Full Transcript for Tech Genius Reveals Why The AI Revolution is Inevitable | David Heinemeier Hansson

00:03:36,341 --> 00:03:36,758 audience. 71 00:03:36,758 --> 00:03:40,053 And suddenly I got questions from all sorts of non-technical people 72 00:03:40,094 --> 00:03:42,096 like, hey, how do I set up this cloth thing? 73 00:03:42,096 --> 00:03:44,641 I need this, this terminal, this is how I use it. Right? 74 00:03:44,641 --> 00:03:47,936 And this has all been happening in such a short order. 75 00:03:47,936 --> 00:03:53,149 So we should have incredible humility that we don't know what the end of 2016 76 00:03:53,191 --> 00:03:57,070 look like, let alone what things are going to look like in two years. 77 00:03:57,070 --> 00:03:58,780 But does that worry you with writing code? 78 00:03:58,780 --> 00:04:02,408 Because what happens to developers if this continues, 79 00:04:02,408 --> 00:04:04,327 if it continues at the pace that it's continued 80 00:04:04,327 --> 00:04:08,081 or that it's been at the last six months for the next six months? Yes. 81 00:04:08,122 --> 00:04:12,293 I think what gives me even more humility on top of the newly 82 00:04:12,335 --> 00:04:17,882 I just talked about was I thought, I wouldn't like this way of developing. 83 00:04:17,882 --> 00:04:21,886 I thought that I didn't want to be a project manager for agents. 84 00:04:21,886 --> 00:04:27,058 I thought that that was sort of like being a project manager for human programmers. 85 00:04:27,058 --> 00:04:29,769 I don't like that that much. I like to get my fingers dirty. 86 00:04:29,769 --> 00:04:31,145 I like to do my own programing. 87 00:04:31,145 --> 00:04:32,814 I don't like to go through other people. 88 00:04:32,814 --> 00:04:35,942 And I thought like, oh, the mental model for agents is sort of like that. 89 00:04:36,901 --> 00:04:37,735 And then it 90 00:04:37,735 --> 00:04:40,780 happened and I realized, no, it's nothing like that at all. 91 00:04:40,863 --> 00:04:44,450 Because the way you interact with these agents, yes, you give them a task, 92 00:04:44,450 --> 00:04:47,537 but then you're ready to review their work in like seven minutes. 93 00:04:47,829 --> 00:04:51,916 It's not like they go off and the feedback loop is two weeks, 94 00:04:51,958 --> 00:04:56,212 let alone two months, which usually is with a group of human programmers. 95 00:04:56,212 --> 00:04:58,339 In a lot of cases, if they need to build something substantial. 96 00:04:58,339 --> 00:05:00,717 You're talking about weeks of work at the very least. 97 00:05:00,717 --> 00:05:04,178 Then in some cases, once of work, when you're dealing with agents, 98 00:05:04,595 --> 00:05:07,307 in many cases you're talking about minutes. 99 00:05:07,307 --> 00:05:10,059 Maybe if they're doing something wrong, just it's hours. Right. 100 00:05:10,059 --> 00:05:14,355 So the change of the feedback changes the interaction model. 101 00:05:14,355 --> 00:05:16,899 And suddenly I found I actually really like this. 102 00:05:16,899 --> 00:05:22,071 If the agents are able to write code that I appreciate and find 103 00:05:22,113 --> 00:05:23,072 is that of depleting. 104 00:05:23,072 --> 00:05:25,908 And that was a big part of my reservation in the beginning. 105 00:05:25,908 --> 00:05:27,660 It's like, I like beautiful code. 106 00:05:27,660 --> 00:05:32,165 This is why I so lovingly handcrafted it over multiple decades. 107 00:05:32,165 --> 00:05:33,416 And I prefer it. 108 00:05:33,416 --> 00:05:36,002 That motive of writing. 109 00:05:36,002 --> 00:05:37,670 I really wanted it to be beautiful. 110 00:05:37,670 --> 00:05:41,299 And then I saw the early agents make something work, 111 00:05:41,299 --> 00:05:45,762 but in a really ugly way, and I thought, I act no. 112 00:05:45,762 --> 00:05:46,929 I'm going to use it for something else. 113 00:05:46,929 --> 00:05:49,932 I'm going to use it for the learning I'm going to use them for, 114 00:05:49,932 --> 00:05:51,559 I don't know, looking up error codes. 115 00:05:51,559 --> 00:05:54,687 I'm using them for figuring out new APIs. 116 00:05:54,729 --> 00:05:56,814 But then again, you have this change in December. 117 00:05:56,814 --> 00:06:00,735 Suddenly the agents were writing code that with a little bit of nudging, 118 00:06:00,777 --> 00:06:01,778 looked like my code. 119 00:06:01,778 --> 00:06:05,740 And then I realized that, my gosh, if I can have this super fast 120 00:06:05,740 --> 00:06:08,910 loop, it's more like an extension of myself. 121 00:06:08,951 --> 00:06:14,082 Like I get a bionic arm, like I'm extending that arm, 122 00:06:14,082 --> 00:06:18,211 but suddenly I can crush 4,000 pounds instead of whatever 123 00:06:18,211 --> 00:06:22,048 a human hand can crush that actually feels more powerful. 124 00:06:22,048 --> 00:06:26,260 It feels more like I'm turning into a superhuman, rather 125 00:06:26,260 --> 00:06:30,223 than I'm just giving up everything to some smarter robots. 126 00:06:30,264 --> 00:06:35,103 Again, as you talked about in two years, maybe humans will be the dumb element 127 00:06:35,103 --> 00:06:36,396 of the community 128 00:06:36,396 --> 00:06:39,190 already on some of the books, but maybe they will be in all those loops, 129 00:06:39,190 --> 00:06:40,691 and maybe it will then be totally different. 130 00:06:40,691 --> 00:06:41,984 But right now, today, 131 00:06:41,984 --> 00:06:46,239 I feel like this is the most exciting time to be a programmer. 132 00:06:46,280 --> 00:06:50,743 You have the most capacity to do the most work, 133 00:06:50,743 --> 00:06:56,499 to fulfill more of what you'd like to see in the world, at a higher quality 134 00:06:56,541 --> 00:07:00,336 than you ever able to do when you were writing everything by hand. 135 00:07:00,336 --> 00:07:03,339 So in short, if a developer is not using AI, 136 00:07:03,423 --> 00:07:05,883 they are they they are going to lose their job. 137 00:07:05,883 --> 00:07:07,343 I think. 138 00:07:07,343 --> 00:07:09,679 I don't know a lot of

programmers actually already. 139 00:07:09,679 --> 00:07:12,223 I mean, we went I went through that face. Right. 140 00:07:12,223 --> 00:07:15,560 So up until December last year I was using AI, but I was using it 141 00:07:15,560 --> 00:07:18,729 for as a, as a tutor, as a, as a lookup mechanism. 142 00:07:18,729 --> 00:07:21,858 I'm still writing the vast majority of my code by hand. 143 00:07:21,858 --> 00:07:24,152 And then from December 4th, that totally flipped. 144 00:07:24,152 --> 00:07:28,156 Now I haven't started a single new piece of code that didn't start 145 00:07:28,156 --> 00:07:29,323 as a prompt first. 146 00:07:29,323 --> 00:07:32,285 Occasionally I will find that the agent isn't going into direction 147 00:07:32,285 --> 00:07:33,411 I want to go and I drop in on. 148 00:07:33,411 --> 00:07:36,289 I read some code, but everything starts with a prompt now. So 149 00:07:37,457 --> 00:07:38,040 I haven't 150 00:07:38,040 --> 00:07:41,335 talked to a lot of people who haven't gotten sucked into that loop already. 151 00:07:41,377 --> 00:07:44,213 Now, not everyone loves it. That's very true. 152 00:07:44,213 --> 00:07:47,300 There's a class of programmer, I think, who 153 00:07:47,925 --> 00:07:52,972 just like the mechanics of turning requirements into working code, 154 00:07:53,014 --> 00:07:56,225 they didn't necessarily care too much about the requirements. 155 00:07:56,225 --> 00:07:59,228 They didn't care so much about what we were trying to accomplish. 156 00:07:59,228 --> 00:08:01,022 Like what was the outcome. They just cared about. 157 00:08:01,022 --> 00:08:04,734 The mechanicals of human says they want feature a 158 00:08:04,817 --> 00:08:08,154 I will put feature A together and then I'll hand it over to the users. 159 00:08:08,154 --> 00:08:11,240 I don't really care either end of it. Right. 160 00:08:11,282 --> 00:08:17,288 And some of those people are struggling and they're struggling because it is clear 161 00:08:17,288 --> 00:08:20,583 that the agents are eating more and more and more and more of that. 162 00:08:20,625 --> 00:08:23,628 And if you just really like writing the code by hand, 163 00:08:24,003 --> 00:08:25,505 some of that is disappearing. 164 00:08:25,505 --> 00:08:29,550 And I can totally sympathize with the sense of loss. 165 00:08:29,550 --> 00:08:31,469 Like, hey, I just had a job. 166 00:08:31,469 --> 00:08:34,055 A year ago that I love. 167 00:08:34,055 --> 00:08:34,972 Everything was great. 168 00:08:34,972 --> 00:08:37,058 I was running on this book by hand, and people were paying 169 00:08:37,058 --> 00:08:41,562 these lavish sums of money because I was the tight resource. 170 00:08:41,687 --> 00:08:45,358 All these people with all these ideas had to go through me 171 00:08:45,483 --> 00:08:47,235 to get to work in software. 172 00:08:47,235 --> 00:08:53,533 And suddenly I'm becoming, if not optional, less of the constraint resource. 173 00:08:53,616 --> 00:08:55,868 And maybe that doesn't feel quite comfortable. 174 00:08:55,868 --> 00:08:59,330 And again, I also think it's fair to have 175 00:08:59,330 --> 00:09:03,251 some uncertainties about what the world is going to look like in six months. 176 00:09:03,251 --> 00:09:05,086 What if this just continues on that bar? 177 00:09:05,086 --> 00:09:07,630 Is anyone going to need any programmer at all? 178 00:09:07,630 --> 00:09:11,425 Or can the people with ideas just ask their agents to do it, 179 00:09:11,425 --> 00:09:15,388 and the agents will be so good that we don't need a human interview. 180 00:09:15,429 --> 00:09:18,474 But for me, I. 181 00:09:18,474 --> 00:09:20,726 I got started with program. 182 00:09:20,726 --> 00:09:24,438 I learned programing not because I wanted to lovingly 183 00:09:24,480 --> 00:09:26,941 type out programs, but because I wanted the programs. 184 00:09:26,941 --> 00:09:28,609 I wanted the outcomes. 185 00:09:28,609 --> 00:09:32,613 And then I spent a long time, I mean, almost the whole career, 186 00:09:32,655 --> 00:09:36,576 just getting really good at the craft and perhaps slightly convincing myself 187 00:09:36,576 --> 00:09:37,577 that that was what I liked. 188 00:09:37,577 --> 00:09:40,746 And now I have been returned to the original premise. 189 00:09:40,746 --> 00:09:42,373 I just really like programs. 190 00:09:42,373 --> 00:09:45,084 I like to make computers do things. 191 00:09:45,084 --> 00:09:47,545 Agents make that so much easier. 192 00:09:47,545 --> 00:09:51,090 I can pursue so many more ideas concurrently, 193 00:09:51,090 --> 00:09:54,218 and that's a really powerful feeling. 194 00:09:54,218 --> 00:09:58,347 for the people that don't know, which I think most do, you built the framework 195 00:09:58,347 --> 00:10:03,894 that runs Shopify, GitHub, Airbnb, like the modern infrastructure of the internet. 196 00:10:03,936 --> 00:10:04,562 Right. 197 00:10:04,562 --> 00:10:08,274 And you built a company that's done tens of millions of dollars 198 00:10:08,274 --> 00:10:13,404 in profit over 25 years without a single dollar of investor control. 199 00:10:13,529 --> 00:10:16,866 I want to go like level by level for someone that's just getting started. 200 00:10:17,408 --> 00:10:19,368 You know, take me to the first steps, right. 201 00:10:19,368 --> 00:10:23,831 Why did you choose to stay bootstrap? 202 00:10:23,998 --> 00:10:27,752 A lot of that came from my experience at the earlier internet 203 00:10:27,752 --> 00:10:31,756 phase, mid 90s to early 2000. 204 00:10:31,756 --> 00:10:36,969 We had this incredible boom and bust cycle where investors were throwing money 205 00:10:37,011 --> 00:10:41,057 after every harebrained idea, maybe a little bit like what's going on 206 00:10:41,057 --> 00:10:45,102 right now, where anything that sounded like internet in the late 90s 207 00:10:45,144 --> 00:10:48,397 just got funded to ridiculous sums, regardless of whether there

208 00:10:48,397 --> 00:10:51,734 was an underlying premise that made sense, regardless of whether there was 209 00:10:51,776 --> 00:10:54,695 a sustainable business that could create profits, 210 00:10:54,695 --> 00:10:58,908 that could then repay those investors, and eventually that part house fell apart 211 00:10:58,908 --> 00:11:02,244 and we got the donkey bust, and everything 212 00:11:02,286 --> 00:11:05,748 kind of was like a wasteland for a while. 213 00:11:05,748 --> 00:11:09,752 And I think that really set a mark both on me and my business partner, 214 00:11:09,752 --> 00:11:11,337 Jason Free, that. 215 00:11:11,337 --> 00:11:14,298 It's a little bit like the stories that we hear 216 00:11:14,298 --> 00:11:17,426 of an older generation who lived through the depression. 217 00:11:17,593 --> 00:11:22,598 I still, all these decades later, they're like butter. 218 00:11:23,182 --> 00:11:25,351 Butter. Like, do you want some extra butter? 219 00:11:25,351 --> 00:11:28,187 Because they remember what it was like not to have enough butter. 220 00:11:28,187 --> 00:11:33,984 And you're marked for life to some extent by those early impressions you have of 221 00:11:33,984 --> 00:11:37,363 what was the economy like, what was society like when you were 222 00:11:37,780 --> 00:11:40,783 coming up, and what would the crisis and traumatic experience? 223 00:11:40,783 --> 00:11:44,328 So we went through that, and then by the time I got involved 224 00:11:44,328 --> 00:11:47,665 working with Jason, I had that very fresh in my mind. 225 00:11:47,665 --> 00:11:49,291 I did not want that. 226 00:11:49,291 --> 00:11:53,462 I saw what happened to a company that gets funded to the moon and then suddenly 227 00:11:53,462 --> 00:11:57,425 collapses and people have to get laid off, and it's not pleasant. 228 00:11:57,466 --> 00:12:03,055 It's actually a lot of human stories and a lot of heartbreak and a lot of despair. 229 00:12:03,305 --> 00:12:04,765 And I thought, like, do you know what? 230 00:12:04,765 --> 00:12:06,934 There's got to be a better way to do that. 231 00:12:06,934 --> 00:12:10,938 Maybe we can build a business where we grow a little slower, 232 00:12:10,938 --> 00:12:14,942 certainly in terms of our expenses, and we live within our means, 233 00:12:14,942 --> 00:12:18,237 but we still have great ambitions about the imprint 234 00:12:18,237 --> 00:12:22,032 we want to make in the world and the products we want to put out there. 235 00:12:22,116 --> 00:12:23,868 Can those things be combined, 236 00:12:23,868 --> 00:12:27,163 especially in software, where it's not like we need 237 00:12:27,204 --> 00:12:29,623 hundreds of millions of dollars to build big factories? 238 00:12:29,623 --> 00:12:31,375 And I mean, it's funny, 239 00:12:31,375 --> 00:12:34,378 we've actually returned that cycle now, and we talked a lot about AI. 240 00:12:34,795 --> 00:12:36,547 They're not spending hundreds of millions of dollars 241

00:12:36,547 --> 00:12:38,924 to spending hundreds of billions of dollars 242 00:12:38,924 --> 00:12:41,844 literally building factories with all these data center buildings. 243 00:12:41,844 --> 00:12:44,096 But when the internet got going 244 00:12:44,096 --> 00:12:48,058 again, it was all about software, and therefore it was all about just 245 00:12:48,100 --> 00:12:52,062 could you have a couple of people sit down and just write code 246 00:12:52,188 --> 00:12:55,900 that should not require this enormous amount of investment? 247 00:12:55,900 --> 00:13:00,029 So I was actually just a little offended by the business models at the time. 248 00:13:00,029 --> 00:13:04,366 This is the early mid 2000 where why do you need all this money? 249 00:13:04,617 --> 00:13:06,494 Why do you need all these people? 250 00:13:06,494 --> 00:13:09,246 I remember hallmark of success 251 00:13:09,246 --> 00:13:13,000 around those days was I got to get to 100, I got to get to 100 people. 252 00:13:13,042 --> 00:13:16,295 And I always thought like, what am I going to do with 100 people? 253 00:13:16,337 --> 00:13:20,174 Like I wrote Basecamp, the product we're still selling today, 254 00:13:20,216 --> 00:13:22,176 22 years later that has generated 255 00:13:22,176 --> 00:13:25,387 hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue over the years by myself. 256 00:13:25,930 --> 00:13:29,391 On the technical side, Jason and Ryan would do the design side. 257 00:13:29,391 --> 00:13:30,726 I did all the technical stuff. 258 00:13:30,726 --> 00:13:33,771 I set it up and again, this was the computers 259 00:13:33,813 --> 00:13:37,107 of 20 years ago, like the technologies we had 20 years ago. 260 00:13:37,191 --> 00:13:39,026 Not nearly as productive as what we have today. 261 00:13:39,026 --> 00:13:42,738 So if I was able to do that, then why couldn't we take that further? 262 00:13:42,738 --> 00:13:44,073 Why did we need all this money? 263 00:13:44,073 --> 00:13:48,244 And then as things started taking off, it was even more true. 264 00:13:48,285 --> 00:13:52,206 Hey, we have more money coming in that we feel like 265 00:13:52,206 --> 00:13:55,918 we have to or even can productively spend going out. 266 00:13:55,960 --> 00:13:57,711 Like, I don't want to have a huge company. 267 00:13:57,711 --> 00:14:00,714 I love working with small type teams. 268 00:14:00,840 --> 00:14:03,676 I particularly like working on 269 00:14:03,676 --> 00:14:06,679 individual features, which is 1 or 2 people like. 270 00:14:06,679 --> 00:14:10,349 The worst thing for me is this idea that we're going to have 271 00:14:10,349 --> 00:14:14,311 a meeting of 12 people because we're all working together, interesting. 272 00:14:14,311 --> 00:14:16,689 And we just all this communication overhead, 273 00:14:16,689 --> 00:14:19,316 all this ping pong back and forth like, no, no, no, 274 00:14:19,316 --> 00:14:22,570 let me just sit down most of the time by myself in my little

room 275 00:14:22,570 --> 00:14:24,989 where I can close the door and do the work. 276 00:14:24,989 --> 00:14:28,409 And then occasionally we'll meet with like 2 or 3, 277 00:14:28,450 --> 00:14:31,662 four people if it's really getting high. And 278 00:14:32,913 --> 00:14:34,832 that was the premise. 279 00:14:34,832 --> 00:14:36,834 And I thought, like, hey, this is panning out. 280 00:14:36,834 --> 00:14:39,295 Like we're running this tiny company. 281 00:14:39,295 --> 00:14:42,131 At the time we were like at seven people. 282 00:14:42,131 --> 00:14:46,010 This is a little bit later in 2000, we had four major products 283 00:14:46,010 --> 00:14:49,179 out there, seven people, and we were launching a new product 284 00:14:49,179 --> 00:14:52,433 every year, and we still had base camp that was taking off like a rocket ship. 285 00:14:52,975 --> 00:14:56,061 And I would just look at all these other companies, like, 286 00:14:56,061 --> 00:14:57,688 what are you wasting all this money on? 287 00:14:57,688 --> 00:14:59,648 Why do you have all these people? 288 00:14:59,648 --> 00:15:03,360 Not just because it's unnecessary, but also because I actually think it's 289 00:15:03,360 --> 00:15:03,736 harmful. 290 00:15:03,736 --> 00:15:07,072 You're producing a bunch of software that's overly complicated, that has way 291 00:15:07,072 --> 00:15:10,284 more features than way more bulk than when most people need. 292 00:15:10,326 --> 00:15:12,828 Most people don't want something super complicated. 293 00:15:12,828 --> 00:15:16,457 They want something they can just solve whatever problem they have of them. 294 00:15:16,457 --> 00:15:20,210 As we were doing with Base Camp, I now have too many people. 295 00:15:20,210 --> 00:15:22,504 I'm dropping things on the floor. 296 00:15:22,504 --> 00:15:23,797 Things are falling through the cracks. 297 00:15:23,797 --> 00:15:25,633 Email is no longer good enough, right? 298 00:15:25,633 --> 00:15:29,929 Anyone does private management over email, which, by the way, is everyone. 299 00:15:29,929 --> 00:15:32,222 Every project almost today starts over. 300 00:15:32,222 --> 00:15:33,390 You want that's the initial. 301 00:15:33,390 --> 00:15:34,725 And then they realize, oh, 302 00:15:34,725 --> 00:15:37,645 by the time they have to add the third or fourth person into it, 303 00:15:37,645 --> 00:15:38,854 it kind of falls apart. Right? 304 00:15:38,854 --> 00:15:43,901 So that was the premise behind Basecamp first success product that we had, 305 00:15:43,901 --> 00:15:46,403 and just realized that the most important thing 306 00:15:46,403 --> 00:15:49,031 we were selling in part, was a we got to solve the problem. 307 00:15:49,031 --> 00:15:50,741 Like things are no longer falling off the 308 00:15:50,741 --> 00:15:53,994 cracks and people can get up to speed, but then also it's got to be learned. 309 00:15:54,703 --> 00:15:59,333 Someone's got to be able to invite a stranger to their

base camp 310 00:15:59,416 --> 00:16:03,629 without having to teach the 500 things, without asking them to read the manual 311 00:16:03,629 --> 00:16:04,213 and so forth. 312 00:16:04,213 --> 00:16:07,549 And I always thought like, that is very congruent with that. 313 00:16:07,549 --> 00:16:12,513 We have a small team that are constrained that we can't actually do 314 00:16:12,513 --> 00:16:16,517 everything we want because I don't trust us. 315 00:16:16,517 --> 00:16:18,018 I don't trust me. 316 00:16:18,018 --> 00:16:22,940 With a team of 100, I think I would do way too much. 317 00:16:22,940 --> 00:16:26,235 I would have way too many ideas that wouldn't have to get 318 00:16:26,235 --> 00:16:29,571 called down to just the essential ten. 319 00:16:29,697 --> 00:16:32,408 And I would start pursuing 50 ideas. 320 00:16:32,408 --> 00:16:36,370 70 ideas, in fact, to reference your own discussion about AI, 321 00:16:36,412 --> 00:16:40,541 I think that's going to be one of the new challenges that suddenly, 322 00:16:40,582 --> 00:16:44,878 if implementation is no longer your bottleneck, you can do 323 00:16:45,087 --> 00:16:48,716 every day you have, but if you do, is contingent. 324 00:16:49,174 --> 00:16:51,802 Every great design 325 00:16:51,802 --> 00:16:56,765 work, every great, even artist has to kill their dollars, have to kill 326 00:16:56,807 --> 00:17:00,602 many of what they think is their best ideas to arrive 327 00:17:00,602 --> 00:17:05,524 at something that's simple and pure and has a coherent vision. 328 00:17:05,524 --> 00:17:09,862 If you allowed even the greatest artists and the greatest designers, infinite 329 00:17:09,862 --> 00:17:11,155 resources, infinite 330 00:17:11,155 --> 00:17:15,034 teams, and infinite time, they would also turn everything to shit. 331 00:17:15,117 --> 00:17:18,787 I mean, one of my great examples of that is the Star Wars movies, right? 332 00:17:18,912 --> 00:17:20,581 The original trilogy. 333 00:17:20,581 --> 00:17:20,914 What? 334 00:17:20,914 --> 00:17:24,126 The first one came out and it was 76 or something. 335 00:17:24,209 --> 00:17:28,005 Still one of the greatest space odysseys of all time. 336 00:17:28,964 --> 00:17:29,339 They were 337 00:17:29,339 --> 00:17:32,551 doing things with like, no computers, right? 338 00:17:32,593 --> 00:17:36,013 They were all just doing cardboard elements. 339 00:17:36,180 --> 00:17:41,602 It's a much better movie than what they were able to produce 340 00:17:41,602 --> 00:17:45,105 20 or 30 years later, with 100 times the budget, 341 00:17:45,439 --> 00:17:48,859 tens of thousands of times more resources where they could. 342 00:17:48,901 --> 00:17:50,986 Computer animation of shit. Right? 343 00:17:50,986 --> 00:17:54,156 There is just such a clarifying, 344 00:17:54,239 --> 00:17:58,952 liberating funnel by having the tricks. 345 00:17:58,994 --> 00:18:02,748 Like when you have these titles where you got all this stuff going into it, 346 00:18:02,748 --> 00:18:05,793 and then it falls on its funnels and funnels because it has to. 347 00:18:05,834 --> 00:18:07,628 And then defining the output 348 00:18:07,628 --> 00:18:11,924 is this beautiful, attractive, coherent piece of software. 349 00:18:11,924 --> 00:18:14,468 And that's what I wanted to build. 350 00:18:14,468 --> 00:18:17,554 And that I feel, is what we have built over the past 20 years 351 00:18:17,554 --> 00:18:21,683 by embracing those constraints, not trying to liberate them as quickly as we could, 352 00:18:21,725 --> 00:18:25,062 not trying to think like, well, if I have two programmers today, 353 00:18:25,062 --> 00:18:28,065 I could build ten times as much as if I had 20 programmers, 354 00:18:28,065 --> 00:18:30,400 because first of all, that's not how anything works. 355 00:18:30,400 --> 00:18:34,029 You do not go ten times as fast by adding ten times as many people. 356 00:18:34,029 --> 00:18:39,243 In many cases, you like to go half a slot because of the overhead, 357 00:18:39,243 --> 00:18:42,412 of communication, overhead, of just trying to deal with all this stuff. 358 00:18:42,412 --> 00:18:44,790 So I think we're going to phase a little bit of that again. 359 00:18:44,790 --> 00:18:50,087 Now that so many more people suddenly have huge teams, huge capacities 360 00:18:50,087 --> 00:18:53,257 at the fingertips, and feel like it can do whatever they want, 361 00:18:53,298 --> 00:18:56,135 and it's the worst curse they could ever have. 362 00:18:56,135 --> 00:19:00,097 Like, you don't want unlimited time and resources. 363 00:19:00,097 --> 00:19:01,765 You want constraints. 364 00:19:01,765 --> 00:19:04,685 guys, we've been so passionate about finding the biggest geniuses, 365 00:19:04,685 --> 00:19:06,770 and this is just one of the many episodes. 366 00:19:06,770 --> 00:19:08,772 If you want to make sure you don't miss the next one. 367 00:19:08,772 --> 00:19:10,065 Make sure to subscribe. 368 00:19:10,065 --> 00:19:11,984 All right, let's get back to the episode. 369 00:19:11,984 --> 00:19:15,112 for the person starting today, do you think they can do what you've done? 370 00:19:15,112 --> 00:19:17,865 Can they stay bootstrapped? How should they look for their idea? 371 00:19:17,865 --> 00:19:19,449 Should they solve one of their own problems? 372 00:19:19,449 --> 00:19:22,578 First, is it possible to recreate the type of success 373 00:19:22,578 --> 00:19:24,705 you've had in this new environment? 374 00:19:24,705 --> 00:19:29,668 Every major success is always a product of its circumstances at the time. 375 00:19:29,668 --> 00:19:34,173 So can you do exactly what we did in exactly the same way 25 years later? 376 00:19:34,214 --> 00:19:37,259 No. Does it mean that there are no lessons to take away? 377 00:19:37,301 --> 00:19:37,885 Of course not. 378 00:19:37,885 --> 00:19:39,386 I think there are tons of lessons to take away. 379 00:19:39,386 -->

00:19:43,682 And in many ways, a lot of what we did has gotten so much easier, right? 380 00:19:43,724 --> 00:19:46,602 I remember I had an essay 381 00:19:48,020 --> 00:19:51,023 once, one time called There's No Room for the idea Guy, 382 00:19:51,148 --> 00:19:55,360 because when implementation was scarce resource 383 00:19:55,360 --> 00:19:59,573 and it was very expensive, you kind of have to be an implementer 384 00:19:59,573 --> 00:20:00,616 to build a business. 385 00:20:00,616 --> 00:20:03,493 Either you had to be an incremental or you had to be rich. 386 00:20:03,493 --> 00:20:06,455 You had to have a lot of money because you have to pay other people to do it right. 387 00:20:06,455 --> 00:20:09,750 And I saw this archetype for a while that hadn't either 388 00:20:09,791 --> 00:20:12,211 they didn't know how to build and they didn't have any money. 389 00:20:12,211 --> 00:20:14,546 And I thought, like, do you know what? 390 00:20:14,546 --> 00:20:15,547 That's going to be tough. 391 00:20:15,547 --> 00:20:20,135 And in fact, not only is it going to be tough, it's going to be a little scandal 392 00:20:20,260 --> 00:20:23,805 because you kind of sort of have to bullshit your way into convincing 393 00:20:23,805 --> 00:20:29,061 some implementers to build it for free or on a promissory note. And 394 00:20:30,395 --> 00:20:32,397 kudos to the folks who pulled that off. 395 00:20:32,397 --> 00:20:36,652 But I didn't think that was a generally viable model that has changed now. 396 00:20:36,652 --> 00:20:41,281 I have absolutely already seen people who just had great ideas 397 00:20:41,281 --> 00:20:46,787 and not alone be able to, with a $20 a month club 398 00:20:47,287 --> 00:20:51,208 subscription build, at the very least, a prototype that can validate 399 00:20:51,208 --> 00:20:52,709 whether there's a business idea there. 400 00:20:52,709 --> 00:20:55,420 And then suddenly you have something, you have a little bit of traction, 401 00:20:55,420 --> 00:20:57,881 you have a little bit of momentum, you have something real. 402 00:20:57,881 --> 00:21:00,342 You don't just have a bunch of fleeting ideas. 403 00:21:00,342 --> 00:21:03,220 And that means that now 404 00:21:03,220 --> 00:21:07,182 this domain of entrepreneurship is open to a whole new class of people, people 405 00:21:07,182 --> 00:21:10,936 who aren't equal members and don't have a lot of money. 406 00:21:11,603 --> 00:21:17,317 That's actually a class of people who did not have the opportunity to build 407 00:21:17,442 --> 00:21:21,321 without kind of also being great bullshit artists. 408 00:21:21,321 --> 00:21:25,450 And I think there's a sort of a dark try out there if you're really good 409 00:21:25,450 --> 00:21:27,703 at portioning other people into working for free for you. 410 00:21:27,703 --> 00:21:29,830 I don't know if that's what I want to build 411 00:21:29,830 --> 00:21:33,750 the next generation of businesses, but you can be someone with great ideas 412 00:21:33,792 --> 00:21:36,545 who just don't have these two properties, and suddenly now 413 00:21:36,545 --> 00:21:37,754 you're able to build something. 414 00:21:37,754 --> 00:21:39,798 So I think it's actually opening up. 415 00:21:39,798 --> 00:21:44,469 But what it also means is, of course, that if we're making it much easier 416 00:21:44,469 --> 00:21:45,637 for someone to get started, 417 00:21:45,637 --> 00:21:47,848 a lot more people will get started, and that means 418 00:21:47,848 --> 00:21:49,558 things become a lot more competitive. 419 00:21:49,558 --> 00:21:53,353 It perhaps does mean that the quality of the idea matters 420 00:21:53,353 --> 00:21:57,316 a lot more, and finding the right angle on how to protect that idea, 421 00:21:57,316 --> 00:22:00,444 since you don't just get ten clones tomorrow. 422 00:22:00,569 --> 00:22:03,989 As we talked about before, we started finding a way to get distribution, 423 00:22:03,989 --> 00:22:07,701 finding a way to have the angle for attention, which is what 424 00:22:07,743 --> 00:22:11,955 so much of the modern marketing world is around today. 425 00:22:11,997 --> 00:22:15,167 It's not just build something great, 426 00:22:15,208 --> 00:22:19,296 they'll come like that was never true, but has never been less true. 427 00:22:19,296 --> 00:22:24,134 And therefore you need an angle on how do you get people to care 428 00:22:24,801 --> 00:22:28,263 to a greater extent than what was true 25 years ago? 429 00:22:28,263 --> 00:22:31,683 If 25 years ago you build something that was just 430 00:22:31,725 --> 00:22:35,520 a really nice piece of software, you had far more of a chance. 431 00:22:35,520 --> 00:22:39,399 You just get up and you discovered because it just wasn't that much software. 432 00:22:39,441 --> 00:22:45,322 People had more time and mental capacity to try something out. 433 00:22:45,364 --> 00:22:47,908 I think today that it's a lot less true. 434 00:22:47,908 --> 00:22:53,789 I've seen even quite pedigreed teams launch something into the market, 435 00:22:53,789 --> 00:22:57,417 and you see this one blip and then just crickets. 436 00:22:57,501 --> 00:22:59,461 And that's kind of terrifying. 437 00:22:59,461 --> 00:23:01,213 But it's also kind of liberating, right? 438 00:23:01,213 --> 00:23:04,007 Then it is getting democratized. 439 00:23:04,007 --> 00:23:07,386 More people have access to it, but it's harder than ever to break through. 440 00:23:07,594 --> 00:23:12,015 So it's a bit of like, well, a monkey pause, like, oh, I'd love that. 441 00:23:12,015 --> 00:23:14,142 Entrepreneurship was easier. Okay, here it is 442 00:23:15,143 --> 00:23:15,727 easier. 443 00:23:15,727 --> 00:23:18,146 Well, welcome to a competitive space. 444 00:23:18,146 --> 00:23:21,149 That's 100 exports than what it was 20 years ago. 445 00:23:22,067 --> 00:23:23,110 Pick your poison. Right. 446 00:23:23,110 --> 00:23:27,280 So would you

say that makes distribution at this stage, at this 447 00:23:27,322 --> 00:23:31,076 where we're at so much more important than than it used to be. 448 00:23:31,076 --> 00:23:35,330 And maybe you can have a mediocre product with amazing distribution 449 00:23:35,330 --> 00:23:38,333 and have success, but it can't be vice versa. 450 00:23:38,333 --> 00:23:40,043 No, I think that's probably true. 451 00:23:40,043 --> 00:23:43,338 I think you actually, it's probably getting competitive enough 452 00:23:43,338 --> 00:23:48,260 that to really break through, you have to have both amazing distribution and right. 453 00:23:48,427 --> 00:23:50,929 But I do think if you're going to pick one over the other, 454 00:23:50,929 --> 00:23:54,015 having great distribution gives you a higher chance 455 00:23:54,015 --> 00:23:57,352 of having at least a moderate, successful business. 456 00:23:57,436 --> 00:24:01,231 You're not going to have a moderate, successful business by having shit 457 00:24:01,231 --> 00:24:06,236 distribution and just some okay, software, that window has closed. 458 00:24:06,445 --> 00:24:10,907 If I'm not mistaken, you did take a single minority investment from Jeff Bezos. 459 00:24:11,199 --> 00:24:12,492 We sold secondaries. 460 00:24:12,492 --> 00:24:15,704 So we never took money into the business because we didn't need it. 461 00:24:15,704 --> 00:24:19,708 By the time Jeff Bezos was interested in 37 signals, 462 00:24:19,708 --> 00:24:24,212 we were already making enough money and then some to pay all our expenses 463 00:24:24,212 --> 00:24:27,382 and all our growth ambitions and whoever we want to hire. 464 00:24:27,382 --> 00:24:30,302 And it was funny because at the time, 465 00:24:30,302 --> 00:24:32,554 we were already kind 466 00:24:32,554 --> 00:24:35,724 of adversarial to the whole venture capital idea, 467 00:24:35,765 --> 00:24:41,646 because we had just seen how poorly could have gone and did go into busting. 468 00:24:41,646 --> 00:24:45,275 So even though when based on launch, we had a lot of traction, 469 00:24:45,275 --> 00:24:46,860 we started getting a bunch of interest. 470 00:24:46,860 --> 00:24:50,822 I remember the count being something like 40 odd beaks reached out like, hey, 471 00:24:50,822 --> 00:24:52,240 do you want investment? You want this? 472 00:24:52,240 --> 00:24:55,076 And we basically just slammed the door and no. 473 00:24:55,076 --> 00:24:57,954 And then Jeff Bezos reaches out 474 00:24:57,954 --> 00:25:01,166 and you're like, okay, let's just see what he has to say. 475 00:25:02,125 --> 00:25:03,752 I mean, actually distribution, right. 476 00:25:03,752 --> 00:25:06,463 Like your reputation is a form of distribution. 477 00:25:06,463 --> 00:25:09,841 Your reputation is a form of a key conversations 478 00:25:09,841 --> 00:25:12,886 that people would not have had with anyone else. 479 00:25:12,886 --> 00:25:14,221 They'll have with you. 480 00:25:14,221 --> 00:25:16,223 If you have a reputation, they'll open the door 481 00:25:16,223 --> 00:25:19,434 for you and Jeff already at that time to get it right. 482 00:25:19,476 --> 00:25:22,020 Like even if anyone is also still losing a ton of money. 483 00:25:22,020 --> 00:25:25,273 At the time, it was clear that he had built something special, and the Jason 484 00:25:25,273 --> 00:25:29,277 and I, at the very least would have an interesting conversation 485 00:25:29,277 --> 00:25:33,782 versus and I hope I don't offend any of my more recent VC friends. 486 00:25:33,823 --> 00:25:34,533 Like all of these, 487 00:25:34,533 --> 00:25:39,621 these are just not that interesting as entrepreneurial counterparts, right? 488 00:25:39,663 --> 00:25:41,915 Like some of them will build great businesses and then companies. 489 00:25:41,915 --> 00:25:43,583 These are more interesting, the kind of people 490 00:25:43,583 --> 00:25:46,545 who just came up through like, well, I like to deploy capital 491 00:25:46,628 --> 00:25:50,590 to know what I'm not that interested in that conversation in that direction. 492 00:25:50,799 --> 00:25:52,676 Jeff. Okay. You build something. 493 00:25:52,676 --> 00:25:56,555 You took something from nothing but a shitty banner on the wall 494 00:25:56,555 --> 00:25:59,015 that said Amazon and turned over table. 495 00:25:59,015 --> 00:26:00,976 And you build something critical. 496 00:26:00,976 --> 00:26:02,060 Okay, we'll hear you out. 497 00:26:02,060 --> 00:26:08,191 And and then it turned out that Jeff was also irrational in a very irrational way. 498 00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:10,318 Like we were like, we don't need your money. 499 00:26:10,318 --> 00:26:12,862 And to make it go away. 500 00:26:12,862 --> 00:26:16,992 Here's a ludicrous term sheet that makes no financial sense. 501 00:26:17,033 --> 00:26:19,202 Like, okay, fine, if you want to give us literally 502 00:26:19,202 --> 00:26:22,247 just millions and millions of dollars for no control, 503 00:26:22,247 --> 00:26:26,376 no timeline, no guaranteed exit, fine. 504 00:26:26,376 --> 00:26:26,918 We'll take it. 505 00:26:26,918 --> 00:26:28,378 But you're not going to do that, are you? 506 00:26:28,378 --> 00:26:31,089 And then he's like, okay, like fuck. 507 00:26:32,257 --> 00:26:33,091 And I remember it. 508 00:26:33,091 --> 00:26:36,177 It was it was funny because like, normally you go to pieces 509 00:26:36,177 --> 00:26:39,306 in this pitch deck and you go through all of these metrics in case. 510 00:26:39,306 --> 00:26:41,016 And I was like, we're not doing any of those. 511 00:26:41,016 --> 00:26:43,310 We will just write one piece of paper down. 512 00:26:43,310 --> 00:26:46,479 Here's the three key metrics about where the business is going 513 00:26:46,479 --> 00:26:47,606 and where we are right now. 514 00:26:47,606 --> 00:26:50,859 And here's the stupid number that we're asking you to pay 515 00:26:50,984 --> 00:26:52,986 and slide it

across the table. 516 00:26:52,986 --> 00:26:56,072 And he's like, basically, actually 517 00:26:56,114 --> 00:26:56,740 what happened 518 00:26:56,740 --> 00:26:58,867 first was slightly across the table, just t 519 00:26:58,867 --> 00:27:00,785 and we got some real feedback to the right. 520 00:27:00,785 --> 00:27:01,870 Okay. 521 00:27:01,870 --> 00:27:04,414 I mean no, like that's ridiculous. 522 00:27:04,414 --> 00:27:07,751 But of course I mean they Jeff just to get this thing. 523 00:27:07,751 --> 00:27:10,712 So when he got Ahold of it he was like no you know what? Yeah. 524 00:27:10,712 --> 00:27:15,925 It doesn't make any sense right now at this nascent space, at this nascent 525 00:27:15,925 --> 00:27:19,596 time, they don't have the revenues to validate what they're asking for. 526 00:27:19,638 --> 00:27:22,349 It is a little bit stupid, but I'm still going to take a bet on it. 527 00:27:22,349 --> 00:27:25,810 Like he saw something in in us and what we were doing. 528 00:27:25,810 --> 00:27:29,773 We had written Getting Real, the first book that we published 529 00:27:29,773 --> 00:27:33,151 at the time, and he had read that, he just saw something 530 00:27:33,151 --> 00:27:36,988 in just the two of us that was beyond the fundamentals of the business. 531 00:27:36,988 --> 00:27:39,115 And he gave us our stupid number, which, 532 00:27:39,115 --> 00:27:41,201 I mean, in hindsight, wasn't that stupid at all. 533 00:27:41,201 --> 00:27:42,577 It was just stupid for the time. 534 00:27:42,577 --> 00:27:46,623 It was stupid for the traction we had in the moment. 535 00:27:46,623 --> 00:27:50,502 And then over the next, what is it going to be about 20 years, 536 00:27:50,543 --> 00:27:52,545 almost 20 year anniversary? 537 00:27:52,545 --> 00:27:55,674 Actually, I think this year we should actually celebrate 538 00:27:55,674 --> 00:27:59,719 that he's gotten his money back many times over. 539 00:27:59,761 --> 00:28:02,555 His stake is worth a ton more than what he bought it for. 540 00:28:02,555 --> 00:28:04,557 It was a fantastic investment. 541 00:28:04,557 --> 00:28:09,771 I wish that I actually had that level of rational irrationality sometimes. 542 00:28:09,771 --> 00:28:11,064 Like, I don't actually think I have that. 543 00:28:11,064 --> 00:28:14,150 And I also think that's why I run into singles, not Amazon. 544 00:28:14,192 --> 00:28:14,609 Right? 545 00:28:14,609 --> 00:28:19,781 Jeff just has this incredible capacity to see really far out 546 00:28:19,781 --> 00:28:23,868 and make some bets that don't actually pencil out 547 00:28:23,868 --> 00:28:27,789 on the math side of things, yet still somehow succeed. 548 00:28:27,789 --> 00:28:30,500 So that was how it happened to Jason. And I got 549 00:28:31,584 --> 00:28:33,420 to take some money off the table, 550 00:28:33,420 --> 00:28:36,631 which meant that we were now 551 00:28:36,631 --> 00:28:42,011 completely immune to even quite lavish proposals from BKS about 552 00:28:42,011 --> 00:28:45,682 putting a ton of money into the business, because we were like, do you know what? 553 00:28:45,724 --> 00:28:50,353 We've already taken enough off that if this thing blows up next year. 554 00:28:50,395 --> 00:28:52,147 Im not going to regret anything. 555 00:28:52,147 --> 00:28:54,566 Versus the thing is, when you're getting started 556 00:28:54,566 --> 00:28:57,569 and neither Jason or I were rich, like we did not have like, 557 00:28:57,569 --> 00:28:58,653 a cushion to fall back on. 558 00:28:58,653 --> 00:29:02,365 If this thing didn't work, then we'll go back to working for someone else. 559 00:29:03,491 --> 00:29:07,537 It's going to be tempting if someone comes waving a check. 560 00:29:07,579 --> 00:29:09,497 Do you want to see me into your business? 561 00:29:09,497 --> 00:29:11,166 Like it feels like it's 562 00:29:11,166 --> 00:29:13,835 sort of your money, even though it's totally not right. 563 00:29:13,835 --> 00:29:15,754 Like, I suppose these days, 564 00:29:15,754 --> 00:29:17,922 taking money off the table I ask some of these funding worlds 565 00:29:17,922 --> 00:29:19,132 is something that happens all the time. 566 00:29:19,132 --> 00:29:21,009 At the time that was not really been on. 567 00:29:21,009 --> 00:29:23,887 Like you could see a large check, but it would all go into the business. 568 00:29:23,887 --> 00:29:28,641 And then you basically had taken on a promise to pay the back, 569 00:29:28,683 --> 00:29:30,059 like you were going to productively deploy 570 00:29:30,059 --> 00:29:31,311 that and you're going to hire a bunch of people, 571 00:29:31,311 --> 00:29:32,645 you're going to spend a bunch of marketing, 572 00:29:32,645 --> 00:29:34,355 and then hopefully it was going to work out. 573 00:29:34,355 --> 00:29:37,525 And if it didn't, you were left with Butkus. 574 00:29:37,901 --> 00:29:41,905 You were just as badly off as if you're just failed on your own. 575 00:29:41,905 --> 00:29:46,326 In fact, you were part of your worse off because you would have tasted real money, 576 00:29:46,534 --> 00:29:49,537 and then it would just like, have gone away like bubbles. 577 00:29:49,579 --> 00:29:51,873 So that was not the model we wanted. 578 00:29:51,873 --> 00:29:54,834 We wanted the model where if the money we took in was some to keep 579 00:29:54,834 --> 00:30:00,006 and we wanted to give up zero control, and somehow we found exactly the person 580 00:30:00,006 --> 00:30:04,844 who were lined with that crazy triangle of what we wanted, 581 00:30:04,844 --> 00:30:08,848 what he was interested in, and what the baseness was able to deliver. 582 00:30:08,848 --> 00:30:13,728 And it's been the most happy investor 583 00:30:13,728 --> 00:30:16,940 and bestie relationship I could possibly imagine. 584 00:30:16,940 --> 00:30:20,944 All we did with Jeff was we had some wonderful conversations 585 00:30:20,944 --> 00:30:23,947 with

him over the years where we took 586 00:30:24,030 --> 00:30:27,242 problems, challenges, interesting dilemmas of the business 587 00:30:27,242 --> 00:30:30,245 to him about once a year, and we had a great conversation about it, 588 00:30:30,245 --> 00:30:33,665 and most of the time his advice was, you know what to do. 589 00:30:33,706 --> 00:30:37,877 He should just do it right, giving us the confidence 590 00:30:37,919 --> 00:30:40,338 that someone in his position would say, like, 591 00:30:40,338 --> 00:30:43,341 hey, whatever you're doing is actually looks good. 592 00:30:43,341 --> 00:30:44,175 Keep rolling. 593 00:30:44,175 --> 00:30:46,928 I'm like, all right, let's do that. And turned out very well. 594 00:30:46,928 --> 00:30:49,055 do you think are the things he saw in you guys? 595 00:30:49,055 --> 00:30:51,933 I think he saw some. 596 00:30:54,018 --> 00:30:55,311 He saw some ripples. 597 00:30:55,311 --> 00:30:59,816 He saw some people who were not part of the usual scene he was in. 598 00:30:59,858 --> 00:31:05,488 He saw a brash company out of Chicago, of all places, especially in the early 2000. 599 00:31:05,530 --> 00:31:08,533 Chicago had nothing in terms of a tech scene. 600 00:31:08,533 --> 00:31:11,911 It later got something like Groupon and others 601 00:31:11,911 --> 00:31:16,833 came in the late O's, but at the time there was nothing. 602 00:31:16,833 --> 00:31:20,336 He was like, what are these people who actually believe they know better? 603 00:31:20,461 --> 00:31:23,339 They're in in backwater country 604 00:31:23,339 --> 00:31:27,552 as far as tech goes, and they're building everything by themselves. 605 00:31:27,552 --> 00:31:29,012 They're not wanting to raise VC. 606 00:31:29,012 --> 00:31:32,765 I think there was just a curiosity there, like a long shot 607 00:31:32,807 --> 00:31:37,687 maybe, but also just a promise of a different shot 608 00:31:37,729 --> 00:31:39,564 compared to all the other shots he was looking at. 609 00:31:39,564 --> 00:31:40,732 And he took some of those too. 610 00:31:40,732 --> 00:31:43,651 It wasn't like we were the only company then he did this model with. 611 00:31:43,651 --> 00:31:44,694 But I actually do think 612 00:31:44,694 --> 00:31:47,989 after we were talking to his team, I don't know, 10 or 12 years ago 613 00:31:48,031 --> 00:31:51,284 that we were one of the ones that fared the best, even though we had 614 00:31:51,284 --> 00:31:57,373 none of the traditional shape of like, oh, this is an obvious deal to me, right? 615 00:31:57,415 --> 00:32:01,377 And I think that's a wise way of investing 616 00:32:01,377 --> 00:32:04,881 that putting your eggs on, on, on some long shots. 617 00:32:04,923 --> 00:32:05,173 Right. 618 00:32:05,173 --> 00:32:08,092 Like if you see some shape there, there's some promise here. 619 00:32:08,092 --> 00:32:11,054 It's like, I think this thing is going to flame out to be tackle 620 00:32:11,054 --> 00:32:12,138 or it's going to go somewhere. 621 00:32:12,138 --> 00:32:14,223 In some ways it's a very DC way of thinking, right? 622 00:32:14,223 --> 00:32:17,685 Like leases are very much up like, well, right. 623 00:32:18,061 --> 00:32:19,729 Well they look mostly at the grandeur. Right. 624 00:32:19,729 --> 00:32:21,356 Like it's just going to be $1 billion business. 625 00:32:21,356 --> 00:32:23,149 That wasn't what Jefferson before it was like. 626 00:32:23,149 --> 00:32:27,195 But these motherfuckers crazy enough to just continue to push 627 00:32:27,195 --> 00:32:28,363 in the way that they are. 628 00:32:28,363 --> 00:32:31,032 And let's see where that plays out. 629 00:32:31,032 --> 00:32:32,283 I think perhaps part of it, 630 00:32:32,283 --> 00:32:35,078 I mean, for him, even though for us it was a stupid valuation, 631 00:32:35,078 --> 00:32:38,247 it was very meaningful amount of money that we suddenly went from, 632 00:32:38,247 --> 00:32:41,501 hey, here's almost nothing in your bank account to here's millions. 633 00:32:41,584 --> 00:32:43,127 Like, that's very meaningful for him. 634 00:32:43,127 --> 00:32:44,754 He was cushioning change, right. 635 00:32:44,754 --> 00:32:48,466 So at that stage you can do it just for the laughs. 636 00:32:48,633 --> 00:32:51,552 How does a founder that's just getting started 637 00:32:51,552 --> 00:32:54,973 decide to raise versus not? 638 00:32:55,181 --> 00:32:56,683 What are the variables? 639 00:32:56,683 --> 00:32:59,644 For me, a lot of it is does the business 640 00:33:00,019 --> 00:33:03,648 require capital to build out things? 641 00:33:03,690 --> 00:33:08,319 Does it require capital to build factories or produce inventory, 642 00:33:08,319 --> 00:33:12,365 or any of the other traditional avenues that acquire a lot of some capital? 643 00:33:13,491 --> 00:33:14,325 I'm far more 644 00:33:14,325 --> 00:33:18,204 skeptical when it comes to, do we just need to pay a bunch of people, 645 00:33:18,413 --> 00:33:21,958 because then I feel a what's just been happening, 646 00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,211 as we've talked about with agents, is changing that dramatically. 647 00:33:25,336 --> 00:33:28,506 Certainly in terms of that early validation stage. 648 00:33:28,548 --> 00:33:29,590 Right. 649 00:33:29,590 --> 00:33:33,302 It makes a lot less sense now, in my opinion, to raise a bunch of money, 650 00:33:33,553 --> 00:33:38,850 to pay a bunch of salaries to see if there's something there you could get to. 651 00:33:38,891 --> 00:33:42,645 Is there something there lot, lot cheaper? 652 00:33:42,687 --> 00:33:45,064 And I mean, we already been very cheap 653 00:33:45,064 --> 00:33:48,651 20 years ago, before the ratings, before all sorts of things. 654 00:33:48,651 --> 00:33:52,363 It is Tripoli doubly true today 655 00:33:52,363 --> 00:33:57,160 that you can find out whether that idea you have has legs. 656 00:33:57,201 --> 00:34:00,163 If your ideas in software again

as you talked about the problem 657 00:34:00,163 --> 00:34:04,167 is something everyone else and that maybe is kind of difficult now. 658 00:34:04,167 --> 00:34:08,171 And maybe that's also why the investor sentiments have changed somewhat. 659 00:34:08,463 --> 00:34:11,215 We just went from literally 660 00:34:11,215 --> 00:34:15,887 the high watermark in the history of software, I think 2001. 661 00:34:15,887 --> 00:34:18,890 That was when the highest valuations ever granted to pure 662 00:34:18,890 --> 00:34:22,935 software companies had ever been achieved, and probably ever will. 663 00:34:23,227 --> 00:34:23,561 Right? 664 00:34:23,561 --> 00:34:27,106 Like, it is so fascinating to look at the graph of when BC started 665 00:34:27,106 --> 00:34:30,902 investing in software, especially from the internet based 90s forward. 666 00:34:30,985 --> 00:34:36,866 Then you read the Senate in 2021 where the valuation to truly bonkers 667 00:34:36,866 --> 00:34:39,869 because everyone thinks SaaS is magic, right? 668 00:34:39,869 --> 00:34:42,205 Like it's magic or was magic. 669 00:34:42,205 --> 00:34:45,208 You could take these monthly 670 00:34:45,208 --> 00:34:48,586 revenue streams and you just plot them out and you could think it's a machine. 671 00:34:48,586 --> 00:34:52,715 If I put in X amount of money into my marketing thing, 672 00:34:52,715 --> 00:34:56,135 I can look at my LTV and my cat. 673 00:34:56,135 --> 00:34:59,764 And if those ratios are right, I can extrapolate that this is just going 674 00:34:59,764 --> 00:35:05,603 to continue over the next ten years, 15 years, 20 years that music is stuck. 675 00:35:05,645 --> 00:35:09,065 No one is making 15 year projections 676 00:35:09,065 --> 00:35:12,944 on what kind of recurring revenue a SaaS company can get today. 677 00:35:12,944 --> 00:35:14,529 That makes no sense, right? 678 00:35:14,529 --> 00:35:18,282 Because this AI joker has been plagued, and we don't even know 679 00:35:18,282 --> 00:35:19,742 what the world is going to look like in six months. 680 00:35:19,742 --> 00:35:23,955 So suddenly, if you cannot extrapolate all the way out there, 681 00:35:23,996 --> 00:35:27,500 the investment thesis is a whole lot more shaky. 682 00:35:27,500 --> 00:35:33,172 And therefore I also think raising money now is a pure software play. 683 00:35:33,214 --> 00:35:33,881 I hate that word. 684 00:35:33,881 --> 00:35:39,887 I mean, is it in a way is probably one of the worst times to do it? 685 00:35:39,929 --> 00:35:43,141 Maybe as bad as it was in that first com bust, 686 00:35:43,141 --> 00:35:47,645 because you're going to get shitty multiples, you're going to get 687 00:35:47,645 --> 00:35:52,400 some very tough questions about how your business is defendable. 688 00:35:52,817 --> 00:35:55,153 And there was sort of always there, right? 689 00:35:55,153 --> 00:35:56,195 Like you would always ask like, well, 690 00:35:56,195 --> 00:35:59,615 couldn't someone

else couldn't Microsoft this would be cut into other days. 691 00:35:59,657 --> 00:36:04,328 Couldn't Microsoft just turn Base Camp into a feature of whatever office 692 00:36:04,829 --> 00:36:08,040 and like, yeah, maybe sort of in theory, but they wouldn't 693 00:36:08,124 --> 00:36:10,251 because they accompany like that. 694 00:36:10,251 --> 00:36:13,254 Couldn't create software like we were making 695 00:36:13,254 --> 00:36:18,217 because Base Camp was a product of what, seven, ten, 20 people can create. 696 00:36:18,259 --> 00:36:21,470 Not a product of what 50,000 people can create, right? 697 00:36:21,512 --> 00:36:26,267 But now it's a lot easier for a lot more people to be able to take a shot at that. 698 00:36:26,309 --> 00:36:29,478 Whether they succeed or not, you're going to have more competition on it. 699 00:36:29,478 --> 00:36:32,899 So I think the pure software thing is in for a rough ride, 700 00:36:32,899 --> 00:36:37,320 and obviously it's not even in for a rough ride, is in a rough ride. 701 00:36:37,361 --> 00:36:40,489 Like everything I'm hearing from valuations being branded 702 00:36:40,489 --> 00:36:45,578 to existing companies and what they need to show has just gotten up so much or so. 703 00:36:45,620 --> 00:36:47,705 In some ways, I think that's a blessing. 704 00:36:47,705 --> 00:36:51,792 It means that the easy money is no longer available, and therefore 705 00:36:51,792 --> 00:36:53,127 you have to figure out another path. 706 00:36:53,127 --> 00:36:56,130 And some ways, again, this is our story. 707 00:36:56,339 --> 00:36:59,592 Even if we wanted to raise a bunch of VC capital 708 00:36:59,634 --> 00:37:04,055 back in whatever, 2005, it wasn't going to happen in Chicago. 709 00:37:04,096 --> 00:37:07,058 We were going to have to move to Silicon Valley. 710 00:37:07,058 --> 00:37:09,810 Like I didn't want to move to second ballot. So 711 00:37:10,978 --> 00:37:11,646 maybe some 712 00:37:11,646 --> 00:37:15,399 of that was the year you fall in love with your circumstances. 713 00:37:15,399 --> 00:37:16,609 And I think that's actually a good thing. 714 00:37:16,609 --> 00:37:20,529 Fall in love with the fact that, like, no, you can't just raise an SEC 715 00:37:20,571 --> 00:37:21,489 funding anymore 716 00:37:21,489 --> 00:37:25,993 on the same terms that people are doing in 21, you gotta you gotta do it yourself. 717 00:37:25,993 --> 00:37:29,080 Now, good news is using them. 718 00:37:29,330 --> 00:37:33,042 And what's your roadmap for the software company owner out there 719 00:37:33,042 --> 00:37:36,337 that's going through some struggles, maybe not just in terms of valuation, in terms 720 00:37:36,337 --> 00:37:39,382 of the competitiveness, the distribution. 721 00:37:39,590 --> 00:37:43,803 You know, they're in a tougher market than they were three years ago. 722 00:37:43,803 --> 00:37:46,138 Five years ago. What are you guys doing? 723 00:37:46,138 --> 00:37:50,393 I have

already come to terms with all the outcomes. 724 00:37:50,393 --> 00:37:53,396 And I say that in a way of 725 00:37:54,105 --> 00:37:56,274 we've been so fortunate, 726 00:37:56,274 --> 00:37:59,986 especially with Base Camp, to have a software product. 727 00:38:00,027 --> 00:38:03,864 We launched in February of 2004, 728 00:38:05,449 --> 00:38:06,033 the same 729 00:38:06,033 --> 00:38:08,995 day or the day after Facebook launched. 730 00:38:09,036 --> 00:38:12,164 This is an eternity in software. 731 00:38:13,040 --> 00:38:18,754 We've gotten all that we could ever expect to get out of that business. 732 00:38:19,088 --> 00:38:23,467 So therefore everything we're getting from this day forth is all gravy. 733 00:38:23,467 --> 00:38:27,471 And if it ends tomorrow, I will look back on that ride 734 00:38:27,471 --> 00:38:31,309 with nothing but immense gratitude that a we were at the right place 735 00:38:31,309 --> 00:38:32,560 at the right time. 736 00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:34,020 We built the right team. 737 00:38:34,020 --> 00:38:37,231 We had an incredible run, both 738 00:38:37,231 --> 00:38:40,651 economically, spiritually, professionally. 739 00:38:40,693 --> 00:38:45,072 Craftsmanship lead to build that over 20 plus years. 740 00:38:45,072 --> 00:38:48,701 So if it's all going to end by the end of the year because AGI 741 00:38:48,743 --> 00:38:52,830 is going to eat it all, I won't have any regrets. 742 00:38:52,913 --> 00:38:57,126 Now, I understand that perspective 743 00:38:57,168 --> 00:39:01,797 is a little more difficult to have if you haven't yet gotten yours. 744 00:39:01,964 --> 00:39:03,257 So he. 745 00:39:03,257 --> 00:39:08,679 But it's also an historically evergreen perspective. 746 00:39:08,721 --> 00:39:10,639 This is what the Stoics were all about. 747 00:39:10,639 --> 00:39:12,641 What is inside of your control? 748 00:39:12,641 --> 00:39:14,852 That's what you should focus your energy on. 749 00:39:14,852 --> 00:39:15,895 What could you do? 750 00:39:15,895 --> 00:39:18,439 Well, I continue to do all that I can do. 751 00:39:18,439 --> 00:39:20,441 I show up, I build the best software. 752 00:39:20,441 --> 00:39:25,446 I know how I try my darndest to be interesting and to share 753 00:39:25,446 --> 00:39:30,034 and therefore earn some attention and attention economy. 754 00:39:30,034 --> 00:39:33,037 And therefore, hopefully there are some people who maybe 755 00:39:33,037 --> 00:39:35,456 watch this show go like check it out, watch base camp. 756 00:39:35,456 --> 00:39:36,707 I am here at this camp. 757 00:39:36,707 --> 00:39:38,876 Let me see. Oh, make this something I need them. 758 00:39:38,876 --> 00:39:39,919 Maybe it's not something I need, 759 00:39:39,919 --> 00:39:43,047 but I know someone who could need it, so I'm going to recommend it. 760 00:39:43,714 --> 00:39:45,591 That's what I can control. 761 00:39:45,591 --> 00:39:46,926 So that's what I'm going to focus on. 762

00:39:46,926 --> 00:39:50,679 Can I control whether API is going to hit by the end of the year? 763 00:39:50,679 --> 00:39:53,474 And base camp and the rest of the SaaS world 764 00:39:53,474 --> 00:39:56,477 is going to just get swept away in this tsunami. 765 00:39:56,477 --> 00:40:02,316 No, I can't, so I am going to choose not to worry about it all the time. 766 00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:06,112 I'm going to do a little bit of negative visualization 767 00:40:06,112 --> 00:40:08,406 where I imagine that's going to happen, 768 00:40:08,406 --> 00:40:12,410 and not even just by the end of the year, but like three months, it's over. 769 00:40:12,535 --> 00:40:13,369 All right, 770 00:40:15,079 --> 00:40:16,664 Mick, peace with that. 771 00:40:16,664 --> 00:40:18,082 Because what else are you going to do? 772 00:40:18,082 --> 00:40:19,834 What are you going to go resentful. 773 00:40:19,834 --> 00:40:23,838 What are you going to take a baseball bat and start smashing data centers? 774 00:40:24,588 --> 00:40:26,132 That's not going to work. 775 00:40:26,132 --> 00:40:30,719 I mean, people try many times throughout history, we have this great moniker 776 00:40:30,719 --> 00:40:34,723 now for diluted movement, and it's happening right now. 777 00:40:35,391 --> 00:40:38,769 Data centers are tremendously unpopular in a lot of places 778 00:40:38,769 --> 00:40:42,064 because they've become the symbol for it's going to take our jobs. 779 00:40:42,106 --> 00:40:44,191 It's going to take what I have right now. 780 00:40:44,191 --> 00:40:46,902 Well, yes. 781 00:40:46,902 --> 00:40:52,992 And that is individually tragic and societally absolutely necessary. 782 00:40:53,576 --> 00:40:57,246 Productivity gains are what leads to prosperity. 783 00:40:57,329 --> 00:40:59,874 Productivity gains are the same. 784 00:40:59,874 --> 00:41:05,463 Person is able to do much more, or we need fewer people to do the same job. 785 00:41:05,463 --> 00:41:10,050 Now, the hope and the trust that all 786 00:41:11,302 --> 00:41:13,637 sort of optimistic people 787 00:41:13,637 --> 00:41:17,933 and comedies take on this is that, yes, some of those going to happen. 788 00:41:17,933 --> 00:41:20,519 We're going to need fewer people to perhaps make software. 789 00:41:20,519 --> 00:41:23,689 But one of two things that's going to happen, either 790 00:41:23,689 --> 00:41:26,859 it's going to take a lot fewer people to make that software, and therefore 791 00:41:26,901 --> 00:41:28,402 the price of software is going to come down, 792 00:41:28,402 --> 00:41:31,155 and therefore the demand for software is going to go way up. 793 00:41:31,155 --> 00:41:36,952 So we're now going to have actually more people writing software, directing agents 794 00:41:36,952 --> 00:41:39,079 to create software, because the price is going to come 795 00:41:39,079 --> 00:41:41,290 so much down and therefore dimensional go up. 796 00:41:41,290 --> 00:41:44,960 That was the theory around ATM machines when they were introduced. 797 00:41:44,960 --> 00:41:45,127 Right? 798 00:41:45,127 --> 00:41:48,088 Like a lot of people thought bank tellers were going to be out of a job 799 00:41:48,088 --> 00:41:50,633 because the ATM machine is going to take them all. 800 00:41:50,633 --> 00:41:54,470 Know what happened was the price of opening a branch then fell tremendously. 801 00:41:54,512 --> 00:41:55,763 It became cheaper to open a branch. 802 00:41:55,763 --> 00:41:59,350 So banks opened a bunch of branches, and we had more people working in retail 803 00:41:59,391 --> 00:42:00,267 banking than ever. 804 00:42:00,267 --> 00:42:02,770 After the advent of the GM. 805 00:42:02,770 --> 00:42:07,358 Or you look at the industrial or the agricultural revolution, 806 00:42:07,358 --> 00:42:12,571 which had like 97% of the economy was dedicated to farming. 807 00:42:12,655 --> 00:42:15,658 Like 97% of people were out there 808 00:42:15,699 --> 00:42:19,078 driving a plow and a horse. 809 00:42:19,286 --> 00:42:22,957 And I sure think at the time when they saw the first tractor roll around, 810 00:42:22,957 --> 00:42:26,961 they thought, fuck, that's, that's my job there. 811 00:42:27,169 --> 00:42:28,587 Do we want to go back? 812 00:42:28,587 --> 00:42:29,296 Do you want to? 813 00:42:29,296 --> 00:42:32,341 I mean, some people have a romantic notion of what it's like to be a farmer, 814 00:42:32,341 --> 00:42:35,344 including, surprisingly, a lot of software developers who were like, well, 815 00:42:35,386 --> 00:42:36,095 you know what? 816 00:42:36,095 --> 00:42:37,012 I'm done with this shit. 817 00:42:37,012 --> 00:42:39,932 I'm going to be a goat herder. Okay. 818 00:42:39,932 --> 00:42:40,766 And then if you try 819 00:42:40,766 --> 00:42:43,644 and realize that a lot harder to be a farmer than you think, 820 00:42:43,644 --> 00:42:46,647 you're sitting inside and you push little chair and conditioned 821 00:42:46,647 --> 00:42:50,776 room and and hitting your little keys is actually quite the job. 822 00:42:50,776 --> 00:42:53,112 Now there's some stuff there. 823 00:42:53,112 --> 00:42:56,574 And maybe human happiness is not in just getting the most cushy job 824 00:42:56,574 --> 00:42:57,366 you can possibly get. 825 00:42:57,366 --> 00:42:59,660 But I do think there's some very romantic notions 826 00:42:59,660 --> 00:43:02,871 about going back that don't pan out a societal level. 827 00:43:02,871 --> 00:43:03,789 We don't want to go back. 828 00:43:03,789 --> 00:43:07,334 We actually want the prosperity that comes from productivity. 829 00:43:07,334 --> 00:43:09,295 And productivity 830 00:43:09,295 --> 00:43:12,840 inevitably means either fewer people doing the same work, 831 00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:14,800 or the same number of people doing more work. 832 00:43:14,800 --> 00:43:18,929 What about those people watching out there that are 35 years old, 45 years old, 833 00:43:18,929

--> 00:43:21,223 55 years old, that they don't know how to use 834 00:43:21,223 --> 00:43:25,019 cloud code, they don't know how to prompt, and their job ends up going away. 835 00:43:25,019 --> 00:43:30,357 And they feel like, you know, they're looking at AI like, this is crap. 836 00:43:30,357 --> 00:43:32,401 This is taking over. This is taking over the world. 837 00:43:32,401 --> 00:43:33,569 It's taking my job. 838 00:43:33,569 --> 00:43:36,030 The rich are getting richer from AI. 839 00:43:36,030 --> 00:43:41,452 The poor guinea poor were more by polarized in the US than we've ever. 840 00:43:41,452 --> 00:43:42,536 Been in the class. 841 00:43:42,536 --> 00:43:46,415 And there's a lot of nightmare scenarios you could imagine in that. 842 00:43:46,415 --> 00:43:49,543 And I also think you could have imagined those things in the prior 843 00:43:49,543 --> 00:43:54,715 to that doesn't mean it can't happen, and I completely sympathize with it. 844 00:43:54,715 --> 00:43:58,093 I actually think a lot of the current political discontent 845 00:43:58,469 --> 00:44:01,680 we've seen broadly, not just in the US, but in Europe as well, has come from 846 00:44:01,722 --> 00:44:04,975 a very elitist, glib response 847 00:44:04,975 --> 00:44:08,354 to free trade that when all the 848 00:44:10,022 --> 00:44:13,067 happened in the US and Europe and everything got shipped to Asia, 849 00:44:13,275 --> 00:44:17,363 people just went like, well, you get a cheaper iPhone. 850 00:44:17,571 --> 00:44:19,114 And they were like, well, 851 00:44:19,114 --> 00:44:22,117 I mean, okay, but I don't have a job and I can't pay for a house. 852 00:44:22,117 --> 00:44:23,410 And again, to the kids, to college. 853 00:44:23,410 --> 00:44:25,954 So what good is that done? Right? 854 00:44:25,954 --> 00:44:31,210 Even though the economy as a whole did a lot better, there are individuals in it. 855 00:44:31,251 --> 00:44:32,044 We did a lot worse. 856 00:44:32,044 --> 00:44:36,507 Now I and some of that is just had and always has been inevitable. 857 00:44:36,548 --> 00:44:39,093 You can have some transitions and some people are going to be worse off 858 00:44:39,093 --> 00:44:42,971 and some people are going to be better off, but it is still to have a 859 00:44:43,972 --> 00:44:46,767 well-functioning society. 860 00:44:46,767 --> 00:44:49,812 You need to lift all boats, and most people 861 00:44:49,853 --> 00:44:53,607 in most situations have to see the things are getting better. 862 00:44:53,649 --> 00:44:57,695 Otherwise it's not going to be stable and you can end up in a situation 863 00:44:57,695 --> 00:45:02,491 where the economy is getting better in terms of the global aggregate. 864 00:45:02,491 --> 00:45:07,371 And too many people feel like, well, it didn't pan out that way for me. 865 00:45:07,371 --> 00:45:10,916 And then you don't get a stable society, right? 866 00:45:10,958 --> 00:45:14,253 And then suddenly even the people who

have all the money in the world 867 00:45:14,336 --> 00:45:18,340 can't live in a nice place because the rest of the 868 00:45:18,841 --> 00:45:21,343 civilization literally falling apart. 869 00:45:21,343 --> 00:45:22,594 So I do think that's a threat. 870 00:45:22,594 --> 00:45:23,887 I think it's worth taking serious. 871 00:45:23,887 --> 00:45:27,766 But I also think you have to divorce your 872 00:45:27,808 --> 00:45:30,853 insides from, okay, so what are we going to do? 873 00:45:31,019 --> 00:45:31,437 Right? 874 00:45:31,437 --> 00:45:35,858 First of all, what can you do if we tomorrow in the United States said, 875 00:45:35,941 --> 00:45:39,778 do you know what the threat that AI is going to take a bunch of jobs, 876 00:45:39,820 --> 00:45:42,531 it's just too great. Let's just not do it. 877 00:45:42,531 --> 00:45:47,286 We're just going to stop AI tomorrow, and then Americans won't have access to AI. 878 00:45:47,369 --> 00:45:50,122 They will be forbidden from using new technologies. 879 00:45:50,122 --> 00:45:53,333 And let's see how long we make it as a cocoon. 880 00:45:53,333 --> 00:45:54,293 What do you think is going to happen? 881 00:45:54,293 --> 00:45:55,961 Is it the rest of the world is going to go like, 882 00:45:55,961 --> 00:45:58,464 oh, the American said we shouldn't do AI. 883 00:45:58,464 --> 00:46:00,507 Like China is just going to go like, yeah, yeah. 884 00:46:00,507 --> 00:46:01,592 All right, fair play. 885 00:46:01,592 --> 00:46:02,968 Let's just put it all aside. 886 00:46:02,968 --> 00:46:04,845 No, it never happens like that. 887 00:46:04,845 --> 00:46:06,305 It has never happened like that. 888 00:46:06,305 --> 00:46:07,848 So that is the 889 00:46:08,891 --> 00:46:09,725 motion to 890 00:46:09,725 --> 00:46:13,270 propels history forward is no single nation 891 00:46:13,270 --> 00:46:16,982 really just gets to say let's hit pause on progress. 892 00:46:17,024 --> 00:46:19,401 Progress is going to happen. Whether you like it or not. 893 00:46:19,401 --> 00:46:22,237 We have an obligation to create as societies at all. 894 00:46:22,237 --> 00:46:24,740 Try to nudge it, steer it. 895 00:46:24,740 --> 00:46:27,743 We don't get to put it in reverse. 896 00:46:27,868 --> 00:46:33,999 And that's a hard reality to accept 897 00:46:33,999 --> 00:46:38,170 because it feels like we could it feels like, hey, this is democracy. 898 00:46:38,212 --> 00:46:41,256 We just vote for people who want to ban AI 899 00:46:42,090 --> 00:46:46,053 or ban other forms of technologies that include progress. 900 00:46:46,053 --> 00:46:47,846 And by the way, this happens all the time. 901 00:46:47,846 --> 00:46:51,433 Like there are all these interests who line up and say, for example, 902 00:46:51,642 --> 00:46:56,688 Waymo shouldn't drive in New York because there's a lot of cabbies who paid 903 00:46:56,688 --> 00:46:59,858 a bunch of money for their medallions to drive a yellow cab. 904 00:46:59,858 --> 00:47:04,780 And if Waymo comes in and undercuts them with a driverless car, 905 00:47:05,447 --> 00:47:07,032 well, what's going to happen to them? 906 00:47:07,032 --> 00:47:09,827 You could sort of imagine that there were a bunch of 907 00:47:11,662 --> 00:47:15,332 horse drawn carriages back in, whatever, 908 00:47:15,332 --> 00:47:19,294 1910 who went like, hey, this Henry Ford guy. 909 00:47:19,336 --> 00:47:24,007 Whoa, slow down with the mob of T, dude, like, this is going to fast. 910 00:47:24,049 --> 00:47:25,676 Like, this is my living. 911 00:47:25,676 --> 00:47:29,555 I live by taking care of these horses and the right people around 912 00:47:29,555 --> 00:47:31,098 in my little carriage here. 913 00:47:31,098 --> 00:47:33,976 And we don't need these stinking model teams. 914 00:47:33,976 --> 00:47:35,185 Right again. 915 00:47:35,185 --> 00:47:36,019 Do you want to go back? 916 00:47:36,019 --> 00:47:36,812 Could you go back? 917 00:47:36,812 --> 00:47:38,981 Is that how anything works? 918 00:47:38,981 --> 00:47:43,402 How is it panned for any economy in the world, for any country in the world 919 00:47:43,443 --> 00:47:47,239 who just said, like, I don't know about you. 920 00:47:47,573 --> 00:47:49,032 I don't know about progress. 921 00:47:49,032 --> 00:47:50,534 I don't know about technology. 922 00:47:50,534 --> 00:47:55,122 Have they lived prosperous, happy lives ever after? No. 923 00:47:55,163 --> 00:48:00,544 So some of this is coming to the acceptance that we, as powerful 924 00:48:00,544 --> 00:48:03,839 as we feel collectively, actually have 925 00:48:03,839 --> 00:48:06,842 a surprisingly limited amount of influence 926 00:48:07,009 --> 00:48:11,847 on world history and how it progresses and what happens with technology. 927 00:48:11,847 --> 00:48:14,641 It's going to happen whether we like it or not. 928 00:48:14,641 --> 00:48:19,271 Now, therefore, I personally choose to like it 929 00:48:19,313 --> 00:48:20,564 because this is going to happen regardless. 930 00:48:20,564 --> 00:48:23,483 I can either feel miserable every day and dread. 931 00:48:23,483 --> 00:48:27,321 Then AI is going to eat my company and it's going to eat this, 932 00:48:27,321 --> 00:48:29,448 that and the other thing. Or I can go, do you know what? 933 00:48:29,448 --> 00:48:31,283 I don't know what's going to happen. 934 00:48:31,283 --> 00:48:34,286 So I choose to believe this is going to be amazing. 935 00:48:34,328 --> 00:48:38,081 I choose to believe that we're going to get a new age of abundance, 936 00:48:38,081 --> 00:48:42,127 in the same way that every technology revolution has granted mankind 937 00:48:42,169 --> 00:48:45,464 as a whole, in aggregate, since time immemorial. 938 00:48:46,006 --> 00:48:49,426 Maybe I'll be disappointed, but if I will be, then I can save 939 00:48:49,593 --> 00:48:50,761 this appointment for that day. 940 00:48:50,761 --> 00:48:52,304 I don't need to

nurture it 941 00:48:52,304 --> 00:48:54,640 every single day going along, because I often think it has 942 00:48:54,640 --> 00:48:59,227 this stall defying ability to just paralyze you. 943 00:48:59,227 --> 00:49:03,315 So you sit around fretting all day about what's going to happen in the future, 944 00:49:03,357 --> 00:49:05,359 a future you don't control. 945 00:49:05,359 --> 00:49:07,819 You're just going to be miserable and useless. 946 00:49:07,819 --> 00:49:11,239 That is not a recipe for neither happiness or prosperity. 947 00:49:11,239 --> 00:49:16,870 So might as well put on those rose colored glasses and make the best of it. 948 00:49:16,912 --> 00:49:18,121 Get involved. 949 00:49:18,121 --> 00:49:23,669 I mean, I had that little moment actually with AI when I thought AI, 950 00:49:23,794 --> 00:49:27,631 the program was clearly saw it was taking off and I saw this mode. 951 00:49:27,631 --> 00:49:30,842 I didn't like this auto complete mode, the early stages of AI, 952 00:49:30,842 --> 00:49:34,805 and I felt like, shit, maybe I should be a potato farmer. 953 00:49:34,888 --> 00:49:36,306 Like maybe I'm done with this shit. 954 00:49:36,306 --> 00:49:37,516 Like, if this is what my industry 955 00:49:37,516 --> 00:49:40,727 is going to turn into, I don't know if I want to be part of it. 956 00:49:40,727 --> 00:49:43,063 And then thankfully, I snapped out of heaven. 957 00:49:43,063 --> 00:49:47,901 Also, the mode of operation changed and I saw what you ages with people like, 958 00:49:47,901 --> 00:49:48,318 do you know what? 959 00:49:48,318 --> 00:49:53,865 I'm just going to lean that I am going to make the best of what I've been given 960 00:49:53,865 --> 00:49:55,534 because I don't have a choice that the way. 961 00:49:55,534 --> 00:49:58,996 So choose to be miserable, choose to be happy. 962 00:49:59,204 --> 00:50:01,415 This is literally within your control. 963 00:50:01,415 --> 00:50:01,748 Yeah. 964 00:50:01,748 --> 00:50:04,042 Look, I agree with you on some things, but I do want to push back, 965 00:50:04,042 --> 00:50:08,088 so I so I live my life with an insane level of optimism. 966 00:50:08,088 --> 00:50:10,048 So I'm in a similar way 967 00:50:10,048 --> 00:50:11,925 not going to think about, oh my God, this is going to end the world. 968 00:50:11,925 --> 00:50:14,803 All these jobs. I'm pushing forward with optimism. 969 00:50:14,803 --> 00:50:20,267 But the but the the pushback is unlike some of these other references. 970 00:50:20,267 --> 00:50:21,560 Right. Where. Yep. 971 00:50:21,560 --> 00:50:23,270 The model T came along okay. 972 00:50:23,270 --> 00:50:26,606 Horse and carriage is gone or self-driving is here. 973 00:50:26,648 --> 00:50:31,945 Taxis in New York are gone from the people that I spoke to, specifically 974 00:50:31,987 --> 00:50:35,032 Romanian Polski and a couple other people even here more recently, 975 00:50:35,032 --> 00:50:39,119 their worry isn't that AI

is going to help, 976 00:50:39,244 --> 00:50:42,664 or AI is going to put us in a position where we're losing all our jobs. 977 00:50:42,706 --> 00:50:44,875 They're worried that if we don't put guardrails, 978 00:50:44,875 --> 00:50:47,753 you have a couple companies, 3 to 5 companies, right? 979 00:50:47,753 --> 00:50:50,464 You have anthropic, you have Google, right? 980 00:50:50,464 --> 00:50:54,259 You have OpenAI that are building something that 981 00:50:55,469 --> 00:50:57,596 will be powerful enough 982 00:50:57,596 --> 00:51:01,183 to kill all of humanity, right? 983 00:51:01,641 --> 00:51:05,312 Henry's model T Ford was going to displace a lot of jobs 984 00:51:05,312 --> 00:51:06,188 and things were going to happen. 985 00:51:06,188 --> 00:51:07,606 There's a technological 986 00:51:07,606 --> 00:51:11,109 there's an industrial revolution coming, but there wasn't a chance 987 00:51:11,109 --> 00:51:12,611 that was going to kill all of humanity. 988 00:51:12,611 --> 00:51:16,990 We're in a position today where we're still in control. 989 00:51:16,990 --> 00:51:19,826 We haven't reached from what we know. 990 00:51:19,826 --> 00:51:22,370 We haven't reached artificial superintelligence. 991 00:51:22,370 --> 00:51:27,042 And yes, I'm not going to sit here and live my life and just stress 992 00:51:27,042 --> 00:51:28,168 and worry about that all day. 993 00:51:28,168 --> 00:51:31,922 But but if I think that could be a possible outcome. 994 00:51:32,089 --> 00:51:33,632 I have children. 995 00:51:33,632 --> 00:51:34,800 You as well. Right? 996 00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:38,220 So, you know, thinking about there existence 997 00:51:38,220 --> 00:51:41,348 in their life and, you know, you're probably just like me. 998 00:51:41,389 --> 00:51:43,433 Like your family is one of the most important, 999 00:51:43,433 --> 00:51:45,727 the most important thing in your life. 1000 00:51:45,727 --> 00:51:49,064 You know, I don't want to stress about it, and I don't want to worry about it. 1001 00:51:49,064 --> 00:51:52,109 But at the same time, if I just act like it's 1002 00:51:52,109 --> 00:51:55,112 not there and put those glasses on, 1003 00:51:55,237 --> 00:51:59,574 I think I'm doing myself, my family, potentially the world a disservice. 1004 00:51:59,991 --> 00:52:03,078 If you believe that you have the power to change it, 1005 00:52:03,662 --> 00:52:05,872 if you don't have the power to change it. 1006 00:52:05,872 --> 00:52:09,626 I don't know what the service you're doing by not fretting about it all the time. 1007 00:52:09,668 --> 00:52:14,798 Now, the other thing I'd say is, through most of recorded history, 1008 00:52:14,798 --> 00:52:17,926 we have had a doomsday story to tell each other, 1009 00:52:17,926 --> 00:52:22,430 and in the early ages that was limited to just what religion was. 1010 00:52:22,472 --> 00:52:26,434 I was like, well, there was going to be a judgment day, and it's going to come 1011 00:52:26,476 --> 00:52:30,230 and it's going to be terrible for all people. 1012 00:52:30,230 --> 00:52:31,523 It's going to watch this in this way. 1013 00:52:31,523 --> 00:52:32,774 And then whenever 1014 00:52:32,774 --> 00:52:36,653 maybe there's a blessed few that gets this ticket to a higher plane. 1015 00:52:36,653 --> 00:52:40,407 And then in more modern days, we've had with the nuclear bomb, 1016 00:52:40,448 --> 00:52:43,869 like when that got amended and you had decades 1017 00:52:43,869 --> 00:52:48,790 where people lived their lives in fear that like the Soviet Union 1018 00:52:48,874 --> 00:52:52,586 or United States just going to get into this conflict. 1019 00:52:52,836 --> 00:52:56,464 And we had the Cuban Missile Crisis and got close. 1020 00:52:57,591 --> 00:53:00,218 Oh, if all those people, for all that time 1021 00:53:00,218 --> 00:53:03,221 just setting out, worrying about like, well, 1022 00:53:04,014 --> 00:53:07,434 there's there's two crazy guys, the American president and, 1023 00:53:07,434 --> 00:53:10,729 and the leader of the Communist Party in Soviet Union. 1024 00:53:10,770 --> 00:53:12,689 They have the finger on the button. 1025 00:53:12,689 --> 00:53:14,524 They just need to push them all over. 1026 00:53:14,524 --> 00:53:18,069 I mean, that was in many ways that get more immediate threat, right? 1027 00:53:18,278 --> 00:53:23,366 It just required one misstep from one individual, actually. 1028 00:53:23,366 --> 00:53:26,119 And in the end of the world. Right. 1029 00:53:26,119 --> 00:53:29,497 What we have right now with AI is we have a fear 1030 00:53:29,831 --> 00:53:32,500 that requires a fair amount of extrapolation. 1031 00:53:32,500 --> 00:53:36,004 I'm not saying it's not a scenario you should worry about. 1032 00:53:36,004 --> 00:53:39,341 I'm certainly not saying that the people working on the AI shouldn't 1033 00:53:39,341 --> 00:53:42,594 be taking it seriously, but I'm also saying 1034 00:53:42,677 --> 00:53:48,767 it is less immediate end of the world stuff than the nuclear threat was. 1035 00:53:48,808 --> 00:53:52,687 Then we look at more modern faces and we've had the climate movement, right, 1036 00:53:52,771 --> 00:53:56,524 like al Gore 20 years ago, went like the polar bears 1037 00:53:56,524 --> 00:54:00,153 are all going to be gone by the time we sit and record this. 1038 00:54:00,195 --> 00:54:04,115 Well, they weren't I'm not saying again that there is no climate change. 1039 00:54:04,199 --> 00:54:05,867 I'm saying perhaps there's a little more doubt 1040 00:54:05,867 --> 00:54:09,412 now about what sources of that what's our influence on then? 1041 00:54:09,454 --> 00:54:15,502 Can you actually change it by switching everything to to renewable sources? 1042 00:54:15,502 --> 00:54:17,379 I think there's a lot of uncertainty there. 1043 00:54:17,379 --> 00:54:21,091 But there's a lot of people, especially in Europe, or spend a lot of time 1044

00:54:21,258 --> 00:54:23,677 who've let that grip their entire personality, 1045 00:54:23,677 --> 00:54:27,264 who've let that dictate whether they should even bring children into the world. 1046 00:54:27,264 --> 00:54:28,932 Why should you bring children into this world? 1047 00:54:28,932 --> 00:54:32,185 Because the climate is going to end in 20 years, right? 1048 00:54:32,227 --> 00:54:35,230 Like it's going to be an uninhabitable planet, 1049 00:54:35,313 --> 00:54:38,233 which first of all, it's just not true. 1050 00:54:38,233 --> 00:54:43,029 Second of all, even if it was to whatever definition of 1051 00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:46,950 of of reality that could be, it's not a way to live like 1052 00:54:46,950 --> 00:54:47,659 what you're going to waste 1053 00:54:47,659 --> 00:54:51,830 the last few decades just sitting around covering in the corner. 1054 00:54:51,830 --> 00:54:54,457 No, it's not a way to to live. 1055 00:54:54,457 --> 00:54:58,003 So I fall back to this story. Principle. 1056 00:54:58,044 --> 00:55:00,005 What do I have control over? 1057 00:55:00,005 --> 00:55:03,550 Like maybe you have some control over the largest things you can vote, 1058 00:55:03,550 --> 00:55:08,013 and there's a tiny bit of a sliver of something you don't get to stop. 1059 00:55:08,013 --> 00:55:12,100 Whether AI technology is going to continue to be delivered anymore. 1060 00:55:12,183 --> 00:55:13,685 Then I don't know. 1061 00:55:13,685 --> 00:55:17,981 Some person in a French cafe in Paris got to stop the United States from 1062 00:55:18,356 --> 00:55:21,026 or developing the nuclear weapon, right? 1063 00:55:21,026 --> 00:55:22,736 We just don't have that much agency. 1064 00:55:22,736 --> 00:55:26,531 And there's a great liberation in that realization. 1065 00:55:26,573 --> 00:55:31,286 You don't get to control of the world, these locomotives of progress, 1066 00:55:31,286 --> 00:55:32,203 they're going to turn. 1067 00:55:32,203 --> 00:55:39,878 You don't have very many of any real examples of this kind of progress. 1068 00:55:39,878 --> 00:55:41,463 Just halting. 1069 00:55:41,463 --> 00:55:45,717 Now we actually in the negative content of a little bit of an indication of it, 1070 00:55:45,759 --> 00:55:49,387 like what we did with nuclear power plants, the Western world 1071 00:55:49,429 --> 00:55:54,559 basically went, here's this insane, amazing technology that is basically 1072 00:55:54,559 --> 00:55:59,147 producing the most environmentally friendly form of electricity. 1073 00:55:59,147 --> 00:56:00,982 It's all baseload. 1074 00:56:00,982 --> 00:56:03,568 It's all coming from splitting goddamn atom. 1075 00:56:03,568 --> 00:56:07,447 And what it produces is the size of a soda can in terms of nuclear 1076 00:56:07,447 --> 00:56:10,450 waste per person, per lifetime of energy. 1077 00:56:10,492 --> 00:56:13,370 It's an incredible technology to have. 1078 00:56:13,370 --> 00:56:14,871 And we just went like 1079 00:56:14,871 --> 00:56:19,250 and no, let's like not build more of those power plants, right? 1080 00:56:19,334 --> 00:56:23,838 Absolutely insane hysteria led us to that conclusion 1081 00:56:23,922 --> 00:56:26,925 of a Chernobyl. 1082 00:56:27,384 --> 00:56:31,221 Why they killed then issued a small number of people. 1083 00:56:31,262 --> 00:56:35,642 I mean, air pollution kills more individuals on, I don't know, weekly 1084 00:56:35,642 --> 00:56:41,564 basis probably than what Ginobili indirect effects killed even though that garnered 1085 00:56:41,564 --> 00:56:44,984 so much attention and really steered the conversation about nuclear. 1086 00:56:45,026 --> 00:56:45,985 Right. So 1087 00:56:47,070 --> 00:56:49,322 that's an example of us slowing down right now. 1088 00:56:49,322 --> 00:56:52,325 We're kind of realizing, okay, that was a big mistake. 1089 00:56:53,118 --> 00:56:56,329 What a wonderful land of abundance of energy. 1090 00:56:56,329 --> 00:57:00,166 All this fretting we have right now over data centers and like how they're 1091 00:57:00,166 --> 00:57:02,252 going to get their energy and what we're doing. 1092 00:57:02,252 --> 00:57:05,630 None of that would have been there if we just kept the pedal on the metal 1093 00:57:05,630 --> 00:57:10,135 and built as many nuclear power plants as, say, France did it in the 80s. 1094 00:57:10,385 --> 00:57:14,764 They more than half of France's new or power 1095 00:57:14,764 --> 00:57:18,643 generation capacity today, which is built in the 80s from nuclear. 1096 00:57:18,726 --> 00:57:19,102 Right. 1097 00:57:19,102 --> 00:57:22,814 And absolutely amazing decade of just true progress. 1098 00:57:22,814 --> 00:57:25,984 We got we got to realize that that's what we want to be. 1099 00:57:26,025 --> 00:57:27,819 We want to be on the side of progress. 1100 00:57:27,819 --> 00:57:31,698 We want to, yes, have a mind to the potential dangers 1101 00:57:31,698 --> 00:57:34,826 that they're in, but we don't get to sub in any way. 1102 00:57:34,826 --> 00:57:38,621 And if someone's going to have this super capacity, the super technology, 1103 00:57:38,663 --> 00:57:39,956 it should be us. 1104 00:57:39,956 --> 00:57:43,084 And I mean that collectively as certainly as the West. 1105 00:57:43,084 --> 00:57:47,338 And therefore I'm, I'm all in a 1106 00:57:47,755 --> 00:57:52,343 like again, you could be all in and said realize that there are some dangers. 1107 00:57:52,385 --> 00:57:55,680 I mean, you could take another example of just normalized. 1108 00:57:55,722 --> 00:57:58,892 In the United States, 42,000 1109 00:57:58,892 --> 00:58:02,520 people die every year from cars. 1110 00:58:03,354 --> 00:58:05,523 We could stop all of that. 1111 00:58:05,523 --> 00:58:07,817 If you set the speed limit to five kilometers 1112 00:58:07,817 --> 00:58:11,696 an hour for every car in America, people would die from a car. 1113 00:58:11,696 --> 00:58:14,324

Accidents. Would you not to do that? 1114 00:58:14,324 --> 00:58:17,327 We choose to go like, you know what, 42,000? 1115 00:58:17,911 --> 00:58:19,245 It's worth it. 1116 00:58:19,245 --> 00:58:22,999 It's worth being able to get the word get through all days, 1117 00:58:22,999 --> 00:58:26,461 being able to ship goods back and forth, to be able to live a civilized life. 1118 00:58:26,711 --> 00:58:28,463 It's worth some trade off. 1119 00:58:28,463 --> 00:58:30,757 And I think that that's what's often 1120 00:58:30,757 --> 00:58:34,636 missing in that discussion is like everything is a fucking trade off. 1121 00:58:34,636 --> 00:58:39,432 And yes, we don't allow cars to drive 100 miles 1122 00:58:39,432 --> 00:58:43,144 an hour on residential roads, even though they could get slightly faster 1123 00:58:43,144 --> 00:58:45,980 to where they were going, because like, that doesn't seem worth it. Right? 1124 00:58:45,980 --> 00:58:48,983 But we don't go like, well, we can't have cars, 1125 00:58:49,025 --> 00:58:52,779 we can't have transportation because people get killed in traffic accidents. 1126 00:58:52,779 --> 00:58:56,741 And therefore with AI, we also just can't go like, well, there's a risk here. 1127 00:58:56,741 --> 00:58:59,244 This could go wrong. Let's put it back in the box. 1128 00:58:59,244 --> 00:59:04,332 This is the most exciting technology that I've literally seen in my lifetime. 1129 00:59:04,415 --> 00:59:08,753 Like the most exciting thing we've made a machine do. 1130 00:59:09,128 --> 00:59:11,798 I am astonished 1131 00:59:11,798 --> 00:59:14,968 on a daily basis that we've made computers do this. 1132 00:59:14,968 --> 00:59:16,052 And I love computers. 1133 00:59:16,052 --> 00:59:18,179 I got into the viewers because I love these damages. 1134 00:59:18,179 --> 00:59:20,598 I love what you were able to make them do. 1135 00:59:20,598 --> 00:59:21,683 Now I'm seeing what 1136 00:59:21,683 --> 00:59:25,562 they're able to make themselves do and I'm just constantly marveling at it. 1137 00:59:25,770 --> 00:59:26,938 Let's talk a bit about that. 1138 00:59:26,938 --> 00:59:28,314 So what they can do 1139 00:59:28,314 --> 00:59:31,317 is let's go back to that founder that's just getting started, right. 1140 00:59:31,317 --> 00:59:34,779 Do you think, you know, I think you've talked about, 1141 00:59:34,862 --> 00:59:38,032 you know, your workweeks while even while you're bootstrapping, 1142 00:59:38,241 --> 00:59:41,578 I think every founder watching has been told 1143 00:59:41,619 --> 00:59:45,540 like they need to like work all day and night work these 16 hour days. 1144 00:59:45,540 --> 00:59:49,252 I actually had a founder on recently, and I think he was putting in just crazy 1145 00:59:49,294 --> 00:59:52,922 18, 20 hour day, like he's putting in crazy amount of time. 1146 00:59:52,922 --> 00:59:54,340 Do you think that's required 1147 00:59:54,340 --> 00:59:57,468 from the founder coming

up today to build an amazing company? 1148 00:59:57,510 --> 00:59:58,511 Absolutely not. 1149 00:59:58,511 --> 01:00:01,764 Now I'm actually moderating Slide Down. 1150 01:00:01,764 --> 01:00:05,101 I think this delusional belief 1151 01:00:05,184 --> 01:00:08,104 that you putting in 1152 01:00:08,104 --> 01:00:11,024 all these excess hours is actually going to affect 1153 01:00:11,024 --> 01:00:15,194 the outcome of your endeavor, has some qualities to it. 1154 01:00:15,194 --> 01:00:16,738 I think it's wrong. 1155 01:00:16,738 --> 01:00:19,741 I don't actually think it works in almost all cases. 1156 01:00:19,741 --> 01:00:24,454 When you look at all the science on your mental capacity, 1157 01:00:24,454 --> 01:00:28,583 when you're under slept or just singularly focused on something, 1158 01:00:28,583 --> 01:00:32,170 most people can't do that productively for very long, though. 1159 01:00:32,211 --> 01:00:36,424 There are a handful of outliers, and I will give Elon Musk a free pass 1160 01:00:36,424 --> 01:00:37,425 and a few others. 1161 01:00:37,425 --> 01:00:43,640 But for the vast majority of mere mortals, you're not going to go further. 1162 01:00:43,640 --> 01:00:49,437 You're not going to go better by doing the 120 hour bullshit. 1163 01:00:49,479 --> 01:00:53,149 Now, as I said, there's something redeeming about leaving 1164 01:00:53,149 --> 01:00:53,983 that you could, right? 1165 01:00:53,983 --> 01:00:56,653 Because it actually is affecting your own agency. 1166 01:00:56,653 --> 01:00:59,614 It's a faith in your own worth. 1167 01:00:59,614 --> 01:01:03,159 If I put in another two hours, I'm going to get that much closer to it. 1168 01:01:03,159 --> 01:01:05,161 But I also think 1169 01:01:05,161 --> 01:01:08,539 you need to look at these things in like what actually works, right? 1170 01:01:08,665 --> 01:01:10,667 Are you having better ideas? Are you being more productive? 1171 01:01:10,667 --> 01:01:12,960 Especially now given the discussion? 1172 01:01:12,960 --> 01:01:15,213 We've had a lot about these aged things, right? 1173 01:01:15,213 --> 01:01:20,551 And we have computers who could do a lot of the grind for you 1174 01:01:21,302 --> 01:01:24,055 when you're there to add to huge 1175 01:01:24,055 --> 01:01:28,351 degree is whatever is beyond that, right? 1176 01:01:28,393 --> 01:01:30,228 You're not supposed to be grinding. 1177 01:01:30,228 --> 01:01:31,729 Grinding is for agents. 1178 01:01:31,729 --> 01:01:35,858 Grinding is for human or not for for humans, grinding is for computers. 1179 01:01:35,900 --> 01:01:38,695 They don't care. You can run clawed all night. 1180 01:01:38,695 --> 01:01:40,863 As long as you pay the token bill, it's not going to. 1181 01:01:40,863 --> 01:01:42,281 It's not going to pitch and moan. 1182 01:01:42,281 --> 01:01:42,824 In fact, 1183 01:01:42,824 --> 01:01:47,203 anthropic is going to love you even more if you run a 24 over seven, right? 1184 01:01:47,245 --> 01:01:49,664 That's not how humans work. 1185 01:01:49,664 --> 01:01:52,458 So I think you have to look at what actually works. 1186 01:01:52,458 --> 01:01:55,795 And what works in part is to get proper sleep 1187 01:01:55,837 --> 01:02:00,466 is to be well rested is to be informed 1188 01:02:00,466 --> 01:02:03,886 by more than just the tunnel vision of what's in front of you. 1189 01:02:03,886 --> 01:02:07,849 I find this goes, in fact, history. 1190 01:02:08,224 --> 01:02:11,477 People who get great ideas on simple walks 1191 01:02:11,519 --> 01:02:14,522 in the shower, away from the grind, 1192 01:02:14,522 --> 01:02:19,777 right where you gain those insights that route around 1193 01:02:19,944 --> 01:02:23,990 two months of drudgery because you should just have a better idea. 1194 01:02:24,031 --> 01:02:26,576 That's what's going to make or break. 1195 01:02:26,576 --> 01:02:30,538 Now, I'm not saying that there aren't phases and moments 1196 01:02:30,538 --> 01:02:31,789 where you push a lot more. 1197 01:02:31,789 --> 01:02:34,208 Of course, there's I've certainly done that. 1198 01:02:34,208 --> 01:02:38,963 But what I like to look at is the moving average, the long term moving average. 1199 01:02:39,672 --> 01:02:43,509 My moving average over the past 25 years has been 40 hours a week. 1200 01:02:43,509 --> 01:02:45,762 And some of those weeks have been 80. 1201 01:02:45,762 --> 01:02:48,347 Yes, but a handful of them, it's a little bit less. 1202 01:02:48,347 --> 01:02:50,349 But the moving average is 40. 1203 01:02:50,349 --> 01:02:53,352 And I think it's actually a good place to be. 1204 01:02:53,352 --> 01:02:58,065 And I think you can wind yourself up thinking that 1205 01:02:58,065 --> 01:03:02,111 unless I spend 80 hours a week, I'm guaranteed a failure. 1206 01:03:02,153 --> 01:03:04,489 That's not just not how anything works at all. 1207 01:03:04,489 --> 01:03:06,199 Everything has got them. Powerwall. 1208 01:03:06,199 --> 01:03:09,786 The first ten hours you spend on your business every week 1209 01:03:09,786 --> 01:03:15,374 matter infinitely more than whatever the ten hours from 80 to 90, 1210 01:03:15,416 --> 01:03:18,711 right when we got going over base camp. 1211 01:03:19,337 --> 01:03:21,172 This is the reason I use this democracies. 1212 01:03:21,172 --> 01:03:27,011 I had ten hours a week because I was in school. 1213 01:03:27,011 --> 01:03:28,763 I had other clients ten hours a week. 1214 01:03:28,763 --> 01:03:30,807 That was what I was dedicated to, base camp. 1215 01:03:30,807 --> 01:03:33,059 I've never been so productive in my life. 1216 01:03:33,059 --> 01:03:38,189 It was the most productive hours I have ever witnessed from my own two hands, 1217 01:03:38,231 --> 01:03:39,816 because there was no time to waste. 1218 01:03:39,816 --> 01:03:44,153 The problem with the 80 hour delusion is you start thinking 1219 01:03:44,153 --> 01:03:50,576 that every bit of

the moment is, or movement is momentum. 1220 01:03:50,618 --> 01:03:51,744 No it's not. 1221 01:03:51,744 --> 01:03:55,706 You're going to waste the vast majority of those areas on bullshit, 1222 01:03:56,457 --> 01:03:59,794 because that's just sort of that's just what we do as humans. 1223 01:03:59,794 --> 01:04:04,090 The more we have available, the less value there is at the end of that tale. 1224 01:04:04,131 --> 01:04:04,423 Right? 1225 01:04:04,423 --> 01:04:09,011 So then I also think, okay, you're going to give this a shot. 1226 01:04:09,053 --> 01:04:10,721 You want this to succeed. Of course you do. 1227 01:04:10,721 --> 01:04:12,056 This is why you started it. 1228 01:04:12,056 --> 01:04:16,269 But you should also have to drill into is like most of these fail 1229 01:04:17,144 --> 01:04:20,147 and most people fail repeatedly. 1230 01:04:20,147 --> 01:04:22,942 And life is not that long. 1231 01:04:22,942 --> 01:04:27,738 If you grind incessantly from your 20s through your 30s through 40s 1232 01:04:27,780 --> 01:04:31,951 and you've just done a batting average, you're going to fail. 1233 01:04:32,118 --> 01:04:36,038 You're going to end on the other side, and you're not going to be living there. 1234 01:04:36,289 --> 01:04:38,207 You're not going to build a new car. 1235 01:04:38,207 --> 01:04:39,876 You might have some base hits. 1236 01:04:39,876 --> 01:04:41,752 That's the best. Most people can go for it. 1237 01:04:41,752 --> 01:04:42,503 They should, of course, 1238 01:04:42,503 --> 01:04:46,132 ink for more, but then they should also set up for the downside. 1239 01:04:46,173 --> 01:04:49,176 Okay, if I spend 80 hours a week 1240 01:04:49,176 --> 01:04:52,513 for decades on end, or even just a decade, 1241 01:04:53,222 --> 01:04:56,267 what's left for the rest of life, right? 1242 01:04:56,309 --> 01:04:59,520 Am I going to be left with this terminal regret 1243 01:04:59,687 --> 01:05:02,607 if I spend ten years of my life pursuing this business, 1244 01:05:02,607 --> 01:05:06,235 pouring in everything and then some, and then it doesn't work. 1245 01:05:06,235 --> 01:05:07,737 I don't get the payoff. 1246 01:05:07,737 --> 01:05:10,281 There's not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 1247 01:05:11,449 --> 01:05:11,908 Do I have 1248 01:05:11,908 --> 01:05:15,703 anything to fall back on, or do I just have this one leg of the stool? 1249 01:05:15,703 --> 01:05:17,622 That was business. 1250 01:05:17,622 --> 01:05:22,168 I think this is the great American pollution that you have to choose. 1251 01:05:22,168 --> 01:05:26,464 Either you're putting it all in a business and then you sacrifice your family, 1252 01:05:26,464 --> 01:05:32,303 your friends, your health, your hobbies, your everything else in life. 1253 01:05:32,803 --> 01:05:34,388 Oh, you're not serious. 1254 01:05:34,388 --> 01:05:37,141 This is one of the critiques we got right from the early days, 1255 01:05:37,141 --> 01:05:39,226 and we were running a lifestyle business 1256 01:05:39,226 --> 01:05:43,022 because we were not putting it all in on black woman 12 right. 1257 01:05:43,064 --> 01:05:43,898 And I always thought 1258 01:05:43,898 --> 01:05:48,736 that was such a curious accusation because I thought of it as a compliment. 1259 01:05:48,945 --> 01:05:52,406 I have a lifestyle and I have a business that sounds great. 1260 01:05:52,531 --> 01:05:54,742 I get to have both at the same time. 1261 01:05:54,742 --> 01:05:55,743 Wonderful. 1262 01:05:55,743 --> 01:06:01,332 I get to apply my intellect and my talents towards the business about 40 hours 1263 01:06:01,332 --> 01:06:04,710 a week, and then there's time left over to be a whole human. 1264 01:06:05,086 --> 01:06:07,046 That sounds like pretty sweet. Deal to me. 1265 01:06:07,046 --> 01:06:09,966 Like I'm not willing to trade that 1266 01:06:09,966 --> 01:06:13,344 much of my human time. 1267 01:06:13,386 --> 01:06:14,929 And not that work isn't human. 1268 01:06:14,929 --> 01:06:18,224 I think it's actually deeply human, and I think most people really need work. 1269 01:06:18,224 --> 01:06:21,811 And I think this is one of the greatest challenges of the utopia 1270 01:06:21,811 --> 01:06:26,107 that can be imagined by AI, that we get such abundance that humans just aren't 1271 01:06:26,148 --> 01:06:26,941 needed for anything. 1272 01:06:26,941 --> 01:06:29,485 And we think we're all going to be artists and painters. 1273 01:06:29,485 --> 01:06:31,445 No you're not. You're just going to be depressed. 1274 01:06:31,445 --> 01:06:33,781 This is what we see when people lose their jobs, right? 1275 01:06:33,781 --> 01:06:36,742 And go for long term. Most people need work. 1276 01:06:36,742 --> 01:06:38,494 They need to be able to employ their talents 1277 01:06:38,494 --> 01:06:41,747 towards a goal together with other people to feel good about themselves 1278 01:06:41,789 --> 01:06:43,499 and to feel happy. 1279 01:06:43,499 --> 01:06:45,334 But, but, but you can. 1280 01:06:45,334 --> 01:06:50,172 Do that 40 hours a week and get all of that meeting and satisfaction. 1281 01:06:50,172 --> 01:06:50,756 In life. 1282 01:06:50,756 --> 01:06:53,759 And then you can also raise a family. 1283 01:06:53,843 --> 01:06:55,469 You can also have friends. 1284 01:06:55,469 --> 01:06:57,096 You can also have hobbies. 1285 01:06:57,096 --> 01:07:00,099 And if you manage to combine those two things. 1286 01:07:00,224 --> 01:07:02,184 That's a slice of happiness right there. 1287 01:07:02,184 --> 01:07:03,811 And this. 1288 01:07:03,811 --> 01:07:07,648 Economy that is either one of the author is just so bunk. 1289 01:07:07,648 --> 01:07:10,109 And I wish that 1290 01:07:11,527 --> 01:07:13,904 there were more examples, I suppose, 1291 01:07:13,904 --> 01:07:17,700 or there was more pull on that end that the examples we do have, 1292 01:07:17,742 --> 01:07:21,495 and I'm putting my

own example for of it panning out 1293 01:07:21,787 --> 01:07:24,582 would be appealing. 1294 01:07:24,582 --> 01:07:29,003 Again, I love the fact that, especially in the United States, we have 1295 01:07:29,045 --> 01:07:34,675 single obsessed individuals like Elon, who's the productivity, for example, here, 1296 01:07:34,717 --> 01:07:38,429 which is lives and breathes the business in the dirt 1297 01:07:38,554 --> 01:07:42,850 business, the businesses and getting humanity and Martians. 1298 01:07:42,850 --> 01:07:45,853 What wonderful. How inspiring. 1299 01:07:46,103 --> 01:07:50,858 That's not something tens of millions of people have neither 1300 01:07:50,900 --> 01:07:54,987 talents, the temperament or the good fortune to pursue. 1301 01:07:55,279 --> 01:07:58,365 Most people have to come to terms with something 1302 01:07:58,365 --> 01:08:01,368 a little more modest in their ambition. 1303 01:08:01,744 --> 01:08:06,582 Build a great business that serves tens of thousands of customers, 1304 01:08:06,749 --> 01:08:09,752 a few hundred thousand of customers, not necessarily billions. 1305 01:08:10,211 --> 01:08:12,963 That turns out to be a moderate success. 1306 01:08:12,963 --> 01:08:16,926 That affords you a nice lifestyle, but not, 1307 01:08:17,426 --> 01:08:21,972 I don't know, five planes and your own personal rocket to Mars. 1308 01:08:23,057 --> 01:08:27,228 I sort of aspire that, like, we can have both of these things. 1309 01:08:27,228 --> 01:08:28,521 We can have the appreciation 1310 01:08:28,521 --> 01:08:32,691 for the outlying success, the trillionaire, and applaud 1311 01:08:32,691 --> 01:08:36,987 that as a great achievement for mankind and also go like, you know what? 1312 01:08:37,029 --> 01:08:39,532 Most people. Are not going to get that they should. 1313 01:08:39,532 --> 01:08:43,536 Be happy with far less, but maybe that's not possible. 1314 01:08:43,619 --> 01:08:47,206 I've also come to that sort of realization 1315 01:08:47,206 --> 01:08:50,668 that Europe, to some extent have been pursuing the like. 1316 01:08:50,709 --> 01:08:56,507 What if everyone just has a moderate degree of ambition, or moderate 1317 01:08:56,590 --> 01:08:59,927 for European standards would be very low for American standards, right? 1318 01:08:59,969 --> 01:09:03,389 And if you look at the long run experiment there, it's not panning out that well. 1319 01:09:03,389 --> 01:09:04,473 For me it is. 1320 01:09:04,473 --> 01:09:06,934 It's not going down great. The VPN economy. 1321 01:09:06,934 --> 01:09:09,145 So I could also be wrong. 1322 01:09:09,145 --> 01:09:12,773 But I certainly think at a personal level I would not try. 1323 01:09:12,857 --> 01:09:14,024 I would not trade. 1324 01:09:14,024 --> 01:09:17,319 Having spent two plus decades 1325 01:09:17,319 --> 01:09:20,489 building Basecamp as a lifestyle business 1326 01:09:20,990 --> 01:09:24,994 while making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues

and getting to keep 1327 01:09:25,035 --> 01:09:28,080 a surprisingly large chunk of that while enjoying life 1328 01:09:28,080 --> 01:09:31,375 and having a family like, I don't want to give that up, right? 1329 01:09:31,375 --> 01:09:35,921 And I don't want to have any guilt over that either. 1330 01:09:35,963 --> 01:09:38,841 This is what the accusation lifestyle business is off the ground. 1331 01:09:38,841 --> 01:09:41,802 Like you aren't applying yourself enough. 1332 01:09:41,802 --> 01:09:44,096 Like if you were more ambitious, you could do more. 1333 01:09:44,096 --> 01:09:45,598 Okay, I don't need more. 1334 01:09:45,598 --> 01:09:47,516 I have more than plenty. 1335 01:09:47,516 --> 01:09:50,519 Finding what your personal enough is, 1336 01:09:50,603 --> 01:09:56,525 I think is an incredible gift as a personal insight to a rival. 1337 01:09:56,525 --> 01:09:58,194 And we all have different levels. 1338 01:09:58,194 --> 01:10:03,199 Like my enough was certainly not just I'm going to have a 95 and I'm going 1339 01:10:03,199 --> 01:10:06,368 to do some good work just individually inside a company work for someone else. 1340 01:10:06,368 --> 01:10:07,661 That was not enough for me. 1341 01:10:07,661 --> 01:10:09,872 I went like I went around my own business. 1342 01:10:09,872 --> 01:10:12,791 I want to, I like cars, I want to be able to buy some cool ones. 1343 01:10:12,791 --> 01:10:13,918 I want to go racing. 1344 01:10:13,918 --> 01:10:16,128 I want to have some comforts. 1345 01:10:16,128 --> 01:10:18,547 That material success support me. 1346 01:10:18,547 --> 01:10:20,216 Okay, I got those things. 1347 01:10:20,216 --> 01:10:22,885 I didn't become a billion in the process. That's okay. 1348 01:10:22,885 --> 01:10:24,428 What's your number for Fu money? 1349 01:10:24,428 --> 01:10:27,514 Because, you know, I've heard I think it was Adam Robinson on LinkedIn. 1350 01:10:27,556 --> 01:10:31,268 Say getting a software company, getting a SaaS company to 10 million. 1351 01:10:31,268 --> 01:10:33,479 Bootstrap is like the new Fu money. 1352 01:10:33,479 --> 01:10:35,606 Back in the day, it was. Let's raise a bunch of money. 1353 01:10:35,606 --> 01:10:37,566 I want the unicorn with $1 billion evaluation. 1354 01:10:37,566 --> 01:10:38,609 And now it's like, 1355 01:10:38,609 --> 01:10:42,947 if I can bootstrap to ten mill and I can have good margins, that. 1356 01:10:42,947 --> 01:10:48,869 You are already in the pantheon of of most wealthy, most capable 1357 01:10:48,911 --> 01:10:52,248 humans who have ever lived on this planet in the history of the human rights. 1358 01:10:52,289 --> 01:10:55,125 Right. Like we should all be so fortunate to get there. 1359 01:10:56,210 --> 01:10:57,044 Yeah, it's a good question. 1360 01:10:57,044 --> 01:10:58,212 And it has evolved over time. 1361 01:10:58,212 --> 01:11:02,716 I used to naively think about it back in games, $1 million I like. 1362 01:11:02,841 --> 01:11:04,051 I am dating myself here 1363 01:11:04,051 --> 01:11:05,970 like $1 million is not fucking money 1364 01:11:05,970 --> 01:11:08,097 for very many people in very many circumstances. 1365 01:11:08,097 --> 01:11:10,140 But I don't know what it is. 1366 01:11:10,140 --> 01:11:14,061 A lot of it is also on like what is the lifestyle you're happy with, right? 1367 01:11:14,103 --> 01:11:19,316 Like if you're conception of I've made it is a private jet. 1368 01:11:19,358 --> 01:11:21,860 Yeah. No ten mil can't even cut right. 1369 01:11:21,860 --> 01:11:22,987 You need a little bit more than that. 1370 01:11:22,987 --> 01:11:27,449 But if you can abstain for that tremendous luxury, 1371 01:11:27,491 --> 01:11:31,203 it is to have a private plane, and, I don't know, a handful of millions is. 1372 01:11:31,203 --> 01:11:32,079 Probably where. It's at. 1373 01:11:32,079 --> 01:11:36,792 Like, as long as you get to live in a place where you're happy and 1374 01:11:36,792 --> 01:11:41,547 how is your content with and have all that paid off, you could. 1375 01:11:41,547 --> 01:11:43,340 Get. Away with surprisingly little. 1376 01:11:43,340 --> 01:11:43,882 I mean, there's been 1377 01:11:43,882 --> 01:11:47,177 this whole fire movement with I don't even know what the pattern 1378 01:11:47,177 --> 01:11:50,681 stands for, but like retiring urban white people, like they set this number. 1379 01:11:50,806 --> 01:11:52,641 They work really hard to get to these number. 1380 01:11:52,641 --> 01:11:54,727 And then they go, like, now I don't have to do anything. 1381 01:11:54,727 --> 01:11:57,146 Not I think there's actually a little bit of a dilution of that. 1382 01:11:57,146 --> 01:12:01,567 As we touched on briefly, I don't think most people are happy to talk about 1383 01:12:01,608 --> 01:12:04,611 some of the most miserable people I've ever met, of people who retired 1384 01:12:04,611 --> 01:12:08,907 or are you and some, through the great fortune of selling their company 1385 01:12:09,074 --> 01:12:12,745 before they had a better idea and they just thought, well, 1386 01:12:12,745 --> 01:12:16,332 I made this one company and it went great and someone wanted to buy it. 1387 01:12:16,332 --> 01:12:18,834 I'll just make another one when this one is sold. 1388 01:12:18,834 --> 01:12:21,337 And they realize, oh shit, it's not that easy. 1389 01:12:21,337 --> 01:12:25,090 And not only in terms of success that's hard enough to 1390 01:12:25,132 --> 01:12:27,426 make another successful business, but to find something 1391 01:12:27,426 --> 01:12:30,512 that you're actually passionate about the second time around. 1392 01:12:31,305 --> 01:12:34,224 Difficult. Quite difficult. And I am. 1393 01:12:34,224 --> 01:12:36,727 Personally, I didn't want to say I'm afraid of it. 1394 01:12:36,727 --> 01:12:38,020 I'm realistic about it. 1395 01:12:38,020 --> 01:12:40,397 I am very realistic about the fact that base camp 1396

01:12:40,397 --> 01:12:43,984 is probably the best business idea I've ever had, 1397 01:12:43,984 --> 01:12:47,780 and I will not have another one that is anywhere near as good. 1398 01:12:47,905 --> 01:12:50,616 And it requires some humility because I think most founders, 1399 01:12:50,616 --> 01:12:52,326 they have a high symptoms of self. 1400 01:12:52,326 --> 01:12:52,743 That's why 1401 01:12:52,743 --> 01:12:54,995 they put themselves forward and they think they're better than other people. 1402 01:12:54,995 --> 01:12:57,664 That's just that's what it takes to build something, right? 1403 01:12:57,664 --> 01:13:01,001 You got to believe that I'm better at whatever this niche is. 1404 01:13:01,001 --> 01:13:04,671 I have some insight here and that's why I'm worth it to pursue it. 1405 01:13:04,671 --> 01:13:08,050 But that can also tip over into that delusion thing like, well, 1406 01:13:08,050 --> 01:13:10,677 I have infinite number of great because no you don't. 1407 01:13:10,677 --> 01:13:11,512 Most people don't. 1408 01:13:11,512 --> 01:13:16,475 Most people would be so lucky to have one great idea in their lifetime 1409 01:13:16,475 --> 01:13:20,187 as it pertains to business that can take it to our success. 1410 01:13:20,187 --> 01:13:25,317 So yeah, I will say though, when you find whatever that number is 1411 01:13:25,317 --> 01:13:31,240 and when you reach it, you also got to be careful about the 1412 01:13:32,241 --> 01:13:33,325 transformation you 1413 01:13:33,325 --> 01:13:36,328 expect your life to have not actually occurring. 1414 01:13:36,453 --> 01:13:39,331 This was one of the things I had a little bit when Jeff 1415 01:13:39,331 --> 01:13:40,582 did the secondaries with us. 1416 01:13:40,582 --> 01:13:44,545 I went from having a bank account with not a lot in it. 1417 01:13:44,670 --> 01:13:48,090 Just suddenly there were millions and I thought that life 1418 01:13:48,090 --> 01:13:51,802 is just going to be magical actually, afterwards, 1419 01:13:51,844 --> 01:13:55,305 that somehow like everything which is going to be pink 1420 01:13:55,305 --> 01:13:59,226 all the time, like rose colored, just it wasn't right now 1421 01:13:59,268 --> 01:14:03,981 I also understand that lesson, or that piece of advice or even observation, 1422 01:14:04,189 --> 01:14:07,734 is actually a piece of insight that cannot transfer to another human. 1423 01:14:08,110 --> 01:14:10,571 No one believes you, literally no one. 1424 01:14:10,571 --> 01:14:12,865 And I know this because I didn't believe any of the fucking shit 1425 01:14:12,865 --> 01:14:14,700 tried to tell me before it happened to me. Right? 1426 01:14:14,700 --> 01:14:17,536 And then I've seen I've tried to share this article and they're like, 1427 01:14:17,536 --> 01:14:19,121 yeah, that's easy for you to say. You got yours. 1428 01:14:19,121 --> 01:14:21,665 And it also is doesn't mean it's not true. 1429 01:14:21,665 --> 01:14:25,085 It does not mean it's not true that if you look at the 1430 01:14:25,335 --> 01:14:29,673 so people who achieve that, they achieve the goal they like, 1431 01:14:29,715 --> 01:14:33,177 they sell the business or they get a home run or something else, 1432 01:14:33,177 --> 01:14:35,888 and then they think that all the problems go away. 1433 01:14:35,888 --> 01:14:40,893 And then it's Monday and like all the demons 1434 01:14:40,893 --> 01:14:44,730 or whatever, that everyone, Ted, they're still there. 1435 01:14:44,730 --> 01:14:45,856 And like, 1436 01:14:47,274 --> 01:14:49,610 it's not actually bliss that doesn't need is not better. 1437 01:14:49,610 --> 01:14:54,448 I might rather be unhappy and lovely than than poor and unhappy, 1438 01:14:54,448 --> 01:15:00,746 but there is some sort of insight into if you pin all your hopes 1439 01:15:00,746 --> 01:15:05,209 and dreams on all your mental state, issues are going to be solved. 1440 01:15:05,209 --> 01:15:07,836 When you reach that number, the fuck you know. 1441 01:15:07,836 --> 01:15:09,129 You're probably going to do this 1442 01:15:09,129 --> 01:15:11,215 because almost everyone who who's ever gotten there has. 1443 01:15:11,215 --> 01:15:13,884 Now, that being said, 1444 01:15:13,884 --> 01:15:17,304 didn't you fuck you as a mental state? 1445 01:15:17,304 --> 01:15:21,308 I think it's actually an incredible drive and really actually helped me 1446 01:15:21,850 --> 01:15:23,185 make better decisions. 1447 01:15:23,185 --> 01:15:25,312 Like for example, not take the Cup fantasy money, 1448 01:15:25,312 --> 01:15:26,772 because if I take someone else's money 1449 01:15:26,772 --> 01:15:30,275 and I owed them in that sense, I can't very well tell them to fuck off 1450 01:15:30,275 --> 01:15:34,279 if I think their immediate full of bad ideas. But 1451 01:15:36,281 --> 01:15:37,366 I mean, not that I would, 1452 01:15:37,366 --> 01:15:40,577 but I actually can't tell Jeff to fuck off if I think he's an idiot 1453 01:15:40,577 --> 01:15:43,038 with bad ideas, right? Like we don't have that kind of relationship. 1454 01:15:43,038 --> 01:15:49,169 He's not bought that part of me and neither has anyone else. 1455 01:15:49,211 --> 01:15:54,258 So therefore I get to show up to work and mostly 1456 01:15:54,258 --> 01:15:58,095 just spent my time on things I find interesting. 1457 01:15:58,136 --> 01:15:58,554 Worth it. 1458 01:15:58,554 --> 01:16:02,474 Suing and see where the chips may land without a whole lot of 1459 01:16:02,933 --> 01:16:05,435 of like what someone's going to say. Think about that. 1460 01:16:05,435 --> 01:16:08,021 Or what's my boss going to like? 1461 01:16:08,021 --> 01:16:11,316 The price of independence for the kind of people 1462 01:16:11,316 --> 01:16:14,653 who are motivated by that is actually priceless, right? 1463 01:16:14,695 --> 01:16:18,907 There's no amount of money that I would sell that for. 1464 01:16:18,907 --> 01:16:22,035 And

this is something we've occasionally 1465 01:16:22,661 --> 01:16:26,039 garnered disbelief with when I say I would not trade my business 1466 01:16:26,039 --> 01:16:30,377 for almost any other business if it required me to have someone above, 1467 01:16:30,460 --> 01:16:33,505 and even that someone above me would just be the public markets. 1468 01:16:33,505 --> 01:16:34,756 I know 1469 01:16:35,841 --> 01:16:36,049 there are 1470 01:16:36,049 --> 01:16:39,886 number of people who run public companies, and the constraints 1471 01:16:39,886 --> 01:16:45,642 on their independence and ability to say what they think is quite severe. 1472 01:16:45,642 --> 01:16:47,853 And it's such a curious thing. 1473 01:16:47,853 --> 01:16:49,521 You actually think like, if you get to that level 1474 01:16:49,521 --> 01:16:51,398 and you have that power to know, 1475 01:16:51,398 --> 01:16:55,235 in some ways you're more constrained because you have more dependance. 1476 01:16:55,402 --> 01:16:58,363 You have on your investors, the public market investors 1477 01:16:58,363 --> 01:17:02,743 and regulators and many, many, many more employees. 1478 01:17:02,743 --> 01:17:04,661 And you have all these obligations. 1479 01:17:04,661 --> 01:17:06,747 And it actually means that you're you're 1480 01:17:06,747 --> 01:17:09,625 less free in a lot of ways that I really cherish 1481 01:17:09,625 --> 01:17:12,794 now you get other things in return, and you have to have 1482 01:17:12,794 --> 01:17:16,006 a larger impact on the world, which like, totally see the motivation for that. 1483 01:17:16,006 --> 01:17:20,844 But independence is something you have a hard time pricing 1484 01:17:20,886 --> 01:17:26,475 until you lose it, and then suddenly you realize, fuck, I shouldn't solve that. 1485 01:17:26,642 --> 01:17:28,101 Let me ask you. 1486 01:17:28,101 --> 01:17:32,189 You talked about having passion in what you do. 1487 01:17:32,564 --> 01:17:36,109 Do you think passion is required in your industry 1488 01:17:36,109 --> 01:17:39,112 or in what you're doing for a founder when they're getting started? 1489 01:17:39,112 --> 01:17:43,075 Maybe they're just passionate about money or cars or something else, 1490 01:17:43,075 --> 01:17:44,618 and this is a vehicle to 1491 01:17:44,618 --> 01:17:47,663 get them something else they're passionate about in their personal life. 1492 01:17:47,704 --> 01:17:51,833 Is it possible to build an amazing company that you're not necessarily 1493 01:17:51,833 --> 01:17:53,001 passionate about? 1494 01:17:53,001 --> 01:17:55,545 I think so, but I also think it's harder. 1495 01:17:55,545 --> 01:18:00,759 But I will also say when I got interested in computers, 1496 01:18:00,759 --> 01:18:03,762 I was interested in the viewers because I love the video games, 1497 01:18:04,221 --> 01:18:07,724 and now I've ended up doing collaboration software 1498 01:18:07,724 --> 01:18:09,810 for small to medium sized businesses.

1499 01:18:09,810 --> 01:18:13,021 If you were to pitch that idea to my 18 year old self, 1500 01:18:13,063 --> 01:18:15,941 I would have gone like that sounds boring as fuck. 1501 01:18:15,941 --> 01:18:16,858 No way. 1502 01:18:16,858 --> 01:18:21,113 I want to make productivity software like Jesus. 1503 01:18:21,405 --> 01:18:25,117 I mean, that's one step away from being an accountant in my 18 year 1504 01:18:25,158 --> 01:18:27,077 old mental image. 1505 01:18:27,077 --> 01:18:28,412 I want to make video games. 1506 01:18:28,412 --> 01:18:32,124 I want to make fucking explosions and rocket launchers and all that stuff. 1507 01:18:32,165 --> 01:18:35,001 Right? And then line is a way of surprising you. 1508 01:18:35,001 --> 01:18:39,131 I found out that I really like creating productivity software. 1509 01:18:39,172 --> 01:18:43,385 I really like just writing Ruby code, and I actually don't play 1510 01:18:43,385 --> 01:18:44,428 that many video games anymore. 1511 01:18:44,428 --> 01:18:45,345 I still play some, 1512 01:18:45,345 --> 01:18:47,806 but not nearly as many as I did when I was 18 1513 01:18:47,806 --> 01:18:50,517 and I no longer have any interest in making it. 1514 01:18:50,517 --> 01:18:55,731 And that is to say that sometimes, like the passion follows, the effort 1515 01:18:55,939 --> 01:18:59,776 like you may start until endeavor and you're not all that set about 1516 01:18:59,776 --> 01:19:02,821 something, but then you get deeper into it and you realize most 1517 01:19:02,821 --> 01:19:06,366 domains are actually interesting if you scratch deep enough, 1518 01:19:06,825 --> 01:19:10,287 and then if you're trying to get good at it and trying to make it 1519 01:19:10,287 --> 01:19:13,874 something, it just becomes easier to, if not fall in love with it. 1520 01:19:13,874 --> 01:19:15,625 That's a little overly romantic. 1521 01:19:15,625 --> 01:19:17,335 Get excited about it. 1522 01:19:17,335 --> 01:19:20,338 I do think it's difficult to sustain momentum 1523 01:19:20,338 --> 01:19:23,300 if you don't get excited about your business at some point. 1524 01:19:23,300 --> 01:19:28,180 It does not have to be on day one, but if you're going to try to make it 1525 01:19:28,180 --> 01:19:31,892 7 to 10 years, which is what many businesses take 1526 01:19:31,892 --> 01:19:34,895 before they really start to hit their stride, right? 1527 01:19:34,936 --> 01:19:38,398 I think it could be a bit of a slog if you don't have any interest in it. 1528 01:19:38,398 --> 01:19:41,526 Now, that doesn't mean you have to love all aspects of it, right? 1529 01:19:41,568 --> 01:19:45,363 And some people really do just love the aspect of like, it's working. 1530 01:19:45,864 --> 01:19:49,117 Like, I don't miss any love making the thing, but I love seeing happy 1531 01:19:49,117 --> 01:19:50,368 customers. 1532 01:19:50,368 --> 01:19:54,289 I love seeing a growing business. 1533 01:19:54,289 --> 01:19:56,249 I love taking care of our employees. 1534 01:19:56,249 --> 01:19:58,794 Like there's got to be something in the equation 1535 01:19:58,794 --> 01:20:02,130 that I think you get excited about, and that fire should up to me, 1536 01:20:02,506 --> 01:20:07,302 that's beyond just I like the rewards that come out with them now. 1537 01:20:07,385 --> 01:20:08,804 I mean, I'm just talking to myself here 1538 01:20:08,804 --> 01:20:13,099 and I could totally imagine that there are I mean, should do most. 1539 01:20:13,141 --> 01:20:17,646 Did most people through time love going to work, but did they do it 1540 01:20:17,646 --> 01:20:19,356 because they wanted to provide for their family? 1541 01:20:19,356 --> 01:20:21,817 Well, they probably did it because they want to provide for their family. 1542 01:20:21,817 --> 01:20:25,195 That doesn't also mean that the work was meaningful to them, 1543 01:20:25,195 --> 01:20:29,282 and it also does not mean that they might have had delusions about like, 1544 01:20:29,324 --> 01:20:30,659 oh man, I quit. 1545 01:20:30,659 --> 01:20:35,664 If I could, if I won the lottery, I quit my job in a heartbeat. 1546 01:20:35,664 --> 01:20:37,707 And I'd just like, I don't know, right. 1547 01:20:37,707 --> 01:20:39,209 Jet skis all day. 1548 01:20:39,209 --> 01:20:43,255 And you do that for about six months and odds 1549 01:20:43,255 --> 01:20:48,385 and I'm talking like, statistically in terms of lottery winners are that like, 1550 01:20:48,510 --> 01:20:52,138 you're fucking hooked on drugs and partying and cooking. 1551 01:20:52,180 --> 01:20:56,309 You realize that like, shit, that's actually maybe not the greatest thing. 1552 01:20:56,309 --> 01:20:59,563 And in a lot of cases, you're actually bankrupt in 24 hours, right? 1553 01:20:59,604 --> 01:21:02,607 So that is to say, a lot of people don't know what they want, 1554 01:21:02,691 --> 01:21:05,193 and they don't know what gives them deep sources of meaning. 1555 01:21:05,193 --> 01:21:09,614 So it's worth looking at history and wisdom, 1556 01:21:09,948 --> 01:21:12,701 accumulated experience over time and realized, 1557 01:21:12,701 --> 01:21:17,372 you know what turns out that work is probably important for me. 1558 01:21:17,455 --> 01:21:20,125 I should not be so quick to wish it away. 1559 01:21:20,125 --> 01:21:23,503 I should try and find something that align somewhat with my talents 1560 01:21:23,503 --> 01:21:25,255 and with my interests. 1561 01:21:25,255 --> 01:21:27,549 But I can develop over time too. 1562 01:21:27,549 --> 01:21:32,846 I got started with programing quite late, and I wasn't all that good at it 1563 01:21:32,971 --> 01:21:35,432 when I got going with it, but I stuck with it 1564 01:21:35,432 --> 01:21:38,977 and I found my angle on it and then suddenly I didn't get good at it. 1565 01:21:39,019 --> 01:21:41,730 And that happens a lot. 1566 01:21:41,730 --> 01:21:44,941 If you spend time and talent and investment

into something 1567 01:21:44,983 --> 01:21:46,151 that you can go from, like, 1568 01:21:46,151 --> 01:21:48,820 I don't know shit about this to something, I know a lot about this. 1569 01:21:48,820 --> 01:21:50,030 And you know what? 1570 01:21:50,030 --> 01:21:52,574 Things become more fun when you're competent, 1571 01:21:52,574 --> 01:21:54,743 the better you become at something. 1572 01:21:54,743 --> 01:21:59,414 Even though you did not have an intrinsic motivation for that mission at the start. 1573 01:21:59,497 --> 01:22:00,999 Before funding becomes. 1574 01:22:00,999 --> 01:22:04,961 I've learned a lot of things in running a business over the last 25 years 1575 01:22:04,961 --> 01:22:10,592 that I didn't think I'd appreciate, like cost management, right? 1576 01:22:10,634 --> 01:22:12,260 Like, it turns out I love it. 1577 01:22:12,260 --> 01:22:14,554 I love going through expense reports. 1578 01:22:14,554 --> 01:22:17,307 I love finding like I'm spending a little too much on this. 1579 01:22:17,307 --> 01:22:19,267 I love the optimization game that comes 1580 01:22:19,267 --> 01:22:23,229 from having a well-oiled business that feels proportionate to its mission. 1581 01:22:23,271 --> 01:22:25,857 Not just proportionate like efficient. 1582 01:22:25,857 --> 01:22:27,067 That in itself. 1583 01:22:28,234 --> 01:22:28,818 You'd ask me 1584 01:22:28,818 --> 01:22:31,905 again, as an 18 year old, would you like to optimize your expense report? 1585 01:22:31,905 --> 01:22:34,532 I'd be like, you're having a fucking mind? No I don't. 1586 01:22:34,532 --> 01:22:35,784 And then you do it. 1587 01:22:35,784 --> 01:22:37,619 And suddenly there it is. 1588 01:22:37,619 --> 01:22:39,537 Passion. Let's talk about that. 1589 01:22:39,537 --> 01:22:44,709 Because if I'm not mistaken, your whole company cut off the cloud. Yes. 1590 01:22:44,709 --> 01:22:48,838 And you cut, like, $3.2 million a year off of your bill. 1591 01:22:48,880 --> 01:22:49,547 You saved a bunch. 1592 01:22:49,547 --> 01:22:52,008 You saved millions of dollars. Yes. 1593 01:22:52,008 --> 01:22:55,220 And everyone told you, I think, like, look, the cloud that's non-negotiable. 1594 01:22:55,220 --> 01:22:56,096 It's the cloud. 1595 01:22:56,096 --> 01:22:58,682 And so teach the decision. 1596 01:22:58,682 --> 01:22:59,557 Should founders 1597 01:22:59,557 --> 01:23:01,559 be looking at building their own infrastructure 1598 01:23:01,559 --> 01:23:03,269 instead of running in certain cases? 1599 01:23:03,269 --> 01:23:05,563 They should certainly do the math. 1600 01:23:05,563 --> 01:23:06,898 They should always do the math. 1601 01:23:06,898 --> 01:23:08,358 And the math is actually very simple. 1602 01:23:08,358 --> 01:23:10,235 You say cloud and then sound very technical. 1603 01:23:10,235 --> 01:23:13,238 It's really should you rent or should you buy 1604 01:23:13,363 --> 01:23:17,033 if you need a thing all the time, every day, as part of the course 1605 01:23:17,033 --> 01:23:20,870 of running your business, and you can imagine doing that for years to come. 1606 01:23:20,870 --> 01:23:22,372 You should buy it. 1607 01:23:22,372 --> 01:23:26,334 Of course, it's going to be more expensive to rent a car from Hertz. 1608 01:23:26,376 --> 01:23:30,088 If you need a car 340 days out of the year, 1609 01:23:30,380 --> 01:23:32,674 you should buy that thing or lease it, or do something 1610 01:23:32,674 --> 01:23:34,926 where you have more of a stake of an ownership in it. 1611 01:23:34,926 --> 01:23:39,431 Because of course, if someone else has to buy for you and then rent it to you, 1612 01:23:39,472 --> 01:23:42,517 they want to get paid and you have to pay that right. 1613 01:23:42,517 --> 01:23:46,271 But when it comes to computers, people kind of forgot that somehow. 1614 01:23:46,271 --> 01:23:48,064 And part of that was convenience. 1615 01:23:48,064 --> 01:23:51,443 The cloud has some real conveniences to it, but not as many as people think. 1616 01:23:51,443 --> 01:23:56,531 And when I sat down and went through those damned expense reports, something 1617 01:23:56,531 --> 01:24:00,785 stood out that suddenly, when we were spending on the cloud, 1618 01:24:01,036 --> 01:24:05,415 was the second largest expense we had in the business, after payroll, 1619 01:24:05,415 --> 01:24:09,085 and it was just growing at an unnatural pace 1620 01:24:09,085 --> 01:24:12,422 that was not proportionate to the growth of the business. 1621 01:24:12,422 --> 01:24:16,009 As such, that's always a good like, what's the ratio, right? 1622 01:24:16,051 --> 01:24:18,136 Like if you start your business and you're spending is over 1623 01:24:18,136 --> 01:24:21,848 time, ratios should typically go down as you see on your business, 1624 01:24:21,848 --> 01:24:25,810 whatever you expenses are, you should reach some economies of scale. 1625 01:24:25,810 --> 01:24:29,731 And that usually means I'm spending less on X now because I have a lot 1626 01:24:29,731 --> 01:24:30,690 more customers, right? 1627 01:24:30,690 --> 01:24:32,192 That wasn't happening in the cloud. 1628 01:24:32,192 --> 01:24:34,986 I was looking at our spend and comparing it 1629 01:24:34,986 --> 01:24:38,031 to what it was like when we were running more of our own infrastructure 1630 01:24:38,073 --> 01:24:41,951 years in advance or prior and going like, what? 1631 01:24:42,410 --> 01:24:45,371 Aren't the people supposed to be faster and cheaper all the time? 1632 01:24:45,371 --> 01:24:48,083 Why is these prices going up and what a getting for it? 1633 01:24:48,083 --> 01:24:49,000 And then it got into it, 1634 01:24:49,000 --> 01:24:53,797 and I realize that part of it was a massive theory in the industry, 1635 01:24:53,838 --> 01:24:58,551 where we had collectively convinced ourselves that running your own computer 1636 01:24:58,551 --> 01:25:02,764 was somehow now an alien, foreign, difficult task,

1637 01:25:02,847 --> 01:25:06,226 regardless of the fact that literally every business that you know of 1638 01:25:06,267 --> 01:25:10,021 that has been built their brand on the internet since, 1639 01:25:10,063 --> 01:25:14,067 I don't know, prior to 2015, they ran their own computers. 1640 01:25:14,109 --> 01:25:15,068 They owned their own computers. 1641 01:25:15,068 --> 01:25:17,070 Like, this is not ancient history. 1642 01:25:17,070 --> 01:25:20,073 We're not reexamining the pyramids and going about. 1643 01:25:20,156 --> 01:25:21,324 They built these things. 1644 01:25:21,324 --> 01:25:22,575 No, they bought computers. 1645 01:25:22,575 --> 01:25:25,954 They plucked in power, they plugged in internet, and voila, 1646 01:25:25,995 --> 01:25:28,998 they had servers to run their software on. 1647 01:25:29,332 --> 01:25:32,377 Somehow the industry, 1648 01:25:32,710 --> 01:25:36,673 not somehow through an amazing marketing campaign, 1649 01:25:36,714 --> 01:25:41,219 PsyOps, even the hyperscalers and Amazon in particular, 1650 01:25:41,302 --> 01:25:45,265 convince people that running your own, owning 1651 01:25:45,390 --> 01:25:49,686 your own computers was actually this exotic act that made no sense. 1652 01:25:49,686 --> 01:25:52,689 I started running the numbers, and the numbers made no sense. 1653 01:25:53,273 --> 01:25:55,358 I cannot get into add up. 1654 01:25:55,358 --> 01:26:00,446 We are not getting anywhere close to the efficiency gains that were promised. 1655 01:26:00,655 --> 01:26:03,199 We can't suddenly, because we're in the cloud, 1656 01:26:03,199 --> 01:26:07,620 get away with a team that's a 10th at the side, half the side. 1657 01:26:07,704 --> 01:26:11,583 We couldn't even get rid of one person on our team going to the cloud. 1658 01:26:11,875 --> 01:26:15,587 And the fact that was proved by the fact that when we moved out of the cloud, 1659 01:26:16,004 --> 01:26:17,172 we hired them. 1660 01:26:17,172 --> 01:26:19,048 The team stayed exactly the same. 1661 01:26:19,048 --> 01:26:22,177 The team that runs our servers as they did when we were in the cloud. 1662 01:26:23,136 --> 01:26:26,139 But we we made millions of dollars. 1663 01:26:26,181 --> 01:26:28,016 I actually say made, and that's what I mean. 1664 01:26:28,016 --> 01:26:30,143 We say, but it needs to be made 1665 01:26:30,143 --> 01:26:33,980 because every dollar you get to cut off the expense line 1666 01:26:34,022 --> 01:26:37,442 actually goes to the bottom line, which is quite different from revenue. 1667 01:26:37,483 --> 01:26:37,859 Right? 1668 01:26:37,859 --> 01:26:38,693 You think like, well, 1669 01:26:38,693 --> 01:26:41,696 if I can roll my business $1 million, how much do I get to keep? 1670 01:26:41,696 --> 01:26:44,699 Well, you got cogs, you got these, you've got that, you've got margins. 1671 01:26:44,699 --> 01:26:47,660 And maybe there's only, I don't know, 200 grand left at the end. 1672 01:26:47,660 -->

01:26:49,162 That's even amazing margins. Right. 1673 01:26:49,162 --> 01:26:52,373 You have turned and said Martin, you get to keep 200 grand out of the million. 1674 01:26:52,415 --> 01:26:56,586 You save $1 million off your expenses. 1675 01:26:56,586 --> 01:26:58,504 You get to keep 100% of that, 1676 01:26:58,504 --> 01:27:01,841 at least if it's a clean cut and you're not just replacing it with something else. 1677 01:27:01,841 --> 01:27:03,426 And that's basically what happened. 1678 01:27:03,426 --> 01:27:06,888 We have a cloud budget of 3.2 million or something, 1679 01:27:06,930 --> 01:27:10,725 that we cut down to about 800,000 on a yearly basis. 1680 01:27:10,767 --> 01:27:14,520 Suddenly there were more than $2 million 1681 01:27:14,520 --> 01:27:18,107 straight to the bottom line freed up into business. 1682 01:27:18,107 --> 01:27:20,401 And I also think what's fascinating with that 1683 01:27:21,569 --> 01:27:23,863 journey, if I recall it 1684 01:27:23,863 --> 01:27:27,075 for us, was that it seems so obvious in hindsight 1685 01:27:27,075 --> 01:27:30,620 that this was the right thing to do, but the motivation is missing a lot 1686 01:27:30,620 --> 01:27:33,957 of businesses run by professional managers because they're not actually renewing 1687 01:27:34,415 --> 01:27:37,710 or are rewarded on what flows to the bottom line. 1688 01:27:37,752 --> 01:27:38,795 They're rewarded on what 1689 01:27:38,795 --> 01:27:42,006 your multiple lists and what you're multiple is in many ways, 1690 01:27:42,048 --> 01:27:45,093 or in many cases, is a symptom of what you're revenue and worship. 1691 01:27:45,093 --> 01:27:47,929 Roughly. Who cares if you're making money? 1692 01:27:47,929 --> 01:27:51,015 Well, I care because if I owned a business, I get to keep the money. 1693 01:27:51,015 --> 01:27:54,852 We don't trend and I get to cure it, but the other one is in the business 1694 01:27:54,852 --> 01:27:55,853 and even the employees. 1695 01:27:55,853 --> 01:27:59,023 We have a 10% profit share plan that 13 singles. 1696 01:27:59,065 --> 01:28:01,901 So everyone got to participate in that. 1697 01:28:01,901 --> 01:28:04,904 And of course, Jason and I are primarily in the business, 1698 01:28:04,904 --> 01:28:06,155 got to participate even more of that. 1699 01:28:06,155 --> 01:28:08,366 And I'm like, okay, this makes sense. 1700 01:28:08,366 --> 01:28:11,828 Like, I know how hard I had to run. 1701 01:28:11,869 --> 01:28:13,621 I'd say the marketing side of things. 1702 01:28:13,621 --> 01:28:18,167 Two if we say $1 million, how much revenue 1703 01:28:18,209 --> 01:28:21,212 would I have to produce to sort of get the similar amount to key? 1704 01:28:21,254 --> 01:28:22,630 I don't know, 5 million? 1705 01:28:22,630 --> 01:28:24,257 Holy shit. That's a lot of work. 1706 01:28:24,257 --> 01:28:28,094 It was way less work for us to get out of the cloud and saying, 1707 01:28:28,177 --> 01:28:31,931 let's just

say the million dollars than it was to try to attract 5 million 1708 01:28:31,931 --> 01:28:32,682 more in business. 1709 01:28:32,682 --> 01:28:36,394 Now, I don't think this is particularly the American mindset. 1710 01:28:36,436 --> 01:28:39,439 Certainly in entrepreneurial circles, it's almost like it's taboo 1711 01:28:39,480 --> 01:28:43,693 to talk about costs because it almost again means you're unambitious. 1712 01:28:43,943 --> 01:28:46,612 Why do you care about costs? Growing business? 1713 01:28:46,612 --> 01:28:51,367 Just find twice as many customers, then you don't even have to bother 1714 01:28:51,367 --> 01:28:53,494 about expenses. It's going to be a trickle. 1715 01:28:53,494 --> 01:28:54,370 And I actually I mean, 1716 01:28:54,370 --> 01:28:57,665 I appreciate that actually, as a sort of entrepreneurial spirit. 1717 01:28:57,665 --> 01:28:59,751 There's some real pro-growth to it. 1718 01:28:59,751 --> 01:29:03,129 But I also think, like, you didn't have to get me to like, it's 1719 01:29:03,129 --> 01:29:07,592 not either or you can have some people who are responsible for making 1720 01:29:07,592 --> 01:29:09,302 sure your costs are kept in check 1721 01:29:09,302 --> 01:29:12,055 and get out of goddamn cloud, if that makes a sense. 1722 01:29:12,055 --> 01:29:15,558 Why do you have other people building new things and attracting new customers? 1723 01:29:15,558 --> 01:29:17,185 And then you get to have both of them. 1724 01:29:17,185 --> 01:29:19,562 Can we have our cake and eat two? Yes we can. 1725 01:29:19,562 --> 01:29:22,565 That's so funny because so one of my first software companies, 1726 01:29:22,565 --> 01:29:26,986 we started me and my wife from our garage, and at the time 1727 01:29:27,070 --> 01:29:29,155 we were choosing, okay, do we have our own server, 1728 01:29:29,155 --> 01:29:30,990 which I think it was like 500 bucks or something. 1729 01:29:30,990 --> 01:29:32,408 Or do I go to the cloud? 1730 01:29:32,408 --> 01:29:36,371 And this was probably when cloud was just first starting maybe 2016, 2017. 1731 01:29:36,371 --> 01:29:39,540 And I think it was like $200 a month to rent it in the cloud. 1732 01:29:39,540 --> 01:29:41,417 And I'm like, well, we'll just buy it. 1733 01:29:41,417 --> 01:29:42,919 We'll just plug it in in the garage. 1734 01:29:42,919 --> 01:29:45,838 And we did that for the first however, you know, years. 1735 01:29:45,838 --> 01:29:48,716 And it was like we just didn't have the budget for it at the time. 1736 01:29:48,716 --> 01:29:49,258 And it was. 1737 01:29:49,258 --> 01:29:50,259 And that's how we got started. 1738 01:29:50,259 --> 01:29:53,346 The only downside was I think there was a power outage one time and I was like, oh. 1739 01:29:54,138 --> 01:29:55,598 Is in the cloud all the time. 1740 01:29:55,598 --> 01:29:56,766 There you go. Right. 1741 01:29:56,766 --> 01:29:58,893 So I love that story. 1742 01:29:58,893 --> 01:30:00,812 And it's actually something I've been trying 1743 01:30:00,812 --> 01:30:04,107 to build some tooling around bringing back the closet computer. 1744 01:30:04,148 --> 01:30:06,609 When I got started with the internet, like every company 1745 01:30:06,609 --> 01:30:09,862 had, the closet computer, the companies I was working at back in Copenhagen 1746 01:30:09,862 --> 01:30:10,822 in the late 90s, 1747 01:30:10,822 --> 01:30:14,992 they all have a server rack in the office, and that would serve things. 1748 01:30:14,992 --> 01:30:17,578 And there's actually a real connection. 1749 01:30:17,578 --> 01:30:22,333 You get to your material when it's not just the cloud, like hardware is cool. 1750 01:30:22,542 --> 01:30:24,919 So, you know, blinking and ice is cool. 1751 01:30:24,919 --> 01:30:26,462 It's nice to be connected to it. 1752 01:30:26,462 --> 01:30:27,839 And then even nicer 1753 01:30:27,839 --> 01:30:31,509 if it also makes economic sense, which of course it does in so many cases. 1754 01:30:31,509 --> 01:30:33,928 So I think the cloud business 1755 01:30:33,928 --> 01:30:37,640 has been really successful and actually admired what they pulled off. 1756 01:30:37,682 --> 01:30:41,227 But I also think a lot of businesses have wasted 1757 01:30:41,227 --> 01:30:44,772 a lot of money on something where they didn't get to return on it. 1758 01:30:45,064 --> 01:30:48,067 you launched a company called once where 1759 01:30:48,401 --> 01:30:51,404 instead of recurring revenue, which is what we all got into 1760 01:30:51,404 --> 01:30:55,366 software for, you just Pay once was part of that 1761 01:30:55,366 --> 01:30:58,911 because you see software becoming a commodity. 1762 01:30:58,911 --> 01:31:02,165 And and it's a race to the bottom in terms of price. 1763 01:31:02,165 --> 01:31:06,002 Or tell me about It actually wasn't it predated the agent stuff 1764 01:31:06,002 --> 01:31:08,880 and it didn't work. 1765 01:31:08,880 --> 01:31:10,089 Oh, okay. So 1766 01:31:11,549 --> 01:31:14,760 our analysis was there is a 1767 01:31:16,220 --> 01:31:18,181 large number of software 1768 01:31:18,181 --> 01:31:22,852 categories that should be commodities where you don't need 1769 01:31:22,852 --> 01:31:26,814 the best, you just need something and it shouldn't be overly expensive. 1770 01:31:26,939 --> 01:31:31,652 The one we started with was a slack competitor called campfire, 1771 01:31:31,652 --> 01:31:35,531 which is ironic because we had a SaaS 1772 01:31:36,365 --> 01:31:40,870 chat for our call campfire years and years before slack, 1773 01:31:40,870 --> 01:31:45,833 and now we're sort of full circle to like slack as the dominant major 1774 01:31:45,875 --> 01:31:49,295 chat service that people use, and so people 1775 01:31:49,295 --> 01:31:52,632 spending unbelievable sums on them. 1776 01:31:52,965 --> 01:31:53,966 Not at all 1777 01:31:53,966 --> 01:31:58,387 uncommon that a medium sized companies are spending tens of

thousands of dollars 1778 01:31:58,429 --> 01:32:01,432 a year. And I just felt like 1779 01:32:01,474 --> 01:32:05,102 the magic is not there for that kind of spend. 1780 01:32:05,520 --> 01:32:07,897 This thing is a commodity. 1781 01:32:07,897 --> 01:32:09,398 It should have commodity prices. 1782 01:32:09,398 --> 01:32:11,025 And some of the things we are. 1783 01:32:11,025 --> 01:32:13,402 The parallels I looked at was drugs. 1784 01:32:13,402 --> 01:32:17,198 So with drugs you get a patent, you develop something 1785 01:32:17,198 --> 01:32:19,158 that's very expensive to develop a new drug. 1786 01:32:19,158 --> 01:32:20,743 Of course, well over $1 billion. 1787 01:32:20,743 --> 01:32:25,122 So you get a moment of exclusivity to get you to recoup that. 1788 01:32:25,122 --> 01:32:27,625 And then when that's out, the generic is come in. 1789 01:32:27,625 --> 01:32:29,835 Because once the compounds are known 1790 01:32:29,835 --> 01:32:33,422 for whatever the drug is, someone else can make it and cost not thing. 1791 01:32:33,506 --> 01:32:35,258 It should be thinner, it should be. 1792 01:32:35,258 --> 01:32:37,343 And actually this is how we progress, right? 1793 01:32:37,343 --> 01:32:38,970 If this is how things get cheaper 1794 01:32:38,970 --> 01:32:42,682 over time that pioneers come up with the first version, 1795 01:32:42,682 --> 01:32:45,434 they make a lot of money to reward them for the risk they took. 1796 01:32:45,434 --> 01:32:47,478 And then over time, 1797 01:32:47,478 --> 01:32:51,399 generics competition wanted that out and it comes cheaper and cheaper. 1798 01:32:51,732 --> 01:32:54,026 Why is that not happening to software? 1799 01:32:54,026 --> 01:32:56,279 Why do we not have more generic software? 1800 01:32:56,279 --> 01:33:01,409 Why is the cost of SaaS is not going down in some of these categories 1801 01:33:01,409 --> 01:33:07,123 that have matured and are no longer at the leading edge of new development? 1802 01:33:08,124 --> 01:33:09,333 That was the thesis. 1803 01:33:09,333 --> 01:33:13,045 So we put out once and said, you know what, we'll sell them. 1804 01:33:13,129 --> 01:33:14,755 She said, she's slack in a box. 1805 01:33:14,755 --> 01:33:18,009 Go run it on your machine and it'll just be a one time fee. 1806 01:33:18,009 --> 01:33:19,302 And in many cases 1807 01:33:19,302 --> 01:33:23,222 you'll be able to save thousands, not tens of thousands of dollars doing so. 1808 01:33:23,431 --> 01:33:25,474 And it didn't work. 1809 01:33:25,474 --> 01:33:27,143 The market wasn't ready for it. 1810 01:33:27,143 --> 01:33:28,060 They didn't want it. 1811 01:33:28,060 --> 01:33:32,023 They maybe didn't want the obligation of running their own computers anymore. 1812 01:33:32,064 --> 01:33:33,482 Maybe this is part of that discussion. 1813 01:33:33,482 --> 01:33:37,737 We just talked about that the cloud PsyOps has been so successful 1814 01:33:37,737 --> 01:33:39,739 that has convinced everyone that running your own computer 1815 01:33:39,739 --> 01:33:42,408 is the scariest thing in the world, which is complete bullshit. 1816 01:33:42,408 --> 01:33:44,285 But there's also something good to it. 1817 01:33:44,285 --> 01:33:46,912 There is a convenience to it, and there's a convenience to SaaS. 1818 01:33:46,912 --> 01:33:50,041 That's why SaaS is now the predominant software 1819 01:33:50,041 --> 01:33:54,086 business model and has been for decades, including for our business. 1820 01:33:54,086 --> 01:33:56,422 This is how we made all our money on base camp. 1821 01:33:56,422 --> 01:33:57,548 It was through SaaS. 1822 01:33:57,548 --> 01:34:00,468 Does a lot of people realize that if I could just sign up for software 1823 01:34:00,468 --> 01:34:04,263 in my browser and don't have to install in, I think that's really nice. 1824 01:34:04,263 --> 01:34:05,931 But we thought like, you know what? 1825 01:34:05,931 --> 01:34:09,435 It is nice, but maybe it's not so nice if you want to spend tens of thousands 1826 01:34:09,435 --> 01:34:13,773 of dollars on a commodity piece of software, but as of yet, it is. 1827 01:34:13,814 --> 01:34:17,068 And this is one of the other things, because we were on the other side of it. 1828 01:34:17,151 --> 01:34:18,778 Let's take the slack example again. 1829 01:34:18,778 --> 01:34:22,031 We had essentially a version of slack in 2005. 1830 01:34:22,198 --> 01:34:25,201 We can't find market wasn't ready. 1831 01:34:25,284 --> 01:34:27,328 They didn't want to chat. 1832 01:34:27,328 --> 01:34:29,997 They wanted to talk to the phone. 1833 01:34:29,997 --> 01:34:31,999 They wanted to call people into the conference room. 1834 01:34:31,999 --> 01:34:36,629 And it wasn't until slacking off, first of all, the great product, 1835 01:34:37,171 --> 01:34:38,756 but at the right time 1836 01:34:38,756 --> 01:34:43,135 that things switched over and suddenly it became like a stable. 1837 01:34:43,386 --> 01:34:46,931 And that's what a lot of businesses like. 1838 01:34:46,972 --> 01:34:50,976 I mean, there's a lot of these saying it's better to be to be lucky 1839 01:34:50,976 --> 01:34:53,062 than to be good. There's something to that. 1840 01:34:53,062 --> 01:34:56,565 There's better to be at the right time, at the right moment than to be amazing. 1841 01:34:56,565 --> 01:35:00,194 And I say that with all of our own success, 1842 01:35:00,444 --> 01:35:05,157 we were at the right time with a good enough product with Basecamp, 1843 01:35:05,241 --> 01:35:08,119 that it worked out great and basically was great example too, 1844 01:35:08,119 --> 01:35:12,081 because we were too early to the market with campfire, the market was ready 1845 01:35:12,081 --> 01:35:15,084 and they didn't want to buy something like that at that time. 1846 01:35:15,376 --> 01:35:19,672 But we were also too early with base camp, in the sense 1847 01:35:19,672 --> 01:35:22,383 that competitors

hadn't realized that selling productivity 1848 01:35:22,383 --> 01:35:24,135 software online was a very profitable business. 1849 01:35:24,135 --> 01:35:25,594 So we got to have the entire market, 1850 01:35:25,594 --> 01:35:29,515 even though it was relatively small to ourselves for a decade. 1851 01:35:29,557 --> 01:35:34,145 I kept being amazed that we did not have more competition for Basecamp. 1852 01:35:34,186 --> 01:35:35,396 Like I knew our numbers. 1853 01:35:35,396 --> 01:35:37,481 And this is, by the way, one of the things I credit 1854 01:35:37,481 --> 01:35:41,861 the American style of the LLC to have private numbers. 1855 01:35:41,902 --> 01:35:45,364 For the longest time, people would underestimate our business 1856 01:35:45,364 --> 01:35:48,367 by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude. 1857 01:35:48,367 --> 01:35:51,495 They think like you're running a lifestyle business, which means you're making, 1858 01:35:51,495 --> 01:35:54,915 I don't know what happened million in year and just breaking it. 1859 01:35:54,915 --> 01:35:57,710 It just absolutely killing it. Right. 1860 01:35:57,710 --> 01:36:01,922 And I was like, fuck, if this gets out of how much money 1861 01:36:01,964 --> 01:36:05,926 can be made in the history, like, man, we're going to have a hard time, right? 1862 01:36:05,968 --> 01:36:08,095 And I just kept marveling at that. 1863 01:36:08,095 --> 01:36:10,639 And did some people write? All of us. 1864 01:36:10,639 --> 01:36:12,475 Nothing's going to stay a secret forever. 1865 01:36:12,475 --> 01:36:15,478 But our secrets stayed hidden 1866 01:36:15,519 --> 01:36:18,647 for a shockingly long period of time. 1867 01:36:18,647 --> 01:36:20,399 And and now it's a bit harder. 1868 01:36:20,399 --> 01:36:22,109 And that's okay too. 1869 01:36:22,109 --> 01:36:26,071 But yeah, once didn't work yet. 1870 01:36:26,113 --> 01:36:28,699 I think that's always really important to say. 1871 01:36:28,699 --> 01:36:31,952 It didn't work yet, because the history of business 1872 01:36:31,994 --> 01:36:36,165 is full of these case studies where people go like, well, we tried that. 1873 01:36:36,165 --> 01:36:37,208 It didn't work. 1874 01:36:37,208 --> 01:36:38,709 Well, what did you try? 1875 01:36:38,709 --> 01:36:40,377 Well, we could have said that. Right? 1876 01:36:40,377 --> 01:36:43,172 Like slack, we tried slag. It didn't work. Well. Yeah. 1877 01:36:43,172 --> 01:36:47,343 With that product in 2005, if you try it out with the same product 1878 01:36:47,343 --> 01:36:50,179 or a slightly different problem in 2012, suddenly it works. Amazing. 1879 01:36:50,179 --> 01:36:52,223 And it's a huge category, right? 1880 01:36:52,223 --> 01:36:55,226 So you got to be really careful about what the lesson should take away 1881 01:36:55,226 --> 01:36:59,730 from history, including business history, what works and what doesn't work. 1882 01:36:59,772 --> 01:37:04,860 I often take people who feel like, well, I mean, I have this idea 1883 01:37:04,860 --> 01:37:07,029 I want to build this thing, but like, there's a lot of competition. 1884 01:37:07,029 --> 01:37:10,032 Like, okay, that doesn't mean you can't succeed. 1885 01:37:10,157 --> 01:37:13,452 It doesn't mean that you spin on it isn't the one that's going to break through. 1886 01:37:13,494 --> 01:37:16,330 Happens all the goddamn time. 1887 01:37:16,330 --> 01:37:20,584 Tell me about the war you guys had with Apple over their cut. 1888 01:37:20,709 --> 01:37:22,920 Yeah, that was that was a good one. 1889 01:37:22,920 --> 01:37:30,344 In fact, now, in retrospect, it was one of the single best, not one of them. 1890 01:37:30,469 --> 01:37:33,722 It was the single best launch campaign 1891 01:37:33,722 --> 01:37:36,725 we've ever, ever had for new product. 1892 01:37:36,809 --> 01:37:42,106 We launched hey, Come our email service back in 2020. 1893 01:37:42,147 --> 01:37:46,402 And we knew that to make that service successful, we needed mobile apps. 1894 01:37:46,443 --> 01:37:46,986 Of course we did. 1895 01:37:46,986 --> 01:37:48,737 We had mobile apps for base camps. 1896 01:37:48,737 --> 01:37:53,742 Since the app stores came out, you need to be on mobile but Tripoli. 1897 01:37:53,742 --> 01:37:56,871 So if you're targeting consumers with emails, right. 1898 01:37:56,912 --> 01:37:57,997 So we build these mobile apps 1899 01:37:57,997 --> 01:38:02,918 and we submitted them as we monitor and we got them proved. 1900 01:38:02,960 --> 01:38:05,087 And then like two days after ourselves, 1901 01:38:05,087 --> 01:38:07,131 Apple came back and said like, oh, sorry, many mistake. 1902 01:38:07,131 --> 01:38:08,382 You shouldn't have been approved. 1903 01:38:08,382 --> 01:38:12,803 You don't get to do this unless we take 30% of your business 1904 01:38:12,845 --> 01:38:14,346 because you need to have customers 1905 01:38:14,346 --> 01:38:18,309 sign up through the App Store using our payment system. 1906 01:38:18,309 --> 01:38:19,018 You can't just have 1907 01:38:19,018 --> 01:38:22,730 to sign up in your website that then we don't get our cut. 1908 01:38:22,771 --> 01:38:24,023 Like, I was not going to work, right. 1909 01:38:24,023 --> 01:38:25,274 And they charged pressures. 1910 01:38:25,274 --> 01:38:29,028 And it turned out to into this struggle and the big struggle 1911 01:38:29,028 --> 01:38:32,615 to have an absolute worst time for Apple and the absolute best timing for us, 1912 01:38:32,615 --> 01:38:36,493 which was like two weeks before WWT, which is Apple's great 1913 01:38:36,493 --> 01:38:38,454 developer conference, where you have all the media 1914 01:38:38,454 --> 01:38:42,416 attention on it in the build up to it, and you have this great little David 1915 01:38:42,416 --> 01:38:45,669 with Goliath story that I think 1916 01:38:45,669 --> 01:38:49,131 a lot of developers, actually millions of developers, can resonate with. 1917 01:38:49,214 -->

01:38:52,134 Like anyone who tried to submit 1918 01:38:52,134 --> 01:38:55,638 mobile app to especially the iOS app Store knows what 1919 01:38:55,638 --> 01:39:01,101 a heroine that could be and how sort of just random. 1920 01:39:01,226 --> 01:39:03,062 Like you submit something 1921 01:39:03,062 --> 01:39:05,522 and it'll go right through, and then the next thing it's an update 1922 01:39:05,522 --> 01:39:08,734 and won't because there's different little bureaucrat 1923 01:39:08,776 --> 01:39:10,527 sitting and reviewing your stuff. 1924 01:39:10,527 --> 01:39:15,658 And we just didn't do what everyone else did, which was to bow our heads. 1925 01:39:15,658 --> 01:39:17,826 It okay, fine, we'll pay you whatever you want, 1926 01:39:17,826 --> 01:39:21,747 because Africa's has a bit of a monopoly in that regard, or at least 1927 01:39:21,747 --> 01:39:23,332 a duopoly shared with Google there. 1928 01:39:23,332 --> 01:39:25,834 So we had a huge fight. 1929 01:39:25,834 --> 01:39:28,796 It went on for several weeks, and in the end we got 1930 01:39:28,796 --> 01:39:31,173 the best thing that we ever, ever gotten, which was sort of a truce. 1931 01:39:31,173 --> 01:39:33,133 We didn't pay half of 30%. 1932 01:39:33,133 --> 01:39:36,011 They got some bullshit concessions to save face 1933 01:39:36,011 --> 01:39:39,306 with some demo sign up nonsense. 1934 01:39:39,306 --> 01:39:43,811 But what it did give us was essentially a $20 million launch date. 1935 01:39:43,894 --> 01:39:48,065 We could not have bought that amount of publicity, that amount of focus, 1936 01:39:48,107 --> 01:39:52,653 and we signed up over 30,000 paying customers 1937 01:39:52,653 --> 01:39:55,990 to come in less than two weeks. 1938 01:39:56,782 --> 01:40:00,494 I mean, these are customers, painters, 100 bucks a year. 1939 01:40:00,661 --> 01:40:04,790 Like it was instantly a $3 million a year business. 1940 01:40:05,040 --> 01:40:06,917 I never had a launch like that. 1941 01:40:06,917 --> 01:40:10,254 It took years and years to get to that level. 1942 01:40:10,295 --> 01:40:14,258 It was just an incredible high stakes 1943 01:40:15,509 --> 01:40:19,013 encounter where the other outcome, they kill a business. 1944 01:40:19,013 --> 01:40:22,349 If we just stood firm and everyone said, well, fine, 1945 01:40:22,349 --> 01:40:24,601 then you don't get to be in the App Store and keep you out. 1946 01:40:24,601 --> 01:40:26,145 We would have been dead right? 1947 01:40:26,145 --> 01:40:29,815 Like 80% of that business was people 1948 01:40:29,815 --> 01:40:33,277 who had an Apple product because people have products with them. 1949 01:40:33,277 --> 01:40:37,698 Attendees pay more for software and 80% of them were buying. 1950 01:40:37,740 --> 01:40:41,410 Hey, so if we had not had an iPhone app, we would have been dead. 1951 01:40:41,660 --> 01:40:44,663 But in that case, 1952 01:40:44,830 --> 01:40:47,750 we just said, you know what? 1953 01:40:47,750 --> 01:40:49,084 Come with me. 1954 01:40:49,084 --> 01:40:50,794 We're not going to benefit any of them. 1955 01:40:50,794 --> 01:40:53,338 We are going to stick to our principles. 1956 01:40:53,338 --> 01:40:54,840 This is bullshit. 1957 01:40:54,840 --> 01:40:58,010 You do not get to take 30% 1958 01:40:58,010 --> 01:41:01,138 or force us to route all our customer signups 1959 01:41:01,138 --> 01:41:05,267 through your little tollbooth here, when we're bringing our own customers. 1960 01:41:05,309 --> 01:41:07,144 We're not asking Apple for free publicity. 1961 01:41:07,144 --> 01:41:09,521 I'm not asking you to features on the App Store. 1962 01:41:09,521 --> 01:41:11,440 None of that stuff. We would sign up our own customers. 1963 01:41:11,440 --> 01:41:12,775 We'll get our own attention. 1964 01:41:12,775 --> 01:41:15,486 We'll send them up in the app on our website, 1965 01:41:15,486 --> 01:41:17,613 and then we'll just say we have an accompanying app 1966 01:41:17,613 --> 01:41:19,156 you can download and log in 1967 01:41:19,156 --> 01:41:22,242 with your credentials, which has been kosher for Basecamp 1968 01:41:22,242 --> 01:41:24,119 since we were beginning for tons of other apps. 1969 01:41:24,119 --> 01:41:27,289 And Apple themselves in a pretzel trying 1970 01:41:27,289 --> 01:41:31,168 to explain why it wasn't kosher in this case. 1971 01:41:31,168 --> 01:41:35,214 And of course, it could be because the whole case has just so many distances. 1972 01:41:35,214 --> 01:41:38,634 So we ended up with this fortune, this outcome. 1973 01:41:38,675 --> 01:41:40,719 We've got this incredible launch campaign. 1974 01:41:40,719 --> 01:41:43,764 We've got 30,000 paying customers that we would not have gotten 1975 01:41:43,764 --> 01:41:47,142 otherwise, at least in that amount of time. And 1976 01:41:48,102 --> 01:41:50,854 we got out of the dragon's mouth alive without them. 1977 01:41:50,854 --> 01:41:53,732 And it was a public fight. On what? Twitter. 1978 01:41:53,732 --> 01:41:54,775 Mostly on Twitter. 1979 01:41:54,775 --> 01:41:55,275 Yeah. 1980 01:41:55,275 --> 01:41:58,320 I mean, Twitter has actually been the focal point 1981 01:41:58,320 --> 01:42:03,117 for all the great balance I've had in my career, almost. 1982 01:42:03,158 --> 01:42:04,118 We've had other things. 1983 01:42:04,118 --> 01:42:08,580 We've had the great woke nonsense blow up. 1984 01:42:08,580 --> 01:42:12,668 We had actually, just a year later, there was a huge fight. 1985 01:42:12,668 --> 01:42:14,128 It was all driven on Twitter. 1986 01:42:14,128 --> 01:42:18,715 Every great fight since 2008 has been Twitter. 1987 01:42:18,841 --> 01:42:22,427 Is that the is that the fight where you banned politics 1988 01:42:22,594 --> 01:42:24,888 and 30% of your staff quit? 1989 01:42:24,888 --> 01:42:26,473 What actually happened there? Yeah. 1990 01:42:26,473 --> 01:42:29,935 So, we got boiled like a frog over 1991

01:42:30,727 --> 01:42:35,983 70 short number of years, I'd say, were the mood among certain 1992 01:42:37,234 --> 01:42:39,862 parts of the company or subset, really 1993 01:42:39,862 --> 01:42:44,408 a minority of employees just thought that, like, politics 1994 01:42:44,408 --> 01:42:48,787 should have a much, much bigger role at work, whether or not even whether, 1995 01:42:48,829 --> 01:42:52,166 despite the fact that these politics had nothing to do with our business, 1996 01:42:52,166 --> 01:42:56,128 we sell parking management software and now need another system, like 1997 01:42:56,170 --> 01:42:59,339 there are some politics related to that privacy, for example, 1998 01:42:59,339 --> 01:43:02,009 or App Store policy. 1999 01:43:02,009 --> 01:43:04,178 It's like, all right, fine, let's engage in that. 2000 01:43:04,178 --> 01:43:07,347 Like, do we have any stake in, I don't know, gracefully 2001 01:43:07,764 --> 01:43:12,186 in the United States or Foreign Wars or whatever? 2002 01:43:12,227 --> 01:43:13,812 Absolutely not. 2003 01:43:13,812 --> 01:43:16,190 But we got sucked into the same 2004 01:43:17,274 --> 01:43:20,277 force to NATO that was swallowing up 2005 01:43:20,402 --> 01:43:24,448 companies much larger than ours into nonsensical proclamations 2006 01:43:24,448 --> 01:43:31,121 and statements and flags and growling tweets and all these other bullshit 2007 01:43:31,163 --> 01:43:36,376 that just dominated the tech industry, doing those awful woke years. 2008 01:43:36,376 --> 01:43:38,795 And Jason and I, 2009 01:43:38,795 --> 01:43:42,174 at the peak of it, perhaps we picked out the time and poorly said. 2010 01:43:42,174 --> 01:43:42,841 Do you know what? 2011 01:43:42,841 --> 01:43:44,176 This is insufferable. 2012 01:43:44,176 --> 01:43:46,970 I actually don't want to work at my own company. 2013 01:43:46,970 --> 01:43:52,392 If this is going to continue like it is, I don't want to constantly be engaging 2014 01:43:52,392 --> 01:43:56,188 in these fraught discussions about politics where we're trying to do 2015 01:43:56,230 --> 01:43:59,441 work right, like we're trying to ship new features and bug fixes. 2016 01:43:59,441 --> 01:44:00,025 To pester 2017 01:44:00,025 --> 01:44:04,863 like that is not the same space where we then also discuss societal politics. 2018 01:44:04,905 --> 01:44:09,701 Now, as crazy as that sounds in 2026, that was a very controversial statement 2019 01:44:09,743 --> 01:44:14,748 in 2021, not least within a minority of employees. 2020 01:44:14,748 --> 01:44:16,708 And then broadly with Twitter. 2021 01:44:16,708 --> 01:44:19,920 This was before Elon liberated Twitter. 2022 01:44:19,920 --> 01:44:22,547 I will use that word specifically. 2023 01:44:22,547 --> 01:44:27,719 This was when it was just a woke Gemini governing that platform, 2024 01:44:27,761 --> 01:44:33,350 and we had the most intensive 2025 01:44:33,642 --> 01:44:36,395 scrutiny of the company has ever had over 2026 01:44:36,395 --> 01:44:40,148 anything over a two week period 2027 01:44:40,190 --> 01:44:43,860 where a lot of employees just cracked on it. 2028 01:44:43,860 --> 01:44:48,532 There was a hardcore small subset of just ideologically committed 2029 01:44:48,532 --> 01:44:51,535 to all this nonsense, and like they were always going to be a problem. 2030 01:44:51,535 --> 01:44:55,414 But then there was a much larger group of people who simply couldn't or wouldn't 2031 01:44:55,455 --> 01:44:58,417 take the pressure that came with the public scrutiny 2032 01:44:58,417 --> 01:45:01,044 that that little minority was able to spark. 2033 01:45:01,044 --> 01:45:04,339 And just and I still went like, you know what? 2034 01:45:04,923 --> 01:45:06,300 Fuck it. 2035 01:45:06,300 --> 01:45:08,051 We're going to pull the bandage off here. 2036 01:45:08,051 --> 01:45:10,220 We're not going to continue down the path as we are, 2037 01:45:10,220 --> 01:45:12,055 even if that's going to be highly unpopular. 2038 01:45:12,055 --> 01:45:15,767 Much the same reasoning, actually, as with The Hague Apple, 2039 01:45:16,184 --> 01:45:19,354 which is like, you know what? This is worth 2040 01:45:20,397 --> 01:45:21,606 the gamble. 2041 01:45:21,606 --> 01:45:25,444 Because if we don't take the gamble, if we don't take a stand. 2042 01:45:25,485 --> 01:45:28,488 I don't want to work at the company that comes out on the other side. 2043 01:45:28,530 --> 01:45:30,282 This was true in both instances. 2044 01:45:30,282 --> 01:45:33,368 I do not want to run a company that's growling before 2045 01:45:33,368 --> 01:45:36,455 a monopolist behemoth to be able to be in an app store. 2046 01:45:36,455 --> 01:45:37,706 So we get paid for the third person? 2047 01:45:37,706 --> 01:45:38,749 No fucking way. 2048 01:45:38,749 --> 01:45:40,292 I'd rather farm those potatoes. 2049 01:45:40,292 --> 01:45:42,753 Then, at least in my little head, I probably wouldn't 2050 01:45:42,753 --> 01:45:46,131 want funding actual potatoes, but it's a useful metaphor to half truths. 2051 01:45:46,131 --> 01:45:46,965 South of Ufa. 2052 01:45:46,965 --> 01:45:48,925 I could do something else. 2053 01:45:48,925 --> 01:45:50,510 I am not stuck here. 2054 01:45:50,510 --> 01:45:53,138 Oh, and by the way, I've made my fucking money. 2055 01:45:53,138 --> 01:45:58,143 So fuck you apple fuck you woke insanity. 2056 01:45:58,185 --> 01:46:01,104 We're not going to stand for any of it. And 2057 01:46:02,814 --> 01:46:03,273 if we 2058 01:46:03,273 --> 01:46:06,735 perish in the fight, it shall be with a smile. 2059 01:46:06,735 --> 01:46:08,445 And we think we didn't. 2060 01:46:08,445 --> 01:46:11,239 And now we get back upon both of those instances, 2061 01:46:11,239 --> 01:46:13,450 like within actually a relatively short period of time. 2062 01:46:13,450 --> 01:46:16,203 I think it happened within like a year of each other, 2063 01:46:16,203 -->

01:46:21,458 as two of the most proud moments I have in my 30 year career. 2064 01:46:22,125 --> 01:46:26,129 When I think back in my little rocking chair when I'm 80 and I like, 2065 01:46:26,171 --> 01:46:27,881 what am I most proud of? 2066 01:46:27,881 --> 01:46:32,135 I will remember 2020, in the fight with Apple, 2067 01:46:32,135 --> 01:46:35,931 and I remember 2021 and the fight with the Wilkins attitude. 2068 01:46:36,056 --> 01:46:37,766 Let's talk about racing. 2069 01:46:37,766 --> 01:46:39,351 So you're a car guy? Yeah. 2070 01:46:39,351 --> 01:46:42,187 Yes. What are what are you what is what is your thing? 2071 01:46:42,187 --> 01:46:44,231 Porsche. McLaren, what are you what are you into? 2072 01:46:44,231 --> 01:46:45,482 All of it. Okay. 2073 01:46:46,608 --> 01:46:47,275 Streetcars. 2074 01:46:47,275 --> 01:46:48,944 I love all of it. 2075 01:46:48,944 --> 01:46:55,450 My first taste of that good life in cars was actually, 2076 01:46:55,492 --> 01:46:59,704 I think literally the week after the wire from Jeff 2077 01:46:59,996 --> 01:47:03,166 had hit my account, I bought a yellow Lamborghini Gallardo. 2078 01:47:03,708 --> 01:47:05,877 Okay. Yeah. 2079 01:47:05,877 --> 01:47:08,547 It's sort of. It's always it's such a shame. 2080 01:47:08,547 --> 01:47:11,383 But it's also, I think, a cashier for a great reason. 2081 01:47:11,383 --> 01:47:16,930 Like there's almost nothing more satisfying as a celebration, 2082 01:47:16,930 --> 01:47:20,642 at least as a guy who's into cars to just be able to buy something. 2083 01:47:20,684 --> 01:47:24,396 A rage is like a yellow fucking Lamborghini right now. 2084 01:47:24,396 --> 01:47:28,316 At this point, it's almost like a stereotype of tips on the fact 2085 01:47:28,316 --> 01:47:32,571 that being a little much like Lamborghini has been associated with crypto 2086 01:47:32,571 --> 01:47:32,988 quite a lot. 2087 01:47:32,988 --> 01:47:36,158 But I'm like, fuck it, no, straight Lamborghini is exactly that kind of fuck 2088 01:47:36,199 --> 01:47:37,075 you bring, right? 2089 01:47:37,075 --> 01:47:41,121 Like the origin store of that company was fruit your Lamborghini going to 2090 01:47:41,121 --> 01:47:44,207 Ferrari and say like, hey, could you improve your clutch a little? 2091 01:47:44,207 --> 01:47:45,876 And Ferrari saying, fuck you? 2092 01:47:45,876 --> 01:47:48,170 And Farouk was saying, no, fuck you. 2093 01:47:48,170 --> 01:47:50,130 I would make my own goddamn company. 2094 01:47:50,130 --> 01:47:52,883 I may make tractors today, but I will make the mirror. 2095 01:47:52,883 --> 01:47:53,967 I'll make the cookies. 2096 01:47:53,967 --> 01:47:56,970 I'll make the coolest goddamn supercars 2097 01:47:56,970 --> 01:48:01,516 that will adorn bedroom posters in years to come. 2098 01:48:01,516 --> 01:48:03,727 And he did that. So I love all of that. 2099 01:48:03,727 --> 01:48:07,939 And I love buying that yellow line again as soon as the money was there to do it. 2100 01:48:07,939 --> 01:48:09,649 But I was actually quite late to cars. 2101 01:48:09,649 --> 01:48:12,277 I didn't get my driver's license until I was 25. 2102 01:48:12,277 --> 01:48:15,530 I grew up in Copenhagen, Denmark, and had neither the money 2103 01:48:15,530 --> 01:48:18,950 nor the inclination to drive a whatever 2104 01:48:18,992 --> 01:48:21,995 old beat up to yoga, which was what was filled the street at that time. 2105 01:48:21,995 --> 01:48:24,789 I didn't care anything for cars of that pedestrian. 2106 01:48:24,789 --> 01:48:27,834 I cared for supercars, loved those. 2107 01:48:27,918 --> 01:48:32,547 And when I had that opportunity to to to buy my own, 2108 01:48:32,589 --> 01:48:35,592 I got, I got on to and then I of course, I got sucked into it. 2109 01:48:35,592 --> 01:48:40,639 A few years later, I went to a racetrack about an hour away from Chicago. 2110 01:48:40,680 --> 01:48:44,100 A friend of mine dragged me down a friend, by the way I met through these cars. 2111 01:48:44,142 --> 01:48:48,230 I mean, this is the other thing, these these cars, like so many other hobbies 2112 01:48:48,230 --> 01:48:51,358 of that kind, whether it's watches or it's it's video games. 2113 01:48:51,358 --> 01:48:52,776 There's just a community. 2114 01:48:52,776 --> 01:48:55,111 You get to know people who are into the same thing as you. 2115 01:48:55,111 --> 01:48:58,073 And I got to know some people who were also into super cars, 2116 01:48:58,073 --> 01:49:02,953 and one of them took me down to Joliet, and then I got to sit in a race car, 2117 01:49:02,953 --> 01:49:06,873 and I got to driver of this car, and I just went like, Holy smokes, 2118 01:49:07,457 --> 01:49:08,625 this is what I'm going to do. 2119 01:49:08,625 --> 01:49:10,418 This is what I want my hobby to be. 2120 01:49:10,418 --> 01:49:13,421 I want to see how far can I push this. 2121 01:49:13,463 --> 01:49:15,423 And I spent a few years training. 2122 01:49:15,423 --> 01:49:16,258 I'm getting good at it. 2123 01:49:16,258 --> 01:49:20,554 And then I got into competitive racing in like 2009 2124 01:49:20,679 --> 01:49:23,598 or something, the first thing, and then really 2010. 2125 01:49:23,598 --> 01:49:26,726 And in 2012, I was on the grid up to 24 hours old mom, 2126 01:49:26,768 --> 01:49:28,353 which was always over my goal. 2127 01:49:28,353 --> 01:49:30,230 And in two years after that, I won. 2128 01:49:30,230 --> 01:49:35,402 So I just really steered all my efforts and kind of single. 2129 01:49:35,402 --> 01:49:38,905 And he got a bit obsessed on the hobby side, like for quite a number of years, 2130 01:49:38,905 --> 01:49:42,450 like that was it that was doing the business. 2131 01:49:43,034 --> 01:49:44,411 I had some friends I've spending time with 2132 01:49:44,411 --> 01:49:47,831 and everything racing, and that was kind of the the extent of it. 2133 01:49:47,831 --> 01:49:52,836 But I just, I love

cars, like there is just such a unique 2134 01:49:52,836 --> 01:49:56,464 blend of thrill, danger, 2135 01:49:56,756 --> 01:50:01,094 art history, engineering, design. 2136 01:50:01,469 --> 01:50:03,722 There was just so much to it. 2137 01:50:03,722 --> 01:50:08,810 And I find that especially Italian cars was the thing for me. 2138 01:50:08,852 --> 01:50:09,603 Like, you're like, 2139 01:50:09,603 --> 01:50:13,440 he needs your Ferraris and then later your Pagani and that kind of stuff. 2140 01:50:13,982 --> 01:50:16,276 The Italians just they have that right. 2141 01:50:16,276 --> 01:50:20,780 Like they had that gut instinct of like, it's not just the sum of its parts. 2142 01:50:20,822 --> 01:50:22,991 Like I also like German cars, but they're very different 2143 01:50:22,991 --> 01:50:23,617 and they're very much 2144 01:50:23,617 --> 01:50:27,621 sort of like methodical engineering, like maybe the engine is in the wrong place. 2145 01:50:27,621 --> 01:50:32,208 And then I got to make it work and the Italians a little bit more flair. 2146 01:50:32,208 --> 01:50:33,918 I was certainly attracted to that Italian thing 2147 01:50:33,918 --> 01:50:37,047 and that look for buoyant something to the colors even. 2148 01:50:37,130 --> 01:50:37,839 Right? 2149 01:50:37,839 --> 01:50:40,300 I mean, this is even more illusionary today. 2150 01:50:40,300 --> 01:50:44,804 We have this great grain of the world, like the most common colors. 2151 01:50:44,804 --> 01:50:47,432 I think like 80% of the cars on the road in the U.S. 2152 01:50:47,432 --> 01:50:48,683 today are white. 2153 01:50:48,683 --> 01:50:51,686 Gray are black with travesty. 2154 01:50:51,728 --> 01:50:53,104 Where's the fucking red? 2155 01:50:53,104 --> 01:50:54,939 Where's the green? Where the yellow? 2156 01:50:54,939 --> 01:50:58,652 And there are actually a few red cars, 2157 01:50:58,777 --> 01:51:02,530 but there's almost no yellow cause you count on your daily commute. 2158 01:51:02,530 --> 01:51:04,908 The number of these yellow cards you see, you see almost none. 2159 01:51:04,908 --> 01:51:06,951 So of course, my first one has to be yellow. 2160 01:51:06,951 --> 01:51:07,994 Right? 2161 01:51:07,994 --> 01:51:12,040 And I think that that is a great motivating factor 2162 01:51:12,040 --> 01:51:15,168 to, like you talked earlier about starting a business for another purpose. 2163 01:51:15,168 --> 01:51:19,089 And just like you like the business like those kinds of rewards are great 2164 01:51:19,089 --> 01:51:20,256 carrots and great drivers. 2165 01:51:20,256 --> 01:51:25,970 And it legitimately was one of the contributing factors of 2166 01:51:25,970 --> 01:51:30,058 I don't just want this to work, I want to be it to be a success 2167 01:51:30,100 --> 01:51:32,060 because I'd like to buy a yellow Lamborghini. 2168 01:51:32,060 --> 01:51:35,063 It's a great fucking reason to 2169 01:51:35,647 --> 01:51:38,566 I don't want to say grind like that's the word that actually like 2170 01:51:38,566 --> 01:51:40,485 the token predicting your head goes like, oh, 2171 01:51:40,485 --> 01:51:42,821 you should work with how you should grind. Just to give you an idea. 2172 01:51:42,821 --> 01:51:45,031 I don't think that's actually how it goes. But you should. 2173 01:51:45,031 --> 01:51:46,241 You should work hard. 2174 01:51:46,241 --> 01:51:48,368 You should work well. You should work dedicated. 2175 01:51:48,368 --> 01:51:49,744 You should try to become really good, 2176 01:51:49,744 --> 01:51:53,206 try to become very competent, and then you try to be a success. 2177 01:51:53,623 --> 01:51:56,459 And then some of the spoils can be a yellow Lamborghini 2178 01:51:56,459 --> 01:52:00,380 or a red Ferrari or a gray Porsche or whatever is your flavor. 2179 01:52:00,380 --> 01:52:04,342 But it is a great parent, and I make absolutely no bones 2180 01:52:04,342 --> 01:52:08,138 or reservations or policies for it, which is something that sort of sometimes 2181 01:52:08,138 --> 01:52:11,808 I've gotten a little bit of like, well, you post your cars or whatever. 2182 01:52:11,808 --> 01:52:12,767 I don't post them that much. 2183 01:52:12,767 --> 01:52:16,062 But for a while I was on Instagram and I'm like, I posted a lot of it 2184 01:52:16,062 --> 01:52:19,858 and I would get some of that, like these, like it's too much, right? 2185 01:52:20,191 --> 01:52:23,236 Normally from European and then go like, well, this is one of the reasons 2186 01:52:23,236 --> 01:52:26,948 I'm in America did because here you can actually 2187 01:52:26,990 --> 01:52:30,744 you can flaunt it in a way that can feel positive, 2188 01:52:30,785 --> 01:52:34,914 where it's not just like bragging, even though it also is that right. 2189 01:52:34,956 --> 01:52:37,500 But there's also some element of that. But it's more than that. 2190 01:52:37,500 --> 01:52:41,254 It's a collective celebration that I think the American entrepreneur scene 2191 01:52:41,254 --> 01:52:45,049 does better than any of them is like, I'm really happy for you. 2192 01:52:45,592 --> 01:52:48,887 Oh my God, you did so well that you would buy Yellow Line bikini. 2193 01:52:50,138 --> 01:52:50,805 Bravo! 2194 01:52:50,805 --> 01:52:51,556 Good for you. 2195 01:52:51,556 --> 01:52:54,809 Versus the stereotype and reality of European 2196 01:52:54,851 --> 01:52:56,644 entrepreneurs and broader society. 2197 01:52:56,644 --> 01:52:58,354 Is not that right? 2198 01:52:58,354 --> 01:53:01,065 You're like, well, that's just a show off or whatever. 2199 01:53:01,065 --> 01:53:02,233 Like, fuck that. 2200 01:53:02,233 --> 01:53:04,194 This is one of the best things about America. 2201 01:53:04,194 --> 01:53:07,989 Just this celebration of success and it's fruits 2202 01:53:08,323 --> 01:53:12,494 is a legitimate thing to do, and you get to share it broadly. 2203 01:53:12,494 --> 01:53:13,787 And it's wonderful. 2204

01:53:13,787 --> 01:53:16,372 And for me, cars is probably the number one thing. 2205 01:53:16,372 --> 01:53:19,000 For that. Okay, so you're a Ferrari and a Lamborghini guy. 2206 01:53:19,000 --> 01:53:21,377 And let's talk about that for one second, which is. 2207 01:53:21,377 --> 01:53:23,546 My favorite car in the world is actually a okay, okay. 2208 01:53:23,546 --> 01:53:28,760 So I got to commission a Pagani Sonda, which is my favorite car of all time. 2209 01:53:28,802 --> 01:53:30,678 Beautiful back in 2010. 2210 01:53:30,678 --> 01:53:35,016 Those are crazy story on a sidekick mission and blah blah, blah. 2211 01:53:35,016 --> 01:53:36,851 But I mean, I love all of it. 2212 01:53:36,851 --> 01:53:40,104 But for me, the one car that was always for me after 2213 01:53:40,104 --> 01:53:43,316 I watched it on Top Gear, actually, before I even had my driver's license. 2214 01:53:43,441 --> 01:53:47,654 I think Top Gear didn't necessarily the Sonda F back in 2004. 2215 01:53:47,654 --> 01:53:50,114 I want to say I watched that on this window. 2216 01:53:50,114 --> 01:53:51,032 Oh my god, 2217 01:53:51,032 --> 01:53:54,536 if I ever make it all the way, this is the car I want more than anything. 2218 01:53:54,661 --> 01:53:55,954 What do you think of where they're going, though? 2219 01:53:55,954 --> 01:53:58,998 You look at Ferrari with the Sf90, the Lamborghini with the revolt, 2220 01:53:58,998 --> 01:54:00,583 and then even Ferrari with their new release. 2221 01:54:00,583 --> 01:54:03,127 That looks like an Apple product. What do you think? 2222 01:54:03,127 --> 01:54:04,337 What do you what do you think? 2223 01:54:04,337 --> 01:54:04,796 You know, 2224 01:54:04,796 --> 01:54:05,129 what are your 2225 01:54:05,129 --> 01:54:05,797 what is your take on that 2226 01:54:05,797 --> 01:54:07,715 when they're going with the hybrid now all electric, 2227 01:54:07,715 --> 01:54:09,634 do you think it takes a soul out of the vehicle? 2228 01:54:09,634 --> 01:54:12,637 So the funny thing is I just got a model Y, a new model Y. 2229 01:54:12,679 --> 01:54:15,765 I've had Teslas for a long time, but the model Y managed 2230 01:54:15,765 --> 01:54:18,768 to blow my mind because it's a family car. 2231 01:54:18,768 --> 01:54:20,103 It seats seven three. 2232 01:54:20,103 --> 01:54:24,774 We got it was because it's practical and seven and it drives itself no more. 2233 01:54:24,774 --> 01:54:26,985 It's so fucking fun to drive. 2234 01:54:26,985 --> 01:54:28,903 I'm like, I didn't even buy it for that. 2235 01:54:28,903 --> 01:54:32,073 But electric cars are fun candy. 2236 01:54:32,156 --> 01:54:33,324 They're not all fun. 2237 01:54:33,324 --> 01:54:35,952 Like, I had a model X before that. 2238 01:54:35,952 --> 01:54:37,954 It did a lot of things and had cool doors. 2239 01:54:37,954 --> 01:54:40,748 Fun to drive, if not one of the attitudes ever to play to it, right? 2240 01:54:40,748 --> 01:54:42,166 But there's

something about electric 2241 01:54:42,166 --> 01:54:46,212 that I don't think it's inherently bad, like the instant torque is amazing, 2242 01:54:46,379 --> 01:54:49,382 but I also do think it is a 2243 01:54:50,216 --> 01:54:53,720 graying of the car, in the sense that the driving 2244 01:54:53,720 --> 01:54:56,806 characteristics of electric cars have a tendency to be very uniform 2245 01:54:56,806 --> 01:55:02,520 in a way where there's just more variety with gasoline powered cars like, 2246 01:55:02,562 --> 01:55:06,524 oh, there's a ten and sound this way and feels this way versus a B 12 versus 2247 01:55:06,566 --> 01:55:10,153 a B flat, six versus a turbo versus all these things. 2248 01:55:10,153 --> 01:55:10,528 Right. 2249 01:55:10,528 --> 01:55:13,781 So I also have all of those cars and I love him and I love both of them. 2250 01:55:13,781 --> 01:55:18,453 But I do think we're we're at a fork where electric cars are 2251 01:55:18,453 --> 01:55:22,957 not only so good at all the daily stuff, there's a really fucking fast. 2252 01:55:22,999 --> 01:55:25,501 Like the fastest cars in the world are electric cars. 2253 01:55:25,501 --> 01:55:31,257 So that's taking a little bit of the top trumps out of the sort of supercars. 2254 01:55:31,633 --> 01:55:33,593 So why did the supercars have left? 2255 01:55:33,593 --> 01:55:37,138 Well, they have the feeling, I think Supercars is going 2256 01:55:37,138 --> 01:55:40,892 to turn into the panicle watches and they are half mechanical watches. 2257 01:55:40,892 --> 01:55:42,810 I mean, you're wearing one now. I'm wearing one. 2258 01:55:42,810 --> 01:55:46,648 They're not actually great at keeping time like a $19 2259 01:55:46,648 --> 01:55:49,692 Casio F 91. 2260 01:55:49,692 --> 01:55:52,654 I think it is that famous watch time. 2261 01:55:52,654 --> 01:55:56,074 Much better than even the best Rolex that you can buy. 2262 01:55:56,282 --> 01:55:59,786 Yet most people would still like a roll or a lot of people anyone cares about. 2263 01:55:59,786 --> 01:56:03,748 Watches still certainly at the very least appreciates a Rolex for what it is. 2264 01:56:03,790 --> 01:56:07,251 It's this intricate piece of engineering 2265 01:56:07,627 --> 01:56:12,840 that takes 300 parts, even though it's worse on something, right? 2266 01:56:12,882 --> 01:56:14,467 That's where the cars are all going. 2267 01:56:14,467 --> 01:56:17,345 And you're seeing that now with the rest of mod scene. 2268 01:56:17,345 --> 01:56:20,264 I had singer for a while. It was great project. 2269 01:56:20,264 --> 01:56:24,978 When we take these older raw cars and we bring them a little bit up today, 2270 01:56:24,978 --> 01:56:28,731 but still keep some of the old llamas, and then we accept that like 2271 01:56:28,982 --> 01:56:31,776 a model Wiseman out of accelerated, it's going to have to drive it. 2272 01:56:31,776 --> 01:56:32,944 It just is. 2273 01:56:32,944 --> 01:56:34,779 And it's a better

view of the car. 2274 01:56:34,779 --> 01:56:36,447 Right. So I think we're 2275 01:56:37,490 --> 01:56:39,158 some of these cars built 2276 01:56:39,158 --> 01:56:42,328 in particular some of the middle stuff 2277 01:56:43,121 --> 01:56:47,458 where the supercars are still trying to chase the absolute 2278 01:56:47,458 --> 01:56:50,837 acceleration numbers, for example, like that game is kind of lost, right? 2279 01:56:50,878 --> 01:56:52,547 Like you're not going to beat the planet. 2280 01:56:52,547 --> 01:56:55,550 Model S is just going to accelerate faster than it for a mile. 2281 01:56:55,591 --> 01:56:58,594 Then virtually anything that you can produce, right. 2282 01:56:58,636 --> 01:56:59,637 So you got to give that up. 2283 01:56:59,637 --> 01:57:03,057 And then you've got to focus on what do people want to step. 2284 01:57:03,099 --> 01:57:05,309 They actually want the opposite, right. 2285 01:57:05,309 --> 01:57:06,811 Like the model Y is amazing. 2286 01:57:06,811 --> 01:57:11,274 And part because it's so quiet and relaxing and fucking drives 2287 01:57:11,274 --> 01:57:12,525 itself amazing. 2288 01:57:12,525 --> 01:57:15,278 And then when I don't want that, I want it's 2289 01:57:15,278 --> 01:57:18,865 I want it raw, I wanted loud, I want it uncomfortable. 2290 01:57:18,865 --> 01:57:22,326 I wanted all of those instance into it. 2291 01:57:22,326 --> 01:57:22,493 Right. 2292 01:57:22,493 --> 01:57:23,911 So I think a little bit of that is happening. 2293 01:57:23,911 --> 01:57:26,998 I think there's a fair amount of mainstream cars. 2294 01:57:27,248 --> 01:57:29,625 I also love that like that are a little bit trapping now. 2295 01:57:29,625 --> 01:57:30,209 Right? 2296 01:57:30,209 --> 01:57:33,671 We're both trying to be easy daily drivable. 2297 01:57:33,671 --> 01:57:36,591 And then we're also trying to be fun. 2298 01:57:36,591 --> 01:57:37,216 Right? Right. 2299 01:57:37,216 --> 01:57:38,760 And we're getting a little bit squeezed. 2300 01:57:38,760 --> 01:57:41,512 I think some of the modern stuff is having that problem. 2301 01:57:41,512 --> 01:57:42,764 And you can see them wait. 2302 01:57:42,764 --> 01:57:45,767 In particular, many modern supercars 2303 01:57:45,767 --> 01:57:49,479 weighs more than a minibus would have made it way a decade ago, right. 2304 01:57:49,479 --> 01:57:50,438 They're just getting really heavy 2305 01:57:50,438 --> 01:57:53,775 because they're trying to compete with electric by adding electric motors 2306 01:57:53,775 --> 01:57:57,153 to their combustion engines, and that's a hard game to play. 2307 01:57:57,153 --> 01:58:01,199 I think this bifurcation is going to happen, and it's one of the reasons why 2308 01:58:01,324 --> 01:58:02,658 the majority of cars that I have 2309 01:58:02,658 --> 01:58:05,620 that are not so driver stuff is actually older stuff. 2310 01:58:05,620 --> 01:58:11,417 Manual cars, manual transmission, like man made a huge comeback

for a while. 2311 01:58:11,459 --> 01:58:13,795 The manufacturing commission is about to die. 2312 01:58:13,795 --> 01:58:19,425 Then Porsche actually should be credited with releasing this one special version 2313 01:58:19,425 --> 01:58:23,805 of what is called the one of the 911 special, the had manual. 2314 01:58:23,805 --> 01:58:27,809 It was like going to be the last record, and demand was just over the top. 2315 01:58:27,850 --> 01:58:32,396 Like suddenly, after a decade plus of having automatic gearbox as a paddle 2316 01:58:32,396 --> 01:58:35,858 shifters, everyone wanted the manual because they want to be part of the loop. 2317 01:58:35,900 --> 01:58:37,026 Yes, it was slower, 2318 01:58:37,026 --> 01:58:40,530 it was not going to be as efficient, but it required a human in the loop. 2319 01:58:40,530 --> 01:58:42,782 And we want to be we want to feel needed. 2320 01:58:42,782 --> 01:58:45,910 I think this is actually something you feel with the mechanical watch as well. 2321 01:58:45,952 --> 01:58:47,620 You got to wind it, right. 2322 01:58:47,620 --> 01:58:50,039 It doesn't just have a battery that goes for ten years. 2323 01:58:50,039 --> 01:58:51,499 It needs you. 2324 01:58:51,499 --> 01:58:54,877 And as so many parts of our existence 2325 01:58:55,086 --> 01:58:57,547 kind of seems like it doesn't need us anymore, right? 2326 01:58:57,547 --> 01:58:59,048 We've talked a lot about agents. 2327 01:58:59,048 --> 01:59:00,925 Maybe they don't need us that much anymore. 2328 01:59:00,925 --> 01:59:03,553 We got to find our worth somewhere else. 2329 01:59:03,553 --> 01:59:06,764 And some of that would be like, well, at least my mechanical watch still 2330 01:59:06,806 --> 01:59:08,766 leads my winding. At least my 2331 01:59:09,934 --> 01:59:12,562 performance car still needs 2332 01:59:12,562 --> 01:59:16,816 my leg plugging in and changing it here, so it's fun to see those two things. 2333 01:59:16,816 --> 01:59:20,903 But, yeah, I, I love cars and I, 2334 01:59:21,154 --> 01:59:24,824 I hope we can continue to enjoy them and they don't end up 2335 01:59:24,866 --> 01:59:30,329 all being sort of commoditized in the way that EVs a little bit is doing, 2336 01:59:30,371 --> 01:59:34,250 where they all just insist in the same, but they all feel the same. 2337 01:59:35,001 --> 01:59:37,587 There's such great variety in the combustion engine. 2338 01:59:37,587 --> 01:59:38,671 All right, David, last one. 2339 01:59:38,671 --> 01:59:43,384 So the founder listening right now right there a founder of 2340 01:59:43,467 --> 01:59:44,844 they're just looking to start a company. Right. 2341 01:59:44,844 --> 01:59:46,387 They haven't started yet. 2342 01:59:46,387 --> 01:59:48,639 Hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. 2343 01:59:48,639 --> 01:59:49,932 Single best piece of advice 2344 01:59:49,932 --> 01:59:52,351 you have to give everyone just one last piece of advice. 2345 01:59:52,351 --> 01:59:56,480 What is If you haven't already read The Guide to the Good Life, 2346 01:59:56,647 --> 01:59:59,609 it's the introductory text to stoicism. 2347 02:00:00,193 --> 02:00:05,031 A lot of the ways of viewing the world that I've talked about in this interview 2348 02:00:05,072 --> 02:00:08,826 are straight out of stoicism, from negative visualization to splitting 2349 02:00:08,993 --> 02:00:10,328 the things that are within your control 2350 02:00:10,328 --> 02:00:14,874 and outside your control, leveling up your mental fortitude. 2351 02:00:14,957 --> 02:00:19,795 Just that you're better able to deal with the waves that come your way 2352 02:00:20,046 --> 02:00:24,550 is a thing, an incredible investment, and it's only going to get more relevant. 2353 02:00:24,592 --> 02:00:26,677 You're only going to have more stresses 2354 02:00:26,677 --> 02:00:30,890 to deal with and to better you quit yourself to cope with that. 2355 02:00:30,973 --> 02:00:32,808 The higher you can go, the further you can go 2356 02:00:32,808 --> 02:00:34,769 and the more fun you can have along the way. 2357 02:00:34,769 --> 02:00:39,607 I look back upon all the times where I really stressed 2358 02:00:39,774 --> 02:00:46,822 about this, that idea of the thing, and 97% of it was a complete waste, right? 2359 02:00:46,864 --> 02:00:50,201 Just needless torching of myself for this. 2360 02:00:50,201 --> 02:00:54,580 And I am not a person who's otherwise anxiously temperamental, 2361 02:00:54,747 --> 02:00:56,290 and I still did a bunch of that. 2362 02:00:56,290 --> 02:01:00,670 And what really helped me move on from a lot of it was to internalize 2363 02:01:00,670 --> 02:01:04,340 some of these stoic principles and practices more than anything, right? 2364 02:01:04,382 --> 02:01:06,133 Like they're actually sort of 2365 02:01:06,133 --> 02:01:10,554 tools, mental tools that you apply to your view of the world, 2366 02:01:10,554 --> 02:01:15,726 and you can just make the same situation a lot easier to deal with. 2367 02:01:15,726 --> 02:01:19,981 And I think, who wouldn't benefit from that? 2368 02:01:19,981 --> 02:01:23,859 Everyone, but particularly the people who willfully put themselves 2369 02:01:23,859 --> 02:01:27,488 in stressful, high stakes situations like entrepreneurs. 2370 02:01:27,488 --> 02:01:29,907 David, thank you so much for coming on, Dakota Genius. 2371 02:01:29,907 --> 02:01:30,574 Thank you.