This Week in Startups - E1030: News Roundtable! Zapier CEO Wade Foster & Early-Stage Investor Monique Woodard on Tech Journalists vs. Founders/VCs, Twitter’s fake news detection, Kickstarter union, Blue Apron plummeting, Lambda School controversy & more!

Episode Date: February 22, 2020

0:36 Jason intros Monique & Wade 8:29 Tech Journalists vs. Founders/VCs 14:48 Is link-baiting press a systemic, societal issue? 19:21 Future of Founders/VCs controlling their own voice via podcasts, email newsletters, etc. 23:59 SpaceX sending passengers into space in late 2021, early 2022 28:02 Kickstarter employees vote to Unionize 41:28 Gray New World - how lucrative is the growing elderly demographic? 49:37 Twitter combatting fake/misleading news with potential new features 58:01 Blue Apron continues to plummet 1:04:13 Lambda School controversy 1:12:42 What is the path for Zapier? What is No-Code's impact on the startup industry?

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level up your hardware today and save up to 43% by going to Dell.com slash twist. Hey, everybody, welcome to this week in startups. It's what you always wanted. It's what you demanded. You love a news roundtable. You love when I talk about the news with really smart people. We've been doing so many great interviews. We've had these long-form two-hour interviews.

Dan Rose, George Zachary. The list goes on and on. And so many great interviews coming up that you're going to love, including Sarah Taville from Benchmark, just amazing guests we've had on the pod. Today, we're lucky to have a long time reoccurring guest and friend of the pod and friend of launch our investing company, Monique Woodward. She's an early stage investor. Welcome back to the pod.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's like your fifth or tenth. It's only my second. No. Yes, too. That's that. Oh, for the roundtable?

For the roundtable. But you've been on panels and other things that have wound up on the podcast, I think. Yes. I've been on panels and other things. Yes. Yes. And you invest in early stage companies. You were at 500 back in the day.

You're doing your own thing now. You invest in what? I'm owning the space around demographic change. So I invest in areas of demographic change, specifically the rising aging population, women who can drive companies to billion-dollar outcomes, and then the new majority where people of color become the majority in the United States. Absolutely. That's fantastic.

Yeah. Huge opportunity. People don't know this. but like the number one company in terms of raising money coming out of our accelerator, Black woman. Yeah. Crystal from Ruby Love raised $15 million coming out of the accelerator. Yeah.

It's pretty amazing. Like if you think about driving culture, you look at Instagram, you look at Vine, you look at Twitter, TikTok. TikTok. People of color are driving these platforms. Yeah. And then they're massively underrepresented in the first. spending space, this is a huge opportunity.

Exactly. Black culture is American culture and is pop culture. And that drives culture all over the world. And so we need to be investing in more people who are creating platforms and creating new companies. And we also need to figure out how to better reward creatives for creating things on TikTok and on Vine that eventually go viral like Jaliyah's Renegate Dance or, you know, when everyone was saying eyebrows on fleek, which came from Vine. We don't have a good mechanism to actually reward people for creating things that drive the culture forward. And they're, yeah, they don't have equity on those platforms. Right.

They're making the platforms. Yeah. They don't have equity in. Black Twitter is driving Twitter. Black Twitter is driving Twitter. Yeah. Twitter would be nothing if it wasn't for Black Twitter. I have an inside story about Black Twitter.

I think you know the story. I think you and I talked about it. There was a moment in time where trending topics were getting so, Black Twitter was driving trending topics so much. It was half of the trending topics. And then all those white people were like, I don't understand what's going on. So the person in charge it was like, we need to localize and personalize the trending topics so that you get San Francisco topics or for your demographics to start personalizing. This is my internal, this is a long time ago.

Yeah. But that's how influential it was, was that. And now I'm having it happen with Korean culture. My entire, I don't know if you're having this in San Francisco, but there's this Korean boy band, BTS. BTS. Yeah. And when these BTS fans go crazy, it just floods my.

Yeah. And each member of the band. Show up in random Twitter threads. I can't take it. Yeah. I can't take. I'm just trying to find out what's going on with impeachment. I want to know what's going on Roger Stone.

I just want to see Black Twitter. I don't want to see V.C. Twitter at all. I would like to be. be able to switch to black Twitter. Sounds like it's going to be more fun. It is more fun over there. It's a lot more fun. People, I just, I love, my favorite Twitter, NBA Twitter.

NBA Twitter is the best quit because literally like someone like Harden Flops and they just, it's every SpongeBob meme, every meme you can imagine of people falling over not gracefully. Well, the players are so into it too, which is what makes it fun. That's the best point. Way more interaction and stuff like that. Especially Kevin Durant with his. He's like, I'm still going to do a burner account. Okay, so our other guest today is back on the pod.

He was on the pod episode 6-26 back in March of 2016 when he was trying to figure out this little company known as Zapier, which makes you happier. Tim Ferriss mispronounced it on his podcast. What's the proper pronunciation, so we're just clear? Zapier. Zapier makes you happy. You got it. Because you can make zaps. Yes.

And they automate your day. And they automate your day. I've been a huge fan. as you know, of the product for, oh, how long now? You started back in... We started in 2011. I was about to say, it feels like we're getting close to a decade. Coming up on it.

Why did you start, Zapier? My co-founder and I were getting hired, like, little side projects to connect these apps for folks. So we built, like, a WordPress forms plugin that you could funnel leads into Salesforce. We had another one that was, like, PayPal sales into QuickBooks. And my co-founder was like, hey, we could probably just make an off-the-shelf thing. where sort of your everyday knowledge worker could set this stuff up on their own without having to hire us to do this work. It's such a brilliant platform. What's the footprint now of the company? You guys are raised money. You're making money. Yeah. So we're 300 people fully distributed. We only raised a million in change, but been profitable since 2014.

I remember one of your investors contacted me. It was like early days. We're like, what do you think of this thing? Is it ever going to be something? I was like, I used to. use it every day. I have my own bots going in the background. I think it's brilliant. I don't know about monetization. But you figured out, obviously you've got 300 people and you've only had a million invested into the business. So the business is doing tens of millions of dollars. Yeah, the last

announcement we made was a year and a half ago at 50 million ARR. What? With one million invested. And Monique and I are not on the cap table. No. You know what? Monique makes a great. There's not very many people on the cap table. Listen. Wade, after this,

we'll see how this goes. All right. After this, I just want to say, you might need a board member who understands business and culture. You might, you know, maybe you can chip off whatever we talk about here, 50 bases points, maybe 75 bits. She's good at what she does, all right? I'm looking at what she does, all right? I'm looking out for you, Monique. Thank you.

We're going to together. I was broken 2011, so unfortunately. I wasn't too far behind you. It's amazing. You are like the mega Pegasus. You turned one million in a million. investment into 50 million a year in a highly profitable business that you guys own, the investors own 20% of the business or something, ballpark, and the rest of you own 80%. God, you are the model.

That's like amazing. How did you do it? Was it just bootstrapping and being lean in the beginning? Yeah, I mean, you know, we sort of took the money we need, we went through YC and then did the seed round right after and then sort of treated it like that was the last money we would ever see. So, you know, we had some, I think the most money we ever burned in a month was maybe 20 grand, which is quaint compared to- falling in love with you, Wade. I know. The way we're looking at you right now is just like, oh, if we could swipe right,

right on this startup. We have people who are burning $200 a month. The product's still not out. Yeah, yeah. When you look at some of these gross stage companies, this is like your $200 million in like a quarter or something, like some of these, you know, Uber and Lyft as they were. Take it easy there on the first examples, okay? Right into profitability right now.

All right. Speaking of, well, there's no segue here, but this was the big story of the week, and I think it's pretty relevant. Tech journalists and the Tech Nerati went to war this past week. And Bellagie, as you know, B-A-L-J-I-S on Twitter, he worked at the Indreason-Harrowitz there. He's an expert on crypto and on biotech. And he was talking about how people were not covering, you know, this story properly. And a reporter from Recode who's only been there for a month, her name is Shereen, and I offered her to be on the pod. She declined. Belagie was going to

come on the pod, and then he canceled on us because Kara Swisher wanted to be on the pod as well. And there was just a little bit of like me and Kara fighting for the same guest. And Kara and I have been fighting about this, but the tweet came, the DM came in and he published the DM. And we all get these from journalists. And the journalists have been pretty negative.

And I just said, based, and she said, hey, we saw your tweets on top, would you be available to chat more about this on a brief call? And he was sort of speculating that this is going to wind up being like another link link bait historical story. So I wrote founders,

My advice is never talk to journalists on the phone. You will likely be misquoted and your answers will not be as, I should put a little type of there, as crisp as email. There's so much gotcha journalism and link baiting. Always use email and let the journalists know you plan to publish your answers on your blog. This is my advice to founders. Yeah. Because the downside of talking to the press today in this kind of very negative environment is high. So, Kara Swisher comes out swinging as you would expect to defend her person.

She's like, oh, please, with the dopy snark. She's doing a great story and yada, yada. Then I go into it and, you know, Karras Fisher and I get into it. We're friends. We're going to talk about it on her podcast. Long story short, the story comes out. And boom, the story, no handshakes, please. The tech industry is terrified of the coronavirus.

virus. The worst, she literally said, you know, we have this big debate that this story is going to be link bait and there's all, it's all downside for a founder to talk to her. And then she proves it to us. And then, um, Balaji says, incredible. Last week I called the adjourns, who I thought was writing a piece that would be a disservice to public house. Unfortunately, my concerns prove well-founded. Recode virus piece ignores WHO and CDC, gets the science wrong and focuses on the handshakes. Because here in Silicon Valley, people are saying, hey, let's not shake hands. By the way, that's what everybody's saying around the world. This is not unique to us.

Monique, when you look at this craziness, oh, and then, by the way, Balaji then goes on to dunk in a tweet storm because he has massive knowledge compared to a writer, a journalist has 5, 10% of the knowledge he's going to have on this subject, by definition, a journalist versus somebody who spends her time on this,

and he just fact checks the whole thing and dunks on her. Monique, you've been in the industry for a long time like me, a couple decades. Has it ever been this content? between us and the press? No. This is the height of peak contentious. Peak contentiousness.

And, you know, I understand the media business model is sort of failing right now, right? And so they need those clicks. And investors don't want to shake hands is a much better story than the real issue around coronavirus, right? It's a much less exciting story. But this is, it's become really difficult to talk to. to the press. And I've had my own issues with, with the media and with the press. And I was actually around the same time that this was happening, I was going to make a tweet about a complaint that I had

about the press. But it got so, people were dunking on the press too much. And I just felt like, I felt bad making it. But people often reach out and ask you to make comments and you know it's going to take a terrible turn. Right. Right. So you know already that it's, that it's, what you say is going to be misrepresented, misconstrued. or placed into a story that doesn't really give the full weight of what you actually said. No context. So I think a lot of investors and a lot of founders have rightfully sort of pulled back from doing a lot of press and are sort of controlling their own media narrative, controlling their own story through podcasting,

through writing, through other mechanisms. And there has to come a time when the press starts to pull back on this Silicon Valley is bad. these investors are terrible these founders are dumb they're kooky they don't want to shake hands it's all becoming very personal and unnecessarily dunking on us yeah and this and i don't have particularly thin skin no at some point it gets to be it gets to be a lot it gets to be very one note it's nine out of if you got 10 if you were contacted the last 10 times by the press of those 10 times how many times do you think it was a negative slanted story so many times so seven eight nine seven.

Okay, I was going to say eight or nine. Yeah. And I always write back to them, this is the third time you've gotten back to, you've, you know, DM'd me. Yeah. Because they slide into your DMs like, hey, want to talk on the phone? I'm like, no, I'll talk to you. You ask my question here. And it's always the same thing.

Like, you know, Uber, there's this, this. And I said, do you want to meet any of the 200 companies I've invested in since Uber that are doing really important stuff in the world? Because you haven't written about Blockable, you haven't written about CafeX, X, you haven't written about Lead IQ, you haven't been written about Ruby Love. Can you do a profile in one of these companies that's doing a great job? And, you know, as I tweeted, tech leaders are asking the tech press to take a pause and ask themselves if they could do better covering tech less hysterically and negatively. Which is very similar to what the tech press has tech leaders to do of the last couple years, which is be better and act more honorably. Both parties can improve. Wade, you're a founder. Your company was not built off the press.

You didn't need the press. When you're watching all this going on, how do you think about the press as a founder with not a lot of investors and you know, a ton of revenue. Do you even bother with the press? Do you have a press strategy? How do you look at the press as somebody with an at-scale business? You know, obviously the press is important because they can help amplify a story. So like if you can do it well, then it's advantageous. But it is tricky. Like you, you know, you're competing with things that get clicks. And so, you know, there's a lot of hardworking people in press that are trying to write good stories, do good work. But as a culture of society, we like watching a train wreck. And so it's hard when you're running one of these

business saying like, hey, I want to write a feel good story when as a culture, like, that's not what we want to watch. We love watching this. People don't go on each other. That's what we like. And so there's, I think there's more systemic problem here where it's like, like, as a society, how can we get our attention more on things that actually are generating positive good things happening in society and try and just move more of that direction instead of, you know, watching things fall apart all around us. Is the, is the ascension of podcasting, because you kind of alluded to this, Monique, and I think it's a really interesting and subtle point, the ascension of podcasting in a way

is a reaction to the dissension and the degrading of journalism in print or journalism in text. they're not making any money there. They're quoting us out of context there. They're desperately trying to get clicks. So they will spin the stories to be as tribal and, you know, aggressive as possible, sometimes to the point as in this case where it's just a goof. It's a serious story and they made it goofy.

Like you could really lean on Silicon Valley to give you very good insights. You could have gone to Google. You could have gone to Facebook and said, hey, do you have any data on how coronavirus is being talked about? Does that relate in some way to how this is spreading? There's so many ways you could spend this. When we get back from this quick break, I want you to, Monique, tell us about podcasting in relation to what's happening now. We get back on the Phoenix service. Listen, time and place is everything.

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I mean, everybody could use the Hyundai and everybody needs a little marketing, some more customers. All right, let's get back to this amazing episode. All right, Monique Woodward is back with us. You can follow her on the Twitter, Monique Woodward. Woodard. I'm sorry, I keep saying Woodward. Yeah, Woodard. How are we doing on each other?

Over 10 years. And Wade Foster is here. W-A-D-E-F-O-S-T-E-R on the Twitter. He's the CEO of Zapier, which makes you happier. Hey, and you're sponsoring the podcast. Thank you for that. I was really heartwarming to see. And super easy for me to do the entry because I use your product every day.

That's, yeah. It's easy to sponsor. when you love the product. We do use this every day, so here's how it works. The way I actually started using yours was, remember Twitter and Instagram got on the war? Oh, yeah. And they wouldn't support it. So it's like, anytime I post on Insta, repost my image to Twitter.

That was when I found out about your service. Yeah. So we were talking a little bit, Monique, about the extension of podcasting. We can all sit here and spend 15, 20 minutes talking about the, this issue of journalism, and we'll talk about four more, five more issues of this great episode. And I can't misquote you here. You speak for yourself. People can see the look on your face when you say something. They can hear the context. When you say something to the press, you can say something like, you know, this isn't really important, but certainly, you know,

X factor comes into play here. And they can take that, cut out, this really isn't the important point, and just take whatever you said and put that in the headline as the lead to the, you know, as the headline or the link banning or whatever. Is podcasting the future of all this, you think? And in subjects,

you kind of alluded to this that we're kind of routing around. Like, I don't go to the press anymore. Yeah. I am the press. I have 25 million listeners a year. I don't need to be on anybody else's podcast. I don't need to talk to any journalist ever.

Why would I talk to a journalist? If I have something to say, I say it here. Audience comes to direct. Can't misinterpret. in me. Is this the future? It's not just podcasting. It's podcasting. It's substack, having your own newsletter, controlling your own email list, and being able to control your voice and what you put out into the world. So podcasting is certainly part of that and definitely gives people who either

didn't have a voice or felt that they were misrepresented in some way, a voice that they can control. Right. So I think, you know, the rise of podcasts, obviously, obviously started with like voices as a platform and having you know these devices in our home right so that was like the first foray yeah and then we started layering podcasting on top of that and i think it will continue i think people want to control the way that they are seen by by the public right and people want to be able to control what they put out into the public and i highly recommend to founders to anyone um you know in the industry control your message don't let the means control the message for you.

Right. Right. And do it either by writing regularly, podcasting regularly, or some piece of content that you are able to, like, get out there into the world. Yeah, you got to develop that muscle as a founder because you will get spun. I mean, look what's happening to Lambda School right now. I think that might be in the notes coming up.

But, you know, they're getting savaged online. And luckily, the kid Austin, who runs that, who's been on the pot, he's coming back on the pod to talk about it. And these journalists are never going to be able to talk to him. You know who's going to be able to talk to him? Me. Because I'm not going to try to do gotcha journalism with him. I'm not going to have him come on in the first five minutes just grill him.

I'm going to say, hey, tell me what's going on. How's the business? Tell me honestly. And that's why our podcast is bigger than any journalist podcast intact. We're going to be just much bigger than the journalists because we're going to get better guests because they feel more comfortable having a real conversation here. You listen to a lot of podcasts with? I've started to listen to more.

You're getting into it? Yeah, starting to get into it. We started sponsoring stuff and like, all right, I got to understand the medium. Yeah, yeah. You have any of you like? Yeah. Well, reply all is the place I started because, yeah, those guys do really good. It's like fun, quirky, like, interesting.

It's weird, yeah, cool stuff. Yeah. People like that one. I like to listen to the people who are the most polarizing on each side. Oh, yeah. And I like to listen to them back to back. Sometimes on my drive home, I'll listen to Rachel Matta and Ben Shapiro. and they'll talk about the same stories every day.

And one of them is talking about Bernie Sanders in one way, one, the other. And then when they sync up is when it gets really interesting. Because they might say it slightly differently, but they're both a bit worried about Bernie Sanders, not, you know, Ben Shapiro's like, Bernie Sanders can't be Trump. He's going to just be like 40 people are, Trump's going to take 40 states. And Rachel Mattis saying the same thing, like, we've got to be careful what's going on here. We're not going to get Trump out with Bernie Sanders. They were like in sync on that actual issue. All right, moving on.

And Kara Swisher, looking for it to be on the pod. I think the solution to all this, by the way, for journalists, do a better job. Balance your coverage 50-50. If you're going to do for every time you're going to do one of these pieces that might be negative or critical of press, just try to write a profile of something promising. And remember, you know, why this industry is here to, like, building interesting products that help humanity. Like, we're not here to, like, destroy humanity, even though, like, sometimes that does seem to happen that, like, a technology is bad for humanity.

there are some good things going on here. Hey, SpaceX amounts is a plan to carry up to four private citizens into space by the end of 2021 or early 22. They announced agreement with space adventures, space tourism company. Prices of the mission will not be disclosed. We have a quick video of the SpaceX cabin design. It's pretty beautiful. My friend Chamath, partnered with Richard Branson on Virgin Galactic for low Earth orbit. And Bezos obviously doing Blue Origin.

Virgin plans on setting customer space later this year. Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, about 200K. And I guess the question is, is this, you guys, would ever, if you even had the money, considered doing this Wade? I mean, is this appealing to you? Like, as a kid. Well, yeah, you could afford this actually.

As a kid, like, being able to go to, like, how cool would it be to look down on Earth? That's pretty appealing to me except for the danger. Well, sure. But, like, I don't know. You get to be one of how many people have ever done it? I wouldn't be the first, but maybe the third. I don't know, you know.

First of third is kind of the same. I think there's four people on the same one. I guess that's true. So maybe I'll be on the third flight. Yeah, no, not for me. Yeah. Three thousand flight? No problem.

Yeah. I'm going to do the three thousand flight. I'm going to look at how many blow up. Yeah. Because I think it's, you know, I think it's a one in 500 chance these things blow up. Yeah. So that's not my kind of odds.

Yeah. I mean, I was actually thinking about the Kobe Bryant situation, tragically. I think it's one death per hundred thousand hours. of helicopter flight. Yeah. Which, that seems very safe. Unless you're flying helicopters

for 30 years every, you know, five days a week, and now of a sudden it looks like maybe you got a one in ten, you've got ten thousand hours

under your belt. You're starting to... Yeah, those odds are starting to not look so good. Exactly. It's sort of like the odds on a motorcycle. Like,

you know, it's really about how often you're on those things. Would you do it? Is it interesting to you at all? No. Not interesting, right? No.

You want to be safe. There's, it's not even the safety. It's just like, why? Why? There's so much stuff down here. Yeah, pretty good down here. It's pretty awesome. Yeah.

Go to Paris. Go to Bali. 200,000? Go a lot of good places. Right. Yeah. There's a lot of Amon hotels that goes, $1,500 a night.

I look at $200,000 right now, I think, that's 100 nights in Amman hotels. You know what the Amman Hotel is? You're going to start going to this way. Yeah. When you're, now that you're making a $50 million a year, and you're probably. Jesus, wow.

Yeah. You're going to take this in public? Mr. Minimalist over here. I know. Are you, what do they call those people? What's Tim Ferriss doing now? They're all doing, um, what's, uh, not Socratic. They're doing, like a Spartan kind of thing.

They're trying to be. I mean, minimalist. They're minimalists. It's another word. Yeah. I forgot. I don't know what the other word would be. But yeah.

Yeah. You know, I don't need things. Stoic. Stoic is good. Yeah, sure. Stoic. Are you stoic? I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm,

I mean, I've, like, read some of the stuff, but I wouldn't say I'm like Tim Ferriss levels of stoicism. But, yeah, I mean, it's, I think it's healthy. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Why? Well, it just, I think it keeps you, it allows you to have perspective on things, which is good. So you don't always get caught up one way or the other. You know, if times are good.

Two materials. Yeah, times are good. Times are bad. You know, whatever. This two shall pass. So, you know. This two shall pass. Yeah.

Lord of the Rings. There you go. All we have to do is decide to do with the time we've been given. Yeah, there you go. I like that. That's all. Yeah. When I hear that quote,

I get a little motion. I know, right? It's good. You're going to orbit the earth two to three times, 250 mile height, which is the international space space. I think Blue,

I think Virgin Galactic's going to be kind of low. I think this is going to become a thing. I think, I wonder how many people have already signed up for Virgin Galactic. And by the way, the stock is tripled.

I don't know if you saw that. They haven't even done these flights yet, and they tripled. But from what I understand, they have a large number of people who've either paid in full or put the deposit down. Do a quick search. Tell me how many people have done this. And let's go on to the next story, which is Kickstarter employees have unionized.

Yes. The average salary is $97,000 at Kickstarter. And they've unionized. 46 employees voted in favor, 37 opposed, which is kind of interesting in itself. and the debate's been a source of tension at the company for a number of months. But the reason they're doing it seems to be that there was a lot of tension about which projects they take. So it's very easy to look at this. And I made a, I sort of dunked on this as I'm prone to do on the Twitter.

I said, thank God the union was approved. Not sure how much longer these Kixir employees would last under these conditions. And then they screenshot it that the average salary there is 97K. But I actually think I would rather see these people get stock and have it go public. This is really weird to me that people who are making a ton of money need to have a union. When they could leave this company and have 20 other job, it's like, tech workers need a union? What do you think, Monique? Am I missing something here?

Is this my white mouse's privilege speaking? I'm not opposed to tech workers unionizing. Right. But is it in that sense? I actually think, I think it's net positive. Okay. Right. I think if tech workers start to unionize, you know, you'll have better issues around

treatment like as you get older, getting pushed out of a tech company. Okay. Age discrimination. Age discrimination. All types of discrimination, sexual harassment, all of those sorts of things. But aren't all those actionable already? Like, why do you need a union to step in to do that? You can just sue people if they do something bad like that.

You can, but it's really hard to sue a massive tech company that has a lot of money. Really? Even as a person who makes $97,000 a year, which is not actually that much here in San Francisco. I wonder. I think there's a lot of people take it on contingent, but I'm just wondering, like, would you want somebody as a like high paid tech worker, would you want somebody in between you and your ability to negotiate?

Because my understanding is a lot of these companies want this to happen. This is the back channel that I heard. Okay. Give me the back channel. I'm giving you the back channel. This is fantastic. now we don't have to negotiate salaries anymore because everybody with five years gets 97

everybody six years gets 103 everybody with 12 years gets this we no longer have to have some otherworldly developer who is the 10x developer which does exist in the world you could have a 5 or 10x of anything 10x salesperson 5x salesperson

5x marketer 510x we don't have to pay them more because we just look at the union chart and say well the union says is what we pay you and when Garker and all those all the media companies, which are like sinking, as we talked about in segment one, they're all sinking and unionizing at the same time. Yeah.

So they're literally fighting over like the last little bit of, like, they're literally fighting over the remaining lifeboats on the Titanic. That's the way I look at it in the media sense. In this sense, these things are going up into the right. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think the fact that that is the back channel kind of speaks to the need for better worker protections. Yeah.

Right? Is it that sort of making the case? I did think that actually. It's interesting that we were thinking the same thing. And I thought to myself, well, I think they would rather not deal with a union person. Yeah. Like coming to their office and be like, I represent 3,000 developers at Google. They all want more kind bars.

And then I would just be like, okay, you know what? We're now turning all the food to paid. No more free food. Like, that's what this is going to turn into. because the benefits that people have at tech companies are absurd. Yeah. So what is the union going to do and be like, Google, you're spending, Google spends $17 a day, I think, on lunch for age person or something crazy like that. It's just lunch.

Like, what are they going to do? Come in and say, we want you spend 24? I don't know. Wade, what do you think? If your employees came to unionize, like, would you be like, okay, fine? Or is this necessary? I don't know. So the unit I'm most familiar with is the Players Union for Major League Baseball.

Clearly, those people are very well paid. I mean, highest of the highest. However, you can look at how the players association in major league baseball are not happy with the agreements they have. Because when you're early in your career, your salaries are depressed. So you see a player like Mike Trout who gets paid basically nothing for the first, you know, five years of his career. But he's the best player in baseball. But that's what the union has negotiated with owners. So he can't be outside the union.

Yeah, so he can't. Everyone is a part of the union. I don't understand it. Can you be outside the union? Like if LeBron James said, you know what, I don't want to be a part of the union. Well, I think, I'm not really sure if you can't. I think you has to be a part of the union. I think you have to be right. And it creates this weird incentive where, you know, you sort of in major league baseball, you, your career arc looks like the first five, ten years of your career. You're playing at the top of the game. But you're under these union issues where you can't be a free agent. Then by the time you're a free agent, you're sort of over the hill a little bit. So, like, you. You. You. clearly have earned that salary and you go out and try and get one, but no one wants to pay you that because they don't think you can deliver on it anymore. So what's happened is what the union is negotiated in Major League Baseball isn't what's best for the players. So it feels like, you know,

you can have unions that do a good job of negotiating on behalf of their, you know, workforce. And you can equally have unions that do a bad job of negotiating on behalf of your workforce. So in my mind, unions are neither good nor bad. It just is how capable are. the people who are running those of advocating for the the workforce. It's fascinating to me, like in the NBA, they look at the rookies because they also have cap salaries. Yeah, they want those players. And they're like, this rookie is an asset because they're getting paid $2,000 or $3 million,

but they're performing better than this $15 million, $32-year-old. And it's like, well, that's like unnecessarily insane. Like, why would a person who's performing over have their salary captains because the union negotiated that? For other protections, like, hey, if you're going to drug test people or there are times when a group of people saying, hey, enough. Because with the NBA players, they wanted to like take blood samples and like put wearables on them and just have every single piece of data on them 24 hours a day. And they're like, yeah, no, I am not like a piece of livestock here where you're going to like put. me into a pen and literally study everything. I mean, this is like really oppressive. Paradoxically, some folks are opting into it because they want to optimize for health and they're doing

blood tests on their own and hiring third parties to do it. But there's something weird about like, my boss is taking my blood test and like knows my sleep patterns and everything every day of my life. Yeah, there's something very weird and invasive about that. It feels invasive, right? And so that's what the players association. And then also NBA players can't smoke weed. What? Yeah. Like, San Francisco, I can't not smoke weed if I walked down the street. We had a meeting in the studio the other day.

We opened the window. The guy was blazing a joint that was so fat that the whole room smelled like, this poor guy sitting by the window couldn't pitch his company. I'm not joking. He was contact-eyed. Yeah. Well, congratulations to Kickstarter. Kickstarter is also like a charming company in a way because they decided they would be a

benefit corporation, never go public or anything. So I think Kickstarter does not, is in no way representative of tech actual companies. I think that unionization of tech companies are going to fail because at a company like Kickstarter, which is a socialist company, like literally like a communist socialist kind of company, they don't want to go public. They don't ever want to pay their investors back. They've been very public about. They want to B-corp.

They would be a nonprofit if they could. They were upset about a punch-a-Nazi book, I think, either being taken off or put on. So the actual employees want control over which projects they put on Kickstarter. So I think that's the core of this. Interesting. Which is even more interesting. It's not about pay.

I think it's about what, if I come to work at Kickstarter, do I want to have a Ben Shapiro or a Milo Yianopoulos Kickstarter up on there? You know, like, or. I want to have a say in the sort of moral or ethical work that we do as a company. Yeah. Right. which is really getting interesting here. I mean, I don't know if you saw the Oracle thing

with Larry Ellison. It's like hosting Trump and like somebody who did a petition. I was like, that person doesn't want to work at Oracle apparently. Can you imagine you're at Oracle? Larry Ellison has a fundraiser for Trump. And then you go on to the Oracle. My understanding is the person went on to the Oracle, like chat system or whatever and circulated a petition.

It's like, yeah. You work for Larry Ellison. Like the guy's got owns half the samurai swords in existence. guy bought every piece of samurai armor in the world there's no samurai armor left I was talking to another billionaire he's like he can't get any samurai armor I'm like what he's talking about

he's like all the samurai armor is in first rule problems right there Larry Ellison quartered the market on swords and armor from like feudal times in Japan you get new stuff you want to get a new samurai so you can get it just not the old stuff he's got it's either in a museum

or Larry Ellison's backyard I was in the market for some samurai. Well, you know who to go to. I know. You know, I'm looking at a new... I'll show up at the Trump fundraiser. Yeah, there you go. I have a new SaaS company.

You can look at a samurai as a service. I'm actually the co-founder. You basically just take out your phone. You just get a samurai shows up. How about that? It's like 200 bucks an hour. Listen, some people have bodyguards. I just walk down the street with a samurai.

You can't carry a weapon, but you know, a gun, but... You can have a samurai with sword. How great would that be? That would be amazing. This is what I'm going to do. if I'm ever a billionaire, Wade. I'm literally, when I'm a billionaire, I'm going to get two samurai guards.

Just walk around. And I'm just going to walk around with two samurai. And people go, can I take a selfie? The samurai's going to go, shh. Oh, wow. And like, look at him. Okay, you can do something. Yeah.

I always wanted more of a jam band behind me. You did, yeah. Pump up your life a little bit. I think that would be cool. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Just have like, there's like a commercial about that.

You know, a guy like. Bob Weir behind you. Yeah. It's like, you know, he spills his coffee on a shirt and it's like just needs a little bit of a pick-me-up or something. Absolutely. Yeah. Blue's Traveler.

Yeah. Get her monica. We've got there, Monica. That guy. That'd be great. Behind you. All right, when we get back, we're going to talk about a great new world. A lot of people making products for old people, for old people, for old, which I am going to be part of.

I'm going to be 50 this year. It's over for me. We're all going to be part of it. We're all going to be part of it. I'm hoping that I'm going to be part of this because I'm hoping that I can make it to 120 years old. I want to be, what do they call those zones? whether people make it to 120 or something, or a blue zone, over 100?

No. No? You want to go out on top of your game? Put my head in a nothing. I like, all right, that's fine. It got dark. We'll be back in a minute. Listen, if you broke your arm, would you go to the doctor?

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That's betterhelp.com slash twist, H-E-L-P. Let's get back to this amazing episode. All right, everybody, welcome back to this week in startups our news round table. February 21st, 2020. Monique Woodard is with us

and Wade Foster from Zapier, which makes you happier. Gray New World. Is the gray world? Is that a new term for this industry? Services for people over 50 or 60? You know, I think people are calling it a lot of different things. I've heard people calling it Elder Tech.

Elder Tech, I heard, yeah. People are calling it the longevity economy. You know, I just happen to call it the gray new world. Yeah, love it. Thank you. Okay, boomer. Okay, boomer. Okay, boomer.

It's like they're saying, okay, boomer now. Yeah, exactly. To Gen X. How old do you weigh? Do you 32? 33. Yeah, I got that. So you're a millennial or you're on the...

I'm a millennial. So you would say okay boomer to Monique and I in an ironic way knowing we're not boomers. Ah, okay. That's how it works. You're like, yeah, I don't participate. So in this study done by Cake MX, whoever that is, 500 people age 55 to 70, I don't know who they are. It's me. That's your fund?

I did the study, Jason. We talked about this at dinner. I didn't know what Cake MX is. Is Cake MX your company? Sorry, that threw me off. I knew you were doing, you did a report on it, but I didn't know what Cake MX. Okay, so Cake MX is yours. Yeah.

This is your 2020 report on aging. We're very good friends. What does Cake MX stand for? It's cake mix. Got it. Perfect. 17 million boomers in the U.S. spend $3.2 trillion annually by 2030. 20, 20% of the U.S. will be 60%.

I didn't know that. We have an aging population. And they spent 27 hours a week online, $7 billion in online shopping and 10,000 boomers returning 65 every day, 7,9% plan to age in place, not move to a retirement. And why is that last piece so important? So previously, a lot of people would expect to move into an assisted living facility, a retirement home, or some other sort of place outside the home as they age. But what we're now seeing is that people are actually wanting to age in their homes and stay in their homes, which brings up, yeah. I don't want to leave. Well, see, you'll be aging in place.

But it brings up a lot of interesting challenges and issues. So how do you help people remain safe in their own home? How do you help them continue to age as they lose mobility and maybe can't move up the stairs? So one, I think there are lots of opportunities to help them age it within the home. How do you help people remodel their home so they can. can stay in it longer. How do you help people continue to afford their home on a retirement salary? Right. Reverse mortgage. Exactly. Airbnb being part of it. Right. Or something like Silverness, where I'm an investor, where Silver Nest is a platform that matches like-aged roommates so that you can

rent out a part of your home. So it's Airbnb for seniors. What a great idea. Yeah. This is one of the things, like where I live here in the peninsula, I live in the Hillsboro Burlingame area. And Very few homes come up for sale because the way we do taxes here is taxes are based on whenever you bought the home. So if you bought the home in the 70s or 80s for a million dollars or $500,000 you're paying 1% of that, then the home becomes worth $5 million or $10 million. And you can't leave because wherever you go, the taxes are going to be so high. So people are living in 4,000, you know, five bedroom square foot homes with two people. The kids, they're empty nesters.

and they need to do something with those extra rooms and so some of them are doing Airbnb's or they put what's called an ADU accessory dwelling unit called an in-law house. In-law house. They move into the in-law house that rent the main house. And then that's how they make their money, right?

So for their retirement. And we're totally seeing stuff like medicine and prescriptions go online. Definitely you have nest cams and remote telemedicine happening. Yeah, this is going to be a big space. Any other companies you find in here? There was one company we had in the podcast

that's doing loneliness for women over 50. Yeah, Revel. Revel. That's a great idea. Rivel, Papa. Papa is also focusing on social isolation, sort of grandkids as a service.

So having college students come over, run errands, play chess, you know, do all the things that grandkids might do. But, you know, families are much more distributed than they were before, right? So you may live a thousand miles away from your grandparents. Right. And so it's creating these really interesting challenges, but that's where I think startups can step into the middle of and create platforms and services that are specifically targeted to this massive group. And we're also on the customer of a care crisis. We don't have enough care workers to actually take care of people as they get older.

And home care, home health care is a huge turnover industry and people are tremendously underpaid for the services that they're at. actually providing. So how do we help people access better care as they get older? Yeah, we had an investment home hero, which was trying to automate this. It didn't work out. And then we had Seth from Honor. Honor on the pod as well. He's trying to make home care automated. That's so expensive, so hard to do. But what I love about Poppin, some of those other platforms is they're not medical attendance. They're just people who run errands. Exactly. And that loneliness is such a big part of this and online can solve that. Yeah, wow. What a great space. Yeah, it's a great space. It's one of the major demographic changes that I think are changing the way we should be investing.

For those of you wondering, Lisa from Revel was on episode 970 and Andrew Parker from Papa was on episode 875. We're getting to the point now way that everybody's been a podcast. So anytime we mention every company, we just say a number. Oh yeah, Wade. Wade was 626. 626. That's your number. 66. I'll have to remember that.

Just remember 626. Anybody asked you, should say 626? Look it up. Three figures. So are you going to raise a fund around this, you think? Or is this going to be like a specific thing? Yeah, I am going to raise a fund around that demographic change white space. Aging is certainly a part of it.

It won't be just aging. Right. You said before, yeah, you want to also do the changing demographic. I think there are also other changing demographics that are going to be. areas that investors should be investing heavily in. Yeah. We actually have a company in our accelerator called Nudebar, and Serena Williams also was an angel investor in it, and they make undergarments that come in 12 different shades, because

Erin, the woman who's the founder, was a Nick City dancer, my team, and she shows up, and they give her like a pair of stockings and leggings for her outfit, and they're beige, and she's black. and there's many tones and the skin tones now because we have so many people who are mixed race my kids are mixed race I mean like so many draws so many people are marrying each other and having mixed race kids you don't even have underwear that matches for women so yeah I mean how is that not exist? Which one? Cosmetics and beauty have also been huge industries the rise of Finty um finty finty is uh Rihanna's beauty brand oh right yes um so it was one of the first that came out

with like this huge array of shades that would actually match skin tones that weren't light, medium, and dark, right? That literally with the three tones. Right. They're like, minted cosmetics, which I invested in, beauty brand for women of color. Right. Also trying to, you know, give you better lipsticks that actually match browner skin tones, better makeup.

Amazing. Like, such a huge opportunity. And all these demographics just totally underserviced. Exactly. It's like when you put a product out, that's good. If there's no other competing products, you're competing against nobody. It's just a perfect path to victory. Yeah.

Consumers are super hungry for this. So I think this is a massive opportunity. Huge. All right, Twitter is combating fake news with some new features. NBC News put up an article. There's a leaked Twitter demo. And they plan on putting. And let's see, they're testing new ways to fight this.

and Ben Collins says here's what it might look like, might. This is his design. These are screenshots that were left on a public testing site. Twitter confirmed they're possible iterations. So these are not official yet. But it's a Bernie Sanders suite that says 40% of the guns in the country are sold without any background checks. We have to end the absurdity of the gun show loophole. harmfully misleading.

Twitter community reports have identified this tweet as violating community policy on harmful misleading information tweets visibility or reduced. That's bonkers. And this shows you how hard it is to police speech. Yeah. Like, this is not Twitter's job to do this. I mean, just from this tweet, this will never work. What do you think, Wade?

I'm glad you have a platform. I'm glad they're trying. Yeah. it's a Herculian task But Twitter for so long It was just it hadn't changed I didn't tried to do anything

So it's I like seeing Technology companies At least a Make an attempt Yeah Yeah I like that there's an attempt

To filter out fake news But I don't I worry that this can be weaponized By troll farms Of course Right? Because it is community driven rather than, you know, an editorial board or something like that. So I can see this

easily being weaponized by by people who have wrong intentions. There's an interesting article on Wikipedia. I read a while back. I forget where it was and maybe the New York Times or something like that, where they talked about how Wikipedia has managed to remain somewhat neutral in a very, in a community-driven way, because anyone can make changes to to that. And so really dug into how two polarizing sets of people can attack a controversial topic site of Wikipedia and come out with it something that reads fairly, fairly neutral. That's because they pause the page. They lock it down.

They've got this like cobble of like early editors who kind of all agree. Yeah. Like librarians. I think the co-founders, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wells, co-founders of Wikipedia, really Larry Sanger was the person who actually came up with the concept and Jimmy Wells took credit for it. because he paid for the servers, which is a little point of history. And they lock those pages down. Those people are all librarians in that early cohort. They went to the people with library science degrees.

So what actually happened is when a page gets, you know, really controversial, they just lock it down and they don't let anybody's edits go through. Yeah. And then if they'll lock it like a month later, if there aren't a bunch of edits, if it happens again, they just lock it down, any controversial page. And here's where it gets, when you want to talk about, like, how insane it is to try to do this. The potential UI, question one, given current evidence, is it likely this tweet contains harmfully misleading information that could cause real world harm to intervals aside, likely harmful misleading, unlikely harmful misleading. Question two, what percentage of the community members will answer the same as you?

The more accurate your answer, the more your report will count, the more you receive question three, and they have a slider from zero to 100 percent. What about this tweet does or does not make it harmlessly? This is the kind of interface that's so easy as you're saying when you need to just game. Yeah. the Russians are like, thank you. Clear shot on goal. Everything Trump says is 87% true.

Everything that Bloomberg says is 14% true. Block her up. Isn't this already built into Twitter that you can reply and retweet people and fact check them? So why not just, if I was Twitter, you know what I do? I would hire a third party company with 20, like, serious researchers on it, make it public who those researchers were, and then have a Twitter account called at fact check.

And I would make that count verified. I'd explain what that count does. And I would say every day, look at the trending tweets, and reply to them with a fact check. Based on what these 20 people say, we have gone away from the age of respecting expertise to thinking the crowd knows better. The crowd does not always know better. quotes from the article disinformation or misleading information posted by public figures

will be corrected directly beneath the tweet by fact checkers and journalists where verify on the platform and possibly other users who participate in the community reports. Okay, well, that was just my idea. Yeah. Oh, I didn't realize.

So there we got it. There you go. In one iteration of demo, Twitter users could own points and a community badge if they contribute to good faith. I would not make this a community thing. I would literally hire 20 experts

and let those people debate it on a different form. And actually, I had this idea. I bought the domain name annotated. Dot com. And I still own it. And my idea was to just hire 20 fact trackers, maybe when I retire, I'll do this, and just have them annotate stuff on the web they think it's right or wrong. How would you do, Wade? What would you do here?

What would your approach me? You think this is going to work? You think they're going to execute on this? You said it's nice they're trying. I agree. Yeah. I mean, it feels like it gets heavily slanted towards the majority opinion, like the majority belief will stand out. And so it could reduce the voice of folks who are just simply underrepresented, which,

you know, I don't know if that's good or bad. It seems like we should have all viewpoints represented here. I certainly like the idea of having fact checkers, like literal experts that have sort of, you know, that are digging into these topics replying to it. So maybe it helps, but I don't know. It seems hard. I'm skeptical.

All right. When we get back for this quick break, Blue Apron went from being worth $1.9 billion to a market cap of now $58. million. The stock is down 97% since their IPO. I want to know, is this a bad sign for DoorDash and seamless, or are those different type of companies? And what we think

went wrong here, they raised 200 million of funding before the IPO, and is this indicative of some bigger picture? We can spin it into the fight between DoorDash Grubhub and Uber Eats. Let me get back on the future. Hey, everybody. Have you been thinking

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Thanks again to Dell for supporting independent media like this podcast. All right, Blue Apron continues. It's fall from grace. Wow. 1.9 billion at their IPO. Now the mark gaps 58 million stock down 97%. Was this just a bad business model or a bad product market? fit? What do you think? Did you ever use it? I've never used blue apron. I used it. It was actually

good. Yeah. We didn't keep using it, but we did use it and enjoy it. I could see. There's the problem right there. Yeah. Well, I think if I was like a busy person, I would use it. I'm not actually that busy and I like to cook, but I like going to the market and buying stuff. I don't like somebody else doing all that. I enjoy going to the market. I'm like one of those people who likes to go to the farmer's market and look at stuff and that was our problem too yeah this is you know my wife wants to pick out the produce like she doesn't trust anyone else to do it for and so yeah are there enough busy people who want that like to cook actually have the time to cook so won't order things online right and want to have things delivered to them in a box and for how long do they want to do that and pay a

premium for it and play a premium for it uh right so it fits between ordering on Uber Eats and DoorDash, Postmates, or buying your own food and cooking it. It's not that much different maybe than buying your own food and cooking it. And if you're busy, you go to DoorDash or Uber Eats or whatever. Right. Or you go out to eat. Yeah.

It seemed to fit, it didn't fit. What I think is really interesting, and I do, is I go to a couple of shops locally that prepare food and they freeze it. Because when you have kids, you get busy. And they have this great mac and cheese, this great eggplant, palm. The girls love it. I love it. And I'll just keep that in the refrigerator.

And then if we're busy, I can just pop in the mac and cheese, eggplant parm, you know, maybe, you know, roast chicken and boom, we're done. And I like that kind of a service that would keep your refrigerator. And there are some of these new stoves that are doing, like, pre-prepared meals that you can slide in. but I guess they may be up for sale yeah this just seems like going public before you have product market fit is a bad idea that's how I would file this I mean the unit economics of this business were just

not good it was difficult yeah this was always a difficult business to run and I just I just think the public markets didn't didn't drink the Kool-Aid yeah you know yeah I mean the public markets say what you will about them and there are weird moments that happened, like all these people shorting tests and then all these people who are long tests.

Like, these are very weird moments. And in a way, it's just like people betting. There's a huge incentive system, money, and people can bet against each other as to what they think is going to happen, just like they do in sports. And the betting line moves in sports. Well, the betting line here said, I don't think that this has enough margin to scale. And then with Uber, they did the same thing. They said, you know what?

We would like you to prove to us that you could be profitable and what did Uber do? Okay. We're going to sell some unprofitable units. We're going to shut down some offices. And every time they do that and they close the gap, the stock goes up two bucks. And I'm like, okay, if this is what it's going to take, by all means, I still have most of my shares. Let's go. Let's make it profitable.

That's what the public market wants. And I think what we found is the perfect system. Private markets, go for growth. If you have good union economics, go for growth. Build the biggest pie possible. And then public markets, you've got to shift gears a little bit. So maybe it can be too, we can make that happen a little smoother. But I do think in the private markets, if there's enough private funding, why not go for growth if you have good union economics?

But you did it differently with. Well, yeah, I mean, I think eventually all businesses are meant to generate cash. They have to generate some cash enough to pay your expenses. And in the private markets, perhaps you can sort of delay that, but not for forever. eventually the sort of tastes of, you know, the private markets will change. And if your business isn't set up to manage that shift, you're going to be caught, you know, with the tides going out on you. I assume that your business is either very profitable or could be if you chose to.

When you look at the end of the year and you say, hey, well, we could have, you know, whatever amount of money coming back to shareholders distributed to pay taxes, do you just look at that and say, well, I'll just invest it in the business. Yeah, we generally are trying to figure out, hey, where are the new areas we can go invest in? Right. And chase those things. Right. So you like to do what Bezos did, which is the $1 profitable company.

Yeah. It's like, you know, you want to sort of manage it. We set a baseline for the year and say, hey, this is where we think we're going to be at the end of the year. That's our budget. Perfect. Did you ever go over and say, hey, let's be more aggressive? Like, you just were too profitable and like, you know what? Let's just see if we can deploy this money.

We've never tried. tried to spend more than that. Not more, but if you got close to it, do you say like, let's try to invest more? Have those moments happen where you're sitting around a table saying, how can we grow the business faster? How can we put the other money? Yeah, well, we'll ask those questions of ourselves. But we're always looking at the end of the day, is this fundamentally sound? Is this a thing that can generate cash over the long haul?

We're not trying to come up with plays where it's like, well, we hope that some third party is going to decide that we can keep having our fun over here. We want to be able to control our own destiny. Yeah, smart. You know, I had that happen with the podcast itself. I was like, well, the podcast is doing really well. Let's try it. I did it last year.

I was like, what if we spent 10% of whatever money we make promoting the podcast? So we just would promote clips to people we probably don't know about the show. So we'll take some clips from this. And every episode, maybe put $1,000, $2,000 to promoting those clips that then get people to think. And since we started doing that last year, the number of people who stopped me on the street went up 5x. And it's like, oh, they're a lot. people who aren't fans of the show who are running into the show. They're running into a great guest. And then we pull them into the longer episode. Yeah, you get more casual fans to check

you out. Exactly. Because people are busy. And marketing actually works. Lambda school in these ISAs, income sharing agreements have become quite controversial. Just so people understand, you can go to a school called Lambda, L-A-M-D-B-D-A. they will let you pay I think $20,000 in cash we had Austin the founder on he was on episode number will come up in my chat in a minute

anyway Austin was on the pod really smart kid and he's very vocal on Twitter they will let you pay $20,000 I think it's a nine month program you pay it up front or you can pay a percentage your salary that's higher

and that winds up being $30,000 they were bundling all of these ISAs income sharing agreements, basically like student loans, and bundling them selling them to people who are like, oh, wow, we're going to make

whatever, 10% on this, not 4%. It's a good deal. So they would bundle them up. This to me sound like a good use of the financial system. The issue that's come up now, and again, back to the press

being potentially either watchdogs or overly negative, the headline Lambda School of Buzzy Online Coding Boot Camp backed by Big Silicon Valley names could be placing far fewer graduates and jobs than it says. That's actually a pretty straight headline. I like it. And that's from Business Insider. They claim 86% of graduates, according to this story, are hired within six months. In May 19, they told investors that roughly 50% of

students are placed six months after graduation. So who knows if these two numbers were changed over time. It could be changing over time. Lambda says the numbers were taking out of context and that it will be releasing its own data shortly. I'll take them out their word. Students allegedly felt the quality fell short and some even likened it to a cult. I like the idea when people make it a cult. That's to me like a good sign that something's powerful. But not everybody is going to get the value of the education. So if you look at the, the way I look at this is you look at the college education system,

how many people come out of their degrees and are like, well, that wasn't worth it? I think that's like 80% of people probably look back on their college degree and are like, well, on a dollar basis, I mean, I'm glad I did it, perhaps, but on a dollar basis, maybe not worth it. What do you think is going on here? So I think the bigger issue is that students have been complaining about the level of quality that their instructors kind of churn out at a high rate and that they're not getting what they paid for. So I think that is the biggest issue that I see. The 86% versus 50%, who knows when those numbers were quoted? I love 50%. I mean, do 50% of it? Do 50%

of college graduates get a great job in their field? I don't think so. Right. So I think as long as they're not wildly misrepresenting those numbers, right, to two potential students in particular, I think, you know, I'm not that worried about it. I tend to agree. I mean, the ISA is, it's intriguing. Like, if it works out, like, this is better than going to college.

College is expensive and it takes a long time. So if this is fruitful, then great. If the marketing is misleading If they're sharing false numbers That's a problem Like you don't want to hoodwake someone Into you know Come in to spend time on your program

If you can't back it up So I don't know If I'm in their shoes I'm being very careful about the numbers I put out Always be conservative You don't want to hoodwink people Yeah you want to bamboozle people You want to under promise

Over deliver That's like Totally Totally It's going to turn into a Donniebrook All right Crazy Yeah

No I mean I am very attuned to this because people are like, oh, we have a thing, the syndicate.com, which you should join Wade, now that you're rich and you got this company, you should join Angel investing. But anyway, you can look at the deals I'm investing in.

You can put in 2K or 10K, and I'm very clear with people like, majority of startups fail. Yeah. I'm not kidding. 80% go to zero. This money is probably disappearing. Yes.

And the people who have, according to Angelus study or any relative study, you need to hit a certain number of investment to have a chance of an outside return, like maybe investing in a Zapier. That means you're going to have a lot of blue aprons

and maybe hit a Zapier on your 30th. And I tell people, I think the number is 30 in terms of diversification, but that's my guess. Only invest money you can lose. And that's why I put in our syndicate the lowest possible minimum, which is like one or two thousand.

I think we go 2,000. And if somebody emails, like, can I put just a thousand? And I'm like, sure. If we have room, I don't want anybody ever coming to me saying I misrepresented anything, right? And I don't think that serves Austin either.

The weird part that nobody's talking about here is, my understanding of this is, if you don't get a job, you don't pay, right? You don't pay. So what are we talking about here? If they're taking the risk of giving you the education for free, what does it matter? Let's just say, they don't chase people down

when they become a barista and say, we're going to take 14% of your barista income after the nine-month program, if 10% got jobs, it would still be worth running because they took the risk. And if one out of 10 people, and it costs $20,000, if it costs, let's say, 15,000 to provide the program, that's their actual cost. If one out of 10 people actually became a developer, that would actually be worth it for society. And then people were like, well, what if you waste nine months and what if you drop out of college

to do this? That's like what some people might say. Yeah. This is where the expectations are what matters. Like if those students come into that agreement knowing that like, hey, the odds are one in 10 and it's likely I'm one of the nine of ten and I'm still willing to put the effort in, that's on them. Listen, if it's one in 10 and it's nine months, I think a lot of kids should go spend nine months trying 10 different things. It's like six or seven years of your life. It's called your 20s.

Go try. I would rather see students instead of going to a college and going 250K debt for a philosophy degree. I would have rather done this. Yeah. Yeah. Here we go. We're going to try up to 10 different. careers, nine months each, and maybe you get to career three, four, or five, each one is

$20,000, but we'll take the risk. And whichever one hits, hits. Fantastic. Yeah. I don't understand. It's like you do something good in the world. I think people are just looking for a way to attack you. I think if you back up from Lambda School as a company and think about how much attention is paid to relatively young startups that are going to kind of make some mistakes. Right. That's the idea. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Let's make some mistakes and see if we can make something that changes the world. Exactly. So I think, you know, one of the bigger issues is people paying way too much attention to super early, super young startups that might win, that might fail, that are probably going to make a lot of mistakes and expecting them to be these perfectly formed companies really early in their life cycle. Yeah. You're going to make mistakes. We all make mistakes in those first couple of years. Like how many things, wait, have you looked at your first.

three years in business, would you change if you go back? I mean, we tried to, like, there's a bunch of small mistakes. You try and make your mistakes small. So you go back and there's things where I'm like, yep, that didn't work. We spent too much money there. We hired the wrong person there. We spent, we launched a feature that didn't work. Like, there's tons of that stuff.

But you try and keep them contained. You try and keep them small. And that way, when it doesn't work out, it's not that big of a deal. Yeah, it sucks. You wish you wouldn't have done it differently. But we call it an experiment in the business. Yeah. We ran an experiment.

it took six months, we should have done it in three. Or we should have run two experiments, or we should have constructed the experiment better. Yeah. But imagine having to make those early mistakes under a microscope. Yeah, I mean, that's not fun. And how detrimental that would be to both like your mental health as a founder, but also to the business itself.

Oh, yeah, I wouldn't want to be under the microscope that, you know, Austin's under right now. Like, that's intense. That's hard. By the way, Wade, I wish all my founders made the mistake of raising a million dollars and generating 50 million a year. Jesus. please let's make some of those mistakes

you didn't even know what's going on in Monique and I's portfolios we got people who took 10 million burned it and made a million I like this one million to make 50 oh my god you're efficient yeah

that's a great feeling look at us who would have guessed it it's a good business not me yeah it's a good business what a great business

people want to buy your business that's what I understand what's the path for your business you just want to keep doing this don't you? Well, so we're trying to democratize automation. Like everyone should have the ability to like sort of create apps, the whole no code movement. Like that's the point. You are the no code move. By the way, I had the guy from Webflow on. Yeah, Vlad. And Vlad and I had bubble on. Yeah. And I was like, you know what no code means to me? Zapier. Mm-hmm. That's no code. And it's the point of it.

Like engineers have known this for a long time. If we were able to build things, your automate things, you have leverage on the world. You can do things and create value in a way that others can't. Well, Turns out not many people can code. So if everyone has this ability, they can create leverage, too, on the things that are around them, in their job, in their businesses, whatever they're doing. And so how do we give that superpower to everybody? That's what we're trying to do. We're loving it now.

Because we have the syndicate.com has 4,000 members now. By the way, if you had one of these great deals, we could send a syndicate, maybe we could co-split the car or something, maybe, you know, have you got something, maybe. We'll give you a little taste. I cut off a little slice for Monique. And what's going on with the, we got the 50 Bips as you need a board member? What's going on? It feels like you're halfway there.

Maybe you guys get coffee after this. Episode 973 for WebFlow's Vlad and episode 1021 for Bubble co-CEO Emmanuel. I'm actually going to start a no-code podcast. We're starting a no-code newsletter, inside.com slash no-code. Because I think this is going to open up for Monique and I in terms of investing in startups. You know how there's like this why comedy I think you have to be a developer? Yeah. which I think rightfully so

you would be able to answer this better than me when people felt was a little bit of bias in there some implicit bias that may be Right it's oh do you have a CTO Yeah And having that be like the one and only thing that that sort of kicks you out of the process We've been talking about blue apron blue apron Could have been a no code store up

There's no reason that they need sophisticated software No they need a great product Yeah They need to be able to deliver stuff on time. It's a logistics business. Right. But it's, you know, we're pretending that it's a software company. I have so many people coming to me in there.

Like, I have an idea. I'm like, go ahead and no code it. They're like, what's that? I'm like, Google the word no code and get to work. Yeah. And now there's no excuse. Like, maybe 5% of people can be developers. 10%.

No, if they really set out to do it, you know, something like that. It's hard. So if 5% of people, you know, have the wherewithal, the aptitude, the desire to be a developer. I think no code in the current state puts it at 20. I think if you grind another 10 years in Zapier and Vlad on Webflow and Emmanuel on bubble and a couple other things come out, I think we could be looking at the majority of humans on the planet could start a startup without a developer. That's going to be amazing for society. What a democratization. Yeah. If somebody who's not a developer but who's a liberal arts person or who's a

philosopher or an artist could make a startup and not wait for a developer. That's the finding the developer co-founder is what? It's hard. It's hard to find that person. And there's so many industries that, you know, sort of your Trish Additional Software Engineers, just not going to get that excited about. They don't want to do it. Yeah.

But for you, you might be in love with that thing. And so if you're able to take that first step, that second step on your own, that's so much more powerful because then you can get some traction. You can get some things going and then your doors are open. What do you want to do from there? Do you want to raise money? You want to raise money. Do you want to hire software engineers?

Do you want to hire software engineers? You got choices. So it's all about just giving people tools that they can, you know, make it happen on their own. All right. It's been an amazing episode. Austin's going to come on the podcast and we'll talk it out with him. I think we're going to do that in a week or two. And anybody else who's got problems, you know, like if your startup is struggling,

just a message to other founders and investors, And you want to have a fair, you know, it's not going to be an easy. I'm not going to just give you softballs. But if you want to have a fair conversation and not be with a gotcha journalist who's just trying to get a link-bating title, come on this week in startups. It goes, I'll give you the space and the respect. And I'm not going to just try to gotcha journalist to you. Okay. I'm going to let the conversation breathe.

I'll still ask you a hard question, Austin, about the numbers. I'll have the hard conversation, but this is a safe space. Hashtag, safe space. It's been a great episode. You hiring? Absolutely. Always. And your name is Wade.

Yep. And your company's name is Zapier.com. Yep. Did Wade in shipping get Wade at Zapier.com? Did you get that email? Wade at zapar.com? Yeah, I got it. You got it?

Yeah. Okay, good. Wade and shipping didn't get it. No, no, he didn't. People are always like, how do I email the CEO? I know. I would have said it anyway. I mean, just spoiler alert.

Like, if you type first name at any company name, it's likely to go to that person. Yeah. So, what do you hire for? What's the hardest position? Oh, what's the hardest position? We're looking for a design leader right now. A design leader for Zappia?

What a gig. We'd love to have a great design leader. A world-class design leader. Here in the office or at home? So we're totally distributed. We don't have an office. So wherever you want to be. This person could be in Australia.

They could be in Sydney. It doesn't matter of time zone? Yeah, you got an internet connection. Internet connection. We're good to go. And you create a design. And you have Photoshop. illustrator?

We're a figma. We're a figma company. Oh, you're a figma company, yeah. People are crazy about Figma. Oh, yeah. It's our designers love it. We never had the Figma found her on. What's going on, Nick?

Figma, episode zero. No Figma, no Figma. Let's go, producer, Nick, let's get Figma. TBD? Episode TBD. It's coming. It's coming. This is what we do now.

We listen to what people say on the podcast. Go get it. This is the like elite producing name. Somebody drops something on the podcast. We're like, book them. Yep. Book them. Let's go, Figma.

Get on the pod. So designer. Yeah. This job pays well. Oh, of course. Six-figure job working from home. Whatever Mac you want. You want the Mac Pro?

Get the Mac Pro. Six or $7,000 Mac Pro. Is that included? We do set you up with like an office budget. Like a, you know, get your, you know, equip thing. Yeah, get it set up for yourself. Now, for a design lead, that's going to be a little bit higher. So the average person, what, has like a $4,000 or $5,000 budget?

So I think what we do, like stand-up desk, laptop, everything? I'm going to have to remember what it is off the top of my head. So I think we give folks seven grand for your first three years that covers like everything you need. Laptop, desk, chair, after three years, you have to keep it for a dollar or something. Yeah, we let you keep it. Yeah, so this is a really cool thing that's happening in startups now. I love this. If you stay for three years, you get to keep the laptop for like a dollar.

And then the company doesn't have to worry about inventory and getting it back for you. leave. Especially in a distributed company. It's so much better. Do you want to chase that stuff down? Chasing it down is the problem. Then the other thing we do is it's on a 30-month thing or a 36-month thing. So the price depreciates 136th.

So if you stay with the company for 36 months, you get it for free. But if you leave after 18 months, you can buy that stuff for half. So if you bought a stand-up desk or whatever, you just be like, you know what, I'll just keep it. I got my, now I've got set up from my next company. But now, let's just say seven's the average for the creative director of Zapier. It's the same. No, come on now.

It's the same. Look, you got to come in. This is like... But wait a second. You know that IMAQ, the one that they're selling that beautiful IMA Pro Tower. They want to get a rate array in there. Maybe we go up to 10. I'm sure they, you know, they can make that happen on their own.

I'm going to go ahead and say, for the creative director. You don't go from one to 50 without a little fiscal responsibility. That's true. That's true. But I'm going to go ahead and say, this is a great job. You get some equity in this company, which is, let's be honest. This could be like MailChimp Uber level equity. I mean, you're kind of like MailChimp.

Do you model yourself after that? We do a profit sharing like MailChimp does as well. So that's a nice, that's really nice. Yum, yum. On a percentage basis, range of what that could be on salary? 20%. What? Don't hear anybody working in my company, you didn't hear that.

I give people like 5%. Sometimes they'll cash bonus at the end of the year. We set up goals and stuff like that. I know. Jesus Christ. Sir Charles just starts. started a union here at this weekend startups. You guys start a union?

You know what? That's $6 coffee you got upstairs. That's gone. You want to see somebody fight with the union thing? Don't ever start a union with me. That's it. Krispy cream's out. Kind bars out.

You guys are going to get the generic. What's the generic? Kisha bar? Keshah bar. Kesh's bar. He's not going to give him the name. I'm not. All right.

Listen, this has been great. Look at us. Who would have thought it. Wait. Hey, thanks. Oh, by the way, thanks for, sponsor in the podcast, I do appreciate that. Yeah, we love it.

It's always nice sometimes now. Like, I have these weird moments where like, they're like, oh, can you read this ad? And I'm like, we have Zapier as an advertiser? I love Zabber. We was on the pod. They're like, yeah, we know. Oh, that's great. Then the other day is, oh, can you read this ad for com?

I'm like, well, you read an ad for com? I'm like, you want me to read an ad for Uber? And Uber sponsored the pot at one point when they were, when Dara came in, they were doing their like apology towards a new Uber. I'm reading the thing. It's fantastic. Yeah. Great.

Great to support the pod. Yeah, we love, you know, for podcasts where people use the product, we love sponsoring it. Because it's like, look, you're already going to talk about us anyway. Like, it's just great. This is what we do. We do the same zap of the week for you guys where I just make a zap. Yeah. And then you did Tim Ferriss.

He mispronounces the name of the company. I'm not just saying. I'm making Zapp of the week. Yeah. Tim Ferriss doesn't have a pronounce Zapp. Yeah. But, you know, he's Tim Ferriss. You got to support Tim.

I love to us. You know what he did. It was so funny on his podcast. Tim's podcast, by the way, is getting great because he moved from self-optimizing and now he's into love and he's got a girlfriend. He's been very public talking about this,

but he didn't have a girlfriend for a long time and he was like self-optimizing and he's like, I'm going to optimize my girlfriend. I just heard that, I was like, good luck with that one, brother. That's not exactly what you're going to do. I can tell you right now you're not optimizing shit. But he has literally figured out

how to be happy in a relationship but he's talking about it. And I was texting with him that day. And I said, Tim, I think this is the best Tim Ferriss ever. Because he was talking about podcasts. I wonder if everybody's going to be like, for our body people, for our work where people like the self-optimicers are going to be upset that he's talking about relationship goals and relationship obstacles.

I was like, Tim, trust me, your nerd guy, male audience, if you can teach them how to talk to a woman and make eye contact and take them. and take them on a date and meet a girl. Like, your audience has no ability to do that. This is going to be amazing. Your podcast is going to go 10x. What's the next book? Four hour relationship.

That's what I was just right. I don't know. It doesn't quite ring off the tongue in the same way. Four hour conversation until three in the morning. The four hour marriage. How about that? Four hour conversation about feelings. Here's how to do.

Oh, boy. I actually literally have been teaching like, some young colleagues of mine how to like ask a girl on a date they don't know they don't know yeah it's really easy wade you're married i'm married yeah these kids don't know i was like it's very simple you look the person in the eyes and say i really think that you're an interesting person i'd love to get to know you better would you be interesting getting a couple of fair like 40 year old men also don't know that's true but monique if just theoretically if a guy just said the simplest sentence to you yeah I think you're a fascinating person, and I'd love to get to know you better.

Would you like to get a cup of coffee with me sometime? I know you're busy, but I would just love to get to anymore. I mean, you don't have to be crazy and creepy, and you don't have to overthink this. I think you're interesting. I'd love to get to know you better. Interesting going on a hike or maybe getting a cup of coffee at some point. You know, I guess pretty simple. And then just wait for the answer.

Wade already wants to go out with you. I know. Wait. I can tell. Maybe we go to a cyclist. one of our site guys? Wait, you have a board of your company? Do you have a board? It's the three founders of the board.

That's it. All right, I'm just to say it right now. If Monique's not available and you're going to go public just saying, I can see it happening now. If you want a real independent board member who will go to bat for you? You think it should be you? No, I think it should be Monique. If she says no, I've got some references.

I don't think you need a four white guy on your board. Is it four white guys? Well, yeah, the three families are white guys. Yeah, so you might want to have a little more version of the board. We do need that. In California, I think now is that you have to have a woman

on the board, right? Thank God. If you're a public company. I mean, it's so brutal for me going to board meetings. Like, I'm like, guys, I think we might want to like make this not, like a little, I've been on some boards

where it's six white guys and like four went to Stanford. I'm like, guys. Yeah. That sounds fun. Can we get a seventh person who's not from Stanford? We'll see you all next time on this big start. Bye-bye. Look at us.

Hey, look at us. Look at us. Huh? Who would have thought? Not me.