Prof G Markets
00:55:58 · Misha Laskin
[00:55:58] S4: The biggest learning that I've had, and it's pretty straightforward, is to have a deep sense of what it is that you're interested in, and it's okay if you don't know what that thing is now, and there's no rush to jump into building companies. Just building a company for the sake of building a company is not a good reason. Building a company for, I think, financial reason, there are plenty of way better, less risky ways to make money. So, it has to come from something that you're deeply interested in, that you're going to commit a lot of time to, and see through even when things are tough, and so for me, the journey of getting to this company was preceded by studying physics for a long time, for years, developing an interest in science there, discovering this interest in AI in the mid-2010s, as deep neural networks were starting to work, going in and working at the frontier, really understanding the frontier of something, right? And so understanding what is a problem set, finding a business partner that I trust fully, and that I was very kind of excited to build something with, because we already had worked together very closely on projects before that. So, right, I would say that if someone is considering starting a company, I'd advise it not to be rushed in the sense that, oh, I need to start a company for the sake of starting it. It should just come from a place of deep interest and commitment, and you'll kind of... People will feel when it's right. You can't kind of... We all have our own BS detectors, and maybe there's a quote by Feynman that the easiest person to fool is yourself. And so I think that maybe the advice is not to fool yourself into building a company, but only do it if it's coming from a place of deep interest in in that space and idea.
00:58:05 · Ed Elson, Misha Laskin, S0, S1
[00:58:05] S2: Misha Laskin is the cofounder and CEO of Reflection. Misha, we appreciate your time. [00:58:10] S4: Ed, thanks for having me. [00:58:16] S2: This episode was produced by Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our research associates are Dan Shalan, Kristen O'Donohue, and our senior producer is Claire Miller. Thank you for listening to the Prof G Markets Founder Series. We'll see you next month with another Founder story. [00:58:41] S0: You've been asked to run the company's social channels, but company content plays by its [00:58:46] S1: own set of rules. [00:58:47] S0: It needs a logo in the first three seconds, but it can't feel like an ad. It needs subtitles, except when it doesn't. It needs to run at two times speed and deliver a complex message Simply, of course, within nine by 16. Thankfully, your company has Canva, so you can easily edit your video and every version of it. What will you Canva today?