In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the difference between running a fully remote company versus semi-remote companies. The business world has changed. It’s now possible for employees to work outside of an office and be very productive at it. But deciding if your company should be a remote company or a semi-remote company is a critical decision a founder can make In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how Close started as a semi-remote company, why remote employees shouldn’t be treated or feel like second class employees, how Hitens company managed their remote teams. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 01:10 Why this topic was chosen. 02:00 How Close started as a semi-remote company. 03:39 Why remote employees shouldn’t be treated or feel like second class employees. 03:37 Why Airbnb stopped referring to their headquarters as HQ. 04:44 How companies fail to understand how to make remote working work. 05:05 How Hitens company managed their remote teams. 05:50 Why everyone should have the information they need to do their jobs. 06:06 How to ensure that everyone should have the information they need to do their jobs. 06:33 The importance of understanding that you have to fight silos. 3 Key Points: Remote employees shouldn’t be treated or feel like second class employeesWe started documenting meetings all the time.Everyone should have the information they need to do their jobs. [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey, everybody this is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about the difference between running a fully-distributed, or remote company, versus being, let’s say, semi-remote and semi distributed. So, let’s first define what the difference is between the two, and then let’s go through the pros and cons of both approaches. Right, so we have talked recently on The Startup Chat about the trend of remote work and that not going away. Check that episode out if you haven’t listened to it, but today I wanted to talk about a difference between companies that from Day One have decided that they’re not going to have an office and that every person that works in the company is basically working in the distributed fashion remotely and is setting up their own work environment. All right, and all work, all collaborative work, all communication, happens virtually versus companies that do part of their work or have part of their workers outside an office. So, semi-remote, in my definition, means you have an office or multiple offices but you also have… Either you have a bunch of people that work for you that are not working out of these offices and live in completely different locations or, and this is a big or, you have everybody that works for you, let’s say… The early days of Close we were qualifying ourselves as semi-remote because we did have a small office, and everybody lived in the Bay area, so they could get to the office. But people were traveling so much, or entire team was traveling so much, and we really didn’t care that much about having working hours in the office. But we thought of ourselves as semi-remote because, at any given time, it was very rare that all of us were at the office. At most of two out of three months there was maybe just like two out of the six or seven people that worked actually in the office. [0:02:03] Hiten Shah: Wow, yeah I’ve had an office once, and I didn’t really go into it as much as other folks did that were in the area. I don’t think we’ve made it the biggest requirement to go there and then we had a lot of folks who were remote as well, and I think I’m going to start it off by… their equal in terms of team members. And I think that’s a very challenging thing when you have an office and you also have remote folks, because remote folks should not be treated or feel like second-class citizens. There is a pretty huge risk of people feeling that way. [0:02:47] Steli Efti: Yeah, I think that’s really one of the biggest challenges that you have to work on when you have an office and some of the people are not… Are in a completely different location is that it’s very easy to create the impression or create the reality that there’s two classes of citizens at your company. Right? There are the people that are in the… And this is even true for companies that have multiple offices but there’s one headquarter, all right. And then, I remember recently a friend of mine that worked at Airbnb, she was telling me how they stopped referring to the San Francisco office of Airbnb as HQ- [0:03:26] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:03:26] Steli Efti: …because a huge part of Airbnb’s business and growth and profitability came from Europe. But the Europe offices and all the management there felt like they were totally disconnected from HQ where all the important decision are being made. Right? And, so it’s interesting, this is a challenge anywhere, but I think even more so when there’s not even an office, and you’re just like, you live somewhere, and you work somewhere on your own and then everybody else or many, many… Most of the other people in the company work out of one central location. It’s very easy to be siloed, its very easy to feel like you’re a second-class citizen, and I think that can be very detrimental to culture and to making these distributed workers successful. I think a lot of times when companies try this semi-remote set-up they don’t find as much success because their not as empathetic and as thoughtful about how to design an environment that’s going to really empower these remote and distributed workers. And then when it doesn’t work out, it makes them go to the conclusion that, “Yeah, we tried hiring people remotely and it doesn’t work.” Right? Versus understanding that they were not as thoughtful in designing a work environment that would empower these people to succeed. [0:04:42] Hiten Shah: Yeah, it’s interesting like what we started doing was, even if you’re in the office, when there was an All Hands you had to join remotely. [0:04:52] Steli Efti: Mm-hmm (affirmative). [0:04:53] Hiten Shah: So that was one thing we did. Another thing we started doing was we started documenting meetings a lot more. So there were notes and appropriate people would get those notes shared, or everyone would if it was relevant to everyone. Even today on our remote teams, I’m personally doing more of that sharing notes with appropriate people after I have a meeting because they weren’t in the meeting. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a meeting internal or external, I’m doing that more, and more, and more, even if it’s just a bunch of bullets in Slack, just so I think it’s rally easy to have what you would say are random conversations when you’re in an office. Whether it’s like, even after work for drinks or whatever it is. And it’s just really easy to do that and you don’t get to do that when you’re remote. So, what do you do? How do you make sure people have the information they need? Because really that’s what it’s about. Everyone should have the information they need to do their jobs and they should have as much information as possible would be the logical way to think about it. So the one way to do that would be to spread the information around and you’re just more diligent about making sure that that information spreads and that you’re taking notes and you’re being diligent with documentation and things like that. So there’s a bunch of stuff you can do and it’s sort of like the equivalent of mandates, right? Like this is how we do it and we do this so that everyone knows what they need to know even if they’re not in the office. [0:06:26] Steli Efti: Yeah love that. And I think that number one, understanding that you have to fight silos, that you can’t just have in person chats and [inaudible] brainstorms that are not documented and shared anywhere. Right, and then expect people that are remote to have the proper context and feel truly connected to the vision, mission, or the goals that you’ve set. Right, because they’re just lacking all this information anytime a distributor worker would hear something like, ” Yeah, we discussed this last week and decided that…” and they weren’t there, it breaks peoples hearts, right? It really makes them feel terrible which then leads to very, very back outcome. So creating transparency, making sure that even when every bodies in the office, every conversation is documented, communicated… We often times when we were like… So we started with this, like, everybody in an office but people were traveling all the time, then we started hiring remote people and at some point we were like 50/50. Right, 50 people who were in the Bay area, and 50 percent that were people outside the Bay area that we had hired. And, you know, we would make sure that we would record every kind of meeting that we had and uploaded it to Dropbox so people could just listen in to either brainstorming sessions or anything else that would go on. We would write transcriptions or summaries of conversations that were going on, and I think that that made a big difference. Another thing that I heard from other companies that’ve tried this that said that, you know, that had a core team in an office and then a bunch of team members that weren’t, is that they… I was just talking to somebody yesterday about this, that they… What they did, and what they’ve tried and what can work really well, is to do these fully remote weeks. So you can go two ways, right? You can fly in the remote workers frequently to work out of your office with everybody else to connect more if there’s an office there. But the reverse is also to have a full remote week where even the people that are in the office are not allowed in the office for that week, right? And everybody is doing distributor work and that can work magic to increase empathy. That can work magic so that somethings that the, kind of, on-site team members were annoyed by, like, “Why do I have to write this up? This is all this busy work that’s not really useful.” All of a sudden, once they have to go fully remote, and they have to get with bad wifi in a coffee shop or the challenges of working all day from their pajamas or feeling disconnected about a discussion of this type or the other, it increases empathy. And I think it then makes it so much easier for people to develop better ideas on how to work better together, how to communicate better together, and also a passionate commitment to really support the people that aren’t in the office. And so I’ve heard many, many… we’ve never done this, but I’ve heard this about for the third or fourth time from people that had this setup of the core team in an office, and a bunch of people that weren’t, and I’ve heard really great result and makes total sense to me as an ideas, as a strategy to make sure there’s a good culture in place. [0:09:30] Hiten Shah: Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think there’s ways we can manage this, we’re just learning still. [0:09:35] Steli Efti: Yeah, now as a last thing that I want to touch on, this fully remote versus semi-remote, we talked about the semi-remote one because it’s the more complicated one to a certain degree. Right? How they keep kind of [inaudible] and culture and make sure everybody feels like they’re valued the same way. When you’re starting out, let’s say you’re a founder and you’re just starting out, and you’re not sure. Do I want to do remote or do I not want to this and the first one or two people that I want to start this company with, they are living in the same city as I do. Any risks to starting with an office and then going remote or going semi-remote or any benefits to being fully dedicated to fully remote no matter how many people that you hire that live in that city? What’s your take on that? What would be your advice to a founder that is like, “I don’t know if I should have an office or not? If I should go fully remote or not because I could see both things working out in the long term and I don’t know quite how to start.” [0:10:38] Hiten Shah: Yeah if you’re not sure and you’re able to work in person then work in person and as you start making hires, decide what works better. Because a lot of times, in the beginning, you’re still learning a lot about each other and the business and how it’s going to work. So if you’re not sure, then start with whatever’s the most comfortable for you. So if you’re in the same place, start working in the same place, it’s okay, it really is. You can change it as long as you’re pretty small. Its harder to change it after about a dozen people. Twenty is kind of the threshold where it makes it really hard to change and not have some kind of fallout, people leaving, or just some kind of difficulties. Bu my suggestion would be just don’t make this such a big thing that it stops you from starting, or it causes you to have a lot of confusion and prevents you from sort of taking action on just building your business. Because I think that’s the number one thing. Which is start building your business and do it in whatever ways the least friction possible and you can decide you know like I said, before you hit ten, ideally before you hit five, what you want to do about where you end up. Whether you want to end up fully remote or a hybrid or just build out an office. [0:11:55] Steli Efti: Exactly, I couldn’t have said it better. I totally agree and I would just add one little thing before we wrap up the episode to your point, which is, if you are thing about remote, you want to get better at this. Even if you’re three people in an office, you can start practicing best practices. Right? And start having the type of processes in place where you don’t just chitchat all day long. You chitchat, and then you document. Right? Or you make sure that certain this are recorded; you make sure that just certain practices in the way you create transparency within the team are adapted even early on. You don’t have to spend most of the time on it but just a little bit to build that muscle, so as you start growing the team and potentially hiring somebody that’s not there, its easy to transition into that and you’re getting better and better at it and you don’t have to worry about it. Whatever’s easiest, do that first because in the beginning, you know, birthing a product that has any kind of merit and gains momentum is so difficult on its own, that worrying about all kinds of things that will happen down the line once you’ve succeeded too early is usually a waste of time. All right. That’s it from us for this episode of The Startup Chat, we will hear you very soon. [0:13:01] Hiten Shah: Later. [0:13:02] The post 420: Semi-Remote? Good/Bad? appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about remote work or distributed work. The topic of having remote or distributed teams is a hot one in the startup world. It is common for some startups that implement remote work policies to see increased productivity, efficiency, and fulfillment from their employees. However, the reverse can be the case when a remote team is not managed properly In this week’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about having a remote work or distributed work, what the workforce could look like in the future, how the business landscape has changed and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 01:44 Why this topic was chosen. 02:10 One side of the trend line. 04:34 Another side of the trend line. 06:40 What the workforce could look like in the future. 07:31 How we’re going to get better at managing remote teams. 08:16 Why the growth rate of distributed companies is going to play a bigger role in the future. 08:56 Companies that have had success being fully remote. 09:43 How the business landscape has changed. 10:37 How the future of the workforce could look like. 3 Key Points: It’s so difficult to hire from a local areaWe’re going to find and learn how to hire productive team members no matter where they areThe growth rate of distributed companies is going to play a bigger role in the future. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody. This is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah, and today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to do first of a few, and I know we’ve talked about this before at some point too, but I think this is a trend, and so the topic is about remote work, or what some are calling distributed work, and we just wanted to talk about it as a trend and talk about why it’s so important right now and why so many people are talking about it. And, on top of that, I’m doing some research on the topic, by creating a report with my team at FYI, and we’re partnered with a company called [Mirro] to do that, and before we even begin, I did want to give one shout-out because there’s a newish podcast and blog by Matt Mullenweg from Automatic, and it’s called Distributed, and it’s at distributed.blog. One of the things that Matt, I believe, really believes is that he likes calling it distributed work, not remote work. I think he’s got the pet peeve similar to mine of, put it as self-funded instead of bootstrapped. [0:01:09] Steli Efti: Yup. [0:01:11] Hiten Shah: But he’s really talking about what most of us have been talking about as remote work. So distributed work, remote work, this is a trend. I know you’ve been doing it for years. I’ve been doing it for about 16 now. Let’s talk about it. [0:01:24] Steli Efti: Yeah. And specifically, I think I’d love to talk about why it’s seeming to be bubbling up even more so than I’ve seen ever before and becoming more and more of a topic. I see a lot of debate area kind of an echo chamber of … Just recently there have been a bunch of articles about more and more startups leaving the Bay area or more and more startups starting to hire more aggressively remotely. I think recently there were big news that Stripe said their next big hiring hub is going to be distributed or remote, right? [0:01:58] Hiten Shah: Yup. [0:01:59] Steli Efti: And that was kind of a big announcement, for a unicorn startup to say that, that was, I think, traditionally very much based on setting up these large offices, right, and headquarters. And, so, I wanted to talk about why this is a trend and why I don’t think it’s going to die down, right? So the trend part on my end, from my perspective, is just that … I mean, it’s just like everything else. You go through cycles, but the trend plan is definitely going up in the sense that there’s a bunch of people that will try this. Then they will overhype it and write about this as, “This is the solution to all problems. This is the biggest, best, next thing. Every company needs to do this.” There’s like an overexcitement, and then there’s a sobering up period where a bunch of these startups fail. A bunch of these people that tried this, it didn’t work out for them. And then there’s this new wave of, like, writing cynically about it. And we’ll be like, “This is why remote didn’t work. This is why we decided to go back to an office. This is why … ” Right? And this everybody goes, “Oh, this … Ah, does remote work really work? Oh, I heard a lot of bad things. I hear a lot of people that tried it, those startups that tried it and failed.” And then rinse and repeat, right? Because there’s always a part of that cycle, a bunch of companies that did go through it, had some hard times as well or had to adjust or had to learn and grow and figure out processes and best practices on how to do this well. And during the time of figuring it out, they were quiet but, then, once they figured out, they again go out in the world and were, like, “No, no, no. Remote work does work. We’ve been doing it now for a number of years, and here’s what we learned on how to do it well.” And so you go through these cycles, and I feel like we’re just coming up again on a cycle where just there’s been another huge batch of companies that went through quite a strong period, that went through a lot of challenges organizationally on how to do distributed really, really well and are now kind of hitting their stride and starting to write again more about it. You have more and more examples today than ever of startups that have grown quite significantly and are very successful running distributed teams. That’s one thing. And the other side of the trendline is that it’s just becoming harder and harder to only hire local talent, even in an area like the Bay area that probably has the highest concentration of tech talent in the world, the market is so overheated and so overly competitive, and people are jumping from one insane offer to the next every eight to twelve months. So the retention is a problem. Housing is a problem. Salary is a problem. So hiring just focused on one local area is just very, very, very hard to do, and so now you have this whole trend in the Bay area where a lot more companies just go, “It’s not feasible to just hire all our team from this physical location. It just doesn’t make sense. We cannot do it successfully.” So we are forced to be more open-minded and look elsewhere for talent, and since we have to look elsewhere for talent, we might as well start learning more about remote and distributed, and we probably have to be get better at it and try it out. So I think that that’s kind of the phase that we’re in right now, but the long-term trendline … Do you see this ever going completely down? Can you imagine a world where five or ten years from now every company has decided that, no, remote and distributed doesn’t work, and so now the future of business and the future of work is you will always go back to an office because that’s the only way to get work done? [0:05:45] Hiten Shah: You know, I’ve been doing it a long time. I know you’ve been doing it a long time. [0:05:50] Steli Efti: Yup. [0:05:52] Hiten Shah: There are other folks out there that have been doing it a long time, where there’s so many people understanding a lot of the benefits of doing it, and I think what will probably end up happening is, just like Matt Mullenweg kind of is trying to point, it’s distributed work, and it means that you might have different locations, but you might also have people who are not coming into the office ever as well, or coming in rarely. That seems to be where it’s going to really accelerate this trend, and accelerate this is when we don’t just think of it like companies are fully remote or companies are remote first or anything like that. So I think the conclusion of remote work isn’t going to go back to, “Oh, everyone needs to be in an office.” I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to find and learn how to have productive team members no matter where they are. Whether you have an office or people are working from home or working from coffee shops or co-working places, we’ll just get better at doing work if we’re doing work at all stages of the company and all stages of the business when people aren’t in the same place. I think one thing that’s really interesting is I’m not sure if any fully remote company has gone public yet. I’m not sure. I’m trying to think. I’m not sure. Is Upwork public? [0:07:14] Steli Efti: Upwork is not public yet I think. [0:07:16] Hiten Shah: Yeah, so that’s the only one I can think of, because I think they’re one of the largest, if not the largest. [0:07:20] Steli Efti: And [MySQL] was purchased before they ever went public- [0:07:24] Hiten Shah: No, I think Upwork is public. [0:07:26] Steli Efti: Is it? Oh, my bad. [0:07:28] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:07:28] Steli Efti: My bad. [0:07:28] Hiten Shah: Yeah, yeah. I didn’t know either. Yeah. So, yeah, who else did you mention? [0:07:34] Steli Efti: I mentioned just … Remember one of the bigger ones in kind of the “old days” was [inaudible], and they were purchased by- [0:07:45] Hiten Shah: Or Red Hat, Red Hat too, yeah. [0:07:46] Steli Efti: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [0:07:48] Hiten Shah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re right. Yeah, so there’s been a few. So, yes, there have been companies going public, I think one of the reasons I ask is because growth rates of distributed companies versus non-distributed companies is one of the things that people are going to start thinking about, is my kind of opinion. [0:08:09] Steli Efti: Yeah, I think going public, any kind of, like, unicorn going public, super spotlighted success story, is creating kind of a huge wave of imitation, right? So- [0:08:20] Hiten Shah: Exactly. [0:08:21] Steli Efti: I think there have been a number of success stories, but not to the degree of, you know, the biggest success stories that we can imagine or that we’ve seen in the last 20 years, right? There have not been like a Google that’s fully remote or a Facebook or whatever else you would want to put out as an example. [0:08:42] Hiten Shah: Yup. [0:08:42] Steli Efti: But it doesn’t mean that … But I think, and I’m banking on, the fact that there are going to be these companies, and so it just takes … As the world is changing, as technology is changing, as the way we organize work and talent, and as the world is becoming a lot more global from day one, both from the … Like just think about today’s companies, the rate at which a new business is instantly selling to an international market today versus 100 years ago, right, where it was, like … There was a time, maybe not even 100 years ago, there was a time period where it probably was almost unheard of for a completely new company to have a customer that is based on a totally different country on day one. [0:09:33] Hiten Shah: Yeah, true. [0:09:34] Steli Efti: Right? And, so, that was unheard of, almost impossible to imagine, whereas today it is, you know, so common it’s crazy, and I think that that trend is going to continue, and the same thing goes to hiring talent wherever you can find it and distributing work. And that doesn’t mean … And this will be another episode for sure for the listeners. [0:09:56] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:09:58] Steli Efti: This doesn’t mean, as you pointed out, that it has to be complete distributed, where there’s no office. There’s no … Just everybody is remote. [0:10:05] Hiten Shah: Right. [0:10:06] Steli Efti: There’s going to be all kinds of flavors of this, right, where you have some offices and some remote workers or, you know, any kind of mix, even like having multiple offices around the world, especially when there’s cross-functional teams, or teams that are divided up in different offices, that part of the work then has to be distributed because not everybody that’s working on a project is in the same physical location. So I think that that trend is never going to slow down, and my recommendation to anybody that is interested in entrepreneurship and business is, instead of debating, “Is it working? Isn’t it working? Is it good? Is it bad?” I think this is a trend that’s not going to stop. This is the way the world is going to … The direction, the entire world is going to, and so it’s more about utilizing and getting better at it and utilizing the strengths of distributed work and recognizing it doesn’t mean that if you enjoy having an office that you have to give it up, but it does mean recognizing that not all work can happen in a physical location or should happen. [0:11:17] Hiten Shah: Right. [0:11:17] Steli Efti: And, so, how do you set up your company and your culture where work can happen in multiple places at multiple times and how can you become more open-minded about potentially tapping into talent pools that are not living around the corner, right, or not living in a physical, close proximity to wherever you wanted to have your office or wherever you live. I think becoming more open-minded and learning more about it and getting better at this is a long-term investment, both for the success of your business, but also your personal career, because this stuff isn’t going away, and the companies that get really, really good at it, they will have a competitive advantage in one way or another. [0:11:55] Hiten Shah: Yeah, absolutely. I think that that’s … We’re definitely in agreement there. This is a trend, and it’s going to stay, and companies are going to need to embrace some aspect of it, even if they don’t go fully remote. And I’m seeing a lot of companies start fully remote, so the amount of companies that are going to be remote is definitely going to increase, and even, like, only remote. [0:12:15] Steli Efti: Yeah. So let’s point out two episodes that people check out if they’re interested in getting better at remote work already. One is Episode 203, Productivity Tips for Remote Workers, and then Episode 181, How to Manage Remote Teams. Check out those two episodes if you want to get better at this, if you want to learn about this, which is something I recommend everybody to do, and then look out for more episodes on distributed and remote teams from us on The Startup Chat. Look for you very soon. [0:12:49] Hiten Shah: See you. [0:12:51] The post 419: Remote Work Isn’t Going Away. How to Do It Well appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about what to consider before changing your domain name. There are multitudes of reasons why a startup might want to change it’s website’s domain name. This could be due to rebranding or switching to something entirely new. While this can be an exciting time for your startup, there are risks to this and it can also be one of the scariest you may ever do for your business. In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about why close.io purchased the domain name close.com, risks involved when changing a domain name, things to keep in mind before changing a domain name and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic 00:34 Why this topic was chosen. 02:13 The first reason why they purchased close.com. 03:05 The second reason why they purchased close.com. 03:46 The third reason why they purchased close.com. 04:23 Risks involved when changing a domain name. 05:37 Things to keep in mind before changing a domain name. 05:56 What typically happens when people change domain names. 06:50 The biggest thing to do when you change domain. 3 Key Points: We didn’t want our competition to buy it.We wanted to communicate to our customers that we have matured as a company.Make sure you have a good reason before changing domain. [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat,, we’re going to talk about how to change your domain name, should you change your domain name, risks changing your domain name and benefits of changing your domain name. A lot of people have been asking me recently, why close changed from Close that Io Close.com, why we purchased that domain name and what the benefits were that we were looking for. I was surprised, I always felt like people just intuitively know, but apparently, this is still a really big interesting topic. And then we have talked about over the last couple of weeks, multiple times about how the migration to the new domain has gone for us and we’ve asked you for advice. I felt like we might give people some like, do’s and don’ts quickly for those that are in this situation. I’ll start and tell people the core reasons why we bought the domain and the benefits and risks. And then I’ll throw over to you as some like best practices on what to keep in mind when you change your domain name, especially when it pertains to not losing all your SEO juice and all your organic traffic. Does that sound cool? [0:01:13] Hiten Shah: Sounds great. [0:01:15] Steli Efti: All right. For us one of the biggest questions people ask me has been, did you buy Close.com because it’s going to bring you millions of more traffic? And the answer to that question has always been no, right? I’m sure there might be a domain name that you could purchase, that you could track, that has a ton of traffic and has relevant traffic to your product or service. Right? And then you purchasing that new domain name is an actual growth strategy or a distribution or demand strategy. But that was not the case for us. We didn’t think that close.com was getting a lot of like relevant traffic. The reasons that we bought it, where more branding and positioning and more competitive, securing than anything else. A number of things. When we launched in January 2013, we wanted Close.com as our primary home and domain for our brand and product from the get go. We just couldn’t buy it, because somebody else owned it that wasn’t interested in selling, so we had to settle to the dot io name. And then we always referred to ourselves as Close.io publicly, because we wanted to tell people how to find us and not just what the name is, right? If we had said Close, people would have not known where to go, they probably would have typed in Close.com. And then over the years, we just knew that we wanted to have that domain. A, because we felt like it communicated especially now much better to our customer base that we have grown up as a business. And we’re not a startup anymore, we’re a legitimate, fairly large company with a large customer base. And so the dot io always we felt like we’d outgrown it from a branding perspective and from a positioning and signaling perspective. It was just communicating to people that were coming to our site to check it out, that we were a fairly young upstart startup early stage, versus the dot com is communicating that this is a much more matured business. That was one reason we wanted it. The other reason was that, our customers have always referred to us as Close, so we just wanted to own all the assets out there from a branding perspective that associate with Close. And then last but not least, we didn’t want a competitor to purchase it. Right? We didn’t want any competitor to purchase Close.com and launch some product that they called close. Close is not a name that we could like protect in the space. We didn’t want somebody to come in and use all the hard work that we have put in, to build a brand and snatch a really killer domain from us and then take a lot of the shine in the branding from us, to sell some other competitive products. Those are the core reasons that we wanted to purchase the domain. And that’s what led us to buying the domain earlier this year and transition into the new home for the brand earlier this year. Now changing your domain is a big headache. There’s a lot of risk, especially if your company and your domain has been around for a long time and if you’re getting a lot of traffic from Google and a lot of people know that domain. The migrations are quite a complicated process that you have to like, make sure that you think through that process really carefully, you don’t really mess up anything. And that’s the second part of today’s episode, which I wanted to throw over to you, because you are the man when it comes to SEO. And also you’ve seen so many and helped so many companies with changing their domain names and seen it all, all the mistakes, all the things that people should avoid. From your perspective, or just from a technical and from an SEO perspective, when you migrate a domain, what are the core tips that you give founders and startups on what to keep in mind and what to get right? [0:05:01] Hiten Shah: Yeah. The first thing is, make sure you have really good reasons like Steli did that are business reasons to do it. Because, particularly when it comes to search traffic, it can be really tricky to make sure you get back to the levels you were at. The main reason is that historically, when domains are changed in that way, even when you do all the right things, like 301 redirects and a bunch of best practices that are out there, Google is going to take a while to give you your traffic back. And the funny thing is, and this is the biggest pitfall is that, when people do domain changes, they tend to do other types of changes that are structural to their website. Changing URLs and cleaning a bunch of the stuff up that might’ve been messy and that causes even more problems. Because now you’re telling Google, not just your domain change, but also there’s a whole bunch of other pages and things that have changed. And so Google starts like, Google’s already going to take a while to figure that out, even if you change it on your normal domain before the migration. And there you go. Like you got a pretty big issue, where you’ve changed the domain and you’ve made other changes to your site. And so your whole property, can take a dip in traffic and then it can take another dip, because of the changes you had. You’re basically taking dips on dips when you do that. And so I think the biggest thing to do if you are going to do a migration, is take the state that your website’s in, the URL structure, the design, everything and just copy and paste it over to the new domain. And then, do all your 301 directs from the old one to the new one, and then you’re going to sit there. And you’re going to sit there for like, the common timeline is about three months. And the reason for that, is now Google re indexed your site. As if it’s essentially a new site, even though you’re already getting traffic and your 301 redirected, you’re going to keep some of your traffic, but most folks see like a decent 30 ish plus percent drop in their traffic. And that’s very normal and then if you see a greater drop in traffic, you just need to wait. And so this three month period of Google, just basically picking up all your old links and scrolling your website and all this stuff, is where you have the big risk when you do a migration. You always have a dip, especially if you had obviously a lot of Google traffic. You’re basically getting a dip on Google traffic. And that’s the thing to just, like not even be careful or anything, just be aware of, that way you can know what’s coming, plan for it and basically deal with it. Then there’s other times, when like you make a migration and the dip is more than the 30% that I’m saying. And again, you can’t really do much about it except make sure that you’re not making too many changes at once. And then you go from there. Now a lot of times like there’s just like, not even a lot of times, there’s just SEO tips period, that you can look into and do that just to improve your SEO no matter what. Again, a lot of those tips I would wait til the three month period is over and then I would consider making some of those changes. That being said, there’s a lot of things that are more like on page STL like, reducing the amount of load time on your website. Those are good things to do anytime and I haven’t really seen a big risk in doing those things after a migration. They can be helpful because they’re just making your site better, from like on page, speed standpoints. This has to do with like loading of images and the most notorious are loading of third party Java scripts that tend to slow down a site. [0:09:06] Steli Efti: Beautiful. Yeah. Those are really good tips and I think, at the end the few things that you said there. I want to really underline this, because for a lot of founders that are not super technical and that are not like SEO experts themselves. I think many of them under estimate the technical side of SEO right? We all understand writing articles with appropriate amount of keywords and getting links to these articles and so ranking through the content perspective, but there’s a technical perspective that is increasingly important. How quickly does your site load? That is something that I think most founders wouldn’t think about as a SEO challenge or opportunity, they would think of it as more of a user experience one. But Google does range your site very differently if it’s too slow, because Google wants the internet to be super fast. There’s the technical perspective, which is going to be important when you do a domain migration, where you want to make sure that you either internally particularly that’s some expertise. If you get advice, you get it from people that have like real technical SEO expertise versus just content SEO expertise. [0:10:11] Hiten Shah: This is very true. [0:10:12] Steli Efti: Yeah. All right. That’s it for this episode on like reasons to change, well some at least in our mind, but also like some high level things to keep in mind. And expectations, I think people, really these numbers are not out there and I don’t think people really understand that they’re going to take a dip and they’re going to have to weather that storm. And is that really worth it to them at that stage? I think that those are a lot of golden nuggets to share with the audience. Right. This is it from us for this episode. If you enjoyed it, please give us a five star review on iTunes and we’ll hear all of yours soon. [0:10:48] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:10:48] The post 418: Changing Your Domain Name? Here’s What You Should Consider appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about building your content muscle. As founders, sometimes we want to create content, but we talk ourselves out of it. And this could be due to many reasons, and one of those is that we overthink it and strive for perfection in version 1, and then when you start doing it, it feels wrong and this takes all the sails out of your wind. In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about how to get comfortable at creating content, why you shouldn’t over think your content strategy, the importance of understanding that you might suck in the beginning and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic 00:28 Why this topic was chosen. 01:52 Why you shouldn’t over think your content strategy. 04:05 Why you should start with whatever comes easiest for you. 05:16 Why you should find the form factor that’s easy for you and start there. 05:50 The importance of understanding that you might suck in the beginning. 07:05 How consistency can help you be great at creating content. 07:56 How to get comfortable at creating content. 09:30 Why self-criticism can make you self conscious. 3 Key Points: You’re over thinking it and trying to be to perfect at it.Whatever comes easiest for you, start there.You don’t have to be perfect when you get startYou can either progress, or you can look great. You can’t be both at the same time. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat we want to talk about building your content muscle. So, here’s why I wanted to talk to you about this and why I wanted to share it with The Startup Chat Nation and the listeners, I’ve had this experience many, many times but it’s happened again more recently where a good friend of mine who is charismatic as hell, very wise, smart person, big heart, lots of unique and interesting experiences as an entrepreneur, has done super small bootstrap things, has done big venture funded things, has failed, has succeeded, but is just overall a beautiful human being with lots and lots of funky experiences and lots of life energy to him. He has been having the desire and has been communicating the desire to create content, start creating more content probably for the last year to me. And he has been somebody that I’ve heavily encouraged and I know we have a lot of common friends and a lot of people encourage him heavily to create content because he’s such an entertaining storyteller. He’s such a great personality. And so he’s been talking about starting doing content for a long time, but he has been struggling in really getting into a groove, and the struggle is always the same. I’m sure this is the same for you, but and maybe there’s some listeners out there, I’m pretty sure there are, that have been thinking about starting a podcast or YouTube channel or blog more or just tweet more, whatever the hell it is, and have not been finding success with it or getting really into it. I always find it happens for the same reason which is you’re overthinking it and you’re trying to be too perfect. In version one, hence, where you’re never really getting into it and when you start doing it, it always feels wrong because you’re not as great at it as you think you should, which then takes all the wind out of your sails, all the momentum out of the whole thing. He is a perfect example because he’s such a charismatic storyteller, but the moment he puts, the few times I was traveling with him through Thailand, we were doing Muay Thai Camps and training together, with [Ramine] together. Big shout out to Ramine who is a big part of this podcast and behind the scenes. And so we’re nagging him on to start recording and not overthinking, and you could tell the moment he would click on record on his laptop or on his webcam, it would turn into a different person and personality. It would be the struggle bus. You could just listen that he’d be like, just he would sound like some fake YouTuber. He was not himself anymore and he would struggle and you could tell how much energy it took out of him and the moment he would stop the recording, he’d be exhausted, and be like down on himself. Aw, his really sucked. I’m not sure. And then it would take all the energy and joy and excitement out of doing this again. So, I know the advice I’ve given him and I’ve given many, many other people, but I’d love to get your take on this before I share my take on this. This is really an episode for everybody out there that wants to create more content and has a good reason. This guy, he’s a teacher. He loves sharing, he loves teaching, he loves communicating. So, he has all the makings and he wants to have more of an impact and share more of his thoughts and lessons learned and stories with the world. So, he has the right motivations, but he can’t get started. He’s struggling so much getting into it and building that muscle. What do you tell to somebody like that? I’m sure you’ve observed this pattern many, many times before yourself. [0:03:53] Hiten Shah: Oh yeah. So, what I tell someone like that is whatever comes easiest for you, start there. So, if this person is good at talking and telling stories, he should talk and tell stories, and literally record that. Then have somebody else turn that into content, like written content. Which means he might be good at a podcast, he might be good at even practicing by getting on someone’s podcast, and being a guest and telling his stories. So, to me the best piece of advice that I give on this is go do what’s super easy for you to do that you do really well, and then use that to motivate yourself to turn it into content. [0:04:43] Steli Efti: I love that. And there’s one more thing that I’ll add to that and then… I mean this could be a very short episode because it’s not that much to it. But the big thing that I tell people besides the find the form factor that works for you, find the thing that’s easy. Maybe you’re great on Twitter, maybe you’re great on Instagram, you’re better at taking pictures or videos. Maybe you’re better at long form, written out, researched, super in-depth, data-driven, block content, or maybe you’re better are short form, or something completely different. Maybe you’re great at slides and you should just design slide text on certain topics because that’s easy to you. Whatever is easy to you. You can start with one form factor, then you can get the help from others to trend build that one form factor into other form factors. Right? Take a blog post and turn it into an audio recording, an audio recording into an ebook, or whatever. But, besides finding the right form factor that’s easy for you to get started, is getting comfortable with the fact that in the beginning you just might suck. Everything in life takes a certain level of practice. You don’t have to be perfect when you get started. The problem is people have … You know, I mean when you put yourself, when you create content, maybe it’s such an intimate thing because it’s you speaking or you writing that we are so uncomfortable when we speak and we listen to it and we think this isn’t the most brilliant version of myself. Part of being great at content is being able to create content consistently and being able to eventually learn how to get into the groove or framework or mental mindset that allows you to be your best self, consistently. Not just that one moment at a bar with a bunch of people that are laughing where you’re just like you’re hitting your stride and your storytelling abilities, but being able to tap into that consistently and professionally whenever you want. So, the only way to get there is to consistently create content and have that mindset that maybe for the first three, four months your content isn’t going to be that great, and that should be fine. Maybe you’re just building up your content muscle, building up your ability to get into the framework and finding what works for you. What you have to do before creating content to get good at it and getting comfortable in being uncomfortable and getting comfortable in looking a little stupid in the name of progress, or not looking as smart and not shining as bright as you would like to in the name of growth and progress. So, for him it’s really getting comfortable with clicking the record button because the moment he clicks record, he’s so self-conscious that it takes him out of himself and it takes him out of his best version of himself. Hence why he then just sounds like any other person “creating content” versus sounding like himself. But the only way he’s going to get comfortable hitting the record button is if he does it often now that he stops being so self-conscious about it and stops being so in his own head and gets comfortable because it’s something that he’s used to. So, my biggest advice on top of find the right channel is be okay with just not being the most brilliant version of yourself in the beginning and commit to creating content consistently for at least two or three months before you really start judging yourself that harshly and you expect greatness or expect your stuff to be as good as it could be. In the beginning, it probably is not going to be as good as it could be and that needs to be okay for you, otherwise you’ll never get into a groove and you’re never going to accomplish the things you want to or create the value for the world that you know you can. [0:08:32] Hiten Shah: Yeah, people have the hardest time with that because they have all this fear around creating content, right, and then being judged. So, I think it’s really good advice. It’s the thing that you should attack and get over which is the sort of self-criticism and the fear of putting something out there and nobody caring or liking it. Well, it’s okay. Like at least you put it out there and you’ll get better. It’s this all practice makes perfect sort of thing. [0:09:03] Steli Efti: Yeah, and it’s another episode we should record. I’ll write it down. I had this very thought yesterday at the gym where for the first time I wanted to try some new exercises, some things I wasn’t quite as comfortable, and my inner dialogue shifted so much. The things that I’m comfortable doing, I don’t even look around. I don’t pay attention to who else is in the gym if anybody looks at me or not. I’m just in my own zone, but the moment I try something where I felt uncomfortable and I felt like I might look like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, instantly I became super self-conscious, and I paid attention to everybody. Like is anybody looking at me? Is everybody close to this area that could judge me if I look like a total fool trying this new exercise or trying this new thing? And I caught myself thinking, ooh, this is so important. You can either progress or you can look great. You probably can’t do both things in life, right? [0:10:01] Hiten Shah: No. [0:10:01] Steli Efti: Right. You cannot massively grow and progress while at the same time looking like a million bucks, looking like an amazing person that’s a pro at this thing. And so our ego is in the way of our progress, and once we… And usually, the first time you go to the gym you have to over come that ego and that self-consciousness, but once you have setup a routine and setup a rhythm and setup something that you now feel comfortable with, that’s your biggest trap. Now you just want to go to the gym and do the same fucking thing every time forever because that’s now your new comfort zone versus keep expanding your comfort zone because you want to progress. That’s so true in everything. But I think content is even especially so true because it is you put your name and yourself out there and you’re saying I think what I have to say is so important it needs to be recorded and published and listened to. And then when you listen to it yourself and you think, aw, this wasn’t that good and I could have said this much better and I could have… You know when you can tell that you’re not as good as you know you can be, it’s very hard to push the publishing button and keep going. But it is needed if you really want to progress. And if you want to get into the content game and sharing game, then there’s no way around this. You’re going to have to push through that level of discomfort and putting yourself out there for your own criticism more so than anybody else’s in the beginning. [0:11:27] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I tweeted your quote. [0:11:29] Steli Efti: Beautiful. [0:11:30] Hiten Shah: Our ego is in the way of all progress. [0:11:34] Steli Efti: Yeah, it is, it is. It is what’s pushing us to want to progress, but then it’s holding us back because we only want to progress in ways that look good. Right? We want to progress in ways that feel good and look good, and there’s very little progress to be found in those places. All right. Look out for more on this topic from us in future Startup Chat episodes. But this is it for us for this episode. If you enjoyed it, please give us a review, a five star review on iTunes, Stitcher, and everywhere else you’re listening to us. We’ll hear you very soon. [0:12:09] Hiten Shah: See ya. [0:12:09] The post 417: Building the Content Muscle appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about effort vs leverage. Using leverage can be seen as being lazy by some and being smart by others. Sometimes it might be in your best interest to put in the effort to perform a task or it might better to have someone else who better at it than you do that task for you. In today’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about when to use effort vs leveraging what you have, the idea of working hard versus working smart, what approach to take at the early stages and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:24 Why this topic was created. 01:37 How people tend to see leverage. 02:50 The two sides to leverage versus leverage. 03:37 Why you have to be more mindful where you put your effort and when to use your leverage. 04:46 What approach to take at the early stages. 05:01 Hiten’s point of view on the issue. 05:54 How most people are not naturally inclined to get other people to do stuff for them. 05:50 Why you probably have more leverage than you do. 06:17 How to leverage your time better. 3 Key Points: In the beginning, you might need more effort than leverage.You have to be more mindful where you put your effort and when to use your leverageIs there a way to get someone better than me to do this. [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:02] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. And today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about effort versus leverage. So, this is just an interesting topic that came up last time that we met in person when we were recording an interview at a conference. Or, not an interview, an episode at a conference. So, why don’t we dive into kind of the difference between effort versus kind of leverage? I think one concept that you mentioned, Steli, about this was that in the beginning, maybe you can’t use leverage in your business or even in your work because you might not have anything to leverage, and you need to spend more effort. I think the big thing on my mind about this is that we’re taught to do hard work and that’s where effort comes in. So, effort to me, the AKA, also known as, is hard work. [0:01:09] Steli Efti: Right. [0:01:10] Hiten Shah: Well, leverage, the AKA, also known as, is lazy. And- [0:01:21] Steli Efti: Wait, is it lazy, or is it… [0:01:24] Hiten Shah: Smart? [0:01:25] Steli Efti: Smart. I’m not sure. [0:01:27] Hiten Shah: It could be seen both ways, right? If you’re… One way to think about leverage, at least one way I think about it, early on in a business or not, is do I have to do this? Is there someone better than me that I can get to do this? Or, something like that. So, that’s what I meant. That’s kind of what’s on my mind about it which is, is there a way that I can get someone else to do this? Possibly someone who can do it better than me. [0:01:59] Steli Efti: So, I love that. So, I think one of the reasons we wanted to talk about this, just to give people kind of a window into some of our private conversation, was that we were discussing something. And then we both looked at each other and we went, “Well, we don’t want to do this because this would be a lot of effort and we’d rather use leverage.” [0:02:20] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:02:21] Steli Efti: And then we both laughed, right? And that stuck with me because I thought, I mean, there’s two sides to this, right? One is kind of the psychological one, which you brought up. I think we both have this and many, many founders probably have this. We’ve been brought up with this sense that hard work is good, right? [0:02:40] Hiten Shah: Yep. [0:02:41] Steli Efti: And putting effort into things is good. [0:02:44] Hiten Shah: Yep. [0:02:44] Steli Efti: And that’s actually something I constantly have to tell my children, right? My boys, I constantly have to tell them, “Hey, if you want this, going to have to put in the effort, right? You’re going to have to put in the hard work. There’s no shortcuts in life.” But then today, with so many opportunities kind of right in front of us, with so many things that could be worked on and done, we have to be more mindful of where we put our effort. And when we use kind of the leverage that we build up. But I was thinking about the early days and kind of trying to unpack with you if effort and leverage are just two concepts that are independent of the resources you have. The time in your career, the amount of money you have, the amount of just the network that you have. If it’s just a mindset and the way you approach things, or if it is truly something where every new thing you start, you have to kind of break through with effort and build up some momentum with effort. And then later in the process, you could actually use leverage to get to places or to accomplish certain things. I think that’s, to me, something that is confusing. Especially for early founders that are reading some of the stuff that’s out there about being super leveraged and being super smart about how you use leverage and all that. And then on the flip side, they read all these articles or hear all this advice about hard work and putting in effort, and working over time, and just grinding your way and pushing your way through walls. And I could see, I definitely know for me, it was confusing for a long time, too. Which way should I choose and what’s appropriate for me at the early stages? [0:04:37] Hiten Shah: Right. Yeah, I think at the early stages you can take this approach, too. You might just not have anybody else to help you, or it might just be a co-founder or somebody like that. At the end of the day, I think this ideology can work in life, can work in early stages, can work any time. And one of the ways that I think about this would be, am I the best person to do this? [0:05:06] Steli Efti: Right. [0:05:07] Hiten Shah: And really, that’s important. And in our discussion, we were just talking about should we do this, right? And we realized that we don’t have any leverage here, there’s no… and we don’t want to put the effort in. And there’s no way to leverage this so that we don’t have to do it. It’s going to be things that we have to do, at least right now, right? And we made a decision. I think when it comes to doing something and trying to figure out the difference, it’s like you want to do all these things yourself. That’s just usually how things are for most people. They’re not naturally inclined to make other people do things. And so it’s just a good exercise, and sometimes you might realize like we did, we don’t want to do it at all. And so I think it has to do with this idea that you might think you have no leverage, but you probably have more than you do. And one way to think about leverage is just not doing something, or thinking about things that you do and how they can be leveraged so that you can do more. So, early on in a company, I like to think about repeatability. I like to think about, how can some of the acts and things that you do lead to you doing more things, or you getting better at something? So, another version of leverage is, am I leveraging my time so that the next time I do it, it can be done better? [0:06:30] Steli Efti: I love that. [0:06:31] Hiten Shah: So, there’s a lot of angles on this, right? Because all we know how to do in general is put effort in. [0:06:38] Steli Efti: Yeah, yeah. Or, at least to a certain degree, just thinking through, just looking at the world of work through the lens of effort is also a very lazy way of thinking. It’s kind of a very, can be a very habitual way where everything you do, you just attack through pure effort without having to go through the exercise of thinking it through. And thinking it through out of all of the available actions that I could put into, that I could put effort into, which one could have the biggest return, right? Where could I have the biggest leverage? And it’s just that few seconds or minutes of extra thinking before jumping into the world of action can pay huge dividends. But I think for people that have a super strong work ethic and have maybe been brought up or programmed to believe in the power of effort, we’re sometimes too trigger happy to snapping into action immediately and feeling comfortable just doing things and putting effort into things. Versus taking the few uncomfortable minutes or moments to consider where to channel our effort and energy. So, instead of thinking effort versus leverage, maybe it’s effort into the effort and leverage. Effort into things that have leverage, right? And wherever you are, obviously Elon Musk or somebody of that stature might have certain levers available to them that are much larger than the average founder has. But there are things you could do that will have more leverage than other things you could do, and there’s a lot of things that you could do that you shouldn’t do at all, right? And that would kind of save you a ton of energy and effort to channel into things that will pay bigger dividends and bigger returns for your company and startup. But it could be as easy as, we’re going to start blogging. We have no idea about SEO, we’ve never written anything. We’ve never created any video, we’re not great writers. We don’t have any unique stories, but because every other company is starting a blog, we’re going to start a blog and we’re going to write things. And then we’re just going to hope that once we hit publish on our unknown blog, somebody on the web is going to find it. Versus saying, “Okay, let’s go and find blogs that have an audience that we want to reach. Let’s research all the content they are creating, and let’s try to figure out, can we create through effort, through finding writers, through finding great content creators, can we put together super valuable pieces of content that take a lot of effort? And then pitch it as a guest post as a valuable piece of content that came for free for these blog outlets, and kind of use our effort and our extra work, energy, resources, time, money, but then publish it on a site that has a huge audience?” So, we use leverage. It could be the same amount of effort to write the content, but a totally different outcome. And this is just one example, right? Of thinking through where to put your effort in, how to invest your hard work in things that have leverage and could pay the biggest possible dividend from where you are at. [0:09:58] Hiten Shah: Yep, yep. That’s the way to think about it. [0:10:00] Steli Efti: All right, that’s it from us for this episode. We’ll hear you very soon. [0:10:03] Hiten Shah: Later. [0:10:04] The post 416: Effort vs Leverage appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the new positioning for The Startup Chat. After over 400 episodes of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten have decided to step back a little and review the podcast positioning, content and brand. In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about the history of the Startup Chat, why the name was chosen, why the show is all about startup mentality and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About the topic of today’s episode 00:35 Why this topic was chosen. 02:25 A little bit of the history of the podcast. 03:24 What Steli thinks of the name of the show. 05:05 What Hiten thinks of the name of the show. 06:48 Why the show is all about startup mentality. 07:28 How the content of the show helps a wide range of people. 08:24 About the show’s tagline. 08:58 A more accurate description of the show. 10:18 How you don’t need to be starting a startup to get value out of the show. 3 Key Points: It’s really about the startup mentalityThe name could be misleading but could also be accurate.The name has been a question mark for me [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody. This is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:05] Steli Efti: In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, we actually want to do … This is going to be a behind the scenes one. We have had this topic on the docket of talking about the podcast, especially about, we’ve done now over 400 episodes. I think that we both love each other, we love the podcast, we’ve had tremendous, I think, impact. Even trying to be humble, lots and lots and lots of people over the years have given us the feedback loop needed that this is something that provides a lot of value to people. We also are helpless self-improvers and people that try to grow so I think we’ve been thinking about, “What’s next for the podcast?” We’ve been thinking a little bit about the brand and positioning of the podcast and what is going to be the next stage. Are we still happy with both the name, The Startup Chat? Are we happy with the positioning that we have which is two experienced entrepreneurs just talking shop? And the intro that we have. We don’t even have an outro I think. [0:01:21] Hiten Shah: Nope. [0:01:21] Steli Efti: The intro that we have that’s basically a bit of a funky music and then the two of us that are just like, “We just want to talk startups. Talk entrepreneurship with no bullshit and just have the best business podcast.” All that, our positioning, our name, the way we intro, everything, really happened 400 episodes again in episode number one which was basically, we had the idea, “Should we do a podcast?” And then we started recording. We recorded a 20 or 30 minute episode where we figure things out really quickly, “How long should this be? What should it be about? How would we structure it? What’s the name?” And then boom. And we never looked back. So we thought four years into this, maybe we should take a few minutes and check in and see, “Are we still happy? Do we need to adjust or improve or change something about it?” [0:02:15] Hiten Shah: I think all great questions that we currently don’t necessarily know the definitive answers to. Let’s go at it. I think we did this. I actually had a domain- [0:02:30] Steli Efti: That’s true. [0:02:32] Hiten Shah: … Startupchat.com. Actually, is it The Startup Chat or is … Yeah, it’s thestartupchat.com. I always forget. We have the Twitter handle, The Startup Chat, and, Startup Chat. Use Startup Chat on Twitter but don’t tweet much because someone would have to do that. I think another thing about this is that you and I just spend our time focusing on the content by getting on and talking about things that we feel are interesting in the world or interesting to us, or that we think people will get some value from, we hope get value. Apparently some people do get value because we’re still here 400-and-something, over 410 episodes later. What do we think about the name? [0:03:21] Steli Efti: I think that I thought about the name on and off. On the one hand I like it. Now it’s an established thing and it’s a little bit of a brand in and of itself. It does describe accurately what’s happening on these episodes. We talk, we chat about startups, but we don’t really, I think we don’t really talk about other startups. We talk about what it means to be an entrepreneur, what it means to work at a startup. I think we are very tactical and practical, but we can also be very philosophical. I think a lot of the episodes have to do with the internal work that’s going on in life and in startups and entrepreneurship. I could see some people if you’ve never heard of us or the podcast before, I could see people interpreting it as, “They’re going to be talking about startups out there. They’re going to be chatting about the latest startups.” [0:04:23] Hiten Shah: That’s true. [0:04:25] Steli Efti: That could be misleading although it could also be accurate. At times I’ve always felt, “We’re doing more than just chatting about startups so maybe it should be a bit broader.” I’ve noticed that a lot of times people will … Some people will refer to it as, “The Startup Chat,” but a bunch of people will refer to it as, “I listen to Steli and Hiten’s podcast.” They won’t even say the name. They’re just going to say, “You should listen to Steli and Hiten’s podcast,” or, “Hiten and Steli’s podcast.” I don’t know. The name, I think, has been a question mark for me. At times I’m like, “it’s cool.” And at times I’m like, “Hmm, maybe something else would be better.” I’m undecided. [0:05:07] Hiten Shah: For me, I don’t think about it a lot. I haven’t thought about it until you brought it up. I think the way I think about this though is it’s really about the startup mentality and how people should have a startup mentality. As we think about this show and what we talk about, I think a lot of it is we’re talking about the startup mentality, we’re not talking about startups. [0:05:34] Steli Efti: That’s true. [0:05:34] Hiten Shah: We’re talking about startup mentality. That applies to people working at a big company, people working at a startup, founders, executives. I think it applies to anybody. The reason this makes sense is maybe 400 episodes ago it was about a startup or startups and people who were working in a startup or doing their own startup, I think now this whole idea of the startup mentality has permin … Permeated far and wide. There’s Eric Ries’s book, The Startup Way, which is really targeted at enterprise companies. But it’s called, “The Startup Way.” It’s not called, “[Lean] Startup,” anymore or anything like that. It’s literally, The Startup Way. It’s pretty much like, “This is how startups are.” I feel like we’re, this is even before you came up with the name we were doing this, and a lot of the stuff we talk about is applicable, a ton of it is applicable to any individual anywhere. Any age as long as your post, probably, high school, once you’re in college as stuff starts making sense to you because you got to figure your life out. That’s been my take which is this is really about startups, or, this is not about startups like, “Oh, a company.” This is about how to think a certain way or how to be a certain way or how to just improve all the time the way a startup always needs to with the limited amount of resources you have. [0:07:15] Steli Efti: I think it’s a lot about how to think like a startup, how to approach things like a startup or enter … Like an entrepreneur. We have talked a lot of tactics, but we’ve talked even more external tactics, but we’ve talked a lot more fundamental internal thought processes. The way to think, the way to act, the way to communicate. These things are very universal. It really doesn’t matter the industry or the job position or the context within … You work, you could use most of the episodes. This is feedback we’ve gotten consistently from people, a lot of people have told us, “It doesn’t even …” like, “My wife is listening to you guys. She doesn’t even work in a startup and she’s still getting a lot out of it,” or, “My friend is listening to it.” We had a lot of people directly say, “I work at a big ad agency but I still love the podcast and get a lot out of it.” It’s really nothing just to do with if you want to start a startup. One thing that we discuss is maybe this is a positioning thing. Changing the name I think, everything’s always on the docket, but I think the changing the name always seemed like a lot … A ton of work. Maybe a step towards the right direction is to think about, “What’s even the tagline?” Today our tagline as a positioning is unfiltered insights and actionable advice straight from the trenches of startup and business life, which sounds very … It doesn’t sound like us, to be honest. It’s not a bad tagline but it doesn’t necessarily … It sounds very- [0:09:09] Hiten Shah: It’s a little dry. [0:09:11] Steli Efti: It’s a little dry. It doesn’t sound like us for sure. So the current positioning for people who don’t know the podcast that list … Read the subtitle is, this is unfiltered insights, actionable advice from two people that are running startups. It seems like it’s a bit dry and we’re not happy with it. What would be a more accurate description or summary of what the podcast is about? [0:09:50] Hiten Shah: Usually you’d ask your audience. How do we ask our audience Steli? [0:09:57] Steli Efti: I don’t know, you’re the king of surveys. Obviously we’re thinking about this so if you’ve been a … Well, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been a long time listener or this is the first episode you’ve ever listened to, send us an email. We always like to hear from you directly. You can email us at steli@close.com or hnshah@gmail.com, or if it’s easier for you and you’re on Twitter right now as you’re listening to this podcast, you can tweet at us @steli or @hnshah. Just let us know, “Love the name. Hate the name. Here’s a better name. Here’s the way I would summarize in my own words how- [0:10:41] Hiten Shah: How do you describe it? [0:10:41] Steli Efti: “… How I would describe your podcast to somebody else.” We might throw out a Twitter survey in between times to get more feedback. I think we talked about this earlier already, this … I think the podcast is a lot more about exploring how to think like a startup, exploring the startup mentality. Then- [0:11:08] Hiten Shah: It’s, think like a startup and then defining that a little bit as how I think about it, at least, if I were to put a tagline on it. It’s like, no matter who you are, you can think like a startup. No matter who you are and what you do, you can think like a startup. [0:11:33] Steli Efti: If we look at that, that I think broadens the audience which has happened organically already to be where we’re saying, “You don’t have to be starting a startup to get value out of this,” which I think is important. Would that then mean that we might want to take a look at the name as well? Or is that just still too much work? Should it be instead of, The Startup Chat, The Startup Way? Or maybe the Startup Way is Eric Ries’s book. [0:12:07] Hiten Shah: It’s his book. He has it. [0:12:08] Steli Efti: All right, I don’t want to do that. Or, The Startup Mentality, or something along those lines? [0:12:14] Hiten Shah: Yeah, for me, I hate rebranding things. I’m always going to try to push for a, “Let’s not rebrand it.” The reason I hate rebranding things is because we’ve built up so much brand equity around the name already. There’s all these podcast episodes that have that name on them. We say it every time on every podcast episode and so I would say that if there’s a really good reason, yeah, we should do it. Otherwise we should keep the name and really focus on the positioning so that it’s more accurate and resonates with us and the audience a lot more. [0:12:51] Steli Efti: This is as unfiltered as it can be. We haven’t really talked about this too much before so you see us [live] contemplating things in real time. This is an important one, the effort and time and energy it takes to rebrand the whole thing, and the return on that investment is probably super disproportionate so it doesn’t make sense. Rather use a different tagline, maybe a different intro and outro. Let me ask, a good amount of people that start listening to the podcast probably started listening to it because they know you or they know me and they want to listen to us a bit more, they’re interested in that. Do you think it still makes sense today, a big part of the brand is that the podcast has our two mugs on the cover of it. Do you think that it makes sense to move past that or change that at all, or do you think that’s still probably a really good idea? It is the two of us that talk and if you’re not interested in the two of us, you don’t want to listen to the two of us, you’re not going to … You probably shouldn’t subscribe to the podcast in the first place. [0:14:01] Hiten Shah: I think so. I think the two of us still make sense. The reason is because we’re the ones talking and that’s … It’s what we want to talk about. It’s not what some guest wants to talk about or anything like that. We’re not really interviewing anybody. I do think it makes sense. There are now actually a lot more podcasts that have faces on them. I really believe we were one of the first to put two people. Now there’s a lot more that have two people and they’re just talking about things. We could change it if there’s a way to make it more relevant in terms of what we want it to be about and what we want people to come in and … Make it more relatable. I think people like other people. Seeing our faces and knowing that we’re part of it is probably still a big deal. That would be my take. [0:15:00] Steli Efti: The other thing that I was thinking about, there’s a least five podcasts that I know that started after us that use a very similar … Down to the name, the look. The whole thing. Which is cool, we got inspired by other people as well and so it’s always cool to see people be inspired by what we do. The other thing is though, that we’ve done very differently, let’s check in on that as well, is that we think from a … From the get-go we decided, “We don’t want to have guests.” The reason we didn’t want to have guests, it was a multitude of reasons. Number one, we didn’t want to be like every other podcast. Number two, we wanted to talk to each other. Quite honestly, we’re just more interested in talking to each other than talking to somebody else and differentiate ourselves from the pack. There’s so many great podcasts that do a good job interviewing people, how much of a better job can we do interviewing the same person? How much effort would it take us to do that? How much longer would these episodes be? It would completely change the format, where today we can have these super quick, 10 minute episodes in most cases. 10, 15 minute episodes and really go deep on one very focused topic and unpack, explore, and share some of our tactics, wisdom, and experiences with people. We’ve also, I think in real life, one thing that we’ve noticed is that one thing that we both enjoy doing and people get a lot of value from is giving people feedback on their pitches, on their ideas, on their struggles, on their website. I think one of the first things that we ever done together on stage was where you had a website tear-down session on stage and at that event, at that conference, was the first time that we really hung out for a whole day and became really close friend … Fast friends. You invited me onstage. You’re like, “We should do this together. It’s just more fun if we do it together.” [0:17:01] Hiten Shah: That’s right. [0:17:01] Steli Efti: And then we did it together and people loved it and we enjoyed it. We know we haven’t done this on the podcast, we’ve done this a long time ago I think, but giving real founders and real people out there feedback. Not the famous founders that everybody wants to interview, but giving people in the trenches that are starting out feedback on their website, on their emails, on their lending pages, on their ideas, on their elevator pitch. That’s something that we’ve always enjoyed and we find that we have … We complement each other really beautifully in the type of feedback we give and the amount of information and feedback we can give to somebody in a very short period of time. That’s something that think we might want to explore doing a little bit more on the podcast is actually having you, the listeners, send us things you want feedback from and you want us to chat about. And us doing quick two, three minute feedback rounds that is specific to the work that people are putting out there. [0:18:07] Hiten Shah: I think we can experiment with that and even structure it. You and I both like giving feedback and it’s nice to give feedback on someone’s website or someone’s business or someone’s idea or even anything that I … Can be valuable to other people too. What I always find interesting is when you do this kind of stuff how much value, depending on what you’re giving feedback on, anyone that’s listening to it can get. I think you might have just figured out some kind of experiment we might want to do. [0:18:49] Steli Efti: Again in the spirit of, this is, I think, the real behind the scenes and a real open dialogue we have, and we want to hear from you. We need to hear from you. You’re the end user at the end of the day, the consumer of the podcast. Let us know if you’d like us to do more of these feedback, elevator pitch episodes where we help people, where you can send us anything you want to critique. Maybe here’s the first experiment. If you listen to this and you’re like, “Oh my god, yes please. I would send you my website,” or, “My landing page,” or, “I would send you …” anything that you would like to get feedback on that’s concrete, just send us an email and you might find us giving feedback about whatever you wanted us to give feedback on on an upcoming episode of The Startup Chat. Just send us an email at steli@close.com and hnshah@gmail.com. We might collect a few of them and then experiment and run an episode and see how you like it and how we like it and if we want to make that more of a staple of the show. And in general any feedback that you have, anything you’d like us to do more of or less of or anything that you think, “This is not obvious improvement. I wish these guys would just do X, that would be so awesome,” now is the time. Sometimes it’s the wrong timing but right now would be the perfect time to share that feedback with us. We’re very open. We’re in a state where we’re taking a step back, looking at it, the big picture, and thinking, “How can we fuck around with this? What can we learn next? How can we experiment? How can we expand what we do with the podcast?” Any and every kind of feedback is highly welcome. And then look out for us maybe playing around with different things coming up. We might try longer or even much shorter episodes. We might publish a few more episodes in a week to experiment with that and we might play around with content. The next couple of months look out for some new stuff around The Startup Chat. We’d love to have your feedback along the way. We’ll keep you in the loop as we learn things and as we learn what works and what doesn’t work. [0:21:03] Hiten Shah: Absolutely. [0:21:05] Steli Efti: That’s it from us for this episode. We’ll hear you very soon. [0:21:07] Hiten Shah: Looking forward to your feedback. [0:21:09] The post 415: New Positioning for the Startup Chat? appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about The Energy-Thoughts-Action Framework. The thoughts that we have in our your mind play a huge role in the actions we take. And our thoughts influence how we behave, our attitudes to things in life, and they also control how you react to different situations as well. In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about what the Energy-Thoughts-Action Framework is, the hierarchy of action, how behavior usually leads to action and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 01:00 Why this topic was chosen. 01:50 What is the Energy-Thoughts-Action Framework. 03:39 Why Hiten calls it the hierarchy of action. 04:37 Things that come before thought. 04:44 How behavior usually leads to action 05:05 How the ultimate thing that you’re looking for is your actions. 05:42 Why the trigger part is crucial. 05:48 How most of us are not aware of how susceptible we are to external factors. 08:17 The importance of setting positive triggers for ourselves. 3 Key Points: Before there even is a conscious thought, there is a feeling.The ultimate thing that you’re looking for is your actions.Being aware of the trigger is really really important. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:05] Hiten Shah: This is Hiten Shah. On The Startup Chat today, we’re going to talk about something that Steli’s going to explain, I thought I’ll throw at you at first, that I’ve shared with many people privately and haven’t really discussed in in any way, shape, or form in a way where other people can be on a one-on-one, can take advantage of it. I think, Steli, you wanted to go after this? [0:00:28] Steli Efti: Yeah, yeah. [0:00:29] Hiten Shah: I’ll let you set it up, and then let’s talk about it. [0:00:33] Steli Efti: This is one of my favorite things about the podcast is uncovering these little nuggets of content gold, private discussions. Then later, just putting them on the docket and be like, “We should talk about this. The world needs to hear this.” Last week, I think last week. Yeah, last week I was in San Francisco. We were having lunch after a conference that we spoke out together. We always drift into, I think, very interesting topic. We’re always drift into a current state of new self-discoveries and self explorations. Things we’ve discovered about ourselves in life, and psychology, and energy in the universe, and everything. You brought up a beautiful framework that I wanted to share with people, which was what I will call it now, the energy thoughts, actions, framework. I’ll summarize what I heard, and then you can correct me. We can unpack this for the listeners real quick. We were talking. I think the conversation started about inner talk, self-talk, and how our thoughts and the quality of our thoughts and the tendency and energy of our thoughts, how that then affects our actions and our habits. You were like, “You know what? One thing that I’ve started to think about more is energy. I’ve discovered that a lot of times before they’re even is a conscious thought, there is an energy. There’s a feeling. That feeling of energy in your body then produces a certain type of thought in a talk. That in a talk and thought then creates a chain of inner thoughts that then create actions. Maybe those actions eventually create habits.” It all always starts at the energy level, right? At the feeling level, at the emotional level. You were describing to me how you started paying a lot more attention to the energy before even the thoughts arise. The feeling could be, “Am I hungry? Am I tired? Am I irritated? Am I excited? Am I nervous? Am I afraid?” There’s an energy in your body. If you catch that early on, you’ll be a step ahead of the thoughts that might arise. Then those thoughts will eventually kind push you towards certain actions. I thought that was brilliant and beautiful and simple, and so I wanted to unpack it for people. [0:03:09] Hiten Shah: I’m going to go after it a little bit and give I think what I’m really going after. One way to think about it is … I’ve been thinking about this. Really trying to gravitate towards it. Understand it, view this as way to help myself really first. I call it the hierarchy of action. The reason I call it that is because I think there is a hierarchy to our actions. The ultimate thing is a bunch of actions. You look at it a pyramid. To me, there’s a trigger.Something that triggers you. It’s internal, external. It could be a trigger from childhood that keeps coming up for whatever reason. It could be somebody said something. It could be you saw something. You were just walking around, and you saw something like that little teddy bear you had when you were a kid or something. That’s the trigger. Then, it turns into energy. It’s usually energy that you have in your body and you can feel it. Awareness of this is very low for most people, unless you’ve done a lot of meditation or yoga or some kind of breathing exercises or practices like that, or are just somebody who can feel stuff in your body really easily, because that’s not most of us. There’s trigger, there’s energy. Then there’s actually, I think emotion before there’s thought. Then after that comes behavior. Then that behavior usually leads to some action. The behavior could be something really small like you move your hand a little bit or something like that. Then you take an action. To me, it’s actually trigger first, then energy, then emotion, then thought, then behavior. Then, finally, the ultimate thing that you’re looking for as my actions, right? What am I doing? Where does it come from? I wanted to add that component in where I think things trigger us. We skip energy and emotion. It goes straight to thought. Instead, I think we need to think about it as what’s triggering us and what is the energy that we’re feeling before we go even any further. If we can cut things off at that point, I mean negative things, at that energy level or at least recognize them, then we can basically spend more of our effort. Not, “I shouldn’t think that,” but, “Why am I feeling that?” [0:05:55] Steli Efti: All right. Let’s unpack this real quick. I think the trigger part is crucial because I think that a, most of us are not as aware of how susceptible we are to external signals and things that trigger a domino effect of things that then lead us to make decisions and take certain actions. But we never really had full awareness of attribution of where it all started, right, and how it started. [0:06:27] Hiten Shah: Yeah, it’s attribution problem. Yes. [0:06:28] Steli Efti: We think it started with I thought about you always doing this. I got really irritated. I thought now it’s enough. I need to do something. But what might have triggered all of it was I ate too much bad food yesterday. Today, I decided to skip lunch. I’ve been really irritated. Then I started thinking about all the things that irritate me and boom, I thought about you in the one thing you did. But the problem really, the trigger really, I mean you could go back. There’s actually an exercise that we might discuss that’s a bit out there, but kind of fun. If you try to find the starting point, it might’ve been being hungry. We could go even crazier and go, “Well, maybe it was overeating the day before. Why did you do that?” I don’t know. You can go back until you can’t go back anymore. Being aware of the trigger is I think really, really important. All right. I’ll throw this out there since this is such out-there episode. There’s this crazy exercise. I don’t know if it’s like … I heard this from Robert Anton Wilson a long time ago where he talked about this. I think it’s a Buddhist exercise, where you sit down and you ask yourself, why am I sitting here? Basically, you try to keep answering that until you can. He was describing how you said, “Well, I read this or I heard Robert Anton Wilson talk about this exercise.” Well, how did I hear him talk about this exercise as well? Well, read his few books. That led me to listen to some of his lectures. Why did I read this books? You just keep going until it’s like, the Sun is the perfect distance to Earth, right? It’s like you go back in time. He was describing how I, every time he does this exercise, he discovers something new about himself, life or the universe that he was aware of before. [0:08:33] Hiten Shah: Cool. [0:08:33] Steli Efti: That’s a crazy exercise, but I wanted to throw out there because it’s fitting here. Bring me back to triggers. There are external triggers, but then there’s also the flip side of it, which is I think something we under utilize, which is setting positive triggers for ourselves. Knowing who we are, knowing what triggers good actions, what triggers good thoughts, good emotions, good energy. [0:08:59] Hiten Shah: Absolutely. [0:09:00] Steli Efti: I think we’ve talked about this many, many times before. What gives you energy? What cost you energy? What kind of people give, bring your energy? Which ones are the people around you that suck energy out of your life? Creating and designing a life that has, in your days, in a way that creates these positive triggers can be huge. Something that I think we all under utilize the times. The next thing though, the last time we talked, I confused energy and emotion as one thing. You separated it here, which is super interesting because I thought, “All right, there’s a trigger and then I have energy into me.” Energy was just an emotion, but you actually made those two distinct things. First, there’s energy and then it translates to an emotion. Can you unpack that real quickly for me? Where is energy and how does it live? How does it go to emotion then? [0:09:52] Hiten Shah: I think that what ends up happening is that we start with an energy, and it leads to an emotion. The emotion leads to the thought. I don’t think we can think anything without it being it having some emotion. I don’t think we can have an emotion without an energy. That’s why it’s a hierarchy for me. The trigger leads to some energy. It’s energy in your body energy. It could be in your head too. I mean that’s part of your body, right? It’s an energy that just comes really fast, comes on, leads to some emotion, some negative or positive. Then you go, and then there you have it. You’ve turned it into a thought. It’s almost like slowing it yourself down and be like, “Where did this thought come from?” If you’re ever wondering how to work backwards here, thoughts are the easiest thing to recognize. The hardest thing to probably recognize is actually the trigger, because so many things are going on. Right now, even as I sit and talk to you, I can look around and be triggered in so many ways. That’s because there’s all these things everywhere, right? I’m looking at it a socket. If I ever got electrocuted by a socket, there’s a whole bunch of stuff there, right? I think I wanted to separate out the emotion part because my understanding, at least of myself, is that before I have a thought, I have an emotion. Before I have an emotion, there’s an energy. The whole thing starts from some trigger. I just want to work backwards and figure it out where these thoughts come from so that I can understand them better. [0:11:35] Steli Efti: I love that. I think this is a beautiful framework for anybody out there that is as passionate and is as interested and practically seeing self-awareness is the two of us are, right? [0:11:46] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:11:47] Steli Efti: It’s all goes back to if you want to grow, if you want to become wiser, if you want to improve yourself the way that you live life, the way that you impact things, first, you have to, not first, but you have to try to constantly master yourself a bit better and understand yourself a bit better, if you want to have any hope of understanding the world. That’s also one of the reasons. Probably self-awareness is one of the key themes of this podcast. We have many episodes around this. I’ll throw two out, Episode 45 found our self-awareness. Then 65, how to become more self aware? We have so many. If you type in The Startup Chat and self-awareness, you’ll find lots of episodes, team self-awareness, all that. I think this framework is a beautiful one to help practice more self-awareness of a practical framework to go. How do you catch more of your thoughts? Then instead of just evaluating those thoughts onto themselves, ask yourself first, go find the attribution. Where did this thought come from? Well, I felt this way. How did this emotion arise? Can I find the source of what created the energy, that then created the emotion, that then triggered the thought. Once you have the correct level of attribution, I mean, that in and of itself, will push you to step back enough to have a bit more perspective, right? Once you analyze your thoughts and emotions in this way, disconnects you a little bit from them, which allows you to think more clearly. It also gives you the context to truly evaluate those thoughts and be like … I think that the one framework that I use a lot is, “I cannot trust myself right now.” Or, “I can’t trust these thoughts right now.” I don’t know if we talked about this at the lunch, but oftentimes, if I’m in a bad emotional state, especially when I’m tired or hungry or exhausted. Sometimes I’ll go to the gym. I’ll go, I’ll train martial arts. I’ll push myself a bit too far. The next day I’m sore, I’m exhausted. Everything hurts. In that physical bad state, I will have more negative thoughts. Then when I catch myself, I go, “Oh, you cannot trust yourself right now.” You cannot trust that inner voice right now because it comes from that emotional place that’s bad. All your thoughts are going to be a bit more exhausted, a bit more tired, a bit more grumpy, a bit more aggressive or irritated. I cannot trust any of these things that I’m thinking right now. That helps me just catch myself and not let these thoughts run wild or run a muck. Then, eventually, do really bad actions that you almost always regret, right? One big part about this whole framework is catching yourself before you do really dumb things, right? Before you say something that you will regret or do something you will regret because a day later or a few hours later when the emotion is different, you wouldn’t have said it this way. You wouldn’t have done this thing, right? You would have thought about it totally differently. Stopping yourself from doing dumb things is 80% of winning in life. Stopping oneself from making really terrible decisions is a huge part of winning that we all, I think, under estimate. [0:15:23] Hiten Shah: Totally, agree. Couldn’t agree more. [0:15:25] Steli Efti: All right. [0:15:26] Hiten Shah: It got to stop. [0:15:28] Steli Efti: That’s it from us for this episode. We’ll hear very soon. [0:15:32] Hiten Shah: See you. [0:15:33] The post 414: The Energy-Thoughts-Actions Framework appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the importance of choosing the right market for your product. When developing a SaaS product, choosing the right target market is the most critical step in planning a successful launch of your product. And making this choice comes down to understanding two things – tailwind and trend. In this week’s episode, Steli and Hiten if the CRM market is still a good market to get into, why you shouldn’t worry so much about the right market and focus more on executing properly, the two T’s to determine a good market and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 01:44 Why this topic was chosen. 02:12 Steli’s response to the question of if the CRM Is a good market. 02:47 Why you shouldn’t worry about the right market. 04:00 The two T’s to determine a good market. 04:43 How to know a good market from a bad one. 05:55 The importance of thinking through if a product has tailwind and if it’s a trend. 07:38 How there’s a growing trend for business to move to SAAS. 09:33 Why the market you’re in is an important thing to consider today. 10:11 How Evernote hit on a tailwind. 3 Key Points: The less great you are in your execution, the more the market and timing matters. I think that for us, I don’t care how competitive our market is.The truth is, I don’t rely on the market to make things happen. [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Let’s go. Hey, everybody. This is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And today on the Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about the importance of choosing the right market or a “good” market. So recently, we had a chance to catch up in person. I was in San Francisco. We grabbed some coffee. There were many hugs involved for those that are interested. [0:00:19] Hiten Shah: Three. Two or three. Yeah, yeah. [0:00:22] Steli Efti: Three for sure. Big bromance. We do not just pretend to like each other. [0:00:28] Hiten Shah: Not pretend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not pretend. [0:00:31] Steli Efti: Actually, I’m wondering honestly, Hiten, if there is another podcast duo like us that likes each other after four years as much as we do. And I’m going to make a claim that I don’t know, but I doubt it. In the startup space, I definitely doubt it. [0:00:48] Hiten Shah: I like it. I like that. [0:00:51] Steli Efti: One of the things I’m very proud about when it comes to this podcast is that it has increased our love and our respect for each other rather than decrease it like it does for many other people. [0:01:00] Hiten Shah: That’s a very good point. [0:01:02] Steli Efti: So anyways. Enough of us. But one thing that we briefly chatted about for just a minute, I think. But back in my head … And I thought, “We should share this with people.” The importance of being in a good market or bad market or in a competitive market. Is this market still a good market to be in? Is this market too- [0:01:24] Hiten Shah: Can I share how that came up? [0:01:25] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:01:27] Hiten Shah: I asked Steli what he thinks about what he’s doing in the CRM market, and that’s what led to the, I think, one-minute discussion. It was a quick one because he said something great. But literally, it was just a question for you. Because it popped in mind. I’m like, “Wait. I should ask Steli this. This is really interesting, and I want to know what his answer is.” And I’m glad that we’re sharing it. [0:01:46] Steli Efti: Beautiful. Yeah. So you asked, “Do you think the CRM space is still a good … Do you think your market is still a good market to be in?” My response was, “I don’t think it matters that much.” I think it’s a huge space. Yes. Is it very competitive? Yes. Did a lot of the things that we did earlier, nobody else was doing, have they copied it? Has it become more competitive? Has it become more expensive to acquire customers? All these things, yes. It is a challenging space to be in. But I think if you are great, and if you build your business in a great way, you can be almost … There’s companies and markets that I don’t think are great markets that are amazing companies. I think the market matters more … The less great you are in your execution, the more it matters what market you’re in and what you’re timing is. [0:02:35] Hiten Shah: Right. Absolutely. [0:02:38] Steli Efti: There’s some companies that became billion-dollar businesses, although their founders and everybody in that company made a million mistakes just because their timing was one in a million lottery ticket. If they had tried to start the same business five years later with a bit more competition, it would have never worked because they were not that great at execution. So I think that for us, I don’t care. I think this is a big enough market and a good enough market that we can build an incredible business, the type of business I want to build. So anything that’s a difficulty to me, it’s always an internal one. It’s always a difficulty that is self-inflicted, so we need to get our shit together. The truth is I don’t rely on external forces to be pushing me up. I don’t rely on the market or the hype or the interest or whatever to make things happen for me. I need to make things happen for myself, and my team has to do that. But I don’t think it matters as much for us for those reasons. And I remember when I told you that, you were like, “Yeah. You’re absolutely right.” And then we keep talking about something else. But then later, I was like, “That was a nice little moment, and we should share this with people.” [0:03:44] Hiten Shah: I’m going to give a- [0:03:46] Steli Efti: Oh, go ahead. [0:03:46] Hiten Shah: I’m going to give a thought. I think you were going to ask me about that. I call it the two Ts. And what you’re looking for is the two Ts. And the two Ts you’re looking for are basically tailwind and trends, which are kind of related. [0:04:09] Steli Efti: Tell me more. [0:04:10] Hiten Shah: So I agree with you about you don’t want to rely on anything. But people still need to know, “How do I know I’m in a good market or one that’s not as good? Maybe not bad, but not as good.” So I’ll give an example of an interesting one. I think virtual reality is a trend. There’s a trend. There’s a movement. And I’ll be controversial and say I don’t think there’s tailwind yet. I don’t think there’s a big movement [inaudible] that’s going to [inaudible] with me. And that’s fine. I’m not in the market. I don’t really care. But that’s a very good example. It’s like, “Is there a natural movement for this? Is there something that’s happening that causes this trend to continue and accelerate and grow?” And it’s not about market stats or anything. It’s just like, “You’re a founder. What are your feelings about this?” Or you’re making a choice of a company to join or whatever. “Is that company in a good market for me?” I’m not saying VRs a market. I’m just saying it might not be as good as people might be thinking. And you know the number one reason I know that is because I ask people who are in it, because some of my friends are in it and I’m meeting with them. And we’re not talking about VR. And I’m like, “Hey, what do you think?” And one friend told me something really interesting, and I think it’s a really good example. He’s like, “People get dizzy in this VR thing. And their stomachs hurt. And you have to put on all this equipment, and it takes 45 minutes.” And that’s a state of the art, and you have this costly thing going on. And yes, something will change. When? I don’t know. Well, if you don’t know when, the trend doesn’t matter. And there’s no tailwind. Yet. But that is a market to watch, no doubt. Yeah. [0:06:05] Steli Efti: I love that. And now- [0:06:08] Hiten Shah: That being said, augmented reality [inaudible]. What was that Steli? [0:06:18] Steli Efti: Go ahead. I think I have to stop … Let’s stop videoing. Just go ahead. Just repeat what you just said. I didn’t even say anything. My internet connection seems to be bad now. [0:06:28] Hiten Shah: Oh, no worries. What I was saying is when it comes to virtual reality, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad market. It’s one to watch. And when I think about a related market, I think about augmented reality and try to think about, “Okay. What’s going to cause that market to have tailwind?” And the trend’s already there, right? There’s all the different sort of faces and things like that and all the augmentation you can do on your face, all these apps and things like that. But I don’t really feel like there’s a strong enough tailwind yet. So you want to think about what’s going to cause that to happen. Usually the tailwind comes from demand or a platform. There was so much tailwind for Facebook apps when Facebook said, “We’re building an app platform.” And the trend was that people were on Facebook for so long, and Facebook wanted people to be on Facebook even more and wanted to become the internet, basically, for them, right? And so Facebook apps had tailwind, and there was a trend, which is Facebook saying, “Hey, people are spending time. We want them to spend more time.” That’s a trend that Facebook wanted to perpetuate. At the same time, the tailwind was the fact that they have a platform, and they make it easy for you to do a number of things and get distribution. So I think it’s really important to think through, “Is there tailwind in the market, and is it a trend? Are there trends that point to that?” And that can really help you identify whether you’re in a good market. So let’s take CRM market today. The market has some level of penetration. There’s a massive company, largest SAS company or whatever they call it. I don’t remember anymore. And it’s verticalized, and they have many different products now. But still, CRM is their bread and butter. And there’s so many people that have gotten … The trend, to me, is so many people have gotten used to wanting a CRM, wanting a way to manage their customer relationships. And that’s a trend. It’s a growing trend. Every market is going to have some demand here because of SalesForce and because of what they started in terms of putting it in the cloud. And then now we have another tailwind, which is people are going online more and more. And a lot of the real estate and all these obscure markets have lots of opportunities around needing CRM, whether it’s Close.io or verticalized CRM just for real estate or whatever. And so there’s a number of this tailwind and trends, even in literally the oldest SAS market, I believe, that’s out there, which is CRM. So yeah, of course it’s a good market. It’s huge. And not everyone uses a CRM today. Simple as that. [0:09:05] Steli Efti: Yeah. You hit it on the head. Actually, 80% of companies on this planet don’t use a CRM that is in the cloud. They use either an internal solution, some spreadsheet, a whiteboard, or something that’s still kind of on-premise. We always think about SAS products having hit this peak penetration, all these businesses around the world are using SAS products. But nothing could be further from the truth. So there’s a growing trend to move to SAS for businesses. There’s a growing trend of new businesses around the world that are much more sophisticated and looking for new solutions. So we’re in a market that still has an insane amount of demand because it’s so vast. And I’ve been in a market before where … I’ve been in a situation before when you’re in a dying space. And it’s important to quantify that and to realize it, but I think that knowing if you have tailwind, knowing if you’re in a trend or not is really, really important. But also, not getting too distracted if the space that you’re in is competitive, not instantly thinking, “Oh, we have some competitors. Hence, our market is bad. Hence, we cannot build an amazing big company.” I think that that’s a very limited and limiting mindset that I would advise people to not think about. But I think that the tailwind and trend thing, I really love that you shared that. I’d never heard that before, and I’m definitely going to use this moving forward. [0:10:33] Hiten Shah: Yeah. I made it up. I don’t know if it exists. I’m not taking any credit for it, but it’s the two Ts for me to determine a good market. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot, not just since we talked. But I think I asked you the question because it’s on my mind and just to kind of put a pin in it, so to speak. The market you’re in is an important, very important, thing to consider today. It might not have been in the past, but it helps you define who you’re customer is, and it helps you really figure out, “Is this what I want to be doing? Is there anything here that gives me an advantage because of the market I picked?” And that’s really what you’re looking for. You’re looking for every damn advantage you can get. And so if you think about it like this, then you can think about tailwind. Is there wind behind my back? Not in front of me. Headwind is a whole big other thing of you find a headwind, you can’t get past it, you have a bad market. If you can’t figure out how to get past it. But tailwind, that thing just pushes you naturally. And it almost makes the customer pull you into opportunities. And then trends are really important. For example just real quick, Evernote hit on the mobile trend, the fact that mobile just hit. And they hit on a tailwind, which is people wanted free products to start with before they were ready to pay for something. And that’s one of the … Those two things are what made them work in the beginning. There was a lot of tailwind, and there’s this trend that was just huge. And it was also tailwind in their case, which is the idea that now all of a sudden, people have the mobile devices, and they need stuff. And you can sync across devices. That was super key to the product they built. And it was even before some of the other products and the core offerings by Apple were able to do some of those things that they did. And that’s why the business existed. And then obviously, then it goes to what you said, which is like, “I’m not going to rely on things like that, but those things are great.” You need to execute, and this is kind of where Evernote ended up where it is because the execution was … It was in a good market, but execution was where kind of things fell apart. And now a lot of other companies are capitalizing on that. [0:12:35] Steli Efti: Beautiful. Mind your two Ts. Think about your market. Think about tailwind and trends. That’s it from us for this episode. We’ll hear you very soon. [0:12:44] Hiten Shah: See you. [0:12:45] The post 413: How Important Is Choosing a Good Market for Your Startup? appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about bragging versus being humble. How you feel about an entrepreneur who brags about his successes or is humble about them is something that is very subjective in nature. However, there are certain situations where bragging or pumping yourself up might be the right thing to do and vice versa. In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about why people feel differently about humble founders versus those who brag often, the big revelation he made, why what’s important is the motivation behind people’s actions, the utility of being confident and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic 00:28 Why this topic was chosen. 00:52 How people typically look at bragging versus humble. 04:35 Why the motivation behind what you do matters so much. 05:50 How you can never know the motive of people actions. 06:27 How people that are good at what they do, hardly have to say it. 07:00 How our attitudes towards people can affect how we look at them. 08:06 How MMA fighters pump themselves up before a fight. 09:00 The utility of being confident. 3 Key Points: The things that people say about other people, say more about themselves than anybody elseIf you’re a billionaire and you drive a Honda Accord, it’s because you want to drive a Honda AccordI think we care too much about what other people do with their money. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. Today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about bragging versus being humble, because we think that it’s just an interesting topic that I think both Steli and I have some thoughts on and haven’t gotten the chance to really think about. So y’all get to listen as we think about this topic between bragging and being humble. Bragging, it’s an interesting word to me because I always think about these words and what’s the connotation. The connotation is that you’re bragging, it’s a negative thing, it’s something that nobody wants to hear, and if you do it, you’re a bad person. [0:00:42] Steli Efti: Right. [0:00:43] Hiten Shah: Being humble comes across as oh, that person’s humble. They’re really successful and they don’t really talk like they are, or they don’t act like they are, or they drive a Honda Accord that’s a 1996 Honda Accord, like the first car I drove. And that’s it. And they have a billion dollars or whatever. It’s almost like those things that people do that we label … I’m going to get a little esoteric on it for a second, but those things that people label about other people say more about themselves than anybody else. It’s almost like if you keep talking about the person with the Honda Accord that’s worth a billion dollars or the fact that Warren Buffett supposedly lives in the same house he bought I don’t know how many years ago, 60 years ago, 50 years ago. [0:01:42] Steli Efti: When he was 12, when he was 12. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [0:01:43] Hiten Shah: And then you know, that’s cool. You have an opinion of that, you share it, and then it makes for good content on a blog post on Business Insider or something like that. But I’ve read a Quora post breaking down Warren Buffett. He has other houses apparently. Not to blow the man up, but that’s what I heard, that’s what I read. It was just because I’m interested in Warren Buffett just like many other people, and Charlie Munger and all these folks, because they’re just interesting, successful and share a lot of their wisdom. I just look at this and I’m like, I don’t know how much of this is our impression of other people and our own opinion and our own lens, or it’s actually truth about the other person and how they feel about themselves. Why does that billionaire drive a Honda Accord? I don’t think they think about it the way all of us think about it when we look at them. They’re just like, “This is my car. I drive this car.” End of story. Right? Literally, if you’re a billionaire and you’re driving a Honda Accord, it’s because you want to drive a Honda Accord. It’s not our judgment of why. One of my friends has a bunch of money and for the longest time, he drove a Chevy Lumina, and it was probably the first car he bought, I think. It was just a thing. Everyone talked about it and made fun of him for it or whatever, but at the end of the day, that’s what he drove and that was his decision. Then he goes and buys a Tesla and that’s cool. Now he drives a Tesla, like who cares? I think we care too much about other people, and bragging and humbleness and all that are just a judgment. My other friend has … I go over his house and he has, I don’t even remember what kind because I don’t look at these cars, but he has a very fancy sports car. He’s like, “Drive it, drive it, drive it.” I’m like, “I’ve driven these, it’s cool, but I don’t want to drive it. I don’t want to drive it.” He’s like, “No, drive it, drive it.” I’m like, “Okay.” Then I’m like, “All right, fine.” So I drive it, and he didn’t say it like this, but basically it came out. “You know why I wanted you to drive it?” I’m like, “Why? I told you I’ve driven one of these.” “Oh no, I fixed it up. It’s faster than it should be.” [0:03:51] Steli Efti: Oh. [0:03:52] Hiten Shah: I didn’t know that, but he fixed it up himself and he took pride in that, and he’s been working on it. He knows I like fast cars, but I don’t buy one and I won’t drive one like that regularly, and he has one. But you know what it was? It wasn’t about … It could have been a Pinto that he fixed up and he just wanted me to drive it. It wasn’t because it was a fancy car, it was because he fixed it up. I don’t know, I think perception is reality and appearances are deceiving. Sorry for the rant, but that’s my rant on the topic. I know I went off. [0:04:24] Steli Efti: All right, all right. I love it. [0:04:26] Hiten Shah: I’m dying to hear your perspective on bragging versus being humble. [0:04:29] Steli Efti: Well, we should really rename this podcast to It’s All Contextual or something, something with context because we’re always like, “It depends and context is everything.” I think the motivation behind what you do matters so much and the motivation is not apparent at all just by the appearance of it, right? [0:04:53] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:04:53] Steli Efti: Driving a Prius, and I’m the Google founder, I’m a billionaire. I drive a Honda, a Prius. It could be because I care about the environment. This is a few years ago, I don’t know what they drive now. It could be because I love that car and I think it’s beautiful. It could be because I don’t care about cars and this seems like the best economical choice given all the factors. It could be that I just don’t care, right? Or, it could be that that is my ego boost, like I love driving something that surprises people in how humble I am, or how normal I am. Maybe that’s an ego drive, right? I drive the Honda because I get a big reaction every time somebody sees me because they expected me to drive a more expensive car, and that’s something that boosts my ego. Or it could be I drive it because I want to park at the public parking spaces and I don’t want, when the people that work for me, I don’t want them to see the Ferrari that I’m driving on the weekends that nobody knows about, right? You never fucking know why people do what they do and how they do what they do. The same thing is true, there’s a whole other rant about this about … Yeah, we have to talk about Rolex watches one day, because I have one- [0:06:10] Hiten Shah: Oh wow. [0:06:10] Steli Efti: And there’s a story behind why I have one. I’m actually wearing it right now. [0:06:14] Hiten Shah: Oh, cool. [0:06:14] Steli Efti: There’s a whole story why, and there’s so many different stories why people wear a watch like this and different reactions I get. There was also a different time where I was wearing expensive watches for a different reason, so there’s a whole lot to talk about there. One of the things that I’ve observed that is kind of an interesting topic, so people I admire or the thing that I find attractive or interesting, always people that are understated, right? I find that people that are incredibly good at what they do, they don’t have to say it. Other people say it for them. Their actions speak louder than words. Nothing is nicer than meeting somebody and then later discovering that they’ve done all these incredible things, not even from them. That’s what impresses me more. Nothing is a bigger turn off than meeting somebody for the first time and then starting to tell me how important they are or how impressive. Nothing makes me immediately think the opposite of them. I’m like, “You are a failure if you have to tell me you’re successful.” [0:07:09] Hiten Shah: Here’s the debate, right? Is that attitude preventing you from something? Is it preventing you from understanding the person? Is it preventing you from getting value or being valuable to the person depending on what the goal is? I’m not saying you’re right or wrong, that’s the existential question on I think our own judgments of other people, especially in this topic of whether they’re bragging or braggers, or whether they’re being humble. [0:07:34] Steli Efti: I think it’s a matter of that rigidity, right? This mental model of judging the world is not good or bad, but what’s bad about it, in and of itself, is that I only apply it to everything and I have no flexibility around this. I don’t sometimes think differently about things, or I don’t have that flexibility. I think that’s the bad thing about it. What I’ve noticed, one interesting thing, because I’m a huge fight fan right now. I’m watching all these boxers, I watch all these MMA fighters, all these Muay Thai fighters. One interesting thing that I’ve noticed is that there are some humble ones that don’t speak a lot and speak very humbly of themselves, but the majority of really exceptional fighters will speak quite … They will brag about that they’re the best, they’re going to destroy this other person before the fight is happening. They will pump themselves up. There’s something to that. There’s a utility to that. Part of it is to intimidate the other person, part of it is because they get more attention then for the fight, which makes them make more money and all that. There’s many, many factors that play into this. But part of it is also that they make themselves feel good. Similar to rappers, one of the reasons why rapping is such an aspirational, hip hop is such an aspirational version of music is because it came out of poverty, and so they were talking about being rich and that they’re the best and they’re the smartest and they’re the most successful. They are making themselves feel better about themselves and start kind of mind programming themselves about this life that they’re going to have. And there is value in that. And people like to hear it. I like to hear people that are rapping about … They put you in a mood of confidence and of like, “Yeah, I’m going to kick ass today.” That’s a good feeling and a good state to be in versus somebody that would rap about, “I know nothing and I always tried to learn and who knows what I’m going to accomplish in life. Life is complicated.” That’s not a fun song to listen to. I can’t do anything with that. [0:09:30] Hiten Shah: No. That’s true. [0:09:32] Steli Efti: I’ve been thinking about this in the business context, obviously. What’s the utility of being confident? There’s a lot of utility in speaking highly of yourself and your business. There’s a lot of utility for morale, for being able to recruit people, for being able to raise money, for being able to get attention from press. There’s a lot of value in that, and it’s something that I think I dismissed for too long, hence why I recently started thinking about maybe I’m too rigid about this … The other thing that’s interesting is that any time that somebody on my team wants to talk about me and for instance, my brand like, “Oh, the Steli Efti brand, we need to do this,” it makes me instantly feel uncomfortable to talk about myself in the third person, talk about myself in some positive way. I don’t know, and that discomfort makes me think okay, here’s an area I need to grow. Here’s an area that I’m not … I shouldn’t feel uncomfortable about this. I should use it when it’s useful and not use it when I don’t want to, but feeling uncomfortable about something, to me, means always that there’s something there that needs poking and needs further exploring. [0:10:46] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I see what you mean. I think that’s a good way to bookend this one, which is basically if you’re judging somebody else, it has to do with yourself in some way or another, and you should figure out what that looks like and what that means for you and if that’s preventing you from having a different perspective that would be valuable. I’ll just say on my end, when I figure that out about myself that I’m actually judging someone or I’m being very critical in a way that makes me close minded, I want to figure out why and I want to figure out why am I feeling that way and how do I become more open minded? Because I think that open mindedness helps you, honestly, stay in your own shit and not get into someone else’s, and that’s what I’m really trying to do with this stuff, right? That’s why this topic’s really interesting because it’s a judgment, it really is, to think that someone’s humble or to think that they’re bragging. We don’t know their story until we do, and even then, we don’t know them. We are not them. We are still yet impacted by something they did or are doing, and making a judgment and putting in our opinion, our own filter on. I think that that’s a close minded viewpoint. It doesn’t mean any of us are perfect and are not going to be judgmental, it just means that I’d rather be open minded so again, I don’t get in anyone else’s ish. [0:12:17] Steli Efti: That’s it. Amen. This is it from us for this episode. We’ll hear and see you very soon. [0:12:25] Hiten Shah: Bye. [0:12:26] The post 412: Is Bragging Bad? Is Being Humble Good? appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about Hiten’s Billion Dollar Mistake. This episode comes after a blog post that Hiten wrote a couple weeks ago that blew up on the internet. It’s about a billion dollar mistake he made at his company KISSmetrics. In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about the reaction to the blog post, the big revelation he made, lessons he learned from it and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic 00:55 Why this topic was chosen. 02:15 One reason why his blog post blew up. 02:34 The second reason why it blew up. 03:31 Some statements about the Hiten bomb. 05:16 The reason Hiten believes this post resonated with people. 05:32 An experience you’ve probably had at your team. 06:56 The reaction to the blog post. 08:00 Why Hiten is no longer feels bad about the situation. 3 Key Points: We were ahead of the market by 3 years.Product development and building products is hard.If you are a team member in a company, you’ve had this experience. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hello everybody. This is Steli Efti. [0:00:05] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:05] Steli Efti: Today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about, drum roll, the billion-dollar … [0:00:11] Hiten Shah: Mistake. [0:00:12] Steli Efti: Boom. Whose billion-dollar mistake, Hiten? [0:00:16] Hiten Shah: I guess it was mine because I wrote about it. [0:00:18] Steli Efti: It was your billion-dollar mistake. Now, before I let you talk, because this is going to be mainly a Hiten Shah- [0:00:24] Hiten Shah: No, I don’t think so. I’m going to make you talk. What do you mean? [0:00:27] Steli Efti: What? No, don’t do that. Don’t do that with me. Let me set it up first for the audience that don’t know what we’re talking about. It’s hard for me to believe that if you’re listening to this podcast that you don’t know what we’re already talking about, but just in case. A couple of weeks ago, Hiten wrote a pretty impactful blog post about his billion-dollar mistake, and it blew up like a bomb. My Twitter feed and my Facebook feed was full of people sharing that article and sharing it not just like … They didn’t just click the To Tweet This button or something. People would write really, really long responses about why this was impactful to them, how vulnerable and powerful this blog post was. People were praising you. People felt … They felt something. It really had an impact with them, and so this thing blew up. It’s been everywhere. Everybody responded to it. It’s been a really, really big thing. I think that you shared some incredible lessons that you learned with Kissmetrics, which was your billion-dollar mistake. So, I wanted us to talk about this a little bit on the podcast as well as make people aware of the fantastic blog post that they should read that’s going very in-depth and in detail. You’ll give people the URL in a second, and we’ll have it in the show notes as well. But let’s talk about … Maybe summarize it in a sentence or two. What was the big mistake that you made? What was the big revelation that you shared with the SaaS world, and why do you think people responded so strongly to it? [0:02:05] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Well, first of all, a lot of people know the Kissmetrics brand because we hit about a million page views a month on our blog. So, even if you don’t use the product or didn’t even know what it was, you knew the brand. That’s one reason. What I talked about was how we had two product failures early on. Then, we had a product success, which was our original version of Kissmetrics, and we really nailed it in a few key areas. I’ll save the technicals for the blog post because I want to give more than what’s on the blog post on this because you all are listening. What I said was we were ahead of the market by about three years, and I know that’s accurate for a number of reasons. But either way, it’s three years ahead of the market because we finally got it right by doing a whole bunch of research and things that … I think Steli and I talk about a bunch when we talk about product and stuff like that. Then, what happened was what I call the Hiten bomb. I didn’t call it that, actually. It was the head of product and engineering that called it that. He wrote a 1300-word, I think, memo. We called it a memo because it was in Confluence, and he just wrote it. It was just basically saying, “Hey, I finally figured out what these things are that Hiten does to people on the team,” and he called them Hiten bombs. These are a couple of the statements, I’ll read these off because these are pretty good, that people would say about me behind my back, basically. “Hiten’s got yet another great idea that’ll save the company. I’m going to wait till I hear from him three times before I do anything about it. I just had another Hiten bomb dropped on me. I ignored it.” So, I think this is … Oh, yeah. This is what the head of product and engineering said. He said, “Hopefully I can help everyone understand where those things that might seem like left field are coming from.” He talked about all the different competing forces that I have to deal with, or any CEO, founder, leadership team has to deal with, which is, like, existing customer sales, ourselves, board of directors, future investors, competition, and there’s a bunch of others. Those are the ones that I include in the post. The reason that I believe this post resonated so well with so many people is because, one, product development and building products is hard, and you kind of are trying to capture lightning in a bottle. Once you do, you take it, and you run with it. We took it, and we ran with it for a little bit. But then we lost sight of it, and it was my fault. I admitted it was my fault. Well, one, someone wrote something about me that made me see it as my fault, and he didn’t write it in a negative way, like, “Hiten’s all wrong,” or anything. He actually wrote it in an extremely positive way to help people understand, but that gave me recognition I didn’t have before about what I was doing. Then, I dug in deeper, and I talked about how that made us lose the market because other folks just took it and ran. They ran faster than us and better than us after we had nailed it. A lot of those principles that we created early on are exactly the type of principles that made everything after us successful in the market, the core principles. Right? We figured those out. Yeah, my thesis on why this resonated … I’ll talk a little bit more about all the things that have happened since, but the why it resonated was because if you are a team member in a company, you’ve had this experience. If you are leadership in a company, you’ve probably done this. When you have something that people are reading, anybody that works in a company is reading, and they can relate to it, and it’s written in a way where even things like all the crazy analytic stuff I talk about is sort of boiled down to basics, and it’s described in a way that’s easy to understand, not technical, I think people tend to read it, and they read it. I spent a lot of time on this with my co-founder as well as folks who help us write, and just getting it so that it feels right so that people got the message. But the message is basically a Hiten bomb. So now, I’ll get on calls with people, whether it’s team members or whatever, just to help them out or to talk about my product or whatever it is, and they’ll tell me about their co-founders’ names’ bombs. They’ll be like, “Oh, John bomb. We have John bombs all the time,” right? I’ve gotten countless text messages. Some of them were really interesting and just telling me about their stories. I’ve met with founders as a result of this. My email box is still not empty, and will not be for a while. I still have to keep running through it, and I still keep getting it. Facebook blew up with it. LinkedIn blew up with it. Twitter, as you said, blew up with it. One interesting thing … My dad is at home at night. I posted it on Facebook in the evening the same day that we posted it on the blog and kind of emailed it to the Product Habits email list, which is a blog it sits on. My stepmother is talking to him and is like, “Honey, honey.” She’s like, “Honey, honey, have you seen this? Have you seen this?” That’s what he told me. Then, he texted me in the morning. He’s like, “Hey, can you talk?” This is like 7:30 in the morning. Okay, cool. I’m like, “Yeah, I can talk.” So, he called me in, like, 15 minutes, and he’s like, “I read that post.” I’m like, “Okay.” He’s like, “How are you doing?” I’m like, “Wait, hold on. How did it make you feel?” He said it made him sad. [0:07:43] Steli Efti: Ooh. [0:07:44] Hiten Shah: Then, I’m like, “Oh, Dad. I’m okay. This was years ago.” [0:07:48] Steli Efti: This is years ago. [0:07:50] Hiten Shah: I was a tough-ass years ago. I’m good now. I’m okay now. I mean, I’m really grateful for Steve, who wrote the memo. My only line there about that is I’m grateful. I’m not sad about it. The reason is because I still get to work with Steve, so I must’ve changed. Right? [0:08:13] Steli Efti: That’s so interesting. When you publish something … I feel like there’s a tendency that it takes us a while when a failure, especially something that was negative in our life … When that happens, it takes a little while to have the proper amount of distance of perspective and be able to talk about it in some useful and valuable way. Then, then we do, it’s hard for people to realize that it didn’t happen right now. Right? [0:08:41] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:08:41] Steli Efti: I remember I had this blog post once where I talked about when I had to let go of half my company team at one point. I had people emailing me that were like, “Wow. I heard what just recently happened. I’m really sorry for you.” That was like two years ago or something, so it’s funny that people … For them, it’s a new story. They didn’t know you went through this. They didn’t know about the situation. So, because they read it right now, that’s when they’re going through the … Your dad went through the emotions reading it that day, so he was like, “Is my son all right? How do you feel?” [0:09:15] Hiten Shah: He has never in his life told me, “I’m sad.” [0:09:18] Steli Efti: Really? [0:09:20] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:09:20] Steli Efti: Wow. That’s kind of cool. [0:09:23] Hiten Shah: Like, ever. So, it was shocking. I’m like, “What are you sad about, dude? [inaudible] What are you sad about?” [0:09:31] Steli Efti: I like that, though. I like that here’s a new moment. Here’s a new moment for him to also share an emotion with you that he hadn’t had a chance to share before. [0:09:40] Hiten Shah: [inaudible] [0:09:41] Steli Efti: I wanted to ask you, so a lot of the things in that story were not talking to me because we had talked about them a long time ago. Some of these things, like the Hiten bomb, and kind of the founder drive-by, and a bunch of other things that you shared in that blog post, we have mentioned or discussed in one way or another on the podcast. But I was wondering, and I’m wondering, now that you wrote the piece, and you published it, and you got a response, did that in any way bring up any new thoughts, any new feelings, any new perspective to all this? Or are you like, “I’ve digested it so well, and I’ve now shared it with the world for the world to get it and to help others, but there was nothing there still for me. Writing this piece didn’t really affect me at all, or didn’t really add anything to it”? [0:10:30] Hiten Shah: I think it solidified my fortitude on how I’m managing myself. Because it reminded me of how I wasn’t at the time and didn’t realize it. So, I have a lot of things I do now. If I have a meeting, I take notes. If I have a meeting in my company with somebody, I take notes. Then, I go share the notes with several folks on the team right away. Then, sometimes I get some questions right away before I’m even able to do a summary and next steps. So, I will always, if it’s an important meeting, I’ll go write notes on it. Because I’m doing a lot of work outside the company, so I’m talking to people outside the company, that’s why this Hiten bomb kind of thing would happen to me. Outside the company could even mean stakeholders in the company, like, investors, board of directors, whoever it is, advisors. Now I’m taking notes, lots of notes, sharing the raw notes, then, within 24 to 48 hours depending on timing, writing a summary and next steps. If there’s no next steps, cool. It’s still next steps. No next steps, right, and a summary. Some of those next steps would happen by the time I write all the stuff, but it basically makes it so that whatever’s in my head is not just in my head. If I go talk to someone about it at some point, there’s a lot of context, and I’ll even … Steve actually gets this a lot. I did this yesterday to him. Had a meeting, wrote the notes, shared it with Steve and a couple other people. Haven’t written the summary or next steps yet. I’m going to do it later today. Then, I call Steve right away. I’m like, “Yo, Steve. I had this call. I just needed to talk to you about it.” Now, it’s not like he’s sitting there, like, “Hiten said some random stuff. I have to take notes, or I have to take note of it.” Right? But the key there for me is I documented it. So, it solidified this idea that I need to keep doing that in order to keep everyone informed of what I’m learning. That way, we can all have the same information and make really good decisions. Because at the end of the day, the reason the Hiten bombs come is because you want people to make really great decisions in the company like you would, I mean, in your mind. Right? Not just like you would, but with the information you have as well. I think I got more fortitude on that, especially as I heard all kinds of other people coming at me. I’ve talked to a lot of people who have these bombs, founders, and team members. Yeah. Definitely, that’s my way of solving for this, and it definitely gave me the fortitude to keep doing that. [0:12:56] Steli Efti: That’s beautiful. For people that want to hear us talk about this in much more detail, for those of you that are like, “Bombs? What bombs? What exactly are they talking about?” you definitely want to listen to The Startup Chat episode number 43, four, three. We need to give this a better title. I think back in the day, we called this impulse-driven communication. We talked about founder drive-bys and Hiten bombs, but I think we need to officially rename this episode the Hiten Bomb or something. Then, so listen to episode number 43 to learn more about this. The blog post, where can they find it? What’s the URL to get to it? [0:13:30] Hiten Shah: Yeah. It’s producthabits.com/my-billion-dollar-mistake. [0:13:35] Steli Efti: Boom. Go and read it today. I guarantee you’ll learn a lot. Hiten, I’ll do something unusual. In the name of the entire Startup community … I mean, you’ve gotten a million thanks, but I’ll say one more thanks from my side. I love that you published that story. I love that you shared these stories and you shared some of these lessons that I think would really benefit a lot of people. I know they have benefited me. They’ve benefited the Close team. Still working with some people on the bomb track record, not being as impulse-driven and jumping into teams and asking critical questions that leave you havoc when they run away. That’s a real big challenge between people and leadership, and I think that making people aware of it and helping so many people out there to get better at this is so valuable and will have a huge impact. So, thank you for that, and thank you for all of you for listening. I think this is it for us for this episode. We’ll wrap it up, and we’ll hear you soon. [0:14:38] Hiten Shah: Thanks, Steli. [0:14:39] The post 411: Hiten’s Billion Dollar Mistake appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.