#039 Track Zach Marshall #3: 10x-ing your company in 4 Months
Topics: (2:29) - How clear is the picture of how far you’ve come in the past 4 months? (3:27) - Recapping Track Zach #2 (10:36) - What are customers buying now and how have the service offerings changed? (20:06) - Do you know the bootstrapping process of these other industry marketplace products? (21:49) - How did you arrive at home security audit and family protection as the right first products to offer? (29:20) - What’s your ultimate revenue goal as it pertains to fundraising? (38:35) - What do your internal operations look like? (41:06) - Zach’s experience in Launch New York (43:32) - Spending too much time on “shiny object” opportunities (48:55) - Traction and the fundraising process (57:01) - Entrepreneurship is really hard (1:06:01) - Is there anything you’ve changed your mind on in the past quarter? (1:17:06) - Are there other mental models from your time as a SEAL that you apply in business? (1:20:44) - Feeling high leverage work shift over time (1:26:22) - How can people listening help Conterra? Links: ConterraSecurity.com LaunchNY.org The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen NfX Marketplaces Other Episode You’ll Like: Kevin Espiritu: Bootstrapping Epic Gardening to 8 Figgures by mixing Media + D2C Biz Models. Oh and Poker, Pink Pineapples, and Male Models. 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Important quotes from Naval on building wealth and the difference between wealth and money: How to get rich without getting lucky. - Naval Ravikant Making money is not a thing you do—it’s a skill you learn. - Naval Ravikant I came up with the principles in my tweetstorm (below) for myself when I was really young, around thirteen or fourteen. I’ve been carrying them in my head for thirty years, and I’ve been living them. Over time (sadly or fortunately), the thing I got really good at was looking at businesses and figuring out the point of maximum leverage to actually create wealth and capture some of that created wealth. - Naval Ravikant Seek wealth, not money or status. - Naval Ravikant Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. - Naval Ravikant Money is how we transfer time and wealth. - Naval Ravikant Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games. You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity—a piece of a business—to gain your financial freedom. - Naval Ravikant The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner. You have to know how to learn anything you want to learn. The old model of making money is going to school for four years, getting your degree, and working as a professional for thirty years. But things change fast now. Now, you have to come up to speed on a new profession within nine months, and it’s obsolete four years later. But within those three productive years, you can get very wealthy. - Naval Ravikant Important quotes from the podcast by Naval on Leverage: “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.” —Archimedes To get rich, you need leverage. Leverage comes in labor, comes in capital, or it can come through code or media. But most of these, like labor and capital, people have to give to you. For labor, somebody has to follow you. For capital, somebody has to give you money, assets to manage, or machines. - Naval Ravikant Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media). - Naval Ravikant Capital and labor are permissioned leverage. Everyone is chasing capital, but someone has to give it to you. Everyone is trying to lead, but someone has to follow you. - Naval Ravikant Code and media are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep. - Naval Ravikant If you can’t code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts. - Naval Ravikant Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment. - Naval Ravikant Apply specific knowledge, with leverage, and eventually you will get what you deserve. - Naval Ravikant “We live in an age of infinite leverage, and the economic rewards for genuine intellectual curiosity have never been higher. Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now.” - Naval Ravikant Important Quotes from the podcast on Business and Entrepreneurship There is no skill called “business.” Avoid business magazines and business classes. - Naval Ravikant You have to work up to the point where you can own equity in a business. You could own equity as a small shareholder where you bought stock. You could also own it as an owner where you started the company. Ownership is really important. Everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, a business, or some IP. That can be through stock options if you work at a tech company. That’s a fine way to start. But usually, the real wealth is created by starting your own companies or even by investing. In an investment firm, they’re buying equity. These are the routes to wealth. It doesn’t come through the hours. - Naval Ravikant