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Letter to Oli: On Craft, Quality, and Founders Podcast

Hi Oli,

I like to visit your website every 6 months or so, and today was one of those days.

I found your public letters to your sister Joana fascinating and it made me want to do the same.

That’s why I’m writing this letter, in response to your post on digital craftsmanship. Lately, I’ve been thinking along similar lines.

I'm frustrated about how most entrepreneurship advice is focused on marketing and selling. For example, when validating if you have a viable business, it's focused entirely on whether someone is willing to pay for the product. 

Sure, that's super important. Not doing this is why most-first time entrepreneurs fail to take off.

But I think there's too little emphasis on product quality, on making good stuff.

Sure, they got someone to buy the product... But did the customer feel like they got what they bought it for, at the minimum?

In episode 2 of The End of an Era, the documentary on Taylor Swift, she reflects on what she thinks about at the end of every show, as people are leaving and walking home:

I really hope they got what they’ve been waiting for. I hope they got what they’ve been saving up their money for. 

That's the spirit of what I mean.

That's also why I wanted to share a podcast I've been obsessed with recently: Founders by David Senra.

One of the themes he talks a lot about is product quality over everything else.

In the Tim Ferriss podcast, he refers to this as the “Anti-Business Billionaire” philosophy — 

These people are so obsessed about one thing and that’s the quality of the product that they’re making. 

They make non-financial decisions like Steve Jobs making sure that the inside of the Mac looks beautiful even though you can’t open it up and it costs more money. He doesn’t care. He wants the best product. 

James Dyson’s like this, he’s an anti-business billionaire. 

Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, anti-business billionaire. 

These guys, they’re obsessed with two things: the quality of the product that they’re making and retaining control of their company over long term. 

And the funny part about this, the reason I call them anti-business billionaires is because if you make the world’s best product and you retain control over your company, you wind up with the money anyways.

In another conversation on the Dialectic podcast, he talks about Apple, Patagonia, and Dyson – 

If you can make the iPhone, you're going to be rich. If you can make Patagonia, starting with climbing equipment and then clothing, you are going to be rich. If you can make the Dyson vacuum cleaner, you are going to be rich.

That's why they're anti-business—because they're not doing it for financial reasons. They're not saying, "Okay, this is what the quarter was. How do we enhance shareholder value by 10% over the year?" They don't. It's quality over everything.

“Never sacrifice quality for speed” --

In the back of Raising Cane's, in their kitchen that the customers never see, there's a great sign that says, "Never sacrifice quality for speed." And they're fast. He knows if you walk up there, it's two minutes and 29 seconds.

He has everything dialed in, but not at the expense of quality. It's almost like the Elon algorithm where you automate at the end. You add the speed after, but not first. The quality has to be there.

That's a handful of words that have helped me through the last few weeks. No one's going to remember if the episode is five days late. They'll remember if it's good or not.

Other reasons I love the podcast:

  • He repeats the same ideas over and over again, ideas I want to "brainwash" myself into, such as product excellence quality over everything else
  • Focusing on one thing for a very long period of time
  • He also embodies the lessons he teaches so it is all very aligned. He's been doing the podcast since 2016 and revisits ideas he did years ago, so you get a sense of how the ideas hold up over time and as he learns from other sources
  • It goes deep into history and connects it to modern life. Like how there is no entrepreneur today like the robber barons such as Vanderbilt, but Putin would be a modern-day incarnate
  • He has an expansive view of what "tech" is which is not just software. But how oil was technology in Rockefeller's time, and so is Patagonia's clothing and equipment

Here are some interviews with him that I think would make a good intro to his stuff:

Did you already know about this podcast? Regardless, if you end up listening to one of these, I’d love to hear what you think.

Chiara

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