I got the chance to listen to the Brian Chesky and the Sam Altman episodes today. The focus on doing things that don’t scale to figure out what your product really does seem key fro a successful startup. The same concept was covered a decent bit in other episodes, so it ended up being a bit repetitive for me, but as you and Justin said in recent podcasts, the mistakes that founders make time and again, perhaps that repetitiveness is necessary to really bring the point home.

Looking forward to the release of your next podcast!

In terms of the AP scores, I think our kids did pretty well in comparison with the distribution, but maybe a little low. You have understood that the BC exam is very much a self-selected group. Kids don’t take it unless they aced the AB exam and are generally very strong and confident in their mathematical ability. Then you have to factor in that our kids are just middle schoolers and aren’t very sophisticated or conscientious test takers, which is probably worth at least a point right there. Also, Colby and Caroline are a year young, which compounds the effect. While I’m proud of what they accomplished, I still wanted more. But then again, I’m greedy like that. 😉

I recently relistened to a handful of the earlier episodes in the feed and they hold up well! Late 2012 / early 2013 and Jason consistently hyped about Tesla stock (uncanny timing!). In #234 Justin predicts it could be be at $300 in 5 years — not a bad guess!

More broadly, listening to them highlights the common threads. Justin is clearly working his way towards the ideas that’d become Nugget, and Jason seems to be struggling to not let Catalyst take over his life completely.

* HANDCRAFTED Brian Chesky, Co-founder & CEO of Airbnb
https://mastersofscale.com/brian-chesky-handcrafted/

* WHY CUSTOMER LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator
https://mastersofscale.com/sam-altman-why-customer-love-is-all-you-need/

I’m not sure that I’d listen to more unless there was a specific person that was being interviewed I was interested in hearing from.. Maybe I just like ta conversational podcast better than an over produced one. 🙂

Here’s Moneypenny music released to Spotify for realz.

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/moneypenny/d8qM

Think of it as an early version of the music deliverable you wanted.

Don’t say I never do anything for ya 😉

Justin, finish up Nugget but play with music a little as you go. Not only will that help keep the fire going, but it’ll also help get you into what your current music groove really is. Your vision will be wrong, maybe not completely, but not exactly, so the play will loosen you up to see where the vision needs to go.

@Jason good luck turning the revenue knob on Math Academy. Thanks for the recommendation on the Masters of Scale podcast, will have to make some time to listen to a couple of episodes.

I’m finally able to comment again after Justin reset my account. I couldn’t even remember my username, much less my password. 😉

Justin, looking forward to hearing your new music. Having a project that just makes people happy, regardless of income, can be very rewarding. One of the most deeply affecting emails I ever received was from the wife of one of my magazine subscribers. She said that her husband had recently died of brain cancer, but that the stories in Compelling Science Fiction helped distract him when the side effects from his treatments got really bad. Means a lot more to me than money.