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This week on episode 3 of Jake & JZ, we talked about:
- The Seinfeld Moviefone episode (”Why don’t you just tell me what the product does?”)
- The Startup Wayback Machine (continued!), our technique for learning from successful companies in their early days
- Websites through the years, including Uber in 2011, iPhone in 2007, Slack in 2014–2017
- Solving one problem well before you try to solve a bunch of problems
- A great LinkedIn post from Kushal Byatnal (founder of Character portfolio company Extend) about selling your product before you build it
- A fun tabletop analog game called KLASK (check out this epic game on YouTube)
- A great movie: The Eagle Huntress
- And much more
📩 Get an email about every episode at JakeAndJZ.com
💸 Learn more about our seed fund Character Capital
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Creators and Guests
What is Jake & JZ?
Weekly podcast about startups, design, marketing, technology… and anything else we’re thinking about. 🤓
Hosted by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, co-founders of Character Capital and bestselling authors of Sprint and Make Time.
JZ (00:00)
So last week we were looking at a bunch of different websites for startups and for more mature companies, but we were talking about what are the best ways for companies to describe what they do. And I can't believe it, but I completely forgot about an amazing mental trick for thinking about this. it's based on a Seinfeld episode. Have you seen the movie phone episode?
Jake (00:28)
yeah, for sure. I actually was thinking about this when we were talking about it last week, I felt like I had probably gone on enough tangents. So I resisted. However, it is very good. It is a very good tool.
JZ (00:41)
Yeah, we deferred that tangent to this episode. Lucky for you, listener, watcher. So there's this episode of Seinfeld and I haven't seen it in a long time. I probably should have looked up the synopsis, but from what I remember, somehow Kramer's phone number ends up being the same as the movie phone number, or it's like off by one digit or something like
Jake (01:04)
Yes, and probably for everyone who's under, don't know what age, like explain what movie phone is because before...
JZ (01:09)
God. That's a really good point.
Jake (01:14)
the internet and even maybe early days of the internet before the internet was like, you could just get everything easily. If you wanted to see a movie and also this is before streaming. if you want to see a movie, you have to to the theater. And if you wanted to find out what was playing and when you could call this phone number and get all of the movie play times at the theater that you wanted to go to. So that was movie.
JZ (01:35)
Yeah. So it was more convenient than looking in the newspaper. you would type in. would punch in, press 1 for this theater, and then it would tell you these are the showtimes at this theater.
Jake (01:47)
Yeah, or maybe even you might even be able to type in the name of the movie and find out where it was playing. I, cause I think that's part of the, part of the joke is, Kramer trying to basically his line is crossed at the movie phone line. So he's getting these calls and he's trying to interpret the beeps so that he can answer. He could give the person an answer.
JZ (01:53)
Ooh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so first he decides to be the movie phone operator and yeah. he's like, yeah, enter the name of the movie or press two for like this theater. And of course.
Jake (02:14)
He's got like the newspapers so he can rifle through and try to find the listings.
He's doing the voice like it's a little pre -recorded. hello, you've reached movie phone.
JZ (02:28)
Yeah. And of course he can't decipher what the beeps mean because a machine can figure out what they are, but like to a human, they're, they all sound the same. So eventually he just goes, why don't you just tell me what movie you'd like to see? And it's as with every Seinfeld like episode,
Jake (02:45)
Ha
JZ (02:52)
the actual show is much funnier than the retelling of. we used to use this as a parable with startups a long time ago. why don't you just tell me what the product is? Why don't you just tell me what the company does on the homepage instead of going around in circles trying to sound clever and smart?
Jake (03:03)
Yeah. Yeah.
But it really feels like that sometimes. often you're looking at the marketing for a new thing and it's like they're sending you beeps. know, like, tell them, why don't you just tell me what it is? But it's hard. It's also very hard when you're in the thing to know what's a beep and what's telling the person what it is.
JZ (03:19)
Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. The other crazy thing that we used to do with telephones is you could call and get the time and the temperature. Did you ever use this when you were a kid?
Jake (03:44)
I didn't, but I was aware that it existed because I feel like it was a thing that would show up in TV shows sometimes. But yeah, you could call and get the time. Yeah, that's what a wild world that was.
JZ (03:45)
Time and temp, yeah.
interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah. Like what if your clock was off? You like the, you had a clock in your kitchen wall and the battery died and you're like, well, what time is it? I don't know. Like you could call the, I don't know what the number was. I'm sure there was a special number you would call and it would, would just tell you the time. and, I, and I remember it having the temperature too.
Jake (04:19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JZ (04:21)
Anyway, so concludes history hour, telephone history hour. Back to the present day. I'm going to keep talking about good writing, know, how to describe what you do. Why don't you just tell me what your company does? Whether it's a homepage, a sales deck, know, an email, whatever.
Jake (04:25)
Back to the present day.
JZ (04:45)
Yeah, should we get into it?
Jake (04:46)
get into it. Yeah.
you're listening to Jake and Jay Z the weekly podcast about startups, design, marketing strategy and more.
JZ (05:15)
I'm John Zyrowski, the co -founder and general partner of Character Capital. And I'm here with my co -founder, co -author, co -host, co -laborator, I'll have to think of some other co's that you can be someday, Jake Knapp. And you can read, listen, and learn more if you're so interested at jakenjay -z .com.
Jake (05:40)
Last week we talked about startups and new products and how they might be explained using a framework that John calls what, why, how. I'm getting much better at remembering the sequencing of those. is what, why, how. And we alluded to the idea of going into the Wayback Machine and finding out how startups
startups who are successful today, companies who have grown and found their target customer were successfully able to communicate what they were doing to their customers, how they did it in the early days, maybe at different phases along the way. Because a lot of times if you're doing a new thing, whether that's at a startup or you're in a larger company or whatever kind of project you're doing and you're trying to explain it to people.
If you do have the idea and it's a good idea to say, Hey, I want to look at how some other folks have done this. You've done a good job of explaining what they do. And we often tend to go to the same places. We'll often tend to go to like, well, how's Apple explain what they do? How do you know for a product? How do they market a product? know they're good.
JZ (06:47)
super successful companies that are really good at marketing. They're really good at writing, explaining their products. absolutely, we should learn from them. We should follow in their footsteps.
Jake (06:56)
We should, there absolutely are lessons there, but the challenge is if you're doing something new, if you're just getting started, if the product is brand new and nobody's heard of it before, nobody's heard of your company, nobody knows what this thing is, you're playing a different game than Apple is playing today. You're not.
You're not explaining something to people who've never heard of it, who aren't interested, who don't want to pay attention because it's just using up brain calories that they'd rather spend on something else. And so to find out how that really has worked for people when it was a hard thing to explain, when it was brand new and they didn't have that brand, they didn't have that relationship, didn't have that familiarity, you have to go back in time.
JZ (07:36)
Yeah, thankfully we have the way back machine archive .org has created this wonderful tool that you can type any URL into and see what that website looked like over time. And we think this is a really helpful technique. We do this a lot. when we're running sprints with companies and we're doing lightning demos, which are kind of these quick demonstrations of an interesting website or company or product that we think we can learn something from. And so.
imagine instead of looking at Apple today, imagine you could look at what Apple was doing in the, in the eighties, you know, when they introduced the Mac for the first time and you can learn from that. You can learn from them when they're at a point that's maybe a little closer to where you are as a company versus like, you know, the Apple of today, you know, wonderful in many ways, but, playing a different game, like Jake said, then, then a startup.
Jake (08:27)
it's remarkable that someone had the foresight set up to start archiving everything. cause it goes back into the nineties. You can go way, way back to see things. And I'm just thinking like, who is, who had the foresight? It's
JZ (08:30)
I know. I
Incredible.
archive .org and Wikipedia. amazing public services that you almost can't believe exist. They're like so good.
Jake (08:48)
Well, since I used to work on Microsoft and Carta, a competitive encyclopedia I have less fun feelings about Wikipedia than most people.
JZ (08:53)
Yeah.
Yeah, but you, you probably still use it all the time. Yeah.
Jake (09:01)
I still do. Yeah. It's unavoidable. It's unavoidable. You can't, can you not drink water? Can you not breathe air? I have to use, have to use Wikipedia.
JZ (09:09)
One of my favorite ways to use this is to look at companies that now do a lot of things and look back at when they, they only did one thing or like when they started out, how did they talk about that one thing? and I kind of an interesting example of this is, is Uber, you know, Uber super successful. They do a lot. They've they have rides. have.
Jake (09:22)
Yeah.
JZ (09:32)
They have food delivery. can get groceries on Uber. Now you can have, you can send it like if you have a small package you need to deliver across town, Uber can take it. They have a lot of stuff. You can rent cars through Uber. think, I mean, every time I opened the Uber app, there's a new promotion for some new, new service. and, it's interesting to look back at in the way back machine to look at Uber's website when they first started. so I'll just show, show this real quick.
Jake (09:59)
Let's see what it looks like.
Wow.
JZ (10:00)
So this is in 2011. And look at how specific this is.
And, and if you're listening on audio, so we're on the Uber homepage from 2011, there's a picture a black car, like a it's a, yeah, that's exactly right. So Lincoln town car, the classic. Yeah.
Jake (10:13)
car, it's a Lincoln town car. You rarely see these around anymore, those are the most comfortable cars to ride in the backseat of, by the way. That's unsurpassed in the modern world.
JZ (10:23)
Yeah. And it doesn't say what this website does not say is like, an innovative platform for transportation in cities around the world, right? It doesn't. Yeah. It just says everyone's private driver sign up now. And then below that it says request from anywhere, request a car with any mobile phone ride with style and convenience.
Jake (10:34)
Yeah, you don't see the word platform anywhere.
JZ (10:50)
Within minutes, a professional driver in a sleek black car will arrive. Hustle -free payment. Automatically charge your credit card on file. Tip included. It's so specific. It's not surprising that Uber had such clear product market fit what they were offering in the early days clicked so readily with people because it was so specific. It was so clear.
Jake (11:15)
Look at the what, why, how here, what it is everyone's private driver. Why request from anywhere ride with style and convenience, hassle free payment. This was a big deal in 2011. If you were trying to get around and you're visiting a city and you had to take taxis and it's time taxis were like, I just remember, man, it was always like, do I have enough cash? Cause they often wouldn't take a credit card. So it was like hassle that you expected a hassle when you had to pay, ride with style and convenience.
JZ (11:37)
Yeah.
Jake (11:44)
this was this is sort of like a luxury offering the way they positioned it at first and requesting from anywhere I mean you'd have to you'd have to figure out how to you know do I go find a taxi stand or am I like calling and I need to know the address and I need to wait there I don't know how long I'm gonna be waiting for the taxi to show up and so this I remember the first time I used you or do you remember the first time you used it
JZ (12:10)
I think I do. mean, I remember the general period like in San Francisco and using it. Actually, one thing I will say that I do remember is that Michelle and I used Uber like when it first came out, when it was just the black car and we liked it so much that we used it so much that we made in 2011 going into 2012, we made a new year's resolution half -heartedly that we should take Uber less because it was like expensive, right? It was like, because it was
Jake (12:11)
It was just.
Yeah.
What year was that? That's pretty good. That's an early adoption.
JZ (12:40)
It was like 2011 into 2012. So it was probably like.
But then in January of 2012, they introduced UberX, which was like a third of the price. And we were like, nevermind. They got us. It turns out we're not the only people having this sensation.
Jake (12:53)
Yeah.
Well, yeah, was terrific and very magical. they had that going for them. And of course that was all like, you get in the whole big topic of a lot of that was sort of underwritten by VC money. So they were able to make it cheaper than it would otherwise have been and blah, blah, blah. Uber is a long saga, but the what, why, how here.
is terrific, it's very clear, and it is a different game than they're playing today. And really shows a clarity of thought and a through line from what the service is to how we're going to talk about the service and sell it to people. then clear values that people can then recommend to other people. So that's like, that's the golden, the golden star for differentiation for me.
JZ (13:52)
Yeah, yeah. We were actually just talking with a portfolio company yesterday and they're in Character Labs right now and their vision for the company is broad. without giving too much away, they have an idea for an AI tool that could be useful to business owners.
but in a bunch of different applications, sort of a platform, literally a platform of different solutions that the customer could get access to. so it's like they're trying to start with like the Uber of 2024. And we had a great call with them yesterday because we get on the call and they're in the Character Lab. they've now run two design sprints.
Jake (14:37)
Yeah, yeah.
JZ (14:47)
and a foundation sprint and they're running another design sprint this week.
Jake (14:49)
That's
Quick reminder to our listeners, Character Labs is a program that we run at Character Capital. And it's super early stage startups who are founding teams, they're just getting going. And we work together in basically across four weeks running a sequence of sprints, including three design sprints in a row, which is the part that these teams are in now is the design sprints. So they're learning a ton every week. Some green, lots of red on their scorecards.
JZ (15:14)
It was.
Jake (15:20)
end of each week for the key questions and risks they're trying to assess.
JZ (15:24)
Yeah. And was great because like they've had some green, some red, they've, you know, been learning things, getting useful reactions from their customers, but it's what they're offering, which again, is this sort of platform, this AI platform for business owners. It's not really clicking, right? It's not really working for people, but they picked up on the fact that a lot of the customers that they've talked to, that they've tested prototypes with, they really want.
help from AI with one specific application, like running one specific part of their business related to marketing. And so we had this great call with the team yesterday where they're like, we've been hearing this from our customers and we're thinking of just focusing on creating a great AI tool for marketing. What do you think about that? And we were like, that's amazing. You should do that. Like you're trying to build Uber 2024 today.
you should go back and build Uber 2011 and like nail one thing, make it so good that people are making New Year's resolutions to spend less money on it because it's just too good. And then build from there and build from there and build from there. So we didn't even have to like give them that advice. They like learned that themselves, which was great. But a good example of why it's so important to start specific and make sure that you're solving
Jake (16:27)
Yeah.
JZ (16:47)
one problem, any problem, some problem for your customers before you branch out and try to solve a bunch of problems.
Jake (16:53)
Well, it's hard to understand any one problem well enough to figure out how to do the what, why, how of it. like looking back at this Uber page and I look at it I think, yeah, this all seems so familiar. remember that feeling of the difficulties with taxis at that time. And, and yet it took a great deal of insight to pinpoint. These are the things that make this experience bad. And.
JZ (16:57)
Yeah.
Yeah
Jake (17:21)
there's an opportunity to change it here. I have an idea for how to change it, recognize that and to be able to call those things out, even when they're obvious, mean, it's like what makes Seinfeld funny is it's a recognition of things that are obvious to all of us once they're highlighted on, like, yeah,
That is an obvious thing and boy that is silly. How silly that that's, that's basically what a startup is, a new product is. It's recognizing something that's just right in front of everyone or right in front of a large, large enough group of people that you have a market and being like, look, like this is stupid. You know, this is absurd. And here's a, here's a way to sort of fix it. And so instead of a joke, you have a product at the end.
JZ (17:58)
That's such a good point.
Jake (18:00)
Okay, so up next, let's take a look at the iPhone and actually illustrate what we're talking about with.
playing a different game, a different game today than when the product was first introduced. So if we start off and we look at the iPhone page as it is today, we've got, yeah, okay, iPhone designed to be loved. it doesn't tell you what the thing is at all, right? Like, because we all know what an iPhone is. if you don't know what an iPhone
iPhone is, they're not worried about that as a customer. They're trying to get you to buy your like 13th iPhone, right? So that's the game they're playing here. they're probably trying to convince you to buy something you really don't need, because we all probably have a functional phone already.
JZ (18:34)
Yeah.
Jake (18:42)
So get to know iPhone, you know, they get into talking about the cameras, the chips, the battery. And, you know, There is some somewhat and why here, you know, it's talking about what what it is and why. But clearly the burden is not on Apple
today to explain what the iPhone is to you in the same way that it is on a startup who's coming out with a new product today. But it's very interesting to go back and look at the very first iPhone page. So if we go way, way back in time and see when it first appears, and it'll be in early 2007,
If you haven't seen the video of Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone, you know, it's classic presentation. look, here's the 404 page for the iPhone. So this must be just before. They've got the folder ready. They've got this directory ready, but they haven't put the page there yet. This would probably send Mac rumors into a frenzy. So, okay, here we go. Here's the first.
JZ (19:29)
You
So we're now in February of 2007.
Jake (19:46)
Now we're in February, so this is after the announcement. And anyway, famously in the presentation, Steve Jobs says,
Today we're introducing three devices and he, talks about the three devices and this page is reinforcing that message. So the iPhone is three devices in one. And that's what it says here. Introducing iPhone. There's a picture of the hand holding the iPhone. then it says iPhone combines three products, a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls and a breakthrough internet communications device with desktop class email.
web browsing, maps, and searching into one small and lightweight handheld device. It's amazing how much text there is here. We're, we're less than halfway through this paragraph of text. this is quite interesting also just to see. Yeah. That was one sentence. That was one sentence.
JZ (20:34)
That was one sentence. Everything you said so far is one sentence. Very, very bold dash use. I'm a fan. I'm a big fan of the dash. from, I fell in love with the dash during my newspaper days. And this one really
Jake (20:47)
But there's a lot in between those two dashes. There's most people could consider a small paragraph.
To continue, iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi -touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone. All of those things are true. It is bananas that there's that much text, like above the fold. I mean, if just think about any Apple page today, they've had like,
JZ (21:07)
Okay.
It's pretty small text too. Yeah.
Jake (21:25)
Small text, yeah. I don't like, it's a good, it's a well -designed page. It's attractive, but.
JZ (21:32)
It's like, what size is it? Let me see here. It's 12 point. It's 12 point text. It's like tiny.
Jake (21:35)
John is going, okay. Yeah, it's super tiny. But there is a what, why, how going on here. What is it? It's sort of three devices in one.
And, why this is an entirely new user interface. It's enabling a new era. mean, it's actually kind of funny that in this, you know, above the fold on the marketing page and it's talking about ushering in a new era of software, which it totally did. mean, how often does somebody make up this bold of a claim and it comes true? but the, there's the list of below this sort of, think that if you're not reading and we know most people don't.
won't read that much text. That's why most websites don't have that much text. It says widescreen iPod, revolutionary phone, breakthrough internet device, high technology with an icon of like a wand or something or a laser maybe, thanks to it. And you can click into each of those and they each have like a big colorful, V1 iPhone sort of style icon next to it. Lickable, you know, three dimensional icon. But pretty interesting.
JZ (22:25)
And you can click into each of those to learn more.
Yeah.
Jake (22:40)
to see, I thought this is just like a world in which people don't know what an iPhone is. They don't know what a phone, a smartphone that has the entire thing is a screen and you touch the whole, like it's all new. And so they were really, really thoughtful and careful about how they explained what it was. And I really like painstaking about like, look, this is what this thing is. And they relied on a lot of text. And I mean,
most people probably had heard about it in the news. They, you know, they were super fans. I think the really the early adopters of the iPhone folks like you waited in line for it, right? Like you, were a big Apple fan. Right? So like most people who bought one were just big Apple fans, but still fascinating.
JZ (23:22)
Yeah. The other thing I remember about when the iPhone came out was there was this long period between when it was announced and when you could buy it. And so this webpage is from February of 2007. I know it was in the summer because I remember waiting in line to buy the iPhone. It was warm out in Chicago. Do you remember what month it was when it came out? OK. But so let's say, even if it was July, you know, that's still
Jake (23:30)
Right.
JZ (23:50)
Five months, a minimum of five months. So had this huge period of time when people were really interested in the, in the iPhone, but you couldn't buy it. couldn't pre -order it. Like this page does not have like a pre -order now, like reserve your iPhone button. It's just information. And one thing I remember very vividly was they use that time to do essentially like an ad campaign, but the ads were like, and I should try to find some of they were, they were what?
Jake (24:05)
Yeah.
JZ (24:16)
Why how? They were not the iPhone ads of today that are all about how beautiful the design is or showing like these cool uses of it in real life. It was here's how you browse the web on the iPhone. And it like showed a person like interacting with it. And they made a bunch of these videos. They were videos you could watch on their website and some of them were ads too. And this was really important because they had to teach the world how to use the iPhone. They had to teach the world.
what it was and how you interacted with it and what it actually looked like to use your fingers and tap and pinch and zoom and do all those things so that when the product came out, knew they knew what it was. They knew how to use it. I think that that aspect of the launch of the iPhone is often overlooked because we just think about this moment of the introduction and the sensation and how popular it was. And we forget that Apple had to had to
Jake (25:06)
Yeah. Yeah.
JZ (25:11)
teach the world how to use a totally new paradigm for interacting with computers.
Jake (25:16)
A real hallmark of how old this is is that on the screenshot, the carrier is singular.
JZ (25:22)
That's like three three AT &Ts ago.
Jake (25:26)
Yeah. So what should we look at next?
JZ (25:32)
Alright, I've pulled up here is Slack from 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.
Jake (25:42)
Okay, so one a year. Okay.
JZ (25:44)
So one a year, and we probably worked with Slack around, it was probably 2014 or 15, right? Yeah. So GV invested, and this was at the point where seen really good adoption from other tech companies, software teams who sort of intuitively understood what a chat room was. They had used chat rooms. They could see why it would be useful at work.
Jake (25:51)
I think that's right, yeah.
JZ (26:10)
A lot of people, like 500 ,000 companies had signed up for Slack pretty quickly. And around the time that GV invested, the next chapter of the company was to really tell the rest of the world about Slack, the rest of the professional world, and explain to people why they should use it if they work in a law firm or in a consulting company or an accounting office or
Part of the challenge was how do you explain this product to somebody who maybe has never used a chat room? They don't have the experience of using this type of product. So anyway, let's start with 2014. What do you think of this homepage, Jake?
Jake (26:51)
Well, not the most helpful headline in terms of what it says be less busy. There is a very nice vibe here. So you've got a person with their feet up on a desk. The desk is made out of planks of rough wood. You can see that there's a Mac computer on top of that desk, but it just
JZ (26:56)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jake (27:12)
The whole vibe is like very chill and it says, be less busy than below that. The text is relax your team's communication problems. We've got that Slack brings all your communication together in one place. It's real time messaging, archiving and search for modern teams.
The lead is very buried here, although the lead, I guess, is actually how you feel with Slack, that Slack is gonna actually change the feel of work. And I imagine that because this is from the era of word of mouth in tech companies, that the vibe...
JZ (27:37)
Yeah.
Jake (27:47)
maybe what they needed here to sell it. Maybe that sort of why. So they're kind of leading with why. And then getting a little bit into what it is. A little bit by saying it's real -time messaging, archiving, and search for modern teams. And that's the last sentence you get before they say, give us your email address and your company name and sign up for free. So they're...
JZ (28:05)
Yeah.
Jake (28:08)
They're leaning in for the kiss very early here. And I think the presumption is you've heard about this from somebody already and yep, it is just as chill and cool as he thought it was. That's the big message of the hero image at the top. So just go ahead and sign up.
JZ (28:10)
Thanks.
It's pretty crazy So below that, there's a section that says, learn what Slack can do for you, take the they don't show the tour, they don't show the screenshots, the video on the homepage. You have to click
Jake (28:37)
It says
JZ (28:38)
And then below there's like a testimonial, which is like, you know, it's a cool testimonial of somebody saying, I'm basically in love with Slack. took us less than 24 hours to get everybody on the board. Good quote, but it still doesn't tell you what it Then below that Slackworks, the services your team already uses, see our full list of integrations, still doesn't tell you what it can't see what it So very interesting, very bold. Did not follow our advice.
Jake (28:43)
it.
Very interesting. yet this was very effective. This was at that time, and maybe it still is, this was the fastest growing business app of all time, right? So this website achieved that, the best B2B product of all time, of early growth, the best. how they did it. And obviously a huge part of that was the product itself.
JZ (29:09)
Right, yep.
Jake (29:26)
and people just recommending it to other people. That's the engine behind all of this. But this part is important. The marketing is important, even with the best product possible. may have spot on here that what they needed to do was to tell these folks, these super tech enthusiast folks who are adopting it, hey, the thing you hate the most is being busy and stressed out. This is chill. We just have a different take on it.
JZ (29:26)
Yeah.
Jake (29:53)
And yeah, that's interesting. They're breaking the mold in terms of the marketing and positioning.
JZ (30:00)
Yeah. And I think important to consider this web page in the context of those other things you were just saying, like word of mouth, like people, you know, hearing about this from other companies, getting invited maybe to sign up for it from a coworker because you know, nobody, wakes up in the morning and all of a sudden is looking at a website for Slack.
about these examples, they are a step in a journey. And there's something that comes before and there's something that comes after. And depending on what those things are, the website itself may not be the most important part, right? Maybe Slack was so successful despite this website, or maybe this website did just enough that when somebody came into it with a really strong recommendation from a colleague, maybe the website
to just enough to get them over that hump into, yep, I'm going to put in my email address, my company name, I'm going to sign up and try it. So it's super important as much as we like to talk about, you what does this website do and say, and how good is that? It's really important to zoom out and think about the broader context of how people are, are learning about your product. They're, they're understanding your product. They're building trust in it. They're trying it. They're starting to use it in their day -to -day lives.
Jake (31:13)
this was intentional and probably was working and part of the reason you'd think that's true is because the founder Stuart Butterfield had previously founded Flickr he had figured out how to explain products to people before this probably wasn't just luck on top of a really good product this is probably a very good plan well let's see how it evolves should we go forward in time of year
JZ (31:34)
Yeah. Yeah. So that was 2014. So let's look at 2015.
Jake (31:39)
Okay. So 2015, now we've got, a image of an office with a video on top of it. There's a, there's a small image that's crisp of a person at a, sitting at a And the headline says in quotes, so yeah, we tried Slack dot dot dot.
And then underneath the video, says the sandwich video team tried Slack. It turns out it really did change the way they communicate. And so again, here, like the sort of the whole thing they're, they're going for is the vibe. And also this feeling that it's different. it's chill. It's the, it's the why they're leading with the why of the product. I remember that video and I don't think we should play the video in the podcast, but it's a great video. I imagine if people search for.
Sandwich Slack video on YouTube. You probably be able to find it. Sandwich is a company that makes terrific advertising videos for startups. My personal favorite is Notarize. So you should also, I guess you could just look for Sandwich's website and find a whole archive of their stuff. But they're really putting a lot of weight on that people watching that video. again, I think, yeah, what do you think is going on here, John?
JZ (32:33)
Yeah.
I don't know. mean, when I pulled these up before we started chatting today, what struck me was at how bad they all seem on these homepages. And like, I agree with you that this was working and there was a plan and there was a strategy. And the fact that it stayed kind of basically the same from 2014 to 2015, which was a period of incredible growth for the company.
Jake (33:00)
You
JZ (33:24)
makes me think that it must have been working really I think it's helpful to look at these because it doesn't strictly follow our advice or like conventional advice about what you should do when you're explaining a product. So kind of interesting. I think your theory is right. you're probably coming to this because you've heard about it already.
Jake (33:34)
Yeah. Yeah.
JZ (33:42)
And the job of the website is not to completely explain Slack and convince you to do it. It's to just get you over that hump from, I'm already here. Like, okay, cool. Like this feels about right. The sandwich video team, like I've maybe I've heard of, of sandwich video. They make cool videos and make funny videos. and then right below it is says Slack is a messaging app for teams, everything in one place, instantly searchable, free for as long as you want with an unlimited number of people. Try it.
So again, really focused on driving people to just try it.
Jake (34:11)
Yeah.
Yeah, you've come here and you probably...
You not only have heard about Slack and heard that it's great, you've probably heard that it's cool at this point, right? Like it was, like it was a very cool product. And I think most people like kind of w once they sort of had the sense that it existed again, if you're in the tech industry, this is where it's spreading at this time, you kind of want to use it already.
JZ (34:23)
Hmm.
Jake (34:35)
Similar to how when we look at the iPhone website today and we say like they're playing a different game than a startup, Slack was actually playing a different game than 99 .999 % of other startups because of Stewart's reputation, because the product was so...
good and the audience for whom it was compelling knew about all of this sort of startup insider stuff that also made Slack cool. It was just like the cool kids. so, idea that we're going to get you to watch this video that like, think about the advice that I would give to a company today who's making product page and they're trying to explain.
what their thing is. If you're going to have a video, it should really show what the thing does and it should probably play without audio so people can get the sense as quickly as possible like what's going on because people's attention span is so short. And this one really assumes you're ready to sit down and watch what I...
I recall is probably like a two plus minute video like a mini documentary of this team using Slack. It's a totally, it's a different game. They're definitely playing a different
JZ (35:44)
Yeah. we look at 2016? So we looked at 2014. Okay, so 2014 is be less busy. 2015, yeah, we tried Slack. 2016.
Jake (35:46)
Yeah.
2016, we have a picture of Mars. We have a Mars robot. What was the first one?
JZ (36:06)
you mean the name of the Rover Mars Curiosity? Yeah.
Jake (36:07)
Yeah, Mars Rover. Curiosity. So Curiosity Rover is in the foreground. Over the top of it, a headline, a messaging app for teams who put robots on Mars and robots and Mars are underlined. The team behind the Mars Curiosity Rover, I could have just read and it says right there, the team behind the Mars Curiosity Rover is one of tens of thousands of teams around the world using Slack to make their working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive.
and then email address, create new team, like big, big heavy thing.
JZ (36:36)
Isn't this crazy though? it's basically the same homepage from 2014 to 2015 to 2016. While the company has raised, you know, probably a hundred million dollars. They've grown from like 500 ,000 to 5 million. I'm just, I'm just sort of making these numbers up, but like, incredible growth. It's basically the same homepage. It's basically, you already know about Slack. You heard something about Slack. The homepage is all about
Jake (36:46)
Yeah.
JZ (37:01)
you should join the club, you should get on board with like this new way of thinking about work. Give it a shot, like start now. You you scroll down the page, that's the whole page.
Jake (37:11)
time you can't scroll down and find out anything else.
JZ (37:13)
There's nothing else on the page. is the whole homepage. It's really amazing. They do have a separate page for like product, which has a detailed walkthrough of the features. And that was something we worked on a lot in the design sprint was a tour of the product. But the homepage is all about just saying, Hey, you can be like team behind the Mars Curiosity Rover. you may not think of yourself as a tech company, but like cool people are using Slack and you should use it
Jake (37:26)
Yeah.
It's remarkable in looking at this thinking about how much they invested in brand. And in this sense, the investment is actually the attention that they had, right?
They had money they were raising but one form of capital that you have is the attention that you get and you can choose how to spend it. And the conventional wisdom is you should spend most of that attention on just explaining what the thing is to make sure that people,
won't miss out because you don't have a big budget of attention. And I think Slack sort of rightly so figured out that we've got a pretty big budget of attention. People are actually paying quite a bit of attention to us. And then they decided we're gonna spend as much of that attention as we can on the vibe, on the brand, on the sense that this is different, this is cool, this feels better. And so I kind of think in looking at these that if I imagine
JZ (38:13)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jake (38:30)
the perfect crystal clear marketing page version of this, where it's just like nicely designed, very clear cut, like here's what the product is, here's what the product is, here's what the product is, that Slack probably feels a little more boring at this point to people than it did. Like I think that this sort of atmospheric, like get people really excited about it even before we show them anymore. You
think it's a very interesting intentional choice that I don't think most people can get away with because they don't have that much attention budget coming in. You don't have people constantly pouring in, willing to spend time. But if you think you can make it work, pretty powerful. It worked pretty well for them.
JZ (39:01)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And again, just the importance of knowing where, where the homepage sits, where the sales deck sits, the email, the white paper, whatever you're writing that you're trying to use to explain what the product is and why people should try it. Like you have to understand where that sits in the broader experience of your customer because yeah, you might be like Slack and you might have this incredible amount of attention and people.
curious about your product, but you might not. might have to kind of reach out to people and grab them and shake them a little bit and say, hey, like we exist and we are different than what you know and you use today. And that's a very different, the website has to do a very different job. The email you send them has to do a very different job than Slack had to do at this time.
Jake (40:02)
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Well, what do you have?
JZ (40:05)
that was 2014, 15, 16, and then I have 2017 too, just because it finally in 2017, it finally changes.
Jake (40:15)
It finally looks more like you'd expect the marketing page to look. Well, a little bit more.
JZ (40:21)
Yeah. it's this, I mostly just was sort of puzzled by this one because
Jake (40:27)
Yeah, it doesn't it first blush I was like, this is gonna be a typical marketing page largely just because the background is mostly blank there it's a bunch of like illustrations It says the headline says where work happens, which feels a little bit more like they're kind of finally describing what the thing is
but there's an asterisk where work asterisk happens and then the asterisk defined below. Whatever work means for you, Slack brings all the pieces and people you need together so you can actually get things done. Pretty decent, you know, decent what there and a bit of why like so you can actually get things done. But then that's, again, that's it. You scroll down and there was nothing more to this page. They just say, give us your email address and get started. It's...
It's very counter again to the conventional list of them of let people scroll down and know, if they need to learn more, let them learn more here. You'd have to click product if you wanted to find out more. So, I assume that had to have been an intentional decision throughout the years to not scroll down because probably most people were coming in via referral and just needed some kind of a little bump to go ahead and sign up. And that has to be.
part of this thesis here for marketing in this way.
JZ (41:43)
Yeah. I was also, when I was looking through the way back machine for Slack, I was looking at how long slack .com has been an active domain. The first capture of slack .com by, by the way back machine is in 1999. So this has been a, I mean, obviously Slack, company didn't exist then, but the domain has been online for a long time. So I started poking around in some of the old versions and this was, found this one.
Jake (41:59)
Wow, let's check.
David's webpage.
JZ (42:10)
In 2013, D Giacomo owned slack .com. You know, you could just imagine this is just like in the early days of the web, you're like, what's a cool domain name. I know slack .com. He buys this, he turns it into a personal, personal webpage literally has times new Roman on the top. It was like a goofy photo of him with like, I don't even know how to describe what's going on here. These are like.
Jake (42:13)
Did Jack? Yeah.
A great photo of him. It's a three, it's a thing that I feel like I've seen before and I can't recall what It's like these three dogs and they're wearing like chef's hats and it says DD. Maybe a listener can tell us what that is. might be probably instantly recognize it. And then at the bottom, says cat photos.
JZ (42:49)
Underneath.
Yeah, that's great. So first, yeah, so it's like, yeah, there's three links or four links underneath, cat photos, test equipment and electronics information, credit card fraud, and free software for Unix. And all these just link to like cats .html. It's like the name of the web page for the cat photos. So anyway, props to you, sir, D Jackimo, wherever you are.
Jake (43:08)
for Unix.
Hahaha
JZ (43:22)
is an iconic personal ampere.
Jake (43:22)
Actually, this was in a way the clearest version of Slack .com. You definitely know with 100 % clarity what's going on with David's webpage.
JZ (43:30)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jake (43:31)
Well, that's pretty good. I think that's going to be tough to top.
So cool. we have looked back at, we look back at Slack, we looked back at the iPhone, we looked back at Uber. These are all super successful products, obviously over time. And we got the chance to see what they looked like in their earliest incarnations in terms of marketing and how they explained what they were and whether or not they followed the what, why, how framework.
interesting to see how different companies are playing different games at different times. think Uber was the clearest example of what, why, how, and kind of the straightforward movie phone, why don't you just tell me what it is. They really did that. Actually the iPhone, no the iPhone did as well. That was also very clear
JZ (44:17)
We Yeah.
Jake (44:19)
Slack was less clear, but definitely interesting to see how that worked or try to guess what was going on behind the scenes there and making that work. So super cool. That's, I think that's a good place for us to wrap. Do you have any recommendations for the listener?
JZ (44:39)
Yeah, I have two. have one sort of a serious one and one fun one. It'll start with a serious one. This is like a weird thing to recommend, but it's actually a LinkedIn post from one of our founders. I don't often recommend LinkedIn posts, but this one is by...
Jake (44:56)
especially recommending LinkedIn posts verbally.
JZ (44:59)
Right. Yes. Now in the next episode of Jay -Z's Poetry Hour, I will read you this LinkedIn post, but we'll include the link, but I'll just screen share just so you can kind of get a sense of it. And this is from Kushal Baitanel, who's the founder of Extend, which is a character portfolio company.
Jake (45:05)
You
JZ (45:23)
And basically the post is that he says, one of the most valuable things we ever did was selling the product via cold outbound before writing a single line of code and close the six figure ARR deal as our first customer in the process. So I just really liked this because I think that just think it's such good advice. And I think that a lot of people talk about doing things like this.
But I know from investing in Kushal at that time and from talking with him, I know that he walked the walk. Like this was actually how he operated the company in the early days. He showed us like when he would go into a customer meeting, he would go in with high fidelity clickable prototype of the product, preloaded with that customer's like.
data or at least data that seemed like realistic for that customer. And the whole thing was it was just a demo. Like it wasn't real software. Like it didn't work, but it looked really real. And he learned a ton from those conversations. Of course, it's just like, you know, the prototypes that we help founders create in, in design sprints, but he, but it was also a really effective way to sell because he was able to show this is what it would be like to use the product.
Jake (46:30)
Yeah.
JZ (46:39)
the like, he could take them there. He could time travel with them, not into the past, like the way back when she, but into the future into like, this is, this is the moment when you're, you're using extend and it was really powerful. So that's it. just thought that was a, I think it's, it's a good technique. I recommend the technique and I recommend this, this very brief post and story from Kushal about how to do it.
Jake (47:03)
That's great. The second paragraph is also quite cool. In most startups, with a few exceptions, technology and code is the easy part. People positioning framing in the market are always the hardest parts. And before we committed months and years of our time to the idea, we wanted to de -risk it as much as possible.
JZ (47:07)
Yeah.
That's awesome. I thought of another great thing I like about this, which was in the comments. A founder left a comment. said, what is the tool you used for cold outbound? Or would that be in the full story? And Kushal said, just Gmail, nothing else needed to run this playbook. People focus too much on setting up infrastructure, et cetera, in the early days, being hands -on, hitting the ground, getting learnings quickly is the most important thing to optimize for.
again, great advice, but what I really liked about that detail of it was that, he played on hard mode from the beginning. like cold outbound, think is one of the hardest ways to find customers and sign them up. but a lot of founders and founders that we invest in, you know, the first thing that they ask us for after we invest is like, do you have any customer intros?
Here's the kind of company that I'm trying to sign up. Do you know any, can you make an introduction? is good, is helpful. Like we're happy to do that, but it's kind of like training wheels. It's kind of like, okay, let's put the training wheels on, which are customer intros. So you can start riding the bike and then eventually we'll take the training wheels off. the goal, when you're building a company, the goal is not to ride the bike as fast as possible with the training wheels on. The goal is to get the training wheels off so that you can.
really start to cover some ground. can be in control, you can be more maneuverable, you can go faster. And so the fact that Kushal was like, I'm going to not only sell the product before it's built, but I'm going to do it in the hardest way possible, which is by cold emailing people. I just thought was really cool. It a really good way to start.
Jake (48:55)
if you skipped away further down the road, you, find out a lot faster if this, people really want this? that's the core most important thing.
JZ (49:03)
Yeah. Okay. Now that was my serious recommendation. Now I'll move on to my fun recommendation, which is, last weekend, up, we went to a friend's lake house and, they had a game there that I've never played before. I have a feeling this is the sort of thing that I've never heard of before, but I think maybe everybody else in the world has heard of is a game called clask. Have you heard of this game, Jake?
Jake (49:24)
haven't I haven't I'm kind of into games so can you show us whoa whoa this is so John's got a video up and there's two people opposite it's like a special board that's sort of got like a little wooden perimeter around it and it stands up high off the table
JZ (49:26)
me get it.
Jake (49:46)
and its own little platform and inside the board down below that little perimeter, it's blue. mean, is there, what's going on?
JZ (49:46)
Yeah.
Yeah, so it's it's like a tiny air hockey board, but without the air, right? so it's just a board painted blue and there's some different pieces that move around. it's a hockey soccer, you know, it's a goal. You have a stick, you can hit the ball into the goal. there's a couple of things that are really fun about this game. One is that there are these dots in the
Jake (49:58)
my
Okay.
JZ (50:14)
if you get two of the three white things stuck to stick, you're out or you lose a point. The other person gets a point. So you have to be somewhat controlled in the movements of your stick. But the other thing is that the, way you control your stick is through the bottom of the board. If you look this up, or if you can see the screenshot right now, like you have a stick underneath and there's a magnet from that stick, like through the, the play surface, through the board.
Jake (50:24)
That's great.
JZ (50:40)
so that they're magneted together so you can move it around underneath and it moves the stick at the top. But it's not perfect because it's a magnet and there's friction and it can come apart. So if you like move it too fast, you like lose control. And so anyway, it's really fun. one of those games where the fact that it's like hard and awkward, like makes it more fun. anyway, I was playing it over the weekend and I was like, this is a great game. So I thought I should look up some YouTube videos and.
Jake (50:48)
you
Right.
JZ (51:08)
This says this is YouTube video. It says the best clask game ever. Question mark, an epic battle between two champions. And I'll just jump ahead to some game play. and you can just see them playing
Jake (51:19)
Well, there's something pretty magical about seeing the board moving from the top because of the magnets, the participants hands are underneath. It almost looks like a video game when you see it from the top.
JZ (51:25)
Yeah.
Totally. Totally. Yeah. And the other thing I loved about this is like, obviously these guys are like really, really good at playing this game, bit, but it's still like clunky. It's still awkward. It's still it's not like when you go from you playing ping pong to like watching Olympic ping pong, like these are the best players in the world. And like,
Jake (51:38)
Right.
Yeah.
JZ (51:47)
the stick still falls over and the white thing still gets stuck to the stick. Anyway, this is if you're if you're listening audio only, I apologize. This is probably not interesting. But anyway, clask super fun game. K. L. A. S. K. I believe it is also look up the YouTube
Jake (51:48)
You
K -L -A -S -K, by the way, K -L -A -S -K, yeah.
That's great. Okay. Okay, I have a recommendation. This is a movie that I watched last night. Well, we always watch movies over two nights. So this is over the night before and last
JZ (52:13)
Do you, sorry to how do you decide where to stop the
Jake (52:17)
Well...
Yeah, I think partly a factor of what time it is. by the time we start a movie, it's like pretty close to when we want to go to bed. So so then when you get into sort of the red zone where it's like, OK, we should really probably go to bed soon. We say, OK, let's look for a good stopping place. So we were watching this last night our 13 year old son, our younger son. we're all then on the lookout for a stop in place. And it's usually
JZ (52:26)
Yeah.
Jake (52:45)
I think there was actually a book, I in for the moment, where this phenomenon was explored in detail of like if you're trying to stop watching Netflix or whatever, like a series.
you should always stop mid -episode rather than trying to stop at the end of an episode because they always end the episodes with a cliffhanger. the plot follows a typical sort of arc and there's going to be lulls in the middle when it's a lot easier to break away. But in a movie, also have intense parts and lulls. so you just, good stopping place is a lull, right? So it's like it's a time when you feel less pull,
JZ (53:11)
interesting.
Got it. Okay.
Jake (53:23)
like painful to break away from it. And some movies do not have good stopping places. They're very intense, but we've kind of decided that we don't watch movies that we suspect will be like that in the evening. try to, and so we rarely watch them, but it's more in the afternoon. Like Mission Impossible movie is going to be more of an afternoon movie. No, no good stopping movie, although it did have a good stopping place, was a very, very fun, very compelling movie.
JZ (53:26)
Yeah. Yeah.
you
No walls.
Jake (53:51)
and it is called the Eagle Huntress. I'm going to share my screen here.
show you the Eagle Huntress. is the Eagle Huntress and a documentary and it is about the central character, I guess protagonist, person in the documentary is year old girl who at the time of the filming was in Mongolia. She's a Kazakh, like Kazakhstan, like that's a people who live in different places too.
they're nomadic you know so they're kind of like they'll live one place for a while and then move like seasonally and one of the things that they do is hunt with golden eagles so they'll catch a golden eagle when it's young and then
both the hunter and the, they sort of like train to work together to hunt and they hunt for foxes and things like it. And it's traditionally been something that only men do and she's the first woman to do it. And it's, so there's a lot of things that really great about this and you can see if you're looking on video, you can see that it's like winner of like all these awards.
JZ (54:42)
Yeah. Wow.
Wow.
Jake (55:02)
It's great movie. Everyone agrees this is great. But the storyline is compelling. It's fun to see her breaking all these barriers.
she has to like compete in a contest against all these older men some of whom are kind of not so welcoming a girl participating. She has to go hunting out in 40 below or something. it's also beautiful. Like the landscape is just very stark and, and the cinematography is gorgeous. So really, really cool movie. And I also.
also thought we watched this little special feature about the filming of it afterwards. And I thought there was a pretty interesting story there because one of the things that's remarkable about this movie is you watch it and I don't want to give away too much, but I don't think this is giving away too much because you know she has an eagle. very early on in the movie, she goes, her father takes her and they've kind of like scouted out where there's these two young eagles and they catch one.
JZ (55:51)
It's on the cover.
Jake (55:59)
And so she has to climb down this cliff face with her father holding the rope at the top and get this eagle, which is still doing the baby bird kind of thing with the beak where they're like, like opening their mouths to get food. because these eagles are so big when they're full grown, it's like,
half as tall as she like it's big it just seems physically seems very big and you'd think she'd be it would be scary like you're on the cliff face eagle there waiting for like is the mother eagle gonna come back and anyway it's an amazing moment and watching it and then seeing everything that unfolds from my thought was throughout was like how did they know
How did the filmmakers know that this was gonna be such a great story? And she's like the first person to do it. She's not like a person who did it. Like she's the first girl who did it. how did they have a sense of this and how did they get there in time? And so anyway, the thing that was... Yeah.
JZ (56:39)
Yeah.
Yeah.
I always wonder about that with documentaries, like whether it's a hard to access place like this, or whether it's just like following a sports team through the season. Are you just sort of placing bets that some of them are going to pay off? like, yeah, how do you know? It's such a fascinating part of the process that I haven't heard very much
Jake (57:04)
Right.
How do you know?
Well, I thought it was actually sort of similar to thinking about startups and finding the right market opportunity, or if you're investing, finding the right startup to invest in.
Basically the filmmaker saw a photo of her with an eagle, which would have been at the time her father's eagle probably. And he was like, I bet that's a cool story. I'm going there right now. And he grabbed some of his gear, but not all, and went with one other colleague of his. let's see if we can track down those folks and find them. And they just went to Mongolia, found them.
they're interviewing the father as well. And he's like, yeah, we had him over. They spent a day with us. We really kind hit it off. And father was like, I just kind of knew. I thought someone might come because I thought this was a great story. And so he wasn't really surprised. He was like, of course you would want to film a documentary about this. It's awesome. but the guy showed up basically the day that they were going to go get
JZ (57:59)
I thought someone might come.
HAAA!
Jake (58:10)
the eagle so he just had to use the camera that he had and he's like yeah I have a GoPro so I put the GoPro on her so that you could see from her perspective and then I filmed as best I could for like some shots from up above the dad and then like went down below but it's not the most beautifully filmed part of the movie because he just had the stuff that was on him anyway it's I just thought that was a fun a fun little detail
JZ (58:11)
crazy.
That's cool.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jake (58:36)
Yeah, fun movie, so.
JZ (58:37)
Cool. The eagle huntress. Awesome.
Jake (58:39)
The Eagle Huntress, yeah. And it's not new, you know, I'm always a bit behind the times on stuff that's came out. I think maybe in like 2016 or 17 or something like that. But it's won't...
JZ (58:51)
Okay, cool.
Well, somehow against the odds, we made it through another episode of Jake and Jay Z. And if you're still listening, you did too. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. We'll see you next Z .com. Talk to you soon. Thanks everyone. Bye.
Jake (58:58)
We did it.
everybody