A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:01:08 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:01:08] S1: Do you think the product market fit show has product market fit? Because if you do, then there's something you just have to do. You have to up your phone, you have to leave the show five stars. It lets us reach more founders and it lets us get better guests. Thank you, [00:01:22] S0: Jack. [00:01:22] S1: Welcome to [00:01:23] S0: The show. Thanks for having me back. I'm honestly surprised you decided to do this, but here I am. Let's do it. Back [00:01:28] S1: By popular demand, man. Not , not, you know, there are a few people that thought that that April Fools episode was real, or at least some they wrote, like, man, I was getting so, and then I realized it was actually a joke . So , uh, but overall it was well received and , and so we brought you back to the show, man. Well, [00:01:43] S0: Thanks for having me. Let's get into things. 'cause a lot has happened in the past month, dude.
00:01:43 · Jack Kuveke, Pablo Srugo
[00:01:43] S0: Thanks for having me. Let's get into things. 'cause a lot has happened in the past month, dude. [00:01:47] S1: It's actually, you know, so I've thought about doing some news related stuff for a long time , um, but never really knew the angle. And, you know, then I started seeing your post on it, and I figured , you know what, that's the angle. But I also never realized just how much crazy happens in one month <laugh> in , uh, in startup Plank . So, yeah, let's get into it. I mean, the first one is your, your twin brother , uh, Adam Neumann, who raised a bunch more money, a hundred million bucks at a two and a half billion dollar valuation to do like the same thing basically that , uh, WeWork already tried to do that, you know, failed in a spectacular way. So, I mean, maybe we start there. You tell us like, I mean , maybe, you know, you twins are, they say, are like connected in special ways, so maybe you have some insight into what, what the hell is going on there?
00:02:32 · Jack Kuveke
[00:02:32] S0: Well, I mean, this, this is obvious to me, and I, I wrote about this a little earlier in the week, but the , the reality is everyone makes the argument that like, oh, a 16 Z should have just given like, the $300 million they invested into Adam's new company, like 300 underprivileged entrepreneurs . But I think that's very shortsighted. You know what, a16z and all these other investors, at the end of the day, Adam Neumann is like the bad boy that your sister dates. Okay? We all like to pretend that we don't understand why she's going out with him. He lives in a van. He thinks he's Kurt Cobain, he's 38 and hasn't held down a job in 10 years. But he's exciting. You know, she could go with the nice guy who as the sales rep, you know, makes good money, will treat her well, but he's boring. VCs are the same way. They don't want just some, like, you know, guy who promises they're gonna make reasonable returns, who's honest and safe? Adam Neumann's like the exciting investment. You know, when you give him money, he's gonna do the wildest possible. His company's probably gonna explode at some point, but he's gonna get mega viral push marketing for your company. Like a and z became like famous and viral because of , uh, giving him money. So I just think, honestly, at the end of the day, like pe they like crazy people and they're gonna continue giving money to crazy people despite all of these young like, or less, you know, privileged founders yapping about it. Like at the end of the day, they don't really care.
00:03:57 · Pablo Srugo
[00:03:57] S1: You think there's a, there's a world where this actually works out. Like I , you know, I , I get that, but then part of me, I'm like, man, like these , I mean, these a team guys, like, you know, they're pretty good <laugh> . They're pretty good at what they do. So I'm kinda like, did I , I don't know, man. It's just, I'm two ways about it. One is what it's like, really what he's doing is, as far as I can understand the exact same thing as WeWork, but instead of for like businesses, it's for residential. But then the other side is like, what, you know, what am I not seeing? You know, did this guy figure some things that they learn from his WeWork experience? But I have seen in other, I don't wanna, you know, na name drop people, but I can tell you like, there's, there's other situations where founders have made the exact same mistake <laugh> multiple times. So that is possible. I just, I don't know, I don't know how to make, make sense of this one dude.
00:04:41 · Jack Kuveke
[00:04:41] S0: I just think that like, he's just doing like what Ba BlackRock's doing. He's buying him a bunch of residential properties. He's gonna rent them to people who are too broke and too indebted to be able to fight , afford abort, buy , buy homes on their own. So like, this may actually be a totally fine play. <laugh> , if he just owns a bunch of property, becomes a landlord and property manager that's like the oldest business in the book. Before he would just became a commercial property manager, and no one's going to office this anymore. So that was kind of a dog idea. But like, everyone still needs a home to live in, they just can't afford to buy one. So they're just gonna rent one from Adam Neumann . Like, it's just a re it's literally just a property management company, which is not a bad business, it's just not like a tech company. But
00:05:22 · Pablo Srugo
[00:05:22] S1: He is , you know, I'll give him this. He's like the ultimate storyteller, <laugh>, at least from what I can . I mean , like , think about WeWork, man. Like we were , like you said, I mean, it was actually Covid aside and nobody predicted Covid, but it was a pretty solid business. I remember I rented WeWork, that place was packed. Like, I'm like, you know, the margins have to make sense because he's just packing a bunch of people in a space and making 'em pay a lot of money. But this guy, you know, he was, he had like community adjusted ebitda. I mean, I mean, he was building a community, he was building something much bigger that turned out to not be bigger at all. It was really just space. But I mean, that, that's probably his number one trait. Is this guy just really good story guy . Yeah ,