My First Million: Greatest Hits #7 - Revisiting The Idea Episode with Product Genius Scott Belsky

Hubspot Podcast Network Hubspot Podcast Network 7/5/21 - 58m - PDF Transcript

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Back to the show.

This episode is sponsored by the HubSpot Podcast Network.

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All right, everyone.

This is Sam.

I am sitting in a La Quinta Inn.

If you're not American, that is like a budget motel type of place.

I'm in the middle of Texas driving to New York City.

It's close to 11 p.m.

And you know what I did or at least what I want to do after driving a few hours on my

way to New York?

I want to talk to you and I want to listen to one of my closest friends, Sean, interview

my hero.

So today's episode is with Scott Belsky.

Scott is an acquaintance of mine and he invested in the hustle and I've looked up to him for

years.

And I'll tell you why.

Just his accomplishments, so Scott is the chief product officer at Adobe.

If I had a bet one day, he'll be CEO maybe soon.

But prior to that, he had this wonderful company called Behance.

Behance, you go to it and designers can't upload their portfolio.

It's awesome.

If you're a designer, you definitely know what this is.

If you're not a designer, go to Behance.

You'll see it.

It's a B-E-H-A-N-C-E.

He sold that company for about $150 million and when he sold it, it was mostly bootstrapped.

He eventually raised a little bit of money, like $6 or $7 million, but they raised that

money like right before they sold.

So they had built most of the business without funding.

And he funded the company by selling notebooks and speaking at conferences.

It's a pretty amazing story.

And also, he used to get traffic at Behance, and he'll tell this story, I believe, from

this company called Pinterest.

He was getting traffic from Pinterest and he emailed the guy and goes, what the heck

is this thing Pinterest?

And he talked to Ben, the founder, and they were just a small company at a time, I think

a couple of folks working on it.

And he eventually invested in that company, invested $15,000 into that company.

I think at the time, they were worth something like $3 or $4 million.

So if you do the math, that investment could be worth like $50 million.

That same week, Scott, he had a friend who was buying his notebooks and he looked up

who this guy was, was buying the notebooks and he hollered at him and he worked at this

company called StumbleUpon and his name was Garrett Camp.

And Garrett goes, hey, I'm working on this other startup.

Would you want to invest in it?

Basically it's going to replace taxis.

It's called UberCab.

Scott was like, well, I don't have too much money, but you've bought my notebooks.

I kind of feel like I've got to support you.

And I don't think this idea is that great, but I'll invest in it anyway.

And he invested another $15,000.

I believe that round was valued at the company at like $3.5 million.

And so whatever the valuation of Uber is today, like $90 billion, $80 billion.

I mean, that's worth like, I would imagine close to $100 million from that 15K investment.

Pretty amazing story.

So he's incredibly accomplished as an entrepreneur and as an investor, but he's a product genius.

I mean, this guy is amazing.

I've only hung out with him a handful of times and he invested in my company, but I admire

this guy so much because of the way he thinks about product.

But then also his vibe, his energy, it's always calming to me.

You know, he's very inspirational and he, he's got a wonderful outlook.

And so what we're going to do is Sean's going to interview him.

He did this like maybe 12 months ago.

And I'm going to tell you some thoughts as Sean is interviewing him and I'll do some

quick interruptions.

So let's get to the episode.

But here's the amazing thing is that when you ship a number of features and then you

start killing a few of them.

What you find is that the core stuff gets used more.

A lot of social consumer products, you know, ultimately engage someone based on something

they're insecure about.

Hey guys, Sean here.

I got a different kind of episode for you that I think you'll like and just to set the

scene for you.

So I'm recording this right now.

It's Christmas Eve.

We've got about an hour to go till Santa hits the chimneys.

And this episode is going to be with Scott Belsky, probably one of the coolest people

I met this year doing the podcast.

And as I'm recording this, you know, I'm just supposed to do the intro and tell you what

this is about, but I'm feeling a little reflective because it is the end of the year.

I started this podcast about six months ago on a whim.

I was bored.

We were selling our company and we were in the due diligence period and I was just getting

itchy waiting for lawyers to finish doing what lawyers do.

And I was like, I want to start something new and so I knew I couldn't start a company.

So I started a podcast and I didn't know if anyone would listen and amazingly, you know,

I really thought nobody would listen to this thing.

And now here we are six months later.

I'm looking at the dashboard right now and there's 526,000 listeners, so over half a

million listeners already just last few months.

And so I never thought that that would happen.

If you're listening to this right now, thank you.

This has been a kind of an amazing new addition to my life.

Hey, what's pretty funny is this Pat, I mean, I'm recording this at the end of June.

I mean, we're in what Sean was was given that speech we were at like, well, I don't know,

baby, 60,000 downloads a month.

Now we're at like 800,000 downloads.

So whatever he's saying we had after like six months, we get, we get that way over that

per month now.

So kind of funny how hearing him say that I started the podcast because I thought it

would be a great excuse to hang out with interesting people.

I don't drink coffee, no caffeine from me, never had the taste for it.

So I didn't like inviting people out to coffee or trying to make up excuses to meet.

And I thought the best excuse would be, hey, come on my show, come on my podcast.

And for whatever reason, that kind of flattery works.

So I wanted to invite people like Scott onto the podcast and somebody like Scott's interesting

because I start the show with this, which is he's done basically every job I've ever

thought about doing.

So he bootstrapped his own startup.

He raised venture capital and right to grow that way.

He sold his company and then he became a tech executive.

He's currently the chief product officer at Adobe, which is, you know, obviously Adobe

is a massive company.

So he's a, you know, he's been a founder, he's been a tech executive.

He's been an author.

He wrote a book called the messy middle, which is an awesome book about the process of creating

stuff.

So, you know, he created a guy who wrote a book.

He's been an angel investor in companies like Uber or Pinterest, AKA, you know, two of the

best angel investments of the decade.

And then he was a VC with benchmark, one of the top funds that exists.

So the guy basically has done everything.

And what I was blown away with and what you'll get out of this conversation is he's just

a good dude.

He's a very down to earth, smart person who, I think he says this somewhere in it, which

is his goal wasn't to become any of those things.

He didn't say, I want to be a tech executive.

I want to be a founder.

I want to be an investor.

He was just curious and followed his curiosity and it kind of led him down those paths and

I found that kind of inspiring.

So, you know, as the new year hits, I'm thinking about all these different episodes we've done.

I don't know about 25 episodes, meeting all these great people and then even getting a

chance to meet some of, you know, if we got half a million listeners, that's a cool number.

But I've gotten to meet, you know, hundreds of you in person at one of the live shows

or people who email me and we're going to try to squeeze in a Q&A episode this week.

So, if you are listening to this and you have a question that you wanted to ask, you know,

it could be about business, it could be about investing, it could be about a podcast, whatever,

I'll answer.

Just shoot me an email.

My email is just puri.

P-U-R-I dot Sean S-H-A-A-N.

So, puri.Sean at gmail.com.

So just shoot me an email.

I'm going to do a Q&A episode.

I already have like 20 questions or so, but send them in and I'll try to get through as

many as I can.

I hope you enjoy this episode.

We're not going to do a super fancy intro.

We're just going to go right in and it's a little bit different.

We recorded this thing at night and I just didn't have the energy to do the whole, okay,

let's start with your story from beginning to end.

I just hopped around on whatever was interesting to me and it made for a fun convo.

Me and Scott, I consider us friends now after this because the conversation was that fun

to be a part of.

So, it kind of hops around.

It's a little bit of a different flavor.

I hope you guys like it.

And again, thanks so much for supporting the show.

The podcast is already bigger than I ever dreamed it would be and all that made me want

to do was grow it even 10 times bigger.

So, that's what we'll be doing next year.

All right, guys.

Enjoy the show.

Oh, my gosh, we're popping this guy up so much and we're both recording at night.

So, that's that's something.

Let's go.

Scott, welcome.

Thank you.

So, Scott Belzky.

So, I don't like doing intros because usually I butcher it when I do it, but what I thought

was interesting about having you was like, you've done the career path that's like everything

I've thought of doing, you've actually already done.

So, it's like, you know, you've written a book, you bootstrapped a company, you raised

venture capital, you sold the company, you've invested, you've been a tech executive at

Adobe.

So, I'm like, all the potential career paths you've actually explored, it sounds like,

okay.

So, you're a career identity crisis at all times.

Yeah.

Either you know exactly what you're doing or you have no clue what you're doing.

Right.

Fine line between the two maybe.

And currently, which one of those paths are you in at the moment?

Yeah.

I mean, listen, sometimes I think, what is my happiest state professionally?

Actually, just generally.

Okay.

I have a feeling of feeling fully utilized.

And I think that personally, you know, I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm a friend, you know,

you feel utilized in all those ways.

And then professionally, I feel fully utilized in a day like today, actually, where I had

meetings with product teams.

I had meetings kind of bleeding change in the big organization, those types of meetings.

I also had pitches, a couple pitches from companies that I might invest in.

I also helped make a couple introductions to companies that I'm already an investor in.

And I also even had a quick talk related to the book.

And so I feel like every muscle was stretched in some way shape or form.

That's a day.

Yeah.

That's a day.

And so I think that I've always just tried to pull threads on curiosities and I do, you

know, for better or for worse, I kind of am enjoying, you know, both ends of the spectrum

these days.

Yeah.

To give people a sense, it's like 9pm on a, what is it, Tuesday, Monday night, I don't

know, Tuesday night, some day.

We squeezed it in.

And I was telling you, I was like, I give you credit because I know it's easy when you're

like two weeks out and you're like, sure, yeah, we'll make it work.

And then the day of you're like, and you're like 9th Uber of the day and you're like,

what am I, who, who's this podcast?

What am I going to do?

Yeah.

But I, yeah, give you props.

In fact, on the last episode, I sort of put out one of my, my life theories, which is

80% is just showing up.

And most of the things that you don't want to show up for it, if you just build that

discipline to just show up, good things happen and you just have to, you just have to do

it.

Okay.

So you've done a bunch of things.

If I'm listening to this, I'm like, okay, why am I interested?

So you've created Behance, which if you're a creative person, you know exactly what

Behance is.

Like somebody who's a, maybe a designer or somebody in the creative world, what, what

was Behance?

Yeah.

So Behance was inspired by a bit of a sense of frustration with the creative world and

just how disorganized it was.

A lot of my friends in the creative community, architects, designers, finding from college,

their careers were at the mercy of circumstance.

And I felt like they felt like they never got attribution for their work.

And I felt like they were not doing the greatest they could be doing in their career as a result

of that.

And so Behance was an effort to organize the creative world and people would always say,

yeah, good luck with that, but the, the idea back in the day was, why are people having

their portfolio sites sitting on some websites out in the ether, only visited by people who

know them.

Their work should also be broken out and searchable and sortable based on the client, the search

term or whatever.

And then through someone's work, you discover who that person is, then you see their portfolio

and then you see who they are.

And so it was inverting the model to some extent and it was a long slog.

I mean, Behance was five years of bootstrapping, two years as a venture-backed business acquired

by Adobe, three years of integration.

It was an incredible journey.

Artridge in a pear tree.

Right, right.

We kind of saw it all, but it's, it's great.

I mean, I love building products for creative people.

I find that ultimately across all industries, creative people are the ones that really move

things forward and they compel us to take action.

They, you know, prompt emotion through media and movies, whatever it is.

So it's just kind of an honor to, you know, build things for creative people.

It's always been something that gets me going.

Yeah.

Somebody asked me like, why do you like to do that?

Why that?

In traditional terms, I don't seem that creative.

I'm not a designer.

I'm not an artist of some kind, not making music.

You know, anytime you're trying to make something new happen, you're being creative.

You know, fundamentally you're problem-solving something new.

And I'm like, you know, it's really simple.

Like, I like the new shit in the world.

I get excited about new shit.

And if you want new shit, you need people to be creative and you need creative people

to have all the tools at their disposal to do what they do best.

Well, I think it's, you know, creativity is genuine interest combined with initiative.

You have like deep interest into something.

It doesn't matter what it is to your point, but you also have the initiative to do something

with it.

You know, there are folks that get fascinated by those edges that will someday become dissenters

and, you know, that's what makes things work.

And so normally on the bottom, like, okay, be Hans, great.

That's the mission.

How did you think of the idea?

How did you get your first 100 customers?

Those are the normal ones.

And so if you're here to listen to that, sorry, I'm not going to do it this time.

There's people who have asked you those questions.

I've seen those interviews.

So actually, I don't know if it's because it's 9 p.m.

I'm in the mood to just talk about other things.

One of the things I want to talk about is you wrote this book, Messy Middle, which is

cool.

I'll tell you the premises I understand.

The premises I understand it is 95% of the conversation is around the beginning and end

of companies.

I'm guilty of it myself.

But, you know, press and, you know, the media is much more, you know, that's their bread

and butter is like somebody's starting something, somebody's ending something, either from set

failure or success.

It's a 95% of the talk or 99% of the talk is about 1% of the time that actually goes

into any venture.

And everybody just sort of fast forwards the middle, the actual like sort of doing and

navigating of the unknown.

And so that's what the Messy Middle is about.

It's about that middle section.

I think Eric Ries says this good phrase where he's like, act one, we go into depth about

the hero and how they came up with their idea.

Act three, you know, the resolution and act two is the montage, which is all the hard

work and it's just like all the training.

You just, you just quickly fast forward through all of it so you can get to the good.

It's not sexy, but it's kind of all the matters.

And so why write the book?

Well, I was fascinated by that big period of volatility that just seemed like an endless

succession of lows and highs.

I was interested in the idea that we're not our best selves at the lows or the highs.

We're not our best selves at the lows because we make decisions out of fear.

You know, at Behance, we saw new companies, new competitors emerge and we made a lot of

mistakes at times where we would suddenly try to emulate and then realize, wait, we just

lost touch with what we really are and what we're good at.

And then you're also not your best self at the highs because you falsely attribute the

things that you did to the things that work.

And so there's something to be learned at those moments.

There's a practice to be developed and how you endure the lows and how you optimize like

hell, anything that works.

And that was what was interesting to me and I wanted to interview and chronicle a lot

of stories and insights from people that I've worked with, wards that I was on, entrepreneurs

that I partnered with and also things that I learned in my own experience.

And originally I kind of started this as a project for myself and then I realized I had

this Evernote notebook of like 680 or so insights and I said, okay, I'm going to pare

this down and ship it.

So that was the origin of the book.

Because I was thinking, why not a blog post?

I read a bunch of blog posts.

Part of the reason why I wanted to have you on is your blog is actually really good.

And what's the domain?

It's just like Belski.com, right?

Yeah, I guess, yeah, it's like on medium, but I don't know, you can get there through

many different ways.

So I read a bunch of your things and you have these like, almost like watercolor art diagrams

of stuff.

So I've been reading these for a long time and I have a couple of friends, Sam from

the Hustle, who you invested in and Greg, Greg Eisenberg, he says amazing things about

you.

So that's why I wanted to have you on.

Like your philosophies that I've read and then friends who vouch for you and why not just

like do a blog post?

Why did it have to be a book?

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question because a book is kind of stagnant.

You can't really update it as easily.

I think though that a book is a forcing function to just still it all down and also try to

find the threads and then to package it as a piece of art.

One thing I did with this book is every insight has like a statement that is also like presented

in sort of a design section to give it some gravity.

Gotcha.

Like what's an example of one of those?

Like an example is the science of businesses scaling the art of business is the things

that don't scale.

And then it's like, okay, what is that?

Right.

Yeah, impact that.

And so that will be like a two or three page section about how we sort of perseverate over

all the science nuances and actually our instinct is to not want to do anything in our businesses

that doesn't scale because we feel like that's a waste of time when in fact a lot of the

greatest examples of distinguishing a brand or a service are the things that don't scale

like Airbnb sending out photographers for every apartment or I mean, every company has their

example of the things that they did that don't scale that ended up being the art.

And how do you also preserve that as you grow and how do you decide what your art is?

And so that's like an example of one of maybe 200 or so insights in the book.

Gotcha.

And by the way, I don't know if Sean clearly said this, but Scott had just come out with

a book at this time called The Messy Middle.

So it's awesome.

I actually, I bought it.

I read it.

It's pretty badass.

All right, back to it.

You write this book and I like it because there's some books where you can kind of tell the

person who's writing this, like they're either, you know, nowadays not trying to make money

off this, but they're trying to parlay this into speaking gigs or things like that.

But like you already had your sort of success and wins.

So this, it feels like it comes from a different place.

It comes from a place of like, I want to share wisdom or like first tap into the wisdom,

the scattered wisdom you had in your Evernote files, like put it together for yourself and

then like generously give.

Is that like a...

Yeah, it was weird.

It was actually, I remember the moment when I was kind of entering another one of those

things I had observed over, you know, a board meeting or something.

And then I realized, gosh, like there are so many in here and I think it was on a plane

and I remember being like, gosh, if this thing goes down, like no one's ever going to see

any of this stuff.

It's only going to be for me.

Right.

And so that was one of those moments.

I also, you know, I think there's a part of me that aspires to do more coaching and

helping people build products.

One of the things that I love doing and done it with Sam and also with Bragg and others

is help them develop their products and to build their product teams and hire the right

designers and build a design culture.

And I wanted to, I did see this as a book as an opportunity to kind of help share some

of the things I've learned, some of the things I'm thinking about and do more of that stuff.

So it was in some ways like a cornerstone of that, of that intention I have for the next

part of my life.

What's something that you commonly, so when you advise people to say on building products

and making better products, obviously as an entrepreneur, you'd always be better.

You will never turn down the opportunity to make your product better.

Sure.

It is your rock.

Let some like common things you find yourself constantly advising people to do or, you

know, questions you keep asking or advice you keep giving.

Is there anything that's sort of a pattern you're noticing as you do this for different

companies?

I would say like two that come to mind, you know, one is obsessing over the first mile

of the user's experience of the product, which ironically typically is the last mile that

the team spends actually thinking about.

And yet it's the only part of the product experience that every customer will in fact

experience.

Right.

After that is just drop off.

And first mile just so people know.

Sorry.

So it's like literally the onboarding, the splash page onboarding, step by step, the questions

you're asked before you get into the product, how quickly you actually realize any form

of value in the product, the defaults of the product, you know, does it show you everything

at once or only a few things?

The progressive disclosure functionality, like all of these factors are things you

must consider as you're nailing that first mile experience, which is in fact probably

what determines the fate of most products, frankly.

Yes.

Because, you know, you get 60 seconds or 90 seconds with the bulk of your cost of your

do.

And I like to remind folks that every customer as great as they may be and as wonderful as

your product may be, every customer is lazy, vain and selfish in their first 15 to 30 seconds

of using your product.

How are you going to cater to them in that world before, and I think the mistake we make

is we expect our customers to have too much faith in us as product builders.

They don't care.

In fact, they shouldn't because their life is too busy and they shouldn't spend any

amount of time, energy or effort, you know, until they actually know that they're going

to get value out of it.

Right.

And so that's the conundrum.

So that's like one example of something that, you know, I love working on with product teams.

Another example is kind of unpacking the psychology of their customer.

A lot of social consumer products, you know, ultimately engage someone based on something

they're insecure about, right, something they want to have validated, something they want

to learn or they're worried about.

I mean, there's a lot of like under underlying nuances of a product that are really driven

on psychology.

You know, I was talking to the team at VSCO the other day and, you know, they decided

not to aggregate the number of followers that you have visible to you, nor do they let you

see how many likes something has.

That's very counterintuitive to what we know about ego analytics and the things that drive

social consumer product usage.

But they had an insight, right, which was the type of customer and how they wanted to

use the product.

That sort of thing is very important thing to kind of distill and then make as a core

principle.

And so when you're investing in companies, I'm guessing you're looking for in that first

couple, you know, first conversation with the entrepreneur, you're trying to figure out

what insights do they have about the psychology of their customer.

And also when you demo the product, how's this first mile experience?

Those are probably two of the, you know, first tests of your investment.

Yeah, they are.

And of course, you know, for consumer products and for enterprise products, there are different

types of tests or different types of lenses you look at them through.

But I think that those actually apply to both, you know, in the enterprise, you realize that

everyone wants to look better in front of their boss.

Everyone is, you know, sometimes even more lazy in terms of what they're willing to do.

And so you have to build products and first mile experiences that take those things into

account.

So these are important things to think about as you're considering as an investor.

If you're a product oriented investor, like, right, what are some of the investments you

made that you're proud of?

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, my first ever investment was Pinterest.

So I met Ben Silverman back in 2010, and I had no business being an angel investor.

I was just leading my own company.

But I had met...

You met him how?

You just...

I met him through of all people.

I think it was our intern.

And he, you know, but Ben was coming through New York to raise money because he had hard

time filling his round out here.

And we both were building products that we were orienting towards designers to some degree.

And a lot of the pins on Pinterest were driving to behance pages.

And I was seeing that all those slow, but rapidly growing, you know, source of traffic.

Back then it was a forest Google, but then stumble upon and tumblr made a couple others.

And then I just started working with him first as a product advisor.

And then when he was raising the seed round, he was like, do you want to participate?

And I was like, okay.

So that was, you know, that was the first foray.

It was amazing because it was just cool to see a product at that stage and to share

some of what I learned, but also just engage in a lot of healthy debate.

And so I think there, you know, there have been a bunch of every product experience that

I've had with the team has been remarkably different.

I sat on the board of Sweetgreen for a few years, you know, a totally different world,

right?

But then again, Sweetgreen is thinking about efficiency behind the counter and how to,

you know, reduce operations time or preparing salads.

The form factor of the actual bowls and how that increases efficiency and is better for

the environment, the design of the space.

And then the mobile experience, they had this ambition of having over 50% of all orders,

you know, started on mobile, you know?

And so I just, I love getting a bit geeky with product problems and, you know, and helping

solve them.

Right.

That's amazing.

So what fascinates me and gets me pumped up about Scott is his passion.

So we just jumped from Behance, which is this thing for designers.

We went to Sweetgreen, which is fancy, healthy salads.

We did Pinterest, which is whatever you, however you describe Pinterest, I mean, he just jumps

from thing to thing to thing.

And so his tastes are eclectic.

He likes all types of stuff, but it's all kind of boils down to this, like this passion

about making widgets that just like, we don't have to like pretend and act like Pinterest

is saving the world.

I mean, maybe it is, maybe it isn't a matter.

I mean, it definitely isn't like we can say that safely, but he cares about, and his passion

about making it great.

And I admire that about him.

I know I get burnt out on stuff and I'm like, oh, everything's stupid.

This is so dumb, this podcast, it's so stupid.

This is meaningless.

I mean, we all get that way, right?

And I get pumped up hearing him about how passionate he is about this.

It gets me excited.

But then also, did you hear how, and I actually believe this to be true when Ben asked him

to do it in vast, he goes, well, okay.

And it was a small company and there was the first round of funding, but he defaulted to

optimism.

It's something that I don't always do.

Because I'll default to, well, this won't work for this reason, this reason, and this

reason.

Scott doesn't tend to do that.

I've talked to him.

It seems like he doesn't do that.

And I admire that.

And I think that's a really, really good takeaway that you should all listen to in his voice

is this optimism.

There's something about it.

It's like, it's the American dream.

I don't know what it is.

It's one of the reasons why I love immigrants.

It's one of the reasons why I like people who are down on their luck.

They still get after it.

There's something here that I find addicting and invigorating.

And just listening to his voice and him describe these things, it gets me pumped, it gets me

fired up.

Okay.

So when you made that first angel investment in Pinterest, you don't have a budget for

this.

You're not like, okay, I've made it because you're still doing Behance at the time.

You had not exit, correct?

And so you said, I'm in no position to do angel investing, but you did it anyways.

What risk did you take there?

So when you put in whatever you put in, what percent of your net worth were you putting

on the line at that time?

Yeah, it was probably a good chunk of my salary.

And the other thing I did, though, to rationalize it for myself, I remember is Ben had worked

at Google.

He had a network on the West Coast.

I was this new entrepreneur in New York that didn't have any of that network.

I actually felt like I would learn a lot from this.

And so in some ways, I was like, I'm sort of paying for an education, if nothing more.

And it was, again, like I just knew so little about everything I do now back in 2010.

So it was nine years ago.

If you have a real deep curiosity about something and then you find someone you really respect

and give a lot to learn from them, find a way to get closer to them, find a way to work

with them.

It just always leads to something and you may not accept what it is.

This is timely.

So I just yesterday invested in a self-driving car company.

And my last sort of, as I was going through the last checklist of, OK, should I do this?

This is meaningful money to me.

I'm not at the point where, when I invest dollars in, I actually really want those dollars

to come back.

This is not like the philanthropy angel investing that some people do.

And so my last thing was like, look, I'm going to learn so much about robotics, machine learning,

and self-driving cars.

That's the future.

Whether it's this company or the next one, these guys are the future.

And this might just be my education.

And worst case scenario, this is my education.

And I started helping these guys the last couple of days, try to get their business

off the ground.

And already I feel like I'm get to live in the future a couple of hours a week just

by working with them.

Do you guys want a funny update on that?

I'm almost positive.

That company either has gone bankrupt or Sean has completely written it off.

And I asked him if he should have done that.

And this is funny.

He's going to kill me for saying this.

I think, don't entirely quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure he said that he regrets

it because he wasn't entirely interested in, or after learning a bit, he's like, I don't

actually don't know if I'm actually that interested in self-driving cars.

But the guy who started it was pretty interesting.

And I was cool taking that risk.

But that was, in fact, his education.

I don't think he regrets that investment.

But I think that it's fun.

Just to give you that update, it went out of business, I think.

It's a long-term view on the value of learning and relationships.

But also for those that aren't ready to write a check to people, there's so many ways of

getting closer to people that you admire and want to learn from and keeping those relationships.

I think platforms also like Twitter are amazing in that regard.

There's some people that I somehow got connected to on Twitter that I've never even met in

my real life who just reached out to me and just started to share enough information and

witty observations and feedback on something that I wrote that I just start to follow them.

And then I follow them for a year and two years.

And then these are folks that feel like you know them.

This is how I met Scott, by the way.

I followed him on Twitter and this is how I met Sean.

I met Sean this way.

I started emailing him and we got to know each other online, even though we lived a few miles

away from each other.

This is how I've gotten in touch with most of my friends.

So what Scott's talking about, it works, this podcast is the results of it.

The company that I started, the Hustle, it happened because I took a course called the

Copywriting course by Neville Madora.

I emailed him, became friends with him.

He taught me about writing.

I wanted to start a newsletter.

So if you are sitting on your ass right now with nothing to do and you want more, reach

out to people and in particular, start a Twitter and start tweeting and use that same picture

on Twitter for the rest of your social profiles, including your email.

People feel like they get to know you and get to know your picture because they see

your content.

They see you commenting on stuff.

I recognize people who comment on my stuff.

Sean has 150,000 followers.

I think on Twitter, he recognizes people who comment on his stuff.

I'm telling you, it works.

It's pretty amazing.

I'm sitting in this hotel, like I said, in Texas.

I'm driving to New York.

I'm going to stay at a friend's house.

I've become great friends with him.

I consider him a family friend.

We met on Twitter.

I'm telling you, this works.

Do it.

Yeah, and anything that they were probably doing next, I would probably be first in

line to help support or at least learn more about, and so it's just enlightening that

anyone can kind of do their own insights and just hard work and knowledge sharing, sort

of generosity in that sense, build relationships these days.

I learned this the hard way in the sense I host these mastermind groups.

Do you do anything like this, like a dinner series or anything like that with the same

set of people where you get together every two months or so, where it's like your peers.

Do you do anything like this?

Yeah, only informally.

There's probably groups that I do that with.

But tell me about it.

So the regret was, I moved to San Francisco and I got invited to one of these and I was

like, this is great.

This is an awesome way to learn and meet people because the good thing is, you're at a table

with founders and they're not selling because it's like, you're not their employee, you're

not their investor, you're not their customer.

So they're actually telling you what's up with their company and you're sharing likewise.

And so the first couple groups I was in, if I had just written checks to all of them blindly,

I said, you know, like with no judgment, I'm just writing the same $10,000 check and

all of you guys, you know, calm was in that crew.

They would have paid off, right?

Yeah, exactly.

They would have paid it off clear bit was in that crew, product hunt, Zola Electric,

which is the biggest solar company in Africa.

So that portfolio would have done amazing.

And so I looked back and I was like, man, I did the first part, right?

Which is what you're saying.

You know, I just spent time with interesting people and added value to them through sharing

ideas and sites, whatever, hope it being helpful.

But then the lesson I learned was, why wasn't I investing?

And to me, I kind of asked myself this and I thought, because I wasn't thinking of myself

like an investor.

And so then it happened again and I saw this company called Lambda School that I thought

was really big.

It was really early on and I started, you know, talking to Austin and I was like, this

time I'm not going to fuck this up.

And so I convinced my friend, I was like, I found a company that's amazing.

If you invest, this is, I'm your scout here.

If I, if you invest, you know, give me 15% of your, your action and, and let's, let's

do it.

And so then that was like my first like deal, deal where, you know, I was able to put it

in.

And since then now, you know, once we sold, I got a little more money.

So I could do it myself.

But the lesson I learned and what I would tell anybody who's listening to this is don't

count yourself out as, as a player in the game, either as a founder or investor.

There is a way if you're willing to be creative and helpful enough, I think.

So that's why I'm so box-ranked.

I think that's one of the greatest cultural attributes of the system of kind of early

stage founders is that we all know how much those circumstantial relationships matter

and how much we learn from one another and how we actually can't do it alone.

This podcast started from those dinners, by the way, Sean and I and a bunch of friends

would meet and he always had a bunch of groups, but we would meet and explain what we were

suffering from in our business, what we weren't suffering from, and then eventually we would

just brainstorm.

And that's kind of how this podcast started.

And you know, that manifests itself in ways like what you're describing.

Did you invest in Uber?

Is that right?

Yeah, I did.

So that was also kind of early on and the funny story there.

So we were bootstrapping our business, the hands early days with paper products of all

things.

We had products for creatives to be organized, they were serious products and they're called

action books.

They're actually still out there.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so, and one of our core partners for Behance, from a traffic perspective and partnership

was Stumble Pun.

Garrett had recently purchased Stumble Pun back from eBay, so he had sold it and he

bought it back.

And so he was in my apartment, which was also my office back in the day in New York.

And we were kind of jamming on some product stuff and he whipped out one of our action

books that I'd given him previously and was like, Hey, you know, check this out.

I'm like working on this side project.

And then he showed me, he literally invested in the sketch of Uber.

Literally showed me these sketches of this product where it's about summoning a black

car as opposed to having a dial for it.

And I'm like, dude, you should be focused on your business.

You just bought it back.

Right.

Now I'm a founder CEO, struggling, you're a founder CEO now struggling, like you're thinking

of making it.

It's a distraction.

Yeah.

It's a textbook distraction, right?

And so fortunately, he didn't take my advice.

Sixty billion dollars of distraction.

And he said, you know, do you want to, do you want to be involved?

And I think it kind of was like, I don't know, but then I also became a product advisor for

him.

And this was actually even before Travis was in the picture, Ryan was involved.

And then of course, you know, that team got up and running.

And so I had, he asked me if I wanted to invest and again, it's like, sure, but I very small

check, which is all I could do at the time, right, and I was a journey as well.

And so you're, you do this sort of starter product advisor and because of that, you're

at the table.

And so when, when the time came to you, you were, you were, I try to, I try to fall in

love with a product in the sense where it's still on my mind, you know, and I'm like thinking

through the problems and maybe, you know, what's wrong with the interface or how could

the onboarding be better?

So what's something at Uber that the product, a product change early on, like probably before

any of us touched it that you remember, was there anything like that?

Yeah, I remember, I remember a debate with Garrett around the brand and this notion of

should it be a, it was UberCAP at the time, right?

Right.

It was UberCAP at the time.

Should it be an expensive feeling brand where it looks like it's aspirational, but something

you couldn't afford?

Or should it be a, an accessible brand where it feels like this is something that everyone

should be doing?

And it was actually a really healthy argument because you intuitively think it should be

accessible to everyone.

I mean, if you want to make a big company, but Garrett's view is that it should be something

that feels like a superpower.

Like everyone's private driver, it should feel expensive, even though it was intended

to be accessible.

And so that was part of the, you know, part of the thought behind the black kind of logo

and, and the brand identity that like sort of suggested that, that feeling.

Luxury, elite feel.

Exactly.

So I remember that debate and I think that was also the right choice.

That's amazing.

Okay.

And what are you excited about nowadays, like going either a space, a company, a problem

that you think needs solving?

What's got Scott interested?

Well, I think, I think there's, I think there's, there's a lot of different things that are

interesting me at any point in time.

I mean, in my day job, it's building products for creative people and kind of thinking about

the future of not only the creative tools we know, but also things like augmented reality

and, and how we're going to actually infiltrate and build content in that new medium that

would otherwise die if it wasn't enriched with like interactive, animated hyperintelligent

content.

So it's thinking about that, working with a lot of our partners, like Apple and others

to help think through like, how does that even happen?

It's been like a really fun thing for me by day and you know, by night, I mean, there's

been a lot of really interesting enterprise companies that are thinking about the future

of work.

If you're in a big company, you know how hard it is for them to even think about a remote

workforce and how to make a transition.

Even though a lot of us all know it's coming, what are the steps to get there?

What kind of technologies need to come about?

I also think that, you know, social has been out of favor.

Well he called that one.

Good job, Scott.

Right.

Which makes it interesting.

Which means it's the, yeah.

You know, when everyone says interesting is dead, it means that something's being born.

Right.

And now's the time.

We've got it out, consumer products that help people connect with one another in new and

you know, privacy driven premium ways.

Gotcha.

Okay.

By the way, let's just, let's, we gotta recap.

He just said a lot in that sentence.

So he talked about everything's dead or when people say things are dead, it's going to

go back.

What is that?

I mean, a lot of people are saying remote work is taking over.

Yeah.

It is.

But what's the opposite of that?

You know, going in person or I actually don't know what the opposite of that is.

But that's like an interesting thing to think about retail, we all, I mean, I would think

retail is dead.

I think the next like in person retail, you know, brick and mortar stores, I thought the

same too.

I've been talking to a lot of my friends who are doing Ecom, all their sales are down because

people are getting out of the house and shopping.

I would have said that retail is dead.

I would have said like going to Macy's and all and going to Target, going to Walmart,

like why on earth would you do that?

Why would you go to a store when you can just order it online?

Now I get out of the house just to go because I want to be around people.

That's kind of interesting.

And so it's pretty wild.

He talked about the future work.

I mean, this guy, it's so funny that we're only a few months, 12, 18 months, pre COVID.

But I think he actually predicted a lot here.

And he also talked about privacy.

I've been paying attention.

I probably actually, not knowing it, started paying attention to it because I started listening

to Scott, but a lot of my friends have started talking about that about 24 months ago.

I think we are on the cusp of something big with privacy.

We look at what Apple's doing.

They're changing how their ads work, Facebook, changing how their ad works.

I have the latest iOS on my iPhone and I have the latest operating system on my computer.

They have things like different privacy features.

They also have things that ask you to, you know, your screen time limit.

So if you hit a certain time, they say, are you sure you still want to use your screen?

I think that before we would have thought that's ridiculous.

No one would ever do that, but I think that's going to be popular.

So screen time, I think normal average Joe's are going to be weary of giving their data

to big companies.

I talked to the founder of Pandora about this.

He said, you know, just your average dentist in Missouri is playing Pandora is nervous

about submitting to different privacy statements.

And if you look at the traffic of DuckDuckGo, DuckDuckGo is this really, really cool Google

alternative that tracks your privacy way differently and it's way more concerned about people's

privacy.

Go to Google DuckDuckGo searches per month and they actually reveal what their searches

are per month.

It's growing like a weed.

This looks like a vert ramp.

I mean, it is exponential as exponential can be.

So I would highly recommend if you're looking for what's next in the next five or 10 years,

I think we've just talked about a few things here.

So let's get back into it.

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What's a day in the life?

What's your wake up time morning routine that you like that kind of works for you?

I mean, every day is different, right?

But I'm trying to think of anything that would be useful and helpful.

But I ultimately-

Normal is also useful and helpful because people are like, oh, there's no secret.

He just wakes up and eats his breakfast, ties his shoes, a little bit groggy and gets out

the door.

Like that's okay too.

Yeah, I know.

I mean, I think that I do try to switch it up.

I'm actually not one of those people that has to be the same and whatever else, but

I do.

I mean, there are a couple of things I do do.

Like I do try to audit my calendar and retrospect a lot of people only look forward.

Not many people look back.

So you do a time on it.

You look back at the last week or what do you do?

I do.

I typically look back at the last week and I typically ask myself, how do I spend my

time?

It's actually a really interesting thing because you're typically at least ashamed of one day

and not more than one day.

For sure.

Yeah.

And how you did it and you look at these blocks.

So like, what did I do during that period?

But why did I meet with that person for that long or whatever it is?

Is this advancing, you know, what's most interesting and most important to me?

And that could be personal things and work things, right?

But it's just this audit and it's, you know, it's prompted some difficult realizations.

It's like, wow, like that was more important than, you know, seeing my family.

Family time.

Yeah.

It's important.

I saw a version of this that I really liked.

So there's a guy.

You probably know his name.

Matt, something.

He's like the like coach, CEO coach to a bunch of CEOs in Silicon Valley.

He just wrote a book called The Great CEO Within.

I think it's called.

It just came out.

And so Emmett, who's a CEO at Twitch, he, I think he works with him.

I might be getting all these details wrong.

Name wrong, book title wrong.

Directionally.

Yeah, something like this.

Let's just wave our hands a little bit.

This guy works with a bunch of CEOs.

And so he, he wrote this book and I saw his like, like you had your 680 Evernote notes.

So he had a bunch of Google Docs that were just like quick, you know, like principle

after he worked with so many CEOs, he was noticing some things, he would just start

writing them down.

And he called this one, the energy audit.

And so it's the same thing you're talking about where you go back in your calendar,

but he said, get two markers, right?

Red and green or whatever.

Red means this took this, this activity takes energy away from you.

You feel less energetic after you do it.

Green means that activity gives you more energy, right?

Like the gym is this weird thing where you would think.

Like you go to the gym, you put all this energy in and you exercise and that should

deplete you.

But actually you walk out and you feel more energy for the rest of the day, right?

So like there's these activities.

So he said, just start highlighting and just look at the, step back and just look at the

colors and then be like, okay, that's where you're at today.

Let's try to move towards more green.

And different things give you energy, like the sort of doing things that are in your

zone of genius, right?

Things that you're good at, things you know that are important and you're, you can just

get in flow and do them.

And I really liked that because it was, it's one of those things that you know when the

first time you do it, you're going to like, it's going to look bloody.

It's going to be like, oh, this is not a, not a good use of time.

I think that would be interesting.

I wonder, I feel for me, as I have like a natural introvert tendency and they say that

introverts get their energy from being alone, right?

I wonder if I'd be skewed a little bit.

All the non-meeting times are green.

Like, oh, that was the best time.

But, but I like that.

I like that idea because I mean, listen, there are meetings where you're like, you know,

and there are meetings where you leave with a lot that you're thinking about.

Maybe that's another measure also is after you spend time with something or someone,

right?

Are you leaving thinking about things?

I mean, that is a, one of the things I have used over the years to determine founders I

want to work with as an investor is if I feel like every conversation with him or her was

a step function more interesting than the one before it, or was it a repeat?

Right.

A lot of conversations we have with people are readies.

Yes.

That's like, oh, you know, the time I talked about the same thing last time, every now

and then you meet someone where you just pick up where you left off and it just gets like

actually even right, you know, better and better and richer and more dynamic and whatever

else.

You know, there's this story with Periscope and I met Kavan and Joe and they were doing

this thing called down to you up at the time, but every conversation with them about what

they were trying to build and whatever was, was like infinitely more interesting.

Right.

And it was like, okay, we got to work together.

And what you're saying is it's not just that the results were getting better every time

because nobody does know, right?

Right.

It was the ideas, right?

It was the ideas and the, and the, you know, the, maybe also chemistry, like building upon

an idea to make another idea, right?

And it's like, oh my gosh, sort of like seeing the world through someone else's eyes.

Oh, it's like teleportation.

Yeah.

It's like, oh, teleportation.

What would I want to do?

You know, maybe I'm bed at night going to bed and I just want to like drop into Tokyo

and like walk around.

It's like, oh yeah.

Like maybe you could do this.

Oh, you could go and see a tennis match that's at Wimbledon when you're in New York.

And then you suddenly like, oh wow, like what are the media rights implications of that?

And maybe there's a business model there and it's like thing to thing to thing to thing

to thing.

And it's like, okay, this feels good.

Right.

Yeah.

I like, I have a similar thing where I call people Pokemon because it's like, if Pokemon

just sort of evolve, it's like the next time you see him, oh my God, this, this whole

person has evolved into a better person.

Yeah.

This is one of the most like fulfilling people to like spend time with.

I agree.

I like that.

Pokemon.

Yeah.

Here we go.

New book.

One thing I wanted to ask you because the way I look at it is this is a guy who's achieved

a lot of things that I'd like to achieve in my life.

Right.

So just sold our company.

But, you know, I'd love to write a book.

I'd love to, to, you know, achieve success in the next thing or invest in great companies.

So you're still setting goals for yourself.

What's a goal you have set for yourself now?

Like what can you share?

That's, that's something you're like, all right, here's a goal I have for myself nowadays.

Yeah.

But there, I think there's some ideas that I'm like brewing that I want to give some time

to, right?

So I am trying to kind of sporadically schedule time to just think through these things.

I actually love flights for that reason because I can give myself a chunk of hours that you

ordinarily never get on that round, right?

I think.

Or just take a shower.

Yeah.

Right.

You know, just uninterrupted time.

I mean, I do believe in this constantly connected world that disconnection is a competitive

advantage because you can actually think deeply about something as opposed to just constantly

react and heck away at the collective inboxes around you.

I think that I also certainly have some goals for like the changes I'm trying to bring upon

the teams, you know, that I'm that I'm leading now, you know, as this chief product officer

role at Adobe.

I mean, this is just a company that bought my company, a lot of my DNA is in this business.

I care about where these products land and what, you know, and so I've set some like

KPI driven even, you know, goals around and it's just, it forces you to start making big

swings and think about like how you're going to lead those changes and get people to go

along with it and, you know, and then it's about narrative and merchandising and all

these other things that it's, it's fun.

You kind of have to build a internal marketing campaign at times just to get people to change

their minds.

Totally.

So, so those are just a few examples.

Okay.

And if you were 21 again today, so I'll let you keep all the knowledge you have, but

you give me back sort of all your, all your assets, your reputation, nobody knows you,

you're 21 years old again.

What do you think you do?

How do you think you would go about spending, you know, the next few years of your life?

Well, I would, I would definitely start something again, if I had really a deep interest.

I think I would probably aspire for more empathy for the customer suffering the problem as

opposed to my passion for the solution.

I think a lot of the mistakes that I made early on was that, were that I was always

like super passionate about what I know needed to happen.

And then we would realize eight months later, we were like 30 degrees off and cherry pick

evidence that might fit.

Yeah.

The need for that solution.

Because you're, you know, you get excited by a prototype and a vision and you want alignment

so you force alignment and then you realize, wait, had I just spent more hours next to

a customer seeing what their actual life was like, what they actually thought of my product,

I would have known better.

Right.

So I think those were some of those, they were, I think a few lost years as I like to

call them in behance in that five year bootstrapping period, but we had to rebuild a lot of stuff.

And I can't say I would do that all over again, you know, if I had the choice, although I

would say that it definitely built us as a team, like a culture that we went through

a lot together.

Adversity will do that to you.

It did.

Like what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Like definitely true.

Right.

And a team struggling.

I think I would also try to do fewer things.

I, you know, and I go back and forth on this.

I've heard two contradictory these years about, about like what makes a great entrepreneur.

Either you are really, really great and willing to take risk or you're really good at hedging

risk.

It's like, wait, those are like, which one is it?

Right.

And I, I, I was always a hedger, you know, I always was thinking about the contingency

plan and that caused me to do a number of weird things.

Number one, it caused me to go to business school simultaneously as I was starting a

business and not drop out.

I see.

Little did I know that dropping out would be way better PR value than finishing.

No one would give a shit about an MBA.

Right.

Right.

The second.

And so the other, the other way you had taken, uh, let's say taken the risks, that would

be what?

Okay.

So dropping out to one.

Uh, what were some other ways that you were doing contingency plans?

Does that mean like?

Oh yeah.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was like, if this one doesn't work, then this one will work.

Right.

And, um, and, uh, even like features.

Yeah.

It's like the insecurity of shipping many features in a product is basically, I don't know what's

going to work.

Right.

But here's the amazing thing is that when you ship a number of features and then you

start killing a few of them, what you find is that the core stuff gets used more and

gets more attention from the team too.

And it was one of those really strange realizations.

I would say four years, three or four years into the answers again, probably two years

too late or too much later than it should have been where we killed a few major features.

We had this tip exchange thing where creatives could leave like tips for another and build

it for each other and vote them up and down.

It was like a mini dig at the time, but within the hands, there was a groups functionality

where people could share, and then we killed both like one after the other.

And then suddenly people created more projects and they use, and they use the core fee functionality

more.

And I just again, wish I could have gone back and just really drove it down to like, what

do we actually have to ship and how do we make sure it's amazing.

What space would be interesting to you for 21?

Would you be like building tools for creatives or would you go into bio hacking or, you

know, like whatever, like, is that that point you have a long time where you can ramp up

or go into any space?

You're not sort of committed.

Sure.

And I guess the question is if I was 21 today or I was 21 back then, because back then I

21 today.

Yeah.

21 today, I would definitely be doing something different.

First of all, I mean, we're still living in an app driven world, which is crazy.

I mean, apps were born in the world where there was no GPS, there were no notifications,

there was no AI, and, and so you had to download apps and then use them for things.

Now within a modern OS that should know where you are and what you're most likely to want

to do based on where you are and when you're there and with whom you are with, the whole

operating system, the whole notion should be completely different.

There shouldn't even be apps, frankly.

There should be superpowers that are suddenly there and then they're suddenly gone.

And if you think about, and I think that we're going towards that end, I think that we will

see operating systems evolve.

I think that the notification systems, we know them today will be totally antiquated

to do this more, you know, actionable interface that just is always like the sixth sense,

the appendage that we never know we needed.

And I think about like, what are the applications that are going to thrive in such a world?

I also think about marketplaces that are more sustainable, you know, the modern notion that

every freelancer marketplace essentially taxes the transaction is silly, right?

And that's actually the on-demand model for on-demand marketplaces and it's all the same

formula.

There's a totally different model that should exist.

Maybe it's blockchain driven, maybe there's some other mechanic at play for value distribution.

So there's a lot of these things that I think a bit about some of them overlap into my day

of job.

Some of them I'm looking for companies and entrepreneurs that are tackling and want to

help them.

What I like about your approach is that you didn't start with some idea like, oh, I want

to build this or a generic space, but it was more like, why are things the way they are?

Wait, shouldn't they be different?

Like you basically were like, why are apps and notifications the way we use this phone

now that we have XYZ or why do all marketplaces do this, you know, rent seeker model where

they just, you know, sit in the middle and grab from every transaction?

So it's funny, like one of the things I learned most working with the benchmark team for a

little while was I really went in there thinking the greatest investors are really good at

making the future.

And what I left there believing is that the greatest investors have a really deep and

concrete understanding of us and how the present is like about to change and you can

kind of, but not, you know, distant, distant long shots are fun bets, but they're bets,

right?

But if you really have a tune into the current dynamics and just how they're slightly shifting

and start getting ahead at really interesting things.

And so you, um, where do you like to learn from?

So like, what do you listen to?

What podcasts do you listen to?

What book do you read?

Who do you think is really smart where if there's talking, you're listening.

What, what, what do you like to feed your brain?

So before, I haven't commented in a second because I've been listening.

I love this guy.

Um, when I raised a little bit of money from Tim Ferriss to Tim is the popular author investor.

He told me, I actually asked him this question and he told me the first.

He goes, there's two people who I listened to for investing advice.

The first is Naval.

The second is Scott Belsky, whatever Scott Belsky says, I usually trust he's my sort

of figure on investing.

So this is a good question to ask.

I think it's great.

I'm very eager to see here who he says.

Yeah.

No, it's something that, so I'll tell you, like my first answer is I have, I am a huge

fan of Twitter.

I think that is an incredible, it sounds like such a cliche answer, but I have carefully

curated a group of people, they are, they are astrophysicists, they are biologists,

they are economists, they are political scientists, they are other entrepreneurs and designers

and illustrators.

These are the people who curate for me every day.

What's interesting to them?

I just think that's freaking amazing.

Right.

You get to surf on top of that.

It is.

It is.

And so some people say, oh my gosh, it's been so much time on social media.

Actually, it's just literally going through and reading.

Yes.

If you think about it, but, but curated by the people.

And I also learned about the books that I want to read.

Right.

I mean, I love reading books related to psychology and I love reading, I'm starting to listen

to a lot of history podcasts.

So like some of those like Kings of Kings type podcasts, I think are super interesting

because you're just learning about this notion of history rhyming.

Like it's so true.

I mean, you're learning about what happened in like Rome, you know, and you're like, oh

my gosh, it's happening all over again now in America.

Right.

There's just a lot of that.

So I, but I try not to, you know, I actually don't have like one feel that I'm just like,

I love reading just this genre or whatever, you know, and I don't read too many business

books.

Why is that?

Well, I find that most of them are a big book about a little idea, you know, so I feel

about most books.

It is.

But, you know, I think that, and I have an argument with my publisher about the messy

middle because I came in with this, like this, this big book of like, you know, between

a hundred, 200 insights that were completely disconnected from one another, although there

was some sort of red, but, you know, and they were like, this is not what you're supposed

to do.

Just write a chapter book.

And I was like, well, let's read each of us.

Right.

At least my audience, they're too busy.

You know, they're starting companies or changing companies.

They just want actual insights that'll make them think about something differently.

This is a funny insight.

So one of my favorite books ever, I believe Paul Graham and his wife, Jessica, I forget

her last name, Livingston, wrote it.

It's called Founders at Work.

And all it is, is interviews, and this was written, I don't know, 05, maybe, it's in

the early, it was before Twitter was around because they interview Ev Williams, the guy

who started Twitter and he was called the founder of Blogger, his old company.

So whenever Twitter launched it was before that.

And it's like 18 or 20 or 30 interviews, and it's called Founders at Work.

And they just, they just ask questions.

That's all it is.

It's Jessica asking questions and the, it's like this podcast, basically.

This podcast kind of in book form a little bit.

It's awesome.

And I agree with Scott here.

I actually love these types of books.

They aren't chapters I can flip through and they're just quick insights, like 10 pages.

I think you could actually build a book that's like founders at work or make a book founders

at work, but then do like engineers at work.

You can do designers at work.

You can do, and all you do is release a series of books.

You could do it every year, every two years, every three years.

And it's just sold for $29 or whatever books cost $18.

And you just do this over and over and over again.

Just like, remember, you know those books like be keeping for dummies, SEO for dummies, whatever

the four dummies.

I think you could do the same thing.

So if you're looking for an idea, I think you could do that.

Right.

And like we're ready to go to learn more.

Turn the page and then like, you know, turn on your brain basically.

That's the least that I want.

Yeah.

Great.

All right.

I know you got to help on a flight side.

Look at this.

Perfectly on time.

That's my podcast or instincts.

Great.

10 p.m. flat.

Yeah.

This was fun.

I hope you guys liked this conversation.

If you want to follow Scott, where should they follow you?

Reach out to you.

Okay.

Just shut up.

Scott Belsky at Scott Belsky, wherever, whenever, go for you.

Great.

Awesome.

That's it.

That's the podcast.

That was a quick one.

I think like the introductions took up a lot of it, but Scott's amazing.

I hopefully, I hope you enjoyed this.

I enjoyed just sitting here listening to it.

It's cool, man.

It's got, I mean, I just get fired up.

I'm kind of a lost for it because I'm thinking about what Scott said guys amazing.

I love his attitude.

I'm going to keep doing these.

This was another greatest hits app.

Let me know how you, how you feel about these.

The Sam Parr is my Twitter handle.

I read all of them.

Let me know what you think.

I'm digging it.

I like doing them and I hope you, I hope you liked listening to them.

So let me know what you think.

And by the way, it's now close to midnight over here.

I'm staying up late doing this.

I'm doing this all for you and you know what I want?

Just click that subscribe button on iTunes, that follow button on Spotify and leave me

a review.

Leave us a review.

We check them and we iterate quickly in the podcast because we review those all the time.

So thank you.

This is a Sam Parr calling you from like Waco, Texas or somewhere and I'll look Quinta in

the next video.

Thank you.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.

On this episode, Sam (@theSamParr) gives an update on one of Shaan's favorite episodes, his interview with Scott Belsky. Sam revisits what Scott said a little over 18 months ago during episode #32, and shares his thoughts on Scott's ideas today. Grab another salad, this is a good one.
#32: We've got a different flavor today for you. We sat down with Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky) join us today and instead of hearing his backstory, we bounced around a bunch of topics. Scott has done it all. He's been a founder (Behance), angel investor (Uber, Pinterest), VC (Benchmark), Tech Executive (CPO of Adobe currently), and Author (The Messy Middle). So sit back, grab a salad (cause we're healthy in 2020) and enjoy this conversation. 
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Show notes:
* (0:27) Sam intro commentary
* (5:51) Sam commentary 2
* (9:10) Sam commentary 3
* (17:16) Sam commentary 4
* (23:19) Sam commentary 5
* (27:06) Sam commentary 6
* (28:31) Sam commentary 7
* (32:01) Sam commentary 8
* (36:09) Sam commentary 9
* (36:27) Sam commentary 10
* (51:37) Sam commentary 11
* (53:52) Sam commentary 12
* (55:43) Sam final commentary