Greatest Hits #7 - Revisiting The Idea Episode with Product Genius Scott Belsky

On this episode, Sam (@theSamParr) gives an update on one of Shaan's favorite episodes, his interview with Scott Belsky. Sam revisits what Scott said a little over 18 months ago during episode #32, and shares his thoughts on Scott's ideas today. Grab another salad, this is a good one. #32: We've got a different flavor today for you. We sat down with Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky) join us today and instead of hearing his backstory, we bounced around a bunch of topics. Scott has done it all. He's been a founder (Behance), angel investor (Uber, Pinterest), VC (Benchmark), Tech Executive (CPO of Adobe currently), and Author (The Messy Middle). So sit back, grab a salad (cause we're healthy in 2020) and enjoy this conversation. --------- * Want to be featured in a future episode? Drop your question/comment/criticism/love here: https://www.mfmpod.com/p/hotline/ * Support the pod by spreading the word, become a referrer here: https://refer.fm/million * Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. --------- Show notes: * (0:27) Sam intro commentary * (5:51) Sam commentary 2 * (9:10) Sam commentary 3 * (17:16) Sam commentary 4 * (23:19) Sam commentary 5 * (27:06) Sam commentary 6 * (28:31) Sam commentary 7 * (32:01) Sam commentary 8 * (36:09) Sam commentary 9 * (36:27) Sam commentary 10 * (51:37) Sam commentary 11 * (53:52) Sam commentary 12 * (55:43) Sam final commentary

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  This episode is sponsored by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business. Whether you're looking for marketing, sales, service, or operational guidance, the HubSpot Podcast Network hosts have your back. Listen, learn, and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network. Go to hubspot.com/podcastnetwork.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  All right, everyone. This is Sam. I am sitting in a La Quinta Inn. If you're not American, that is like a budget motel type of place. I'm in the middle of Texas, driving to New York City. It's close to 11:00 PM. And you know what I did, or at least what I want to do after driving a few hours on my way to New York? I want to talk to you, and I want to listen to one of my closest friends, Sean, interview my hero. So today's episode is with Scott Belsky. Scott is an acquaintance of mine, and he invested in the hustle, and I've looked up to him for years. And I'll tell you why. First, his accomplishments.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  So Scott is the Chief Product Officer at Adobe. If I had to bet, one day he'll be CEO, maybe soon. But prior to that, he had this wonderful company called Behance. Behance, you go to it, and designers can upload their portfolio. It's awesome. If you're a designer, you definitely know what this is. If you're not a designer, go to Behance, you'll see it. It's a B-E-H-A-N-C-E. He sold that company for about $150 million. And when he sold it, it was mostly bootstrapped. He eventually raised a little bit of money, like $6 or $7 million, but they raised that money like right before they sold. So they had built most of the business without funding.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  And he funded the company by selling notebooks and speaking at conferences. It's a pretty amazing story. And also, he used to get traffic at Behance, and he'll tell the story, I believe, from this company called Pinterest. And he was getting traffic from Pinterest, and he emailed the guy and goes, "What the heck is this thing Pinterest?" And he talked to Ben, the founder, and they were just a small company at the time, I think, a couple of folks, working on it. And he eventually invested in that company, invested $15,000 into that company. I think at the time they were worth something like three or four million dollars. So if you do the math, I mean, that investment could be worth like 50 million bucks.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  That same week, Scott got, um, he had a friend who was buying his notebooks and he looked up who this guy was, was buying the notebooks and he, and he hollered at him and he worked at this company called Stumble Upon and his name was Garrett Camp and Garrett goes, hey, I'm working on this other startup. Would you want to invest in it? Basically it's gonna like replace taxis. It's called Uber Cab. And Scott was like, well, I don't have too much money, but you've bought my notebooks. I kind of feel like I've got to support you and I don't think this idea is that great, but I'll invest in it anyway. And he invested another $15,000. I believe that, uh, round was valued the company at like 3.5 million dollars. And so whatever the valuation of Uber is today, like 90 billion, 80 billion.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  I mean, that's worth like, I would imagine close to a hundred million dollars from that 15K investment. Pretty amazing story. So he's incredibly accomplished, uh, as an entrepreneur and as an investor, but he's a product genius. I mean, this guy is amazing. I've only hung out with him a handful of times and he invested in my company, but I, I admire this guy so much because of the way he thinks about product, but then also his vibe, his energy, it's always calming to me. You know, he's very inspirational and he, he's got a wonderful outlook. And so what we're gonna do is Sean's gonna interview him. He did this like, uh, maybe 12 months ago and I'm gonna tell you some thoughts as Sean is interviewing him and I'll, uh, do some quick interruptions.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  So let's get to the episode.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  But here's the amazing thing is that when you ship a number of features and then you start killing a few of them, what you find is that the core stuff gets used more.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  A lot of social consumer products, you know, ultimately engage someone based on something they're insecure about.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  Hey guys, Sean here. I got a different kind of episode for you that I think you'll like. And just to set the scene for you, so I'm recording this right now, it's Christmas Eve, got about an hour to go till Santa hits the chimneys. And this episode is going to be with Scott Belsky, probably one of the coolest people I met this year doing the podcast. And as I'm recording this, you know, I'm just supposed to do the intro and tell you what this is about. But I'm feeling a little reflective, because it is the end of the year. I started this podcast about six months ago, on a whim. I was bored. We were selling our company and we were in the due diligence period. And I was just getting itchy waiting for lawyers to finish doing what lawyers do. And I was like, I want to start something new. And so

• 5:22Speaker 03

  I knew I couldn't start a company. So I started a podcast. And I didn't know if anyone would listen. And amazingly, you know, I really thought nobody would listen to this thing. And now here we are, six months later, I'm looking at the dashboard right now, and there's 526,000 listeners. So over half a million listeners already in just the last few months. And so I never thought that that would happen. If you're listening to this right now, thank you. This has been a kind of an amazing new addition to my life.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Hey, what's pretty funny is this Pat, I mean, I'm recording this at the end of June. I mean, we're in, Sean was, was giving that speech, we were at like, well, I don't know, maybe 60,000 downloads a month. Now we're at like 800,000 downloads. So whatever he's saying we had after like, six months, we get, we get that way over that per month now. It's kind of funny how, how, hearing him say that.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  I started the podcast because I thought it would be a great excuse to hang out with interesting people. I don't drink coffee, no caffeine from me, never had the taste for it. So I didn't like inviting people out to coffee, or trying to make up excuses to meet. And I thought the best excuse would be, hey, come on my show, come on my podcast. And for whatever reason, that kind of flattery works. So I wanted to invite people like Scott onto the podcast. And somebody like Scott's interesting because I start the show with this, which is, he's done basically every job I've ever thought about doing. So he bootstrapped his own startup. He raised venture capital and tried to grow that way. He sold his company and then he became a tech executive. He's currently the chief product officer at Adobe, which is, you know, obviously Adobe is a massive company. So

• 6:59Speaker 03

  he's a, you know, he's been a founder, he's been a tech executive, he's been an author. He wrote a book called The Messy Middle, which is an awesome book about the process of creating stuff. Um, so, you know, he creative guy, he wrote a book. He's been an angel investor in companies like Uber or Pinterest, AKA, you know, two of the best angel investments of the decade. And then he was a VC with Benchmark, one of the top funds that exists. Um, so the guy basically has done everything. And what I was blown away with and what you'll get out of this conversation is he's just a good dude. He's a very down to earth, smart person who I think he says this somewhere in it, which is his goal wasn't to become any of those things. He didn't say, I want to be a tech executive. I want to be a founder.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  I want to be a investor. He was just curious and followed his curiosity and it kind of led him down those paths. And I thought I found that kind of inspiring. So, you know, as the new year hits, I'm thinking about all these different episodes we've done. I don't know about 25 episodes, meeting all these great people and then even getting a chance to meet some of, you know, if we got half a million listeners, that's a cool number. But I've gotten to meet, you know, hundreds of you in person at one of the live shows or people who email me. And we're going to try to squeeze in a Q and A episode this week. So if you are listening to this and you're, you have a question that you wanted to ask, you know, it could be about business, it could be about investing, it could be about a podcast, whatever, I'll answer. Just shoot me an email. My email is just Puri,

• 8:20Speaker 03

  P U R I dot Sean, S H A A N. So Puri dot Sean at gmail.com. So just shoot me an email. I'm going to do a Q and A episode. I already have like 20 questions or so, but, but send them in and I'll try to get through as many as I can. I hope you enjoy this episode. We're not going to do a super fancy intro. We're just going to go right in. And it's a little bit different. We recorded this thing at night and I just didn't have the energy to do the whole, okay, let's start with your story from beginning to end. I just hopped around on whatever was interesting to me. And it made for a fun convo. Me and Scott, I consider us friends now after this because the conversation was that fun to be a part of. So it kind of hops around. It's a little bit of a different flavor. I hope you guys like it. And again, thanks so much for supporting the show. The podcast is already bigger than I ever dreamed it would be. And all that made me want to do was make, grow it even

• 9:05Speaker 03

  10 times bigger. So that's what we'll be doing next year. Uh, all right, guys. Enjoy the show.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, we've been, we're pumping this guy up so much. We're both recording at night. So that says something. Let's go.

• 9:17Shaan Puri?

  Scott, welcome. So Scott Belsky, so I don't like doing intros because usually I butcher it when I do it. But what I thought was interesting about having you was like, you've done the career path. That's like, everything I've thought of doing, you've actually already done. So it's like, you know, you've written a book, you bootstrapped a company, you've raised venture capital, you sold the company, you've invested, you've been a tech executive at Adobe. So I'm like, all the potential career paths you've actually explored. And so I was like, okay.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Career identity crisis at all times.

• 9:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, either you know exactly what you're doing, or you have no clue what you're doing.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Right. Fine line between the two maybe.

• 9:51Shaan Puri?

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

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, listen, sometimes I think, what is my happiest state professionally? Actually, just generally.

• 10:01Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  And I think it's the feeling of feeling fully utilized. And I think that personally, you know, I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm a friend. You know, you feel utilized in all those ways. And then professionally, I feel fully utilized in a day like today, actually, where I had meetings with product teams, I had meetings, kind of leading change in a big organization, those types of meetings. I also had pitches, a couple pitches from companies that I might invest in. I also helped make a couple introductions to companies I'm already invested in. And I also even had a quick talk related to the book. And so I feel like every muscle was stretched in some way.

• 10:35Shaan Puri?

  That's a day. Yeah.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  It's a day. And so I think that I've always just tried to, you know, pull threads on curiosities. And I do, you know, I, for better or for worse, I kind of am enjoying, you know, both ends of the spectrum these days.

• 10:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. To give people a sense, it's like 9:00 PM on a, what is it, Tuesday, Monday night? I don't know, Tuesday night, someday.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  We squeezed it in.

• 10:53Shaan Puri?

  And I was telling you, I was like, I give you credit because I know it's easy when you're like two weeks out and you're like, sure, yeah, we'll make it work. And then the day of, you're like, and you're like ninth Uber of the day. And you're like, what am I, who, who is this podcast? What am I gonna do?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  I'm feeling good, feeling good.

• 11:06Shaan Puri?

  But I, yeah, yeah, give you props. In fact, on the last episode, I sort of put out one of my, my life theories, which is 80% is just showing up. And most of the things that you don't want to show up for, if you just build that discipline to just show up, good things happen.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  I agree with that.

• 11:19Shaan Puri?

  You just have to, you just have to do it. Okay. So you've done a bunch of things. If I'm listening to this, I'm like, okay, why am I interested? So you've created Behance, which if you're a creative person, you know exactly what Behance is. But if you're not, somebody who's maybe a designer or somebody in the creative world, what, what was Behance?

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Behance was inspired by a bit of a sense of frustration with the creative world and just how disorganized it was. A lot of my friends in the creative community, architects, designers, people I knew from college, their careers were at the mercy of circumstance. And I felt like, you know, they felt that they never got attribution for their work. And I felt like they were not doing their, the greatest they could be doing in their career as a result of that. And so Behance was an effort to organize the creative world. And people would always say, yeah, good luck with that.

• 11:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  But the, um, the idea back in the day was why are people having their portfolio sites sitting on some websites out in the ether, only visited by people who know them? Their work should also be broken out and searchable and sortable based on the client, the, the search term or whatever. And then through someone's work, you discover who that person is, then you see their portfolio and then you see who they are. And so it was inverting the model to some extent. And, uh, and it was a long slog. I mean, Behance was five years of bootstrapping, two years as a venture backed business, acquired by Adobe, three years of integration. It was an incredible journey.

• 12:28Shaan Puri?

  Partridge in a pear tree.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. Uh, we kind of sell it all. But, uh, but it's, it's great. I mean, I love building products for creative people. I find that ultimately across all industries, creative people are the ones that really move things forward. And they compel us to take action. They, you know, prompt emotion through media, movies, whatever it is. So it's just kind of a, an honor to, you know, build things for creative people has always been something that gets me going.

• 12:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Somebody asked me, they're like, why do you like to do that? Why, why that? In traditional terms, I don't seem that creative. I'm not a designer. I'm not an artist of some kind, not making music. You know, anytime you're trying to make something new happen, you're being creative, you know, fundamentally, you're problem solving something new.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 13:04Shaan Puri?

  And I'm like, you know, it's really simple. Like I like the new shit in the world. I get excited about new shit. And if you want new shit, you need people to be creative and you need creative people to have all the tools at their disposal to do what they do best.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's, you know, creativity is genuine interest combined with initiative. You have like deep interest into something. It doesn't matter what it is to your point, but you also have the initiative to do something with it. And those are the folks that get fascinated by those edges that will someday become the centers. And, you know, that's what makes things work.

• 13:28Shaan Puri?

  And so normally on the pod, I'm like, okay, Behance, great. That's the mission. How did you think of the idea? How'd you get your first hundred customers? Those are the normal ones. And so if you're here to listen to that, sorry, I'm not going to do it this time.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 13:39Shaan Puri?

  Uh, there's people who have asked you those questions. I've seen those interviews. So actually. I don't know if it's because it's nine PM, I'm in the mood to just talk about other things. One of the things I want to talk about is you wrote this book, Messy Middle.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:47Shaan Puri?

  Which is cool. I'll tell you the premise as I understand it.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 13:50Shaan Puri?

  Premises I understand it is 95% of the conversation is around the beginning and end of companies. I'm guilty of it myself, but you know, press and you know, the media is much more, you know, that's their bread and butter is like, somebody's starting something, somebody's ending something, either for failure or success. It's a 95% of the talk or 99% of the talk is about 1% of the time that actually goes into any venture. And everybody just sort of fast forwards the, the middle, the actual like sort of doing and navigating of the unknown. And so that's what the messy middle is about. It's about that middle section. I think Eric Reese has this good phrase where he's like, act one, we go into depth about the hero and how they came up with their idea. Act three, you know, the resolution and act two is the montage.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:27Shaan Puri?

  Which is all the hard work and it's just like all the training, you just, you just quickly fast forward through all of it. So you can get to the good bits.

• 14:32Speaker 02

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

• 14:33Shaan Puri?

  And so why write the book?

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Well, I was fascinated by that big period of volatility that just seemed like an endless succession of lows and highs. I was interested in the idea that we're not our best selves at the lows or the highs. We're not our best selves at the lows because we make decisions out of fear. You know, hence we saw new companies, new competitors emerge, and we made a lot of mistakes at times where we would suddenly try to emulate and then realize, wait, we just lost touch with what we really are and what we're good at. And then you're also not your best self at the highs because you falsely attribute the things that you did to the things that work. And so there's something to be learned at those moments. There's a practice to be developed in how you endure the lows and how you optimize like hell, anything that works. And I just, that was what was interesting to me and I wanted to interview

• 15:16Speaker 02

  and chronicle a lot of stories and insights from people that I've worked with, boards that I was on, entrepreneurs that I partnered with and, and also things that I learned, you know, my own experience. And originally I kind of started this as a project for myself and then I realized I had this Evernote notebook of like 680 or so insights. And I said, okay, like I'm going to pare this down and ship it. So that was the origin of the book.

• 15:38Shaan Puri?

  Cause I was, I was thinking, I was like, why not a blog post, right? Like I read a bunch of blog posts. Part of the reason why I wanted to have you on is your blog is actually really good and you can shut, what's the domain? It's just like belski.com, right?

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess, yeah, it's like on Medium, but I don't know. You can get there through many different ways.

• 15:51Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So I read a bunch of your things and you have these like, almost like watercolor art, like diagrams of stuff. And so I've been reading these for a long time and I have a couple of friends. So Sam from The Hustle, who you, you invested in and Greg, Greg Eisenberg, he says amazing things about you. So that's why I wanted to have you on, like your philosophies that I have read and then friends who vouch for you. And why not just like do a blog post? Why did it have to be a book?

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's a good question because a book is kind of stagnant. You can't really update it as easily.

• 16:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  I think though that a book is a forcing function to distill it all down and also try to find the threads and then to package it as a piece of art. One thing I did with this book is every insight has like a statement that is also like presented in sort of a designed section to give it some gravity.

• 16:30Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. Like, what's an example of one of those?

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Like, an example is the science of business is scaling, the art of business is the things that don't scale. And then it's like, okay, what does that mean?

• 16:38Shaan Puri?

  Right. Unpack the hat.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, unpack that. And so that will be like a two or three page section about how we sort of perseverate over all the the science nuances. And actually, our instinct is to not want to do anything in our businesses that doesn't scale because we feel like that's a waste of time. When in fact, a lot of the greatest examples of distinguishing a brand or a service are the things that don't scale. Like Airbnb sending out photographers for every apartment, or I mean, every company has their example of the things that they did that don't scale.

• 17:06Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  That ended up being the art. And how do you also preserve that as you grow? And how do you decide what your art is? And so that's like an example of one of maybe 200 or so insights in the book.

• 17:15Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  And by the way, I don't know if Sean clearly said this, but Scott had just come out with a book at this time called The Messy Middle. So it's it's it's awesome. I actually, uh, I bought it. I read it. It's pretty badass. All right, back to it.

• 17:32Shaan Puri?

  You write this book, and I like it because there's some books where you can kind of tell the person who's writing this, like, they're either, you know, nowadays not trying to make money off this, but they're trying to parlay this into speaking gigs or things like that. But like, you already had your sort of success and wins. So this, it feels like it comes from a different place. It comes from a place of like, I want to share wisdom. Or like first tap into the wisdom, the scattered wisdom you had in your Evernote files.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:53Shaan Puri?

  Like, put it together for yourself and then like generously give. Is that like a?

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was weird. It was actually, I remember the moment when I was kind of entering another one of those things I had observed over, you know, a board meeting or something. And then I realized, gosh, like, there are so many in here. And I think it was on a plane and I remember being like, gosh, if this plane goes down, like, no one's ever going to see any of this stuff. It's only going to be for me.

• 18:11Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  And so that was one of those moments. I also, you know, I think there's a part of me that aspires to do more coaching and helping people build products.

• 18:18Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  And one of the things that I love doing. And done it with Sam and also with Bragg and others is help them develop their products and then build their product teams and hire the right designers and build a design culture. And I wanted to, I did see this book as an opportunity to kind of help share some of the things I've learned, some of the things I'm thinking about and do more of that stuff. So it's in some ways like a cornerstone of that, of that intention I have for the next part of my life.

• 18:40Shaan Puri?

  What's something that you commonly, so when you advise people, let's say on building products, making better products, obviously as an entrepreneur, you'd always be better. You will never turn down the opportunity to make your product better.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 18:50Shaan Puri?

  It is your rock. What's some like common things you find yourself constantly advising people to do or, you know, questions you keep asking or advice you keep giving? Is there anything that's sort of a pattern you're noticing as you do this for different companies?

• 19:01Speaker 02

  I mean, there are a lot of them. I would say like two that come to mind, you know, one is obsessing over the first mile of the user's experience of the product, which ironically typically is the last mile that the team spends actually thinking about. And yet it's the only part of the product experience that every customer will in fact experience.

• 19:17Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  After that is just drop off.

• 19:19Shaan Puri?

  And first mile, just so people know.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, sorry. So it's like literally the onboarding, the splash page onboarding, step by step, the, the, the questions you're asked before you get into the product. How quickly you actually realize any form of value in the product.

• 19:31Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  The defaults of the product, you know, does it show you everything at once or only a few things, the progressive disclosure of functionality? Like all of these factors are things you must consider as you're nailing that first mile experience, which is in fact probably what determines the fate of most products, frankly.

• 19:46Shaan Puri?

  Yes, because you know, you get 60 seconds or 90 seconds with the bulk of your customers, your potential customers.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  And I like to remind folks that every customer, as great as they may be and as wonderful as your product may be, every customer is lazy, vain and selfish in their first 15 to 30 seconds of using your product. How are you going to cater to them at that, in that world before? And I think the mistake we make is we have too, we, we expect our customers to have too much faith in us, you know, as product builders. They don't care. In fact, they shouldn't because their life is too busy.

• 20:13Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  And they shouldn't spend any amount of time, energy or effort, you know, until they actually know that they're going to get value out of it.

• 20:18Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  And so that's the conundrum. So that's like one example of something that, you know, I love working on with product teams. Another example is kind of unpacking the psychology of their customer. A lot of social consumer products, you know, ultimately engage. Someone based on something they're insecure about, right? Something they want to have validated, something they want to learn or they're worried about. Or I mean, there's a lot of like under underlying nuances of a product that are really driven on psychology. You know, I was talking to the teen at VSCO the other day and you know, they decided not to aggregate the number of followers that you have visible to you, nor do they let you see how many likes something has. That's very counterintuitive to what we know about ego analytics and the things that drive social consumer product usage. But they had an insight, right? Which was the type of customer and how they wanted to use the product.

• 21:02Speaker 02

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

• 21:07Shaan Puri?

  And so when you're investing in companies, I'm guessing you're looking for in that first couple, you know, first conversation with the entrepreneur, you're trying to figure out what insights do they have about the psychology of their customer? And also when you demo the product, how's this first mile experience? Those are probably two of the, you know, first tests of your investment.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  And of course, you know, for consumer products and for enterprise products, there are different types of tests or different types of lenses you look at them through. But I think that those actually apply to both. You know, in enterprise, you realize that everyone wants to look better in front of their boss. Everyone is, you know, sometimes even more lazy in terms of what they're willing to do. And so you have to build products and first mile experiences that take those things into account. So these are important things to, to think about as you're considering as an investor. If you're a product oriented investor like me.

• 21:46Shaan Puri?

  Right. And then what, what are some of the investments you made that you're proud of?

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, my first ever investment was Pinterest. So I met Ben Silverman back in 2010 and I had no business being an angel investor. I was just leading my own company, but I had met.

• 21:59Shaan Puri?

  You met him how? You just?

• 22:00Speaker 02

  I met him through, of all people, I think it was our intern. And he, you know, but, but Ben was coming through New York to raise money because he had a hard time filling his round out here. And, and we both were building products that we were orienting towards designers to some degree. And a lot of the pins on Pinterest were driving to Behance pages. And I was seeing that although slow, but rapidly growing, you know, source of traffic.

• 22:22Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Back then it was a forced Google, but then stumble upon and Tumblr and maybe a couple of others. And, and then I just started working with him first as a product advisor. And then when he was raising this seed round, he was like, do you want to participate? And I was like, aye, so, okay. So that was, you know, that was the first foray. It was amazing because it was just cool to see a product at that stage and to share some of. What I learned, but also just engaged in a lot of healthy debate. Right. And so I think there, you know, there've been a bunch of, every product experience that I've had with the team has been remarkably different. I sat on the board of Sweetgreen for a few years, you know, a totally different world, right? But then again, Sweetgreen's thinking about efficiency behind the counter and how to, you know, reduce operations time of preparing salads. The form factor of the actual bowls and how that increases efficiency and is better for the environment, the design of the space.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  And then the mobile experience, they, they had this ambition of having over 50% of all orders, you know, started on mobile, you know? And, and so I, I just, I love getting a bit geeky with product problems and, you know, and helping solve them. Right. That's amazing.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  So what fascinates me and gets me pumped up about Scott is his passion. So we just jumped from Behance, which is this thing for designers. We went to Sweetgreen, which is fancy, healthy salads. We did Pinterest, which is whatever you, however you describe Pinterest. I mean, he just jumps from thing to thing to thing. And so his tastes are eclectic, like he likes all types of stuff. But it's all kind of boils down to this, like this passion about making widgets that just, like, we don't have to like pretend and act like Pinterest is saving the world. I mean, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, it doesn't matter. I mean, it definitely isn't like we can say that safely, but he cares about and is passionate about making it great.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  And I admire that about him. I know I get burnt out on stuff and I'm like, oh, everything's stupid. This is so dumb. This podcast, it's so stupid. This is meaningless. I mean, we all get that way, right? And I get pumped up hearing him about how passionate he is about this. It gets me excited. But then also, did you hear how, and, and I actually believe this to be true. When Ben asked him to invest, he goes, well, okay. And it was a small company and there was the first round of funding, but he defaulted to optimism. It's something that I don't always do. Sometimes I'll default to, well, this won't work for this reason, this reason and this reason. Scott didn't, doesn't tend to do that. Um, I've talked to him. It seems like he doesn't do that. And I admire that. And I think that's a really, really good.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  That you should all listen to in his voice is this optimism.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  There's something about it. It's like it's the American dream. I don't know what it is. It's one of the reasons why I love immigrants. It's one of the reasons why I like people who are down on their luck, but they still get after it. It's just there's something here that I find addicting and invigorating. And just listening to his voice and him describe these things, it gets me pumped. It gets me fired up.

• 25:21Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so when you made that first angel investment in Pinterest, you don't have a budget for this. You're not like, okay, I've made it because you're still doing behance at the time. You had not exited, correct? And so you said, I'm in no position to do angel investing, but you did it anyways. What risk did you take there? So like when you put in whatever you put in, like what percent of your like net worth were you putting on the line at that time?

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was probably a good chunk of my salary. And you know, the other thing I did though, to rationalize it for myself, I remember is Ben had worked at Google. He had a network on the West Coast. I was this like, you know, new entrepreneur in New York that didn't have any of that network. I actually felt like I would learn a lot from this. And so in some ways I was like, well, you know, I'm sort of paying for an education. If nothing more. And it was again, like I just knew so little about everything I do now back in 2000 and what is it 2010? So it was nine years ago. It was if you have a real deep curiosity about something and then you find someone you really respect and give a lot to learn from them, find a way to get closer to them, find a way to work with them. Just always leads to something and you may not exact what it is.

• 26:23Shaan Puri?

  This is timely. So I just yesterday invested in a self-driving car company. And my last sort of like, as I was going through the last checklist of like, okay, should I do this? This is meaningful money to me. I'm not at the point where, you know, when I invest dollars in, I actually really want those dollars to come back. I'm not, this is not like the philanthropy angel investing that some people do. And so my last thing was like, look, I'm going to learn so much about robotics, machine learning and self-driving cars. And that's the future. Whether it's this company or the next one, these guys are the future. And this might just be my education. And worst case scenario, this is my education. And I started helping these guys, you know, last couple of days, try to get, you know, get their business off the ground. And already I feel like I'm get to live in the future, a couple of hours a week, just by working with them.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Do you guys want a funny update on that? I'm, I'm almost positive that company either has gone bankrupt or Sean has completely written it off. And I asked him if he should have done that. And this is funny, he's gonna kill me for saying this. I, I, I think, don't entirely quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure he said that he regrets it because he wasn't entirely interested in, you know, after learning a bit, he's like, "I don't actually, I don't know if I'm actually that interested in self-driving cars, but the guy who started it was pretty interesting and I was cool taking that risk." But that was, in fact, his education.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  I don't think he regrets that investment, but I think that it's fun, just to give you that update, it went out of business, I think.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  It's like a, you know, it's a long-term view on the value of learning and relationships, but also for those that aren't ready to write a check to people, I mean, there's so many ways of getting closer to people that you admire and want to learn from and, and keeping those relationships. I mean, I think platforms also like Twitter are amazing in that regard. There's some people that I somehow got connected to on Twitter that I've never even met in my real life, who just reached out to me and just started to share like enough information and witty observations and feedback on something that I wrote, that I just start to follow them. And then I follow them for a year and two years and then, you know, these are folks that-

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Feel like you know them. This is how I met Scott, by the way. I followed him on Twitter and this is how I met Sean. I met Sean this way. I, I started emailing him and we got to know each other online, even though we lived a few miles away from each other. This is how I've gotten in touch with most of my friends. So what Scott's talking about, it works, this podcast is a result of it. The company that I started, The Hustle, it happened because I took a course called The Copywriting Course by Neville Medora. I emailed him, became friends with him, he taught me about writing, I wanted to start a newsletter. So if you are sitting on your ass right now with nothing to do and you want more, reach out to people and in particular, start a Twitter and start tweeting and use that same picture on Twitter for the rest of your social profiles, including your email. People feel like they get to know you and get to know your pic-

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Sure, because they see your content, they see you commenting on stuff. I recognize people who comment on my stuff. Sean has 150,000 followers, I think on Twitter, he recognizes people commenting on his stuff. I'm telling you, it, it, it, it works. It's, it's pretty amazing. I'm, I'm sitting in this hotel, like I said, in Texas. I'm driving to New York, I'm gonna stay at a friend's house. Uh, I've become great friends with him. I consider him a family friend. We met on Twitter. I'm telling you, this works. Do it.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and anything that they were probably doing next, I would probably be first in line to help support or at least learn more about. And so it's just enlightening that anyone can kind of do their own insights and just hard work and, and, uh, and knowledge sharing, like, you know, sort of generosity in that sense. Build relationships these days.

• 29:56Shaan Puri?

  I learned, uh, this the hard way in the sense, I, I host these like mastermind groups. Do you do anything like this? Like a dinner series or anything like that with, with a sa- with sort of the same set of people? Where you get together every two months or so, where it's like your peers, do you do?

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, only like informally, there's probably groups that I do that with, but tell me about, uh.

• 30:11Shaan Puri?

  So the regret was, uh, I moved to San Francisco and I got invited to one of these and I was like, this is great. This is an awesome way to learn and meet people. Cause the, the good thing is you're at a table with founders and, uh, they're not selling. Cause it's like, you're not their employee, you're not their investor, you're not their customer. So they're actually telling you what's up with their company and you're sharing likewise. And so, um, the first couple of groups I was in, if I had just written checks to all of them blindly, I said, you know, like with no judgment. I'm just writing the same $10,000 check in all of you guys, you know, Calm was in that, uh, in that crew.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  We had to pay it off, right?

• 30:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. They would have paid it off. Clearbit was in that crew, uh, Product Hunt, uh, Zola Electric, which is the biggest solar company in Africa. Uh, like, so, so that portfolio would have done amazing. And so I look back and I was like, man, I did the first part, right? Which is what you're saying, you know, I just spent time with interesting people and added value to them through sharing ideas, insights, whatever, helping, being, being helpful.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:00Shaan Puri?

  But then the lesson I learned was, why wasn't I investing? And I, to me, I kind of asked myself this and I thought, um, cause I wasn't thinking of myself like an investor.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:07Shaan Puri?

  And so, uh, then it happened again and I saw this company called Lambda School that I thought was really, really big. It was really early on and I started, you know, talking to Austin and, uh, I was like, this time I'm not gonna fuck this up. And so I convinced my friend, I was like, I found a company that's amazing. If you invest, this is, I'm your scout here.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:22Shaan Puri?

  If I, if, if you invest, you know, give me 15%. Your your action and and let's let's do it. And so then that was like my first like deal deal where

• 31:31Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 31:31Shaan Puri?

  Uh, you know, I was able to just put it in. And since then, now, you know, once we sold, I got a little more money so I could do it myself. But the lesson I learned and what I would tell anybody who's listening to this is, uh, don't count yourself out as as a player in the game, either as a founder or investor. There is a way, if you're willing to be creative and helpful enough, I think.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Yep. So I agree. I think that's one of the greatest cultural attributes of the system of kind of early stage founders is that we all know how much those circumstantial relationships matter and how much we learn from one another and how we actually can't do it alone.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  This podcast started from those dinners, by the way, Sean and I and a bunch of friends would meet. And he always had a bunch of groups, but we would meet and, uh, explain what we were suffering from in our business, what we weren't suffering from. And then eventually we would just brainstorm and that's kind of how this podcast started.

• 32:18Speaker 02

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

• 32:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Did you invest in Uber? Is that right?

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did. So that was also kind of early on.

• 32:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  And the funny story there. So we were bootstrapping our business, uh, Behance early days.

• 32:30Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  With, uh, paper products of all things. We were making paper products for creatives to be organized. There were a series of products.

• 32:36Shaan Puri?

  Actual paper.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  And they're called action books. They're actually still out there.

• 32:38Shaan Puri?

  Okay, yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  And so, uh, so and and one of our core partners, uh, for Behance from a traffic perspective and partnership was, um, was StumbleUpon. Garrett had recently purchased StumbleUpon back from eBay. So he had sold it and then he bought it back. And so he was in my apartment, which was also my office back in the day in New York, and we were kind of jamming on some product stuff. And he whipped out one of our action books that I'd given him previously and was like, hey, you know, check, check this out. I'm like working on this side project.

• 33:07Shaan Puri?

  Sketch. You literally invested in the sketchy Uber.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Literally shows me these sketches of this product where it's about summoning a black car as opposed to having to dial for it.

• 33:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  And, um, and I'm like, dude, you should be focused on your business. You just bought it back.

• 33:20Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Now, I'm a founder CEO struggling. You're a founder CEO now struggling. Like you're thinking of making it.

• 33:25Shaan Puri?

  It's a distraction.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's basically like, that's a textbook distraction, right? And so fortunately he didn't take my advice.

• 33:32Shaan Puri?

  Sixty billion dollar distraction.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  And he said, you know, do you want to, do you want to be involved? And I think it kind of was like, ah, I don't know.

• 33:38Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Uh, but then I also became a product advisor for, for him. And this was actually even before Travis was in the picture. Ryan was involved. And then of course, you know, that team got up and running. And so I had, uh, he asked me if I wanted to invest. And again, it's like, sure, but I very small check, uh, which is all I could do at the time.

• 33:56Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  And that was a journey as well.

• 33:59Shaan Puri?

  And so you're, you do this sort of start as product advisor. And because of that, you're at the table. And so when, when the time came, you, you were, you were in a good position.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  I try to, I try to fall in love with a product in the sense where it's still on my mind, you know? And I'm like thinking through the problems and maybe, you know, what, what's wrong with the interface or how could they empower me better?

• 34:16Shaan Puri?

  So what's something in Uber that the product, a product change early on, like probably before any of us touched it that you remember? Was there anything like that where?

• 34:22Speaker 02

  I mean, I remember, I remember a debate with Garrett around the brand and this notion of should it be a

• 34:27Shaan Puri?

  It was Uber cab at the time, right?

• 34:29Speaker 02

  Right. It was Uber cab at the time. Should it be expensive feeling brand where it looks like it's aspirational, but something you couldn't afford? Or should it be an accessible brand where it feels like this is something that everyone should be doing?

• 34:41Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  And it was actually a really healthy argument because you intuitively think it should be accessible to everyone. I mean, if you want to make a big company, um, but Garrett's view is that it should be something that feels like a superpower, like everyone's private driver. It should feel expensive, even though it was intended to be accessible. And so that was part of the, you know, part of the thought behind the black kind of logo and, and, uh, the brand identity that like sort of suggested that, that feeling. So

• 35:05Shaan Puri?

  Luxury elite feel.

• 35:05Speaker 02

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

• 35:09Shaan Puri?

  That's amazing. Okay. And what are you excited about nowadays? Like going either a space, a company, a problem that you think needs solving? What's got Scott interested?

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I think there's, um, I think there's, there's a lot of different things that are interesting me at any point in time. I mean, in my day job, it's building products for creative people and kind of thinking about the future of not only the creative tools we know, but also things like augmented reality and, and how we're going to actually infiltrate and build content in that new medium that would otherwise die if it wasn't enriched with like interactive, animated, hyper intelligent content. So it's thinking about that, working with a lot of our partners like Apple and others to help think through like. How does that even happen? It's been like a really fun thing for me by day. And you know, and by night, I mean, there's been a lot of really interesting enterprise companies that are thinking about the future of work. If you're in a big company, you know how hard it is for them to even think about a remote workforce and how to make that transition.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Even though a lot of us all know it's coming, what are the steps to get there? What kind of technologies need to come about? I also think that, you know, social has been out of favor.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Well, he called that one. Good job, Scott.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Right, which makes it interesting. Which means it's the, yeah. You know, when everyone says something is dead, it means that something's being born. And now's the time. So I'm thinking a lot about consumer products that help people connect with one another in, in, in new and, you know, privacy driven, premium ways. Gotcha.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Okay, by the way, let's just, let's, we gotta recap. He just said a lot in that sentence. So he talked about everything's dead, or when people say things are dead, it's, it's gonna come back. What, what is that? I mean, a lot of people are saying, uh, remote work is, is taking over. Yeah, it is. But what's the opposite of that? You know, going in person or, I actually don't know what the opposite of that is, but that's like an interesting thing to think about.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Uh, retail, we all, I mean, I, I would think retail is dead. I think the next, like in-person retail, you know, brick and mortar stores, I, I, I thought the same too. I've been talking to a lot of my friends who are doing e-comm. All their sales are down because people are getting out of the house and shopping. I would have said that retail is dead. I would have said like going to Macy's and all, and, uh, uh, going to Target, going to Walmart. Like, why on earth would you do that? Why would you go to a store when you can just order it online? Now I get out of the house just to go because I'm, I wanna be around people. That's kind of interesting. And so i- i- it's pretty wild. He, he, he talked about the future work. I mean, the, this guy, it's so funny that we're, we're only a, a, a few months, twelve, twelve, eighteen months. This was pre-COVID.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  But, uh, I think he actually predicted a lot here. And he also talked about privacy. I've been paying attention. I, I probably actually, not knowing it, started paying attention to it because I started listening to Scott. But a lot of my friends have started talking about that about 24 months ago. I think we are on the cusp of something big with privacy. We look at what Apple's doing. They're changing their, how their ads work, Facebook, changing how their ad works. I have the latest iOS on my, on my iPhone and I have the latest operating system on my computer. They have things like, um, different privacy features. They also have things that, uh, ask you to, um, You know, your screen time limit. So if you hit a certain time, they say, are you sure you still want to use your screen?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  I think that before we would have thought that's ridiculous. No one would ever do that, but I think that's going to be popular. So screen time, I think. Uh, people, normal, average Joes are going to be weary of giving their data to big companies. I talked to the founder of Pandora about this. He said, you know, just your average dentist in Missouri is playing Pandora is nervous about submitting to different privacy statements. And if you look at the traffic of DuckDuckGo, DuckDuckGo is this really, really cool. Uh, uh, Google alternative that tracks your privacy way differently and it's way more concerned about people's privacy. Go to Google DuckDuckGo searches per month and they actually reveal what their searches are per month. It's growing like a weed. This looks like a vert ramp. I mean, it is exponential as exponential can be.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  So I would highly recommend if you're, if you're looking for what's next in the next five or 10 years, I think we've just talked about a few things here. So let's get back into it.

• 39:12Sam Parr?

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• 39:56Sam Parr?

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• 40:02Shaan Puri?

  What's a day in the life? Is there a wake up time, a morning routine that you like that kind of works for you?

• 40:09Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, every day is different, right? But I am trying to think of anything that would be useful and helpful, but I ultimately.

• 40:14Shaan Puri?

  Normal is also useful.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  You know, because people are like, oh, there's no secret. He just wakes up and, you know, eats his breakfast, ties his shoes, a little bit groggy and gets out the door. Like, that's okay, too. Yeah, I know. I mean, I think. I think that I I I do try to switch it up. You know, I'm actually not one of those people that has like every day has to be the same and whatever else. But I do. I mean, there are a couple of things I do. Like, I do try to audit my calendar in retrospect a little bit. A lot of people only look forward. Not many people look back.

• 40:37Shaan Puri?

  So you do a time audit. You look back at the last week or what do you do?

• 40:40Speaker 02

  I do. I typically look back at the last week and I typically ask myself, you know, how do I spend my time? It's actually a really interesting thing because you're typically at least ashamed of one day, if not more than one day.

• 40:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  You know, and how you did it and you look at these blocks, you're like, what did I do during that period? Or why did I meet with that person for that long or whatever it is? Is this advancing, you know, what's most interesting and most important to me?

• 41:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  And that could be personal things and work things, right? But it's just this audit and it's, um, you know, it's prompted some difficult realizations. It's like, wow, like that was more important than, you know, seeing my family.

• 41:09Shaan Puri?

  Time, yeah.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Right. It's important.

• 41:10Shaan Puri?

  I saw a version of this that I really liked. So there's a guy, uh, you probably know his name is Matt something. He's like the like coach, CEO coach to a bunch of CEOs in Silicon Valley. He just wrote a book called The Great CEO Within, I think it's called. It just came out. And so Emmett, who's the CEO at Twitch, he, I think he works with him. I might be getting all these details wrong. Name wrong, book title wrong.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Directionally.

• 41:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, something like this. Let's just wave our hands a little bit. So this guy works with a bunch of CEOs and so he, uh, he wrote this book and I saw his like, like you, you had your 680 Evernote notes. So he had a bunch of Google Docs that were just like quick, you know, like principle after he worked with so many CEOs, he was noticing some things. He would just start writing them down. And he called this one the energy audit. And so it's the same thing you're talking about where you go back in your calendar, but he said, get two markers, right? Red and green or whatever. Red means this took, this, this activity takes energy away from you. You feel less energetic after you do it. Green means that activity gives you more energy, right? Like the gym is this weird thing where you would think you go to the gym, you put all this energy in and you exercise. And that should deplete you, but actually you walk out and you feel more energy for the rest of the day, right? So like, there's these activities. So he said, just start highlighting and just look at the color, step back and just look at the colors and then be like, okay, that's where you're at today.

• 42:14Shaan Puri?

  Let's try to move towards more green and, uh, different things give you energy, like the sort of doing things that are in your zone of genius, right? Things that you're good at, things you know that are important and you're, you can just get in flow and do them. And, uh, I really liked that because it was, uh, it's one of those things that you know, when the first time you do it, you're gonna like, it's gonna look bloody. It's gonna be like, oh, this is not a, not a good use of time.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  I think that would be interesting. I wonder, I feel for me, as I have like a natural introvert tendency and they say that introverts get their energy from being alone. I wonder if I'd be skewed a little bit.

• 42:44Shaan Puri?

  All the non-meeting times are green.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Like, oh, that was the best time. But I like that. I like that idea because, I mean, listen, there are meetings where you're like,

• 42:51Shaan Puri?

  Oh, right.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  And there are meetings where you leave with a lot that you're thinking about. Maybe that's another measure also is after you spend time with something or someone.

• 43:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Are you leaving thinking about things? I mean, that is one of the things I have used over the years to determine founders I want to work with as an investor. Is if I feel like every conversation with him or her was a step function more interesting than the one before it. Or was it a repeat?

• 43:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  A lot of conversations we have with people are repeats.

• 43:17Shaan Puri?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  It's like, oh, you know, Tanya talked about the same thing last time.

• 43:20Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Every now and then you meet someone where you just pick up where you left off and it just gets like actually even,

• 43:24Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  you know, better and better and richer and more dynamic and whatever else. I mean, that was like the story with Periscope when I met Kayvon and Joe and they were doing this thing called Down Diop at the time. But every conversation with them about what they were trying to build and whatever was was like infinitely more interesting.

• 43:38Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:38Speaker 02

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

• 43:39Shaan Puri?

  And what you're saying is it's not just that their results were getting better every time because nobody does that, right?

• 43:43Speaker 02

  It was the ideas, right? It was the ideas and the, and the, you know, the maybe also chemistry, like building upon an idea to make another idea.

• 43:51Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:51Speaker 02

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

• 43:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  It's like, ooh, teleportation. What would I want to do? You know, maybe I'm bed at night going to bed and I just want to like drop into Tokyo and like walk around. It's like, oh yeah, like maybe you could do this. Oh, you could go and see a tennis match that's at Wimbledon when you're in New York. And then you suddenly like, oh, wow, like what are the media rights implications of that? And maybe there's a business model there and it's like thing, the thing, the thing, the thing, the thing. And it's like, okay, this feels good.

• 44:16Shaan Puri?

  Right, yeah, I like, I have a similar thing where I call people Pokemon because it's like, you know, Pokemon just sort of evolve. It's like the next time you see him, oh, my God, this, this whole person has evolved into a better person.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:26Shaan Puri?

  And those are the most like fulfilling people to like spend time with.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  I like that. Pokemon.

• 44:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, here we go, new book. One thing I wanted to ask you because the way I look at it is this is a guy who's achieved a lot of things that I'd like to achieve in my life. Right? So just sold our company, but you know, I'd love to write a book. I'd love to, to, you know, achieve success in the next thing or invest in great companies. So you're still setting goals for yourself. What's a goal you have set for yourself now? Like, what can you share that's something you're like, all right, here's a goal I have for myself nowadays?

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think that there, I think there's some ideas that I'm like brewing that I want to give some time to, right? So I I'm trying to kind of sporadically schedule time to just think through these things. I actually love flights for that reason because I can give myself a chunk of hours that you ordinarily never get on the ground, right?

• 45:07Shaan Puri?

  Or just take a shower.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. You know, just uninterrupted time. I mean, I do believe in this constantly connected world, that disconnection is a competitive advantage.

• 45:15Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Because you can actually think deeply about something as opposed to just constantly react and peck away at the collective inboxes around you.

• 45:21Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  I, uh, yeah, I think that I also certainly have some goals for like the changes I'm trying to bring on the teams, you know, that I'm, that I'm leading now, you know, as this chief product officer role at Adobe. I mean, this is just a company that bought my company, a lot of my DNA is in this business. I care about where these products land and what, you know, and, and so I, I've set some like KPI driven even.

• 45:40Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  You know, goals around and it's just, it forces you to start making big swings and, uh, and think about like how you're going to, uh, lead those changes and get people to, to go along with it. And, you know, and then it's about narrative and merchandising and all these other things. It's, it's fun. You kind of have to build a internal marketing campaign at times just to get people to change their minds.

• 45:58Shaan Puri?

  Totally.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  So, uh, so those are just a few examples.

• 46:00Shaan Puri?

  Okay. And, and if you were 21 again today, so I'll let you keep all the knowledge you have, but you give me back sort of all your, all your assets, your reputation, nobody knows you, you're 21 years old again, uh, what do you think you do? How do you think you would go about spending, you know, the next few years of your life?

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Well, I would, um, I would definitely start something again if I had, um, really a, a deep interest. I think I would probably aspire for more empathy for the customer suffering the problem as opposed to my passion for the solution. I think a lot of the mistakes that I made early on was that, were that I was always like super passionate about what I know needed to happen. And then we would realize eight months later, we were like 30 degrees off.

• 46:38Shaan Puri?

  Right. You cherry pick evidence that might fit.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:41Shaan Puri?

  The need for that solution.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Exactly. Because you're, you know, you get excited by a prototype and a vision and you want alignment. So you force alignment and then you realize, wait, had I just spent more hours next to a customer, seeing what their actual life was like, what they actually thought of my product, I would have known better.

• 46:57Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  So I think those were some of those. There were, I think, a few lost years, as I like to call them in Behance, in that five year bootstrapping period, where we had to rebuild a lot of stuff. And I can't say I would do that all over again. You know, if I had. The choice, although I would say that it definitely built us as a team, like a culture. We went through a lot together.

• 47:13Shaan Puri?

  Adversity will do that to you.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  It did, like what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, like definitely true. In a team struggling, I think I would also try to do fewer things. I, you know, and I go back and forth on this. I've heard two contradictory theses about, about like what makes a great entrepreneur. Either you are really, really great and willing to take risk or you're really good at hedging risk. It's like, wait, those are like.

• 47:35Shaan Puri?

  Which one is it?

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Right? I, um, I, I, I was always a hedger, you know? I always was thinking about the contingency plan and that caused me to do a number of weird things. Number one, it caused me to go to business school simultaneously as I was starting a business and not drop out. Little did I know that dropping out would be way better PR value than finishing. No one gives a shit about an MBA, right? The second.

• 47:56Shaan Puri?

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

• 48:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:00Shaan Puri?

  That would be what? Okay, so, so dropping out's one. What were some other ways that you were doing contingency plans? Does that mean?

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, sorry. I was gonna say like also like another example was a number of products we were building. You know, because I was like, if this one doesn't work, then this one will work.

• 48:10Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  And, um, and even like features. It's like the insecurity of shipping many features in a product is basically, I don't know what's gonna work.

• 48:18Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  But here's the amazing thing is that when you ship a number of features and then you start killing a few of them. What you find is that the core stuff gets used more and gets more attention from the team too. And it was one of those really strange realizations, I would say four years, three or four years into Behance, which is again, probably two years too late or too much later than it should have been. Where we killed a few major features. We had this tip exchange thing where creatives could leave like tips for another and build upon each other and vote them up and down. It was like a mini dig at the time, but within Behance, there was a groups functionality where people could share. And then we killed both, like one after the other. And then suddenly people created more projects.

• 48:50Shaan Puri?

  Right, usage goes up.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  And they use, and they use the core fee functionality more. And I just, again, wish I could have gone back and just really drove it down to like, what do we actually have to ship? And how do we make sure it's amazing?

• 48:59Shaan Puri?

  And what space would be interesting to you? If you're 21, would you be like a link tools for creatives? Or would you go into biohacking or, you know, like whatever? Like, cause at that point you have a long time where you can ramp up or go into any space. You're not sort of committed.

• 49:10Speaker 02

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

• 49:15Shaan Puri?

  21 today?

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, 21 today, I would definitely be doing. Something different. First of all, I mean, we're still living in an app driven world, which is crazy. I mean, apps were born in the world where there was no GPS, there were no notifications, there was no AI. And and so you had to download apps and then use them for things. Now, within a modern OS that should know where you are and what you're most likely to want to do based on where you are and when you're there and with whom you are with. The the whole operating system, the whole notion should be completely different. There shouldn't even be apps, frankly. There should be superpowers that are suddenly there and then they're suddenly gone.

• 49:48Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  And if you think about, and I think that we're going towards that end. I think that we will see operating systems evolve. I think that the notification systems we know them today will be totally antiquated to this more, you know, actionable interface that just is always like the sixth sense, the appendage that we never know we needed. And I think about like, what are the applications that are going to thrive in such a world? I also think about marketplaces that are more sustainable. You know, the the the modern notion that every freelancer marketplace essentially taxes the transaction is silly.

• 50:18Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Um, and that's actually the on demand model for on demand marketplaces. And it's all the same formula. There is a totally different model that should exist. Maybe it's blockchain driven. Maybe there's some other mechanic at play for value distribution. So there's a lot of these things that I think a bit about. Some of them overlap into my day job. Some of them I'm looking for companies and entrepreneurs that are tackling and want to help them.

• 50:39Shaan Puri?

  What I like about your approach is that you didn't start with some idea like, oh, I want to build this or a generic space, but it was more like, oh, why are things the way they are? Wait, shouldn't they be different? Like, you basically were like, why are apps and notifications the way we use this phone now that we have XYZ? Or why do all marketplaces do this, you know, rent seeker model where they just, you know, sit in the middle and grab from every transaction?

• 50:57Speaker 02

  So it's funny, like, one of the things I learned most working with the benchmark team for a little while was, I really went in there thinking the greatest investors are really good at it in the future. And what I left there believing is that the greatest investors have a really deep and concrete understanding of us. And and how the present is like about to change. And if you can kind of, but not, you know, distant, distant long shots are fun bets, but they're bets.

• 51:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Right. But if you really have a tune into the current dynamics and just how they're slightly shifting and start getting ahead of really interesting things.

• 51:25Shaan Puri?

  I see. And so you, um, where do you like to learn from? So like, what do you listen to? What podcast do you listen to? What book do you read? Who do you think is really smart where if there's talking, you're listening? What what what do you like to feed your brain?

• 51:37Speaker 01

  So before, I haven't commented in a second because I've been listening. I love this guy. When I raised a little bit of money from Tim Ferriss, Tim is the popular author investor. He told me, I actually asked him this question. And he told me the first, he goes, there's two people who I listen to for investing advice. The first is Naval. The second is Scott Belsky. Whatever Scott Belsky says, I usually trust. He's my authoritative figure on investing. So this is a good question to ask. I think it's great. I'm very eager to see, hear who he says.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's something that, so I'll tell you, like, my first answer is I have, I am a huge fan of Twitter. I think that is an incredible, it sounds like such a cliche answer, but I have carefully curated a group of people. They are astrophysicists, they are biologists, they are economists, they are political scientists, they are other entrepreneurs and designers and illustrators. These are the people who curate for me every day what's interesting to them. I just think that's freaking amazing. Right, you get to surf on top of that. It is, it is. And so some people say, oh, my gosh, you spend so much time on social media. Actually, it's just literally going through and reading. Yes. If you think about it, but curated by the people. And that's how I learned about the books that I want to read. Right. And that's, so I mean, I love reading books related to psychology and I love reading, I'm starting to listen to a lot of history podcasts.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  So like some of those like Kings of Kings type podcasts, I think are super interesting because you're just learning about this notion of history rhyming. Like, it's so true. I mean, you're learning about what happened in like Rome, you know, and you're like, oh, my gosh, it's happening all over again now in America. Right. There's just a lot of that. So I, but I try not to, I actually don't have like one field. I'm just like, I love reading just this genre or whatever. And I don't read too many business books. Why is that? Well, I find that most of them are a big book about a little idea, you know? That's how I feel about most books. It is, but you know, I think that, and I had an argument with my publisher about the messy middle because I came in with this like, this, this big book of like, you know, between 100, 200 insights that were completely disconnected from one another. Although there was some sort of thread, but you know, and they were like, this is not what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to write a chapter book.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  And I was like, well, that's three chapters. Right. At least my audience, they're too busy. You know, they're starting companies, they're changing companies. They just want actual insights that'll make them think about something differently.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  This is a funny insight. So, one of my favorite books ever, I believe Paul Graham and his wife Jessica, I forget her last name, Livingston, wrote it. It's called Founders at Work. And all it is, is interviews, and this was written, I don't know, 05, maybe? It's in the early, it was before Twitter was around, because they interview Ev Williams, the guy who started Twitter, and he was called the founder of Blogger, his old company. So, whenever Twitter launched, it was before that. And it's like 18, or 20, or 30 interviews, and it's called Founders at Work. And they just, they just ask questions. That's all it is. It's Jessica asking questions, and the, it's like this podcast, basically. It's this podcast, kind of in book form, a little bit.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  It's awesome. And I agree with Scott here. I actually love these types of books. They aren't chapters, I can flip through, and they're just quick insights, like 10 pages. I think you could actually build a book that's like Founders at Work, or make a book Founders at Work, but then do like Engineers at Work. You could do Designers at Work. You can do, and all you do is release a series of books. You could do it every year, every two years, every three years. And it's just sold for $29, or whatever books cost, $18. And you just do this over and over and over again. Almost like, remember, you know those books, like Beekeeping for Dummies, SEO for Dummies, whatever, for Dummies? I think you could do the same thing. So, if you're looking for an idea, I think you could do that.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  Right. And like, where to go to learn more?

• 55:19Shaan Puri?

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

• 55:22Speaker 02

  That's the least that I want.

• 55:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, great. Alright, I know you got to help on a flight, so I checked the clock. Look at this, perfectly on time. That's my podcaster instincts.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  This is great.

• 55:29Shaan Puri?

  10pm flat. Yeah, this is fun. I hope you guys like this conversation. If you want to follow Scott, where should they follow you, reach out to you?

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Hey, just Scott Belski, @ScottBelski, wherever, whenever, go for it, connect.

• 55:42Shaan Puri?

  Great, awesome.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  That's it. That's the podcast. That was a quick one. I think like, the introductions took up a lot of it. But Scott's amazing. I hopefully, I hope you enjoyed this. I enjoyed just sitting here, listening to it.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  It's cool, man. Scott, I mean, I just get fired up. I'm kind of a lost forward, because I'm thinking about what Scott said. The guy's amazing. I love his attitude. I'm gonna keep doing these. This was another Greatest Hits ep. Let me know how you feel about these. TheSamPar is my Twitter handle. I read all of them. And let me know what you think. I'm digging it. I like doing them and I hope you like listening to them. So let me know what you think. And by the way, it's now close to midnight over here. I'm staying up late doing this. I'm doing this all for you and you know what I want? Just click that subscribe button on iTunes, that follow button on Spotify and leave me a review. Leave us a review.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  We check them and we iterate quickly in the podcast because we review those all the time. So, thank you. This is Sam Parr calling you from like Waco, Texas or somewhere in a La Quinta Inn. Talk soon.