The Exchanges

Q Are you ready to come up with the policy for how dishes get cleaned in the office?

A It just reminded me, uh, uh, it's probably 20, 2018 or 20 19. We're at like Somewhere between 15 and 20 employees at this point, maybe a little bit more. And, you know, the early days of the brew were all, like, the first few people on the team, you know, we were very, very, um, homogeneous, like, twenty-two-year-old, like, white male Jewish team, and then over time, um, the, the team, uh, got more diverse in every sense. Gender, age, ethnicity, background, and I so vividly remember the first time that we hired a mom. We had never had a mom in the company, and then all of a sudden, you know, one day they asked us, because they had just had a child recently, and they had to pump milk. Austin and I were like, holy shit. Like, this is, this is the definition of, like, When, when you are just. Blind spots. Yeah, when you, when you have such a different life situation from other people, you have such blind spots to things you would never think about. So we literally, I remember at the time our HR person, person literally had to like put up a, a curtain on one of our conference rooms.

AI assessment note: “It just reminded me, uh, uh, it's probably 20, 2018 or 20 19.”

Q Yeah. I love that. For our listeners who aren't maybe familiar with the franchise model, can you just talk for a second about how that works? Like what you provide to a franchisee, what they have to provide to you? Like, what does that relationship look like?

A So someone gets first and foremost a brand. When we start a one-eight-hundred-got-junk franchise in Tulsa, or in New Jersey, or in Los Angeles, customers move. So when they move from one city to another, and they go, oh, this is the same company I used in Vancouver, and they're also in Toronto. That's useful to everybody. When you're building up customers, or you're getting free press, everybody benefits. Everyone in our system benefited from Oprah, from Ellen, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times. So it's the power of building a brand together. That's the most important thing they get. They then get this whole, you're not in business for yourself. Sorry, you're in business for yourself, but not by yourself. So there's support. You built things with your partner from the ground up, and there were things where you're like, is this going to work? What are we going to do? I'm making a mistake. Are we going to survive? Whatever might have happened as entrepreneurs like us would do. In a franchise system, you get to be an entrepreneur, but with the support and guidance of others. Uh, one thing I talk about in my book is Shaquille O'Neal. I got to meet Shaquille O'Neal a few times recently, and we were- As big in person? Oh my gosh, huge. Seven foot two, and I'm just like some six foot little white guy, right? He's amazing, and, and the thing that I got super excited about Shaq on…

AI assessment note: “So someone gets first and foremost a brand.”

Q was so cool to be on a lot of these shows. But I, I think it's doing, moving in the forward, moving in the future, you know, it's probably just being more strategic. Which shows do you think will move the needle? It was hard to know that. And I asked people which ones did, and, um, it was still cool to be on a lot of shows to practice.

A Totally. Uh, I, I think to, to your point, and maybe, maybe the best way to talk through this is to just work through StoryArb. Um, but like, I think a lot of people will be listening to this and will be like, They'll be like, Noah, I'm, I'm listening. Like, I understand the, the method of how you do growth, and I understand how you did it for your book, but everything you listed out related to your book was based on having a massive audience or relationships that you've built up for 15 years. Like, if I'm, if, let's just, like, if it's someone who literally is reading your book, so it's like a first-time entrepreneur, where do they go if they want to get customers, but social is not Accessible to them.

AI assessment note: “maybe the best way to talk through this is to just work through StoryArb”

Q How do you find undiscovered talent as an entrepreneur? Like what are either specific questions that you ask or what are you looking for?

A Yeah. So, I mean, the first, first basic premise that Peter taught me in, uh, November of 2000 is that to build a successful startup depends upon critical density of talent. The team you build as a company you build is kind of a way of, you know, I'm going to reframe it later in my life, but how do you assemble Marshall critical density of talent? The truth is, if you go after people who already discovered as a startup, you're going to not have an unfair advantage or including them. In fact, you're going to be a disadvantage typically. Those people can be expensive. They know their net worth. They know their value, their market value, and the last thing you want to do as a startup is compete on the basis of like cash compensation or something like that. So you've got to go find people who haven't yet proven what they can do that these large organizations think meta, Think Google, think Apple, think Amazon, think Microsoft, or even these days open AI. They don't know how to assess these people. And then if you can assess them correctly, you can assemble a team with incredible talent and ambition to achieve their life's work. Then you've got a shock. So that next opens the next, that opens the door to the next question, which is how do you assess people with undiscovered talent? You know, that you can have the theory right, but if you can't actually in practice do it, it doesn't …

AI assessment note: “that opens the door to the next question, which is how do you assess”

Q Out of curiosity, was the, uh, the writing course that you took in Utah, was that part of kind of this, uh, Journey to re-find identity outside of building your business, or did you just want to start writing?

A I mean, I, I felt like I knew like, and it's funny, like unpacking it, you know, because the sci-fi is really what led me to startups in the first place, because if you really, I feel like unpack, it's almost like this kind of religion where you read these books and you believe them, right? You're like, wow, like in the future, not today, but like in the future, we're going to have like humans on tons of planets and like spaceships and like all sorts of cool stuff. But this is like a, Part of the timeline. It's not like a fantasy. It's a sci-fi, right? Uh, it's just, it felt more real. Uh, and that leads you to like startups and venture capital and like all these things like, you know, AI now have playing out, right? Like it all is part of, part of that. And so I felt like, okay, if I'm not going to be the one that makes Tesla or SpaceX or whatever, maybe I can like contribute to it in some capacity. And I love reading these books. Um, and so, you know, I think trying to write Write one would be, would be great. Um, but yeah, I think on the other hand, it was just like a thing to do, right? Like a thing to just, I have a hard time. At least some people are maybe very good at just like relaxing or just being, and just like, you know, chilling out or whatever. And I'm like, I need to like do something else. Like I need to solve some other problem, uh, get into something that is g…

AI assessment note: “I need to like do something else... take my brain so that I can't think”

Q And he loved the first game, right? Like, didn't he have an amazing time?

A Yeah, the first game, he had this great time. We took him out early. He was upset that we had to leave the third period. You know, his sister was there. We didn't want them to get not asleep last night. We said, you stay until, until it's over. He got home at 1030, which is really late. His bedtime's like eight. He had a blast, you know, and, and like that motivate, like, I don't know, I'm motivated to like give him unique life experiences, and so, yeah, I think, I think my pure drive to be really successful and make a lot of money is definitely different than when I was 25, um, but I, I don't know that I'm less ambitious. I'm like more ambitious for a balanced life, if that makes sense, like a holistic experience and all those different aspects of it. I think to answer the question, I mean, look, it's hard for me. I, I, I kind of think I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur by the time I was 12, which, cause my dad was an entrepreneur, so I had this, like, unfair cheat code of seeing someone in that position, and started my first real company at 25, which I think with kids and, you know, uh, would have been really hard. Like, we worked hard. We had no idea what we were doing, and I don't know, other than if you've been really, like, experienced in a business or maybe early on in another business, I don't know how you learn that, but maybe you do. Maybe at 55, you were the The f…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, the first game, he had this great time.”

Q You a hundred percent did. Um, it was one of those deals where, uh, just to be associated with it was, was the reason enough to put money into it. Um, but before the, uh, our conversation started, you were talking about Reese Witherspoon and her business. You were talking about Aerosmith and their businesses. Why are you so fascinated with the way they've monetized themselves?

A So I've become, so there's levels to every game. And the way I think about it is like this. Um, have you ever had an employee and, you know, with employees, once you have them and you're paying for them out of your pocket, you're like, what are you doing over there? What, what are you going to work on that? Like, is that going to, like, what's the, are, are they actually working? Like you have this anxiety, right? And I think about my money that same way. It's like, is my money working hard for me? Is it lazy over there just lazing around? Is it getting paid in an assistant level when it should be getting paid a CEO salary? Like, What are you doing over there, money? And, um, so I think about that a lot, and then I think about that with my- Only person I know that talks their money like that. Come on, buddy. Come on, let's go. Um, so, uh, I feel like that with my time, too. So now time has become so precious, it's like, everybody thinks about scoreboard. How could I make a million bucks? How could I make ten million bucks? Wrong question. The question I would ask is, what is the fastest, funnest, Least time intensive way to get to a million bucks or to get to ten million bucks because you would , you would know inherently it will take me longer to walk through To the park than it will to drive to the park. We know that there's like Google maps, right? What there's not Google ma…

AI assessment note: “what is the fastest, funnest, Least time intensive way to get to a million bucks”

Q the questions that you didn't have an answer to, that you needed an answer to to push forward your business, and what you actually did, like, literally what you did to get answers to those questions. Like, what I mean by that is, like, was it reading, like, seventy-page academic papers? Was it, like, Getting in touch with a geneticist at a lab. Like, what did that actually look like?

A Yeah, that's a great question. So, all right, let's go back. Let's see. The first thing I wanted to do was I really wanted to build up an elemental understanding of it, right? So I, I was a big believer in, like, kind of being able to independently re-derive everything, which is, like, how do I go from what is a probability to here's a genomic model of analyzing DNA? That's the level of depth of understanding I wanted. I didn't want anything to be superficial because in my mind, I wanted to kind of Have this, um, bark, like this, like bark as a foundation, right? And then all the branches that, that kind of stem from that, um, you know, you can then figure anything out, right? If the fundamental, if the intellectual fundamentals are strong enough, you can re-derive anything.

AI assessment note: “I really wanted to build up an elemental understanding of it”

Q company. Tomorrow I start building it. Uh, when you wrote this, you thought Gumroad would become a billion dollar company with hundreds of employees. You thought about the prospect of IPO-ing at some point down the road. Obviously that didn't happen. Um, can you share with me why that didn't happen? And when you realized that wasn't going to be the path that you ultimately would take the business on?

A Yeah. I mean, I think the first time I realized that was not going to happen, which is, you know, I joke the, the blog post is called reflecting on my failure to build a billion dollar company. It's a little bit like tongue in cheek because it's sort of like not, you know, it's a weird failure to have, right? Um, it's like failing to go to the moon or something like that. Um, but it sort of just hints at like the, the, you know, the culture of Silicon Valley, um, in which I was living in at the time where you basically everybody inherently just signs up for this sort of journey where you're trying to build this billion dollar company that we call a unicorn. And, you know, the way you do that is by basically having some idea for this like really large market, having some software product that you build, you hire, you know, you raise some venture capital, you hire some engineers, you use AWS, you ship some app. And then there's sort of actually like quite a little bit of fuzziness in what happens like between now and like the billion dollar company part. But in theory, you know, you, you basically acquire customers if you're a B to B product and you just kind of like grow double or nothing, you know, every three months to two year, or, you know, you have a consumer product in which you basically get to like hundreds of millions of users. Then you sell ads, uh, you know, and I had…

AI assessment note: “I think the first time I realized that was not going to happen, which is”

Q middle layer where companies build, and his view is that, um, there's going to be training of AI in a vertical fashion, so there's going to be a business that does this for healthcare or biotech or financial markets, because you can't just rely on the data set that, uh, GPT-III has in order to do really interesting things in specific categories. That's his view. Sophia, what do you think?

A I mean, I think specifically for entrepreneurs looking at this, I'm realizing, wow, if this gets really sophisticated, there could be a computer that can like mimic my voice better than any human. I write every word of copy on every website that I've ever made, um, for business class. It's like, it's so much copy, every word of copy for the 300 pages of worksheets. Uh, I'm really, you know, it's like my voice, like you can't replicate it. It's what I'm trading on. It's why people are emotional about the brands I create. It's why they read my newsletter. It's not about news. And even that, you know, um, you know, Morning Brew has a voice, and that's something that you can input, you know, requests. So, okay, it's witty, but at the same time, there is that kind of human element and references to things that we've experienced that software is just never going to be able to predict. I think it can really drive costs down for entrepreneurs, and I would be pretty ruthless about that. Um, I think it can, you know, increase speed for your business. It's something like I would absolutely adopt, but primarily for creative work, um, as an introvert who has built my best things from behind a computer and then got pushed in front of a bunch of people to be like, yeah, I did a thing. And now I lead teams. Like I do my best work behind a computer with as few people as possible at dinner. I'm …

AI assessment note: “I think specifically for entrepreneurs looking at this, I'm realizing”

Q I say all of this because in order to answer your question, which is like, how do you not let your side hustle distract you from your full-time job? Well, we need to know where we're starting from, which is like, what are you trying to achieve with all these different pieces, right? So, you know, to throw it back to you, What's, what's your goal with your full-time job?

A I kind of have, like, a few different buckets and things that I see myself doing in the coming years. I don't think there's, there's one, like, this is what I want to be exactly doing in five years, in 10 years. Kind of thought about, okay, like, with these buckets that I do have, is there alignment with what I'm doing now currently for my full-time job, and is there alignment with what I'm doing for my side hustle? Can they get me to where they, where I want to be in the future with these buckets? And, you know, I can say yes, like, what I'm doing, um, Is leading me towards, you know, getting closer to like what I want to be doing full time, you know, in the future. But yeah, let's like give an example. I mean, you know, I have a friend who is at a company that has nothing to do with their side hustle. Um, and I've obviously been in many positions like this as well. Um, my friend's trying to develop a video editing company has nothing to do with his side hustle, which is more focused on real estate. Do you think that there are opportunities and like, should he be looking to Find ways to collaborate, you know, these two ideas, or is it best to keep them separate?

AI assessment note: “Do you think that there are opportunities and like, should he be looking to”