What happens when founders hit a wall?

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]If a family gets to the point, Jenny, where they're like um I just can't do it.

[00:00:05]I'm not living my real life. I kind of feel like it's uh like one of these kids who goes and does ayahuasca or they go to Burning Man and they they they do LSD or something.

[00:00:16]They come back and they're like, "I'm living a lie. I need to go be a yoga instructor. I need to start a surf camp in wherever." I'm just like you know You should go do that.

[00:00:28]>> Godspeed. Godspeed. [laughter] Everybody has somebody in their circle who came back from Burning Man and their brain was broken and whatever they were doing is over. Like they left their spouse, left their city, and they're in Kauai living their best life. Mazel tov.

[00:00:44]>> Or they came back with a great vision for a new startup and I'm like, "Great.

[00:00:47]I want to give them some But it is frustrating, Jenny. I I always think to myself like I I always say to founders, "What are your three other ideas? Do you have another idea? We've already got the capital here. We bet on you.

[00:00:58]What else?" I'd be curious um if you're seeing this too, Jason, around first-time versus second-time founders.

[00:01:04]We are finding that the first-time founders will just like, you know, put their nose down and just like try to get through and burn the money, potentially, but they're going to try to find something, the passion, maybe the ego.

[00:01:16]And the second and third-time founders who've had a lot of success or some success, it's just opportunity cost. And in this case, it felt like a team very seasoned, very technical, had a lot of success, and they just said, "You know what? Like it's not going to work." I've seen some of these offers and to put your nose to the grindstone at a startup for 10 years, 15 years, and the outcome is unknown, or you get a guaranteed you know, 10, 20, 30 million-dollar package from OpenAI, and you know it's going to 10x from here, so it's really a 300 million, and there's a secondary market, as we talked about in the first thing, and I could just start selling my shares immediately. You know, I I told somebody recently they were like, "99% of my net worth is in one of these companies." And I just said, "Sell it all and put it in index funds."

[00:02:07]Like or sell at least half of it, put it in index funds. Go buy yourself, you know, a house and a ski house. Like By the way, that's the advice I gave myself, which is just keep building that foundation that's rock solid with the speculative stuff and get yourself diversified and out of these because if these companies are trading at 30, 40, 50 times revenue, okay, there's a chance that they'll catch up and their earnings will get there. There's also a significant chance that open source and other products win a big part of this and tokens just are the the fastest declining commodity as you know, I'm obsessed with a lot of technologies including my Plaud pen. It's time for us to applaud.

[00:02:55]Clap clap. Plaud. As you can see here, I have it on my t-shirt. How did I get it on my t-shirt? I didn't use the clip you usually see me use when I'm wearing a suit. Well, I'm in Tahoe, so I'm not suited up. It has a magnetic one. So, you can put it right behind you. Then, Alex, I got you on the Plaud train. I'm recording my Plaud right now. So, if I have any ideas, like, "Hmm, I should uh go to the emergency room and get my pinky which I dislocated playing basketball yesterday and make sure I send a note." I can do that. And uh you just flashed your Plaud, Alex, and you're using the attachment that lets you wear it like a wristband. Which is kind of cool, too. It's totally privacy first because you have a button, you press it, the red light goes on.

[00:03:36]Everybody knows what you're doing. For meetings, it's amazing. People say, "Well, why wouldn't you just use your phone?" Getting your phone out, opening an app, starting it, closing it. Okay, all that's great. It's going to take you 30 seconds, a minute. Whereas here, you just press the button. 1 second or less and you're recording. And it's got multiple microphones on it. And the battery lasts forever. And if your phone's in your bag or your jacket and you're skiing, but you want to leave it on like a lunatic all day, Alex. I just leave it on when I'm skiing. And I just talk to myself when I'm skiing alone.

[00:04:08]You know, if I ever go down in a tree well or whatever.

[00:04:10]>> I was about to say, didn't we just talk about you not skiing Didn't we just talk about you not skiing alone anymore like like 10 days ago? It wasn't that far back, man. But anyway, we have a we have a promo code people can get a good deal I think on a Plaud, yeah?

[00:04:21]>> Yes, we do. If you go to plaud.ai, plaud.ai/twist, use the code twist, save 10%. Jason, I'm using mine to take ideas for uh blog posts. When I'm out and about, love it.

[00:04:33]And because I have the wristband, my children can't yank it off my body. So, not really a a clip-on guy yet, but give me like 5 years of older children and then I'll be able to, you know, safely wear it like that. But yeah, I'm loving it, Lon's loving it, you're loving it.

[00:04:45]Can I have a hit here at Twist HQ?