Transcript

Live from SXSW: Mike and Kass Lazerow’s ‘messy’ path to success

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0:53 Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more. Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too.

1:20 Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. twenty six. Hey folks. Jeff Berman here.

1:35 I got the chance to talk to my very old and very dear friends Cass and Mike Lazro on stage at South by South West earlier this month, and we wanted to share that conversation with you. Cass and Mike are two of the very smartest, very best entrepreneurs, investors, and humans I know. And I've had the pleasure of watching them work, working with them for a very long time now. I was on their board at Buddy Media, the SaaS company that they built from scratch from the ground up. And eventually sold to Salesforce for nearly a billion dollars.

2:16 And now Cass is on the board of Wait What? The company that makes this podcast, so we're keeping this all very much in the family this week. Cass and Mike are unabashedly honest about how hard it is to build successful companies, especially when your co founder is also your spouse. You gotta have incredible talent at every position. It's like this huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to, this is totally gonna be amazing.

2:51 There are so many easy ways. So I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. We haven't made it. Just how you do it. This His masters of scale. The Lazarus have distilled their most valuable lessons into a new book which is coming out this spring. It's called shoveling sh.

3:26 Yes. Shoveling sh A love story about the entrepreneur's messy path. to success. We talked about this love story live on stage in Austin, Texas, as part of South by Southwest. And I started by asking Cass about the messiest parts of their careers.

3:45 Their toughest business moment was back just before the dot com bubbst. Mike and Cass were newly weds. And they were co founders of the site and the business golf.com. We had sold golf dot com. Chip shot.

4:06 And chip shot. worked in uh Silicon Valley and they made custom golf clubs in the most expensive part of the world. We were bought december twenty-third, nineteen ninety nine, and we were psyched. This company was going public in the spring. our board had all voted for it we were like oh my god this is the heyday of Everything that you wanted for the internet, like this was e toys was going public for like billions of dollars.

4:33 And on in march I think it was march third two tausen We got a call that said, Hey, I just wanted to let you know this is from the president of Chip Shot. formally closed yet. You'd you'd signed an agreement to sell the company a chip shot. In advance of their moving public going public. It was closed. It was fully closed. Fully closed. We no longer had control of our bank accounts. Okay? Every bit of money was coming from ship shop.

4:59 March third, two thousand. I pick up the phone, it's the president of Chip Shot saying I'm very sorry, I have bad news. We're going out of business. And I said what the Yeah.

5:10 What the f we doing here? And we we we can it's Texas. We can we can curse. Are you talking about? And basically he said that uh Sequoia, who had backed them to go public, had pulled out. And there was no more filing and they were going bankrupt and we would they'd be out of business in two weeks and they had no more money to pay anything for us. Nothing for payroll.

5:33 Nothing. Zero. And and this was not a deal where you had taken a whole bunch of cash off the table, they had this this was a a stock deal. We were psyched, we thought we had hit it. And and your your team members were gonna do well as well. Big time. Right. And we own more than fifty percent of the company. So set the stage for us. This call comes in, w where are you when the call comes in?

5:57 So we actually lived above our office. And when we got too big, we started bringing people up into our living room. And we were in what was the bedroom. So the three founders, Mike, myself, and Mike Casper were in the back. And just for the record, there was only one bathroom. So any time someone had to go to the bathroom, they had to walk past us, which is inc incredibly embarrassing. It was a poop deck. Yes, it was basically a poop deck. And uh There's gonna be a a scatological theme to all of this where and so we were sitting there in the bedroom part of this office. And

6:34 I put it on speaker and then Mike and Casper came by and they're like, we just started firing questions. And I actually think there was an employee in the bathroom at the time that came out and was like, Is everything okay? And the answer's no. No. Immediately. Yeah. So so you're you're in the bedroom, you're taking this call, it is a Deluge of bad news.

6:57 You must have been personally Devastated. Yes, I think the first thing that came to my mind was all the employees. Right. I didn't even go to the all the investors and we had a lot of friends and family in the in in as investors, but

7:11 I immediately went to oh my god, how am I going to pay these people? This is their livelihood. What's gonna happen? So what happens next? Well the first thing is I had to calm down. I was angry. So I felt an immense amount of responsibility to everybody there. I felt like I was duped. Right.

7:30 Of course, I'm the operator, so I'm a COO, so I'm going back I'm going backwards. I'm like, okay, what what did I miss in due diligence? What did they say to me? I'm looking through notes and I keep looking and Mike's like Okay, okay. And then I'm like, what are we gonna do? And he's he literally turned to me and he's like We're gonna start this again. We're gonna just start it again. We're gonna do this.

7:53 Mike, w where did that come from? I mean I think most people would be spinning. Yeah, so it came from just this idea we've always had, which we didn't know at the time, which was you just keep going as an entrepreneur. So as an entrepreneur, you show up to work and sh hits the fan. This particular day It rained right. It was like whoa.

8:16 And one we've to realize is Ninti Ninety Nine. The frenzy around the internet was like Taylor Swift. Meet AI. Like Globally, everyone's talking about the internet. ETOYS is doing like a hundred million of sales, but it's worth like fifty billion dollars and

8:33 You know, everything's going up and to the right, and we sold to a Sequoia back company. And we were in our heads very rich. Yeah, we own half of this company. And on paper. On paper. Yes. And so all of a sudden it's like oh we have Like

8:50 No money now. Um Which was fine, so we didn't really have money at the time. And I remember sitting down, what do we need to do? And the first thing we need to do is raise money. And so we hit the road with our partner, San Francisco, the Bay Area, which was very expensive hotels, so we stayed at a motel that had you know the thick glass, like bulletproof at the But there are three of us in the world. Um yeah, because we uh had just gotten married. We got married october twenty third, nineteen ninety nine.

9:25 We did what no one probably should do, which is start a company while you're dating Um but to us I was twenty five, I'm like, you know, she's really smart, she's hot, she's like loves the internet, I'm all in. Um Yeah, and I'm like cross eyes, like bad heart. I'm like okay.

9:49 I was like Are you alive and like me? That's all I needed. And we raise the money. We you know you do it all. You have to do as an entrepreneur. And we found the money, and the key thing about that and CAS. Who's the operator, such a brilliant operator, she was so transparent with the employees and the team.

10:06 That we didn't lose anyone even though we didn't pay them for three months. We got lucky, like a lot of this is luck, and we met a guy named Keith Bank in Chicago. And we raise I think one point two million or one point five million. Wow. Yeah, and that was like such a key meeting and we filled it in with a few others.

10:28 Our former investors in golf.com, some of which were friends and family. Just weren't pleased with us. I think that's a bit of an understatement. Yeah. Yeah. What was the worst part of that? The worst part I would say is that

10:45 Well first of all I think telling Our individual families that we lost their money. And don't forget that you have startup costs when you start a company, and that comes from yourself, right? Unless you can take a loan or anything. Um, but I think the worst part was that a very close family member. Suit us.

11:02 And just demanded the money back. And Over and over again I had calls. Then I got lawyers to tell him like this is not going to happen. This is not I mean, I don't have any money to give you. It's not even legal. And then he basically

11:16 Threatened to kill Mike. Which was Pretty awful. Um like white meat. It was a little odd that he didn't threaten to kill me. Not your family, direct family. It was a little bit odd, but um at the time

11:33 I think I was just deeply embarrassed by that, like thinking to myself, like How does this happen? Pick. Your investors wisely. Yeah. Okay. And make sure that they can afford to lose whatever they're putting in.

11:47 So you raise this one point two million dollars over lunch with a bunch of golf dudes at a legendary country club and We went back. I think the first thing that would that made like brought a little bit of joy was that I could hold an all team meeting.

12:04 And say We're back in business, so That is like a feeling of just massive relief. So we did that. And we put our heads down, and you have to understand this is now two thousand. There is nothing, nothing living. Right, no companies are living. We the one point oh bubble has gone.

12:29 Mostly dead, right? Barely alive for seven years until the ad revenue business started coming back. And you were able to sell the company ultimately There are very few people who start one company and exit it and do a second company and have some success, and notwithstanding the chip shot. crazy um you did have a successful exit. You know, at that point you're married. You've got

12:54 two kids with one on the way, right? If I might start the next company. But you didn't. Why? Well, it usually happens around the birth of every kid. Uh and and he he loves to think Um like you said rabbit holes en so uh May twenty fourth, two thousand seven.

13:22 Facebook announced that you that it was opening up its platform and you could develop on it. And so I get pulled out from you know just delivering uh our daughter, our third child. And uh we're in the recovery room and Mike goes, I've got it. So you just be clear. Yes. You've just given birth to your third child. Yes. It's not C section. It's not three weeks later, no. In the recovery. Yes, and it was I I was in a lot of pain. And he goes, I've got it. And I literally think he is getting me sushi. Like this is going to be he's gonna get me pizza and he's gonna get me sushi, and this is gonna be great. And I go, Okay, where are you gonna order from? And he goes, No no no no.

14:04 I know what we're gonna do next. I said are And he goes, No, this is it. This is it. You've no idea what's about to happen. I know the next company and we're doing it. So Mike, what what happened in that moment? Where did that where did that come from and what what was the thing? I knew about Facebook, about two hundred million people on it, and I was kind of fascinated. And Mark Zuckerberg gets on stage, says, We're opening up our platform, we're exposing the social graph. Anyone who wants to can build apps on Facebook, and this is back before Facebook had

14:37 kind of impacted democracy and mental health and all this stuff. So it was like kind of a good thing for the world, we thought. It was a simpler time. But when Facebook. Recreated the social graph, the real life map of relationships. And you could put that on apps, it fundamentally changed the internet. And we ended up

15:02 Launching a business that became Buddy Media. We didn't know it was gonna be a software company. It had to pivot a few times. Would have never called it Buddy Media if we thought it would be a software company. So you talked about the company pivoting a few times. What was the initial vision once you got past kind of the the space you knew you want to go to? Where did it start and where did it get? So the initial vision was we want to bridge the commercial world, like businesses advertising with Facebook. And it took us I think four business models to get there. We pivot really fast. We love throwing away stuff.

15:39 And so the first idea was probably the worst idea I've ever come up with in the history of ideas. It was a loyalty platform. For Facebook. And It was basically like Venezuelan currency, massive like inflation.

15:55 And it Crashed and burned. I remember going into HBO at the time, I said, we can help you on Facebook. We got this thing called Ace Bucks, and they just like laughed. But Бей седкиню Хелпас. deploy our content on Facebook.

16:12 And we heard that enough time, so we said, Okay. We're gonna pivot into software to help the largest brands in the world. Which I think is a a really important moment in the story because you're out pitching one thing, the market's giving you feedback on the product that the market needs. And so rather than searching for product market fit, you're actually being told by the customers what product market fit looks like. And you have to be ready to listen to that. Because Half the time with pivots.

16:39 It's ego, right? That you don't do the pivot. So you have founders who sit there and go, Well, wait. I raise money on the first idea. I can't go back to the board and tell them that this isn't working. I can't go back to my family and tell me that this isn't working. So you have to listen. And we were having clear feedback to us. Still ahead. How a focus on company culture helped Buddy Media grow, and why Cass and Mike turned down a massive offer from Google.

17:07 and exited to Salesforce instead. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show. Because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.

18:05 Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies. Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered.

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18:50 You can find this conversation and much more. on our YouTube channel. Around the time that Cass and Mike were getting Buddy Media up and running. I was working at my space. And shortly after I left MySpace, I went out to New York and parked to see them. And we sat in their makeshift conference room and they showed me what they had built so far at Buddy Media.

19:18 and we started riffing on what it could be, where it could go, what the market needed, what the business opportunities were. And before I knew it, they were offering me a seat on their board. I said We gotta get him on the board because at that point we were moving so quickly. That

19:37 I think I needed someone that I could bounce ideas off of, and that was another lesson that I learned that. You need to have a working board, you need to have people who actually help you. Right? So they have to have a purpose. It's not just like oh they gave you money and they get a seat at the board. It's like no, what are you gonna do for that money? Mike, there's something very powerful about how you communicate with boards and and how you manage boards. And can you talk about your philosophy on that, how you did it at Buddy and how you now advise companies to do it. Yeah, so I think the biggest

20:07 issue with founders and their relationship with boards is They don't the founders don't have a clear commute A clear. Idea.

20:17 of what is going on. Right. They can't they can talk about it, but they really can't think clearly about their plan. And so I would write these epic letters. Which would take

20:30 Probably like a day. where I'd outline my thinking, here's what we said we would do, here's what we're doing, here's where we're going, here's why. And that forced me to put it down in paper, and if it didn't make sense to me. It would never make sense to anyone else. And so board decks are very useless other than the financials.

20:53 Бизнет, і в кантир і комуніка. what you're doing, why you're doing, what are the top three areas of focus, why those areas of focus are so important. You will never be able to move. the board forward, let alone your team. Yeah. I've always treated

21:13 the board as partners. Not as bosses. I'm no better than them or You know, worse, it's just we're partners in this. And it has helped, and it's helped me as you know, now that we have like a hundred Investments and the tech.

21:28 Space. I think it's helped me work with entrepreneurs better because I really asked them to write it down. Like if it's not written down, it doesn't exist. I think Mike's also not telling the other story. So at golf.com When we started

21:42 Like we had to redo the whole company. That meant new money. Right, and a new board. And we had two sharks on our board now. We didn't own much of the company.

21:52 And that was Jeremy Minage and Matt Sorovich, and they had a hedge fund. And I remember the first board meeting. That I gave, right? So whole new company. And he said, How does sales going? I'm like, Yeah, you know sales is going pretty good. I mean, Mike, why don't you talk about it? And Mike says, Yeah, you know, it's going like this and the he interrupts And Sc Matsarovich, I'll never forget it, screams at the top of his lungs at me. Don't Shine.

22:20 The turd. And I remember just kinda like literally like losing the blood in my face, having goosebumps and going Okay. And that was the lesson. And so Mike took that.

22:33 So w what did what did you hear when he said don't shine the turtle? Say the sail what the sales are. They're not good. They're not great, they're not okay. Say the number. Say what's going on, be truthful, be transparent, like have radical transparency.

22:49 And it doesn't matter if it's your board. Your employees, you've got to be transparent. And I think Mike did took that lesson because we were like It was as if we had just been massively reprimanded. And we took that lesson, and he did such a good job going forward, and that was it. It was just Full transparency going forward.

23:09 People In general or Are okay with bad news. Especially these days, right? Um

23:16 But even then, they're like they're fine with bad news. People hate surprises. So if they think things are going this way, but they're actually going this way. That just like ruins trust forever. It's one thing as co-founders to figure out roles. You're also wife and husband here. Um

23:32 H how do you to divide roles in in leading the company? So I do everything that's operational. So anything that touches Legal account teams

23:44 Employees HR FINS. Um, and then I also took on marketing, which is unusual, but it's like a pastime for me. And Mike is always doing vision sales strategy board. I got all the credit like Arts and young entrepreneur of the year, all these things the cast does all the work. And she made me look incredibly.

24:07 Great. And these companies only work if they're operated incredibly well. It's not the ideas. You have to have like a big market, like differentiated product, all that stuff. But how Cass run companies our whole life. As

24:24 Been the biggest blessing to us business wise. Cass, among the things that you do incredibly well in operating a company is the team part. And you talk about putting the cult in culture. Um uh How do you do that? How do you do that great, how do you do that at Buddy Media. So I think it stems from my childhood. I don't want to be like over dramatizing this, but

24:45 I did not have The team atmosphere. In my childhood, that I wanted I'm the fourth kid. There were a lot of alliance games. I always felt like I was not getting picked on a team if that

24:58 relates to anybody. And um ostracized at some point, and that was just such a awful wound that I thought Okay, if I'm gonna participate, I'm gonna take a role and I'll try to make the culture better. So the same thing happened at all all of the companies I did. I wanted to create an atmosphere where there were no alliances, where there was none of this

25:20 There were times where I saw like mean girl stuff happening, not just with girls. And I literally brought them in and I said, If I see it again, you're fired on the spot. Period. Pencil down. We're not gonna have that. We're gonna lift everybody up. And then you have to think about the tools. Right? How do you what's the glue to connect everybody? Everyone talks about oh how it's so hard right now because everyone's remote. It is. But you have to think about how do people bond? They bond in bad times and they bond in good times. So if you're transparent, that's incredible. If you celebrate the small wins together, that's a pretty obvious one.

25:57 So I wanted to start the glue from the very beginning. So I had scavenger hunts, I made everyone dress up, I had leadership team who did not want to do it, and I basically said off fire you. But It Again, it was the bond of being together. And the same thing on celebration. So I figured if you could make it a year

26:17 I I mean this is gonna sound bad, but make it a year with me and I had it thought literally put you on a pip. Performance improvement plan for those who don't know that. Um you were gonna get the best prize I could give, the most expensive one to put on your desk, and that was a custom bobblehead. of you wearing a buddy media t shirt. And they became the symbol that everybody wanted. Every single person who interviewed there would talk to me in the interview about wanting to get a bobblehead.

26:44 And it was just crazy because now all across New York. Everyone's talking about the Bud Media Bobbleheads. And you'd see them on the desk. And then the second year I did this huge, it must have been like I don't know, three feet tall plastic sculpture that said I'm a somebody because Budia, we became buddies, everyone was into it. And these rituals and symbols. That is not Anything different than what you do in a family.

27:10 Right, with traditions. Right, and you have celebrations over birthdays. And so I realized that that was the way to do it. And if I could make them feel things. It went. It would allow them to want to come to work. And there was another big part of it though. You had to laugh every day.

27:27 You had to laugh. I can't stand work environments that aren't. That are so serious. And so I presented bobbleheads by scaring the sh out of people. So I would jump out of like rooms and doors. It's probably not a great HR thing now, but but and and hardover Zoom. Correct. It's a bit harder to presume, but I I would make it and so it was fun because you'd see people going, Oh my God, it's my anniversary week and they'd they'd start like looking over their shoulder, they'd look under their desk. But I made it fun because how do we take ourselves so seriously? Like we've gotta be in this together. So so As as the leaders of Buddy Media, you navigate these pivots, you navigate these scaling challenges. Um there's product market fit. It starts hockey sticking.

28:11 Company gets to a point where there's there's some MA interest, there are a few companies in the category that are swirling, buddy's the market leader. There's one critical hire that happens in this phase, and then there's a process that leads to selling the company and not deciding to go it alone. Take us take us there, if you would. So one of the things that was happening is Mike was getting a lot of interest from California companies, specifically Salesforce, was really talking to us about like what are we doing? They were you kinda opening, you know, lifting the hood up and ask. And I thought to myself What would really make us well known to companies? And I think I even bounced it off of you. What if I stole the number one salesperson from Salesforce and convinced her to come over to our team? We needed her. We needed to upscale our team. At the time, Jeff Ragavan, Mike and I, we were doing the best we could, but

29:04 If we were gonna really go for it and at that point with fifty million dollars in ARR at that point, we had to go public, right? Because we were getting so big that was on the trajectory. We were like looking to like that was our plan, I thought this would be a good move. And um I was going back and forth to the West Костю міт Сузен і конвісер. that she should leave this big company. Not easy. I mean Salesforce is a fast growing company. She's a superstar there. Mark is incredibly generous with all that he gives every employee. Mark Benyffes. So how how did you get Susan to come aboard?

29:41 We dated her. It felt like And which just means we're spending time with her. We're flying out. I remember the dinner in Woodside at that Fancy restaurant. And we had a vision and

29:53 We needed someone. I mean she was gonna be president. We were the fastest at the time, like the fast growing company to reach fifty million in like annual recurring revenue. It took us three years on the back of Facebook. No end of sight. Nine of the top ten brands in the world. We're using us for all of their social marketing to get messages out to all their markets globally. We have offices in Singapore and this we're like can't keep up, right? And

30:22 We just told the story the way we saw it and gave a really It wasn't about the money, but at that level it's it is. Like so we have to present with like A very generous equity grant. And to her credit, she Took the job.

30:41 And I o I kept thinking, I don't know why she's doing this, right? Like leaving Salesforce. And sh she's gone on to do incredible stuff, but uh I think Three months later, after we hired her. I then had to have another scary conversation, which was uh you're going back to Salesforce. Because I just spoke to your old bossman and he's gonna buy Buddy Media. So at at the time um uh

31:04 Google was looking to acquire in the space. Microsoft was looking to acquire in the space. Yes. Salesforce, there were a couple of other companies circling and there were a handful of competitors who were smaller but doing similar kind kind of work. You guys had a choice. Right. You you could keep going it alone and probably go public and and try to stay on the trajectory. or or sell and and you you ran a really interesting process. Tell us about the process you ran and why you ultimately sold Salesforce so we ultimately sold because

31:34 The signs were so clear that it was our time to sell. We had On I've never told this story publicly, but we had a term sheet from Google. That was a hundred million dollars more. then Salesforce.

31:52 Hundred million is a lot of money. It's a lot of money. And and it was a lot of money for us that difference. And we had Yahoo and Microsoft. Circling. And

32:03 I had been in San Francisco and I went to Mark's house. And he just said, Let's go through your software and I had all the data and I used this mapping tool where I just like circled an area of the map and it put all the people on Facebook into a targeting bucket. And Mark is like me in the sense that like you can't We can't control our like excitement. Like when I get excited, you know. It's like I kinda jump out of my shoes and Mark's like, Oh sh like this is so cool.

32:35 And we basically hashed out the deal and I had I knew nothing about the software business, but Mark had written a book that's like here's our playbook. And I Consume this book modeled the whole business off. of the book and I had this like massive man crush, which I still do. He's such a great Guy.

32:57 forget entrepreneur, just he does the right thing. And we got the deal done. And it turned out that if we hadn't done that deal, I think like I haven't talked about this publicly either. I think we would have Hada hard time as a business. And I think it was a tough acquisition for Salesforce. Because soon after Facebook made it known that they didn't want anyone between them and their customer.

33:21 We were the biggest one between them and their customers. Yeah, customer being the the advertisers. Their advertisers were spending at the time it was early over a billion dollars with fail with Facebook through our platform. Right. That's not a great thing for a large platform, right, to seed their ad business. And so The timing was just great. And also we had done our due diligence. Remember if you remember back

33:48 We've got the pump. I was not gonna let this happen again. So I was doing due diligence. That by the way, anyone who's done due diligence Congrats if you get through that process. I was up all night all day for three months making sure that everything was looked at.

34:04 And one of the things I also realize about Mark Fenny off is he has this huge U charitable part of himself and his companies, like he believed what we believed. And I thought this is great. We were struggling to keep up with hiring sales people. Here's a company that's all about salespeople and the expertise. And there's also the same shared values and morals. So it was great.

34:30 So we've got a few minutes left. Um I I I you all have become extraordinary investors. For those who are listening to this, Mike's wearing his liquid death cap as we sit here and talk. You mentioned you've invested in over a hundred companies, largely tech companies. How do you decide what companies to invest in and how do you two allocate the the responsibilities of assessing that. So I always look at the team members, right?

34:53 And I'm gonna also do the due diligence. Right. So Mike's gonna look at obviously does the business model make sense? Do they know where they're focusing? And and I look at do they know what they don't know? The biggest thing I can tell you as a founder is you better know what you don't know and then you better hire around you. Do they know that they need a leadership team that fills in their gaps? Are they do they have hubris? Are they Incredibly arrogant? Are they full of pride? Do they understand they're going to pivot six times? What they start with is not going to be what they end with. So I'm looking at that. Yeah.

35:29 I'm very gut. oriented but I have a framework as well. So I just think that You know, an entrepreneur who loves to shovel is unstoppable. And it's is this person going to be able to run through walls and get it done because whatever they're doing right now will have to evolve, if not completely pivot. And then it comes down to something that we actually have Yeah, we have a framework which is kind of in the book shoveling the love story which

35:57 is called the go gauge, which is Very simple. It's what's the product, why is it different? Who's the customer? When I say who's the customer, it's not only who, but how many of them are there. How are they gonna find out about it? So the sales and marketing. How are you gonna deliver it? Like so it's the whole operations side.

36:16 And then do the financials make sense on the napkin? Like do they pass the smell test? Those six things with is this the right founder? has gotten us into Just great companies, companies like Liquid Def, companies like Scopely, which we were a seed investor that sold for five billion in cash, companies like eToro and

36:40 I c and originally like we were investors in Facebook and Tumblr and all of these like And so I just think that Antrepreneurs Have a miserable life. And there's nothing else that they'd rather do. It's the beauty and the struggle, and if you

36:56 See an entrepreneur, you know it. And we really have tuned in to kind of Who are the people who are on their

37:07 Path, who have found their purpose. Like we did. And that's what matters. Mike, as we sit here in March of twenty twenty five, if a college student comes up to you and says, w what should I be looking at? Forget about what I'm passionate about, market wise. What should I be looking at? What's your answer right now? I mean it's so to me it's so simple. It's basically

37:30 Large platforms that have aggregated audience. AI And the no code development platforms. So check out lovable.

37:42 I think that I L but it's It's just a chat. Build me an app. Or a website. that lets me upload a picture of my Um

37:53 and get a picture sent to the house. Like And it's like It opens it up and it walks you through how to connect it to a database, right? And so all of a sudden we have the democratization of

38:08 Engineering with the largest productivity hack the world has ever seen. AI And access to consumers that we have never had access to like this. Right, and I'm not talking about just Facebook and Instagram.

38:23 And whatever that Twitter X thing is. But also Shopify and Etsy and You know, all these other Incredible platforms. And so I just think

38:36 Figure out. Um Idea that should exist. And even a journalism student can build it now. Shoveling sh

38:45 A love story comes out in June. Cass and Mike, i I mean it's a fantastic read. I can't recommend it highly enough. Uh if you're in business, if you know a young person who's thinking about being the world, this is the gift to get them for graduation this year. Thank you so much for being here. And um more to come. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah. To say that I had so much fun talking with Cass and Mike at South By would be a horrible understatement.

39:16 Their intellect, their ability to see what's coming next. Their drive. But also their humanity. It makes them extraordinarily special people. I'm so grateful we had the chance to talk about their journey and to talk about why they wrote Shoveling Sh a love story.

39:38 I devoured it. I think you're gonna love it when it comes out, and we're grateful for you being here for this conversation. I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening. Masters of Scales await what original.

40:08 Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our senior producer is Trisha Bobida. The production team includes Tucker Legurski, Masha Makutunina, and Brandon Klein. Our senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern. Mixing and Mastering by Aaron Bastanelli and Brian Pew.

40:25 Original music by Ryan Holliday. Our head of podcasts is the tall Malad. Special thanks to Denise and Matthew Thompson of Griffin Co on this production. Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode and to subscribe to our newsletter.