That Will Never Work
I met my co-founders Max and Ernesto in 2019. Max and Ernesto had been friends for years, but I was a new face to them. [I will write a future dedicated blog post about the PingPod origin story.]
When we first came together to work on PingPod, we allocated time to immersing ourselves in the start-up world. Namely, we devoured books (Super Pumped, Shoe Dog, Infinite Games, Bad Blood, The Ride of a Lifetime, The Everything Store, etc.) and podcasts (lots of How I Built This) in order to learn from other founders’ experiences.
One of the books we read was That Will Never Work, by Marc Randolph. Marc is the co-founder and original CEO of Netflix. One night, as I was reading page 96 on paperback, I came across a paragraph in which Marc referenced his original email address. In the same paragraph, in what was almost a throwaway sentence Marc included, “I still have that email and check it from time to time.” I stopped reading and sent him an email on the spot.
I had no expectation of receiving an email back. And I didn’t…for over 10 months. Then one day in October I was surprised to find an email from Marc in my inbox. He described his new podcast project That Will Never Work as follows:
“In each episode I’ll be doing a one-on-one mentoring session, almost identical to the type of session you and I might have were you to come visit me in person. We will talk through your idea, your progress, and what concerns you might have, and I’ll do my best to help get you unstuck, start you moving in a better direction, or in the best case, give you the confidence you’re already on the right track.”
Marc said if I was interested in having him help me with my idea – and potentially appearing on the podcast – I should send a message explaining who you are, what you’re working on, and (most importantly) what help you are looking for.
That same day I composed my pitch and rolled the dice. Sure enough, PingPod was selected and Marc’s team reached out to schedule a recording session.
I guess Marc liked how the episode turned out because he reached out a year later to record a second follow-up episode. For those of you who are interested, please find both segments here:
Episode 4, “COVID-Friendly and Ready to Rally” – Released March, 2021
Episode 69, “Should You Buy or Lease Your Location?” – Released October, 2022
Thanks to Marc and his whole team for the effort they put in on these episodes. On behalf of the whole PingPod team, we appreciate your wisdom and the creative ways you find to pay it forward to the next generation of entrepreneurs.
If you like what you hear, we would love you to join the movement. Download the PingPod app or head to www.pingpod.com.
See you at the Pod!
