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**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. That's good for you. That's what we can all ask for in life. We want to be nowhere else besides where we're at right now, and be content in what we're doing. And that's not how a lot of people are. They're looking for the next thing, or they're looking further forward, and they're not in that ... |
**Michael Grinich:** It's a really good time to start companies right now, too. I bet a lot of people listening here are thinking about that... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Why do you feel that way? |
**Michael Grinich:** It's just always kind of a good time whenever there's like an economic downturn. It turns out that's like the ideal time to start a company. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. The question is "What?" It must be artificial intelligence. |
**Michael Grinich:** Okay, so I have a trick for coming up with good company ideas, actually. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Please do tell me. |
**Michael Grinich:** Okay, so here's -- because everyone's like "Ideas are cheap, executions is all that matters", yadda-yadda. And that's kind of true. You've gotta build stuff. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's true. |
**Michael Grinich:** The idea guy has become the archetype. Here's the formula to coming up with really good startup ideas. Figure out what's the area that you have unique insight in, first of all. What have you just been doing for the last few years? For you, it's a few different things. But even just like podcasting,... |
\[01:15:59.09\] So find an area of where you have spent a lot of time... And this is probably related to what your job is today, or kind of how you grew up, or something. And then around that, figure out something that is the way that you think it should be, but for some reason, no one else can figure that has done thi... |
I think the product-market fit kind of game - it's actually a lot about like founder-market fit; what experience and insight do you have, that you can draw from? And that's where you find really, really good ideas. Those are the ideas where to everybody else they look like a bad idea, or they just can't tell; they're j... |
And the really frustrating thing is if you take that idea, and you try to go to explain it to other people, they won't get it. They won't get it, because they don't have the insight around it. So all good ideas do look like bad ideas initially. But you can't blame them. They just haven't spent all that time in podcasti... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** For sure. You have to be steeped in something; some domain knowledge, some unique expertise, or experience with something... Otherwise - yeah, like you said, you're just gonna be on the surface, just sort of like where everybody else is mostly at. Most of the people are at the surface; there's only ... |
**Michael Grinich:** One of my pals is this guy, Jason Boehmig, who started Ironclad, which is this really cool -- it's kind of like a CRM for like legal contracts. It's kind of a weird idea. You're like "Why would you start that company?" He was a lawyer for years and years and years. He was actually my lawyer at Fenw... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** "A global leader in contract management software." Wow. |
**Michael Grinich:** Yeah, this was years ago. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's the person? |
**Michael Grinich:** Yeah. So Jason got this company started. But it just came from him having spent time in the world of contract management, and working with startups, and understanding their legal needs... And he just kind of saw this window. And I think to a lot of people initially it didn't make sense. They were l... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. You have no bloody knuckles. |
**Michael Grinich:** Yeah. Yeah. And he partnered with -- his co-founder is someone really strong on the engineering side, to build it. And they do a bunch of AI stuff now on top of it as well. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I'm sure they do, right? Everything's AI. |
**Michael Grinich:** So that's the secret to success. That's the secret - figure out what you know, go deep in that, and... Success isn't guaranteed, but that's a pretty good starting point. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, it's better than no starting point, right? Half the battle really is -- there's such a draw to being an entrepreneur, to being creative, to create something... There's such a draw to that, because it's become the cultural norm, to be a founder, to be an entrepreneur, right? And I get it. I tot... |
\[01:20:08.29\] It seems from the outside like this glitz and glamour, or only the good things, but there's also a lot of hard things that come with it that you have to persevere through, you have to be resilient, and you have to be prepared for the change, like you'd mentioned; like, how often the role changes, and ho... |
**Michael Grinich:** People don't really talk about the downs. People celebrate the ups, if you go scan through LinkedIn, or whatever. But it's rare that people talk about the challenges of it, or the downs, or the waves that people go through. But they're definitely there. I think it's a high extreme up, and high extr... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** No. |
**Michael Grinich:** I have friends sometimes that are like "I should go start a company." And I'm like "I don't know, man. I don't know if this is what you're gonna like." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Do it young, before it's too late to fail. Sometimes -- well, I mean, I guess not... What's the age-old story? Kentucky Fried Chicken fella, he started his company, KFC, way late in his life? |
**Michael Grinich:** But I bet he was doing something he knew. That was the thing, going back to the idea... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Chicken, right? Food. |
**Michael Grinich:** Yeah. If you're in an area that you have experienced around... That's actually the way that older entrepreneurs win, is that they have the domain experience. They can kind of use the cheat codes, and move forward faster. It's really like whatever life you're living, and whatever you're into. |
This is why it's always puzzling to me when there's a couple of really smart young kids, and they're like "We started a company to do title and escrow management for buying homes." And I guarantee you that was not that kid's idea. That was like some VC that was like "You should go build this. I think that there's a mar... |
And the counterpoint to that is, you know, why did social networks come out of universities? Well, what do you do when you're in college? It's all about building relationships. All you're doing is that. I mean, you go to class, but you're really socializing at an extreme -- you know, most people never socialize at that... |
But it's hard to reflect and figure out "What is the thing that I know really well? What is the thing that I've been in?" And I think for a lot of people too, that can feel kind of boring. You feel like "Oh, it's the thing I've always been doing." But if you can apply technology to that, and think about the way that th... |
If you think about -- we're going back to sales; say you're gonna do some software on like podcasting - you would understand innately why it was better. You would get fired up and emotional about why it was better. Probably when you're selling it to people, they would connect with it in a different way, and connect wit... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, or something way foreign, and you just have no context and no tie to it. |
**Michael Grinich:** So it's not just a way to get good ideas coming up in that formula, but I think it's a way to actually have sort of a more fun experience, and a better life as an entrepreneur, if it's in there. People call this passion; I think that word gets thrown around a lot. But it's really what you're wantin... |
**Break**: \[01:24:00.11\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** In light of you mentioning the downs, I'm curious - since we've talked a lot about the ups for you, what's a down for you? It doesn't have to be from WorkOS particularly, but what's a less desirable, or less than desirable thing you've had to deal with in the last couple of years, that's something y... |
**Michael Grinich:** So this was like a year or two ago, a couple years ago... And before that... Where this happened - we were building out the company, and it was very early in terms of sales and growth and marketing. And my thinking was that I should hire like an enterprise style marketing team. Like, we're building... |
And I hired this whole team, and started doing work, and everything; we were working on a website redesign... And then at about seven months in, or sometimes like six, or seven, or eight months in, I woke up one morning and I was like "Oh, \*bleep\*. This is totally wrong." Not like a little wrong; like, completely wro... |
And if we continued on that path, it was going to actually hurt the direction we were doing really well in, which was like developer marketing. Like, developers didn't want to get on a webinar. They didn't want to have to talk to sales. They just wanted good blog content and docs. They didn't care about what was in Gar... |
And \[unintelligible 01:29:16.22\] all this stuff, and I was just like "Oh man, the marketing team structure I have - they're really good. Their experience, their skills, and everything." Like, we hired really good people. But it was kind of like, you know, you were opening a French restaurant and it turns out you need... |
\[01:29:59.25\] Stuff like that - in some ways, it's really clear, to make a decision like that. It's like "Oh, we've got to change direction." But you really mess up people's day, at least; or their life, in a way. They have to get a different job, they have to transition, and it's hard for everyone... And I think mak... |
There's a bunch of different pieces around it, but there's things like that, where -- that was not a good month for me, working and thinking about that. And then for me, being like "Oh, man, I really messed this up." And it's not just having to lay people off, it's like, it's expensive, now you wasted a bunch of money ... |
And so there's definitely downs that are like that, which you kind of just go with. And ultimately, in hindsight, it was totally the right call for us, the right decision. We've found our path, we ended up rebuilding stuff in the direction that was the right fit, and all those folks went and got jobs, and everything's ... |
So making mistakes is totally fine, I think, in startups. I think if you're not making mistakes, you're either not self-aware, you don't realize you're making mistakes, or you're not moving fast enough. So making mistakes is part of the job. And I think one of the hardest parts is to learn how to know when you've made ... |
Product strategy can change left or right, and that can be tough. Winning and losing customers, that's a high and a low. But those kinds of strategic decisions and the implications that they have - they sit with you for a while, and I think those are the things that help you grow and evolve as an entrepreneur as well. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Wow. Well, that was a good share, man. I like that. I mean, I don't like that, but I liked the rawness and the realness of it. I just can't imagine -- my empathy goes right to how did you bounce back... Because I've been there, in the wrong decisions, the wrong direction; not exactly the same versio... |
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