Bonus Episode: Logan Bartlett’s Guest Appearance on Ordinary Astronauts: Talking the Why Behind Cartoon Avatars and the State of VC

Logan Bartlett joined the Ordinary Astronauts podcast to talk Cartoon Avatars, the current state of venture capital, how startups can raise in this environment and paths for company building. Listen to Ordinary Astronauts: https://t.co/6bVExMcSVF Time Stamps: (0:00) - Intro (1:18) – Private vs public markets (4:31) – Finding your investor (7:47) – Valuations in the current market (12:52) – Few buyers at $1B valuation (14:12) – VC conspiracy theories (18:56) – Founder decisions (23:50) – Work/life balance (27:21) – Seeing through to the exit (30:04) – Origins of Cartoon Avatars (35:01) – The art of creating (38:26) – Assessing the numbers (42:39) – Infiniteness of content (47:04) – Lessons learned in podcasting (50:55) – The important opinions (52:37) – Why Cartoon Avatars changed formats (55:39) – Areas of uncertainty (58:27) – Maintaining the routine for publishing (1:01:03) – The biggest guests (1:03:58) – Wrapping up 🎙 Listen to the show Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cartoon-avatars/id1606770839 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb4br3LlyVrdqOYYb?si=00fe3494b43a4e4c Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9zb0hJZkhWbg Follow on Socials 🎬 Daily Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@cartoonavatars 📸 Reels - https://instagram.com/cartoonavatars 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/cartoonavatars About the Show A Saturday morning podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett (Partner and Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures) covering the tech news with his friends and other people with industry expertise. Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member. Tap follow and enable notifications to stay ahead of the game.

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

• 0:04Logan Bartlett?

  Welcome to a special bonus episode of Cartoon Avatars. This is a conversation I had with Nathan over at Every, which if folks don't subscribe, Every is a, it's kind of a bundle of subscription writing. And Nathan was formerly the VP of Product at Substack before that. They write on a bunch of interesting topics related to tech. And he launched a podcast with his co-founder, Dan. And the name of the podcast is Ordinary Astronauts. I was somehow one of their first guests. I don't know how they, they must've gotten turned down by a lot of people.

• 0:46Logan Bartlett?

  So this is a conversation that I had with Nathan in which he kind of interviews me about starting this podcast, about the state of the venture landscape. Really interesting conversation. He was thoughtful in all his questions and we went in a bunch of different directions. So hopefully you enjoy this bonus episode here now.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Logan, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me on. I want to talk about two things really in this conversation. First being like what's going on with venture capital right now that a lot of things seem to be changing kind of beneath our feet. And then second, I want to spend a lot of time talking about Cartoon Avatars and your Twitter and the TikTok and just hear about the sort of content machine that you're creating. Sure. But let's start with what's happening like right now. I feel like we're kind of, the first quarter of 2022 was like, oh, things kind of keep going down. And then somewhere around the turn of like, you know, March, when we're getting into the second quarter, it's like, oh shit, things are actually pretty bad. And it's only pretty much gotten worse from there in public markets. I don't think it's clear at all that we found any sort of bottom yet in public markets.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  How is that translating to VC? Cause I'm not involved in much, you know, fundraising discussions or I don't really have a lot of visibility into maybe if all the rounds are on pause or if valuation conversations are running really differently than they did, you know, earlier this year. I'm just curious from you, like what are you seeing?

• 2:08Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's interesting. So the way I sort of think about the private markets, so public markets, there's thousands of transactions a day, right? That end up coming up with some price and it's a, it's a ton of people agreeing on what something should be worth, right? Private markets are more akin to like, you know, selling your house. It only happens.

• 2:29Logan Bartlett?

  Every so often, and it's hard to know what anything's worth if if your neighborhood's changed around you. Right. Zillow found that out the hard way. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But if the neighborhood's changed around you, maybe you did some additions to the house, whatever it is like. Yeah. You can try to come up with an estimate of what you're worth, but you actually have to go to the market and determine what people are willing to pay for your house. And then all it takes is one, right? And so it's not consensus based in the same way that the public markets are where it's thousands of people agreeing to it on a second basis. It's it's a handful of people poking at something and then it's one person saying, hey, I think it's worth this. And the CEO saying, okay, sounds good, right? Yeah.

• 3:07Logan Bartlett?

  And then there's this interesting dynamic, especially as you get earlier, earlier stage where where ultimately it's actually not that you're selling your house. But it's that you're inviting someone to be your roommate, right? And so you're actually taking far more into consideration, gosh, well, you know, what's this person's hygiene like? Do I get along with them? All of this stuff that you wouldn't if you were just selling your house. Hey, that guy smells bad, but whatever. I don't really care. Right? And so the private market, I guess I say all of that in that each pocket of this is it's ultimately a derivative of the public markets. Right? Because like, for the most part, what we're underwriting to is a public market outcome. And so what I think we've seen is a couple of things.

• 3:49Logan Bartlett?

  One, most of the companies, the A plus businesses raised last year more than enough money for them to get through this period of time. Right? And so a lot of people are just sitting on their hands saying, hey, you know, not my problem. Right? I have more than enough cash. And so a lot of those companies are just have so much cash that they're hanging out on the sidelines. Then there's some businesses that maybe kicked the can and said, hey, you know, well, we'll be a little bigger at this point in time. And it's been good for 12 years in the market, plus or minus. And so why don't we just wait till, you know, July next year to go raise, right? So those people are at the later stages, they're very much in this price discovery mode of like, hey, what do people think we're worth?

• 4:34Logan Bartlett?

  Right? And ultimately, investors at the later stages, like before they go public, they're taking their cues from the public markets. But at the end of the day, all it takes is one person to say. Hey, I think the multiples are going to go back to being up, or hey, I think this business, their plan, they're going to beat even what they think. All it takes is one person saying that for the market, quote unquote, to determine that's what the valuation is, quote unquote. And so I think at the growth stage, there's a lot of companies that when they're raising, they just have to talk to a lot of people, right? It's sort of like this unique house that, you know, it might be perfect for one person out there, but it might be their

• 5:16Logan Bartlett?

  dream home, but it doesn't appeal to 90% of the population or whatever. You're trying to figure out like what the value is, which I think leads to very long processes. It leads to feeling like you're jerked around. It leads to feeling like there's a bunch of ambiguity and uncertainty in the market. And so I think at the growth stage, like there's that whole thing going on. And I think that that's really hard as an entrepreneur to be out there trying to figure out like, hey, I just want the money. You tell me what it's worth. And it's really hard if like in December, people were telling you, maybe you didn't take the money, but people are telling you, hey, I'm a unicorn, right? Or you're a unicorn. I'm willing to give you a billion dollars. And now those same

• 5:58Logan Bartlett?

  people are like, you know, we're not, we're not investing right now, right? Or, or we think you're now worth 200 and not a billion. And so I think it's very weird at that point in time. And then the last thing I'll say is at the early stage, I think for the most part, it's still business as usual, like deals are getting done. Prices maybe have come down a little bit, you know, that's just anecdotal, but I think prices ultimately all this stuff adjusts down. But you're not going to be right or wrong about investing in a company if you, if you're swinging big and hoping these businesses are going to be worth billions and billions of dollars. And you're deciding between 40 posts and

• 6:40Logan Bartlett?

  60 posts and 80 posts, like sure, those are big differences nominally, but like if the investment works, it's ultimately going to be worth a lot. And if it doesn't work, it's not going to be worth a lot. And so the situations that you get caught in the middle and like, hey, 60 posts is a good deal, but 40 posts isn't. Or just so few and far between, right? And so ultimately, as an asset class, that matters. But for any individual investment, it doesn't. And so I think early stage is still business as usual.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, but, but I'm curious about that, kind of like especially the sort of series A-ish, maybe like a late A. Maybe they raised a really big seed round, so the A is kind of coming on the heels of more traction. Are you seeing a company that could fetch 80 posts, maybe fall of last year, be closer to 60 or 40 now? Like what? I, I know it's hard because like every house is different. Like you, I think it's a really good analogy, but just roughly, you know, like if you had to give like a zestimate of, of, of, you know, your average, whatever, quote unquote, which there's no such thing as average in this market, but.

• 7:43Logan Bartlett?

  This sort of goes to like a fundamental question of what are valuations, right? And so this is where the house thing kind of breaks down because for a house, you're, you're ultimately saying, hey, I'm walking away from this transaction, right? And this is my only bite at the apple. And so I want to maximize the absolute valuation that I'm going to get out of it because that dollar, those dollars, the difference between paying a million dollars and 1.2 million dollars is an additional, you know, 20% to me. And I will never look at that house again. I'm moving to the other side of the country, right? The difference in the, the venture market is all of these things are somewhat at the early stage, especially.

• 8:25Logan Bartlett?

  It's an arbitrary function of what it takes to get the deal done and what you think ultimately the business can be worth. And so when we're talking about like, let's say, hey, your business plan for, for every, you're saying, hey, you know, we're, all we need is $10 million, right? And that can get us to profitability. Okay, great. I'm saying, "Hey, I want to own 25% of your company, and I want to give you $20 million for that." Right? And you're saying, "Well, all I need is 10." And I'm saying, "Well, I've got this big fund. I want to give you 20." And so ultimately, we agree. And you say, "It's okay.

• 9:10Logan Bartlett?

  I'm worth 80 posts now, right? $20 million bought me 25% of the company. It's 80 posts." Well, someone else could have a smaller fund and say, "You know what? All I can give you is 10. But all you want is 10, right? Like, that extra $20 million is going to sit on your bank account, on your balance sheet. And there are some cases to be made that having a lower valuation is actually better. It gives you the ability to give options at a lower price to your employees. It sets up success. If you do choose to raise another round, you can raise it, you know, definitely as an up round, right? All of these things. There's some case to be made that that's better, especially if you're never going to touch the extra $10 million, right? And so maybe you pick to go with the person

• 9:53Logan Bartlett?

  that is giving you 40 posts for $10 million, because that's all you need, right? Well, now the valuation is half. Is it actually half? Not really, right? You just sort of decided that, like, "I'm going to give out 25% of the company, and I don't need that extra $10 million anyway. And so, so be it." So, a long-winded way of answering a fairly simple question of like, all of these things of what valuation is, is somewhat an arbitrary function of, especially at the early stage, picking the partner you want, and figuring out how much cash you need, and making your existing investors and employees happy. And if you can do all of those things,

• 10:35Logan Bartlett?

  like, if your seed investors are going to have a down round at 40 posts, let's say the round was done at 60, and now it's, your seed investors are going to be like, "F off. No, we're not doing that, right? Go take the 80 posts." If your seed investors got in at, you know, 8, They're going to be like, oh, well, it's your call as the CEO. We would prefer more cash on the balance sheet. This could go on longer than you think. This recession, blah, blah, blah. So a long-winded answer is it's definitely happening that there's price pressure occurring in all this stuff. How much and to what extent at the early stage TBD, I would guess, especially with how much capital is in the ecosystem. I would guess it doesn't end up correcting that much at the early stage and it does at the late stage, but that's just a theory.

• 11:19Logan Bartlett?

  I don't have data to actually back that up.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Got it. Cause like definitely, I think it's really smart to understand like when valuation decisions are made, especially at the early stage. You know, it's not like someone whose independent job is to come up with the most accurate possible number. If you had to like measure a willingness to pay of all the investors and like you want to hit somewhere right. And like where the supply and demand curves right, you know, intersect or whatever, like that's not the point. The point is how much cash do you need? And then what kind of ownership requirements do the, do the VCs have? And how much dilution is the entrepreneur willing to take on?

• 11:49Logan Bartlett?

  And who do you want? Right? Who do you want? And that's where you see people get discounts based on their brand, right? Hey, I'll go work with SoftBank at X, but I'll work with Sequoia at Y, right? And there are spreads that exist based on the brand, based on the perception, based on the value add, all that stuff as well.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. And I guess one of the important inputs to that function is for a founder, your kind of assessment of the probable outcomes. And everybody wants to say, okay, we're going to be the biggest company ever, but like, of course, you know, there's a degree of probabilities. And I think that if you look at kind of what's happening to a lot of companies now where the valuation that they thought they could get is like, well, maybe I'm able to get half that. If I'm a really late stage company, right? Or like, you know, thinking about IPO and maybe now I'm not thinking about IPOing. For earlier stage companies, it also weighs on you because, you know, acquisition budgets might go down, they might freeze up. There's a lot of risk in that. And the higher your valuation, the, you're kind of raising the stakes.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Like the, the level of outcome you can get of exit that you can get, that is considered a win. Is harder and harder to attain, the higher your valuation is.

• 12:57Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, that's right. And the easiest way to make 20 million bucks is like to own 100% of a company and sell it for 20 million bucks. The hardest way to make 20 million bucks is to own 2% of a company and sell it for a billion dollars, right? And it's just like, it's like the absolute gravity of these numbers end up being impactful in terms of the there's a lot of people that will buy a company for 20 million dollars. There's not a lot of people that will buy a company for a billion dollars, right?

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:21Logan Bartlett?

  Ultimately, the gravity of these numbers and what expectation of success you're striving for end up being pretty impactful to how you run the business.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And I'm really curious if it feels like that's changing the calculus for many founders right now because, you know, every is pretty much a different kind of business. Like, we're really building it for like the very long term. And, you know, it's not kind of a traditional tech VC type, type business. But I can imagine like if I'm looking out and I'm thinking about my willingness to take on the increased risk of an increased valuation, right? It was probably very different in the fall of 2021 than it is in the summer of 2022. And I'm curious if you see that as a force that's like kind of bringing valuations down as well, because obviously investors, they like the valuations to go down to some extent, like it's because it allows them to buy equity cheaper.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  But I feel like with entrepreneurs, this is sort of a subtle point that is lost a lot and kind of like the conversations on Twitter is a lot of entrepreneurs might actually like that too, because it's decreased risk in their part.

• 14:21Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, you know, it's a funny, the whole trope about like VCs are willingly suppressing prices to try to get better deals. It's funny like.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  It's like, oh, the sky is falling.

• 14:31Logan Bartlett?

  I'm like, people say that and from a game theory standpoint, it's like a prisoner's dilemma that immediately falls apart. It's sort of like if you were selling your house and, and your real estate agent had conspired with every other real estate agent to like, you know, drive down the prices to sell the deal, but like. Anytime one real estate agent breaks from that and says like, hey, you know what? I promised this this group that I would do this, but I'm not actually, I'm going to get you the actually best price and negotiate on that. The whole thing breaks down because now no one trusts anyone else. And like, take that and apply that to like 60 very ego or 100 very egocentric, like

• 15:12Logan Bartlett?

  money hungry investors and try to think about like what backroom we could possibly coordinate, like a conspiratorial effort to drive down prices.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  We would meet up at Ben 16 or whatever it was in the marina. Remember Angel Gate from way back in the day?

• 15:27Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, that's right. It's just like, it's one of those things that I get how it sounds good in theory, but in practice, it's just like, how would that actually ever occur when we're all acting in our own self-interests? But your point is a, it's a good one where ultimately there's, there's kind of a trope that VCs cling to, and I fall victim of it, that like discourage people from raising money, right? And I actually think, I don't know what percentage it is, if it's 50% or 10% or 75% or 90%, whatever number it is, there's a bunch of companies that I think their ambitions, that are venture-backed, their ambitions should be different because of what the ultimate

• 16:10Logan Bartlett?

  size of the market is, because of their, you know, business model, because of the, you know, the leadership skills of the CEO, because of whatever, a bunch of different things, right? There's only a finite number of markets that I think can and should aspire to be worth, you know, 1, 10, 50, 100 billion dollars. And what's interesting is a lot of people, and it's VC's fault, right? To be clear, because we raise all this money and then we try to convince entrepreneurs that they should go because we have a portfolio of investments, right? And so from a construction standpoint, what VCs want is all of their portfolio companies to go as big as they can, right?

• 16:55Logan Bartlett?

  Because if they turn into a Stripe or a Snowflake, which we were fortunate enough to work with, or turn into a Facebook or a Google or whatever, right? That papers over everything else. Well, to an individual entrepreneur, their outcomes can be very meaningful to their life. Like if I have 10 investments and one turns into Google, It actually, everything else is a rounding error, right? All nine of those are a rounding error to me and our fund and our limited partners, right? Well, those are nine other companies, entrepreneurs, employees, like, that maybe shouldn't be pushed to go for the absolute biggest outcome, right? Even though that's in my interest.

• 17:35Logan Bartlett?

  And so, at times, that's where the interests of companies and VCs diverge, is like, sometimes the answer might be to aim a little lower and to say, hey, you know what? Let's keep this price down, or let's not go raise that incremental round of funding, because then we're gonna have investors that want us to go even bigger than what's actually natural for our market or our opportunity. And so, I think when you have a million investors in your ear saying, no, you can be $10 billion, because almost everything was like somehow worth $1 billion to $10 billion over the last two years somehow. And if all, if you can't find a single investor that's like, no, you know what? Don't go raise that money, or, yeah, we're fine if you just hit a double on our capital

• 18:20Logan Bartlett?

  or whatever. If you can't find a single investor, like, it definitely deludes your thinking. And it's like, wait, if you had thought, hey, maybe my business should only be worth $100 billion, and that would be an amazing outcome for me and all my employees, but every other investor is telling you, you should go to be worth $10 billion? Like, it's gonna be hard to turn all that down, because it seems like free capital, hey, well, this person's willing to give me a $500 million valuation. Why should I ever settle for a $100 million acquisition, right? But when the incentives diverge, that's where it starts to break down. And so, I'm seeing more and more of that.

• 19:04Logan Bartlett?

  Ultimately, I think it comes down to, if a founder, you sort of need to make a decision as a founder of, you can pick maybe two of these, but you can't pick all three. Like, do you want to be rich? Do you want to be king? Or do you want to leave a legacy? And like you're kind of faced with a conundrum and to be clear, I think the best case scenario, unless you really want to try to be Google and Larry, Sergey, Elon Musk, whatever. Like if you just want to make money, the best case scenario in my mind is like own as much of your company as you possibly can and just methodically build it, right? I think that's like the safest probability weighted thing. When you start wanting to be king, you care about like, you know, how many people you have?

• 19:45Logan Bartlett?

  You care about, you know, the ability to look good in press releases and have valuations and have all this stuff, right? And that's like a slightly different mindset. And if you want to leave a legacy, you're really focused on like the endurance of the ultimate business and making sure it's built the last. And maybe you actually don't even need to be the CEO. If there's a better person to come in to run the business, like you step aside, like Ryan Peterson did recently at Flexport and, you know, you want to build something that lasts and the answer might be you, it might not. And so those are kind of the decision trees that I think founders ultimately face. And I think now people are starting to recognize that like it seemed over the last two years that you could do all three because VCs were telling you that.

• 20:29Logan Bartlett?

  And now I think there's more and more people being methodical about like, hey, you know what? I actually think the best outcome for this is not to try to build this long lasting, you know, hundred year legacy where I get to rule over, you know, the GDP, the size of a small country and the same number of employees. Instead, like I'll build a very solid company that's worth $50 million and, you know, sell it and, uh, and have a very happy life. And so I think that's, that's happening more as people see that there are trade offs in all these considerations.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. I mean, I, I think it's a fascinating point and important one. And to me also kind of an illustration of the idea that the medium is the message. And so in this case, the medium is basically finance, right? And there's this subset of finance that's like high risk finance. It's like, let's see if we can find vehicles that provide risky, but really high returns. And then, you know, what you get from that is the whole idea of startups of, uh, you know, being the next Google, of being the next Facebook. And you get these myths and you get people to kind of promulgate the myths. And then you get a whole bunch of people to try and do the next thing and you get the people who want to fund them. And it creates, it's like amazing how if you sort of trace back. A lot of behavior that we observe around us, it kind of comes back to some like math

• 21:43Speaker 01

  variables in a spreadsheet that tend to work pretty well for like giant pools of capital, getting a little bit more giant using one particular method, you know, that's like a small portion of their actual overall allocation. And it's crazy how it's like, you know, people's lives are like, just like shaped by the mechanisms of these like, kind of like universal constants of like risk and reward or whatever. And this is just like one version of it. But a framing thing about the point of, you know, whether a company is, should aim higher or lower, basically, and whether you should try and own more or own less, but be bigger. I think the important thing that was missing from what I heard you say in some of it was the aspect of time, because I think if you just say, do you want

• 22:25Speaker 01

  to be big or small? It's kind of like, well, yeah, I want to be big, you know? But if you say, okay, and how long are you willing to work on it? And how much control do you want to have? So I think of it less like, have a legacy, be rich, or be king, although maybe this ultimately maps back onto it. I think about it like, how much time are you willing to commit? How big do you want it to be? And what do you want it to ultimately be? Kind of, which is like, size is one aspect of it. And like, how much control do you want to have? So big, I guess, is rich, control is king, and then time, I guess, is legacy. But I think of it more like a cost, like, I'm willing to incur the cost of time on every, in order to have it be really big and to have a lot of control over it. That's

• 23:10Speaker 01

  like, Dan and I, you know, Dan, my co-founder, we've been really clear on like, we want this to be really big. Like, we don't view it as a small potential thing. We think building a really great audience and learning a lot and working with a lot of writers and building a subscription business is potentially a vehicle longer run into like, other businesses. I think Silicon Valley is very like, you know, monomaniacally focused on like, the single product company, but a lot of great companies in history were built as kind of like, slow roll empires, where you parlay one thing into another, you know? I mean, look at like Warren Buffett or whatever.

• 23:42Logan Bartlett?

  How much of the time component is the depth of time and the effort required versus the length of time and how far in the future you're thinking?

• 23:53Speaker 01

  I mean, it's both like,

• 23:54Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  But I think it's more about the length of time. So like, I work pretty hard now. Like, I don't know. I hate the whole like debate over like, how hard should you work or whatever? Like, I don't know. I feel like I work basically as hard as I can without sacrificing the really important things in my life, like family or my health or whatever. And I kind of have a sense of where my own limit is. And it's the kind of thing like, you know, if you're an athlete, you know, where your physical limits are, and it's important to push it to that point, but not too far beyond for too long, otherwise you ruin kind of everything. So that's basically how I think about how I operate.

• 24:27Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, what's interesting, I guess, and maybe this is a function of investing mostly at Series B, C stage, is that like, the opportunity cost of time, I think, feels a lot more material, I would say, in the very early days of company. You know, when you're in the, in my world, the seed or, you know, pre-seed or angel or, you know, the second seed or whatever people call it.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:53Logan Bartlett?

  When you're still in the early days, your obligation to the money you've taken on, the people you've hired, the product you've built, all of that is, you still can think about like, okay, what if I go back and work at Google, right? Or what if I go work at like this other company that has more certainty? And I wouldn't have to sacrifice all the depth of the time and more certainty on like the length, and maybe I'll have another great idea in the future. And that's one of the things like, sometimes when big company execs leave and say they're going to go start a company, like, it's interesting because generally they've made more than enough money.

• 25:34Logan Bartlett?

  And generally, their time can be assessed in a very quantifiable way to what they walked away from and what they could walk back into, right? And so that's an interesting thing versus a lot of the CEOs I back. I back, one, it's the decision's already been made at Series B, C. Like, the door is not really going back the other way. There's not like an opportunity cost at this point. The toothpaste is out of the tube. And so you've sort of set the train in motion. And it's sort of like, yes, you're making a decision of how big and how long you want to sign up for the ultimate exit. But for the most part, you're going for it in some meaningful way, right?

• 26:17Logan Bartlett?

  And that's one of the conversations I have with CEOs is like, you know, How long, we're going to do this as long as it takes to build this into the company it should be, right? And if they don't want to do that, then I'm not the right investor for them. And so I guess it's a function of maybe the types of companies that I talk to and assessing that the ambitions, ultimately what I said about like, I want the people, and this is why I'm very comfortable with secondary for founders, is because I want their incentives to be aligned with mine and going as big as they possibly can.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:54Logan Bartlett?

  And if, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, whatever it is, changes their willingness to pursue the ambitions that align with me, then I'm very comfortable with that. And so I guess maybe it's, I live in this little bubble of like, I mean, I definitely do, but the like worldview I have is informed by the types of founders I work with.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. I mean, it's interesting because I feel like there's even different orders of magnitude, time commitments than that. Like, there's the, I'm going to try this for a couple of years, and if it doesn't seem to be taking off, I'm not really down to struggle and I want to go back to get, you know, like a 400K salary somewhere type level of commitment. There's the, I want to see this business through to a really great exit, you know, be the CEO for maybe a little while after that. And then like, you know, if it's an IPO, maybe eventually I'll hire a successor, or if I get acquired, I'll stay there for a while to kind of like vest in peace and then think about my next company. I think that's the more typical, kind of like 10-ish year time horizon. Dan and I, I mean, literally, one of the biggest risks that we focus on is are we having fun and

• 27:57Speaker 01

  how's our relationship? Because the goal is that this is the last company that we work on. And we might fail. I mean, odds are we'll fail, right? Though there might be other things we do. But I just think it would be absolutely sick to enjoy the benefits of compounding for decades on a thing. Like, it feels like, it's very rare for me to think that way because it feels, I don't know, it's like, I don't know, it's weird. It's like getting married or something like that, you know, like it's too, it's a little bit too much. Like even for the sort of like, long-term, you know, like typical VC-backed company, which to me feels, it's almost like a financial vehicle, more than an institution that someone wants to build as like a life's work type thing. And I think when you shift the perspective to like the life's work institution building type thing, certain things become

• 28:40Speaker 01

  really important to optimize for that maybe aren't that important if you're building a financial vehicle that's got like a 10, 15-year time horizon. And again, like I think our thing can be really big, but it's we're sacrificing some growth for sure for the next like couple of years because we're prioritizing certain, certain like, you know, ownership things or whatever, whatever other things we think we need.

• 29:00Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, just like the natural pace of absorption, you're sort of balancing the absorption in the market with the ownership you want to have with how big you want the company to be versus like all those things. There's all these things are trade offs. I think it's interesting, you know, I've been a career investor and so a lot of my, I get the breadth of experience and domain across a bunch of different industries, a bunch of different types of people, a bunch of different end markets, a bunch of different scenarios. But two things, one, because of the stage I'm investing, I only really see like plus or minus two types of companies. There's kind of like the cash efficient business that's like, you know, raise some money, but now trying to be more ambitious than they've

• 29:41Logan Bartlett?

  been. And then there's like the venture backed company that's now, you know, raising their subsequent round. And for the most part, there's a lot of decisions that have been made along that journey that don't, that I'm not privy to. But I get a lot of like those types of things. I could talk forever, you know, and so your experience, it's funny, like, and what your considerations and trade offs are. I ultimately don't really have that much of a perspective about all these things. Like I get it conceptually, but I haven't lived any of the things you're talking about with the exception, and maybe this is an interesting segue, you know, this, the podcast that I, that I started, it's a funny thing where I'm not really sure to what end I'm doing it, other than like

• 30:23Logan Bartlett?

  the thesis behind it was, we started it in the beginning of February with two buddies. And my, my thought was I watched the success of All In, right? And

• 30:34Speaker 01

  This is the podcast with Jason Kalkanis and

• 30:37Logan Bartlett?

  Yep, Chamath, David Sacks and David Freberg. Yep.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:41Logan Bartlett?

  So four people that, you know, self proclaimed billionaires that have, have been investors and founders and an interesting group of buddies, started a podcast and during the pandemic, and now it's like a top, I don't know, 25 podcasts in the world, something like that.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  They had like a big conference thing recently.

• 31:01Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, they did a conference and, but it's been amazing. And, and one of the things that kind of hit me was That the the market, in the same way that Hollywood was started to be covered in the 50s, and then politics and sports started to get covered in the 80s and 90s, where people were intrigued by like the the different dynamics and the the inside baseball of stuff and the different personalities and all that stuff. It became clear to me over the course of the pandemic, partially because of this podcast, All In, that they started, partially because of Elon Musk, partially because of Robin Hood and meme stocks,

• 31:42Logan Bartlett?

  partially because of crypto, that we were entering this world of like this intrigue about tech and investing and venture and like it was starting to be covered in a in a really interesting way. And there was clearly this appetite for people to get a peek behind the curtains of like what's going on, right? And so I was watching all this happen and the market over the last two years has just been insanely competitive. And you know, you have former CEOs, you have CROs of companies, you have CTOs of companies, you have Tiger Global with infinite amounts of money. You have all these people investing now into private companies, right? And I'm like a 34 year old career finance person

• 32:27Logan Bartlett?

  that like started tweeting at the beginning of the pandemic and kept tweeting and like ended up having a decent audience. But I'm like, gosh, how do I stand out in this in this world? And my Twitter is very, I sort of had one voice, which was kind of Stephen Colbert for the Colbert Report of tech, where I'm just like always in character, only a personality, like poking at stuff in a ironic way and saying it like I didn't understand what was going on, but was kind of the joke guy, right? Yeah. And whenever I would deviate from that, people were like, hey, go back to being the joke guy, right? And I was like, all right, well, this is kind of becoming my thing. And so I looked at all this and I was like,

• 33:11Logan Bartlett?

  Hey, maybe, maybe there's an opportunity for someone that's, you know, young. I'm about as young as, you know, there's probably people a couple of years younger, but like to be on the inside, you know, general partner, managing director, whatever, and you can't be that much younger than me and be at a firm that's like, you know, been around for 20 plus years or whatever, like one of those, like you can be a little bit younger, but not that much younger, right? And so I felt like I was both very much on the inside. I came from the outside. Like I went to a small school in Virginia. I didn't know anyone in TAC. I sort of fell into all this stuff. And so I still sort of have this outsider-ish view about everything that's going on. I don't feel like I'm on the inside, even though I definitely am. And it felt like I could have a unique voice to weigh in on

• 33:56Logan Bartlett?

  all this stuff. And I thought, hey, it might be a differentiator for just my awareness and people knowing who I am. And so we started doing it. And I guess to bring it back to what we were talking about, like, I actually can't relate at all for the types of companies I invest in to the experience of every, right? But I can in some ways to the podcast I started because now it's, it's had success and I'm having fun, but I don't know to what end. I'm not totally sure what, what, I don't want to do a conference. We haven't taken, I get pitched all the time for advertising and I don't want to do that. I'm sort of funding it out of pocket with Redpoint right now. And my partners have been gracious in doing that. And so I don't really know, do, do I want to be as big as I possibly can

• 34:40Logan Bartlett?

  be? Is that like a good thing to get stopped on the streets? I don't think so, right? I don't know if that's even within reach of what I'm doing. And so it's funny, like this has now had success and it's starting to escape from my little orbit of like, you know, listenership and all that. And, and I don't exactly know to what end, right? I'm kind of like, it's possible, it's possible I just shut it down, you know, like, I don't know. So I'm having fun with it, but that's kind of the quick backstory. You'd asked about it earlier. And I think it's like what you're thinking about to some extent.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm so glad you brought that up because I think there, there might be something unique about media or maybe a fancier word that doesn't really describe what I do, but you know, would be like art, right? Like people creating something personal and creative. Um, you know, even if it's funny or sarcastic or whatever, like it's personal and, um,

• 35:33Speaker 01

  The way that you relate to that type of creation is just really different from kind of like a normal transactional-ish type thing. And yeah, maybe there is something. I hadn't honestly really related like why it feels really natural or like obvious for Dan and I to try and think of every as like potentially the last company that we ever worked for, but probably a big part of it is because it's like, I don't know, we're like writing essays where it's like we're trying to create a and it also seems like media companies, the really good ones do have that kind of longevity, like The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, like, you know, it seems like it seems like there's something about the natural, we're like, like, it's like a turtle or something. It's not like the biggest animal, but it lives like a really long time or something

• 36:17Speaker 01

  like that's like how these kinds of media companies are. So yeah, I hadn't really related to that before, but.

• 36:23Logan Bartlett?

  It's 100% interesting in terms of, in terms of all of that stuff, right? And I think what's, I don't know how you think about it, like, I assume to some extent, because it's your business, right? You look at the metrics as somewhat of an assessment. You could write the best piece and maybe you get internal gratification for having done it, right? But like, at the end of the day, if the numbers don't show on it, then, you know, you're probably just like, oh gosh, I kind of missed on it. Or because you're solving for your business, right? And what's interesting for me is all I know is to do that, is to keep growing and keep assessing the metrics and all that. But like, actually,

• 37:07Logan Bartlett?

  there's probably, there's some TAM that I have of like what I'm doing before I start deviating for what I enjoy to get those next rungs. And I sort of saw this with Twitter, I was like, okay, I found this voice and I figured out how to do it. And at the end of the day, to continue to do it, I couldn't be three dimensional. I had to be one dimensional because people come to you for something, right? And so even if I wrote a really thoughtful, interesting thing, if it wasn't ironic or sarcastic or funny, people would be like, what? This isn't what I signed up for, right? I always joke for make me a bicycle clown in Wedding Crashers, like that element of it, right? And so now I'm sort of at this point with the podcast where I actually don't need the money, right? I venture is a great

• 37:50Logan Bartlett?

  business, which I'm happy to talk about. And this is kind of like a side. Thing for me that I'm having fun with and so we haven't taken on advertisers and we're not going to, I don't know, do a conference or anything like that as far as I can tell. But am I actually satisfied if it's not growing, right? By what metric? Is it just the texts that I get that people said, hey, this is a great episode this week from people I respect? Am I willing to do that? Or do I, at the end of the day, is the scoreboard the metrics and the growth? And I want to continue to grow. And I don't know the answer to that, right? You have a little bit of a conundrum of the, this is your business, right? This is just sort of my hobby on the side. And so I can be a little bit more pure theoretically about it, right? And not needing the dollars.

• 38:35Logan Bartlett?

  But at the end of the day, I'm a competitive person and the only way to know if it's resonating is the numbers going up and to the right. And so I'm addicted to that now increasingly.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. I mean, it's funny because I feel like, you know, there's some people who have the attitude that's like, oh, you know, there's a ton of really beautiful, amazing, wonderful stuff that's just not appreciated. And in my experience, the posts that get a lot of traction really were just better. And the posts that were duds, even if I poured my heart and soul into them later, I can kind of see why that was a dud. And like, it's okay, I was maybe reaching for something that was really interesting, but didn't quite get there. I'm very much, you know, it causes definitely some pain and suffering, but I'm very much like, I generally think numbers are a pretty good indicator of quality. And I mean, we see it over and over again with stuff like that theoretically shouldn't

• 39:26Speaker 01

  succeed, but does, like Ted Lasso, who would have thought Americans would watch a sitcom about soccer, you know? But we will, if there's something at the core of it, that's like really fresh and emotionally true. Or like, you know, everything everywhere all at once, like no one can explain what that movie is, but they're just like, oh my God, like you have to watch it. And I haven't even seen it yet, but everyone keeps seeing it. So I'm like, yeah, I'm sure it's gonna be good. And no one can tell me what it's about. So I'm just like, I don't know, there's probably something good there. But yeah, I feel like generally things that are really good, like do numbers.

• 39:56Logan Bartlett?

  I think that's your, and ultimately we're not, I mean, you know, people ask, if you go back and look at like the books that we consider, the art that we consider, or the music we consider, you know, from a generational standpoint that have stood the test of time from the 1800s or 1500s or like, were they appreciated at the time? And like, for the most part, they weren't, right? Like some were, there's obviously exceptions, but for the most part, they weren't. That said, There was much more constraints around distribution that existed in those days. And so like, you know, maybe they would, if they could have tweeted it out, right? Like, it very well could have been appreciated in its time, but there were like constraints around who got their eyes on it, where it was, all that stuff.

• 40:39Logan Bartlett?

  And increasingly now, we live in this world where, you know, we're not beholden to our ability to get on a cable news network or our ability to get a book bound in the 1600s or whatever, right? We're not constrained by that. And so we had this near infinite distribution that is the internet. And so for the most part, like, sure, you see some of the downsides of social media. And if we were trying to acquire all our customers through Twitter viral posts or whatever it is, or Facebook's algorithm or something, we would definitely gravitate to more extremes of stuff. But I think you and I both are sort of operating within a certain level of sophistication and, you know,

• 41:24Logan Bartlett?

  intellect, hopefully, that the rage bait headline type stuff can feel fleeting and also just isn't going to persist for what we're solving for ultimately, because everything else is a click away, right? We have no way of keeping people captive. You know, even if someone's paying you, they could walk away tomorrow. And so it's not like we're trying to keep ratings up to some extent. We're trying to consistently deliver a product to the people that come and hopefully the people that will come, right?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. And maybe it's sort of the most useful mindset about this stuff depends on what kind of problems a person is most likely to run into. And like, for me, I think I have very little risk of doing something that I'm just not going to be proud of in the future or from like an ethical standpoint. Or like, the few times that I've kind of flirted with being a little bit like disingenuous or clickbaity or whatever, I've always pretty much instantly regretted it. And so like, I feel like, and even those weren't particularly bad examples. It was just me being kind of dumb, like why I thought Quibi was a good idea or whatever, which... At the core, I think there is something interesting to say there about like, well, hold on, everyone is shitting on Quibi. Maybe we could make a bold case, you know?

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Which I think I can, I can stand by that impulse, you know, to try and be a little contrarian about that. So maybe for me, it's, it's useful to be like, look, you, you just gotta look at the numbers because you're prone to do like some whatever thing that you think is deep and thoughtful, but is actually just boring. Right?

• 42:51Logan Bartlett?

  You know, the irony of, of advocating for Quibi in this context is like, all the reasons Quibi failed is because of all the stuff we're talking about. It's like, because of the infiniteness of content and the scalability of all these things, like there are things that can go viral and you don't need to have the high production value of the, the bottleneck of supply that they did, right? Quibi's ultimate competitor was TikTok and YouTube and Netflix and you know, everything else, right?

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:19Logan Bartlett?

  And so it's funny, like the, the, the reason it didn't succeed is sort of what we're, we're talking about is because of the supply side of all this stuff, right?

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 43:28Logan Bartlett?

  Which is interesting. It's just like an interesting, Quibi would have been an amazing idea in like 2000, whatever, right? When the iPhone came out or maybe before that, where, you know, they, it was kind of the short form bundled mobile, blah, blah, blah, all of that stuff. But now you're competing with people's willingness to watch shitty TikTok videos or shitty production TikTok videos. And so you're competing with the infinite consciousness of the world.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Totally. I think that's right. Quibi would have killed it on the BlackBerry.

• 43:57Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. Yeah, totally. I actually think so. Right? In a world of constraints, uh, but now in a world of abundance of content, like, you know, it doesn't work. Right?

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Totally. I, I think it's interesting because um, the number one thing I took away from it is uh, they used a storytelling toolkit that only works if you have like at least 30 minutes and probably more likely an hour or longer of somebody's attention and time, which is great for if it's on a big screen and you're sitting in a comfortable seat, but they're competing for a form factor and a time commitment, uh, that those storytelling techniques just don't work. Like all the things about like setting up a scene and doing a little characterization and doing some foreshadowing. None of that works when you've got like three minutes on your phone and you want to like quickly swipe through like 10 different things and like to find something funny or shocking or whatever. Like it, it just, it's a totally different, um, like almost job to be done. And so it's like,

• 44:53Speaker 01

  You know, the things that make a skateboard good like are totally different from a car and they thought they were in the same product category. So they brought like car mechanics and, and, and you know, uh, whatever, like design principles and mechanisms to like the skateboard market and failed for obvious reasons.

• 45:08Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. You know, you know what's funny about that? Like ultimately there's, there's a bunch of like kind of cringey quotes from Netflix over the years about like, uh, oh, we're competing with sleep. That's our main competition or oh, we're competing with like Fortnite. I think it was like, that's our competition and being very dismissive of like all the other platforms that were coming out. But to some extent, like I think Quibi thought of themselves as competing with like cable television or just Netflix, right? And like, hey, we can have a different, more mobile centric Netflix. But at the end of the day, their competition was actually reading in every article in your email inbox, listening to my podcast. It was, uh, watching the next Tik Tok.

• 45:49Logan Bartlett?

  It was going on YouTube. And so I feel like it's really hard to be prescriptive when, when these things require very high upfront costs, the way that Quibi's content did. And then to nail what's going to resonate with people, that's really hard to do. And then also when you're competing on a phone with everything else in the world, right? Like they thought, hey, we're competing with Netflix and that's the other app we're competing with. But in truth, they were competing with every other thing you could be doing with your time on the phone. Right? And so it's funny, like the hubris of the Netflix guys kind of saying, hey, we, we're dismissive of, uh, of the other competitors. I actually think that that's kind of true in a lot of ways that like your competitors, when you get to a certain scale,

• 46:34Logan Bartlett?

  ultimately are different than my podcast competes with someone else going to watch Netflix, right? Uh, just because maybe they want to watch whatever other thing out there. And it's not just all in. It's not just, you know, whatever, uh, Lex Friedman. And it's not just these handful of podcasts that like touch on similar themes. It's actually everything else you could be doing. And I think Quibi didn't totally appreciate that.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  So I feel like, speaking of being competitive in the arena of content, you have done a great job of that. I feel like there's no podcast in the past couple of years that has sort of captured tech Twitter or VC Twitter in the same way that Cartoon Avatars has. And I'm curious, like, looking back, like, what are the things that you think mattered most? Because so many people want to launch a podcast, and usually they don't. And then when they do, it usually doesn't go that well. And so, you know, just asking for a friend, not myself personally or anything.

• 47:29Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  What you've learned, like, what ended up being important?

• 47:33Logan Bartlett?

  I set different milestones for myself when we started of, hey, in four weeks, let's check in, in three months, let's check in, in six months, let's check in, and in one year, let's check in. And at each point along the way, I gave myself the off-ramp to, like, shut it down. And so I was just trying to get to the next rung, am still trying to get to the next rung, right? We'll hit the six-month mark here in, I don't know, another four weeks, three weeks, whatever it is. And like, I feel pretty good about where we're going, but like, I'm not 100% figured out exactly what it is. And so each point in time, I think if you're just staring out in the abyss of like, gosh, this isn't growing to the extent that I was hoping it would, or is this product resonating?

• 48:17Logan Bartlett?

  Or whatever, to some extent, just like, setting these different milestones in front of me and being like, I'm just gonna keep going to that additional bogey in the future, and then I'll take inventory. Just psychologically, allowed me to keep going. There's some crazy stat I'm sure you can look up, but like, you know, 90% of podcasts don't make it past their fourth episode, and then the next, like, 9% don't make it past their, like, 12th or something. Like, there's some stat like that, that like, to some extent, to persist is to succeed, right? And so I think that was one, is just being realistic about expectations. The other two things, I think, the insight of, hey, can a, can someone that's on the inside, that still views themselves in a lot of ways as on the outside,

• 49:02Logan Bartlett?

  that is old enough to be of a certain level or seniority, but young enough to still talk a different, you know, talk in a more accessible way. I think there was something to that. Insight that I was like right place, right time in that tech was now being viewed as this like palace intrigue type situation. And so I think that was lucky. I don't know if I totally appreciated that. Some of it I did, some of it I didn't, but I think that was fortunate. I guess two other things. One was I fortunately had a, because I had a decent Twitter presence already, it gave me a credibility and access to a bunch of people that I only knew of,

• 49:45Logan Bartlett?

  right? And so like Parker Conrad, the founder of Zenefits and then Rippling came on and gave like his side of the story of the Zenefits leaving and everything with Andrew S. Horowitz and everything with David Sacks, who was like his COO. And he had never really told the story. And, and he did, and he told it to me. And now we can, we can assess why. And I think it's because I got him at the right time. Now he's been successful in his own new company. And so it's not sour grapes. And we did it in person. And I was able to make it like a comfortable sort of free flowing conversation and whatever. We can analyze all that. But like literally how I got to Parker was he followed me on Twitter and I DM'd him. And he was positively inclined

• 50:27Logan Bartlett?

  to me because of my Twitter. And so I think that was kind of like a fortunate thing as well. And then I think what's also kind of occurred is we've reached this volatility point in the market where there's just like a lot of interesting stuff going on. And, you know, when it's all bubble gum and, and apple, motherhood and apple pie or whatever, you know, it's not as interesting. But now when companies are going under or, you know, whatever.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Right. Volatility leads to uncertainty, which leads to demand for people to explain what's going on.

• 50:59Logan Bartlett?

  So I think what's fortunate in that is now with Zach Weinberg involved, I'm kind of like a neutral-ish voice. Like I have opinions about stuff, but like I only hold a few opinions very near and dear. And, and even then I'm willing to have like an amicable conversation where I would love to walk away from the conversation with a good relationship to whoever I talk to.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:21Logan Bartlett?

  And so I think that leads to like-

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Very southern of you, by the way.

• 51:24Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. It sort of goes back to my southern roots. And so I don't know if I independently with all this volatility and stuff going on, if I independently would be interesting enough to host a podcast. I think I would be beholden to getting other interesting people involved. But I think Zach coming on and being something of a, he's sort of like the perfect, he's post cancellation because he's made a ton of money. He's has the credibility of selling two companies, right? He's brilliant. And actually, I've never met someone that cares less what people think other than being right. And so like all those things are kind of the perfect foil to me and also the perfect like entertainment from for

• 52:09Logan Bartlett?

  a content standpoint. And so I think that was lucky and I he wouldn't commit to doing it full time for a while. I just kept pulling him in and kept like letting him take it in the direction he wanted to go. And now he's just really having a good time with it. And so now he's going to come on and do it more. And so I think it was just like a bunch of these things together. But yeah, it's been lucky. Some of this was intentional. Some of this was just like hard, you know, willingness to keep, keep my head down and keep going. And some of this was just like fortunate circumstances of the time or the people that I had access to.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Totally. I'm curious because like the original incarnation of the show was three cartoon avatars. And you had Zach and Nikita. So you've actually had two Zachs.

• 52:51Logan Bartlett?

  That's right.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  So far in 2022. And like, I think a lot of people had their original concept for the show. It seems like basically like, you know, Nikita's building a company and Zach with his, the way that his job works, it was hard for him to be opinionated or something like that.

• 53:09Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's basically the TLDR. Nikita, you know, he, he said it was taking up too much time and he wanted to go back to working on his company. And he was always like frazzled when we were like. He was coming off of a bunch of, I don't know, investor pitches or whatever it was. Like he had a bunch of people living in his house and it always seemed.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  He had a bunch of people living in his house?

• 53:31Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, he had like a bunch of engineers living in his house with him, starting this company. And he was always like kind of frazzled coming into it. And I ultimately think like, he just didn't enjoy it that much. Like, people can be fucking mean and you just get random mean comments. And it's like, you sort of need to appreciate the good way more than the bad to keep slogging. And he's like, I have all this stuff going on and I get random strays from people like, you know, talking shit and I don't need this in my life. I think that was, he's never actually said that to me, but I think that was kind of his calculus. Yeah, Zach, their general catalyst is in RIAA and their compliance team had to review every transcript,

• 54:11Logan Bartlett?

  which was, was, at different points in time was fine and in others it was somewhat less fine. And so he, he, he actually volunteered by the end as we were sort of going back and forth. And honestly, I'm surprised they even let him do it. I, I think they were amazing to him, to us in terms of like their willingness to try to make it work. But, but at the end of the day, when a compliance department needs to read everything before we push it live and like maybe to make comments on stuff, it just really comes at a trade off of timeliness and like content. And, you know, and so ultimately we're still good friends and, and he, I think it ended very amicably. But yeah, I was kind of on my own for a little while there.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like, what was that like? Like, so, you know, the kind of original three cartoon avatars team has sort of like fallen apart. The show name changes to cartoon avatars and it's just your sad little one head in the corner as compared to the three heads you used to have on the cover art, like.

• 55:12Logan Bartlett?

  I keep offering to Zach, by the way, Zach Weinberg, to go on the cover art. And he's like, no, no, I don't want that. And I'm like, all right, I'm gonna, and it's funny, like All In almost blew up over like ownership and ego and all, whatever, like how much people, different people got the other podcasts that I was kind of thinking of when we started. And like, I can't even get my co-host to like willingly put his face on the thing. That's how like little ego we have right now. It's like, come on, like just, we'll put our heads on. He's like, I don't want that right now. Like, let's let it go, right?

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Amazing. Yeah, but I'm curious, like, did you consider, like, trying something else or shutting it down? Or like, what and how did you think through, like, what to do next?

• 55:50Logan Bartlett?

  The most uncertain part of it all was like, I, I knew I could do interviews in an interesting way and like pull interesting stuff out of people. Like, I knew I could do that, right? And so there were kind of two models I looked at where, I don't know, to the extent people listen to sports podcasts, but like part of my take is a podcast I listen to a lot and it's, it's interesting personalities talking about sports in a slightly irreverent way. And then they interview someone and then they go back to doing sort of topical stuff. And so my thesis was people come for whoever you're interviewing, but stay for the relationship that they develop with you and the other people. And so not everyone needs to be like a superstar, right? Not everyone needs Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant on the team.

• 56:34Logan Bartlett?

  You can introduce, Howard Stern was kind of the original one that did this. You can introduce like just the audio engineer or the producer or like, they don't all need to be like, you know, billion dollar company CEOs or whatever, like.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  So that means I might have a chance to make it on.

• 56:50Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. You could do it.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Great.

• 56:52Logan Bartlett?

  So, uh, but my concern was that I inherently wasn't interesting enough to carry the topical elements of the show, that I didn't have like hard enough opinions, interesting enough insights, like that was the most ambiguous part of it. And so I was trying to figure out, like, who could I get on that I had chemistry with, that wanted to do it, that was willing to, um, you know, be interesting and have interesting opinions and all that. And I made a short list and Weinberg was actually top of my list. I'm trying to think of who else. Aaron Levy, I wanted to get, there were like a couple of people. I can't think of who else was on my list.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Chris Dixon?

• 57:32Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, Chris Dixon. Yeah, exactly. He stopped responding to anything I said long, long ago. But, um, and so having Zach come in was a godsend for that because ultimately I think. The recurring nature of it and the trust that you build with the audience is their relationship to you and what you what you can get out of people and not beholden to any one individual guest. And so I knew that I could shoot my shot with like a handful of guests that I could keep it going for some period of time, right? And I ultimately got Levy to come on and I got Parker to come on and I got, you know, a handful of Alexis Gay to come and I got a handful of like interesting people that I liked a lot to

• 58:13Logan Bartlett?

  come on. And that was kind of like a bridge period in time where I was most uncertain that I was going to be, it was maybe going to evolve just to an interview show. And now it's sort of taken another format because Weinberg is really good at this other thing. But there was definitely a period in time in which I wasn't totally sure we were gonna make, I mean, I guess I'm still not sure we're gonna make it. But I was just like head down every week, just like press publish. And that was another thing, I guess I didn't mention upfront was just like the routine of like, hey, it doesn't matter where I am, what's going on in the world, what's going on in my life, who I have as a guest, we're recording and there's an episode going live, right? And that was really needed for like three or four weeks of like anxiety around just getting it out there. And, and so now

• 58:58Logan Bartlett?

  that's less of a problem. But yeah, it was, it was definitely a little uncertain for a little while there.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Amazing. Well, it's brand new, but it's super exciting and it's cool to see how it launched. It got a little spark of the first thing, co-host situation didn't work out. And then the second sort of like act already, I guess, has been, I'm, I'm curious, like, I don't know, can you give us like any rough like downloady type numbers?

• 59:22Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, so we've been, it's hard, maybe you'll find this, it's actually really hard to track listenership across all these different mediums, right? Because we upload, and this is a little inside baseball, but we upload through one platform to be able to publish video to Spotify, then YouTube's another platform, then, you know, Apple Podcasts is a third, but some do it on plays, some do it on views, some do it on downloads. So it's like a total mess, right? And so I don't even want to, I haven't checked this past week because I kind of just don't want to know. I wasn't like, Thrilled with the ultimate end product. I don't know where we're going to run this. So maybe we'll run this in an ambiguous time that people don't know what episode I'm talking about.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Sure, we'll make it ambiguous, but the guest was very pleased with his resume.

• 1:00:06Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So I wasn't thrilled with the output of the whole thing. So I haven't actually checked the numbers because I don't really want to know. But we've grown since it really took off. It was like 20% a week, 20% a week, like 15% a week, and then like 12% a week. And so ultimately, we're getting to some gravitational numbers that, you know, obviously the growth rate slows down. But my ambitions, I think to be like a consistent top five tech podcast, you kind of need to get to like 100,000 downloads to be in that range. And if you look at it, it's always pretty consistent. It's like Lex Friedman, All In, something called like Dark Net Diaries or something. There's like a few tech podcasts that are like consistently at the top of the charts.

• 1:00:50Logan Bartlett?

  And so my ambition is to consistently land in top five. We've bumped around, you know, at our highest seven or eight. We dropped down to like 13, 14, 15, 16. We've fallen off for a couple of weeks in there. We were like out of the top 100. Again, back to, I don't know if that's the right metric to orient around, but it's, it's, yeah, that's sort of like my own goals for it is to keep the growth up, keep growing every week, make a good product I'm proud of, and hopefully land as a consistently top five thing, so.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Amazing. Well, I'm rooting for you. And, you know, if you ever need like an extremely charming and famous guest, you know.

• 1:01:32Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Once you start to get really low on your list.

• 1:01:36Logan Bartlett?

  It's funny, we're starting to get the inbound of folks volunteering to come on, which is, which is nice. It's, it's one of these self referential things that like. I can say, oh, well, Aaron Levy's come on, Keith Raboy and Parker Conrad. And I can't even remember who all the guests I've had. Eric Lyman from Ramp and we have like a bunch of other interesting people scheduled. And so now I can kind of point to everyone else and be like, no, no, it's legit. Right. But before it's like, you just got to keep faking it. And so now I'm getting proactive outreach to people and a much more willingness to come on. But, you know, the early days was kind of just leading on friends and friends of friends. So.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally, totally. No, it's amazing. Um, cool. Well, I'm excited. Maybe, maybe I can have you back, depending on whether this podcast crashes and burns or not. Maybe I can have you back in a couple of years. And, uh, well, you've been number one. You vanquished, uh, David Sacks in more ways than one because you vanquished him kind of on the Parker Conrad.

• 1:02:32Logan Bartlett?

  I did, uh, Kraft is a friend of our, uh, our firm and, uh, Parker had a story to tell. And I was just his, uh, I was just the person he told it to, but I, uh, yeah.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  That is true, but we'll, we'll, we'll say you vanquished his podcast, uh, with the all in. Thing you'll be number one. That's what we're rooting for.

• 1:02:49Logan Bartlett?

  Hopefully my ambition, uh, my ambitions are to get ahead of them one day. But, uh, and I, I jokingly kind of troll, they've been very gracious to me. Uh, but I jokingly definitely trolled them, uh, as like kind of stoking a competition between the two. But yeah, my advice for, for this in general is just, uh, just keep, keep at it. I mean, you get it from writing, right? It's like you, you, you know, this is just a, uh, it's just a game of like getting some of these things out there in the wild and, and tweaking and improving and, uh, all that stuff and sort of setting realistic milestones. And so, yeah, I, I'm glad you're doing this. We, it's funny, people get mad about like, I got a lot of backlash when we launched, like, who needs, uh, other tech bros having a podcast, right?

• 1:03:32Logan Bartlett?

  And I'm like, these are infinitely scalable, like, like, if, if we can let the market decide. It's not like these are, I'm stealing a time slot at 5:00 PM on ESPN, uh, from, you know, whatever, someone else. It's like, these are infinitely scalable and we'll let the market decide if this is a good product or not. And so I think if anyone wants to start a podcast, I am more than willing to tell my, you know, anything that I know about it, try to be helpful because I think more content is good. And, uh, and yeah, so I'm excited you're doing this.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Thank you. And I totally agree. I feel like anyone who wants to start writing or doing a podcast or anything should be encouraged. And it's just a jerk move to say there are too many newsletters or too many podcasts or whatever, because you're exactly right. There's no limited shelf space.

• 1:04:14Logan Bartlett?

  It's like, yeah, well, we can let N people decide that. That's the advantage of not having shelf space on the internet, right?

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I can scream into the void if I want to. Cool. Well, thank you so much for doing this and excited to see just how you keep killing it.

• 1:04:31Logan Bartlett?

  Thanks, man. Appreciate it. See ya.