Mike Hudack
Co-Founder & CEO, Sling Money. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveoperatorinvestor@mhudack ↗LinkedIn ↗hudack.org ↗
Mike Hudack is an entrepreneur and product leader currently building Sling Money, a global payments app leveraging stablecoins for international transfers. He previously co-founded the online video platform Blip and served in senior product leadership roles at Monzo, Deliveroo, and Facebook.
2shows
2appearances
52statements
3resolved
1supported
1contradicted
33%fully supported
Everything Mike Hudack said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Hudack: Product teams should be 6-8 people and PMs are optional
“I think every product team should be probably between six to eight people. Most of those people should be engineers. If possible, one of those people should be a data scientist. One should be a designer. And then I think a PM is optional.”
Hudack: Gradient AI dramatically outperforms Intercom across all shared customers
“These guys are dramatically outperforming Intercom in all of the, with all the customers that they have.”
Hudack: Meta has one of the largest permissioned training datasets globally
“Facebook has one of the largest permissioned training sets in the world.”
Hudack: Respect founders who shut down with cash over burning to zero
“I can speak for myself as an angel investor. The level of respect I have for somebody who comes to me with half of the money still in the bank and just says, hey, we were wrong about this, and has a conversation either about selling the company or shutting it …”
Hudack argued strongly against Monzo shipping crypto products
“I argued very strongly against, against shipping crypto products. You know, I didn't think it was the right thing to do for our audience, for our user base at the time.”
Mike Hudack: Big tech managers often fail at zero-to-one startups
“Don't mistake Good, you know, managers or ICs at a large company for people who are going to do well going from zero to one in a startup, you know, think about what that means.”
Hudack: Founders must build consumer products to create a $100B company
“You're also probably not going to create like a hundred billion dollar company in doing that, you know? If you want to do that, you got to go consumer, I think.”
Hudack: Founders should replicate common product primitives instead of inventing everything
“I think there are just certain primitives or certain ideas that become commonplace and, like, should be replicated by everyone. And you have to be, like, you know, it's, like, impossible that you're gonna come up with all of those yourself.”
Hudack: Targeted Facebook ads no longer work well for acquiring early adopters
“I think that there was probably a golden age in which the answer would have been like,
You know, target exactly the right message at exactly the right people on Facebook.
Find the, like, 3400 people who are your early adopters and just, like, get it in front o…”
Hudack: Price AI by heavily discounting total labor and emotional damage saved
“With an AI company, it feels really clear to me that you look at the number, the amount of human input that you're saving, And the cost of that human input, and I mean total cost, I mean salary, emotional damage that you have to sustain in doing the work, you …”
Hudack: Startups can raise prices later on products that customers truly love
“If you build a thing, which is like, Beautiful and people love and has a place in their lives. You can charge more for it later. And you know, that goes against conventional wisdom. And I think if you have that knowledge it's a secret weapon because it's easie…”
Hudack: Meta's open-source strategy smartly commoditizes competitors' closed AI models
“I think that the strategy that they have right now of like open sourcing a bunch of models, you know, makes a ton of sense. It's like the right strategic move. If you're in their position you're kind of like salting the earth in a pretty meaningful way, you kn…”
Hudack: Founders should not write code before establishing a theory of the world
“I really believe that before you build something, you should have a theory of the world. You should, you know, understand who your user is, what they want to accomplish. You should understand your strengths and weaknesses in doing that and have a, you know, a …”
Hudack: Users lie in research and tell builders what they want to hear
“You can do user research along the way, but, you know, the reality is that, that users lie when you talk to them, and they will always tell you what they think you want to hear.”
Mike Hudack: Deliveroo was late on 40% of deliveries when he joined
“We were late. 40% more, you know, 40% of the time.”
Hudack: Deliveroo's backend logistics mattered far more than consumer app
“Most of the work in Deliveroo for a really long time was actually in what we called the Delivery organization. We created an organization called Delivery, and that was core machine learning systems, dispatch systems, rider pay, rider app, all that kind of stuf…”
Hudack: Products should empower consumer trade-offs rather than restrict choices
“One of the great insights, one of the things that I really learned here was that it's so important to allow people to make their own choices. It's just so important to let people make their own choices. Like, if somebody wants a soggy burger, and you've given …”
Hudack: 99% of Facebook users opening the "dive bar" did so by accident
“I think something like 75% of Facebook users opened the dive bar, and so, There was an argument to be made that it was a great surface to ship into. The thing is that like, 99% of those people opened it by accident.”
Hudack: A leader's job is not always to cheerlead
“First of all, I don't think that a leader's job is always to cheerlead. I think sometimes a leader's job is to say, hey guys, we're in a really tough situation here, or-”
Mike Hudack: Startups should delay hiring a CPO as long as possible
“Really depends on the founder but probably very, very late. I wouldn't do it too soon. I think that the best CEOs are very product minded and should stay involved in product for as long as possible.”
Hudack invested in YC AI debt collection startup despite initial skepticism
“There's another one I invested in recently.
It's a YC company that is doing debt, AI debt collection, which I would have thought was like a terrible idea.
I can't think of the name off the top of my head, but the way the guy explained it, which I thought was r…”
Hudack: Organic distribution requires adopting platform-native communication formats
“If you want to target like techie people, you probably want to do it on Twitter X. If you want to target
Sales people, you probably want to do it on LinkedIn.
You know, like, it just, you know, and there's a format, and there's a way of thinking, and a way of …”
Hudack: Monzo's top pre-COVID revenue stream was overseas debit interchange fees
“Our number one revenue stream was actually people using their debit cards overseas, and the interchange you get from that, and that went away overnight, and we were totally screwed.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Mike's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Sling Money | 1 | 40 | 0% 0/2 | full record on 20VC → |
 STARTUP IDEASLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Sling Money | 1 | 12 | 100% 1/1 | full record on the Startup Ideas Podcast → |