0:00

If you're listening to this, you're

0:02

an aspiring entrepreneur, don't do that. Hang

0:04

around with people who get done. Hang

0:06

around with people who ship. Hang around with

0:08

people who say it can be done. And

0:10

if you don't know any, then find them on

0:12

the internet. Listen to this podcast. Read

0:14

the books from people who are getting

0:16

it done. Welcome

0:32

back to another episode of startups

0:34

with the rest of us. I'm

0:37

your host Rob Wallin and in

0:39

this episode I have a handful

0:41

of solo topics one of which

0:43

is a question I received on

0:46

X Twitter about quoting revenue versus

0:48

profit. Then I have a topic

0:50

about giving up before you

0:52

should finding excuses why things

0:54

can't work. Then one about having

0:56

taste and what you might have to

0:59

do to achieve that taste. and potentially

1:01

another topic or two,

1:03

depending on timing. Before I dive

1:05

in to the meet of the episode,

1:08

microconf growth retreat in

1:10

London is one month away. It

1:12

will sell out. We've sold all our

1:14

events out for the past couple

1:16

years. If you are in London

1:18

or can get to London, May

1:21

14th through the 16th of 2025,

1:23

for this small intimate event that's

1:26

going to foster deeper conversations, going

1:28

to be about 40 to 60.

1:30

bootstrapped and mostly bootstrap founders. You

1:33

should head to microcom.com/retreat and buy

1:35

a ticket. It's going to consist

1:37

of morning work sessions, afternoon excursions,

1:40

and all day hanging out with

1:42

a bunch of motivated bootstrapped

1:44

and mostly bootstrap founders.

1:47

That's microcom slash retreat.

1:49

In addition, I wanted to mention

1:51

the M&A brokerage that I recommend

1:53

for folks doing. two to 20

1:55

million in ARR, SAS companies in

1:57

particular. It's discretion. That's Discretion capital.com.

1:59

You've heard the founder and principal

2:01

of Discretion Capital on this very

2:03

show, Anar Volset, my co-founder, with

2:05

Tiny Seed, heads-up Discretion Capital. So

2:08

if you are considering selling, and

2:10

frankly, if you're north of a

2:12

million ARR, and you're thinking, hey,

2:14

I want to sell when I

2:16

get to two million or more,

2:18

that's when you should reach out.

2:20

Anar at Discretion Capital capital.com, or

2:22

you can head to Discretion. capital.com.

2:24

They've had incredible exits. They only

2:26

do the sell side of M&A

2:28

advisory. So they don't help buyers

2:30

find you. They support founders as

2:32

they go through their exit. And

2:34

with that, let's dive into my

2:36

first topic of the day. This

2:38

is a conversation on X Twitter

2:41

where it starts with a tweet

2:43

from Stefano Monte Duto and he

2:45

says everyone's talking about MRR and

2:47

ARR. But what's the point of

2:49

sharing those numbers if costs aren't

2:51

even considered? You can hit 20K

2:53

MRR with 10,000 in expenses or

2:55

12,000 MRR with just 1,000. Am

2:57

I the only one who finds

2:59

this weird? And Nagash Dev says,

3:01

I would love for Rob Walling

3:03

to address this. I know it

3:05

would be epic. I'm not sure

3:07

it's going to be epic, but

3:09

I at least like to weigh

3:12

in on this. So I've bristled

3:14

at this whole sharing revenue and

3:16

public thing anyways, because I think

3:18

it's not building in public. It's

3:20

a lot of bragging in public.

3:22

And I really do feel like

3:24

a lot of sharing revenue. It's

3:26

either marketing. or bragging or a

3:28

lot of it's fake. And you

3:30

know, folks have pointed that out

3:32

and shown how people fake their

3:34

screenshots. So you have to kind

3:36

of take all of that with

3:38

a grand assault anyways. But the

3:40

other thing that has bothered me

3:42

is I've heard folks who are

3:45

not building SAS. Let's say they're

3:47

building a brick and mortar or

3:49

e-commerce or a consulting firm, for

3:51

example. And they're like, we're a

3:53

seven-figure e-commerce business, a one million

3:55

dollar, two million dollar e-ecom business.

3:57

And you compare that to the

3:59

MRR or the MRR of SAS.

4:01

very very different business where cost

4:03

of goods sold in sass can

4:05

be 5% 7% you know you

4:07

think about the hosting cost and

4:09

whatever else you would throw in

4:11

cogs and your cogs if you're

4:14

selling through let's say Amazon

4:16

could be what 50% 70% if you

4:18

include all the Amazon referral fees and

4:21

the FBA fulfillment fees and your storage

4:23

and whatever else. Obviously, if you're selling

4:25

direct, there's a reason that DTC has

4:27

become such a thing because cogs in

4:29

e-commerce, it really makes it a

4:32

completely different business. Having a $2 million

4:34

e-com business selling a widget versus a

4:36

$2 million ARR SAS company. It's just

4:39

night and day, both in terms of

4:41

the profit you can pull out of

4:43

it, but also for the exit multiple.

4:45

That $2 million error assas company might

4:47

sell for $10 million, right? It might

4:49

sell for five, six, seven times ARR, and

4:51

an e-commerce business might sell for what are

4:54

the multiples? Three to five X net profit?

4:56

I'm kind of guessing at that, but you

4:58

get the idea? It's night and day. So

5:00

that has always bothered me when folks... kind

5:02

of compare apples to oranges and claim they're

5:05

the same. I mean, look, I'm not. Am

5:07

I talking about e-com businesses? Absolutely not. Great

5:09

business. Hard to do mad props to you

5:11

if you've done that. But I just want

5:13

to call out the building an agency to

5:16

two million in revenue versus a SAS versus

5:18

e-com. It's just night and day. And a

5:20

big part of that is the cost of goods

5:22

sold, and it's also the value. You know, the

5:24

exit multiple and the exit enterprise value that you

5:26

can get for it. But with that, let's

5:29

shift to this example that Stefano

5:31

is talking about, where you can

5:33

at 20K MRR with 10K expenses,

5:35

and so therefore you're making 10K

5:37

net profit a month, or 12K

5:39

MRR, which is 1K, so therefore

5:41

you're making 11K profit a month,

5:43

so it's lower MRR. Historically, the

5:46

cost to run SAS pre-Ai has

5:48

been very low. And in fact,

5:50

if you're not offering SMS or...

5:52

have a big AI component or

5:54

big expense or some type of

5:57

underlying API cost that you are

5:59

relying on. that really drives up your

6:01

expenses, then historically, SAS has just been

6:03

really cheap. You know, it's just been

6:05

cheap to run. And so in general,

6:07

when you say, I have a 20K

6:09

MRR SAS company, most people think, yeah,

6:11

I bet, and I bet they're costs.

6:13

Not the cost of developers and all

6:16

the other stuff around it, but just

6:18

the cost to host it is probably

6:20

five, ten, fifteen percent of that number.

6:22

Now that has kind of changed lately.

6:24

And there are a bunch of different

6:26

ways to not even game this, but

6:28

just to kind of leave things out.

6:30

And top line revenue just sounds more

6:32

interesting, doesn't it? And in fact, ARR

6:34

sounds more interesting because it's times 12.

6:36

And so saying, why say 20K MRR

6:39

when you can say I'm at $4?

6:41

This is just a top line number

6:43

to kind of brag slash market slash,

6:45

what's the other purpose of it, right?

6:47

So I think Stefano says, you know,

6:49

am I the only one who finds

6:51

this weird? I don't know that it's

6:53

weird as much as it's consider the

6:55

reason that people are sharing these numbers.

6:57

They don't actually want you to know

6:59

all the things about the business. They

7:02

don't want to tell you why they're

7:04

successful. I'm guessing they're not going to

7:06

tell you which marketing approaches are actually

7:08

working or how they actually got there.

7:10

They're not going to give you the

7:12

secret sauce. They're not going to tell

7:14

you how to compete with them. They're

7:16

just giving a headline number. So I

7:18

don't find it weird at all. Because

7:20

it's basically cherry picking a number that

7:22

sounds big and that sounds impressive and

7:25

it sounds good. And so I guess

7:27

in my opinion, it's like, if people

7:29

are going to share revenue, should they

7:31

share expenses too? I think they share

7:33

expenses too? But I think the reason

7:35

a lot of people don't is, number

7:37

one, it's probably a little bit more

7:39

info than folks want to share. Probably

7:41

makes folks look not as impressive when

7:43

you're running a 20K MRRs and you

7:45

have 19K of expenses. That doesn't sound

7:48

interesting, versus the 20K MRRs. Sounds neat.

7:50

In addition, historically, as I've said, if

7:52

you were to say you had 20K

7:54

MRRs, we can all kind of assume

7:56

the expenses and that hasn't really been

7:58

an issue until the last few years.

8:00

So thanks Nagosh for calling that out.

8:02

Hope that was interesting. For my next topic,

8:04

I want to tell you a story about

8:07

a friend of mine that had a friend he

8:09

had gone to college with and was still

8:11

hanging out. And this was a few years

8:13

after all of us had graduated. And so

8:16

I'm hanging out with this friend of mine.

8:18

and his mutual friends. And one of them

8:20

had just graduated from film school. And I

8:22

don't know if he'd gotten a bachelor's or

8:24

a master's, but we all lived in Pasadena.

8:27

So we were in Los Angeles and we

8:29

knew a lot of folks trying to break

8:31

into the entertainment industry. And this friend of

8:33

a friend who I hung out with a

8:35

few times, but didn't know that well, wanted

8:38

to be a director. And that's what he

8:40

had studied in film school. And I was

8:42

intrigued by this because at the time I

8:44

was playing a lot of music and I

8:46

was in, well, a band or two during

8:49

that time, which thankfully was really

8:51

pre-spotify and YouTube, so there's no

8:53

existence of any video or songs

8:55

on the internet that you can

8:58

find. But I was intrigued by

9:00

it because I've just always been

9:02

fascinated with what it takes to break

9:04

into the entertainment industry and frankly

9:06

what it takes to... do interesting

9:08

hard things. You know, you hear

9:10

me talk a lot on this

9:12

show about Paul McCartney or Bruce

9:14

Lee or Albert Einstein, kind of

9:16

these realms of genius and the

9:19

realms of doing, I'll say it's like creativity

9:21

plus maybe some science, plus just to

9:23

me, just it's magical to like put

9:25

something into the world, whether that is

9:28

a song or whether it's a book,

9:30

whether it's a film, whether it's a

9:32

theory. So I was intrigued by this

9:34

guy's story and I was saying, have

9:37

you directed anything, right? And we were

9:39

all young. We were, let's say we

9:41

were 25 years old. And he said,

9:43

no, I graduated and I made my

9:45

real, I think he made a short

9:47

film and maybe made like a sizzle

9:49

real and he had like a sizzle

9:52

real and he had circulated it to

9:54

folks and he didn't get any

9:56

traction. Oh, cool, what are you doing

9:58

next? And he's like, no. Like, this

10:00

doesn't sound like all you can do

10:02

at all. And this might have been,

10:04

let's say, 2005 to level set. And

10:06

so as I'm saying that, I was

10:08

definitely not 25. I was a few

10:10

years old in that. So let's say

10:12

we're in our late 20s, early 30s.

10:14

And I remember asking him to the

10:16

point where I think I kind of

10:18

annoyed him, but I think I kind

10:20

of annoyed him, but to me, I

10:22

think I kind of annoyed him, but

10:25

to me, to me, but to me,

10:27

to me, to the point where I

10:29

think I think I think I think

10:31

I kind of what, I kind of,

10:33

I'm work. And I could have been

10:35

like, yeah, this just doesn't work. You

10:37

can't bootstrap software products. It doesn't exist.

10:39

It can't be done. But instead, I

10:41

was like, I figure if anyone can

10:43

do it, I'll be the first. I'll

10:45

keep trying until it works. And I

10:47

was kind of trying to encourage this

10:49

guy. I really just, I was so

10:51

puzzled by his. lack of faith that

10:53

he could pull it off. And I

10:55

said, well, what about just getting a

10:57

job maybe as an assistant director? And

10:59

he was like, no, if you're an

11:01

assistant director, you get pigeonholed as an

11:03

assistant director and no assistant director ever

11:05

becomes a real director. And I don't

11:07

know if that's true or not, but

11:09

that was his attitude. And everything I

11:11

came up with, he had a reason

11:13

why it wouldn't work. And that's the

11:15

thing that was fascinating to me was,

11:17

you know, how he would possibly give

11:19

up on this dream, how he would

11:21

go to four years of film school.

11:24

And again, maybe he got a master,

11:26

so maybe it was six years, I

11:28

don't remember, but a lot of years,

11:30

and I knew that he wanted to

11:32

do it, and he was talking about

11:34

how much he wanted to do it.

11:36

So I knew it wasn't just some

11:38

fleeting fancy that he really didn't care

11:40

about, he really wanted to do it,

11:42

and I was like... What do you

11:44

mean? You're not doing anything. It was

11:46

so interesting. And the other thing was

11:48

all the reasons he had for why

11:50

all of my ideas wouldn't work. And

11:52

you know what? Maybe my ideas wouldn't

11:54

have worked because I didn't know crap

11:56

about the film industry. But I had

11:58

other ideas like, hey, start a blog,

12:00

start something online. I mean, this is

12:02

before podcast really, but it just seemed

12:04

like the asking for permission waiting to

12:06

be selected, waiting to be anointed. attitude

12:08

just wasn't it wasn't gonna fly and

12:10

that's that's what I like about bootstrapping

12:12

in general right is you don't have

12:14

to ask for permission you look at

12:16

Kevin Smith you look at Robert Rodriguez

12:18

you look at a bunch of the

12:21

gorilla filmmakers in the 90s and early

12:23

2000s who they didn't ask for permission

12:25

from big Hollywood studios or from an

12:27

investor they just went out and they

12:29

made a movie similarly when I wrote

12:31

my first book start small stay small

12:33

I didn't go begging publishers for permission

12:35

to write a book and say, anoint

12:37

me, pick me, choose me. I just

12:39

fucking wrote a book. And I self-published

12:41

it. And I expected I would sell

12:43

a few hundred copies. And lo and

12:45

behold, here we are 15 years later.

12:47

And it happens to have sold 30,000,

12:49

35,000 copies. That's not the point. The

12:51

point is that I shipped it anyways.

12:53

I shipped that book into the world

12:55

and didn't wait for permission. Now, making

12:57

a full-length feature film feature film in

12:59

05, obviously... can't just do this on

13:01

your own. But here I am 20

13:03

years later still remembering that conversation because

13:05

I was so impacted by kind of

13:07

the helplessness, the defeatism, and the attitude

13:09

that there was just no way to

13:11

get this done, the lack of belief.

13:13

And that mental model is the one

13:15

that I hear from some aspiring entrepreneurs

13:17

who will probably never make it. Because

13:20

if you don't believe you can do

13:22

it. And you figure out reasons why

13:24

it's not going to work and you

13:26

rely on those. Now I can call

13:28

out when we have a new effort,

13:30

we're going to launch a new thing,

13:32

I think about how it can fail.

13:34

But what I don't do is say,

13:36

well that's what's going to happen and

13:38

throw up my hands and not do

13:40

anything. That's the difference, right? Is if

13:42

you put something into the world and

13:44

it fails, at least you shipped something.

13:46

But this friend of a friend was

13:48

so memorably defeated before he'd really done

13:50

anything. that it stuck with me all

13:52

these years later. So if you're listening

13:54

to this, you're an aspiring entrepreneur, don't

13:56

do that. Hang around with people who

13:58

get done. Hang around. people who ship,

14:00

hang around with people who say it

14:02

can be done. And if you don't know

14:04

any, then find them on the internet. Listen

14:07

to this podcast. Read the books from

14:09

people who are getting it done. Follow

14:11

people who ship. You have Jason Cohen,

14:13

you have Ruben Gomez, we have Heat

14:15

and Shaw, we have Stella Efti's been

14:17

on the show, any of those folks.

14:20

You can just listen to the way

14:22

they think about if there's a roadblock,

14:24

I'm going to turn it into a

14:26

speed bump. That really is the analogy

14:28

here, isn't the analogy here, isn't it.

14:30

This person was turning speed bumps into

14:32

roadblocks. And if you want to be

14:34

successful as an entrepreneur, you need

14:37

to learn to do the exact opposite. My

14:39

third topic today is about George

14:41

Lucas, and it's about his vision

14:43

and his taste in visual effects

14:46

in film and also in sound

14:48

was so far ahead of the

14:50

industry standard that he had to invent

14:52

new things. He had to start

14:54

entirely new companies and build new

14:57

technologies in order to achieve. his

14:59

own vision or to live up to his

15:01

taste of what visual and audio should be

15:03

in films. If you don't know his

15:05

story, he wasn't just a director.

15:07

He wanted to do incredible visual

15:09

effects and he started his own

15:11

effects studio because there was no

15:13

other effects studio that could do

15:15

it. It's ILM, it's industrial, light and

15:18

magic. They spun off Pixar at

15:20

a certain point, but I think it

15:22

was before it was called Pixar.

15:24

It was called The Graphics Group,

15:26

Inside ILM. And I believe George Lucas

15:29

was running into money issues and

15:31

so sold it off to Steve

15:33

Jobs basically. And that's a whole other

15:35

story. But the idea that if you're

15:37

a film director and you're a writer and

15:39

you're an artist in film and you want

15:41

to start your own effects company, like that

15:44

is very very rare. But Lucas had this

15:46

vision and this taste that no one else

15:48

could achieve. And so he had to start

15:50

his own. And then of course, ILM now

15:52

does a, it's its own company, right? And

15:54

it does a ton of visual effects work

15:57

in a lot of films and they're known

15:59

as one. of the best in the world.

16:01

And similarly, not sure if you know this,

16:03

but THX surround sound is something that George

16:06

Lucas designed himself. He designed the whole thing

16:08

because theater sound sucked. And his first student

16:10

film is called THX, 1138. And so when

16:12

it came time to name this technology for

16:14

sound, he called it THX. And the interesting

16:17

part of this is not how much of

16:19

a Renaissance man he is, because that's pretty

16:21

impressive. But it's that. It's exact opposite of

16:23

the roadblocks into speed bump story, I just

16:25

told. George Lucas is making these films, and

16:28

he's saying, I want the visual effects to

16:30

be better, I want the sound in the

16:32

theaters to be better. And instead of throwing

16:34

his hands up and saying, well, it's just

16:37

too expensive, it's just too hard, he just

16:39

said, let's figure it out. I'm sure he

16:41

said more than that, I'm sure he had

16:43

a lot of help. I'm not going to

16:45

act like he himself designed all the visual

16:48

effects because he didn't. He hired group, but

16:50

he hired great people and motivated them. And

16:52

I'm sure he didn't design all of THX.

16:54

I'm sure he had some amazing engineers there,

16:56

but he had the vision and the taste

16:59

to get them there. And while it's interesting

17:01

that like... I think George Lucas is a

17:03

terrible film writer. Like if you look at

17:05

all the movie, all the Star Wars films

17:08

he wrote, they're way worse than the ones

17:10

that other people wrote. Right? So Empire Strikes

17:12

Back, not written by him, not directed by

17:14

him. It's my favorite, the first by him,

17:16

not directed by him. It's my favorite, of

17:19

the first trilogy. In fact, it may be

17:21

my favorite of the first trilogy. In fact,

17:23

it may be my, is my favorite, is

17:25

my favorite, is not a vision for Star

17:27

Wars. And really is not that great of

17:30

a vision for Star Wars. And really is

17:32

not that great of a vision for Star

17:34

Wars. And really is not that great of

17:36

a vision for Star Wars. But he did

17:39

know what he wanted. He had a vision

17:41

for amazing visual effects and amazing sound. And

17:43

I love stories like this of entrepreneurial artists.

17:45

If you think about it, that's what he

17:47

was, is an artist who's making film and

17:50

does not feel the constraint of kind of

17:52

the box that you're in in the 1970s

17:54

and early 80s, where, do you remember theaters

17:56

back then? Like, the sound wasn't good. The

17:58

visual effects weren't great. Look at every sci-fi

18:01

film that came out in 1970s. and then

18:03

in 77 before Star Wars. They are catastrophicly

18:05

bad. The effects are terrible. I think Logan's

18:07

run might be one of them, and there's

18:10

a couple others that I've watched, and they

18:12

really, yeah, they're really not great. In terms

18:14

of the, you know, the visual effects, and

18:16

he was so far ahead of his time

18:18

that he couldn't just rely on off-the-shelf technology

18:21

to do this. So as you're thinking about

18:23

building your startup, about building your career, about

18:25

being a founder and an entrepreneur, You don't

18:27

have to feel the constraint of the modern

18:29

technology. You don't have to feel the constraints

18:32

that an LLM puts on you or that

18:34

a tech stack puts on you, but that

18:36

as you develop your vision and your taste,

18:38

and if it's ahead of the tech that's

18:41

around you, that in the long term, you

18:43

might be able to turn these roadblocks into

18:45

speed bumps. My last topic for the day

18:47

is Mike Tyson's training routine back when he

18:49

was a heavyweight fighter. He would get up

18:52

at 4 AM for a five-mile jog, then

18:54

he would... Over the course of a day,

18:56

he would do 2,000 sit-ups, 500 push-ups, 500

18:58

dips, 500 trugs, and about 30 minutes of

19:00

neck bridges. He repeated this six days a

19:03

week. There are sites all over the internet

19:05

talking about Mike Tyson's intense training regimen. And

19:07

as I read this, I thought to myself,

19:09

if I did the exact same regimen, assuming

19:12

that I could or that I could have

19:14

in my 20s, I still would not have

19:16

been the heavyweight champion of the world. because

19:18

it's not just about hard work, he was

19:20

putting in the hard work, but it is

19:23

about some luck and some skill. When Mike

19:25

Tyson obviously had, you know, I don't know,

19:27

he had a build that I do not

19:29

have, and maybe you would say, well, it's

19:31

lucky he had the genetics to have these

19:34

massive biceps, and if he and I did

19:36

the exact same workouts, our biceps would be

19:38

different sizes, and he had, you know, muscle

19:40

fibers that twitched in a different way so

19:43

that he could put in a different way

19:45

so that he could put a lot of

19:47

power into a lot of power into a

19:49

punch. and he could move very quickly. So

19:51

whether we put that into skills that I'm

19:54

sure he developed over time or the luck

19:56

of just being built a little bit differently,

19:58

I ran track. in high school and college,

20:00

so I ran for nine years, and I

20:02

ran with folks where we would do the

20:05

same workout every day. And for some folks,

20:07

I wound up being a lot faster than

20:09

them, and for other folks, they were a

20:11

lot faster than me. And so it's not

20:14

all about the hard work. That's the thing

20:16

that I think about when I read something

20:18

like this is that it takes several

20:20

things to be amazingly successful. It's a

20:22

combination. And that to be the best

20:25

in the world, if Mike Tyson hadn't

20:27

done this daily workout routine, his

20:29

genetics, his skills, whatever else he brought to

20:31

the table. I don't think it would have

20:33

got him there. I think that's the thing.

20:36

To be world class in something, you need

20:38

all of it. You need the work ethic,

20:40

you need to put in the time, you

20:42

need to develop the skills, and you need

20:44

potentially a leg up from the start. But

20:47

here's the interesting thing. To be a startup

20:49

founder, and to build a business to 10K

20:51

a month, 100K a month, 500K a month, you

20:53

don't need to be the best in the best in

20:55

the best in the best in the world. You're

20:57

not competing against... everyone

21:00

else trying to do it, where there's

21:02

only one winner, like being a

21:04

heavyweight champion. That's the beauty of

21:06

what we do as startup founders, is

21:09

to try to be one of the

21:11

best film directors in the world, or

21:13

to try to be an artist who

21:15

can support themselves on their art. These

21:17

are really hard things to do, to

21:19

try to be Taylor Swift or Beyonce

21:21

or another superstar. There are very,

21:24

very few of them, even to

21:26

be any kind of professional athlete.

21:28

There are what, hundreds of professional

21:30

NBA players in the world, hundreds

21:32

of professional, I say major league baseball

21:35

players, not professional, because there's obviously

21:37

the minor leagues, but they're just

21:39

not that many. But how many

21:41

thousands or tens of thousands of

21:44

successful entrepreneurs and startup founders are

21:46

there compared to those other numbers?

21:48

This is where we get a little bit

21:50

of a pass, where hard work is what you

21:52

can control, and I think you should put in

21:54

a ton of that. Skills are things that you

21:56

can develop. and I think you should put in

21:59

a ton of those. but from the start,

22:01

we can all start at varying

22:03

places in terms of our natural ability,

22:05

your working memory, your ability to

22:07

focus. How many entrepreneurs do we know

22:09

who have ADHD or struggle with

22:11

depression or anxiety or all other types

22:13

of neurotypical issues and are able

22:16

to make it work? And in some

22:18

cases, those can be part of

22:20

what works for them, those can be

22:22

superpowers in this game of getting

22:24

a startup off the ground and building

22:26

an incredible company. This is one

22:28

of the reasons why I love entrepreneurship

22:31

is I think so many of

22:33

us can be successful at this. It's

22:35

not just one heavyweight champion of

22:37

the world where you have to be

22:39

at the peak of the peak

22:41

or folks who are competing in the

22:43

Olympics. You have to be hit

22:46

things just at the right time and

22:48

you have to be incredibly gifted

22:50

and talented and build incredible skills and

22:52

train for a lifetime and hope

22:54

that that one day or that one

22:56

week at the Olympics that you're

22:58

able to get that gold medal. Then

23:01

what I really like about entrepreneurship

23:03

is it usually doesn't come down to

23:05

just one moment like that and

23:07

you don't have to be the best

23:09

in the world to build generational

23:11

wealth or have an incredible life building

23:13

a company that changes your entire

23:16

life and the trajectory of your family.

23:18

You can come from poverty, you

23:20

can come from solidly working class, you

23:22

can come from a country or

23:24

a background where no

23:26

one would ever guess that you would

23:28

find success and yet we see it

23:30

over and over in the stories and

23:32

the interviews on whether on this podcast

23:34

or this week in startups or any

23:36

startup podcast that you listen to. This

23:39

is what I love about entrepreneurship and

23:41

specifically what I love about bootstrapping and

23:43

self -funding and being able to do

23:45

it without anyone's permission. You don't have

23:47

to wait for a publisher to annoy

23:49

you. You don't have to wait for

23:51

a film studio to say you're a

23:53

director, we loved your sizzle reel and

23:55

now you can direct our film. You

23:57

don't have to ask for permission. That's

24:00

one of the reasons why we do this,

24:02

and that's one of the reasons why I've

24:04

shipped this podcast for the last 15 years,

24:06

written five books, started six companies,

24:09

why I've started an accelerator for

24:11

mostly bootstrap SAS, why I run

24:13

microconf the community for SAS founders,

24:16

because I believe that software entrepreneurship

24:18

has and will continue to change

24:20

the lives of a lot of people. My

24:22

mission and life and the mission of

24:24

everything I do these days, this entire ecosystem

24:27

across the companies and the

24:29

books, is to multiply the

24:31

world's population of independent self-sustaining

24:34

startups. And no matter where you

24:36

come from, or what you're working on,

24:38

I'm glad you're here. You belong here.

24:40

Let's do this. Thanks for listening to

24:42

this solo adventure. Hope you enjoyed

24:44

our time together today. This is

24:46

Rob Walling signing off from episode

24:48

770.