Adam Robinson

And it has this like really makes your body feel really cool. And I didn't even know that that was a backstory until like a year ago. And like that's literally what happened. If every single person in Nepal and Bhutan is drinking tea a certain way, then there are definitely a ton of people in America who do the same thing. And if you're a great storyteller game over, right?

Like, but all that stuff, like I wasn't a good copywriter 14 years ago, you know, like, like, but like you said, I was just like looking at stuff that I was like, man, like, what about that do I think is so amazing? And then like, how could I just like adapt it to what I'm trying to do? You know? Um, and, and I think that's what all the greats do, right? Like it's like steal like an artist.

There's this great book called steal like an artist. Like if you take from one person, you're a plagiarist. If you take from 20 people, you're an artist, right? You just kind of have to do it that way.

And then I think the longer you're in the game, the more you develop your own true style and the less you're doing that, you know, like I'm not really looking at stuff anymore when I write copy, but man, I've been, I've been doing this a long time.

Beautifully said. Thank you, sir.

These guys love being different.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I, by the way, like the, these guys were like one of the most influential, you know, I sort of read for our work. So, um, I worked as a trader at Lehman Brothers for 10 years. The day I arrived in Manhattan, my roommate, Jake Lodwick was building Vimeo on a Dreamweaver instance, baby blue homepage, big letters.

And he's like, I think I'm going to make this thing that shares video with people. I was just like, why would you do that? You know, like they didn't know we, we didn't have smartphones. Like it was, it was 2003 or 2005, no four. Anyway. Um, so, um, That made me want to be an entrepreneur. I was a trader for 10 years.

And when you're a trade, when you're like, it's really hard to describe the life, how much of a fucking grind it was. Like I was getting up at four 45 in the morning. Cause the gyms where I had to get to work at six gyms were not open until like five 30 or whatever. I was running across the Brooklyn bridge on the coldest day of the winter at four 45 in the morning in Manhattan every single day.

Cause I wanted to work out. Uh, and then, you know, putting a tie on, like getting on the subway, like it was just brutal. Um, And then financial crisis happened. I had a good year and then a bad year. And then I got fired because I lost some money, a lot of money at once, but I've saved some dough. And I was like, okay, what do I do now? I don't want to do that anymore. You know?

And I think I've got enough money to like transition this to something else. And if not, I'll just go get another, I go back. Right. Like, but I was on the clock and yeah, You read 4-Hour Workweek after you've lived that life for 10 years. And it's like he was writing to me. He said that he was writing to somebody, one of his friends who was an investment banker.

And it's like this idea that if you're making a lot of money and you're living that way, that's not actually good. making far less money for far, far, far less output is actually a much better position to be in. And like, there's a lot of ways to control your expenses.

And then you have this free time to do, you know, whatever you want, presumably, you know, just the way he thought about time versus money was like a massive paradigm shift. And then I read rework and I was like, holy shit, this is it. You know, like this is the direction that I want to go in. And then my first startup, basically ended up being a rework business.

It was like 3 million ARR, 50% profit. I had two co-founders. But it was like an email marketing business and the customer count was shrinking by a percent a month. But it's a low-term product category as net revenue expansion because you're charging people based on their list size. And they don't switch that much because it's where the data is being stored.

So it was kind of just stably at $3 million ARR, but at some point it was going to end, which was not a great space to be in. And then... I think the perfect combination is like rework fundamentals, but Y Combinator orientation towards growth. If you can think about product market fit and growth from the Y Combinator lens, which I really don't think rework emphasizes that much.

I'm not sitting there reading the rework book and being like, I need to strive to have a truly excellent product that has incredible word of mouth. before I even take anything to market. That's not the vibe that I get from that. The vibe that I get from Y Combinator is it's all about your product. It will solve all of your problems.

The reason you're going to get burnt out is because it's not growing anymore. The reason it's not growing is because the product's not good enough. If you kind of marry those two ideas, I think you can be in this perfect world of entrepreneurship where it's like,

you have enough conviction to stave off VCs and whatever, not go down that path that's stacked against you horribly, but you still have the understanding that your entire life is only going to be as good as the product that you sell. That's just the reality. And I don't think those rework guys emphasize that enough.

maybe I'll be the guy who sort of comes out with this, you know, religion about how, you know, well, Jason Freed was spot on. The Y Combinators are spot on in many ways, but like they missed the mark in some, there's this myth. There's the third way.

Yeah. No, I think we're really aligned in the way we think about this. Right. Cause my whole thing is like, look, If you have a chance of making a big company that would require venture capital, it's going to be because you have a great product. If you have a great product, you really shouldn't need venture capital unless it's a really capital-heavy company. business, right?