Rich and Paul discuss the classic startup dream of world-changing impact. But in today's unpredictable landscape, the real key is resilience. To develop a software that fosters collaborative communities that revolve around trust. This podcast is sponsored by Aboard.

So rich.

Paul, it's good to see you.

It's good to see you, too.

People don't know this.

We went to summer schedule because you were out for a couple weeks in Lebanon

Doing some work and also on vacation.

I took a couple days off.

So summer is over, baby.

It's July, but

We're not Europe,

it's hot startup

Fun is over.

No more fun.

I want to pitch you a whole theme and concept for the rest of our lives.

I thought I told you not to come up with any ideas while I was away.

What have you been doing?

here we go.

Wait, so this is an idea, a theme for the rest of our lives.

Alright.

Wait, so first we gotta take a step back.

We are launching a product, and it is gonna be out relatively soon.

It's out in limited beta right now.

You know, we told people, if you DM us, uh, we'll get you in on the beta.

That's actually true.

If you're a Ziotti Ford listener, we'll march you right to the front of the line.

So, so go ahead, DM away.

I'm glad to hear from you.

The product is called a board and a board.

We have three verbs that we're using with a board, um, collect, collaborate,

organize, actually, I got them out of order, collect, organize, collaborate.

Sorry, sorry, everybody for that order.

So the, what it lets you do is bring in lots of data, not just data

from the web and it tries to make it really smart and clean it up,

When you say data from the web, you just mean a link.

bookmarks, you know, visual and easy to use and so on.

And then, but you can also add your own, you can make your own

You can type your own.

when people see that, when people see it look pretty, they're like,

Ah, it's like Pinterest for everything.

And I'm like, no, cause you can, it's also like Google Docs for everything.

So, all right.

And then you can talk and chat and comment, like you

can work collaboratively.

You can also publish out to the world.

And so, and everything can be nicely organized and tagged.

And so it's very visual.

We're very proud of it.

So here we go.

And there's a funny thing that happens when you're launching software.

And I, I've thought about this with some of the work we've done before and

the way that we organize the agency.

You kind of need a theme and I don't mean You might tie this up into brand equity.

You might tie this up into mission and so on I'm, just going to call it theme

You mean like a vision?

not even just let's stick with theme for a minute Okay, because

themes tend to be like first of all, there's the theme of i'm going to make

a lot of money and change the world That's the classic startup narrative.

We're going to blow up the world and we're going to get a lot of money Yeah.

Um, regardless, I, you know, we like to make money, but I don't, that is not

what we walk in in the morning and do.

We walk in the morning, we go, how's the product?

Right.

We don't,

Yeah, as an end goal, money, we've, I mean, and this

was the case even at the agency.

Uh, that we ran when you're only aiming for money, it tends to like misalign a lot

of the things that you should be focused

I mean, it really does, like you can't, you

can't just do that every day.

Even if you,

a great product that people love.

if you're a bank, you have to have like a good experience

or people just go to another

Yeah.

You can say, I need your money.

Yeah.

That's not going to

Give me your money.

So anyway, um, okay.

So, so there's like the classic startup theme.

I'm going to blow up the world.

I'm going to change everything.

to change the

Change everything.

Everybody's going to see, and I think a lot of that is always like,

everybody's going to see how smart I am.

I'm going to show them how, they're going to, whoo, look out, here I come.

Yeah.

Look, I mean, I do respect the sort of naked ambition of a,

of a startup founder, right?

I have felt that ambition in different times in my

It's cool.

I mean, it's ridiculous and it's very risky and it's, I, I, I, I embrace it and

I, I, I applaud people who try to do it.

It is although I will say when you're outside of it talking

to someone who has the vision they are They sound bananas, right?

So it's just

Some lose the script, right?

I, I've, I've had interactions with, with founders of fast growing startups.

They're like, so what, what is your plan?

And they'll say, I'm gonna make a billion dollar company,

that there's also I'm good people in the future are going to use

this instead of Google and it'll be like a smart shoe Right, you'll be like Okay,

I'm not quite sure how that's gonna

look, I think thinking big is okay.

I think when you think big money, it gets, it gets complicated, right?

humans get confused.

So there's that narrative and there's a growth narrative.

Grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.

And, um, and also we're in a space where there are a lot of competitors.

We're not alone in wanting to organize the world's data on

the internet in a collaborative

In fact, I think a trend of sorts seems to be taking hold.

There's a few others that are trying to double down on the web and give people

great tools to collect stuff off the web, which is cool to see, by the way.

I think it's very validating for

That's the thing in the past, I think we would have looked at them and be

like, they're garbage to hell with them.

But

it's good for us.

It's good for us.

We're gonna crush them all that's a separate

when I see that people have been able to gather attention and create

utility that isn't that good right and like okay, if we can where are we

gonna live inside of all of that and um What's been on my mind a lot and I was

thinking, I was thinking, cuz you and I went and I went to Asbury Park, New

Jersey, big trips, sat in the ocean for a minute and thought, and I'm like, what

a boat

No on a, on the, on the sand.

Oh.

And um, and I thought for a minute and I was like, you

know what, what is this thing?

What is the narrative?

What is the theme?

What do we talk about?

And you know what we talk about a lot resilience.

We talk about how Lebanon has been through it.

And how quickly and how, how complicated it is to respond to stressful

economic situations and how, like, and we talk about our own lives and

how they've had some real ups and downs, especially in the early days.

mean if you're 50 you've had ups and downs.

What do you do most mornings before you come in or many mornings

before you come in right before work?

I Have some breakfast and I work out

Um, do you work out because you're going to be the most handsome

man in the world and the most powerful?

Um, I already checked the handsome man box,

so no, that's not my goal.

Um, it, uh, I, you know, for me, working out is very much

mental as much as it is physical.

Um, it's also like I need that ugly piece of resistance in the

morning that I have to climb over just to get going for my day.

That's my own brain.

Other people work out for different reasons, but yeah,

it's very meaningful to me.

I also make my bed.

I make my bed every day.

Interesting, I didn't know this about you actually.

It's the first time I've ever learned this after

I like, it brings a little order to my day.

I'm not the neatest guy in the world or anything like that, but I

do make my bed before I leave the

I get this.

And then you come home and the bet is made.

That's a good outcome.

you know, when I look at why you work out, you're not actually,

you're, you're normal amount of vain.

Like you're not extremely vain in

No, no, also, it's a diminishing

Well, and you're, you're, you're, you're no longer

as young as you used to be, right?

And so like when you talk about it, you talk about it in terms of resilience.

You want to be strong and flexible and to be able to age in a

more gradual, controlled way.

It's control.

It's great, like, not being active, you start to feel, as you age,

in less and less control, yes.

And, and, and, and also, you're fighting time.

You literally, I mean, this has been documented.

You could see, see it in writings and documentaries that it

slows down the aging process.

But that's not my goal.

It just makes me mentally a lot, it just lines me up.

look, the miracle of semi glutide showed up in my life.

I've lost about 50 pounds.

I have plenty more to lose, but I have, I've been on my bike a lot lately.

I've been doing more lately and it's nice.

People say like, Hey, you're looking good.

You know, good for you.

good.

It does.

But the real deal is that I was in no way like.

Health events and life events could really knock me off the

track when I was at my biggest.

And I couldn't quite get control of it and it really sucked.

And what I feel is not this like, I'm gonna look great, I'm gonna have

some before and after photos that get everybody all hot and bothered.

I could give a shit.

But what I love is that I'm gonna be more able to respond to the

world around me instead of having to like kind of retract from it.

Control and adaptability.

And so what I'm realizing is that as people who are starting a

company in mid life, like we are middle aged men, flat out by definition, we are,

we are.

we are thinking not about taking over the world.

And we're also not thinking about everybody saying what good boys are we.

Reality and success in this is that we actually disappear.

It's nice we're on this podcast, but people, if this thing succeeds, no one

will be saying, Boy, Rich and Paul.

No, our heads are not going to be in the logo.

But also just like, the founders disappear

with successful products.

Nobody knows who Sergey Brin is who isn't us, right?

Nobody, you know, Elon Musk is unusual in that he wants to be this relentless voice.

But most, most people just focus on the products they use.

That's right.

Right.

And so like, that's success.

This success in a funny way, to me is true life success is

I'm able to react, I'm healthy.

Um, I work with a few people that I like, not a million.

And I have, uh, and frankly, I don't need credit for the things

that I put into the world.

I would like to see other people do things

Mm hmm.

the, the, the things that I put in the world.

And then I looked at.

Um, and this is where I'm going to finish pitching and then I

want you to give me feedback.

Um, and for listeners like this is an actual like, Rich and I briefly

talked about this before, but I'm actually throwing this out to see

what, what he makes of it to see if this theme is going to line up

because the theme will influence the copy we write and the story we tell.

And it actually turns out the story is not quite as important,

but almost as important as the software when you're building

hugely important.

So, um, when I look at a board, what I see is there.

Is When you look at social media and you look at the other tools

that get built, they're built for all kinds of environments.

And actually what I'm realizing is a lot of them have a very,

very strong opinion about trust.

And let me explain that for one second.

So the problem with Twitter right now is you can't trust anybody on it.

You can't put anything out.

If you put anything out there, you can be attacked at any moment.

And people are kind of at war.

And actually one of the things that's fun about Elon Musk is because he's such a bad

leader for it, he's just turned it into an absolute cage match of, of human misery.

It's a form of entertainment.

now, I mean, it's, it's in its true form, right?

Like it used to be at least people would pretend to be nurturing on there.

And now it's just like, you don't believe in my kind of socialism.

I'm coming at you for the next six

lost their minds.

Just amazing, right?

So very low trust environment is how I would put it.

And you can't even trust that like your DMs are going to remain private.

Anymore.

There's a lot of threats.

Right?

Like, as, as Twitter...

as, I mean, if we're going to focus on Twitter for a second, imagine

when we use these platforms, right?

We tend to pour a lot of ourselves into them.

Like our, our information is there.

Our family photos are there.

Our identity is very much shaped by these

You can log into other things with them.

Yes.

And, and what ends up happening most of the time is that the platforms

themselves actually, There's a pact.

It's like an unwritten pact that like I'm gonna do you right because I am

going to observe your behavior and probably sell it and put ads in front

of you, but I'm gonna do you right.

And I think what's happening with Twitter, which is interesting, is that

he's essentially saying I am in God mode.

I didn't make that deal, right?

And so, it's a lot of implicit threats.

It's, it's almost corny.

Like, it's, it's such a goofy style of aggression.

Like, it's just the corniest.

It's like the Steven Seagal of, like, technology.

It's like a lot of flexing, but the person's not actually a Kung Fu expert.

He's just an actor, right?

It's a lot of that.

Which would I would watch I'm not gonna lie.

Look it's entertaining from a like just a social observation perspective

Like technology.

It's like a lot of

But but what you're talking about is is is is you're touching on

something really important Which is I don't think people appreciate how fragile

it all is, you know when they appreciate it when like Google Photos goes down.

That's when they appreciate it,

let me go the other direction environments in which, okay, we admit

that no one can trust anyone else.

And like, everything is needs to be structured.

Now we go the other way to enterprise software, Salesforce is an ERP tools.

If you want to accomplish or do anything in those tools, you have to be given

all sorts of rights and permissions that are set into the database.

It's inversed.

zero trust in a funny way really I don't I can trust the platform,

but the platform doesn't trust me, right?

Have you ever seen Microsoft's Policy Manager?

yeah.

No, no, it's It's endless and I've been thinking about I've been thinking

as I've been thinking about all this stuff and think about my friends I have

a friend Pete listen to this podcast.

Hi Pete.

I'll tell you what if there was a bad flood I kind of expect

Pete to show up in a canoe.

Like, you know, I have that relationship with you too.

Like, it's just like, and people have that relationship with me.

Like, I better show up.

It's the, it's the deal we made, right?

And what I realized, what I really want to build, and what I want a

board to be, is resilient software for building communities like

that, for, for that kind of trust.

And if you look at the decisions we made in the product, I'm not

coming out of left field with this.

It's a very trusting product.

You only get to bring a few people in.

Like, we haven't set a cap, but let's say eight, right?

hmm.

Mm hmm.

Smaller circles of

because the people who come in can move the cards around and change the

have power, right out of the

We are giving people power with the assumption that

it's not for 50, 000 people.

We thought about that.

We thought about, you know, because Slack will do that.

Slack will get you to 30, 000 people.

They can talk in all the open channels, etc.

That's not a board.

A board is about getting the thing done, organizing it, and the people

who get, the people who come in.

As an admin, as a creator, you have certain powers, like

you can publish the board.

Not anyone can say, I want to make this all public.

You know, there's, you can kick people out over time.

And we can figure, we're figuring all that stuff out.

But the reality is we are creating this very constrained, trust driven environment

for high levels of collaboration.

And when I think about.

Resilience because the world is messy right now and needs more resilience

like just that's one of the big climate words I think a lot about how we've

architected this product because it is actually built with a very strong point

of view about What that means and I don't we've never said this out loud, right?

But it's just like I think we have built a resilient software product where people

on Mobile phones can coordinate and work together to achieve certain goals.

So that goals might be like let's pick a movie

hmm.

Mm

You know the goal might be like I want to buy a fancy car like

that's life, but it might also be like hey Boy could really use someone to

pick me up because a little trouble coordinating babysitting today You know

it can be it can be stuff like that and

People do that.

I mean, I want, I want to, we're doing this in real time.

We've never rehearsed this.

You're pitching me on it.

What's different.

What what's different about a board versus WhatsApp where I can talk

to my friends about a babysitter.

is a great Coordination tool because it's incredibly easy

right like just like I'm in there

It's talking.

and I'm talking, but it is A big part of trust is accountability

and a board has a lot of accountability built in and I don't mean like workflow

We can do that We have kanban boards and you can do all that stuff with the board

But what we what we have instead is is the data there's a memory built into it

We

have reached a point where we just assume that there

is no power to create permanence with anything on the internet.

So we keep tabs open, we email ourselves, ourselves.

There's a, there's a browser add on that has like a million downloads.

All it does, it's called SendIt, I think, or

I think, to send to you.

All it does is email you the link you're looking

But, but if you

to your account.

that is everybody understands that system.

Those are easy to filter.

Like it does.

That's a lot of what's good.

Yeah.

Right.

Are there, uh, resilient is a fascinating word.

You're saying you can trust the platform.

Is that what you mean by resilient?

Partly the platform needs to be up and needs to be operating,

but it's for creating resilience.

So let me let, the example would be more like, so how do

you get to resilience in a.

Messy climate, chaotic world where politics are no longer

as stable as they used to

Mm hmm.

You can go on Twitter and you can get really upset in

public and not a lot changes as a result, but you get affiliated

with certain classes of screamer.

And you can go attack the Capitol.

I mean, there's all this

But you're not solving anything.

where, where all change that and sort of safety comes from, this

is where Lebanon's in my head a lot.

It's that small unit.

In Lebanon, it's the family.

You know, but it's like that small group of people who are like, you know what?

We gotta, I got these bags of rice and I need to get them to

hungry people in the neighborhood.

What's the tool I'm going to use?

I have to get 500 bags of rice distributed.

Yes, you're saying that the narrower groups and the tools

given allow for more resilience because

You're going to create, yes, you're going to create a more resilient

group if there's high trust and there are goals and there are, there is clarity.

whereas large groups, mass media, social media is mass

media, by the way, and everyone Wants to be heard, right?

They love it when they get the hearts, or they get the retweets,

or whatever it's called now.

Um, but nothing's getting done.

You're getting nothing done.

You're getting maybe social acknowledgement.

Maybe.

The number one tool that I see in your life that you use to build

resilience into your family is WhatsApp.

You're on, you're on, you're talking to people in Lebanon, you're talking

to people, you're moving money around.

WhatsApp groups.

and you're moving money around, you're, you're, and by moving

money around, I don't mean like banking, I mean like you're saying, hey, we're

going to go to dinner here, or like, hey, I'm going to get you a hundred

bucks, or just like, there's a lot of

a smaller trusting group.

but it has no memory, it's just an infinite scroll,

I think that's, that's the rub.

Which is, it's very near term.

It's very transient.

And I

what are we doing today, who's bringing what to the barbecue, right,

I can't address climate change in WhatsApp.

I can talk about it and share a link about it.

But if I really, like, let's say I had a business that is like, yeah.

I can talk I really, like,

that's what you're talking about here,

For my wife and I to get solar in Brooklyn because of various

like regulations was a 12 month process was a disaster and now our

electric bills 20 bucks a month.

Hey, you know pretty cool But but like yeah, the conversation and the

structure around that was just kind of ongoing and it fell to my wife

Let me, let me take it full circle here for a second, you know, our

tagline, which was, you know, mocked by a good friend of ours who we trust,

collect, organize, collaborate, um, is like things you can do with the thing,

which isn't very good as a tagline.

It's very descriptive.

It's my tie.

I came up with it.

It's not

We're wrestling with all that.

You go to Notion and it's just like, It's Wiki, it's a document manager.

They're about like, Hey, we smooshed it all together.

What you're saying here is that chat, um, And open tabs doesn't

scale up to bigger things that you're trying to get done and that the platform

here allows you to create structure to create mechanisms of accountability so

that you can do bigger things like yes, you can use chat to decide on pizza

for tonight, but that's transient.

It's gonna move on and you'll never think about it again.

You don't need that log, right?

You just you all coordinated

can use chat to eat the pizza and then it's done.

exactly.

But here's where it breaks where it breaks down is.

Let's pick something not as ambitious as climate a wedding like the the the level

of orchestration and collaboration and frankly Knowledge gathering which probably

happens in some insane way in like I guess your browser or use heart stuff and you

It does or you use the not or whatever, but there's always this

responsibility what happens in the wedding is there's always one party

usually the bride who does all the work.

And then kind of informs the husband.

I don't think we're going to change that dynamic necessarily

but at least the husband would have less excuse to be uninformed.

think, I think the bride is relying on a bunch of other people, the

husband and the, the, the, the bride and groom are relying on a bunch of

other people, it's a mess today, it's a sloppy mess, these are dynamics that

are, that you find when you hire an agency to do your branding, when you hire

a, a personal trainer to, to help you achieve, train for a marathon, these are

dynamics today that happen in production.

Straight up what are classic communication platforms, but there's more to

You know what would make me feel really good is when the bride

says, This was really helpful for us.

And actually, we skipped so many fights.

Because you know what that marriage is now?

It's more resilient.

They have a tool that they use to communicate.

And that makes a better fundamental relationship between individuals.

And now they can do more in their marriage.

a board fix your marriage?

Yes.

That's what I'm landing

This is the marketing I was looking

That's the new headline.

Fix your marriage

a board.

Yeah.

Um, I like this.

I I

let's be real.

Like it's not, doesn't mean that you're going to go to a board.

com and it's going to say resilience.

No, yeah.

No, I I look I think I think the world feels very chaotic.

I don't, and I think it's always been chaotic.

It's just, we get to peer into it.

Like now there's like no anesthesia anymore.

Oh, no.

You,

guts everywhere.

see the whole thing.

It is wild.

and I think, you know, what we're, we're

that

here and by the way, that could, we're creating something that.

For calmer more productive places for people to interact and get things

done and that could be a Company

Yeah.

a team inside of an organization could be a family

planning a trip It doesn't really matter and this is sounding pitchy

But it's genuinely where we're

this is the goal.

The goal is to take anyone who, to, to increase resilience

inside of organizations.

That's how I'm putting it forward.

And like, we,

It could be you and your extended

yeah.

And I mean, what does that mean?

It means we were, we trust each other more.

We got a lot done.

We felt that we were accountable to each other and we feel better

about going into the next thing.

Can software really do that?

No, but it can get out of the way.

So the humans can build those relationships themselves.

love to, I want to drive the next podcast we record

and talk about software getting out of the way and how hard it is

to make software that gets out of

Boy, is it?

Well, we should, we should record that podcast really soon.

we should.

Who sponsored this podcast,

Well, this is where it sounds intensely hypocritical, but a deeply

resilient piece of software that will help you and your team become more resilient.

It's called a board, a board.

com.

Uh, DM if you'd like early access and we'll get you in there.

Our board is for, um, collecting data, including or adding your own data.

Organizing it.

It is a hell of a platform.

It is pretty and cool and we love it.

We're excited to get out in the world.

It's coming.

It's coming real soon now and uh, Check it out and check us out on twitter

at ziottiford and send us an email.

Hello at ziottiford.

com We are your podcast advisors here to help and help you get more

resilient anything else rich No,

No,

all

let's make the world more resilient.

it.

Let's do it.

All

Have a great