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This episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different is part of a very special two-part series that we are doing on how to design a legendary career, company and category. This two-part series is a masterclass on how to have a legendary career in technology from 2 different perspectives. On this episode, we have a dialogue with the legendary Joe Sexton.

Joe Sexton has been a material contributor to creating well over $40 billion in market value over his legendary career. He’s one of the most legendary sales revenues and frankly, overall company leaders I’ve met or ever had the pleasure of working with.

There are many people who would easily pay $25,000 to have lunch with Joe, and today you got him for free and on repeat. So sit back and let this conversation take you into new heights and ideas in the next hour or so.

How to Change to Conversation in Tech Industries

Christopher and Joe reminisce on the time they spent working together, what they learned from each other during that time, and how they were able to apply what they had learned from each other to their own practices after they pursued their own paths.

For Joe Sexton, it was all about changing the conversation about things. Whether he went to McAfee, CrowdStrike, and other different fields in tech, his understanding in improving their business and becoming business leaders in their respective categories was on how to change the conversation, i.e. making a radical change in the usual perspective of a certain product, or creating a new one for a problem that people didn’t think of solving before.

Know What You Know, and Execute

Joe Sexton has taken may advisory roles over the course of his career, and have heard from CEOs that doesn’t seem to know what exactly their company does, or what they do in it.

“I’ve spoken literally to well over 100 CEOs in my board role. I’ve heard pitch after pitch after pitch, and 99 times out of 100, after a half hour of passionate talk and presentation by the CEO, I say, “I’ve been doing these 35 years, and I don’t understand what you said. I mean, I only understand what you do.””

– Joe Sexton

On the other hand, Joe has also worked with people who knew what they were good at, and got his help so they could focus on the thing they’re good at, rather than stretching themselves thin. Of course, it doesn’t mean that you only stay on that level for the rest of your company’s development, but learning where you can help your business grow, especially during its start, can spell success or failure in startups and the like.

Joe Sexton on Creating Your Opportunities

When asked about how he would create opportunities for himself when he got started, Joe replies that that is one of the questions that young people ask him.

To answer the question, Joe shares that one must have a good track record on their field and the data to back it up. Because when it’s time to compete in the market, these two things will speak for themselves, rather than coming up with a soft pitch and hoping for the best.

It’s like explaining what you are worth to a company or a potential investor, without needing to resort to technical babble or telling your story from scratch. Having that track record and reputation and the data to back it up means that they have something to look into before you even meet, and that could put them at ease.

To learn more about How To Design A Legendary Career, Company, And Category, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Joe Sexton

Mr. Joe Sexton is an accomplished technology executive who’s been part of creating over $40 billion in value.

He’s served as CEO, President, CRO and SVP, advisor and/or board member for more than a dozen category designing technology firms.

He is the former President of Worldwide Field Operations at AppDynamics. ($3.7B purchase by Cisco)

Prior to AppDynamics, he spent significant time in senior leadership roles at McAfee ($5B public co), Mercury Interactive ($4.5B purchase by HP) and CA Technologies ($20B public).

Joe is currently on the Board of Directors of Aqua Security, Menlo Security, D2iQ, DecisionLink and BrainBox Intelligent Marketing.

He is formerly on the Board of CrowdStrike and Executive Advisory Board of PagerDuty helping both companies experience successful IPOs.

Joe is also a private investor in several promising technology startups.

Joe earned his BA in Marketing from the University of Kentucky.

He is very passionate about mentorship, helping women succeed in the workplace and teaching salespeople how to become Value Professionals.

Links

Connect with Joe Sexton!

LinkedIn

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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On this episode of Christopher Lochhead, Follow Your Different, we are going to drop a conversation that I recently had with my dear friend, one of the smartest guys in tech, Bob Evans, on his podcast, Cloud Wars Live.

If you work in technology, what Bob and his guests have to say is fascinating, illuminating, and, frankly, agenda-setting. If you’re a regular reader of Category Pirates, you’ll know that we’ve been writing about intellectual capitalists and the emergence of a whole new human category, Native Digitals, for quite some time. We believe this is an extremely important topic, and we believe that the emergence of the intellectual capitalist as the highest value role in the work world above that of what has historically been the highest value job you can have in the working world, which is the knowledge worker, is particularly significant.

Because those of us who will thrive not just survive in the future, we’ll move beyond acquiring knowledge and getting paid to apply that knowledge to getting paid to create and monetize new categories of intellectual capital, new categories of knowledge, new categories of thinking, which can be turned into new products and services.

The Story of the Hummingbird

The conversation starts off with Christopher telling the story of the Hummingbird and his Sensei Sutton. His sensei is an amazing martial artist and a badass individual, but at a certain point in his life, he had to overcome many adversities before getting to where he is now.

“So the moral of the story is in life – Sometimes you’re the hummingbird and sometimes you’re the sensei. But Sooner or later, we all need somebody to catch us tightly enough not to hurt us, but strongly enough to save us.”

– Christopher Lochhead

In life, we will absolutely be in situations where we are the hummingbird. But the real question is, when we have an opportunity to be the Sensei, will we will we meet the call?

ChatGPT and the Death of the Knowledge Worker

Christopher then talks about the current boom in AI technology, particularly on the topic of ChatGPT and similar AI generated content.

Much like how machinery and Automation have taken over some aspects of labor from men, this new AI technology seems to be crowding in the profession of Knowledge Worker. While it may not be up to par with certain intricacies to date, it is quickly learning and becoming better over a short period of time.

And much like the service workers of the past have to learn to adapt to new technology, Knowledge Workers also have to follow the trend and evolve, paving the way to what we call Intellectual Capitalists.

Intellectual Capitalist

So what is an Intellectual Capitalist? For Christopher, it’s someone who doesn’t just collect information and apply it like a knowledge worker, but someone who actually generates net-new knowledge. It could be from their experience while working on a certain field that makes them faster, more efficient, or outright the best in that field.

In one word, an Intellectual Capitalist has Leverage over other people who are in the same field, but can’t do it better or even as good as them.

An Intellectual Capitalist should also not be only bound to current categories and ideologies. If there is an idea worth pursuing, it’s not enough to learn why it hasn’t been done before. One should also look through it with what we have today, and if the rapidly-growing pace of technology will  be able to support it and when.

To hear more about the dialogue about AI and the Intellectual Capitalist, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Bob Evans

Founder of Cloud Wars and Co-Founder of the Acceleration Economy, Bob leads the strategic direction of the global analyst network and actively covers the Cloud and Digital Business categories.

Creator of Cloud Wars Top 10, a ranking and ongoing analysis world’s most influential tech companies driving digital business and the digital economy. World-class strategic communicator focused on emerging business strategy, disruptive innovation, and forward-looking leadership.

Links

Follow Cloud Wars Live!

Acceleration Economy Network | Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Related links to the discussion:

The Digital American Dream: Life, Liberty, And The Exponential Pursuit Of Capital

The Digital Creation Game: Exiting The Analog World Of Competition And Entering The Digital World Of Infinite Creation

Paid To Create: How To Leverage Your Intellectual Capital To Accelerate Your Career & Achieve Financial Freedom

The Mentor Myth: What Native Analogs Can Learn From Native Digitals (And Vice Versa)

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Position yourself or be positioned has long been one of my favorite expressions. Most people think of life as something that happens to us, and that we have no agency to design our lives. It turns out, successful people like our guest Carly Malatskey, tends to think differently from that. They learn to create and seize upon opportunity before they succeed, they position themselves for success.

Carly Malatskey hosts the SheLeads podcast, which is a podcast network made by women for women. Carly is also a two-time Stanford National Soccer champion, and has also started off her career as a new Venture Capital Investor at the legendary Floodgate in Silicon Valley.

On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, what you’re about to experience is a real dialogue about how to seek out legendary mentors and surround yourself with legendary people. We also talk about what it takes to win championships at the highest level, and how to start your career in a strong, powerful way and much, much more.

Carly Malatskey on Starting a Podcast

The conversation starts off with Carly being asked as to why she started her own podcast, and the types of dialogues she wants to have in it.

Carly explains that she has always loved listening to podcasts. But she also thought that as a young leader, she has the opportunity to talk to other leaders in different fields, and have a conversation from the view point of a young woman who has the youthful energy of coming out of the academe but still has a lot to learn and experience in the field.

This also comes at the cusp of COVID, so she along with countless leaders and individuals are currently stuck at home and pretty much open to doing conversations over zoom and the like. It just seemed to Carly that it was the right time to take a chance at it and reach out to different types of people so they can share their experiences with her and other young aspiring leaders.

SheLeads Podcast: A Podcast for Women by Women

Carly shares that one aspect of SheLeads podcast is that it is from the perspective of incredible female leaders in different fields and industries.

“I talked to Olympians, founders, lawyers, and I thought, “why not have this aspect where these women are also talking to someone like me?” And thinking of how they started their career, what were their first steps, or how were they thinking through their career.”

–  Carly Malatskey

Men and Women Communicate Differently

When asked about the saying that men and women communicate differently, Carly shares her thoughts on the matter.

For Carly, it’s much more natural for women to sit across from someone and really just sit for hours, talking. The topics could range from their experiences this past week or so, something that worries them in the future, or their feelings about certain matters.

For men, they need an activity to distract them from the fact that they’re actually sharing their thoughts with another individual. It’s almost like it’s an excuse to talk and bond over something, though it was their original intention to begin with.

Carly found the question quite interesting, and was even thinking if there was a scientific reasoning for these types of behaviors.

To hear more from Carly Malatskey on how to win big and start your career stronger, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Carly Malatskey is an Investor at seed-stage VC firm, Floodgate.

Prior to Floodgate, she earned her Bachelors in Science, Technology and Society from Stanford University and was a Mayfield Fellow at Stanford as well. She also played for the Stanford Women’s Soccer team for 4 years and won 2 National Championships!

Shortly before graduating, she started a podcast called SheLeads with Carly, where she speaks to powerful female leaders from all industries. With 80+ episodes, she explores their unique paths to becoming leaders in their fields as well as the lessons they learned along the way. It is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Facebook (video version).

Links

Connect with Carly Malatskey!

Floodgate | Twitter | Apple Podcast | Spotify | SheLeads Show on Facebook

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we talk about Pricing, and how it can be a Superpower. Our guest, Dr. Rafi Mohammed explains how pricing strategy is one of the most underused power levers in business, and why you should start using it.

Dr. Rafi Mohammed has written over 90 articles on innovative pricing strategies for Harvard Business Review over the years. He is the author of The 1% Windfall: how successful companies use price to profit and grow and the art of pricing. Also, he has got a brand new HBR article out called Expand Your Pricing Paradigm.

When the smartest people in business want to work strategically on pricing, they go to Dr. Rafi Mohammed. So this may well be a very, very valuable episode that could be a demarcation point for you personally and your business.

Pricing is about Capturing Value

This dialogue could not come at a more timely manner for Christopher, as there have been multiple questions and discussions with him with CEOs who are asking very deep questions about pricing. And while him suggesting to double the price was being outrageous, Dr. Rafi agreed to his point that Price should be a function of value.

To calculate their profits, many businesses, in Dr. Rafi’s opinion, erroneously use the formula “cost times a certain percentage,” which he claims is fundamentally flawed. For Dr. Rafi, Pricing is all about capturing the value of the product or service. He gives a story about it to illustrate the point:

“A little example I have of that, that sort of illustrates a story is street vendors in the middle of Central Park. The minute that it looks like it’s gonna rain, many street vendors double the price of their umbrellas. But think about that: the doubling of price has three important thing components of pricing. First of all, it shows that price really doesn’t have a correlation with cost. The second point is price is all about what is the customer’s next best alternative. So if I’m in the middle of Central Park, I can hightail it to a local CVS six or seven blocks away, then get right on to buy an umbrella. Or I can have the convenience of it right now. And the third and most important point of that very simple story is pricing is all about thinking like a customer, how’s your customer thinking?”

– Dr. Rafi Mohammed

Dr. Rafi Mohammed on Highlighting the Unique Value

One of the common practices that is also observable in the tech and Silicon Valley industries is that they view their competitor’s price, and adjust accordingly if they think they are “better” or roughly competing on the same level.

The issue that Dr. Rafi sees in this is that most companies only have a vague idea of the “advantages” that their companies have over their peers. Most do not pinpoint what makes their products or services “unique” from the rest, hence they have problems capturing and justifying the correct value for their product or services. This lack of definition also makes the market more spread out, as consumers have a harder time figuring out which one is the better alternative from each other.

Highlighting the “uniqueness” or in some cases, the “premium” qualities of a certain business also helps consumers figure out if they’re getting a decent price for it, or just paying too much for a small added convenience.

“Here’s also the beauty of pricing. Even if you’re not as good as is the next best alternative pricing come in to save the day? And you can sort of look at customers other eyes, they look, I get that don’t have all the bells and whistles of this of this alternative that you’re looking at. But is it really worth the 40% premium that they’re charging over what I am? And I often tell people that if consumers always want the best, we’d all be driving Rolls Royces.”

– Dr. Rafi Mohammed

The Value of Category Design in Pricing

Christopher then addresses the elephant in the room, which is how category design can affect the value and eventually the pricing of a product or service.

Dr. Rafi explains that his point before still stands, which is how radically different this new category is to its next best alternative. It’s important to communicate with the consumer that they need it because it’s radically different, rather than this is different, therefore you want it even though It pretty much functions the same.

“[An example would be] going from cell phone to smartphone. I could look you in the eye and say, “Look, we have all these different features. You can use apps in the internet, and you can start to put numbers to that.” And so, I think you’ve even in it in a new category, you can base a price off of what the customers alternative would have been, which is an older category plus the extra work they’d have to do.”

– Dr. Rafi Mohammed

To hear more from Dr. Rafi Mohammed and how Pricing can be a Superpower, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Dr. Rafi Mohammed has been working on pricing issues for over 25 years.

He is the founder of Culture of Profit, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company that consults with businesses to help develop and improve their pricing strategies. He also holds the title of Batten Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business.

Rafi is the author of The 1% Windfall: How Successful Companies Use Price to Profit and Grow (Harper Business), which provides a blueprint for managers to create a comprehensive pricing strategy.

His first pricing strategy book, The Art of Pricing (originally published by Crown Business), has been translated into seven foreign languages.

Rafi has written 90 articles on innovative pricing strategies for the Harvard Business Review. He has a feature article published in the September/October 2018 HBR magazine titled “The Good-Better-Best Approach to Pricing.”

Rafi is a frequent commentator and contributor on pricing strategy issues to the media including Bloomberg Business Television, CNBC, Fox Business News, Today Show, National Public Radio, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek.

Rafi’s research has focused on bundling, one of the most popular yet least understood pricing tactics.

This research was published in the Rand Journal of Economics. Rafi has also worked on pricing issues at the FCC during the telecommunications deregulation, National Economic Research Associates (NERA), and Monitor Group.

Rafi was born in Milwaukee and raised in Cincinnati.

He is an economics graduate of Boston University, the London School of Economics & Political Science, and Cornell University (Ph.D.).

Rafi is an avid Bruce Springsteen fan.

Links

Follow Dr. Rafi Mohammed’s works!

Pricing for Profit | Twitter | LinkedIn

HBR Article: Expand Your Pricing Paradigm

The Art of Pricing

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Today marks the 300th episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different. And who better to have a dialogue with on this episode than one of our very first guests in the podcast, the amazing Dushka Zapata.

Dushka Zapata is a regular here on the podcast, and is one of my absolute favorite people in the world. She’s the author of many legendary books. Her most recent is called How to Write a Book: or tackle anything you find daunting, which is part of the How to be Ferociously Happy series. When she’s not writing, she has had an extraordinary career as a PR communications executive and coach.

A Period of Creativity

The dialogue starts off with a reversal of roles, as Dushka asks Christopher about how he has been, and congratulating him on his most recent works.

Christopher attributes it to having partners in the craft in Eddie Yoon and Nicolas Cole. He feels grateful that he has been able to work with both in what he refers to as his “business writing band”.

“I think in my case, on the writing side with Cole and with Eddie, when you have partners, we sort of feel like a band. We call ourselves a business writing band, in so far as we’ve committed to do work together for years, and do meaningful work over a meaningful amount of time. And while the three of us have other interests and do other things, we do the vast majority of our writing together. So what being in a creative band means is the quality of the work changes radically.”

– Christopher Lochhead

Christopher adds that while they have overlapping interests, they also each have expertise in other areas, which allows for a multiple perspective on what they write, and can reach out and connect to different audiences.

Creativity as a Way to Connect with Yourself

On the topic of connecting to people, Dushka shares that creativity in a way has a purpose of connecting you more with yourself. She also finds it wonderful that while you are doing so, other people can join you on that path of self-connection.

“I feel like being connected to the part of me that creates, which in my case is mostly writing. But it can be anything. Creativity can be baking, or raising a child or anything that creates something from nothing. But I think it’s us at our most us.”

– Dushka Zapata

Writing as a Superpower

It usually is the case for people who create is that the more they get older, the less they create. Though it does not seem like it for Dushka, as she continues to write and share new things enthusiastically as time goes on.

For Duskha, she feels like she has even become more creative as she grew older. Because for her, it’s something that she genuinely enjoys doing.

“My relationship with writing is idyllic. I have heard great writers like Hemmingway say that you have to bleed at the keyboard. And I have never associated writing with anything that hurts. I have never felt frustrated with it. Or I’ve never experienced writer’s block. I’ve never felt that I have to suffer at the keyboard or with my pencil. It’s just pure joy. It always has been.”

– Dushka Zapata

To hear more from this amazing dialogue with Dushka Zapata, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

After working for more than 20 years in the communications industry, Dushka noticed a theme.

People find it very difficult to articulate who they are and what they do.

This holds true for both companies and for individuals.

For companies, this is an impediment to the development of an identity, a reputation, a brand.

It makes it hard for customers to see how companies are different from their competitors.

For individuals, in a new world order of personal brands, it makes it hard to develop one that feels real.

This is the focus of Dushka’s work: she helps companies and people put into simple terms who they are, what they do, and where to go next.

Her work comes to life through message development, presentation training, media training and personal brand development.

It comes to life through executive coaching, workshops and public speaking.

It comes to life through what she writes.

Dushka has written ten bestseller.

Her work has been consumed on Q&A site Qoura 180M times.

Links

Connect with Dushka Zapata!

Amazon Authors | Quora | LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Given recent events in the world of Cryptocurrency, almost everyone in business is currently pondering the following question: Is Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of the crypto exchange FTX, the Bernie Madoff of Crypto? Or is he merely an entrepreneur who made some horrible errors? Today at Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we are joined by the legendary Jim Campbell to examine this question.

Jim Campbell is the author of the bestselling definitive book on Bernie Madoff called Madoff Talks. We did a deep dive with him on the book and on the topic of Madoff himself. Check it out if you’re interested in how Madoff manipulated everything before it all fell apart (FYD 217).

On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we go deep with Jim Campbell on the similarities and the differences on old school scammers like Bernie Madoff and the disaster that is Sam Bankman-Fried and the fate of FTX.

Jim Campbell on Sam Bankman-Fried: Madoff 2.0 or not?

The dialogue starts off direct to the point: is Sam Bankman-Fried Madoff 2.0?

Jim responds that there are similarities but also differences between the two. The biggest similarities is that both Madoff and Bankman-Fried comingled their firm and customer assets to boost the value of its company, with Bankman going so far as to use said money to create more connections in the tech, business, and even so far as government and politics.

Both were also involved in something like a Ponzi scheme, though FTX allegedly took it a step further by using its own FTX tokens as collateral to further increase its own valuation, which is a form of market manipulation.

The baffling behavior of Sam Bankman-Fried

When you are accused of a crime as big as the one Sam Bankman-Fried is currently facing, it’s normal to avoid the public eye for a while, and make no statements unless in the presence of their lawyer, lest they say something incriminating.

Which is why Sam Bankman-Fried’s behavior baffles everyone, as he goes so far as guest for certain podcasts and interviews. Yet he still had the arrogance and audacity to say that he didn’t know what he has done would result in a loss of $32 billion dollars for their investors and consumers.

Jim Campbell on doing your due diligence

The thing is, there were a lot of questionable aspects to FTX, once you dug into their model. Unfortunately, doing the due diligence seems to be a rare thing nowadays, due to the fear of missing out. With the boom of crypto in the latter half of the 2010s and even more so during the pandemic, investors wanted to hop it to latest coin or token, should it increase in value exponentially like what happened to Bitcoin.

Some tech companies and businesses are also guilty in this regard. Take for example on what happened to Theranos. Businesses were so eager to jump in even with just a concept, because they think it’ll be more expensive to establish connections and partnerships later on. Some were dazzled by the names attached to the concept, others by the “projected” earnings should it be developed. In the end, they all lost their investments because they couldn’t be bothered to do their due diligence beforehand.

To hear more from Jim Campbell, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Jim Campbell is the host of the nationally syndicated radio show Business Talk with Jim Campbell. He is known for his hard-hitting interviews of leading figures from the worlds of business, politics, and sports.

Known for “firsts,” Campbell snagged the first extensive interview with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer after his resignation, the first interview with former Tyco CEO Denis Kozlowski after his release from prison, and the first broadcast interview with former stock analyst Roomy Kahn, a government informant in one of the biggest insider trading busts in American history.

Campbell’s extensive corporate, consulting, and entrepreneurial business background includes roles at KPMG Consulting, Dean Witter Financial Services (now Morgan Stanley), and IBM. He is founder and president of JC Ventures, Inc., a management consulting business.

Links

LinkedIn: in/JimCampbell

Book: Madoff Talks: Uncovering the Untold Story Behind the Most Notorious Ponzi Scheme in History

More about Bernie Madoff and Madoff Talks:

Wall Street Journal: Bernie Madoff Dead at 82

CNBC: Bernie Madoff dies, Mastermind of the Nation’s Biggest Investment Fraud

More about Sam Bankman-Fried:

Exclusive: SBF secretly funded crypto news site

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Plato once said that Necessity is the mother of Invention. This could not be anymore true with Category Design, and for our guest today, Mike Evans.

Mike Evans is the founder of Grubhub, a category in food delivery service that was born from the necessity of having a multitude of options in one app, rather than having to look for it in different websites or printed pamphlets. From a budding delivery guide, Mike grew his company into a premier delivery ordering platform, and became Category King in this regard.

On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we go through Mike Evans’ journey, from the spark of the idea to managing a successful startup and beyond.

Mike Evans on the inception of Grubhub

The conversation starts off with Mike sharing how their love for great food made them a big fan of ordering.

“I live in a household with a woman who loves to cook. Because we like to eat, sometimes we don’t feel like cooking. And when I say we, I mean her – I helped mildly. And maybe it’s because we’re getting a little older or whatever, sometimes you just don’t feel like the rigmarole of going out to a restaurant and sitting down and that. And there’s this magical ability to press a button on your Star Trek communicator and have a very nice person show up at your house with some very warm food from one of your favorite local restaurants. It’s a fucking miracle.”

– Mike Evans

Grubhub came at a time that the home internet is still finding its foothold in everyone’s household, and is one of the first few apps you’ll find in the App Store.

Necessity brings Innovation

But as the idea might seem like a simple one nowadays, it’s surprising that we haven’t thought of it sooner, even as a simple website or catalog.

Of course, there was the yellow pages, but it’s not like there’s a dedicated section there for restaurants, and the numbers aren’t always updated. And you still have to resort to pamphlets to find out what’s on the menu, so can be quite redundant.

“I just wanted to find who delivered to me, and the Yellow Pages was a terrible, a terrible way to organize that information. It was just alphabetical sorted for the whole city and Chicago is 25 miles tall and 3 miles wide. And so the restaurants that deliver to the White Sox area, don’t deliver to the cubby area. Not useful to see it in a in a big Yellow Pages book. And so that was the original idea.”

– Mike Evans

While there were some restaurants that were doing online ordering at the time, it wasn’t what Mike has originally had in mind. He just wanted to have the location and contact details of a restaurant, as well as and updated menu of what they offer. Eventually they would expand Grubhub to be an ordering platform as well, but that’s a few years down the road.

Mike Evans: Content comes first

Now that he has the idea for it, the next step was creating the business and driving traffic into it. Mike Evans explains that the common trap among starting business that bridge two markets together is that they often cater to just one end or the other.

According to Mike, before you even get to any side of the market, you first need to create great content for your business. In his case, he built out the online menu guide first for high-traffic restaurants before marketing it to potential users and showing restaurant owners that it is a viable product.

He basically found a way to get value on his business that doesn’t depend on either side of the network to start.

Mike also commented that there’s a common misconception that you have to be the first in order to corner a big chunk of the market. For him, being the First Best is important, as you will be used and remember much better this way by users, rather just having a clunky business model that happened to come out first.

To hear more from Mike Evans and his startup journey, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Mike Evans founded GrubHub in his spare bedroom and grew it into the multi-billion-dollar online food delivery colossus that is a household name.

In Hangry, his insightful and hilarious memoir, he reveals the inside story of how a pizza craving turned into a hobby, and then became a business, and then ultimately grew into a multi-billion-dollar behemoth that changed the way we eat.

Shocking everyone, at the pinnacle of startup success, Mike leaves it all behind, quitting the company he started to bike across the United States.

Links

Connect with Mike Evans!

Mike’s Website | Linkedin | Twitter | Instagram | Hangry on Amazon Books

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!