Rethinking Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and the Work in Between

NEWaukee: you Hey, welcome back to Making New Possible. My name is Angela Damiani and I am your host. I am very excited to welcome our guest today on the podcast. Glenn Reed is a serial entrepreneur, engineer and designer. He's worked for Adobe, Ford and most notably Apple. He's going to share a little bit of his own experience with Steve Jobs, having left Steve Jobs a number of times and having come back to him. But mostly we talk about creative rebellion in general. what it means to be an innovator versus an entrepreneur and how to cultivate a sense of innovation, both in your team and in the community at large. I am very, very excited to welcome Glenn. Thank you so much for joining us. Hey, Angela, how are you? Good. I'm super excited to have you on the podcast today. I'm super excited to be here. I'm going to admit to everyone that, um, you are the epitome of creative rebellion, which of course is the theme of this podcast because you sent me quite a rebellious response to the questions I wanted to ask you to today. But I appreciate that. was like, this is perfect. This is exactly the point. We want to be talking to people who perhaps don't comply to the status quo. I think that's me, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which day you ask. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, that's a fortunate way of being. So I don't know, I'm going to start with your very first question, if that's okay. Sure. What is it to be an entrepreneur and how does that relate to innovation in your mind? The reason I sort of suggested that as a question is I think people conflate these two ideas that entrepreneurs are always innovative and it's just, it's all one big thing. I think they're incredibly different things really. So an entrepreneur is really just someone who starts a business. It could be a restaurant, could be a podcast, could be, you know, an entire VC funded company. Entrepreneurship is much bigger than innovation in a way, like you don't necessarily have to have a new idea. fact, innovation and new ideas rarely lead to new companies. And most of the time they shouldn't, somebody else should make it into a business for you. I think teasing those two things apart is key to thinking about this whole space really. And if you think about innovation and new ideas, often that happens in a university or in a research lab and you know, there's no company there. They're just, there's a new idea. Sometimes it takes decades for it to actually make it into the world. So entrepreneurship is the act of, you know, creating a C corp and going for it and trying to make a business out of something. So. The more I think about this, the more those things separate from each other. So that's why I wanted to kind of lead with that, I guess. Yeah, I think that you're right. And I do agree that sometimes they can be conflated. I'm curious actually about your impression of the word intrapreneur having worked inside of big companies as a, know, a resident innovator. That word gives me the creeps. be honest with you. But what do you think of that? does that resonate with you? It's not a thing, honestly. So big companies, and I've worked at several of them, well, in the US, would say, are quarter driven profit, you know, companies need to make money. So nobody wants new ideas inside big companies, if they stamp them out, there's an immune system that suppresses innovation. At the same time, every company wants to be thought of as innovative. you create these little you know, advanced technology labs and all this stuff. And it really is just a showpiece. And often the company has no intention of commercializing any of products. So I don't really think it's a thing, although people talk about it and they encourage it right up until, know, okay, we're done. Can we make this into a product? no, no, no, no, no. know, Briggs and Stratton had that problem. I knew the guy who ran their lab, they had a beautiful lab. They 3D printing machines everywhere. They made cool stuff. And the company wouldn't put it into the market. it's a frustrating job. And often the mindset that leads someone to be an intrapreneur means they quit after that and they go start a real company and they become an entrepreneur. it's in a way, it's a breeding ground for the frustration that leads to a new company. We'll talk a little bit about those points in your history when you've gotten frustrated and quit. Cause you've had, have some big names on your resume, right? Apple, Adobe Ford. I do. When what has compelled you at the moments in time you have to start your own thing rather than stay at a safe, you know, big company. Somewhat what I just described, like you're working on something, you think it's cool and you realize it's not going anywhere in the actual company that you're part of. you know, big companies, they're safe. They pay you. There's a, they give you a computer and a desk, you know, cushy comes to mind. So people love those jobs, except if what you really want is that. things to be real, it doesn't happen there. So sometimes people in the advanced tech, know, groups at Adobe or Apple, they stay there for 25 years because they just love tinkering around. If you're compelled to go out and find out if people want it and sell it to them, then you have to kind of leave. So I've left for different reasons, but I guess the two things are either working with a bunch of obnoxious people that I don't get along with. which is, know, has nothing to do with business. It's just like, can't survive here anymore. Or this is such a good idea. I can't stand it anymore. I've to run out the door and do it. it's different motivation sometimes. But I guess it's in one case, it's frustration. In the other case, it's opportunity. Opportunity is a much better reason than frustration, actually. yeah, but I think that sort of grain of salt or whatever that's like a grain of sand that's in that. Oyster of frustration can become the opportunity or the motivation you need to actually seize an opportunity that you see. Because you're right, if you're really comfortable or they're taking really good care of you, you know, what is the motivation? It's a lot of work as you know. It is, and it's risky as we know, and it's kind of a crazy thing to do when you get right down to it. You know, one of my people say, what is it that's supposed to be the mother of invention? I always forget what it's supposed to be. but ⁓ curiosity or something. I say irritation is the mother of invention. If something irritates you enough, you start trying to think of a solution for it. And I think that's where a lot of ideas come from is frustration with the status quo. And a friend of mine years ago told me they thought it was an incredibly negative person. I was shocked because I think I'm the most optimistic person ever. And they pointed out that I was always finding fault with things like that sucks and look what's wrong with that. And I have a mind that does see what sucks about things, but I see it as an opportunity, not just, not just to complain about it, but maybe there's maybe somebody should fix that, you know? And some of the companies I've started like Marathon, was making washing machines and stuff and like, why would you do that? It just seemed like a good idea. And for two years I was like, somebody should really do that. Somebody should really do that. And then I was like, I guess it's going to be me because nobody else is going to do it. So I think opportunity is, is more important than the idea itself is does somebody actually want this thing? Is there a market for it? And early on in, in entrepreneur classes at Stanford or whatever, they talk about, you know, product market fit and customer development. Like you got to have a customer or you don't have a business. So those things are interrelated. And I think an opportunity. boils down to timing and, you know, is the world ready for this? Is the technology there to support it? Do people want it? Can they buy it? Is there a mechanism for them to get hold of it? All those things have to come together. I agree with you. I'm thinking about my own self-definition. I do think of myself as an opportunist as well, but I've become keenly aware of my own. I think I've acquired a higher risk tolerance over the decades. But I have a very low tolerance for discomfort because I've learned that I have agency to fix whatever situation I'm in. And so for me, maybe it is pointing out, that's like an irritant, but I feel compelled to do something about it rather than to lament it. Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. You know, like, because I know I can, can fix it, you know, and sometimes the solution is a whole new business. And sometimes it's, I don't know, whatever a new process. Sometimes it's duct tape, right? Sometimes it's duct tape. Exactly. You know, use the word agency. think that's crucial. Like a lot of people don't think that they have the agency or the ability to do something about a problem. They just sort of think, maybe if I complain about it to the right people, they'll fix it. know, someone else will do it for you. Yeah. Even just, you know, my daughter, the things I'm most proud of is when she orders like a belt to fix the vacuum on Amazon and fixes the vacuum. I'm like, ⁓ my God, you know, good for you. And it's not hard, but a lot of people don't try. They don't open the hood of their car. They don't watch a YouTube video on how to fix stuff. They just assume somebody else is going to do it for them. Yeah. I don't know what that is. I don't know where that came from. Or if it's just sort of like learning over time. You know what mean? That like, you know, I think some people think, especially if you come through a more classical. institution like you're talking about for entrepreneurship or you're like learning about business. I didn't, I wasn't raised in that way. I just sort of started doing things and then stumbled into some form of success. But I think I've learned like that. still don't know why every day it feels new. Literally yesterday we announced that we sold. one of our companies, which is so exciting. And I woke up today like, well, this is a new feeling to feel like we sold it and we're on the other side. I don't know how to do this thing. What does it mean to be on this side of it? And to feel like, I don't know, I had like a twinge of jealousy seeing our staff who've been acquired by the new firm, like post-op, excited they are at their new jobs. And I was like, why am I jealous? This is the whole point. Like, what is this weird, you know what mean, emotion that's sort of like, ⁓ late hangover from that whole experience maybe. But yeah, think that's always the point is that like every day is different and you just sort of have to rise to the occasion. Glenn, I have to tell you that when I first met you I was like sort of intimidated by you because I knew you had worked directly with Steve Jobs and he's sort of like the, I mean isn't he the entrepreneur? Like the one that we all sort of like idolize in some ways, at least in our like modern zeitgeist as being a Yeah, he's an icon of some sort, that's for sure. For better or worse, you know what mean? I think people have lots of feelings about that. the thing I love about your story is that you quit on him three times. Yeah, was thinking about that. What was that about? What inner revolt were you going through? You know what mean? And then why did you go back? Well, I'm thinking to myself rewrite that passage of your bio because it's true that I did quit on him three times But the more important thing was he hired me three times. That's what I should emphasize exactly. Yeah, and so yeah the first time I was young and foolish and I had been at Adobe I was in it in engineering and they yanked me into marketing which I didn't want to do and then I I actually emailed Steve Jobs out of the blue when I was 25 or something and said, I guessed Sjobs at Next.com and it actually got to him. said, hey, I'm awesome. You should hire me. And he didn't hire me right away, but he did hire me. But I got hired into kind of a marketing role and I realized that just wasn't, know, once you're, this is a weird thing to say, but an engineer who moves into marketing, you become tainted. The engineers think you can't be any good and you wouldn't be doing marketing. The reality is marketing is just being able to speak in full sentences and explain things to people. So as an engineer, if you're good at that, you should be a better engineer, but people's up here in marketing, you've got, you've got it gone near, you know, so I had to quit to get permission to be an engineer again. I was like, Steve, I'm going to go build software for your computer, start a company to do that because you need all this stuff and nobody's doing it. And nobody's letting me write software here. And he just looked at me like I was nuts, but he said, you know, if you change your mind, you can come back, which is not something he typically says to people. I took that as a compliment. I started a company, built a lot of awesome software, found out that Next didn't really sell any computers. were, you know, 30,000 of them worldwide. So it was really dumb to build software for a market of 30,000 total computers. So I lost some money, but I gained some some skills and some reputation, all of a sudden I could call myself an engineer again and that, it reset my career. The second time I was, I got hired back into, not back, I never worked at Apple before, but when Next bought Apple for negative $400 million, Steve came back and he's like, go find Glen Reed. I want him to build iMovie for me. So I turned them down for a while. The guy who was looking for me, I'm like, tell him I have a job, you know, whatever. Because Apple was about to fail. I didn't really want to go down with the ship or whatever, but I went and it was great. then I was ready to build, well, I started building iPhoto. Then I wanted to build what became iTunes and I put proposal together and I ran it up the flagpole and they just didn't really respond to me. And then one day I run into this guy in the hallway that I'd met before, Jeff Robin. was like, Jeff, what are you doing here? And he's like, I can't tell you, which is what secrecy was like back then. What are you working on? can't tell you that either. Who do you report to? And he reported to my boss, the VP of, you know, consumer software. What I realized was they had gone and bought his whole company to acquire iTunes to become that the music app, which sucked for a long time. still kind of sucks. Honestly. I was so mad. I'm like, you didn't bother to tell me that? Like I'm over here pitching that I want to do this. I was livid. And I just literally dropped my badge on the table and said, fuck this, I'm not working here anymore. I don't like this client. So that was impulsive. But yeah, I just quit. And at that time, and maybe still, I don't know, but I felt like I could get a job in four hours. You know, people wanted what I was good at. I don't need this job. I just and so my bullshit threshold is very, very low. And they exceeded it. So I quit and Steve was mad because they had let me quit and for about nine months they were trying to get me back and I was like, nope, nope, I'm out of there. And they kept, you know, the guy whose job it was to get me back. He's like, Steve's yelling at me. Why'd you let him get away? And then they came back after it was about nine months I was gone and he said, we'll double your salary and we'll give you a hundred thousand dollars signing bonus to come back. And this is in, you know, 1998, when a hundred thousand dollars was actually a lot. And I was like, Okay, so they bought me back and I came back again. And the third time I quit was several years after that, but it was like Apple had become very like to put it is when you're like you're sitting in a hot tub at a hotel and all the wrong people are you look around you're like I gotta get out of it was it had become. There was no longer a company fighting for its life, they were kind of becoming successful and you get all these I call them zero value people. They're not negative value. They don't remove value from the room, but they don't add anything either. It's a lot of fluff. Yeah. They're just super nice. They just graduated. ⁓ my God. I'm so happy to be here. But the way I look at it is a company or the world is sort of like a bank. You're either making deposits or you're making withdrawals. And when a company becomes successful, everybody wants to go there to put it on their resume and withdraw from the company, essentially. They're not bringing anything to it. And that's who was around me when I looked around, just all these super nice MBAs and Stanford grads and wonderful people that wanted to, they wanted to work there. So I didn't and I left a little more gently that time, but I left and Steve was known for, they called zeros and ones, you're either a zero or you're a one, you know? And once you flip from a one to a zero, that's the end of that kind of thing. So I'd survived that twice, but after the third time, I literally never heard from her again. I became a zero instead of a one at that point, but it was okay. I put in at least five years with the guy and you know, he has a reputation for being all this stuff. And most of it's only partly true. It's sort of, I think he was a sociopath. He didn't really understand people or care. So ⁓ He was fine with the people around him that he sort of trusted and he was easy to work with in that way. But if you were kind of useless or annoying, he was mean to you. Like, he'd say things like, what the fuck are you doing in this room? Get the fuck out. Like, and if you were that person, you didn't think he was a very nice guy. But the rest of the people are like, thanks for getting rid of him. He was a bozo. So he was very expedient at swatting people out of the way. But mostly he was kind of like me and a bunch of other people like us where you just want to do stuff and build stuff. And he just happened to be more powerful and richer than the rest of us. So he was able to make a lot of stuff happen, but not all of it was great. Like he did a lot of things that nobody wanted it next and whatever, but he just, he was relentless. And right up to the point he died, he kept coming to work and wanting to do more stuff. you know, he told me once that he was worth a hundred million dollars, I think by the age of 19. And it was like a lot of people would just retire, but you know, I don't understand retirement. It's like, don't you want to do stuff? Don't you have ideas? Like, you're really going to play golf? I can't believe that. So he was just driven, I think is the right word. Yeah, I mean, I think really innately creative, he's really tapped into that, whatever that is, access to source or something. I mean, I think I feel the same way. I have a hard time imagining what the end of the story will be for myself. Because I love to build stuff, especially the beginning bit. thought the beginning bit is my favorite part. When it feels like all the options are still your options and you don't have any things you to actually work arounds yet. Okay. Well, I mean, you you designed iMoodie and iPhoto with Steve Jobs, but now you're building hardware for robotics. Tell me about that switch over and you know, how your approach to product design differs from hardware versus software after all those years of simply doing the software It does seem like an unusual switch, it? Hardware for me, well, I studied mechanical engineering and then I switched into computer science, so I kind of loved mechanical things. And nowadays, everything mechanical is controlled by computers, so it's sort of perfect. But I call myself a product guy. What that means to me is a product is something that people want to pay for. They want to give you their money. Please, here's 20 bucks. I love that. And the software industry, especially when I got back into, or got into hardware was turning into television. It's like, we'll entertain people for free and sell ads to support it. And actually most of what we think of this software today is that, you know, Facebook, Google, they don't charge you anything. They entertain you and they sell ads. So that's not a product and I didn't like it anymore. I thought the one thing people are willing to give you money for is physical things that you obviously can't make a digital copy of. it led me into manufactured products just because people will pay money for it. And that seems more pure to me. It's not like, Hey, this is free. What do you think? The value seems more tangible. Literally. Yeah. And people get that viscerally. Like everyone kind of knows that they can make a perfect digital copy of a song or a piece of software. Why is this costing money? It's obviously trivial to replicate it. So they don't really buy it deep down. It's like, this is bullshit. It's digital. Physical things, even if it's a piece of toast, somebody has to make it, know, slice it or break the bread or whatever. So we get that physical things are worth something. As for the process, I think it's the same, honestly. A product is a product, whether there's a hardware component or not, figuring out how to get it to work. building it, selling it, the process is almost indistinguishable with some small differences, obviously, like if you're making a physical thing, you have to figure out how to manufacture it. Most people use digital tools to do that. You get a 3D CAD program and you draw a picture of it and then you send it somewhere and they make it for you. it's surprisingly abstract and digital still, even if at the end product is physical. it's It's not as big of a leap as you would think from hardware to software or back. Although software people are traditionally afraid of hardware and hardware people are the worst programmers ever. So being fluent in both of those languages is a surprisingly valuable skill set. I believe it. And there's even jokes that, how many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb? That's a hardware problem. And my hardware friends are like, something doesn't work, check the software, it's always the software, it's always the software, so it's like oil and water that the worlds typically don't mix. But in the end game, the product that you take out of a box, all of them nowadays have both. It's hard to find a product that doesn't have software in it and an electronic chip and a battery somewhere. Even the little cables that, most people don't know this, but the cable that you hook up to your iPods and whatever, there's a microchip. in each end of that cable that decides what to do when you plug it into something that they actually have tiny little processors built into them, which is it's not just wires. It's kind of crazy. Huh? So yeah, that's interesting. Fascinating. Well, tell me a little bit more about your theory around building like a team. And I guess you could talk about it as you've done it for a startup or in a more traditional enterprise place. Like how do you I hear you as having a very decisive view of what it means to be a creative person and a generative person, someone who adds credits and doesn't take them away. But how do you do that as a leader? How do you inspire that? Do you have any sort of like tips and tricks, I guess, from that perspective? It's honestly, it's very, very tricky. And I've been thinking about this ever since you and I started talking about talking about this stuff like And, and, you know, nuance was a recruiting company and you guys have mixed up in that for a long time, but what motivates somebody to join a team? Sometimes it's very different than what you need that person to do when they arrive. So you have to be very careful about not selling them a dream that they don't, it isn't true when they get there, know, that's definitely true. And vice versa. It's amazing how many people I've hired. or interviewed, let me put it that way, who didn't bother to understand the product. When I was hiring for iMovie, my first question was, have you ever used iMovie? You'd think it was an obvious question, but about half of them said no. No, they told you no in the interview? Yeah. What a bunch of is at a time when you could go into the Apple Store and use it for free. You didn't have to buy anything. But it's more like Oh, they wanted to work at Apple. sounds like a cool job. It was more like, do I get, you know? And I was like, what do you bring? What are you going to do when you get here? Exactly. The other piece of it, though, is if you want to be innovative and you want to make stuff and you want to have new ideas, to some extent, I don't want you on my team. And that sounds really weird. But once you've made a commitment, like I have this idea, I'm going to start a company, we're going to go build this thing. The last thing you want is more ideas. It's like, finish the idea we started already. We got to sell this thing. You you just sort of want to suppress innovation. And that sounds crazy, but it's true. Like in order to finish something, you got to stop having new ideas yourself too. Like quit adding features, quit having dreams, just finish this shit. And it's a lot harder than it seems. And if you, if you nurture innovation and everybody's having ideas. you fail. It's fun for a while because it's like kindergarten and there's post-it notes everywhere. But you're, you're, you're pursuing a dream and not facing reality. It's sort of like, you got to get the stuff done that you already started before you get permission to go think of something new. So finish it. And then like ideas are cheap. Everybody can be innovative, or at least have ideas. The key is, should I work on that? And when and the Right now is almost never the right time to work on a new idea. It's like, that goes in the future sometime. agree. I think having that follow through is really what distinguishes the success, whether you're a startup or not. I feel like being able to follow through and execute on what that plan is. Obviously, you can go through and build a whole new feature product and it cannot work out anyway. I feel like nothing's going to work if you have a bunch of open whips and no final thing to deliver. And if you look at Google as a company, you know, for 20, 30 years, they've had one product, it's a search engine and they print money in the back room and they're famous for letting, you know, fifth of 20 % of your time, you're allowed to do whatever you want and think of new things. Or is that just a thing they put on their like employment websites? It was true. I don't know if it's still true because they're coming to their senses a little bit now. For many, years, was true. everything that came out of Google for 20 years had the word beta on it. Somebody just threw something over the wall. And they did all kinds of stuff. And then they just canceled it. was a playground. There was no adult supervision because they were making so much money. It didn't matter. But they didn't finish things. They didn't really productize things. They just kind of amused themselves. I don't know why I chose them as an example. use the word execution. That's absolutely key. venture capitalists, every book that's ever been written about startups execution, you know, that it's just getting the shit done. So found weirdly for my startups that you're better off hiring contract engineers, like people will come in and get the job done. Then you pause them when the job is done. If you hire a full-time engineer, they're sitting around. when you're trying to be done, they're like, you know what, I made some changes, like stop that, you know, but if you're paying them and they're sitting there, of course they're going to change stuff. there's a, there's a time when you do a lot of work and then there's a time when you stop doing the work and you go and sell it and learn what the customer thinks and feedback. And then you go start up being, so it's a very stair-stepping process to develop things or it should be, I think there's a trend nowadays, you know, continuous improvement, which I don't believe in at all. I think. You got to stop and listen and see what people actually think before you start changing it. And people forget to do that. But it's hard to find fault with happy sounding words like continuous improvement. Why would you not want that? Well, maybe it sucks or maybe making it a little bit more like what you think it should be is not going to improve it at all. It's improvement is in the eye of the beholder, not in the eye of the person who thinks they're improving it, if that makes sense. A lot of things that engineers do that they think is improving it. Like look at Microsoft Word, way too many features. Like take some of them out, please. You know, that would improve the product, but nobody does that. So it's a, it's a minefield. And I used the word tricky at the beginning because balancing what inspires people makes them want to work for you. Get some excited about being on the team has to be balanced with getting the work done and you know, making a company's goals successful. So I think the best approach is to be clear about that right up front, like, yeah, we're an innovative company, but that's we're not innovating right now. We're just getting shit done. Is that okay with you? You know, and make sure that that the balance is clear on the way in. It's not that you completely suppress it, but you you have to be business like about when to do the new thing and who wants it and how much is it going to cost and it's very much pragmatics. Yeah, I find it very hard because what attracts people to a small cool seeming company is I'm gonna have so much fun there. Like no, you're not going to fix bugs and ship stuff. Yeah, but I think the thing I've learned is that you can create a lot of dynamism when when things are being actually ticked off and pushed out like you create a bit of momentum. And I think showing people that that that like yes, coming up with a new idea and iterating, you know what mean? People think that that's where you might feel like the win, but I feel like having it actually be completed so you can move on to the next phase, at least for me, that's where I feel the most sense of forward That's a great point. In fact, a lot of these people that you talk to from the advanced tech labs who've been doing fun stuff, the thing that motivates them the most or that demotivates them is like, Did it ever go out the door? Did anybody use it? Did it ship like that? Isn't that what you just told about your own stories, right? Like you were coming up with ideas or you were pitch pitching products and it was going nowhere. I think it actually can be very demotivating if 20 % of your time is spent on fanciful ideas, but they never come to life. I don't know. That sounds like living hell to me. You know, you're right. And people don't quite realize that on the front end. They're like, this is going to be so much fun. But then they realize We want this done. want it out the door. want to it. We want real people to use it. Well, I'd like you to take, I've heard, I've heard parts of this before, but I'd like your, you know, January, 2026 take on the importance of community and relationships in all of this. Yeah. Where do you sit today with that? Well, that's a great question. And a teeny bit of context. I have a complicated relationship with, community and relationships and all this stuff. And Part of the reason is, if you think about the words best practices, right? That's another one of those things like, why would you not want that? Isn't that the greatest thing? What best practices boils down to is you're doing the same stuff everybody else is doing. That's why it's called best practices, you know? You're just copying someone else's idea. Yeah. I find that community and shared experience lead to mediocrity and group think very quickly because everybody just wants to agree with each other. And it's sort of weird to have a controversial idea or a new idea. People make it makes them uncomfortable. So the more coherent a community is, the more the belief system is fixed and static. you know, organized religion is like that. It's the world's biggest community, but it's static and fixed. And you're not allowed. You're not encouraged to think new things or doubt things or believe different things. You're just encouraged to join and pay your dues or whatever. So. I think there's a lot of negativity to some communities, not all. And, you know, I would talk with some of the people of your own, you know, Milwaukee founders, communities and stuff. And ⁓ on the surface, it's amazing. It's like, you know, us against the world, we're, we're the same. I would tell people like, you don't want to stand next to somebody who has exactly the same problems that you do and complain about them. You should be going to the, to the lawyers meet up or the, the bankers meet up and meeting people who aren't like you and who can help you grow in the directions that you're trying to grow instead of complaining, you know, sort of shared misery. It's sort of like ⁓ Alcoholics Anonymous or something, you know, it's like, Hi, I'm Glenn. I'm a programmer. Hi, Glenn, you know, and so I that's been part of my negativity toward community. It's sort of like, what's the premise for the community and why are you there? And I think communities to me form as a side effect to something that you wanted to do anyway, like you like, I'm gonna learn to knit. And so you go to the knitting store and you buy yarn and needles and you meet people who learning to knit. So you become at least temporarily bonded to a community that you didn't even know was there because they happen to share the same interests as you. But if it's a community that like, I'll go back to church as a to pick on it. You join a church because it's there, because your mother told you to or whatever. And then you expect something to come of it. So if the community comes first and then the growth comes maybe never, or there's a second effect, I think it's better if it's purpose driven at some level. And it also goes back to, you bringing something to it? Are you taking something from it? know? Yeah, I was going to say that it's hearkening back to that earlier comment. I feel like the only way it really works and is sustainable long-term is if you have more givers than you have takers. Exactly. And even what is giving mean is a little bit hard to define. A lot of things boil down to contacts like can you introduce me to so and so? Can I meet your friend? know, huge value in that. But that's also somewhat finite. And also there's LinkedIn and virtual versions of that. And so yeah, it's sort of and there are people who show up at every event and sort of drain energy from the room. ⁓ my God, that person's here again, you know, and there aren't a lot of those people, but there are at least as many as there are people who energize the room and bring something to it. So I would just say it's a little bit complicated and it's not just sort of automatically a great thing. And, you know, if everybody's bringing cookies or ideas or whatever, then communities can be incredibly powerful. If they become habitual, I'd go to the black sheep because it's Monday. I don't know if I'm going to meet anybody or whatever. I do think, and I see this in a lot of the language around community builders, that there are unexpected surprises, spontaneous people that you meet. I absolutely agree with that. And my negativity is something that I struggle with because I know that I don't see the whole picture. I'm I'm missing something. And every time I force myself to go to something and the like, Oh my God, I can't believe how great that was, you know, or I met somebody that I had never knew existed. So There is value in just serendipity. And one of my mottos, I have lots of mottos, but if you want to be in the right place at the right time, you should start out by being in the right place. Because if you're in the wrong place, the right time is never going to come along. Forcing yourself to go out into the world, places, even if it's uncomfortable, because there's opportunity there, or there are people, valuable people. You know, downtown Palo Alto, it's sort of this amazing place where, uh, you know, it's the town next to Stanford. So it started being a college town and it still is. And, but I college town Madison or whatever you can believe literally in this, I was having coffee on the, on the sidewalk in this little pretentious Italian cafe once. And I'm just watching people and most of the people in Palo Alto walking down the street. are not speaking English bizarrely. There's people from all over the world that come there because they've heard about it. But this weird guy is riding down the street on a bicycle. One of those, you know, kind of commuter European kind of bikes. Sure. And he screeches his brakes and pulls over. And it was somebody I knew it was the vice president of engineering from Apple, French guy, typically looked like a mad professor on a bicycle. But he was literally riding his bike down the street and saw me at the cafe. and he stopped to talk to me and tell me about this company he was about to start. And, you know, if I was home, that wouldn't have happened. So you're not always going to run into somebody on the sidewalk or at the night market or whatever, but if you don't go, then you're definitely not going to meet anybody. So, and, know, I sent you this an email, but I admire you in particular in the whole world that you live in, because you, the way I think you put it on your website or something is, creating a sense of belonging and community. Like what the heck is that? But I think you have an intuition for what actually gets people fired up to, know, whether it's like, let's sing this song together or let's go to this place and build a bonfire. Like, I don't have that instinct. I can suggest something and everybody looks at me like I'm nuts, you know? So you must have an innate sense of what people are longing for. know, belonging is a sense of needing something too. Like I need something. What is it? So. I don't know how you do that, or maybe you don't either. It's an intuition, when you build or you have an event or you build a community or you start something I've seen when I watch you from the sidelines, everybody can't wait to show up to these things that you do. Even if they have seemed somewhat of a weird premise, but I'm definitely going to that, you know, and they invite their friends and it's a wild success. So there's obviously something to it that I don't completely understand. So I'm glad there are people like you in the world that build these communities and I'll show up sometimes. Well, think there is a method to the madness for sure. I think you're right that you'll never be in the right place at the right time if you don't get up and go. And that's been a very perplexing thing honestly since COVID because the ways people interact with the world have really changed. It's a paradigm that even six years later feels like I'm still relearning How will people interact with spaces and places? And I don't know, can we even say new normal after six years at some point? It's just normal, this is what it is. ⁓ I think the only thing I like pine for is like the before. It's coming back with a vengeance when I see and I think San Francisco is a little ahead of the curve in some ways, but everything is in person. Nothing's virtual. Nobody wants to do a Zoom call. And they're having meetups left and right. like social norms that are just done. even within our, like I think the RCP was dying before COVID, but now it's completely dead. I mean, and it goes in both ways. Like people will RCP and not show and people will not RCP and show. And so, you know, you can imagine from planning purposes, that's a total nightmare. I went to this thing a couple of nights ago. It was called Llama Lounge in San Francisco. And I don't even know who ran it, but it's like super groovy, you know. all the people with expensive shoes, hoodies and whatever. But I registered for it and it's free, you just have to register and that's an RSVP. But to your point, I started getting these emails like it started at six o'clock or 630 actually. They're like, we strongly suggest you get here at five. There's a wait list, it's oversubscribed. If you're not here at five, you might not get in. And the place was mobbed at five o'clock. There's people standing on the sidewalk waiting to get in because they were worried they might miss something. So there's something about that. And RSVP is sort of like there's no downside for not showing up. like, well, I know. But it's of. Yeah, but it's an annoyance. know what mean? But I think there's it happens to me all the time. Actually, people will come up and tell me a story about a person they met or a thing they did. at something they came to that, you know, was an unintended consequence for us as organizers. And I am still sort of bewitched by that. I think that's the coolest thing that there are. Anytime you kind of create a platform for people to convene, they'll just having that space available and for people to feel like they're allowed to be there. You know, there's usually an objective. There's a speaker that needs to speak about something or an exchange of goods that needs to happen or whatever. But there are all sorts of things that happen on the periphery that That's the part that is the most compelling for me still, particularly knowing now that like, I don't know, it's just, feels different. It feels like people need extra incentive. I'm going to steal this idea though. We had, we had a newsletter go out last week actually that announced an event, but it left the date off, which was a mistake. It was a typo, but I had more engagement with that email. People replying back like, I want to go, but when is it? And I was like, is this a way to like get people to actually read shit? Like we'll just intentionally leave off like pertinent information. We know it's great. think it's creating a sense of FOMO fear of missing out on people. That's what makes people show up to stuff like, ⁓ my God, if I don't go, what, what am I going to miss? So somewhere in between that and, and RSVP might be the answer. Maybe you'll get in or maybe you won't. The love of your life or your future business opportunity. It's going to be. Well, Glenn, thank you so much for exploring these topics with me and for being a guest on this show. I really appreciate it. And I hope you'll come back. I feel like there's more yet for us to unpack together. Happy to come back. Happy to chat. And I forgot that we were on a podcast, I'm unfiltered as always, but it's been a pleasure talking with you. You're just the best. Thank you.