Slop vs Craft

Dalton Caldwell 0:00 I think you wanna stay out of a symmetric battle for who can slop harder. If there's a competitor and they're spamming a lot, and you're like, "Well, our only solution is to spam harder"-

Michael Seibel 0:09 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 0:09 ... and you're just in an arms race of who can create the most garbage to make the graph go up-

Michael Seibel 0:14 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 0:14 ... I, I think don't do it.

Michael Seibel 0:17 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 0:17 I think you have to find a way to stay out of trying to produce the most low-quality crap. [upbeat music]

Michael Seibel 0:27 This is Dalton + Michael. Today, we're gonna talk about slop versus craft.

Dalton Caldwell 0:32 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 0:33 Maybe another way to describe this is like what does it mean to have good taste? Why don't we kick this off, you and I were talking about Claude Code. You've maybe gone down the smallest of rabbit holes. How is Claude Code changing how you think about slop versus craft?

Dalton Caldwell 0:48 Sure. So I think for context, I've been doing a fair amount of programming over the past, uh, nine months.

Michael Seibel 0:54 Mm-hmm.

Dalton Caldwell 0:54 Um, like I was messing with Cursor and Windsurf a while ago-

Michael Seibel 0:57 Mm-hmm

Dalton Caldwell 0:57 ... and it was cool, and, you know, I've been having fun with it. And then of course, Claude Code came out probably a while ago, but it, it really took off memetically-

Michael Seibel 1:05 Mm-hmm

Dalton Caldwell 1:05 ... Q4 of last year, and definitely over, like, Christmas break is when everyone-

Michael Seibel 1:09 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 1:10 ... went nuts with it. And what I would say is it's really fun.

Michael Seibel 1:14 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 1:15 [laughs] It's like a video game.

Michael Seibel 1:17 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 1:17 And you, like, type stuff in, and it just feels powerful.

Michael Seibel 1:21 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 1:21 Like, you watch the screen fly by. It's like programming with the best programmer you've ever met-

Michael Seibel 1:26 Mm-hmm

Dalton Caldwell 1:26 ... who's, like, really nice and really fast.

Michael Seibel 1:28 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 1:29 And it's so energizing to watch the code fly by on the s- on the screen and, um, see all the tokens it's burning and just, like, you know, it's, it's super cool, so I would recommend it.

Michael Seibel 1:40 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 1:40 And this is not yet another, you know, VC podcast talking about how great Claude Code is-

Michael Seibel 1:45 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 1:45 ... 'cause here's where I'm going with this.

Michael Seibel 1:46 Uh-oh.

Dalton Caldwell 1:46 It is great.

Michael Seibel 1:46 Is there a dark secret? [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 1:47 No, it is great, but I easily could imagine a younger version of myself-

Michael Seibel 1:53 Hmm

Dalton Caldwell 1:54 ... not really sleeping or taking care of myself-

Michael Seibel 1:58 Mm-hmm

Dalton Caldwell 1:58 ... and then being convinced that all of this junk that I was making with Claude Code was really good.

Michael Seibel 2:03 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 2:05 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 2:06 It reminds me of, like, I remember setting up Linux when, uh, when I was super young.

Michael Seibel 2:10 Mm-hmm.

Dalton Caldwell 2:11 And I used this version of Linux called Gentoo-

Michael Seibel 2:14 Okay

Dalton Caldwell 2:14 ... where you would compile the whole thing from scratch.

Michael Seibel 2:16 Mm-hmm.

Dalton Caldwell 2:16 And so when you were setting up Linux, it would just be like, stuff would be flying by on the terminal.

Michael Seibel 2:21 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 2:21 And I felt like a really elite guy-

Michael Seibel 2:23 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 2:24 ... that I was, like, hand-compiling my own Linux kernel.

Michael Seibel 2:26 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 2:27 And in retrospect, that was, like, not-

Michael Seibel 2:29 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 2:31 Like, I'm embarrassed-

Michael Seibel 2:31 There's a lot of value being created there

Dalton Caldwell 2:32 ... maybe I shouldn't be telling this story.

Michael Seibel 2:32 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 2:33 But, like, it felt really cool-

Michael Seibel 2:35 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 2:35 ... to compile your own Linux kernel, when in practice, I- literally nothing beneficial happened with that.

Michael Seibel 2:41 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 2:42 Okay? And so where I'm going with this is there's such a temptation that even I felt-

Michael Seibel 2:46 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 2:46 ... using these super powerful tools to basically make slop.

Michael Seibel 2:50 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 2:50 So let's define slop.

Michael Seibel 2:52 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 2:52 Like, I'd like to hear your definition. Like, what, what... Yeah, what do we mean by slop here?

Michael Seibel 2:56 Very simply in my mind, slop is products that don't actually help the user. They can seem great in your mind. They can seem great when you're demoing. They can seem great when you're raising money. But when we put it in front of the intended user, we do not see the user getting their problem solved and them being happy. It's like, "Oh, it's just missing one thing." [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 3:18 [laughs] That's a, that's a... It's the, it's the feature treadmill where you're like, "Oh, it's bad, but just let me add 10 more features."

Michael Seibel 3:24 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 3:25 You're like... And again, it's so tempting. The tools are so good.

Michael Seibel 3:28 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 3:28 You can just keep adding features to something that's-

Michael Seibel 3:30 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 3:30 ... kinda crappy and have a very large surface area very fast.

Michael Seibel 3:35 Have a lot of crap.

Dalton Caldwell 3:37 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 3:37 Yeah. So that's kinda what I think about with, with slop. What do you think when, when you see slop?

Dalton Caldwell 3:41 By definition, this is subjective, and so one person... Like, you could say anything's slop, and people have debated, and that sounds very tedious.

Michael Seibel 3:48 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 3:49 I think the best definition is that in your own objective mind, you know it's not that good. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 3:58 Hmm.

Dalton Caldwell 3:58 Like-

Michael Seibel 3:59 Hmm

Dalton Caldwell 4:00 ... like, especially after you've, like, you know, taken a break and taken a walk or-

Michael Seibel 4:04 Mm

Dalton Caldwell 4:04 ... gotten some sleep-

Michael Seibel 4:05 Mm

Dalton Caldwell 4:05 ... and then you really look at what you're doing with fresh eyes or people that you trust, and you're like, "Actually, this isn't that good."

Michael Seibel 4:10 Hmm.

Dalton Caldwell 4:11 C- 'cause in the, in the, in the Linux example I gave, come on.

Michael Seibel 4:14 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 4:14 Like, the hand-compiled Linux kernel-

Michael Seibel 4:16 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 4:16 ... was not actually better than the one I downloaded from Red Hat.

Michael Seibel 4:19 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 4:20 It's the same thing. And so I think you have to have this, like, objective perspective about if something is actually good. Basically, you can't practice self-deception. That's what I'm trying to say. Slop is where you're sort of actively self-deceiving-

Michael Seibel 4:33 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 4:34 ... that your thing is good-

Michael Seibel 4:35 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 4:35 ... when you kinda know it's not that good.

Michael Seibel 4:37 You know, as an aside, whenever I work with a company and they say, like, "Oh, our competitor gets funded, or Newcoming gets funded," and they're super afraid, the first thing I do is just like, "Have you used the product?"

Dalton Caldwell 4:48 Yep.

Michael Seibel 4:48 "Have you used it?" Like, you can't even really determine whether something is good or bad by not using it. [laughs] Like, if you're taking all of the clues, but you don't try it, you're not getting any signal.

Dalton Caldwell 5:00 Yep.

Michael Seibel 5:01 So we have some examples of slop, um, which are fun. Um, first one, Web 2.0 with the-

Dalton Caldwell 5:06 Yeah. SEO spam. Okay, so the real insight when Google was taking off is that if you could rank number one in Google for something-

Michael Seibel 5:13 Game on

Dalton Caldwell 5:14 ... you, like, would make so much money.

Michael Seibel 5:16 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 5:16 Right? If you, if you could, like, spam your way for your e-commerce site to be the number one Google search result, you would, yeah, you'd make tons and tons of money. So guess what happened?

Michael Seibel 5:24 Or content, and you put a little Google ad on it.

Dalton Caldwell 5:26 Right?

Michael Seibel 5:26 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 5:27 So guess what happened is a lot of people built slop farms-

Michael Seibel 5:30 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 5:31 ... to game Google-

Michael Seibel 5:33 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 5:33 ... so that they can end up at the top of search results and make money in various ways.

Michael Seibel 5:36 And they had very nice early graphs.

Dalton Caldwell 5:39 Yeah. They made a lot of money.

Michael Seibel 5:40 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 5:40 I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna name any of the names of these companies. You can ask ChatGPT about this.

Michael Seibel 5:44 A lot of money. Not a lot of money relative to successful companies. A lot of money relative to-

Dalton Caldwell 5:49 It looked like it was working.

Michael Seibel 5:50 Yes, it looked like it was working.

Dalton Caldwell 5:51 So they were spamming the hell out of Google.

Michael Seibel 5:53 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 5:53 And some raised, like, VC money for this.

Michael Seibel 5:55 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 5:56 Um-

Michael Seibel 5:56 Many, I might argue. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 5:58 Ultimately, none of those are going concerns anymore. Like, it was, like, a, a brief moment in history where you could spam Google and make lots of money, and then you were done. Uh, this, this is something I've been calling it with PB.

Michael Seibel 6:10 Mm-hmm.

Dalton Caldwell 6:11 He, um, he calls them turkey startups. Have you ever seen the graph of the life of a turkey?Where it's, like, getting better and better and better, and then one day it's over?

Michael Seibel 6:18 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 6:19 That's a turkey startup. It's a turkey graph.

Michael Seibel 6:21 Oh, man.

Dalton Caldwell 6:21 And you know what I'm ta- you know what I'm talking about, right?

Michael Seibel 6:22 Uh, yes.

Dalton Caldwell 6:23 It's so-

Michael Seibel 6:23 It's a little brutal. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 6:24 It's like where you're like, "Oh, you know, my startup's going great," and then it's just, like, over.

Michael Seibel 6:27 Boom. Google changed the algorithm.

Dalton Caldwell 6:29 Yes.

Michael Seibel 6:29 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 6:30 So an SEO slop company is the definition of a, of a turkey-

Michael Seibel 6:33 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 6:33 ... startup.

Michael Seibel 6:34 For me when I think back to mobile consumer, there were so many products where when you would dig deep, someone would subscribe to them for a year and their activity would end after 30 days. And, like, the business model was, like, okay, like, I love this business model. It's like, all right, we're gonna acquire the user for this much. If we get them to buy the annual subscription, we al- we have one-year LTV, that's pretty good. And if we get them to, like, somehow forget and subscribe for two years, well, I mean, that's, uh... And then we'd run that play across 100 million users-

Dalton Caldwell 7:11 Yep

Michael Seibel 7:12 ... and all the graphs look great.

Dalton Caldwell 7:13 Well, and remember, like, the early App Store, it was a lot of slop.

Michael Seibel 7:16 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 7:16 It'd be like iBeer.

Michael Seibel 7:17 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 7:18 There was the-

Michael Seibel 7:18 Lightsaber.

Dalton Caldwell 7:20 It was just like-

Michael Seibel 7:20 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 7:21 ... crap.

Michael Seibel 7:21 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 7:22 And people made money in the short term.

Michael Seibel 7:24 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 7:24 But again, none of those became durable businesses because it was, it was slop, and Apple didn't want slop in the App Store either.

Michael Seibel 7:30 No.

Dalton Caldwell 7:30 Like, no one was that excited about this stuff.

Michael Seibel 7:32 No.

Dalton Caldwell 7:32 It was effectively a scam.

Michael Seibel 7:33 It, it was a scam, and, and they were... Users understand when things are scams, so you get, like, a negative word of mouth-

Dalton Caldwell 7:39 Yep

Michael Seibel 7:39 ... and then, you know, you- But to your point, like the SEO thing, you look, in the first 10% of the race, you look like you're winning.

Dalton Caldwell 7:48 Yep.

Michael Seibel 7:49 And it's like, that's why it's, like, so interesting, 'cause it's like, man, it's so desirable to look like you're winning in the first 10% of the race, you can sometimes just forget that you have [laughs] 90% of the race to run. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 7:58 I just, thinking about this, um, out loud, it's almost like the same shills that are selling courses were into all this stuff.

Michael Seibel 8:08 Yep, yep.

Dalton Caldwell 8:08 Like p- [laughs] Like, basically, on the, the dark corners of YouTube-

Michael Seibel 8:11 Yep

Dalton Caldwell 8:11 ... of, like, get rich quick.

Michael Seibel 8:12 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 8:12 They love this stuff.

Michael Seibel 8:13 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 8:13 Like, everything we just mentioned, there were totally people that were like, "This is the secret to wealth."

Michael Seibel 8:18 Yes, yes.

Dalton Caldwell 8:18 And it was some version of, like, whatever the latest scam was-

Michael Seibel 8:21 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 8:21 ... to, like, fool people with slop.

Michael Seibel 8:23 Get in early and get out with money before, you know-

Dalton Caldwell 8:26 Well, they made money selling courses.

Michael Seibel 8:27 Exactly, yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 8:27 So again, that's the irony, is selling, selling content to explain to people how to make slop-

Michael Seibel 8:32 Makes more money [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 8:33 ... is probably a better business than making slop, so.

Michael Seibel 8:35 So then crypto happened, which was slop-free, right? Right? [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 8:41 I mean, I think the, the, the thing with that is it was so intoxicating in the same way. Again, I-

Michael Seibel 8:47 Mm-hmm

Dalton Caldwell 8:47 ... you know, to speak to myself, when I first learned about, you know, Bitcoin-

Michael Seibel 8:51 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 8:51 ... I thought it was super cool. I remember telling you about it.

Michael Seibel 8:53 Mm-hmm.

Dalton Caldwell 8:53 It was hard to think about anything else for a little while, this was, like, in 2013 and 2014, because it seemed so revolutionary.

Michael Seibel 8:59 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 8:59 Again, it reminds me of the feeling that I've had messing with a lot of the vibe coding tools, like CloudCode.

Michael Seibel 9:04 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 9:04 It's just feeling like I'm seeing the future and feeling almost, like, a euphoria about it and an excitement.

Michael Seibel 9:10 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 9:11 And because I've been through multiple cycles before, current Dalton is like, "Yeah. [laughs] Um, chill, dude." [laughs]

Michael Seibel 9:16 Yeah. Ex- Yeah. Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 9:17 Um, and that, and that's kind of where I ended up with the crypto stuff too, which is to realize there was an incentive to do low-quality stuff with crypto, like ICOs or, or to-

Michael Seibel 9:29 Mm-hmm

Dalton Caldwell 9:29 ... you know. There, there's a lot of things like that. And ultimately, you know, enduring value was not in- created in as many of those as was created by Coinbase and, and-

Michael Seibel 9:36 Of course

Dalton Caldwell 9:37 ... what have you.

Michael Seibel 9:38 I think the, the moment that crypto really kinda jumped the shark for me, I remember I was working with a company in the batch who made something, you know, like a Discord plugin or something, and it was an interesting seed that something could've grown from.

Dalton Caldwell 9:55 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 9:55 And then they were, the, the plan was to ICO and monetize it and be done.

Dalton Caldwell 10:05 Dump on retail. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 10:07 And I was like, I was like, "You, you guys have something, like, you might be able to make some..." And they're like, "What are you talking about?" Like-

Dalton Caldwell 10:15 That's not the game

Michael Seibel 10:15 ... "No, that's not the game we're playing."

Dalton Caldwell 10:17 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 10:17 And I was just like, "Oh, come, oh, okay."

Dalton Caldwell 10:19 Yeah. And, and again, to put a fine point on this-

Michael Seibel 10:20 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 10:21 ... I still think there's, like, really cool things that are gonna be built with crypto.

Michael Seibel 10:24 Obviously, yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 10:25 But backwards-facing, objectively, a lot of the startups were the equivalent of, like, the crappy f- Facebook apps or the crappy iPhone apps or the SEO sites where they kinda got some activity-

Michael Seibel 10:37 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 10:37 ... maybe they made some money, and then there's, it's a turkey. Like, there's nothing left.

Michael Seibel 10:40 Well, I think that's, that's the interesting thing, is that, like, maybe the difference between when we started and now is the venture world has gotten so much bigger and there's so much more money.

Dalton Caldwell 10:50 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 10:50 Whereas I feel like a lot of the things that were like this back in the day had to bootstrap.

Dalton Caldwell 10:55 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 10:55 Whereas, like, some of the things like this now, a lot of slop can raise funding.

Dalton Caldwell 11:00 Yep.

Michael Seibel 11:00 And so, like, that confuses people. Like, well, how can it be slop if it's raising a round, right-

Dalton Caldwell 11:05 Yeah

Michael Seibel 11:05 ... Dalton? Like-

Dalton Caldwell 11:06 Well, this is where it goes back to the thing I said earlier, which is you have to have your own good judgment.

Michael Seibel 11:11 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 11:11 And just bec-

Michael Seibel 11:12 Mm

Dalton Caldwell 11:12 ... like, if you're looking around and you're like, "Everyone else is scamming, maybe I should scam too"-

Michael Seibel 11:16 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 11:17 [laughs] That's not a great way to make life decisions. And so I do think this is where taste comes in.

Michael Seibel 11:24 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 11:24 Is that if we... You know, I'd love to hear your definition of taste, but in my definition here, taste just means having a strong barometer, having a strong compass of what is good and what is not good, and not producing things that you know in your heart are bad, right? Or, like, not helping people or hurting people.

Michael Seibel 11:41 You make such a good point, because I feel like there's, like, a artistic definition of taste which, like, I'm not much of an artist. Like, I don't really, can't really engage with. And then there's just, like, a pure, like, value generation, right? Like, almost in, like, kind of the core of the economy, like, is what, is what you're doing positive sum? It's weird, because, like, I think in a classic definition of taste, people are like, "Well, some people have it and some people don't." I think everyone has the ability to look at something honestly-

Dalton Caldwell 12:11 Yeah

Michael Seibel 12:11 ... and ask whether it's, uh, positive sum.

Dalton Caldwell 12:12 Well, and again, the irony, I'm, you know, you've heard me say this before, but anyone that insists what good ta- taste they have-

Michael Seibel 12:17 Yeah. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 12:18 [laughs] It's like definitionally-

Michael Seibel 12:19 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 12:19 ... that's how you spot the people that don't have good taste-

Michael Seibel 12:21 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 12:21 ... is they, they talk about how great they are.All the time.

Michael Seibel 12:24 Well, and I think that's so funny 'cause like, like when people are like, "Oh, taste is like where the buttons are on the screen, or like how cool my dark mode is," it's like just-

Dalton Caldwell 12:31 Yeah

Michael Seibel 12:31 ... like, you know, like...

Dalton Caldwell 12:32 But to recognize great taste in other people-

Michael Seibel 12:34 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 12:35 ... it's people that have high standards.

Michael Seibel 12:36 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 12:37 And that they really care-

Michael Seibel 12:39 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 12:39 ... about anything that they release, they're proud of.

Michael Seibel 12:43 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 12:44 And they would stamp their name on it-

Michael Seibel 12:45 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 12:45 ... and just be-

Michael Seibel 12:47 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 12:47 ... stand by their work.

Michael Seibel 12:48 And the user gets value out of the work.

Dalton Caldwell 12:51 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 12:52 Because there are a lot of people, if you stand by the work but you don't care whether the user gets value, that's art.

Dalton Caldwell 12:58 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 12:58 Which I think is great, it's a per- perfect category of things to do, but that's not building businesses.

Dalton Caldwell 13:04 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 13:04 Like at the end of the day, value has to be created to the user. Interestingly enough, one would argue we're in a slop war right now.

Dalton Caldwell 13:12 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 13:12 And maybe one would say like this is what happens in any new platform kind of zone, right? Like, you got a, a lot of easy to slop out things, and then things kinda get sorted out.

Dalton Caldwell 13:24 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 13:25 How do you think about the slop war? Who wins?

Dalton Caldwell 13:27 I would almost compare it to the Facebook platform app wars.

Michael Seibel 13:31 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 13:32 Where a lot of people-

Michael Seibel 13:33 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 13:33 ... were competing with Zynga, Zynga was buying people.

Michael Seibel 13:35 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 13:35 They were competing with Farmville.

Michael Seibel 13:37 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 13:37 And ultimately, no one won that was playing that game.

Michael Seibel 13:42 I mean, Facebook won. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 13:43 That's true.

Michael Seibel 13:44 [laughs] Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 13:45 Um, and so yeah, the people selling tokens-

Michael Seibel 13:47 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 13:47 ... were like, "Yeah, this is great," like-

Michael Seibel 13:48 Slop's great. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 13:49 Everyone should use cloud code-

Michael Seibel 13:51 Yeah. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 13:51 ... to make, like, whatever they want.

Michael Seibel 13:52 Yes. Yeah. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 13:53 But if you are the people consuming all these tokens-

Michael Seibel 13:56 Mm

Dalton Caldwell 13:56 ... I think you wanna stay out of a symmetric battle for who can slop harder. If there's a competitor and they're spamming a lot, and you're like, "Well, our only solution is to spam harder"-

Michael Seibel 14:05 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 14:05 ... and you're just in an arms race of who can create the most garbage to make the graph go up-

Michael Seibel 14:10 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 14:11 ... I, I think don't do it.

Michael Seibel 14:13 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 14:13 I think you have to find a way to stay out of trying to produce the most low-quality crap.

Michael Seibel 14:20 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 14:20 Whatever that is, whether it's features, whether that's content. 'Cause again, if you look at this to back test it, usually the winners in any space stayed out of these symmetric spam battles, right man?

Michael Seibel 14:30 Well, it's funny because I always like to think about, you know, there have been phases where I've worked in consumer and I've cared about my top line user growth, and then the phases where I've worked in consumer and I cared about retention. There are all kinds of things you can do when you're only looking at top line revenue growth-

Dalton Caldwell 14:47 Yeah

Michael Seibel 14:47 ... or top line user growth, or top line DAUs. There are all kinds of tricks. Why don't we just send more push notifications? [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 14:54 [laughs] 'Cause that's what users really want.

Michael Seibel 14:56 Send more email. Let's-

Dalton Caldwell 14:57 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 14:58 Let's send them deceptive email.

Dalton Caldwell 14:59 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 15:00 You know, there's a problem with your account.

Dalton Caldwell 15:01 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 15:01 That'll make our DAUs go up.

Dalton Caldwell 15:03 We could go up with like dark patterns all day long, right?

Michael Seibel 15:05 Yes. Um, and, and whenever I've had to work on retention, it's like funny 'cause it's like you have to start with like, "Well, am I helping the user? Is it actually working? Oh, if it is working, well, why do these users not see that it's work?" Like, everything comes back down to serving someone. Whereas I feel like whenever I worked on the top line graph, I was serving myself. The user was a side story. The user was someone to be, I don't wanna say exploited-

Dalton Caldwell 15:34 Yeah

Michael Seibel 15:34 ... but certainly someone to be extracted from.

Dalton Caldwell 15:37 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 15:37 Whereas whenever I worked on retention, it was like it's hard to make these users happy. I gotta [laughs] like, I gotta really do more work. If you find yourself looking at the graph that allows you to take more from your users than you give, I think that's how you lose the slop war. If you find yourself looking at the graphs that other people don't wanna look at, that's how you win.

Dalton Caldwell 15:56 Yep.

Michael Seibel 15:56 Yeah. I think the last thing I like to talk about when it comes to slop, and why I would encourage kinda early stage founders to be very careful, is pre-slop, there was always, there was already kind of a high likelihood of people getting to pivot hell.

Dalton Caldwell 16:11 Yep.

Michael Seibel 16:12 What I worry about is, like, cloud code and slop might accelerate that already pretty aggressive trend.

Dalton Caldwell 16:17 Well, 'cause you can one-shot anything.

Michael Seibel 16:19 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 16:19 So basically if you're, if you're low conviction and you decide to pivot, you can just-

Michael Seibel 16:25 Have the new thing

Dalton Caldwell 16:25 ... send in a TechCrunch article and say to clone it.

Michael Seibel 16:27 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 16:28 You can be like, "Oh, like clone this new startup." And so it's even more tempting-

Michael Seibel 16:31 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 16:32 ... to just randomly change your idea over and over again-

Michael Seibel 16:34 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 16:34 ... and to build plausible prototypes. Again, I'm, I'm saying these are like pretty good.

Michael Seibel 16:38 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 16:38 Like, it's good. I like cloud code.

Michael Seibel 16:39 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 16:39 And so it's like we're giving-

Michael Seibel 16:42 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 16:42 You're getting a really powerful weapon, like, don't hurt yourself with it, right?

Michael Seibel 16:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 16:45 I think it's easier-

Michael Seibel 16:47 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 16:47 ... to, because you can crank out a really good prototype so fast-

Michael Seibel 16:50 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 16:51 ... to have lower conviction on what you should be working on-

Michael Seibel 16:53 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 16:53 ... and to constantly change your mind-

Michael Seibel 16:55 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 16:55 ... to seek the next shiny thing.

Michael Seibel 16:57 Well, and we always talk about this, but in pivot hell, the shiny thing is often the thing you know the least about. Because, like, you know why the things that you experience or you use are hard to build.

Dalton Caldwell 17:08 Yep.

Michael Seibel 17:08 So it's kind of like it's so much easier to go so much further astray from things you know anything about. You only have so much energy-

Dalton Caldwell 17:16 Yep

Michael Seibel 17:16 ... before you wake up, look at your startup, and you're like, "This is not working."

Dalton Caldwell 17:20 I mean-

Michael Seibel 17:20 "I gotta stop"

Dalton Caldwell 17:21 ... think about it, you could, you could one-shot, "Hey, build a Salesforce clone. I've been reading tweets about that." "Okay, here's your Salesfo- force clone."

Michael Seibel 17:28 Yep.

Dalton Caldwell 17:29 Now what?

Michael Seibel 17:29 Try to get-

Dalton Caldwell 17:30 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 17:30 ... three startups to use it. Oh, they don't like using it.

Dalton Caldwell 17:32 "Oh, maybe I should build something else."

Michael Seibel 17:33 And wait, if it was so easy for you to clone it, like why won't someone clone you? And like, like, like basically you can start poking at this-

Dalton Caldwell 17:38 Yes

Michael Seibel 17:38 ... and end up in a very sad, low conviction place.

Dalton Caldwell 17:42 Yes.

Michael Seibel 17:43 In conclusion, don't play in the slop war.

Dalton Caldwell 17:46 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 17:47 Figure out how to focus on creating value for users, and maybe be a little bit less addicted to graphs that go up but where no value is being created. I love graphs going up.

Dalton Caldwell 18:00 Me too.

Michael Seibel 18:01 Right? Like, graphs should go up, right? But like graphs that go up where no value is created, come down. They've, they have a life of a turkey. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 18:12 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 18:12 Great chat.

Dalton Caldwell 18:13 All right. Thanks, Michael. [outro music]