The Exchanges

Q thing, uh, that I'm also interested about, and this is kind of nuanced to what you guys built, but there's a lot of people trying to build networks and marketplaces out there. Obviously the thing, the, the now old adage that, uh, Andrew Chen talks about and has written about in his book, you know, the cold star problem. How did you guys crack that problem in the early days?

A Yeah. So you either have to get supply or demand and, uh, ultimately you have to get both. And so we started with supply cause we said, Hey, if we get demand and there's no, no service pros, then this doesn't work. And so we, uh, S we tried a number of different ways of acquiring service pros, but one way really worked. And that was, uh, Craigslist. And so all these service pros were listing their jobs on Craigslist. We went out and found them and said, Hey, there's a new platform for you. You can sign up with us. And instead of posting a job ad every week on Craigslist, which is really dumb, you post with us once and then, uh, we'll help you find jobs forever. And so we actually created a way for the pros to sign up and create their profile on Thumbtack and then auto post that on Craigslist as well. Cause that's where the demand was. And this scaled up to a point where it, it was like a quarter of all Craigslist service volume, all these auto posts from, uh, Thumbtack pros. And then, you know, not surprisingly, we got a cease and desist that told us, uh, we, we should stop this and we'd been banned from Craigslist. And that was one of those moments where like, shit, uh, this was working. We were signing up, you know, tens of thousands of pros a week. Um, and now this main channel has been shut down and we had to find a new way. And you know, the question we asked ourselves is …

AI assessment note: “we started with supply... and so all these service pros were listing their jobs on Craigslist.”

Q Do you remember any of those early ideas that you didn't push forward with?

A Oh, we had lots of them. I mean, like dog rental, uh, we, we had one that we had dog rental entrepreneurs out there. We had, uh, one that we started moving forward with. It was a financial accounts aggregator. They would connect all of your financial accounts, put it in one place. So you could track in one place. Um, you know, some of you may have heard of mint that launched and it launched, like we've been thinking about this for a couple of months and we saw that thing launch and we're like, whoa, they've nailed it. There's like no chance for us. And so we went back to the drawing board and fortunate for us, uh, we came back to this idea of local services, which turned out to be a 10 X bigger idea. And the motivation there was, you know, Amazon's making it trivially easy to buy any product and the same should be true of any service. And so we, you know, were ambitious and naive and just jumped in and started working on it. And it's certainly harder than we ever expected. Uh, but we've made great progress and yeah, we're, we're closer to bringing that vision to life than we ever have.

AI assessment note: “I mean, like dog rental... one that we started moving forward with. It was a financial accounts aggregator”

Q Jonathan, I've listened to you tell, um, a pretty amazing story. I want to say it was like seven years ago at this point, the story of, uh, McCann. Um, can you share just the, the journey of your experience with McCann and the impact it had on you? Because I also think it's an amazing bridge. Between what you built at Thumbtack, but also what you're doing at Athena.

A Yeah. Uh, so. You know, when Thumbtack was scaling up, we had all these service pros, a handyman, a DJ signing up and they would create profiles where they describe their services. And, you know, it turns out a plumber is great at plumbing, but not very good at writing marketing copy about themselves. And so. Marco and I would rewrite all these profiles by hand to help them put their best foot forward, and we did this for the first few hundred service pros thinking that there's this, like, broken window theory where if we did the first hundred then, like, everyone would raise to that bar, but that turned out to be totally wrong, and it was clear we're just gonna have to proofread these things forever, and so I put a job ad up on a site called Odesk at the time, it's now Upwork, and we had, for proofreaders, and we had Applications from all around the world, from Philippines, India, you know, Jamaica, the United States at all price points. And so I thought this was cool. Uh, I'll run a couple dozen people through a practice test and we'll see who wins. And to my. Absolute amazement. This woman in the Philippines named Mikan beat the Americans and everyone else, not just on price, but on quality. She was a better English proofreader than Americans. And so this just like was a jaw dropping moment for me where it opened my eyes to this world of talent outside of America. And obviou…

AI assessment note: “This woman in the Philippines named Mikan beat the Americans and everyone else”

Q I need, um, I need you to talk about one more. Sorry. I'm just, I can't stop thinking about it. Is your, your, your interest in and your delegation of things, uh, containing phthalates?

A Uh, sure. Yeah. So, I mean, uh, the first thing I, like with our EA, we, we had our first create a digital health record. I've always wanted like all my health stuff in one place. And so I was like, Hey, can you reach out to every doctor I've ever worked with for the last 20 years? Um, from my email and asked for all our digital health records. And so we pulled all of those in and had them in one place and that felt good. Um, and then I was listening to this podcast, uh, by Shanna Swan on Rogan. And some of you may have heard of her. She basically, um, there's this mystery. There has been a mystery about testosterone falling one percent per year for the last couple of decades and miscarriage rates increasing one percent per year. These are like bad trend lines and people weren't sure what was behind this. And her theory is that it's a phthalates, which are this chemical in plastic. And basically, uh, it's in plastics and cosmetics and chemicals. It's like Everywhere. And this chemical disrupts your endocrine system, which lowers your testosterone, which means bad for you as an adult, but really bad for, um, babies and kids. And so, you know, if I didn't have an EA, I probably would have honestly like listened to this podcast and be like, well, we're screwed. What am I going to do about it? I mean, it's like, I've got lots of other things on my plate. Um, but since I have, you k…

AI assessment note: “I said, Hey, here's a book on this topic. Will you go read it?”

Q last valuation I saw was a report of three billion. Like you have that win. And so I'm always fascinated when founders have a win. What is it that motivates them to do anything else? Right? So you've, you're now working on Athena, you're working on power set, like you're doing a lot of shit in your life. Like what is it that propels you forward after that first win?

A So I think two things. One, I don't feel like I've won. Uh, when, you know, you go back to what Marco and Sander and I were talking about when we started Thumbtack, our ambition was to be the Amazon of local services. And we made a lot of progress. We've got a big team now, raised lots of capital, but we're not there yet. And so, uh, there's a lot left to do at Thumbtack, but even if Thumbtack does reach its full potential and become the Amazon local services, I just always want to swing bigger. It's like, we've got one life to live and I want to start as many businesses as we can do as much as we can. And it's like, life is short. So, you know, swing for the fences.

AI assessment note: “One, I don't feel like I've won... I just always want to swing bigger.”

Q So on that note, my understanding is first two years of Thumbtack, you slept in a closet and you were rejected by 42 VCs. What was the biggest reason people gave no's?

A Uh, I mean, all the reasons we weren't making any money. Um, there were lots of dead bodies. Lots of people had tried to start a local service marketplace and failed. And, um, we, you know, had a process for signing up lots of service pros at scale. That was pretty, pretty cool, but we hadn't figured out payments or invoicing or, you know, how to make money and all these things. And Um, yeah, the first few years were really tough. We didn't have any money and it was just a small team of 10 of us working out of a house and it's kind of the like do or die and you work All day long, all night long, and just hope you can survive to fight another day.

AI assessment note: “we weren't making any money. Um, there were lots of dead bodies.”

Q spent my time on the 20% of things now. So for you, What are the 20% of things that you spend your time on now? And what are, like, things that, say, an entrepreneur or a CEO thinks that they should be spending their time on that, like, you do not spend your time on and you've delegated, whether it's to EAs or to other people within your company now?

A Yeah, great question. We, you know, Thumbtack was a very traditional venture-backed experience. We raised money. We did all the, all the things that venture-backed companies do. And I, uh, I did whatever was best for Thumbtack always, even if it wasn't what I wanted. You know, this person may not be the person I'm most excited to work with, but they're right for the role. Um, 12 hours of interviews today sounds terrible, but it's what Thumbtack needs. Um, and when I started Athena, there's a few people from, um, Thumbtack's team in the Philippines who came over and helped me start it. And, uh, we just did a daydream where we said, What is a dream business for us? Unconstrained by the way we've built businesses before. And w we said a couple of things. One, uh, we control our destiny. So we don't raise external money. You know, investors are great, but if we're in the fortune position to self-fund it, then let's, uh, let's do that. And, uh, I don't like meetings, so let's not have meetings. So one standing meeting a week. Uh, with the team in the early days and we worked very independently. And now what I say, this is like the most optimal way to run a business. If you're trying to get to Mars. No, I would like get in an office and I'd meet all the time, but I wanted to build a business that I wanted to work at for decades to come. And so I built it much more around the way I li…

AI assessment note: “I don't like meetings, so let's not have meetings... then I brought in a CEO”