Modern WisdomLearning From Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover - Julien Smith
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
115 min read · 22,938 words- 0:00 – 0:19
Intro
- JSJulien Smith
You know what Mark Zuckerberg used to call Twitter way back in the day when both companies were private, he called it a clown car that drove into a gold mine. A company filled with schmucks that nobody knew what they were doing, could barely keep it going. (wind blows)
- CWChris Williamson
Julian Smith, welcome to the show.
- JSJulien Smith
Thanks for having me.
- 0:19 – 17:41
Elon Musk Buying Twitter
- JSJulien Smith
- CWChris Williamson
Elon Musk's tried to buy Twitter, Julian. What the fuck's going on?
- JSJulien Smith
Yes. (laughs) Uh, oh, man. So everyone... I think I, I'm on the other side of what everyone else... Everyone's like, "This is catastrophic," 'cause I, of course I'm reading Twitter about this. Uh, I think, you know, there's this weird... 'Cause E- Elon Musk is not the founder of Twitter. Excuse me, of Tesla. He's not the founder of Tesla, but he did take Tesla to... from where it is to where, uh, it is today. And, and, and so there is this, there is this stagnation. I'm, I'm a small Twitter shareholder. There's this stagnation inside of Twitter where it's like everyone has wanted an, an edit button as like the manifestation of this. Like no one... Everyone wants an edit button, but they don't want to give an edit button. It's like a manifestation of a stagnation that occurs inside a company when a kind of... sometimes when a founder doesn't run it properly. So I actually believe Twitter is one of the greatest, most amazing things on this, on this, uh, earth. And, uh, so I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I'm for it. I'm for it. I'm for-
- CWChris Williamson
Who... Who's against it? I want, I wanna know-
- JSJulien Smith
Dude, everybody is against it.
- CWChris Williamson
Ah, dude, your Twittersphere is completely wrong. Look, let's give... For the people that don't know what's going on, I'm gonna give you the breakdown. Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter to take it private. This is from the New York Times article. "Elon Musk Offers to Buy Twitter: Live Updates." "His takeover bid, at $54.20 a share, comes just weeks after he became the company's largest shareholder. Here's what you need to know." Um, "Twitter's stock price suggests that the markets aren't convinced by Musk's bid." I don't think I agree with that. The New York Times is probably trying to spin it. So, "Elon Musk has launched a takeover bid for Twitter, offering to buy it for $54.20 a share, just weeks after he became the social media company's largest shareholder. Mr. Musk said that this was his best and final offer, representing a 54% premium over the day before he began investing in the company in late January." Uh, "In the filing, Mr. Musk said, 'I don't have confidence in management,' and that he couldn't make the changes he wanted in the public market." So at that point, I mean, that's a pretty damning, uh, comment from somebody who's kind of just, just arrived in the house, hasn't even taken their shoes off, and he's sort of curled a big fat one out in the middle of the carpet in front of everybody.
- JSJulien Smith
(laughs) I don't like what you're making for dinner. Let me take over.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, precisely.
- JSJulien Smith
We'll have a proper dinner this way, otherwise I'm leaving.
- CWChris Williamson
I didn't know, 'cause the... he's actually posted... The, the tweet that's gone super viral, I bet that this is the m- the most accessed SEC document, uh, of all time.
- JSJulien Smith
Of all time. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Definitely. By far. So he's just tweeted a... saying, "I made an offer," linking to an SEC filing, which presumably... Does that have to be made public? Is that the sort of-
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Right, okay. So this was out there in any case, and rather than him just letting somebody find this, he's decided to get out ahead of it. But it's got in it... It's got some exhibits, and I don't know how-
- JSJulien Smith
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... common it is for this sort of stuff to be shown there. In it, he says, uh, this is him to Bret Taylor, Chairman of the Board, "I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform of sp- for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment, I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company. As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share, in cash, a 54% premium. Uh, my offer is my best and final, and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as shareholder. Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it." So presumably, you, you might be able to explain this better, but presumably-
- JSJulien Smith
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
... what he's doing here is he's saying, um, "All of the shareholders in Twitter, I'm going to offer you a 54% premium on-"
- JSJulien Smith
Sure, yep.
- CWChris Williamson
"... what I started, a 38% premium on the day before." Um, "However, if you don't do that, not only are you going to look like you've been cooked to your own shareholders, but I'm going to withdraw my... I'm gonna dump 10% of my stock back into the market."
- JSJulien Smith
All of my ownership, and then the, and then the stock will tank down again to wherever it was before the Elon Musk thing in the first place. And so it is... And by the way, you'll note that the 54.20 number includes the, the, the number 420, which he also did whenever he said he was gonna bring Tesla private at $420. This is like maybe a couple years ago, back when it was worth much less than that. So he said, "I've got a private buyer for Tesla at $420 a share." Always this number, 420, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Why is that?
- JSJulien Smith
And, uh... Uh, why the number 420?
- CWChris Williamson
Is- He's not memeing his way through...
- JSJulien Smith
I mean are, are you sure? Because... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Are you kidding? Are you trying to suggest that Elon Musk is using 420 like blaze up day as-
- JSJulien Smith
I... Uh, all that... Here's what I'm suggesting, actually. Here's genuinely what I'm suggesting. I'm actually not sure that he's not doing that. But the reason that I think that this is so interesting is that, is that, um, so much of, of what you do as a founder, as a CEO, as all of these things, really in the public sphere, so much of what you do is about telling a story and people believing in you. And honestly, if I can be... if I can be super clear, I... again, being back to being early at... on every, on everything, when I was... I, I bought Tesla stock really, really long time ago, and, and since, it's like the one thing I wish I had put like all of my money into but didn't. But, but what happens is you're looking at a company that effectively was insolvent and wasn't gonna succeed unless he was able to get people to believe.And I'll tell you what he's really good at, is getting people to believe in something and then that allows kind of, like, that story to ride out and become dominant.
- CWChris Williamson
But sh-
- JSJulien Smith
And he's good at that, like, over and over and over again.
- CWChris Williamson
Surely if he's about to take this company private, his ability to make people believe from a value creation perspective now becomes irrelevant. People don't need to believe in Twitter as a platform, they already need it. The difference with him with Tesla is that he, his ability to garner belief actually then pays out dividends in terms of the share price.
- 17:41 – 21:55
What is a Hostile Takeover?
- CWChris Williamson
first question, is this what's considered a hostile takeover?
- JSJulien Smith
That's a great question. I think the answer is, uh, yes. What a hostile takeover is, strictly like legally speaking, I'm not clear on. But the u- the understanding is that it is a hostile takeover in the sense that it is being done without the permission of any, anyone else that's, that's involved. And it's effectively like backing all the shareholders and, and the board maybe into a corner.
- CWChris Williamson
Interesting. So I'm looking at some of the biggest replies (laughs) , uh, some of the highest replies here. Um, uh, "A man who's willing to spend $41 million for free speech is a good man that I can admire." Someone replying said, "If you're paying billions, you are buying speech. It's not free." I don't know. I mean, what is it-
- JSJulien Smith
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... the thing that I don't get...... is people's aversion to Elon Musk, overall.
- JSJulien Smith
They have a... They have a very strong one. It's interesting 'cause, like, people often make those comparisons with Jeff Bezos too. They're like, "Oh," like, "how rich is he really?" And they show, like, an ant and then a skyscraper, and they're like, "Let's... This is you, and this is how rich he is." And they show these crazy comparisons of wealth accumulation that are admittedly, like, out of proportion with the past because of, because of tech and, again, that acceleration that was able to happen. It happens faster than ever. But then, uh, there's this automatic assumption that all they're trying to do is accumulate. Like, like, money is no longer valuable to these people. And so then you could think, "Well, what's the next thing? Oh, is it power?" That seems simplistic to me. It really feels like they want to make the world, you know, maybe the language is... Neutral language is, like, in their image. And that could be some good and some bad. But I don't know, like, space travel feels pretty good to me. You know? And electric cars feel pretty good to me. Like, admittedly, uh, i- one of the stories of Elon Musk is he, uh, he... I think he made some money from his previous company, Zip something, before PayPal or whatever, and immediately went out and bought a $1 million McLaren car and crashed it on his first ride out. So we're not talking about a normal person, but we're still talking about somebody that has more vision than the average Twitter shareholder.
- CWChris Williamson
I would say more vision, but the thing that's interesting is all of the, uh, like, new world order accusations that get thrown at Bill Gates. Bill Gates doesn't have as much wealth as Elon Musk, but for some reason more people seem to be happy with Elon, at least from, I guess, like, the center right side of the fence certainly seem to be a little bit more happy with him 'cause he's kind of cool and, and young and hip and does, like, meme coin stuff. But I, I just don't know... I just don't know what it... I, I don't know what people's problem with Elon is overall. Like, I don't think he's said anything particularly egregious. You know, he, he... I don't think he's got, like, a secret alt-right past. I might be wrong. Uh, yeah.
- JSJulien Smith
Right. Yeah. I'm, I'm not sure that that's... I don't think that's the case either. But there, there is this thing that happens. And the general attitude in tech, right? And it's true everywhere. Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk. Like, Jeff Bezos was more neutral. And by the way, people did feel this way about Bill Gates in the '90s during the antitrust, uh, lawsuits that were going on with the government, but it sort of receded since then. And Bill Gates became this dude that is almost like, uh, John Rockefeller Sr. John Rockefeller Sr., his post-oil monopoly thing that he did is he went out and he spent a n- a gigantic amount of money, uh, donating, donating it towards, uh, mostly medical causes. And his, his father was a quack doctor, and so he was like, "Oh, okay, well, medicine needs to be evolved," and all these other things. Essentially what Bill Gates has done. And... But these people are... These people are too young for that, and, and they still have energy, and they're, they're like, "I can run another company." Because when you run one company, I haven't run a company as, as big as that, but I have run... I've raised a lot of money, and I've built companies that are meaningful size for startups. You're still like, "I th- I think I could do it again. I think I could... I think I could make it better and easier this time." So I bet he still has a lot of that energy in him.
- 21:55 – 26:21
Free Speech Alternatives
- CWChris Williamson
There's a, a bunch of replies from Gab. Are you familiar with Gab? Do you know what that is?
- JSJulien Smith
I am familiar with the website Gab.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Okay. So, um, there's one set of replies. "Counteroffer. Sell your 9% Twitter stock, invest $2 billion in Gab, join Gab's board, and let's take them down."
- JSJulien Smith
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
"You have to consider that bringing free speech to Twitter isn't as simple as buying it. Apple and Google do not allow free speech. So if you stop the censorship..." Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, this is the equivalent of the guys on Pornhub that comment-
- JSJulien Smith
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... that comment things saying, "Oh, I... If she... If I got my hands on her."
- JSJulien Smith
"If only I was in that room."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. "Dude, she wouldn't know what we got..."
- JSJulien Smith
Unbelievable. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And all, all the people that comment on the, you know, glamour models' Instagram pages saying, "Looking so hot, sweetie." You go, look, dude, you're... Elon's not bothered about buying Gab. You know? He, he's-
- JSJulien Smith
But, but this is the thing is, like, is anything off the table at this point?
- CWChris Williamson
But my, my point is, like-
- JSJulien Smith
Like, that's, that's the part that really scares the shit out of me.
- CWChris Williamson
Homeboy's... Homeboy's playing in a 50 million... A $50 billion hostile takeover of the largest town square platform on the world. In the world.
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah. For sure.
- CWChris Williamson
He... You know, Gab as a free speech alternative might be fun or whatever, but I... It just, it just seems to me like a really poor move. I think Rumble did the same thing when-
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... Rogan got popped by, uh, Spotify about is he gonna take episodes down and doing apologies and things like that. And Rumble were like, "Oh, we'll offer you 100 million bucks to go from Spotify to us." And you think-
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
(sighs) I understand that when you're sat in a boardroom that it kind of sounds cool, but when you're everybody else watching on Twitter, you sound like the guy on Pornhub saying that you should come to... You should come over-
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... to my casting couch, as opposed to the-
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... the one that you're on right now.
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And because the plat- those platforms, like, nothing's become a... Become a... Become Spotify. Like, no matter how much... It... Like, that's been won. And so that's the same thing with Twitter, actually. The common square, it's just Twitter, maybe, may... I don't know how, I don't know about forever, but keep in mind, like, it is the one place where you can go say some shit. Well, maybe not everything anymore. I don't even know about that. But, like, where you could basically go say some shit no matter how stupid or offensive it may become. And it, it is public, which by default on Snapchat, 'cause we talked about other social channels before, it is not. On Facebook, it is not.... on a medium that's behind paywalls now, so you're not even there. Uh, on Clubhouse, I don't know that it even is relevant or where you can compare.
- CWChris Williamson
I mean, Instagram's, Instagram's got the equivalent amount of access. But you are, you are right. I understand.
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah.
- 26:21 – 38:31
Advice for Startups
- CWChris Williamson
Graham's got this quote, I think, that I learned from you that says, "Don't give up and don't get demoralized."
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That's his advice to starters. Do you think that there's anything else that's missing from that?
- JSJulien Smith
So that's, that part, that's from a famous article called Thirteen, 13 Phrases About Startups. And the two, the two ones at the end are like don't get demoralized, and if you happen to get demoralized, don't give up, even if you are demoralized. And the reason that he says that is because startups are like not rocket science. Like so long as you keep going and you tr- you're able to even raise a little bit of money to keep going, you'll be able to deviate your way to success. And so that's, that's actually like, that's why the clown car was able to drive into the gold mine, from the conversation before, because they were able to get enough money to just kind of deviate while the thing was skyrocketing. And so the, the number one thing that they say in startups, and it's true for all companies, is like get someone to love you. And if someone l- Like I just did an aw- We serve coaches, for people in the context of, uh, of my, uh, that are just randomly listening to this. Uh, I run a company, Practice, that serves, that serves coaches, lets them, help them run their business. And so I just onboarded a dude and he's like, "My God, you've just saved, you've just like solved so many of my problems." And he was so excited about it. You, you just wanna have one person like that. And if you can get one person like that, there's probably two. And if there's probably two, then there's probably 10. If there's probably 10, there's probably 100, you have a company. And so it's really about, and I, I think he even says it in the same article, instead of making 10 people or 100 people ambivalent, get one person who's just like I can't get enough of this to, to come out of the woodwork or find a person like that.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the difference between a startup founder and a normal small business owner? Because I'm friends with a ton of small business owners. Most of my friends in the UK have-
- JSJulien Smith
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... businesses of some kind. You're familiar with Jonny and Yousef from Propane. Mm-hmm. You know they've been running a company nearly as long as, as I have. I've been in nightlife since I was 18 years old. Everybody there was running their own company and hustling-
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... on the side, doing social media, doing whatever it was. Um, and yet, there seems to be a step change between... Uh, there, there's something fundamentally different about a startup founder, you know, someone that's raising capital, that's... Is it, is it simply the, the sector or the industry that they're in? Or is there-
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... is there something else going on that's the difference between those?
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah. So the main one is this. Like there was a period, and actually maybe it's still true, where every, every company can refer to themselves as a startup. But strictly speaking, it's may- probably there's capital in the bank, and the capital in the bank allows an insane acceleration to occur. And so there's like, you, you know, we, we talk about nightclubs, we could talk about anything. Uh, my, uh, my fiance runs a pottery studio. Okay?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JSJulien Smith
And so no matter how many people she gets to become, to try to become cu- customers of her pottery studio, like there's only a certain square feet, so there's only a certain number of seats. And so then you'd have to start another place, and that's gonna be expensive too. So it's like there's these costs. And so from the per- perspective of finance, it's about the marginal cost for the next person is almost zero. So it costs almost zero to bring the next user in. It's true for Twitter, it's true for Stripe, it's true for, what's, uh, Gab? It's true for all of them. And so the zero marginal cost for the next customer or user means that it can grow to infinity with all, with relatively low costs, which means it is, uh, there's a chance, a small chance, that this can become insanely successful insanely quickly. So quickly that it makes your fucking head spin. And that's true for Twitter. And I've run companies like that where it's felt like the wheels are falling off and it's growing so fast. So that's the essential difference, speed.
- CWChris Williamson
Scalability.
- JSJulien Smith
Speed and scalability, ideally. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Yeah. Well, I, it's, it's just in- I find it very interesting because...Again, I wonder how many of the guys... I- I don't have that startup... I don't know whether it's that I'm not in the right circles. I've definitely started to be around them since I've been in Austin. But some of the people that I've met that run startups are total droogs. Like these people couldn't hold a candle to some of the operators-
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that I've had that have either worked for me or worked with me.
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And you think like the shrewdness that the boys have got, that I am, their executive function-
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... their ability to be able to see and, uh, be agile and predict-
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... and charm people, all that stuff, right?
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and I really do wonder whether if, if we were able to, um, switch roles for a little while, and I could pick kind of a dream team of the people that I've worked with over the last 15 years-
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... and I could throw them into startups... And I'm sure that there's, you know, there's tons and tons of people who are unbelievably shrewd operators when it comes to their-
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah.
- 38:31 – 44:48
Angel Investing
- JSJulien Smith
on it."
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- JSJulien Smith
I'll give you the whole pitch.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJulien Smith
"Hey, we're about to go full-time on it, and actually we really believe that there's this unconquered market for random thing. And, uh, it's, we're actually just looking for, uh, somebody and a few people who will be able to give us the initial seed capital, and then my team will come together and we believe we can get it to, like, a million users, or we believe we can get it to half a million in ARR." You gotta know the code, the way-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JSJulien Smith
... to talk to people.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the lingo?
- JSJulien Smith
But if immediately if you have that, what happens with ... And, and by the way, this is true for Elon Musk, to sort of bring this thing full circle, is people like Elon Musk, but less busy than him, and obviously less rich, but rich enough, are, are looking for... And this is, like, maybe a, an insight or a weird thing for some people, but there, there are places they're looking to put money, and they don't know where to put it. They're literally sitting around with so much cash going, like I did, randomly. No, I'm not one of them. They're like, "Uh, well, I'll buy Twitter stock," is, like, what some rando dude will say. But others have put all the money in the stock market that they want and now they're, they still have it. And they're like, "I gotta give it to people and make it grow somehow."
- CWChris Williamson
Well think about-
- JSJulien Smith
And that's where... Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Think about AngelList, right? What is AngelList? A AngelList is basically a, uh, platform for people who need money to access people who have money that want to give it away.
- JSJulien Smith
Exactly right.
- CWChris Williamson
That's-
- JSJulien Smith
And syndicates are some dude, literally like yourself or like myself, who's like, "I know a bunch of rich people that are on my list, and then I've got these entrepreneurs and I met them once and we're gonna give them 250K." That's, that's, I mean, that is what AngelList syndicates are. And i- and the amount of money that flows, uh, through the ecosystem is, is sometimes, like, that... And by the way, I've been in those, I've been a CEO, startup CEO, for like 10 years at this point. But even today it baffles me. Uh, we had a really good lead investor for our last... We raised $10 million from a, uh, a fund called Andreessen Horowitz, which is a really good invest-
- CWChris Williamson
Andrew Chen, Andrew Chen's been on the show.
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah, oh, cool. Andrew's been on your show. Great. Yeah, so and so Andrew is my lead investor at Andreessen Horowitz, and the moment that Andreessen Horowitz became the lead investor, literally I would get on the phone just like this, like a, like kind of a Skype or, or Google Hangout, and people would be like, "Well, you're in the driver's seat. How much do you want?" And there would be no other conversation needed, because this capital is just kind of randomly sitting around. So actually, this brings me to the core thing about startups, which is s- the, really what the startup world needs is more good ideas. It doesn't need more money. It needs people, little Elon Musks. This is kind of, I mean, here we are talking about him. Little Elon Musks that are willing to do crazy things. And by the way, this is why Adam Neumann of WeWork was so successful, is he just spoke to this crazy unbelievable industry, real estate, that nobody knows how to fuck with, but that everyone hates. And he's just like, "Yeah." He's like, "You know what? We have billion dollar companies." And he was like, "You know what doesn't exist? A trillion dollar company. I'm gonna make a trillion dollar company." And people would look back at him and they'd be like, "I fucking believe him. I believe him." I- and, and money would roll in.
- CWChris Williamson
Here's the problem with- Here's the, here's the problem (laughs) that I have with it, man. Like I understand that somebody like that can give a compelling narrative. You know, I had a, a guy who wrote The Downfall of WeWork on, uh, about a year and a half ago, and that story about Adam Neumann is, is crazy and compelling, and I understand that he was a great speaker.
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
It makes me feel very, very sad there are, there are people out there who have that amount of capital, uh, you know-... hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, or if you're SoftBank's case, like, hundreds of millions of dollars to be able to throw around?
- JSJulien Smith
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
And they're so stupid that they're prepared to do it based on some guy's charm. I understand-
- JSJulien Smith
I, I mean, you, you've literally, you've brought it to essentially what it is. And, and the reason that that's the case is because out there in the world, a lot of these people, most of these people have seen some crazy thing happen that they were not ready to believe, with the, and maybe the most relevant example of one of them being Bitcoin. Like, everyone is just like, "It's called what?" "Oh, it's called Bitcoin." You're like, "Okay." And it became what? "Oh, it's, like, one of the leading currencies in the 21st century." Is ... And, and so you've got these, these stories, these unbelievable stories that are out there, and when people miss these investment opportunities, they then go, "Well, I've got to fucking throw my money at the next one."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJulien Smith
"Fuck it."
- CWChris Williamson
There seems to be kind of like a, um, this inherent ability, this sort of artistic ability to clairvoyantly see talent in someone, right? You hear these stories about, you know, "I, I heard the founder, and I just knew that he was gonna make it work."
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And you go, "Well ..." This is ... And that's the bit that gets me. I, I think surely the business fundamentals are more important. Surely the, uh, potential size of the market, surely the overheads versus the gross GP that you can make on each transaction, surely the liquidity. Pick anything, right?
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Anything that isn't whether or not homeboy manages to keep eye contact with you during this conversation. Like, that, that to me should not be the main determinant, and wh- ... It just surprises me that people who have so much capital do not use any more rationality than the rest of us.
- 44:48 – 56:15
The Skill of Innovating
- CWChris Williamson
were talking before we got started about your, um, perennial ability to be a first mover/almost so early that it can be both an advantage and a disadvantage.
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Can you kind of lay that out?
- JSJulien Smith
Uh, uh, the, um ... Well, I mean, the, the, the examples, there's a lot of examples. But, like, maybe the ... Podcasting is now a gigantic thing. I started one of the first podcasts in 2004, right? Many, many years ago. And I remember thinking, "Oh, the world's gonna get, gonna get transformed. Oh my god, this is gonna kill radio." The same things that people say literally 18 years later, which is wild to think about. And so I have a lot of examples like that in my life. And I've learned to, I've learned to, to push that, that characteristic of mine and to be like, "Wait, wait, wait. Okay, but what's actually gonna happen in 12 months, though?" So that I'm not thinking that the future will so radically change. I'm now conscious of probably one of the top qualities of humanity, which is it just wants things to not change that much. And it wants things to change, like, a tiny bit. So when we innovate, uh, we try to innovate 10% or 20% at my companies that I, that I built, versus 50%, 100%. Uh, you can, you can innovate 50% or 100% five, 10 years down the line. But you gotta, you gotta give people a little bit.
- CWChris Williamson
One step. One step at a time. Yeah. Well, I mean-
- JSJulien Smith
It's huge.
- CWChris Williamson
So I've got a friend, Sky, a good buddy of mine out here in Austin, and he's trying to completely revamp the way that the advertising model works by using Polkadot, right, on the blockchain. And-
- JSJulien Smith
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... what, what he's trying to do is he's got this complex plan, which I can't really explain or understand. But it's, I, I understand he's trying to capture all of the area under the supply-demand curve for potential advertisers-
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... rather than it being at one particular price point. Even if you have a dynamic buy on an ad on the backend, it only moves a little bit, right? You can't capture the entire area underneath the curve.
- JSJulien Smith
Right. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and we've been talking about this, and he's like, "Dude, I ..." And I really, really appreciate his vision. And I have other friends that are, got this, they're super excitable, and they're so positive about things, and it's really inspiring-
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... because I'm British, so, like, genetically, that's kind of contrary to-
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... how I'm programmed.
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
But we had a chat, uh, a couple of weeks ago, and he was like, "Man, I, I think I might be kind of trying to make too much of a leap here. I'm trying to basically-"
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
"... reimagine the way that advertising's done, and the technology that I'm trying to do it on has only just been finished four months ago." I'm like-
- JSJulien Smith
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"Yeah." So that kind of speaks, I guess, in a similar way to what you were talking about, that people need to be led.
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Cultural change, especially in the business world, especially with unproven product-
- JSJulien Smith
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... especially with state changes and complete sort of shifts in the way that things operate. It has to be done one step at a time. People need to have proof of concept-
- JSJulien Smith
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... which is strange because in other areas, like give me some money, proof of concept-
- JSJulien Smith
Right.
- 56:15 – 56:56
Where to Find Julien
- CWChris Williamson
Where should people go if they want to find out more about what you're up to?
- JSJulien Smith
Uh, I mean, Twitter is the, is the public square, so, uh, twitter.com/julian, I was early to that too, and, uh, and then my company, uh, software company that is, uh, manages stuff for solopreneurs, especially coaches, practice.doo. That's about it. You can look me up. I got, I'm all over the place.
- CWChris Williamson
Dope. I appreciate you, man. What's happening people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.
Episode duration: 56:56
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode qkMT8VenBQc
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome