# Dalton & Michael: How future billionaires get sh*t done

**Author:** Dalton Caldwell, Michael Seibel
**Type:** Video
**URL:** https://www.ycombinator.com/library/Ik-dalton-michael-how-future-billionaires-get-sh-t-done
**YouTube ID:** ephzgxgOjR0

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Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel take a look at Paul Graham's essay "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" and share
tips on how to be more effective and productive on the journey to creating a billion dollar business.

## Transcript

i think notebooks are great for ideas i think like a well-managed to-do list is a software product that you need to adopt and there's like 80 of them i actually don't even care which one you adopt but it's like when i like tell something to founders and then they write it down in a notebook i'm like that's gone forever but they look cool they have like a fountain pen and they're like taking beautiful notes michael we all know that everything important is

this is michael seibel with dalton caldwell today we're going to talk about how future billionaires get [ __ ] done so dalton you were inspired by a pg boast when thinking of this idea right yeah paul graham wrote this really famous blog post um i believe called maker schedule manager schedule where you know he said something that all of us had thought before but he put it very succinctly and in great words and so if you haven't read it before anyone out there on the internet um you should read

it just google make your schedule manager schedule we can put a link in and he introduces the idea of the difference between how makers ie programmers in his case organize their time to be productive versus folks that are managers all right and so it's great terminology it's good stuff yes so let's start with the maker mode you were a developer in your startup i was a business guy in my startup i think in many ways this stuff came a little bit more um natively to you and i had to learn this stuff by like

basically destroying the productivity of my co-founders so how did you think about makers mode as a founder most companies are set up around a manager schedule where you have a day packed with meeting after meeting and so if you're a programmer at a big company you would have to you know you'd have like an hour to program here an hour to program there and this is bad this was not conducive to to building things okay and so to just walk through

my perspective of someone that you know was programming back in the day when i when i was a startup founder um when you're programming the more of the program you can keep in your head at any one time the the easier it is for you to know what's going on and have the context up here to make changes and fix bugs and it takes like an hour or two cold of looking at a program and figuring stuff out for it to get loaded into ram so to speak and so if you're interrupted

like if you have to program in hour increments man are you gonna suck like you constantly have to restart your state every time you program and so a great maker schedule is something like an eight-hour uninterrupted block of time and his argument i think he was also talking about this from the perspective of an artist or a musician like if you wanted to record an album or write music or if you wanted to write a book the same deal if you had to write a book in 20-minute increments i think a lot of writers wouldn't love that

fair which is so much different than the business guy like i you know i was the business guy at my startup and you certainly can do email in 20 minute increments or hour increments and so i remember having this conversation with emmett where he said michael imagine that i'm doing ridiculously complicated word problems and you're interrupting me in the middle of them and i was like then it clicked i was like oh well i've had to do hard work like like i went to school i had to do

that [ __ ] that's what your day is like one that sounds a lot harder than writing emails but two i would hate to be interrupted like that and once he said that it kind of clicked um before he said that i just assumed well you know he's typing on typing yeah he's typing things and and i remember i remember when i read the post what resonated with me is i felt like my work day really began around five or six pm isn't that weird and that's because what that's when

things would quiet down and i would stop getting email and the building i was working out of would quiet down and that's where actually all the good programming happened was at the end of the day what was interesting was that for us we basically had to figure out how to build that in i think in the beginning organically it happened because you know that was our sleep cycle we were all living in an apartment together but when we had more employees we had an office you know we literally and this is something that i just noticed happened organically nothing got done before lunch like getting to work was all about like

getting in answering your email doing a couple meetings like it was just like no one who was writing code even wanted to start writing code before lunch because lunch was the big like fu in the middle of the day and our whole trick was one how do we not serve a lunch makes everyone go to sleep and two how do we make that post lunch time free of everything pg in some ways designed yc a little bit that way right i think that's counterintuitive to a lot of founders like one

there aren't that many events you don't have classes all day at yc like you know we try to take as little time as possible during your week so you can actually get [ __ ] done two there's a hard deadline demo day and three i think people are often surprised like a good portion of yc is just asking you what are you going to accomplish by demo day and then asking you every week well did you do it yep and it's you confronting the yes or no of that like it turns out that like

there's a lot of magic on that and he wanted to build as much maker time as possible in the program i think in this kind of balance between maker mode and manager mode what people should be trying to do is maximize their productivity when they're in that mode right how do you maximize productivity so when i think about manager mode for me i always like to think about this like okay if i'm going to be managing my time between my to-do list which is just another way of saying [ __ ] that's actually important to get done

meetings email and slack i always think that my to-do list comes first like whenever i'm being productive i start at the to-do list and i do everything there and then i check those things whenever i control it yes versus if it's inbox driven other people are in control of your time which is watch out horrible horrible the second thing is around meetings and like we talk about this a lot like you're gonna have to have some meetings

um i've seen a couple tricks but they can all be reduced down to write [ __ ] down the worst thing is when you have to have another meeting because people didn't write the [ __ ] down from the first meeting like like that is like when you know you've punched yourself in the face but like i'm so shocked it's like no one again let me push you on that because you and i agree but let me let me let's make this clear the audience what are we saying what we mean is say you and i are an immediate we agree on something if narus writes it down it's like it

never happened it's like we just we were like patting ourselves on the back what a great meeting right michael no one writes it down we're like what do we talk about even if i didn't think i needed it oh let's write down the agenda oh let's write our notes where we decided uh that would be great any other things that have made you productive as a manager the number one thing that i do that i realize that a lot of the other successful founders did too was i had my analytics dashboard or whatever

was important kpis on the business up on my screen 24 7 and i would stare at it all the time and i actually could memorize i even this is even the case for yc man i don't even know if you know this but like a lot of our internal stats i have memorized yes and it's because i stare at them all the time and no one told me to do that this is just a me thing but i'm like obsessed with like the internal key kpis for anything i'm working on i'm just like an addict to look at that stuff

i think that that is such what we see on the other side and i completely agree with you that was a huge thing especially for my second startup that was a really huge thing it's funny when you talk to a founder who knows their stats well they just talk about their stats so differently you know like man like the first of all they don't round off numbers to the nearest like zero you know like but second of all they know whether they're up or down 10 percent at like at any given time like at any given time whereas other founders is like yeah i

think it was an up week but it's like how do you not know how do you not know if your revenue like went up this week like what are you what are you doing yeah no i i don't get it i don't get when someone is like operating a business and it's like what was i do we what was our revenue last month but but like keeper they they give that to me at the end of the month and it's like what like or people didn't know i mean for us it was you know daus and it was like amount of video watched but it's like

everyone on the founding team knew when we had less traffic today than yesterday everyone right like just just like in like in their bones like oh i i think my last point on this manager schedule the thing i would just add is what i've learned that i did not appreciate when i was a founder is that the maker schedule vibe works for sales and talking to customers too and scheduling 20 minute blocks to talk to customers

is not the same as an eight-hour like like even if it's not literally your programmer using the maker's concept to apply to the things that are the main event of your startup at any one time and for many folks that is sales yes yeah you should be scheduling eight-hour blocks like if you're if you're if your job is the co-founder is to be doing sales and it's like a couple of slivers in between other things on your schedule i don't think that's gonna go well you know right it's interesting i agree with you it's basically this idea of get

all of this stupid crap so productive that you can clear out that every founder can clear out a chunk of their time for the make your schedule and like some founders gonna have to do more of this non-development blocking tackling others are gonna have to do less of it but i completely agree with you like it's really hard to get anything at a high level done in 20 minute blocks let's talk though about the opposite of all these things right so you know the premise of this chat is how future billionaires get [ __ ] done

let's talk about what we see great founders not do what comes to mind dalton what are founders avoiding look i think the trickiest thing for everybody is social media it's like a social media is the black hole for time yes and you know we're all guilty of it too like it's addictive and so what's tricky is how to have a healthy relationship with social media so that you aren't spending 24 7 paying

attention to who the main character on twitter is that said something dumb and everyone's like making fun of them it's so hard not to do that constantly and it's also not hard to think that like you are a startup founder and you're succeeding and you like did well but if i actually if like a like a hidden camera was shadowing you through the day it was like you just read twitter all day you know what i'm saying like imagine if there was like a hidden camera auditing what people actually did with a lot of their time i think some people out there would be

pretty embarrassed if there was a full clear-eyed accounting of where their time went so okay discord here um techcrunch here twitter here you know it's like how much time are you actually spending on not those things you know it's hard man i had a twitter problem and you know one of the things that i realized is that sometimes willpower isn't enough you know like what i did was i follow unfollowed everyone on twitter

and then i installed this like chrome app that basically disables like three quarters of twitter's features and i was just you know it was like this is an addictive thing i need an intervention and that did it like that kind of killed my twitter because it was just like oh well and it was funny because for a while twitter kept on trying to feed me interesting articles and interesting stuff but it was they couldn't really do it because i was not following anyone i wasn't really interacting with many tweets and so eventually just like it broke but yeah i mean i i uninstalled

facebook years ago so i don't have it i don't have notification turns on i don't have the twitter app installed on my phone so again like everyone should do what works for them but i'm people that actually are super productive do abnormal things to turn all this crap off yeah isn't that like you have to like aggressively be abnormal on protecting your time yes because if you don't the world is going to steal your time from you it's going to steal your energy from you

and like that's a bad trade-off if you're a startup founder man yeah what a waste of time you know it's funny it's like it's almost like these two sets of tools there's one set of tools that allow you to organize your time better and there's another set of tools that protect your time and yeah effective people use both constantly and i think ineffective people sometimes are mistaken and they think if i were just had a stronger will i like needing tools is the problem

like successful people are just have a stronger will and that's like not true it's like no success people reach for tools all the time like successful people recognize their weaknesses and actually reach for tools now here's the one that comes up a lot the collecting of mentors advisors weird credentials like advice oh i went through three different accelerators and an idea lab oh my advisory board i'm building my advisory board why do you think founders are attracted

to that versus just building something and launching it it smells like you're doing successful startup stuff you're like part of the community of startup this and you know like there's all this stuff you can do and i'm not saying like it's all bad but it's it's a bottomless pit of time suck like you could go so far deep in there you could be in that bottomless pit for years and be a startup founder that's never built a product and has never gotten a single customer because you just cycled in and out of various forms of startup mentorship

it's weird it's like going to hollywood and getting acting lessons yes and like you just you you're in like this acting lessons mode for like years and you're like yeah i'm an actor and it's like you know what i'm saying like it feels like you're making progress right but you're not you know i think a lot of it also has to do with founders being a little bit afraid and thinking these things do risk well if i have an advisory board it's going to de-risk my startup it's a bunch of smart people saying my idea is good or if i do a bunch of mentorship it de-risks my startup i get a lot of

advice and i don't know the thing we keep on saying over and over again is like the two things that really ridiculously de-risk your startup three things and we'll get to the third one the second first one's talking your customers the second one is building a launching product like and it's like god forbid you're doing anything more than you're doing those things you are not taking the optimal de-risk strategy like um and then the last one we see a lot of people trying to hedge their bets

so many people trying to be like well i'm keeping grad school open i've got a google job offer i've got a jane street or whatever the new tech finance thing of the minute is and i'm talking to three friends about doing a startup and like i'm kind of moving all those pieces down the board at the same time and like we get asked questions like okay so how do i optimize this i'm like i don't i don't think you can be great at those four things at the same time

like it's hard enough to be great at one of those things but like once again like why should i have like why shouldn't i hedge delton like isn't the optimal move to hedge like how do i know making the right decision when you're taking a high risk life decision a lot you know like we said again like we said on these this video series never times you're going to look stupid and you're going to take risk and there's a chance you're going to be like that was a huge mistake and you want to like barter with the

universe you wanna you wanna be like come on can i can't i like do you risk this like you wanna think that you can be smarter than the system to somehow give up nothing and have no downside and only have upside and the yeah the more you want to try to barter with the universe to be like okay first i'll get a job at google and i'll save money and then i'll do you know i'll invest in crypto and then i'll do like you want to like barter with the universe to have no risk and i guess like i get where i feel i get where people

are coming from i just i'm not sure that's a real thing and i think it's being more real with yourself is like yeah i'm taking risks like yeah quitting my job at google is a risk and this i may regret it but i may not and but i'm doing this with eyes wide open and by actually putting my full heart into anything i do whatever that is including not quitting my job that's how can you have regrets about that being proud of the work you do i mean this is what i tell a lot of folks i do a lot of office hours of people that are shutting down i did one today you know it's like their final office

hours because they're showing another startup but i i tend to tell people similar stuff which is like look if you're proud of the job you did you know if you if you had a heart and you gave it your all and you feel like you learned stuff then great job and you should view this as an affirmative experience you didn't and so like i'm proud of you i'm proud of the job you did i know you had your heart into this thing and like we'll get the next one you know i think that that message has to be told because it is rewarding

but founders have to be kind of reminded that they didn't fail like it's not like or let's just put it this way it's not like failing a test that like uh a basic math test that you just didn't study for it's like it's not like that like you tried to do something that so few people in the world are successful at failing is not really failing like at all it's like it's like trying to be a pro athlete like you're really good in college you try to go pro and you like make a team and then you get cut in the first year

like that's still pretty awesome yeah you still were really one of the best thousand people on earth who could play basketball yeah and so it's like you know again it would be great if you were number one in the world but like people are gonna respect what you did and you and if you if you're if you're proud in your heart of the work you did then you will view this as a positive thing in your life you know yeah and i always tell the people who are hedging i always say this the other side you know in our world it's really competitive and what happens if there's

a team that's exactly as competent as you and they're not hedging they're always going to win you know they're always going to beat you so how much better do you have to be than that team if you're splitting your resources two ways three ways four ways like so it's not even a good strategy even if you were trying to think strategically unfortunately no um so yeah so there you go those are some of the things that future

billionaires do to get [ __ ] done and some of the things that they avoid as well great chatbot sounds good thanks man [Music] [Music] you
