The Exchanges

Q In a way that, you know, when you compare 15 years of Fiverr, how does today feel in context?

A Look, my, you know, my, my dad was a, was a very senior executive at the, at, at, at the semiconductor business. The beauty about that business for many, many years was that it had Moore's law. Great. So you can extrapolate, like, unless it breaks, you can extrapolate and say, I know exactly what's going to happen in 10 years to the power of computing and the size of chips. Period. I, we can reminisce about those times and miss them, but it's not the case. So right now the cadence is super fast. People that ask me, oh, uh, what do you think, uh, what do you think the business is going to look like in five years? I start laughing. It's a laughable question. Um, you can have grand general ideas, but people that ask you to describe it are just out of touch with what we're seeing. I think that because of a lot of changes.

AI assessment note: “right now the cadence is super fast.”

Q They were successful, so they'd be thrilled, no?

A Ah, yeah, but it's a public company. And I don't know if telling the story would, uh, would, would do well, but this was, I mean, this was, this was a company, this was seed stage. Um, it was a tough market. It was a, it was a tough nut to crack. Um, the, the company had internal things between, you know, between the founders. I mean, all the, all the, all the tough, tough stuff. And, and I said, you know, it's, it's, I mean, there's so many reasons why this company needs to die, but it didn't. I mean, people, I think, um, I think one of the investors of Etsy, um, talked about them in the same way. He said, you know why I invested in this? And I said, no, why? He said, because this company, you know, should have died at least seven times and it didn't. And this, this to me speaks for the strength of the company and the strength of the team behind it. And, and so this was the same story with, with this company. I mean, this, I mean, I, I, I, at some point I also lost a little bit of connection with the company, um, which is, which is fine. And, and then I realized that they were going public, and I was like, the fuck? Seriously? And, and I think that this is, this is probably the best investment I've ever, ever, ever made. The multiples were like in the, in the 50. Like, like crazy, crazy story. It's all about the people.

AI assessment note: “Ah, yeah, but it's a public company. And I don't know if telling the story”

Q When is more worse than better unit economics? And what I mean by that is HubSpot said recently that actually they're producing so much code They can't put it into production, and there's too many features to release, and it's just too much. When is more actually worse than trimming and having better unit econ?

A The fact that you can generate more doesn't actually mean that you can just generate more, which is why I never, when I talk with my team about the concept of moving fast, I never use the term speed. I always use the term velocity. Speed is just the speed of movement. Velocity is speed plus direction. So, so speed is not enough. You need to, you need, you need energy in a certain direction. If you're unable to push the code that you generate, it means that you didn't solve your infrastructure to be able to do this. So it means that your priority is incorrect because you don't solve the things that the bottlenecks that are actually keeping you from moving fast. So take the same energy and instead of building infinite amount of things, try to figure out how can I entertain That many ideas. So solve your infrastructure first, then start building like crazy. Plus, you're probably building stupid things. Stop doing that as well. Um, when going back to this conversation that I had with, with, with the team, this meeting with 200 people, 250 people in, in a, in a cramped room, one of the things that I told them is, like, I'm, I'm thinking Um, as I'm thinking about velocity, I'm, I'm thinking, um, of how do we read, like, the, the interpretation of it, the, or the, the, the result of it is just reducing the cost of failure. Because, because essentially, look, all companies, all compani…

AI assessment note: “If you're unable to push the code that you generate, it means that you didn't solve”

Q Tell me, you've got a child who's entering the workforce, okay? They've just graduated from university. What do you, what advice do you give them?

A Probably rather give them, um, And advice before they go to, uh, to, to the university and that would be don't go because I think it's a waste of time in, in most cases. Um, look, if, if you're, if you're up for, you know, for finding chicks and getting drunk, that's fine. If you need someone to tell you to wake up and get to a, to a class and someone to Um, scare you with an exam, because if not, you're not going to learn, then this is a good, you know, institute to do it. In 90 plus cases of modern professions, you can study on your own, and you can do it in a fraction of the time. And by the way, if you don't like reading, great, we have video for that. Oh, you don't like video? There's voice for that. And if there isn't, then ask AI to produce something for you. Whatever. It's like, it is, in my view, it's just a waste of time.

AI assessment note: “Probably rather give them advice before they go to university and that would be don't go”

Q Tell me, you've got a child who's entering the workforce, okay? They've just graduated from university. What do you, what advice do you give them?

A Probably rather give them, um, And advice before they go to, uh, to, to the university and that would be don't go because I think it's a waste of time in, in most cases. Um, look, if, if you're, if you're up for, you know, for finding chicks and getting drunk, that's fine. If you need someone to tell you to wake up and get to a, to a class and someone to Um, scare you with an exam, because if not, you're not going to learn, then this is a good, you know, institute to do it. In 90 plus cases of modern professions, you can study on your own, and you can do it in a fraction of the time. And by the way, if you don't like reading, great, we have video for that. Oh, you don't like video? There's voice for that. And if there isn't, then ask AI to produce something for you. Whatever. It's like, it is, in my view, it's just a waste of time.

AI assessment note: “Probably rather give them, um, And advice before they go to, uh, to, to the university”

Q Final one. When you think about how you most want to be remembered, I know it sounds weird, but I think about it a lot with grandchildren, actually, like, what do my future generations say? How do you want to be remembered?

A You know, I think I'm a part of a legacy. I think that there's a lot of things that have passed to me from my parents and grandparents that are at the very core of what defines me and how, what defines me as a human being, but what defines me as a, as a husband, what defines me as a, as a dad. And a lot of it has to do, and we've touched on some of these things is about like being a good citizen of, of this Of this world. Like, this idea that, uh, it's always better to be a giver than a taker, but in general, it's, I mean, you can't just take, I hate takers, so maybe they'll remember me as a giver. The world doesn't owe you anything, so that's one of the values that I instill in my kids, and the other is, Home is a, is a safe place. Like I, it doesn't matter what happened in your life. I don't know. You killed someone by mistake. Come home. We'll solve it together. There's like, this is, which doesn't mean that, that you're not going to be judgmental, but you, it means that you, you're not going to be judgmental to a point where you break them because your motivation is to help them. And, and I think this, this also It's also, you know, uh, penetrating my management style. If you think about this and, you know, radical candor, these types of things, it's, it's, it's all, you know, encompassing. And in, like, my contribution, like, I'm probably an artist. Um, that, that's what I…

AI assessment note: “maybe they'll remember me as a giver”

Q question then, without sounding bleak is, yeah, I'm very friends with Jason Lemkin from Sasta, who has quite a bleak summarization on this, but he says, yeah, and no one wants to work today. Like, young people don't want to work like they used to. And so my question to you is, when you reflect and look, how much of society is really wanting to embrace that change versus not?

A I think that it's going to be wrong. To try and understand reality through the lenses of the current, of the present, of the current present. I think that right now we're in a very fuzzy state in time where, you know, things, things change very, very fast. I feel that we are in a period that is very similar to the .com, but it's now .ai. So it used to be pets.com, it's now pets.ai. Whatever, it's the same bullshit. In, there's like, in my feed, there's like, 40 startups every day. There is no need for so many, but, but everybody's trying to cope with the endless amount of information that comes in. And this is very discouraging. I don't think that this is going to be the situation in the future. And so I don't think that the way people judge the present has too many implications about the future because we're in a very unstable world right now. Now the question, do people want to work or not, in my view, is a personal question. If you don't want to work, the exit from the building is on ground floor. Bye-bye. That's fine. I don't think that it is my primary function to figure this question out with people. My assumption is those who want to come and engage, um, in In the activity of working, either to make a living, it's usually the combination of making a living, um, expressing yourself, the search for meaning. Um, look, we spend the majority of our time, our awake time, at wo…

AI assessment note: “do people want to work or not, in my view, is a personal question.”

Q When you have those CEO groups and conversations behind the scenes, is the consensus that AI is further along than people think, and we are moving towards more unemployment quicker, or is it that it is further away than we think, and not as close as people assume?

A I think most of them are just making the healthy assumption that we're closer to it and then further from it, because If it's, if it's further away, then great. Let's chill. It's fine. But if you assume that this is closer, then you, you, you at least think about the necessary, or you think about the implications, which I think is the healthier thing to do. I haven't seen companies go through massive layoffs. Um, I think companies that had fat in them, Started doing that, um, because they understand that it's very, and which is what I wrote in my email as well. I said, Look, um, before we figure out that we need more people, let's just make sure that we're extracting the most out of ourselves, out of our existing team. This was true five years ago, which, which is why, you know, if you run a lean company, not too lean, so you can actually be very, you can be aggressive, but lean enough so that there's, if, if you say, oh fuck, Like, I, I need to cut costs. There's like, you know, 50 people that you know are going to be the first. If you know this, you should say goodbye, you know. Um, but, but the message was, how do we maximize our capacity before we actually think about bringing more people? And if, if we think about bringing more people, These people need to be AI natives in whatever they do. I don't care if you're whatever, if you, or you're joining the legal department or …

AI assessment note: “most of them are just making the healthy assumption that we're closer to it”

Q question then, without sounding bleak is, yeah, I'm very friends with Jason Lemkin from Sasta, who has quite a bleak summarization on this, but he says, yeah, and no one wants to work today. Like, young people don't want to work like they used to. And so my question to you is, when you reflect and look, how much of society is really wanting to embrace that change versus not?

A I think that it's going to be wrong. To try and understand reality through the lenses of the current, of the present, of the current present. I think that right now we're in a very fuzzy state in time where, you know, things, things change very, very fast. I feel that we are in a period that is very similar to the .com, but it's now .ai. So it used to be pets.com, it's now pets.ai. Whatever, it's the same bullshit. In, there's like, in my feed, there's like, 40 startups every day. There is no need for so many, but, but everybody's trying to cope with the endless amount of information that comes in. And this is very discouraging. I don't think that this is going to be the situation in the future. And so I don't think that the way people judge the present has too many implications about the future because we're in a very unstable world right now. Now the question, do people want to work or not, in my view, is a personal question. If you don't want to work, the exit from the building is on ground floor. Bye-bye. That's fine. I don't think that it is my primary function to figure this question out with people. My assumption is those who want to come and engage, um, in In the activity of working, either to make a living, it's usually the combination of making a living, um, expressing yourself, the search for meaning. Um, look, we spend the majority of our time, our awake time, at wo…

AI assessment note: “Now the question, do people want to work or not, in my view, is a personal question.”