Travis Kalanick on going as hard as possible, Marketing advice from Brian Armstrong, and Elon Musk's programming skills

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: Travis Kalanick on going as hard as possible

“When you build a company the way I built it which is like my current one, where you're literally under the radar, it means that you are powered by you have an internal fulfillment.

You're not caring what others think. You you get internally fulfilled with building.

I don't look at somebody and go, “I had it so much harder. uphill both ways to school,” I don't think like that.

It's more about the excellence of the process.

So, I'm like, "Well, how do you raise money?" And they're like, "just throw together a deck." That’s not a thing.

What is a thing is going all the way until it hurts. If you're doing something and it's easy, it's not valuable.

Just think of like a world class marathoner on mile 21. Is that dude smiling?

No, he's not smiling. By the way, if he is smiling, you know what's about to happen? He's about to get his ass whooped, because somebody else who's down for the pain will go harder and further and pass him.

If you're getting money easy, I'm like, why didn't you go harder? You could have done it better and more.”

Source: FULL INTERVIEW: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick is Back with a New AI Startup

2: Marketing advice from Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong is the CEO and founder of Coinbase:

“We have these young, internet-native marketing people. They’re not like the people who used to make ads for Coca-Cola or something. They’re people who’ve lived their whole lives on the internet and understand meme culture.

Someone could reasonably say, “Brian, are you trying to turn the company into a meme stock or something?”

No. I think we’re building something very serious and important—an institution that’s going to stand the test of time. But we do need to get the word out in the way people actually consume content today.

And frankly, I think our shareholder letter is brilliant. I get a lot of great feedback on it from the biggest funds and other folks like that.

So I’m glad we’re putting out a shareholder letter. But 99% of people aren’t going to read it. They’re going to see some clip about the company on social media. That’s how they’re ingesting information about the company.

So the question becomes: how do we speak in an internet-native way?”

Source: Brian Armstrong: Iron in His Veins

3: Elon Musk’s programming skills

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- The Z Fellows Team

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