The Speechify Founder's Rules for Life and Business — Cliff Weitzman

Rory: Cliff, so good to see you first of all. Two days before your birthday. You've achieved a lot, and you were just telling me you feel like you still have so much more to achieve.

Cliff: Yeah, I wouldn't say I would achieve the world. There's a lot more to be done.

Rory: A lot to dive into here. So, a lot of people I know in the world are very familiar with your product Speechify. 60 million users is no small accomplishment.

Incredibly capital efficient company, which we're going to dive into as well. And now close to 200 teammates, which is also like you've you've scaled an operation at size, which is very impressive thing to do for any founders listening. But somehow with all of these traits, I feel like the most impressive thing about you actually is your life.

Cliff: Aw, thank you.

Rory: The way that you live, the way that you interact with people, it's Honestly, been very fun to know you for the last 6 or 7 years and just watch how you watch how you live. And everyone I know who knows you agrees, you are a prolific In the best possible way. Like a truly like incredible storyteller.

So, we're going to loop back to the founder journey. We're going to start somewhere else today. You recently took a challenge from Mr.

Incredible challenge. Drop us in day one. How did this come about?

What was the challenge?

Cliff: We get into share how we met each other, cuz that's a even better story. So Rory and I met on Raya. We did.

If anybody doesn't know, you can like activate the map portion and like sometimes you want to see like, what's this guy about? Like who's my competition? I was like This dude's awesome.

I want to date him. And I had a little soccer game I was organizing over the weekends where we go into like a baseball batting cage and do a very like three on three and I was like this guy's like he's a DJ Elk Road. He's like an ML engineer at Apple at the time.

You were just starting your

Rory: Just getting going.

Cliff: And I was like, "Yo, man, you want to come join our soccer game?" He's like, "Sure." And we started hanging out and every we shared Find My Friends and every time I'd switch a city, Rory would be there.

Rory: I we followed the same path.

Cliff: It was like this like LA like SF down to LA to London. Now we're in New York. It was in Miami for a bit.

Like yeah, it's all the best cities. But it was a great time. It's the only time I've ever been approached by man on a dating app and here we are today.

Rory: It works out. And so I almost feel like there's already a lesson in this because you're the only straight guy I've ever met who would just like willingly message people like guys on dating apps being like, "Hey, you seem like a great guy." And you're like there's a networking alpha to be found at dating apps already.

Cliff: And I don't even think about it as networking. I think I like I just every person who's awesome I want to be their friend. Like I want to I want to learn their story.

So you talked about being good at telling stories. It's just I hunt for good stories. I want to meet friends who have interesting adventurous lives so I can be inspired to live adventurous lives and then I live my life so that I can have fun adventures.

Rory: Amen. It's one of my favorite ways I've met a lot of fun friends. So it's just to that.

Cliff: Love to hear it.

Rory: All right. So drop us back in. Mr.

Beast approaches you. And one of the best challenges I've ever heard. Walk us through it.

Cliff: Yeah. So basically the premise is I started in the middle of the US with no phone, no computer, no money and a $200 car from the junkyard and I supposed to make a certain amount of money by the Originally it was by the end of 100 And it took me 3 days to make enough money to have a phone, 5 days to have enough money to have a laptop.

And your progress from there. It was crazy difficult. I slept in a Walmart parking lot for the first 11 days.

Like in the trunk of the car.

Rory: In the trunk?

Cliff: In the trunk of the car. And I would go like dump It's actually dumpster diving for cardboard.

Rory: What does a $200 car look like?

Cliff: So, it's a car that doesn't actually And it like broke down multiple times during the thing. There's like rust everywhere. It's like essentially a totaled vehicle.

Like 400 miles on the vehicle. Mainly it was just a way for me to like have a place to sleep that was not and the most challenging thing was in the beginning I had all these great business plan ideas. I was like I'm going to I'm going to rock this.

And I

Rory: And so for the listeners understanding, you essentially you were brought back to $0 net worth. You had nothing in the world, just a trunk of a And Mr. Beast is like, "Can you make millions of dollars in 30 days?"

Cliff: I'm not allowed to talk to my family. I'm not allowed to use my name. No one can know about like any of my resume.

And like don't even have a phone or a dollar. And so I was like, "All right. I'm first going to like, I don't know, coach kids in gymnastics and like basketball and like people for the SAT.

Or it was going to be Valentine's Maybe like a week after. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to go and like sell people flowers for Valentine's Day." I had 100 different business And so one of the first things that I did is I went to a flower shop and I got them to give me a couple of samples of their catalog and I went knocking door to door in like the most expensive neighborhood in the town that I was dropped in.

Nobody wanted to buy my I was like, "All right." So, I went to like a busy area. Still nobody wanted to buy. I went to a college campus.

I sold like a couple. But no one really wanted to buy my flowers. And in the end the way I got people to buy them is I would be like, like you're on the I'll do a backflip if you buy it." And they're like, "Oh, you'll do a backflip?

Yeah, I'll buy it." So, I realized that people were just willing to pay me to do backflips. So, I'd make like $5 a back backflip type thing. And it got really cold.

And the second day I also got really hungry cuz like I didn't have money for food. And I at this point had a few flowers and just nobody was buying my flowers. And so in the end I went to this bar.

I was like, "All right, people are drunk. Like they'll they'll buy flowers for Finally, I'm like thirsty. I like go to a place, like a bar.

They're like, "Oh, like how many people in your group?" I was like, "Ah, I'm just like waiting for some people like I was like I didn't know what to do. And I was like, " what? I'm just going to ask for help." So, I turned to a table next to me.

It was a bunch of girls. I was like, "Hey, can I ask you guys a question? I'm trying to save enough money to buy a phone.

And I'm trying to sell these flowers, but nobody's buying these flowers. What would you say to get people to buy my flowers?" And like they think about it.

Rory: Smart. Go to the source.

Cliff: And then a girl at the back is like, "Can I buy her a flower?" Yeah, can I have a And then they like basically walk me around the bar and help me sell my flowers.

Rory: That's amazing.

Cliff: And then they're like, "We're going to go to karaoke. You want to come with us?" And I was like, "I'd love to go to karaoke. But also more importantly, I need access to Craigslist because I'm trying to find a phone that I can buy.

It's in someone like me and it's in their like library like email account." And just people started to help. So, the next morning I woke up and I took a big thing of cardboard and I wrote, "Need friends. Come say hi." And then I wrote like, "Song $1, backflip $1." And like would raise it over my head.

Rory: It's true grassroots. Like as grassroots as it can be. Yeah.

Cliff: And people came and said hi. And a lot of people thought I was going to pay them a dollar to do a backflip or pay them a dollar to sing a song. I was like, "Oh, well, I had it the other way, but tell you what, I'll do a backflip if you do a backflip, we'll call it even.

And then people would still like, donate me money. Eventually somebody gifted me like a busted up old I traded it in and it just it didn't work. So, eventually I took it to a pawn shop and pawned it for a guitar.

Once I had a guitar, it actually everything was great because I could busk and make like 100 bucks a day like playing it. I knew how to play like one and a half songs on guitar. Wonderwall and I knew James Arthur Say You Won't Let

Rory: Oh, wow. That's a yeah.

Cliff: I knew and I knew like a bits of Perfect from Ed Sheeran. And it worked great. And eventually I went to like this big student union area.

I was like, "Hey, I'm trying to save enough money to buy an iPhone. Like the problem is I didn't have enough time on a computer to even like buy a used iPhone. Where would I ship it?

I was like, "Listen, if anybody's got a used iPhone, I'm about to do a backflip off this table. Just like take a story on your Snapchat and say this guy's trying to buy a iPhone here for 200 bucks." Eventually someone sold me a used iPhone.

Rory: Let's go.

Cliff: Eventually I made enough money to buy a MacBook and then I started building an app called Talkify, the opposite of after visiting 100 places and getting rejected, the like fifth time I went to a local gym, they agreed to hire me. But like I didn't have insurance to do PT, so I like worked the front desk and I would just code. They're like, "What is this kid doing?

Why is he like furiously typing on his computer?" And then it fell apart. It was just like a very difficult challenge to do. Partly we had like just issues making it work and partly it was just like fundamentally extremely difficult.

So, the video never happened. We thought about doing it again. We like, considered a bunch of different options.

But fundamentally it is really hard. I also didn't have any ID. So, like without documentation, without money.

No, even just without like just no person has an easy time going from absolutely zero to finding like a good experience. And then there's two actually most important things that I learned. The first one is for the first 5 days I had crazy amounts of adrenaline.

I was so I also was like nourished. And once I got the phone I felt safe. Because I now had Google Maps.

I didn't even have Google Maps before. Once I have the computer I felt I'm good cuz like I could always sit in the back of the car. I could tether from my phone and I could code, I could work on Upwork, I could do whatever.

Like I had a real means of making money. Before that I felt really real survival. And like the sixth day I just slept because I couldn't I had like used up all of my energy getting the computer.

And God like I precisely that computer was my life. And I was far less motivated once I had the safety of the computer and the phone. And then the other thing is maybe around day 15 of trying to do this I felt a lot of resentment for just like the setup.

I was like, "Ah, like, we were supposed to do this but we did this and we were supposed to do this but we did this and in the end I was like, " what? The project failed. And I always take 150% responsibility for everything in my life and I was like, "What more could I have done to make this successful?" And I had done a to make it successful.

And I realized that my biggest mistake was that I wasn't grateful enough for the project and the opportunity to do what I was doing cuz if this had worked out we could have inspired so many different And I was like, "Yeah, I forgot to be grateful for the fact that I had this." And the thing that I had lost by day 15 was my optimism.

And I would say that above, I'm a person who has very high AQ like adversity quotient like do not give up on things. But my most effective trait, I guess, powerful trait, is I'm just like a huge optimist. And I believe that I can do things that other people think they can.

And when like you're a kid, you think you're a superhero, and like I just never lost I lost a lot of it during this I think that it takes that level of delusion to believe that you could do crazy things for those things to happen. And it actually taught me like a really important lesson for the rest of my life is actually, if things are really hard, yes, you can try to push more and be more strategic and you first check yourself, am I grateful for what I'm doing?

And can I be more optimistic about this and just coach yourself to become more optimistic about it. The other thing is like it was a very weird project for us to be doing cuz like you don't want to be cos playing homeless person, like that's not legit. So you need to do it in a way that like gives back to other people and like you set the stage.

So in the end, we scrapped it. But yeah, learned a lot sleeping in a Walmart parking lot for 11

Rory: It's It's a shame because it's such an incredible premise, like if I saw a thumbnail that was like, can a millionaire go to $0 and get back to a million in a month? I would click that. That's just such an incredible I feel like if you had to nail it again, you could tweak a few small variables, like maybe start from you do get to keep your ID, your social security number, and start with a laptop, but you're like locked in a hotel room or something like

Cliff: So yeah, there's like a lot of different ways that you could do that. I can't do go into a crazy amount of detail for like the things that we have considered doing, but yeah, like there's a lot that you could do.

Rory: Yeah. It's so funny cuz you're the fourth guest in a row to use the word

Cliff: Oh, interesting.

Rory: When describing yourself. And I think it's becoming increasingly a trend and we've talked about it a few times in this show, but basically this idea that in order to become whatever you want to become, you actually have to have some level of total delusion about who you are in the world. And everyone who became the greatest founder of all time just believed that they were from like a really young age.

They were like, of course I'm going to do that because that's what the greatest founder of all time would do. And it sounds like this fell apart when you lost that vision of yourself. So, let's go back to early Cliff.

And your origin story cuz I think it's it's truly so interesting. Your there's only a really a few a small handful of founders who are building problems that not only they have identified in the world, but are uniquely for them. Truly for them.

And I feel like Speechify is a product that you built for you. And then there was 60 million people in the world who are like, "Hey, this is wonderful. I want in on this as well." So, take us back to your childhood.

What is it about you that caused you to build this product?

Cliff: Yeah. So, when I was a kid, I wanted to be prime minister of Israel, a billionaire, and a pop star all at the same time.

Rory: Still could be.

Cliff: Working on it. Less interested in politics, definitely still make a lot of And like I just believe that I could do it. Like never once did it cross my mind that was not a normal appropriate thing for me to be working towards.

And my logic was, at least for two of these kind of need to be able to read. And I was a I even today I just read really slow. And I wanted to read fast.

And when I got to university I just I couldn't read fast enough to actually keep up keep up. So, I built this PDF parser that would scan things for me. I made a iPhone app that could take pictures of books and then it would read it.

I tweaked a lot of code so that I could go really fast and I could change the speed not by like 1.25 or 1.5 increments, but like 1.1, 1.015 And I set up a thing that would highlight the words for me at the same time. And that was actually training wheels to learn how to listen really fast. So, the average American listens at 200 230 words per minute.

I listen to everything at 800 words per minute. So, almost four times faster than most people read. And I've listened to 100 audiobooks a year every year since I was 13, 14.

And I am the person that I am today because of all the books that I read, listen to, read speechify. And even for school, I would in top of the books listen to another 300,000 words a week just of different handouts and emails and papers that I was writing of my own, my own things that I was making. And there were pieces of software out there like Kurzweil 3000.

It was just like very clunky and slow. Mac obviously has text to speech. Google Chrome has text to speech.

ChatGPT every everything has text to speech built in. It's was invented in 1962. It predates the iPhone.

But nothing was designed to be really good or be really fast or have high-quality voices. And I just kept having to make modifications. Now, I still make little pieces of software for myself all the time.

I think I the first time I hired a personal engineer to just make tools for me it was maybe 4 years ago.

Rory: That's awesome.

Cliff: But before that I was just like make them all myself and now with Vibe Coding

Rory: Personal engineer before.

Cliff: It's great. I don't have an I don't have an EA. I don't have a personal assistant or executive assistant, but I have a personal engineer.

Like that's all I need. Obviously now with Vibe Coding that role becomes even more powerful and your ability to Vibe Code stuff for yourself becomes crazy powerful.

Rory: 10x your output. Yeah.

Cliff: But that has always been incredible. And I made I made about 36 products when I was in college. Everything from 3D printed skateboards brace to iPhones sorry, not the iPhone.

IPhone apps and websites and payment systems.

Rory: 36 products?

Cliff: 36 different products that I published and like people could pay for. And I was studying renewable energy engineering at the time.

Rory: This is at Brown.

Cliff: After I graduated, yes. And I found that and even like going to Brown like it just required delusional optimism to believe that I'd get into an Ivy League and

Rory: Did you cross over with Emma Watson?

Cliff: I did not. She was more than 5 years older than me, sadly, no. I wish.

10 points to Gryffindor. And I do have the first chapter of Harry Potter memorized though in the entire language. And I was studying renewable energy engineering.

I'd worked on all these projects and I decided that I didn't know what I wanted to work on when I graduated. I knew I didn't want to take a job at Google or Amazon or Palantir or and so I just wrote I wrote this 30-page paper about my world views. I add to it every birthday, so it's now almost 100 pages long of all the things that I believe and who I want to be and then recently I wrote another thing called the Prometheus Plan, which is all my life plan for the next 30 years.

And the conclusion was above everything else I wanted to be the person I needed the most when I was a kid and what I really needed was someone to do my readings for me. And this tool, I kept working on it even alongside other projects cuz I'd go and read the documentation for an API and like it would be too clunky, so I'd go like fix something about Speechify.

I was like, what I really want to do is just make this thing really good. I just don't know how it's going to make real money. Like the only way it'll make real money is people will pay for it.

And at the time subscriptions for software for consumers was not a really big thing. Like people only paid for iTunes, Spotify was just popping off, but there was one thing I definitely paid for and it was Audible. And people were also paying for Netflix.

And I was like, all right, well, kind of similar to Audible. I just want to make this thing. And so I started making posts about dyslexia in Facebook groups and I wrote a book publicly online about my experience with dyslexia.

I'd write 500 pages, sorry, 500 words a day. Every day. And I gave me like 30,000 followers of moms of kids with learning differences.

And I released the first product essentially for free. You could pay ahead of time if you wanted to. Made the iPhone app.

Started sneaking into conferences for people with learning differences. A couple of school heads offered to fly me out to their schools to teach their kids how to use Speechify. And I just would always up the ante from what people expected.

So like I go to a conference but I didn't have the ticket. And so there'd be like 1,000 people at the event. There'd be a keynote speaker, but at lunch I'd hop on the stage, I do a backflip and be like, "Hi, my name is I'd love to show you this thing I made.

I'm like 21 years old." I'd plug in my computer, I'd show them Speechify, and a dozen school heads would offer to fly me out to their school to teach the kids how to use Speechify. I'd show up at the school to give a talk, and instead of leaving, I'd be like, "Hey, can I go help the kids install it on their computers?" And they'd be like, "Yeah." So, I'd go to every single class, sit in the back, see where the bugs were, and go desk by desk and fix the bugs.

And then I'd like give my email and phone number out liberally. It's like, "If you have an issue, message me." And still today, like people can message me all the time. If you're listening to this and you want Speechify, cliff@speechify.Com, I'll send you a discount.

Like, I just want people to use the product. And the product kind of grew from there, and it took about 4 and 1/2, 5 years before we had a real product market fit. But once we did, it was really good like behavior in terms of user cohorts.

And then I spent a lot of time learning how to grow the product and get a lot more users in, hiring the rest of the team and the leadership team, and we probably have one of the most stacked leadership teams of any startup that I know, and have for a very long time, and we've just been very, very capital efficient the entire way.

So, that

Rory: It's It's very interesting listening to this. Our audience is primarily either founders or people who are becoming founders, and there's this common theme with all the consumer founders I talk to, including myself, that the way you get your first users is completely unscalable. And like, you're flying to dyslexia conferences and literally saying to people like, "Hey, I can solve your problems." And as like a, 5, 10, 15 year founder, like, that can't be scaled over decades, but you can get your first 20,000 MAUs doing that.

Like, we got our first 20,000 MAUs literally sending burritos to sorority houses. No way. And it worked.

And like, can we get to a million doing that? Absolutely not. But you get that like that first thing, and so a lot of young founders, I think, look at big companies and they go, "Well, whatever they did to get from 10 to 20 million users, like, let's do that to get our first 10,000." It doesn't work.

Right? You have that you don't get that scalable flywheel until way later interaction to figure out how to improve your product over time. Yes, and so I think like a real lesson to everyone out there is like do unscalable things early.

Like really unscalable things. Find your power users first, which it sounds like you were in Facebook groups finding these power users and engaging

Cliff: But you can still do unscalable things at scale. So like a great example is I have a friend Rory who has a great voice. Rory's voice is now one of the most popular voices on Speechify.

So, we have a whole team that finds voices. There's like 2,000 voices on Speechify.

Rory: Greatly honored.

Cliff: But when I find a good voice, I go and add it. There's so many random small things and sometimes those things become the become what is the most beloved about the product or how people find out about it, etc. Like I wrote a rap song about this Lexia one weekend and like that was one of our best performing ads ever for the product.

Like things that don't scale sometimes can scale. But it all you people won't remember what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel. And so the things that don't scale are what makes you feel.

Rory: That's beautiful. So, the voices. Let's go into that.

Speechify I first I would encourage all our listeners to download it. The onboarding is beautiful. You build a truly lovely consumer experience and I think you feel good when you're using it.

It's very clean. You really get taken through. You hear a bunch of voices.

They all sound fantastic. Your sister Geffen is number one voice

Cliff: She is.

Rory: On the platform. Gwyneth Paltrow, number two. And you are number three.

How's it feel being beaten by Gwyneth?

Cliff: She beat me by like 10x. I remember when we recorded her voice originally. We needed a variety of different things to read and so I had her read her blog and she read like some messages and emails and then we wanted her to read a script and she had not worked as an actress for a long time because she was running Goop.

Now she's gone back to it. And she started reading and it she turned on. Let's go.

And I was like, I have never seen someone be so good at reading a script in my entire Everything. Like she's amazing. And I was like absolutely blown away.

But I think that when I was a kid and I wanted to read Harry Potter or whatever, I couldn't. And so I'd listen to my dad's voice. And my dad has this like very deep voice.

And so I'd lie in bed and I'd listen to him, you "On the faraway island of Solomon so, Yertle the Turtle was king of the pond. A nice little pond, it was clean, it was sweet, the water was warm, there was plenty to eat." And be like, "Oh, this is like I love I idolized my dad. And so the fact that actually I can kind of read now, but I don't read fast.

And so the fact that the Speechify voice is better than me at reading. And peop- people have listened to at least 10 million full books. Like, take all the words in a book times 10 million, like that many words with my voice.

That's crazy. Like, if I wanted to sit and be the person reading that to kids, I would need to not eat, not sleep, and like multiply myself times a couple million. Like, that's

Rory: It's completely surreal. So, I think we're entering an interesting world where like people are starting to be represented by their agents in a in a sense. And it feels like because you guys are in many ways in many ways an AI research lab on top of being a consumer product.

You have 45 AI researchers now, which is super impressive. Like, the talent war is tough and I want to drill into hiring strategies with you in a minute. Heading into that world, what can we break down the actual mechanics of a celebrity licensing deal?

So, you've got Snoop Dogg as an example. How does that work?

Cliff: Sure. So, even to take one step back. So, Speechify is an applied AI research lab.

Like you said, we have 45 AI researchers. We've got about 150 product-facing engineers. So, roughly 200 people in total.

And the original goal was to make sure that reading was never a barrier for learning for anyone, no matter what your background is. Now, we are the largest consumer voice agent company in the world. And we just launched enterprise voice agents.

Thank you very much. Simba voices.Ai. And if you DM me, I'll get you a million minutes.

And we have a use like a B2C agent called Jarvis, and we have a B2C agent called the teacher agent that like will basically quiz you on the material, figure out where your knowledge gap is, and then teach it back to you. I think that a lot of the through line of Speechify and where we've gotten lucky is by real people using the product or people resonating with the message.

So, for Snoop, the story is I one day got a text message from this number, and then I got a call from this number. And it's this guy Ari Emanuel. If you ever watch Entourage, Ari Gold, based after that name.

Rory: CAA founder

Cliff: Yeah, WME Endeavor, and then he also for a while owned the WWE and UFC, wow, and he like packages them all together. He's like an incredible entrepreneur. But basically, he calls me and he's "WHY DOES YOUR APP SUCK?" AND I WAS LIKE, "WHOA, OKAY, LIKE, HI.

What's your problem?" And so, he's telling me about his issues, and I was like, "All right, well, what's your I'll log you into the database, I'll figure out what's going on." I fixed his He's very happy with the fix. He's like, "Now, tell me about you. Like, what's what's up with this company?" And so, we start chatting, and we end up becoming good friends.

And he ended up becoming one of the most supportive people I have ever met on our journey with Speechify. Like, super on top of giving us opportunities, introducing us to people. He's a huge user himself.

He messaged me like twice a week just like product like ideas, and he has a whole team dedicated to his Speechify. Like, literally what they'll do is he is a prolific reader, and he'll read a ton of news, a lot of industry reports, like deep stuff, like very intellectual stuff, and his team will upload it to his Speechify from the web app, and it'll show up on the iOS app product for him and he just is ravenous for consuming information and he wants like the most real-time information.

So, for him that's better and more dense than a podcast or an audiobook. Anyway, I was shooting an ad in LA and I got a call from Ari and he's like, "Cliff, meet Snoop. Snoop, meet Cliff.

He's got a product called Speechify. I love it. I use it every day.

So many people I know use this product. It helps kids with dyslexia read. I'm dyslexic, my kids are dyslexic.

You should put your voice on the app." And Snoop goes, "Oh, man." And I'm like, "All right." And he's like, "Yeah, man. Like, for people who got issues with vision and, anxiety and concussions, like, I'm glad to be the voice of reason."

Rory: Let's go.

Cliff: And I'm like, "The voice of Snoop Dogg." And I was like, "Amazing. Well,

Rory: The man has had so many side quests.

Cliff: He's had so many side quests.

Rory: It's incredible.

Cliff: And I was like, "Great. Like, I'm literally only here today. Do you want to record later today?" And he's like, Come to my crib." He has a studio.

We record. I have him read Harry Potter. And he just like off the cuff goes, "Hey, yo, it's Snoop D-O-double-G.

And I'm going to read to you with flavor. This is the English voice from the United States." And he's reading, but like he keeps reading the same text over and over again cuz he wants to give it the vibe. And I'm like, "Snoop, you don't even need to do that because it's AI.

Like, I just need to hear you say as many syllables and phonemes as possible and then it'll catch on." Like, he ignores me. He keeps reading. Like, all right.

Well, we're going to run out of time. We're not going to finish the stuff that we read. Like, I say it again.

He ignores me. And I'm like, "Snoop, like, listen. You don't need to read the same thing over and over.

It's fine." He goes, "I know what I'm doing. I've been doing this since I was a goldfish." So he's a very good example of you can't manufacture that voice.

Rory: Yeah. Yeah.

Cliff: It's the energy behind the voice. And this is why I often explain to people one should not be afraid of AI anyway because the human touch still will always rock. But, finding ways to put it together is the real magic.

And if you can put it together, you have a 1 + 1 = 1,000, and like that's the thing that always ends up being amazing.

Rory: That's beautiful. I love that. That's an incredible way to get them.

So, looping back to the scale of the company that you've built, you guys are really capital efficient. You've deliberately raised very little capital. You still own substantial portions of the equity of the company.

And there are competitors out there that have raised like tens of millions and have nowhere near your MAUs, which is super impressive. How have you done it? What's the secret to be so capital

Cliff: The first is just principles around frugality. So, we have four core principles. Extreme product quality, we talk to users a ton.

Leading with love, we take really good care of each other. Almost like siblings. Frugality, we don't waste money.

We have for forever made our own tools. Like, we don't use Notion or stuff like that.

Rory: Love that.

Cliff: And speed. We move really fast. We look to ship to We look to ship to production.

When we hire people, we want people who have fire in the belly for the product. High loyalty to the team.

Rory: Fire in the belly.

Cliff: They're able Yeah, they're able to ship features fast and move metrics. And so, we have people all over the world. Of the 200 folks, I think we've got like 36 countries represented.

We don't think that all the smartest people in the world happen to be living in the Bay Area, in California. When we hit

Rory: Refreshing to hear that.

Cliff: When we hit inference cost challenges around 2022, we had solved the voice quality problem. Just like the voices sounded great. We could clone anyone's voice.

The latency was really fast. But, it was very expensive. And as the product got better and better, and people were using it more and more and more, we just hit a wall where we couldn't afford to bring more people on, because we'd lose money.

And so, the entire company became oriented on reducing inference costs. And it took us about 2 years. We filed so many patents on the stuff that we've built around like just the efficiency of the models that is definitely related to text to speech and speech to text and voice and LLMs, but also just like general inference work.

And we solve that problem. And only once we solve that problem, did we start scaling to the degree that we wanted to again? The other thing is being a very strong individual contributor.

So, at every point in time at different points in time, I've ran every department at Speechify. So, I've obviously led engineering, I've led product, I've led design, I've led customer acquisition, I've led customer support, I've led recruiting. And I have a very simple playbook, which is I'll listen to 100 books about the topic on Speechify.

I'll interview 100 experts. I'll just like send unlimited cold messages until people respond, and I'll hop on a Zoom, and I'll show up in their office wherever they are in the world, and I'll learn how to do it. And then I'll run it myself, and then I'll anoint someone else who's more qualified than me to run the blueprint.

But, the blueprint always ends up being different than what is industry standard, and it ends up being more efficient and much more cost-effective. We are very flat organization. There's no like gigantic chain of command.

Like any person can DM me directly, and I'll respond. And we look for people to take responsibility, and you can take as much responsibility as you want at Speechify. Just don't damage the funnel cuz this the funnel is so valuable.

One place where we really excelled is customer acquisition. So, about 10 to 15% of our users now come organically from ChatGPT. We're very good at SEO.

We get featured a lot by Google and Apple. Word of mouth is incredibly strong for us. The app literally speaks for itself.

And even when it comes to ads, like I'll be in the ads as a character, I'll write ads, I'll edit ads, I'll hire

Rory: Oh, yeah. We're going

Cliff: On top of, all the engineering side and work. And every leader in the company basically has like three or four different jobs. So, you get a lot of efficiency from that.

There's a phenomenon in economics. This is like Friedrich Hayek and Mises from the Austrian School of Economics. Hayek won the Nobel Prize in economics, and his line is no single man can hold all the knowledge of the economy in his head at once.

And this is like a, reason why communism doesn't work. One secretary can't do central planning for everything. You need what's called temporal and local now knowledge.

But the nice thing about dictatorial regimes small fast moments, they can be very efficient. They just will not be very efficient in the long term. And so what you do want is a collective of really strong leaders who each one the ability to go as deep as possible.

Because the more people you have, the more things get fragmented. So like, there's a bathroom over there. If you wanted to re-tile the floor, hiring five contractors to be in a five square foot bathroom like wouldn't make any sense.

Like in the same way throwing more engineers at a problem does not help. You just want one really good general contractor that's able to do all the things. And so like our CFO will also lead growth and he'll also lead hiring and he'll also lead like a bunch of different things.

And like Simon is COO, but he leads product and technology and like I'm CEO technically, but I also work on growth and I also work on voices and I also work on product and I also work on Q&A. So every like Tyler's head of AI, but he also leads all legal. And so you look for people like Rohan's chief business officer, but he's also leading Simba voices and he also did all our contracts with publishers and he also at a certain point led like right now leads all of You want really high AQ, high EQ, high IQ people and you just give them opportunities to be exceptional and you push them to go really, really deep.

That results in being able to have a lighter team that has less layers. And it ends up being a very cohesive team where people feel very appreciated and that they're creating a lot of value. So that's always been very important.

We do always think about customer acquisition for example. I will never spend a dollar without knowing that I'm getting the dollar the that dollar back. And so there's a good saying in marketing which is CMOs will say, "I know I know I'm wasting half my marketing dollars.

I just don't know which half." And I actually would like to do that more. I know far and large exactly how much money I'm making for every dollar that I'm spending. So, there is an argument I should be more creative and that's one of my actually biggest limiting factors as a person is I'm I'm I am too frugal.

I will not spend if I don't see the clear ROI and I'm trying to break out of that. I do think that I'm stuck in a little bit of a local minima and I'm breaking attempting to break into a local big next up.

Rory: Calls it famine syndrome.

Cliff: Is that I have famine syndrome?

Rory: Elliot and I should talk. We were we were in London in 2024 and I remember you were scaling head count at the time and I think my team was 15-ish at the time. Now we're like 31.

You guys have grown to almost 200. And I was asking I was picking your brain on sort of hiring tips like how do you get good people? And you said to me, "Everyone I hire for their role loves what they do.

Like loves." And I jokingly said to you, "Like what about the guy who runs AB tests? No one likes running AB tests." And you turned to me and you said, "Our guy loves AB tests."

Cliff: He does.

Rory: So, you've got 45 AI engineers in an era where AI engineers are getting poached left, right, and center to Meta for $100 million, a billion dollars.

Cliff: Meta is the most scary. It's the main one that when we give an offer people resent from Meta, yeah.

Rory: There's a guy who went to a high school near me in Perth, Australia who he got $1.2 billion offer from Meta a few months ago. I think it was the to leave SSI and move to Meta. I think he did end up taking it.

How are you getting talent in this era? Hiring is such a hard thing we found is

Cliff: So, the first thing is don't only hire in the Bay Area. It doesn't matter where you are in the world. If you're super talented, we want you on the team.

We had 178,000 people who applied to open engineering positions at Speechify last we have an asynchronous challenge not started but finished. 19,800 people finished the challenge. And so we have a very wide aperture for talent the people and obviously now technical talent is actually less important than it used to be before.

Obviously still important. The weight of your ability to communicate and drive outcomes and be an outcome owner is even more important. So, now we look for that very strongly.

Basically, we're at now only hiring for outcome owners. Like, if you can't drive a feature all the way, it's very challenging to make the argument. And we just we look everywhere.

Rory: So, people who can just own like total ownership of an entire staff.

Cliff: We look for people who are like the math olympi- olympiad top 10 in their country. They were really into like computer science programmatic competitions. Like, I want to talk to you and like what's your top three software engineering textbooks you've read and why did you like each one of them?

To know that like it's more than vibe coding. But, I also want to see your project. And so, I think that works really well.

People are very excited about Speechify because of the mission. There's very few [clears throat] companies that hyper scale to the degree that we do and are very legit AI operation, but still are like objectively super good for the world helping people learning differences, et cetera. I think a lot of people also like to listen.

Like, if you're listening to this podcast, you like to

Rory: Yeah, people love long-form content.

Cliff: And I don't know if you're listening at 1x or 1.5 or 2x, but like that resonates with people. We also really invest in people. So, the principle I have is I want to see the greatness in others before they see it in themselves.

And that gives them a reputation to live up to.

Rory: It's beautiful.

Cliff: And I've seen this with basically every person who I've been lucky enough to work directly with, they've become beasts. All of them.

Rory: Frederick from Google Ventures gave us a variation of that quote, which I think is super interesting., When you're hiring someone, ask has this person seen excellence? Do they know what excellence looks like in this role? Like, true excellence.

And sometimes they don't.

Cliff: Of course. And then every now and then like I was like classically guilty of this. Like, we brought in someone for a role, which I won't say what it was because it'll out the person, but we brought in someone for a role where I questioned if it was valid to hire someone for this.

And I had never seen excellence in this role. And then this person did such a good job that we restructured a whole org around them. And I was like, turns out I just never seen excellence in that role, never really knew how much value it could add.

Rory: Jealous. I'm going to I Offline I want to hear more. But I think there's like such a true learning lesson in that.

And it's especially for those first few employees. Like I remember the way just like getting your first few users, the way you get your first few employees also totally unscalable. Totally.

We were getting celebrities to text them. We were like I was making personalized Spotify playlist to send to our early earliest employees. And as we were giving them the offer, I'd be like, press play on this playlist.

And it'd be like the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack. And we'd be like, we'd love you to come and join our mission. And I'm like, you can't do that beyond, I think Elizabeth Weil from Scribble Ventures, she was very early at Twitter.

And she would handwrite a note to every single Twitter offer that they made. And that's actually where the term Scribble Ventures came from cuz she was scribbling these notes out. But just hundreds and hundreds of people like So, doing unscalable things works really well early on, like very well.

Cliff: Very well. And later on, too.

Rory: Yeah. Yeah. Whichever stage you're trying to crack into.

So, your birthday's in 2 days.

Cliff: It is.

Rory: I remember I'm going to say it was 2 years ago. It was probably around the same time, a few days before your birthday. You posted a list of life principles on your Instagram story.

And they were very interesting. There was a principle in there that stuck out to me actually, which was that if you can help it does nothing negative for you, then you should help that person.

Cliff: I've heard that as well from Richard Rosenblatt actually told me the exact same thing. He was like, my life philosophy is if someone asks you someone asks you for something and you can do it and it doesn't detract from you at all, always do it.

Rory: So, the life principles were amazing. I want to challenge you. I want you to pick one that is sort of like your overarching life principle above all.

And then one that you could

Cliff: Ooh. I like it. All right.

So, the overarching one is give love my is love is the most important thing in life. And the more you give of it, the more you have to give. It's like fire.

You can light an additional candle without extinguishing the original flame. It's like a jug that the bigger the more you pour the jug gets bigger. But the limiting factor in love is people feel scared to show love first because they don't want to be rejected.

Thankfully, I have very little fear of rejection and I'm okay making a clown of myself. So, if I'm hanging out with a friend, let's say it's the third time we're hanging out. All right, see you man.

Love you. You're like, what? Boom.

Like even my family doesn't say love you that much like this dude I met a couple of times. And then like it becomes the norm. And just like give as much So, there's a saying the your success in life can be measured by the number of conversations the number of hard conversations you have.

I think your success in love in life can actually be measured by the number of conversations you finish with I love you. Like when you hang up the phone, ideally you should be finishing with I love you. And like with our lawyer, with our CFO, like everybody like just give as much love as possible.

And the world just rewards

Rory: That's beautiful. That's really

Cliff: The overarching one.

Rory: Love that.

Cliff: And many of them overarching is a nice word collapse into that one. So, for example, [clears throat] if you smile at others, typically they'll smile back. So, always smile first.

Rory: That's so I when I moved to Los Angeles in 2022, I was trying to pick a gym. To and I and I built this is classic maybe I built a spreadsheet of all the gyms in West Los Angeles and I went to all of them and I was rating them on various criteria and one of the criteria was whether the people at the door would smile at me as I walked in.

Cliff: So, which gym did you pick?

Rory: I ended up going with Icon Fitness Hotel. It was fantastic. Fantastic gym.

They were so friendly every time I walked in they were like they had a nickname for me and everything and they were like high-fiving and stuff and it was great. But, I totally agree with this.

Cliff: That's amazing energy.

Rory: On the flip side though during our series A we turned down a term sheet from a fund where the partner never smiled on a single Zoom call. And my co-founder and I were completely unanimous. We were like they're they're a wonderful tier one funds that a lot of people know.

It's like a household name and this partner like could we work with this person for 20 years and we decided no, It'd just be too hard. They Could I sit next to them on a plane? Probably not.

And so yeah, this is 100% I love it. One that I would drop That's hard. I spent a lot of time thinking and whittling down.

You here. Yeah. Or even like one that you've considered as weak and you would have thrown over the years,.

Cliff: The challenge is a lot of them like that list was like a hundred in the beginning and I would have made it

Rory: It's 30.

Cliff: Dancing is one of the best sports to learn. It will keep you fit when you're old. Does not require a huge knee mobility.

It's hard to get injured and it's just crazy fun. So not that I disagree with it, but if I had to drop one, that's the one that I would drop.

Rory: I love it. We're going to put those up on the screens so people can see our life principles. On that note of physical activity, there's a particular move you've been trying to land.

Cliff: Oh, yeah.

Rory: For a long time, okay? And I've seen videos online of you going for it. How close are you and what is holding you back physically?

Cliff: Oh, that's a great question. So, in tricking I do parkour and tricking. There's a move called a cork where you basically plant your right foot, you kick your left foot, but you keep kicking until it goes over your right shoulder and you basically do a backflip with a 360 twist, but off of one leg and then you land.

If you do gymnastics, it's like a back full, but off of one I find this move so elegant. It's beautiful. I've been working on it since I was 14.

And I have it. I just don't have it smooth like I want. And if I had it smooth, I could do it in this room and I could do one and then another one and another one and another one like on like my really good days, I could do two of them in a row and like I could do it on grass.

I would never try it on concrete, which means I don't got it locked cuz like a backflip I'll do on concrete any day. The physical thing that's blocking me mainly is I'm very upper body As a person, I'm very upper body aware. I don't have the mind muscle connection with my lower body to the degree that I need to.

And so it's very hard for me to ride my left leg up on the kick. And really you should lock your left leg and I kind of bend my knee cuz I'm scared and I have the temptation to tuck in like I would on a back flip. The other thing that you should do on a cork, I kind of think of it like you're giving yourself a roller coaster ride.

Like you need to go all the way, you need to keep your body hollow, and then at just the right moment you need to do this with your head and look behind your shoulder at the ground. Which is so scary and terrifying. Like in a split second when you're upside down, you just don't want to do this when you're upside down.

You want to do this. But your body actually will perform better. So obviously the way that the body works is the body follows the head and the head follows the eyes.

But if you do this, your head will spin in the right way. If your head does you will not spin if your head does that, but it's just so counterintuitive as a motion. And so for me, the reason why I can land corks is I've drilled them like north of 20,000 times.

Like the reason I can land corks is because I've drilled them north of 20,000 times. And so I'm completely reliant for the most part on my muscle memory for the I am very, very scared in the split moment of like fully committing. Now I have fully committed before and I was fine.

Every once in a while I fully committed and I injured my rib or like, I've paid a I'm very conservative when it comes to physical movement. I really don't want to get injured. And so I'm okay with the slow and steady wins the race.

Rory: It's so interesting about the sort of the upper body awareness and lower body awareness. I used to rock climb prolifically all the time and the best casual non-professional rock climber I've ever trained with was a guy in Western Australia called Josh McMurray. But Josh was actually a pro skateboarder.

And his body awareness was unbelievable. He wasn't necessarily like stronger or fitter than anyone. Well, he was a very strong guy.

But he wasn't like abnormally freakishly strong. His coordination and body awareness, particularly his lower legs, was just unreal. And like we all assumed rock climbing was his main sport.

When I added him on Instagram, it was all skateboarding videos. And this was like the best climber in our gym. And so I used it's such a real thing.

And it's so hard to like unless you skateboarders just have such an ollie Can you ollie a skateboard?

Cliff: I wish.

Rory: All right.

Cliff: I always wished I could. So, like on a very, very, very good day I can ollie a skateboard, but like

Rory: It's so hard.

Cliff: One out of 20 times. It's so hard. Kickflip feels totally unattainable.

It's such an counterintuitive motion. It's almost like cheating gravity. Like

Rory: Oh, yeah.

Cliff: Make sense. And so there's sometimes I do think about this for a backflip. So, I'm very, very good at backflips.

And there's a move called a whip. Where you don't tuck your backflip. My whip feels like an

Rory: Ollie like real clean. I've seen it. It's beautiful.

Cliff: Whip feels like an ollie and I just like cemented in my muscle memory. Like it's By the way, that's actually why my cork should really bad because in a whip you do bring your chest up and in a cork you should keep it hollow. It's called eagle.

And I'm over relying on it. It's like what we talked about before. Stuck in a local minima as opposed to a global maxima.

Like I need to like break from the local minima. That's like warm and cozy and good and go for the bigger one.

Rory: And push through it.

Cliff: Yeah, yeah. So, we're still trying.

Rory: We're going to move past company stuff in a second into more sort of life philosophy things. I do have one more question about building. You have run an insane amount of content online.

You actually produce your own You're in your ads, which for a lot of founders interestingly they're not. I remember opening Instagram 2 or 3 years ago and you were in a swimming

Cliff: Oh, yeah.

Rory: Talking at me from the swimming pool. This ad I think did a lot for you guys. Walk me through the Cliff content Walk me through how you perceive Instagram and TikTok differing in platforms and what you found has worked and hasn't worked.

Cliff: Yeah, so one thing I did back in like 2020 I made a list of the top 100 best performing consumer subscription companies in the world. Number one out of interest? The one that was like growing fastest at the time in 2020 was Grammarly.

Cuz Grammarly had like 750 million in revenue very fast. They were yeah, the biggest like spender on YouTube by far at the time. Yeah, I learned from Grammarly.

I learned from Notion. I learned from Instagram, from Twitter. I learned from like Plaid, Brex, Nika, Revolut.

Like everyone I would go and fly around like just learn how they did their thing. So one, I learned how to buy media really well. Two, I realized that no matter how smart you are you're not going to be able to predict what ad is going to perform.

You just got to test. The difference between performance marketing by the way and organic is in organic you upload to your profile and if you upload almost exactly the same video, one the algorithm will punish you, two your audience will be like, "What the heck is this? Like why are you wasting my time?" Performance marketing doesn't work that way.

It can always serve a new audience cuz the audience is almost always new. So therefore you can test 80 variations of the same video. And so it's actually a lot more AB testing centric.

So what you realize is just a volume game. So I'll test 4,000 organic like 4,000 UGC based creative a month and then I'll add on top of that like 600 AI generated creative a day. You just got to figure out how to like organize the spend and make creative that is good.

Back in the day obviously I didn't have a team. I was doing it all on my own. So I made a bunch of ads, found the local maxima and it'd be like "As a lawyer, I love working from home.

From medical school, I listen to my textbooks with Speechify., I have dyslexia and ADHD and it's really hard for me to read. So I just use this app where I click a button and it speeds up and I can throw my PDFs in there and it'll read my email and it completely changed my life. It's amazing.

It's a game changer." And like you have product demos, whatever. So I found a really good local maxima doing those types of videos. But I was like, "Nah, I need to up the ante." And I wanted to crack YouTube.

YouTube typically had slightly higher production value, horizontal [clears throat] videos, funny mattered more. So, I made a list of the top 100 best performing ads of all time. Like Super Bowl ads and ads that had won like Old Spice Old Spice commercial.

I got I like I literally I posted on Instagram, "Hey, anybody got a horse like a white horse?" That's the what I got from your ad was I was like, "This is Old Spice inspired." It was really good. The person who owned the horse at the time that I used was Logan Paul. And so like we went to his ranch like he helped me like direct and then and I just basically took the ads, I rewrote them to be about Speechefy, and then I shot them.

You're giving me a great idea, by the way. I can now go with like Claude Code, Big Field, Edit Mode, write those ads, feed in those videos, and be like, "Rewrite the script. Here's the ads for Speechefy.

Remake each one of these ads about Speechefy. Test them. See if it

Rory: So, Logan Paul lent you a white horse

Cliff: He did.

Rory: For your ad. How did you How did Logan Paul?

Cliff: We had a friend at the time who had introduced us.

Rory: You said, "I need a white horse." He goes, "Ring Logan."

Cliff: Yeah, exactly. And then we hung out. Turns out he's like super like dialed in very good at product.

Obviously incredibly good at marketing. And so it was like peak COVID. We got to know each other really well and he had a ranch at the time and we ended up recording there.

And it's like when you have no resources, you just beg, borrow, and steal from wherever you can. Like you steal shots and be like out of license like all the time. By the way, there's a really great episode of Founders about George Lucas who made Star Wars and like the early movies that he made and how he made them.

And it's like absolutely fascinating the life of George Lucas. Both the long like 9-hour audiobook, but also the Founders episode is absolutely incredible. So, the whole point is as a your goal is just get done.

And it doesn't matter how you get the done. And the tool that I use to get done is learning. I just try to learn faster than everybody else, and there's no domain that I do not believe in my heart of hearts that I can conquer and learn how to do well.

And so, it doesn't matter whether it's coding or designing or customer acquisition or video editing or being a improv actor in a skit, like I will do everything. I have absolutely no shame. I will ask for help 24/7 a day.

I'll send 50 cold messages a day all the time very constantly. Most of my emails today I send out of cloud codes like CLI. And I will just look I will just look for where can I go to get help and I'll ask for help.

Rory: That's actually beautiful. I love that. So, I want to dive more into your personal life and kind of like your philosophies around the people around you.

Theodore Roosevelt

Cliff: Oh, yeah. I love Theodore Roosevelt.

Rory: Big hero of yours. And you actually likened a close friend of yours, Valentine Perez,

Cliff: I do.

Rory: To Theodore Roosevelt. So, tell me about

Cliff: And I worked out this morning. He goes, "I'm going to do a Murph." Do what a Murph is?

Rory: It's the CrossFit exercise. You run a mile, then you do I think it's 100 pull-ups, then you do 200 push-ups, then you do 500 squats, then you run another mile.

Cliff: And like I go to his apartment to pick him up. He comes out with a 25-lb vest on his chest. And I was like, "That's how you're going to do the Murph?" And he's like, "Yeah." And I Valentine broke the world record for the number of pull-ups per know until I went to his apartment and there was a world record plaque on the wall.

Valentine's the only guy who would break a world record and not tell

Rory: He's like so humble.

Cliff: 60 pull-ups in 60 seconds. And like people at this gym were like, "What is WHAT IS HAPPENING OVER THERE?" So, yes. So, Theodore Roosevelt.

So, Theodore Roosevelt is easily my biggest hero other than my the other one's Arnold. And one of my favorite things about Teddy is he was super asthmatic. And like he couldn't even like leave the house properly.

So, he could just stay in the library and like read books. Like he's just like a book with two legs sticking out. And at a certain point, he got to the age where, other people would like pick on him and move him around.

And like he had this like pretty traumatic incident on a train where people bullied him. And his dad you have built your mind. It is time to build your body."

Rory: It's like a

Cliff: Like a moment out of like Bruce Wayne Batman movie. So he started weightlifting before weightlifting was like a really a thing. And he was famous as president of the United States having a huge chest.

He's 200 lbs and he's 5'10. And he was like the consummate outdoorsman, right? Like he'd swim naked in the Potomac as president.

He'd like bring in foreign dignitaries from like Japan and be like, "Bring a sumo wrestler." And like he'd wrestle a sumo wrestler in the White House. Like [gasps and laughter] he's amazing. Anyway, because of his asthma, which was really bad, he went to Harvard, he got into boxing, and like he needed to wear glasses.

And obviously you can't box wearing glasses. This man would box no glasses. Couldn't even see, but he'd do it And, he's very same famous for the speech, The Man in the Arena, whose face is marred in blood and soot and sweat, who knows the great exaltations of life.

To him goes the credit, not to the critic. And there's a great story about him where he has a meeting with his doctor when he is in And the doctor goes, "Listen, you can't do exercise. Like you're going to die.

And you can't do it. And you just need to live a life of relaxation. And that is how you're going to recover your health." And Teddy stands up.

And he's like, "You don't know me. You don't know what you were talking about. I am going to do exactly the opposite of what you say, sir." And he left running.

And his roommates at the time used to say his roommates at the time used to say you could tell that it was Teddy who got back home because the front door would burst open and someone would run up the stairs to the top of the stairs and the door would shut after the person got to the top. That's how you knew Theodore Roosevelt.

And there's a foreign dignitary who'd come and he'd be like, "Yeah, you guys have two really incredible things in the United States that are super pneumatic, like full of energy. And it's Niagara Falls and your president." And to Valentin Perez to me is Theodore Roosevelt incarnate. He is just so full of energy, it's unbelievable.

And my biggest aspiration is to have Theodore Roosevelt's life motto was get and like I'm nerding out about Theodore Roosevelt with you right now, but I could do this about any one of like 300 historical figures that I'm obsessed with. I'm just could cannot get enough audio like I love biographical audiobooks. I eat them for breakfast.

And I just know the lives of each one of these people intimately and it just makes me really, really happy.

Rory: And so you have the five closest friends of yours that you think get action is a common trait

Cliff: Very much.

Rory: Between all of them. Are there are there common traits that you think link them?

Cliff: My friends? Of course. One is intellectual curiosity.

One is they also people who give love first and give love aggressively. They really care about their family and have very like good family values. Everybody's very entrepreneurial.

Almost everybody's very fit. Typically high levels of creativity, whether it be art or music or whatever it might be. And I think just very much adventure seeking.

And everybody is better than me at many different things that I can learn from them, which I love to do. I think that those are the big and then kind, like good people. Most of them don't drink, don't smoke.

Will turn up and like be the life of the party when it's time to dance. And I just find really interesting people throughout the world and I almost think about it like I'm hunting for adventures. I'm hunting for the people who want to come on the adventure and I don't care what city you live in.

Like I'll just organize a thing, we'll go and do it together. And

Rory: This we've like just come out of like winter and there's a big summer before that. I know you were traveling all over. What was the best adventure

Cliff: Oh my gosh.

Rory: Found in the last few years?

Cliff: I have a good

Rory: With this mindset.

Cliff: Well, I'll just answer for this summer. So, I happen to be in San Francisco. And I actually had a moment exactly like this 4 years ago.

So, 4 years ago, I happen to be in San Francisco. I had a meeting that was canceled. And so, I went to visit Valentina in Cancun.

And because this meeting was canceled, I had free time. We had an engineer we were trying to get onto the team who was in And it was already like conflict escalation and I flew to Ukraine to recruit this engineer. I had to sign a waiver that says I understand that I'm taking full responsibility for me entering the country and like United will not get me out of it.

Anyway, I happen to be in San Francisco. I had a meeting that was canceled and I was like, "Screw it. I'm going to go to Sweden." So, I booked a flight to Sweden like that day, got in an Uber, went to the airport, flew to Sweden, had a layover in France.

In France, pulled up a story on Instagram. "Hey, I'll be in Sweden. Anyone I should meet?" Didn't know anyone in Sweden, not a single By the time I landed, I had like, I don't know, 100 different DMs from random friends introducing me to folks in Sweden.

One of them was like, "Hey, I saw you on a podcast. I got an extra room if you want, you can come crash with me." Turns out it wasn't a room. It like it was like literally a mattress on the floor of his living room, which is perfect.

So, we stayed there.

Rory: Of there's something about mattress on floor energy. I've discussed it so many friends. Like it's it's like a it's such a feeling.

Cliff: That's what I want. And so, landed, immediately met him at an underground chess bar where we just played blitz chess against people and then I recruited like three people to come out with us and just like have fun in Sweden. And I just hung out there for the next week.

And then I just started meeting founders organically. I met Anton who runs Lovable. And ended up running with a bunch of mini horses, which is like a thing in Sweden.

I'll send you the video. I met the guy who basically started the Stripe of Sweden. I met a couple of folks who had like publicly traded companies.

I met Avicii's manager. And built like a really amazing

Rory: What's it like?

Cliff: And then I had a friend who was in Israel at the time, Julius. So Julius Dean flew from Israel to Sweden. I convinced him like over FaceTime.

I literally bought I was like, "Get in the car. Get in the car." He got it cuz he was complaining that it was like too hot. He got in the car.

I bought him the ticket to go from Israel to Sweden. In the car on the way to the airport, he lands. We hang out hang out.

And then I went to Logan's wedding in Lake Como in Italy, which is absolutely amazing. Like the best dancing ever. Incredible

Rory: Yeah, how was Logan Paul's wedding?

Cliff: It was great. One, it was 3 days, which was exactly the right length for a wedding.

Rory: Perfect wedding.

Cliff: Like all my favorite weddings are around 3 days. And like that's somewhere I ended up having so many different weddings. It rained in the middle.

And so we all clustered inside of like the lobby of the hotel, and it just became like this amazing like mush of love and party. There were maybe like three, four different dance floors. At every moment, we just like move from one to the other.

And just I think that weddings are a summation of the people at the wedding. And so the reason why they it could have been done like in a tent. It's just there were great people, and that's why it's like, good people, so you have a good time.

And from there, where did we fly? Actually, my brother and my sister were adopted by Mark Roberts who we met there and ended up like going on a trip to Greece with him. I couldn't go cuz I had to go to the UK to onboard John Rhys-Davies who is the king of the dwarves in Lord of the Rings as a new voice for Speechify.

And that was like a great week over the summer. Just like making new friends and like all of us intertwine. And actually, in the gym in the hotel in Logan's wedding, we made three of the top 10 best performing ads of that summer, like me and my sister.

Rory: That's incredible.

Cliff: It's just like everything just happens all together at the same time. I just I was just in the UK right before this. I did the 20VC podcast, and on the flight on the way here, we made like 10 new ads that I think like one of them is going to be like an absolute banger.

And so we're just like constantly thinking of like new ideas and like whether it's people that you're hiring or projects that you're working on. So like I'm going May 8th to meet Joe Laitman in I think his name is Joe Laitman in Austin. So he runs a amazing program called Alpha School, which is just like incredible learning education platform.

The Friday before I did the fireside chat for Stripe. So I was interviewed by Patrick and John Collison. So Patrick just introduced me to like a really cool person to do with like DNA sequencing that I'm really excited about.

And before that I did like this incredible din- dinner with Marissa Mayer, who's like so talented. She's she was the CEO of Yahoo, and also was on the board of is on the board of Starbucks, Walmart, and Hyatt. And the person sitting across from me was Bret Taylor, who's the chairman of OpenAI.

He was CTO of Meta, and was co-CEO of Salesforce. And like I think what happens is you I have this concept called surface area of serving nobody. Just say yes.

So like Marissa texted me, and she's like, "Hey, I'm doing dinner." "It'll happen tomorrow in San Francisco." And I was in New York. She's like, "We'd love to have you." I was like, "Okay." So I flew there. And then Harry was like, "Hey, if you want to do this podcast, let's do it." I was like, "Okay." So I flew there.

You texted me, "Hey, would you be down to do this?" I was like, "Yeah, let's do it." There's maybe five other things like this that I had to say no to cuz there's I had too many things going on. But the principle that I follow is number one, I can always tether my computer with my phone. So I'm [clears throat] never in end the of an Uber not using Speechify to either read or respond to email, or using Cloud Code, or like on a call, or working with someone on something.

I never go to the lounge in the airport. I go directly to the gate, and I sit at the gate. I confirm that I'm at the right gate, cuz I've made that mistake too many times this last year.

And I'm just like locked in for 15 minutes. As soon as I can get on the plane, I get on the plane, and I keep working on my Exactly the same. And so, if I didn't have that option, I just wouldn't do the travel, but there's something different about being in person with people that allows for these

Rory: Especially with, the added dynamic to planes

Cliff: I have yet to be on a United Starlink plane. I've been on it with like Hawaiian Airlines.

Rory: It is just brilliant.

Cliff: I So, the thing is, I typically still do JetBlue, cuz JetBlue, you're going to get Wi-Fi. United, you've got like 90% Yeah, 10% Great.

Rory: It can be hit or miss. So, I think, for our audience listening, it's pretty evident that you are someone who is relentless, and you're go 24/7. I love sort of in your internal philosophies, you emphasize AQ over IQ and EQ.

So, for our listeners, IQ, obviously a common metric a lot of people measure. There's EQ, right? So, there's emotional intelligence, like how well do people converse with other people.

AQ is something that's not regularly mentioned, right? So, adversity quotient, how much How much you can get

Cliff: Correct. Exactly.

Rory: And keep moving forward. And this really ties in, because you're writing a book right now.

Cliff: I am.

Rory: And the book is titled You Can't Fail Unless You Quit, which is awesome name for a book. It's really great. It's really great.

So, tell us about the last time that you nearly quit. If such an event has ever occurred.

Cliff: No, no, no. Yeah, 100%. So, one of the things when I was reflecting in writing this book is my brother and my sister went to a boarding school called Exeter in New Hampshire.

It's like the number one high school in the United States. Tyler's dorm was like literally where Zuckerberg went for high Tyler got to skip 4 years of math in high school, and like 4 and 1/2 years of computer science. Wow, flipped.

4 and 1/2 years of math, 4 of computer I really wanted to go to Exeter. And I applied, and I didn't get in, and I applied again, and I didn't get in, and I applied a third time and I didn't get in. And for the fourth year I didn't apply because I was going to go to college anyway.

And then I got out of the college. And that sucked because I ran out of time to keep going. And by and large in my life, I haven't had too many situations where time-bound I can't keep trying.

So, most people do gymnastics when they're maybe like 13, 14, 15, and then they stop. I'm still doing corks, and I just I still haven't nailed it. So, I'm just going to keep trying.

I love playing music. Last summer, I was very into guitar. Like, I had a guitar coach, and we would jam like every single day.

I have not had a guitar lesson in 10 months, and I hate it. I want to play guitar so badly. I carry a guitar everywhere I go still, but I just don't prioritize time.

Fitness, too. I've like not been on top of the gym at all in a while. And is because of Clockwise.

Like, there's a great line from Marc Andreessen Horowitz I recently heard, which is talk to all the best engineers that, and ask them how great AI is for coding and how much more efficient you are, and like they're saying they're more efficient, and then ask them, are you working more or less hours?

Rory: Way more.

Cliff: Way more. And so, Valentin and I were talking about this morning like he need like Both of us are like kind of in the worst shape we've been in for like a long time. Oh man, just circling back to that, but now that you can activate clone agents from your phone while you're out and check their progress, it's like I'm building 24/7.

Like, I'm never switching off now. But also, people are like, "Hey, you're not present." Cuz like I am with my best friend, Yiannis. Yeah.

Rory: Sorry, you were saying about the last

Cliff: And so, [clears throat] I kind of think about it like a like a MMA fighter where you push them and they immediately need to re-stabilize. The entire landscape of tech is now changing and so it the onus is on us to re-stabilize and make sure you're moving forward with like strength. So if there's one time to sacrifice the side hustles, not side hustles, the side quests, this is the time.

Lock in on the core quests. Like we just launched the enterprise version of Simba Voices which is like our voice agent voice agent is just code for co-worker, right? Whether it be outbound phone calls or meeting setting or inbound sales.

Like there's so much that you can do with it. And oh my like just the license to build is so big. So doing that but also obviously maintaining friendships, connections with people like re-basing yourself every once in a while taking on challenges.

So for example as you said, it's about to be my birthday and a bunch of my friends and my girlfriend were like, all right, well, what do you want to do? And I was just like, this is the last thing I want to think about right now. But I also want to see all my favorite people.

And so I sent out a party full like 48 hours before my birthday. Just like

Rory: I just got it.

Cliff: Yeah, I like I literally all right, we're going to meet at this place. Actually, no, it wasn't we're going to meet at this time. I didn't even know what place it was.

I just invited a bunch of people. And then like later I added in the place. And I'm very excited for it but also my brain is just so locked in on the other And so my framework for life is the There are five categories that make me happy and I don't want to not have them in my life and it's making music time spent with loved ones working out eating well and audiobooks.

And like I need those five things to be like vibrantly happy. And if I don't have those things, my happiness will flip. And then on top of that I pull all the work stuff and everything else that I want to do.

Right now, I'd say I'm still very on top of spending time with [snorts] loved ones. Working out is weak. Music was really strong but now it's really weak.

Eating Yeah, I'm pretty on top of it. And audiobooks I haven't listened to an audiobook in a very long time. At this point, almost everything I listen to is like 100-page reports about interesting things that I have AI generate for me.

I actually sent you a bunch of them. Like the most recent thing I did is like my little brother's really sick. He has neuroinflammation, and he's had that for 4 and 1/2 years, and it causes OCD and psychosis.

We mapped his entire genome and RNA, and I just spent the last 48 hours like plugged in analyzing all of it. And made like a 60-page document that I've been reading through, listening through. And I just feel like we all have superpowers now.

And it's like we're like a baby learning to walk and like acclimating to these new but obviously you got to find the balance, and so you do in the cracks. There's a really good YouTube video. We should find it where there's a professor and he's like, "Hey, here's your time." He has like this big clear box, and he puts in some big stones in the box.

And he's like, "Is this box full?" And they're like, "Yeah." And then he takes a bucket with smaller rocks, and they're like, "Is it full now?" And he's like, "Yeah." And they take some sand, and he puts the sand in. He's like, "Is it full now?" And they're like, "Yeah, it's full." And then he takes some water, and he pours the water in.

And so there's always space to fill things in, but put the important things

Rory: And you were saying about the sort of five common traits of happiness for you, I really identify with this. I think like when I think through the happiest days of my life, it's and I used to track this. I would give every day

Cliff: Hey, I also did the same thing.

Rory: It would always have exactly the same common traits. Some form of exercise with people. Like I can run on my own, but like if I go to like a run club or I lift weights with friends or like just get something in with friends.

Even just playing sport in the park. Like some form of exercise with people. Some form of getting progress in career, like you're building on something that's very interesting.

Some form of the arts, like you engage the great movie, you listen really great music. And then randomly for me it's like having a dinner with friends. Like sharing a meal with people is something that really like ties it together.

And it's so interesting you were saying that you found like you've lost some of these a few of these things I've lost you months you've been so busy you've had to let go of like music and stuff, right? And I go through the same thing.

Cliff: Always they'll come back.

Rory: They'll come back. And it's because you reflect on that and you go, "Well, why am I feeling down this week?" And I'm like, "Well, I haven't seen anyone. I haven't seen the sun.

I haven't worked out. I've just been coding for 4 days I'm just like sitting in my room." And it's so easy once you identify those triggers to bring them back into your life and your daily life. And make them habits and sort of form around them.

I completely resonate with that.

Cliff: Yeah. And so for anyone listening, if you feel down or whatever, write out the things that make you happy. And if And if you can't diagnose it, debug it.

Just This I used to do this all the time if I felt down. Take a Google Sheet, break it into not 24, but like 48 items of 30 minutes each, and then write what you did in that time frame. And then categorize what that thing is.

And then if something is invading your space and your time, that needs to be clawed back, clawed back, and then put in the times for the things that you really care about. And you'll see your mood improves very fast. I was free time recently I connected Claude to my calendar.

And I said, ", here's every journal entry I've ever written. Here's everything about me. Here's my calendar.

How am I doing with time?" And it just shredded me. Well, it was like less than 1% of your time is on anything you love. Like all you're doing is just grinding.

Like less than 1% of your time. And I was like,

Rory: I should re-evaluate these priorities, but yeah, if you really want to be free time optimized,

Cliff: Want to do. This is a really great idea. One, I'd love to connect it to the geolocation of my phone, but two, I'd love to have some sort of screen recording of my computer that categorizes what I'm doing every hour

Rory: Brutal. You can feed that into Claude.

Cliff: Wow, I would really want this product.

Rory: I really want that product. It'd be so brutal. I think if people, everyone I know has turned off screen time on their phone, cuz you don't want that notification that's like, "Guess what?

This morning you laid in bed for 2 hours on Reels."

Cliff: So, I have the opposite. I have the child safety lock turned on my phone, like I'm a baby. And everybody in my life knows the code except for me.

I've never known the code for 9 years. And I just don't have more than a minute a day of TikTok, a minute a day of

Rory: It's incredible. And I need to have it unlocked or access it on my computer, and even there it's like heavily nuked with ad block. Very good.

Be the person you needed when you were young is literally your LinkedIn What's the person that you still haven't become that you're trying to become?

Cliff: Oh, I love this question. Dude, Rory, there's so many versions of me that I have not become. It's not even funny.

All right, let me first address it in terms of like who I want to be for myself, and then I'll address it for who I want to be for the rest of the world. I think I really want to play this character Kaladin in the movie.

Rory: Oh, yeah.

Cliff: From the Way

Rory: Brandon Sanderson.

Cliff: So, I played Kaladin in the show, and I can do all the things that Kaladin does in terms of like movements and martial arts, but I still don't have the role for the movie. I know I like we'll we'll see what happens. So, that's one thing that I really want.

Two, I do want to write at least three songs that my friends play for fun at parties. Stole that line from Brandon Sanderson. It's like a really good definition of a goal.

Yeah. And when it comes to music and writing, I love Lin-Manuel Miranda, and I just like cry at things he writes all the time. I want to be able to self-express to that way with music.

Rory: This is the author of Hamilton?

Cliff: That's correct. But he's also just like

Rory: And he And Frozen?

Cliff: Not Frozen, but he wrote a lot of the music for many of the most successful Disney movies. So, he did Moana, he

Rory: Oh, the Moana soundtrack is great. Did you enjoy playing it for me?

Cliff: We don't talk about Bruno in Encanto. All the songs there. He's unbelievable.

And I want to have that ability to self-express like that. I used to have a big goal. Great example of something I quit.

I didn't I wanted to get to the point that I can freestyle rap for 10 minutes straight about items in the room around me. And I practiced that for a little bit and it's just like it fell off the it fell off the assembly line and never got back. And like eventually will.

And so I think that's what always happens is like just other things take up the space, but I don't give up on I write them down. They're in my Google sheet where I track all of my goals. And they make reappearances once I complete the other things that I want to

Rory: Is there a goal that you put in there at the start of the year that you just like you were like it's start of the year fresh energy I want to do this thing and then you haven't even touched it once. No progress at all.

Cliff: No, there's attempts on everything. But there's no progress on many of them. Cuz the attempts might have been there, but I, I didn't succeed.

Yes, that happens all the time. All the time. And I agree eventually we'll do it.

But right now that's I don't have the I don't have the in terms of energy to make that thing happen right now and I think that like the life force inside of me my energy that optimism that's the thing that actually makes crazy things happen. And unless I can fully direct it, it doesn't work. And often it's the case that I pick really big goals and the only way that it happens I need to direct all of myself into that goal.

And the second even 20% of it is deviated nothing will not happen. And so you just need to like it's almost like a laser you need to like focus on the thing charge the thing for a long time and then finally that thing cracks. In terms of who I want to be that I'm not yet one is What was it called?

Famine?

Rory: Famine syndrome.

Cliff: I want to alleviate myself of the famine

Rory: Elliot Hulse shoutout.

Cliff: I want to I want I want to alleviate myself of the famine. I want to alleviate myself of the famine syndrome. And then person I want to be for others.

So I have this principle which Churchill was so beloved partly because of speeches he would give on the radio. Right? We will fight on the beaches.

We will fight on the landing grounds. We will fight with growing confidence and greater strength in the air. We will never surrender.

Right? Same thing for JFK with the fireside chats. I think that I have potential to be a much better speaker and actually a much better storyteller.

And I think that the way that you build those types of relationships can happen through a podcast, can happen through YouTube, can happen through writing. I don't know how it will eventually for me. But to be a better leader, I think I need to figure out how to use asynchronous communication methods better.

Maybe it's an email news newsletter. I don't know. I've tried a bunch of these different I have tried a bunch of these different things.

I just haven't landed them well yet. Exactly like a cork. So I'm just not going to give up until I eventually succeed with them.

And so that's one way in which I'd love to become a better leader is connecting with people on that level. The way I actually was thinking about this morning cuz Speech Fight is growing really fast. We're already at the point where I can't have a conversation with everybody in the company every single day.

It just won't happen. Even every single week it's tough. I think my quality of life will be higher with a smaller team where I have a really good relationship with everybody and they can help me grow and I can help them grow.

And so I'm very much aligned on this principle of I'd rather bring exceptional people and pay them more but have less people than bring more people and have sewage. And then as it relates to who I want to be for the world, like I said, my youngest brother is very ill and I spend probably 1/3 of my time on medical stuff with Eric.

I haven't cracked it yet. And so I wish that I was more capable and there's a principle I came I found recently that I thought was amazing, which is whatever you want more of, use more of. If you want more money, use more money.

If you want more energy, use more energy. Like don't lay in bed all weekend. Like of course you'll be tired.

Use the energy. You want more strength, use more strength.

Rory: Risk it for the biscuit. You got to spend money to make money. Yeah.

Cliff: Correct. But, life will give to you that thing that you use and deplete. And so, I want to leave it all on the court as it relates to the medical research I'm doing for Erics.

And good things happen when you just you try as hard as you possibly can. There's nothing left in the tank. I want to do that more and more and more.

One thing I'm very proud that I never gave up on is figuring out a cure for Erics cuz it's been 4 and 1/2 years. It's very frustrating. The brain is so complicated.

And just like me and my parents and the rest of my family, we're dialed in that we will solve it. There's a song I wrote called that we can link here that's like about the experience of working on this thing for Erics. So that's like the person that I want to be not just for Erics but for everybody else who has a similar situation in life.

My dad had prostate cancer on and off and we the I we basically solved it. And I'm so grateful for that and I'd want to like very much keep it that way where the PSA stays low. And so, I think a big principle that I found is for founders in general, one of the coolest things that you can build is something that ties to where you were vulnerable.

So, in my personal case, it was dyslexia but if I wasn't to work on Speechify now, I'd probably work on a cancer diagnostics company for my dad or a neuroinflammation and learned immunity solution for what my brother has.

Rory: Confirm with you, the problems you want to solve in the world are unique to you and your family members and like that your immediate loved ones. Yeah.

Cliff: Correct. Because I don't want to build something that if I didn't build it, somebody else would. I want to build the thing that if I didn't build it, no one would get around to it for a long because it's not like I have some genius inside about the world that other people didn't have.

All I just have is energy and optimism and gratitude for getting to work on the problem. And those are actually my assets. And so, if I'm going to point them in some direction, let me point them in a direction that other people don't have optimism around, don't have gratitude around, don't have energy around.

And just by virtue of the fact that I point all my laser energy on top of them and recruit other people to help me and ask for help consistently, great things will happen. So, like that is my principle for where the arbitrage happens as a founder is you pick a problem that other people don't go for and you just pour energy, optimism, and gratitude on that problem and you just issue great energy into the rest of the world and it'll come back from you and you redirect it at that problem.

Rory: That's really beautiful. You've achieved so much at such a young

Cliff: Say that.

Rory: If the if the achievements just stopped would you die happy? Is it enough?

Cliff: No. I would not be happy. So, I was reflecting with Valentin yesterday.

We have this thing we called elephants. It's like, we track our goals and our happiness. So, we have this thing called the wheel of life.

And it's ranking your joy from a scale of 1 to 10 on every category: business, health, spirituality, family, friends, romance. And I'm maybe the happiest place I've been in the last 3 But, 4 years ago I was happier. And 5 and 6 years ago I was happier.

And there were big step-ups in my quality of life that happened around that time. Maybe we, figured something out in the company. I went from high school to college.

Like, something big, big, big happened. And Valentin was laughing at me because I was like, "Cliff, you can't count this. Like, you ranked this as a 12 out of 10." And I was like, "No, but I want a 12 out of 10.

Like, I want my life to be a 12 out of 10." And so, that 12 out of 10 genuinely it's a comparison, right? Your baseline of happiness is compared to your best day the week before, the month before, the year before. And so, I ranked my health as one of the best it's ever been even though I'm less on point with the gym because I know I can solve the gym problem, but I have issues with my vision.

I have keratoconus. And so, I have asymmetric astigmatism. I can't see perfectly well in my left eye.

And I found this like amazing scientific research that actually found the solution. I found the two doctors in New York City that are experts in it. And the doctor put something in front of my eyes that got me to see well the other day and like I almost teared up.

It was amazing. And so, like my health is like 9.9 because I've suffered with this Thank you so much. With this vision thing for like a long time.

And like a company I considered doing many time is basically you would scan the retina and then you'd 3D print a custom contact And so someone did exactly this but with a different approach. Like very brilliant approach. Essentially, you have a hard shell that sits on a film of saline water and the water fills in the troughs and the peaks of your eye and then you have a perfect lens.

And so that health was ranked really high because previously I had an issue. Now that issue is solved. I will get used to it and then with time it'll update.

So no, if I stopped having the ability to self-improve, I would feel stagnated. This is like the classic blue ribbon challenge or like astronaut syndrome that people have. And if I hit that, then I'd have to start measuring and thinking and learning and readjusting and finding the optimism and finding the gratitude for the situation and I hope that I would.

I think that I would. The problem with me is I'm a very emotional person but I'm very logically led. And so I would try to write my way out of that problem as opposed to feel my way out of the problem.

And I know for a fact that in some places in life, you can't logic your way out of a problem. You have to feel your way out of the problem. So the thing that then I would find challenging is feeling my way into the solution which I know I'm capable of.

Just my brain typically ends up being such a more valuable and powerful tool. But that's the again, local maxima to a global maximum. It's beautiful.

Rory: Okay, rapid fire. Last few questions. We made it to the end.

Question one. You're a fresh founder listening to this podcast or most of our listeners are either founders that they're going to going to build something. Monday morning 9:00 a.M.

It's day one.

Cliff: What do you do? Message five of the friends that you think of most highly and tell them, "Listen, for the next 90 days, I'm going to code for 6 hours a day. I'm going to send you a screenshot of the RescueTime or whatever time measurement software on your on text every single one of those days in a group chat.

And I'm going to send you my GitHub commits for that day. And every day I don't do that by 10:00 a.M. The next day, I'm going to do 200 push-ups and 100 pull-ups.

Rory: Love it.

Cliff: And if I miss any one of those workout days, I'm going to run 10 miles that weekend, like guaranteed. And if no, just you should know that I am not a man of my word. Like the first I build the accountability system.

The second thing I would do is I would do rapid because product is actually not the limiting factor today, neither is engineering and neither is design, it's customer acquisition. So I would build a new product in the niche that you are interested in every single day. I would make a screen recording not of your phone of yourself explaining it with the computer or phone in the shot and I would post it on And I'd be like, "Hey, here's what I built, whatever." Every single day you owe a video.

And so you should send your friends that video every single day. So maybe you do 6 hours of coding and 6 hour or in 4 hours of like merchandising of the product. And if you see that one of them takes, then you don't need to do a new product, you can just do a new feature every single day.

And just do that for 90 days and I guarantee if you do that, you will find revenue and you will find success. Like it's just there's no world where you don't. And then after that, just start grinding on customer acquisition and it doesn't matter whether it happens through email or SEO or partnerships or organic social, whatever.

Like if you grind at that like you grind here, you will make it. That's how to win as an individual, but the rule is if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a team.

So then from that point on, you look for people who you can see the greatness in them before they see it in themselves because those are the people who actually you can easily hire and then will join you. You level them up and then you'll end up building so much momentum that you'll start being able to hire people who are much better than you at different places [snorts] and then do your best to give them an opportunity to grow inside of your organization and then you go from there.

Rory: I love that. Okay, final two questions. I want you to recommend two world-class builders who should come on the show.

Let me think about this for a moment. Is there a niche that you care about or you don't care about a niche? No, anyone interesting.

Cliff: Collins Key. Collins Key. He was pulling like Mr.

Beast's views on YouTube before there was Mr. Beast and he has such a creative approach to production and also to like company building. Collins Key.

Rory: Amazing, thank you. Final question, you're coming back on the show in 1 year.

Cliff: All right.

Rory: Thing you want to be true 1 year from

Cliff: If Eric Siu is still better than I'll be over the moon excited.

Rory: That's a perfect answer. Cliff, thank you so much for coming on.

Cliff: My pleasure, brother.

Rory: It's been a pleasure, fantastic discussion. Really appreciate it and have a good day.

Cliff: Thank you very much.