#244 Harry Snyder (In-N-Out Burger)

**David Senra** (0:00)
Almost immediately, a boisterous crowd appeared, requiring the presence of police to direct traffic and help with crowd control.
There were businessmen in suits, women in heels, truckers in jeans, college students in t-shirts, construction workers in heavy boots, and moms with babies on their hips.
They all braved the long lines, enduring waits of more than two and three hours. Remarkably, the official kickoff was marked with little fanfare. Two workers carried a simple white sign with the familiar In-N-Out logo and the words, We Are Open.
There weren't any prizes offered, furry mascots, or any other marketing gimmicks.
There was no promotional advertising either, just a small sign that stood on the lot for some time, coming soon, In-N-Out Burger.
In fact, there was no grand opening. The carnival atmosphere was created entirely by In-N-Out's rabid fans.
The chain didn't need to advertise its opening. For weeks, its devotees had been broadcasting the news to one another. For two years, ever since word had spread that an In-N-Out was coming to their city, the residents had been waiting anxiously.
People began lining up at 2 a.m. the day before, some sleeping in their cars overnight.
In-N-Out's vice president of planning and development, Carl Van Fleet, assessed the scene with the chain's typical understatement.
This is not something that happened overnight. It just grew with us.
That is an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is In-N-Out Burger, a behind-the-counter look at the fast food chain that breaks all the rules, and it was written by Stacy Perman.
This book was recommended to me by a listener, and it came at the absolute perfect time. Some of the best businesses in history could be described as cheerful cults. So reading this book, I wanted to read this book to better understand a phenomenon that I've noticed over and over again as I study the history of entrepreneurship. In fact, on the very front cover of the book, there's a blurb, and it says, this is an absorbing case study on how a family business came to be at the center of its own cheerful cult.
And so it's important to keep in mind, as you and I talk today, we're not talking about cults in the negative connotation, the most famous examples, people like Jim Jones or Charles Manson. What I'm trying to figure out as I read this book is like how do you develop a positive cheerful cult? How can you bring joy to somebody else's life through a product or service? You bring so much joy to somebody's life that they tell others about it compulsively. So that is the definition that we're working with. I'm gonna link this below. I'm only gonna read parts of it, but this is one of the best posts that I've ever come across. It's called Aliens, Jedi and Cults, A Mental Model for Potential. And it was written by this guy named Richard Burton, who was a early employee at Stripe. Stripe, in case you don't know, is probably, I think it's the most valuable private business in the world. It's gonna wind up going public, I think, relatively soon. And his experience as an early employee allowed him to discover a mental model for potential that he has then applied to other things like Bitcoin, Ethereum, SpaceX. He's got a bunch of other projects and businesses. He lists about eight in the post. I'm just gonna read from the very beginning though. He says, I wanna explain some of the experiences that I've had that very few people can relate to. I have been lucky enough to stumble across a few rocket ships before anyone else cared.
This has helped me build a mental model for things that have potential. So he starts with Stripe. He says, in 2010, I started a little company selling custom apparel on the internet.
I integrated WooFoo, Google Checkout, and PayPal to sell around 100,000 sweatshirts to students. So he's talking about the problem that you had 10, 15 years ago trying to sell things online. You had to patch together a bunch of different products or services, it's very difficult. Stripe, that's the first solution, the first problem that Stripe solved, right? So it says, in 2012, two years later, I read a blog post about a little company called Stripe. I instantly understood the value of what they were doing and decided to apply for a job there. I researched every single person in the company. I learned their names, I read their tweets, I sifted through their blog posts. I was completely focused on getting a job there. When I met John Collison, this is one of the co-founders of Stripe, he's gonna be referred to as one of the Jedi, and I'll get there in a minute. When I met John Collison and we started whiteboarding together, I knew two things. This guy is going to be a billionaire, and I'm definitely gonna get this job.