The Exchanges

Q of that. If I think about the pie chart of the things you will do and may change, there's, you mentioned a few, one is raise prices, one may be lower prices. One's probably change your pricing model. There's a couple more, I guess. In your experience, where have you found the biggest opportunities end up being maybe early, in the early phase of a startup in that pie chart?

A The number one thing to figure out when you're thinking about the different pricing pieces, pound for pound, it's the pricing metric or the value metric. That's how you charge per user, per thousand visits, per thousand Whatsits, whatever it is. Consumer companies, it's a little bit harder. Physical good products. It's really hard, obviously, because you have that physical good, the physics, you know, you can't get over. But the reason this is so powerful is because If you get everything else kind of in your pricing wrong or not great, but you get that right. You tend to be okay when it comes to monetization. And the reason is, is because first from an acquisition standpoint, like acquiring customers, you end up making sure that you get Disney coming into your product. They're paying Disney prices. And then you get Johnny or Jane startup coming in and they're paying Johnny and Jane prices. You don't want them paying the same thing. Cause obviously the value is different, even if they're consuming almost the same amount. So this allows you to kind of figure that line out. And then what's really beautiful about it is churn tends to be about 20 to 25% lower because people will downgrade, but they're using, you don't get this, like I'm paying for so much and end up not doing, you know, not using a lot of it. It's like, oh, I'm using eight seats this month. I'm going to downgrade or…

AI assessment note: “pound for pound, it's the pricing metric or the value metric.”

Q building your team as a founder or just a leader of any kind. So here's the question. Just what What are the biggest mistakes people make building their team? What are the biggest opportunities people miss when they're building their team? And then just, or just generally what's like your take on how to best approach building your team as a, as a founder or just a leader of people.

A You always have to start answers with cliches. And I think the, the biggest cliche with building a team is, is team is everything, right? Like if you're listening, you've, you've heard that you've probably said that to somebody or, you know, gotten mentored on that. And I was told that in the early days of building, and I, I actually thought it was terrible advice. I thought it was gonna be like the product or marketing or something that was gonna hold us back. But I think that although team is everything, and I truly believe that, If you look at most data or most behaviors that most companies make, this isn't actually how we think or what we do. Let me give you two fundamental issues. I think the first one is we confuse team by being everything to all people, to accommodating to every single person. And especially in tech the last couple of years, maybe that's going to change a little bit now, but it was always like, oh, everyone needs to be like happy. And I think that's a really, really big misconception because Uh, you're not there to make everyone happy. You're there for some sort of mission and some sort of goal, and you want to set up the culture and the team in a way that gets to that particular goal. And I think the little bit more actionable way to look at this is I don't think we actually focus on our team. The average tenure of a manager in tech right now is about 1…

AI assessment note: “Let me give you two fundamental issues. I think the first one is we confuse team”

Q Next topic, first principles thinking. As a Renaissance man of a brain, I feel like you spent a lot of time thinking about from first principles and in our conversations, you always have really interesting approaches to things. What have you learned about actually implementing first principle thinking, which, you know, people are always talking about how do I want to be first principle? Yeah.

A People, people always talk about it and I have There are no good courses that I have found on first principles thinking. There are good blog posts, but the good blog posts kind of explain what it is. And then that's kind of it. Like, it's like, this is what it is. And here's an example. And most of them quote Elon Musk about rockets and breaking down, you know, the, the different parts. So what I kind of found is there's the five whys, which I, I think someone's talked before, or at least I've read it in the newsletter before. Which is just, you keep asking why, right? You know, you kind of, well, this is this way. Well, why is that? Well, this is this way though. Why is that? I found the model that people who aren't great at first principle thinking or aren't great at talking about it, that kind of helps them unlock is this thing called problem cause solution. So I learned this in debate in college and high school, and it basically is you have a problem that you're trying to solve. Well, you can't actually solve a problem. So if we talk about world hunger, You can't just solve world hunger because it's kind of the symptom. It's this problem that exists. Well, then I want to break down what are all the causes of world hunger, right? And it's a little more brainstorming when you have these conversations with folks, especially again, when they struggle with this. And all of a sud…

AI assessment note: “I found the model that... helps them unlock is this thing called problem cause solution.”

Q So the most nerdiest of all bumper stickers. Patrick, we've gone through 10 topics. Is there anything else you want to touch on before we get to a very exciting lightning round?

A I think what I will say is this is all still hard, right? So I'm giving, I'm giving some heuristics. I'm giving some benchmarks, but like your mileage is going to vary, but that's, Again, that's your job. Whether you're a founder, a product person, an exec, whatever you are, like your job is to, you know, take in information. Your job is to kind of analyze the problem and then ultimately, you know, come up with the best solution. And so I think it's one of those things that there's some hard truths I think we talked about, but then there's a lot of this that you kind of have to evaluate it for yourself. So just a general, I may come off like a know-it-all, but I understand that, you know, mileage varies, I guess is the best way to think.

AI assessment note: “I think what I will say is this is all still hard, right?”

Q This is amazing. Two questions. Should every startup have a former spy on their team to help them operationalize these ideas? And then two, is there anything else that you found super valuable that you did based on your training there?

A We didn't have a formal program, but I love hiring veterans, either veterans of intelligence. So they're, they're citizens. So they're not, they're not veterans from a military perspective, but like people who had worked in Intel or people who were actual veterans of, of different military branches. There's a lot of reasons for this, but I think that the intelligence folks, it's a way of thinking. Now you gotta be careful. And this is just purely my opinion, because Depending on how long they were in, the reason I left is because it's the government. It's super bureaucratic. Was one of the most fulfilling jobs like I will ever have. And I was only there for, for, for a short amount of time, but it was just one of those things where like, it's just so bureaucratic. So the 15 year person there is not driving. They're not trying to like change the world necessarily. They have a job, right? So you gotta kind of be careful with that. But yeah, I think there's, there's these really smart people that just think in a different way and It's a broader point is I think it's just really, really good to like go to different industries. Like all this customer development stuff, you go to any like major retailer or any major e-commerce company, they have entire teams just dedicated to this stuff. Like Hallmark was one of our first pricing customers back in the day before we went subscription …

AI assessment note: “I love hiring veterans, either veterans of intelligence... it's a way of thinking.”