Silicon Valley OG shares crazy stories from Zynga early days + 3 business ideas
Episode 678: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Siqi Chen ( https://x.com/blader ), the founder of Runway.com.
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Show Notes:
(0:00) Early days at Zynga
(14:34) Business ideas
(52:18) Touchy-feely class
(1:07:24) Siqi’s favorite interview question
(1:12:48) Insane growth of ElevenLabs
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Links:
• Limitless - https://www.limitless.ai/
• Rewind - https://www.rewind.ai/
• Runway - https://runway.com/
• Hoffman Institute - https://www.hoffmaninstitute.org/
• Pump - https://pump.fun/board
• ElevenLabs - https://elevenlabs.io/
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Check Out Shaan's Stuff:
• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com
• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.
• Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies!
Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC
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Check Out Sam's Stuff:
• Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/
• Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/
• Copy That - https://copythat.com
• Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth
• Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/
My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano
Building an Intelligent Business OS, with Runway CEO Siqi Chen
Nathan interviews Siqi Chen, CEO of Runway, about revolutionizing business finance through AI. In this episode of The Cognitive Revolution, we explore how Runway is creating an intelligent business operating system that generates financial scenarios and explains complex metrics. Siqi shares insights on AI's future impact on finance, business, and society at large.
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CHAPTERS:
(00:00:00) About the Show
(00:02:45) Runway
(00:06:11) AI features
(00:12:10) Defining the syntax
(00:14:48) How AI has been expressed since GPT-3
(00:18:32) When did it become clear that the models were getting good enough?
(00:24:29) Sponsors: Oracle | Brave
(00:26:38) How the model is being asked to generate a scenario
(00:26:38) What will drive the most improvement?
(00:28:50) How Runway can help you make decisions
(00:37:47) Sponsors: Omneky | Squad
(00:39:34) Runway as a business operating system
(00:39:51) How does the product work?
(00:44:31) What does the future hold?
(00:47:34) The frontier model has passed the average person
(00:51:18) AI tools for operations
(00:55:21) How to get the best out of AI models
(01:00:39) How AI models can write as you
(01:02:43) AGI, work, and the future
(01:08:33) AI safety, regulation, and the future
(01:11:26) Closing thoughts
(01:12:20) Outro
Siqi Chen on How To Go Viral, Secrets to Storytelling, and Forgetting Best Practices
Siqi Chen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Runway, the modern and intuitive way to model, plan, and align your business for everyone on your team. Or, in Siqi’s words, “revolutionizing the $80 trillion business industry”.
A few months ago, Runway’s new website went viral across the internet. Siqi takes us inside how that happened. He’s no stranger to going viral, having previously built multiple companies that went from zero to millions of users within weeks, including the fastest growing product ever before ChatGPT took the crown in late 2022.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:00) Sponsor: Attio
(02:59) How Siqi goes viral
(06:13) Why conversion doesn’t always matter
(11:23) How to make B2B software more fun
(14:31) Working on the Curiosity and Spirit rovers at NASA
(16:50) Re-designing at the entire codebase and product at his first startup job
(21:13) Earning the nickname “FB Millz” making a million dollars building Facebook games
(25:11) Selling to Zynga and building the fastest growing product before ChatGPT
(28:36) Building a game with 90% Day 1 retention
(30:09) Being played by Kim Kardashian, Jack Dorsey, and shut down by Tim Cook
(32:10) Almost getting fired building a growth team at Postmates
(35:04) Building Sandbox VR: “escape rooms in VR”
(40:35) Meeting Kanye
(44:38) Getting the idea for Runway when COVID hit
(47:32) Why spreadsheets run every business
(54:40) Disrupting the $80 trillion business industry
(57:55) Making formulas 50x easier than Excel
(01:02:32) Why Runway’s building a painkiller
(01:06:32) How to fundraise
(01:08:32) Why the first question from an investor is the reason they won’t invest
(01:11:28) How to tell a company’s story
(01:15:23) The three layers of a story
(01:17:28) The importance of positioning in storytelling
(01:18:56) Runway’s flexible remote work strategy
(01:21:34) Why their hiring strategy changed over time
(01:22:39) Siqi’s single interview question & the three traits he looks for when hiring
(01:26:10) Unlearning consumer to learn B2B
(01:30:26) Navigating the first three years of no customers
(01:31:45) What surprised Dylan Field the most about building Figma
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Referenced:
Runway’s website: https://runway.com/
Reform Collective Design Agency: https://www.reformcollective.com/
Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/
SandboxVR: https://sandboxvr.com/
Lulu Cheng’s Android Playbook: https://www.piratewires.com/p/anduril-comms-strategy-early-days
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Where to find Siqi:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/blader
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siqic/
Where to find Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/