YouSaid · the spoken record

Alexis Ohanian

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105
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2014-10-09
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2014-10-09
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1
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  1. “I'm going to buy your shirt. Mark my words right now, everyone, as my witness. I'll be the first person to buy your teespring shirt.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “So thoughtfully, and it appealed to me in a way that I got instantly just because of my own experience and were generating revenue and clearly had built something people wanted from really early on.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “Merchandise was amazing because it made a t shirt even more valuable because it felt special one of a kind. And you had this immediacy you need to buy it before it runs out. And then it also combined that with the fact you didn't need to have inventory anymore. And this was something that I fundamentally, I knew this because I had triple extra large shirts just lying around the apartment from like five years ago, like these Reddit shirts that like I just could not unload because it was a random skew. And this just happened to be a problem for me that I knew personally. In an industry that's not very sexy, right? Oh, swag, like printing stuff on a shirt. Like we've seen a lot of different varieties of this, but they had built this platform”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Not just shown traction, right? There's not only just signups, there's not only just users coming back every day, they've actually got people paying money for this thing and really have an understanding of this market. I guess that's the thing I like. They are seeing something that everyone else hasn't quite gotten yet. And it's something that personally resonates with me. And an example would be, oh, okay, so Teespring. Teespring was an immediate, like as soon as the application started going around, I was giddy because I had done t-shirts for like three or no, at that point, maybe eight years, right? I started with Reddit, did all the merch stuff for us there, Hitmunk, all the merch stuff, and then even bread pig, we did all this merch stuff. And we had actually spun up our own janky version of Teespring just because, you know, Kickstarter had sort of changed people's perception about pre-ordering and this idea of scarcity being brought.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “So I can't promise that kind of a sort of instant user base. But one of the things that I see, these companies all find ways pretty early on in their business to make money. And I realize this is a bit ironic coming from the guy who started Reddit. But hey, look, we learned this lesson with Hipmunk because we made money on day zero. And that was important because we learned how much stronger of a position you're in if you actually make revenue from the first day. And they knew pretty clearly what their goal was, like how they were going to be making money. We see this, you know, I think about this now, you know, I've pretty much hung up the investor. Now it's all, I'm not wearing my Y combinator outfit, but I still am my YC tattoo. And so I don't actually have a YC tattoo. And, you know, I think about it as I'm sitting there in the interview room for Y Combinator, I'm thinking, all right, if this company has already”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Just talking about it, you will start to see growth coming from social channels. You will start seeing growth come just organically to your domain. It's not like up. That's all you have to do. If you start with focusing on making an amazing product that people just love and they want to talk about, you're building a much better foundation for your company, then we're just going to get a product out the door subscription widgets, it's going to work, and then buy a ton of Google ads or whatever or Twitter ads, whatever the next cool thing is, and artificially build that house or that business on top of something before you've actually proven that you've really made something people want. Sure. Well, no.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “25% is. And then you dig a little deeper, and it turns out that, like, let's say a majority of it, like a significant majority of it, is coming through paid. And so founders can fall into this very seductive trap where, aha, you know, money out and money in, like, as long as we can just keep paying for it, like, don't worry, we can have enough traction to sort of get a seed round of funding one day. And it becomes a really seductive thing in an early stage company and a kind of foolish one because you still, you've kind of deluded yourself into thinking that you have demand where you don't actually. And as someone who, I mean, whether it was early stage read at early stage hipmunk, like we didn't have budget for any ads, like it was also more important that we showed that we had built a real product people wanted, that people were actually willing to talk about it. And in an age of abundance when it comes to social media, you've got no excuses. Like if you focused obsessively on making something people want, you will have natural, you know, organic. You will have people.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Well, I really think a lot can be conveyed with a raised eyebrow. It's something I really, I don't want to brag about, but I'm really good at. What are some good ways? It would be, I mean, I don't want to, I can't call it specific companies. You know what this is? I will say side note. This is incidentally a section I'm doing on the podcast so people will actually get to hear me doing this with real people. Notwithstanding actually being able to magically pull a clip out of my butt, it would be, what's the kind of thing like, all right, I have this company. We're selling a subscription. It's a subscription widget service. And they might tell me about growth rates. And let's say this is a very early stage company. And they're telling me about their growth rates. We're going to 50% week over week. I'm like, well, that's awesome. All right, where's that growth coming from? And again, this is where you get these different shades of this, right? Some founders will tell you, okay, well, 25.3%, maybe not to the 10th place, but like 20%.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “We're just going to help you get there through these kinds of principles and practices and these sort of methodologies. It's a good cop out. We don't actually have to have all the answers.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “And it's an easy thing to talk about, it's a hard thing to do, and it's a hard thing to teach. That's the other crazy thing. It's like, dude, I mean, I think part of the reason entrepreneurship is so, so hot right now, and especially voices like yourself. I think the reason people are so interested by it is because there's never really been a modern curriculum for it. You can read the old case studies and all the NBA nonsense, but like there are a lot of people right now who are hacking it as entrepreneurs and there isn't a lot of a blueprint for it. And if you've grown up pretty much anywhere, I think in the country, you probably didn't get exposed to this kind of curriculum in schooling because a lot of it's still being written right now. A lot of it can't even be written because we're still writing it. And I think that's why there's such an appetite and a hunger for it and why so many people are very quickly becoming sort of authorities on it. But a lot of what we do is really just saying like, hey, look, the brilliant idea is not necessarily going to come from us.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “When they showed up. And like, we all thought, oh, this is really cool. Hope it works out. We weren't thinking, oh, right, in five years, have more rooms than Hilton. But I've seen so many of these companies now get started. And the founders who tend to do well are overwhelmingly the ones who during office hours don't just take feedback and they push back, right? Every founder has to be determined and stubborn, right? You know, she has to think that she's going to win, that we just have to delude ourselves. A great founder, she also realizes that she can be that stubborn and that determined, but also adaptive and flexible. And so that founder comes out of office hours. And then two weeks later or a week later, whenever the next session is, not only has tested all the things we sort of talked about or launched or done or whatever, but also tried three other things and also comes back with a whole other things that they've learned and really challenged every one of her hypotheses along the way.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Just because, right, you're obsessing over a company, you're obsessing over solving a problem, you have this kind of tunnel vision, and it helps to have someone just to gut check you and make sure that you're asking yourself the questions you may not be thinking of simply because you're so intently focused. And a lot of it comes down to just basically holding up a mirror at the right time and being like, are you really focused on getting users like you say you are? Or have you been doing the exact same thing for the last three weeks and haven't actually adapted it to the fact that it has an improved conversion? The founders that I see succeeding down the road, and you could go back, and I would lucky enough, right? I was in the first batch of YC with Steve. So I remember when Drew Houston was the founder of Dropbox, was the guy who came to some of our open events and he was working on this SAT prep software, which was just a dead end startup. And I remember the Airbnb guys.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “I guess I like to come into the meeting with a sense of how, like a general sense of how the company is doing. So things like growth, things like, if at all possible, like the big looming, every founder has, there's a million things that they could be working on. But what is the big focus for the coming week? What are the one to two big things that you're considering worried about wondering? And then also just even notes from our previous meeting. And that's sort of, fortunately, that's sort of built into the software other times I'll just hack it with Evernote just for my own sort of sanity, just to kind of keep up and have a sense of things. But I find more often than not office hours are less about me saying aha, here it is. This is what you shall do, and more about me asking questions and being skeptical, and giving them feedback that they may not hear.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “No, I definitely prefer the former. I think what involves people, it's much better for me to just get it all in one burst, in one four or five hour chunk. Whereas if it's like solo work or with a sort of limited team and it's over email and other kinds of other things, I don't mind the, what's the method where you work for 45 minutes and then you're messing around on Reddit for 20 minutes and then you work for 40 minutes?”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “So thanks to amazing software that engineers at YC, it actually originally Paul Graham built, basically any portfolio company can come in and request office hours with any one of the partners. And so we as partners schedule blocks of times. We just block off whatever four hour, five hour chunks in a day or whatever, one hour chunks in a day when we're available for office hours, just like back at college. And startups can slot in to take those times and either show up and do kind of like an assembly line. I mean, it's not that soulless, but do that kind of setup. It's not literally on an assembly line at a cafe or at a YC or over Skype. I've got notes ahead of time based on previous meetings we've had and they've got their latest sort of issues and stuff that help me prepare. And we just get to it and start talking about whatever they're working on.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Or what have you. And it's just a good time to be talking through startup problems, having these kinds of office hours with companies. But again, like you, it's really not interesting. And I would, oh, man, I'd feel really bad for someone who had to watch that for an entire day because it's just, it's such a, I don't know. To your point, you could sit there, whether it's me alone in front of a computer for five hours or going through like five hours office hour sessions. There are a few moments where, holy shit, we hit on something and there's something great here and there are like there's a way to turn this into something special. And that was a valuable use of the time. But it's not like there was any clear indication of, oh, that was the instance it was going to happen. It just happens. I wish I could just push a button and have great shit come out on demand. Don't we all? Right?”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “And more people are asleep, so I don't think about checking the inbox and falling to that trap. And all the way, pretty much once the sun sets all into the wee hours of one, two in the morning. This is now harder to do because I have a girlfriend, of course, who apparently doesn't love the idea that I might spend, you know, say a Saturday night sitting in front of a computer from 7 p.m. until 2 in the morning. But this is life. And it's the balancing. But that's definitely when I get the solotime going. And I'll tell you though, you know, I do, I tend to stagger office hours, whether it's with YC companies or portfolio companies. Every like, say, 20, 30 minutes in the late afternoon, because I feel like, well, you know, about what time I get up in the morning. So morning's pretty much done. And there is this stride that I will find myself getting into because I'm just enough of an extrovert that it's like, all right, lunch is behind like this is everyone's got their second coffee in them.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “And you know that feeling. I love that feeling, man. It is such a drug. It's the flow. They've written books on this stuff. That is my crack. It is so incredibly addictive. And again, this is part of the reason I feel so fortunate to be able to do the stuff I do, man. Because if it's with people, okay, so if it's solo stuff, if this is mapping out, oh, I'm mapping out this podcast I want to do, or I'm helping, I had already talked to a startup and I was helping them build out a launch strategy. But now it's like Alexis time where I'm going to sit down in front of a blank Google Doc and start typing. When I don't need interact with other human beings, my go time is once the sun sets, I've always felt like basically the internet kind of calms down so my distractions are fewer.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “And really try to make sure I get those covered by the end of the day because I get into this work creep where I start knocking off really easy stuff. Like the things I shouldn't, like I don't really need to do, but I can get a little bit of mojo, a little dolphin rush. And before I know it, it's usually like noon or one o'clock and I still haven't showered. So then I'll go do that and then carry on my day. Usually it's office hours with companies or whatever stuff might be lined up. It's a very undisciplined morning and my evenings are this is why I need more Tim Ferris in my life, man. Should I be meditating in the evening or should I be doing it in the morning?”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “All for grinding coffee. And I got my little craft coffee subscription and I plowed out, make a little French press. Oh, it's great. And then usually I'll mess around, check out the front page of Reddit, obviously. And although I have been checking out a little bit of product hunt lately, and just like, I don't know, I just kind of get into my zone. I start prioritizing what I want to do that day. And this is something I've had to be really disciplined with While actually usually on Evernote, sometimes I'll write it down when I'm feeling like a pilgrim when I want to go old school and like get up my quill pen and I'm like major things to do today”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Tends to be before noon. Yeah. Like around 10. Yeah, depending on the night. And yeah, feed my cat. And then I'm a real hand grinder. We were talking about this on the Twitter. So I got broke down and got one of these hand grinders because it makes me feel like I'm closer to my coffee beans as I grind them. And I'm trying to get workouts in where I can, Tim. So my right bicep, incidentally, is huge. You're like.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “If I'm not forcing myself to exercise, it is whenever I wake up. Which is amazing. I stay, I usually stay up probably later than I should, but I wake up whenever I kind of wake up.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “Real quick, what do you think? I downloaded Headspace Because I don't know if you could tell me this is correlation or causation, but after I got back from Burning Man. I had it planted in my head that I should really try meditation. Which is not something I do at all and have never done, but I'm intrigued by it. So we're going to have to, I want to talk about that. But my morning ritual is waking up, feeding my cat, and making coffee.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “Oh man, I have not read fiction in a minute. It's mostly nonfiction. I'm trying to think the last fiction I read. I can't admit to 50 shades of gray on your podcast. So let's see. It would be... Oh man, this is really bad. Last piece of fiction I have read. It's been a long time. I didn't even read Harry Potter.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “When I was in their position, and that's good, that makes me feel good. It makes me feel like we're all making progress here. But it also just is a sense to, it's one of those things in terms of like dispelling young founders of this notion that you or I or the people they might look at and be like, yeah, they've really got their shit figured out. They really, you know, they're really cooking with bacon. We are still figuring it out. Like we're all still hacking it. And we've made tons of mistakes. And we are no different. Some of us may be a little stronger. Some of us may have some international titles in martial arts. But like at the end of the day, we're no different. And that's something I really want to get in people's heads as early as possible to not hold them back.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “And it was amazing because those guys, you know, John Carmack and Romero and the crew didn't have any funding. You know, they pioneered an entire industry. They created a genre, right? First person shooters. And all with, you know, shareware, all with a business model that was still very nascent. And they were just kind of hacking it. And they created this amazing empire. And it made us think, and Steve had lent it to me, my sophomore year, and it really made us think, well, if these guys could do it. Why can't we? And yeah, that was the big three. And actually, that was the big impetus for my own book, just because I don't know, man. In nine years in the game of startups, nine, ten years, which is still not a ton of experience. But in the last 10 years, like it's just, I still am just amazed by the founders I get to meet who make me feel like I was such an amateur.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “Well, let's say one of the bug that inspired us to have not start a company, well, kind of. It was really inspiring us to start a video game company, which didn't quite work out. But it was called Masters of Doom and was the founding of id Software. We were a huge gamers. It was one of the things we bonded over. I was a much better Quake 2 player than Steve. Let me just make that clear. He was a little better at Half-Life, but I just want to say I was much better Quake 2”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “Worked out well for them. Yeah, the first company to launch, and obviously the first sort of exit. But anyway, Jessica wrote a great book called Founders at Work, which has been around for a while. And it's just a bunch of really great interviews she did with a bunch of just OGs and entrepreneurship. I am begging her to do a second book because the first one is such a must read. And then the final one is the book that inspired me and Steve to”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “Amazing. And PG was like, all right, all right, okay. All right, we'll do it. And yeah, yeah. Thanks. Thanks, PG. That works.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “They'll be good with the internet. If you can't find it, you probably shouldn't take the class. You're probably not good enough with the internets to search for it. Yeah, CS183 Bravo, how to start a startup. So that's the class. Silicon Valley, right there, all in your brain, wherever you are in the world. That's one for sure. Gotta give a shout out to Jessica Livingston, who is one of the founders of Y Combinator, the partner who basically saved me and Steve. We were rejected from the first batch of YC. And it was her input. She basically pounded the table and said, their idea is terrible, but I like them. So we're going to let them in.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “Oh man, hold on. It's called How to Start a Startup. If you Google how to start a startup class Stanford, you should be able to find it. I am terrible with my plugs. Beautiful.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “Yeah, well, I was thinking of a few amazing scratch and sniff books from my childhood. Okay, so number one, actually, oh, perfect. So Y Combinator, we're teaching a course at Stanford this semester. And we've got some amazing guest professors all like from the YC network, just amazing founders, investors, just great people. And it's going to be available to anyone for free. It'll be podcasted, streamed, all that good stuff. So everyone should sign up right now and take that class at Stanford. You don't have to.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “I mean, I'm not, and I am a tall guy. So I was just surprised. Why are you going to pick a fight with me, man? But it wasn't, I mean, let's be clear. And I'm not like it wasn't nothing. I mean, it was a haymaker. It was a wild really thrown out-the-boxing references here. It was a wild kind of punch. It caught me in the cheek. But, you know, that Yvon Drago training obviously paid off, so it didn't hurt me too bad.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “We were just walking. He was going one direction. I was going the other direction on the sidewalk. And he's kind of muttering to himself and he just kind of slugged me. And I looked at him and he kept walking by. And I was like, why the hell did you do that? And he just looked at me and was like, I was like, all right, well”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “Oh man, this was the only time I've been punched in the face since then. And I was walking down 16th in mission at four in the afternoon. And some random homeless guy punched me in the face.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “I've never, okay, let's get real. I've never hit a person. Maybe I got into some little stupid kid fights in elementary school, but I am a lover, not a fighter, Tim. I don't know what I would do because I got Reach. Ray is not a tall man. So I've got the reach on him, but he's obviously much stronger than me. So across, here's what's sad too. I was named after a boxer. So I'm named after Alexis Arguillo, who is, my dad was really into boxing in the 80s and he was his Nicaraguan fighter, three different titles. He was a baller, good mustache, too. And I am the exact opposite. My namesake in terms of fighting prowess. But what do you think?”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  37. “And you know what? Here's the thing though, and this is something I feel like in tech in this little bubble, there aren't enough sports people who are paying attention to this, paying attention to sort of sporting life. But this is the one thing, of course, that's sort of transcended. And if everybody knows about this story now, and I really do hope, though, it gets, because I'm a diehard NFL fan. I love the NFL. And I know this is an extremely violent sport. But what the league has done, I don't want to get all political on this, but what the league has done to cover this up is appalling. And I really hope, I don't know, I really hope some good comes out of this because, you know, it's offensive. And yeah, Ray Rice is the guy punching the face now that you mention it.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  38. “Incidentally, you made that Evandrago reference for viewers who can't see me. I guess no one can because it's audio. If you've never seen me before, I look just like Ivan Drago down to the... Down to the nine pack or ten pack.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  39. “Going to be the Evandra to the startups coming to you. No, and saying no is something you have to do a vast majority of the time as an investor if you're going to be successful. And I want to be as helpful as possible. And I do genuinely, I will not feel any ill will. I would actually rather a company. We do this at YC. We would rather a company tell us on their IPO day, email, and just be like, hey, heads up, we applied in summer of 2010 or whatever. And you guys rejected us. Or I'd want them to email and be like, hey, man, we met for coffee six years ago and you didn't invest. But I just want you to know we IPO'd. And even if they want to throw a silly little animated gif in there just making fun of me for missing out, like that's great. I want to know where I got it wrong. So hopefully I can learn from it. And I would bear no entrepreneur ill will for even rubbing it in my face a little bit. But I don't want to be a part of that wall of negative reinforcement, even though sometimes you, well, a lot of the time you have to deliver that kind of bad news.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  40. “And so that guy's credit, he's provided me with so much motivation. Like that is he has fueled, I put that, I put your rounding error on our wall in the Reddit office after that meeting just as like this wall of negative reinforcement for me. And so that was then ended up being kind of valuable for me and helpful. And I still am grateful to this day that he was such a dick because it was so motivating. But I don't want to be that guy”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  41. “Who basically brought me and Steven this is early in Reddit and told us we were a rounding error because our traffic was so small. We were a rounding error compared to Yahoo. And he was like, what are you even doing here? And we're like, you invited us.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  42. “Right, because you are more likely I mean, I've started a couple companies now. It is basically the language I would want to hear. Obviously, the no isn't the part I want to hear, but everything else is what I would want to hear if I were a founder. So it's upfront, I'm passing, and here's why in a few sentences, if I can fairly concretely say what it was, right? Like, I just, I don't think you have enough traction yet. I mean, the growth numbers that I'm looking for are going to be like double digit week over week or month over month. It doesn't seem like the data doesn't show that you guys have found product market fit and try to, or maybe I wouldn't even say product market fit because I feel like that's a buzzword bingo game. But to really as concretely and concisely as possible explain like this is why I'm passing and I'm sorry and I do mean this with all sincerity. I really look forward to you proving me wrong and I really do wish you all the best because I had people who he never got I didn't name him in the book, but I mentioned the story like an executive of Yama”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  43. “There have to be more efficient ways to be scaling our knowledge. And I haven't gotten really good at figuring them out yet, but I'm always imploring folks to just to hopefully find in themselves, to just sort of realize that it doesn't really come down to one particular person. It doesn't necessarily have to start or end with one particular door that gets open from an email because there are so many possibilities and so many opportunities. And I don't know, man. I really need your help with this, Tim.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  44. “Try to be valuable because at the end of the day, I want my ideas to scale. A lot of people in our position, there's a genuine interest to want to help folks. And then to also do it in the most efficient way possible and to realize, like, look, 20 minutes with Tim Ferris might change your life, but I know that 20 minutes with me is probably not actually going to change the trajectory of something, right? Like this isn't like false modesty. I really just think.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  45. “And I mean, this is a gift and a curse. Obviously, I'm in a really fortunate position where my inbox has this problem. But yeah, you're right. Like, I'm still struggling. You know why it was a 200 event bus tour? It should not have been 200 events in five months. That is crazy. But it was because I just kept saying yes to everything. And I'm clearly not good at this. This was supposed to be my year of no. Where the default setting would be no. It's been a lot better. Certainly, you know what it has been, I think. And to actually answer this question, it's really been trying to listen to my gut, my initial impulse, the initial feeling of, yes, if I'm not like, yes, I am stoked. I absolutely am excited. I want to do this. Then it's going to be a no. Or it's going to be, let me find some other way.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  46. “I was hoping you would tell me this. I don't know. I was actually just thinking about this this morning. One of the things working with early stage companies again that was so heartwarming was I remembered back when Steve and I were starting Reddit and like no one knew who we were, no one cared. Like I woke up every morning and I didn't have a bunch of stuff on my calendar. I didn't have a bunch of people who wanted to get coffee. It was just like I was desperate for anyone to want to talk to me or hear about Reddit.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  47. “I'm only half kidding. I am not eating a waffle diet. But I'm 31 now, man, and I'm thinking about things like my health and I'm thinking about how I can be more effective with the time that I have and well-being is a huge part of it. So that's a very long answer of me just being afraid to be mortal. But get me that matrix, man. I need my singularity so I can upload.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  48. “I don't want to get too morbid, but I am afraid of my own mortality. I mean, I guess everyone is. Who am I kidding? Everyone is. This is not a unique thing. I guess my perspective on it has always been that the way I thought about it even as a little kid was when you're playing video games. Back when video games used to be hard, you would have like a finite number of lives. And when you were on your last life, it would say zero lives remaining or lives remaining zero, some variant of that. And when you're on your last life in video games, again, when they used to be hard, you played your best because you just realized there was nothing left. Obviously, this is just like life, notwithstanding reincarnation. And I had a bunch of events happen to me pretty early in my 20s that really gave me this, really imbued this perspective on me. And I know how fortunate I am to be living the life I'm living. And I'm so grateful for it. And I just want to do as much stuff as possible while I can and while I have my facilities and while I can do stuff.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  49. “It's a spectrum of it, but those are the people who I really look to and think if only, like that's a place to strive toward for me.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  50. “You've got to look at where you start on the spectrum and where you're at on the spectrum when you sort of finish. And obviously they're not finished, but where they've arrived at this point. And simply because of a life lottery ticket, my starting point on that spectrum was a lot further along than Jay's and Oprah's for all kinds of systemic reasons, frankly, beyond any of our controls. And that doesn't make my success any less cool. I'm very happy with it. But when I look at the entire scope of it, I have to be in awe and be like, holy shit, like that's next level success. And then when I think of philanthropy, I mean, you got to think of folks like Gates and Buffett for just being able to say that they're going to take this tremendous amount of wealth and in their life, especially Gates, become so, so active about finding brilliant ways to use it, to make the world suck less.”

    2014-10-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · Ep 36: Alexis Ohanian on Y Combinator, Getting Punched, and Picking Winners · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT