The idea is often like not the thing, it's the execution. But it's also the distribution channel. Actually, I think it's often neglected. You companies have a distribution channel. Let's where they really excel. Yes, that's where their power is. But they are also slower. Usually. True. They will see a post and they're like, okay, let's plan it for 2025. Hello and welcome to the Metacast podcast. This is Illya. And this is our now. Metacast is a podcast.
We have a podcast app like no other. You can get it at metacast.app. The sponsor of our podcast is because we own the app and the podcast. So you go check it out at metacast.app.
And this podcast is our behind the scenes look at how we run the company. And also we invite entrepreneurs to chat about their journeys. So today is one of those episodes where we don't have a guest. So we just chat about what's going on.
And today's topic is just like every other podcast in existence. It's an emergency episode. Talking about Sam Altman. Yeah. So Arna, what's your what's your take on Sam Altman?
I think we missed the boat already. Everything is back to as it was last Friday. It was just a crazy three days of me. Him. In some ways, I'm glad that we missed that boat though. I think it would look pretty stupid if he did.
Yeah. Some of the podcasts I was listening to, there was like an almost daily or sometimes multiple times that the emergency podcast coming out. The hard fork one they recorded while Casey Newton was in an airport. It was insane. Yeah.
Yes, I used to that one. I think some podcasts that have nothing to do with the news. They still did an emergency episode because they just wanted to write the hype wave.
So I think that's how we would look like if we did this and now we don't do this. I had a feeling that these things we will only go on for like a couple of days. Things have to fall back into places like too much money at stake by Microsoft and other people to let this go crazy like this for more than a few days.
Right. Yeah. So the topic for today's episode is building in public. We started this podcast. Well, I guess we pivoted this podcast to like a behind the scenes show, which follows the movement called building public where entrepreneurs build their companies in public.
So they talk about how the bill their companies how the bill their products, they share revenue numbers. It's a very interesting movement. Probably thousands of people who do this. But there are more people who don't do this. So and we opted into participating in this.
And yeah, today we want to talk about why we're doing this, what are the pros and cons of building in public and also our approach and what we are ready to share and what we are not ready to share. So some of that we are actually going to be making decisions as we speak because in our approaches, what it is up to this point.
But very soon we will launch the app. We'll start to have revenue coming in and yeah, right now in this episode we'll actually discuss and decide how you're going to tackle that. Yeah.
What was your first glimpse into like this building in public? What were some of those people or companies?
I think back five or so years ago, I was listening to the podcast called Founders Journey by Josh Pickford. So Josh founded the company called Bear Metrics. They were doing some analytics on top of Stripe. And yeah, he was doing this. I think weekly very short episodes like seven to ten minutes where he would almost like give a status update on how the company is going, like what happened.
And there were some episodes where he would just share over doing this, this and that. There were some others where he would share revenue, I believe. And there were a couple of episodes where he described some of the mistakes that they made.
I think there was something about the offer something for free and nobody was converting and it was just dreaming money. And he was sharing this as it was happening. And I found that honesty to be very, very engaging.
I was always looking forward to his new episodes, I being on the entire podcast when I discovered it. Yeah, that was my introduction to this.
Right. Mine was, I think, through the indie hackers podcast, they would often bring on like people who were building on public.
This is, I want to say maybe two, three years back, right, where this was huge and was very popular for people to do. It was almost like a marketing movement.
By building in public and sharing people were supporting you a lot more because it was very new. Well, I don't know if it was new, but it was certainly popular at that time.
It started to intermaint stream at the time problem. Yeah. And people were like posting their revenue numbers or number of commits or even things that they changed in the deep behind the scenes part.
Almost like status updates every week people would write like retrospectives and like very honest retrospectives about what went right, what went wrong monthly and things like that.
So it was very engaging and like I started bonding with these people, right. And I actually bought indie products and all I am not like big into indie like one person building something.
Now I am after these three, four years of hearing the trust factor got I think way higher compared to like long back.
Yeah. I was trying to figure out where this whole movement came from who really made it more acceptable, I guess.
And I was thinking is it base camp 37 signals because I don't think they were building in public necessarily. They were very openly sharing stuff that they've learned while building products.
Like getting real was their first book. Yeah, I feel like base camp is more like very open about the culture and what's happening inside the company like socially or culturally technically or technology wise.
I don't think their ass open though. Well, they have certainly spoken recently about like moving away from cloud and that sort of stuff, but they have not always been like that.
They have built significant stuff on top of like open source like rails DHH is one of the main contributors and creators of real.
So that has always been there. But aside from that open source aspect, I don't feel like they were as open about technology or revenue or those kind of things, but they were certainly always open about how they run the company.
What are the kinds of decisions that are happening culturally, you know that.
Actually, you're right. They have always been more like retrospectively reporting what they've done from the position is like the heroes what we learned here are some advice for you go use it if you want to.
Whereas building public is more like, I have no idea what I'm doing here. My hypothesis here is how I'm testing it. And then like a few weeks later, here's what I learned.
So it's a more vulnerable position. So there probably were many, many, many things that didn't work out for 37 signals. And no one knows about those because they wrote only about things that worked. And maybe some mistakes, but generally it's more about here is what works.
I'm not super good with names, but I feel like some of the very early indie hacker as the indie hacker podcast was becoming super popular.
It's not very regular right now, but back then like two, three years back, there would be an episode almost every week. And it would be like an insanely good episode with a indie founder.
And almost everybody coming on was very open about their like numbers.
Yeah, I remember the Michael Lynch episode that one was very good.
That was the episode was Michael Lynch, the guy who was writing weekly retrospectives about like, this is my money coming in this week. This is what is going on. This is what I'm spending on rent and all that.
Yeah, he was writing weekly retrospectives. I think he left one of the big companies. I forgot the photos met out Google Google. And then he built some remote desktop control hardware plus software.
Yes, KVM and he moved to like a smaller town in Massachusetts.
Rhode Island or something like somewhere up there. Yeah, yeah. And I think there were a few also very popular and prolific indie hackers around that time who used to post on Twitter.
And I think he agrees. He always agrees with you. Yeah. You know, we started doing this as well. I think we never had any ulterior motive. I think just generally I've always liked sharing stuff.
I was just logging goes back to early 2000s when life journal was a thing at least in Russia where I lived. I was just writing about whatever. I mean, it wasn't professional. It was more just about life rate.
I've always been writing all my adult life. Launching the company is like the whole domain and much topics that I can write about now because it's right in front of me.
I really waited to leave Google so that I can actually start publicly talking about it. So that's when we started doing the podcast and yeah, I started writing a bit.
The newsletter. I think newsletter came a bit later. It's like four months ago or something. Yeah, close beta launch. I think. So it all just happened naturally to us.
But I think while this is really cool to kind of share the results of the benefit that we get from this to be clear, we don't necessarily do it for the benefit.
And at least we didn't start motivated by the benefits. Sometimes it's easy to just skip out. Let's just not do this week. Great. But then you start thinking, okay, so actually there is a reason you're doing this other than just like fun.
Keeps a discipline going in like writing those every two weeks or publishing the podcast every week. I feel like we ourselves when we document things that happen.
We keep ourselves more honest, but writing things down will learn something new about ourselves and it forces clarity writing about anything at any time forces clarity on you.
There's also implicit reflection that we get out of this. So for example, the newsletter that's primarily you sometimes maybe I or Jenny would come in and say like, oh, this technical detail.
It's a great reflection opportunity because you send it out to us before you publish it. Maybe a day or so, right. We read it.
And I always get a lot of first of all happiness out of it because it's a new perspective that maybe I have not thought about it that way.
But also we get to reflect back on what did we do, what were these decisions that was made. And maybe by this time we have some data about whether that was the right thing to do or not at that point.
I think there are a lot of benefits. Plus like you said, there's the of course the benefit of the newsletter is pretty popular and more and more people are like reading it every week. We get subscribers like I want to say there isn't a single day that goes by right now where we don't receive at least a few new subscriptions.
So it's doing well. People are liking it for the record. We are at about 350 subscribers right now and there are some days when there'll be like 15 new subscriptions.
But I feel like at least one or two a day every day even Saturdays and days we do tend to see people are liking it. Like let's be honest, right. Like you said, this is a marketing channel.
But by being honest and authentic about what we're doing, I feel like that bonding that I used to feel for people who are building in public two or three years back. Maybe that's what this channels for other people to get connected to us.
Yeah, I think you brought a very good point about marketing here. I forgot who it was. I think it was Jason Fried from 37 signals who said you don't try to optimize for like conversions or clicks or whatever we just share.
We just share what we have to share and then things just happen and sometimes they happen actually years later. They don't have to happen the same day. And I think that's what makes it different from marketing.
Oh, actually, you know, it was the HH on the rework podcast. Yes, he was calling it content marketing bullshit that people just like create content so that they can get something out of it. Something explicit.
Right. Whereas for them, it's all implicit. So they just share it and then things just happen.
I'm not good at I don't enjoy and I don't post much on social media, LinkedIn and all that. Most of it is like really shares and stuff from you and other people that I like.
And even though I know that's not going to get too much eyeballs because of the algorithm that LinkedIn has I read a quote yesterday.
I think I was in my daughter's school and on a wall, there was a beautiful inscription and I read it and I felt like wow, this is like exactly.
And I think that's at the heart of what base camp is trying to say it's by a Brazilian poet, Mario Quintana. I might be puttering the name, but I don't remember exactly what the words were, but don't go chasing butterflies instead.
I like to your garden and the butterflies will come there. I liked it so much that I wanted to like make a poster out of it and all that I went to Reddit and looked up and there was an addition. I think a reddit or that that I liked even more, which is don't go chasing butterflies instead tend to your garden and the butterflies will come.
And if they don't come, you still have a beautiful garden to enjoy for yourself. That's actually very true. And I think it goes back to what Jake Knapp was saying on our episode four.
He said that whatever you write, like a blog or podcast, first and foremost, you have to do it for yourself.
Because then like if nothing reads it, you still enjoy what you've done.
Actually for us, this podcast, I know that many years from now, I'll be listening to this episode with a smile.
Plus also, I feel like if you don't do it for yourself, I don't think you can sustain it.
Also, if you do it for yourself, the inspiration may drain at some point.
So there has to be this kind of balance of you do this for yourself, you're enjoying it. But when you know, when they're going to get stuff that I've got going, I said not linked it from one of the influencers.
When you feel like, I just don't feel like doing it today. And then you don't do it, then it becomes a slippery slope. But when you actually have something depending on it, then you do it anyway.
And then that discipline gets you over to not slide into the slippery slope.
So there's the, I'm going to call it shallow engagement aspect of it. People share it, like it and all that.
And various places like LinkedIn and all that promoted that's how maybe people see this go click into your profile and find out about Metacas. So there's that angle to it.
There's also the actual deep connection angle where we have had multiple people so far send us like deep, thoughtful emails, sharing their experiences.
And we have had multiple back and forth conversations with them. And I feel like without doing something like this, like writing out our stuff authentically in public, that would never happen.
Yeah, I think what you're talking about actually are two things there. So first, it's super fans. People who become you like tribe.
People who really like root for you and they will probably become our users and help us in some way. That's not why we are doing this. But this is where the serenity plays out, which is the second thing.
This week, or last week, we had an email coming out of nowhere with the subject line. Can I work for you for free?
Yeah, look at the email. It's a very thoughtful email from a very young designer. This is in our last newsletter. There is a write-up on that.
We're not going to go into the to much detail on this. But the point is like somebody who is very young just out of school, they want to build their portfolio, get some experience.
And they're just like, yeah, can I do an internship for you? And we were like, why not? There is basically like zero risk for us. There is a potential upside if the work turns out to be good. Why not?
It's almost like a win-win from their perspective to...
Yes, exactly. At least we don't lose anything by doing this. It's limited downside, sort of unlimited upside, which is the greatest kind of situation can be in.
But this is just one of potential things that might happen with this kind of serenity, right? If you really need something, you can just ask about it. And then people may reach out back.
So it's almost like you make that community that has formed that Parasotional Connection video to be your almost like support network. It's a kind of interest, right? Because actually we had to look up what Parasotional Means.
I remember Justin Jackson mentioned in our podcast. Parasotional Connection means that, let's say, you listen to a podcast of Casey Newton and Kevin Russ.
So to you, they are like your friends. And they don't even know you, right?
That's a bit like one of the people we talk to, he also said, like, he listens to us. He knows so much about you. He feels that connection. He almost felt like Star of Strak was something. But for us, we have no idea.
It's very one-sided. It is one-sided. It's only when these people reach out, it becomes two-sided.
People, when people form this connection video, then I think more serenity can happen down the line.
I think people sometimes view the world as very transactional. But it's actually very relational. It's based on relationships.
And this is how you form relationships as well. You can just go and meet a thousand people and build a relationship for them.
But by putting something out there, those people find you and they build a relationship with you. You can know that one way relationship, which can sometimes morph into a two-way relationship.
Right. It's also a bit about the Brian McCullough in our very second episode.
I always like the way we said very second episode because we started by saying very first, but it was actually the second. So we corrected it to like very second episode.
So I keep going back to that. But he talked about this. The snowball effect of this.
This doesn't start one night and like next day you don't get all these people engaged with.
You have to keep doing it over time more and more. And that's why you need to be authentic.
And you know I'm working with authentication. You have to be authentic. Yes. And authorize.
But yeah, that's why you have to be authentic. And you sort of have to do it for yourself so that you can keep growing this so that it has a chance to become that message snowball.
Absolutely. Actually, I was listening to this episode over the software and the venture podcast. That's a good example in itself because you were listening to Role and Kent Guang for a long time.
And then we invited them onto our podcast. We became more friendly with each other than they invited us. Guang and I are like sending each other messages a few times a week.
So basically we converted that parasocial connection into an actual relationship, which is amazing for everybody involved. But anyway, so they had the episode with Kelsey Haithauer.
Second episode they had. So because they had to. They're very first episode with Kelsey.
The very second time with Kelsey Haithauer. And one of their very last episodes is with Kelsey too.
Where Kelsey talks about living Google and retiring, the thing that really struck me there is how he was describing his financial discipline from like the age he was 20 or so.
I think he's like 40 something right now. The reason why he was able to, or one of the reasons why he was able to retire now at this age is because he's been doing these disciplines for like 20 years.
So he built his habits, he built that wealth and all that. For somebody to listen to this right now and repeat this unless you are like in your 20s, it's almost impossible.
Because of all that compounding effect, I think like you said, everything good in life comes from compounding effect. This kind of building in public is also one of those things.
Right now we don't have, you know, that many followers, that many listeners, but three years from now we'll be looking at this.
And like if we didn't sustain this despite the low engagement in the early days, I'm talking like even when we just started right we would have 20 or 30 list of episodes.
You don't even know if people even listen to this, but you have to start somewhere.
The overnight successes that you see where probably like five years in the making.
Yeah, exactly.
Another thing I want to bring up is how you can get good inputs from your community when you build in public. So obviously once you have something out and people actually can give you feedback about features and bugs, you have a better engagement channel than some anonymous users for consumer product.
You don't have a relationship with people when you build in public, you establish that communication channel too way to me communication.
People can just write back to you because they are familiar with you. They're more comfortable doing this than if you were just like a random corporation faceless. I want to give a very good example that really struck me.
It was probably 15 years ago. There was a Russian author, Dmitry Klohovsky, who wrote a novel called Metro of 2033. I don't know if it was translated into English or not.
It was, I read it. It was awesome.
You read it? I listened to it in 2008, I think. It's like this old. It's about an apocalypse that happened in the world and then a bunch of people live in the Moscow Metro.
And then basically the entire thing happens in the tunnels of the Metro. It's like every station is like a city. It's a faceting, dystopic kind of thing.
But the way he wrote it, so he was posting one chapter at a time to the internet for free, I suppose.
And then people who would read it and discuss it. And then he would get all of that user-generated content. It would help him come up with better ideas for the plot.
And by the time the book was done, well people were language-related. It got published by a publisher. And like you said, it was even translated to other languages.
But this whole story of just getting it out there, building it in public, writing it in public, I think is fascinating.
And the similar thing, I don't know if you know the behind the scenes part of Andy Weir, you know the Martian, you've read it. Project Hail Mary, those are like some of my favorite recent science fiction, recent-ish books.
So he was a software engineer. And he was writing up these short stories and blog posts and posting it up on the internet.
And if I remember the first three chapters of the Martian, he did like that. And he got a lot of feedback and validation from the community saying, this is awesome.
That's when he went to actually write a book. And he completely transformed, I think, his life. Nobody thinks of him as a software engineer at this point, I think.
Yeah, he's a book author. I mean, Matt Damon was the main actor in the Martian. It's incredible.
Let's talk about the downsides of doing this. The reason why I even wanted to record this episode now, because I've just been grappling with how much sharing is enough versus oversharing.
I think we've established that sharing something is good, but what is the right level of sharing?
And I think a few reasons that I've been thinking about why good backfire is like, if you speak too much about your vision, about the features that you're building before you build them, other people can copy it.
And I think it very much depends on which industry you play in. Other big players who can just like grab your idea and just implement it faster than you can.
And they already have the market share. And that was your differentiator. So that could be a challenge.
Yeah, I mean, you are talking about it publicly. So yes, generally, my gut feel is like, if somebody is imitating your work, then you are already starting to be in a good place.
That's the best form of validation you can get if a big player is imitating your work.
The two things I would say is almost all the time, at least in software products. The idea is often like, not the thing. It's the execution.
It's the UX that you create usually. That's what really makes the featured popular or not, or the app popular or not.
But it's also the distribution channel. Actually, I think it's often neglected. The companies have a distribution channels. That's where they really excel.
Yes, that's where their power is. But they're also slower usually.
True. They will see a pose and like, okay, let's plan it for 2025.
Yes, they will take some deliberation to figure out whether this fits their roadmap or not when it fits in the way to build it.
And also, I think there's probably more danger from smaller players doing what you're doing. But that's where it comes down to execution ultimately.
More than the copying aspect, what I feel is a big danger is talking too much about your numbers.
Like the revenue sales or what? The revenue and all that. I am a bit hesitant.
I'm actually very hesitant about this as well. I'm like, I don't think we should share in revenue.
And why are you hesitant? Let me talk about your hesitation first.
Maybe there is some taboo but money just in general. I never was comfortable sharing how much money I make personally.
I was okay to tell my parents how much money I make. But my friends, I'm already not very comfortable.
Even my extended family is outside of my parents. Even my sister, I wouldn't be very comfortable.
Casins and others are not comfortable at all.
Especially if you're making good money. If you're making like a thousand bucks driving a bus, don't care.
But if you're making hundreds of thousands, they're making tens of thousands, then you create a reason for jealousy and all that.
It's almost like you're creating an invisible status level because of money. That's true.
The company is different though. But I think it's like a logic and it also plays a role in my hesitation.
But I think for the company where it's the reason why I'm not comfortable is it shows the validation.
It also potentially shows some of the tactics that you use. Maybe some features that you use that move the needle.
And then that creates data points for your competitors to maybe like imitate.
Because if they follow you, they know that you ship something and that works and they see like these whatever millions of dollars coming in.
And like, okay, so let's go do it, right?
Rather than the specific idea, I think this is the key thing that you give signals about what to look for.
Maybe this is a bit of an unfounded or premature worry.
But I feel like not for us specifically, but generally talking about revenue, right?
At some point, if you're going to have an exit, like you're going to sell or you're going to acquire like funding in it or get some money from somebody else.
I feel like you have lost a lot of your negotiating power by giving out a lot of your internals too early.
But I think in our case, we are like prematurely early to think about that risk specifically, but it is a risk.
And that's one of my main things about not sharing too much about the internal revenue aspects.
Yeah, but I think you and I are agreeing that we should not share kind of revenue numbers publicly and I think we will not.
Where I'm a bit more comfortable is maybe sharing some milestones that we hit.
Let's say whenever we hit maybe like $100,000, maybe one million, that's just good signal to send to starting with the users.
So like other people are paying.
There was trust there, right?
There's credibility that it's not going to go away.
Other people are paying maybe I should pay too, because there's also a herd effect.
It also sends a signal to potential employees, also potential contractors, vendors, users gain more credibility when you've hit a certain milestone.
Obviously investors, you want to take investors.
I think I'm very comfortable sharing actually growth percentages, not like a new weekly basis.
So it's not like every quarter we share a percentage, but more like we hit a certain milestone and get part of that the percentage growth was like X. Oh, like X percentage of our users are paying.
I am also very comfortable talking about the decision making internal technical details and all that.
I'm not super worried about people looking at that and saying, oh, yeah.
But I'm also curious.
I'm sure there are people listening right now who have other thoughts.
We would love to hear.
Right now is just in the safe when they listening to us.
Well, whoever is listening, if you have different thoughts, do send us an email at helloatmetacaspodcast.com.
We would love to have a chat about it.
If you're building a public, especially share your story or come over on our podcast, talk about it.
Yeah, that's how it gets started.
Yeah. So the other thing that I was thinking about, I was writing up like a short post linked in that we want to build a calm culture, which means you know, we do this to work like 80 hour work weeks.
We don't do this to work on weekends.
I mean, every now and then we will need to have this kind of intense maybe moments during launches or some kind of crisis, because we have that work ethic in us.
Right.
But it should not be the default mode of operation.
But then if you say these things out loud and it doesn't work out, have you lost your credibility at that point by just like making a bad decision publicly?
I feel like it can go two ways, right? So maybe some people will think that, yeah, you are just nuts and you do this publicly.
And therefore, even more nuts, we don't want to work with you or like hire you or whatever.
But at the same time, I think if you frame it properly, that you have offices, is that this kind of different culture can be built.
We are trying this, it may not work out.
And then if it doesn't, well, at least you've had this caveat up front.
Also, I feel like the kind of people I would want to work with in the future, if nothing comes out like you said, nothing comes out of this.
Right? Like it was a bad decision, whatever.
The people that I would want to work with in the future are the people who would look at it and say, okay, what were the decisions?
What did you learn from it? What are you going to do differently rather than say, like, oh, you made a bad decision.
Let's not work with you.
I don't want to work with those people.
Actually, that's a good point. This kind of public statements, they can help weed out filter out.
Yeah, people we don't work with anyway.
I think you also mentioned one more was your reputation.
If you take a big stand on a, I don't know, a political issue or something like that, right?
And that turns out to be an unpopular thing. There is definitely a risk there.
Yeah, generally my perspective is that politics should be kept out of the company stuff.
Like we should not do what Elon Musk is doing, even some of the changes post.
So he sometimes, I mean, I agree with what he said, but I know it pieces off a lot of people who are on the polar opposite from what he was saying.
I think every one of us has unpopular opinions.
And yeah, there is no place for them.
There is no need to, like I think, express all of those in your persona through the company.
I think in the small startup, you and the company are inseparable.
Let's say if I say something politically damaging, it might affect our ability to hire people in the future.
It's not a company. It's just my belief.
Who's going to buy this bullshit, right?
So let's finish this by this.
I think it's very easy to share stuff that goes well.
After it has gone well.
Yes, even like we hire Jenny. Yeah, we talk about the compensation and all that, right?
But then maybe we made the wrong decision that we don't know how it's going to pan out.
We might just wait a few months and then talk about how it turned out great or not talk about it at all.
And I'm more in the camp of when we have difficult decisions, let's just talk about them.
And then if they pan out wrong, then we can have a little respect from this also publicly.
I mean, obviously every time we do this, we need to account for risks.
Yeah, the risks we talked about already.
But I feel like it's also an immediate point of reflection when we talk about this.
That's true.
Actually, even when we write up by the decision, it's already a point of reflection right after we made the decision.
Or while we're making the decision.
So it actually might help improve the decision itself.
Also, some things that I don't feel comfortable talking about is any legal stuff.
I think it's okay. Let's say we have our terms of service in privacy policy and all of that.
Broad strokes.
Like, after we've already done it, maybe we could just say like this is the law we used.
But we should not discuss like, these are the risks we've identified for ourselves.
Because that automatically exposes us because people will find loopholes and all.
If they really have malicious intent.
So I think legal stuff, I've been just trained really hard by the Amazon lawyers to sometimes not even put things in the wrecking.
Sometimes that culture, it becomes extreme.
I'm curious now, what do you think about when we talk openly about that technology?
Or let's say like, what would you feel about talking about like, oh, we evaluated these, these, these kind of risks for the security.
Or something like that.
I think as long as you mitigate them, I think it's okay to talk about that.
If you say like, we accept these risks.
And then it creates basically publicly exposed attack vector.
So yeah, that's different.
But I think for legal, that's not like for security.
Let's say if you say we've identified this risk, there is no mitigation for a lot of things.
Yes.
For legal, it's just not black and white, right? It's all in a great area.
So that's why, yeah.
Legal, and also like, none of us are lawyers.
If we're lawyers, or at least one of us was a lawyer, we would have been more comfortable maybe because we would understand what we were talking about.
But like, we don't.
Also, if one of us was a lawyer, we probably would have, I feel like 80% of all the money we have paid so far are two lawyers.
So yeah, so we would have saved a lot of money already.
That's true.
All right, so the last section of the episode that becomes a tradition is what are we reaching a listening?
So Arnav, what are your books of the week or podcasts of the week?
Before we get to books, podcasts of the week, I have been all, of course like emergency podcasts about Simon Moutman.
In spite of me feeling like, okay, this is just a few days, let's just calm down.
I'll just listen to all this after a few days.
The insane drama while we were in that period during that weekend was crazy.
And I wasn't rigged by it.
If you know the HBO TV show succession, it was like that in real life.
And I did enjoy it.
So the coder, I think it was like a merge between the coder and the first cast, but they did a great breakdown.
You shared it with me, I think, originally.
I also subscribed to their podcast.
I listened to almost everything.
So that was a really good breakdown. Hard fork had some really good behind the scenes takes on what could be happening and all that.
And also good breakdown of the timelines of what happened, who did what and all that.
Those were like really good.
Aside from that, I don't think I heard any other podcasts and the ones that we always do to prepare for our future guests.
Those are always there.
In terms of books, I don't know where I got the cue, but atomic habits.
I've only ever read the minutes version of it, like here the takeaways from it.
I started that book and I'm really enjoying it.
I listened to that book on my way back from Vancouver last time I visited you, I think.
Oh, okay, so like a year back or something maybe.
Last November, I think, yeah.
I actually don't remember much.
It just shows how bad information is retained when you listen versus reading.
The one thing that I'm really liking about that book is even though it's about habits and all that.
The way to change your habits is not to think about the habits, but to think about your identity.
If you want to be a tennis player, for example, instead of saying like, I'll go to the gym every day, I'll do this every day, I'll go practice this much every day.
Just think about like, I am a tennis player.
What do I need to keep doing to stay as a good tennis player?
And that will be the biggest motivation.
For some reason, I think it doesn't resonate with me.
Really?
Okay, interesting.
I remember I read the same thing in Adam Grants' book, given take over 10 years ago.
He was saying something along the same lines.
If you want your kid to do something, you don't tell him that they should share.
It's more like, you're a kind person, therefore you share.
And it just felt to me very manipulative, especially when targeted at kids.
When they read the Tome of Habits, like for some reason, it's just this identity thing.
Maybe it's just not part of our culture as much.
I mean, my culture.
I'm like, whatever.
Tell me this.
I think he had a really good example.
I just made one up on the flag, right?
Like, let's say you're a smoker and you want to stop smoking.
If you make your goal that I want to stop smoking, you have a very high failure rate.
Like, we know that people fail with that.
However, if you change it to like, I don't smoke, I'm not a smoker.
And I do resonate with that kind of perspective.
It's hard to, I think, change your identity like that too.
But I do feel like if I was a smoker and I start with the belief, somehow I make my head believe that I'm not a smoker, I'm more likely to stay a non-smoker.
Then in my head, believing that I must smoke and I want to become a non-smoker.
I wonder if part of that is this kind of social thing where...
When you make a statement socially, right?
Somebody offers you a cigarette and you say, like, I don't smoke.
You can't go back on that.
There was something about it in Daniel Kahneman's book.
Accountability, I think.
But you're putting it on yourself.
Yes, but also like you're making this claim in the external world.
And then you have to keep yourself accountable, otherwise you become inconsistent with what you're saying.
Like, I'm vegetarian, right?
Well, I got forbidden to eat chicken in front of those same people later on because they will remember that what you said, right?
Now, remember the book and this thing.
That's why I don't remember much about the book itself because it didn't quite resonate with me.
Actually, I think I got it unaudible.
I listened to it and I'm like, I just returned it back because I didn't feel like it was worth my money.
Oh, I am listening to it unaudible too, but I'm going to buy the book.
I love it so far, yeah.
Good, good, good.
What are you listening to?
I've just finished Death's End, which is the third book in the 3-Bodied trilogy.
So I'm done with the trilogy.
Amazing mind-blowing stuff.
Yeah, mind-boggling stuff.
Especially with that power, where like 18 million years passed.
Oh my god, that's, I mean, I won't spoil it.
The book series gets like increasingly more abstract and philosophical.
Like, it's so far.
The way it starts, it's like sci-fi.
And the way it ends is like philosophy.
Yeah, I read the first book five years ago.
And then the other one I read this summer.
So the second one, the Dark Forest.
I thought like, okay, so Dark Forest, I definitely enjoy more than the 3-Bodied problem.
So the second book is my favorite.
And then I read the third book, and now I'm undecided.
But I feel like the third book, I think the plot is so twisted there.
And also some of the concepts there are just so out there, like alien, literally.
But also all those multi-dimensional things.
Actually, the thing that is really helpful to be able to understand what they're talking about there, is not another book that Justin Frankl recommended on our podcast.
It's a book called Flatland.
It's a book that was published over 100 years ago.
It's about, I guess, a geometrical figure is living in two-dimensional space in the flatland.
And then they get exposed to three dimensions.
And the book just shows how, if you live in two dimensions, you cannot comprehend three dimensions.
It's just outside of your realm of language and concepts.
Whereas from three dimensions, you just look down, it's all obvious.
I almost feel like this person, essentially, who wrote the trilogy, he probably read Flatland.
Because I think some of the things that he says there, they're almost like borrowed from that book, in terms of like, you cannot comprehend this if you haven't been there.
And only when you get exposed to it, then you understand it.
Well, you still don't understand it, but at least you can appreciate it.
That book series is one of my, I think, all-time science fiction favorites.
The moment I finished that third book, I started the whole series again, because there's so much mind-fuck going on, right?
And a lot of what happened in the first book makes sense in the second book, and then more and more in the third book.
So I finished it immediately, read it back to back.
And last year, I think I was on a long road trip somewhere.
That's when I was like, it's perfect.
Let's spend nine hours on this thing.
And I did that again. It was awesome.
It's not nine hours, it's like 29 hours for the last one.
I think the first book is like nine hours.
I remember I started it.
Like we were driving, I think, to Oregon or somewhere.
So it was like an Eitar drive or coming back from Oregon, something like that.
I started the first book.
And then, of course, you're not putting it down again.
You're just going to finish it. So after coming back home, yeah.
Another second book is about 20 hours.
The last one is 29 hours.
I'm not sure about the first one, but I also have a physical book at home right now that I got from my son of the first book.
It looks as big as the other two.
So I suspect it's also about 20 hours.
Maybe it was nine hours when it's sped up.
Anyway, so yeah, that's what I've been up to.
And I'm trying to know to consume any information for the last couple of weeks, just because it was too dense.
Yeah. Okay. This is a great episode.
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Ilja. Oh, yeah.
As always, you're very welcome.
Yeah. So where can people find us?
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And if you have any feedback or any thoughts about what we talked about, at helloappmetacastpodcast.com.
Yeah.
Awesome. See you next week. Yeah. Bye.