This Week in Startups - E1114: #AskJason! Silicon Valley exodus, product vs. branding, expanding into adjacent markets, avoiding burnout & more

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis

Hey everybody, hey everybody. It's another this week in startups and I'm doing something I love to do today, which is talking to you, the audience, founders, investors, and doing and ask Jason where we will talk about the Silicon Valley Exodus. We'll talk about San Francisco, basically being like Queens, if you had to rank it as a borough, avoiding burnout and knowing when to market and when to focus on your product, when to go into an adjacent market versus stick to your current market. And should there be a paid version? of Twitter and Facebook and much, much more on this very special Ask Jason. You're going to get a ton of value out of this. And if you want to be on Ask Jason and get to promote your company, because that's what people do, right? They always mention the name of their company up front before their question. You have to submit a video. Please submit a video.

If you want to ask me a question on an Ask Jason episode, get a little promotion for your company and get some advice from me, your boy, J-Cow. I want you to do it at bit, bit, b.it.ly, slash, ask Jason now. That's right. if you go to bit.ly slash ask jason now and submit your question by video please and if you submit it by video you've got a really great chance of getting on air okay let's get to it people this week in startups is brought to you by trends by the hustle track and capitalize on emerging industries and trends before they explode start your two-week trial for just one dollar at trends dot co slash twist silicon

For over 35 years, Silicon Valley Bank has helped thousands of tech and life science companies planned for the future. Learn more at SVB.com slash next. Silicon Valley Bank, built for what's next. And send pro online from Pitney Bowes. Save time and money no matter what you ship or mail. Try it free for 30 days and get a free 10 pound scale when you visit pb.com slash twist. Okay, let's take a question from Chef Lizette. Hello, Jason. Chef Lizette here. Cookies by Chef Lizette here in New York City.

So I just started my business in the wake of Corona. And so my question is, for now it is New York based, my cookie company. I've been perfecting, tweaking the best chocolate tip cookie for the last 30 years. and it's time to share it. I've been very selfish and not sharing it. So as I am building and putting the pieces in place to really set the framework, right now I'm self-funding 100%. I'd like to keep it that way, but I do realize that there's limitations to my own self-funding. I'd love my question to be centered around getting an investor. It's something that I don't really want to do right now. So just point me in the right direction. Tell me what I should do. Have a great day. Okay, great question.

I can't wait to try those cookies, Chef Lizette. Yeah, you know, number one, it doesn't seem like it's a capital-intensive business. So the amount of time it would take to raise money might be much greater than it is to make money. So if you are selling 10 orders of cookies a day and you're making $10 per order and that's $100 a day and that's $3,000 a month in profit and in $3,000. three months, you'd have 10,000 in profits. Well, raising $10,000 might take you six months. So what's the point? You might as well just get back to work and bootstrap it. And cookies are a perfect way to bootstrap something. People can order them online directly from you. You could find people who want to distribute them, i.e. cafes, et cetera. So I would absolutely not raise money for the

business. The reason to raise money for the business is you have a thesis of how you could get this business to $10 million or $100 million in revenue. Well, in order to have a credible thesis for that, you would have to get it to first 50K a month in revenue, let's say. And when you get to 50K a month in revenue, then people could say, oh, $600,000 a year. If they 10x it, and then she 10xes it again, and then she doubles it from there, they could see this becoming a really great investment. So I would get to that first benchmark of, you know, call it 50K a month in revenue before you even think about taking on investors.

Great question. Okay, let's take a question from Patrick. My name is Patrick Wright. I'm working on a subscription media conference. company with a focus on the weather, climate, and the environment. I'm a college student, a senior, and therefore I have minimal experience in the real world. So in order to start a in 20 different things, all critical to start a company. So what are your suggestions on learning those skills without burning yourself out or overwhelming yourself? Yeah, burnout is real. But if you're a young

person and you don't have a lot of obligations in the world, you can eliminate things like going out drinking and partying. You can eliminate things like watching five hours of television day. You can eliminate things like doing an hour or two of social media day like I do. You can just eliminate those things and focus all that energy onto building a business. And it's totally fine to be a little overwhelmed building a business, especially when you're a solo entrepreneur. And you have to learn these skills anyway. You have to learn how to incorporate. You have to learn how to hire people. You have to learn how to do payroll and taxes. Why not get started? Why not get all that scar tissue now? So enjoy the fact that you're a neophyte and enjoy that you learn the art of company

building. It's a great thing to learn how to do. And in fact, if you're in college and you know how to incorporate your company, if you know how to file a trademark on your own, if you know how to hire somebody, if you know how to register a domain name, all of these little things, they add up. And now, you know, at the age of 49, I can start a business in a day or two. I know how to close a deal in an hour with somebody. I know how to do a non-disclosure. I know how to do banking. All this stuff to me seems super easy.

In fact, I look at it and I just outsource it to people, right? Because when you get to a certain point in career, you have a team around you. And you can say, start a company, incorporate this, get this trademark, boom, boom, and do these 20 things. And then I focus on what's the most important, which is the product, which is what you need to really remember is that at the end of the day, your subscription media company is going to rise and fall with how essential you are, how delightful you are, to your readers or listeners. So you're going to just have to listen to them and make your product better and better.

And the great news about a media product is you could make it 10% better in 10 different ways. So looking at our podcast here, this week in startups, we've made this podcast five or 10% better 20 different ways every year, which means the product gets, you know, basically 50% better or twice as good every year, which means over 10 years, this product is elite, right? You look at the quality of the production, you look at the quality of the gas, you look at the consistency in which we publish it. You look at the marketing we do for it. We were not doing that 10 years ago, I can promise you. 10 years ago, we were like, oh, we lost the audio file. So we had to figure out, hey, can I

not lose the audio file? We had to figure out like, why is the sound coming out of one ear? or why is it not showing up in, why is the file not showing up in the RSS feed? Or how do we get into Stitcher or Spotify? We're trying to figure out all this nonsense. Then over time, all that stuff becomes easy for you. So rest and sleep easily knowing that all of this stuff you're doing,

incorporating, filing for a trademark, getting a domain set up, getting a bank account set up, all that stuff, you're going to learn, and it's going to be in your little utility belt like Batman, and you're just going to have it there for all time. Great stuff to learn.

And then in terms of burnout, I find that people who burn out tend to not get exercise, not see their friends and not blow off a little steam once in a while and not be well-rounded. So if you like playing the guitar or reading books, don't stop doing those things that give you pleasure. Put those things at the end of your day or, you know, in the middle of your day after you do three or four great hours of work. If you love to play the guitar, go ahead and play the guitar for an hour. If you love old movies and you want to go see a Kurosawa film? Yeah, set yourself a goal. I'm going to see a Kurosawa film. I'm going to go to two. I'm going to go to a double feature this weekend. If I get my newsletter done and I send

out my tweets, when I get all that checked off, I'm going to reward myself with going to see that Kurosawa double feature. Give yourself those little rewards. Go see your friends, create a focus, I'm sorry, a mastermind group, like I know it's a corny term, but basically a fancy way of saying, get three of your friends together who are entrepreneurs and say, hey, do you guys want to have coffee one time a week or do a Zoom call once a week or every two weeks and just talk about our businesses. That kind of socialization will recharge your batteries, especially when you realize you're not the only one in the entrepreneurial circle who has got burnout. So great job. Great job starting a company when you're in college. Man, you are so ahead of it.

Nine out of ten of your contemporaries are like doing, you know, keg stands and you're starting a company. So you've already won. Revel in your awesome early success at you. Hey, everybody. I want to tell you about a great new online community from our friend, Sam, from the hustle, you know the newsletter and the conference. Well, he's got this incredible new service. It's called trends, t-R-E-N-D-S dot CO, trends.com. And it's a great community where they talk about being an entrepreneur and how you can sharpen your blade and be better at what you do. They did an amazing analysis recently about Kickstarter and unbundling it and how startups are. now using pre-sales and crowdfunding to fund their companies more than ever before because obviously, hey, it's not easy to get venture capital. And the pre-sales becomes this great way to incentivize people to invest in your company because you're showing demand for your product ahead of time,

really great analysis. And you get access to a community of industry leaders in virtually every field. They do workshops and they have a network of other founders and investors who you can just like basically leave workshop ideas, you know, and be better at what you. you do. They have weekly live lectures with experts and they teach you things like growth strategies, SEO, and how to send the perfect cold email so you get a response every time. And Trends has exclusive research, including intriguing topics to help educate and inspire you, like the 30 companies defining the future of media and pop culture, or they have data on thousands of successful Kickstarter projects that you can peruse and figure out, hey, how do you make your startup a success?

I'm enjoying the trends community so much. I want to share it with you. right now you get your first two weeks for just $1.000. That's right. Go to trends.com. Pretty good domain name there. Trends. Dot C.O. I love the dot CO domain slash twist and start your $1.2 week trial. Trans.com slash twist for your $1.2 week trial. I'm not to lose there. Okay. Thanks for supporting the show. Sam. And he was on a news roundtable recently. Just great entrepreneur. Go ahead and join trends.com Slash twist. Let's take another question. This one from David. Hey Jason. My name is David. My company is called Expand. The website is expand. It is a system for communities and networks to leverage one another as introducers in a privacy

preserving and double opt-in type of way that uses the professional graph from Slack and from email contacts rather than LinkedIn connections. And so my ask is a simple one, which is this week in startups is one of the great communities of the ecosystem. And so, yeah, I would love to figure out how to leverage this piece of technology to make this community more helpful and enable the helpful people and the courageous people in the community to be more helpful and more courageous. All right.

Great question. How can I solve your problems with the community I've built over the last decade? I get this a lot, actually. People look at this weekend startups or they'll look at something that's at scale and they're like, I have a product. I'd like you to promote my product. We actually don't promote anybody's products really because we have to stay focused on creating content and then we have advertisers who sponsor the show and partners as we call them. And so we limit and it's very important for anybody building a media brand. You can have a lot of people come at you who want you to promote their products. And what we do is very simple. On the editorial side, the editorial team picks the guest and on the community side or on the advertising and partner side, we promote them. And we don't do anything in between.

So it's probably a no for us unless people in the community were like, hey, can we get together and talk? And so we had a personal interest in starting the Slack channel, which is at this week in startups.com slash Slack. You can enter your email. You agree that you're not going to spam the Slack group and then we let you in. And then if you do spam, we ban you for life. And we ban the URL that you shared and we ban anybody else from your company.

so please don't spend the Slack. But it sounds like an interesting idea. I don't know if I want to have everybody in the Slack group doing speed dating, but I'm not sure I don't. I mean, if they self-organized and wanted to have something like that, we might allow it. But it's an interesting idea. I would encourage you to start your own community

and start building your own community of community organizers. So instead of trying to get me or some ad-scale communities to promote your software, which is unlikely, because we're too busy and other people are going to be too busy. What you should do is you should say, I'm starting a community. And it's going to be your community slash slack. And I'm inviting people who run communities to invite our community managers and other people's community managers to join your community of community managers.

That would be better for you. That would be more sustainable. And then you would show them in your community the ability to do speed dating. And then we might be sold on bringing it to our community. So I think you're kind of, you're throwing the hell Mary Piss here, trying to get me to promote your stuff to tens of thousands of people, it's not going to happen. Just like people are like, hey, will you promote our podcasting app? I'm like, no, I'm not going to promote your podcasting app.

Like, if you want to do something like that, go ahead and buy ads on the show. But we're not going to, we're not here to promote the seven new podcasting apps every month. And so when people do come to us with that, we're like, yeah, no, do something for us. Right. And so people all the time are asking us to do something as opposed to providing something to us. So you're kind of asking me to solve your problems. I would tell you to change your mindset into providing something of value to me

and the way, you giving me your tool is not really providing value in your mind you might think that. What I would encourage you to do is say, I run a community and I have a top 10 guidebook on how to grow communities. I think you could have twice as many people in this week and startup Slack

in the next three months. You should join my community mastermind group and our Slack to learn how to run a better community and you should do these three things. That's the better way to bait a potential customer or partner is for you to be helpful to me, not for you to look for me to solve your problem.

So just in terms of your SaaS pitch, you're kind of asking me to solve your problem when you should be trying to solve my problems. That's a better approach to asking for favors in the world and trying to promote your product. I hope that's helpful, David. Okay, another question. This one is from Benjamin. Hey, Jason. My name is Benjamin Burns, the founder and creator of ourspace.com, O-U-R-S-P-A-C-E.com.

My mission is to build the largest centralized platform highlighting the remarkable talent of women and men of color, specifically in technology and in creative roles. I'm tired of the HR and recruiter excuses year over year over year that they cannot find such talent. The question I have for you, Jason, that I need help on is balancing the customer acquisition and giving value to the previous members. We're very early stage, and it doesn't seem like we have a problem with acquiring members, because there's this natural organic tribe mentality that we all want to have this platform. But that being said, what is that value at at the end of the day for current members? Access to mentors, jobs, recruiters. I'm not sure.

I'm looking for you to help. Jason, thank you so much. Keep BK looking good. I'll talk to you, man. Thank you. Peace. Nice to hear about your company, Benjamin. And to your core question, which is you focus on new customers from providing value to the current members,

I think if your current members are bringing people to the platform and they're tweeting about it and they're writing blog posts about how great it is, that's a good sign that you have provided enough value to them. If they're not talking, the community is not spreading by word of mouth yet. That means you probably could do some more work on providing value to the existing members. And you will know when you provide value to the existing members because they will show up. So when we did the book club, for those people who were in the book club, we notice every week the same people kept showing up and they told their friends about it. And that is kind of the viral loop. That is what Net Promoters Square tries to prove is that people are telling their friends about something. So

when you hit that point, that's when you know, hey, maybe you could add some more members because they won't churn. You can also look at the engagement statistics. So in your community, if the number of people coming back every week is going up, well, that's good. You have retention. And if the retention is increasing or the time on site is increasing or the number of messages they send or the number of answers they give on Kora is going up. Great. Most people say, you know, if you could split your time, you would probably want to split two-thirds of your time, making your members delighted to maybe one-third getting new customers. That seems like a pretty good balance. Now, if you have super product market fit, you could flip that. So let's say you are Facebook and you know the product

works. You know the product's viral because it's growing like a weed on every college campus. Well, then you're going to spend two-thirds of your time, just get. getting it localized into another language, getting it to work on another platform, getting your Android app tour, getting your iOS app out there. There was a time when Facebook didn't have a good iOS app or any iOS app. They didn't have an Android app. So for them, just getting that checkbox done was more important. So I do think you have to know and study your customers and see if they are actually getting

value. And the way to know that is if they're telling their friends about it. That's one way to know about it. Another way to know if you're getting value is if they're coming back. so you look at their engagement data. Those are the ways to know if you're providing enough value. Great question. Keep at it.

It's important work. And obviously, we support you in that. All right. Another question from Andrew. This one came in by email. What's more important? Co-founder skill fit or co-founder vision fit. Okay, let me think that through.

Co-founder skill fit. So your co-founder has the skills you need in the business. Or your co-founder has the same vision fit as you. Great question. Okay. If they just have the skill, but they don't share the vision, that means they would do great work for some period of time, but they might leave to pursue their vision. If it was the opposite and they had all of your vision, but they don't have the skills, well, that means they're going to screw up your company. They're going to be a blocker because they're going to be trying to do the skill.

Let's say the skill was growth, marketing, or design. They're going to design a really ugly or non-functional product and they're going to actually hamper you. So ideally you want both of these things. I would say if somebody has the vision but they have no skill, you'd have to ask yourself, can they quickly acquire this skill? And you'd have to have a very candid discussion with them of like, your design is like a six of 10.

Can you get better by one point every month and in three or four months be able to produce a world-class product here? The answer is probably no. But if you love the person and they have the vision and they tell you, yes, they're going to really commit to being a great designer and UX designer or whatever, then I guess you could take that chance. And maybe that chance is, you know, of them getting better takes three or four months. And the chance of finding a co-founder might be a year or two.

So maybe you would be willing to take that chance. And so I think you could take the chance on being a skill fit or a vision fit. And you just have to know the person who is the skill fit without the vision might quit on you to pursue something that they find more interesting. So they're mercenary in that way. A missionary person might be a very kind missionary, but super ineffective. So you have to go eyes wide open and let them know, hey, you know, you're not a great sales executive.

You're going to need to read some books and get on Cora and get on YouTube and take some courses on sales. So I do think both of these could work for you. Beggars can't be choosers. If you can only find that founder, maybe it's better to have a founder with skills without the vision or with the vision and modest skill. And you kind of work with them on developing. Nobody is perfect.

and people are, you know, in a constant state of evolution, hopefully, if they're taking the founder journey. So, but ideally, yeah, you want both. And if you only have one, you want to be candid with that person and upfront with them, that you need them to develop it. Or you can say, listen, I know that this is not your vision. It's my vision. But can you stick around for a year or two and help me? Or are you going to, like, leave in six months? Or if you do leave, would you promise me that you'll hire and train your replacement? Which is always my ask. I tell everybody in my organization, like, listen, if you want to leave, I totally get it. I don't want to hold anybody back. in life. Just if you're a senior executive, all I ask is that you find and replace yourself,

right? Find somebody qualified, train them and then leave, which is what adults should do. Maybe not like entry level people that you probably, their entry level, you don't expect to do something like that. But for anybody who's a senior manager, you know, top five employees at a company, they really should have that level of professionalism. And if they don't, well, they're just lame and you just know not to work with them in the future because they would just leave your company in that state of ruin and just, you know, be self. They wouldn't be very thoughtful. They would be selfish, right?

I'm going to leave as quick as possible, I'm giving you two weeks notice. Like, I've had people who worked for me for five years, give me two weeks notice. And I'm like, wow, that's so lame. You know, like, I was lulled to you for five years and paid your rent and mortgage or whatever. And you left with two weeks notice. That's lame. But okay, maybe I deserve it.

Maybe I wasn't good enough to you. But, you know, you really should think things out and be kind to your previous employer. and you're going to be like super loyal. I'm super loyal to everybody who's worked for me unless they do that lame thing and they just leave a two weeks notice and then I'm just like, eh, don't really feel the need to be super loyal to you

if you're just going to, you know, cut and run and leave your other, you know, co-founders in the Lurch or other co-workers. But yeah, it's, it's ideal that they would have some belief in the vision and some skills, yeah, to be a co-founder. If not, they might just be an employee.

That's the other thing. It's like, if you have some, somebody who's just got great skills and doesn't share the vision, well, maybe they shouldn't be a co-founder. Maybe they should just be an employee. Maybe they should just be a consultant. And you should frame them that way. This week in startups is brought to you by Silicon Valley Bank. What's next? What if? Are we ready? Now what? These are the questions that can keep founders up at night and no one understands this quite like our friends at Silicon Valley Bank. For over 35 years, Silicon Valley Bank has help thousands of high-growth companies by providing scalable financial solutions,

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and they can assist in turning your great idea into a great business, which is two very different things. This is why 50% of U.S.-based venture-back tech and life sciences companies bank with SVB. Will your business be next? Learn more at SVB.com slash next. Silicon Valley Bank, built for what's next. Okay, let's get back to this amazing episode. And you didn't ask this question, Andrew, but just to punch it up a bit, you know, investors are generally looking for co-founders and sometimes they even like three founders. Why do they like that in the early

stage or for first-time founders? They like it for first-hand is because it's redundancy. It's like having a spare tire. Like, okay, we have three founders. If two of them quit, we still have a third. Oh, we have two co-founders. If one of them leaves, we still have the other. Or one goes on vacation, the other one really cares about the business enough. Now, that's not essential. If you are a high performer, if you're Evan Williams, if you're Elon Musk, if you're Mark Pinkish, you're not going to have co-founders. You're so far along in your career. Like, I'm not having co-founders at this point in my career. because it don't need to, right?

I would rather just pursue my vision without having to be slowed down by a co-founder. So investors for somebody who's a seasoned entrepreneur, who's done this before, they don't really care if you're solo or co-founder. They just care if you're growing and what the vision is and the execution and those kind of things. But early on, be self-aware. If you're going into Y Combinator, they had a rule, I believe it was a rule that they didn't invest in solo founders.

And the reason was they saw too many times, I believe this is the reason. They saw too many times that when they, invested in a solo founder, they didn't get the results they wanted. The solo founder might quit and the company would go away. Great question. All right, let's take another question. This one is from Ben. Would we be better off if social media companies changed charge subscriptions so that customers, so the customer is actually the user, not the advertiser. What would that do to use this traction on Twitter? I've been advocating for this forever to have a Twitter pro. I think that customers

could have this choice and that Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all social networks would say, tomorrow, hey, Facebook is free. If you accept advertising, we can sell your data and we make $96 a year on average. Or you could pay us $10 a month, $99 a year to have no ads and no tracking. If they did that, the entire government would be off of Facebook's back and they would probably convert 5% of users. I think in Twitter's case, they might convert of the users who use it more than an hour a day.

In other words, the ideal customer profile of a Twitter user is they're on the platform five times a day, let's say, for those people who are on the platform five times a day for more than an hour a day, selling a premium membership on Twitter is going to be the easiest thing in the world. And it would, as you're sort of saying here, change the customer from the advertiser to the individual. And then you could focus on, hey, what else can we provide that provides value to the user? So on Twitter, you know, if they come out with a, they're coming out with a clubhouse killer where you're going to be able to just do a voice group, you know, amongst, like, let's say a Twitter list. So I can make a Twitter list and then turn

it into a voice group and everybody can listen in on that conversation or whatever, like these little voice groups. Well, that could be a premium feature. And if you want to host those, you can host up to five people, but when you get past five people or a thousand listeners or Periscope and HD could be an upsell or being able to save your file. So it opens up a whole world of possibility for Twitter. And I think if Twitter wants to be in the race with Facebook, they've already lost that race.

So why be in that race? Why not change the race and change the narrative? and it's quite possible they could have, you know, 10 million paid users and 10 million paid users at 10 bucks a month is, you know, a billion, over a billion dollars in free cash flow. That would be free cash flow to Twitter. And that would make them dangerous. So I believe 100% that Twitter should do that. And they said they're going to.

And I think they should do it because it's a great business idea. And it will align the product team around providing true value as opposed to providing value to the advertisers, as you say, changing who the company perceives as their customers. You know, at Facebook, they perceive the advertisers as their customer. And that's why they let, you know, Russian, you know, spies put up Hillary Clinton ads, Hillary's a racist ads, and they pay for them in rubles because they're ultra-focused. Facebook is ultra-focused on servicing any advertiser at any cost to the point at which they throw our democracy in the garbage in the process so they could make an incremental

million or two million dollars from Putin a year. and they had to like they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar cookie jar that's what happened Zuckerberg got his hand in the cookie jar and he got demolished by it and rightfully so now Facebook's had their hand in the cookie jar so much with advertisers they're publishing i don't have you ever seen this but there's a facebook now directory of advertising you can look up anybody's name you can look at my angel university or my name launch and you could see that we're advertising angel university you see the ads we're buying it's pretty great that they've been forced to do that Okay, let's take another question.

This one from K-U-A-N, I hope I'm pronouncing that correct. What does a focused, intentional way of scaling really mean? At what stage of a company should founders be thinking about adjacent products or serving adjacent markets with their current product? Okay. Scaling means you set goals and you have a team and you have a strategy and tactics that you're pursuing against that plan. So hope is not a plan. You don't hope you grow.

You say, we want to grow 20% month over month. here is how we're going to do it. I want to grow the syndicate.com or angel investing syndicate. I want to grow it and get to 10,000 members eventually. We have 4,000 now. We're adding 300 a month. You can do the math. 20 months from now, if we add 300, and 20 months goes by in a heartbeat, right? The days are long, but the years are short in life. And so if we just hit 300 a month, but hey, what if we hit 600 a month? Oh, we could do it in 10 months? Okay, well, why not accelerate that? Okay, is there a way we can accelerate that? Let's have that discussion. And so I am in our investment company actually setting targets for people. Hey, I want to get this many more subscribers to

YouTube. I want to get this many, I want to syndicate this many deals. I want to have this many accelerated classes. So you can get your team focused on this. And when you get your team focused on it, it means having a plan. Now, going into adjacent markets is the equivalent of taking your oil rig, right? So you've got this oil rig and there will be blood and you're slurping up, you know, everybody's milkshake and you're drilling and you're getting more oil. and then you decide, you know what? God, we've got all this oil pumping out of this oil rig. Let's go put an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico

and build another oil rig, float it out at sea, and see if we can find oil at the bottom of the ocean. Okay, there might be oil at the bottom of the ocean, but you're sitting on top of oil right now. The rig is already built, and all you're doing is pumping the oil into barrels and selling it. Like, there's no more discovery here. There's no more having to wonder if there's oil

under there. It's just a matter of selling the oil. So going into an adjacent market would be something wise to consider, you know, and you can strategize and you can ideate on it, sure. But to actually execute on going into an adjacent market, you would do that only if you had conquered that existing oil field. Now, conversely, let's say you're in the Gulf of Mexico and you're getting all that oil and you realize, hey, it's running out. You might very well think, well, we're out here in the middle of the ocean. So we know the ocean, something adjacent to this oil rig might be wind or hydro underwater electrical systems. Great. Let's pursue that because we already got the boats and we got the captains and we like salt water. And we have people who know how to plant things in

the water and do deep sea diving. So that's where you would look at your existing skill set and make sure that your skill set is actually actually applicable. The people building a rig in Texas may not actually have ever been in the Gulf of Mexico. They may have never scuba dive. They've never, they may get seasick. So they may not even be qualified to be out in the open ocean doing any kind of energy in the water, whether it's hydro, underwater, or above water with windmills or drilling down into the earth, you know, with the oil rig. So keep that in mind. I, based on what I'm hearing here, I think you haven't even made the scaling plan and you haven't set an aggressive enough goal, set an aggressive goal. If you look at Elon, he just did Battery Day, he's in year 11 or what he's

well past year 10 in Tesla's. So, yeah, he's getting closer to 20 years with that goddamn company. And what is he working on? He just did Battery Day. Wait a second. He's been added for over 10 years and he's doing Battery Day, the first battery day? Yeah, that's because he's been buying batteries and he's still building those cars and you realize, you know what would be great?

If the batteries cost half as much and it can make twice as many of them, then we'd be able to keep scaling this company. So he's still thinking not about the next product. He's thinking about the current product. How do I make the current car even better? And he's got the car, the model Y. I just traded in my Model 3 for a Model Y. The Model Y is like 50% better than the Model 3.

And the Model 3 was twice as good as I'd say the Model S and the Model X in terms of like value for dollar. Maybe even five times better for value for dollar actually. Now that I think about it, because those other cars were over 100K. So you need to really iterate on the current product and make it better. Look, I'm still here in year 11 of doing the podcast. I'm still doing angel investing and doing seed investing even though I started 10 years ago. my belief is that things get interesting in year 11. And I really think you have to think long term about your career.

And you got to send 10 year goals, five year goals, two year goals, one year goals and one month goals. So be aggressive in setting goals. And don't be afraid to go deep on the theme that you are currently pursuing. Keep drilling straight down. If you found oil and you found a million dollars of oil,

keep drilling down and see if you can find 10 million. Keep drilling down and see if there's a billion or $10 billion in oil down there before you launch that next product. question one. All right, with SendPro online from Pitney Bowes, you can simply print posted champs and shipping labels even when working remotely, which, let's face it, a lot of us are doing for as low as just $4.99 a month, you'll have access and discounts of up to 40% off USPS priority now. And you're now going to get up to 62% off UPS daily rates. They get all these great deals with SendPro online. Plus, since you're this week in Startups Listener, you're going to

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online from Pitney Bowes. All right. The next question comes from Derek. Derek asks, what will the startup venture capital landscape look like in 2030? Have we seen the end of Silicon Valley as a startup investor hub? Will Silicon Valley change locations? It's a question. Great question. I think about it a lot. So there will be, if history is any guide, more options for funding, and funding will continue to spread around the world. There is a global appetite for risk. People want to have access to private companies, and the SEC is creating a path to accreditation

for non-accredited investors. If you don't know what that is, out of 100 Americans, four or five of them are accredited by the definition of the United States of making $200,000 a year. Basically, you can look it up. They're going to allow the other 95% of people to be accredited, the SEC, is going to allow them to be accredited

by the nature of taking a test or having a degree or working in the field. And they're just starting that process. My hope is that angel. dot university will become a course that if you take that three or four hour course, you will be able to be an accredited investor. Please, SEC, consider that.

Because if you take that three hour course, I believe you're qualified to spend your own money investing in startups when that happens 20 times the number of people will be able to invest now they will be the bottom 95% of the net worth in the country so you know they're not as loaded as that top 5% but still it's money and then in already in england as an example anybody can invest in startup so they have all these great crowdfunding sites here crowdfunding equity crowdfunding on republic or seed invest is a little bit complicated it's a little bit of extra work to make to raise small dollar amounts so a lot of founders don't bother doing it.

that. But my vision for the future of Silicon Valley is, yes, it will be companies can be based anywhere. And now something I didn't consider is that investors could be based anywhere. It used to be the concentration of investors in Silicon Valley made it very difficult to be an world-class investor and not be in Silicon Valley. I do think that you're going to be able to be a world-class investor by 2030 and be in a different location. As long as you have access to the deals here, but the shranglehold that Silicon Valley in the Bay Area had on capital is slowly being erased. So will it go away completely no? But I do think people are going to leave San Francisco because it's poorly run, Mayorjason.com.

And so since it's so poorly run and so expensive, you're seeing it collapse right now in the pandemic and during a recession. So you will see people moving to either low tax states, high freedom states, low regulation states, to build their companies and places that are high functioning cities that are great for young people that have low crime and high nightlife and fun. So Nashville, Miami, Reno, Salt Lake City, Park City, Austin, Houston. There's going to be a lot of these cities that are cosmopolitan to some extent, have great nightly. life, have low tax treatment, have great housing at low prices, great housing stock, and young people want to be there. And rich people who are sensitive to wealth taxes, et cetera, might flee to those places.

I've seen people leaving the United States or going to Puerto Rico. All the crypto kids went to Puerto Rico to try to save on their taxes. So as an example, I don't think that that's going to be the standard, but I do think it's on people's mind. And I've thought about it. you know, if people don't feel the need to be in Silicon Valley, well, then I don't have the need to be here. So maybe I'd rather be in Austin or Park City and or maybe split my time between, you know, based in Austin and get that cool, you know, kind of city and have a horse ranch. I've been thinking about it.

I'll be totally honest. I've been up front about it. I've been thinking about maybe living in Miami. It's a cool city, nice and warm. And then maybe spending my winters in Park City or somewhere like that and skiing. So, you know, once you get to a certain point in your life, if you do not, if you don't have to be here and the pandemic shows you don't have to be here, well, that's a game changer. And so I think everybody's going to consider, hey, during this great pause, what do I want my life to look like? And the exodus from San Francisco is very real.

The exodus from New York, I think, is more modest. I think when the pandemic wanes in, you know, the second half of 2021, hopefully, or maybe earlier, get a vaccine or just, you know, we hit some sort of level. of base herd immunity, if that's possible. Knock on what it is. I think you will see New York rebound very quickly because it's such a fucking cool place that people are not going to not be attracted to New York. But San Francisco, San Francisco is basically like a borough.

It would be like one of the weird boroughs. It would be cooler. Like San Francisco, if it was in New York as one of the five boroughs, which is basically its footprint, it would be somewhere between like the Bronx and Staten Island. It would be like Brooklyn's the coolest, Queens the second coolest.

Maybe then San Francisco. Francisco. It would be Brooklyn's the coolest. Manhattan is the second coolest. Queens, San Francisco, the Bronx, and then, oh, my, I might even say San Francisco, yeah, would only beat Staten Island hands down as a cool place to be. I'll be totally honest. It would be like right in the middle of the pack of the boroughs. So it's really not that great of a city. I'll be totally honest. It's like a kind of a nice cool borough. It's kind of like, you know, it's Queens. San Francisco's kind of like Queens in terms of how cool it is. It's not as cool as Brooklyn, obviously. It's not as as cool as Manhattan. No, kind of like Queens. So you can take it or leave it. No offense to Queens,

but take it or leave it. I mean, I don't think anybody ever woke up and was like, you know, where I want to live, Queens. You know, like you were born in Queens. You might say like Queens is a pretty good deal. I like Queens. Queens is dope. You know, I lived here. When people like Queens, they're kind of like, I'm kind of surprised they actually like Queens. Queens is cool. Nobody's ever saying that. Like San Francisco. San Francisco did have a cool moment, I have to say, in the late 90s when I came to San Francisco, it had a very cool like counterculture kind of vibe. So even like the kid from Brooklyn was like, whoa, this is different. Look all these like hippies. And like there's this like gay culture and there's this hippie culture. And there are these

anarchists and then there are these like technologists who are kind of like the hippies. And everybody kind of got along and there was art. And like they were doing like funky. food and you can go out to Berkeley and see this really cool food. And Oakland was all these dope warehouses and people lived in giant warehouses for 500 bucks a month that had giant backyards. And, you know, like it was totally illegal. It was like cool and dangerous and fun. And then it just became like expensive and sanitized, you know.

And it was just I think it's, I think the crash of San Francisco that will occur in the next decade is going to result in San Francisco potentially becoming cool again. Because what might happen is it's so dangerous. and it's, you know, collapsing, that the collapse might make it attractive to artists and, you know, avant-garde people again where they're like, wow, I can just buy the storefront and live here for $1,000 a month and a 2,000-square-foot storefront, you know, somewhere in San Francisco. We'll see. It's up in the air. But I think the more likely scenario for San Francisco, the city specifically of San Francisco, is that Google and Apple just buy up all the real estate. Facebook, they just buy up all the real estate.

and it becomes a corporate town. I think it's going to become a corporate town. So it's going to become even more boring and one-dimensional. It's going to be all Google, Apple, Facebook executives. That's my prediction. Okay, let's take another question. This question is from Brian. How much focus in energy should be put into building a brand

rather than fully focusing on creating product value? Brand awareness value brings better future opportunities, but that value can't be realized without a strong product. So you're kind of answering your own questions there, Brian. Branding is a fun exercise if you have a world-class product. But branding without a world-class product is essentially like an empty can making a lot of noise, right? That was what my karate instructor said to me at one point. Like the empty can makes the most noise because I was always talking and not like practicing my forms and sidekicks and sparring.

And then I just stopped talking and I just focused 100% on actually doing the forms, the kata. And so, you know, if you're banging the drum and making a ton of noise, that's kind of a waste of time if the product's not great. Now, when we saw Angel University as an example, people gave it rave reviews, we said, let's start advertising this. Instead of having 50 people show up for it, let's try to get to 200 or 300. Now, I think we'll have 400 people coming to the next angel.com university and we spend money on advertising and we give all the proceeds of charity. And we're advertising and getting, you know, more than half the people, I think, are people who have never heard of us before. So when you reach your natural audience, you kind of have no choice,

but to kind of add that marketing. And so for a company like Calm.com or FitBot or Steasy, they go do a lot of marketing because there are all these new customers who've never heard of Calm.com. And then they see LeBron James doing Com.com. And you're like, oh, what's com dot com? Like, it's been around for six years. They've got a million members.

And then LeBron James becomes a spokesperson. And all of a sudden, boom, you've got access to another huge, giant audience. And so you really do want to have a perfect product that is not a leaking. bucket or close to, you know, being a perfect product. Because if it's a leaky bucket and you get new customers and then they churn, i.e., they go join Disney Plus, but then they quit because there's not enough content. You don't want to be in that situation. So you want to have enough good content on Disney Plus in that example, or Com has to have

enough efficacy in getting your kids to bed or you to bed or lowering your anxiety in order for you to resubscribe. So therefore, you really want to have good product market fit before you do marketing. But don't feel like marketing is selling out. marketing is critically important to getting customers to even know that your product exists. You wouldn't believe how many people I meet and they're like, you have a podcast? And I'm like, yes, I've known you for five years. You've never heard of this week in startups.

They're like, no, I didn't know that. How do I find that? I'm like, you go to my Twitter bio or you follow me on Twitter and I tweet three clips a day of it. And they're like, oh, yeah, I follow you. I never noticed that. Is that what that is? That's your podcast? I'm like, oh, my Lord.

Like, literally there are people of my family who don't know I have a podcast. And I, you know, like, listen, I'm not a, you know, a shy guy. I'm telling people all the time listen to the podcast. So don't assume that people know about your product. And you really have to hit people five to ten times with your product in order for them to remember because there's so much noise out there. So get to product market fit, have a good product. That's not a leaky bucket that people don't just try once and turn off. And then don't be afraid.

And just you have to eyes wide open. You have to have people on your team who are being intentional and have a plan for your marketing. So just make sure you're watching, you know, the spend and that the new customers you gain, either break even or are profitable. And if you're gaining people, if you're selling, you know, com.com for $60 a year and you're acquiring them for $50, well, great. You made $10. And those people, some half of them might renew.

And then you'll make the other 60. So you're making on average in the first year is $40 per person. Great. You would just keep advertising, wouldn't you? And building that marketing footbook. And, you know, the marketing footprint can also block other competitors and make people afraid to compete against you. So there's a little bit of that. When you're just doing massive promotion, it's kind of a blocker.

It kind of cements your position. So why is Uber Eats having Patrick Stewart and Mark Hamill on it? Like, isn't Uber Eats doing well enough? Well, I think they want to do a little bit better and they want to cement their position and, you know, make sure they have every restaurant on there. I mean, if you're a restaurant and you see Luke Skywalker and, you know, Captain Picard talking about Uber Eats, Do you not want to be on Uber Eats? Like, I think that's a message, actually, those new ads by Uber Eats. I think that's a message to restaurants, not to consumers.

I think that's like, if you're a restaurant, you're not on Uber Eats, and they're going to be marketing Uber Eats. Dang, you know, like, you're going to need to be on there. Great question.