#309 Arnold Schwarzenegger (Before He Was Successful)

**David Senra** (0:00)
One of the most unique things about this podcast is that I know the founder of every company that advertises on founders. I know Chris and Andrew from Tiny, I know Anil from Meter, and I know Matteo from 8 Sleep. And I do this, well, first of all, because all of them listen to founders, so it makes building a relationship a lot easier. But the primary reason I do this is because I only want supporters of the podcast that live and breathe their product. In every case, we share the same obsession for the quality of the products that we make and the businesses that we are building. And 8 Sleep is one of the supporters of this episode, and the founder, Matteo and I actually live in the same city. A few months after I started using 8 Sleep, I randomly ran into Matteo at a restaurant. I was with some founder friends of mine, and I went over and said, Hi, when I got back to my table, my friend asked me who that was. And I was like, Oh, that's Matteo, the founder of 8 Sleep. And my friend replied, he said the funniest thing. He said, Oh, he looks like he gets good sleep. Matteo is living and breathing his product. I've never had the ability to change the temperature of my bed before I had an 8 Sleep. I had no idea how much that would improve the quality of my sleep. I keep my 8 Sleep ice cold. I make sure it's cold even before I get into bed so I can fall asleep faster and I wake up less during the night. There are very few no brainer investments in life. And I believe an 8 Sleep is one of them. You can get yours by going to 8sleep.com forward slash founders. They'll give you $150 off for being a founder's listener. They ship all over. They ship in America, the UK, certain parts of Europe and Australia. Go to 8sleep.com forward slash founders and get $150 off today. Another supporter of founders. And this episode is our good friends at Tiny. Tiny is the easiest way for you to sell your business. They provide straightforward cash exits for founders. I want to read something to you from their very first shareholder letter as a public company. And it's about the fact that they built their entire processes focused on founders. So it says, while our roots lie in the technology industry, we will consider any business that we feel we are capable of understanding. Our companies range from enterprise software to a coffee maker company to a social network. We, and this is so important that they made it bold and underline it. We have built a process focused on founders. This means our deals are fast, our diligence is focused on what really matters, and we give the founder full flexibility to either stay and run the business or transition to a new CEO. Sometimes founders sale off and sell everything. Sometimes they continue to advise and hold on a minority stake. Other times they choose to keep running the business. It is 100% driven by the founder. Most importantly, we make a commitment to not ruin the business they spent a decade building. We do not flip businesses. We keep the DNA of the company the same and operate them for the long term. If you are a founder and you're thinking of selling your business now or in the future, make sure you email Tiny first. You can email them at hiatiny.com. I will also leave their email address in the description below. There's one other thing from the shareholder letter that I want to read to you because there's a lot of venture capitalists that listen to this podcast as well. And so Tiny's also looking for things they called venture misfits. And it says, these are businesses that would be phenomenal but for their cap table. They have dedicated teams, good growth and strong potential for profits. However, because they've raised tens of millions of dollars and are not doubling in size every year, venture capitalists that are on the boards of these companies usually check out once they realize they'll not be a unicorn and generally just want it off their plate. Because of this incentive misalignment, we consistently seen an unfair advantage in making the process quick and painless for sellers. If you have a company in your portfolio that sounds like that, make sure you email tiny at high at tiny.com. This podcast and this episode is also supported by our friends at Meter. Meter gives you faster, simpler, more secure internet and Wi-Fi for your business. Meter can work in any commercial space, whether it's an office, a warehouse, a lab, everywhere. Meter believes that setting up internet service that can grow right along with your business should be as easy as setting up electricity and telephones. I mentioned earlier that I love founders that live and breed their product. The type of founders who are obsessed with the quality of the products that they're making and the businesses they are building. The founders of Meter are these kind of people. I'm gonna read from this piece that was in Bloomberg. It's actually written by Ashley Vance. Ashley Vance was the guy that wrote the first Elon Musk biography, like probably five or six years ago. And this is what obsession with quality sounds like. It says, after they sold their first networking company, they moved into a single room in a hostel in China where they sought manufacturing partners to build the routers and switches that they need. We'd spend all day at the factory and then we'd sleep on the factory floor because we wanted to learn everything about the manufacturing process. I didn't even have a bed because it was covered in circuit boards.