One for the road

I've done the short drive from Cornwall to London and back six times in the last eight weeks. Instead of listening to mindless radio I've got into podcasts recently and thought I'd share the top podcasts I've listened to and what I've been picking up from them:

Top Podcasts

1. How I Built This by NPR: in their words, this is a podcast about innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I love hearing the stories of others and NPR deliver this in a really engaging storytelling way. They get big names on the show with businesses ranging from beer brands to cosmetics companies - it is well worth a listen!
2. How to Start a Startup by Sam Altman: this is a series of lectures given at Stanford University facilitated by Y-Combinator and given by the founders of a number of other amazing businesses like Facebook, Air BnB and Paypal. Unlike a lot of podcasts that are fluffy self-help ones, this is a really practical, experience based podcast giving advice on all areas of starting a business and I took away a tonne of tangible and actionable pointers from it.
3. Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman: Reid co-founded LinkedIn and in this podcast he explores his philosophy on how to scale a business. I think there's a lot of advice out there about how to start a business and get it off the ground but this one is quite unique as it really focuses on the scale phase which is a critical but not often talked about aspect of building a business.

Key Learnings

1. Don't go for the Super Bowl launch: the founders of Air BnB shared this in a 'How I Built This' episode about how they opted for multiple small launches over one big launch. This enabled them to move fast and keep things cheap and they were able to learn their key lessons quickly in order to iterate their offering for the next launch at a slightly larger scale. This was instrumental in them pivoting their product until they nailed it and then they scaled it - I loved their approach and it's one we're trying to take with Jubël.
2. Do things that don't scale: this is the Y-Combinator mantra and I was confused when I first heard it but really liked the thinking behind it. Early stages are a brilliant time to really put in the effort to drive engagement with your customers and get important user feedback. Usually this requires an approach that is not scalable in the long-run, but initially it is the best way to pick up the key learnings you need to succeed in the long-run.
3. There are two types of growth: I love Patagonia as a brand and look-up to their approach to business as a best in class examples of how to put values at the heart of what you do. Their founder Yvon Chouinard shared in a podcast how there are two types of growth, growth that makes you stronger and growth that makes you fatter, and you have to watch out for the one that makes you fatter. The advice was solid - in order to be a sustainable brand and business over-time, go for the growth that makes you stronger and make wise decisions otherwise you could be a flash in the pan and be here today but gone tomorrow.
4. Don't worry about competition: I used to be terrified about telling anyone about my business ideas for fear of competition but most start-ups don't fail because of competition so stop worrying about it. The competitor to be feared is the one who doesn't worry about you at all but the one he goes about making his business better the whole time. 
5. There's no magic bullet: before I started Jubël I wanted to speak to as many business owners as I could to understand how they did it and I was looking for the one size fits all answer that would enable Jubël to be successful. That answer doesn't exist so don't pay to sign up to anything that says it does. You don't need expertise in start-ups, you need expertise in your users. There is no secret that makes things tick so stop asking the question and start making something that your users love and tell them about it.

Always on the lookout for good new podcasts to listen to as I seem to spend half my life in the car at the moment so please let me know if there's some good ones you've been listening to!