358: House Hacking: Live for Free and Turn Your Biggest Expense into a Profit Center
What if you could make your rent or mortgage payment go away?
Or, what if instead of paying that expense every month, your living situation actually paid you?
It’s not as far-fetched as it may sound.
In fact, that’s exactly what today’s guest, Craig Curelop, has done by intentionally “house hacking” over the past few years.
He’s even written a book on the topic, and it’s one I wish I’d had when I was 18 or 19! I would have definitely done some things differently.
The basic idea is to use other people’s rents to offset, or even profit from your own housing costs. On top of that, you’ll begin building wealth through real estate and earn tax benefits as well.
If you have a spare room or two in your home, or you’re interested in house hacking, this episode is going to get the gears turning for you.
Tune in as Craig runs through some examples of how you can do this. Whether you’re a young professional, or you have a family of your own, you can offset some or all of your mortgage payments.
But keep in mind, this isn’t a common path — this is living for a period of time like others won’t — as you’ll hear from Craig’s story.
“Typically you’re going to sacrifice comfortability with profitability,” Craig explained to me. But living for a few years like others won’t has given Craig the financial independence to potentially live decades like others can’t.
“One of the key insights from Bushido is that a culture is not a set of beliefs, it’s a set of actions.” — Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz) is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and the upcoming Harper Business book, What You Do Is Who You Are, available October 29th. He also created the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund to connect cultural leaders to the best new technology companies, and enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry.
Prior to a16z, Ben was cofounder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications, including the widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line.
Ben has an MS and BA in Computer Science from UCLA and Columbia University, respectively.
This podcast is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is, inevitably, Athletic Greens. It is my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body and did not get paid to do so.
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This episode is also brought to you by Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel, LinkedIn’s podcast now in its second season, and it is full of advice you can start using today.
Each week, Jessi sits down with featured guests to investigate the role work plays in our lives, and how to make it work for us. This season, one of the first episodes I recommend checking out is with Jerry Colonna. I’ve worked with Jerry in the past, and he is one of the start-up world’s most in-demand executive coaches. In the episode, Jerry shares his approach to meetings, explains how to ask good open-ended questions, and he also goes through his approach to daily journaling.
Whether you’re starting your first job or gearing up for retirement, Hello Monday helps you tackle Monday — and the rest of the workweek — with tactics and strategies you can use. Find Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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394. Does Hollywood Still Have a Princess Problem?
For decades, there’s been a huge gender disparity both on-screen and behind the scenes. But it seems like cold, hard data — with an assist from the actor Geena Davis — may finally be moving the needle.
0:00:05 The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business 0:00:10 tax or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed 0:00:14 at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. 0:00:18 For more details, please see a16z.com/disclosures. 0:00:19 Hi, everyone. 0:00:21 Welcome to the A16Z podcast. 0:00:22 I’m Das Rush. 0:00:27 In this episode, we talk with Ola Griginski, the founder of People AI, a platform for sales 0:00:28 and marketers. 0:00:31 Well, the broader question we’re tackling is beyond just sales and marketing, to really 0:00:36 how AI is taking data from across the enterprise to change how we work, regardless of our 0:00:37 function or industry. 0:00:42 Also joining us in this conversation is Peter Lauten from the A16Z Enterprise investing 0:00:43 team. 0:00:46 We’re going to cover everything from how to design AI to be a co-pilot for knowledge 0:00:51 workers, to the founder’s playbook for spotting the next AI opportunity, and then how to take 0:00:53 a product to market once you do. 0:00:58 First, we begin with why AI and B2B, that is business to business, is so different from 0:01:00 business to consumer. 0:01:05 In the last five years, more and more areas of human existence or activity are adopting 0:01:06 the AI. 0:01:12 And in particular, AI is finally proliferating B2B Enterprise world, which is very different 0:01:15 to work with than your classic B2C scenario. 0:01:17 B2C is much more reactive. 0:01:22 You build something, you throw it at a million users in Australia, and then see what happens. 0:01:24 And if it doesn’t work, you can pull it back. 0:01:28 With B2B, you cannot do it because you have five customers and each one of them is paying 0:01:29 you. 0:01:34 So you better go ahead and do the research in advance and make something enterprise is 0:01:35 one. 0:01:41 And so with that, it’s a very different level of risk, but also a very different level 0:01:45 of data instead of having a large number of users out there that all contribute a little 0:01:47 bit of data to you. 0:01:53 You have very few users that contribute a lot of very valuable, very private, secure 0:01:55 and needle-moving data. 0:02:00 It’s much harder because you have to make those companies very comfortable with the 0:02:06 fact that their data will be anonymized, aggregated, will not be shared with competitors, will 0:02:08 not be leaked if you get hacked. 0:02:13 And one of the big calculations that particularly big customers would be doing is how do I compare 0:02:18 the gains of machine learning being applied this way against the cost of actually doing 0:02:19 it. 0:02:24 And so if you think about the cost of collecting, cleaning and maintaining the data, like that’s 0:02:28 certainly gotten cheaper over time, particularly in the last decade with cloud compute and 0:02:31 AWS, GCP, Azure, etc. 0:02:37 But there are scenarios where the value out of the data you get maybe isn’t so obviously 0:02:39 worth the cost of actually collecting it. 0:02:46 And so when we think about how this generation of technology will get deployed over even 0:02:52 the scale of decades, a lot of it is, where is the greatest yielding application of these 0:02:54 technologies by industry? 0:02:56 And then let’s aim our efforts there. 0:02:58 And then what’s the next best industry? 0:03:03 So it’s also a function of just how valuable is the promise you’re making to customers 0:03:06 against their cost of being able to achieve it. 0:03:07 Interesting. 0:03:12 That’s how companies are evaluating AI, but what about on the startup side? 0:03:15 How should an entrepreneur look at the market for AI? 0:03:20 For aspiring entrepreneurs, there is a pattern that if there is an area of human activity 0:03:24 or existence that generates activity data of how humans do something and the data is 0:03:28 not being captured today, there is a ripe opportunity. 0:03:34 There is a time series activity stream, someone doing something, moving shipping containers, 0:03:40 ordering readings from a wind farm, recording emails from a salesperson, recording location 0:03:42 of an Uber driver. 0:03:48 And as long as you can collect reliable, comprehensive, non-manually entered high-volume activity 0:03:54 data from many wind farms or from many containers and ships or from many salespeople in one 0:03:59 place, aggregate and start seeing the big picture and then use that big picture to analyze 0:04:04 the micro trends and predict what’s the best next action for the operator, the salesperson, 0:04:10 the Uber driver is, that’s where it brings in network effects and significant acceleration 0:04:11 of growth. 0:04:17 So my theory is that every industry is going to switch into this business model of collecting 0:04:21 activity data, understanding its scale and turning into best next actions in the next 0:04:23 five, ten years. 0:04:26 You mentioned network effects there as an accelerator of growth. 0:04:29 What exactly do you mean by those network effects? 0:04:35 The more sensors, edge computing devices, salespeople, Uber drivers you have in the 0:04:40 network, the more data you collect, the more the patterns of behavior you see. 0:04:45 When you put them all into one centralized graph, the smarter this graph becomes for 0:04:52 everybody, the better the predictions it can produce about the best next actions. 0:04:55 Now this is where the second loop of the network effect starts. 0:05:00 The better the predictions are, the more money Uber drivers make, the more money salespeople 0:05:02 make, the less wind farms break. 0:05:08 So more and more players will be lured in with this better efficiency to become part 0:05:11 of the network, contribute even more data into this shared graph. 0:05:13 So it becomes kind of this virtuous cycle. 0:05:14 Exactly. 0:05:18 Imagine you’re a wind farm operator and you know that your wind farms are going to break 0:05:23 after they broke and there’s a wind farm next to you, same wind, same everything, but they 0:05:27 come in and practically fix them and have zero downtime because they start collecting 0:05:30 the data about their wind farms breaking five years before you. 0:05:34 If your competitor automated the business process and you did not, you are at disadvantage 0:05:38 but you can go to the same vendor and buy the same assembly line and catch up. 0:05:42 If you miss the AI boat, the results are very different. 0:05:47 If you did not collect the data early enough, there’s nothing you can do to make your AI 0:05:49 better than your competitors. 0:05:54 Even if the data is shared, the AI has been trained on your peculiar behavior and the 0:05:56 market responds to it for three years longer. 0:05:59 It’s seen more examples, more samples, it’s just smarter. 0:06:07 And so unlike automation, like industrial revolution from 100 years ago, AI arms race is a zero 0:06:08 sum game. 0:06:13 So my prediction is that 10 years from now, Fortune 500 will look very different than now 0:06:19 because some companies did not get into collecting the data and training their machinery models 0:06:20 early enough. 0:06:25 Is there a tipping point where this balance of power around the data shifts from the customers 0:06:31 you’re serving it up to, to the vendors because your AI, your model becomes such a competitive 0:06:34 advantage that they’re going to have to play by your rules. 0:06:38 They’re going to have to allow you access to that data and to reuse that data for training. 0:06:41 The competitive dimension part of that is really interesting. 0:06:46 In theory, if one customer is contributing their data to that corpus, certainly their 0:06:51 data is anonymized and no one else in the customer base would really have access to their data. 0:06:56 But in theory, anything you observe at one customer is informing generalized models that 0:06:58 all the customers benefit from. 0:07:03 And so I think part of it is just being super honest in the sales process that yes, of course, 0:07:04 that’s how it works. 0:07:08 But I think the calculation that most of the customers are doing is, okay, that’s fine. 0:07:13 I realize I’m helping everyone else out a little bit, but you’re helping me so much 0:07:17 that I’m willing to contribute a little bit of the signal from my data to help everyone 0:07:18 else. 0:07:22 It’s kind of like you push the boulder uphill getting first customers, but then you roll 0:07:27 downhill with the network effect becomes so strong and the value of joint data set, joint 0:07:30 knowledge becomes so big that people just go ahead with it. 0:07:35 And so one reaction to how nervous customers can be around, “Oh, I don’t know if I want 0:07:41 other people to benefit from my data at all,” is that’s kind of analogous to people writing 0:07:46 contracts that say, “You can only exclusively sell your software to me,” because in abstract, 0:07:49 these are just tools and technologies that everyone’s going to get access to eventually. 0:07:55 And so any hesitation I think customers have about it, that’s going to be a relic years 0:07:56 from now. 0:08:00 One trend, and actually I think I heard it from Marc Andreessen here, is that when data 0:08:03 model changes, systems of record die. 0:08:10 So there were systems of record like CRMs built on, not relational, but on hierarchical 0:08:12 databases in the 70s. 0:08:13 Do you know of any today? 0:08:15 They don’t exist anymore. 0:08:19 Then the next data model that happened was on-prem SQL, C-Belt. 0:08:21 Then the cloud SQL happened. 0:08:23 And now we’re talking about Salesforce. 0:08:28 The next generation of data model is likely to be a graph, which is the data model that 0:08:35 allows you to train AI in the best way possible, federated shared graph of data. 0:08:40 Together with data model shifts, the way you consume the software has been changing. 0:08:47 Instead of you pulling data and looking for it in bunch of Excel reports or Salesforce 0:08:53 reports or websites, it’s actually being pushed to you in a pre-packaged, we call it personalized 0:08:58 actionable insights way, where everything you need to know to complete this action is 0:09:01 right here pushed to you through the channel through which you’re most likely to engage 0:09:02 with it. 0:09:08 Most of the systems of the future will have this feed or minimum choice, a maximum focus 0:09:10 on one thing in front of you. 0:09:13 And once you complete it, the next thing will come and then the next thing will come. 0:09:17 And that will make you much more productive and much more focused at what you’re doing. 0:09:20 So you mentioned that the way we consume software is changing. 0:09:21 Say a little bit more about that. 0:09:24 What does that change mean for product design? 0:09:26 It’s not the case that the product is simpler. 0:09:31 It’s that the UX is designed such that there’s a level of intent that you can observe from 0:09:32 the user. 0:09:35 You should generally know what they’re trying to do such that you don’t have to expose the 0:09:39 entire complexity of a product to the user and overwhelm them. 0:09:42 You just say, we’re quite certain this is what you actually want to do at this stage 0:09:43 of the product. 0:09:44 That’s all we’re going to show you. 0:09:47 And you’re going to be able to very efficiently execute that function. 0:09:52 It sounds like the prediction here is this next wave of AI companies, this next generation 0:09:58 of enterprise software, it starts to make worker lives easier because it gets simpler. 0:10:00 And give you the last tabs in Chrome. 0:10:01 Totally. 0:10:07 And part of that is just the interaction between how do you map UX and design against this 0:10:11 like increasing orchestration of the knowledge worker labor force? 0:10:14 So what does that mean then for kind of the enterprise worker of the future? 0:10:18 It seems to me like in that scenario, you’re getting workers to be increasingly focused. 0:10:21 Does that mean they’re also getting increasingly specialized? 0:10:22 I think it’s two things. 0:10:29 They’re able to focus on what really needs human judgment, really complex rare situations 0:10:33 that maybe there’s not a sufficiently big data corpus to make an interesting inference 0:10:35 on with a machine learning application. 0:10:39 And so what you get is humans can not only do the hardest IQ work that compute can’t 0:10:43 really replicate yet, but also they do become more empathetic. 0:10:47 Your accountant spends more time thinking about your specific needs and how they communicate 0:10:50 with you versus them doing simple math. 0:10:53 There are two modes in which AI operates with people. 0:10:56 We call one autopilot and another one is copilot. 0:11:01 So autopilot is when you are doing as a human, you’re working on something mundane, some 0:11:04 repetitive low value at task. 0:11:07 And so AI can easily automate that for you. 0:11:12 So think of our Uber analogy of them receiving a phone call, typing in the computer, picking 0:11:15 up the ham radio, delivering it to you. 0:11:20 That’s just not the best use of all those billions of neurons in your brain. 0:11:24 So AI comes in and automates those functions, freeing up your time to do something much 0:11:26 more productive and much more effective. 0:11:31 The second bucket in which we see AI play in the role is what we call copilot. 0:11:38 In copilot cases, AI is augmenting your ability to make decisions. 0:11:42 Think of you are in a race car and there’s someone next to you that knows what’s around 0:11:47 the curve and is whispering in your ear what to be ready for, what’s the best next thing 0:11:48 you could do. 0:11:54 While autopilot makes us super productive, copilot allows us to focus on more human, 0:12:00 more face to face, more EQ driven things that machines will not be able to do for a long, 0:12:01 long time. 0:12:07 Oleg, I’m curious, a lot of these companies that have some sort of copilot goal, there’s 0:12:12 some sensitivity around the employees and the users not wanting to be tracked. 0:12:15 For some people who didn’t grow up on the internet, they say, oh, this is a violation 0:12:16 of my privacy. 0:12:20 I don’t want Oleg to know the magic of how I deliver my sales. 0:12:24 To be honest, if I have some really good weeks and I have some bad weeks, I don’t want them 0:12:26 to know about my bad weeks. 0:12:28 How do you get the end user comfortable? 0:12:30 Record the 10x rule. 0:12:38 You have to be visually in a very simple, explainable way, promising and delivering 10x the value 0:12:42 of being on the system than being off the system. 0:12:47 Now, to simplify that, we go to our customers, we say, great, let’s not put you on the platform, 0:12:51 let’s A/B test and see what happens in another quarter when the guy next to you or the girl 0:12:58 next to you did 10x your results and the only variable we have is you were afraid of being 0:13:00 a user of a modern system. 0:13:02 So break that down for me a little bit more specifically. 0:13:05 You’re making this technology for sales and marketers. 0:13:08 What are sales and marketers doing today that they’re not going to have to do five years 0:13:12 from now and how is AI going to change the way that they work? 0:13:17 Is this just about their efficiency or is it going to fundamentally shift how those industries 0:13:18 work? 0:13:20 It will definitely shift how the industries work. 0:13:22 So let’s think about the day of a salesperson. 0:13:28 In an average week, salespeople spend about a third of their time on manual data entry. 0:13:35 Another third of their time is supposed to be spent on prospecting, so finding who else 0:13:41 looks like my current customers, which from computer science perspective is a very classic 0:13:45 lookalike problem we’ve solved 30, 40 years ago and then only a third of that time is 0:13:51 spending face-to-face meetings actually selling, actually building relationships. 0:13:55 Now the first two parts, the manual data entry, it should be gone. 0:13:58 It should be fully automated through autopilot capability. 0:14:04 The second part is who should you talk to next is also very easy to solve with the help 0:14:11 of lookalike modeling, machine learning, pointing you to very high value ad prospects 0:14:15 of customers and actually helping you automate the outreach to them. 0:14:21 And then a third part, which is being face-to-face with customers, truly building relationships 0:14:23 is where machines cannot replace humans. 0:14:29 So five, 10 years from now, salespeople or any white collar kind of knowledge workers 0:14:37 will be actually focused on EQ-driven relationship-building activities still with copilots help because 0:14:40 by then copilot will recommend how to better build a relationship. 0:14:46 So you can think of, in particular, the sales org of the future is really high EQ people 0:14:51 showing up and then compute is aiming them at where their labor is best suited. 0:14:54 I mean, this all sounds really fascinating, but then I think about the older generation 0:14:58 of Salesforce out there being told they have to use this new tool. 0:15:03 We’ve been going about their methods of selling and they’ve got their kind of day-to-day. 0:15:07 How do you go about with that habit change for those sorts of workers? 0:15:12 Or is this a generational shift in terms of how AI technologies get adopted in the enterprise? 0:15:18 If you think about it, the salespeople themselves, they are ingrained in their habits because 0:15:21 something they’ve done over and over again worked. 0:15:26 What autopilot does, it frees up a bunch of their time to experiment more. 0:15:32 And so if we approach any problem that involves AI with autopilot freeing up your time and 0:15:38 copilot teaching you the new ways, eventually you will be able to retrain the people who 0:15:42 are ingrained in their old ways into new ways by showing them that trying new stuff actually 0:15:44 yields results. 0:15:49 This training at the end point exactly where the knowledge worker is doing their job, we’ll 0:15:51 say these are the next top priorities for you. 0:15:55 This human can learn from that and they start to understand, okay, this is the best way to 0:15:56 sell. 0:16:00 The way that this is playing out is it’s kind of unbundling these horizontal, like learning 0:16:03 management systems of two decades ago. 0:16:09 This kind of dance between the knowledge worker and the software, the knowledge worker and 0:16:12 the machine learning algorithms trains them live on the job. 0:16:16 You learn in the software while you do your job. 0:16:20 We hear a ton about we have to retrain the workforce, but this is, I think, the first 0:16:24 time I’ve heard it articulated that some of that retraining gets built into the products 0:16:30 especially at the point where it sounds like the products are augmenting what humans do. 0:16:32 How are products going to look different? 0:16:34 What does the product of tomorrow look like for me? 0:16:40 In the next 15 years, every area of our existence will probably go through a transition and 0:16:45 will be, instead of being inundated by a bunch of Chrome tabs, it’ll be inundated by a bunch 0:16:47 of feeds that tell us what to do. 0:16:53 I think there are cycles of bundling and unbundling playing out here already in the latest wave 0:16:55 of machine learning applications. 0:16:59 The use cases are getting increasingly precise and tailored to the end user. 0:17:03 One of the consequences of that is as these systems get richer and deliver more promises 0:17:08 to the user and then help them do their job in more and more ways, I think you just get 0:17:11 much fatter workflow applications. 0:17:13 We see that already happening in B2C. 0:17:17 The bundling of services as they figure out the right workflow. 0:17:18 Think of Uber. 0:17:19 It used to be just rides. 0:17:20 Now it’s food delivery. 0:17:22 Now it’s freight and stuff like that. 0:17:23 It’s coming from the same app. 0:17:27 You can ship something, you can get somewhere, or you can get food delivered or whatever 0:17:29 you want to have delivered. 0:17:36 Once the company finds an optimal user interface that allows for suggesting best next action, 0:17:41 then it just makes sense to bundle in more and more functionality and take over more and 0:17:43 more of the attention span of the user. 0:17:46 I think this actually goes to a question that I’m really curious about, too, which is the 0:17:49 broader trends of how these products are coming into the market. 0:17:54 Are you finding that you have to really drive that adoption at the enterprise through your 0:17:58 user first, or is it still more of a traditional top down? 0:18:02 You’re going in, you’re selling to somebody because they want to automate what their sales 0:18:03 force is doing. 0:18:07 So that has been an interesting point for us because we want to build a bottoms up approach. 0:18:08 Right now we’re top down. 0:18:11 We come in through kind of standard procurement channels. 0:18:17 The part that is tricky there is that you have to make the organization comfortable with 0:18:20 your security posture, your privacy posture. 0:18:26 And so having that is what slows down the bottoms up approach, you cannot give someone 0:18:30 an AI that’s going to learn from individual user without checking in with the company 0:18:31 first. 0:18:35 It’ll be a very tricky balance played out over the next few years where the users will 0:18:40 be demanding more and more powerful and data hungry products, while the enterprise will 0:18:43 be saying, well, I still want to be in control of it. 0:18:47 I think there’s a distinction between the types of enterprise apps. 0:18:55 The apps that build AI based on user behavior and that do not require merging of that behavior 0:19:02 data with proprietary enterprise data such as Zoom or Slack, those will have much easier 0:19:06 time with bottoms up adoption because they just need the user to log in and do stuff. 0:19:10 It’s a workflow or a utility tool that a single player can use in a single player mode. 0:19:15 The flip side is when the value you create is based on or is significantly amplified 0:19:20 by the historical proprietary knowledge of the company. 0:19:25 So in our case, at people AI, we need to know what’s in your CRM in order to not give you 0:19:27 random suggestions. 0:19:33 And so having access to this proprietary information that the company has under the lock by the 0:19:39 security IT is where you have to go and be very transparent and open with the kind of 0:19:46 top down IT security infosec teams and work with them to get access, but also work with 0:19:49 them to explain to them the value that the end users are going to get. 0:19:53 You’ve both been working around these AI technologies for a few years now. 0:19:57 I know, Oleg, you’ve gone through a few different companies and iterations, getting to people 0:19:58 AI. 0:20:01 What have been the biggest surprises for you in this space and what have been some of 0:20:03 the biggest lessons learned? 0:20:07 So the first company I joined, I started my career as an inside sales person back in 0:20:08 2006. 0:20:12 I was pounding the phones before LinkedIn existed and before Twitter existed, Smile 0:20:13 and Dial Style. 0:20:21 The company that I was at went out on Toronto Stock Exchange right before the downturn. 0:20:23 So the first lesson I learned was timing is everything. 0:20:27 And if you get an opportunity to move forward aggressively. 0:20:32 Second lesson I learned was with Cementria, the company I started in 2011. 0:20:36 That’s where I realized why the size of the market really matters. 0:20:43 We started a sentiment analysis API, beautiful technology, scales nicely. 0:20:47 The only problem is there was only 20, 30 companies that really needed it in the world. 0:20:53 So Cementria ended up being a very small market and we ended up owning probably 80% of the 0:20:59 market within three years while still doing single millions of revenue, which was kind 0:21:00 of crazy. 0:21:03 It’s really striking that you mentioned you’ve been an inside sales, you’ve done the Smile 0:21:05 and Dial, you’ve been a marketer. 0:21:09 How much did your personal experiences inform your product development? 0:21:10 Oh, 100%. 0:21:16 I’ll never forget the moment in 2007 when CEO of the company, where I was actually at 0:21:20 that point leading inside sales team, grounded me and my whole team in a room in a pretty 0:21:27 small sweaty conference room for a week, having us go and clean Salesforce record by record. 0:21:32 And then a week later, we came out and we used the new clean, amazing Salesforce for 0:21:33 a week. 0:21:37 And by the end of the month, it was just as bad as it was before. 0:21:41 And so that was one of the first formative experience where I knew something is really 0:21:45 wrong with how we do sales and marketing today. 0:21:48 And then I had to run my own sales team. 0:21:51 And when I was running my own sales team, I could not get the data. 0:21:52 I like data. 0:21:53 I understand it. 0:21:57 I could not understand what’s going on in the sales team and my people were working really 0:22:03 hard, but I could not pinpoint why it’s not working out, why we are losing deals, why 0:22:09 we are not ramping quickly, why we need to hire more people while seemingly our productivity 0:22:12 seems to be fine, but we are not doing enough. 0:22:16 And so all these why questions that you’re supposed to have the data in the CRM, but 0:22:23 you never actually have it led me to really start thinking about starting people AI. 0:22:27 I love that the way that like the product development has been informed by your personal 0:22:28 experiences. 0:22:32 I think that’s a beautiful tie-in to just how you can have all the data in the world, 0:22:37 but there’s still something about human experience, human empathy, that you really can’t replace 0:22:39 with a computer or a data set. 0:22:44 I get to spend almost every single day of my life meeting founders on the frontier of 0:22:47 building products for knowledge workers. 0:22:52 And there’s a huge disconnect between their optimism for these people against what you 0:22:57 hear in the policy realm and all this doomsday thinking. 0:23:02 This whole wave of automation and augmentation that is making people pretty nervous at the 0:23:07 macro picture, I see all this micro level evidence that it’s just really transforming 0:23:12 the workforce and people really get more meaning out of their jobs and they really start to 0:23:15 love that they can focus on exactly what they’re good at. 0:23:21 You’re really good at something, like you want to be the best musician, you want to 0:23:24 be the best artist, the best computer scientist. 0:23:28 That’s what deep inside we’re all striving towards. 0:23:35 And that self-mastery is what AI, the co-pilot specifically, helps you amplify. 0:23:40 The autopilot takes away the time that you spend on stuff that you don’t care about on 0:23:42 your way to mastery. 0:23:47 And then the co-pilot actually gives you guidance on how to become better, more effective, 0:23:51 learn faster on becoming a master at what you do. 0:23:56 So I think the side effect or the primary effect of AI eventually is going to be that 0:24:01 a lot more people will be insanely good at that specific thing. 0:24:02 Great. 0:24:04 I think that’s a fantastic note to end on. 0:24:07 So I want to thank you Oleg for coming in and thank you Peter. 0:24:08 Thanks for having me here. 0:24:09 It’s been a lot of fun. 0:24:10 Yeah, thanks to us.
Consumer software may have adopted and incorporated AI ahead of enterprise software, where the data is more proprietary, and the market is a few thousand companies not hundreds of millions of smartphone users. But recently AI has found its way into B2B, and it is rapidly transforming how we work and the software we use, across all industries and organizational functions.
In this episode, Das Rush interviews Oleg Rogynskyy, founder of People.ai, an AI platform for sales and marketers, and Peter Lauten from the a16z Enterprise investing team about what the rise AI in B2B means for enterprises, workers, and startups. They explain why AI provides a strong first mover advantage to enterprises that adopt it early; how it can automate lower level tasks, maximize our focus, and, ultimately, make our work more meaningful; and for startups, they provide a playbook for seizing the next AI opportunity.
The infatuation of Celebrity is something we can all relate to and Steven Galanis (@Mr312) is making sure to take opportunity of that. When was the last time you got a celeb to sign something of yours? Nowadays you’d grab your phone in a heartbeat to snap a pic and share it on the gram or “it didn’t happen”. Steven built Cameo so you can just pay your favorite celebrity to say (almost) whatever you want. And it’s becoming huge. It’s a great story that I think you’d love to hear.
0:00:03 – Welcome to the A16Z podcast. 0:00:05 I’m Doss Rush, our enterprise technology editor, 0:00:07 and in this podcast, I moderate a panel discussion 0:00:09 on some of the most heated topics in open source 0:00:12 with two of the leading founders of open source companies, 0:00:15 Armand Dodger, co-founder and CTO of HashiCorp, 0:00:18 which does open source tools for managing multi-cloud, 0:00:20 and Oli Goetze, the CEO of Databricks, 0:00:22 a SaaS offering of Apache Spark. 0:00:23 Joining them in conversation 0:00:26 is A16Z general partner, Peter Levine, 0:00:28 who’s invested and been on the board 0:00:29 of numerous open source companies, 0:00:31 such as GitHub and Netlify. 0:00:33 It’s a great discussion and it takes on everything 0:00:34 from making money on open source, 0:00:37 while managing community, to the nuance of partnering 0:00:40 and sometimes competing with big cloud vendors. 0:00:42 Just to note that this was recorded at a live event, 0:00:44 so there are some audio issues. 0:00:47 The first voice that you’re gonna hear in this is Armand’s, 0:00:49 then Oli, and a few minutes into the conversation, 0:00:50 Peter joins them. 0:00:52 Finally, please note that the content here 0:00:54 is for informational purposes only. 0:00:56 Should not be taken as legal, business tax, 0:00:58 or investment advice, or be used to evaluate 0:01:00 any investment or security. 0:01:02 And it is not directed at any investors 0:01:05 or potential investors in any A16Z fund. 0:01:09 For more details, please see a16z.com/disclosures. 0:01:12 Throughout the history of open source, 0:01:14 talking about making money on open source 0:01:16 has been a pretty controversial topic 0:01:18 with a lot of different views. 0:01:20 So, I’m curious, Oli and Armand, 0:01:23 how have you thought about commercializing open source 0:01:26 and why did you choose to turn a project into a business? 0:01:29 – For us, it didn’t start necessarily 0:01:31 as thinking about turning the open source 0:01:32 into the business. 0:01:36 It was more around recognizing that there’s a clear market gap 0:01:37 in terms of, in our case, sort of DevOps tooling, 0:01:39 how do we actually provision things 0:01:41 and sort of cloud infrastructure. 0:01:43 And then realizing it’s very hard 0:01:46 to become a large sustainable project 0:01:48 if you have negative cash flow forever. 0:01:50 And if you’re at a university and great, 0:01:51 you have grants and things like that 0:01:52 that can sort of fund it, 0:01:53 or it’s a little hobby project 0:01:56 and it’s two, three people doing it on a weekend, fine. 0:01:58 But if you’re solving a large enough problem, 0:02:00 you eventually need teams of dozens, 0:02:03 hundreds, thousands to work on that problem. 0:02:04 You kind of need a business. 0:02:07 There has to be sort of a top line connected 0:02:08 to the bottom line, 0:02:09 otherwise it doesn’t make a lot of sense. 0:02:12 And so I think for us, it started pretty pragmatically 0:02:14 in terms of, hey, we are passionate about the technology, 0:02:15 passionate about the space. 0:02:18 We want this to be viable long term. 0:02:20 Well, the only way for it to be viable long term 0:02:21 was if you make money. 0:02:24 – I’m just going to be honest. 0:02:25 We were academics. 0:02:27 We just wanted to have impact 0:02:29 and we wanted to publish papers. 0:02:32 And the software we built, people didn’t want to adopt it. 0:02:34 So we went to all the companies that were out there, 0:02:36 went to cloud error, all these guys, 0:02:37 and said, please take the software, take it with you, 0:02:39 take credit for it. 0:02:41 And they all just refused. 0:02:44 They said, this is just an academic mambo jumbo, 0:02:45 not interesting. 0:02:47 What if these PhD students just leave? 0:02:51 And then this is enterprise software we’re selling. 0:02:52 So they just rejected us. 0:02:54 So in 2013, we were kind of frustrated and we said, 0:02:56 if we want to actually succeed, 0:02:57 the only way we can get these projects off the ground 0:02:59 is if we actually start something ourselves. 0:03:00 They wasted so much of our time. 0:03:02 We put interns into these companies. 0:03:03 – What do you really think? 0:03:05 (laughing) 0:03:06 – We were sending interns into these companies, 0:03:07 hoping that they would adopt our software. 0:03:08 It never happened. 0:03:10 Since we were frustrated in 2013, 0:03:13 we just said, let’s create a company ourselves to do it. 0:03:15 I don’t think revenue was sort of top of mind for us. 0:03:16 The first two years of Databricks, 0:03:19 our only goal was how can we make spark 0:03:21 in the software that we have take over the world. 0:03:23 – Let’s talk about the flip side. 0:03:26 You choose to go out and then have a commercial venture. 0:03:28 How have you gone about managing your community 0:03:29 and communicating that with them, 0:03:32 kind of keeping their support for what you’re doing? 0:03:35 – I think for us, it goes back to Peter’s point around 0:03:38 having a clear product management framework 0:03:40 that you can articulate where your community 0:03:42 doesn’t feel like you’re just randomly picking 0:03:44 what goes one way or the other. 0:03:47 And I think for us, it was really trying to draw that line 0:03:49 and saying, okay, great, the things that are truly 0:03:52 organizational complexity problems, right? 0:03:54 You need role-based access control. 0:03:55 You want audit logging. 0:03:58 You need PCI ISO SOC compliance, things like that. 0:04:00 You’re like, okay, great, if you have those problems, 0:04:02 you’re probably a global 10,000 business. 0:04:04 You’re not a SMB hobbyist. 0:04:06 And I think we drew that line and articulated to the community 0:04:08 and said, hey, things in this bucket, great. 0:04:10 They go into enterprise and the people who are gonna pay 0:04:12 for that are the people who have that problem. 0:04:15 You as a hobbyist don’t care about, you know, 0:04:17 hardware security device integration 0:04:18 for your compliance, right? 0:04:19 Like it’s not a problem you have. 0:04:21 And so I think if you articulate it clearly that way 0:04:23 and have the discipline to stick to it, 0:04:24 then the community doesn’t feel like 0:04:26 they’re sort of randomly being jerked around. 0:04:28 And they don’t feel like they’re losing value 0:04:30 ’cause those aren’t problems they have. 0:04:31 – Yeah. 0:04:32 For us, we’re different. 0:04:33 I mean, these guys are much smarter than us. 0:04:35 We didn’t think these things through. 0:04:37 I mean, we just wanted Spark to take over the world 0:04:38 as open source projects. 0:04:40 So we only had one roadmap. 0:04:41 It was the open source roadmap. 0:04:42 We wanted to sort of, and we were frustrated 0:04:43 that no one would adopt it. 0:04:44 And there was a lot of fun in the market 0:04:48 that the technology we built won’t work for this 0:04:49 and won’t work for that. 0:04:50 It only works if it’s in memory, 0:04:52 not if it’s on this, this kind of thing. 0:04:53 So we were super frustrated. 0:04:56 So the first three years, our only goal was get adoption. 0:04:57 We didn’t care about any revenue. 0:04:58 I mean, three, four years in, 0:04:59 we only had one million revenue. 0:05:01 So we only had one roadmap. 0:05:03 We only managed the community. 0:05:05 And then in 2015, it just exploded. 0:05:06 Like it exploded. 0:05:08 Like, I mean, you saw some of the curves. 0:05:10 It’s like, you know, thousands of developers 0:05:12 started contributing code to it. 0:05:14 And at that point, that’s when things started, 0:05:15 the community was so big 0:05:17 and this thing became way bigger than we are. 0:05:19 Like, we were like, unknown. 0:05:21 And then the project was huge. 0:05:22 So at that point, we started thinking through, 0:05:24 hey, how do we actually monetize this thing? 0:05:26 – Can you talk a little bit more about, 0:05:27 you know, that moment in 2015 0:05:29 when you have this huge community 0:05:30 and now you’re starting to think 0:05:32 about the secondary roadmap 0:05:33 where you’re commercializing something. 0:05:35 How did the conversations change? 0:05:36 – Yeah, well, so what happened is, 0:05:37 remember those guys that said, 0:05:39 hey, we don’t want your stuff? 0:05:40 It’s crap. 0:05:42 In 2015, they all took it 0:05:43 and then they went and said, 0:05:45 we are the Spark company. 0:05:46 – Right. 0:05:47 – And they took credit for it. 0:05:50 So, you know, so at that point, we were like, wow, okay. 0:05:52 So everyone was adopting Spark 0:05:53 and actually these established vendors 0:05:55 were actually taking credit for the project 0:05:56 and we were unknown, small company 0:05:58 with one million revenue, right? 0:06:00 So it was at that point that we had to start figure out, 0:06:01 okay, how do we do this? 0:06:02 And that’s when we actually started 0:06:03 leveraging product management 0:06:06 and really listening to, you know, 0:06:09 what are the customers really need? 0:06:12 What’s, enterprise customers, what do they need to succeed? 0:06:13 And we realized actually 0:06:14 that the open source project itself 0:06:16 is far from what it is. 0:06:18 It just covers a small portion of it. 0:06:19 So we started building all the other things 0:06:22 that they need to have a managed solution for enterprises. 0:06:23 And then we started building that 0:06:24 and we kept it, a lot of that proprietary, 0:06:27 frankly speaking, starting in 2016. 0:06:30 We kind of like swung the pendulum the other way. 0:06:31 – You mentioned there a little bit 0:06:33 some of these other companies starting 0:06:34 and I think that’s an interesting space 0:06:37 that happens with these open source communities 0:06:38 is you’re not just the only company 0:06:40 contributing back to this code base. 0:06:42 How have you navigated some of those relationships 0:06:45 where you have competitors in there as well? 0:06:46 – You have this natural advantage 0:06:49 if you’re the sort of spiritual center of the project. 0:06:51 Yes, you could take one of our projects 0:06:53 and fork it and go contribute to yourself. 0:06:55 But in any conversation, right, they’re like, 0:06:58 why would I use your version instead of the Hashikur version? 0:06:59 They’re the author, they’re the creator, 0:07:01 they’re the one with the roadmap control. 0:07:03 So I think, you know, you see some of it 0:07:06 but it just falls by the wayside so rapidly, right? 0:07:09 Because it’s so hard for someone else to build a community 0:07:12 when there’s already sort of an orbit and universe 0:07:15 around sort of the spiritual center of the project. 0:07:16 So I think it’s just super tough. 0:07:18 You just don’t see a lot of that. 0:07:21 – When you say that spiritual center of the project, 0:07:22 like what gives you that? 0:07:24 Where does that come from? 0:07:25 – I think a lot of it comes from the credibility 0:07:27 of having the founders still there, right? 0:07:29 I think it’s super hard if you don’t have, 0:07:31 if not the founding team, 0:07:33 at least the core contributing team. 0:07:35 I think if you have that core development team, 0:07:37 the core founders still there, 0:07:40 it’s very much the spiritual center, right? 0:07:42 And it matters a lot in sales conversations, right? 0:07:43 When you can say, hey, we have the creator, 0:07:46 we have the top 20 contributors, right? 0:07:47 And I think that’s what gives it 0:07:49 that sort of spiritual center. 0:07:52 – And you mentioned that you had all these other competitors 0:07:54 starting around that same time. 0:07:56 How did that play out for you with the community, 0:07:58 kind of making people realize like you guys 0:07:59 were the ones to go to for that? 0:08:01 – Yeah, I mean, I have a controversial opinion 0:08:03 and it’s that most open source projects 0:08:05 are actually just led by one company. 0:08:08 Like there’s really one company that’s contributing to it. 0:08:09 And if you look at the, 0:08:12 in fact, most open source projects are super brittle. 0:08:13 If you actually look really closely, 0:08:15 you’ll notice it’s actually five people only. 0:08:18 It’s six guys or gals that are building the project. 0:08:19 And that’s just one company. 0:08:21 There are some counter examples. 0:08:23 In the case of Hadoop, there was two companies 0:08:24 and that created a huge mess. 0:08:26 So they were like fighting each other. 0:08:27 One would contribute code to it. 0:08:29 The other one would delete it. 0:08:31 And then the other one would add it back. 0:08:32 The Kubernetes maybe has two companies, 0:08:35 like maybe Google and it used to be Red Hat. 0:08:37 So it’s usually anyway, 0:08:38 just only one company or two companies. 0:08:40 So in our case, while other people started saying, 0:08:43 hey, we also offer Spark on the ground, 0:08:46 they weren’t really actually digging in. 0:08:47 They were just selling it. 0:08:48 – They were just packing it up. 0:08:48 – They were packing it up. 0:08:50 So I mean, I think in case of Hashtag Corp, 0:08:52 you guys are the only real major contributors. 0:08:54 But if you look at GitHub, 0:08:56 I’m sure you sort on contributions and commits, 0:08:58 you’ll find that the absolute majority 0:08:59 is just probably Hashtag. 0:09:00 We saw the exact same thing. 0:09:02 It’s in sort of same thing. 0:09:04 Everyone said, yeah, we’re like a lot of, 0:09:07 there’s a lot of people who look at the code 0:09:10 and maybe put a comment in or whatever, 0:09:13 but fundamentally looking at like really innovating 0:09:15 and all that really happened. 0:09:18 It’s like down to really a handful of folks who do it. 0:09:20 It’s actually very interesting. 0:09:22 Notwithstanding how large the company’s getting all that, 0:09:25 there’s always the core group that knows it. 0:09:26 Absolutely. 0:09:28 – The way we sort of articulate is almost all of our products 0:09:30 make a distinction between what we’ll call a core 0:09:32 and then sort of the extension points around the edge. 0:09:34 And if I look at the contributor graph, 0:09:35 if you look at core, it’s exactly that. 0:09:37 Yeah, it’s like five, 10, 20 people 0:09:40 working at Hashtag Corp, the 99% of the core. 0:09:42 It’s the contributions set at the edge 0:09:44 where you have these integration points where it’s, 0:09:45 you know, take a terraform, for example, 0:09:48 its integration surface is infinite, right? 0:09:50 And so at that edge is like where you go from, you know, 0:09:53 20 contributors to 2,000 contributors on the outside. 0:09:55 And I would guess for you guys is a similar thing 0:09:57 around there’s the core versus maybe some of the algorithms 0:09:59 or plugins that sit at the edge 0:10:00 where it’s easier to contribute, 0:10:02 you don’t have to be a core expert. 0:10:03 – Yeah, I agree. 0:10:05 I’m just saying in terms of like core ownership 0:10:06 of the project, it’s one company. 0:10:11 – And I would say that where open source sort of degrades 0:10:14 is the opposite of that where you have many companies 0:10:16 all arguing with each other. 0:10:18 I mean, OpenStack was a really great, 0:10:22 to me, and a great example of that where, you know, 0:10:25 like it was a jump-all on every company 0:10:27 had their own version, had their own thing, 0:10:29 and there was no consistency with it 0:10:34 because there was, in my mind, no leadership of that project. 0:10:35 – While we’re kind of on the topic 0:10:38 of participating in these communities, 0:10:40 how have you gone about managing kind of the engineering 0:10:44 function within an organization and keeping them involved 0:10:46 and how do they interact with that community? 0:10:49 – So the way I see it these days is you run a company, 0:10:50 you have an engineering department, 0:10:51 you have your product management, 0:10:52 and you’re building an awesome product 0:10:55 that’s gonna, you know, wow your customers. 0:10:56 That’s it. 0:10:59 A portion of it happens to be open source for us these days. 0:11:01 And that portion, we manage a community 0:11:03 and we give them roadmaps and, you know, do that. 0:11:08 But really, by and large, Databricks is, you know, 0:11:10 software company, I focus on building software. 0:11:13 The fact that some portions of it happen to be open source, 0:11:15 that’s just an amazing lead gen machine 0:11:18 that, you know, makes us be able to walk into accounts 0:11:20 and get ahead of the competition 0:11:21 because that’s how we know you guys. 0:11:23 You guys create its part. 0:11:25 But really, the way I look at the company is, you know, 0:11:28 build amazing software that you can monetize 0:11:29 with enterprise customers. 0:11:31 That’s the only way I look at it. 0:11:32 – Yeah, I’d guess our engineering 0:11:33 probably looks pretty similar. 0:11:36 It’s not like a open source side of engineering 0:11:37 and then an enterprise side. 0:11:39 It’s sort of one team and they just work 0:11:41 against two different roadmaps and, you know, 0:11:42 some of the features land in open source, 0:11:43 some of them land in enterprise, 0:11:45 but it’s the same engineering team, 0:11:47 same sort of product management team. 0:11:50 – Do you guys have a framework for how to think about 0:11:52 what goes in open source and not? 0:11:56 And is that consistent over time or for each release? 0:11:57 Do you debate that? 0:11:59 – Yeah, so we sort of articulated something 0:12:02 probably early 2017, which was we think about 0:12:05 sort of our split as what’s technical complexity 0:12:06 versus what’s organizational. 0:12:08 So if we’re solving something that’s fundamentally 0:12:11 caused by the organization, right? 0:12:13 You have, for example, a silo between networking 0:12:15 and security in ops, right? 0:12:16 You have a collaboration problem now. 0:12:19 Or you have a PKI team that’s distinct 0:12:20 from your security team, right? 0:12:21 – And those are close. 0:12:23 – Those are enterprise things, right? 0:12:26 Versus is it a core technical thing that we’re solving? 0:12:27 Right, like the tool fundamentally needs it? 0:12:29 That’s open source. 0:12:31 – SaaS software is very different 0:12:34 from the Red Hat support services on-prem. 0:12:37 That’s really the big difference for Databricks. 0:12:40 So kind of what we open source and what we don’t open source 0:12:42 doesn’t really matter to our customers, you know? 0:12:44 And that’s just because we’re SaaS company. 0:12:45 If we’re on-prem, it would have been a different business, 0:12:47 but because we’re in the cloud, 0:12:49 they’re renting the service from us. 0:12:51 They’re not trying to run our software. 0:12:52 They’re just renting it from us 0:12:55 and they’re paying us rent for that service, right? 0:12:56 They just want this to work in the cloud 0:12:58 and we manage it for them. 0:13:00 Where it would maybe get, iffy, 0:13:02 is if someone else decides to take all of our software 0:13:03 and offer it as well. 0:13:05 So it’s just that competitive angle. 0:13:07 Otherwise, our customers don’t care. 0:13:08 And I think the perfect example of that 0:13:10 is Amazon Web Services. 0:13:12 People use Amazon Web Services as an enterprise. 0:13:14 They have over a million customers now, right? 0:13:18 They never ask, hey, is EC2 from Amazon open source? 0:13:21 It is S3 from Amazon open source. 0:13:23 It’s Redshift from Amazon open source. 0:13:25 They’re not and no one seems to care. 0:13:28 And the truth is when you’re renting a service in the cloud, 0:13:31 you know, it’s just a different dynamic. 0:13:32 So we don’t have to worry too much about these things. 0:13:35 What becomes open source and what’s not. 0:13:36 – That’s an interesting thing because I think 0:13:39 we sit in phase one.o and you’re sort of in phase two.o, 0:13:41 which is like, we’re by and large on-premise 0:13:42 desktop software vendor. 0:13:45 – This is why we didn’t go to on-prem at Dead Rix. 0:13:48 ‘Cause we wanted to have this model. 0:13:50 We didn’t want to have to worry about this. 0:13:52 So you just rent the service from us in the cloud. 0:13:53 That’s it. 0:13:56 It’s very inspired by Amazon sort of business model, 0:13:59 rather than the red hat model, which is what exists on-prem. 0:14:00 Harder to monetize, I think. 0:14:01 – Absolutely. 0:14:02 – Well, since you’re talking about 0:14:05 kind of these cloud vendors, you mentioned AWS. 0:14:07 Peter said in this presentation, you know, 0:14:10 hey, we’ve maybe over-rotated on this threat. 0:14:12 Agree or disagree with that? 0:14:14 – I think it depends on the type of software you run. 0:14:16 And what I mean by that is, you know, 0:14:18 there’s things that are super compelling 0:14:20 for the clouds to want to run. 0:14:21 And there’s things that, you know, 0:14:22 maybe they care less so, right? 0:14:24 So I think about like HashiCorp tooling, for example. 0:14:26 You know, Terraform, for example, 0:14:28 it allows you to consume more cloud. 0:14:29 And so in that sense, 0:14:31 anything that allows you to consume more cloud, 0:14:32 wonderful, what do they care? 0:14:34 You know, they don’t care if you’re running Windows 0:14:35 or Linux or whatever you want to do. 0:14:37 Just draw more power, basically. 0:14:38 And so in that sense, it’s like, 0:14:41 is there value in them co-opting Terraform 0:14:42 or console or ball and running it themselves? 0:14:45 Like, okay, you’re gonna run two more extra nodes in Amazon. 0:14:48 Like the amount, it’s a rounding error for them. 0:14:50 So I think by the nature of being management tooling, 0:14:52 it doesn’t drive what they really monetize, 0:14:57 which is CPU hours, network I/O, disk gigs, right? 0:14:57 That’s it, right? 0:15:01 Everything else is just different packaging of that. 0:15:03 So I think, you know, it depends kind of where you sit 0:15:06 in that, you know, how aligned 0:15:08 are you to what the cloud cares about, I think. 0:15:09 – I think you guys are an interesting case, 0:15:12 usually if you sort of drive all three of those, 0:15:14 you know, probably heavy users of compute network 0:15:15 and storage. 0:15:17 So I think it’s probably a different interest. 0:15:19 – We don’t get any paid on those things. 0:15:20 We only get paid on the software. 0:15:22 We, they get a separate bill from the cloud vendors. 0:15:24 I mean, I kind of agree with Peter. 0:15:26 I see it differently from like the community 0:15:30 or the media, how they describe this problem. 0:15:32 The way I see it is basically there’s a bunch 0:15:35 of on-prem vendors, ISVs, you know, startups like us, 0:15:38 they’re running successful open source projects. 0:15:40 And then their customer base is moving to the cloud. 0:15:41 So they talk to their customers and the customer’s like, 0:15:43 hey, we’re about to move into the cloud. 0:15:45 So they say, oh, okay, we’ll also offer our service 0:15:46 in the cloud. 0:15:47 So they try to offer it in the cloud. 0:15:50 Then it turns out it’s actually extremely hard 0:15:51 to offer a cloud service. 0:15:53 And it takes you many years to get good at it. 0:15:55 In our case, we’ve only been in the cloud 0:15:56 from the very beginning. 0:15:57 We’ve never been on-prem. 0:15:58 We’re good at running cloud services. 0:16:01 There’s no problem in, you know, offering services 0:16:03 that has a lot of value to customers and to pay for it. 0:16:05 And we can run it really well in the cloud. 0:16:08 So as an example of that, we had a proprietary thing 0:16:10 called Delta, which had massive adoption 0:16:11 in the last few years. 0:16:12 It’s completely proprietary. 0:16:13 And we decided to open source it this year. 0:16:16 And we open sourced it with completely liberal open licenses 0:16:18 with no shenanigans in there. 0:16:20 You don’t need to freak out and be afraid of the cloud 0:16:22 vendors if you know how to run a cloud service. 0:16:23 But it’s hard to run a cloud service. 0:16:25 Running the SaaS model has been very hard. 0:16:26 It takes a long time to get good at it. 0:16:30 So like when we did the shift over sort of to start monetizing 0:16:33 it, you tell your engineers, hey, dude, can you, you know, 0:16:34 have this pager duty? 0:16:36 And, you know, might have to wake you up at 3 AM 0:16:37 if the thing goes down. 0:16:38 And then you’re like, what? 0:16:39 Like, I don’t want to. 0:16:40 It’s like, yeah, you’re on call. 0:16:41 This is the rotation. 0:16:43 You know, you have to wake up at 4 AM. 0:16:45 Between 4 and 6, you’re covering if there’s 0:16:47 any outrage of any security breach and so on. 0:16:49 That’s the hard thing that you have to do, 0:16:50 which the on-prem vendors don’t have to do really 0:16:51 for their service, right? 0:16:53 Because it’s the responsibility of the IT 0:16:55 department of that private data center of your customer 0:17:00 to handle outages, security breaches, SLAs, yada, yada. 0:17:03 Whereas in our case, we had to tell our engineers, hey, sorry. 0:17:06 Like, that’s why we’re getting paid the big bucks. 0:17:07 Carry this pager. 0:17:09 It feels like there’s an interesting analogy, right? 0:17:11 Which is, you know, there was an era where, as everything 0:17:13 went from hardware to software, you 0:17:14 saw the hardware companies really struggle. 0:17:17 Because fundamentally, if your core competency is hardware, 0:17:19 it doesn’t translate super well to software. 0:17:21 And I think as you go from being a software vendor to saying, 0:17:23 hey, I want to be a cloud service provider, 0:17:26 the skill set, the core competency of writing 0:17:28 and developing software actually doesn’t translate that well 0:17:29 into being good operationally. 0:17:31 It’s a completely different skill set. 0:17:33 So I think as you go through from being from a software vendor 0:17:35 into saying, I want to be a cloud SaaS vendor, 0:17:37 you might find that actually your internal core competency 0:17:38 isn’t there. 0:17:42 My sort of opinion on this, it’s very hard to do both. 0:17:45 And we’re all tempted to go, many startups 0:17:49 are tempted to do both so that we have optionality. 0:17:53 Hey, if they, well, a customer can buy in any case, right? 0:17:56 But I think you guys have pointed out a very important part 0:17:59 here, that doing both is really, really 0:18:03 hard to do as a large company, let alone as a startup. 0:18:05 The misunderstanding is in the media, 0:18:08 they say, oh, you know, these big cloud vendors, 0:18:10 they’re just taking other people’s open source software, 0:18:13 not contributing anything back and just exploiting that. 0:18:16 What they forget to tell you is they’re really, really good 0:18:18 at running that software in the cloud. 0:18:19 And almost no one else can do it. 0:18:20 It’s really hard to do. 0:18:23 And actually, they’re getting paid the big bucks for that. 0:18:24 That’s what they don’t tell you. 0:18:28 It’s because ruin is the villain and hero story. 0:18:30 Yeah, well, I think that speaks to the fact 0:18:32 that there’s a lot more nuance to the relationship 0:18:35 between an open source company and a cloud vendor 0:18:37 than maybe what we see in the media. 0:18:40 How have you or how have you seen other open source companies 0:18:43 navigate the nuance of a cloud vendor relationship 0:18:46 or other partnerships around open source? 0:18:48 I think you can partner with them. 0:18:48 They’re good partners. 0:18:51 We have extremely close partnership with Microsoft. 0:18:53 We also had good partnership with Amazon and other cloud 0:18:54 vendors. 0:18:55 You can partner with them. 0:18:57 It’s like all these workloads on the planet 0:18:59 are moving into the cloud. 0:19:01 There’s just so much for us all to eat. 0:19:03 Figure out what the cloud vendors are good at. 0:19:05 Let them add value there. 0:19:07 Look at where they’re not adding value. 0:19:08 You can go there and focus on that. 0:19:09 And then partner with them. 0:19:11 It’s a win-win situation. 0:19:12 You can do that. 0:19:15 So I do think one has to figure out how to align with them. 0:19:17 And I think one mistake a lot of big companies are doing 0:19:21 is they don’t align their Salesforce comp models 0:19:24 to be compatible with the big company’s comp model. 0:19:26 The way it works at Databricks is our customers 0:19:30 get two bills, one bill from the cloud vendor 0:19:31 and then one bill from us. 0:19:34 You get a bill for the hardware storage, the watts 0:19:36 from the cloud vendors, and you get a bill from us 0:19:37 on the software. 0:19:38 The reason that is really important 0:19:42 is that that other bill that they get from the cloud vendors 0:19:45 is actually paying the sales compensation of the cloud 0:19:47 company salespeople. 0:19:48 Hence, they like us. 0:19:51 So they partner with us in the field in every account. 0:19:53 However, if we change the pricing model 0:19:54 so that they don’t get paid, then they 0:19:56 would hate us and block us from all the accounts. 0:19:58 So I think that’s like a minor nuance 0:20:00 that some companies haven’t figured out 0:20:03 and they end up in a really fierce competitive situation 0:20:04 with the cloud vendors. 0:20:05 We don’t have that problem. 0:20:07 The cloud vendors are very friendly to us. 0:20:08 I kind of want to zoom in a little bit and put 0:20:10 Peter in the hot seat. 0:20:12 He shared kind of that four stage funnel from developer 0:20:15 community management to product management 0:20:19 to kind of the lead jet and sales dev and then those sales. 0:20:20 I’m curious, how has that played out for you? 0:20:22 Has that held true? 0:20:25 What parts didn’t necessarily hold true? 0:20:27 I think it goes through those exact phases 0:20:29 that sort of Peter laid out. 0:20:31 I think then those phases actually map pretty well 0:20:32 into the funnel as well, which is 0:20:34 that early phase of product market fit. 0:20:37 It’s a lot about developer advocacy, building the community, 0:20:40 things like that as you go into a repeatable sales cycle. 0:20:42 Well, that only works if you have a tight fit 0:20:45 between product management and product marketing in terms 0:20:47 of, OK, great, we need the futures customers are asking for. 0:20:48 And then we should tell them about that. 0:20:51 So there has to be sort of an integration there, that phase. 0:20:53 And then I think as you start going to scale, 0:20:57 you get to those phases three and four in the funnel 0:20:58 to really be able to amplify that message 0:21:01 and bring in the cloud partners as part of your channel. 0:21:04 I think the only thing that maybe we experience slightly 0:21:06 differently actually would be on that fourth phase. 0:21:10 I think you laid out sort of start with SaaS, self-service, 0:21:12 then go departmental, then go enterprise. 0:21:14 For us, it’s almost been exactly the opposite. 0:21:16 And I think it, again, I think it’s 0:21:19 because we were sort of a phase 1.0 versus a phase 2.0. 0:21:22 I also think it depends on what product you’re actually selling. 0:21:25 You may not have– your value may not accrete 0:21:28 to an individual user, in which case, 0:21:30 I just want to make it clear, you may not have that line 0:21:33 because the product doesn’t support that line. 0:21:36 And so then you may start– many companies 0:21:38 start with field sales first. 0:21:42 So it was an example of how to layer it up as opposed to that’s 0:21:44 every company ought to be that. 0:21:46 But I think it goes to your point that you made of having 0:21:48 a framework in terms of what do you decide 0:21:49 goes open versus enterprise. 0:21:51 Because as I describe our framework, 0:21:53 our dividing line is what accretes to an individual. 0:21:54 Well, that’s open source. 0:21:57 And what accretes to an enterprise. 0:22:00 And so because of the divide we use in product management, 0:22:03 it’s very hard for us to have a sort of a self-service model. 0:22:04 There is no self. 0:22:05 That’s given away for free. 0:22:05 We’ve given away. 0:22:07 So you could look at that bottom curve 0:22:10 and say this is the open source line. 0:22:13 It’s not dollars per customer, whatever the y-axis would be. 0:22:16 And then you’d build your revenue model on top of that. 0:22:16 Exactly. 0:22:18 Exactly. 0:22:20 So I think for us, once you sort of acknowledge, hey, 0:22:22 that’s the divide, it makes sense 0:22:25 to start on the enterprise side. 0:22:29 In an article that Peter wrote in 2013, I think, 0:22:31 that was same time as we started Databricks, 0:22:34 in which he really accentuated the big difference 0:22:38 between this Red Hat model and the SAS model. 0:22:39 And it really resonated with us. 0:22:42 And we really thought, our view was really 0:22:44 like this on-prem Red Hat open source model is dead. 0:22:45 It’s bad. 0:22:46 We looked down on it. 0:22:48 We didn’t want to have anything to do with it. 0:22:52 And we really saw this SAS model as extremely powerful. 0:22:55 And it’s pretty prescient, because 2012, ’13, 0:22:59 and you know, AWS was not the huge phenomenon it is today. 0:23:01 Now it’s absolutely exploded. 0:23:03 It’s like taking over the whole planet. 0:23:05 So I agree with it, but I think the thing 0:23:08 that I would really emphasize is, for me, 0:23:11 the difference between SAS and non-SAS 0:23:12 makes a huge difference. 0:23:15 I think churn is higher if you’re not SAS. 0:23:17 I think net expansion rates are lower. 0:23:19 I think everything is worse if you’re not SAS. 0:23:21 Because what can happen– I’ll give you an example. 0:23:23 I’m not going to name the names. 0:23:25 But basically, there was an open source event. 0:23:27 This is one of those cases where the open source software 0:23:30 actually had two companies fighting over it. 0:23:32 They had contributors. 0:23:36 One would run it on-prem and give support and services. 0:23:38 And then what would happen is, after a couple of years, 0:23:41 the customer would keep the software, because it’s free, 0:23:43 but then migrate and get support from the other cheaper 0:23:46 vendor, but keep the same software. 0:23:48 That you can’t do with SAS services, right? 0:23:49 If you want to move away– if you 0:23:51 don’t want to have a contract with us, 0:23:52 we would shut down the service. 0:23:53 You can’t use it anymore. 0:23:55 And so hence– and then what they would do 0:23:56 is, then they get the cheaper vendor. 0:23:57 And then after a couple of years, 0:23:59 they would not even renew with the cheaper vendor, 0:24:00 because they would say, I actually 0:24:03 hired your support guy into my company, 0:24:05 so I don’t need to buy any support from you anymore. 0:24:07 And I’m still going to keep the software. 0:24:08 With SAS, you can’t do that. 0:24:10 So churn ends up being lower. 0:24:11 Expansion rates are higher. 0:24:12 Everything is just better. 0:24:15 It’s super interesting as I think about it. 0:24:17 Well, there’s an exact example of commodity 0:24:21 when I can go swat like all this software has been developed. 0:24:25 And yet, it’s total commodity that I can basically 0:24:28 go from one vendor to another to hiring a person 0:24:30 to actually support this thing. 0:24:32 And that’s what was happening during that era 0:24:35 when I mentioned the difference between open source 0:24:37 valuations versus proprietary. 0:24:41 This was exactly that characteristic that propagated 0:24:42 that particular dynamic. 0:24:45 So open source– the software itself 0:24:47 has zero intrinsic value. 0:24:48 Anyone can download it. 0:24:50 So if these companies were selling, 0:24:53 their value was support and services, 0:24:55 which quickly gets commoditized. 0:24:56 And it goes down to who can do that most efficiently 0:24:59 where on the planet, and they can manage that P&L. 0:25:01 And then you have a company like Red Hat, which 0:25:03 has sort of a scale advantage. 0:25:04 Exactly. 0:25:05 That’s their value at. 0:25:07 It’s a scale advantage to do exactly that. 0:25:10 So for people who aren’t familiar with that article 0:25:13 from back in 2013, could you give kind of a quick summary 0:25:13 of what your– 0:25:16 I mean, the title of this blog was 0:25:19 “Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat,” was the title. 0:25:23 And I made the argument to Ali’s point 0:25:28 that the support model was pretty broken at the time. 0:25:31 And thinking about going to a service– 0:25:35 to a open source service model, hosted service, 0:25:40 was a way to really uncover and accentuate 0:25:43 the value of the product that you’re bringing to the market. 0:25:44 So that was– 0:25:47 I mean, there’s basically all the points that we argued here. 0:25:51 Red Hat had the scale and capacity to go and do that. 0:25:52 Don’t get me wrong. 0:25:53 Red Hat is a great company. 0:25:55 It’s just very hard for a startup 0:25:59 to go replicate what they have done because their value at 0:26:00 is the scale. 0:26:03 And the things that startups don’t do very well 0:26:06 is scale, because you don’t have the money to go and do that. 0:26:09 So it’s counter– it’s sort of counterproductive 0:26:10 on that dimension. 0:26:12 Compete with Procter and Gamble and Distributor. 0:26:14 Exactly, like, it doesn’t– you can’t do that. 0:26:16 You can’t do that as a startup. 0:26:18 SAS also is killing that business model even more. 0:26:19 Because the– 0:26:20 Totally. 0:26:23 The secret sauce– like, the thing that’s weird about Red Hat 0:26:25 is that of all the open source companies that exist, 0:26:27 that for some reason, that people can analyze and debate 0:26:30 forever, they ended up being a monopoly. 0:26:31 Exactly, yes. 0:26:33 Without really any fierce competition, 0:26:35 which is generally not true about the open source software. 0:26:37 You end up– because the software has zero intrinsic value, 0:26:39 you end up getting lots of competitors, which 0:26:42 commoditizes the price and brings it down. 0:26:45 So but with the cloud vendors now, 0:26:48 you’re much more unlikely to have a monopoly like they had. 0:26:50 Because if you offer just free software 0:26:52 that you’re just distributing, they can also pick it up 0:26:53 and offer it. 0:26:55 So it’s very unlikely there will ever 0:26:58 be another Red Hat because of that. 0:27:01 So what practical advice might you give? 0:27:05 Having done on-prem, I’d say skip on-prem. 0:27:09 Go straight to SAS, save yourself. 0:27:12 Yeah, I mean, I think the advantages 0:27:16 that Ali has talked about around the SAS model are very true. 0:27:19 And I think, to Peter’s point about changing competence, 0:27:22 being very hard, if you go down the road of building software 0:27:25 competence and then realize you want to switch to SAS 0:27:28 competence, very much the bucket we’re in, to be honest, 0:27:31 you realize it’s a hard shift, right? 0:27:32 It is a different skill set. 0:27:35 It’s a different set of practices. 0:27:39 And so the earlier you can do that, ideally at inception, 0:27:41 the easier your life will be, right? 0:27:43 The further you get down one road, 0:27:46 the harder and more painful that shift really is. 0:27:49 Yeah, for me, I would say SAS is obviously the one. 0:27:50 Definitely just start with the SAS. 0:27:51 By the way, Wall Street likes SAS 0:27:53 and gives you higher multiples. 0:27:54 So you get a higher valuation. 0:27:56 So there’s that as well. 0:28:01 But ignoring that aspect, I think what is it you want to do? 0:28:04 What do you want your company to do? 0:28:05 Which space do you pick? 0:28:07 And the way I think about it is you 0:28:09 have to expect these three cloud vendors, Amazon, 0:28:12 Microsoft, Google, they each have roughly $100 billion 0:28:14 of cash sitting around. 0:28:16 And they actually have a printing press 0:28:18 that’s not the cloud business, right? 0:28:20 They either have an ad business as a printing press, 0:28:23 or they have a Windows or something server business 0:28:24 that is a printing press. 0:28:27 Or they have a retail of everything on the planet 0:28:29 as their printing press. 0:28:31 So you should just assume that they’re 0:28:34 going to get really, really good at the lower levels of the stack. 0:28:36 And the lower levels of the stack, 0:28:37 there aren’t that many things. 0:28:40 There’s like machines, there is storage, 0:28:42 there’s networking, there’s some databases. 0:28:43 That’s it. 0:28:45 You move up the stack a little bit. 0:28:46 You start having much more. 0:28:49 And as you move up the stack, it gets more and more verticalized. 0:28:51 And it actually becomes a lot of different things, 0:28:53 a lot of different products. 0:28:54 The cloud vendors can’t win all of those. 0:28:57 They can dominate and crush and just completely 0:28:58 own the bottom layers. 0:29:00 The higher up you go, there’s going 0:29:01 to be a lot of vendors. 0:29:03 Otherwise, if I’m wrong about this statement, 0:29:06 there will only be three companies on the whole planet 0:29:06 in software. 0:29:08 That’s very unlikely. 0:29:10 So pick a space higher up in the stack. 0:29:11 Competition will be much less. 0:29:13 It’s going to get much more verticalized. 0:29:18 And do the sass and you’ll probably be very successful. 0:29:20 I did want to touch on briefly your backgrounds 0:29:24 and the origin of open source, as well as your own start 0:29:27 in academia. 0:29:29 Those two have been really tightly linked. 0:29:31 Now we see with commercializing open source, 0:29:33 what does that relationship look like? 0:29:36 How are academia and open source connected in your mind? 0:29:38 I mean, I think one of the interesting things 0:29:40 about academia is going back forever. 0:29:43 It’s always had this ethos of it’s free software. 0:29:45 It’s sort of publicly funded. 0:29:47 You get in government grants to pay for the stuff. 0:29:49 So you’re sort of naturally giving it out 0:29:51 or the code is there for it so other people can reproduce 0:29:53 the work and extend it and add on it. 0:29:56 So I think if you spend time in that, 0:29:57 you kind of soak in that ethos. 0:30:00 And that’s sort of the notion that the software is free 0:30:02 and other people collaborate and extend and remix. 0:30:04 That comes normal, like it doesn’t seem weird. 0:30:05 I think the other nice thing is, 0:30:07 especially infrastructure software, 0:30:09 this stuff isn’t like, hey, I’m gonna bang it out 0:30:11 over a weekend and launch my cool new app 0:30:12 and put it on Hacker News, right? 0:30:15 It’s like spend years building this stuff, right? 0:30:19 And really getting it to a point of broad usability, 0:30:21 scalability, et cetera. 0:30:23 And so where are the environments where you can spend years 0:30:26 and years working on a thing, right? 0:30:27 You kind of have that luxury in academia 0:30:29 to be able to do that. 0:30:31 And so it’s like, the first few years of development 0:30:34 take place in a university, 0:30:37 and then it becomes sort of an industrial project from there. 0:30:39 But it would be very hard to bootstrap some of the stuff 0:30:41 from zero in an industrial setting. 0:30:46 – Yeah, I actually think academia is misconfigured. 0:30:48 I mean, I’m actually a young professor, 0:30:50 so I’m kind of, I wear that hat too. 0:30:53 But I think in the systems research field, 0:30:54 it’s misconfigured. 0:30:56 I think there’s a huge opportunity for academia 0:30:59 to come in and completely disrupt the software scene. 0:31:01 But the way it’s configured right now 0:31:03 is as academics, 0:31:04 we get incentivized on publishing papers 0:31:06 in the top conferences, 0:31:09 and that’s what we focus on typically. 0:31:11 If the focus was on push the boundaries 0:31:13 of what kind of software you can build 0:31:14 and disrupt the world with it, 0:31:16 you know, all these universities, 0:31:18 with all these students that have five years 0:31:19 to sit and create the open source project, 0:31:21 could like completely disrupt 0:31:22 how software is done on the planet. 0:31:24 It’s a gigantic opportunity for any university 0:31:26 to sort of take on. 0:31:28 Berkeley actually did it, I mean, to our credit. 0:31:30 I mean, we kind of pushed forward on that 0:31:32 with some of these labs that we had, 0:31:34 like Rad Lab, Amplab, Rise Lab, 0:31:35 but it’s just scratching the surface. 0:31:38 I think there is a scenario, 0:31:41 if all the universities kind of figured this out, 0:31:41 which they haven’t, 0:31:44 that they could like completely start owning the software space. 0:31:47 It could become like the future of how software is developed. 0:31:48 It’s like basically open source projects 0:31:50 that the different universities are leading. 0:31:52 That’s not happening right now. 0:31:55 – All right, so kind of time for like a last question here. 0:31:56 What area of open source right now 0:31:58 is the most fascinating to you? 0:32:01 Where do you think the most interesting things are happening? 0:32:03 – I mean, so I’m going to kind of not answer that 0:32:08 by saying data and how, you know, 0:32:11 the value of data and the ecosystem around it, 0:32:12 how you can buy it, how you can sell it, 0:32:13 how you can leverage it, 0:32:16 and the models that interpret that data. 0:32:18 That’s, you know, we think of software, 0:32:20 we used to think of a hardware software and so on. 0:32:22 I think data is the next thing. 0:32:24 And, you know, I mean, a lot of people have said it, 0:32:25 it’s the new oil or, you know, 0:32:27 but we’re just in the beginning of that. 0:32:29 It was the early innings of how that’s, 0:32:31 there’s going to be an economy forming around data itself. 0:32:32 I mean, it’s already kind of happening. 0:32:33 So that’s, I think, fascinating. 0:32:37 So I think that’s like the next third wave 0:32:39 of interesting sort of market trend 0:32:41 that you’re going to see in the software space. 0:32:43 Like the software will kind of be free, 0:32:45 but who has the data will actually, 0:32:46 and the models around it are going to be the, 0:32:49 that’s going to be the competitive edge. 0:32:51 – I’ve always personally been a bit of a systems guy. 0:32:53 So I love following sort of like what’s happening 0:32:54 in database research land. 0:32:57 And to me, I think, you know, it’s been interesting 0:33:00 ’cause it’s like it already BMS has sort of ruled the world 0:33:01 for decades and decades. 0:33:03 And I think what’s finally happening 0:33:05 is you’re either seeing shifts because of scale, right? 0:33:06 You’re no longer saying, okay, 0:33:08 I can fit all the data on one machine. 0:33:09 I need to, you know, fundamentally go 0:33:11 to a clustered architecture. 0:33:14 Or now as we think about sort of IoT edge, 0:33:15 fog computing, whatever you want to call it, 0:33:18 there’s these notion sort of hierarchical levels of data 0:33:19 where you might have high bandwidth, 0:33:21 high throughput, you know, cloud data centers 0:33:23 and then, you know, go out to sort of an Akamai 0:33:26 or Fastly Pop and then go out to someone’s house 0:33:27 and then go out to your phone. 0:33:29 And so how do you actually design systems 0:33:32 that can reconcile and handle data sort of planetary scale, 0:33:34 much higher volume, much lower latency 0:33:39 and reconcile and do it all in a comprehensible way. 0:33:41 So I think that’s a sort of a fascinating space 0:33:44 in terms of, you know, is RDBMS finally being challenged 0:33:48 as sort of supreme when it comes to data management? 0:33:52 – I think one of the fascinating elements of open source 0:33:54 is the origination of projects now. 0:33:58 Like these stats of Google doing 2,000 projects 0:34:01 and all of that, maybe that’s part of the answer of, 0:34:05 you know, I love your academic sort of comment. 0:34:06 It may not happen there, but the fact 0:34:09 that all of these companies are really built 0:34:12 on large backbones of open source 0:34:14 and are releasing these projects into the market 0:34:17 where there’s, you know, not a lot of strategic value 0:34:19 to them, I think it’s in quotes, 0:34:23 unlocking a huge number of opportunities 0:34:27 that I think will very much dominate the landscape 0:34:30 as we, you know, sort of roll into the future. 0:34:31 That’s really interesting. 0:34:34 – I want to thank you, thank the panelists 0:34:36 and a huge thanks, Peter, to you 0:34:37 for sharing all this information. 0:34:39 (audience applauding) 0:34:41 – You just heard Olly Goetze of Databricks, 0:34:43 Armand Adger of Hashicorp 0:34:45 and A16Z general partner, Peter Levine, 0:34:48 with me, Das Rush, moderating the discussion. 0:34:49 Thanks again for listening. 0:34:52 And if you want to learn more about open source, 0:34:53 the importance of commercializing it 0:34:55 and what it takes to turn an open source project 0:34:57 into a business, you can download 0:34:59 and/or watch Peter’s presentation 0:35:04 and other open source materials at a16z.com/opensource.
Today, despite the critical importance of open source to software, it’s still seen by some as blasphemous to make money as an open source business. In this podcast, Armon Dadgar, Cofounder and CTO of HashiCorp; Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks; and a16z General Partner Peter Levine explain why it’s necessary to turn some open source projects into businesses.
They also cover the most important questions for open source leaders to answer: How do you keep community engaged while building a business? What new opportunities does SaaS (software-as-a-service) present? And if you are a SaaS business, how should you approach cloud service companies, like Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
The Hustle’s My First Million presents: Million Dollar Brainstorm. Host Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and The Hustle CEO Sam Parr (@theSamParr) sit down and discuss what side hustles, trends and big business ideas that’s keeping them up at night. This week they shoot the sh*t about the no code movement, reinventing fireworks through drone light shows, creating a brand around miniature things, putting tiny houses in your backyard, the huge business of website plugins and social agencies. If you enjoy this and would like a weekly briefing on super in-depth research in these trends, Sam has offered a discount on The Hustle’s Trends newsletter, go to https://trends.co/million.
0:00:01 – What was that aha moment for you? 0:00:05 I see something the rest of the world doesn’t see yet. 0:00:05 – Yeah. 0:00:06 – Well, I mean– 0:00:08 – Simon Sinek, popular at 50 million views. 0:00:10 – I mean, my initial conclusion was, 0:00:12 the good partnerships, you love the partner, 0:00:13 and they’re offering you the ability 0:00:15 to expand your vision. 0:00:17 Though it won’t be perfect, no relationship is, 0:00:18 you still love coming to work 0:00:20 because you feel like you’re still advancing 0:00:21 the greater good in building this business. 0:00:23 Those are the partnerships we should be pursuing. 0:00:24 – Discomfort is one of those things 0:00:26 that to learn to be uncomfortable 0:00:28 is nobody who’s ever achieved anything in the world 0:00:29 did it smoothly. 0:00:32 We all came close to zero if not hitting zero first. 0:00:35 And when you’re coming up to a stranger, 0:00:37 can you help me get out of this? 0:00:38 My answer is always the same as, 0:00:40 why would I get into mud with a stranger? 0:00:41 – Right. – I don’t know you. 0:00:43 Go ask somebody who loves you. 0:00:44 It’s safer to be vulnerable with me 0:00:45 because I’m a stranger. 0:00:46 It’s hard to be vulnerable 0:00:48 with somebody who actually knows me. 0:00:50 I don’t know the three most important words 0:00:52 that a young entrepreneur can ever learn. 0:00:53 It’s your story, it’s also my story. 0:00:55 I thought I had to have every answer 0:00:56 and if I didn’t, I thought I had to pretend that I did. 0:00:58 Let me tell you, you are who you are 0:00:59 and the rest of your life is simply an opportunity 0:01:01 to live in balance with that wire. 0:01:03 I’ll show you another way to find your wire. 0:01:04 Which is, and this is. 0:01:07 – This episode is brought to you by Manscaped. 0:01:08 Manscaped, in my opinion, 0:01:11 has the best beard razor on the market. 0:01:12 It’s called the Beard Hedger. 0:01:15 It has 20 different length adjustments 0:01:16 with this 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thanks to Element for sponsoring today’s show. 0:03:34 – Simon, thank you for joining me. 0:03:35 – Thanks for having me. 0:03:36 – So great to have you on. 0:03:39 I’ve been a fan from afar watching what you’ve done 0:03:41 over the years and your content. 0:03:42 In preparation for this interview, 0:03:44 I had to go and just check the numbers 0:03:47 of how you’ve blown up over the years. 0:03:51 I mean, it’s insane, so 56 million views or so 0:03:53 on Start With Why. 0:03:56 Did you have any idea it was gonna be that big? 0:03:57 – I mean, of course not. 0:03:59 It’s winning the internet lottery. 0:04:00 I knew that the talk resonated 0:04:02 because it wasn’t the first time I gave it. 0:04:04 I’d been giving the long version of that talk 0:04:05 for a few years. 0:04:09 I knew the content was resonant with people. 0:04:12 I knew it was a different way of seeing the world. 0:04:13 But of course, I could never have known 0:04:15 that it would do what it did. 0:04:17 Combined with the fact that the audio quality 0:04:19 is terrible and the video quality is terrible. 0:04:23 And it’s living proof that it slick comes second. 0:04:24 – Yeah, I look back on that. 0:04:25 It’s not even HD. 0:04:26 – That’s terrible. 0:04:29 – My microphone breaks in the middle of my talk. 0:04:30 – Yeah. 0:04:32 There’s a handful of books that have really changed 0:04:34 my thinking, especially around entrepreneurship 0:04:36 and leadership, zero to one. 0:04:38 There’s a handful of ones where I’m just like, 0:04:41 oh wow, there was some great insight there that happened. 0:04:43 Where did this come from? 0:04:45 Where was that aha moment for you where you’re like, 0:04:49 I see something the rest of the world doesn’t see yet. 0:04:54 – Like most of these ideas, they’re rarely an aha moment. 0:04:56 It’s more like evolutionary steps. 0:04:59 The realization after many steps, and this was no different. 0:05:01 I came from an advertising and marketing background. 0:05:03 And I was always curious why some marketing worked 0:05:04 and some marketing didn’t. 0:05:07 I wasn’t the creative teams ’cause I could have 0:05:10 the same creative team make good stuff and bad stuff. 0:05:11 And it wasn’t just the clients. 0:05:13 I had clients that made good stuff and bad stuff. 0:05:14 And so I looked at sort of the great marketing 0:05:18 that I admired and I recognized that there was a pattern 0:05:21 that it all started with why they did what they did. 0:05:24 And I articulated the concept way back then 0:05:25 just to explain why some marketing worked 0:05:26 and some marketing didn’t. 0:05:28 That’s all it was. 0:05:29 And the original model was why, what, how. 0:05:31 The definitions were the same as they are now, 0:05:32 but it was why, what, how. 0:05:33 And I used to use that. 0:05:34 I started my own business and I used to use that 0:05:36 as my sort of pitch, you know. 0:05:38 And it wasn’t until much later I went to an event 0:05:40 at this black tie affair and I was just sort of 0:05:42 coincidentally seated next to somebody 0:05:43 whose dad was a neuroscientist 0:05:46 and we just started talking, making small talk. 0:05:49 Yeah, and she was telling me about neuroscience 101. 0:05:50 And I was curious about it. 0:05:52 And I came back and started like Googling like crazy. 0:05:54 And I realized this little model that I had discovered 0:05:56 and the neuroscience perfectly overlapped. 0:05:58 I hadn’t discovered why marketing worked. 0:06:00 I discovered why people do what they do. 0:06:02 So I reached out to a famous neuroscientist named Peter Wiebrough 0:06:05 who was the head of the Semmel Institute at UCLA, 0:06:07 which is the largest neuroscience institute in the world. 0:06:10 I don’t know how I got hold of him, but I did. 0:06:12 And I basically said, I need you to look at this stuff. 0:06:13 If I’m gonna say this is related to neuroscience, 0:06:15 I need this blessed. 0:06:15 Yes. 0:06:18 So I like went to his house for a weekend, 0:06:20 just basically talk nonstop. 0:06:24 And I came in on Sunday morning and he was like fidgety. 0:06:25 And I’m like, what’s the matter? 0:06:27 He goes, it doesn’t match the neuroscience. 0:06:28 I’m like, well, what do you mean? 0:06:31 He goes, you need to switch what and how. 0:06:32 I’m like, done. 0:06:33 Yeah. 0:06:34 Maybe came why, how, what? 0:06:35 Yeah. 0:06:36 The definitions are always the same, 0:06:38 but to match the neuroscience of how brainwork, 0:06:39 that’s what it was. 0:06:41 I started to realize that this thing had power. 0:06:44 At a later point, it saved me 0:06:46 ’cause I’d lost my passion for my own work 0:06:48 and hit sort of a really dark period. 0:06:50 And I realized that I knew what I did. 0:06:52 I knew how I did it, but I didn’t know why. 0:06:54 So these things all sort of collided, 0:06:57 personal depression, plus my exploration here. 0:06:58 And it all sort of came together. 0:07:00 I have at least a half dozen friends right now 0:07:03 that have landed in what they thought 0:07:05 was gonna be their dream job. 0:07:07 It typically happens via an acquisition. 0:07:08 It’s a tech entrepreneur. 0:07:10 They get acquired by a big company. 0:07:11 They’re now inside the belly of the beast 0:07:12 of something large. 0:07:14 And they have a couple of sayings. 0:07:15 It’s like, vest in peace. 0:07:17 Or it’s just like, you’re just vesting 0:07:19 and kind of showing up and quiet quitting, right? 0:07:20 Which I’m sure you’ve heard about. 0:07:22 What’s going wrong there? 0:07:23 What’s happening? 0:07:25 Why are they feeling this way? 0:07:28 You’re asking something that’s, 0:07:30 something that happens two or three steps prior. 0:07:31 Okay. 0:07:36 The number of young idealistic entrepreneurs 0:07:40 who start businesses and ethics matter to them 0:07:42 and treating their people right matters to them 0:07:43 and culture matters and all the things 0:07:45 that I write and talk about matters to them. 0:07:49 And they build these beautiful businesses 0:07:52 and then they sell them to the highest bidder. 0:07:54 Not to the company that believes in their values 0:07:56 and has to maintain the culture. 0:07:58 The highest bidder, right? 0:08:01 And the company goes to shit. 0:08:04 They change the ingredients of the product 0:08:06 because they go for something cheaper, 0:08:07 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 0:08:08 You go down the line. 0:08:10 And these, they can rationalize it 0:08:11 because they cashed out big. 0:08:13 They can rationalize that, no, we did it right. 0:08:14 And they didn’t. 0:08:16 That’s, be honest, they didn’t. 0:08:17 Why not take a little less money 0:08:19 and sell it to the right company who believes in the values 0:08:21 rather than just sell it to the highest bidder? 0:08:23 And so, if they’re stuck in a place 0:08:25 where they don’t wanna be there, 0:08:28 well, that was their choice. 0:08:29 They chose that partnership. 0:08:32 That’s like marrying somebody just ’cause they’re pretty. 0:08:34 And then complaining that my marriage isn’t working 0:08:35 and we don’t get along. 0:08:40 And I’m like, I don’t know how many marriage advice for you. 0:08:43 – It’s hard though too ’cause you have stakeholders, right? 0:08:44 – Well, that is another thing. 0:08:46 It’s the same trauma, which is, 0:08:49 so many entrepreneurs who are looking for capital, 0:08:51 they take the biggest capital 0:08:54 from the most famous venture capitalist, 0:08:56 not less capital from the right venture capitalist. 0:08:57 – That’s right. 0:08:59 – So, they chose their own partners 0:09:00 and then they’re surprised 0:09:02 whether partners are applying massive amounts of pressure 0:09:04 on them to make decisions that they don’t wanna make. 0:09:05 – Yeah. 0:09:07 – I don’t have a lot of sympathy, you know? 0:09:09 And we have reached the point now where, 0:09:10 and I can’t remember the statistic, it’s overwhelming. 0:09:12 It’s something like 80% of companies 0:09:15 are venture capital or private equity backed. 0:09:18 And so, we used to mock the public markets 0:09:20 that the pressure exerted by Wall Street 0:09:22 would force CEOs to make decisions 0:09:24 they knew were bad for their companies. 0:09:26 And we’re now at a point where private companies 0:09:27 are basically functioning like public companies 0:09:30 where the external pressures are so great 0:09:32 that the number of young, brilliant, 0:09:35 fantastic, talented CEOs getting fired from their own companies. 0:09:37 I have a friend who just got fired from her own company 0:09:39 because she didn’t have control of it. 0:09:40 – Yeah. 0:09:41 – And she couldn’t make decisions. 0:09:43 They fired her because she was trying to do 0:09:45 the quote unquote right thing and follow the vision. 0:09:47 And they wanted to do the thing that made it prettier 0:09:49 to sell in a short period. 0:09:51 There’s an element of like, you made your bed. 0:09:55 And so, there’s even a degree of, 0:09:57 look, I’m not in their position, 0:09:59 but there’s even a degree of irresponsibility. 0:10:02 You made the choice to take the deal 0:10:04 and now you’re dissatisfied with the deal. 0:10:06 You have sort of sellers remorse. 0:10:09 And so, you’re gonna quiet quit because you’re pissed off. 0:10:11 I’m like, they didn’t do anything wrong. 0:10:12 – Right. 0:10:13 – You took the deal. 0:10:15 I think there’s some soul searching to be done 0:10:17 in business writ large, 0:10:19 which is who we take money from and who we sell to. 0:10:20 Because I think a lot of good companies 0:10:23 actually don’t survive the founders 0:10:24 because of who we sell them to. 0:10:26 – I can almost count it like clockwork 0:10:28 because I’ve seen so many of these deals 0:10:29 and I know what it is. 0:10:30 It’s a three-year vest. 0:10:31 When you sell the company, 0:10:34 they put golden handcuffs on you for three years 0:10:36 and you can almost just mark the date. 0:10:37 And then you see a founder being like, 0:10:39 I’m leaving and it’s of course 0:10:41 right at the three-year anniversary, right? 0:10:42 And they’re out. 0:10:43 And then if they were holding it together 0:10:45 with any duct tape or whatever else, 0:10:48 like everything seems to fall apart from there, unfortunately. 0:10:49 – Good partnerships. 0:10:50 You love the partner. 0:10:52 You love the buyer. 0:10:54 And they’re offering you some sort of ability 0:10:57 to expand your vision that you couldn’t do yourself, 0:10:58 which is why you took the deal. 0:10:59 – That’s right. 0:11:01 – Fundamentally, you come to an arrangement 0:11:02 where even though you have a boss now 0:11:04 and you didn’t have one before, 0:11:05 that there’s a degree of independence you have 0:11:08 to build this brand, which is what they want as well. 0:11:12 And though it won’t be perfect, no relationship is, 0:11:15 you fundamentally still love coming to work 0:11:16 because you feel like you’re still advancing 0:11:18 the greater good in building this business. 0:11:19 – Right. 0:11:21 – So those are the partnerships we should be pursuing. 0:11:22 – Yes. 0:11:23 Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. 0:11:25 It’s almost like feel for the fire at that point. 0:11:26 Like you’re joining forces with someone 0:11:29 to help you expand and grow a lot faster. 0:11:31 – What about individuals that are, 0:11:34 I see as individual contributors to an organization 0:11:36 and I see some of these resumes 0:11:38 when I’m looking to hire, say an engineer, 0:11:39 and you see bouncing around. 0:11:40 You see bouncing around 0:11:43 between different employment opportunities. 0:11:45 What advice do you give them 0:11:46 and how do you help coach someone 0:11:49 through finding their why? 0:11:51 – Well, there’s a couple of different questions there. 0:11:53 You and I, when we were younger, 0:11:55 even if we hated our job, 0:11:58 we would never dream of quitting in less than one year. 0:11:58 – 100%. 0:11:59 – We couldn’t. 0:12:00 – It would look so bad. 0:12:01 – And we all knew that if you did that, 0:12:03 it would destroy your resume. 0:12:03 – Yes. 0:12:05 – It would create a bad narrative 0:12:07 about what kind of employee you were. 0:12:09 And I mean, it would have to be pretty toxic 0:12:11 for you to leave it under a year, right? 0:12:14 And so we held our nose and we made it to a year. 0:12:16 And this predominantly younger generation, 0:12:17 no, it’s not exclusive, 0:12:19 but predominantly younger generation 0:12:21 is very comfortable quitting quickly 0:12:24 and sometimes for not good reasons. 0:12:25 And I’ve seen it happen, 0:12:27 which is the young people who are so confrontation avoidant, 0:12:29 they’d rather quit than go through the discomfort 0:12:31 of asking for a raise, for example. 0:12:33 For every action, there’s an equal opposite reaction. 0:12:34 There’s a finite mindedness to it, 0:12:37 which is how do I solve the immediate problem in front of me 0:12:40 without considering the long-term impact of that decision? 0:12:42 I’m not for or against the decisions. 0:12:44 I’m saying consider the long-term impacts. 0:12:45 And I’ve been public about this 0:12:47 and I’ve been criticized for it by young people, 0:12:51 which is flash forward five or six years 0:12:54 and you’ve had seven jobs, right? 0:12:55 And whether you’re bouncing 0:12:57 because you think they’re all toxic 0:12:58 or whether you’re bouncing 0:13:00 because you’re just dialing for dollars, whatever it is, 0:13:02 in five or six years, 0:13:03 the new employer is looking at you 0:13:04 and you’re a certain age now, 0:13:07 which means I expect a certain level of maturity 0:13:08 and accomplishment. 0:13:09 – Yes. 0:13:11 – You haven’t had it 0:13:12 because you haven’t gone through the shit. 0:13:13 – Right. 0:13:14 – You keep jumping shit. 0:13:16 So I don’t even know that you’re qualified 0:13:18 for the senior position you’re applying for 0:13:19 that somebody else with seven years experience 0:13:21 could apply for, number one. 0:13:24 And number two, if I’m given two resumes, 0:13:27 one with somebody who’s bouncing around 0:13:30 and one who’s like had two jobs over seven years, 0:13:31 I’ll take the one with two 0:13:33 because I’m not gonna trust 0:13:35 that this person’s gonna stick around 0:13:37 after I’ve trained them up and got them all in. 0:13:38 We have a few years 0:13:39 before we start seeing the repercussions, 0:13:41 but the repercussions are coming. 0:13:42 – Yeah. 0:13:43 – And again, I’m not saying don’t quit. 0:13:47 I’m saying just be cognizant 0:13:49 that there are implications 0:13:52 and maybe be a little slower. 0:13:53 – Do you think the problem there 0:13:55 is that they’re picking the wrong profession 0:13:58 and wrong job from the get-go 0:14:00 or they don’t have the grit to stick it out 0:14:02 during the hard times? 0:14:04 You mentioned this confrontation avoidant. 0:14:05 Is it because they are like, 0:14:07 this makes me uncomfortable. 0:14:08 I can’t handle it. 0:14:09 I’m out. 0:14:11 Or did I just pick wrong right away? 0:14:12 I know we’re generalizing, but– 0:14:13 – I mean, who knows? 0:14:16 But this idea of dream jobs is a funny thing, right? 0:14:17 – Yeah. 0:14:19 – Ain’t no such thing, number one. 0:14:20 Every job is imperfect, 0:14:22 like every relationship is imperfect. 0:14:24 And we live in a world that idealizes 0:14:26 both relationships and jobs. 0:14:29 And so when my relationship isn’t perfect 0:14:31 and my partner doesn’t do all the perfect things 0:14:33 and then I ban in that relationship, 0:14:34 and I’m doing the same thing, 0:14:36 this job isn’t perfect and I have stress 0:14:38 and they want me to work late on a Thursday, 0:14:40 there’s a problem with pursuing the dream job 0:14:43 because it doesn’t exist. 0:14:45 Now, that’s not to say we should suffer either. 0:14:47 I believe you should have joy at work. 0:14:49 I believe you should be fulfilled by work. 0:14:50 I believe that you should be inspired 0:14:51 by the company you work for, 0:14:53 but you don’t have to like every day. 0:14:54 You can love your children, 0:14:56 you don’t have to like them every day. 0:14:56 You can love your job, 0:14:58 you don’t have to like it every day. 0:14:59 I think we confuse the two, 0:15:01 that there are days that I don’t like my job 0:15:02 and that’s the reason to quit. 0:15:04 But the fundamentally, 0:15:05 are you working in a place 0:15:06 where you feel seen, heard and understood? 0:15:07 Are you working in a place 0:15:09 that you feel like you’re growing as a human being, 0:15:11 that you actually are a better version of yourself 0:15:13 because you work here? 0:15:15 Are they pushing you and challenging you 0:15:17 to take on more responsibility 0:15:19 than maybe you even think you’re capable of? 0:15:21 And that’s uncomfortable. 0:15:24 And if you go back to Steve Jobs, for example, 0:15:25 and I know we herald him, 0:15:27 but he was pretty remarkable, right? 0:15:29 One of the things that Jobs did 0:15:31 is it was uncomfortable working at Apple. 0:15:35 And it wasn’t uncomfortable because he was mean, 0:15:38 although he wasn’t the nicest person in the world, 0:15:40 it’s because he saw potential in people 0:15:42 that they didn’t necessarily see in themselves. 0:15:44 And he pushed and pushed and pushed people. 0:15:47 And people who didn’t like being pushed, they quit. 0:15:49 But the people who were okay being pushed, 0:15:53 they all said, I achieved more at this company 0:15:56 than I ever would have imagined. 0:15:59 Johnny Ive, this sort of middling designer, 0:16:00 Jobs sees something in him 0:16:03 that maybe he does or doesn’t even see in himself. 0:16:05 And he gets pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed. 0:16:07 He becomes one of the greatest designers 0:16:08 in modern history. 0:16:10 – I had a really long conversation with Tony Fidel 0:16:12 about this, working with Jobs, 0:16:15 and the growth comes from the discomfort. 0:16:17 – The growth comes from the discomfort. 0:16:19 I mean, look, there’s so many metaphors and analogies, 0:16:21 I love the one about the lobster. 0:16:22 – I haven’t heard the lobster one. 0:16:26 – So, lobsters, the soft mass inside the shell 0:16:28 is what grows, that’s the audience. 0:16:30 The shell itself doesn’t grow. 0:16:35 It’s this hard thing that excretes out and hardens. 0:16:37 And as the lobster grows, 0:16:40 it starts to get very uncomfortable in its own shell 0:16:41 ’cause it’s now bigger. 0:16:43 It’s like wearing clothes that are too small. 0:16:45 And only when it gets to that point, 0:16:48 does it then shed the shell and build a new one. 0:16:51 In other words, you can’t grow without being uncomfortable. 0:16:52 – Right, right. 0:16:52 Yeah, that’s so good. 0:16:53 – And that’s true. 0:16:55 I like to equate everything to personal relationships 0:16:59 because corporate relationships are relationships, right? 0:17:03 Which is every fight or uncomfortable situation 0:17:04 I ever had with my girlfriend. 0:17:06 Though I did not enjoy it, 0:17:08 though I wish we’d never had it. 0:17:09 Though sometimes I was to blame, 0:17:10 sometimes she was to blame. 0:17:13 More often than not, we were both to blame. 0:17:14 And when I say that just a quick aside, 0:17:16 usually in an argument, 0:17:18 we start accusing each other of who started it. 0:17:19 The reality is, yes, 0:17:20 absolutely somebody always started it. 0:17:22 And the other person almost always poured gasoline. 0:17:23 – Yes. 0:17:25 – So you both have a culpability. 0:17:27 It doesn’t matter what started it. 0:17:28 You both made it worse, right? 0:17:31 Invariably, every uncomfortable conversation 0:17:33 or fight that we ever had, 0:17:36 though I hated every moment of it and so did she. 0:17:38 We ended up stronger and closer because of it. 0:17:40 Because there were lessons that were learned. 0:17:44 There were triggers that were realized. 0:17:47 There was language that was dissected. 0:17:50 And what we did was learn to fight, 0:17:53 not against each other, but against the problem. 0:17:57 And I think it’s the same at work, right? 0:18:00 Which is when there’s pressure exerted, 0:18:02 is it me versus management? 0:18:04 Or is it management and me 0:18:06 versus whatever we’re trying to accomplish. 0:18:08 And good leaders know that. 0:18:10 And good team members know that. 0:18:13 It’s when it becomes adversarial. 0:18:14 Us versus them. 0:18:15 – Yeah. 0:18:16 – And by the way, I blame leadership 0:18:18 as much as I blame employees. 0:18:21 Team members will go out for drinks and vent about work, 0:18:23 which I’m, by the way, totally healthy. 0:18:24 – Yeah. – I’m in problem with that. 0:18:25 But sometimes narratives, 0:18:28 and especially in virtual and distributed workforces 0:18:30 where everybody’s wherever they are, 0:18:32 the rumor mills can spin out of control a lot quicker. 0:18:33 – Yes. 0:18:36 – And we blame management for what they did to us 0:18:37 or whatever. 0:18:39 But it happens at leadership as well. 0:18:41 The number of times I’ve sat in leadership groups, 0:18:45 including my own, where we label someone dumb, 0:18:50 or lazy, or inconsiderate, or one foot out the door. 0:18:52 And we make jokes about, 0:18:55 ugh, here we go again, we’re entitled, 0:18:57 or just go down the list. 0:18:59 And we label them, we create a narrative about them, 0:19:01 and now we treat them that way. 0:19:03 And though they may not know our narrative, 0:19:06 they know that they’re being treated a certain way. 0:19:09 And so one of the things that is imperative 0:19:10 in any leadership team, 0:19:13 which is when one person finds themselves venting 0:19:15 about somebody where it’s creating a narrative 0:19:16 about another human being, 0:19:18 it’s imperative that somebody else in the leadership team 0:19:20 interrupt that narrative. 0:19:22 And say, they could be lazy. 0:19:25 True, that’s definitely a possibility. 0:19:26 Or they’re overwhelmed, 0:19:28 or we haven’t given them good instruction, 0:19:29 or they’re struggling at home. 0:19:30 – Yeah, I was gonna say, 0:19:32 are they going through a divorce or something? 0:19:33 We don’t know about. 0:19:34 There’s a list of things. 0:19:36 And so we treat them with empathy 0:19:37 and maybe check in on them. 0:19:38 I expect leadership to go first 0:19:40 ’cause they should know better. 0:19:41 But whether it’s in a group of team members 0:19:43 about each other, 0:19:45 more about management, 0:19:46 management about team members. 0:19:48 And again, I hold the leaders to a higher level 0:19:49 of accountability. 0:19:50 And if they act appropriately, 0:19:51 the team will act appropriately. 0:19:53 But we have to interrupt each other 0:19:54 with these kinds of narrative. 0:19:57 Discomfort is one of those things 0:20:02 where it’s good to be transparent about discomfort. 0:20:04 And it starts, again, leaders set the tone. 0:20:06 – Because it’s disarming. 0:20:07 – When you lie, hide and fake. 0:20:10 When you pretend that you got it all figured out. 0:20:11 People will think you got it all figured out. 0:20:15 And so they will pile on more and push you more 0:20:17 and give you more and expect more 0:20:20 because you said everything’s good. 0:20:22 And that’s when it becomes overwhelming. 0:20:25 And that’s when you start blaming management 0:20:26 for mistreating you. 0:20:28 But hold on, right? 0:20:29 Whereas I’m a great believer 0:20:31 in just being totally transparent about discomfort. 0:20:33 And sometimes it’s real 0:20:34 and sometimes it’s perceived. 0:20:36 For example, and I had it happen recently, 0:20:38 one of my team members, she’s wonderful. 0:20:39 We’re a distributed workforce 0:20:41 so we don’t get a lot of face time, right? 0:20:43 So she’s never had a lot of one-on-one time with me. 0:20:45 You know, I see her corporate off-sites and stuff like that. 0:20:46 And I see her on Zoom all the time, 0:20:48 but she’s never had one-on-one time with me. 0:20:50 And so we brought her out to LA 0:20:52 to have a one-day hackathon with me. 0:20:58 She’s young, she’s in her early mid-20s junior employee. 0:21:02 And she came clean. 0:21:04 She said, I just need to tell you, 0:21:06 I was really nervous about today. 0:21:08 I don’t get us a lot of face time with you 0:21:09 and I want to make sure I do right. 0:21:13 And I got really prepared, but I’m really nervous. 0:21:16 And giving me that information was magical 0:21:19 because if she had come in all like ego and everything, 0:21:22 I would have ripped her writing apart a lot more aggressively 0:21:24 because she’s good. 0:21:26 But now I could just be like a little softer 0:21:28 or it’s a doing great. 0:21:29 I can just reinforce 0:21:32 ’cause I know she’s feeling a little intimidated or fragile. 0:21:36 So saying, I’m really excited about this project. 0:21:37 I’m really excited about this new responsibility. 0:21:39 If you’ve given me, I’m a little uncomfortable 0:21:41 because I’ve never had this amount of responsibility. 0:21:42 And I really don’t want to screw it up 0:21:43 and I want to do right by you 0:21:44 and I do want to do right by me. 0:21:46 And I don’t want to fail. 0:21:50 And simply just saying that means that a good leader 0:21:54 will be like, got it, I’m here, you’re good. 0:21:56 And you feel supported in that discomfort. 0:21:58 Yes, right? 0:22:00 Uncomfortable isn’t the problem. 0:22:01 It’s feeling alone and uncomfortable. 0:22:02 That’s the problem. 0:22:03 Yeah. 0:22:06 All right, if you watch this show 0:22:08 or you’ve seen me on the random show with Tim Ferriss, 0:22:11 you know I love to talk about all things finance. 0:22:14 I’m always looking for better ways to be smarter about this. 0:22:16 One crucial thing that I’ve learned along the way 0:22:17 is that you absolutely don’t want anything 0:22:19 that chips away at your returns. 0:22:23 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0:23:54 So my once a month newsletter 0:23:56 is just packed with high quality information. 0:23:59 This is all the products that I’m checking out, 0:24:01 other great clips and YouTube videos 0:24:03 that I’m finding across the web. 0:24:05 Oftentimes, I have friends that are launching new products. 0:24:07 So I’ll have early beta access to those types of things. 0:24:09 Some of the books that I’m reading, 0:24:12 some of my favorite podcast clips, movies, 0:24:15 you can sign up for this over at KevinRose.com. 0:24:17 Join 115,000 other readers. 0:24:20 KevinRose.com, you’ll find the little newsletter link there 0:24:22 and sign up today. 0:24:24 – A good leader can see the signs. 0:24:26 Virtual makes it much more difficult. 0:24:27 – Yeah. 0:24:27 – Working in a distributed workforce 0:24:30 makes it much easier to hide. 0:24:34 Lionfake, body language doesn’t come across as easily. 0:24:35 If somebody’s a little bit fidgety, 0:24:36 you can’t really see, 0:24:38 doesn’t really show up on a Zoom call. 0:24:39 But I think discomfort is one of those things 0:24:41 that to learn to be uncomfortable 0:24:43 is probably the single greatest asset you could ever, 0:24:46 you know this, ’cause nobody’s ever achieved anything 0:24:50 in the world did it smoothly. 0:24:54 We all came close to zero if not hitting zero first, 0:24:55 all of us. 0:24:58 And Lionel Richie talks about this. 0:25:01 When he was younger, he had crippling, 0:25:03 debilitating stage fright. 0:25:04 Lionel Richie. 0:25:06 – Yeah. 0:25:08 – And he says, there’s two types of people in this world. 0:25:11 Nobody has the absence of fear. 0:25:13 The two types of people in the world 0:25:15 are those who have fear and they take a step back. 0:25:16 And there are those who have fear 0:25:18 and take the step forward. 0:25:19 And I always took the step forward. 0:25:20 – Yeah. 0:25:22 – Courage isn’t the absence of fear. 0:25:25 It’s being afraid and leaning into it. 0:25:28 And so to be uncomfortable and step forward 0:25:30 is perhaps the single greatest thing you can ever learn. 0:25:31 And what you discover is you’re surrounded 0:25:32 by people who want to help you. 0:25:33 – Yes. 0:25:34 – 100%. 0:25:36 – Which is the most amazing thing to discover. 0:25:37 – This is one of my biggest mistakes. 0:25:39 You know, when I was in my early 20s 0:25:40 and I had my first startup, 0:25:43 I was pleasantly surprised in that it was my first go, 0:25:46 it was dig and it was the first social news app 0:25:49 and it exploded to tens of millions of users in six months. 0:25:50 – Yeah. 0:25:52 – And I was afraid. – That’s uncomfortable. 0:25:55 – Oh my God. Well, here I am in college dropout, 0:25:56 moved to the valley. 0:25:59 I was so intimidated by everyone around me, 0:26:01 the VCs I was getting introduced to everyone else. 0:26:04 And I was scared to raise my hand 0:26:07 and say, I don’t know the answer to this. 0:26:10 Because everyone was looking to me as like someone 0:26:12 that had created something new and exciting. 0:26:14 And it wasn’t until actually two years into the company 0:26:16 where it was really strange. 0:26:17 It was a very small period of time 0:26:19 where dig was bigger, traffic-wise than Facebook. 0:26:22 And so Mark came to my office at Zuckerberg 0:26:25 and he just asked a thousand questions. 0:26:28 And he was really probing me on so many different things 0:26:32 and admitting so many things that he just didn’t know. 0:26:35 And I was like, wow, I need to be more like this. 0:26:36 – Exactly. 0:26:39 – Because here I am operating in the silo. 0:26:40 – Yeah. 0:26:42 – Afraid, ashamed. 0:26:43 And it’s not doing me any good. 0:26:46 I’m actually doing more harm to my business. 0:26:49 And once you have that unlock and you realize 0:26:52 it’s a massive strength to have vulnerability 0:26:53 and to raise your hand and say, 0:26:55 I don’t know the answer to this. 0:26:56 It’s a huge, huge unlock. 0:26:59 – I don’t know is the three most important words 0:27:01 any young entrepreneur can ever wear. 0:27:03 It’s your story, it’s also my story. 0:27:07 I had a small business and I was chief cook and bottle washer 0:27:08 and I started having employees 0:27:09 and I had to be in every meeting 0:27:10 and I had to make every decision. 0:27:12 I thought I had to have every answer. 0:27:15 And if I didn’t, I thought I had to pretend that I did. 0:27:17 And A, the business doesn’t do well with that model. 0:27:19 But B, it’s crippling. 0:27:20 – Yes. 0:27:21 – Like depression set in. 0:27:21 – Oh, 100%. 0:27:24 – Because you feel so alone in the hiding. 0:27:26 And it wasn’t until I learned to say, 0:27:28 I don’t know or can you help me 0:27:31 or learn to accept help when it’s offered. 0:27:33 The amount of help we’re offered on a daily basis, 0:27:37 if you just counted it’s tons to say, I’ll take that. 0:27:38 – Right. 0:27:39 – And it is humiliating by the way. 0:27:41 Like I have some very successful friends 0:27:42 and they asked me what I’m going through 0:27:44 and I’ll just talked about the stuff 0:27:46 that I’m stuck with or don’t know. 0:27:47 And these are very successful people 0:27:49 that I want to look good in front of. 0:27:52 The amazing thing is by being open to them, 0:27:54 the amount that they are there for me, 0:27:56 like that day of humiliation 0:27:58 was the greatest investment I ever made. 0:27:59 – Yeah. 0:28:00 – And I think that’s what you need to think of it as. 0:28:00 Like it’s an investment, 0:28:02 which is when you make an investment, 0:28:04 you pay money, it hurts, you take it out of your bank account, 0:28:06 it was a high number and it was a low number. 0:28:08 And you’re like, oh, this works. 0:28:08 – Yeah. 0:28:09 – It’s an investment. 0:28:10 And sometimes it pays off. 0:28:12 I can’t say that it pays off all the time. 0:28:13 – Sometimes it’s just humiliated. 0:28:14 – Yeah, right. 0:28:15 – But that’s okay. 0:28:15 – And that’s okay. 0:28:16 – Yeah. 0:28:17 What was your personal story? 0:28:18 What was that moment you mentioned 0:28:20 where you didn’t want to go to work anymore? 0:28:22 And then how did you dig yourself out of that? 0:28:25 – Not ironically, I didn’t do it alone. 0:28:27 I reached a point where I didn’t have the skill set 0:28:28 to build the business. 0:28:30 I’d reached a certain level of growth 0:28:32 that I could achieve by myself. 0:28:35 And needing to let go and not be in every meeting 0:28:36 and not make every decision. 0:28:37 That’s a critical point 0:28:39 because you literally can’t grow beyond a certain point 0:28:43 of if only one person can make all the major decisions. 0:28:44 I couldn’t let go. 0:28:48 And so I couldn’t grow, which means frustration. 0:28:49 Didn’t know how to build systems. 0:28:51 Didn’t know how to ask for help. 0:28:52 Ego was out of check. 0:28:54 And I don’t mean like, I thought I was everything. 0:28:57 I mean, I was pretending that I was everything. 0:28:59 And depression set in. 0:29:00 Didn’t want to wake up. 0:29:04 Didn’t find the joy in business ownership anymore. 0:29:06 And was really good at lying, hiding, faking. 0:29:08 I could pretend that I was happier, more in control 0:29:09 and more successful than I felt. 0:29:11 And by the way, so good that nobody could tell. 0:29:14 I mean, I was phenomenal. 0:29:18 And one friend could see through the armor. 0:29:22 One friend came to me and said, “Something’s not right. 0:29:26 “I don’t know what it is, but something feels off.” 0:29:27 And for whatever reason, 0:29:32 probably ’cause she is really good at making a safe space, 0:29:33 I started to open up. 0:29:37 And she didn’t try and fix anything. 0:29:39 She didn’t have suggestions. 0:29:44 She simply let me be vulnerable. 0:29:46 And it’s not the act of being vulnerable per se. 0:29:50 It’s the act of not feeling alone in that vulnerability. 0:29:53 And that she could hold space for me so effectively. 0:29:55 I now had the courage to take all that energy 0:29:56 that I was using to lie, hide and fake. 0:29:59 And I could take that energy to find a solution 0:30:01 to my malaise. 0:30:02 And the solution that I found was sitting right in front 0:30:03 of me the whole time, 0:30:05 which is this thing that I called the golden circle. 0:30:06 And that’s when I made the realization 0:30:07 that I knew what I did. 0:30:09 I knew how I did it, but I didn’t know why. 0:30:12 And that was the reason that I was stuck 0:30:15 as I had no sense of purpose, cause or belief. 0:30:18 And I became obsessed with understanding my why. 0:30:20 I learned my why, but more important, 0:30:22 I learned how to help others find theirs. 0:30:24 And I helped my friends find their ways. 0:30:26 Just because I wanna, it’s like you see a great movie. 0:30:27 You tell your friends to go see it. 0:30:28 – Yeah, yeah. 0:30:29 – No other reason, right? 0:30:30 There’s excitement. 0:30:31 And my friends, they quit their jobs 0:30:32 and started their own businesses 0:30:36 or they found renewed joy in the jobs that they had 0:30:40 to the same levels that I was experiencing, way higher. 0:30:42 And they asked me to talk to their friends 0:30:44 and I would go to someone’s apartment in New York City 0:30:45 and stand in the living room and talk about this thing 0:30:46 called the why and help people find their why 0:30:48 for a hundred bucks on the side. 0:30:51 And my career took a weird turn completely by accident. 0:30:52 – Yeah. 0:30:52 – It was all organic. 0:30:54 But the point to the question was, 0:30:56 it was one person who held space. 0:30:59 We forget that we are social animals 0:31:03 and our very ability to survive 0:31:05 requires the help of other people. 0:31:06 If you fall asleep, 0:31:08 you need someone to watch for wild animals. 0:31:09 – Right. 0:31:10 – We just know good by ourselves. 0:31:12 We can’t solve complex problems by ourselves. 0:31:13 But in groups who are remarkable, 0:31:15 human beings hunted woolly mammoths. 0:31:16 – Yeah. 0:31:19 – No other animal could take down a woolly mammoth. 0:31:22 But we frail, weak human beings could 0:31:26 because the asset that we have that is our superpower 0:31:28 is our ability to cooperate. 0:31:30 And if you know that and you remember that, 0:31:32 that no human being can survive or thrive alone, 0:31:34 that we are fundamentally social animals, 0:31:35 you have to learn to ask for help 0:31:38 and you have to learn to offer it. 0:31:39 And that’s what I did. 0:31:40 That’s where I learned that lesson. 0:31:42 – One of the things that you said that struck me is, 0:31:44 and this is the mistake I make with my wife a lot, 0:31:45 I’ll admit it publicly, 0:31:47 is that I go into problem solving mode. 0:31:50 She’s got an issue and rather than just sit there 0:31:52 and hold space and have some empathy 0:31:54 for what she’s going through 0:31:57 and how it is something that lands on her. 0:31:58 I’m like, let’s fix this, you know, 0:32:00 and I’m like throwing out solutions and all this. 0:32:03 And then that’s not always the best. 0:32:05 – Men are particularly bad at it. 0:32:07 Men are usually in solution mode, not exclusively, 0:32:09 but tends to skew that way. 0:32:10 That’s correct. 0:32:11 That is not a good idea. 0:32:13 There’s a great video on YouTube 0:32:14 called It’s Not About The Nail. 0:32:15 Everybody can go look it up. 0:32:17 It’s one that has a bazillion views. 0:32:19 It’s many years old, but it basically sums it up 0:32:20 absolutely perfectly. 0:32:22 And by the way, you’re the same. 0:32:24 When you have a problem and somebody says, 0:32:25 well, why don’t you do this? 0:32:27 You end up being defensive and fighting with them 0:32:28 because you don’t actually want them to solve the problem. 0:32:31 You just want to feel safe in your stuckness. 0:32:32 And when somebody comes to you and says, 0:32:35 I’m struggling, just go tell me more. 0:32:35 What else? 0:32:37 Boy, by the way, you know how to do this 0:32:40 because you read all the books to do it with your children. 0:32:42 Then when you say, daddy, I’m afraid, that’s okay. 0:32:44 You can be afraid. 0:32:45 But daddy, this, and you’re like, that’s okay. 0:32:47 You don’t try and fix their fear. 0:32:48 You hold space for their fear. 0:32:51 When they’re nervous, you don’t try and fix their nervousness. 0:32:52 You don’t have to be nervous. 0:32:53 Don’t be nervous. 0:32:54 We’ve learned that that’s a terrible thing to do 0:32:55 with children. 0:32:57 You go, oh, I know, it’s scary. 0:32:59 You affirm the feelings. 0:33:01 Well, why did you stop doing that? 0:33:03 Just because somebody’s an adult? 0:33:04 Like you still have to affirm their feelings. 0:33:05 – It’s a great point. 0:33:06 – Honey, I’m nervous. 0:33:07 Honey, I’m scared. 0:33:08 Honey, I’m confused. 0:33:09 Honey, I’m angry. 0:33:10 – Yeah. 0:33:12 – My girlfriend and I were, 0:33:13 she said something about something 0:33:16 and I had done something that upset her. 0:33:19 And I basically was like, well, that’s ridiculous. 0:33:20 And clearly, I didn’t mean to. 0:33:21 How can you say that I did that? 0:33:23 Of course, I didn’t do that on purpose. 0:33:24 – Right. 0:33:25 – You know, I’m in full on defense mode. 0:33:28 I’m in full on like, it’s not really gaslighting, 0:33:29 but it’s a form of gaslighting, 0:33:30 which is like I’m saying, 0:33:32 you can’t feel that way about that. 0:33:33 – Right. 0:33:34 – Right? 0:33:38 And after many rounds, I finally said, 0:33:40 if I were in your shoes, I would have felt the same. 0:33:41 – Mm. 0:33:42 – And she said, thank you. 0:33:43 – Yeah. 0:33:45 – And the funny thing is what preceded that was, 0:33:46 I just need you to see it. 0:33:47 What if you were me? 0:33:49 Like she literally gave me the instruction. 0:33:50 – Right. 0:33:51 – I’m like, well, if I were in your shoes, 0:33:52 yeah, I probably would have felt the same 0:33:53 where you’re feeling now. 0:33:54 – Right. 0:33:55 – That was it. 0:33:55 – No, you’re right. 0:33:56 – Argument over. 0:33:57 – I’ve been there. 0:33:58 I’ve been in this exact conversation. 0:33:59 – Yeah. 0:34:00 – 100%. 0:34:02 – I’ve had it happen where I’m in a bad place 0:34:03 and I call a friend and tell them basically like, 0:34:04 hey, I’m not feeling good. 0:34:06 And they start fixing and I get off the phone. 0:34:07 – Yeah. 0:34:08 – ‘Cause they make it worse. 0:34:10 – So true. 0:34:11 I talk about this a lot, 0:34:13 which is the idea of sitting in mud, 0:34:17 which is when we or our people we love are in a bad place, 0:34:18 they’re sitting in mud. 0:34:19 – Mm-hmm. 0:34:20 – And our instincts, well-intentioned, 0:34:21 is to pull them out of the mud. 0:34:22 – Sure. 0:34:22 – Right, to fix it. 0:34:24 Oh my God, that looks horrible. 0:34:25 Nobody wants to be in mud. 0:34:26 Let me pull you out of the mud. 0:34:27 And they don’t want to be pulled out of the mud. 0:34:28 – Right. 0:34:30 – But they don’t want you standing on the sidelines. 0:34:32 What they want, what loving friendship, 0:34:33 what loving relationship means is, 0:34:36 I’m gonna come and sit in the mud with you. 0:34:37 – Yeah. 0:34:37 – I don’t want to sit in the mud with you. 0:34:39 It’s no fun being in the mud with you, 0:34:41 but I’m gonna get in the mud with you. 0:34:44 – Well, that act alone will allow them to dig theirself 0:34:45 or climb their way out of the mud. 0:34:47 – Or turn to you and say, 0:34:48 I think I’m ready to get out of the mud. 0:34:49 – Yeah. 0:34:50 – And then you can go into solution mode. 0:34:52 If a friend is depressed, 0:34:54 they just don’t want to get out of bed. 0:34:55 And we can’t make them get out of bed 0:34:57 and tell them they have to get out of bed. 0:34:59 Go to their house and get into bed with them 0:35:03 and watch TV, watch movies all day, be depressed with them. 0:35:04 It’s not fun. 0:35:07 It’s not productive, but it makes them feel not alone. 0:35:08 – Right. 0:35:12 You’re matching their spirit at the moment. 0:35:13 – You’re making them feel not alone. 0:35:14 – Yeah. 0:35:16 – And usually when we try and fix someone’s problem, 0:35:19 usually when we try and pull them out of the mud, 0:35:20 what that makes them feel 0:35:22 is that they’re in the mud by themselves. 0:35:26 ‘Cause we’re standing on high ground, on dry ground, 0:35:27 saying, “Let me pull you out.” 0:35:28 – Right. 0:35:30 – Oh my God, look at you down there in the mud. 0:35:31 Let me pull you up here to the dry land, 0:35:34 which all that does is remind them that they’re alone. 0:35:34 – Right. 0:35:38 You must have just given everything 0:35:40 that you’ve been through in all your talks. 0:35:42 I’d imagine people come up to you randomly 0:35:45 or at talks after talking to the line forms 0:35:47 and people want to ask you questions. 0:35:51 If a young person comes to you looking to be pulled out 0:35:52 or in some way it’s like, “Give me advice on this,” 0:35:56 or that, “How do you empower them to make their own decisions? 0:36:00 How do you equip them to figure out their why?” 0:36:03 ‘Cause I’d imagine you can’t do that in two minutes. 0:36:05 – You can. 0:36:06 – Tell me. 0:36:08 – So finding the why is the easy part. 0:36:11 It’s like college graduation is called commencement. 0:36:12 – Yeah. – Beginning of something? 0:36:13 – Yeah. 0:36:14 – Well, finding your why is easy. 0:36:16 That’s why I called the book “Start With Why,” 0:36:18 ’cause once you have it, now the work begins. 0:36:19 – Right. 0:36:21 – So again, there’s two questions there. 0:36:23 One is how to find the why and which I’ll tell you. 0:36:26 And the one is when you’re coming up to a stranger, 0:36:28 I mean, they don’t know me and I don’t know them. 0:36:29 And they come up to me and say, 0:36:31 “Can you help me get out of this?” 0:36:32 Or, you know, hey. 0:36:33 – Right. 0:36:34 – And my answer is always the same is, 0:36:35 you don’t know me. 0:36:37 You know the image of me. 0:36:39 You know the image you’ve built of me. 0:36:42 I could be the worst qualified person to help you with this. 0:36:44 Go ask somebody who actually cares about you. 0:36:46 You know, you’re not my friend. 0:36:48 Like, I like you, you ever seem very nice, 0:36:50 but why would I get into mud with a stranger? 0:36:52 – Right. – I don’t know you. 0:36:54 You know, go ask somebody who loves you 0:36:57 because it’s safer to be vulnerable with me 0:36:58 because I’m a stranger. 0:36:59 – Right. 0:37:00 – It’s hard to be vulnerable 0:37:02 with somebody who actually knows us, 0:37:04 but that’s the thing you gotta do. 0:37:05 – Yes. 0:37:06 – They’re asking the wrong person. 0:37:09 I’m sympathetic, but I’m the wrong person. 0:37:09 – Yeah. 0:37:12 – So where does a therapist fall on that? 0:37:13 Because you don’t know them, 0:37:16 but yet you can be vulnerable around them. 0:37:19 How do they fit into your thinking? 0:37:21 Like, obviously it’s a useful tool to have a therapist. 0:37:24 – Therapists have said that I professionally 0:37:26 hold space for you, that is my job. 0:37:27 – Right. 0:37:28 – Depending on the therapist, 0:37:30 some of them have tools to help you 0:37:31 with whatever you’re dealing with, right? 0:37:33 So they can equip you with tools. 0:37:36 And I think therapists are one of the things that we need. 0:37:38 I don’t think they’re the only thing that we need. 0:37:40 I believe in therapy, I think it’s a good thing. 0:37:42 And the practice of being open with someone. 0:37:44 But I hope that you use that skill set with your friends. 0:37:46 Like, what’s the point of learning the skill 0:37:48 if you’re not gonna apply it in other places? 0:37:49 And I think somebody who really struggles 0:37:51 with vulnerability should do therapy 0:37:55 because it is a good way to practice being vulnerable 0:37:58 with the people you really need to be vulnerable. 0:38:00 If you’re only vulnerable with your therapist and no one else, 0:38:02 I think that’s as much of a problem 0:38:03 as not being vulnerable to anybody. 0:38:06 It’s an education as much as a catharsis. 0:38:07 – Right. 0:38:08 – So going back to your question about finding your one. 0:38:09 – Yes. 0:38:10 – Okay. 0:38:11 I’ll give you two answers. 0:38:11 – Okay. 0:38:13 – There are many ways to do it. 0:38:14 We’ve tried to make many tools available. 0:38:16 We have things in our website 0:38:18 that people can do to find their why. 0:38:20 I wrote a book called “Find Your One.” 0:38:20 – Yeah. 0:38:22 Your website’s got some great thank courses 0:38:24 and things that people can sign up for, 0:38:25 which look awesome. 0:38:26 – Thank you. 0:38:28 – But there’s something called the friends exercise, 0:38:30 which anybody can do, and it’s fun. 0:38:32 Basically find a friend who loves you and you love them. 0:38:34 The kind of friend who, 0:38:35 if you call them at three o’clock in the morning, 0:38:36 you know that they would be there for you 0:38:37 and you would be there for them. 0:38:38 – Okay. 0:38:40 – Do not do this exercise with a spouse, 0:38:41 with a sibling, with a parent. 0:38:42 It does not work. 0:38:44 Those relationships are too close. 0:38:45 – Okay. 0:38:46 – Do it with a best friend. 0:38:48 And ask them the simple question. 0:38:49 Why are we friends? 0:38:52 And they’re gonna look at you like you’re crazy. 0:38:53 Because the part of the brain that controls 0:38:56 all of our feelings, love, loyalty, trust, 0:38:58 the limbic brain, doesn’t control language. 0:39:00 It doesn’t control rational thought. 0:39:01 – Hmm. 0:39:02 – And so it’s very hard for us 0:39:05 to rationally articulate emotions, 0:39:07 which is why we use metaphors. 0:39:08 – Yeah. 0:39:08 You’re hard tempering him in the words. 0:39:09 – Yeah, of course. 0:39:10 It’s a biological problem. 0:39:12 And so then you immediately convert the question, 0:39:14 because why is an emotional question? 0:39:16 And you start saying, come on, come on. 0:39:19 What, what specifically is it about me 0:39:22 that I know that you would be there for me no matter what? 0:39:23 And again, they’re gonna hem and ha, 0:39:24 it’s very hard to put them to words. 0:39:25 – What if they just give you high level like, 0:39:26 oh, you’re funny? – They will. 0:39:27 They will. 0:39:28 That’s what they will do. 0:39:28 They’ll start describing you. 0:39:32 You’re funny, I trust you, you’re always there for me. 0:39:33 And you have to play devil’s advocate. 0:39:35 Great, that’s the definition of friend. 0:39:37 What specifically is it about me? 0:39:39 Or great, yes, all true. 0:39:41 But you get that from lots of other people. 0:39:43 What specifically is it about me? 0:39:45 Then I know you’d be there for me no matter what. 0:39:47 And they’re gonna go through a few rounds of this 0:39:48 where they’re just describing you 0:39:52 and describing this generic best friend archetype. 0:39:56 And eventually, because of discomfort, they will give up. 0:39:59 And they’ll go, look, man, I don’t know. 0:40:02 All I know is, and they’ll start describing themselves. 0:40:04 And this is what my friend said to me 0:40:04 when I did the exercise. 0:40:06 Look Simon, I don’t know. 0:40:09 All I know is, I can sit in a room with you. 0:40:11 I don’t even have to talk to you when I feel inspired. 0:40:13 And I got goosebumps. 0:40:15 So what they’ll do is they’ll say something 0:40:18 about themselves and you will have an emotional reaction. 0:40:20 You’ll get goosebumps, you’ll wail up with tears, 0:40:21 because what they’re doing is articulating the value 0:40:24 having their life, which is the thing you give 0:40:26 to the world, which is your why. 0:40:27 And if you do this with multiple friends, 0:40:30 you will get very similar, if not the exact same answer, 0:40:31 because who you are in the world 0:40:35 is the space you fill in all of these people’s lives. 0:40:37 – And so is this idea what you give to them 0:40:38 or what you give to the world, 0:40:41 are you looking for a cross-section of agreement 0:40:42 amongst friends? 0:40:43 – No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. 0:40:45 This is not subjective, this is objective. 0:40:46 – Okay. 0:40:47 – Find as there’s common themes. 0:40:50 And your why is the value you have in the world. 0:40:51 It’s why not everybody likes you. 0:40:53 It’s not everybody wants what you have. 0:40:54 There are plenty of people who think 0:40:57 that my entire existence is cheesy. 0:40:58 I mean, I talk about inspiration. 0:41:01 I mean, literally what could be cheesier, right? 0:41:02 And they’re very dismissive. 0:41:03 Well, I’m not for them. 0:41:04 That’s okay. 0:41:05 It’s like some people like chocolate, 0:41:05 some people like vanilla. 0:41:06 It’s all good. 0:41:08 But the people who love what I have to offer, 0:41:12 well, those people are either part of the movement. 0:41:15 They either, you know, buy a, read a book 0:41:17 or watch a video or they’re my friends. 0:41:19 And we’re all kind of the same kind of person. 0:41:21 It’s like when Apple says think different, 0:41:22 who are they describing? 0:41:23 The answer is yes. 0:41:24 – Yeah. 0:41:25 – They’re describing their employees. 0:41:26 They’re describing their founders. 0:41:27 They’re describing their customers. 0:41:30 They’re describing, the answer is yes. 0:41:33 They’re describing everyone who believes in that thing. 0:41:34 Well, it’s the same. 0:41:35 Your why is the thing you give to the world 0:41:37 and the people who value that 0:41:38 are the ones who want to receive it. 0:41:39 But it’s always going to be you. 0:41:42 – Can we have different whys, multiple whys? 0:41:44 When do these whys form? 0:41:46 – Your why is fully formed by your mid to late teens. 0:41:48 The youngest why discovery I ever did 0:41:50 was a 16 year old and it worked perfectly. 0:41:53 – We are all the products of our upbringing. 0:41:55 You are who you are based on the experiences you had 0:41:57 when you were young, which made you quote unquote, 0:41:58 who you are. 0:42:01 And you don’t have a why for work and a why for home 0:42:03 because then how would I know which one’s the real you? 0:42:06 And one of those two places you’re lying, right? 0:42:08 And you can’t change your why every year 0:42:09 because then again, how would you ever form trusting 0:42:11 relationships because I’d never know who you are. 0:42:13 Are you authentic this week? 0:42:14 But last week was a different why, 0:42:16 so it’s the concept of authenticity 0:42:19 literally couldn’t exist if your why could change. 0:42:20 You are who you are and the rest of your life 0:42:22 is simply an opportunity to live in balance 0:42:23 with that why or not. 0:42:26 I’ll show you another way to find your why, 0:42:27 which is pattern recognition. 0:42:31 I want you to tell me something you’ve done in your career, 0:42:32 whether it was commercially successful or not, 0:42:34 does not matter. 0:42:35 But something, a project you’ve worked on, 0:42:37 something specific that you did in your career 0:42:40 that you absolutely loved being a part of. 0:42:43 And if everything you ever did for the rest of your life 0:42:44 was like this one thing, 0:42:45 you’d be the happiest person in life. 0:42:47 – Oh. 0:42:50 – I would say one of the things that I’ve enjoyed is– 0:42:51 – Loved. 0:42:53 – Loved, okay. 0:42:55 One of the things that I’ve loved is, 0:42:57 then this is probably ego loaded, 0:42:58 so let’s just take it with that. 0:43:03 So I’ve loved getting the recognition from others 0:43:05 for discovering things earlier than anyone else. 0:43:08 Tell me something specific that you did 0:43:12 that you loved the process, you loved being a part of it, 0:43:14 that if all of your projects were like this one, 0:43:16 ’cause you’ve started multiple business, 0:43:19 many of them have had commercial success, 0:43:21 some of them you enjoyed more than others, 0:43:24 and within those projects, there were things that happened. 0:43:25 – Sure. 0:43:26 – Things that went right or wrong, 0:43:27 new clients you landed, whatever it was. 0:43:31 Tell me one specific thing throughout this entire career 0:43:33 that you loved, you didn’t necessarily like it ever, 0:43:36 but you loved every, like this is the most exciting thing. 0:43:40 – I would say that is the invention of things that– 0:43:42 – Specific, invention of what? 0:43:45 – When we created social voting for the first time 0:43:48 and you could see the number go up 0:43:51 on a piece of content on the web, this is before likes, 0:43:54 and because of something called asynchronous JavaScript, 0:43:57 you could actually watch as people socially voted 0:44:00 on things in real time, and inventing that, 0:44:04 and seeing that come to life, and watching humans 0:44:07 in real time gather around articles 0:44:11 and watch them socially spread information, 0:44:16 that moment of creating that and seeing it take off 0:44:20 was just the creation process was a highlight 0:44:22 you would probably never get anywhere else. 0:44:27 That was a great just accomplishment for me and my team. 0:44:29 – So of all the amazing things you’ve done, 0:44:31 and you’ve had exits, and all of the things 0:44:33 that people dream of, right? 0:44:35 What specifically was it about that, 0:44:40 about social voting that stands out in an entire career? 0:44:42 – I think it’s because historically, 0:44:43 my kids will look back on that and said, 0:44:47 dad did something that changed the world in some small way. 0:44:48 Could say that about other things you’ve done, 0:44:49 dad did something with dig, 0:44:52 dad did something with all those things. 0:44:54 My dad did was precursor to this or precursor to that. 0:44:57 Mark Zuckerberg came to my dad for advice. 0:45:01 So that, what specifically was about social voting 0:45:01 that was so exciting? 0:45:03 – Probably because it had the biggest impact. 0:45:05 I would say there’s been other things, 0:45:07 like when I made the first intermittent fasting app, 0:45:10 severely obese people, my dad died of a heart attack, 0:45:11 were losing a lot of weight, 0:45:14 and we started getting emails saying it changed their lives. 0:45:18 And that was another aha moment where I was like, 0:45:20 this makes me feel so good. 0:45:22 Just because I know that I’d give anything 0:45:23 for another year with my dad, 0:45:26 and to like think that I’m giving somebody else’s son 0:45:29 or daughter an extra year with their mom or dad 0:45:31 is a huge one for me. 0:45:33 So I think that’s another huge one. 0:45:35 – No, that’s good. 0:45:37 Tell me an early specific happy childhood memory, 0:45:38 something I can relive with you. 0:45:40 – Saturday mornings, my dad– 0:45:41 – One memory. 0:45:45 – One memory, catching a fish with my dad out on a boat. 0:45:47 – So this is a specific time you were at? 0:45:48 – Yeah, 100%. 0:45:50 – Okay, tell me about that day. 0:45:52 – Got up early, I had never been fishing in the sea, 0:45:54 only kind of on lakes. 0:45:58 My dad drove me about, it was a multi-day trip 0:45:59 to get up to the state of Washington. 0:46:03 When we went out on a boat, I was probably 10 years old, 0:46:07 and I helped reel in like a 45 pound salmon. 0:46:10 I obviously couldn’t do it myself, ’cause I was tiny. 0:46:11 – Actually, I take that back. 0:46:14 A better memory was laying in the back of our truck bed, 0:46:15 looking up at my dad, 0:46:17 he showed me satellites for the first time, 0:46:19 and I saw a satellite camping with my dad. 0:46:21 That was like just a magical moment. 0:46:22 – Okay, tell me more about that. 0:46:24 – I just realized how much I love my father, 0:46:26 and I just realized how special it was 0:46:28 that I got to spend some one-on-one time with him, 0:46:31 and that he would take time out of his busy schedule 0:46:34 to show me attention, to teach me things. 0:46:36 It was difficult because my dad 0:46:38 was a very verbally abusive father to my mom, 0:46:40 and so he was always angry. 0:46:44 And so to see him being tender with me 0:46:47 was just a beautiful thing, 0:46:49 because I got to see my dad in a place of like, 0:46:52 happiness, which I didn’t see that often. 0:46:53 – Yeah. 0:46:56 And what was it about showing you the satellites? 0:46:57 – More one-on-one time, 0:47:00 and I just didn’t even know those things existed. 0:47:02 My late 40s, satellites were a big deal 0:47:03 way back in the day, 0:47:04 and now I will go watch SpaceX launches 0:47:06 outside of my balcony. 0:47:07 But back then it was like, 0:47:09 I just didn’t even know you could see them with a naked eye. 0:47:11 And if you’re laying on a clear enough night, 0:47:13 you can look up and you can actually track them 0:47:14 and see a satellite, which is amazing. 0:47:16 – Yeah. 0:47:18 Okay, so what’s interesting about those stories, 0:47:20 seeing satellites with your dad, 0:47:22 and when you talk about the intermittent fasting, 0:47:26 you use very similar language in both of them, 0:47:28 which is you talk about the opportunity 0:47:30 to have these moments, right? 0:47:31 My dad was an angry man, 0:47:33 and I got to see him in tender times. 0:47:35 You talk about giving somebody else 0:47:38 the opportunity to spend more time with, right? 0:47:40 It’s about the discovery of beautiful things 0:47:42 that you didn’t know existed, 0:47:43 an angry man who could be tender, 0:47:46 a satellite you didn’t know you could see with a naked eye, 0:47:49 the discovery of changing an intermittent fast, 0:47:51 even the uploading of things. 0:47:55 It’s really about recognizing that there’s community, 0:47:57 like there’s other people who connect. 0:48:02 And I think your why sort of exists in this arena. 0:48:04 I’m struggling to find the exact words for it. 0:48:05 – Yes, that feels right to me. 0:48:07 It’s very right to me. 0:48:09 – Where the things that bring you joy 0:48:11 are when you give somebody the opportunity 0:48:14 to make a discovery that has a positive impact in their lives. 0:48:15 – 100%. 0:48:16 – To see something they didn’t see before. 0:48:17 – And in all of those examples, 0:48:20 there was an element of like, I didn’t know that before. 0:48:22 I had never seen that before. 0:48:23 I didn’t know that could have an impact. 0:48:24 And there was a positive impact 0:48:26 whether it’s spending time with your dad. 0:48:27 And you said it beautifully, 0:48:28 which is giving somebody the opportunity 0:48:31 to spend more time with their mother or father 0:48:33 that you didn’t have. 0:48:34 And to some degree, 0:48:36 you’re becoming the best parts of your father, 0:48:39 which is to take quiet moments, 0:48:40 show somebody something 0:48:42 and let them discover something magical. 0:48:44 – Yeah, I think that’s why I like playing with my kids so much. 0:48:46 – The things you get to show your kids. 0:48:47 – Yeah, and see through their eyes. 0:48:48 – See through their eyes. 0:48:49 – Yeah, it’s beautiful. 0:48:50 – It’s beautiful. 0:48:52 And even in the way you talk about social voting, 0:48:55 which is to see through other people’s eyes 0:48:57 what they find interesting. 0:48:59 So there’s discovery for the person 0:49:00 who’s learning it for the first time, 0:49:01 but there’s discovery for you who’s teaching them 0:49:03 because you don’t know where it’s gonna go. 0:49:04 – Right. 0:49:05 – And so there’s discovery on both sides. 0:49:06 – Yeah. 0:49:07 – So I think discover or discovery 0:49:10 is sort of your magic place, your magical place. 0:49:11 Anyway, your why exists somewhere in the– 0:49:12 – No, that’s awesome. 0:49:14 I do wanna talk about like what you do professionally 0:49:16 for people because I think this is important. 0:49:18 I noticed your site has some ways 0:49:19 that people can sign up 0:49:22 and actually learn how to be coached through this. 0:49:24 More people need to do that. 0:49:25 And I wanna take it further now. 0:49:27 What do people do on your site? 0:49:29 – So we started the optimism company 0:49:30 with a very specific purpose, 0:49:33 which is to advance the idea of human skills. 0:49:35 I hate the term soft skills. 0:49:36 Hard skills and soft skills. 0:49:38 First of all, hard and softer opposites. 0:49:40 These things do not work against each other. 0:49:43 And also there’s nothing soft about soft skills. 0:49:45 They’re hard skills and there’s human skills. 0:49:46 Hard skills are the skills you need to learn 0:49:48 to do the job you need to do. 0:49:50 And human skills are the skills you need to learn 0:49:51 to be a better human being. 0:49:54 And there’s a great irony in being human, right? 0:49:56 Like cats don’t have to work very hard to be cats. 0:49:58 They’re just naturally good at being cats. 0:50:00 But we have to actually do a lot of work 0:50:01 to be good human beings. 0:50:03 It’s frustrating and annoying. 0:50:05 And we built the optimism company 0:50:08 to completely focus on teaching people 0:50:12 the human skills they need to be better human beings 0:50:15 and to advance that ability to cooperate and socialize. 0:50:17 – Is that both personally and professionally? 0:50:18 – It’s you, right? 0:50:20 So when I teach you better listening skills, 0:50:23 when I teach you how to have a difficult conversation, 0:50:26 when I teach you how to have an effective confrontation. 0:50:28 Now we teach it in a work context 0:50:30 because that’s where the people are. 0:50:32 But the reality is those skills are useful everywhere. 0:50:34 I like to make the joke that there’s an entire section 0:50:36 of the bookshop called self-help. 0:50:39 And there’s no section of the bookshop called help others. 0:50:41 And what we need is to advance the help others industry. 0:50:43 And that starts with teaching people the human skills 0:50:46 of how to not only be a better version of yourself, 0:50:50 but more important, which is how to be a good partner, 0:50:54 friend, colleague, coworker, boyfriend, girlfriend, 0:50:55 brother, sister, son, daughter, 0:50:57 mother, father, to somebody else. 0:51:02 Because all of these relationships, boss, employee, dad, 0:51:05 mom, brother, sister, they’re all cooperative. 0:51:07 None of them are solo. 0:51:09 They all involve a relationship. 0:51:10 Almost every label we have for people 0:51:12 involves some sort of relationship. 0:51:14 You can’t be a leader if nobody’s following you. 0:51:17 You can’t be a follower if there’s nothing to follow. 0:51:18 All of these things is a relationship, 0:51:20 even when people talk about their faith. 0:51:21 I’m a follower of X. 0:51:22 Well, that’s a relationship. 0:51:24 That’s how they describe faith. 0:51:27 And so that’s what the optimism is singularly focused on, 0:51:28 which is how we teach people the human skills 0:51:29 to be better human beings. 0:51:30 – That’s awesome. 0:51:32 I was picking through the website 0:51:35 and I noticed there was a couple of things 0:51:38 you mentioned on the site that you teach people 0:51:41 the courage to lead and then also conflict resolution. 0:51:44 How do you teach someone to resolve conflict? 0:51:46 – So many of these skills, 0:51:49 the foundational skill of a lot of them is listening, right? 0:51:51 Like we talked about it before with you and your wife. 0:51:52 You fix everything. 0:51:54 One of what you need to do is learn to listen. 0:51:57 You work really hard to learn to listen to your kids, 0:51:59 but then you abandon the skill at work 0:52:02 or in your adult relationships, right? 0:52:05 And so conflict resolution, we have conflict at work. 0:52:06 We have disagreements. 0:52:07 We have misunderstandings. 0:52:09 We feel triggered by certain things that people say, 0:52:11 whether they said it on purpose or by accident, 0:52:14 we feel pressure, we react badly. 0:52:16 There’s conflict everywhere. 0:52:19 And I don’t believe that world peace, for example, 0:52:21 is the absence of conflict. 0:52:23 I think that’s nonsense, right? 0:52:26 We live in a world with no conflict or war. 0:52:28 Nope, not gonna happen, right? 0:52:30 To me, world peace is the ability 0:52:32 to resolve conflict peacefully. 0:52:36 There’s gonna be conflict on how to resolve it peacefully. 0:52:36 And you see it at work all the time. 0:52:38 People yell at each other, people quit out of anger, 0:52:40 people fire out of anger. 0:52:42 Conflict is gonna happen. 0:52:44 How do we resolve our conflicts peacefully? 0:52:45 You’re gonna have conflict in your relationships. 0:52:47 How do you resolve conflict peacefully? 0:52:51 So for me, conflict resolution is that very difficult skill 0:52:52 of when you’re angry, 0:52:54 you still have the skill to hold space for somebody else. 0:52:57 – That’s so hard because when someone is triggered, 0:52:58 everything goes out the window. 0:53:00 And it’s just like, all of a sudden it’s all about emotion. 0:53:03 How do you train yourself to say, 0:53:06 let me pause this emotion and set it aside for a second 0:53:08 and listen, what’s the process like? 0:53:09 – Part of it is you have to have a game plan 0:53:10 going into every conflict. 0:53:11 You wanna make these decisions 0:53:13 before you get to conflict. 0:53:14 You don’t wanna be in conflict 0:53:16 and then having to come up with strategy. 0:53:17 You need to master these skills 0:53:19 before the conflict so you’re prepared. 0:53:20 Whether they’re athletes or military, 0:53:21 they talk about muscle memory. 0:53:22 You practice and practice and practice 0:53:23 and practice and practice. 0:53:25 So you don’t quote unquote have to think 0:53:26 in the stressful time 0:53:29 because you can just quote unquote rely on your training. 0:53:30 – Interesting. 0:53:31 – Very similar. 0:53:32 – So you offer that type of training? 0:53:34 – Well, I mean, if you do these kinds of trainings, 0:53:37 then you’re doing them in artificial environments. 0:53:38 – Is it role-playing? 0:53:39 What type of training is it? 0:53:41 – The role-playing, we expect people to go do themselves. 0:53:42 But the point is all of these things, 0:53:44 even if you learn the skill, you have to go practice it. 0:53:45 So I’ll give you one example. 0:53:49 My girlfriend, we talk to each other very openly 0:53:53 when we’re not in conflict, that when we fight, 0:53:55 we don’t want it to be me versus you. 0:53:57 We want it to be us versus the problem, right? 0:53:58 So we know that. 0:54:00 So both of us have that mindset. 0:54:04 So when conflict does arise, we both have the right mindset 0:54:06 and sometimes it takes us a little to get back to it 0:54:08 or we can say to each other, “Hey, hey, hey, 0:54:10 “I’m not trying to be right here. 0:54:11 “I’m trying to solve this problem.” 0:54:12 And then we might see the person. 0:54:13 But I’ll give you a real-life example 0:54:15 that actually happened where we went down 0:54:18 that horrible rabbit hole of who started it. 0:54:20 If you hadn’t done this, then I wouldn’t have done that. 0:54:21 Well, if you hadn’t done that, 0:54:22 then I wouldn’t have done this. 0:54:23 It sounds like some Middle East conflict, 0:54:25 which is like we’re both blaming each other 0:54:26 for where it started. 0:54:29 And it was getting worse and worse and worse 0:54:31 and more aggressive. 0:54:33 And it occurred to me in that fight, 0:54:34 this is going nowhere. 0:54:36 This is intractable. 0:54:39 This is going to end up on you on the couch or something. 0:54:40 One of us is going to storm out. 0:54:42 If you just flash forward 10 minutes, 0:54:46 there’s no peaceful resolution to this journey we’re on 0:54:48 where we’re pointing out what I did right 0:54:49 and what she did wrong 0:54:50 and she’s pointing out what I did wrong 0:54:52 and what she did right. 0:54:53 Right? 0:54:54 And I literally interrupted. 0:54:58 I said, “Okay, this is going nowhere, new rules. 0:54:59 “We’re going to reverse the script here 0:55:01 “because right now I’m pointing out everything 0:55:02 “I’m doing right and you’re doing wrong 0:55:04 “and you’re doing the same, new rules. 0:55:07 “From now on, I’m going to tell you what I did wrong 0:55:10 “and what you did right and I’ll go first.” 0:55:11 Wow. 0:55:12 And I said, “Here’s what I did wrong 0:55:14 “and here’s what you got right.” 0:55:16 And she goes, “Well, yeah, here’s what I got wrong 0:55:17 “and here’s what you got right.” 0:55:17 That’s beautiful. 0:55:18 And I said, “Well, here’s what I got wrong 0:55:20 “and you got right.” 0:55:25 And in five minutes or less, the tension had been released. 0:55:28 We realized that both of us were trying. 0:55:29 Neither of us was evil. 0:55:32 Both of us were doing things right 0:55:35 and both of us had accountability. 0:55:37 And in that moment, it just petered out. 0:55:38 That’s beautiful. 0:55:40 You’re taking the knob and just turning it down enough 0:55:43 to where you can have a sensible conversation again. 0:55:44 But I created rules. 0:55:45 Yes. 0:55:47 The rules of engagement are this. 0:55:49 We’re going to continue to fight, 0:55:52 but we are operating from this script. 0:55:53 Me right, you wrong. 0:55:54 I’m just going to flip the script. 0:55:56 Me wrong, you right. 0:55:57 And let’s just see what happens. 0:55:59 Do you use that every time or is that just– 0:55:59 No, I didn’t. 0:56:00 That was spontaneous in the moment. 0:56:01 That’s amazing. 0:56:02 I’ve never done that before. 0:56:03 I’m going to do it again. 0:56:04 Yeah. 0:56:08 But the point is, is like doing it once even, 0:56:10 the next time you go down that path, 0:56:13 I don’t have to go down the path and get it really tense 0:56:15 ’cause I can stop it immediately like look, 0:56:16 I hear what you’re saying 0:56:18 and I definitely have some culpability here. 0:56:19 Yeah. 0:56:21 I definitely did this wrong and you did this right. 0:56:23 I can do it immediately now. 0:56:24 But the point is, these are skills. 0:56:25 Right. 0:56:27 Learnable, practicable skills and they’re muscles. 0:56:30 If you don’t use them, they’re going to atrophy. 0:56:31 And this is what we’re trying to teach. 0:56:34 We’re trying to teach a host of these skills 0:56:37 that by themselves, they’ll help a little bit. 0:56:39 But the more of these skills we master, 0:56:41 the better colleagues, 0:56:43 yeah, girlfriends, girlfriends, brothers, sisters, 0:56:46 fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, leaders, employees, 0:56:49 the better we become team members, colleagues, 0:56:51 any kind of human relationship. 0:56:53 It was a big blind spot for me for a long time, 0:56:56 which is I was a computer geek as a kid. 0:56:59 So back in our day, it was not cool to be a computer geek. 0:57:00 So I was made fun of a lot. 0:57:04 So I was socially awkward and I had a really hard time 0:57:06 getting into my teens and then twenties, 0:57:10 going into a new situation without applying alcohol 0:57:13 because alcohol for me was like a crutch, right? 0:57:14 I’ve since course corrected that, 0:57:17 but I’ve had to realize that when I stopped alcohol, 0:57:19 I have to build new muscles again. 0:57:22 I have to build new muscles around social interactions. 0:57:23 One on one, I’m fine. 0:57:25 I can turn it on for a while and I’m fine. 0:57:29 But there’s things that you have to kind of figure out 0:57:31 how to build that muscle around 0:57:34 so you can become proficient in it. 0:57:38 When you meet someone that is like, I’m socially awkward, 0:57:42 I am not advancing my career, 0:57:43 the classic one is afraid to ask for a raise, 0:57:45 but let’s just say I’m not outgoing enough 0:57:50 to inspire confidence by the leaders in my organization. 0:57:52 Is that something that you believe 0:57:54 that we can learn and improve upon? 0:57:57 – So social awkwardness is not the problem. 0:57:59 Un-discomfort asking for difficult things 0:58:00 is not the problem. 0:58:01 I’m socially awkward. 0:58:02 You see me in a crowd, I’m useless, 0:58:03 I’m the one standing in the corner. 0:58:04 – So am I. 0:58:07 – I’m an over-sharer, mainly out of discomfort. 0:58:10 Talk too much, come on too strong. 0:58:12 It’s all discomfort. 0:58:13 Years of failed dates, you know? 0:58:14 – Yeah. 0:58:16 – Just social awkwardness. 0:58:21 And what I’ve learned is that those are not the problems. 0:58:23 The problem is confidence. 0:58:28 And I use social awkwardness or ADHD or introversion 0:58:33 or one of these excuses for whatever weirdness that I feel. 0:58:36 And I’m a great believer 0:58:38 that none of these things are right or wrong. 0:58:40 They just are, you know? 0:58:41 You can be socially awkward as an extrovert, 0:58:43 you can be socially awkward as an introvert. 0:58:44 They just are. 0:58:45 And again, it goes back to asking for help 0:58:47 and just owning it, right? 0:58:48 Let’s be vulnerable. 0:58:51 Let’s be open about our social awkwardness. 0:58:52 Let’s put it out there, let’s let people know. 0:58:53 I say it all the time, 0:58:54 like I’m really socially awkward. 0:58:58 I say it on dates, it’s a release, right? 0:58:58 It’s like putting it on the table. 0:59:00 So if I have a moment, 0:59:02 I’m not beating myself up in my head, right? 0:59:03 – Which can compound, right? 0:59:04 – And now it’s all me. 0:59:06 It’s all me in my narrative, right? 0:59:06 – Yeah. 0:59:09 – And so the most important thing 0:59:10 is just owning it with confidence. 0:59:12 So here’s an example. 0:59:15 I’m really uncomfortable asking for a raise. 0:59:20 This is really hard for me, right? 0:59:22 That’s not owning it. 0:59:24 How about, hey, I’m so uncomfortable 0:59:25 having this conversation with you right now. 0:59:27 Like, I know I need to ask for a raise, 0:59:28 but I don’t want to ask for a raise 0:59:29 because it makes me really uncomfortable. 0:59:31 But can we have the conversation anyway, please? 0:59:32 Right? 0:59:32 – Yeah. 0:59:33 – Or when you’re out with somebody, 0:59:34 meeting somebody for the first time, 0:59:35 it’s like, I’m really socially awkward 0:59:36 and I’m going to introvert 0:59:37 and I’m probably going to say something 0:59:38 that’s going to make you uncomfortable. 0:59:40 Like that’s just got creeper vibes all the way. 0:59:41 – Yes. 0:59:42 – Right? 0:59:42 – Yeah, that’s like, I’ll follow you 0:59:43 out of the bar situation. 0:59:45 – Yeah, that’s so uncomfortable to even hear, 0:59:46 even though it’s well-intentioned 0:59:49 and it’s explanation versus just so you know, 0:59:51 I’m probably like totally socially awkward. 0:59:52 I’m probably going to say something 0:59:53 that’s going to make you uncomfortable, 0:59:54 make me uncomfortable. 0:59:55 It’s going to happen 0:59:56 because I’m just socially awkward that way. 0:59:58 You can hear the difference in tone. 0:59:59 – Right. 1:00:00 – When you just own it. 1:00:01 – Yes. 1:00:03 – When you’re just confident about who you are. 1:00:04 – Yes, it’s a great point. 1:00:06 – And so all the things that we talk about, 1:00:07 we’re trying to fix the symptoms, 1:00:10 but the cause is that you’re just not owning who you are. 1:00:11 – Right. 1:00:12 – And you can own your strengths 1:00:14 and you can own your awkwardness. 1:00:14 – Yeah. 1:00:15 – Just as an aside, 1:00:17 I don’t believe in strengths and weaknesses. 1:00:19 I believe we have characteristics and attributes. 1:00:20 And in the right contexts, 1:00:22 those things are strengths. 1:00:23 And in the wrong contexts, 1:00:25 those things are weaknesses. 1:00:27 So nothing that we have in our personalities 1:00:29 is inherently a strength or a weakness. 1:00:31 It’s all contextual, right? 1:00:34 So I work hard to be aware 1:00:36 of my characteristics and attributes. 1:00:39 And I work hard to learn 1:00:40 when those things are to my advantage 1:00:42 and when those things are to my disadvantage. 1:00:44 And I work hard to put myself in situations 1:00:46 where who I am is more likely to be an advantage 1:00:48 than a disadvantage, right? 1:00:51 So for example, I’m disorganized, 1:00:53 chronically disorganized, right? 1:00:56 And I remember I was a young entrepreneur 1:01:00 at a networking event, socially awkward, introvert, 1:01:01 not very good at this stuff. 1:01:03 And I met a guy who, 1:01:06 he’s like, Simon, what you have to say is amazing. 1:01:07 I wanna work with you. 1:01:09 Here’s my card, right? 1:01:10 Amazing. 1:01:11 And if I was organized, 1:01:14 I would be texting him from the taxi on the way home 1:01:16 or at least emailing him the next day. 1:01:17 – Pleasure to meet you. 1:01:18 – All of that stuff. 1:01:19 I lost the business card. 1:01:20 – Yeah. 1:01:21 – I don’t know what I did with it, right? 1:01:23 I had it and I lost it. 1:01:26 Two weeks later, I found it at the bottom of a briefcase. 1:01:27 And so I emailed him. 1:01:29 I don’t know if you remember when we met a couple of weeks ago, 1:01:30 I just wanted to reach back out. 1:01:32 And he wanted to work with me more 1:01:33 ’cause he thought I was busy. 1:01:34 – That’s amazing. 1:01:36 – So is being disorganized a strength or weakness? 1:01:38 The answer is it depends, right? 1:01:41 In some contexts, it is really not helpful. 1:01:44 In some contexts, it’s an accidental strength, 1:01:46 introverted and a little bit quiet, right? 1:01:48 And intimidated by, like, you don’t know what to say 1:01:50 in a room, strength or weakness. 1:01:53 Well, at a networking event, it’s not gonna help you, right? 1:01:54 When you have to go around the room 1:01:55 and do all that kind of stuff. 1:01:57 But if you’re in a meeting and you’re the quiet one, 1:01:59 nobody knows if you’re an idiot or a genius. 1:02:02 And you’re the listener. 1:02:03 And they’re just waiting. 1:02:05 So huge strength. 1:02:08 And so all of the things that I know about me 1:02:12 and when I thrive and when I fail, 1:02:14 when I’m happy and when I’m struggling, 1:02:18 I figure out what the characteristics and attributes are 1:02:20 and work very hard to put myself in situations, 1:02:23 find jobs, find clients, find opportunities 1:02:25 that are more likely to result in me 1:02:27 having those characteristics and attributes 1:02:29 work to my advantage, 1:02:30 versus simply chasing the money, 1:02:32 chasing the client, chasing the opportunity, 1:02:34 finding myself in a situation 1:02:35 where this is not gonna work to my advantage. 1:02:37 – Yeah. 1:02:38 And do you believe those characteristics 1:02:41 and attributes can be enhanced? 1:02:42 Some people I know, 1:02:43 they just can’t make a decision for the life of them. 1:02:45 They can’t move forward. 1:02:46 Is that something where you look and say, 1:02:47 well, that’s kind of your DNA, 1:02:49 that’s an attribute or a characteristic, 1:02:50 that’s who you are, 1:02:53 or we can actually take who you are 1:02:55 and enhance something to make that a better, 1:02:57 more smoother process for you. 1:02:58 – Yeah, I don’t think that’s necessarily 1:02:59 a characteristic or attribute. 1:03:00 – Okay. 1:03:02 – You know, what’s underlying that is risk tolerance. 1:03:03 Accountability. 1:03:05 – Yeah, so how do we improve risk tolerance? 1:03:06 – So risk tolerance and accountability 1:03:09 come from relationships, believe it or not, right? 1:03:11 So this is why people say, 1:03:12 the lawyers say we can’t do that. 1:03:13 – Right. 1:03:16 – The lawyers don’t make the decision on this. 1:03:17 – Right, right. 1:03:18 – The lawyer said I can’t do it. 1:03:19 That’s not a lawyer’s job. 1:03:21 And any lawyer who says you can’t do this 1:03:22 is actually not doing the job. 1:03:24 Lawyers have one job, advise you on risk. 1:03:25 There’s a lot of risk if you do that. 1:03:28 And you’re the one who’s supposed to assess the risk reward 1:03:30 and decide if the risk is worth it. 1:03:30 – Yeah. 1:03:31 – And if it’s not worth it, then say no, 1:03:33 but if you think it is worth it, then say yes. 1:03:35 – Every time I hear a CEO say that, it’s such bullshit. 1:03:37 – And when anybody says the lawyer said we can’t, 1:03:39 they’re abdicating the responsibility 1:03:40 of making a decision. 1:03:41 – Yeah. 1:03:42 – It’s a weak leader, right? 1:03:44 – Yes, take counsel from your attorneys. 1:03:45 – Right. 1:03:46 – Absolutely. 1:03:48 But ultimately you’ve got to take a risk or not. 1:03:49 – Right. 1:03:50 – It’s your choice. 1:03:51 – Right. 1:03:52 – If you want to have a high or low risk tolerance, 1:03:52 I don’t care. 1:03:54 – But ultimately say, own up to it and say, 1:03:57 I listened to our lawyers and I agree with them. 1:03:58 This is too risky for our business. 1:03:59 – This is too risky. 1:04:00 – So I made the call. 1:04:00 – I made the call. 1:04:01 – Right. 1:04:02 – I made the call. 1:04:05 They spooked me and I just don’t think it’s worth it. 1:04:06 It’s palpable. 1:04:07 And if it goes sideways, 1:04:09 I think we can deal with the fallout. 1:04:12 That’s the conversation of which the lawyers are part of it. 1:04:15 – So being decisive, I think is about relationships. 1:04:19 When we have relationships where somebody says to us, 1:04:22 I believe in your vision, you got this. 1:04:24 The world needs what you’re trying to do. 1:04:28 You will find your courage to make decisions skyrockets. 1:04:29 – Yeah. 1:04:32 – When you don’t seek relationships and support from others, 1:04:35 you will gonna be alone in all your decisions. 1:04:38 And that’s where the fear creeps in. 1:04:39 – Yeah. 1:04:41 – Because you feel like you’re on an island. 1:04:43 You know, and I think the more senior you get 1:04:44 in an organization, whether you’re a young founder 1:04:47 or whether you’re a senior in a large corporate organization, 1:04:50 you know, it’s a very lonely place. 1:04:51 And we all know it. 1:04:52 We all talk about it. 1:04:53 When you’re not in those situations, 1:04:54 you don’t understand it. 1:04:55 – Yeah. 1:04:57 – But when you’re there, it is an incredibly lonely place 1:05:00 because there’s not a lot of people you can confide in. 1:05:04 When you have moments of crippling doubt, 1:05:05 are we doing the right thing here? 1:05:06 – Mm-hmm. 1:05:08 – That last decision I made that I just blow it, 1:05:11 you can’t go to your team and say, 1:05:13 I think I’ve completely screwed this one up. 1:05:14 You have to be vulnerable and open with your team. 1:05:16 But you can’t share that. 1:05:17 But you have to share it with someone. 1:05:18 – Right. 1:05:19 – And to be able to call a friend. 1:05:20 – Yes. 1:05:22 – And be like, dude, I think I completely screwed this up. 1:05:23 – Yeah. 1:05:24 – Yeah. 1:05:25 – It’s relationships. 1:05:27 Human beings need human beings. 1:05:28 – Yeah. 1:05:28 – Done. 1:05:30 And the more human beings that you have in your life 1:05:31 that love you, care about you, trust you, 1:05:34 and you love them, care about them and trust them, 1:05:36 you will find yourself with a courage 1:05:38 and a confidence that few others have. 1:05:39 By the way, people who have that confidence 1:05:40 without relationships. 1:05:41 – Yeah. 1:05:42 – That to me is like psychotic. 1:05:43 – Right. 1:05:44 So if we want to unpack that a little bit and say, 1:05:46 okay, I’m in my late 40s. 1:05:48 Yeah, I just moved to LA six months ago. 1:05:51 Building a new network of trusted friendships, 1:05:54 relationships, it’s harder to do as you get older 1:05:56 and couples establish patterns. 1:06:00 They have kids now, there’s more responsibilities. 1:06:01 What if someone’s listening to be like, 1:06:03 okay, great guys, you’re telling me over and over again, 1:06:04 I need relationships. 1:06:04 I get it. 1:06:06 I don’t have a whole heck of a lot. 1:06:07 – Right. 1:06:07 – What do I do? 1:06:09 – So I’m in the same place as you. 1:06:10 I’m a COVID transplant. 1:06:13 I’m gonna have friends in LA, some good friends in LA, 1:06:15 but expanding my networks proved to be very hard, 1:06:18 partially because LA doesn’t have serendipity. 1:06:20 I come from New York where you bump into people 1:06:21 all over the place at the time. 1:06:23 Here I go from my couch to my car. 1:06:24 – Right. 1:06:26 – To an hour drive or a conference room 1:06:28 and then back, we’re then reversed back away 1:06:30 and you never bump into any, there’s no serendipity. 1:06:31 – Right. 1:06:34 – And so meeting people has to be prescriptive 1:06:35 and it’s very hard. 1:06:37 It’s very hard to meet people here. 1:06:40 And it’s Hollywood so everybody’s a little bit aloof. 1:06:41 You get people’s cell phones, 1:06:42 but you’re not allowed to use them. 1:06:43 It’s a weird place. 1:06:44 – Yes, yeah. 1:06:46 – So one of the things I’m doing, 1:06:47 and it’s imperfect but I’m doing, 1:06:51 which is I’m leaning on my friends from not from here. 1:06:52 – Yeah. 1:06:53 – When I’m calling them up more. 1:06:54 – That’s what I’m doing as well. 1:06:55 – Yeah. 1:06:58 – And I’m finding ways that we can meet up somewhere 1:07:01 or can you come out here or let me come out to you 1:07:03 or why don’t we go away for a weekend together? 1:07:04 – Yes. 1:07:06 – When I’m realizing that a couple of days 1:07:08 of precious time is better than lots of fleeting moments. 1:07:09 – Yeah. 1:07:11 – And I spend a lot of time on the phone 1:07:12 with my friends who aren’t here. 1:07:14 – So funny how the phone’s made a comeback. 1:07:16 – I do more phone calls with friends remote now. 1:07:18 I actually want to hear them than texting. 1:07:19 It just feels more intimate. 1:07:21 – Also I don’t like Zoom. 1:07:23 I don’t think well sitting. 1:07:24 I’m a pacer. 1:07:26 And so on a phone I can pace. 1:07:27 – Yeah. 1:07:28 – I go for a rock. 1:07:29 I put on one of those weighted backpacks 1:07:30 and just go on some of these trails 1:07:32 and just call a friend, check for a half hour. 1:07:33 We now live in a world where, you know, 1:07:36 it’s considered rude to call without texting first. 1:07:38 I mean, really just don’t answer the call then. 1:07:40 – Right, I just call, yeah. 1:07:40 – I just call. 1:07:42 – If they’re that close a friend, 1:07:43 you should just build a call. 1:07:44 – But I do with people I’m not that close with either 1:07:46 because I just think the phone is a beautiful, 1:07:49 magical to hear voice. 1:07:50 – One more question for you. 1:07:52 We started off the conversation 1:07:52 talking about great leaders. 1:07:54 You mentioned Steve Jobs. 1:07:55 One of the people that I’ve been fortunate enough 1:07:58 to have on this show is Elon Musk a while ago. 1:08:00 Really admired him and, you know, 1:08:02 got to watch his career unfold 1:08:04 and him build some great companies. 1:08:07 Seems like he’s found his why. 1:08:12 That said, Twitter/X was a huge head scratcher for me. 1:08:14 Do you think he kind of lost his way? 1:08:17 – So let’s just take one step to the left 1:08:20 and say why is Elon Musk important, right? 1:08:24 There are plenty of very successful entrepreneurs 1:08:29 who, their success, they won the lottery, you know? 1:08:32 Like, right place, right time, right partner, 1:08:33 and some of the ones we admire 1:08:35 weren’t the ones who came up with the idea. 1:08:36 They’re just the ones who are leading the company. 1:08:37 – Sure. 1:08:39 – And then we’ll leave the names of those companies out, 1:08:41 but you and I both know who they are. 1:08:43 And they won’t be able to repeat it. 1:08:46 Even if they’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars, 1:08:48 they won’t be able to repeat it, right? 1:08:53 Elon is important because he’s repeated it multiple times. 1:08:54 He’s the real deal. 1:08:55 – Real deal. 1:08:56 – Real deal, right? 1:08:57 So that’s important. 1:08:58 – Yes. 1:08:59 – He didn’t win a lottery. 1:09:02 Absolutely, people bet against him. 1:09:05 And he had so much passion and vision for what he was doing 1:09:08 that he proved all the naysayers wrong. 1:09:11 He made a very bad decision on Twitter, right? 1:09:12 He got backed into a corner. 1:09:14 He backed himself. 1:09:15 – I don’t think he wanted to buy it at the end. 1:09:16 – I don’t think so. 1:09:17 I think he backed himself into a corner. 1:09:18 – Yeah. 1:09:21 – And he tried to get out of the deal. 1:09:22 Couldn’t. 1:09:24 Just as a side, I think it’s really funny. 1:09:26 The board members of Twitter and like leaders 1:09:27 that were like, we would never sell, how much? 1:09:28 – Okay. 1:09:29 – Yeah, totally. 1:09:31 – How’s that idealism doing for you guys? 1:09:33 Turns out everyone’s got a price. 1:09:35 Anyway, I think Elon backed himself into the corner 1:09:39 because he’s always beaten the naysayers in the past. 1:09:41 People are saying, well, never doubt Elon. 1:09:42 – Right. 1:09:43 – Well, no, you can doubt Elon. 1:09:46 In this case, he doesn’t have a passion or a vision. 1:09:47 – Yes. 1:09:47 – Like he did for the others. 1:09:49 – The others were his ideas. 1:09:49 – Others were his ideas. 1:09:52 I mean, Tesla wasn’t his idea, but he saw the potential. 1:09:53 – Right. 1:09:54 – The decisions he made were clearly 1:09:56 to advanced a greater good. 1:09:58 And he was willing to take tremendous financial risk 1:09:59 to do it. 1:10:01 In this case, he’s trying to make a company 1:10:03 that doesn’t make money, make money, 1:10:05 as opposed to advance some sort of greater good. 1:10:07 And it’s clearly, I mean, he keeps talking 1:10:09 about freedom of speech, but that’s not it. 1:10:10 – Yeah. 1:10:11 – Because you can just look at the decisions 1:10:12 that are being made. 1:10:13 – Yeah. 1:10:13 – I think he screwed the pooch. 1:10:14 I think he made a mistake. 1:10:18 And the sad part is because I think he has a brand 1:10:21 and his brand is look at the shit I get right. 1:10:24 I think he’s too intimidated, shy, embarrassed 1:10:27 to say I blew it, right? 1:10:28 – Yeah. 1:10:30 – And if you would just come at and be like, look, 1:10:32 I made the biggest mistake in my career. 1:10:34 I got wrapped up in the excitement of it all. 1:10:37 I find myself buying something I didn’t wanna buy. 1:10:39 We’ve all done it, but when you’re the world’s richest man, 1:10:41 it’s just a lot more expensive. 1:10:44 And at the end of the day, I don’t really wanna do this. 1:10:45 It’s not my passion. 1:10:47 And I’m willing to sell Twitter to somebody 1:10:49 who actually has a vision for this thing. 1:10:51 You know, I don’t wanna lose my shirt on it, 1:10:52 but you’ll get a good deal. 1:10:53 – Yeah. 1:10:54 – And I need to unload this thing. 1:10:55 And I screwed the pooch. 1:10:57 I don’t wanna go back and focus my time energy 1:10:58 on the things that I actually love and care about. 1:10:59 – Oh man. 1:11:01 – If he just said that, we’d all be fine with it. 1:11:02 – Yeah. 1:11:03 – We’d all be like, cool. 1:11:05 – Everyone would stand up and applaud. 1:11:06 – Everyone would stand up and applaud. 1:11:07 – And what he’s doing, it’s unfortunately, 1:11:11 it’s very the times, which is deny, deny, deny, 1:11:12 deny, deny, right? 1:11:14 Like nobody does anything wrong anymore. 1:11:16 If you look at all of his companies, 1:11:18 you can see there’s an idealism 1:11:21 and that you can see they kind of like fit a portfolio. 1:11:24 Like they kind of all belong in this fund. 1:11:24 This one doesn’t. 1:11:25 – It doesn’t. 1:11:28 – Also, it’s a social product that I find 1:11:29 that it’s a different beast. 1:11:30 – Yeah. 1:11:31 – It’s not science. 1:11:33 – Guy with ass burger shouldn’t be running a social. 1:11:33 – Exactly. 1:11:35 – Look, it’s so fraught with irony. 1:11:37 One of his things that he said at the beginning was, 1:11:39 I think it’s irresponsible and bad 1:11:42 that one company should be deciding 1:11:45 what we say or don’t say. 1:11:47 So I’ve replaced that company with a person. 1:11:49 It’s another one person decides 1:11:51 who all we should be saying or not saying. 1:11:51 – Yeah, I know. 1:11:52 – I mean, whatever. 1:11:53 We can talk about it. 1:11:56 Like he screwed up and I can’t imagine the pressure 1:11:58 he feels or more importantly that he puts on himself. 1:11:59 It’s gotta be so tough. 1:12:00 – You know, he’s still a human being. 1:12:01 – A hundred percent. 1:12:02 – Give the guy a little grace. 1:12:03 He screwed up. 1:12:03 We all do. 1:12:05 His was more expensive and more public 1:12:06 than the rest of ours. 1:12:07 – I’d much rather be working 1:12:10 on neuroscience related issues and working on this. 1:12:11 – Yeah, the exactly. 1:12:14 – Like every moment or day that he spends working on this, 1:12:17 he’s not helping us find solutions to energy problems. 1:12:18 – Right. 1:12:19 – He’s not helping us find solutions 1:12:21 to mental health problems. 1:12:22 – Which he’s damn good at. 1:12:24 – I want Elon to do the stuff that he’s great at 1:12:25 and I don’t want him to do Twitter. 1:12:26 – Yeah, same. 1:12:28 We’re completely aligned. 1:12:29 So what’s next for you? 1:12:32 You’ve got several successful best selling books. 1:12:35 That could just be your jam for the rest of your life. 1:12:39 – I’ve all but stopped doing in person public speaking. 1:12:41 I do them occasionally, 1:12:45 but it’s basically not happening anymore. 1:12:45 – Yeah. 1:12:48 – Because it doesn’t work like it used to. 1:12:50 I believe in impact. 1:12:52 Impact is more important to me than money. 1:12:54 And when I was starting, I was proselytizing. 1:12:58 I was preaching a point of view in a way the world worked. 1:12:59 And most people in the room had never heard of me 1:13:01 or my ideas. 1:13:04 And so I came into preach and the delta 1:13:05 of how people felt when I came in, 1:13:07 when people felt when I came out 1:13:08 and the lifestyle that I was living, 1:13:11 which was on the road all the time exhausting. 1:13:12 – Yeah. 1:13:13 – The pain was worth it. 1:13:15 And I’m a great, but people like, 1:13:16 you should never quit. 1:13:16 You have to have grit. 1:13:18 People like, well, you have to know when to quit. 1:13:19 My standard is very simple, 1:13:23 which is if the struggle or the sacrifice is worth it, 1:13:24 then keep doing it. 1:13:26 If the struggle or sacrifice doesn’t feel worth it, 1:13:28 then stop doing it, right? 1:13:30 You know you have cause 1:13:31 and you know that you’re doing the right thing. 1:13:34 When this sucks, but it’s worth it. 1:13:35 – Yeah. 1:13:36 – Right? 1:13:37 And so I hated it, but it was worth it. 1:13:39 I hated the lifestyle. 1:13:42 Now the delta is much smaller. 1:13:44 I’m coming to talk about ideas 1:13:46 that people have already read about or heard about, 1:13:49 or I’m no longer proselytizing a group of people 1:13:50 who’ve never heard of my work. 1:13:53 And so I’m in this magical period of exploration. 1:13:55 I actually don’t know what I’m gonna do next. 1:13:56 And so I’m saying yes to things 1:13:58 that have no financial gain whatsoever, 1:14:00 but I’m just kind of like giving it a try 1:14:01 to see if I like it or not. 1:14:03 I know that it won’t be what I’ve been doing. 1:14:04 – Yeah. 1:14:05 – I like steep learning curves. 1:14:06 This is the curse of 10,000 hours. 1:14:08 Gladwell made this whole 10,000 hour things 1:14:09 that you have to achieve 10,000 hours 1:14:11 or something before you can achieve mastery. 1:14:15 And we all are in quote unquote pursuit of the 10,000 hours. 1:14:16 But what we forget, and I firmly believe 1:14:18 that everything is balanced. 1:14:19 Everything in the world is balanced. 1:14:20 Every advantage you have in the world, 1:14:22 there’s a disadvantage that comes 1:14:24 with whatever that thing is, always. 1:14:27 The world is always balanced and nature pours a vacuum. 1:14:29 And so there’s a downside to the 10,000 hours. 1:14:30 You talk to lots of people who have mastery. 1:14:32 You’ll find the same pattern. 1:14:34 There’s only one of a few things. 1:14:35 Boredom is one of them. 1:14:38 It was so exciting when the steep learning curve was steep. 1:14:40 And I’ve met directors and producers 1:14:42 and VCs and entrepreneurs. 1:14:44 And they’re so good at what they do. 1:14:46 They’re considered the best in their industry. 1:14:47 And they’re out there. 1:14:48 They know how to make money. 1:14:49 They know how to make movies. 1:14:50 They know how to write books. 1:14:51 They’re like bang, bang, bang. 1:14:54 And if you get them on a quiet night, 1:14:55 when they’re a little bit tired, 1:14:58 probably a glass of whiskey or two in them, 1:15:00 they will absolutely all admit 1:15:01 that they’re bored out of their skulls. 1:15:03 Because there’s nothing exciting 1:15:04 about what they’re doing anymore. 1:15:05 It’s just rote. 1:15:07 – Because it’s become second nature to them? 1:15:08 – Because it’s 10,000 hours. 1:15:09 They have so much mastery. 1:15:10 It’s not exciting. 1:15:12 It’s the excitement of gaining 10,000 hours. 1:15:14 It’s actually more enjoyable for the human being. 1:15:16 I meet these really, really senior successful people 1:15:18 that privately admit that they’re bored. 1:15:20 – I wonder how Steph Curry does it. 1:15:22 – I wonder how those professional basketball players 1:15:24 when they’re just like the top of their game, 1:15:25 how they stay motivated. 1:15:26 Like Kobe was really good at this. 1:15:28 – If you saw “The Last Dance,” 1:15:30 Michael Jordan created narratives that were fake. 1:15:31 – Yeah, that’s right. 1:15:32 He was making shit up. 1:15:33 – He was making shit up. 1:15:35 He was making enemies. 1:15:36 – Yeah. 1:15:38 – He was not this great infinite minded guy 1:15:38 that we all thought he was. 1:15:40 He was the consummate finite player. 1:15:41 He was the best finite player in the world 1:15:43 where he would produce conflict that didn’t exist 1:15:44 to make himself so angry 1:15:46 that he was gonna take you down. 1:15:48 I mean, that was crazy. 1:15:50 That was insane. – It was crazy insight. 1:15:52 And I do think they get bored as well. 1:15:54 And I think it’s just like the next ring 1:15:55 and become the winning most of this 1:15:56 or the winning most team. 1:15:59 They just keep setting finite goals. 1:16:00 And that’s exciting for the short term, 1:16:02 but do they have long-term joy? 1:16:03 I don’t know, you know? 1:16:06 So boredom is one thing that I think a lot of people, 1:16:07 when you reach 10,000 hours, 1:16:10 I think the other thing is you find yourself, 1:16:12 like when you’re a hammer, every problem’s a nail. 1:16:14 And when you have mastery of something, 1:16:17 you see the whole world through that one lens. 1:16:20 And I think it creates a closeness to new. 1:16:21 And you see this a lot. 1:16:25 You see very successful CEOs, entrepreneurs 1:16:29 that miss significant changes in technology, for example. 1:16:31 And the number of CEOs who didn’t see the internet 1:16:33 as a thing. – Right. 1:16:34 – Yeah, you look back and look at those old quotes 1:16:36 and they’re hilarious. 1:16:39 – Or like bomber who like, shittle over the iPhone. 1:16:40 Like it’ll never be a thing 1:16:41 because no one’s gonna spend that amount of money 1:16:42 on a phone. 1:16:43 – You’re smarter than that. 1:16:45 But the problem is it’s not because he’s dumb. 1:16:46 – Yeah. 1:16:48 – And it’s not because he’s blind. 1:16:49 And it’s not because he’s stupid. 1:16:52 It’s because when you have mastered something 1:16:54 and you’ve been doing that thing the same way 1:16:57 for 30 years to the point where it’s made you rich 1:16:59 and famous and the top of the organization, 1:17:01 it is very, very hard to see the world 1:17:04 through any other lens than that lens. 1:17:05 – And whether you know it or not, 1:17:07 you’ve created a walled garden for yourself. 1:17:09 When I was at Google, the first thing I did 1:17:11 when I landed inside and I was assigned 1:17:13 to their social products team and I was running mobile 1:17:16 for Google+ which ended up failing. 1:17:17 – Well done. 1:17:18 – Listen, I bounced. 1:17:21 I was speaking of leaving jobs quickly. 1:17:22 I was there for like four months 1:17:25 and I went to Google Ventures and just became an investor. 1:17:27 I knew there was no future there. 1:17:28 But yeah, that was horrible. 1:17:30 But one of the things I realized is like, 1:17:31 I’d gone to these product meetings 1:17:33 and there was like 30 people in the room. 1:17:36 And I’d start talking about what we were doing 1:17:37 that was novel and different 1:17:40 and that just wasn’t feature parody with Facebook. 1:17:45 And it was like, they were so of the mindset 1:17:47 of like, we’re Google, we can do anything. 1:17:49 We have scale. 1:17:51 They didn’t even use anyone else’s tools. 1:17:53 They were never installing other apps 1:17:53 of other competitors. 1:17:54 They weren’t playing. 1:17:55 They lost all of that. 1:17:57 They had their free lunches. 1:17:58 They had their soccer campuses. 1:18:01 They even had a half pipe on Google’s campus, 1:18:03 which I rode, which was actually pretty awesome. 1:18:08 But it was like, you’re so surrounded by like-minded people. 1:18:11 You don’t think to play and there’s no discovery. 1:18:13 And so I think that’s what happened with Bomber and others 1:18:15 when you don’t get a chance to actually get out there 1:18:16 and be a real person. 1:18:17 – And that’s the thing that made you successful 1:18:19 in the first place was the open-mindedness 1:18:20 of the child like one. – Play, yeah. 1:18:21 – You’re 100% right. 1:18:23 And this is the curse of the 10,000 hours. 1:18:26 It’s 10,000 hours plus, plus, plus, 1:18:29 which is why publishing didn’t invent the e-reader. 1:18:32 Amazon invented the e-reader, not publishers. 1:18:34 – Right, very confusing. 1:18:37 – Why is it that Netflix made streaming a thing 1:18:39 and not the movie and TV industry? 1:18:41 How did you guys miss that? 1:18:43 You could have, but you didn’t. 1:18:44 – You can’t blame companies or industries 1:18:46 ’cause companies and industries don’t make decisions. 1:18:50 It’s human beings who have achieved mastery, 1:18:51 who are now running organizations, 1:18:53 who are decision-making positions, 1:18:56 who literally cannot perceive the world 1:18:58 outside of the 10,000 hours of mastery that they’ve achieved. 1:18:59 – For sure. 1:19:03 I’m at that point where I have 10,000 hours of mastery 1:19:06 in one little space and it scares the shit out of me. 1:19:08 And so if there’s one thing I know, 1:19:10 which is to go be an idiot again. 1:19:11 – I love that. 1:19:13 – I need to start with four hours. 1:19:15 Okay, I’m gonna learn about venture. 1:19:18 I don’t know and understand anything about money. 1:19:20 I’ve never been motivated, I’m the money idiot. 1:19:21 And I’m sitting at these meetings 1:19:23 and they’re all using all this jargon. 1:19:25 And I am so clueless. 1:19:28 It is not fun, it is not comfortable, I feel dumb. 1:19:29 Everybody thinks I’m smart 1:19:30 because I’ve achieved something 1:19:33 and they think I know everything about everything, right? 1:19:35 And I’m trying to be dumb. 1:19:37 And I’m trying to find what I’m passionate about 1:19:40 that is worth really working hard 1:19:43 to not be dumb at the thing that I’m dumb about. 1:19:44 – What’s your point earlier? 1:19:45 I mean, it’s about asking questions 1:19:46 that you don’t know the answer to again. 1:19:47 – You’ll appreciate this. 1:19:50 So I got to know James Kars, 1:19:52 who was the originator of the concept 1:19:55 of finite and infinite games before he died. 1:20:00 And when I first met him, of course, the burning question, 1:20:01 how’d you come up with that? 1:20:03 Right now, just as an aside for those 1:20:04 who don’t know what I’m talking about. 1:20:07 So Jim Kars was a philosopher and theologian. 1:20:09 He worked at NYU who wrote a book 1:20:12 in the mid-1980s called “Finite and Infinite Games” 1:20:13 where he defined these two types of games. 1:20:15 It’s a kooky little philosophy book, right? 1:20:16 He defined these two types of games. 1:20:19 A finite game is defined as known players, 1:20:22 fixed rules, agreed upon objectives, football, baseball. 1:20:23 If there’s a winner necessarily, 1:20:25 you have to have a loser or losers. 1:20:28 But more important, there’s always a beginning, 1:20:29 a middle, and an end. 1:20:30 Then you have infinite games. 1:20:33 Infinite games are defined as known and unknown players, 1:20:34 which means you don’t necessarily know 1:20:36 who all the other players are, 1:20:38 and new players can join the game at any time. 1:20:39 The rules are changeable, 1:20:42 which means every player can play however they want. 1:20:43 And there’s no such thing as winning. 1:20:45 You can only perpetuate the game. 1:20:47 The goal is to stay in the games long as possible. 1:20:48 – Right, so life, basically. 1:20:51 – Business, nobody wins business. 1:20:52 When Circuit City went bankrupt, 1:20:54 Best Buy didn’t win anything. 1:20:55 The game will change forms. 1:20:57 You don’t know who your competitors are necessarily. 1:20:58 New competitors can join. 1:21:00 Every company can run however they want to run. 1:21:02 And no one’s ever declared the winner of business. 1:21:04 This is what Kars put out in the world. 1:21:07 And it dramatically impacted my work. 1:21:09 ‘Cause I bought into his philosophy, 1:21:11 Hogan and Sinker, and I started to realize, 1:21:12 if you listen to leaders, 1:21:13 they talk about being number one, 1:21:15 being the best, or beating their competition. 1:21:17 Based on what? 1:21:18 Based on what agreed upon metrics, 1:21:19 objectives, and time frames. 1:21:21 So when you play to win in a game 1:21:22 that has no finish line, 1:21:24 turns out you make a lot of stupid decisions, 1:21:26 and you end up destroying trust, cooperation, 1:21:27 and innovation. 1:21:30 And if you look, most companies today, 1:21:32 most large companies are not innovative. 1:21:34 They just buy smaller and more innovative companies. 1:21:37 The average lifespan of a company, I think, is 17 years, 1:21:39 which is abysmal, right? 1:21:41 Look at the damage that companies are doing 1:21:42 because they’re so short-termist. 1:21:44 It’s all because they have a finite mindset 1:21:45 in the infinite game of business. 1:21:47 What Kars articulated was a truth. 1:21:49 A lot of people have theories. 1:21:50 Finding them games is a truth. 1:21:52 That is how the world works, 1:21:54 and you have to play for the game you’re in. 1:21:56 So I got to know some. 1:21:57 And of course, when I met him the first time, 1:21:58 I sat down with him and was like, 1:22:02 I gotta ask, how did you come up with this? 1:22:05 And he was telling me that in the 1970s, 1:22:06 there were all of these salons, 1:22:09 so these intellectual salons of which he was a part of, 1:22:11 where they would bring in people from different disciplines, 1:22:13 like mathematics and philosophy and engineering, 1:22:17 to debate the topic of the day, which was game theory. 1:22:20 Game theory was all the rage in the 1970s, 1:22:23 and lots of theories were coming out of these salons. 1:22:24 So for example, the prisoner’s dilemma, 1:22:26 which many of us are familiar with, 1:22:29 that came out of one of these salons in the 1970s. 1:22:31 So he was in these salons, 1:22:35 and it occurred to him that in all of these discussions, 1:22:37 they were always talking about winning and losing, 1:22:38 all of them. 1:22:40 Nobody was talking about playing. 1:22:43 Even the prisoner’s dilemma is about winning and losing. 1:22:45 And then he sort of went home with this problem 1:22:46 he had stuck in his mind, 1:22:48 and he watched his kids, 1:22:50 and he saw when his kids played ping-pong, 1:22:52 there was always screaming and yelling, 1:22:53 there was always fighting, 1:22:55 and there was always accusations of somebody cheating. 1:22:56 Every time. 1:22:57 – That doesn’t change with adults, by the way, right? 1:22:58 – But yeah. 1:23:00 – But when his kids were playing Lego, 1:23:03 they would sit there quietly for hours, 1:23:05 and one of the kids would leave for a little bit, 1:23:06 and then come back later, 1:23:09 and the game would, the Legos would last for days, 1:23:11 and they would start and stop and start and stop, 1:23:12 and there was never any fighting, 1:23:14 and there was only cooperation. 1:23:17 – And he realized that we’re so obsessed 1:23:18 with winning and losing, 1:23:19 that we’ve forgotten the value of playing, 1:23:24 and not all games have an end. 1:23:26 And business should be treated like a game 1:23:27 rather than a competition. 1:23:31 It should be treated like Lego more than baseball. 1:23:32 – Yes. 1:23:34 – And we overuse sports and war analogies 1:23:35 in business all the time. 1:23:36 – Yeah, hit a home run. 1:23:38 – ‘Cause we treat it like a game. 1:23:40 We have launches, we have campaigns, 1:23:42 we have wins, we have losses, 1:23:44 we give bonuses for accomplishment, 1:23:45 we talk about performance-driven, 1:23:47 but we never talk about creativity, 1:23:49 we never talk about joy, 1:23:53 we never talk about cooperation or cross-pollination, 1:23:55 and this is the magic of great innovation 1:23:57 and great businesses. 1:24:00 And so you talk about the magic of play, right? 1:24:03 One of the problems with 10,000 hours of mastery, 1:24:04 or any kind of mastery, 1:24:06 is you’ve become so good at something, 1:24:08 now you wanna win every time you’re playing, 1:24:10 because you’re the expert. 1:24:13 And there’s a joy in not worrying 1:24:15 about the outcome. 1:24:18 There’s a joy in just playing. 1:24:23 And so I am looking for few opportunities to play baseball, 1:24:25 and more opportunities to do Lego. 1:24:26 – That’s interesting. 1:24:28 – A few years ago, I picked up studying Zen 1:24:30 with a great Zen master out of Santa Fe, 1:24:32 and one of the things about Zen 1:24:34 is it is a dedicated practice. 1:24:37 You wanna get in your reps in terms of hours, 1:24:39 but you cannot have an outcome, 1:24:41 because that pushes away. 1:24:43 It defeats the point. 1:24:46 The West is more obsessed with finite, 1:24:47 and I think Eastern philosophies 1:24:48 are more obsessed with infinite. 1:24:51 I learned that you are actually not present 1:24:53 until somebody else says you are, right? 1:24:55 Because you can’t be present by yourself. 1:24:57 I mean, you can, that’s one of the side effects, 1:24:59 but the true value of being present 1:25:01 is as a gift to another, right? 1:25:02 So let’s think about meditation. 1:25:04 For those who’ve ever practiced meditation, 1:25:06 what you’re supposed to do is sit still, 1:25:08 and focus on one thing, 1:25:09 whether it’s something you stare at, 1:25:12 whether it’s a mantra or a sound, 1:25:14 or the ocean, or whatever it is, 1:25:17 you’re supposed to focus on one thing. 1:25:18 You can’t clear your mind, it doesn’t exist. 1:25:19 You focus on one thing, 1:25:20 and you learn to clear your mind 1:25:22 of all other thoughts except this one thing. 1:25:25 And if you have a thought about work, 1:25:26 you label it a thought, you say, 1:25:28 “Ah, that’s a thought, I’m gonna push that aside 1:25:29 “and I’ll deal with that later.” 1:25:31 And you find this tremendous calm and focus 1:25:33 and tremendous relaxation. 1:25:34 Okay, what was the point of all of that? 1:25:35 Just so you can feel good? 1:25:38 No, that’s the unintended byproduct 1:25:40 that you feel good and you have all the health benefits. 1:25:43 The true benefit for me of practicing meditation 1:25:45 is that when I’m sitting with a friend, 1:25:46 they wanna tell me something amazing 1:25:47 that’s happening in their life, 1:25:48 or they wanna tell me something 1:25:49 that’s horrible that they’re dealing with. 1:25:51 I’m focused on one thing and one thing only, 1:25:53 what they’re telling me. 1:25:55 Every other thought, the car that just screeched, 1:25:56 don’t hear it anymore. 1:25:58 I have thoughts of things I wanna say, 1:25:59 and I label them thoughts, I’m gonna say, 1:26:01 “That’s a label of, I’m gonna deal with that later.” 1:26:02 You’re bringing it into real life. 1:26:03 I’m bringing it to real life. 1:26:04 And at the end of the conversation, 1:26:06 I know that I have been present, 1:26:08 all of that practice, we call meditation a practice, 1:26:10 that all of that practice was worth it. 1:26:12 For this one moment when my friend says to me, 1:26:13 “Thank you for listening,” 1:26:14 or “Thank you for being present,” 1:26:17 or “I really feel heard, thank you.” 1:26:19 Now all of that meditation was worth it. 1:26:22 And all of the benefits that I derive are secondary. 1:26:24 The true benefit is the gift that I get to give 1:26:27 from working really hard in my own practice. 1:26:31 So we’ve made so many of these Eastern practices 1:26:34 that are pro-social, selfish. 1:26:35 We made them checkboxes. 1:26:36 We’ve made them checkboxes, 1:26:37 and we’ve made them only for us. 1:26:38 Yes. 1:26:42 And perpetuating that imbalance that America is so good at, 1:26:44 which is we’ve over-indexed on rugged individualism, 1:26:47 maubrum in, with hero-ized CEOs, 1:26:50 as if they did everything by themselves, right? 1:26:51 We’re all striving to be the hero. 1:26:52 We’re all striving to be influencers. 1:26:54 We’ve created heroes out of individuals 1:26:57 of which none of us succeed without groups of people 1:26:59 who believed in us, took bets on us, 1:27:01 were there for us, they were crying their shoulders, 1:27:04 or just cheered us on on a rainy day. 1:27:07 And we’ve forgotten that the more we can focus 1:27:09 on each other and taking care of each other, 1:27:11 and what it means to be a good friend, 1:27:12 to be a good partner, to be a good leader, 1:27:15 to be a good follower, to be a good employee, 1:27:17 to be a good boss, to be a good, all the relationship, 1:27:21 friend, that’s where true joy and success lies. 1:27:26 And play, play, I think is the most magical of all, 1:27:30 play without a required income. 1:27:33 You start drawing, you start playing with Lego, 1:27:36 and a few days later, you decide to put it away. 1:27:39 Yeah, arbitrary, yeah. 1:27:40 And I’m trying to do that with my career. 1:27:41 I’m trying to play again. 1:27:43 That’s great, I love to hear that. 1:27:44 Must feel good. 1:27:46 Well, it’s nerve-wracking. 1:27:47 You know, we talked about being uncomfortable, 1:27:49 I’m uncomfortable, I have no idea 1:27:52 what my future is gonna be, but I’m okay with that. 1:27:53 That’s awesome. 1:27:55 What you did with me, it was beautiful. 1:27:56 Thank you again for that. 1:28:00 That was just a fun little few minutes of unpacking that. 1:28:02 Well, let’s just say, I wanted to go deeper on that. 1:28:03 Where do I go on your website? 1:28:05 Is there a specific course? 1:28:07 There’s a whole thing about finding your why. 1:28:09 Okay, so that’s the one to sign up for. 1:28:09 That’s the one to sign up for. 1:28:11 Okay, awesome. 1:28:12 Simon, thank you so much. 1:28:13 This is great. 1:28:13 Oh, my pleasure, thanks for having me. 1:28:14 It’s been great. 1:28:15 Yeah, the joy, thanks.
The Random Show is back! In this episode: Japanese whisky, forest bathing, healing wood potions, Tim’s favorite gifting books, growing mushrooms, the power of awareness and surrender, intermittent fasting, and Tim’s new book [exclusive]!
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.kevinrose.com/subscribe
Technologist, serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, self-experimenter, and all-around wild and crazy guy Kevin Rose (@KevinRose), rejoins me for another episode of The Random Show. In this one we discuss Japanese whisky, domestic speakeasies, wooden saddles, the rebooting power of Anthony de Mello’s Awareness, poetry, the art of surrender and letting go, mushroom cultivation in the Pacific Northwest, fasting, learning to say no, and much more!
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You’re selling it to clients and getting great feedback.
That’s great, you’ve overcome so many of the hurdles we face as entrepreneurs. But the next step is finding a way to keep new customers coming through the doors and scaling up your services.
That’s the challenge today’s guest Matt Rudnitsky of Platypusbooks.com is facing. Matt helps entrepreneurs and other interesting people turn their ideas and expertise into books.
For this, Matt earns $30k and up per project. But, as you might have guessed, it takes a ton of work and the client pipeline is sometimes dry for months at a time. Matt has also created an online course teaching self-publishing, but hasn’t enrolled any students yet.
So, I invited Kurt Elster from EtherCycle.com back onto the show. (Some of you will remember Kurt from episode 71 back in 2014 where he talked about productized consulting).
Kurt hosts the unofficial Shopify podcast and is a leader in productized consulting in the Shopify space. He’s faced all the same problems Matt, and a lot of you reading this are currently facing.
Tune in to hear our take on Matt’s business and Kurt’s recommendations for next steps. As you listen in, put yourself in Matt’s shoes and see how a similar product or service ladder can apply to your own business.
