Life on Mars - A podcast from MarsBased
Life on Mars - A podcast from MarsBased
Top 10 podcast moments that shocked, cracked us up, or both!
10 moments. 10 guests. Total unpredictability on Life on Mars.
This isn’t your average “best of” episode. it’s a chaotic, hilarious, insightful rollercoaster through the most unforgettable english-language moments from life on mars, the startup podcast by MarsBased.
🔥 from death metal growls to burning down offices (literally), surprise cofounders, and existential founder questions... this episode has it all.
if you’re into tech, startups, or just love a good story, hit play.
🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
Hello everybody and welcome to Life on Mars. I'm Alex Sion, founder of MarsBase, and in this episode we bring you the top 10 best moments of the English version of this podcast. A few days ago, we released a Spanish version of this in which we covered the first 150 plus episodes of the Spanish version of Life on Mars, and I went through with our friend David with the most instructional, fun and inspirational moments of 10 of the best episodes we've had so far. In these very episodes we do the same in English. So I wanted to start with probably the biggest name we had in the earlyitude of the remote worker not meeting your co-founders or even your team members for years in their case, which struck me as pretty surprising, and all the things. And actually you know he doesn't speak very much in other podcasts and I think that's something that makes me even more grateful for his time. I think we learned a lot from Sketch, a company that we admired, that we actually have used for many years in Mars based, and we can learn a lot from Peter, both from technical side but also from the management side of things.
Speaker 1:So let's take a look at the interview with Peter Omblay. Let's go to the very beginning. What we're going to talk today is mostly how to keep the love alive with your co-founder and with your team after so many years, after experiencing growth. You guys also raised investment. We're going to cover all of this throughout the years. Let's start from the very beginning. You met your co-founder, but actually you didn't meet in person after the launch of the product. Right, you had been working for a while. How did that come about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's true. We met a couple of months after we launched that version of Sketch. We worked on it together and that was just because we were both flying to the US and said, well, it makes sense to meet up somewhere before we get on the plane. Well, it's made less makes sense to meet up somewhere before before we can get on the plane. We worked together for um, I think at least a year before we, before we, before we saw each other in person and just uh, back then I was working from, uh, london, he's, he was and still is based in portugal and we just connected over. I think back then was called I chat, um, uh, you know, we just talked like that, uh, lots of lots of texting, lots of exchanging images, and we just we just started working together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got, I got in contact with emmanuel through another designer I worked with before that on another app I built, and that designer I had never met either. We built that app together. We launched it. He went off to Apple I was looking for a new designer because of that and he said, hey, let's go have a chat with Emmanuel, I think you two should like each other. And that's how we met, never meeting in person.
Speaker 1:And now for the second highlight. I bring you Founder Partners, a company that I collaborate with. They are from Silicon Valley. They're a group of seasoned entrepreneurs and M&A advisors for bootstrap and semi-bootstrap companies that I like a lot. You will see that these friendships transpires into the conversation, and I think this is a must for companies that want to sell or companies that want to buy.
Speaker 1:Actually, and one of the most fun moments in this episode is where, actually, brian and Dimitri go back 20 years and when they are confronted with the question of what has been your most expensive fuck-up and Brian starts telling a story that sounds familiar to Dimitri's and I'll leave it at that, I think, for not being prepared. It's one of the best sort of improvised moments in the history of this podcast, so let's jump right into it. Time for the last question. This is a signature question of the podcast. You guys have to share, each one of you, your biggest fuck up and how expensive it was, and don't give me the usual things Everybody tries to give me the I hired the wrong person. No, I will not accept that one. Just try to think of a big fuck up that you've had in your career, if related to M&A, of course, all the better. And if you can quantify in money how much was lost, don't worry, we've had people setting fire to this, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is great. Okay, you want to?
Speaker 4:go most expensive. First, I want to talk about things other than m&a and, dimitri, you focus on the m&a thing because we can cover. I'm going to talk about um me as an my biggest fuck up as an entrepreneur and as an investor. Dimitri, you talk about it Awesome.
Speaker 1:I like it, like your attitude.
Speaker 4:So I've started and sold quite a few businesses and I think I, my I became a little bit too confident, maybe a little too cocky, and I thought that because I was a software guy, I've always been a software and a digital media guy and so I thought, hey, and I even brought Dimitri and I thought I could build a business in the consumer package good space, and it was called New York tapped, which was basically bottling New York city tap water and and I was pumped. I thought it was a brilliant idea. We were on the David Letterman show, we were all this free PR that came around and I was like, yeah, this is going to be a cool business and it went bankrupt. I lost Dimitri's 25 grand as the angel investment and it was just like God. But that was a.
Speaker 4:That was a screw up and and, by the way, I've had others. I mean I've I've been a serial entrepreneur. I've had some other failures besides all the things that look glamorous and good on the outside. But what I learned it's it's actually the screw ups are about learning, frankly, right. And so I learned I better stick to my knitting. My knitting is software. Just don't go outside of that. Don't look for me to do anything in biotech or semiconductors. Just stay to software, alex. Have you ever seen a $25,000 bottle of water? Thank you for rubbing it in my goddamn face, dimitri. I love you.
Speaker 1:I hope you like the anecdote of Brian and Dimitri as much as I have and go back and revisit the entire episode, because I think it's full of wisdom nuggets and I think that's an episode that every entrepreneur ought to watch at least once in his life. Every entrepreneur ought to watch at least once in his life. For the next episode, I bring you a personal friend of mine, julian Truchon. He's the singer and the leader of a death metal, grind death metal band. I don't even know how to describe this band Benighted. It's one of my favorite extreme metal bands and you know sort of crimecore death metal, brutal death Depends, pretty technical as well, and I really like him. He's a super charming person and we discuss business and music and technology for band members and touring bands and what do they use? What's the shareholder agreement? How do they finance themselves?
Speaker 1:Not much of a technologist, but I think I wanted to highlight in this episode what I really enjoyed the most and I remember like wow, this is going to blow some people's minds is the one-on-one for growling, the 101 for growling. You know these brutal death metal screams and good rolls, shrieks and cries and whatnot different techniques that he's got, and I asked him to provide a short demonstration on camera and I had a lot of fun. That was totally not prepared as well, like everything we do in this podcast, and it's pretty uncommon for the rest of the content that we have. So I hope you enjoy this, but, seriously, just go back and revisit the entire episode, because I think it's also really fun and teaches you how difficult it is to monetize and to grow business out of music. Let's go. Do you learn how to sing with bass and how do you like? You took lessons, I guess, but like, what do you do in order not to fuck up your voice forever?
Speaker 8:Well, at first I never took any lessons for that, I just learned by myself in my car most of the time, because people maybe not know. But this kind of vocal practice when you do it at home you have to have very tolerant neighbors because it's very loud and it's very it's, it's noise. It's noise. I mean, for example, my vocals, because I think most of the people don't know what I'm talking about. Uh, I have one, two, three, four, five main, uh, kind of uh of vocal.
Speaker 1:But first we go through them can. Can you demonstrate the five of them?
Speaker 8:I can say through them can you demonstrate the five of them, I can't say number one death metal, pretty high, pretty low then I've got the high pitch, which is, yeah, and um, something more hardcore. That's pretty much the last. The big squeal that one is the brie.
Speaker 1:That's the brie. Yeah, how did the brie story come about? Just because you're French?
Speaker 8:It came pretty stupidly because I realized that I was doing the. You know this kind of voice and for some words where there's E inside, when I wanted to go down the E, it really sounds like a pig that you got. That's very funny, let's use that as a gimmick. And some singers were trying to get close to that with inhaling vocals, but I only exhale to do the screams.
Speaker 1:I inhale. Can you do it exhaling? I thought it was inhaling all the time. I don't know, everything is exhale, I inhale to do the high pitches. So that's, oh my God.
Speaker 8:Yeah, lots of people do inhaling. But, yeah, I do everything by exhaling, including my big squeal. And that's why me, when I sing, every kind of vocals I do are using my fake vocal cords not the spoken vocal cords, but the fake one. Above were more like a huge membranes to protect the spoken vocal cords. And I went to a doctor, a throat doctor, who put a camera in my throat and he told me well, your vocal cords are safe because you don't use them when you scream and that's also why I can do all my screams, as you saw, without any warm-up and without hurting myself. I mean, I could be totally mute because of the cold, I can still do my.
Speaker 1:Oh my god.
Speaker 8:It's a great comfort for a singer. Trust me.
Speaker 1:It's a great comfort. I love karaoke and then I fucking destroy my voice because I don't know how to sing properly, and sometimes I go for a growling style and it's like, no, not going to happen the next day. I'm not.
Speaker 8:With this kind of techniques you're pretty safe. Of course, at first it hurts a bit. It's like in your muscle. You have to get used to it. So of course at first it's pretty painful, but then you're safe, yeah, for our audience.
Speaker 1:Don't try without an adult supervision because you might fuck up your vocal cords. That was fun, wasn't it Cool? And to the next highlight this is a very special episode for me as well, probably one of the most creative ones we've done so far in which one of my best friends, josh Felberg, has actually been a customer of Marsways for many, many years, a great person overall and somebody I deeply admire and respect. And he said man, can I interview you for your podcast? I said why would we do that? But at the moment it sounds kind of like a crazy idea. But then I slept on it and I said well, why not?
Speaker 1:We actually speak a lot about other companies, but we don't really speak about ourselves that much. And so Josh was very intentional about drilling deep into the company culture of MarsBase. And we speak about transparency. We speak about like why am I so outspoken in politics? For instance, how do I combine my multiple projects with MarsBase ambitions? And I've selected this particular part of the episode because it's one of the longest episodes we've recorded. But this part in which he touches really, you know, somewhat not confidential but an uncomfortable part of business, which is are you going to sell the?
Speaker 6:company. It's sort of all the tech companies. They all strive to not pay any tax and they make out this all self-made billionaires' CEOs. But actually, if you look at the infrastructure, or rather how the company operates, whether it's Tesla, amazon, netflix, they're ultimately all built on a government-created infrastructure which needs tax money to exist, right? So it's ironic that they then kind of go the other way and they claim oh, I'm against big taxes and I'm not going to pay any taxes, or as little as possible, and they sort of claim it is all self-made, whereas actually you can't have big internet infrastructure in simple, you know, as a very simple universe. Yeah Well, we all know that the internet was created out of university. The World Wide was created by tim berners-lee. You know, none of that was made by those other guys. They built on top of it, right, um, and that was funding free tax money.
Speaker 6:But talking about investment and and sort of growing big, they say they want any of this regulation, everything. My space has got quite big. Tell me in a second. Uh, I'm not gonna ask for your revenue numbers, uh, but I'm not sure how many staff revenue numbers, uh, but I'm not sure how many staff you've got. I mean, if I remember 20 something, I'm sure you've been approached about investing and having people invest in you and potentially being acquired. What's your thought around that? Would you ever accept because you've got quite if they were aligned with your values or anything and you felt actually this might be a good idea because it can help us grow and kind of continue our mission excuse the pun mission to mars based um we? Would you rule it out forever or what your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:we'd have to consider it. I mean, throughout the years. Yeah, we've had the. I mean there's two things here. Investment doesn't really make sense. Why would you invest in an agency? Some people do it to make sure they can just like scale shit up and kind of like blow up and open an office in 50 countries, right, Well, you're basically buying a team of devs in your case, right Like you've got all the infrastructure set up.
Speaker 1:I've had people like I remember last year there was this Israeli investor with whom I have a great friendship with. It's like dude, I'm ready to make something big in Spain. Do you want to become the next big consultancy? We could totally pour a few million into the company and then just help you to scale up with Dundas in Israel. And I'm like thank you, but I don't want to do that. Like, what's the point? It's a great offering, but not for me, not for my co-founders, not for the company, so that one was turned down right away.
Speaker 1:Acquisition that's a different conversation. We've had acquisition talks over the years, namely twice. By always it's always our biggest client. Right, the two times where our biggest clients two separate companies that you know, you've been working for them for a few years, you've got a big team there and they're your biggest client. At a certain point I don't know if it's intentional or not they might know that they are your biggest client they're like okay, let's talk about doing something bigger, which always comes down to how about you join our company? Like we buy your team and you're part of the company, you can run it independently with this and that, blah, blah, blah, and then you're stuck between a rock and a hard place because you don't want to say no to your client, you definitely want to entertain the conversation, but what's the protocol right? You don't want to lose them. In both cases, we politely turned them down. We followed protocol. We had advisors and this some of our best friends in the industry and so we had to turn them down because they were not. One of them was definitely not aligned with our, the way we perceived it was a bigger consultancy and they, they, they like we said, like house, how is it going to be like on the first day after the acquisition? And they're like well, so you people will have to go to the office and then you, you know, like that's not gonna happen. Well, I mean, you know there's always a price for everything and, uh, you know, give me, give me two billion for Mars diesel, like I'll sell it tomorrow, but that's not going to happen. We know that's not going to happen. Cool, for the next highlight, I'm going to go back some years, actually some years before we actually started the podcast.
Speaker 1:We recorded this episode, this event of Startup Grind. We recorded this episode, this event of Startup Grind, an event that we used to organize and we ran for almost 11 years and more often than not we would cover founder stories, investment, you know, scaling the business, management, leadership, company culture and whatnot. But on rare occasions I would bring the CTOs, because I don't know of many companies that the CTO in Spain can actually give good conversation in English and is a co-founder and knows how to speak in front of an audience. And in this case, I found the perfect match Elisenda Boll, co-founder and CTO of Vellings, a company that was acquired by Apple a few years back, and of course, they really wanted to nerd out and talk about technology, but the audience wasn't the right one. At Startup Grind, we had entrepreneurs, people from corporate investors and whatnot, but not so many developers. Therefore, we don't really dig down very deep into technology. Of course we cover technology, because at the time we were speaking about TensorFlow, we were speaking about AI, machine learning, how to hire engineers, and that must have been around 2017, if I remember correctly, 2017, 18, something like that. Around 2017, if I remember correctly, 2017, 18, something like that.
Speaker 1:But in this episode, I remember I had a lot of fun moments. Haley is such a great speaker. She's inspirational and fun at equal parts, and I remember that I started more or less around that time to ask about the worst day at the office. I wanted people to share the lows of entrepreneurship and more often than not I was also asking the most expensive fuck up, but also wanted to know, on a personal level, how did you feel, what did you do to overcome this Mental issues that we all suffer from and I speak pretty openly about. I wanted to open up on stage in front of an audience and I think we had a very, very insightful conversation and I like to remember fondly this episode, this event with Ellie. So just take a look.
Speaker 7:I wouldn't say that here the rhythm is less like I think. Usually I tend to think that Palo Alto, or like Silicon Valley, they have very good working hours. Yeah. Because they, I'm just not meaning that.
Speaker 3:They're just kind of more business oriented. They tend to take decisions very fast, whereas here we're more like yeah, I'll postpone this decision to like next month.
Speaker 7:No, that doesn't happen. Okay, it doesn like next month. No that doesn't happen. Okay, it doesn't happen in your company. No, I don't think that happens to us. We're really quick at taking decisions. I don't think we have a different pace. I think most of the problems are mostly like how do you organize Because we have also people in Taipei, so sometimes like finding the right meeting time when you have US, barcelona and Taipei, it's just impossible. It doesn't work. Somebody has to be in a call at 1 am or 2.
Speaker 3:But apart from that, Right, a bit of quick questions before we open up the floor for other people's questions. What has been your worst day at the office as a founder? I think, we like to open up here.
Speaker 7:Worst day at the office.
Speaker 7:Something you really struggled with and you took a terrible decision, or Sometimes it's not exactly the question you asked, but one of my biggest problems is when somebody from the team people that you respect a lot and they're team leads and you rely on them a lot they come to you and they look at you like you have all the answers.
Speaker 7:They look at you like I'm going to ask you what's the future, what are we going to be doing in one year or two years? And they're looking at you like you must have all the answers right. You don't have them. Most of the time it's like you're taking guesses as educated as you can and you're sharing with the team and you're open for ideas. So maybe that's the past, but maybe it isn't. So one of the moments that I struggle mostly with is when people look at you and they're expecting you to have the right, perfect answer for any single problem that there might be. You know, and they're like I mean, I'm just trying to lead this thing, but we're a startup just trying to figure out every day.
Speaker 7:I don't have the perfect solution for everything, so we're going to just keep figuring out as we go.
Speaker 1:This is a really good one. I really really like this episode with Jamin Holmgren, one of the co-founders of Infinite Red, a company we look up to, a company that had a podcast that was called Building Infinite Red, which the co-founders sort of group discussed Building the company very openly, and it was great. I have listened to that podcast about three times, all of the episodes, because they're very inspirational and insightful and instructive for companies like us. We look up to them. We've never really worked together, although we keep in each other's minds. They're really fun and you will see it, damon, despite being a CTO, really knows how to talk in public and he's got a great sense of humor.
Speaker 1:He also loves tractors. If you follow him on Twitter, you will know what I'm speaking about. And we had a very, very good conversation about the pains of building agencies, the pains of bootstrapping, the pains of leaning on the side of quality not quantity, being a super specialized company, when they decided to go all in on React Native and stop doing Rails like they had been doing for many, many years, just to be clear that they specialize in only one thing, and it was. You know, one of the pinnacles of this episode was when he started recounting the parable of the rich man and the fisherman, and I don't want to spoil it for you, so I'd rather have you watch it, because I think it explains very well what we do with the bootstrap and lifestyle businesses.
Speaker 9:So let's take a look. So about 10 years into my first agency, I met a couple of other guys, actually three other guys Ken Miller, todd Worth and Gant Laborde and we you know they we decided that we were going to merge our companies together. So at the beginning it was just me, todd and ken, and when we kind of got things together we would have these long discussions, you know, in zoom, and it was really great. And eventually I was like why don't we do a podcast? Because there's so many cool things that we talk about that it feels like we could just make this a public discussion and people would enjoy it.
Speaker 9:Um, and so, building infinite red, uh, which is buildinginfinitered on the web you can go find it. Uh was born and uh, we went through the first season, uh, and then gant actually joined as an owner, uh, the second season, and Ken left us, actually, incidentally, to go work for a product company. And because it turns out that it really is two different type of people and for him the idea of doing consulting, you know, just didn't match with what he wanted to do, is totally fine. What's really cool is that we're still good friends with Ken, you know. What he wanted to do was totally fine. What's really cool is that we're still good friends with Kent. You know, like we went and Gant and I were down there last April and, you know, went to his house and went to lunch with him and you know we're great friends with him. But it's just. You know, it works better with certain personalities.
Speaker 9:So Building Infinite Red was born. We did one season, we did another season. We've talked about a third season. We did one season, we did another season. We've talked about a third season. We want to do a third season. But in the meantime, like we had sort of gotten to where we had said what we wanted to say and I think we would have to relaunch it with maybe a little different focus, because a lot of the stuff just holds up over time, you know it's surprisingly thus, surprisingly well.
Speaker 9:Yeah, pre-pandemic, like you know, it wasn't like we weren't doing this when everybody was remote and stuff like that. So there's maybe some new things to talk about.
Speaker 1:That was way back, way before people started jumping on the cool wagon of the podcast. Like must have been like 2017, 18, something like that.
Speaker 9:Yeah, that's when we did the podcast, but we were remote in 2014.
Speaker 1:So almost 10 years ago, because I met Ken must have been like 2015, something like that in San Francisco. That's my original connection to Infinite Red, and one of the reasons I bring this up is because oftentimes and you will also know, this is agencies, and more so, bootstrap companies agencies usually are bootstrap are perceived as unambitious projects. Right, yeah, it's true. However, we stand the test of time because right now, like companies are going down like flies, and especially startups, right, or companies are basically so, based solely on growth and no real financials to back them. So they're, you know, favorable weather companies, favorable weather companies, fair weather companies, I think you call them right In English.
Speaker 1:So, my point being, there's not a lot of literature around building agencies, like everybody tells you about building product. You know the ABC of entrepreneurship, right? Get some friends, get a co-founder, talk to customers, find an idea, find product, market fit Ideally not raise capital in the meantime, but a lot of people have to because they're just not good at sales. Build something, try to scale it up, blah, blah, blah. Raise another round, round, round, round. After, like every 12 months, raise some money, and so, however, if you're trying to learn how to create an agency, there's not a lot of good content out there. It is. I think people assume that it's kind of like freelancing but scaling it up. There are so many things that just don't fit this description. So that's why I think that podcast if you really want to start an agency, you should consume it from beginning to end.
Speaker 9:I appreciate that that's really kind of you to say. And you're right, there really isn't a lot of uh there really isn't like a model to follow there. Um, I think partially because, uh, you know, a lot of silicon valley kind of looks down their nose a little bit. Um, the ones that are, you know, the big ones out there, pivotal and whatnot. They have a certain kind of goal and way of way of working that you know fits what they like to do. And uh, I'm have a certain kind of goal and way of way of working that you know fits what they like to do. And uh, I'm connected with a lot of you know people that are in operations and leadership within uh larger agencies and they do have a different mindset. It's very much like push, push, push, uh type of a uh mindset. Um, there's sort of this like, um, you know kind of negative uh wording of saying mindset. There's sort of this, like you know, kind of negative wording of saying that that you know, oh, you're building a lifestyle business, like a business that's sort of like built around your life, rather than trying to be ambitious, and I get that. But I don't optimize for dollars and cents necessarily. I don't optimize for, uh, perceived, um, you know, stature in the world. Um, we do optimize for certain types of impact, uh, so impact is part of it. One of our, one of our core pillars is significant positive impact, um, but we feel like we can do that in different ways than building some sort of, you know, startup that changes the world. What we really love, at the end of the day, is to work and build things with our friends and, you know, build things with people that we care about and build a great life for our families. You know happiness we're optimizing for happiness and fulfillment and contentedness, things like that and at the end of the day, you can, you can kind of like, throw away your family and throw away your personal life and your health and everything else and chase the dollar or you know the big splashy startup and then, and then what you know, someone else probably runs it after a while and you're stuck there with, you know, with not a lot, you have a lot of money, but like what else? So I really think that you know there there's this. I've told this story countless times and it's not my story, but it's a. It's a kind of a uh, a parable, if you will. Uh, that I think is very interesting.
Speaker 9:There's this, uh, this fisherman who is, uh, he takes his boat out and he goes fishing in the morning. He goes from, you know, he sleeps in, so he's probably going out around, you know, 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock depending on the day, and he'll go out and he'll catch a couple fish and then he comes back in by noon and you know, he has lunch with his wife and he takes a siesta, and then maybe he goes into town and he, you know, kind of hangs out with his friends, has some wine, and then, you know, he and his wife go dancing in the evening and then he goes and, you know, hangs out with his kids and goes to sleep. In the morning he does it again. And one day a businessman is there, he's on vacation in this, you know this kind of like fishing village, and he sees this guy going out and doing. He says, why don't you just stop at noon? Why don't you keep fishing until five o'clock? You know, why don't you work harder? And uh, the guy says, well, why would I do that? He said, well, you can take the fish, the extra fish that you catch, and you can sell them and you'd get more money. And then you could buy a bigger boat and you'd get more fish because you could have, you could hire people to come on the boat, help you with it, and then eventually you could get many boats and, you know, have a whole fleet of fishing boats and be managing all that. And, uh, you know like, uh, you, you just be doing really well.
Speaker 9:Fisherman said, well, what would I do? Then I said, well, what would I do? Then he said, well, you could sell the thing you could. You know you could go public or something. You could really make tons and tons of money and you could retire early. And the guy says, well, what would I do after I retire? And he says, well, you could sleep in, you could go out fishing, you could come back in, have lunch, take a nap, go dancing, have some wine, hang out with your kids and go to sleep. You know it's the same thing at the end of the day. You know you're the fisherman and the businessman. He's like I'm already doing that Like, make a business that allows you to have the life that you want Great.
Speaker 1:That episode with Damon was actually one of my favorites. I could talk for hours. We speak often once per quarter every few months, and we speak often once per quarter every few months, and we can always learn so much from people like Damon, who have been in the industry for many, many years running a company similar to ours. So we can, you know, chat back and forth about the pains of growing these kind of businesses. So for the next highlight, we have Liz Dunn, a very good friend of mine that resides in the States. I met her many, many years ago it must have been 2017 when they were on a break with her partner traveling around Europe and I hosted them at a start-up event and we had very good conversations. We emptied many glasses of wine over the course of a few days in Barcelona, where we discussed business, investment, technology, innovation and whatnot. I said, like you have to be in my podcast someday.
Speaker 1:I didn't know I was going to have a podcast conversation about innovation in entrepreneurship and her long experience in being in management positions in Silicon Valley, and one of the topics I really really wanted to cover with her was imposter syndrome Imposter syndrome. In this case, I share my imposter syndrome being an angel investor, but we talked about it at length. This is just a part of a very long conversation about many other topics, but I wanted to focus on this one because it doesn't get much press. It doesn't get spoken about as much as we should. So I hope you like this part of the conversation with Liz done Hard question here.
Speaker 1:Let's open up a little bit Imposter syndrome. Did you get it when you started investing? Like, am I really an investor? Can I put it on LinkedIn? Do I really want to? You know, advertise me as, like, promote me as an investor. Am I investing enough money to be called an investor or not? Really, I still got it and I've been investing for six years now. So it's like I'm not really an angel investor when I never put more than 10 grand in a company and I don't know like something like this, I still get it a lot.
Speaker 10:I know what you mean. I mean, you know, being a woman in Silicon Valley, I kind of always have it Like it's always just like sitting on my shoulder, like do you belong here? And you get treated that way too, like do you belong here, like. So I kind of I take that feeling and I kind of I use it to make me, like, show up harder.
Speaker 10:But uh, yeah, I mean, you know, especially at the point where I'd invested I don't know less than ten thousand dollars, uh, sure, I wasn't running around telling people I was an investor. Then, once I got up to, you know, more and I put that on LinkedIn. Then all these people come out of the woodwork trying to pitch you. So then I took it off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the wheels start turning right.
Speaker 10:Yeah. But now I mean I sort of feel like I'll really feel like an investor when I get my first like profitable exit. Actually, I think one of Zach Collius's investments is about to cash out, not hard, but like a two Xer. So then I'll have like that. But my plan had been because I didn't think of myself as a real investor Well, I'm going to angel invest and I'm going to have a couple of successes, and then I'll go work at a big VC company right, because I can show them here's my resume Like I don't have, you know, an accounting or business background, but I have. I've made these successful bets. And then the more that I do this, the more I'm like why should I work for a VC?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's the incentive? I mean probably, yeah, you can make like a 75X return or something like that on something crazy.
Speaker 10:Part of it was. I thought I needed that for legitimacy so I wouldn't feel like an imposter.
Speaker 6:And now I'm like nah, all right, that's interesting yeah.
Speaker 10:To go out with a business card. It's real.
Speaker 1:But for me it's like the reason I want to become an investor is to work less, not more. But if you go to a VC fund, you will work like you know until like the crazy hours around the clock, just because they're a VC and they got to have like these returns, because otherwise the fund loses money. And 75% of VC funds worldwide they lose money. They never return the money to the investors, right? So it's like why do you want to go in a business that it's inherently bleeding money, right? Well?
Speaker 10:I'll send you this article and you can show it in the-.
Speaker 1:I'll link it in the show notes.
Speaker 10:yeah, but basically it talks about how, in a sense, vc is. They're so beholden to their returns that like, for example, you look at WeWork, people kept the board, knew it had a problem and it just kept letting that guy do whatever he wanted and the vcs were like this does not make sense. But then they didn't want to lose. They didn't want to, like, lose their money, so they kept just going along with it. It's a great article about how, basically, it's their desire to not to have a return on their fund that made them, you know, prop up a failing business for so long. It's a great article. It's basically like how VC is breaking business.
Speaker 1:Good, and now for the next one. This is actually a part of a series of three episodes with Mike Cunningham from Transcend Partners in which we discuss M&A everything about M&A. We discuss sales side, buy side. We discuss advisors, boutiques, prices, fees, retainers, deadlines, documents, protocol, etiquette. We discuss everything, and I think we will record three episodes more because Mike is a great friend. He's super generous with his time, he's somebody I like working with and I really enjoy all the conversations over tacos that we have offline, and every now and then I'm like man. It's been a while since we recorded with Mike and when you will watch this part of the clip, you will understand why you want to consume the entire three episodes we recorded with Mike. So let's jump right into it. What's one or two clauses that only rookie entrepreneurs would accept? Something that you know seasoned entrepreneurs. When they see on the LOIs, they're like fuck, no, I'm not getting this.
Speaker 11:Yeah. So I mean, this exclusivity period is one that almost nobody really understands too well. They just don't know what the norms are. So it's kind of they get an LOI and it says 80 days of exclusivity.
Speaker 1:And they're like oh, 80 days is nothing, right? Yeah, they're like ah, 80 days is nothing, right?
Speaker 11:Yeah, they're like ah, makes sense to me, you know they're going to be investing in-. What's the lowest you?
Speaker 1:can get it to Wow. I mean there's 30 days yeah.
Speaker 11:I mean 30 days would be quite low. But you also want it to be two. Everything you do in this you want to be kind of in good faith in two way, because the more it seems you don't want to be too one-sided. You need to be doing things in a, you know, kind of a partnership way. Obviously you're representing your interests and you want it to be certainly not negative for you but as favorable as possible. But you also don't want to be unrealistic and demanding things that are way off market. So this is another thing an entrepreneur, you know, who doesn't have experience in this, they could say no, you know, I'm not giving more than 15 days of exclusivity, and every acquirer I'm not saying this has ever happened, but it could easily happen Every acquirer would say that's ridiculous, this is a joke. I'm not going to do this process with this guy. He's demanding outrageous things and he has no idea what he's talking about.
Speaker 11:So it's kind of we know, kind of what's the norm, what's in the market what's reasonable and you know, and what's reasonable but very good for our end, because the range of reasonability is is very wide. You know, and if they, you know, and I would say many times you know, especially if they're not dealing with a professional advisor, you know they're going to try to push things in their favor, why not? Who wouldn't you know? I mean, it's kind of you know. If I know I'm just, you know, dealing with a CEO or you know somebody from the board in this process, then you know why not? You know, make it as favorable for myself. So it's kind of so that's, you know, I think, quite normal on the side of the buyer in those situations.
Speaker 1:Oh man, this is a really good one, john O'Nolan. That's actually a big achievement for me personally, as a longtime user and fanboy of Ghost, one of the technologies I love the most, one of the products I really admire. I've been following for many, many years. My personal website is built with Ghost. I really like him. I really like John as a leader. He's a charismatic entrepreneur, charming, charming person, super generous with his time.
Speaker 1:I sent him an email Do you know me, john, I really like to host you on the episode and within two minutes it's like yes, let's do it, let's find a time. Boom, and in three days we were recording. Like that doesn't happen with this sort of caliber and these people high up the ranks of entrepreneurship and technology. So, yeah, I really admire him. Super thankful, we discussed everything. We didn't discuss everything because we didn't have time and I was nervous, as you will be able to tell from the episode, but we had a really, really fun moment towards the end of the episode in which he actually actually he saw and he caught the reference a reference I like to use from Hot Ones, one of my favorite YouTube shows, and he's like man that's from Hot Ones, right, I appreciate the reference Like man that's from Hot Ones. Right, I appreciate the reference. I'm like okay, you're the first one to actually get it. In more or less 100 episodes I've been using these sentences Like I'm rolling the red carpet for you. Here's your camera, here's your camera. I like that style towards the end of the interview, and so we started riffing for a couple of minutes about Hot Ones and his favorite episodes that were not, and I think that that was really, really fun.
Speaker 1:The entire episode is fantastic. It's phenomenal, but I think this part is pretty short. It's pretty fun. It's good to kind of like wrap up this episode even though we got one more, and so I hope you enjoyed this conversation with John Nolan. I was going to go into that, but I think from this answer you've just given me, I've inferred how not to use Ghost, which I think it's as valuable, if not more. So well, let's just wrap it here. Because you've been extremely generous with your time. I'm rolling out the carpet for you. You got one minute left to say how we can help you, how we can help Ghost and any announcements or anything you want to share with our community.
Speaker 5:Love the Hot Ones reference.
Speaker 2:yeah, If you want to check out Ghost You're the first one to get it yes.
Speaker 5:I would. If you publish online and you have an email list or you have thoughts to share with the world, check out Ghostorg. We're doing a lot of interesting things. Um favorite hot ones episode so far. I mean the DJ Khaled's always a classic right, just for for its incredible failure. Um, what was the one I watched just last week? Oh, ryan Reynolds, that one was really good.
Speaker 5:Yeah that's very good. There's a few. I'm struggling to think of them all on the spot. Jimmy Fallon is the one I just watched. He was very funny. What's yours? Shaquille O'Neal probably.
Speaker 1:Like I don't understand him most of the time we're speaking, but the faces and the entire performance is superb. That for me is like an all-time great.
Speaker 5:Ricky Gervais. The Gordon Ramsay one was good as well, just because of how angry he got throughout the whole thing, like why do you do this Exactly?
Speaker 1:exactly, they're really good ones. And then I'm really surprised by people who you wouldn't expect it but they tolerate spiciness so well, like charlize their own, for instance, and uh I'm surprised, gary vaynerchuk yeah, yeah, exactly. Some people are like yeah, yeah, spicy, but you know, I'm like yeah, holy fuck like I. I have the bomb, the bomb, I have it in my fridge. It's is literally unbearable Stuff like that I love spicy and that's why I buy all of these terrible sauces and when I see some of the guests that they don't break a sweat, I'm like, no, I don't know how they can do it.
Speaker 1:I don't know how they can do it, but anyways.
Speaker 5:I'm a big hot sauce fan.
Speaker 1:And for the last one, oh man, this is the banger. This is the banger of the episode. So, yeah, we have Dorian Carroll, great, great friend of mine, great person to converse, super interesting, super knowledge about technology, super experienced, being a CTO for companies, silicon Valley, and VP of engineering and technology since I don't know for 40 years right now close to 50. I got the mistake in, but yeah, he's worked for companies like EA. He's worked for Technorati, for Blogger, for Amazon and for many, many other companies. When I met him back in the time, he was a CTO, slash CIO of Zynga, you know the gaming company, and I really wanted to wrap up this special five years anniversary of the podcast special episode with a banger. And the last one is his technical fuck up in which, well, it's, let's, let's put it like that it is a very hot one an electrician had been working out on the street and he wasn't uh, he wasn't certified.
Speaker 12:he made some mistake, luckily didn't kill himself, but uh, what he did in doing that, it actually started a fire in the data center, and so we were literally on fire. This wasn't just an emergency. The software is on fire that people often say. No, the data center was on fire. They were able to put the fire out Lateral fire.
Speaker 12:Yeah, lateral fire, they were able to put the fire out. They were able to put the fire out and we realized we weren't going to have power in that data center for a while and we rented a trailer and unplugged all of our equipment and stacked it in the back of this trailer and drove it over to a new data center where we had been looking at and just we moved the whole thing and we got the site back up and running.
Speaker 1:How long had it elapsed?
Speaker 12:We had realized we needed to change data centers, so we had a footprint in the new data center to some extent, but we hadn't been ready to flip the switch. So I think, if I recall correctly, we were able to flip the switch to at least put up a sorry page, uh, and then, over the course of, I think you know, several hours, we were able to bring up the rest of the services maybe it was somebody who wanted to speed up that process.
Speaker 1:He was very getting upset that this was not moving and the ceo was not approving the budget. It's like, fuck it, I'm gonna burn the office down if you don't do it. Anyways, last question to you. It's a very, very, very nice way to end this special episode. We learned a lot from Dorian. You can go and watch also the Startup Grind episode we recorded with him, where we discussed more technology. We nerded out for an hour about React, nodejs, javascript, ruby, amazon Cloud and whatnot. We discussed a lot of technologies.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, hope you enjoyed this special compilation of the five years anniversary of Life on Mars podcast. There's going to be five more years. I assume we enjoy doing this. We want to thank you for your support. I want to thank you for being there, for sending suggestions of content, suggestions of speakers, sending questions, and I'd like to ask you for more questions. If you made it this far, let us know in the comment section down below, because you really and truly deserve a gold medal for being a great supporter and for always being there for us, and so you got some questions for the company, for me, for my co-founders, for some of our employees for David, the marketing guy, whomever, just let us know in the comment section down below. Send it also via email at olamarspacecom. And, as always, if you like this show, just recommend us share it, retweet, repost, hit the like and subscribe buttons and I'll see you all in the next episode.