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Craig Cannon on Podcasting with Adora Cheung
1 hours 7 minutes 20 seconds
🇬🇧 English
Speaker 1
00:00
Welcome. I am Adora Chung. I'm a partner at Ycominator. And I am here interviewing Craig Cannon.
Speaker 2
00:06
How's it going?
Speaker 1
00:08
How are you doing?
Speaker 2
00:09
I'm doing very well.
Speaker 1
00:11
Thanks for being on your own podcast.
Speaker 2
00:12
No problem. I had a great time setting it all up.
Speaker 1
00:16
And so Craig is the head of marketing at Y Combinator and also the extraordinary host of this great Y Combinator podcast. And he actually asked me a few weeks ago on topics I was interested in and doing on a podcast. So I thought about things I wanted to learn more about.
Speaker 1
00:31
And 1 of those things is actually podcasting itself. It's hitting its stride, I think. And who better to ask than someone like yourself. So I want to spend most of the time talking about podcasting trends, what you think about it, how to do it correctly, things like that.
Speaker 1
00:45
And about the Y Combinator podcast itself. But maybe you could start off with telling us, lots of people listen to you, what, 2 to 3 times a week?
Speaker 2
00:54
And I don't
Speaker 1
00:55
think they know anything about you. So why don't you start off with, who's Craig Cannon? Where are you from?
Speaker 1
01:01
What's your background? How did you learn about YC and how did you even end up here? Craig Chipps
Speaker 2
01:05
Yeah, that's a big question. I'll do the quick version. Hi, my name's Craig.
Speaker 2
01:11
I'm from Boston or near Boston. I went to school at NYU and I was an English major. So I was like the guy all you people, all you CS engineers made fun of. And I was about to graduate and I realized that I was like moderately unemployable.
Speaker 2
01:28
I didn't have very many skills but I was running the comedy magazine at NYU. And so I was like, well, maybe I can get a job at this place called The Onion. And so I just sent out an application and that was the 1 thing I got. So I started working there, and while I was there, I actually started reading HN and programming on the side.
Speaker 2
01:49
And after a few years there, I started this hackathon series called Comedy Hack Day, where developers and comedians made stuff together. Edith Piaffo It was
Speaker 1
01:59
like literally a hackathon. Oh, that's funny. Paul Wiltz
Speaker 2
02:01
Yeah, because I was going to hackathons and realizing that they were mostly presentation competitions, not really programming competitions. Edith Harris
Speaker 1
02:08
What's an example of something that got pretty strong on these things?
Speaker 2
02:12
Paul Matzkoff So 1 of the early ones was called Timesify, and it was a Chrome extension that would allow you to turn any website, usually a junk news website like Buzzfeed, into a site that looked like the New York Times, but it would inject the article into it. And then you could click the ads and it would basically create a slideshow of all the images. So that was great.
Speaker 2
02:34
And there were a ton of them. Yeah, so I did that for like 4 years with a few of my friends. And I had gotten into cycling when I was out here. And I found this thing, this world record that I wanted to go for, and I did it, and it worked out.
Speaker 2
02:52
And people started treating me differently, and it was really weird. And I started feeling this pending doom of my youth and vitality fading away.
Speaker 1
03:01
What
Speaker 2
03:01
was the world record again? It was most elevation climbed in 48 hours.
Speaker 1
03:05
Oh wow.
Speaker 2
03:05
How much is that? Well, mine was like 97,000 feet.
Speaker 1
03:09
Got it.
Speaker 2
03:10
Yeah. So, yeah. So, people were treating me differently and I was like,
Speaker 1
03:15
oh shit, I'm not
Speaker 2
03:16
gonna be young forever. And so I quit and I went on a 5 month bike tour. And I was out of the country and I went to Japan and Vietnam and New Zealand and I came back and I had no job and I had no idea what I was gonna do.
Speaker 2
03:31
And then Luke Isman, who used to work here,
Speaker 1
03:34
called
Speaker 2
03:35
me up and asked me if I wanted to do a contract for the blog. And so that started 3 years ago.
Speaker 1
03:40
Edith Warren Okay. So you started with the blog and then, so what were the steps into how you eventually started this YC podcast? And why even the podcast?
Speaker 2
03:49
Paul Matzkoff Yeah. So it should be said that Aaron did a YC podcast a few years ago called Startup School Radio. And yeah, I wanted, actually, I didn't care as much about making a podcast.
Speaker 2
04:03
I wanted to make a YouTube channel. Because YouTube, I think a lot of people know now, has great SEO and podcasts have terrible SEO. And so I was like, all right, what's the easiest way for us to create a ton of content for a YouTube channel and then title it all in a way that you know like our founders get attention like stuff we want to talk about gets attention and more importantly it doesn't fade away. And so I was like well podcast is a good way to do that and yeah we just started from there.
Speaker 1
04:29
Oh so podcast is the way to get the content and then YouTube is the way to spread it.
Speaker 2
04:35
Well, because we do both, but I think it was like 2014 or 2015 when I started following Joe Rogan
Speaker 1
04:41
and
Speaker 2
04:41
I just saw this like massive growth happening and people were like clipping his videos and creating like fan channels. And now I think his YouTube channel gets as many views as his podcast gets downloads, which isn't true for ours. But yeah, if you look for Adora Chung online, I'm sure if you Google yourself, you
Speaker 1
04:59
show up. Occasionally.
Speaker 2
05:01
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1
05:02
So to calibrate us a little bit, so the Y Combinator account, how many views do we get, or how do you even calculate this, or what metric actually matters? And so let's talk about that.
Speaker 2
05:13
Yeah, so The thing that ultimately really matters is we kind of have 2 goals. So 1 is to help educate founders and people who are in the startup game, and 2 is to bring other founders in. So the way we're trying to calculate this, and it's still pretty loose, is by driving applications.
Speaker 2
05:33
And that's like the main thing. But in terms of like sheer metrics, you know, we started out just like possibly a little bit bigger than other shows by having like maybe 2 or 3,000 people automatically subscribe. And now we're maybe like 40-ish thousand, give or take, you know, 5 or 10000 every episode, plus YouTube. So YouTube can go from like a thousand to a hundred thousand, depending on who the person
Speaker 1
05:58
is. Yeah. Got it. So, alright, so I wanted to get into how you create a podcast essentially and your tips there.
Speaker 1
06:06
So let's pretend I'm I want to do a podcast. And so I have a topic that I want to do. How do I decide if that's actually a good idea or not? Do you even work on
Speaker 2
06:18
it? Do you have an idea in mind?
Speaker 1
06:22
Well, I can come up with a theoretical idea. So 1 I've always just joked around doing, which I think actually might be a good idea, is to do a podcast where I ask little kids deeply philosophical questions. Just because I think they will, they actually have great insight into the world in which we are unaware of.
Speaker 2
06:41
You've seen that show, right? Kids Say the Darnest Things?
Speaker 1
06:44
Yes, People have told me about that. I have not seen it, but I've seen clips of it. I've seen like little clips of it.
Speaker 1
06:48
Yes, yes.
Speaker 2
06:49
So right off the bat, there's clearly an audience already for this. Like that show worked. The first question is honestly, do you want to do the thing?
Speaker 2
06:59
And I think another question that a lot of people don't ask is, am I willing to even create like a time box around this and say, I'm okay if I make 10 episodes? Because 1 of the hardest parts about podcasting, in particular, if it's not your job, like with YC, I'm just like, okay, we'll just keep banging out every week. If it's not your job, it can become a real grind because those metrics don't go up that quickly. You know, getting from like 30,000 to 40,000 and 40,000, 50,000 can take years for certain people.
Speaker 2
07:28
So, assuming that you really want to do the thing, think what could I maybe make like 8 of these like Alexis Madrigal did that with a container podcast I don't know if you listen to that 1
Speaker 1
07:37
but
Speaker 2
07:38
it's super cool and it's like the short version I thought that was a great idea. So then I would Would this be scripted in any way?
Speaker 1
07:49
Probably not, but I would have to probably edit a lot.
Speaker 2
07:53
Yeah, okay. So what I would suggest doing then is just getting like a basic, basic setup and then just going and recording a bunch. Like don't even release.
Speaker 1
08:01
Got it. Cool. And so the YC podcast has every episode has its own topics.
Speaker 1
08:09
So how do you come up with those topics?
Speaker 2
08:11
Yeah. So in many ways it's about like stuff I'm interested in. I don't know, I hit this point where you hang out with other people at YC and people who are in tech, and I just found that there wasn't really any tech podcast that interested me, because it all feels very inside baseball. And I was like, maybe other founders aren't interested in this either because they talk about it all the time.
Speaker 2
08:38
So I thought, okay, perhaps we could focus on technology as a core, as like a pillar, but also do art and science and entrepreneurship. And then it's just been like getting a mix of these people. So yeah, a big driver is obviously if they have a following. But then, yeah.
Speaker 1
08:58
So you have a topic for the episode, then you obviously need to find someone to interview. Usually it goes
Speaker 2
09:06
the other way. Oh, okay. Got it.
Speaker 1
09:07
So tell me the order of operations of how you put together a whole entire podcast.
Speaker 2
09:11
Okay. So a common 1 is I ask someone at YC like you, Hey, who do you want to do a podcast with? Kevin Hale has done a few recently, that's what that was. There are other ones.
Speaker 2
09:22
For instance, I did an episode with John Preskill, who's a quantum physicist at Caltech, and he suggested other people. So he was like, Oh man, you got to get like Scott Aronson, Leonard Suskin, all those people. And so that's a really common thing. Yeah, it's just finding trends, finding things that are interesting.
Speaker 2
09:40
And like going from there.
Speaker 1
09:41
And is booking guests easy, hard? Or are there what are reasons why people don't want to do it? Because I'm sure some people said, not really.
Speaker 2
09:48
The more common no is not replying.
Speaker 1
09:51
Got it. Okay.
Speaker 2
09:52
Yeah, but there are there are some fringe ones for sure where people say, I don't know if I want to be on a YC podcast. Interesting. Because there are certain brand connotations.
Speaker 1
10:02
Interesting. Yeah. Okay. You're making this actually to do a podcast sounds like almost like starting a startup.
Speaker 1
10:08
Like you need to validate your audience. You know, there's a lot of hard, long days of work to do. And you know, maybe there's a lot of cold emailing. Cold outreach essentially, and just keep asking people to do it until they actually do
Speaker 2
10:23
it. And then keep learning too. I think thinking about content in the same way you think about product is just like, great, there you go. You can apply all the same ideas.
Speaker 1
10:31
Cool. All right, so how do you prepare for interviews? In particular, you have some interviews that involve topics which you're probably not an expert in, like quantum physics, these kind of things. But you actually ask really good questions.
Speaker 1
10:47
So, yeah, how do you do that?
Speaker 2
10:50
So, I think I would probably break apart the episode types. So there's episodes like Office Hours with Adora. Okay, I know you, I know the kinds of questions that come in.
Speaker 2
11:01
I don't really have to prep for that 1. There's a middle level, which is a founder of a company, like say, Ryan Peterson at Flexport. I kinda know what Flexport does. I've seen Ryan talk before.
Speaker 2
11:13
In that instance, what I would do is find every podcast he's ever done and listen to all of them at like 2x speed. So you're like, okay, this is the stuff he's excited about. These are the anecdotes he's used a million times. Avoid anything that he's going to like have these really easy places to go.
Speaker 2
11:30
And the last category are the quantum physics type episodes, which yeah, to confirm your belief I'm not an expert in.
Speaker 1
11:38
Yeah. How long does it take? For example, that episode itself, did you, like some of these you don't have, you barely have to do any prep. For this 1, like, did it take weeks or days or…?
Speaker 2
11:49
The first quantum physics episode with… Well, there was a hard 1 before that too with Ron Adhikari about gravitational waves. But the quantum 1 was more difficult. That probably took 2 and a half days between listening to John's talks and reading articles he's written, you know, with other people.
Speaker 2
12:09
Scott Aronson, I read his whole book.
Speaker 1
12:12
And
Speaker 2
12:12
you just like take notes on that kind of thing. But ultimately, the goal is actually not to become an expert. The goal is to become informed enough that I know more than maybe the average listener, but not so informed that we fill it with jargon and talk about stuff that like no 1 really knows about or cares about.
Speaker 1
12:29
That makes sense.
Speaker 2
12:30
Yeah. But there are examples like the Susskind episode which is 1 of the most popular ones we had planned for months and then the week before I hadn't done any prep yet the week before I'm like all right you know we're gonna meet here no reply usually when that happens it means that he's ghosting me And so I didn't do any prep.
Speaker 1
12:50
And so I'm like, all right, he's ghosting me, he's ghosting
Speaker 2
12:52
me, he's ghosting me. We're doing the interview on Monday. He emails me Sunday night.
Speaker 1
12:56
And I'm like, oh shit. I have to like,
Speaker 2
12:59
cram it in. So possibly the YouTube comments reflect my level of preparedness. Oh no!
Speaker 2
13:05
Which is a separate thing to deal with.
Speaker 1
13:07
Was that the most, what was the most challenging 1
Speaker 2
13:10
for you? I would say the, So John Preskill was particularly difficult because he's also very chill. And so keeping it upbeat, keeping it interesting, keeping it fun.
Speaker 2
13:21
But I would say the 1 I bombed hardest on was Jocko Willink and Mike Cirelli I don't know if you listen to
Speaker 1
13:27
that 1. 0 the
Speaker 2
13:28
Navy SEAL guy. Yes I
Speaker 1
13:29
remember listening to it.
Speaker 2
13:30
Yeah I think I was just too nervous. I have this thing where when I get nervous, I laugh. It was fine, but we hung out afterwards and
Speaker 1
13:40
it was like, yeah, this is much better
Speaker 2
13:42
than before.
Speaker 1
13:42
Edith Warren So On the topic of keeping a podcast or an episode engaging, how do you, like you said, some people are just really chill and maybe they're monotonous or whatnot. How do you push them to keep it engaging?
Speaker 2
13:56
So usually there's, this doesn't come out in the podcast, but we talk before we start recording. And so you kind of feed them what they should think about, how they should act. Basically, these are the norms of the show, and most of it's just about making them really comfortable.
Speaker 2
14:15
And we do a slight amount of editing, usually almost none. But if I edit anything, it's often the first 5 minutes. I'll just cut the whole first 5 minutes off because you're like, oh, Adora really got warmed up and she was into it at this point. And I can mix in an intro.
Speaker 2
14:31
People think this matters, but the intro doesn't really matter. I don't know. It's not a big thing that I care about. And actually, 1 of the best podcasters in this regard is Russ Roberts from Econ Talk.
Speaker 2
14:43
Yeah. So if you pay attention to his show, he always starts with not a controversial question, but a question that's not a softball.
Speaker 1
14:52
And
Speaker 2
14:52
I think that's a really great way to start the show. Because you wanna give them something that's interesting to them, but you don't want to confront them. And this is something that a lot of podcast hosts, and I fall prey to it too, you don't want to offend someone,
Speaker 1
15:08
and
Speaker 2
15:08
so you're really nice. So you ask them all these softball questions, but you don't really go anywhere. And that's how you end up with the Joe Rogan, Elon Musk episode.
Speaker 2
15:17
Did you
Speaker 1
15:17
see that 1? Yeah, I did.
Speaker 2
15:19
It was so bad. It was like, Joe Rogan's great, and Elon Musk is capable of giving good answers, but because he knows so much more than Rogan, and Rogan didn't prep that much, he just dodged him the whole time, and he was fanboying. So,
Speaker 1
15:31
yeah. Yeah, yeah. Those get obvious after the first 10 minutes. It's like, okay, this is going down the, yeah, not gonna learn much here.
Speaker 2
15:39
Do you listen to full episodes normally
Speaker 1
15:41
or do you? Joe Rogan?
Speaker 2
15:42
Of any, of any podcast?
Speaker 1
15:44
I try if I'm going, I try listening to Joe Rogan. I like his, so do I listen to the whole thing? Maybe once a week I'll listen to 1.
Speaker 1
15:54
Paul Matzkoff
Speaker 2
15:55
In other shows you listen to
Speaker 1
15:56
the whole thing? Edith Weiss Other shows, I listen to yours. Those are maybe the only 2 where I regularly listen to the whole thing.
Speaker 1
16:03
Yeah, I guess not much. Because this
Speaker 2
16:05
is something that I often think about, because of metrics, not the metrics, the analytics are so bad. You don't really know, like, man, should I just be cutting this down to someone? I think there are just different audiences.
Speaker 1
16:16
It's not like YouTube where you can see where they just dropped off. Well, you have Apple Analytics, but they're not very good. Oh, really?
Speaker 2
16:21
And it's only a percentage of the market.
Speaker 1
16:23
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I want to talk about analytics in a second.
Speaker 1
16:27
Sure. But actually, let's just talk about analytics. Okay. So, Apple Analytics, there's nothing like Mixpanel or Amplitude or any of these things.
Speaker 2
16:35
It's like Google Analytics version 0.1. That's where Apple Analytics gets you. Because I think what might not be obvious to people is that podcasts aren't like YouTube videos.
Speaker 2
16:47
You don't upload your podcast to iTunes. You upload your podcast to a host and then the host serves the podcast from an RSS feed. And because that's the way it works, what information you can get is like serves. Like it's been downloaded basically X amount of times, but you don't have any kind of that like retention data that you have unless you're using Apple or using an embedded player.
Speaker 2
17:10
So if you listen for instance on the YC blog in the embed thing, done I
Speaker 1
17:14
know, but that's it. Yeah, So really only these podcast players might know. Well they will know it given what that went for that episode I guess.
Speaker 1
17:26
Yes. It's actually played on their podcast. Yeah. But I guess the players have You're seeing fragmentation amongst players now.
Speaker 1
17:32
Paul
Speaker 2
17:32
Fogarty I've heard something like 60% is Apple, Apple Podcasts. Edith Weiss
Speaker 1
17:36
Okay, got it. Paul Fogarty
Speaker 2
17:37
So it's a pretty big share. Edith Weiss
Speaker 1
17:38
Yep.
Speaker 2
17:39
Paul Fogarty But then after that, I think there's a dominant
Speaker 1
17:41
player on Android. I don't have an Android.
Speaker 2
17:42
I forget what it's called. And then there are a bunch of other ones.
Speaker 1
17:46
Edith W. Kruse I use CastBox on Android. But I
Speaker 2
17:48
don't know. Paul W. Robbins It's actually not
Speaker 1
17:49
that 1. Edith W. Kruse Oh, I just Googled for that 1.
Speaker 1
17:51
Paul W. Robbins Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2
17:52
Well that was a YC company, that was like when they applied, I was like no way, the podcast app? Edith W. Kruse There's
Speaker 1
17:57
the podcast app, yes. Paul W.
Speaker 2
17:57
Robbins It's like such a great name. Yeah, such a good idea.
Speaker 1
18:00
Edith W. Kruse Okay, cool. So what are other tools that are indispensable for the podcast?
Speaker 1
18:08
So maybe we start with software and then you've got a lot of gear. But what I'll say is, so I did my research and I listened to before this. I listened to a lot of your first episode. Oh no.
Speaker 1
18:18
And so you can hear and which is actually pretty good quality. But then if you listen to the last 10 episodes that you just did, you can hear the sound quality like less. There's less echo. You can hear the voice more clear.
Speaker 2
18:29
Yeah.
Speaker 1
18:30
So, yeah. Maybe walk me through like how. What did you start with and what's the gear that like what's the MVP gear you need to get going and then what do you have today?
Speaker 2
18:39
The MVP gear is this. This is your phone. You can record a podcast on your phone and don't let your gear disqualify you from doing it.
Speaker 2
18:48
That's my main point. But what I started with, I did a podcast before YC too. It was great. It was called Salt of the Earth.
Speaker 2
18:58
It's still on iTunes. It was really funny in contrast to the YC podcast because it was in relation to tech entrepreneurs getting so much attention. My friend and I, we went to college together, and we both grew up in New England, and None of our role models were tech entrepreneurs. They were like local electricians and stuff.
Speaker 2
19:20
And so we said, dude, why isn't there a podcast with these guys, and ladies, who are often very funny? And so we, it was like really hard to find these people, but funny, successful, small business entrepreneurs. So we did that. And we maxed out like, I don't know, 2,000 downloads an episode or something like that.
Speaker 2
19:37
But we had really simple gear. And so that was a Zoom recorder. So it has like 4 inputs, totally great. And Shure mics that were like 50 bucks each.
Speaker 2
19:50
And the Zoom recorder, I don't know, it was like 100 bucks. So there are also USB, there's this thing called the blue Yeti which you can just plug into your laptop and record.
Speaker 1
19:57
Got it cool. And then
Speaker 2
19:58
oh yeah in the gear now yeah oh yeah.
Speaker 1
20:01
I don't know if you're listening to this on a podcast, Craig, like when he does an episode, he actually has a lot of stuff. And 1 of the things he does is he takes down our walls, these portable walls that are in another room and then he like drags them into like a really small conference room. So I guess that's for sound.
Speaker 2
20:21
Paul Matzkoff Yeah, I think it actually ends up looking better too, in a weird way. So what happened there was I realized after I started doing this podcast in this room that this is not the best room in the world to record a podcast. But actually our office doesn't have many great rooms for that, because you definitely don't want a street window.
Speaker 2
20:44
But it also needs to not be in use all the time. And so I was basically left with like this room. So yeah, so I have these like sound blocking things to eliminate echo because my voice was getting picked up on your microphone. And now it's a little bit, you still get it, but it's a little bit less because we don't do the headphones.
Speaker 2
21:01
You've probably seen that before.
Speaker 1
21:03
Yes, yes. Yeah,
Speaker 2
21:04
I tried it and everyone freaked out.
Speaker 1
21:06
I hate headphones. Exactly. I used to do, when I was in college, you had a radio show.
Speaker 2
21:10
Really?
Speaker 1
21:10
And I was, because you're hearing yourself talking and I was the 1 who was the annoying 1 and just denies it.
Speaker 2
21:17
You were the host?
Speaker 1
21:18
No, no, no, no, no. Well, it was like a talk show, so it was like just gabbing. It was like old school podcasts, I guess.
Speaker 2
21:24
What was it about?
Speaker 1
21:25
It was just, it was a, we talked about news in the school and just regular politics and stuff like that. I really hope this was not recorded. And does not exist anymore.
Speaker 2
21:35
Oh, that was my next question.
Speaker 1
21:37
Dude, that's awesome. But yeah, it was a local college news station.
Speaker 2
21:40
Okay, cool, yeah. Yeah, that's hard. That's a separate question that someone asked that we should talk about, hearing your voice.
Speaker 2
21:46
But yeah, so now we use, these are Shure SM7B mics. These are like $300. The biggest upgrade was the recorder, which was actually from a YouTube comment. This is called a MixPre6 sound devices.
Speaker 2
22:00
To make these Shure mics sound good, you need a bunch of what they call clean gain. And our Zoom recorder didn't really do that. This thing does that. And then we record on like Canon DSLRs.
Speaker 2
22:10
So they're like, you know, less than a thousand bucks each.
Speaker 1
22:13
Okay, so your suggestion is step 1, just use an iPhone, because that's good quality anyway.
Speaker 2
22:17
Well, I wouldn't suggest iPhone as doing it, but I was like, you can conceivably do it with an iPhone.
Speaker 1
22:23
Got it.
Speaker 2
22:23
But what I would suggest is, if you're gonna move around locations all the time, and even if you're not, if you're gonna do the interviews in person, get a recorder like a Zoom H4N, something like that. Get Shure mics, SM58, whatever. They're like 60 bucks and XLR cables, the cables to plug them in and you can take it anywhere.
Speaker 2
22:45
If you're going to interview people remotely, get a USB mic like a Blue Yeti. And then
Speaker 1
22:50
do it over Skype?
Speaker 2
22:53
I've used it 1 time. I'm bummed out that I don't remember what it's called. There's podcasting software you can record online.
Speaker 2
23:00
But if you just Google it. Okay, got it. Cool.
Speaker 1
23:04
All right, and then how do you, and then what's the, sorry, this is really new questions, but like, so you record it, you're editing it, do you use software to edit?
Speaker 2
23:13
Oh yeah, so We definitely use software to edit. There's free software called Audacity. Again, you can take the file from your iPhone, put it into Audacity, you're good to go.
Speaker 2
23:25
We use, because we have video, we actually just edit the video and then export the video audio to a podcast.
Speaker 1
23:32
I see.
Speaker 2
23:32
And then if you've heard it before, but like I record an intro thing.
Speaker 1
23:36
Right, got it.
Speaker 2
23:38
Which is what I like, but other people like songs, other people like little clips from the show, whatever. Yep, cool. And then you have to serve it, and we use backtracks for that.
Speaker 1
23:46
Got it. Okay, cool. All right.
Speaker 1
23:50
So you mentioned your voice. Do you think your voice sounds awful when you listen to it?
Speaker 2
23:55
Well, I mean, man, you get used to it. That's my answer.
Speaker 1
23:58
Okay. Yeah. Because you have to, because you're the 1 editing too. So you have to play back.
Speaker 1
24:02
Okay. So you just get used to it.
Speaker 2
24:03
Well, cause yeah, my answer to this question is actually like, well, how do you feel about your voice?
Speaker 1
24:09
I, I generally don't like it, but I, it sounds different than when I'm like, when I'm hearing myself, I sound very different than when I hear it on a recorded version.
Speaker 2
24:21
Is it lower higher? How does it sound
Speaker 1
24:24
to you? Just not what I expect. It's a little bit lower I think.
Speaker 1
24:30
I think I don't know.
Speaker 2
24:31
Yeah It's tricky because actually some people have figured out ways to manipulate in like post-production their voice to make it sound closer to what it sounds like in their head. Which is you know like I often think about this. I did an episode of another podcast and it was bassier than we normally record at.
Speaker 2
24:48
And I was like, oh man, that sounds like more like my actual voice. But yeah, personally I don't really like the NPR tone. Like, you know, really like soft. I don't really like it, so I'm okay with it.
Speaker 2
25:00
But you get a, my voice in my head is lower, but as soon as you start recording yourself on video all the time, you're like, oh man, that's what I look like. And then you feel like way worse about that. So yeah,
Speaker 1
25:12
I got over it. Okay, cool. So let's move to what you've learned from the YC podcast itself.
Speaker 2
25:20
Sure.
Speaker 1
25:20
Okay, so let's start off with actually what has been the best interview, your favorite interview so far? So
Speaker 2
25:28
my favorite interview? So The most popular 1 is Leonard Suskins. So that's, yeah, that's the most popular 1.
Speaker 2
25:34
But I've actually learned a lot from different people. I really liked the Michelle Kuo interview with Kat. So that was about art and technology.
Speaker 1
25:44
Oh, that's right, I watched it.
Speaker 2
25:45
That was a fun 1. She's awesome. Then Ryan Peterson interview was a great 1.
Speaker 2
25:50
He's got this like cool hustle but not annoying vibe, which I really liked. The Rosalynn Watts, the psilocybin, the mushroom interview. Yeah, that was like, because I mean I had heard about it, but I didn't know it in that detail. That was awesome.
Speaker 2
26:06
And then maybe some of the ones with my friends have been really fun. It's like my friend Matt Hackett started this company with Casey Neistat. So I like that 1 too.
Speaker 1
26:15
Oh, that was pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. All right, and what's the most surprising thing you've learned about startups after joining YC and interviewing so many founders like Ryan?
Speaker 2
26:25
Paul Well, I mean this is definitely 1 that you should answer too. But I think a core part of it that wasn't obvious to me from the outside was how important confidence is and how big of a role it plays in just doing the thing.
Speaker 1
26:42
A
Speaker 2
26:42
lot of people, oftentimes when I meet them and they're interested about YC, they make up these things in their heads that disqualify themselves from starting. And a lot of the successful founders don't do that ever. And then they also have gotten into YC or some other thing and they have a little bit of wind behind them.
Speaker 2
27:01
And so they have just like the confidence to do the thing. And I would say that's like. A learned trait and that's a skill that you can develop and a lot of people might not think it is but I really do think it is. So yeah I would just tell people like just do the thing and like know that you're good enough because they're just normal.
Speaker 2
27:20
I don't know. What do you say?
Speaker 1
27:22
No, I think that's a good observation. I think It's hard to, you know, 1 of the things as working with startups now that I do is during office hours for example, is just keep the optimism of where this could go at a realistic but high level. Meaning like the everyday, you know, the ground everyday, you would not think it's going anywhere fast.
Speaker 1
27:57
But, so it's always, I like to remind people like this is where, you know, you started this for this reason, and this reason could be bigger than what you even thought about what you thought it could be. But regardless you know you should always think about why you're doing something.
Speaker 2
28:14
That's that's a really good thing to like bigger than you think it could be. This is a big, I mean big, it's a core thing in Silicon Valley that like gets some criticism and because you could say like, all right, not everything is venture fundable, nor should it be. But there's another way to think about that, which is it's not as risky as you think it is.
Speaker 2
28:36
And it's actually often easier to find people to work with if you're like, I'm just going to build rockets now. And you really stand out. Whereas doing these, I don't want to put it down, but hackathon level like SaaS tools isn't as compelling to people. That's been a big takeaway for me as well.
Speaker 1
28:52
Edith Warren Alright, so I'm going to start going through questions that Twitter has. Twitter was great, I didn't have to prepare much for this interview. So what have you learned from any of your guests that you've put into practice?
Speaker 2
29:11
I think the honest to God main thing is it's just gotten me super anxious about doing my own thing.
Speaker 1
29:20
You must do a startup now. Or something, yeah.
Speaker 2
29:24
Because you can only interview so many people where you're like, I mean this is fun to do, but being the host, it kind of sinks into your mind as, I mean, kind of reviewing YC applications too, as this observer of trends happening, of things happening, and you realize that you're just like this passing moment in someone else's life, and it's cool and everything, but they're like getting right back to their thing. So I really admire that. That's been a big thing.
Speaker 2
29:50
Sam encouraged me to just do the thing, which is always good, and he's very helpful there. Mushroom interview, very interesting, And you can do your own research privately in different countries if you want to do that. Tim Wong, he he did the Container Book with me.
Speaker 1
30:09
Oh, that's right.
Speaker 2
30:09
Yeah. And he's been on twice.
Speaker 1
30:12
He's the AI policy guy.
Speaker 2
30:13
Yeah.
Speaker 1
30:14
I remember. OK. Yes.
Speaker 1
30:14
I've met him. Yeah.
Speaker 2
30:15
So Tim's awesome. And so Tim is 1 of the only people I know who has been able to maintain cool jobs, but also have all the little side hustle projects going on. And his work ethic is unprecedented in my mind for that kind of thing.
Speaker 2
30:33
I think maybe the last 1 is just realizing like, it doesn't take that much to generate a pretty real following online by writing and communicating clearly. I think like YC, that's at the core of YC, right? Like PG's essays are content marketing.
Speaker 1
30:51
I mean
Speaker 2
30:52
they're cool. They're obviously like valuable, but it's, you know. And you know, like Andrew Cortina from Venmo, that's how I found out about him.
Speaker 2
31:00
And even like Michael, like Psybull's essays are great and really help him. Yeah. So yeah.
Speaker 1
31:05
I like them when they're to the point. Yeah.
Speaker 2
31:08
I mean this is tricky right? Like that's just a style thing.
Speaker 1
31:11
Yeah.
Speaker 2
31:11
Like who are your favorite writers right now? I guess in that scene.
Speaker 1
31:16
In the tech scene? In the tech scene.
Speaker 2
31:18
I don't, you know, honestly I don't
Speaker 1
31:20
read them. This is what
Speaker 2
31:21
I'm saying. This is the podcast too. That's exactly what I'm saying.
Speaker 1
31:25
I wish PG would write more essays is what I'm secretly hinting at that. Anyway, all right, so what are the most counterintuitive, or maybe non-consensus things you've learned about building successful startups after interviewing so many founders?
Speaker 2
31:45
Well, I want your answer on all of these, because these are really cool questions. There's definitely no 1 model for a successful startup. They're usually not riding some trend in the middle of the wave.
Speaker 2
32:00
They're like way early, so it seems weird. They're not doing like AI, blockchain, da da da, right now. That's definitely a thing. And then I think they like often are more focused on finding these really big problems than they are on just focusing on like doing a startup or a company, and they're definitely not attached to a solution.
Speaker 2
32:21
A lot of these people, with that in mind, in my experience, there aren't a lot of crazy pivots, like 180 degree pivots. They come in and they're like, hey, I found this thing, And then all of a sudden they realize that it's like quite large or they change degree a little bit, you know, but it's not like a total turn. Yeah. And then the last thing is like, they're just normal people.
Speaker 2
32:41
I don't know. I think like they get built up so much.
Speaker 1
32:44
Yeah, I agree with that. Cool.
Speaker 2
32:48
What's your answer?
Speaker 1
32:49
Oh, I agree with that. It's a good question. I actually agree with the whole, What did you say about the AI blockchain thing?
Speaker 1
33:03
Paul Friedman
Speaker 2
33:03
Oh, they're not in the middle of a big trendy wave.
Speaker 1
33:07
They're early. Edith Weiss Oh, okay. So what I was thinking was, I think the best ideas are when you can explain the problem, And even the solution without saying jargon, like without saying AI or blockchain.
Speaker 1
33:20
So I think some investors are, when you say those words, they're like, I'm in. But for me, I think if you can articulate it without actually describing the new tech you're doing. That's always the mechanism of which you're solving the problem, but that's never, I don't think that's the problem you're solving, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2
33:41
I totally, I mean, this question's like, what mic do you need, man? It's a tools question.
Speaker 1
33:45
Right, yes.
Speaker 2
33:46
But it's not a product question, and that's the answer, Like I said, content, product, same thing. Like do you make a good podcast, do you make a good app or whatever you might be making.
Speaker 1
33:55
Yeah. Okay so now that you've done podcasting for many years, If you had to start 1 again from scratch, how would you structure it?
Speaker 2
34:07
Okay, so I have a couple notes on this, but the thing is I kind of did start this podcast from scratch, so in many ways it reflects my personal taste and how I like shows to go. If I were to do my own thing, like not YC related from scratch, so that like the main constraint here has been this is still my job, right? And so in that way, I think in real life, I would have, in real life, in a non-YC podcast, I'd have more really strange people.
Speaker 2
34:40
Like weird, definitely do not fit in this podcast. What's
Speaker 1
34:43
an example of that?
Speaker 2
34:45
Well, he's not, okay, so 1 friend comes to mind. He's not actually weird Not that weird, but he is an off-the-grid guy in the middle of Vermont And so he's like built his whole cabin in the woods. He's homeschooled all of his kids He is solar-powered like all that stuff, but he's also a teacher at a college.
Speaker 2
35:06
And so he's super smart, but a sweetheart, and living this very weird, different life that I think appeals to a lot of people. So stuff like that, There have been moments where I'm like, could I? Is this like a YC episode? Whatever.
Speaker 2
35:20
Maybe not. I mean, even like the Casey Neistat episode, I was a little bit like, I don't know
Speaker 1
35:25
if this is going to fly. So there's like a little bit of a branding thing you have to think about. Is that what you're
Speaker 2
35:31
talking about? Well, well, yeah. I mean, this is like a separate conversation, but given that the podcast has grown a little bit, you know, I have like 18 bosses.
Speaker 1
35:42
Oh man, that sounds awful.
Speaker 2
35:44
It's fine. Everyone's, Everyone I see is cool, but at any given moment, I can get emails from anyone. And this is how I feel about the podcast.
Speaker 2
35:52
And usually it's an expression of personal taste. And this is something that you have to get used to with creative work, right? It's like differentiating, oh, this is objectively good feedback, even if it hurts, versus, oh, they just have a personal opinion, they feel that way, and both strategies can work, which is really hard. So, yeah, so the answer to the question is like, I would make it more weird, I would have maybe sillier people on, but I would definitely still do YouTube, do transcripts, do the podcast, clip the show as much as you can.
Speaker 2
36:26
I'm really bad at that, but clipping it for YouTube. And then pro tips, big names still work.
Speaker 1
36:33
Like
Speaker 2
36:33
trends still work. I don't do a lot of trend stuff, but big names work.
Speaker 1
36:36
Do you see, when you talk about clipping, do you see, does that in whole, unique-wise, unique listener-wise anyway, get you more listens than people just listening it from the audio stream.
Speaker 2
36:51
Paul Matzkoff So what's tricky, oh yeah, this is a learning. We have 2 YouTube channels, subscribe. We have Y Combinator and Y Combinator Clips.
Speaker 2
37:02
Because what happened was, initially I was like, oh, I'll just clip the show because this is great. It's great for SEO, right? You title like, Jessica Livingston on finding a co-founder rather than Jessica Livingston with Sam Altman. And then you can make like 5 clips from 1 episode, which is cool.
Speaker 2
37:19
But when I put out all like 7 videos on 1 day, everyone freaked out on the YouTube comments.
Speaker 1
37:25
Like, what are you doing, man? Like you're clogging my feed.
Speaker 2
37:27
So I was like, okay, fine. I'll make a clips channel. The problem there is like the clips channel doesn't have that like flywheel effect.
Speaker 2
37:34
So in the long run you see this with Joe Rogan. Like there are in aggregate like his show clipped out will do more than an individual episode. But but you need an audience before.
Speaker 1
37:45
Right yeah.
Speaker 2
37:46
Which requires like yeah bigger names helping that way.
Speaker 1
37:49
Right makes sense. Yeah. 1 question why are more podcasts not actually videos on YouTube?
Speaker 2
37:55
Because people are dumb.
Speaker 1
37:58
By people you mean? Podcasters? No,
Speaker 2
38:06
it's more work, right? And I think this is actually like a fairly new revelation. Like some people have been doing it for a while, but I don't think it's been as obvious to people that you can even just like upload a still image of you and then the audio and that would be a thing.
Speaker 2
38:21
Yeah, but. It's interesting
Speaker 1
38:23
that you actually thought in reverse. Like I wanna start a YouTube channel because that's where the audience is and then podcasting is a excuse to get that content.
Speaker 2
38:31
Yeah. That's smart. Well, the question was, I met with Michael in this room when we were talking about it, and we were like, where are the youths hanging out?
Speaker 1
38:41
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2
38:42
And I was like, man, I don't know. Like, a lot of these other mediums are kind of feel aging to me. Whereas YouTube is just gonna be young.
Speaker 1
38:49
Or it still is young for a while. Oh, and then you guys started Instagram.
Speaker 2
38:53
Yeah, that's another thing I'm bad at. So thanks for reminding me. Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 1
38:56
Did you ever do Snapchat too?
Speaker 2
38:58
We didn't do Snapchat. I held out, cause people were like, oh, you wanna be like the YC personality on Snapchat? It's like no fucking way.
Speaker 1
39:05
We adjusted for that.
Speaker 2
39:06
Yeah, yeah. But we clipped the podcast on YouTube, on Instagram, and that actually does really well, too. It just takes work.
Speaker 1
39:12
All right. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1
39:15
All right. So what patterns have you recognized in just from your life just from YC but when a YC podcast when an episode gets popular or viral, what are the reasons for that? Like beside like big name?
Speaker 2
39:28
Yeah, big name is like an easy 1. Usually it's some certain like cohort of influencers grab it online and then it just goes like this has been true and I won't go so far as to say any of the episodes have gone viral. Like, definitely not.
Speaker 2
39:49
But 1 of the strategies for the physics episodes was, we want more people to apply who are studying physics, and there aren't that many big names in those communities. Therefore, if we get the biggest names in those communities, we can get them to at least know about YC, right? And so what I realized there, it was like, those communities, again, not viral, but as soon as anything is shared within those communities, everyone shares it. And so you have like, John Presco will share it, but then like Sean Carroll will share it, and then Scott Aronson will share it, and it's like 123456.
Speaker 2
40:26
And so yeah, like finding these small but really tightly networked communities works really well.
Speaker 1
40:31
Edith Warren It's almost like you want guests that are maybe not within startup tech itself, but kind of adjacent.
Speaker 2
40:38
Just adjacent to it. Paul Warren This is my personal opinion. This is like how I differentiate
Speaker 1
40:42
the show. Edith Warren Yeah, no, it makes sense.
Speaker 2
40:43
Paul Warren Because I'm like, okay, actually a really good example of that is Mr. Money Mustache. Do you listen to that 1?
Speaker 1
40:49
What was that 1 about?
Speaker 2
40:50
So that was about personal finance and like saving money. Oh, I don't
Speaker 1
40:52
think it's on.
Speaker 2
40:53
Okay. So this has been a crazy trend happening in the past maybe 10 years about people saving high, high, high percentages of their income and quote, retiring early, right? So I think Pete, this guy, Mr. Money Mustache, saved up something like 600K and owned his house outright and then he quote, retired at 30.
Speaker 2
41:15
And he's become like a figurehead and a cult leader. The episode is called Don't Start a Blog, Start a Cult, and this comes from 1 of his talks, and people at YC were like, dude, what are you talking about, starting a cult? But he has this passionate following of, in large part, software engineers, because they earn so much money, it's very easy to save 50% of your income. And so yeah, I was like, oh this is tech adjacent, this physics thing is tech adjacent, people like taking mushrooms, that's tech adjacent.
Speaker 2
41:49
That was more of a trend thing actually. But yeah.
Speaker 1
41:52
Edith Warren All right, so in terms of the future of podcasting, it seems like it's taking off now. And 1 of the primary problems I guess is it's hard to make money. I mean it starts with it's hard to measure but 1 it's hard to make money.
Speaker 1
42:09
What do you think is the future of podcast monetization?
Speaker 2
42:14
I think There are a few possible avenues. I tweeted this out recently but with the Spotify Gimlet anchor deal, right? It's conceivable that a lot of these podcasters get on contracts with big companies like Spotify and are just paid because for the majority of them, like they're not making more than a thousand bucks a month off of ads.
Speaker 2
42:37
Like if you're not a big podcaster, a lot of them aren't making any money. And they actually don't care all that much about having maximum distribution, which is different than Rogan, because Rogan wants to sell comedy shows. He's monetized his podcast. This is why comedians dominate podcasts.
Speaker 2
42:54
They have a business plan right here. This is all marketing and their content is super interesting. So they've figured it out. The people who have had products on the side have figured this out for a long time.
Speaker 2
43:05
I think we're going to see a decrease in CPM around podcast advertising.
Speaker 1
43:11
Because
Speaker 2
43:11
it's been like a racket. And now I think it's really thinned out.
Speaker 1
43:15
As in it was...
Speaker 2
43:17
More lucrative than it is now.
Speaker 1
43:19
I see. It was higher than it would have, would it actually performed?
Speaker 2
43:23
Because it was just made up, right? So you're like, Hey, MailChimp, I want 20 grand. I see.
Speaker 2
43:26
And they're like, okay, fine. And that's how it goes. So yeah. And so I think that'll be a trend.
Speaker 2
43:32
I think we're going to see some kind of Patreon model work out in some way. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more like tipping happening. That will probably be a new app. Stuff like Himalaya in China for sure.
Speaker 2
43:44
Yes. Tons of education. And 1 thing that I've really been surprised at that doesn't exist yet is super expensive podcasts.
Speaker 1
43:53
Like $10 an episode type?
Speaker 2
43:55
Expensive or? More. So you listen to Hardcore History?
Speaker 1
43:59
I have, Yes.
Speaker 2
44:00
It's free.
Speaker 1
44:01
That
Speaker 2
44:01
could be 50 bucks an episode. Yeah. Easily.
Speaker 2
44:03
Like you see this stuff like masterclass happen. Like why isn't hard for history? What's the
Speaker 1
44:09
right. And then you're seeing more, I guess we pay for audio books. Yeah. So I guess there's, you're saying there's something in the middle between audio books, which we pay a lot for, and free podcasts.
Speaker 2
44:19
Well, I heard this last year, but I'm not sure if it's totally true, but last year or whenever it was quoted, the audiobook market was $3 billion. In the same year, the podcast market advertising was $300 million. And then when I talked to my friends, like wait a second, there's this huge gap here because most people are actually listening to podcasts, not audio books.
Speaker 2
44:39
So there has to be some kind of thing in the middle, especially around educational content where people will pay a lot of money to have you and like teaching them and educating them because I think there probably is like a definitively best American history teacher and a definitively best Mandarin teacher.
Speaker 1
44:58
Right. Yep.
Speaker 2
44:59
And you, I don't know, pay a thousand dollars a year for their podcast or whatever. Have you
Speaker 1
45:03
heard of the Great Courses? Yeah. Yeah, that seems like kind of in that spectrum.
Speaker 2
45:07
It's more like audiobooks. It's like Internet 2.0 though. I think there's like a new, like a bigger version that will happen.
Speaker 1
45:13
Yeah, yeah, cool. The Himalaya is actually, I think, a crazy, if you don't know about it, you should check it out. I'm trying
Speaker 2
45:21
to get some Chinese guys on it right now.
Speaker 1
45:23
Oh really yeah.
Speaker 2
45:23
It's like this big complicated thing.
Speaker 1
45:31
All right so do you think pot okay so there are so many podcasts out there.
Speaker 2
45:35
Yeah.
Speaker 1
45:36
Do you think it will become saturated like the music industry or do you think the music industry is saturated?
Speaker 2
45:42
No, I thought that question was like a false premise. I don't think music or like is YouTube saturated? I don't think so.
Speaker 2
45:48
Is blogging saturated? I mean there's a lot, but that doesn't mean like, you know, like you said, like PG doesn't write an essay a day for you. Like, yeah. And would that be enough?
Speaker 2
46:00
Maybe not even.
Speaker 1
46:01
What do you think is missing in the podcast world? I guess we talked about the educational content. Yeah,
Speaker 2
46:06
I mean there's a lot of missing stuff around monetization for sure. But I think in many ways it's going to be about people committing. A lot of People do it on the side or they've already had a product.
Speaker 2
46:19
So I think shifting that model to be like, hey, this is valuable, you should pay for it, I'm making really great content. And that might require some kind of basic income salary from Spotify.
Speaker 1
46:32
So
Speaker 2
46:32
if I'm like, hey Adora, you want to make kids say the darndest things, here's whatever, 30 grand a year, and that's enough for you to get really motivated to make all this stuff. Because oftentimes, you don't see it because iTunes doesn't make it obvious,
Speaker 1
46:47
but
Speaker 2
46:47
iTunes has hundreds of thousands of dead podcasts. And they just never get it going enough to commit. Edith
Speaker 1
46:53
Warren Right. It's after 3 or 4 and then it just kind of doesn't go anywhere. Paul Wiltz
Speaker 2
46:56
Yeah, and then you're done. Edith Warren I think that's a
Speaker 1
46:59
good idea. So what you're saying is Spotify might do the Netflix model of, or what you would hope is that the Netflix model where they commit you to a certain number of episodes and then you just go for it and then if it does well you just redo.
Speaker 2
47:13
Well, because like think about it, right? So I heard that Jerry Seinfeld signed a $100 million deal with Netflix for comedians in cars plus some other stuff. Okay, how much could Spotify sign a door for?
Speaker 2
47:27
Probably less than $100 million. And so, you know, you could imagine a world where like they hire a hundred podcasters at 30 grand a year They all work from anywhere in the world and they just make stuff that people are really into
Speaker 1
47:41
right for
Speaker 2
47:41
Spotify Yeah, cuz like at 30 grand per person that's actually not nearly as much, you know, as like paying for all of the, I don't know, Lady Gaga royalties. So yeah, I could see that happening.
Speaker 1
47:56
In terms of podcasters, so you've obviously you listen to lots of podcasts. What has been, you talk a lot about Joe Rogan, but who else has been the most influential for you?
Speaker 2
48:09
I think Ross Roberts is great. When I started the YC podcast, I had just heard about Econ Talk.
Speaker 1
48:15
He's been doing it for a long time. Paul
Speaker 2
48:16
Matzkoff Ever. I still don't know why that show's not bigger. It's pretty big, but it could be bigger.
Speaker 2
48:22
I wanted to do a combination of Econ Talk and Rogan, where it's interesting people who are technical, but it's also fun. Because Econ Talk can be a little dry sometimes.
Speaker 1
48:32
I
Speaker 2
48:32
really like those, but I have, dude, I have this whole list I wrote down of other shows I listen to. So another dead, so there are a ton of dead podcasts that are still good. There's 1 called Seventh Avenue Projects.
Speaker 2
48:43
So this is by this guy Robert Pauly, who lives in SF somewhere, or nearby SF. It's basically like an NPR science show, and the interviews are great. They're like an hour long. It's got the NPR vibe, but if you can get past that, it's cool.
Speaker 2
48:58
There's another podcast I listen to called Barbell Medicine. So have you ever gotten into lifting weights at all?
Speaker 1
49:05
Not really.
Speaker 2
49:06
Okay, so I got into it last year
Speaker 1
49:08
because
Speaker 2
49:08
I hurt my back
Speaker 1
49:09
and
Speaker 2
49:09
I was like, how do I fix this? And people said, well, you should lift. And I was like, okay, cool.
Speaker 2
49:14
So This is a podcast called Barbell Medicine,
Speaker 1
49:16
and
Speaker 2
49:16
it's 2 doctors who talk about medical research as it relates to exercise. And so they read a bunch of papers and say, oh, creatine is good, or this protein's garbage, and this type of exercise does nothing, and this is why you should train like you know 3 sets of 5 versus something else surprisingly interesting dead authors podcast you listen that 1 this one's also dead it's a Paula Tompkins bringing on comedians who imitate dead authors and they have like, it's like an interview show.
Speaker 1
49:50
They do it in their voice too?
Speaker 2
49:51
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's all goof. Oftentimes you don't really know what their voice sounds like, but the Borges 1 with Nick Kroll is amazing if you want to check it out. Berkshire Hathaway, so Yahoo got the rights to the Berkshire Hathaway board meeting, or not the board meeting, the conference.
Speaker 1
50:07
The shareholder meeting.
Speaker 2
50:08
The shareholder meeting. That's a podcast.
Speaker 1
50:10
Oh wow, okay.
Speaker 2
50:10
Which is awesome. I have a couple more. The 9 Club, If you're into skateboarding growing up, 9 Club is amazing.
Speaker 2
50:20
They interview a bunch of skateboarders from back in the day, which is fucking awesome. My buddy Spencer does 1 called Prepared, that's about manufacturing. I did an episode on that. And Startup School Podcast by Seth Godin.
Speaker 2
50:33
Did you ever hear of that 1? Same name. It's from like 2012. It's actually really good.
Speaker 2
50:41
That's my list.
Speaker 1
50:42
Edith Warren I'll check out all of those. How did you discover the dead podcast? Or?
Speaker 2
50:47
Dead author podcast? Yeah. I subscribed when it was still active.
Speaker 1
50:51
Or I mean like the dead, because I have a topic that I'm interested in, I'll go and search for it, and then that's how I discover some of these podcasts that don't really exist anymore.
Speaker 2
51:00
Yeah, so what ones are you into that are dead?
Speaker 1
51:03
Well, I'm not into it. I just listen to the 1 episode. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1
51:06
I don't actually...
Speaker 2
51:08
Have you checked out Listen Notes?
Speaker 1
51:10
Yes, that one's a good 1.
Speaker 2
51:11
Listen Notes is awesome because they index everything. Yep, yep. Yeah, that's a big thing.
Speaker 2
51:16
But, I mean, it should be said, Discovery is totally broken. Which is why the clipping, this is what I think will happen. Like, there will be some version of a podcast app that resembles YouTube clipping, that's a podcast app. And so what happens with YouTube clipping is you just get in this 5 to 10 minute clip, 1 after the next after the next.
Speaker 2
51:36
And like Himalaya is much more like that than the standard model of
Speaker 1
51:40
feeds and stuff. Edith Warren More Twitter questions. These are trying to get unrelated but we'll just finish off with some unrelated ones.
Speaker 2
51:49
Wait, but what podcast do you listen to?
Speaker 1
51:52
I listen to YC1, I listen to Joe Rogan, I do listen to Econ Talk, I listen to Tyler Cohen has a good 1. I listen to Recode Decode. That 1.
Speaker 2
52:08
Why do you listen to podcasts?
Speaker 1
52:13
I will preface with I actually listen to audio books much more. And so when I'm kind of tired of listening to the audiobook, I will either switch to music or podcasts. And so it's kind of my other thing that I listen to.
Speaker 1
52:25
Paul Weaver But are you
Speaker 2
52:26
kind of tuned out when you're listening? You're like doing something else?
Speaker 1
52:28
Edith Warren No, if I'm doing something else, I'll listen to music. But I never listen to, like it's hard to listen to audio books especially, but also podcasts when you're tuned out. The tech ones are actually, because it's like, it's not listening, yeah, I guess I'm not learning anything entirely new, and so you can just listen to it while you're doing something else.
Speaker 1
52:47
So that's what I do.
Speaker 2
52:48
Yeah I'm similar.
Speaker 1
52:51
Patrick Bender asks, what idea do you believe in that your social group would think is crazy?
Speaker 2
52:56
Oh yeah, okay. So this is why I'm glad we got this question beforehand. I had a moment to think about it.
Speaker 2
53:05
I think cushy internet jobs are bad for innovation.
Speaker 1
53:09
Edith Warren Okay, like what's an example of that? Paul
Speaker 2
53:14
Krahulik Any fang job where you just show up and kind of do work. And for that reason, I think jobs should have term limits on them, unless you're like the founder. So basically reverse vesting.
Speaker 2
53:28
So it's like, hey Adora, you've been a partner at YC for 5 years. See you later.
Speaker 1
53:34
Dora, you've been a partner at YC for 5 years. See you later. And you, yeah.
Speaker 2
53:35
And it's kind of implied that like, you know, if you go join Sequoia or something, you're like, okay, fine. Yeah, because I've, it's related to this early retirement thing, but I see a lot of people like maximizing that and just staying on at big companies. And it makes me mad because they have so much talent and they like they have safety nets.
Speaker 2
53:59
They could go do stuff. So.
Speaker 1
54:01
Interesting. I think maybe somewhat related to that, I think there should be forced sabbaticals. Totally. After you work for so many years, you should take time off to just do something else.
Speaker 1
54:19
I think if you work at a company, especially if it's just 1 position on 1 team, you just kind of get stuck. That creativity flow and just thinking outside the box gets a little bit harder after some time. Paul Matzkoff I've
Speaker 2
54:34
been surprised that that's not like a bigger employee retention thing. I know some companies do it, but it's after quite a while. So Kat did 1 last year.
Speaker 1
54:45
Edith Kerr Kat who's also a YC partner.
Speaker 2
54:46
Yeah, and she came back because she had all these thoughts, right? And then she came back and she was like super excited and really happy and was like, you know what, I kind of didn't feel like doing anything and that was okay too. I got off my phone and to her point, that's totally fair.
Speaker 2
55:05
But I do feel like the forced sabbatical would need to be longer than the company won.
Speaker 1
55:11
Yes, I haven't thought about how long it should be, at least 6 months? 3 months, 3, 6 months? I
Speaker 2
55:19
think it's such a good idea. If there was an even greater incentive for them to, basically what I'm saying is I want people to leave their jobs, but if they were like, we will decrease your salary if you return or we'll give you some seed funding or something. But then you see this stuff happening at Google, right?
Speaker 2
55:36
Where they're funding internal startup-y things and it just feels like employee retention.
Speaker 1
55:42
Right. Yeah. I don't know. I haven't thought through what the right mechanism for that is, but yeah.
Speaker 2
55:49
Well, because I'm curious about you, like if you, how long
Speaker 1
55:51
have you been at YC? 2 and a half, 3 years, almost 3 years.
Speaker 2
55:55
Yeah, we started roughly around
Speaker 1
55:56
the same time.
Speaker 2
55:59
Yeah, like how much time do you think you would want to really consider?
Speaker 1
56:03
Yeah, 3 to 6 months is probably, I think. Because then, I think it lets you just focus on other things that, again, will help you with your job, actually.
Speaker 2
56:15
And, anyway. But yeah, this is the thing, a lot of people don't know this about you at YC, but you've jumped around between a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1
56:21
Edith Winkler Within YC.
Speaker 2
56:22
Paul Wiltz Within YC.
Speaker 1
56:23
Edith Winkler
Speaker 2
56:23
Yeah, that's right. Paul Wiltz Whereas some other people haven't. And so you're kind of always looking for new things.
Speaker 1
56:27
Edith Winkler Right, it's my version of ADD.
Speaker 2
56:29
Paul Wiltz Yeah, Totally. And is that also in the back of your head? Like, maybe I want to start a city or maybe I want to do this on my own.
Speaker 1
56:37
Yeah, we'll see. In the back of my head is always, what's the next startup? So that's always, And I think we talked about this in our episode.
Speaker 1
56:50
Whatever the case, on 1 hand being at YC is great because you're with all these founders and you're motivated about startups in general and there's so many ideas. On the other hand, it's like 1 week I'm obsessed with this 1 idea and then I talk to another founder and then I just ping pong around ideas. And so it's very hard to stay focused on your own stuff. Paul Wittman It's
Speaker 2
57:15
tricky, right? I can see it going both ways because with all of this stuff, like it's all good. There's no like objective right answer.
Speaker 2
57:22
But yeah, I can see that that intellectual like game being really compelling.
Speaker 1
57:27
Yes. But then you're also addictive to totally.
Speaker 2
57:30
But you're also like a maker, right? And so that shift might happen.
Speaker 1
57:34
Yeah, watching people build and you're on the sideline not building is really rough. So you have to come up with at least hobbies, side projects that often go uncompleted, unfortunately. All right, so Zachary Cannon asks, oh okay, so this is 1 of the application questions
Speaker 2
57:58
for YC.
Speaker 1
57:59
Please Tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some non-computer system to
Speaker 2
58:03
your advantage. So I kind of mulled over this 1 for a while, and I think that silly world record actually might be the best 1, because it had the largest outcome. So basically what happened was, there was this trend in cycling, whatever I did, it's like 4 years ago, where people were climbing the height of Everest on their bike and they called it Everesting
Speaker 1
58:25
and I
Speaker 2
58:26
was like, I could probably do that. Meanwhile, I'm not, I mean, I'm heavier now than I was then, but even then I was like 170 pounds, which in cycling is like heavy. Like you're the fattest cyclist if you're 170 pounds.
Speaker 1
58:38
170? What's the typical weight?
Speaker 2
58:40
I mean, the guys who win are like 135, 140, and they're taller than me,
Speaker 1
58:46
so they're stronger than me too. They do look very, they all look very tall and skinny.
Speaker 2
58:50
They look like skeletons. Yes. Yeah, so like you're looking at probably like 5'11", 137 pounds, something like that.
Speaker 2
58:56
And they're stronger than me.
Speaker 1
58:57
And
Speaker 2
58:57
so I'm like 170 pounds and yeah, not that skinny. So yeah, so basically what I did was like, I did that Everesting thing and it worked. And I was like, oh, I could do more of this.
Speaker 2
59:09
And so then I created a spreadsheet of all the hills in the East Bay where I could like maximize how much elevation I could get in like the shortest distance while also being like close to a bathroom close to like not having enough traffic or not having too much traffic like something that my friends could get to so they could like help me out and yeah through that spreadsheet I like unlock this place that just worked for me. And so that's basically how it happened. Edith Warren
Speaker 1
59:34
Oh wow. That's pretty cool. Paul Warren
Speaker 2
59:36
It was pretty cool.
Speaker 1
59:36
Edith Warren And you achieved your goal. Paul Warren I achieved my goal.
Speaker 2
59:39
Edith Warren Of
Speaker 1
59:40
ever staying. Paul Warren
Speaker 2
59:40
Exactly. And then my life was over. Happily ever after.
Speaker 1
59:42
Edith Warren And then you had a quarter life crisis. Paul Warren
Speaker 2
59:46
Yeah, yeah, basically. And then I left the country. Edith W.
Speaker 2
59:48
Duffield
Speaker 1
59:50
All right, cool. So last question, what, so you obviously talked to a lot of founders and being at YC, similar to myself,
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