The Eric Ries Show

Founded in 2011 in the distinctly non-Silicon Valley location of Columbia, Missouri, software integration company Zapier hit profitability in 2014. Today, the company is valued in the billions, and is poised to keep thriving as AI becomes a normal part of everything we do online. My guest on this episode of The Eric Ries Show is co-founder and CEO Wade Foster, whose ethos from the earliest days on has been: “If you're going to try and build a company, don’t do anything that doesn’t matter.” For Zapier, that has meant staying as close as possible to customers from the start in order to build a product they really want. It’s no wonder their journey to product-market fit was easier than most founders can ever dream of – a story Wade tells in the episode that involves the magic of an early adopter and a lot of hard work. 

From that customer delight, the company was able to build a flywheel and growth engine that have kept it steadily growing with minimal outside investment ever since, a path it fully intends to stay on. As Wade told me, they’re “willing to sacrifice a little bit of revenue for the durability of these customers over the long haul.” We also talked about how the company maintains its culture now that it’s expanded to 750 people, all of whom work remotely, and why product and marketing aren’t actually separate functions, especially at the beginning of a company’s life.

Other topics we touched on include:

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—

Where to find Wade Foster:

• Wade’s Zapier blog: ⁠https://zapier.com/blog/author/wade-foster/⁠

• X: ⁠https://x.com/wadefoster⁠

• LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/wadefoster/⁠

Where to find Eric:

• Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ericries.carrd.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• Podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ericriesshow.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/ericries⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

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In This Episode We Cover:

(00:40) Introducing Wade Foster

(06:33) The transition to Silicon Valley and defying received wisdom

(09:18) Where the courage to do things differently comes from

(14:08) The internship that made him realize he was an entrepreneur

(17:07) The value of staying close to customers during product development

(18:07) The genesis of Zapier

(21:24) How Andrew Warner became Zapier’s first customer

(24:43) The company’s ease in finding product-market fit

(30:03) The early days of company-building

(31:55) How they stayed small and worked with a single million dollar Series A raise. 

(32:48) Reaching profitability in two and a half years

(34:50) On not buying into the need to burn cash and hire quickly

(36:44) The unique power of the company’s distribution engine

(39:25) Zapier is a classic Lean Startup story

(41:14) How the company discovered its growth engine and validated its growth hypothesis

(43:30) How Zapier’s flywheel works

(47:46) The problems of over-funding and monetization

(49:25) Building and maintaining trust 

(1:12:25) Zaper’s “build principles”

(1:00:39) The power of story-telling for sharing values

(1:04:57) Wade’s thoughts on and excitement about how AI will affect Zapier and work

(1:10:34) How AI has spurred Zapier’s second founding

(1:13:30) The vertigo of evolving beyond the founder-entrepreneur role

(1:15:24) Lightning round – including Wade’s favorite Zap! 

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Production and marketing by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.

What is the relationship between technology and society? What happens to idealism over time? I’m fortunate to have discussed these questions and many more with Tim O’Reilly for this episode of The Eric Ries Show.

Tim is the founder of O’Reilly Media, which has provided countless programmers and technologists with foundational information for doing their work well. He’s also been a long-time witness to the changes and growth of tech, and has consistently looked far ahead of other people, perhaps most famously in his book What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us. 

Many call Tim the Oracle of Silicon Valley. He thinks of himself more as “a voice in the wilderness” and someone who brings together people with great ideas to build new things. In our conversation, we covered how to build a business with a real ethos, how to gain competitive advantage by doing the right thing, and why thinking beyond the quarter, or even the year, is crucial for survival.

As he said, “Companies need to think about the long term, which is: who is going to provide what you are the gatekeeper for if you basically have a relentless acquisition of all the value for yourself?” Ultimately, he believes – and I couldn’t agree more – that “we need to build an economy in which the important things are paid for in self-sustaining ways rather than as charities to be funded out of the goodness of our hearts.”

Other topics we touched on include:

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—

Where to find Tim O'Reilly:

• O’Reilly Media: https://www.oreilly.com/ 

• X: https://x.com/timoreilly 

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/timoreilly

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timo3/

Where to find Eric:

• Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ericries.carrd.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• Podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ericriesshow.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/ericries⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

—

In This Episode We Cover:

(00:43) Meet Tim O’Reilly

(06:25) How Eric and Tim met

(08:38) On not getting caught up in trends of the moment

(10:44) Tim’s early career and how his thinking evolved

(13:10) From open source to Web 2.0

(14:06) Working to make the world a better place

(16:11) How idealism is subsumed by the system we work in

(18:25) Resisting the lure of profit

(19:53) Thinking about companies as members of an ecosystem

(21:20) Creating versus capturing value

(23:38) Internet aggregators

(26:45) Choosing value creation over-extraction as a means of sustainability

(30:00) Ads and the lesson of screen placement

(32:49) AI and Google

(37:13) Values are a map of the world

(39:56) How to build a company ethos

(42:24) How adpoting values publicly makes them more powerful

(47:46) Dune

(49:31) Literature’s evolution

(50:21) Anthony Trollope’s proto-feminist novel, Can You Forgive Her? 

(49:30) George Elliot’s The Mill on the Floss

(51:22) The Dune movies

(52:39) Turning books into movies

(54:23) Tim’s favorite childhood books

(58:29) Why doing good is the best path to success

(1:02:22) Generative AI, value, and trust

(1:12:25) How idealists talk themselves out of it

(1:15:53) Lightning Round

—

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Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Stacy Brown-Philpot is a unique voice in Silicon Valley. She began her career as a public accountant and worked at Goldman Sachs before landing at Google.

She was the COO and then the CEO of TaskRabbit, which she saw through its sale to Ikea. Today, she’s on a number of corporate boards including HP, Nordstrom, StockX, Noom, and Black Girls CODE. She’s also a founding member of the SoftBank Opportunity Fund, which invests in Black, Latinx, and Native American founders.

Throughout, she’s been a consistent advocate for building cultures where people can bring all aspects of their rich and varied lives to work. The importance of setting out what you want to be and fully committing to it is the wisdom she’s held her entire life: “My grandmother's always telling me, if you don't stand for something, you fall for anything.”

In our conversation, we touched on Google’s rise and its eventual tumble from its “don’t be evil” ethos, what it was like to pioneer the sharing economy at Task Rabbit and the pivots the company went through along the way, and why selling the company to Ikea was dependent on its mission because “they weren't going to buy anything just to buy it. They needed to buy something that they believed in because they're only a part of something that they believe in.” 

Stacy’s model of compassionate leadership is inspiring, as is the fun she’s had executing it for the last few decades, even when things were bumpy. She had a lot to say about both, as well as:

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—

Where to find Stacy Brown-Philpot

• X: https://x.com/sbp04 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacyphilpot/

Where to find Eric:

• Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ericries.carrd.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• Podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ericriesshow.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/ericries⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

—

In This Episode We Cover:

(00:44) Meet Stacy Brown-Philpot

(05:11) The heyday of Google’s “don’t be evil” culture 

(08:01) Google’s IPO

(11:20) Stories from Google’s hyper-growth era

(13:44) The shift to backing away from idealism

(15:46) How the 2008 downturn changed Google’s DNA

(24:13) The difference between cultures at Goldman Sachs and Google

(29:43) Mistakes, apologies, and creativity

(31:18) Stacy’s transition from Google to TaskRabbit

(33:52) “the serendipity of what it means to be building something together”

(35:00) Navigating culture change at TaskRabbit

(42:31) Pivots at TaskRabbit

(46:08) Cutting categories and losing revenue for a longer-term goal

(47:35) Inside the TaskRabbit pivot war room

(48:59) Stacy’s stories of taking client and customer calls from her couch

(57:20) The Ikea acquisition and cultural alignment

(1:00:15) Ikea’s foundation ownership model and its “vertically integrated” mission

(1:01:27) Stacy’s reflections on her startup experience

(1:04:05) Stacy’s view of the board’s role in a company

(1:06:07) How she came to be on the board of HP and the companies that followed

(1:07:26) The pandemic at TaskRabbit and on the Nordstrom board 

(1:08:21) George Floyd 

(1:11:20) Stacy’s views on DEI, where we are now, and its cyclical nature

(1:14:45) Lighting round

—

Production and marketing by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.

The latest episode of The Eric Ries Show features my conversation with Reid Hoffman. Executive Vice President of PayPal, co-founder of LinkedIn, and legendary investor at Greylock Partners are just a few of his official roles that have changed our world. He’s also been a mentor to countless founders of iconic companies like Airbnb, Facebook, and OpenAI. He’s an author, a podcast host – both Masters of Scale and his new show, Possible, with Aria Finger – and perhaps most importantly a crucial steward of AI, including co-founding Inflection AI, a Public Benefit Corporation, in 2022.

Reid has also long been a voice of moral clarity and a stabilizing influence on the tech ecosystem, supporting people who are working to make the world a better place at every level. He’s a firm believer that “the way that we express ourselves over time is by being citizens of the polis – tribal members.” That includes not just supporting the legal system and democratic process but also building organizations “from the founding and through scaling and ongoing iteration to have a functional and healthy society.”

We talked about all of this, as well as AI, from multiple angles – including the story of how he came to broker the first meeting between Sam Altman and Satya Nadella that led to the OpenAI-Microsoft partnership. He also had a lot to say about how AI will work as a meta-tool for all the other tools we use. We are, as he said,” homo techne,” – meaning we evolve through the technology we make.

We also broke down his famous saying that “entrepreneurship is like jumping off a cliff and assembling the plane on the way down” and:

• The human tendency to form groups

• The relationship between doing good for people and profits

• AI as a meta-tool

• What he looks for in a leader

• The necessity of evolving culture

• Being willing to take public positions

• His thoughts on the economy and the upcoming election

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—

Where to find Reid Hoffman:

• Reid’s Website: https://www.reidhoffman.org/

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman/

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reidhoffman/

• X: https://x.com/reidhoffman

Where to find Eric:

• Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ericries.carrd.co/⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• Podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ericriesshow.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/ericries⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

• YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

—

In This Episode We Cover:

(01:15) Meet Reid Hoffman

(06:01) The three eras of LinkedIn

(08:21) The alignment of LinkedIn and Microsoft’s missions

(10:39) The power of being mission-driven

(18:42) Embedding culture in every function

(21:08) The purpose of organizations

(23:45) Organizations as tribes for human expression

(29:08) Reid’s advice for navigating profit vs. purpose

(38:33) The moment Reid realized the AI future is actually now

(41:57) Home techne

(44:52) AI as meta-tool

(47:05) Why Reid co-founded Inflection AI

(49:53) The early days of OpenAI

(55:41) How Reid introduced Sam Altman and Satya Nadella

(58:26) The unusual structure of the Microsoft-OpenAI deal

(1:04:42) The importance of aligning governance structure with mission

(1:09:56) Making a company trustworthy through accountability 

(1:15:59) Inflection’s pivot a unique model

(1:19:53) Companies that are doing lean AI right

(1:22:52) Reid’s advice for deploying AI effectively 

(1:26:21) Being a voice of moral clarity in complicated times 

(1:31:26) The economy and what’s at stake in the 2024 election

(1:37:24) The qualities Reid looks for in a leader

(1:39:43) Lightning round, including board games, the PayPal mafia, regulation, and more

—

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Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.

This episode of The Eric Ries Show is all about the relationship between trust and success. I can’t think of anyone better to talk about it with than Seth Godin, author of the classic Permission Marketing, the best-seller This Is Marketing, and many other books, as well as a fantastic daily blog that has been going strong since the early days.

He also co-founded two companies, Squidoo and Yoyodyne. While the world tends to view Seth as an expert on marketing, he sees what he does in slightly different terms. “What I write about is how do humans interact? What stories do we tell ourselves? What do we want? What's worth doing?” 

We talked about the roots of “the epidemic of unicorns,” the two approaches to gaining customer loyalty, how AI has permanently changed the means of production, how to build systems that create the conditions for great work to occur more easily, plus: 

• False proxies

• The permissions hierarchy

• The power of stories

• The problem with business school

• Continuous effort

• Why Amazon lost customer trust

• Seth’s definition of marketing

• Chocolate cookies

—

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—

Where to find Seth Godin:

• Seth’s Blog: https://seths.blog/

• Seth’s site: https://www.sethgodin.com/

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sethgodin/

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sethgodin

Where to find Eric:

• Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠https://ericries.carrd.co/⁠⁠⁠ 

• Podcast: ⁠⁠⁠https://ericriesshow.com/⁠⁠⁠ 

• X: ⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/ericries⁠⁠⁠ 

• LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/⁠⁠⁠ 

• YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow⁠⁠⁠ 

—

In This Episode We Cover:

(00:33) Meet Seth Godin

(05:06) Seth’s book, Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers

(06:31 The relationship between attention and trust

(07:29) The hierarchy of permission

(09:18) Seth’s essay Trading Trust

(10:44) Amazon’s trust for profit trade-off

(14:54) How fear of change erodes organizations

(18:16) How new paradigms spread

(20:34) Getting customers to love you

(23:20) Why business schools don’t produce leaders

(26:02) The need for internal systems to process feedback

(26:40) The two choices a brand makes in order to earn trust

(28:55) Continuous versus sporadic value creation

(33:13) How taking shortcuts leads to a brittle company

(35:35) The “holy trinity” of engineering, product, and marketing

(36:35) Seth’s definition of marketing

(39:27) The AI hype and future

(42:33) AI, ethics and trust

(44:40) How political money and ads changed Facebook’s culture

(46:48) Money and the race to the bottom

(49:30) Status, affiliation, and warm chocolate cookies

(51:13) Aphorism lightning round

—

Production and marketing by ⁠⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠⁠. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠ 

Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Yancey Strickler is the co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter, and the founder of Metalabel, a platform for releasing collective work. He’s also the author of This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World.

I’m thrilled to share our recent conversation in this episode. Yancey started out as a music journalist before applying his talents to helping the world share its creative pursuits. For him, creativity and humanity are implicitly connected, and so he’s been a forerunner in thinking about how to build companies that bring good things into the world and are also successful without devolving into extractive behaviors.

Not that any of this is simple. As Yancey says, “Everything is harder than you think. To do anything well is so hard. [But] if you put in the work, you don't need to fear it.”

We talked about the founding and growth of Kickstarter, which has been profitable since it’s 14th month, the power of humility, past mistakes and future hopes, why he started Metalabel, and more including: 

• The innumerable inventions that make up our world 

• Crisis hopping in Kickstarter’s early days

• The challenges of funding speculative projects

• Being one of the first Public Benefit Corps

• Creativity and self-knowledge

• Company building as an art

• Collective creativity

• The Bento Method 

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—

Where to find Yancey Strickler:

• X: https://x.com/ystrickler

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yancey-strickler-486b4557/

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ystrickler/

Where to find Eric:

• Newsletter: ⁠⁠https://ericries.carrd.co/⁠⁠ 

• Podcast: ⁠⁠https://ericriesshow.com/⁠⁠ 

• X: ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/ericries⁠⁠ 

• LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/⁠⁠ 

• YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow⁠⁠ 

—

In This Episode We Cover:

(00:36) Welcome to the Eric Ries Show

(04:44) The invention of the high five.

(07:22) Our world is the product of innumerable inventions

(08:22) The story of Kickstarter

(13:48) The difference between a fad and a trend

(15:50) The early days, and difficulties, at Kickstarter

(17:24) How Kickstarter introduced standards

(18:58) The a-ha moment: “Kickstarter is not a store”

(20:42) The need for company sacrifice

(22:06) The tension between risk and failure

(24:16) Kickstarter’s early days and how Yancey became CEO

(27:12) Mistakes, burnout, and stepping down.

(30:05) Yancey without Kickstarter

(31:45) Disentangling from the old and starting anew

(35:21) Public Benefit Corps and why Kickstarter was among the first ones

(39:19) The challenges of running a good company that makes a profit

(42:07) Crowdfunding and creativity

(46:31) The future of creative work

(47:12) MetaLabel

(48:48) The curator role

(50:26) Moving from solo to cooperative work

(52:04) The Leaders Guide on Kickstarter

(54:30) Doing work for yourself, in a community of peers

(57:29) Self-knowledge as an entrepreneurial asset

(59:35) Organization building as an artistic discipline

(1:04:30) Humility, fearlessness, and hard work

(1:06:25) The Royal Society

(1:10:04) Rejecting the extractive model

(1:14:50) Succession planning and deprioritizing financial maximization

(1:19:52) A new version of the hockey stick graph

(1:21:20) The Bento Method: women vs. men

(1:26:48) The Golden Ratio

(1:30:18) The Dark Forest

(1:33:27) How the internet has redefined individuality 

(1:36:49) Online institutions of the 21st century

—

Production and marketing by ⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠ 

Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.

For this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sat down with Ritu Narayan, founder and CEO of Zum, which has had incredible success in the field of student transportation.

The company began as a private service to tackle a problem Ritu was facing herself: how to function as a working parent dealing with erratic pickup and drop-off schedules. Before long, it became clear that there was a far larger opportunity to change pretty much everything about how all kids get to and from school.

Pivoting to working with school districts and a fleet of electric buses, the company set out to “modernize student transportation to make it safe, sustainable, and accessible for all.”

To say it’s been a success is an understatement. Zum now serves thousands of schools in multiple states, and in February 2024, it hit unicorn status with a valuation of over a billion dollars. As Ritu says in our conversation, “the service is for everybody.” 

We also talked about everything from carbon-neutral buses to cracking the procurement system of public school districts, the invaluable asset of parental peace of mind, scaling care, and more, including: 

• How Ritu came to entrepreneurship

• Scaling trust

• How coming from the outside allowed the company to transform the industry

• Shifting from a B2C company to a B2B company

• Zum’s values: customer obsession, doing things the right way, thinking big and executing meticulously, and building better communities.

• How a clear mission makes alignment easier

• Zum’s “Five Step People Program” to reinforce culture and behaviors

—

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—

Where to find Ritu Narayan:

• X: https://x.com/ritun 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritunarayan/ 

• Zum: https://www.ridezum.com/

Where to find Eric:

• Newsletter: ⁠https://ericries.carrd.co/⁠ 

• Podcast: ⁠https://ericriesshow.com/⁠ 

• X: ⁠https://twitter.com/ericries⁠ 

• LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/⁠ 

• YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow⁠ 

—

In This Episode We Cover:

(00:31) Welcome to the Eric Ries Show

(01:09) Meet our guest Ritu Narayan

(04:32) Ritu describes how Zum has reinvented the school transportation field 

(06:50) The Zum origin story

(08:01) Zum’s pivot from private service to school district partner

(11:17) Scrambling to meet the demand and understand the RFP process

(13:17) Zum’s amazing growth from one contract to unicorn

(19:48) How Ritu got started as an entrepreneur

(21:09) Being a woman engineer in her family, college and the workforce.

(22:06) How being a working parent showed her the multi-generational problem she wanted to solve

(27:59) Establishing trust and placing it at the center of the company

(33:28) Being a child-centric company

(35:13) The deep care that transportation directors showed towards their students

(40:00) The Zum pivot

(41:43) Reconciling long-term vision with a flexible strategy

(44:28) Expanding from private to public schools as the result of raising a round

(47:20) Shifting from B2C to B2B

(51:54) How gaining clarity of mission brings the right people into alignment 

(55:01) Zum’s four pillar values and the narrative they uphold

(57:05) The five steps to restructuring the company after the pivot

(58:58) The value of Zum from the parent perspective

(1:02:05) Zum’s climate impact

(1:06:19) Reconciling the vision of sustainable transportation and equality with profit

(1:09:34) The advantages of tackling a huge problem instead of a narrow one

(1:13:08) Working with mission-aligned investors

(1:15:02) Ritu’s advice for founders who want to build purpose-driven companies that are also  for-profit

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Production and marketing by ⁠https://penname.co/⁠. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email ⁠[email protected]⁠ 

Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Welcome to The Eric Ries Show. I sat down with Dustin Moskovitz, founder of not one but two iconic companies: Facebook and the collaborative work platform Asana. Needless to say, he’s engaged in the most intense form of entrepreneurship there is. A huge part of what he’s chosen to do with the hard-earned knowledge it gave him is dedicate himself and Asana to investing in employees’ mental health, communication skills, and more. All of this matters to Dustin on a human level, but he also explains why putting people first is the only way to get the kind of results most founders can only dream of. We talked about how to get into that flow state, why preserving culture is crucial, his leadership style and how he decides when to be hands-on versus when to delegate, and how Asana reflects what he’s learned about supporting people at all levels. 

Dustin sums up the work Asana does this way: “Our individual practices are meant to restore coherence for the individual, our team practices are meant to restore coherence for the team, and Asana, the system, is meant to try and do it for the entire organization.” I’m delighted to share our conversation, which also covers:

• How he uses AI and views its future

• Why he founded a collaboration platform

• How he applied the lessons of Facebook to building Asana

• Why taking care of your mental health as a founder is crucial for the company as a whole

• His thoughts on the evolution of Facebook

• The importance of alignment with investors

• His philanthropic work 

• And so much more

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—

Where to find Dustin Moskovitz:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmoskov/

• Threads: ​​https://www.threads.net/@moskov

• Asana: https://asana.com/leadership#moskovitz

Where to find Eric:

• Newsletter: https://ericries.carrd.co/ 

• Podcast: https://ericriesshow.com/ 

• X: https://twitter.com/ericries 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/ 

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow 

—

In This Episode We Cover:

(00:00) Welcome to the Eric Ries Show

(00:31) Meet our guest Dustin Moskovitz

(04:02) How Dustin is using AI for creative projects

(05:31) Dustin talks about the social media and SaaS era and his Facebook days

(06:52) How Facebook has evolved from its original intention

(10:27) The founding of Asana

(14:35) Building entrepreneurial confidence

(19:22) Making – and fixing – design errors at Asana 

(20:32) The importance of committing to “soft” values.

(25:27) Short-term profit over people and terrible advice from VCs

(28:44) Crypto as a caricature of extractive behavior

(30:47) The positive impacts of doing things with purpose

(34:24) How Asana is ensuring its purpose and mission are permanently enshrined in the company

(41:35) Battling entropy and meeting culture

(44:31) Being employee-centric, the flow state, and Asana’s strategy

(47:51) The organizational equivalent of repressing emotions

(52:57) Dustin as a Cassandra

(56:51) Dustin talks about his philanthropic work and philosophy: Open Philanthropy, Good Ventures

(1:02:05) Dustin’s thoughts on AI and its future

(1:07:20) Ethics, calculated risk, and thinking long-term

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Referenced: 

—

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected] 

Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I talk with James Reinhart, founder of the second-hand resale platform ThredUp. A history major in college, James started his career as a teacher. That might not seem like it has much to do with fashion, but, as he explains, his early education and experiences actually led him not only to be a dual degree student at Harvard’s Business and Kennedy schools, but to a long-term view of ThredUp’s power to effect real change. 

We get into the reasons why having a harder mission can be counterintuitively easier and why, as he says, “intrinsically good businesses are good for bottom lines and good for the world.” Not only did ThredUp generate 80 million dollars in revenue in the first quarter of 2024, but James has an uncanny track record of being able to accurately predict what’s going to happen ten years ahead. 

Those details alone should be more than enough to pull you in, but they’re just a fraction of what we talked about. I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation with the founder whose mission is to inspire the world to think secondhand first. 

• What it was like to be an entrepreneur at Harvard Business School before the days when everyone was doing it

• How his education background fed into his business acumen

• The value of investors who believe in you

• The advantages of having a mission that all your stakeholders are passionate about

• His experience going public and advice for founders

• Why he built a company culture around humane principles based on employee feedback

• The change he’s working towards and believes is possible

• And so much more

—

Brought to you by:

Mercury – The art of simplified finances. Learn more.

DigitalOcean – The cloud loved by developers and founders alike. Sign up.

Neo4j – The graph database and analytics leader. Learn more.

—

Where to find James Reinhart:

• X: https://x.com/jamesreinhart 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesgreinhart 

• Facebook: ​​https://www.facebook.com/james.reinhart/

• ThredUp: https://ir.thredup.com/corporate-governance/management-team 

—

Where to find Eric:

• Newsletter: https://ericries.carrd.co/ 

• Podcast: https://ericriesshow.com/ 

• X: https://twitter.com/ericries 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/ 

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow 

—

In This Episode We Cover:

(00:00) Welcome to the Eric Ries Show

(00:27) Meet our guest James Reinhart

(06:04) James talks about being an entrepreneur at Harvard Business School and a dual degrees student at the Kennedy School 

(10:27) How his decision to take a teaching job after college presaged his journey as an entrepreneur

(12:53) The story of ThredUp’s beginnings, including multiple pivots

(20:24) The value of a supportive investor 

(22:00) How failure set the stage for the biggest counterintuitive pivot of all: taking on inventory

(24:42 Identifying the true customer need: convenience + economic value

(27:59) The moment when James realized the company’s power to make change

(31:18) ThredUp’s mission statement

(33:06) Being a for-profit company with social change as its purpose

(35:43) Growing in order to increase positive impact: good businesses are good for the bottom line and for the world 

(39:22) The many advantages of taking the harder path to a solution

(43:34) Protecting ThredUp’s company culture and stakeholder alignment

(45:39) ThredUp’s IPO

(48:17) Advice on going public 

(50:38) The connection between mission and long-termism

(59:35) The value of being a history major in business

(1:00:19) David Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything

(1:05:35) ThredUp’s maker days

(1:09:24) Trusting and believing in your employees

(1:12:17) How ThredUp is a pioneering user of AI

(1:14:05) James’s thoughts on the role of government in business and society

(1:17:23) The power of transcending generations

(1:20:08) Lightning round!

—

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/.

Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.

In this first episode of The Eric Ries Show, I sit down with serial entrepreneur and intrepid explorer, Sami Inkinen. Sami has co-founded two companies: Trulia and Virta Health. After Trulia was acquired by Zillow for $3.5 billion, he rowed from California to Hawaii with his wife, unassisted. What can’t this guy do? Now, he’s on a mission to reverse type 2 diabetes in 100 million people with his latest venture, Virta Health. In this episode, we discuss:

In the interview, we cover:

• How Sami got started as an entrepreneur coming over to America with no experience

• What it was like to IPO during his time at Trulia 

• What he’s learned raising money after a market crash and a zero-interest environment

• The best way he found to get great talent

• Why Virta is a mission-based company disguised as a for-profit company

• What he learned rowing unassisted to Hawaii from California

• Why he says you should create a mission that is both simple and ambitious  

• And so much more

—

Brought to you by:

Mercury – The art of simplified finances https://mercury.com/

DigitalOcean – The cloud loved by developers and founders alike https://try.digitalocean.com/eric/

Neo4j – The graph database and analytics leader https://neo4j.com/eric/

—

Where to find Sami Inkinen:

• X: https://twitter.com/samiinkinen 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samiinkinen/ 

• Website: ​​https://www.samiinkinen.com/ 

—

Where to find Eric:

• Newsletter: https://ericries.carrd.co/ 

• Podcast: https://ericriesshow.com/ 

• X: https://twitter.com/ericries 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/ 

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow 

—

In This Episode We Cover:

(00:00) Welcome to the first episode of the Eric Ries Show

(00:35) Meet our guest Sami Inkinen

(05:20) Sami reflects on Trulia’s IPO

(08:20) How Sami started in entrepreneurship

(11:10) Sami’s founding story for Trulia (acquired by Zillow for $2.5 billion)

(16:40) Why most people never end up starting a business

(18:57) How to find better talent as a founder

(23:15) Sami shares how much money he raised for Zillow and Virta

(25:20) Sami’s lessons on how to get momentum for your startup

(30:30) What changed when Sami took his company public

(38:00) Why Sami decided to start Virta and take on type 2 diabetes 

(41:55) How type 2 diabetes can affect anyone, even a high-performing endurance athlete

(47:36) Sami shares what he tells each founder when they ask for his investment 

(53:20) The importance of defining your mission that is both simple and ambitious 

(57:30) Trust leads to success 

(1:03:07) A mission-based company disguised as a for-profit company  

(1:08:10) How Sami built an economic model built on helping his customers

(1:14:00) More details on how Sami set up Virta’s company structure 

(1:17:08) What is a GLP-1 drug and how Virta is a GLP-1 off-ramp 

(1:24:32) Sami’s approach to leadership 

(1:26:02) Why Finland maximizes human capital better than most

(1:28:00) What are Sami’s thoughts on AI 

(1:30:15) How to become one with your pain

—

Referenced: 

• Virta Health: https://www.virtahealth.com/ 

• Virta Health YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VirtaHealth 

• Trulia Acquired By Zillow: https://zillow.mediaroom.com/2014-07-28-Zillow-Announces-Acquisition-of-Trulia-for-3-5-Billion-in-Stock 

• Type 2 Diabetes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_2_diabetes 

• GLP-1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLP-1_receptor_agonist 

• Ozempic: https://www.ozempic.com/ 

• Buddhist Parables Of The Arrow: https://grandrapidstherapygroup.com/second-arrow-of-suffering/ 

—

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected] 

Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.