A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:34:26 · Pablo Srugo
[00:34:26] S0: That’s right. If you look through the – we talk only about Phil Knight. Obviously, Bowerman, I mean, he gave up half his company to get him on board. That was massive. Without Bowerman, he doesn't even have the Nike shoe. He doesn't have the Nike shoe, doesn't <laugh> – Nike never happens without – I forget the name of his first salesperson, but he was an all-in type of person, so Power Teams is another thing that comes out. Funny enough, it just – back to something else you said, you were talking about Jeff Bezos. I think, for me, Jeff Bezos and Phil Knight on this piece are exact polar opposites. Jeff Bezos is one of the very few – like an Elon Musk, one of the very few founders who actually did, if we’re being honest, predict, like go out and say, oh, the internet; oh, e-commerce; okay, books. Didn't start from, oh, it'd be cool to sell books to somebody. It was really top down. But I would almost say to you there’s one Phil Knight for every thousand founders, and there's one Bezos for every thousand Phil Knights. If you look at the success crew, you're way more likely to find success if what you're chasing – because it's not about never think about market size. It's about what are you going to prioritize. The thing you got to prioritize above all else, it’s like value is bigger than market size. Prioritize delivering value, and that tends to take care of itself versus because I – this is not what I see. What I see is TAM, TAM, TAM. Is it a big TAM? Is it a big market, right? Here's the market. Here's how we get 1%, and that's just not – when you look at most of these businesses, Shopify was – is another one that comes to mind, just not how they were built.
00:36:00 · Rob Woodbridge
[00:36:00] S1: No. They were built where you had to believe in the outcome, right? You had to suspend – so we bought this house, and I'll never forget it. It was a long time ago. It was 13 or 14 years ago, and it was a rental unit. And we were outside in front of the house here. The real estate agent says, “Okay, you have to have an imagination.” That's what she said going into the house. “You have to have an imagination.” So we're like, “Okay, whatever.” So we walk in and we're like, oh, I get it, okay. She set the stage, but you had to see the vision, the long-term vision of what it could be. And I think that that's the thing that sometimes gets lost in this.No. And they were, and they were built where you had to believe in the, the outcome, right? You had to believe you had to, you had to suspend. So we, we bought this house, and I'll never forget it. I , uh, it was a long time ago. It was like 13 or 14 years ago, and it was a rental unit and we were outside in front of the house here. The real estate agent says, okay, you have to have an imagination. Like that's what she said going into the house, you have to have an imagination. So we're like, okay, whatever. So we walk in and we're like, oh, I get it. You okay? She set the stage. But you had to see the, the vision, the long-term vision of what it could be. And , and I think that that's the thing that sometimes gets lost in this . You have to see the long-term vision. So when somebody comes into a business like this, like Bezos, you do have to see the long game, but with Phil, his long game was 30 days, always 30 days. But then he had this one moment, man, where – I've been sued as a business, right? Every business you've got something. You've got something wrong with an employee, or you've got something wrong with a man, a provider, or whatever it might be, and so what I learned very young, this is a really important lesson, is that you have to clearly distinguish between feelings and business, without hesitation. That doesn't mean you're a total prick when you're working with people, but when you are getting sued, the best advice that I ever received from anybody was you can't be emotional about it. You can be angry about it, but you have to swallow the anger and do what's right by the business, always what's right by the business. Anybody who pursues anything is typically doing it out of ego.
00:37:51 · Rob Woodbridge
Typically, what ends up happening is that you're doing it out of ego, and you spend a lot of money on any of these lawsuits. So I'll never forget this is that the kind of character that Phil Knight is is that he finds out a manufacturer in Mexico, or South America, or somewhere, is manufacturing Nike's knockoffs and selling them, and so the first thing that you think about is I'm going to go after this guy with every – I'm going to put him in the ground. We're Nike. And he takes a moment, puts his ego aside, and says, “They're actually doing it much better than one of our other manufacturers are doing it. I can't tell the difference between ours and theirs,” and he signs them. He says, “Do you want to do this legally? Let's go.” And so he converts those guys, puts the ego aside and converts them into his South American manufacturing, and that, to me, is one of those lessons that every entrepreneur should learn.
00:38:37 · Pablo Srugo
[00:38:37] S0: That's exactly what great entrepreneurs do, which is they see opportunity where other people see problems, right? He sees the situation that most people would just want to, like you said, crush this guy, and he sees an opportunity to partner with somebody who's going to be a better manufacturer. And that's something I see through and through is how do you turn – you say high level, turn challenges to opportunities. It sounds cliche, but there's an example. There's Phil actually doing it. I think, one of my pieces, I just find Phil Knight is the sort of founder that you can really – I mean, Phil Knight's obviously exceptional. He created one of one company, but if you're going to copy founders, he's – he could be top of your list. Bezos is hard to copy. Bezos is like on its <laugh> – he's on some other pyramid of whatever. Elon Musk is another one where, I mean, it's really hard to copy the sort of things he did, but Phil Knight, year after year of doubling, of consistency, of tenacity, of taking opportunities and making the most out of them, those are things that most founders can do and should do. One of the things I saw today – I'm a big fan of Ben Thompson's Stratechery. I'm sure you know that newsletter. Anyways, he was talking about – he's comparing Gates and Jobs. He's talking about some new – there's this new executive order on AI that Biden put out. That's what he's talking about. The point was, obviously, Microsoft got really nothing out of mobile and Apple owned it, and he goes back to this interview, well, I guess a decade or two ago, right? They're asking Gates and Jobs, both on the stage, and they're asking both of them of the future of mobile. And they go to Gates, and they say, “What do you think about mobile?” And Gates is pretty specific things. There's going to be navigation. There's going to be, obviously, internet, communications, all these sort of things in a device, but it's not going to be a core. You’re going to have – it’s going to be this satellite thing, right? The core's going to be your desktop and whatever, and obviously, they fall flat and they get nothing on mobile. And then they ask Jobs. “Jobs, what do you think is the future of mobile?” Jobs is like, “I don't know.” That's his answer. His quote is, “I don't know.” It's changing so fast. There's so many things happening. People are just reacting.
00:40:48 · Pablo Srugo
Opportunities come out and then they just build on, that honesty towards uncertainty, and that was his point. I totally buy into that. Who won, right? It was not the one who had the set out vision, everything “figured out,” rigid. Because that's the promise is what we were saying before is Bill Gates probably believed that vision, and because he believed it, it got reiterated, reiterated. And all of a sudden, he went all the way in this direction. Jobs was way more fluid, and so he got to actually start from first principles, made the most out of what mobile could have been, and then built on that. The app store came later. Things came later, right? There's value to that. There's value to just looking at what's right in front of you and maximizing that opportunity every time.
00:41:40 · Rob Woodbridge
[00:41:40] S1: Jobs is like, “I don't know.” That's his answer. His quote is, “I don't know.” It's changing so fast. There's so many things happening. People are just reacting. Opportunities come out and then they just build on, that honesty towards uncertainty, and that was his point. I totally buy into that. Who won, right? It was not the one who had the set out vision, everything “figured out,” rigid. Because that's the promise is what we were saying before is Bill Gates probably believed that vision, and because he believed it, it got reiterated, reiterated. And all of a sudden, he went all the way in this direction. Jobs was way more fluid, and so he got to actually start from first principles, made the most out of what mobile could have been, and then built on that. The app store came later. Things came later, right? There's value to that. There's value to just looking at what's right in front of you and maximizing that opportunity every time. That's incredible. It is a very clear understanding. Nobody knows what's going on and nobody knows what this world is going to be like a year from now, let alone 10 years from now, because there are so many forks. And it's better to have an open mind like Steve Jobs. You end up trying to protect yourself as an established company when you have up and comers fighting after you. Clay Christensen used to write or he did until he passed. He wrote about that, the innovators don't analyze, that you are blinded to the things that are below you, and you start to give up your market to those guys because it's not worth your effort to go after those types of businesses in those markets because they – they're low margin. Then you get swallowed by the competition eventually. That's what happened there. I'll never forget Microsoft and Mobile because I had an iPAQ, the very first pocket PC devices, and it was like this big thing. You couldn't connect it to anything. It was basically a useless piece of hardware, and then you had to buy a sleeve with a modem and it was – and an extra battery. And the thing was maybe four inches thick, and you had this stylus. And every once in a while, you could connect to dial in. It was like a modem. You dialed into an ISP, and that's how you connected. And I thought this is the future, buddy. This is the future.