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  • Gross Margins, Early to Late: What They Do (and Don’t) Tell You

    Gross margins are essentially a company’s revenue from products and services minus the costs to deliver those products and services to customers, and it’s one of the most important financial metrics a startup can track.

    And yet, figuring out what goes into the “cost” for delivering products and services is not as simple as it may sound, particularly for high-growth software businesses that might use emerging business models or be leveraging new technology. Why do gross margins matter? When do they matter during a company’s growth? And how do you use them to plan for the future?

    In this episode, a16z general partners Martin Casado, who invests in early stage enterprise startups and  David George, who leads our growth fund, and Sarah Wang  on the growth investing team share their perspectives on how to think about gross margins in both earlier and later stages at a startup. The conversation ranges from the nuances of and strategy for calculating margins with things like cloud costs, freemium users, or implementation costs to the impact margins can have on valuations. 

  • #86 – Why Every Business Should Have an Enemy

    Joined our private FB group yet? It’s a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they’re already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. Episode summary: (0:03) Discounted Uber credits hack (4:06) Scam talk: Chamath bitcoin giveaway, Nigerian PPP, Super Pac (12:05) Baseball card storage idea (15:20) Self-storage company, Public Storage, is wildly profitable (16:12) Real estate talk (20:01) Why it’s important to have enemies when marketing (27:42) Private Twitter idea (30:08) Chris D’Elia and Wikipedia for creeps idea (37:42) Should Wikipedia be government owned? (39:50) Cheaper backend brokerage 

    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

  • #443: David Yarrow on Art, Markets, Business, and Combining It All

    “I must never again put myself in a position where my work ethic can be undone by things totally beyond my control.” — David Yarrow

    In his genre, David Yarrow (@davidyarrow) is one of the world’s best-selling fine art photographers. Most recently, he has focused on capturing the animal and human worlds in fresh and creative ways, with philanthropy and conservation central to this drive. In 2019, charitable donations from the sale of David’s images exceeded $2.5 million.

    David’s photography of life on earth has earned him a large and ever-growing following among art collectors, and he is now represented by some of the top contemporary fine art galleries around the world. In the last two years, three of Yarrow’s works have sold for more than $100,000 at Sotheby’s auctions in London and New York, and UBS has also appointed David as its global ambassador.

    In this conversation, we’ll talk about his photography, but also touch on how his double life as a hedge fund manager informed his art.

    You can buy David’s #1 best-selling book with a $50 discount and a one-year free subscription to his new quarterly photographic journal at davidyarrow.photography/Tim. 

    Please enjoy!

    ***

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    For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.

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    Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

  • 394: Pandemic Pivots: How Entrepreneurs are Adapting to “Obliteration”

    394: Pandemic Pivots: How Entrepreneurs are Adapting to “Obliteration”
    394: Pandemic Pivots: How Entrepreneurs are Adapting to “Obliteration”

    Businesses evolve over time, but I don’t think anyone could have prepared for the pace of change this year.

    To gauge how some of you have been handling everything the pandemic has thrown at you, I reached out to Side Hustle Nation and asked what pivots and changes you’ve been making in your business over the last few months.

    What I got back were some interesting and innovative ways some business owners and side hustlers have found to actually grow their businesses during the pandemic.

    Here’s a look at some of the hardest hit industries, and some of the ways business owners have been pivoting and adapting.

    Full Show Notes: Pandemic Pivots: How Entrepreneurs are Adapting to “Obliteration”

  • Exploitation Economy

    Scott discusses how the Tech Giants will see a snapback in their US advertising revenue, as well as how the disruption to higher education has already begun and why universities need to rethink their plans. Scott also brings on Jim McKelvey, the co-founder of Square, to hear his ideas around innovation, the payments sphere, and advice to entrepreneurs. McKelvey is also the author of “The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time.”

    This week’s Office Hours: Palantir’s potential IPO, what to expect when impact investing, and how to build your personal brand. 

    Algebra of Happiness has Scott wondering when the US moved from an innovation economy to an exploitation economy.

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  • Your questions, answered

    Your questions, answered
    Your questions, answered

    Believe it or not, we’re already halfway through 2020. What a great year so far, huh? Just a delight. That means it’s time for an AMA. Among the questions you asked:

    • If Joe Biden is elected president, what should his administration’s first legislative priority be? 
    • What were the best critiques of Why We’re Polarized? 
    • How much of today’s political conflict comes down to the Boomer/Millennial divide?
    • What’s your reading process?
    • What does preparation for EK Show episodes look like?
    • If you were only intellectually accountable to beauty and not truth, what religion would you choose? 
    • What’s your favorite non-Vox podcast?
    • What’s your biggest takeaway from year 1 of being a dad?
    • East coast or west coast? 
    • What are the episodes that you have the most fun doing? 
    • What’s an important identity of yours that doesn’t usually come out on the show? 

    Roge Karma joins me for this one.

    References:

    “In praise of polarization” by Ezra Klein

    “Imagining the nonviolent state” by Ezra Klein

    Ezra’s book recommendations:

    The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

    Beyond Ideology by Francis Lee

    What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer 

    Most fun EK Shows:

    I build a world with fantasy master N.K. Jemisin

    The art of attention, with Jenny Odell

    Tracy K. Smith changed how I read poetry

    How Hasan Minhaj is reinventing political comedy

    Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com

    Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.

    New to the show? Want to check out Ezra’s favorite episodes? Check out the Ezra Klein Show beginner’s guide (http://bit.ly/EKSbeginhere)

    Credits:

    Producer/Editer/Audio Wizard – Jeff Geld

    Researcher/Guest host – Roge Karma

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  • 423. The Doctor Will Zoom You Now

    423. The Doctor Will Zoom You Now
    423. The Doctor Will Zoom You Now

    Thanks to the pandemic, the telehealth revolution we’ve been promised for decades has finally arrived. Will it stick? Will it cut costs — and improve outcomes? We ring up two doctors and, of course, an economist to find out.

  • #85 – Why Privacy is Big Business and the Multi-Million Dollar Ideas Hidden in Plain Sight

    Joined our private FB group yet? It’s a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they’re already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. Episode summary: Privacy Based Businesses (14:20) Opportunities “Hidden in Plain Sight” (18:29) Unclaimed Baggage unclaimedbaggage.com (22:50) “Costco for services” idea (28:55), Income Share Agreements (37:00) Simple websites doing $100k/mo (39:10) Sam and Shaan get a little philosophical about if you should spend time investing or building (44:40) 

    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

  • David Ige: Governor of Hawaii

    Governor David Y. Ige was sworn in as the eighth governor of the State of Hawai‘i on December 1, 2014. Governor Ige is focused on improving the lives of Hawaiʻi’s people and making the islands a place future generations choose to call home. He is increasing affordable housing, reducing homelessness, moving toward the state’s 100% renewable energy goal, and remodeling public education to prepare students for the innovation economy of the 21st century. Under his leadership, the state has aggressively moved to ensure financial sustainability and enable future growth. He believes that we can achieve our shared goals because we have always been better together than alone.

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

  • Building Products for Power Users

    As more digital natives have entered the workplace, they have brought with them the expectation that their software should both be a joy to use and allow them to be power users. That is, users who configure and control it to better serves their needs. And often, these digital natives aren’t just aspiring power users, they are also prosumers, who can and will pay for a premium experience. But first generation SaaS products have often struggled to deliver the experience these users crave.

    For today’s founders and builders, how do you get the user experience right when a product has to delight your power users, while being something a less savvy user can pick up and learn?

    In this episode, a16z general partner David Ulevitch and Superhuman founder Rahul Vohra discuss how to build products that can turn any user into a power user. The conversation touches on themes from David’s recent talk on products that adopt developer tools, like the command palette and keyboard shortcuts, to improve usability, and Rahul’s talk on how to apply game design principles to product design. They cover how to onboard users to drive virality, when to expand to a second product, and how to use pricing to position a premium product.