# I built a billion dollar company in 18 months  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: I built a billion dollar company in 18 months - Show: My First Million - Owner / Host: Hubspot Media - Guests: [Eric Glyman](https://share.snipd.com/person/8aba1034-59c0-4228-b0b3-2ad73fc0a75a) - Episode publish date: 2025-08-20 - Episode AI description: In this conversation, Eric Glyman, co-founder of Ramp and former Paribus CEO, discusses how he built a billion-dollar company in just 18 months. He shares insights on navigating rapid growth amidst the pandemic and the complexities of credit card processing. The talk also touches on the evolution of banking and the cultural differences in American credit practices. Eric candidly reflects on the emotional challenges of entrepreneurship, including managing imposter syndrome and the importance of integrity in business. - Mentioned books: [Insanely simple](https://share.snipd.com/book/b0152dfc-015d-40a8-accc-a760ddf2e3c9) by [Ken Segall](https://share.snipd.com/person/2c1de7c8-ac23-4074-9b0d-c5757e285e6d), [Becoming Steve Jobs](https://share.snipd.com/book/4344068a-5d36-44ab-be6a-528b32b4a093) by [Brent Schlender](https://share.snipd.com/person/54eebce5-088d-482c-bf2d-3a8f454daa4a), [Rick Tetzeli](https://share.snipd.com/person/a405d66d-c33f-4fb2-b90b-5000bd5bedb9), [Trust Me, I'm Lying](https://share.snipd.com/book/2359198a-9e9f-4df6-adaa-841d49211ead) by [Ryan Holiday](https://share.snipd.com/person/32dd95cc-c72e-410f-8267-0b163f2338fc), [Meditations](https://share.snipd.com/book/ac8eb4e5-dd91-40c8-9570-8652161da2d7) by [Marcus Aurelius](https://share.snipd.com/person/443d8c10-b700-4a0e-9c52-c4cfa457fec4) - Duration: 51:45 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/2804d2aa-627e-497d-9bf9-e8b9860a3c8b) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/a3bc85ac-9318-431c-9821-7a14a7408e4b) - Export date: 2026-02-11T20:06:34 ## Snips ### [The 18-Month Unicorn Conversation](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2fa22694-6442-4df3-9fc2-4a935ba8519e) 🎧 01:01 - 02:05 (01:04) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/5ad45ae0-ca7f-4831-9da7-a30868ffff33" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Eric Glyman recounts a real conversation where he and his co-founders set a goal to build a billion-dollar company in 18 months. - They incorporated in March 2019 and reached unicorn valuation in 2021, under two years from incorporation. #### 💬 Quote > Yeah, that's a real conversation. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman describing the founders' conversation about building a billion-dollar company in 18 months #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** Yeah, that's a real conversation. You **Sam Parr:** guys didn't have, you and Kareem, were you on the same page? We wanted to go fast for sure. You know, I think like the world is moving faster than ever. We had already **Eric Glyman:** sold our first company and we were definitely, like neither of us came for a whole lot. We were comfortable. And, you know, I think even at the time, had already proven a couple things out and, you know, in some sense had left. Like I was a 26-year you know, senior director of Capital One. think he was like the youngest person at that age. Like we left very good setups. Um, and so we knew that if we wanted to leave, we wanted to go and make this company big and either make it huge quickly or fail really quickly. And so, yeah, Kareem really did have that conversation. I think he had it with Calvin who, you know, later he cracked me up. I think when we finally did become a billion-dollar company, and it did occur in 2021. And so it was less than two years from incorporation of the company. No shit. Wait, two years after incorporation? Yeah. That's insane. Yeah. It was crazy. A lot of magical happened in 2021, but it really did happen. --- ### [Fast Revenue Plus Market Multiples Scales Valuation](https://share.snipd.com/snip/009bf049-4f45-413d-8214-8d7fdb4e8d64) 🎧 02:38 - 03:19 (00:40) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/235581b3-ddd7-4b4a-9957-a994bfc12fec" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Ramp hit near a $10M run rate within its first year and reached an $8.1B valuation by end of 2021. - Rapid revenue growth combined with market multiples produced an outsized valuation even before $100M ARR. #### 💬 Quote > That year revenue grew something like 70 times year over year to the point where... it was approaching 10 million a year before the company was out for even a year. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman on Ramp's explosive early revenue growth and valuation #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** me back it up yeah we incorporated the company in march of 2019. We launched it publicly in February of 2020. The pandemic hit, things slowed down, then ramp just started really accelerating. I think that year revenue grew something like 70 times year over year to the point where, in a small denominator, but we had hit, it was approaching 10 million a year before the company was out for even a year. And by the end of 2021, again, I think the multiples really hadn't changed too much, but the company ended with an $8.1 billion valuation. And we were coming up to, but hadn't yet crossed $100 million a year in revenue. --- ### [Who Keeps Card Interchange And Why](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f4006e6e-d151-4426-bad8-5b831d97f330) 🎧 04:47 - 06:39 (01:52) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/dfbe13a6-3e59-45f3-a929-bd70546dd686" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Card issuers make most revenue from interchange because they take credit risk and cover operational costs. - Payment processors collect gross fees but net margins are usually a small fraction of gross merchant fees. #### 💬 Quote > And so the issuer in interchange is traditionally keeping most of that interchange. The reasons actually make sense when you think about it... they're taking on the risk. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman explaining how interchange revenue is distributed and why issuers keep most #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** business models. Credit There's two basic ways that they tend to make money. Number one is a transaction-based model where there's this thing called interchange. Every time a card is swiped, there's a series of payments. The merchant, rightfully so, gets the lion's share. And then folks involved in moving the money take a little bit. A little bit goes to, let's say, the merchant processor, the people who accept the cards, route it, and deal with all And who's an example of that company? That would be like a Stripe or a Square, maybe a Shopify. And take a huge percentage, right? So they collect it, but they don't keep a huge percentage. Got So you might see headline on some of these sites, you know, 2.9% plus 40 cents or something like that. At the very end of the day, they might keep, you know, it varies anywhere from like 0.1 to 0.5% is ultimately their net take. But the gross is much higher because they're collecting. They also pay the networks. Well, so they have a few folks involved. They have the merchant bank. So you as a customer have banks that's deposited to some bank, which maybe you keep it there or you move it to your business's bank They'll keep a little bit, maybe 10 cents. Visa or a MasterCard, they'll keep a little bit too, call it like 0.1 to 0.4%. And then the remainder tends to go to the issuer and the issuer processor. That's generally the people that you think of as like people's name is on your card. It could be like a Chase or it could be like a Ramp or something like that or a Capital One if you have a Capital One card or Wells Fargo if you have that kind of a card. And so the issuer in interchange is traditionally keeping most of that interchange. And the reasons actually make sense when you think about it, know, especially in credit, they're taking on the risk. They're saying that merchant, we will pay you, you know, even if our customer doesn't pay us back, when you accept this payment, you are getting paid for it. And if the customer later defaults, that's on us. And so they're generally taking the credit risk. --- ### [Account For Credit Risk In Card Models](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a8eaa1d6-24ae-495b-8bb5-6a0dcfbc1af8) 🎧 04:52 - 06:03 (01:10) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/7af9094e-7ea4-4df4-9f8b-ff42d01dc917" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Understand that issuers keep interchange because they hold credit risk and run operations. - When building card businesses, design models that account for underwriting and loss exposure. #### 💬 Quote > They're taking the credit risk... and so they're generally taking the credit risk. They have the operational costs of standing up the card programs. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman explaining why issuers retain most interchange due to risk and operations #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** Number one is a transaction-based model where there's this thing called interchange. Every time a card is swiped, there's a series of payments. The merchant, rightfully so, gets the lion's share. And then folks involved in moving the money take a little bit. A little bit goes to, let's say, the merchant processor, the people who accept the cards, route it, and deal with all the who's an example of that company? That would be like a Stripe or a Square, maybe a Shopify. And take a huge percentage, right? So they collect it, but they don't keep a huge percentage. Got So you might see headline on some of these sites, you know, 2.9% plus 40 cents or something like that. At the very end of the day, they might keep, you know, it varies anywhere from like 0.1 to 0.5% is ultimately their net take. But the gross is much higher because they're collecting. They also pay the networks. Well, so they have a few folks involved. They have the merchant bank. So you as a customer have banks that's deposited to some bank, which maybe you keep it there or you move it to your business's bank They'll keep a little bit, maybe 10 cents. Visa or a MasterCard, they'll keep a little bit too, call it like 0.1 to 0.4%. And then the remainder tends to go to the issuer and the issuer processor. --- ### [Design The Company For Velocity](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bff2646d-b975-4925-bb8e-09e491cddb4e) 🎧 11:12 - 11:46 (00:34) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/44b9595e-85dd-445f-9110-8e7e75c32209" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Design your company explicitly for velocity with short, aggressive operational milestones. - Set measurable cadence goals like weekly or monthly growth targets to force rapid shipping and learning. #### 💬 Quote > We had set goals that we wanted to grow the company 10% a week. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman advising on early Ramp goals and velocity-focused design #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** you know, and I remember in the early days, when you go back to that 18 month stat, you were talking about the beginning, you know, we were like hell bent on, okay, within 45 days, we want to be approved by the network. Within we want to be approved by our bank. Within 70, we want to be, you know, funding our first transactions. We want to get this product in front of customers as fast as possible. And so a lot of what we were trying to do is just move very quickly. We had set goals that we wanted to grow the company 10% a week. You know, once you get the scale, 20% a month. burn people out? --- ### [Why Manufactured Homes Seemed Attractive](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ef53a0e2-86a4-4825-b4a7-67177a68de25) 🎧 15:38 - 17:17 (01:39) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/e2df411d-c5d2-44cf-a7c8-b23a2a70cd66" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Eric explored manufactured homes as a startup idea and studied Japan's prefab housing model. - He abandoned it because zoning, not manufacturing, was the fundamental bottleneck in the U.S. #### 💬 Quote > The constraint in the bottleneck was not around manufacturing at all... it was all the zoning. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman reflecting on why manufactured home startups face zoning challenges #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** And I think we went on a journey of bad ideas until eventually it came back to good ones. I think at the time, I was looking at, I think similar to our talk before this, we were looking at places in New York and they're all kind of bad and we're wondering why are they bad. Cars are manufactured, planes are manufactured, all these products that are low cost, affordable, but wondrous that anyone can afford are manufactured. Why aren't homes manufactured? **Sam Parr:** So you're interested in manufactured, like when I was a kid, like a bunch of my poor friends and my grandparents, they lived in, we just call it like mobile homes. I guess that's what they're called. I mean, the nice way is manufactured houses. They're **Eric Glyman:** manufactured houses. I mean, there is also, you know, like one of the places that like is extremely populous. It's the biggest city in the world and yet housing isn't so crazy unaffordable is like Tokyo. Or you go to Japan and it's because they actually, most of the home builders are home manufacturers. And things are very standard. The cost of a new home build is like not that expensive. And, you know, I think there's all sorts of issues in the states related to this and we thought wow we should look in into like manufacturing homes and i still buy the and i think that there i've **Sam Parr:** invested in a few of them yeah they're um they're very hard it was very popular right around when you were starting a ramp yeah and i invested in two or three yeah that space interested me none of them have completely taken off. **Eric Glyman:** Ultimately, we decided not to do this for a couple of reasons. So One, I actually had no business in doing it. I rented an apartment in New York. I never owned a home. I manufactured anything. --- ### [Play Where You Have Domain Credibility](https://share.snipd.com/snip/250c6169-f2f9-440c-a436-e115c725c93a) 🎧 19:00 - 21:02 (02:02) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/79c4c3aa-fc07-46d7-8268-ddda83a8fc3d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Build products in spaces you know well and where you understand the economics. - Leverage domain credibility to navigate complex regulated or partnership-driven industries faster. #### 💬 Quote > We came back to the things that we actually knew and a bit of our roots. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman on choosing Ramp's focus by returning to known domains #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** And so there was almost two variants of what eventually became RAMP. Variant number one is what turned into RAMP, and we can come back to that at some point. The other was this view of, you know, in the card space, which is, it feels almost voodoo from the outside. It's unclear how you start these things, how the business model work. But we knew this because we had spent a bunch of years inside of Capital One, studied the models really deeply, knew the history well, and had some credibility in the space. We're also very interested in the partnership business and the co-brand business. So let's say that you go to Best Buy, and at the very end, someone says, would you like to open a Best Buy credit card? Someone is doing that. There's people powering those business models. **Sam Parr:** Who are they? It's a big one. **Eric Glyman:** You know, Synchrony is really big name in it. Capital had a large co-brand business. Amex. I all the large banks. **Sam Parr:** And are huge tens of billions of dollars company? Barclays. How big is Synchrony? I've never heard of it. MBNA. **Eric Glyman:** Tens of billions of dollars. I haven't looked up their... In revenue? You know, that is, well, certainly in market cap. For sure. Huge businesses. And the basic premise of that is like, look, as we had a side of our business at Paribus where we worked very closely with retailers, all of these stores have strong customer loyalty. And credit cards are great products, but they're very hard to sell. And so the basic business model was if you could as added, you know, if you're a store, you had customer loyalty, if you could convert even a tiny percentage of these customers to just take on a new credit card. And that was it, you would make a little bit of interchange, you would kind of lower your costs when they were shopping with you. But also you could make a little bit back at all the other places that customers went and shopped. And so the whole question was, could you build a product that was standard enough, simple, modifiable enough that you could convince lots of different stores? And as this was going on, the online boom was happening. Shopify was, you know, opening up new retailers and stores everywhere. --- ### [How Credit Spread Through Towns](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c2fb45ff-69b7-4925-b5d2-f4450179f478) 🎧 23:37 - 26:34 (02:56) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/5c172432-4a0e-47e7-a9a0-1697cfb5dd56" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Eric tells the history of early consumer credit tied to department stores and Bank of America's expansion. - Banks mailed cards to entire towns, rapidly turning local shoppers into broad credit users. #### 💬 Quote > I think they mailed everybody in the town. It was like a four or five digit card and you could go use this and you could say, put it on my card. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman recounting how early banks expanded credit by mailing cards to towns #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** After the earthquake, there were fires everywhere. A huge portion of San Francisco burned down. And he was one of the only people that supposedly, the story goes, he set up a table out in the middle on Market Street, and he started making loans then and there on the spot. And he went from this tiny bank to effectively started going everywhere. And his history is pretty interesting. So it was kind of this bank to merchants and then eventually to consumers. I think in the early 1900s, Woodrow Wilson was trying to supposedly encourage lots of different banks to go and lend to small businesses and the emerging middle class, right? This is the things you hear about if like the Americans are buying their first car, their first washing machine, all that kind of stuff. And he were very big on it. And so he, I think, was famous for setting up franchise banking, where there was like little branches and branch bankings in all sorts of little cities. And they sort of took over what used to be like, and this is relevant when you get into the history of Card of Cards. One of the most common places that people would take loans would be in an apartment store. So if you wanted to buy, you know, you may know that Sears was the parent company to discover or Bank of America would actually go instead of branches in like the top, you know, somewhere in like a Macy's. So instead of Macy's giving you a loan, so if you wanted to buy a washing machine for, you know, a dollar, you know, you would walk out of it after making a 10 cent down payment and you pay them back. They said, we'll take over that. Macy's, you don't need to underwrite each customer. We as the bank can do that for you. And that was the start of it. What would they do **Sam Parr:** if you didn't pay? It **Eric Glyman:** was a loan. And so it was whatever banks normally do. Maybe they could go and take the good, but it just was **Sam Parr:** loan. bureaus exist then? This was before credit bureaus. So what do you do if someone didn't pay? I **Eric Glyman:** think that was why they had the local bankers. They would go and work. I think they would try to collect for a lot of years, but that was like, this is like early 1900s banking. The part where you're getting to was by the time I think Bank of America was the biggest, certainly the biggest bank in the US, it might've been the biggest bank in the world. Um, it was just enormous, enormous scale. And I think the town, I want to say it was Fremont. Um, and so this was in the fifties and I think that it was something like 60% or 70% of everybody who lived in this town were customers of bank of America. And, you know, if you were going to a department store, they had this, this branch that you could go and go to. But, you know, if you were going to like, you know, any random, you know, hard goods store, you couldn't get a loan for it. And so they took this bet and they said, let's just get the rest of the town. Let's get everybody and we're going to send you cards. I think they mailed everybody in the town. It was like a four or five digit card and you could go use this and you could say, put it on my card. And you would go and pay the bank back later. And it just exploded. --- ### [Credit Culture Is Historically American](https://share.snipd.com/snip/eb1cb8d9-6c22-40d8-98e6-c5752262062a) 🎧 27:24 - 28:38 (01:14) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/312ea785-f862-463c-aa13-2b272f7630d4" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The U.S. consumer credit culture arose from early 20th-century retail finance and mass lending norms. - That cultural acceptance makes credit more ubiquitous in America than in many European countries. #### 💬 Quote > I would say there's a good argument to say yes... by the time I think Bank of America was the biggest... almost everyone in the town became customers. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman on why credit became central to American consumer behavior #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** You know, I think there's a good argument to say yes. You know, and some of it comes back to that early 1900s kind of lineage, where as this was going on, you saw the birth of the American consumer where you have department stores, cars, automobiles, and you saw financing for the emerging middle class. I would say in Europe, even to this day, you see this very different behavior. **Sam Parr:** Yeah, like for example, they put way more down when they buy a home. And **Eric Glyman:** this is exactly it. **Sam Parr:** Americans are very accepting of borrowing and debt. **Eric Glyman:** And I think that's the perverse way to say it. I think the non-polite way to say it is like, you know, in Europe, if you're rich, you can borrow. And if you're not paying cash, that's all you can do. And I think it's actually much harder for people who aren't in the middle class who are poor, you know, to borrow in the U.S. people, you know, it's this view of you can kind of pick yourself up by your own bootstrings. You can go and borrow for that car or for that farm equipment or that laundry machine so you can go and build your business and go into it. And so I think there's a lot of good that comes with it. Obviously, sometimes there's some bad people can get into credit issues. --- ### [Compounding Beats Short-Term Blasts](https://share.snipd.com/snip/599613e6-2385-48db-891a-aaf4ede307c8) 🎧 29:29 - 30:08 (00:38) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/019bba1e-7784-491b-a1a7-30c9c9c9c2c6" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Long-term compounding growth (e.g., 30% for decades) builds massive incumbents more reliably than short hypergrowth bursts. - Rapid early growth is valuable but sustainable compounding determines century-scale businesses. #### 💬 Quote > If you can grow 30% for 30 years... and if you do that, you will be a giant business. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman comparing sustainable compound growth to one-off hypergrowth #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** It's that which businesses can grow 30% for 30 years. And if you do that, you will be a giant business. That's not what you did. Our view is that we can. And like the crazy part is we have grown extraordinarily quickly. We're still just about doubling each year at enormous scale. I think we are 1.5 %-ish of the corporate and small business card market in the US. And so if you just look at the physics of it, even if we were to massively decelerate and start growing 30% for decades, it's physically possible. The market is so big. --- ### [Losing 75% Of Revenue Overnight](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bfa9b225-806f-423a-986f-d6420ad14fc8) 🎧 37:22 - 37:59 (00:37) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/3cef35cd-9346-408e-b2df-b71a50419b2e" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Glyman recalls a prior company day when 75% of revenue vanished overnight, teaching hard lessons. - That experience shaped Ramp's emphasis on risk management and proactive planning. #### 💬 Quote > In our first business, we had a day when we lost 75% of our revenue overnight, vaporized. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman recounting a catastrophic revenue loss in his prior startup #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** So in our first business, we had a day when we lost 75% of our revenue overnight, vaporized. There were risks that we knew about that we didn't properly manage. And one of the things in Ramp that we resolved to do is like, Kareem and I and others are just going to beat the shit out of each other all the time, worrying about problems that are three to six months to a year out in the future. And so it's true. If you look at kind of ramps trajectory, it has been kind of nonstop growth, fairly consistently up into the right in terms of like the revenue, the cash flow, profitability, all those kinds of metrics has been consistently good. --- ### [Worry About Problems Before They Arrive](https://share.snipd.com/snip/be8ec21e-0943-4e5b-8b3c-6273677e5e5d) 🎧 37:45 - 38:13 (00:28) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/0c3a417b-e19f-4a63-845a-20605ce9ccfe" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Hunt future problems early and obsess over metrics that will matter months ahead. - Confront issues proactively rather than waiting for them to disrupt growth. #### 💬 Quote > We're just going to beat the shit out of each other all the time, worrying about problems that are three to six months to a year out in the future. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman describing Ramp's culture of preemptive problem solving #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** And so it's true. If you look at kind of ramps trajectory, it has been kind of nonstop growth, fairly consistently up into the right in terms of like the revenue, the cash flow, profitability, all those kinds of metrics has been consistently good. But it's because inside of it, there is so much like agony we spend over this metric that's going to affect how we perform in three months from now is not going the right way. What are we doing about it? --- ### [Learning Leadership From Biographies](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b4e03d1a-275f-4489-83f4-6cc5649e4bd3) 🎧 39:04 - 40:00 (00:55) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/cb1f90c3-5b1a-4c2e-a3f4-970d2681f673" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Glyman reads many founder biographies, especially about Steve Jobs, to study leadership evolution. - He values Becoming Steve Jobs for tracing Jobs' personal change over time. #### 💬 Quote > I probably read, you know, 15 biographies of Steve Jobs... I think he changed over the course of his life. > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman discussing his reading of Steve Jobs biographies to learn leadership lessons #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** It's part of why I like the Founders Podcast so much, like biographies of other founders. I like reading about design. Are you a designer? I really like it. So the first company, Paribus, I had design and product reported to me. And so I had to spend a lot of years kind of like thinking about the principles of it, what makes products great. And, and so I, I, uh, I love it. I would probably get booted off of our design team. Uh, I don't think I have quite the level of, uh, of, of talent and crafting, but I definitely spent a lot of time thinking about it. What biographies? In terms of favorites or what am I reading now? I mean, my, you know, it's, uh, I think I probably read, you know, 15 biographies of Steve Jobs. You know, it's, uh, uh uh, I, I think as, as great as people think he is, I think he's still underrated, um, for what he was able to do and how consistently he was able to, to do it. And, um, I also think that he changed a lot over the years. I think he gets tight, kind of typecasted this like brilliant asshole, --- ### [Audit Your Calendar Frequently](https://share.snipd.com/snip/26fa416f-d6d6-49fd-b5c5-a1427927ab4f) 🎧 46:56 - 47:12 (00:16) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/73fe17d8-a9c4-4291-9198-06aaa76a5943" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Regularly audit your calendar and redesign weeks so you spend time on what you love and do well. - Remove repetitive tasks that steal craft time and regain control of your schedule. #### 💬 Quote > I pretty regularly try to go and blow up my calendar and be like, all right, I actually love doing this thing. Am I spending any time on it? > — Eric Glyman Eric Glyman on periodically redesigning his schedule to prioritize craft time #### 📚 Transcript **Eric Glyman:** Or want to be spending the time on. And I pretty regularly try to go and blow up my calendar and be like, all right, I actually love doing this thing. Am I spending any time on it? No. i promise if you spend your too many weeks in a row doing something you hate um you're going to be miserable you're going to be stressed --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts