Fiverr CEO & Founder, Micha Kaufman: "If You’re Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You’re Done!"

1. 0:00 – 1:00

   Intro

   1. MKMicha Kaufman0:00

      (dramatic music plays) Why do you think it's my responsibility to make you better as professionals? (censored) you. Seriously, if you're not gonna take the time to make yourself valuable, to embrace reality, you're doomed. I'm not gonna help you. If you don't want to do this, you're either gonna be poor or a burden on society. And again, this is a part of this awakening. Wake the (censored) up. Grow up.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings0:25

      Ready to go? (rock music plays) Micha, it is so good to have you on the show today. Listen, I've been looking forward to this one, so thank you so much for joining me.

   3. MKMicha Kaufman0:44

      Thanks for having me, Harry.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings0:45

      Not at all. I've heard many good things for a long time. I had Adam of Bessemer on a while ago, and he sung your praises then and so I wanted to make it happen then. And then when you, you know, did your (laughs) recent activity, I was like, "Shit, we've got to make this show happen." So I want to

2. 1:00 – 3:03

   AI Is Coming for Your Job

   1. HSHarry Stebbings1:00

      start, "AI is coming for your jobs. Heck, it's coming for my job, too. This is a wake-up call." Can I just ask, what spawned this post? What was the reason/catalyst for it then?

   2. MKMicha Kaufman1:13

      This was boiling for, for a while, and I think that this is also echoing some of my team's thoughts about their futures as, as professionals. And for some reason, but some of it might be also frustration of, of not seeing people going through this wake-up moment, and I really wanted to validate a lot of what people were, were thinking, um, between themselves or in, you know, in small groups. But... And be very blunt about it, but also offer, um, some directions or at least thoughts about what you can do about it, and then have this as an invitation for a discussion, which we did have after the, uh, the email. And this, this was surprisingly large. I- I've asked my, uh, my chief of staff to assign a room that can, that can hold, I don't know, 50 people. And I wrote an email saying, "Look, I'm, I'm gonna spend three hours sitting in that room with my laptop, just working, and if you wanna have a conversation, I'm there. Just come s- sit beside me. Let's chat." And so, so we, we scheduled that time. And I came to that room and there were about 250 people just cramping in that room, and I wasn't prepared to give a lecture. (laughs) The idea was that this would be a conversation and it turned out into a, into what started with a brain dump on my part and then, and then just having, having a conversation, which, which is pretty hard to do with 250 people.

3. 3:03 – 9:40

   Confronting the AI Threat to Fiverr

   1. MKMicha Kaufman3:03

   2. HSHarry Stebbings3:03

      Ca- can we start on that brain dump? I, I'm so... You, you're bluntly... You're a direct dude, I'm a direct dude. Um, my question to you is, we've seen Chegg be k- bluntly killed as a business by AI, and, you know, Fiverr is one that people say is very vulnerable, and I'm sure people you know talk about it in that same vulnerability. When you did the brain dump to people, what did you say in the brain dump?

   3. MKMicha Kaufman3:26

      It was, again, very blunt, um, in... What I told the team is this. I said, "In an ideal situation, my expectation of you is that each and every one of you, and it doesn't matter what you do, is going to replace 100% of what you do with automation." Now, maybe it's, it's impossible. Maybe you can't get to that number. But ideally, that would be the number. And, and the obvious question is, great, if I can automate 100% of what, what I do, you don't need me. And my answer to that was, "Actually, it's exactly the opposite, because if you can automate 100% of what you do, that means that now you have 100% of your time free to figure out what are the things that you can do that cannot be automated. You can spend more time th- you know, having non-linear thinking. You can, you can work with me on strategy." And I actually said that this was... As, as I was writing this, um, it d- it, it dawned on me that there is something very interesting about this process when you, when you understand how AI, uh, augments who we are and, and, and how we do things, is that maybe in, in a, in a weird way, what's happening with AI is forcing us to rediscover our humanity. Because it... In many ways if, if, if functions that we do as, do seriously as robots, can be automated, then there's no reason for a human being to do it. But what makes you, Harry, special? What makes you special? Is, is this the fact that you have a very advanced taste for things and you can determine right from wrong? Um, i- is, is it the fact that you are great at ideating and thinking in a way that is unconventional? What is making you special? This forces you to actually...... get down to understanding your humanity again.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings5:59

      There's so many things I just want to unpack there. Uh, you mentioned there about, um, finding h- humanity again, uh, inherent part of humanity is also vulnerability and fear, um, running from things that can kill us. I'm literally just came from a board 10 minutes ago where the CEO was like, "My team is not embracing AI because they're like scared that it will replace them over time gradually. How do I, as a CEO, encourage adoption without fear?"

   5. MKMicha Kaufman6:26

      So that gets me to another point that was, that was super blunt. Look, w- when you think about high tech, um, the average age is very young. In, you know, I've been, I've been building companies for almost 30 years, and when I started, uh, when I started developing my career, um, it was very obvious that as a professional, you need to be up-to-date. You need to be able to be valuable. And in order to do that, you need to constantly upgrade yourself. But I think that what happened in the past 10, maybe 15 years, was this notion that your place of work has the responsibility to make you better. And my point to the team was, "Look, guys, this is an aberration. This is like you're getting everything wrong. And let me tell you how things, uh, really are. Whose responsibility is it to make you a better person? Whose responsibility is it to make you a better spouse? Whose responsibility is to make you a better dad, a better parent? And why do you think it's my responsibility to make you better as professionals? Fuck you. Seriously, if you're not gonna take the time to make yourself valuable, to embrace reality in a good way, you're doomed. You're doom- I'm not gonna help you. I am not, it's not my responsibility. But I will tell you what I will do. I will help those who want to go through that process. Meaning, if you want to help yourself, I'll be there for you. That's my vow, okay? But if not, fuck you. You're do- you're done." You're done. You're not done at Fiver. You're done, period. Because no one, th- th- there's not gonna be demand for people that cannot upgrade themselves. People that have, you know, uh, that are having a bad time coping with reality and understanding what it means. I'm s- I'm sorry. So this changes now, and, uh, each person should figure out what, wh- what they want to do with their time.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings9:02

      I, I mean, essentially, when you were saying it, it's funny. I was like, "No, I disagree totally." Like a, a husband or a wife should want the other person to be better, push them, challenge them in ways that make them grow. But to your point, it starts with you. Uh, the, the additional is good.

   7. MKMicha Kaufman9:16

      If your spouse wants to help you become better, but you're not interested in doing that, it's not gonna happen. If you don't put the time, it's not gonna happen. I'm putting the time to give the infrastructure for growth. That's fine, but I am not ris- I'm, I'm not your dad. I'm not, I'm not responsible for you.

4. 9:40 – 18:00

   Do People Really Want to Work Anymore?

   1. MKMicha Kaufman9:40

   2. HSHarry Stebbings9:40

      So, I, I agree completely with that. My subsequent question then, without sounding bleak, is, you know, I'm very good friends with Jason Lampkin from SaaStr, who has quite a bleak summarization on this, but he says, "Yeah, and no one wants to work today." Like, young people don't wanna work like they used to. And so my question to you is, when you reflect and look, how much of society is really wanting to embrace that change versus not?

   3. MKMicha Kaufman10:01

      I think that it's gonna be wrong to try and understand reality through the lenses of the cur- of the present, of the current present. I think that right now, we're in a very fuzzy state in time, where, you know, things, things change very, very fast. I feel that we are in a period that is very similar to the dot-com, but it's now dot-AI. So, it used to be pets.com, it's now pets.ai. Whatever, it's the same bullshit. And there's like, in my feed, there's like 40 startups every day. There is no need for so many, but, but everybody's trying to cope with the endless amount of information that comes in, in, and, and this is very discouraging. I don't think that this is going to be the situation in the future. And so, I don't think that the way people judge the present has too many implications about the future, because we're in a very unstable world right now. Now, the question, do, do people want to work or not, in my view, is a personal question. If you don't want to work, the exit from the building is on ground floor. Bye-bye. And that's fine. I don't think that the, it, it is my primary function to figure this question out with people. My assumption is those who wanna come and engage, um, in, in the activity of working, either to make a living, it's usually the combination of making a living, um, expressing yourself, the search for meaning. Um, look, we, we spend the majority of our time, our awake time at work.It needs to have a meaning. If it doesn't have a meaning, then it's, it's very miserable. Now, if, if you don't want to do this, you're either gonna be poor or a burden on society, or a burden on your parents. And again, this is a part of this awakening. Wake the fuck up. Grow up. If you don't wanna work, don't work. I think that as human beings, we're by nature a competitive creature. Why? Because we need to compete for food, we need to mate, um, and i- if you translate this into modern times, you wanna, you know, you, you wanna have the best looking girl at school, you wanna have the fastest car, you wanna fly business, not coach. You, like, it's... These are basic stuff. They don't come out of thin air. They come out of hard work. And in my view, it's more important to actually look at, at the meaning part of it.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings13:09

      You know what I love about my job, honestly, is the fact that I admit to my woeful lack of experience in some respects, and you have 30 years. You there draw the analogy to the dot-com. When you look at today and the dot-com, where do you look at today and go, "That's unsustainable and a sign of bubble-like times?"

   5. MKMicha Kaufman13:30

      Oh, look. So I, I mentioned 40 new companies a day on my feed. There is no market for so many companies. And by the way, it started... It actually started, I don't know, eight or 10 years ago when I started talking about bubbles. Because w- when you look at markets and you look at the amount of companies that are actually competing for the same customer, for the same function or need, you realize that there's just too many companies for a market that cannot entertain that amount of companies. So I think that it was boiling to a point where the market needed to have a cleanup. And sometimes cleanups happen with a lot of companies go bust, and sometimes it happens through consolidation of saying, "Oh, there's..." whatever. "There's five companies competing for a market that is very specific in cybersecurity. This is a market that can probably entertain one or two in that sub-segment. Um, someone's gonna win, which by definition is not gonna leave that much for the rest. Which means that there's gonna be a cleanup, either through consolidation or through companies going bust." Right now, what we're seeing is on steroids. And what, what's... You know, (sighs) I was, I was reflecting about this, uh, a while ago of saying, you know, when I started building my first company, the... I- I was referring this as time to clone. Okay? Meaning, um, you create something that is outstanding, you succeed. How fast would someone clone you? And maybe 25 years ago, this would have taken a year, e- depending on the sophistication. When we launch- launched Fiverr 15 years ago, time to clone was between six and nine months. Okay? The time to clone right now is, uh, uh, I don't... 10 days? Whatever. Like, I, um... Eh, p- probably for simpler stuff, it's nothing. So, so th- the influx of just, of just the, the amount of things that are being built, and they don't have a differentiator, they don't have the delta of what they're adding to the existing, is, is really, really marginal. And there's another thing that is really interesting about this. Um, and, and, and you can see this... I- it's hard to, um... I think it's hard to, uh, measure exactly. But what's interesting is... Think about, think about the horizon of, of building something. So it used to be that you had Mount Everest in front of you, and this was the m- the mountain of building something. So you, you had to spend tremendous amount of preparation, energy, all of it, to climb the mountain. When you reach the peak, what you realize was that there's like 10 other Everests in front of you that you need to climb. And what's happening right now is I think that we've received a lift. So now you get a ride to, let's call it, 300 feet from the peak. Okay? So you can take a ride, and usually when you build stuff, that, that could be lovable, that could be wa- whatever. Then you, you get stuck at some point, and then you need to climb the rest of it with a professional or whatever, getting help. But when you reach the peak, what you understand is, "Now it's really easy to climb, but I'm still at ground zero, because who's gonna know about what I've built? H- how would I... How would I market this?" So it's shortened that phase, but it didn't change the actual tough issue. My sister builds apps. Great. And this is what's happening with AI. It's

5. 18:00 – 23:08

   Why Your Startup Can Be Copied in 10 Days

   1. MKMicha Kaufman18:00

      so easy, everybody's building.... but what's the, what's the true value? It's, it's, it's very small to none.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings18:08

      Well, that was my, my question to you, which was on the time to clone. Does that not just reduce the importance of time to clone? 'Cause respectfully, I would say that Fiverr's value is, is built in its brand, is in its distribution channels, is in the trust that it has with the supply side. It's not the front end of the website or the payment system of the website. It's all of the externalities or other products that make it an enterprise valuable company.

   3. MKMicha Kaufman18:31

      You, you're right. But, but here's, but here's the but. You know, when the, when the company was nine months old, there were already like 30 clones. And years after, there were thousands of clones. And we were having a debate between ourselves what to do with it, and we had two camps. Um, there was one camp that said, "Let's fuck 'em all." Okay?

   4. HSHarry Stebbings18:57

      (laughs)

   5. MKMicha Kaufman18:57

      "Let's go after everyone. Let's, let's fight it. It's unfair. Um, uh, people should not be just copying our labor and our concepts and all of our hard work." In my camp, the way I was looking at it, I said, "Look, the, the, the advantage that we have, um, is double." One, we're first for the market, and we're in, um, it is speed. It's just sp- like we're running really, really fast. And when you think about the analogy of running, when you run, your head can point to only one direction. It's either in front of you, or you look behind yourself. Try running by looking back. You're g- I'm, I'm telling you, you are going to slow down, because it's, it's, you, you lose your balance. You're afraid to hit, you know, a b- like a, a wall or, you know, or a pole. Um, so you need to look straight, and you need to run as fast as you can. The second advantage is they don't know what we know, because we're ahead of the game. We're the ones who are innovating. We're the ones who are actually figure out- figuring out how to solve the very, very fundamental tough questions and challenges, and as you said, there's the front end, and there's the magic that happens behind the scenes. But what's the but? The but is we had nine months of head start, which were the nine months where we started seeding the brand and creating something powerful and creating a movement and a community around it. If the time to clone is 10 seconds, you don't have that time to develop it. So you leave more to luck. Look, everybody has... I mean, luck has a tremendous portion in succ- in, in success. I'll be the first to admit, but the portion of luck varies. And if you don't have the head start, then you need to be super, super lucky. The, the, all the stars need to align for you, and I think it just makes things very hard. And what I see a lot of entrepreneurs doing these days is they're just building off of stuff, and they're trying to introduce a, a marginal advancement on what was already built, because their imagination is not large enough. And the, and the fact is that when you do incremental stuff, you get incremental results.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings21:54

      Does defensibility not shift in terms of where it accrues in the system? And I don't mean that to sound like a VC with a load of bullshit words, but if you think about time to clone being where defensibility was before, now time to clone is almost nil, so there's no defensibility there.

   7. MKMicha Kaufman22:08

      Mm-hmm.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings22:08

      But it's in the mid-spectrum where you're at 1 to 10 million in ARR, where you're getting great data from high-quality customers, enterprise or consumer, the way you collect it, cleanse it, utilize that data. Maybe defensibility's just shifted different parts of the spectrum.

   9. MKMicha Kaufman22:25

      Uh, you're absolutely true, and I think that this is where, again, as I was saying that AI forces us to discover our humanity, these are the things that are going to, you know, to generate the most interesting startups. It's, it's that level of thinking. It's that level of building. It's not... I'm, I'm not just building for the sake of building. I'm, I'm taking the time to understand the real needs, the real challenges and, and trying to build off of that instead of saying, "Oh, people like this, so let's make X dot one," or, or like the next version of something.

6. 23:08 – 28:53

   How Do You Invest When There’s 20 Startups in Every Category?

   1. MKMicha Kaufman23:08

   2. HSHarry Stebbings23:08

      Again, another of the reason I love this show is 'cause I just get to ask advice from much smarter people like you. I'm an investor for a living too, um, and there's 20 companies in every single category that I invest in. Um, I just invested in an LLM optimization engine.

   3. MKMicha Kaufman23:24

      Mm-hmm.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings23:24

      Uh, we've both seen 30 of those. Um, how- (laughs) don't laugh.

   5. MKMicha Kaufman23:29

      (laughs)

   6. HSHarry Stebbings23:29

      (laughs) How do you... (laughs) No, we'll edit that out. (laughs) Uh, my question is, how do you advise me as an investor then to navigate and operate a new world where every category has 20, not two to three like it was 10 years ago?

   7. MKMicha Kaufman23:44

      Look, this, this goes down to, to maybe, uh, again, a more fundamental view of what's happening with technology right now. (sighs) Look, technology by itself doesn't give advantage to anyone when it's 100% democratized. Okay? And i- and here's the tricky part.The go to market of OpenAI in, what was it? November 2022, was as democratized as possible because they gave it for free. You can't, you can't be freer than free. And so, what happened with that is... And this is what people don't get. And this is, and definitely they didn't get at launch or the year after, but they're realizing right now, they- everybody felt smarter. "Ooh, I can write incredible stuff. Oh, I can, you know, do research, uh, much faster." Yes, but so does everybody else. Meaning, yes, it's super powerful, but then it doesn't give you advantage because it's giving the same advantage to everyone, which makes everyone get back to ground zero. It is elevating the standard, but it is just picking up everyone to the starting line. And so, as you think about how to apply this to a VC thinking, it goes back to the oldest way of making judgments, which is look at the people that are running the company, (laughs) you know. Because you make decision based on people. Technology will evolve. Ideas will change. Companies will pivot. But who are the people that are running the show? How talented are they? How passionate are they to what they're doing? Are they 100% opportunistic or are they missionaries, right? They- th- they're not gonna rest until they get it. Are they adaptable? Do they think about problems from first principle kind of thinking, about fundamental truths, about, uh, do they have these things and invest in people? I mean, at the end, I mean, I've, I've invested in tens of companies. It's, it's the b- it's the best people that get it. I wrote off companies of saying, "Ugh, this... Okay, this is money lost for sure." And these were the most successful companies I've invested in, because they had the best people, period.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings26:27

      Which company did you write off that was the most successful?

   9. MKMicha Kaufman26:31

      Uh, this would, this would be brutal. Um-

   10. HSHarry Stebbings26:35

       But they were successful, so they'd be thrilled, no?

   11. MKMicha Kaufman26:38

       Uh, yeah, but it's a public company.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings26:42

       Oh.

   13. MKMicha Kaufman26:42

       And I don't know if telling the story would, uh, would, would do (laughs) would do well.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings26:47

       (laughs) .

   15. MKMicha Kaufman26:47

       But this was, I mean, this was, this was a, a company, this was seed stage. Um, it was a tough market. It was a, it was a tough nut to crack. Um, the, uh, the company had internal things between the, you know, between the founders. I mean, all the, all the, all the tough, tough stuff. And, and I said, you know, "It's, it's... I mean, there's so many reasons why this company needs to die." But it didn't. I mean, pe- people... I think, um, I think one of the investors of Etsy, um, talked about them in the same way. He said, "You know why I invested in Etsy?" And I said, "No, why?" He said, "Because this company ha- you know, should have died at least seven times, and it didn't." And this, this to me speaks for the strength of the company and the strength of the team behind it. And, and so this was the same story with, w- with this company. I mean, this... I mean, I, I j- I... A- at some point, I also lost a little bit of connection with the company, um, wh- which is, which is fine. And, and then I realized that they were going public, and I was like, "The fuck? S- seriously?" And, and I think that this is, this is probably the best investment I've ever, ever, ever made. The multiples were like in the, in the 50, like, like, crazy, crazy story. It's all about the people, dude.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings28:26

       Right. I always say seed is about three things. Founder, being directionally correct. In other words, you don't make pillows or, you know, beds. Uh, and three, is the deal okay? I'm not gonna do 50 on 250 for a seed.

   17. MKMicha Kaufman28:39

       Yeah.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings28:39

       If they're three, go mad.

   19. MKMicha Kaufman28:41

       Awesome. So there you have it. I, I don't think that this principle has changed. And, um, to be honest, I don't think it's gonna change.

   20. HSHarry Stebbings28:50

       You, you made the analogy to the dot-com. Do you think we

7. 28:53 – 37:53

   Is an AI Bubble Burst Coming?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings28:53

      will have, uh, an AI bubble burst in the next few years or do you think the exponential advancement in the core technology means that we will, um, sustain excitement and financing?

   2. MKMicha Kaufman29:03

      In terms of the amount of companies that are gonna be around, absolutely. Like, look, I don't know, like n- n- uh, 90... you know, 999 companies out of a thousand maybe is gonna be around for a year, maybe two. It's gonna be, it's gonna be ruthless. An- and I've a- already explained why. I think there's just too many companies that are not introducing interesting advancements and I think it's just, it's just opportunistic, which, by the way, there's nothing wrong with be- being opportunistic but the market can't sustain it. I think that the market is going to start sorting itself out. So you're gonna see, much like what we've seen before, you're gonna see... I mean, w- w- where... I was thinking about the dot-com. The dot-com also gave birth to Amazon, right? So it's like... So there are companies that have true value, true mission, um, and, and the patience to actually build that and, and, and staying true to your, uh, the c- you know, core reason to exist.It's gonna be the same here. The market is gonna arrange itself. There's gonna be very, very large players that are gonna be foundational players, which some, I think, we know who they are, or have a g- a good chance of being these companies. I mean, the Googles of the world, uh, you know, the Entropics, the, the OpenAIs, which (smacks lips) I, I don't know what the play is going to be exactly, but it might be reduced to the equivalent of paying for CPU cycles. It's just gonna be GPU cycles, it doesn't matter, but it's a cloud play, essentially. Um, and then there's gonna be the other applicational layers on top of it. But again, I don't think that we can judge from where we are right now, because it's just changing too fast for the market to get a chance to organize itself. I think it's gonna, it's gonna go through a clean-up process, and that clean-up is gonna be triggered by investors, because at some point, they'll say, you know, "Fuck it. Like, I'm, I'm out. Like, the, I'll, I'll, I'll let it sort out and then I'll figure out." So, that's gonna dry up. Look, if you're an AI company right now, um, you, you have, you have two fundamental problems. Um, o- one is getting noticed, so g- getting, getting customers, and then it's retaining them. Um, i- in both, the vast, the overwhelming majority fail, rightfully so. There's not that many... There's, there's no space for so many companies, and there is so much space for people to actually pay for something. So, what I think, we're in the infancy of that market, um, because there is, there is, I think, two main things that are missing. One is regulation, and the other is expensive tech. (laughs) Okay? And what I mean by the second is, um, the, the type of technology that is not free, or 20 bucks, or 200 bucks, the technology that is freaking expensive, so that very few can actually allow themselves to, to have it. So, that's gonna create differentiators between players, and so those who are already large or at least have the backing to actually invest in it are gonna have it, and those who don't, won't. And that's fine. We're before these two, these two transformations, regulation and expensive, expensive tech. And this is gonna be another force in arranging and sorting out the market.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings33:09

      So, I was on, on a call with a massive bank this morning, and they were like, "Harry, there's no way that we can use Notion, let alone use AI tools, dude." Like, enterprise-

   4. MKMicha Kaufman33:19

      Why?

   5. HSHarry Stebbings33:19

      ... adoption is so far but compliance-

   6. MKMicha Kaufman33:22

      But why? Why? Wha- what was the reason?

   7. HSHarry Stebbings33:24

      Why not com- compliance? Compliance. That you cannot, for data and privacy-

   8. MKMicha Kaufman33:27

      Mm-hmm.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings33:27

      ... record calls, record calls and then take summarized notes. Not a cha- I mean, they laughed me out of the room, Misha.

   10. MKMicha Kaufman33:35

       Look, fine. Um, so they shouldn't use it, um, wh- which is, which gonna be another reason why banks are gonna be, gonna be left behind. W- whatever. But l- look, it needs to be sorted out, so if, if compliance is the issue, compliance is gonna sort itself out. Some of it is gonna be, like, uh, hosted on location, some of it... Whatever, there's solutions for that. Um, do banks use any cloud services? I guess they do. Is cloud safe? Well, you know, uh, here and there. Uh, do you have companies on the cloud with compliancy? Yes, you do. So you can use them. Like, it's, nothing is, nothing is 100% safe. I don't think that these are the interesting problems, to be honest.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings34:24

       What do you think are the most interesting problems?

   12. MKMicha Kaufman34:26

       Well, (smacks lips) I, I think that, um, questions like, um, are we okay with the fact that, um, truth is dead? (laughs) Like, that c- we, we, we can't even tell what's real and what's not. Are we okay by not being able to, uh, differentiate between things that are human and things that are not? You know, when are we being manipulated and not? Do we... Uh, b- but there's even a much, much greater and much more interesting question, which is, are... d- how do we consider ourselves as human beings in our place in the world? My view is, I'll, I'll give you my view, my view is that humans, you, you and I, are the center of the universe. Everything evolves around us.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings35:28

       Sure.

   14. MKMicha Kaufman35:28

       Acting from, from an assumption that we are in the center. Are we okay with losing that center? Because what's happening right now is going there. Because if, you know, if, if we continue to develop technology in, in, in a, in a way that e- eventually is gonna be unsupervised because it develops itself, and we feed it because it's based on us, but it doesn't, it doesn't care about us, because, you know, AI now is eating the world. It is learning from everything everyone ever created. It's mixing it, it's churning new results without even saying, "You know, I've, I've just, uh, generated a, a nice podcast based on what I've learned from Harry." No, fuck Harry. Right? It's just generating stuff. So, my actual concern is that if this will go on over time-... then what's gonna be our motivation to continue creating and sharing stuff if, if it has zero value? I mean, some of, some of, some of the motivation to create is internal. But as human beings, we need feedback. So, we, we want to see what... how the things that we create impact others. This is why we share. This is why you have open-source code, right? (laughs) Because, because people can, people can use what you, what you've done, but they can build off of it. But if this... if, if it has no value, then why, why would we create? And if we stop creating-

   15. HSHarry Stebbings37:09

       Well, why, why would it, why would... I'm sorry, why would it have no value? If you look at AI-generated content today, it has not quite the same value, but it has a similar value. A lot of short form-

   16. MKMicha Kaufman37:19

       No, no.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings37:19

       ... video stays actually-

   18. MKMicha Kaufman37:21

       No, but that wasn't the question. The question is, what is the value for those who created the actual content on which AI is being trained? If when AI generates something, because it learned from me, I don't get any credit for it. I don't get compensated for it. You know that copyright is dead, essentially. It is dead. It's a notion from 1710, and it's dead overnight. There is no copyright. It's done. It's dead.

   19. HSHarry Stebbings37:52

       I'm so

8. 37:53 – 42:10

   We’re Creating for AI, Not People

   1. HSHarry Stebbings37:53

      sorry, can you help me understand why copyright is dead and when so much of content-

   2. MKMicha Kaufman37:56

      Well-

   3. HSHarry Stebbings37:56

      ... and media is predicated on it? Just help me understand. I'm really naive.

   4. MKMicha Kaufman38:00

      If you look at the arc of advancement of humanity or, you know, homo sapiens have been around for what, like, 300,000 years? It was pretty linear for a long while. What changed the, the, the pace of advancement of humanity was the printing press or the, the, uh, uh, the, the printing machine. And because it allowed for the distribution of knowledge, which made more people knowledgeable, which inspired them to create stuff, and then through press, distribute it, so that more people can enjoy it. Very close, maybe a hundred years, maybe less, after the Gutenberg, uh, there was this 1710 act in the UK that was, that was called the, uh, the Act for the Advancement of Learning or something, which was the basis of copyright, which said, "To motivate people to create and share, we want to give them protection." One is their right for their, for the, uh, creation to bear their name, so the... you know, and then to commercialize this if they want. So, one is a moral right, right? And, and another is a commercial right. And this is how we advance because people wanted to both create stuff but share it be- because they, they got the recognition, um, for doing this and because it created connection, because you knew who wrote this piece, so you can get in touch with them. And maybe it nurtures new ideas, and maybe there's forks, and maybe there's... it inspires other people to do stuff. This was, this was on steroids over a course of 500 years with, you know, modern media, with the internet, wh- which is incredible, and with AI. So, now the distribution of information is incredible. But what happened with AI is it jumped over the hoop of, you know, attributing anything to anyone it is based on, which is why I say that, essentially, copyright is dead. And e- everybody calls it fair use. I'm fine, whatever, like I'm not a regulator. I'm fine. But my fear is that if people produce stuff, they publish it, it gets eaten and churned out without any recognition, without any connection to what they've done, their motivation to create and share is going to start slowing down and then decreasing because you lose the benefits of actually creating and getting the recognition and maybe commercializing this, which, to me, is troubling. I don't know if this would be the case, but I'm raising a flag. And I think that this is... and I'm not raising the flag as the CEO of Fiverr. I don't... like whatever. Look, I... (sighs) you know, my place on this planet is, is finite. It's like... but I have kids. There's future. I think about... I think about the fact that everything that happened in the past 500 years made our quality of life much, much higher. I don't want this to slow down, and I don't... in, in my view, we should be the center. We shouldn't be... right now, Harry, I have news for you. You are working for AI and, and so do I, because we're producing content, and that content is going to be eaten by a machine and used to produce new stuff.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings41:52

      Mm-hmm.

   6. MKMicha Kaufman41:53

      It sounds good. I don't know, maybe, fine. Um, this is up to you. But I think that we, we lose our place in the... or we're at the risk of losing our place in the center when we start, you know, working for something else.

9. 42:10 – 49:48

   Do Public CEOs Need an AI Take Now?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings42:10

      You're very vocal in a very refreshing way, in a very unguarded way. Do you feel the pressure to be vocal on AI given your role? A lot... I think a lot of public CEOs feel the pressure to have an AI strategy. Do you feel the pressure to have an AI opinion?

   2. MKMicha Kaufman42:27

      No. I... no, I wouldn't use the word pressure. I would say that I have a responsibility.It's not the same thing. The, um, g- garbage of once great companies that are now no longer with us is, is overflowing. Um, and a lot of the reasons why these companies are not around is because they, they couldn't sustain transformational waves. Compare this to surfing. Like, you, you have to start rowing to get a wave then, and then you can ride that wave. It used to be for seven, eight years, and then you need to prepare yourself to catch the next wave so that you can ride it. Um, today those waves are much shorter, um, in, in distance between th- they're attack waves, but, but it is the responsibility of a c- of a, of a leader of a company to ensure that you're able to, um, to actually be opportunistic about each one of these transformational waves. And in some ways, they force you to invent your act two and act three of a company. Most companies don't, don't, don't manage to go... Even the successful ones do not manage to go through the phase one of the company, e- even if they're a big company already. There's always gonna be a transformational wave, um, and if you're unable to catch it and make the... Use i- its energy to surf for (laughs) for a period of time, then you're gonna lose it, by definition. So, you start, y- you know, getting left behind, waiting for the next wave, or just going past.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings44:17

      What are your biggest questions on whether you'll be able to transition to the next wave and stand on the board to ride the next wave?

   4. MKMicha Kaufman44:24

      Look, I, I was asked in a, in a, in another conversation, uh, "So h- how is it like to be CEO right now?" And I said, "You know, it's, it's like you asking a, you know, a, a captain of a ship, in the middle of a storm, 'How is it to be a captain?' And the answer is, it's wet, it's dark, and you can't see, (laughs) you know, a mile ahead." Um, I, I, I think that-

   5. HSHarry Stebbings44:55

      Does it feel like that?

   6. MKMicha Kaufman44:57

      W- well, y- I mean-

   7. HSHarry Stebbings44:58

      In a way that... When you compare 15 years of Fiverr, how does today-

   8. MKMicha Kaufman45:02

      (coughs)

   9. HSHarry Stebbings45:03

      ... feel in context to the-

   10. MKMicha Kaufman45:05

       Look, my, you know, my, my dad was a, was a very senior executive at the, at, at, at the semiconductor business. The beauty about that business for many, many years was that it had Moore's Law. Great. So you can extrapolate. Like, unless it breaks, you can extrapolate and say, "I know exactly what's gonna happen in 10 years to the power of computing and the size of chips." Period. I, y- y- we can reminisce about those times and miss them, but (laughs) it, but it's not the case. So, right now, the cadence is super fast. Peop- people that ask me, "Oh, uh, wh- what do you think, uh, what, what do you think the business is gonna look like in five years?" And I start laughing. It's like, it's a laughable question. Um, you can have g- grand, general ideas, but people that ask you to describe it are just out of touch with what we're seeing. I think that b- because of a lot of changes-

   11. HSHarry Stebbings46:10

       Well, why... L- l- let's just push on that. Why, why is that a laughable question? Like, I think it's perfectly legitimate to try and stretch someone's thinking. You know, la- Sergey Brin was asked the other day, "What will search and the internet look like in 2030?" And he said, quite understandably, "I don't know. We're taking every year as it comes."

   12. MKMicha Kaufman46:28

       N-

   13. HSHarry Stebbings46:28

       But I don't think it's a bad question to try and stretch your thinking.

   14. MKMicha Kaufman46:31

       No, no, no, that... No, I, I think it's a fair question, and I, I think it's a fair question that we should ask ourselves constantly, but also understanding that right now, and I, I told you, we're in this, what I refer to as, like, this intermediate phase of technology, where things are not, are not sorted out. There's... The signal to noise is impossible. And, and then there is the question of will it get regulated? How would that change stuff? Um, will, will countries, governments actually take hold of it? What AI companies is doing right now, the, like, the foundational companies, it's like privatizing the Manhattan Project. Okay? All right, so imagine that they do build the atomic bomb. And now, they're sitting and saying, "Ah, you know, I don't know. Maybe we'll do it non-, nonprofit." (laughs) Or maybe they'll say, "Oh, we'll license the atomic bomb to..." Do you see a government allowing this? Seriously? S- seriously. Think about that for a second. If you get to AI that cures the worst disease in the world, which actually is worth a lot of money, do you see government leaving this in private hands? If this could create the ultimate weapon, if this could be the, kind of, whatever, the ultimate solution for infinite food and energy. No way. Dude, no way. So, we're pre all of this. (laughs) So, to try and extrapolate five years from now? Seriously?

   15. HSHarry Stebbings48:29

       But you, but, but do you not think we're just seeing the commoditization of all model knowledge and advancement when you look at deep seeking-

   16. MKMicha Kaufman48:35

       Mm-hmm.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings48:35

       ... the 12 different open source models in China. China versus the US is kind of a moot point at this stage, because the...Do you not agree?

   18. MKMicha Kaufman48:43

       No, I don't think so. And, and, and again, we're pre-expensive AI. We're pre-AGI. We're pre-superintelligence. We're p- like, we're not there yet. W- we're probably not that far, but we're not there yet. So I think that right now, companies are allowed to play. At some point, it's, it's gonna cross a line where governments are gonna say, "Mm, I'm not comfortable with that level of power. Not in my hands."

   19. HSHarry Stebbings49:20

       (laughs)

   20. MKMicha Kaufman49:20

       Right?

   21. HSHarry Stebbings49:21

       What happens then? They become nationalized?

   22. MKMicha Kaufman49:23

       I, I don't know. I mean, some functions of AI might be, um, prohibited and kept only for governmental branches. I don't know. I don't know. Uh, I mean, uh, uh, I'm thinking about these questions. I, I don't have answers b- because this is like, these are equations with, with, with too many variables.

10. 49:48 – 53:10

    Tech’s Wealth Gap: Are We Creating a Monopoly of Everything?

    1. MKMicha Kaufman49:48

    2. HSHarry Stebbings49:48

       How do you feel about value dispersion being concentrated? And what I mean by that is it feels like today's environment is more and more about the 0.0001% Anthropic, OpenAI, NVIDIA, TSMC, uh, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, sure, becoming the multi $10 trillion companies-

    3. MKMicha Kaufman50:07

       Mm-hmm.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings50:07

       ... and then everything else kind of languishing in no man's land, in a way where that value chasm has never been greater. Do you worry about that?

    5. MKMicha Kaufman50:16

       But, but is it really different than, um, you know, the AWS, Azure, and like, how many, how many, how many cloud providers are probably plenty? How many take 80% of the market? 2, 2 and a half, whatever? Tha- that level of concentration exi- exists for many, many, many years. Well, how is this different? Um-

    6. HSHarry Stebbings50:46

       Do you like being public?

    7. MKMicha Kaufman50:49

       Do I what?

    8. HSHarry Stebbings50:50

       Do you like being public?

    9. MKMicha Kaufman50:51

       Sure. Why not? Th- there's many reasons why, why, you know, I would advocate to being a public company, but there is time for that. If you're under the illusion that you can actually control the market or influence your share, don't do it. Uh, it's a bad idea. In... For those who are long thinkers and understand that this is a long game, it, it, it's, it's, it's a great choice. It has tremendous amount of benefits.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings51:25

        Help me understand that because the, the feedback that I get is that the market relies on predictability and values predictability almost more than anything, which means that your ability to invest in very long-term projects which do not have concrete upside guaranteed and are timeline variable are less available to you. And so if you have a long-term mindset, surely it would disincentivize you?

    11. MKMicha Kaufman51:48

        If your capital structure, um, is very solid, if you generate free cash flow, you're your own engine, if you have very solid execution, which means that you have high trust and confidence from the market, and you decide to make bold moves, you can raise more money, um, and that shouldn't be that hard.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings52:14

        Will you have more or less engineers in five years time, do you think?

    13. MKMicha Kaufman52:18

        Probably more. I don't know-

    14. HSHarry Stebbings52:20

        Why more?

    15. MKMicha Kaufman52:21

        ... how much more, but probably more.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings52:24

        Why more?

    17. MKMicha Kaufman52:25

        Because of the same, the same reason... Y- uh, w- when I said that technology levels the playing field because everybody has it, so it's like, it's square one all over. And so, great, now you can squeeze 3X out of each person. So does the next company. Great. How do you do more? How do you move faster? You know, in a, in a market of a lot of uncertainty, one of the biggest strength of, of, of a company is speed. It's just your ability to just move super, super fast.

11. 53:10 – 57:48

    The HubSpot Problem: When Feature Overload Kills Execution

    1. MKMicha Kaufman53:10

    2. HSHarry Stebbings53:10

       When is more worse than better unit economics? And what I mean by that is, HubSpot said recently that actually they're producing so much code they can't put it into production, and there's too many features to release, and it's just too much. When is more actually worse than trimming and having better unit eco-

    3. MKMicha Kaufman53:30

       The, the fact that you can generate more doesn't actually mean that you can j- just generate more, which is why I never... When I talk with my team about the concept of moving fast, I never use the term speed. I always use the term velocity. Speed is just the speed of movement. Velocity is speed plus direction. So, so if speed is not enough, you need to... You need, you need energy in a certain direction. If you're unable to push the code that you generate, it means that you didn't solve your infrastructure to be able to do this. So it means that your priority is incorrect because you don't solve the things that the bottlenecks that are actually keeping you from moving fast. So take the same energy and instead of building infinite amount of things, try to figure out, "How can I entertain that many ideas?" So solve your infrastructure first, then start building like, like crazy. Plus, you're probably building stupid things. Stop doing that as well. Um-When, uh, g-going back to this conversation that I had with, with, with the team, this meeting with 200 people, two, 250 people in, in a, in a cramped room, one of the things that I told them is, like, I'm, I'm thinking, um, as I'm thinking about velocity, I'm, I'm thinking, um, of how do we re- like, the, the interpretation of it, the, or the, the, the result of it, is just reducing the cost of failure. Because, because essentially, look, all companies, all companies, the majority of what they do fail. The, the reason why you don't know this, or maybe some people are not aware, is because they don't talk about their failures, because there is nothing to talk. It failed. Um, so the, the amount of things... I mean, if you take a company the size of Amazon, I'm guessing they have, you know, 5,000 tests running at, at the, like, concurrently because they have enough traffic to entertain that. Um, the, the vast majority, maybe at some point of time, all 5,000 failed. That, who cares? But if building something took 10 engineers three months and you failed, that's unpleasant. If it took one person three days and it failed, great. So, we reduced the cost of failure so that we can test more things, we can have more progress. So, so the wa- the, the way I was thinking about this is, is, is really, y- y- you know, um, how do we, you know, double or triple the output per unit of time and, and the same for quality per unit of delivery? But, but we... by doing so, we, we just reduce the cost of error. Now, if, if you do this and everybody else is doing this, you're... again, you're in... (laughs) you're, you're in the starting line. And so you need to have those differentiators. And, uh, look, developers, the, the, the, the profession of being a developer is, is going to change dramatically. But you always need brilliant people.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings57:05

       Mm-hmm.

    5. MKMicha Kaufman57:05

       Will you need many, many more of them? I don't know. But you asked me, is your team gonna be... is your engineering team gonna be larger? Yes. I think so.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings57:16

       Does A- does AI help normal 1X developers become 10X developers or does it help 10X developers become super, super, superhuman developers?

    7. MKMicha Kaufman57:26

       Well, the second one is easy. It's an easy yes. The first one is p- probably an easy no.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings57:33

       What function... If, if engineering actually becomes more a part of our org, and more important, what function do we have today will we not have in five years?

    9. MKMicha Kaufman57:44

       E- everybody talks about customer support as an example.

12. 57:48 – 1:02:07

    Which Department Took the AI Hit at Fiverr?

    1. MKMicha Kaufman57:48

       Um-

    2. HSHarry Stebbings57:48

       Which function has been most impacted in Fiverr by AI? Customer support?

    3. MKMicha Kaufman57:53

       The area that is going through the, the, the, the most fundamental disruption is actually marketing. If you think about coding and you think about y- you know, how, um, developers are actually using AI, it's really interesting. But, but when you look at the f- the fundamental function of, of all the types of co-piloting, what a lot of them are doing is actually what developers hated doing, which is copy-pasting from open source. Looking for a library then reading the, you know, the repo notes and then, you know, figuring out if you wanna use it as is or you wanna go through it and look for security holes or you wanna fork it and build something off of it. Like, it, it... you know. It's like doing research on Google following blue links, you know, copy-pasting stuff from different websites and putting a document. Who likes to do this? It's robotic. Um, I think in marketing, it's a whole different thing. Because, A, there's no... there is no AI at the level that we have in programming in marketing so we need to figure out how to use AI without actually screwing up or giving it too much freedom because essentially right now, we're at least still marketing to human beings. And so what- whatever is being produced e- will be consumed by a human eye or, or ear. And, and therefore, there is a much deeper sense of understanding human behavior when you do marketing and I think that this is where, you know, marketeers get tempted to use synthetic technologies to, um, automate their work. But I think that, you, you know, what they're, they're... it's not ripe yet and they're not necessarily automating the right functions (laughs) still. Um, and, and, and so I think that this is... this is a less charted territory in AI at, at this point. But it feels... it, it feels like there's, there's no need. Oh, there's no need to write copy. There's no need to, to do... to manage social. They don't need to write, you know, to create, you know, ads. Like, e- everything could be automated. Um, and I think that what we've seen over the past year or so is that there is a... there's like an awakening out of this illusion that this could be fully automated.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:42

       As, as someone who spends a huge amount of time in social and in viral content, the truth is, you're absolutely right. For your Virgin NatWest Chase Bank social media manager, you're fucked. You're fucked already. "We're thrilled to announce the launch of our new product. See you later." Gone.But if you're a fucking master of social and viral social posts, and it includes nuance, contacts from current events, m- media, like, uh, very trending GIFs that are particular today, not yesterday or tomorrow, today, the way it's structured, it is a fucking art form where I can't even hire people today-

    5. MKMicha Kaufman1:01:20

       Yeah.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:20

       ... and pay them a million dollars.

    7. MKMicha Kaufman1:01:22

       Yeah.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:22

       Literally, I would pay a million dollars for someone to do social like me.

    9. MKMicha Kaufman1:01:26

       So I think that in, in marketing, uh, the entry level juniors have been replaced the fastest. Definitely faster than developers. Because still, if you use AI, you still, at some point, need to open the code and understand what the heck is written there. And if you cannot do this, then, then you don't have a job. But even relatively young developers can do this. It's not the same with marketeers. I think that this is the, this is the area where there is the, you know, the, the, the most amount of disruption.

13. 1:02:07 – 1:06:18

    Leadership Adaptation in an AI World

    1. MKMicha Kaufman1:02:07

    2. HSHarry Stebbings1:02:07

       Final one before we do a quick fire. Just in terms of your leadership style, have you changed anything in the way that you communicate? The tone with which you communicate? The style? Have you changed your leadership approach in a world of AI?

    3. MKMicha Kaufman1:02:20

       I don't think so. I, I, I don't use AI to write, uh, which is very important for me.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings1:02:27

       Yamini from HubSpot said that she writes some of her public update... well, she writes her public update with AI.

    5. MKMicha Kaufman1:02:34

       Yeah. You know, (laughs) we, we, we've been, uh, you know, I've, I've been talking to other public companies, um, you know, friends from other companies, and we were saying, "You know, we need to... We should build our own investor relations, uh, AI, so that we don't need to do these calls every time. We don't need to answer the questions. We don't need to write the letter to," so letters to shareholders, all of that. It's... Anyway, it's, most of it is read by machines for algo trading (laughs) or w- whatever it is, and they analyze the tone, whatever. So let's feed them with their own... That's, you know...

    6. HSHarry Stebbings1:03:12

       But when you have those CEO groups and conversations behind the scenes, is the consensus that AI is further along than people think and we are moving towards more unemployment quicker? Or is it that it is further away than we think and not as close as people assume?

    7. MKMicha Kaufman1:03:28

       I think most of them are just making the healthy assumption that we're closer to it than, than further from it. Because the... If it's, if it's further away, then great. Let's chill. Uh, it's fine. But if you assume that this is closer, then you, you d- you, uh, at least think about the necessary or you think about the implications, which I think is the healthier thing to do. I haven't seen companies go through massive layoffs. Um, I think companies that had fat in them started doing that, uh, be- because they understand that it's ver- and which is wha- what I wrote in my email as well. I said, "Look, um, bi- bi- bi- before we figure out that we need more people, let's just make sure that we're extracting the most out of ourselves, ou- out of our existing team." This was true five years ago, which, which is why, you know, if you run a lean company, not too lean, so you can actually be very... uh, you can be aggressive, but lean enough so that there's... if, if you say, "Oh, fuck. Like, I, I need to cut costs," there's like, you know, 50 people that you know are gonna be the first... If you know this, you sh- you, you should say goodbye with, you know. Um, but, but the message was: how do we maximize our capacity before we actually think about bringing more people? And if, if we think about bringing more people, these people need to be AI natives in whatever they do. I don't care if you're... whatever. If you... or you're joining the legal department or the finance or customer support, you need to be very well-versed in this new world, because again, I'm not, I'm not gonna teach you. And...

    8. HSHarry Stebbings1:05:26

       What cost would you most like to cut today, but for whatever reason, you can't? Shareholder pressure, um, whatever it is.

    9. MKMicha Kaufman1:05:34

       In general, i- i- if I could cost marketing, I would always do it. Uh (laughs) . I mean, just because, because the, the only way you can actually do it is because you can grow without it. So if you can... if your organic component in growth is crazy strong, then you have a good case of, of going even deeper into your marketing and saying, "Do I need the incremental additional customer, um, that I'm, that I'm actually paying money for or not?" Um, but this is not because of pressure. This is just because, you know, we're, uh, w- we're not in that situation.

14. 1:06:18 – 1:16:42

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. MKMicha Kaufman1:06:18

    2. HSHarry Stebbings1:06:18

       Dude, I wanna do a quick fire. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. What one belief about AI have you changed your mind on?

    3. MKMicha Kaufman1:06:26

       The way modern AI burst into our life was, uh, driven by a, um, non-for-profit organization which made me think that this could be... this could be like a... this could be like a global, uh, endeavor that I think would, would probably give more power to more people, um, and not more power to less people. And obviously, with the reality, I've obviously changed my mind, you know, seeing how...... uh, how open a- open AI changed their strategy.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings1:07:09

       In terms of being in favor or the morrigan's, am I ... ? Obviously, Elon wants open, Sam wants closed. You were open and now you're closed?

    5. MKMicha Kaufman1:07:16

       Yeah. Um, AI is, is being a very fundamental, um, technology engine. I would probably rather have open than closed.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings1:07:31

       Tell me, you've got a child who's entering the workforce, okay? They've just graduated from university. What do you ad- what advice do you give them?

    7. MKMicha Kaufman1:07:41

       Probably rather give them, um, an advice before they go to, uh, to, to the university, and that would be, don't go. Because I think it's a waste of time in, in most cases. Um, look, if, if you're, if you're up for, you know, for finding chicks and, and getting drunk, that's fine. If you need someone to tell you to wake up and get to a, to a class, and someone to, um, scare you with an exam, because if not you're not gonna learn, then this is a good ins- in-, you know, institute to, to do it. In 90 plus cases of modern professions, you can study on your own, and you can do it in a fraction of the time. And by the way, if you don't like reading, great, we have video for that. Oh, you don't like video? There's voice for that. And if there isn't, then ask AI to produce something for you. Whatever. It's like, it is, in my view, it's just a waste of time.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings1:08:44

       What strategic opportunity did you not take with Fiverr that you wish you had taken?

    9. MKMicha Kaufman1:08:49

       One of the strategic opportunities was to create OnlyFans, uh, many, many years before OnlyFans. And we decided not to do it.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings1:08:59

        Sorry, uh, how does, how does that come as a strategic opportunity, and why did you decide not to do it?

    11. MKMicha Kaufman1:09:07

        Well, i- it is, I mean, if you look at the size of OnlyFans, you'll understand why this could be a strategic opportunity. Um, but, uh, but we, we, we just, fr- from, from a point of the, our values as, as founders, the values of our, of our board, we, we decided that this was not a direction that we wanted to venture into. The reason why I'm saying that we could have done it, is because th- this was, this was actually bubbling, uh, w- within the first versions of Fiverr. Organically. We didn't have a category for that, uh, obviously. But we, we started noticing that this was, this was happening behind the scenes. There were like, uh, code words, um, that people, that people spread on social, and said, "Oh, go to Fiverr, do a search for X," and what it actually means is what you think it means. And so, and we, we started seeing that in the system, and we, we, we decided that, um, this was not a direction that we're gonna go down.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings1:10:20

        Is Fiverr your last company?

    13. MKMicha Kaufman1:10:22

        I d- I don't know. Um, right now, yes. Um, look, I have this exercise that I do every year, um, where I, I take a day or two or three aside, and, um, I'm, I'm doing an accounting of how I feel about the next year. And I'm asking myself, am, am I the right person to continue leading this company? It has a process, like, I'm going through this process. It's like, it's, you know, measuring my energy, my contribution, uh, my leadership, um, my, my interest, my curiosity.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings1:11:01

        Do you not so identify with your company that it is a part of you? Like, I would have a very hard intellectual wrestle if I, if I realized that I wasn't. But dude, I, I started this when I was 17. I'm now 28. To, to not be 20 VC would be very difficult for me.

    15. MKMicha Kaufman1:11:17

        B- but, but if you ... maybe yes. But at the same time, if, if your contribution to the success of the company is not maximized, I don't know if like ... I know I, I ha- I have a rule. Uh, if I wake up five days in a row saying, "Oh, fuck, no." Then I'm done. Then I'm done. (laughs) And it never happened. You can have a day. Maybe you can have two. But n- like, if you have them in a row, that's a bad sign. And sometimes, I mean, if you're not, if you ... like, sometimes you fall out of love. Sometimes you lose your energy. Sometimes y- you, you, l- life calls you to, you know, attend to other things. And if that's the case, yes, it's maybe you consider this to be your baby, but dude, it's time to move on and find someone who's, who's, uh, who's gonna do justice with th- with, with your baby and your creation. Uh, it is a hard, it is a hard exercise. But I think it's worth doing, um, at least once a year.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings1:12:35

        When are you happiest, and is life about happiness? I know it sounds weird. But Nick on the show said to me, "I don't think life ..." from Revolut. "I don't think life's about happiness. I think it's about success and winning, and that often leads to happiness. But it's not about happiness." When are you happy, and is it about that?

    17. MKMicha Kaufman1:12:57

        Um ... I think it's about, it's about meaning. When you look for meaning, when you pursue meaning, you are going to have a mixture of misery and happiness, by definition. (laughs) But I think it's, I think that- that this is that. And, uh, as- as long as you're in your element, as long as you feel that you have... there is, there is, uh, very deep meaning to what you do, then by definition, your core is gonna be very happy. Your life might have, uh, you know, swings, because we don't control everything in our lives, and, you know, the surrounding, our family, health, all of that. But I think that, generally speaking, I think meaning defines this for me more than- than the word happiness.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings1:13:51

        Final one. When you think about how you most want to be remembered, I know it sounds weird, but I think about it a lot with grandchildren actually. Like, what- what do my future generations say? How do you want to be remembered?

    19. MKMicha Kaufman1:14:03

        You know, I- I think I'm a part of a legacy. I think that there- there's a lot of things that have passed to me from my parents and grandparents that are at the very core of what defines me and, uh, how- what defines me as a human being, but what defines me as a- as a husband, what defines me as a- as a dad. And a lot of it has to do, and we've touched on some of these things, is about, like, being a good citizen of- of this- of this world. Like, this idea that, uh, it's always better to be a giver than a taker, but in general, it's... I mean, you can't just take. I hate takers. So, maybe they'll remember me as a giver. The world doesn't owe you anything. So, that's one of the values that I instill in my kids. And the other is home is a- is a safe place. Like, I- it doesn't matter what happened in your life. I don't know, you killed someone by mistake. Come home. We'll solve it together. There's, like... This is... Which doesn't mean that- that you're not gonna be judgmental, but you- it means that you- you're not gonna be judgmental to a point where you break them because your motivation is to help them. And- and I think this- this also... it's also, you know, uh, penetrating my management style. If you think about this and, uh, you know, radical candor, these types of things, it's- it's- it's all, you know, encompassing. And- and it... Like, my contribution? Like, I'm probably an artist. Um, (laughs) that- that's what I do, I think. I think, um, I- I just express my art in the things I build. And sometimes you build a business, you build a company, you build a product, you build- you build a community, you build a movement. Um, yeah, so a builder, an artist, I don't know.

    20. HSHarry Stebbings1:16:07

        Dude, I'm sure this show has taken some turns that you didn't expect (laughs) .

    21. MKMicha Kaufman1:16:13

        (laughs) Yes. That is because you thought about every question so hard.

    22. HSHarry Stebbings1:16:18

        Yeah. You know what? It was because of the review cycle in my head post the bad question analysis (laughs) . Um, thank you so much for being so open. This has been fantastic.

    23. MKMicha Kaufman1:16:28

        Thank you very much for having me. Th- this was really fun and, uh, and- and thought-provoking.

Episode duration: 1:16:43