Chris Bakke on Selling to Elon, Small Exits, and Using Memes for Marketing
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Chris Bakke has founded and sold three companies for between $25-100 million to Zillow, Indeed, and most recently Twitter / X. He shares how he convinced Elon to buy his company, what it's like working for Elon, exactly how the Twitter algorithm works, and all his meme making secrets.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:52) Inside Twitter’s acquisition of Laskie
(05:38) Why Twitter / X works so well for recruiting
(08:11) A sneak peek at upcoming Premium features
(13:58) How the X algorithm works
(20:48) Why “dwell time” is the most important metric
(24:07) What it’s like reporting to Elon
(27:40) Elon’s crazy ability to context-switch
(29:16) Why you should consider selling your company for $25-100 million
(35:39) The reasons large M&A deals are so rare
(42:07) Surviving inside Big Tech as a founder
(46:23) Chris's philosophy on company building
(51:23) Why “Time in Market” is so underrated
(53:44) YC’s “sandwich incident”
(55:44) How to use memes for marketing
(58:55) Chris’ 100+ page Google Slide meme library
(1:01:46) His top three favorite meme templates
(1:03:48) His favorite proprietary trade secret at X
(1:05:03) Turning down jobs at Coinbase and WhatsApp
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Twitter jobs: https://twitter.com/jobs
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Where to find Chris
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisJBakke
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bakk3/
Where to find Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
#214 – Getting A Big Exit By Being A Small Player In A Small Pond with Chris Bakke of Interviewed
Chris Bakke (@ChrisJBakke) came on my radar when he posted an AMA on Indie Hackers after selling his $2M ARR SaaS for $50,000,000. Like a lot of people in the Indie Hackers community, I have a lot of questions. In this episode, I'll find out how Chris came up with the idea and why he intentionally chose a tiny market.
Follow Chris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisJBakke
Check out Chris's new startup: https://laskie.com/
#107 with Chris Bakke - This Serial Entrepreneur is an Idea Machine
Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) hosts the pod today with guest Chris Bakke (@ChrisJBakke) an early employee at Bank Juice, which sold to Zillow. In today’s episode you’ll hear: Chris gives his background and how he ended up in the Bay Area (1:15), Shaan gives his philosophy on how to hire new people (9:35), Chris explains why he thinks raising capital is a good idea (14:15), Chris has an idea he calls "Shopify for SaaS products" (17:05), Chris and Shaan kick around how to get subject matter expertise out of gurus to build a service business (21:50), Chris has an idea for franchising a service like GeekSquad (27:05), Shaan tells a story of how his friend franchised a service model (31:30), Shaan and Chris explain how at-home camps/schools can generate a lot of money (40:05), Shaan gives a framework of how to give poor people something that rich people have and how that translates to give small businesses something they want that big businesses already have (39:45), Chris gives the elevator pitch for his new company that replaces big consultants with software (52:50). This episode is presented by Tempo! Check them out at tempo.fit and use code "TempoHustle" for $100 off. Have you joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion.
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