[
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "It's not the blood bond that it was made out to be. The most common outcome for people have multiple co-founders is years in there's always one person still running it. There's only room for one"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Zuck at Meta will stop you. Question to ask yourself is like are you that person or not? I call it the founder pixie dust. The company is like inside of me."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "I took the company at tens of millions in AR."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> What is like the bare case for being a solo founder?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> There's no one to blame if things don't go well. Every mistake is yours."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Follow it up with the case for solo founding. It's a thing people can't take from you if you make it from scratch and it's just yours. The company, I find, is like this mirror. It shows you every"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "imperfection in yourself and weakness all the time. It's like this adaptive video game on top of your life. You only get one life. You get one shot. Why not swing as hard as you can?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Founders usually do things first. That happens when it's co-founded companies as well. They sort of do the, you know, the job or the role and they kind of like bring people in who can do it a lot"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "better than them. Can you share a little bit about what that experience is like with this company?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah, I've gone through a whole different journey around this. Um, well, so I think the first thing that's like maybe somewhat notable is like this is the second company I've started. And so,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "uh, the first one I started pretty much right out of school. I'd done some consulting and some like random stuff, but I didn't I didn't really know how to like operate a business or what a"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "business was."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um, I had studied engineering. I had like built a bunch of stuff and product stuff. Um, so there's a lot I figured out, but um, for the second company, because I had like such a basis around"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "what a company should look like, I kind of did the speedrun of like the first couple years and like, you know, the first 3 months or so. Um, and that that actually counts for a lot for work OS."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Like this is year eight. And so I actually had like many years as like a bootup phase for me to get good at a lot of things and like make a lot of mistakes along the way and kind of like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "learn trial by fire. But the consequences were relatively low. Like especially during the COVID and postco era >> like you just couldn't grow that fast >> like you know the light speed in the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "universe was like low."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> And and so that meant that um we were growing well and compared against that you know um we were doing well but but there wasn't this like time sensitivity in the market. I think now it's"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "different and I see this with our customers and I see it with um our own business and I do a bunch of small angel investing and I see with these companies is like when things hit they really hit"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "they hit really fast and they immediately start working and so you don't have this like gentle bootup phase where as a new founder you're like okay cool I get to like spend the next 18"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "months messing around to figure out how to do like engineering management reading all the books talking to people making some mistakes and it's like no you got figure that out in the next two"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "weeks. And the same thing for all these other areas. So I think the learning pace in order to do this your your learning rate has to be like extremely high. It already needs to be really high"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "but I think it's the demands are much higher to like capture it. It's like lightning in the jar. Capture it. You know for from my own experience like when I started this company having you"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "know already done the first one I actually wrote down like a list of all the things that I thought were weaknesses of mine. I kind of knew what my strengths were and and I and I built"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "the idea of the company around things that I thought were my strengths because you want to put yourself in a position for success. You know, you don't um like I had a bunch of ideas for cool stuff I"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "wanted to build where I had like no experience and I was like that's kind of a dice roll. Why don't I do the one that's like in in line with my experience? But um I also wanted to make"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "a list of all the weaknesses I had. Like what were the risks in the areas that I thought could be things that I could either mitigate or learn. And I just kind of like went through those and I"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "was like, okay, what would I do to learn these and and you know pursue them and who would I hire? Who would I get as mentors and adviserss? Um who should I spend time around? Who are the the kind"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "of like kings and queens of this domain?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Who are the ones that have written the books? You know, who are the idols? Like I know all the engineering idols, you know, like you know, John Carmarmac, people like that, you know, if I met"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "him, I probably would like start stuttering over my words because it's like, you know, it's like nerd, you know, Jesus or something. Um, but I was like, who is that for sales?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Who is that for marketing? Who is it for operations? Who is that for finance?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like could I put pick like a killer CFO out of a lineup and say like that's this is a person that's like a because the CFO is really the like business model architect in companies you know um the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "answer was no I didn't know those people um and I didn't really at my first company like look up to them that much it's not that I look down on them I was just like engineering is what wins make"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "something people want you know if you do that everything takes care of itself just not true um and so I spent spent time like trying to figure out in these other domains what could I learn and"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "what could I read and um and was it even possible for me to learn these things and I feel like I've kind of gone through this full cycle now of it where even even in the first like probably"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "half of the company there were a bunch of these areas where I I actually believed I would not be able to become strong at them. I was like that's just not my personality or who I am or the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "skills I have you know I was like I just kind of was boxed into something already in my own mind. Um, and at some at some point I kind of just like said like screw it, I'm just going to go figure"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "this out. Um, and you actually can learn like just about anything. It's like high agency, you know, takes over. But I think the the solo founding journey, there's no there's no one to blame if things don't"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "go well. There's no one really to like defer to. Um, every mistake is yours. You know, like anything I get upset or angry about, like you can try to blame other people or blame the market or blame what, but"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "ultimately it's if you accept your own role in it, you accept your agency, um, you're responsible, not a bad thing, but um, so that can either be like extremely crushing where like the whole weight of"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "the world and more is on you. Or if you take this like high agency mindset, it's actually the most liberating. You're like, I have full control over my environment. Like anything that I'm"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "unhappy about, I can change. Um, and my attitude is like the first thing you have to you have to start by changing."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um, but I think that's a it's a very challenging like personal development process to go through. And if you are going to go through that personal development process at the same time"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "that you're like trying to build a product, at the same time that you're trying to discover a new market, you're just like stacking these like really hard things on top of each other. And"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "so, um, I think right now it's in particular really hard because the market's moving so quickly, you know, to go through personal development plus company development plus market development plus just the the like raw"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "skills you need to learn. And so in that environment, it might make more sense to team up with people that have, you know, um, skills that are, you know, complimentary or people that you know."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Um, but that's also hard, you know, like selecting co-founders. I mean the the speed at which things go really quickly with companies nowadays if you have co-founders and maybe things are a"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "little bit on edge you know like you don't have the perfect matchup of people the the friction that you would normally have at a company you know might it might you might be able to get a little"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "bit of progress over a year or something maybe things blow up much faster I feel like because you know we've helped people start companies and collaborate and find potential co-founders over the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "last seven years at ODF and um and I will say that it feels Like nowadays people are creating partnerships but the partnerships are actually dissolving or or collapsing much faster um sort of"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "when you talk to people who have co-founders than maybe they were you know a couple of years ago as well. It's not the blood bond that it was made out to be you know initially I think there"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "was this maybe maybe spoken maybe unspoken idea that like if you co-ound a company with it someone it's like ride or die till the end."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> I don't know. Um, if you look at many of these companies that had, you know, four co-founder, like Facebook had four co-founders."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> So, yeah, >> it's Zuck's company."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Full stop."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> You know, not not to belittle the accomplishments of the other people or to say they're not >> smart and like I actually almost worked at a sauna before starting my first startup. So, I"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> love Dustin and and think the world of those guys. But, but it was Zuck's company, you know, and it still is, >> very much still is. And I think it's very very hard to find like a stable"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "matching of multiple people together over long periods of time for u for leadership. And so the just kind of similar how the default state of most companies is they don't succeed. They"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "get acquired you know that's why acquired podcast is called that because they were primarily going to study companies that failed. You know that's the the acquisition is the most common"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "target. The most common outcome for people have multiple co-founders is years in there's always one person still running it. And so I think if you're going to start a business, the question"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "to ask yourself is like, are you that person or not? You can have co-founders or not. That's that's fine. But I think the question should be like, is this the thing where I'm going to be the one that"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "holds it forever? Um because it's a very different perspective building the company in terms of how you make decisions, who you hire. When you have that long-term perspective, when you"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "just internalize that it's your life's work, things can happen. Markets can change. Maybe you have to sell the company. Maybe you run out of money."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "maybe a great opportunity comes along and you you merge with another business, you know, but but having the mindset of like this is like part of me, you know, it's it's almost like the art and the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "artist, you know. Um I don't think that when people co-ound businesses, everybody is making that level of commitment to the organization and idea."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "I think that there there needs to be at least one person, but generally speaking, the other people are like, \"Cool, this sounds good. Yeah, I'll do it, but I could go do something else.\""
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "or like maybe I didn't get a job over here so I decided to co-ound the startup with the you know friend of mine or something and it doesn't have this like personal like soul bind on it. Um and so"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like some people some people also don't want that relationship with their work too. I'm not I'm not professing that this is like the way to work. I I I actually don't think it's like the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "healthy way to work. It's >> probably not. It's it's an obsession type thing. Yeah."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah. It's it takes over your your mind."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "It's like you you can't stop like you can't stop thinking about it. Like it's just I watch these interviews with people like like you know people interview Jensen and he says like he's"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like I work every day I'm working all the time and people are like oh that's crazy that's like you know work life balance he all this stuff. Don't you have kids and all this stuff?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> But like what what he doesn't say or like what's missed in translation is like it doesn't turn you just can't turn it off. It's not. It It'd be like It'd be like going and sitting down with"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Miles Davis and being like, \"When do you stop thinking about music?\" And he'd be like, \"What are you what are you talking about?\" Like it is the person is is the expression. And so"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "if if you feel like compelled to have that type of a relationship with your work or you already do in some way, I I think those people end up becoming founders. And that spirit like that fire"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "is like the thing that that drives it forward. And you have you have a very different relationship with your work."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Like when when I hang out with other people, especially other kind of founder CEO type of people which have made this decision, I I almost feel like we all have the same mental disorder, you know,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "we've we've all like kind of encapsulated our work in this way. But not everyone has it and not not everyone needs it either. Um and I think also >> if you have a bunch of co-founders as a"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "group, >> it might not might even be best if everybody doesn't have it. if there's like one maybe two people that have it together because if you have two people that have it and they get out odds it"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "together it explodes and blows up you know there's there's only room for one Zuck at meta like full stop you know um and so it's it's kind of this introspection thing about like how you"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "want to work and what your what what you want your life to be like going the solo route like solo co-founding um you know removes like potentially some risk around like co-founder breakups and"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "explosion But it it also like applies a lot of other challenges around it. Um around like you know community and like having someone to bounce ideas off of and like friendships and relationships"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "and like you the the bond between people that are spending like so much time creating creating something together is like so deep. It's like deeper than like most other things that people have in"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "their life that um I have felt the the like pain of jealousy of seeing other people have that when even I know it's probably more of a um uh like an imagined fantasy of what it's like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "versus what it actually is. um you know desiring the type of relationship with someone you know like uh like John and Paul had from the Beatles you know writing music together like that kind of thing. It's just like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "oh yeah it's like >> juicy. Um >> but they also yell at each other all the time >> it's crazy right like the the amount of beauty they were able to create together but also for a very short period of time"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "relative to a lot of bands."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Totally. There's a lot of examples of this where people make really good stuff together and then also like don't get along well together. You know, you kind of imagine as like they're best friends"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "forever. But um often like the best working relationships aren't one that lead to that. And if you're if you're in your like, you know, early 20s, you just got out of school. You got out or this"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like college environment where you're meeting all these new people and everyone's at similar life phase and it's really easy to make friends. You go to parties and talk to people and stuff"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "and you get dropped in the workforce and suddenly you have none of that. It's like hard to meet people. Everybody's busy. Uh dating's terrible, you know, like it's you don't know who you are."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> And you apply on top of that this like machine of isolation, which is the company starting thing. It can like mess with your psyche. It can like really really screw you. And I I think one of"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "the the things that Y cominator is fantastic at is creating that community element. what you guys are doing and others to create that like kind of um you know substrate of like connection uh"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "because without that like people will frequently burn out you know there's only so much you can get you can get online um but I think it is just a really hard thing you know and I always felt like I was open to having"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "actually open to having co-founders on this company I just ended up getting started so fast actually as soon as I kind of had the idea like raised money and hired people and it just like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> the snowball kind of like started snowballing very quickly. Um, I didn't have anyone like waiting in the wings that was ready to jump in and do it. And timing is such a hard thing as well um"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "as well for it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> If you're enjoying this conversation, then perhaps you're starting your own company. And if so, you should apply for the solo founders program. I've spent the last 7 years working with startups"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "and founders who are figuring things out. And I'll tell you that the ones that make the most progress are the ones who make sure that they have relationships that can help them go the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "distance. The solo founders program is about bringing 10 solo founders together so that they can build solo together versus building solo alone. I'll work with you. We'll invest $100,000 and"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "we'll make sure that you make the most progress that you possibly can in 3 months. If that sounds interesting, you should learn more and apply at solofounders.com/program."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "When you were starting this company, you were open to the idea of co-founders, but at the same time, you um you know, things just progressed and it it didn't end up happening. Um, did you realize"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "sort of the trade-off that you're making is obviously there's benefits to having co-founders if if it works um and there's benefits to being solo, but did were were you thinking about that at the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "time or was it just things were moving so fast or it just kind of happened?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> I think so. I mean, I think um I was less concerned about it being a liability for the company because this business was something I knew I could execute on or like the first few years"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "of it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> You know, I was like, I know how to write software. I know how like software engineering works, at least enough to make this thing."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um I knew how to like hire engineers, what a good team would look like. I knew how to build things for developers and APIs. And you know, selling software APIs to developers is kind of like if"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "you're in the community is sort of like selling your friends. I kind of knew who all the companies would be that I'd go spend time with and um and could get plugged into that. I think if I had been"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "building a very different product um that had like other constraints around it, uh I absolutely would have like you know stopped and and not driven the company before finding coonus. as an"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "example, if I had started anything related to like hardware engineering, >> yeah, >> I'm I think that would be super fun to work on, like very, you know, interested in that. But, um, I haven't built I've"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "toured some factories. I haven't built anything. Um, >> that would be like a big risk factor on that. If I was building a product like at one point I started I thought about starting like a a software company for"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "electronic medical records. It was like a stuff around the Obama era and modernization >> and I just seen I was like this is a software problem that could be fixed but that would require having all these"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "relationships and doing sales with hospitals and like partnerships and whole medical system like that would be a thing that I would probably get a co-founder on you know to do it where"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "there would be a good like parody of of skills and experience and depth. Um, but for this one I was like, am I just going to get like another person to write code with me? Like, yeah, I mean, that's"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "great, but there's not this like enormous skill gap. Um, and it was one of the things that led me to thinking I could get the company started quickly as well. I was like, what of all the ideas"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "I have of things to work on, which one has the um, highest chance of working out because the market is great and aligns with my skill set really well. So I kind of selected the problem in a way"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "first."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> Um and then I think not not having a co-founder kind of came out of that."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> Could you share more of your thoughts about uh idea selection and kind of the process there? I think that either I read or somebody told me that you um that you had like a way of sort of like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "taking notes on various ideas and sort of exploring different things. So I'd be really curious to hear more about that."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "So, I spent like a year and a half, something like that, year and change, um, trying to think about what to do next. And I I wasn't even convinced I was going to start another company. So,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "I was a pretty wide openen, um, mindset, but I had read, um, a few different books about like creative process. Um, you know, there's a really good one called Born Standing Up by Steve Steve"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Martin. Um, and then there's other stuff that, you know, like Jerry Seinfeld and people in comedy, just like extremely creative act, you know, talk about where you think like a joke is something that"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "just like pops in their head is immediately good, but it's like not the case. Like most of what you produce is like bad. It's garbage. Um, and then the selection of the good stuff is what"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "makes it into the act you see, you know?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> And also when they go to the when they go to the comedy clubs, they're trying out the material. I don't know if you've seen this before, but I've gone to comedy clubs in New York City or"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "whatever and you see these famous comedians. They just pop in and they Yeah. They're just like, \"Okay, that one didn't work.\" And they're like, they write a little note on their phone or"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "whatever."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> They're looking at their notebook. I mean, they're trying stuff, you know, on to the next one. Yeah."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah. They bomb hard. And >> uh you know, if you've ever been to the the comedy seller in New York, great spot. they frequently will have these people that just show up, you know, like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "it's just like insari, you know, is there like Chappelle or something and they're not on the lineup because um they don't want like a big audience and they'll try new stuff. Anyway, so all"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "this is to say, I think the having good ideas is actually really hard. Like in hindsight, when something works, it seems obvious or everyone thinks it's great, but but to actually come up with"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "it is very very challenging. Um, and so I kind of looked at all this and I was like, what would be like a process that I could give myself to try to like get good ideas, you know, to to make sure"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "because after doing the first company, I was like, it's so hard. It's so hard."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Like I only want to do that again if I'm pretty sure it's going to work, you know, like you fool me once, you know, I'm not going to do it again unless I'm I'm pretty confident it's a good company"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "to to bet on. And so one of the things that that people talk about is just having a lot of ideas. Write a lot of jokes. Steve Martin like just wake up and write jokes all day. sit down at"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "9:00 a.m. and just work on it. Just work, work, work. Don't wait for inspiration to strike. Just like think."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um, and so I tried to do that and and did a bunch of I did a bunch of consulting stuff, like small projects."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "We kind of felt like a greased the machine. Um, but I was just trying to think of new stuff all the time and I wouldn't filter it by what I thought was a good business or a good just like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "stuff I was interested in, like was curious about. So, I had this like notebook. I just carried around the back of my pocket. I still have it somewhere."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "It's just like ripped to shreds, you know, cuz it's all beat up. and tried to write down things I thought were I was curious about, things that were changing the world, things that I was just like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "kept coming back into my head. And I put more or less an idea on every page. And so, you know, I'd write like two sentences and the rest of the page would be blank, but I would come back to it if"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "I had more ideas and more pieces of it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And so, you could kind of see the like the ones where there was like accumulation of additional ideas or concepts."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um, so that was kind of the raw like synthesis of the of the problem space."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "After that, I tried to think about areas where I had um unique experiences because just sitting around and like trying to come up with ideas like if we just sit with a whiteboard and just like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "you know burn tokens and come up with stuff you're at best you're going to come up with what also a bunch of people you know at uh you know like Stanford Business School are coming up with or"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like some YC kids trying to pivot their startup or some like executives at you know like a data bricks or like whatever right you have no unique information you're just going to spin on the same"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "level so you might come up with something >> but the only place you have like an advantage you know is something where it's some some personal experience of yours um and so I tried to also think"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "about what were places where I had seen things that I knew to be true that like the market didn't realize yet in that way um and and the best teacher of that usually is failure Um because usually if you failed at"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "something it's because you thought it was going to work and sort of nobody told you it wasn't going to work. Like people kind of thought certainly people gave you money to try to make it work if"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "they invested money and it didn't work."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um fail failure is a much much better source of information than success. And so I tried to think about like things I had struggled with or failed or what were like bits around the the company"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "experience I had that were really actually really hard that I thought wouldn't be that hard. Um so that was the other you know unique information."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um, the third was, uh, I tried to find like enormous markets. And so something I had sort of sort of learned the hard way is you like can't outrun a small TAM. Like if if you sell into a market"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "that's expanding, like it's like changing. That's possible to do. Like nobody thought Uber would be this big."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "But transportation is an enormous industry, right? It's huge, right? But but people are like taxis like Yeah."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um, so it's really the transportation market, not the taxi market for Uber."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "But um if you pigeon hole yourself too much and you don't see how the market is going to grow, you can win the whole thing, but then you're playing small games, you know, win small prizes. So I"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "was like, it has to be an enormous market um that feels like ripe for kind of disruption in some way. It hasn't like a copycat company, but like an area that hasn't been touched. And then"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "lastly, uh fourth, it has to be something that fits my skills. So not just an observation I had but um you know a thing where I felt like I have the ability to quickly execute on this"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "so I don't have to go like learn from scratch. You know I I had a bunch of ideas for building like an electric airplane. I think it's still a cool idea. I was like I'm going to have to go"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like get my PhD in aerospace on an accelerated basis. Maybe not the degree but learn all this stuff you know very fast."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um you can do that like Elon did that."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "It's a famous story of him getting this like yeah Blake Shel this like stack of books >> but I was a little bit impatient. I was like I'm I want the second one I do to work."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> I want it to work. And so >> drisk across all of these and um for me I kind of picked like the IT sector. I was like it I don't even know what that means. It's like just seems gross and"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "old and >> hasn't had this like Stripe moment, you know, like fintech kind of seemed boring before Stripe. Um I had built things for developers. I knew software. I knew infrastructure and I had seen this"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "problem around this like enterprise stuff at my first startup. I I I hadn't solved it but I had stumbled over it. I had tripped over it because it wasn't an obvious problem to the market. And so I"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "was like that together, you know, feels like it's it's good fodder for ideas."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And so that's the one I picked to work on. It's sad you can't pick multiple things. you can't run bets in parallel cuz I always wonder um what my life would be like if I had started one of"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "the other, you know, half dozen or so contenders running for it. Um but I'm very happy with where I landed obviously on this and and I'm I'm I'm glad it's a it's it's a thriving company behind it,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "too."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> So, you've got this you've got this notebook, just to take it back to sort of that time, you've got this notebook, you're coming back to different pages where you're sort of filling new things"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "in, you're seeing what pages you keep returning to. Was it clear that at some point you were returning to sort of these these ideas that were more related to it and enterprise ready and that sort"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "of thing or were were you also returning to these pages that you know were were really interesting but maybe you just weren't you sort of talked about that last category of evaluation which is"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "like is it is it a good fit for me as a person with my skills. Uh was was that sort of the the deciding factor there?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "you were coming back to these two types of pages, but then you said, \"Okay, honestly, I really want this thing to work, so I should go work on the the one that I have probably the best sort of"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "personal fit with.\""
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah, I would say. So, that was kind of the filtering aspect towards the end."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "You know, there was an element of like what can I practically do quite quickly on this."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um, >> you know, to to build an airplane takes many years and and um >> I mean, what Blake has done with Boom is is incredible. It it took them I don't even know how many years before they"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "flew that jet. A long time. A long long long long time. And it's just the protojet, you know, it's not like the commercial jet."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> And so, um, I just felt this like urgency. I was like, I want to get back after it. And so, software is like fast to build and easy to explore."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> But many of the other things I kept gravitating towards that I thought were like bigger problems in the world, like um, you know, like an idea. I couldn't figure out how to build a company around"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "it, but I had this idea to try to build like dradicalizing technology."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> So, if you remember back, this is like back in 2017 or something, 2018, there was like the YouTube spiral where like if you just >> people would just watch something and get completely completely ra uh rabbit"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "holed and like radicalized based off of something like the algorithm would like, you know, you'd start off watching like a kid's, you know, TV show and then like eight, you know, autoplay videos later you're"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "watching some like ISIS. This would happen for kids too."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Totally. Yeah."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> And in particular, it it was like people that were susceptible to it were folks that were like living in areas where they didn't have exposure to other things, you know, and they're"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "impressionable. They're young, you know, um a lot of like teenagers and stuff."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And so I was like, what if we like built technology that did the opposite that got people instead of radicalized like kind of, you know, like conscious in the world? And we did it through media."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Couldn't figure out how to build a company around that. I think it's cool."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "I think YouTube actually they they fixed it fixed a bunch of stuff about the al algorithm here. You know, I had an idea for building like a software stack for cars. It's like it's crazy that cars are"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "still dumb. Like you can buy $100,000 Tesla, but I can't make my, >> you know, Toyota from 20 years ago like smarter in some way. Um, you know, I had a whole bunch of different different"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "things that I built um as ideas that I thought through. I would pitch them to people and I'd talk about them. I'd like work the material."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "But but getting down to it, I was like I many of them conceptually I was like more interested in."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Mhm."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Like I think the initial conception of work OS helping you make your SAS enterprise ready."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "It's probably a lot of people we weren't able to hire because they didn't think it was that exciting to work on."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> You know, it's like it's infrastructure that everybody needs but nobody really wants to do. It's not the hot shiny thing. You know, I had another idea of a company to build that was an AI"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "infrastructure company. This is back in deep learning and tracking hyperparameters and like you know artifacts and everybody's like training these models on like their laptop and then like uploading the kernel to like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "some server to run. It's like stuff the supply chain management for this was like terrible. I was like oh I could just build like GitHub for AI training but I thought the timeline the timing"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "around that in the market was going to be too long. I was like I don't think I can raise a seed round and like survive long enough. I won't be able to get customers. everyone, this is a cottage"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "industry of people doing this in-house."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And so there was this like pretty strict filtering around like the practicalities of can I make this into a business pretty much within 12 months."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> You know, you can extend it to maybe 16 to 18 months, but but you got to show something working within like about a year of getting it going. Um otherwise, you can't get investors to care about it"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "anymore. You fall off the map practically speaking. Also, your team gets antsy and anxious and they're like, \"What are we doing here?\" you know, and so I was like, what's the thing that the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "timing feels right? I feel like I can build it. I feel like uh the risk profile is low. It fits my skills. I can sell it. You know, if not making a ton of money, I can get users in it. I'm not"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "going to fly the electric airplane, you know, in 12 months. Um, but I could probably build this like a security thing. And it meant that the act of forming the company and then this like second act of"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "starting the process was actually more of a pursuit and expression of like creating an amazing business rather than like it's just a technology exploration."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Like to me work like the the thing I'm kind of the most proud of as as a company is actually not that technology."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "We have amazing technology. It's that the formation of it is a business solution to companies. We help you grow."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "We help you like unlock revenue like >> um we do it through technology through APIs but like the business impact we make is so clear to companies and that was a thing I was like really hungry to"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "find and create after the first one the first business I had which was by and large like a technology cool thing I built in search of a business it best if you do that if you start like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "just a product and engineering thing and then you're searching for the business later the best case is you get lucky and you slap something on you know you you you add ads or something like that to it"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "or you stumble into some some network but you never really create this harmony between the product and the business model and I think if you build it from the beginning with that mindset you can"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "actually integrate the two together so you get this like yin-yang type of thing together and it feels really good and that that was like a design principle I had as well I was like how can I"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> like what I was saying about the anti-radicalization stuff it's like really valuable for the world but like it's not like a posttock I'm doing you know it's a nonprofit, it's like I want"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "to make this thing like a an economic machine."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> And so those gears have to be like machined to be perfectly fit together."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Um and so I spent a lot of time thinking about that. Um could be could be a fit and uh and this is the one that stood out. Yeah. So there's this feels like there's this giant romantization of uh"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "of pivots in startups like in tech like everybody uh the we we really love the the pivot like as a as an industry but at the same time I feel like a lot of great companies don't pivot you talk you"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "hear about like the great stories of companies that do but work OS like you pretty much had the same description from the beginning right as you as you do now it's been pretty consistent right"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "sort of this highle thing and And it and it just and it sort of just works. And it feels like in some ways because the pivot is such a popular thing to talk about, it kind of feels like perhaps um"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "people rush into whatever it is they start working on instead of taking the time to maybe spend the thoughtful process that you did to come up with what you should actually be working on."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Do you think that there's anything to that or like maybe reject reject the premise that I'm I'm laying out there?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "I'm curious what your take is on it because it seems like there was an awful like lot of thoughtfulness on your end um to actually get something where you felt like and I think that you just said"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "this a little bit where you were talking about this idea of it wasn't like we were trying to slap on a business model after the fact. It was that we were really I was trying to figure something"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "out that had a real business problem that I was focused on first and foremost. And if I could actually build this and and get it out there, which you would have a high degree of confidence"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "in your ability to do, it would actually help these businesses, you know, achieve much more revenue and be much more successful. I think pivots are the most traumatic thing possible to do to a"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "business. I I don't if people romanticize them, they should not. you know, iterating on things and learning for the market and like evolving and trying different things and learning"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "from your mistakes and like that's that that's a different thing, you know, the iterative fast improvement like launching a feature and it doesn't work and having the courage to kill it"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "and move on >> like that I really admire. But changing what you're about and like why you exist on a whim to me like indicates a some some type of like lack of integrity on why you exist. And and I"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "think it's very hard after you do that for your team or your customers or your investors to like know who you are like what it's about. You know, you you become you become more a child of the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "process than actually like the output of what what you're trying to do. And so I had no interest in pivoting. I I had no I had no like romantic romanticizing about like the startup process. I was"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like I'm going to enter into this like suffering like many years of like suffering and hell it probably won't work out and the last thing I want to do is put myself in the meat grinder as"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "many times I can. Um I think people should try to avoid pivoting at all costs."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "There's a this document that I found I I tweeted this a while ago and it was like this one pager I wrote um about a year after starting the company around around that and I was sending it to early"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "customers and folks and you literally could use it today. It's like literally the exact same thing and I think I I've spent a lot of time reflecting on like why that happened. Some element of I"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "think I think I did get lucky like quite a bit. Um, but I think the main thing is I focused on like the pain in the market, not my technology. Like what was it doing for people? Like who cares? Who"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "cares about what you're building? Um, I think it's one of the questions in the YC application is like who cares about this? And I find myself asking that all the time about ideas or new things. And"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "it it doesn't mean that like a lot of people have to care like not at all."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Like the the initial market for work OS was like my friends working on other SAS startups. It was like people I know. But the who cares I almost felt like it was this mission where I needed to go fix"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "this problem because I had tripped over it so hard and I was like they're all going to hit it going 200 miles an hour."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "It's like a it's like a big road bump, you know, that I needed to go file down or a pothole or something. And so like picking that and then staying firm about that, but then being flexible in how you"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "go about doing it and like flexible in the means of what you do. Uh I I see sometimes people do the opposite where they're like um they they like the technology they're working on. Um so they're adamant about"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "the technology that they're building, but then they're very flexible at how it gets applied."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> They're like we might do this or this or this or this. We don't know where we can >> the customer might be. Yeah, they're like, \"We built this thing. The first person didn't like it, so let's go and"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "try find some other people who might.\""
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> We're building an agent orchestration framework, you know, and we're going to go find 12 different markets to figure out where to apply it. Sometimes it happens. A AI might be the one place"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "that AI actually actually is possible."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "But like historically in business that has not worked well because you find one dimension, then you find another, and you find a third and it starts working and all three are so different. And the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "question is like who are you? What's your identity? Who are you as a business? What matters? Who do you help?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Like why should you exist as a company?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Like what is the myth of the organization that transcends each individual person working there? That's this like shared hallucination of the group of people together. What is the thing that like outlasts you know each"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "individual person working there. Um I love institutions. This idea of we create things that like go on past each individual person. It's like the ship of thesis you know. Uh you know I was I was"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "in uh New York last week. office there and I walked past the the Lion King on Broadway. I don't if you've ever seen it. It's >> No, but it's it's crazy. And it's been around for what 20 years now?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> I think I think more and they do like 10 shows a week or something and it's a machine and if people get sick or people, you know, have kids or people are born and they die and they go like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "The Lion King keeps going. It has gone through different owners, has gone through different managers, it's the same story. It's an institution that just its entire purpose is to keep"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "producing the thing that is The Lion King, you know. You can't make that if you change who you are on a whim and if you signal that you're able to, you know, that that you're willing to do"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "that to your customers. And and I think it's it's even a thing that like your customers look for is when they're sussing out, they're like, are you going to go to the ends of the earth on this"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "for me or not? And if they see you changing who you are for like different types of customers, kind of being this chameleon, it's hard to believe that that person is like going to be bound to"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "you. Like I I feel like our relationship we have with our our customers today is one of much more like a partner you know it's much more like I work there at the business. A part of me works there and"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like you know I will be this like durable supplier over long periods of time."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um you know it's like you're a restaurant and I'm your bread guy and I'm going to bring you bread every night of the week at the same time because like if you don't have bread like your"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "guests freak out and you just don't have to think about that you know. Um, but if I start, you know, making pizza on the side and then, you know, selling croissants on Saturday mornings to"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "someone else and I, people are like, well, is my bread going to show up on time or not, you know, from this guy."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "So, I I think pivoting is this like thing that puts that into question. And people do it, great companies have done it, but I think it should be an absolute last resort. And, uh, you should spend"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "as much time as possible up front to try to figure out like what's the bet you're making, like why you should exist. And if that bet is invalidated, you should just kind of like run the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "algorithm again. You know, it's like form a band, put on an album. If none of you like the music you made together and it wasn't a very good band, that's fine."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Just go start a different band. You know, you look at these like bands that are like super successful and you look at what the people did before >> and they have this long string of like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> they were in a bunch of bands, >> bunch of bands that all kind of sucked, you know, like in different ways, you know, but you learn, you try different things, you find different people,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> you know. It's it's like any anything or like relationships like you know people that are happily married that is after a long string of unhappy relationships you know or like a relationship that ended"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "in unhappiness in some in some form."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um so you kind of only have to be right once and I think when people pivot what you're robbing yourself is the opportunity to actually find the formation that where you'll get it"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "really right again. You're holding on to a thing that like didn't quite work and really what you should do is just like recycle it again. And it's it's one of the downsides of being able to raise so"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "much capital is it's like kind of inconvenient to do. You're like, \"Oh, we raised all $7 million seed round, incredible, you know, and like 18 months in nothing's really working. What do we"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "do? The core thesis we're building doesn't work and now we're a bunch of random people trying to find the new thing.\" That's a really hard position to be in. I I really don't envy that. Um,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "and I think there should be some maybe better socially accepted mechanic to just like run the experiment again. you form a different team, recycle the capital, you know, go into it and um"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "maybe some VC can come up with that structure. I think that' be really interesting."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> I think it would work really well if there was like a a reset button that you could hit if you raised one of these big funds and maybe it's the same cap structure or something like that, but"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "the team can be slightly different or you can run a different a different bet."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Um instead, I see these examples of teams like pivot pivot pivot pivot pivot >> and then it's like who are you? You know, >> it feels a bit like there's this sense, especially now, maybe maybe you can feel"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "it or you see it when you talk to other founders, but it feels like there's a sense that time is of the most important essence now ever more than ever before because of the speed at which things are"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "progressing. And I feel like it's causing people to rush into things maybe more than ever before. And maybe that's also combined with the fact that startups are and AI is in some ways like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "it's cooler than ever before to start a startup or it's more so maybe it's actually more socially acceptable than it is cooler. Um it's kind of become it's kind of become like a new sort of"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "socially acceptable thing akin to going to grad school or something. I don't know. I'm curious how you think about um how if if if there's some truth to that and also how that relates to people kind"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "of maybe trying to come up with ideas or businesses that a lot of people agree with in the early days because it seems like a lot of the best companies they generally have a lot of people who don't"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "believe in them who disagree with the idea like the founder or founders might have a really strong opinion about things that turns out to be true uh you know in in months or in Um, but a lot of people just don't get"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "it early on. Uh, but it feels like a lot of people are trying to start things that a lot of people get in theory. And it it maybe leads to more generic companies, maybe leads to more companies"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "that are kind of not actually based off of the individual's personal experiences, but they're just trying to do this almost maybe it's like overfitting. I'm curious if you have any"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "thoughts on that or things that you've seen."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> You know, there's there's that famous question like Peter Teal would ask people. It's like what's one thing you believe that others do not? Um it's kind of his like party trick question ask."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um I actually think there's like some some truth to asking that question around the company."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Like what's the thing that you believe that other people do not?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> And if you're like well what we believe is we need to build a uh context layer for companies to have information about their internal business process. It's like other people believe that too, man."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Like that's not you're not exactly like on the contrarian angle on that. And it doesn't mean that's a bad thing to exist. Like I I think >> it it doesn't mean like you're you're a for coming up with that. In in"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "fact like realizing that like >> um you're probably even ahead of the rest of the world. You know that that thing doesn't exist in general >> in general in the world. You can't go buy that. So it does need to exist. It"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "will exist."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah. But if an idea is too consensus, there will not be enough of an advantage building around it uh to build a company. You won't be able to get enough of a head start. When you're a tiny"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "startup, you got nothing. You don't you can move fast, but you don't have a weight. There's no inertia, you know, and so you need to find a place where you can be misunderstood for long enough"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "that you can gain enough momentum that when everybody else wakes up and sees it, you already are outpacing them. Um, and if something is too consensus, you can't do that because some exec at data"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "bricks will figure out that this is a good thing to build and they'll be able to convince, you know, their senior management to put a team on it. They'll go build it and then they'll launch it"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "and even even if it sucks, they'll own the mind share because they have the market. And so, you need to have an idea that people like that will try to pitch and it'll get shot down or everybody"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "will think it's a bad idea. And so there's actually this thing around like everybody wishes fundraising would be easier, you know, like I talked to 30 or 40 people and I only got like, you know,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "two term sheets, which is excellent, by the way. Most companies get zero. And you know, the second most common is one."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "So if you get two term sheets, you're already in like upper decel."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um, but but thinking like, oh, I just did this big fundraising process and like I only got, you know, everybody said no, is actually like a prerequisite for success. But the thing that's"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "challenging is it's very close to also having a bad idea."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> You know, like good ideas always the great the greatest the best ideas always look like bad ideas, but also all bad ideas look like bad ideas almost."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Occasionally there's like bad ideas that look like good ideas, but usually people can discern that they're not good. So I so I think you you actually do need some amount of contrarian pressure in the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "market. It's also a founder filter. Like if if what gets you excited about building the startup is that everyone's going to think what you're working on is cool and you're like searching for"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "validation from other people, which I understand deeply. I like seek it from others. I did in school, from my family, from my friends, you know, um if you need that uh and you're and you're"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "filtering your ideas based on it, you're you're only going to pluck out the ones that have the highest likelihood of everybody liking it, which won't have any advantage in the market. and and so"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "it works against you uh in that way which is which I think is this like I don't know a very very like painful element of the mechanic of the startup you have to like almost by definition if"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "you're going to work on something that is going to be successful you have to survive being misunderstood for a long period of time and that just sucks. It's like you'll you'll present what you're"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "working on to your friends, to your relatives, to people you're trying to date, and they'll just be like, \"What the hell is this guy doing? Like, he's wasting his time.\" This like And like again, the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "thing is like it's very it's very s You might actually be working."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "It actually might be a total waste of time too. You don't know. You don't know, right? But but it's a prerequisite. And so I think like working on something that's too consensus actually you will guarantee"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "failure because you can't can't make it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "You know, you'll you can maybe raise $10 million and squeeze a million dollars in ARR out of it, but it's not going to be enough to like uniquely stand the test of time and and accelerate. Um, and it's"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "it's kind of a leap of faith bet at some point. I think that's why if you go back to like what is the thing that I understand like this is a bad idea but I uniquely know it's a good idea. I know a"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "secret about the market that nobody else knows and I'm going to like hook my idea on that. Um because it's some lived learned experience that I have. If you don't have that like you're just you're"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "just swimming around trying to find something. And I think that's honestly I think it's just a it's just a waste of time. is statistically so unlikely that you'll land on the thing."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Yeah. So, so there is there is a lot of truth in that. Like the best ideas look like bad ideas um initially. And I think if you go out and fund raise, this is kind of a maybe crazy thing to say, like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "if you go out and fund raise and you pitch 10 VCs and you get like six term sheets, you should reconsider the idea you're building."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah. still raise the money, get all the money, you know, get it in the bank, but you should immediately come back and be like, >> \"Guys, I think this is the wrong idea to work on. Now that we have all this"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "funding, we need to find something that's our unique angle that everybody else wouldn't do.\" And bet on that because otherwise, you're just going to be another kind of like yet another"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "whatever company. So, when you're starting out, you're solo, you this is your second company, so you um have the advantage of being able to speedrun a lot of things that maybe took some time"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "to learn the first time. Um, you're starting out solo. You have you you eventually build a team now. I think you have what about 100 people uh at work?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> Yeah, a bit more. Almost 120."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> Okay, cool."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> Yeah, cool."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> It's right at Dumbar's number. It's it's interesting."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> So, you you you've got this team now. Um I think that in many ways people maybe think that they uh that they should be working on what they're best at or they they have different ideas around what"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "they should be doing as the CEO, as the founder, as the company grows. Um, I would love to hear your philosophy, especially around founder sales. Um, when when you started to bring on other"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "people, when things started to break, uh, with you doing it on your own, that sort of thing, because I think that often times founders maybe think that they should be getting external sales"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "help, maybe prematurely. Uh, and I' I'd love to hear uh, your thoughts on that and what your experiences have been. My journey around founder sales like has a few different kind of chapters and"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "phases. I think the first one which is just like worth calling out is I deeply believe that I could not become good at it >> which if I say that with that sounds sounds you know nonsensical"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "um but I actually really believed it. I I think I had been told that a lot in school. If you're like a CS grad, >> you know, the the the canonical like nerdy engineer builder, you always hire"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "the sales guy and the person comes in and they whip the company into shape, you know, and you know, fire the CEO or whatever and and make it into a real business. It's like this trope, you"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "know, in a lot of cases it's true >> to be clear. Um, but I I I internalized it to the point where it became my reality, not someone else's story, but it became my story with no with no data"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "around it, you know. Um, and I had investors kind of like hint at it or tell me that and and other people in the market. Um, and the reality is like everything can be learned."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "You just have to choose to learn it. And so for the first chapter of my kind of sales journey is like I was choosing not to learn this. I was like assuming I wouldn't be able to be good at it. I"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "could never be good at it. So I I just didn't pursue it. And I would try to hire other people to come do it for me, I'd stumble through it a little bit, but really be like, uh, I'm stumbling"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "because I suck at this and I'll always suck at this. And so, I'm going to hire experts. And the problem with that is there's this incredible thing about doing sales, which is not the mechanized"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "scale it out sales motion. I'm not talking about that. There's this incredible thing that like sales is the ultimate distillation of like the company value to the market. It's the ultimate performance. It's like writing"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "your jokes and performing them on stage."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And if you just wrote jokes and you didn't go perform them, you miss out on the whole thing, you know? It's like you you don't realize what you're missing out on without without doing that, you"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "know? It's like it's like reading about sex or something and be like, \"Okay, I got it.\" You know, it's like it's just it's it's it's so different than than actually what what the reality is. And I"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "think for so many founders, you're like robbing yourself of the opportunity to like become really good at it and drive forward your company and just that it's part of the entrepreneurial experience"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "is to become great at this. What What other job do you get to learn how to do this? Never. You're never going to go get like a sales development job at some other company, you know, probably"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "probably or whatever if you're a builder."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> It's like the one job where you're going to be able to go figure this out. So it's an opportunity to become amazing at it, even passable. And I think it's also essential because it's it's the ultimate"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "expression of like the value of the company. And if you love your customers, which you shouldn't start a company in a dimension unless you love your customers, but if you really really love"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "them, if you're like, you know, I want to build software for doctors cuz my family was a do family had doctors and I just like want to spend time around them and I love medical profession. You're"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "going to love doing sales with doctors."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "You're going to get spend all this time around learning about their business."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Sales is mostly about asking questions like curiosity, you know, understanding their business. The best form of sales is where you you understand their problem so well that you can wrap your"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "product around what they're trying to achieve and achieve their goals. They don't feel like they're being sold to."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "They feel like you're solving their problem and helping them be more successful. This is amazing connection you get with them in the market. And I and I think like that's not how sales is"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "framed. That's not how most people have bought stuff. It's not the experience engineers have when we go buy software."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "There's so many lousy sales experiences in the world. I mean, literally starting with if you ever like bought a car or something like major purchase, it's terrible. It's terrible. But I think if"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "you reject that premise and you're like, I'm going to create excellence in this in the same way I have excellence in all these other areas of the business that I care about. Um, you can become good at"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "it. And it's kind of like that harmony."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "I was saying that like yin-yang between the two where if you just decide decide to do it and read all the books and like learn it, um, you can bring that same like creative creative energy to it. Um,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "it also is more mechanized than people understand. They they kind of think about sales people as this like, you know, steak dinner and golf game and wear a suit and be like alpha male and"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "you know like I got a Rolex and I drive a Porsche and and you know, slick my hair back and that's how sales. It's not at all the case. Certainly not with technical products. Like we sell to"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "other nerds, like super smart technical people, you know, that that really your stuff has got to be amazing for. It's fun. It's it's actually one of the things my job now I like the most which"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "is crazy to say, you know, um because I get to spend time like you will pry it from my cold dead hands doing this. We just hired our head of sales a couple months ago and he's fantastic and I was"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like really excited to collaborate with him but uh in the process someone had said like oh is Michael gonna give up doing sales and I was like never never because I I want to be close to our"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "customer. I want to do stuff. what we're doing now is building a sales team and an engine around it to scale it and we needed to train and hire a bunch of different reps and go get a so many new"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "companies getting started that we could help today. I can't do all of it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> But just just to contextualize for people who are watching or listening you this is the first time you had a head of a head of sales at the company."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah. I mean, I had so I had hired other this is the first time I hired a head of sales like fully in the the kind of like uh high agency like I'm doing this but I'm going to partner with you to scale"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "it >> versus I'm hiring this person because I'm going to hand it off."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah, >> that was the previous mindset I had."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "I've gotten it to this point. I suck at doing this. Um I shouldn't be doing it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah, >> my board doesn't like me doing it. You know, all this stuff. And so I'm going to go hire a sales guy. I did that a couple times. I hired people in with that mindset. The problem is people can"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "smell it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> The people that are coming in that opportunity, they're like, \"Oo, I can come in and get the power. I can come in and own this whole thing and I can tell, >> you know, the founder that now I own"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "sales and it's like this ego trip and all this stuff.\" The right person you want to come in that wants, they should be really curious about how you've been doing this stuff. Should be a"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "collaboration between the two of you. It should be like, you know, like you ride shotgun with each other into these these experiences and like find new products and new ways to grow in the market and"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "then their job is to exclusively run that as your job is to go run a bunch of other things in in the company. But but this was a huge journey for me. I mean it took me like 10 years to get through"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "this. And I I remember having uh this conversation with one of our investors who I I who I love dearly and I talked with them about this. This is several years ago and I was like, there's this"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "person we're going to hire as a head of sales and look, this person's got the amazing track record and they got everything I'm looking for. You know, they got an MBA and then they also have"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "a CS degree and they worked at Amazon, but they also worked at a startup and like all AWS and also a startup. And I was like, this is the profile. I was like, we should this is this is the guy."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And this one investor was like, \"I understand you're excited about this person and we'll close them and we'll get them to hire, but the reason that we invested in you is like, we think you"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "will be able to do sales better than anybody else you will ever hire inside the company.\" And I remember thinking to myself, that's ludicrous. No effing way."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "No way. This guy's like off his rocker, you know? No way. Look, I like how can I be the one to It was It just didn't register in my mind. And what I realized later was like him saying that wasn't uh"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "that I had the most sales training, that I knew the methodologies, that I'd be able to hire reps, that I'd be able to scale it. None of those things. He was just saying you embodying the product,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "you being able to go out and do that in the market, the special I call it the founder pixie dust, like the things that I can do in a sales because it's going back to what we were saying earlier. The"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "company is like inside of me, you know, I can do these things that like I'll never be able to do. I'll never be able to expect anybody else to do. And you know, I I I took the company at tens of"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "millions in ARR with with that. Um, and I think it turned it into something that I was like, how do I avoid this or how do I build my founder job in a way I don't have to do this thing? It's like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "kind of icky and like, uh, I don't like salespeople and like bringing them in the company. They culturally mess everything up, you know? And like a lot of companies, you reach the phase where"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "you start having to hire sales people and you're like, great, now it's the end. The end is near. we have to hire these jabronies in, you know, there bunch of clowns that aren't that smart."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And I was just like, screw that. I'm going to find sales people that are really smart. They're hard to hire."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "They're hard to find. They're expensive."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "So, great salespeople make a boatload of money. You would not believe how like the really really great sales people how much money they can make, but they're worth it, right? They drive value. They"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "literally drive economic value for the company. You can look at it and be like, I'm paying them this much, but they're bringing in that much. Okay? You know, I'll I'll do 3x that deal, you know, on"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "both sides. Um, so very very hard to find. But I just I just said like if I'm gonna actually continue doing this for my own sanity, I want a sales team that I'm like thrilled to work with. People"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "when I wake up in the morning, it's like the first person I want to call, you know, where I'm ecstatic to get on a call with them and I'm going to learn a ton from them around how to scale it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And if you just take that mindset and you're like, that's the sales team I want, then it becomes this thing from like running away or like shying away to like holding on to and being really"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "active. And I think that's that's kind of the culmination of like my own journey in doing sales. And I would I would I would encourage anybody that's like feels like they're on the other"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "side of that where they don't think it's possible. It's probably the case that you just haven't met any great salespeople. That that was the experience I had. It's not that it's not"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "that I had met like bad sales people, but like I mean it's just kind of generally with people with friendships. You know, you meet people and like you get to know you have friends that are just like so so"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "friends, but then occasionally you meet people where you connect with them and you're just like, \"Holy like I'm just totally on the wavelength with that person. We are going to be friends for"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "the next 20 years.\" Like you need to hold out to like find those people and then believe that they exist in the world. And and I think those exist in all the different domains even if you're"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "kind of like afraid and scared of them."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And so part of it is like put yourself in the position to meet them and succeed. go pay an exec recruiter to introduce you to a ton of people. I went I went and interviewed all these like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "CRO um just to find ones that I liked and there was like two or three of them that I was like, \"Okay, those guys are actually smart. These guys are like not clowns like uh I remember one in"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "particular as a as a digression. It's this guy named Chris Merritt who was uh leading sales at Cloudflare. Chris Chris is total brainiac. He's like total engineer mindset. I remember talking"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "with him. I talked to them for like an hour and and I I had to go for a walk after I hung up the Zoom call. This is like during the pandemic cuz I was like what did I who did I just meet? This is"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like a he led sales. He doesn't seem like a sales guy but totally he's like totally mechanized you know how he thinks about growing it. He's just really really smart, very cerebral. Um"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "and so you just need to look for that in people and and sales is a very very important function of the company. if you lean away from it, if you don't if you don't lean into it to try to make it"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "amazing, uh you're screwed, you know, because it's the economic value capture piece of it. It's like in some ways like the one of the most important parts of the whole company. But I think for"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "everyone going on their own journey, depending on where they are in that process, it's important to know like you can learn it and that if if you haven't been wowed by somebody yet around that,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "uh you should make it your your personal goal to like get wowed. find the person doesn't mean you'll be able to hire that person. Chris love him to pieces. He wasn't going to take our head of sales"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "job at our little, you know, dinky, you know, probably at the time I met him, we were like 30, 40 people. I was like, I think I emailed him even I was like, \"Chris, would you like he's like I might"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "advise. Here's my phone number. You can call me, but like I've just been like CRO of a global public company. Probably not going to join. Um, shoot your shot, you know.\" Um, but at least meeting"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "those people, I was like, \"Okay, I know it's out there. I know I can fall in love. I know that the people that are there that I can resonate with, I just need to like structure now from a"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "process how I can line that up and get that into my company at some point and then just be patient, you know, and and and wait for it to hit. But yeah, but you know, turning it's it's one of the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "crazy things about doing startups in this like founder journey is like if I would have told you this like five years ago or six years ago, I'd feel like a totally different person. It's crazy. Like I just I' feel"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like I've I've turned over my brain in that way. And like I wonder what the version of that is for me like 5 years from now. Like where's where is my you know brain evolving. It's it's why it's"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "fun. It's why it stays interesting and why I continue to surprise myself in it as well."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> Okay. So last question. This is this has been amazing. Thank you so much for doing it. Um uh so many people are going to have so much that they can take away from this. Um last question is it's it's"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "sort of a two-parter. Right. I think that I would love for you to share sort of what you think is like the bare case for being a solo founder and then follow it up with the case for solo founding."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah. I think the bare case um is that you miss out you miss out on, you know, finding your John Lennon."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Like if you're adamant around it and you're like, \"Okay, I got to own more of the company or I got to make all the decisions or I gotta not have a, you know, someone I got to collaborate with"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "a boss or something like that.\" You miss out on this opportunity to have that type of partnership with someone, which which like I said earlier, like um the allure of it is strong. It's it's"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like that's still a thing I like fantasize about, you know."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um I would love to have that type of like work relationship with someone in the future. Um, and it's it's not going to happen right now with this company because it's already spun up and going,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "but it could happen in other ways. You know, it could start something else in the future."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> So, you miss out on that. Um, I think also that the the bare case is like it's just so hard to get started with the business. It's like everything is trying to kill you. I mean, that that's not"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "even true cuz that implies like attention on you. It's like it's like you're starving in the desert. It's not that you're actively hunted. It's like no one cares."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Like nature is indifferent, but it's still very dangerous."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah. It's it's like, you know, nobody cares. Nobody cares what you're doing."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And so we're not built to do that. I think as like humans, like our psychology, it's just you're not you're not supposed to go out into the forest alone for years and just be by yourself."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "We're social creatures. We need to be around other people. We get energy from other people. and and and the the bare case is you're you might have an amazing idea for a thing and you might be"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "you know compromising on the outcome you could have um because you don't have the network around you. You might you might find the right right product, right time, right market, right opportunity"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "and the limiting factor is you >> and and the engine can't take the you know the horsepower or whatever and you're you don't you don't make it. I don't know if for my first company like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "doing it by by myself fully like would have been sustainable. I don't know. I don't know. I didn't have a large group, you know, of co-founders. I didn't have a large network. But um but I think I I"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "think it's really challenging, you know, and and you kind of burn yourself out and then you never do it again."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> That's kind of the bare case. You're just like, \"Wow, I just like spent two years alone working on this and I was living out of coffee shops and sitting on someone's couch. I didn't make any"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "money.\" And what do you learn? What do you have at the end? You know, the the bullcase for it though, I think, is one of this like story of personal transformation in this journey. And it's"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "a thing people can't take from you if you make it from scratch and it's just yours. Like, you know, I I don't have I don't have children yet. And uh I' I've always been like envious of like um a"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "bit envious of women that they can like birth a child. I think it's just like the most hardcore thing in the world that to like make another life form. you know, as a as a man, you participate in"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "a part of it, but like it grows in the woman, you know, it's like it literally comes from your flesh. It's it's pretty metal. You think about it. And so I don't get to do that, you know, exactly"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like that. You know, I I can I can I can write music or make other things, but I think this this u pursuit of expressing this thing and having it just be yours."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um if you're solo, it's only yours. It's like yours. The step came from coming from an idea inside of your head into this thing that exists in the world. And along the way you get to go through this"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "journey of personal transformation and learning different things. And the company the company I find is like this mirror like it shows you every imperfection in yourself and weakness"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "all the time. All the time uh it's inescapable like like your weaknesses the company will find a way to highlight them and make it the hardest obstacle that you have to overcome. It's like"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "it's it's like this adaptive video game on top of your life or something. It's kind of crazy. And so the upside of that is like it's this constant hardcore journey, you know, it's it's like the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "extreme sport version of that. Um, so I think there's there's an upside in terms of the accelerated like personal growth and transformation if you want that. And not everyone wants that and not every"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "company pushes depending on your skills or your abilities or talents or what what's required of the company, you're going to get different journeys that you go through. But I I think the piece that"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "really is the like the bullcase is like you have this thing that like uniquely feels like it's yours and and there's something just like really I don't I don't I don't even really know"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "how to describe it. It's it's like it's like lasting to have something that you create like that that can just become one of those institutions. You you can make it into this thing that will exist"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "and then eventually the people working on it won't even know who you are. Like institutions that just stick around forever. No one knows really. It gets it fades away. I saw I was talking from a"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "guy who um longtime exec at Disney who um worked on the Lion King and uh which I was talking about earlier and the Lion King the story of it was their childhood story from their family that they told"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "and he just had it as a kid and like made it into this made the movie you know and then like produced the movie and the music and all the stuff but like the story of it just just I believe just"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "came out of this. It was just a thing he had as a kid. And when you go see it on Broadway or see the movie, it's it's not the story of him, right? It's the story of the story itself that continues on."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "It's this like this kind of self-continuing process, this meme that exists in the world. And I think there's there's an element of like making those things exist in the world."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "That is the the the desire of like the entrepreneur like can I get a thing spinning and like just I'm spinning a plate and then eventually it just flies by itself. And there's an element of it"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "that if it's like it fully came from you, it's just it's just really satisfying. And I think that's when it's with other people again like the things that go poorly, you can blame them. The"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "things that are successes are shared."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "You know, it's not as this like extreme fully full ownership and agency. And that's the double-edged sword where it's also can be a terrible thing. Um but when it works, it really works. It's"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "really special. And I think it it becomes this thing that like you you like never want to let let go of as well you know and and uh who knows what happens with you know companies at the"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "end of the day it's just a business you know as well like you know it's um who knows where markets go or uh companies merge and sell all the time and stuff but for that for that moment when it"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "starts actually working like where work OS is right now like it's we're ripping it's going I'm having more fun right now right now than any time in my entire career. I never thought I could have"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "this much fun working and feel like this about my job. It's crazy. And I don't think I I would have been able to get this specifically like this um if I had been a piece starting it with a bunch of"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "other people. I just think I wouldn't have the same level of connection to it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And so it's it's a vanishingly small number of people that get to the position that I'm in right now. I I don't even know what the I don't even I don't even want to know what the odds"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "are, you know? Um it's like I've gone through all these gates and like survived. Um, but I I think there is a there is a bull case that's like very special around that and and it's"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "probably something that's like not reproducible. Like I I don't know if I'll get another one of these in my career like this. It's it's again getting product market fit is like running the algorithm and like rolling"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "the dice. It's just very hard to get multiple ones. Um, and and to be part of it from from the beginning where it was just this like scratched idea in my notebook and these things inside my"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "head, you really realize like the world is so like malleable like every like it's a lot of people talk about this this idea of like everything around you was just made by people like you and and"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "I I remember distinctly like realizing that about the world. But when you build something from scratch yourself and you you make every bit of it from the beginning because it literally starts"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "out as not it doesn't exist. It's a figment in your idea. It's just like I've heard this quote like uh a secret is something that only one person knows."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "At the very beginning of the company that's it only you know it you believe this thing. Once you go through that experience you really realize that everything in the world like started off"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "like that and there just a kind of a special connection to like humanity in this way. So, I think that's it's it's it's extraordinarily, you know, unlikely and extraordinarily challenging to get"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "to that point. Um, but that is like kind of I think the ultimate, you know, the ultimate bull case for it. And what I would say is it's like worth shooting for cuz like you only get one life. You"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "get one shot, you know, like why not why not swing as hard as you can."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> What a way to end it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah, >> it's beautiful."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> Thanks for doing this."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> Thank you for having me by. It's great to see you. If you enjoyed this conversation, we would love it if you could share solo founders with everyone you know, particularly people who are"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "considering starting companies solo or who are already doing it. You know, the entire goal of what we do is to normalize solo founding, encourage more people to solo found instead of end up"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "with co-founders of convenience. If you'd like, and we'd really appreciate it, you can go leave a review on Apple."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "You can go give us a thumbs up, you can subscribe on the YouTube channel."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Anything helps. And of course, if you are starting a company or considering starting a company, you should go look at the solo founders program. We work together with you in San Francisco"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "alongside of a bunch of other solo founders. The idea is it's much better to be solo together than to be solo alone. I'll spend a lot of time helping you, and we also invest $100,000 in your"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "company. So, if you're excited to learn more about that, go check out solofounders.com/program."
  }
]