00:28:01 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Immad Akhund
[00:28:01] S1: Yeah. And you said you've, like, modulated it down to a reasonable amount of hours from your... What is reasonable in your mind? For me? [00:28:08] S0: Yeah. Yeah. I normally work, like, nine to six, five days a week. Yep. I I mean, like, I'm I'm still on Slack. I'm still thinking about it the rest of the time. So it's not like absolutely zero outside that, but but those are my core working hours. [00:28:22] S1: A friend of mine is the is the CEO of ZoomInfo, Henry Schuck. Have you met Henry? No. He's great. He's a great, great guy. [00:28:29] S0: Mhmm. [00:28:29] S1: And I think he's a great CEO. And one of the things that he was telling me recently was that he's basically taken all of his work dinners. Because you could be at a work dinner with a VC or customer or candidate all the time. Yep. And he's like, I just don't do them anymore. He's like, just... There were coffees. I think it'd be four or 05:00 coffees that have like decaf or whatever. Yeah. They'd be lunches. They'd be breakfasts. Mhmm. But he's like, I just don't do the dinners anymore. [00:28:58] S0: Yeah. And... And he's like that. And that's what he... And that's... He changed. Yep. [00:29:02] S1: And he has dinner with his daughter and his wife most nights, and I've I've started to try and do more of that. Mhmm. And I love it. Mhmm. I'm like, this is so nice. Like, I don't have to do any of these dinners. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I can just move the meeting Yeah.
00:29:02 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Immad Akhund
[00:29:02] S1: And he has dinner with his daughter and his wife most nights, and I've I've started to try and do more of that. Mhmm. And I love it. Mhmm. I'm like, this is so nice. Like, I don't have to do any of these dinners. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I can just move the meeting Yeah. [00:29:16] S0: Yeah. To whenever I think I should have the Yeah. I think that this is kinda what I was touching on earlier. I really feel like people should just do what they wanna do. Like, they should just stop listening to other people and just do what you wanna do. Like, if you wanna work seven days a week, whatever, do that. But like, yeah, I feel like a lot of startup world is like, there's like people who say things on on Twitter, on podcasts, and then other people are like, oh, I don't know how to run a startup. Like, I'm gonna go help you with this person is saying I should do. And yeah, if you're not enjoying the... Like, and actually, like, one thing that I think it is a low counter duty of is to do things not that you just wanna do, but that you enjoy doing. Like, if you enjoy having those dinners, like, think some people probably like networking, and they like meeting those people and having those dinners, then go do those dinners. But if you don't like them, just go go do a coffee. You know? Like, you just have to make these decisions. And I don't think there's that many wrong decisions. At least when it comes to how you live your life. I mean, there's obviously like wrong localized startup
00:29:16 · Immad Akhund, Joubin Mirzadegan
[00:29:16] S0: Yeah. To whenever I think I should have the Yeah. I think that this is kinda what I was touching on earlier. I really feel like people should just do what they wanna do. Like, they should just stop listening to other people and just do what you wanna do. Like, if you wanna work seven days a week, whatever, do that. But like, yeah, I feel like a lot of startup world is like, there's like people who say things on on Twitter, on podcasts, and then other people are like, oh, I don't know how to run a startup. Like, I'm gonna go help you with this person is saying I should do. And yeah, if you're not enjoying the... Like, and actually, like, one thing that I think it is a low counter duty of is to do things not that you just wanna do, but that you enjoy doing. Like, if you enjoy having those dinners, like, think some people probably like networking, and they like meeting those people and having those dinners, then go do those dinners. But if you don't like them, just go go do a coffee. You know? Like, you just have to make these decisions. And I don't think there's that many wrong decisions. At least when it comes to how you live your life. I mean, there's obviously like wrong localized startup [00:30:12] S1: decisions. I think the... Probably the like LARPing of it is just like you're... Feel like you're being judged by people, whether it's employees or VCs.
00:30:12 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Immad Akhund
[00:30:12] S1: decisions. I think the... Probably the like LARPing of it is just like you're... Feel like you're being judged by people, whether it's employees or VCs. [00:30:21] S0: I mean, who's judging people? I mean, who cares? Yeah. I guess so. Yeah. I don't... Like, yeah, no one's... I I think I think this judgment is, like, probably self judgment more than other people. I don't think there's that many VCs. [00:30:34] S1: Yeah. Like, you think it's your own internal model. Yeah. [00:30:36] S0: Yeah. Exactly. I think it's what you think you should be doing. Yeah. Yeah, at least my experience isn't like, I mean, VCs are like living a pretty relaxed life. It should be. That's my experience of it. So like, well, who are these people to judge you when they're like going on like six week vacations for the year or something like that? Yeah. I don't... I mean, there are hardworking VCs, but I think you should just do what you wanna do. And I mean, there's like, obviously, like, sometimes you'll have to work your ass off and that's just like part of being an entrepreneur. But I think that shouldn't be your default. Can I go to the next one? [00:31:13] S1: Yeah. And we touched on this a bit, but some non obvious traits you need to be an entrepreneur. Unrealistically optimistic, calm, resilient, and decisive under crisis, conviction in your ideas regardless of popular opinion. I think we covered the second one, But I'd be curious on the unrealistically optimistic and the conviction in your ideas regardless of popular opinion.
00:31:37 · Immad Akhund
[00:31:37] S0: Yeah. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are like unrealistically optimistic. Actually, like, if you think about this idea, and actually I think about this quite a lot, it's like, you know, you have this thing that's nothing, right? Like, it's an idea in your head, and you have to go all the way to like, I mean, let's just say, I guess it used to be cool to be a 100,000,000 in revenue, whatever the, like, let's just say that. The promised land is. Now it's like a billion dollars in revenue or something. Right? Like, it takes such, like, a crazy mindset to think that's possible. Right? To go from like, idea in your head that I'm gonna go write some code, go sell this thing, go hire the people, and get to a billion dollars in revenue. And actually, like, it is unrealistic. Like, the percentage of startups that achieve it is like less than 0.1%, right? But you have to go out there and believe it yourself, firstly. And you have to, like, project that belief to investors. You have to project that belief to customers and then employees. Right? Like, it's... And you can't, like, not believe it. Like, it's very hard. I think I think it's a relatively unconvincing pitch when, like, the the person doesn't really believe this is possible. So that requires, like, an unrealistic optimism. Right? It's to go, like, wow. I'm gonna, like, know about... And then I think it's like, you know, you're gonna get a lot of no's. You're gonna get, like, a lot of, like... Yeah, you're gonna have to wake up every day and keep keep having that kind of optimism. And, yeah, I think it it I think it is not a given, but I think it's a good way to get... Live life personally. Like, I like I like being optimistic. I'm just like, most of the time, I'm like, oh, yeah. It'll be good. And it kinda simplifies things. But, yeah, I think the startup world in specifically requires, like, a really extreme level of optimism to, like, win in.
00:33:21 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Immad Akhund
[00:33:21] S1: On the third point, the conviction in your ideas regardless of popular opinion, Ali Ghodsi was talking about how this data... I think it's called the data lake. Mhmm. Does that sound right? Don't know. Whatever they call it. It's like from the data warehouse to the lake house or something. Something like that. He was like talking about how for three years, everyone inside of the company at Databricks was like, this isn't gonna work. It sounds like a ski, like a a like a boathouse. Mhmm. You know, like people are familiar with the Yeah. Conventional phrasing. And he was like, for three years Mhmm. I was like, I forced people no matter what, marketing, whoever. [00:34:03] S0: Call it data lake. Yes. And then he made it happen? [00:34:07] S1: And then he made it happen. And this point kind of reminded me of that. Yeah. That like struck me. I was just like, oh man, like three years? That's so long to like persist with the category creation Yeah. Nomenclature. I was like, so... Like, that's just so hardcore.