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Best of Founder Mode I · Founder Mode

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Founder Mode special episode.
• 0:02
  This week we're going to do something kind of new and maybe
• 0:05
  kind of cool. Yeah, we're going to share our
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  favorite clips from the 1st 20 episodes of Founder Mode.
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  Let's get into it. You can't wait.
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  We open this whole series by redefining luck.
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  Luck's not a lottery ticket. It's reps, compounding and
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  surface area. Luck is a skill.
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  You can manufacture it, Which is kind of counterintuitive, right?
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  Are people who are lucky actually lucky or did they
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  create their own luck? People don't see the reps you
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  put in to go in to get the final outcome.
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  How does luck turn into that compounding sort of effort that
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  allows you to say here, now, I created the situation where I
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  was lucky? Founders think they can Sprint
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  forever. But burnout always collects
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  interest. I think there's this like
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  fallacy that I can just run really fast at everything all at
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  once. Like founders are like, I am
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  superhuman and I, you know, the laws of physics don't apply to
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  me. I don't need sleep.
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  I don't need to stop and eat that meal.
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  My family will be there whenever I stop working.
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  Like it's all going to be fine. I'm just going to run really
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  fast and, you know, break things in the tech startup sense.
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  But like, the reality is that you're actually breaking stuff.
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  And like between breaking your own body, your own mind, your
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  kind of support system, like there's a bunch of casualties.
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  Alex built A6 figure sass solo. But .01% of the code was
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  actually typed by him. AI did the rest.
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  I built creator buddy over the last six months, launched it
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  about a month ago. I basically took my content
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  creation system I used over the last three years while I was
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  working a nine to five, right. I was trying to come up with
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  content as I, you know, had this very strenuous job.
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  I took that system that allowed me to come up with endless
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  content ideas, push out tons of content and grow to hundreds of
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  thousands of followers. I took that system, I turned it
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  into software, right. And so first thing I was
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  thinking about when do this, I just want to build an app for my
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  that makes my life a lot easier. And as I started building it,
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  I'm like, OK, other people could use this and this would bring
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  tons of value to them. Anxiety isn't a bug, it's fuel.
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  Bill Russell threw up before every game.
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  Founders feel the same. Anxiety just has to be there,
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  and the sooner you accept the fact that it, it will always be
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  there no matter what, it's there to help you and not harm you.
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  If you know how to ride that Bill Russell, one of the most
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  legendary NBA players ever, he threw up for every single game
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  he played. That's 1200 something games.
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  So that anxiety was there when it mattered and when it didn't
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  matter. So why would a founder in 2025
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  accept there to be no anxiety if Bill Russell is playing a last
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  place team like the best player of the era and he's throwing up
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  because of her nervous he is. The biggest unlock?
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  Just ask but. Ask with clarity, fairness, and
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  conviction. People are much more likely to
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  like fund your company or hire you if you show that you're
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  trustworthy. And one of the best ways to do
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  that is through references. I started looking up people at
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  Shopify that I was interviewing with and I realized that I had a
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  mutual connection with with the president of the company.
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  And so I reached out and I asked him.
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  I said, hey, if you truly, I believe I'd be a great fit, I'd
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  appreciate an intro or some sort of like endorsement.
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  And it was never like, hey, I need a favor, please hype me.
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  I was really authentic with him. And I said no pressure
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  whatsoever. I think that's also super
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  important where it's like, yeah, you want to be grounded.
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  You want to be clear, you want to make sure your ask is
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  reasonable, but also give people an out.
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  The word that saves founders No. Boundaries build trust, not
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  enemies. An absence of answer is in a
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  sense leaving that bridge open. But if you do like, I mean,
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  yeah, playing strategically leaving like that open and the
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  response, right, I think that is that is the key because it
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  depends like who's from, right, if it's somebody.
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  Strategic that I actually. Do want to work with like then?
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  Yeah, there is definitely a scenario where I'm like, sorry,
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  like we, we don't have the bandwidth right now.
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  Like that's that's usually the most honest answer I think.
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  It's like. If you're running a startup of
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  any size, I'm sure like regardless of how much resource
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  you have. You always.
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  Have a confine in how much output, like it's always a
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  resource game, right? Then it's just like it's hard to
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  allocate that unless there's like a budget allocated to it.
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  Like unless there's revenue on the table, like it's hard to
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  allocate that right. So I think that is usually the
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  play, like it's, yeah, I'm like interested, but like down the
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  road, not right now. From flurry to accompli, Peter
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  cracked Go to market. It all comes down to empathy.
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  The biggest single word that I think is the most important
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  word, which is also probably going to be a relief to people
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  dealing with the question of will AAI replace my job?
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  AI won't replace your job, it'll change your job.
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  A big difference between a good market and a good product person
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  is an empathy. And so, and what I mean is like,
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  can you put yourself in the shoes of that customer and like,
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  what are their, what's their pain?
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  What's their aspiration? You know, what are the dynamics
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  like at work for them to make a decision?
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  How easy are you making it for them to try you and make a
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  decision? So like that momentum piece is
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  really, I think it comes from somehow understanding the
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  customer really well. If it's.
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  Just an AI wrapper, it won't last.
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  The Moat is solving what used to be impossible.
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  People think that the bottleneck is actually the hardware when in
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  reality, it's not the hardware, it's the real like time data
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  where there's just simply not enough models to kind of train
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  it on. With software, it's a lot
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  different because you can just train it off of X or Reddit or
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  like you know, with Grok, for example, just pulling from all
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  the X posts. But I think to get real life
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  footage is, you know, that's why Tesla was ahead of the curve
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  when they were doing FSD. And you know, then you look at
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  Waymo or you look at, you know, in the past Cruise for Zooks
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  where they're having to basically send vehicles as test
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  vehicles to collect it. I mean, the reason Elon was
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  ahead of the curve with Tesla is because he was able to just have
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  drivers like us going around. Data for Elon.
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  For we're the Tesla training team right here at The Trio.
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  Exactly right. And so I think that was a
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  brilliant move on his part because everyone else's is
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  behind. Megan hacked building permits to
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  launch retail. Under 8 feet and under 50 square
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  feet. No permit required.
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  Spy reveal was a pop up company. We basically did small format
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  kiosk that got deployed pretty much anywhere consumers were.
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  So sidewalks, hotel lobbies, corporate lobbies, malls, public
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  plazas, parks, pretty much anywhere.
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  And it was. This small format boutique that
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  could get deployed in under an hour where consumers could come
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  touch and feel products and then transact directly on site.
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  And so then I started looking at the permit and I realized that
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  if something was under 8 feet and under 50 square feet,
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  technically it was not a building.
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  Therefore, it did not need to meet building codes or building
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  permits. Nice.
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  It just, I just needed a sales permit and all I need to do is
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  like the business that it was in front of, they needed to approve
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  it. And then I needed like a
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  seller's license and I could pretty much go anywhere I
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  wanted. So I was just trying to hack the
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  building permits and that was how I designed the kiosk to be
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  able to fit within those parameters.
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  From Outlook Mobile to AI Co pilots.
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  JJ says every founder now has to think fast software.
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  We are. In this weird moment when?
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  AI is like, really, really useful.
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  Extremely useful. Almost too useful to be
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  dangerous, right? But.
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  At the same time, not very. Reliable, so it cannot really do
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  things fully autonomously. So the paradigm between sort.
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  Of like a. Copilot Paradigm and the the.
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  Independent to another dev on the team paradigm we are.
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  Quickly moving toward that, but not there yet.
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  This is why Devon may not work the best today yet for a lot of
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  tasks, but I'm sure that in a period of time everyone will be
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  on the other side. Design love means nothing if the
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  box never ships. Sam built GIR from spatula to
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  pattern brands. I have this phrase that I that I
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  didn't coin but that I come back to all the time, which is the
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  collision with the customer and like no plan survives the
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  collision with the customer. Launching our Kickstarter was a
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  pre market collision with the customer because I used to, I
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  mean, see pre selling spatulas, but I had effectively customers
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  that I owed, you know, time and attention and ultimately
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  products too. And and so I think that
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  crowdfunding is such a fascinating tool for that
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  reason. Like you get to learn from your
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  customers, but you also have to support them much earlier on
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  that you might have yes, my job was product and yes, my job was
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  building our website and like, and also, yes, my job was
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  talking to factories, but my job was talking to customers and
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  making them happy, you know, before they had anything.
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  But they had, you know, they hadn't even given me dollars,
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  actually pledge to give me their dollars.
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  I'm like, I have nothing, but I owe you a lot.
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  From Hollywood robots to nuclear power plants, ASA shows why
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  safety and simplicity win. This stunt double reactor
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  practice run blew my mind. Yeah, as you can imagine,
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  they're, they're very, very careful people, those who run
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  nuclear reactors. Makes sense.
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  They're they're very careful kind of ramp up to get to the
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  point where you can, you can go in, fly during an active, active
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  mission, you know, to the point where where you have to go and
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  weigh every single part of your drone.
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  It gets weighed before it goes in and it gets weighed when it
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  comes out. There had better be the exact
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  same mask. It has to be able to be used
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  with glove or essentially sort of hardening it to the point
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  where you're sending it into outer space.
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  Almost kind of just hammered on this problem for maybe a year
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  and a half, something like that to go through all of the
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  different checks proving that we could do it inside at our at our
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  place. And then we go to their training
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  reactor or they have a full training mock up, which is the
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  full size thing sitting, you know.
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  Yeah. And then you know.
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  Exact same size. Just 100% yeah.
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  Do that enough times. You know we had a the.
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  Movie analogy. The film analogy is like the
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  stunt double. This is the stunt double nuclear
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  reactor. Yep, I understand this is very
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  different from from software. You just can't.
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  You know you can't just. Throw it out there, yeah.
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  I'm like shipping apps as we were like logging onto the
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  podcast. Yeah, not quite.
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  Dennis built AI scheduling agents years before there were
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  LLMS. The brutal lesson 32,000,000
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  hand labeled emails. Any startup is probably one of
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  two things is 1000 things, but it's certainly a startup where
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  you're trying to solve either some market challenge and or a
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  science challenge. Try not to solve both at the
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  same time. It's going to be twice as hard.
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  So Airbnb is not a technical challenge.
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  That is you trying to figure out whether can I have murderers
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  sleep in my apartment while I'm here and I'm OK with that or
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  whatever the business plan might look like.
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  Or is it a science challenge like X dot AI for where we at
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  that moment in 2014 thought we could carve out just a corner of
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  the language universe, build a set of models where we could
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  navigate that pre LLM for where it kind of looks like we solved
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  language, certainly to a large screen now, but certainly not
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  back then. So to answer your question,
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  we're in that bucket where we were brave enough or foolish
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  enough to believe we carve out that particular corner for where
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  we could create this agent that could converse on scheduling
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  only. And we did it on a labeled data
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  set which we assembled, so 32,000,000 hand labeled items.
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  Founders don't need perfect days.
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  It's just a daily 15 minutes that compounds.
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  Small wins everyday push ups count.
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  Think of like. Your your body and.
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  When you wake up in the morning is like, what's the first thing
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  I need to do for my? Body in a healthy weight.
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  Mentally and physically, you know, and that would be probably
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  still, you know. Whether?
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  Whether? It's just getting on the.
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  Floor doing some abs. Or you know, doing a set of push
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  ups, it's it starts there, the small things will create.
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  You don't need a gym, you know. It really does, you know, And it
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  goes across the board with the eating, too, yeah.
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  Suja says stop selling pieces, ship outcomes.
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  Build applications, not tool kits.
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  People want an. Uber.
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  And right now they're being sold car parts.
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  They're like, here you go, there's a steering wheel,
• 13:24
  there's a here's some engine, go build it yourself.
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  Yeah, bro, I just. Want to?
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  Go from point A to point B. Like just give me.
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  An Uber. And get me there.
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  Yeah. And I think.
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  That's the opportunity right now, right that.
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  You don't. Need to sell the tools.
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  You want to be able to think through.
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  The AI. Applications from like first.
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  Principles and be able to deliver.
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  The transportation is what the clients want, not the tools that
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  they need. To go and do that with Angus
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  carries a road map of hypothesis.
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  Fail forward fast and travel 0 drag.
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  I think it's there's really like two different situations here.
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  Internally, it needs to be about your road map of hypothesis
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  instead of like every single thing we build is going to is
• 14:07
  going to crush. I actually think like I like to
• 14:09
  pull the failure forward. Every PM should be failing first
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  thing in the morning. Like you should be hitting the
• 14:15
  model, like seeing whether it can do the thing you want it to
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  do. And so like, I think bring those
• 14:20
  failures forward and then learn whether you're going to make it
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  do what you want it to do. The Moat isn't hype, it's
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  hardware and proprietary data. Hybrid, old, smart, fast,
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  fearless. Let's.
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  Start from the software like. Not only do I have to build just
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  the best software that people are that want to use, they like
• 14:38
  to use as an API everything that a software company has to do,
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  but we also have to like make something that physically works
• 14:45
  in the water that you open up that has, you know, for us a
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  cartridge and a battery, it degrades over time.
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  It's sitting in water, it gets waterlogged.
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  Like no software company has those issues, right?
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  So if you get the hardware right, you now have a Moat is is
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  kind of thing. Number one thing too is that you
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  actually get a proprietary data mechanism, right?
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  It's probably one way to think about it.
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  Like The thing is inside the water and it's collecting data
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  that otherwise a SAS, like just a pure chemistry water SAS
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  company would never have access to unless they asked Jason, hey,
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  can you go in your pool, measure your pool water and give us the
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  data? But now I'm making you the human
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  do something. And so I think that's kind of
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  the real benefit of having both the hardware, software and a
• 15:28
  service all kind of combined into one.
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  Ride with the people who'd follow you anywhere.
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  Boomerangs are rare. Build with your Rider dice.
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  It's really hard to make the return trip work when it's the
• 15:41
  same company. And so the difference between
• 15:43
  these two concepts are bringing people back in that have left.
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  They left for a reason. Whether you let them go or they
• 15:49
  quit, there's a reason they left.
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  And maybe they're at a different place in their journey.
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  But I think it's kind of like putting people on a PIP like,
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  yeah, a lot of them never make it out.
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  And so it's, it's a very rare case that the boomerang thing
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  works well from my personal experience than others I've
• 16:02
  seen. And then the boomer ride thing
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  ultimately, like, you know, the people that are good, you've
• 16:08
  worked them a long time and those are the ones you bring
• 16:10
  along with you and, and that's your crew.
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  And sometimes people kind of fall off the boat and maybe they
• 16:16
  get to get back on, but maybe not.
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  AI gets you to 80%. Your voice is the final 20.
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  Don't forget distribution and your rolodex.
• 16:25
  I think the, the people that use it, the best that I've seen are
• 16:31
  they follow my 8020 rule. So I don't think that any AI is
• 16:36
  that where the point where you can just be 100% like it can
• 16:40
  talk for you, do everything for you.
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  So for me and the people that I work with, they I just want to
• 16:46
  get it to 80%. So if I'm right at using it to
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  write a post or write a VSL or write a, you know, a YouTube
• 16:52
  script, whatever it is, I want to get it to 80% percent, you
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  know, 80% AI, 20% Chris. And the people that I see that
• 17:02
  are doing that, like there's some you're still putting some
• 17:05
  emphasis on the real part of, you know, you.
• 17:09
  I think we're getting really close to major major major major
• 17:14
  revolt against all just AI generated slot.
• 17:19
  Most creators live in the long tail.
• 17:21
  Own your business, not just your content.
• 17:23
  Monetization beats going viral every time.
• 17:27
  Like everybody sees. Mr. Beast and is like I want to
• 17:29
  be Mr. Beast but. Mr. Beast, by definition is a
• 17:32
  .0001% of the greater economy, right?
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  The. Vast majority of people are on
• 17:37
  the long tail, right? And the long tail is you.
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  Have these viral? Moments where you have millions
• 17:41
  of views, but the payouts you get from these platforms are
• 17:44
  like. Dollars, maybe 10s.
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  Of dollars. For like.
• 17:47
  Millions of views. So the platform, the social
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  media platforms. Are able to generate.
• 17:51
  All sorts of viewership serve all sorts of ads.
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  And give you like a DE. Minimis payment off the back of
• 17:56
  that, even though your product or what you put out there had
• 17:59
  just gone viral, right? Our thesis around Kajabi is
• 18:02
  like, those moments are great. And we're not saying don't have
• 18:05
  those moments because distribution is amazing.
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  But the question is what do you put behind that that makes it
• 18:10
  sustainable and helps you? Capture that value.
• 18:12
  And turn into a business. Kevin, I can't believe we've
• 18:16
  done 20 episodes. I mean more than that by now,
• 18:18
  actually. It's pretty cool.
• 18:21
  I'm, I'm stoked man. What do you think the next 20
• 18:22
  are going to be like? Pretty good.
• 18:24
  I think they're going to be better.
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  I think they're going to be better.
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  I think we kind of like got our teething done with the 1st 20.
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  And I think now it's it's really, you know, sort of
• 18:31
  scaling this out and I'm hyped for the next 20 because I think
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  some of these are going to be in person and, you know, kicking it
• 18:37
  up a notch with studio. Yeah, stay tuned.
• 18:39
  Subscribe, like Reshare, review, comment.
• 18:42
  Tell us what you love from the 1st 20 episodes, what you hated,
• 18:44
  what you want to see more of, and maybe we'll bring a guest or
• 18:47
  two back to hear what they've been up to since the last time
• 18:49
  they were here. Awesome talk soon, Jason.