What's up, everybody? This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to
the IndieHackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making
a lot of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these IndieHackers to
discuss the ideas, the opportunities, and the strategies they're taking advantage of
so the rest of us can do the same. It's good to have you back on the pod, man. It's been
a while. For folks who don't know you, you're Vincent Wu. You've been on the podcast a few
times.
Oh, have we been recording?
Yeah, we're recording, man. Welcome to the show. What's your background? You started
a company called CoderPad, which you sold for tens of millions of dollars. Can we still
not say the exact amount you sold it for? Yeah, I think I'm allowed to say when the
current company is sold to a new buyer and then I negotiate to have the secrecy clause
expire at that time. But this may never happen. So I have no idea. They just bought another
company. So like, I don't know, like they're going strong. Are you tracking this? Like
when you sell your company and you're no longer involved, like how much are you just tracking
what happens to your baby? Not at all. I have no idea what goes on. You just wash your hands.
It's like you've given your baby up for adoption. Are you even interested? Oh, I'm very interested.
They just don't like to talk to me anymore. I saw a photo from their all hands in Portugal
and there's like 80 people. They bought this French company and then they like had an all
hands like sort of in the middle in Portugal. Not really. And there's like 80 people and
I don't like one or two of them in the photo. I'm just like astounded. It's like he grew up or
something changed it. Yeah, that's all adults. No, you know, it's weird. Like they have kids.
If we, if we sold any hackers to an acquirer that wanted to take over that kicked us out,
they said, all right, we're going to take the wheel. I would be fascinated and the changes to
the forum. I'd be really interested to see what they did. So I can't imagine pulling back. Yeah.
What, what Stripe employee would be like next in line if like the two, I literally have no idea,
literally no idea. No. Do you think sometimes that Stripe forgets that it owns indie hackers?
Maybe Stripe as an organization does like there are people within Stripe who are like, oh yeah,
we were doing this thing company wide and forgot about you guys. But I don't think like the people
who matter, like Patrick has not forgotten. Oh, do you like not get invited to some of the all
hands or something? Like, I mean, we were sort of explicitly instructed to like, don't, don't do any
of the big company bullshit. Do you get invited? Yeah, we can join whatever we want, but the whole
point is not, I've gotten distracted by that. I've gotten sales emails from sales people at
Stripe. So they definitely don't all know that we're part of a recruiter email from somebody
at Stripe once, which is, I thought you should go through the interview process. See how long it
takes. See if you can negotiate a better deal. Like the market has changed, you know, like you
never know. Anyway, you sold your company. Now you're just a rich ex indie hacker. I don't know
what you're up to nowadays. Waking up at noon, sipping on your coffee. Yeah, like drugs. Yeah.
DMT. I really ought to do more DMT, which is the thing I find myself saying pretty often sort of
surprising because nothing's really stopping me from doing as much DMT as my heart desires. But
I haven't done it in months, you know, I think because it is still like a somewhat intimidating
experience, even though it's like totally pleasant every time. Beforehand, I'm like, oh, man, like,
am I in the right zone to do DMT right now? And the answer like probably technically is like,
yeah, I think at any point, I'm in the right zone. What's the right zone to do DMT? But like,
it's hard to describe. I don't want to use the word scary, but that's the word that like punches
the sort of, like hesitation that I have. Like, it can be a little scary to actually dose DMT,
like in the describe describe a DMT trip, because I agree with you, I've never actually done DMT,
but I'm afraid of it. Like I put it in the same category as like, as like ayahuasca. It's like,
I don't know if I want to ever do this. Well, ayahuasca will probably make you throw up DMT
is actually totally pleasant. Like ayahuasca is DMT. By the way, it's DMT taken with MAOI,
which like basically makes the DMT trip, like last a long time, as opposed to merely like 15
minutes. So the thing that's scary about DMT, I don't know, like from an objective standpoint,
there's absolutely nothing scary about it. Like the incidence rates of bad trips are like near
zero. Like it lasts 15 minutes, so you can never be stuck. And you'd like totally sober again at
the end. It's actually really pleasant. The only thing that's sort of scary is that you have to
like create a mental mantra to get you through actually being able to inhale it. Because like
you basically have to inhale like three lungfuls of like vaporized DMT. And by the second one,
you're already losing. Like you stop being able to see so good, like pretty quick. And then you're
like, you're saying it's physically difficult to do this. No, it's mental. You have to remember sounds
terrifying because your mind is going to like you're entering the DMT realm. It's hard. You're losing
your mind at the same time. You're still trying to finish doing the DMT. Yeah. And also physically,
you're sort of going to write you're stopping being able to see so clearly too. So like,
it's all this stuff like you have to really sort of gird yourself in the beginning to actually
consume the dose well. And then after that, you can kind of trans out. And even though that
process only takes like a minute, like it does feel like man, you got to really like you got to go.
What about like the next 15 minutes? Are those in any way scary? But also it's 15 minutes
objectively, but subjectively, does it feel like 15 minutes? Honestly, probably it feels like less
than 15 minutes. I feel like it goes quickly, actually. I feel like the hard part is actually
remembering everything that occurred during those 15 minutes. Like it's all sort of dreamlike, you
know? Anyway, yeah, I came on this show to evangelize DMT. This is like a Silicon, I hope
it's like a Silicon Valley Bay Area thing, right? Like what the first thing I noticed when I moved
to SF was every single coffee shop, people were talking about tech, like you couldn't get away
from conversations about tech. And then everybody did hallucinogens. It's like a it's a run-of-the-mill
thing. It's like getting a drink. It's not the overlap that you would guess. It's like polyamory,
hallucinogens and tech startups. Well, I would say one, you get you're getting a very specific
bubble slice of San Francisco. Like I meet tons of people who live here and are deeply involved in
the city who fight me tooth and nail for the right to never do drugs, which, you know, whatever,
it's their right. I would say that, like, that's the normal thing. But I think if you, I don't know,
if you're like a young tech guy and you know a bunch of other people just like you, yeah,
you'll totally meet a bunch of people who do hallucinogens. I wanted to say that I did,
I sort of understood Joe Rogan better once I did DMT because he like constantly evangelizes it.
And he's also kind of a knucklehead and I just didn't really like for a long time. I just thought
like that was just like a weird quirk of like Joe Rogan or whatever. But then I did DMT a few times
and I was like, oh, like I get it. Like I understand why someone would constantly and socially awkwardly
bring up the topic of DMT in any social circumstance. Well, this is you now, immediately on the podcast.
Yeah, and I sort of became DMT evangelism. Yeah, exactly right. So me and Joe Rogan are
actually best friends now and we hang out all the time. I feel like the life that's open to you is
like a, I don't know, financially independent ex indie hacker. You can do anything you want.
Channing and I, I guess, what did you tell me the other week? We're like similar. We read
productivity books and talk about like things we can build and you're like, I don't know,
doing art, making pots and doing DMT. Why? Why is that like the choice? Do you have a broader
philosophy for how you're living your life? Practically speaking, like if a random human
has a life philosophy, like how did they get it? Like what happened to them that they thought like
that the right thing to do was attempt to codify like a set of like written sort of logic based
rules for how to do living in the general sense. And I've met quite a few people like this,
I would say they often are proud of like the fact that they've read some Marcus Aurelius or something
or they're like into Seneca or whatever. Like they tend to be like stoic adjacent and I would say
like this maybe isn't even that bad. I would say that there probably is like a group of people
for whom my intuition is that life seems so chaotic and so directionless or devoid of like
meaningful feedback that the only like bulwark they can erect feasibly in their like inner
spiritual life is to like codify literally like a set of rules for living. Whereas I think, I don't
know, like if your life is going well and you're having a good time, you have no incentive to
develop a philosophy. The reason I'm curious about this is because I think that like, okay,
obviously me and Channing are in the situation, you're in the situation, I know a lot of people
in this situation. And I like reflecting on like why people do the things that they do. And to some
degree, it feels like what you're saying is like you shouldn't be intentional about how you live or
what you're doing. And it's like almost like life should just happen to you. And ideally things are
good. I'm being a little bit flippant. I think that what you're saying makes sense. But that
there's like a paradox here, which is that I think most life philosophies are bullshit. I think that
the stories that we impose on our lives are bullshit. I think that there's a lot of chaos.
Like the truth of the universe is, you know, entropy is expanding, chaos is like spreading,
and that applies to our lives as well. And our attempts to like, do these things where we create
stories about ourselves and like, this is my identity, or this is my religion, or this is
like, you know, sort of, this is the rainbow, the arc that I'm on where I'm starting a business,
I'm free and I'm working on the next mountain. I think that those are two things that are kind of
contradictory. Number one, I think that they're not objectively true. And then number two, I think
that they tend to be like, useful, they tend to help make us more robust people, they tend to
sort of keep us motivated. So on the one hand, I agree with you, if you if everything is like
this fun roller coaster, then like, why why necessarily change? Why disimpose? Well, Channing,
let me interrupt you for a second. You're one of the most like, life philosophy based people that
I know, you are extremely focused on having a life philosophy, you have it written down, you have
codes that you buy. Is that true? Channing, what's your life philosophy? In a way though, in a way.
Now you just have to tell everyone. What's your life philosophy? Don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna
run away from it. But I think that so that the extent to which I'll distance myself from this
is, is I'm not like, what do you call it? Maybe we call it a philosophy maximalist. I don't really
believe that I'm in the story that I that I create for myself, but I'm really into psychology and I've
like, tried on a lot of hats and I've tried different ways of approaching life. Like what
specifically what is your life philosophy? Let's take just myself. No matter what, I'm always going
to place a constraint on myself that that I need to continually try to create, try to like improve
the world around me. Like what like whatever it is, whatever like, you know, mountain I'm trying
to climb, whether it's a problem in my own life, whether it's deals with other people, whether it's
a business or whatever the situation is, if I find myself in a situation where I don't have like
something that's truly challenging, and you know, isn't a problem that I'm really chewing on, then
red flags start going off even before maybe I start feeling like on we or I start feeling like
sort of listless and, you know, bored about stuff, because it almost always follows downstream. And
like, you know, it's been somewhat cyclical. I think we're not maybe in the exact same situation
as you. But like, we don't necessarily have to wake up and work in any hackers every single day
for like financial or other kinds of freedom ways. And just trying different hats, I found that like
a hat that involves a kind of philosophy, I heard a really good quote that I follow, which is like,
to live a good life, live a good story. And I like to write, I like the idea of stories. And the first
thing you'll notice about any good story is that if you read a story, and there's no bad guy,
there's no antagonist, there's nothing bad happening, you put the story down, you're like,
why am I reading this shit? This is super boring. And yet, if you apply that to yourself, which I do,
like at an almost like philosophical level, that means that when you don't have a problem, like you
proactively go in search of problems, go looking for them. And I think you always want to have
problems. This is basically what yeah, and I think that I think that can I ask a question? Yeah,
go ahead. Do you feel like had you not like consciously thought all these thoughts about
how to like, explain what you're explaining right now that you would have not otherwise done like
a lot of the things that you've done? I think that at a barest minimum, the things that I've done that
I care about, I would have done at a much slower pace. And the main thing that I like about this,
the main thing that I like about going in search of monsters to fight even when there's none like
destroying your home village, is that it's like the it's almost like the best way to a learn things
about yourself and like learn other interesting shit to go get involved in. I think that like the
externalities, I think that the main thing and I don't know, this gets kind of theoretical, and maybe
I can think of concrete examples. But like, you for example, you can't really empathize, it's harder
to empathize with people that you where you haven't like felt their pain, you haven't like done the
things that they're doing. I often like tell founders that they need to be like, loosen the
world to generate good ideas, right? There's no way to like sit in a box and come up with an idea
about reality. So I guess like what I'm finding is that I'm agreeing with everything that you're
saying, I've just never considered these to be like components of like philosophy. If you automatically
find problems that are interesting to you, like it could be like, hey, I want to try this DMT,
that's going to be wild. That makes me sort of anxious. And maybe I want to find some stuff. If
you're constantly people in your world with, I don't know, interesting, like sort of stressful,
you know, stimulating events, then you don't have a problem not doing that, then I can understand
not appreciating like, why would someone do that? Okay, Cortland, he sold me, I now subscribe to the
Channing Allen life philosophy. What I'm hearing is the highest virtue is that you ought to do
things, which I like actually totally agree with. Like, I wonder if that's in Jordan Peterson's
Rules for Life, you know, like, it's like number five, just like, it's like, uh, what is that? It's
like, uh, Stephen Covey seven habits of highly effective people. I don't know who that is.
If you need any self help, tell me, read the seven habits of highly effective people. I'm
going to tell you, if you do, that's what you should read. Let's talk about, uh, this NFT bet.
Oh yeah. You want to explain to the readers? I've got a little note on my Google calendar,
October 26th, 2021. So Cortland Allen, Vincent Woo, odds 10 to one in Cortland's favor
amount, a thousand dollars to Vincent. If he wins $10,000 to Cortland, if he wins the term,
I'm so sad that this is a podcast and people only hear you the terms, the terms. Well,
any triple a game studio meant an end game item or accomplishment from one of their games
as an NFT by October 26th, 2022. So a year from the start of the bet, I bet a triple
a game studio would do that. You bet no. And your, uh, extreme confidence, some might say arrogance.
You gave me 10 to one odds. So if I lose, I pay you a thousand dollars. I gave you two good odds.
You gave me crazy odds. Yeah. Well, I wanted you to take the bet. So I couldn't not, I wasn't
going to take the bet until you gave me 10 to one odds. And then I got trapped only a few months
later, Ubisoft, uh, those brilliant, those brilliant game developers that would be soft
decided to put up extremely crappy. Famously common. They make amazing games games. They
already shut down their NFT experiment. Uh, last month, by the way, it lasted four months,
but they put NFTs in ghost recon, some sort of ghost recon game. They botched it.
They did the worst version of NFTs I've ever heard of. It was not interoperable with like
any major blockchain. It's crappy. It was completely underused. They sold like literally
like a double digit number of these NFTs. Also, okay. So like the reason this is even a thing
that we're speaking about at this very moment is because Cortland and I became like, uh, entwined
in a debate as, as to like effectively like whether NFTs have like sort of any real life utility.
Yeah. At all in any way. And I am, uh, I am a skeptic in so much as like, I could not conceive
of like, and Cortland was especially interested in video games for some reason. I could not conceive
any like useful application of NFTs in the video game dimension that would not better
be achieved by like a video game company, like making an API or like open sourcing something
for instance, right? In so much as my theory is that like, you know, like what NFTs and the
blockchain is in general is a way of solving like the Byzantine generals problem, like computation
that can be verified in the face of adversarial computing. And you know, like video games are
like pretty easy, like in my estimation, right? Like generally, like if you want to make a mod
or you want to like share some assets, like you can just do that. It's very little preventing you
from doing that. But like Cortland was really into the idea that like users taking ownership
of like things that might like represent skins or something in game would somehow create like
a new modality of beingness or whatever, like in video games and that there would be applications
that we like could not conceive. No, this is, I think I'm summarizing accurately, right? Like
there could be applications that we could not even yet conceive. Okay. So I don't necessarily
know that much about NFTs, but just like, just, what is confusing about this? Let me help you.
Well, well, but just so for example, the only idea that I can think of for like how that would
happen is maybe if you have an NFT of a, you play one video game, you play, you know, the,
the Mario character or whatever, and then you might want to take that Mario skin into another
video game. Is that the kind of, yeah, you earn, you earn a sword and then you play another video
game and they recognize that you've earned this one game and they give you a representation of
that in their game. So wait, how much do you owe me? How much what? How much money is
it? Vincent owes me $10,000. Nobody would take this. You bet. Nobody would take this. Hey,
hey slow. Hey, come on, Shannon, go easy. All right. Like the real question is I don't care if,
I don't care if my, my prediction of where the role would go is accurate. I have no idea. That
was, we're talking about like 10 years out, but one year out, I said, somebody would take this
seriously enough to try somebody major AAA game CDO. Yeah. If that was your literal statement,
then you're absolutely correct. Right. That's what I was going to put money on. I turned the one out.
The real question is how do I get, how do I collect my money? At what point? I'll send it to you. What
do you want today? I mean, I'll ask for some clemency. Look, here's an argument for clemency.
I say like in the spirit of the bet. Vincent, you sold your company for tens of millions of dollars.
I'm begging for a discount here. Like in the spirit of clemency. I would have paid you a
thousand dollars if I lost. I would have 100% then made you a thousand bucks. Okay. Well,
the spirit of the bet is sort of about, you're right. There was like a literal bet,
but there's also like the, you know, the spirit of a lot here. Right. And I was trying to make
a point about like the fundamental uselessness of these things. Right. Like that. If you ever,
if you were like the IP owner of some game skins, you would never, you never make an NFT of like
your in-game IP that conveyed any sort of legal right to use that IP because we'll be immediately
like you will immediately destroy the value of your brand by doing so. And, you know,
video game creators are very, well, some of them more so than others, but generally very like
thoughtful, like it takes like five years to make this IP. They pay like hundreds of artists and
story writers. This is incredibly precious content and it cannot like be trusted like to
the vagaries of the internet effectively. Okay. But like market forces, if like in theory, if you,
if this became popular, like let's just suppose this became popular, wouldn't that then be,
but if it did, wouldn't that then be a competitive pressure where you like, you know, all, you know,
your competitor game, your competitor battle royale Fortnite style game allows you to sort of use
your NFT character. And then someone else, you're saying if we were trapped in the local Nash
equilibrium that was equivalent to hell. Yeah. Like I guess then we would all be incentivized
to act like demons, but like that would never happen. I mean, we can do it. We're in a circular
lodge. I deny you clemency for this bet. We can make another bet. Okay. And we can put this one
further out. I'll do how about five years and I'll give you, I'll give you one to give me one to
three odds. One to 10 was insane. On what? On whether or not, I mean, I want something that
like actually aligns with the spirit of what you're trying to say because whether or not,
well, the spirit is like, there is a like social convention where it is somewhat common for
popular video games to have licensed out some like real component of their game IP as NFTs or whatever
the next word that replaces NFTs. I agree to this. Give me one to three odds. We'll do the same,
like $1,000. If I lose, I'll pay you $3,000. If I win five years from now, I'll put it in Google
calendar. We'll concretize the time you put into what you just said. I totally, yeah, I'll take
that bet for sure. NFTs are fucking bad. I don't think so. I think that the price is so vague.
There's no, no, no, we'll concretize it. We'll concretize it. I know what he's saying. He's
saying that they won't be useful. Like we, we both at this moment experienced the sense of we
understand each other five years from now. We'll see whether that's still the case, but I think
we have it. We have a shot at concretizing it some way as you put it. Jenny, where are you on
this one? Do you want a sidecar bet? I want absolutely no part of this, but I'm enjoying
it. That's the same response. Yeah, this is stupid. I mean, fundamentally, this is stupid.
Let's talk about, uh, let's talk about Hidakazi. Uh, Hidakazi. Who? Remember is the guy you
introduced me to over Gmail. Oh yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. Should we add it out or you
forgot who he was? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Please. Uh, you sent me an email. Let me find it. Uh,
it was on it. I rarely get emails from you and it was just, uh, yeah, I don't really send emails.
And it was an introduction. And so Kortland Hidakazi. Hey Kortland, I just talked to this guy. He day.
It was nice. He wants more perspective on starting a business and it'd be great if you could just
chat with him for a bit, take it away. Uh, and I had also a very pleasant call with him and it got
me thinking about, uh, number one, just giving advice in general. Number two, like as an indie
hacker or anyone in the world, like why do you do the things you do? Why do you want to start a
company in the first place? And there are certain things you told him that like, I think he said
that I disagree to it. Like we gave him almost polar opposite advice in some areas. I think
that's why I sent him to you. I think I remember what you told him. Like one of the things I
remember was that he's, you told him that I guess he came away from his conversation with you
trying to figure out if he should be an indie hacker and the best way to start. He came away
thinking I learned from Vincent that the reason I want to start a company is because I'm deeply
unhappy. And well, that's what he told me. Yeah, it was like a therapy session. So I'm curious
like how your conversation went with him. Well, yeah. Whenever I like, I don't very often get
calls like that. And I think you probably get them a lot more than I do, but like sometimes
like a somewhat estranged founder or fledgling founder, like wants to talk to me for some weird
reason and I'm not very famous. So it's usually like, I'm usually surprised that anyone wants
to talk to me for this reason. And like, they're almost always someone who like listened to
previous podcasts we made. I don't know. Anyway, what I always try to do is like figure out like
why they want to try to figure out why they're doing what they're doing. And I guess I do have
a life philosophy about this. I'm surprising myself that like, if you are trying to start
a company because you think you ought to start a company, I feel like you ought not to start a
company. Like there should, in my view, be only one reason to start a company, which is you have
a good idea for a company, right? Like, cause that's what it takes to make a company work.
Like the company has to make sense. Like starting a company before you have an idea for a company,
to me sounds like that would be, it's sort of similar to like paying McKinsey to figure out
what your business model is. You know what I mean? It's just like not possible to use
rune terms. There's like, there's alpha out there somewhere, right? And you have to be able to get
it. Like the world's not going to serve it to you on a platter. So like, I usually in these calls,
try to gently figure out like what motivate, when they first think of the idea of starting a company,
like where are they now? Like what's, what's pushing them one way or the other? Like what's
dissatisfactory about their current experience and so forth. They're like, what do they think? Like
if it goes badly in a year, like what do they think they, like will they regret what they've done?
Like that sort of thing. And yeah, I think through that I was sort of of the impression that like,
you should just have more friends. Like I'm just like hanging out with people in real life. I think
a lot of the motivational acts has to be sort of blunt, which I think is sort of ironic. I do feel
a lot of founders like start as somewhat lonely people just because lonely people can afford to
like obsess about like company building more, but I don't think that's necessarily good for
them as a population net out, averaged across everyone. So I like that approach to giving
advice. I mean, you're probably right. I get a lot more calls than you, but I mean, I don't know.
You also gave that like a pretty cool talk at Dropbox years and years ago, after you started
CoderPad about how to start a startup. And I remember watching that a long time ago and be
like, Oh, this Vincent guy is so fucking cool. Like I wanted to call you and ask for advice on
how to start a startup. So I'm not shocked that people are still reaching out to you,
but I like the idea that you started with like, why? Like, why are you even doing this? Because
I think it's very easy when somebody asks for advice to just start telling people what they
should do, which makes no sense if you don't understand anything about them. Like theoretically,
you can ask like why five times like, I want to start a company. Why? Because I want to be rich
and successful. Why? Because Oh, I would stop there. Actually, if someone is emotionally aware
enough to like literally say to the question, why do you want to start a company? I want to be rich.
That's good enough for me. Actually, like that's probably the best answer to why,
for why you should start a company. Like if I mean, like, for like the motivating factor,
it's very, right? Like, because I want to make a bunch of money. Like, what else? Like, what else
is the point of this? Right? Like, that's okay. So this is where I disagree. Because I think he
told me and I'm not sure if he's quoting you correctly or if I remember what he said correctly,
but I think he said, Vincent said that the point of a company is to make money. And that is the
purpose of a business. And I feel the polar opposite. I think that there's what I think
that there's a constraint. I think there's a constraint. Wait, what? I think there's a
constraint. Okay, so I think a company, the way I define a company or businesses, it's a project
with a constraint that it has to sustain itself. So it needs to make enough money to keep itself
going. But beyond that, it can be whatever the hell you want it to be. I feel like we said the
same thing, but you use more words. I think you're saying that the point is to make money,
which means that if you push comes to shove, if you have a decision in your business,
like you're generally going to err towards, let me do the thing that makes money because that's
the purpose of what I'm doing. And the challenge I have with that, I don't agree with that at all.
Here, look, third party, I think that there's a distinction between a constraint and a goal
and you both are conflating it. No, no, no, exactly. I think there's two different things.
Everything has to do something. It could do that thing as a bare minimum. Like,
I want to go to the store in a car. Like I have to drive on the road, but like the purpose,
like driving on the road is like one of the things that I'm doing, but it's a constraint.
Yeah, you have to do that, but it's not why you're going to the store.
Right. I feel we're actually trying to debate values here or something, right? Like, yeah,
you're right. Like, I mean, technically speaking, yeah, you could define businesses that way.
The question is like whether you ought to or not, or like what the purpose of doing so is.
I think you're better served by conceiving of your business is simply a thing that makes money.
Well, here's an idea.
So as an order, okay, go for it.
I was going to say, because when I think about businesses, when I think about like,
just taking myself, for example, I like my next mountain is I want to write novels,
but I don't want to like give up all the freedom. Like if I, if I want to write a mainstream novel,
I've already got a literary agent. He's talked to me. He's like, listen,
you're not going to make any money. You have no freedom. Uh, you're going to sell the rights
of your book to the, to this, one of the four big publishers. You don't get to choose the cover.
You don't get to choose the title. You don't get shit, right? Shut up and like take the paycheck
and then get back on the title. You don't get the, unless you're Stephen King, unless you,
unless you've like really, really proven out, it's very similar to, uh, to like startups, um,
publishers are basically investors. If you don't have a proven track record, if you haven't,
if you don't have a huge pass with a bunch of sales, a huge Twitter following, et cetera,
they're like, we're not going to bet very much on you. You got $50,000 and shut up. You don't
get any choice. So to me, the idea of, and I've been thinking about this for like 10 years before
indie hackers. And I'm like, well, I want to create my own like indie publishing company.
Right? Because yeah, sure. I want to make money. I have to make money or else it's not worth it,
but I want the freedom to like choose when I want to write out with the freedom to like
the fucking title of my book and the, and you know what the cover image is like, right? If,
if I have the skills to bring that about. And I think that that seems like, if someone's like,
if someone comes to you and they're like, Hey, I think I want to do this indie hacking thing.
Well, what you ask, what's your problem? They're like, well, fuck I, you know, I have this
mainstream, I have this nine to five job. Um, I get paid okay, I guess, but I don't get to choose
anything about, you know, I don't get much choice in life and I have to kind of go in at nine. I have
to leave at five. I want to do things differently, but I want to make about the same amount of money.
Is that not a good idea in your, in your estimation of like a good reason to start a business?
I'm not saying you're wrong. And I think if you could jump to that like net outcome in reality
for a lot of those people, that'd be great, but I caution against it. You know what I mean? Like,
I think people should evaluate their business purely through the lens of will it make money?
I think it's really hard to do multi-dimensional like priority choosing in business. Like if you're
getting some emotional juice, but you also maybe get a bit of money, like how do you weigh them
against each other? It's like impossible, right? I think a lot of people who try to do that just
end up getting caught in a local minimum where they don't make nearly as much as they used to
at their regular nine to five. And I would think a lot of those people would be better off working
a slightly more soulless job for a lot more money in the longterm because they could work net less
over their lifetime as a result. So like, I don't think these decisions are context or consequence
free. I think it's actually in a lot of ways quite dangerous to start a company. And I think,
you know, like people in our position are a little glib about starting them, but I think it behooves
us actually to like caution founders somewhat against becoming founders, if that makes any
sense, in cases where the utility looks marginal. And I think the best way to slice that sort of
Gordian nod of like, whether you ought to or not is to try to evaluate the idea as purely as like
a money making venture as possible. Because I think when you do that, the good ones will jump
out at you and the ones that seem like it might make money become easier to pass on. And I think
that net out is what best serves the pool of people who might become founders. I think that's true.
I think that's wise because quite frankly, the vast majority of all companies fail. People greatly
underestimate how difficult it is to just like make money. And I think a lot of founders that
I've seen when they quit their job, or they start their company, they immediately go into this sort
of freedom phase with like, I'm free. And then they just spend their time working like very few hours
and doing other chores and hanging out with friends in the middle of the day. And like, they
haven't figured out how to make money yet. And then six months later, they're like out of cash,
and they're going back to their job. So like, maybe as a sort of first order thing, like,
how is this going to make money makes sense. But at some point, you hit like a threshold,
where you're basically financially independent, where your company sustains itself, it sustains
you, it's fine. And it's very hard to get to that point. But at that point, I think you can do
anything you want. Like what Channing and I like one of my biggest, like one of my biggest, like,
I guess desires is like, I want to spend more time around the people that I love, like my best
friends, my family. And it's like now I have a podcast with my brother. And we can bring like my
mom on the podcast and like talk to her. And it's like it would be very hard to have an excuse to
like do this without a company, right? Or like people can like say like, I really want to spend
more time like, I don't know, talking to people. There are so many unemployed 30 year old dudes
with podcasts. What are you talking so many, right? Anyone can write, but okay, like how much time
for them is like a source of stress where it's like, I've got to squeeze this in on nights and
weekends. You don't need the excuse of success to go hang out with your mom. Yeah, just do it. Like,
you don't need to be registered to do it. Like people do it all the time.
I agree. But I think that I guess what I think is companies are an under appreciated way to
force yourself to do certain things. I think people's jobs get them to do things they would
never do. And sure, like if you have infinite self discipline, and self control, you can make
lots of all the things you want to do and just do it. But when your livelihood is tied to something
when your paycheck is tied to something, I think people like in practice are extraordinarily more
likely to do that thing. Well, even with a company, you can start you can start a side project,
right? Like you can take the idea. You can like get those early early reps, anything anything
that's hard to do, and all three of us will admit like businesses are fucking hard, like it requires
a huge amount of training. And you get some training doing a real job you do you get some training
working on on the real business, obviously, but like you can sort of do that to an extent with
side projects. Yeah, literally was a side project. And I didn't quit my job right away. Like I didn't
quit until I was already making money. So like I usually try to endorse this plan. I also think
it's self sorts for the people who actually really want to do like any particular project, right?
Like, if you want to do a project enough that you'll do it like after you're done working,
like it's a pretty good sign that like there's something to it. Or it was people who are like
waiting to start their thing until they clear their plate, I think of it's less serious. And
some well, that's the challenge, I think of having a business where the primary purpose of it is just
have I found something that makes money, because I talked to a lot of founders where they find
something that makes money, and then they get to the point where it's making lots of money.
And then they've accomplished their goal. And they like fucking hate every other part of their
business. I'm like, I don't really like the life that I'm living. I like the people that I'm working
with, I like the things that I'm doing. And they start to care a lot more about how they're spending
their time, and less about money. And so the holy grail, in my opinion, is to do something that not
only makes money, but also gives you an excuse and maybe a kick in the ass to like do something that
you would like to do more of. So that once you get to the point where it is making lots of money,
you don't feel this overwhelming desire to quit because you don't like your life DMT on weekends.
I agree with all that. I'm seeing in my calendar notes, I'm going to pivot. I see in my calendar
notes that there's a bullet point with merely the question, how to make our podcast interesting,
question mark. I know you got thoughts on this. Channing versus Cortland, question mark. And I
want to hear more about this. I want to hear more about this because you have opinions,
and that's why I put this on here. Well, is this how many of this is the new format, right? How
many have you done so far? This is our third episode, or maybe our fourth. Did they usually
have people who aren't you on them? We've done one with just me and Channing. And I think that's
going to be our bread and butter. Most of our episodes will be just the two of us. We've done,
I think, two with me and Channing, and then two with guests. We had our mom on for Mother's Day,
which was a blast. Oh, you already did the mom episode. Yeah, it was cool. Oh, shit. And we've
got this one. And we did one with Daniel Vassallo on Harvard call that we recorded last week that I
haven't listened to. I have no idea how it went. But yeah, I think you're like our fourth.
Nice. Yeah, I think, I mean, I wanted to hear more about Channing versus Courtland.
I mean, so you've talked to both of us enough that you know that we both have strong opinions.
Obviously, we're brothers, and we're both at the same wheel of one bus, right? I mean, so
a lot of debating happens. In my perspective, Channing is a very different person than I am.
I think of Channing as the polar opposite person to me. But from an outsider's perspective,
I think we're very similar. Like, Vincent, you're like marveling. I've thought both
at different times. Yeah, sometimes I've marveled at how similar you seem. And other times,
I've been like, well, these guys are totally different. Is your point ultimately that you
think that we should turn this into a we debate each other? No, no, absolutely not. No, no,
I was just wondering if like, that's happened. Because I haven't seen any of the new stuff yet.
Like, really just curious, like, how can this work? Or like, what's it gonna be? Like,
I want to know just as like a listener, I guess. I think I texted Cortland something like there's
no alpha left in advice giving. Like a lot of the pontificating we just did I think is almost like
totally useless to anybody. But I think what is useful is like, like gossip, and like shitting on
like strong man positions in like current events effectively. So there's just a lot of stuff.
What's a strong man position? Like all the time. I don't know, like you could debate stable coins,
for instance, which I think are like a hugely important moral issue or whatever, like right
now. Right. Vincent, what are your opinions on Elon Musk and Twitter? Yeah, isn't that weird,
like that that's happening at all? Or like maybe what happened? I feel like it's really hard to
have like a morally coherent position on Elon Musk in general. Because it's like, the guy
obviously has done things that seem pretty good for humanity, right? Like accelerating the
electrification of like, you know, vehicles in general, it's pretty good. At the same time,
he kind of constantly defends like car centricity as like a public policy. And then also he's just
kind of a lunatic on Twitter. So it's like hard just to evaluate. Like sometimes he seems to really
struggle grasping basic information. And I can't conceive of like how that can be. Like what? Like
if you look at his tweets, I don't know, like he was just talking about someone asked like, do you
see that he recently complained about the Twitter acquisition bots? Like he tried to fake back out
because there are bots or something. And then he listed his methodology for like testing whether
there were bots, which involved like clicking a few pages down on his followers tab and then just
like looking at the profiles or something. Okay, but how do you tell if this isn't just
three dimensional chess? Like he's so trolly that maybe he's just like, but how do you know?
I can't, I mean, like I don't subscribe to that kind of, like if he gave some obvious indication
that he's trolling for the fun of it, like then sure. But otherwise, like most people will like,
I think it's beside the point, right? Because most people will take his word somewhat literally. And
like that's the criterion against which we must evaluate him, right? Like we have no access to
the interiority of his mind. So I treat him like I treat any other public figure, right? Like just
try to see what the words mean and then like form an opinion about them. And in a lot of the cases
with like his utterances, like I just like can't understand how it could have come to this, right?
Like could he not, like if every, if anything he's saying is true, like you would expect he would
simply call the guy who runs Twitter and like ask because he's gonna buy it presumably, right? And
then he would, like if he was sincere, he would seem, I think he would get a very simple answer,
right? But he seems not to do those things. And I can't tell if it's because he's being actively
deceptive or like just the ideas, like you can't process this information. And both seem pretty
crazy to me because he seems to have demonstrated remarkable competence, right? In other, in other
domains of life. It's very hard. I kind of think that Elon Musk might be three people tweeting under
the account. And every day we get a different one. My theory is that he is a recklessly overconfident
individual who also sticks with things and learns powerfully and quickly. So he starts off way off
base. Like he knows zero about social networks. He knows nothing about bot calculation, but he's
extremely confident that he does. And if you were to give him like if you were to give him the reins
of Twitter, you know, two or three years from now, I think he'd be doing an excellent job. But in the
beginning, I don't know, I'm much more skeptical. I think that has worked out for him in some cases,
I think when the field is quite narrow, right? Like it's worked well for rocketry and car making,
but it's worked terribly for like the tunnel boring thing. For domains where it seems like
the main juice to be applied is like an understanding of like public policy and society.
It seems like he's really ill equipped. And I think Twitter is like the ultimate end boss of
that type of challenge. And I think Elon Musk is very like his suite of like executive skills
seem very poorly suited. Yeah, but public policy means starting a car manufacturer or like a space
company. He's had like 10 years to realize that the tunnel boring idea is terrible. He's, he's,
I don't know how many cycles he needs to put on it or whatever. But he keeps tweeting about how
great it is. And every single time, like every urbanist in the country spells out like number
by number, why this is a horrible idea to build tunnels for cars to drive individuals through
as a way of dodging traffic. Like it's crazy. Like it literally, like if you spent like an hour
just learning about urban infrastructure, you would conclude that this is probably not the
best use of like the public's dollars, right? And he's proposing that the public
expend dollars to build these tunnels for his cars, which is just absurd. Like,
I don't know anything about cars. I don't know anything about space. I don't think about tunnels,
but I do know a decent amount about social networks, bots, spammers. We got a ridiculous
amount of spammers on any hackers. So it's like one of the few domains where Elon will tweet things
and I can actually like look at his logic and say, I know enough about this domain to know whether
he's full of shit or not. And with the bots, it's like absolutely like he's completely wrong.
The Twitter CEO, did you see Parag's like thread about why it's 5% and how people outside the
company don't actually know what the monthly daily active users are? Yeah. I mean, obviously
only the people on the inside. Right. Cause like only people. So Twitter says 5% or fewer of our
monthly daily active users are actually bots are spam. And Elon has contracted with like some other
I guess analyst companies ran fishkin actually did a long blog post that I think Elon's referencing
where he's like concluded that 20% of the active Twitter accounts that they found at least 20% are
bots. Yeah. It says, it says lower limit. It's a lower limit. They have a conservative estimates,
right? And I read through his posts and I like his methodology, but there's like a central
flaw. Yes, exactly. It's a central flaw in that all the active users they count are people who
have tweeted at least once in the last 90 days. And having run a social network, I can tell you
the vast majority of users don't post. I guarantee you the vast majority of active users on Twitter
don't tweet. And so there's probably four or five times as many people who are active on Twitter
than they're even counting in these analyses, which means if you take that 20 number, 20%
number divided by four or five, you're exactly what the Twitter figure says, which is like, yeah,
5% of our active users are spammers, which is exactly. And like, that should be pretty easy
to explain to somebody of Elon Musk's intelligence. So it is kind of mysterious. Like why nobody has
explained this to him. Not to mention he, he keeps referencing this like eyeball test. I mean,
set, set aside, I mean, his intuition was tripped up before he said, let's investigate. And he's,
you know, his intuition has repeatedly been some form of, well, just look, just, you know, when I
make, when I make tweets, when other big, you know, big accounts make tweets, well, it's like,
if there were only 5% of the, of the active user base were spammers, where would they spam? They
would spam like the top 5% of accounts, right? And it was sort of, I believe it's only 5%. And I
bet that all 5% of them are devoted wholly to spamming Elon Musk. All right. What do you think
about the ethics of, of his like goals for Twitter of basically creating? I don't even
understand. I assume he's lying. Like, or I don't know. It's a big common ethical position that like,
okay, we, we, we believe that like speech is better. The internet's a better place if we don't
censor people with offensive opinions and we, you know, have Twitter as much as possible
represent, you know, the entire population of the country or earth rather than, you know,
only people who don't have extreme positions. And so he wants it to be sort of a public towns,
town square. I assume he would still ban people who harass each other, but he wouldn't ban people
who are like tweeting about, you know, vaccines or fake, etc. What do you, what do you think about
that? I think we should ban way more people than we're banning. I don't know, man. Like the it's,
look, it's a coherent ethical philosophy. It's really, look, one thing I learned from actually
doing philosophy in college, it's impossible to evaluate moral philosophies against each other,
right? Like individually humans just have value vectors for like values they prioritize over
others. And then they choose the philosophy that best suits them as a result. I personally do not
think that the ethical like framework that prioritizes like unfettered speech as the primary
virtue in society is the best one. Like, unfettered speech is nice. But like, it's not that nice. Like
there are other things that are nicer, like not getting shot. Like, so I don't love his plan. I
also think he has no fucking clue. Like I think, I think if he were actually on the inside and had
been running Twitter for six months, if he showed up and like didn't make any changes for a little
bit and just like got to know how it's all going and like embedded himself in the moderation teams
for a while, I think his opinion would pretty quickly change. Because I don't know, I definitely
have friends who have worked as content moderators. And let me tell you, the experience really does
change what you think, of course, to be allowed or not. It is, it is pretty dark out there. The
stuff people say, and once you start saying things like, yeah, okay, like we can censor videos where
the cartels behead people in Mexico and post them on Facebook video, like it's a pretty, I mean,
where do you go? Where do you draw the line? How do you decide where to, it's very hard
to have a coherent ethical position where objectively true it is that you should draw
the line. The amazing thing about running indie hackers, which is a social network in its own
right, yet it has a very specific direction. It's like we've dealt with this. Very small amounts,
luckily. Really small amounts. But we have the kryptonite to this, which is when anyone gets into
this back and forth, like, oh, there's a guy that kind of said this conservative opinion. We think
we should ban that. Oh, there's someone that sort of did the woke opinion or whatever. They had both
parties. The only time we've really had to deal with this, maybe two or three times, is number
one in situations where somebody is saying, like, two co-founders are fighting and one person makes
a post on indie hackers and somebody else wants it taken down. So people basically going through
us and attempt to censor someone else publicizing a message they don't want to get out. That happens
constantly. And then the more rare thing was during the 2020 sort of Black Lives Matter protests,
like the sort of like groundswell when there was a lot of companies that were doing promotions
and support of this or shutting down or doing various things. And people were so passionate
about this issue that they were emailing us and messaging us and basically fighting with each
other on the forum about what should be allowed and what shouldn't be allowed on indie hackers.
And then they were both sides looking to us to silence the other side. And so I think the second
you're in charge of any sort of social network, you have a lot of power. And the second you have
a lot of power and people are fighting with each other, they're going to appeal to you to basically
become a tool for their side against the other side. And that's the shitty position you have to
be in if you run any sort of social network. Indie hackers is a... When you say shitty,
I say privileged. It's privileged. You get to choose a side and create an outcome in society.
Well, the CEO of Reddit, Yishan Wong, tweeted about this. He was like, people both believe,
like on both sides believe that the platform owners are conspiring against them. But the actual
feeling the platform owners have is, I wish you guys would resolve your shitty little fights so
we can go back to doing the things that we're doing, we want to do, because we want to want
to adjudicate... Please allow us to keep making money without any... Right. I don't... The last
thing I want to do on any hackers is like resolve it. Like the very first time this happened.
If only you political activists would just stop being activists on our platform. No, no. Continue
being activists. Just don't look to me to become your... Go post don't photos. Don't look to me
to become your activist about this issue I don't care about. Reddit was really happy when no one
really suspected them for incubating Donald Trump, right? Like it was nice when like the Donald was
just like a fringe subreddit with like no consequences whatsoever. If we could have all
just kept believing that was the case, that'd have been really nice for Yishan Wong. I don't
think... I don't think Yishan Wong was happy about that. I don't think Zuckerberg is happy about
Facebook's role. He wasn't unhappy enough to like independently of activism from users to do
literally anything about it. That's the thing. So like, I don't know. I think activists are correct
to appeal to the institutions that hold the reign of power in order for them to clarify what their
values are and goals as a platform are in the continued operation of their business. And I think
it's also perfectly reasonable. This is a thing I see less frequently. I think it's also perfectly
reasonable for platforms to choose a side. Though very infrequently you would do you would see like
no one ever does it. And I think that's like just cowardly. They should just choose sides.
Like, I mean, they've chosen the side. The side is maximize our income. And the reason the ideal
way to maximize your income is to appear to not have chosen a side so you can collect as many users
as possible. So I wouldn't say it's cowardly. I would say it's self-serving. I want to... I'll
give Yishan some credit. I think they did clarify. Like they began to increasingly clarify where the
line is for everyone, right? Like what behaviors you're allowed to encourage or not. But I don't
know. Like all this sounds like, I don't know how to put it, like quintessentially unavoidable.
Like if your goal is to monetize the instinct that humans have for socializing with each other,
then I think it is your duty to be there for when the socializing inevitably results.
So but then this goes full circle, I think back to what you said, Vincent, which is, oh, hey,
I took philosophy. Anyone who takes philosophy and thinks about the ethics of it knows that,
look, the reality is you just have a bunch of people with their own opinions sort of working
in reverse to find the philosophy that best fits that. So if you find yourself at the top,
basically trying to create a civil society where everyone's having a conversation,
everyone's moving forward, but like you sort of split the difference for the greater good,
it ends up being that whatever your affirmative stances is sort of somewhere in the sort of free,
speechy direction, it would seem like it's you have to figure out the lines, but you have to
sort of allow that everyone, you know, everyone who has an opinion, it doesn't necessarily have
the right opinion. I agree with if that is your I think the business owner fundamentally has to
use their value metric to determine like what the best thing to do with the platform. And if that
is truly what you feel that like the civil discourse is the most important virtue that
your platform creates above all else, then yeah, I understand that your behavior might look like
that. But like, if you had slightly different values, right? Like, if one of your values,
for instance, included, it would be pretty, I don't know, I think it's a totally morally
coherent position to have like imagine it's 2015. And you think, you know, it would be really
disastrous, like for the world for like 8 billion humans, as if Donald Trump was elected president.
And like that whatever small step that we took, let me put it this way, like if Reddit had banned
the Donald, it would be like the most important thing that that company has ever done or had
hypothetically ever done in its entire existence. And for the world, like every good that the
platform has done independently of that would be completely eclipsed by them merely having prevented
like Donald Trump from ascending to the presidency. So yeah, they continue to promote civil discourse.
But again, their their priority is not doing good for the world. The priority is making
red money, which means not losing a half of their users. The business owner has
has to choose what their value metric is. And I think nakedly, if it is to make money,
they should feel free saying so. And that's why you see the behavior that they do. But like,
we as business owners, or as individuals are free to choose any particular value metric. And I guess
what I'm saying is like, I would like to see more of platforms acting according to like the actual
values held by those who run the company. And I guess I'm shooting my own argument in the
foot from before about how one ought to think of a business solely as a money making venture.
And you're right, there are knock on benefits to owning a business. And I think this this is one
of them right that you you do like if you're the sole owner, especially affect people, you can,
you can affirm values much more coherently and directly than you can if like,
you run a publicly owned company or whatever actually exists in the world as an impact on
you, your employees, your relatives, friends, families, your community, your customers,
your suppliers, and you have the ability to decide how you're going to affect them. And I
think that that is not only an important responsibility, but also like, if you think
about it carefully and enjoyable and a privileged one to have. So I strongly encourage people who
start businesses to think a little bit more than just about the money aspect. But in the early days,
figure out the money so your business doesn't die. Yeah, I meant it mostly as like a decision making
criteria for like ought you to write. Yeah, it's a necessity. So you that you can make money.
You also tacitly just endorse Trump's truth social. I want to point out.
Yeah, I like this idea. I like these debates. I'm, I'm happy for true social to exist because
it gives cover for like Twitter to like have banned him. You know what I mean? Like it's fine.
If you really like Donald Trump, you could just use his fucking app. You can subscribe to his RSS
insane thoughts. All right. Thanks for coming on the show. I like this idea. We should do more
debates, more gossip, more bullshit. You should come on and join us. Well, look, hey, if anyone
lives in SF and wants to hang out, I'm around, you know, like I got a free time. Just DM me, baby.
All right. You're here. If you're NSF, hit up Vincent. I don't know what your email address.
How do people find you? They'll figure it out. If they can't figure it out, then like,
I don't want to hang out, you know, like, all right. Until next time.