Thanks for pressing play. If you love the
Ser magic that can only occur in a
real conversation, you're in the right place. This
is Christopher Lock follow you different. The number
1 real dialogue On cast for business leaders,
entrepreneurs and category designers with a different mind.
Our guest today is the legendary Mike Maple
junior, a trail in the world of Venture
capital and
entrepreneurship. As the founder of Flood gate Mike
has been a driving force behind some of
the most groundbreaking startups of our time, including
Twitter lyft and Twitch.
In this episode, we dive deep into Mike's
journey and his unique approach to identifying and
nurturing what he calls pattern breakers.
Those rare innovators who redefine industries by envisioning
radically different futures. Mike shares his invaluable insights
on what it takes to break free from
the present and create something truly transformative.
Christopher and Mike explore Mike's new book pattern
breakers why some startups change the future which
serves as a guide for founders to harness
inflection and insights to achieve exponential success.
Mike discusses the important of living in the
future and moving past traditional logic to embrace
bold, high risk, high reward opportunities,
He emphasizes the importance of leveraging
inflection and insights to create transformative
value rather than just incremental improvements.
This episode is a masterclass
in visionary thinking and offers invaluable lessons for
entrepreneurs and investors alike.
Join us as we uncover the principles that
have made Mike Maple junior, a legendary figure
in venture capital and a true architect of
innovation.
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And now as Joey Ra ramon said, hey
h, let's go.
Well Mike Maple.
It's great to see you. It's great to
see you, my friend.
And I just gotta say
congratulations. Thanks.
And I take full credit if particularly given
the success that I know
pattern breakers is going to be. I take
full credit.
Okay? I'll get you you're you're... You you
get at least a big part of it.
Well, I feel like
there was there were a handful of people
you being 1 of them who nudge and
some really pushed
me and us to write. And and, ultimately,
of course, we did. And, you know, it's
now been 8 years for me personally. And
I can't imagine my life now
not being writer.
And I wanted you to write this book
for so long,
and you were just busy. Yeah. You know,
helping entrepreneurs.
And so I remember when you when you
told me, you were actually gonna do it.
Yep. I was like, alright. Yeah. Awesome Yeah.
I think also, I mean, this is where
p Peter Z played a huge role. Right?
So he teaches at the Stanford Gs b
And he was really good at sort of
keeping me on task and reminding me that
there was a deliverable that needed to be
shipped someday.
And so he he was really good about
both
keeping us focused and keeping us
making progress forward, but he was also really
good about sort of
applying some academic rigor, right, to the to
the ideas and not just not just me
ex
coming up with stuff. But, like, okay, How
do how do how does that really get
framed and how's that
academically correct and grounded and not just your
story about something?
Yeah. Absolutely.
You know, it's it reminds me of the
legendary, quote, real engineer ship.
Yes. Well, real writers published.
Yeah. That's right. It's right as a verb.
Turns out.
So
let's get into it.
There's so many
big ideas here.
So maybe let's just start at the top.
Yep. The term pattern breaker
seems somewhat obvious, somewhat self evident.
However,
Let me ask you the question.
Mike Maple.
What's a pattern breaker?
A pattern breaker in the words of Christopher
Lock?
Is someone who forces a choice not a
comparison.
And so,
pattern breakers understand
that business is never a fair fight.
The only question is who fights unfair.
And the default is the incumbents fight unfair.
The default is the status quo fights unfair.
And if a pattern breaker is going to
win, the startups gonna win,
they win not by persistent compounding, they win
not by
thinking of the present or the future as
an extension of the present.
They win not by forecasting forward from what's
happened.
They win by proposing a radically different future
by denying the premise of the rules
by showing up in a way that dis
disoriented incumbents.
It turns out a startup capitalist is a
different kind of capitalist. A startup capitalist doesn't
create value through persistent compounding because they have
nothing to compound. Startup up capitalist creates value
by
disrupting the current patterns of thinking feeling and
acting that exists in the world
and imposing a different set.
That ultimately become the acknowledged
conventional wisdom.
Start out as a heresy, and they become,
in and and this has been true in
other fields too like science, you know, when
who was at Cop said he thought that
the
the earth orbit around the sun,
the Catholic church put him under house arrest
for the rest of his life and didn't
come around. And didn't the end up going
crazy?
Well, well, he kinda of pretended that he
wasn't sure after all. Right? But, like, you
have a pretty good incentive to do that
when the when the pope's like, well, I'm
gonna kill you if you don't if you
don't kind of pipe down a little bit
here.
Nothing like a
ben loving pope. Yeah. So so, you know,
so what I've learned is that,
the first big aha, and it's very related,
you know, in in many ways, we're kind
of
spiritually,
of the same
stranded Dna. Right? And that is that,
ultimately, you can compete by being better and
by
running up the score and by
doing the things that embody your competitive advantage
consistently well over time, and that's what warren
Buffett usually invest in.
And he always says rule number 1 don't
lose money, rule number 2. Don't forget rule
number 1. And so when Buffett buys a
stock or when most of us buy a
stock in fortune 500 company,
We're betting that it is going to persistent
compound longer and more intensely than most of
the rest of the world thinks.
Whereas when we're investing in a startup,
we're not saying rule number 1 is don't
lose money. We're saying rule number 1 is
don't pass on Airbnb.
Because you can you could only lose a
few hundred thousand dollars, but but you made
6000 times your money. If you did the
seed round of Airbnb.
And so it's just a different form of
capitalism, a different model of value creation. And
and so part of this book was understanding
what is startup capitalism really? And and like,
when does the entrepreneur
have the chance to fight unfair? What forces
does that founder or harness?
And how are those forces different from how
normal companies operate? And then that's where the
idea of pattern breaking came into play is
like you have to
you have to have something radically different to
have a chance to break the pattern.
Because if it's too much like, you know,
human beings are conditional like things. And so
if everybody likes your idea, if it's too
much like what's come before,
you're an extension of the incumbents that you're
an extension of the current rules.
Only by polarizing people,
can you change the future? Right? And so
that was the the pattern breaker idea came
from that? Force the choice, not a comparison.
Right?
Yeah. So, like, and and there's a recent
example of a pattern breaking product is the
Tesla cyber truck. And and, you know, a
lot of people say the cyber truck is
ridiculous.
And and I don't I don't really know
what I think of the cyber truck yet.
But but 1 thing I do know, nobody
after seeing the cyber truck says, how does
that compare to an f 01:50?
Right? Or how does that compare to a
Chevy silverado or a Gmc Yukon. Right? It
And they don't go and test drive the
for f 01:50 lightning, which is the electric
1, and then test drive and do a
comparison.
That doesn't happen.
That's right. That's right. And, you know, the
same thing happened with the original Tesla Roadster.
It would have failed in any normal conventional
comparison against like a porsche of 09:11. It
seats weren't as good. It wasn't as fast
at the time It didn't have as good
of a radio.
Did have luxury fit and finish like a
Porsche had,
but nobody when they saw the Tesla Roadster
said, well, so how does that compare to
a 09:11. It was sort of like
live in my future or don't, but you
can't reconcile the 2. Right? There they they
can't be compared with each other. They defy
comparison.
And so a great pattern breaking idea. So
a pattern breaking powder does 2 things.
They have a pattern breaking idea
that
can't be reconciled with anything that's come before.
And so when I started work on this
book, the first half was,
how do you take the idea of thinking
different?
And make that more tangible?
Like, what do... What does Brian C really
do? What did Travis Call and the lift
founders really do? What did the jack Do
and I haven't real... Williams really do that
embodied thinking different.
And then and then the second thing they
have to do that's subtle as well as
they have to act different. So
Lyft had to launch an illegal service in
San Francisco because if they'd asked for permission,
the government would have outlawed it. And so
they had to have a service that people
fell in love with before they could negotiate
with a government.
Not not to interrupt you, But I remember
at about that time
in the development of Silicon Valley in the
tech industry. I remember having a conversation with
you, and you said,
there seems to be a large number of
founders who walk into my office and sort
of very early on, say,
I'm not sure this is a hundred percent
legal bud.
Yes. Yeah.
I got a lot of Uber changed laws.
Yeah. Yeah. Because they were illegal. And so
I I was getting pitched by a lot
of people said, first of all, just so
you know, I'm not sure this is legal
or I'm pretty sure it's not.
And then I had 1 guy pitch me
who wanted to over overthrow Cuba.
And I was like, I don't really see
a business model for that, but, like, hey,
I'm
I'm interested. So I I certainly you help
you don't finance foreign wars?
No. I... I try not to. So so
far, that hasn't been on my agenda. But,
you know, would I started it wanna start
looking. I didn't think I was gonna fund
illegal products either. But, you know, sometimes,
you have to get the law changed.
Now
1 of the things you and I have
talked a lot about, you've said it publicly
a lot. You you've written about it.
Is this idea that to be a successful
pattern breaker to be a successful entrepreneur trader
category. There. Anybody who
changes the world in any kind of a
exponential way as opposed to an incremental way.
The phrase you've used is, I I believe,
non consensus
and right.
Yes. So so pop the hood on non
consensus and right for me, Mike. And so
it kinda flows from
it it's interesting. It's a...
It it is what I would call the
investment
rendering
of your points when you talk about category
design. Right? So
the basic idea is that
only by being radically different, can you make
a radical difference?
And you can't make a radical difference by
being part of the consensus.
Right? 2 things. First of all,
Is it wrong for 1 man to love
another man?
Second all, Can you say that first part
again? I just wanna hear it a second
time?
Yeah. Only by being radically different, can you
make a radical difference?
And so so, like, and people don't understand
this. It's not just true of marketing. It's
true of life.
Like, let's just take stock picking.
If you and I both buy the index,
we're gonna basically perform the same. Now we
may perform well because the stock market may
perform well. We may get rich because the
stock market does well,
but we're not going to do meaningfully better
than each other. We're gonna do roughly the
same as everybody else who buys the index.
And so now let's say, you say Maple,
you know what I'm gonna go buy some
nvidia stock because I think Nvidia is a
great company.
It's not just that you think Nvidia is
a great company,
you think Nvidia is going to outperform the
index, given the price that it's already priced
at.
And that price is set by supply and
demand and by everybody who participate in the
market of the wisdom of the crowds. And
so
1 or 2 things is true, you're either
right or you're wrong.
If you're right, you'll outperform the index. If
you're wrong, you'll under perform the index. And
so you have to depart from the consensus
to be a radical performer. By definition true
in everything everything field of endeavor, of human
endeavor. It's true in science. It's true in
art, You know, Picasso with Cub. Right? Nobody
said, how does that compare to
Van go because it couldn't be compared. Couldn't
be reconciled. Well, and the interesting thing about
Picasso, like, for years, he chased Van go.
Yes. And he got nowhere.
Right? And somewhere along the line, like, if
you look at his early work, it's very
clear and if you read about his life,
and somewhere along the line, he said,
maybe different, not better. Yes. And so and
and now, why is that important for startups?
Well,
If you're going to break the pattern,
it's axiom that you have to be different.
Right? Because you're trying to get people to
think feel and act differently
than how they ever had before.
And so better doesn't matter when you're a
startup.
Because better
favors the incumbent.
If if all you are is better,
why do I wanna take a risk buying
a product from a company that's 80 percent
likely to go out of business? Doesn't it
make sense.
Like, what what needs to happen is I
need to propose a different future
that a subset of humanity
is extraordinarily
emotionally bought into
as an early set of true believers in
that here
insight.
And so in order to bend the Arc
of the present to different future, you have
to do something radically different. And in order
to be different, you have to depart from
the consensus.
And in order to be different, you have
to have a product that most people will
dislike, but a few people will just irrational
love.
And, like, it it comes with the territory.
Because if everybody likes your idea,
it's not a good startup up idea. It's
a derivative idea of what somebody else has
come up with.
Hey man. Hallelujah your brother.
Now you have said,
I forget whether this is in the book
or not. And you'll excuse me. Of course,
I've I read the book, of course,
I tried to help
with some of them along way. So
excuse me for forgetting what's in the final
book and what's
in stuff we've talked about We're just been
talking about. It's all mashed. I I don't
know what the fuck I've written either by
the way.
So I can't remember this in book or
not, but
you've often said a startup is not a
company.
Yes. And a company is not a startup.
Correct. So so let's dig into that. Because
when you said it, You know, it's like
1 of those things where
somebody says something that you know to be
true, but you never quite put it on
the table that way.
So... Yes. So let let's let's go there
if we could, mike. Sure. So what I
like to say is that a pattern breaking
start
started by startup capitalist
has to break free from the present.
And so there's a breakthrough sequence. It starts
with the insight breakthrough.
And in the insight breakthrough, we're answering a
specific question,
what do we know about the future that
is empowering and not obvious.
And non consensus.
And we want that insight to embody
inflection
because inflection are the asymmetric weapon.
For the startup founder. So an insight that
body's inflection is the first breakthrough.
The second breakthrough is the 1 everybody talks
about, but product breakthrough.
We're trying to get product market fit, And
what we wanna answer is another very specific
but hard question.
What can we uniquely offer that people are
desperate for?
If we have an insight, we have something
unique. Now we have to navigate that insight
to the desperate.
And as we navigate that insight, we hold
firm on the insight, but we can vary
who we sell to or or the specific
implementation of what we sell. And that's what
it means to pivot. And that's why 80
percent of our exit profits have come from
pivot
because we don't evaluate the product for what
it is. We evaluate the insight for how
meaningful it is about the future. And it's
like in basketball, like Bill Walton. Right? You
hold your pivot foot down as you pivot.
And you as you move your body, you're
varying the implementation or you're varying the audience
of that implementation.
So product market fit,
you navigate your insight to the desperate.
And these different breakthroughs transfer
energy from 1 to the next. They have
a multiplier effect. So If I have a
truly unique insight, I'm gonna be truly unique.
If I harness
super powerful
inflection, there will always be someone desperate for
that empowerment.
Because if I can offer something that's 10
times better or a hundred times better than
has ever been seen before,
someone's gonna value that advantage, Particularly, if you're
the only person in the world who has
it. And so that's the product market fit
phase is what can we uniquely offer that
people are desperate for. And then the next
breakthrough is the growth breakthrough. And then in
the growth breakthrough, we ask ourselves,
how can we
massively,
rapidly
penetrate the category of the future that we're
designing at scale
as soon as possible and as predictable way
as possible.
How do we harmon all of our growth
gears so that we could get predictable growth
how do we grow not by spending money
on marketing programs to cover the gaps in
our value, but instead s indicating the truth
of our value because we found the desperate
all we have to do is teach people
to buy, all we have to do is
syndicate the truth. And so that's the breakthrough
sequence and it's a little bit like a
Newton's cradle. If you have a really powerful
insight, more power is transferred to the product
market fit phase. And if you have super
freaking strong product market fit more
more energy is transferred to the growth stage.
And if you're getting it right, you're penetrating
this category, just tearing through it at incredible
speed.
And, you know, that's what the breakthrough sequence
looks like. And that's how the pattern breaking
founder escapes the gravitational pull the present. That's
how they escape the rules
that govern current competition, and that's how it
they cause come to say, what the hell
was that? What just... It's like an asteroid
just came out of nowhere and hit the
earth I was a dinosaur and life was
good, but now the only guys that are
gonna survive them are mammals after this asteroid
hit. And so, like, that's what we're really
looking for here.
And so
part of why Wrote this book was
a couple things. First of all, 80 percent,
my exit profits came for pivot. So I
thought, maybe I was just a lucky fool,
and this is all random, and I didn't
know what I was doing, and I should
just retired for before. I got exposed.
But the other thing is I wanted to
help fad. I that every day.
That's why I start taking people, you know
listen. I don't have a Ged.
I have dis fuck it like because I'm
just gonna expose myself.
Well, I'm I'm more concerned in the opposite
direction. I'm probably over educated. I probably got
too much of a pe degree, But and...
And you learn over time that doesn't translate
to me and you're smart. Maybe the... Maybe
and you're the opposite of Smart. But,
So then sad note, it makes it interesting
that we're friends. Yeah. I mean, and... But
I I think that, you know, we're pretty
symbolic in terms of how we show up
in the world. Right? And how we look
at things. And it... And I think so
just either like you a lot more than
me. You're you're nice. I'm lot know over
Ras.
Yeah. Oh, well, it's it's a little bit
of a tougher
environment for me these days because these days,
you kinda get ahead a little bit by
not keeping the piece. But but you you
kinda gotta be who you are. Right? You
gotta be your best self. And
so I'm I'm never gonna be
Keith Boy or Mike Alana or, you know,
some of these guys that shake things up,
but that's just... You just gotta be who
you are. Right? Can't you can't be something
you're not.
But so so the the other thing I
started to work on here, though Christopher was,
it's 1 thing to say, yeah, you need
a radically different idea. But it's another thing
to say, okay, how does that happen? What
is the mechanism for a radically different idea?
You know? So like,
why do some ideas escape
the present and
achieve a radically different future and why do
some ideas not do that? Like, what are
the... What what can be understood about those
ideas? And that's where, you know, inflection and
insights in is this from the future sort
of came in? Right? So I was like,
if founders are able to say,
does my product idea have an inflection?
They're more able to stress test
that idea for its fundamental power.
If they're able to ask do I have
a fundamental non consensus and write insight
about the future?
They're more able to test the potential power
of the idea And if they're able to
validate that the idea itself comes from the
future, rather than them just thinking of a
start,
there there they're intuition about what to build
is a lot more likely to be right.
So the, you know, the first half of
the book was all about,
how do we help founders
avoid pla good sounding ideas that aren't that
good.
Because the most dangerous ideas are the ones
that everybody likes and they encourage you to
pursue, and then you're 2 years in, and
it's... You're just kinda getting nowhere, and you're
not excited about it anymore, but now you're
obligated. You got customers, you got employees. You
got investors. Now now you do it out
of obligation, not of passion. And so you
wanna eliminate those ideas because the only thing
you never get back is your time.
And then the the other thing you wanna
do is protect the ideas that sound stupid,
but might be good. You know, like, who's
gonna get in a stranger car. That's crazy.
Like, why are people going to want to
express themselves a hundred 40 characters or less,
and there's no revenue model in the road
roadmap. That sounds silly.
But why would anybody start a company where
you live cast your life 24 7 on
the Internet. That's 1 of the dumbest things
I've ever heard.
But all of those ideas were worthy of
pursuing because all of those ideas embody those
types of powers that I'm describing. And you
don't necessarily have to know how the dots
will forward connect? You just need to know
is this is this future worth exploring. Is
this is this territory of the future worth
inhabit,
and count on my entrepreneurial skills right to
find that by
navigating the insight to the desperate,
And then the the the second half is,
you know, it's not enough to be right
about the future. It's not enough to have
a powerful idea about the future. You've gotta
move other people to that different future. You
know? If you're if you're Elon Musk, you're
sitting there with a cyber truck in the
future, and you're not gonna sell many cyber
trucks unless
you convince a lot of people,
I believe what he believes. I wanna move
to that different future. And so... And and
to me, like, Another place where our thoughts
are probably pretty S is in some ways,
to me a movement and and category design
are 1 in the same. Like, of course.
A category in some ways can be thought
of as the market space. Right, that you
1 day occupy.
But the way I like to think of
it is in this active sense of you're
creating a movement. And and what you're doing
is you're saying, I'm in a different future
this is the different future that someday will
be recognized as the conventional future. But right
now, I'm the only 1 in it. And
so I have to find people who are
predisposed to believe what I believe and spend
no time with anyone else at first. Get
those people to move first 1 at a
time and eventually it starts to accumulate and
accelerate,
And so what happens there, the founder c
creates the future with their early believers.
And over time, as people start to see
the empowering capabilities of that different future, more
and more people start to move to that
future and pretty soon,
you start to feel social pressure not to
move.
And so it's like it's like the difference
between being the first person out on the
dance floor and feel self conscious about it
versus being
the last person still in the chair while
everybody else is dancing. Now you feel kinda
like a do for not being in the
dance. It's a startup up markets are a
lot like that, categories are a lot like
that. And so
Whenever somebody tells me they want to engage
in category design, I always start by saying
what movement are you trying to create who's
gonna move first? Why are they gonna move?
And what story are you gonna tell to
get them to move. And so the second
half of the book is all about that,
and then the the the... It goes with
the territory that need to be disagreeable in
the right situations because a startup that is
a breakthrough that changes the pattern
fundamentally is a disagreement with the present. And
the status quo has the word status embedded
in it. So this Status quo will fight
back, the present will fight back, and it
won't fight back fair. And so you gotta
decide, do I wanna try to negotiate with
someone I can't negotiate with who's has no
interest in a good faith negotiation, or it's...
Here's my strategy. My future wins and their
future loses.
Right? But, like you have to decide
what you're in it for
because the present will try to
leverage
keeping the peace at your status within the
dominance hierarchy
to cause you to feel
guilty or afraid or
Par
for violating the rules,
violating the conventions, you know, not doing what
you quote unquote should do. All that was
legendary.
I'm reminded years ago, a dear friend of
mine, Nick d jo, god rest his soul,
friend and mentor
said to me, Christopher.
You know why big companies are conservative
because they have something to conserve
That's right.
And and by the way, here's the irony.
A lot of times the very best companies
are therefore the least stable to create breakthroughs.
What what people don't realize is the weakness
in the strength of how good they are
creates a bias.
And so it's the very fact that they
are that good that made them so profitable
that made them so good at the pattern
that they've
embraced sometimes for decades.
To your point, companies are not startups and
the other way around. I mean, some people
For example, have been critical about apple's,
recent announcements and strategy around Ai.
And this may sound funny coming from me
coming from Eddie
but
we believe what they did is really smart
because
we don't look at Apple a 3000000000000
dollar market cap who
company, who I would assert is more important
than the Gdp of a bunch of countries,
Right. I want Apple to be thoughtfully aggressive.
I don't want them behaving like a start.
Always throwing a 40 yard pass. Right? We
rely too much on them. Same thing with
Amazon. Same thing with Microsoft.
You know, same thing with Google. Right? We
want them to be thoughtfully focused on the
future. But at the same time,
we don't want them to do
what the startups that you and I get
involved with
do and how they behave. Yeah. And it's
interesting because I've I've learned that the the
startups
obviously use inflection and insights to change the
future, so can big companies. Right? So a
big company can have
sustaining innovation, which is what they normally do
and probably what they normally should do. That's
what they're good at.
And sustaining innovation could be organic,
you know, the iphone 15 is designed by
Apple, and it's a sustaining innovation.
It can be
purchased with M and A, you know, like,
when,
Microsoft bought blizzard
entertainment. Right? Act activation. Or it can be
through partnering,
which I would argue what Apple's doing with
Open Ai.
And so, like... But if you're Apple,
you're pretty happy with the dynamics of the
smartphone market. You're not trying to upset you're
you're like trying to extend your lead in
smartphones because you're making a ton of money,
the best business ever invented in mankind probably.
And so... But but then on the pattern
breaking side,
you can do organic. Apple did it with
the iphone 1, Amazon did it with Aws.
You can do it with M and a,
meta when they bought Oc,
that would be an example,
or you can do it also,
with partnering.
And so, you know,
what would be an example, Ibm when they
partner with Intel and Microsoft.
Now sometimes, when you do those partnerships, you
lose control of the future. But but you...
I think as a company, you always have
to decide what is the portfolio of bet?
That you're placing and how do you place
those bets and how do you think about
what success looks like and how you staff
them and what expectations you set?
And so
we talk about that sum because, there are
some companies that have mastered both at the
same time,
and it's not just tech companies. You know,
lockheed back in the day with Sku works.
Did this right.
It's possible to do,
but it's like, you have different assets and
liabilities when you're con... When you're a big
company. When your Apple, and you wanna have
a pattern breaking product like the iphone,
there's still advantages from your pass that you
wanted to marry with your inflection. You wanna
take 10. You wanna take the ipod. You
wanna take the app store. You want... Well,
they didn't have the app store yet. They
had the I itunes store. Right? You you
wanna take all of those things forward because
you have assets that the rest of the
industry doesn't have. Startups don't have. But you
wanna marry that with inflection like the touch
and like the, you know, the the the
better chips and the location capabilities that started
to evolve the cameras that got better. And
so, you know, when you're a start... When
you're a company,
you wanna
you wanna harness inflection along with your current
assets and combine them in new ways.
Yes. Very much. So
Let's talk about...
Wanna go circle back to this idea of,
creating different futures. This is language that
the collective we have been using for a
while.
Yep. And
thanks to you.
When we talked to entrepreneurs when we work
with entrepreneurs,
We will often do an exercise that sort
of goes like this?
We'll talk about their b eggs. They're big
hairy audacious goals,
And what's the difference they wanna make in
the world. What's the problem they wanna solve?
Why does that problem matter? To whom does
matter? All of that good shit? And then
we say,
and this is right out of Mike Maple.
Most people situate their brain and the mental
scaffolding they use.
When they think about the future is mentally
they're in the present
and they're looking
forward
forecasting.
Yep. Well, the exercise that we now often
do, say okay. Let's take the B h.
Let's take our Po. We thought about the
mega headwind
and tailwind
because you wanna be using those things to
your advantage. Right?
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. All that we write down
all the things that we believe will be
different about the future 10 years out, etcetera,
etcetera, etcetera. And we try to do the
opposite. That is to say
stand in the future
and look back
and say, we created this radically different future.
We achieved this awesome b,
We're now looking back 10 years,
how did we do it?
Yes. And I have found, and again, I'll
credit to you
that that simple
if you will switch mental scaffolding
from... I'm in the present looking forward,
to I'm in the future looking back to
the present.
Right? Because you have said many times
that legendary founders
Legendary creators, legendary innovators are visitors from the
future telling us how it's going to be
and trying to welcome us to that future.
And so
I would if you like Mike, if you
could.
Sort of pop the hood on,
I'm a founder.
I want to
do this back casting. I want to do
this standing in the future, having created an
exponential
outcome for customers around a big problem.
How do I go about
thinking
future back as opposed to present forward?
Yeah. And so here is 1 of the
top lessons I learned, and this has v
me for a long time
that what I learned is that
you want to literally live in it. So,
like, you don't want to imagine you're in
a different future and work backwards
you want to really be there. Right? So,
like, Mark Andre jason when he was at
the University of Illinois in a supercomputer lab,
he was tinkering with the technologies, the Internet,
and he was trying to make the Internet
useful for him.
And so his intuition about what to build
is more... Far more likely to be right.
Because he's building the thing that's missing for
him? And so, like, why is this important?
What I came to realize is that
by living in a different future by tinkering
by getting your hands dirty with what's new
about it,
you learn firsthand
the opportunities to break the pattern of thinking
feeling and acting because it is that direct
exposure and experience
that helps you
break the limits of your thinking. And andre,
in his case was fortunate because There were
no limits to his thinking. He didn't know
anything about business. He a college kid.
The the people who thought the Internet was
gonna happen, Thought it was the digital super
highway.
And so they thought Time Warner was gonna
build it or At and T or the
Us government or Microsoft Network or whatever.
But those executives
as experienced they were as much power as
they had
were burdened by the bias of thinking that
the future was gonna be a forward rejection
of the present.
It didn't occur to them that some kid
make minimum wage in supercomputer lab was tinkering
with the future that he was he was
just there. Like, a pocket of the future
visited him
before it visited other people. And so William
Gibson right, the future is already here. It's
just not evenly distributed.
But if you go to a lot of
these people,
you know, this is why I use non
consensus and not Contra.
Contra is contrary to something. And ultimately being
contrary to something is another form of conformity
because it's relative to somebody else's thinking. That's
also what different is different is a comparison
when you say different choose be better. That's
right when you say better, the immediate thing
that goes on in our brain is better
than what?
Exactly. And so so, like, what what you
want and the great founders that I've seen.
When I say, how did you come up
with this idea, they almost feel guilty.
They're they're they're they're sort like, well, I
was living in the future, and I was
working on this stuff, and I was super
interested in it and of, you know, of
course, people were gonna wanna be able to
browse the Internet because, you know, if you
looked at the standards of the worldwide web,
that was the thing that was missing. You
know, Bob Met ka when he talks about
designing Ethernet. He's like, Well, I was in
Xerox Park, I lived in a thai machine.
Of course, everybody was gonna have w w
desktop computers with mice. Of course, everybody was
gonna wanna share a laser printer. Course, these
computers would be fast.
Well, the rest of us didn't know that
yet, But to Bob Met, it was obvious.
And so I like to say,
People who live in the future. It's like
you live in an Oasis. Everybody's living on
a Sand Dune, and 1 guy wander off
and finds an Oasis.
Once you're in the oasis,
it's no longer a question what's different about
it. You look around, you're like there's palm
trees, coconut, there's water,
This is awesome.
You're you no longer have to imagine what's
different about the Oasis and the sand dude.
And so how do categories get designed,
that founder comes back to the sand dude
and says, hey, guys, guess what? There's an
oasis over there. It's amazing.
And most people are like, oh, no. I
I don't think that's Oasis. I think that's
a mirage. I think you're crazy.
I'm not going. But a few people say,
you know, I'll I'll give it a whirl.
I'll try, and they go over there, and
they say, holy, Mack. This is amazing.
Oh, my god. And then more people come
back and say, dude, you gotta check out
this Oasis.
But like, if you're...
What most people get wrong is they try
to think of a startup.
And they don't realize that by doing that,
they buy into a certain context, which is
to try to analyze the problems of the
present.
What you really wanna do is ask the
question, have I gotten now of the present.
Am I living in a
valid, different future governed by different assumptions
than most other people living in the present?
You know, And and there's different ways to
do that. You know, you can you could
be at a super supercomputer lab. You could
be at Xerox Park, but you could also
be like Todd and Freddie at O,
and all their early customers were Salesforce,
cloud early adopters, and they were seeing what
their problems were in identity management, and other
things.
And so they were they were building what
was missing for the customers that they spent
every day with. But that... Those... Not all
customers are equal Those customers were early adopter
lighthouse customers cloud. Right? And so... But it...
But in both cases they got out of
the present.
And what what happens too often is people
think of vision like having better bin vernacular.
They they have the wrong idea about what
Vision really is. It's it's not about staring
over the mountains with better.
It's about getting out of the present and
living in that oasis.
And learning how life is different in the
Oasis specifically,
such that you can now
understand the new opportunities to create new patterns.
And so, like, it becomes intuitively obvious to
the founder,
what the insight ought be because they're just
building what's missing. They're not even they're not
even thinking about it is Oh, what is
my insight? They're thinking
in order to get full advantage
of these empowering capabilities
there's some missing things that need to be
built. I'm gonna build those things.
And I have found normally Mike that
the person who's saying in doing what you're
just describing.
On 1 hand, they might have made a
choice. I wanna be a founder. I wanna
be a creator. I wanna be an innovator
entrepreneur.
So people are sort of, if you will
call to stuff. I get that piece.
That said,
the vast majority of the legendary ones that
I know of
are
the thing, the mission, what we in category
design, we call the point of view.
Owns them.
Yes.
So
and there's 2 examples of this.
You can be the founder creator of this,
or if you're curious and you pay attention
to the right kind of customers,
you can collaborate. Now let me give you
2 of my favorites. Quickie.
1 of my heroes is a guy named
Shane Mc.
And Shane is the category designer of what
today is called frees skiing. K? He didn't
make it on the Olympic team. He was
too this. He was too that. Plus he
was a wack do guy who like to
drink Jack daniels and wear silly outfits and
jump off cliffs and and and be very
child like in his approach to skiing.
And so when the Us Olympic team shunned
him. He sort of said, go fuck yourself,
and I'm gonna I'm gonna go in the
back country, and I'm gonna jump off these
things, and I'm gonna be playful. And I'm
gonna make silly movies and so he goes
he does all that stuff. And he's always
thinking about how to have more fun skiing
and how to do cooler things skiing. And
then he has this idea.
He looks at water skis 1 summer.
And he looks at the size of them
in the shape with him. And he said
never really thought about it. And he was
like,
hey, wait a minute.
Snow is fucking frozen water.
So... And I think was Alaska. I might
be wrong on this, but he takes
a pair of water skis that he,
you know, jacks up
fig did sort of jerry rigs into skis.
And he starts skiing on them. And then
he shows up to his sponsor
Yep. And says, this is what we're doing.
I believe it was vocal if... If my
memory is right, but I'm not that smart.
And that was a lot a... That was
a lot of Ipa ago.
And and he's able to convince them.
So that's like legendary. The second story is
a very similar 1 that I love equally,
which is
there was this rock band back in the
sixties.
And they were looking for a particular kind
of sound.
Mh. They also had a legendary
and fucking loud ass
drummer.
Okay. So they... For the sound they wanted,
they needed volume, both to deal with the
drummer,
and they they wanted to push amps.
And so the lead guitar player in this
band is, like, pushing his amps to the
edge and adding more cabinets and more speakers
and he's tinkering and he's tinkering,
and he can't get
sound known enough to big enough to compete
with his drummer. And big enough to create
the crunch and the power
that he's looking for.
So he goes to his local music store.
And the guy that owns that store's name
is Jim.
And he says to gym,
you gotta build me a giant cabinet, and
you gotta go to a hundred watts, and
you gotta do all this stuff. And Jim
says, that's not gonna work. And and and
this guy's name is Peter, and Peter says,
yeah, Jim, but you gotta do it in.
So Peter convince Jim.
And that's how
the who became the loudest rock band in
the world, Pete Townsend.
And that's where the marshall app came from,
Jim marshall.
And so
There's also in this... I'm leading to a
question mike. In both those examples,
there's some serendipity
Mh.
So
the innovator category
designer, pattern breaker
is pushing for this new innovation.
And the manufacturers in this case
have to be open to radically different thinking.
And you mentioned earlier in our discussion. I
forgot the exact phrase you said Mike, but,
like, would... I think you said focus on
the early believers
Yes.
And, you know, in category design, that's called
the super consumers.
And the interesting thing is
If you if you don't ask the customer,
what would you like us to do, which
is a pathway to incremental, which is what
most people do.
But if you look at
those early believers, those people on the outer
edge. So if you think about the,
a graph. Most people ignore the edges of
the graph and focus on the fat part
in the middle. In in in category science,
we say focus on the the edge cases.
Right? The Pete Townsend,
the Shane Mc.
And if you do that,
you can make if you will, a ser
insight happen.
So so share with me your thoughts, Mike
on this exact topic, which is Maybe I
wanna be a founder. I'm called to it.
I don't have the idea yet. How do
I be a person
who is like Jim Marshall.
Okay. So I would answer it at 2
levels,
and 1 level, I have more expertise than
the other. Right? So
Like, I I'd say that the the thing
that's a little bit different about some of
the things that you do and some of
the things that I do
is,
I'm very narrow. Right? So
I'm looking for ideas that
embody
usually technology
inflection. And and the reason that I'm looking
for that is
I'm I'm looking for something that could be
worth more than 10000000000 dollars if it works.
Right? And and most of the time I'm
wrong, but I need to be spectacularly right
when I'm right. Whereas
category design doesn't have to just apply to
technology breakthroughs. It could apply to the 5
hour energy drink or or gorilla or whatever.
It it's more of like a state of
mind about how you wanna show up in
the world. Right? And so, like, what I
would say is that that
most people who succeed
they don't they don't follow a recipe.
They adopt a certain mindset. And so
too many people in business want a recipe.
The problem with that, though is that all
breakthroughs by definition are undiscovered.
And so, like, you can only have a
recipe for something that has been to covered.
If you have a recipe for cake, it's
because somebody's made a cake that specific way
and is sharing that recipe that playbook with
other people.
And so breakthroughs come from a certain mindset,
and you described it well.
It's it's almost a mindset of more like
an artist than a business person. And so
what's true about artists, artists, first of all,
they notice things that other people don't notice.
And what you're saying about, like, the marshall
amps and, like, all these different things are
you know, we could be talking about the
les paul guitar, Like, all these things happened
because somebody noticed something subtle
that other people just... You know, there's that
store about the... There's 2 fish swim, 2
little fish in the ocean, and a big
fish comes up. It says, morning boys has
of water.
And the 2 little fish swim a little
bit farther. And then 1 of them says
the other, what the hell is water. And
it's like, you know, we're so
the just like I said earlier, that companies
that succeed well that follow patterns well,
they have an inherent set of biases.
The biases are so strong and so fundamental
and so flex, they don't even know they
have them. They they don't realize that that
that, you know, the people who started lifting
Uber under stood that the thing that's in
your pocket or in your hand,
now had a Gps locator chip in it,
that could enable ride sharing. Most people don't
know that the things in our pockets.
Have a new form of empowerment. Most of
us don't notice. Most of us aren't even
looking to notice. And so the thing that
I would say is likely similar
I bet you that the guy that did
the 5 hour energy drink. I bet you
that the person that did gorilla glue. I
bet you the person that is red bull,
even though they weren't technology centric, I bet
you that they were
supremely effective at 2 things. 1 is noticing
the opportunity for new pattern.
That's number 1, and artist noticed things. You
know, Michel sees P and a block of
marble,
you know, Vince van Go sees star store
eye on Canvas.
But then the second thing that Artists do
that's similar as they move us past our
logic.
And so when you see P,
you don't sit there and and think of
it in a clinical way.
You're you're trans by it because
you can you can see the emotions that
we're conveyed, the the the depth of human
experience that comes, you know, overcomes you.
And the same is true startups, like nobody
would do business with a start
if they were following their logic. And so
the the founder has to convince early believers
to abandon their logic.
And and feel the same type of
aesthetic connection to a different future
that a patron of the arts fields. That
the Medici felt towards Vinci and Michel
and Rafael and all those people that you
see in the
Saint. Peter's of Basil silk, all those artists
right that got commissioned. And so,
in those ways, I'd say my business
is similar. You know, like, the way you
would describe category design, you probably think of
it
more broadly than I do. You probably think,
hey, 5 hour energy drink
perfectly
perfectly valid case a category design. I would
agree with that. But the difference for me
is I don't invest in those kind of
things. Right? So I have to be an
expert in the things that have
extraordinary
exponential technology empowerment.
So I have a, you know, a a
very specific edge case of category design that
I care about. Yeah. Of course.
And in edge an edge case that I
spent the bulk of my professional life over
30.
Yeah years. You you so I'm a founder,
Mike, and I say to, hey, that shit
you just said was really awesome.
What do I need to do
to be a person who,
quote,
moves us past
logic.
Yeah. So
and this is where 1 of the things
I like about
you have this term lang something,
and you treat the word language as a
verb.
And interestingly,
imagining that you're in a different future. I
find
that could work,
but it's better to just be in a
different 1.
And now what we have to do is
we have to educate the rest of the
world about how to think about the different
future we're inhabit.
And the biggest mistake we could possibly make
is to define it relative to a to
the best or to the present. Right? So,
you know,
this is where people get product market fit
wrong.
There wasn't some, you know, abstract market for
ipads.
Jobs harness a set of inflection
to create an entire category around tablets,
but he didn't just
tinker at a different future. And he didn't
just create a different product that embodied that
future.
He had to come back to the present
and help us all learn how to think
about it. He had to come up with
language to describe what tablet computing was, just
like you had to have language to describe
what a thousand songs in your pocket was,
just like he had to have language to
describe what a smartphone and an app store
were. And so, like, the great category designers
use lang
to
cause a line a d and thinking
that then extends into a line a d
in behavior and acting.
And and in so doing, they cause people
to abandon
existing patterns and embrace the new patterns.
And so that's to me, that's getting people
to move past their logic. And they do
that by...
And by the way, this has happened in
other fields, you know, movements happen their social
movements that happen, Martin Luther King.
He says, I want people to be judged
by the content of their character or not
the color of their skin.
You you either believe that or you don't.
You can't halfway believe that. And and you
don't move with him for utilitarian reasons. You
move with him for aesthetic reasons.
In the same way that people adopt embrace
artist dentistry or embrace startups.
Early believers move for aesthetic reasons.
They they want to
transform their life in their own hero's journey,
and they wanna actual that transformation, and your
product or your startup becomes a vehicle for
them to do that. So you have to
language what you're doing in such a way
that they'll embrace that language. And it can't
sound like any languages come before. Like Twitter
can't say we're Micro blog inc. That would
have been a terrible
under appreciation of the opportunity. Right? And and
so, like,
all the all the startups have worked with
that have really succeeded,
have come up with language on purpose, sometimes
by accident, but but, like, ultimately, it's been
part of their success is they've defined a
new language to describe the new pattern.
And that language resonates powerfully with the early
believers who move past their logic to that
aesthetically different future.
Is it wrong for 1 man to live
in man?
Yes. Yes. So let me take a recent
example. So this
pattern breaking category design hides and plain sight
with lang.
And of course, the purpose of language do
exactly what you describe, a d point in
thinking to a d point ultimately in action
and in business,
buying and purchasing behavior. So let's let's take
a recent example.
Open.
Yep. If you ask most people in Silicon
Valley,
why open Ai
became the fastest growing,
most impactful
software startup of all time.
The vast majority and we're gonna go to
the product.
And the product is amazing. I mean, it's...
Yep. The first time we all used it,
we all went oh, fuck. Right? Like... Yep.
So
legendary breakthrough product. Absolutely.
And
Let's look at the lang.
First of all, they didn't say they were
Ai.
They said they were generative
Ai.
So they're trying to focus it down on
generating
and answer, generating a completely different result. Here's
what they didn't say, Mike.
We're searched 2 dat.
No. And and and they go a step
further.
They say we want to enable
artificial general intelligence. And this is a step
on the path to enabling that. The point
of view is the company. Exactly. Right? And
so their point of view is Ag.
And so they're like, I'm gonna have a
sec a sequence of things
that prove my point of view, that prove
that we're making progress to to that ultimate
point of view. But like,
open Ai doesn't say we're trying to make
a better
question answer interface. They say there's this thing
on the horizon that's gonna change humanity called
artificial general intelligence, we exist as a company
to make that true in the future. Everything
that we do is gonna be, you know,
wood behind that arrow of that. And and
the weird thing is,
I'm not even trying to hide it. I'm
trying to do category design right now with
the book pattern break Right? I'm trying to
say you're
designing yourself and your first there's a different
way to think of startups and it em
embed inflection and insights and it em impair
movements and storytelling and disagreeable ness, and, like,
I'm trying to create a new language. Yeah.
Yeah just like Eric Reese, when
you knew that his ideas were starting to
succeed. When I would get pitches and they
say, well, we're doing a minimum viable product
or, you know, we're we're a lean start.
I'll know that our ideas are starting to
win.
When people start to say, here's what my
fundamental insight is. Or here's what my inflection
were... Like, here's the movement I'm trying to
start. And I'm I'm trying to do that
because I'm trying... First of all, I think
it's a better way to think of startups,
particularly if you want breakthroughs,
but I'm trying to create a line of
d and language. I'm trying to have a
common set of words that people could use
to describe what they see and and the
phenomenon that they're witnessing when they create these
breakthroughs
and my hope is that if if if
if we win,
if you win the agenda, you know,
the the point of view around the language
becomes to the point of view flood gate.
And so now I have a reason to
talk to people
about these ideas, and it's it's a vehicle
to talk about the point a view of
flood gate and why we're different in seed
and why, you know, we're not just 1
of 2000 seed funds that say all the
same content free words. And so So my
hope is to start a movement and move
early believers in this way of thinking about
startups,
and the hope is over time that a
a whole bunch of people will embrace that
movement, what it bodies and that that 1
day, the the language of pattern breakers will
become
mainstream to the language of
entrepreneurship in the same way that the lean
startup up terms were 0 to 1 terms
were, like, Steve blank customer development. So that's
but the goal is to have something meaningful
to add to the startup up can and,
you know, of of ideas. Right? And and
it's a pure category design problem. Right? It's
like your you're trying to move people to
a different future. You're trying to explain why
you think that future is aesthetically superior to
the way people are doing it right now.
And then people are gonna choose to believe
or not believe ultimately.
Yeah. And you're trying to...
And I'll use this
in category design language,
create a new missing for people in the
venture startup world.
Right. Yeah. I want... What what I want
them to do is I want them to
realize
most people think the wrong way about success
and failure. They think about
success success as avoiding failure?
Or they think of failure as not succeeding
To me, there's only 1 way to fail,
and that's to pursue
an okay but not great idea that you
get stuck in that you have to deal
with the s. And you can't get out
of it, and you have all these commitments.
I would rather take a high risk, high
upside bet on the future and fail quickly
Not because I'm just willy nilly fail fast.
It's because
you can only know your non consensus at
first. You can't know that your non consensus
and write it first. And so it's your
willingness to be wrong that allows you to
be spectacularly right at your willingness to fail
that lets you have asymmetric success
And so what we wanna do is we
wanna say, okay, if we do succeed, did
we get paid for the risk that we
took? Was it worth it? Because we only
have to be right once. You know, if
you're an entrepreneur, you only have to be
right once in your career
if you're spectacularly right. So we're we're looking
for very high risk, but even higher expected
value futures that most people are afraid to
pursue
because they think of risk the way Buffet
thinks of it as avoiding hazard or rather
than something that you take proactively and with
courage. And with
conviction and with intelligence.
And so, you know, how do you decide
what risks are worth taking is what we're
interested in? And that's the way we wanna
help founders is to come up with ways
to stress test their ideas to see? But
do I wanna cross that Rub? Is this
risk worth taking? Is this future worth exploring
or is it something that, I'm trying to
think of a startup and I can't articulate
a path to a radically different future? Yes.
Absolutely.
And the other thing about what you do
and what we do is most people in
business when they're presented with any anything, an
idea, a plan strategy or what whatever it
is.
They view it through a lens called
why won't this work?
And let me point out all the holes
in this thing. And Yep. There's some real
valid reasons to do that, Of course. However,
If you're in the different futures business,
you have to spend more time thinking about
what would need to be true
for this different future to happen?
Yes.
And then you have to decide
how much are you willing to bet on
the entrepreneurs ability to move the world as
we talked about earlier
from the way it is to a new
and different way.
But fundamentally,
it's about trying to get your arms around
what category design is called category potential, what
could be true.
If
this were to happen. And to just circle
back on the lang because I think it's
so important.
The other legendary thing open Did.
Through the entire history of of software,
we have built and used
databases.
And databases were designed to store and or
retrieve
information.
Well, you can't use
old words to describe new things.
No. So Open A says,
it's not a database in any traditional sense.
It's an L.
It's a large language model.
And they... And I'm gonna use this word
on purpose,
Differentiate
what happens to data in an Ll as
compared to a traditional database. And then you
don't store and retrieve in an Ll,
you quote
train the data.
Yes.
So
just that
differentiated lang,
lets everybody know.
We're trying to explain what we believe is
an
exponential different
future
breakthrough.
Yes. And Eli who else does this really
well is Tesla. And... It's not just the
car.
Tesla is a great example of this. Because,
first of all,
their mission doesn't even describe cars. Right? They
say we wanna accelerate the world to sustainable
energy. And so great movement, a great category
starts by appealing to a higher purpose than
just any 1 company. Right? And so then
what do they do? They don't just sell
you a car that em embark that different
future. They create, like, the
charger network, and they create the power wall
batteries, and they create the solar panels on
your house.
They create an entire ecosystem.
Of things that validate your belief in that
aesthetically different future. And so, like,
that's that's part of what they've done so
brilliantly. And and
every step of the way they've lang it.
Right? It it it all fits together, right,
in a coherent hole.
And, you know, you don't sit there and
you see all the stuff that they're doing
and then say, oh, well how is that
different from Ford? How that different from Chevy?
How's that different from Bmw?
It's self evident. Right? That the language is
so different that it's self evident.
And so
that's, you know,
it takes courage to do that because everybody's
like, I wanna be in the Ga Magic
Quadrant or I wanna be, you know, mentioned
alongside x y and z companies,
but that's not good because
that that that causes you to fall into
the comparison trap. You wanna defy comparison
by having language that def defines the comparison.
And then, you know, when you start the
movement and you're disagreeable,
you wanna do that, so you can escape
the conformity trap because conforming to society's
expectations of you will cause you to rep
the mission. It'll cause you to back down
when you shouldn't back down. And so, you
know, you have to escape both traps, The
the comparison trap and the conformity trap. By
thinking and acting different.
And and so and language is is key
to that. Is key to escaping
both forms of that trap because it takes
courage to have different language, but it also
takes originality to have different language.
And you gotta be committed to it.
Quick 2 quick stories.
1,
a little while ago,
Ding Dong Magazine and approached me and they
said, hey, we're doing this big cover story.
On,
I forget what the number was the 10
or the 20 or the whatever... Some... You
know, these list things. Is, you know, you're
on the midas list and all the other.
Awesome.
Bc. So it's 1 of those
for marketing people. Right? And there's like,
we love you, and you're 1 of the
top, 1
But here's what they called it.
Marketing
influencers.
Yeah. It's a bad name. Well, guess what?
I'm not a fucking donkey influencer.
And so I said, hey, I really appreciate
it. I can't be on your list.
Yeah.
And then years ago when we were at
mercury,
we were working a big story with Forbes.
And they do an annual list of their
top you know, high growth companies or whatever
they. And and
as we're working on the story with them,
it becomes clear, it's gonna be a big
story.
Yep.
And then
the senior editor working on the story calls
me, and he says, hey Christopher.
We'd like to do this is... Would like
to put you guys on the cover.
Picture of your Ceo.
And they're gonna fly to California, They're gonna
take pictures of them and We we take
them shopping and get them new outfits and
buff them up and do the whole thing.
So we do all of that shit. The
story ready to roll.
And
the
editor calls me? And I said, hey, what
do you... What what are you gonna say
on the cover?
Which is a taboo question, but I asked
it anyway. And he said, well, we normally
call this our top 50 or 02:50. Whatever
the list was.
Small companies in America.
I said to him Bruce.
We gotta eject.
He says what?
I said, dude,
we're already public.
We sell to the largest governments and corporations
in the world
You calling us
1 of the top small businesses
literally
undermine everything
we're trying to get done. And so we
love you, we know it's gonna be a
great story. We appreciate it. But
as crazy it'll... As it sounds, this will
do way more damaging and good.
He said to me, to the best of
his knowledge at that time,
we were the first
people to ever say Thanks, but no thanks
to the cover of forbes.
Yeah.
I'm not surprised. Here's what they did.
They renamed the issue.
They came back and we sit... And they
said, if we call it the top entrepreneurial
companies, does that work for you? I said
that works great. That's awesome. Yep.
And so my point in all of that
is, you know, it's the rare company or
individual who's willing to look at a giant
opportunity and take a pass on it for
this
clear commitment that I want the world to
be able to
perceive us in a very particular way And
even though this might lead to a lot
of good things,
it's ortho to what we're trying to get
done, and we're eject.
Yeah. And it's and it's interesting
because
what you what you start to realize is
that people wanna be led.
They wanna be led into a different future,
and they're so used to, you know, sometimes
I'll turn on the Tv and I'll see,
like, Cnbc or something.
And business people don't talk like normal people.
Right? You'll see somebody say, well, We have
this new line of branded coffee that our...
Customers are going to like and it's gonna
expand our footprint and value
proposition for coffee
consumers.
And I'm just, like,
why does anybody even listen to this person?
That like, it's just gibberish.
And so, like, the the authenticity of having
different language and having a valid different future
that you're moving people towards
really magnet people in the same way that
a story magnet people. And,
it's a shame that more people don't have
confidence
in the fact that it'll work if they
show up in the world that way.
Because it's it's it's it's risky, but it's
it's 1 of those risks worth taking. Not
doing it as more risky because not doing
it means you fall into the comparison trap,
and you'll never be truly great.
To Mike Be?
We've done it before till late in the
evening
with various.
Yeah.
We we don't have a huge substances here.
Well, I've got a bunch of whiskey right
over there. Good day. So unless you wanna
do that and keep going for another 2
hours,
is there anything else you wanna touch on
before we were at?
I guess,
the main thing is that, you know, I
imagine some people listening to this will be
founders.
And
I just always
reminded,
it's just how grateful I am to them,
and just
they have the courage to stick their necks
out
and make the future different.
If it weren't for people who want to
make this future different and have the courage
to try.
And
against all odds,
try to make it come about.
We'd still be sitting in caves, you know,
drawn pictures on the cave walls, and maybe
maybe somebody, somebody will come up with fire
but it would just be a very different
world. And so, you know, the abundance and
the the the the things that we enjoy
in our lives
come from the fact that some people dare
to be different. They they dare to make
a radical difference, but being radically different. And
so just if anybody listening to this is
1 of those people. I just wanted to,
you know, just offer my just deepest gratitude.
You're fighting the good fight. I could... You
can't guarantee that you're gonna win or not
win, but you're sure is hell fighting in
a good fight. You're fighting a fight worth
fighting.
I couldn't agree more.
Mike Maple,
thank you for writing this book. I've been
waiting for this book for 20 something.
And it's finally here
And then let Me say this to too,
actually, I don't think I've said this to
you before. I think
more than any book that's come out
since play bigger.
This is
the most powerful
adjacent
work to category design. I actually view it
frankly
as part of category design.
I just think it's so great.
And I think the more...
Let me say it this way.
The vast majority of business content that gets
created
is written for and by
people who extend the present.
Yeah.
And so if you're somebody who says, hey,
listen. I wanna create exponentially different futures and
new massive new value as a result of
that, and I wanna consume non consensus
non obvious
content that helps me think in ortho ways
about how to design different futures.
I'll tell you this, Mike.
They're ain't a lot of content for that
person.
There really isn't. Yeah. It's too bad.
Well,
and we're changing it and you're changing it.
We're trying to change it. Right?
But most business books just skew the obvious
that most people already know.
This is very different than that. They try
to come up with saying something that's been
said already, but in a way that resonates
in a new way. And like, that's that's
not what... To me, that's not the interesting
challenge here. It's it's to help people understand
in a better way the mindset that leads
to breakthroughs,
and the mindset that leads to,
you know, actual the desire to create a
radical their and to avoid
the temptation to pursue things that aren't worth
of your time and talent. That's right.
And let me ask you this 1 last
question maybe.
I remember in 1 of our prior
conversations. I think we were talking about.
What's the name of the company doing the
supersonic jet again? Oh, boom super supersonic. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I remember you're talking about
how long ago it was
that this
capability was created
and
that we don't have it anymore, and we
sort of went backwards
for quite a while.
And you got emotional about that?
And so what is it about
the people
and the difference that they make
who move humanity so far forward like this.
That
makes a guy like you with an iq
like yours,
kinda tear up.
Yeah. I guess it's that,
you know, it reminds me of that book
that I like Jonathan Living in Seagull, right,
about this Seagull who wants to fly faster
than any birds ever flown. Right? In june
bach. Yeah. It's a great book. Right? And
and I was lucky enough to get to
know him. He helped me... I was trying
to figure out what to ins ent on
the inside of Julie's ring, and I was
having a little bit of a writer's block.
And we had traded so messages back and
forth over the year. So you Richard Ba?
Yeah. Yeah. So friends with Richard Ba?
Well,
Friendly. Frank. Friendly. Yeah, for sure. I didn't
know that. Mike. He's 1 of my heroes.
That's a amazing. He's awesome. Yeah. It's may...
And so you know, back to Jonathan Livingston
a seagull. Right? It was... My dad had
it when I was a little kid, and
I saw it, and I asked him what
it was about, and he said, you know,
classic Mike Maple Senior why don't you read
it? You tell me what it's about. So
I read it. And
and what I took away from Jonathan Livingston
in Siegel,
and it relates to boom supersonic. It relates
to all these other things is that
the limits that we experience in the world
are not really limits of the world itself,
it's the limitations of our own mind and
our own expectations of what's possible.
And if you break the chains of your
own self imposed limit, you break all the
chains
from
achieving what you wanna achieve. And so I
get inspired and emotional about people like Blake
Sc boom supersonic,
because he's willing to depart from the flock.
He's willing to say, you know,
the amount of time from the wright brothers
to the Concord is the same as the
amount of time for the Concorde to today.
That's bullshit.
I don't believe that that is a valid
way of assuming the world. I think that's
a bunch of self imposed limits that don't
have to be and I'm gonna break them.
I'm gonna break the change of those limitations,
watch me. And it's just like, I just
love people like that. I just think that
people like that.
Are honoring the gift of their short time
in this world by making it count.
And so and and by pursuing a world
of no limits,
rather than resigning to themselves
to succeeding
within a set of limits that somebody else
imposed on them. And so so I just
I just love people like that. Right. I
just love it. And so, you know, that's
my story and I'm sticking to it. It's
a hell of a story.
Well, Mike,
god bless you.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much
for writing this book,
and to quote my dear friend, Bill Walton.
You know, I you know I feel about
you and our relationship,
and so to quote, Bill,
Thank you for my life.
Man, you're gonna... That to get me choked
up.
Yeah. Well, thanks for having me Christopher, and
it's always been
gotcha Known each other for more than 2
decades now.
And you know, I've always had the greatest
regard for you and always been
so grateful that I got to know you
earlier in my career. It would have been
a shame to get to know who this
late and realize how much fun times we
could had. And so I'm glad that we've
gotten to have him and
you know, maybe maybe How do a better
job of
showing up more often, so we could do
more stuff. That'd be great. Imagine if we
can make the 20 years even more legendary
than the last. Hot damn. Let's do it.
Mike Maple. Thank you so much. Alright. Thanks,
Chris. Good to see you.
That was the legendary Mike Maple junior.
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