SPEAKER_00: hey everybody welcome to friday's show we're back molly and i went to the warriors game last night we're going to talk about that we're going to talk about apple's new emojis and then we're SPEAKER_04: going to have a long time before what's that we're just going to have a little fun for a minute before we get into the real yes we're going to talk about all these fun new apple emojis we're SPEAKER_00: going to talk about our great seats for the warriors game that was a blast everybody we met and then we're going to talk about the hiring freezes rescinding of offers more layoff bad news but then we have a super productive discussion about how you can make yourself so valuable that you don't get laid off and how managers can reduce layoffs David Friedberg: and how everybody can work together to make your company strong and viable uh through increased communications uh setting great goals and everybody uh upskilling themselves and being SPEAKER_04: super efficient so some silver linings here absolutely think of it as like we're filling SPEAKER_08: up your prepper pantry and then producer rachel closes out the episode with okay boomer because it's friday skill bank founder and ceo and skills by the way very relevant right now founder and ceo SPEAKER_07: mahek vora it's gonna be a great show stick with us this week in startups is brought to you by SPEAKER_09: and broker and brokers startup insurance program helps startups secure the most important types of insurance at a lower cost and with less hassle save up to 20 off traditional insurance today at and broker.com twist while you're there get an extra 10 off using offer code twist linkedin marketing to redeem a free 100 off linkedin ad credit and launch your first campaign go to linkedin.com slash this weekend startups and thorne thorne empowers people to take control of their long-term well-being with a proactive science-based approach to help through a variety of at-home tests thorne teaches you about what your body needs and provides the right high quality certified nutritional supplements for you to get started and take 10 off your first order head to thorne.com slash you slash twist SPEAKER_17: hey everybody happy friday you made it molly and i had a great time and a just horrific ending to the warriors game but what a night out huh molly it was the best of times and it was the worst of Jason Calacanis: times it was a great night out at the warriors if you are not basketball fans and did not watch this game on tv uh then you did not see us but everybody else did because i was getting texts and tweets SPEAKER_08: about it all night long it was so magical thank you for bringing me it was so magical to sit that SPEAKER_21: close and be like jay-z is directly on my latitude right now just right across the corner for me from SPEAKER_24: snapchat sitting right in front of us right in front of us last week we're talking about the 46 drop in SPEAKER_25: his stock not gonna lie too i didn't get the vibe that he's like the biggest basketball fan which i SPEAKER_29: always find to be a waste no he was not quiet he's a little quiet at the evan i don't i think maybe SPEAKER_31: he's a lakers fan uh but also a very reserved guy i mean he didn't clap he didn't cheer um but he's you know nothing yeah uh but uh again gave me the nod which was very nice steph gave me the nod you have SPEAKER_32: to admit you fangirled that moment i did fangirl that moment i was like he's not making it up at all SPEAKER_31: i told you steps i know steph uh i didn't know if he remembered me i played cards with him a couple times we see each other socially once in a blue moon but uh you know he i mean he watches the show whatever and he gave me a nod and so let's you know two games in a row two nods in a row so SPEAKER_37: that was a big victory for me uh good day but my god what a crazy game yeah uh and just like it was SPEAKER_07: up by 14. back and i mean it was a dogfight not to keep going back to top gun but it was a dogfight the Jason Calacanis: entire game yeah and then yes a 25 point swing at the end to choke it away in the fourth i mean SPEAKER_40: they just classic congrats to the celtics i was dming with uh bill simmons to drop a name who was David Friedberg: there at the game and uh i was like oh hey let's say hi because you know we've we've talked to each other on twitter but he didn't get my message in time so he dm'd me after but uh congratulations to fellow podcaster bill simmons is he a celtics fan big time big time you know for decades here and you know and it's been a bit of a dry spell for them i guess since the kg you know uh paul pierre stays um rondo i mean which is a hell of a team back then i mean they're you know i will give a legit team Jason Calacanis: it's a legit team i'll give all credit to my brother too who's been saying for the last two years that the celtics are the team of the future i just hope the warriors are like you can't have SPEAKER_07: that future right now though yeah let's let's delay that future i'm still going with my original SPEAKER_32: prediction warriors in six but uh three of the four besties there are paradoxically the one who owns a piece of the team chamath wasn't there but sax in the first row we were lucky enough to get my David Friedberg: friend c in the second row uh who gave them to me at face value which was very nice uh considering that worked three times as much uh so thank you to my friend uh and um in the third row friedberg uh brad gerstner uh was also there who else was there that we saw jason chang uh phil helmuth poker player uh jay-z was there alfred lynn from sequoia was there uh brian from airbnb was there i mean SPEAKER_55: it was a who's who travis from uber was there it is name drop time for sure it was crazy nancy David Friedberg: pelosi was there like it was absurd it was absurd so when you have these like first two row seats you get a little wristband people who haven't had the opportunity and i don't know if this happens in every city i think it's like a new york lakers thing but they have like a vip area so they just SPEAKER_58: give you sushi for free with your thousands of dollar ticket uh so we got to you know hang out back there and i met chris mullen uh we both went to the same high school and i was kind of star shocked i was like you know you're the most famous guy go to high school but i'm the second famous and i i literally i have never asked a celebrity for a selfie and i asked him for a selfie and i look like a goofy fool i was so happy to well i mean when i was a kid chris mullen was a hero yeah he went to my high school and then his brother terrence uh was in my grade so i knew terrence uh and then um he uh it's a true story we had breezy point which was a like a firefighter cop irish community where we would summer uh out in the rockaways in queens in new york we were in brooklyn it's like the tip of this like little point you can look it up with a bunch of bungalows basically houses that are weatherized they just you know lived there in the summer at least back in the day he did and he would uh sometimes show up and just play basketball with a bunch of kids he would just shoot hoops with us at the basketball court uh by the dugout and breezy points so shout SPEAKER_46: out chris mullen great to meet you uh and it's overall great time um and good for business met a bunch of new people so yeah it's always nice yeah it was lovely i know it seems like we're just SPEAKER_59: selecting but we were also networking but we were networking yeah whatever yeah it's it's kind of like SPEAKER_00: unjustifiable but then i also think on a marketing basis like those quartzite seats were going for 30 40 the second row obviously a lot less um but those quartzite seats i think on a branding basis if you see jay-z there now jay-z doesn't need more branding right but yeah i wonder yeah when jay-z's there does more jay-z tickets sell you know for the next concert or if he had a record out does he get more listens because you know how many people watch these finals games like maybe not for our standard knicks game but uh the finals game absolutely i mean that's nationally televised i think it's probably there there might be some amount of marketing that you know jay-z value gets out of it right i i think so absolutely i think that's why celebrities go it's kind of like it's a oh SPEAKER_67: absolutely it's you gotta be seen at the thing and then it raises your own awareness in people's SPEAKER_07: minds 100 i mean i can attest to the fact that on a way less famous level that happened as podcasters SPEAKER_40: yeah that happened yeah yeah yeah so and it's it's good and then also you know if we're ever looking to recruit another person to be on this podcast now it's like well i don't think marketplace SPEAKER_70: is taking you to the finals games you know let alone good seats you've just seen poor kai respond SPEAKER_03: to the poor kai no kai did oh no kai responded sorry well the photo that you tweeted of us looking SPEAKER_07: all hella bummed as the warriors were like pissing it away in the fourth and he kai responded and was like SPEAKER_74: what what is happening oh hey shout out kairos hey guy hey buddy how's how are you doing come visit SPEAKER_79: yeah you ever think of venture capital SPEAKER_80: kairos would be a great venture capitalist chop it up chop it up hey um let's have lunch so i i David Friedberg: i feel like emojis are such a big part of our culture yeah and i feel like i've had a strong SPEAKER_81: emoji game i've always been good with the fist bump i've been good with the hands up holla i've embraced it and i've always felt you know a little awkward as an older man using emojis but i kind of just went for it at a certain point and i you know for me the hilarious face emoji is my standard right because on twitter and other places people don't know i'm making a joke and so to SPEAKER_68: preemptively uh you know correct these people who are like that's not funny the literal or i like to SPEAKER_77: call them the literal net the literal net for the literati out there who don't read books but who are SPEAKER_85: just phenomenally literal the literal otty there's a mouthful i put my hilarious folks like the crying laughing one with the tears are coming out yeah it's just i put it there and it's apparently this SPEAKER_84: like a thing boomers but i don't care i love it i think it's like laughing at your own joke which i SPEAKER_93: think is a funny premise to begin with because i think it's funny when you laugh i mean i always SPEAKER_92: laugh at my own jokes like thank god i'm here to laugh at my jokes because no one else is gonna it's SPEAKER_85: like hilarious lee yeah it's hilarious to laugh at your own jokes because you're not supposed to anyway yeah but i now have a new favorite emoji that came out yes yes holy i always SPEAKER_58: gave people by the way yeah thank you whoever just you do with the discovery oh there is the picture SPEAKER_17: of us oh yeah there it is in the second row at the warriors game straight across from us and whatever SPEAKER_98: so anyway uh yeah there i am putting the crying emoji um got it okay i see what you're doing there SPEAKER_00: justin yeah david sacks sacma freeberg third roach moth and my yes exactly there is a literal SPEAKER_103: version of me doing putting three of them in fact i'm going to quickly explain one crucial type of insurance that all startups need it's dno insurance you've heard of this before you might not know what it is this is directors and officers insurance and it helps if somebody does something dumb and you get sued i don't know how to tell you more plainly or maybe you didn't do something dumb and some dumb person decides to sue you for a dumb reason i have seen this i've seen all flavors of it you need to have dno it's just part of growing up as a startup and if you don't have business insurance but you're going to have failed one of the first steps of being a founder the best place to look for it is in broker and brokers technology is going to save you time it's going to save you money prices are up to 20 lower and you get better coverage than the incumbents you can go from sign up to quote and purchase in just 10 minutes when you work with in broker instead of all those slow incumbents you're not dealing with those giant lumbering large companies sign up takes days not weeks and the process is transparent there is no opaque pricing so to instantly buy custom-built insurance for startups go to in broker.com twist while you're there you're going to get an extra 10 off by using the code twist easy to remember this week in startups t-w-i-s-t go to in broker e-m-b-r-o-k-e-r.com SPEAKER_105: slash twist and use that offer code t-w-i-s-t um so i used to do the okay and i used to ask people SPEAKER_81: like if i ask you something you know when you're a boss you see me bossing uh and being a boss i'm just like can you please just say to me got it or roger or okay or yes captain any whatever recognition you want to give to me that you have heard the words coming out of my mouth and give me an okay please by all means got it roger whatever you you know whatever works for you as the other person on the side of that conversation to just let me know so a lot of people give me the thumbs up a lot of SPEAKER_31: people give me the okay but now i can't believe it but salute is now in the emoji library and it is glorious day for me if i say something it's a game changer just give me the goddamn salute man yes sir sir yes sir on it you know there it is there it is salute what a delight there's a lot and i SPEAKER_37: don't like the pointing one it's so aggressive it's not for me the pointing emoji is a hard no i don't like it that whoever did that is got years of therapy ahead of them it's aggressive it really is super aggressive um i do like the heart i like it's very nice i don't want to comment on the SPEAKER_19: pregnant man slash man doing too much food pregnant people i'm sorry people that's what we say yeah is SPEAKER_49: that what we say now i love the little i love the peaking eyes like peeing out from yeah it's good behind the scared eyes so we know by the way for those of you it's like i'm moving on from the SPEAKER_121: pregnant man i'm moving on from the pregnant people i just want to know something because my friend just SPEAKER_122: said i ate a huge lunch and he used the pregnant man emoji and i was like dude you're gonna totally get canceled for that no that's why you can't get pregnant and i'm like oh my god no no no no see i tried SPEAKER_124: i just dear audience i would like you to know that i made a valiant effort to try to move along SPEAKER_84: but is it a pregnant man or a man who's eating too much food i mean i'm just saying you know what SPEAKER_08: put it in your text use the man who's eating too much food like use the pregnant person emoji to be SPEAKER_128: like i ate too much food i don't care that's what texts are for not tweets not tweets okay SPEAKER_04: but i did try but i did try i'm gonna be using the troll emoji constantly such as right now right SPEAKER_85: now you would have used the troll emoji so who knew it but molly now has a favorite one because she gets SPEAKER_84: brigaded so here you go look at this a troll emoji a troll emoji fantastic emoji so we know SPEAKER_134: what i want to do with you right now is play a little game for what will this eventually mean SPEAKER_138: what will this eventually mean play some backwards welcome to what will this emoji eventually mean SPEAKER_58: exactly so i the troll one we all know what that's going to be used for you're trolling yeah super SPEAKER_85: super cool but um i saw there was a melted face producer rachel was like hey check this out melted face and i was like all right so that's when you get twisted i mean that's when the zannies hit or SPEAKER_58: whatever your bag is you had you're that's when you're high af you're tilted you're tilted i mean SPEAKER_06: literally the emojis tilted and melting right rachel was so nice she's like this is like when everything something's really embarrassing or i can't believe that happened i'm like no no i think that's when SPEAKER_150: the molly hits or something it's a melted face it's a melted which was hilarious um we do want to SPEAKER_08: acknowledge right now by the way that yes these emoji were all released in technically in march with yeah they're like two months old we're just ios 15.4 boomer but it's not just that we're just catching up it's that because i have this theory like today i was like what if i float this theory that every time there's a new emoji drop culture changes a little bit like i agree i agree in response so now these have been out for a couple months salute is starting to like proliferate i'm SPEAKER_81: gonna make salute proliferate salute is amazing going to be the new slang for okay short down Jason Calacanis: whatever yeah so each of these will be like me have seen old top gun 1 000 times and new top gun two times you will know that what they do in the google and have a mild military fetish you'll know that what they do in the cockpit is they go like a thumbs up and then a salute uh and so just look out David Friedberg: for me to start using the thumbs up and the salute oh you're gonna double emoji let's go let's take so i noticed one here which is the um the beans they have beans yeah and these are your classic SPEAKER_161: burrito beans and not the would those be pinto or oh there it is yeah he goes uh he gives a thumbs up SPEAKER_163: it's like a back it's over the shoulder thumbs up maybe he's telling you to go backwards or he's giving you the thumbs up i don't know what kind of starts the thumbs up back here goes forward and then salute Jason Calacanis: and it means let's launch this jet let's launch this rocket that's pretty great love it that reminds SPEAKER_81: me of um there's a video of like one of these action stars and he calls it loading his guns in a fight scene so he he's got his fists up here but he goes and that's loading the guns so he's somewhat SPEAKER_58: cocking the guns right so there's some guy i don't know if it's liam nielsen or the guy who plays thor or something it might be it might be oh you know it might be the guy who plays superman whatever that SPEAKER_37: harry cavalli oh yeah henry cavalla all right so in other emoji news yes here's one for david SPEAKER_68: sax there you were with the beans uh-huh they're beans for your burrito they look like pinto beans SPEAKER_00: i guess yeah i mean kidney beans they look like they look like they're also kind of red tails so i SPEAKER_171: kind of feel like they could be red that could be a new a new version of red pills and right next to it SPEAKER_172: it pour one out for the homies this is uh pouring one out for your folks who no longer are with us SPEAKER_00: um why is there a chest x-ray emoji again i mean is that like i'm going to get a SPEAKER_59: x-ray you're seeing inside my heart uh i'm gonna start using that for hella feelings SPEAKER_19: really oh maybe i'm being transparent we'll be transparent maybe maybe um i don't know what's to the left of that that's a telescope i guess uh it's a crutch and then that is an empty battery SPEAKER_175: like a low battery battery is like that i know what that's gonna be useful for all kinds of stuff yeah i know what that's gonna mean that's gonna mean i'm done i'm going home that's the irish goodbye yeah yeah so like it's 4 a.m and you just tell your friend you send the empty battery it's like we're out audi 5000 let's go uh disco ball sure that's yeah sure overdue lotus flower why why do SPEAKER_89: we have a lotus now is that a lotus or a it looks i mean what is that oh it's a lily that's a lily SPEAKER_51: oh it looks like a succulent to me i'm like it's an edge it's a lily pad right underneath it it looks SPEAKER_19: like that i wonder what the word is you type for it a little bit so we got a little more nature we got some coral and then you have empty nest so you're an empty nester that's kind of cool for SPEAKER_31: parents who are empty nesters oh molly don't cry don't do it molly but you'll be using that in three SPEAKER_187: years oh i didn't do that i'm sorry monster it's gonna be your number one emoji in three years oh SPEAKER_189: sorry that's so mean oh but you're gonna have to do that three times my friend that's a good one that's SPEAKER_55: good yeah what about the bubbles i like the bubbles i don't know i don't know what those are what SPEAKER_191: that will wind up being party um yeah we got an empty we got an empty mason jar lovely empty mason jar SPEAKER_37: like what is that for we're gonna go catch fireflies like what will that be used for in pop culture the Jason Calacanis: slide um canning toby asked a good question the note is uh what is the hand illuminati emoji there's SPEAKER_00: like an open kind of a diamond so that's like you know for rockefeller records they would do a diamond throw your diamonds up like kind of situation wait the one with the illuminati eye in the middle SPEAKER_198: wait where's that next to the oh no that's different oh okay i thought you're talking about the um hands up that was a i think that's just yeah i think that's literally literally illuminati you know how SPEAKER_41: people are always like illuminati what and it's sort of a joke about like oh it's a conspiracy theory i SPEAKER_08: guess that must be that yoga search dog says yoga people use it and there you go wait oh it's a Jason Calacanis: thing it's like a real oh geez it's a really important weight to represent the hamsa a blue hand with an eye in the center of the palm an ancient symbol important to multiple religions including islam judaism booty as buddhism and christianity i've never seen that before i've never seen SPEAKER_40: that christianity and i am a devout christian or i was for three years uh from the age of seven to ten um okay sure it's the hamasa sorry we didn't know sorry we didn't cool we learned something emojis David Friedberg: so what is the i know the the big red lips for like a kissing kind of thing uh people use that but is this one biting your lip is that just it's biting your lip biting your lip it's like say SPEAKER_32: for a second so somebody said something and you're biting your lip but it's a female biting it like it's like it's like a hot one it's like it's a hot biting your lip it's a hot oh okay so that's different biting your lip like i don't want to say something right no this is not that kind SPEAKER_11: this is like oh sexy or like ooh ooh la la it's like ooh la la yeah just belabor it just make it as SPEAKER_217: awkward as you possibly can just keep going sorry i mean it's sort of like yum you're like oh okay so SPEAKER_218: it's like i mean you could use it for a slice of that you could use it for yum yum it could be yum SPEAKER_77: yum uh i stopped using yum yum it is cnbc thank you producer justin let's just go all the way here it's eggplants for females it's the egg that's it yes got it got it like aroused in someone got it SPEAKER_37: i understand uh all right well there you have it folks here's the new emoji we've just discovered SPEAKER_07: the new emojis but what we really want to know is how is this going to uh change the culture because SPEAKER_32: it already is somebody tell us what to do with them if you have a clever idea for the mason jar the bubbles the lotus flower lotus flower yeah i think those ones we don't understand David Friedberg: um all your eggs in one basket because you could say don't put and then put the eggs in SPEAKER_46: the basket don't put all your yeah you kind of be more efficient i don't want to talk about the basket i don't want to talk about the best you could combine these things you could combine these things SPEAKER_19: you could put the basket and then next thing you could put a flying bird molly as the bird flies away three times my friend it's gonna hurt so much more three birds a little nested three birds SPEAKER_236: three little birds yeah we're off to college jay cow's broke now college in 10 years is gonna be SPEAKER_92: six million dollars a year jaco needs to keep working at 65. it's gonna be free by then it's gonna be free by then i've been telling myself that for a decade i'm like maybe college will be free SPEAKER_241: by the time he gets to be i'm doing these this is uh we'll end on this i'm uh i'm doing the power SPEAKER_37: move of my daughters i'm gonna say here's what you have for college you know let's just pick a number uh if i had one million dollars no i mean in today's dollars i think if you 150k would do it David Friedberg: maybe 250 something like that for like a private school public school obviously you could get away with 50 probably to 100 i think today right is that about right like cities city school city is like five not for the state is like 20 you have to do it per year 5 20 per year so it would be you probably get away with 50 with room and board for city college 100 something like that so anyway SPEAKER_81: putting it all together i'm going to give them the move which is like here's 250 000 SPEAKER_00: dollars spend it on school and your first business or or you can pick the percentage could be a hundred percent school 100 first business 50 50 like then the child has to be going wait a second if i go to state school for a hundred i graduate with 150k to do my first business or they could say you know what i want to go be an angel investor like you pop can i invest 10k and 10 companies and then put the 150k into the the one that does best or two that do best put 75k in each of the two of the winners i'd be like oh my god my heart would just explode with joy um so that's what that's what i'm thinking SPEAKER_58: is the right move for kids and then explaining to them what a ripoff college can be not always is but how overpriced it is and you need to make your because there's no decision making here right yeah SPEAKER_17: unless you're taking loans and then really loans are it's the first loan you're ever going to take in Jason Calacanis: your life so what's that book there's a great book but i like that new york times economics guy called how not to raise spoiled children oh yeah i heard about it's all like money lessons yeah it's really good yeah lieber ron lieber and he i got from his book an idea that's similar but for like when you go on vacation we started this really really early with my son when i when we i go on vacation he gets a budget up front like you have 150 for this 10 day i get it's usually like for a while it was like 10 day 10 a day yeah whatever you have this budget that's it yeah none of that like we never have that fight in a store about i want this thing and i'm having a meltdown crying about it or whatever the opposite of spoiled there it is oh wow i need to read that looks like a good book and then you have the jars give them a give jar a save jar and a spend jar like for charity for saving and for allowance it's actually it's a wonderful book and it's super and it's like i love the idea of doing a version of the vacation budget but for college and life like SPEAKER_07: that is yeah first five years as an adult hey tom eschbacher is here with us again he's a senior SPEAKER_263: sales manager at linkedin marketing solutions and we're talking about their amazing report today in startup marketing as well as how to use linkedin to grow your startup as an angel investor i like to see revenue early and often from startups how can linkedin help with that yeah the short answer is SPEAKER_268: linkedin lead gen forms 89 of our startup advertisers utilize them and i'll tell you why think about all the effort that goes into creating interest within a prospect you have to nail the value proposition create compelling content find them and then message them with enough frequency so that they engage you do all that you get them to your signup page and you know how many of them are going to convert just two percent that's so much value that marketers are failing to capture and it's a big reason why linkedin marketing and specifically linkedin lead gen forms are so popular with startups so people know SPEAKER_266: a lead gen form lives on linkedin they click one time and boom the email is sent to the company by using SPEAKER_268: linkedin lead gen forms you're ensuring they're coming from an audience that you care about and then we're pulling the information right from the member's profile so it's great your sdrs are going to be thrilled with that info they're going to want to follow up that's the improved lead quality and as SPEAKER_266: you say jason it all takes place in just two taps in the linkedin news feed and so if you would like to get this incredible report you can go to linkedin.com slash this week in startups and not only can you get the report for free you're also going to get a hundred dollars off your first marketing campaign from tom at linkedin way to go tom let's move on to uh the i don't want to David Friedberg: get repetitive here because we're going to have layoffs announcements every day some of them will be more important than others but basically you can assume every company is going to either put a hiring freeze on at this point or do a modest layoff that'll be the majority of companies will do those one of some version of that and then they'll be outliers people who are hiring because things are going bonkers for them and maybe they're understaffed or they didn't overstaff during this period and then there'll be some people uh who do you know let's call it greater than 15 cuts right a noticeable cut so but i wanted to talk about um after we wrap up you know all these layoffs announcement today we'll just take a minute or two to tell you what's going on you should know because it probably impacts your business if you're listening to this week in startups but i don't want to talk about how to avoid layoffs uh and then how to make yourself as an employee uh the one who doesn't get laid off and i don't have ideas yet for what to do if you are laid off i mean i do have some actually but i want to focus on those two things because they did talk a little bit about being more efficient SPEAKER_248: the other day but i wanted to continue that so maybe we just run through these the breaking news SPEAKER_271: here we should and then i want to add that i think that there's a little bit of a twist that appears Jason Calacanis: to be spreading in the tech market downturn there are layoffs hiring freezes and i'm sorry to say SPEAKER_273: it seems an increasing number of rescinding of offers oh right that is the next year to drop which is Jason Calacanis: the next that and it's just intense it's that's intense and i think like so when we talk about avoiding layoffs we should also talk about rescinding offers because i do think that's probably let's get to the news first and then we can discuss the latest right the latest uh you know of course there was breaking news today most recently about tesla pausing hirings and uh SPEAKER_08: potentially elon musk saying headcount would need to be reduced by 10 percent yeah um coinbase yesterday said that it was extending its hiring freeze and rescinding some offers uh crypto market volatility that may test the company the insurance marketplace policy genius laid off about 25 percent of its staff Jason Calacanis: about 170 employees uh toby one of our noties in the chat said loom rescinded an offer to uh one of his friends yeah and i mean so it's happening it's happening and i what i really want to ask you about is this rescinding because i think like on on the most in the most mercenary SPEAKER_273: interpretation rescinding an offer is cheaper than a layoff you don't have to pay severance right that's right it's more but also talk about a reputational hit because then these people are out Jason Calacanis: on twitter i mean there was a there was a tweet today from someone who turned down like multiple phd offers um chose to go work at coinbase instead of pursuing a phd uh said no to all these opportunities SPEAKER_08: that were really competitive and look yeah there is nothing this person did wrong nothing no like i always sit here and i'm like and you never get off the bus without a transfer you make sure you have signed paperwork before you make a move and people are getting signed paperwork in some cases SPEAKER_273: with visas attached to them okay which is what this person was tweeting about today and are having their offers rescinded and i feel like long term that is not a good move it's a tough one um and so David Friedberg: i i think well let's talk about coinbase for a second and then we'll get into rescinding the thing i thought was interesting in this memo is market volatility that may test the company may test the company is a very strong statement in my mind right um if if that is accurately if i'm accurate in what i just said so we'll double check that but um i'm reading it now in our notes here it says your crypto they cited that the crypto market volatility may test the company now that means it came from a news story um yeah no yeah that's in the letter it is in the letter okay word for word may test the company now may test the company means like i don't know that means existential like we're going away but it means like prepare for war like this is going to be very hardcore and that directionally um i think is super candid i mean it's not directionally it is super candid straight up and so i applaud uh the team over there for being super candid about that what they're saying is like this may not be the last of the layoffs and the crypto market could be coming apart i my i suspect people are not trading crypto in a moment like this i think people are hodling but i i can't imagine there are new entrants into the crypto market right now right i would not i would not think so and i Jason Calacanis: think that what this shows and we talked about this a little bit in our group chat is coinbase makes its money on transactions and so if everybody's just hunkered down even if they're not selling right that's probably still bad right and so if they're just hunkered down and holding SPEAKER_08: on for the long term and for your life doesn't help hodl doesn't help exactly uh they don't make SPEAKER_00: money on hodl which maybe they knew maybe they have to move to it's five bucks a month to have an SPEAKER_32: account there right right if you have over just like a minimum charge which is i don't know somebody i think they have a paid tier right they do have a paid tier but i wonder if but i know all of this like free accounting now right you know maybe people have to say listen it's like a bank you know you have to pay you have to have a minimum deposit size to have a free account SPEAKER_81: and there'll be fees for other things so i think because they were venture backed and had all that venture money were not public they probably didn't have to have a lot of fees um and so they didn't want to put any friction there but maybe they have to start adding some fees here maybe there has to be memberships um like you know peloton has and and they're raising their prices here so perhaps that will happen now on the rescinding of the offers man that is a super bummer um would it be worse if the person came for three to six months and then lost their job and arguably they might get a couple weeks severance so which is worse you know not starting or starting knowing that like everybody's leaving at the same time and you got people showing up for orientation while the other people SPEAKER_07: are being leaving it this is just kind of no man you know i mean it is chaos and i just i think there has to be a better way to handle it like i think the idea of making a written offer to Jason Calacanis: someone on which they you know it's like it's one thing to say have somebody in an interview process it i just feel like at some point someone's going to get sued there are going to be these stories that come out that totally tug at your heartstrings even if it's one out of a thousand stories and it's just a it's you know like that's something i would be thinking very very very carefully about and like you've been saying there are other ways for you know layoffs become contagious it becomes almost i think in some i think for some ceos it becomes like a lazy way out like an easy way to cut a quote unquote easy way to cut costs and make it look to your boss like you're really like you're cutting costs when the SPEAKER_08: fact is you could probably stop spending money on a lot of things yeah and so that's what you'll see SPEAKER_175: is that the next thing will be the entitlements so i think we're going to see the free lunch David Friedberg: literal free lunch in silicon valley concept the massage is you know just a lot of stuff is going to be a lot of belt tightening all around now this is overall good for the economy so it sucks for the people who are very good for the economy because we have too many companies that maybe aren't providing enough value and they're going to go away then the talented people from those companies will go to the stronger companies the stronger will get stronger which means they're more profitable which is good for the economy the weaker companies will go away because the work they're doing producing products and services those products and services maybe because they're not growing are actually not good SPEAKER_81: products and services so this is what's supposed to happen in a healthy economy but the last five years have not been healthy because right a lot of companies that should have died were propped up because there was too much money in the system and maybe a lot of people who were not becoming better at their job were not as focused on their career were not focused on productivity uh maybe they'll get SPEAKER_58: back into the workforce and focus on career and productivity and providing value to you know uh the economy now we can argue that like you know people have personal choice whatever but the truth is an economy uh is driven by employment and employment is driven by products and services that are produced and bought and sold if you don't have great products and services and you don't have people who are good at their jobs and getting better at them and who are focused on their careers you're just not SPEAKER_37: going to have monetary velocity which means you don't have a growing economy and um if you don't have a growing economy standard of living goes down so this is how it works you're gonna see you're and and i SPEAKER_08: would be wary of like we're going to be talking about this a lot because in the tech industry in particular is where this is going to hit the hardest right so when you have the dot-com crash in 2001 late 90s 2001 2002 that it it really impacted the broader market because we were talking about the crash of a lot of public companies yeah there's a sense that this time a tech downturn isn't going to have this sort of widespread impact i think it is though because it's having this psychological impact people are like oh the economy is terrible because the tech sector is crashing and there's inflation and there's all these things but if you look at sort of market fundamentals separate from the tech industry yeah we have now apparently record low unemployment yeah the u.s economy has regained in a year and a half 98 of the jobs that were lost during the pandemic that's remarkable mission accomplished yeah mission accomplished in some ways uh with the fed is maybe now out ahead of itself in terms of the economic recovery because things do seem to be somewhat improving supply chains may ease and you know opec is going to actually make more release more barrels of oil thereby easing this somewhat artificial energy crunch but you are seeing conversely the things that make you feel like everything is falling apart is that there's a huge crash in the tech economy and that's because once again there was a huge bubble right so like the further you expand the harder you're going to contract and that's going to give this like outsized sense of disaster when really it is somewhat of a localized disaster SPEAKER_321: i know that dealing with your personal health and your wellness can be daunting especially right now and SPEAKER_08: by right now i mean something like the last three years well that is why thorn created a care system that's personalized preventative and holistic while still being backed by science being any kind of a high performer is incredibly difficult even if you're just sitting all day long at a desk remember sitting is the new smoking okay this is all where thorn can help thorn offers at home tests that identify where you need the most care they offer things like a gut test that analyzes your gut microbiome a stress test that measures your stress hormone fluctuations these tests help eliminate the guesswork for good health by providing personalized steps for how to eat how to exercise and even what supplements you should take and then thorn has a range of multivitamins and supplements that you can subscribe to because again this is personalized health and wellness you take a quiz you get the answer that is built for you get started take 10 off your first order by heading to thorn.com slash u the letter u slash twist that's thorn.com yeah it's like the trimming of the fat is going on here people are just getting healthier SPEAKER_32: so it can have the optics of looking like massive chaos like they're sending the office the offers SPEAKER_326: the number of layoffs and it feels it is chaos in a way localized to our sector yeah and i don't think it should be pursued it shouldn't be construed as like a broader economic disaster it's not a broader economic David Friedberg: disaster and when you look at the the companies themselves they will be healthier because of it so if you were eating too many calories every day and gaining weight and you weren't working out and you just weren't being thoughtful which let's face it when there's tons of money tons of calories around people just go yolo and it's been five years of maybe people overspending and people maybe not focused on their core business building other businesses maybe people not working as hard as they should be maybe you know too many people in a department when there's 10 people in a department and really five of them are doing 90 of the work and anybody who's worked at a big company or a mid-sized company knows like you look at the 10 people in the department and you're like those five people are doing 90 and then these other five are either a drag on the everybody else they're negative productivity or they're doing two percent each on average it's just so when you make these cuts um you're obviously going to cut the weakest people the people who are not the best contributors uh or people who are overpaid which is another thing you could have you could have SPEAKER_81: somebody who's a great contributor molly but they're getting paid three times as much as an equal David Friedberg: contributor so this is where i think we can pivot into um this discussion of how to avoid being laid off SPEAKER_00: yep don't be the sitter well be the hitter yeah i think oh i think what you have to look at is SPEAKER_81: take a self-assessment what value are you providing for your company um what projects are you responsible for not that you work on but you're responsible for and what i encourage you to do is take the things SPEAKER_00: that you're busy with email and slack you know meetings and then maybe unless you're in sales and like you're closing deals those meetings are obviously an input but the things that are not inputs into an output so an input if you're a salesperson is finding leads and then taking meetings the output would be closing deals right which is money in the register if you were a producer on a podcast the input might be finding guests that come on the podcast that increase the ratings the output right you get a better you find a better guest has an output now in both of those cases being on email and checking slack might be necessary to get those functions done but you have to have a candid look and say how many hours did i put into the sales calls and the lead gen as a sales person or in this hypothetical producer position how many great guests did i get this week and then what did they do to the ratings uh and these are the kind of things where you actually look at your inputs and outputs that's how you're going to be judged by your boss so people have in their mind molly i'm busy i work 10 hours okay that's valid i know that's how you feel but at a time like this people are looking at more of David Friedberg: um an input output here yep and if you were going to look at a 12 uh person sales team you would say here's the 12 sales people we need to get rid of three give me a list of their sales and then give me a list of their renewals and they will literally because i've been involved in these discussions as a board member and as a ceo and as an investor and a confidant of people they'll go through it and they'll be like hey this person is like the number nine person on the list and we're getting rid of you know 9 10 11 12. so we're gonna get rid of three we got 12 people on this hypothetical sales SPEAKER_81: list the last three last four it turns out number 11 is just an incredible culture fit everybody loves them they help each other out but 9 10 11 12 they all are underperforming 20 to 25 but you know what number 11 is really positive and hard working and ask for help and number nine is uh you know doing better you know they sell five percent more they're real pain in the ass and David Friedberg: they're negative and they're a drag so it's not a popularity contest to be clear people are not going to make these choices on popularity in almost all cases there could be some edge cases where it's like SPEAKER_81: hey that's my guy you know i went to college with him and it could be a little insider trading favoritism that goes on but by and large it's going to be input output who's got the best output we're keeping them but on the margin now you're down to that 25 percent that are going if all things being equal they're going to pick the person who is the most enthusiastic who asks for help and they see professional development happening with that person so you have to then ask yourself what's my output for this company what am i actually accomplishing so this company is google search am i how am i increasing the number of searches how am i increasing the search quality how am i increasing the number of ads you know whatever it is how am i making the servers faster the output and then how is my output SPEAKER_298: in relation to everybody else and so there's a there's a trick here which is increase your output or you're not very good at your job uh be realistic and say hey to your boss preemptively i see my SPEAKER_00: output is in the bottom 25 i want to be in the top 25 can i get five minutes with you you know today tomorrow this morning anytime to just tell me one or two things you can just do by email that would make me get into the top 25 is it do i need to find more leads do i need to work harder do i need to come in on saturdays just give me whatever piece of advice you you can give me because i actually realize that i'm new here you know other people have had a time to build up their book of business what do i got to do just tell me but what people do at a time like this they think it's time to put their head down right classic mistake right if your head's down you have no relationship with the person making this decision for layoffs you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna they're gonna make it easier to cut you as opposed to the person says listen i don't want to get cut i want to be on the team what do i got to do if i got to run laps i got to do a thousand free throws i know my free throw shooting isn't the best on the team i'll be in the gym every day throwing at that i do a thousand free throws if that's what you tell me i need to do to be on this team so so be that person uh be that person who is realistic about their output and then says how do i become elite that is super super engaging for a manager who if you have empathy for them is having SPEAKER_81: a really hard day not as hard as you getting laid off but boy does it suck no one wants to do it yeah nobody wants to do it so anyway there's my framework i don't know what you think of this framework but poke a hole in it or tell me what you think i'm trying to be super candid with the SPEAKER_00: people who are on the other end of this having been on the other end of it briefly when i was SPEAKER_37: young and then having 25 years experience running companies that do layoffs yeah no i mean i think Jason Calacanis: that's really good advice because fundamentally there may be a reason that you some people are just not good at their jobs some people are in the wrong job right there's a there's sort of an epidemic i think in middle management of like just putting people someplace to plug a hole and then have them do the work and they're in the wrong job and and so having a proactive learning mentality about how can i contribute better or even contribute in a different way in the role that i'm in like hey SPEAKER_08: i have an idea for a project i'm big on a moonshot let me pitch this thing it is mutually beneficial for both of us let's see if we can make something out of it um a hundred percent and some of it might be unavoidable like at some point it might be like the great british baking show where you're all SPEAKER_277: really good but that's the show like the deal is they have to cut yes it is possible you could have David Friedberg: in this theoretical 12 person sales team 11 people all did a million dollars plus or minus 10 percent last year it's a negligible difference and the 12th one isn't easy because they did 500k so that's an easy cut um and so it's um this is what you'd be doing now on the other side conversely and and for the people watching live at youtube.com slash this weekend 250 people watching live right now thank you so much i think that people want to hear about this conversation um and go ahead and give us a thumbs up if we had a hundred thumbs up i'll i'll send somebody uh an ember mug maybe uh or something fun so um let's go to the other side molly you're the manager you're running the company who do you want to keep okay now this is the big secret there's output and then there's your salary people don't want to talk about this when the cuts happen you've been at the company for 30 years and you're molly and jason and you're high paid podcasters and there's let's say we were in a podcasting company we're the ringer SPEAKER_37: where i don't know what was the other one that did all those shows that got bought gimlet media gimlet yeah let's say you're gimlet better because they have like such a diverse array of shows um and i SPEAKER_46: don't know anybody over there i know bill simmons i don't have this clip inside to them so gimlet some SPEAKER_352: there's no fallout for me with gimlet like let me see somebody else you're i don't know you're now SPEAKER_171: okay bleep out the app so you're gimlet you got a roster of 25 shows you look at the 25 show SPEAKER_81: and let's say you got a podcast host you know of the 25 shows top five podcast hosts are you know their shows make millions are making 250k each you know two hosts per show and then you go down in the middle and you got people making 150 as a host 100 that's 75 so you got a big range there and let's say there's some hosts that are solo and some that are three hosts and then you look at the revenue of the show literally somebody's doing this here's the cost of the show this show is you know makes us three million dollars two hosts can pay 250 okay you know that makes sense we're spending 15 on the host whatever we got a profit margin sales people taking 30 and they're just looking at that spreadsheet you might get down there and like you're getting paid 150 you're a mid-tier podcast oh somebody's getting paid 75 the 75 host you know they have 25 less revenue than you but they're growing and you're overpaid and then the formula just somebody's doing a formula so your salary divided into your output what's the number yeah so in this example if those two pockets did a million dollars each somebody's gonna pay 250 okay it's 4x you're making four times your salary but the person getting paid 100 is making they're 10 times more profitable right they're they're a 10xer SPEAKER_00: spending 100 making a million spending 500 making a million it's you're making the profit margin is completely different if the sole cost was the host let's say in this example 50 margin versus 90 they gonna keep the 90 margin they're gonna cancel the show that's not profitable so this is where people who fought for raises and who let's face it might be overpaid because they were you know they had the company over the barrel the company had a bunch of money it was easier to just go with the flow and suspend disbelief this podcast is going to add a bunch of advertisers it's going to go 10x that's what those are the hard decisions that are also going to be made so you have to include your cost in this SPEAKER_81: and you probably saw this at cnet uh when they because you were there for their layoffs so Jason Calacanis: or did they have layoffs all of them uh so many layoffs so many layoffs over the years like so so SPEAKER_367: many and i get did you see that trend though it was like underperformers and then highly paid high SPEAKER_370: performers people who are expensive yeah exactly expensive people but they might be high performers SPEAKER_08: you could well yeah i mean look when it gets deep enough when you at some point you're to the bone right and that's when you have to you've got that's when you're down to your four bakers and they're all freaking great yeah they're just great and so you have to go with the more the most expensive one in the or before you're to the bone yeah like i really want to highlight the investor mindset that you're using here though which is like because there are managers again like some of this becomes contagious it becomes a lemming effect it becomes how can i impress my boss by cutting people yeah that's right there are companies with that culture and so then you have managers who just look at the top line and go most expensive cut most expensive cut and they do that before they're to the bone yeah without taking into account what you just said which is the roi so like don't cut talent before you have to because talent is an investment in a business so make do if you're going to cut your high paying people make sure that they're not returning 100x right now right like at least do the SPEAKER_326: math before you cut them and i don't think everybody does that now take the two cars this is not me SPEAKER_273: arguing for my job by the way no you're good we'll have that talk later i mean who knows anything could SPEAKER_32: happen but i think you're good um uh now you overlap uh these two phenomenon that are going on the output SPEAKER_81: and then the dollar value people the roi and what i said i think on wednesday's show when i was talking about um you know people being uh productive well let's face it work from home uh you know covid people being a little depressed anxious you know maybe productivity hasn't for certain people been great maybe for other people it's been better let's all just say like everybody got a little fat during the you know really fat years that we all had everybody took a little extra vacation everybody spent a little more money this is where all the sides can come together and have this discussion and i think David Friedberg: this is where you're at the elite level which is um and hopefully at this point in my career having done this a bunch of times i'm i'm i'm taking my own advice on this level which is how can we as a team SPEAKER_81: look at maybe not hiring new people looking at the team we have and being 10 better each we hold each other accountable as a team 10 better each in two or three verticals and so this is what i'm doing at my companies i did it at launch i'm going to be doing it at inside so the inside people watching David Friedberg: will be doing with you i asked you all for your calendars as well this is gonna say that i am SPEAKER_00: surprise i mean this is basically how i communicate with my employees through the podcast it's efficient but we will be looking at everybody's calendar we're not planning cuts we're profitable we've got tons of cash in the bank at inside but heart to heart we're all a little nervous about the economy if tesla's cutting 10 and that's elon musk and he's the best in the business right uh and you know coinbase was a star just a year ago and was the most important company in silicon valley and now is thinks it's facing existential risk you know peloton was the star now it's like is peloton going to be spoiled sold for spare parts it's a serious business folk yeah um now i was more conservative SPEAKER_81: running both my businesses so you know good on me for seeing it coming but for the inside folks SPEAKER_00: we need to look at everybody what's your output you know like how good are your job how good are you managing your time is there more you could do so if you're doing one newsletter a day could you do two do we need to hire another person if three people can get together and they're doing one newsletter each and the three of them could produce a fourth newsletter then we don't have to hire the fourth person uh to do the fourth newsletter and yeah you got to work a little harder or a little smarter hopefully you don't have to add hours but you can cut some things and be more efficient or the product could be more efficient great can the sales team make more money and be more efficient SPEAKER_81: can we support them in being more efficient all of those things will result in you avoiding layoffs and then having this sort of esprit de corps you know a team spirit here and i think this is the upside of this down market if you are thoughtful as a leader and you're thoughtful as a team member as a soldier and you take this approach hey listen we're going to war with the recession and we know when you go SPEAKER_334: to war a lot of people don't come back that's the nature of war let's try to leave no executive behind David Friedberg: let's try to win the war with as few casualties as possible now i know people don't like when i use war or you know samurai metaphors or team sports metaphors it seems whatever some people are SPEAKER_81: uncomfortable with that but it's the it's the best metaphor possible and if you have a better one about picking flowers and daisies in a field while doing yoga i'll use it but i don't have one i don't know how the how to translate this into yoga babble and picking daisies but based on what i've learned the teams that are realistic yeah and they collaborate on how we're going to win the war with the least resources with the most efficiency they kind of win these ukrainians they seem like they're better fighters they seem like they're getting more out of each fighter and each weapon and each drone and they're more nimble and the russians in this equation seem like the ones who are maybe not as efficient or not as driven or not as coordinated or don't have the esprit de corps and that's why they're if apparently they didn't win the war i mean it's no winners in war but anyway SPEAKER_394: there's my speech well let's right let's like boil that down now boil it all down i went off the rails SPEAKER_395: a little bit there about the ukraine well comparison from the war comparisons but it's really it's well SPEAKER_08: horrific and also relevant and what it comes down to ultimately is leadership like it really does and and then you know there are a lot of good men there are a lot of bad there are probably way way way more bad managers than good 100 yeah but you know everybody sort of has to take this advice from the manager side and the employee side it is really look we've all been that like young person who's at the mercy of the meetings that we're not in it sucks that's a bad feeling but it's true that as you get older in the work world you understand the bad position that managers are in also and like i think everybody's got to sort of figure out the realities of the situation there are a lot of feelings about work and it's hard to step i think especially in america like we don't separate our feelings from work right because everything is work and yeah yeah yeah so also we can just continue to hope and not get sucked into the propaganda of this is going to be the worst recession ever right we don't know yet there's also the really important part that we don't know yet and i really do think that a lot of companies look at your coinbase i get it right yeah you you literally have a business built on trading uh an imaginary asset so like if people stop trading that asset that's a big problem tesla you know respectfully that stock is halved right it has gone to half there is just not as much capital as there used to be to run that business of course there are going to be layoffs right like peloton apparently didn't know that pandemic was going to end there are like individual cases that make things yeah seem worse than they are but we do not know how broad this is and so maybe while you're contemplating layoffs because you think it's going to make the short-term Jason Calacanis: bottom line look better take a step back and ask if that's what your business really needs because it David Friedberg: might not and if that's the case this is where monitoring situations daily weekly daily and just yeah SPEAKER_402: you got to understand like you you may see some panic you know selling you may see like if you SPEAKER_00: were running a sas company you might have three or four companies uh all of a sudden stop using your sas software and you don't have that revenue i have to look at those three or four companies where the are those companies out of business well that's not the fault of your sas software it's just companies went out of business and you know you're going to have a certain level of attrition and those four people who canceled in the last two months their you know sas software let's talk about each one of them are those terrible businesses that should have never existed or are these your lighthouse clients right so you have to really have uh your eyes wide open you have to be super present looking at that David Friedberg: dashboard you know if you think about this like flying a plane which is another analogy i use a lot because it's super complex and you're in this storm and you're off course yeah your navigation systems going in and out you know what data do you have and that's what i always ask me what what SPEAKER_81: what do i have here what do i have control over well i have control over the productivity of each of the team members okay so that's good let's make sure everybody's super productive okay what else do i have well i can pick what direction we're going to go hopefully this theory is working i can pick how fast we're going to go and okay i can pick how many passengers we're going to take what can i know okay what is our altitude what is our speed what is our heading you know what's the pitch of the airplane you can start to just figure out what the reality of the situation is and then check it constantly and when you see those plane accident videos that i watch on the blanco lyrio channel SPEAKER_00: on youtube you know a lot of times pilot like sometimes they have recordings of the cockpit yeah and he zooms in on something he's like the pilot did not see this yeah he's not watching this pilot like there was some pilot this guy was not watching his uh his angle and he didn't realize SPEAKER_81: he was in the dead spot and he's like you know anybody who looks at this can see this thing is tilted and you know he's going faster and so he's trying to figure out like going up but he's really SPEAKER_37: gotta just you know uh even stop tipping the even out the wings and you know now you're gonna have control of the plane anyway all these crazy things and this guy was in you know it's a panic thing right just trying to keep your head not being present you know not getting all the signal you David Friedberg: can so i think i'm looking at it right now i feel like the inflation is going to work itself out over SPEAKER_00: the the coming months uh because it's so high there's really not much more room to go before people just stop buying stuff so if you know the people selling oil want to keep prices as high people are going to start riding bikes people are going to stop filling their tanks they're going to take shorter rides they're going to take one car instead of two somebody's going to take the bus this stuff if you push people to too high prices people stop going i went to a restaurant i i couldn't believe it but i have this great place new england lobster company uh by the airport at sfo and i love going there but it was 40 for a lobster roll and it used to be like 25 and i was like oh my god yeah i just bought you know i had my family i bought like eight lobster rolls you know eight people everybody gets a lobster i was like whoa i got the bill and then oysters went from two dollars to four SPEAKER_92: dollars what's going on in the world i'm rich i was like i like i promise i'm not making this up but after top gun this weekend we went to five guys well just like does it but literally it was SPEAKER_202: like a five guys burger is 8.50 like what the hell yeah eight i know they were always like six SPEAKER_125: bucks because it's a good burger it's like always been six it's like a 1500 calorie burger or whatever SPEAKER_08: it's a whole meal for 8.50 but i mean it's like you know 30 more expensive now i mean it was really SPEAKER_419: so i think it's something for people to just think about yes the cure for high prices is high prices SPEAKER_202: i really do like i i don't oh that's well said yeah people will increasingly i am starting to feel SPEAKER_08: like we're taught we we always talk ourselves into a recession right and now it feels like we are talking ourselves into a recession that maybe does not have to be as bad as we're saying that it is and and yes i am aware the more americans are in food lines than at any point since the pandemic maybe even more right like the the high prices are very very very real yeah and yet there's nothing systemically wrong even on cnbc today they were saying like it's hard for me to believe we're in SPEAKER_273: this massive consumer recession when like every single airplane going anywhere in america right now is packed sold out like hotels sold out restaurants sold out you know it's like really weird SPEAKER_175: like well where is this recession happening i still bought the lobster rolls i'm still gonna go see top SPEAKER_81: guns weekend like it's a little bit weird so i the other thing is all these jobs that are available and all these people who are leaving for everybody leaving there's other companies hiring so i feel David Friedberg: like this is going to be like you know 10 cuts at a companies that got too big and we're hiring for 2023 2024 growth and now they're just going to be more conservative they're going to hire as they go yeah one of the big things you know in boardrooms and it was you know hire for what you need next year or hire for what you need in two years if you got the cash laying around why wouldn't you get people online you know everybody loves having the extra resources you go faster and it's is it as efficient as hiring as you need people no but that was the approach people took because it was a competitive market and that made it more competitive now you can have the opposite and people might take jobs and they might take a salary cut just like companies are uh raising money at lower prices you might get those cuts so yeah that's that's going to be a very mixed bag uh my current thinking is we're in quarter two of the recession i'm going to go ahead and say here i think this is going to be uh four three or four quarters of negative growth and then it's going to be like you know whatever it usually is two or three quarters of kind of like flat growth so in other words i think we're two thirds or halfway there i think it's going to look much different in q1 next year i think q4 is going to be like this mixed bag where people like is it getting better is it not getting better and then i think next year i think we're going to have some smooth sailing i don't think it's going to be gangbusters i don't think stocks are going to return where they are which is fine but we'll have SPEAKER_81: clarity because people have taken the medicine yeah yeah back to normal yeah yeah all right so next SPEAKER_46: up is uh everybody's favorite segment okay boomer all right everybody it's time for your favorite SPEAKER_247: segment of the week along with other favorite segments but this one is truly uh carved a niche for itself it's okay boomer where rachel braun of rachel reporting um meets with a millennial a gen z hopefully and uh we get some insight as well we're gen xers but okay we'll call us boomers rachel who's on top SPEAKER_430: for this week tomolina i got to speak to the skill bank founder and ceo mehek fora you actually already SPEAKER_432: spoke to her on episode 1202 as a part of office hours on the speaking startups but i wanted to hear a a little bit more about her background and her thoughts on being a young founder yeah and tell Jason Calacanis: us about skill bank i'm actually really really into this idea of upskilling and skill matching and SPEAKER_65: this is like upskilling to a specific for a specific type of job right it's really awesome so SPEAKER_430: what got me really interested in skill bank was i did one of those google certificates in college to SPEAKER_432: skill up and the biggest problem i had is i thought it was really difficult to hold myself accountable so it definitely did take me longer than if i did it with like a cohort and skill bank is kind of like a boot camp but for marketing so we see a bunch of coding boot camps but this one really helps people get jobs at ad agencies and things like that so basically skill bank's a platform it helps people get jobs in marketing by skilling them up to land these jobs and it doesn't focus mainly on startups it does focus mainly on those like agency roles which are um pretty well paying after college so i thought that was really awesome yeah if you go and you uh go to and we're SPEAKER_247: investors in skill bank they went through our accelerator and she is a force of nature as a founder also a dj i saw her social she's doing a little djing um which is always interesting uh SPEAKER_432: amazing attracted to djing she's so sick she's actually also i found out after i met her at the all-in summit i found out after she's my friend's roommate and i was like wow i know i was like wait a minute i was getting dinner with a friend brooke was like uh oh and there we did talk about this on the show but she was with two other founders um and they call their little like founder house the federal reserve and the nickname is the fed and i thought that was really cool so we did talk about what it was like uh living with other founders as well out in l.a ah what a great idea to motivate SPEAKER_247: each other and if you're i mean this happened in l.a laurel canyon um which is a really groovy area that i lived in for a little time uh where jackson brown and other musicians lived i think george harrison uh and even to this day you know modern musicians live there uh jenny lewis i think moby a bunch of other folks had lived there and there's a documentary about it and so there is something about being around your cohort making each other better that's why accelerators work you mentioned it yourself in terms of being in a cohort uh so you know marketing i just want to make a note for anybody listening here who wants to break into startups uh or you know have a great salary and doesn't know where to begin and doesn't like coding my lord marketing is really easy to learn uh you know it's hard to perfect and be good at it but it's very easy the the the entree into um being a marketing manager is very easy i think maybe three four or five months of just doing basic marketing and you'll find an entry-level job and man if you get good at it and you can become a growth manager you know like a growth hacker uh you can be invaluable so highly recommend uh checking out skill bank and uh this SPEAKER_446: amazing okay boomer let's listen to the interview with mehek thanks guys okay boomer i understood the SPEAKER_450: assignment thank you so much mehek for being on a segment of okay boomer but this isn't your first SPEAKER_451: time on this week in startups you actually have spoken to jason before can you give us a little bit of a background about yourself you're the ceo and founder of skill bank i'm a big fan of skill bank SPEAKER_453: i think it's a really great idea yeah rachel thank you so much for having me on um yes i'm the founder SPEAKER_454: and ceo of skill bank uh my background is kind of all over the place i dropped out of college at 19 moved to san francisco ran a marketing agency there for about three or four years ghostwriting for investors and ceos on linkedin and it was really hard for us to find great talent and i was looking at what were some different ways for us to create a scalable agency um and i realized we couldn't scale the services that we were giving because every client of ours was an edge case you know someone's coming in even if you can standardize your services everything that you're working on with a client is going to be specific to that client yeah so i realized if we couldn't scale the services we were giving maybe we could scale the people that were giving the services and i was really interested in the boot camp space i think it's really exciting to be able to train people and take them from point a to point b and yeah that's when i decided to start skill bank very cool so can SPEAKER_458: you let us know why you were on an episode of the speaking startups in your affiliation with jason a SPEAKER_454: little bit yeah so i was on the very first episode i was on was an office hours episode and i think skill bank at the time was called on delta we were about like four months old at the time i was teaching classes from my apartment in the tenderloin and i was like waking up at like six seven a.m in the morning to teach classes oh man like coding it was it was crazy um it's it's kind of nostalgic going back and watching that video because i can see just i had no idea what was coming like just in terms of like what the next steps were what we were going to be doing um my work was definitely cut out for me but yeah i came on the show and i asked jason a question just about like how do you manage everything when you're a solo founder and you're working on a team by yourself and um yeah it was my first introduction to jason and to the team that's awesome did he give you any good advice yeah i i think so i i remember as well i think my question was like i was trying to be like oh hey like look at my company and like look at how well we're doing like come check us out um but yeah i SPEAKER_465: think i remember his advice being pretty good that's good that's good so to give everybody a little bit SPEAKER_458: more context we met at the all in summit a few weeks ago and jason was there and everything it was really cool getting to meet you in person because i've definitely already checked out that episode before uh i think it's really inspiring honestly for lack of a better term to see founders that have SPEAKER_451: directly worked with jason in that matter um and meeting them in person i think it's really cool to see the people he's like actually directly impact i love remote work but sometimes it does get a little bit draining feeling like you have so many inputs that you're you're putting in and you can't directly see your output sometimes because everything's just over a screen um is your entire team remote SPEAKER_466: yeah we're completely remote um i actually don't think we have any team members in california anymore so we're we're no us yeah wow what's keeping you there um the weather i would say is probably the SPEAKER_454: biggest thing um i mean there's also a lot there's a really big tech network out here in la so i'll SPEAKER_470: probably be here for another couple more years um but definitely open to switching things up a little SPEAKER_471: bit in the future maybe i'll come to new york yeah dude you're gonna have to let me know SPEAKER_458: um definitely there's a lot there's i just saw your uh your roommate so you live in a little bit SPEAKER_451: of like a tech house situation brooke leblanc who is absolutely wonderful i met her in person too but SPEAKER_458: i met her not at the island summit i met her out for coffee while she was stopping by yeah i didn't have this prep before but do you want to talk a little bit about like for sure what it's like i know so i guess i haven't written any notes about this just spoke to your roommate in passing but basically you SPEAKER_451: live in a house or apartment with three founders so there's three of you and you're all working in different spaces all pretty early on in your your journey as founders which must be really SPEAKER_465: interesting um how's that going it's great so it's really funny so this house was originally the skill SPEAKER_470: bank house so i had originally like brought in um a couple of like my employees and i was like all right we're all gonna work here in this house and i realized very quickly that it was just the worst SPEAKER_474: possible thing i could do like it would just be so much better if i like we separated work and uh SPEAKER_454: personal um so yeah then i ended up moving in my girlfriends and yeah right now it's uh we're all founders we've called the house the federal reserve so our instagram account is at fed house la if you want to see photos um i love that it's so much fun and we'll host poker nights on thursdays um dinners and we're really just trying to curate more of a scene here in la for founders totally yeah it's been super fun so far i think brook and back are both incredible founders and you know it's nice living with people that are also in a similar stage that you are because we can bounce ideas off of each other whether it's like we're working out together in the morning or we're going to grab a coffee at the local coffee shop um yeah it's just really nice to be around people that are in that same stage as SPEAKER_451: you i i am so jealous because right now i have two amazing roommates they're great they're some of my best friends in college however they both work east coast times and as i've mentioned before in the podcast um we work west coast times so a lot of times we're working like 11 sometimes a little bit earlier to nine sometimes a little later those are not traditional hours so me hanging out with my roommates is a little bit like safe for the weekend in that aspect so it must be really nice just having people understanding like that that same mindset for you uh how much how important do you think it is as a founder to be friends with other founders and like engage in your community do you think that's something that's like important that people should do or do you think that's like too overwhelming like i find like you know tech san francisco vibes like i feel like sure in your face all the time like how do you know when to take a step back and how do you know when to like keep SPEAKER_470: engaging with that community yeah it's it's a really interesting question and i think when i was in san francisco it was one of the things that i really liked was when i was deep in the weeds working on SPEAKER_454: skill bank i was surrounded by people who were also working on their companies so it was easy for me to stay in the zone um i think moving to a place like la there's so many different distractions and i found during covid it was really hard to stay inspired when it's just me working by myself in my house trying to figure out the next step um so yeah i think it's been really great living with other founders i'd highly recommend that if you're living in a place where you're not surrounded by a really big startup community to find people that are within the same stage as you or maybe even a SPEAKER_470: couple stages ahead because it's it's just a lot easier to visualize and figure out that next step and stage that you're trying to get to when you have people around you that are also chasing after that same dream or yet trying to accomplish the same thing got you and you and your roommates are all around SPEAKER_451: the same age correct yeah okay so how old are the people normally then going through skill bank are these people that are also like around our ages like in their 20s or is this even younger is this even SPEAKER_454: older yeah this so this this varies um our youngest student has been 19 dropped out of college um but i SPEAKER_470: would say our sweet spot is probably 29 to 32 working in the service industry okay very cool why do you SPEAKER_489: find that the service industry is such a pivot into marketing people working in the service industry SPEAKER_470: have incredibly strong communication skills you know they've they've learned how to do customer service they've learned how to make sure their customers are happy they've learned how to build SPEAKER_496: relationships and going into a marketing agency it's really important that you also have those skills and the barrier to entry in terms of the tech behind it actually isn't that high it's just about SPEAKER_470: knowing what you need to learn so within 12 weeks we can take someone with a really strong customer service background and teach them those technical skills that they need to know to go land a job SPEAKER_497: at a marketing agency got you and do you guys have like how often um are you actually able to place these people into marketing agencies like do you guys have any statistics on that yeah it's most of our SPEAKER_470: students like i would say awesome right now we're looking at like three or four students like probably in the last six months that haven't gone to go work at a marketing agency but most of them SPEAKER_465: do get placed at marketing agencies and that's that's where our funnel is so why don't you try funneling them into other startups of why marketing agencies marketing agencies are i would just say SPEAKER_454: like probably more fitted for what we're teaching we're teaching a very specific skill so compared to SPEAKER_470: other boot camps in the digital marketing space um if we're looking at other competitors they're teaching everything across the board from digital marketing to paid media to organic it's uh you're becoming more of a jack of all trades whereas with what we're teaching is we're just teaching paid media marketing so over the span of 15 weeks you're going to get certified across google facebook amazon and apple ads and those skills are really great for going into an agency and being able to provide immediate results going to work at a startup you need to have more experience being in the field and actually seeing results come to fruition especially in earlier stage startup they want to see probably a little bit more results what we have started to see though is students that have gone on to work at marketing agencies will start to take up part-time jobs also doing consulting at startups that's been pretty normal to see um and then we've had some outliers with students that have maybe tried things out in the SPEAKER_454: past and have gone to go work at a market uh gone to go work at a startup after that's awesome so SPEAKER_451: why would people choose to do a boot camp rather than go through like a specific platforms like free SPEAKER_458: learning option so by that i mean i did i think it's called like facebook blueprint um i did the google one at the time um google now has some pretty awesome career certificates that came out my senior year um but before that they had a different platform that i was able to learn um and was able to leverage those into like social media jobs in college where i took uh like photo i was really really scrappy in college i had like one of those people who had like a million jobs and one of them um came out of came out of doing one of these uh certificates where i helped a uh local boutique downtown um like just run their SPEAKER_451: social media their instagram and like do google ads what is the difference between doing a boot camp SPEAKER_494: and doing that so we will actually help you get certified in those certifications like we'll pay for your facebook blueprint certification we're not trying to reinvent the wheel there uh really what SPEAKER_470: you're learning within our program is how to create strategies based on how these platforms work so we're not only just going to run you through this is how facebook ads work and this is how the certification works so you can go and get it and then pay for that certification but we're also teaching you how do you actually put that all together to then create a strategy and provide results SPEAKER_454: to that company that you're working with so starting week one we go into content and then we go into the platform we go into bidding you you cover every piece of it and the pieces outside of not just how SPEAKER_470: the platform works but yeah how to actually help a company start to get results that's awesome yeah SPEAKER_497: one big problem i had with like the google digital marketing uh certification was the lack of structure SPEAKER_451: that i personally gave myself and i feel like if i had maybe a real person like not just a computer uh to tell me you know when things are due i think that would have helped a lot so just the community aspect seems like i would have been a big contender for skill bank honestly when i was in college um because i also worked in the service industry because i i worked in food services i was a caterer person for a wedding venue in annapolis maryland and now i treat everybody that works in a restaurant with the most respect ever because that was probably one of the hardest jobs i've ever had and i was really happy when i moved over to working at that boutique and taking their instagram photos it wasn't that glamorous but it was surely a lot better than working in the food industry at what point um did you decide i guess to why didn't yourself like why didn't you just start working in the food industry not just start working in the food industry why didn't you work in the food industry and in college and continue to go like what made that big pivot into creating a marketing company and then eventually SPEAKER_454: creating a startup i so it's it's funny growing up i used to ref soccer games and that was like my first uh introduction into getting a job um and then my like sophomore junior year of high school was when i started coding i made my first out my freshman year but i didn't really start taking it seriously until later on into my high school career and by the time i graduated high school i knew i wanted to SPEAKER_470: do something in software so i spent my freshman and sophomore year actually just trying to build websites for people so that was like my first job um and then yeah it's just like it just slowly went SPEAKER_454: from that to how can i formalize my relationship and my first agency jamoka was really just a vehicle SPEAKER_470: for me to learn as much as i possibly could so it would be like okay someone wants to get have me do facebook ads for them i'll charge them a little bit less to be able to take on this contract and learn and i spent a lot of my first year and a half just like googling and trying to figure out how to how do these things work like i also would have been a very great contender for skill bank at the time because you don't know what you don't know and it's also so hard to know what what is the industry actually looking for so like if i'm going to go do facebook ads for someone or google ads for someone i can take a udemy course on how the platform works but i have no idea on what are those actual strategies that i need to use to start providing results and what are these hiring people looking for whenever they're looking to bring on people to do contracts um and that's the one thing i think skill bank has over all the other boot camps that are out there is our curriculum was developed in tandem with a lot of these marketing agencies that are also investors of ours that have given us feedback into the curriculum and have really made sure that we're teaching the relevant SPEAKER_511: skills that they want to see when they're hiring that is so freaking cool um so you said like going back a little bit in the conversation you said that you were in high school when you first started coding SPEAKER_451: i was also in high school but probably for a very like selfish reason i took a coding class a web design class taught by mr edom shout out mr edom my first coding teacher ever doing html and css and the only reason i did it is because i wanted to make my tumbler look a lot cooler and um that was like the sole reason why i took the coding class but how do you think obviously marketing is a very awesome skill to have but i guess starting even earlier than that going back to high school how do we get more especially women to code besides just um telling them yeah you can make your tumblr look a lot nicer which as as far as i'm concerned tumblr's not that cool anymore so that that excuse SPEAKER_454: isn't gonna work i i've thought about this a lot um not only just in terms of how do we get more women into coding but also how do we make it cool to go into tech or go into marketing um not influencers i SPEAKER_458: saw this one thing it's like how crazy is to think how many people want to become youtubers and influencers now remember when we were kids people wanted to become like astronauts i'm not that being SPEAKER_451: a youtuber influencer isn't like a job it's not a career that's wonderful but there are so many options out there there's definitely a little pigeonhole that feels like yeah and i i think i think there SPEAKER_488: needs to be a shift in the way culture thinks about working in a marketing agency or working and learning SPEAKER_470: how to code um it's not a nerdy thing that people do i think that there's actually a lot of freedom and being able to build an app and um i think it would be a really exciting day when we see someone SPEAKER_454: who wants to like become a beauty vlogger coding their own app to like showcase their own products and i think i think that's what we really need to see is the shift in oh it's like actually really cool to SPEAKER_475: build something that your friends are using um and yeah i mean i think i think that's the first step SPEAKER_458: but like that's a really big cultural shift yeah we see it with with carly kloss i mean who is a model SPEAKER_451: and everything like that and she's a big spokesperson excuse me for girls who code which i think like that's really cool seeing people you know speak out against um or speak for programs specifically geared towards young people to help them get into the space because i think you're right i think a big reason that people aren't coding or aren't going into tech or aren't trying to you know break into a marketing position at a really young age is because maybe that's not cool so definitely the cultural cultural shift is is a huge part of it and i also i wish that when i was younger i was definitely afraid to code when i got to college because i was like oh my gosh like i never i didn't touch java until i got to college python didn't touch that until i got to college and i wish i knew about tools like figma or no code tools in general beforehand because it's such a good introduction like the pipeline between learning a no code tool to then like slowly dipping you know into coding and then understanding like from a visual aspect first and then going into the technical aspect like that pipeline i feel like needs to be a little bit more secure um presh who is our chief of staff um is jason's chief of staff created the entire all-in summit app on a wonderful no code platform i believe it's no code it might be low code but i think it's called glide g-l-i-d-e i'm like i wish i knew about that in high school you know what i mean because the more interested you get in the space the more you want to know about it the same thing goes for marketing like yeah it starts off probably taking really cute photos putting them online but the deeper it goes it's like okay how can you monetize this how can we get more people to see it what is what can i be selling with this and i think you know those are just you need to figure out like what to put in front of people initially to get them like SPEAKER_497: hooked to get them through i guess what is skill banks like how are you getting putting skill bank SPEAKER_521: in front of people and being like this is cool this is what you should do the really big thing that SPEAKER_488: we're selling to people now is we want to help you take that next step in your career so if you've SPEAKER_470: been working 40 hours a week and in the service industry and you know it's it's not super sustainable long term um we want to we want to provide more stability to our students and people going through our program and there's a lot more growth opportunity for someone that's going to go work at a marketing agency you can either progress within that marketing agency you can go work in house somewhere um and yeah you know that's the really big thing that we're selling is we want to be that next really big step in your career and help you create a life for yourself that you're like really excited to get up in the morning and go work somewhere um my favorite stories to tell are we SPEAKER_454: just had um a dad go through our program i love that he was in uh the army for like the last like 10 to 15 years and wanted to be able to work from home stay at home with his kids and he can do that now he works remotely for an agency and that's been really cool to see to give people that autonomy and he hasn't been able to spend the last 10 years with his kids but now he can do that and make enough of a wage to make sure that they have food on the table um we also had a student that was um a paraplegic from the waist down and had trouble paying off medical bills coming into our program and within a month of graduating landed a 75k job with health care and benefits so like that's the really big thing that we're trying to to sell and to get people into is say like hey you can create a really sustainable life for yourself if you stay the course and we're not like other boot camps like we're not going to take 10 of your salary like we're we're really trying to set it up in such a SPEAKER_470: way where yeah if you're willing to put the work and effort into it we're going to help you get to SPEAKER_511: that next stage that's so awesome so do you have any advice for people that are looking to go into SPEAKER_451: the world of marketing that you've seen be really applicable across the board SPEAKER_488: yeah i think the the really big thing is just start testing and trying out different things i think that there's a lot of power in having a voice and having people listen to you and i think SPEAKER_470: it's one of those things that you're not going to try out the first thing and it's going to work i think people have this idea of like oh it's only one video and if that one video goes viral then i'm going to become famous or this thing's going to work or i'm going to blow up whatever i'm working on i think the thing with marketing that's super important is it's a lot of small hits to actually get someone to recognize you and i think you it's just a lot of practice like get yourself out there try different things see what sticks and stay consistent i think consistency is super important SPEAKER_451: i totally agree the consistency is definitely key meheck thank you so much for being on the segment where can people find you is it twitter is it linkedin yeah uh twitter i'm at the meheckvora SPEAKER_465: um and then if you want to check out skill bank we're join skill bank.com amazing thank you so much thank you