Paperless Post: James and Alexa Hirschfeld

30:08And so people really looked at us like we had two heads when we said we wanted to build this business. When we come back in just a moment, how James and Alexa finally prove that they're onto something, but then learn a hard lesson about staying in their lane. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

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33:57Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the fall of 2008, and Alexa and James are still trying to convince investors that there's a market for digital invitations. So they roll out a beta version to see how it goes. At this point, by the fall of 2008, we had gotten this, what we thought was a beta product, was probably really like an alpha prototype that was out there in the real world with real users using it. And we, from the very beginning, we saw that real people understood the product and were so happy that it existed. Despite, you know, it was early, it was rocky, there were bumps, it wasn't perfect, there were bugs, but they got it.

34:41They really understood it. And so on one hand, you'd have this very powerful kind of like internet personality or investor telling you you are wrong. And on the other hand, you'd have real mainstream people trying to get into the product, trying to get a login, using it, asking you if you'd seen what they made and don't you think it looks cool. And I think the reason it was energizing was because it showed we were onto something that was not obvious to everybody else. Yeah, I think that's right. I think we still kept on hitting walls with most investors, but our first investors came to us through the product.

35:20The lead investor of our seed financing round, this was someone from a fund called Moose Partners. and he received an invitation and he just got it. He saw this invitation, he clicked it, it opened up like a card on his desktop. And he just never said anything like it. And he called me and he said, you know, I'd love to give you some feedback on your product. And I was so used to getting feedback on the product. I was like, okay, here we go. You know, okay, what are you complaining about? And he did - Your temperament is really, you guys have even keel temperaments, man. Thank you. Thank you. Yes.

35:58Yeah. Marathon runners here. Okay. Keep going. So he's like, you know, so he's giving me, he's giving some people, you were giving some really tough feedback. You know, his feedback was kind of softball feedback. He was, he was like, well, you know, I think that you, you, you don't have all the fonts that I would like to use, or I think you need more options that speak to this type of thing. And I was like, okay, this is softball feedback. I think this person actually really likes the product. And, you know, he had this thick French accent. I was like, okay, maybe it's because he's foreign. And anyway, the end of the call, I said to him, well, we're trying to raise some money so that we can, you know, take this out of beta and really launch the product.

36:32And do you know any investors? And he said, I don't know any investors, but I am an investor myself. And, you know, maybe you want to come to my office and we can talk about it more. And all of our investors, we're lucky to have a lot of supportive investors and they all in their own way, I think, really get it. And what were you looking for? How much? We were... Like a million? Half a... Yeah, we raised about$800 ,000 the first time. Which was in 2008 a lot. We thought it was a lot of money. I mean, now you see these pre-launch, like$40 million seed rounds. But back then, we were super proud of raising$800 ,000.

37:13That's a lot. Especially in 2008 during the financial crisis. Yeah, we ended up getting great early investors. You know, they're basically angel investors or family offices. But the truth is that I think every entrepreneur knows a dollar from one place buys you the same as a dollar from another place. They're not different. You don't there. I think if you really want to succeed and support your company, you don't need to be too picky about, you know, where the funding is coming from. as long as you trust the investor and you want to partner with them through ups and downs. Yeah. All right. So you were able to raise about$800 ,000.

38:02And how long was, I mean, given that I think, again, and I don't mean to like project something on you that you're not, but I think the marathon runners of NAPT analogy, like I think you built a plan and you started to kind of methodically follow it, even though you would have to adjust. Right. How long was 800 ,000 going to last? At the time, we were a pretty small team. We were probably like four or five people. And we had a revenue model, but it wasn't. It turned out not to be the revenue model that we have now. And Alexa came to me and said, I think, sort of while we were in beta, I think this product should be free for consumers.

38:44And I think that we should have a different business model where we allow, you know, 501c3s and organizations that are selling tickets to events to sell tickets through our platform and we'll take a commission on the transaction. Huh, that's an interesting idea. Yeah, and by the way, it's a great business model. And obviously Eventbrite is an amazing public company. Yeah, exactly. So it was a good instinct and we built it. So we raised money on the back of this revenue stream around ticketing. But the organizations that were using us for ticketed events were harder to acquire and much harder to serve.

39:21You know, you would help them. They needed a lot of handholding. They needed a lot of, you know, custom support. And then you'd invoice them after the event. And it was hard to get them to pay because there were small charities and stuff like that. whereas our consumer business was like taking off like wildfire. People were like batting down the door to try to get into our private beta. So we had a very difficult conversation. And I look back in hindsight, I can't believe. Who did? You and your sister? Alexa and I, yeah. Okay. And I think our partner, Lucy, who was the first person to join us.

39:56The gist of the conversation was that I felt that we needed to focus on monetizing the consumer business because these consumers were so much easier to serve and to acquire and they were so passionate. And I thought we should get rid of the paid ticketing business because it was distracting and difficult. But it sounds like in order just to kind of validate the questions that potential investors had, you had to show some revenue. So you made the decision to try this thing out, prove it out. But you needed to do that in order to gain the confidence of investors. I thought it was a good idea at the time.

40:34I think I should have listened to James's instinct, which was always originally to actually charge for the product itself. But the truth is that because we were able to see the value that the users were getting, it gave us this confidence that, you know what, we're going to have to figure out a way to charge consumers who are valuing this product. You know, killing this business model pre-launch was a massive decision and it was incredibly disruptive to everything that we had invested in to that point. But it was also as a matter of survival, it was just such an obvious thing to do and it really set us on the right path.

41:12And I remember after that we had to think, okay, so how are we going to get consumers to pay for this product in a way that is palatable to them? And our initial instinct was, or what we landed on was the idea of people buying stamps. So you would buy like a packet of stamps and you would use, one stamp would send one invitation and a stamp was probably like 25 cents or 15 cents or something. And our product has evolved. The credit system has evolved since then. But, you know, it was very scary. We thought hard about how to charge. And I remember in 2009 in the spring, six months after we raised money, I was studying for my final exams.

41:51I was in Widener Library where I was supposedly studying, but I was refreshing the tracking page that we had to show, you know, activity on the site. And I remember we launched this stamp product. We had no idea, you know, whether our user base, our tiny user base was going to revolt, you know, whether they were going to hate it. And I just remember refreshing and seeing a$7 purchase and within about 30 seconds. And I just remember thinking, okay, we've got one customer. So if we've got one customer, we can find more. And I remember going to a party that night and someone saying, oh my God, I love these stamps.

42:31What a cute idea. And so I was like, okay, I think we're onto something here with this payment model. So that basically, initially, you could design the card, but then to send them out, you would buy these virtual stamps. Like you guys are doing early virtual currency, basically. And it's true. It was an early virtual currency. It was early, you know, digital goods. You know, the invitations aren't physical, but the design is real. And the relationships that you have with the people you're inviting to the party is real and the party is real. In fact, it might be the most important thing happening in your life in the next three months.

43:11So I also think that we had, this was an area where not being, kind of having an atypical background, you know, not having been product marketing managers at Facebook or Google or, you know, not having gone to Stanford Business School. Or, you know, we were coming at this really almost as like naives. But the other thing I wonder is you guys are New York City. I mean, this is like the at least the capital of America for parties. You know, every company has a party and there's so many events in New York every day. And how much how important was being in New York to getting the right kind of influential people to use this early on?

43:59I think it probably helped. The way that we grew was through, you know, it was two parties that in the first weekend of September in 2008, one of them was kind of a fashion week jewelry party. It was like a, you know, professional event. And the other one was our friend Halsey, who sent her 23rd. Halsey the singer? No, no. A different friend. Not the Halsey. She was like a baby at that time. Yeah, exactly. R. Halsey, just a friend. And she sent her, she had kind of been, yeah, hounding me about when she could get into the site because she needed to send out her 23rd birthday invitation. And she was so proud of what she'd made afterwards.

44:47She called me to ask if I'd seen what she made. And then that's how we grew is through all the people that were invited to her birthday and to the jewelry party. and actually really quickly, we heard that the outgoing administration in the White House, somebody had used it and people were writing us to see if they could get logins. And it would have sounded so naive when we were telling people that we thought it would grow virally, but it did. I read that in the first full year you had like 150 ,000 invitations sent out. But I'm wondering, I mean, I can't imagine because, you know, it was not expensive to do it.

45:25And it's certainly far less expensive than sending out printed invitations, right? Like, you know, you're paying maybe 20 cents per invitation or 25 cents per invitation. So what was the revenue situation like in that first year? I remember it being exciting. I remember in December of 2009 that we did$100 ,000 in sales. In one month? In one month, yeah. So we launched around like April of 2009. We opened up our beta. We allowed anyone to register. And by December of 2009, we were doing$1 ,000 a month,$100 ,000 a month rather. But I remember when we did$16 ,000 in sales in a month, I was so excited.

46:13And I remember reporting to a family friend and she just rolled her eyes at me like, when are you going to give up on this thing? Like$16 ,000. Like, you know, what the hell are you talking about? That's a very small business. It's a very small business, yeah. I mean,$100 ,000 a month is still a small business, but obviously it's showing significant growth. Yeah. Okay, so really, I mean, given that you had this product and a limited amount of money, how were you – I mean, was it – I guess this is also – the advantage of this product is it's sort of vital. Right. Because if somebody is using it and sending it out, then all the people who get it see it.

46:59And you essentially don't have to spend money, a whole lot of money on user acquisition because your customers are your sales force. Totally. And honestly, we didn't really spend much money on marketing until a few years ago. We kind of thought that marketing was like fake news. We were really on to product-led growth and kind of these viral growth dynamics very, very, you know, a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other thing is that we decided to try having an envelope where the invitation came out of the envelope. Like the card, and I think most people have experienced this because probably most people listening have gotten a paperless post, which is when you click it, it's like the envelope opens up, the card pops out like you would pull it out.

47:46Yeah. And to be honest, that was, James can chime in on this, but that wasn't necessarily key to his original vision. The design of the invitation was key and the idea that it was a luxury design product was key. But the idea of it coming out of an envelope was something that we decided to try out because we wanted it to be – we wanted it to stand out and people to say, oh, yeah, I received your invitation, the one that looked like paper and came out of an envelope. And we ended up building that in pretty close to the launch. Because you guys had to be scrappy and you didn't have a whole lot of money, you know, and again, like the model at this time was just get a bunch of users, acquire a bunch of users.

48:35But your model is a little different because even if somebody used your product, it didn't mean that it wasn't like Facebook where they were going back to check the site 17 times a day and you didn't have advertising. So you had to hit profitability pretty quickly, right? I mean, that must have been a pretty sort of pressure-filled goal. Well, you know, we've got two sides of our network. We've got senders and we've got receivers. And it's true that receivers don't come back and check the product 15 times a day. But senders actually are very, very, very active for the month leading up to their event.

49:13But you're right. We didn't make money by monetizing engagement in that way. We were lucky to be able to raise more venture capital financing as the product kind of took hold. And I think that took away some of the urgency around achieving profitability early on. When did you guys first hit profitability for the first time? We had always been running kind of close to profitability, and we would always be profitable in Q4 probably since 2010. Around Christmas. Yeah, since 2010. We'd have a huge surge. But we've been profitable since 2021 in terms of full years of profitability, yeah. Right. I mean, again, a marathon.

50:01Yeah. Right? It's a marathon. So, all right, let's go back to the timeline for a moment. You launched this thing, and I guess sort of two, two and a half years in, you decide to actually offer up printed cards. And not just to offer them up, but I think you built your own printing business within Paperless Post. Tell me about how that came about. So we realized that we had, you know, a couple years in, we'd built up this very passionate user base of early adopters who were people who actually loved paper. And when we would talk to them, you know, they would say, I used you for my wedding. I wish I could print some for my scrapbook.

50:51Or I used you for all of my birthday parties for the past two years, but now I'm getting married. and I want to use you guys for my wedding invitation, but I want to send paper. And I think for me, there was this kind of big vision of being a platform that could be sort of one-stop shopping for any type of invitation you were sending. And could we be everything to our users, not just digital invitations, but the paper as well. And we validated the demand for it. and then we set about building it and we launched it in 2012. I think we did$500 ,000 in sales in the first like 10 weeks of paper. And did you build, did you, you worked with a partner or did you actually like, did you contract with a printing business?

51:45So we had two print partners. We had, we worked with Crane Stationery, which is, you know, which is, I think they make the paper for, for, for money. Yeah, like a 350-year-old paper company in Dalton, Massachusetts that did all of our fine printing. And we worked with a state-of-the-art digital printer in Memphis, Tennessee that did our digital printing on these incredible, you know, million-dollar printing machines. And, you know, maybe there was a bit of a vanity aspect as well, where I really, I thought we'd, you know, we created a product that people associated with quality so much that could we offer a product that was, you know, people would spend hundreds of dollars on instead of 10, you know, 10 or$20.

52:31But at the same time, it also pulled us into a different market with different competitors. But there were other companies that had been at it for a long time and gone deep into the product, production, manufacturing, marketing, all areas that we were new to. And so we were able to get up to speed and we actually grew it to be a pretty big business. But, you know, in 2017, we decided to shut down the operation. We would have had to choose to compromise on the quality of one product or another. We also found at the same time that our engineering team and our product team was being forced to think a lot about this paper product and how to be more competitive with the people who are doing great things in that space.

53:22But they were engineers. They were, yes. They didn't have 300 years of stationery experience. Exactly. And what we really needed them to be doing was focusing on making our product amazing on these iPhones, which were becoming more and more pervasive and replacing BlackBerrys. And when we saw these opportunities kind of passing us by with our core digital business, which always remained much bigger and much more profitable, and made, again, maybe for the second time, the difficult decision to shut down a business that we had built, you know, with blood, sweat, and tears. I mean, it sounds like what you're saying is, which makes a lot of sense to me, you couldn't do both things and be best at both things.

54:11That it was not like it's another sort of version of saying you were spread a bit too thin. Yeah, exactly. When we come back in just a moment, how James and Alexa get spread even thinner when 2020 hits and every event that brings people together is canceled. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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55:14Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's early 2014. Paperless Post has grown to about 45 million users. And after some false starts with its business model, the company raises a big chunk of cash,$25 million, which, as it turns out, is both good and bad. It was kind of problematic for us because we weren't ready to have that much capital. And it's so funny how when you look back on, you know, building a business, how the things that you think are going to be great can be kind of the kiss of death and things that you think are going to be really bad can be amazing. You know, the thing about having a lot of capital when you're a small company is that you can put it behind the wrong strategy and you lose touch with the practical reality of the business.

56:10And it took us a little longer to realize that it wasn't right for us because of that, like, you know, heavy capitalization. capitalization. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wonder whether, you know, when you raise that amount of money, right, that there's also an expectation that you're going to do something with it, that, right, that there's going to be a, like a shiny new thing. And so one of those shiny things was the paper business, right? But then another thing you tried was, was a less expensive version of the online invitation, I think, which I, which I think you called Flyer, right? Yeah. So, so Flyer was conceived as a mobile first, more casual, less expensive product.

56:51And we built it on the back of exiting the paper business. And it's been really, really popular with existing users and with new users. But it's mostly free. It's mostly free. It's about 75 % free. Wasn't there concern that might undercut your core product? Our position was that it was a very different product. You know, Flyer today is heavily based around motion and GIFs, and it's much more of the aesthetic of sort of social media, of stickers and animated text. And our position was that people who want cards are going to continue to use cards, and people who want Flyer want something different.

57:36And so that has mostly turned out to be the case. I mean, I struggle with this idea, even with what we do, which is how much free stuff can you give out without understanding what you're going to get back in return, especially if you're doing it, if you're trying to build a sustainable business, because even making giving free stuff away still costs you money. Right. And so and you have no advertising. So it's not like all of a sudden people are getting flyer and they're also seeing an ad. Right. You're right. We have no advertising ever. And we don't we don't sell people's data. Yeah. So what's the problem?

58:09the return. I think that, you know, you have to remember that our growth has been so heavily driven by this viral dynamic that happens. So when someone sends an invitation, their recipients are, you know, clicking to our site, they're engaging with it. If it's like a cool looking invite and it feels relevant to them, then we acquire a user who can become a customer. So, you know, yeah, maybe we give a lot away for free on Flyer. But there's a return in terms of – and are you able to measure that? Is it possible to know for sure if actually it's generating – We're definitely able to measure that, yeah.

58:53So on balance, it works out? On balance, it works out, and it's been a very, very popular product. So, okay. So, you know, you've got this business humming along and growing and obviously, you know, you launch in 2009 and 10 years in, you've got a product, a business that's really kind of penetrated the culture, you know, and it seems like there's nowhere else for you to go except up. Except something very significant is about to happen in the world, which is a global pandemic. Good for some businesses. If you are an online apparel and you happen to sell at leisure wear, it was going to be a very good year for you.

59:36If you're an events business, we've had Eventbrite on the show, or you are in the business of helping people to organize their events, different story. Yeah, it was pretty catastrophic. I mean, our mission is to help people gather in real life in a more meaningful way. And the term social distancing that kind of like entered the lexicon out of nowhere and became the word everyone was talking about, it was pretty much the sort of antithetical to the purpose of our company. Yeah. Every event was a super spreader event. Don't go there as a super spreader. Exactly. Every event was a super spreader event.

1:00:19Yeah. I was actually five months pregnant at the time and people were writing saying, oh, how are you? Are you okay being pregnant during this pandemic? And I was like, that is not my biggest problem right now, if I'm being honest with you. I think the pregnancy is going to be, hopefully it's going to be fine, but I have something bigger to deal with. Which is a business that was collapsing. And payroll that was, you know, the same as it was two months before when our sales were significantly, significantly higher. So we took about 10-year step backwards in a month. Wow. But it took us back probably in terms of like our sales volume.

1:01:05We were probably back to where we were in 2009 in sales. Wow. Yeah. With a staff of how many people? 100 plus? 120, yeah. The difference between 10 years before and that time was that 10 years before, we really had very little to lose. And during COVID, we had a lot to lose. The stakes were inarguably much, much higher. Yeah. And actually, I think when I think about it, what really happened was that sales dropped by 85 % in April. And then over the summer, they settled it around 50 % down to the prior year. As we saw, people figured out how to have parties that were outdoor parties or drive-by parties or virtual parties.

1:01:59So for 2020 and 2021, we were down about 50%, but still, you know, very difficult. That's still devastating. But what we realized is that our main concern was to get through it without ruining our company. How are you going to do it? Tell me how. I mean, I'm imagining you had to do everything. We had to do everything. But first, I think it started with deciding that we were going to survive it and that we were going to respond as shrewdly and as scrappily as possible. So we did a little bit of everything. So we had to we had to kind of work every angle. We started with pay cuts, which was, you know, everyone was a pretty good support about that.

1:02:54and so we kind of heard we heard about PPP loans we were one of the first companies to get PPP loans and they were pretty generous we negotiated with our landlord we renegotiated our debt and we ultimately did have to raise some money from our investors who all came together around the company and helped bridge us to the other side so we really pulled every lever to keep the company together and to allow us to preserve the value that we'd built over the previous 10 years. But an idea would eventually emerge from this. I mean, an idea that now is a part of your business, which is actually really interesting, basically kind of a products side of your business, like physical products.

1:03:45Yeah, that was definitely, that emerged. Actually, a lot of great ideas emerged during the pandemic. We became very focused on profitability for obvious reasons. And once we came up with the idea of starting a physical product shop, which has been very cool. This is called, just for people to know, it's called Party Shop. It's called Party Shop. The paper was post-Party Shop. Yeah. You know, if your kid's having a dinosaur birthday party, we can create matching dinosaur products, etc. So that sort of started as a test coming out of the pandemic. But I think even more substantially, we started to really look at the business through the lens of which segments were driving the most value.

1:04:29and we noticed that two segments were kind of standing apart from the rest, professional events and wedding events. And we were thinking about the fact that these customers, these business customers are really appealing. They're great customers. They have high willingness to pay. They have high repeat rates. They are pretty easy to serve. Maybe we should build for those segments. I mean, this comes out and you launch this, obviously, you know, this is launched, I think, in 2022. So and again, we forget like there were basically a year and a half of many states in the United States of just people not going out.

1:05:15And then there was another year and a half of like outdoor eating and masked eating and going to hotels masked and sidewalk cafes. And that really lasted in at least California until like 2023. Yeah, no, it was really – we became like weather people on the TV. I mean I remember everyone – we were kind of looking at maps of the U.S. and saying, well, this outbreak of this Omicron variant is moving across these states. and the next wave would happen and we would be battered again. It was like being in a boat that was going through a storm. It was like waves of kind of crashing over a business. Yeah.

1:05:57And actually, I think when I think about it, a lot of the competencies that we built up and the muscles that we built during COVID that we had to hone for survival, as the kind of the cloud lifted, it was like we'd been training at altitude. Tell me a little bit about what, where the, I mean, so you've fully recovered and more, like now you're back to full strength where you were before COVID in terms of like employee count or what? Yeah, we're a little bit, we're around the size we were before COVID, but we're double the size. We're profitable. We're double the size as a business, yeah. And we're growing at a pretty nice clip.

1:06:38Yeah. You know, back in 2023, Saturday Night Live did a parody of a paperless post commercial. And we'll post a link to this, by the way, in my newsletter for people who haven't seen it because it's so funny. And it's like – basically, it's like paperless post. You know, if – we have a new feature. If the people aren't RSVPing, we'll throw a brick through their window. And it just gets more and more crazy. And like eventually like wild dogs are sent after people who aren't responding to the paperless post invitation and then to the one person who writes in and is like, I don't really want to celebrate the world.

1:07:15It is so funny when you saw that. Because when I saw it, I was like, this is amazing. They must love this. This is so good for the – did you – is that how you responded initially or were you like, ooh, I don't know about this? I think we were pretty – we thought it was pretty amazing. So we just got a Google alert one – I think it was Saturday night. And I think I was probably out at a party. I got this Google alert and I looked at it and I thought, wow, this is pretty wild. And the skit kind of gets at some of the manic energy behind planning an event. You know, you really care about it. You really want people to RSVP.

1:07:54You want those damn RSVPs. That's so funny. It's really funny. One of your early investors that you mentioned was a French guy. And I think he was also like they had invested in Chanel. And I just think about like, you know, all the brand partnerships you do with some of these designers. And I wonder what is the like, what is is there an exit, so to speak? I mean, is there a world where you're acquired by LVMH or you're looking for something like that? I mean, or does it go public like some other companies do or or or neither of those? I think that we didn't build the company to sell it. We built it because we have a personal passion for it and we're inspired by it and it's all around us.

1:08:41So, you know, I think over the years we've explored, we've had different companies approach us and, you know, sometimes explore different opportunities the camera way, but the timing, the partner, the deal never really felt right. And we believe that we have more to build and further to grow. And we're, you know, we're still, we think we're still the people to lead that. Yeah. When you guys think about this journey you've been on and where you are now, and I mean, you've had a lot of incredible success and you proved early doubters, including me, I would have been a doubter, wrong. and you had a massive crisis, you know, once you were a mature company and you recovered from it.

1:09:27How much of where you guys got to, do you attribute to the work you put in the grind and how much you think has to do with just the luck of the timing and how consumer behavior changed? I, you know, I think that there are ways that we've been lucky. I think we were lucky to be born as siblings, you know, to have a co-founder that you know so well. from day one, to have supportive parents that gave us confidence. But when I think about luck, I also think there have been a lot of supremely unlucky moments that have happened, going out, launching our beta and going out to raise money in the fall of 2008.

1:10:09COVID was extremely unlucky for us. I think it kind of washes out in the end. I think the part that doesn't wash out is the incredible hustle and desire to succeed that I think Alexa and I share and our team shares. I agree with everything that James said. But I think that, you know, I do think that really horrible and difficult things happen to everybody in their lives. And you can't stop those things from happening. So how you respond to these unlucky situations like people quitting or COVID or death or sickness, that's the biggest freedom that you have. That's one of the biggest powers that you have as a person and as an entrepreneur is how you respond.

1:10:55And oftentimes those really, really hard moments are where you can perform the best. That's Alexa and James Hirschfeld, founders of Paperless Post. By the way, earlier this year, the company celebrated its 15-year anniversary with a big party. And the invitations were, of course, sent by a paperless post. I saw a photo of you with Anna Wintour. I was like, wow, you have fancy people at your 15-year party. Yeah, that was... She's like the Michael Jordan of the fashion world. That was very nice for her to come, yeah. By the way, how do you have a conversation with her? I would be so intimidated.

1:11:36intimidated. I don't, she's got her sunglasses on. She's Anna Wintour. Like she's surprisingly nice. I'm sure she's nice, but I would still be like, I don't know what I'd say to her. I'd be so nervous. Talk about the theater. Talk about tennis. I don't know anything about tennis. I don't know anything about theater. I guess my wife would be with me so she could talk about theater. I'm like, I'm like a caveman. She's great. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free.

1:12:05And if you're interested in insights, ideas and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, sign up for my newsletter at GuyRoz.com. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Ramtin Erablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from JC Howard. Our audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez and James Willetts. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Chris Messini, Devin Schwartz, JC Howard, Sam Paulson, John Isabella, Catherine Seifer, Carla Estevez, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

1:12:48If you like How I Built This, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.