Josh Ogundu is currently a product operations lead at TikTok, previously worked in consumer product across media and communication tools. Outside of product he has an affinity for entertainment as well as college sports. Shoutout to The Big Ten & PAC 12.
Twitter handle: https://twitter.com/JoshuaOgundu
Most recent article feature: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/11/tech-comedians-poke-fun-at-employers.html
Time Stamps:
00:50 - Josh’s most non-consensus opinions
3:06 - How to make engaging content on TikTok?
5:32 - The value of 100 true fans
7:50 - How important is distribution?
10:06 - How can non-technical people recruit technical people to join their startup?
13:38 - Launching distribution for a new startup
16:47 - How to leverage new media for startups?
24:11 - How do you amass social capital?
27:04 - The value of a college education in tech
31:39 - What challenges are Black and Latinx people facing in tech that others are not?
36:36 - Best piece of technology according to Josh
Josh Ogundu is currently a product operations lead at TikTok, previously worked in consumer product across media and communication tools. Outside of product he has an affinity for entertainment as well as college sports. Shoutout to The Big Ten & PAC 12.
Twitter handle: https://twitter.com/JoshuaOgundu
Most recent article feature: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/11/tech-comedians-poke-fun-at-employers.html
Time Stamps:
00:50 - Josh’s most non-consensus opinions
3:06 - How to make engaging content on TikTok?
5:32 - The value of 100 true fans
7:50 - How important is distribution?
10:06 - How can non-technical people recruit technical people to join their startup?
13:38 - Launching distribution for a new startup
16:47 - How to leverage new media for startups?
24:11 - How do you amass social capital?
27:04 - The value of a college education in tech
31:39 - What challenges are Black and Latinx people facing in tech that others are not?
36:36 - Best piece of technology according to Josh
So how do you make that good content? How do you like make content that like, I do want you to download my app. Yeah, but I also want it to just be inherently good content. Okay. I think if you're thinking about an app, I think as you're making content that that people can connect to, I tell the story behind the app and say, Hey, you can do this. You can do that. You can do that. People people know what they can do. Tell them how it will make them feel, tell them how this app will weave into the story of the life that they're trying to build. Right? Like if you are good at storytelling and weaving, like how does, you know, using Twitter? Change the way that someone can consume news and knowledge and shit like that. Josh, thank you so much for joining us yeah. I love happy to be here. Thanks for thanks for inviting me. So, you know, when we're thinking about like where to start this so for us, I discovered you on Twitter for having a very differentiated point of view compared to The typical following that I followed. And then later I found your Ted talk and I thought that was hilarious, but that was like really well done. And just generally the product that you're putting out on tech talk is vastly different compared to the other tech media, I would say. Your point of view on Twitter specifically is very non-consensus. So you have takes on certain topics like higher education and the value that it provides, or the idea of wealth accumulation and wealth creation. And so of all the, you know, of all the takes that you have that you feel get maybe the most fullback in, you're probably in the best position to tell us, you know, the takes that get you the feral creatures on Twitter and the non-US links and whatnot, showing up and populating on your feed. What gets, the craziest reaction. Yeah. So I think the reason that people don't. I typically agree with what I liked, what I say is because it kind of, some of it goes against like the quote unquote American dream. Right. When I had made a tweet about that, you know, about home ownership and things like that, they're like, whoa, like I had so many people come out because people are very sensitive to that. So, so anytime I critique The American dream. People get very, very upset about that, that it's trying to home ownership is tied to wealth accumulation. It's a tight team wake up everyday and think about generational wealth. I'm like, okay, like, that's cool. I'm glad you all do that. But that's not something that, that I think everybody should be focusing on and thinking about. But when you're like, I guess for me, like in some ways, like I live minimalists and I'm like anti-consumerism so I don't really try to, my, my goal in life is not to consume and more so to produce. And I think when I go against like consumption theories people get upset about that. And to this day, I still don't understand why people are so like, you know, riled up when that happens. But yeah, a lot of my takes are like anti consensus and people don't always agree, honestly, it feels like people would disagree with me more than they agree with me. But you know, that's, that's, that's kind of the thing, you know every, every taken everybody isn't for everyone. I definitely agree with you regarding consuming less than you produce. I think like the path towards becoming great at something is just making stuff. Yeah. But, you know, the issue with, you know, they should always how did that is as like, I want to produce something, but do I have enough knowledge to produce anything? My opinion is learn as little as possible to make as much as possible. And then once you reach a point where you can't make any more than learn just enough to keep it. Anyway so I think that's, that's fairly interesting, like you're sort of your point of view on tech. I think the other thing we wanted to get on is you're sort of semi famous on Twitter. I just want to take talk. I don't know what is considered famous. I think I'm definitely a micro creator. I am higher. I'm not popping as of yet. Do not let the CNBC article fool you. There's a, there's a CNBC article. Yeah, I was, I was highlighted in CNBC like a month or so ago. Wow. Right. And I think what's really fascinating. We haven't even brought up is that you work at TechTalk, you are a product lead. So what does that entail and what insights do you have working on the back end of to talk, but you can tell to other creators so that they can go from being a micro creator to a macro creator. Yeah. So I feel like, so the one thing that I think people tend to assume with tick-tock is that there's like some secret thing that you can do to start popping on Tik TOK, realistically people focus on the like, oh, should I post it this time? Do I need to do this? I need that. Like it's really like good content gets discovered. I think if everyone just looks at it from that perspective, it's just like, make good content. It will get discovered because that's what Tik TOK is. Tik TOK has an audience for the most people who make the most generic content. So the people that make the most niche content. So if you really focus on the craft at first and the craft that you're looking to produce, you'll get found. People will see it. People will find it, but when you try to focus too much on them, and now I'm up on the material then you end up in a very Weird state where you're optimizing for the wrong thing. So that's why I say for people to tick tock creators me working in product at exact is really interesting. I work across trust and safety and six hock for good justice and safety is giving tooling to keep people safe on platform. But also encouraging good behavior on platform. Fake hock for good has two things under working across. Accessibility and our donation feature set accessibility is exactly what you think it is. How do we make six taco place that anybody and everybody, no matter what can use it again, the value from it. So there's that. Yeah. And then T the donation futures is like, how do we make Tik TOK, a place for giving, right. A place that you can raise money for NGOs NPOs and different causes that are happening across the globe. So that is really interesting work. It's been fun. Before working in this space, I worked in like media utility products. But always been working in consumer facing product has been always my, my thing. But yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a good time. And I, I don't believe that I have any unique insights from working here that would benefit someone as a creator. I think one thing I have seen is that the most pop and creators that I'm a fan of. Is that they really do focus on the content and they make a brand for themselves. They don't look to just do what's hot. They do. What's unique to them and unique to their brand and build their brand around it. I see a lot of creators who are those middle of the road, creators people who don't have a unique voice, but have a lot of followers. And the unique voice is what gets you popping? Like, obviously, like I was telling you. I only have like 3,400 followers on Tik TOK. But my, the, the voice that I have is so unique that people are starting to get into it more than the people that have, you know, 15, 20,000 followers, but do generic content. Right. Yeah. It's the concept of the w of 100 true fans are worth more than 10100%, 100%. And I wish more people understood that. We're don't break that. Break that down for us. One of you guys, what a hundred true friends really means. I'll let you go, man. And also fight on SC. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I, I heard this from Y Combinator, which is that if you have like 10,000 people who kind of like what you're selling, converting that into 10,000 people who are willing to pay for it, who love you is impossible. But if you have a hundred people who love what you're selling, converting that to a thousand or 10,000 is difficult, but doable. So you can't scale. If people are lukewarm about what you're doing, correct. It has to be. People you have to really fuck with your shit or not fuck with your shit. That's kinda how I look at it as well from like a content perspective. And I look at it from like a product perspective. So from a content perspective, if you are making content that like, you know, people are just really, really enticing. Maybe like everybody's not into it, but you really want to get the people who are really into it. So for me, my content is nice. It's satirical takes on tech and some of the tech and some of the stuff I make. The only way you really would get it is if you're like somewhat deeper into tech, like I made a video about next door and like the racism that happens on next door, the only way that you would think that's funny is if you know that people talk about how racist that there is, next door also has anti-racists. Fucking procedures on their website. So it, it actually does happen there. And then from a product perspective, you're building a consumer product and people are like, like you said, they're kind of like, eh, like this is kind of cool, I guess, like convert, converting those into paying people, paying, paying people, or converting those into people that just retain on your product. If it's free is going to be tough. You've got to get people like, yo I really, really like, you got to get people that will evangelize what you're doing, whether it's the content you make or the product you produce. So Josh, I'm going to tell you my ulterior motive for starting this podcast is so I, I worked hard to start it for six years. I was the first employee and I was head of software. So I learned the tech side of things and I was like, now I got the skillset in terms of tech. To found a startup and I have a bunch of ideas, but what I realized is that like again, getting a thousand true fans or a 10,000 true fans is so difficult. And I realized like, I don't know anything about sales. I don't know anything about marketing. So my whole thing was, if I can get people to listen to my podcast, I can sell anything. This is like my business school for learning that as there you go, I liked that. I liked that idea. So how did you how'd you learn distribution. Yeah. So for me, I founded a startup. It was called like me, it was identity and interest based social network. Basically the way we looked at identity is like where you're at in life. Like what stage of life are you at undergrad grad or working professional? Working professionals, anyone that has a job was not white collar specific, which a lot of people in tech, when they think working professional, they only think white collar jobs, but we get anybody's a professional who's, who's great at their craft realistically. And then interests were like, just what you'd like to do. What industries are you interested in professionally? And like, what do you like to do for fun? And we're taking those three data points and like surfacing people around you who are the best measure of who you are. Right. And the way we thought about distribution is like, When you, when you look at like the first thing you were like, yo, what if I want to distribute my app? I gotta like pay for Facebook ads when you don't have money. Facebook ads are really ineffective for you because you are fighting against people who have multi-million dollar budgets to get their eyes on the same thing that you might be trying to do. So for us, we took a different strategy since the time in life that you're most looking to find people who are most like you might be when you're in unfamiliar areas like a new neighborhood, a new city, and you stayed in the country. So we ended up actually distributing our app in awareness via postcards. So we ended up leveraging postcards. You can buy those data from Experian and you can know people who moved in the last six months, we ended up selling we ended up sending these postcards about like me being on iOS, like seeing like, you know, like iOS, we were looking for people that are, you know similar to you download the app. And that worked pretty effectively for us to the point that we got, we didn't have a ton of like users. We had like 40,000, maybe 40,000 users. And we knew it was effective when we started getting inbounded on Facebook, when people would ask them when the Android apps coming out. Cause like, people are like, oh, I don't have iOS, but I do have Android. When is the Android app coming out? And, you know, we were trying to build that thing and you know, that didn't work out. We needed to do how it needed to work. But my, my first point of distribution was like meet people where they're in Mo the emotional feeling will gravitate to your products. And also try to do it in the most cost-effective way as possible. If you're bootstrapping. It all comes back to what you just said, which is like, make a great content, you know, like that's what it is like tapping into the emotional side of things, I think is like the big difference. So just to sit back a little bit, I think so you correct me if I'm wrong, you are non-technical. Yeah, I have, I have a degree in economics. Got it. So as a non-technical person, how did you convince technical people to work with you on this vision that you had? Yeah, sure. Like, I, I actually really enjoyed this part of the story. So I was the director for member relations for the entrepreneurship association at Michigan state. That's where I went to undergrad. And I was actually there to like, try to recruit engineers to come and build products for other folks. Like we're going to pay them money to build products for other folks. And ended up finding my first co-founder talked to him about that. And he was like, Hey, do you have something that you're working on? And I told him what I was working on. And he was like, okay. Like, like me, it sounds cool. I had a landing page up, already had beta signups. I already was talking like to other engineers or dev shops. And I think what convinced Yosef specifically was that he felt like he was like, I was going to do it regardless if he was going to come or not. And I think that's something that I think is a powerful tool for non technicals is to not be like, yo, this, you come off. Like somebody that go, if I don't join you, like, you just won't do it at all. Like you got to come off like yo one, I'm going to do it regardless. And to show me interest, show me that people actually want what you're looking to build. And anybody who's not to who can build a landing page. Get some beta signups. Like you can do a lot of stuff to show intent for consumer have a beta list for B2B should have a LOI is like letters of intent from businesses that they want to purchase your, your, your, your SAS product. Like you have to show that you are building something that you're moving something and not just waiting for this person to like, sit down and like, build your. Front end and your back end all day while you're not, while you're not doing anything, like you could have done a lot before even talking to engineers. So it was like, that's kind of how that happened. And then art, my second co-founder Brendan. He ended up just coming to us because he liked it. He saw that we were quoted in Cosmo as I was. So before we released a product, somebody saw the landing page and picked it up from the state newspaper, like the Michigan state college newspaper, someone at Cosmo saw it and wrote an article about us. And he was like, yo, already got. You know, actual press about y'all and you gotta have a product out, you know, I could join this thing and do that. And we're all college students at the time. So like, that's kind of cool. And we're like, yeah, it was all just like built together. But yeah, the way I would look at it from a non-technical perspective show that people are interested in what you're trying to build before it's out. And also come off like a person that is looking to build it regardless because the confidence brings people together. So it seems like you've gotten a lot of press Vasan sent me a USA today. Article about like me told me about Cosmo. Then you just got written about in CNBC. Is this like something which just happens or is this something that you make happen? Yeah, so I would say for everything like me related, Cosmin was like, honestly, like somebody just picked it up USA today. We wanted to talk to USA today. When they had that college thing. So like one of my friends had gotten quote, I had had an article in USA today. I was like, yo, can you connect us with the reporter, the reporter in the world about us? CNBC that was really through happenstance. The reporter hit me up and she was like, Hey, her name, Jennifer Ellis. And she was like, Hey, like saw your content would love to include you in this piece that I'm talking about, like comedy and Silicon valley. I was like, sure, like, let's talk about it. Let's do it. So for, for companies, I do think that it's more intentional for content. I think people just happen to discover you and want to write about what you're doing. So yeah, one thing which I also wanted to go back to was I absolutely love the idea of postcards. I think that's such a creative way and it's such like a nice way to like touch into people's like emotions. Do you have any other kind of like creative tricks that you've done throughout the years? You want to talk about? I'm trying to think if there's anything else that was more creative than that. I don't even know what I was even trying to think at that time. I was like, that was. That was one that I always think back to him. Like, I don't even know how you landed on that idea. I'm trying to think there's anything else that I think was interesting distribution wise when it comes down to things nothing off the top of my head. That's probably the most creative one I've ever made. So, if you had to, if you had to launch a new startup, like, is there any playbook that you'd use for launching distribution or would you just kind of focus on, we run the same thing that I did for liking realistically? I would have a landing page to show. I would want to know that people are interested in the potential, like the potential idea before I sink money into it. I think a lot of people sink money into things before knowing that people would even want it. And there's a lot of way to test the market before you sink a lot of cash into it. And then distribution wise, like go like, like you were saying, like the a hundred to France go where you feel like your product would most connect with someone emotionally and grow from there. If you can think about the emotion that your product elicits from people. And I think every product, no matter if it's enterprise or not enterprise or consumer and listen to an emotion in some way and figure out what that emotion could be. And put the product in front of those people and see if it connects in that kind of way. So that's the kind of way I would look at like the whole, like, you know, launching it or distributing it. Yeah. So let's say that, like, you were the guy who thought of Instagram and before you launch it, you want to kind of run it through, like, let's test the idea before we start deving. How would you go about launching this and testing it? Yeah. I feel like for Instagram, I feel like it's like, kind of like shading your face on how they probably did it. Like, you know, his wife is the one that brought up the whole filter thing and things like that. It's like, you know, who thinks about who wants to look good? Like, whether it be like the people who are either in entertainment, like we see on the Instagram, we have Instagram influencers. We have people who might be, you know, looking for, you know, potential romantic partners. Those people also want to look good because what the filters do they make you look better than you might usually. So like, if I was launching Instagram and I was like, and if I had at least a couple of filters, I will be talking to. People who are working in entertainment, who needs to look good for their job. Cause like, if you don't look good at entertainment, you only have so much of a shelf life. And then I will talk to photographers who want to make people look good. So like, how could you use Instagram? You don't have to carry all of your, like, you know tools and cameras and film and lenses, all that kind of stuff. Just use this app and that might get you the the product that the person wants without you having to use all this. Equipment that you have and given that wear and tear, like could Instagram help you have less wear and tear on the camera tools that you have potentially. Have you heard of the mom test? I have not. It's this great book that I think Y Combinator recommends it a lot. And I've like seen it posted like in online startup communities. So it's this wonderful book. It's only like a hundred pages long. But it is such a good primer on customer discovery. How do you interview people? How do you find them? How do you get them to like sign letters of intent and yeah, it sounds like your thinking is completely aligned with it. And so it's an it's it's it's it's, it's interesting. If you just like. Super. If you just sit down and think about stuff, like how much, like the things that have already been said, you can like discover for yourself. Like, I feel like there's so much stuff that you can, like, you just sit down and think about it. Like, huh? I thought about this. This came across my mind and then you look maybe years later, like you see somebody like, oh, someone else had brought that up in your book at some point. It's like, I think just being introspective and really just sitting down and thinking you can, you can come up with the same. You can call it with the same, like highlights in, in, in, in insights that, you know, people like me decades or senior have come up with. Absolutely. So what are your thoughts on kind of leveraging new media, like Instagram or Tik TOK for launching your startup? I saw somewhat some, like, I don't know this guy directly, but he's like a friend of a friend and he was posting about it on LinkedIn, on like how. He was like this 21 year old kid. And he's like, oh, you know, I got my startup so much attention on Tik TOK and he did he get a lot of use, but I think even more interesting was like the fact that I saw it on LinkedIn, even though I wasn't directly his fan means he did understand, like this kind of like a media. So what are your thoughts on like leveraging new media? First 100% will say if you're launching a consumer product to leverage data it doesn't only move downloads. It moves physical goods. It started on Tik TOK, that whole thing. People like, oh Tik TOK made me do it. Okay. I bought this from Tik TOK. And if you think about purchasing things versus downloading things, if Tik TOK as a distribution channel and an awareness channel can get people to spend money on it, how easy did it, how easily could it make it so people will download your free app. Like when you think about like the friction between the boat, there's more friction with purchasing thing than downloading something sometimes. Depending on what you're fucking downloading, but if you can, if you are leveraging Tik TOK to sell, like, I don't know, socks and underwear and apparel and plants and all this kind of stuff. Why do you not think you could leverage that thing to get your app downloaded people like, oh, I saw the Tik TOK, especially if you put the link in your bio was like, oh, link in my bio. They can go to it. Boom easy. And I hope that your link takes them directly to the app store and not to a website that they didn't have to go through because then your funnel's fucked. So I definitely think that if you leverage tic-tac from like, as a consumer founder, I think, I think you read, you would be shooting yourself in the foot. If you do not leverage tick-tock as a distribution channel as a consumer founder, I do not have any thoughts on the enterprise though. I'm not sure how it would work for the enterprise, but I believe it will work in some kind of way because it's all humans at the end of the day, whether it's a business ran by humans or a human using it on their phone. But I ha I don't know how it works for enterprise, but I've seen it work. Very well for consumers, I feel like on the topic of enterprise marketing, they try damn near everything. When I'm in San Jose, our SFO yeah. Airports, the only ads that I see are like enterprise software ads. I don't know if he gets it. Yeah. Say for AWS. And you're like, how many people who are flying into SFO even know what, like, why are you doing that? And, you know, SFO has maybe like, okay, you know, it's not because everybody's a tech here. So. Probably a good chance. You'll come across an engineering manager or somebody that's in a decision-making sort of position, but then you'll see it in Austin. You'll see it in New York. I'll see everywhere else in Utah. I've seen it everywhere. It's like slack. It's like the Azure's like, so I feel like Tik TOK wouldn't be any worse than, than what the airport is giving them before we leave this topic though. One thing which I really wanted to ask is people hate being sold to. So how do you make that good content? How do you like make content that like, I do want you to download my app. Yeah, but I also want it to just be inherently good content. Okay. I think if you're thinking about an app, I think as you're making content that that people can connect to, I tell the story behind the app and say, Hey, you can do this. You can do that. You can do that. People people know what they can do. Tell them how it will make them feel, tell them how this app will weave into the story of the life that they're trying to build. Right? Like if you are good at storytelling and weaving, like how does, you know, using Twitter? Change the way that someone can consume news and knowledge and shit like that. Tell that story, don't say, Hey, you can, you know, talk about your life or you can tweet this. Don't go through functionality and tell the story. So, if you were to do that for liking me on Tik TOK, what would that sound like? For me, I definitely would have made a Tik TOK video telling the story of someone like someone moving for the first time. You have all those sounds effects. You have like the more dreary kind of thing. I, it was, and I would go from like that more like black and white, like, oh, I'm moving to this place. I don't know anybody kind of situation. Like you're on like me and now you're like, You know, at a ranger or doing this or doing that? I think because I think about like me and I think about what we were trying to build there and we were trying to do we're really trying to build a way for people to be less lonely, right? Like the older you get, the harder it is to make connections outside of the place you go to school and the place you work at. So the story I would have told on Tik TOK would have definitely been about like, you know, what life looked like. With the tools that we have today with the apps that we have today. And if you use like me, it can build that friendship. Like I would have, you know, brought the phases of life that I was talking about. I would talk about like the first time you hit it, it's like, post-college, post-college that post-college depression not being around people anymore. What can it do then? What can it also do for that stage of life? When you become a new parent? Now, when your friends, aren't parents and you're a parent, how you connect to other parents, there's other parent groups and things like that, but also told the story from that lens. And then. I would even do it for the older folks. At some point as we're scaling up and be like, Hey, you know, you're in your sixties now. You're like, you know, wanting to connect with people in this, in this phase of life that you're in now from, from an age perspective and like, what does that look like? How does like me, how does liking help everyone from the palate student to the grandparents? And I would have told those stories in very unique ways and that would have connected with people. So I th I think another interesting trend is this idea that companies are realizing it's better marketing spend to pay for an influencer to promote your product than it is to go through a sort of traditional advertising channels. So if you were building like me today in relational, for us, we're saying with the money you spent on sending those postcards, be better spent purchasing time with an influencer to promote your product. Yeah, I wouldn't have, I would have done the postcards still. Yeah I can say why. Because I don't and identifying an influencer that can tell the story in a way that emotionally connects in the same way that when you get a postcard in the mail emotionally connects. I don't believe that I have been able to do that at where I was at. So I definitely would have to. Sure. That's totally fair. Yeah. If we if we had to switch topics a little bit, I think one of your tweets, you had mentioned that it's weird that a lot of the tech media revolves around interviews and how to tackle interviews. And I think. W w where you're differentiated is how you provide advice on leveling up in tech, or just breaking into the career and whatnot. So what in that space do you think is not sort of spoken about often and there isn't enough information that's out there in relation to like leveling up in tech? I think the main thing about leveling up in tech is that people believe that it's all about like years of experience and like your skillset and things like that. Not for real, the higher you go up, the less technical the promotions tend to become. As folks know, they tend to become more political. They tend to be more like you're not going to get a promotion unless other people believe you need them. You're going to you, you deserve the promotion as well and not just your boss. So how do you, how do you build that social capital within the organization for people like yo, this person definitely deserves whatever is going to have whatever promotion they're looking for and things like that because it's usually by committee. There's no, one's making a. Unilateral hiring decision and saying, Hey, this person is getting promoted regardless. You have to have other buy-in. So the thing that I want us to talk more about is less like I have X amount of years of experience, or I have this skillset. How much social capital have you built? How much social capital do you have throughout the organization? And I think you, I think we, we should be fairly great engaging their own social capital, but I don't think we all are, some of us has less than we think we do and more than we think we do. But something we should talk about definitely more in leveling up in tech is a mass in social capital. And that, and that is something that I wish we talked more about because that's how people get opportunities anyway. So let's talk about it. How do you amass social capital? So the first within the organization, or just in general let's first talk about promotion, but then I would also like to hear other places. Yeah. So for me, the way that I've always leveled up is being is not only letting my boss know what I'm doing, but being visible around. So I'm like, I'm on documents. I'm like, you know, giving feedback, I'm doing more than, what's just my role. Like, I'll do the extracurricular stuff. Hey, you need a volunteer for this. I can help you out with that. I see might have a lot on your plate. I can also help you out with that. Like easing the load for other people gain social capital because they feel like they can trust you and they feel like you will look out for them. The more that people feel like they can trust you. The more social capital you are a mess. Now you can easily. Lose social capital by saying, you're going to take on something and don't actually do it. I'm going to say you're going to do it and not do it. So I think the easiest way to get promoted and build up your career in tech is building trust with people throughout the organization and not only in your department, but with other XFN stakeholders that you may or may not work with. So that's the way I would look at it. I think that's really interesting. I I, I hear these stories sometimes. Like do you know the song, do you know the story for like how Sundar Pichai came to run? Google vaguely familiar. Like I vaguely, for the, I was hoping that you knew the detailed, because like, I know I'm vaguely familiar, but what I had heard was that when Larry Page was trying to figure out who was going to take over the way he decided was every time we'd go into a boardroom with all the executives, he would look at. Which executive everybody deferred to on certain topics. And it sounded like everybody, all the executives with argue, argue with each other on which strategy to take you know, which roadmap to put down how the messaging should be, et cetera, et cetera. But then whenever soon there would talk, everybody would quiet down and, you know, listen to what he had to say. And and that's how they decided to go with him. So, yeah, it sounds like, I don't know. What do you think about Josh? Just like that kind of like city to your framework of social capital. Yeah. Because it's trust they trust this. Decision-making like, how did, how did he build that trust over those years with all those people, he probably made decisions that they're like, yo Sundar knows what he's talking about. We trust his decisions because the decisions have, even if he. Even if he made a decision that didn't work out as well as, as well as people would have hope he, they trusted that he was making the decision with everybody's best interest at heart. And I think if you don't have trust, you don't have anything. And I think we don't think about how do you build trust in the workplace? Like, how do you go about doing that? If you don't have trust in the workplace, you're only gonna go so far. Hm. So another thing that you've you've talked about on Twitter is. I love how this podcast is just, Hey, you said this on Twitter. They explained your tweet podcast, but here's what tells you the power of distribution on Twitter and keep that that's a fair point. That's a fair point. We've never met you. Yeah. We've never met you, but we already know like all these like very interesting insights that you carry. So I guess that's another, yeah, because of, because of digital distribution. So here's my, here's my question. A lot of people in like the tech industry, a lot of founders say like, don't go to college, it's a waste of time, but you seem to disagree with that. So what is your take here? Yeah, so I can do, I will say the reason I'm a big fan of higher education and also the people who say don't go to college usually comes from economic privilege. So that's, that's the first thing. Usually you can dive into people's family backgrounds and see like, oh, you're saying don't go to college because X or Y or Z. And it's usually rooted in economic privilege, really. So like, if you're already, if you fail, your parents will like pay for you. Like you have to work safety, net entrepreneurship, as much as people say, it's all about grit. It's about family background. If you have a. Financial safety net that no, you can rely on. Sure. Don't go to college. You can go to college some other time, or like, don't go to college at all because your parents can bank for all this stuff that you want to do. You can raise that friends and family round that people, for some reason thinking should be common, but it shouldn't be because people don't make money in the U S like that. So that's the reason I'm like, Anti that rhetoric about don't go to college. If you want to find something, I'm like, yeah, if you want to find something, go do your thing, but please let us know your family background. What economic privilege do you come from? That, that, that not going to college is, is, is fine for you. Now I have a whole thing about don't go to college and you're trying to be an employee. Like that is a very strange thing, because if you're trying to be a tech employee, I am unsure how many people really work at these. At the most elite companies in, in, in, in functions and did not go to college. Like I think people, people see a few people who've done it and think that's the rule. No, those are anomalies. If you look at the rank and file of all of these phases, I mean, we know where Sundar Sundar went to B-School right. Like, and a good one. So it's like, I think people like to have this Imad, this fairytale, that. Tech is all about, you know what you've done, you've built this and you've done that. No, it's not like that. It's it honestly just like financing a lot of ways. People care about pedigree and finance. Like they care about pedigree and tech. Like if you look at all these companies and schools and where people are coming from, like that's, that's a funnel, a funnel into tech is going to college. So I am a person who will always say, if you want to get some of the most prestigious opportunities in tech. I would advise folks to get that education because the bar is only raising the bars only raising to get these opportunities now, since everybody wants them. So they're gonna ask education. Some senior PM roles are asking for graduate degrees now. I'm like, yo, like that's just the bars he's going to keep raising. So don't put yourself in a weird position later on because you took some advice from fucking Keith Rabos on Twitter, right? Yeah. He's a, he's a funny guy. And very insightful in some cases. Yeah, I do. So there's things. I agree with what Keith keeps me saying. And some of that shit, I just like dog, I don't know what you should not be telling people this, I guess, buying, if you just like, share this with the other, like a millionaire friends at dinner, but like, you should not be putting this out to like hundreds of thousands of people, people who are very impressionable, who are just trying to figure out how this industry works and how people, how we say this industry works on Twitter and in public is not how we always talk about it in private. Absolutely. So what do you think are like the important life experiences to have to be a great founder or even just be a great tech employee window founder? I would say the experiences those folks should have is exposing themselves to different types of types of things, whether it's living somewhere else, going outside of your own frame of reference that you were born into or raised around is great because you can't. You excuse me, you only will have so much insight for building for a mass population. If you were only exposed to a sliver of the population and that's across like race, gender, economic background nationalities, all that kind of stuff. So I would say the most foundational thing for me as when I built my company, the reason I built my company was when I was interning at target headquarters. And I had the idea while I was there because I left Michigan and Minnesota. New place, new people. I couldn't find people that I was really trying to build in tech. Like I was, and I was like, Hey, I would love to build this thing. I don't believe I would have had the idea for like me had, I just stayed in Michigan all the time because I would have been around the same group of people. And I would have never had that emotional reaction to one. That's cool, man. I've heard of a lot of people who have had that experience where they're like, I did an internship in some other state. I didn't know anybody and their first reaction wasn't I'm going to produce. It was just, I'm going to deal with it. So like the instinct to like be a producer, it kind of goes back to what you said before, you know, produce more than you consume. You're in a great position to tell us about sort of the lack of black and Latin X people in tech and maybe even beyond tech in other industries. So what challenges are black and Latin X people facing, breaking into tech or leveling up in tech that other people are not, they listen to Twitter. It's too much. When I say that, and I say that like half joking I, I see a lot of black and Latin X folks do take the advice that you don't need to go to college. All you need is a certificate like you don't need to be in the places you don't need to be in these large metros where the opportunities are most dense. You can do it all remote, like too many black and Latin X people listen to with Twitter a little bit too deeply. And they, and they really apply it. I see so many people saying you don't need, w you don't need a degree to work at Google in any capacity. You just need a certification. I'm like, that is not facts. I'm not sure where you're seeing that, but okay. Because too many. There's been too many barriers for us to enter into industries anyway. So we're saying like what what's the sometimes was the least amount of thing we can do to get us the result that we want. And that's not always what's going to happen. I think I see it all the time. Actually, that certifications is so big and like black takes work. They always talk about start this cert that surface like that. So what what's, so what sort of certification are you talking about? Like InfoSec certificates. During the Google, you know, the Google data analytics certificate, like those kinds of certificates, thinking that you'll do the Google data analytics certificate, it will get you a data analyst job at Google I'm like that. That is strange. So for black and Latin X folks, I will say one, don't listen to the shortcuts that people try to present to you because shortcuts usually are not the best route for you to go going. The traditional route is fine. Trying to find a shortcut. You'll be doing that shit your whole life. And then I do think. Inherently that black and lessen expos have to reach a higher bar to get these procedure opportunities. Like I would even say for myself, like I have an economics degree, I went to B school at USC. I founded a startup. I've worked at startups. I'm fucking wrote an angel check by to this fucking company that raised a hundred thousand. Like I'm a text. I was Techstars mentor. Like there's a shit ton of shit I had to do. And then when I looked at my contemporaries, like the people that are in a similar position to me that are. More majority in here in the, in the space. I'm like, you literally have not done half of the shit I've done. So I do think for black and Latin X folks, the bar is higher. Like you may or may not have heard this, this, this trope that is very popular in the black community and you have to be two X better. And I've seen that in my own career. I've seen it in my own career all the time. I'm like, yo, I have done so much more than the people I'm even interviewing with. Yeah, I'll come work here or whatever, but I'm like, I should have not had to do this much to get here when you just had to like. Fucking do one internship and then you're like in the same position or some shit like that. So I think to wrap it all up black and Latin X folks should not be trying to look for shortcuts that people propose on tech center because that shit does not work. And secondly, the bar is much higher and if you know, the bar is much higher, get the, get the credentials, get the pedigree that you need to move in these spaces. Like I doubt that I'd be able to move in these spaces. Like the way I was had I not founded a startup, got press, have a degree in economics. I interned at two fortune fives Macy's and Macy's and target like all that kind of stuff. If I didn't have all these brands and all that kind of stuff connected to me as a person, I highly doubt I would be in the position that I'm in now. So what can people like us who are not black and Latin X and work in the tech industry do to be better allies tell people what it is and not what they want to hear. Like that's the, that's like the real thing. I think sometimes like folks who want to help folks, like, okay, you're saying this, you're saying that you're saying this, let me, let me say something that in some ways placates you, that makes you feel like, oh, like, you know, this, this is a route you could take that would make you feel better, or you can be straight up like, Hey, you want to work at Google as a PM? No, getting us a certification from product school is not going to get you a Google PM job. Full-stop. So like, I would like more allies to just be real with people and tell them the harsh truth so they can move through the industry how they need to. And that's why people don't agree with me on Twitter, because I say w how it really is and not how people think it is. And I think that also goes to like a lack of self-awareness where it's like this. This worked for me because my dad helped me get this job at Google because he works there. Cause he's a VP. And like you just put that out and you don't even re I think that's the big thing. They don't even realize that, like, I know a bunch of people who got these like plum jobs. And like you said, like, yeah, they got like, B plus in their computer science class and that's about it. And then they end up working at Google, Facebook, whatever, and they just don't even have the self-awareness to realize like that the reason they got it, there's like a lot of people who could work way harder than they did and knock it, that position. I agree with that. This lack of self-awareness because people don't realize the privilege in their own story. I think that's like what you're saying with the self-awareness people are not aware of the privileges that help them get into the thing that they got into. All they focus on is what they did and not the environment that they were around that helped them get there. Super insightful. I'm glad you shared that. I think sort of to wrap up this podcast where we we'd like to ask our guests this final question, which is in your opinion, what is the best piece of technology or software? Either in recent memory of all time, does it have to be software? Can it be technology? It can be technology, the printing press. That is how knowledge first started getting distributed. Like how we're talking about distribution Tik TOK, Twitter, Facebook, all these social networks. Honestly eBooks like the, the thinking around, how do we distribute knowledge to a greater amount of people started with the printing press and everything after that has just been a greater, better, more polished version of the printing press. I love it. Great distribution answer. I know that was very out of left field. Y'all probably was not ready for that for that, but it makes perfect, like, it took me a second to process it, but then I was like, oh, distribution answer. I was like, perfect distribution. You can ask for a distribution. I love it. Well Josh, thanks again for joining us. It's just really fun. It's really cool. Yeah. I learned a ton from those. I had a good time. I hope you all enjoy your Memorial day weekend. Likewise. All right. That's it. That's it for this week.