Andrew Wilkinson: Why founders pick the wrong startup idea

1. 0:00 – 4:07

   Introduction to Andrew Wilkinson

   1. AWAndrew Wilkinson0:00

      You don't want to walk into the gym on day one and try and deadlift 300 pounds. So when someone comes to me and they're a first time entrepreneur and they say, "I'm going to make the next great AI company," I think that is the equivalent.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:12

      I feel like you've actually started and run more companies than maybe anyone else in the world. What is your best advice for coming up with a great startup idea?

   3. AWAndrew Wilkinson0:20

      Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's longtime business partner, has this amazing quote.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky0:24

      "Fish where the fish are."

   5. AWAndrew Wilkinson0:26

      The biggest mistakes I've made have been going into business models where other people have repeatedly failed and thinking, "I can do this better."

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky0:34

      It's so funny to watch you on Twitter. Clearly, you've become AI obsessed.

   7. AWAndrew Wilkinson0:38

      It's like having the world's most reliable employee who costs $200 a month and works 24/7. So many knowledge work jobs are going to change massively. I think the fundamental question is, do all jobs just become a single prompt?

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky0:54

      Today my guest is Andrew Wilkinson. Andrew is the co-founder and CEO of Tiny, a holding company that's often called the Berkshire Hathaway of the internet. They own over 40 businesses ranging from Dribble to WeCommerce to the AeroPress coffee maker. And they focus on buying profitable businesses from founders and holding them for the long term. Andrew and his co-founder bootstrapped the business from zero to hundreds of millions of dollars in value. And Andrew personally was worth over one billion dollars at one point. In our wide ranging conversation, we cover a bunch of strategies for coming up with a good business idea, what common business ideas you should avoid, his experience automating much of his work and life using AI, and what that means for employment in the near future. Also, what he's learned about happiness and money, and how they are not directly related. And also, how getting diagnosed with ADHD and then taking SSRIs was the thing that most impacted his happiness in life. This is both a powerful and also a very tactically useful conversation, and I'm really excited for you to hear it. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also, if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of a bunch of amazing products, including Bolt, Linear, Superhuman, Notion, Perplexity, Granola, and more. Check it out at LennysNewsletter.com and click Bundle. With that, I bring you Andrew Wilkinson. This episode is brought to you by Sauce. The way teams turn feedback into product impact is stuck in the past. Vague reports, static taxonomies, unactionable insights that don't move business metrics. The result? Churn, lost deals, missed growth. Sauce is the AI product co-pilot that helps CPOs and product teams uncover business impact and act faster. It listens to your sales calls, support tickets, churn reasons, and lost deals, surfacing the biggest product issues and opportunities in real time. It then routes them to the right teams to turn signals into PRDs, prototypes, and even code that drives revenue, retention, and adoption. That's why whatnot, Linktree, IncidentIO, and Zip use Sauce. One enterprise uncovered a product gap that unlocked 16 million dollars ARR. Another caught a spiking issue and prevented millions in churn. You can too at sauce.app/lenny. Sauce, built for AI product teams. Don't get left behind. This episode is brought to you by Interpret. Interpret is a customer intelligence platform used by leading CX and product orgs like Canva, Notion, Perplexity, Strava, Hinge, and Linear. To leverage the voice of the customer and build best in class products, Interpret unifies all customer conversations in real time, from Gong recordings to Zendesk tickets, to Twitter threads, and makes it available for your team for analysis and for action. What makes Interpret unique is its ability to build and update a customer specific knowledge graph that provides the most granular and accurate categorization of all customer feedback, and connects that customer feedback to critical metrics like revenue and CSAT. If modernizing your voice of customer program to a generational upgrade is a 2025 priority, like customer centric industry leaders like Canva, Notion, Perplexity, and Linear, reach out to the team at interpret.com/lenny. That's E-N-T-E-R-P-R-E-T.com/lenny.

2. 4:07 – 7:18

   Finding the right business idea

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky4:09

      Andrew, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast.

   2. AWAndrew Wilkinson4:15

      Oh, thanks, man. Great to be here.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky4:17

      I've been wanting to chat with you for so long. There's so much that I want to talk about. And I want to start with a topic that I know that you think a lot about, and that it's also on the minds of a lot of people, which is coming up with a great startup idea. And, uh, this is something that a lot of people are thinking about right now, because AI makes it so easy to actually build your idea into something real. And I feel like this is something you spend a lot of time thinking about. I feel like you've actually started and run more companies than, I don't know, maybe anyone else in the world. I feel like you're in the top 100, top 10, something like that. I don't know. Does that feel right?

   4. AWAndrew Wilkinson4:51

      I've definitely had a lot of experiences, and I've probably started or been involved with 75 different projects or businesses where I've been a primary contributor. And I wouldn't say that's anything to brag about, because I've been an inch deep and a mile wide. Um, so that's been, in a lot of ways, kind of my Achilles heel, is I get too excited about ideas and I start too many businesses. But as a result, I've seen almost every business model under the sun.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky5:18

      Amazing. Okay. So yeah, I think the benefit is for us, is we get to learn from your experience. So let me just ask you this question. What is your best advice for coming up with a great startup idea?

   6. AWAndrew Wilkinson5:28

      Ultimately, the best thing is something you're going to be interested in. But I think a mistake a lot of people make is they choose something that everything is- everybody is interested in. So for example, they say, "I don't know anyone that hasn't had the thought, 'Man, I would love to start like a really cool restaurant,' or, you know, 'I want to have a cool cafe or something.'" And what- in reality what they think about is how cool would it be to come up with a ma- an amazing logo, or you know, all the fun stuff, design the logo- the menu and stuff. But in reality-Operating those businesses is miserable, and it's also a very hard business because every morning, millions of people wake up and they go, "I should start a cafe." But on the flip side, almost nobody wakes up every morning and says, "You know what? I'd love to start a funeral home," or, "I would like to start a pest control business," or, "I should start software that helps people fill out forms for the government." And Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet's longtime business partner, has this amazing quote. He says, "Fish where the fish are." And he gives this example. He says, "You know, if you're a fisherman and you see a large pond, and all around the pond there's a whole bunch of fishermen and they're all elbowing each other out of the, out of the way, they're all using the best lures, the best fishing line, uh, you know, they all have amazing strategy, you actually want to walk off into the forest and find a small fishing hole with lots of fish and very little competition." And I think that's probably the most important thing in business, is actually to find those niches where you can actually make real money, because competition equals lower margin. The more competitors there are, the lower your prices have to be and the more competitive the business

3. 7:18 – 11:58

   Avoiding common business pitfalls

   1. AWAndrew Wilkinson7:18

      is, ultimately.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky7:19

      It doesn't feel, uh, intuitive to go after small markets and to find niches, so let's just follow that thread. Well, why is that actually a source of some of the best ideas, starting really small and niche?

   3. AWAndrew Wilkinson7:31

      I, I don't necessarily think it has to be something that is small forever, but it has to be something that... Like, I think about if- if you're a first time entrepreneur or a student or something, you don't want to walk into the gym on day one and try and deadlift 300 pounds, right? So when someone comes to me and they're a first time entrepreneur and they say, "I'm gonna make the next great AI company," or, you know, "I'm gonna launch, uh, a new bank," or something like that, something that is very, very rigorous and complicated and highly competitive and regulated, I think that is the equivalent. I think you really want to take the baby weights and start slowly building your muscle. And I think about my own experience starting a business, I was so lucky because the first business I ever started, my web design agency, which became Metalab, that was so easy, and it worked. It worked immediately because all I had to do was know how to build websites and be able to talk to potential customers, and then once they said, you know, "Yes, I will pay you $5,000," I just had to send them an invoice, do the work, and that was it. It was a very simple business. And because of that, I got immediate positive feedback, and I built my own narrative, and my narrative was, "I'm good at business. I can do this. Keep going." And then I went off and I started taking my money, uh, that I made from that original business, and that's when I fucked up. So I went out and I started a pizzeria, and I lost all my money. I started a designer cat furniture business, a online DJ school, uh, a skin cream business. All of these things, I just lost all my money almost immediately. But because I had that first win, I kept on going, and I just think it's so critical that people choose a business where they get that initial win.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky9:22

      Okay, this is a great topic. This is just like, how do you avoid creating a job for yourself you hate? There's a lot of business opportunities and ideas that like, yeah, you can make this work, and then it works, and then you're stuck doing this thing, running a restaurant. Like, uh, my wife tells a story where her friend started a coffee shop, and then he's like, "I thought I was starting a coffee shop, but I'm just, uh, replacing milk and buying milk all day. That's my job now."

   5. AWAndrew Wilkinson9:45

      Mm-hmm.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky9:45

      So just kind of along those lines, to help people avoid creating a beast that they, oh, didn't expect, any advice for just how to know this is maybe... Even though this may work and make money, you probably don't want to be spending your life doing this sort of business?

   7. AWAndrew Wilkinson9:59

      So like I just started a pressure washing business. I was speaking at a local business school, and after I spoke, one of the kids walked up to me and he said, "Hey, I'm an entrepreneur. I've started two or three businesses in the past, um, doing landscaping, and I'm not enjoying school." And so just on the spot, I said to him, "Why don't you drop out and we'll start a business together?" And I'd kind of been cooking on this idea of a pressure washing business because I'd studied that industry a little bit and I knew a few friends who'd done it in other cities, and I had this unfair advantage, which is I owned a whole bunch of media properties where I could advertise it for free, basically. And so we started this business, and, and I think for him, he kind of had this moment of, "Do I really want to be washing people's driveways for the rest of my life?" And what I said to him is, "Look, if this gets to scale, you'll never touch a pressure washer unless you want to." You know, if the business can get big enough where you can have employees, he can just focus on sales or digital marketing or whatever aspect of the business that he really loves. I think that's the biggest thing that a lot of entrepreneurs miss. You know, they say, "I don't want to do that for the rest of my life. I don't want to, you know, be in the back of a dry cleaner, dry cleaning clothes." And to me, it's just a question of scale. I think the cafe is a great example, because a cafe, if it doesn't get to a reasonable scale, is just a job. There's a big difference between a business and a job, right? I think if you- you could start a pressure washing business where you're the only employee. Yeah, that's a job. But if you can get to a scale where you can drive 10 leads a day, then you don't have to do any of the pressure washing and you just do what you love. So I think a lot of people have this kind of Protestant work ethic where they think, "Well, I've got to be the person to do everything," and I think they really need to lean into what I call lazy leadership, which is, "How do I get away from the things I hate as quickly as humanly possible? How do

4. 11:58 – 17:08

   Finding your unfair advantage

   1. AWAndrew Wilkinson11:58

      I be Teflon for tasks?"

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky12:00

      It's interesting that this business is non-software related at all, this p- pressure washing business. So I guess just for folks that are coming up with ideas...And I imagine most ideas are, there's like a pull to make it software-oriented, something AI is going to help build for you and help you run. What's your calculus on just going down a direction of, like, real world physical business, like a restaurant, power washing business versus, uh, software? Just, like, what are the benefits of that direction? When should someone actually seriously think about doing a business like a power washing business?

   3. AWAndrew Wilkinson12:30

      I think if someone's listening to this podcast, odds are they're someone who's kind of a digital native. And I think the question is, what's your unfair advantage and what are you great at? So for me, I think I have reasonably good taste. And so what I could do is identify... And I knew enough to identify great design and development talent. But mostly I was lucky because I was a talker. I was good at meeting with clients and selling myself. And so ultimately, my highest and best use, my superpower, was sales. And so that can be applied to anything, anything where you need to go out and you need to sell a customer. And so really, it just comes down to what do you get drawn to, and then how do you find the profitable business within that? So here's an example. A friend of mine, he owns a restaurant, and he said, "Oh," like, "I love it. It's so... I'm so passionate about it. It's this stunning, beautiful, uh, restaurant in my hometown." And he said, "You know, but it's really just a job for a few different people, and we can't make any money at it. But I've been noticing that there's all these vendors that service the restaurant, and those guys are making a killing." And so he told me about a business that cleans grease traps, another one that cleans, uh, exhaust vents for kitchens. So I think looking around and seeing where your passion is and then sniffing around within it, probably somewhere within your passion, there's an opportunity. So for example, I love movies. My happy place is a dark theater. You know, that's the best way for me to de-stress is go to a dark theater and watch a movie and get lost in it. And probably about four or five years ago, I was like, "Man, how cool would it be to invest in movies in some way, to be a part of that creative world?" And so I started looking into funding movies, and I realized that when you fund movies, like, 90% of the time, you lose all your money. And even if you do make some money, you rarely make a good return. But I kind of spent a bunch of time understanding the industry and learning about it. And then, uh, two years ago, I was in New Zealand, and I met the founder of Letterboxd. And I realized, "Oh my God, this is a business where, uh, this has a moat." So it has a network effect. It's a huge social network for film reviewers. It's something I'm passionate about, and it's something that we can buy at a fair price. And so all those things came together and I was like, "Oh my God, I can invest in film now." So, and in the same way, I used to be a barista. We ended up buying the AeroPress coffee maker company. So I kind of follow my passions and spend a long time learning different industries, and then I find the profitable niche within.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky15:19

      Okay, this is a great takeaway. Essentially, when you're thinking about startup ideas, make sure there's some connection to something unique to you where you have some unfair advantage. This makes me think about Brian Armstrong. He came... He- I saw him do a talk once, and he gave this really amazing insight about why, uh, h- why Coinbase did well and why he started Coinbase. And it's because if you look at his background, he had this weirdly rare Venn diagram of background of computer science, and I think it was cryptography and economics, which is the exact set of skills you need to start something like Coinbase. And so I think the tip there is just what is that unique Venn diagram of skills in your background, and just ideally what you're building connects to that and gives you an unfair advantage.

   5. AWAndrew Wilkinson16:02

      Well, yeah, I mean, like, I just met some, another UVic student at the- l- local university student, you know, she is interested in marketing. And so she's gone out and she's found some local clients, so small restaurants and stuff, and managed their social media. And she kind of said, "Yeah, it's okay. I can make a thousand bucks a month, but it's a lot of work and, you know, the owners really want a lot for their money." And I said, "Well, you know, if you just pivot that idea just ever so slightly, and instead of doing restaurants, you did realtors or wealth managers who have quite a large marketing budget and are used to spending serious money, and it only has to work a little bit to make a lot of money for them, those people you can charge $5,000 a month." So I think often it's you find your passion, you know your skill set, you zero in, and then you just kind of pivot and you find the most profitable way to do it. Like, when I started my web design firm, I started mostly with local and small projects, but very quickly I found a job board in San Francisco where startups would share, uh, projects they needed help with. I could charge five times the amount for five

5. 17:08 – 20:08

   Fish where the fish are

   1. AWAndrew Wilkinson17:08

      times less work.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky17:09

      This point about fish where the fish are, I think is really important. You can start something that's awesome, that you love, that you're so excited about, but nobody needs it. Talk a bit more about just what that looks like. What have you seen when you're thinking about ideas that tell you that there's fish, but also not overfished, as you pointed out?

   3. AWAndrew Wilkinson17:25

      I think it's hard. Like Warren Buffett has this great quote, "I'm a better businessman because I'm an investor, and I'm a better investor because I'm a businessman." And I feel like in order to know what problems are valuable to solve, you kind of need to have valuable problems. So it's a bit of a hard thing because, you know, I remember when I was like 20, I would say, um, "I hate how ugly all the cat furniture I can buy for my cats is. I bet people would pay a lot of money to solve this." But I didn't understand anything about the realities of that business model. I didn't understand how little people were actually willing to pay. I didn't... There... I just... I didn't have enough life experience to go, "Yes, that's actually a worthwhile opportunity." And I think that...Being able to know what people would pay to solve the problem realistically is incredibly valuable. So, my example of a realtor selling a house, because I've studied that industry, I know that a realtor can make like 20 to $50,000 selling a single house. So, I can intuit they'd be willing to spend a lot of money if I have a unique way of getting them clients that'll buy houses that'll convert at a high conversion rate. That is worth $5,000 a lead maybe, right? So, so, I think you kind of have to, like, understand the problem in depth before you really know, because when I was starting out, I would go down every rabbit trail. You know, every, um, infomercial idea I had, I would think was genius.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky18:59

      For people that don't, I don't know, that don't have this experience (laughs) which is most people, is there- is there one thing you do, maybe a heuristic that kind of gives you a sense, “Maybe there's something here, maybe there's a lot of fish, maybe it's a valuable problem, or no, this will tell me it probably isn't"?

   5. AWAndrew Wilkinson19:12

      No. Unfortunately, I think it's mostly gut. I mean, it's, um, it's, uh, like, you know, Munger and Buffett talk about having a whole bunch of mental models in your brain, and they form a latticework, right? And they all kind of piece together. And I feel like for me, there's so much of this that is like, it's almost like I'm an AI model and I've trained on all this data of what works and what doesn't and what, you know, what's a good vote and what, what's a bad business, et cetera. And when I see it, I just immediately know. I mean, I think all the- all entrepreneurs are so lucky now to be able to go into Claude or ChatGPT and just say, "Hey, I'm thinking about starting a Botox clinic. Can you break down the numbers? Is this a good business? What's hard about it? What is the regulatory, um, mode? You know, what would my payroll look like?" I didn't have any of that. And so I started so many incredibly stupid businesses. But I think there's no excuse at this point. You should be able to do it with AI.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky20:07

      That's a really good

6. 20:08 – 25:30

   Why boring is good

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky20:08

      tip, actually. Then there's this point you made about boring is good. That's a really good piece of advice. A lot of people are going after flashy stuff, things they can dem on Twitter. Your advice here is boring is actually a really good thing, because fewer people are going after it. Is that the general tip?

   2. AWAndrew Wilkinson20:22

      Totally. I mean, I think, um... So, I started this business, uh, one of my first called Flow. And Flow was basically Asana before Asana came out. So, it was a way to manage your to-dos and projects with your team, uh, in a web app. And we basically did the thing, we made the mistake that so many entrepreneurs make, which is to go after an industry that everybody goes after. You know, just like cafes, everybody has the idea, "Man, I wish I could design my own project management system or my own to-do system." And not only that, but everybody loves new things. They love jumping around. I know me personally, in the last three years, I've probably used three different productivity systems, and I- I love jumping around in them. And I didn't understand that, and I ended up losing $10 million trying to compete with venture-backed businesses and bootstrapping. It was all my own money, poured $10 million, lit it on fire, trying to compete with Asana because I didn't understand how the business world worked, really. You know, I was kind of like... They had raised, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, and they were run by the co-founder of Facebook. And it was a little- little bit like, "I'm Fiji, and I'm deciding I'm going to invade the United States," in retrospect. Just completely silly. Now, on the flip side, if I'd taken that same amount of energy and I'd instead focused on, let's see, what's a really boring one I've heard about? There- there was a business I saw recently, they were making $30 million a year, and all they did was help people fill out forms to get government assistance in certain programs. So, it'd be like, uh, you know, your uncle is disabled and you need to access government funding. They- the process to do it is incredibly time-consuming and miserable, and you have to fill out all these forms. They just have software that fills out the forms for you and it says, "Look, you're going to get $20,000 as a grant. Pay us a thousand bucks." And that is such a boring... Like, nobody wakes up and goes, "I want to make form-filling software," but I think they would if they could make $20 million a year.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky22:29

      Along these lines of just bad ideas, things people shouldn't start, what are a few ideas that you think everyone thinks is going to be a great idea and then they do it and then they always fail?

   4. AWAndrew Wilkinson22:37

      Well, I think the biggest mistake, I can speak from my own experience, the biggest mistakes I've made business-wise have been going into business models where other people have repeatedly failed and thinking, "I can do this better." So, for example, me and one of my best friends about 10 years ago, we really wanted to start a bar. We just thought it'd be so cool to have a bar where us and all of our friends could go. We thought it'd be great for the city. And so we- and we- and we thought, you know, "We can run this really high margin because we're tech guys. We know how to build systems, we're good at business." And we were utterly humbled. You know, we realized that we didn't know anything about business compared to someone who runs a pizzeria. If you think about it, like my example earlier of, if you run a software company, what has to happen? You have to hire a bunch of nerds. They need internet connections and computers, and you need to pay them, and you need to coordinate online, and everyone can work asynchronously. Nothing has to go right. You know, it's not that complicated, at least at small scale. A pizzeria, it's like, if the baker doesn't wake up at 3:00 in the morning and start prepping dough, the entire thing is effed. And all along the way, there's 100 different failure points from front of house, back of house, the deliveries arriving on time, all these logistics. And so I think it's been stuff like that. I- I mean, I also, you know, I got into the news business, the local news business. I ended up buying a- like, uh, old paper, uh, in Vancouver. And it's the exact same thing. It's like, I just can't... You can't take a brilliant management team and change a bad business model. You know, ultimately, the business model wins.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky24:19

      This is, uh, this is really good advice. Basically, if there's a bunch of dead bodies in that space, there's probably something there (laughs) that keeps killing 'em and that you were probably not aware of, until maybe somebody figures something out, right? Like, once in a while, once in a blue moon, someone's like, "Okay, here is how we do this," and then it works.

   6. AWAndrew Wilkinson24:34

      Well, look at Instacart, right? When Instacart came out, everyone said, "Well, Webvan failed. This is-"

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky24:38

      Right.

   8. AWAndrew Wilkinson24:39

      "... never gonna work." And we still don't necessarily know if Instacart is a great business, I don't, I don't know. I haven't studied it. But, but I think it was like, okay, enough technology has changed that it can happen. But it, would it be easier to start Instacart, Amazon, or Coupang, or would it be easier to start an enterprise SaaS software company? Definitely the enterprise SaaS software company.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky25:00

      Hm. I see. So this is, I guess is the advice there, the thing that is easy to start is the thing you should not do, because everyone's going after that?

   10. AWAndrew Wilkinson25:10

       Well, it goes back to my gym analogy of if you're gonna deadlift 300 pounds-

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky25:13

       Yeah, don't just-

   12. AWAndrew Wilkinson25:14

       ... train for 15 years, right? You should have already-

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky25:18

       Yeah.

   14. AWAndrew Wilkinson25:18

       ... had three startups and they should have worked and, you know, you've really built up the reps. And I think that if I was gonna start Instacart, you know, that's different than someone who's 20 starting it. Not that I would be good at it, but at least

7. 25:30 – 31:20

   Bootstrapping vs. venture capital

   1. AWAndrew Wilkinson25:30

      I would know what I'm getting into.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky25:32

      Let's talk about something that is kind of this, like, endless debate on Twitter, maybe it's a false dichotomy between lifestyle businesses, kind of bootstrap businesses, this idea of not raising money, just making revenue, living off the revenue, versus venture-backed, venture-scale companies. Feels like you're, uh, very good at the first bucket, and a lot of people, this is their dream. "I'm just going to start something, I'll start a lifestyle business, make a few million a year, never raise money. Who needs VCs? VCs suck." Advice for deciding which route to go with a, an idea you have?

   3. AWAndrew Wilkinson26:03

      Well, I think, um, there's this, it's just not true that a, quote unquote, "lifestyle" or bootstrap business can't get huge. I mean, we bootstrapped the entire business, and now across all of our companies, we do almost $300 million in revenue, right? So, it doesn't, there's no... And the, the whole time, you know, I had been focusing on taking, you know, starting small businesses, small ideas, simple ideas, often buying small companies and watching them grow really big. And I think that the only difference between what we do and what a venture capitalist does is the level of tolerance of burning money on fire. And I just haven't seen that if we ch- if we choose the right businesses that aren't in incredibly competitive markets or where they have some sort of moat, so what I mean by that is like a great brand or a network effect, like a social network or something like that, there's no, I don't feel we're holding them back by not letting them light a bunch of money on fire, because these things naturally grow. The numbers, I mean, they're like, you know, balloons. They just go, uh, as long as we don't mess them up too much. So, I think the decision ultimately comes down to how hairy do you want your big hairy audacious goal to be? And if you, you know, your big hairy audacious goal is, "I'm gonna start the next satellite business that, you know, creates some sort of crazy technological revolution," yes, you're gonna have to raise venture capital unless you're already a billionaire or something like that. But if you're wanting to just tinker and solve a problem that you think is not gonna be hyper competitive, so for example, that form filling thing or software that just does a narrow thing, that doesn't require 20, 30, $40 million to be lit on fire before it can make money, then, you know, you can have a wonderful life and build a wonderful company that can scale into the hundreds of millions of dollars if you play your cards right without ever raising money.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky28:08

      Per the story you shared with Flo, where you were competing against a venture-fil- uh, venture-funded company, if there is a venture-backed company in this space, is the advice, like, you're not gonna win competing with them, most likely, and try to do something else?

   5. AWAndrew Wilkinson28:22

      Well, look at, um, Things. Do you know Things? It's like a Mac-

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky28:25

      I use Things. I love Things.

   7. AWAndrew Wilkinson28:26

      I do too.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky28:27

      Yeah.

   9. AWAndrew Wilkinson28:27

      It's awesome. So, you know, Things still exists and Things has existed for 20 years. It's run by, I believe, one or two or three people, like it's not a big team, certainly under 10 people. It was, I believe, bootstrapped, and it's just consistently delivered an exceptional product and built up a loyal following. They have their, you know, 10,000 true fans who use it, and that's enough for them, but they don't do a lot. They've been very intentional. They don't do any AI stuff. They don't have an API, you know, all, they, they've, they're not on Android. They're very focused. And I think they, they have succeeded, but the question is, what would an MBA or a business professor say about their success? If the measure of success is, did they maximize taking as much market share as possible and grow to be as big as possible, then the, the answer is no, because Asana and other people have built multi-billion dollar companies. If the goal is the founder has an incredible life, probably has three houses, flies all over the place, does whatever he wants, has recurring revenue, and he gets to work with headphones on, building a beautiful piece of software that people love, then I think he's won. I am generally much more in the camp of the Things guy has won, not Dustin Moskovitz. Dustin Motvik- Moskovitz is just playing a different game than the Things guy. And if Dustin Moskovitz was running Things, he'd be miserable. And if the Things guy was running Asana, he would probably kill himself, 'cause he wants to put his headphones on and build.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky30:05

       I wonder why nobody has come... It feels like just with lifestyle businesses, if it's working-And you would think somebody would come in with more money and more funding and just eat- eat their lunch. Is the key that the market is too small for a VC to ever be excited, and so that's why no one's coming for them?

   11. AWAndrew Wilkinson30:21

       I think so. I mean, I think things probably... I'm- I'm just guessing, I don't know any of the numbers or whatever, but I- I would assume it makes between five and 25 million dollars of revenue, which to a VC is, like, not even worth considering. Like, a VC, they want to y- for- for a VC to invest in your business, you need to have a story where it's worth 300 million to a billion dollars or more. So, it's just not that exciting to them. Which, again, going back to fish where the fish are, right? You don't want to be con- uh, fighting against the commercial fishermen, right? If you just want to have a little business where you make enough, you know, you get enough fish to feed your family and your village or whatever, find the other fishing hole. Don't go where the trawlers are.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky31:04

       This is great advice. If you're trying to start a non-venture-backed company, it's find... Uh, this metaphor just keeps working for us, which is (laughs) uh, fish where the fish are, but not where the professional fishermen are. Also, ideally not where there's just, like, a ton of, uh, I don't know, fishermen from all over the place. I don't know, solo, solopreneur

8. 31:20 – 36:47

   Lessons from acquiring and managing businesses

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky31:20

      fishermen. Okay, coming back to just starting a successful company, what would you say are the keys to an amazing business model, an amazing business broadly? Like, what should you be thinking about and looking into? I know you spend a lot of time thinking about this when you're buying companies. What are, like, a few bullet points that you want to focus on?

   2. AWAndrew Wilkinson31:38

      What I do for a living is basically buy businesses. So, in my early career, I started one business, then I started about 10 more. And then I realized starting businesses was extremely hard, and I, I was doing pretty well. I was making quite a bit of money and I'd sold one of my businesses, and I was looking out at the next 10 years and really asking myself, "What do I want my career to be? And am I happy doing what I'm doing?" And the answer was no. I did not like starting businesses and experiencing that failure rate. It was incredibly stressful. And so, I picked up a book about investing, and I got lucky. The first one I ba- I bought was about Warren Buffett. And for those that don't know, Warren Buffett is kind of... He's counter to every VC kind of hustle culture thing you might hear, because he basically just sits quietly in a room and reads all day. Despite owning 260, uh, different businesses and being one of the 10 wealthiest people in the world, his life is incredibly calm. He only does what he wants, and he spends most of his time quietly reading. And once or twice a year, he makes a big decision to buy a business. And so, when I read about Warren Buffett, I just thought, "Wow, I'm a sucker. I'm running around like a crazy person trying to run all these businesses. Why am I not just buying businesses and letting them run?" And so, when I'm buying a business, what I'm really looking for is something that I can't mess up, right? Now, obviously we buy a business, we try not to mess it up. And we're very intentional, actually. We're very odd in that when Tiny buys a company, we generally just leave them alone. If they already have management in place, we say, "Nothing changes." You know, n- no one should know that an- that we've even bought them. Uh, obviously people know that, but- but really, like, there should be no change whatsoever. The only change that we generally make is if the founder wants to leave the business, then we'll bring in a CEO to run the company. And that's probably the most important decision that we make. So, I'm looking for a business, though, where it is so good that it's hard to mess up. And most businesses are very easy to mess up. You know, like one person leaves and the whole business falls apart because it's held together with dental floss and duct tape. And so, uh, I'm really looking for what Warren Buffett would call a moat. So, a moat is basically a brand. So, that could be a brand like Coca-Cola, Tylenol, Advil, something like that. So, something that gives you pricing power, where you can consistently charge and you have loyal customers. Or, uh, w- where we usually find a lot of opportunity is in network effects. So typically, we're looking for a community that's gotten so big where people don't want to go elsewhere. So for example, we own Letterboxd, which is the largest social network for film lovers. And the question is, if someone else wants to compete with us, why would someone go to their social network that has a small number of users when all their friends are already on Letterboxd? And so you see that same kind of thing with Instagram or Facebook or similar. And so we're looking for businesses like that, something that has staying power, that is hard to compete with, and that we can hold over the very long term.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky35:01

      It was interesting when Elon bought X, how that was such a test of the power of network effects. If you think about it back then, he changed the name, so the brand completely changed. The team, 80% of the people left. Like, what was left? It was the network and the network effect. And the simplest way, just for folks that aren't super familiar with network effects, the way I think about it is just network effect is where every additional user that joins the network, it becomes more useful for everybody.

   4. AWAndrew Wilkinson35:27

      There's another moat, which is high switching cost. Which I don't really like, 'cause it's- it's not really very consumer-friendly. But an example might be Salesforce, where no one wants to... They've- they've spent years and they've done all the implementation and trained everyone on it, and it's kind of the standard. Everybody hates it. But ripping it out and switching is such a pain in the ass that they just won't bother. You know, that's another form of sometimes a great business. But again, that's more depressing. I don't love that one.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky35:55

      (laughs) What's the last company you guys bought?

   6. AWAndrew Wilkinson35:58

      Uh, we bought Serato. So, Serato is the largest-

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky36:01

      Ah.

   8. AWAndrew Wilkinson36:01

      ... DJ software company in the world.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky36:03

      Hmm.

   10. AWAndrew Wilkinson36:04

       So, if you ever see a DJ playing and they've got a laptop in front of them, probably using Serato to DJ.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky36:10

       Wow, that is super cool. What a, like, a fun thing to- (laughs) to be involved in, too.

   12. AWAndrew Wilkinson36:13

       (laughs) Well, I used to- I used to DJ, so I- I was aware of them. And it was one of those moments we talked about earlier, where...You know, I understood the business. They had, uh, a really interesting moat of this huge passionate user base and deep hardware integration. And, uh, and I also loved DJ-ing, and I was able to analyze the business. And, you know, luck comes to the prepared mind, and it worked out.

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky36:35

       This is, uh, another great call back to your excellent piece of advice of just ideally what you're working on. And whether you're starting the company or buying the company, is you have a unique unfair advantage or some kind of unique background that connects

9. 36:47 – 42:39

   Avoiding people problems

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky36:47

      to that idea. Let me ask you one more question before we shift to a whole different topic. Uh, hint, hint, AI. Something that I know you talk a lot about, something you believe strongly and something you deal with a lot is when you buy companies is just, is people and the, the challenges of, of management and hiring and people. So, what have you learned about just, uh, how to successfully, I don't know, find amazing people, keep amazing people, help people be more successful within the companies that you operate?

   2. AWAndrew Wilkinson37:15

      My business partner, Chris, has a really great quote. He says, "There are no problems. There is only people problems." And so we've found that, you know, you could tell us that there's a disaster, that, you know, one of our business units is about to fail or something like that. As long as I'm surrounded by really great, smart people, I feel fine, right? But when we have a bad actor, we have a psycho or a narcissist or a really horrible difficult person we're dealing with, all bets are off and life becomes incredibly stressful. So I'd say I spend probably 20% of my time just trying to make sure we're filtering people very carefully and ensuring we're working with people that we enjoy. Uh, and I can talk about it in the AI. I've done some really interesting stuff to help me screen and identify difficult people. But I've just found that the biggest mistake I made in my early career was, I would hire people because I liked them, on gut, and I would think that I could change them. So it's kind of like in romantic relationships. It never works out well if you, you know, get married to someone and you go, "Okay, well, this is going to be a great relationship as long as I can convert them to Christianity or I can change their parents or their personality," or whatever it is. And so I've just found that I've never been able to change someone. I've never... You can never mentor someone out, out into being a good employee. And the, the kind of heuristic I have is, if I ever think, "Should I fire this person?" even once, I should fire them immediately. Uh, it has always been a signal, at least for me, that when someone's a superstar, I can't imagine firing them. I think it's, it's impossible. The... I'd, I'd be lost without them. But when I repeatedly start going, "Man, is this person going to work out?" almost always within six to 12 months, uh, it doesn't work out. And so I really try and be really direct about stuff like that and just cut when it's not working. So I'd say, like, the lesson really is hire for what you need. Don't hire just for potential, which is counter to what a lot of people say. A lot of people say, "Hire for potential and coach them into being whatever you need." I just haven't found that. I, I think you kind of need to have... hire someone who already is fully formed and can do what you need. But again, everyone does it differently.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky39:30

      (laughs) This is big advice, powerful advice. Is this, is this true not just for, like, the CEOs of the companies you, you run? Is for folks under... lower down the ladder, too?

   4. AWAndrew Wilkinson39:39

      Well, for CEOs, one of the most interesting things we've observed is... So, so I'll give you an example. So, we had a CEO come in and we were interviewing them. And he... My, in my opinion, the business needed to grow via organic marketing. In his opinion, it was enterprise sales. And so when we're interviewing him, he keeps going back to his experience building with enterprise sales. And there's this great saying. "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." And so for him, he's looking at this business and going, "Enterprise sales, that's the way to grow." I hire him, but I say, "Look, if we're gonna hire you, we need you to do the organic marketing." Lo and behold, of course, he goes off and he does the enterprise sales thing. And I've just found that hiring CEOs is like you're... they're an elephant and you're the rider. They're gonna go wherever it is that they want to go, and so listening incredibly carefully to people's words and their experiences, because generally people will do the thing they tell you. So what I look for when I interview a CEO now, I want to be nodding along. I want to go, "That's exactly what I would do," or, "That's way smarter than my idea." And then I just leave them alone, because I've found that any time I try and pull, pull them in a certain direction or coach them or whatever, it just doesn't work. And again, this could be my problem. I might be the world's worst coach and mentor, but for me, that's been what's true.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky41:06

      I imagine there's also an element of they won't love the job if they want to be doing, say, enterprise sales, and then they're, like, creating viral TikTok videos all day and tweeting. They're like, "What the hell?"

   6. AWAndrew Wilkinson41:15

      Well, I've also found people will shoot themselves in the foot, right? If they, if they... if I tell them an idea in a board meeting and I say, "I really need you to try this," it never works, because usually they kind of sandbag it, right? They don't really put their heart into it or they- they're just kind of placating me, and they don't want it to work. They want their idea to work. And so I've learned not to do that.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky41:37

      This episode is brought to you by Miro. Every day, new headlines are scaring us about all the ways that AI is coming for our jobs, creating a lot of anxiety and fear. But a recent survey from Miro tells a different story. 76% of people believe that AI can benefit their role, but over 50% of people struggle to know when to use it. Enter Miro's Innovation Workspace, an intelligent platform that brings people and AI together in a shared space to get great work done. Miro has been empowering teams to transform bold ideas into the next big thing for over a decade.Today, they're at the forefront of bringing products to market even faster by unleashing the combined power of AI and human potential. Teams can work with Miro AI to turn unstructured data like sticky notes or screenshots into usable diagrams, product briefs, data tables and prototypes in minutes. You don't have to be an AI master or to toggle yet another tool. The work you're already doing in Miro's canvas is the prompt. Help your teams get great work done with Miro. Check it out at miro.com to find out how. That's

10. 42:39 – 49:30

    Leveraging AI in business and life

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky42:39

       M-I-R-O dot com. Let's talk about AI. Uh, it's so funny to watch you on Twitter. Clearly you've become AI obsessed, AI pilled, I don't know what the term is. And I love that you're not just the kind of person that just talks about it and tweets pontifications, you're, like, clearly using it in, like, every facet of your job and looking for more ways to use AI. So I have a lot of questions here 'cause I think this is where more and more founders are gonna be, where you are today. First of all, just what's in your AI stack these days? Like, what are the tools you find yourself coming back to most or finding more- most useful?

    2. AWAndrew Wilkinson43:10

       So the primary tool I use is a tool called Lindy, lindy.ai. Uh, and what it basically lets you do is build workflows and agents. So it's very simple. You might say, "When I get an email in the Gmail API, uh, I want you, I want to add an AI agent that reads the email and labels it based on that," right? Or you can build a crazy Rube Goldberg machine that sends different emails all sorts of different places. So for example, uh, when I get an email and it's related to my kid's school, one of the big problems I have is that my kid's school sends so many emails, you know, "The field trip is on Thursday and you need to bring the following things," and meanwhile there's parent-teacher interviews and all these things get added to my calendar. The AI agent automatically takes that, puts it onto my calendar, makes sure there's notes for all the things I need to prepare and stuff. So, like, I have just be- basically tried to take every single thing a human could do in my inbox and automate it with Lindy.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky44:10

       And you're sitting there in Lindy doing this yourself, uh, or do you have people that you've kind of trained to help build s- these sorts of things for you?

    4. AWAndrew Wilkinson44:16

       No, I do it myself.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky44:17

       Okay. How many agents, if, if that's the term you want to use, do you have running for you?

    6. AWAndrew Wilkinson44:22

       Oh man, I think I-

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky44:23

       Roughly?

    8. AWAndrew Wilkinson44:23

       ... probably have not, not a crazy amount within, let's see, each, well, each workflow probably has four or five agents. So for example, my inbox has four or five agents, and then I have a whole bunch of other, you know, I've got a calendar agent, I've got a meeting agent, I've got an email agent, I've got, uh, a scheduler, I've got a CRM, and basically they're all different workflows with a whole bunch of agents within.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky44:50

       Okay. And you're not even, you're not an investor in Lindy, right? You're just a fan super user?

    10. AWAndrew Wilkinson44:53

        No. No.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky44:54

        Fun fact, I actually am, so this is great Oh, no way, that's awesome. ... to have this robot, a tiny angel investor, so I just want to put that out there. That, which is, I love that this came up organically. What are a couple other, uh, really interesting use cases, workflows you've built that people might be inspired by?

    12. AWAndrew Wilkinson45:08

        Let me, let me go through the email one a little more. So basically, emails come in and the first agent says, "Does Andrew N- even need to see this?" Like, let's say you're in a thread and you've already chimed in and everyone's just saying, "Cool, that works," I don't need to see that. So it just archives that. Never, never, it's o- that immediately reduces my email by about 20%. Then it decides, "Is this something that is time-sensitive? Is this something that needs to be dealt with in the next 24 hours?" And if so, it labels it in a special 24-hour label. So when I go to my email, one of the biggest stresses I find is I go, "Shit, there's 200 emails in here and if I don't go through all of them, I don't know if there's an emergency burning somewhere." So now I do. Then it takes any email, uh, or every single email and it decides, "Is this a simple decision?" So for example, let's say s- you email me and you say, "Hey, do you want to get lunch?" So it emails me privately and it says, "Hey, Lenny wants to get lunch. Do you want to say yes? Do you want to say yes but in a few months? Do you want to say no? How do you want to say no?" And it gives me multiple choice. I just can say, "Four," like, "Number four," and then it'll email you as me and it'll write out a nice thoughtful email or whatever. So stuff like that is, like, so freaking cool and helpful, and I'd say that it's replaced stuff that my full-time, I used to have a full-time assistant just working on email. That's all completely automated. And there's all sorts of other cool stuff I'm doing there. Other agents, like, I'm working on one right now to manage my calendar, which is really complex. I do a lot of scheduling and a lot of rules. I have another really simple one, it adds emojis to every single calendar event, so when I look at my calendar, I've got beautiful little emojis for every single calendar event, very silly.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky47:00

        What are the emojis? Like, do they represent something?

    14. AWAndrew Wilkinson47:03

        Yeah. So if I write "weightlifting," it'll just do, like, a, you know, a guy weightlifting or whatever. I've got one that, this one's cool. Basically what it does, every time I email someone, it looks them up online, it figures out what city they live in, it checks my CRM in Airtable. It says, "Okay," I don't know, where, where do you live?

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky47:21

        In, uh, in Marin, in the Bay Area.

    16. AWAndrew Wilkinson47:22

        Okay. So it would say, "Okay, you email Lenny, he lives in Marin." It puts in the database you live in Marin. And then next time I travel to the Bay Area, the agent will see two weeks before and it'll say, "I saw you're going to S- to San Francisco. Here's all the people in San Francisco you should try and have coffee with," right? So just like-

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky47:40

        Wow.

    18. AWAndrew Wilkinson47:40

        ... all these things that I-

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky47:41

        I was- I paid for that.

    20. AWAndrew Wilkinson47:43

        Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, all these things that I've dreamed of having my assistant do that my assistant could just never consistently do because she gets distracted, we're doing an event, there's something going on. It's like having the world's most reliable employee who costs $200 a month and works 24/7.

    21. LRLenny Rachitsky48:02

        Okay. I want to follow that thread, but first of all, what other tools do you have? What are- Lindy is one. What else do you find really useful?

    22. AWAndrew Wilkinson48:07

        So the other one is, um, Replit. So Replit is basically a vibe coding platform. You can literally go into it and say, you know, "I want to make a website for my SaaS software business. Here's, you know, a big document with a bunch of details," and it'll go and design a pretty impressive website. But then you can also build web apps now, so you can, you can literally be like, "Yeah, build a Python web app that does X, Y, Z." And the design is getting so good because it uses Claude 4.0. You can start saying, "Do it in the style of Stripe. Um, think this through. Rewrite all the copy in the tone of David Ogilvy or Malcolm Gladwell or whoever you like," and it does a really incredible job. So what I'm finding is that things that previously would have frustrated me because I would have had to rely on a team of five, I can just do entirely on my own when it comes to web projects and stuff like that. So I'm having a blast with that. Um...

    23. LRLenny Rachitsky49:07

        That's cool. And so your team Replit versus Lovable, Bolt, b0, is that roughly right?

    24. AWAndrew Wilkinson49:11

        I mean, they're all great. I- I just am the most familiar with Replit.

    25. LRLenny Rachitsky49:15

        Okay.

    26. AWAndrew Wilkinson49:15

        And it seems like it has the most functionality. Like, it has a lot of, uh, beef to it, whereas Lovable and Bolt seem a little more basic. You might have to deal with, uh, deployment and stuff in a fiddlier way with them.

    27. LRLenny Rachitsky49:29

        Awesome.

11. 49:30 – 53:13

    The Limitless device

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky49:30

       Okay. Anything else?

    2. AWAndrew Wilkinson49:31

       Um, another one I love, so Limitless, I don't know if you've seen this.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky49:35

       Hmm. I've- I've got one of those.

    4. AWAndrew Wilkinson49:37

       It's really cool. So it, you know, it clips to your shirt. I actually just put it on my pocket, so no one actually notices that I've got it on usually. And I just have it on all day, and what it does is it just records everything I do, and then I can say, you know... The other day, I had a coffee with someone, and I'm the kind of person where I go a mile a minute and I say, "Oh, I'll- I'll send you that and I'll do this," or whatever. And so at the end of the day, I can just say, "Hey, what did- what did I promise to people today?" Or me- even better, everyone loves this use case, I have a fight with my girlfriend and she says, "You didn't say that!" And I'm able to say, "Well, actually, you know, you did." And- and you can query it as an LLM. So you can say, "You're a couple's counselor. Look at this fight. What did each person need? How did it start? What are the key lines? Where did it change? How could you do this better?" And so honestly, from a relationship standpoint is probably where it's been the most useful. What's cool too is that has an API, and so eventually, I haven't gotten there yet, but eventually you'll be able to just have it record your entire day and then automatically go into your Todoist or whatever it is and add to-dos or send emails or whatever you need it to do.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky50:48

       Wow. This is so fun. Uh, or just per your point with the relationship, ask it, "What could I have done better today? Where did I- where did I- where did (laughs) the day go downhill?"

    6. AWAndrew Wilkinson50:57

       Yeah, I saw a guy on Twitter, he said, "Every day I ask it, how could I have been a better dad?" And it'll be like, "Oh, your- you know, your daughter tried to get your attention about this. You- you know, you should have paid attention," or whatever.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky51:07

       And that was with the Limitless data?

    8. AWAndrew Wilkinson51:09

       Mm-hmm.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky51:09

       Oh, man. I love that with the relationship (laughs) you didn't go, or I thought you were going to go where it's like, "Oh, but who actually said it? What did you actually say?" I love that it became much more wholesome of just like, how could we have communicated better holistically?

    10. AWAndrew Wilkinson51:21

        Mm-hmm.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky51:22

        Okay. My wife actually is like, "Don't- don't wear this around." (laughs)

    12. AWAndrew Wilkinson51:24

        Huh. You just got to wear it really covertly. It honestly- honestly, I know it sounds kind of cheesy 'cause you think like, "Oh, it'll tell her," right? But in reality, usually you're both guilty in the fight, and my girlfriend has actually appreciated it because there's been... Half the time it'll be like, "Oh, yeah, you know, Zoe kind of said this and it triggered this," but a lot of the time it's me too, and I think I'm totally right, so I- I find it actually really helpful. Other- other tools, I mean, otherwise it's kind of the basic stack of, uh, Claude and ChatGPT and Gemini. And Gemini, I use mostly for things that are really, um, large. So for example, all my medical records I have trained on Gemini 2.5 just 'cause the other ones can't really go through it all. Claude, I use for writing very extensively, I find it's the best for that. And then ChatGPT for everything else. In terms of cool things I do, recently like I went through my entire medicine cabinet, and I just took big photos that showed all the different, um, medicines and stuff, and now I can say something like, "Hey, um, you know, I'm really tired and stressed out today. What supplements should I take and what dose?" Uh, or I'll say, "Remember- remember all the medications I'm taking. Whenever I ask you a health question, always remind me in the context of I might be taking that medication." So a few times it said, "Hey, you shouldn't take this other medication because your genetics say you're not compatible with it and you're already taking this other one." So stuff like that's been really helpful.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky52:57

        For that use case, do you s- come back to a specific conversation where you've given it that context, use a project or something like that?

    14. AWAndrew Wilkinson53:02

        I never say remember. I just say, "Reme- remember-"

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky53:04

        Just whenever you have-

    16. AWAndrew Wilkinson53:05

        "...remember these supplements. This is what I have in my medicine cabinet." Or, "This is what I take every day."

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky53:10

        I see. So just tap into the memory of ChatGPT.

    18. AWAndrew Wilkinson53:12

        Yeah.

12. 53:13 – 58:20

    Job displacement and AI’s future impact

    1. AWAndrew Wilkinson53:13

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky53:13

       This is awesome. This makes me, uh, remember (laughs) that I- I've started to use, and this connects to other points you've been making, I've started to use ChatGPT Deep Research to prep for these conversations. I used to have a researcher who did this for 400 bucks. They did research on every guest that I had, 4 to 500 bucks, and gave me a whole doc. "Here's everything about them, here's their background, here's questions you might want to ask." Deep Research is better, just as of recently, especially with O3 Pro.

    3. AWAndrew Wilkinson53:39

       We were talking earlier about agents, I forgot one of my favorite agents. So it looks at my calendar 30 minutes before I meet anyone. It goes on to Perplexity and it does a deep dive on the person, and it sends me, it goes into my email and it gets the context of the meeting. So often I book meetings three months out, so I usually look at my calendar and I go, "Who is this person? I don't even remember booking this meeting." It'll text me before and it'll say, "Here's who you are, here's your background, here's the email context of why we're meeting." And it can... And it basically does all the research for me. So and I- I do the same thing. I also use Deep Research and say like, "Give me... If I'm meeting them, you know everything about me. What are our commonalities and what are all the fun things we should talk about?"

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky54:22

       Oh my God. I just- I just want to plug and play all these agents you've built to use them myself.Uh, interestingly, I tried to, uh, create a, an agent to do this research kickoff for me, but I don't think you can automate ChatGPT deep research. Okay, you're nodding no.

    5. AWAndrew Wilkinson54:36

       It's only Perplexity. Yeah.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky54:37

       Okay. Okay. Perplexity is great too, but it's different. Okay, so let me follow this thread I was going down, which is around job displacement. I know you think a lot a- about this. So with me, this researcher is a contractor I was working with for a few months. I no longer need them. Your assistant, you no longer need. Thoughts on just the impact we're gonna see on jobs as a result of AI?

    7. AWAndrew Wilkinson54:58

       There's this great l- uh, William Gibson quote, "The future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed." And I think that we are in the Palm Treo phase. Do you remember the Palm Treo?

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky55:09

       No.

    9. AWAndrew Wilkinson55:09

       So, so w- when I was... Let's see, in 2007, I think... Was that when the iPhone came out? 2007? 2700-

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky55:17

        I'm really bad with timelines.

    11. AWAndrew Wilkinson55:18

        Something like that. In 2007, there was this device called the Palm Treo, and it was like a little PDA-

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky55:24

        Oh, yes. Okay.

    13. AWAndrew Wilkinson55:24

        ... with a stylus, and y- it had a little modem attachment. And so what you could do is you could get your email anywhere, and that was the shocking thing. It had a, you know, black and white or barely color screen, and you could go in and email people. And I remember being- walking through the mall buying shoes while answering business emails and going, "This is the ultimate freedom. This is incredible." But the problem with that device was it sucked. You know, you had to use a stylus. It's not a good user experience. And then the iPhone comes out, and you're like, "Okay, this is, this is what I was waiting for. This is the real thing." But I got a little preview with the Palm Treo. And so right now, people like me who have the time to... N- the time and skillset to nerd out and build the agents can do this. It's just not accessible to everybody. And I think that if it was accessible to everybody, in terms of if you could just open ChatGPT and say, "Hey, ChatGPT, I run a business. Can you help me?" And it started asking you questions, and it said, "Oh, well, you know, you do sales. Do you want me to set up a sales agent? Okay, great. Plug in your HubSpot API. Now, tell me a few things and then give me access to all your data." And then before you know it, it's just a digital employee that's on the other end of the phone on ChatGPT, just like in the movie Her, that you can talk to and it can go do stuff. I think that is, kind of, the iPhone moment that we're gonna have in some time in the next five years. And so I think that if AI doesn't progress, we will see some serious job displacement, like what you already mentioned, the translators, the researchers, the admin, um, some assistant jobs, depending on the kind of work they do. Those jobs will definitely be massively affected, but I think pretty quick all knowledge work jobs could be affected if the models scale in the way that they say they're going to. I mean, if you trust Sam Altman and Dario Amodei... I mean, Dario Amodei said, "By 2027, our models will be smarter than all PhDs," any, so in any subject. That is a staggering statement, and he's been a very conservative, kind of, almost fearful voice in the AI world, very cautious to say things like that. And so when he said that, I kind of perked up and started listening carefully. I don't know that that's gonna ho- uh, how it's gonna play out. He might be trying to fundraise. We have to take it with a grain of salt. But if that's true, then I think so many knowledge work jobs are going to change massively.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky58:08

        Hmm. Okay. There's a lot here. I actually had Mike on the podcast, their CPO, Mike Kriger, and he pointed out that Dario, every prediction he's had so far has been right over the past few years. And so there's

13. 58:20 – 1:02:50

    Advice for new grads

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky58:20

       reason to listen to his insights. Okay, A- Andre, I know you're not gonna have all the answers for people, but let me ask you a, kind of a two-part question. For new grads and for people currently in the workforce, say, like, I don't know, senior product manager, advice on what they should do. Where should they focus? What skills will matter most? What jobs do you think will last? What advice can you give us?

    2. AWAndrew Wilkinson58:43

       You know, everybody 10 years ago, do you remember there was this whole movement that we should teach kids how to code? Remember that?

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky58:50

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    4. AWAndrew Wilkinson58:51

       So now, teaching kids how to code is like teaching kids Basic, and we have a GUI, right? You don't need to learn punch cards and Basic programming because... Or MS-DOS, because we all have keyboards and mice, we don't have to do that. And I feel like coding has really gone away because of that, and I think now people are saying people need to learn how to prompt, which I think is very true for the toolset right now, but I don't know how relevant that is in the future, because I think we're still, again, in the Palm Treo phase. I think that the AIs will be very good at eliciting what the actual problem you're trying to solve is, and reinterpreting it in a way that it can optimize the query to get the right answer and solve the problem. And so I think the fundamental question is, do all jobs just become a single prompt? So for example, does a CEO just become, uh, grow the business while making the customers happy and turning a profit or, or something like that, and it is able to actually be an omn- omniscient presence that can run a whole company? Now, that's a big... I'm someone building AI agents. I can barely get it to reliably do, you know, calendar entries and that kind of stuff. So I don't think that's totally imminent, but I can certainly see a world where that's coming. And so the question is, what is one to do when that reality is barreling down at you? For people who have resources, I think there's a lot of things they can do in terms of investment. They can invest in the companies that'll benefit from this, companies that have a lot of compute or energy or that sort of thing. So, that's one thing, but that's not really the question. The question is, what do you do if you're a smart 18-year-old or 19-year-old or whatever?In my opinion, I think the best thing to do right now is to get incredibly good with these tools and utilize them to build enough wealth that you can put the money into diversifying into, uh, compute and energy. And I do think that while everybody thinks that, you know, all jobs will go away in five years and robots will be everywhere, people generally overestimate things in the short term and underestimate them in the long term. So, I think there's going to be this long window where robotics is not anywhere near good enough to even do, like, raking leaves and stuff. And I think there's going to be a ton of opportunity for people to just spin up new businesses that never existed before. Like, I was talking to some friends and we were like, "You know, what do you do in a world of abundance where, you know, everything is really cheap and, and companies operate almost autonomously?" I think there's a lot of weird skillsets that we can't imagine right now. Like, for example, just being funny, right? Being funny to hang out with. You know, think about OnlyFans, right? Right now, there's this whole idea of OnlyFans or, uh, or where people are paying for comfort and connection, but in a romantic sense. Imagine people did that day-to-day. They just love hanging out with funny people. So, you have a funny guy who you chat with, or comes over to your house, or whatever it is. I'm making stuff up. Maybe it's a guy who comes to play- to plays- played pickleball with you or something. I don't know. But I can imagine that in this weird world, there's all these weird new jobs. So, I think like my take is, like, things will either be to-... Hmm. Things will either be totally fine or they will be terrible and we'll all be dead. And I can't predict which one of those is there. I don't think it's worth thinking about all of us being dead. And so I think it's really just lean into what are the tools? How do you stay cutting edge? How do you build businesses and wealth in this new world? But I'm certainly feeling a little bit like all of our brains could be defunct in the next 10 years, and that's kind of a scary thought.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:36

       I'm picturing this dystopian world (laughs) where humans are just going around making jokes and just making living.

    6. AWAndrew Wilkinson1:02:43

       Well, it's like, where does- where does status come from, right?

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:45

       Yeah, man.

    8. AWAndrew Wilkinson1:02:45

       In a world of abundance, where does status come from? You know, maybe it is just like

14. 1:02:50 – 1:05:26

    Parenting in the age of AI

    1. AWAndrew Wilkinson1:02:50

       having- being the best at hiking or something.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:52

       Well, let me ask you this, 'cause this is where it gets even more real, is just, with your kids, what are you encouraging them to learn? What are you encouraging them to get good at? Because that's- you know, like, this is- the real problem a lot of people are having right now is what will matter in the future. Obviously, we don't know. But what do you- what do you- what are you encouraging them to focus on?

    3. AWAndrew Wilkinson1:03:09

       Well, I don't know. I mean, they're so little. They're five and eight. And so really what I'm focused on is making sure they're socialized and they're polite. Very basic. So, are they comfortable talking to adults? Like, I often send my son whenever he wants something at a cafe, I always make him go up, ask nicely, pay himself, all that kind of stuff. But at this point, you know, I feel like for the first 10 years of life, you're just trying to make sure that they're not traumatized or rude. And (laughs) that- I think it's gonna be really interesting when they're 10 plus, where they're really aware of this stuff and can start building with these tools. And to be honest, I just don't know. I think- I just want them to lean into whatever they're passionate about and go from there. But I have no idea. And to be honest, it's not something I'm worrying about because it's too hard to worry about. I don't know. It's too multivariate. There's too many ways it can go.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:03

       I feel like, uh, a core part of your message is just get good with these tools. There's- you know, there's a classic quote, "Uh, AI won't replace you. It'll be somebody very good using AI is gonna replace you, at least for a while." And so it feels like a big part of this is just like use these things. Before we were- started recording, we were having a mic issue, and I love you just went straight to ChatGPT. "ChatGPT, how do I connect this mic to Riverside and make it work?" And I feel like that's just a habit to build, is just assume ChatGP- like, go to ChatGPT whenever you have a problem like that. I've been doing that a lot. I was connecting a subwoofer. I'm like, "What wire do I need to buy to connect the subwoofer to the receiver?"

    5. AWAndrew Wilkinson1:04:37

       Well, the best part about ChatGPT is, I used to just get stuck. And I have ADHD, so when I get stuck, let's say, like, what's an example? I was- I was redoing my home IT security, right? And what will happen is, I'll be in the terminal and I'll enter something and then something goes wrong, and it just keeps erroring. And then I'm like, "Well, I'm out." Like, I have ADHD. I can't tolerate this. I- I don't have- I just- I just lose the thread completely. And ChatGPT allows me to stay on track and go so much further and faster than I ever could before. And I just love- I love not being artificially stopped in your tracks and being able to continue the flow state as a result.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:17

       And also, uh, I noticed you were using voice mode, which is what I've been using more and more. And I feel like that's something a lot of people sleep on, is just the voice mode where you could talk to it and not have to sit there and type your questions.

15. 1:05:26 – 1:10:10

    The pursuit of happiness beyond wealth

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:27

       Okay, so let me go in a different direction. You've been spending a lot of time- you wrote a whole book about this, of just kind of your journey from, you call it barista to billionaire, where you (laughs) started serving coffee, then you ended up being very successful, then realized that that's not- didn't make you happy. You were quite unhappy, uh, with lots and lots of money. I think a lot of people hear these stories, they see this stuff, they're like, "Yeah, okay, I sort of get it," but they still do the same sorts of things. They still assume they will be happy once they reach that next goal, that next title, make certain dollar amount. What can you share? What have you learned about just what it actually takes to be happy that you think people are still not really recognizing and still kind of are confused about?

    2. AWAndrew Wilkinson1:06:10

       Do you remember, um, when you're in your early 20s, like, you... I- I- I remember when I was in my early 20s, I'd always be like, "I need to move away to Europe. I need to go discover myself." And I'd be really anxious and stressed out and in an existential crisis, and then I'd fly to Europe to go backpacking or something, and I'd still feel anxious and have my existential crisis. It's just now I'm in Europe. And I think the reality is that...Whatever is in your brain, whatever that anxiety loop is, doesn't go away just because you have a bigger house or more money in the bank account, or you're in Bali or wherever it is. That's a chemical reaction happening inside you that relates to your past, and your DNA, and all that stuff that creates that soup. And for me, I've always been a very anxious person. I've always worried about tomorrow. I rarely enjoy today. I'm always worrying about what could go wrong in health or my businesses, or with my family, or whatever it is. And so, when I started my business, all I thought was, "I just don't want to work for someone else. If I can just wake up in the morning, do my own thing, make 60K a year, then I'll be happy." So, I got that. And then it was, "Once I make a million dollars a year and I can buy a house." Well, I got that. And so on, and so on, and so on, all the way up to, at one point, being worth over a billion dollars. By the way, should redo the title of the book from Barista to Billionaire. Now it's Former Billionaire, because our stock went down. But, you know, it didn't change anything. Like, I'm still just as anxious as ever. I remember a month ago, I had this day where I was sitting in the sauna and I was stressing about a bunch of business problems and money things, and I had this mom- I stopped myself and I was like, "Wait a minute. Like, 10 years ago, I had all the same thoughts and I was stressed ab- out about similar kinds of problems, and our revenue was 20 million bucks or 15 million bucks. Now we're at alm- you know, almost 300 million, and I'm still stressed about the same things." And the saddest part was, as I met more and more wealthier people, all the way up to multi-billionaires, I realized they were all still comparing themselves to their peers, competing over who has what, and tracking stuff, and still unhappy. That anxiety loop or depression was still in their brain. Uh, I remember I had this moment where I met this guy who is a multi-billionaire, single digit multi-billionaire, and he goes, "Oh, Jeff Bezos, he's just so fucking rich." And I was like, "Wait, like, what do you- what do you mean? You're worth like five billion dollars. Like, what can- what can he do that you can't?" And he goes, um, "He can buy a super yacht." And it's like, "What?" Like... A- and you know, you can look at that guy and you can say, "Oh, that's a wacko," and all the other stuff. But the reality is that we're all just comparing ourselves to our peers. Whatever our peers have that we don't, we feel hard done by. And I remember just thinking like, "Oh my God, how do I not- how do I avoid becoming this?" And that, that's the scary reality, is no matter how lucky you are... I mean, we're all so fortunate. We live in, uh, you know, uh, for me, I live in Canada. I have every opportunity that I ever could've hoped for, and there's people all over the world who have nowhere near what I had growing up. And yet, I felt hard done by because in my neighborhood, I was the poor kid. I wasn't poor globally. I wasn't even poor based on Canada. But all my friends had big screen TVs and would go to Hawaii, and I never got to do any of that stuff. My parents were stressed about money. So, I feel hard done by.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:05

       There's a phrase a friend's financial advisor once shared, "The Joneses are doing really well."

16. 1:10:10 – 1:16:45

    Mental health and medication

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:10

    2. AWAndrew Wilkinson1:10:10

       Mm-hmm.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:11

       And that's hard to-

    4. AWAndrew Wilkinson1:10:12

       Yeah.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:12

       ... get over.

    6. AWAndrew Wilkinson1:10:13

       Yeah.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:13

       What, um... So what changes did you make to just be happier? It... You know, it's hard to give up money. It's hard to give up more money you could make. It's hard to give up things that, you know, that- that money buys, I guess. Just, so what- what did you change?

    8. AWAndrew Wilkinson1:10:28

       Well, there's a few things. I mean, one was reframing money, to some degree, to have it be something that wasn't just about feathering my own nest and making it better. So for example, I- I was talking to a friend who's very wealthy, and I was kind of saying like, you know, "I- I...," all the feelings I described of, you know, "I have all this and yet I don't feel better." And he said, "Well, you know, what are you working for?" And I said, "Well, I guess I'm just working for the numbers to get bigger, and you know, have more employees. And you know, that's nice. Like, our businesses do good things in the world and help more people and stuff, but ultimately, it's just to pile up cash." And he said, "You know, I've reframed it so that all my money, 90% of my money plus, goes into my philanthropic foundation, and then it gets given away to great causes. So, when I think about working really hard or losing a deal or an investment going well, the win isn't for me. The win is about s- doing something good." So- so I did that, and that definitely helped. I also stopped spending as much money. I found that, you know, the more stuff I had, the more houses I had, the more people that directly worked for me to manage all that stuff, the less happy I was. You know, I was kind of owned by my stuff. And then I also do a real- I work really hard not to have people... I- I try not to beat people over the head with it. Like, I drive a normal car. I don't bring people to my house until I know them really, really well. I meet them on neutral ground, like I meet them in a cafe. I dress like a schmoe, you know? I just try not to be a, you know, a weird out of touch rich person. Um, but the biggest thing, which is kind of a weird answer, is actually medicating myself. So basically, like all my life I've been really anxious. And in 2020, I remember I was watching a movie with my ex-wife, and I was looping on, you know, "I need to respond to this email. If I don't respond to that email, this person's going to be mad." And then I realized that I was watching a movie for the last 20 minutes and I didn't know anything about what was happening in the movie. And then I was going, "Oh my God, my- my wife is going to be mad at me. We're going to get in a fight and..." You know, I'm projecting all this negative stuff. And in that moment I was like, "Okay, maybe I do need to, you know, try an SSRI or something. This is not sustainable."And so I went to my doctor and I got prescribed with one. And I remember I was so scared of it that I cut it into 10 pieces. I said, "I'm just going to take a tiny little piece." And it took me six months after that to try and eat. But I started taking these pieces every day, and I just noticed that within about three or four days, it was like someone had turned down the volume on the nasty voice inside of me doing all that. And for the first time in my life, I felt relief. I f- you know, no amount of money or success or a- or attention or anything else had done what this little tiny yellow pill could do for my mental state. And so now I've been on an SSRI for four and a half years or something like that, and then I also started medicating my ADHD, and I would say that my brain went from Times Square to a quiet library. And I think a lot of people are scared of that, but ultimately most people are acting out something that's going on inside of them. You know, there's a trauma or something medically going on and that's creating this anxiety, this depression, this feeling, and addressing that is so much more important than trying to get praise from the external world.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:05

       Wow, that is really powerful. I really- I'm really thankful you're sharing this. The advice most people hear, you know, like the general, I don't know, culture is just like, "No, don't take meds. Don't take- don't medicate yourself. You're gonna, you're..." I don't know. There's all these downsides, all this risk. The pharma industry is trying to make money. I love this other perspective of it. It's actually really effective, and actually makes a big difference in your life, and it may be the only solution.

    10. AWAndrew Wilkinson1:14:29

        Well, it's funny because if you have a headache, I don't think many people say, "Oh, don't- don't take Tylenol." You know, you're benefiting Johnson & Johnson, Big Pharma. They go, "Yeah. You know, you take a Tylenol when you have a headache," or a lot of people have seasonal allergies and they take antihistamines, and they forget that histamine is not just in your nose. Histamine's in your brain and everywhere in your body. And so when you take an antihistamine or a Ty- even a Tylenol, you're changing your brain. You're changing the way you think. You're changing everything. And yet, for some reason, people are so scared, myself included, of taking an SSRI or similar medication to treat something that is ruining their life. Like anxiety was ruining my life. Every minute of every day, I was convinced that something terrible was about to happen. And even now, medicated, I still have that voice. It's not like that. That bene- that, frankly, beneficial voice that helps you grow your business or whatever becomes unproductive at a certain point, and I think that it is- it's wonderful to be able to actually just get a little bit of solace from it.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:38

        Wow. For the folks that... I imagine many folks listening are like, "Oh, man. I should really explore this," what's the best way to explore this? To talk to your primary care physician- physician?

    12. AWAndrew Wilkinson1:15:47

        Yeah, I think talking to your doctor. And one- one note I think a lot of people miss is when I... I was so scared of side effects 'cause you hear about all these horrific side effects of, you know, people lose their libido and feel terrible and stuff. And so I looked into it, and a lot of the side effects are due to the way that people metabolize different drugs. And so you can actually do your 23andMe, uh, or similar DNA test and you can find out how you metabolize different SSRIs, and then I chose one that I could metabolize well. And so I've had no side effects or problems. And I know I- every time I mention this, I get a lot of people that say exactly what you say. You know, Big Pharma and all this other stuff. But I just ask everyone listening, if you take a Tylenol or you take an antihistamine or other medications, I don't know why, you know, something that can be so profoundly helpful is something that people need to be afraid of.

Episode duration: 1:28:28