#280 – Replacing Yourself as CEO, Living on a Boat, and Crowdfunding to Survive with Alex MacCaw of Reflect
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Uh, we are here with alex and called the founder of reflect dot APP. How's gone good to be here?

Thank you for inviting me.

Is your second time on the heck is podcast I can member, how long go IT was that you on the first time was at least three or four years ago. remember?

I was at least three, four years ago. I can't even remember what I was talking about.

I think let me look at that. I think you were definitely still doing clear bit but now you have like pivoted your episode number fifteen.

I found you can two thousand .

and seventeen like you are one of the original uh, interviews uh we will get a clear big as like OK Alice is like moved on. You started this company clear bit. I think you raise funding for IT was huge when I was in sf.

Like every company is using clear bit like look up data. Like if I want to find someone's email address, I would use clear bit. And now I looked at happens like this huge like enterprise company.

Like you go to the website and that says like try to figure like what IT does. And the top, this is a drop done that says like solutions. And you know the company saw solutions at the top like it's an enterprise company that's got like you know a thousand customers and is making bank.

And then we looked up on some other website that speaking like tens of millions of dollars in revenue, I was like forty million and you're not even doing that anymore. You're like, that's cool. I started that.

Get enough. I'm on to the next thing and I are an nd hacker with the boot rapped business coluber flat. That's a crazy transition.

Yeah, that's right. You say I prevented while I almost prevented my life, I I you know I will see you yeah A B to be a business that was, you know almost two hundred people, and I wasn't doing any coding or building myself. And now I run a consumer APP. This four of us, we have just over two thousand customers, and I am doing everything myself. Dei development r and IT is like a complete, complete change in my life.

By the way, I was going to say that reflect the landing pages. So sick. It's like highly unique. It's like this dark purple futuristic looking landing page. I'll go to say, does alex code like like you know are you are you you know involved in this?

I do code every day. I'm code um and and I I mean that was one of the criteria for this new business. You know after my years of running A B to b business, I I had to code, I had to get back to coating.

So it's just me and two other engineers and one growth guy. And then we actually contract in all our design. So the design you see, if you go to reflect on APP, that is, sign is incredible. And I can not take credit for that either. I I basically found an amazing designer, so I can take credit for finding Young talent. You know, I think he's like twenty, twenty three or something, but all idea was tell them, make a dog and powful and he just went for went for IT uh like is is not as like three visualizations you can even play tech on yeah I found that is like a very .

hidden touches game is like keyboards, controls to put that what is and I playing tech that was distracting .

corner as we were like prepping for this episode.

So reflect is like it's like you said you prevented your whole life, right? You went from like, you know hype eline looking valley CEO with you know millions in revenue and like now you're like indie hacker guy on a boat who move camera who also .

on this boat with you just a visual very time. This is oh that's coy right right now right now me on on board it's it's a caTamaran and we're in granada. Uh and I just like sAiling around the grand. We have style inquires changed my life. In fact, when I heard about starting is when I decided to get the boat and live on the boat.

Do you know i'm generalin, the founder of a blocking platform called ghost, because he also kind of sales around lives on a boat.

Here is name a bit every night again, like h you, this boat people, I know that's .

a person.

this this two of you. So what happened? Like what had that happen? Like because you just like wake up one day and and just look at the man. And this is not for me like.

yeah, it's like you just snapped.

We gave a different person well.

pretty much, you know I think kova made a lot of people we think you know their lives, to be honest. For me, IT was taking like a real look at what the company needed from a leader over the coming years, and then also looking in the mirror and being like, is that you are you that person? And coming to a really difficile decision that actually it's not you and and it's funny because I ego just gets in the way all the time of our own happiness.

And there's a lot of c is out there who are miserable, who is just doing that because the eagle is it's take them to do IT. But not only are they miserable but not good at IT. That's lucky thing like I think Grace you up to a point you know, at at at some point in just the job changes completely.

What I am amazing is going from zero to one， uh, in buildings, new stuff. And so honestly, what I should do in life is just concentrate on the thing that I can do almost uniquely, and then other people can focus on the scaling aspect of IT. And if reflect ever gets big enough, I will just tie up the C. E, O to run IT and do the same thing again.

China, I was just talking about how if I had to choose, like I can be the CEO, like some huge corporations that I get enterprise solutions, thousand customers make million dollars year or be the C. E O, like something like andy hackers where like I just been building in public last week, I tweet about the features and i'm making I like, like released bugs and people tell me about them and make mistakes. It's scrappy like this.

What's our game place in janey, like that. Like the next three weeks we're going to do that. That's a look around and .

time me play. Yeah.

if I can do that, I could around and find out and make ten times less money, I would choose that path. You would. I knew I would be good at being a big company CEO, just because I like the way.

And let's just just get a sent to the numbers to here because because you saw someone that mention that a clear bit and twenty twenty two did like forty one million in revenue like on that order is the o right?

The C E O is getting a very tty lot of stock. But like let's say, you could be like the like the founder like outs. I see that you could be the founder of a company is making where u CEO.

Are taking home like twenty million dollars something crazy, right? All you can be an andy hacker starting like a superfund business is really enjoy. You're making like five million year and then you can be good to both.

Which one do you pick? Oh definitely the latter one. Uh, I think sometimes people have to do the former who come to that conclusion, though they have to feel like they have yeah done the big thing or or what what have you because of the way it's always out there there always one day, you know what if I done that, I can tell you after doing IT that small companies are a lot more fun.

I think I think there a lot more lucrative as well because, you know, when i'm A C E O of the company, i'm probably not being paid the the most. I should definitely not being paid the most. They had to say, you know, you are C, F, R. So many other people are being paid more than you. In fact, this year salary is typically quite low ah and so you not putting in twenty million, where is when you are in the city company? You and end to be to be clear with you, reflect that none of this point yeah but it's very good able that you could be pulling like ten and and twenty and and thirty and then like once you have that coming and I don't know how much more you need really and and IT feels like so much more uh then if you just do a secondary right, if you do a secondary, uh, you sell some of your equity. You know that's like a one and done the thing and just said, you know that that's like a pretty rare event and that you need to basically save that money and not use IT worries if you have money coming in every month from your lifestyle business， then then I think you feel a lot richer.

And especially if you have a lifestyle where it's not that expensive. Imagine living on a boat. On the caTamaran. The carbon is cheaper than living like an expensive two three bedroom, same for school apartment and like the peak of the tack booo and what like break down the cost me you like living on a boat.

Um well, uh yeah I mean, that is to say there are a different a different types of you do you can do this a lot cheap for .

the I do you have A I .

think you probably about right? I I think it's probably even if you're not exactly right, it's probably fairly even. And so then the question is like, do you want to be living in downtown S F. Or do you want to be living on a boat in the Carrie? So then you have to ask yourself .

that but .

you know IT IT is expensive, but but like red rent in this is not as well, right?

So it's about think about what you're doing is work on and hacker APP. You've joined us. You joined the board.

I think you said there's you and six other people are you and five other people. So it's a very small team. And IT is called reflect and the life.

This has never missed a note idea of connection. So you get this cool video that's also expertly designed. And I watched this for fifteen media introduction to reflect that and how to be productive and reflect.

And I got it's hard for me to describe IT because I ve used like zero note taking apps. I don't use your research. I don't use what's the other one you like chatting of city, I don't use for I I don't take any notes at all.

I I use post. That s that all I do. I guys scribble, sit on, eat papers like this and throw away once it's IT gets too for so walk me through the idea of reflect lego.

Why did you build this? Why should anyone use IT? Who's IT for?

How does work? Well, I would say your system is Better than sum. I've had I heard of people like saving email draft, uh that so come on now taking to but ultimately like the way that I think these days is that I don't really do much thinking up here.

I I push everything out into my no taking tool um and then once it's in paper then I can look at IT objectively. Wanted on the screen. So I for me, there's like IT really helps improve my thinking and IT also in license anx ety.

You know, we all kind of have this feeling when we like you wake up in the night and so many things to do. I got this this long list to do. The only way of reducing anxiety is literally getting that stuff out of your mind and into um other paper pen or maybe something.

I grow flags. What I set out to do with your flags was essentially built a apple notes plus you know I view opponents as our biggest competition. You know apple one is amazing.

IT just works. It's fast. IT thinks people you never lose a note. We has actually at a huge maniacs ery that's gone IT into that is quite impressive products. Um but there is a lot of things that are missing, as you can I imagine, like apple have a lot of different products that in apple notice is not getting hundred percent of their focus is be as good as someone was dedicated life to making this APP awesome. So we are trying to do apple those plus we have something called back linking and you familiar with that?

I am I feel like everything just to be clear, everything that you're saying like you're basically talking to me, i'm in you're like torney customer based courtland is like courtland like I don't know. Can you back lank with with posted notes? Like I don't know. Is that a function of a post?

Yeah, yeah. It's essentially okay. If you think about Colin, what's the last thing you forgot? If you think .

you remember, you can remember well.

If you think about like that, the time when you did remember something, you typically you just remember around the edges, right?

Actually, somebody message me last week and said they wanted to call. And I was, yeah, I would love to talk to this person. We even spoken a long time. I should call her that I marked read in archive date and told you forgot out about IT. And then I remember IT today and I just before .

this forecast. So that's the last. But imagine if you couldn't remember her name. You then try remember the that SHE worked for maybe, or how you met her, or who you have common you, you can remember around the thing to try and get to the thing. And this is essentially how the memory works through association.

And we could think about tools like a reflect of city as well, is that you can create references, so one note can reference another, or even a word in a note can reference another note, and then you can essentially build up a grow on associations. And this is helps a lot with recall. You know, I I can tell you understand why you use us the the method of no taking, it's fast, it's right in front of you.

It's physical like you can't go wrong. You don't have to pay monthly description for IT every note that will heal us different people and then I was like, you know what this to see if there are any other people out there that I like me who think like me are. And there were we you know, we launched a couple of years ago now.

And we are, especially in the last year, have been taking off like growing fifteen percent months a month. We just stood about forty three k revenue last month. And we are like very close to being profitable, which is like .

going to do when .

you start again. So you you're forty three a months.

yes. So we we we started maybe two a bit years ago. Notes apps are extremely complicated, surprisingly complicated. Things like the entin equipment that we haven't reflect the real time, think offline, think in conflict resolution is so much to IT. So the first a year or so was building.

And the thing about these consumer products is that they are just the bar so high and the chair is and there no expansion. And if you don't have any social elements to your products and we we don't have any social elements, it's like this is building a business on hard mode. So I like definitely think that if if you want to build a and a lifestyle business, take me to be for your own sanity.

But I can tell you that H B to c is fun IT. IT is a lot of fun. And and you know, one of the main differences between this company and client was that I really jail with our customer base and I hanging out with more day and I chat with them in this d and that, I think would be a big piece of advice to Younger alex. So should be pick your customers because you're going to hang out with quite a lot .

is what I been doing with andy hackers recently. And any hacker's is like technically, it's A B to bee company, right? Like the products that we build are for other and hackers who are themselves running businesses, but the tiny little one person businesses or two person businesses.

So sometimes feels like B2C bec ause I j us t lik e tal king to the peo ple who are lik e fri ends. They don't have like a head sales. There's no like giant pipe plant have to work through the itself of people.

And I also got to hang out with them all the time, right? Like you build in public in your tweeting photos of which building and the features are talking about and you're posting form about other people just jump in and give you feed back. So I like right there with you on the built for people that you like. That's almost like checkless. I number one, if I am considering an idea who is this for and do I like hanging and out talk and to the people because that with the next day for ten years and I look like.

yeah, he took me a long time to figure that out sadly. Um but the thing is if you do that well, then your products will be much Better because you you're you going to take their feedback, you are going to improve the products. And and I think that's one of the reasons that I managed to the phone reflect into a note up and I love to use everyday.

I think so I like I said, I am a massive note APP fan. Like right now i'm I was like going to early adopter to notion was obsessed with I got cortland into IT even while I was using notion and I then kind of cheated on notion and I played around with like room research and of city and and definitely nomi with reflect and I find IT insane because you said building some consumer apps is like playing business on hard mode.

And I feel like with productivity apps in particular, it's like super mega hard mode, right? Because many apps are so ends like you like to know. Part of reflect is like it's got IT to do up and like like, you know the every person who is you want to be a start of found or probably has some to do a business idea that is sitting sitting around that bought a domain for.

And I think ironically, one of the things that makes reflect like that gives us a shot is exactly what you ve said, which is that it's like sufficiently like opinionated and unique, like IT actually does kind of have A A learning curve. And so there are certain people who will look at that and be like that's exactly what the fuck i'm looking for, right? Like it's got a mind map. It's like got to look at your home page and like there are few things that just like turn on like a part of my brain that I know. For example, court looks at the needs like us need is I just keep scanning and like I have to to play around .

with that thing yeah, I called them .

in the tetris. Exact you same to, by the way, that ChatGPT is no social features, is no built in sharing you have to sign up before you can use IT is no inherent viral loop i'm series sly questioning the years of advice that I gave you to started because he was like running, like comedy, are telling something.

They have to put all of those things and that the company to succeed and now is built a much bigger sort of on any of them without doing any that. And that's kind of what I think about I think about what you're doing, right? Like you are not adding all that stuff. Yeah, you're still having like forty and a amount of revenue, which is human is especially given how competitive .

this areas and after spending a whole the whole year building. So like you know, I just presume like a year marketing.

yeah, how did you how did you get there? How did you grow to that that size? How did you make forty thousand doll month from a competitive note taking up?

yeah. Well, I can tell you I always when broke up building IT.

you know I like go .

almost right. Yeah I mean, I was we were both chat for a long time and you know, eventually I basically ran out of money and then we had to do a cloud fund. But yeah, I was difficult like I I was just everyday like coding, coding, coding and found some amazing engineers to work on that.

We grow initially through what a mouth and you know A I features have been great as well for like we got a big great once we wanted those. But IT is like IT IT definitely feels like a very light long game. I guess I got very slow burn because the are organics that is increasing a little bit every month, but we don't know why. And you know, obviously try good try to .

figure this yeah you .

try to figure this out. Like IT is a when the first thing to tell you about marketing and I repeatable channels, you know and and we've been turned to build this repeatable channels. But really, it's just like IT is like a real product first and a growth strategy where we just just polish and polish and polish and and just make this products amazing. And then uh and that he seems to be working for now they they added, you know, they will come if you build something useful seems to be working. And I think we can get away with that because very little lifestyle business, we only need to make fifty six k monthly revenue to be profile.

Yes.

right? So like we we we're close. We need all these things that we have. You have a large companies is like massive ad campaigns. And so far, will you just focus on the products? Um and I think we are getting over this hump that you have with this brute trap come is just so difficult at the start where no one will invest in you um and you just decline on your cash to IT, especially if you want to be to see company where you're doing that maybe four years because craft.

funny thing is, is fast. I don't like like the money behind this because like you've got clear bit, i'm sure you still own. You want a good chunk of that clear bit story, but they haven't like so they even acquire they have gone public. So that's just like locked up.

locked up. So yeah, let's talk about crowd funding because I don't think enough people understand crowd funding and what has changed fundamentally. And also, I don't think people are being imaging enough about about investing in general.

So I I do a bunch of investing as well. I run a little fun. So i'm like familiar where the investing grow out. And often i'm talking to entrepreneurs and they are pitching me their companies and i'm thinking and I end up saying, and why you raising money for this, and you should only raise money and VC money if your products and your company has a chance of an IPO, that is the only reason.

And you should not delete yourself, because once do you read a fair band of V, C capital, you have just sign way your business eventually, eventually the business will exit but go either go public or get sold 啊。 And you will just make sure you you won't be running IT certain ly, you won't have full control over IT. And even if you don't like that, the best scenario, the most likely scenario is you make a medium sized business that is OK your your v is keep asking for growth or your employees keep asking for growth because there were made just made a million dollars stripe.

And I like, know what you know? I like I I like, like working the right come to me on the, I do. So then you going to raise another make around. And this and this and this is what has happened the last few years.

All these companies under water now, and the the founders are basically right now working for free because they are onna make any money out of these companies because they raised such high valuations. So my point is essentially really, really consider about raising venture capital. Crowd funding changes the game. So this like there's two rigid platforms for this. We found that in republic, they will handle all the advance for you.

You can go on there and you can raise your customers and you can raise up to I think is five million a year um and you can raise much less than that if you uh if you don't want to go through all audit requirements or so fast, there's a various degrees of the regulation. So we decided up raising a million dollars and we we raised from our customers, we raised IT in, I think, a month, maybe I was very straight forward. We just um posted about that. We sent one email to our customer base and they I think this is a very enthusiastic cash base, right? And they love the and I .

think they are they they think this is great, is going to be huge. And how often is the consumer restrict to have .

a chance like invest and like text start up, like it's not a thing maybe yeah if you guess that had I want that if they were like this, i'm sick and I know taking out going out of business, you know I get him sick of changing tools like, maybe this i'll be big maybe maybe not but maybe this will health that stick around？ I don't I don't know.

There's a lot of different motivations and a lot of our 啊 or they are investors were first time investors。 So I wanted to take them along on the journey. What I tell them was we're not going to try and make your equity at ten times valuable.

What we are going to train to is pay you a dividend. So this changes the incentives because now the investors and the employees will receive actually are not looking for, for the growth early. The maximum amount growth.

What they are looking for is like a dividend, and I get annual dividend from the business. And IT means you don't have to sell the business, alright. So IT is IT is it's a little nuts.

I haven't heard of .

any company. I think we're to and I very went to me that we pull IT off because I want to be a very good example because I think this should be this cottage industry of mom pop tech businesses. Yes, that just two or three people, we know if you use their product and have a problem, the personnel evenings to found that you're gona get founder level support and and have agency and they buy into the products and they really, really care.

And we just, I think, lost that for no really good reason in IT with a lot of tech businesses. And we have so many companies that go out of business for no good reason they would like. They were great businesses that just happen to raise bench capital. And now they have to sell for job to the drop box and they get to shut down style. The lifecycle wouldn't a be nice if we had alternative.

What's so interesting about that is that i'm invested in an notion. Notion is my big no taking up. I have my entire life a notion. I moved all of my, all of my notes and all my dogs and all of my to do in a notion many years ago before IT was big.

And I specifically remember that they had like an outage one day where you notion was down for five hours, and I lost my shit freak out. I get, I know on my, my hands are tied and everything and I specifically remember being like, I just want to pay notion tons of money, right? I wish get to invest money because I just love the the product so much just of this.

They give me just like mitter it's up for me and like I I remember that I I felt invested in the company where else like I want to you want to evAngelize notion and get as many people do to as possible because I wanted to be successful because I don't want you to shut down. And it's like a similar alignment of of incentives in the way that you say. And what makes me the immediately place that my mind goes towards is like, okay, that crowd funding model might work, but IT specifically needs to be for these kinds of products were like people are massively invested.

For example, if like my kindle APP sort of shut down and I like I used kindle to read, also be like whatever i'll just go to google. Books are like apple books, right? It's it's totally total commodity, nothing specific to any individual APP. But like yours, a real research in notion like that model really does seem like IT could work.

Yes, I would that far as a great point and I I think of the model lends itself to consumer businesses from from that regard. Um but also, quite Frankly, you are much more likely to see you like a good return from A B to b company. So I think I people who are more interested in the actual return aspect of investing um might be more interesting investing in B2Bees whe n peo ple are mor e pas sionate abo ut the too ls the y use eve ry day mig ht be mor e inv esting in in b t o sea. If you go on we find republic, you see also the different companies raising not not just be to see a company is all over the shop.

The only andy company that I can recall that has been like double and cloud funding is dumb road by cycle of that if you met cycle, alex.

yeah I have yes. So they raised, I think a hundred more valuation yeah and .

then I think he is ten dollars. You like whatever like the maxim was in five million or something and they do not have the sort of dividend promise. IT wasn't like OK, we're going to pay you dividend.

They would just like to be a part of this big thing. And then I think he sort of stopped going for like that crazy unicorn and huge valuation. Sort of right.

And so people are investing thinking what i'm going to make like you know ten x one x on the investment if gera as well, just like that, the money like we're going to I wonder I wonder like yeah because this is something that I want to export. Andy, hackers, I think, would be awesome if we have like this whole industry of two and three persons companies who could raise money from their customers. I mean, you have like a few hundred customers invest, you know, at a million dollar.

Uzi, take a few thousand dollars each. You know it's not that much money. But like can that community can that like phenomenon flu and bloom if there isn't a lot of trust, right? If investors are getting ripped off, if they don't know what they're going to get in return, if you, as the person raising money, are necessarily held to any sort of really saying you have to pay a different and like how does that work and how do you see that playing out?

There is a huge amount of trust, and that is, I think, how the system has worked up to this point regardless. You know, that is, if you go out and raise an Angel and A B C round, you know the best is can do do diligence on the founder. And it's gonna the early stage.

Do we trust this guy or not to do his references? Check out um it's a reputation game. So I I I mean, I think we can probably land on the same on the same dynamics as well for crowd funding.

You probably needs some kind of lead investor. He's doing a lot of the due diligence. I think that, that helps as well. Some some other person has trusted, then you can kind of trust the entrepreneurs proxy of that person involved.

Uh, for example, gamma specifically, I was confused why they raised that valuation and because that really means that you are onna, try and sell the business and make that money liquid or at least I mean, I feel the business 啊， i would if I was in issues, I would I just offer IT to the investing out is certain a man every year just yet offer some liquidity? Yeah and maybe that's an attentive model. But I but I do think the evidence kind of get you around all of that, you know changes the incentive completely.

And I want to like and this is an experiment and if we put IT off like our investors, I think I go to we pay the first vivid. And if not this year, next year, we still have like a hundred k out of the military race, right? So you know the first event check, check them might be half their money back.

And do you know, by the way, how many of those customers you raise that million from? Like individual people I know .

I just we funder there is three interest seventeen university and I think you raise money from some other places.

yes. So um we raise uh majority on we funder and then we raise a separate uh check on intro this. You know some of my friends were like, alex, you gotto let me invest because they invest my last business that went well for them.

Uh so you know we took maybe like maximum like fifty k checks, but those of were only a couple of those and the rest were all like a thousand dollar checks from uh, individual customers. Um but what we told our customers is that they're getting payback or sorry, what we told our investors is that they're getting payment first, right? They are going to get their principle back. And so I want to carve at all of this bites. IT looks like we will get be able to payback our investors really quickly their principal and then from then on, they get a percentage of the the profits of the business.

right? yeah. So like imagine being like a user of an APP and like, you love this APP and he gets Better every month, every week.

And then also that I just started sending you, start sending you money. So you checks in the mail. That sounds amazing.

That s amazing.

So let's say you're like a founder listening to this and you want you want to do what they hear. Are you doing right? What's the playbook for a founder that wants to go the crowd funding around, they sign for, we funder. Step one, how do they ensure they get a million dollars based? Because that's not easy to do.

Look, if you don't have a brand or you aren't like a good at making products, then maybe think again, this is not like some free money out sitting out there like you should already have a products by the end customers by the time you're raising like in this day and age, I don't think there are any excuses unless you're you are doing some nuclear fusion.

If you know if you you're just building a notes, APP would be to be SaaS company, build the product first, do contracting on the web on the side, if you have to, to pay for that. But like beauty product, get customers once you are a few hundred customers, then start thinking about where do you should go this route. And we actually pull our customers to see if they're interested or not prior to the crowd fund. That's another thing is free to do as well.

We had a conversation recently with a rob willing is the founder of microsoft. A bunch of indie hackers go and have these community meetings, and he's dealing. He has a fund, a tiny seed. And so we brought up this idea during s right, right? And like when we ran the idea by ham that OK, maybe we should do crowd funding for indie hackers, be able to invest and each other's products, like on our product factory, he almost immediately popped that idea. And he is like, hey, listen, you don't want to deal with illegalities dealing with equity at at at its like the structures get really difficult to, especially with the hackers who you have such low revenue and he's like, but maybe if you think about crowd funding, where is all about like think kickstarter, it's all about like non equity based perks you could get off the ground. Maybe you would have a lot of indie hackers who were like willing to invest in each other's products for like you know, I don't know, A A three months there like A A few extra features or maybe extra access to the .

founder who knows how arana it's like kick started, right? I can really guarantee IT people like might just know the product. They might like what they what they were promise to get again.

Yeah that's right. You can't guarantee IT and you relying on their reputation, the person that sounds like this guy doesn't want any more competition.

I no no look the other action .

you know um like I can then differently a good point on his behalf. You don't have to you could use a platform like we find our republic. The really key thing that you guys have a distribution and trust brand, you could just organize the high level and then people go and invest on these other platforms that are exist. Then then you would have to do any real any work around you know, the legality of IT. You can just use the testing .

structure ideas.

ideas. So one of the things I like to do on the show is we get on andy hacks like you. You have a cool business. Um we talk about that for a bit but also like whatever somebody's writer I wants to talk about, what you think is excEllent writing I think is excEllent, make good conversation.

So you got your blog blog, uh alex ma dot com or are you just go to alexa a dot com and see you like a list? It's very poprad mask, just like a very flat list of all the topics, even a super simple I love you and your latest one is called the illusion of free will, which I take to mean, but you don't believe the freewill. Well, give me the run down.

Why do you have a blog? Why do you write? How do you baLance? This is because a founder like writing, blogging, and give me to take freewill.

wow. Yes, I think like one of those things is not like the others. this.

And then you take me, year glosses on life.

the universe. And okay, so I ve always loved writing. I think of IT as brain programing, uh, essentially that I think if you are a very good writer, you can have an impact on the world such that you could never have in any other profession without having, without having A A master team.

Must can have a huge impact. This is got a big team ah if you did tid like one person working for, you know he wouldn't have that impact right? Is on the other hand, okay they can really change the world just by in I said IT is always fascinated me.

And this one of the reasons that I started and not taking company a up to this point, I have been writing nonfiction, extremely boring books. And my brother says he uses to get themselves to sleep at night time. Sometimes this a dog ah, I written a few books on programming for a rightly back in the day, and then I wrote a couple books, management and building companies.

I carrot a book called the great CEO within that take a fantastic book building startups. And another one called the man just handbook, which is a free online book about managing and companies. So for me, it's like I set out to write a book, and then I learned along the way, I I don't write about subjects that I know about completely.

I I used that the writing, the book is like a mechanism for learning about IT. But having said that, my ultimate dream is to write science fiction. And I just think writing fiction in general is just so much harder than writing a non fiction.

You know, when you're writing about book of programing, you know exactly what put in the book. You just the features of the programme language, but if you are writing a fiction book can be whatever you dream of, you can go in any direction, right? So that is like one one of my heroes. And SHE is a guy called hue hoi, yeah. And he write science fiction, and he lives .

on the boat and full circle. Yeah, but .

he was alright. So we talk about freewill. But before before job.

the freeway, I want to ask you few more questions about your boat life because like the more you talk about and I just see you chilling and here is like this, a beautiful background. You sort of to get this cool ebon flower just bob and up and down slowly IT just IT looks nice. What is the like to live on about? right? Like like the downsides for me IT seems that could be lonely. You're traveling a lot, you know, there's a lot of people around, but all the upsides, a lot of adventure, you're going to place the island island, be scary. You know, like give me like a good snapp shot of your boat life before you give me a snapp shot of why we don't have very well.

So essentially I solve the lonely this problem by having friends coming here. And so every other week I have a difference out of friends coming to um and and otherwise you are right, they would get very lonely. What what is IT like? Well, it's kind of the closest thing to living on like a spaceship and space travel that we have right now.

You know, if you think about IT, I have my life support system here on above me, instead of solar panels that give me all the electricity that I need. Um I have a water maker, A D sAlinator that turn seawater into fresh water that I can drink and a and then I have storage fridges, freeze what have here, and then my attributive trace org is the wind. So I bely use the engines, and I just like, put up a sale and is in is kind of crazy.

But I can go whatever is blue on the map. You know, I sometimes I look at the globe like bind, and now I can stop here. You can put an anchor anywhere in the world, uh, and it's like the freedom there is just is incredible. Of course, IT is is good to downsize.

Is this a major, major downside, just like the amount of overhead, the money, the time you spend? You know, like right now i'm in the marina, but let's say we were doing this podcast and I was an anchor and the anker started slipping and the forecast and make sure my house and flow away, you know, so that you know this person at this stage of my life, I absolutely love IT. You know, there is a saying season that in a few guys know this, but this is a hrk anes come through the carib an from july, november. So you can't you can know someone say us to and trying to judge them A I I i'm sure doesn't let me do that. 2。

I mean, you're like right in the remote triangle like this is where .

people disappeared during our king season in the every again can come and of islands. You know right now i'm in gen nado, which doesn't typically get hit but ah yeah northern arabian is kind of no goes and for much the year.

did you have like a like a starter version of this? Did you have a friend who had a boat? And you got to like example IT or was this just a you are a land lover and then one day you should not your fingers pound the table and .

like you just on a boat .

trying to figure everything yeah um so I grew up saying my dad, head of butter and H A lot a lot of sailors that that's the story of here so I really kind of caught the bug early on. And ah you know what like like like I mentioned when I was working clear bit I heard about starling and and I was like, what this is really interesting styling actually changes a lot of things is now now we can work forever you know and then I was like, well, how do I want to change my life based on this information and and you know commissions to vote with life crisis um but with you .

seem like you're like in your last one is i'm thirty .

three yeah i've got a baby face three prime I think that's like A.

A valley slow value sort trope made crisis about age thirty same thing happened well you .

know I just think more people should just think I had the box a bit. You know, we know we didn't have to be talent to, you know our apartments. We you can be best for anywhere these days and certainly I recommend .

living on a ft. Not going to the good stuff. Why is there? Why is there no freewill? Give us your your take.

Well, five minutes, definitely not long enough talking about that.

It's all the end of the outs.

But yeah, like I don't think this is like a some of the people like talking about, especially people who maybe more scientifically minded. I like talking about IT just because that is kind of the unfortunate that we have not found any expand for free will in like for example, like the stand model or classical physics. And there actually is no space for IT.

So if you talk to a physicist and you ask them if there is any free will, that they will probably tell you that does not like that is the scientific consensus right now. It's just not really talked about because it's kind of an unsettling thought. I have found that once you embrace IT, IT is actually very freeing.

And and I found that with also benefits giving employ are the people on the situations. And I think we would, I mean, the purpose of that post was to try and like I ultimately would be lovely at if a government level, like a policy level, we admitted that there was no free will and then we they would let you change how you would do a justice and present reform. Ah IT IT would put a big focus on rebilitate because you wouldn't trying to get revenge.

You wouldn't be trying to a like just punish people who who were bad, morally bad because the economy moves the morality from the equation in in, in, in a lot of sensus. Um but so there I think there are a lot of benefits to IT. If you can get over that hump, I don't think a lot of people will get over that hump because IT just seems um the idea seems not it's such a cool part of experience that IT must think like a reliant idea that that that we don't have any free will get offended .

by stuff like that. Neither chain nor I will cause are probably on the same page of you. And I think you are .

not only am on the same page, uh, literally one week ago, today, I preordered a book that's coming out called determined by the guy, Robert a polsky. He's like, he's written a book called behave on on human behaviors, one of the most preeminent biologists and like and docker ologies in the world right now. And all of his books and studies are about like the things that make us tick.

And at a certain point, the through line there is like when you explain even what we know, you quickly squaze out the idea that you sort there's like a magical go inside of us or that these these biological skin bags full with magic um and so that book is coming out. I'm a huge nerd of of that stuff and it's particularly it's not merely just you abstract college dorm talk right like IT has a lot of implications for illegalities like one of the things that Robert sport sky likes talking about is like, yeah like prison reforms should be thought about differently. Like criminal justice should be thought about differently um IT really like changes almost everything about some of our core institutions and how you behave.

This is a person like, I like that you mentioned empathy, alex, because I also like, uh, real believer and free. Well, I kind of think like there's a moment you're born, you know like your biology is set your environment to set. You're no choice in any of that and the rest of IT might just just be dominus, right?

You unfold and as you put your blog, like giving the exact same of the universe, like you're going to make the same decision every time because like that just the set of experience that you had up in your life, you can really change in a bubble and you know pep oni pizza and like you can never choose others SE. And I think why the not? There's anyway to prove that it's true or not and a lot of people will be unconvinced, even though I am convinced.

I think that gives me a lot more empathy for other people because I understand like, okay, well, like everybodys got a story. Everybody has a set of things that happen to them and things that are that make them who they are. If I was that person, I do the exact same thing that they're doing, right? Like I wouldn't have a choice.

I would essentially be forced to do that exact thing that they're doing. And I am only me because of who what I was before, you know, in the moment before this, and who I was the moon before that, all back down to the very beginning of my being right. I never had any choice at any point along that process. And I think that doesn't mean everybody gets up the hook IT doesn't mean you don't want to punish, you know, imprison somebody who is violent or dangerous IT doesn't an any these things. That just means for me, like I can have a little bit more and empathy and I can try to understand a little bit more of where somebody y's from if they're doing something it's hard for me to accept to understand .

and there's nothing wrong with yeah having more empty that's right and a bit of .

more hungary as well .

exactly life as well .

exactly pretty yeah your faults and your credits both become a lot more muted right?

Ah but thanks for indulging this range line of questioning at the end of an excEllent cover. I A little bit envious of your boat life or see if I am getting a Better anytime. But I i've taken the apostate approach, investing in turn to my problem and trying to make at this very cool place.

Um think I always ask for us to think of these episodes for you to give any act resenting one piece of advice, one observing, one recommendation that could be anything. This is not to be the most important thing that you ve taken away from your journey, but just something that you don't think they would have heard from other people, or something that's important to you. What do they take away?

I think this the the book, the great CEO within is mostly written by my CEO coach at macharg. He is coached almost all the the top founders and so I can value this point is such an amazing work. So I guess my my matter advices go and read that book because IT contains all the actual practical advice that you need to run a business.

They have to talk about CEO coaching next time.

Yea, S I alex.

thanks. African .

appreciated your a second of ten episodes on the other podcast.

So eight more to o .

IT happen. Thank you much.