Write a Notion memo to iterate on your idea - Lesson 2

today we are talking about writing a memo turning the business idea that you have into uh into a memo that you can use the way that i frame it

um is to so good that you can raise money off of it um but that's a pretty low bar to be honest especially in this market where there's a lot of money flying around i think a much better bar is do you want to invest your time like

your time is much more uh expensive than anybody else's money um so i think that's generally like the the sort of the framing that i would like to use here is basically like this is the stage in which you kind of figure

out and i mean i guess this is kind of a question that you ask a lot um as you go um but do you actually like want to work on this problem um

so yeah so i'll explain a little bit about sort of again this is going to be a kind of a brain dump of a lot of kind of opinions that i have about sort of why i put

together these memos um and and what questions they're supposed to answer um but first let's start with the why so why write memos right like i guess maybe like one assumption would be why don't i

just start like building the thing or why don't i just start talking to customers um or whatnot right so why memo pretty simple question

actually i i'd actually kind of be curious like why why memo like why did why would why do some people um well why why do you think um why would you write a memo maybe there

are people here who are like why the hell am i writing a memo this is stupid uh and maybe there are other people who are like no i love writing i don't want to build anything please delay building as much as possible

uh matt phillips says clear writing is clear thinking to organize your thinking clarify your thinking is the idea even worth pursuing

reading makes it tangible hash out idea write your thoughts on paper scalable way so yeah clarity clarity of thought often often comes up a lot um a big one for me is

do i actually even want to work on this i think there's like this idea that people get where they they come up with an idea right airbnb for dogs or whatnot uh and they they think that they have

that idea fully established in your head you can't help but kind of like fill in the blanks but the truth is you have you've done almost no real work thinking through

what that business actually is like what that business actually looks like what is the business model what is the strategy and a lot of these things i think there's almost like this like

silicon valley kind of like discussed around like mbas and like business plans and strategy uh so that like it just becomes so focused on product but these questions are really really important because if

you don't have these middle steps right if you don't have this like let's say here's idea like the idea step and then you know you kind of have your memo step and in this case you know we have design

and build and then event you know event eventually let's say here is when you say i have a business you know awesome i just like i'd much rather get up here and be like oh that was a bad i actually

don't want to do this or this is sort of a fundamentally flawed idea um go back to the beginning and then go up with a new idea right you want to kind of build these reps um

so it just saves me a ton of time and generally i find that like my certainty i say on average when i have an idea that i get excited about like really excited about uh

to the point where like my wife's like please stop talking about this idea um i'd say if i from that point to going through to the end and i'm like i wanna build this i'd say roughly five

percent conversion rate so like one in 20 ideas i really am like oh wow this like and and it's actually like it's it's i've learned that it's actually really

easy to figure out what kinds of ideas those are going to be and the simple way is that my excitement generally starts like here or no let's let's be more like my i my

excitement is like here right like because i haven't thought of any of the bad stuff like it's just good right it's like the night it's the reason i had the idea right there's some good reason i had the idea and then i do more research

like this is the way most ideas go like that's that's the way that's like that's excitement this is my excitement bar right excitement that is where most and some of them like kind of go like this

some of them get really far and then i real or like i actually get more excited over time as i like learn more uh and then i realize something that like makes the idea impossible like you

can kind of draw my excitement levels but i found that the ideas that work generally they just go like this they kind of almost like grow like a

startup where like i slowly get more and more cautiously optimistic i do more research i get more and more and more and more more excited um not because the difficulty it gets easier but because of

like the potential impact like when i started thinking about the sort of second order effects um i get more and more and more excited about it um

and i've yeah i've sort of learned that about myself and so that this is kind of like a way of figuring like figuring out like of the 20 ideas which one should you actually be working on so i think that's a really really

really big one uh and then i would say one of the other things is that um there's this kind of concept of the elephant in the dark i don't know if folks have heard this it's often used to refer to kind of the

crypto industry but basically it's it's it's basically saying that everyone is like feeling a different part of the elephant but no like so we all kind of know there's an elephant there but we don't really know what it looks like uh but we all know that we're

like and the reason is because a lot of these industries are like they're kind of they make sense in hindsight like it's very obvious that like apple was going to invent the iphone uh in hindsight with the ipod and the

itunes you know all these things led to the iphone in the app store in this like beautiful way uh but that's kind of like as steve jobs said you can only connect the dots looking back right and so going forward it's all like elephant in the

dark crawling around and i find that that's that's where some of that excitement comes from is like as you start to sort of feel around this thing be like oh that's how this thing is going to grow that's what the mvp is going to look like um and you can do all of this kind of

stuff uh in writing you know writing is the cheapest basic form of you know it's free that you know anyone can write um and so you know start starting the kind

of the cheapest sort of medium possible um and then what else do i want to say about memos and why i love them i also think memos i think every creative pursuit has this

sort of iteration cycle uh you know there's the famous malcolm gladwell quote right about 10 000 hours and they've sort of become you know

a big thing um and and that's not really about ten thousand hours it's really about sort of like number of iterations right like how many times you learn uh and i've i've learned this in painting for example

like i've been working on this painting recently um and uh because this is this is the unit of improvement for me um this will probably take me 10 to 20 hours i'm like

four or five hours in um but i do one of these uh and then i do it again and i do it again and i do it again a new new painting every time or i do it with figure drawing like i went to a studio and like these are all different figure

drawings like these are small poses i just started doing ipad stuff i normally don't my work on traditional is much stronger but you can almost see like each one is like i'm learning and getting better every single time

and if i spend like fit and this is this is kind of pretty terrible to be honest but if i just spent like seven hours on on like a drawing it would be pretty bad right this is kind of like the the quantity over quality thing right this

sort of the you split a pottery class into two you tell one to only work on focus on quality you're going to be judged on quality and the other group you're only

going to be judged on quantity and then the people who do the quantity create better quality anyway because they don't have the they're not thinking about the kind of they're not stressing over like creating the perfect thing right if you're gonna spend 50 hours on something you're gonna

like micro analyze everything and i notice this all the time like some of my best work is like just kind of like threw it at a wall like had five minutes like typed it up really quick and those are often the

kind of like the most fluid like ideas that end up sticking uh and so i find that like the memo is kind of like that version of kind of the gesture drawing of an idea right it's where you find out all of like the broad

sweeps of things like obviously you have to like render the nose and and you know that requires like knowing that you know like the anatomy of the nose and like the wings and all like there's a lot of things that go into the nose

um but the gesture of a nose is like is like this right like that at least for me i just draw the body the triangle shadow of the nose and then if i wanted

to draw the eyes like right something like that i i needed reference i'm not good without reference but generally you know i guess this you'd only draw the shadow something

like this um yeah so anyway uh i like thinking about how do you how do you communicate the most um with the least right this is kind of a con you know one of the themes i think of this

class is kind of this constantly like less is more less is more i mean julia were talking about this earlier um less is more

uh and the and i a memo i think is a really good framing of this i think a really well written memo is like very little it's a page or something like that but it communicates so much about

the idea it's kind of like a poem you read like a poem like uh what's the famous uh is it like hemingway or something who came up with like for sale baby shoes

for sale baby shoes never worn right and he i think the the sort of story is that you know he basically challenged someone to come up with a better story in six

words and like these six words is like i don't know like just full of emotion like for sale baby shoes never weren't like just like

crazy uh crazy to me this is the goal like the goal is to come up with a memo that like evokes such a level of like you you know in the like the reason you can draw this nose is because

the reader can you know the viewer of the painting or whatnot can can fill out all the blanks right but it takes time to know oh that's how the eye does fill in the blanks in a way that i don't have to do

all the detail work or whatnot right sorry for the extended painting metaphors um what yeah i guess one other way to think about it is that i get pitched you know like we

we use the example of you know like my panipuri food truck right like that isn't enough to know if it's a good idea or not right like what's what's enough is a menu a real menu oh yeah i've done the proco classes

peter those are great i highly recommend the proco uh figure drawing classes um and so yeah i kind of that that that i would say is kind of like a good a good

way to think about a memo which is the actual menu like what what is the actual thing that you are providing right um and then once you have a memo

you know you can do all of the other stuff you can go uh you know we'll design we'll build it and and all of these steps you might you might have to go back to the to the

beginning um but you should get more and more clarity and that elephant in the room will make more and more sense and then even in the building phase you can kind of do the same thing right if you have an idea for some

some sort of restaurant what do you do you don't start a restaurant as julie said that's crazy what you want to do is you probably want to do like a dinner with friends right

then you might want to do like a pop-up at a restaurant that already exists like recently there was a thai brisket soup pop-up at a brewery brewery is apparently a great place to do

pop-ups uh then you might want to do a food cart then you might want to do a restaurant and of course there are other steps after this right like starbucks i don't know is maybe like the

final destination of like a of this right like it might start out with like brewing a friend a cup of coffee and them saying wow this is really good um and so this is just

can i ask you a question so when you um when you're writing your memo when you like putting this against the memo is the first version of the memo dinner with friends or is the first version of

the memo as aspirational as starbucks it my goal is to kind of somehow summarize all of this like basically to have the road map

built into there but generally like to to speak to the gesture drawing piece of it it'll be a lot of this stuff and a little bit of this stuff right

but this stuff is it's it will be kind of the reader will fill in the blank if that makes sense it'll make it'll make more sense i'll show some examples um in a second right another another way of thinking about this right is you kind

of do do something freelance do something manual you know we talked about a lot of trends last time right automation so it's kind of a similar similar way of of sort of reducing it

um and yeah so i just i just think it's like a super super helpful exercise if if trying to become an author is writing 10

books uh not just coming up with 10 ideas but actually going to the end that's really the learning happens in that whole full cycle um i think it's really like in business this is kind of

this this is uh this is that which is like going from zero to one one dollar and back number of iterations and i do think it will take you know a few dozen like i would be very surprised um like

imagine if you have ten ideas like the quality of ideas will definitely improve over those 10 but imagine if you had one idea and then you turned it into a memo and you went through a lot of this exercise and you

learned a bunch of stuff you know it could be like regulatory concerns it could be different risk factors to the business it could be like oh wow i'm going to have to find the skill set this person that you know there's like seven

of them in the world um or whatnot uh and you'll learn and and if you do all that and then you do your second idea and you do it again like i find that you're gonna end up with far better

ideas like your ideas are going to go like through the roof and so i think a lot of people kind of get they they just think oh i haven't had the right idea so they just keep having ideas and you know they keep trying to go through the like basically like just what we did last

week but just that over and over again until they have an idea and they're like this is the idea i want to work on i think that's kind of the wrong approach and i think i mentioned in slack to somebody like just pick an idea

i think was to thomas like pick an idea and then just like you know and just do it like it can be it you know going through the exercise of it i think is really really really really uh really important um and

which is why i recommend that everyone doing this course even if you already have a successful business uh like you can still do this uh you can still have new ideas um or you could do this for somebody else's

idea but i think it is really important to go through this ultimately like the a lot of these skills are kind of muscles like you really want to develop your muscle memory uh and i think a lot

of the way i approach it like i i'd like to think there's a ton of structure to it um and there's kind of a framework and i think i know everyone kind of like wants a framework like wants kind of a mental model but ultimately it's kind of like

playing soccer like you don't know how people play it you don't see what their body is doing they just play right um so so yeah anyway that that's kind of my

rant on uh on why memos um um i don't know if that was helpful um but that's i i just wanted to kind of address that because i know it's kind of weird um

and q a i did want to take q a about business ideas um do people have questions from or concerns from the last week before we jump into uh actually writing down what a memo should answer

as a group exercise and then doing kind of going through my my actual process for what one looks like matt has a question matt you want to unmute and ask

can you hear me now i'm sorry yeah yeah i was just wondering uh what what you know kind of the process that i go through which i never get very far

but the kind of the process i go through when i'm kind of vetting ideas is to go look what's already on the marketplace at some point and i i had to drop off uh early last week so i didn't know if we

covered that last week about like what happens and this can happen at any point right during your you know journey you can suddenly discover that oh well someone's already

you know done this yeah um dude i was just asking if we if we had kind of gone over that yet uh yeah so so in in in this kind of framework

i do research as late as possible um i'm not a huge fan of research um i think you should basically if you're excited you should run with it you should get as

far as you possibly can through these steps you know this week memo next week design build etc and then once you've built everything you have the domain you have everything ready to

go you've done all of the hard work of building this business then you can like do research and see if there is competition out there that's the way that i would do it the reason is

i find that often people use research as an excuse to not build anything not ship everything like every idea will have something in the market like there's seven billion people on earth you know like there's just there's

four and a half billion internet users um it just everything has been done has been tried i don't think anything is that unique i think um and i will talk a little bit of

actually about like what do you you know well then why build it at all um but yeah i i would say delay the research part as long as possible and the other thing i would say is if you if

you have this problem and you don't know you know like of any solutions like then presumably most people who've also had this problem also don't know any solutions right

so it like it doesn't really matter if like you know if a tree falls in the wood no one hears it right like there's a com competitor out there no one knows it right um like i recently discovered i put in the

chat furnished finder.com which like brands itself as like i think it's older than airbnb um furnished finder.com and it's literally like you know you can use it for anything uh it's just it's like

airbnb for like long-term furnished rentals um and but it looked like the the headline is monthly furnished rentals for travel nurses and other traveling

professionals like the majority of their business is uh travel nurses which is how i learned about it was through a travel nurse um but like this exists and there's like and like

you know my guess is like there's a lot of these right um but this is the one for travel nurses and this is the one that they use and like there are probably a lot of kind of like

vertical specific things uh you know that that this can kind of offer um that that these other competitors don't right um for travel nurses specifically and of course if

they say other right so there's other um but i do think it's kind of an interesting uh kind of example of that jewelry has her hand up also julie do

you want to unmute and ask a question and then rohit will get to your question too awesome yes um yeah my question was what if you're kind of excited about an

idea but the mvp you come up with feels like it would be a lot of effort and like that first mvp or the smallest unit of that would be like

it wouldn't be something you could build in a weekend it might it might take a lot of effort especially with some ideas that could be to be b to b like how do you like how do you think about that

yeah i mean i think i would really just push you aggressively to figure out how to whittle it down into a weekend thing um

for example with a lot of b2b stuff there's like a kind of like that manual to automation thing where like a lot even like some startups that i will invest in like they basically say

we we offer this it looks automated but actually it's fully manual it's just we're hiring all the people we're doing all the manual work ourselves and over time we'll automate this stuff in the back you know and it'll kind of

the you know the you know economics will kind of like make sense over time um but you know if you if you kind of do that then you can kind of promise you know you can sort of you have the value of automation without having built any of

the automation right you're just dealing with the cost yourself right you're kind of internalizing that cost so i think that's kind of one way that i've seen it often done um but yeah i would just kind of really

really aggressively say like try to like scope i think in the shape up language it's called scope hammer which i like like just hammer the scope until it's so small

uh that it basically does like one thing you know um that's kind of another you know really important thing about the kind of that the memo will reveal to you is like well what is that what is that

one thing right um so yeah julie do you have a specific idea that's really big that needs to that is this are you talking about something specific or hypothetical

yeah i mean there were some ideas i got excited about but then i was like oh that would be too much effort for example of like the idea where

like i would want this but i would i think i would need to hire an outside expert for it like would that outside expert have like

be part of the customer experience or is it someone you could just like work with on the back and to fulfill the service i think they would be integral to the

service so like that makes sense i mean for those kinds of things i i think basically it seems like like you're looking almost like for a

co-founder in a sense um like for example like i've had ideas uh i had an idea recently actually today um

this is probably one of those 95 ideas that will not go anywhere um but i was like i need like a boutique lawyer uh who just is knowledgeable about early stage startup

rounds because i want to like experiment with like some weird like new legal documents formation stuff and like i realized like yeah basically everyone i know just works at one of these big firms and these big

firms just do like the classic stuff that you know people are need most big companies need you know my weird ideas they're not interested in um uh so

you know in that case i would basically like part of the memo ish right it's so essential to me it's almost part of the memo is like this is the person i'm building this with right like i'm basically building

like here's like the lawyer in the middle you know i told you i'm gonna figure drawing uh and then you're building this software around this person you know

that's kind of how almost how i would think about uh about your kind of you know your business and then like the memo basically kind of says that you know but that requirement is like who is this

person then right you can't just say a lawyer um and this is kind of the fun part about the memo is that it kind of forces the clarification but only on the right kinds of things uh like a really

good painting is mostly blurry except for like the focal point right um you don't render out the whole thing uh because if you render out the whole thing you get a photograph right um like what one counter-intuitive thing about

painting is that like the the paintings are basically everything that is wrong because if it had nothing wrong with it it would just be like every painting would look the same because it would you know if you're all painting the same thing you they would all look the same

so actually like what makes a painting interesting is all this all the lies in it all the things that are not true about the subject matter um so in a weird way like a memo is kind of like approaching like what the business actually is

uh but actually what's interesting is like all the stuff that isn't in there which is kind of this like weird thing it's like all this stuff it's kind of like all you know your mvp is is all the stuff you decided not to

build in a way right um and so a memo is almost kind of like like your business is kind of what it doesn't do uh it's kind of i don't know that's

sometimes how i think about it um let's take rohit and gary and then we'll move on go ahead you want to want to unmute please ask yourself yeah uh so my question is like a

follow-up to your previous comment around your research i know last session you talked about the concept of like 10x improvements being really important and wouldn't research earlier help make sure that even if it's a similar premise

that the idea that you're building and thinking through is a 10x improvement or do something just kind of come keep like working on and building upon um i mean i think like the math

version of saying this would be like let's say like research let's say research is like a 10x you know like a 10x multiple on your idea

like to me then like wouldn't you want to develop your idea as far as possible because if you can turn an idea into a two before you do research then this turns from a 10 to a 20.

you know but if you do your research at the beginning then you go you start at a 10 and then you can you kind of linearly improve your idea from a 10 to 11.

so like like for example like this painting that i'm working on i have another 12 hours to go i could go to my painter friends and be like hey

can you help me like make this painting better like what should i change and i will do that um but first i will like try to improve it as much as possible with photos with reference with

different ideas uh and until i literally can no longer make the thing any better i'm i'm physically incapable of visualizing a better

version of this painting it exists i know it exists because in two seconds someone will be like delete that add this and it'll look so much better so quickly but the better

the painting that i can show them the even better the painting they're going to give me in return like the feedback is going to be even stronger um like i really want to be pushed all the

way to my limit otherwise like let's say i do a decent idea but i know i could change that i could do that it would take me like 10 hours but like and then i get feedback guess what they're going to just tell me all those things right like

i'm like oh yeah i already kind of knew that i just wanted you to do that for me or like i don't want to acknowledge the hard truth of like it's going to be really hard to fix this painting because i did it all on one layer and i have to redraw everything uh

or whatnot right um so i i think generally you want to be delaying as much outside interaction like outside work like interfacing with the world on on your idea uh as long as

you possibly can because you you really want to like it's also like a test of like like i learned like i still don't know how to draw noses if i don't have one in front of me right like forcing yourself to do it in isolation

is going to show you it's really going to make you face to come face to face with like all the things that you don't know um right like i often use the example of a dollar bill everyone thinks they know what a dollar bill looks like right you

draw a dollar bill i could ask every single person here what a dollar bill looks like and they'll draw probably something like this like i don't know like what goes in this corner

we've seen dollar bills like millions and millions of times like maybe not millions of times lots of times you know dozens of times we have no idea what a dollar bill looks like because we've never had to really know

all we've had to know is this which is what's stored in our head right um but we you know we don't we we are not yet forced to you have to like pressure yourself

like if you want to learn if you really want to memorize like how to draw a dollar bill you have to actually draw a bill it's going to be really painful you're going to realize there's a lot of detail and they're going to spend hours and hours and hours doing it and then you'll wake up the next morning

most of it your brain will have forgotten but you'll be able to do a little bit more you'll realize like oh this the one the way the one is shaped was i remember it was like that right and you'll like build layers and layers

upon um upon your uh your knowledge and you won't need any notes you won't need any reference uh like for example when i write memos like it's not like i

i'm like oh what do i need like i don't have any notes uh uh right like all the notes for this class are notes that i'm making for the class like i'm trying to pull them out of my brain repackage them and then they get into

your brain but it's really the notes only exist as like a transitory mechanism because we don't have telepathy yet right um which would you know hopefully in 20 years we will in court very i think your

questions about iteration also one last thing yes gary okay yeah so i think you kind of answered this to a degree because it it

goes off of rohit in terms of the the research but i guess my question was based around the layout and how it was documented linearly of you make you have an idea

then you build the memo then you design then you build and i was wondering if there is an alternative where or whether this happens just in parallel rather than in serial

like you you have the idea you build the memo and then you market it to see if people like it because that is probably the ultimate you're done with that painting and then

you could show it to people and that's a stage in which you then try to market it and i'm just curious about your thoughts you kind of have touched on it already yeah i mean there honestly are a lot of ways to go about it and i

don't know if like you know this is not this is just a set of opinions that i hold right um and just kind of my approach like certainly sometimes like i'll just build a thing you know like for example like i built

this thing called metazoom uh that was like a way to like share my screen um in a censored way um but i just built it for myself and i was like i know i want this i know i'm gonna

build it um and it took you know three hours right and so like in that case i didn't write a memo like why i think this might be interesting or or what not but i think i would i would for anyone

questioning like is this the right process for me like just assume that it is the right process do it ten times or do it five times do it once and then make a decision right it's kind of like that research thing right like don't do

the research yet like do it after you do the work um like should you run a half marathon run the half marathon and then ask yourself

should you have run it you know um like do the hard work uh first uh generally is what i what i say too many people like buy the running shoes and then sign up for the half marathon that's kind of

how i think about like telling people about your idea marketing like it's like too satisfying uh it feels too good everyone's gonna be like oh that's awesome idea you know um at least that's that's like what i hear

no one is like don't build that it's like it costs them nothing and it costs you everything to build right so like everyone has this incentive to tell you oh no you should totally go build that um sounds awesome and it does sound

awesome because just like i can tell you like titanic in space sounds freaking cool did i show you my outline and you're like dude that's freaking sucks right like it's

it's the meat of the story that you like that that i think uh is is the hard part it's not the log line that that's hard and i find when you go straight to the marketing piece you're not really ex like selling like you're not really

getting feedback on on your business you're getting feedback on this like adam movie and you know this kind of like a garden of eden that you have in your head that you haven't actually taken the time to flesh out personally that's kind of how i think

about it um yeah so two more things and then we're going to go to uh actually like the structure of the memo and uh

one is that i i like that that question about or like the the furnished finder thing makes makes me think of something this goes back to a little bit of the idea stuff um but if you think about

like uh airbnb or something like that now it's it's kind of more of like a ver a layer in terms of like the value per like let's say this is like vertical

vertical sorry i should use a different brush let me use a different brush [Music] this should be better make it smaller

make it actually do the thing awesome that's better uh yeah so this is the ver these are the verticals right like one of these would be like nurses etc um and then this is like the value like the

kind of like the impact or kind of like how awesome you know how much of a fit it is like let's say fit actually because product market fit is a pretty good framing so like airbnb is kind of like a flat

rectangle right and like imagine like the travel nurses is like here this is like travel nurses they're like airbnb is still here for them right it's basically the same

but that furnace finder thing is like this right like they probably don't like they probably do this other stuff but you know most people probably just go to airbnb for that but they're really good

at this stuff right um so that's a lot of the business ideas that i that i saw in the chat um and it's like a really good way to think about it which is like what can you effectively what can you verticalize what can you what already

exists craigslist is like you know people often do this with craigslist or subreddits um but effectively software allows you to build these effectively monopolies right like if you if you

define a monopoly as a winner take all sort of company within a market the easiest way to have a monopoly is just pick a really small market right like if you define a monopoly as uh

i don't know indian chinese restaurants in portland oregon area you can have a monopoly by opening up one right and then you can expand your market you can say you can well you can say

restaurants okay there's like i don't know 100 million restaurants in the world uh or something uh obviously not a monopoly no one would say that right but like depends on how you kind of define it so that's often

like something that came up a lot in the office hours and things like that so i would highly think about like kind of like this idea of like small monopolies um uh and for sort of what's fragmented

that you could kind of verticalize with software and build like the best the obvious every travel nurse uses this furnished finder dot com um

and then one small note on 10x ideas we talked a lot about what like 10x ideas means and i realized like i said pdfs as another as kind of like you know anytime

i see a pdf that's a business opportunity and i just want to be super explicit about like why that is um and the reason is that every time i see a pdf i see something that's going to take me 10

minutes instead of one minute that's really it right um and so that's like the just a very obvious example of something that wow this is this is like i see this ten

minutes in front of me that you know that i wish if there was a if there was a docusign link i could just click hit fit you know sl finish autofill done right just like really like symbolizes

this kind of 10x thing to me it's like wow this is so broken um last thing i'll add is power sellers i was listening to the origin of of paypal

because after i was like it kind of took a negative stance on like the zero to one peter teal stuff i was like i gotta make sure that i'm uh doing him justice so i like to listen to a bunch of his stuff

yesterday and he talks about how paypal started with powersellers on ebay kind of this idea of like starting with a small monopoly um and so this is just another thing i would really kind of

get people to think about which is like and you could replace sellers with like users right but like this is the important thing um you want people who are already obsessed with something right like travel nurses are kind of like power

users right like the reason they're such awesome customers is because every three months they have to move to a different place in the country and they're just like the best customers for this kind of like 30-day you know furnished rental thing um

so that's that's that's another thing that i would think about awesome let's move on let's move on to uh what should a memo actually answer um so i want this to kind of be a group

exercise what are the questions that a memo should answer uh feel free to unmute and just answer what what what like when you when you read a business plan or a deck or anything like

that that you've ever seen or just for yourself like what questions are you trying to answer um oh sorry how are you going to make money

how are you going to make money yes how are you going to make money sorry what was that problem what what

problem you're solving what problem are you solving yes maya you want to say the next part and who are you solving that yeah

what is the problem you want to solve and who are you solving that problem for i would think who are you so yes

and why am i solving the problem oh i like that one well who are you solving that problem for

basically this is what i call the yu awesome i always ask this question

why now vc's love this question why now why now threats weaknesses gary says what are the threats slash weaknesses this is kind of like

swot analysis you learn in school swat what does swat stand for strengths weaknesses

opportunities opportunities and threats i would have said opponents and threats opportunities and threats um

awesome yes so these are all kind of uh yeah strengths weaknesses opportunities threats how easy is it to iterate could you frederick could you and kind

of define that a little bit more when you say how is it to iterate like how would you define like what metric would you say usually time and energy um

and i'm thinking of if you build hardware there's a if you if you're building a semiconductor chip it may take you a

year two years to iterate um if you're building a circuit board it might take you a week or a month and it depends a little bit on [Music] you know what you're trying to build it

might be perfectly appropriate in 12 months but then you have to take that into account everything that's scaled differently awesome sid do you want to say yours

yeah sure you know how i guess the indication of how painful i mean the 100 sponsorship painful but the pain more pain in the problem the easier it is for you to get someone to pay for it and also

who are the people who can actually support you along the journey because eventually it's not just you who's going to solve the problem you'll need a community and people to support you and

awesome awesome how is this uh problem currently solved by too sharp is also a good one um though that might get it a little bit too much into research be careful no

research allowed uh and faisal says why would the new solution be 10x better yes let's put that in big because 10x is very very

very very important um and yeah awesome and let me let me show you the way that i answer these questions right so this is kind of like

kind of reverse engineered like i'm i i use these as kind of mnemonics to remind myself of all the questions i have to answer they're not mental models i think mental models are

are wrong um and stupid another hot take that i have um but mnemonic devices are much more useful than mental models mental models

are are lies uh to make things seem simpler than they are but yeah my memo structure is quite simple my the the way that i think about it is

mv oops i don't even know what order i generally use but mvp gtm tam is my simple shorthand

and then often at the end i add kind of like my steve jobsian one more thing this is kind of the epilogue uh

the moon shot and another way to look at this um this is kind of the way that people often do is sort of problem

solution market i would say sort of gtm by the way who knows what gtm stands for go to market go to market go to market

this is kind of the problem basically what is the problem this is basically mvp minimum viable product i don't write that down everyone knows that

uh this is kind of the solution and this is obviously total addressable market or maybe not obvious but if you didn't know this is kind of the way to think about this is like how

big is that market right how many users times how much value are you creating times what percentage that value can you capture is sort of tam um but yeah this is often the way that i've

heard it framed as this bottom one often people say like and you know market first like the sort of the sort of order of operation switches but i often hear like problem solution

market is generally the the thing i prefer sort of gtm mvp or mvp gtm tam just because i like the sort of three letter

thing um and to go sort of more specific about you know we were kind of we had these these kind this is kind of an example by the way like as you write your memo you realize like this is great but this is kind of still

too abstract this is still too uber for dogs right so for example like one example is who are you solving that problem for i think is a great question

that you should definitely answer but actually could be better uh and i'll make it better the way we make it better is we make it spikier we make it more opinionated we

make it more pithy who's your first user do i do that or who's user number one when you make a movie

i think it's often in hollywood people say what's the demo who are you making this for i think a much better question is to whom is this going to be the best movie they've ever seen like who is this

for who like you know this is their favorite movie who is this their favorite movie um i think it's much it's much spikier it's

it's who is your first customer um is a much much much more profound important question to be able to answer so that is like super super super super important

the other thing that generally uh the gtm sort of question and uh answers is what does your sales cycle actually look like which kind of goes into in line

with with um with i think gary said it or who said it oh no frederick said it um how long basically how long does it take um which is what is your sales cycle

uh basically how do how do what is the customer journey even look like the amount of pitches i get where i can't even visualize like how the customer is going to interact with this sort of thing

is incredible like it's all the time um another question another thing that's really important to answer in my opinion is uh what are the actual features that

you're going to start with like what are you actually building what are you not building really really important here many people just say oh we're building a service to connect

people uh who want to you know exchange their houses during thanksgiving right um but that's not a set of features that doesn't like again that doesn't say what

you're not doing i think it's really really important to it's not that hard to come up with a billion ideas what's hard is to say i'm not doing any of that i'm just doing this one thing the best

example ever in my opinion is tesla uh where they basically you know they could have done all of these sorts of things there was this massive like obviously we want electric cars we'll have them in a hundred years like what does that actually look like

and the answer was basically like we want to build a you know a car for like 400 super rich californians um you know who will be comfortable with like a lotus elise basically looking car

that goes 100 miles you know and they have to charge it in their house they have to like build you know solar panels in their house to charge or whatever right like that's their user number one um and it just visualizes like the clarity

of we're gonna make this car for this group of people that's gonna allow us to make this car for this group of people that's gonna allow us to make this car for this group of people et cetera et cetera et cetera i think is just so uh

so much more clever and insightful like i can start to see how tesla becomes a company um another thing is the aha moment

uh i find that many people forget this but this is kind of like the core part of the customer journey what is the aha moment market tam honestly this is boring this is like in all my memos this is like the

shortest thing this is very much a less is more it can literally be something like you know number of users times value per you you know value created per user

times you know percent value captured right like this this part doesn't matter in my at least i mean that much i think if you can do this

these first two like this is kind of like two or three sentences and this is really just and this is why i prefer kind of like the one more thing moonshot which is it's kind of you know as i was

saying that kind of gesture drawing you know this is kind of like um you know this is like the beginning this is zero this is like infinity right um

this is like what what are you building this is like mvp this is like who your first customer is this is like your go to market strategies like your aha moment all the stuff your memo doesn't have to do any of this stuff and then at the very end it's like

hey if we do all this stuff you know obviously if we get this far we'll we'll build a team we'll be able to figure these sorts of things out most companies fail like around you know in this period of time so these are kind of the real ultimately

like that you know the question the investor is is will this idea work right like that's the ultimate question you're trying to figure out so if businesses don't really fail in this bar you know like then or in this

section you don't have to worry about it and at the very end you have a little bit that's like you know just really the north star is kind of what i call it the moon shot what not um

that is kind of like what your memo should kind of be consisted of and as we go through the examples which we'll do after we take a little bit of a break um you test me on it like see if if my memo is actually like aligned to that

um yeah any that that's literally it i mean this this is like the really simple framing of how i look at obviously this is it's going to get a lot more interesting when we when we

actually start writing a memo together um and going through examples um julie what do you think we should do should we take a break and then come back and write a memo i think five

minute break and we'll three minute break and we'll come back and write a write a memo yeah that's good okay uh we'll come back at o2 everybody bring questions if people have questions

i'll i'll answer them as i uh write them oh as i write them out all right see everyone in a couple minutes

oh simon wanna answer simon's question oh yeah what example are you writing a memo for so i will be using fweb3 i'll go through the the the flex on memo

but i built it i'm i'm hacking on this like fun side project this uh this month and uh so i'm gonna which i didn't know this is a good example i just kind of

went straight to build it um so i'm gonna i'm gonna do that and we'll see how it goes oh this is a good question about power users

and i can also switch to my laptop i feel like we shouldn't answer that question the question i'm curious about ankara's question about the lifespan of a memo and evolution especially looking

at the flexile memo and seeing the comments and how you integrate the comments how many how many iterations of a memo will you

make oh my god so many yeah yeah we'll go we'll go through it um i want to see if i can find another

couple members that i brought another actually i have another idea that i could do this [Music] [Music] okay

um yeah i'm going to open up by the way if people want to post some memos that they have in progress feel free to work on your memo um during this like get a head start on it

and i'm opening up all the ones in uh slack and i'll go through a bunch of them as well i will probably just spend maybe

10 minutes or so writing a memo and kind of just i think i think it's sort of lob diminishing returns i think you'll get a lot of the value of how i think about this stuff pretty quickly and then i'll try to

spend more time on feedback on other people people's will be the most useful i think always easier to get feedback on other people's ideas than

work on my own you ready we're at 1003. so while we're getting started awesome cool cool cool so let me start with the the flexile one

and kind of recap it i know i didn't really go over it um but i'll go through kind of the the story um and see see how honest i was being about if i about my process it's always hard

to come up with like a system where you know life is always a little bit weirder than that you know a little bit more chaotic um but this is i believe how i started

flexible and you could actually see let's see if i have the uh page history oh yeah i probably copy i think i wrote the first version of this in 2017.

um and so i basically wrote this was like very much like a problem that i was facing and so at the beginning of this memo i literally started with well what problem do i have i've

basically over time made it pithier and cleaner and simpler um as i send it to people i send it to somebody they'd give me some feedback i'd kind of every and i use this i use

this framework by the way if anyone wants feedback on anything i always say abcd which is what's awesome what's boring

what's confusing what didn't you believe it's funny because i use this for fiction uh this is kind of plot holes and stuff uh character motivations but actually in

in the in the context of business like this is really important right which is effectively what your memo is is if these assumptions that i'm making are true i will have a successful business

here right and so that is like if you have a if you don't believe me if you you know if you think i'm lying to myself to make you know make this seem more successful uh

tell me please right tell me now when i can move a word here or there versus like you know have to you know reconsider a business that i've spent years building

so anyway i started with this um i i probably wrote it more about like my guess is i probably started something like today gumroad uses it works but it could be ten times

better i sort of made it more pity over time like this nice header etc um but that is kind of this is the bulk this is the problem right

today gumroad uses and this is super specific right this is not like we use software you know that sucks and we want better software it's like we use bill.com which

has a 15 billion market cap boom that's tam that's it like three words that's tam right because effectively what i'm saying is like at least as big as this thing that we already use

right um lots of manual service agreements again manual keyword manual anytime there's something manual that's a business opportunity so we do a lot of manual service agreements

and invoices and a high touch again another way of saying manual uh recruiting process to find vet and onboard engineers it works but it could be ten times better

again this like this could be ten times cheaper it could be ten times faster it could be we could you know same amount of effort leads to 10 times better people um but it could be 10 times better

i personally if i was critiquing this i would say that this is a red flag i hate the word better uh not good enough better is like a cop-out like

like my food is better like you've told me nothing right like is it spicier is it saltier like what tell me more give me the kind of the vector you know

uh information uh so i would i would red flag that for myself when a live edit and ask people what they think would be a better word sure yeah how do we make this better what

would i uh it could it also i hate the word it like by the way one of my favorite things to do in terms of feedback is just deleting stuff

sometimes you just don't even need it like let the reader fill it in in their head right less is more i've said 50 times and ironically i'll say it again and then this is kind of the moonshot

right this is almost like a way of saying the one more thing and i often do this i even say plus everyone deserves to earn equity not just salaried employers we can pioneer

this um so this is kind of like what i would call like the hook which i guess i didn't talk too much about but like ideally there's something that grabs the reader right this is the case of all writing um but this is the

line that grabs people uh and i found this out over time which is why i kind of moved it out and made it its own sort of thing so once i have that which is a very

clear problem sort of definition then it's about the solution really simple which is basically what we already do but productized we're going to take this thing this is very much the

kind of manual to automate uh sort of you know freelance agency product we're kind of at the agency stage in which we've kind of built our own tools to do this thing and now we're going to

sort of productize it for ourselves first and then for other people and this is the features right this is basically this is kind of a trend almost right like this is the old this is the

new this is the old this is the new here's pdfs i told you i hate pdfs uh we're gonna get rid of them uh so these are very very very specific

features i would say native solution i guess is fine but i would probably in in like a meeting i would probably want to elaborate on actually i don't like i hate meeting so

that's a cop-out in itself um this is not good actually i'm going to red flag this too that's where i plug this native solution like there's something missing here um

and i'll go into it at the end okay we're gonna we're gonna get paid out daily i actually talked to uh i sent this to my uh my teammates and this actually is not a value

proposition like no one cares like actually turns out if you get paid once a week or once a month like actually many people most people prefer to get paid less frequently because it's like less annoying so that's something i

learned uh going through this so that's gone uh and then a semi-automated onboarding process fully productized yeah honestly i would kind of that's i

kind of said that already um and you know with this kind of basically says that right so what i would probably just say manual pdf agreements and invoices

you know turn into automated software right something like that i think that is a little bit a little bit cleaner uh to me personally uh and then let's fix the native

solution thing now um this is this is another like weird thing that i'm doing here which is like well why am i seeing less obvious wins like why i say them at all then

it's like i don't have the you know i'm not confident enough to put in the main section but it's kind of important um i'd probably just remove this and like try to consolidate these even further

again they don't really care about getting paid faster um this is actually what i was trying to say here what happens when you go from third party to native you actually have access to the data so you can actually

start to do certain things which are basically these two things so maybe what i would do is take these two and like make them some points uh and then of course

i would do something again like this and this is kind of a hint of like i'm thinking about how we are going to market this because that's kind of another important thing that the memo should answer is like how will you know this is kind of the customer journey like how will

people actually learn about this thing and the answer is we will launch with this framing of equity by the hour we won't talk about any of this other stuff we will just talk about the fact that we figured out how to do equity by the hour

we also have all this other stuff we figured out but this is the hook this is the real hook and then mark it this was pretty easy for me because like i know exactly how much we spend this is we should update this to 400 thousand

dollars a month uh and so really it's like how do we you know uh how do we uh how do you model this out and this is kind of like that super simple thing i

did right which is like effectively number of companies effectively you know value captured or created and captured are these two things right and then this is just like

that times that times that you know uh pretty simple uh i would say this is a little convoluted i also hate the word and and is another

red flag for me uh i'm sort of keyword stuffing in seo terms like i'm just i'm just i'm trying to make it too interesting i'm like if you weren't already convinced here's

more bill gurley says like if you have two business models it means you don't have any business model right you're not confident enough in your primary fundamental business model you're like already second guessing yourself

uh so and is a big red flag so what i would do is probably think about you know i want i would name this moonshot and then i would probably move this down and this makes yeah and then i can just

delete this marketplace thing which is cool and interesting i guess uh or maybe like what i can do is i can duplicate this by the way this is like what i do i just stare at my own work and just like try

to incrementally improve it make it better and better and better so what i can do is i can duplicate this and this actually makes the point better in my opinion

which is i delete this this is all about just the market for this sas product that we're building and then here i can make the point at the very end i can make this point which is the moonshot

which is basically my point being if we can figure out oh no yes so i can just remove this now i don't need the and anymore right this is its own little section while r d is our biggest expense

recruiting is our biggest bottleneck i probably say largest don't want to use biggest again uh pretty pretty clear like every ceo reads this like literally is like yes

obviously yes fine finding engineers is the largest bottleneck once we've built the flexible the operating system for flexible work

we'll focus on building the ecosystem so this is just you know basically reusing build first we'll build an operating system then we'll build an ecosystem this is often this is

a callback to for example the iphone first you build the iphone the software and then once you have a bunch of iphone users then you ship the app store two years later right um so this is kind of in reference

to that an inter-company marketplace that connects companies to credential flexible workers this kind of i'm gonna red flag this too i can i can make this better this is this is way

better like i actually again maybe the answer is just delete this boom think i want to hire anyone who has worked for government this does that super well and then if i

really want to you know punch him i can do the math on what that looks like i take the average recruiter fee it's actually 20 so i've decreased it to 10 and if you just do the same math on the

same number of companies if you can truly solve recruiting it's actually a much bigger sort of you know roughly 10x larger opportunity in terms of of sort of tam quote-unquote

um and then finally i i would probably you know this is just a joke on the kind of like the tesla master plan probably too clever i don't really need it so i can just end with this ec2 for people

and maybe i even need to i can delete this i don't even know if that's resonating with people no one another way by the way is to ask like send this to somebody and then talk to them about it later and see what they

even remember and the truth is they'll remember like one thing right like it's kind of like that quote like they won't remember what you said they'll remember how you made them feel right like they're gonna remember like

one thing like for me i know uh it was equity by the hour like that's that's the idea that everybody remembers uh and so this is it this is like my memo for for flex aisle and then of course i

did the design for it so i uh sort of i took that i'll show you like the really crappy design that i did uh it's a lot better now so i've replaced this link

with actually like a beautiful design that we've been working on that looks super sexy we can say how you're using the memo now three years from its original from its original version

yeah i mean i still i use it all the time i mean i i use it when i mean for example like i don't do meetings at gumroad right so if some if i'm like hey i have this idea

what do you think i send them a link to this memo right and then they have sometimes they're like wow this is awesome i want to work on this uh and then it's like cool you're you know you can start working on it like every

you know let me know if you have any questions like every question should be answered on here um and so that's kind of how i also send it to people so let me let me pause my screen share and

i'm going to open uh someone a dm with somebody i i you know i kind of think about this which which is this isn't written specifically in that memo

but basically i figure out who are the top you know the user number one user number two and i dm them so let me un share let me just move stuff around so i

don't violate anyone's privacy but yeah this is literally what i do uh and this is totally cold by the way like it's not like i've been having a conversation with this person i guess like four days ago or something um i've been toying around with a new

startup idea that would replace build.com for us at least in how we interface with our part-time work employees here's oh so in this case i didn't even send the memo i literally just sent them him the the figma prototype

um and then we had kind of a conversation about it um etc sometimes i'll send the memo some you know add this if i have a prototype then i'll just send the prototype and this is actually what i i think the the old one

um so yeah this is this is what i built so i took that memo and then within like basically one night i was like i took the memo and i turned it into an actual product and what this is what we'll do

next week um but i basically built this whole kind of little mini thing so people can kind of play with it oh you can add people you can send people invites they get an account they can view and sign they can you know go to their payments

you know they can send out an invoice i can pay it i can view they can have a timetable this is a terrible terrible terrible design uh but it has all of the features it has

every single feature and so i can basically and this is what i did i basically kara who's our phenomenal designer i said here's the memo which he already read at that point gave me a bunch of feedback we made it better uh

so we had the memo and then we had this shitty sigma prototype that i made and literally like you take those two things you give them to an amazing designer and you will come out with an amazing design

right because you have you've thought through all of this sort of strategy the business strategy the functionality of the features and even though this isn't the best design it gives them a really clear mental model of like what are you actually trying to

accomplish here what are you trying to build so that's kind of how i would how i would do that um i'm going to start writing a new memo uh because i want to do that before we get

to the end of time um but julie does anyone have any questions that i should as i go there's a question about dms um uh

but maybe we should keep going i think and uh everyone should write along with you uh as yeah people have ideas that should i don't think i've ever

written a memo fully live julie i'll put a pin in your dm your question about cold dming people just because it's 10 20 and this way everyone can start on the

homework basically but yeah that literally is pretty close to my first dm like hey i've been working on this thing uh i would love to to hear your thoughts

uh here's a link to a figma prototype the brilliance of a figma prototype is it shows proof of work right like it even though it's ugly it took hours and

hours to put together so let's use my favorite mvp gtm why do i use notion over google docs uh because i can do stuff like this and i can link stuff to people and i can

do inline tables and i can have toggles like this and i can archive things like it just so and i can link to things on somebody else's notion like it just it's just

supreme uh google docs is pretty nice but uh i've highly and and i actually will i did remove the and google docs or google docs like i highly recommend

using notion uh especially if you don't like it uh because it's awesome and it'll uh i think for stuff like this i think is super super helpful i mean even for example like

i have a fun memo i know i should be writing a memo right now but i have a fun memo you this is all public two you just go to shl.capitol

uh i constantly work on edit on this like this is like if you go onto the version history of this thing i can't even imagine how many versions of this there are you know quite a few

and this is this is old too i probably copy paste it or actually this probably just expires i don't know um but yeah you can just you know you can do these like tweet embeds that are really nice and like you can have links

and i don't know i just vastly prefer this over uh you can do like i don't know it's just nice i just like it the answer is i just like it um so mvp gtm tam

and then let's do kind of one more thing and just to remind everybody this is sort of you know the other framework for this is problem solution

uh market right um so yeah what is the problem what is the problem the problem is i want to learn about

web3 and specifically and build learn about and build build web3 but i i'm too lazy that's the honest truth that's the

answer i want to learn about web3 and we'll we'll we'll kind of strengthen this this is like pretty weak someone's have to send this to me it's not very strong problem is i want to learn about web3 and i am too lazy um

what is the solution the solution is effectively nanowrimo oh that is the sort of x for y right which is basically nanowrimo you write 50 000 word novel in the month of november 30

days 16 67 words a day um i wanted to build like a version of that and honestly my unique insight my hook is february is the shortest month of the

year and it shares eb in common with web3 so you combine those you get web3 dot xyz

and that's the domain that i bought and that's literally like all i had probably in my head when i shipped this thing uh and then the market what is the market

in this case i don't really have one but let's say you know a billion people i i believe like pretty strongly that everybody

at some point will own crypto right so like the market opportunity is like all humans minus crypto holders right i don't know which is like 200 million

people or something like that so it's massive right it's so massive that you might not even need this uh at all um but basically the market is and i would say that is kind of a

yeah you want to be a little careful with that you don't want to be too broad um but we'll get into that so so so that that's cool but like what what what is what am i actually trying to build here

what what is missing well i don't actually say what this is um so i need to figure this out i know this wants to be a game uh i decided that i wanted to make a game

um because it needs to be fun that's pretty important uh so you know lazy how do you how do you resolve lazy video game video game you know video games are fun

so basically a video game that i can make in a month because i only have a month to do it

that other people other people can also use to learn about and build web3 so it's kind of this like meta game it's

like a game that i'm making but by playing the game you will also kind of learn all the things that i have to learn had to have learned you know a month earlier kind of thing um

so this kind of is starting to crystallize i think for me a little bit which is like okay i need to make a video game a really small video game uh that people can can can play and you know very

quickly using a wallet uh to to learn about and build web3 awesome and

what else do i need here um what am i missing what am i missing what does this not answer yet aha moment aha moment ooh that's a good one yes

that's really juliana's question how to describe the aha moment and he asked for examples so this is a chance to give an example real-time example no pressure

yes aha moment uh so i've had a couple aha moments myself uh so what are some aha moments and well ideally we pick one by the way

vomit draft right so if you have ideas like write everything down you can always delete deleting is easy you saw me delete stuff even from the flexor memo so i might write a bunch of weird stuff down um so i apologize uh but yes

aha moments moments in crypto what are they well you know one thing is like offing with crypto that's cool right so that's an aha moment that's not

impactful enough to me though um generally you'll end up with one uh that you really want to sell in your memo so there's other thing with the wall there's like minting money i guess it's like kind of this interesting weird idea

it's like too abstract in my opinion um there's like sending someone you know that's kind of cool um you want to be careful with this because some often i i see a lot of

people say that this is like the aha moment but really they just want to emphasize that there's like a growth hack it's like not actually the aha moment it's just like oh by the way there's like a growth hack here it's like

yeah you're kind of forcing it it's like it's like if tesla said like the aha moment is like driving your friend in a tesla you know like no um it's the torque of you know of the

car is the aha moment um but uh but closer i think there's something here um decentralization obviously like there's

sort of like this permanent permissionless trustless thing um and i think the answer is and we did figure it out eventually so i'll kind of short circuit to it which is basically

and this is this was the aha moment for me as i started to learn more and more about building this thing which is i i started to gain a conceptual

understanding of money like what actually is money money is this crazy crazy crazy thing i could give like a five hour talk on money and all the things that money does but

it's like this totally made up thing you can go read sapiens or whatnot about it um but and you can read uh you know and i have read sapiens and all sorts of other

books about it but actually creating my own money i have my own money there's 10 million web3 tokens creating that myself of having 10 million of them and then moving one from

one chain to another and listing them like really rocked me this idea of what money actually is and does um

and so i can basically kind of refine this with something like the end of the game right

the other thing i forgot here is that there's actually many and sometimes what i what i do is i list something called assets which is basically like what are what are we actually making it's kind of like features i guess but

in this case it's basically like the website right so like what is it actually it's like a website you know video game is like an abstract term right what is a video game uh it's

a website uh it's a discord channel community etc but i like being you know pretty explicit so i'd rather say discord rather than community same more you know

same number of words more specific um and then it's the coin itself it's like the actual money right um it's the tokens that i minted uh these these are kind of the core assets maybe

uh i would add one more actually no this is this is really it i i i would probably replace this with like the game um

but yeah actually no the game is kind of the meta of all of these right the game is the solution the whole thing is gaming so

i want to learn about and build in web3 to do so i'll give myself some credit

solution nanowrimo for web3 a video game super simple video game you can play with an eth wallet

there's actually other problems i'm going to list them out in a second a super simple video game you can play with an eth wallet and this made me realize like well

that's not that low of a bar like eth you know not many people hold so then i realize another problem is it's too darn expensive like it's so like

even just removing all the conceptual stuff you have to figure out it's too darn expensive to even get into it so there's another problem which is plus

you notice i use this plus at the end only at the end last sentence only problem plus so that's kind of i think that's a simple enough framing which basically like this is

kind of like almost saying the market stuff to the point where i almost like don't even need this obviously this is like a very simple product like you don't need a lot again like the goal is not to like write a million words like

the actually the shorter the better if i could do all this with that six words um and beat uh schrodinger or erdinger or ernest hemingway or whoever it was um

that works great this is short enough i don't even need this table of contents um i want to learn about and build in web 3 but i'm too lazy or busy to do so

plus it costs money to play making it inaccessible and hated by millions i like this framing because it's kind of like me and then everybody else me others cool what is the solution and i'd probably want to kind of

mirror this you know as well right this is like the solution for me and then i'm going to want the solution for everybody else right the solution for me is i'm building

a super simple video game you can play and win with just and this just is pretty key uh because it it

is really in reference to this all you need is an eth wallet you don't need any eth you don't need anything else you just need an eth wallet address and you can even

change this to like a chrome browser right and then part of the game is getting an equality address if you wanted to really and to be super explicit you could say like no money right

and then often what i do is i put this thing at the top which is just kind of the x for y it's like the tldr i don't need this this is kind of just

for myself maybe i'll put this up here if people want to explain sometimes i'll say i'll add this back the game is julian asks if you're the first user

basically in this case i'm kind of right because really this first user is going to be the first person to play the game which was just whoever signed up to the discord when i created it uh and tweeted about it uh or

maybe i did a email blast i can't remember um so kind of i would say i'm you know i'm definitely in that cohort of people and by the way if you want to join that

discord feel free it's on the website um but i'm building a and then i'm building a super oh yeah and then i can talk about this part i can answer this part which is basically

others let's join the discord get a hundred web three tokens

complete nine tasks and win additional tokens and a commemorative nft

and then this is kind of the moon shot next year oh giannis could you and you didn't ask your question please uh hello the question is

what features do not include in this first name yeah i mean almost everything right i mean like in terms of like let me show you

um i don't even know if i did a figma prototype for this but let me i don't know why this is so wide but let me see if i did

yeah i did actually so here here i'll show you what i what i what i design and literally i was like what is the simplest thing wordle it was kind of my inspiration so i was like okay maybe i can build a game that's like portal

right where it's like there's no database it's all local storage it's just a game that looks something like this uh and so that's kind of what i did you log in has the you know has the and

we'll we'll go a lot more into this next next week and i just built this like super simple game and i think this is just enough to get the premise across right which is effectively you have some sort of user state is how many tokens you currently have in the corner then

you have these tasks there's nine of them uh and then you know there's kind of a binary state like once you complete the task it lights up right it changes color um

and then presumably and what i have built i believe on the website this is kind of what it looks like now um let me connect to ethereum and show you

it should light up if i um uh yep there you go see so these two things are lit up because i have done these two things but i have not done these other things i have done some of these but i haven't this game doesn't actually exist

yet um and then you know presumably all these buttons light up and then this thing turns pink and then you can click it and you know this this motor will come up and you'll be able to like mint an nft and and stuff like that um and then yeah

here are the links to discord and github and this is like you know i did this all today uh so you can see like this is what i'm building right uh this is like the mvp

and i haven't tagged these so let me tag these and then i can show you what that what the mvp actually is going to have and i just use github issues because it's the simplest way so this is it like

these are the things i need to build literally it's mostly just the dots right those nine dots need to light up um oh sorry these nine dots will need to light up

you need to be able to do this and that's it right that's the entire kind of game for the for this month right um and you can see how many i have seven

million tokens um because i've given two and a half million of them they're somewhere else um to other people or whatnot um and

uh it's 10 37. want to take a second and look at some memos from people in the cohort yes let's do it but it is tough i mean it's tough to come up you know you have to do this and like you'll get better and better at

kind of just instinctively kind of knowing um what not to build um and matt you mentioned doing test net um i could but i want to do this on like a

real uh mainnet we're gonna do it on polygon actually so um and i'm fronting all the costs like what i've decided to do is i'm just gonna basically airdrop all the tokens to everybody for free and then people can use those tokens

in matic and they'll get framatic um as well from a faucet that we have built um and and this is all i did i just created the discord and like things have happened like we have a like

all the community really does kind of start to do stuff like you know julie kind of to your point like once you start you need help like you might be surprised at like how

much that helped kind of come for you once you have something so many people just don't want to start that if they're like oh you started i'm happy to join you you know you did the hard really risky thing so yeah let's

let's go through some examples um peter i can't see your memos by the way could you uh share them on uh share them on the web from the top

right yeah peter do you mind putting them in the um in the chat as well just so that uh it might be a little easier for people

to see them so one issue with this uh name there's a there's a couple issues with this name the name is the first part of your memo right uh one this looks like ui two this

looks like train so i read this as a ui train box not ultra inbox um so just fyi

problem we are overwhelmed with messaging top touch points be it yeah that's fine i would say this is a little bit too it's not specific enough

like it's very vague like um but let me read the whole thing users are part of numerous conversations groups etc sure this is kind of like the friend feed

memo basically right from a user i don't really know what this means right for my user that values productivity oh you're basically just giving kind of

examples of potential potential customers etc um i would pick one right like i think going to that like number who is your

first user like who is your first user uh is it is it the average prosumer that just wants to you know uses rome and and and like wants more productivity my guess is no

uh is it a creator getting messages across channels uh that's i would you know to me like this is the most specific one

you can almost even see that you're getting more specific as you write this like a shopify store owner getting queries or complaints is much more specific like complaints is much more specific i don't know why it's doing

that when i click complaints are much more specific than messages for example right a complaint is a kind is a kind of message but you know every complaint is a message not every message is a complaint so complaints are more specific

um so i i would say sort of the biggest one of the sort of flags here is like i don't think you really define the core user as a number one user kind of well enough

um i also by the way didn't on the flip through thing i could talk more about go to market and like the kind of viral growth loop or whatever um but we don't really have time um

so that yeah that's kind of what i would think about here is i would say like we yeah i guess we are i personally don't feel overwhelmed whatsoever uh

so like i would say i would try to scope this down to like shopify users uh or some other group um and build a product just for that group

those kind of power seller quote unquote that i mentioned before um solution one inbox integrate organize all your chats dms and emails one inbox that pulls in all messages

user chooses which yeah i mean this is this is too specific almost which is definitely better than too vague i would say um

but if you could yeah i'm i'm like i would i would think about this more like what if you could only say one thing here like for me with flexile it was equity

by the hour right um what is the one thing that you can put here that is going to inherently like it's going to basically like hey does this really well in my opinion

where they they just like really you know put their most opinionated things uh you know close to the top and they even had like a manifesto at some

point uh i don't know where they put oh yeah the man this is like how they launched it uh you know and i just yeah like here this part and so i i don't know i think it's cool

uh like no consent no attention right that's pretty opinionated right like the screener uh which they have right up here um sorry right here it all starts with a

yes or no right this is pretty opinionated like no other client does this right and even though they don't like if this was all i could see i could almost guess all sorts of other features that they

have in this product based on this opinion i've already started able to kind of extrapolate and that's like the goal right that's kind of like the shadow of the nose um this is the shadow on the nose i can kind of auto complete

the rest of the face um so i would sort of try to think about what what can you what can you really highlight um yeah that's kind of and and and and

going back going back to this like shopify store user will help because if you can refine who like flexstyle is really really really specific it's you know for like remote

you know startups remote first freelancer only startups like gumroad like there's just not there's not that many of those right it's there's so few that like when i need to come up with people to dm i can like there's like 30

of them you know like i can i can they're you know they're they're people i can dm like i know who those people are um and so i would really try to write the memo towards like those people like try to get more and more specific

and that will help here that'll help with the solution if you have already built a product i would probably just put a screenshot here that will kind of do a lot of this for you um totally fine to have images and stuff if

you have them um pricing is interesting if it's interesting uh like if it's not unique i probably wouldn't bother um

because you know just because it's like pretty normal sass like i don't i don't think you have to kind of get into it too much i probably would think about adding like an x for y at the top that kind of tldr um

and then market fine but also like pretty obvious like i don't think you have to sell that too much the biggest question i would have around market is like are you selling to

i mean like slack is a very different kind of company than superhuman it's a very different kind of company than hay right um and so this is less about tam it's more about who are you going after

um is what i would think about here um slack has about 400 customers who make the majority of their revenue you know like their average kind of

client is like you know hundreds of thousands of dollars a year acv um very very different from hey.com right so i would really try to figure out like how are you going to make your money is kind of different than what

your business model is right which is like where is 80 of your revenue gonna come from what kinds of users um i think might be a better way to kind of think about think about that

so let's go to peter who picked one of his five members tie my flies and then we'll go to janet after that

all right let's do it and we have office hours on friday too which uh i'll post link soon but we have a couple spots left for this week um problem most fly fishermen have only 20

days a year that they get out to go and fish i would my first question is why and what are they doing is it's like a weather thing or is it like they're lazy um

like what is this what is the sin that means they can't do this more um i definitely want to kind of i feel like i'm missing something kind of uh about that um

usually i also like this makes me think you're talking about the profession of fly fishing fly fishing like professionals but then now i'm the second sentence makes me think maybe you're talking about

sort of hobbyists or kind of prosumers um so i would kind of clarify um you also have a gender thing here that you want to be careful of gen generally you want to avoid any gender in

any any memos that you that you put together um just to avoid alienating anyone um i don't know what you what the proper

term is for this one though well you use angler later on so maybe you start with angler first yeah i i'm already changing the language i noticed myself or here you say fly fishing professionals or whatever

um yeah i mean i get why you would say that that is pretty colloquial but you know especially when you're writing you kind of want to try to be as every word matters as you know a lot

more um usually the book of god okay cool so yeah so it's really it's really more about sort of pro like kind of prosumers basically which is a good group to go after it's kind of like the power seller

thing right um so yeah i think i would basically just simplify this to like what i did love about this memo is that it just feels more readable to me

um i like f's um f shape is a is a kind of a design principle uh but basically just says that the way people read no one reads the whole thing

everyone skims uh and make the skimming forms this f f shape uh right uh everyone probably kind of gets this instinctively obviously in different languages do it you know

different different shape uh right to left but um but this kind of has you can kind of see has more of an f reading thing whereas this is a bit more kind of like wall of texty

like this is intimidating this is like if you have a painting and you have no like a hard edge right like i can't get into the background because the foreground and the background don't

blur together there's just a heart at like that kind of thing um so i would just kind of and i often start with like short sentence and then they get longer over time you kind of like want to build you

know the endurance of the reader uh as you go this is good i like this this is like a nice cadence um but yeah i would say that i would say you kind of just take too

long to get to the problem like i think you you you kind of say it and then you say it kind of you say kind of some of the difficulties around it but i really just want to know like what do

people want and why aren't they getting it uh you know like yeah i i i guess i just don't really get that um yet from this sometimes like you're

you're you're almo this is like kind of like kind of like that there's too many problems you know like what is the biggest problem um that they have like is there one problem that most of them have

and then there are all these other side problems um but i would you know this there's this is problem right not problems uh

not jay-z's 99 problems uh maybe this is like the one problem and this is like the initial solution uh right uh is maybe a way to think about

it um yeah like i love this the most important thing is the right flies um so you could almost simplify maybe some of this stuff like yeah even say like there's a bunch of reasons that you

know people who want to fly fish don't but the biggest one it you know that but you know the reason is that basically like you're unlikely to catch anything that's just the truth of it it's like a

you know like one in ten you catch fish um and then you can say well you know my goal is basically 10x the chance that you can catch fish right and we're starting with the right flies

we think that the flies are like one of the huge areas of improvement to get people to actually like get to that aha moment because i presume the aha moment in fly fishing is

when you catch your first fish right um that uh or eat it maybe or something like that um but i assume you probably return them so yeah probably catching it um

so yeah i would say oh wow you that's cool this is like a learning opportunity for me i like this because it's like a teacher teaching moment it's like did you know like i had no idea there's a lot right

um so i like this like i kind of like like well yeah why can't i just buy the right flies um you could say you'd think this is easy but it's not because

to find exactly you know i would also be curious like how many flies there are right are there 80 000 different kinds of flies yes there are right like that's my guess

because if th you know there's many of these you know this all compounds um and that you know numbers are always good by the way right like your eye was always gravitate to 20 or or and you know obviously the market you

have more um but i think uh i think that's that's something definitely worth kind of including there looks like the problem here could really speak to economic utility

yeah it really is like save time yeah that to me seems like the the opportunity to spend time from i want you know someone who's starting to fly fish to their aha moment of catching up their first fish right and 10x like

maybe it takes 10 times and you want to make it take one or maybe it takes 20 and you want to make it take three um or something like that market i think is is going to be easy for everybody that's kind of the easiest

part of this um generally i would say i would say starting like figuring out the right beach head like where to start is the really really hard part which is why this course is so much about that

um things get easier over time yeah awesome no keep going yeah i mean then if there's something else uh then we need uh oh need to have database of flies that works by location that's an

interesting uh that's an interesting idea matt one question that i by the way we missed this whole time is like why can't and this is maybe goes into that research thing but like why can't you know the

joke that vc says like why can't google do this right um so maybe a question someone may have here and by the way i i think this is a good length actually so like i wouldn't try to over answer

too many questions like wait for people to ask you the question before you find a way to answer it um but why can't amazon do like why isn't amazon.com good enough um maybe you know uh what

something that someone may ask um which i'm sure has a great answer to it um but just but just came up um so janet is up next

awesome yeah one thing is that like this is kind of surprising to me like i thought you would actually be kind of sourcing and layering on top like i more of like a kind of boutique like an amazon less

like an etsy um so maybe you want to clarify that up front closer closer to kind of like maybe this just goes under solution and then you don't need this at all you know okay this might be the first line of of

uh or one of the right here somewhere but it's pretty good i would say pretty good uh awesome units memo on your terms

problem business negotiation infrastructure is underdeveloped negotiation is the most frequently used skill in every company at every level if i had a b c d i would say this is a d for me

um i don't believe this um breathing is a skill that everyone you know like obviously that's a little a joke but um this might be a thing where you might

have to either like work up to it like kind of earn your kind of big moment uh kind of big uh ideas um or

you kind of purposefully under promise over deliver on it um i think that i especially think if you can bring a number into this or like you know sometimes like

one story is more powerful than like a really you know everyone right like what is it like you know a million is a statistic you know a one is a life that sort of thing um

like sometimes sometimes like you know an anecdote can go here right or or something like that like did you know like the um the average executive yeah like this to me is actually more compelling the

average executive um like actually when we were talking on friday during our office hours i was like really it was actually quite interesting to me how many negotiations i didn't even consider negotiations but were

um which is uh which maybe is another way to think about like negotiation is everywhere in business even though most people don't think about it um for example you know the average and

this is something i learned with like being an investor is like i negotiate all the time like that's my job but every founder i talk to negotiates

once you know uh so effectively i it's like an unfair advantage i have all this institutional knowledge and this founder on the other side has has little so that you know that's just kind of an example

of negotiation kind of coming up um but i think this works pretty well i i do think you could get a little bit more specific like maybe in terms of like you want to start on like a specific

industry uh that you want to focus on first um but i think it's it's pretty pretty good um solution

the process of negotiation preparation is universal our solution is a productized version of our negotiation playbook um it provides an interactive structure for going from zero to

fully prepared awesome i probably need this defined um i'm trying to think of like what is the one hook that you can highlight here

that does a lot of the work for you um i mean i think the thing that you really want to highlight here is that there is a don't worry there is a process right like it's not like we're gonna teach you

it's not like a sport in which it's like you're gonna sweat it's like no there's kind of a framework and if you go through this and you ask these kind basically there's kind of a script um

and if you follow this script we see that you know the like the average you know we the average person gets you know a 10 000 a year salary increase right i assume that a lot of the uh sort of

um the stuff that people have questions with you know a lot of the value being created is around salary negotiation that's my guess um not at all but um the people tend to

relax strongly to the last perk so i guess that should be higher up though yeah exactly yeah something maybe this maybe this goes very like at the top kind of thing um

you know like i would combine these you know i basically say like top negotiators inc you know what are people negotiating about if they're not negotiating about salary

because you were so you said that so strongly yes so i'm not doing it for employees i'm doing it for the people who are decision makers so they're hiring or they're forming partnerships or they're

doing procurement or sales there's just a lot of different functions but generally it's not for the people who are negotiating to be hired oh yeah you're saying like sales uh and like buying buying things

um acquisitions etcetera um anything company growth essentially or yeah makes it makes sense um

yeah i mean i think i think it's good i think i would i would just put this at the top that's like a really big one um and then everything else is just kind of a bullet under that you know um

like i would basically say you know like top negotiators outperform the average by 20 they do this by following a relatively

well-defined playbook that we're going to productize that includes colon and then three or four bullets right um and then that's it basically that's kind

of how i would do it if that makes that make sense um can i duplicate this and show you let's see what happens if i do this so some yeah basically i'll say i and i

am i am changing this so i don't know if it's actually true but but i'm just i'm just simplifying [Music] and then this feels a little bit too

marketing like an interactive structure from going from zero to fully prepared like it's kind of like what would go on your website but like in a memo i can kind of just skip this um

and so it's something like that um this i like because it's feel specific community access um community events one less word always

looking to cut as many words as possible um playbook i would say customizable playbook template and then you can kind

of get all of these words gone customized preparation based on type of negotiations kind of kind of almost the same as that so maybe

you can even do that um mirror the last one because i kind of like that um and then i i like rule of threes a lot beginning immediate middle end sort of thing so i would try to come

like kill one of these because you're already so close suggestions and recommendations oh i like this one i think there's a like this is this i think you can fold this is more

interesting to me because i like this idea of this kind of like recursive like it it sells the network effect right which is like if you get more people doing this like the actual product will improve like that network effect

um i think is important to communicate somewhere um it's also integral to the playbook it wouldn't work without it so that should be the third yeah so maybe there's like

i don't know how you i'll just say it network and we can always make sound better a network of constantly improving

subject or you know you know what people use a lot they say recommendation engine uh powered by data or whatever you know and then this kind of said

something like that um i think just i also like how these kind of get shorter over time i always try to like do that so i always try to like have some sort of rhythm visually

um just to make it fun it's almost like you're designing it you know um so something like that i think really consolidates it like really makes it

snippy and snappy um and i think when you start to like do this kind of stuff in figma i think is is like having these kind of bullets i i find just makes it a lot easier to

be like oh this is kind of a feature that we need to make sure that we have right whereas if you structured it differently um i might not you might not you might sort of forget quote unquote to do that mark it

um this works i would do you know just to kind of showcase what i did um is and you kind of give an example of notion

um and why it's cool is you know say like tam or revenue uh i don't know why this title one i'm gonna hide this i hate how notion does this why they show the title by default

oh i guess i can't even hide it so i'll just say number of companies and make this some text nope okay never mind i'm going to move it over here i want to make this a number i'm going

to say number of companies rev you know let's say negotiate uh potential and let's say you charge just a has a hypothetical let's say you charge

uh take rate let's say you charge like 0.1 and let's say this is also a number or this can't be a number that's annoying

why did notion do this to me negotiation potential and let's say you have 100 companies you only need one row and let's say there's a hundred thousand

dollars and then this is gonna be tam and this is gonna be a formula and this formula is going to be the number of companies

times the negotiation potential times intake rate boom which is 10 million all right one million one million dollars right um

i just like this because it spices things up it just keeps it a little different um so yeah i was trying to try to make things look look more uh more interesting

um this is kind of interesting it's a little like i don't know if you need it again like i always find like the market can be super super

simple like the hard part is really in the problem in the solution um as i mentioned like you know this is kind of like that that mvp where it kind of is really about the starting and then at the end you have kind of a moonshot

um so maybe there's like an opportunity to make this more of a moonshotty kind of thing um which is you know like imagine a world in which everyone can negotiate so much better like that sort of thing like i

wonder what if you can think more about like what is the kind of what what do you like what like what gets you so excited about working on this right like um in terms of yeah what like

what changes in the world does if this business find success um for those for those you know kind of customers um is kind of how i would think about this um

yeah but honestly i mean this is such an obvious thing that i feel like you know this is this is kind of something like that like i think that's plenty um

you don't need much here in my opinion um yeah a lot of this comes down to problems problem solution okay

do we have time for any more no we have so we're seven minutes i mean before we finish we have questions any questions or any anything from you julie did i miss something

i think uh last week people asked the explicit assignment is to write your own memo uh where should people post that i'm thinking that we should reactivate assignments

because they're all over the place right now they're in business ideas some are in workshop questions um i would probably say that we should just let's rename assignments

to memos great um and then we can just use memos as that um great so write your memos and post them

in memos post them yeah and by the way what thomas did which i think was awesome is he basically just like posted his whole memo in uh the slack itself which is a good test like is this short enough like it should be pretty darn

short um like they should almost all fit within a macbook air screen or what am i looking at macbook pro screen um yeah

so yeah post them in there and then i will go through them this week as they come in and like give feedback as i go so just make sure that use notion preferably uh and then so i can comment and then

enable comments so i can comment on them um and i'll go through and and make some comments and highlight some red words i don't like um

but it's one of those things where like it's the little things that add up over time like i believe that like that web three memo actually like came out kind of nicely at the end but it took you could kind of see like i was struggling like i can't can't frame this the right way like you

you you kind of have to like cycle through that a lot and that is kind of like what we talked about the very beginning of the class like writing does clarify your thinking like i thought i've built this like i built this game already and i still wasn't

really able to communicate it that effectively um so it is like a really useful exercise certainly much prefer doing it when no one is watching me

um just a quick question about just scoping on the memo um if you have kind of a bigger idea that you know you know you're not gonna complete right away

right um how much of the broader vision would you include in that i mean if you could scope it down to something as small as possible right for an mvp you're kind of thinking

more about that when you when you're you know when you're working on it and maybe writing the memo and that may help but keep it short but anyway

yeah yeah i mean i don't think you need much um like i i really do love this uh tesla memo uh that elon published

um i read it and i like invested in tesla right away um imagine like my day job is running a hell crazy guy um anyway this is a great piece but you

know he like the whole point of tesla is this uh which is effectively to create zero emission electric power generation options like literally has nothing to do

with cars right um like cars is just the excuse to basically create so much demand for lithium ion batteries and solar and et cetera it's a kind of like like kind of a kickstart this this thing that needs

to happen um and so it can literally just be a sentence right um like it can be um like for example paypal it can be like oh you know we want to build a you know like the whole thing like 80 90 of it

can be something like you know we want to like create internet money or like allow people to like send money on the internet or something like that um and then like the last line can be something like if we do this we no longer need us dollars

or something you know like you can load a lot into that last kind of like uh like you know it's a it's like it's kind of like you you want to leave people hanging almost like it's almost like a

cliffhanger in a sense like you don't want to flesh it out too much nor will you be able to because like that's so far down the road that so many things will change that you won't

get there the way you thought right um but just to just just a sense of it i think is really helpful and it's it's super i don't know for i find that it's for like hiring people

and stuff like that it's really nice to have like just a little bit of like the mission right like what is the kind of the kind of thing that when you know it's fun to write memos but like when you're actually building the business you're gonna have shitty days right and

you're gonna need something that kind of gets you through the hard three six nine months right um and that sentence is really gonna that's when it matters right in the context of

a memo i think it's mostly to make sure that people don't get too stuck on like what we're building now right um though definitely i would say most people i talk to are too stuck on

the 10-year vision and not stuck enough on what we're building today so i think it's definitely if you're if you pick one or the other i'd rather you know people bias way too much so like what's the problem what's the solution today

um but i think just a couple sentences that just kind of and it's also just like i like hearing people's thinking on it like how you know there i do sometimes meet with people and they're like i want to build this and it's like okay cool like this

is going to take you like a year like what comes next and they're like i don't know and i'm like okay that's kind of weird i mean there should be something you know like generally there should be most people

when they pitch you an idea for something they're excited about like they have like sequels planned you know even though they like they haven't even written the first chapter of their first book they're like they're telling you like the

the you know like the kind of similarion kind of you know world building and i'm like i just want to know what like your first you know what your main character does on the first page um so yeah anyway so if you're like

building something just for yourself like you're not going to pitch investors right away you know i mean it sounds like you can you know skip a lot of the restaurants yeah

you know exactly yeah i would say if you're you know like the reason i even write that stuff is just to clarify like do i want to work on this problem

uh is the solution like interesting enough like what is the hook um like you know when you see a memo that's been like edited to crap it's kind of like when you see a movie

or you read a poem and you're like that took you five years like what like it's because you don't see all the trial and error and trial and error that got you to like the citibank logo or

whatever right like you missed that um you just get like the final answer um and so yeah sometimes like just having the memo is like a nice like i i have memos for lots of things and i

just like looking at them every once in a while and being like oh did my thinking evolve on this and like you know even the flex on my like i'm still you know improving it all the time um

and then when i want to write the blog post to announce the thing it's going to be so much easier one because i've just thought about it so much that i could almost probably write the memo from scratch without having to even look at it but also because i would literally like the way i'm going to write that

blog post is i'm going to copy paste the memo probably into google docs and then like add some stuff and add some screenshots and that's going to be it you know um this is kind of like the amazon sort of

approach right where they kind of write the product marketing blog post first and then they kind of build a feature kind of based off of the story that they're going to tell the customer um and there's a great book on this called

working backwards um i believe um so yeah that's that's that's kind of my my approach and then i would say homework wise like write the memo put it in in

write a memo uh at least one put in slack uh as soon as you want and i'll start to critique them um and then i would say send it to a couple people

and get feedback um and see what kinds of questions people ask um you know use abcd awesome boring confusing didn't believe if you need a framework

um because people are you'll you'll also learn by the way how hard it is to get feedback from people um the vast majority of the time like this is a huge filter for me like if i get really excited about something like

i had an idea for uh an nft tattoo project that i scoped out um and i wish i had the memo but what i did is like as i as i designed the prototype i just deleted the memo because i felt like the

prototype did a better job of explaining the memo and so i just like basically the memo became like a to-do list of things i had yet to design um and then i would send it to like a

bunch of tattoo artists and every single one was like i don't care whatever and i was like okay like if you don't care then there's no you know there's no reason for me to build this um

so i just moved on um so that often happens right um and uh yeah i forgot what point i was trying to make but send it to people oh yeah send it to people you'll realize how hard it is to get feedback because

people will only give you really good feedback if they want this thing to really exist right because they're like oh wow that my life sucks i really do have that problem this would really help me so i

will spend 30 minutes like giving you feedback right like the vast majority of people will say looks good you know that's it

like or they won't respond or you know whatever um so yeah exactly you're saying you can use it in in in a community to kind of you know

uh look for you know people who you don't necessarily know that it's a problem but you may use your memo to see if it is yeah i mean like yosh you know there was that thing in the slack that

you know josh was like hey uh i'd love to you know to julie i think it's like hey can i you know i think julie mentioned like typing up some notes for the from the from the podcast or from the

from the zoom and you know like i think there's a very common approach and we'll get more into this kind of the sales kind of stuff week five um but there's this like

very common approach that's like hey i'm thinking about solving this problem for you can you jump on the phone with me or can we do a zoom meeting and i hate that i hate it i hate meetings obviously um

and yeah i just think it's like i have zero evidence that you have done any work on this problem and a memo is far better for me because it's like oh this is your thinking on this problem uh

and i can give you feedback asynchronously on it um and i will actually spend more time i hate the reason i hate real meetings is you're asking me for real-time feedback and real-time feedback is it's kind of like

hard i mean you can notice like when i'm trying to get feedback in real time it's hard because i'm like reading and analyzing and doing all these like imagine like being on the phone with someone pitching you some idea and then pitching them some idea and trying to

get feedback in real time like it just doesn't work it's just it's like brainstorming it just doesn't really work i find um it's just always going to feel forced what i think is far better is like writing that memo saying hey

uh and by the way the reason people do that is because they're scared that they're not gonna get feedback like they're that's the only way they're gonna be able to get your time for that you know um because if they sent you an email or a dm

with the memo they'd learn everything about what you're building and then they'd never return your call like they just like you never get any feedback but that's the fear that you need to deal with i mean that's the

the fear that that highlights is that you're building something that's not valuable and it's far better to realize that now than later right um as i mentioned i think last time we're in the kickoff like i love telling

people that their ideas suck right like ultra ultra inbox is just i would say not that strong of an idea at least based on the memo that i've read it's just too generic um

it's not specific enough it doesn't have a obvious like you know first set of users um the sort of hook on on a specific feature that makes it more interesting than everything else that's out in the

marketplace it would be much easier i think hearing that feedback when there's only a memo than you know a product right um but so yeah i i just find like having

uh have having a memo is like a far better filter for like do people really want this thing to exist or not um and i know like flexi like it really gave me a lot of confidence because like

people would be like hey can i send this memo to my head of ops and i'm like this product doesn't even exist like what do you what like what's the point um but it's like no this like you know like

i think he he actually does this this thing and he can give you even better feedback on it um you know like can i pay for this like that's often i send a memo to somebody and like they'll say can i pay for this does this

exist right um like you shouldn't have to ask i think the problem with asking for meetings is like you're you're kind of asking for things that you're almost definitely not going to get you should never even happen have to ask right um

for example you should never have to ask like hey sahil do you want to invest in my product you should no one should ever have to ask me that all you have to do is say hey check out this like i wrote this memo what do you think it's my job as an invest like literally

all i'm trying to do is like deploy capital right so if i read a really freaking good memo like i'll be the one who says hey do you need money um yeah so so that's kind of you know it's

kind of like it feels almost like passive right like you kind of give them the memo when you walk away and you hope that they read it on their own terms and you know get a response to you but i think that's

like the honesty like that's kind of i think you need that you need to kind of get used to that um so yeah anyway that was kind of a long rambly word but

um bro hit says doesn't that count as research oh good one it does yeah it does

sorry we'll cut it from this from the recording life is complicated i would say that like i do i actually every time i like even

when i send it to nathan and josh um i i like was thinking i remember being like do i really want to send them this thing because i like i know that i'm going to be less likely to build it because they're going to be giving me

the feedback that's going to make me feel good about the idea and then i will never build this thing um so it was definitely a fear that i had um

when i was when i sent it to them um but i did um and yeah luckily they resonated with it and stuff but um but yeah like like did i need to do that

i don't think so um like i don't think i actually learned anything that important from them um to like i don't think it gave me that much more conviction

awesome okay all right that was a lot hopefully that was helpful next week memo or during this week oh

yes sorry yeah do the memo post in slack uh and next week yes figma um

do we want to do a poll on how many people have experience with figma and or notion just so i have a sense of it awesome

that was way too quick all the time what if you use a tool that is like figma oh that's a go um i use framer

oh i haven't actually messed around too much with framer i think that counts um so i do i'd be actually it would be cool to have your perspective on actually because i'll ask you questions on like how framera might approach certain

things and maybe you could even give it like a brief demo a framework if you want as part of it sure yeah awesome um yeah balsamic is also pretty cool lots of uh yeah we can definitely

discuss like i have my own preference on stack right um but uh it'd be cool to hear what other people use miro has come up a little bit um i'm sure there's other other news i

think maya mentioned that she uses something else too i think she's not here anymore but she mentioned oh yeah awesome yeah so cool and next time

there'll be a little bit of procreate drawing but it'll be mostly screen sharing and on my laptop and doing figma stuff um and hopefully people will be we'll all collectively be able to take

um our different memos and start turning them into prototypes which will be pretty fun