Clay’s Unusual Path to Building a Multi-Billion Dollar Company

0:00 I feel like people don't talk enough about things that actually matter in building a business. I think capitalism rewards risk. You need courage to make a leap and um actually commit to these ideas. To take real risk, you need to not know what's going to happen genuinely. So you're you're going to discover something new. You can fail in a way that feels scary or maybe associated with shame. And when you're doing that, you're genuinely about to discover something new. [music] That's when you can take real risk.

0:43 >> Can you describe the the long strange [music] journey you've been on of like why you started and then what it was like to exist and have done some interesting stuff when this thing happened and then how you took advantage of it. I find the two chapter story so uh so interesting. We started with the really abstract ambition of how do we give the power of programming to more people. My co-founder Nicola and I were really we like worked in product even though we both studied engineering and we were trying to build I think it was really just hey you're in the 21st century you have computers that can do things for you and if you can't tell them what to do then you can't capture any of the value that's being created and we had a lot of ideas and we wanted to build them and every time we tried to build something it was taking so long. I was also starting to play around with producing music and I really like tools like Ableton Live. I have an idea. I can extract it from my mind and into the machine. Um, and we were also in this uh kick of like looking at the history of computation and things like in the 1960s like the mother, you know, the mother of all demos. seeing the fluidity of the interaction between you and a computer needs to be super fluid for it actually to lead you to the next stage of thinking, right? You need like low latency between I have an idea, it happened and um and because we were coding, we felt kind of that that adrenaline that everybody's feeling right now, right? Which is, hey, I can tell the machine to do something and it does. In the 21st century, it really is like the material is computation. It's kind of like if in the past it was oil, you know, or steel or whatever it is, today it's computation. Um, and so the more we can give that to more people, the more interesting things happen, um, the more egalitarian it is. Um, and so it's almost it's kind of interesting because that was our desire and there were no LLMs which actually we started off by thinking about the terminal and we're like how do we reinvent the terminal where you know engineers are spending all of their time and then we're like well that's just going to speed up engineers. We need to find something that gives that power to more people. In 2017 we started thinking do we give it to consumers or business users? We ended up deciding business users for a variety of reasons. Um and then within that we were like okay which department in a business actually has a ton of ideas but isn't able to execute them um and landed on kind of like sales and marketing where we think people are really creative but they don't have the ability to turn a lot of their ideas um into reality. I'll give you one example that's real today that is kind of wild, but we have one company that sells to businesses that have a lot of garbage, right? So now they're using Google um what's called satellite view to see which areas have a lot of accumulation of garbage and then they kind of figure out, okay, that's a good business to sell to. So that's an idea that you might have, but it might be super hard to execute that at scale. And now something like Clay can actually translate that for you. Because of that, because the whole intention around Clay was how do we give the power of programming to people, that's kind of how the name came because we're like, okay, it's go to market, but now you're an engineer. And so we came up with that before it was really possible to um you know, use LMS to fully code, but it it was how do you systematically think about a problem and break it down and then execute it? Um, and I I think we've also kept that ethos in the company. Um, and that's what makes us really different than everybody else in our space. There are simple things that we've been saying out loud, but I think people don't really believe that that's why it works. So, one is it's a creative task. And so, if it's a creative task, we need to leave it somewhat open-ended.

4:30 A lot of companies that counterposition to clay or in the space are like, "Hey, what you really want is salespeople are people have literally used the word coin operated, right?" And so what you need is something that's super easy to use. It gives you the answer. It tells you who you're selling to and what you're saying and it just works. Um whereas we think you always need in sales or it to find go to market alpha. So like how are you different than everybody else otherwise it's just noise and then Clay in order to do that you need to have a really powerful tool that allows you to experiment quickly and try things out and see what works and and so we built that instead which was very counterintuitive.

5:14 >> Describe the takeoff of chapter 2 of okay now LLM's come out sort of what happened in that what that moment felt like what the sort of subchapters have been since. >> Yeah. What's interesting in that story that I that is maybe worth talking a bit more about is that it wasn't um as simple as you know like this was back in 2022 and we we had made a decision to say okay we are targeting kind of go to market teams specifically sales specifically we're going to start with outbound specifically we're going to start with people who want to get data from lots of different data providers in order to do outbound um and in in fact it's going to be agencies and not startups and we're going to do a lot of what we're doing and support them in public uh and build a community. So we took a lot of decisions that I think were nonobvious.

6:08 Um, and the main thing that happened was really the courage and commitment I think to making those decisions that actually allowed the company to take off cuz the company was already taking off before uh like chat GPT came out and we were well set up to include kind of like LLM LLMs in Clay because one we were set up to allow any integration to anything and two we for a coding like product just designed with go to market primitives. Um and so as soon as we had LLMs it just boosted everything. There were three kind of like core assumptions that we made. Um and I actually think this is how to build a really big company and one that grows really quickly. So we went from one to 100 in two years. But that wouldn't work if the if we weren't pointing in the right direction. So you need to kind of set everything up so that you're pointing in the right direction so that when the wave comes, you go with it and you're not fighting it. So for us, we made a couple of decisions. One, people in go to market are creative. And so we're going to give them the most powerful tool. If you were going to give the most powerful tool instead of the kind of like the most simple out of the box tool, then you need to find the right customer or user for it. And for that we said okay we're doing it for revops um which is an existing kind of role and we're going to call the subset of um or the the the word jobs to be done go to market engineering to give it um a a framing right this is the tasks to be done are all the things that you need to do like the activities to grow your business right remove kind of any obstacles to growth um and then the last part was we're going to charge charge uh for usage instead of per seat because we're trying to get more productivity.

8:00 And so if you have fewer people, we didn't want that to be something that, you know, is is an anti-inccentive for us. >> So if you just look at those three decisions, actually almost every other decision in the company falls immediately out of those. Anyone can come up with what we should do next if you believe these three things. And I think that's the best way also to run a company that's growing really quickly is because I have to just communicate to you these are the three things that we're assuming and whenever you're making a decision check to see if it works within these three concept. I mean I feel like people don't talk enough about the things that actually matter in building a business. I had this dream actually where um it was kind of like a vision where I saw like lots of statues in a kind of like modern city but I was wondering like oh we don't build statues anymore. If you look at like old kind of like republics, they would have statues for concepts like courage or you know um integrity or whatever and there are like gods for these different things. And I feel like we've forgotten that those are the things that actually these abstract kind of ideas or justice or you know whatever it is that matter in the moment when you're building a company. It it was actually hey you need courage to make a leap and um actually commit to these ideas and then see what is the logical conclusion if we take these ideas seriously all the way to the end.

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11:27 If you can put three statues off the elevator in the lobby, what three would you build? >> Courage. Because you it's it's one thing that I've been that I think a lot about is like real risk. I think capitalism rewards risk um more than anything else. It's not I think a lot of people think it rewards it's like meritocracy. There are a lot of people who are working really hard or hard work which I think is silly. Um there are a lot of people working really hard and not making a lot of money. Um so it's not hard work.

11:58 There's some correlation there but it's definitely not just that. It it doesn't just reward kind of skill. Again, there's a lot of really skilled people. Uh there are people, you know, who do things that I can't even dream of. You know, they're you're eating a sword or you're like juggling and they're not making as much money as someone doing like a YouTube video. You know, I just it's clear again that that's not the case. I do think it rewards risk. Um which makes sense as well. I don't have like a strong comment on whether that's good or bad. I'm just trying to figure out what's actually happening.

12:36 >> And so to take real risks and then there's a lot of people who think they're taking risks but aren't taking real risks, right? I talked to one founder who was like, you know, went to a good school then went to YC and then was telling me about his company and he's like, "We serve sales and we serve recruiting." And I was like, "You have to pick one." This is where you're actually providing value in picking and and actually committing yourself um to serving some group of people in some specific way.

13:08 For me, at least my definition of risk or how I've experienced it is you need to not know what's going to happen genuinely. So, you're you're going to discover something new. And you also need to have I think it needs to be coupled with a high potential for shame. it needs to be you can fail in a way that feels um scary or maybe associated with shame and and and when you're doing that you're genuinely about to discover something new and learn from it and that's that's when you can take real risk and to do that you then need to have many traits one of them is courage >> let's take justice for a second because I I want to live like in a stable society that allows me to kind like have the time and space to think of things. I think you know and and just to explore like you know the world is pretty crazy.

14:00 Um I went to see this movie uh called Stop Making Sense. I was uh downstairs like in the movie theater and I was I had like a joint that I was about to smoke and I was trying to light it up but I didn't have a lighter and so I asked a guy uh who was standing there. And I was like, "Hey, can I borrow your lighter?" And he was like, "Sure. Can I ask you a question?" And I was like, "Yeah, of course." And he was like, "What is this?" And I was like, "What do you mean this whole thing?" He was like, "Yeah, what is this?" And I was like, "Well, that's a big question. I haven't even spoke by joy yet." Like, >> well, I mean, if I was just kind of like thrown into this and I was like, "What is this?" I think like the world is a mysterious and kind of like amazing place. And I feel like there's so much to know. we're just kind of like starting to make progress on like how wonderfully weird it is. Um, and we should be spending more time like like exploring that. Um, and and to do that, I feel like we need stability. So, and and to get stability, I think you need to have justice between people. I think there's no way no stable way for some group of people to dominate others.

15:18 um it just doesn't work. No matter how strong you think you are, um the other person is a tremendous nuisance, you know, if if they feel like they're treated unfairly. So there's no stable configuration around that. And if you're thinking about the economy um or like countries, there's no way to you can't bluster your way out of it. You can't say we're the strongest. you have to do if as soon as you start even when I'm saying that right like I have to remember when I have power over people you tend to be like they must do what I want because I want them to because I control this it's just not a stable configuration you can get by for a little bit and then you get tremendous push back um so I think that having the value of justice um one thing I think about is like how do you treat people with respect and fairness all the time um in every situation whether you're hiring them or firing them or you're disagreeing right over what they should be doing. So I think that that maybe is what's fueling kind of this democratization, right? Like you want to even people are stable in a place where they feel like they have the opportunity to get what you've gotten to as long as there's some kind of like fair chance for that. Um and they're okay with what they've gotten if they feel like, hey, this is what's available to me at the moment. But it's also just as a side note, I think this is just kind of like an internal thing that I've had. Like I used to play soccer and even on my team if I feel like we fouled the other team and we could get away with it, I would have like a really weird thing of like integrity. This feels off.

16:57 >> Do you have a sense of where that came from? >> It's some kind of like intuitive knowing for myself that it's like I'm a long-term greedy person, you know, and this is kind of what one of the things we talk a lot about at the company is like how do you be long-term greedy? And I think the only way to be long-term greedy is to stay in integrity for people to feel like there's justice all the way along. And that way you can Yeah. I think it's also just like a belief in yourself, right? You don't have to cheat in the like short term to get something. You're going to win.

17:27 Maybe one small thing about this is like if you let's say you're playing a soccer game, you feel like you cheated or like this wasn't fair and then you won. It doesn't feel as good. So I I did hear the your like interview with Brian Chesky's the um like the statement he made around you know the getting to hundred billion dollars and um >> feeling like >> I Yeah. And I I I actually felt like I related in like we're obviously in a much you know smaller spot but even early on when we raised our series A um I remember having that sensation of like oh there's no if you're doing this to get agilation or to get uh you know prestige or to make some money there's no end to that. It's kind of like an empty thing that passes. Um you the only judge of anything is yourself and your own kind of self-respect.

18:29 Um uh and so you have to be doing it so that you feel like what you've done is interesting and worthwhile and you you know when you're an ambitious person your judgment is actually way higher than anyone else because you know everything that you're thinking and you know everything everything that you've done. So, I know everything that I'm thinking about or doing and my kind of um standards are higher than anyone else. >> There's this thing I like to do where when I spend some time with somebody, I wait an hour and then I write down notes in my phone cuz I want I like I like benefit from the hour of like it it's like a cleansing function or something like whatever lasts in my brain through that hour like I want to write down.

19:10 When we last worked together, this is the one thing I wrote down which was this notion of optimizing for self-respect over everything else. Yeah. >> Oh, we'll get to truth in a second, but how that optimizes relates back to risk and courage. Like, do you think those things are related? And and and the question behind the question is like how do you think it's possible to help people become more courageous and take more risk? >> I think I think in order to do that, you just need to understand your mind and your motivations more and be more honest about them. It's very hard to admit to yourself. I think you know why you're doing something are you doing it even if you look at the narratives for companies none of them have any relation to the motivation the motivation of the founders and I think probably the honest story is like a mixture of things and we don't talk about that in public right so I think if you for me for example it's like why am I building a company um and do I think that I will be more liked or loved if I, you know, do something that is a success at a worldclass level, right? And can I get that now? Right?

20:26 So, I've had friends come up to me that are like, "Hey, I don't care if you succeed or fail. I love you." And I was like, "Wow, that's actually helpful. I didn't think it would be, but it's like, well, I'm that that's feeding kind of like some part of my desire must be fueled by that, but I can get that right now." And now I can start to take real risks where I'm thinking about the business and not trying to fill this like particular need.

20:50 >> Um, you know, VCs have this common trope that is, hey, we invest in someone that has a chip on their shoulder, right? Or has some kind of lack that they're trying to fulfill. Um, and this is common across like creative work. The trope is like you're depressed or you're anxious or whatever and you're trying to fill that and you're actually afraid to lose that depression or anxiety or whatever it is because you feel like you'll be less productive or like creative. Um, and I had the kind of like through my journey, I had this moment where I was like, you know what, I'm not going to create from a place of lack anymore. Um, and I went around uh probably pretty annoyingly telling people I'm I have everything I need. I'm good.

21:33 >> Post lack. >> Post lack. Yeah. And um it's a great negotiation leverage because there's nothing you can give me. I feel great. I'm already complete, you know, and from there you can still create. I think people are misunderstanding um like tremendously misunderstanding this in in my opinion. It's kind of like well if we have if we were in a post scarcity world no one will do anything. Everybody will just be hanging out. And it's like have you been to Burning Man?

21:59 People are still doing stuff you know and they have things. I think you can create from a place of wholeness and in fact you will be less destructive in the world. Um, so I I think you'll create less damage because you're doing it now because we keep thinking here like, hey, let's think of our customers. What are we trying to give them? Stop thinking about other in an organization, you could there are so many other why do people keep saying customers first. It's because when you're in a company, things start to happen where it's like this person's thinking about their career or this person wants to please this other person. They're not thinking about the customer. They're just thinking about the internal dynamics. The more whole you can be, I think, the more risks you can take and the more courage you will have because you have nothing to lose.

22:45 >> It's funny to me that perhaps the most interesting duo in modern business history, Johnny Ivan, Steve Jobs, were like almost undoubtedly creating from this generative place. Um, I don't know if they'd use the same terminology or something, but you read it all like it's all there. >> Yeah. >> And they're the most adored, right? But maybe the least emulated. It it demands the question um the things that got you to this sense of wholeness. Yeah. From this place of lack.

23:12 >> Um there's been much strange debate about the role of introspection in in um in business and in general. I think naively I would say like it's introspection. It's a key tool in the toolkit to get from one to the other. Um curious what your experience has been or what you would what you would offer about that phase change. I kind of understand actually the the motivation here because one thing I talk a lot about here and have thought for myself is the amount of work the doing versus metaanalysis um it can sometimes flip right so you should be like 90% of the time doing and then 10% of the time meta analyzing sometimes actually at work we've had this happen a lot and I talk to the team a lot about it where people are like hey what is going to happen in one year or like why are we building this feature instead of that feature and I'm like is that stopping you from taking the next step in your job? If not then you're procrastinating. So I think my sense is his conversation around that is and also by the way if you're trying to build I think his example was Walmart right it was like if you're trying to build more Walmarts yes you should always be thinking about wake up in the morning build more Walmart but at some scale news when Walmart is affecting all of us if you don't think about why you're building Walmart you know or what you know more Walmarts do to us or to a shared environment um that responsibility is on you. I I I think that the more you make and the more successful you become, it is part of your responsibility back to like all of us to think about what you're doing, right? That you're our representative now. Um you're not a completely independent actor. Uh and in fact, we have the power to pull some of that stuff back from you. So is there anything that you did in particular right >> as just just about your specific story going from kind of black to wholeness or >> right for me I think the introspection is it it was um a journey to kind of understand like why ambition right so I was suspicious of my own ambition I was like what what am I trying to get out of this um and actually I think part of why the company took some time to take off was because I was grappling with that and that led me to kind investigate like which parts of me are trying to kind of be expressed through this. And that was just my own personal interest. I just found that I couldn't just do something without understanding my motivation for it because I was um looking at people who are further ahead in my field, right? Like if you're a great business person or you built a great company and I was like, do I want that? What actually I I think it's also coming from like valuing my time and myself really I I was having this kind of experience where I'm like what if I took myself really seriously. You could take yourself lightly and just be like well these are just thoughts. I want to do something big so do other people or take it really seriously and be like what why do I want to do that? What would I actually offer the world if I was able to do that? Um and then thinking like hey you can succeed and create a lot of damage in the world. Um and back to the kind of like I was I I think a lot about death right and like you know if you on your deathbed like what are you thinking what are how does it feel in that moment if you had a moment to reflect and like who get how do you judge yourself and for me I didn't there's like the experience of every day and living a life that you feel is worthwhile on a day-to-day basis and there's also like how did you impact the world if you did impact it and I wanted to make sure that I felt like I really grappled with that correctly and I didn't just try to accumulate resources.

26:54 >> Um, and just be like, hey, I did something big. I accumulated some resources. It's funny, it does go back to this like justice principle. It's like if you're going to do something big, you need to kind of think about the consequences of you taking that role because it's just a role. >> It's a really cool thought exercise to say, okay, play out the thing I'm doing to its natural extreme. Do I want that state? >> Right?

27:16 >> Probably no one does that. Do you respect like you know I had one time where I I remember when I was much younger I was like oh like I want to make a lot of money and then I'll be a philanthropist and I'm like is that actually useful there are a lot of philanthropists is it working or is it just that I want the control to pick the causes that I want. >> Um and on this like uh maybe one more thing on the death thing that I think is kind of interesting was like my own insight that I had. I went on this 10day silent retreat um a while back and it I thought I was going to just go think you know it was not that it was kind of like a spiritual experience and it it wasn't um it was called herodia not like a vapa and so hi herodas their approach there is like a non-dual approach to meditation where typically you kind of like meditate on your breath or some object whereas in non-dual traditions it's called the direct path and in the direct path you meditate on the space between the breaths or you you ask the question who am I a very frustrating question I would say I would not recommend it but anyway I'm doing this thing on the fifth day I have like this big insight where I'm like I I figured it out I got it so then on the seventh day I'm like okay well what now you know I uh I start imagining going back and telling my friends about like this insight but I'm like oh I'm not here I'm just imagining the future I'm I kept kind of wanting to go towards the end and then I had this like really big flash of insight that I try to remember, but it's that whenever you're picturing the future or anticipating the future, you're actually it's kind of like Freud's death drive, right? You're actually just the the only thing that happens in the future is you die, you know, like the far future, whatever it is. And so you're accelerating that. Um, and as soon as I had that thought, it's kind of the death drive, you know, actually thinking about the future is the death drive. And so I like immediately kind of felt back in my own body in the moment and felt the boredom of where I was. And I was like, "Wow, this is such delicious boredom. I'm so I I finally got that insight, which is I'm so grateful to be bored right now because it's so amazing." I also realized that I have this like scarcity like food scarcity. I was thinking constantly about food and where am I going to eat, you know? And then I just had this one pee and it exploded in my head. I was like, "This is too much. I can't eat anymore."

29:39 But I realized that I have an accumulation tendency where I'm like, it's with food. Like, where's the food going to come from? And in the company, I noticed I'm like, where's the next, you know, ARR going to come from? And and I now I'm aware of that and I'm like aware of when I have enough. And then I can take more risk. I don't need to accumulate something that's way beyond actually what we need. What was the day five insight or was that the insight itself?

30:00 >> No, the day five insight is like a momentary experience of like this of like understanding what matters or something like that because I felt like oh I'm I'm connected to all things. Hey, I am a component or like a part of this whole thing and I'm connected to all things and they all matter. I had kind of this thought of like one, I'm no better than and no worse than anyone else. Uh but also it made me feel like this real empathy when you know I see someone who's suffering they're also me and not not like not I empathize with them as if I was them.

30:40 I'm like this is actually me. >> Um and that that's kind of like a really out there thought or like belief. >> Strange thing is it's actually not at all like it's like the longest lasting set of beliefs right >> in the deepest richest philosophical traditions. What was crazy wasn't the idea. It was the >> experience >> experience of really feeling that and then knowing that like you know when I hear something in Buddhism that's just like freedom of all beings or knowing that um you know the suffering of one person is the suffering of everyone. So back to the justice thing, it's like well I can't solve everybody's problems and I I and and in fact that would be hurting me to try to help someone when I don't have capacity. but to really know like every single person they're carrying it for me rather than they up or they screwed up and I'm better because I worked hard and did x y and z.

31:32 >> So bring it back to our statutes is that then truth like is the is the day five insight >> is that just truth? >> Yeah. So I think that yeah if we go back to kind of capital T truth it's like really understanding that and then I understand why in philosophical traditions or even in religions they're like remembrance right because it's like I can I can get that momentary understanding but then remembering it in the moment when I'm making a decision about my business or about like my personal life is very tricky. Um, but I do think that that is what's necessary for us to get to the next stage of like what's interesting in the world. There's so many mysteries, you know, like scientific mysteries. There's just like so many interesting things. Um, and I feel probably like many other people that we're squabbling in circular ways around the same nonsense.

32:22 >> Uh, truly actually it like my real anger is like what are we doing? We're wasting our time. Um, but we're wasting our like human potential. We're wasting our time. >> If I hear and digest all of that and then I imagine, okay, this guy is now running a software startup, >> right? [laughter] >> I I might imagine that that startup is run in some unusual ways, >> right? >> And so I'm curious what those are and and and why you arrived at unusual ways of running the business.

32:51 >> It's back to like the meta reflection point is yes, there are some unusual ways in which we run the business. I think it's important to be careful of how much you kind of push ideas onto other people or like project onto them kind of like your beliefs and also to to remember what context you're working on. It's almost like telling a story, right? Like if you're if this is the normal way to run a business and then you think that it's this kind of like completely bizarro way over here, you also need to take the steps to like tell the story.

33:24 And I think it's the same in like product development, right? I can't just give you a product that you have no context for. You don't even understand how to interact with it. Um, so I think it's like, hey, these are my personal beliefs that are and my kind of like interests that are underlying some of the normal activities that we do and then there's adjustments that we make. I'd say the first and most important way is that it's a felt experience right in the company um of how we treat people and how we think about uh like their personal development. But there there are like concrete ways in which it shows up. One way is that we overinvest in things that people typically underinvest in. So what does that mean? Like we over we've overinvested in recruiting, in brand, in content, in community building. We've hired people who are very overqualified, you know, um, in some of these roles who are doing it for the first time and we've paid them as if they were, for example, we just actually published an article about this with one person who was an early employee, Mishi.

34:30 And um, she took a content role. She would have never taken a content role, right? Um, it's typically kind of not the most highly paid thing in a company where it's like you're it's extra. And we compensated her like a PM and we're like, go do it. So we take those kinds of risks and then we stick with it. I think another thing by the way with risks is when when you couple risks and courage, the next part is commitment.

34:53 You actually need to kind of follow through to see what actually ends up happening. You can't just quit in the beginning. We take that seriously and if we see some somebody is really skilled or has some star potential, we stay with it for way longer than most. You know, everybody talks about hiring fast and firing fast. We've had people who nine months in were floundering um and we're like this person is excellent. I know they are, but what's going on here? Is it the role? Is it the context? Right? Is it our decision-m that's limiting them? And eventually, I would say we we find an amazing spot for that person and they become a superstar 50% of the time. you know, 50 the other 50% of the time, this person might be really special, but we just can't create the conditions for them or they're too far away. Like, one thing that I've talked to my co-founder, Verunat, is like, "We're never pissed off when someone doesn't work out." We're like, "Hey, you're just we're here and you're here. Maybe along the journey one day you'll get there, but you're not getting there fast enough. You you don't have what we need at this moment." Um, so I don't even have a opinion on whether you're good or bad. Like people were like, "This person was good. This person was bad." that were you good in the moment that we needed you to be? Uh, and actually you might also be super skilled, but you just didn't perform here. I've had people who are incredible. I know they're incredible and they couldn't perform here for a variety of reasons and they've gone to other places and done a really good job.

36:17 So, I think it's important to kind of like be nuanced. But then, you know, there are some other things where I think some of the things that people have covered about us in the past is like, you know, I like clowning. For example, I discovered clowning. >> What What's clowning >> exactly? I when just the word clowning I was like what is this? I think of it as like edgy improv. Um there's kind of like four types of clowning. Um uh so there's kind of like physical clowning which is the one you would imagine when you think of clowning. There is uh u like emotional range. So let me make you happy then make you sad then make you happy. So you can feel the full kind of like range. There's the jester which is like telling truth to power. Um, and then there's the trickster which I think is pretty interesting which is how do I tell you like spiritual truths through kind of jokes like you realize hey everything does change you know that's like a truth about the world but I get you to experience that we take kind of like our things like that or like we are really into magicians at clay um and we incorporate it into kind of like uh our events or things that we do and we take risks like our our brand takes a lot of risks way more risks than I think general B2B brands and it it that's why people love the brand and the company.

37:44 It's authentic to us but it's also um I think honest. We're not hedging. I think a lot of times people are authentic but hedging. So they're not really saying what they want to say because they're afraid of the consequences. What have you learned from magicians? I actually think the trickster thing is the thing that's been a common thread between this, but I there's this place called 69 Atlantic. And the thing that I remember from the these really like incredible magicians is it's not just like a slate of hand things.

38:16 There's a storytelling component. And I think a lot of them, it's kind of wild, but like a lot of them are telling a story of like a deep understanding of like how your mind works or like how the world works where they're like, "Hey, I'm showing you this thing." And really what they're trying to do is to spark curiosity. And actually, we're going to do something about this at Clay. Um, we're calling it like re-enchanting the world, right?

38:43 Like in a world where there's AI, right? It's literally magic in some form, right? And to remember that like there's a lot of this is magic, right? Like a lot of these things that we're sitting in front of are still magic. It's pretty wild. And to kind of like re-enchant the world again and not make it like this boring place where you think you understand how it works cuz you really don't. Um, and so I think they're doing like simple things to reignite that feeling of like wonder. Um, and I think if you take that feeling of wonder actually in your everyday um, life, you're you're you're a more kind of like friendly person cuz you're you're not like, "Oh, I understand how this person works or I understand how this is." You're like more curious. Um, it makes you more curious about our customers. It makes us interact in a more pleasant way cuz we're like, "Oh, there's stuff to learn here." So, I think what I've been actually getting from this like magic stuff is been like remembering what it feels like to be like, I have no idea how this is working and I can't even begin to comprehend how to think about it. I know that it's a trick, but I can't figure it out.

39:44 >> For whatever reason, this makes me wonder kind of the same question about music, like the role that music plays in and has played in your life >> and what you've learned from your many many experiences with music. >> One of the key things I think with music versus other kind of things is time, right? Like you can't listen to a song without time. Time is actually a core component and silence is a core component like the spaces between things. So it's a good reminder that those are like fundamental things that you have to work with. It's like very zen you know it's like where the thing isn't you know where the room isn't is where we are right if this room was full of things we couldn't sit in here and we only think about making things. We don't think about removing things and we don't think about things unfolding. Right?

40:26 Like I think video is also like that but a painting isn't right. It's just you can see it all at once. Um, so I think about like narrative, like how are you telling the story? How are you bringing people along with you on the journey? Um, you can't tell everyone everything all at once. It's overwhelming because you've you've had time to process. They haven't. Um, but the this piece that I was reading, it was talking about endings. So, we always think about beginnings, but we don't really think about endings. When you're starting a company, you're not like, well, what about all the people that I'm going to fire? And so many crazy things genuinely happen. As soon as you have a large number of people, all kinds of people get sick, people people's par, you know, just like you're dealing with a microcosm of humanity. You're running like a mini society. Um, and so it was like, hey, we can look to music to think about the different forms of endings and learn from that. So some songs end, you know, um, as just like repeating and it goes like down in volume. Some things end suddenly, you know, some things end with like it's like a whimper or like intensity. And actually, you can think of these as like different ways to end something. Another one that I think is really cool, an essay that I read that was called um the emancipation of dissonance, which first of all is a really cool title. Uh but it was kind of like theorizing the history of music as um a history of accepting more sounds as music. So in the beginning it was just kind of like maybe drumming or like first it's like the tonic like you know you play the C and then you know the C an octave above and then it was adding the fifth like that's why it's called the perfect fifth and like a lot of Baroque music had that and then people started adding the third which is what creates chords like minor and major chords and initially that was resisted people are like what the hell is this feels off but then you add the seventh where you get jazz and people were like that's unacceptable like this is not music and then eventually you start to add more and more tones. So this was arguing for not just like the tw you know in western music there's 12 notes but in um Arabic music or Indian there's 24 and there's other kind of like um scales that you can use that have even more tones you can use micro tones now that you have electronic music you can make any kind of sound um and I I think this idea of accepting more sounds as music um is actually a helpful product principle >> um and and just a way of being where you can start to think like what are all these other ways of being that you think are off that actually could be productive or useful if you kind of put them in the right context.

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44:14 It seems also like an interesting throughine is in the world we're going into, how important it will be to make people feel something, >> right? Um but maybe also something new. >> Yeah. >> Like like if we can create anything like the logos of it all is like yeah whatever you can create anything you want that the pathos is becomes really important on top of that and the insights for music is like make people feel something new.

44:37 >> We use this a lot like I I'm telling people like hey we're not building a microwave. Microwaves are useful but they're commoditized right? You just go and say hey 1 minute heat it it does what it needs to do. There's no difference between most of them, but we're building a guitar, right? And with a guitar, there's just six strings and 12, you know, frets, but you could spend your whole life >> just getting better at that. And you can only be playing one style of music and it's still like new. And I actually think um like if you bring that to sales or like go to market things um it can feel like a crazy stretch, but actually if you actually respect that discipline and be like hey where what is the ultimate version of sales you need or like marketing or customer success that's why it's called go to market in my opinion is just like how do I take the thing that I made and give it to you when you need it and that's the I if I really truly was like hey what's the idealized form of this that's what it is yeah it's raining I bring an umbrella you were like great thank you right and that's what you actually want to get to. And I think there's a place where, you know, I made something, especially as people make so many new things and you happen to need it and it's very niche and I'm able to find you and give it to you and without necessarily manufacturing that desire in you, but ideally like if you need something, we can get it for you because we happen to be making it.

46:07 >> Um, and so we're thinking about all of the creative ways to figure that out. One really interesting conversation you and I have had before is about the role of vision in company building. >> Yeah. >> And the leader's responsibility or lack thereof to have one in the first place. >> Oh yeah. >> And uh or to have one sometimes. >> Yeah. >> I'd love you to riff on the leader role and responsibility to have or not have a vision.

46:32 >> I think when we were having that discussion too, my my uh instinct is to go one level deeper. Actually, let's turn it back to one of our statues. truth. Um, you need to say the truth. So, if you don't have a vision, then you don't have a vision. If you do have a vision, then you do have a vision. Don't say something that actually isn't happening. Um, and that's that's my answer to that is that I do think ultimately you need to kind of have some destination or like some guiding principle or some compass, but you don't need that at all times and you don't need to force it. If you just know what the next step is, you should take the next step. And sometimes things happen in all kinds of ways. You most of medical discoveries are complete coincidences. So many of like the most advanced things that we've got, I don't know, the cosmic microwave background.

47:22 Complete coincidence. You couldn't have gone out and said, I want to discover the cosmic microwave background. There's so many of these things. And so I think we're telling ourselves a a story that is not true about the nature of discovery and how it happens. And I think we do a disservice to everybody when we go back and retell the story in a way that is not honest because it confuses the people who are on the path of figuring it out. So for me um I think a much more honest version let's say you're starting a company and you don't know what to do. So many people have that problem. All the stories of greatness are like I was 13 and I um saw this one thing and then I dedicated my whole life to it. And I think that happens and it also happens in other ways. So sort of optimize for discovery rather than destination would be like one way to think about it.

48:09 >> I would say leave the space for the opportunity to discover. If you do have a vision, you should be clear about that. Um and clear how confident you are in that. And if you don't have a vision, I don't think that's a problem. Um I think you can take the next step and allow the vision to come. you know, um, in Native American traditions, I don't know why this is relevant, but it it's coming up for me, is like there are things called like vision quests where you go and fast for a few days and you're asking for a vision, right? And I think you know the sometimes you need to do things in order to get the vision of what you're supposed to do and and by and by the way in companies it also could change over time. So you might have a vision and then either the vision is wrong. A lot of companies who started five, six years ago that are kind of confused now because things have changed. Well, it's time to change the vision. And you don't need to settle on a new one immediately. You can say, "Hey, we don't we don't actually know what we're doing right now." Um, and we can take the next step in what we like the immediate next step in what we're doing right now and wait to receive that vision.

49:15 >> Do you feel like you have a vision right now? Yeah, right now I feel pretty clear that about and within the like scope of what we're doing like what the vision is. We're basically just helping everybody every company in the world find who their best customer is and find more of them and accelerate that. >> What about the notion of wealth? Like you've also in these chap two chapters had this interesting experience of um now because of Clay's success you've achieved a level of wealth that by any measure is you know extraordinary. What has that process been like and what has it what has that taught you?

49:50 >> The initial thing that I had thought was true is true is that there's no like amount of if you're not kind of like feeling whole in yourself, there's no amount of wealth that fills that. Um it it it doesn't change that because you know it's a it's a it's a continuous kind of like competitive game. But I think what material kind of like like abundance gives you is the like reality also of your time back. And I I'm choosing for example to build this company. I don't have to I don't need it to succeed more.

50:23 I don't need to like make more money or whatever it is. I'm choosing what I want to be doing with my time. Um and that is like it goes back to kind of like that truth part. It's like really empowering to I don't I can make my own choices and I can test things out in the world and see if they work or not. Um like I'm not scared or worried about what happens, but I also needed to have that point of view in order to get here. So I think having the opportunity to like choose what I do with my time um and to like take bigger swings, it just it feels really important and then it's like what responsibility do I owe back to society?

51:01 You also once said to be that all problems are communication problems. I'm curious how you've gotten better or what you've learned about not falling into that trap. >> It's not that all problems are communication problems. Like we might have a disagreement or different needs, but often uh we can't resolve it because we're not uh like we're making assumptions about each other. We're doing like all kinds of like game theory things about what would happen if you did this, if I did that. It's kind of like in negotiations.

51:31 Um, you might have [clears throat] different strategies, but my strategy is to be as clear as possible about what I want, what I think you want. Assuming that you are really intelligent, can read kind of like and have access to the same information as me. I need to know what you want and what are the options available. And then we might still disagree, but at least we are disagreeing from a place of clarity rather than from a place of misunderstanding. Let's say we're asking someone to leave clay. In in in most cases, as long as the person is kind of like in a shared reality with us in a way that h um is based on clear communication, right? Like, hey, do you think it's working here? I don't for these reasons. What do you think? And maybe you're like, no, it is working.

52:17 But and I was just like, okay, let's let's kind of like bridge the gap because we can get to a place where it's like, I don't want to be giving you negative feedback every single day. At one point I told someone, "Hey, listen. I've lost faith in the ability for you to bridge the gap." And I'm the CEO, so it's it's it's not a good uh like situation for you. Does it make sense? Right? And even if you think you can get there, I'm taking responsibility for that. I'm not saying that this is rational even. It's just I I can't do it and that's it. And so in that case it doesn't really make sense um for you to continue working here and I want to share that with you because I'm like you know I want to be like direct and clear about it and also own up that this is my call and I think a lot of people actually really appreciate that and are just like okay I get it that doesn't I wish that it was different but it it's not so I'm going to do something else.

53:11 Most times if someone's leaving what are they worried about? They're worried about what are you going to say in the future to other people right? So I tell them, hey, if someone calls me up, I'm going to say it didn't work in these ways, but I think these are their strength. I think here are the gaps that we have in our organization that didn't support them. How do you not think about that? Right? Like when I call up a reference, it's like, can you tell me what was wrong with your company at the time? Cuz it wasn't perfect.

53:35 >> It's always about someone else. This is obviously not true, right? Like there are times when um my management skills weren't there to like handle this particular person or the company itself was um not working and so it creates a really bad vibe for everybody inside. When things are working things are working when things are hard only a few people can handle that. The reason I'm saying these things by the way is I'm like these are the things that I think are actually interesting through so part of my experience of building a company was I I just wanted to know through building it and being given the hard choices of how to relate to people or like you know given a quick profit versus a long profit what would I do and like what's the experience that other people who are making these choices are facing and I think we're not talking about these things because the risk is too high right like if If I talk about what I'm doing, you know, in a company and like how I'm treating people, maybe someone will sue you or like I don't know, someone will lose customers will lose faith in you. But actually, these are kind of like the interesting things.

54:39 I really feel like companies are built through um rules of thumb where I'm like, "Hey, how do you scale from 100 to 300?" And then I talk to five people who have done it and they tell me. And by the way, I've done things that are completely the opposite of that and it's worked. And the reality is when you're going from 100 50 for example to 300 people you don't want to take the risk of doing something new. You're like these people did it but then you're going to get the same problems that they had. So many people told me there would be all these weird problems scaling 50 to 300 people. None of them happened.

55:10 >> We have some other things that happened you know but I didn't have the typical problems because they didn't do it the typical way. >> As we approach the end one more question about endings. >> Yeah. >> Uh I'm realizing I take a lot of notes after our various meetings over the years. The first time we met, the idea that I remember writing down was that you w you told me something like you wish that there was something like a death duela for companies.

55:30 >> Oh, right. I'm just like why are we not talking about whether it is good to scale like uh every business every I mean people talk about it a little bit in this like really boring um super worn out way of like should you raise VC capital or should you I don't know like bootstrap completely non-interesting like actually ways of talking about it but it's like as a bit as if you I don't know if you had um like a donut business, should you try to scale it?

56:02 What does scaling it entail? What do you lose when you scale it? Should we be as a society incentivizing all businesses to scale? And we all know this problem which is like, hey, this restaurant was really good, now it sucks. So, because I think there's a life cycle to things and maybe part of this meditation retreat and thinking about the death thing, I've been thinking about like is there a life cycle to companies and should we just be okay with that? I I'll pick Microsoft for a second. is just like you have an initial put a computer on every desk. I remember that mission right when I was a kid and you did put a computer in every desk but now the mission is u devices and services and you know do do cool things right the idea of a company I think started in the 1500s I think it was the what East India company or something so it's like you you get together for a purpose and then you do it and then should you disband or should you keep like the minimal number of people I think the crypto people have had some of these ideas okay you built the layer now you move on to the layer.

57:02 Um I do think it's worthwhile as all this disruption is happening to start thinking about like the new ways of doing this. I'm curious about it, but it's just um a death duela for companies is hey if your company has achieved its mission, should we help it pass? Maybe it should have children and like people come out and they do cool stuff, but maybe we can institutionalize these things rather than trying to scale things that become zombies or become worse versions of their former selves and then complain about it. when we're incentivizing everybody to scale no matter what.

57:32 >> When you and I are together, I feel like we always talk a little bit about Clay and a lot of bit about even more interesting things. And Clay's very interesting. >> Yeah, >> this has been yet another example of one of those conversations. I've loved having it. When I do these, I ask everyone the same traditional final question. What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you? The one that's coming to my mind immediately I had already mentioned actually but it's uh like a few friends have come up to me especially when uh Clay before Clay succeeded um and were like hey you don't need to do anything we just love you anyway and then I realized oh I also don't want like I don't care what they're doing I don't care what they achieve I just implicitly like this person and love them and knowing that I had that and then I could give that back to myself as well without any achieve achievement. Um cuz I think like my childhood wounding was feeling like I must achieve in order to have like care and love and I was like I actually don't need that. It created a ton of clarity where I was like I'm doing things because I want to not because I need something from it. Clay is just the output of a lot of like thoughts and things and we're doing it in a way for me I hope where I'm not attached um I'm not attached because I don't need anything from it. It should just I want it to evolve the way it wants to evolve.

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