Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners

Alexis Ohanian is best known for being: - On the Forbes "30 under 30" list multiple times (then he turned 30) - A co-founder of reddit and hipmunk - In the very first class of Y Combinator, arguably the world's most selective startup "accelerator" (bootcamp) - Investor or advisor to more than 100 startups - A newly minted parter at Y Combinator - An activist related to SOPA/PIPA, etc. Enjoy! Tim

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hello ladies and gentlemen, wookies and maguys, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I'm whispering due to two factors. Number one, I'm in an airport and I'm trying to avoid having people heckle me or other issues. Number two, I've had way too much caffeine. So, I'll try to keep this short. Number one, this episode is brought to you by the Tim Ferriss Book Club. I read, eh, let's call it two to four books a week typically. Out of all those books over the years, I've highlighted four to six of them that had a huge impact on my life. You can get samples of all of them at audible.com/timsbooks. That's audible.com/timsbooks.

• 0:39Tim Ferriss?

  And if you'd like a chance to go with me on a private jet to Necker Island, this is the private island of Richard Branson, to spend a week with Richard Branson, with me, with Damon John of Shark Tank and founder of FUBU, Marie Forleo, let's see here, Seth Godin will also be there. If you want to spend a week learning lots, there might be some debauchery, you never know, on Necker Island, you can do it and have all of your expenses paid. Check out Shopify.com/Tim. That's S-H-O-P-I-F-Y.com/Tim. And now, on to our guest. My guest is Alexis Ohanian.

• 1:19Tim Ferriss?

  And Alexis is best known perhaps as the co-founder of the social news site Reddit. It is massive, as you probably know. Hitmonk, he was in the first ever Y Combinator class. Y Combinator is the best-known startup accelerator in the world. Its selectivity is something like combining Harvard with the Navy SEALs. Very hard to get into. Stars that have come out of that include Reddit, Dropbox, and many, many others. He is now a Y Combinator or YC partner, and we're going to talk a bit about that.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Give me a thank you for being with you. US Airways Southwest.

• 1:56Tim Ferriss?

  Here we go.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  American Airlines.

• 1:58Tim Ferriss?

  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I'll try to keep this... You know what? I'm not going to stop this recording. I'm going to keep going. Because they never shut up in the airport. So, I'm going to take a moment, and I'm going to let you listen to some of this.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Please take a minute now to gather your belongings. You're all on board with one care package.

• 2:21Tim Ferriss?

  I like this. It's very cinema verite.

• 2:26Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, you know what? I'm gonna keep going. Fuck it. So Alexis has a lot of stories. I ask him a lot of weird questions, like when is the last time he punched someone in the face or got punched in the face? And we digress all over the place. Talk about how to spot the next big company, how he chooses companies. We talk about favorite books. We talk about documentaries. We talk about everything. So without further ado, I would like you to meet Alexis Ohanian. Thanks for listening.

• 2:54Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 3:00Speaker 03

  Now would seem an appropriate time.

• 3:04Speaker 04

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 3:14Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Thank you for listening. This episode, we have a spectacular, charming, and altogether handsome guest named Alexis Ohanian.

• 3:29Tim Ferriss?

  How are you, buddy? It's good to have you on.

• 3:30Speaker 04

  I'm doing really well.

• 3:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 3:32Speaker 04

  Doing, doing very well. Very happy to be here. Thank you, Tim.

• 3:34Tim Ferriss?

  Of course. And you are in NYC at the moment?

• 3:38Speaker 04

  I should be. I should be, but I'm actually in Los Angeles.

• 3:41Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, what are you doing in Los Angeles?

• 3:43Speaker 04

  I'm cheating on Brooklyn. Don't tell her. Uh, you know, catching up, catching up with some friends. My grandpa lives here. He is ninety-two years young and want to spend a little time with him and then doing some press stuff.

• 3:57Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Love it. Like this. Well, hopefully this will be the highlight of your LA trip.

• 4:02Speaker 04

  Oh, yes. Well, it's a shame. It's a shame we're doing this remotely, though.

• 4:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, we can. It makes me feel taller when I'm not standing next to you or even seated next to you. You have a very majestic torso.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  See, it makes me feel healthier not having to sit next to you. Uh, this morning, seriously, I was like, I'm gonna do some pushups this morning. Nope. No, no, went for some coffee instead.

• 4:26Tim Ferriss?

  Didn't happen. Well.

• 4:27Speaker 04

  Wait, real talk.

• 4:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  This is totally random, but you said I could ask you questions.

• 4:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  Is there anything you've learned since Four Hour Body that if you were to do like the addendum or like the like quick update? Cause I'm, you know, forever a human guinea pig. Like what, when it comes down to it, have you learned anything particularly new that you would add for, for readers of Four Hour Body? They should be doing physically in order to be as efficiently healthy as possible.

• 4:52Tim Ferriss?

  I think there would be a few addenda I would add. The first would be on smart drugs, and it would actually be a cautionary tale more than a prescription for smart drug use. I would also outline the point that sort of Cartesian separation of mind and body is very artificial. And if you do a lot of things intended to improve physical performance or that are associated with that, whether that's dietary, say elimination of starches and gluten, or taking care of your microbiomes, or really looking at the sort of bacterial balance, or not even balance, but composition of not just gut, but skin flora, for instance, which I've become very fascinated by, you'll improve your mental performance. And related

• 5:37Tim Ferriss?

  to that, I would probably delve into different types of fasting, which I skim the surface of, as well as a couple of other sort of fringe topics that I've become very, very fascinated by. So it's funny you should mention that. I'm actually thinking of doing an updated version of the Four Hour Body with case studies, as well as a few additional chapters on areas that I think are worth exploring. But I think as a side note, that pushups are very, very underrated. I think that if you were to just take a few variations of the plank pushups in different ranges of motion, and you had a, say, three to four foot dowel that you could put across two chairs, so that you could lay on your back

• 6:19Tim Ferriss?

  and do basically reverse rows, like body weight rows, that's all you, that's all you need, along with, say, pistols or split squats to stay in fantastic shape when you're on the road. You really don't need anything else.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  Really? I could get cut up?

• 6:35Tim Ferriss?

  I think, well, getting cut up is, has more to do with diet. Yeah, I'd say you add muscle in the gym, you lose fat in the kitchen, or when you choose what you eat. So that's definitely a major piece of the puzzle.

• 6:47Speaker 04

  But one of the things I've been trying, and it's still early, and I don't know if I'm ready to start promoting this, but it's the waffle diet.

• 6:55Tim Ferriss?

  I can see a large market for that.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I tell you, man, it's, I haven't quite seen the results I've been looking for, but it makes me happy every time I do it. There's a twinge of remorse.

• 7:07Tim Ferriss?

  It's the happiness diet.

• 7:11Tim Ferriss?

  I like this. I like this. You could sell a book. I'll take you. I'll shop you. I'll shop. I'll shop your waffle diet. I will gladly take a portion of that. So for those people who may not be familiar with your background, the first thing I'm going to say is Google is your friend. And we've spent time together before. I would really like to explore certain aspects of you and your experience and your projects that perhaps haven't been covered before. Because of course, you have the early days of Reddit, Hitmonk, publishing, being part of the first class of Y Combinator, now being a partner at Y Combinator, the huge bus tour, I guess it was 200 events for Without Your Permission, your book, Internet Activism, for SOPA, PIPA, neutrality, etc. The list goes

• 7:54Tim Ferriss?

  on and on and on, including 100-plus startups or so that you've invested in, including at least the very partial list, obviously, secret Instacart, Coinbase, Zenefits, Teespring, etc. A lot of those areas have been covered in many fantastic interviews and articles, and I don't want to replicate those. But I would like to dig into how you operate and some of what has allowed you or helped you to do what you've done. And so the first question I'd love to ask you is one I often ask, but that is, when you think of the word "successful," who's the first person that comes to mind?

• 8:33Speaker 04

  Hmm. Oh, wow. This one, all right. So this is something that has changed and has evolved over the years. You know, at a baseline, I really, this is so cheesy, at a baseline, though, I think of my own parents, for whom success was measured primarily by having a happy, loving, awesome family. And I'm the product of all of that hard work and love and all that great stuff that made me who I am. And when I think about it as a businessman, frankly, I think of people like Oprah and Jay-Z, because...

• 9:11Speaker 04

  If you consider the spectrum of, let's just say, a business success, you've got to look at where you start on the spectrum and where you're at on the spectrum when you sort of finish. And obviously, they're not finished, but you know, where they've arrived at this point. And, you know, simply because of a life lottery ticket, my starting point on that spectrum was a lot further along than Jay's and Oprah's. For, for all kinds of, you know, systemic reasons, frankly, beyond any of our controls. And that doesn't make my success any less cool. I, I'm very happy with it. But when I look at the entire scope of it, I have to, I have to be in awe and be like, holy shit. Like, that's, that's next level success.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  And then when I think of philanthropy, I mean, you got to think of folks like Gates and Buffett for just being able to say that they're going to take this tremendous amount of wealth. And in their life, especially Gates, become so, so active about finding brilliant ways to, to use it, to, to make the world suck less. So it, it, it's a spectrum of it, but those are the people who I really look to and think like, if only, like, that's, that is a place to strive toward for me.

• 10:20Tim Ferriss?

  If we were looking at the, the opposite end of the spectrum, what are, what are some of the things that you fear? Uh, and those don't have to be internal insecurities. They could be externalities. But I mean, what are, what are the things that you're afraid of currently?

• 10:35Speaker 04

  This is, I don't want to get too morbid, but I am, I am afraid of my immortality. I mean, I guess everyone is. Who am I kidding? Everyone is. Uh, this is not a unique thing. I guess my perspective on it has always been that, uh, the way I thought about it, even as a little kid was, uh, when you're playing video, back when video games used to be hard, you would have like a finite number of lives. And, and when you're on your last life, it would say zero lives remaining or lives remaining zero, some variant of that. And when you're on your last life in video games, again, when they used to be hard, you played your best because you, you just realized there was nothing left. Obviously, this is just like life, notwithstanding reincarnation. And I had a bunch of events happen to me pretty early in my twenties that really gave me this, really imbued this perspective on me.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  And I know how fortunate I am to be living the life I'm living. And I'm so grateful for it and I just wanna do as much stuff as possible while I can. And while I have my facilities and while I can do stuff. So I'm, I'm only half kidding. I'm not eating a waffle diet. But like, I'm thirty one now, man, and I'm, I'm like, I'm thinking about things like my health and I'm thinking about how I can be more effective with the time that I have and well being is a huge part of it. Uh, so that's a very long answer of me just being afraid to be mortal, but get me that, get me that matrix, man. I need my singularity so I can upload.

• 11:52Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know, I think that that actually relates to the next question and that is a question of filtering and selection. So you said doing a ton of stuff, right? But you're at a point and many people let's reach a point where they have a paradox of choice with a, a menu of options they could not possibly exhaust, even if they lived for three hundred years. Of different things they could do and you've invested in a lot of startups. We'll get, we'll get to this, the startup specific discussion a little bit later, but how do you choose what to say no to? And what are some of the ways that you've learned to say no? As opposed to the like, oh, sorry, I just don't have bandwidth right now, like maybe in three months and what you really mean is no, but then they follow up in three months

• 12:36Tim Ferriss?

  and it just snowballs into this chaotic mess. Well, how do you choose what to say no to currently? And how do you, and are there any, any ways that you've found more effective than others to say no?

• 12:47Speaker 04

  Tim, I was hoping you would tell me this. I don't know. I was actually just thinking about this this morning. One of the things, working with early stage companies again, that was so heartwarming was I remembered back when Steve and I were starting Reddit and like, no one knew who we were, no one cared. Like I woke up every morning and I didn't have a bunch of stuff on my calendar. I didn't have a bunch of people who wanted to get coffee. It was just like, I was desperate for anyone to wanna talk to me or, or hear about Reddit. And I mean, this is, it's a gift and a curse. Obviously I'm in a really fortunate position where my inbox has this, this problem. But yeah, you're right. Like I'm still struggling. You know why it was a two hundred event buzz tour? It should not have been two hundred events in five months. That is crazy, but it was because I just kept saying yes to everything.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  And I'm clearly not good at this. This was supposed to be my year of no. And where I would, where the default setting would be no. It's been a lot better, certainly. You know what it has been, I think, and to actually answer this question, it's really been trying to listen to my gut, my initial impulse, the initial feeling of yes, I, if I'm not like, yes, I am stoked, I absolutely, I'm excited, I want to do this. Then it's going to be a no, or it's going to be, let me find some other way to try to be valuable, because like, at the end of the day, like, I want my ideas to scale. I, I think, like you, like a lot of people in our position, like, there is a genuine interest to want to help folks, uh, and then to also do it in the most efficient way possible.

• 14:13Speaker 04

  And realize like, look, 20 minutes with Tim Ferriss might change your life, but I know that 20 minutes with me is probably not actually going to change the trajectory of something, right? Like, this isn't like false modesty. I really just think there have to be more efficient ways to be scaling our knowledge. And I haven't gotten really good at figuring them out yet. But I'm always imploring folks to just, to hopefully find in themselves, to just sort of realize that it doesn't really come down to one particular person. It doesn't necessarily have to start or end with one particular door that gets opened from an email, because there are so many possibilities and so many opportunities. And I, I don't know, man, I really, I, I, I need your help with this, Tim.

• 14:55Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think just a couple of points there. So the first would be,

• 15:00Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think 15 minutes with me will change most people's lives either. It's a hell of a lot of responsibility to feel if somebody believes that. So you have to disabuse people of that notion, I think. And also, if you are, let's just say, beginning in your career, or a new career, or a new company, and you want to reach out to someone who is getting deluged with requests, like in Alexis, asking to pick their brain over coffee without any context is not a good way to do it. Uh, because that often reflects a lack of focus or forethought on the part of the person making the request. So make a very, very specific request, a question they can answer in a handful of lines that will in fact be disproportionately valuable to you.

• 15:44Tim Ferriss?

  That is, I think, the right place to start. Uh, even more so if you do it A forum where they can answer one to many like a blog post.

• 15:52Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 15:53Tim Ferriss?

  Right? Because you are more likely to answer that and take the time to give a substantial answer. The second point I was going to maybe refine really is my question. Since you deal with so many startups and you have to be selective. Let's just say when you were angel investing and you may still be angel investing, we'll get to that. When you say no to a company, how do you say no? Because you've had to do this. You can't just string along hundreds of companies. It'll disallow you from doing anything else. How do you typically say no? What's the language that you use?

• 16:23Speaker 04

  I mean, I've started a couple of companies now. I it is basically the language I would want to hear. Obviously, the no isn't the part I want to hear, but everything else is what I would want to hear if I were a founder. So it's upfront, you know, I'm passing and here's why. In a few sentences, if I can fairly concretely say what it was, right? Like I just, I don't think you have enough traction yet. I mean, the growth numbers that I'm looking for are going to be like double digit week over week or month over month. Like it doesn't seem like the data doesn't show that you guys have found product market fit. And try to, or maybe I wouldn't even say product market fit because I feel like that's a buzzword bingo game. But to really as concretely and concisely as possible explain like this is why I'm passing and I'm sorry. And I do mean this with all sincerity.

• 17:08Speaker 04

  I really look forward to you proving me wrong and I really do wish you all the best. Because I had people who he never got, I didn't name him in the book, but I mentioned the story. Like an executive of Yahoo who basically brought me and Steve in. This is early in Reddit and told us we were a rounding error because our traffic was so small. We were a rounding error compared to Yahoo. And he was like, what are you even doing here? And we're like, you invited us, like you brought us here.

• 17:32Tim Ferriss?

  What a dick.

• 17:33Speaker 04

  To ridicule us. Yeah. And, and so like that, and to that guy's credit, he's provided me with so much motivation. Like that is, he is fueled, I put that, put rounding, I put your rounding error on our wall in the Reddit office after that meeting. Just as like this wall of negative reinforcement forming. And, and so that, that was, that ended up being kind of valuable for me and helpful. And I still am grateful to this day that he was such a dick because it was so motivating. And but I don't want to be that guy.

• 17:59Tim Ferriss?

  You don't want to be the Ivan Drago to the startups coming to you.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  No, and I and saying no is something you have to do a vast majority of the time as an investor. If you're if you're going to be successful and I want to be as helpful as possible. And I do genuinely, I will not feel any ill will. I would actually rather a company, we do this at Y C. We would rather a company tell us like on their IPO day email and just be like, hey, heads up. We applied in, you know, summer of 2010 or whatever and you guys rejected us. Or I'd want them to email me like, hey, man, you know, we met for coffee six years ago and you didn't invest. But I just want you to know we IPOed. And even if they want to throw a silly little animated GIF in there, just making fun of me for missing out like that's great. I want to know where I got it wrong. So hopefully I can learn from it and I would bear no entrepreneur ill will

• 18:45Speaker 04

  for even rubbing it in my face a little bit, but I don't want to be a part of that wall of negative reinforcement, even though sometimes you, well, a lot of the time you have to deliver that kind of bad news.

• 18:55Tim Ferriss?

  Related to the go ahead.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Incidentally, incidentally, you made that Ivan Drago reference. For viewers who can't see me, I guess no one can because it's audio. If you've never seen me before, I look just like Ivan Drago down to the down to the like ninth, the nine pack or 10 pack. I guess it's only an even number.

• 19:13Tim Ferriss?

  You can have an odd number.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  12 pack. No, because it was Soviet.

• 19:16Tim Ferriss?

  Just one up at your sternum.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  It's a nine pack in Soviet Russia. Yeah.

• 19:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I know you've got the the tight red singlet and everything. For those who haven't seen Alexis during his keynotes. All right. So switching from the word successful, whose face pops up when you think punchable? Ray Ray.

• 19:42Speaker 04

  And you know what? Here's the thing, though, and this is something I feel like in tech in this little bubble, there aren't enough sports people who are paying attention to this, paying attention to to sort of sporting life. But this is the one thing, of course, that sort of transcended, you know, and if everybody knows about this story now. And I really do hope, though, it gets it because I'm a diehard NFL fan. I love the NFL and I know this is an extremely violent sport. But what the league has done, I don't want to get all political on this, but what the league has done to cover this up is appalling. And I really hope, I don't know, I really hope some good comes out of this because you know, it's offensive. And yeah, Ray Rice is the guy punching the face now that you mention it.

• 20:23Tim Ferriss?

  What kind of punch? I'm curious because you've got a different build. I mean, you'd have to think it through a little.

• 20:28Speaker 04

  I've never, okay, let's get real. I've never hit a person. Maybe I got into some little like stupid kid fights in like elementary school, but I'm, I'm a lover, not a fighter, Tim. I don't know what I would do because I'm, I got reach. Ray is not a tall man. So I've got the reach on him, but he's obviously much stronger than me. So a cross, here's what's sad too. I was named after a boxer. So I'm named after Alexis Arguello, who is, my dad was really into boxing in the eighties and is this Nicaraguan fighter, three different titles. He was a baller, good mustache too. And I am the exact opposite of, of my namesake in terms of fighting prowess. But what do you think?

• 21:07Tim Ferriss?

  I think elbows, use elbows. If you, if you haven't punched many people, you'll probably break your hand if you, and Ray has a thick skull and a big neck. So I'd say elbows. Have you been punched since high school? When is the last time you were punched in the face?

• 21:24Speaker 04

  Oh, man. This was, uh, it's the only time I've been punched in the face since then. Uh, and that was walking down 16th and Mission at four in the afternoon. And some random homeless guy punched me in the face.

• 21:36Tim Ferriss?

  Wow. Just no, no warning?

• 21:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. We were just walking, you know, he was going one direction. I was going the other direction on the sidewalk and he's kind of muttering to himself and he just kind of slugged me. And, and I looked at him and he kept walking by and I was like, why the hell did you do that? And he, he just looked at me and was like,

• 21:54Speaker 04

  and I was like, all right.

• 21:55Tim Ferriss?

  Kept moving.

• 21:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm not gonna get an answer. So.

• 21:57Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know, maybe, maybe boxing's in your future. If you took, if you took that and didn't flinch and just asked him why he did it, that's, that bodes well for your burgeoning boxing career.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm not, and I'm, I am a tall guy. Uh, so I was just surprised why, why are you going to pick a fight with me, man? But it wasn't, I mean, let's be clear. It was, and I'm not like, it wasn't nothing. I mean, it was a, it was a haymaker. It was a wild, really throwing out the boxing references here. It was a wild kind of punch. It caught me in the, caught me in the cheek, but uh, You know, that Ivan Drago training obviously paid off, so it didn't hurt me too bad.

• 22:31Tim Ferriss?

  So it stung.

• 22:32Speaker 04

  I mean, it stung.

• 22:32Tim Ferriss?

  This is good to know. Yeah, I won't be throwing any undirected haymakers your way at trade shows or anything. Now that I know you won't go down. The switching gears completely. If you had the opportunity to give, let's just call them entrepreneurs. That doesn't mean venture backed necessarily.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  Truth.

• 22:50Tim Ferriss?

  Eighteen, 20 years old, you could give them two or three books or resources. What would those and only two or three? What would you give them?

• 23:00Speaker 04

  Wow, okay. Oh, man. See, you've always got the really heady stuff. I am gonna be.

• 23:07Tim Ferriss?

  The little prince? What are you bringing out?

• 23:09Speaker 04

  No, well, I was thinking of a few amazing scratch and sniff books from my childhood. Okay, so number one, actually, oh, perfect. So Y Combinator, we're teaching a course at Stanford this semester. And we've got some amazing guest professors, all like from the Y C network, just amazing founders, investors, just great people. And it's going to be available to anyone for free.

• 23:32Tim Ferriss?

  Wonderful.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  It'll be podcast and streamed, all that good stuff. So everyone should sign up right now and take that class at Stanford. You don't have to.

• 23:39Tim Ferriss?

  How can they?

• 23:39Speaker 04

  You don't have to pay Stanford tuition.

• 23:41Tim Ferriss?

  How can they find it? What's the name?

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Oh, man, hold on. It's called How to Start a Startup. If you Google How to Start a Startup Class Stanford, you should be able to find it. I am terrible with my plugs.

• 23:51Tim Ferriss?

  Beautiful.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  And then.

• 23:53Tim Ferriss?

  People can find it. That's good enough.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  They'll be good with the internets. If you can't find it, you probably shouldn't take the class. Because you're probably not good enough with the internets to search for it. Yeah, C S one eighty-three Bravo, How to Start a Startup. So that's the class. Silicon Valley, right there, all in your brain, wherever you are in the world. That's one for sure. Got to give a shout out to Jessica Livingston, who is one of the founders of Y Combinator, the partner who basically saved me and Steve. We were rejected from the first batch of Y C and it was her input. She basically pounded the table and said, their idea is terrible, but I like them, so we're gonna let them in.

• 24:30Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't know that. Yeah, Jessica's great. She's wonderful.

• 24:32Speaker 04

  Amazing. And P G was like, all right, all right, okay, all right, we'll do it. And yeah, yeah, thanks. Thanks, P G.

• 24:40Speaker 04

  But uh That worked out for Y C. Well for them, yeah, the first company to launch and obviously the first sort of exit and. But anyway, Jessica wrote a great book called Founders at Work, which has been around for a while. And it's just a bunch of really great interviews she did with a bunch of just OGs in entrepreneurship. I am begging her to do a second book because the first one is such as just a must read. And then the final one is the book that inspired me and Steve to, well, let's say one of the, it's probably the, I'd say it was the book. That inspired us to have not start a company, well, kind of, it was, it was, it was really inspiring us to start a video game company, which didn't quite work out, uh, but it was called Masters of Doom and was the founding of id Software.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  We were huge gamers. It's one of the things we bonded over. I was a much better Quake 2 player than Steve. Let me just make that clear. He was a little better at Half Life, but I just want to say I was much better Quake 2. And it was amazing because those guys, you know, John Carmack and Romero and the crew didn't have any funding. You know, they pioneered an entire industry. They created a genre, right? First person shooters and all with, you know, shareware, all with a business model that was still very nascent. And, and they, they were just kind of hacking it and they created this amazing empire. And it made us think, and Steve, Steve had lent it to me my sophomore year. And, and it really made us think, well, you know, if these guys could do it, like, why can't we?

• 26:05Speaker 04

  And, uh, yeah, that was, that was the big three. And actually that was the big impetus for my own, uh, book. Just because like, I don't know, man, I, in nine years in the game of startups, nine, 10 years, which is still not a ton of experience, but in the last 10 years, like, it's just, I still am just amazed by the founders I get to meet who make me feel like I was such an amateur, uh, when I was in their position. And that's good. That makes me feel good. It makes me feel like we're, we're all making progress here. But it also just is a sense to, it, it's one of those things in terms of like dispelling, you know, young founders of this notion that like you or I or, or the people they might look at and be like, yeah, they've really,

• 26:48Speaker 04

  they've really got their shit figured out. They really, you know, they're really cooking with bacon. We're, we are still figuring it out. Like, we're all still hacking it and we've made tons of mistakes and, and we are no different. Uh, some of us may be, you know, a little stronger. Some of us may have some international titles in martial arts, but like, at the end of the day, we're, we're no different. And that's, that's something I really want to get in people's heads as early as possible to not hold them back.

• 27:12Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I, I, it makes me think of a quote and I'm paraphrasing here, but from Jack Ma of Alibaba, which is slated to, or expected to be the largest tech IPO in history. And I'm not even sure if I need the modifier tech. I mean, it's going to be one of the largest IPOs in history. And he said, you know, in the beginning, we had a huge advantage and that was we had no money, no experience and no plan. And I, and I think when you, when you don't know what you don't know, in a way, obviously there are risks, but when you're not aware that what you're trying to do is impossible, then very often you actually pull it off. So there is, there is an advantage to that. Do you read any fiction? Any, do you have any favorite fiction books?

• 27:52Speaker 04

  Oh man, I have not read, I have not read fiction in a minute. It's mostly nonfiction. I'm trying to, the last, uh, the last fiction I read, I can't admit to 50 shades of gray on your podcast. So let's see, it would be, oh man, this is really, this is really bad. Uh, last piece of fiction I have read. It's been a long time. I didn't even read Harry Potter.

• 28:18Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't either. That's okay.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  Which I know some people, some people will contest is nonfiction. Uh, but, uh, yeah, man.

• 28:26Tim Ferriss?

  If it doesn't come to mind, yeah, no, that's all right. If, if nothing comes to mind, nothing comes to mind. That's, that's.

• 28:30Speaker 04

  I'm gonna check my Goodreads account or my, uh, Amazon to see if there's, man.

• 28:36Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any particular morning or evening ritual? Or just, uh, patterns in, say, how you spend the first hour of your day or two hours of your day? What is that? And it could be a weekly thing. It could be that you spend Mondays doing A and Wednesdays doing B, anything like that. But I, I find that people usually have certain patterns and rituals. I have a sort of a way that I go about, say, doing meditation and then having tea and then whatever. But what does the first, say, hour or two of your day tend to look like?

• 29:07Speaker 04

  Dude, real quick, what do you think? I, I downloaded Headspace because I, I don't know if, you could tell me this is correlation or causation, but after I got back from Burning Man. I had I had it planted in my head that I should really try meditation. Uh, which is not something I do at all and and have have never done, but I'm intrigued by. So we're gonna have to, I want to talk about that, but I, my morning ritual is waking up, feeding my cat and making coffee.

• 29:34Tim Ferriss?

  When do you wake up?

• 29:35Speaker 04

  If I'm not forcing myself to exercise, it is whenever I wake up.

• 29:41Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  Which is amazing. I stay, I usually stay up probably later than I should, but I wake up whenever I kind of wake up.

• 29:46Tim Ferriss?

  And that tends to be before, before noon?

• 29:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, ten, like around 10.

• 29:53Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  10, 11. Yeah, depending on the night. And, uh, yeah, feed my cat and then I'm a real, I, I, the hand grinder, we were talking about this on Twitter. So I got, I got broke down and got one of these hand grinders because it makes me feel like I'm closer to my coffee beans as I grind them. And it's, it's like I'm trying to get workouts in where I can, Tim. So my right bicep, incidentally, is huge.

• 30:16Tim Ferriss?

  You're like a pincher crab. You got like a, you got a battle arm. It's good.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  Yes. All for grinding coffee. And, uh, I got my little craft coffee subscription and I plow it out, make a little French press. Oh, it's great. And then usually, you know, I'll mess around, check out the front page of Reddit, obviously. And although I have been checking out a little bit of Product Hunt lately and just like, I don't know, I, I just kind of get into, get into my zone. I start prioritizing what I want to do that day. And this is something I've had to be really disciplined with, where I'll actually, usually on every note, sometimes I'll write it down when I'm feeling like a pilgrim, when I want to go old school and like get up my quill pen and I'm like, big major things to do today. And, and really try to make sure I get those covered by the end of the

• 31:02Speaker 04

  day because I get into this work creep where I start knocking off really easy stuff, like the things I shouldn't, like I don't really need to do, but I can get a little bit of, uh, mojo, a little adorfin rush. And before I know it, it's usually like noon or one o'clock and I still haven't showered. So then I'll go do that and, uh, and carry on my day. Usually it's office hours with companies or whatever stuff might be lined up. It's a very undisciplined morning and my evenings are, this is why I need more Tim Ferriss in my life, man. Should I be, should I be meditating in the evening or should I be doing it in the morning?

• 31:39Tim Ferriss?

  Here's my take on that. My take on meditation is that the less you feel you can afford the time to meditate, the more you need to meditate. So I had Russell Simmons say to me once, he said, "If you don't feel like you have 30 minutes to meditate, you need three hours to meditate." So you strike me as a pretty zenned out calm guy, which means you may need meditation or benefit. The delta in improvement might be less than for someone who's hardwired to be sort of neurotic and super tightly wound like I am. But I find that meditating first thing in the morning, before almost anything, and then ideally again mid to late afternoon is the ideal split. But realistically, if I set it up so that the pass fail requires me to meditate twice a day

• 32:24Tim Ferriss?

  to pass, then I'll just quit altogether, like a lot of things. And I think you want to, you want to make it easy to win the game in the beginning. So for me, I meditate five to 20 minutes almost every morning. And I find that to be the ideal spacing. I think Headspace is great. I think calm.com also is a competitor to Headspace is also fantastic. I meditate without guided meditation and typically approach it from a transcendental meditation standpoint, although I'm very interested in Vipassana. So TM.org for people who want to check it out. I think it's very valuable, but I do suspect that the more tightly wound you are, the less you feel you can afford taking 10 to 30 minutes to meditate, the more you actually need it.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  Very, very.

• 33:09Tim Ferriss?

  So, you know, if you're sort of rolling with your Buddha nature and like admiring the irises of your cat while it's chowing on its fancy feast.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  Did you just call me fat because of my Buddha nature?

• 33:21Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, I'm talking about,

• 33:22Speaker 04

  Very proud of that.

• 33:23Tim Ferriss?

  I'm talking about collegiate sports Buddha when he was doing the pole vault, very svelte, similar, similar look.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  Not a lot of people know about that.

• 33:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, it's not, not written about a lot. But the, so that's my take on the meditation. When do you feel you are most productive? So when do you sort of hit your stride? So in other words, people think of, they often ask me like, what does your average day look like, right? Or journalists will want to follow me for a day. And I almost never do it because it would be extremely boring and they would come away. Writing an article that is something along the lines of like, wow, this guy, I don't know if he works four hours per week at all, because he seems to get, even when he's attempting to work, next to nothing done. And you're able to get some really outsized results and returns from the things that you've put in your mind to.

• 34:13Tim Ferriss?

  So it would lead one to sort of conclude that it's not about how much stuff you do, but how well you do a handful of things. And so my question to you is like, what is the most kind of professionally valuable time in your day? Like when you're, you're sort of hitting your stride?

• 34:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:32Tim Ferriss?

  What are those hours?

• 34:33Speaker 04

  And you know that feeling. I love that feeling, man. It is, it is such a drug. There's this, what's the flow? They've written books on this stuff. That is my crack. Like, it is so incredibly addictive. And I, again, this is part of why, a reason I feel so fortunate to be able to do the stuff I do, man. Cause if it's with people, okay, so if it's, if it's solo stuff, if this is, you know, I'm mapping out, oh, I'm mapping out this podcast I want to do, or I'm helping, I'd already talked to a startup and I was helping them build out a, a launch strategy. But now it's like Alexis time, or I'm going to sit down in front of a blank Google Doc and start typing. When I don't need to interact with other human beings, my go time is, is once the sun sets.

• 35:14Speaker 04

  I've always felt like, basically like the internet kind of calms down, so my distractions are fewer.

• 35:20Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  And more people are asleep, so I don't think about checking the inbox and falling into that trap. And all the way, pretty much once the sun sets, all into the like wee hours of, you know, one, two in the morning. This is now harder to do because I have a girlfriend, of course, who apparently doesn't love the idea that I might spend, you know, say a Saturday night, sitting in front of a computer from 7:00 PM until 2:00 in the morning. But this is life and it's, it's the balancing. And, uh, but that's, that's definitely when I get the solo time going. And I'll tell you that, you know, I do, I, I tend to stagger office hours, whether it's a YC companies or portfolio companies. Every like, say 20, 30 minutes in the late afternoon. Because I feel like, well, you know about what time I get up in the morning. So morning's pretty much done.

• 36:03Speaker 04

  And there is this stride that I will find myself. Of getting into because I'm just enough of an extrovert that uh it's like, all right, lunch is behind like this is everyone's got their second coffee in them or or what have you. And it's just a good time to be talking through startup problems, having these kinds of office hours with companies. But again, like you, it's really not interesting. And I would, oh, man, I'd feel really bad for someone who had to watch that for an entire day. Because it's just, it it's such a, I don't know, it it to your point, like the you could sit there, whether it's me alone in front of a computer for five hours. Or or going through like five hours, office hour sessions, there are a few moments.

• 36:45Speaker 04

  Where holy shit, we hit on something and there's something great here and there are like, there's a way to turn this into something. Special and and that was a valuable use of the time, but it's not like. There was any clear indication of, oh, that was the instance it was gonna happen. It just happens. Uh, I wish I could just push a button and have great shit come out on demand.

• 37:02Tim Ferriss?

  Don't you don't we all?

• 37:03Speaker 04

  Right? It's but you just don't know.

• 37:05Tim Ferriss?

  So those office hours, how do you schedule office hours currently?

• 37:09Speaker 04

  Hmm. So thanks to amazing software that engineers at Y C, it's actually originally Paul Graham built. Basically, any portfolio company can come in and request office hours with any one of the partners. And so we as partners schedule blocks of time. So we just block off. Whatever, you know, four hour, five hour chunks in a day or whatever, one hour chunks in a day when we're available for office hours, just like, you know, back at college. And startups can slot in to take those times and either show up and do kind of like an assembly line. I mean, it's not that soulless, but do that kind of setup. It's not literally on an assembly line at a cafe or at a Y C. Or over Skype. I've got notes ahead of time based on, you know, previous meetings we've had and they've got their latest sort of.

• 37:53Speaker 04

  Issues and stuff that help me prepare and we just get to it and start talking about whatever they're working on.

• 37:58Tim Ferriss?

  Do you prefer to batch, let's just say, pre Y C or outside of Y C? A Y Combinator for people who may not be keeping track. Do you prefer to have one day or two days blocked out? For say a four or five hour block of time, or do you prefer to spread it out so that you have an hour? Or or two per day, say Monday to Friday?

• 38:19Speaker 04

  Uh, no, I I definitely prefer the former. I think when it involves people, it's much better for me to just get it all in one burst, in one four or five hour chunk. Whereas if it's like solo work or with a sort of limited team and it's over, you know, email and all the kinds of other things, I don't mind the, what's the method where you work for 45 minutes and then you're messing around on Reddit for 20 minutes and then you work for 40 minutes?

• 38:42Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, well, there is one called the Pomodoro technique.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 38:45Tim Ferriss?

  Which is usually, a lot of people talk about 23 minute increments, but some people,

• 38:48Speaker 04

  Oh, I was way off.

• 38:49Tim Ferriss?

  But some people, but some people double that.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  But like, so I'm not saying I'm actually, I'm obviously not a student of the Pomodoro technique.

• 38:58Tim Ferriss?

  That's right.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  But, uh, but I find myself falling into that kind of a cycle when it doesn't involve something as interactive as office hours.

• 39:07Tim Ferriss?

  Cool. No, I'm always fascinated by how people batch tasks or not. In my case, I'm the same way. I prefer to have a large block of time sectioned out for one type of task so that my, I don't have the cognitive fatigue of switching back and forth. For those people who don't have access to Y Combinator software, I've been using something called Schedule Once, which is meetme.s o, and that allows people to schedule for a block of time that you make available. It's really helpful. It was first introduced to me by Andrew Warner of Mixergy, who has scheduled hundreds, probably thousands of entries at this point. And it's been fantastic. Uh, when you meet with these startups, is there

• 39:49Tim Ferriss?

  any agenda? Do you ask for anything in advance? Are there particular types of questions that you routinely ask them?

• 39:56Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 39:58Tim Ferriss?

  How do you make those sessions most productive, I guess is the overlying question?

• 40:01Speaker 04

  You know, I like to come into the meeting with a sense of how, like a general sense of how the company is doing. So things like growth, uh, things like if at all possible, like the big looming, you know, every founder has, there's a million things that they could be working on. But what is the big focus for the coming week? What are the one or two big things that you're considering, worried about, wondering? And then also just even notes from our previous meeting. And that's sort of, fortunately, that's sort of built into the software. Other times I'll just hack it with Evernote, just for my own Sort of sanity, uh, just to kind of keep up and and have a sense of things. But I find more often than not, office hours are less about me saying, aha, here it is.

• 40:45Speaker 04

  This is what you shall do and more about me asking questions and and being skeptical. And giving them feedback that they may not hear just because, right? You're obsessing over a a company, you're obsessing over solving a problem. You have this kind of tunnel vision, uh, and and it it helps to have someone just to gut check you. And make sure that you're asking yourself the questions you may not be thinking of simply because you're so intently focused. And a lot of it comes down to just basically holding up a mirror at the right time. And being like, like, are you really focused on getting users like you say you are? Or have you been doing the exact same thing for the last three weeks?

• 41:27Speaker 04

  And haven't actually adapted it to the fact that it hasn't improved conversion. The founders that I see succeeding down the road, and you could go back. And I've been lucky enough, right? I was in the first batch of Y C with Steve. So I see, I remember when Drew Houston was the the founder of Dropbox was the guy who like. He came to some of our open events and he was working on this S A T prep software. Uh, which was just a dead end startup, uh, and and and I remember the Airbnb guys when they showed up and like. We all thought, oh, this is really cool. Like, you know, hope it works out. We weren't thinking, oh, right, in five years they'll be, you know, have more rooms than Hilton. But I I've seen so many of these companies now get started and. The founders who tend to do well are are overwhelming the ones who during office hours.

• 42:10Speaker 04

  Don't just take feedback and they push back, right? Every founder has to be determined and stubborn, right? You know, she has to think that she's gonna win, that we just have to delude ourselves. But a great founder, she also realizes that she can be that stubborn and that determined, but also adaptive and flexible. And so that founder comes out of office hours and then two weeks later or a week later, or whenever the next session is. Not only has tested all the things we sort of talked about or launched or done or whatever. But also tried three other things and also comes back with a whole nother things that they've learned. And and really challenged every one of her hypotheses along the way. And that's, it's an easy thing to talk about, it's a hard thing to do. And it's a hard thing to teach. That's the other crazy thing is like.

• 42:54Speaker 04

  Dude, I mean, I think part of the reason entrepreneurship is so, so hot right now, and especially voices like yourself, I think the reason people are so interested by it is because there's never really been a modern curriculum for it. There's been, you can read the old case studies and all the MBA nonsense, but like, there are a lot of people right now who are hacking it as entrepreneurs, and there isn't a lot of a blueprint for it. And if you've grown up pretty much anywhere, I think in the country, you probably didn't get exposed to this kind of curriculum in schooling, because a lot of it's still being written right now. A lot of it can't even be written, because we're still writing it. And I think that's why there's such this, this such an appetite and a hunger for it, and why so many people are very quickly becoming sort of authorities on it. But a lot of what we do is really just saying like,

• 43:38Speaker 04

  hey, look, the brilliant idea is not necessarily going to come from us. We're just going to help you get there through these kinds of principles and practices, and these sort of methodologies. It's a good cop out. We don't actually have to have all the answers.

• 43:52Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think that, and this is true in writing, it's true in teaching, it's true in many areas. Having the right questions is more important than having the right answers, because you can have the right answer to a bad question. So I think that it's, it's very important to have the ability to formulate the right questions, that's get to the crux of the matter, right? And in office hours, just to pull out some concrete details, in addition to what we already covered, what are some ways in which you challenge founders, or express skepticism in a constructive way? Like, what would be some examples of that?

• 44:32Speaker 04

  Well, I really think a lot can be conveyed with a raised eyebrow. It's something, something I really, I don't want to brag about, but I'm really good at. What are some good way? It's, it would be, I mean, I don't want to, I can't call it specific companies. You know what this is? I will say, side note, this is, incidentally, a section I'm doing on this, on the podcast. So people will actually get to hear me doing this with real people. But notwithstanding actually being able to magically pull a clip out of my butt, it would be, what's the kind of thing like, alright, I have this company, we're selling a subscription, it's a subscription widget service, and they might tell me about growth rates. And let's say this is a very early stage company, and they're talking about the growth rates, and we're going to have 50% week over week.

• 45:17Speaker 04

  I'm like, well, that's, that's awesome. Alright, where's that growth coming from? And again, this is where you get these different shades of this, right? Some founders will tell you, okay, well, 25.3%, maybe not to the 10th place, but like 25% is, is coming from paid advertising. 50% is coming organically. Another 25 is coming from some other thing. You get other founders who, who might be a little cagey at first. They're like, ah, you know, it's, it's a variety of things. And it's like, well, come on, this is your company. You have, you need to know this. Then you dig a little deeper and it turns out that like, let's say a majority of it, like a significant majority of it is coming through paid. And so, you know, founders can fall into this very seductive trap where aha, you know, money out and, and money in, like as long as we can just keep paying for it,

• 46:02Speaker 04

  like, don't worry, we can have enough traction to sort of get a seed round of funding one day. And it becomes a really seductive thing in an early stage company and a kind of foolish one, because you still, you, you've kind of deluded yourself into thinking that you have demand where you don't actually. And as someone who, I mean, whether it was early stage Reddit, early stage Hitmonk, like, we didn't have budget for any ads. Like, it was also more important that we showed that we had built a real product people wanted, that people were actually willing to talk about it. And in an age of abundance, when it comes to social media, you've got no excuses. Like, if you focused obsessively on making something people want, you will have natural, you know, organic, you will have people just talking about it. You will start to see growth coming from social channels.

• 46:46Speaker 04

  You will start seeing growth come just organically to your domain. It's not like up, that's all you have to do. If you start with focusing on making an amazing product that people just love and they want to talk about, you're building a much better foundation for your company than we're just going to get a product out the door, subscription widgets, it's going to work, and then buy a ton of Google Ads or whatever the, or Twitter Ads, whatever the next cool thing is, and artificially build that house or that business on top of something before you've actually proven that you've really made something people want. Yeah, there you go.

• 47:17Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, sure. Well, no, definitely. I mean, I think that a lot of folks will use paid acquisition and they'll have a fancy landing page with email capture that promises the world when no one's actually tried it yet. And they use the signups as sort of the week-on-week growth number and it's, it can be really delusional. I mean, if I look at the, and I'm going to ask you a very similar question, but if I look at the companies that I've invested in or advised that have done the best, they almost always will take a dollar and put it into product development rather than put it into PR or marketing. And there are some exceptions, but if you look at, say, Evernote or, I mean, Uber's in a, in...

• 47:57Speaker 04

  Things are pretty well.

• 47:58Tim Ferriss?

  Uber's had a lot of wars, so they have, they have...

• 48:01Speaker 04

  They have a, they have a war chest budget.

• 48:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they have a war chest budget now for a lot of, you know, aggressive advertising. But for a long time, it was product and it still is product, product, product. At the end of the day, because the switching costs are so low in a lot of respects. Shopify, very similar. The paid acquisition came after the product had been refined over a longer period of time. I've been sort of criticized even by some VCs, although in retrospect, it's kind of funny, given how well or poorly some of their funds have done. Because my, my investing thesis, if you want to call it that, is very simple. It's, can I be a power user of this product? Is the market large? Can I drive, say, 100,000

• 48:43Tim Ferriss?

  users to this service or product? And do, does my audience and the reach I have overlap with their target market? Right? It's very simple. And for the most part, that's sort of how I've approached it. And when I've deviated from that and tried to invest in some cutting-edge biotech company that's going to have to contend with things that I don't understand very well, like FDA approvals and phase trials and whatever, that's usually when I get kicked in the balls really hard.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  Can the Tim Ferriss army not help with FDA approval?

• 49:16Tim Ferriss?

  You know, maybe, maybe on some level. Maybe I'm not, you know, fine slicing it enough.

• 49:20Speaker 04

  Don't tell them, sure.

• 49:21Tim Ferriss?

  But what are the commonalities that, and I'm going to qualify it, but what are the commonalities that the revenue generating successes are that you've invested in?

• 49:33Speaker 04

  So I can't promise that kind of a sort of instant user base. But one of the things that I see, these companies all find ways pretty early on in their business to make money. And I realize this is a bit ironic coming from the guy who started Reddit. But hey, look, we learned this lesson with Hitmonk because we made money on day zero. And that was important because we learned how much stronger of a position you're in if you actually make revenue from the first day. And they knew pretty clearly what their goal was, like how they were going to be making money. We see this, you know, I think about this now, you know, I've pretty much hung up the investor.

• 50:14Speaker 04

  Now it's all, you know, I'm not wearing my Y Combinator outfit, but I still have my YC tattoo. And so I don't actually have a YC tattoo. And, and you know, I think about it as I'm sitting there in the interview room for Y Combinator. I'm thinking, all right, if this company has already not just shown traction, right? There's not only just signups, there's not only just users coming back every day. They've actually got people paying money for this thing and really have an understanding of this market. I guess that's the thing I like. They are seeing something that everyone else hasn't quite gotten yet. And it's something that personally resonates with me. And an example would be, oh, okay, so Teespring. So Teespring was an immediate, like as soon as, as soon as the application started going around,

• 50:59Speaker 04

  I was giddy because I had done t-shirts for like three or, no, at that point, maybe eight years, right? I started with Reddit, did all the merch stuff for us there, Hitmonk, all the merch stuff. And then even Breadpig, we did all this merch stuff. And we had actually spun up our own janky version of Teespring. Just because, you know, Kickstarter had sort of changed people's perception about pre-ordering. And this idea of like scarcity being brought to merchandise was amazing. Because it made a t-shirt even more valuable because it felt special, one of a kind. And you had this immediacy, you need to buy it before it runs out. And then it also combined that with the fact you didn't need to have inventory anymore. And this was something that I fundamentally, I knew this because I had triple extra large shirts

• 51:41Speaker 04

  just lying around the apartment from like five years ago, like these Reddit shirts that like I just could not unload because it was a random SKU. And this just happened to be a problem for me that I knew personally. In an industry that's not very sexy, right? Oh, swag, like printing stuff on a shirt. Like we've seen a lot of different varieties of this, but they had built this platform. So thoughtfully and it appealed to me in a way that like I got instantly just because of my own experience and we're you know generating revenue and clearly had built something people wanted from really early on.

• 52:12Tim Ferriss?

  So I will, I will admit, I believe I have one of your Teespring t-shirts.

• 52:18Speaker 04

  Huzzah.

• 52:18Tim Ferriss?

  Bring in the nerds.

• 52:21Speaker 04

  Awesome.

• 52:22Tim Ferriss?

  So I've, those guys are really impressive. I've spent on a few occasions some time with the Teespring guys. Very impressive team.

• 52:28Speaker 04

  Dude, Tim, what are we gonna get? We should, have you not run a Teespring campaign?

• 52:31Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't yet.

• 52:32Speaker 04

  Brother, dude.

• 52:32Tim Ferriss?

  I know, I know. I gotta, I gotta get on it. Well, I've been thinking about it a lot. So that is, that is pending. I've been, not to take this into the.

• 52:40Speaker 04

  I'm gonna buy your shirt. I mark my words right now. Everyone has my witness. I'll be the first person to buy your Teespring shirt.

• 52:46Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna make.

• 52:47Speaker 04

  I don't care what it says.

• 52:47Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna make a camouflage, long, slender, sort of gap, kids small for you with, with a snap button for the crush. So you can, so it's a onesie. It'll be a.

• 53:00Speaker 04

  You can't unsee that, Tim.

• 53:04Speaker 04

  I don't wanna do that.

• 53:05Tim Ferriss?

  No, I'm very, very impressed by those guys. And I mean, really what's, what's been sort of delaying a lot of stuff like that that I'd like to do is I've been busy sharpening,

• 53:16Tim Ferriss?

  sharpening the saw as it relates to my own blog mailing list, redesigning mobile slash responsive versions for the site. Just basically getting all of the architecture and armature ready for a bunch of big things that I want to do. So that the, the net, so to speak, for conversion is much tighter mesh.

• 53:33Speaker 04

  See, and that's why, dude, Tim, I love, like, I don't know when that switch got flipped for you, but you were such a maven for that. Like, when did that happen?

• 53:43Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, you know, I, it was very, ah, that's a good question.

• 53:46Speaker 04

  You were ahead of the game and you were not in Y Combinator, so I can't take credit for that.

• 53:51Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you can take credit for it anyway. But I think it really hit me in very late 2006, early 2007, when I started experimenting on WordPress and started the blog and pretty much immediately saw the possibilities, even if I lacked the technical training and expertise.

• 54:11Tim Ferriss?

  I don't have a computer science background, but I remember something very early on that influenced me. And I'm pretty sure it was Robert Scoble, who was very helpful in the early days and continues to be a friend. But he said to me, good content is the best SEO. And I had been so preoccupied with search engine optimization and tags and metadata. And all of this stuff that I've realized is extremely trivial compared to putting out good content that other influencers are happy, in fact, eager to share with their audiences. And once the blog started to take on, and it was hideous in the beginning, it was so ugly. People can search, you know, first blog, Tim Ferriss, and find this hideous fluorescent blue and yellow monstrosity that I put together.

• 54:56Tim Ferriss?

  But over time, just have continued to create a back catalog of evergreen content that doesn't really expire in terms of relevancy. So I now have 550 some odd live posts, the vast majority of which still receive a ton of traffic. So I think that that was really the starting point for figuring out how to use content as an Archimedes lever to attract very specific types of audience. So for instance, I'll sometimes write posts that I know will only appeal to maybe 10,000 of the 1.5 to 2 million monthly readers that I have.

• 55:37Tim Ferriss?

  And I'll do that specifically as a honeypot, basically, to attract expertise that I want to have contact with. So I might write about some weird aspect of like derivatives finance, or I'll put up a tweet or a post about someone in the hedge fund world that I find very interesting, like Seth Klarman, for instance, or Renaissance Technologies, or any of these guys. And I'll see who responds or who reaches out to me. And I'll use the comments as a way to develop my thinking around that subject, which allows me then to write something later that will appeal to a million people about a fringe subject area that not many people know about.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  Oh, that's good.

• 56:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so it's been, it's been pretty fascinating. But yeah, Teespring, I'm looking forward to doing a bunch of stuff with. Here's a question I've been dying to ask you, which is related to questions. If you could never sit down with the YC companies as they're coming in, and I guess the YC class is around, what, 170 accepted companies at the moment? I mean, somewhere around there?

• 56:39Speaker 04

  Oh, you mean in? Like all time?

• 56:42Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, in a batch.

• 56:43Speaker 04

  Oh, no, dude, 170, man, that'd be, that'd be a lot. No, we had like 70.

• 56:48Tim Ferriss?

  70, okay.

• 56:48Speaker 04

  70 companies.

• 56:49Tim Ferriss?

  All right, I knew there was a 70. All right, sorry, I was tagging a one on there. So you have 70 companies coming in. If you could only choose five of those, and again, I'm, I know this isn't how it's formatted, but if you could only choose five of those to invest in personally, and the only way you could interact with these companies was sending them no more than 10 questions each, what would some of those questions be?

• 57:13Speaker 04

  Whoa, okay. And these are the 10 questions I will use to decide whether or not to invest.

• 57:18Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. You have to invest in, let's just call it 10% of the people who get accepted.

• 57:24Speaker 04

  Got it.

• 57:25Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, what are the questions? What are some of the questions you might ask?

• 57:29Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. Whew, okay. This is bad because I'm really tempted to think about the questions on the application.

• 57:38Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I've seen some pretty hilarious ways that people rehearse for the, you know, well, for the interviews. The application I haven't seen recently, but there was this, I remember at some point that they had this, this simulator, which would throw up questions common in YC interviews. And then if you gave a poor answer, there was a, it wasn't an animated GIF exactly, but it was like a picture of Paul Graham that would then shoot fire out of its mouth.

• 58:03Speaker 04

  Oh, he does that.

• 58:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So, but, but you can choose, you're absolutely allowed to ask questions on the application form. Absolutely. And so.

• 58:12Speaker 04

  That's, that's really, that's a really good, the form has been refined over the years and it's, it's really good. I think, okay, so 10, I, I don't know if I can keep count, but okay.

• 58:21Tim Ferriss?

  No, you don't have to keep 10. That's just me trying to give a good question.

• 58:26Speaker 04

  One of the favorites that's not on the application anymore is how are you and your founders' animals? Describe it. And, and I guess it got dropped because it's, it's kind of obscure and a little weird, right? How does one describe that? I say, we're not asking for spirit animals, though I do love asking that question. So maybe I would put that on mine. But I remember when Steve and I filled it out, I'll never forget Steve had a really good quip. It was animals, question mark. I guess I could have just said that with my voice. Let's try that again. Got to work on my voice acting. Animals? We're a freaking zoo. And I was like, well done, Steve. Let's keep going. And we just talked about how the projects we've been working on in college just for giggles, right? The stuff outside of assigned work, the stuff we were doing just because we enjoyed learning and being curious and making things.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  That's the kind of X factor that I find in successful founders. They are curious for just the sake of it. They are hungry to learn and try new stuff and challenge themselves. And it's weird. I know there are certain things where I am not, let's say that, curious or ambitious or hungry, right? Like physically, for instance, still working on that, not like waking up in the morning and trying to optimize my kettlebell exercises. But when it comes to learning about stuff and making stuff, I definitely find that in me. And I see it in a lot of successful founders in all kinds of different forms, right? It could just be learning about 14th century tapestries, right? But like, having shown that you have this hunger to learn and to do is generally a good sign.

• 59:54Speaker 04

  And then, you know, the other, the kind of expected stuff with like, well, okay, so obviously you're going to want to see the growth stuff. That's kind of, that basically gets you in the door.

• 1:00:01Tim Ferriss?

  Well, let's, let's drill into that, though. Are we looking at week on week growth? Cause I mean, there, there are ways to fake that, right? So what would the, a lot of ways, so what would the qualifying BS detector add on to that be? You know, like, all right, what's, what's your week on week growth? I mean, people can fake that in all sorts of ways. So how do you, how do you separate the bullshit from the, the real deal? If it's just an email set of questions?

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  If it's just email, because it's funny, a lot of this stuff starts to come out a lot easier in in-person interviews. Cause you can ask the next question about, you know, how much of that is organic and start to see a little squirm.

• 1:00:36Tim Ferriss?

  That could be part of a multi-part question.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Are you squirming right now as I ask you this question?

• 1:00:42Speaker 04

  But it also, the growth question can also be thought about as, all right, okay, then, then you start looking at things like, well, all right, let's, have you done like, say a cohort analysis? Have you actually taken a look to see, you know, the users who've been around for three months? Like, what are they still doing today, right? How many people, you know, these growth numbers are great. How many times they actually opening the app? Or how many times per month are they ordering a widget? Or whatever the applicable thing is, there's a way to get a little deeper in the numbers. That's almost the baseline, right? That's the kind of thing that gets you in the YC. The thing that gets me. I guess personally really excited is also sort of to talk to the Teespring reference, or even, oh, another one would be like Patreon. That was something where they, the founders, were building something and knew something

• 1:01:27Speaker 04

  about the how the world was going to be that everyone else hadn't yet. And it just so happened that because of my own experience, I'd been, I've been working with a bunch of webcomic artists for years through Red Pig, XKCD, Saturday Morning Breakfast cereal, and even a couple musicians like Lester Chambers, helping him with a Kickstarter. And I knew that what artists in the new world wanted was not just a way to try a one-time project like on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, but to actually have recurring revenue. Like, being an artist is no longer binary now. It's not starving artist or successful. It's actually like you can make three grand a month making a cappella video game theme song music videos from your apartment in Oklahoma, which is actually a guy on Patreon, Smooth McGroove. The founders, like in the Teespring example, had seen something.

• 1:02:10Speaker 04

  So I guess the question would be, what have you seen, what are you doing that the world or that everyone else doesn't yet realize is a really big fucking deal? And I guess, we actually, I think we have a question kind of like that on the application, but that's the one that really gets me going, especially if it overlaps with something that I personally really get. And that's part of the reason why, and I see this in a lot of great investors. I know this is like, as you just actually talked about with some of your blog posts, like, I think being investors is like, it gets way more credit than it deserves, but I think good investors are ones who are intellectually curious and who want to learn about new stuff and, and, you know, be able to say that they've had at least some serious interaction or experience with a variety of industries and people and all that stuff.

• 1:02:55Speaker 04

  And, and so that's me just trying to optimize for more moments where I can kind of like Jedi mind meld with another, with a startup that's working on something in industry that I don't necessarily understand as well as they do, not as fundamentally, because I'm not solving that problem, but have enough experience with to be like, yes, got it. I see this is absolutely where the world is heading, and you are in the best position possible, and you're the best team possible to, to bring this idea to fruition in that new world.

• 1:03:22Tim Ferriss?

  No, that makes perfect sense. You think it's also a close cousin of Peter Thiel's, "What do you believe that other people don't believe?" Or "What commonly held truth do you believe to be false?" You know, that type of stuff.

• 1:03:34Speaker 04

  Mr. Contrarian over there.

• 1:03:35Tim Ferriss?

  Mr. Contrarian. He's a smart cookie, very good investor. What other questions would you ask? Again, keeping in mind that you're not going to be able to sit there and watch him squirm for an hour, but this is ColdHowl2000, or was that the name of the computer? Just questions in an email.

• 1:03:52Speaker 04

  2000. It would be, oh, you know what I do ask? This is one that I love asking. So I'm all, oh, it's Howl9000. I Googled that. I did not know.

• 1:03:58Tim Ferriss?

  Damn it.

• 1:03:59Speaker 04

  Uh, sorry.

• 1:04:00Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, that's all right.

• 1:04:01Speaker 04

  Sorry, Dave. So I really, really, really love building brands that people love. I know that gets really eye-rolly where it's like, oh, right, building brands like, I don't know, it's a new flavor of Pepsi. Yeah, it's this new brand. Like, but what's so cool now, and you're a great example of this, like, because of all these tools we have to interact with people in real time at scale, it is possible to build these experiences, build relationships between your users or your fans or whatever, on a much smaller budget in a way that we've just never seen before. And a lot of what I think carried Reddit and Hitmonk was that, you know, Steve and I, in the product that we built and the way that we engaged with our users,

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  really obsessed over creating an experience that we thought was special, that made people go like, whoa, and made them laugh sometimes because we have like jokes in the error messages, that kind of thing. And I ask people for an example of something that they've done. What have you built into your product? Give me an example of something you've built into your product or your service that you're especially proud of, that is one of these touchpoints for someone to like, to just go, wow, or feel this sense of like, whoa. Like, we're still using robots in there, right? We're still using a computer that is soulless or an iPhone that may look nice but is devoid of soul. And if you can inject this life into your software, into the copier, into the whatever, you can connect with people in a way. I mean, people still fucking tweet about error messages on Hitmonk.

• 1:05:30Speaker 04

  And it's an error message. Like, why are they doing that? Because it gave them a moment of levity while they were doing something that they expected to be pretty boring, like searching for a flight. And along with that, I asked for their best piece of feedback email from the last couple of weeks. Or best feedback tweet, or like, I wanna see that founders are responding to every feedback emails. This isn't a bad way to at least, they'll at least run back to the, even if they haven't, they'll at least run back to their inbox. Be like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, and I'd go find something. But hopefully they'll respond immediately and say, oh, here's what we got last week. And it's some person effusively saying, oh, this is the greatest thing ever. And one, one startup even, oh, man, they, uh, they sent me a voicemail. The startup's called Get Bell Hops and they do like a short term moves.

• 1:06:15Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 1:06:15Speaker 04

  And it's powered by a bunch of college students who, who do all these short term moves and it's on demand, really great. And they had this voicemail from some guy, an older gentleman, who was basically like, he, he just wanted to let you all know that, uh, he's from the south, I guess. The gentleman, let's say George, who came over and helped me with my move was one of the finest young men I have ever met. I was worried about this generation until I met George. He is an upstanding young man and I am so excited for your company Bell Hops. I'm gonna tell all my friends and click. So it was just like, and it was like, it's shit like that.

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  I mean, the bar, yeah, I mean, founders have to realize the bar is set so low. Because most companies stopped giving a fuck so long ago.

• 1:07:06Tim Ferriss?

  Too, too early, yeah.

• 1:07:07Speaker 04

  Right? And the bar is set so low, like go above and beyond, make, strive to make a great experience and, and you'll get, I mean, this guy, I'm just, I'm stereotyping here, but I suspect he was not like user 1,000 on Twitter, right? And he's not an early adopter, but he had an experience there that was just above and beyond his wildest expectations. He picked up the damn phone to call and just leave a voicemail with your customer service, just to say how amazing this was. And it's like, obviously, and, and obviously they closed the feedback loop, right? They told, and of course they passed along the message to George, who I'm sure enjoyed it. But like, that's a sign you're really on to something because it isn't actually that hard. And, and we see, you know, Kevin Hale, who's another partner at Y Combinator, founder of Woofoo, right? Like, yeah.

• 1:07:53Tim Ferriss?

  This is amazing company. I've used them for, used them forever. Yeah.

• 1:07:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, and rocked it from Tampa, right? He wasn't chilling in the valley, he wasn't in New York, or he was in Tampa after he left YC. And they built an amazing company, uh, it was acquired, I think, by Survey Monkey. But, but more importantly, he built this amazing customer service experience and it's become like, that's his MO. And, and I want to fund as many Kevin Hales as possible. Again, coming from myself, who was technical enough to be friends with Steve, but not technical enough to program in Lisp, which is what the first version of Reddit was built in. That was my only excuse for existing in like, the first year of Reddit, was to bring that element and to try to create that, whether it's in community building or, or in product, to help build something people love.

• 1:08:38Speaker 04

  It's something that I really expect other founders to do, and it ends up being pretty easy. Like, compared to building out the actual site or architecting the backend, like, this doesn't require, you know, a few years of programming expertise, just requires you to give lots of dams.

• 1:08:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:53Speaker 04

  Which not enough people do.

• 1:08:55Tim Ferriss?

  No, I, I agree with you, man. And it's, it's also true in a world where despite the complexity of building, say, architectures and infrastructures that can handle tens of millions, hundreds of millions of users, the Lego pieces are commodities, right? AWS, Heroku, anybody and their cousin can go and set up one of these accounts and have the basic sort of modular building blocks. But, which means one of the easiest ways, you get most overlooked ways to differentiate your company is in those touchpoints, like you said. And sort of having a human experience. And in fact, I was looking up an article that you reminded me of. This was a guest post on my blog called "The Most Successful Email I Ever Wrote",

• 1:09:38Tim Ferriss?

  and it was about Derek Sivers, who founded CD Baby.

• 1:09:41Speaker 04

  He's so awesome.

• 1:09:42Tim Ferriss?

  Derek is amazing. And the most successful email he ever sent out was this email that he, he sort of very whimsically wrote one night that would become the order confirmation email. And I, I won't read the whole thing, but it starts off with, "Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd", you know, dot, dot, dot, you get the idea. But people just loved this. And it, uh, I think it's so refreshing in a world where people are accustomed to being on... You know, going through a telephone tree for united.com for an hour and a half at a time. So

• 1:10:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. Actually, can I challenge all of your listeners?

• 1:10:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, you can.

• 1:10:29Speaker 04

  Boom. Here we go. A challenge from Alexis. Assuming every one of them is an entrepreneur or has some kind of side hustle, they should all go right now. Wait till the podcast is over or no, pause it unless you're driving. Don't do this right now. But you should go and find your notification email because everyone probably sends it. I don't care if you're doing subscription widgets or what. You probably have a notification email. And if it is not half as awesome as the one that Tim just read from Derek, work to make it there. Like just invest that little bit of time to make a little bit more human or you know, depending on your brand, right? A little funnier or a little more just different or a little more whatever. It'll be worth it. And that's, that's my challenge. There you go. You can tweet at me too. When you did it and I'll, I'll give you a favorite.

• 1:11:12Tim Ferriss?

  No, that's a good, no, that's a, that's a great challenge.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  Much easier incidentally than your challenge, Tim. The last

• 1:11:19Tim Ferriss?

  The knob, the knob numb. Yeah. No, it was no masturbating. That was a very fascinating experiment. It was, we had almost 6,000 people participate and log their sort of daily check ins. And I think we had thousands of questions asked and answered. Yeah, it was amazing how informative that was and also how much hell I got from some people who just want to be offended. It's, it's sort of a right next to basketball and baseball and football and national sport here, it would seem, but that's okay. I'm very happy with the outcome. Quick question on the fine line between determined and entitled slash arrogant. This is something

• 1:12:01Tim Ferriss?

  that's led me to cut back on a lot of my angel investing and advising, but I don't know if you saw, God, this may be a year or two ago, this video, which caused like collective eye rolling by almost every, every graduate of Princeton was a comedy video called the Ivy League Hustle. And then the chorus was, I went to Princeton bitch. And it's like, It's this ridiculous video. There are actually parts of it that are kind of funny. In fact, I think the star of the video is this guy who pretends to be either an investment banker or a consultant. But where I was going with that is I get the feeling like many startup founders, particularly in the valley, but elsewhere, develop a certain haughty

• 1:12:46Tim Ferriss?

  arrogance very, very quickly. And they mistakenly believe that that's necessary in some way to prove they're successful or to make them successful. Where you mentioned Drew from Dropbox, obviously you've done very well. The guys I've met who have, for the most part, done the best, do not behave like arrogant pricks all the time. I mean, there are always a handful. But where do you draw the line? Because I feel like there's a danger in any collective identity, whether that's Silicon Valley, or even YC, where people view their acceptance as this sort of immunity bracelet, where they're allowed to be just blatant pricks. And that's not everybody. But you see it a lot in many different worlds, many different

• 1:13:31Tim Ferriss?

  industries. But where do you draw the line for you? Is it an important line to draw? Like, what is the proper balance of determined and resilient versus entitled and arrogant and sort of a very, in a sort of Icarus-like sense, where these people are sort of increasing the likelihood of failing because they're not going to listen to criticism, they're not going to incorporate feedback in a very insular way? That's a long question. But I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this. And it's certainly, I'm not pointing the finger at YC, it's just the sort of systemic, I feel like, startup environment as a whole. I've seen a huge uptick in the number of people coming in who really haven't built

• 1:14:15Tim Ferriss?

  much, acting like they believe a Larry Ellison or Steve Jobs would act. What are your thoughts on all that?

• 1:14:23Speaker 04

  Well, first and foremost, I need to watch this video, and then maybe I can create my own, the public school hustle, "I went to UVA, bitch." No, I would not.

• 1:14:33Tim Ferriss?

  You should absolutely do that. You should do that on Patreon. Do that on Patreon, and I'll give you some money.

• 1:14:43Speaker 04

  So, okay, obviously, I mean, this stuff is bad form. And this is actually part of the reason why I'm so excited for the second season of Silicon Valley on HBO. I, I really, and I live, let's keep in mind, right? I'm a partner at Y C, I live in Brooklyn. I spend about half my time each place. I was born in New York, like I, I'm very much, I've got East Coast bias. I mean, it is the right coast, right, Tim? Am I right? It is the right coast. So, so those are my biases. I think it is a problem within the valley. I think broadly, you could say it's a problem in tech, but I think it's exacerbated in the valley. And so at the very first Y C dinner, so the partners go around and we'll, we'll give some, so, so sort of advice for how to make the most out of the next three months.

• 1:15:24Speaker 04

  And one of my favorite things to say, and what you'll hear the partners always saying is like, congratulations, this means nothing. Like, you, you have, this, this is, you, you still have a very long way to go to actually creating something. I think the challenge is it's twofold. It's one that we, we just as humans, you know, no one's going to tell a story or write an article about a founder who is respectful and reasonable. Right? We, we're going to think of the outliers, we're going to think of the assholes. And those are the ones that are going to get the attention. And, and that's not to say, you know, that's just sort of a human nature thing. So that, that's part of the sample bias. Yeah, for sure. But it is still there, right? I've encountered it for sure.

• 1:16:04Speaker 04

  And I don't know the way to combat it other than to keep reminding people, if you haven't done shit yet, don't act like you have. It is not, that is not, correlation is unequal causation. When you see people like Jobs and Ellison, yes, you know, they had serious attitude problems. That is not why they were successful. Exactly. It's more like they were able to be successful in spite of the fact that they were douchebags. It's a frustrating thing because, I mean, I see this speaking really broadly for like the valley and, and tech. In a matter of years, we, the nerds, we have been championed a lot. We've been lionized a lot, you know, they made films about us. It has become kind of cool, right? It's the new band, right? To start a startup is having a, is having a band.

• 1:16:50Speaker 04

  And that's been great and I'm happy because generally speaking, I want more people to be thinking of themselves as entrepreneurs. And I would love it if we had a world where teenagers and kids were like, man, it'd be really cool to like, build a business or to use technology to make the world suck less one day. Like, that's great. That is a general thing is something that I like. Then, though, we reached these new heights and our, what was it, the wax on our wings started to melt? That's right. And we've been seeing this backlash, eh, good bit in the mainstream media, good bit on the blogs and whatnot. And in the public, certainly in San Francisco, and again, I've seen this as an outsider, right? So I don't, I don't have a, I don't live in San Francisco, but I've obviously seen all this stuff. And I really hope it's a chance for tech, pinning in really broad strokes here,

• 1:17:31Speaker 04

  to take a little bit more of a perspective on where we're at. And for all the people who are acting like they're already Steve Jobs, like, just stop. That's not gonna help, please. And for all of us, like, let's find ways for tech to live up to the ideals we hope it can be. I really do believe in the power of this technology. I really do believe in the power of software and the internet. But it's gonna take work for us to get it to where we want it to be. And acting like assholes is one way to definitely not do that. And more broadly, I want to see, and one of the reasons I work with a lot of the nonprofits I work with, and you and I are of course both on the advisory board of donorschoose.org. Great work. Amazing organization.

• 1:18:13Speaker 04

  And I ran a little Tilt campaign, it was last year, we funded every single STEM classroom in Brooklyn on Donors Choose. So thank you to all of you who backed that and you helped me out with that and like, I, or actually, no, it was a prize you campaign. Sorry, Tilt guys, it was a prize you campaign. But the point is, one of the reasons why I'm so interested and involved with these organizations is because I really do believe in this technology. And I also believe that it's only gonna live up to so much of its potential if we miss out a huge portion of our population that's not even connected, let alone taking advantage of it, and able to create on it and code and build and have that access and awareness. So, uh, dude, it's a big thing. I know this just started with asshole founders. But my advice to them, seriously, for all of you who are listening, you haven't done shit yet, so just relax, okay?

• 1:18:58Speaker 04

  Don't act like that. You're not doing yourself any favors. And hopefully that's a bigger challenge to tech because it really can't, I mean, we had two nuclear energy companies. We had a handful of biotech companies in the last batch of Y C, some amazing nonprofits, I mean, companies that are fighting cancer, like all kinds of like a nonprofit, the immunity project that wants to create an HIV vaccine, a vaccine for HIV. Like, it's amazing to me that this thing has grown to this point, because I remember nine years ago, and it was just like, like Paul and Jessica and Robert and Trevor in this little house, and just, we're all just trying to make our websites. And I want it to keep growing. And I want our industry, more broadly, to be able to solve some really amazing problems. But being assholes for our early-stage companies is not a good way

• 1:19:43Speaker 04

  to do it.

• 1:19:45Tim Ferriss?

  Well said. No, good answer. Which, just out of curiosity, which, uh, you need a breather?

• 1:19:51Speaker 04

  Man, I gotta get off my soapbox.

• 1:19:52Tim Ferriss?

  No, that was good. That was good. You're good. You're good on the soapbox. I think you should spend as much time as you can there.

• 1:19:58Speaker 04

  It's not a load-bearing soapbox.

• 1:19:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Gotta work on your kettlebells.

• 1:20:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:03Tim Ferriss?

  No more waffle diet for you.

• 1:20:05Speaker 04

  They're so good, though.

• 1:20:06Tim Ferriss?

  So, closely related to this, and then I'd love to talk about your new appointment at Y Combinator, but, and I don't want to chew up your entire day here, so.

• 1:20:17Speaker 04

  You can admit to it.

• 1:20:19Tim Ferriss?

  But, when are startups too expensive? And I know this is a super tough question, but there seems to be a divide, at least in Silicon Valley right now. Actually, no, it's not. It's elsewhere, too, because Fred Wilson has commented on this. He's not so much concerned with the valuations, but with the burn rates. But looking at both of those, it's hard to ignore the sort of frothy nature of the market at present. And no doubt, there are some incredible companies and opportunities still, both if you're looking to join a startup or to invest in one. There are some amazing opportunities. But there also appear to be very, very overpriced companies. Now, if you assume that or agree with that, there then seems to be a divide

• 1:21:01Tim Ferriss?

  among the investors. There are people who are, for lack of a better term, momentum investors. And they're like, look, everything's going up. It's going up. It's a great company. Even if it's expensive, even if you view it as expensive, it is still a company to invest in because it will be larger later. Some, I'm sure that there are other ways they would justify it. And then there are others who say, you know, I, for lack of a better term again, but more of a value investor, I'm looking at. Different assets, IP, revenue, et cetera. I can't justify these prices, therefore I'm going to opt out. Although there's a lot of FOMO and fear of missing out, even those folks tend to jump on a lot of bandwagons. What is your feeling there in terms of almost like grade inflation, sort of price inflation? Things are, one could argue, quite expensive. When is a startup too expensive to invest in?

• 1:21:47Speaker 04

  So I can't really speak to grade inflation because I didn't go to an Ivy League school. But actually, you know what, though? I have to call myself out because although I went to UVA, I was a humanities major.

• 1:21:59Tim Ferriss?

  Well, and by the way, UVA is not a bad school.

• 1:22:02Speaker 04

  No, it's an amazing school. No, it's an amazing school. Amazing school. Very grateful for that. But it's funny, all my friends were engineers and I didn't like talking about grades with them because the engineering school is the land of deflation, right? That is the, that is where they go to crush souls. Whereas history majors, and I also majored in business, it was like, the business was the best part because it was like, great, the five of you like colored in the lines, As. But anyway, okay, so, you know, obviously different investors have different sort of expectations, right? If it's an angel investor...

• 1:22:35Tim Ferriss?

  Let's assume you're playing with your own money.

• 1:22:37Speaker 04

  Okay. Oh, all right. Well, dude, if I'm playing with my own money, I'm making this bet partially because, okay, well, so it gets a little weird, right? I've definitely made bets that were partially just heart and weren't necessarily like this is absolutely going to be a multi-billion dollar company one day.

• 1:22:54Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:22:54Speaker 04

  But even actually even factoring that in, I wouldn't really care about the valuation because if I really do believe it's either a multi-billion dollar company or some percentage of it is also just because I want this to exist in the world.

• 1:23:05Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:23:06Speaker 04

  I don't want to be sensitive, right? I don't think there are too many angel investors or early investors who got in at, I don't know what the early Uber rounds were, but there weren't many complaining if they missed out on the four versus the nine or the nine versus the 20 even because it's, you know, that's, we all, as investors, we go around saying, of course, you know, I only invest in companies I believe are going to be multi-billion dollar companies. And if that's true, then you shouldn't really care.

• 1:23:28Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:23:29Speaker 04

  And I do, however, wonder, it does seem like times are really good and capital's still really flush and that has to, right? This whole business thing comes in cycles. That has to come at some point to an end. And I always do chafe a bit, it chafes me when I see startups really trying to optimize for valuation at the early stage.

• 1:23:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:52Speaker 04

  Because you want to, I mean, this is your seed round, you just want to get back to doing the important shit. You want to get back to running your company and have enough money to go do that. Find the optimal way to get the amount of money you need to get to that series A or to that next step, or maybe to not even needing a series A. And get back to running your business. And if you start over optimizing for valuation or you start falling in love with the investing process, right? There are people who love, or the fundraising process, people love fundraising, get to go out, talk shop, right? Maybe go out for dinner. Founders who get seduced by that end up failing.

• 1:24:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yep. Yeah.

• 1:24:25Speaker 04

  And so, you know, the investors that play into that are definitely creating a kind of culture that is not optimal for great companies.

• 1:24:33Tim Ferriss?

  At what point do you think founders taking money off the table is a problem? When do they become misaligned with the interests of their employees and investors? So I've noticed a number of companies that shall not be named, companies that are doing very well, but people want to take, you know, in some cases, millions of dollars off the table. And for those who are not familiar with this process, that means that there are founders who are selling some of their stock to investors and putting millions of dollars in their bank accounts before employees or investors see any return. When is that a problem? Because I'm seeing it earlier and earlier, and that worries me a bit.

• 1:25:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:11Tim Ferriss?

  Even at like the series A level, I'm seeing founders who are like, I'll only do it if we can, each of us can take a million off the table. And I'm just like, that seems like a symptom of potential dysfunction and disaster, pending disaster. I don't know, but you know, maybe.

• 1:25:27Speaker 04

  It gets dicey, right? I certainly don't begrudge, it becomes, you know, at the later stages, I really do think it starts aligning most everyone's interest. Again, so you have to control for assholes.

• 1:25:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:25:38Speaker 04

  So you'd hope like, there's going to be, there are going to be some percentage of founders who will get that like personal milestone checked off. And it starts becoming a problem.

• 1:25:48Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:25:48Speaker 04

  Hopefully, right, hopefully investors identify that earlier. Hopefully, like that, hopefully those folks get to some extent managed, but that is not always going to be the case. But I tend to believe the majority of folks who will get to that point are not in that category. But I'm, I'm an optimistic guy. But I've seen it at an A round. Now I think about it, I've seen it in some instances where I haven't begrudged it because it was. And you end up having to trust the founder, like as an investor, I'm not going to be like, show me your financial records. But you have founders who have a ton of student loan debt.

• 1:26:18Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:26:19Speaker 04

  They just want cleared or they have oftentimes it's like a family situation. Someone needs a lot of money, there's something, you know, if in instances where there is.

• 1:26:28Tim Ferriss?

  Extenuating circumstances.

• 1:26:29Speaker 04

  That extenuating circumstance, like I can't really begrudge them for that. But I do think there is a growing tendency now to see this happening just kind of because. And having that peace of mind, again, let's assume the slate gets cleared. It's not student loan debt. Let's say you have zero debt. If you're at that point as a founder, I think you are best aligned with your company. Because you value that equity you have, you want to grow this into amazing thing. Your employee, you're all on that same sort of level ish with your employees, which is so important. Where it becomes a real problem is when founders are basically building companies to get to a series A to get a couple of million in the bank.

• 1:27:10Speaker 04

  And then just kind of like run their companies, I'm putting that in air quotes, for another few years, just to see what happens.

• 1:27:16Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:27:16Speaker 04

  That's a real problem.

• 1:27:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Speaker 04

  And again, if you can sort of factor out the extenuating circumstances, I think that's where it starts to be really dicey. And when you start talking about later stage, I start caring a lot less because I really, I tend to be very founder friendly. I think a lot of, I think the investors they're going to win the long term, realize that they have to be, but.

• 1:27:37Tim Ferriss?

  I think there are different ways of being founder friendly.

• 1:27:38Speaker 04

  Right, it's being founder friendly without like sabotaging the company.

• 1:27:42Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:27:42Speaker 04

  And putting 50 people out of work in a year and a half.

• 1:27:45Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. Now, just I know this this might be boring to a lot of people listening, but since I'm curious, how does a potential acquisition offer factor into this? So for instance, I've seen a number of companies who have had acquisition offers that have not consummated for any number of undisclosed reasons. And they say that the pricing has been set by this acquisition offer, usually that has been turned down, according to the founders. And therefore, we want this, since we've turned down this acquisition offer, when we raise our Series A, we want to take millions of dollars off the table. Assuming other employees do not have an opportunity in some type of secondary offering at the same time, what is your opinion of what is your opinion of that situation? When it when or when it does not make sense?

• 1:28:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's why we're getting really inside baseball, man. All right. So, you know, I think, oh, man. All right. So part of it definitely depends on who made the acquisition offer, right? Like if it's Clown Town Incorporated, I'm gonna be like,

• 1:28:45Tim Ferriss?

  I love those guys.

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, great portfolio. They just they're really building the future. It really depends on who it is. And it was so that that becomes the first thing. We're like, all right, if this is just, oh, hey, look, look, people like us. It's certainly less leverage or less leverageable than, oh, hey, here is like, this is a legit company where it makes a lot. It actually makes a lot of sense for that acquiring company. Like, there's more leverage sort of implicit in the offer. And it's sort of validates the price and then thus validates the, hey, but look, we're gonna grow a billion dollar company out of this. And so we just need to take some money off the table, etc., etc. Dude, it's case by case. I would say I am, ah, am I ambivalent about it? I'm struggling to decide how I feel.

• 1:29:31Speaker 04

  So it's a little, so I guess.

• 1:29:33Tim Ferriss?

  I guess that sounds ambivalent.

• 1:29:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, sounds pretty ambivalent.

• 1:29:36Tim Ferriss?

  The fly in the ointment, or one of the flies in the ointment with this type of question is that. Even a legitimate company, a larger company, it's not uncommon, let me rephrase this, for legitimate, larger companies who could be acquirers to open a discussion about acquisition, to go on a fishing trip, to look at the internals of how a smaller company works. And they, they may have no intention of actually going through with the acquisition. And in fact, this has happened to some of my companies, which sucks and it's fucking evil.

• 1:30:07Speaker 04

  Waste of fucking time.

• 1:30:08Tim Ferriss?

  And but nonetheless, the fact of the matter is that company was never going to acquire. They were doing industrial espionage, basically.

• 1:30:15Speaker 04

  Not happening.

• 1:30:15Tim Ferriss?

  To, yeah, exactly, to determine, but these are large, brand name companies to see if they could replicate what was being done internally. Or, this is another thing, to kind of bleed the company through protracted due diligence so that they could negotiate then a better price when the company's running out of funding, which is totally fucked, but also not unheard of. So anyway, you know what, I, I want to pull us out of the weeds, but these are some of the things that I think people need to have a plan for before they're confronted with these situations, lest they make some really bad decisions that are, that are done on reflex, less so than planning.

• 1:30:52Speaker 04

  Well, and I think, okay, so if a founder listening wants to take something away instead of my just general ambivalence about it, uh, consider, all right, if we all believe, that is not just, you know, Tim and me, but, but you as a founder, if we all believe that your company is going to be a, you know, multi-billion dollar business one day, and you don't have the extenuating circumstances, right, there's no student loan debt, family stuff, shouldn't it be in everyone's interests, especially yours, to hold on to as much of that equity as possible, so that in three or five or 10 years, when you IPO, you're actually getting far more value from it? It's weird because we all kind of do this dance, right?

• 1:31:32Speaker 04

  We all kind of play this game as investors and founders and potential acquirers and this all just, there's a lot of this other stuff, but like, at the very, very core of it, if you believe in your business, and if you believe it's going to change the fucking world, like you said, at TechCrunch Disrupt or whatever thing event, right? If you really believe that stuff you said. Then it's actually in your best interest to hold on to that and not cash out a bit early and keep putting everything you can because right, it has an effect on the rest of your company. And I always want to concede that I like, I don't know how to run a company better than the founder does. I know that as an investor, but at the very least, have that be your starting point for when you go through that process.

• 1:32:13Tim Ferriss?

  No, absolutely. And just to add to that, I would say it doesn't even need to necessarily be until IPO. It could be until the point where you can offer.

• 1:32:21Speaker 04

  Yes, right.

• 1:32:22Tim Ferriss?

  Equitable options to your, options meaning opportunities to your early employees and potentially even early investors. So there isn't a complete divergence of, of sort of incentives. Cool. All right. So, uh, very related, who's your current celebrity crush?

• 1:32:42Speaker 04

  My current celebrity crush?

• 1:32:45Tim Ferriss?

  Or recent?

• 1:32:46Speaker 04

  Wow. Uh, oh man. This is, I, should this be taking me so long? I should ask my girlfriend because she would know better than I would.

• 1:32:56Tim Ferriss?

  Nicolas Cage? I've heard you pining after.

• 1:32:58Speaker 04

  The one, the one true god, of course.

• 1:33:04Speaker 04

  Oh my goodness. Uh, uh, uh, why, why? Hold on. This is bad. I don't know.

• 1:33:11Tim Ferriss?

  You're not asexual, are you? I mean, you, you, you have.

• 1:33:13Speaker 04

  No, I, I, I mean, I have a girlfriend. You'll have to ask her that question.

• 1:33:20Tim Ferriss?

  Not that there would be anything wrong with that. God forbid, I live in San Francisco.

• 1:33:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, let me, uh, hold on, let me think. Where, what movie have I seen lately? I'm totally blanking. I did really appreciate the choreography in the Nicki Minaj Anaconda video. For whatever that's worth.

• 1:33:35Tim Ferriss?

  So if, if Nicki Minaj were coming over for dinner, uh, assuming your girlfriend didn't mind.

• 1:33:41Speaker 04

  Oh, oh, oh, well, let's change that then. If, if, if she's coming over for dinner, I'll go with Beyonce. Cause then my girlfriend would totally be down with that.

• 1:33:49Tim Ferriss?

  What would you cook Beyonce if she came over?

• 1:33:51Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 1:33:54Speaker 04

  I can't cook, Tim.

• 1:33:55Tim Ferriss?

  What cocktail would you purchase?

• 1:33:59Speaker 04

  For Beyonce? I could barely, I got a, I got a shaker and all that stuff and I tried to make a Manhattan and it would just tasted like garbage. And so I just went back to drinking whiskey.

• 1:34:08Tim Ferriss?

  So, so whiskey and waffles is what you're telling me?

• 1:34:11Speaker 04

  I can't, I don't even have a waffle line, dude.

• 1:34:13Tim Ferriss?

  I think that should be the name of your podcast, by the way.

• 1:34:15Speaker 04

  I could take her out, whiskey and waffle, that becomes the theme. I could, there's a good, there's a good Thai place near me called Pock Pock, uh, which is amazing.

• 1:34:24Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, those guys are famous. They actually, I have, I have Pock Pock's cookbook, literally about 10 feet away from me.

• 1:34:29Speaker 04

  Dude, I love Pock Pock and it's, it's weird because it's like, it's legit, like it's not pad Thai, I'm not an authority on Thai food. Uh, and the dude's white. So I know a lot of people are going to be really skeptical and be like, really? But he actually does it. He actually does a really good job of it. Screw that stuff. Wait, are you gonna, you're not gonna set me up with this Beyonce date?

• 1:34:47Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, well, you know, I'm working on it. This is not the kind of thing.

• 1:34:49Speaker 04

  I'll try to help.

• 1:34:50Tim Ferriss?

  I have to, I have to, I have to start returning her text messages. She's, uh, she's just like three in the morning. They got, they got kind of incessant. Uh, so to sort of bring this volume one of our discussion to a close, what are your current projects? And where can people learn more about them? Cause uh, you, you have a lot to share. You have a ton of background, but why don't, why don't you give an overview of what you're currently focused on and what you'd like people to check out?

• 1:35:18Speaker 04

  All right. Well, I am a partner and now at Y Combinator. I, uh, joined as a full-time partner last batch in June. And we have another batch coming up and we're taking applications right now. So because I know every single one of you already signed up to listen to the Stanford class, we're going to be teaching how to start a startup. You should also go and apply at apply.ycombinator.com. And then we also accept nonprofits. By the way, we have some amazing Watsi, W A T S I was an amazing nonprofit that went through the program. And, and you know, we're willing and able to take applications for the next 27 days to apply. So apply to Y Combinator. And let them know Alexis set you. I don't actually think there's a section in the form for that, but uh.

• 1:35:59Tim Ferriss?

  That's on the dropdown for how did you hear about us?

• 1:36:01Speaker 04

  How did you hear about this?

• 1:36:03Tim Ferriss?

  What is uh? Uh, just to put a hard date on it. What is the deadline for the application?

• 1:36:08Speaker 04

  Deadline, because you all are gonna wait until the last day is October 14th. So, put your calendar, set your deadline for October 13th. I should have just told people the 13th. Yeah, it's October 13th. Get it in by October 13th. Tweet at me when you do, so I can thank you for sending in that application. And then, I'm also getting into this podcasting game, Tim, and uh, starting up a little thing. It's called NYRD Radio. That's New York Research and Development, or NERD Radio. And uh, it's just gonna be, basically, it's an extension of the Without the Permission book and tour, in that I want to talk to people who are doing really cool stuff, using the internet,

• 1:36:51Speaker 04

  to be entrepreneurial in weird, interesting ways. So not just founders of startups, but like comedians. My first guest is Baratunde Thurston.

• 1:36:59Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wonderful. Yeah, he's, he's great.

• 1:37:01Speaker 04

  Amazing. And he runs a company called Cultivated Wit. Uh, and I'm also talking to a friend of mine, a supermodel named Cameron Russell, who has an amazing TED Talk, one of the top 10 most viewed about beauty. Uh, and she started an amazing activist group, and sort of creative space in Brooklyn. But all these people are using the internet in unconventional ways to just make stuff, to create. And I want to show them off. And then the other section of the podcast is called Office Hours, which is just a riff off of what we do all the time as investors and partners. And that's just basically doing Skype chats with, I'll be doing Skype chats with random people, uh, from all over the internet, who want to get some feedback, want to have some office hours with me about whatever they're working on. And uh, we got some really interesting folks. I went to the R Entrepreneur,

• 1:37:46Speaker 04

  or no, R Startup subreddit, a couple of weeks ago, said, "Hey, what's up? Holler at me if you wanna do this segment." And we had a bunch of great people. So if you are interested in even coming on the show, you should uh, tweet at me, because I was not proactive enough to come up with a better way for you to get in touch with me. So just tweet at me, let me know.

• 1:38:02Tim Ferriss?

  And, and I'll include links to all of this in the show notes as well, folks. So you can check that out at uh, fourhourworkweekallspelledout.com/podcast. You'll be able to find a blog post accompanying this episode with links to everything as well.

• 1:38:17Speaker 04

  And this all came full circle, man. I want to thank you because it was on Four Hour Work Week that I dropped the first excerpt of my book without their permission when it launched last October. So it's almost, it's been a year now and now here we are full circle and I'm dropping my podcast, so.

• 1:38:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, you know, it's my, my pleasure. I think you do a lot of good work out in the world. And I would encourage people to take a look at some of your activism as well.

• 1:38:42Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Net neutrality, man.

• 1:38:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. You wanna, I'd please give that a plug because I think it's a very important, critically important topic. So how can people learn more about that and most important, take some action?

• 1:38:55Speaker 04

  Oh, man. Okay, so technically, they should have taken action a few days ago because the open comment period just ended, but let me, let me thank a few people. 3.7 million people commented, sent, basically sent in a message to the FCC saying, "Don't fuck up the internet. Don't let cable companies screw up the internet. Preserve net neutrality by reclassifying broadband as Title II," which is not the sexiest thing, but you know, it's DC, but it's really, really important we get this right. And right now, we're going to have these open sort of discussions. The FCC is having these open forums now for the next few weeks. So basically, pay attention. And the best group actually to stay on top of this stuff right now is either EFF,

• 1:39:39Speaker 04

  which has just always been on point for protecting our digital rights.

• 1:39:41Tim Ferriss?

  EFF.org.

• 1:39:42Speaker 04

  EFF.org.

• 1:39:43Tim Ferriss?

  Electronic Frontier Foundation.

• 1:39:45Speaker 04

  They're awesome. Or FightForTheFuture.org. They are a very startup-y nonprofit that works to expand the internet's power for good. And they've been on the front lines of this whole thing. You probably saw the internet slowdown day. Everyone, I mean, it was Reddit, Imager, Tumblr, everyone was participating. And that was a record for a number of comments sent to the FCC. So, yay, internet. So hopefully, this is another SOPA PIPA situation and all of us can save the internet one more time. So thank you if you helped.

• 1:40:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it won't be the last time either. Yeah, it won't be the last time.

• 1:40:18Speaker 04

  It's gonna still be time for that because, because look, right, at the end of the day, reclassifying broadband as Title II just comes down to making sure, and Jimmy Kimmel did a nice illustration of this, John Oliver did a great one as well on his show, but it just comes down to making sure that all those bits are treated equally. And so if Tim Ferriss makes an amazing podcast, any one of you can hear it as easily, as quickly as any other content, as any other podcast, whether it's coming from the White House, or whether it's coming from NBC, like, it's the exact same. And, and it should be treated that way, because it lets the next Tim Ferriss come up with the same level playing field that you had and the White House has and NBC has to compete for our attention.

• 1:40:59Tim Ferriss?

  Hopefully, but a lot better than me without all the defects. But yes, I agree.

• 1:41:04Speaker 04

  Which all is improvement, man.

• 1:41:06Tim Ferriss?

  Constant improvement. Well, Alexis, thank you so much for being on the show and taking the time, man. I'm sure we'll be chatting again. What is your Twitter handle for people so they can say hello?

• 1:41:15Speaker 04

  At Alexis, A-L-E-X-I-S, Ohanian, O-H-A-N-I-A-N. I know it's, it's a little long and ethnic, but there are not too many Alexis Ohanian out there, so I got that on lock. And gotta rep, gotta rep the Armenian thing, so there's no way I was not gonna put my last name in there.

• 1:41:32Tim Ferriss?

  You gotta start boxing, man. You gotta start boxing.

• 1:41:34Speaker 04

  You know what?

• 1:41:35Tim Ferriss?

  That's a tough guy combo. You're named after a boxer, and you're Armenian. You really gotta, gotta work on that.

• 1:41:41Speaker 04

  The rumble. I know. I know. Well, you know what? If you'll train me, Tim, you'll...

• 1:41:46Tim Ferriss?

  I only have short gai-fu. I can work on it, but there's some fantastic Muay Thai instructors in New York City, and there, there's also a wonderful Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school run by Marcelo Garcia, who's a six-time world champion, which is amazing. Also co-owned by Josh Waitzkin, who is also on this podcast, who's considered a chess prodigy and was the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer. So you should...

• 1:42:12Speaker 04

  What?

• 1:42:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you should swing by. It's an amazing school.

• 1:42:15Speaker 04

  Why, I could beat up Bobby Fischer?

• 1:42:17Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, no, you probably, well Bobby Fischer probably.

• 1:42:20Speaker 04

  Would kick my ass.

• 1:42:20Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, Josh Weitzkin probably not, because he's a black belt under Marcelo. But you could certainly learn a lot from both of them, so I will, uh...

• 1:42:27Speaker 04

  It would be a better story if he kicked my ass, actually. I could tell, I'd tell my grandkids that.

• 1:42:31Tim Ferriss?

  I think, uh, that can probably very easily be arranged. Uh, so, I will, uh, put all the links, folks, in the show notes. And, uh, until next time, Alexis, thanks so much, and everyone, thanks for listening.

• 1:42:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:42:51Speaker 05

  If you want more of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or go to fourhourblog.com.

• 1:42:57Speaker 03

  F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G dot com.

• 1:43:00Speaker 05

  Where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter, it's twitter.com/TFerriss. That's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. Or on Facebook, at facebook.com/TimFerriss. Until next time, thanks for listening.