Shirish Nadkarni, Author of From Startup to Exit | An Insider's Guide to Launching and Scaling Your Tech Business

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Remember Gain Grow Retained on the HubSpot Podcast Network. Today my guest is Cherish Nadkarni. He is the author of from startup to exit. Cherish is a serial entrepreneur. He has had an incredible career. I'm going to read through some of the things that he's done. Some of them you definitely know. So he's a pioneer in email technology and online education. He has developed consumer technologies that have been used by tens of millions of users worldwide. He successfully founded three companies and achieved exits with two publicly held companies. These are some of the accomplishments. He co founded live mocha, the world's largest language learning site with over 15 million registered members. Live Mocha was selected as Time Magazine's top 50 sites in 2010 and won the prestigious English speaking Union Award presented by Prince Philip Duke of Enbarrow. Live Mocha was acquired by Rosetta Stone. He is the founder of team on systems and innovative developer of wireless email technologies. He successfully negotiated acquisition by research in motion, rim, blackberry. The team on technology was the foundation of the blackberry internet email, which serviced over 50 million mobile users. He contributed to rims early growth in the wireless device market through partnerships with T-Mobile. He launched rims first smartphone device, the blackberry 7100 with a phone form factor. He established MSN as an industry leading web portal. He was responsible for Microsoft's entry into two of the largest application categories in the internet email and search successfully negotiated acquisition of hotmail and partnership with ink to me corporation. He reestablished Microsoft as an undisputed market share leader in windows development tools and he was responsible for Microsoft's early entry and leadership in PC based email marketing. He has been working in tech for a long time to say the least so we spoke about his career. We spoke about differences in similarities, lessons learned as he transitioned between different companies. We spoke about raising funds, we spoke about finding investors, proper fit investors, we spoke about how to select the VC as a partner, we spoke about how to structure agreements with venture capitals, we spoke about culture, we spoke about target market, we spoke about challenges and entrepreneurship, an absolutely incredible conversation. If you are an entrepreneur or if you are a techie or if you just love listening to somebody that has worked through so many different industries as the internet has matured, this is an incredible podcast for you. So let's jump right into it. This is Cherish Nadkarni. He is a serial entrepreneur but more recently the author of From Startup to Exit. Alright, great. First of all Scott, great to be here with you. Thanks for having me on your show. So I'll tell you a little bit about my story. I'm based here in Seattle, Washington, but I came to the United States in my late teens and did my undergraduate education here in the United States. And then after getting my MBA from our business school, I joined Microsoft. This was in 1987, right after they had gone IPO. So this was in very early days of Microsoft, they had probably about 1000 employees. And I was 26 years old and I was given the responsibility for launching Microsoft's software in the email category. Email today is pretty widespread and everybody uses email, but at that time in 1987 only very large companies used email and they use it on mainframe systems. Hardy anyone had a PC based email solution. So I was very fortunate to have launched the whole category of email on the PC and the Apple Macintosh back in 1987. And then I'll talk a little bit more about my history at Microsoft, but I also got to do the hotmail acquisition at Microsoft, which was a pretty large acquisition at that time, about 400 million dollars. And you know, that became MSN hotmail and grew to over 300 million users down the world. So that's a little bit about my history early days. And then I became a tech entrepreneur. I've started three companies and had successful exits for two of those companies. And that's what prompted me to write my book. So we'll talk about some of the lessons that you've learned over your career, which I'm pretty sure has formed the basis for what you write about. Now, even walk me through, like walk me through as you left as you left working for somebody. And you know, when I was looking at, I was looking at, you know, your, your resume and your history, you've worked with some of the biggest names. Like these are these are iconic brands that you've worked with, including from Namaste, the first company you founded, team on. That was acquired by Blackberry. So you've worked with like all you've worked with the biggest names in tech. So at what point in your career did you pivot and start your first company, leaving was it after the Microsoft or was there other things that you did in between. No, this was after I had done about 12 years tent at Microsoft. So I had amazing experience at Microsoft. I always wanted to be a tech entrepreneur. But in the early days of the PC industry, it was hard to be an entrepreneur because you had to not only produce software. You had to package it into, you know, five and a half inch floppy's and create a box and then find a find retail distribution like egghead. You may remember egghead in those days. So it was not really easy to find customers for your, for your software. But you know, by the late 90s, the internet was in full swing. And you could actually develop applications in the cloud that could be distributed straight to your customers. So it was a lot easier to get started. And I had great experience at Microsoft, you know, working on MSN and launching hotmail, you know, once we had acquired it. And so I felt that there was a big opportunity to create an email solution, which was business or enterprise grade. And, you know, provided to the cloud as opposed to installing servers in your, in your company. And so that was the genesis of my first company, Tmod systems, which was a business grade or enterprise grade email and calendaring solution that could be deployed by companies, you know, typically small and medium sized companies. And how did you, how did you start team on? So walk me through where you, you were not or were you a technical co founder or founder rather? No, I was a business guy. I had technical background, certainly, but I was, you know, it was, it had been decades since I had written code. So I had to actually find a technical co founder, which was pretty challenging. Obviously went to my friends who I knew at Microsoft, but the Microsoft stock was doing incredibly well at that time. And they didn't want to leave, they don't want to lose their health insurance. So finally, I was introduced to my co founder, Shybo, Roy, he was working in the Bay Area and he was working on net scapes email software. So he was the perfect CTO to work with me. But even he was reluctant to leave the company. And so we came, came to an agreement where he would work part time and I would find an outsourcing company to go build this off and he would manage it. And then he would move to Seattle and join the company full time once we had raised our initial round of funding. And that's what happened. I raised about 15 million in 1999 and he joined my company and then we started recruiting company and recruiting people locally for the company. And some of the obviously some of the lessons that you learned in that first in that first company you founded are things you speak about in the book. One of the things that are obviously like a big issue for startups is the fact that nine out of 10 of them fail mostly because they don't find proper product market fit. So how did you, how did you find that proper product market fit? What was your, what was your strategy for that? And also just to follow up question I want you to give some context. Did you, did you raise that money pre revenue or did you wait until you were actually you found product market fit you were selling to the market before you raised that 15. Yeah, that's a great question. No, this was doing the crazy days of the dot com boom. And based on my reputation having worked for Microsoft obviously was a big help. I had, you know, we had only developed beta software when I started running raising money and I raised, you know, 15 million dollars in funding on a pre revenue basis. So we didn't have any revenue at that point. And I raised it on a pre money valuation of 23 million. So it was totally crazy times at the time to be able to raise that kind of money without really having any kind of revenue or customer traction. But to answer your first question about product market fit. What we discovered took us about six months to kind of iterate through various versions of our software. We were able to sign up a lot of users, but we didn't really get good retention. I think that was because people were still uncomfortable. So using email in the cloud and relying on some other company to store very sensitive corporate information, which is your email information. So it became clear to us that the original idea was not working. And so we decided to pivot our solution to providing mobile access to your existing email. This was the time when blackberry was getting started. They had about, you know, a couple of hundred thousand users and it was a small, you know, form, you know, like a page of form factor blackberry instead of the, you know, the smartphone form factor. And at that time, you know, regular phones were becoming internet enabled. And you had something called a WAP browser on your phone, which, you know, on a very small screen allowed you to access the internet. And so we decided that, you know, that why do you need a specialized device like blackberry which can be expensive. Why not enable access to your email on your phone. And that's what we did. We basically reverse engineered all the proprietary email systems like Microsoft exchange and Lotus Notes and AOL mail and hot mail and so forth. And we would allow you to access that email from your phone wherever you are. Understood. Okay. And so your, your products. So that's a, that's a pretty crazy start of story. So you, the fact that you raised 15 million free revenue. So you, you were, you were playing with investors money while still trying to figure out product market fit and you were iterating. I'm just curious, would you have done it differently if you could redo it. Was that a lot of stress with the 15 million free. Sure was a lot of stress. You have a lot of responsibility to your investors. Yeah, I think I would have done it differently. I would have done a lot more, you know, market research initially to validate whether the idea made sense at that time. You know, today, you know, the idea of Timon is something that is widespread. So it was a matter of timing. So the idea was great, but the timing was not right because it took, you know, quite some time for companies to become comfortable with using software on the cloud. And, you know, we were one of the first SaaS software, you know, introduced into the market at that point. And so whenever you need to use a new concept, it takes, you know, it takes time for companies to adopt it. So I wish I'd done a lot more market research to really understand, hey, you know, is this something that is ready, you know, in terms of market acceptance or not. And what advice would you have for somebody who after you've learned and you've gone through this to find that product market fit or to validate that idea before you take it to market. Yeah, I talk about that in my book from startup to exit. I have a whole chapter dedicated to, you know, a shipping product market fit. And so it's not an easy, it's not a quick easy. Yeah, what I recommend is obviously conduct a lot of customer interviews. And don't even talk about your solution first or ask the customer, you know, they like your solution first, you know, first, understand what are the top three or four problems that they have in the domain that you are kind of researching. And if your problem that you're addressing is not in the top three or four, then right there, you may want to pivot and understand, okay, let tell me more about the top three or two or three problems and maybe there is a solution I can build that is more of interest to you. Because if your solution, if your solution is not addressing a top three or four problem, then even though they may be addressing and, you know, a need. It may not be top of mind to customer and as a result, your sales cycles will be extremely long because the customer is going to say, I'm going to first address my critical problems and then I'll get to some other problems that, you know, I need to address. And so first, you know, focus on, you know, the top three or four problems, make sure that your solution tackles that and the other thing that I recommend is actually testing, even before you built your software is actually creating a website and using Google SCM or Facebook ads drive users to that website and see if you can get customers to register for your solution. Because that will tell you, you know, when you actually start marketing a solution, what kind of an uptake are you going to get and are you going to get enough users and it's going to, is it going to cost you, how much is going to cost you to really acquire those users and can you build a profitable business where your lifetime value to your customer is, you know, far greater than the cost of customer acquisition. So those are two things I highly recommend that, you know, people fall in terms of the methodology for achieving product market. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode, Peloton. 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They were very interested in the solution that we were providing. And then we also started talking to BlackBerry because BlackBerry at that time was limited in its access to only Microsoft email software, whereas we provided access to a whole range of proprietary email systems. And so as we started discussions on licensing our software to them, they came to the conclusion that this was a very strategic for them and they would be better off acquiring our company. And so in 2002 they made an offer to acquire T-MON and we decided at that point that given that BlackBerry was becoming quite well known and because they had existing relationships with wireless carriers around the world that we could get much wider distribution for our software through BlackBerry as opposed to trying to do it on our own. And this was also a time when the .com bust had happened and so raising money was very, very hard at that point. So the sale to BlackBerry made a lot of sense for the company. And we did extremely well. Our technology became known as BlackBerry Internet email and it grew to about 50 million BlackBerry users over time. And so really widespread usage within the BlackBerry community. What are and when you were going through that process so they were thinking about licensing it and then the conversations started around whether or not we should just acquire the software. What were some of the things that you were thinking because when you build a company there's different ways to exit right you can go for another funding round you could technically IPO it or you could just sell it to a company. So why did you I think you sort of alluded to it because the .com bust it was it was harder to potentially take it in other directions. Is that the reason why you decided to sell to BlackBerry or what other considerations should you think about when you're trying to exit a company. Yeah, that's that's a great question because a lot of founders have to come to that decision point at some point whether they are actively selling their company or whether somebody approaches them for an acquisition. In our case as I said you know funding was very difficult to raise we did have actually an offer from our existing investors to continue to fund the money fund the company. But the terms were not very attractive for us. Because evaluations had come down significantly at that point because of the .com bust and second consideration was the fact that BlackBerry had you know relationships with all the major carriers around the world. And so you know we've been much more successful getting distribution for our software through BlackBerry than trying to do it on our own. And that ultimately worked out you know for us because as I said you know our technology reached about 50 million BlackBerry users you know within a few years. And was critical and it was also critical for BlackBerry because they were able to not only reach large enterprises but also small businesses you know who could use BlackBerry because of our software. Were there things that a founders should think about when they're starting to get offers or they're starting to get approached or even during the life of the company that can help them get a better valuation when they're exiting is their things the way they structure the revenue or the way they or certain customers they go after the digital think about. I would say the best the couple of things that founders need to consider ideally your company does the saying that your company should be bought not sold. So you want to be in a position where your company is getting offers for acquisition as opposed to you going out there and trying to sell your company. And you should typically look to do an acquisition when the economy is doing really well versus when the economy is doing poorly because at that time it's very hard to sell your company. So first of all you know the economic circumstances should be you know it should be amenable to helping you sell the company and get the best price. And the second thing that I advise in my book is that you should think about hiring an investment bank that specializes in your vertical whatever market you're addressing and they can line up a number of acquirers and create competition between those acquirers and help you get the best price. Because if you have only one acquirer at the table it's a lot more difficult to get a good price than it's either you know something or nothing versus a situation where you have two or three acquirers who are competing to acquire a company and you can get the best price for your company as a result. Did you did you work with an investment bank or is that just us? Yes, yes, we did. Once you got interest from Blackberry we hired an investment bank to help us with the sale of the company. Very smart. Okay, so then so then you sell the company to Blackberry. Do you work for Blackberry for a while? Yes, I did. I did. Blackberry was a great company to work for. I worked there from 2002 to 2006 approximately and I not only did we integrate at the team on technology with Blackberry to create something called Blackberry Internet email. Which as I said reached you know 50 million Blackberry users over time. But also launched a number of Blackberry devices through to it through a team mobile. I for example launched the first. Blackberry device that was that had a phone form factor as opposed to a pda you know form factor. So it was a great time to be at Blackberry. They were growing very fast. And they were kind of the top device that everybody wanted at that time and it was known as crackberry if you remember. Yeah, I do have that device. Yeah, it had quite a run. It had quite a run. Quite a run. Yes, yes, sad to say that they had they got taken over by iPhone and Android, but they had quite a run for about a decade. So you eventually eventually finished up at Blackberry and then you started another company because you just. You couldn't sit around. You couldn't sit around so you had to start live mocha. So walk me through walk me through the second, the second entrepreneur story. The second startup story and how that came about. Yeah, it came about you know based on two factors. One was, you know, I was traveling in Spain with my family and I just landed in in Marabea in Spain. And we rented a car from the from the airport and it was dark and we got lost. And we ended up at a gas station and I, you know, stepped out of the car to ask people around me how to get to the hotel and unfortunately everybody spoke only Spanish at that time. Things are different today, but this was in, you know, 2006, 2007 timeframe. So I turned to my kids who had been learning Spanish for a couple of years in middle school. And I said, okay, you know, ask them for directions in Spanish. And not, not surprisingly, they couldn't really speak any word of Spanish and became clear to me that the way that, you know, kids learn Spanish in high school and middle school. Is really not the way to learn and the way to learn, you know, foreign language is by practicing with native speakers. So that was kind of one one thing that stuck in my mind. The second thing was at that time was at a stone, you know, started becoming popular and they had these kiosks in airports. This was in 2007, but they were selling their boxed CD-ROM based, you know, language learning software. And it's struck struck me that in the day and age at that time, broadband internet was quite prevalent that why do you need a piece of CD-ROM software on your PC? Why not just scream it from the internet and you could create an online learning program that could, you know, teach you a foreign language. So we came up with this concept of social language learning where everyone was not just a student, but also a teacher. So I could be learning Spanish as a native English speaker and I could, you know, help somebody in China learn English, whereas somebody in Mexico could be learning English and teaching me how to, you know, speak Spanish. So that was the genesis of life mocha and we were the first of its kind on the internet and we grew very rapidly to over 15 million users in over 200 countries around the world. And what was different or what was the same when you started live mocha was this another idea that you took to investors pre revenue or did you bootstrap it at this point because I'm sure you had some cash coming from the past exit to walk me through the inception. Yeah, in this case, we had launched live mocha and we got really good press and the investment community. This was pre the financial crisis, the investment community was investing in startups and so we were lucky to have raised funding at that point. So today is about $6 million in funding from a local VC firm here in Seattle and then started, you know, rapidly growing the the our user base from that point on. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode trade coffee now I'm a coffee lover and I just found out a really unnerving stat and fact about coffee 90% of coffee that you buy from a grocery store is actually stale. You heard that right it blew my mind the coffee you know in love and you go by from your grocery store needs an upgrade and that's not the way coffee is actually supposed to taste. 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And one one thing you do speak about is that fundraising doesn't just have to be an art there can be a science to it so I actually wanted to touch on it during the live mocha fundraise versus versus a team on fundraise because I feel like it's unfair with your fundraising and a dot com boom people are going to say well that was just easy but you did it twice now right so you did the fundraising for a live mocha as well and also raised six million. So when you do raise money what are some strategies that you can use to pitch VCs and then I also want to understand a little bit more about the fundraising process and some lessons that you have because I think that's something that I think a lot of first time entrepreneurs really have a hard time with so how do you turn this into a science from an art from just pitching anybody and crossing your fingers. Yeah a critical piece of that fundraising strategy is to really tell a compelling story about what kind of transformation is happening around the world that is going to make your company successful. In our case the key transformation that was happening at that time was globalization everybody was talking about globalization you know they're talking about how you know George were being created in countries like China and India and Brazil and as a result of that there was an immense need for people around the world to learn English. So whether you were in China and your Brazil and you know country where jobs were being outsourced to it was critical for people in those countries you know they wanted to get ahead then learning English was their ticket to success. And so you know I kind of painted a picture of a billion plus people around the world wanting to learn English and how the internet would enable us to reach people all around the world without having to sell these you know see the boxes and create distribution for software and all that all that could be done very easily you know through the internet. So that's one of the critical pieces that you have to kind of talk about and then you have to show you know how your solution is really unique and it's going to capture the imagination of you know the potential customers. And then finally it comes down to the team you know you know I had prior success in having sold a team on to blackberry and so that gave me some credibility that I had achieved some level of success and that I could potentially repeat that again with Lamoka. And did you have to did you have to reach out to many investors or did you only have to reach out to a select few is it a volume game at any point. No it's not a volume game typically you reach out to between five or 10 investors and either you are you find traction or you don't at which point you need to kind of if you really can't get your story across you know that you know five to 10 investors. Then you need to kind of pull back and say what's going on what's going on what's wrong with my pitch and really you know talk to existing investors other entrepreneurs and understand what's going on is it external factors is it your pitch that is not resonating what's going on that's not because you know you're just going to be. You're just going to be otherwise just bang your head on the wall and getting bloody in the process and wasting a lot of time and energy when you could be focusing on building a company. I agree yeah no sometimes I feel like when I speak with founders who are fundraising it seems like almost a full time job to do the fundraising and they can't focus on their company because they're spending so much time looking for money. Yeah that's making the right time also to pitch a company is very important so it all again depends on the investment climate but generally when you have some real traction to show that's when you should go out and raise your next round of funding. And the other point that you discuss and you speak about in the book I thought is an interesting point and I mean I agree with this point a lot is that you have to be careful who you select as a VC partner walk me through why that is. Yeah I mean there are you'll find that there are two categories of VCs out there there are those who have who have been prior entrepreneurs have deep operational work experience and they know what it takes to build out you know great stars. And those there you know who have MBAs of financial background but don't really have expertise in in how to build the company now both sets of people are really smart. We generally will find that there are a lot of smart people but I found better success with the VCs who have prior startup experience because they really understand you know what it takes to build a startup they're more patient they have better advice to offer you they have more connections so that you can leverage those connections to build your company and build partnerships and find people can advise you on your startup. So I typically encourage founders to go find VCs who have deep success and deep operational experience to back them up. And do you when you structure those agreements with the venture partner is that part of the actual agreement where they may they may offer some strategy or they may make introductions or is this sort of like an unspoken handshake agreement just because you know the experience that they have. No it's an unspoken handshake agreement typically what happens is when you get investment from a VC firm then one or two partners from that firm will join your board and so by joining a board they are committing to spend a certain amount of time with your company and advising on your strategy and operational issues so that's an unspoken agreement yes. Very good and the last thing that that I pulled out from this book that I thought was important was the emphasis on company culture and the importance that plays in growing a startup and I think that everybody I don't think anyone's going to disagree that having a strong company culture is important but in a startup environment why is it even potentially more so. Yes it's actually not very common for founders to take the time to create a company culture and oftentimes the company culture will simply reflect you know how the founders you know work. So when I was a Microsoft example you know Bill Gates didn't define a culture and say these are our cultural values we basically all emulated bill and we were super like bill we were also you know super hungry super aggressive. Which you know served Microsoft well for a long time but also got Microsoft into trouble with the justice department so I definitely advise founders to take the time to work with the management team to come up with a set of values. That they want to you know promulgate to employees within the company and take every opportunity to really discuss those values whether it's you know new employee orientation or whether it's company meetings where they highlight certain accomplishments and kind of relate those accomplishments back to their values. Those are the things that are really important and the reason that the culture is important is because at some point the company is going to outgrow you and you will not have the option to work with everyone and so you want to make sure that the culture defines the car trails and the process by which. You know your employees will make decisions and how they'll interact with each other how they'll interact with customers how they'll interact with partners and if you want a certain type of behavior then you need to define that culture and really make sure that your employees understand your values you know Amazon is a great example they have you know 14 different principles that they've articulated. Which are you know in fact the hiding process they make sure that the hiding people based on those principles. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now you may have heard me speak about leveling up in the past how we can level up our careers our businesses our customer experience. 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I think that's actually a good point I mentioned that culture is important but you're right I think that's something when you're a startup founder you may not see the value in it day one just because you're so distracted with all the other stressors that are going on in your life but think long term think longevity like you have to get that you have to get that right from day one or that can that can damage you in in the long term for sure. I mean if take the example of Uber you know Uber was super successful because they were very very aggressive you know Travis Kaleneck who's the founder and CEO for a long time was very very aggressive and in you know in fighting the taxi industry. But unfortunately the aggressive culture really created a lot of problems for them and ultimately he was fired from his from his position. So you really have to be very careful about how you define your culture and how that changes you know what time maybe you need to be aggressive initially but then as you grow your company you know the tone of the company you know might might need to change as well. And one thing that I just wanted to ask you because you put this book together and even as I was I was reading through the it goes through literally every part of building a company which is like incredibly impressive. Who is you know here show it here if somebody's watching or you know it'll be in the show notes as well but who is this book for what is the most important thing that you want somebody to take away after they read this book. Yeah so the book is is meant for anyone who has an interest in either becoming an entrepreneur or understanding how the startup industry works. So it's designed to be especially for founders or aspiring founders is designed to be a guide book that you can one read from start to finish and understand the whole journey but also can be a guide books reference so you know have a couple of chapters on fundraising and how terms sheets are negotiated what does each term mean etc well you might forget after you read the book. That specific portion but you know when you get ready to negotiate your terms sheet with we see partner you may want to go back to the book and read okay what does you know participating preferred mean what does anti dilution clause mean all those you know terms are covered extensively in the book. Very good and then I actually forgot to mention so I'll leave it in the show notes but the book is called from startup exit and then this actually brings me to my next point if people do want to get the book or they want to connect with you yeah best website social media where do you want people to go you can drop as many handles or websites as you'd like. Yeah so the main website I have is Sharish netcarnie.com so that's spelled S H I R I S H N A D K R N I dot com and you'll find me very active on LinkedIn as Sharish N S H I R I S H N as well as the same handle on Twitter as well so I'm very active on those particular channels. Very good okay so to finish off these interviews I just like do a couple rapid fire questions to pull out some insights from your career so as long as short as you like whatever is fine with me so the biggest challenge that you had in your career what was it and how did you overcome it. The biggest challenge was with my first company with the team on systems as we discussed you know my initial for a with the product was not successful and then we had to pivot and so we were successful in pivoting a company and finding a good solution which ultimately led to the acquisition by blackberry. And I think that's actually really important point like I think we've we've kind of glossed over the fact that you've mentioned the word pivot a few times how important is being able to pivot as an entrepreneur. Yes it's always has to be at the back of your mind as you're doing you know testing for product market fit you know you need to continually understand your customer pain points how are they using your software are they. Engage with your software are you retain your customers all of these things you have to really understand and have ideas in your back of your mind is to you know how to take the product forward whether it's you know whether it's fine tuning it or whether it's a complete pivot those are things that you need to be thinking about all the time. You've probably had a lot of people that have impacted you over the course of your career if you had to pick one person who had an incredible impact who was that person and what did they teach you. I would say my my mother was very impactful to me she always believed in me and encouraged me to do things beyond what I thought my capacity was. So she really pushed me hard and gave me the freedom to you know and also encouragement more so to pursue things that I thought were a stretch for me and that's how I kind of grew over over time and when I wanted to come to the United States she did not raise any objections she encouraged me to do that even though it meant that you know we would be separated and not be able to see each other for long periods of time. If you could recommend a book or a podcast that you've read or consume lately what would it be. For for the book I will one of my favorite books is called Positioning by I think the author is Al Ries and it's incredibly smart book about how to think about positioning. You're a product in a variety of different ways and my favorite podcast is how I built this by Guy Razz. Yeah I'm trying to get there one day one day you will be on that list is yeah exactly exactly okay so if if you had to tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be. I would say start sooner I started my first company when I was you know 40 years old which is not you know too old but I tell young people these days that as they're especially graduating from college is that hey you have you know you have all the freedom in the world in the middle of the month of risk you know stay in your parents in a basement if you need to save money but you know go start something or go join a startup because this is the time to do it and you'll have all the energy and excitement in the world to do it. What is a big misconception about startups or entrepreneurship. I would say a big misconception is that you know you need to work 80 90 hours a week certainly there are some number of people who do that but I think you can do a startup and still you know I had you know young kids growing up when I was doing my startups and I still managed to find time to spend with them help them with their homework and so forth. Not long hours but you don't necessarily need to sacrifice everything to achieve you know success it is I mentioned that to people that it's a marathon where you need to run you know fast but you need to pace yourself you can't burn yourself out in the first first earnings because you need to continue going for a long period of time. And last question what is success mean to you. Success to me the thing that I get the most gratification from is getting the message out about whatever you're doing to a large community of people and and and delighting them with what you have done. So whether it's a you know product that team on or live mocha baby reached you know 50 million blackberry users are 50 million live mocha users on my book I want to get the word out and and help people you know and delight them and help them in their journey as much as possible. you