YouSaid · the spoken record

Micha Kauffman

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63
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2025-06-09
most recent
2025-06-09
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1
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  1. “Or you look behind yourself. Try running by looking back. I'm telling you, you are going to slow down. You lose your balance. You're afraid to hit a wall or pole. So you need to look straight and you need to run as fast as you can. The second advantage is they don't know what we know because we're ahead of the game. We're the ones who are innovating. We're the ones who are actually figuring out how to solve the very, very fundamental tough questions and challenges. As you said, there's the front end and there's the magic that happens behind the scenes. But what's the butt? The but is we had nine months of head start. Which were the nine months where we started seeding the brand and creating something powerful and creating a movement.”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “You're right, but here's the but when the company was nine months old, there were already like thirty clunts. Years after, there were thousands of clones and we were having a debate between ourselves what to do with it. And we had two camps. There was one camp that said, let's fuck them all. Okay, let's go after everyone. Let's fight it. It's unfair. People should not be just copying our labor and our concepts and all of our hard work. In my camp, the way I was looking at it, I said, look, the advantage that we have is double. One, we're first for the market and it is speed. We're running really, really fast. And when you think about the analogy of running, when you run, your head can point to only one direction. It's either in front of you.”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I mentioned 40 new companies a day on my feed. There is no market for so many companies. And by the way, it started, it actually started, I don't know, eight or ten years ago when I started talking about bubbles. When you look at markets and you look at the amount of companies that are actually competing for the same customer, for the same function or need, you realize that there's just too many companies for a market that cannot entertain that amount of companies. So I think that it was boiling to a point where the market needed to have a cleanup. And sometimes cleanups happen with a lot of companies go bust. And sometimes it happens through consolidation of saying, oh, there is.”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Fuck up, grow up if you don't want to work, don't work. I think that as human beings were by nature a competitive creature. Why? Because we need to compete for food. We need to mate. If you translate this into modern times, you want to have the best looking girl at school. You want to have the fastest car. You want to fly business, not coach. These are basic stuff. They don't come out of thin air. They come out of hard work. And in my view, it's more important to actually look at the meaning part of it.”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Very unstable world right now. Now, the question, do people want to work or not if you don't want to work the exit from the building is on ground floor bye bye? I don't think that it is my primary function to figure this question out with people. My assumption is those who want to come and engage in the activity of working either to make a living. It's usually the combination making a living, expressing yourself, the search for meaning. We spend the majority of our awake time at work. It needs to have a meaning if it doesn't have a meaning, then it's very miserable. Now, if you don't want to do this, you're either going to be poor or a burden on society or a burden on your parents. And again, this is a part of this awakening.”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I think that it's going to be wrong to try and understand reality through the lenses of the current present. I think that right now we're in a very fuzzy state in time where things change very, very fast. I feel that we are in a period that is very similar to the dot-com, but it's now.ai. It used to be pets.com. It's now pets.ai, whatever. It's the same bullshit. In my feed, there's like 40 startups every day. There is no need for so many, but everybody's trying to cope with the endless amount of information that comes. And this is very discouraging. I don't think that this is going to be the situation in the future. And so I don't think that the way people judge the present has too many implications about the future because we're in a”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “If your spouse wants to help you become better, but you're not interested in doing that, it's not going to happen. If you don't put the time, it's not going to happen. I'm putting the time to give the infrastructure for growth. I'm not your dad. I'm not responsible for you.”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Better Dod. And why do you think it's my responsibility to make you better as professionals? Fuck you. Seriously, if you're not going to take the time to make yourself voluble, to embrace reality, you're doomed. You're doomed. I'm not going to help you. It's not my responsibility. But I will tell you what I will do. I will help those who want to go through that process. Meaning, if you want to help yourself, I'll be there for you. That's my vow. But if not, fuck you. You're done. You're not done at Fiverr. You're done period. There's not going to be demand for people that cannot upgrade themselves. People that are having a bad time coping with reality and understanding what it means. I'm sorry. So this changes now. Should figure out what they want to do at their time”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Look, when you think about high tech, the average age is very young. I've been building companies for almost 30 years. And when I started developing my career, it was very obvious that as a professional, you need to be up to date. You need to be able to be valuable. And in order to do that, you need to constantly upgrade yourself. But I think that what happened in the past 10, maybe 15 years was this notion that your place of work has the responsibility to make you better. And my point to the team was, look guys, this is an aberration. This is like you're getting everything wrong. And let me tell you how things really are. Whose responsibility is it to make you a better person? Whose responsibility is to make you a better spouse? Whose responsibility is to make you a”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “It daunted me that there's something very interesting about this process when you understand how AI augments who we are and how we do things is that in a weird way. What's happening with AI is forcing us to rediscover our humanity because in many ways if functions that we do, dude, seriously as robots can be automated, then there's no reason for a human being to do it. But what makes you, Harry, special? What makes you special is this the fact that you have a very advanced taste for things determine right from wrong? Is it the thought that you are great at ideating and thinking in a way that is unconventional? What is making you special? This forces you. To actually get down to understanding your humanity again.”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Was again very blunt. What I told the team is this in an ideal situation, my expectation of you that each and every one of you, and it doesn't matter what you do, is going to replace a hundred percent of what you do with automation. Maybe you can't get to that number, but ideally that would be the number. The obvious question is great. If I can automate 100% what I do, you don't need me. And my answer to that was actually it's exactly the opposite. Because if you can automate 100% to what you do, that means that now you have 100% of your time free to figure out what are the things that you can do that cannot be automated, spend more time having non-linear thinking. You can work with me on strategy. And I actually said that this was as I was writing this.”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “A conversation. I'm there just come sit beside me. Let's chat. We've scheduled that time. I came to that room and there were about 250 people cramping in that room. I wasn't prepared to give a lecture. The idea was that this would be a conversation and it turned out into what started with a brain dump on my part. And then just having a conversation, which is pretty hard to do with 250 people.”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Was boiling for a while, also echoing some of my team's thoughts about their futures as professionals. Some of it might be also frustration of not seeing people going through this wake up moment. I really wanted to validate a lot of what people were thinking between themselves or in small groups and be very blunt about it, but also offer some directions or at least thoughts about what you can do about it and then have this as an invitation for a discussion, which we did have after the email. And this was surprisingly large. I've asked my chief of staff to assign a room that can hold, I don't know, 50 people. I wrote an email saying, look, I'm going to spend three hours sitting in that room with my laptop just working.”

    2025-06-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Fiverr CEO: 'If You're Not Adapting to AI, F* You. You're Done | Why "Time to Copy" is the Most Important Metric in Startups Today | Why 99% of AI Companies Today Will Die | Why Governments Will Take Control of AI with Micha Kauffman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source