The Exchanges

Q Okay, I want to follow that thread, but first of all, what other tools do you have? What are Lindy's one? What else do you find really useful?

A So the other one is, um, Replit. So Replit is basically a vibe coding platform. You can literally go into it and say, you know, I want to make a website for my SaaS software business. Here's, you know, a big document with a bunch of details. It'll go and design a pretty impressive website, but then you can also build web apps now. So you can, you can literally be like, yeah, build a Python web app that does X, Y, Z. And the design is getting so good because it uses cloud four. You can start saying, do it in the style of Stripe. Um, think this through, rewrite all the copy in the tone of David Ogilvie or Malcolm Gladwell or whoever you like. And it does a really incredible job. So what I'm finding is that things that previously would have frustrated me because I would have had to rely on a team of five. I can just do entirely on my own when it comes to web projects and stuff like that. So I'm having a blast with that. That's cool.

AI assessment note: “So the other one is, um, Replit. So Replit is basically a vibe coding platform.”

Q Amazing. Okay. So yeah, I think the benefit is for us is we get to learn from your experience. So let me just ask you this question. What is your best advice for coming up with a great startup idea?

A Ultimately, the best thing is something you're going to be interested in. But I think a mistake a lot of people make is they choose something that everything is, everybody is interested in. So for example, they say, I don't know anyone that hasn't had the thought, man, I would love to start like a really cool restaurant, or, you know, I want to have a cool cafe or something. And what, in reality, what they think about is, How cool would it be to come up with an amazing logo or, you know, all the fun stuff, design the logo, the menu and stuff. But in reality, operating those businesses is miserable. And it's also a very hard business because every morning millions of people wake up and they go, I should start a cafe. But on the flip side, almost nobody wakes up every morning and says, you know what? I'd love to start a funeral home. Or I would like to start a pest control business, or I should start software that helps people fill out forms for the government. And Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's longtime business partner has this amazing quote. He says, fish where the fish are. And he gives this example. He says, you know, if you're a fisherman and you see a large pond and all around the pond, there's a whole bunch of fishermen and they're all elbowing each other out of the, out of the way. They're all using the best lures, the best fishing line. Uh, you know, they all have ama…

AI assessment note: “find those niches where you can actually make real money because competition equals lower margin”

Q Final question. Okay, so let me know if this is true. I, I found that when you were a teenager, when you're running MacTeens, you interviewed Steve Jobs at a conference. Is that true?

A So when I was a teenager, I had a tech news website, and I emailed the Apple PR people, and I said, hey, could I interview Steve Jobs? And they kind of laughed at me, like, they're like, yeah, there's no way you're not going to interview Steve Jobs, but, um, hey, why don't you go to this, um, tour Of the Apple Store. So this is, no other Apple Store has existed. This is in New York at Macworld back in, like, 2000 and four, no, 2003, something like that, and so I was really excited about that, so I show up to go do this tour, and there's, like, 30 other journalists there, and I'm first in line, and this big black SUV pulls up, and this man gets out, and the man is wearing Grey New Balance, little circular John Lennon glasses, the mock turtleneck, and my brain finally puts it together, and I realize it's Steve Jobs, and he walks directly up to me because I'm first in line, and he shakes my hand, and he says, hi, I'm Steve, and I'm like a quivering mess. You know, I'm 17 years old. I, he's my hero. He is my Jesus, and so I was just so high on adrenaline That I just started asking him questions. As soon as we walked in, I basically just stayed at his side and I just picked his brain about all sorts of different stuff. So it's not like I got to ask him questions about life. I was asking him about, you know, the new. 17 inch iMac or whatever, but it was a pretty cool experience to ge…

AI assessment note: “I just started asking him questions. As soon as we walked in”

Q For people that don't, I don't know, that don't have this experience for just most people. Is there, is there one thing you do maybe a heuristic that kind of gives you a sense? Maybe there's something here. Maybe there's a lot of fish. Maybe it's a valuable problem or no, this will tell me it probably isn't.

A No, unfortunately I think it's mostly gut. I mean, it's a, it's a, like, you know, Munger and Buffett talk about having a whole bunch of mental models in your brain and they form a lattice work. Right. And they all kind of piece together. And I feel like for me, there's so much of this that is like, it's almost like I'm an AI model and I've trained on all this data of what works and what doesn't and what, you know, what's a good boat and what, what's a bad business, et cetera. And when I see it, I just immediately know. I mean, I think all the, all entrepreneurs are so lucky now to be able to go into Claude or chat GPT and just say, Hey, I'm thinking about starting a Botox clinic. Can you break down the numbers? Is this a good business? What's hard about it? What is the regulatory, uh, moat? You know, what, what would my payroll look like? I didn't have any of that. And so I started so many incredibly stupid businesses, but I think there's no excuse at this point. You should be able to do it with AI.

AI assessment note: “No, unfortunately I think it's mostly gut.”

Q the place. I don't know, solopreneur fishermen. Okay. Coming back to just starting a successful company, what would you say are the keys to an amazing business model and amazing business broadly? Like, what should you be thinking about and looking into? I know you spend a lot of time thinking about this when you're buying companies. What are like a few bullet points that you want to focus on?

A What I do for a living is basically buy businesses. So in my early career, I started one business. Then I started about 10 more. And then I realized starting businesses was extremely hard. And I, I was doing pretty well. I was making quite a bit of money and I'd sold one of my businesses. And I was looking out at the next 10 years and really asking myself, what do I want my career to be? And am I happy doing what I'm doing? And the answer was no, I did not like starting businesses and experiencing that failure rate. It was incredibly stressful. And so I picked up a book about investing and I got lucky. The first one I bought, I bought was about Warren Buffett. And for those that don't know, Warren Buffett is kind of, he's counter to every VC kind of hustle culture thing you might hear because he basically just sits quietly in a room. And reads all day despite owning 260, uh, different businesses and being one of the 10 wealthiest people in the world. His life is incredibly calm. He only does what he wants and he spends most of his time quietly reading and once or twice a year, he makes a big decision to buy a business. And so when I read about Warren Buffett, I just thought, wow, I'm a sucker. I'm running around like a crazy person trying to run all these businesses. Why am I not just buying businesses and letting them run? And so When I'm buying a business, what I'm really loo…

AI assessment note: “what I'm really looking for is something that I can't mess up”