5min chapter

#397: Two Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Answer

The Tim Ferriss Show

notes

CHAPTER

How Does This Thought Process Relate to Pivots?

In the early 19 nineties, when reed stepped in to take over net flicks because it was failing, he said, well, why don't we try the subscription thing? It might work. And little did he know it, it was the ideal antidote to the late fees that block buster charged that used to drive everyone crazy. The metaphor of pivot is apt, and that a pivot involves keeping your pivot foot on the ground as you move your body, right? You can't have any arbitrary aspect of success bi your pivot. There are exceptions. A great example is instagram ended up doing something completely different then what it started out to do.

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Transcript

Episode notes

"If the customer doesn't scream, you don't have product-market fit." — Andy Rachleff

Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This time, we have a slightly different episode—a takeover by Mike Maples, Jr.

Mike Maples, Jr. (@m2jr) and his firm, Floodgate, have invested in and supported many of the startups you might recognize — including Twitter, Twitch, Lyft, Chegg, and Okta, among others — long before they were household names. He's been on the Forbes Midas List eight times in the last decade, but he's much more than a successful investor. Mike has also succeeded as both a founder and operating executive.

He's also simply a great guy and the first person who really taught me how to angel invest. For more on that background, listen to my interview with Mike at tim.blog/mikemaples.

In this episode, however, Mike speaks with Andy Rachleff (@arachleff), co-founder of Wealthfront and Benchmark Capital, about two of the biggest questions that should be on every start-up founder's mind: How do you reach "product-market fit" (a term that Andy coined), and how do they know when you've achieved it?

Andy has known many of the start-up world's giants and synthesized their lessons, so you will also hear what Andy learned from Don Valentine of Sequoia, Scott Cook of Intuit, Reed Hastings of Netflix, Geoffrey Moore, Clay Christensen, Eric Ries, and Steve Blank.

The audio from this conversation is from the premiere episode of Mike's brand-new podcast, Starting Greatness, which I encourage you check out. There are some incredible guests coming.

So, if you like this conversation between Mike and Andy, be sure to subscribe to Starting Greatness on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also check out the website at greatness.floodgate.com, and on Twitter you can follow Mike at @m2jr and Andy at @arachleff.

Please enjoy!

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Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.