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Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman
3. Learn from every “no,” w/Walker & Company’s Tristan Walker
3. Learn from every “no,” w/Walker & Company’s Tristan Walker

3. Learn from every “no,” w/Walker & Company’s Tristan Walker

Masters of Scale with Reid HoffmanGo to Podcast Page

Reid Hoffman, Tristan Walker
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34 Clips
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Nov 24, 2020
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Episode Transcript
0:00
He listeners, it's June Cohen, one of the co-founders here at where you at where the company behind masters of scale as well as meditative story and some other podcast you might be a fan of so we are looking for great people to join our team and we always find that when we reach out here, it works like magic. So let me tell you what we're looking for. We're building outweigh, whatever really special team of smart driven inventive people with wildly diverse backgrounds.
0:30
Everyone is comfortable in the all-hands-on-deck semi chaos of a start-up everyone. We hire has a passion for creating highly original content that matters in the world and then scaling it in contrarian ways, which is exactly what you might expect from the creators of this show. So some of the roles we need social media strategist curation associate audience development strategist and producers with Awesome Audio production skills. So head to wait what.com.
1:00
ABS that's wa-ait whatp.com jobs and note. We only hire incredibly kind people. I've been turned down a hundred and forty eight times. That's Kathryn Minshew co-founder and CEO of the Muse a career development website that she pitch to investors a hundred and forty eight times. Not that she was counting. There were literally days where I had a no over breakfast a no over at 10:30 a.m. Coffee.
1:31
I know over lunch, you know disinterest at 2 p.m. Somebody who left a meeting early at 4 and then I would go to drinks and feel like I was being laughed out of the room and when we finally raise our seed round, I went back and counted it was both painful and gratifying at the same time looking at all those names and thinking I remember that no, I remember that. No, I remember that no and they sting everyone's dings.
2:01
Today the Muse serves users in the millions Catherine raised 16 million dollars last year and the her tail is the origin story of most great startups. So if you're hearing a chorus of noes, you should look for other signs that you're onto something. I believe that the best ideas often appear laughable at first glance. You got to have incredible Talent at every position. There are fires burning when you're going home.
2:30
This is totally going to be amazing. There are so many easy ways. So so it's do I have no idea what happened. Sorry you made a mistake. Would you have to time it right?
2:50
This is masters of scale.
2:56
We'll start the show in a moment after a word from our sponsor
2:59
plaid. There's a reason we have used car salesman jokes. If you like me are unlucky enough to have gone on to a used car lot. Those jokes are based on it pretty bad customer experience.
3:16
That's John pits head of policy at plaid a financial data Network that
3:20
connects leading fintech apps and financial institutions. Maybe you're already feeling his pain four or
3:26
Five times they're going to hop up and say well I'm going to have to go speak to the manager. Are you buying the car for cash or you financing it? Okay. I'm going to go back to financing and see what we can get you and they're going to decide what loan you get.
3:40
The sales person disappears into a back room the door shuts, you're not even involved in the
3:45
conversation but fintech is changing all of that compare that to carvanha not only is the price right there up front. My ability to apply for financing is built into the product.
3:56
Act they can connect to my bank account. They can tell me before I click anything what the cost of that financing is going to be
4:03
carvanha harnesses the power of plaid and it's not the only retailer building fintech into their customer transactions will hear more about that later in the show to learn how plaid can power digital Finance for your business visit plaid.com.
4:23
I'm Reid Hoffman co founder of LinkedIn partner Greylock and your host. I have the theory that the best business idea is often appear laughable at first glance. The lesson for entrepreneurs goes deeper than the padded Vise. He shouldn't take no for an answer. You should expect to take no for an answer if you're laughed out of the room. It might actually be a good sign. I'm going to test this Theory by talking to some of the smartest people. I know many of them have spent time in the rejection line.
4:52
Google Facebook LinkedIn Air B&B all sounded crazy before they scaled spectacularly on this episode of Masters scale. I want to help you see what the transformation from a crazy idea to a clearly good idea looks like and what signs to watch for along the way we'll talk to several CEOs, but we'll focus on one entrepreneurs Journey from beginning to now it starts in a
5:22
A far far away from Silicon Valley. So you're not one of those classic kind of Silicon Valley geek people. Not at all. That's Tristan Walker the founder and CEO of Walker & Company their Flagship brand is bevel a razor from man with curly facial hair. He started as a kid in the projects.
5:41
You know, I like to say I had the whole Rose That Grew From Concrete story, right? Yeah, I grew up projects welfare All That Jazz and I had one goal in life. And as good as wealthy as possible as quickly as possible and I realized that there are three ways.
5:52
Ways to do it. The first was to be an actor an athlete and that didn't work out for me too. Well at all the second layers of work on Wall Street. I had the Good Fortune to do that for about two years and hated it. So I said to him I've already exhausted two of the three. The last one is entrepreneurship and the day I came to that realization, you know, I applied to the school Stanford for business school. Unfortunately, let me in and then I learned that Silicon Valley existed in the rest is history. So you
6:18
came to Stanford not even knowing it was like it. Was it the hardest.
6:22
Idea,
6:24
Tristan doesn't sound like your typical Silicon Valley geek but I can't stress this enough. You don't have to wear a food stained hoodie to succeed here. Neither. Do you have to play World of Warcraft or write code until sunrise? You only need to have a sense of curiosity and Tristan was exceptionally curious. He wasn't just a student of business. He was a student of every technological shift taking place around him.
6:50
I was an accounting class at Stanford and I remember I believe MC Hammer was supposed to speak at Stanford. And there is this commotion going on people wondering if he was actually going to do it and it was going around for like five minutes and I open up Twitter and I just asked them to hammer out. Like are you coming
7:05
bear in mind? This is 2008 back when Twitter had a relatively cozy community of 500,000 monthly users. Tristan was one of the more active members as luck would have it. It was Hammer Time on Twitter
7:19
30 seconds later. He
7:20
Back and I turned around to my fellow classmates and said yes, he's coming C and at that point I realized how important Twitter is part in like the kind of Innovations within communication were and it was my first understanding of bad ideas being a good idea because everyone else around the table is like, why are you on Twitter? What's the point of this thing? I don't care about what you're eating for breakfast and they just didn't get it.
7:45
And that showed me that there was something there that I had to kind of dive into
7:50
so are already seeing the seeds of Kristen success. You don't have to be a geek but you do need to geek out over the new ideas. You want a level of enthusiasm that slightly out of step with your peers and Tristan was seriously geeking out over Twitter. He wasn't just an early user. He wanted to help build the company.
8:10
So I emailed 20 different folks who I knew were either one or two degrees separated from the company the last
8:15
Emails David Hornick because he was a professor at Stanford and also partnered August Capital he replied back. He said come to my office. Let's talk. David asked me to question
8:24
Tristan. Are you willing to work for free for the summer? That's David Hornick by the
8:28
way, right? And I said, yeah,
8:30
I'm happy to introduce you to Twitter. I'm curious if you actually know what Twitter does.
8:34
Yes, right, and at the time they weren't thinking about the business model and that sort of thing and I was fascinated by what it can become
8:41
send me your resume and I'll send it to every
8:43
probably two days after that.
8:45
Evan Williams send me an email Evan Williams is the founder and former CEO of Twitter saying come in for an interview in a week. After that. They gave me an internship at Twitter and I worked there for about six seven months when they're 20 bucks of the company.
8:57
You may think Tristan is lucky to get an email from Evan Williams, but notice the size of Twitter's Workforce the time 20 employees total Tristan spotted the company's potential not just ahead of his classmates but ahead of the market. He has a knack for spotting ideas right before Blast Off David Hornick noticed this to
9:15
Was nothing when Tristan was excited about it. I mean Twitter was a place that you told your buddies you were heading to the park Twitter at the time was a service where you said I'm eating a delicious ice cream cone. It was entirely unclear what one did with Twitter how one could make money at Twitter how big Twitter would become shortly after his Twitter internship ended. He started his next email campaign. He bombarded the founders of a fledgling startup called Foursquare.
9:45
And again the CEO Dennis Crowley responded.
9:49
I emailed them eight times the eighth time Dennis sent me an e-mail. I'll never forget this verbatim. He said Tristan, you know what it just may take you up on some of this. Are you ever in New York dens, right? That's it. And I was in LA at the time and I was sitting on the couch with my wife and I said, how should I reply to this guy? 10 minutes later. I sent him an email and I said actually I was planning on being New York tomorrow. I booked my flight that night flew out the
10:15
Following morning hung out with him for a week in a month later. I was running business development for the company
10:19
by now. You may be thinking holy cow CEOs are awfully responsive creatures. But before you start dashing off messages to the employers and investors are you dreams? I should warn you few stories and like Tristan's I've had the experience where like I was walking out of Greylock and guy said I've been waiting here all day to meet you and I'm like, this isn't the way to meet me. I'm going to continue walking to my car.
10:45
And I would try to get a reference to me. This will get me to never pay attention to you again, you go into my security services file of people to track that file exists, but Tristan's pursued a Foursquare had a happier ending that's because he targeted teeny early-stage companies startups with 20 people are less. The lesson here is not just as persistence. But his prescience some people get lucky and board a rocket ship by chance, but to rocket ships, that's no coincidence.
11:15
That's a sign you can spot an undervalued idea ahead of your peers. It's like the spidey sense that just keeps tingling. It's hard to stay in one job even are wildly successful company. Once you've started sensing opportunities all around
11:30
you when I started at the company, we had zero Merchants zero Brands all that one platform by the time I ended up leaving Foursquare even a couple of years later. We had over a million merchants on the platform by the time I left we were a hundred and fifty people I started when we were three and
11:45
Frankly, I wanted to go out and build ambitious things myself.
11:48
So Tristan left for square in 2012 after building a business development team from the ground up. He then found the perfect place to plan his next move Ben Horowitz a founding partner at the iconic Venture Capital firm Andreessen Horowitz invited Tristan just to hang around the office and think
12:07
Big Ben said come spend six to nine months us figure out what you want to do guy spent all nine months there and I like to say I spent the first seven months of my time.
12:15
They're wasting their time. I wanted to build a bank. I went and fixed rate and trucking I wanted to fix obesity in the country in the world,
12:20
right then inspiration struck.
12:23
I just got frustrated by the Shaving experience
12:26
a better shaving experience may not sound like the idea on the scale of freight Trucking obesity or banking but the most scalable ideas don't have to tackle dramatic problems. They have to tackle neglected problems. And the more that Tristan looked into the history of Shaving the more you realize there was a huge lie.
12:45
Overlooked demographic men with course or curly facial hair who had been living with the curse of razor burns and razor bumps for so long. They no longer even recognized. It was a problem. Let's just get a handle on this course or curly hair dilemma, which I'll admit is outside my particular area of expertise. Are you fed up with razor burn for decades razor manufacturers have promised a better shaving experience. They identify the same problems. Are you sick of Nick's cuts and unsightly.
13:15
Razor bumps an offer essentially the same solution more blades and every cartridge that one not two but three blade a lot more blood that's right five blades to whisk away those stubborn whiskers and this ever-growing stack of blades did actually improve the Shaving Sprint for a lot of men. We tested our six blade razor on 1,200 men two out of three reported a smoother cleaner shaving experience.
13:40
But it mostly worked for white guys like me white guys with straight hair, but the rest of the population and especially African-American men were experiencing a multi-blade assault on their skin. They're shaving experience got worse and this went on for Generations until a dive in a history open Tristan's eyes to a problem that no one else could see
14:02
the reached out to an old retired an executive from the cpg companies at Tristan. Look at photos of black man, a hundred hundred twenty years ago.
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None of them had raised a bunch of shaving irritation on their faces. I thought he's being facetious. So I said I have time and increasing our has made you look it up and I went to Flickr and identities generic Search terms like Harlem Renaissance black in the 1920s that sort of thing. I want you to 1200 photos and then find one with like a non cleanly shaven face and had to do with you know, the tools they use in 1904. This whole industry was built a gentleman named King Gillette. He had this amazing idea. He said for hundreds of years Barbara serving you this thing called the straight razor to Great efficacy it
14:40
Hair level with the skin not beneath but using a straight razor yourself at home is pretty hard to use. If you're not trained CIA this idea. He said what if you can take a single blade house it within a safe head attach a handle to it. Take it home with you and shave and that started the mass-market shaming industry As We Know It Fast Forward 20 years later. They lose the patent and many would argue that the only reason we have two three four five six leg raises a is purely due to patent protection, but actually has less efficacy and if you travel internationally single blade is more popular than
15:08
multi his solution.
15:10
Re-engineered the single blade razor specifically for coarser curly hair. He called it the bevel and it became the flagship product for Walker & Company and the first step in his grand plan. He envisioned a health and beauty company on par with global Brands like Procter & Gamble a company that devoted his attention to men and women of color. It was blindingly obvious to him that this company should
15:37
exist mean a lot of people say that they're trying to build the Procter &
15:40
Gamble for people of color. Let me talk about this for a second because it's really funny. Number one. I've never said that and into is interesting. Like I think folks talk about is if it's a niche kind of thing, but people of color the majority of the world safe where the parking lot with people of color. What the hell is Procter & Gamble,
15:54
but when you're pitching a room of mostly white mostly male investors, it can be hard to convey the urgency of this Market oversight. So how did the best and brightest VCS respond to Tristan's idea?
16:07
I don't know it's niche. I don't think it's scalable.
16:10
Terrible idea for me to kind of jump into the bevel thing because it was a consumer group who didn't want it and Industry that is dominated by the multi blade use case with billions and billions and billions of dollars to attack you with patent protection Etc. Right and to do it in like Silicon Valley, right? That's crazy
16:27
as is often the case. That was one lone
16:29
Champion negative been he's like, that's the idea and at that point. I knew I had something quite frankly
16:35
this may sound like a strangely optimistic reaction. Why should a single endorsement from
16:40
an investor outweigh a crowd of investors telling you thanks, but no thanks shouldn't you weigh all of the feedback equally short answer? No and here's why the first truth of Entrepreneurship and investing is that the very big ideas are contrarian because the contrarian is part of the reason why a bunch of large companies and competitors haven't already done it why a bunch of other entrepreneurs haven't already succeeded at it. And so that leaves the space for the creation of something and
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It's something big you have to have that initial space. For example in the early stages of Google. It was searched as a terrible way of making money in advertising because advertising is time on site and what a search do it shuffles you off the site as fast as you can go, right? That's not a good business model. So like an Airbnb it's like oh someone's going to rent a couch or room from someone else who are The Freaks on both sides of that transaction. So all of these things have a similar quality, very smart. People will tell you
17:40
you there's no there there. So you have to gird yourself for a string of rejections some entrepreneurs simply develop thick-skinned others treat it like a normal part of the work day, you know, wake up brush your teeth. Listen to people crush your dreams. It's a living but there's another more hopeful approach our producer Dan CAD me talked with a number of entrepreneurs who pitched seemingly laughable ideas in all kinds of Industries like a be falak founder and CEO of global citizen year her.
18:10
Send students abroad for a year of International Service between high school and college back in 2008. She was struggling to get funding and she turned to a leadership coach for advice. We asked her to share that advice the nose are actually a gift. You heard that right a gift and he said between now and when we talk two weeks from now, I want you to go out into the world and gather as many nose as you possibly can it is your homework.
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Work to be rejected over and over and over and over and come back and report on it and it ended up being the most important thing. I could have ever done and the most important advice I could have been given at that point the most successful entrepreneurs listen closely to the nose. They mine the rejections for Clues Kathryn Minshew the founder of the Muse got her share of ejections over the course of a hundred and Forty-Eight knows she shared at the top of this episode. We asked her about the reasons that investors turned her down the bit too early for us, but keep in touch once
19:10
Hit a hundred thousand monthly active users. Give me a call. This is a Fool's errand. It's expensive. It doesn't scale. That's not very Tech. That's not a scalable platform. Aren't you worried that you're going to lose all your users once they turn 30 and you know have babies or you know, I get that women in New York and San Francisco love this product, but I think you're going to really have a hard time finding women who care about their careers once you go outside of you know the coast and I just remember looking at these people and thinking
19:40
Do you know a lot of women Catherine is right to ask this question. She knows more about women than most investors and she also knows more about her business entrepreneurs have to learn how to hold on to what they know through the arduous pitch process and Care golden the founder and CEO of hint water takes this a step further when she was hard at work on a recipe for a flavored drink with no sugar preservatives a bigwig in the beverage industry offered her pointed advice. What I want you to notice is how Carol listen to his rejection.
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She didn't just hear. No, she saw the breadcrumbs leading to our own Company Success. His response was sweetie Americans love sweet. That's really interesting that he just called me sweetie. You know, I'm a business person. I had been zoned out of the conversation and came back in realize that somebody at a major Beverage Company basically was sharing with me, you know without him knowing it that that was really what the belief was at this major soda company.
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That Americans really loved sweet and so that was the fork that they were taking in the road and that I needed to put the gas on and grow this before they decided to come down my Fork as well turns out the cares critic was wrong to the tune of 90 million dollars a year. That's how much revenue hint water takes in from Americans who supposedly have incurable sweet tooth's at this point. You may be thinking about your own Counterpoint to my theory Sure.
21:10
Karen Catherine, ultimately secured financing and prove their critics wrong, but what if you're pitching a truly terrible idea, how can you learn to hear that?
21:27
We'll be back in a moment after a word from our sponsor plaid.
21:34
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plaid.com.
23:05
So how can you tell a truly bad idea from a bad sounding idea? How can you be sure your ugly duckling could become a swan. This is the key you have to pay attention to the quality. Not the quantity rejections. You want to see at least a teeny minority investors squirm. You don't have to get them to a yes, but you should detect some friction as they reason their way to a no Tristan has a keen ear for this quality in his conversations.
23:35
Can pinpoint down to the PowerPoint slide number the moments his audience stops paying attention
23:43
at a slide in there? I think it was like slide 14. We're talking about proactive the acne system as like a kind of a good analogy to what we're trying to do, you know, it's a difference between kind of Gillette and bevel as like Neutrogena and proactive as a system. It's always very important issue and this VC looked me and I'll never forget. This said Tristan. I'm not sure issues related to
24:05
Raise them up shaving irritation or as profound and big an issue for people is acne. At which point I said, you know, I kind of understand what you're saying. But all you had to do is get on the phone with ten black men and eight of them when they said this is a permanent thing I have to deal with. All you got to do is get on the phone with ten white men and four of them would have said the same thing could have done it for women to and you would have got the same ratios. So it wasn't that it was like a bad idea or not as important is just that that person was unwilling to acquire the context necessary to understand what we're working on. That's just laziness and at that point I can't fix.
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That so I just got to move on until I find somebody who understood it
24:38
notice how quickly Tristan's mind moves on to the next investor when the quality of the questions drops. He knows mid pitch that the conversations over. The rest is noise. Those half-hearted questions are like the elevator music of the pitch process. It's meant to pacify entrepreneurs. In fact, it creates at them. It also wastes their time. Tristan will tell you he prefers a hard no to a comforting maybe
25:05
I mean
25:05
In Silicon Valley investors will tell you all the time. We want to invest in people who can execute with some symbols of pedigree chasing a significant white space and a big opportunity for us. It was like check check check check and we heard 99% knows like how much is this? Right and you just like trying to say something that I want to hear as opposed to telling the truth and I wish that Silicon Valley we tell the truth a little bit
25:27
more Tristan raises a really interesting question here how much of this investor hemming and hawing as well both
25:35
What's really going through their heads as a partner Greylock? I want to share what happens after entrepreneur leaves room and investors left to mull
25:44
over crazy idea.
25:46
It begins with the debrief of the investors Partners if I'm presenting an idea to my partners at Greylock and they all go that's great. We should do that. I'm like, here's a bunch of hyper smart people and no one's saying oh watch out for this or watch out for that. It's too easy. The idea is so obviously good. I can already hear the Stampede.
26:05
Speed of competitors trampling over are hopeful it'll start up on the other hand. You don't want every person in the room to say read. You're out of your mind because then you're wondering hmm my drinking the Kool-Aid in a very bad way. What you want is some people going you guys are out of your minds and some people going I see it. You want to polarize reaction? So take my decision to invest in Airbnb is an example David Z told me during the air B&B debrief David Z is a
26:35
A Greylock investment.
26:37
Well, every venture capital is past have a deal. It doesn't work that they learn from Airbnb can be yours and David Z is a super smart VC. He invested in LinkedIn. He invested in Facebook. He invested in Pandora. He personally return two and a half billion dollars to gray locks funds. He's as smart as smart money gets and believe me. I weigh his objections carefully if someone as smart as David disagrees with me, I worried but I also get excited. It's an emotional roller coaster.
27:05
Sure, and as this sort of emotional turmoil plays out in the background discussion, it's hard to give an entrepreneur a hard. No the best ideas make you want to say yes, and no in the same breath. This mixed reaction can strain the relationship between investors and entrepreneurs TV. One point example, my friend Josh kopelman the founding partner at first round Capital tweeted a picture of a letter he received from aspern founder. It was a message printed in huge black.
27:35
Is the sender who will remain anonymous wrote dear Josh will see I think you've already yourself over by getting left out of this deal Josh coming in on the street. Well, that's one way to respond when a VC passes, but I talked with Josh and that tweet doesn't even begin to capture the full range of emotions. He experiences when he turns down a Founder so but why did you like just kind of personal question? Why did you tweak the letter? What was the impulse? It wasn't to mock him. It was just too Oma.
28:05
Most show that I recognize I have a privileged life just because I say no it doesn't end there. It's a hard thing. You know, I'm an optimist. You're an optimist. The job is 99% of the time were saying no and so when you become a VC, you have to try to figure out like what style of VC you are, right, but I've actually found that when you're going to pass being able to be explicit and transparent about it and also doing it upfront probably same experience you had when I was
28:35
Big money there were three types of VCS my favorite with a quick. Yes. My second favorite where the quick know and my least favorite was the long drawn-out maybe if you show me this and prove this I knew that I wanted to be in class one or two. And that's what I optimize for. Yeah quick. Yes or quick note. Well, I'm the problem of the type 3 of EC is actually they're damaging the founders and the really just trying to play out their own image, you know their own option on this and that's exactly right. Why say no, I'll just wait around the hoop and maybe if something changes I'll get a shot in.
29:05
It is very damaging for a founder and and many Founders because they're optimists. They have happy ears. They hear that as oh this VC is interested. When what they really should be doing is just saying thank you. Let's move on to someone else now on the other hand. I've got quite a long Woulda Coulda Shoulda list. So there ya as I tell most Founders there are plenty of companies that are in that empty portfolio. So, you know, I'm often wrong. Are there any particular Founders that you passed on that? You're haunted by
29:35
Yes, baby. I try not to obsess because the list is so long. I like the way that Josh describes his list of missed opportunities every VC including me has a list like this an anti portfolio the startups you might have funded which cast a long Shadow over your conversations launched from yours. And if you as an entrepreneur see a flicker of that shadow Cross and investors face, that should give you comfort ultimately you need to get used to being alone champion, and there's
30:05
A question Tristan poses to himself, which is a good question for every entrepreneur who's in the depths of a grueling pitch
30:12
process. What do you fundamentally feel that? You're the best person in the world to do I'm like really be thoughtful about that, you know increase your humility a little bit and really think about what you're uniquely qualified to do and in to chase the bad ideas.
30:28
Like it may be that there is a hundred thousand people who could go solve this problem if they knew about it if they're motivated by it, but of those hundred thousand you may be the only one who knows about it can assemble the resources and wants to do it. One of my favorite quotations is from Robert De Niro in the movie Ronin, which is if there is a question, there is no question and the parallel in entrepreneurship is if you don't have an absolutely solid theory of competitive differentiation you do not have competitive.
30:56
Differentiation and it's really important to have competitive differentiation. For example, if you said at the beginning of LinkedIn, what was my differentiation my differentiation is I understood virality. Am I an expert on careers and the job recruiting Marketplace and hiring like no, right. So I'm the unique perfect person doesn't mean that when you line up every attribute you turn out to be the only person it's action fact that you're taking a unique shot and you have a unique ability to take that shot relative to competition.
31:27
And once you're certain of your competitive Advantage, you'll no longer feel like you're waging at quixotic battle against conventional wisdom. You'll feel like the world must eventually come around to your way of seeing things.
31:39
I think health and beauty is doomed for all types of reasons I could suggest and talk to you about but one in particular really sticks with me and still does to this day. You know, I think all Global culture is like by American culture, which is led by Black Culture in the US and more recently in seeing Asian culture. The big frustration of mine is my
31:56
In early adopting region on the planet and it's knowing very little about the earliest adopting culture on the planet right like that. Discord doesn't make too much sense to me because I'm trying to show folks that here's one of these kind of lost industries that have seen no disruption certainly with technology have seen no disruption certainly with like this demographic group that I understand and cultural impact of it you start to see this demographic group becoming the majority of the country with increasing wealth access to Technologies the early
32:26
and culture on the planet my experience of not having products that worked for me my ability to potentially raise money for that thing. I don't think there's anyone better on the planet to do this one thing than I and the day. I came that realization. It was the most freeing moment for me and I didn't care about hearing the nose anymore because I knew that we had something
32:46
I'm Reid Hoffman. Thank you for listening.
32:54
And now a final word from our sponsor plaid.
33:00
If you're a company and you touch money ever you're a fan tech company or you're going to be a fan tech company. We're back one more time with John pits of plaid
33:10
who's been telling us how retailers are partnering
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with apps to keep the customer focused
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on their product instead of worrying how to pay for it.
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When I try on a new pair of jeans. I don't spend most of that time thinking about whether I'm going to use a credit card or cash or a debit card, I think about the jeans your customer.
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Once the financial aspect of their engagement with you to be the easiest part of your transaction and it isn't just retail that's getting easier fintech is making its way into every consumer offering from home office software like Microsoft Excel to Home Improvement loans. The next phase is embedded Finance where fintech becomes part of every product that's probably coming in the next two or three years. That's what makes every company a fin tech company.
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You're becoming a fin tech company because fintech makes money easier consumers have voted with their thumbs. If you don't pay attention to what they want. They won't pay attention to you
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to learn how plaid can power digital Finance for your business. Visit plaid.com.
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Masha's of scale is a wait what original the show is recorded on site and California and produced at the studio inside Sy Partners in New York. Our executive producers are June Cohen and daren't riff our producers Jenny Cataldo dank had me and Ben Manila are supervising producer is Jay Punjabi original music is by the holiday Brothers mixing and mastering by Brian Pew special. Thanks to Jessica Johnson say it is sepia Eva.
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At least a Schreiber Chris Shea David Sanford Stephanie Kent and rafina mod visit masters of scale.com to find the transcript for this episode and be sure to subscribe to our email
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