Rob Henderson: An Internet Academic
North Star Podcast
Rob Henderson is one of my favorite up-and-coming writers. I like him because he's one of those people who doesn't fit into a category. He's a Ph.D. candidate in psychology, but I met him in a book club about technological stagnation. He's spent years in the academy, first at Yale and now at Cambridge, but most of his influence comes from his online writing. Most of all, he's interested in human nature. In particular, psychology, status, and social class.
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Chrisman Frank and Ana Lorena Fabrega: How Childhood Education Will Change
North Star Podcast
This week, I have two guests. Both are affiliated with Synthesis, a new kind of online school where kids learn through games and simulations. One is Chrisman Frank, the CEO of Synthesis. The other is Ana Lorena Fabrega, who is their Chief Evangelist.
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Ash Fontana: Building Artificial Intelligence
North Star Podcast
Ash Fontana is an entrepreneur, investor, and author. As an entrepreneur, he was only of the early employees at an online investing platform called AngelList. From there, he became the Managing Director at Zetta, the first investment fund focused on artificial intelligence. Now, he's the author of the AI-First Company.
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Li Jin: Creating the Creator Economy
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Li Jin, the founder and managing partner at an early-stage venture capital firm called Atelier.
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Zena Hitz: Liberal Arts Thinking
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Zena Hitz, a tutor at St John’s and the author of an excellent book called Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. Her book explores the meaning and the value of learning for its own sake, through images and stories of bookworms, philosophers, scientists, and other learners, both fictional and historical.
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Tiago Forte and Will Mannon: Building Cohort-Based Courses
North Star Podcast
I have two guests today: Tiago Forte and Will Mannon.
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Gagan Biyani: Building Silicon Valley Startups
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Gagan Biyani, the current CEO of an education startup that helps teachers run Cohort-Based Courses on the Internet and has students from around the world. Gagan also founded a multi-billion dollar online education platform called Udemy. Afterward, he founded Sprig, a food delivery platform that grew to a nine-digit valuation but eventually failed. So today, he has the distinct pleasure of being both the founder of a unicorn and the founder of a massive failure.
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Trevor Bauer: Playing Professional Baseball
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Trevor Bauer, who is arguably the very best pitcher in Major League Baseball. I wanted to interview Trevor not only because he's an excellent pitcher, but because he takes a radical approach to the game. He's a physicist and a scientist. A scholar and an entrepreneur. And you don't find that combination very often.
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Nik Sharma: Building DTC Companies
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Nik Sharma, the founder of Sharma Brands and an advisor to companies like Judy and Cha Cha Matcha. Nik is one of my very best friends, and my go-to person for all things commerce. Since we first met, we've spent hours exploring the future of marketing and commerce together, and recorded this podcast to give you a window into what our conversations are like.
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Kevin Kelly: Seeing the Future
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Kevin Kelly, who co-founded Wired Magazine in 1993 and served as its Executive Editor for the first seven years. As one of the most important futurists of our generation, he's published a number of books including The Inevitable, What Technology Wants, and New Rules for the New Economy which is my favorite one. Coolest of all, he's also a founding member of the board of the Long Now Foundation, a non-profit devoted to encouraging long-term thinking.
info_outlineMy guest today is Michael Mayer, the co-founder and CEO of Bottomless.
This episode explores business from a variety of angles. Michael talks about how he thinks about marketing at bottomless, and the accumulating advantages that drive the company. He also talks about what he learned at YCombinator, why startups that move fast have such an advantage, and how to think about execution in a fast-growing company. Five years ago, Michael was a dish washer. Then he worked at Nike before receiving funding from YCombinator and starting Bottomless. Please enjoy my conversation with Michael Mayer.
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Links
Bottomless https://www.bottomless.com/
Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Lateral_Thinking_with_Withered_Technology
Y Combinator https://www.ycombinator.com/
Paul Graham http://www.paulgraham.com/
Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin Whitepaper https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Sam Altman- https://blog.samaltman.com/
Wyden and Kennedy https://www.wk.com/
David Ogilvy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ogilvy_(businessman
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Show Notes
2:05 The inspiration behind Bottomless. How Michael reformulated coffee supply and demand as an information problem. How advances in computing and the internet are really advances in legibility.
08:18 The original vision Michael brought to Y Combinator. Bottomless’ marketing plan. Why to buy fresh coffee and grind yourself.
15:50- How Michael’s tech and coffee journey are connected. How to find luxury in inexpensive packages. How many luxuries are just resource intensive.
22:23- What surprised Michael about working with Y Combinator. How the thinking needed in a company gets baked in with the first vector, but extreme execution is what makes success.
26:57- How execution informs Michael’s strategy. Why Bottomless and David strategize on Sunday and execute the rest of the week. How making more decisions more quickly is better than making perfect decisions slowly.
30:30 Michael’s 10-minute interview to get into Y Combinator. When to think, and when to act in your business. Why mistakes are penalized in school, but some of the best things that can happen in life.
37:09 Why to write pseudonymously. What Michael has learned from Paul Graham. Why Bottomless has outsourced a lot of marketing recently. Michael’s experience watching product development while working at Nike.
46:35 Why Michael believes the best people to be doing product development are also doing the operations and customer support. Why status and hierarchy get in the way of running a good business. Why market research should be satisfied by your customer service.