Radical Authenticity Over Marketing Tricks

`0:52:57`

I build the company I want to work at. I hire the people I want to work with. I try to write. I do all of our writing. I don't do the design, I work with our designer to do a lot of that, but he's sort of the visual person there. But I do all the writing. And I want every word to land with meaning. This is, again, like thin, thick. I don't like thick stuff. Thin, how can I just get to the right point but not be sterile? It's a problem sometimes with getting to the point, you can be sterile. So there should be a little bit of bounce, a little bit of rhythm in the writing. It should feel nice. You should be carried through it. There should be some momentum in there, and I just love doing it. That's my favorite thing to do, actually, at the company is write. But we just do stuff that we like. I like that style.

`0:53:44`

If you look at my product demos, I always do the demo for the product, like the launch. They're long, and they're unedited, and I screw up a bunch, and I don't care. If I was sitting with you, what I want to try to get to with this kind of stuff is, if I'm showing you something, our product, literally, you're behind me or sitting next to me, and we're looking at this thing together, if I screw up two minutes in, I'm not going to go, "Let's start over." I'm just going to keep going. And so that's how I want these to feel. I want to connect with people in a real way. This is a real person showing off a real product. This is a real person writing a real thing. My name's on it, my signature's on it, my email is on it. We are who we are. We represent ourselves as we are. We are not a corporate entity hiding behind a structure. We're not a CEO or a CTO hiding from our customers.

`0:54:31`

We don't have a board. We don't have any of these things. It's just us running the show. And the show is open for anyone to see. And we open source most of our work. We're very open about sharing everything we know as best we possibly can. I just feel like there's no reason not to. I just want to be direct and clear with people. And hopefully, they like that, and some people don't. Some people are like, "Oh, you guys are too small, I can't trust you." I'm not out to convince anybody of anything. That's the other thing. I don't want to convince anyone. I don't like marketing language. I don't like tricks. Here we are. Here's what we do. Here's what our product does. That's the best we can do, and that's the best I want to do, and I think it's the honest way to be. And take it or leave it. Some people don't like it. That's totally fine. I get it.

`0:55:16`

— I love the idea of doubling down on authenticity and leaving the mistakes in. I remember reading one of your essays a long time ago. I can't remember the culture, but they would do... — Navajo rugs. — Okay. — I'll tell you the story. — Yeah. — I was in Wisconsin, in this little town called Mineral Point, Wisconsin, small, little town, about 50 miles west of Madison, and I was wandering through this gallery. Strange. It was this weird building, and it looked like a junkyard inside. You peered in, it's like, "What is going on in here?" And I saw some old man in the back. Like, "There's going to be something cool here." So, I knock on his door, I walk in. There's some rugs hanging, but there's also junk everywhere. Anyway, he comes out, and you're like, "Okay, this guy's a character." I love characters. I love old people. There's something going on there, right? I'm like, "Who is this guy?" So, he's a Navajo...