But here's the amazing thing is that when you ship a number of features and then you start killing a few of them What you find is that the core stuff gets used more A lot of social consumer products, you know, ultimately engage someone based on something they're insecure of Hey guys, Sean here. I got a different kind of episode for you But I think you'll like and just to set the scene for you. So I'm recording this right now It's Christmas Eve got about an hour to go till Santa hits the chimneys and this episode is gonna be with Scott Delsky probably one of the coolest people I met this year doing the podcast and as I'm recording this You know, I'm just supposed to do the intro and tell you what this is about But I'm feeling a little reflective because it is the end of the year started this podcast about six months ago on a whim I was bored We were selling our company and we were in the due diligence period and I was just getting itchy waiting for lawyers to finish doing what lawyers do And I was like I want to start something new and so you could start a company so I started a podcast I didn't know if anyone would listen and amazingly, you know, I really thought nobody would listen to this thing And now here we are six months later. I'm looking at the dashboard right now, and there's five hundred and twenty six thousand listeners Over half a million listeners already just last few months And so I never thought that that would happen if you're listening to this right now Thank you.
This has been a kind of amazing new addition to my life I Started the podcast because I thought it would be a great excuse to hang out with interesting people I don't drink coffee no caffeine for me never had the taste for it So I didn't like inviting people out to coffee or trying to make up excuses to meet and I thought the best excuse would be Hey, come on my show come on my podcast and whatever reason that kind of flattery works So I wanted invite people like Scott on the podcast and somebody likes Scott's interesting because start to show with this Which is he's done basically every job I've ever thought about doing so he bootstrapped his own startup He raised venture capital and right away. He sold his company and then he became a tech executive He's currently the chief product officer at Adobe, which is you know, obviously Adobe's a massive company He's a you know, he's been a founder. He's been a tech executive. He's been an author He wrote a book called messy middle, which is an awesome book about the process of creating stuff So, you know, he created a guy who wrote a book He's when an angel investor in companies like uber or Pinterest aka, you know, two of the best angel investments of the decade And then he was a VC with benchmark one of the top funds that exists So the guy basically has done everything and what I was blown away with and what you'll get out of this conversation is He's just a good dude.
He's a very down-to-earth smart person who I think he says this somewhere in it Which is his goal wasn't to become any of those things. I didn't say I want to be a tech executive I want to be a founder I want to be a investor He was just curious and followed his curiosity and it kind of let him down those paths and I found that kind of inspiring So, you know as the new year hits I'm thinking about all these different episodes we've done on about 25 episodes meeting all these great people and then even getting a Chancell to meet some of you know, we got half a million listeners That's a cool number But I've gotten to meet you know hundreds of you in person at one of the live shows or people who email me We're gonna try to squeeze in a Q&A episode this week So if you are listening to this and you have a question that you wanted to ask, you know, it could be about business It could be about a podcast whatever I'll answer just shoot me an email my email just purry p u r i Dot shan sh a and so purry dot shan at gmail.com. So just shoot me an email I'm gonna do a Q&A episode I already have like 20 questions or so, but but send them in and I'll try to get through as many as I can I hope you enjoy this episode. We're not gonna do a super fancy intro We're just gonna go right in and it's a little bit different We recorded this thing at night and I just have the energy to do the whole okay Let's start with your story from beginning to end I just hopped around on whatever was interesting to me and it made for a fun convo me and Scott I consider us friends now after this because the conversation was that fun to be a part of so it kind of hops around It's a little bit of a different flavor.
I hope you guys like it and again Thanks so much for supporting the show the podcast is already bigger than ever dreamed it be and all that made me want to do was Grow it even 10 times bigger. So that's what we'll be doing next year. All right guys enjoy the show Scott welcome So Scott Belzky, so I don't like doing intros because usually I butcher it when I do it But what I thought was interesting about having you was like you've done the career path that's like everything I've thought of doing you've actually already done So it's like, you know, you've written a book you've pushed up the company raise venture capital you sold the company you've invested you've been a tech Executive at Adobe so I'm like all the potential career pets who've actually explored it's like okay, we're a great Any crisis. Yeah, either you know exactly what you're doing or you have no clue What you're doing right fine line between the two maybe right and currently which one of those paths are you in at the moment?
Yeah, I mean listen sometimes I think what is my happiest day professionally actually just generally okay I think it's the feeling of feeling full utilized and I think that personally, you know, I'm a dad I'm a husband I'm a friend, you know, you feel utilized all those ways and then professionally I feel fully utilized in a day like today actually where I Had meetings with product teams. I had meetings kind of leading change in the big organization those types of meetings I also had pitches a couple pitches from companies that I might invest in I also helped make a couple introductions to companies I'm already an investor in and I also even had a quick talk related to the book And so I feel like every muscle was stretched in some way that's a day Yeah, so I think that I've always just tried to you know pull both reds and curiosities And I do you know I you know for better or for worse I kind of am enjoying you know both ends of the spectrum these days Yeah, to give people a sense It's like 9 p.m. On a Tuesday Monday night on a Tuesday night some some day I was telling you I was like I give you credit because I know it's easy when you're like two weeks out And you're like sure yeah, we'll make it work and then the day of you're like you're like 9th uber of the day You're like who who's this podcast? I'm like good good good good good But yeah, yeah give you props back in the last episode I sort of put out one of my life theories Which is 80% is just showing up and most of the things that you don't want to show for it If you just build that discipline to just show up good things happen You just have to do it Okay, so you've done a bunch of things if I'm listening to this I'm like okay, why am I interested so you created be hands?
Which if you're a creative person, you know exactly what be hands is if you're not somebody who is that maybe design or something creative world? What what was bands? Yeah, so BH was inspired by a bit of a sense of frustration with the creative world and just how disorganized it was a lot of my friends in the Creative Community architects designers from college your careers were at the mercy of circumstance And I felt like they felt like they never got attribution for their work And I felt like they were not doing their greatest they could be doing their career as a result of that And so BH was an effort to organize the creative world and people would always say yeah, good luck with that Yeah, but the the idea back in the day was why are people having their portfolio sites sitting on some websites out in the ether? Only physically people who know them their work should also be broken out and searchable and sortable based on the client the search term or whatever And then through someone's work you discover who that person is then you see their portfolio and then you see who they are And so it was inverting the model to some extent and it was a long slot I mean BH was five years of bootstrapping to use as a venture back business acquired by Adobe three years of integration It was an incredible territory to prepare to be right right kind of sell it all but it's great I mean I love building products for native people I find that ultimately across all industries Great of people are the ones that really move things forward and they can tell us take action They you know prompt emotion through media and movies whatever it is So it's just kind of an honor to you know build things for creative people is always something that gets me going Yeah, somebody asked me like why do you like to do that why that in traditional terms?
I don't seem that creative I'm not a designer. I'm not an artist of some kind I make a music You know anytime I make something new happen you're being creative you know fundamentally problem solving something new sure And I'm like you know, it's really simple like I like the new shit in the world I get excited about new shit and if you want new shit You may be creative and you're afraid of people to have all the tools that they're disposal to do what they do best Well, I think it's you know creativity is genuine interest combined with initiative You have like deep interest into something doesn't matter what it is to your point But you also have the initiative to do something with it And those are the folks that get fascinated by those edges that will someday become the centers and that's what makes it work It's a normally on the bottom like okay, hands great that's a mission How did you think of the idea how to get your first time customers those are the normal ones? And so if you're here, so listen to that sorry, I'm not gonna do it this time Yeah, there's people who have asked you those questions I've seen those interviews actually I don't know if it's because it's 9 p.m I'm in the mood to just talk about other things one of the things I want to talk about is you wrote this book Messy Middle yes, which is cool. I'll tell you the premise is I understand it is 95% of the conversation is around the beginning and end of Comfy I'm guilty of it myself, but you know press and you know the media is much more yeah That's their bread and butter is like somebody's starting something somebody's ending something either from failure success It's a 95% of the talk or 99% of the talk is about 1% of the time that actually goes into any adventure And everybody just sort of fast forwards the middle the actual like sort of doing and navigating of the unknown And so that's what the messy middle is about it's about that middle section I think Eric recesses good braise where he's like act one we're going to depth about the hero and how they came up with their idea Act three, you know the resolution and act two is the montage Right, which is all the hard work and it's just like all the training you just quickly fast work through all of it So you can get the good sexy, but it's kind of all the matters And so why write the book lowest fascinated by that big period of volatility that just seemed like an endless succession of lows and highs I was interested in the idea that we're not our best selves at the lows or the highs We're not ourselves at the lows because we make decisions out of fear You know it be hands we saw new companies new competitors emerge I mean made a lot of mistakes at times where we would suddenly try to emulate and then realize wait We just lost touch with what we really are and what we're good at and then you're also not your best self at the highs Because you falsely tribute to things that you did to the things that work And so there's something to be learned at those moments There's a practice to be developed and how you endure the lows and how you optimize like hell anything that works And I just that was what was interesting to me And I wanted to interview and chronicle a lot of stories and insights from people that I've worked with words that I was on entrepreneurs that I partnered with and also things that I learned you know my own experience and originally I kind of started this as a project for myself and I realized I had this ever notebook of like 680 or so insights and I said okay like I'm gonna pair this down and ship it So that was the origin of the book because I was thinking I was like why not a blog post right like I read a bunch of your blog But it's probably the reason why I wanted to have you on is your blog is actually really good and you should go man Just like else get on right.
Yeah, I guess yeah, it's like on medium But I don't know you get there too many different ways because I read a bunch of your things I have these like watercolor art like diagrams of stuff Yeah, I've been reading these for a long time and I have a couple friends a Sam from the hustle You invested in and Greg Greg Eisenberg he says amazing things about you So that's why I wanted to have you on like your philosophies that I've read and then friends who vouch for you And why not just like do a blog post? Why did it have to be a book? Yeah, I mean it's a good question because the book is kind of stagnant You can't really update it as easily I think though that a book is a forcing function to just still it all down and also try to find the threads And then to package is a piece of art one thing I did with this book is every insight has like a statement that is also like presented in sort of a Design section to give it some gravity and an example of this like an example is the science of business is scaling the art of Business is the things that don't scale and then it's like okay. What is that right?
Yeah, I'm back that so that will be like a two or three page section about how we sort of persevered over all the Science nuances and actually our instinct is to not want to do anything in our businesses that doesn't scale because we think it's a waste Of time when in fact a lot of the greatest examples of distinguishing a brand or a service are the things that don't scale like Airbnb's any of photographers or Department or I mean every company has their example of the things that they did that don't scale that end up being the art And how do you also preserve that as you grow and how you decide what your art is? And so that's like an example of one of maybe two hundred or so insights in the book You write this book and I like it because there's some books where you can kind of tell the person who's writing this like They're either nowadays not trying to make money off this but they're trying to parlay this into a speaking gig So it's like that but you already had your sort of success and win so this it feels like a different place It comes from a place of like I want to share wisdom or like first tap into the wisdom the scattered wisdom you had in your Evernote files yeah, I put it together for yourself and then like generously give is that like a yeah? It was weird actually I remember the moment when I was kind of entering another one of those things I had observed over You know a board meeting or something and then I realized gosh like there's so many in here and I think it was on a plane I remember being like gosh this thing goes down like I was ever gonna see any of this stuff It's only gonna be for me right and so that was one of those moments I also you know I think there's a part of me that aspires to do more coaching and helping people build products Right one of the things that I love doing and then it was Sam and also with rag and others is help them develop their products And they build their product teams and hire the right designers and design culture and I wanted to I did see this a book as an Opportunity to kind of help share some of the things I've learned some of the things I'm thinking about and do more of that stuff So is in some ways like a cornerstone of that of that intention I have for you next part of my life What's something that you commonly so when you advise people to say I'm building products and making better products Obviously as an entrepreneur you'd always be better You will never turn down the opportunity to make your product better sure it is your rock What's something like common things you find yourself constantly advising people to do or you know questions you keep asking or advice you keep giving Is there anything that sort of pattern you're noticing as you do this for companies? I mean there are a lot of them I would say like to the come to mind you know one is obsessing over the first mile of the user's experience of the product Which ironically typically is the last mile that a team spends actually thinking about and yet It's the only part of the product experience that every customer will in fact experience right after that is just drop off First mile just so it's like literally the onboarding the slash page onboarding step-by-step that the questions you're asked before you get into the product How quickly do you actually realize any form of value in the product?
The defaults of the product You know does it show you everything at once or only a few things the progressive disclosure functionality like all of these factors are things You must consider as you're nailing that first mile experience Which is in fact probably what determines the fate of most products frankly Yes, you know you get 60 seconds or 90 seconds with the bulk of your customer do it's a customer And I like to remind folks that every customer as great as they may be and as wonderful as your product may be every customer is lazy Vane and selfish in their first 15 to 30 seconds of using your product How are you going to cater to them at that in that world before and I think the mistake we make is we have to we expect our customers to Which they think us right as hard builders? They don't care in fact They shouldn't because their life is too busy right and they shouldn't spend any amount of time energy or effort You know until they actually know they're gonna get value out of it Right, so that's the conundrum So that's like one example of something that you know I love working on the product teams another example is kind of unpacking the psychology of their customers a lot of social consumer products You know ultimately engage someone based on something they're insecure about right something they want to have value It's something they want to learn or they're worried about or there's a lot of like underlying nuances of a product that are really driven on psychology You know I was talking to the team at Visco the other day and you know They decided not to aggregate the number of followers that you have visible to you nor do they let you see how many likes something has That's very counterintuitive to what we know about ego analytics and the things that drive social consumer product usage But they had an insight right which was the type of customer how they want to use the product that sort of thing is very important thing to kind of Distill and then make as a core principle And so when you're investing in companies I'm guessing you're looking for in that first couple First conversation with the entrepreneur you're trying to figure out what insights do they have about the psychology of their customer And also when you're done with the product has this first mile experiences are probably two of the first tests of your And of course, you know for consumer products and enterprise products are different types of tests for different types of lenses You look at them through but I think those actually apply to both you know in enterprise You realize that everyone wants to look better in front of their boss Everyone is you know sometimes even more lazy in terms of what they're willing to do and so you have to build products and first Now experiences that take those things into account So these are important things to think about as you're considering as an investor if you're a product range of investor Right and what what are some of the investments you made that your product? Yeah, I mean I think that you know my first ever investment was interest So I met then silver and back in 2010 and I had no business being an initial investor I was just leading my own company But I met him how you just and at him through of all people I think was our intern And he you know but then was coming through New York to raise money because he had part-time filling his round out here And and we both were building products that we were orienting towards designers to some degree and a lot of the pins on Pinterest were driving to Behance ages and I was seeing that although slow but rapidly growing you know source of traffic back then it was of course We'll but then stumble upon and tumbler and media for others and then I just started working with him first as a product advisor And then when he was raising the seat round he was like you want to participate and I was like okay So that was you know that was the first for a it was amazing because it was just cool to see a product at that stage and to Share some of what I learned but also just engage in a lot of healthy debate And so I think there you know there been a bunch of every product experience that I've had with the team is in Remarkly different I said on the board of sweet green for a few years You know we're totally different world right but then again sweet greens thinking about efficiency behind the counter and how to you know reduce operations time Preparing salad is the form factor of the actual bowls and how that increases efficiency and is better for the environment the design of the space And then the mobile experience they had this ambition having over 50% of all orders You know started on mobile, you know and so I just I love getting a bit de-ge with product problems and you know and helping solve them Right, that's amazing. Okay, so you when you made that first thing to best put in Pinterest Yeah, you don't have a budget for this.
You're not like okay I'm I've made it because you're still doing but hands up time. You had not exit right? Correct and so you said I'm in no position to do angel investing But you did it anyways. What risk did you take there?
So like when you put in whatever you put in like what percent of your like net worth were you putting on the line at that time? Yeah, it was it was probably a good chunk of my salary And you know the one other thing I did to rationalize it for myself I remember is Ben had worked at Google he had a network on the west coast I was just like you know new entrepreneur in New York that didn't have any of that network I actually felt like I would learn a lot from this and so I was like You know sort of paying for an education if nothing more and it was again Like I just knew so little about everything I do now back in 2010 so it was nine years ago It was if you have a real deep curiosity about something and you find someone you really were second You have a lot to learn from them find a way to get closer to them I don't wait to work with us just always leads to something and you may not exactly this is timely So I just yesterday invested in the self-driving car coming and my last sort of like as I was going through the last checklist of like Okay, should I do this you know, this is meaningful money to me I'm not at the point where you know when I invest dollars in I actually really want those dollars to come back I'm not this is not like the philanthropy angel investing that's on people do and so my last thing was like look I don't learn so much about robotics machine learning and self-driving cars And that's the future whether it's this company or the next one these guys of the future Yeah, and this might just be my education worst case scenario This is my education and I started helping these guys You know a couple days try to get you know get their business off the ground and already I feel like I'm getting live in the future Yeah a couple hours a week just by working with it It's like a you know It's a long-term view on the value of learning and relationships But also for those that aren't ready to write a check to people and there's so many ways of getting closer to people that you would learn from and And keeping those relationships I think platforms also like Twitter are amazing in that regard there's some people that I somehow got connected to a Never from that in my real life who just reached out to me and just started to share like enough information and witty Observations and feedback on something that I wrote that I just start to follow them And then I follow them for a year and two years and then you know these are folks that feel like you know Yeah, and anything that they were probably doing next I would probably be first in line to help support at least learn more about And so just enlightening that anyone can kind of through their own insights and just hard work and and knowledge sharing like you know Sort of generosity in that sense build relationships I learned this the hard way in the sense I host these like mastermind groups do anything like this like a dinner series or anything like that with the same with sort of The same set of people we get together every two months or so where it's like your peers do that only informally They tell you groups that I do that with I tell me about so the progress was I moved to San Francisco and I got Invited one of these and I was like great. This is an awesome way to learn and me people because the good thing is you're at a table With founders and they're not selling because that's like you're not their employee You're not their investor. You're not their customer So they're actually telling you what's up with their company you're sharing likewise And so the first couple groups I was in if I had just written checks all of them blindly I said you know like with no judgment I'm just writing the same $10,000 check and all of you guys.
You know calm was in that in that crew Yeah, exactly would have paid it off clear bit was in that crew product hunt Zola electric was the biggest solar company in Africa like so that portfolio would have done amazing So I look back and I was like man, I did the first part right which is what you're saying You know I just spent time with interesting people and added value to them through sharing ideas and sites whatever helping being helpful But then the lesson I learned was why wasn't I investing and to me? I kind of myself this and I thought because I wasn't thinking of myself like an investor Yeah, and so then it happened again and I saw this company called Lambda school That was really big it was really early on and I started you know talking to Austin and I was like this time I'm not gonna fuck this up and so I convinced my friend I was like I found a company that's amazing if you invest this is I'm your scout here Right fine, but if you invest you know give me 15% of your your action and and let's do it and I was like my first like deal deal Where it's great, you know, I was able to split it in and since then now You know once we sold I got a little money second to do it myself But the lesson I learned and what I would tell anybody's listening to this is don't count yourself out as as a player in the game either As a founder or investor there is a way if you're willing to be creative and helpful enough I think that's one of the greatest cultural attributes of the system of kind of early-stage owners Is that we all know how much those Circumstantial relationships matter and how much we learn from one another and how we actually can't do it alone and you know That manifests itself in ways like what you're describing. Did you invest in Uber? Yeah, I did so that was also kind of early on right and the funny story there So we were bootstrapping our business the answer early days with paper products of all things You're making paper products for creatives to be organized actually pay action and they're called action books They're actually still out there.
Okay. Yeah, and so and one of our core partners for be hands from a traffic perspective and partnership was Was some bullpond Garrett had recently purchased them both on back for me They sold it and he brought it back and so he was in my apartment Which was also my office back in the day in New York and we were kind of jamming on some product stuff And he whipped out one of our action books that I given him previously and was like hey, you know check this out I'm like working on this side project I'm literally invested in the schedule literally Shows me sketches of this product where it's about summoning a black car as opposed having to dial for it And and I'm like dude, you should be focused on your business. You just thought it back I'm a founder CEO struggling your friend. See you and I was struggling like you're thinking of making it's a distraction Yeah, it's a basically like that's a textbook distraction, right?
And so fortunately he didn't take my advice to do a lot of distraction and he said you know Do you want to do you want to be involved? I think I kind of like I don't know but then I also became a product advisor For him and this is actually even before Travis was in the picture Ryan was involved And then of course, you know that team got up and running and so I had he asked me if I wanted to invest And again, it's like sure but I very small check on it was all I could do at the time right and I was a journey Product advisor and because of that you're at the table and so when the time came to you were you were I try to fall in love with The product in the sense where it's still in my mind, you know And I'm thinking through the problems and maybe what's wrong with the interface or how do we need better something at uber that the product Change early on like before any of us touched it that you remember was there anything like that? Remember I remember a debate with Garrett around the brand and this notion of should it be a Expensive right it was every kind of time should be an extensive feeling brand where it looks like it's Aspirational but something I couldn't afford or should it be a an accessible brand where it feels like this is something that everyone should Be doing and it's actually a really healthy argument because you intuitively think it should be accessible to everyone I mean if you want to make a good company, but Garrett's view is that it should be something that feels like a superpower Like everyone's private driver It should feel expensive even though it was intended to be accessible So that was part of the part of the thought behind the black kind of logo and and the brand identity that sort of suggested that feeling So I feel exactly so I remember that today and I think that was also the right choice That's amazing. Okay, and what do you excited about nowadays?
I don't want either space company problem that you can be solving what's got interested Well, I think there's a lot of different things that are interesting me at any point in time in my day job It's building products for creative people and kind of thinking about the future Not only the creative tools We know but also things like augmented reality and how we're going to actually infiltrate and build content in that new medium that would otherwise die if it Wasn't enriched with like interactive animated hyper intelligent content So it's thinking about that working with a lot of our partners like Apple and others to help think through like how does that even happen? It's been like a really fun thing for me by day and No, I mean there's been a lot of really interesting enterprise companies are thinking about the future of work If you're in a big company, you know how hard it is for them to even think about a remote workforce and how to make a transition Even though a lot of us all know it's coming what are the steps to get there and kind of technologies need to come about I also think that you know social has been out of favor Which makes it interesting which means it's yeah, you know, and everyone says interesting is dead It means that something's being born like and now's the time So I'm thinking a lot about consumer products that help people connected one another and in new and you know privacy driven premium Way is not what's the day in the life? Is there a wake up time morning routine that you like that kind of works for you? I mean every day is it right, but I am trying to think of anything that would be useful helpful But ultimately is also useful people like oh, there's no secret He just wakes up and you know he's a breakfastizer she's a little bit grugging right at the door like that's okay, too Yeah, I know I think that I think that I I do try to switch it up You know, I'm actually not one of those people that has like everything has to be the same and whatever else But I do I mean there are a couple things I do like I do try to audit my calendar and retrospect A lot of people only look forward not many people look actually do a time on it you look back at last week or what you do I do it typically look back at the last week and I typically ask myself now this is actually a really interesting thing because You're typically at least ashamed of one day and I'm more than one sure yeah Yeah, how you did it and you look at these blocks like what I do during that period But why did I meet with that person for that long or whatever it is this advancing?
You know, what's most interesting and most important to me and that could be personal things and working so right? But it's just this odd and it's some you know it's prompted some difficult realizations like wow like that was more important than you know See my family time. Yeah, I saw a version of this that I really liked so this guy You probably know his name is Matt something he's like coach CEO coach to a bunch of CEOs in Silicon Valley He just wrote a book called the great CEO within I think just came out and so Emmett who's a CEO twitch He I think he works with him might be getting all these details wrong name wrong but how the wrong direction Yeah, something like this. Let's just wave our hands a little bit So this guy works with a bunch of CEOs and so he wrote this book and I saw his like you had your 680 ever notes So he had a bunch of glue docs that were just like quick, you know Like principle after he worked with somebody CEOs he was noticing some things you just start writing them down and he called this one the energy So the same thing you're talking about we go back in your calendar We said get two markers right red and green or whatever red means this took this activity takes energy away from you You feel less energetic after you do it green means that activity gives you more energy Right like the gym is this weird thing where you would think you go to the gym You put all this energy in and you exercise and that should deplete you but actually you walk out and you fit more energy for Right, so like there's these activities So we said just start highlighting just look at the cup step back and just look at the colors and then be like Okay, that's where you're at today Let's try to move towards more green and different things give you energy like the sort of doing things that are in your zone of genius Right things that you're good at things you know that are important and you're just getting flow and do them and I really like that Because it was a it's one of those things you know when the first time you do it you're gonna like it's gonna look bloody It's gonna be like oh, this is not a not a good use of time I know it's interesting I wonder I feel for me as I have like a natural intervert tendency and they say that introverts get their energy from being alone Right, I wonder if I'd be skewed a little bit All the non-meeting times are green like that was the best time But but I like that I like that idea because I mean listen There are meetings where you're like and there are meetings where you leave with a lot that you're thinking about Maybe that's another measure also is after you spend time with something or someone Are you leaving thinking about things?
I mean that is a one of the things I have used over the years to determine Founders I want to work with as an investor is if I feel like every conversation with him or her was a step function more interesting than the one Before it was a really right a lot of conversations with how people are we yes? It's like time I talked about the same thing last time right every now Then you need someone where you just pick up relefte off and just gets like actually even right now better and better and richer and more dynamic And right over else I mean that was like the story with periscope I met cave on and Joe and they were doing a single bounty out at the time But every conversation with them about what they were trying to build and whatever was was like infinitely more interesting Right, and it was like okay, we gotta work together and what you're saying is it's not just that their results were getting better every time because nobody does not right It was the ideas right it was the ideas and the and the you know the community also chemistry like building upon an idea To make another idea right like I'm like gosh sort of like seeing the world through someone else's eyes Oh, it's like teleportation. Yeah, oh teleportation. What I want to do, you know, maybe I'm gonna go into that I just want to drop in a Tokyo and like walk around It's like oh yeah, maybe you could do this oh you can go in see a tennis match It's at Wimbledon when you're in New York and and then you suddenly like oh wow like the media rights implications of that I mean it's a business model there and right thing the thing the thing the thing is like okay This feels good right like I have a similar thing where I call people Pokemon because it's like you're Pokemon just sort of all It's like the next time you see them.
Oh my god This whole person has evolved into a better person. Yeah, and those are the most fulfilling people like I like that Yeah, there we go. New book one thing I want to ask you because the way I look at it is This is a guy who's achieved a lot of things that I'd like to achieve my life right so just a little Or company, but you know, I'd love to write it I'd love to you know achieve success in the next thing or the best of a company so you're still saying goals for yourself What's a goal you have set for yourself now? What can you share that's something you're like alright?
There's a goal I have for myself nowadays Yeah, well I think that there are some ideas and I'm like growing that I want to give some time to right so I am trying to kind of Stretically schedule time to just think through these things I actually love flights for that reason because I can give myself a chunk of hours that you're nearly never gonna run around right I think we'll just take a shower. Yeah, right You know just uninterrupted time I mean I do believe in this constantly connected world the disconnection is a competitive edge Yes Because you can actually think deeply about something as opposed to just constantly react and take away the inbox is around you Right I think I also certainly have some goals for like the changes I'm trying to bring on the teams, you know that I'm leading now as this chief rock officer role at Adobe This is just a company that bought my company a lot of my DNA is in this business I care about where these products land and what you know, and so I've set some like API driven You know goals around and it's just forces you to start making big swings and think about like how you're going to Leave those changes and get people to go along with it and you know, it's about narrative and merchandising and all these other things that It's fun. You kind of have to build a internal marketing campaign at times just to get people to change their minds So so those are just a few examples Okay, and if you were 21 again today, so I'll let you keep all the knowledge you have but give me back sort of all your assets Your reputation and we nose you you're 21 years old again. What do you think you do?
How do you think you would go about spending you know the next few years of your life? Well, I would I would definitely start something again if I had really a deep interest I think I would probably aspire for more empathy for the customer suffering the problem as opposed to my passion for the solution I think a lot of the mistakes that I made early on was that I was always like super passionate about what I know needed to happen And then we realized eight months later. We were like 30 degrees off like cherry pick evidence that might fit Yeah, the need for that solution exactly because you're you know You get excited by a prototype and a vision and you want alignment so you force alignment and then you realize wait How did I just spend more hours next to a customer seeing what their actual life was like actually thought of my product? I would have known better So I think those were some of those there were I think a few lost years as I like to call them in be handsome at five years We had to rebuild a lot of stuff and I can't say I would do that all over you know if I had the choice Although I would say that it definitely built us as a team like a culture and we went through a lot to get diversity will do that too It doesn't kill you make you stronger like definitely true I think I would also try to do fewer things I you know and I go back and forth on this I've heard two contradictory scenes about yeah about what makes a great entrepreneur either you are really really great and willing to take risk Or you're really good at hedging risk.
It's like wait those are like which was it right? I I was always a hedger You know I always was thinking about the contingency and that caused me to do a number of weird things number one It caused me to go to business will simultaneously as I was starting a business and not drop out I see a little bit. I know that dropping out would be way better PR value than finishing No one just should have been right right the second and so the other way to take them Let's say taking the risk. Yeah, that would be what okay sister so dropping out one.
What were some other ways that you were doing Just that mean. Yeah, sorry I was gonna say like another example was the number of products we were building It was like this one doesn't work and this one will work and and even like features Yes, like the insecurity of shipping many features in the product is basically I don't know what's gonna work But here's the amazing thing is that when you ship a number of features and then you start killing a few of them What you find is that the core stuff is used more and gets more attention from the team too and it was one of those really Strange realizations. I would say four years three or four years in the answers again probably two years too much later than Should have been where we killed a few major features We had this tip exchange thing where great as could leave like tips for another and build a punch other book up and down It was like a mini dig at the time but within the answer was a group's functionality or we would sugar And then we killed both like one after the other and then suddenly people created more projects I use it because and they use it the core functionality more And I just again wish I could have gone back and just really drove it down to like what do we actually have to ship and how do we make sure it's Amazing what space would be interesting to your 21? Would you be like doing tools for creatives or would you go into bio hacking or you know like whatever like that point You have a long time where you can ramp up or go into any space You're not sort of committed sure and I guess the question is if I was 21 today or I was 21 back then because that then I Twenty one today.
Yeah, I would definitely be doing something different first of all and we're still living in an After the world which is crazy being apps were born in the world where there was no GPS there were no notifications There was no AI and and so you had to download apps and then use them for this now with a modern OS That should know where you are and what you're most likely to want to do based on where you are and when you're there and with whom You are with the whole operating system the whole notion should be completely different It should be apps frankly there should be superpowers that are suddenly there and then they're suddenly gone And and if you think about and I think that we're going towards that end I think that we will see operating systems evolve I think that the notification systems we know them today will be totally antiquated to this more You know actionable interface that just is always like the sixth sense the appendage that we never know we needed and I think about Like what are the applications that are going to thrive in such a world? I also think about marketplaces that are more sustainable You know the the modern notion that every freelancer marketplace essentially taxes the transaction is silly, right? And that's actually the on-demand model for on-demand marketplaces and it's all the same formula There's a totally different model that should exist maybe it's blockchain driven Maybe there's you know some other mechanic at play for value distribution So there's a lot of these things that I think a bit about some of them overlap into my day job Some of them I'm looking for companies and entrepreneurs that are tackling and want to help them But I like about your approaches that didn't start with some idea like this or a generic space So it was more like a why are things the way they are? Wait shouldn't they be different like you basically were like why are apps and notifications the way we use this phone now that we have XYZ?
Or why do all marketplaces do this rent secret model where they just you know sit in the middle and grab from every transaction So one of the things I learned most working with the benchmark team for a little while was I really went in there thinking the greatest Investors are really good at the future and what I left there believing is that the greatest investors have a really deep How to understand you guys and how the president is like about to change and kind of but not you know Distant distant long shots are fun bets at their bets, right? But if you really have a tune into the current dynamics and just how they're slightly shifting and starting out really interesting I see and so you where do you like to learn from so like what do you listen? What book do you read? Who do you think is really smart where if they're talking you're listening?
What do you like to feed your brain? Yeah, no, it's something that so I'll tell you like my first answer is I am a huge fan of work I think that is an incredible soundless feature answer, but I have carefully curated a group of people there are astrophysicists They are biologists they're economists. They're political scientists. They're other entrepreneurs and designers and illustrators These are the people who curate for me every day.
What's interesting to them. I just think that's freaking it's right You get to surf on top of that it is and so some people say oh my gosh It's just literally going through and reading yes You think about it but curated by the people and I just I learned about the books that I want to read And that's so I'm not love reading books related to psychology and I love reading I'm starting to listen to a lot of history podcasts So like some of those like Kings of Kings type podcasts I think are super interesting because we're just learning about this notion of history writing like it's so true You're learning about what happened in like Rome, you know, and you're like oh my gosh It's happening all over again now in America. There's a lot of that so I I try not to actually don't have like one field I'm just like I love reading just this genre or whatever I don't read too many business books I find that most of them are a big book about a little idea You know talk to about most books But I think that and I have an argument my publisher in the middle because I came in like this like this big book of like You know between a hundred two hundred insights that were completely disconnect from one another There was some sort of red but you know, they're like this is not what you're supposed to do It's like a chapter book. I was like what's each of us right at least my audience.
They're too busy They're certain companies are changing companies. They just want actual insights They'll make them think about something differently and like we're gonna learn more turn the page than like you know turn on your brain Yeah, that's at least what I want. Yeah, right now. You gotta help on a flight site clock look at this Oh, that's my podcast or anything great 10 p.m.
Flack. Yeah, this is fun I hope you guys like this conversation if you want to follow Scott Where should they follow you reach out to you? Hey, just Scott Belsky at Scott Belsky wherever whenever