The Exchanges

Q And then did you share when this might come out? I know you don't promise dates, but is there something you want to share there or is it?

A Well, unfortunately we promised. We, we said, uh, we said by the end of this year, here's, that's why I was getting to that. But we said, uh, by the end of, of 20, 23, and we're almost there, here we are in December. So mid December, we're gonna start to roll this out to the first batch of customers. It's probably not gonna be available publicly to everyone in the world yet. But that'll come soon after, but the first batch of customers are gonna, are gonna get it, and we'll kind of slow roll it out, figure out what we missed, what we need to, you know, tighten up and tweak. It's not really a beta as much as it's just a limited release, which is the smart way to do this, and then we'll, uh, we'll open the doors very, very soon after that.

AI assessment note: “mid December, we're gonna start to roll this out to the first batch of customers”

Q raising venture and bootstrapping. So just like, what's your advice to founders for when raising money makes sense? I, I actually wrote this article once called, your startup is probably not venture scale. Just trying to convince people like you may have a really good idea, but it doesn't mean it's a venture scale business. And I feel like we're aligned on this. Um, what's your advice to founders there?

A I think, you know, obviously if you're, I think if you're building cars or you need a factory or you're opening a restaurant and there's actual like things you need to buy, like ovens and you need to hire people right off the bat and you need to pay rent, you need capital and it could come from you, it could come from friends and family, or it could come from an investor. It can come from a bank loan. There's lots of places to get it, but you'd need it, you know? Software businesses, though, and, you know, businesses like ours, we just make software, and a lot of people in our industry are like us in that respect. They, ah, they need a couple laptops and a couple people, and like, it's pretty cheap. It's really pretty cheap to get going, and the margins are incredibly healthy in software, or they should be. What's interesting is that Silicon Valley has found a way to make the most profitable style of business the least profitable. Like, software has, there's like, No physical costs. Uh, it should, the margin should be close to 80 or 90%, and, and it turns out that they're, they're barely even, you know, they're, most of them aren't positive in the end, or they're just slicing or sliding by basically. Um, I don't understand how, how that, well, I do, I mean, they have too many people and they spend too much money on customer acquisition and all that stuff, but it, it blows me aw…

AI assessment note: “if you're building cars or you need a factory... you need capital”

Q this, uh, path is essentially build something, sell it, make money, live like a chill life, not, you know, super stressed, growth focused, obsessed, need to build a billion dollar company. Do you think this path is something everyone should do? Is it specific type of personality, a specific type of product? Do you recommend people that are, I don't know, sometimes do go this big shot venture scale route?

A I'm glad there are some people who do that. I mean, I'm glad that there's some businesses that wouldn't have worked out had they not taken a bunch of funding and went big, clearly. And, and there's many impressive businesses that do that. But let's face it, those are extreme outliers. The majority of companies on this planet run like ours. They're bootstrapped. They don't have any money. No one's willing to give them a penny. And they, they, they, they open up a shop somewhere, they, they do something, they put their shingle out, and they, you know, launch a website or whatever, and they try to make it work. So most people are doing it our way, even though in our industry, it seems like we're the outliers. We're, we're not. We're actually incredibly boring and mainstream, really, you know. If you were to pick any random business owner on the street, they'd run their business like us. I gotta make more money than I spend, otherwise I'm out. I don't have this big cushion of millions sitting in the bank that I can just spend on things. So they're, they're pretty, uh, they keep an eye on costs. They think about this carefully, but yeah, I'm glad there's people who are going for the moonshot and doing it their way and doing a different way. And, and, and the world moves forward sometimes because of those businesses and it's great. It's great. And I admire them. It's just that it's n…

AI assessment note: “I'm not really, hopefully I don't come off as encouraging everyone to be like me.”

Q Final question. I was going to ask you this before you mentioned this, but you said you're writing a new book potentially. Are you able to share what this new book might be about?

A Yeah, we haven't started writing it. Um, I can tell you where I'm thinking about it. Uh, and it's going to revolve around the idea of, of gut and intuition in business. And decision making. I don't really know exactly how they all play in here in, in a book, but I, I think we need to celebrate gut and intuition more in business. And most business books are not about that. They're kind of about the opposite in many ways. You know, you can't, uh, whatever you can't, uh, improve what you can't measure or whatever these things are. And I think that's true in a lot of realms like, you know, medicine and, you know, you can look at your biomarkers and you can do things. Uh, I, I don't think things are quite as direct in business, and I, and I think that intuition and gut is something to be celebrated, so I think what we're probably gonna end up doing is looking at all the ways we use intuition and gut to make decisions at work, whether it's hiring or product decisions or policy decisions or whatever it is, maybe break down some of those decisions in the past, perhaps, or talk about things on a day-to-day basis about how we employ those tools to, to move forward. So that's roughly the idea. It's very loose right now, but, uh, hopefully we can tighten it up, and that's what I'd love to I'd love to focus on that next.

AI assessment note: “it's going to revolve around the idea of, of gut and intuition in business.”

Q our CEO is also a designer, very product minded person. Many people aren't that many people don't have actual lack of enough experience to have built amazing instincts. So do you solve that by just hiring people that have a lot of experience? Is it like a hiring thing? Is it trust people that have a lot more experience more, you know, cause not everyone's gonna have the right instinct.

A It's true. I mean, look, um, Brian's probably one of the greatest CEOs around today, but, uh, I, I can't, I like, I like small business. So he knows how to run a bigger organization. I, I wouldn't. So I don't, I can't really step into that answer from that perspective. One of the reasons we stay small, I think is so we can all rub off on each other. And, and when we hire, we can be very, very selective because we only hire a few people a year. And so when we, when I, when I, I only hire designers and product people, David hires programmers and different people in the company hire different people. But when I hire designers, I'm curious about their tastes. I'm curious about what they like. I'm curious about what other products they think are, are, are good. I'm curious about what they've seen that they admire or who they like. I'm always asking about that because that helps me get a sense of who they are and what lens they see the world through and, and how, what, what kind of, um, influences are going to bring to bear. So that's the kind of stuff I'm looking for. And, and One of the things that we do, uh, during the interview process for designers specifically and product people, which is the same thing in my mind, is, uh, they do a project for us at the end. So the last, like, five finalists will do a project for them, for us. We'll pay them to do the project. They'll have a w…

AI assessment note: “when I hire designers, I'm curious about their tastes.”

Q Okay. So one of them is, uh, work isn't war. And you wrote a book about this roughly about work doesn't have to suck, but I guess just, can you just talk about why war work feels like war and then what maybe people could do to make it feel less like war?

A This is about words, uh, in a lot of ways. So, uh, I don't, I'm not looking at the page right now. I could pull it up and read it, but essentially, you know, a lot of work uses war metaphors and war to like, you're targeting customers. You are conquering a market. Uh, gosh, now I really want to make sure I get all these right. So hang on. I'm just going to look this up because, uh, the, these things, these things are how people talk about work. So, so it says they conquer the market. They capture mindshare. They target customers. They employ a sales Force. They hire head hunters. They destroy the competition. They pick battles and they make a killing. That's how people talk about business. I, I find that to be depressing. It just feels depressing to me. We use words to, to establish Uh, a perspective and a way of thinking about the world, and if those are the words that are in your head, then, then you feel like it's this war, and we're always like, you know, people are always, this is the other thing, people are always like, you know, what do the Navy SEALs do, and they're like, yeah, that's the Navy SEALs, man, it's not your software business, like, what is, we always look into, like, Navy SEALs and tell us how to run a business, and like, military, they've got a group of eight, and they do, it's like, yeah, ok, that's, that's that context, like, Can we not look at that for a…

AI assessment note: “if those are the words that are in your head, then, then you feel like it's this war”