Jason Cohen on Missionaries vs Mercenaries and The Impact of Passion in Business

Jason, welcome to the show. Thank you for being the first guest of 2024. When I was reading your bio, I was very surprised and impressed and jealous that you've been documenting it for about 17 years on your blog, you know, which is like, that's so cool.

Build a mission-driven business, which very few actually are. People kind of have a mission statement. That's not what I mean. Everyone writes one down. That's not it. I mean, really, you have like a bigger purpose or a thing that really truly is why you did this. So TOMS making shoes, Patagonia with the environment, even Tesla with changing the climate through transforming energy. Those are missions, like real mission-driven. That has to come from passion or it's not genuine.

Just be you on the internet. You know, that's how you just grow your influence. I was reading this book called Invent and Wander, and in which I think Jeff Bezos talks about there's 2 kinds of people in the world. There's the missionaries and the mercenaries, and you can tell by— Welcome to the Building Public Podcast. I'm your host, KP, and on this show, I interview world-class entrepreneurs, ambitious startup founders, creators, and builders on the internet who are boldly building the future in public. This podcast is my excuse to take you all on a curious journey to understand, learn, and hopefully be inspired by the worldviews, insights, and stories of these fabulous people changing the world. So far, I've gotten the rare privilege to sit down with incredible guests like Gary Alexis Ohanian, Cat Cole, Sahil Lavingia, and many more leaders. So check out the full podcast listing at buildingpublicpodcast.com. Now buckle up and get ready for our latest episode. Jason, welcome to the show. Thank you for being the first guest of 2024.

All right, let's go.

I'm really honored to have you here. There's been quite a buzz on Twitter. you know, since you announced— I mean, since I posted about a couple of weeks ago, I think, and even today I got a couple of DMs. Mac Martin, one of my close friends, was saying like, I'm excited for this interview. So I'm excited. Looks like you're ready. But as I was saying earlier, I kind of want this to be a curious exploration of your journey as a founder, you know. And when I was reading your bio, I was very surprised and impressed and jealous that you've been documenting it for about 17 years on your blog, you know, which is like, that's so cool. I wish I would, you know, I think I'm doing it for the last 3 or 4 years, but It's amazing that you've kind of kept writing long-form content for a long time. So that's awesome. I want to start with the first question, which is, how does writing feel to you? Like, how do you keep up with writing when a lot of people think writing is a very tedious and cognitively heavy task?

Well, it is. A lot of things in life are like that. I think even if you're in a band and you're practicing that, it can be tedious and maybe cognitively heavy. Certainly writing code, I mean, everybody that loves it like me, a lot of it is tedious and it certainly occupies a lot of your brain. So yeah, of course it is. It's hard. A lot of things that are worthwhile are hard. Personally, I get a couple of things out of it. One is I get to try to almost like chew the cud on my ideas or thoughts or the things that we do, whether that's like a framework or a process or some kind of thing that we developed at work, or if it's just something that's in my head. I think writing forces you to figure out like, wait, what is this? You know, in the usual way that teaching someone else means you have to really understand it and all that kind of stuff. And so you get that personal benefit. So yeah, it is tedious and it's a struggle, but One of the things you get out of it is just, what do I think about things? And do I have any new ideas at all? Or maybe even it's not that new of an idea, but I have a way of talking about it or, or, um, communicating it or thinking about it or applying it, which is maybe a little bit new. I think that counts too. And so early on, I was just learning how to get better at writing and I didn't know what I was doing. And I would copy a lot of styles I would see. I would see other people who I thought were really cool at writing, whether it's like Copyblogger at the time or James Altucher, who was popular then. And it was really irreverent or like Seth Godin who would write a little tiny, like miniatures, but they were, you know, each one was just had this nice little ring to it. And so I would try them on almost like clothes. What about this style? What about this style? Of course, eventually I found my own voice, right? Which was none of the above, but it was, it was whatever, you know, but I don't think that's bad either to just say like, I mean, cause if the question is how do you do it or how do you get into it or whatever, you know, you just, you, you start by anything, including even copying, not copying the words, but maybe the style or this, that. In fact, there was one even where I wrote about The fact that I was copying on purpose to learn and did it in the style of the person I was saying I was copying and tried to even copy the form that they wrote in for that. And it was kind of neat, but also wasn't quite right. And that's fine. Anyway, so over the years, I wouldn't say I documented the path. Like, it's not a timeline. It's not news. It's not like, here, we tried this and this did or didn't work per se. Again, it's more like ideas or frameworks or processes, or sometimes it's just observations about psychology or stories from that kind of thing. And just anything that was on my mind and seemed useful to get out this way. And another benefit for myself is this is now— it's now easier to recall and use any of these things because I've spent so much time on each concept. And then yet another benefit is ego. If I publish something online, even one person says, oh, this was great, and that feels really good. And that's a perfectly valid reason to do anything. I mean, not doing evil or bad things, but I mean, as long as the thing is fine, you know, that's not a bad reason to receive that. It's not a bad reason to try to do well and put it out there. And I definitely do it for that reason also.

Yeah. Now, what does the current writing routine look like? Do you have an allocated time in the day where you think, okay, 8 to 9 AM every morning, I'm just gonna sit down and write something? Or is it more so organic where you feel like, oh, Wednesday 4 PM, you had this thing and you want to sit down and write?

Right now it's— or I say right now, It's always been organic. Sometimes I'm in the mood and I write all day, not usually during the week because I've got work, but, uh, like on the weekends or break. But it's, it's mostly just sometimes it comes and then I do it and sometimes it doesn't. Of course, a real writer has to sit down and write every day. I guess you could debate whether that's true, that statement is true or not. I think it's roughly true and certainly it's, it's commonly said. So, but fortunately this isn't my business. I don't make any money on it. I don't want to, I don't have to. This is strictly for me and all those reasons we just said. It's for those reasons specifically and no others, not for making money, etc. So that means I don't have to apply myself every day and make sure that a thing comes out here. I have no restrictions on it because it's just for me.

Did you do a 2023 review at the end of last year, or do you do reviews? Do you believe in that?

No, I don't do any things like that. I don't make top 10 lists. I don't do reviews.

Because I was going to ask you if that was a prompt. That, you know, kind of help you?

I don't use prompts. Yeah,

I

don't use prompts either because I'm not, I'm not trying to fill— first of all, I'm not trying to fill space or time. If I don't have something that I think is good and new to say,

you're like,

um, or at least in a very new way, in my own way, I'm simply not going to do it. If that means I write more or less or longer or shorter— some of my things are, uh, a 30 or 40-minute read in one article, and some are A 3-minute read. It's whatever. It's whatever I think. If I have a lot to say and I think it's really good, it'll be long. If I think I have a short amount to say, that's what I'll do. I'm not trying to fill a business book, you know, arbitrarily pad it, right? So whether it's when do the articles come out or what is the topics or what is the form, like what is the format, I just won't do that. And I guess it does, it would make it harder to do this regularly or certainly every day. I don't know how to ever do that. I think you probably need more templates and forms to do that. And probably I could have more quote unquote followers or actual subscribers if I did some of these things that work better? You know, probably, but I'm not trying to do that again. I'm trying to do whatever I think is the best that I can do and put out, whatever that may mean. I don't do any of those things. I'm not, in fact, I, I probably would write a lot worse if it was, oh, use this template and here's the outline. I'm, I'm sure it would just come off as, uh, less genuine and less, uh, fluid and organic.

Yeah.

So, and, uh, I think it'd be harder to, to write. I don't, and that, that's just personal. I, I know people where They could never write like that. They love making the outline first and filling it in. So this is, there's no rules here. This is just personal preference and style straight up. Like this is not a law.

So for me, it's been interesting because I downloaded like 4 or 5 templates during, uh, second half of December to kind of write my 2023 recap. 'Cause it was a big year in terms of so many, you know, highs and lows. And so, but none of those templates really moved me to start writing and they felt very much like a gratitude journal, which is like cutesy and not so deep. And so I was like, um, so I came up with my own prompts. We're like, whoa, what were the 3 things that energized me this year? And I kind of first finished those outline prompts of like 6 or 7 things, and I got excited because of my own prompts, because I know the upcoming answer to each. And so that kind of motivated me to kind of sit down. And it's very hard for me because I'm like, you know, I'm very impatient as a person and restless. It was very hard for me to sit down for like, I don't know, 2, 3 hours. So I did it in 2 days and then I finished it and I felt so great because back to your point, it didn't really feel that I was doing it as a checkbox or as like, oh, everyone has this template, I got to fill this out. I felt like I did it what was authentically, you know, like my reflection of the year. Also purely selfish about like I wanted to pluck out some lessons and keep them top of mind into my next phase of career.

Yeah. So like for me, I would never ever write anything like 3 things that excited me about this last year. Again, it's It's just personal preference, no judgment or anything. It's just not what I would do. Uh, but I, if I did that for myself, that sounds useful. And then, like you said, oh man, that second one. Oh man, this, that, the other thing, and ideas start coming. Maybe, maybe you even get out a tool like AudioPen or something and just talk, just go blah, blah, blah, and let AudioPen, you know, turn it into text. And then that text is still not a blog post, but at least now you can sit down and maybe edit or reference that while you write something. Right. That you're excited about, that you have something to say about, maybe with your own scattered thoughts as input, or, you know, that sounds more, um, more useful. But you're, you're making a composition. Just say the thing that's interesting. Like, I guess, um, again, this is just style, but to me, the process behind it, or what people, people like thinking on their own, I'm just so not interested. Don't care. I don't care. Even the stuff like, hey, so, uh, you're, you've done startups. Where'd you get Where'd you— where were you born? How did you— oh my God, I don't care. Now, a lot of people do care. So again, just personal style. But for me, who cares if you have something interesting or useful, or hopefully both to say, just do that as well as you can is my style.

So let's talk a little bit about the one of the articles that you talked about. You were so passionate about this concept of SLC, which I like. And I thought it was a really nice twist on the, you know, accepted wisdom on MVP, minimum viable product. Right. And I had to like really get into what is SLC? What does he mean by that? Simple, lovable, and complete. Did I get that right? Right. SLC. And I was really interested and I thought you would be the perfect person and this would be a great platform for you to kind of— for you to double-click on that. Right. So walk us through what you didn't like about MVP or didn't feel like it was a great sort of a fit to what you're trying to describe and then how SLC is like a better vehicle for the idea.

Yeah. So the idea of an MVP or a minimum viable product is that you do something small that you can put out quickly, maybe even 2 weeks, but okay, 2 months. certainly not a year, and start to get feedback from customers about it so you can find out the truth. And this idea of doing something small and finding out the truth, I like. That part is check plus in my book. The reason I wrote that article is because for like the 3rd or 4th time in a row, either by request or I just found the software and it was just complete garbage. And I realized, oh, this is someone's MVP. And what happened is they put out something that was garbage and didn't work and using me as essentially a guinea pig or quality control so that they can learn. But meanwhile, they're abusing me and I'm the customer. And I don't think it's okay to abuse the customer. Furthermore, I don't think any of us are in this, you know, like, in other words, doing a startup, making a product because we want to build crappy things and give them and, you know, and foist them on people. It's not really why we're doing this. Does an MVP— does it supposed to mean that it's bad, a bad product? No, it's not supposed to mean that. But in fact, it often means that people emphasize the M minimum part.

Yeah.

And it's not really that viable. And the word P product isn't is actually, you can throw that away. It's not a useful word. So I just, I thought people weren't, it wasn't a good idea, but the idea that it's simple, you get it out there quickly and get feedback, I like. What I like, so I had this new way, this SLC. So simple, because yes, you do need to get it out fast. And so the product itself must be simple or you won't be able to do it quickly and get it out there quickly. So simple, yes. Simple's different than minimum. Now you might say in practice there should be no difference. And I would say, fine, then why don't you pick a word that means the right thing,

right?

Because minimum does mean something different than simple.

It also can signal like minimum effort.

Okay, and so simple's the first one.

Signal minimum effort, and that is not a great thing, right? Like if you're putting the bare minimum effort into something.

Yeah, like, uh, if I said write a poem and you did a minimum effort, it's not a

great thing. Yeah,

if I said do a poem and you write a 4-word poem that's perfection, as they often are in, say, Latin, or maybe a haiku, for example. That's simple and beautiful and wonderful, not minimum. And a haiku is not minimum, it's simple. Okay, so they're not the same words. So for anyone that says, but that's what I meant, it's like, well, then why don't you use the right word if that's what you quote meant? Okay, so simple, not minimum. Then lovable. This is the part where we're not abusing the customer. It is possible for a product to not do very much, but you like it. Oh, it doesn't have all the features you want. Okay, that seems like a, like an okay thing. Just being bad is not an okay thing. So lovable, that people should like it. The other thing is, new product's gonna have bugs. It's not gonna have all the features you want. It's not gonna integrate with something. It's not gonna support some device you want. Of course, it's brand new. Like, of course. If the product is delightful or lovable, that helps you bridge that gap. Oh, it also had this one bug, but I like it so much, I'll stick with it. Like, it helps you get over the fact that, of course, Of course it's not perfect. So lovable. And then finally complete. If it, if I can't, because again, I found with these products, I would want to do some task and it could do like half the task. Well, then it's not useful to me. And again, you're abusing me because you made me think that it could do this task and it just can't do it. So complete, meaning it's, it's a finished product. It may be too simple and not do enough for a lot of people. That's okay. But if it can do something from soup to nuts so that it, you know, then it is complete. It's in some simple way. And then you're not abused again. You're not abusing your customer. The other nice thing about complete is you can stop. You might just make a simple product that works and you're done. This is especially true if you have an existing product. And if what we're talking about is a next feature or a next component that you're again testing, starting out with it being simple and lovable and complete for some feature, right? You might realize, okay, that was fine and we should stop and move on to something else. Or you could determine, oh, There's this is a great vein to mine. We should just do way more. We should da da da da, and you could of course go in and work on it for years and expand what that is right into more and more and more. If it's complete, you're you have optionality of what to do, whereas if it's incomplete, as many MVPs are, it's just it doesn't exist. It's it's a non starter, and so either you have to finish it or I don't know. You can't leave it because it's broken.

Close the loop, right?

Once again, people will say, "Well, that's not what an MVP is supposed to be," and I would say, "Okay," but it doesn't say that anywhere. Maybe it means maybe viable sort of means that. But again, I feel like people believe— people see viable as the question that the person who makes it is asking rather than the customer finds it to be wonderful. So, you know, can an MVP mean that? Should it mean that? Yes, it should. That's what I'm saying too. I'm just picking different words that say what I think it actually should mean.

I also like the fact that your definition is coming from the customer's lens, which is ultimately what, you know, is way more important. than just like self-serving from the founder's lens. You know, the product that came to mind while you were describing the SLC framework, uh, which is what you just mentioned like a few minutes ago, is AudioPen. It's actually built by one of my friends. His name's Luis Pereira. I think we both follow him, I think, or we know him on Twitter.

Yeah, I use AudioPen.

Right, it's such a simple product and it's complete in its own right. Like, he could extend the roadmap for another 6 months, 8 months, whatever, and then there could be some more additional features. But like, on its own right, from the first week itself, I think for the first 2 days itself, it started working, you know, and it's simple and it's lovable. It's got a little personality. He's like put a little care. Yeah. He, I love the fact that he actually, um, he's a no-coder. Did you know that? It was built on Bubble, which is insane, right? Like, um, so it's such a great, I think, example for—

Yeah. Or, um, something like, um, Snapchat, you know, it first came out, it was this very simple thing. You can send a message and it's not saved and it just went from there. And then it's a video and then it's this and then the stories, like, of course it went on and on and added stuff. Obviously, um, but at the beginning it did almost nothing, but that almost nothing was something people wanted. Or WhatsApp, which also started with literally just, you have a status and not even a history, a status. And if you changed your status, your friends could be notified. That's it. And it was really popular because SMS messages are expensive, especially back then. They were very expensive globally. And so this was a way to sort of have a weird broadcasted SMS message for free. Yeah. And as bizarre as that is, that was also already very valuable for millions of people. Of course, it became much more feature-rich after that. That's all it was when it started. So there's a lot of examples. Those 2 are from consumers, so fair enough. But, um, but yes, like, you can, you can see this kind of thing evolving.

So if you reflect on the last few questions that, um, a founder's asked you, or a couple of— I don't know if you've been to a you know, a meetup or hackathon or whatever. I'm curious about like, what are people coming to you to ask about? Is it product-market fit advice? What's been like the theme of some of the questions you've been getting, even on Twitter?

In private, people, people are interested in things like, I have an offer to sell the company. I've never done it before. I don't really even know how to think about it. Maybe an offer to raise money is a lighter version of that. Although there's a lot more information about that, I think. available. On Twitter, yeah, sometimes it's how to do very specific things, you know, oh man, I'm trying to break into this market. I don't know where to start. Or another one that's, that's hard is I've been working on this thing for 18 months. It's not really working. I'm not sure if I could continue working on it or not, which is always a hard one. I think that one's one of the more difficult things to answer, maybe unanswerable. In fact, you know, that's, that's a real toughie, especially because getting a year, 18 months in and it's hard. and not quite working is the origin story of many successful companies where then it started working. And it's also the story of— and then they worked on it for another 18 months and it never worked. And that was an enormous waste of time. And so you're like, well, what's the difference? Because this seems in common with both. How the hell do I know the difference? And that can be, you know, it's not— I'm not sure I know the answer to that either. But that's a common one.

How much— I saw in your product-market fit article, The first item you put on there is like passion, right? Like founder's passion and like actually giving a shit about that particular problem statement or the space. How much of that has changed for you? Do you still believe that's like one of the number one first things you look for? Or like one thing, because the premise to this question is

that

it gets through. I agree in the premise. I agree in what you described, but the premise to that question, the reason that you brought that up is I genuinely believe without actual real passion on that particular problem or customer base, it's very hard to pull it off. And I'm constantly having to redirect people who come with this one-off pieces of sound, seemingly sound, uh, smart ideas. They come to me and they're like, here's the niche that no one's looking at. It's just like, what if you just made these military housewives or like whatever, and then they made like a TaskRabbit for them? And like, I'm like, do you, like, you don't care about that? And they're like, no, but it's a huge overlooked opportunity. I'm like, yeah, but there's 7 billion of them, right? Right. Such opportunities, right? Like, you have to care. And I think I think there's a lot of gurus on the internet who are like, oh, here's the 15 niches in a PDF, uh, Excel sheet that you can monetize tomorrow. And I'm like, that is useless in my view unless you actually personally care.

Well, yeah, there's a lot of thoughts here. Yes, I want to hear that. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. So first of all, you need passion to get you through the tough times. Like we said, you're 18 months in, blah blah blah. Like, something's got to be driving you. So you need some kind of passion about, yeah, the problem or the solution or just being here. Or you'll quit and it'll never have had a good chance. And that's just not a good use of time. Yeah. At the same time, passion obviously is not a business model. And a lot of people are passionate about stuff that isn't a good business. In fact, that's kind of the problem. They're passionate about the solution and they don't find the problem, or they're passionate about the problem, but it's not a business. You know, you don't know how to find customers. They don't care. They don't have a budget. You're charging the wrong thing. You don't even bother trying to sell because you're just busy making it and you're not, you're not trying to sell. There's all kinds of ways in which you can have passion and not a business. So it certainly can even be a trap, but it's certainly not, not the business. Now, another thing people say is if you're good at something and you dive into it, you fall in love with it. And that can totally be true. You can fall in love with something as you get to know it and it starts to work and you start to make money and, and you fall, you do fall in love with it and you're passionate about it. That happens. So it is possible to develop it, I think. At minimum though, I think you'd need to have a passion for the act of making a company. Yeah. And wanting to be whole hog in it, but it's not guaranteed that you'll fall in love with it. And so it's a risk. It's now everything in business has risks. So I say it's a risk. I don't mean that in a negative way. I just mean that's one of them. I do think you don't want too many stacked up in a company because then it's just unlikely that they'll all come out good. So that just becomes one of them. So for example, if you do have a great niche because you bought one off a PDF and people are buying it, maybe even bought a company that's working. So that all kinds of risk about can the product be built? It already is built. Will people buy it? They're already buying it. Ba ba ba ba. You know, all these different risk points are solved, and now the question is: Will you develop a passion? That is not necessarily a bad risk. Whereas if I don't have passion for it, and I'm not sure I can build it, and I never talk to a customer, I'm not sure there's a market. It's like, look, how many of these risk bubbles are you going to accept? Because like the chance that all of them work out seems real low, doesn't it? Like just seems like a bad choice, right? So. I don't have like a rule of how many of these things, but like that doesn't sound good. So not having— having passion is nice. Not having it and maybe you'll grow into it is a risk and you have to just sort of weigh, is that, you know, is there enough other good stuff that you'll take the risk? Um, and another thing is, uh, if you build a mission-driven business, which very few actually are, people kind of have a mission statement. That's not what I mean. Everyone writes one down. That's not a, you know, I mean, really, you have like a bigger purpose or a thing that really truly is why you did this. So Tom's making shoes, Patagonia with the environment, even Tesla with, you know, changing the climate through energy, transforming energy. Those are missions, like real mission-driven. I don't see how that can't be. That has to come from passion or it's not genuine. Yeah. You can't just decide I'm gonna, and you don't really believe that. If you don't really believe it, then sorry, it's not mission-driven. So you don't have to make a mission-driven company. Um, I didn't. SmartBear was not a mission-driven company. So there's no requirement. Just saying, if that's the kind of thing you want, which it does confer amazing advantages to be mission-driven genuinely is quite amazing to do. If so, that's gotta be an existing passion too, I think. 'Cause that's what, that's kind of part and parcel of what it is. Right. But again, like most businesses aren't and that's okay. So, so that's fine. But that's another kind of place for passion, I think. Where you could say you have to have it on day one.

I think, yeah, I mean, I— a lot of what you just said resonates with how I think about it. I think fundamentally it's been for me because maybe I'm like so blinded by this sort of like mission-driven— like I'm very like there. I was reading, uh, this book by, um, called Invent and Wander, and in which, um, I think Jeff Bezos talks about there's 2 kinds of people in the world. There's the missionaries and the mercenaries, and you can tell by spending time with them. And he said like, I spent time with the Whole Foods CEO and like within 20 minutes, I'm like, this guy is mission-driven. And again, I don't like actively think about Whole Foods as a mission-driven company as much as I think about TOMS or Patagonia or Nike. But

well, I do. But, but they're— but they were founded in Austin.

Oh, I see. Okay, maybe that's why, because I, I don't usually shop. Yeah, so obviously you have the

money. I was, I was there when it was a co-op where everyone was barefoot and it smelled weird in there. Like, I didn't see any of that. That's—

but yeah, what's been fascinating is I think, you know, when you are I guess very mission-driven. I think it's, it's very— for me, it's like you have one life, you have one chance. You can build the company that you personally give a shit about, right? Why not is how I think about it, as opposed to picking the 85th column or a row in an Excel sheet that's like, oh, it's got a high SEO ranking, let's go build something. I'm like, you know, but, um,

yeah, yeah. I mean, but I mean, so to me, it's, it's not even— it's not just that it's a company you want to be at, it's more there's this higher purpose that you have. And you believe that through a company, you can help, you can be a part of achieving that higher purpose. You can help push it along in some way. And it's amazing because you can, whether it's employees or customers or investors or et cetera, for people who are also passionate about that, or at least are impressed and want to be associated with someone who is passionate about that, it just gives you in all those areas, which is everything, you know, it just gives you this automatic advantage. Yeah. Which especially with things like customers or employees can be a decisive advantage for investors, maybe. But they have to think about money too, if it's not an angel. But, but for employees to want to be there and work extra hard because they want to and stay and be loyal because they want to, enormous advantage. And of course, customers. I mean, if 2 people have identical products, one has a mission though, I mean, it's obvious that that can be a genuine permanent, unassailable competitive advantage. Well, there ain't many of those things in the world. So that's, you know, I mean, on, on the other hand, how can you blame someone who says, I work a job, or maybe I don't even do that. I want to be independent. I want to make businesses. Maybe my very first business won't be Whole Foods. Maybe what I'll do is I'll grab something off the list. I'll make a thing. And if I can, if that can mean I'm independent, if that can mean I can make more money, if that means I can develop these skills. Yeah. while making money. I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. Probably more. Maybe one day it'll be a mission one. So is that a bad path or can you say that person is doing it wrong or something? No way. Like, I totally understand that some people might want a mission right out of the gate. The first, first company, I don't want to waste one second on this earth that doesn't have a big purpose. That makes sense to me. But also someone that says, no, I want to, you know, I want to make a company become independent, etc. I don't see anything. I mean, it's certainly not ethically wrong or anything like that. I just, I feel like there's many ways. I do think it's good to be consistent of what you think you're doing and saying you're doing and actually doing. Don't say you're a mission-driven company and then your mission is to sell towels. That's not a mission. Don't do that. Just admit that that's not what it is.

That's what it is.

I think top to bottom— Self-contradictory things is counterproductive. But it's okay to have a mission or not have a

mission.

No,

I

think that's what

I'm saying. It's the top-to-bottom integrity thing, right? Like, say the same thing, do the same thing, and think the same thing, right? So you nailed it. Tell me about this car seat story that you have, which I loved, by the way. That whole paragraph, that whole— it made me think of, like, my first time in America was in Nashville. And I remember going to Nashville downtown, and, like, it really was such an experience, you know? Like, I grew up in India, and, like, moving here and, like, going through the downtown, the buildings, and I'm like, whoa, this is is insane, you know? And so I love the fact that you— I mean, I want to actually not spoil the thing about this for listeners. Tell me about what is the car seat story and why are we talking about this? Like, what made you write about it?

When I was a kid, there was this bagel store that we would get bagels. That was like the one good place to get bagels,

right?

And

yeah,

in Austin. And so, but it was on the edge of downtown. And as a kid, downtown was this scary place where you never went ever. And it, it wasn't that great in the early '80s in Austin. It was, there was crime and it, there wasn't anything there. There's no stores. No one lived there. There were all the buildings that are there now. Many of them were not there. And so, uh, now of course it was exaggerated in my kid brain, right? But, but still, like it was the, right. But okay. This still wasn't for kids, that's for sure. So what would happen is we would go down 5th Street, uh, toward downtown and, uh, we would stop kind of on the edge of downtown and my parents would go and get bagels. Then we'd turn around and leave, you know? And I knew we were getting there because, or we were there Because I'd look out my car seat, which was on the left driver's side, and look out the window and I could see this parking garage that was like this long sloping ramp that went into a parking garage. When I saw that, then that's how I knew we were there. WP Engine is now 4 floors of that building and we have our name on the outside of the building in big light-up letters. And so that same building that I thought of as like when I was a kid of like, that's downtown. Like now our name is literally on the building.

I love it.

And, uh, it's amazing. Now, of course, pre-COVID, we had about 450 people there on a typical workday or weekday. Um, now that's not the case. People like working at home. So now office space, I guess, means a, a very different thing. But, um, that was very, of, of course, it's really meaningful. Also, my, uh, my dad passed away in 2004 and so wasn't alive to see that. And that, that would've been really great. Yeah. So that was another thing I was thinking with, as the sign went up.

You would've gotten a, Kick out of it.

Yeah.

I mean, and to close the loop on this, like, this is an article where you're talking about like, when do you know your company's real? And you make a list of, you know, all the bullet points and this is one of them for you. I love that. Okay. So this is the question I keep getting a lot of the times. And I always ask my smart guests this thing because I know that the more perspectives we get on this, the better, which is how do you hunt for a great idea when you're getting started? Let's say a bootstrap startup founder's listening to this or when a potential VC-backed founder who wants to build the next Amazon. listening to this and they're like, okay, how do I pick a great idea among like 50 ideas? What is your framework?

So is the question, how do I get ideas in the first place? Or is the question what you just said, I have 50 ideas, but I don't know how to select between them?

I think it's more so the latter. I feel like a lot of people have ideas, even if they're terrible. They have like some ideas like Uber for dogs or whatever, you know. So this is a high achieving— this is like very common. I'm sure, you know, this is a very aspiring founder problem where there's a lot of these ambitious professionals and they have 5 or 6 ideas and they're like, how do I decide which is a better one? Or how do I even like think about ideation?

Well, if, if you can't decide, what that means is on the primary dimension that you care about, they're the same.

Yeah.

Like if one of them stood out as, oh my God, I love that one.

Well, then you would have it. Yes.

Considering 5 of them. So the good news whenever you're stuck on something like 5 is like maybe any one of them would be fine. And right away you can let the stress level go down a little bit. Because you realize that no matter what you pick, it's okay. So then you start asking, well, what are those secondary characteristics that I want to do? I think there's a couple ways to approach that. One is what we were just talking about. What is at risk? What do I know versus not know? Well, this idea, I know I could build it. What I don't know is, will people buy it? At what price is there? You know, this one, I know the market's there because I don't know, it already exists and so forth. Actually, the risk here is there's already 20 competitors and I don't know how I'll stand out or compete with them with advertising. So So in that way, in that manner, you could look at each idea and look at all these different things. You know, I have some materials on this, but things like the market size and whether people buy and whether they're already buying and how bad the competitors are. And there's, you know, you can get lists of these kind of things online or you can think through what a company needs or, you know, I have some of this kind of information on the blog, right?

Yeah.

On my site as well. And you could just ask like, which of these things are known and solid versus which of these are sort of unknown? Which of these are maybe just bad? There's always some things that are hard and bad. That's not a deal breaker. It's just, that's what it is. So that when you're looking at them, it's like, which combination of stuff do you want? So which is better? An idea where the market is real and busy, but the competition's high, or a market that doesn't seem to exist and there isn't competition, but it's not clear whether anyone would ever buy it. Which one's better? And the answer is no, there's no which one's better. They're different challenges, different kinds of risks. Different bets you're taking, different challenges. And the question is, which do you want? And that still comes down to a personal question, but at least you've identified what the choices really are. This is the shape of the things that'll be easy and hard, the risks and the knowns. That's the shape of that one. That's the shape of that one. And you're picking between these bags of risks and goods and bad things. So that's one way to try to analyze it better so that you're making a decision with more information. Of course, you could just simply solve for like which one seems most likely to succeed? That's an obvious one. So again, you can go back to these things and try to add those up in some, in some fashion. You can also ask about emotion and like, can I see myself still working on this problem in 10 years? And of course you don't know, 2 years from now you might feel really differently. So it's not about predicting that really, but just could I see myself doing it is an interesting question. Yeah. Because some of these might be, like you said, I picked a thing off a list. It's probably a decent business. But God, no. Like, if 10 years from now I'm still doing that, I'll kill myself. It's like, well, then you don't really want to do it at all. Like, why would you spend 1 year on it? Whereas something else is like, yeah, I mean, it may not work, but if it did, this could be like my life's work. Okay, that's— that seems like a positive vote. So you could, you could take that sort of long-term, even emotional view that might select one, or at least deselect some, you know, that don't qualify there. So you could take that view as well. Another place I always go to, we've We keep talking about passion, but what about what your strengths are? Like your abilities, your experience, uh, your capabilities, or maybe what you have access to. Maybe you have access to more money and so you can apply money to things, or you don't, and so you can't apply money to things. That's not a strength, and so forth. Maybe you have a network because Twitter, maybe you don't because whatever. So what are these assets and things that you have, whether your abilities or things around, and which of these ideas leverage what you have?

Right.

So like, oh, I'm great at writing code, but here's a business that doesn't involve writing code. Okay, well, you can still do it, obviously, but you have no intrinsic advantage. There's no reason why you should do it. You're not going to be especially effective. You're not going to— you're going to have to make mistakes that an expert would never make because you haven't done it before. You'll be slower because you're figuring things out and so on. As opposed to like, look, I'm an expert in X. Okay, well, if you can leverage that expertise in something, you'll be more efficient, faster. less likely to, you know, you'll make higher class of problems and so forth, or whatever the challenges are in the business. At least this will be no problem because that's your expertise. Put that to bed and just work on the other challenges. So if you're not leveraging any of your strengths, they're just, everything's a challenge. Everything's riskier. Everything's harder. That's no good. Of course, this requires you to know what they are, which is hard. It's hard to be introspective. It's hard to analyze yourself, hard to know what the strengths are. So that's hard. You can try to do it. There's, there's things online that help you try to figure it out. It's often nice to ask other people. Yeah. The people, whether they're your coworkers, family, spouses, et cetera, they know what you're good at and not, probably better than you. And especially if you can make it anonymous, like a 360 often review is, if you can manage that, that can be hard. By the way, maybe an interesting use of AI, people put in their stuff but use ChatGPT to keep the meaning, but take their, take their unique style completely out of the equation. So it really is anonymous. That's a fun use of AI to anonymize writing. Like, normally it's like ChatGPT's writing is boring and crappy because it just has no style. It's like, yeah, but for anonymous stuff, that's what you want. So, you know, maybe that's good.

That keeps— so that keeps us from guessing, right, who the person wrote that, right?

Yeah, maybe it helps people be more honest. Maybe, you know, it's always hard. Anyway, the point being is if you can— if the more you can get the truth out of other people, the better is what I'm getting at, right? So you get an honest assessment things. And it'll surprise you because there are things that you feel, oh man, I'm, I always struggle with this, but everyone else thinks you're the best.

Right.

Because that's what it means if you're a perfectionist and you care about it is that it's never good enough for you. So you're like, ah, but other people think like, no, this is like, this is amazing. I just can't believe that you can even do that. You're like, yeah, but it's hard and I work really hard on it and it's no good. It's still like, I feel like that. I

was

going to say, I was going to ask you, what is, what is that? Absolutely. I rarely put out something where I think, oh, this is great. I just think like, goddamn, like this needs so much more work. And other people are like, it's so perfectly written. And I'm thinking like, no, it isn't. Like, you know, that you're wrong. This, this one end of this one paragraph, I'm proud of that. But the rest of it, I don't know.

You know? And so that's how it is.

So from an outside perspective, you can, you get that and vice versa. There's things you think you're really good at that you are not. Yeah. I'm good with people. Maybe not so much. I know a lot about this. You think you do, but everyone just kind of doesn't say anything and actually know. You think you're patient about certain things. You're not. So really you can get a lot of feedback. Another way you can do this, and this is, by the way, if you're interviewing people, or sorry, if you're, if you're, if you're doing like a reference call on someone for an interview, right? It's hard to ask them stuff because they only say nice things. So it's sort of an analogous situation, right? A nice trick for that, which you can apply this to, is you ask without saying what the culture and environment of your company is. You ask the other person, "What is the culture and environment and situation and responsibilities in which you think this person absolutely crushes it?" And they're like, "Oh yeah, well, they're good at this, so this," and ba ba ba ba ba ba. And then you're like, "Okay, and then what would be like their anti-environment? Like, not that they're a bad person or anything, or that they're bad, but just if they were." were stick in a certain environment, they would, they would be crushed. They would die. They would be horrible. They would, you know, they would be awful. They would act badly. Like, and they're like, oh yeah, well, if this and that, then, you know, it's a safe way for them to say kind of what they're like. And they're, in a sense, their strengths and weaknesses and how they interact with the world in a way that's safe because they don't know what your company's like. So they don't know how to tune it to you. And it's a perfect, it's a good question. So I like those first follow-up questions like that. And so that's, that's a useful little nugget in itself. But so back to who you are, you could ask people that, like, it's one step removed. Hey, what environment do you think I thrive in? Or what environment do you think I would, I would die in? And it's a nice way for someone else to be more honest than they could otherwise be because they're talking about the environment now, not— it's like one step removed from you. Right. Oh yeah, you're great if, you know, no one— you hate it when people tell you what to do, even when you're wrong. And so yeah, you gotta, you know, that's probably true if you're an entrepreneur. entrepreneur, that's probably one of the things. Anyway, it's easier for people to say that, I think, and tell the truth. And it's almost like a mold. It isn't you, but you're the space that that mold leaves behind is you. And it's easier for people to describe the mold maybe or be honest about it. And so I think you could use that. So that's just a long way of saying it's hard to figure out about you, but I think you must. And yes, passion is one of those things, but like all these other things, That is another way to cleave these ideas. And so all the way back to the ideas, okay, is it a good business or not? Obvious one. What's the risk profile? What is the basket of risks that you're taking? And then this question of applying your strengths and knowing what they are and then saying, okay, so which of these are in an environment in which I would thrive? You know, that kind of trying to apply that. And that might help to say, man, I would just crush it on this one idea because of who I am.

You know, that nugget around asking someone the environment question, I'm going to remember that and I'm going to take that forward into, you know, whatever I do next. Because I had one similar nugget like that 2 years ago when I was at On Deck and I was hiring. I was a director and I found this somewhere. Somebody advised me the same way you just blurted out in a random conversation, this particular thing that has stuck with me. And it's an amazing hiring question too, which is, who would be a great companion for this person to be next to, to be paired to, so they balance their strengths and weaknesses. So you're not really asking, hey, what's the weakness of KP?

Mm-hmm.

As on a reference call, because they'll never tell you exactly the weakness because, you know, they're trying to protect them. But if they say, oh, KP would really thrive with someone who got their ops and organizational strengths together, that's actually true. This is a real example. I'm like, I'm, I'm great big picture thinker and all that. I'm like terrible at the file system and operational things. So I always had Someone who's my right-hand person who did that. And but that awareness has been really helpful. So when I did my own company, the first hire I made was an ops person because I'm like, I know that, right? I got so many people to tell me the truth about applicants by simply asking this question. And what I'm going to do now is ask the second question, which is the culture question, in what environment/culture they'll thrive, which will also open up another side of theirs, you know? So I love that. It's fascinating. So Jason, let's talk Twitter. You're online. You're extremely online. I don't know if you're extremely online, but you're as online as I am. Like you're— you use Twitter prolifically. I mean, the benchmark is someone like my wife who opens Twitter once a year. So that's the reference point I'm saying. What do you love about Twitter? What do you hate about it? Or what do you— I feel like I'll tell you what I love about your Twitter is your replies and your DMs and just the way you engage with it is so authentic. And it's like, to me, that's like the benchmark of how people should be on Twitter. Now, does it get followers or not? It's secondary. Frankly, I don't— I could care less. But to me, that's what makes—

Yeah, it'd probably get more followers if I did other stuff, but oh well.

You know, like, that's what Arvid Carl's Twitter is like, that, you know, Drew Riley, one of my good friends. There's, there's a few that have a really authentic presence and they use it like, like a chat, chatbot, right? Like a Telegram or WhatsApp. I love that, you know. So what is your relationship with Twitter? Like, how do you view it? What's fun for you there? Connecting with founders? So what is it about?

Yeah, so it, it looks like I'm online more than I am because I, you know, queue things up and they get sent out, right? So I'm not like, yeah, But yeah, when I reply, I always think, um, I mean, unless it's a quick thanks or something, right? Um, I need to add something to the conversation. And so I think if you think that way, you know, hopefully it's, maybe it's genuine, but certainly it's like worth reading or something. I do think, um, I try hard that everything I put out is something I think is saying something. Meaning, again, there's a lot of like people just put out a platitude and sometimes those things go viral, you know? It's fine. Or so a quote from someone else. All right. It's fine. You know, it's, it's, I guess it's engagement. It's just, you're just not adding anything. So I, I try to do that. I also have a deep buffer of stuff I put on Twitter. In other words, I don't ever wanna be like, oh, my buffer's running low, but I've gotta keep posting. So now I have to post crap. You know, I don't wanna feel that way. So I make sure the buffer's really, really deep so that that's not the case. Another thing I do, another fun trick, I, I don't think I've ever talked about this. It's not a, it's not like bad or a secret. I just haven't, you know, I just don't talk about my, processes very much is this, because as you say, it could take a lot of time. Like, okay, I'm going to take a lot of time to write a tweet and take a lot of time to reply. Like, this is going to take too damn long. I double up my time on the replies and new tweets in the following way. Someone says something and it triggers something in my mind, or they ask a question. Okay. At that moment, I think, ooh, let me, let me think of a really good answer. And then I will write that really good answer in there and also put it in a draft in the queue. Same text, just paste it in like a draft area, right? So I send the answer right then, but then I have this draft and I rewrite it to be a standalone tweet. 'Cause the answer's often like, oh yeah. And also, you know, because there's a thread. So just, so I, it, it's just like, I just rewrite it. Same concept. I don't have to think of a new idea. And most of the text is probably fine too, maybe length, but you know, and I just simply rewrite a little so that it's just self-contained. And that goes in the queue.

Interesting.

And because my queue is long, that won't come out for a long time. Like—

So it may take like 2, 3 months. Yeah.

Yeah, because, you know, if that person read my instant reply and then saw me like repeat it, that's just kind of weird. I don't know what that means, right? But if it comes out months from now, neither one of us will remember that that happened, you know? So in other words, I double up.

It's a gift to your future self.

I double use my time. And so it's these like, how do you have time for all these great replies? And it's like, oh, you're right. Except that's also where I get my tweet ideas. Not every one, but like a lot. I would I would say like you know a third maybe even a half come out of there. It's still me, like you said, it's still me and genuine because it's my thoughts in the first place. Like I didn't take it from somewhere else. It's I'm just repurposing this thought. If it's so good, quote unquote, obviously, you know, but if it's so great, okay, then why shouldn't I say it again in two months? It's Twitter. That's fine. So so there's a little trick that doubled my efficient, you know, my productivity. You

might say I get a lot of um. Similar ideas from just replies. And I feel like replies are underrated. You know, one, from an engagement point of view, it's good and all that. But apart from just the metrics aside, replies are— sometimes when I'm so lazy and that morning I'm like, I'm not in the mood to write something new, like my brain's not like creatively, you know, open that way, I just look at some smart person's tweet like yours, for example, or Arvid Kaas. And I'm like, because, you know, obviously the people I follow, the 10, 20, 30, 40 close people that I follow, are smart. And they will tweet smart shit. And so I'm like, oh, if a smart conversation is ongoing, adding to it naturally is intellectually stimulating because you're like, they're talking something really cool like MVP or SLC or whatever. I'm like, oh, this is interesting. So from my experience, I try to think about, from my experience, this has been a different way and here's my unique take, blah, blah, blah. And that itself is fodder to my original post. And so back to what you're saying, and so a lot of the times Sometimes when I'm helping founders with content advice and they're like, KP, they're mostly lurkers and they're like, how are you coming up with— they seem to think that there's some magical way in which I, or I'm not saying me, but I'm like, how do you come up with great content ideas and post them? They come from listening and reading and observing others. And what they skip is they often skip the engagement part because they feel like it's below them. And if you're a big account, you don't engage with And I'm like, but that's where gold is. Like, that's where the unpanned gold is, you know, in my view. Also, personally, I'm a very social person, so I'm like, I love engagement, you know. Um, that's been very helpful on Twitter. So,

you know, there's, there's an interesting way to do that engagement. So I forget if it was Larry— I think it was Larry Page, it might have been Sergey— but I once heard this really funny thing they do with email, with one of them, which is they're like, look, I get I mean, other than company email, I just get gobs of random email. I'm not going to look at it, right? So he says, so here's what I do. Every once in a while, I'll open up my public email and I'll respond to the first thing on the list, like the thing that just came in. And what happens in this person's words is most people who email me get exactly what they expected, which is no response from the CEO of Google, you know, like, right? But there's, but one person will say, oh my God, I emailed him and literally like 37 seconds later he responded. The dude is a beast. Like, what the hell is this dude? Yeah. So someone has that experience. That's funny. And that always stuck out at me as like absolutely hilarious and, and, and actually not, not, uh, not unwise. So apply that to social media and here's what I think you get. Okay, don't, you know, you don't have to watch everybody all the time, but sometimes open up Twitter and go to your feed or whatever you have of people you're trying to talk to. And just if someone posted 1 minute ago, go answer it, right? And it's like the same, it's the same thing. Like, don't do that all the time because that's crazy. But if you do it sometimes, then people have it in their head like, that dude is on it, you know?

The other thing too is about your content and my content is similar too, is that You are generous in resharing other people's ideas or posts and tweets. And I feel like you just don't have this weird, like, you know, oh, like, I think boundaries or egotistical boundaries. Some people, you'd be surprised. I think you're not in the same circles that I'm in. There are some circles that I'm in, their feed is so manicured and pedicured or whatever cured that is. They're like, oh, KP, this is such a great idea. Oh, I wish I could repost. I'm like, just repost it. I'm like, oh, I can't do that. I'm like, why not? And they're like, oh yeah, because I just don't retweet other people's stuff. I'm like, what? Who put this artificial construct that you can't retweet other people's shit? And they're like, yeah, it's going to mess up my feed for the rest of them. I'm like, oh my God, is this your account or are you kidnapped for this? Like, what? Come on, right? And so I feel my favorite account is Gary Tan's account where Gary Tan will just tweet whatever the F that comes to his mind. Same with PG. Like, you just don't know what you're going to get out of PG's account, right? And I love yours. I love it. And so it's like, just be you on the internet. You know, that's how you just grow your influence. But if you're after this sort of, um, audience-building games, I feel like that's just not a— you're not gonna do any of these, you know, things because they're like anti-audience building.

Yeah, I don't know. Um, again, like, I, I'm not trying to do all the things to build a following, quote unquote, and I'm not, uh, I'm certainly not trying to make money at it. I'm not selling courses, and I'm not, you know— and so I don't know. I don't know. Maybe you do need— maybe all that stuff with the manicured feet, etc., etc., maybe that's absolutely It is.

If you do that, if you want that mountain, if you want to climb that mountain, it is. Because I've taken some courses and I'm like, this is disgusting. That's why this year, 2024, I feel like I'm coming back full circle to just being completely— my favorite posts, despite the engagement, have been where I was myself and at peak, like at best, you know. And I'm like, even with the podcast, with my Twitter or whatever, I'm like, you know what, this is more sustainable, it's more fun, and I also actually get to build relationships. And that's what I care about ultimately, right? Like, when you— what's the point about having 87,000 followers versus 76K?

Okay,

so

yeah, I mean, there could be a point. The point is, uh, you know, you feel more important. You do— you, as long as they're not bots, you do have a bigger audience, and maybe you want to do something with that audience.

If you want to monetize and all that.

Yeah, true. Yeah, like, so there can be answers. So I As usual in life, it goes back to like, what are you trying to do here? What are your goals? And it's not that you have to predict everything and it's not, it's, and you can also change your mind. So we're not trying to like, you know, not trying to artificially set things in stone. At the same time, yeah, like either you're trying to build an audience because it's good for your ego, or like you said, I wanna make more relationships. Okay, well that's a wholly different thing then that you're, that you need to do.

It's a different mountain too. Yeah,

true. So yeah.

Awesome. Anyway, I think we're almost at the end of our hour. Jason, this has been a blast. I feel like I could go another hour easily, but in respect for your time, I want to say thank you.

We'll just do it again. We should.

We should definitely do it again. I'm grateful for your presence here. I'm excited for this year's lineup. I have Rob Walling coming up soon. I have got a couple others I'm excited for. This has been my theme, as I said earlier, Folks who I really am excited about, I really want to learn from them, is who is on the lineup. So thanks for your time.

Great to be here.

Awesome. I'll let you know when this comes out. And for now, it's a wrap.