Jesse Pujji
86 statements across 26 episodes · 30 bullish · 12 bearish · 3 people on the record · first statement Oct 25, 2022 by Jesse Pujji · said 44 times in 11 episodes since 2023 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Jesse Pujji's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Alex Lieberman (39), Brett Adcock (3), Jesse Poogee (2)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 4 mentions in 1 episode
2024 9 mentions in 2 episodes 5 per episode
2023 31 mentions in 8 episodes 4 per episode
- How My Company Went From Zero to a $10 Million Run Rate
- Building Technology With Infinite Scale
- How This Founder Wants to Reward You for Paying Rent
- Co-founders Austin Rief and Alex Lieberman on Building Morning Brew
- Startup Hotline
- Why I Lost Motivation After Selling Morning Brew
- 3 Strategies for Choosing the Right Co-Founder
- How 2 Personal Losses Led To Building The #1 Faith-Based Media Company
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
Everything said about Jesse Pujji, oldest first
Oct 25, 2022 positive
Pujji: Mark Zuckerberg explained Facebook's entire multi-stage expansion strategy in 2005
“And he just, for 45 minutes, I didn't say a word. He just told me the whole strategy, which they actually did the whole thing. We're going to go into high schools and pods, then workplaces. It's going to be your online identity. Like he had already figured it …”
Oct 25, 2022 neutral
Oct 25, 2022 negative
Oct 25, 2022
Pujji: Bosses can never be true peers to employees whose salaries they control
“When you control someone's salary, and you control their livelihood, you'll never be the same as them, and you can't, even if you want to be buddy-buddy with them, it's never the same, and you have to take that responsibility, and be very careful about how you…”
Nov 1, 2022 negative
Pujji: Non-VC founders do not need proprietary or uncrowded business ideas
“The third one I would take issue with unless you're a Y Combinator venture funded. The third one you said, which is make sure that like few other people can do it. Right? Because, don't get me wrong, I think way more energy is spent on people being like, oh, i…”
Nov 1, 2022 negative
Pujji: No consumer affiliate recommendation app has achieved organic scale
“No one's nailed it. I mean, there's a bunch of people who try to do it the shopping point of sale. I've seen pitches a ton, but I don't think anyone's nailed it in a way that feels organic, that actually has wide-scale adoption.”
Nov 1, 2022 neutral
Pujji: A 50% hiring success rate is good for early-stage startups
“Hiring, especially in an early stage company, is extremely hard. Like, I was just talking to the CEO of Growth Assistant, I was telling her, a bet, a fifty-fifty is a good rate, and then when it comes to executives, it's even harder.”
Nov 1, 2022 bearish
Pujji: Experienced candidates who talk well are the riskiest startup hires
“There's a lot of people out there who are inexperienced, but seem to be really great. That's my favorite group to hire from. But the biggest mistakes I've made of is people who are smart, who are experienced, but like they talk a good game, but they're not act…”
Nov 3, 2022 bullish
Nov 15, 2022 neutral
Pujji: Raising institutional capital turns your startup into a financial product
“The second you raise institutional or professional money, which I define as sort of money raised from people who have raised from other people, right? Like Sophia said, it's their business, not a person's individual capital. Your business becomes a financial p…”
Nov 15, 2022
Pujji: Growth Assistant delayed legal review until business validation
“And, you know, example, we were starting growth assistant and someone, you know, Adrian was like, well, we need to figure out if it's legal to do what we're doing. And I'm like, well, no, we're not going to spend any money on that. Let's go see if there's a bu…”
Dec 6, 2022 positive
Pujji: Major investment bank fees are worth paying on $100M+ sales
“Typically if you're selling it for under a hundred million, you'll find a boutique bank who knows your industry, but if you're selling for over a hundred million, you'll call up Morgan Stanley or one of the big, big kahunas, and they charge one or two percent,…”
Dec 6, 2022
Pujji: M&A due diligence centers on resolving the buyer's worst-case fears
“Imagine you were spending millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a business. What would keep you up at night? Just think that's what you got to put yourself in the shoes of the acquirer. And that's what a lot of the legal stuff …”
Dec 20, 2022 positive
Dec 20, 2022 neutral
Pujji sold the AudienceGraph.com domain for five figures plus equity
“So I bought, like, adgraph.com, audiencegraph.com, like, I bought everythinggraph.com, and I got a ping from someone, and it was just like, hey, I want to, I'm starting a startup, and it's going to be called audiencegraph. Can I buy your domain? And I sold it …”
Dec 27, 2022
Dec 27, 2022 neutral
Dec 27, 2022 negative
Pujji: Standing meetings waste founder time and encourage pointless presentations
“I try to avoid standing meetings. And the reason is, is because what's important this week or for the next week or two is going to be very different than what's important in the following two weeks. And I like to change and shift my hour, like where I spend my…”
Jan 10, 2023 negative
Pujji: Founders who claim universal knowledge lose credibility immediately
“By the way, that's one of my signs of like a mature, self-aware entrepreneur. Is when, like, a person says to me, like, I know this really well, so I'm gonna, but these things, like, I have no clue. And then someone, like, has the same level of knowledge on ev…”
Jan 10, 2023 positive
Jan 10, 2023 negative
Jan 10, 2023 positive
Jan 17, 2023 neutral
Pujji: Fear Is the Most Effective Entrepreneur Motivator, But It's Unsustainable
“Fear is the most common. By the way, it's the most effective, so I'm not judging fear, right? ... Yeah, you put a gun to your head, you're gonna run faster than you've ever run, but the downsides of fear are that they leave a negative residue on you and others…”
Jan 17, 2023
Jan 31, 2023
Pujji: Co-founder contributed two-thirds of his Carlyle salary to fund Ampush
“Chris had a Commitment to Carlisle. He was a private equity and he had nine more months left on his contract and he didn't want to burn the bridge and leave early. But we all agreed that basically we would treat ourselves as one entity and he would give up two…”
Jan 31, 2023
Pujji: M&A Advisors Deferred Decisions to Owners Over Non-Owner CEO
“The lawyers and accountants kept coming to me and Nick for every decision. And actually they left it with one of their jokes and we were doing like superlatives at the end of the deal. And one of our jokes was John was the most left off person of emails. And i…”
Jan 31, 2023
Pujji: Children will not receive unearned money or inheritances without work
“I'm not, there's not going to be a lot of free money given between me and them. And I don't just mean when they, you know, when I die, which is also probably not going to happen, but you know, like they'll, if they get allowances, they'll do chores for them. I…”
Jan 31, 2023
Jan 31, 2023 neutral
Jan 31, 2023 positive
Jan 31, 2023
Jan 31, 2023
Jan 31, 2023 positive
Pujji: Spousal Support Is the Most Unseen Factor in Startup Success
“I think it's one of the most unseen roles in any kind of success like this and I'm, even now, we're still unpacking sort of, you know, my appreciation, gratitude, the things I didn't even know I was feeling or know that I needed, that I was getting from that”
Jan 31, 2023
Feb 7, 2023
Pujji: First Venture Puforia Generates $10k–$15k Monthly on Autopilot
“The first company we started, Puforia, true story, we still sell a hundred SKUs every, every month. Like the thing is just making like 10, 15,000 dollars a month. I don't know how people are getting to it. Like, does someone run that business? No, it's just, i…”
Feb 7, 2023
Feb 7, 2023
Pujji: Unbloat Took a Year of Iteration to Find Core Demographic
“When we launched Unbloat a year ago, we thought, you know, we'd heard lots of versions of it. We started selling it and we didn't, we know we, by the way, we interviewed 50 different women, all these things. Like it wasn't, and then we launched it. We thought …”
Feb 7, 2023
Feb 14, 2023 positive
Pujji: Founders should tell investors what belief they hold and what would change it
“For anyone of us coaching someone, I would say, here's what I believe, here's why, here's what I'm gonna do to validate it, and here's what would change my mind, if, and, you know, I'll keep you abreast, so now, again, someone goes, oh, this person has a point…”
Feb 14, 2023 neutral
Pujji: Macroeconomic recessions are not valid excuses for startup sales failures
“Recession is the economy goes down by three percent, sort of up by three percent. So we go from being a 20 trillion to being a 19.5 trillion or 20.5 trillion. Like, I just, I personally just don't believe in that effect. Like, you think it's an excuse? Yeah. W…”
Feb 14, 2023 positive
Pujji: Founders need five to ten sales meetings weekly to find fit
“Well, you have to get five to 10 a week because that's the, everyone is an at bat, right? And so that's number one, you gotta keep getting the sales meetings. Number two is you gotta adjust, you know, and again, ideally build a culture of adjustment after ever…”
Feb 14, 2023
Pujji: Core business operators cannot successfully incubate new startup ventures simultaneously
“If you're running the business. There's nothing wrong with that, but don't also try to do those other things because that's not going to work and vice versa. If you're not running, you know, if you're not running the business, you have to find the right people…”
Feb 21, 2023 positive
Feb 21, 2023 positive
Pujji spent $500 to $1,000 in ad tests to validate 'Unbloat' name
“In my case, what we did was we looked a little bit at nominal email signup, but what we were actually doing was testing for brands. And that was like, let's call it a brand name. This let's, you know, and that was our way of figuring out. ... So we had before …”
Feb 21, 2023 positive
Pujji: Ampush shifted from sharing revenue to EBITDA after Red Ventures deal
“In Ampush, we were focused on revenue growth for the first five years, and man, everyone knew our revenue every day. I knew it. It was in channels. It was talked about, and then when Red Ventures invested, they were like, guys, screw revenue. We don't care abo…”
Feb 28, 2023
Mar 7, 2023 negative
Mar 7, 2023
Pujji: Frustration comes from collapsing desired future states into current reality
“And so like one of the most common human thing is to collapse that future state in today and be mad that you don't have it. Right. And it's like, well, why don't I know how to lift bench press, 300 pounds yet? That's like, well, you just, you're at one 50, lik…”
Mar 7, 2023 negative
Pujji: Debating if an idea is 'big enough' stems from ego and fear
“It's the whole conversation of whether the idea is big enough or not too big or no, it's all ego oriented versus just waking up in the morning and going, what will make, you know, what will energize me today? What will be something I'm excited to do? And I thi…”
Mar 7, 2023 positive
Mar 7, 2023
Pujji: Testing prospective co-founders on early tasks reveals builder drive
“The other thing I do is at any given time, I'm probably working with, like, Three or four people on different ideas, but one thing I found that's just really effective is like, Hey, here's an idea. Like, why don't you go and let's go like, go do this and let's…”
Mar 13, 2023
Pujji: Frame Crisis Communication Around the 'I, We, It' Model
“One of my frameworks I like is the I, the we, the it, like, what does this mean for me? What does this mean for my team? And what does it mean for the company? Like the group, like the whole thing. And so like being able to very clearly dispel what that means.”
Mar 13, 2023 neutral
Mar 13, 2023 bearish
Mar 13, 2023 positive
Mar 21, 2023 positive
Mar 21, 2023 neutral
Pujji: A 10% to 20% ad improvement is incremental, not a true champion
“Carolyn, if something is 10 or 20% better, it's not actually better. Like, it's not a champion. It's just another iterative sort of, like, incremental ad. And, you know, she's never experienced this, and I think you probably have with the brew. I have a millio…”
Mar 21, 2023 positive
Prioritize CEO information access even if it burdens team productivity
“As the leader, sometimes it is important that maybe the team's a little bit less productive for your benefit, because you're ultimately the only person who can see everything that's happening and you're ultimately making most of the decisions. Right. And so it…”
Mar 23, 2023 positive
Mar 28, 2023
Pujji: New founders should give a startup a two-year timebox
“If you're a new, new founder starting out, I typically say like, give yourself two years. If you don't have anything going interesting within two years, Then probably you should do something else. Two years is a long time if you're giving it your all every day…”
Mar 28, 2023
Pujji: Apple requires leaders to know operational details three levels down
“Apple requires that you know the details of your organization three levels down. So if you're a VP and the reason they do that is just a very, like, this is part of just why it's important to be super buttoned up or know the answers or know, know your numbers …”
Apr 11, 2023
Pujji: Creators Should Fear Irrelevance and Low Quality, Not Public Judgment
“Your problem is not going to be that people are going to see your content and judge you. It's going to be that your content's not very good, and they're not going to see it. And like, but that's the reality of all these things, right? Like, the more I've been …”
Apr 11, 2023 positive
Pujji: Walking industry conference floors instantly builds a mental market map
“I think one walk on a conference room floor, like I almost want to make it a requirement for gateway X before we start a business, we have to go walk a conference floor in our, in the industry, because dude, you learn so much about what's there, what's not the…”
Apr 11, 2023 neutral
Pujji: Delegation breaks down when management altitude mismatches employee maturity
“Oftentimes where delegation breaks down is like, you're either flying too low. The person is as at the, Hey, I know what to do next. Stop Telling me what to do, all these specific things. That's micro. Or it's the flip, which is like, they need various prescri…”
Apr 11, 2023 neutral
Pujji: Most nine-figure e-commerce tech businesses do not rely on Shopify
“The biggest thing that, you know, industry or market wise was, dude, there's a bunch of nine figure e-com tech businesses. None of which, like with the exception of Klaviyo and maybe Attentive have anything to do with Shopify.”
Apr 25, 2023 negative
Jesse Pujji: Executives should leave operational Slack channels to force team synthesis
“I don't think it's good actually for me to be in these channels. Like, I think it's important that I'm not, actually, because when I'm in them, then it feels like, oh, Jesse's alongside. He knows what's going on, and even we had our first version of those meet…”
Apr 25, 2023 neutral
Apr 25, 2023 neutral
Apr 25, 2023 bullish
Apr 25, 2023 positive
Pujji: Operational review meetings should strictly separate facts from explanatory stories
“One of the things we've overlaid on top of that, and I, I'll, you know, this format is like facts versus stories. And so we, you know, we try to get people really tight on, I don't want to hear spin in that meeting.”
Apr 25, 2023
Pujji: Customers requested Growth Assistant for years, unlike Kahani
“People were asking me for growth assistant, not in those words for years, years, like forever. And then it's like, okay, now it popped up and it jumped off and nobody has been asking me for Connie. Right. No one was like, yeah, I wish this was happening.”
Apr 25, 2023 positive
May 9, 2023 neutral
May 9, 2023 bullish
Pujji: The Plunge could be a $10M business generating $2M annual profit
“Cause I think it, I still believe what I've said to you every time, which is, is this going to be a hundred million dollar business? I don't know, but do I think it could be a ten million dollar business that made one to two million dollars a year? A hundred p…”
May 9, 2023
Pujji: Agency founders must exit service delivery to scale successfully
“You and the CEO have to be out of the delivery of the service other than maybe coming in, whatever you're willing to do once a week, once a month. With like, I'll review stuff and give specific comments. And that's, and when you do that, it all gets up leveled…”
May 9, 2023 bullish
Pujji: Internal company initiatives often yield higher returns than outside investments
“Inside of a company, oftentimes the returns on capital are way higher than even an investor ever gets. Like there's initiatives, hiring five salespeople can have a 500% return in a year if you do it well, right?”
May 9, 2023
May 16, 2023
Oct 16, 2023 positive
Nov 22, 2023 positive
Pujji: Asking direct reports for recommendations reveals the quality of their thinking
“If you tell me what you recommend, it forces you to think about an issue. And I get to see the quality of your thinking. And even up front, even a very experienced person may have a five out of 10 hit rate with like, I would do the same thing. But then it crea…”
Nov 22, 2023 positive
Pujji: Rare high-stakes moments like company sales require direct executive ownership
“There are certain times in an organization where, you know, just like on an airplane, like the pilot has to take carte blanche and basically say, guys, I'm going to zoom in and I'm going to own this and we're going to, I'm going to quarterback the crap out of …”
Nov 22, 2023 positive
Ignoring task-relevant maturity guarantees either micromanagement or leadership abdication
“And so by task, you could have a very senior person who actually has never done a certain thing inside the organization. And if you don't create, if you're not aware of their task relevant maturity, Then you're going to end up either managing them too far or t…”
Nov 22, 2023 positive
Pujji: Managers should push direct reports two rungs up the leadership ladder
“One of my big recommendations is always, wherever a person seems to come in most commonly, if you're a manager of that person, just ask them to try to come in a couple levels above it. Right? And as a person, if wherever you see yourself at, try yourself to co…”
Nov 22, 2023 negative
Hiring a CEO lacking task-relevant maturity in the core function will fail
“I have to think through this TRM thing for people, because if the main task of the business, they're lower medium on, it's never going to work. Right. Adrian was really high on recruiting people from the Philippines. Like I did not, I never, I detected it goin…”
May 14, 2024
Pujji: Gateway X hires complete a Conscious Leadership worksheet during onboarding
“The first thing I do with every new person who works at GatewayX and any of the companies is, We go through that worksheet and we start to build that self-awareness and that's kind of the starting part of the journey.”