Rallying to $10M ARR | Jacob Eiting (Founder & CEO, RevenueCat)

Episode 5 June 15, 2023 00:52:41
Rallying to $10M ARR | Jacob Eiting (Founder & CEO, RevenueCat)
Subscription Heroes
Rallying to $10M ARR | Jacob Eiting (Founder & CEO, RevenueCat)

Jun 15 2023 | 00:52:41

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Show Notes

I recorded this episode with Jacob Eiting—founder and CEO of the beloved RevenueCat—just after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. And while Jacob and his company made it through the banking crisis relatively unscathed, it served as the perfect foil for Jacob's story and what he thinks made RevenueCat achieve the milestone of $10M in annual recurring revenue.

Here's what we discuss

  • Navigating a financial crisis and achieving $10M ARR
  • The challenges of building a successful company
  • Crossing the chasm to enterprise sales
  • Rallying teams during tough times and the COVID-19 pandemic
  • Market fit, product channel fit, and product market fit
  • Balancing founder responsibilities and personal passions
  • Enterprise sales and introducing new vendor strategies
  • Scaling a company while maintaining culture and team cohesion
  • Chaos and growth in a rapidly growing business
  • Challenges as a founder and taking calculated risks
  • Maximizing app revenue and personal growth with RevenueCat
  • The importance of validation, price testing, and maximizing iPhone utility

More about Jacob

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeiting/

https://twitter.com/jeiting

https://www.revenuecat.com

https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/27/revenuecat-raises-40m-series-b-for-its-in-app-subscription-platform/

Follow Scott at

https://scotthurff.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/scotthurff/

https://twitter.com/scotthurff

This show made possible by Churnkey:  https://churnkey.co

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 00:00:04 Welcome to Subscription Heroes. I'm Scott Hear, co-founder and chief product officer of turnkey. In this episode, Jacob IDing, founder and c e o of revenue. Cat is incredibly generous with his knowledge bombs. We cover topics like the journey to 10 million in a R, how he rallies his team during tough times, how Covid forged revenue, cat's, company culture, and the most ridiculous thing he's ever done for his company. Here we go. How you're doing after S v B and the two, three weeks? The <laugh>, the collapse of the financial system, uh, the end Speaker 2 00:00:41 Of startups as we know it. Uh, yes, I'm doing much better. Uh, Speaker 1 00:00:45 Weren't gray in that beard. Speaker 2 00:00:47 <laugh>, we were supposed to record this podcast a week ago and you gracefully gave me a, a rain check, but yeah, it was like I'm mentally in a much better state after I had a weekend off with my family and kind of got to like reset. But, you know, I don't know. My, my co-founder and I six years into a project and then to like see an existential risk like that happen in such a weird Yeah. You know, you got hit from a flank like you weren't even thinking about. Really kind of put us in fire flight mode there for, for a few days, but I'll just say I'm grateful to be focused back on the court problems, <laugh> and not Thanks, Speaker 1 00:01:20 <laugh>. Yeah, I mean, what, what did you even, I mean, what, how did you even start to try and contain the problem? I mean, was it get money out or, Speaker 2 00:01:30 I mean, it's almost, almost gonna sit down yesterday. Cause it was like, kind of like yesterday was like the first day I was off cortisol from it and just document the whole thing, just so I had the, the memory committed. But like, maybe I can just do that on the podcast here. <laugh>. I got a text from my co-founder at Thursday morning of the bank run. He was like, Hey, is this a thing we should worry about? And I'm lazy. Um, you know, you're always just like trying to not do as much work as possible in this job. And so I was like, uh, like really a bank friend, like, that's gonna, that's that's not gonna happen. And then, yeah, by the time it was clear that yes, in fact it was gonna happen, it was too late. That was on Thursday and I didn't know what was gonna happen until Friday. Speaker 2 00:02:07 Then I got the news about the receivership, and then we had payroll due on Monday, 250 K or 227 K. And then we had random bills that week and I was like, we're not gonna survive on this little F D I C allowance very long. So honestly, like the first day I was just shocked and exhausted and like, oh my God, I can't believe this. That was on Saturday. My finance team went into full mode, like, we need a new bank, we need to like get ready and all this stuff. And I was just kind of like, yeah, honestly, like sometimes you're just in shock when something big heck that happens. And then I don't know what happened. I woke up Sunday of that weekend and I was like, you know what? No. Like, I don't know what I can do, but I'm not gonna sit, I'm not gonna lie down. Speaker 2 00:02:46 Like there's no, like, if this is gonna be what kills us, I'm gonna go out screaming. So like, um, that's when I woke up and was like, all right, let's see how much liquidity I can find on top of my finance team. So I was pretty proud of us between our BRS line of credit that we got and like, um, I was able to had a big customer close like on Thursday for uh, like 190 grand <laugh>. And so I was like, and I had a connection to the CFO F and so I was like, Hey, um, you guys think you could wire us that Monday? First thing Monday morning, <laugh>. And they were amazing about it. It's nice to have good relationships with your customers and they, it was like that mo one moment where you can look like a little unstable to as a vendor and you're like, I'm gonna take advantage of that. Speaker 2 00:03:28 So between that, right. I also had an investor just straight up wired us quarter million dollars, like from his personal account with just a email note like to say I owe you, which was pretty incredible. And so, yeah, we, I mean, by Sunday night we had, by the time I got the email from Janet Yellen saying everything was gonna be okay, we had probably pulled together our quarter, three quarters of a million dollars in, in liquidity, which was enough to survive the week. And then I was like, we'll figure out from there. Right. But, uh, yeah, definitely learned a lot more than I ever wanted to know about financial engineering in a weekend. So I'll be ready for the next, uh, black swan banking event, which hopefully, knock on wood, it's March 21st probably is gonna happen while we're recording this podcast now, probably just how this year's been going. <laugh> Speaker 1 00:04:14 Yeah, we'll, we'll hit stop and then, you know, boom, Speaker 2 00:04:16 Check it. Yeah, I'll find out what's on Twitter. Yeah. Uh, <laugh>. Speaker 1 00:04:20 Yeah, I mean, it it's gotta be nice to know that you can, if you had to find, you know, three quarters of a million in, in the couch, right? Speaker 2 00:04:28 Yeah, it's definitely, I mean, this is one thing I, I tweeted about it, but I was thinking about all the found, I have two board members who worked furiously through the weekend. I have other investors who are actively engaged. I have a lot of people invested in the company, like literally and emotionally that were like, yeah, fighting. And I, I just kept thinking about there are other founders, like if this had happened at our seed stage or pre-seed stage, it would've been like the same problem potentially. Maybe my, maybe I wouldn't have had the payroll, like, wouldn't have been as big. But there are definitely stages in the company where this could have been way worse because I wouldn't have had the support and the help and the finance team and like all that stuff. I had the luxury of being able to tweet about it over the weekend, <laugh> and try to get political attention. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:05:10 I saw you going after, uh, good old JD and, uh Speaker 2 00:05:14 Oh yeah. Who's your music? Oh, well I accidentally tweeted at, oh, I forget it already. Uh, the, the at Portman, who I don't think is the Senator anymore. It's not Sheriff Brown, but it's hard to keep track of these folks, but Right. And then, then, uh, also my, my local representative too, I was, I now have an email relationship with one of their staffers, so I'm politically engaged now and I've, I've also committed to, I'm going to be just doing the like, sleazy thing of donating to anybody who can possibly help me so that at least I have something to point to when I need it. Um, Speaker 1 00:05:42 You are now the donor class. Speaker 2 00:05:44 I know, I know. I've always like, you know, turned your nose up at like, oh, this like corrupt system where you, you know, pay to play. But I'm like, well, hey, as a business owner it's like not a bad hedge to like, right. Maybe get a phone call taken on a Sunday when something like this is happening. So yeah, it was interesting. Dan never got a response from jd, by the way. I'm still waiting, or, or Mr. Portman. But, uh, Warren Davidson, my, my local representative or US representative, he did get back to me or his team did. So shout out to Speaker 1 00:06:10 It's good to know him. Yeah, Speaker 2 00:06:11 Nice to done. That's kind of work. Yeah, Speaker 1 00:06:13 It, it's funny because my first question was, uh, perspective setting one where kind of back up and look at the whole story and one of my questions was, what's been most on your mind lately about revenue Cat? So that kind of answered itself, but I mean since 2017, I mean you've, the scale of revenue cat has blown up. I mean, multiple funding rounds, you know, you went through the YC gauntlet one and a half, probably more now of, uh, billion in processed revenue. I mean, beyond the banking system, what has been just business wise, you know, something that's been on your minds. Speaker 2 00:06:49 It's funny, interesting. We started with the very myopic dodge bullet, right? Yeah. And then it's like <laugh>, which, which I think for like founders listening on the call, it is almost like that, it's like a series of myopic moments, right? Like it's, and I think that's, you know, almost the question is, it's important, but you know, somewhat the um, the tools and mechanisms you use change. But sort of those core things as a founder never change, which is like, I've been using the term shark closest to the boat a lot lately. It's kind of like you're always just focused on the shark closest to the boat and trying to figure out what that is. I love that. I think like, you know, we're, yeah, you mentioned couple rounds we're five or six years in Series B funded crossing into the cross, the 10 million in revenue kind of level last year, which is, you know, when you're just starting, you're like, oh, the promised land. Speaker 2 00:07:37 And I'm like, eh, <laugh>. Like, it doesn't, it's just different, the different land, you know, and for us, you know, you're always just trying to find that next gear, right? You're always just trying to find what worked at one does not work at 5 million, does not work at 10. And you know, for us right now, for us right now, that's, we've, we've had a really good success. And this I think is just because of where I was. And Miguel, my co-founder, you know, we're engineers started the company, we made a really good developer tool that's really good when there's a sole developer decision maker at a company and they're starting something from scratch. That's where our strongest product market fit is product channel fit. It's really good there. Where we're weaker is when an app is bigger and maybe house problems, but switching vendors or like introducing a vendor is expensive and confusing and challenging. Speaker 2 00:08:27 And honestly it's an enterprise sale and this is like a classic conundrum is like making, crossing the chasm to enterprise sales. Yeah. And so that's kind of where we're at right now. We've had some success where the stars align and we have the right champions in place and like just everything kind of lines up and their solution works for their set, their particular problem. It's, it's, it's hairy enough, but we have not, I will say we don't have product channel fit for that channel in terms of like repeatability and that some of that's on the product side. So you might even say, see my product market fit for that market and then fitting that to the channel. It's interesting cuz you're not starting with nothing. Like you have something, you have, you know, velocity, we have a brand, we have awareness, we have a team to support this stuff. Speaker 2 00:09:08 But it is kind of in some ways inventing a new company inside your company or new, like we need to have dual motions, right? Having a self-serve motion and a really good sold motion. And we don't have, I mean we have like the basics of it, but like it doesn't feel is that that product market fit feeling where you're like, it's just growing and I don't know why. Yeah. We don't have that yet on that segment. And so, and the construction of our market is such that we have to get that and this, this is the case for most ass companies. It's like typically the construction of it at the market. Um, and just like powers and whatnot will dictate you have to go there at some point. If we wanna keep growing at the clip, we wanna keep growing at that time for us is kinda six months ago <laugh> like we should have figured it out. So we're a little behind the ball. Speaker 1 00:09:50 I hear you on that. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:09:55 Let's take a little break to tell you about Turnkey. The ones making this podcast happen. Now. I think turnkey's awesome, but I am super biased because I'm a co-founder. But I love what we're doing for subscription companies. You might look at your churn numbers and think there's gotta be a way to turn this around. There's gotta be someone who can improve retention and help us track down why people are leaving your product. And that's why Turnkey's here, Turnkey's the only platform that fixes every type of churn for you. We handle retention for customer obsessed teams like Jasper Farro, AI Dungeon and Casto. We lower cancellations by up to 42%, recover up to 89% of fail payments and even increase customer L t V by 28%. And we do it with our user-friendly, customer-centric, cancel flows, modern failed payment recovery and AI driven feedback analysis. So if you wanna run a healthier subscription business, head to turnkey.co to get started. When did you realize that you had to, I mean, did you always know you had to dip your toe in the, or jump in fully into the sales pond? Or how did you start doing that too? I wanted to Speaker 2 00:11:03 Avoid it desperately cuz I just, I'm, I don't like being sold to, I'm not like that's never been my buyer persona. Like I'm the guy trying to skip sales calls. Like, Hey Jacob, Speaker 1 00:11:12 If you haven't seen my sixth email <laugh>. Yeah, Speaker 2 00:11:15 Yeah, exactly. Um, and I'm like, who falls for this stuff? Right? But right. I mean that's a, the way I just said that is a really good way to highlight that. My mentality about it is not right because it does work and there are a lot of buyers that want to be sold that way, right? For them. If you think about the like mechanics of their job and like the power structures of whatever, you know, internally selling and stuff like this, it works. And so yeah, to answer your question, I didn't wanna do it for the longest time. Like sales was the unfortunate calls I had to do to get a self-serve customer to sign up, right? <laugh> and to like, yep. And then it was like, oh we need a contract. It's like, uh, okay, like let me go on, you know, we, Y Combinator had like a standard contract and I would like do all the right lines. Speaker 2 00:11:59 Yeah. Lemme Google one. Yeah. I'm not getting a lawyer. <laugh> like you guys want that term? Yeah, okay. Like that's not the shark closest to the boat again. Like that's not gonna be what sinks us. Me spending more than a day doing this contract is what's gonna sync us, right? So like that was initially what it was and then we kind of evolved from there. I brought in some folks and I was like, here's what I'm doing. And then they kind of took it over and improved it a little bit, but we never really looked at it strategically. Like how do we actually build emotion here and bring in the right expertise to build emotion there? Cause I'll blame myself for being a little bit like, eh, like I don't love it, so maybe I focused on other things, but eventually the metrics just, and the, you do the math and you're like, okay, like I have to do this now. Speaker 2 00:12:40 And so now it's like how do I do it in a way that's true to our brand, some in a way true to me and will achieve the business's goals. Like, cuz I don't, I don't think there's a world where we're successful and become like a full enterprise. No pricing on the website, contact us sale. But we have to kind of try to, and this is a real challenge for anybody who has a self, like a successful self-serve motion and a sold motion. There's just that boundary, there's tension, like one's gonna inevitably compromise the other on some things. And so, and it really comes down to how your product is priced and packaged and all these things as to where that boundary lies. I talk to sometimes like sales execs and things like this who work on the like, contact us will send you a white paper that's the only, you know, kind of thing. Speaker 2 00:13:23 And I'm like, that seems in some ways so nice <laugh>. Cause you're just like, you know, you don't have to have perfect continuity in all your different pricing and packaging. Like you can kind of size deals appropriately. You can kind of, you know Yeah. But you gotta be elephant hunting, right? Like every deal has to be six figures pretty much at that point to make that work. And I came from consumer before this, so the way we designed revenue cap was to mostly convert hands free. Cause in consumer you do, you're, you're you're talking like $50 ACVs, so you have to make everything automated, right? And I kind of designed revenue cap from the beginning that way cuz I was like, I don't know, that's just how you do turns out it's actually pretty high leverage, right? Like it's a good ROI if people can just convert and pay you in some cases, pay us six figures a year off a credit card, which is like amazing. That's a deal. Speaker 1 00:14:10 <laugh>. Speaker 2 00:14:10 Yeah, that happened a lot. But like, it happens enough for it to, to be impactful, but you kinda end up sitting around waiting for those, right? And now it's kind of like, how do we, how do we create those opportunities and how do we generate those kind of deals? That's a long way to answer your question of, of, you know, what is what's on my mind right now. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:14:28 I love it. I mean, your dna n a and your brands are so developer-centric that, you know, I totally see the dissonance of, okay, we gotta scale up this high touch barrier demo e process that feels antithetical to our values in a way it kind of feels like the same move that Stripe has had to make. Speaker 2 00:14:50 Yeah. Yeah. And like I think, um, I mean I, I haven't engaged too much with their sales, but knowing for a few folks that have been inside and, and and stuff, it hasn't been easy for them too. I mean, Aons become such a big boogeyman for them and I think that's maybe because they've done it a little bit better and they haven't had to carry that baggage, that historical baggage with them because Yeah. And then also too comes down to the founders, right? And like, I'm, I'm fortunate I have some investors that are very the opposite of me in terms of being pro sales and like understanding that stuff. I tend to be the most like developer oriented person. But, uh, <laugh>, you know, also I'm just, as you get further along, you just, you just as a founder, you kind of have to really pick very carefully what you hold onto, right? Speaker 2 00:15:35 Yeah. And so for me, there's some aspects that we must carry forward and like not lose or the brand. I think loots is the magic a little bit, but I'm also like realistic and say like, Hey, if this is the way that our next 10, 30, 50 million in revenue is gonna buy, like, let's not, let's not shoot ourselves in the foot outta something, you know, thing I, I I think we can, I think we can maintain, well, I don't know. We'll see, I think, but, but I think we can preserve the, some aspects of what makes that special. But there will be compromise, right? There will be some compromises as we, as we go down this path. Speaker 1 00:16:08 Yeah, I mean you're, you're setting the, the, the goals, you're setting the vision and you know, it, it's pretty clear to you having filtered through all the options, like, this is the way we gotta go and let's just make it as painless as possible, right? Yeah. Uh, it's, it's a long way that, uh, that you've come, I remember I saw the other day you were joking that when you were raising from Jason Lemkin, you were asked a question about your SDR strategy or something and, and you went, what's an sdr? <laugh>? Speaker 2 00:16:35 Literally. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot about that moment. But yeah, I mean, I'd been annoyed by people emailing me <laugh>, but I did not know what an SDR was, right, <laugh>. That's right. Uh, and I didn't really know how any of the mechanisms of that work. And I still think it's a dis dis disservice to me because I don't know what great looks like internally. Like, I don't know how a sales team should feel. I do do for engineering and for product and for all the things that I've worked on before. And I think we've been a little bit more successful there in building really good functions and teams and things like this. Um, it's been I think, more of a struggle for us on the sales side because I just really still don't know what I'm doing. <laugh>. And I think I tweeted that Lemkin responded. Speaker 2 00:17:15 He's like, we'll get you there. And he's not wrong. It's like six years later and like, I still don't really have that stuff developed. But yeah, I mean it's this, it's this meta strategy I have of, of just being, um, uh, just kind of look really dumb. Cause then people tend to underestimate you and it gives you an advantage, right? Because they'll, they'll make a mistake. Not that Jason made a mistake, but <laugh> like, I think folks, founders tend to think they have to have all the answers. You have to have one answer, which is like what your product does. Like that's, you need to understand one thing really, really well. And then maybe two things, which is like how to work hard. But then everything else I think is negotiable. Um, and, and you can learn and you can kind of be bad at, um, as long as you're not so bad at those first two that you die in the early stages because what happens is right later on as capital and cash and things become more of accessible, like you do get access to more talent. Speaker 2 00:18:11 And this is one thing that's been, you know, reflecting on the whole journey's been counterintuitive to me is like, you kind of always assume your best days are behind you for like team and, and sort of like cohesion and culture and things like that. And I've been proven wrong here just because I have a, I've always been a startup person. I've always worked at really small companies and never remember one at one that scaled as quickly as this. And you just kind of assume that like all of the best people are startup people too. I'm a I'm a startup person and therefore all the great people I wanna work with are startup like early stage, early stage people. And you learn that's not really the case. People have different motivations, different risk appetite, they wanna a different set of challenges at different scales. And, and there's, there are a lot of fun and interesting problems that you can't really do at the like five person stage <laugh>. Speaker 2 00:18:53 And so what I've learned is that you are, if you, if you get talent right and, and you focus on recruiting and stuff like that, you can actually increase talent density and the team gets better over the years. And Yeah. When you're on year five or six, it's really nice to, to have that comfort <laugh> to know that like there's, in terms of like, it's, it's very possible that your best years are still ahead of you n and not just in terms of revenue, right? Still also in terms of culture and things like this. Like it's, it's, it's, I think it would be hard to keep going if I didn't also see that now and know that like the, the best years in terms of like the day-to-day could still potentially be ahead of us, which is really cool. Speaker 1 00:19:29 I've seen that so many times too, where it, it kind of becomes this like founder's lament where mm-hmm. <affirmative>, there's moping around and, and then it's just, Speaker 2 00:19:37 Oh, we're not as cool as it used to be. Oh, we don't ship as fast. Uh, because there are things that change, right? Like you don't, chip is fast, it's harder, right? There's more people in the room and, and I think the, the failure mode can be only discounting the downsides and not really looking at what all the advantages it brings you. Right? Like the fact that you don't have to do anything every, sorry, you don't have to do everything yourself. The fact that you can have multiple work streams, which you couldn't before. Yes. Right? Like that's really something that it takes a while to go from one tight-knit group working basically on one thing at a time. And you can't go from one to like infinite. Like I think you can, if you scale that too fast, it breaks. And I think we tried and it kind of failed, but once you get that right integer jump, you go from one work stream to maybe two or three and you're like, okay, we have like, you know, for us, we have like our data strategy and a team so assigned with that, we have our like, um, ecosystems and developers, like APIs team working on stuff. Speaker 2 00:20:33 And then we also have a team focused on like the core infrastructure piece of it. And you can kind of say like, yes and to things a little bit. I think that makes up for any sort of like, um, nostalgia that you feel like that, oh, you, things used to be better and faster or whatever. You should just always need to like zoom out and look at the big picture and be like, Hey, we're running faster than we ever have before. And even if I had to give up some things, like I think that's, that's, that's worth it. And like ultimately we're here to grow, right? So yeah, you can either get sad about it, like you said, lament about it, or you can just like embrace it, try to make it as good as possible. And I think there's like, I think I went through this phase where I kind of just accepted the things I didn't like and kind of had just said like, well, that's just the way it is. Speaker 2 00:21:16 Big company stuff. Like, it's just gonna get bad. And no, that's actually not the case. Like I think there's this, um, there's this like real, I don't know if it's like some kind of survivor bias or something like this where like companies like, I think like there's this tendency to look at big company practices and be like, well, oh, here it is now I got it. So it's like, oh, they got big because they did this and that and X and Y and Z and it's like not always the case. Like you don't know what brought them there, right? And then maybe the culture you, you're only gonna see, it's like looking at, it's like looking at galaxies that are long exist, extinct, right? Cuz they're very far away, you know, where their culture ended, right? You don't know what brought them there. And I think there's the tendency to over bias on some of that stuff. Speaker 2 00:21:57 And like copy big company practices. You see most companies end up in that stage because I think it's probably the easiest like reflection of just like the pressures of the, the markets and, and sort of like cultural expectations for work and things like this. But if you as a founder actively work against that stuff and you say like, yeah, we're not gonna do things that way. And when you see them, you're like, no, we're gonna make the, we're not gonna let that happen and we're gonna try to bring this forward even though it's an unstable equilibrium. Like you're these things that, like shipping quickly or whatever, shouldn't be able to exist at this scale, but through, through sheer force of will, you're like, no, we are going to do those things at this scale. <laugh> it w it it doesn't work all the time, but it does work a little bit. I think that was something that Miguel and I kind of did not, we were a little bit late to realize, like we kind of, as we hit past the A and the B and like started scaling really fast, we kind of felt out of control culture-wise. And then in a, we were like, yeah, we don't, there's some things we don't like. And we were like, yeah, just change them. Like you're allowed <laugh>, right? Speaker 1 00:22:55 Right. You Speaker 2 00:22:55 Kind of forget this, right? You kind of feel like you lose control of the thing, but you know, in some ways you do. But like, I think, I think it's easy to underestimate what you can affect even, you know, when you're past 50, 60 people. Speaker 1 00:23:07 That's one thing I I love about seeing, you know, what, what people like you work Jason Fried and d h h you know, for years, uh, who is actually gonna be on the show. So I'm very excited. Oh, Speaker 2 00:23:18 Congratulations. I just lost a candidate to him, so give him heck for me. Speaker 1 00:23:21 Oh man, I love it. I love some, some we can have like a little, um, gladiator arena or you know, virtual or something, but like, just the whole notion where it doesn't have to be like this at work. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. It doesn't have to, you don't have to, you don't have to use slack. Remote teams don't need slack. Maybe you can use something else. Just these assumptions that everyone takes with them company to company, it Speaker 2 00:23:45 Becomes momentum, right? Yeah. And then there's this calcifying tendency of a lot of things at companies, I always say like, a rumor becomes a myth and then a myth becomes a truth, right? Yeah. Um, this happens so quickly at a company, even for things that like are unsubstantiated. Like somebody will be like, oh, and, and nobody means wrong. It's a telephone game, right? Like somebody will say like, oh, the product doesn't do this. Right? And then somebody who doesn't have all the context will hear that from an authoritative figure and then they'll be like, oh yeah, I heard from X like this doesn't work, right? We can't do that. Right? And then before, you know, you'll be like, I'll see it somewhere. And I'll be like, wait, that's not true. Like, <laugh>, how did that, how did that happen? And you know, you followed the chain and it's like, well nobody really was doing anything wrong here. Speaker 2 00:24:25 It's just that like people were being trusting and, and, and kind of like trying to make sense of a very chaotic situation, right? Which is like, what's going on inside a company that's not stable, that's not growing at 10% a year. It is inherently chaotic, right? Like, you can't have sort of exponential growth without chaos. It just can't happen. And so, yeah, I think a lot of those things crop up coping with those things, right? As people attempt to control it might sort of take these days. It's like, just embrace the chaos, right? Like take control of it. Yeah. Embrace it, know everything you build is gonna get thrown away. You know, every process you have is, is, is probably gonna get broken again. You can or ignore a lot of the second and third order issues with the design because especially internally, right? This maybe is not so true for like pro external facing product design, but like internal facing systems design, like when I'm thinking about compensation to systems and, and you know, internal communications and, and tour tooling and stuff like this, like, I'm always like, Hey, just solve the, the 80%, it's like the 80 20 thing, but just like solve it. Speaker 2 00:25:28 You're gonna throw that away too, so like, don't worry about the estimate, it's all gonna get trash. Yeah. So, you know, optimize for reactivity and, and quickness and then you know, it, I think it tends to, tends to work better, but you do lose that at scale, so you gotta keep like reiterating that constantly. Yeah. Speaker 1 00:25:43 The, the notion that nothing is too precious, that we're not creating art here. Speaker 2 00:25:48 I think people avoid doing it because they don't wanna hurt other people's feelings. And I think that's a reasonable thing to assume outside of a startup, but when you come into a startup, everybody needs to be not precious about their stuff, right? Like everybody kind of has to hate their own work <laugh> in a way that when you break it or your, or your colleague is like, I wanna throw this out. Like, you're like, please, absolutely. Like if you're gonna take it and own it and do a better job, I am more than happy to not have to think about this thing anymore. Thank you. Um, especially because Speaker 1 00:26:17 It's like, yeah, yeah, please fix that for me. I've got 20 other things that need to be fixed. Speaker 2 00:26:22 That's the nice thing about growth, right? And I think that's why you see, I mean, it's a theory. I don't have a ton of firsthand experience, but I think that's why you tend to see a lot of cultural maladies like show up when the growth slows because right. Suddenly, and this happens in, I think in, you know, bureaucracies too. It's just like when there's not bigger problems to fry, when there's not an existential crisis like around the corner, the minutia arises to an inappropriate level of importance. You hear sometimes that growth solves all problems. Like if you have growth, a lot of these like, I think cultural issues that sometimes creep into companies, they don't never happen, but they can be avoided because it's like, really, are we gonna make this a thing? Like we have these problem, like let's just, it's much easier to get everybody on board when there's a, like a actively burning house, right? Speaker 2 00:27:08 Like ev nobody argues about what kind of color the firetruck should be when the house is on fire, right? <laugh>, like, everybody just goes, I mean, going back to also like the meta, you know, I talked about trying to make sure I can figure out the next phase of growth. That's maybe the meta part of it, right? It's like, yeah, I wanna increase shareholder value. Yeah. I want to grow the company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's also like, I know if I can't keep the problems getting bigger and bigger, then we're gonna have more time to bike shed and argue and all that stuff. I just, but if I can keep the company growing really fast, then it's gonna hopefully stay a really good culture, um, as well. So, which maybe is antithetical to the D h H philosophy a little bit, so they have to bring me focus on it a little bit more. I think they have a slightly different philosophy there as a bootstrap company. Speaker 1 00:27:50 Yeah. I'd love to see you two debate that out. That'd be fun. <laugh> Speaker 2 00:27:53 I think I would lose Speaker 1 00:27:54 <laugh> very hard. Um, I mean, do, do you think there's a risk though, when, when do you exit the business while it's still growing so you don't have to solve those problems when growth Speaker 2 00:28:06 Still? That's a really good question. I I, yeah, you'll have to call me again in five years or 10 years. Um, because like, I think as a founder too, he's like, you start these things, even when you raise venture, whatever, you don't really have answers to that, you know? Right. I think if I started another company today, I would think more about it. Like, what's my exit strategy? And I mean, one type of exit strategy is that there is no exit strategy <laugh>. Right. That it's a forever thing. Right. I imagine revenue CAD is a forever business. Right? I think it's important. It's almost like a public utility level of importance for a part of the, the economy, um, the app store economy. And so everything I've done is with that in mind. So like, I don't think there's a really good set of acquirers for us. Speaker 2 00:28:45 I don't think there's, I don't think there's a lot of exit, which is good. It's kind of self-limited, my exit. And then also the amount of money we've raised also limits our exit potential outside of like a public offering or something someday, you know? And then in terms of the founder relationship with that, it's like I set myself up to assume I'm gonna work on this as long as I'm the best person to do the job and, and, and all of that stuff. Can I say that forever? I don't know, things change really quickly in life, but Yeah. We'll see, I mean, I think I've, I've, I've hadn't, I've been fortunate enough to meet founders who have gotten to that scale and not lost their identity in terms of like wanting to maintain control and like wanting to caring really about the business and how it's built. Speaker 2 00:29:25 And it doesn't just become another public equity that nobody cares about or the wrong people care about. Right. I was fortunate enough to meet with some of the founders and early team from Expensify. They've done a really interesting, they, they IPOed in a very interesting way. They structured their stock in a very interesting way. And again, it was like founders being like, yeah, actually, you know, it's again, it's like feeling out what are the false walls, right? Like what are the walls that like are real, and then what are the ones that kind of are fake? And like, yeah, if you push, yeah, maybe you're accepting some risk, but as a founder, I think that's kind of what you're in this game for is like, you like to accept some risk and feel, feel things out and stuff like that. So again, it's sharp, closest to the boat. Like what happens to our exit plan someday? I don't know. What I do know is that the biggest thing in my life is making sure that this service provides maximum value to those developers as long as possible and as long as it's useful. And so working backwards from there, there's your extra strategy, I don't know, whatever, whatever serves that purpose. Right. Which I think in some ways simplifies it. Speaker 1 00:30:25 Right? Right. Well, and that also means too, you're, um, even though things are growing, you know, you still have to figure how to deliver the goods and figure out, you know, take on the problems that you, you don't like, even though, um, you know, your team's growing too. I mean, what's been hardest for you to do perpetually over the lifespan of the company? Speaker 2 00:30:45 I mean, there's always like regression in work, like where you fixed something and then it got unfixed, right? You like hired the right person or set the right team up, or you thought you did. And then it's always like kind of an subtly annoying to have your sandcastle knocked over and be like, okay, I gotta rebuild this thing again. Right? <laugh>, like that's, and that's, that's perpetual. Like that just keeps happening, right? I think at this stage I've learned that that's just kind of the cycle, right? Like, I'll have cycles where everything's kind of neat and tidy and I got the right folks in the right places and everything's kind of working. And now I recognize that and I'm like, okay, quick. Like get a bunch of work done on things that are forward-looking and like time to work on vision and strategy and things. Speaker 2 00:31:25 And maybe like experiment with product stuff. Um, because I know that I'm only one day away or like from a slack message that somebody's resigning or like, you know, something's changing or your bank is having a bank run or <laugh> like one of your growth investors is shutting down. Like, there's all these different things that can potentially happen. So yeah, I mean that's always, that's always frustrating and stuff. And I think to some degree too, there's always just, you're never done with, I don't wanna say politics is the wrong word, but you're never done with people stuff. Like people are the core of the business. And like, I think a founder or CEO who thinks they can abstract themselves from all those messy details is gonna mi like, that's a big handle on your culture is like understanding how people interact and people are attracted and join and performed and all that stuff. Speaker 2 00:32:10 And if you want to totally, like, that's sounds painful. Like making performance, like just firing layoffs, like all this stuff is so incredibly taxing as a founder that I think there's a lot of incentives to avoid it. And obviously like if you, if I could wave a magic wand then like hire a vendor that's like never Fire Lee or whatever, like I never have to like think about it again. That would be amazing. But I, I think that's one of those things that I can't do, right? So I'm, I'm, I'm speaking of exceptionally calmly about it right now cause I'm, I'm not in the middle of it, right? Um, and I'm after kind of a, a tough couple weeks. Um, and then there'll be a week where it's like all of that stuff all at once, right? Again, but you get to it long enough and as long as you like are growing and like your fundamentals are good and you, you know, you don't have some big thing hanging over your head, you know, that like, okay, this is just some like glass I have to eat for a week, two weeks a month and or a quarter. Speaker 2 00:33:02 And then you'll get to the other side and then you'll have some fun again. And ideally those setbacks, you know, and the, the wiggly graph like aren't aren't this way, right. The, the graphs like adding up, you know, your two, one step back, two steps forward and you just kind of get your For sure. Speaker 1 00:33:15 I think. Yeah, I was gonna say, uh, you know, you're, you are speaking exceptionally calmly and, and zen-like about very painful and hard things. So that's the mark of someone who's been through it <laugh> many Speaker 2 00:33:25 Times. Uh, yeah, Peter, um, Peter from segment talked about it once on a podcast about, uh, it's just like growing, like roller coasters are intense if you ride one and you're not used to it. But like, if you lived on a rollercoaster <laugh>, like I'm pretty sure it wouldn't really feel like anything. Right? And you look crazy because you're like, you know, to outsiders you're like, how does somebody survive this? And sometimes really well-meaning people are like, oh my gosh, like, it's so hard. And you're like, yeah, but also you just kind of get used to it, right? And I, I think I struggled too, like as harder things I realized like I was gonna have to do harder things frequently. Like, and it wasn't gonna be something that's once and done. It's like every quarter, every other quarter or once a year, whatever, there's gonna be something I gotta let go. Speaker 2 00:34:11 Or like some really sticky people situation I sort out or something like this. And I started to feel really bad when I like tried to minimize how upset and like worked up and pain, how much pain, like I felt a lot of pain in those situations and I was like, well, I should feel pain because like they're certainly feeling more pain, right? Like there's definitely, and, and that's true. And I felt a lot of guilt about trying to minimize that. And so, and I, and I don't think I've got it figured out quite yet cause I don't think you should ever feel nothing. Right? But practically speaking, you do have to come into this mindset where you're, where you can both like recognize and feel it, but then also like be a dead eyed shark at the same time. Otherwise. I just think as a founder, it's, it's not a tenable situation to do this for as long as they expect us to do this. You know? So Speaker 1 00:34:55 It's enough to drive you and sing Speaker 2 00:34:57 <laugh>. It really is. It really is. So, and I'd say we're about halfway there. So <laugh>, Speaker 1 00:35:03 I mean, do you find yourself gravitating back towards your, your roots? Like what you're good at? I mean, I, I, when things get hard, I find myself wanting to go back and opening Speaker 2 00:35:12 A design y or something. Or design, yeah, yeah. Opening Figma or whatever, like, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Luckily, uh, I'm not very good at the things that I used to be really good at anymore. Right. Like <laugh>, it's, it's can be very frustrating when I open a code Speaker 1 00:35:26 Separation. Yeah, Speaker 2 00:35:27 Yeah. A little bit. And that, that takes some, I think that's a, that's a thing you earn as a founder, but it's also takes a little bit of mourning to be like, oh, I'm not really the greatest programmer or as good as programmers I used to be anymore. I joke I'm like the Rick Rubin of, of technical stuff now. Like I, I <laugh>, I just, I know what I like and I know what I don't like, but like, don't ask me to make music cuz like, I I, I don't know how to play any instruments anymore. Speaker 1 00:35:49 I think that comparison is more spot on than you think <laugh> Speaker 2 00:35:52 Because of the, because of the way that my appearance Yeah, yeah. The beard. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. I, uh, yeah, no, I, I do like, and I think, you know, I'm an engineer and I still know the power of code and the power of tools. And so sometimes when I see folks who, who don't code or haven't known how great it can be to build a tool to do le to to find leverage for you, I sometimes get frustrated and I'm like, oh, like why is this, we're doing this with 9,000 spreadsheets and like, whatever. And I'm like, oh, if I had a day I could like sit down and put this in a little web app, right? And it would like cut our process down by a bunch. And so yeah, I tend to have those dreams and maybe that is that, maybe that's a thing I could, you know, in terms of like making this job sustainable, maybe I should do that. Speaker 2 00:36:36 I should like build some little fun projects for me to like keep me, keep me feeling a little bit engaged in, in those things. But yeah, so the answer to your question, yeah, I do definitely like just want to code some days. Um, fortunately the company kind of demands that I can't, uh, <laugh>, right? Or else I probably would. Some folks build it in like Mitch Hashimoto, like he, he just, uh, CEO hash corp. Like he just stepped back into engineering after like eight years as ceo. Wow. And I think that's really says a lot for how he cares about the company that he's like, yeah, I'm gonna let somebody else drive, but I'm gonna go back to, to coding. And yeah, maybe that's the path for me someday. Like I'll just say like, Hey, I'm gonna stay on as chairman and, and, and <laugh> be a level a level three engineer or whatever that I think I would be fairly happy doing that, uh, potentially so might some interesting conflict. So, but eh, we'll figure it out. <laugh>, right? Speaker 1 00:37:27 Man, that's, uh, good for him though. I mean, usually, Speaker 2 00:37:30 Usually it's so jealous. It's like a Speaker 1 00:37:31 Ceremonial role where it's like, okay, the mad scientist, we will give him the corner office. No one will see him, he'll work on Lee's. Yeah. Speaker 2 00:37:40 I think that would, that would feel projects that would feel very, um, I don't know, it wouldn't feel like I'm rowing the boat, right? Like I feel like I'm just, I'm just drag, right? I don't think I could feel good about myself. I'd probably just go start another company. So I'd still have to be pulling, right? Um, and like I, uh, don't want anybody to think that my team, if they listen to this or any of my message or anything like this, that like, I'm ready to resign or anytime soon. But like, I mean, I think as a founder, I think it's good to stare at it and think like, what do I want? Right? And have a good answer. Cuz for me right now the answer is let's, let's go. Like I'm not, I'm not looking to do that at all. Like there's way more leverage I can put into this company and I have way more to give in this seat. Speaker 2 00:38:22 But if you, if you actually lay it out and like say, like think to yourself what do I actually want and care about it makes it easier to like assert that, right? And say, and, and I kind of, you know, my co my governor and I do this every year, it's kind of like, are are you good for another five before I do a five year plan? Like, are you good for another five? And so far yes, the answer is yes. The answer is yes. Right? And so, um, I think it's just a healthy way to think about a business in a longer term. It's like, make sure, you know, you know, cuz you're gonna have to give a lot, right? And make sure that that's, you're prepared to do that. And then it gets a lot easier too, especially with co-founders. Like if you're on the same page or if you're not just like putting it on the table that like, hey, like no, I can't do five and one of you can do five and one of you can do two. Like, okay, now, you know, now how do you, how do you navigate that? Right. You know, naming the thing is often the hardest part. And then once it's named, it's a little bit easier. Speaker 1 00:39:12 I love that question. That's a really powerful question. Especially founder to founder. Cuz it it is a marriage, it is a commitment. Yeah. Speaker 2 00:39:19 Yeah. And it's like, I couldn't do it without him, right? So I'm like, before I even bother planning out past 2027, like, <laugh>, are we gonna be doing this? Cause like my plan will look very different depending on the answer to that question potentially. Right? So, and it's good too, just gets it out there, right? Like if you have that right, that commitment from your, you know, cause you're always even the like, longest term marriages and whatever, there's always like that tiniest like little smallest corner darkest corner of doubt. And if you can, if you can like minimize that, I think it, I think it helps, it helps you feel more secure. Like at least I've got one thing that I know is not gonna like one, one thing that's not gonna hit me in the back of the head. Right. Uh, when I'm not paying attention. Exactly. Speaker 1 00:39:57 So, exactly. Well, that leads me to my next question. What's the most ridiculous thing you've done for revenue ca over the years and, and kind kind of related to this one? Speaker 2 00:40:08 I mean, yeah, I saw this question in your notes and I was like, I don't know. Like, I was like, I borrowed money from my parents, like when I was 30 some years old, which is not something you wanna do. Right. Which very sounds very annoying and privileged <laugh>. But like I had, when Covid happened, this is after we had raised money, I had like depleted all of my, I wasn't paying myself a lot. I had depleted most of my savings. And then I decided to move back to Ohio during the pandemic. And I literally had to borrow like 20 grand for my parents to like pay for the move because like I was, I was dead broke. And then we had our series A and she was B right after that. And things got a lot better. <laugh>, this was really funny. Like, I literally borrowed, I was like shame carrying my, my hat in my hand and my parents being like, can I borrow some money? Speaker 2 00:40:48 And they were like, yeah. And then, and then it was literally maybe like a month later I was like, all right, I have, I can pay you back now. <laugh>. Like wow. Things have turned around. I don't even know if that's the craziest thing cuz that was just, you know, I mean, I think it's like, I think it is just reshaping kind of everything about my life around this company, which seems, I don't know, it seems a little hyperbolic to say and like, I have another life. Like I have hobbies and things that aren't about revenue cat and like try to maintain some semblance of self. But I think the founders that think it's gonna be, you know, if you really want to go the distance and you really wanna put everything into it to think you're gonna be able to treat it like a job and to kind of like, you know, and I think maybe for some businesses that can work, but like the fact that, you know, where I live, where I work, like I moved back to Ohio because I wasn't so concerned about being able to raise money, but I was concerned about being able to raise my daughter, right? Speaker 2 00:41:44 <laugh>. And like, I needed the support, right? So I like uprooted my whole life kind of to support the company and I've, you know, very focused on how I structure my time and very focused on how I spend my time and like vacations or lack thereof and like some sort of, everything has gone into this company. So I guess like, I don't have some wacky story where I like <laugh>, you know, wore a chicken suit and like, or catsuit and like, you know, walked down <laugh> Market Street or anything like this. Um, oh, I did stay in a hacker house that was really gross. Like we were getting ready for a yc a demo day and, uh, we were living in SF demo day's down in, in in Mountain View, and it was a lot of commuting, like, and there's a lot of stuff like leading up to demo day. Speaker 2 00:42:23 And I was like, oh, Miguel Alexis's just like, let's stay down in Mountain View. It'll just like save us like seven hours of driving. We're like, okay, great. Um, and I <laugh> ran into like, it was like a hacker house, but it was like seven bunk beds in one bedroom, like the most discu, I do not know, I didn't get meningitis <laugh>. Like, we stayed there one night and I was like, no, no. That was the closest to like, that's the lowest point for me, a 30, 30 some year old man, like staying with a bunch of like 19 year olds, uh, in a hacker house. But again, like I didn't have a salary and it's expensive. Hotels are expensive in Mountain View and the company didn't have very much money. So I was like, this seems like the responsible thing to do. Like, uh, no, that is the nice thing, you know, for folks that are considering bootstrapping versus not. I know. Yeah. Yeah. You slowly show the devil and now you got this like, equity, you gotta like unload at some point. But man, it is just nice to not have to stay at the hacker house <laugh>. Speaker 2 00:43:13 Like, even if that means you have to be a public company CEO someday, or like, you know, you're gonna have, you know, some messy exit options someday. Yeah. It, it's, it's nice to be able just to get a regular hotel room, even if you and your co-founder have to sleep in the same room. Which, uh, I still feel weird when Miguel and I travel and like, we don't share a room. It feels wasteful, which is very strange. But, uh, you Speaker 1 00:43:33 Know, <laugh>, that, that's how, you know, you've been in the trenches for a while. <laugh>. Speaker 2 00:43:36 Yeah, <laugh>. I'm like, we could've saved $300 if I, we had shared a room and we're like, yeah, company policies, people don't share rooms. I'm like, okay, fair enough that that seems sensible for other reasons. <laugh>, and, Speaker 1 00:43:46 You know, we get clean bathrooms, you know, that's a bonus too, right? Yeah. Speaker 2 00:43:50 <laugh>. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It'll probably, I'm sure there'll be an even crazier answer in another decade. So. Speaker 1 00:43:57 Well, I mean, I I've been following your content for a while. I love, I love the new podcast. You dropped a thank you sweet new report called the State of Subscription Apps. And I know we're kind of like jerking around here, but this is, this is really interesting to me. All the work you put into this, all the insights you gleaned from it. I mean, what, what are the top, top insights that, um, that kind of came to you, that popped out to you from that? Speaker 2 00:44:22 Yeah, so we serve a really interesting niche market, right? Which is, is mobile apps that sell subscriptions on the app stores and they just have different sort of rules of physics to them then do like subscription SAS companies or d TOC subscriptions and things like this, right? So we felt that there wasn't really good data on there and we were sitting on, we were like the US and Apple are like the only, and Google are the only people sitting on a real data set here. So yeah, we, we, and I'd wanted to do this for years, but it took a long time to have the resources to do the study properly and really make sure we like, you know, of course anonymize the data really well and like actually generated good clean data. So revenue cat.com/report if there's anybody who's interested in downloading it. But yeah, I mean it's interesting you spent, you invest a lot to kind of tell you things you already knew <laugh>, which is like, every app is different. Speaker 2 00:45:09 So like a good subscription, like a good conversion rate. Any metric you have, you can say like, where do I sit on the curve? But in va in a vacuum from what your app does, what the value prop is, like the, the, the service it's providing can't really, there's no like golden standard of a good crowd conversion rate or a good whatever. There's high and low, but depending on your price points and just like right, your a acquisition rates and acquisition, um, costs and things like this, it can really matter. Which is why our report, like we, we gave a lot of distributions cuz we wanted to show people like, yeah you can exist in like lots of, there's successful apps and lots of different parts of this, these quartiles verticals really matter. I guess it's the same thing as saying apps are different, but like verticals really matter. Speaker 2 00:45:50 Like a a a Sumer app looks very different from like a, uh, an exercise app, right? And I think, I think depending on if you're thinking about entering this business, really like know what your goals are because I think kind of what you're building will dictate in some ways the headwinds you're gonna have, like the economics of a dating app are gonna be very different from the economics of, you know, many other categories. So understanding that is, is really important. You kind of need to kind of need to look at all your data on that in that lens. And then this one does that pricing matters. So like, this has actually been recently we, we launched an experiments tool to like let folks run price testing, which is really a pain on the app stores. I don't know if we have data in the report that says this, but it does, like pricing is still probably one of your biggest levers. Speaker 2 00:46:37 And yeah, before you go invest in a lot of other things, you should think about your pricing or, and, and, and to know that there's no, if you have the ability to do a data-driven pricing exploration, do it. I know a lot of SaaS companies, like it's hard like revenue cap for us experiment with pricing is difficult just because our number of at bats is really low compared to a consumer app. But if you have like high conversions, like number of conversions, like run some experiments because like anybody who tells you that they can just look at the data and tell you what your price should be is, is lying. Like the market is the only one that knows and the market is in some ways appears irrational, right? There's not, it's not a hundred percent rational and how it decides like what price it will bear. So, um, yeah, those three things like know your market, know your app is gonna be unique and then also just pricing. So it's the, the basics, you know, we build a 48 page report to tell you like kind of stuff you already knew, but Speaker 1 00:47:30 <laugh> uh, validation is key though, right? The price testing. I, I gotta jump on that too because I remember at Tinder we were rolling out subscription tiers and a la carte tiers and we're testing manually different skews within different regions and it was just, just a nightmare to manage Yeah. Even make sense of a sense of what was happening, you know? Yeah. Speaker 2 00:47:52 You just enter this cone of confusion, right? Where you <laugh> Speaker 1 00:47:55 Exactly. Speaker 2 00:47:56 You don't trust anything and it, it is hard. So hopefully, I mean if you think about that's kind of the vision for revenue Cat, like a company like Tinder or Duolingo, some of the folks we've had on, on the sub club, our, our podcast, they can do this internally because they have teams that can build it. Yeah. And I've seen how powerful those tools are and so that's what gets me excited. It gets me outta bed every day is cuz like I know we can take that expertise, build it, package it, and give the 80% result to thousands of developers. And I think that's just going to maximize the utility of the iPhone <laugh>, frankly, of software, right? As if developers can learn how to make more money, they'll make more better apps if they're, if it's a more profitable endeavor for them Speaker 1 00:48:35 And everyone wins, Speaker 2 00:48:37 That's the the dream. Speaker 1 00:48:38 All right. We're almost at time. I got two more questions for you. Book or long form article, anything you're reading right now that's uh, popped out at you? Speaker 2 00:48:46 You know, this is gonna sound really like cheesy, but I'm, I'm finally reading Wealth of Nations, which is like the Adam Smith like yeah. You know, capitalism book I guess from the 17 hundreds. And I just, you know, a lot of the examples are dated and there's some stuff that I don't think would really carry forward, but I do think it helped for me as an engineer learning how to run a company to understand sort of some of the basics of market economics and having experienced it first, not just in labor markets, but then also in like my product markets and like all these things really kind of gave me a lot of labeling on stuff that was, that was really, really helpful. I'm only like two thirds of the way through it, but I can tell you all about the price of how many shillings a bushel of corn was in England in 1643 before the rule of King Edward or something like this. But surprisingly not that dry. So I would recommend it. Um, I also have capital, the Marks one, I figured like, you know, let's just let 'em put 'em both in my head, let 'em debate it out, right? Yeah. So I'm gonna read Capital next cause I got that, I got that in sent on my shelf. Speaker 1 00:49:45 Awesome. That one I remember is a bit more of a slog I think I only read, Speaker 2 00:49:48 Yeah, I'm for how readable wealth of nations has been. I'm, I'm, I'm not, I'm not looking forward to, based on what I've heard, maybe I'll read just a, a summary or I'm a, a great courses about, about capital, uh, or, or Marxism in general I think would be maybe a faster, faster path. Speaker 1 00:50:04 <laugh>. And I'd like to close with one high octane tip. You give everyone else listening, parenting, life, exercise, anything that's, uh, that's changed your life for the better. No, Speaker 2 00:50:16 Man, this is like, so annoying. Like, like, uh, Tim Ferrisi stuff, but like a year ago, I, this is so <laugh>, I quit therapy <laugh>, I hit the gym and I started taking cold showers. So annoying, right? You're like, that's like every, every idiot with a podcast like says that stuff works. But like, honestly, well the quit therapy thing is kind of a McGuff, it just makes it funnier. But having like an exercise routine and then like the cold showers thing, like I know there's physiological stuff, people say matters, but for me it's the most difficult thing I do every day cuz like, it sucks. It never stops sucking. Like getting into a cold shower in the morning and I have a, it's, it's really annoying. I have a little mantra I say to myself like, uh, what is it, fortune favors of brave? Or I'll say something really like, hardest thing you're gonna do all day. Speaker 2 00:50:58 It's really, really, really cheesy. But like, it helps me cuz like, I'm like, all right, no matter what happens today, like if I can throw myself into this and do it for 10 seconds or whatever, like I can probably answer that email that's like a little stressful or like whatever, <laugh>, right? And then on top of that, there's all the physiological benefits that are supposed as well. And I've, I've found that too. So yeah, it's, it's, it's annoying, but I think it's just like simplify, like find a routine for you that just works and lock it in and then, you know, because you're gonna just have this eight hours of chaos every day. So <laugh> like, right? Yeah. That's, that's, I dunno, that's, it is a really annoying tip. It's probably every other, every I, I'm annoyed with myself that I've like fallen into that like cliche, but like, Hey, you know what, it's my personal truth works for me, so well, Speaker 1 00:51:45 Hey, and you're the first one in claiming on the show, so, so there you go. Everyone's gonna be a follower to you now. <laugh>. Awesome. Good deal. Jacob. This was awesome. Appreciate it. Speaker 2 00:51:53 All right, Scott, this is, it is great to reconnect. All right, thank you. Speaker 1 00:51:56 You too man. Don't miss out on future episodes. Get alerts from new [email protected] or follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Special thanks to turnkey for sponsoring the show. Learn how to make customers happier while boosting [email protected]. Your support for this show has been incredible so far, and let's keep the momentum going. We are all slaves to the algorithm. Ratings and reviews really do help. Please rate as five stars on your platform of choice. We'll be truly grateful. That's all for now. I'm Scott Hif and this is Ben's subscription Heroes.

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