The NFX Podcast

Latest Episodes:

"Don't Just Be the Best, Be the Only" with Kevin Kelly & James Currier Dec 15, 2020

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In this candid conversation with iconic tech thinker Kevin Kelly (founding Editor of Wired), we discuss inspirational and transformative advice for early-stage Founders reflecting on the work they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how it all adds up in the long term. Kevin and NFX General Partner James Currier talk about: “You want to work on something that nobody has a name for.” You don’t just want to be the best -- you want to be the only. This applies to the companies you start, the projects you tackle, as well as to how you live your life. “It’s fine to focus on scaling a wall, but you need to make sure your ladder is leaning against the right wall.” Transforming from short-term founder to long-term steward is a mental shift that many Founders need to start making. “If you operate on a longer term perspective you have an advantage because everyone else is completely short sighted.” Why Wired? What was the reason for it to exist? We need to listen to the technology to see how people actually use it vs. how it was invented. Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor for its first seven years. His most recent book is called The Inevitable, and is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. He is also founding editor of the popular Cool Tools website, which has been reviewing tools daily since 2003. Every Sunday, he and the Cool Tools team mail out Recomendo, a free one-page list of 6 very brief recommendations of cool stuff.

The Founders’ List: "How To Make The Most Out Of Your Time And Your Life" by Nir Eyal (Author + Former Stanford Professor) Dec 10, 2020

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This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. "Becoming indistractable requires an understanding of why you lose focus and learning the skills to do as you say. This guide is for people who want to harness the power of focus, but don’t have a lot of time. The more we respond to external triggers, the more we train our brain in a neverending stimulus-response loop." This is the audio version of Nir Eyal's focus guide, 'How To Make The Most Out Of Your Time And Your Life'. By reimagining a task, you can make anything more enjoyable and intrinsically rewarding because in our digital age, it's very difficult to “muster enough energy” to stay focused. Nir is a former instructor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and author of the bestseller, “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.” 2013 His latest book, “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life,” 2019 is out now. Check out his website and content at - https://www.nirandfar.com/

The Founders' List: Steve Job's Famous 'Thoughts on Flash' (Famous Memos) Dec 03, 2020

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This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. 'Thoughts on Flash' is an open letter published by Steve Jobs, Co-Founder and then-CEO of Apple Inc. on April 29, 2010. The letter criticized Adobe Systems' Flash platform and outlined reasons why the technology would not be allowed on the company's iOS hardware products, specifically iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Now it's available to listen to on The Founders' List. Read the full memo here - https://www.nfx.com/post/founders-list-steve-jobs

The Irrational Truths Behind User Behavior, with Dan Ariely & Gigi Levy-Weiss Nov 30, 2020

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We all think we know how our users behave. It turns out, we don’t. Founders over-index on rational assumptions, but users most often behave irrationally. Behavioral economics, by contrast, is the practice of truly seeing your users' emotions, beliefs, and habits. This kind of vision is critically missing from product design at most startups. In this episode, NFX General Partner Gigi talks with Dan Ariely -- the world’s top expert in behavioral economics and a renowned professor at Duke -- as he breaks down the most common types of irrational user behavior and shares frameworks for predicting how your users will actually behave.

The Unusual Signs of a Billion Dollar Company with Elad Gil & James Currier Nov 23, 2020

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Can your company be a Billion-dollar business? When we look inside the early days of companies like Stripe, Airbnb, Coinbase, Instacart & Square, what are the patterns that may shed light on how great Founders beat incredible odds? In this episode of the NFX podcast, Elad Gil — one of the world's top angel investors in an astonishing number of Billion-dollar companies (Airbnb, Airtable, Anduril, Brex, Checkr, Coinbase, Flexport, Gitlab, Gusto, Instacart, Opendoor, PagerDuty, Pinterest, Samsara, Square, Stripe, & Wish) and cofounder of ColorGenomics— joins NFX partner James Currier to unearth what makes certain Founders and teams exponentially better. Together they examine the counterintuitive -- and often contrarian -- patterns that he has observed in many of the world’s best known Billion-dollar companies and their decision frameworks along the way. NFX Essay - https://www.nfx.com/post/unusual-signs-billion-dollar-companies Elad's Twitter - https://twitter.com/eladgil

The Founders' List: Steve Yegge's Famous Rant on 'Google vs Amazon' (Famous Memos) Nov 20, 2020

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This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Longtime Googler Steve Yegge posted an insightful rant on his Google+ page about how Google is failing to make platforms for its products. He also shares some interesting little tidbits about his six-year stint at Amazon working for the 'Dread Pirate Bezos'. The rant was intended to be shared only with his Google coworkers, but was accidentally made public. Read the full memo here - https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611

The New Growth Mindset with Sean Ellis & James Currier Nov 16, 2020

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In order to drive growth, you need to be data-driven and relentlessly creative. The difficult part of implementing growth in your company is finding someone who is good at both. Growth expert and thought leader Sean Ellis (Dropbox, Eventbrite, GrowthHackers, LogMeIn) sits down with NFX General Partner James Currier to share his thoughts and insights around: - The current stage of growth hacking - The digital growth evolution - The balance of data and creativity - Understanding the physics of growth - Importance of word of mouth Be sure to check out Sean’s latest project GoPractice! as well as his famous book ‘Hacking Growth’.

The Founders’ List: "Why Figma Wins" by Kevin Kwok (Former Investor at Greylock) Nov 12, 2020

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This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. "Design is all of the conversations between designers and PMs about what to build. Building for this entire process doesn’t take away the importance of designers—it gives them a seat at the table for the core decisions a company makes. Companies that are successful in the long term are the ones that can repeatedly find the next loop." This is the audio version of Kevin Kwok's essay, 'Why Figma Wins'. His analysis of the trajectory of Figma reflects the incremental product thinking & execution required to build this type of bottoms-up giant. Kevin was formerly worked at Greylock Partners investing in marketplaces, autonomous vehicles, bottoms up productivity tools, and more. He is particularly interested in understanding the underlying structures that shape industries and the core loops that drive companies and writes on his popular site www.kwokchain.com. Read the full article here - https://kwokchain.com/2020/06/19/why-figma-wins/

Status Games with Eugene Wei (Product Lead at Amazon, Hulu, Erly, Flipboard, Oculus) and James Currier Nov 10, 2020

Show notes

Status can be a volatile, powerful driver of engagement. Status and one of its underlying mechanisms, scarcity must be considered by product designers in every category, as early on as possible. But it can also be a double-edged sword, as managing a network and the status dynamics within it is constantly recirculating, always shifting. For this reason, status that is more entertainment-based than utility-based can over time become precarious, as well as too restrictive for continued user growth. NFX partner James Currier sits down with Eugene Wei (Product Lead at Amazon, Hulu, Erly, Flipboard, Oculus) to draw from his original Status-as-a-Service article and expand to discuss status in entertainment, frameworks for emotional product design, video games as world leaders in defining scarcity, the future of virtual goods, and the underlying status games that drive us all -- in technology and in life.

The Future of Digital Advertising with Mikael Cho & Luke Chesser (Co-Founders of Unsplash) Nov 09, 2020

Show notes

"What's happening in general on the internet is an evolution to visual storytelling. The image is more powerful than ever, but it's also much harder to be seen than ever due to saturation. What's happening is the exchange is in social capital - the exchange is in being seen." NFX partner James Currier sits down and chats with Mikael Cho (CEO & Co-founder) and Luke Chesser (Head of Product & Co-founder) about their Founder journey to creating Unsplash, solving the chicken and egg problem within their marketplace, the psychology of their users, and what the future of digital advertising will look like.

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