Dalton & Michael: Elon Musk and the Midwit meme

Everyone can reach for the idiot approach. Yeah. Has the intellectual capacity to reach for the Yeah. If I didn't know anything This is Michael Seibel with Dalton Caldwell. Today, we're gonna talk about how overthinking is sometimes a founder's biggest mistake. So, Dalton, this video was triggered by this amazing meme that you made on fundraising advice.

But before we get to the meme, because I think it's like one of the best memes I've ever I've ever seen for fundraising advice. For fundraising? Let's start in general. Let let's start in general. How can overthinking be bad? And and when can overthinking be bad?

Yeah. I mean, I think that what people think being a founder is is what they saw in, like, watching the Facebook movie or or popular television where, you know, you're, like, coding a lot and, you know, you're making deals and screwing over your friends. Just kidding. But but in reality, it's a lot of feeling lost and being not sure what to do and feeling stressed out a lot.

And you're worried all the time and so you tend to overthink everything. And every decision, you kind of think in circles over and over and over again. Because you don't have a boss. You don't have constraints when you're a startup founder. Right? There's no one really telling you what to do, so you're on your own.

And so when you the experience of being a startup founder, it's to always be overthinking everything. In this way, there's a bit of advantage to being young. Right? Yeah. Like, you and I experienced this ourselves as founders where we were young when we first started, and this is the beauty of not knowing anything.

The beauty of not knowing anything is that you think everything is easy, and none of the innumerable reasons why something might be hard or your startup might fail even occurs to you. You're like, oh, yeah. I'm I'm 22. Like, everything's easy. I can figure this out. Right? Yeah.

And so, again, this this is like the the midwit meme, right, where if you don't know anything, your approach looks a lot like the approach of people that are really good founders. Yes. And the worst place to be is that you know just enough to know why the things you're trying are hard and the odds are stacked against you,.

and that freaks you out. And so you think about it a lot. Right? Yes. So, Dalton, one of the most perfect examples of this is actually Elon Musk. And why I think it's so perfect is that depending on how you tell the story, Elon looks like the dummy or the idiot. Right? Like I'm sorry.

The dummy or the genius. Right? Depending on how you tell the story. And it almost doesn't matter. Right? Because he's winning. But, you know, to me, the first example that I always loved is that, you know, I read some book about the starting of SpaceX, and it started with Elon going to Russia trying to buy, like, rockets.

And, like, the Russian government being like, there's this American billionaire guy who wants to buy rockets and kind of not believing it. But Elon just looking really serious, so they, like, considered it. And, like, they eventually said no. But, like, he got to talk to people about buying rockets from them. He's just a dude with money. He was like,.

go to Russia, buy rockets. Like, that's the that's the extreme. Is that genius or stupid? I can't tell. I can't tell. And and like with Tesla itself, like, to me the midwit is is electric cars are good. That's the extreme. Electric cars is good on both in the middle, it's like, no one has successfully done a start up car company since the fifties.

And every you know, if you look at all prior attempts to build an electric car, like, there's all these words.

The infrastructure you need to good. Yeah. Yes. And I think the the one that we find most funny, which we'll see this video, we'll see if we sent stand the test of time, is is The Boring Company. Right? Drilling holes under the ground so that you can drive places faster is very clearly the idiot one, but like it could be the genius one too. Yeah. It's.

exact it's a beginner's mind idea which is like traffic is bad. What if we dug a hole under the ground to get to downtown Las Vegas? What's funny is you read all the critiques of this, like the Midwest stuff's like, woah, bus systems already exist. It's it'd be much more efficient to optimize transportation. Know, there's lots of words in the middle of that.

But, you know, drill tunnel to avoid traffic is certainly at the extremes. Yeah. Yes. And you kinda see him approach all of his problems this way, where you can imagine it being the same sort of ideas that we like, Mars is cool. Like, yeah, Mars is cool. Like, this is the kind of stuff we come up with as teenagers. Like, a lot of ideas. Yes.

And the the hard work is in the implementation, but the idea isn't very complicated. And, like, the v one is kinda.

simple minded. And if he was an overthinker, he would do he would rule all the stuff out. All the stuff is, like, obviously a bad idea, and anyone in the Midway territory would rule out all these ideas. Yes. Right? Yes. And they still do.

They still do. It's, you know, it's the Tesla short seller. Right? Why? Let's go through some of of the Midwit meme, and you have to start with the meme that you made for YC founders. So just to provide context, we're in the part of the batch where YC founders start getting nervous about fundraising. And whenever a founder gets nervous, they start overthinking.

And whenever they start overthinking, they assault us with office hours on topics. And Dalton created this meme so that we could fight back.

What does the meme say? Yeah. What the meme is simple. It's the the naive founder is like, oh, I'm gonna raise the amount of money I need to succeed. I need I need here's the amount of money I need to raise for my series a. I ran a model and it's, you know, $800,000, so that's what I'm gonna raise. That is the, like, naive approach.

The really smart three three three time founder, someone that's done this before, is like, I need to raise $800,000, I'm going to do it. And then the midwit is the one who wants to ask 15 questions and try to construct the perfect round and be afraid that some they may not have enough allocation for value add investors, and they wanna not have a signaling risk. They talk a lot about signaling risk.

And there's, like, all these factors where I'll be talking to someone, and will be, like, 15 levels deep in a hypothetical for an offer that they don't have. Yes. Right? And that's that's the midway, man, is that, like, you're screwing yourself by overthinking all this stuff instead of just being like, hey. I need x dollars. I'm gonna raise it, I'm gonna get back to work.

This comes up a lot with MVPs. One of the questions that I love getting from a founder is before we launched our MVP, how do we know we're gonna be able to survive the onslaught of traffic and users that will come on our launch day? What what what's what's Midwit? What's the Midwit play? What's the Midwit meme for for your MVP? I mean,.

yeah, the the the two extremes of the Midwood meme are launch something fast. Yes. Build something fast and put it out. And the Midwood one is like, woah. I don't wanna get a bad reputation that my thing was buggy, and we only have one shot to launch. And, you know Yeah. Like, you come up What about the press? We gotta do a press launch.

Doesn't it have to be an event?

Yeah. I I don't want people to see my idea and copy it, so it's gotta be perfect. Yes. That's one. And then do we do do we do, like, a TechCrunch post or is it better to try to get the New York Times or, like, what about Hacker News? Yeah. We need to get all three, so how do we coordinate them together?

We wanna we wanna be featured in the New York Times, and so how do we optimize for that? Or, oh, what should we name the company? How about Yes. I don't.

Yes. We have to rebrand because there's a name that's kinda similar to ours. We don't want people to be confused. How about cofounders? I hear this a lot. Like, I I am a business person, and I'm good at sales. I need to find a marketing cofounder and an engineer, like a CTO who's already managed 50 people because we're gonna grow fast.

Like, how how does cofounders Yeah. How do you see this thing go? Yeah. Dalton, I'm open to the idea of a cofounder. I just haven't found the right person. And what I really am looking for is someone with at least five to seven years of experience at Google who made it to at least a level seven. And so, you know, I'm look I I haven't found the right person yet, but we're looking for it. Yes.

When we find them, I'm I'm totally open to bringing out a cofounder when I find that one. But first, we're gonna raise money, and then I think that'll attract a better cofounder. Yeah. Yes. So, again, the the point we're kind of making is not that any one of these ideas is the one people say. It's that it's thinking in circles and having a thousand different reasons Yes.

That it's that the person that should be your cofounder is.

no one that you currently know. Yes. Yes. Right? And then and let's talk about the other sides of the equation. Right? The the on the dumb side, the founder's like, it's fun to work with my friends, so I'm just gonna start picking up my friend. Right?

On the smart side, the guy likes to put a camera on his head. You know? And you're like Let's go. Let's go. Our guy.

Like We were drinking buddies. Why did they pick you as your as their cofounder? Wasn't it like Well, because I I helped them find an apartment and open up a big account. This.

guy this guy helped us find an apartment. Alright. He's the cofounder of Twitch. Done. There you go. Done.

And then, like, the super smart experienced founders, like, oh, having a cofounder is viable for emotional support. I know this is gonna be tricky. And, like, they have all the, like, sophisticated reasons. Same answer. Same answer. I love that. Okay. Next.

This is a classic one, especially because you have to deal with so many admissions questions. Applying to YC, Dalton. What is what is the what is the Jedi founder move to apply to YC versus the Midwit founder? Yeah. The the extremes of this and the Midwit meme are.

I filled out my application and submitted it. Like like, I applied. Yes. And the Midwit founder is like, gee, I don't know if now is the right time to apply. I don't know if we're ready. Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna write a draft of my application and then send it to 15 people, and I'm gonna get feedback on my application.

And I'm going to, like, you know, oh, I need an introduction to alumni, and I need to talk to alumni. And I need I need recommendations.

Yeah. I need recommendations from strangers that don't know me.

I I'm gonna do a lot of research. Like, you see you talk to people that, like, put months of effort into their application to YC strategy.

Yes.

Not correlated with success. And then you talk to people, and they're like, oh, yeah. I just, like, filled it out in 30 and.

Submit it. Got in. And I spent all that other time working on my company. Yeah.

And to be clear, we're not saying do a bad job on your application. We're just saying trying to tweak out on this is like something that you can spend tons and tons and tons of time on. I'm not sure that's a great allocation of resources.

No. You didn't and I think that's, like, maybe the essential point here is that, like, we want you to spend time on the important stuff for your startup. Like, we're trying to get you to avoid spending time on the things that won't help you. That's the idea. That's the idea. Alright. Next, and and here's here's kind of a classic one, is product market fit. Dalton, do I have product market fit?

And how what's the midwit approach to product? Yeah. The the midwit approach for this one is to be not sure if you have it and create 15 different metrics and, like, a complicated series of thoughts that maybe you have it or you have early product market fit Yes. Versus the extremes of this meme Early product. Have some Everyone's got early yeah. Yeah.

The the extremes of this are like, am I overwhelmed with demand? Like, you know it when you see it. Like, you don't have to think very hard when you have it. It sort of like hits you over the head when you have a product market I think the extremes in the meme is like, did I sleep last night?

It's.

like, I didn't sleep last night. Do I have time to wonder if I have product market fit? That's yes. Yes. If you have time to wonder about it, if you're like, gee, do I have product market fit? Let me let's pontificate on this. That probably means you don't. Yes.

Let's do some let's make some reports. So.

so we talk about all the situations where maybe overthinking is not a good idea. But you also describe, you know, there are certain situations. You call them trapdoor decisions when maybe you wanna think a little bit harder than before making a move. So what are some examples of those? Yeah. So.

legal issues. Don't break any law. Like, saying you didn't know there was a law is not a great legal defense. Regulatory issues, similarly. Oh, I didn't know that I couldn't launder this money. Probably not great. You may wanna overthink that and look into it. Things that affect people's health and well-being.

Yeah. You should overthink that. You should really spend the time Yep. Worrying about people. Right, man? Like.

Let's not be fast and loose if we're building an online pharmacy. Let's let's Yeah. Measure twice, cut once. Totally. And and I think that what really good founders do is they are very good at figuring out, are they dealing with something like that or are they not? Because even within legal, right, there's certain things that are like, oh, this is like whatever.

And there's certain things that are like really bad. Michael, should I.

patents for all of my IP? Exactly. Absolute classic overthinking thing. We would not. Probably not.

So I think that, like, the framework here is really twofold. One, don't overthink when you don't have to. And then two, remember that, like, most of the work most of the work is not in these overthinking games. Like, most of the work are not in these overoptimizing games. Yeah. It's action.

Yeah. Taking action and not thinking. Right? Yes. Yes.

It's launching. It's getting the first customer. It's selling. It's like it's doing these things yourself. And that's counterintuitive because I think that founders understand that startups are really hard, so they assume you need complex strategies to succeed. And it's like, oh, that's a hard thing. It makes sense when I say it. Right?

This is hard. We would need a complex strategy. Right? How do you respond to that? It's like, what actual kind of strategy do you need?

I think if you haven't seen really successful startup companies either personally, like where you were the founder of one or you know people and you saw them go through it Yeah. It's hard to believe how silly these things are when they start. Yeah.

Like, I think unless you've literally witnessed it personally and you've seen the silly shit that goes on and, like, how what it really takes to get big, your brain rejects the idea Yeah. That that's actually how these companies got built. You're like, nope. Not true.

It had to be like lots of strategy meetings and whiteboarding, you know, flow charts and, you know, Gartner magic quadrants of, like like like, I think you really your brain won't allow you to see that actually, here's a nice way to say it is, you know, the term beginner's mind? Mhmm. You wanna have a beginner's mind. Yes. That's what the midwit meme is.

And a beginner's mind is like, I guess I'm gonna build a product and I'm gonna give it to people. I guess I'm gonna deliver burritos. You know? Yeah. Yes. That's a beginner's mind approach.

Yeah. That's the game. And so you might find yourself after watching this video asking yourself, what do I need to unlearn?

Yeah. How can I have a beginner's mind? Because, again, this is this is the the beauty of the Midwit meme is the the genius and an idiot come to the same conclusion. So what is the idiot approach? Like Yes. Like, that's actually how you can divine the genius approach. It's just like, what would an idiot do? Yeah.

Everyone can reach for the idiot approach. Yeah. Has the intellectual capacity to reach for the idiot approach. Yeah. If I didn't know anything So with all that being said, have fun, and don't overthink it too much. Don't overthink it too much and make sure that you have a little bit of something in your head that's asking yourself, is this the thing that's really important? If not, I can move on.

If not, I can move on. Alright. Thanks a lot, Charlton. Thanks.