Why Breaking Bad is the ultimate startup journey

You may know a lot about chemistry, man, but you don't know jack about slinging dope.

Well, I'll tell you, I know a lack of motivation when I see it. Oh, my.

Oh, my God. These are like, exactly the type of discussions you'd find at a startup.

Welcome back. Today we're breaking down scenes from Breaking Bad. We're gonna focus on how founders go from dead broke to filthy rich. Let's dive in.

You understood what I've just said to you? Yes.

Lung cancer. Inoperable.

I'm sorry. I just need to make sure you fully understand.

Best case scenario, with chemo, I'll live maybe another couple years.

Most founders have a turning point that resembles Walters to some extent, where they get hit with some news or some life experience, and it completely changes the way that they're thinking about things. Here's one of the most classic ones that I see people experience constantly. It's when you're at a company and everything that the company's doing, you have an opinion on, and it's almost the exact opposite of what the company's already doing. That's the kind of turning point that most founders I know end up having. If they've worked for someone and have a job. It's when they have such a strong opinion about what's happening in the company, they might as well just go own it and do something for themselves. All right, so finding a co founder is one of the hardest things to do. But here, Walter does it masterfully.

I don't know what you think you're doing here, Mrs. White.

The DEA took all your money, your lab.

You got nothing square one.

But you know the business, and I know the chemistry.

I'm thinking maybe you and I could partner up.

You. You want to cook crystal meth.

You. You and. And me.

That's right.

So when it comes to these co founder relationships, a lot of people will tell you it's about, like, complimentary skill sets, kind of like, you know, these two have. But at the end of the day, it's not really about the complimentary or the similarities in what you can do. It's really about how you work together and whether you can work together. And that might start with this kind of fit, where it's like one person has a certain set of skills, another person has another set of skills, and it's seemingly complimentary. But if we watch and continue to watch this, you kind of see them trade places and do kind of all kinds of things. Walter teaches Jesse how to cook. All kinds of things happen Here, that would point to a simple fact. You just have to get along with your co founder. And sometimes that's super hard to figure out. And honestly, you're figuring it out every day that you're working together. And that's just how it is. I'm a really big fan of getting alignment with your co founders, your team, all that stuff. These scenes will help us see how Walter and Jesse get alignment and what we can learn from it.

I cook them. One of those. A big one.

One of these. No, this is a volumetric flask. You wouldn't cook in one of these.

I do.

No, you don't.

When you're starting out and you have a co founder, you might even have discussions that resemble this one way or another. If you've known the person. If you haven't known the person, it's probably a bunch of debates to really get aligned on, hey, what are we doing here? What resources do we need? Who's working on what? And then you get into, oh, okay, we probably need to slow down and figure out who's doing what first, who's cooking, who's selling. Right. And that's kind of what they missed here. But it was fantastic to kind of explain the point of alignment is key and division of labor is even more important, especially between co founders, big time. And I already even want to share a framework I have which I call Batman and Robin. But it really applies to co founders as well. And almost any relationship you're in, that's a kind of two person relationship. What it is, is for anything that's so important that it needs to get done, Someone's Batman and the other person's Robin. And here's why the analogy works. Batman is going to be independent, usually super type A, and wants to just get the thing done. So in any given thing, in your personal life or with your co founder, somebody cares more about the thing than the other person. So whoever cares the most, in my opinion, should be Batman. Of course, there's skills and things like that we need to account for. And then the other person's Robin. What does Robin do? Usually Robin annoys Batman, but in reality Robin knows that Robin is back up to Batman. When Batman needs help, and only when Batman needs help, whether that's something Robin's like, hey, Batman needs help, Batman doesn't know it, or Batman asks for help and that's it, that's when Robin helps. This is a key framework that I've taught so many people to basically prevent a lot of issues. It would have prevented this Issue of them debating about the flask. Because it's clear that Walter has the expertise at the end of the day and Jesse doesn't. So Walter's Batman on equipment and process and how we cook this stuff. But Jesse's probably closest to the customer. So in terms of the quality of the product, that's probably more on Jesse or selling the product, for example. That's where you split up responsibilities. Someone's Batman, someone's Robin.

And let me tell you something else. This in chemistry, okay? This is art. Oh, cooking is art. And the shit I cook is the bomb. So don't be telling me the shit.

You cook is shit. I saw your setup. Ridiculous. You and I will not make garbage. We will produce a chemically pure and stable product that performs as advertised. No adulterants, no baby formula, no chili pods.

No.

No chili pea's my signature.

Not anymore.

It feels a lot like Jesse is like the business person trying to align with customer needs. Maybe you could call him the product person. While Walter's sitting there like, I'm the engineer and we're going to engineer a perfect solution. They're just literally debating about product quality, which, honestly, is the right kind of debate to have, which is like, what does a high quality product look like? And how can we ensure that we have a high quality product? But if you think about it, it's both their perspectives on this. And this is where, yes, one person can own the decision in a bunch of areas related to this, but at the end of the day, it's a collaboration to make sure you're aligned on what a quality product looks like for the market. So this scene we're about to see is all about product market fit and how I think about it today represented by Breaking Bad. Let's check this out.

This is glass grade.

And you got. Jesus, you got crystals in here 2 inches, 3 inches long. This is pure glass.

You're a goddamn artist.

This. This is art, Mr. White.

Actually, it's just basic chemistry. But thank you, Jesse. I'm glad it's acceptable.

Acceptable? You're the goddamn Iron Chef. Every jib head from here to Timbuktu is gonna want a taste.

This is a perfect representation of product market fit. Because if you truly have product market fit because you understood customer needs and you had a vision, and then you see it built and you have this reaction like, oh, my God, look at this. It hits the mark. That's when I say it's a vibe. Product market fit is a vibe. You know it before the customer does because you're playing with the product. You understand what they need. This is the high bar. Everything you ship should hit this mark if you really want to ensure you have product, market fit and continue to win a market. You know, they say distribution is everything, not product. But let's see how Jesse and Walter deal with this realization.

You may know a lot about chemistry, man, but you don't know jack about slinging dope.

Well, I'll tell you, I know a lack of motivation when I see it. Oh, my God. Come on, you've got to be more imaginative. You know, just. Just think outside the box here. We have to move our product in bulk, wholesale. Now.

How do we do that?

I mean, like a distributor.

Yes, yes. That's what we need.

We need a distributor now.

Oh, my God. These are like exactly the type of discussions you'd find at a startup. It's like you try to sell something and then now you come back and you and the co founder are debating, what the heck do we do? And then there's like a jab. Hey, you're not motivated enough. That happens a lot. Because there's a lot of pressure and we could take personal jabs at each other. And I mean, fair, unfair, healthy relationship, not, that's a whole different story. But at the end of the day, if you're co founders especially, and one of you has a certain expertise, the other doesn't have as much expertise there, it's likely the one with less expertise is extremely impatient while the other one is just sitting there like, hey, I'm doing as much as I possibly can for this thing and here's where it's at. I don't need you to give me a hard time about it. I'm already giving myself a hard time. Sound familiar? I'm sure it does. Because these are the most common discussions that happen when there's this idea that one person has the expertise, the other doesn't. Yet. And so now everyone has to get up to speed on what the heck's going on and getting that alignment. I personally like to get that alignment extremely upfront and say, hey, if I'm responsible for that thing, here's what that means. Here's what your expectation should be.

You just don't understand the way it works. You can't just bum rush some high level iceman and start cutting deals, okay? It's risky. You need an intro, you need someone to vouch.

Well, who introduced you to Crazy 8?

Emilio.

And that's only because I knew him from like third grade. And we can't talk to Emilio either.

All right, all right, all right.

Look, I'm telling you, Mr. White, it's too risky, okay? I mean, we're making money. Why can't you just be satisfied with.

The way it is?

Come on, Jesus, just throw some balls.

This is so common in terms of co founder disagreements, when you don't understand each other yet and you probably don't have alignment on what your goals are. Our job as founders is to make sure it never gets to this place. Otherwise it creates an unhealthy environment and it's a very unhealthy relationship. So I have one tip. If you're starting a relationship with a founder, that tip is to literally write down your expectations separately on paper and then come together and discuss those and then see if there's actually fit. That's the hack to finding a co founder. You can't imagine how many times I've seen these expectations written down. And folks tell me it's not going to work. And then I ask them why we both want to be CEO. That's like, probably the most common thing I've heard when people do it separately, but that leads to really healthy discussions.