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Hey guys, welcome back to episode number two of my
interview with Stephen, which was originally planned just
as one episode one interview, but turned out
we were talking for nine questions for like 15 minutes. So here
are the next questions. You are the
founder of Suka, a flow app that helps you get
into flow. Having other people online meeting
with you, being seen visually to work, which makes
a big impact. And you've been working
in the film industry in the past and for example, on stuff like
Independence Day, Braveheart, True Lies, Godzilla.
You worked for example on
Transformers prime and so on and so forth. Pretty awesome
stuff. And we just picking your brain here
on, on more stuff on more productivity hacks.
What is your five minute trobbing ritual?
What are the exact steps and tools and environment
tweaks, like from your framework, your playbook?
Okay, that is a great question. Okay, so I'm going to touch upon a number
of things for those listening. Some of these things are going to
be very prescriptive. Like here is something you can try. Some of
them will be illustrative to say, like, this is how it applies in my life.
Okay. So you can understand the context of it. So in
episode one, we talked a bit about time
blocking, right? So I'm not going to cover that here, but that is a very
important thing for me. When I come back from the gym in the morning, I
go get up at 5, go to the gym, come back, I. I have a
few hours of incredible quiet. Those are
sacred to me. You can't even book it in my calendar. And
when we were scheduling this podcast, this podcast is at this
time because I've already completed my focus work for the day, which
feels amazing to know that in those three, four hours, I did enough for
an entire day's work because I was not distracted. So listen to
episode one if you want to talk more about. Listen more about time blocking
and chronotypes. Right? So here's another one
we didn't cover that helps me, which is
it is about the relationship between your mind
and physical spaces. And I will tell you
a story actually about Roland. So when we met,
it was interesting to me that
there was a house, this villa in Puerto
Vallarta, Mexico, where Roland and Dean, who wrote their scripts together,
Universal Soldier, Stargate, all the stuff they would
go to write, apparently it's this beautiful white marble villa in the hills
of Puerto Verita. When Roland
and Dean needed to go write Independence Day, Roland told his assistant
Joey, he's like, Joey, go run the villa. And Joey came back
and said, it's rented because this is like pre Airbnb. But it was like an
Airbnb that you sort of vacation rental. And I asked
Dean why this was so important to them. He said, you have to understand there
is a room there where in the morning the sunlight comes over the
pool and inspires us. We don't think about our agents. We don't
think about the budget of the movie studio notes, you know, what
cast is available. We just think about what's the movie we
would want to watch. And we try and write that.
So when Joey told Roland Roland, the place is not
available, Roland called his entertainment attorney that Friday
and said, John, John Deemer is an amazing attorney. John,
buy the villa. By Monday, roland
owned a $5 million villa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I do
not know the current people who are renting that villa where they went. I'm sure
they were nicely paid to find another villa in Puerto Vallarta.
And they went down there. And six weeks later,
Roland and Dean returned with the script that became the third
highest grossing movie in film history. At the time, that was
this important thing for their mental state to be in there. Now, it is
not that everyone listening to this has to go buy $5 billion villas. We're
not saying that later when I'm at DreamWorks,
right? So I was an executive vice president with Alex Kurtzman and Bob
Orsi, who are great guys. And we had that
Amblin compound, the Dreamers compound is on the Universal Studios lot in
Hollywood. Directly across the street across
Lankershim is the Universal Hilton Hotel.
Now, I'm going to be kind. This is
the hotel where you stay with your three kids the night before you go to
Universal Studios theme park. This is not a place you seek out in the world
as a great hotel, right? But when
Alex and Bob were in crunch time, oh, we have to finish
Transformers 2 in three weeks, right? Oh, we have to finish Star Trek 11.
They had their assistant rent a room over at the Universal Hilton. And they would
go there every day like it was the Office for several weeks. And I
thought to myself, they're making a couple million dollars every script.
Like, they could buy a villa in Puerto Vallarta or they could go anywhere. Why
this? And what I realized was this. They
met back in school and
that hotel room with, like, Kurtzman on the edge of the bed with his
laptop and Bob at the desk, that evoked dorm
room, that brought them back mentally to,
oh, we're These writers who have to prove that we're great, we have to pull
this off. And that was how they used mental
space. They knew that about themselves. So why do I say this?
I made that mistake when I started working remotely.
In the morning, I'd be in the kitchen because you have breakfast, and my laptop's
there and the light is beautiful. I work from there, come upstairs, work from my
office at lunch, the sofa in the late afternoon.
And I realized I was not taking advantage of this thing where you say
to your brain, oh, I'm in this space. This is where I code
or this is where I write. And a lot of
the great writers, a lot of the great engineers use that technique. So
when you start to do this over time, your brain falls into that mode.
I walk into my office up here now, and my brain gives
up a lot of distractions around, should the laundry be done? Oh, did the
trash need to go out? I walk up here and I think, oh, you know
what, Let me open up my coding assistant. Let me open up, you know, my
blogging platform and do that thing. So a very
simple part of my ritual to get into flow. Then, of
course, there is music. And by the way, a lot of research
shows for most people, the sweet spot is 60 to 90
beats per minute. Ambient, non vocal, certain
key signatures, rhythmic music. We
all have some friend that gets into flow using
90s gangster rap or Tchaikovsky or something. There are many
outliers. But for most people, this works.
And I'll tell you a couple things that I learned outside the science. Because
when we designed Suka, we said, oh, I have a lot of friends who are
film composers. Write me a thousand hours of music that's basically like
lo fi beats or upbeat or down tempo sort of
stuff. We threw in some binaural beats, which I know when you have beautiful headphones
like you do, you probably have experimented with binaural beats.
Something I did not know was this. One
of my friends does the sound for the
LucasArts games, like the Star wars games, lives up in Marin.
His high school graduation present to his son
was his son wanted to go to Nepal, so they went there. When he
came back, he said, stephen, this is going to sound weird, but when we were
in Kathmandu, this one day, it poured rain.
It was this beautiful, lush rain. And I had some of my recording
equipment there, so I recorded two hours of it. Do you want it?
I was like, okay, that's kind of an odd offer, but sure,
kind of cool. So we threw it up as a playlist. I didn't know it
was going to happen. I just said, let's call it Himalayan Dream Reign and we'll
just throw it in and see if people discover it. It's our third most
popular playlist. And when I asked some members that I saw
listening to, I was like, hey, do you mind? I noticed you listen to this.
Can you tell me about that? They talked about how that worked for them.
Sort of like the physical space thing that we're talking about. Oh, it reminds me
when I was little, I grew up in this part of the country where it
rained all the time and I'd be doing my homework to the sound of the
rain. So then I started asking, what other sounds
help you get into flow? And it's interesting, some people said, oh,
surf. I grew up by the water. Oh, I grew up by this
lake. We had the sound of a stream
in Japan. And then a number of people said, and this brings
us back to the beginning of the episode. Number of people said,
oh, you know what? Coffee shops, I can't go there anymore. Like, I have
little children. I used to, you know, when I was younger I would go to
a coffee shop and work from there. And, you know, now I can't do it
with kids. But I loved that feeling of being there. So we found
someone who recorded a couple hours in a coffee shop in
Vienna, Austria, and we
threw it up with a little, you know, the sounds of the baristas, you know,
the plates clattering in this. And we called it Cafe Vienne.
It's become incredibly popular. So it's weird the way people have their mental
tricks. Actually, I'll link here in the show notes.
I found a 26 second sample from
your company on YouTube with this
Himalayan dream brain and I'll link it down here in the
show notes. Okay. Yes. So a long answer.
There are a lot of things that help. They're part of my flow practice. But
there is music, there is time blocking, there is mental space tied to
physical space, and there are others we can talk about. But I know that was
a big chunk.
Give us the flow week operating system
rituals on Monday, Tuesday versus Thursday, Friday.
Meeting winners and how you defend. Make your time.
Okay, so I will tell you this. I don't
have research and I don't have anecdotal evidence
of different days of the week. When I look at the distribution
of member usage of Sukha,
there are so many people in so many different time zones in so many different
countries that they have different rhythms.
So I would love to be an expert on things That I know and I
would love to be not an expert on things I don't know. So you just
asked. I have seen so many people use
suka in so many different times in so many different ways.
I can't tell you a pattern of Monday through Friday or even Saturdays and Sundays
because I know we have a lot of solopreneurs who are working
on Saturdays and Sundays because they can't do it during their day job during the
week. So I don't have a great answer for you on that
one. I have some personal experience to share
here because I found a few things.
One, I need the recovery on the weekend. So
basically Saturday, Sunday, no working
unless it's absolutely necessary. Sure.
And in times of maker time, actually
what I did is after first year of being solo
entrepreneur, I was just looking at, I was
analyzing like the data that I had and I found out
Tuesdays are the least booked days. So
basically I moved like everybody, we, we do
get 100 pitches per
interview slot. So you need to work through the emails, you need
to work through like the meetings with the people and then finally
condense them and get, get like a question list up like
we did here. And so you need to have like different stages.
Plus of course I need to meet with potential
sponsors, partnerships. And so. And so I had
two days set up as meeting days and
in between I defend the time to be productive and
my main working day for my paying clients is my Tuesday.
There you go. I'm glad you structured it that way. I work
with an app most people know calendly and
basically on Tuesdays it's extremely hard to book with me.
Yeah, and I love that because what you're saying plays into a
theme that we've talked about in two episodes now, which is how do you get
in control of your life as opposed to be controlled by your life?
You brought up something when we were concluding the last episode
that I think we should talk about, which is
distractions, because I have a lot of data
on distractions and what happens with our members.
I can talk about it in a aggregated way. I'm not going to talk about
any particular person. Like Yorn, you have to get off. You know, you're
watching CNN all the time, right? No, but I can talk about it in
aggregated way because I think this is very interesting and it helps us to craft
the platform. And by the way, you know the value of member feedback,
right? User feedback is golden. Our group
chat is a fantastic place where people complain and we love it. We're like, oh,
we can fix that, we can make that, we can build that. Right. So
you brought up distractions. Why don't you tell me, for
you, what do you think are the most distracting things and what do you perceive
are the most distracting things for others? I'd love to know those two answers.
So distracted things are random phone calls. I
turned to one of, one of the
startups I had here on Interview from Austria, they called
Phonio. So what I do,
I only give up out landline and everybody on landline lands on my
phone or AI and system leaves them a message and
gets here on my email. That's it. And
what a great system. I completely eliminated.
Secondly, people only do like lengthy bookings.
They have to be like four hours
ahead of time. That's also fine. The only things
left for distracting me are actually my
family. But that on the other hand is
basically something you can manage and something that is okay in
some cases. For example, I have like an unwritten rule with my
family, family, if the door is open, you can come in. If the door is
closed right now with the recording, no distractions.
I have a question about that, which is Henry is the son that I've met,
right? Yeah. Right, yeah. So you use
headphones which have become very popular as a signal of don't
disturb me, especially in open offices. Do they also
perceive the headphones as a don't disturb dad? No,
I'm the dad. I'm always available for them 24 7. Okay.
But for you it's the door. It's. The door's closed. Yeah, it's a
door. I actually have a key, I lock it. And when
my sons were very small, they had to learn they
stand outside, they're knocking. If the door is closed, that's it. That
is not going to open. They had to learn it. It was a few very
tough days because they're outside. Daddy, Daddy. Hello. It breaks your
heart but then they've learned it and then you have the pattern
established. Yeah. Okay, okay, please go on.
I'm sorry, I interrupted you. We talked about.
That was example number one and we were talking about
distractions. Question two is, what do you perceive as the biggest distractions
for other people? For other people?
I'm not sure. I think
there are really different type of types of people.
For example, some of them are really
distracted by pop ups, by messages
and so on and so forth. That's actually a new thing that my smartphone
is not doing anything. It's my smartwatch and only very selected
apps that can ping me and in terms on my desktop,
there's barely any app, anything that can send
messages. So everything I have on my cell phone is quiet.
And there are like two or three tools
on my desktop computer that can send me messages. That's it. Okay.
Would you like to know what we've discovered about distraction? Sure,
go ahead. Okay. So I
started, as many entrepreneurs do, solving a problem that I had,
right? And for me, there are two
problems that were painful. One was
procrastination about getting started, the inertia of getting started, and how
easy it was to scroll through the news or return emails or do
something, as opposed to eat the frog, right?
So the second problem was about distraction during the
day. And I found that I was the most vulnerable when
I would be encountering an obstacle. Oh,
I'm. I'm trying to get this, this bit of code done,
and the build keeps failing. What is wrong with this? You know, I'm writing
a blog post and I know that it's terrible.
Like, the muses are not singing to me, and I'm just reading it, going, I
wouldn't read this. Why am I writing this? Right? So in those moments of
frustration, I would then be very vulnerable to my hand
going, picking up the phone. Well, you know, I'm just going to check and see
if, you know, you are in whatsapped me or, you know, who, who sent me
a message. I can just return that and that turns into then, oh, opening the
YouTube video or the TikTok or something. It's just nothing good
happens from that. Right? So those are my two problems. Let me tell you
about how I solve that and let me expand to what I've seen in user
data. So with the first one getting
started, I realized I would procrastinate
because I was overwhelmed. There are too many things on
my to do list. It's paralyzing, or
this thing I have to do is so big I can't make a dent in
it. But between now and the podcast that you and I are going to do
today, I can't write my book or something, right? So why get
started? And I realized the solutions to those were very simple.
When I organized my task list in Suka, as soon as I hit
play and the music starts, it hides everything but my
three top tasks. So it forces me to
prioritize and say, okay, what are the three important things to do today? And then
not think about the 14 other things that could
clutter my mind or make me multitask. Right?
So that was a very helpful thing for me to Say, oh, when I see
three things and I'm working, it seems very achievable. Can I tell you,
since we started that feature where we hide everything but your top
three, our members are 77% more
likely to finish three than before, when they could see
their entire task list and they would finish one or two.
Simple hack, nothing changed. The same tasks, the same members,
the same amount of time. The only thing that changed was, it
seems achievable I can do three.
When I thought about, oh, you know,
this task, I have to go create the new website, write the book.
Those are not tasks, those are goals. So you can ask your smart
assistant, hey, help me break this down and it'll be, you know what? You aren't.
I saw you already wrote the outlines for chapters one and two of your book.
What if today's task, it's just outline chapter three and you
can do that in 30 minutes? I've been watching you. You do your outlines in
about 30 minutes. Suddenly your task list seems achievable, right? So that
was a way of getting over that inertia, that procrastination at the beginning of the
day. That's a problem for me. And in terms of distraction,
I didn't want to download. I mean, there's some great apps, don't get me wrong,
that block your phone. They lock it. They're physical hardware devices like
Brick you can buy that bricks your phone. Like, there are many ways to do
that. But I realized, you know, I'm not a child.
What I actually need is I just need the friend sitting next to me
that says, hey, Steven, like, what are you doing?
So when I hit the play button in Suka, a QR code comes
up. Tap with my phone, start work.
If I pick up my phone, the little voice
comes and says to me, hey, Stephen, it seems like you picked up your phone.
Is that distracting you? And that
gives me that one moment to say, who do I want to be?
And that's sometimes all I need. Just say, you know what? I'd rather be done
earlier and do better work than stay up later
tonight. Exact same thing with websites. I can declare my custom
list of what distracts me and say if I open one of
these websites, more than five seconds, not just tab surfing, but
I stop on it, give me a modal that says,
hey, is this distracting you? And then I just get that moment like a friend
was sitting with me to say, who do I want to be Now? I'll tell
you what's interesting is I have seen now running this for years, the
seasonality of distractions. There are
so many people with very specific sports sites, for example,
that come and go, I'm telling you. Yeah, and
it's the same thing as, you know, across the world. Whether it
is, you know, football, soccer, we, you know, call it here, American football,
whether it's baseball, whether it's ESPN in general, there
is a huge amount of seasonality to. Oh, the
thing that's distracting me is this. Whereas with the shopping
sites that is also very holiday based,
right? So you see like for us, Amazon and the
Etsy and those before the Labor Day sales,
which is our fall holiday, before the Christmas, before the spring Memorial
Day sales, those spike and some people
now in advance toggle them on, say please the next
month, stop me if I open up Amazon. And
I love that people are starting to get to know themselves because again, that's a
signal of I want to be the best version of myself.
I want to be in control of my life. So that's something
that I am very passionate about is just saying, you know what, find
the tools and it does not have to be suka. You can find
freedom. You can find so many of these tools that
help you or get a box. I don't
think I ever showed you this. This is something I experimented with.
See this?
Yes. There's your logo on it and it's action box. It's a
little phone coffin. So I can put my phone in there
and I put it down and you know what, it's just the energy
of trying to like open it and get my phone out that stops me
from picking up sometimes. And it's just a bamboo
box by the way. I have a bunch of these. So
things like that, if you get to know yourself, you say, you know what I
need is this. Because ultimately what we want is
we want to do the thing we're capable of and we want to feel in
control of our life. And that's what I love. And I love how
many people come to you because they are in the startup scene and
they are saying help me, teach me, give me tools, help me to
do this thing. And that's awesome.
I would now move a little bit away from the productivity
tips more a little bit into
because you're a startup in an investor view.
When an investor asks
why you are in a crowded category,
what's your differential thesis versus
focus? Music, apps and co working cameras. Well, I'll tell you two
things. I have been very proud of the fact that we
bootstrapped this. I've
raised over $21 million of venture for three
companies. One successful exit with Roland and Dean, we
did syntropolis effects and two failed startups where I raised about
3 million for each. So I have learned a lot
of the ways in which you raise venture money. In doing
this, I said to myself, you know what? I have seen
how sometimes raising venture
obscures the unit economics. You think, oh, we have
$4 million in the bank, we can be giving away our services or giving away
the thing below what it costs us
to create this. And I went into this and I said,
you know what, if we're not delivering a product that people want to pay
for, then we have to ask ourselves, what's wrong with the product?
And that has been really helpful with Suka
because I can tell when I see cancellations and we just shipped a
release that had a new feature or took away a feature,
that is the most honest user feedback you will ever get.
When someone cancels, you know, people will be nice to you
all day long. Oh, Yoern, I love your app. Really? Because you never use it.
Oh, no, it's so good. No. And when people tell their
friends when referrals go up, that is
a great signal of, okay, we just shipped something that people are like, oh, my
God, Stephen, check this out. This is a really cool app I use. And
for that reason, with this company, I didn't raise outside
venture. It is all me.
And I think with other startups
that, who knows, friends are doing, there are great reasons to raise
venture. But I love the discipline of saying,
if we can't afford that because members are willing to pay,
then is it really that valuable?
Makes total sense.
Let's go a little bit into,
into, into some, some other pieces of the story.
Because you co founded Centripolis FX with
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin.
Yeah. And sold it. How do you translate
that deal craft into startup fundraising and
business development today? You know what,
when we, you know, when you
win an Academy Award, it helps with
fundraising. Let me just say that. Right? So,
yeah, makes sense. Having produced the digital effects for Independence Day. And I
want to be very humble, a thousand people are responsible for that
visual effects. Like, that was a huge number of people who worked very hard.
So it is not any one person. But having
been the guy very close with Roland and Dean doing that, of
course we went out to raise that. People said, oh, you have credibility in this
field. You seem to be a subject matter expert. You have insights
into why this can be done the way you did it, and it
worked. So that was A very different experience
than my later fundraising. And my later
fundraising people didn't care that
I had done independence pay. People didn't care that I'd sold Syntropolis.
Investors were very critical of, well, you haven't done this before.
And that is when I learned the power of
storytelling, even in fundraising. Now, there are
fantastic people who write great advice on fundraising.
Do your research on the investors you want. One of the things
that I think is very important that some young founders don't
realize is don't accept
dumb money.
There are people who will give you money, and they do not
contribute anything to the company. They don't have relationships where it's like,
oh, I need. I'm doing a shopping app, and this person happened to be part
of Amazon. They have insights in how the business should run, or they have contacts,
right? You want to bring
people in who have smart money. They can give you
knowledge, expertise. They can tell you where the potholes are on the road
ahead of you. Right? And importantly, those
seed investors that are smart, not dumb,
their names send a signal to later investors.
Because when they say, oh, you got Joran, who is VP of Europe
for Amazon, in your shopping app, in your seed round,
that's a really great signal you're going to succeed. As opposed to Steven, who has
a bunch of, you know, real estate guys in the United States in his
seed round, right? So that I learned to be very
important. You want to accept smart money, not dumb money. It
is about storytelling, especially at the early stages. When you are selling the
dream, you're like, we don't have 10 years of ARR to
model. We can't. We're not, you know, we have an idea. We have
market research. But more than anything, we have a strong thesis and we can
explain why we think we are the ones to execute on it. And then
you start to deal with, how do we overcome what you brought up, Jorn.
Hey, it's a crowded field, Steven. There are a lot of other apps that
do whatever you do, right? And that is
where you say, it's a crowded field because there's
a huge market for it. These other companies are
not our competitors. They were the ones who proved out
that there is a market. What we are going to do is, is take it
to the next level. We are going to build on their shoulders and say, we'll
do it better now that you've shown, people will pay for this.
And that's something where investors go, oh, so you're right. The crowded market actually
makes you more attractive, not less Attractive. Okay, well, tell me how you're better.
That totally makes sense. I
was wondering. We're talking such a lot about
your tool, but you also partner with tools.
If you partner with tools like Notion, Linear,
Slack or something. Yes. What native integration best
boosts flow without adding any noise.
You know what we do is this is we believe
there are some beautiful tools out there and some people
use todoist, they use asana, they use Jira, they use, you know,
slack or whatever. And we don't really
want to replicate that. If those are the fantastic tools
that someone uses, what we want to say is great. So continue to use todoist
or linear when you want to work.
Wouldn't it be easier for you if you could just integrate
that task list and just pull from it so you never have to retype a
task or copy and paste a task. You can just simply choose from
your linear and just work on that. Today, Today I'm going to close these
three, you know, linear tickets. Oh, I'm going to pull in these tasks from todoist.
And that's our point of view. One thing we're working on right now, and I'll
tell you, this is hard. We have not solved this yet. We
switched to clerk. Do you know the. The auth platform, Clerk?
It's become very popular here in the United States. Right. So
alternative, like we move it off Firebase. So
we used to offer the ability to connect your slack
and the reason we did that is when you hit play, it would
set your slack to away mode. So people knew, oh, you're in a focus
session, you're not going to respond instantly. And it took the pressure off you
to be talking back to people so they would see a
message. Hey, I'm in a flow session, I'll get back to you. And people really
loved that. I'll tell you something, and this is, I'm working
on this. We've not solved this yet and it bugs me is
so when we move to clerk, one thing that clerk has
not gotten to work yet is the
multiple auth thing where people use
Slack. Yarn. Yes. Sometimes. Yeah. How
many workspaces do you have connected? I would need
to check, but it's got so distracted that it's
out of my.
Out of my auto start. And I'm only checking
when I do have some time. 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.
I would say somewhere in the area of 2022,
but you have to see there. Also,
since I'm involved in different startup communities, I also like to look
around. There are slacks on startup communities. For example in
Lyon, France, in New York City, where I'm still a member,
I don't have like to contribute a lot. It's more to get a feel
and to be connected. If I go there, I write, hey guys, I'm coming.
Who's up for coffee? Or something like that. Yes. So
you are like many people that have multiple Slack
workspaces. Clerk has not launched that yet. You can't do
multiple auths with Slack. So we used to offer the ability where when you
started, you hit play, the music starts, everything's blocked.
Your Slack, all your workspaces would automatically say, hey,
Jorn's in a flow session, I'm in flow, I'll get back to you. And
we don't do that right now. And it bugs me every day. And we've been
talking to the devs at Slack at Clerk to say, could you
prioritize this? Because that's a big one. That is a big distraction.
All little Slack messages, they come in. So
got to work on that. And
when I saw your startup, what are you guys doing? I was
wondering what KPIs do you actually
optimize for like flow hours per
user, per week, task completion velocity or
something else? And why? Oh, okay, that is a
really, really good question. Very few people ask me
that because they're usually very curious about flow state. Welcome to startup radio.
No, no, it's a fantastic question, right? So many people want to go deep into
flow states and mental techniques and all that. I'll tell you this
because of other startups that I've done and I've been part of,
there are a lot of the downstream engagement metrics that I used to be
very focused on. Like you said, okay, how many tasks are people inputting, how many
are they completing, how much time are they spending? And I'll tell you,
I've been very focused on top of the funnel recently and I'll tell you why.
Our retention, if you sign up to pay, if you do
your seven day trial and you say, oh, I get it, I want to pay,
our retention is incredibly high. It hovers around
94 to 96% month over month paid retention, which
is insane because the reason for that is
when you experience a flow state and you look up and it's three o' clock
and you're done and you feel good, you're like, why would I work any other
way, right? Here's the problem. Here's
the problem. What we noticed was
we would get unique visitors, like first Time users
who would come to the app and try it for five minutes or 10 minutes
and leave. And it was a very clear bifurcation.
If they came, hit play, listen to music for five minutes,
they go, oh, it's a music app like Brain FM or Endel, and
leave. They never got into a flow state. They didn't come with a task
so they could have the experience of like wow, man, what happened?
That's awesome. I want more of this. Right? And
I gotta tell you, it was black and white, that metric. When we figured out
where it was, we were losing people in, you know, first time user experience
was so clear. I have been focused on that one
metric. How do we move that needle?
So someone has to say, I want to come back tomorrow and develop
a habit and I'm come back on Wednesday and it's free for a week.
You can use it 168 hours in a row if you want without ever
putting in a credit card. And I wanted people to say,
oh, I'm going to do this a few times, I want to have that experience.
So if you notice when you sign up now, there are a couple times in
the first time user flow in the onboarding where I say, hey,
don't go to the next step unless you have a
task you need to do. Because I know
that if you just hit play, you listen to music, you'll bounce in one minute.
You're like, oh, okay, it's music, whatever. And that's not the
magic. Yeah. And the selection is not as good as on platform X
and Y. And that's actually not what you're competing on. Exactly.
Right. So that is, there are many metrics you brought up, but I'm going to
tell you that is the only metric right now that I'm caring about is how
many people have a first session that's over 60 minutes
because that is a determinant if they will end up signing up or not.
Let's talk a little bit about 12 to 24 month
roadmap. Where does the AI assisted
facilitation fit? Like not just break time as
pairing. Oh, another great question.
I will tell you my vision and this is the thing that we are working
on because we are wrestling with the hallucinations
and every day we're getting closer to this, but we're not there yet,
which is where we have the design.
Our goal with the smart assistant is that in the morning your
smart assistant greets you. It's familiar with your task list. It
suggests Joran, you know what I've Been watching what you've been doing every
day. Here are the three most important things
in my point of view. Are these the right three to start with? And you
can say yes or no, you can adjust it. By the way, I noticed you're
starting work today at 8 o', clock, which is right in your sweet zone, your
flow state zone. You work
20% faster when you listen to this playlist in the morning. Can I put on
sonic caffeine for you? And you're like, oh, I appreciate
that you're paying attention to me. It's not a bio wearable sort of thing. It
is a, you complete your tasks on time, you complete them under
time. I've been watching. Here's what you do. Would
love for that smart assistant to say, hey, and by the way, I looked at
your task list like we were talking about before and there's
something on here that's not a task. Would it be okay if I broke that
down for you into actual like tasks
and that sort of companion that's looking at like, what are you listening
to? What kind of breaks really recharge you? What time of
day should be working? Like, by the way, Joran, I know that right now you
put on the list you want to do write some
code, but this is not actually your sweet spot. Can I put that on the
list for later tonight maybe when the kids go to bed. And then right
now let's do this other thing that you're good at doing at 11 in the
morning. Right, that level of
personalization. That is where I'm going.
I see. So basically your own
habit forming AI assistant. Yes. Okay,
prediction. Will remote makers
swing to co located micropods or even
better virtual rooms? What breaks the tie?
What breaks the time? What do you mean by that? Yeah,
what breaks the tie? Where does one win? Where does one lose?
Oh, what breaks the tie. You know what, I will tell you this. I have
seen such strong use cases for solo work,
virtual co working where you may be in a zoom room, maybe
in some sort of group co working and then physical coworking. I couldn't tell
you which one will win. I wish I had an answer for you, but again,
I only wanted to be an expert on things where I should be an expert.
And this is one where I don't know how it's going to turn out.
A little bit contrarian to what we heard from
you before. Hustle culture kills innovation. Do you agree?
And if you could be like Stephen Almighty, like
for one day ruling all the world like
the movie Bruce Dalmatian do you agree with? Yeah, Bruce Almighty.
Exactly. And would you agree? And with what
would you replace it? Okay, I'm going to give you
two answers to your one question, right? Because
the direct answer to question is if you're saying,
hey, Steven, is hustle culture anathema to creativity?
No, it's not. Smart productivity, like healthy
productivity, is a thing. And great leaders know how to
create greatness without enforcing the sleeping
bag under the desk. You're here, I'm going to burn you out and kill you.
And here are some stock options. Go. Right.
There's a certain kind of leader that just doesn't understand how great
work is done. So they only understand grinding it out. Like they're drawing blood out
of you. And they do get blood, but at what
cost? So there are ways in which you can do very healthy productivity. Say this
is. How am I going to manage the team now? When you said, if I
were Stephen almighty and for one day I could
change everything,
the thing I would change is not hustle culture. If people really want
to spend more time than they need to on something, okay, we'll let them. If
someone wants to be efficient, they can do their thing. The one thing I would
change is this. I
would change everyone so they were slightly more empathetic.
And how that would change the nature of the world, including the nature of work,
I think would be profound. Interesting
thoughts here. Interesting thoughts
for our audience. I would love to know what's
one ritual you'll try this week to
protect 90 minutes of deep work? Tell us in the comments
below, tag us on social media, will reshare it
advice and close Stephen, we are now talking for 1
hour, 44 minutes and a few seconds. It's been great, though.
I've really enjoyed this. Yeah, me too. Let's get to the last two
questions and then there will be a few more questions in our founders
world published later.
What single environment change yields
the fastest productivity lift for solo founders?
I would say the oral environment. And by oral, I mean au oral,
like what you're doing with sound. Sound has a deep
influence on the brain's ability to focus. So if you're in an environment
where there are sound distractions, bings of your phone,
you know, children running by the doorbell, it's
a horrible way to break focus. So if there were one thing I had to
say about the environment, it's easy to say, oh, declutter your desk
or go work in this particular space. But I would actually say
work out your sound environment, your oral environment.
What's Your boldest closing insights about
creativity, resilience and building through
uncertainty. Well, about creativity, we talked about the other
thing. That is something that every time I've been blocked on
something, I go back to what Jeff said to me 20 years
ago. You have to be doing the other thing to have
the back of your mind say, and here's the solution you've been waiting for. So
if I'm blocked, I will go for a walk, I'll go downstairs,
I'll take a shower, I'll do something, and then let the back of my mind
do that. So that is my biggest hack in terms of creativity.
And did you all say mental focus or energy? What was the
other part of your question? The
boldest closing insights about creativity, resilience
and building through uncertainty. Resilience. Okay, so
creativity, it is about the other thing, about resilience.
It is that every role model you have has failed
miserably. Period.
Everyone. So you can look up to whomever you want.
And just when you have that moment of like, oh, my God, this thing happened,
we didn't close the round, or we lost users this month or whatever,
everyone you look up to has had a worse loss than you.
And I'll tell you this. The Austin Film Festival was recently here
in Austin, and a number of people that I know from my
film days, which is over a decade ago, were here
with premieres of their movies, their TV series. So they
invited me. They're like, hey, I'm in Austin. I know you live here now and
you're in tech, but, you know, do you want to come to my premiere? I
will tell you this, Joran.
If you asked me 15, 20 years ago, who are the
people that are going to be having premieres,
I would have guessed wrong, because I thought the
determinant was talent. It is not.
It is tenacity. The people who were here
a month or two ago and were like, come to my premiere. I had come
to this. They are not the ones that my friends and I all
thought, oh, my God, that's the best director ever. Oh, it's the most amazing writer.
They're the ones who could take no to their face
and still get up and say, okay, I'm going to try again.
Very, very true.
Stephen, it has been a big pleasure talk to
you. It's been wonderful. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much. It
was now the final recording time will be around
one hour and 50 minutes, I would say.
It's a long movie, right?
Yes. Awesome. Great. With such a
pleasure having you hope to have you back in some time. Thank you very
much. All the best. Okay, bye.
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Sam.