yeah, I think you get
2:19
the idea.
2:19
>> Bigger and better things. Yes. To bigger
2:21
and better things.
2:21
>> You did a great talk here for the
2:23
founders in this program. And you also
2:25
came with me to Saudi. And so, we'll
2:26
talk today about what people should
2:28
focus on. Pretty open dialogue. Of
2:30
course, one of my besties, William
2:32
Barnes, is here. He was Travis's
2:34
right-hand man, left-hand man, front,
2:38
back, everything. Uh you got to work
2:40
with Travis in the boom years of Uber.
2:43
>> Yes.
2:43
>> Also got to come with me to Saudi. Yep.
2:46
>> And here. So let me start with that. You
2:48
know, we've now launched the program in
2:50
just five months or so in in two cities.
2:54
What have each of you noted about each
2:57
of those cities and what founders in
2:59
year zero are most often asking you
3:03
about as mentors in our program? Well, I
3:05
think the experience in Saudi and here
3:07
is the entrepreneurial spirit is it's
3:10
invigorating and kind of reminds me of
3:11
being back in San Francisco, you know,
3:14
101 15 years ago. There's so much kind
3:15
of opportunity. Uh, and that's, uh,
3:18
that's very exciting. Um, and the other
3:20
thing that I've seen through the, you
3:22
know, investing with my venture fund and
3:24
also speaking to founders here is I
3:26
think one of the things that we've seen
3:28
a lot is cash flow management. It's like
3:30
easy to run out of money.
3:31
>> Yes. Um and I think uh keeping a focus
3:34
on keeping the burn low uh before they
3:36
find product market fit I think is a is
3:39
a key thing. I think a lot of people get
3:41
excited they see all the headlines about
3:42
you know Facebook or you know maybe one
3:45
of their friends raises a a series B or
3:47
a C and I think they get out ahead of
3:49
themselves uh trying to build a company
3:51
before they found a product and so
3:53
trying to spend as little as money as
3:54
possible to find some product to scale.
3:57
>> Yeah. And we'll unpack that in just a
3:59
moment. Amanda, what have you noticed in
4:02
meeting the founders in Saudi, in Riad,
4:05
and here in Tokyo, Japan?
4:06
>> Well, there's tons of opportunity. I
4:08
think everyone's been that the breadth
4:10
of startups. I've been very impressed
4:11
with everything from healthcare to
4:13
defense tech to consumer marketplaces.
4:15
So, I've been just impressed with the um
4:18
the scope of of what everyone's trying
4:19
to tackle. I think the questions I've
4:21
been getting the most, at least me as
4:23
someone who's built zero to one, is is
4:25
around hiring, is around finding
4:26
co-founders. When should someone be a
4:28
co-founder? when should you outsource?
4:30
When should you fund raise? At what
4:31
point in your kind of product
4:33
development process should you go and
4:35
ask for capital from investors? And
4:37
similar to kind of Will's point, I
4:39
always recommend people get a MVP or a
4:41
minimum viable product up and running
4:43
and show investors that this product is
4:45
going to be built regardless of if you
4:47
take money from them and show them that,
4:49
you know, this this train is is leaving
4:51
the station and kind of put a little bit
4:53
of skin in the game yourself, whether
4:54
it's using some of your own money or
4:56
getting people to work for equity, but
4:57
but really kind of showing a little bit
4:59
of traction prior to going out and
5:01
asking for money. I think that's a big
5:02
>> Okay. So, I think we're going to start
5:04
with what has come up now over and over
5:07
again, which is product market fit
5:11
first,
5:13
product first, fundraising second. I
5:16
think it's an a fine way to put it.
5:17
Yeah, Will.
5:18
>> I think there's you've got to stage it
5:19
and it depends on your life situation
5:21
whether or not you can you have a lot of
5:23
the time, you know, whether you've got
5:24
some savings, but I think there's a lot
5:26
that you can do before you start
5:28
spending a lot of money or certainly
5:29
before you raise money. And I think
5:31
Amanda, you know, talked about that on
5:33
her presentation yesterday. You can go
5:34
and meet customers. You can kind of
5:36
understand their problems they're facing
5:37
and you can, especially in today's
5:39
environment, whether it's vibe coding or
5:41
having a very hacky front end and then
5:42
doing things manually to try and
5:44
validate whether or not you're solving a
5:46
real problem. And I think, you know,
5:48
evenings, weekends, and using some of
5:50
the AI tools, you can get a lot done to
5:52
get some signal that what you're
5:54
building is valuable or useful to
5:56
somebody. And you can do all of those
5:57
things before you raise money. I want
5:58
you to unpack what you said before which
6:00
is founders maybe especially firsttime
6:03
one have this order of operations wrong.
6:06
They think
6:07
>> they need to convince investors of their
6:10
vision
6:12
>> and land some giant amount of money and
6:15
then deploy capital. Why is that wrong
6:17
in 2026 as we sit here today?
6:19
>> Well, I mean I I think you know you've
6:21
been in the industry for a good amount
6:23
of time. I think you know a long time
6:24
ago you would have to raise a lot of
6:26
money and then build all this
6:27
infrastructure whether it's like servers
6:29
um HR people legal you do all of those
6:32
things to try and get a product out
6:34
there in the hands of a customer and I
6:35
think you know through a whole range of
6:38
uh technology you can now do a lot of
6:40
that validation without needing a lot of
6:42
money and I think that's why it's kind
6:43
of moved how people should approach
6:45
creating an MVP
6:46
>> yeah like with my company we would even
6:47
go before I even had a prototype built
6:49
while that was being developed I
6:51
basically strung together screenshots
6:53
shots that you know you'd use in Figma
6:54
and you can make it so that you know you
6:56
click on a button and it opens another
6:58
screenshot. So if you're showing it to a
6:59
customer, it feels like the app is
7:01
built. Like my mom thought the app was
7:02
built, but it was really just a series
7:03
of like eight screenshots hyperl to each
7:05
other. So you can kind of do these hacky
7:07
things to just initially get some do a
7:10
temperature check with people to say,
7:11
"Hey, would this be interesting to you?"
7:12
So you can kind of
7:13
>> and that was 10 years ago.
7:14
>> Yeah. And and now you can basically vibe
7:17
code these now in a weekend
7:18
>> and you learn a lot through doing that.
7:20
you're going to get like feedback. Yes,
7:21
no, people aren't going to sign up, but
7:22
they are going to sign up. And you learn
7:24
things about your messaging.
7:25
>> And we tested our onboarding for almost
7:26
5 months because that's how long it took
7:28
me to develop my app. And what we
7:29
learned, an example for us was we, you
7:31
know, I had had LinkedIn. I was asking
7:33
people to submit their LinkedIn to be
7:34
able to apply to the league because we
7:36
were that was how we used to to kind of
7:38
vet our applicants. But people got very
7:40
weirded out by having LinkedIn be the
7:41
first thing. No one was used to that.
7:43
They wanted to they were fine connecting
7:44
Facebook, but LinkedIn freaked them out.
7:46
So I basically because of the the focus
7:48
groups I did I I changed the order and I
7:50
put Facebook connect first and then by
7:52
that time the users sort of already
7:54
invested in the onboarding flow and then
7:55
by putting the LinkedIn second we had a
7:57
much higher completion rate than just by
8:00
putting LinkedIn first
8:01
>> and that didn't require you to get
8:03
permission from a seed fund with a 250k
8:06
check that required you to be thoughtful
8:09
and to talk to customers and to run
8:11
these little experiments y
8:12
>> and that scientific method talked about
8:15
in the lean startup or the startup
8:17
engine. Lots of of different people.
8:19
>> My scientific method was taking women to
8:21
wine night and asking, you know, giving
8:24
giving me feedback on this onboarding,
8:25
but yes, it was it was scientific in
8:27
some
8:28
>> and those were clickable mock-ups and
8:29
now we have vibe coding. Yep.
8:31
>> So very important.
8:32
>> It's a very exciting time to build right
8:34
now. I will say
8:34
>> yes, in year zero, you can actually
8:36
build these prototypes and test them.
8:38
They don't have to be just clickable
8:39
mock-ups. So let's go to our what I
8:42
think is our second point. I think we
8:43
pretty much have consensus of this. I'm
8:45
going to put it a second, but we'll
8:47
we'll order these as we go. Finding
8:49
those first customers, doing customer
8:51
research,
8:53
having met with the companies now and
8:55
heard some stories about how they're
8:57
doing that and our own personal
8:59
experience doing it. What are the best
9:01
practices front of mind for you right
9:03
now, William Barnes?
9:04
>> Well, I think this is why the cliche is
9:07
still true, which is find a niche and
9:10
try and go really kind of narrow.
9:11
There's a variety of benefits to picking
9:13
a narrow niche. You can tailor your
9:16
messaging and and the MVP to that niche.
9:19
So, the n the kind of the customer
9:20
profile that you're talking to, they're
9:22
going to feel more special, for one of a
9:24
better word. Um, and the marketing and
9:26
the MVP is going to be more tailored to
9:28
the problem that you're trying to solve
9:29
for them. There's a higher chance that
9:30
they're going to engage with you because
9:32
they're going to feel like it's a
9:34
specific solution uh to their problem.
9:36
So the n the niching down I think is
9:38
incredibly helpful and you'll learn more
9:40
quickly. You know if you go and talk to
9:43
you know 15 uh back offices that do
9:45
importing and export exporting in Japan
9:48
you're going to learn more quickly
9:49
because you're having a similar
9:50
conversation with a similar customer
9:52
profile. So there's kind of like two
9:53
benefits there of picking that niche.
9:55
>> So you pick that niche. We had a
9:57
interesting company yesterday that
9:58
pitched. In this one example importing
10:01
of exporting of products is a lot of
10:03
paperwork.
10:04
>> Yeah. And you and I were talking about
10:06
it at breakfast today. What a great idea
10:08
it was. The pitch was a little bit off.
10:10
Y
10:10
>> the the order of operations might have
10:12
been uh wrong, but we both thought,
10:15
"Wow, it's so messy in that back
10:17
office." And if you talk to 15 of them,
10:20
you say it's just for the back office
10:22
operations of an export company. What
10:24
actually happens in that pit? What
10:27
happens in that boiler room, that back
10:28
room where it's occurring? And how much
10:30
progress can you make? you know, you
10:32
might find out that there's not that
10:34
much to it and you're going to very
10:36
quickly solve their problems, but then
10:37
you will inevitably discover more.
10:40
>> You know, I think one of the reflections
10:41
you and I had is they were kind of
10:43
bundling two two businesses together.
10:45
There was the the consumerf facing part
10:47
and then it was almost they were going
10:48
to figure out the the import export
10:51
paperwork to serve the consumerf facing,
10:53
right? And I think what you and I talked
10:55
about is maybe unbundle those two things
10:57
and focus just on the the kind of the
10:59
workflow piece and then go and speak to
11:02
you know a narrow set of customers you
11:05
know all in you know the the consumerf
11:06
facing product piece but just go and
11:08
solve that one and then make that a
11:10
business first and it's a more narrow
11:12
niche
11:12
>> and dovetailing that Amanda with the
11:15
first point we made which is hey get
11:17
that product really tight and and the
11:19
fundraising will come later if you're
11:21
going to raise money and you've two
11:24
different products and they're extremely
11:26
different. You're now scaring an
11:28
investor or an angel that oh my god,
11:31
you're building a consumer business and
11:32
an enterprise business at the same time.
11:34
Oh, and then you're explaining the
11:35
marketplace.
11:37
>> We've never seen that. Like
11:38
>> Airbnb does not have an enterprise
11:40
business
11:41
>> still.
11:42
>> Still focus is everything in the early
11:44
stages.
11:44
>> Yeah, exactly. And if you want to, we'll
11:48
get to frugality later, but that
11:50
customer obsession seems super critical.
11:52
you specialize in that. I think maybe
11:54
that is your superpower is this customer
11:56
obsession when we saw pitches yesterday
11:58
and you've talked to companies here in
12:00
Tokyo at Foundry University uh in Japan.
12:02
What's top of mind for you thinking
12:05
about maybe your next startup and
12:08
customer don't tell anybody what it is
12:10
but just customer obsession and how you
12:13
will go into your next startup with this
12:15
new inspiration having met so many of
12:17
these companies in Saudi and here in
12:19
Tokyo. What's top of mind for you
12:22
customers? It's yeah it's super serving
12:24
a niche audience and I think Peter Teal
12:26
talks about this a lot with you know
12:27
PayPal it was the early eBay power users
12:30
and with Amazon it was a bookstore and
12:32
you know eBay initially is eBay was pez
12:34
dispensers right so it's it it may be a
12:36
market that people immediately might say
12:38
that's a small TAM that's not big enough
12:40
but if you can like win that market then
12:42
there's going to be concentric markets
12:44
that you can then go after so so don't
12:45
be afraid to go super niche with us you
12:47
know I was going after sort of like
12:49
women who are like 28 to 34 who are
12:51
career oriented who are struggling with
12:53
the the dating current dating apps and
12:55
how dating worked and so we you know
12:58
people called my app MBA date at the
13:00
beginning because there was so many MBAs
13:01
on it and that was the demo that I I
13:03
knew really well as an MBA and I said I
13:06
am going to make sure that it works for
13:07
this very small audience and then of
13:09
course they told friends other people
13:10
you know we eventually were more than
13:12
just a 28 to 34 year old demographic but
13:15
um we started very niche and I had a lot
13:17
of investors be like your TAM's not big
13:18
enough
13:20
>> so kind of don't be scared of of a small
13:23
market to to start.
13:24
>> Let's talk about that. Tam not big
13:26
enough. There is a very simple way to
13:29
address that when talking to investors.
13:31
And remember, you're building your
13:33
business. You're not building a
13:36
performance to give to a venture
13:37
capitalist that gets them to unlock
13:39
money. Like you may have to do some
13:41
things that are performative and answer
13:42
questions of course, but at its core you
13:46
need to have some niche audience that's
13:48
willing to embrace your product. 28 to
13:51
34 year old women who have MBAs who uh
13:55
you know are desirable in market and are
13:57
going to approach maybe dating
13:58
differently than a you know an average
14:01
person. It's a really interesting group
14:02
to start with. you know in your heart of
14:05
hearts if it works for this group
14:06
there's adjacencies there's adjacencies
14:08
there's a next group if it works for you
14:11
know the back office it's going to in
14:13
Japan it might work for the back office
14:14
in India might be slightly different but
14:16
they're still doing the same function
14:18
which is exporting something
14:19
>> what I've seen well well with me when I
14:21
get pitched this by founders is a
14:23
framing around sequencing
14:24
>> right so it's like I I win this small
14:26
piece of the market and then wedge right
14:28
>> it's a wedge and then I can sequence
14:30
this to a bridge to a slightly bigger
14:31
market and then when I really like it
14:33
when founders say, "Well, here's the
14:35
trigger for when we move to the next
14:36
part."
14:37
>> So, they're actually detailing the
14:38
journey first.
14:39
>> Like, what milestones need to be hit?
14:41
>> We're going to get to the new world.
14:43
Then, we're going to
14:44
>> land and expand.
14:45
>> Land and expand. Here we are. We're in
14:47
the Northeast, but we're going to go
14:49
figure out where are the different
14:50
things we can find. There might be.
14:52
>> And they kind of handhold me through
14:53
this sequence of small, medium, and then
14:55
like there's this huge market that we're
14:57
going to earn the right to, but we're
14:59
laser focused on
15:00
>> which makes you more credible.
15:01
>> Yeah. 100%. And that's I think maybe
15:04
where some founders get tripped up. They
15:06
think, "Oh, I'm going to do this and
15:08
I'll be less credible." Oh, you can
15:11
sequence it. As you're saying, when we
15:13
win this war and we we get the beach,
15:16
>> then we'll go to the, you know, a little
15:17
bit further inland. We'll secure the
15:19
beach first. We get that beach head
15:20
market. That's why that term exists.
15:22
It's a military term.
15:24
>> Secure the the beach head. Okay. When we
15:26
get back from a quick commercial break,
15:28
I want to talk about founders going on
15:31
the feature death march. Founders
15:33
putting their head down and spending too
15:35
much time building 10 or 20 features as
15:38
opposed to the essentialism of finding
15:41
what is the core feature loop value of
15:44
my product when we get back on this week
15:46
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15:51
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15:53
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15:55
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15:57
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16:00
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17:01
All right, we're back at this week in
17:03
startups. Here we're working down our
17:05
list of things that founders should
17:07
focus on in year zero. Building the
17:09
team, finding the customers. Uh this is
17:12
before you raise money when you're kind
17:15
of doing that product discovery and
17:16
figuring out what your startup will be.
17:18
Amanda Bradford's with me. She built the
17:20
league and sold it to Match.com and
17:22
she's going to do another startup at
17:24
some point. She Angel Invest William
17:25
Barnes from Carmen Ventures. Let's talk
17:26
about founders going on that feature
17:29
death march. They can't help themselves.
17:32
They love building features. They get a
17:34
little too precious, don't they,
17:35
William?
17:35
>> And customers also love giving feature
17:37
requests.
17:38
>> Yes, they do. Oh, yeah. And this is like
17:40
the two things that will make
17:42
>> founders go off track.
17:44
>> Yeah.
17:44
>> Yeah. 100%. I think it's an expression
17:46
of psychology and I think there's kind
17:47
of there's two parts to it. There's a
17:50
fear of going talking to more customers
17:51
or doing more sales.
17:53
>> It's like a it's a fear of that like I
17:54
don't want to go and do more sales and
17:55
get more rejection. So here's something
17:57
I can control and like I can go and ship
17:59
more product.
18:00
>> Yeah. And the other one is it's an
18:01
avoidance of not having product market
18:04
fit and and finding one feature that
18:07
really solves a painoint and the the
18:09
customers using a lot. There are some
18:12
exceptions to the rule like if you're bu
18:14
you know you're tryinging building like
18:16
a complex enterprise product or like you
18:18
know say a horizontal piece of software
18:19
you are going to need to be more
18:20
feature-rich. But I think in general uh
18:22
having the discipline to find one or two
18:25
features that really solve something
18:28
painful and then charging for it and
18:30
then doing a lot of sales around it is
18:32
the prevailing wisdom.
18:33
>> And if you do it that way there's an
18:36
essentialism you understand and you've
18:39
prioritized the feature set. It doesn't
18:40
mean
18:41
>> that you're not going to add those
18:42
features
18:44
>> later. Yeah. Sequencing again.
18:45
>> Sequencing again. And I had a founder
18:48
who said the way he handled it inside
18:50
his startup was he made he said he would
18:52
say to the team members or investors or
18:55
customers. It's a great idea. I'm going
18:58
to write it down so we don't forget it
18:59
here. And we're going to put it in a
19:01
we're going to prioritize it and we're
19:02
going to do a little research on it. And
19:03
then he would tell the internal team.
19:04
It's on the not right now list.
19:06
>> The backlog. Yep.
19:07
>> But not right now was a very kind way of
19:10
saying it to the team and it showed
19:12
leadership. And let's talk a little bit
19:14
about the simplicity of some of the most
19:16
successful products in the world.
19:18
Instagram, Amanda, had the ver most
19:21
simple I remember
19:23
>> sending postcards to each other.
19:24
>> Essentially the you you upload a photo
19:27
to the social feed. That's one function.
19:30
And then you pick a filter by swiping
19:33
and hit publish. That was it. They
19:36
didn't even have a like button in the
19:37
beginning. They didn't certainly didn't
19:39
have comments. And then those were added
19:41
later. And if you open Instagram now, I
19:45
feel like I am launching a rocket ship.
19:47
I mean, there are so many features. When
19:49
you swipe left, am I doing a story? Am I
19:51
doing a post?
19:53
>> A real. I mean, I I don't know the
19:54
difference between any of these things.
19:55
And then there's a bunch of buttons and
19:57
you can do filters, and there's
19:59
thousands of lenses, you put music
20:02
behind it. It's so convoluted, but still
20:05
growing. When when you started thinking
20:06
about your first product at the league,
20:09
what was the analogy there? Oh, it was
20:12
it was simple AF, I would call it. Uh,
20:14
basically it was five at five. You get
20:15
five daily prospects uh at 5:00 PM and
20:19
that was it. You could message them.
20:21
Nothing else. We didn't even monetize
20:22
for about two years. So, especially when
20:24
you're in consumer, I always say make
20:26
sure you're actually building something
20:28
that people want before you start
20:29
charging them. And so, we did a kind of
20:31
a smoking mirrors implementation where I
20:33
wanted to be able to tell my investors
20:34
that I do have people willing to pay.
20:36
You know, we were servicing a a high net
20:38
worth demographic. So, I actually
20:39
created a a fake button where users
20:42
could say, "I want to upgrade." We could
20:43
we knew that about 10 to 15% of people
20:45
would click that button. And then we
20:47
actually gave them the the feature, but
20:49
we didn't actually charge their card
20:50
because I wanted to be very simple and
20:52
very focused on just let's make the
20:54
basic free product amazing and know that
20:57
we had a 10 to 15% conversion rate, but
20:59
not actually get distracted dealing with
21:00
monetization, with billing, which with
21:02
refunds, which happens in consumer. And
21:04
so that's like an example of kind of how
21:06
you can sort of hack your way into
21:08
building a little bit of features so you
21:09
know there's a demand without without
21:11
ruining your focus.
21:12
>> But so elegantly simple yet complex.
21:15
Five matches 5 p.m.
21:17
>> I mean you say smoke and mirrors. I say
21:19
essentialism.
21:20
>> Yeah.
21:21
>> It gives you exactly what you're looking
21:22
for. 15 would be overwhelming. Now it's
21:25
a chore. Five.
21:26
>> Yep. And the whole thing was quality
21:28
over quantity. Right. So that was our
21:30
main message. That's how we
21:30
differentiated from Tinder from all
21:32
these other apps out there was just
21:33
you're going to get five good prospects
21:35
a day at 5:00 p.m.
21:36
>> which we'll get into a minute in in our
21:38
discussion about trust but let's keep
21:39
talking about like this feature
21:41
essentialism and avoiding the feature
21:43
death march.
21:44
>> What was it at Uber? I mean I have my
21:46
own ideas but you were inside that. I
21:48
mean obviously with a a high frequency
21:50
consumer product you are inundated
21:53
um all week with people making feature
21:55
requests or suggestions and as the team
21:57
got better bigger you know people were
21:59
constantly making suggestions to Travis
22:01
I mean Travis was relentless about
22:04
focusing on reliability as you can
22:06
imagine if you take Uber to travel from
22:08
your office or your home to somewhere
22:11
other in the city and you take it there
22:13
on a Friday or Saturday night and then
22:15
it gets to the end of the evening and
22:16
you want to go home and it doesn't work,
22:18
you're not going to use Uber again. And
22:20
this is in a in a world and in many
22:22
cities unlike Tokyo where the taxes are
22:24
not reliable. So, you can quite
22:26
literally be stranded. Um, and so we
22:28
focused a lot in the early days on
22:30
making it reliable. And to I think to
22:33
say yes to reliability, we had to say no
22:36
to a lot of other things
22:37
>> because for that reliability took a lot
22:39
of uh operational and engineering
22:41
resources. And so we we were pretty
22:44
obsessive about completed a request,
22:46
ETA, which is like the time it would
22:48
take to complete a request, uh, and the
22:50
driver rating. And we knew we had a
22:52
product that had product market fit. So
22:54
we were just very, very focused on
22:56
making the thing that already had
22:57
product market fit work really, really
22:59
well.
23:00
>> So our first item, hey, let's get that
23:02
product right first and we'll worry
23:04
about fundraising down the road. Which
23:06
means you have to be our second point,
23:09
customer obsessed. really understand the
23:11
customers which cost zero dollars.
23:13
>> That's one of the beautiful things and
23:15
then today with vibe coding even doing
23:17
product first and these little
23:18
experiments also zero dollars.
23:21
>> Three, we want to avoid that death march
23:24
with features. You really want to focus
23:26
on what's essential. Now we're going to
23:28
open up our fourth point today of what
23:30
founders should focus on in year zero
23:31
which you did a perfect transition to
23:34
which is trust. Relentless focus on
23:36
trust uh and reliability. Trust and
23:39
reliability, Amanda, in dating.
23:43
This is incredibly important as well.
23:44
>> Trust is everything.
23:45
>> Yeah. So, so tell us about that and how
23:48
much it costs to do that, the resources
23:50
it took and how you think about it
23:52
sitting here today looking back on that
23:54
decade long journey to a very successful
23:56
exit and then carrying that into
23:58
whatever your next product will wind up
23:59
being. I know you're choosing between
24:00
three or four ideas. One of which you
24:02
got inspired by here on the trip, but we
24:04
won't say
24:04
>> a lot of ideas. A lot of domains in my
24:06
GoDaddy shopping cart right now. Yeah.
24:08
Yeah. So for us trust was you know can
24:09
you trust that this product is going to
24:11
serve you prospects or or dating
24:13
candidates should you say that that you
24:15
want that you know fit your preferences
24:16
and for us um I actually vetted every
24:19
single uh applicant manually. So, you
24:22
know, eventually we did transition to
24:23
using algorithms and machine learning
24:24
and all that fancy stuff. But at the
24:26
beginning, it was literally me, Amanda,
24:27
looking at everyone who applied and
24:29
saying you're you're accepted and you're
24:30
rejected. And people downloaded the
24:32
league and joined the league because of
24:34
that, you know, reliability or trust
24:36
that the people are going to be high
24:38
quality vetted. They're going to have
24:40
six photos. They're not going to do gym
24:41
selfies. Uh they're not going to be
24:43
wearing sunglasses in their pictures or
24:45
they would be rejected. And so for us,
24:46
>> And those were specific things you did.
24:48
No gym clothes, no
24:49
>> Oh, yeah. We had a whole rules of, you
24:51
know, eventually I trained people to do
24:52
this. I wasn't always the the one
24:53
accepting all the the candidates, but
24:55
eventually, you know, we found we had
24:56
almost a 50% acceptance rate as far as
24:58
when people get a a prospect, we call
25:01
them prospects, um, in their batch. Uh,
25:04
50% of the time they liked them, which,
25:05
you know, if you've been on any dating
25:06
app today, you know, usually it's
25:08
probably like one out of 20 that you're
25:10
going to be swiping right on. Um, and so
25:12
get, you know, getting a 50% acceptance
25:14
rate was sort of unheard of, um, and is
25:16
still unheard of today. And so that was
25:18
because we spent, you know, a lot of we
25:19
did a lot of things that didn't scale.
25:20
That was what I was doing didn't scale.
25:22
And then we also did customer support.
25:24
So I had a human, that was me at the
25:26
beginning too, the concierge. We had a
25:27
concierge that would answer every
25:29
question from a user regardless of if
25:30
they paid us or not. Help them with
25:32
their profile. We said, "Hey, your third
25:34
photo is actually better than your
25:35
first. I went ahead and swapped it for
25:36
you." And I would actually go, I
25:38
remember before we launched, guys in
25:39
particular are very bad at uh curating
25:41
their photos. So I would go and take
25:43
find the best photo of the six they put
25:45
and put it first. And then I turned
25:46
everybody's photo black and white
25:47
because everyone looks better in black
25:49
and white. So we did a lot of these
25:50
things that just made things uh you know
25:53
made people trust the product and and
25:55
want to come back.
25:56
>> In the case of Airbnb, they said the
25:58
photos were critical and and there's
26:00
this famous story that the founders
26:02
always tell of, you know, talking to
26:04
Paul Graham at YC about
26:06
>> getting the professional photo shoots,
26:07
right?
26:08
>> Getting the professional photos. And he
26:08
says, "Well," and he said, "Hey, then
26:10
the most demands in New York." They
26:11
said, "Why aren't you in New York with
26:13
cameras taking pictures of the best
26:14
places and hiring photographers?" And
26:16
they were like, "Oh, because we're
26:18
startup founders and we want to focus on
26:20
anything that's not the most essential
26:22
thing." And that's what great mentors,
26:24
great investors or great programs um
26:27
like YC or hopefully ours can help you
26:30
do, which is get to that essential
26:32
>> important thing. And those photos build
26:34
trust. If you're going to stay somewhere
26:36
and the photos look like a serial
26:38
killer's apartment, you're not going to
26:41
book it. But if it looks like the Aman
26:44
Hotel or it looks like the Ritz Carlton,
26:47
okay, yeah, maybe I will stay there.
26:48
Which is why, William, when you look,
26:50
they they they almost have a playbook
26:52
>> Yeah.
26:53
>> of what the kitchen should look like.
26:55
And they have a neon sign and then they
26:56
have the pods. I mean, they've literally
26:59
figured it out. When you hear Amanda
27:00
talk about it, it's it seems obvious,
27:02
but each of those nuances builds trust.
27:05
>> Yeah. What I hear when Amanda tells that
27:07
story is somebody that is obsessed about
27:10
making the core value proposition
27:14
reliable,
27:15
>> right? And she's obsessively vetting
27:17
everybody. there's like she's committed
27:19
to five five matches a day or like five
27:21
offerings a day and she's handholding
27:24
the you know kind of what she's serving
27:26
up and she's saying no to all these
27:27
other features. Um and I think that
27:29
level of obsession and you know not
27:32
using tech necessarily and doing
27:34
something that doesn't scale is a way to
27:36
do that.
27:36
>> Okay, we've gone through four really
27:38
important uh things that founders should
27:40
focus on in year zero. We've got three
27:42
to go. First up, hey, let's get focused
27:44
on that product. Don't worry about
27:45
fundraising. Number two, customer
27:47
obsession. Number three, feature death
27:49
march, feature creep. Just staying
27:52
really focused on making the thing the
27:54
thing. And of course, fourth, working on
27:57
that reliability and trust in your
27:59
product. These are really important
28:00
things to think about right now in year
28:02
zero. And if you're listening to this
28:04
and you're thinking about starting a
28:05
company, you can go to
28:05
founder.university, apply for the US,
28:08
Riad, or coming to Tokyo, and everybody
28:11
can apply to all three. It's competitive
28:14
to get in. Let's talk about constraint.
28:15
There's this expression that great art
28:18
is driven by constraint.
28:20
>> Yeah. Innovation is needs a constraining
28:22
variable.
28:23
>> Yeah. And they asked Bob Dylan, one of
28:25
my favorite artists of all time, and my
28:28
favorite album happens to be Blood on
28:29
the Tracks, and they said in this
28:31
Rolling Stone interview, "My gosh, this
28:34
is my favorite album." It starts talking
28:35
about all these incredible songs on it.
28:38
What was the inspiration for this album?
28:39
And Bob Dylan said, "Well, you know, I
28:42
owed the I owed Columbia Records a
28:44
picture. I owed them an album and
28:46
they've been waiting a long time and
28:49
they said if I don't get it to them by
28:51
the state, they would sue me to get the
28:54
advance back. And I didn't have any
28:56
money. I just been through a divorce.
29:00
And this poor interviewer was crushed
29:03
that this album that meant so much to
29:06
them. When I read it, I was crushed that
29:08
the inspiration of the album was the
29:10
divorce and not getting sued to because
29:13
he hadn't he was broke. That was the
29:15
inspiration. There was a limiting
29:16
factor. When you're making a movie, you
29:19
have a certain number of days to shoot.
29:20
With a startup, you have
29:23
>> you can you can drag it out if you want,
29:24
but you uh you have the the gun against
29:27
your head of your burn rate, like how
29:28
much money you have left,
29:30
>> right?
29:30
>> Uh and I think cash flow management uh
29:32
is the the most important thing when it
29:34
comes to managing a startup. Like
29:35
running out of money means the game's
29:37
over. One thing I've seen time and time
29:39
again, I get hundreds of investor
29:40
updates is you have some founders that I
29:43
think get attracted to company building
29:46
that you know they want to play company
29:48
building rather than finding uh a
29:50
product that works and then testing and
29:53
then proving that they can scale it in a
29:56
uh economically rational way where the
29:59
unique econ economics make sense. You
30:01
know, I think David Saxs came up with
30:03
this term of burn multiple, right? Like
30:05
how much for every dollar that you
30:06
spend, what's the incremental revenue
30:08
that you generate, right? And
30:09
>> there's constraint.
30:10
>> Yeah, there's a constraint, right? And
30:12
um and I think for I, you know, defer to
30:14
David on this one, but I think for a lot
30:16
of, you know, SAS metrics, you know,
30:18
under two is, you know, a good signal
30:20
and over three is a bad thing.
30:22
>> You spend 2 million, you make a million.
30:24
Totally fine.
30:25
>> Y
30:25
>> you spend three million to make a
30:27
million. Okay, that's not super
30:28
efficient. What's going on here? and are
30:30
you going to catch up next year?
30:31
>> Yeah, exactly. And um and so I you know
30:34
there's a certain group of founders
30:36
where you get the investor updates and
30:37
they're being very kind of disciplined
30:39
about how they start to increase spend
30:41
and again it's sequencing. It's like do
30:43
they do they feel like they're really
30:44
starting to solve a customer problem? Do
30:46
they have they then been able to prove
30:48
that they can start scaling that through
30:50
sales or you know SEM and only then do
30:52
they start to increase the spend
30:54
relative to how much money they have in
30:56
the bank. signs uh or or thoughts about
30:58
constraint. You tipped us off to a
31:01
little bit of it. Constraint five at
31:03
five.
31:03
>> Five at five. I mean, we also only
31:05
launched in San Francisco. We were only
31:06
in San Francisco for the first two
31:08
years. So, we made sure we really
31:09
understood that market and had a good
31:11
product in that market prior to
31:12
expanding. I think the other piece for
31:14
me was time. I don't know a lot of
31:15
founders are wired like me where you
31:18
perfection is the enemy of done. I
31:19
always say and it's easy to just sit and
31:21
spin and want to keep perfecting things.
31:23
So by setting a launch date and saying
31:24
we are going to launch on this date and
31:26
telling your customers that that we we
31:29
we uh that forced us to actually get the
31:31
product out or else I could have tried
31:33
to make it perfect forever. So I always
31:34
say to founders give yourself a deadline
31:37
uh however you want to do that whether
31:39
it's telling your customers when you're
31:40
going to launch but I know that's what
31:41
got my butt into gear. So
31:43
>> so you have geographic
31:45
>> you have financial and timelines you
31:48
have the ratio of spend to revenue.
31:51
Yeah. You also have maybe a wait list.
31:54
>> Yep.
31:55
>> And limited availability.
31:56
>> You then have a social contract.
31:58
>> Social contract. Yeah.
31:59
>> We were talking about a really
32:00
interesting, beautifully designed app
32:03
about helping people find friends and
32:05
get out in the real world. And you and I
32:06
were brainstorming about it and I said,
32:08
>> you know,
32:09
>> I wonder if, you know, there's a
32:12
possibility of having two day parts, you
32:14
know, the the brunch lunch period and
32:16
nighttime. So that means seven days.
32:18
There's 14. It's a lot of liquidity to
32:21
to manage
32:21
>> to fill. You have 14 events occurring. I
32:25
wonder if you took the peak loneliness
32:27
which probably occurs for people on
32:29
Friday and Saturday nights. Not Amanda,
32:31
>> incredibly popular, but for you and I
32:34
>> sitting home Friday and Saturday night
32:35
like we're losers. We texted each other
32:37
and get a drink or should we go get some
32:39
sushi and
32:40
>> we we're losers no more. But I wonder if
32:43
they just focused on Friday night,
32:46
Saturday night, Sunday brunch, and that
32:48
would be three or 14 and just nailing
32:51
that, selling it out and creating
32:53
pent-up demand. That would work so much
32:55
better than this open platform where
32:56
everything can occur at any time and
32:59
>> then nothing occurs.
33:00
>> I think what you're saying is uh you're
33:01
touching on several points we've talked
33:03
about, which is what you're doing is
33:04
you're niching down
33:06
>> and so now your marketing communication
33:09
or how you pitch it to people can be
33:10
more narrow, right? So it's easier for
33:12
them to understand because it's
33:14
constrained and then your ability to
33:15
serve that product is easier because
33:17
you've got, you know, a nar more narrow
33:19
scope. Um, so you're going to spend less
33:20
money and make it easier for you to
33:22
deliver on the promise.
33:23
>> When you put all that together, you
33:25
don't need as much money. Your ability
33:27
to execute
33:30
because you've narrowed the constraint.
33:31
You don't have to spend as much time. So
33:33
you can get customer feedback quicker.
33:35
>> Yep.
33:36
>> And you can like you can nail the
33:38
product more easily.
33:39
>> Correct. because it's not I don't think
33:41
you can just like do a good job. You
33:43
have to absolutely nail it and like
33:44
overd deliver if you want to drive word
33:46
of mouth or
33:47
>> those five people Amanda have to be
33:49
really high quality in your example in
33:51
this example just that came up in two
33:53
different conversations just hey what if
33:55
there was only four events on the
33:57
weekend with only eight spots each now
33:59
you've only got to fill 32
34:01
>> and you're going to crush them
34:02
>> and just make each of them so wonderful
34:05
and great
34:06
>> and it also prevents like for us you
34:07
know as a consumer marketplace you're
34:09
going to have the cold start problem.
34:10
So, I knew from the get-go I was like,
34:11
I'm not going to have nearly the
34:12
liquidity that someone like Tinder does.
34:14
And so, by limiting that by only showing
34:16
you five, people don't have to know that
34:18
maybe there's only 15 people total. You
34:20
know, I buy yourself, you buy yourself a
34:21
couple days to give them, you know, give
34:23
them your full set of inventory. So,
34:25
they don't have to know how small the
34:26
the pool is at the beginning.
34:28
>> I'm been thinking about that myself,
34:29
reflecting on Foundry University in the
34:32
United States. It was getting popular
34:33
and popular. I said, "Hey, listen.
34:34
There's no cost to accepting more
34:36
people. We should be just able to scale
34:38
this." We did 350 people the last time.
34:39
And then what we found out was because
34:41
we had 10 pods, there was 35 people in
34:44
each pod,
34:45
>> the great founders would skip the pod
34:47
>> because the pod was being filled up with
34:49
questions that were so rudimentary from
34:51
the people who were just very early or
34:54
neophites or maybe not even cut out,
34:56
let's be candid, to be founders. And I
34:58
said, "Huh, did we know that coming in?"
35:00
And we're like, we kind of knew that
35:01
some of them weren't ready. Maybe we're
35:02
just being
35:03
>> version of the gym selfie dudes. No, I'm
35:05
kidding.
35:05
>> Yeah, exactly. like maybe just too many
35:08
people and are trying to do more. So I I
35:10
asked the team, "Hey, can we do less?"
35:12
>> Yeah. And and your team is now spending
35:14
less time with the best people,
35:17
>> right? Because they're more distracted
35:19
>> because they're more distracted with the
35:20
squeaky wheels who get the most grease.
35:22
And so in Saturday we did 60. Here we
35:25
did about 30 in founder University. And
35:28
then that makes the pod smaller. So then
35:30
we had a really interesting what's the
35:32
optimal number of founders to be in a
35:33
pod every Thursday night talking about
35:36
their startups and we came to well two
35:39
or three is probably too small
35:42
30 is way too big so between those two
35:44
numbers we think the right number is it
35:45
might be 15 it might be 10 it could wind
35:47
up at 20 but it's enough that everybody
35:49
gets to participate and there's no
35:51
cameras off so the number is probably
35:53
eight nine or 10 is my guess but we
35:55
don't know we'll figure that out but we
35:57
are enforcing constraint which I think
35:59
is pretty interesting. Next up, we want
36:02
to talk about distribution. We're
36:03
cooking with oil right now. First up, we
36:05
talked about product first. Let's put
36:08
fundraising down the road and we're
36:10
going to keep uh that burn rate low in
36:12
order to do that. Customer obsession and
36:14
meeting with customers and understanding
36:15
them. That cost you zero dollars. Most
36:17
founders are too scared to do it. If
36:19
you're too scared to do it, you can't be
36:21
a founder. You should quit now. Number
36:22
three, feature creep. Death march. Doing
36:24
too much. And why are you doing too
36:26
much? Well, maybe you don't want to
36:28
focus on your customers or or build the
36:30
product. Trust is just so critical.
36:32
Reliability. And then constraints, our
36:35
fifth item. Now, we're at distribution.
36:37
How did you handle distribution, Amanda?
36:39
And how do you think about distribution
36:40
today? When's the right time to be
36:43
thinking about distribution? And I'll
36:45
include virality there. I'll include
36:47
paid. I'll include social. I'll include
36:49
everything. Just distribution as a
36:51
concept. Some people might refer to it
36:53
as goto market. Some people might call
36:55
it growth hacking, but just getting
36:57
distribution for your product.
36:59
>> Distribution is everything. So that is
37:00
your main primary job as founder and CEO
37:03
is to figure out if there are
37:04
distribution hacks for your product and
37:06
you got to go find them. So um if you're
37:08
not the one doing marketing, you should
37:10
be at the very early stages. Uh for us,
37:12
you know, we found a combination of
37:14
doing events, uh inviting press to
37:16
events, and then pitching press were
37:18
actually our biggest levers. And they
37:20
were all somewhat free because the
37:22
events didn't end up costing that much
37:23
money. we were able to get bars and
37:24
restaurants to sponsor or to say, "Hey,
37:27
you can do this for free if you bring x
37:28
number of people to our bar on a Monday
37:30
night when they don't have anyone." So,
37:31
we were able to kind of find hacks to to
37:34
get that initial, you know, a couple
37:36
thousand people uh in the database. Um
37:38
and then we we found a playbook. So,
37:39
what we found is that as we went to
37:40
cities, we would get local press. So,
37:42
you know, Dallas Morning News, San
37:44
Francisco Chronicle, um you get these
37:46
local publications to write, you know,
37:48
for us the the tagline was tender for
37:50
the elites is coming to your city. And
37:52
so we would run that play over and over
37:53
again for each city we went to and press
37:56
was our best friend
37:57
>> and it was controversial.
37:58
>> Oh 100%. Don't be afraid to push against
38:01
uh you know
38:02
>> you actually agitated it. You knew it
38:03
was coming and you said hey this event
38:06
is only for people who can get into the
38:08
league and it's elite and they were like
38:10
oh my god we're going to count the
38:12
demographics and we're going to write
38:13
this and you can go look up these
38:14
>> were the first ones to reject people
38:16
from a dating app. So it was a you know
38:18
it was a controversial concept at the
38:20
time
38:20
>> which makes it worth writing about. So
38:22
you figured out how to hack local PR and
38:26
national
38:26
>> journalists were our best friends today
38:27
in today's era that would probably be
38:29
influencers. You know if you can find
38:30
people with distribution on Twitter on
38:33
Instagram on Tik Tok if they're going to
38:34
be talking about your product for free
38:36
that's amazing. You can get people to
38:38
just try it. So inviting those people to
38:40
events those kind of things. We
38:42
>> Zillow
38:42
>> Business Insider was our best friend.
38:44
Yeah,
38:44
>> they they were doing link baiting and
38:46
all of that
38:47
>> just got people to know the domain name.
38:49
Zillow did something similar. They
38:51
created a very controversial device, not
38:54
you know applied to become part of this
38:56
dating site. It was this estimate. This
38:58
is our estimate of the cost of your
39:00
house. People got really upset. You're
39:03
estimating the cost of my house. It's
39:04
wrong. My house is worth more. Everybody
39:05
thinks their house is worth more.
39:07
>> You want to see what your house is
39:08
valued at, right?
39:08
>> Plays into vanity.
39:09
>> Plays into vanity. Plays Yeah. and and
39:12
if something's wrong, people want to fix
39:13
it. The same thing the Wikipedia had,
39:15
which was sometimes the China page
39:17
originally when I first started using
39:18
Wikipedia was one paragraph. And people
39:21
were so upset that like they're like,
39:22
"This is the largest country in the
39:24
world and it's one paragraph. This is an
39:26
embarrassment." And they said, "Okay,
39:27
hit the edit button." And they were
39:29
like, "Okay, the population of China is"
39:32
and like then the next person was like,
39:33
"Okay, you don't have anything about X,
39:35
Y, and Z. Let's add that." and Zillow
39:37
then made local reports about the
39:40
Zestimates of the local and the national
39:44
and then to this day they send out
39:47
reports every week a different city or
39:49
geo gets sent out so that their team can
39:52
rotate from you know Arizona to Texas to
39:56
New York. Uh really amazing way to get
39:59
distribution. Give to get worked pretty
40:01
well for Uber.
40:03
>> Yeah,
40:04
>> perhaps too well. Yeah. Yeah,
40:05
definitely. At times there were um there
40:08
were groups of people that were hacking
40:10
it. They would create landing pages and
40:12
then drive SEM traffic against it to
40:14
sell them. Um
40:15
>> they would buy ads. Yeah.
40:16
>> To go to a landing page. In fact, my
40:18
friend who I introduced Uber to
40:20
>> story. He bought my friend Nick bought
40:23
ads
40:25
>> on Google that said Uber is now in Los
40:28
Angeles. Click here to get a free ride
40:30
to get $25.
40:31
>> Oh, I remember I remember this guy. And
40:33
it was$1 or $2 for per click. Yep. He
40:36
converted like every other click. So it
40:37
was $4. And every time he got $25 credit
40:40
in his account,
40:41
>> he got to like three or 400 rides. And
40:44
he's like, "I got turned off. I lost all
40:46
the things, but I spent all this money.
40:47
Can you get Travis to undo it?" And I
40:49
was like, "Yeah, let me bother Travis
40:51
with you hacking the system against the
40:53
terms of service." Yeah. No, but give to
40:55
get. Yeah.
40:56
>> That was of the of the moment.
40:57
>> It was definitely of the moment. I mean,
40:59
and I think the the specific example
41:01
which you can turn into generalized
41:03
advice is that your existing power users
41:06
or people who love the product are the
41:08
people that are most likely to be able
41:09
to talk to and find other people that
41:11
are going to love the product.
41:12
>> They're advocates.
41:13
>> Yeah. They can you can turn them into
41:15
advocates. If you have a customer that
41:17
loves your product and is using it a
41:18
lot, um it's worth spending time with
41:20
them and incentivizing them to find
41:22
other people in their life that are like
41:23
them. There were I think there was a
41:25
moment of time where people were
41:27
building tools to
41:30
take their eBay listings or their Airbnb
41:33
listing and get it onto Craigslist. And
41:36
they built tools to just have that
41:38
happen automatically and have it happen
41:40
in different cities. And then it was
41:41
like a little cat-and- mouse Craigslist
41:43
trying to do it. But building these
41:44
little tools that help people move
41:46
inventory from one place to the other
41:48
>> was enough to just make this work. And
41:50
the people who had Airbnbs, well, they
41:53
would set up their own landing page and
41:54
send people to Airbnb.
41:56
>> I mean, it's I think it's a a pattern
41:59
that I'm I'm guessing all three of us
42:00
have seen is, you know, 101 15 years
42:02
ago, um, building the technology was
42:05
equally, if not the hardest part of the
42:07
six months.
42:08
>> Yeah, it took six months. And I think
42:09
with, you know, I think the the the term
42:11
that all VCs like to throw around is
42:13
Javvon's paradox. you know, as something
42:15
gets cheap paradox. As things get
42:18
cheaper, um, people use them more. And I
42:20
think that's definitely true with uh, AI
42:23
and vibe coding. And so the the product
42:26
piece is getting easier. I mean,
42:28
obviously truly uh, brilliant products
42:30
are still hard, but it is easier to
42:32
build product now. And so I think there
42:34
is more and more value being created in
42:36
distribution. And so that can either be,
42:38
you know, the the obvious uh example is
42:41
influencers, people with podcasts
42:43
>> or Dropbox is a great example where, you
42:45
know, you're sharing with a friend and
42:46
then they have to create an account.
42:48
>> Yep. Yep.
42:48
>> To do sort of the classic
42:51
>> docuign is the best one. If you do
42:53
docuign, it's like we can say this is
42:55
saved in your locker.
42:57
>> Yeah.
42:57
>> If you ever want to look it up again and
43:00
then you're like, "Yeah, I got to get
43:01
that document. Is it still in my
43:03
locker?" Yeah, don't worry. It's in your
43:04
locker. But distribution can can mean
43:06
different things, right? So like the
43:07
obvious one is, you know, an influencer,
43:09
somebody with a big audience. Uh but
43:11
distribution at an early stage can mean
43:13
other things like access to customers.
43:16
Uh you know, an industry insider,
43:17
somebody that's worked inside an
43:19
industry,
43:19
>> hiring someone with a rolodex.
43:20
>> Yeah. Hiring somebody with a rolodex, an
43:22
advisor, uh an early angel that has got
43:25
deep relationships in an industry that
43:26
you want to go and sell into so they can
43:28
help you go and find customers to go and
43:30
do customer discovery with is another
43:32
good example. And the other one is a
43:34
design partner. Uh a design partner is,
43:36
you know, kind of an anchor customer
43:38
that's going to allow you uh access to
43:41
their workflows, uh their data. They're
43:43
they're essentially saying like, "Hey,
43:45
you're building a product. I will let
43:46
you use my data. I will I will kind of
43:48
commit to giving you feedback and having
43:50
access to
43:51
>> return for testimonial, right?"
43:52
>> Yeah. Exactly. So there different forms
43:55
of distribution
43:56
>> and and that product council is what it
43:58
used to be called enterprise software.
44:00
>> Customer council. Yeah. Yeah, customer
44:01
council, product council. It's like
44:04
people would I remember when I was
44:06
inside Sony for 18 months, one of the
44:08
few jobs I was able to hold. Um, it was
44:11
14 months now that I think about it.
44:13
Anyway, I got asked to be on like the
44:15
Cisco one or this one. And all it was
44:17
was a local sales rep just trying to
44:19
figure out how to take
44:21
>> us out to more lunches and and bond with
44:25
us so they could sell us more stuff. But
44:27
we got to say that and
44:28
>> put it on our resume. So on my resume I
44:30
had, oh, I was part of this council,
44:31
that council, and oh, tell me about that
44:33
when I go to next job. Yeah. It's like,
44:34
oh, well, they thought so highly of me.
44:36
I I got to see their new products first.
44:39
Yeah.
44:39
>> This is really amazing.
44:40
>> They want the relationship, right? And
44:41
so if they're trying to find with Sony
44:44
you were working at. Yeah. So if they're
44:45
trying to sell into Sony somewhere,
44:47
they're going to ask you for an
44:48
introduction, of course. They're gonna
44:50
they're going to if they find a route
44:51
into a decision maker, they're going to
44:53
ask you to forward an email.
44:54
>> They literally asked me for the
44:55
corporate directory.
44:55
>> Yeah, exactly. I was like, I don't think
44:57
I can give that to like, yeah, no, we've
44:58
we've many times they're like I was
45:00
like, okay, yeah, I guess maybe I could.
45:02
What are you looking for? They're like,
45:04
well, we need somebody in Jersey, you
45:05
know, who does this thing.
45:06
>> My gorge, we're having a great time in
45:08
Tokyo. This is our second time as a
45:10
group
45:11
>> here. William, I took you last time. It
45:13
was your first time coming here. So,
45:15
>> great French toast
45:16
>> and karaoke
45:17
>> and pizza.
45:18
>> Continue. Go ahead.
45:19
>> And sushi, of course.
45:21
>> And wild boar and bear.
45:24
>> Yes. Smashburger. The smash burger was
45:26
exceptional.
45:27
>> Wagu mafia.
45:28
>> Wagu mafia was great. Tonkatsu pretty
45:31
great.
45:31
>> Pretty much all the food.
45:32
>> Wagu mafia was quite expensive but
45:34
>> yeah.
45:34
>> I gave you that bill.
45:35
>> We We thought it was in yen but it was
45:37
dollars.
45:38
>> Yeah, it was pretty disturbing. And she
45:40
>> it was the one I decided to pay for to
45:42
be nice.
45:42
>> Amanda's like, "J, you're paying for
45:44
everything. I'll pay for Wagu mafia." I
45:46
was like, "Okay, it's just a
45:47
>> Wagu sando."
45:49
>> And they charged her $350 for a sandwich
45:51
with gold leaf and caviar. Yeah.
45:53
>> Times three. So, she got hit with a
45:54
thousand dollar wagoo bill.
45:56
>> It was very yummy.
45:57
>> It was very yummy. But I I always love
45:58
introducing people to the culture here
46:00
because
46:02
>> gosh, the commitment to excellence.
46:04
>> It's It's wonderful.
46:05
>> It's just wonderful to see people take
46:09
the donut as seriously as the car, as
46:12
seriously as the consumer electronic
46:14
device, as serious as the hotel, as
46:16
serious as when we lost our bags,
46:18
Amanda. And we were frustrated. And then
46:21
we had this moment of like, okay, let's
46:23
put our entitlement aside. If we were in
46:25
America and we had lost our bags, we
46:27
would be in a 12person line with a woman
46:29
behind the counter was extremely upset
46:31
at us
46:32
>> for having
46:33
>> for being there.
46:34
>> No, but I got to I gotist a lady with my
46:36
son name. She had my name on a sign.
46:39
>> She went to find you knowing your bag
46:41
didn't make it. And they
46:43
>> asked you to describe your bag
46:45
>> in what color is it?
46:46
>> In detail. In a lot of detail.
46:48
>> What size? Does it have a zipper? Does
46:50
it have a lock? Does it have the code?
46:52
And they have what material is it?
46:53
>> What material is it?
46:54
>> Very meticulous.
46:55
>> And then William and I started joking.
46:58
What were the next five questions you
47:00
could ask us? I was like, are you happy
47:01
with the bag? Have you considered other
47:03
bag options?
47:05
>> When did you first meet the bag?
47:06
>> And we were we're just like, wow, this
47:10
woman cares so much about getting a man
47:13
to her bag and to
47:15
>> Jal didn't get a sign.
47:16
>> I didn't get a sign.
47:17
>> I don't know Japan that well. I'm not
47:18
going to pretend to to know the culture
47:20
that well.
47:20
>> Your second trip again.
47:21
>> But my second trip, so I'm now an
47:22
expert. It does seem that unlike in the
47:24
United States, in the United States
47:26
there there is social uh status
47:28
associated with the job itself. Like
47:30
what job you're doing has social status.
47:32
My limited observation here is that
47:34
there seems to be social status not
47:37
about the job, but how well you do the
47:39
job.
47:40
>> Correct. And that is
47:43
>> Yeah. your competency and the detail and
47:45
and your enthusiasm for pursuing
47:47
excellence and in order to do that leads
47:49
us to our seventh point which is the
47:51
team and team building.
47:53
>> What'd you learn Amanda in your years of
47:55
team building and tell us the mistakes.
47:57
>> So many mistakes. I think it's a
47:59
different podcast probably but team is
48:01
everything.
48:02
>> Yeah. Okay. Great. Everything is
48:03
everything. Products everything.
48:04
Distribution is everything. We always
48:06
say everything is everything.
48:07
>> Well, I was just saying for me it was
48:09
the hardest thing to learn and it's easy
48:11
to ignore it at the beginning. you're so
48:13
focused on the marketing and the product
48:15
and you know those are kind of the the
48:17
glamorous things front front of the
48:19
house and then actually building and
48:21
retaining and hiring and and firing if
48:23
people aren't working uh and being able
48:25
to fire fast when it when it doesn't
48:27
work. Those are actually what really
48:28
should be taking almost 30% of your time
48:30
in this zero to one stage and it's easy
48:32
to ignore it and spend maybe 10% of your
48:34
time on that.
48:35
>> Where did you find great people and how
48:36
did you assess their greatness and
48:38
potential? Well, my favorite story is my
48:40
first employee, Meredith, um, had to
48:42
email me, I think, five times because
48:44
I'm not great at, uh, responding to
48:46
emails all the time. And so, she learned
48:48
quickly that she needed to follow up
48:50
with me. And she was one of the few
48:51
candidates that followed up enough to
48:53
get the job. So,
48:55
>> so there's founder candidates,
48:56
>> persistence, grit, not, you know, not
48:58
being uh, offended because someone
49:01
didn't write you back. I've had people
49:02
like that. Uh, and no, understand that
49:04
the founder's busy and they're going to
49:05
go the extra mile and step up to, you
49:07
know, get the job done. And so I think
49:09
people that are willing to raise their
49:10
hand and,
49:11
>> you know, go go the extra mile.
49:13
>> William, what have you learned over the
49:14
years in terms of talent and finding
49:17
great talent, inspiring great talent,
49:19
and maybe cutting talent that isn't
49:21
going to do their best work at your
49:24
company? I mean I I think hiring for
49:26
depending on if you're talking about
49:28
hiring an early stage company or
49:30
>> we're talking about early stage here. So
49:32
let's just say first two years.
49:33
>> Yeah. Then I would I would focus heavily
49:36
on uh generalists that have incredible
49:38
attitudes and like high slope.
49:40
>> That was my first hire.
49:41
>> Yeah. Yeah.
49:42
>> Let's define and unpack high slope.
49:43
>> High slope is uh somebody that you think
49:46
has kind of the they're open-minded.
49:48
They're highly conscientious. They're
49:50
low on neuroticism. And it's the type of
49:52
person that you can throw at multiple
49:54
problems and they're just going to go
49:56
and figure it out. They're not
49:57
necessarily going to be, you know, a
49:58
domain domain expert and become, you
50:00
know, like a VP of like engineering. But
50:02
for the the years where you're early and
50:04
you're trying to find out solutions to
50:07
random problems and there's pivots and
50:09
there's chaos and you're working late
50:10
and there's psychological drama
50:13
>> there. No, there's fear. Company could
50:15
go out of business. It's not working. Mo
50:17
most really good found most really good
50:20
founders are pretty obsessed and they
50:22
can have quite sharp elbows and you need
50:24
people around that founder that they can
50:27
they can handle that and they're so
50:29
that's why low neuroticism is helpful
50:31
because they're not going to get
50:32
derailed by those things and they're
50:33
pretty steady and they're highly
50:35
conscientious and they can grow into
50:38
solving different problems. You know I I
50:40
know they can juggle, right?
50:41
>> And they can they can juggle and they're
50:42
high energy. They're people that are
50:44
like intrinsically high energy and
50:46
they're they're like learning machines
50:48
>> and they're not going to get frazzled
50:50
when you say, "Hey, we're going to
50:52
Tokyo."
50:53
>> Yeah.
50:54
>> And we need to find an AV crew to record
50:57
the episodes and we need to get really
50:59
unique food and I want to do some swag.
51:01
And they're like, they don't say, "I
51:03
don't do that."
51:03
>> Yeah. They're like, "I don't know how to
51:05
do that."
51:05
>> Okay. Well, let me ask Chatty BT and
51:07
Google and Gemini and like how would I
51:09
do this? If if this is going to be true,
51:11
what would need to be true?
51:12
>> Yeah. Yeah, that I think there's a
51:13
fearlessness to certain individuals who
51:16
if they're built for a startup culture,
51:18
we call them jack of all trades or janes
51:20
of all trades in the United States, but
51:21
it's somebody who will understand, hey,
51:25
we're a fivep person company. There's
51:27
eventually going to be 20 people here
51:29
doing 20 different jobs, but right now
51:31
there's five people doing four jobs
51:33
each.
51:34
>> And maybe at best we each know two of
51:37
those jobs, but we're going to on the
51:39
fly figure out paid marketing. on the
51:41
fly. We're gonna figure out how to find
51:43
the restaurant and how to do PR because
51:45
I assume when you did all this great
51:46
stuff on PR, you didn't have a PR firm
51:48
advising.
51:48
>> I figured it all out and then I gave it
51:50
to Meredith once I figured it out and
51:51
she would go
51:52
>> and Meredith was an assistant to you
51:54
like your
51:54
>> she was everything from an executive
51:56
assistant to doing customer support to
51:57
doing marketing to sending emails to our
51:59
customers to doing Facebook ads to
52:01
talking to you know part restaurants and
52:04
bars to get an event done. She did
52:06
everything that I
52:07
>> So let's not always true but I have seen
52:10
time and time again someone very young
52:13
>> somebody very young that hasn't yeah
52:15
they have come from a fly of estate and
52:17
they have made their way to LA New York
52:19
or San Francisco
52:20
>> interesting archive they didn't fly very
52:23
>> they didn't they did they didn't
52:25
necessarily go to an Ivy League school
52:26
their parents definitely didn't go to
52:28
Ivy school
52:28
>> so they're hungry
52:29
>> they they probably had uh jobs in high
52:31
school certainly worked in college
52:33
>> working class blue collar And they
52:35
played sports in in college.
52:38
>> So disciplined with the with the sports.
52:39
>> Yeah. And they're very competitive.
52:40
>> And you were one of those people. They
52:41
hired you as you were from the flyover
52:44
state of London.
52:44
>> Yeah. Exactly.
52:46
>> Yeah. The backwater.
52:48
>> It is now. It's now London has kind of
52:51
evolved into a fly flyover. It's like
52:53
we're going to Paris or Germany.
52:55
>> Dubai. We're going to Dubai.
52:56
>> I don't know if you want to go to Paris
52:57
or Germany. I think
52:58
>> No, we're just going right to right to
53:00
UAE. Yeah. Yeah. We're not sending our
53:02
students to London. It's too
53:03
radicalized. Yes.
53:04
>> It's the greatest headline ever.
53:06
>> Amazing. My parents Yes. I sent that to
53:08
my parents. I
53:08
>> It took me three times to read that to
53:10
understand what I was reading.
53:11
>> Yeah.
53:12
>> The world's changed.
53:13
>> It looked like an onion headline.
53:15
>> Well, I mean, and in all honesty, those
53:17
kind of people are just so valuable to
53:19
the company, especially early on. Later
53:21
on, they get called special projects.
53:23
>> Uh
53:24
>> because as the company gets bigger,
53:25
fixers.
53:26
>> Yeah. As the company gets bigger, you
53:28
you know, for better or worse, you get
53:30
specializations. You have to take things
53:32
away and you have to have people that
53:33
are okay with giving away some of their
53:35
power and not taking that Yes.
53:37
>> personally or, you know, wanting to keep
53:39
their power base.
53:40
>> Go ahead and tell me how you would say
53:42
that to Meredith. Hey, we're taking PR
53:44
away from you. You did it. You had this
53:45
great success.
53:46
>> Well, she was great at that. So, I put
53:47
her in that, but I took her away, you
53:48
know.
53:48
>> So, you specialized her to that.
53:49
>> Yes. That's where she ended up staying.
53:51
But like at the beginning, she was
53:52
customer support. She was doing our mail
53:54
because I hated checking the mail.
53:55
>> She would actually send the mail to my
53:57
mom. So, but when you did that,
53:58
obviously the male she probably wasn't
54:00
bummed out about, but she might have
54:01
loved customer support. How do you say,
54:03
"Hey, we're taking this away from you.
54:04
You didn't do anything wrong."
54:05
>> Yeah. Well, there's this actually great
54:06
first round capital uh article called
54:09
giving away your Legos. And so, I had
54:10
everyone on the team read that and it's
54:11
just about as you scale, you are going
54:13
to have to give away parts of your job.
54:15
And that that's a good thing. That's not
54:16
a bad thing.
54:17
>> In fact, a great founder is
54:20
literally trying to get to the state
54:23
where there is nothing. they come to the
54:24
office on Monday, there's nothing left
54:26
that they're they have to do. That's
54:29
when you actually know you're
54:30
successful. I think as a founder is that
54:31
when you take a week off, the company
54:33
does as well or better than if you were
54:35
there.
54:36
>> Yeah.
54:36
>> What I've seen work well in terms of uh
54:38
taking projects or scope away from
54:39
people is first of all understanding
54:42
what what their kind of career goals
54:43
are. Do they want to stay a generalist
54:45
and stay early stage? And if they do,
54:46
then like it's time to get off, you
54:48
know, the train and I'll help you find
54:50
something.
54:50
>> We have a four-year vest for a reason.
54:52
>> Yeah. And if you do want to specialize,
54:54
which is I would say 75 to 80% of the
54:56
time they want to specialize. Okay,
54:58
which area do you want to specialize in?
55:00
Okay, so this Okay, well my job is to go
55:02
and find an expert with much more
55:05
experience than you. They're going to
55:06
come in over you and their job is going
55:08
to be to mentor you and help you achieve
55:11
their career path. And I'm not going to
55:13
be able to do that because I'm not a a
55:14
15-year marketing expert, but I'm my job
55:16
is to find someone that you find
55:18
inspiring. And if I don't hire that
55:21
person, you got every right to turn
55:22
around and tell me I'm an idiot and I'll
55:23
help you find another job somewhere
55:25
else.
55:25
>> Yeah. And
55:26
>> the good ones will stay and the bad ones
55:27
that that'll make them leave because
55:29
some people don't want to get hired over
55:30
and those are not the people you want on
55:32
your early
55:32
>> stage. Delusional like if if you if you
55:34
think you know you're four years out of
55:36
college and you know you're going to
55:37
become a CMO of a series
55:39
>> happened to me on a board. I was on a
55:41
board and they said we want you to be on
55:43
the audit committee and I I looked at
55:45
the founder and I was like I've never
55:47
done anything like that. He's like,
55:48
"Yeah, I just think it's an opportunity
55:50
for you to learn." And then, you know,
55:52
whatever. You know, fast forward two
55:53
years, I learned how the audit works. I
55:55
learned how to interface with the
55:57
accountants. And I was like,
55:58
>> exciting stuff.
55:59
>> I see that as your superpower.
56:01
>> It was the worst two years.
56:02
>> When I think of you, I think auditing
56:04
>> the worst thing I had to go through. But
56:05
I was like, you know what? If this is
56:07
what the founder of that company in New
56:09
Hampshire, dying, wants me to do, I'm
56:11
going to be loyal to him and suck it up
56:13
and do it. This is 20 years ago. But I
56:15
said, okay, you gave me you gave me a
56:16
board seat. I'm doing it. I'm going to
56:17
make this work.
56:18
>> Y
56:19
>> and that's not one of the points here,
56:20
but just learning to delegate as a
56:21
founder. I know I struggled with that. I
56:22
kind of liked owning things and I wanted
56:24
to do it and you have to really learn to
56:26
to give work away and be okay with the
56:28
fact that maybe it won't get done
56:29
exactly as you would have done it. But
56:31
80% of the way is actually good enough
56:33
in startup world. And so you have to
56:35
learn how to delegate. One of the great
56:37
things about delegating professional
56:39
development that I've learned is it will
56:41
lower
56:43
the anxiety in the organization of if
56:45
this person leaves
56:47
>> the company's
56:48
>> hit by the train issue.
56:50
>> This is all coming off the rails. So
56:51
what we do is I will say well okay
56:54
you're running founder university until
56:55
this date. Six months later you're going
56:57
to work on the syndicate. Six months
56:58
later you're going to work on the fund.
57:00
Six months later you're going to go work
57:01
on first calls with founders and running
57:03
that department. So there's your
57:05
24-month experience.
57:07
>> GE used to do this
57:08
>> and I rotate the and we do professional
57:10
development and when the person hands it
57:12
off to the next person, I say do a Zoom
57:14
call, record it, put it into our notion
57:17
database and make a document with all
57:20
the instructions, use AI to summarize
57:22
it. Now, when we've done the first
57:24
handoff of, hey, you're handing Foundry
57:27
University off and you're going to work
57:28
on the accelerator. Now, you're leaving
57:30
the accelerator and you're going to go
57:31
work on the syndicate. each time you
57:33
hand that off. Now we've done it two
57:35
times or three times. Now there's two or
57:37
three calls, Zoom calls on that page
57:41
now.
57:41
>> Yeah.
57:42
>> The first time was handed off, the
57:43
second time, the third. So the next
57:44
person who gets hand off, we can watch
57:45
all three of those.
57:46
>> It forces documentation.
57:47
>> Yeah, exactly.
57:48
>> Which is right first culture is how we
57:50
say it, how Amazon says it.
57:52
>> That was one of our values. Write it
57:53
down. Whoever writes it down gets credit
57:55
for the idea.
57:56
>> It is a a
57:59
steal that.
57:59
>> Yeah, it is true. Uh, all right. Listen,
58:01
this has been over an hour. What an
58:03
amazing episode. We will take two
58:06
questions.
58:08
>> So, there are a lot of folks in this
58:09
room who will make money, some who
58:11
won't. All three of you have gone the
58:13
process of making money.
58:15
>> Yeah.
58:15
>> Uh I'm curious, how has the meaning of
58:17
money changed in your life as you've
58:19
accured more?
58:20
>> Uh money I mean, you're both going to
58:22
laugh at me for this. Uh money has a
58:24
nonlinear value. Each incremental dollar
58:26
you get, it becomes worth less than the
58:29
one you had before. And there's probably
58:30
some step function depending on your
58:32
lifestyle needs. Money solves money
58:33
problems and it just allows you to have
58:36
more time to worry about other things or
58:38
focus on things that I think are more
58:39
valuable. I think having money is a bit
58:41
like debt. It creates massive leverage
58:42
and so it amplifies the type of person
58:45
you are.
58:46
>> If you know you're the type of person
58:47
that wants to spend lots of time with
58:48
your family,
58:50
>> you make a bunch of money and then
58:51
you're like, "Oh, I'm gonna spend a
58:52
bunch of time with my family now." If uh
58:54
you like lots of external validation
58:57
from social from playing social status
58:59
games, you are now going to do that
59:00
more. Um so it's it's an amplifier. Uh I
59:03
think people need money obviously, but
59:05
once you hit a certain threshold,
59:07
acquiring more money is not about the
59:09
utility it provides. It's about kind of
59:11
the psychology of it.
59:12
>> A lot to unpack. Um I guess I would say
59:15
it allows you to think bigger. I think
59:18
at least for me with the league, you
59:19
know, that was sort of like all my net
59:20
worth was tied up in this company. And
59:22
so if the company, I don't know, all of
59:23
a sudden had a class action lawsuit and
59:25
we were sued out of oblivion or all of a
59:27
sudden, I don't know, a new competitor
59:28
comes out and wipes us out, uh, I was
59:30
nervous that like all my work would go
59:31
to zero. And so I think, you know, by
59:33
selling it and by earning enough to to
59:36
sort of have a nest egg, I now feel like
59:39
I could swing and I could probably take
59:40
more risk. So, you know, JCL's just
59:43
waiting for me to to to pick a a big
59:46
idea to do that with, but um
59:47
>> she guaranteed I'd be the first investor
59:49
and William would be the second.
59:51
>> I've not said that. Um
59:53
>> to William. She hasn't said it to
59:55
William. Said it to me.
59:57
>> But, uh but yeah, I think I think it it
1:00:00
kind of allows you to get to whatever,
1:00:01
you know, that that ability to then sort
1:00:04
of think bigger and and think what would
1:00:07
I do if money was no issue, right? and
1:00:08
and think about solving those kind of
1:00:10
problems versus like how do I make x
1:00:12
amount of money in my life. Definitely
1:00:14
when you hear that term fu money some
1:00:17
people I find they get the money and it
1:00:20
gobbatical kid no it makes them more
1:00:24
guarded more anxious it becomes a
1:00:25
distraction for them and then some
1:00:27
people a smaller group of people it does
1:00:28
actually give them the ability to say
1:00:31
>> I'm going to do things and pursue them
1:00:33
the way I want to with my vision without
1:00:36
compromise that's what it did for me it
1:00:39
just gave me the freedom to say I'm
1:00:41
going to use my own chip stack I'm going
1:00:43
to do it the the way I want to do it. If
1:00:44
anybody doesn't want to do it that way,
1:00:46
I totally understand. But I'm doing it
1:00:48
my way.
1:00:49
>> And you know, this purity of vision, I
1:00:53
think, is very freeing. When you have a
1:00:56
bunch of investors, when you have a
1:00:58
board, you know, you have to build
1:01:00
consensus. And that's good when you're
1:01:02
young because you're going to learn a
1:01:04
lot. And then there's a certain point
1:01:05
where you're like, I think I know the
1:01:07
playbook and I know what works for me.
1:01:09
This has now given me the freedom that I
1:01:11
don't have to compromise the vision. And
1:01:13
so that can send you off the rails. Um,
1:01:16
>> uh, Francis Ford Copala just did a film,
1:01:18
>> Megalopolis.
1:01:19
>> Megalopoulos that nobody has seen and he
1:01:23
stole his watches and his vineyard and
1:01:25
he made this perfect vision for him at
1:01:27
the age of 80 or whatever.
1:01:28
>> There's a documentary about it
1:01:29
>> and it's been a complete flop or
1:01:31
whatever, but he wanted to make it. It
1:01:32
made him happy. He's not going to be
1:01:33
here for much longer. Okay, more power
1:01:35
to him. But there are other people who
1:01:37
also, you know, they started to get a
1:01:40
taste of that money and all of a sudden
1:01:41
20 years of their life went to a Marvel
1:01:43
franchise or a Star Wars franchise. And
1:01:46
George Lucas said he always wanted to
1:01:48
make small intimate films and then he
1:01:51
just Star Wars
1:01:52
>> like addicted to the to the money train
1:01:54
>> and it just became bigger than him,
1:01:56
right? And he he never who's who knows
1:01:59
who can tell me a George Lucas film that
1:02:02
is not Star Wars.
1:02:03
>> American graffiti
1:02:04
>> but after Star Wars.
1:02:05
>> Sorry.
1:02:06
>> Tell me tell me a film a film he made
1:02:08
after Star Wars. He had a really hard
1:02:10
time doing that. So it became a burden.
1:02:13
So sometimes the success can then be a
1:02:15
burden. I have that now. I mean the
1:02:17
podcasting I do is so successful and Tim
1:02:20
Ferrris has been going through this. Lex
1:02:22
Freriedman went through it. the podcast
1:02:23
that they did became so successful, they
1:02:25
had a hard time having other things in
1:02:28
their life that they wanted to pursue.
1:02:30
So Lex was telling me he wants to do a
1:02:31
startup. I think he's been pretty public
1:02:32
about that. And he's trying to balance
1:02:35
being a famous podcaster, making tons of
1:02:37
money from the ads and doing that. Tim
1:02:38
F. So I just tweeted, "Do you want me to
1:02:40
do more podcasts or do you want me to do
1:02:42
less podcasts with higher video
1:02:44
production?" And you know, when I I was
1:02:47
going to text him, I'm going to text
1:02:48
him, "Do what you want, Tim. I want you
1:02:50
to do what you want now. I want you to
1:02:52
do more audio ones because I don't care
1:02:54
about video. But he's looking at all the
1:02:57
other podcasters who came 10 years after
1:02:58
him and did this like high production
1:02:59
value. I think he's got knocked off his
1:03:01
game where he's like, "What do I need to
1:03:04
do here?" And you need to do what you
1:03:07
enjoy. Do what you love. Right? That's
1:03:10
the freedom it gives you. And you don't
1:03:11
have that early in your career. you you
1:03:13
>> I don't want to presume the question
1:03:14
behind the question but you know if you
1:03:16
read biographies of uh successful
1:03:18
entrepreneurs who have made a lot of
1:03:20
money when they're much older uh they
1:03:22
all say I miss being young and building
1:03:24
something and I miss building something
1:03:26
with a group of people
1:03:27
>> and not having the resources.
1:03:28
>> Yeah. And like the money it's obviously
1:03:31
it's it's a luxury statement to say they
1:03:32
don't care about the money because
1:03:33
they're very wealthy so they don't have
1:03:34
to worry about the money but they do
1:03:36
they all say the same thing which is
1:03:37
like building something with a group of
1:03:39
people that you enjoy spending time with
1:03:40
is the thing they miss more than
1:03:42
anything else. Here's the other thing
1:03:42
I'll tell you. I realized this after a
1:03:44
couple of friends of mine passed away.
1:03:47
Me going skiing on the mountain, me
1:03:50
owning a ski house.
1:03:52
I own a really nice ski house. I can ski
1:03:54
in and ski out of Lake Tahoe
1:03:56
>> and I ski 20 days a year in Lake Tahoe.
1:03:59
And then there's somebody else who does
1:04:02
50 days a year and they're broke. They
1:04:05
bought the same epic pass I did for 800
1:04:07
bucks, you know, season pass. And they
1:04:10
get the they get twice as many days as
1:04:11
me. three times as denny as me. I'm
1:04:13
jealous of that person. They get to ski
1:04:16
three times as much. And I was trying to
1:04:18
explain this to somebody like when I go
1:04:20
to dinner with Elon myself and then
1:04:24
somebody who's broke and then somebody
1:04:26
else, the steak that we order tastes the
1:04:29
same to everybody. And there is an upper
1:04:31
bound in almost all of these things that
1:04:34
you can buy. And we both drive the same
1:04:36
car, a Model Y, because it has full
1:04:38
self-driving. It's the best car ever
1:04:40
made. but he also owns a really nice
1:04:41
Porsche and I'm buying this super nice
1:04:44
>> Corvette hyper car and it's like
1:04:46
>> your money.
1:04:47
>> Well, no. I'm just like,
1:04:49
>> but I'm not going to drive it. So, I
1:04:51
talked to him about his Porsche. That
1:04:53
was his dream car. And you're selling it
1:04:54
now.
1:04:54
>> I'm selling it.
1:04:55
>> And so, that tells you everything you
1:04:56
need to know. It's like
1:04:57
>> 15-year-old me is very pleased that I
1:04:59
bought the Porsche. Yeah. And now 46-y
1:05:00
old me is like, "Okay, done.
1:05:02
>> Done. Hit the check box." And you move
1:05:04
on. It's a great question. Another
1:05:05
amazing episode. Thank you to William
1:05:07
Barnes. Thank you to Amanda Bradford.
1:05:09
Thank you to our friends at Jetro and
1:05:11
congratulations to all of the great
1:05:13
founders in the first cohort of Founder
1:05:15
University. If you want to learn more,
1:05:17
go to founderun university. You'll see a
1:05:19
link for Saudi, Tokyo, Japan, uh, and
1:05:23
the US programs. Apply. What do you got
1:05:26
to lose? Uh, maybe you'll be the next
1:05:28
founder that changes the world and that
1:05:29
we invest in. And hopefully we can join
1:05:31
you on that journey. We'll see you next
1:05:33
time on this week in Startups. I buy
1:05:35
him.
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Where early-stage founders must focus to succeed
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