Amos Schwartzfarb, Managing Director at Techstars Austin, Interview on Just Go Grind
In this Just Go Grind interview, Managing Director of Techstars Austin, Amos Schwartzfarb, recounts his journey from serial entrepreneur to Techstars mentor, describing his early imposter syndrome and the creation of the Revenue Formula Workshop that now underpins most Techstars programs. He explains the core ideas behind his two books—Sell More Faster, which frames sales as a pathway to product‑market fit, and Levers, a framework for building repeatable business processes. Amos shares practical advice on identifying ultra‑specific target customers through extensive conversations, pricing strategies that avoid free trials and favor long‑term underpricing, and his evolved founder evaluation rubric (80% founder conviction, 15% team cohesion, 5% market). He also discusses storytelling as a blend of math and theater, authentic pitching, and how he promotes his books via personal networks and a hybrid publishing partnership. Throughout, he provides concrete examples, metrics, and actionable frameworks for early‑stage founders.
Chapters
Amos, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.
Yes, there's so much to talk about. And I'm excited to chat about the books you've written, obviously Techstars and everything, your journey. I think where a good place to start would be is I'm curious how you ended up at Techstars in the first place, Amos.
Oh, gosh. I ask myself that question all the time, because it has really truly been like a, like a dream job. The specific story goes kind of like this. I'll give you the slightly longer version. I had been building companies for close to 20 years. I exited a company. We sold a company called Black Locust. I think it was like 2012 or 2013. I forget exactly. And around the time we exited, Jason Seitz, who preceded me running Techstars in Austin, he brought Techstars to Austin. He's now the Chief Investment Officer of Techstars. Techstars. He moved to town to, to run the first Techstars program here. We were introduced through a mutual friend. I ended up investing in the local Techstars fund and became a mentor. And I had never heard of Techstars at that time. He was telling me what it was. I'm like, sounds good. I just had an exit. Here's some money, you know? And he's like, well, do you want to be a mentor? I'm like, sure. I don't even know what that means. But in my mind, I was like, I'm going to keep an eye on my investment.
Of course.
Little did I know what I was getting into. And so, Shortly after I, after all that happened, I also started another, another company called Joust. And Jason also invested in Joust. He put money into that company. That company was not successful. I guess arguably, I can't really say that yet, because one of my co-founders is still running it. But I ducked out of it because I didn't see where it was going. And I went and had a beer with Jason one day, it was about 3, 3 years later. And I said, dude, I'm really sorry, you know, I'm stepping out. I think we're going to shut the company down. Like, you know, I'll figure out how to get your money back one day. And he goes, well, this makes this conversation less awkward. I was going to ask you to leave and replace me at my job at Techstars because I'm moving into a new role. And I'm like, ah, this is, this is great. It's perfect timing. So I didn't have to feel quite as bad. And now I'm repaying my favor to him because I'm making him a ton of money with the investments.
That's amazing. I have to also say, uh, for people who are listening to this podcast episode, not watching on YouTube, Amos's background is pretty incredible with guitars and drum set and there's a book and everything in there. So definitely check out the YouTube side of it as well if you want to see that. I have to just plug that because seeing it when I first hopped down, I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. This is why video is an interesting medium to go after. And from that experience though, so going from— you started, you're like, okay, I'm gonna decide to go with Techstars managing director role. I don't think I've heard much about this. Like, what was that first year like for you? I remember taking you back. What was that experience?
Yeah, um, you know, talk about imposter syndrome setting in, and I didn't realize it was gonna set in until the first day. Like, I, I just like— being nervous is not something that, like, it's not a trait that I, I have. I've just done a lot of things where I'm pushing myself a lot, and I didn't think I would be nervous until I got to that first day. And, and now, you know, I've run 6 I've run six programs, and I've been a co-managing director on two more. So I've you know I've been around a lot. I'm one of the most senior MDs, and I look back on the first program I ran, and I tell the founders this too. Like you guys got a bum deal for me. Like I do such a better job now than I did back then. Interestingly enough, a lot of those companies are still going and going strong, and I'm on a couple of their boards. So I don't feel too bad. But it was it was really scary, and back then. There was, well, there's MDs still have a tremendous amount of autonomy. So like my program is very different than every other Techstars program. Back then there wasn't a lot of even frame of reference. So, you know, I kind of knew what Jason did, but not really, cuz I wasn't there day to day. And I talked to, there was only like 3 or 4 other managing directors at the time. There's 50 now. So like there wasn't a lot. Yeah. So I just like, I'm like, okay, well, what do I have to do? What do I think is important? And, and in some ways that hasn't changed and in a lot of ways it's changed quite a bit. But, you know what, there's a story that I sometimes tell for a lot of different reasons, but it's sort of how in some ways where the inspiration for this book came from, which is on day 1 or 2 of that very first program, I was kind of copying the model that Jason did for programming with some iteration on the things that I thought might be important, figuring I would figure it out in year 2. And so I took his KPI presentation and I gave it and it was— am I allowed to curse?
Yeah. Okay.
It was fucking awful. Like I did, I knew I did a bad job. And at the end of the day, like we all got together, we're having a beer and I'm like, hey, you know, and I like to ask for feedback. I'm like, any feedback? And like unanimously the room was like, that was fucking awful. Like the room hated it. I'm like, oh shit. Like I am failing on day 1 or 2. So I went home that night and I'm like, okay, how do I recover from this? And I sort of cycled back through, you know, the companies that I've been a part of that have been successful and what we did well. And at Business.com, there's a few things that we did really well there. And one of the things that we did was brought to us by Brian Barnum, who had come from Rent.com, which was acquired by eBay, and he joined us to be our CFO. And he brought in this notion of using a revenue formula as sort of your guiding light for for, for, um, running the company. So understand your revenue formula, you understand what drives the business, and you know how— where to spend your time and how to measure it. And there's, you know, a lot more nuance to that. Uh, so I went home and I'm like, okay, is there any way that I could take what we did and teach it? And I came up with the first, um, version of the Revenue Formula Workshop. That, that workshop actually gets used in most of the Techstars programs now. It's Chapter 2 of the book. It's a basis for the whole process. And I came back and I delivered that and I definitely saved myself. And I was like, okay, maybe I'm not as awful at this as I think I might be. Might've been yesterday.
Totally redeemed yourself.
Yeah, I don't know about totally, but it was a good start.
I love it. And from that as well then, so like that, diving deeper into that thing you mentioned. So with the revenue formula and everything with that, like I know there's like 5 kind of main aspects I think of the book and different aspects of obviously any company building a company, but diving into the revenue side of it, which you, What you just mentioned. What are some components of that? Or how should founders be thinking of that? Because I'm always thinking with this show, most actionable advice as possible. You can't give blanket statements. Of course, it's harder because every company's different. But on the revenue side, what should companies or founders know about that?
Yeah. So without jumping too deep into the book, at least yet, unless that's where you want to head, what I'll say is the revenue formula can, as a notion and as a principle in a company, can absolutely stand alone. I do think it's stronger as part of the system. But when I talk about revenue formula, like when I do the workshop, the very first question I ask is, does anyone know what it is? Almost no one has ever heard of it. And most people will say, oh, it's something about sales. And the reality is it's not, that's not what it is. It is, what I say is the way to visualize it is it's a simple math equation of how your business runs. So the, you know, one of the examples that I'll use is the example from business.com, which is, Visits, it's visits times coverage times— gosh, why can't I remember it off the top of my head? Maybe it's important to describe the example. I can look it up in the book if I need to. But basically, what are all the top-line things that make your business run? So it really consists of product and sales and marketing and technology and finance and like Every aspect of business that will roll up to here's the simple math equation. The complex part is the calculus, which is all of the drivers and subdrivers underneath that make you prove that your math equation is the right math equation, and maybe more importantly helps you understand what are the levers in each value of the math equation.
And with that, so you said most founders they've never heard about it or really understand that, and it's not the same as sales. Obviously, it's different in terms of With the sales side of it, I mean, you wrote a book about sales. So let's dive into that side of it. I wanna give some more context for people. Your first book, Sell More Faster, obviously about ultimate sales playbook for startups. What are some components of that? Because sales is such a huge aspect of any startup, any company. What are some components of that that startups should know?
Yeah. So let me step back and say, I've realized something about myself through the writing of these 2 books, which is that I like to get people someplace by using a little bit of Unimplied deception. So Sell More Faster is not really a book about selling. It's a book about how to figure out, can I find product-market fit? How do I find product-market fit? How do I know when I'm on the path to product-market fit? How do I know when I found it? And what do I do when I've found it?
Which all leads to eventually— Right. Yeah.
But I would say the thing that I'm not—
yeah.
The thing that I don't enjoy when I was leading sales organizations is I don't love once we get to repeatability, like I get bored. I love the building, right? I love the puzzle figuring out. So once you're at that, like, yeah, I know exactly what to do. I'm like, okay, somebody else run it and where's the next puzzle to go figure out?
Yeah, the more fun part of it maybe.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So what I just described is literally the 5 chapters of Sell More Faster. The first chapter of both books, by the way, is are the same concepts applied differently. So Sell More Faster is for early-stage CEOs and early-stage sales leaders, send them on a path. Sell More Faster is really meant to be a book that you're referring back to for 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years specific to the stage you're at in growth. So what I think people do is they'll read the whole book and it's a fast read and they'll say, okay, I get it, but I really only chapter 1 and 2 apply to me right now. I'll go back in 2 years to chapter 3 or however long when we get there and chapter 4 when I get there. But really I'm focused on 1 and 2 and they're both Both of these books are books that you do not read, or at least that's how they're meant to be written. For Levers, chapter 1 is the first step in the process, which is if you don't understand who your customer— you think your customer is going to be deeply, it doesn't matter how you think you're going to make money because you ain't going to do it because you don't know who your customer is anyway.
And with that then, so diving deeper into that side of it, with understanding who your customer is, like, that's such a huge part of it. What goes into that? What are some questions you ask or activities you do to figure that out? I mean, it's can be very difficult, obviously, but I'm curious from your perspective and having seen this again and again, what goes into that.
Yeah, I have a really strong belief in a principle all across business stages, but specifically in the early stages. And I'll just— I'm going to just hand the thanks to this to Jake Weinbaum, who was my co-founder of Work.com, and he was the CEO of Business.com, who instilled this in me over and over again when I was really young and clueless. Now I'm just old and clueless, which is, it's okay to not know where you're going, put a stake in the ground, have conviction around that stake, and go try to prove yourself right or wrong. I mean, as soon as you prove yourself right, figure out why you might not be right. And so, you know, taking that notion and applying it to figuring out who your customer is, like, you have— people have a sense of, all right, I'm selling to this industry. And a lot of times founders like, I can sell to anyone in that industry. And I get it, right? Because ultimately, you do want to own that world. And what I talk about in the book is that's great. That should be your TAM. But what are you doing today? And until you know with 100%, and I do mean 100%, that you can, like, if I describe to you a customer, I'm gonna get a yes 100% of the time, you don't really know what you're doing. 90% doesn't cut it. It doesn't mean that when you're at your TAM, you're gonna sell 100% of your customers. It means that today I know that the attributes of the person that I'm going after are so specific I will get a yes. Timing is part of that. Um, you know, every aspect of who the human being is, where the company is, where they're located, where they came from, what they're into— all these things are important to understand so that I understand a full complete list of attributes of 100% yes. When I understand that list, that list may be huge, 30, 40, 50 attributes. I can start to like play around, take attributes out, add attributes in, mess around with how they play, and then I can start to realize my whole TAM.
With that, so a startup founder, especially early stage in this, trying to figure that part out, and that takes some time to— if they do figure it out, obviously that's when they can grow, they can keep going, progressing their business and put more repeatability into it after that. But during that process, I think a lot of founders who I've talked to, like, yeah, they have a general, very broad idea of who their customers are. And obviously what you're saying is that's not good. You need to figure out way more specifically. What are some of those characteristics or things that they could do then to figure that out? Or like, what even are those aspects of not just, oh, this person works at this job, like, What goes into that? What are some, for example, for founders who are trying to figure this out as well?
Yeah, so I think I'll answer that 2 ways. I'll give you a specific example of the differences of how I think about it. And what I'll say is I don't know a better way than to literally go have 100 conversations or 1,000 conversations. And I tell this to founders all the time, like, you know, if you think that there's a hack, there is not. You will not be successful. Like, you literally need to go work your ass off Digging ditches in in a rock quarry to figure this out, and it will take time. And if you're lucky, you'll figure it out sooner. But just expect it's going to take a few years. And I point to business.com as a really good example of this. And I'll give you the examples in a second. At business.com was founded in 1999. Work.com got acquired into business.com in 2005. When we got acquired in, business.com was doing six or seven million in revenue. It had been around for a long time. It had been doing that much revenue for a few. years, did not really understand deeply who our customers were. And it took us, you know, probably 6 or 9 months of the ditch digging with a full, full, like we had a lot of data that we could mine. So we were way ahead of the game, right? And we had a big analyst team who could help us mine this information to figure out who our 100 percenters were. And even with that, it took 6, 9 months, right? But really it took What was that, 6 years? 6 years and 6 or 9 months.
Yeah, plus the 6 or 9 months.
Yeah, but once we did it, you know, it was a combination of that and understanding our revenue from that. We went from $7 million to $80 million in 18 months because we knew who our customers were, we knew what the levers were in the business, and we just went in full bore. So like, here's 3 examples. Really bad example, what a lot of early founders will say because they're thinking TAM is, I sell to the healthcare industry. Or I sell to hospitals in the healthcare industry, right? That's like super broad and it means nothing to me. So, you know, a little, a little more narrow is, you know, I sell, um, to, to hospitals in the healthcare industry that are of a certain size. Like, all right, that's a little bit better, but really, like, there's so, so much nuance in that. Better than that— and there's even going to be better than what I described— but better than that is I sell to private hospitals in the healthcare industry that are 500 to 1,500 employees that are located in the Midwest, that the— I'm selling to the director of IT. The director of IT has been there for less than 1 year, but in the industry for more than 3. They came from this type of— from a specific type of hospital. They're using this kind of legacy software today, and they're specifically charged with figuring out how to solve problem X, Y, and Z, which we solve.
Really specific. Very specific.
Finding that person is super hard. So the way that I go is like, again, first start with a theory of what you think it is, write it down, and then go try to find those people by picking up the phone and asking those, those questions to start. Like, hey, we're building this thing, or we've built this thing. We think that it could be applicable to you, but I don't really know. So I'm not selling you anything today. I'm trying to understand who you are and like, is there a marriage here? And then along the way, you're writing a list of the things you think you're capturing from them and you're comparing it to the list you had. And it really is this game of Tetris that you're figuring out over a long period of time. It takes a lot of hard work, a lot of discipline, but when you can do that well, and again, like a business.com is almost a bad example because we had years of data. When you're starting from nothing, you've got to go collect that data, which is why I tell founders it is just going to take a long time, hopefully less than 7 years, but Hopefully, fingers crossed.
Yes, for everyone involved.
But also, we do know, right? Like the average overnight startup takes, or success takes about 10 years. So think of that timeframe. 7 years is about right. And then 3 years to get to hundreds of millions in revenue.
Of course. And there's 2 things that I want to just highlight. One being the thing you mentioned around conversations with people and like you mentioned 100+ conversations and having so many interviews with founders on this show. So many of them who have succeeded. They've just had so many conversations early on. They're like, what'd you do early on? Oh, I just talked to customers, potential customers repeatedly, just trying to get as much feedback as possible. That was like a huge thing they did. And the second thing I just wanted to highlight for people who might have missed it is like you've set a specific person that you're trying to reach at the specific company, because when you're looking at actually selling and growing, like that's what you're doing. It's not like, oh, I want to reach this company. Okay, well, even once you get there, then who is the person? Why that person? And why does that matter for your business? I just want to highlight that because I think it's important. I've heard that again repeatedly on the show for people. who have mentioned how they've kind of grown to tens of millions or even $100+ million revenue. It's like, that's how they did it. They were so specific with it and then they could put those repeatable processes in after that to go even farther. And one other thing that I heard you mention—
go ahead. Yeah. So there's 3 things that come to mind there. Let me hopefully not forget the third by the time I get there. The first is I think that a lot of founders early on are really scared of that notion of being narrow because they they're gonna limit their ability to be successful by being so narrow. And it's usually first and second-time founders that feel that way, not multi-time founders. But the reality is you're gonna actually take less time to figure out how you really get big by starting really narrow and specific. Of course, I forgot the second and third thing already.
No worries.
It'll come back to me.
That's right. I think that's something that also I've realized that happens many times on the show. It's just like there's so many things to think about. But with that, so going back to one of the things I heard you mention on a podcast or video interview was around pricing. And you, like you said, you're pretty adamant about not giving free trials. I don't know if that's changed in the last year. However, take me through that. Why no free trials? What do you think about pricing for early-stage startups? How do they go about this?
Yeah. So I don't think— I have a few thoughts. One is I don't believe in free trials because I think that the customer has to have some skin in the game. Now, non-free doesn't necessarily mean there's cash that exchanges hands, although that is my preference. There needs to be some commitment from the other party, like firm, hard commitment. So if they're not willing to give you cash, they are willing to commit to success metrics and a check at the end of it based on reaching those success metrics or something. And the reason is all about skin in the game, because if you give someone a free trial, they may have best intentions, but it won't be a priority to them. They need to have something that is like, if it fails, they're not in a good position either. It might be not awful position, right? But like, it will affect them.
Yeah.
But pricing is another thing, which like, I actually think there's a mistake and I conflict with with mentors in my own program on this regularly. I think it is important to underprice your product for a really long time. It is easy to get to price elastic, you know, to really figure out optimal price once you know who your customer is and what they're buying. Like, you can figure out how to push that ceiling, but— and you can get really good feedback along the way, you know, about the product, about your customers, about all these things. As soon as you overprice, You're going to lose customers. And a lot of times you're really not going to know why. And they're going to say it's too expensive or it doesn't do what we need. And there's nothing, there's no real skin in the game for them to like work with you on it. And, you know, it's harder to like peel back and say, okay, we'll charge you less now. Like it's much easier to say, oh, you're getting value here. I'm going to push that up and see, see where that pressure point is. So I just, for companies that are going to be around a long time, which hopefully everyone who's building something has that expectation, like Just don't stress, charge, you know, get, get some money in the door so that they have skin in the game. And don't worry about the top end of the price. Just, just don't, in my opinion.
Yeah. And for founders to think about that, thinking about price, and that's such an important part of the equation of building a company is what is it? What do you actually charge? And that goes back to kind of going back to the revenue model in many ways, and even your business model. But with that, I mean, how, if a founder is starting a company, they have this product, some, some different products or industries have kind of benchmarks around price potentially, but how do you go about figuring out the actual prices to charge for your service, your product, whatever it may be?
Yeah. You know, the way that I like to approach it, and I do think that, and I think I even say it like this somewhere faster, I'm like, I call it a WAG, a wild-ass guess. A little bit of it is just a wild-ass guess.
Yeah, absolutely.
But yeah, but I, you know, the way that I really more methodically approach it is I try to understand, and this is even for for consumer products. Like, you know, it works exactly the same. It's just that you're talking to a consumer instead of a business. But I try to have a conversation to understand how the customer will value the product. Like, what are they literally going to do to measure it? What do they think the impact is going to be? And like, price aside, I just think this is really important to understand. To understand how important it is to them, how they're going to pay attention to it. So asking questions like literally, you know, so you're using this thing, how do you think it's going to impact your job? How do you think it's going to impact the company? How are you going to measure that impact? And by the way, when they say, I don't know, to me, and this could— I remembered one of the things I was going to say that I forgot before, like sometimes just because you think a company is the right customer doesn't mean they are right now. Like Those in the early days are signals to me that you're not ready for us because if you're not going to measure it and you don't know how it's going to impact you, I don't want to sell you because I am setting myself up for you not knowing whether it works and just spending money even if it works. So I'll work with you to help. I'll gladly say, hey, let's figure this out together if you think it's important. And hopefully you can get there, which means that there's buy-in from you and from them, and you'll get a ton of learning along the way too. But there has to be that understanding from them of how they're going to measure it and how it's going to impact them. And so once you start to understand that, right, if you truly understand how it's going to impact their job and the bottom line of the business, you can start to back into, okay, it's going to affect them by a million bucks. I could probably charge them $100,000 because they want to make that $900,000, right? Yep.
Yep, exactly. And I think that reminds me of even thinking about pricing when I've done sponsorships in the past for the show. And I remember hearing something from another show who They're like, okay, I don't do CPM-based pricing for sponsorships. The reason why they're saying is that that is because what they did instead was they did all based on KPIs. So the businesses they're working with that were gonna sponsor their show, it was like, okay, what value to your point am I delivering to them? And once you figured that out, it's like, wait a minute, then I can charge a lot more than a $20 CPM, but you get on podcasts. And once I started thinking about that more, it was like, wait a minute, if the average customer value of this company that whether it be like an advertising agency Or whether it be, I work with like recruiting firm to sponsor their show. It's like if their average customer value is like tens of thousands of dollars, potentially lifetime value at least, like they'll be able to spend more than $20 per thousand on CPM. Because if they get one customer that pays like 4x, 5x, 10x what they're gonna pay for sponsorship. And when you think of things from that perspective and that lens on a startup too, it's the same type of thing. You can get a lot more value out of it than you're just like, oh, well I'm just gonna charge whatever this even industry standard was. It's like depends on the value you're giving back. And it depends on like what you're tracking, the KPIs, if they can equate that back to sponsoring my show, if they can equate it back to your company, obviously it goes a long ways in terms of figuring out the pricing. But to your point, it also is like a wild-ass guess. Like it's just hard to sometimes figure it out. So there's no rules, which is interesting to think about.
Well, I think, yeah, yeah, totally. And I think there's another notion here, which is that like, I think, and I get it, right? Because founders think like, how am I, how am I going to capitalize my company? You know, a lot of times they want to raise and they think that if their revenues are higher, they will have a better opportunity to raise. That's bullshit, by the way. Like, it maybe helps a little bit. It's really like, what is the customer traction and velocity cadence? And most importantly, understanding of what works and doesn't work. That's what gets you fundraising, especially in the early days. And I think, you know, I mean, I deal with this literally, as you might guess, like, Multiple times a year. And I just don't— I think the opportunity to be able to show understanding in repeatability is 100x outweighs like doubling or tripling your bottom line in the early days. You'll get there if you truly have a valuable product. And if you don't, find out early so you're not wasting your time and investors' money.
Yeah, which is so important. And you've invested now in roughly 70 seed stage deals, obviously from Techstars. From that process, you mentioned early on in this interview, like early on your first like year at Techstars, much different from now in terms of what you're able to offer to people. How has that changed in terms of your process for evaluating companies running this accelerator? I'm curious as how that's evolved in the last, you know, 6 years or so.
Yeah, it has evolved a lot. And I think I, at a very high level, I say it similarly. Specifically, I talk about it much differently. in practice, it's very different. And the example that I'll give is I've always said I want to think about the founder first. And I believe that I did that in the very first program. But I think about both companies, a couple of companies that I invested in that perhaps I shouldn't and companies that I didn't that perhaps I should, is where I strayed from that, where I don't stray from that anymore. And I'll give you an example of Uh, a company that I regret— I regretted the set— 2 companies that I regretted from the second I didn't invest in them in my first program. One is a company called Tokovas, which you may be familiar with. They make, uh, cowboy boots and western wear. I think— I don't know their exact revenues, but I want to say they're doing like $50 or $60 million a year right now. They were an idea when I was talking to Paul, and I even said it to him. I'm like, I know I'm going to regret this. Like, I want to invest in you, but I don't have the courage to invest in a CPG company. I that has changed entirely for me, and I was and I and I was right about him and wrong about passing, you know. And in a similar year, there was a there was a B to B company called Smarter Sorting. They're here in Austin again. I don't know their exact revenues, but I want to say they're doing twenty or thirty million. I think they've raised like fifty million dollars or something. I might be a little off on those numbers, and I didn't have the courage to invest in them because they seemed like an impact company, and I didn't really understand about impact investing. My thought process on impact. investing has gone 180. I think they're some of the best companies to invest in because of the mission-driven nature of them. And there's a business model there. So anyway, those are 2 companies where I passed on because I believe in the founders. I liked the product, but I didn't believe in investing as that product is an investable product. I was wrong. And I will not call out companies by name where I did it in reverse just to respect those people.
Yeah, of course.
But there's a couple of instances where I was iffy on the founders and I was like, yeah, but I can help them and I believe in the product. And the reality is, and I learned this the hard way a few times, like, you know, people don't change unless they acknowledge the change they want to make and how they're going to do it. And so now the way that I talk about it now, 6 years later, is I really truly put 80% of my decision into my belief that the CEO can build something meaningful. Meaningful is relative. Right.
Yeah.
I don't necessarily even care if it's gonna be a billion-dollar company or a $10 million company. I mean, I want it to be the biggest thing possible, but do I think this person is capable? And the way that I go about proving myself, my conviction there is I will almost never ask a company about what they're doing in the first meeting and including the second meeting. So I will often leave the third meeting not knowing what the company does. I might know their industry, but I don't know what they do. And I don't— I never look at products anymore before I invest. I have stopped looking at products because it doesn't matter. Because the thing that I've learned is they're gonna change. So yeah, and so, so the 80% of my decision truly is, do I believe that the CEO can build something meaningful and attract great talent? The second 15% of the 20% left is, do I think the founding team is cohesive and the right team to do whatever the thing is that they're doing. Well, if I believe the founder can, the CEO can build a meaningful team, and I see the team is, you know, like they tie to each other, and the, you know, are they the right team doesn't— they don't have to come from the industry. Like, is it the right makeup? How do I think they interact with each other? You know, do they talk about I, I, I or we, we, we? You know, are they there for the common vision? And then the last 5% is, is the market interesting to me? Because I know the product is going to evolve greatly. So if we've got a great CEO, a great team in an interesting market, we will figure out the most interesting thing that we could possibly build with this team. I believe that in the last couple of years, I've gone exactly to that. And I, I feel like my— as a class, my last 2 classes have been by far the strongest classes.
As a whole. Yeah. And with that too, then so diving deeper onto evaluating these, these founders to see if they are capable or potentially capable of building this company and evaluating that. I'm sure it's changed over time. Again, going back to the point of like things changed in the last number of years, as you see more companies, you get more conviction around it. But what are you asking or looking for in these founders that you— that makes one stand out from another? Because, you know, you hear this in an interview, you're like, okay, yeah, like you need strong founders, but you're like, how do you know? It's not like I'm obviously going to be super clear, but examples or even just like things you're asking or trying to figure out that give you some more conviction than others? I'd be curious about. Yeah.
So I'll start with one of my goals for the next, I'm going to say 2 years, because I've been trying for a couple of years already and it's hard. And I think it'll take me a couple more years to get there. Hopefully not, is to start to quantify the things that I objectively, a lot of times just feel. I think there are things in the world that I'm not good at. I think one of the things that I am good at is reading people. And so now I'm trying to ask myself, like, why do I believe the things about people to be true? Um, some common— so, so there's just one, like, I'll ask, I'll, I'll ask people a lot about their past, but I don't ask necessarily specific things about their past. But what I'm really looking for is I want to hear them talk about, like, their entire life journey. I want to understand, like, what, in their words, what are the obstacles that they talk about How do they talk about them? How did they overcome them? What do they do after? And so I'm trying to tease out like the really who they are as a person and what their resolve is and what their work ethic is and what their hustle is like. I so that's one thing. I this is a little more but not a lot more quantifiable. I try to understand, or at least my belief, what their their relationship is with. being with data and being metrics-driven, even if they've never really done it before? Like, what are— again, what's the language they use? How analytical are their brains? Even if they've never been inside of a metrics-driven company, do I believe they have the capability to be that way? And then something that I— a notion that I've been playing with the last couple of years, and I don't know that this is true or not, but I have a little bit of data that suggests that folks, people that have been through some sort of professional training, like getting your CPA or becoming, you know, getting your, your law degree or medical degree or doctorate, but then realizing that that's not the path for them because they don't want to be controlled. It says something else to me. I understand hard work and discipline. And I'm a founder because fuck, I want to change the world. Yeah, you know, I don't want to be bound by the rules. So yeah, those are like the things that I'm playing with. And there's probably more that I don't even how to articulate yet. But as I think about the next couple of years and figuring out a more formulaic approach, those are the things that are sort of top of mind right now.
And hearing this and thinking of the founders who hear this, to that point, so you like, as a founder, you're gonna, you know, that this is managing director at Techstars, one of the Techstars locations in Austin. So you hear that as a founder, then I'm thinking, okay, well, how do I tell that story? What goes into storytelling for this? And like, how do I obviously portray myself in the best way? You've heard a lot of pitches, a lot of talk to a lot of people. Storytelling is a key aspect of any early-stage founder, you being able to tell that vision. What excites you about a story? Or what goes into maybe good storytelling that can help people as they're trying to articulate what they're doing? Because a lot of times people that do it bad are really obvious. You're like, that's— I'm not compelled at all. But once you do it well, it's like, whoa, let me join. Like, I want to jump ship and join you now.
Yeah.
Take me through that process and what you hear from Man, I dig that question so much.
I got— I have a couple of ways to answer it. Um, the first way that I'm going to answer it is, is a notion that I talk to my founders about when pitching, and it's going to sound the opposite of, of what I actually do, but there is a, there is a lot of overlap. What I tell founders, I say this all the time, and it's, it's, um, I don't want to take full credit for it because I think it's cool. Uh, my co-founder from Work.com, Russ Smith, who is, uh, just one of the most genius people in the world. Um, he and I always talk about how really good business storytelling is 3 parts math, 1 part theater. That came from the fact that he's a math major, major, and a theater major, and probably one of the most skilled data scientists I know, and a product guy and everything else. So we talk about it. So like, there's a story that is theater, but that story is laid over the foundation of math and metrics and data. Yeah, right. Um, so I look for that, but really answering your question a little bit differently, I like to have conversations. I don't really like being pitched to. If you send me your deck, I will promise you I won't open it. Um, I won't. And I just want to have a conversation and I want to get to know you and I want to, you know, I just want to get a vibe from you. And I'll be really honest with you, like, I think I sometimes I meet great people and I'm like, I just don't think this is a relationship that's going to work. Here's why, but here's 4 other tech stars programs that I'll introduce you to. And other, you know, there's other times where I have to sell people like, hey, please like me. I think you're awesome.
You know? Well, I mean, everyone, it's funny because it's across every aspect of life is storytelling. I mean, you think about someone dating, trying to find their partner, like, it's like, how do you tell who you are when they ask you? Or how do you know, like, everything is storytelling. And that, that skill of storytelling is so important for, for everyone. I mean, for the investor side of it as well, like you said, trying to Make sure if it's a hot deal, why are you the investor to get into this oversubscribed round? For instance, like storytelling goes into everything. And like I think it's interesting to think about how you tell that and how you portray yourself and investing in that in terms of learning more how to tell a story, learning about who you are. And like you said, kind of mapped over this like data or math in some capacity is important as well. And like even like I look at Vitalize, a venture firm I'm at. And we track like the connections we make for portfolio companies. And so we have like, we literally know the numbers on this company. We gave 22 meaningful connections based on them leading to a partner or a customer or whatever. And when you have that like level of data to then tell your story that we're founder-friendly, it's like, oh, like you actually help them and like you have the numbers to back it up. It's way more compelling than saying, yeah, we're founder-friendly. We help companies. Yeah.
'Cause it's easy to say, well, there's something I think that's also really cool. that is nuanced in what you're saying, which is honesty and sincerity. Like, I think one of the problems that I find myself dealing with, with the notion of storytelling, and this is my own bias, right? But when I think of story, I think of fairy tales. So automatically when I hear, hey, let me tell you my story, I'm like, okay, so is this like who you really fucking are? Are you just telling me a story?
Yeah.
With me, dude, I don't know how to be any more authentically myself. And I just want that with the people that I work with. With too. Like, dude, shit's gonna hit the fan. Things are gonna go bad. And so, you know, like, one of the questions that I'll ask people when they are pitching me or talking to me, I'm like, all right, sounds like everything's rosy. I know that's bullshit. I see enough of this. So tell me the 3 things that are freaking you the most out right now. Let's talk about those. And so going back to the initial question, when someone can reveal some of those things to me and we can have a real conversation about them, I'm digging at the things like, okay, like, how do they deal with hard times? Like, What is their thinking process? You know, when they get stuck, what are they doing? Are they asking for help? Do they hide that? You know, do they hide it? Like, are they going to reach out and say, guess what, I screwed up, all my projections are off, I'm running out of money, I need help, can you help me solve this? Or are they gonna hold it tight to their chest? And maybe that's an extreme, but like, you know, nuanced things like that. Sure.
Yeah, and that makes you think as well on like mental models. And like Charlie Munger is famous for having so many mental models for how he views things. And it's not that one mental model is for every situation, but there is using that as a framework to be like, okay, going back to first principles or using something like inversion and thinking from the end going backwards, like different ways to view situations as well, especially as you're going through struggles or challenges as a startup can be helpful as well. As you look at even telling that story of like, okay, well we're doing this from first principles of like everyone thought differently because they were going off of these assumptions, let's just say. But first principle says that, like, that doesn't all matter. Like, we've just been kind of conditioned. So like, when you have those different mental models, even to think about how to run your startup, I think it's helpful as well. So even like doing research on that and like figuring out some of those, and like, once you learn about some of those, it's helpful. I think I have the book behind me.
It's, um, I wanna say, yeah, The Great Mental Models, uh, from Farnam Street.
If you haven't already read that, it's a good one.
I'm gonna check it out though. Yeah.
Yeah. And then there's a lot in there that can be helpful for founders as well. And like that, I think as they're going through building their company, there's so many, so many ways to think about things, but investing in your own mind and your own thinking is something that has a potential for compound effects. And so like, as you listen to a podcast like this or watch the video with Amos's great background, you can learn some of these things as well. And I wanna dive into your book. So your most recent book to start with, Levers: The Framework for Building Repeatability into Your Business. Why write this book, Amos?
So, it started with, I don't want to write another book. And not that it was so hard, and I will get to the answer to your question, but I didn't intend to write the first one. The first one came out of literally an accident. I screwed up my ankle and I couldn't walk for a couple of months. And I wrote the book because I just don't sit still well and I needed something to do. And, and there was other reasons behind it, but like, I didn't set out to write a book.
Yeah.
And so with this, with this second one, people kept asking like, are you gonna write another book? Are you gonna write another book? I'm like, no, hell no, I'm not gonna write another book. And, uh, but this process that's in the book is something that, you know, I've been using at Techstars really from the beginning, and, and it has become more refined over the years as I've done it with more and more companies. And I, I, we haven't talked about this at all, but I have a separate coaching business with one of my co-authors, um, called RetroCause, that we— all we do is we focus for one month on the process in the book. And so we've done this with hundreds and hundreds of companies.
Yeah.
And Trevor used to work with me at Techstars. He's now a venture partner at, um, Saturn V. And, um, I don't re— I— he says it was me, I think it was him, but we were talking one day and we're like, you know, we could reach a lot more founders if we put this process into a book.
Yeah.
And I— but I do remember saying this to him, I am not willing to write every chapter in this book. I'm not the expert in some of these things. We have to go find people that can help us. And it was really obvious who those people were because we were already bringing Cody in to teach the stuff that's in chapter, um, the appendix and chapter, uh, 4. And we were already bringing Troy in from my very first program for both of them, um, to teach financial modeling. So, uh, I called both of them. They were both like, hell yeah, we'll do that. And so once we had that, we're like, okay, so the book's going to come together really, really fast. Let's just do it. So I did adapt, you know, the chapter one of both Somewhere Faster and Levers. They're similar, but they're not the same because you apply them differently. That chapter came together super fast. Chapter two, Revenue Formula, also came together pretty fast because I just was like, I've taught this workshop probably 150 times. I'm just gonna write the words, right? We'll worry about how the words. present on a page in the editing process.
Yeah.
It was the same thing for every chapter. We've all done this stuff so much that it was easy to write a single, you know, 20 or 30 or whatever page chapter, because it was literally the words that were already coming out of our mouth. The harder part, which, you know, fortunately this is where Trevor is really— people don't know this about Trevor, but he wrote Get Backed. He's just a ghost author. Um, he's been, he's edited tons of books. He's really skilled with language. He took the hardest part on, which is, okay, how do we make this cohesive and actually read well?
Yeah.
So, if it doesn't read well, blame it on me. If it reads well, give him the credit.
The credit. Yeah.
Yeah. But anyway, that's how we get it. So, to answer your question more specifically, I think at the stage that we all are, all 4 of us in our careers, it is really important for us to feel like we're making impact. And it isn't about money. You don't make money with a book. We do this thing, we know it works, we love working with founders, we've been really all very fortunate in our careers, how do we reach more people at scale? So in a lot of ways, you can think that like the work we've been doing is our MVP to prove product-market fit. We feel like we had enough data to prove it. And this was the broad rollout of that with RetroCause being like, you know, like this is the SMB version. RetroCause is the mid-market version. And we don't do any drop-in consulting because that's just too timely. But that would be the, you know, the enterprise version of it.
Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I, it's always something where you mentioned the impact thing and the way you have the ability to reach more people with something like this. And I think back to my first business called Just Go Fitness. I was training clients, uh, personal training. So training clients in their homes and parks, whatever. And I started blogging cuz I was like, wait, if I just like kind of share stuff I'm learning about this and share on, on the web, on the interwebs, uh, great things can happen. And like once you start, start seeing like, you know, thousands of website visitors, people, random states, like messaging me like thanks and stuff, it's like, Whoa, game changer. Like that started my whole content journey, which is how Just Go Grind started in terms of like talking to people in different careers and founders and VCs and everything. Because it's like, if you do this once, then everyone else can listen to it forever. And like, it's funny looking back, this has been almost 3 years of Just Go Grind podcast. And those early episodes, actually, some of them were cringe for me. It's like I've gotten better, obviously, but they still get downloaded. Like they still get listened to. 3 years later, which is back to that point of like repeatability. It's like as the show grows because like people listen to past episodes and they find them through Google search or whatever, but it's kind of insane to think about. And a book like Levers, like your first book as well, has that ability where it can last a very long time. You can always kind of push back to it. One of the things I have to ask about though is I know you mentioned like it's not about the money for this, it's like impact and reach, but if you write a book and no one reads it, it doesn't do much good. So how are you going about Promoting this thing, getting the word out. I'm very curious about this. Yeah, I do want to write a book one day too.
It's super— it's a super interesting question. Um, and I, I will— I'll start. Well, there's, there's a couple of things. One is that like, I am— of things that I'm good at, I am not a good marketer. Like, I understand it from 100,000 feet away or maybe 500,000 feet away, but that is not my strong suit. I think Trevor is a little bit better than me. And so, you know, I think we have definitely leveraged our networks.
Of course.
You know, the thing that I think, you know, I'm a salesperson at heart, and the thing that I think made me a good early-stage salesperson was my ability to develop relationships with people. And this is a little bit of an aside, but I had the fortune to meet a woman by the name of Lynn Hill, which most people listening to this will not know who she is. But in the, in the mid-early '90s, she was the first person, and as a woman, to free El Capitan in Yosemite. So she climbed from bottom to top using ropes but no fixed gear. And if, you know, there's a whole thing there. Anyway, so when I, when I met her, she was doing a book signing, and I watched her as I was in line, and then I got up to her, and she, she did something that was really fucking cool. She made every single person feel like they were the only person in the room for however long she talked to them. And I realized that, and I took that from that day, and I tried to apply that to my life. And so a long way to say, the thing that I did with Somewhere Faster that we're doing with this that I think has been the most impactful is literally reaching out one by one to our networks. Literally one by one. Yes, it is a lot of work, Guys, yeah, it is a lot of work and it will take a lot of time. But the effects are we hit bestseller on the second day on this book and, and we're getting great feedback on it. You know, I don't know how many people— those people read it yet. Hopefully they have.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's a good point because I think, again, going back to like the thing that people always hear about early stage, like doing things that don't scale, I think it applies as well, especially when you look at what your strengths are. which would be the massive network you build up over the last 6 years of running an accelerator. And the best way to reach those people is one-on-one. I mean, like, because people will see something like, oh, he has a book, great. But when you have Amos reach out to you, send an email, it's like, okay, I'm definitely paying attention. And you'll react in some capacity. Because I mean, it's just, it's a much easier way to go. Easier, I say in air quotes. It's simple, but not necessarily easy. It takes a lot of time to do, but it can definitely get results, especially if that's your—
Yeah. Yeah.
And I also know you've done— obviously this interview, for instance, is one other way, but any other ways that you've gone about kind of growing or, you know, with this book coming out? Because again, I think at one point in my life, at maybe some point, I want to write a book. And so I'm curious as to anything else that's been helpful for getting the word out.
Yeah. Those are the primary things that we're doing. I mean, you know, for this second book, we worked with a publishing company. publishing company. It's a hybrid, but called Scribe Media, where we're really publishing it ourselves. And they're sort of the guides through it. They have marketing services. And we looked at each other and said, it's worth paying for it because none of us are marketers.
Fair.
And it has been worth it, right? Like, you know, most of the podcast interviews we're getting is because of their outreach, or most, I don't know if that's true, but like a lot. And they're doing other things behind the scenes. But I don't even know that I know the details of what they are because I feel like they've earned their— what we've paid them already there.
Sure.
We're super happy with them as a publisher. And so, you know, so I don't have another good answer for you.
That's great.
That's what we've done. And in terms of this living on over time, a little bit of it is hope that enough people like it that they will tell others about it. We will do things over time. And then I think, you know, we're using You know, they sort of use each other, but Retro Cause, the side business, like there's a small group of people that we work with, but you know, they go through the process. We give them a copy of the book, they like the book, they tell someone, there's word of mouth there.
Yeah, there's a lot of ways to go about it. And that's, that makes total sense in terms of that. And actually, I think it was helpful to mention that you use Scribe as their marketing services because someone marketing a book needs to know like, well, should I use something like that? And obviously in this one scenario, it worked out.
Yeah. Well, and I'll say, you know, the flip of that is with my first My first book was published through Wiley, which is a traditional publisher. And I think like, you know, there's a lot of things that you don't know working with a traditional publisher, but one of them is that they don't do any marketing for you. They'll tell you they do a little bit, but, but my experience is it's very low. Like all of the book sales came from, from me having to do the heavy lifting, um, for that first book. And, um, you know, so if you're gonna— that was part of the thinking, which is if we're gonna be doing all the hard work ourselves, like why are we giving any, all the royalties away to them?
Yeah, that is kind of an interesting thing to think about. Why not, you know, self-publish in that way? But like, that's the thing. A lot of times these publishers are looking for someone who has a big audience in the first place. And that's something where our— I know Gail Wilkinson at Advise here started the firm. She was looking at writing a book, I think a year or two ago. One of the big, big things they were saying is like, what's your distribution? What are your followers? What's your— what, you know, what distribution are you going to have if we go about publishing this for you? It's like, they want to know because obviously they want to sell books. It helps them as well.
The one thing I will share with you though, and I just You know, I think I would say this to absolutely anybody. Like, if you, if you have the aspiration to write a book, the— like, be really clear with yourself on your goals, but the— your expectation should be that it is— I think the average business book sells 300 copies in its lifetime.
Yeah.
And that's like, it's just, there's a lot. It's hard to, it's hard to do it. It doesn't mean that you can't hugely, you know, exceed that. Your podcast alone, you'll probably, you know, quadruple or maybe 20 or 30x that, right?
Sure.
But I think we went into it with the assumption that we're going to put this great stuff out there, we're going to do our best to get it in people's hands. If nothing else, we can hand it to every founder that we work with directly, and they've got something that they can carry on with them. And if it does better than that, awesome, then we're really lucky.
Yeah. And the book idea was around this podcast, so making this into a book, which basically has been done in different ways before, but every unique story is there. So we'll see what happens with that. But, but Amos, where can people go to learn about what you're doing, connect with you, buy the book, everything?
Yeah, so anything that's, um, related around Levers, you can go to leversbook.com, L-E-V-E-R-S-book.com. You can contact me through there. You can also contact me on LinkedIn. I, I do respond to every email I get, 100%. Sometimes it takes me a few days, but I do respond. But best place is leversbook.com.
Perfect. Amos, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today, man.
Yeah, dude, thanks so much for having me. This is really fun.
