Lulu Meservey - Transforming Company Narrative - [Invest Like the Best, EP.389]

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1:29 My guest today is Lulu Maservi. Lulu is the founder and CEO of Rostra, a company that partners with founders to level up their communications around all strategic initiatives from hiring to fundraising. Recently I've been fascinated by the challenge of founders telling their story, and Lulu might be the single person that I would want to turn to personally to solve a storytelling or communication challenge in my business. We discussed the evolution of media and its pitfalls. Innovative methods for managing crises, and the power of going direct with your communication, her overall philosophy.

2:00 Please enjoy my great conversation with Lulu Maservi. Okay, Lulu. You and your team are the most sought after partners in the world. For people tackling big challenges trying to tell their story. I'm really curious.

2:18 If we were building like a timeline with those notches on it. Where the N notches you starting your business. What do you think the key formative experiences were for you Personally.

2:28 That got you so interested in this thing that you do so well. I think my primary selling point is actually being unencumbered with experience in doing communications. The world of comms I think is so broken that The more experience you have in it, the more compromised you might be, and the harder it is to break away. I have

2:46 Very little experience in comms. And experience in other things. What maybe makes me a fit for startups. And founders is Having been born in this little village that was

2:59 poor and backwards and rural and communist, and to this day doesn't have running water electricity, and to this day doesn't have free access to information. And seeing the contrast there. and understanding the stakes of what some of these people are working on. That's one. Two is I've lived in a lot of places.

3:17 And I think it helps me. picture how words come across. If there's a culture barrier. There might be a culture barrier between a Norwegian and a Chinese person, or a German and an American person, but there's also often a culture barrier between a tech person and a DC person.

3:32 Or a finance person and a heavy industry person. So just thinking about how words translate through those cultural membranes. And then another thing is that my actual professional experience is a mix of Having studied

3:44 security studies and counter terrorism Having studied Джополітикс, хавingворкт інтек, джеополітикс, а фінанс. Everything except. Comps basically.

3:56 And through that combination Learning and figuring it out. I would not say that I'm perfect, but I think that the bar in the industry is frankly so low. That if you have A good mindset.

4:07 And are willing and eager to help founders. It can get you pretty far. There's many things in there that I wanna ask about, but before we do that I wanna lay a bit of a foundation because I'm sure we'll map back onto the foundation a lot. Вот і overarching philosophy for how companies and leaders

4:25 should tell their story. The founder. Asked to be accountable for the story. The founder holds this Secret knowledge.

4:34 And this vision. That other people don't. If that's not true, you have no business starting a company. Get out of here and go work at IBM. Get a job. Unless you have that secret knowledge and that secret vision And something to bring to the world that's new, you have no business being a founder. So everybody that has business being a founder.

4:54 No. Something that everybody else doesn't know. I'm belaboring that point because it's really important to me. But the core thing to internalize is if you have that knowledge You cannot then transmit it through seven other layers. Until it becomes something that is fulfill to people and fits fully some comfortable narrative that already exists.

5:15 You have to figure out a way to Speak to people. directly with your voice, your passion, your vision. and not have it trickle down too far because you lose the thing that's special.

5:26 There can be Two Many middlemen Such that by the time your message reaches people It's been watered down beyond recognition and it's not special anymore.

5:38 What would you say the norm is? The norm is using a shit. ton of middlemen. If you look at a professional company that has all of its layers and structures in place. The CEO

5:50 Tells you. Maybe a CMO or a VP of comms. who then tells the person who's in charge of corporate comps, who then tells the person who's in charge of media relations, who then pitch as a reporter And then

6:02 They'll find a reporter who already wanted to write something similar because they have a narrative already in mind and then it's Beamed through the prism. of that reporter's worldview to specific readers of that publication. And then those readers get that version. And you can even hear through the process of me describing this how contorted it is along the way.

6:23 Today, there's absolutely no need to do that. Not only do you not need to do that, you shouldn't be relying on that. You can do it every once in a while. You might need to reach policy makers in DC and they do read Let's say the Wall Street Journal and you gotta be in there. But you can't just be doing that. That's maybe one percent of the playbook.

6:41 Why is it so pervasive then? If it's so ineffective. How has it gotten to the place that so few follow your advice? I think people are LARPing. As communicators. And as executives.

6:54 There's never been a Real playbook for comms. That is Analytical. Grounded in reasoning and logic and first principles.

7:04 That has intellectual rigor. And there have been some great, great PR and propaganda people throughout history, and they've had their own playbooks, but there is no definitive Best practice to doing so it's not like math. People will just look to other people doing it. And everybody is kind of a pale shadow of someone who came from before. If you would trace it all the way back, maybe we're all LARPing as Edward Bernays or something.

7:27 But it becomes One of these things where There's four mice and they like to run on a treadmill and you take them out one by one and put in new mice. And then pretty soon all the new mice are imitating the old mice and they don't know why. And I think that's what's been happening in a corporate setting. Probably for a lot of other roles as well, but especially for cops.

7:44 Bernays is interesting because So much about what made him singular and original was Technology around him, the ability to disseminate. New messages. Two masses through new technology.

7:58 And obviously today we've got a very unique landscape. What about Today's landscape of where and how information flows is most important and interesting to you. So we're between two worlds today. I'm not even talking about traditional media versus social media. That's the old old world.

8:14 is traditional media. transitioning to social media. I think where we are today is Social media transitioning to AI driven, hyper personalized, very prolific

8:26 What you can't tell human made from AI made very soon. Media, whatever the term will be. For that. It's a combination of

8:37 Information overload. Trust breaking down. AI slop. Very persuasive real and fake versions of things. We're right in the middle of that, and the key technologies are. social media generative AI.

8:51 And this is not a technology. But Influencers And individuals as mediums.

8:58 If you were to think about against that backdrop. Your whole idea of founders going directly to their audience, telling their story in their words and unvarnished way, no middlemen. Maybe pick an example of somebody that you've worked with or not that does this especially well. to sort of dimensionalize it for us. What are the key components of doing GoDirect well? And who has personified that in your opinion?

9:21 There's a couple of different ways to do this. If you're an earlier founder in a smaller company, You should just straight up do it yourself. But if you're uh founder of a larger Company. You can't and shouldn't try to do everything yourself all the time, in which case you have people who are helping you.

9:38 My point is that you shouldn't be dependent on them and outsource it to them because the buck does stop with you and not with your VP of comms. But you can be working with those people and having them help you take on the load. Big company. I think Toby Luca does an incredible job.

9:53 He takes personal responsibility for the story of Shopify. Everything about the narrative and the way the history is presented and the lore of the company and the lore of him and starting out with his janky online snowboard store. He own that and he tracks it.

10:09 There are people who help and that is the way it should be. But he never abnegates that responsibility. He's a good example of it. Palmer at Andril is another great example. Anderl has several founders and they all do a great job. Palmer is more visible.

10:25 The reason he does a great job similar is Andrell has a great comms team, very talented people at every level. The Do what they're supposed to do and then there's the Palmer Alpha Where on top of that.

10:37 He takes personal accountability and he puts in personal creativity and he puts himself out there for personal risk. There are times when He's being attacked, not the company. And he puts himself out there for that as well. So those are a couple that I think are doing a great job. If you think about

10:52 The subcomponents of GoDirect. How would you break that concept up into pieces? Are there ingredients that add up to that overall go direct recipe? I'm trying to crystallize this. Better? But I think that there are a few core

11:05 ingredients. There might be variations on the recipe. Whenever you post a recipe online, there's somebody who's like I doubled the butter and it was good for me. Maybe you could double the butter, but The core ingredients are Number one It starts

11:18 With the founder. And they have to have a clear vision and they have to be willing. And eager. To take on that responsibility. You can't do it in a self-loathing way where you hate every second of it. You have to appreciate what it means for the company and be willing to lean into it. I think that Alex at scale is a good example of this.

11:35 He is a founder's founder. He gets into the weeds. He does what other people would call micromanaging, and he cares so much. And he does that with comms as well. He has never Shied away. From taking a bullet on behalf of scale. willing to do that. So that's one.

11:51 Two is You need to have a very clear view of what your goals are. And what you're trying to accomplish. This is super important because a lot of people will just flail around and do activity. And once they feel activity is done.

12:05 It gives them the illusion that something has happened. When in fact they haven't moved any closer. to any specific direction. So communication is a vector, not a scalar. It only matters if there's a direction attached to it. And if you know that your direction is

12:19 We have to get More customers, or we're going to go raise around at the end of this year. Or we need to Get this thing done with regulators. Whatever the

12:30 Big goals are, all the comms should be pointed in that direction, and then everything else is wasted motion. And if you don't have a direction, then everything is wasted motion. So two is having a clear direction. Ramp. Which is a fantastic company. I'm really proud to work with them. And one of the reasons I'm proud is that they've always been very clear about what they are and what they're not. They have a bunch of competitors and copycats and wannabes.

12:52 Over the years, who have tried to rampify themselves. And it's never quite worked because Ramp knows that they're there to save customers time and money. They say it 10 times a day. I've heard them say it probably 10 times in a single meeting. And everything is geared. Towards that, including the comms.

13:09 Whereas if somebody is just splashing around in the pool. That's not sustainable. You can't splash around forever, but you'll also never arrive anywhere. So number one is The founder knows what they're about and they're willing

13:21 to take on the responsibility of being the keeper of the vision and the message. Two is the company has to have clear goals that they're working toward. Three related to two is You have to know the audience and know your audience is actually a cliche at this point. It's become so much of a truism that it's faded into the Mbian background and people don't think about it enough.

13:39 Maybe we should rebrand it or something so it becomes fresh and salient again. But know your audience is important because if you're talking to the wrong people, it's worse than talking to nobody. Partly because of the expended time and partly because you might be making new enemies or making unwanted friends. that then tie you down in unpredicted ways. So I think of the audiences as

13:59 Here are the people who actually have a say in the future of the company. If my goal is to Get more users, then these are the users, and I care about them and people who are not users, I literally don't care about them. If I have to make them mad in order to please the users, I will make that choice without hesitation. So there's the people that you really care about.

14:17 Then there's the haters. And every founder has haters and The bigger founder you are, the more haters you'll have. And as the company grows, the your corpus of haters will grow. Most of these haters are irredeemables. The David Petraeus term.

14:31 for people you can't convert. Every once in a while you hear Wonderfully inspiring stories about I used to be a hater and then I came around It's so rare that I actually don't recommend expending much energy on it.

14:44 If you have the opportunity to convert someone, okay, but I wouldn't make it a core part of your strategy to convert people who hate you. If you're going to engage with them at all, you might consider letting them attack you until they overstep in order for you to round up your true allies. That's a good use as oil. And then there's the swing voters.

15:03 It's the people who actually could be your people, but they just don't know it yet. Just like in an election the swing voters are Deserving. Uh Yeah.

15:12 disproportionate amount of attention. That's your audience. And then last I would say your medium and your hook. You need to reach people. Where they intellectually hang out.

15:22 So the type of person who hangs out On Reddit. Or listening to Joe Rogan, or listening to NPR, or going to conferences, or reading the New York Times. These are different people who get their ideas in different places. If you're trying to reach someone who Reads

15:37 Queen. And you're In the New York Times Again, you're just screaming into the void. So the medium and the messenger of Who they're hearing this from and where they're hearing it.

15:47 is the key for whether it actually reaches them and they'll absorb it. I love the ingredients. One of the things to double click on is the message itself. And I always think about I think it was Graden Carter's rules for content, which was narrative, conflict, and proprietary information. You wanna have all three of them in a message? How do you think about

16:05 the most well constructed packets to then send through all these different channels to meet the customer For the person you need to influence where they are. What are the key components of a great Hook, I think is what you called it.

16:17 The Graydon Carter trifecta is good for news and breaking news. And in an age where you had to break news in order to justify the inches and the columns. That totally makes sense. Today we're moving more toward opinions and personalities. I don't think that formula is necessary anymore. It's

16:36 A formula. But even newspapers are moving more toward opinions. An editorial. A new way to think about it would be I don't have the catchphrases yet. Maybe we can make up the catchphrases.

16:48 The way I describe it is That You need to know. Their cultural erogenous zones. What they care about and what they think about.

16:58 Then you need A gateway drug? So now as I'll describe it as an API, but you basically need a bridge from what they're currently thinking about and caring about. To bridge them to The new thing

17:09 that you want them to think about and care about. At the very beginning of this conversation, I said that the founder has something new and secret to share with the world that people don't already know, and that's the whole point is that it's different. You also can't just blast somebody with something they've never heard of before. You have to give them something in there that's familiar or related to something they already care about. And so I think the

17:31 formula would be The hook And the hook has to relate to what their cultural erogenous zone Is And you have to be

17:39 In their culture. to understand that. Then The gateway drug or the bridge. The segue.

17:47 And then the new thing that you want them to understand or think about. One interesting set of questions is around the people that you choose to work with. So you work with a small handful of companies. I think you've got

17:59 thirty times that waiting in the wings that would love to work with you that you don't have capacity to work with. And so obviously I'm sure you're incredibly intentional about who you choose to work with. I wanna hear the reasons why you work with the ones that you do. And maybe some categories f of reasons why you don't work with some others. What the criteria that you seek and avoid are. For who you pick as customers.

18:22 We choose a lot. On vibes. And chemistry. Not just because it makes work more fun, it does. But also because I think Vibes is the

18:32 Best measurement we have so far about Whether things are gonna go well. With Early startups especially, you don't have enough data points. from the company.

18:43 in order to make an educated judgment about how well things are gonna go for the company. And so You look at the founder and you stare them in the eyes and you think, is this someone who's going to make it? We just read vibes a lot. I think you can cultivate an ability to do that. Mine is pretty good. It could

18:58 Probably get a lot better too. But We go by vibes, that's fine. Two is we think about how much does this company need us right now. We've talked with really awesome founders of awesome companies.

19:11 Who are Doing just great. And we could come in and ride those coattails and collect a fee. And it would probably feel like we had gotten a sinecure. And we don't want that.

19:23 We like when there's a delta between where the world is now and where the world Should be with this company succeeding. So for example, working with safe superintelligence. It feels like one of the more important things we could possibly

19:40 Be doing. Is supporting those guys. In any way. Because what they're doing is so monumental for the world. Building a safe superintelligence, it's in the name.

19:50 And then the third thing we look for is just the structure of the company. So is the founder really in the weeds? Is the founder doing things themselves? Or are they delegating a lot and How directly are they willing to Work with us and work with their audiences and put themselves out there. Sometimes

20:10 Founders will use another person like a crush. You do this so that I don't have to, but I feel better knowing that you're there doing it. That's not Our model. Our model is to help the founders look

20:23 Great and be the best version of themselves as a public advocate for their company. Not for me to go do everything for them forever. So it's more Teach a man to fish, less sell a man a fish. A month at a time.

20:35 Let's say we're zoomed in on a company's launching a new product. Is part of what you bring to the table the recognition of what the outside world will most resonate with? Companies obviously know themselves really well. They have an opinion on the things that make them special. And maybe sometimes that's not the same set of things that will most resonate with an external audience. Have you heard of the illusion of transparency? Mm.

20:58 There's different words for it, but you've probably felt it. Let's say you and I are chatting and You say a thing that completes a thought that's in your head. And I'm completely lost, or there's a misunderstanding. I take it wrong, I get my feelings hurt. It's you assuming that

21:13 The outside world can know what's in your mind. And you forgot to complete the thought. Or you didn't read the room properly because you're Too much living inside your own head.

21:23 And that's easy for anybody else to do. So part of our job actually is reading the room. Figuring out what the room is And then getting inside of it. And then reading it. And then reporting back to figure out, okay, if you're going to launch.

21:36 These are the people, this is what they're talking about right now, this is what they care about. This thing that was по Two weeks ago when we started talking about this has actually turned cringe in the meantime. We're not gonna go with that anymore. So hyper reading the room is an important skill. And then I have my co founder, Sergeate, and he's the CTO of our firm.

21:54 He's my autism translator. I will Talk to and listen to one set of people more and he'll talk to and listen to another set of people more and between us, I think we've got a pretty wide spectrum of text. So the reading the room exercise we do together

22:10 It seems like This has become a sub genre of communications that's really interesting and important and people are Buying to one up each other on the more impressive launch. The cognition launch comes to mind with their product Devon, which was obviously well done just based on the insane number of impressions and discussions and

22:29 comparisons that it made possible. And I'm curious how much of something like that is luck or attributable to Real skill behind the scenes. Obviously it's a blend of the two.

22:40 It seems like there's this launch arms race. And I'm just curious. For you to zoom in on launch and what you think separates the great from the good. Launches are more important now than they used to be. So sometimes when you ask people, Do launches matter, they'll say, No. Do you remember when Airbnb first launched? Remember when Facebook first launched? Like it doesn't matter.

22:58 It actually matters a little bit more now. Because there's so much more noise, and because the bar has been raised. It's important to take it seriously. The other thing with startups is if you're starting from nothing and nobody cares about you and you have no name recognition and your family thinks worse than unemployed for working on this thing that makes no sense to anybody because it's new. And nobody's heard of it.

23:21 You can use Every opportunity to make people care that you can have. And the launch is the first. Up those. Introducing yourself to the world in a proper way is the first of those.

23:33 The last reason That the launch is so important is Now, if you don't quickly establish what you're about, you don't have the luxury of quietly building for a long time and then just gradually shaping the perception. Somebody else will just do it for you. There's so many Competitors.

23:51 and reporters and independent writers and influencers and gossips and Especially in AI. We do a lot of work in AI. And the scuttle butt in AI is intense. It's the biggest water cooler in the world. Everybody's gathered around. And word will get out and it'll be this contorted

24:08 Distorted version. that doesn't represent what you want and then you'll spend a lot of time trying to put that back and clean up and start over. So Come out strong with the thing that you stand for. When we work at the companies on launches, I recommend they write a manifesto.

24:23 I don't want to live in a world where everybody's writing a manifesto for everything all the time. But it is good. as a forcing mechanism if nothing else to write down what you stand for and what you value. And then come out either with those words or something that reflects those words. Launches do matter.

24:39 And they matter more than they did before. And if you don't launch yourself, somebody will launch you for you. At some point so you gotta do it even if just defensively. On launches. Luck versus skill for the Devon launch. Ninety nine percent was

24:53 The cognition guys. Bill Devin. They built something genuinely Great and new and impressive. Then out of that remaining one percent, I would say

25:04 Half of it is We did a good job. And then half of it. Was luck. There's always animal spirits on social media.

25:13 You can't fully. Now if we zoom in on the half percent That I would attribute to skill. What goes into that half percent?

25:22 It's having a very clear story about what this is. So everything and every person is a thousand things. You could describe yourself in a thousand ways if you were forced to. There's enough material there. Every product or company can be described in a thousand different ways.

25:39 The Taste and discretion. and creativity in describing it in the single best Way and choosing The number one best one out of the thousand.

25:50 Is where a lot of that skill lies. This founder mode essay, PG's essay that went viral over the weekend. I think more than half of that was a great name. It was simple, it was familiar, people understood it, but it was also new. And so Derek Thomson at The Atlantic has written a whole book about what makes things go viral, and he talks about blending the novel. with the familiar and that being a magic formula.

26:13 Finding a way to describe what you're doing that is simple, crisp, and familiar. But novel. Is a big part of it. Teeing up your allies. Is a big part of it.

26:24 You can't just put something out into the world and if you say it, they will listen and hope that all your friends will rally to you. It takes some time and in the case of cognition, it took Between a month and two months. to brief some people and prep some people and get people ready. There are people who are latently Happy to support you.

26:46 but they might not know how and they might not be ready to do it. And you can help them help you. And then there's the normal logistics stuff of the site should look how you want it to look and your Postion. sound how you want it to sound the video should be what you want it to be. If you're gonna do press, choose the right reporter.

27:02 Reporter selection is probably the number one thing in press. People Stress a lot about the pitch and the prep and what do I say in the interview. If you choose the right reporter, what you say in the interview matters a lot less. What are the characteristics of the right reporter? Is it different in every scenario, or is it often the same talented few reporters?

27:21 It's different reporters, but I think it's the same criteria. Traditionally you would start with What's the outlet, what's the beat, and who's the reporter? I think now it's flipped because we've gone from institutions to individuals. So start with

27:34 Who are the people who are knowledgeable in this space? And love it. They're excited about it. They're not here just to hold you accountable and to get maximum metrics to send to their boss. They genuinely love it. For cognition, for example, and same for SSI. We chose Ashley Vance because he is intellectually curious about AI. He's not the only one, he's just an example, but he just geeks out and he loves it. You want somebody who will match your energy and reflect your energy back as you're talking to them. And then they will research it through the lens of somebody who loves this thing.

28:07 Who are the people who love it and know about it? You'll come up with a list of maybe Thirty. There's many people. But within those people

28:15 Now look at What kind of personal following do they have? Who follows them? And then how many of the who? then what's the publication they work for? Do they work for publication? Maybe they have their own sub stack and that is great too, but if they work for a publication, Then who's their editor?

28:30 You might have a great reporter with a not so great Editor. that becomes an unforeseen problem. And then the publication itself. Who is it read by?

28:40 How big is its reach? How Well is it perceived. There are some publications that are read by a ton of people, but are not seen as prestigious. So USA Today is one of the biggest circulations, but it's not seen as Prestigious compared to The Financial Times, which has a smaller readership, but is seen as a higher bar.

28:58 So it's a qualitative judgment there. And then lastly, do they have a paywall and do you care about that? Sometimes I've gone to publications that are smaller. Or have less name recognition because for that thing we didn't want. A paywall? Or you don't care because you're trying to reach a specific set of people and all those people subscribe anyway.

29:16 I'd love to turn to a topic which is probably the most broadly relevant for this audience. This audience is entrepreneurs and CEOs and then professional investors. That's the two big categories. The thing that both of those people do all the time is fundraise. And I'd love to talk about what you've learned. helping companies fundraise successfully. My guess is that the ideas are applicable both to an investor trying to raise a fund and a company trying to raise a round.

29:41 But the movement of capital flows is like a key, key part of what At least this audiences about and what drives business. And fundraising does feel like this constant Battle.

29:52 What have you learned about the people that do this best? How would you steer them? The people who do it best are unapologetically who they are. They don't fit into one specific persona. They don't have to be charming and amazing salesmen. Sometimes it's better if they're not. You don't want someone who stands up and is like, Hello, sharks vibe. If they're supposed to be a security researcher. Whatever persona or vibe it is, just Lean into that.

30:16 I have seen A founder that Can't make eye contact. I've never seen him do it. I don't know if he's capable. It was like maybe a rare medical condition. Like can't make eye contact. Speaks in a full monotone, looks down, mumbles, and that's what he's about.

30:31 That's his vibe. He is totally unapologetic for him. Wallets fly out of pockets when he walks by. Because he exudes the vibe of cracked engineer who knows what he's doing. That's Totally fine.

30:43 If you're going to go into salesy mode, then Fine, but be authentic about it and be just an authentically good and charming salesperson. It's valuable to have A founder who can sell their thing too. The worst mistake is

30:57 The founder is one thing and then for the purpose of fundraising, they try to make themselves another thing. And they can't pull off the other thing. Practically no one ever can. So it looks like you're nothing. So you don't have the new thing, and then you also don't have the old thing. You're not hot tea, you're not iced tea, you're just lukewarm tea. And you've got nothing and nobody, and you have no natural constituency.

31:17 That is Probably the biggest mistake. The other things that make fundraising seem to go really well. There's normal stuff, having connections and Having a good product like the basics. But within the realm of what is easily controllable.

31:31 What makes it go well is if you can describe your thing, your company, your product. І на контекст of a macro narrative. So maybe your thing fits into a thesis of American dynamism.

31:47 Maybe your thing fits into Um Point of view around US China. competition. Maybe your thing fits into a point of view about what's gonna happen to AI over the next three and five years.

31:58 So it has to fit into some larger worldview, and then you have to convince people about the worldview. And if they By that that worldview is Plausible. then your product or your company is the only natural explanation.

32:12 If you agree with this premise Then You're gonna want this, obviously. It's easier than saying, Here, I have a company, let me pit you on my company because number one, you're so clearly self interested. that that self interest is undermining your pitch the whole time you're making it. And two is

32:28 Investors are Pretty mimetic. This is not meant to be a dunk on investors, but it's human nature. It's not just VCs are mimetic, it's we're all mimetic. But if you can

32:40 Fit yourself. into a macro narrative or show the relationship between you and what's happening out into the world. Then investors have Number one, a way to understand why this matters. And number two.

32:53 A way to look. rate to the rest of their firm. And the rest of the industry When they invest in you. Because they're trying to signal to other founders.

33:03 And to other people. about the quality of investments they make and they need a way to explain why this all matters. What do you think about getting through crises? It seems like one approach lately has been like just post through it. Don't even acknowledge some negative story or something. Just keep going. That's one method. Another method might be attack it head on, especially if you've got the facts on your side.

33:23 Famously in the investing world, this would be like fighting against short sellers or something that release uh really nasty story about your business. Is there any Lessons you've learned on managing through a crisis and communications through a crisis that you think are important for founders to understand. Don't listen to your lawyers.

33:40 And never apologize if you didn't do something wrong and if you don't mean it. 'Cause you'll regret it later. If you talk to founders who apologize for something at the time The woman who was kicked out of the wing, for example. She went back later and said she wished she hadn't done that whole routine.

33:56 They always Regret it. 'Cause you compromise yourself. And you do compromise yourself for nothing. Because an apology doesn't appease people, especially if you didn't do anything wrong and it's insincere.

34:07 One, they can tell if you don't mean it, but two If you didn't do anything wrong, then by definition There's nothing to apologize for, so apologizing isn't gonna change the situation. So do not apologize for something you didn't do wrong. If you did something wrong, apologize wholeheartedly. This is the Ben Horowitz. If you're gonna eat shit, don't nibble. I subscribe to that.

34:28 It starts with the ground truth of did you mess up? If you did, apologize, and if you didn't, don't apologize. It's so simple and people get it so wrong. They'll start apologizing or not apologizing based on all sorts of other garbage factors. Who's mad at me?

34:47 Am I getting ratioed? That's how they decide whether to apologize or not. Who gives a shit? Did you do something wrong or did you not? Don't compromise yourself. Don't sell out like that. So that's biggest thing is don't listen to what people tell you about what you should do to change the situation.

35:03 Either you're wrong or you're not. At the end of the day. You gotta be able to look at yourself in the mirror and know that you stood for something, you have principles. And if we all just go about caving and apologizing if we didn't mean it This world would just

35:16 Fall apart. What is the ground truth? Did you do something wrong? Number two. If yes Apologize wholeheartedly.

35:24 If no, fight it. And the reason I say don't listen to your lawyers is not that I'm not a legal process enjoyer. But I do respect

35:34 legal opinions and the law. However, what I mean is a lot of times the lawyers are optimizing for one thing. They're optimizing for minimized legal risk at all other cost. And this is the same thing where during COVID, it was like minimize COVID transition at all other costs. We're gonna close schools, kids are gonna fall behind. People are gonna have mental health crises, you're not gonna be able to bury your grandmother. That's fine. Minimize transmission.

35:58 That's not the right way to make decisions. And if you're a CEO, that's not the right way to make decisions because you need the whole picture. So if you're the CEO and the founder Minimizing legal risk is one consideration. Another consideration is principles and being true to yourself and doing what's right and courageous. Another consideration is your reputation long term.

36:18 You might do something that minimizes legal risk, but Like stay quiet and issue a really bland statement and go under cover for a while. And don't apologize even if you messed up. But that actually could shred your reputation longer term, which could be way more expensive.

36:34 Both financially, in terms of people will boycott you and not buy your product or not trust your company. Or not accept the job offer. And On a moral level. You've just paid a really expensive price for something that could have been a temporary pain.

36:49 Those are the biggest things in the crisis. I would say pragmatically. Tried it. Fight the crisis before it happens. If there is dry tinder lying around you

37:00 Do something about it. Before the hot summer day comes. Before the campers come by. If you know that there's skeletons in the closet. Deal with them, address them, have a crisis plan in place.

37:10 I still do. These table top war room exercises, the same type of thing that the Marine Corps would do. They do theirs. better and more involved. I do a basic version which is Let's take a crisis scenario and it hits and then your senior team is in a room and

37:23 Now what do you do? Because people will realize in the moment that there are cracks in their plan. It'll be tiny things. You're my boss and it's Five AM and I'm not sure whether to wake you. So I wait until six because that seems reasonable and now we've lost an hour because I didn't make the right call.

37:38 These small things that you don't think of. All of that Needs to be in place and thought of. when the time comes, so that everything that you can do on autopilot has to be done on autopilot because all of your organizational, operational, and mental capacity.

37:53 has to be spent on dealing with the crisis. You spark my memory, you mentioned counterterrorism earlier. Is there anything from that field that You're curious about that applies to all that we're talking about? With counterinsurgency, one of the big lessons Is

38:08 The importance of winning over the local population. the importance of winning over the tribal elders and the leaders in the community and getting to them because they'll propagate the message for you and they'll do it coming from them, which is way better than coming from you. Because for self interesting and you're probably an outsider. So one is paying attention to those people, going to one person who is considered an authority in a certain community.

38:33 Is better than going to Two hundred or in the age of social media, maybe a thousand. Other people. Another thing is the importance of the leadership and the personality.

38:45 is paramount. So people have to trust you as an individual and trust you as a person. In order to trust the organization that you lead. Charismatic leader is so important that one of the strategies in counterinsurgency is to get the leader.

39:00 Because things fall apart. So for you to be a strong leader and for you to be the embodiment of how everybody else should be acting during this crisis. Is absolutely crucial. Sometimes it's tempting to be like

39:12 I can let my emotions take over because I've got advisors around me. Well, no, people aren't looking to your advisors for how to act, they're looking to you for how to act. If you think about the broader set of mistakes, setting aside the middleman category of mistakes where everything's just watered down. So maybe more isolated on Mistakes made by the founder themselves.

39:33 Are there other major common ones that you've seen over and over again that you would urge people to protect themselves again or not commit? Let me put it in an analogy. A common mistake is Playing American football instead of rugby. And I'll tell you why. So founders should be playing rugby. The difference between football and rugby, and I played rugby in college. So I have a soft spot. But

39:53 Bias aside, I still think it's the right approach. With American football Once you get tackled The play ends. So you will do everything to avoid being tackled. You see players run and Like backwards around and lose yards.

40:04 all over the field just to avoid the tackle. Whereas in rugby, the play is more continuous, and you might run into the tackle because you know that the play isn't gonna stop and that your teammates are there and you're gonna keep going. And because it's continuous. You will take the tackle often, run into it, use the force of your momentum to Get as many yards as possible. And then have your teammates pick up the ball and

40:27 Help you. And running a company Especially through a crisis, but in any situation is more like rug because the plays don't stop. You're just going, going, going, going, going. Ideally it never stops. In a crisis

40:38 Or in a normal situation, if someone is coming to tackle you. It's often a mistake to run from it. Either you've done something wrong and it's time to confront it and you gotta Deal with that at some point. Or you haven't, and why would you let somebody besmirch your name and slander you and crap on your company and get away with it?

40:58 Because two things will happen. One is that Your employees will respect you less and the morale will go down. Two is that you are unfavorably shaping incentives for other people. to attack you in the future.

41:12 Unfavorable to yourself. You're showing the world that you can attack me for something I haven't done and get away with it. And more people will come out and try. This is another lesson from Counterinsurgency, where it's if you establish that if you hit us, we hit you back twice as hard. Or if you hit us, we're not gonna take it lying down. You'll be accountable for everything you claim is a fact.

41:33 Then it just raises the cost and the barrier for people trying to do that in the future. For founders the biggest thing is if you're going to be Tackled. You might consider running into the tackle and using your own force and momentum to drive them back and change where you stand on the field.

41:49 In the history of this field or in the current landscape. Food. most inspires you. There are a lot of Founders.

41:58 Who have done this Extraordinarily well. It's pretty cliche to say Steve Jobs, but I'll say it for a different reason. Which is that By all accounts, he knew what his reputation was.

42:11 The unfavorable parts of it. And he knew what people would say about him. It didn't matter because he had priorities. And making new friends. And being liked universally was not one of those priorities. Excellence was one of the priorities.

42:25 He is somebody who is able to put His own Potentially hurt feelings. Aside. in order to pursue the thing that was the most important.

42:35 Running a company doesn't always feel good. And if you stand for something and you're making something that is different, then it might be a threat to incumbents and it might make people uncomfortable. You're going to have people be upset. At you, and you need to decide up front that that's worth it. And you're willing to fight for your company, and you're willing to fight for this better world that you're trying to help shape because it's worth it. I think for that reason Steve Jobs is a model because people will sort of flippantly talk about times that he was an asshole to somebody.

43:04 Imagine having the Strength. to know that a lot of people think that you're an asshole. That would be hard for me. In history, this is is not a direct inspiration, but it's ideas that I find inspiring. My co founder recommended to me Eric Hoffer, who has written about how mass political movements happen.

43:22 True believer. Yes, Triple is very good. And There's a lot in common between mass political movements and just regular mass movements of believing in anything. The one

43:33 Key similarity. between a political movement And what a company's trying to achieve is People are dissatisfied with some aspect of their life. And you want to get them to think about that more and more and more until they just friggin' can't stand it anymore.

43:49 They can't stand it. They're not gonna live like this another day. They're going to Change their whole career path and come work with you. they're going to abandon this other thing they've been using and use this thing instead. Every time somebody Joins your movement.

44:05 joins your company, buys your product, there's a cost to them. Maybe there's a cost of$200 and they have to buy the thing. There's a switching cost, they have to do something differently. There's a learning cost. They have to learn how to use your thing. There's a cost to them explaining to their family. Why they're leaving Google to work for this word that their family can't even pronounce in a company they've never heard of. And you have to make those costs worth it to them.

44:26 And prospect theory tells us this. People fear downside. More than they want upside. It's a lot easier to tell them. This current state that we're all living in is Unacceptable?

44:38 And now we're so close. To something a lot better. That's easier to tell them. And you can say truthfully. than to say things are fine now.

44:48 But they could be even better. The way I discovered your work speaking sources of inspiration, I think it was two or three years ago when you wrote about the lessons we can learn from the way that K pop groups have built their fan bases and their audiences. I remember just reading that just thinking, This is so cool and original and different. I'd love you to recount

45:07 that experience of learning about that method and what you remember from it. And why you're moved to write that piece,'cause obviously I think it reached a lot of people. Certainly reached me. I've only recently recovered from my research for that piece. It is so addictive, Patrick. Do not go down this hole. It'll alter your life for like years.

45:29 It's like I was taking meth to do research and then had to kick it after the research was done. It is designed to be incredibly difficult. All the things I wrote about about How they hook you. completely worked on me in the process.

45:43 I was watching K pop music videos at 1 a.m. as a grown woman. Like what am I doing? The reason I got into it is actually my little sister. With a lot. cooler and with it than I am.

45:56 She was telling me about K pop just ex loading on all her friends were into it, and she was living in LA at the time. People would come to work and just talk about K-pop. And I was fascinated by this because I'd heard a little bit of K pop and their music was just okay, in my opinion. Like what is going on here? I went into the rabbit hole. And I found that K pop is such a major industry for South Korea that there's a whole

46:20 engine around producing K pop. It's like a national industrial manufacturing Complex. But Or

46:30 K pop stars. It's like How Spartans trained fighters. If it matters to this nation. You will figure out a way to systematically train kids to do this and do it well. And the same way that Spartans would choose the most promising youngsters and put them in these schools and then pair them up with older mentors.

46:50 They're doing this. With promising K pop celebrities. If you're good looking and or good singer and or good dancer. And or some secret charisma factor, you get to go into these training academies.

47:03 And then you have to be selected from there and then you're put into a group and the groups are curated top down. So that they're this ided blend of different types of personas And the things that make K pop so addictable, summer has a couple of them. One is It's about the personalities and the individuals that form the band.

47:22 If you notice Anything from one direction to in sync to spice girls all the way Back. There's always Different personas.

47:32 There's the sporty spice and ginger spies and Whatever other spice. There's the cute one and the bad boy. The different personas glue people because it creates friction and drama and diversity inside of this group. So instead of one thing, you get five things. So it's like in the

47:48 Starbucks package, you and I have the added enjoyment of debating over orange versus yellow. Making it about the personalities and the interplay and the relationships brings so much more flavor and interest to the groups. Beyond just the song and the dances. And a lot of fans are into it for the personalities, not the songs and dances. The same way that a lot of fans of fighting and UFC and MMA

48:11 got into it by watching Ultimate Fighter. And getting into the personas and the drama on Ultimate Fighter. And then by the time the finale happened which was a big fight, they were hooked on MMA. They form these communities around things and You're creating your own community so you know this. Being part of a community makes the thing so much more sticky.

48:30 People who are in a community of Tesla owners They can't get rid of their Tesla. It'd be humiliating. What are you gonna go do? Join the Volkswagen community instead. You have all the sweaters, you have the friends, you have the meetups. You're in it. And the communities even have rivalries against other communities. So being a member of this thing larger than yourself becomes a part of your identity. This is really important for startups.

48:51 Where if you're a not just an employee of a company, but a member of a movement. That becomes part of your identity. It makes you so much more loyal than any amount of HR best employee awards, whatever else. It feels ephemeral.

49:05 You have an opportunity now. To be part of this group's journey. Now Because in a couple of years they'll have to go join the military and disband. And that might not be here forever.

49:15 Capturing something special about this moment creates a sense of urgency. I have to go to this concert because they might not tour again next year. And same with a company. We're at our series A now. You have a still a chance to get in on the ground floor next year. This opportunity will be gone. Can you describe why?

49:33 You chose the name, which I really love, the origin story for your business. And then beyond the name The most interesting version of the vision that you'd be interested in sharing with this specific audience. How do you think about What it could become In five to ten years.

49:49 Relative to what it is today. I love the name too. It is quite nerdy and we debated it quite a bit. Arrastra is

50:01 A speakers platform and Specifically the Rostra was the speakers platform that stood in ancient Rome. Both in the Republic and in the Empire era, it straddled those two eras. So it was there at this pivotal moment in history when Rome really was the center of the world. And this Rostra was the center of. Rome. In terms of

50:21 Ideas being spread? You could look at the entire globe. And ideas and Power. would come back to focus.

50:30 On the Rostra. It stood nearby the Roman Senate. It was called the Rastra because a Rastrom is the Battle Ram. Of a ship. It was built on top of the Rastra Rastrums of captured

50:43 Enemy battle rams. It went so hard, I wish I could have seen it in the original. The Rastro was the place where you would go make a political speech It was where the eulogy for Caesar was given. It was where they turned the sentiment of the people of Rome

50:58 To either Vote for you instead of me. Or to Hate versus love Mark Anthony. Really history was made from there. So we called it that even though Sergey and I debated this for a while because it is

51:09 Kind of a mouthful, not long, but Two R's in a word. Chat GPT couldn't even tell you. Like two R's and a word. There's a lot of R's and a word. impossible for like half the people on this globe to pronounce correctly, but we like it.

51:24 If we play this forward. X number of years. Today you're working with A small handful of incredible companies What do you want

51:33 Out of it. What do you want it to become? that it's not already, or do you just wanna get better and better at the work you do with a select few Group of companies. I'll start with what we're not trying to do.

51:45 We're not here to be Revenue maxing. I drive my three kids around in a minivan. My husband and I live a normal life. Any additional money we make from here just sits somewhere or gets given to someone. Our lifestyle isn't about to change.

52:03 Same with Sergey and same with our other team members. We like having freedom. There's merit in being free just to be free. There's an intrinsic quality to freedom where exercising it just makes you more fulfilled as a person. And a lot of times you're limited in being able to exercise freedom because of wanting to maximize revenue. And we always choose. The former.

52:25 We'll always choose freedom and doing what we want. Well Turn down. Great money all the time. Because we simply want to do something else. And so the thing we want to do.

52:36 Is to number one Change how founders think about how they communicate to the world. Everybody thinks it's important and everybody hates it. I'm rounding up to everybody, but it's gotta be over ninety percent of the people I talk to. In the coming years.

52:52 If you graduate or if you Finish Y C And you know two things and one of them is build something people want and the other one is go direct. then I would be thrilled for this to just become The way things are done in tech now, you have to take accountability as the founder and you own the message.

53:10 We want to change. the culture and move people towards that. There's a lot of founders already doing it. They're setting examples that are more powerful than what I'm able to do, but together I think we can really push this change and accelerate it. And we don't make money off of that.

53:25 But It's Better for tech. And I think what's better for tech is better for the world. So we should do that. And then the second thing we want for Rastra

53:34 Is We want to have Grown up. with founders that we really admire and enjoy working with.

53:42 Every great, great founder today who's at the top of their game came from Somewhere many years ago and I wasn't in comms and I didn't know how to do comms and I wasn't around. But I would love to one day The

53:54 Someone who was by a founder's side and help them through that journey. And have some really incredible companies be doing incredible things in the world. Where in some small way I

54:08 help them to propagate the message to be able to get there. Then lastly for Rostra itself as a company, T B D, we don't know. We're less than six months old. So we're playing it by ear. He said something really important there.

54:20 That I find totally true, which is People understand how important it is that they do what you suggest. but they kinda hate it and they want help. And we hear that all the time. Maybe it's the most common thing we get asked.

54:33 How should I Launch. How should I talk about the company? How should I do marketing? It feels like this thing that is Inaccessible. And I'm curious why you think that is. Obviously you've got an opinion on what to do about it. We've talked a lot about it today.

54:47 Go direct, etc. But why do you think it's such a pain point? So consistently for such talented people across so many domains. Хисториклідер'с бина Нір монополі. by traditional media. The only way you could get any message out at scale is to either be incredibly fabulously wealthy already, so that there's someone would just write about you without you in having to do anything.

55:13 Or you'd have to go around begging somebody to cover you, somebody who already has a platform would need to loan it. to you. with their agenda and their lens. And going around begging people to cover you sucks. It's miserable, it's demeaning, it doesn't work, the results aren't good.

55:31 And so again, I think in today's world you could Do it, but don't rely on it. That leads to a life of no joy. I think historically it's been so miserable that people still associated with that and it feels horrible. Secondly

55:45 The Talent density in palms is Is not awesome. There are really ріw. But there's not enough to go around.

55:54 And there are many many founders who have never worked with a single one. that is magnificently good at what they do. and sharp and matches their energy and really cares and has the intensity and will fight for them and doesn't have the principal agents problem and is not saving contact for a future job and is just willing to give it everything. It's so hard to find. Which is why when I was looking for Hire for Rustra.

56:18 We Looked. really far outside of traditional comps people. We had a former nun, we had a rabbi, we had someone from the CIA, someone from the White House, we had a diplomat, we had several founders, we had medical doctors. someone like that who learns can do a better job than

56:35 The average Comps person. So the industry's really gotten a bad name, unfortunately. What question do you never get asked that people should ask you? Something that people should ask me.

56:48 Is What do I need to do? such that I'm not gonna need you anymore. People often come to me because They're frustrated with the way that comms works, which I share that frustration, I get it.

57:02 It's hard to find people that you gel with and who get in or really in it with you. I have maybe Ten clients. It's hard to find these connections.

57:13 Something needs to be done. they want to launch or they're foreseeing a crisis or they're in a crisis or they're just having a hard time getting people to understand. Especially with AI, there's just so much misunderstanding out there. Yeah. A lot to be done to write the perception and to do fact checking and all of that.

57:30 What I think is a productive line of thought is What are we going to do together such that You could keep me around if you'd like to, and you know let's hang out and talk or whatever, but Don't need anyone.

57:44 Including. Become Sovereign become independent. You should be able to have Anybody

57:52 Que Leave. Go to a competitor. And you will be able to keep going. Because not only can you do every job

58:01 But you have the basic understanding of every function. to be able to carry on and replace that person if you need to. And in comms, the basic understanding of the function is so low because it's been so uninteresting and been so miserable that people don't want to touch it, and only now are people learning through experience. That It is.

58:20 Hard. For Me To walk away from work that I'm doing. And have everything

58:27 Carry on just as well. And for the sake of founders, I would want them To not depend on anybody. Not even me. Great one. I'm glad I asked.

58:37 You mentioned Manifesto earlier. What question prompts would you offer people? Where if they answer those questions well, they'll have the component parts of a manifesto. The first one is what gives you a right to exist.

58:51 There's already forty thousand companies doing something like you and then there's fifteen companies doing What sounds exactly like what you're doing. And then there's three other companies that are literally doing exactly what you're doing, at least to the outside eyes. Why don't you just go join them? What gives you a right to exist and to take up space on this earth and to take up any of our time? The most important thing is

59:14 What is missing in the world today that only you can fill? And a lot of companies are never able to answer that question. And it makes it hard to invest in that company. If I'm going to bet my career on you, I'm gonna go leave Google to bet everything on you. Your equity will be the financial security for my kids and my grandkids.

59:33 And you're telling me that you can't name something that would go missing in the world if you were to vanish tomorrow? A steriliction. That question has to be answered for you to not only have a manifesto, but to have a company. The other which is related is Why can only you do this?

59:49 And these things you can write it down or not write it down, but you have to have an answer. The answer has to exist. Why are you the right person? To do this right now. The next question would be How are you approaching this?

1:00:00 Or how are you approaching it differently? Maybe it's a new problem, you're approaching it with an old way, or maybe it's just Same problem, but you're approaching it in a new way. But what is your approach. How are you going about it? If you're going to get us to Mars, how are you getting us to Mars?

1:00:14 And you don't have to share trade secrets. or expose any part of the master plan that you don't want to, but people need to be convinced that the plan exists. And then the next one is What are your principles and values? What do you believe?

1:00:28 And If I were to Invest in you or work. with you or work for you or be a partner to you. What type of

1:00:38 human being. Am I Putting myself next to. Do you stand for what I stand for? Is your vision of the world similar to my vision? If you

1:00:48 Believe that You will only succeed in vision A of the world, but I happen to believe vision B. Then We're incompatible and that's okay, but it's good to know that up front. I don't want to find that out the hard way after we've signed stuff. It's a fascinating list and it does seem like any company would benefit from trying to write this thing and if it's not good, that says a lot about

1:01:08 What they should do with their attention and their time. You know how Y C has the application For getting into I didn't apply to YC Although I work with Gary and love him and Y C.

1:01:18 I actually did the exercise of filling out the application. Before starting Rastra. Just from my own do I have answers to these questions? Is it A vanity exercise, my starting a company because it feels good to be a founder and I'm free from a big corporate. Is there something deeper

1:01:35 That's there.'Cause I'm bringing people along with me. And I owe it to them to know that I don't have bullshit reasons that I lied to myself about. I did that exercise, and I think what we're talking about here with these questions that you have to answer in a manifesto to know that there's a reason your company should exist. is an exercise that founders should do. As well, just to

1:01:54 Be truthful to themselves. Is there any other exercise that you would encourage beyond the manifesto one? founders to undertake to understand themselves better and to increase the odds of a successful go direct communication strategy. Take the manifesto. And say it.

1:02:10 Or put it in every medium. And see which one is the natural medium for you. Compare your writing. to you on a video and a recording. Saying it.

1:02:22 To you. creating a series of short posts about it or turning it into memes. to you delivering it in person, even if it's just over the dinner table. And see which of those is the strongest because different founders and different people have different modes of communication where you can be awesome in one and not in the other.

1:02:39 Gwern, for example. I got to hang out with him and had a great time. He does not feel comfortable in a podcast setting because that's not his setting. He feels incredibly comfortable writing, but even then he feels comfortable writing posts. He doesn't want to write a book.

1:02:54 He knows his medium and he's Excellent at it. Some people Seems Less interesting.

1:03:02 and less compelling than they actually are because they've chosen the wrong medium and the medium is stifling them. They've chosen the medium for the wrong reasons. Our audience is there. Which is a decent reason, but not the best reason. People expect this of us and our blog is here. I'm gonna

1:03:16 Put this on our vlog. And then they end up looking not as good. So choose the medium that actually works for you and everything else can be shaped around it. I think if everyone listening could take all the million ideas you shared today and try to apply it to themselves, everything would get a little bit better. The ten companies are very lucky to work with you. Luckily you're

1:03:33 Very willing to share lots of the ideas that you've gleaned over the years. You may or may not know my traditional closing question to ask everybody. What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you? Part of my childhood was in Norway, and I lived in Oslo. Growing up, we always had very little money.

1:03:50 Just a function of being immigrants moving from place to place and not speaking the language and so I was In public school, just learning Norwegian, and no one was really talking to me. I was not the popular kid in school, as you might imagine. And

1:04:06 I held open a door. It was just in a community center type thing. For an older man who was coming down the hall. And it took a while. It was one of those awkward gaps where I should have just kept walking'cause now I'm standing there and he's Taking another eight seconds. He walked through the door.

1:04:22 And then he thanked me in Norwegian. I got to say you're welcome in Norwegian and then he reached into his pocket and he gave me A ten Kroner. Coin And he patted into my hand and said, You're a nice girl.

1:04:35 And it wasn't the most extravagant act of kindness that one could do. But it meant so much because it was stranger in a strange land, and he was this random person who had never met me and had given me this little kindness and stopped to chow with me. It was enough. Of an impression that I still Remember it one, two decades later. Such a nice random act of kindness.

1:04:54 Sometimes these things are so big and it's so nice to zoom in on a small moment like that. I think the work you're doing is so singular and so helpful in a universal way that I benefited from it. I'm sure now everyone listening will Walk away from this with

1:05:09 Thirty questions to ask of themselves, so Please keep doing what you're doing. It's been awesome to follow along and thanks so much for your time today. Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this episode, check out Join Colossus.com. There you'll find every episode of this podcast complete with transcripts, show notes, and resources to keep learning.

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