The Story of Richard Branson & How to Find Product-Market Fit

Alex Lieberman: Well, you just told me something funny is happening with you. So, what...

Jesse Pujji: No, no, I was just saying I'm late again.

Alex Lieberman: Of course you are.

Jesse Pujji: And...

Alex Lieberman: This is the expectation...

Jesse Pujji: ...and I wanted to...I don't know if you guys know this because you never see me. I'm not a morning person at all. I was asleep...

Alex Lieberman: What time do you usually wake up?

Jesse Pujji: ...25 minutes ago.

Alex Lieberman: Oh, my god.

Jesse Pujji: And not only that...

Alex Lieberman: I've been literally...I've been prepping for this podcast literally since I woke up. I woke up at 7:00am, didn't work out...

Jesse Pujji: This was the fastest turban tie and beard I've ever had to put together. And that's where you're supposed to say it looks really good.

Alex Lieberman: It does. It looks great.

Jesse Pujji: Thank you. Thank you.

Alex Lieberman: Honestly, you shoulda had a Guinness World Record...

Jesse Pujji: Turban-tying speed.

Alex Lieberman: ...official judge by you. Yeah...

Jesse Pujji: I'd be still sleeping right now, but my wife came in at 8:07 into our room and she's like "The water heater guy is here. He's gonna turn off the water. You have to get up and take a shower right now." And if she hadn't done that, I'd still be sleeping.

Alex Lieberman: What's up, everyone? I'm Alex Lieberman.

Jesse Pujji: Yo, this is Jesse Pujji.

Alex Lieberman: And this is The Crazy Ones. Without further ado, I have one ask of the audience before we hop into the episode. I have great news, and the great news is that this show is on fire right now. We have the chance in February to grow downloads by 25% this month, which in the world of podcast growth is the hardest thing. So, growing by 25% when you're over six figures of downloads is pretty remarkable. It is a stretch goal we have, and the only way we can make that happen is if we mobilize all of the Crazy Ones, and not just Jesse and I marketing this thing. So, one really important ask of you all, please, if there's one way you give back to the show, do it in this way. Take one minute now or after the podcast and get one person you know to listen to The Crazy Ones. And because I wanted to make this as easy for you as possible, I came up with two ideas for how you can share the podcast.

One, go to your family or close friend group chat, whether you have an iPhone or an Android. We don't discriminate against phone type. And you're gonna say the following, "This podcast is a cheat code for entrepreneurs. When you sell your business for a billion dollars in 10 years, you can thank me with a point of equity. Please and thank you." That's the first thing you can do. The second thing, if you want Jesse and I to do more of the work, here's the other option: Email thecrazyones@morningbrew.com. And all you need to do is in the subject line, put "New listener" and then, cc one to 10 people that you know that you think would like the podcast. Jesse and I will take it from there, and we will convince anyone who's cc'd on the email why they should give the show a try. So, without further ado, thank you in advance for helping us out, and let's hop into The Crazy Ones.

What's up, everyone? Welcome back to The Crazy Ones. As always, I am joined by my co-host, Jesse Pujji, and we have an awesome lineup today. First, we are going to be talking about the ever-elusive product-market fit, how to find it, how to test for it, and how Jesse is looking for it within his businesses at Gateway X. And then we are going to talk about the amazing and interesting life of Richard Branson. If you only have, say, 20 minutes today and you just want to listen to one of those topics, we're going to be talking about product-market fit and Jesse's businesses first, then the Branson topics will come after. You can look at the timestamps in the show notes if you just wanted to listen to Branson, but I highly recommend you listen to what Jesse has to say.

So, Jesse, let's hop into it. You were telling me that finding product-market fit within your businesses, and specifically Kahani, has not been an easy task. Elaborate on just how you're thinking about things.

Jesse Pujji: Yeah. Let's take a step back. I think when people talk about product-market fit, it's like a classic fancy Silicon Valley term that just means, do the customers want the shit that you're selling? And keep it real simple. And it's like, if you're selling ice in the middle of December, you're probably not going to sell that much ice if you're standing on the corner. If you're selling ice or popsicles in the middle of July, you're going to sell a lot. And so I think, just to keep it super simple, product-market fit is a fancy way of saying, do my customers want the product that I'm selling, or the market in this case, right? That's the lingo, and it's obviously critical for any business to be successful, because if the customers don't want what you're selling, you're not gonna have a business, you're not going to have a small business, any business.

And of course, just like anything, there's certain things in our life we all demand more than others. One of the classic VC lingo things is, is it a painkiller or a vitamin? And the question there is, if you're in super amounts of pain and you have an ibuprofen or something that's going to take away the pain, that's way better than a supplement that's going to make you a little bit less fat or on your [inaudible]. And so that's a cool way of saying, how big is the problem and how much does this product solve the problem? We internally had our off-site for Kahani, and I think everyone on average said we thought we were six out of 10 on product-market fit.

Alex Lieberman: And just for people who are joining the podcast for the first time, can you just quickly...

Jesse Pujji: Yeah, Kahani...

Alex Lieberman: ...remention what Kahani is?

Jesse Pujji: The vision for Kahani is really to build a set of software tools that allow merchants to make their shopping experience on mobile much more mobile-native. So you can have the stories functionality, where we're going to ship a bunch of new things where you can have video really easily integrated. But the idea is, the e-comm website hasn't changed in 15 years, and we're gonna give all the tools to the merchants to make them...it's gonna look just TikTok and Instagram in the future. That's what the e-comm experience will look like.

So it's a software, it's a SaaS business. The customers are $25 million plus Shopify merchants. And I could talk about how we got to even that as a part of product-market fit. It tends to focus on fashion and beauty. Those have been the two big verticals that seems like the product works well for.

But yeah, that's what Kahani is. And I had this really unique experience early in my career with Ampush. We were one of the first companies to integrate with Facebook's ad platform. And so we were really out in the market selling Facebook advertising; that was our pitch. And then, obviously it was, once you were bought in on Facebook advertising, it was like...we're the best, by the way, at doing it. But I got to live through multiple phases of that market.

So from 2010 to 2012, Facebook didn't even have a mobile product. They didn't have the newsfeed ads; their ads were on the right rail. You could do some hyper-targeting. Likes were the thing you sold: "You can get lots of likes for your page." That was the first era. 

The second era was they launched this mobile newsfeed product. Things started to work really well, and man, you could put a dollar in and get $5 out. And it was this crazy period for about three or four years where there was just more demand than there was supply of anyone who could deliver any kind of services or capabilities on Facebook.

And then things started to get a little bit commoditized, and everyone knew about advertising on Facebook. Then, it was like, "Why are you different? What makes Ampush special?" And so those three really distinct phases of a market. And in the first phase, people would be like, "Yeah, this sounds pretty interesting." They were a little skeptical. "We'll give it a try later this quarter, maybe next quarter." You reach back out to someone and they're like, "Oh, yeah, we're still busy. I can't quite get it."

Then we went through this period where we do a pitch and within five minutes of the pitch finishing and the call ending, we'd get an email going, "So, can we go live tomorrow?" And we're like, "Oh, my gosh." We were just hiring and trying to solve for it. And then as the market petered a little bit, everyone wanted it, it was a little more competitive. So there was a little bit more time in between the way we pitched it, but it was still clear that people wanted it. It was a big market.

And so I had the benefit, and that benefit has really taught me at least my version of what product-market fit is, especially when you're selling something, which is, how badly do people want it? And the Red Ventures guys taught us this little trick that is very opposite of normal sales. Normal sales, you take a sales call, you send a follow-up email immediately. They do really big deals, and so they said, when you're doing really big deals, you don't want to pretend a person is into it when they're not into it. You really want to make sure they want it. And so they had a little rule where they were like, "Wait three days for your follow-up." And what it did is it gave us the data to know, because if they didn't follow up, it was a sign, versus the next day someone's...how big is their pain, right? Back to that idea. And so, for Kahani...

Alex Lieberman: Well, and just one second there before you talk about Kahani. With Ampush, which was your first business, again, you were building for 13 years. I'm curious—did you think about things in terms of product-market fit? And the reason I ask that is, at least for Morning Brew, the phrase "product-market fit" never came across my mind.

Jesse Pujji: Yeah. No. It didn't.

Alex Lieberman: It was more just like, "Are we creating a great newsletter that people love? If we do that, we'll win. If we don't, we won't win." I find, especially today in business, it seems like you're being a little bit more formulaic about it now with your businesses. It seems like people get very formulaic about, "Okay, are we a product-market fit, are we not?" And they obsess over this phrase.

Jesse Pujji: Yeah, totally. And I think that's why I said I don't love the lingo. And instead, it's like, "Do my customers want to buy my product or are they buying my product? Not do they want to. Are they actually buying it?"

Yeah. We didn't think about it at all with Ampush. The one slight difference, maybe, and I don't know obviously your story in terms of if this is true or not, but one thing I make up is, the newsletter business had been around and you guys had a new spin on it. Facebook advertising was completely new. I mean, it had not existed. And so the one thing we were very keenly aware of, people don't really want to buy this that bad. We did get that thing, or we could see the arm-twisting we had to do. And then a year later, it was the opposite. I mean, literally, we're raising our minimum fees because we can't service all this demand.

Alex Lieberman: Well, to that point, first of all, I think when you started Ampush, you were looking for a business. You were looking for a business to build to get out of finance. When we were building Morning Brew in the early days, we didn't think of it as a business. It was a side project and a hobby, right? So of course product-market fit wouldn't even be a thought, because it wasn't even thought of as a business.

The other interesting thing you mentioned in these distinct periods for Ampush is, right, there's all this debate of, you have the three legs of the stool of product-market fit. You have the product, you have the team, and then you have the market, and there's all this debate of about what's most important. And Marc Andreessen will always say that it's the market. Don Valentine, who founded Sequoia, will say the same thing.

But it's funny because there's this phrase that goes, "When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins. When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins. And when a great team meets a great market, something special happens." And I think it's a great phrase that people think of in a point of time, but I think what you just described with Ampush is actually, where you sit within that phrase can also evolve over time...

Jesse Pujji: For sure.

Alex Lieberman: ...where, let's say you had a great team. Originally, it seems you were in a lousy market, or not lousy, but the market wasn't a place to be great yet. And over time, you simply could do the same quality of work, but the market pulled you forward.

Jesse Pujji: Yeah, well, yeah, I think that's right. I also think a great market...I think a great team meets a lousy market, they switch markets. That's the one thing, and we did that too. I don't know if you remember our true origin story. We were doing lead gen for edu. And then we started doing this Facebook thing and we're like, "Oh, my god, this thing is..." So we did the same switch-over that I think all great teams if they...and even a version that's happening with Kahani right now, which I can talk a little bit more about.

But yeah, so, we've launched a software. I have a big network, and we've been out and talking about it on Twitter. And so, we have good...we had 24 meetings in January. Our goal was 40, so we're not quite getting the meetings we want, which is a sign in of itself, like we don't get people banging down our door to come talk to us. They know about it. I tweet about it, I talk about it.

And then, I think most importantly, what's happening in the meetings is, everybody thinks it's super cool. Not a single...maybe one out of those 24 went, "Eh, I don't think it's the right thing for us," or "I don't really like it." But the 23 were like, "Oh, this is so smart. Yes, this is obvious. This is the way the world is moving," blah, blah, blah. And you're like, "Yes, yes, yes, yes. Let's do this." And then you're like, "Okay, cool. I'm going to send you the documents." And of the 23, you know, making up numbers, but we converted 20% of them, something like that. So it's not terrible. But...

Alex Lieberman: I was going to say, that feels pretty good.

Jesse Pujji: It feels decent, right? But a bunch of them are like, "Oh, yeah, our roadmap in three months, we can't get this in." Or they ghost us, or yeah, whatever. There's a lot of signs that it's not the...

Alex Lieberman: Doesn't sound like there's urgency.

Jesse Pujji: There's not urgency. People aren't falling over themselves to get this. Now, a couple interesting things. One, is I'm a pretty good salesman, so I have to be careful because I can convince people to do things, and then they may not actually want to do it, but they're, "Oh, Jesse is our friend. He's a smart guy. He'll advise us." And the nice thing is, I have a comparison to GrowthAssistant, and GrowthAssistant, for those who don't remember, is the talent marketplace where we help brands and agencies find awesome marketing talent in the Philippines. That business, dude, people would email us the next day. I mean, it was, "I need a person. I needed a person yesterday." And so they would be driving us to get that person. "Is the person ready yet? Did you find them?" And so, I had the benefit of seeing that. It was a couple years ago when we launched it, and seeing what insane product-market fit looks like when people really want it, versus Kahani is like, "Yeah, it's not...it's sort of, it's okay." So what do you do about it, right? I think that's the next question.

And there's a whole variety of things you do. And the reality of it is, and I've never really built software in this way or software products that I'm selling. We built internal software products at Ampush that the teams used. And what's interesting is it's hard to iterate. And what we learned was we were a little bit, or we still are, a little bit of a solution chasing a problem. Like one morning I woke up and I was like, "Why don't e-commerce sites have the same functionality as Instagram? That's what they should do. Let's go build that." And we built it and a bunch of people used it and liked it. "Okay, this is a good idea." But there was no problem that we articulated that we were solving.

And the nice thing is, we're talking to a lot of customers and we're hearing from them, and it's amazing. In the middle of the month, there was two very specific meetings we had, and they really gave us...they're two very different use cases for it, but they're both very clear. One is, "Yeah, I have all this content, it's all on social, and I cannot have any of it on my website right now. It's really annoying. I wish I could use my content on my website, and I have all this video and I want to put it on my website." And so, boom, I had, I was like, "Oh, oh yeah, that's what the problem is that people are having that we can solve.

The other one was, "I want to merchandise and show all my products in a fast and easy way. I want to be able to show more product to people when they come on the site." And so we literally changed the slide deck the next week because I was like, "Those are two problems." And we started being more specific about that problem and the pitch. You already saw different results.

So in this case, it wasn't necessarily even changing the product yet, which I'll talk about in a second. It was just, do you actually have a problem you're solving, and are you able to articulate that problem to the customer, and do they have that problem also? Because...

Alex Lieberman: Yeah, there's so many thoughts that come from this. The first thing, just kind of high level, is a lot of people think of product-market fit as this Big Bang event, right? You create the product, and it happens, or else, you don't have product-market fit and you should move on to the next business. But the way that you're describing it right now and how people should think about it is, it's more like you're a scientist, and you have a lot of hypotheses. You run these tests, these controlled tests, and then you see what happens.

The second thing that also just comes to mind for me as you're describing, I would say, like me, as Enneagram Sevens, as I learned, you get very excited about an idea, right? So you got very excited about this idea that, "Oh my god, this is where mobile websites are going. They're going to TikTok and Instagram-type formats." And like you said, you're also a great salesperson. What that means to me is actually, if not controlled, it makes you really dangerous within your team, because of course, you're gonna be incredibly persuasive around things that you're super excited about, which means everyone else who's working with you is going to be super excited. And so, how do you create an environment in which people both take in your excitement to motivate themselves, but also, have the ability to step back and think through, "Is Jesse thinking about all of this clearly? Where can I poke holes in how he's thinking about the problem for the business?"

Jesse Pujji: Yeah. And add to that, by the way, if you're the boss, you're the founder and the CEO, and the owner of the company, it becomes triply hard, right? Yeah, I think that's a hard one. You have to give people...I think giving frameworks and creating criteria with which people use to evaluate things. I think surrounding yourself...like our lead engineer, Adam, he's a Type Eight, and he has no problem calling my bullshit. He'll challenge almost everything out of my mouth, which is actually really good as long as you both trust each other and you're not creating friction there. But yeah, I think it's a real issue.

Alex Lieberman: So what's the game plan now? You don't feel like you're totally a product-market fit, and...

Jesse Pujji: Yeah, so some of it is now in search of the...so, now that we've flipped it from Jesse's neat idea to actually, what's the problem, now, we're realizing our product doesn't have all the features it needs. Because now, if the problem is I need...let's split the use cases for a second. I want to feature my awesome rich mobile new video content on my website. Well, I don't just want it in the stories nav bar. I also want what I call vertical carousel, which is TikTok, where you flip up. I also want embedded little widgets in my site that have video. Maybe I want picture in picture in there, right? There's a whole set of ways that customers, merchants in our case, want to solve this problem, that we don't offer, and it's like, "Boom." It becomes really clear that you're like, "Oh, now that I understand the problem, now I understand why my fit is not...I'm not fully fitting in there because my product isn't built out to it." So now, you know, I literally spent yesterday morning mocking up a bunch of what we call form factors for Kahani, which is the core of getting into that experience of a video or picture media, and [inaudible] is obviously similar, but the circles is just one way you can get there. What about carousels? What about swipe up vertical? What about all these other things, right? So, I think that's the big...there's probably there's other stuff, but for the purposes of this discussion, that's probably the big "aha" that we've had.

I think the other thing which I would just share with entrepreneurs, especially people working on new stuff, and just to relate back to the Facebook example, I also believe...and this is, by the way, why raising capital has been helpful in this instance. I believe very, very firmly that we are just a little bit ahead of the market also. And what I mean by that is I think e-commerce people are busy. Last year they were dealing with inventory issues and a whole host of other stuff. The website is actually a forgotten asset, surprisingly, for most of these guys. But I think there's gonna be the moment in the next 12 to 18 months, obviously I'm betting on it, where you're going to hear this thing going, "Oh, my god, if you don't have video on your e-commerce website, you're dead. You are deficient." And all of a sudden what feels like a vitamin will become a painkiller. And hopefully we'll be like, hahaha, the master plan. We'll be, people will be banging down our doors to have Kahani on their website, and so...

Alex Lieberman: One other question on that, sorry, by the way, is how do you...you basically said that you got to this conclusion that you had this awesome idea, but it wasn't necessarily problem-first. So you got to a place where the problem wasn't painful enough for people. And now, in the last few weeks, you've had problems said by clients that you identified, and you're now building the product towards those problems. One of the problems being like, how do we put our video content onto our mobile site? How do you decide when you actually aren't solving a problem, versus, you're in a current market that even if you have a great problem to solve, it's just, the market isn't in a place to solve that problem? Said differently, either you're too early in the market or we're in a recession right now and people are just trying to be in hibernation mode at the moment.

Jesse Pujji: Yeah. I mean, I don't believe in the whole recession thing, right? Recession is the economy goes down by 3%, up by 3%. So, we go from being a $20 trillion to being a $19.5 trillion or $20.5 trillion. I personally just don't believe in that effect...

Alex Lieberman: Do you think it's an excuse?

Jesse Pujji: Yeah, well...

Alex Lieberman: ...for your business if you say that.

Jesse Pujji: Well, yeah, sure. Will the purchase price be a little depressed? Yes. But if the product is...people buy stuff in recessions is my point, right? GrowthAssistant hasn't slowed. I mean, GrowthAssistant had a little period where people were clearly dealing with headcount issues and then it all came back really aggressively.

But anyway, I think the way you deal with it, honestly, the only good answer I have is time. And so...the way you get it wrong is you either spend too little or too much time, you spend a month or two...if right now I was going, "Ah, this is a terrible idea. Let's tear it up and move on to something..." I have a million ideas, right? I have money in the bank. I could change Kahani's whole business tomorrow if I chose to. I'm the board.

But if you do that then, and this is classic Type Seven thing, you haven't given yourself enough time to fully understand, are you making the right call? Then, you're whining in five years. Like, "Oh, I had that idea, and then somebody else built a billion-dollar business for it." So, I see entrepreneurs do that all the time. They had the idea, but they didn't...and then, the flip of that is, if I'm still doing this in three years and it's giving you the same numbers and the same data points, you should punch me in the face. That's crazy, right? That's crazy.

So, it's like a year, I think, a year and a half of trying. Obviously, that's way too broad a brush because you're paying attention to what's happening in the world. Internet speeds may be getting a little faster in six to nine months on mobile, and e-commerce is consolidated. I mean, there's a million things that could be happening that may or may not think that the market's more ready to be there than what it is today. And I think that...some of it is just from my perspective, it's a little bit like "This is obvious. Everyone says it's obvious. I think it's obvious. It's not happening yet. Okay, we're just early. This is gonna happen. It's just a question of when." 

And the other thing I'll add to it is, you've heard all kinds of entrepreneur stories about this, especially in the early internet days. It's also a part of our responsibility to catalyze this. We need to be at the top of the mountain screaming about how your websites look 20 years old and the video experience is broken. And you'd be amazed at ultimately, you're influencing maybe 5,000 people who are the executives and the owners of all these e-commerce businesses. And so it is actually not that hard to get out there and convince those people that there's something the world needs to be different.

Alex Lieberman: One thing I just want to point out, by the way, is again, for a first time entrepreneur, even a serial entrepreneur, if they feel like they haven't quite figured out product-market fit, a lot of people will get panicked about it because they're like, "Shit, this whole grand plan I had, what do I do now?" And you seem very seemingly calm about it. And I think part of it is because your thesis hasn't really changed, the long-distance thesis, and your belief in yourself to figure it out. I think this will also tie well in a few minutes when we transition into just the story of Richard Branson, because this guy built 400 businesses. So many of them have failed. The amount of times he's pivoted at his ideas, you can't keep track of. 

The other thing I'll say in how you're thinking about this business, you know I'm a very visual person. The way I visualize it is, Kahani is this ship, and the ship you ultimately want to get to your destination, some island. And that island is a world in which mobile websites have been rejuvenated and rebuilt for the time we live in. And you're the captain of the ship and your whole team is the crew that's paddling, and all the information you're taking in from customers and from the market is the wind, it's the waves, it's everything that's pushing the boat. And so you need to tell your crew to make adjustments, and that's why you're standing at all times above the ship giving direction with your crew. I think the biggest thing that entrepreneurs think is your business will just succeed if you let the ship start going, people row and then you're sitting below the ship in your room just lounging, but you're the person who's taking in all the information to then distill it into what's most important. And so that's what you're doing right now.

Jesse Pujji: Totally. And I was gonna say, the reason I think I'm calm is...there's some real reasons. I have other success in other businesses. Ampush. I think we have plenty of money in the bank at Kahani, so we have time, which is the most important variable here. But I think the other reason is, I did not start this journey saying "I know the answer." And I think it's so important for any entrepreneur listening is they call it the concept of "beginner's mind." And I think there's this ton of pressure. And I see actually Adriane, at GrowthAssistant, she puts this on herself and sometimes I'm like, "Adriane, no one's ever had growth marketers sold. Why would you know this?" And she's like, "No, I should have known." I'm like, "Why?" And so, for me...

Alex Lieberman: I think I saw her tweet something exactly along the lines of this idea, of how do I deal with imposter syndrome as a first-time CEO?

Jesse Pujji: Yeah, people, they flip out. "I need to know everything. I'm supposed to be the expert." And for me, when we started Kahani, I was like, "I don't know what verticals this is going to work for." In our pitch deck, by the way, we raised money, it says our target market is one to 10 million Shopify stores. And then, we started selling to them and realized, "God, it's hard." The product isn't quite self-serve enough, and we closed a couple bigger guys, and these guys can leverage it. They have the team to use it. We needed a person inside the content. And so we didn't know. And so I think that's the most important thing is, "I don't know" is a really powerful statement and phrase. And I was like, "I don't know what the market's gonna be. I'm gonna go learn, and the way I learn that is I'm going to sell. I'm gonna see who uses it." The one thing, I made it sound like the customers just said that "This is my problem." We had customers use the product, and the ones that have loved it have gone into those use cases. So it's not like...there's people spending every day in Kahani and they're using it for those purposes, which told us that that's what the problem was they were trying to solve.

So it's just super important to be like, "I didn't know. I don't know. I don't know. I have no idea." And then, that's what's kept me calm because I don't expect myself to have the master plan of knowing exactly which customer is going to buy my product. That's why I was calling you out with the plunger thing last week where you're like, "Oh, I don't know that our business professionals..." I'm like, "You have no idea. Just go sell it and see what happens." And the market will speak back to you very fast.

Alex Lieberman: I have one last question for you, which is, it ties into last episode where I talked about how to crush an investor update. As you were navigating stuff like this that is just the reality of your business, where you don't feel like you've perfectly hit product-market fit, it could be perceived by some entrepreneur if they were experiencing it as a weakness. How do you communicate things like this to an investor, where you're fully transparent with them but also, they don't lose faith?

Jesse Pujji: Yeah, I think it's a tricky thing. I would say...I would use words like: "Here's what I believe and why. Here's what I'm gonna do to validate that, and here's the things that would change my mind." Right? So now it's like, you don't want to go in and go, "I don't have any idea." I mean, I could maybe get away with that, right? I didn't say that, of course. I had a point. I said one to 10, and the reason is I want to figure out the product and make sure that it works for this small before I sell bigger. I had a whole story around it, and I was like, but I also have only sold this to 20 people, so I reserve the right to change my mind. But for anyone of us coaching someone, I would say, "Here's what I believe; here's why. Here's what I'm going to do to validate it, and here's what would change my mind, and I'll keep you abreast." So now again, someone goes, "Oh, this person has a point of view. They've thought deeply about the problem. They also thought so deeply about it that they know what might change their mind, and they're also clear on what they're gonna do to get an answer to this." That's how I would frame it. That's how I would frame it with investors.

Alex Lieberman: And I think by doing that also, you kind of flip the narrative where actually it can be perceived as a strength, that you don't feel, you don't purport to know all of the answers. And you show this consistent through-line of, investors can't necessarily expect top-notch business performance at all times, but what they can expect is critical thinking and self-awareness that will allow you to get to a point where you want to be.

Jesse Pujji: And one of my other hacks, by the way, during my investor calls, when people would do stuff like that, I'd go, "Oh, what do you think?" And it was the best because they'd go, "Well, yeah, I think you're thinking about it the right way, Jesse, and you may want to look at this." And then I'm like, "Oh, okay. You have no fucking idea either."

Alex Lieberman: I love that. Okay. Any other thoughts on the product-market fit and Kahani topic before we switch gears?

Jesse Pujji: No, I think if I were to summarize it, I'd say, you gotta keep selling. It's really important. I was talking to an entrepreneur the other day who was telling me about his big plans and his product and his challenges, and I said, "How many sales meetings are you getting a week?" He's like, "I don't know, one." I'm like, "Dude, this is never gonna work."

Alex Lieberman: And you're like, 100x that.

Jesse Pujji: Well, you have to get five to 10 a week because that's...everyone isn't at bat, right? And so, that's number one. You gotta keep getting the sales meetings. Number two is you got to adjust. And again, ideally, build a culture of adjustment. After every sales call at Kahani, we try to end it a few minutes early and we just go quickly on Slack. What did we do well, what did we learn, what could be better? It takes two seconds to do that after a call and next thing you know, everyone's learning, and every time the pitch is getting better and better. And then when you start seeing themes, you have to go back to the product and say, "We gotta change the product. We gotta...now, identify the problem more clearly and then adjust to make sure your product solves that problem.

Alex Lieberman: I love that. Okay, second topic, and...

Jesse Pujji: I was asleep an hour ago, by the way, just...

Alex Lieberman: You were asleep an hour ago. I was feverishly listening to a podcast on 2x about Richard Branson to make sure I was prepared. The reason we're talking about Richard Branson is you hit me up, I think two days ago, being like, "Dude, this documentary on Richard Branson is incredible." I think you used the word "inspiring," so just give me the lowdown.

Jesse Pujji: Man, it's so inspiring. I'll tell you why. I can go and tell you his whole story, but let me tell you specifically why I texted you that. The dude is 70 or whatever, and 15 years ago he said, "You know what? We've done all this stuff. I want to go to space." And part of it is in my mind after...I thought he was more...he is a marketing and sales guy, obviously, which I guess gets me excited because I think of myself that way too. But he said, "We're gonna go to space." And like me or you, I bet you he's a Type Seven. He's like, "Yeah, in two years, we're gonna be going to space." And I don't know how you feel about this, by the way, but this is a struggle...not a struggle. This is a thing that I play with in myself. I have no problem making very bold vision claims, and if we don't meet them, I don't care. I don't feel sad, but John, my old CEO of Ampush, used to really get bothered when I'd say, "We're going to hit $50 million" and then we'd hit $35. He'd be like, "Oh, that's terrible." I'm like, "Well, I don't know. It doesn't matter. We're going to hit $50 next year." And so it's funny I'm saying that because Richard Branson was like, "We're going to space in two years." Two years comes along, and he's like, "They can't even get the plane to lift off the damn ground." And he's like, "No, we're going to space in two years." And he does that seven times.

So for 14 years, he talks about going to space, and it's so cool because he doesn't know shit about space, but he found this guy in the middle of Nevada who's a scientist, who had done all this work, and you know what? He was steadfast in the vision and he didn't give up despite the fact that it was like, people died, sadly, in testing this plane. I mean, there were so many pieces of it, and then he did it. And 14 years...

Alex Lieberman: That's the fascinating thing, by the way, as I was studying him and his businesses, is there are so many businesses that he's gotten into just by definition of him being in every category of business you could imagine; there's so many businesses where he has no expertise in the business. I was listening to one part of the podcast where it's about how he...because he set all these records, these Guinness records, and one of the records that he was trying to set was, I think, the longest transatlantic flight, like basically having a plane flying in air for the longest time. And they set the record—it was 67 hours that a plane was in air, and he wasn't the guy flying the plane, the guy was flying...whoever the pilot was was flying the plane. But he described how they built the plane out of this carbon fiber base that made it way more fuel-efficient, where it used the same amount of fuel as a truck on the road in the US. And I was thinking to myself, "How the hell did he know any of this?"

Jesse Pujji: He didn't, and that's...

Alex Lieberman: ...and he didn't. Yeah.

Jesse Pujji: He didn't. And as I think about my own dreams and my own holdco visions, he's not talked about in the holdco circles as much as I think he should be.

Alex Lieberman: Totally.

Jesse Pujji: And part of what he does is...and it's various iterations I've thought of for Gateway X or whatever. One thought I had watching it, I was like, "I need a different name than Gateway X because it's not like...his is such a good brand and Gateway X is..."

Alex Lieberman: Which by the way, did he talk about the story and the documentary of how it was named?

Jesse Pujji: They do in the first episode. Yeah, so I've read his book, Losing My Virginity. And just to back up, the quick story, he's a dyslexic kid, kind of a bad kid. His mom is super tenacious and kind of this...whatever. He starts a student...and the guy's old. He's in his 70s now. So, in the '60s during the hippie phase, he starts this student newspaper or whatever, media. Just like you, starts a media business. And next thing you know, that paper is the number one paper in the UK, and that turns into a real business. And then, I don't know if he sold that, or it ended up going away for some reason. But then he's like, "Oh, I like listening, hanging out at the record store with my friends and listening to records." So, he starts a couple record stores, and...

Alex Lieberman: Well, and just to add one detail to that, what happened was he had...he was the OG in building your own distribution. He noticed a lot of these students who read his paper, which was called The Student. They loved music. And he even made this comment that they were more willing to pay for music than they would, like, a meal. And so he was like, "What if we start a mail order record for people to buy records and we mail them to them, and we use my newspaper as the built-in advertising for that," and so it's just like it was such...he's used every business as a launch point for the next business, even if...

Jesse Pujji: Yeah, it's a version of product-market fit. He just listens to customers, sees what they want. And then, he's like, "Oh, let's do this, let's do this." And so he starts a couple record stores, and then one day, sees this beautiful house in the country and was like, "You know what? We should start a recording studio." And he starts...he goes, "Yeah, let's get this recording studio." Then he's like, "Oh, some people came through," and there was a famous album called Tubular Bells, which was really his first big hit. But then from there, I mean, he had some of the biggest names in rock and roll and media.

Alex Lieberman: Rolling Stones, Sex Pistols.

Jesse Pujji: Yeah. He was there producing them. And all of a sudden...by the way, let's take a step back. Media is the original software. You record a song once and you can sell it a bazillion times, so all of a sudden, he starts scaling the crap out of this huge music business, and he eventually sells it, and sells it for a billion plus dollars. And he has a great story in his book where he starts bawling his eyes out, and he's just super sad about what he just let go, this whole thing, his baby he ran for 15 years. But from there, he just kept finding ways he would...the airline story is great. The story he tells was...there's a couple origin stories for it, but he was stuck on an island. He basically found a way to charter a plane and get a bunch of passengers to come with him and put the money together. And he was like, "Oh," and he wrote "Virgin Airlines" to go from point A to point B.

Alex Lieberman: Well, do you know why he was stuck on the island? I learned this in the episode. He had just been to Necker Island.

Jesse Pujji: Oh, right.

Alex Lieberman: He had just been to Necker, which is the island that he owns now, and he's known for owning. But he went to Necker because he basically was thinking about, how can I get a free trip for my girlfriend and I? And so he showed interest in buying a property in the Virgin Islands. So they paid for his flight, they paid for his hotel, and on Necker Island, they're like, "Yeah, we'd be interested in selling the island to you for $3 million." And he had offered like $150,000. So when he said that, they were like, "Yeah, there's no interest." And he ended up going to this other island. The funny thing is he ended up going and buying Necker Island for, I believe, $175,000.

Jesse Pujji: Yeah, in the book they're like, "Nine months later, the Lord called him back and said, I'm in dire straits. I need you to buy the island." But yeah, so he did that. And then, but the way he originally started it was, you could buy a plane from Boeing, and it'd be hundreds of millions of dollars, whatever. He basically got a one-year lease that he could put back to them, so he totally mitigated his cost. He built the whole thing out, and then, with a big splash, he got it going, and he was solving a real problem. The airline travel was not fun. British Airways was a total monopoly that sucked at that time. And he created a totally different flying experience that then got going.

So I think what was so inspiring, I mean, all these things we're talking about, these stories are obviously, for any entrepreneur, they're really exciting. The thing for me was, he really knows what he's great at. He leans into his zones of genius. It's just super clear, right? He doesn't necessarily control everything. He has a stake, and he uses the best of himself. He puts the right operators in place. He puts the right expertise in place. But the coolest thing was that the guy's like 70 and he's still ambitiously trying to accomplish things. And I just thought, how wonderful, how cool. The documentary's got...his grandkids are on the island with him. His kids are there, he's there with his family, and then he's like, "Okay, what's gonna happen with the launch? How are we going about this?" And he poured...apparently, according to the documentary, he poured a billion dollars of his own money into Virgin Galactic. And there's no reason you do that other than you really want that thing to happen and exist in the world, and you're really excited and passionate about it.

And so it just got me really inspired, going, man, this guy has been at it for 30 more years than I have already, and he's still willing to go. And dude, 14 years...I just said, 18 months about product-market fit. This guy, two years, like, "We're gonna go. Oh, we're not there. We're gonna go." And by the way, that's how vision works. Just so everybody knows, if you really care or truly feel passionately about a vision, it doesn't matter if you didn't accomplish it in two years. That just means you haven't gotten to the vision yet. You keep going for something like that. But I mean, I'm not sure I would do that. I'm not sure most people I know would do that, but he just kept going for 14 years until they actually got the thing to go to space.

Alex Lieberman: Well, that's the thing also about...even using Virgin Airlines, everyone, all of his close confidants were like, "You're an absolute idiot for starting this business. It's a horrible business. It's fully consolidated," all of these things. And I feel like the through-line to his career is, he really tries to have as much fun as possible. And so if you look at his decisions through the lens of optimizing for fun, it actually makes a lot of sense. He's just done really cool shit. If you look at it through the lens of optimization for money, it makes no sense, some of the decisions that he's made. And yeah, I think there's so many incredible lessons just to learn from him. Obviously, one that we've mentioned before is this guy has zero concern about failure with his businesses. There are so many businesses that he's launched you have no idea about. Virgin Cosmetics, Virgin Brides...

Jesse Pujji: Virgin Cola, dude, Virgin Cola...

Alex Lieberman: Virgin Cola.

Jesse Pujji: ...is the biggest failure ever.

Alex Lieberman: Yeah, totally. And I think part of it, why is he open to doing this? Partially, he doesn't view these things as failures. He knows that it's a game of taking a lot of at bats and being smart about seeing opportunities.

I think the other thing is, the really smart way in the podcast I listened to, it talked about his view of his holdco, and I'm trying to find the name of it. He basically calls it like a branded conglomerate or...oh, it's Branded Venture Capital. And basically, the way that he's done a lot of these businesses is he's like, "I like small businesses way more than I like big businesses. And I'm gonna take all these big swings, and I'm going to try to find every way possible to mitigate my downside. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to find entrepreneurs who have a specific area of expertise. I'm going to go 50/50 in a partnership with them so that they have a ton of upside. I'm gonna fund the business, and then I'm going to let them go off to the races and they're gonna leverage the Virgin name." And so these 400 businesses, he has not been operating these 400, but it's just the combination of having a vision, finding a great entrepreneur, and now, with all these businesses, he's diversified his revenue so much because he has all these companies.

Jesse Pujji: Totally. And I think the other thing that...again, I aspire to be this. This is a part of...this is one of the reasons we did raise money for Kahani is as much as I talk about bootstrapping, and I think that's a mindset, by the way, which I will always retain and want to always retain.

There is...the capital markets are just another market that you, as a company, you want to be able to participate in in smart ways. With Unbloat, we're using all this debt capital and we've raised venture. I want to have that touch where someone goes, "No, no. Jesse is around it. Jesse is involved in that. He's one of the owners. Yeah, don't worry. He's figured it out. The person he's put in charge is probably the right person and we should back that."

And because he also is leveraging, he's backed Virgin Galactic, he's clearly raising money for these things, or the guy or girl running the business is raising money. And that's part of being successful and taking lots of swings, is you have to have access to those capital markets. And I think that's all part of the equation for doing what he's doing. And so he has the brand, he has this unfair advantage of his sales and marketing. He himself is a very keen and shrewd entrepreneur. And then he partners with the expertise of people in different things, but then, he also gets access to capital so that he...I'm sure he puts a lot of his own money into all of these things. But then he's obviously leveraging third party capital. He has to be. There's no way the Virgin Galactic raised...I don't know, $800 million during the SPAC process.

Alex Lieberman: Totally, yeah. By the way, that's the one time I've seen him in real life, is I saw him on the day that Virgin Galactic went public at the New York Stock Exchange. He was outside with his whole team dressed in his spacesuit. That's the only time I've seen Richard Branson in person. And just like to see, again, a 72-year-old just like that filled with energy that way in life.

Jesse Pujji: Yeah, he's doing what he loves. And it's like Warren Buffett, even Ric Elias, these people who are not...they're no longer optimizing for expected value. They're optimizing for their own personal fulfillment and enjoyment, and they're being themselves and they're unapologetically...and I think even as you and I are youngish, I'm young, you know, still, for me, it's even less than it comes up for you where I'm like, "I don't care if they...I don't want to do the math equation." Is this, "Oh, should I spend my time this way, or is it better to focus? Is it better..." It's like, no, I just want to be me, and I want to do the things that I believe I'm gonna have fun with. And I think I'll have success as a byproduct by that. And I think that flip is a really, really important flip for every entrepreneur.

Alex Lieberman: Yeah. And what I'll say also is, as I listen to these podcasts...and by the way, just to give a shout-out, the two of the podcasts I listen to are the Founders Podcast, which is a great podcast. This guy, David, reads autobiographies and biographies weekly, and then, he summarizes them, so it...

Jesse Pujji: Oh, yeah. It's owned by Colossus. Patrick's...

Alex Lieberman: Exactly. So it was super helpful. But to me, as I listened to this, it made me just want to read the full books more, because I think it made me feel a little bit more understood, in a way. I've always viewed myself as this person who is very ADD and distractable and all these things, and always thought like, that is going to be the thing that doesn't allow me to be successful in business. And by looking at this guy's story, he showed, he's literally provided the playbook for how you can create infrastructure and a framework in your life to both...to have your cake and eat it too, where you can work on a lot of things, but also not dilute yourself.

And the second thing I'll say is, we talked about this last long-form episode about The Plunge, my axe-throwing inspired backyard game, where you're like, "That's cute, Alex. You're doing a Kickstarter and you've spent $12,000." And there is a part of the scrappiness that I love no matter what business I start. But also, I think one of the things that separates him is he really is willing to take big swings, and he does have a thoughtfulness around mitigating risk. And so, for me, it pushes me to think about how do I take risk, but also, and mitigate the downside, but do so in a balanced way. Because I think if we looked at what I'm doing with the backyard game right now, it's probably a little bit too tilted in the downside mitigation part, and not the taking the big swing part. One last thing I'll just say about...

Jesse Pujji: Hold on, hold on.

Alex Lieberman: ...Richard.

Jesse Pujji: It makes me really happy to hear you say that, because I think as, you know, my little brother, you're my little brother in a lot of this, the Type Seven thing. I've had my own struggles of like, "No, why am I like that? No, that's gonna be a problem for me. That's bad. Bad Jesse. Focus. Focus, Jesse." And I do think that the answer is, and I'm going to send you this link, but there's a really healthy version of the Type Seven where they're aware of this tendency and they manage around it, and you create structures that support it, and you see Ric has done it. I'm trying to do it now. Obviously, Richard Branson has done it, and it'll be more...not only will I think you'll be more effective, but you'll be much more fulfilled and happy. And I think that's versus constantly being in this inner battle of like, "Oh, am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong?"

And on The Plunge, I mean, honestly, the one way you mitigate risk is hustling. Let's paint the picture of, you go through the three big marketing tactics. You run Facebook ads, you do Kickstarter, and you do some other TikTok organic. Nobody buys the thing; fuckin' sucks. You have a thousand of these things sitting in a warehouse. You just have a plan for that. You're gonna do a tax write off and you're going to save money on taxes. You're gonna go sell them to gyms or schools. There'd be a way to basically limit the downside of that meaningfully. You just have to think it through.

Alex Lieberman: Yeah. It requires some creativity.

Jesse Pujji: Yeah, exactly. And some hustle, I think. And so, once you get comfortable with that, then yeah, go all in, man. And I think this thing will work. Again, I don't know if it's going to be a $5 million business or a $50 million business, but I think people will buy. It's a cool idea.

Alex Lieberman: I agree with you. And by the way, I think in Branson fashion, I think doing this will give me other ideas as well. And beyond his sales and marketing prowess, the other superpower that I just want to mention about Richard Branson is I think he's the perfect example of turning this switch in your mentality of being great at identifying problems and opportunities, taking your brain off of the autopilot of just accepting things in life. Every business was a function of him being like, "Oh, this flight experience to Puerto Rico fucking sucks. My flight's canceled. Why don't I create my own plane? Why don't I get a board and say that I'm selling seats for $39? Oh, I have a record label now." Most record labels won't make a lot of money because they have to pay for the marketing and distribution in the UK. "Oh, I have marketing and distribution, so now, I can make profit from that."

So we should even do an upcoming episode on how to identify interesting opportunities or markets, or how to take your brain off autopilot. But I think the perfect balance is both being a lifelong optimist, but also knowing how to switch your brain to really feel and identify when something doesn't feel right.

Jesse Pujji: Yeah. Or just spot opportunity. To me, I just see things and I'm like, "Oh, there's an opportunity." Yeah, that doesn't seem...yeah, maybe it's the same thing you're saying, but I think of it as spotting opportunity.

I think the other thing is, I've made...I wanted to do this at Ampush and in my wildest dreams, I figured it out at Ampush. I didn't, obviously, right? But the mistake I made was I was still trying to do this while operating Ampush. So talk about the Type Seven, and yeah, that was a mistake. I couldn't do both. I couldn't take the client meetings and make sure we were pacing our revenue correctly while also trying to get new things off the ground. And so that's just an important part of this which is just again, being honest with yourself and knowing what you're doing.

There's nothing wrong...if you're running the business, you're running the business. There's nothing wrong with that. But don't also try to do those other things because that's not going to work, and vice versa. If you're not running the business, you have to find the right people and surround yourself with the right people who will do it.

Alex Lieberman: I love it. I think that's a perfect place to end the episode. As always, love this conversation. And as always, super grateful for all of the Crazy Ones that listen to the show week in and week out. As I mentioned, if you could help us hit 25% growth on the podcast month over month, it would be massive. Send a text to your group, your family or friend group text, shoot an email to us saying "New friend" and cc them, and we'll do the heavy lifting of selling them on why they should listen to the show. Jesse, anything else before we sign off?

Jesse Pujji: Nope. Let's make it happen.

Alex Lieberman: Let's make it happen. Thanks, everyone. Have a great week.