YouSaid · the spoken record

Matt Pohlson

lines on the record: 124
first: 2025-06-06
most recent: 2025-06-06
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

“10 year vision, but it's our 15 year vision 500 impact number one, the Fortune 500 is right now is 8 billion in revenue to be on that list. Impact number one means the number one source of charitable funds in the world outside of government. Right now that's the Gates Foundation. We think the math is on our side to be able to do both those things that requires expansion into 14 markets. I think we can do that.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fairly impatient for them. Look, there's a lot of things through this journey like I used to site copy and contract partnerships and like all these things. I didn't love all that stuff when I was doing it, but I felt like it was the best thing I could do to serve what we were doing.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is that your neurology, or is that like something you, because something happened in your childhood that has made you that way?”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can you reach up and grab that thing for me? I'm short. And I thought it strange that I'm not asked. What's the best answer you've heard of this one?”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The process with which they ideate that then goes to a room where they beat up the ideation and like stress test it and then the testing and how they learn from the episodes before. At one point we were producing 400 celebrity videos a year. And our team figured out that process was really good at learning from that process. That's why we were the only ones who did the celebrity that made it. We've committed WME, try to do it, CA, tried to do it, even Airbnb and Groupon at the time tried to do it. But that machine is why we're able to beat them. And so we learned watching that from him.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he used humor. I said this before, but we believe laughter is the shortest distance between two people. I think he used humor to raise consciousness and awareness around societal issues in a way that like if he didn't have the humor, he couldn't. I think he's incredibly articulate and balanced in the way that he looks at things. But also we didn't experience where you got to be in his writer's room for a day. And so I watched him lead and like the camaraderie and the fun that they had producing like a very stressful show day in, day out. Like that's really hard that had to react to the news and then write comedy about the news that had happened that day. Like think how hard that is. And the organizational setup that they had and the creative machine that they had, like we modeled, like I learned a lot from that to model our creative machine. And I thought that was really impressive.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course. The point is just like, I used to think the fear made it like, so I didn't have the constitution to be an entrepreneur. I would look at, you know, these famous people like Richard Branson or Oprah, a different kind of entrepreneur and be like, oh, wow, they must have always at all times knew exactly what they're doing and felt courage. And then I've met these people or others that we think that of. And you realize like, oh, they feel the same fear. They just process through it fast. And so like it's okay.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would agree with you there are more tools and there's more access to information than ever before. I think there are a lot of structural impediments built into society's value capture, regulatory capture at the top, especially in the US that makes it harder for people to get started and to move up.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Inequality of opportunity, these much differences there are seen in the world. I think we all, most humans would agree, would agree in the power of competition or the importance of competition and that if smart people work hard, they should be able to go up the ladder in society. And I think that we are making that harder and harder to do.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Netflix Because I think it's the perfect blend of science and art. Obviously, I love storytelling, I love content. They do that incredibly well. But the way they do it understands these principles, but also uses best in class technology to do these things.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That guy, yeah, exactly. And so it creates a sense of adventure. Yet he's a perfect guide for that experience. Like their products are great to go out and do that. It hits all of it in a really visceral way.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because it makes the customer the hero. It shows a moment, it shows a transformation for them, right? Like you go from someone. No one is reading, I'm already.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great product. They're incredible storytellers. They totally understand this at a fundamental level. Like you'll see an ad from them that says, be the guy with the story about the bear. That's genius. Why is that genius?”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think back to the people are more liked and different. I thought going into new markets, we were going to have to wildly customize for that market. I've actually heard people talk about this on your show, the Revolution Growth Guy talked about this. But I think, especially when you're talking about a product like they have or we have, which is like core to survival in a customer's mind, a lot of the way you communicate with people can be the same from market to market.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes In the beginning, we were doing a whole content series alongside all the celebrities and t shirts, and we did all sorts of stuff.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh man, we had these guys who basically were recruiting plaintiffs on Facebook to Suo Mays. These guys had also recently, before that, had sued Ginger Ale for not having enough ginger in the ginger, like a ginger ale company for not having enough ginger. These guys were like Harvard and Yale lawyers that were just like farming for some kind of tort that they could do, like he split in the U.S. system. Anyway, they had people suing us or like they gathered these people. They brought a lawsuit that one said both that people didn't really understand the odds. Some people thought that they automatically won and therefore like we were misleading. We're like at no point are we communicating that everybody wins. That seems crazy that the fact that people could interfere, it was a sweepstakes in the US, the fact that people could interfere for free was a problem that was following the law. Like there's just all this like crazy stuff.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you need to do that too. I don't think vulnerability is about just being totally open every time you feel any fear. You got to pick your moments. But I think the old school image of a leader, which was like General Patton, Jack Welsh, like I know everything at all times and we're going to take that hill and nothing's going to get in our way. It's not real. It doesn't work anymore. And so I think you have to be candid about when you're not sure what the answer is and when you do have concerns, you know, as a leader, you also have to be able to work past those because people can clue off your energy. That's why we practice laughter within our company. We invest in it. We hire for it. So when you get in those difficult situations, like I'm always working to be as lighthearted as possible and have as much fun as possible in the really shit times, some of our biggest laughs is when we're like, we might go to business next week and like, because then you can come to a solution faster that way because you get a little distance from the problem”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so I think so. If I want to adjust, if I want to justify, it does help you storytell. I think it helps you to see the world through the eyes of another, which I think helps with marketing and product.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just made so many mistakes in my life. It's really hard to narrow down. I'm this series of failures. I was an actor for a while. I was really bad at it.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I initially said no to subscriptions before we got to House a month. James, I mentioned Ahmit, Prem, the leaders on our team, they thought we could do subscriptions with a house every other month. I was like, no, you got to wait till this comes. Like people won't want it. They were right. I was wrong. And change the business faster.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have our yearly North Star metric. We have our five pillars of our strategy. And we have our OKRs. So it's like, how are we going to get where we want to go? Which is a strategy where are we going this year, which is our North Star? What are you going to do next? Which are your OKRs? And then your job as an individual on the team is to write about how your work connects to each of those things. By doing that, you create a coherence within an organization where then people can say no, don't do that. And we try to celebrate that. Like, tell us about a time that you said no to something. Strategy is a lot of times about what you say no to. And so they should constantly be on the lookout for things that they should not do that saves them time.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm smart enough to know there's a caveat. Because alignment saves time. We're really clear okay, this is our moonshot, this is our North Star, this is how we're getting there, and then everybody needs to be able to articulate what their role is in getting to that place. So we have them all write it out on a Google Doc. So everyone's like, this is my role connects to the strategy, connects to the North Star in this way. And by doing that, then that should enable them to say.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would say that's also been my lesson. There's this guy named General Anthony Zinny. He's a four-star general in the U.S. We did an experience with him at the very beginning. We would do stuff like play chess with a four-star general and stuff, you know, like stuff like that. We didn't get a lot of celebrities. But anyway, he ran all of troops for NATO. And so basically like he had the army, the Marines, the Navy plus whatever, how many different countries is part of that. So just think about all the different cultures that you're having to navigate. I was like, that feels like the most intense leadership challenge ever. How did you do that? And he's like, you realize that all relationships are just between two people. And each person's different. So you have to constantly kind of adjust that. Now, you create your systemic kind of messaging that, you know, is true to you, but then you have to.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's just like knowing the right amount. It's not, I think I'm generally pretty good at it because I really care about the people who work and I care about their development and I push towards that. But like finding the right amount is a constant evolution. That's where I probably spend the most time calibrating.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You mean it's we have a really good team, really smart people, really efficient. We've made mistakes on overhiring before.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an efficient business, but we're bringing on more people, but more senior people, but we're still like a pretty tight group in terms of how we operate. And so that.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. We have another like almost 52 contractors that are doing production. So you could say our company is really 109 people, but it's pretty...”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's mostly around people's decisions because people are just hard. There's never kind of a right way or wrong way to do things. So I'm constantly adjusting. You know, we have our virtues that we're very serious about living and that we reinforce in one of them is seeking offer feedback. Another was raise the bar. And so I'm constantly trying to figure out the right cadence of that. I could give feedback every day to every single person if I wanted to, but that would probably be overkill. And so how do you continue to raise the bar by also understanding when people are like maxed out? We're a very small team. We're only 57 full-time people at that revenue. So it's like.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That keeps it real, man. Yeah, sure. That got syndicated everywhere. I remember reading that. Was that from your show? Yeah. That's hilarious That came up at our board meeting. That's funny.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot of reasons to not go public. You know, you don't have to deal with the volatility of the yen carry trade, reducing morale in your business. And if you're a stripe or your SpaceX, then you have access to liquidity in ways that are pretty similar to being public. Not every company, though, is Stripe or SpaceX. It's still the most efficient way to, in most impactful way for most companies, to get liquidity for their investors and their shareholders. It's still on the margin brings down the cost of capital. It still can be a branding moment for some companies that is important in terms of their international expansion. It's more of a question than it once was, but it's not everybody are those companies.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think being bigger when you go public is really important now. I've watched a lot of companies that were in relatively small market caps. You can just, you're better set up to weather the increased volatility of the world and that volatility is only going to increase and the nature of the markets leads with retail investors and everything else leads to increased volatility.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, absolutely. It's an obsession. Yeah. I mean, it's the way their tax system is set up. It's the most efficient way to build wealth. And so that's why you have that.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's obviously a lot of reasons that it's not the obvious choice, it's not very close, it's not the biggest market. But this has been such an extraordinary success here that we wanted to remove as many variables as possible. So language, obsession with property, the regulatory population density, even though Australia is a much larger country, 83% of the population lives on the East Coast. The distance from Melbourne to Brisbane is almost identical from London to Edinburgh. And there's been proof that that's really work there. So that's the other thing that's really helpful. If you're doing something and it's not working, if you know that other people have done it, you least know that it's your execution, not some kind of fundamental lack of demand in the market. So we'd rather have competitive risk than demand risk. So that's why we chose that.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The best way to think about our business is like a third, a third, a third. So a third goes to VAT and charity. So 16% to VAT, 17% to charity. Spend about a third on prizing. So the house plus the taxes, we cover all the taxes for the winter. We cover all the furniture. We give them $250,000 to move in.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think deep down, I believe I had the potential. There were so many times along this journey where I was like, we are fucked. Like, if you would have told 10 year ago me or the five year ago me, like we were here right now, he would have been like, what are you talking about?”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I totally agree. I think also a lot of the things coming out of universities are really hard to commercialize. A lot of the biotech, a lot of the AI advancements, like that commercializes way faster. There's a lot less impediments. So there should be ways of inflecting that too.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't have a ton of preconceived notions coming. I've loved building in the UK. I think there's great talent here. I think there's great educational institutions that create great talent. People are very motivated by the collective. You get a lot of immigrant talent, so you get a lot of different ways of thinking. I think it's a great place to run a business. I think it's a very dynamic. London is incredibly dynamic city. It's the only city in the world where you have a relevant center for politics, a relevant center for entertainment, a relevant center for finance that are within a mile of each other. And so that creates a dynamism. I know all the narratives now about UK and Europe are sinking into the ocean, but like, I just don't experience that.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I used to like 100%. I don't, I'm much better now. I can't say I'm totally that I totally separate those things. I think of it as so much more than just like a business. I think for all of us who work at Omega's, I think we feel like we're part of something that is bigger than us individually, like that we're able to make a real ripple effect and that it's not about any of us individually. And so I care about serving that mission in a really deep way. But I am better now at separating my identity from it.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it might have been. I've done both of those. Keeping the morale of people after others have left can be challenging, but can also be galvanizing. I think letting that go was just, you know, it's like so much part of your identity. It's also like you developed a real bond. A lot of those people had been there 10, 12 years since the very beginning.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Similar to what we were saying before are you making a decision from a place of fear expansion you can make the same decision from two different places you still make very hard decisions I've still done massive layoffs like let people go given tough feedback”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hope so. I don't think I would have been able to make the decisions I made around switching to business, going from US to UK. I think how I show up in meetings, how I receive bad news has fundamentally changed.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was like, there's stuff I did like 10 years ago I haven't forgiven myself for. You know, it's like, is that still serving me? I actually don't think it is. So I still get these moments, these fears, all these things, but then I could just process through them. Like Hoffman teaches you how to kind of rewire your brain to process through them much faster.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a work of genius. That whole process is true genius in action. But it fundamentally changes your relationship. It changed my relationship to me. It made me understand what it actually, what self-love actually means. And every time I hear that term, it sounds like, I don't know, so cheesy. I don't know how to avoid that. But like there was a point in the process where someone said, hey, do you ever hold grudges? And I said, no, I don't. I always forgive people. And they're like, yeah, but do you ever hold grudges against yourself?”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The meditation twice a day, you know, very serious like you are about fitness and health, maybe not as serious as you. You do two marathons a weekend, which is absolutely insane. But that's a part of it. Sleep's obviously a part of it. I do journals around intentions. Like I think that stuff really matters if done the right way. So yeah, I just have created kind of like a sequence of how to do this stuff. The other thing I did is I did this thing called the Hoffman process. You ever heard of that?”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I meditate twice a day. I have a protocol that I use that I learn from this teacher who I think is incredibly valuable. It's a guy named Jim George. How”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. So I have a very regimented kind of meditation, working out, sleep, food, all those things are like designed to create that space. I have to work really hard to do it.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's wrong. I think, but I think it evolves. And so I think you have to decide if it's still serving you in the way. And it was no longer serving me in the way that it once did. I thought like the only way to be motivated was to beat myself up and be better and you have to be more and you're bad for all these reasons. And then I just learned to be a better friend to myself and recognized that like actually supporting through these things is going to make me work even harder. It's going to make me wake waste less time on repetitive thoughts. You know, I read some studies the other day from the NSF that said the average person has 30,000 thoughts a day. 80% of them are negative and 95% of them are repetitive. And I would bet you I was higher than 80 and 95% on those things. And that's just not that useful.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would argue with that you're incredibly successful. What you build is amazing. It's a great question. I would say I probably even spend more alone time now than I did, but feel less alone. And I think back to that moment, I was totally alone. And like one of the biggest moments of my life, I'm crying on the ground by myself. I'm probably the only one who really could even understand it, you know. But I think I've learned to create a better relationship with myself. I used to be horrible to myself. Like I used to beat myself up. I used to say stuff to meet myself that if a friend said it to me, I would no longer be friendly.”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a $10 million check, but the whole, they were the number two in the round, Rick Heitzman, and first Mark was leading the round. But if they would have fallen out, it just would have made the rest of the round, not Rick, but the other check would have made the rest of it really difficult. And I remember getting that call and literally, I just collapsed. Like I fell to the ground. I just started wailing. I mean, because it had been three years of crazy stuff. You know, like I thought like each one of those was like the thing that we had to overcome. And then so when it finally came through, it was like, I mean, it was just like such a release, you know?”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It did. We didn't really know that at the time. Obviously, no one did. But then we presented to them on that Monday. How did they go?”
2025-06-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Science of Storytelling: Three Steps to Master the Perfect Story | From Near Death Experience to Unicorn Startup: The Untold Story of Omaze with Matt Pohlson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source