YouSaid · the spoken record

Kareem Amin

lines on the record: 59
first: 2026-06-16
most recent: 2026-06-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The one that's coming to my mind immediately I had already mentioned actually, but it's a few friends have come up to me before Clay succeeded and were like, hey, you don't need to do anything. We just love you anyway. And then I realized, I don't care what they're doing. I don't care what they achieve. I just implicitly like this person and love them. And knowing that I had that and then I could give that back to myself as well without any achievement because I think my childhood wounding was feeling like I must achieve in order to have care and love. And I was like, I actually don't need that. It created a ton of clarity where I was like, I'm doing things because I want to, not because I need something from it. So I think Clay is just the output of a lot of thoughts and things. And we're doing it in a way for me, I hope I'm not attached. I'm not attached because I don't need anything from it. I wanted to evolve.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You need some grieving, you need a possibility to move on. We don't have support for that for companies. And I think it's because no one talks about endings.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their former selves and then complain about it when we're incentivizing everybody to scale no matter what. I wake up every day and I think, how do I make more clay? I literally think about it. It's consuming all of the CPU time in my brain. In my friend group, they're all thinking about this because I just keep talking to them about it. So if that's what's happening, should we set up some kind of structures to be like, well, what happens when you scale everywhere? I don't just care about scaling. I care about how is this creating value in the world. People are talking about there's, I don't know, 1500 unicorns if some of them are zombies. How can we help them?”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An initial put a computer on every desk. I remember that mission when I was a kid. You did put a computer on every desk. But now the mission is devices and services and do cool things. Once you achieve a mission, the idea of a company, I think, started in the 1500s. I think it was the East India Company or something. So you get together for a purpose and then you do it. And then should you disband or should you keep like the minimal number of people? I think the crypto people have had some of these ideas. Okay, you built the layer, now you move on to the next layer. I do think it's worthwhile as all this disruption is happening to start thinking about the new ways of doing this. I'm curious about it. A death doula for companies is, hey, if your company has achieved its mission, should we help it pass? Maybe it should have children and people come out and they do cool stuff, but maybe we can institutionalize these things rather than trying to scale things that become zombies or become worse versions of”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm just like, why are we not talking about whether it is good to scale every business? People talk about it a little bit in this really boring, super worn out way of should you raise VC capital or should you bootstrap completely non-interesting ways of talking about it. But it's like if you had a donut business, should you try to scale it? What does scaling it entail? What do you lose when you scale it? Should we be as a society incentivizing all businesses to scale? And we all know this problem, which is like, hey, this restaurant was really good. Now it sucks. So because I think there's a life cycle to things and maybe part of this meditation retreat and thinking about the death thing, I've been thinking about like, is there a life cycle to companies and should we just be okay with that? I'll pick Microsoft for a second because I think it's an easy example, but hopefully they don't hate me for this.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will sue you, or customers will lose faith in you. I really feel like companies are built through rules of thumb where I'm like, hey, how do you scale from 100 to 300? And then I talk to five people who've done it and they tell me. And by the way, I've done things that are completely the opposite of that. And it's worked. And the reality is back to the risk, when you're going from 150, for example, to 300 people, you don't want to take the risk of doing something new. You're like, these people did it. But then you're going to get the same problems that they had. So many people told me there would be all these weird problems scaling 50 to 300 people. None of them happened. We have some other things that happen, but I didn't have the typical problems because I didn't do it the typical way.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because it wasn't perfect. It's always about someone else. It's obviously not true. There are times when my management skills weren't there to handle this particular person or the company itself was not working. And so it creates a really bad vibe for everybody inside. When things are working, things are working. When things are hard, only a few people can handle that. The reason I'm saying these things, by the way, is I'm like, these are the things that I think are actually interesting. Part of my experience of building a company was I just wanted to know through building it and being given the hard choices of how to relate to people or given a quick profit versus a long profit, what would I do and like what's the experience that other people are making these choices are facing? And I think we're not talking about these things because the risk is too high, right? Like if I talk about what I'm doing in a company and how I'm treating people, maybe someone”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The CEO, so it's not a good situation for you. It doesn't make sense. And even if you think you can get there, I'm taking responsibility for that. I'm not saying that this is rational even. It's just, I can't do it. And that's it. In that case, it doesn't really make sense for you to continue working here. And I want to share that with you because I want to be like direct and clear about it and also own up that this is my call. Like any relationship, there's no compulsion. A lot of people actually really appreciate that and are just like, okay, I get it. I wish that it was different, but it's not. So I'm going to do something else. Most times if someone's leaving, what are they worried about? They're worried about what are you going to say in the future to other people. So I tell them, hey, if someone calls me up, I'm going to say it didn't work in these ways, but I think these are their strengths. Here are the gaps that we have in our organization, then support them. How do you not think about that? When I call up a reference, it's like, can you tell me what was wrong with your company at the time?”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're asking someone to leave clay, which I think is a difficult thing. You can do it in a way, I think, that in most cases, as long as the person is in a shared reality with us in a way that is based on clear communication. Do you think it's working here? I don't for these reasons. What do you think? And maybe you're like, no, it is working. And I was just saying, okay, let's bridge the gap because we can get to a place where it's like, I don't want to be giving you negative feedback every single day. That's not fun for me. I can't imagine that it's fun for you. So then why do you want to be here? And here are the gaps between us. At one point, I told someone, hey, listen, I've lost faith in the ability.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not that all problems are communication problems. It's that we might have a disagreement or different needs, but often we can't resolve it because we're making assumptions about each other. We're doing all kinds of game theory things about what would happen if you did this if I did that, rather than being able to like explain clearly. And even within that, I think it's kind of like in negotiations. You might have different strategies, but my strategy is to be as clear as possible about what I want. What I think you want, and then what the possible options, assuming that you are really intelligent can read and have access to the same information as me, I need to know what you want and what are the options available. And then we might still disagree. But at least we are disagreeing from a place of clarity rather than from a place of misunderstanding. That's very, very difficult to do. Let's say”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Support. I also rely on so many things. But I think what material abundance gives you is the reality also of your time back. And I'm choosing, for example, to build this company. I don't have to. I don't need anything. I don't need it to succeed more. I don't need to make more money or whatever it is. I'm choosing what I want to be doing with my time. And that goes back to that truth part that's really empowering. I can make my own choices and I can test things out in the world and see if they work or not. I'm not scared or worried about what happens. But I also needed to have that point of view in order to get here. Having the opportunity to like choose what I do with my time and to take bigger swings, that feels really important. And then it's like, what responsibility do I owe back to society?”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My experience is the initial thing that I had thought is true is that if you're not feeling whole in yourself, there's no amount of wealth that fills that. It doesn't change that because it's a continuous competitive gain. It's a loop. I was telling someone, if you want to raise $100 million, you need to first feel like you don't need that, paradoxically also that you already have that. In order to raise money, you need to be like, I have $100 million in my bank account. How does that feel? Act accordingly because you need to act like you don't need it and you have the confidence. Maybe my own core wounding is I have this super heightened self-reliance where I feel like I don't need other people and I can do everything myself, which is partially why I think it's helpful to be an entrepreneur. And what I've been doing is dialing that down to be like, no, I'm interconnected with people. I do need people. In fact, I need help.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Right now I feel pretty clear. And within the scope of what we're doing, what the vision is, we're helping every company in the world find who their best customer is and find more of them and accelerate that.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Leave the space for the opportunity to discover. If you do have a vision, you should be clear about that and clear how confident you are in that. And if you don't have a vision, I don't think that's a problem. I think you can take the next step and allow the vision to come. The Native American traditions, there are things called vision quests where you go and fast for a few days and you're asking for a vision. Sometimes you need to do things in order to get the vision of what you're supposed to do. And by the way, in companies, it also could change over time. So you might have a vision and then either the vision is wrong or a lot of companies who started five, six years ago that are confused now because things have changed. Well, it's time to change the vision. And you don't need to settle on a new one immediately. You can say, hey, we don't know what we're doing right now. And we can take the immediate next step in what we're doing right now and wait to receive that vision.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A story that is not true about the nature of discovery and how it happened. And I think we do a disservice to everybody when we go back and retell the story in a way that is not honest because it confuses the people who are on the path of figuring it out. So for me, a much more honest version, let's say you're starting a company and you don't know what to do. So many people have that problem. You're like, okay, I want to start a company. I don't even know why I want to start a company, but I feel like this is what I want to do. You don't need to have a reason. And then you can go and start doing things. And once you find something, you can be like, okay, this is interesting to me now. All the stories of greatness are like, I was 13 and I saw this one thing and then I dedicated my whole life to it. And I think that happens. And it also happens in other ways.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think when we were having that discussion too, my instinct is to go one level deeper, or at least that's how it's coming up in me. Let's turn it back to one of our statues, truth. You need to say the truth. So if you don't have a vision, then you don't have a vision. If you do have a vision, then you do have a vision. I think it's important to not say something that actually isn't happening. That's my answer to that, is that I do think ultimately you need to have some guiding principle or some compass, but you don't need that at all times and you don't need to force it. If you just know what the next step is, you should take the next step. And sometimes things happen in all kinds of ways. Most of medical discoveries are complete coincidences. So many of the most advanced things, the cosmic microwave background, complete coincidence. You couldn't have gone out and said, I want to discover the cosmic microwave background. There's so many of these things. And so I think we're telling ourselves.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thing that I made and give it to you when you need it. If I really, truly was like, hey, what's the idealized form of this? That's what it is. It's raining. I bring an umbrella. You were like, great. Thank you. That's what you actually want to get to. And I think there's a place where I made something, especially as people make so many new things and you happen to need it and it's very niche and I'm able to find you and give it to you without necessarily manufacturing that desire in you. Ideally if you need something, we can get it for you because we happen to be making it. We're thinking about all of the creative ways to figure that out.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We use this a lot, bring it back, I guess, to the business. I'm telling people, hey, we're not building a microwave. Microwaves are useful, but they're commoditized. You just go and say, hey, one minute, heat it. It does what it needs to do. There's no difference between most of them. But we're building a guitar. With a guitar, there's just six strings and 12 frets. But you could spend your whole life just getting better at that. And you can only be playing one style of music. And it's still new. If you bring that to sales or go to market things, it can feel like a crazy stretch if you actually respect that discipline and be like, hey, what is the ultimate version of sales, marketing or customer success? That's why it's”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Minor and major chords. And initially, that was resisted. People are like, what the hell is this? This feels off. But then you add the seventh where you get jazz. And people were like, that's unacceptable. Like, this is not music. And then eventually you start to add more and more tones. So this was arguing for in Western music, there's 12 notes. But in Arabic music or Indian, there's 24. And there's other scales that you can use that have even more tones. You can use microtones. Now that you have electronic music, you can make any kind of sound. I think this idea of accepting more sounds as music is actually a helpful product principle, just a way of being where you can start to think, what are all these other ways of being that you think are off that actually could be productive or useful if you put them in the right context.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about the different forms of endings and learn from that. Some songs end as just like repeating and it goes down in volume. Some things end suddenly. It's like a whimper or intensity. You can think of these as different ways to end something. Another one that I think is really cool, this was an essay that I read that was called The Emancipation of Dissonance, which first of all is a really cool title, but it was theorizing the history of music as a history of accepting more sounds as music. So in the beginning, it was just maybe drumming. First, it's like the tarik you play the C and then the C and Octave above. And then it was adding the fifth. That's why it's called the perfect fifth. A lot of Baroque music had that. And then people started adding the third, which is what creates chords.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Starting a company or not, well, what about all the people that I'm going to fire And so many crazy things genuinely happen as soon as you have a large number of people, you're dealing with a microcosm of humanity. You're running a mini society. So it was like, hey, we can look to music.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I was reading this piece that was super interesting for me. And one of the key things I think with music versus other things is time. You can't listen to a song without time. Time is actually a core component and silence is a core component, like the spaces between things. So it's a good reminder that those are like fundamental things that you have to work with. It's like very Zen where the room isn't is where we are. If this room was full of things, we couldn't sit in here. And we only think about making things. We don't think about removing things. And we don't think about things unfolding. I think video is also like that. But a painting isn't. You can see it all at once. So I think about narrative. How are you telling the story? How are you bringing people along with you on the journey? You can't tell everyone everything all at once. It's overwhelming because you've had time to process. They haven't. This piece that I was reading, it was talking about endings. We always think about beginnings, but we don't really think about endings.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm a dilettante musician, but I actually just started a band. I was talking to another famous musician who was calling me because he's starting a company. And I'm like, wow, I'm going the opposite direction, man.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That this is magic. A lot of these things that were sitting in front of are still magic. It's pretty wild. And to re-enchant the world again and not make it like this boring place where you think you understand how it works because you really don't. So I think they're doing simple things to reignite that feeling of wonder. And I think if you take that feeling of wonder actually in your everyday life, you're a more friendly person because you're not like, oh, I understand how this person works or I understand how this is, you're like more curious. It makes me more curious about our customers. It makes us interact in a more pleasant way because we're like, oh, there's stuff to learn here. I think what I've been actually getting from this magic stuff is been like remembering what it feels like to be like, I have no idea how it is working. I can't even begin to comprehend how to think about it. I know that it's a trick, but I can't figure it out.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, I think the trickster thing is the thing that's been a common thread between this. There's this place called 69 Atlantic that we had been going to like, it's a small speakeasy magic close-up magic. There's like 23 spaces in the back of this bookstore. And they get like world-class magicians every month. And the thing that I remember from these really incredible magicians is it's not just a slate of hand thing. There's a storytelling component. It's kind of wild. A lot of them are telling a story of like a deep understanding of how your mind works or how the world works where they're like, hey, I'm showing you this thing. And really what they're trying to do is to spark curiosity. We're going to do something about this at Clay. We're calling it reenchanting the world. In a world where there is AI, it's literally magic in some form.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's why people love the brand and the company. It's authentic to us, but it's also honest. It's trying to really cut through and be like, hey, we think you'll be interested in this and we're not hedging. I think a lot of times people are authentic but hedging. So they're not really saying what they want to say because they're afraid of the consequences.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. I think I was in SF at a party and someone was telling me that they were going to go to this clowny workshop. And I was like, what is that? I think of it as like edgy improv. Those kind of like four types of clowning, physical clowning, which is the one you would imagine when you think of clowning. There is emotional range. Let me make you happy, that make you sad, then make you happy so you can feel the full range. There's the gester, which is like telling truth to power. Then there's the trickster, which I think is pretty interesting, which is how do I tell you like spiritual truths through jokes. You realize, hey, everything does change. That's like a truth about the world, but I get you to experience that. We are really into magicians at Clay. We incorporate it into our events or things that we do. And we take risks. Our brand takes a lot of risks, way more risks than I think general B2B brands.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People were like, this person was good, this person was bad. Were you good in the moment that we needed you to be? You might also be super skilled, but you just didn't perform here. I've had people who are incredible. I know they're incredible and they couldn't perform here for a variety of reasons. And they've gone to other places and done a really good job. So I think it's important to be nuanced. There are some other things where I think some of the things that people have covered about us in the past is I like clowning, for example. I discovered clowning.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is really skilled or has some star potential, we stay with it for way longer than most. Everybody talks about hiring fast and firing fast. We've had people who nine months in were floundering and we're like, this person is excellent. I know they are, but what's going on here? Is it the role? Is it the context? Is it our decision making that's limiting them? Eventually we find an amazing spot for that person and they become a superstar. 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, this person might be really special, but we just can't create the conditions for them or they're too far away. One thing that I've talked to my co-founder of Verunet is like, we're never pissed off when someone doesn't work out. We're like, hey, you're just, we're here and you're here maybe along the journey one day you'll get there, but you're not getting there fast enough. You don't have what we need at this moment. So I don't even have an opinion on whether you're good or bad.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About their personal development, but their concrete ways in which it shows up. One way is that we overinvest in things that people typically underinvest in. We've overinvested in recruiting, in brand, in content, in community building. We've hired people who are very overqualified in some of these roles, who are doing it for the first time. For example, we published an article about this with one person who was an early employee, Mishti. She took a content role. She would have never taken a content role. It's typically kind of not the most highly paid thing in a company or it's extra. And we compensated her like a PM and we're like, go do it. So we take those kinds of risks and then we stick with it. I think another thing, by the way, with risks is when you couple risks and courage, the next part is commitment. You actually need to kind of follow through to see what actually ends up happening. You can't just quit in the beginning. We take that seriously. And if we see some...”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, there are some unusual ways in which we run the business, but also I think it's important to be careful of how much you push ideas onto other people or project onto them your beliefs and also to remember what context you're working on. It's almost like telling a story. If this is the normal way to run a business and then you think that this completely bizarro way over here, you also need to take the steps to tell the story. And I think it's the same in like product development. I can't just give you a product that you have no context for, you don't even understand how to interact with it. It's like, hey, these are my personal beliefs and my interests that are underlying some of the normal activities that we do. And then there's adjustments that we make. I'd say the first and most important way is that it's a felt experience in the company of how we treat people and how we think.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If we go back to capital T truth, it's understanding that. And then I understand why in philosophical traditions or even in religions, they're like remembrance and can get that momentary understanding, but then remembering it in the moment when I'm making a decision about my business or about like my personal life is very tricky. But I do think that that is what's necessary for us to get to the next stage of what's interesting in the world. There's so many mysteries, so many interesting things. And I feel probably like many other people that were squabbling in circular ways around the same nonsense. My real anger is like, what are we doing? We're wasting our human potential. We're wasting our time.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's still like niche. It used to be kind of like a common thing supported with religion. But to me, what was crazy wasn't the idea. It was the experience of really feeling that. And then knowing that when I hear something in Buddhism that's just freedom of all beings or knowing that the suffering of one person is the suffering of everyone. So back to the justice thing. Well, I can't solve everybody's problems. And in fact, that would be hurting me to try to help someone when I don't have capacity, but to really know every single person, they're carrying it for me rather than they fucked up or they screwed up and I'm better because I worked hard and did X, Y, and Z.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard to describe because it's an experiential thing. I think it was a momentary experience of like this understanding what matters or something like that because I felt like, oh, I'm connected to all things, really bizarrely, just feeling like, hey, I am a component or like a part of this whole thing. And I'm connected to all things and they all matter. I had kind of this thought of one, I'm no better and no worse than anyone else, but also it made me feel like this real empathy when I see someone who's suffering. I'm just like, oh, they're also me. I empathize with them as if I was them. I'm like, this is actually me. That's kind of like a really out there thought or a belief.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thinking about the future is the death drive. And so I immediately felt back in my own body in the moment and felt the boredom of where I was. And I was like, wow, this is such delicious boredom. I finally got that insight, which is I'm so grateful to be bored right now because it's so amazing. I also realized that I have this scarcity, like food scarcity. I was thinking constantly about food and where am I going to eat? And then I just had this one pee and it exploded in my head. I was like, this is too much. I can't. But I realized that I haven't accumulation tendency where I'm like, where's the food going to come from? And in the company, I notice I'm like, where's the next ARR going to come from? Now I'm aware of that. And I'm like aware of when I have enough. And then I can take more risk. I don't need to accumulate something that's way beyond actually what we need.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whereas in non-dual traditions, it's called the direct path. And in the direct path you meditate on the space between the breaths, or you ask the question, who am I? A very frustrating question. I would say I would not recommend it. But anyway, I'm doing this thing. On the fifth day, I have like this big insight where I'm like, I figured it out. I got it. Then on the seventh day, I'm like, okay, well, what now? I start imagining going back and telling my friends about this insight, but I'm like, oh, I'm not here. I'm just imagining the future. I kept wanting to go towards the end. And then I had this big flash of insight that I try to remember. But it said, whenever you're picturing the future or anticipating the future, it's kind of like Freud's death drive. The only thing that happens in the future is you die, the far future, whatever it is. And so you're accelerating that. And as soon as I had that thought, it's kind of the death drive.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had one time where I remember when I was much younger, I was like, oh, I want to make a lot of money, and then I'll be a philanthropist. And I'm like, is that actually useful? There are a lot of philanthropists. Is it working? Are they actually impacting the world? Could we move faster in some other kind of formula or like setup? Or is it just that I want the control to pick the causes that I want? Maybe one more thing on the death thing that I think is kind of interesting was like my own insight that I had. I went on this 10-day silent retreat a while back. I thought I was going to just go think it was not that. It was kind of like a spiritual experience. It was called Herodaya, not like a Vipassana. Their approach there is like a non-dual approach to meditation where typically you kind of like”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“World, if I was able to do that, and then thinking like hey, you can succeed and create a lot of damage in the world. I think a lot about death on your deathbed, like what are you thinking? How does it feel in that moment if you had a moment to reflect? How do you judge yourself? And there's like the experience of every day and living a life that you feel is worthwhile on a day-to-day basis. And there's also like, how did you impact the world if you did impact it? And I wanted to make sure that I felt like I really grappled with that correctly and I didn't just try to accumulate resources and just be like, hey, I did something big. I accumulated some resources. It does go back to this like justice principle. It's like if you're going to do something big, you need to kind of think about the consequences of you taking that role because it's just a role.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, I think the introspection is a journey to kind of understand why ambition. So I was suspicious of my own ambition. I was like, what am I trying to get out of this? Part of why the company took some time to take off was because I was grappling with that. And that led me to investigate which parts of me are trying to kind of be expressed through this. And that was just my own personal interest. I just found that I couldn't just do something without understanding my motivation for it because I was looking at people who are further ahead in my field. If you're a great business person or you built a great company, I was like, do I want that? I think it's also coming from like valuing my time and myself. I was having this experience where I'm like, what if I took myself really seriously? You could take yourself lightly and just be like, well, these are just thoughts. I want to do something big. So do other people or take it really seriously and be like, why do I want to do that? What would I actually offer?”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A shared environment, that responsibility is on you. I think that the more you make and the more successful you become, it is part of your responsibility back to all of us to think about what you're doing, that you're our representative now, and you're not a completely independent actor. And in fact, we have the power to pull some of that stuff back from you.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of understand the motivation here because one thing I talk a lot about here and have thought for myself is the amount of work that doing versus meta-analysis can sometimes flip. So you should be like 90% of the time doing and then 10% of the time meta-analyzing. At work, we've had this happen a lot. And I talk to the team a lot about it, where people are like, hey, what is going to happen in one year? Why are we building this feature instead of that feature? And I'm like, is that stopping you from taking the next step in your job? If not, then you're procrastinating. My sense is his conversation around that. I think his example was Walmart. If you're trying to build more Walmart, yes, you should always be thinking about wake up in the morning, build more Walmarts. But at some scale, when Walmart is affecting all of us, if you don't think about why you're building Walmart or what more Walmart's do to us or to...”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great negotiation leverage because there's nothing you can give me. I feel great. I'm already complete. From there, you can still create. I think people are misunderstanding, tremendously misunderstanding this, in my opinion. If we were in a post-scarcity world, no one will do anything. Everybody will just be hanging out. I was like, have you been to Birding Man? People are still doing stuff and they have things. You can create from a place of wholeness. And in fact, you will be less destructive in the world. I think you'll create less damage. We keep thinking here like, hey, let's think of our customers. What are we trying to give them? Why do people keep saying customers first? It's because when you're in a company, things start to happen where it's like this person's thinking about their career or this person wants to please this other person. They're not thinking about the customer. They're just thinking about their internal dynamics. The more whole you can be, I think the more risks you can take and the more courage you will have.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That right now. And now I can start to take real risks where I'm thinking about the business and not trying to fill this particular need. VCs have this common trope that is, hey, we invest in someone that has a chip on their shoulder or has some kind of lack that they're trying to fulfill. And this is common across creative work. The trope is like, you're depressed or you're anxious or whatever and you're trying to fill that and you're actually afraid to lose that depression or anxiety or whatever it is because you feel like you'll be less productive or creative through my journey. I had this moment where I was like, you know what? I'm not going to create from a place of lack anymore. And I went around probably pretty annoyingly telling people, I have everything I need. I'm good.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. I think in order to do that, you just need to understand your mind and your motivations more and be more honest about them. So again, back to the saying simple things honestly. It's very hard to admit to yourself, I think, why you're doing something. Even if you look at the narratives for companies, none of them have any relation to the motivation of the founders, and we don't talk about that in public. For me, for example, it's like, why am I building a company? Do I think that I will be more liked or loved if I do something that is a success, a world-class level? Can I get that now? I've had friends come up to me though, like, hey, I don't care if you succeed or fail. I love you. And I was like, wow, that's actually helpful. I didn't think it would be, but it's feeding some part of my desire must be fueled by that. But I can get.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I actually felt like I related and we're obviously in a much smaller spot. But even early on when we raised our Series A, I remember having that sensation of if you're doing this to get adulation or to get prestige or to make some money, there's no end to that. It's kind of like an empty thing that passes. The only judge of anything is yourself and your own self-respect. You have to be doing it so that you feel like what you've done is interesting and worthwhile. When you're an ambitious person, your judgment is actually way higher than anyone else because you know everything that you're thinking and you know everything that you've done. So I know everything that I'm thinking about or doing and my standards are higher than anyone else.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It feels like it's some intuitive knowing for myself that I'm a long-term greedy person. One of the things we talk a lot about to the company is like, how do you be long-term greedy? And I think the only way to be long-term greedy is to stay in integrity for people to feel like there's justice all the way along. I think it's also just like a belief in yourself. You don't have to cheat in the short term to get something. You're going to win. Let's say you're playing a soccer game. You feel like you cheated or like this wasn't fair and then you won. It doesn't feel as good. I did hear your interview with Brian Jeski's the statement he made around getting to $100 billion and”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People with respect and fairness all the time in every situation, whether you're hiring them or firing them or you're disagreeing over what they should be doing. So I think that that maybe is loads fueling this democratization. Even people are stable in a place where they feel like they have the opportunity to get what you've gotten to as long as there's some fair chance for that and they're okay with what they've gotten if they feel like, hey, this is what's available to me at the moment. This is just kind of like an internal thing that I've had. I used to play soccer even on my team. If I feel like we fouled the other team and we could get away with it, I would have like a really weird thing of integrity that feels off.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Time like exploring that, and to do that, I feel like we need stability. So to get stability, I think you need to have justice between people. I think there's no stable way for some group of people to dominate others. It just doesn't work. No matter how strong you think you are, the other person is a tremendous nuisance if they feel like they're treated unfairly. So there's no stable configuration around that. And if you're thinking about the economy or like countries, you can't bluster your way out of it. You can't say we're the strongest. Even when I'm saying that, I have to remember when I have power over people, you tend to be like, they must do what I want because I want them to because I control this. It's just not a stable configuration. You can get by for a little bit and then you get tremendous pushback. So I think that having the value of justice, one thing I think about is like, how do you treat?”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's take justice for a second. I want to live in a stable society that allows me to kind of like have the time and space to think of things. I think the world is pretty crazy. I went to see this movie called Stop Making Sense. It was downstairs in the movie theater. I had a joint that I was about to smoke and I was trying to light it up, but I didn't have a lighter. I asked a guy who was standing there. I was like, hey, can I borrow your lighter? And he was like, sure, can I ask you a question? I was like, yeah, of course. And he was like, what is this? And I was like, what do you mean this whole thing? He was like, yeah, what is this? And I was like, well, that's a big question. I think like the world is a mysterious and amazing place. And I feel like there's so much to know. We're just starting to make progress on how wonderfully weird it is. And we should be spending more.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who went to a good school, then went to YC, and then was telling me about his company. And he's like, we serve sales and we serve recruiting. And I was like, you have to pick one. This is where you're actually providing value. In picking, committing yourself to serving some group of people in some specific way. For me, at least my definition of risk or how I've experienced it is you need to not know what's going to happen genuinely. You're going to discover something new. I think it needs to be coupled with a high potential for shame. Needs to be you can fail in a way that feels scary or maybe associated with shame. And when you're doing that, you're genuinely about to discover something new and learn from it. And that's when you can take real risk. And to do that, you then need to have many traits. One of them is courage.”
2026-06-16 · Invest Like the Best · Kareem Amin - The Unusual Approach to Company Building - [Invest Like the Best, EP.478] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source