⭐️ The 11 star experience
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What you need to know
⭐️ The 11 star experience
😍 Beautiful database businesses
💬 Strong views loosely held
📝 Learning from job descriptions
A good service isn't good enough
Masters of Scale: 1. Airbnb's Brian Chesky: Do things that don’t scale on Apple Podcasts
Show Masters of Scale, Ep 1. Airbnb's Brian Chesky: Do things that don’t scale - 3 May 2022
3 min read vs 36 mins listening
Happy 5th birthday to Masters of Scale. Reid celebrated by republishing his first ever episode with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. And boy is it a good one. You’ll hear how Brian invented the infamous 11-star experience, a framework I’d recommend you go through for your own company.
What they say
If you want to build something that’s truly viral, you have to create a total mindfuck experience that you tell everyone about
We took one part of our product and we extrapolated what a 5 star experience would be and then we went crazy
So a 1, 2 or 3 star experience, you get to your Airbnb and noone’s there
So a 5 star experience is you knock on the door, they let you in, great, but that’s not a big deal, you’re not going to tell every friend about it
So we thought would would a 6 star experience be? You knock on the door, the host opens, they show you around, and on the table is a welcome gift, maybe a bottle of wine or candy, you say: wow, I love this more than a hotel, I’ll definitely use Airbnb again
What’s a 7 star experience? You knock on the door, they open and welcome you in: here’s my full kitchen, I know you like surfing, there’s a surfboard waiting for you, I’ve booked lessons for you, it’s going to be an amazing experience, btw here’s my car, you can use it too
A ten star experience would be the Beatles check-in in 1964, you get off the plane, there’d be 5000 high school kids cheering your name, you’d get to the front yard and there’d be a press conference for you
So what would an 11 star experience be? You’d show up to the airport and the host is there with Elon Musk and says: we’re going to space
The point of the process is maybe 9, 10, 11 are not feasible, but you have to design the extreme to come backwards
Suddenly knowing your preferences and having a surfboard in the house seem reasonable, it’s just crazy logistics
This is the kind of stuff that creates amazing experiences
There’s two stages of a startup’s product. The first is design a perfect experience and then you scale that experience, and that’s it
Brian Chesky
What I say
Why it matters: To build loyal advocates for your business, you need to think beyond existing barriers and discover what exceptional looks like. I’m going to hazard a guess. Your business sits anywhere between a 3 and 5 star experience. Am I right? Well, I challenge you to go through this exercise and push your business to start offering a 6, 7 or 8 star experience. Pilot this for a subset of customers. I bet that you’ll see a step change in customer satisfaction, retention and referrals.
Between the lines: Within a week of hearing about the 11 star experience, we ran a product workshop at Medicspot to adopt this framework. It was an amazing team building experience. Why? Because we aligned on what exceptional looks like and put together a plan to achieve this.
Unfortunately, the details of our workshop are confidential. But feel free to reach out if you need a hand putting your workshop together and I’ll be happy to share a few tips on what worked for us.
Data arbitrage
My First Million: Elon Musk, Mobile Minorities, and How to Overcome Fear on Apple Podcasts
Show My First Million, Ep Elon Musk, Mobile Minorities, and How to Overcome Fear - 28 Apr 2022
2 min read vs 45 mins listening
Data is the new oil. I’m sure you’ve heard that saying numerous times over the last decade. Data may not be new anymore but database businesses are still just as profitable and exciting as ever.
What they say
I love database businesses. I research database businesses like crazy
I came across [RELX] because they own LexisNexis, which has 140B legal records and documents
I believe RELX is the most profitable company in the world in terms of margin, it’s a little more than a $50B company
They own PatentSight which has a patent asset index of 135M patent documents
They have Law360 which is like The Hustle but for lawyers, it’s basically a daily newsletter for lawyers
There’s a tonne of database businesses in the legal category
Sam Parr and Shaan Puri
What I say
Why it matters: Most people assume you need to have your own dataset to launch a database business. Sure, that helps and it’s super defensible. Think Nielsen, Experian and Gartner. But you don’t always need to own the data yourself. A few solopreneurs are building businesses based on publicly available data.
Take Alex West. He trawls through news outlets, funding platforms, and social media every month to collate a list of all the startups that have recently raised funding. He enriches those lists with contact details and sells this for $197/mo on Cyberleads.
There’s so much data waiting for you, but it’s crying out for a bit of love. If you clean it up, give it some structure, and add a few bells and whistles (think pretty charts and extra commentary), you’ll have yourself a business that spits off cash in no time.
Between the lines: Most data is often useless to the average Joe. Sometimes, even helpful data isn’t helpful enough. Think podcast reviews. Let’s say a friend recommends This Week in Startups. Sure, it’s a good pod. It has 98 reviews with an average rating of 4.7. But it has 1452 episodes at the time of writing this. How do you know what episode to listen to? What happens if you pick one that’s particularly worse than the rest?
That’s a problem I’m looking to solve for with Podup. I’m building a platform where listeners can leave reviews, add comments, and read a more detailed summary. If you have any ideas or want to lend a hand with the project, I’d welcome your input!
Rigorously question your red lines
Masters of Scale: 107. BetterUp’s Alexi Robichaux & Prince Harry: Scale yourself first, and ...
3 min read vs 43 mins listening
Alexi broke his redlines. Here's how the CEO of BetterUp, the largest coaching and mental health startup in the world, took his business down a path he said he'd never walk. Why did he do this? Because he had the wrong redlines to begin with. He assumed that corporates would want full access to employee coaching data and so deemed B2B opportunities a no-go for BetterUp. He shares with Reid why he flipped his position and the impact this had on his company.
What they say
Be open to new ways of thinking
Once Alexi and his team realised just how powerful an enterprise version of their software could be, BetterUp unlocked dizzying new levels of scale
Because their business customers soon learned what BetterUp already knew: employees who learn a healthy growth mindset help make the whole company better
When founders, managers and leaders are given the keys to mental fitness, they manage their teams in a much healthier way
Reid Hoffman
Be curious rather than self-critical
An essential scale mindset is built around infinite learning, it welcomes a beginners receptiveness to new information and new patterns
As humans we’re hardwired to have an emotional response to our mistakes, we get defensive and ashamed
One of the most critical mindsets to adopt along your scale journey is simply being able to be curious instead of self critical when you’re wrong
Reid Hoffman
What I say
Why it matters: Alexi adopted a curious mindset when presented with a business model he’d previously rejected. By adopting a strong views loosely held mindset - one I’d encourage everyone to have - he realised his preconceptions were wrong. The result? BetterUp is now a B2B company, valued at $4.7B. Conviction is critical to execution but it’s important to be open to new information and how this can change your decision making.
Between the lines: I’ve not personally used BetterUp, but I can testify to the value of coaching. Nine months ago, I believed coaching was a fluffy activity reserved for the Silicon Valley elite. However, I was given the opportunity for executive coaching at Medicspot in October 2021 and it has made me a 10X better leader.
I went in with an open mind and committed to 3 months of coaching with a guy named Sam Knight (you get in touch with him at sam@momentumprocesses.com). Within 4 weeks, I saw a step change in my approach to consensus building and decision making. He gave me tools that allow me to live a more stress-free and purposeful life and I continue to work on self-improvement with him to this day.
Read between the lines
Business Brainstorms: Brainstorming SaaS ideas with Tom Zaragoza on Apple Podcasts
Show Business Brainstorms, Ep Brainstorming SaaS ideas with Tom Zaragoza - 10 Feb 2022
3 min read vs 37 min listening
Job descriptions are the most under appreciated research tool. You can find out where a company needs support, where a company is focusing, and how fast a company is growing. Hell, you can even find SaaS and database business opportunities from them. Tom Zaragoza shares his process for doing exactly that.
What they say
Job descriptions are literally giving you a list of problems to solve
Companies hire people to solve problems. Job descriptions tell you requirements of the job, what you would need to actually do
From there you can start to see the specific problems that are either industry agnostic or maybe even industry specific
If there’s certain keywords within there that look interesting and are specific to describing a problem then I put them into Google and add in ‘management software’ - that’s my favourite keyword to tack on, but there’s so many
That’s how you narrow down what a solution or maybe even a micro-SaaS solution might be just from doing that process over and over again
Tom Zaragoza
What I say
Why it matters: There a bunch of ways to turn publicly available job descriptions into beautiful businesses. Here are a couple more ideas:
Lead list for agencies. I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of spam from agencies every time I post a new role. They manually trawl through LinkedIn, Indeed and Fiverr, find my email using Hunter.io, and send me very poorly written cold email.
You can sell a subscription that includes a database of companies who are hiring for roles that can be outsourced to agencies instead. Premium plans could include hiring manager contact details. Want to upsell further? Offer consulting on how to do cold outreach properly - someone needs to teach them.
Competitor research subscription. This is how Apple got found out about its renewed self-driving car efforts. Job titles included ‘Lead Mechanisms Design Engineer’, with responsibility to: “drive detailed design, simulation and test activities for mechanical devices involving moving parts and dynamics”.
You can offer big corporates a choice of what competitors they want monthly reports on and collate this into a single custom report. Want to include one competitor? That’ll be $10,000/mo. Want five competitors? That’ll be $25,000/mo.
Between the lines: You can extract an immense amount of value from job descriptions, from R&D focus to marketing strategy. Even if these ideas don’t float your boat for your next business venture, you should at least start following your competitors on LinkedIn and get notified about their next hires.
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