This Week in Startups - E1028: Laura Huang, author of “Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage” shares insights on overcoming disadvantages to create an edge, being bitter vs. getting better, structural bias in tech & more

Episode Date: February 14, 2020

0:41 Jason intros "Edge" Author Laura Huang 3:00 How do Harvard MBA students compare with Stanford MBA students? 7:17 Why did Laura write "Edge" at this time? 8:55 Overcoming disadvantages based on race, ethnicity & gender 14:56 Laura's experience reading her own audiobook 17:23 What does her research show about structural bias against Female entrepreneurs? 23:33 How can a founder turn adversity into an advantage when asked a question with a negative bias? 28:01 How being underestimated inhibits the opportunity to enrich & provide value? What is an example of delight in p2p interaction? 36:39 How should we look at intent when discussing bias & privilege? 44:35 How to deal with being bitter vs. getting better and controlling emotions while still allowing ourselves to feel? 1:00:17 Laura & Jason share personal stories about bitter vs. better & explain how she converted her energy 1:05:09 What is Laura's hope for the lasting impact "Edge" has on its readers?

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us. My guest today is Laura Huang and she, sorry, she was on the pod back in June of 2017, episode 739. And she was at the time a professor at Wharton. That's right. And you were doing research on ancient. Angel investors, and somehow we got put in touch where I reached out to you. I wasn't sure. You found me.

You somehow. Somebody was tweeting about you, I think. And then I was like, hey, tell me about your research. Because if it's about angel investing, I want to know. And now your new book is out edge turning adversity into advantage. And you can go order that right now. If you're listening to me and you're a fan of the pod, go and order the book. Anytime anybody's on the podcast, if you are a true fan, you order and buy the book to show support for the author's

you come on in the podcast. So we get even better authors on over time. And that's been happening. Great authors come on the pot all the time. So since that time, you left and you went to Harvard. I did. So now you're at HBS teaching. I am.

What are you teaching? So I'm teaching leadership and entrepreneurship two different classes. Leadership is a core required class and entrepreneurship is an elective. Got it. Yep. You're teaching leadership to these HBS maniac kids who are self-selecting for being like massively extroverted, take over the world,

like unbelievably confident individuals. I know, aren't they incredible? I mean, they are incredible. It's a bit much sometimes. I'll be honest about the HBS kids. They're phenomenal. I mean, they are so phenomenal. They're so good.

And you think that they're not going to be humble and have humility. But they, you know, they really do. They are. They surprise me. and they're just so fun to teach. They really are. So shout out to all my students. Shout out. I always find the HBS students are massively confident, but when they get into entrepreneurship, they get a little rattled. Are you describing yourself here, Jason?

No. Listen, everybody knows I went to HBS twice, and both times they escorted me off the campus. I had like a one day pass to speak at a conference or something. But the Stanford Kids, I found maybe not as like confident in that way, but a little bit more creative on the startup side. Is that fair to say when people look at the two programs because they are competitive? Do they draw two different types of people? You know, I mean, I think they do draw two types. of people to an extent.

But the types of ideas. Well, I think people who, look, if you want to be a real, like if you're, if you're, if you're passionate about something, you've got this idea and you're going to start this company, I don't know that you're necessarily initially go to either school, would you? I mean, you know, I think the people who come to HBS and really fall in love with entrepreneurship and realize, hey, you know, I've got all these skills, I've got all these assets, I can really do this. I mean, they've got all of these wonderful experiences.

backgrounds, that they then kind of flip into doing a startup. And it does, I mean, I think that increasingly we're seeing some really creative ideas. Are the majority of folks going to HBS looking to start a company or looking to become senior leadership at established companies going to banking? What percentage do you think? I mean, I think the larger percentage is probably the latter, that there's more that are looking to go into senior management positions, GM roles, that sort of thing. But over the course of their careers, I mean, some of them start out wanting that and doing that for a couple of years, realize that they want to start something on their own.

And so we see that, you know, 90% of people who end up starting a company are ones that have worked in some other industry first and then decide that they want to do that later on. What percentage of the classes ballpark are non-American international students? Because I just spoke at Stanford when they did a case study on me, actually. And I think two-thirds were not from America. It was amazing the number of countries in the room. Yeah, I mean, I don't know the exact percentage, but we have this, in each section, there's a flag day. And it's this amazing sort of night where all of the people will give a little presentation about the country that they're from or, you know, their families. And, you know, the room is filled with different flags.

So I would say like 50 or 60 different flags. Wow. So it's pretty, yeah. Not national origin of American students, but international students who were born. I think both. I think both. So people who, some that were born in those countries and, you know, so, yeah. Any interesting countries?

Like, is anybody from North Korea, Russia, Iran? Azerbaijan. Ajarbaijan? I just wanted to be able to say that. Chinese students? Yeah, we've got a lot of Chinese students. That's fascinating. Yeah, you do.

to be really interesting to have Chinese students at HBS. Yeah, we've got students. Given the climate. Yeah, for sure. Between the U.S. and China is so weird. Weird. Yeah. You know, Huawei.

Yeah. Intellectual property theft. Authoritarianism. The NBA, criticism of China. Yeah. It's a very, we're so dependent on each other, yet so different. Yeah, but we've got so many different. cultures and, you know, at the same time that we've got Palestinians and Israelis and, you know, there's all sorts of, but I mean, it's, it works. It works. There's like, there's really this, this climate where it's, you know, you're, you're in these sections together and you're together all day and you're really learning from each other. So, um, it somehow works. You got to come visit. Yeah, I mean, I go out. Come visit. I get, I get invited out every couple of years and I, and I do a talk or I interview somebody. Last time I was there, I interviewed a Chmoth.

on stage and he, I mean, about five minutes in, he lost like five or six people who just left and discussed who, because he was like, listen, you guys are wasting your money here. He just like went crazy. He's like, you guys should put the 250 into whatever. Let's talk about your book. You decided to write this book edge, turning adversity into advantage. Yep. There's a bit, a little bit about your story in here, a little bit about your research. What made you want to write this book right now? Yeah, I mean, I actually, had been like percolating on this idea for a while. The research that I'd been doing for over a decade was around, you know, inequality and disadvantage and people who are underestimated in the

startup world and in the workplace. And, you know, I kept coming back to this thing where people would say to me, you know, I put in all this hard work. I just, I put in so much effort and hard work. And sometimes that hard work just doesn't speak for itself. And we all come to this sort of realization at some point in our lives that we put in this hard work and for whatever reason it doesn't speak for itself and it leaves us frustrated because we realize it doesn't speak for itself well things you don't get recognition for it you don't get raises you don't get promotions just for doing the work all of those things but sort of the outcomes the success that you're sort of expecting either don't come to you or that you're hitting the same walls over and over and over

again um or you take two people who work equally as hard or and one works perhaps even harder, but the rewards go to that, you know, to that other person. And so it was really around recognizing that perceptions and signals and cues are driving so much of these decisions. And so when people would ask me about my research and they would say, what can we do to level the playing field? What can we do to create, you know, if we know that there are certain people who naturally have advantages and we're not one of those people, what can we do? And so this book is really, how do you flip the obstacles, the adversity, the stereotypes that people have against you, how do you flip those things in your favor so that you can gain and create your own edge? And when you refer to other

people have advantages that we don't have, specifically, you're talking about cis white guys born in America versus women and people of color not having those advantages. Am I correct? Well, the typical cast of characters that we think about is absolutely, right? Like gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion, sexual orientation. Those are typically the kind of things that we think about when we speak about disadvantage. But what I talk about in my book is really everyone has something. It's not just about those kind of things. You can take anybody and you walk into a room. People have perceptions. They're making judgments about you. They're making attributions about you. You know, so there's lots of examples that I talk about. I mean, Ronan Farrow said to me, you know, a couple years ago that he,

every time people are perceiving him. He's this cis white guy that has tons of, he's the son of Mia Farrow. But every time he walks into a room, people are thinking, you know, he doesn't. How does he got access to this person because of who he is? And he doesn't deserve the Pulitzer Prize because he just got it because of who he is.

You know, everyone has something. Yeah. And so recognizing how others see you and recognizing those perceptions, there's so much power in that. Right. Because that's what allows you to then flip that in your favor to show people who you authentically are when they might be misperceiving you.

And is there a danger in people focusing in on that which makes them different? This is like the cis white guy argument. Right. Like why are you guys so obsessed with this as opposed to the outcomes and the work? So this isn't in my position, but this is the position that you probably hear from people, which is, are you guys like just too obsessed? with the differences of being a woman of color who's gay. And maybe that is, because you have that in your mind,

because you're in that victim mentality, the oppression Olympics, I guess people call it, or the intersectionality kind of, everything is looked through the lens of, you know, gender, everything's looked at. It's not always the case that other people are looking through it. Isn't that the case, too? Well, I mean, look, structurally, we know that there are disadvantages, that certain classes of people or certain traits lead to disadvantages, there's less gender parity, all those sorts of things. But that's not what it's really about. I mean, we've been talking about this for a really, really long time. Like decades.

Decades. And structurally, things, you know, we are trying to make changes, but sometimes either those changes are too slow or maybe they're changing, but they're not changing in the ways that we intended or they're not changing. you know, all of these different things. And so the perspective that I sort of take is that number one, everyone has something. And number two, we can't sit around and wait for the systems to change or expect them to change in certain ways that we have to from the inside, behaviorally, also be able to empower ourselves. So how do we then empower ourselves within what may be an imperfect system to show people what we, you know, how we enrich or provide value or whatever the case may be so that we can have these deeper, richer relationships with other people. And I thought that was a pretty controversial moment in the book.

And I'm curious of the feedback you got from people who feel maybe that they're oppressed or maybe there's biased against them. When you say, hey, suck it up. You can fight the good fight for the cause. But the reality is you're entering a system and I want you to individually win. So let's talk about a strategy for you to win. as opposed to one where you're going to lose because you want to fight the bigger battle. Let's talk about that issue and the reaction you got to that part of the book.

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Okay, let's get back to this amazing episode. All right, Laura Huang is back on the pod. She's Laura, H-U-A-N-G-L-A on the Twitter. But she's now in Boston teaching at Harvard, business school. and her new book, Edge, Turning Advantage in Adversity into Advantage. So I actually literally wrote my notes when I was listening to the book. Thanks for getting me in the early audio. You read it yourself.

I did. Do they fight you on that, by the way? Do they ask you to use a professional person? No, they didn't actually give me a choice. They said, here's the studio, show up. And I actually was like, I don't know how to do this. Don't you want to get a professional to do this? but they said, no, no, no, we listen to you.

You know, we've listened to your, we listen to your, this weekend startups, and we think you can do this. So show up at this, but it was agonizing. How many days? Four. Four full days. Yeah, that's what I'd say four. Eight hours.

How to repeat things, you know, four or five times. I didn't know that I dropped teas, things like instead of saying important, I say important. Yeah, important. And instead of, I say, war in, instead of Wharton. Yeah. And then the great part is they're on the other side of the glass. I'm like, okay, stop. Go ahead and let's just say Wharton.

That's right. One more time. And you're like, that's what I said. And they're like, okay, yeah, let's pick it up from Wharton. And they don't want to tell you what you did wrong. They just want to repeat it to you because they're so. They do. They don't want to offend you.

They do. And your voice is raw and you're in a tiny room with bad air. Yes. And it's so quiet that you can hear your stomach grumbling. And they don't give you comfortable chairs because apparently the comfortable chairs make noise. Yes. So you have to sit on a hard. A stool, hard.

wooden stool. And then I constantly got, can you do that again, but with a little bit more emotion. Really didn't tell you like, you know what, Laura, that's a little too much emotion. You sound a bit hysterical, lady.

Is that what you got? Jake out, turn it down. You sound hysterical. I was like, I'm already the bubbliest professor that there is. What kind of emotion do you want for me? If you want to hear something hysterical, type in William Shatner ad-read, like, tape. And literally, like, somebody tried to tell William Shatner to, like, give it a little more energy.

And, like, for an audio engineer to give William Shatner any kind of note, we call it a note in the business, is like, you know, stopping, you know, a play to give, like, an Emmy Award-winning actor. Yeah. Like a note. Yeah. Like, he was so offended that the response is just so timeless and classic. I think the plays are the Tonys, though. I think Emmy is television. I'm working on my EGOT.

I'm going to get my Emmy first. That's right. But did people, do people take it the wrong way when you're like, hey, let's separate out your success from the systematic problems in the world, which are irrefutable. Yeah. Obviously getting better. You would agree with both those statements? Mm-hmm. Well, you kind of half-right.

I mean, I just speaking for like my industry, technology and investing, the number of female investors, investors of color, like it is changed more in the last two years than the previous 20. Yeah. So do we get to count that as progress or is it it's not enough? We do, but there's like so many things there that you're just like even in that statement, right? I mean, I think, okay, the first is that people, it actually has been really well received.

People like kind of thinking about, yes, I have this power. I'm empowered both, you know, there's the outside doing things for the inside and the inside doing things from the outside. And what I mean by that is like structurally things are changing for people who are operating from within the structure. Right. But behaviorally, we're helping to change the structure and that there's this power that comes with being able to flip the biases that other people have against you. And being able to use that in your favor, taking those underestimated strengths and making them something that other people see are actually. actually strengths. But structurally, the other thing is that, you know, I find in my research, for example, that in some instances, in many instances, both male investors and female investors

are equally likely to bias against female entrepreneurs. So, for example, I find in some of my research that women, that female entrepreneurs are more likely to get asked questions about risk and questions about competition. Whereas male founders are more likely to get asked questions about the opportunity and how big you could take this and your vision. Yeah, you studied a lot of the conferences out there in competitions, if I remember correctly. Like tech crunch and, you know, and lots of different and found that. And so the finding in that particular research project was that both male and female investors are just as likely to be asking women, women entrepreneurs, those questions that are called prevention focused questions. Right. So when we think about that, did you further correlate that to the businesses that women create? So was it, did it have to do with, because it's a correlation. Yeah. But what's the cause?

So we did it in a bunch of different ways. We did look at, we did look at industries, right? So are there certain industries where you're going to ask certain types of questions, right? Naturally. Right. If it was a B to C and there's tons of competition and it turned out that the women selected for those conferences, had more consumer products, because when I ran those kind of conferences, we always picked consumer stuff for the stage because it's more entertaining than hard tech enterprise stuff. So I was wondering if there is peel it back a little bit. And you're also more likely to ask more of those specific questions when it's a consumer. But no, actually what we did was we actually controlled for the industry. So experimentally as well as in the field.

And so what that suggests is that, yes, it's going to help. It can't hurt to have more women investors and have more women mentors. but if both male and females are are biasing and doing this sort of thing, it's not just the male investors. And so structurally, it's not going to hurt, but we also have to within be able to change things from within. But the last piece of that is also that, you know,

a lot of people who have commented on these, this, you know, is it the system versus is it what's happening inside? is that, you know, it feels almost strategic or manipulative in a way. And that's why a lot of people don't do that. They say, don't want to kind of guide these perceptions because they say, oh, it's about managing impressions and it feels like, you know, we all know, we know that person who like kisses up to the boss and we don't want to be that person. But this is actually the opposite of that. When you're able to manage and guide people's perceptions of who you authentically are, it's the opposite of being strategic because people are going to have perceptions of you,

not you help them and guide them to who you authentically are or not. You're sort of clarifying more than manipulating. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, it's totally clarifying and it's also bringing your own values and your own vulnerabilities and your own assets to the table so that you can have. I wonder on a metacognition level, if the VCs are asking women a question in a public forum or in general with something else on their mind. So they ask them the competition question for a reason other than they perceive women to be not as good on the competitive front. Like that would be the surface interpretation of this is they're asking women about competition because they feel women are less aggressive or less able to compete. Is that what you inferred from when you first read it?

I mean, there's lots of different perceptions that can be driving this. I think the important piece of it, especially for entrepreneurs, is that, you know, and it's not just limited to gender, by the way. Right. People with tech backgrounds, you know, people who may be getting different questions as well, certain industries, all of those things that you're alluding to. I mean, what happens, though, is that when you get a question, so if I were to ask you a question that's much more around the risk and the competition and the drawbacks of something, you're more likely to respond in turn by giving me an answer that focuses on competition and the risk and that's right. Because I would have listened to your question and directly taken head on. That's right. Which is what I train my entrepreneurs to do. That's right. But if I ask you a question that's much more what we call promotion focus, things about the opportunity and how big you can take this, you're going to be answering in, in turn, by answering with a vision-oriented, large-scale sort of thing. And who do you invest in?

You invest in the opportunity that can go bigger and better. So in one case, you're framing everything for, you know, how is this ever going to win? Like, God, there's so many competitors. and the other one, you're like, kind of assuming it's going to win, and tell me how big can this get? That's right. That's right. Where else could you take this?

What other markets? What other customer segments? Fascinating. But this is where that kind of turning your adversity into advantage. Yeah. How do you do that in this circumstance? In this circumstance, as soon as you recognize, for example, that you're getting a prevention focused question.

You can answer the question quickly. You still answer it. But then you turn it into a promotion-oriented response. So you say something else. Yes, and? Yeah. Yes. And you say, yeah, there are a lot of competitors here, but our product is superior to them

in these ways. And so that allows us to go into these other markets and pursue these other opportunities. And then what I find in some of my research is that you're able to not only level the playing field, but you even increase your chances above and beyond those other folks. Yeah. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Because now you've addressed that competition piece and that risk piece, but you've now flipped

it and now not only do they see you as able to, you know, tackle those things, but now you've put something in their head, a new perception, a new attribution. Inception. No, it's like inception. You know, I teach my founder sometimes to do inception. Yeah. With founders, which is you would answer the question and say, we have three main competitors. One of them is people just using Excel or Microsoft Office.

Yeah. One is a direct competitor and one is outsourcing. and the direct competitor, you know, they've been in markets legacy software, so they're really not that competitive. But, you know, it's really on our roadmap, the second phase and the third phase, that's more important. But it's a great question. And then all of a sudden, they're like, whoa, whoa, there's a second phase or a third phase?

So you gave them a hint that there's something else coming. That's right. And then they're like, oh, so you're kind of implanting something there. What do you... Yeah, that's similar. It reminds me a lot of what I talk about in terms of delight, right? in terms of delighting your counterpart. Right.

Yeah. Let's expand on that concept when we get back from this quick break. You talk about delighting people and in a way kind of getting them intrigued, I guess it would be a good word. Let's talk about delight and intrigue when we get back on this week of startups. Hiring great people is the way to grow your business. You know this. But how do you do that and run your business at the same time? Hiring is a huge time suck.

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free. Just visit LinkedIn.com slash twist. Again, that's LinkedIn.com slash TWIST and get $50 off your first job post. Terms and conditions do apply. Because it giving you a 50. All right, let's get back to this amazing episode. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to this weekend. Startups, my guest, Laura Huang, and she is back on the program, if you want to watch her first appearance, episode 739, back in June of 2017, when we left you. We're talking a little bit about delight.

So what is the strategy of delighting people as it relates to the bias people have against women, people of color, LGBTQ? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the thing about being at a disadvantage or being underestimated is that you don't always have the opportunity to show how you enrich and provide value. That's the E of edge, by the way. So like the framework is about how to gain an edge, but it actually stands for E, D, GE.

The E is enrich. And the problem is that we always, we don't always have that opportunity to show how we, you know, can provide value to somebody else or show what our strengths are. And sometimes it's because we don't belong to the right networks or we don't have the right groups or we just don't have the opportunity. And the D is for delight, which is when we're able to delight our counterpart, delight somebody else. Yeah. That's the equivalent of being able to crack open that door. Right.

So that we can then show them how we enrich and provide value. And delight is sort of, I mean, it's a hard sort of emotion or a hard sort of thing to capture. But I always think about it in terms of like, or I try and like have people kind of think about in terms of, I mean, think about the very first time that you were in an Uber. You may be the wrong person asked. Yeah. Think about the very first, or maybe you're the exact right person to ask.

Exactly. But the very first time you're in Uber, so forget all the other stuff around like the management team and whatever, whatever, okay? The exceptional management team. That's one of the fastest growing companies in the history of Silicon Valley. Cheers to you. Management team. But if you go. Careful that management team is responsible for 90% of my net worth.

Take it easy, Laura. Go back to that like emotion, right? That very first emotion that you had when you were in an Uber for the first time, right? And it's this feeling of this is really interesting, but terrifying. Right. I'm in a stranger's car. Yeah. And he or she just knows where to take me.

Right. And I'm not going to give him or her any money. And so you're sitting there and you're like, this is just you get. Felt like the future. You get this feeling of delight. Yeah. You get this feeling of like, and it's this feeling where it just makes you take pause for a second and think about something in a slightly different way or consider something in a slightly more

surprising or counterintuitive way. When you're able to do that with somebody else, show them a side of you that they perhaps didn't consider or didn't notice. That's when they're going to pause and be like, oh, and want to ask you a question. And once they ask you the question, that's when you start that conversation and you're able to show them how you enrich and provide value. Got it. How would that happen in a VC meeting? Like, it's one thing to talk about it, like, with a product. Yeah.

Okay, you're a black female founder who's a lesbian from Texas. Yeah. How would you? And you didn't go to Stanford or Harvard. Uh-huh. And you're not a developer. You're a sales marketing executive. Yeah.

Who now is a startup. I mean. And you got the meeting with a VC. How does that person. delight them in the meeting. I mean, the first step is kind of understanding that, like, all of those things that you just said, like, they see me as a black woman from Texas who has this background, all the, so what underlying perceptions are they making about me?

Is it about my competence? Is it about how, how, you know, interpersonally skilled I am, about how well I'm able to interact on a team? Like, what are those underlying perceptions? And when you understand. Let's be candid. Let's talk about candidly, what a white VC in. I think it depends on who you are.

are and who that, who your other, who that other person is. I mean, I think there is some degree of, you know, are you able to execute on this? Is this an idea that has substance to it? Is this something that is more of a niche product that is not going to be, you know, that because of your background, you're solving a pain point that's only going to be for black women from Texas. show me that it's going to be bigger or better or something. You know, all of these sort of, I think those are the types of kind of things, but that's the opportunity as well. Yeah.

You know, so what I found in a lot of my research when I've looked at, for example, people who are underestimated in those situations or disadvantage is once you recognize that, for example, the perception they have is that you're somehow not as interpersonally skilled, for example. Yeah. So you go in and then once they start asking you questions, you attack and you actually redirect that very perception. So you give examples of like, let me tell you about a time when I fought for resources for my team.

Or let me tell you about a time when I closed this deal. And I didn't stop until that deal was signed. And it was you're giving them examples that then redirect the way that they see that perception. So you're anticipating even putting aside the word bias because that's loaded. Let's just say you anticipate those perceptions. the perception and those attributions that they're making about you. That this is going to be a lifestyle business. You come in and say, you might be thinking, is this a lifestyle business, maybe something that could make $5 million or $10 million a year. Let me explain to you how this is going to get to a billion dollars in sales a year, not a billion dollar valuation from the company, but the path to a billion dollars in revenue. Yeah. The difference, though, is, I mean, is that you have to do this and the power of sort of flipping adversity to your advantage and the sort of strategies and tactics that I talk about in the book is that you do this in a very benign. way. You don't go and say, I know it's because I'm a woman that you think X, Y, and Z. Yeah, that's going to go of a great. It's not going to go great because the other person's going to feel confronted.

They're going to immediately say, no, no, no, it's not about even if they are, right? And so you don't go in saying, like, I know you think it's a lifestyle business or I know you think that because I'm a woman or I know that you think because of, you know, my race or ethnicity. But instead, you look beyond those sort of factors and you look at those underlying perceptions that they're making because of those, those subscribed or attributed characteristics. And being like, okay, you racist, let me explain to you why your bias is wrong, which is basically 90% of Twitter. And this is why things have broken down on Twitter, I feel, when we talk about race on Twitter or gender on Twitter or even bias. Like the conversation you and I are having right now about bias is so uncomfortable.

Are you uncomfortable? No, not for me. I don't feel uncomfortable at all. Because I know my own heart. I would love to somehow make you feel uncomfortable. You'll have to let me know the best way to do that. I'm not sure that that's worked for many people on Twitter. But it is, the reason I like to talk about it so candidly on this podcast is I feel like

forward progress is made through candid discussion. Yes. And it's a lost art today. And on Twitter, it never works because you have a small window of, you know, being able to explain yourself. But on podcasts, because it opens up, when you talk for an hour, we can actually explore this. Yeah. Just the act of me saying, let's take an example of a female,

black lesbian from Texas, people are like, whoa, oh my God, where is this going? It just makes everybody uncomfortable. Yeah. So you're saying, hey, there's no reason to make people more uncomfortable, but if you do anticipate that you're going to be perceived as a lifestyle business, or maybe even less tech, because you didn't go to MIT, and you went to some business school and, you know, you're a marketer, so they, oh, there's no tech here. Yeah. You're saying, cut them off at the pass, address that somehow in your presentation. Yeah, I mean, I think... There's a way to go about it.

Absolutely. And I think part of what you're saying also is that these conversations, we often don't have these conversations. And the best way to hone your ability to see how other people perceive you and to be able to, you know, hone that intuition around that interaction is by having these types of conversations. And something that I teach in my leadership class to my students is one of the reasons that we don't do this is because we don't think enough about.

somebody's intent versus the impact of what they're sort of saying. I mean, who amongst us has not said something to someone else that we then, for whatever reason, haven't had, didn't get a chance to, like we, we leave thinking, oh, I hope that person didn't think that I meant that, because I did it, but it could have been interpreted. So I hope that they didn't think that I was thinking. Well, certainly 100% of married couples have had this experience where what they've said and how it was interpreted were two wildly different things. No way. I communicate perfectly with my husband. Yeah, I mean, it is, this is another thing that I think, you know, if you're on Twitter like you and I are, or if you're involved in the open discourse of race, gender, bias, and especially in the tech industry, there's just no room for intent anymore. And I always stop and say, okay, this person said something that was horrible.

What was their intent? Because I did it myself. Yeah. I said one time, we were talking about. about black founders, just people of color in tech. And I said, one of the problems is, you know, people have set this ridiculously high bar for who they will meet with. And that bar is typically a million dollars, two million dollars in revenue.

And if you raise the bar that high, then people who are just starting out are not going to ever get a meeting. They're not going to ever get the feedback that you're doing. So if you're a VC, just lower the bar of who you'll meet with and meet with everybody or take 20% of your schedule and meet with people. But let me guess it's the lower the bar piece. The lower the bar thing triggered a bunch of people. They're like, what?

Did you say? You're saying lower the bar for black people? And I was like, well, no, I said lower the bar for a meeting. But by that time, 50 people had run with it. And I specifically was referring to who you take a meeting with. Well, I think the lower, I mean, there's... The quality of the company, the stage of the company. No, I mean, I just think that there's...

And then I just think that there's a lot of, like, there's so many things that are now low or so, you know, I mean, it reminds me of when I said, at one point, was like, yeah, it's very tricky. I said something along the lines of, you know, if you don't have, you can, if you don't have privilege, you can make your own privilege. Whoa. Hold on a second. You're about to get canceled as your counsel.

Saying you can make your own privilege. You can make your own privilege. And if you take the loaded piece, I mean, privilege is really, we talk about unfair advantage all the time, right? Edge. Well, okay. Unfair advantage is an edge. Is there a difference? Yeah, but the unfair piece is what bothers people. How you got the edge. How you got that. What makes it unfair? Got it. And I think edge, what I really, you know, sort of believe is that it's not an unfair thing. It's something that you have. But for whatever reason, people are not seeing it or it's undervalued or it's an underpriced asset that once people understand, they're going to be like, whoa, this has huge. How does one build their privilege? How does one manufacture their privilege?

Well, manufacture is also not a good word. Okay. Create. Yeah, creates, find. Manufacture could be perceived as falsely manufacturing, because it's not real. But I meant manufacturing as, how does one build their privilege? Curate their own privilege? Yeah.

I mean, that's really what the book is about. Like, you know how you enrich and, you know how you enrich and provide value. You're able to delight others. G is for guide. you're guiding the perceptions of others and E, the final E is for effort and hard work. And we tend to think that effort and hard work comes first. That you put in the hard work

and that everything will speak for itself. But actually effort and hard work comes last because if you know how you enrich and how you delight and how you guide, that's when your hard work works harder for you. Interesting. And this is a typical complaint from people who feel there is, or who have experienced bias,

and feel that bias is holding them back, is that, listen, I have the skill, and I've been putting in the effort, but I'm not getting the recognition, I'm not getting the reward for that effort. Absolutely. And part of it is guiding people through, as you're saying,

hey, here is why I am hitting the targets that you need to see in order to get the reward. Yeah, I mean, it's a perspective on how you authentically can understand, because sometimes, I mean, sometimes people don't even, you know, it's hard to really even, understand what are your superpowers? What are the things that you're really good at? What are your weaknesses that you need to make sure aren't liabilities? So sometimes it's that piece of it.

Sometimes it's being able to dynamically improvise when you're in situations so that you know how you delight. Sometimes it's being, you know, being accurate or being in tune with how people really see you and those perceptions so you can correctly guide them to who you are. So it's a variety of different things, but I think it's, you know, I have a, it's called the edge quotient where you can take this quiz and actually see, like, how equipped are you? Which of those categories are you sort of lacking and which do you need to sort of work on and how can you think about strategies to do that? All right. Well, we get back from this final break. I want to know what the strategy is for, at the very least getting credit for the ideas that you brought to the table and for your own execution

in the workplace. We get back on this week's startups. If you're running a business like I am and the 200 startups we've invested in are, you've probably got 30, 40, 50 projects going at any given point in time. But you as the founder and CEO or a vice president, you may not know where all those projects are at, right? And how nice would it be to centralize all of those projects and feeds into one place so you can manage them effortlessly and increase accountability.

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Welcome to this week in startups. My canceled guest, Laura Wong, is here with me, cancel Jason Calacanus, because we're talking about gender, race, bias, and just getting an edge, turning adversity into an advantage is out right now. Go buy it. Again, if you're a fan of the pod, you need to buy. buy whatever book. I know you guys all got a little chatter and the book's well worth reading. It's a great read. Oh, great listen, actually. I'm halfway through it listening to it.

You're not the whole way through listening to it. Well, here's the thing. You're canceled. I know. I should be. I usually do get through the whole thing, but I got sick this weekend and I got three kids and two of them got sick. I know. I know. You need to be guiding my perceptions better to. Well, as a single, I'm not a single. I'm just trying to pull a single parent card. I'm trying to pull a single parent card and I can't. as an outnumbered parent. Okay. Three to two. But yeah, the audiobook, great.

Thanks for sending me that in advance, by the way. I've been listening to them. So when we went to break, I want to know, I hear constantly, consistently might be a better word, since we're focusing on words. I hear consistently from women that they don't feel they're getting recognition for the work they've done. And I'm constantly hearing from men how much

they've done. And how much they deserve a promotion in raise. It's like incessant. Men are like literally nonstop coming at me with, you know, their high fives.

And women sometimes I hear from them that they don't feel they got credit. You have strategies around this. Is this a trend that you hear about a lot in your research? I mean, this is sort of the I work twice as hard for half the rewards kind of thing. True phenomenal. And yeah, I mean, yeah, there is truth behind that.

But in that truth is also, what are you going to do about that? Right. It is what it is to some extent. And so, you know, what I talk about in the second half of the book is... I actually started from the back. Did you? Yeah. I always do.

Right. So you really love it. like chapter 13. No, what I do is I always start with the last two, it's my strategy for guests and the show. I start with the last two chapters. Yeah. Because I feel like they summise what they've said in the book. Then I go back and read, listen to the entire book.

Huh. Interesting. So that I get to hear the end twice. That's some good BSing, Jason. It's the honest truth, actually. If you ever want to do it on a book, your retention will go way out. All right. Interesting.

Because you've listened to the summary twice. Yeah. At the beginning and the end. Okay. And good authors will a lot of times sort of tell you up front, here's where you're what we're going to do in the book. Yeah. But there's nothing like that summary.

Okay. So the summary that you sort of read, which you were so, yeah, that you listen to. You know, I talk about how a lot of, I mean, it's, it's this, we, we are jaded and bitter in lots of ways because when our hard work doesn't speak for itself or when we put in the effort and the rewards go to somebody else or that we keep, or we keep hitting the same walls over and over and over again, we become jaded and bitter. or, you know, there's people who have wronged us, and we hold on to that. It's like a chip on our shoulder.

I ask my students sometimes, think about a time when somebody wronged you or some situation that still has you feeling angry. I mean, within 10 seconds, people can recall two or three instances. Really? You can too, come on. Not too many. I'll kind of let them go, but I'm older in my career. Because you've read the last chapter of my book.

And so I talk about, you know, how a lot of times we, things become. we let it make us bitter. And instead of it, whenever something is starting to make us bitter, we need to be asking ourselves, how does this make us better, not bitter? Got it. And so when we think about making ourselves better and not bitter, then we understand that sort of negative, that failure, that those drawdowns and what is it that we value? Why does it still bother us? Why is it still chip on our shoulder? What's the one you can tell me?

Without telling the names and protecting the innocent, but you're in academia. so the stakes are so low that you must have had people try to screw you over many times. Yeah, I know I really will get canceled when I start talking about the times I've been screwed over in academia. No, you know, loyalty is so, loyalty is so big to me. Like that's like one of the-me too. Yeah, like I feel like loyalty. Hard work and loyalty of my two. Well, hard work should come forth after enriching, delighting, and guiding now that you know that.

But, no, I mean, loyalty and trustworthiness and sort of empathy, like those are my three. I feel like you switch out any one of those and you become like a completely different sort of person. And I mean, I think the times that still sort of, it's, it's those situations where, you know, someone stabs you in the back. And you're like, and especially when you value loyalty and trustworthiness and you and you really like have somebody's best interests at heart. And then you realize that other people are those who for just a tiny bit of personal gain will step on lots of. other people. So I think it's those. And I think this is not unique to me. I think we all sort of have these experiences where we feel that this has happened. But you have to make it, how does this make you better and not bitter? How do you change that? How do you? And I mean, I think it's You didn't tell me yours, by the way. You're nice deflect. I asked you yours. I gave you the, I gave you the macro situation. You didn't give me your example, but there's one. I can see it in your eyes. There's one. There's actually two, but yeah. Well, make a composite. Yeah. Composited for me.

A person's not going to listen to it. They're a narcissist. The last thing they're going to do is take the time to listen to you and your success now. Yeah, no, they are a narcissist because, you know, anyways. Go ahead. Tell us what happened and then tell us how I would. I feel like I'm like on, I feel like I'm on like the Ellen show or something. Well, is that.

I don't want you to cry, but Ellen is trying to secretly reveal like the gender of my, I'm not pregnant, but I'm feeling. The gender reveal of my baby or something. So I've always dreamed of like being in a situation. when somebody tries to like get information out of me on like a talk show. So this kind of feels like this. It's nice. So tell us the composite of how you got this person and the narcissist who screwed you

and then how you let it not make you bitter. Well, I think the, I'll start with the second piece first and then we'll ease our way into the, I think the, you know, the not letting it make. I mean, there's, it's entrepreneurs do with this all the time as well, right? You have to sort of ride the emotions while understanding those emotions but not getting carried away by that. So what I mean by that, like, entrepreneurs sometimes, you know, you have these extreme highs and these extreme lows, and often they're all in the same day. And you have to be able to, I think one of the characteristics that makes a really good founder

is being able to understand that there's going to be huge failures and huge successes and huge, really depressing days and really exhilarating days. And while you're understanding that, still being able to feel those emotions while not getting carried away with it. Consumed by them. Yeah, you don't want to be consumed by them, but you want to understand them because there's so much data in those emotions.

There's so much data in why does it feel so depressing? Why is it, like what is it that's really nagging at me and understanding that sort of feeling? And I think... Unpacking it. Unpacking it. Sitting with it.

Sitting with it. Sitting with it. And knowing what I talk about a lot, which is life rhymes. And we have situations in our life that have made us feel a certain way. Yes. And then a couple years later, it'll be a different context or a different situation, but we'll feel that same emotion or that same feeling.

Like something won't sit right. And there's so much information in that. That's how we build our experience and our mental models and our schemas and our intuition. That's how we sort of hone it by being able to. Now give a sure. Because then now give you mine. You give me yours first. And then I'll give you mine. I'm trying to get you to answer a question.

I'm the host. And you're constantly throwing back. You said you were going to give me yours, too. Well, I was going to give it to you as a reward for giving me yours first. I need a little speedener. All right. Okay, fine. I'll give it to you.

Well, speaking of edge, I have always looked at when you are screwed, when people do come at you. And they do in business. Yes. And I long looked at business as war. Yeah. And there's really two types. of confrontations when it comes to violence. There's quick and there's extended, right?

Yeah. And if you look at the samurai, and that's why Tashira Mufune is on the wall over there, uh-huh. And or the Jedi, which were modeled, they have the samurai. When they take that sword out and they use it. And if you ever see Yo Jimbo, there's a famous scene, which Shira Mufune takes the sword out, and it cuts a guy's arm off, and it lays on the floor. And then they cut to the sword being put back on his bow.

and into the sheath and the blood being taken off of it. And it happens in seconds. And then it's over. As opposed to a barroom brawl, which goes on forever, or a war that goes on forever. And I think in my younger years, sometimes I went to war with people and it was never ending. Because it was not definitive. And what I've learned over time is, you know, I went to war with people over decades or a decade. Now, if I have to go to war with somebody, it's going to be either.

They're ignored and they're just ghosted forever. And I just give them zero attention. Or the possibility is like the canteena scene in the original Star Wars where Obi-Wan takes out and he says, listen, this young one is not worth your trouble. The guy says, well, you know, I want to fight anyway. And it takes out the sword and cuts the guy's armor. If you remember that scene? Lucas took that from Kurosawa. And then that's why Kurosawa's books on the wall here.

That's one of my heroes. and by the way that is a great book something like an autobiography he stole that Lucas from Kurosawa from the Yojimbo scene and you see the guy's arm full on the ground and then the lightsabers put away and turned off just like the sword went away and it's turned off and so now when somebody does something to scream

and happened recently I just swung the sword cut their arm off put it away and never show that person's name or that person will never be in my life again. Never will I take the sword out again? Because I cut their arm off already. They already learned their lesson.

But not every one has that opportunity to cut someone else's arm off. Oh, yes, they do. You have to train of the sword. Just train. Sounds almost like a count of Monte Cristo sort of thing. Like you train and you train and you train. And then like, pow, there's like your... But didn't he stay in the jail for a long extended period of time

and then got his revenge. But he did his revenge. He had ravelled it all at once. It got to be careful with revenge because it's a shallow victory afterwards. Like, trust me, in Jymba or in Star Wars. What prevents that other person from, like, retaliating? They have one arm and they want to keep it. I mean, I know it's a-

Talk about speaking in generalities. You're giving like, you're talking about- If somebody comes at you and you show them that sword and they experience what it feels like for that blade to hit, they very rarely would say, you know what, I'd like to be in front of that blade again. And in this case, it was just dropping the top legal firm in the world and a bunch of paper on somebody and saying, bink. Yeah, but see, this is the thing. This is the thing about, I mean, not everywhere.

This is, I mean, frivolous lawsuits are everywhere. This is like, well, okay, okay, okay. This is a letter with here's what's going to happen. Yeah, well, this is the thing. I mean, we, the, the legal system is supposed to be about justice and about truth and about all these sorts of things. Do you believe that it is? I believe it's flawed, but the best one we got, you know, so far in humanity. But, and it can work for the underdog more than the person who is the person with the big chip stack.

But it could also work the other way. And so I was recently advising somebody who got screwed and didn't have a lot of power. Yeah. It is a valid observation you make, which is I have resources now and I have the sword. Yeah. But when I didn't, somebody else was in a similar situation. I said, you know what you should do? You should write a blog post.

And you should detail exactly how this investor screwed you. I said, and then you should say to them, as they've ousted you from your company, I disagree with what you've done. And I'm not going to sue you, but I'm going to write this blog post. and I'm going to publish it and I'm going to give the story to the Wall Street Journal and Business Insider

and anybody else who will listen and I'm going to tell every founder who contact I'm going to put your name in the title and every founder I'm going to put in the first sentence email me anytime

if you would like a reference for this individual right I said and then watch exactly how quickly and that's a different type of story and then that investor sues you for slander.

No. No. Why not? Because the investor knows that suing a founder is the worst possible recourse and settling with a founder is the best possible recourse

because then they go, you're crazy and you don't care. And let me tell you something. There is one person you do not want to fight with, which is somebody who has nothing left to lose. And that's the, there's, see, this is where having nothing left to lose is a very powerful thing.

When you truly get screwed and you're got nothing. Then the other person has to realize, well, you're backed into a corner, so you might as well fight your way out. There's a chance you might make it out. And the person then who has a lot at stake, who has the money and the power, says, do I want to risk everything I've spent 50 years building

to have this blog post on the internet? And that person, I'm going to sue them, and they have nothing, and then they're just going to write more blog posts? Yeah. so complicated. You underestimate the power of the public. I just think there's so much, there's so much nuance there, right? There's the nuance behind the person with the resources who can continue, right, whereas the other person can't continue because they don't have the resources for the,

for the, you know, for the lawyers and the legal. You, you underestimate that person who can then write his or her own blog post, even if it's complete lies, all of these sorts of things. I mean, I think the, the VC would never do that. because once they're faced with the possibility of other founders seeing them, mixing it up with a founder and not being able to control that relationship, they will just say it's not worth dealing with that person. This actually happened online just over the last couple of days with the VC who's been tweeting crazy stuff. And a couple people have bad stories about this person.

I won't say their name on the show. But it just makes it very hard for that investor then when they're having a conversation with a founder to say, I'm not going to create radioactivity around your startup. Yeah. Right. It's the last thing you want. Tell us your story. We're going to talk about, I mean, there's so many hints of what you said already.

I mean, obviously, when I feel like the bitterness comes when there's legal sort of things. And, I mean, but that is, I'm going to get some of your advice offline about these sort of things. Well, here's the thing about bitterness. It's a lot of times if people feel there's no off. ramp, you know, like they said with the Iran situation, give them an off ramp. If people feel powerless, they will try to take their power back.

And that could be very dangerous for you. So that's why, like, the art of settling. Yeah. This is why it's kind of nice when you take the sword out and you're like, here's a sword. And I'm about to swing it. And then they're like, oh, no, you can put the sword away. Okay, great. Or you swing it.

And it's like, you still got one arm left. I'm assuming that that other person is a rational, logical person. But anyways, you know. clearly clearly there's a lot of clearly there's a lot of feelings and emotions that see this is what I said within 10 seconds my students can bring up things that are decades long you know years year long

sort of bitterness and things that they can I mean we all have these and you were about to tell us sure as if I told you mine so that was yeah I mean it involves sort of that I'll give you a sort of a composite but um you know I had someone that I was that I was mentoring and pretty much was helping this person along, doing all these sorts of things. And then that person basically scooped a paper that I had already started working on. Yeah, yeah. And so that's sort of the composite. Wow. The person scooped your idea for a great paper and ran with it. Yes. And claimed sole ownership of it. So that would be like you worked on.

the screenplay together and they're like, yeah, you don't get, when I get win best screenplay. This would be like you and I, we're Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. We wrote Goodwill Hunting. Right. Best picture. Best picture. I get to go up and get it. You don't.

Yes. Oh, man. You know, this happened to the person who wrote the screenplay writer of Pulp Fiction with Tarantino got kind of marginalized in that process by Harvey Weinstein and he's been vocal about it. This happens often. How did you deal with that bitterness? And what did you carry forward? Well, there was lots of dimensions associated with that too.

I mean, but I think that I think. Were you friends with the person? Yes. And friends no more? No. So this person cared more about that paper than the friendship with you. Yes. How does that make you feel?

Wow, this is feeling really like talk showy. Well, you said you wanted it, so I'm giving you your moment. You're like, I always dreamed of it. I want my moment. We're making dreams come true here, Laura. A moment with Oprah and Ellen. I feel like, I mean. Oh, what?

I can't be, I can't have empathy here and have a moment with you? Oprah and Ellen would probably have read my whole book before. That's fair point. Yeah, yeah. So. I'm working my way through it. You have no idea what's on my plate. But seriously, like, that's got to be a gut punch.

Oh, it's devastating. It's devastating. So, you know. But, but I mean, that is, there's an element of that, I think, that we all have. And so, like, it's, that is sort of the adversity. We have to flip that adversity into our advantage. So you were bitter. How is it made?

I'm not bitter anymore. I'm better now. How did you convert that bitterness into betterness? You know, I think it sounds so funny, but there's some people that you just, you can't ever negotiate with. I think, like, someone once said that, gosh, I really don't want to like, now I'm like saying, but they're a friend of mine who was in the military. He was like, you know, you just don't negotiate.

with Kim Jong-il. Yeah. Because there's no, there's no way to really, you know, you don't. Yeah. So you just kind of, it is what it is. You have to isolate them. You isolate them and you go on with your life and you sort of do your thing. And that's really, that's really what it is.

Yeah. What I tell people is I had somebody, I had loaned some money to, a very small amount. Mm-hmm. And they said, hey, I'll write you a check back. Mm-hmm. That's when I was in my 20s. they write me a check back for the 50 bucks I loaned them. Check bounced.

I got charged 15 bucks. Because I guess if you put in a check that bounces, I got charged. I was like, what the heck is this? Now this is costing me $15 more than the 50. And I was upset about it. And my brother said to me, that's the best $50 you ever spent. Yeah. You never have to talk to that person again.

They were going to avoid you forever because they don't want to see you because they don't want to give you the 50 bucks back, and therefore you paid $50 to eliminate that person from your life. Right. And that's how I felt about, you know, my breakup with Mike Arrington was very famous. And that was one where I just didn't take the sword out. I got into like a wrestling match and we were like in a mud pit. And a friend of mine was like, you know, you guys are in a mud pit.

And like when you were in a mud pit like that, like the pig likes it. Yeah. And nobody knows who the other person is. I'm not saying Mike Arrington is a pig. No, no, no. I'm just chuckling. In that situation, he did enjoy being in a wrestling match with me. me like it was like something he clearly enjoyed.

And it was and cutting that person out then led to me doing launch. Yeah. And the funds. Yeah. And the Uber investment and all this other stuff. So literally getting Mike Arrington out of my life was like cutting off like a hundred pound anchor. I'm just chuckling because my friend, a friend of mine actually gave a very, the same analogy, she just used it a different context. Yeah, go ahead.

She basically said pretty people shouldn't get into bar fights. That's why I feel. I look in the mirror and I'm like, you want this face to get in a bar fight? That is like the, you have nothing left to loot. Like the, right? People who are, you should be getting. No, the guy who's got like a scar in his face is like, yeah, let's go. Let's have a knife fight.

Right, they don't care, but pretty people shouldn't get into bar fides. Yeah. It is a nice way of saying, what is your hope for people reading the book and what they ultimately come away with? If somebody walks up to you in the street two, three, four, ten years from now, it says, hey, I read Edge, here's what it did for me. Yeah. What would be the most meaningful thing for them to say to you? Yeah, I mean, I have gotten so many really thoughtful notes already that have been so meaningful. And I think, you know, these notes and these, this is who I was actually writing.

As I was writing in the book, I was thinking of these people who are aspirational and believe in themselves, but other people haven't for whatever reason. And so it's really this message of you can empower yourself. You can flip all of this. You can flip obstacles and stereotypes and challenges. Flip that in your favor. And when you're able to flip that in your favor, that's when you can create your own edge. Yeah. And it's not, this book is not just for women or people of color. This is intended for anybody who feels that they're being marginalized and who wants to get an edge. Absolutely. It's both those people who are trying to succeed and trying to get somewhere but feel like they can't. I also, as I was writing it, there was a number of instances

where I found that, you know, parents, for whatever reason, will ask professors for parenting advice because they think that, I don't know, whatever. Well, you're a professor. Well, yeah, and so they would, you know, and I was realizing as they were sort of asked is that, you know, parents are fighting so hard to try and give their kids an advantage. You want to talk about an edge. Yeah, I mean, they're fighting so hard. We see instances where parents are like, legally buying their kids' SATs scores and trying to get them. A legal edge. Yeah, buy them into colleges.

But on a more benign, in a more legal way, like private coaches, extra tutoring, extracurriculars. But instead of fighting so hard to give your kids an edge, which might just be one-dimensional, instead teach them how to create their own edge. Teach them how to create their own edge so that they know to go into a situation and how they enrich and how they can delight and how they can guide those perceptions of others. So they have that advantage in every context. Today, almost every skill you want to learn is available on YouTube or online or on Coursera or EdX or MIT courseware. Or at Harvard Business School.

Harvard Business School has – are all the courses online? Well, HBX, so there's an online. Yeah. And all the courseware is free. You only pay to get the paper is why I understand it for these things. If all of the courseware in the world is out there and then all the prerequisites are on Brilliant. which we're investors in or con academy, those places. How do you account for motivation and the fact that so many people who don't feel they can get an edge

are spending five hours a day watching television and just not motivated to add skills or educate themselves when all of this free education is out there. I was looking at MIT courseware recently and I was watching these videos. I'm like, these videos on YouTube are like the huge unlock to getting a job anywhere. in tech, like machine learning course, right? And they have 300,000 views. And I'm just like, you know, and then some idiotic YouTubers got, you know, 100 million views for a video, a billion views.

How do you account for motivation and the fact that so many people want to complain about the system being broken? They don't have an edge. The systems, you know, stopping them. Yet they don't want to go get these skills which are freely available online. Yeah. I mean, I always say that everyone can learn it. Everyone can learn this. Everyone can learn to create their own edge, but not everyone is willing to.

And that willingness comes from a lot of different factors. I mean, one factor is that you have to be willing to be okay with failure and embarrassment. You're going to embarrass yourself. And the more you, and when you embarrass yourself, most people sort of say, oh, like, never again. I'm never going to put myself in that situation. Yes. Yes. But that's actually the situation which you should be doubling down. You double down. And like, because, I mean, we don't learn as much as we'd like to say, like, make that mistake once. and then you'll never make it again. I don't know. Sometimes it takes me two or three times,

making the same mistake before I really get it. And so you have to be willing to have that humility and that failure and that embarrassment to sort of learn this. I mean, I think the other piece of it is that, you know, we, there's so much information out there. There's almost now too much. And so we assume that we have everything at our disposal. But really, in order to grow, you have to prune.

And companies have to do this. people have to do this. You have to go back to, like, what are the basics? What are your basic goods? What are your basic things that really make you? And companies, as they grow and scale, they lose out on this all the time. They start adding features. They start adding, you know, different segments, all these things. But go back to what you're good at. If you are an Italian restaurant and your thing is like homemade pasta. Yeah, get it right. Yeah. Make sure that that stays right, even as you grow and expand your menu and do all these other things. I was explaining this to somebody, we were eating in a Japanese restaurant, a ramen place,

and they were my favorite ramen place in San Mateo, and they were like, they don't have like tempura. And I was just like, you have not been to Japan, right? They're like, no. I'm like, if you said this in Japan, they would say you're in a ramen restaurant. If you want tempura, the restaurant two doors down is a tempura restaurant. And in Japan, it's like, the Katsu restaurant is the Katsu restaurant and the Koube beef and the sushi place. And in America with this weird perception that like you go to a Japanese restaurant and they're like, there's the Katsu and there's your sushi and there's your ramen and there's your tempura.

It's like there's no thought of like which one are they excellent at. And you cannot be excellent at all four or five things. That's right. Pick one. It'd be excellent and deeply excellent. This is because I get this advice too. like, hey, talk to my kid, or what should I tell my kid? And I'm like, the ability to learn skills quickly is the unlock.

Like, if you can add a skill in a very short period of time, it is so impressive to employers and so effective when running a startup. And I was just having a meeting before we got on air with a founder who just was a hardware founder who taught himself all the sales and marketing stuff. Yeah. And he's doing much better than, you know, the VP of sales, like the chief revenue officer that would cost three or four hundred thousand because they just took this three to six months to learn everything about sales and marketing and the whole funnel.

Uh-huh. This is the unlock is just being able to learn these skills quickly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it's so critical because you can't be excellent at six things at once. No. And so that's the sort of you have to prune in order to grow. As you're growing and trying to get bigger, keep going back to what are the one or two things

that you're really, really good at? keep building from there, just like a tree, right? If the tree wants to grow, you got to prune away the extra stuff so that you can grow. You can't have like 50 limbs that are all the big Vic ones that, you know, it's like maybe there's three or something. Right. All right, listen, continued success. You've got to go.

You got more press to do on your book tour. Congratulations. And the book tour is going well? It is. It's like a little overwhelming, but it's also, I mean, you know, when I do research, it's like statistics and findings and stuff. This is like there's stories in there about. me and people I know and it's so vulnerable in a way. So it's also sort of exhausting and

terrifying that people are reading these things about. I love the Elon Musk story. I was, I was tempted, we're friends. And so I was tempted to send the MP3 file to him where you talk about him. And I was like, I can't do that because the publisher sent me these and, you know, I don't want to have MP3's filling. I don't know if it's a final one or whatever. I'm sure he's heard by now. But I won't say the Elon Musk story. I'll save it for the readers. And then my big unlock for you with the book, getting an edge. I created a at Angel. Dot University with Mike Savino and a couple of,

and Jackie here on the staff. And we did that course 15 times since the book came out. And it was my way to meet 50 people, 60 people who read the book. Uh-huh. And then teach them to go more in depth. What you have here is the beginning of an edge course where you could do getting an edge live and just charge people 300 bucks, include lunch or dinner. And really get to know, like, the people who've read the book.

and create like the next level where they can work with each other and meet people around the book. Because books are about community today. It's not just the information in the book I find. And this was a huge unlock for me because I had maybe a thousand people come to live events like the ones that I'm talking about Angel University. I did dim sum Q&As, which worked really well. So are you doing any kind of live like 50 people, 25 person events that are interactive? They can ask questions and hang out with you. Some are sort of, you know, these Q&A.

kind of thing, but that's a great suggestion. I need to figure out how to do that. Just make a PowerPoint and walk people through a course. That's what we did. And it is so powerful to meet the readers and answer their questions. And then you just figure out what you left out of the book. Yeah, that's great. That's great.

Edge the course. Thank you. It would be so great. All right. Everybody go by the book, Laura Huang. It is Edge. Do you have a website for the book or just type an edge? Laura Huang.net.

There it is. H-U-A-N-G. And we'll see you all next. time on this week and start us. Bye-bye.