Inside Wonder Studio: Building the Y Combinator of Hollywood

0:00So there are two reasons why I'm super excited about this conversation. And the first one is that storytelling is just a topic that is personally very close to my heart. I'm very passionate about it. And also, I'm a big believer in the saying that the fastest way to change someone's mind is a story well told. And we'll get into that later. But the second reason is that this conversation is happening literally at a time when you are assembling the plane while flying it. And I think that's something that everyone can relate to because you have a dream and you're taking all those actions to navigate the maze, the struggles and trying to project that dream into existence.

0:40And I think everyone can relate to that. So I wanted to start by asking, what is the dream that you're currently executing on from a more personal perspective? There's a lot there. I love that expression about changing people's minds through a good story. I think that's fascinating. Yeah, storytelling is kind of as ancient as us. Such a fundamental kind of human trait. And to be finally working in a space and an industry where you get to be surrounded by the most creative people, telling stories for a living, it's a lot of fun. Yeah, in terms of the vision and why personally, why it's so exciting, I think there's two ways to think about Wonder.

1:23I think one is like from from Justin's perspective who's you know our co-founder and chief creative officer this has kind of been a life mission for him um yeah he's been a he's been a creative his whole life he was an actor when he was a kid went on to be a filmmaker and that kind of like passion for the craft and like just the way his brain works you can be such a creative guy and you You can just see that like for him, this really is like exactly where he needs to be. And it comes through in our brand. It comes through in our authenticity, the kind of filmmakers we get to work with. I'd say he's pretty central to the vision.

2:02From my perspective, something that's kind of been true my whole life is like, you know, there's definitely a creative side to me. Like I do music, I've like written, et cetera. but one of my kind of like key traits would be I'm really good at getting really creative people to actually get stuff in the world um it's almost like an innate sense of like justice I don't know like I've got like a lot of friends who are really talented really creative but like they're their own worst critics um or like they're they never release stuff kills me because you know when you can see that talent you know you just want to see it like kind of shine through and typically like really creative really talented people maybe aren't always so organized or so like process orientated where I say I'm like I'm like a ruthless executor so I'd say for me like what I love the most about this job and like why it's so much fun is I get to work with incredibly creative talented people you know Justin just being one of them and like actually help them get the ideas out into reality and and like be able to do that quickly and find a way to like keep building iterating and like actually through deadening the the kind of like internal critique you know that like a lot of top artists have balancing that with like okay how do you how do you ship this how do you get it out in the world how do we go quickly um yeah how do we how do we keep building and so i'd say like for me i've kind of found my like perfect middle ground and i think for both of us it's like a dream come true to work on a business in this space and how do you help those creatives because there's the operational side of like okay how do you actually put things out but i think it's also a lot about the emotional side because as you said like most of the time creatives think maybe something doesn't live up to the standards or the expectations so well how do you help them in that regard yeah i think that's um look that's like an that's gonna it's like an eternal challenge um also like you know it's so funny like building a creative business you know i before this i used to run a business called turo in europe and i worked at deliverer and i worked at uber and so i'd always kind of be surrounded by like you know really talented but like more kind of operation operational people or people that are like used to working in a in a tech startup or like you know read their calendar or respond to emails um whereas like i think one day you know we work with a lot of top creatives and and obviously a lot of great operational people producers etc um you know harry our head of productions very long suffering the first thing that's really interesting is like it's not just this kind of protectiveness around the craft also like the different ways of working for creative people and like they sometimes need space or like you know it doesn't you can't really like fit people into the same kind of um boxes that you would otherwise like just scaling and running a normal business and so i think a big part of it is like learning to meet people where they are um and like identifying talent that also has like what we like what justin and i call like the dog in them because you can have a lot of really talented people but like they maybe don't have the drive like the internal burning drive and i think like you kind of need that dog to get over um that like insecurity or that fear of like it's ever quite good enough and so we try and find people that have that like dog in them um and then then it's a bit about like creating the conditions for them to flourish and i think like we're really we're going to be moving office in the new year uh in the end this quarter to an incredible space in east london um that's that's going to be about like you know really creating like a cultural hub for top creatives and i think like meeting them where they are and then lastly it's just force of like personality force of instinct um eventually you have to just get things out and you have to move on otherwise you get stuck one thing i noticed by looking at your life you already like touched on it that you have those seems like you have those two sides which is like one um very much related to like high intensity environment startups and the other one much more creative like you mentioned your musician singer i was wondering like what earliest context of your life set you up um for or had an influence on those two distinct uh sides yeah that's so interesting i'd say that um so from a business perspective it was like fundamentally grounded in a desire to just to like control my own destiny um you know it's a long story but I moved country like five times growing up um didn't have like necessarily like a lot of control over like where I lived and how it works and all that kind of stuff you know from about 18 when I left home I was like I'm going to kind of control my own destiny and then have like that ability to decide like where I live and and how I live and what I do and so I was like very driven um to be successful and to be like in control of my destiny and so I think that was part of it then obviously I went to law school and and I you know I actually really enjoyed it but then I got into being a lawyer and I was like this is so boring um if I wrote I wrote an essay on U.S.

7:33constitutional law in my last ever last ever exam at law school and this lady i was at sydney university this lady who was a professor she used to teach at like harvard and she was she was this awesome professor and months after like my exams finished and i graduated law school she wrote me an email um out of the blue being like i read your essay and she was like um it was something like you know it's one of the best essays i've read blah blah blah but she's like do me a favor like don't end up on the top floor of some you know glass laden law firm somewhere like you're you're you're destined for more than that and it was so funny because it's the first time I ever like felt seen or recognized or you've been told like you know what like maybe I can do something better and so that kind of stuck with me and um I think like from a business perspective it was always driven by this desire of like I think I can do something more and I think I can kind of like you know off my own bat like control that destiny um for better or for worse and then from a music side like that's always just been in me like i think from from the youngest age i've always played music and it's like a it's like i'd say the two the two things that i love the most in life um from like a pastime perspective whether it's like you know competitive sport or music it's like it's it's the same thing in essence it's like a flow state and it's a it's a feeling of like you're the the the ego completely dissolves and you're just like in the moment like either playing music or playing sport and so I've always kind of sought that out and it's probably a counterbalance to um the high intensity ego-driven like world of like working or founding a startup the story that um you first like wanted to become a lawyer and then find it super boring and quit it it resonates a lot with me because it's literally the same thing for me with architecture like i loved it and then at school like at university was like really really good and like great companies and everything and then when i started like actually working in it like just out of a year i started hating it so that's when i quit and uh yeah now went into uh vc so because i think i mean i'm paraphrasing here but there's it comes to my mind when when you said that that i think it was steve jobs who said something like follow like trust your intuition it already knows what you really want to become and it sounds like there was such a moment for you as well yeah I think it's always been there I think I think that's a real I never heard that quote again it's a great one I'm gonna distill it but I think um we have you know an expression at wonder which is like find signals with the noise.

10:17I think Justin and I live our lives by that. Like I've always been like a deeply instinctive decision maker, intuitive decision maker. You know, I wish there was like a formula, but, and I wish it was like, I'd been more logical, but, but actually like it's, it's, it's always been through God. If it was logical, I'd make an incredible VC. Um, but you know, the thing is I, I, I worked for like three different unicorn businesses and advised two, and I joined all of them like really early in their journey but I kind of knew that they were going to work if that made sense and I knew it was the right thing to like pursue even though when I started them people told me I was crazy and you know I had a lot of people pushing back like why are you doing this why are you going to join this food delivery company you know it's only got like 20 people there and it's like never going to make money and there's been a lot of situations like that I think I've always tried to like listen to the gut there is I you know there is logic to it and I do think that like a big part of how I think about it is I try and think for myself from like a first principles basis but at the end of the day you know so many paths I've gone down in life have been like intuition led same with hiring the best people I think always listen to your gut and and it hasn't really steered me wrong so there's definitely something in it um there's definitely something in it but I mean it would be it would be great if there was a way that I could like reverse engineer um the gut into like a set of logical principles and then use it to make investments but time will tell I think there's also a power to it to not be able to do it because I am more on the logical side and I'm sometimes because in the end you can find the logic to everything so then it becomes quite difficult like from a logical point of view what actually makes sense so i think there is there's also an advantage to it okay you work for you said uber touro and deliveroo um because most people are happy to work for like one unicorn and you work for three and also for three marketplaces so yeah what the hell happened like how did this um happen and what is it about you and marketplaces that fits like that goes so world together i've always loved marketplace business it's funny because one is not really a marketplace like there's definitely marketplace elements to it and and as part of like the long term broader vision and i kind of mapped it out a little bit on the sub stack i wrote over the break there are the embers of a marketplace burning but i've always loved marketplaces and i think the reason why there's two things to say that one is like i remember when i was you know i was i was like interning at uber i was handing out flyers and I was hiring drivers so I can barely claim it.

13:04But I remember when I was there and they were launching Uber, it used to be called UberX, and they were launching for the first time ever in Australia this idea that like from tomorrow anyone could take anyone in their car. And I remember being like, that's ridiculous. Like that's never going to work. That's crazy. And the head of APAC at the time, a guy called David Rorshine, turns to me and he said, what do you think a normal taxi is? and I remember in that moment it just like completely dawned on me I was like wow like yeah obviously and I never since that moment I've never been the person that's like oh that's crazy that would never work I'm always the person that's like well why wouldn't that work kind of like from first principles and I think so that that opened up the aperture and it kind of like made me way more aware like okay and I'm also fundamentally optimistic so I'm like okay why why why shouldn't this idea work um i think it's a much better way of approaching problems and that meant that i was therefore like more open to the opportunities that came with deliveroo and then with toro yeah the other thing on marketplaces i think like i can i can actually trace that back to when i was at university and i started a business called nexus notes with some friends and it's the classic business that everyone starts university like the note sharing you upload your notes someone else can download them you know we actually got really far we got onto like shark tank in australia i ended up couch surfing or couch surfing around the u.s trying to like launch the business over there but i remember like vividly we had like we decided that we wanted to launch america and we were like you know sitting in this room in sydney australia and i'd like connected with like 500 students from the university of austin on linkedin and convinced them to upload their notes and we just started running our first paid ads trying to figure out like would this thing work and I used to it used to be a WordPress website and you can you can track you know people on the WordPress website through Google Analytics and I remember having my Google Analytics up I'm like watching the users like suddenly come online in like Austin Texas on the other side of the world and I saw like the the pages and I suddenly saw that someone had gone from like search like astrophysics and I saw like someone was clicking and I saw someone was clicking on checkout I remember just like pausing and staring like oh my god it's gonna work and then like boom the certification comes in and someone's just bought a set of notes you know I think for like 15 dollars or something and I remember just like like just running around the room with my friends being like I can't believe this worked and there's always been something so fascinating to me about marketplaces which is this idea of like you create the space for like two completely random people to connect and interact and like exchange value and and like it can happen at any moment anywhere in the world across cultures and I've just found that always like the most interesting problem to solve and then once you become good at solving it it's the same pattern every time so you kind of I guess you're just drawn back into it but um yeah weirdly I've just been allured to marketplaces what can I say it's uh one of those things because also marketplaces are very difficult because um You have, I think, this chicken and egg problem where sellers won't join without buyers and then buyers don't come without sellers.

16:26So what do you think is the most important thing that you learn from getting those marketplaces off the ground? It's always about quality supply. It's the easiest solution, but you just like knowing the answer is easy, but like how to actually create it is the hard part. you know um very lucky to work closely with like will shoe back in the day at deliver and he always used to talk about price selection service which i made our wi-fi password at turo and when we started that in europe to kind of keep reminding people and the whole thing is like you know i think there's there's two things there so price selection service is like really think about the what's the problem you're solving for the sides of the marketplace you know for the customers it was like how is it good value for money do you have good selection of restaurants and how convenient is it right like you're really putting yourself in the mind of the customer so then it's like well how do you solve that you solve that by having really high quality supply and you start by having high quality supply and if you have to you um jump start it or like guarantee it so for example you know supply in the context of uber is drivers so is it well priced you know is it um How long do you have to wait for a pickup, right?

17:40So the first time someone experiences the app and opens it, is it a 25-minute wait time and like a crazy expensive price? Or is it a two-minute wait time and like, you know, cheaper or more comparable to a taxi? And so what Uber would do is they would like guarantee rider earnings. So the riders would, sorry, drivers, I'm getting confused. Driver earnings. And so, you know, even if there weren't any trips, if a driver logged in between these hours and these days, they would be guaranteed to make this amount of money. Then eventually when the marketplace got liquid enough, you can start to remove those guarantees and the earnings can get higher.

18:21And it's the exact same with Deliveroo. Deliveroo was all about like when someone opened the app, it was a three-sided marketplace. So you had that issue with the riders. But then you also had this fundamental question of like, when I open the app, do I see the restaurants I want to see? And I remember like vividly the day we got Nando's on the platform in London and everyone went crazy. And they're like, oh, my God, Deliverer has Nando's. And so you start with high quality supply and then the rest will follow. When you said that, do you think, what would you say? Do you think podcasts follow a similar principle?

18:55because I'm thinking of like you want high quality guests but usually they don't come without listeners and listeners don't come without great guests so it's probably an answer to that as well what do you think it's the same thing yeah I mean you just gotta I mean look you know go start with so you got some great quality here but you gotta you gotta you gotta start with high quality supply always and so that would be like if I was starting a podcast I would go like okay who can I lean on that i know and like through my network and through friends etc who will kind of do me a solid and um come on to the podcast early and like really focus on like you know high quality supply as much as you can and not dilute that so that like you know people who've had first experience with this product are like oh okay that was really interesting or like there's this person i really want to hear speak you know it's it's not about volume it's even though i'm guessing the algorithm them is probably dictate that it is i do i do think you have to solve quality supply as as your first first issue and then figure out how do you make that scalable because once you've solved quality supply other top people will want to come on and and then the audience will grow itself you know but it is it is always a supply side issue to start i mean i completely agree with that which is why i'm having you on the show uh i appreciate it you also mentioned in one interview that um you've done your time as mercenary and that now you're excited to do your time as missionary like what do you mean by that yeah i think i think i've always actually been a missionary in the sense that like um you know food delivery or car rental like you know not particularly passionate about it like you know i i think when i was at delivery there was like real foodies era like like will was like a huge foodie so passionate about it comes through everything he does same with a lot of people that work there um whereas you know i i do love i used to get a nickname food as uh called like food as fuel um by my friends who are like really like really into their different chefs etc the thing is I do actually love food and like I feel like I do do have an appreciation of it maybe probably not by like the deliverer standards but I guess like I was I was missionary to the extent that like I was truly passionate about building something and I used to find the problem sense really interesting until I didn't yeah so for like you know the two to three years I was at Deliveroo and in the early days at Turo like I was really passionate and driven because I was like fascinated by the problems we were solving until I kind of solved them you know or like built teams that were able to solve them um but you know that like passion got me a long way and it was missionary to the extent I was like with every fiber of my body I was like I really want this to succeed and I would like on my downtime on my quiet moments there wasn't any distinction between the job and me it was like I'd always be thinking like oh how can I do this or this could maybe work or you know it was like it was like it was a mission I wanted to I wanted to like make it succeed but the difference is eventually like once you've exhausted like the hard problems and you've like got the ship set up and it's sailing or the plane's flying to use the earlier analogy um you know it's like well what endures what remains and like in both those cases there was just like a husk of you know a food delivery problem or a car rental problem where I think like what's really fascinating about Wonder and there's two things I think like really do make it like missionary one is like it's ours you know like it's it's like the team at Wonder we all have equity in the business Justin and I you know obviously as founders like it's it's like core to who we are it's what we want to be doing with our time and it's like it's it's the it's the journey like we both are choosing to be on um from like a we created it perspective not from like we need to just like pay the bills perspective so that's one and then two is that when you really strip back some of the things you're you're working on because at the end of the day like all businesses are just a series of you know problem solving and pattern recognition but when you like sit with what are the actual problems or like what are they going to um you know a lot of it's like developing and creating hopefully um world-changing stories that like resonate with millions of people working with really creative people um and like from my perspective that is just like such an incredible way to spend your time it's like endlessly interesting i agree and what i mean talking about wonder like what is the moment that sparked the idea that you then formed into a business um it was actually a very specific moment so uh i was at turo and i was like really bored i'd been there for like six years i had decided to like kind of create on the side a film rights vehicle with a friend of mine who'd been in the film industry for like 30 years because i saw that there was a really interesting opportunity to kind of buy the rights to American UK films but for like foreign markets like France etc and then be able to um kind of sell them the same thing was happening in music with people acquiring music rights and so my friend who was really an expert in the space had taught me about it and I was like that's really interesting we can probably raise you know some small amount of money from my kind of friends and family and create a vehicle and buy some rights and see if we can make it work and um you know it was working it did really well um and we acquired the rights to a Sylvester Stallone film called Armored for France as we we acquired the French rights for that film sadly the the guy that played Stallone in France had passed away and so like he was a very famous voice actor called Alain Duval and so I kind of had this idea I was like well you know it's just the two of us but I was like why don't we try to reach out to someone at Leather Labs which at the time was like a multi-hundred billion dollar business and I was like why don't we try and bring this guy's voice back you know we can work with his estate we can try and like do a trailer using his voice and so through that process I met Justin we were able to actually do that funny enough which is a harder story but I was with Justin who was the creative director at Eleven Labs at the time in the south of France at the Cannes Film Festival and like I didn't know him so well but like we got on well when we when we caught up the first time and he was like where are you I'm kind of at I'm at the promenade like do you want to get a drink and it's like a beautiful sunny day and we decide okay why not and so we sit down and we order this bottle of rose and we start talking about all things like deep down the rabbit hole on like evolution philosophy AI etc and he then shows me a video of something that he's done his spare time which was a trailer for an Alice in Wonderland film and he this thing had got millions of views online and he just kind of done it in his spare time and it hit me like a lightning bolt I was like this is I thought AI was going to completely pass me by um you know I was like I'm kind of a marketplace person I'm like on my days I'm no longer on the cutting edge like this whole thing has passed me by I'm out of it um and it was the same feeling when I like when I had that conversation with the guy who ran uber about what's a taxi it was the same thing when i walked into the delivery office it was the same time at the ceo of tour same thing i was like okay wow boom like this is this is like this is going to change the world i knew it and so uh we watched watched the trailer i sent it to a friend who ran a production studio she came back and said could we do this for a teaser for one of our films and there and then like the company was born and so we actually called it rabbit hole labs off the alice of wonderland teaser which is the official company name um so that was how wonder started and what gave you i mean you said you you actually like you immediately knew that this is going to change the world but like what gave you the conviction to actually act on it goes back to your other question it was like a deep instinctual knowing like it's it was like it was like it's gonna sound ridiculous but it's like it already happened um i was like this is this is this is it i just knew and i couldn't it wasn't even like this this calculation of like, oh, this is going to lower production costs by X and this is going to open up creativity by Y.

27:45It was like, this is a fundamental paradigm shift in how creativity is going to work in future. And I couldn't help myself. It was like, I had other things to do it wasn't like i was like sitting on my hands but it was like it was just fast i was just drawn to it i was like this is so interesting how did you do that oh we should send this to this person and i and i just started doing and making and create like you know justin creating me like connecting yeah um and i couldn't stop it wasn't like i chose it was just like it was happening so um yeah that's that's kind of it was instinct it was instinct and you mentioned you shared an interesting post a couple of weeks ago uh which was both a reflection and also an outlook um on wonder 2026 and you call it the year of the flywheel so could you talk about how wonder is set up as a company yeah um happy to so yeah i think 2025 was like the year of building foundations you know we started at this time last year we still didn't have any employees you know just and i just raised the pre-seed round um which was like a three million dollar pre-seed led by um local globe and blackbird and uh we kind of launched officially in april you know we ended the year you know we did we did over six million sorry we did over a million in six months have about six million um you know we had like this crazy start um we ended the year with like 30 employees and like across like la new york san francisco london worked with some of the world's biggest artists had all this kind of crazy rapid journey raised the 12 billion dollar pre-seed in october from otomico but so much of that year was like foundation building and trying to set the yeah like the kind of four pillars that like this year we think now that that's been laid they're kind of primed to start like reinforcing each other and so there's there's four kind of key pillars to the business one is agency which is kind of our cash flow you know it's a very simple business model um people have like we'll make a music video for someone like lewis capaldi um they need they have a demand for like premium video content we can service it that's our agency we've then got our ip business which is all about how do we help like filmmakers become founders or artists entrepreneurs how do we kind of disrupt the traditional studio model where like if you're great storyteller you have to give your rights away and your ip away um because producing it into a film costs 40 million dollars if we're able to lower the barriers to kind of hollywood great production can we partner with storytellers and like start to develop ip together so there's there's the ip side of the business there's the technology side of the business which is the story engine which is fundamentally you know a workflow problem set so when you're creating content for the agency or IP how do you create that content at scale in a way that's like technology agnostic so you're working with the different underlying models but there's a lot of like collaboration challenges across like different creatives or traditional filmmakers it um there's a lot of like inefficiency when it comes to making like episodic content how does each episode become easier than the last to make so there's a there's a technology layer to the story engine and then finally there's a platform community slash marketplace layer is which is kind of um one how we we're creating the rails for the ai creative industry so how do we have a community where like the best talent can meet can interact can find work can share tips can enter film competitions um and and that's also not only a way of us accessing the best and highest quality talent or supply to go back to my earlier conversation um it's also a way of us solving distribution so having a fan base having an audience where we can release our stuff and so we set up those four pillars and and ultimately like you know i direct people to the post but there's there's a way in which each pillar kind of reinforces the other so you know agency work generates cash flow it also like allows us to build out our work our proprietary technology on paid projects ip increases our brand awareness which brings in agency work Like the platform community unlocks access to the world's best talent, which we use in the agency or the IP.

32:34The IP builds fans and audience, which we direct back to the platform and community. So it's hard to explain, you know, verbally, but like essentially this year is about connecting the dots between those parts of the business and getting that flywheel to turn. I mean, I read the article, so I think on paper and how also you explained it, I think it makes a lot of sense how the flywheel operates. I was just wondering that usually one would say startups, the main advantage they have is that they focus relentlessly on like probably one thing. So I'm wondering, like, how do you think about it of diluting the focus while building software while having the agency a platform?

33:20So it's a great question. So I think it seems like there's four different distinct businesses, but actually like they're all reinforcing under one. And so like it's part of how we articulate it. But like there's another way of articulating that, which is agency and IP are just two different ways of monetizing the same thing, right? Which is high quality storytelling and like video creative content, right? That's ultimately what it is. In one example, someone's paying a services fee because it's a commercial. In another example, it's just we're deriving revenue through streaming rights or royalties or license fees.

34:01But in the same, it's just premium quality content storytelling, right? It's just monetized differently. But then it's like, how is that content created? Well, it's created from a story engine. so and and the thing there is that we are actually applying the most amount of force on the smallest amount of surface area because we're not trying to build our internal tooling as a b2c or a b2b product you know i think if if we were trying to sell story engine to like major streamers or major advertising agencies i think we would have too much diffusion of focus because we would have two revenue streams but actually um and that time that time may come but not until we are in a position where that technology that we've built for our own benefit is so useful that and we're in a stable enough position that we can then find ways to go okay maybe now we actually start to license elements of this underlying technology so it sounds like there's a diffusion of focus but actually it's more about how that business is articulated versus how it's built.

35:07It comes all down, what you said earlier, to quality supply, probably the top, and then you just have four pillars supporting that. Quality supply is the level, is the creatives, the work, and the business. So we kind of live and die by like, are we able to attract the best talent? Obviously, the community platform we've created in the Wanda Studios app is where all that talent kind of lives. and we've like open sourced that it's like we were able to start with very high quality supply just in credit in the whatsapp group years ago that has a community that basically has the has everyone from the creative director of open ai to deep mind to all the leading filmmakers all in one space so we started with that quality supply but the quality of the work that we create the stuff we put out into the world that acts as a beacon for more people to arrive and join the community, etc.

36:01I want to go back. You mentioned that you did the music video for Luis Capaldi and I think people probably don't understand how big that is because one year ago you didn't have anything and then half a year later you made a music video for one of the world's greatest artists. So how do you get there? How did you get in touch? What's the story behind that? i mean there's it isn't even crazy i mean we we may have even worked with taylor swift so like it's it's it's been it's it was a pretty wild it's a pretty wild year um so how do we get there i think i think look that was that came through a relationship with google i think we did a really good job earlier of like establishing ourselves as like the preeminent or one of the preeminent studios in the world that knew how to blend traditional filmmaking and storytelling like craft with AI so if you think about like if there's a if there's a kind of graph where you've got like AI literate on one axis and like highly creative or like you know quality storytelling on the other we try and be in that like top quadrant I think that that came down to quality supply from day one working with the best artists but also coming from like working with and justin is a key key part of this you know he comes from a filmmaking background he comes from an advertising background he's worked on incredible projects it was it was a timing thing we were early we were early but we were known quickly as having that like rare blend of like high quality storytelling with ai literacy and that is really like where we're trying to lean in as we go into 26 is like how do we be the preeminent studio when it comes to like hybrid blending traditional filmmaking with AI we want to be the best in the world of that one of my do you like one of my heroes is David Ogilvie you probably know him he's the co-founder of the advertising agency Ogilvie and Mathers and I mean this guy was just insane he started the advertising agency when he was 40 I think and just 10 years later his clients were making him more money than the British crown which I think is unreal but like he said something which is avoid excess in all things and that is a recipe for dullness and mediocrity why why i'm bringing this up is um you are clearly like super driven how do you think about um excessiveness and hard work because it also goes against maybe a common wisdom which is probably more like everything in moderation

38:34that's so interesting um i know i like to say like success slaps you in the face and mediocrity kills you slowly so you know you gotta you gotta you gotta lean in you know i think one of the challenges one of the biggest challenges in this whole game is like timing and and product market fit so like you can work really hard and you can toil away in XR and get nowhere or just like kind of do okay and you know that was probably me at Turo if I'm honest for the first few years at least until I you know was less less hard-working but you know it was just a really hard business from a product market fit perspective but I worked my ass off and so I think that's actually more to do with it like you know Ogilvy for example like he had product market fit he had talent but like he solved a real problem and like you only go from like nothing to working on Lewis Capaldi if you've got product market fit and the timing's perfect and the problem that you're solving you're really uniquely positioned to solve it like success does slap you in the face and I think that that's like hard work is not necessarily like the biggest indicator of success like so much of it is actually like timing and having a really strong sense of like, are you, like, that's why so many businesses like pivot and then all of a sudden it's like, boom.

39:59You know, so I think that's a much more interesting framework to think about of like, it's more about like, have you timed this right? Do you actually have, do you have the unlock? Because then the hard work won't feel like hard work. For example, like I do work insanely hard enough. It doesn't feel like work. You know, sometimes you can quote me on that. Sometimes it feels like work. But for the most part, it doesn't. And the most part, it's like no one's like forcing me to get up and do something or like respond to this email or whatever it is. It's because like I'm actually excited. And I'm like, that's a fascinating, like, oh, wow, look, this thing is just that could do this.

40:40And so, you know, it's a hard thing to answer. was like i don't see it as excessive because i don't see it as something where i'm like um i'm like not wanting to do it if that makes sense you know if you're blinding in a way exactly like there are probably times where i'm like you know what like you know i actually said last night i'm not gonna look at my phone um you know it was like 8 p.m i'm not gonna look at my phone i'm not gonna respond to anything i'll deal with it in the morning uh you know all that stuff like super healthy and like really important but if you are like if you are in the product market fit like rocket ship phase it doesn't feel like hard work it doesn't feel like excess it feels like flow i like that take on it um so if we have a closing tradition on this podcast which is uh one question i ask all guests is if you could challenge the listeners to do one thing this week that gets them a step closer to their goal and this is whether they are founders operators professionals or students, what would that be?

41:44That's a great one. So I'm a, this is probably a cliche, but I'm a huge advocate for like zero to one. I just got the book for a friend of mine.

41:57So how I like to operate always with any big ambitious idea or project or thing we want to do at Wanda is what's the fastest, simplest, easiest way to validate whether that actually is going to work. And I think a lot of people waste a huge amount of time trying to like concoct up the perfect strategy. You know, it's another way I think about it. It's like, I'm actually quite lazy. Like I always think about like, what's the shortest, fastest route to figure something else and get somewhere? Like, you know, it's like hire lazy people because they're going to solve the problem in the fastest way.

42:31And I think if people, if there's anything you're like thinking about building or wanting to do or like these grand aspirations I would challenge people to boil down to the most simplest rudimentary like ruthless way how do you just test if there's even traction here because it goes the whole way back to that product market fit thing like you need to be spending all your initial days just searching for that like signal and then only when you find the signal running at it with full speed thank you so much for this Seth um I'm super impressed by what you're building and as I mentioned at the beginning I'm a big fan of the creative work that you guys are putting out but even more so I'm yeah really impressed by how you steer the boat I think there is a genuinity and clarity of intention and purpose in there that is very rare so yeah thank you so much for sharing your story.

43:28I appreciate it man, you're a legend, thank you.