The #1 Reason Startups Fail: The Existing Market Trap with Al Ramadan

Positioning by definition is putting yourself in an existing [music] market.

And so you're already competing with somebody who's designed a category. All

our research says that the category king, as we called it in the book, uh takes 76% of the market cap [music] of a category. So that's already done. You're

category. So that's already done. You're

now fighting over 24% in the scraps.

>> The Library of Alexandria was an attempt to capture all human knowledge. Fire and

war destroyed [music] it. Today we try again. Welcome to the Library of Minds

again. Welcome to the Library of Minds where you'll learn the [music] frameworks and mental models of the world's greatest thinkers.

And when our conversation ends, yours begins.

Each guest has created a digital mind on Deli [music] that you can talk to anytime, anywhere.

I'm Darla Levardian. Let's dive in. All

right. Uh everyone, super excited to have Al here. Um author of Play Bigger and also his new book, The Existing Market Trap. Uh he is the master in

Market Trap. Uh he is the master in category design, which was not a discipline that I was that familiar with until I met you and then I was like, "Oh, this actually makes a lot of sense." How to think about architecting

sense." How to think about architecting your company such that you become the master of the category that you create.

So very excited to have you here.

>> Super excited to be here. Well, let's

start in the early days before you actually got into category design, you were the founder of Quoko Sports, which was uh early in sports analytics. And

I'm curious at the time before you even realized this was a discipline. Did you

think about this is building a category at the time or was it only in kind of hindsight where you realized you were kind of doing something new that required thinking about things differently?

>> I think I think category design itself as a discipline has been around for a long time and people have been doing it for a long time. we just didn't call it something, you know, and if you think about sort of management consulting, it

was late 1800s, early 1900s that that category actually showed up as a discipline. It's like that.

discipline. It's like that.

>> People have been doing it and and it really works. And it's the idea that

really works. And it's the idea that people have to go to the aisle to find the product they're looking for, not the other way around. And so, um, your job as a category designer is to build the

aisle. And so with Quaca we were we were

aisle. And so with Quaca we were we were around this is 1995 new media sort of showed up at that point in time was this thing called the internet and this worldwide web and and

it enabled people to experience sport in a really different way. And so we we couldn't put as we say in our latest book existing market trap you don't want to put something new into something old

try and fit it into something old. And

so um we called ourselves digital sports media company. That was the first one.

media company. That was the first one.

>> And so in that sense, yes, we created our own category. And then we then we art, you know, sort of articulated all of the things about being a digital sports media company which were different to being ESPN or you know the

New York Times, right? So yes, we were doing category design at that time. We

didn't call it that. We just called it, you know, framing ourselves or positioning ourselves in the market. Do

you think timing is still as important because you know things in AI are moving so fast. A lot of the bets people are

so fast. A lot of the bets people are making today is that it's just getting better every six months.

I think it's it's about when does the infrastructure and what you need uh truly emerge at a scalable level so that

you can then deliver your thing your experience your application on top of that. I think that's really the in my

that. I think that's really the in my mind that's really the critical timing piece here. As you know, we've got we've

piece here. As you know, we've got we've experimented with a lot of your technology. I've got um a digital twin.

technology. I've got um a digital twin.

We've invested heavily in custom um LLMs and all that sort of stuff. We're not

there yet.

>> Y >> we're not there to do something like I do.

>> Sure.

>> And so that's going to be the that's going to be the point of where that where that tipping point is. I don't

know if it's 6 months or two years or 5 years. I really don't know at this

years. I really don't know at this point. And so knowing, not knowing, but

point. And so knowing, not knowing, but having a good understanding of when that point is is when the value truly gets delivered and then it goes exponential.

>> Totally. And it seems like part of category design is related to marketing and how you position something. Like you

could have something that is actually similar to what's out there, but you talk about it a bit differently and then maybe there is more productled like it's actually differentiated. How do you

actually differentiated. How do you think about the difference between those two and which do you think is more important?

Yeah, in play bigger we talk about what we call the magic triangle. It's this

idea that category design, product design, and company design have to be aligned. And it's more about the balance

aligned. And it's more about the balance between those three things than it is about any one of those things itself.

And so one of the one of the stories we tell in the new book existing market trap is about this company called Clear Metal. And in that particular case, it

Metal. And in that particular case, it was enough to get initial category design out there in the marketplace in the early stages. They went from AI for shipping to predictive logistics. That

was enough to tip everybody over to that new direction. And then probably two or

new direction. And then probably two or three years after that, we understood that the customers went from the shippers to the actual retailers. And so

the category changed with it, which was went to continuous delivery and the idea that you continuously delivering stuff.

And so that's that's really the art of of category design. And more recently, we talk a little bit about in the new book, we really talk about this idea of continuous category design. this idea

that nothing really ever stays still even for CRM or one of these established kind of categories. The truth is is that cloud CRM benny off disrupted the

previous seabol uh on a technology sort of shift right and and in his case you just put cloud in front of CRM which is not unlike mobile phones you know or any of that sort of thing where you're

framing it differently at the start so it's about the balance between all of those three things. If you don't have a product that delivers on the on the the solution or the blueprint, you're screwed. If you don't have a company

screwed. If you don't have a company that can't deliver on the sales, marketing, execution, customer support, and all the other things, you're screwed. And if you don't have a

screwed. And if you don't have a category that's really really speaks to the problem and changes the way people think about it, you're also screwed. So,

it's a combination of all those three things.

>> Totally. And and when it comes to product roadmapping and prioritizing what to build, when you're building a new category, a lot of people can kind of try to pull you into what's familiar.

Um, so h how do you think about prioritizing features and product that reinforce the category itself versus making sure the customers that have come along the way are happy even though

they're pulling you in things that are more familiar to them?

>> Yeah, I I don't really think that like that. I think that the product has to

that. I think that the product has to solve a particular problem. The category

has to articulate that problem in a way that makes people lean forward. I've got

that problem. I feel that pain, right?

And so those two things are the same thing. The category is just the other

thing. The category is just the other side of the pro the it's the solution side of the problem. And so you if you're really good at building product that solves a problem and you're really

good at articulating why that problem has bad ramifications or huge opportunity, you're going to be successful. And that's the combination

successful. And that's the combination of category. And then on the company

of category. And then on the company side, being able to make all of that happen is is the sort of the third leg of the stool.

>> Yeah. And what what should product teams be asking themselves when from a metric perspective, >> how you uh talk about the product in the context of what we call the category

blueprint. So where does where do all of

blueprint. So where does where do all of the if you like features or components show up in the context of something much bigger? And I'll give you one example we

bigger? And I'll give you one example we talked about in the you know in in the existing market traps. This company

called Qualrix. When we first met with them they were sort of considered to be survey monkey on steroids used to piss Ryan Smith off. He hated that term and he wanted to get out of the survey

category. Right now, a lot of the

category. Right now, a lot of the features in the survey category amongst Survey Monkey, Medallia and Qualrix at the at the time were pretty much similar right?

>> And so the product organizations are trying to make better features and faster and quicker and cheaper and all that sort of stuff.

>> That's not really the game.

>> What we realized was with a survey, what is it? This is the question we asked the

is it? This is the question we asked the exec team when we did the category design. It's like when you when you're

design. It's like when you when you're building a survey, what question are you actually answering? Like what is it

actually answering? Like what is it you're trying to find out? And nine

times out of 10 it's like an experience.

Did you have a good experience or a bad experience?

>> And it's like okay. So and then the second question you asked was who has that problem? It's like well people who

that problem? It's like well people who are customerf facing or employee experiences or something to do with a product or a brand or whatever it might be right and so Qualrix went from being

a survey product to being an experience management company.

That was the shift. And then when that happened on the I'm talking there's a product side now one of the co-founders Jared

Smith who's genius walked in and said okay people product team we now need the the the the platform stuff which is a lot of the survey stuff but now we need

an application for customer experience we need an application for employee experience one for product and brand >> so fundamentally the the packaging of

all of the technology took a big shift And with it surveys went for 50,000 bucks. Customer experience went for two

bucks. Customer experience went for two or three million bucks.

>> So it was a 100 times ASP by just by changing the emphasis of what where you are in the value stack and what you deliver.

>> So you have to convince them that they need.

>> Correct. And all great markets start as a zero billion dollar market.

>> Yeah.

>> That's the that's that's what we're always looking for. Sure.

>> Right. and your job as in and Ryan was arguably one of the best ever and I include everybody in that uh at explaining to people that there's a gap

between the experience you deliver and what you think you're delivering and unless you know what that is you're you're done.

>> Yeah.

>> In this experience economy you're literally done. And he was he

literally done. And he was he evangelized that problem for six years.

>> Yeah. And you know their market cap went from a billion when we started working with them to 27 billion when they went public as a result of that work. Right?

So back to the problem side packaging in the context of this new blueprint that you create for the category uh is important. The competitive set then

important. The competitive set then changes because Medallia which was considered to be you know a good customer experience platform

now got pigeon holed as one feature of a much bigger thing that's hard to get away you know it's like hard to compete with that someone came in and expanded the scope of the category included you as one box in the category

>> that's tough you know survey monkey got yeah you're a feature of a platform like seriously that's going to do it no and so when a sales guy goes in or gal goes into a enterprise account and says hey

you know you've got this thing called an experience gap and they're like yeah we do in customers it's like yeah you also have employees and product and brand and they're like holy smokes and so when the competitor goes and said I got the best

customer experience thing they're like uh what do you do for employee experience and product experience and you're done at that point right you created >> right so if you frame this category in

such a way that you are what we call the category king in the book It's tough to compete against >> for sure. And you know, speaking about broad versus singular features, I saw a

chapter in the book, the horizontal illusion. And uh I'm curious because you

illusion. And uh I'm curious because you know, a lot of people say LM are great at being horizontal. And then you look at category creating companies like YouTube and Instagram where, you know, anyone could post YouTube videos online.

That's pretty horizontal. It's not like just business owners posting YouTube videos online. So, I'm curious how you

videos online. So, I'm curious how you think about uh when horizontal makes sense. Or maybe there's a different way

sense. Or maybe there's a different way of thinking about it where YouTube actually wasn't horizontal. They were

more specific on the what and they were horizontal on the who, but not in the what.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, in in our existing market trap, we talk about the 13 deadly sins we call it. And there's 13 different use cases or problem sins that happen. The horizontal tool trap is one

happen. The horizontal tool trap is one of them. And the artic the story about

of them. And the artic the story about qualric is actually the story in this book because they were a horizontal tool survey for anything right you could survey you know

>> marine science applications all the way through to customer experience applications right >> what happened was they said okay >> let's pick off the high priority experience problems and let's focus on

those and develop applications for those and that's the that's the escape from the horizontal tool trap is to start by understanding okay who has this problem what's the use case and then really

drilling down because if you can the horizontal tools like loved by many but strategic than none >> for sure >> and if you can get into [clears throat] the strategic side of the stack i.e

changing a customer experience in the Qualrix case that gives you a 10 or 100 times more value that you can be asking for.

>> Totally. So in these new categories, you talk about really dialing into the problems. Though I I do think with new categories, you sometimes see companies that are almost

like vitamins and like a promise for the feature and sometimes dialing into problems that people don't know they have. And I I bring back Instagram and

have. And I I bring back Instagram and YouTube again because like not everyone thought they wanted to post photos. So

like how do you think about uh Qualrix is an example where you can say oh you have these experience management problems. What about the other side for things where it's like this is actually

a new problem or like a new thing I want. It's aspirational. Do you still

want. It's aspirational. Do you still try to like ground into like very specific pain points that and make them realize they have them?

>> Yes. Is the short answer to that? And

the great problems that we always love to work on are those that A we didn't think we could solve, B didn't know we had.

>> Yeah. Like seriously, they're the two classes of problems that are really exciting to work on. The the I didn't believe it could be solved problem is I just got here in an Uber. I pushed a button and the dude shows up, picks me

up and drops me off here. Before you

guys were born, we used to do this thing called a taxi and stand on the corner in New York and we'd stand there in the rain trying to talk to the dispatcher.

We never believed that problem could be solved.

>> Uber came in and said, "I can solve that problem." Yeah.

problem." Yeah.

>> Right. Now it also it it it got focused initially on regions in that particular case. It doesn't always have to be use

case. It doesn't always have to be use cases in terms of customers or employees. It can be regions or it could

employees. It can be regions or it could be demographics. It could be problem

be demographics. It could be problem spaces. And so part of your job as the

spaces. And so part of your job as the category designer is to understand okay where's the high yield here? Which ones

do I go after first? And then how do I expand or use an ecosystem to expand?

They're all part of the the program and that builds into product and company as well.

>> Sure. And when you are looking at a company that you are evaluating that you want to work with, you think they have category design potential, what do you look for in their first 100 customers um

or are there any signs that kind of give away like hey this could actually be something?

>> Yeah. So one of the things we always look for is what we call problem scope or opportunity scope. So how big is this problem? How many people have it

problem? How many people have it >> and what are the implications or consequences of this problem? That's

really how we start our filter. And and

if you rank highly on all of those three components, we're listening loud. Um

because generally problem scope and market cap are highly correlated, right?

And you don't know that to your point about Instagram, to your point about YouTube, when when when that when those conversations first started happening, I remember the Instagram com conversation because I was having with my son. He was

like 9 or 10 or 11 or something like that at the time. And he's like, "You know, Dad, there's this thing you can share all of this stuff with." And I was like, "Okay." So, scope-wise, that's

like, "Okay." So, scope-wise, that's like a third of the world.

>> That's a big number.

>> Totally.

>> Okay. Um, problem being solved was communicating with your friends or networking, however you want to describe that. That's a pretty big problem. You

that. That's a pretty big problem. You

know, we used to use email and send photos to each other back in the day.

Like, hard to believe now, but that's what we used to do, right? And so okay solving that problem the question in my mind at the time was like can you monetize that? Can you actually derive

monetize that? Can you actually derive value as the as the purveyor of the solution right and that was always the question and that got answered I think

with mobile in 2007 2008 something like that when all of a sudden the um everyone said actually the mobile advertising model does work and then

mobile phones going to you know smartphone emerged in 2007. So by 2009 all of the latent opportunity

of essentially teenagers, kids, you know, young people with mobile phones have seeking this need to socialize and network all really big numbers and then you had this enabler which was mobile

and advertising. So

and advertising. So >> yeah, >> that's that's that example. YouTube I'm

not as familiar with honestly. I never

really studied it in detail, but as a as a user of YouTube, I agree with you. for

certain applications, it was definitely the go-to thing. Yeah.

>> Um, and I'm sure they focused down on those areas to make sure that that workflow or that experience was a good one. Uh, and then since they've expanded

one. Uh, and then since they've expanded and now you can pretty much get any movie or anything else through, which is an undifferiated offering relative to all of the other platforms. But >> yeah, >> they're already the king.

>> Enjoying the conversation? Got a

question? You can ask Al's Digital Mind.

Just check the link in the comments or description. So, of the 13 uh deadly

description. So, of the 13 uh deadly sins, I'm sure some of these are reversible. Are there any that you think

reversible. Are there any that you think are irreversible that you know, one-way doors that startups make that completely destroy their potential of being a category creator?

>> I think anything obviously any once you're aware of a situation, you can then make changes to it. So, I think any one of these 13 deadly sins can be can

be reversed. There are some, however,

be reversed. There are some, however, which are really existential. Um, one of the stories we tell in this in the latest book existing market trap is

about docuign and this is you know traditionally people when you say category design think oh it's all about sort of the early stage and it's about the first three years and all that sort of thing certainly there's lots of

deadly sins as it relates to that but there's also at the other end of the spectrum too we call it the existential decline the story is about docuign they were and have been and still are the

king of e signature >> the problem was e signature has become sort of commoditized. It's available in everything. Adobe signs got it. You name

everything. Adobe signs got it. You name

it, it's got it, right? I think there's 370 vendors that have e signature embedded in it. Right.

>> Yeah.

>> So that's an existential thing which is like unless you fundamentally reframe the problem space that you are doing, you're going to be out of business.

There's no way out.

>> Sure. And we've seen many many many companies fall off you know the edge of their initial category the first category which is why our thinking is more around this is a continuous

category thinking and the time we did a lot of research for play bigger and for an enterprise company it's a 10 to 15 year window for a category the the first three to four five years is what we call

the define phase where everyone's kind of searching around the problem trying to get at what the actual problem is and what the value prop is. The middle is the develop phase which is when the exponential growth happens. That's when

Qualtrick stepped into that. Then

there's the decline phase or the dominate phase which is where um docuine were and in that onethird of the life cycle you know that's where you're going the opposite way and there's literally

nothing you can do about it other than to step into something new.

>> And so that's one example of an existential decline. There are some sort

existential decline. There are some sort of like what I would call that that we call it the sales hype cycle. Uh there's

another one about brand obsession. Those

things are in our opinions kind of basically wastes of time.

>> Brand >> brand and sales obsession the obsession around sales. They become waste of times

around sales. They become waste of times because they they mask an underlying problem that's that's that's not being addressed. Right. And so that's an

addressed. Right. And so that's an example.

The engineers dilemma which is the story about clear metal is as a software engineer as a previous software engineer you know I always wanted to make sell and everything else was right that was kind of my

mindset >> and as I've got older and worked with more companies I've come to understand actually that's not true and that that building product is important but you

you need to have a solution to something that you're really trying to solve that's valuable as opposed to just building a platform that you really like working on. So that's that's another

working on. So that's that's another story. There's each one of these stories

story. There's each one of these stories is is a is is examples of some of the frailty as us as humans trying to build businesses.

>> Yeah. And as you grow uh and you define yourself as a category king in like this initial market, what are new things companies have to do to maintain that?

You know, you've worked with Salesforce and MongoDB other than product partnerships or you know, what are other ways you can kind of solidify that?

>> Yeah. Uh there's lots um there's this is on the company design side of things.

Ecosystem development tends to show up pretty early as being a really important sort of part of >> uh your overall solution. And I'll just

use Qualrix because we've been talking about that in that particular case, you know, we felt like we needed to tackle the first four applications and make sure we got those right, but we also

knew that there was a tail here that might be a lot longer than that. So we

created a an a essentially an API that people could build on and two years later there's 50 different applications built on the platform which were not ex

customer experience, employee experience, brand or product. There was

all different kinds of experiences >> and you wanted that to happen.

>> Absolutely. You want that to happen, right? And so we called it the we called

right? And so we called it the we called it an app form strategy. The idea that you have apps plus a platform but then you want the tail. That's just one example of how ecosystems can play a

role. Also, going into new markets,

role. Also, going into new markets, sometimes you want to go in in partnership with the players who are already penetrated in those markets.

They might be solving a different problem, but they have relationships that might help you. So, that's another sort of entry point.

>> I'm curious how I I saw you talked about this in this book as I was going through the chapters, how a lot of your thinking around category design changes with AI.

um because you could be building for a category that actually becomes made irrelevant in 6 months because of GBT6.

Uh so yeah, has your thinking changed about how to evaluate whether something is actually 10 year durable versus 6 month durable?

>> So there's a chapter dedicated entirely to AI and the the challenges it's going to um that we're all going to face in this world where things are moving at

the speed that they are. So um now some of us have lived through previous transformations, the internet being one of them back in the '9s before you guys

were born. Um that was a transformation

were born. Um that was a transformation that was pretty big as well. And what we found with that was that the if you like

the the horizontal framework platform stuff. So I the sort of one of the fun

stuff. So I the sort of one of the fun stories was in 1995 I was at Stanford Business School and our project was to predict whether or not Netscape going

public was going to be a sort of a major event.

Okay. And there was we there was quite a broad group of people not just technologists but business people from around the world. There was a few of us, me being one of them, who had experienced the internet with Mosaic and

some of the stuff even before that, knowing that this was a fundamentally different medium and that it was going to transform the way we interact with each other, interact with media, all that sort of stuff. And so Netscape

comes out, we predicted, I think it was going to be 50 bucks a share, I think. I

don't remember actually the number at the time, but it was something like that. And but the question we always had

that. And but the question we always had with Netsgate was and how does this actually show up in in in media in applications in enterprises and all that

sort of stuff over time and our sense was they're just a veneer to something bigger.

And in my opinion AI is just a veneer to something bigger.

And so the question for me is like how much goes into the veneer and how much goes into the stack of the for the enterprise or the consumer that's actually being built and how quickly can

um the horizontal players fill those voids. My sense, this is just me, you

voids. My sense, this is just me, you guys know this way better than me, but my sense is is that there are some things that are durable in life and there are some things that are relatively easy to replicate. And the

easy to replicate is probably going to get bundled. I I'm a huge Chat GPT user

get bundled. I I'm a huge Chat GPT user and builder. I have an LLM that does

and builder. I have an LLM that does custom category designs. I've built it since chat GPT3 all the way through to five. And so um I can see the areas

five. And so um I can see the areas where it immediately go, oh yeah, okay, it can do that five times faster than I could do it personally.

>> I can also see the areas where it's showing up now that it's like it's never going to be able to do that.

And so that's I think the the the challenge for all of the innovators and you and all of your team is where are those things that are super durable and and can actually be leveraged and help

us and I'm talking about now as a user of your platform help us actually ex um exemplify those areas where the durability and then and the value is not

going to get lost compared to the more routine mundane task. I think that's ultimately where the the battle is.

>> Awesome. Um, a couple more questions.

So, it seems like when thinking about category design, it touches many different parts of the business. Touches

how you talk to customers, marketing, um, product strategy. Are there any other tactical things that not just leadership in a company but everyone in

a company can adopt to really like come around this mission of creating the category, owning it and dominating it?

>> Yeah. The the answer is is um everyone in the company has a responsibility for being an advocate for the problem we solve.

>> That's your job. The CEO has to do that.

He or she has to do that at the keynote.

CFO has to do it at the S1 call or the earnings call or at the all all hands call. Um the sales per people have to do

call. Um the sales per people have to do it with their customers. The marketing

folks have to do it. Everyone has to do it. And so it's why we believe that

it. And so it's why we believe that there is a discipline called category design which starts with identifying what that problem is and the ramifications and who has it and trying to quantify all that sort of stuff and

then creating what we call a point of view. It becomes what we call the source

view. It becomes what we call the source code to everything else in the business.

>> Everything flows from that. It's an

internal facing document but it everything that deres externally derives from this sort of source of truth. And

then there's a phase after you've got that clear. That's two or three months

that clear. That's two or three months into the journey. After you get that clear, you need to mobilize the entire company, right? And we usually appoint category

right? And we usually appoint category advocates who are all different levels within the organization who are responsible for if you like pushing all of this out.

>> Sure. Whether it's a sales enablement thing or whether it's a you know sort of a marketing activity or an event that's going to happen or a product feature or a packaging issue like right across the

company these advocates are then sort of pushing into the organization and then and and it's all about in initial stages is about building belief as the exact team that belief has to spread

internally to the entire organization and then your job as a category designer is actually to build belief in the market in the minds of the people who have the problem over here and That's

ultimately the belief flows that way.

>> So everyone in the company has to be part of this journey.

>> Last two questions. What's what's a question you wished you were asked more about category design? You work with a bunch of companies and like I want you to ask me this question.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Um I I I So first of all, most people when they walk in the front door say, "Hey, how do you like my category name?" Like that's really how

category name?" Like that's really how the conversation starts. It's like, you know, do you like my cat name? You know,

it's like I don't know. And and so I wish the question was, do you think this is a really good articulation of this problem? And do you think I could get in

problem? And do you think I could get in the value chain up here as opposed to down here? That doesn't happen very

down here? That doesn't happen very often.

>> And there's only few founders who really understand that.

>> And value chain you mean like which people to start with or which >> Yeah. or whereabouts in the value chain.

>> Yeah. or whereabouts in the value chain.

So the example of a survey, it might cost you on Survey Monkey 20 bucks to run a survey.

>> Sure, >> that's cool. But if you solve a customer problem with customer experience up here, that's worth $5 million, right? So

they're their differences and where you fit in that value chain or the value extraction is really important, right?

And understanding that at a sort of an innate level. So to come back to the

innate level. So to come back to the question, very few people say that to me. Very few. There are some

me. Very few. There are some entrepreneurs who walk in and say that it's like, okay, that's somebody I want to be involved in. Right.

>> Yeah. Um, and then there's there's other sort of what I would call misunderstandings would be a polite way to sort of say it about category design.

Some people say, well, you know, positioning is, you know, really important and just as important as category design and our and there's a chapter dedicated to it in the latest book which basically puts that to risk

which is positioning by definition is putting yourself in an existing market.

>> Yeah.

>> Any other questions kind of thing, right?

>> Yeah.

So, and that ends up being feature battles, speeds and feeds, cost, whatever else, right? And that's true.

>> Take the Uber for X, >> right? And so, you're already competing

>> right? And so, you're already competing with somebody who's designed a category.

All our research says that the category king, as we called it in the book, uh, takes 76% of the market cap of a category.

>> Yeah.

>> So, that's already done. You're now

fighting over 24%. And the story we tell is there's 365,000 people on LinkedIn with positioning in their title. They're some of the

their title. They're some of the smartest people in the world and they're fighting over 24% in the scraps. Why?

Why would you do that?

>> So, that's that's another another question that sometimes we love to answer.

>> I like that. Uh, last question. If you

could have dinner with anyone dead or alive, who would it be?

>> Um, Shackleton.

>> Shackleton. Say more.

>> You know what he did, right?

>> No.

>> Ernest Shackleton. Have you ever heard of him?

>> No.

>> Anyone heard of Ernest?

He He's the guy who's sailing around the world guy and he gets stuck in Antarctica. His

boat gets stuck in Antarctica. He's got

a whole crew on board.

The boat's not coming out of being stuck. He grabs a lifeboat, puts 15 men

stuck. He grabs a lifeboat, puts 15 men in them, and goes to an island, survives a winter there. And then they realize, "No, the cavalry is not coming.

There's no there's no satellite that says, "Hey, Jimmy, I'm on island this island here. Come get me." kind of

island here. Come get me." kind of thing. So, he takes five of the people

thing. So, he takes five of the people and goes to the Forkland Islands, lands on the islands. This is around Cape Horn. Lands on the islands in a in a

Horn. Lands on the islands in a in a rowboat with a little sail on it.

Eventually has to figures out he's on the wrong side of the island. There's a

whailing station on the north. Hikes

across to the north. finds a ship, goes back, rescues all of these guys who are still alive and picks up all the trails and takes them all back to England. It's

Ernest Shackleton is one of the greatest explorers of all time. And I would just love to be able to sit there and say, Ernest, like what was in your mind?

What's that mindset that >> kind of kept you going?

>> We'll make that happen. [laughter]

>> All right, let's open up to questions.

>> Alvin, >> so you talked about there's like two questions here. So you talked about how

questions here. So you talked about how Uber you at the time like when you were using taxis you didn't realize that there was like a problem that needed to be solved with that you just had an

existing use that you were doing to get cars. So you think to be able to create

cars. So you think to be able to create a category and like build a company in that area. Is there a certain way you

that area. Is there a certain way you have to look at the world to be able to identify new categories or opportunities for creation? And how do you know if

for creation? And how do you know if you're the person to do it? Do you have to have like can any driven hardworking person be able to do it or is there a certain archetype of person that can be able to solve that problem?

>> Yeah, they're great questions. They are

really great questions. Um, so I think the first thing is is as a founder, as an entrepreneur,

the good ones are dialed into seeing something that others don't. either a

possibility that we could solve that crazy dispatch problem, which is what we used to call it back in those days.

There were companies, literally hundreds of technology companies trying to solve the dispatch problem, make the dispatchers more efficient.

Okay, someone came in and said, "Wait a second, that's a dumb idea. How about we just have a app on a phone?" Now, the iPhone shows up in 2007 and it goes ballistic at that point in time. There's

a whole story about that I can tell you existing markets. I was working with

existing markets. I was working with Nokia and many other companies at exactly that time. And so somebody usually a younger person sees this thing called a mobile phone that isn't a toy.

It was first Apple first two versions of Apple were definitely a toy but they believed that that thing could actually be the place where you could actually do quote the dispatching and there was this

thing called a cloud and all that sort of stuff. And so the great founders have

of stuff. And so the great founders have the technical understanding of where what's possible at a technical level.

Forget the business constraints, forget anything else. And then start building

anything else. And then start building belief in their own head firstly that we can solve that problem. And that's what I thought Uber did a stunning job of.

The first time I picked picked up the Uber app and pressed, you know, like come get me kind of thing and a freaking car shows up, it's like that was like putting a man on the moon for me. Like I

can't believe that just happened. I'm a

technology guy. I write code. Like how

could that be so far-fetched, right? But

we were just all blind to it because we're in an existing market trap. We're

trapped in the thinking of the of the existing markets, right? We're all about sort of like optimizing that the type of person question. Um I've so I have the

person question. Um I've so I have the luxury of meeting with so many of the great entrepreneurs, right? And the

inquisitive ones, the ones who are um have self-belief and have the ability to build belief in a building, this room as

a starting point, then the entire San Francisco, then the entire world, they're the ones that and Ryan Smith's a great example of that. And I think Dar is an incredible sort of has has has has

incredible capability in that regard.

the people who can build belief internally and then have it ex have it go external are naturally the ones that are going to be these great category

designers I think um now the there's counterarguments to that you know the the the guys at workday were pretty shocksy you know oh shucks you know like you know we could probably

make that work and so they weren't necessar their style wasn't necessarily that evangelical sort of style so you know I've come to understand that it's not just about if you like showmanship

or how you present or how comfortable you are in front of an audience but it's that you stay true to this belief that you have and you know the founders of work they had a belief which is we can

automate a lot of this HR stuff and make it a lot easier and better for everybody else and they just did it in a really or shaky kind of way so the style piece compared to say Larry Alex Allison who

were competing for the same sort of market very different people right but same belief And that's I think the the the role of the founder. And when we look at

the founder. And when we look at founders, we're always looking for does this person truly believe this? And does

this person have the ability to sort of communicate that belief externally? Um

and then they are as much internal questions to you as they are to external questions from us, right? Do you believe this? Right. And and so let me can I

this? Right. And and so let me can I turn a question back on you?

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. [laughter]

If I can. So do you believe that Deli, the digital twin, this idea of encodifying you is really going to be

able to change the way I work.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. Thank you so much.

>> Real pleasure.

[applause] >> Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode and want personalized advice from Al, head to the link in the comments or description to ask his digital mind on Deli.