How to Raise from a16z and Sequoia Capital? with Wes Kao (Founder of Maven & altMBA)

Summary

In this episode of our podcast, "How to Raise from a16z and Sequoia Capital? with Wes Kao (Founder of Maven & altMBA)," we dive deep into the world of startups, education, and personal branding with our guest Wes Kao, a renowned founder and entrepreneur. We also explore the topics of leadership, entrepreneurship, and fundraising. Wes emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and leveraging one's strengths when starting a company. She also highlights the value of credibility indicators in fundraising and the need to find the right fit with investors. The conversation provides insights into the process of pitching to venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz. In this conversation, Wes Kao shares insights on fundraising, building a personal brand, and the challenges of scaling as a founder. Finally, Wes talks about her approach to writing newsletters and the importance of thinking deeply about the topics you write about.

Takeaways

1.Self-awareness and leveraging one's strengths are crucial when starting a company.
2.Credibility indicators, such as fundraising from well-known venture capital firms, can provide a boost in the ecosystem.
3.Leadership is learnable, and there are different ways to be a leader.
Entrepreneurship can be learned, but it's important to have a point of view and an unfair advantage.
4.The fundraising process should focus on finding the best fit with investors who can support the company's growth. Credibility and experience are crucial in fundraising, and first-time founders should not compare themselves to veteran founders.
5.Creating a sense of inevitability in your storytelling can instill confidence in investors and de-risk your venture.
6.Marketplaces like Maven differ from publishers like Reforge in the cohort-based learning space.
7.Consistently sharing your ideas and insights online can unlock various opportunities and help build a personal brand.
8.Writing newsletters requires deep thinking and a focus on providing valuable insights and frameworks.

Chapters
00:00 Trailer
02:00 Who is Wes Kao
05:50 Lessons from Seth Godin
08:55 Shipping Fast Is Important
16:20 Why Wes Kao Pickup Education Sector
20:42 Can leaders and enterpreuners are by birth
24:40 Unfair Advantage
27:00 Fundraising and the Importance of Credibility
41:51 Building a Personal Brand (Complete Guide)
48:00 The Art of Writing Newsletters
54:15 Ritual
56:35 Conclusion

Connect with Mudassir

🎥 YouTube Channel - @prodcircleHQ
🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/ProdcircleHQ
📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/prodcirclehq
💻 Website - https://prodcircle.com/
👥 Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mudassir-mustafa/

Transcript

Mudassir (00:01.566)
Okay, perfect. Please do a clap for me.

Mudassir (00:07.41)
This is a pro tip I learned in production. So it helps you syncing audio and video because once you're using all these things, exactly, it's exactly the moment you did that and the moment's gonna be a spike in the sound waves. So you find that pretty quickly. All right, awesome. So let me pull notion on the side so I don't forget. All right, cool. Rolling now. Hey, guys, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

Wes Kao (00:13.11)
Right, it's like the director thing, yeah.

Wes Kao (00:22.615)
Nice.

Wes Kao (00:32.778)
Really good. Thanks for having me, Mourassir.

Mudassir (00:35.514)
My pleasure, honor, privilege, whatever you want to call that. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast, so thank you for the time. All right, so every single time, since whenever I've started doing this thing, I ask one particular question from everybody who has been on the podcast. So the first question that I want to start us off with is, what's the context you have of your life? Who is best and how did you end up wherever you are today?

Wes Kao (00:58.53)
The context of my life. Wow, wow, that is a really big question. Wow, okay. I'll try to give you the nutshell version. I think I've always been pretty entrepreneurial as a kid. And I think, I think I wasn't really sure where I fit in for a lot of growing up. I'm middle child, a little bit of that middle child syndrome and...

Mudassir (01:00.519)
Yeah.

Wes Kao (01:28.102)
After graduating college at UC Berkeley, I went into corporate retail, uh, where I thought I wanted to spend the rest of my career. And I soon realized that fashion was, was too cool for me, that I was not cool enough. Uh, so I switched over to tech and overnight I went from being the least fashionable person in fashion to the most fashionable person in tech. And it was great. Um, so, so changing contexts, uh, and, and going to different places often, often helps. Um, but, uh, yeah.

I have spent the last 15 plus years in marketing, in thinking about consumer psychology, customer acquisition, consumer behavior, how to get people to do the things you want them to do. I think so much of life definitely work, but also life boils down to how do we get the people around us to do the thing we want them to do and make it win-win, and make it good for them.

And so I think startups are very much all about that. It is, you know, in the most raw sense about that. Can you build something that customers want? Can you make their lives better? And I think the market is a fascinating judge. So I think when you put something out there, the market decides. You can't say the market is unfair or the market doesn't like you or the market should realize that you're smarter.

You know, it's like the market decided and that's what they decided, you know? And so I love how, uh, objective that is. So I think every founder, uh, would do well to embrace that. Uh, I definitely have. Um, and I guess that's, that's a bit of context about me.

Mudassir (03:07.542)
Okay, awesome. So there's a question that I wanna ask you, but that's like way later in the interview, but I just wanna ask you at the beginning, because you dropped a couple of things early on. It's a two part question. What's marketing and what exactly is a brand? Let's start there.

Wes Kao (03:23.018)
What is marketing and what is a brand? Okay. I have a very broad definition of marketing. I think marketing is anything that touches customers, that touches consumers, outsiders, stakeholders. I think this definition I really borrowed from Seth Godin, who I worked closely with when starting the Alt-MBA. And Seth says everything is marketing. And I completely agree.

I think some people have a very narrow definition of marketing to mean, you know, brand marketing or performance marketing or account-based marketing or direct marketing. Uh, and those are definitely subsets of marketing, but when you kind of zoom out, I think marketing is really everything and anything that you do, uh, because anything and everything that you do, you know, share something about you, the way that you or your brand, uh, thinks, what you believe in.

the values that you have, the way you want to add value. So I have a very broad definition of marketing. And then secondly, what is a brand? I think a brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room or what they say about your product when you're not there. So it's not something that you can control in a tight sense. You can definitely be as consistent as possible and shape

Mudassir (04:34.173)
Hmm.

Wes Kao (04:49.162)
perceptions as much as you want, but a brand is really what other people say about you, you know, so if you go around saying, you know, I'm really this or that, but no one else thinks so, then your brand is not that, you know, like you want it to be that, but it's not that. So it's, it's very much again, interacting with the market. It's what does the market think your brand is? That is what your brand is.

Mudassir (05:02.886)
Yeah.

Mudassir (05:09.16)
Hmm.

Okay, awesome. So, all right, so for as many videos as I've seen of yours, as many podcasts, there's one question that almost everybody has asked you. How did you met Seth? What was it like working with Seth? So, of course, I don't wanna ask you the same question because it's gonna sound boring to you. So, there's a little twist to this question that I'm gonna ask you is, what are the two things that you have learned from Seth? And is there a thing that you disagree with him fundamentally on? Anything, could be anything. Could be a belief, could be...

Wes Kao (05:40.203)
Ooh, that's a good one.

Mudassir (05:41.674)
Yeah, so yeah, let's start with that. Because I think you've told this story multiple times before, how you met him and all of that. Most of the people already know about that. But there are two things that you've learned from him that you actually think, yeah, two lessons, I'll take it to the grave. And the other one is, is there a thing that you fundamentally disagree with him on?

Wes Kao (06:03.43)
Okay, those are both really meaty questions. So I'll start with the first one. What are two things I've learned from Seth? Well, I've learned hundreds of things from Seth. So just to be clear, these are cherry picking two things off the top of my head. I think one is Seth taught me to call myself out when I was hiding. So, you know, if you follow Seth's work, you know that he talks about this idea of hiding, which is basically giving yourself excuses to not do the hard part of what it is that you need to do.

Mudassir (06:08.57)
Yeah.

Mudassir (06:12.13)
Yeah.

Wes Kao (06:31.722)
So hiding looks like a lot of different things. It looks like working on stuff that's less important and pretending to be busy, feeling productive, patting yourself on the back, doing a bunch of things when you are avoiding the thing that you know is really going to move the needle because doing that thing is uncertain. The outcome is uncertain. It scares you. You're afraid of embarrassing yourself. You're afraid it's gonna go wrong. And Seth was relentless about

calling himself out on hiding and calling his team out on hiding. Um, and so I have a little Seth on my shoulder. Um, you know, whenever it is that I'm hiding that, that is calling me out. So getting really good at, at calling myself on that. Uh, that's one. Um, let's see, what else? I think the other thing that I learned from Seth is to have really high standards. Um, I think I always had kind of high standards before. Um,

But working with Seth really raised those standards. Before I was at a venture-backed, Sequoia-backed startup, NSF, before working with Seth, and I thought I knew what shipping fast meant. We took pride on shipping fast. And then I went to work with Seth, and I was like, wow, we shipped so slow at my old company. Because Seth just, he didn't accept the normal constraints that most people have. Most people were like, oh, there's...

Mudassir (07:46.685)
Yeah.

Wes Kao (07:59.97)
there's a trade-off between speed and quality, you know? And what I learned is that there's so much slack in the system that yes, there is a trade-off between speed and quality, but most people are going slower than they think and shipping work that is lower quality than they think. And so there's actually a lot of room to improve both speed and quality without the trade-off. If you made better decisions, if you brought more craft and more skill to your work,

Mudassir (08:16.039)
Hmm.

Wes Kao (08:30.53)
If you were more thoughtful, more rigorous, there's actually many ways that you can be faster and do higher quality work. So most of you are not at risk of reaching that limit where that trade-off starts rear its head. And so, yeah, having very, very high standards and showing that these standards are possible to hit and to reach. I think that is another really lasting thing.

Um, that, that I take away from my time working with them.

Mudassir (09:04.05)
Okay, so before you let me answer, is there anything that you disagree with him, I wanna ask you this thing. I work in the startup ecosystem not as much as you have, so you already have three times experience that I ever do. So when people say this thing, ship fast and ship fast, and I think this is the ethos of startup, is just like you move at a certain velocity and you build this sort of momentum and then you start doing all these things. Isn't shipping fast is subjective?

is just like whatever you were doing previously, and then you met Seth and you're like, oh, so that's a whole different level of shipping. That's a whole different level of shipping fast. So it's a two-part question. So one is, isn't that subjective? And the other part of the same question is, how do you maintain quality when you increase the speed of shipping fast?

Wes Kao (09:56.71)
Yeah, so shipping fast is definitely subjective. I think that's, that's part of the problem with words like fast and slow and good quality, because in different people's minds, they, you know, you might have 10 people looking at something, the same thing in front of them and have different interpretations, different takeaways, you know, different analysis of, oh, is this good or bad? Is this, is this good enough? Is this fast enough? Right.

Mudassir (10:05.83)
Okay, yeah, exactly.

Wes Kao (10:25.482)
Um, someone might look at something and think this is way too slow. And someone else might think this is the fastest I could possibly go. Um, so, uh, yeah, there's a lot of subjectivity there, which is why I think that working with sharp people and broadening your exposure is one of the best things that you can do as a startup founder, as a leader, as an operator. Because when you have a very narrow view of just what's immediately around you,

You might think that a local maximum is the global maximum. Like you think that this thing is the highest you can go, but the curve actually goes here. The global maximum is actually, you can't even imagine where the global maximum is. And so broadening your exposure, learning from other people, trying to get as much context of what other people are doing or how other companies work or how fast other people ship.

I think that is all extremely helpful to help yourself calibrate because otherwise like you can go through your whole career thinking that you are, you know, the sharpest, the best, the fastest at something without realizing that there are people who are, who are much better than you, that you can learn from, that you can take inspiration from, that, that inspire you, right? So yeah, so there's a lot of subjectivity there. And then what was your, what was your second question?

Mudassir (11:50.942)
Yeah, so second question was, when you're moving faster, comparatively now, but when you're moving faster, how can you make sure that the quality is not compromised? Because sometimes you are really putting out a crappiest of a crappiest thing, but you're moving at a really high velocity. That was the second part.

Wes Kao (12:06.726)
Yeah, I think this is where skill, craft and judgment come in. So someone who is more skilled at something is able to move very quickly and make good decisions along the way. Right? So like, if you think even about something really simple, like, um, like writing. So if you are, um, let's say you're drafting a strategy doc.

Q2, Q3 strategy doc. If you're very junior, let's say there's a 22 year old drafting strategy doc, they're gonna be slow at it, it's gonna be clunky, there's gonna be a lot of holes in their logic, it's not gonna flow very well, their insights themselves might not be very good, there might be leaps in logic or just like misreading certain things. And so that's kind of one person attempting to do a strategy doc.

And on the other hand, if you have a veteran founder who's run multiple companies, who has put together many strategy docs over the course of 20 years, who has had many chances at bat, who has seen more, who has, you know, more data points to pull from, more experience, that person is likely a sharper thinker. And so the strategy doc that they put together is probably cleaner.

It's tighter. It just makes sense. You read it and you're like, yes, this is compelling. I follow your logic. This logic is good and it makes sense. I see where you're going. I see your assumptions. I see your hypotheses. You're pointing out different risks that, you know, and reasons not to do a certain strategy that we should be aware of. I mean, pointing out risks and reasons not to do something like that's, that's more intermediate, right? Like usually beginners are all about like,

Here's my idea, like here's all the reasons we should do it. You know, and they get really excited about all the reasons why this is obviously something we should do. Right. And they, they have not even thought about what are the ways this could go wrong. Their manager is usually, the founder is usually thinking about what are ways this is going to go wrong? Cause it's going to blow back on me. If we do this, I'm not to clean up this mess. I've seen messes like this happen from doing this stuff before. And, and you know, I can tell that this person is kind of really zoomed in.

Wes Kao (14:29.95)
without seeing the bigger picture, right? And so that's an example where skill comes into play, judgment, experience, discernment, right? And there's a whole spectrum, there's a whole range of judgment and skill. And so, you know, if you are newer at something, you have lower task relevant maturity, it's a great term by Andy Grove, CEO of Intel. If you're newer to a task, you don't know how to do it.

Um, you're going to be slower and the work's not going to be as good. Uh, but if you are more skilled, if you have better judgment, if you have more experience, um, you're going to be better at that and so you can work fast and produce good quality.

Mudassir (15:14.102)
Okay, totally makes sense. All right, so the question that you left at the previous question, which was, is there anything that you disagree with Seth? Anything fundamentally that you think, oh yeah, okay, he's correct, but I don't agree with that.

Wes Kao (15:29.662)
I don't know if there's anything that's super fundamental, because he's a pretty logical person, and I like to think I'm a pretty logical person, but I think our styles, our approaches are a little bit different. And so I think Seth, he is very big on inspiring folks. Like he's inspired so many people. He's inspired me to be a linchpin, to speak up, to share your point of view, et cetera.

Mudassir (15:35.238)
Yeah, yeah.

Mudassir (15:43.014)
How so?

Wes Kao (15:59.69)
Um, and, uh, I think he focuses more on, um, the inspiration piece, like the, the what, the why maybe let's say. Um, whereas I am really obsessed with the how. I really like breaking down the tactics of how someone might go about being a lynchpin, for example. So I think lynchpin is a good example. His best-selling book, lynchpin, where he basically talks about why you should be a lynchpin.

and what that looks like and examples of linchpins. I love that book, everyone should check it out. And in my newsletter and in my work, I talk more about the specific ways and tactics that you can do at work to be a linchpin. So like what's preventing you from potentially making better recommendations at work? Like how do you make strong recommendations? What are the...

the, what's the anatomy of a strong recommendation? You know, how do you descend and commit? When do you know when you should descend and commit versus continuing to advocate or continuing to fight for your point of view? Or how do you manage up and manage laterally so that you can influence without authority? How do you give the right amount of context in different situations? How do you ask the question behind the question to better figure out...

why someone is asking you something so you can give a fulfilling answer and maybe add a little bit more that they didn't even think that they needed. But once you share it, they're like, oh, that's so helpful. So how do you do all these more specific how nitty gritty tactics that are very much rooted in strategy and in these bigger, higher level ideas of being linchpin, but more focused on the how.

Mudassir (17:39.432)
Hmm.

Mudassir (17:50.362)
Okay, awesome. All right, so we'll definitely dive deeper into the newsletter you're writing, because I love that everybody who's listening, watching, they should subscribe if they haven't already, because I think they have. All right, so I wanna ask you this question, why you picked education sector as a whole? Like if you look at Maven, if you look at Alt-MBA, even the newsletter that you're writing is potentially like teaching people, it's potentially educating people, and exactly going deeper and deeper, or layer and layer deeper, and telling people like, like what...

is so good about education sector that you love it. Like you're like, okay, so that's the sector that I want to be in. And then while you were answering that, so please just also mention the transition from our all-time BA to moving.

Wes Kao (18:34.254)
Okay. I'll handle the first one, tackle the first one first, and you might need to remind me of the second one. Okay. So with education, yeah, I think it's so fundamental. Learning is so fundamental to being a human being. I think that actually everyone loves learning. Not everyone loves education and school and homework and structure or textbooks, but I think almost everyone loves learning.

Mudassir (18:37.79)
Okay. Yeah, yeah, no problem at all.

Wes Kao (19:03.998)
And there's something really exciting about challenging yourself, uh, intellectually learning something new and the struggle that often comes with learning something new. But because of that struggle, you also get that amazingly rewarding feeling when you, when you finally get something right, that you've been, that you've been trying to learn. Um, and so that, that feeling, uh, that, um, experience of learning, I think is so fundamental.

So that really inspires me and makes me want to share that with more people. So that's one thing. Second is I think that so many skills are learnable. So many traits, things that we don't even think of as skills, we think of as personality traits. I wrote this week in my news that are on the topic of finesse. You usually hear senior leaders or certain charismatic CEOs, people say, oh, they have finesse. The way that they handle that.

Mudassir (19:47.752)
Yeah.

Wes Kao (20:00.426)
you know, showed skill in the sensitive situation, a delicate situation. And most people think like you either have finesse or you don't. Like you're either at this like blunt force instrument that like doesn't get nuance, you know, and, and it's like overly hyper rational and direct, or you're someone who picks up on things and knows how to navigate and, you know, empathize with the people, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and I think that that's lazy thinking. I think that everything from our way looks like magic. But.

Mudassir (20:02.758)
Yeah.

Wes Kao (20:29.47)
If you break things down, if you attempt to break things down, you usually see that there are component parts, there are patterns, there are certain things that people with finesse do and don't do. And if you dissected it and analyzed it, you would be able to see what are things that you can start doing for yourself. So I think that is very, very empowering. And I've proven it to myself multiple times, learning skills that, you know, and traits that I wasn't very good at, you know.

the beginning, and eventually became very good at, you know? And so that kind of almost challenging this notion that like, oh, there's certain things that people are born with or just naturally better at. And like, if you're not that way, you can't be that way. I take joy in subverting that so that people know like, hey, if you want to get good at something and you want to put in the effort, you can. So that's the other thing. And then thirdly,

You know, when I was in school, I was always excited by the beginning of a school year, because it was kind of like new year, new you, right? You're like starting seventh grade and you're like, this is the year I'm going to be cool. Like every year I was like, this is the year I'm going to be cool. And it just felt like such a fresh beginning. And in high school, I started a nonprofit charity that raised backpacks and school supplies for underprivileged kids. Because...

I always felt like the beginning of a school year, with a fresh backpack, fresh notebooks, fresh pencils, was this amazing way to kind of kick off this new year. And I realized that other kids didn't have that. So over the course of high school and into college, I ran this nonprofit. I secured donations from Target, Walmart, Long Strugs, Walgreens, Jansport, Pentel. These are backpack and stationary companies and retail at Walmart.

And they would send me boxes of, of stationary boxes of backpacks so I could donate them. Um, and, uh, this was really my first foray, I would say, excuse me, into entrepreneurship and just starting something from nothing, uh, and it was in the field of education. So I kind of had an early start with, uh, with kind of getting my, my feet wet with, uh, with, with starting things and, um, and it's interesting because at each step, I didn't really think about.

Wes Kao (22:56.254)
education, um, in such a, such an intentional way where it's like, Oh, I, I must do something in education. You know, it just so happened that now I look back, the three organizations that I started were all in education. So, you know, sometimes you see patterns retroactively in hindsight. Uh, but clearly there was something that was kind of pulling me and drawing me to, to that category.

Mudassir (23:18.49)
Okay, so I think that you mentioned which is like, traits can be learned. Do you think, this is probably the most dumbest question or the most asked question in the world is, do you think leaders are born or like anybody can learn to become a leader? And the second part of the same question is, do you think entrepreneurs are born or anybody can learn to be an entrepreneur? Or is that something at heart, like you just, like it's an innate ability that you're an entrepreneur, you're a leader.

Or is that something you can actually learn to become? I think you can become a good one, regardless of whoever you are, but can you become somebody who you are not?

Wes Kao (23:56.694)
The last part, can you be someone who you're not? I don't think you can be someone who you're not. But can you be a leader? Absolutely. I think leadership is absolutely learnable, like a thousand percent. So, and there are so many different kinds of leaders, you know, there's not, there's not one model of, oh, you have to be this way. You know, I think like in the seventies and eighties, it was like, you know, a six, two white guy.

Mudassir (24:10.471)
I really agg-

Wes Kao (24:22.082)
pounding his fist on a conference table. Like maybe that was the way, you know, the one way back then. But nowadays there's so many different ways that you can be a leader. And being a leader doesn't mean being a manager. You can be a leader without being a manager. So you can be an individual contributor and be a leader. Right? So anyone throughout an organization can be a leader. That was something that was very much instilled in our culture at Maven. If you are the most junior person, we expect you to act like a leader. So that, you know, definitely learnable.

Mudassir (24:25.562)
Yeah.

Mudassir (24:32.317)
Hmm.

Mudassir (24:36.582)
Okay.

Wes Kao (24:51.938)
Um, in terms of, you know, can you learn to be an entrepreneur? Can you learn to be a founder? Um, I think that you, you can also learn to be a founder. Um, it's just whether you want to or not. So I think like in our day and age, there's kind of, um, founder worship. Like everyone wants to be a founder and everyone thinks founders are so cool. Um, and so, and so, so many people want to be, want to start companies, want to be founders, maybe not because they want to, you know, build something from scratch or, you know, they're, uh, they're.

sadists or, I forget if it's sadists or masochists who, you know, love pain, right? As an entrepreneur and love the struggle. Um, you know, I think they might want to do it because it's kind of a new, cool thing, right? Just like at a certain point, like going into management consulting, working at Bain, Boston Consulting Group, you know, or Investment Banking, McKinsey, that used to be the cool thing. Um, so, you know, can you learn to be a founder?

Mudassir (25:37.914)
Yeah.

Mudassir (25:43.822)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Wes Kao (25:49.862)
Yes, I think you can pretty learn anything, pretty much anything if you want to. Should you? Should you? I don't know. I actually think that uncovering and rediscovering your strengths and what comes naturally to you is one of the best things that people can do. And some people might be more suited for certain kinds of roles, certain kinds of industries or, I don't know, whatever.

Um, but, uh, yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about how can I use my strengths in, uh, the most highly leveraged way possible. Um, and, you know, and apply them to areas that I already have a point of view about, you know, so I actually think like you shouldn't start a company if you don't really have a point of view about the problem that you're trying to solve. You know, like if, if basically a random person on the street has equal likelihood

Mudassir (26:30.887)
Yeah.

Mudassir (26:44.318)
Okay.

Wes Kao (26:49.45)
solving this problem as you do, you should go pick a bit, a different problem. You should pick a problem that you have an unfair advantage in. You know, like starting companies is too hard to not have an unfair advantage. So your unfair advantage, like it doesn't have to be years of experience in X industry. You know, like it can be your persistence and you know, outlasting everyone else. It can be just your obsession on a certain topic. There's a lot of founders and...

Mudassir (26:56.079)
Yeah.

Wes Kao (27:18.542)
Uh, entrepreneurs who have started, uh, companies in, uh, DTC or retail or, you know, uh, consumer goods, but they didn't work at Procter & Gamble before. You know, they didn't work at Clorox or Colgate, Pumolive, uh, or Kraft. Um, they were just obsessed about, Hey, like, I think I can do this better, you know, but thinking, I think I can do this better and having a way of how to do it better is a point of view. So your point of view can be your, your unfair advantage. Um, but basically, uh,

Mudassir (27:25.233)
Yep.

Wes Kao (27:47.774)
I always go back to, what is my unfair advantage here? How can I lean more into it to, you know, to attack this problem?

Mudassir (27:50.414)
Yeah. And how can you find that? Yes. Yes, so sorry to interrupt you, but for most people, one of the arguments that I hear oftentimes is, I don't know, what's my unfair advantages? Most people get kind of fixated or kind of stuck at that point. For example, like anybody who's building a startup, and you would ask them exactly the same question, like what's your unfair advantage? Or they get into media content creation or something like that. People ask the same question, like what's your unfair advantage?

And most people would kind of go and they're like, I don't know, like what's my unfair advantage? So how do you find one?

Wes Kao (28:28.086)
Great question. I think it might be different for everyone, but for me, becoming more self-aware and reflecting on what comes naturally and easily to you that you are great at, that other people have told you that you are great at, that feels almost effortless to you. You know, obviously many things take effort, but it feels easier than it would for someone else.

Mudassir (28:32.262)
Mm-hmm.

Wes Kao (28:57.666)
for example. So I think like really noticing the way you work almost in more of a meta sense, right? Cause you kind of do your day to day, but then on a meta level noticing like, oh, that gave me a lot of energy. Or, you know, I did this thing, it was pretty fast and everyone thought it was really amazing, you know? There are definitely things, if you even ask yourself those questions, there's definitely things that are gonna come to mind.

for you even in the course of like a day or a week. And then there are other things, the opposite is stuff that feels hard for you, that you dread, that you feel like you're just not really sure how to tackle this thing, or you feel kind of like a fish out of water. And it's just more difficult for you. And so those things are probably not like naturally your strengths. You can have learned strengths. Many of us have learned strengths. In fact, I think founders,

compared to most people have learned many learned strengths because you can't say, I don't want to do that. You can't say that's not my job. You can't, you often can't delegate it to someone else because you're the most available or the most affordable person to tackle this thing right now. So, so founders have many learned strengths. And I think sometimes we confuse learned strengths with, with natural innate strengths, both are very useful.

But I think for the purpose of figuring out your unfair advantage, reflecting on what tends to come easily for you that you are great at, that also fascinates you, that gets you into flow, that you like doing, I think that's a good way to get started.

Mudassir (30:41.114)
Okay, perfect. All right, thank you. Thank you for explaining all these things. So the audience that we have is primarily founders, venture-backed founders, like almost 80%, 90% of the people who listen to us watch, read, whatever. So they are like all venture-backed. So one of the favorite topics everybody that they love is fundraising. You so happen to work at startups that square back and recent, Horowitz back, First Town back. So there are a few questions that I want to talk to you about those because people just

really need to know. So let's start there. And then I also want to transition to what scaling looks like. Like when you are just a 2% company, and then you eventually become a 20%, 50% company, then you just cross, I don't know, 100 million revenue or something like that, like what that scaling thing looks like. So I want to start with the fundraising. So the first question is, which I often ask people, is why founders should fundraise from A, 16, Z, or OK.

Wes Kao (31:36.802)
Sorry, spam call just turned off my volume. Okay. Do you want to repeat that weekend from that?

Mudassir (31:41.274)
Yeah, no problem. Yeah, rolling again. Yeah, no problem at all. So the first question that I'm gonna ask you is, why founders should raise from Andreessen or Sequoia or another brand name firm? Why, because there's an argument going around VC Twitter. It's just like you should be looking at other seed, pre-seed firm or like at least in the early stage because when you're A16Z back or something like that, you're just like another check to them because the fund is too big or something like that.

So why founders should focus on getting a brand name VC partner on the capital.

Wes Kao (32:18.21)
That's an interesting question. I've never been asked that. Huh. I mean, okay, so there's a couple thoughts that I have here. One is you should raise from whoever you think is gonna be the best fit to support your company. So I think like that's just the underlying principle that should just always be first. Take the check from whoever you think is gonna be a good fit, who is aligned with you.

Mudassir (32:29.146)
Okay.

Mudassir (32:41.402)
Yeah, just take the tick. Okay.

Wes Kao (32:48.874)
So that's kind of the first thing. The second thing is, there's a philosophy of, should you raise more money? Should you raise less? Some people say like raising too much is bad. And there's another school of thought that says, you should raise as much as you can because having cash is an asset that you can deploy in different ways. And you don't know when the next time the raise is gonna come around or when the market is gonna crash.

Mudassir (33:08.882)
Yeah.

Wes Kao (33:17.706)
You know, so, um, so there's different schools of thought, different philosophies. Um, I think you should go for the best VC that you can get, you know, for some people that might be Andreessen, first round Sequoia, you know, et cetera. For others, it might be, you know, a smaller firm or more specialized firm, et cetera. Um, so I don't really think it matters. I think at the end of the day, um, you are going to do the heavy lifting. You're investors, you know,

Mudassir (33:28.094)
Mm.

Mudassir (33:47.353)
Not yet.

Wes Kao (33:47.422)
know that, you know that. So I don't think it makes that big of a difference.

Mudassir (33:53.799)
Yeah. Do you think fundraising is a success in any way, or at least a notion of success?

Wes Kao (34:01.694)
I think it can be a credibility indicator. So I think the term success is so loaded and can mean so many different things to different people, but credibility indicator, I think is a more specific term. And what I mean by that is it can be a signal to folks in the ecosystem or to others or to customers or other investors or whoever else that you are a certain kind of company. It's kind of like any other credibility indicator. So.

Mudassir (34:09.24)
and

Wes Kao (34:30.978)
going to Harvard Business School or Stanford, you know, or the fact that you work at Meta or Google or Amazon or Netflix is the person who works at Netflix or Amazon really smarter than someone who works at a no-name tech company. I don't know, who knows, but you know, you notice their profile more on LinkedIn and like, or their resume comes through, you're like, oh my God, someone from Netflix is applying to work at my startup, right? So before you even...

Mudassir (34:53.575)
Yeah.

Wes Kao (34:58.142)
meet them before you know anything about how sharp they actually are. The fact that they are affiliated with Netflix has already given them a boost. So credibility indicators, I think, can be very useful.

Mudassir (34:59.164)
Exactly.

Mudassir (35:09.583)
Good Hope.

Okay, awesome. All right, so can you walk us through like what it looks like when you were pitching to Andreessen? And I know it's like it's way back in the day. But the reason why I'm asking you this question is because as I mentioned before, founders, people who listen to, they're still in the pre-CEED, see kind of a stage, they're still fundraising. And they spend a lot of time listening to, reading to, pitch text related things and all that stuff. So can you just walk us through like, what was the exact process that you guys followed?

So for example, it was a tailored pitch to whoever you reach out to, how many people you reach out to, how did you reach out to in reason and what exactly the process looked like. So yeah.

Wes Kao (35:55.89)
My answer is probably not going to be as satisfying as you want it to be. And that's because our fundraising journey was very unique. So I do not think that it is something that is as replicable. Although I do think that there are underlying components that, you know, lessons that you can take away. But my co-founder Goggin, Bionnie, co-founded Udemy back in the day, over 10 years ago, and he drove our fundraising process.

Mudassir (35:58.706)
Okay.

Wes Kao (36:24.91)
for Seed and Series A. And he had a lot of great relationships in the Valley from being a repeat founder. And so, yeah, so our journey was, I think, a lot simpler and more straightforward and easier from a fundraising perspective than many first-time founders, for example. So I think, I'll share a couple lessons that I think are more applicable.

Mudassir (36:50.245)
Yeah, please.

Wes Kao (36:51.51)
One is if you're a first time founder, I don't think you should compare yourself to veteran founders and their fundraising journey. Because going back to the topic of credibility, when you are just starting out and don't have much of a track record, you are going to feel riskier to invest in. Right? So that is very different from someone

like Goggin or someone like our team, our founding team, which I think instilled confidence in investors because we were, all three of us were veteran founders. So Goggin had started Udemy and then another company called Sprig that shut down. My technical co-founder, Shreyansh Bansali, was the first employee, first engineer at Venmo and then started his own company called Socratic that got acquired by Google.

And then I started the Alt MBA with Seth Godin and essentially kicked off this entire category of live learning and cohort-based courses that we were about to, you know, that we were pitching Maven around a platform for cohort-based courses. So, you know, so all three of us were experienced founders. And so, you know,

I think don't be too hard on yourself. Basically, if you see other people who are raising really easily, um, part of it might be because they have more experience, they have more relationships, you know, they are more quote unquote proven and feel less risky to invest in. Uh, so that's one. Um, I think the other thing that we did well, um, when telling our story, both through investors and, you know, Elsewhere is, um, creating a sense of inevitability. So my co-founder Goggin.

Mudassir (38:39.814)
How so?

Wes Kao (38:40.91)
Um, yeah, we had this, uh, deal memo. So we didn't do a slide deck. We had a deal memo. I forget how many pages, a few pages long that described, uh, the premise for what we wanted to build, why we were the best team to build it, why the direction of online learning was going in the direction of live that, you know, 10 years ago, uh, the dominant form of online learning was massive open online courses, MOOCs. So.

LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, Coursera, Khan Academy, recorded videos basically that people would watch on their own. And this was a whole wave, right? And then now, flash forward 10, 15 years later, the new wave of online learning is live learning. That the technology is now available and the market... Excuse me, consumers are now ready to learn live, to hop on Zoom, to...

Mudassir (39:28.9)
Yep.

Wes Kao (39:37.922)
to talk to each other in communities and Slack. That wasn't a thing 15 years ago, you know? But now it is, right? And so now with the world going in this direction, there's more appetite for live learning, you know? And then citing examples like Alt-MBA, like Reforge, et cetera, that were early adopters in this space. And what this could become, that we wanted to build a platform that made it really easy for any expert to share their...

Mudassir (39:42.661)
Yeah.

Wes Kao (40:06.946)
their expertise online and start teaching online. And a two-sided marketplace where students could learn from experts around the world on really specific work-related topics, like UX design, FP&A, marketing, et cetera. And so we told the story in a way that felt very logical. It felt very objective. There wasn't a lot of aggrandizing or hot air

you know, it all felt very logical that, you know, we're going from point A to point B to point C. Here's the opportunity. Here's why we see this opportunity. Here's why we, the three of us, are the best team to tackle this, given our unique strengths and skill sets. Right? And so there was something about it that just felt inevitable, that like, oh, like this is going to work. I remember digging up the deal memo, you know, a couple of years later and reading it and just thinking like, wow, like,

Mudassir (40:40.894)
Thanks for watching!

Mudassir (40:59.983)
Thank you.

Wes Kao (41:04.866)
This is great. It's so well written. I remember thinking it was so well written when we first put it out and kudos to my co-founder Goggin. But in rereading it, I was like, wow, there's something about it that just feels so solid. Now whether or not we're going to succeed is still TBD. There's a lot to play out, right? But when you are putting together your story, helping people understand it in a way that feels so objective and so...

inevitable, you know, I think it's gonna, it's gonna de-risk you in people's minds.

Mudassir (41:41.438)
Okay, it's not a question that I planned, but not that you mentioned, because I know quite a bunch of people at Reforge. So just wanted to know, like how is Maven differentiated from Reforge? There could be other cohort basis, you know, platforms and all of that. I just happen to know a few people in that community, so just really curious to what we want to know, yeah.

Wes Kao (41:52.715)
Refor-

Wes Kao (42:04.958)
Yeah. So Reforge and companies like Section, Professor Scott Galloway's company, for example, are publishers. So by publisher, I mean that they are a brand, an organization that is creating courses and, you know, sharing those courses with students. So they're the ones that are kind of, there's a singular point of view and everything lives under the Reforge umbrella.

Mudassir (42:24.187)
Yep.

Wes Kao (42:33.142)
Whereas Maven is a marketplace. So we don't have our own Maven produced courses. It's courses from experts everywhere that, you know, bring their expertise onto Maven and start building using our software and using our, our storefront, our marketplace are able to find and connect with students. So it's a different business model.

Mudassir (42:41.476)
Okay.

Mudassir (42:58.386)
This is a different business model. Totally makes sense. Just want to transition towards a little bit of a leadership, brand building kind of a thing now. So when you start out, the beginning, you're just a couple of people company. And you wrote a lot about leadership, vertical, horizontal management, all of that stuff. And we have often heard this thing, the founder to build the company is not the one to scale the company, which is kind of true in many ways and could be wrong in many ways as well. So.

Why founders have such a hard time scaling their capabilities? Like somebody who just founded a company went through that horrible, horrendous, rigorous, you know, sort of a journey at the beginning, went from nothing to something, and then there comes somebody else and obviously that's what it pertains to scale. But why founders have such a hard time scaling the companies, scaling their abilities, and what abilities are those that actually a leader need and not, not a founder, like a scale leader need?

Wes Kao (44:00.786)
Yeah. Um, great question. So I can answer more from the founder perspective because, uh, I would not call myself a career executive, I would say. Like, you know, they're kind of like, there there's founders and then there are the quote unquote adults, the MBAs and suits that are, you know, that are coming, they're going to come in and like add process and do everything the more solid way, the more legit way. So that's not really my, uh, strength.

Mudassir (44:06.158)
Gay egg work please. Gay.

Wes Kao (44:29.574)
or archetype, I would say. But yeah, I think people have different strengths and different parts of the business and stages of the business that they like working on. So I think part of it is, do you want to work on a different stage or different set of responsibilities? Because it's a whole other skillset and a whole other kind of...

Mudassir (44:31.462)
Mm-hmm.

Wes Kao (44:57.326)
mindset and way of being, you know, like personally, um, I think a lot of founders, um, their strength is in attacking a problem with, uh, you know, one of our investors, John Danner, he had such a great way of saying it. I'm trying to think about, trying to remember what he said. I think I asked him, you know, for advice on something on, on a call one day and, and he basically was like, you solve it through

your founder attitude of like running through walls. Like.

That's how you solve it. You know, like there's not like, there's not a playbook. There's not best practices. There's not like do this or do that. It's just like, you use your founder energy and just like fucking do it, you know? Like make it happen, find a way, right? And that's so, it captured the idea so well that founders just find a way, you know? And so I think that like, that's a very valuable skill. And...

Mudassir (45:35.23)
Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Mudassir (45:44.381)
Mm-hmm.

Mudassir (45:47.747)
Yeah, exactly.

Wes Kao (46:01.642)
Uh, and a certain way of approaching problems, you know, uh, whereas I think. I'm, I'm using MBA foil. I kind of as a foil, like an exaggerated foil, but like, I think that, um, often more, more seasoned career execs, that's not their, their natural, that's not the place they go, you know, like they're the place that their head naturally goes is. Um, uh, goal setting and tracking.

Mudassir (46:11.298)
Yeah. Okay.

Wes Kao (46:31.37)
applying processes, organizational planning, like all these things that become more important as you get bigger, but are like very different from the, just make it happen, like find a way, do whatever it takes to find a way. And so I think as a founder, if you enjoy the other part, the more,

organizational, uh, company building aspect of, uh, you know, as, as somebody gets bigger, then that is, again, I think it's totally a skill that you can learn. I think actually that many founders don't want to learn that skill. That like, that's just not where they are the most highly value add and they don't find it exciting. And, um, I think that the older I get, the more, uh, difficult it is to get myself to do things that I don't really want to do. So that's, that's been an interesting.

insight for myself that, you know, early on in my career, I could get myself to do anything. Like, you know, I was hungry and I could just like learn anything, you know, and I'm just as hungry now, but I'm more discerning about the types of problems I like solving and want to spend my time on, you know? And so, so I think that naturally as founders get more mature and more experienced, they get to know themselves more. And

Mudassir (47:30.822)
Hmm. Yeah.

Wes Kao (48:00.318)
And you also get to be pickier, I would say, on the kinds of problems that you want to solve, right? There's a lot of places you could add value with that skillset of just get it done, just use your founder energy to just run through walls. So you can either do more of that, or you can learn this other skillset of being a more career manager, career exec. So I think it's a choice.

Mudassir (48:28.87)
Yeah, and I think one of the things that you mentioned is like, as you grow older, it's a privilege as well, but you know, you become more self-aware. It's like, okay, so I could learn all the things, but do I want to? And should you want to? Something like that. So I think that's where you're like, no, like this is not for me anymore. Okay, perfect. So thank you for explaining all the things. It's really lovely talking to you. So what we do is we have a decent big audience now. I don't know, around 20, 30,000 people who just read the newsletter and, you know, listen

So we just float out this questionnaire like, hey, Wes is coming tomorrow. Any questions you would like for us to ask. So all the time I get all crappy questions and some good questions. So here's a few good questions that I really want to ask you. Not in any particular order, nothing fancy or something like that. But assuming some of these people actually know you, maybe a few of them don't know you. So just keep that in mind. So the first one is a three-part question which I love.

So you have a very strong personal brand. So a few thoughts on that. How have you built it? What opportunities it can unlock for anybody? And how difficult is it to build a personal brand for anybody in 2024? So how did you do it? What opportunities it can unlock and how somebody can do it who's just starting out.

Wes Kao (49:48.266)
Okay. And this is kind of like a lightning round. So I'll go quick. Okay.

Mudassir (49:52.342)
No, no, you can go into depth. You don't need to just like do the, yeah, yeah.

Wes Kao (49:55.754)
Oh, okay, okay. So I started writing my blog in 2010. So I've been writing online for 13, 14 years. And for the first 10 years, no one read my stuff. So I think like most people would have given up way before then. I had a very small email list. I wasn't cross posting to social. Like that wasn't really a thing. I basically wrote to share my insights.

Mudassir (50:11.337)
Holy shit, okay.

Wes Kao (50:25.642)
on what I was noticing in the industry. And my philosophy is on work. And I would do tear downs on advertisements, for example, marketing campaigns that I saw that I thought could be improved. So I kind of like started off, sharing my thoughts on the industry. And I kept up the habit over the years. There were some years where I wrote 50 some posts. There were some years, like when I ran Maven.

Uh, they wrote zero, zero to one post per year. Um, and so it kind of ebbed and flowed, but the, the habit of writing and, um, using it as a forcing function to clarify my thinking and share my perspective is one of the best things that I've done for my career. So, uh, so that's one. Um, and I highly, highly recommend it. Um, the second.

What was the second question? What opportunities can it unlock? Oh my gosh, it can unlock so many opportunities. So I think many of the roles I took on and certainly the opportunity with Seth came because I was sharing my ideas online regularly and there was a track record of my thinking publicly. There were breadcrumbs that if someone wanted to know more about the way that I think and the way I approach problems, there was so much content that you could look at.

Mudassir (51:27.122)
Yeah.

Wes Kao (51:53.174)
And you can, you can say, you know, if you agree, if you disagree or, or whatever, but there was something to build off of and push back on. If someone looks you up and there's nothing, there's no, no ideas that they can even interact with. It's really hard to tell more about you, right? It's hard to learn more about you. Um, so yeah, so I definitely think that opens up so many opportunities, whether, whether you want, you know, roles in-house, or if you want to start your own company, or if you want to, uh, put out, put out the bat signal basically for

Mudassir (52:03.419)
Yeah.

Mudassir (52:08.114)
That person.

Wes Kao (52:22.766)
collaborators, potential collaborators, you know, who think similarly and are like-minded. And then the third piece is how do you do it in 2024? Was that the...

Mudassir (52:32.666)
Yeah, yeah. How can anybody build a personal brand in 2024?

Wes Kao (52:37.33)
Yeah, I think there are more ways to do it now than ever before. I also think it's noisier now than ever before. So I think people caught on that sharing your ideas online is a good idea. And so more people are doing it. I still think you should do it. You know, a lot of people might start and get discouraged because, you know, you get two likes on a post or no one's reading your stuff. And then at that point, you should just remember that Wes wrote for 10 years and no one read her stuff. And then eventually people did. And so, so that's just good to remember, right? Like.

If you see overnight successes, it's people who have just been doing it really long time. You just discovered them last night. They've actually been doing it for a long time before that. So yeah, I think there are so many tools now, so many platforms. It doesn't really matter which one you want to pick. Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, your own blog. Just start sharing and start using it as a way to test your ideas, to get some more reps.

I think one of the best things about sharing online is that it's essentially free reps, which is pretty amazing. Back in the day, 100 years ago, even 50 years ago, to reach people and be able to see what they resonate with and what they are reacting to would be so difficult and expensive. Now anyone can put out a tweet or put out a link to post and immediately get a sense within the hour really, but within a day of whether people...

are engaging with this or think this is interesting or whether you should approach it from a slightly different angle or change the way you talk about it. So there's so many chances at that. And I think reframing from, oh, I have to do this, or I have to post, or I have to whatever, reframe it in your mind to, I get to post. I get to test my ideas for free with this many people online. It's pretty amazing.

Mudassir (54:27.858)
Somebody asked me the same question, what opportunities can it unlock? So whoever listens to this podcast, I have a discount on the show in less than eight months. So that's the opportunity of media. So I'm more than happy with that. So yeah, highly recommend it. I think everybody should do it. It's a great way to figure it out and build self-awareness as well, because you learn so much when you're putting it out there. All right, so the next one is, why don't you share some more, which is a weird question.

Why you don't share much knowledge about marketing, GTM and other stuff on your socials? Like why you just don't go do a deeper dive in GTM of different startups or something like that.

Wes Kao (55:08.706)
So why don't I talk about go to market of different startups on my social? Um, that's an interesting question. I mean, the, the number of topics that you could write about is endless. So I've chosen to focus on the topics that fascinate me at any given moment that I think a lot about. And so like, you could ask like, why don't I write about X?

Mudassir (55:11.482)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Wes Kao (55:34.122)
And like X would be like a million things. Like there's a million things I don't write about actually. Like there's so many things I don't write about. I only write about a few things actually. So maybe the better question is why do I focus on things that I choose to focus on? And it's because those are the things that my brain keeps coming back to that I find endlessly fascinating that I'm always noticing out and about in the real, in the world. And in the past I write, I did write more about marketing. I wrote more about, you know, about

acquisition and branding and persuasion and more in the marketing realm. But my content has shifted because my interests have expanded and shifted and that happens. So nowadays I write more about being a high performer and company building and being a sharp operator internally and what that takes. And so yeah, that might change in the future.

Mudassir (56:18.79)
Yeah.

Mudassir (56:32.398)
Okay, awesome. So the next one is huge fan of your work. I'm a seed founder. They have raised multiple rounds How do you write these newsletter like how much? Work is it actually to write all of these news that are feels like you spend quite a bunch of your time and then again Huge huge fan of your work. Thank you for putting that there

Wes Kao (56:52.77)
Thank you. That means a lot. And yes, I put a lot of time into my newsletters, probably more time than you would think. And so sometimes I even think about the amount of time I put in them and think like, really? Like, how do I spend that much time on it? But there's a creative element to putting together my newsletters. And you can't really rush a creative process. Like there are, yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

Mudassir (57:17.275)
Can I ask something on top of that? So while you're answering this question, just give us a workflow. How you capture the ideas, how you organize them, how you just do a first draft, and how many drafts you do. What exactly is that workflow looks like? So please mention that one as well.

Wes Kao (57:34.05)
Sure, yeah. So my caveat here is that there are some essays that take months to years for me to write. So I think I'm different than many newsletter writers in this way. There's a lot of newsletter writers and content experts that teach you, here's how you can write a newsletter in 45 minutes. Every week uses roughly the same template and give yourself structure, et cetera.

Mudassir (57:48.835)
Yeah.

Mudassir (58:00.57)
Yeah, it's not possible.

Wes Kao (58:03.382)
So there's a lot of ways you can speed it up if you want to. My approach and my advice here is not that. So yeah, like there are posts that I've been thinking about for years before actually writing about it or talking to people about it, IRL and in conversation and on calls and stuff for years before I actually ever put out anything in writing.

And so during that time, I'm developing the idea and really understanding it, understanding the boundaries of it, the implications, the counterpoints, and just like doing a lot of that thinking. I think the thing that takes the longest for my newsletters is the thinking by far. Absolutely. 90% of my newsletters are thinking. Because the reason why it's thinking is because I feel a sense of moral responsibility that I have a lot of people who read my newsletter, who respect me, who take the advice that I say.

And I want to make sure that the advice that I'm giving, the insights and frameworks that I'm sharing, um, are things that I believe in strongly, that I have vetted and tested, that I've thought about when this idea applies and when it doesn't. So that I don't just say in an overly broad way, like everyone go to this and then people do it and then like get into all kinds of trouble. Like I don't, I don't want to accidentally encourage people to do the wrong thing. So I spent a lot of time thinking about, do I even believe in this idea?

Uh, where does it apply? Where does it not apply? You know, the, the first thing when I have an idea is I think about the counterpoint, like, wait, like when might this not be true actually? And then I kind of debate in my own head back and forth. And then I write either by hand in a notebook or in a variety of platforms. So, so my process is very messy. It's, it's like, it's like, it's like a messy desk that just makes sense. Right. And you know how to find everything. Like, so I'm going to share.

this behind the scenes, which I haven't actually shared publicly. Um, some people are very organized. Like everything is a notion. Everything is a Google talks, right? My, the places where I write, I will write in calendar invites. Many times, some of my best posts came from literally drafting an account invite. So the title of the invite will be add, add to, uh, drafts or like add to content

Mudassir (01:00:24.645)
Hmm.

Wes Kao (01:00:27.402)
You know, 500, 700 words on the thing that, um, is on my mind. And then I later paste it into something. So I do a lot of drafts, um, like in calendar invites, which I know is so weird. Um, I'll also draft directly in Google docs. I have, I have, uh, folders and toggles and notion. So I'll draft a notion sometimes. Um, I'll draft an Apple notes. Um, I'll draft directly in Substack. Where else?

Mudassir (01:00:33.35)
Yeah, yeah. Wow.

Wes Kao (01:00:56.91)
Uh, yeah. So it's, my ideas are just kind of like everywhere, but I do have a rough system where I bucket certain things. So in Notion I save, I have like different tabs. So I kind of different toggles where I will, if I see an example of something, I'm like, oh my God, this is totally great for a follow-up on rigorous thinking, or this is a great example of someone's lack of judgment. I'm going to save this in my judgment examples. And then when I, when I accumulate enough examples and then I look at them and I can see a through line,

Mudassir (01:01:00.506)
All over the place. Yeah.

Wes Kao (01:01:25.354)
That's when I then say like, okay, I'm gonna write about this. So I think having a way, as long as it makes sense to you, by the way, like I think my takeaway and my insight here is as long as it makes sense to you, like it doesn't really matter how organized your backend is. I actually think that, and this is one of my spiky points of view, I think that people spend too much time obsessing about a really organized notion workspace or really like well-organized information hierarchy in Google Drive or whatever. And like, who cares?

Mudassir (01:01:45.838)
about the processes. Yeah.

Wes Kao (01:01:55.338)
As long as you are reaching the goals you want to reach, and I am, I'm shipping consistently every Wednesday, something that I am proud of, like, doesn't really matter on the back end, as long as it's like not detrimental for you, you know? Like if you feel like you're spending way too much time trying to find stuff, and that's why you can't be creative, first of all, I think that's an excuse, but like, if you do think that that's the case, fine, like add a little bit of structure, add a little bit of process, but don't, you know, use that as an excuse to hide. So we actually came full circle, because at the beginning we talked about

Seth Godin saying like, don't hide, like don't give yourself stupid excuses to not do something, you know? And I think like saying like, oh, like I can't find my stuff to be able to write. Like, I don't think that that's not why you can't write. I think that, I think you need to think more about what is your point of view on something and start noticing what sparks a reaction in you and keep an eye out for that. You know, everything is potentially topic to write about if it sparks something in you. If you feel like, oh, I read this post and

I feel like they've missed something here. Or I read this thing that someone else wrote and I think it's way too broad and not that useful. I think what would actually be useful is this. And then you like, oh, write that, you know? So I think being more attuned with your point of view and then embracing that you're gonna have to do a lot of thinking, you know? If you wanna write stuff that like is kind of generic and already proven and like everyone's already written about it in like that way at a very high level.

you know, that you don't have to do as much thinking, but if you want to get more nuanced, which I think that's where you add so much value is in the specifics, in the nuances, in, you know, the parts that other people have not talked about, like what's unsaid here, how can you convince your reader about, of your argument? That does take thinking. So don't get frustrated that you have to think, like every, every writer has to, and that's, I think, the hardest part for every writer. So, so be patient with yourself.

Mudassir (01:03:51.502)
Awesome, and I mean, how can you write if you're not thinking? So totally makes sense, yeah. OK, so off the record, sort of the stuff, every single time I have an idea, like there's a gazillion of those that I'm working on. So the thing of not hiding is, so I'll just make an announcement in the newsletter. It was read by 20,000 people. So it's just like, hey, we're launching a production studio. We haven't launched anything. And there's just like three, four people reached out. They're like, tell us more about that.

like, oh, OK, so now we have to build it. So it's like, yeah, so I've done that multiple, multiple times. Hey, we're launching a private community. Haven't launched anything. And then five people, 10 people would come back, and they're like, hey, what's the thesis? Send it. We would sign up. Like, is it paid? Like, people start asking questions, and you kind of think like, oh, OK, so these are the questions that you need to answer in order to build this thing. So yeah, totally makes sense. Exactly.

Wes Kao (01:04:23.178)
Yes, I love it.

Wes Kao (01:04:45.45)
Yeah, yeah. You're putting something out and getting a reaction from the market. It's also kind of full circle. Yeah. You're like, you're seeing what the market is thinking and reacting from what you put out and that's great.

Mudassir (01:04:51.183)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And one of the things that I also see is most founders are doing exactly the same thing. They build something and then they just kind of do a mid-level marketing, it's like going out there and putting a word out. One of the things that I have learned after, like I don't know, so many failures or like whatever, is you don't do it, you don't do a thing, you don't spend a penny on anything. You have an idea, just put it in the market and you'll just find out. If somebody wants to.

do whatever you're building if people care about that or not. If they don't, then there's no point in doing that. So yeah, totally makes sense. OK. Please.

Wes Kao (01:05:27.69)
Yeah, yeah. I would add onto that, that to not give up an idea too soon, because there are many variables with the way that you present it, you know? And so if you, if you just talk about it once and people aren't interested, if you just give up, it's, you're probably giving up prematurely, you know, the way you package the idea, the way you talk about it, you know, the pricing, the timing, who you're talking to, who you're talking to, if you even change any of one of those variables, it can change everything. So, you know, I think being aware of that is good.

Mudassir (01:05:32.698)
Hmm. Makes sense. Yeah.

Mudassir (01:05:39.143)
Mm-hmm.

Mudassir (01:05:42.978)
Yeah. Any other? Yeah. Exactly. Yep. Exactly.

Mudassir (01:05:54.608)
Yeah.

Yeah, totally agree to that. And the thing that you've already mentioned, which is who you're talking to. The people who read the newsletter are the founders. The production studio that we built was for startups, series A-level startups, or primarily for VCs, actually, because these are the people that I know. So they're like, hey, produce our educational series or whatever, podcast or whatever. So we would do that. If asking these people and nobody replied doesn't mean that's a bad idea and that's not gonna work because it's a different market.

Wes Kao (01:06:24.467)
Exactly. Yeah, I love that example.

Mudassir (01:06:26.938)
Yeah, okay, awesome. All right, Wes, so we do have one small ritual on the podcast. So what we do is we ask all our guests a question for our next guest without telling who the next guest is gonna be. So obviously gonna take a question from you for the next guest, but also have a question for you from the previous guest, okay? So the question that the last guest left for you is, what's one thing you're so happy that you did not pursue or achieve, but you really wanted it back in the day?

Wes Kao (01:06:57.338)
Oh my gosh, that's a really good question. This, that's a high bar for my question for the next person. I love this ritual, by the way. This is very, very creative and very fun. Um, let's see. I think the one that immediately comes to mind is going to business school. So in my, in my mid twenties, I really wanted to go to business school. I felt like that was the way that I could, um, you know, just prove that, that I was.

Mudassir (01:07:01.458)
Yeah. Okay.

Mudassir (01:07:14.555)
Oh really? Okay.

Wes Kao (01:07:27.286)
leader and like that felt like the way to advance. And so many of my friends were going to business school. And I applied, I think I applied like two or three years in a row and I didn't get into the schools I wanted to get into. So, and that ended up being amazing because the third year, I went to work with Seth Godin and we ended up starting a business school together. So,

Mudassir (01:07:52.634)
You see that? Yeah.

Wes Kao (01:07:53.622)
That was amazing. I mean, he actually wrote one of my business school letters of recommendation, uh, when I was applying. Um, and, and because that didn't work out, I ended up staying on to work with him and, um, building the all time BA together, which really just kicked off this whole other phase in my career of growth, of opportunities, of impact. Um, and I also think that, I think that back then I was still trying to fit into

a mold of what I thought success looked like. And climbing the corporate ladder, having the shiny trappings of saying, I went to this and this school. And I think I actually would have hated business school and not had fun in it. And that doing the path that I ended up doing was just so much better. So I'm really glad that I ended up not pursuing that.

Mudassir (01:08:29.586)
Yeah.

Wes Kao (01:08:53.17)
And it just opened up, you know, starting this company, you know, starting, starting all time with Seth and then also starting Maven. Like who knows if I would have started Maven, you know, if I, if I hadn't started the Alt-MBA, um, and, uh, yeah, so I'm really glad I, I didn't do that. Didn't do business school.

Mudassir (01:09:07.918)
Awesome. So good to hear that. Great story. Question for the next guest.

Wes Kao (01:09:13.106)
Okay. My question is, um, it's, it's around their spiky point of view. So I'm trying to think, should it be, um, what is your, your juiciest spiky point of view that you haven't really shared with that many people yet? Cause you think it's like going to ruffle some feathers. So it's, it's either that or, or just like, what is one of your spiky points of view? Um, yeah. Yeah.

Mudassir (01:09:28.134)
with anybody.

Mudassir (01:09:35.374)
Okay, alright, so it's along the same lines, okay, perfect. Alright.

Okay, let's pause the recording, but please stay and don't end the call because that has happened to me multiple times. So, just a heads up. Yeah, yeah, we just need to finish the uploading and stuff, okay? But let's just pause the recording by saying goodbye, thank you, blah, blah. Rolling again. Thank you so much, Ves. Lovely talking to you. It's a pleasure. It's a privilege. I'm really happy to have you on the show. So thank you. Thank you for sharing all the things, and thank you for the time.

Wes Kao (01:09:47.414)
Okay. Yes, it's only 13% uploading.

Wes Kao (01:10:11.37)
Thank you so much for having me, Rukaseer. This was a lot of fun.

Mudassir (01:10:17.802)
Awesome.