The AI-Native P&L

Much has been written about the death of SaaS. I believe SaaS won’t die, it will evolve. The dinosaurs will become extinct, but survivors will either be founded as or evolve into AI-Native birds. Just like dino-DNA is different from a bird’s DNA, the P&L of an AI-native SaaS company is going to take on an entirely different shape than its extinct cousins.

I realized this while building the go-forward 4 year financial model for Roam and I am stunned with how much we are going to accomplish for so little compared to what I did before at Yext. Here’s my convictions on the “AI-Native P&L”.

“The cost of software is going to zero, and the cost of acquisition is going to ∞”

-Shutterstock Founder Jon Oringer

R&D. As the cost of software goes to zero, R&D will stay flat over time. You may have a few engineers. Maybe they are 10x engineers. With AI they just became 1000x engineers. What this practically means is that R&D cost will essentially be fixed within a company’s lifecycle. You don’t need to hire more engineers as you grow your revenue.

Traditionally, companies have had to make the tradeoff between maintaining existing features and building new ones. This tradeoff no longer exists. AI Native companies can do more of both, for the same cost.

The latest SaaS benchmarking shows an average R&D spend of 24% at IPO. This will be much lower - 5-10% depending on how much you want to build.

R&D Bottom Line: 24% → 5%

Sales and Marketing. Salesforce spent 37% of its Revenue on sales and marketing, Hubspot 49%. The average $100m Saas Company spends 33%. It’s getting easier to make things. This leads to crowded markets. Traditional paid channels become expensive. I predict this goes up. Relationship-led sales can’t be replaced by AI Agents. And, companies will have extra money saved from R&D leaving extra budget to invest in growth. There will be a premium on customer acquisition.

S&M Bottom Line: 33% → 40%

G&A and Headcount. There’s been a lot of talk of the single person unicorn. I think this will happen. But most companies will need people, just way, way less people. I think Roam will get to $100m of ARR on just around 50 people, many entry level. That’s 1/10th of the number of people we needed at Yext to hit the same number. Most will report directly to me. At least I’ll know every person and what they’re supposed to be doing. This is an astonishingly low number. No middle management, less lines of random specialized ops roles, no “customer success”, less legal, less HR people. The fewer people you have, the fewer people you need to support them.

Also, there will be no office space expense. Roam spends exactly $0 on office space. At Yext we spent $20k/year on office space per person on leases alone, notwithstanding all the other stuff that came with it. No AI-Native company of the future is going to get locked down in long-term inflexible leases. They will hire sparingly, for the best cost and highest quality, and build in virtual offices. A physical office is not even AI-native.

The average Saas company G&A is 14% at IPO.

G&A Bottom Line: 14% → 7%.

Cost of Goods. 80% was always the dream margin, the average SaaS pubco is about 72%. Infra will remain the same, but cost of goods also includes customer service heads. AI will replace a huge part of this.

However, I believe companies will build so much AI as a feature into their products that the customer support savings will end up being a wash as spend goes to the foundation models.

Gross Margin Bottom Line: 75% → 75%

Revenue We’ve thus far discussed the expense side, let’s look at the revenue side for a moment. In a crowded market, I think companies with lower, simple pricing will have an advantage. So Revenue will be a bit harder to come by. I also think companies with large surface area have a big advantage over those with a narrow focus. I wouldn’t want to be the CEO of a Premium priced niche SaaS company with a traditional heavy P&L right now.

Also, long term multi-year contracts will be much harder to come by. Why would a big company commit in an era with rapid change?

This may not impact revenue, but it will drive down upfront cash collection and deferred billings.

Concluding Thoughts The SaaSosouruses will become extinct, but the evolved survivors will thrive as birds in their new lightweight form. They will be smaller, more nimble, and arm blooded. And, they have the opportunity to be more profitable.

AI-Native companies may not get as big as they did before, but there will be way more of them, and they will be more profitable.

It’s easier than ever to build. Just do it this new way so you build a modern car (faster and cheaper), not the old fashioned horse and buggy (slower and more expensive).

Bottom Line: +10-15% net margins realized

The Quest for Product Market Fit

More than any other question, founders ask me about product market fit. How do you find it? How do you know if you have it?

This is a good set of questions because the only job that matters for a founder is to find and hold on to product market fit. Every other job is a tangential side quest. Product market fit is like the sun. It’s the source of all life and movement for a company.

I’ve found product market fit 8 times in my life. There is no formula to discover it anymore than there is a formula to write a hit song. There is not even a standard measurement for it. What follows below are just some observations on the art of the quest itself.

• PMF is not binary. You can certainly NOT have it, but just like different stars have different strengths and sizes, so does PMF.
• Size: You can have PMF in a very small market. If your PMF is strong, you can have a monopoly in this small market. In college, Tom, Sean, and I made a site called “Just a Tip” that let users send anonymous tips telling friends about their annoying problems. It virally exploded overnight with millions of users. We had very strong PMF… in the “anonymous tips by email” market. Not exactly a huge market, particularly in our ability to monetize it.
• Strength: The strength of your PMF is directly proportionate to your organic growth. If leads or users show up out of nowhere without you having to lift a finger, that’s strong PMF. Just a Tip had very strong product market fit, just not in a very large or lucrative market.
• A Market of 1: If you build a product for yourself, you have at least satisfied a market of one. Presumably, there are other people like you. I made Confide because I wanted to use it myself. We made Roam because we wanted a Virtual Office for ourselves. Now, these are networked/team products, but if you make something you use and live in every day, you are living on the edge and more likely to succeed because you can tailor it to fit exactly what you’re doing.
• Change: Just as a star ultimately burns out over time, so does PMF. Early adopters dry up, channels lose their effectiveness, markets change. Competitors jump in. Most often you’re hit not by a direct competitor, but by a new paradigm that changes the demand profile for the product. Several times in my life I’ve had really strong market fit and slowly fallen out of it over time. A founder needs to be watching all of this on the edges and stay on top of it.
• Change can be GOOD: When Yext launched in 2006, the iPhone didn’t exist, and Google Maps was in its infancy. The explosion of these new mobile mapping services was an incredible market force that propelled the entire listings category into real-time updates on mobile devices. Yext was positioned perfectly to lift off from this with our PowerListings franchise in 2010. MapQuest printouts became Google Maps on the iPhone.
• Believe What People Do, Not What They Say: Everyone will lie to your face and tell you your product is great. If you offer it to them for free, they will give you positive feedback with a few meaningless nits to show they’re paying attention. It’s a waste of time. It’s misleading signal unless you make them pay. I endeavor to get harsh signals from the market, not happy signals from friends. There is nothing harsher than the market.
• Focus on the Customer, Not the Technology: Steve Jobs famously said you need to start from the customer and work backwards. One of the worst debacles of my career was Xone, a beacon-based product that failed at Yext. I was obsessed with a new low-energy Bluetooth capability that Apple built into iOS and was convinced it was the future of in-store experiences. I made the huge mistake of trying to figure out applications for the technology instead of just trying to consider what someone actually wanted.
• Bottom Up, Not Top Down: Going super granular is the most important thing I do. Correspondingly, the biggest mistake I see others make is starting at the market level and deciding to “enter the CRM space” with “AI” or “Cloud” or whatever. That’s just pattern matching to what’s already worked in the past and applying it to a new domain. That might work for investors. It may even work sometimes for other entrepreneurs! But it’s never worked for me. I’ve found you have to come up with original ideas, and that only comes from deep work, living down in the trenches of whatever you’re trying to do. The idea for Yext PowerListings came when I was running Yext Calls’ call tracking services and realized you could swap phone numbers in a MapQuest listing, and that businesses would want to control it.
• Services Companies Never Evolve into Product Companies: I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve met with a services company who said they were planning to do some service over and over again, build internal products to streamline those services, and then bring those products to market. I met with them later, and it never happened. I’ve never seen it happen once. If you want to make a services company, do it! If you want to make a product, do it!

Above all, I’ve found that you have to strike the right balance between dogmatically believing in the big-picture thing you want to do, while being willing to change the details constantly to figure out what actually works. As we founded the Yext Calls era business, I spent basically all my time with a small team running media experiments for brands like GymTicket.com or TVRepairman.com. GymJungle.com was a Google-like search for gyms. We tried everything. Very, very few things worked at all. But when something did, we grabbed it and ran with it.

One last point. It’s way, way, way harder than you think. It takes way longer. It involves way more pain. Look at every single major tech company from Amazon to Google to Meta to any of Elon’s companies. They all have an arc of failure every few years where the world is convinced they will not survive. They look nothing like they did in 2005. They’ve required constant effort and reinvention led by the founders (look what’s happened to Google since Brin returned to reshock the company).

Yet decades later, they beat on, because the quest for product market fit is an unending founder epic that starts all over again the second you think you’re done.

RoboHoward Menu: 2000 cals, 225g protein

I ate the same thing every day and got jacked.

Through trial and error, I believe I have perfected the perfect daily menu. This RoboHoward Menu is designed for me to:

• Stay Lean
• Maintain and slightly build muscle mass
• Be fully energized without ever feeling hungry or craving. It tastes great and I eat it almost every day.

The menu is 2000 calories and 225 grams of protein. I discovered a secret item that holds it all together for me. Here’s the full menu:

I’ll now go through each item, starting with the chicken. A eat a whole pack of white meat chicken strips. It’s portioned in a bag like this. 250 calories and 50 grams of protein. This is the foundation of the menu because the ratio of protein to calories is so high. Here’s the kind I get, it’s from Whole Foods, but any store has this:

The next staple is this wood roasted salmon. You can get it from Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods. It has 240 calories and 24 grams of protein. The protein density is lower on Salmon, but it has Omega-3 and healthy fats. But above all it tastes amazing. The peppered one tastes like pastrami.

I heat the chicken and salmon, maybe add some butter lettuce and then I add mustard. It’s a super first meal of the day at 2:00pm. (I don’t think the timing really matters much, this timing and order is simply what works for me given my routine).

Meal #2

At 7pm, I have 93/7 ground beef, a bag of broccoli and a roasted Japanese sweet potato. The ground beef must be 93/7 - that is what keeps it lean. Most steaks and other things have much higher fat and calorie content. I don’t add any oil or butter to cook. Just salt and pepper, or the kindred spice mix. The ground beef has 680 calories and 96 grams of protein. It tastes like a hamburger!

I mix the broccoli in with the beef. The broccoli is key because it’s a huge volume of food and has lots of minerals and Vitamin C but comes with very little calories.

Then, the secret menu item which was a big breakthrough: the japanese sweet potato. For me this was a huge breakthrough because I do not really like normal sweet potatoes. They’re too watery and soft. I prefer the starchy texture of a regular potato. This is precisely what the Japanese sweet potato has, but it’s sweeter and better. I am increasingly convinced it’s a perfect food. You roast it with a bit of salt and a touch of oil, it comes out insanely great. It brings the whole thing together and totally satiates me.

Mix everything up and you get this:

Meal #3: Dairy Snack

You can eat this in the morning or at night. I do it at night. The baseline is 2 fat free greek yogurts and I mix in a scoop of vanilla or chocolate whey. I slice a banana with it. Optionally, I add in some berries. Strawberries, sometimes dark frozen cherries. It tastes like ice cream. I don’t know why more people don’t just eat this. It has 52 grams of protein!

I also have an apple I can slice up anytime and crunch when I feel like it.

Results

The RoboHoward Daily Menu delivered real results. Starting on Jan 1, I ate it each day for 57 days in a row. I got a DexaScan on Jan 1 and another on Feb 27. The results were stunning. I lost 8.4 pounds of fat and put on 1.5 lbs of muscle. Also, I had 0.0 … yes, zero visceral fat. I’ve never been leaner and I’ve never felt better.

Conclusions

Eating the same thing every day may seem extreme. Maybe it is for a lot of people. But I’ve never had any problem acting independently and just doing my own thing. I had to basically opt-out of many things that normal human people do, like enjoying restaurants.

I don’t recommend everyone do this. But I’m sharing it because if it worked for me, maybe it will work for someone else out there. I won’t stay on this 365 days a year, but I will do it 5 or 6 days a week. I have more energy than ever, I’m more locked in than ever in building my company, and I feel amazing each day. I hope reading this will cause someone to take an action that brings you the same incredible feeling of positivity that I feel as I am writing it.

Onward!

Howard

Webinars are Stuck in the Yahoo Era

One of the best parts of the Yext Building was our community theater where we could host events for customers, partners, and anyone else

People RSVP’d, there was a interactive presentation and audience experience. It did require a team of professionals to run the AV and guest registration.

My entire career, I’ve agonized over presentation details. I had breakfast with one of the masters, Jeffrey Katzenberg a few weeks ago. He shared a thought with me: The world’s greatest presenters realized that the aura and environment of the media matter just as much as the content itself.

Walt Disney obsessed about the music in his shows and movies. It wasn’t just about the picture, it was about the sound. All the senses mattered to Iisney: he insisted that the smell of popcorn immediately swarm any visitor to Disney which today remains true.

Jeffrey told me he spent much of his time in Northern California studying the latest technology so he could make video-realistic graphical dinosaurs and other creatures. The medium mattered as much as the content. More, even!

The medium is changing rapidly. Today we live in the era of Mr Beast. Kids are on YouTube, and founders are expected to be the social face of their brands.

We live in this new Creator era, yet, the tools you have at your disposal to host your Webinar were designed for the Yahoo here.

Take a look at this zoom webinar page. It asks you to confirm your email here. It looks like it was designed in 2006.

Even the WORD webinar sounds like it was made in 1998… who actually wants to attend a WEBINAR? Yuck!

Once you get through the clunky registration, you’re in a one-way monolog type environment where a speaker is talking TO you. There’s no interaction or energy. Just a bunch of zombies out there.

Finally, today’s streaming and webinars are complicated and often require professional setup. You need to practically be an IT administrator to safely host a large scale webinar. This defies the point of the internet, which is to democratize things so anyone can do it.

Every single consumer internet service - from YouTube to X with its Live spaces to Instagram Live has stayed current with state-of-the-art live broadcasting media. Why does B2B need to be remain stuck in the Yahoo era?

The most ironic fact of this at all is that the large consumer platforms are free, yet the Webinar platforms charge thousands, so they could certain afford to modernize them:

B2B Webinars better move fast to upgrade from the Yahoo-Era to the Creator Era, because we’re quickly exiting and entering the Agentic-Era.

RoboHoward Final Results & Annual Birthday Address

DexaScan Compare

Jan 1 - Feb 27

Weight

• Jan 1: 177.5 lbs
• Feb 27: 170.6 lbs
• -6.9 lbs

Fat mass

• Jan 1: 24.2
• Feb 27: 15.8
• -8.4 lbs of fat

Lean mass

• Jan 1: 146.3
• Feb 27: 147.8
• +1.5 lbs of lean mass

Visceral Fat: 0.00 lbs

• Jan 1: 0.68
• Feb 27: 0.00

Only the 7th scan out of 963 DexaScans completed at CellDeep to have 0.00 visceral fat

I feel compelled to comment on my protocol that enabled these stunning results.

Each day, for 7 weeks, I simply ate:

• Chicken Breast Pack (250 cals, 50g of protein)
• Wood fired Salmon (240, 24)
• 93/7 ground beef 1lb (680, 92)
• Japanese sweet potato (150, 2)
• Bag of broccoli (100, 0)
• 2 greek yogurts (80, 16 each)
• 1 scoop of whey (100, 20)
• Banana (110, 0)

That’s it. Some salt on the food but no butter or oil or anything. I felt amazing the whole time and I was always very full. This totals 1790 calories and 220 grams of protein each day. If I wanted, I threw in an apple and some frozen dark cherries.

This was not even very hard. No extreme diet, just an extreme willingness to be different. I had to act totally independently and entirely opt out of the food system of normal human people. For many, being willing to act independently is hard, but it’s never been hard for me, especially now that I have entered the post-”give a fuck era” of my life.

The extreme discipline during RoboHoward mode rippled into every other part of my life, and unlocked extraordinary results everywhere. On Sunday I will announce that Roam had its fastest growth month ever, growing 14% in a single month. I read an ancient Japanese book (Tale of Genji) and am taking Japanese lessons with Lyan in anticipation of her first trip there. Lux released her new single and music video, Not Your Actress. I worked out twice per day and didn’t miss a morning strength or afternoon cardio session. It was not hard to do it all, rather, I enjoyed it.

I do want to take a moment to thank the love of my life, Wendy for her enduring support during psycho Howard mode. I can be quite intense and serious and she ran everything while I did this. If you know Wendy, you know she is flawless.

And I want to express gratitude towards all of you. I work with the smartest and best people each day. I feel an immense amount of love and appreciation for all that has transpired and for adventures yet to come.

Because at 46, you are still young enough to build new castles, but you are old enough to know how long it takes to craft stunning cathedrals that stand the test of time. So, you beat on, aim your motor against the current, looking ceaselessly into the future.

RoboHoward Wardrobe Protocol

I use clothes to project different alter egos that bring out my best possible aura tailored to different scenarios to maximize whatever I am doing. I accomplish this while strictly maintaining a simple minimalist uniform system. I can continue thinking deeply about whatever I’m working on while I mindlessly get dressed without any decision making fatigue. What follows is a blueprint for my wardrobe system, which is optimized to maximize efficiency and aura for various scenarios.

Every clothing decision optimizes for (1) reduced cognitive load, (2) projection of the correct alter ego. My closet is designed to trigger a maximum, instant belief in myself every time I step into it. The exciting possibilities of who I am going to be for that part of the way are right in front of me. This helps jumpstart things. For example, I don’t wait for motivation to work out. I force myself to put on my gym clothes and then I assume gym Howard alter ego. Or, rarely, when I don my purple tux for a Roam presentation, I turn into the Greatest Showman Howard. But, most of the time I aim for subtraction. I wear the same minimal uniform to minimize decision making so I can think deeply about my work. Just a black turtleneck and black slacks.

Below I detail the composition and presentation of my wardrobe.

Composition

My wardrobe consists of gym outfits, work outfits, casual wear, show pieces, summer, footwear and winter wear. No accessories like belts, or ties, or other jewelry. I don’t wear a watch or any jewelry. I have some nostalgic shirts from TJHHST, Duke and the companies I’ve built.

I own no clothes outside of this protocol.

Gym Outfits

I work out a lot, often twice a day, so I go through a lot of gym clothes. I try different things over the years but at present like Gymshark. Items I like from gymshark:

Shirt

Ribbed Tank

• This is the workhorse. I wear these nearly every day. I like new ones. They wear down pretty fast. You can get a pack of three for $28, which is $9.33 per shirt.
• Color is almost always black, it’s OK to throw in a few white or striped.
• Refresh Cycle: TBD

Shorts

5 inch Two in one Shorts

• I like 2 in 1 shorts because I don’t need to wear an extra pair of underwear each day. 2 in 1 shorts save a lot of time and energy and are efficient.
• I like shorter shorts for the gym, 5 inches instead of 7. Gymshark used to make a 2 in 1 5 inch short, but I haven’t seen it in a long time. They have not offered it a long time, but I saw they now have a 4 inch 2 in 1 but the pant is longer. I am purchasing one to see how I like it.
• I am unhappy with my current shorts composition. It’s a few 5 inch 2 in 1s (i like) then a bunch of 5 inch shorts without a 2 in 1, which is a bit too breezy…
• Shorts should always be black.
• Refresh Cycle: Bi-Annually

Uniform for Work

I have found that a fresh black turtleneck can flex up to formal or down when paired with black pants.

Shirt

Lands End Turteneck

• This has been my bread and butter for many years. They fit really well, nice and snug. It’s not too hot, which many turtlenecks are. The neck isn’t itchy or loose, another common turtleneck pitfall.
• Color: Black
• Refresh Cycle: 6 months

Pants

• John Varvatos Slacks
• This has been a staple for a long time.
• Color: Black
• Size: 32
• Cost: $500
• Refresh Cycle: annually

Socks

I have two pools of socks - gym and dress. It is imperative to purchase the same type and color of sock so you can just pool them together and never need to find specifc sock matches.

Gym Socks: Under Armor

Dress Socks: Argyle Socks

I love putting on new socks, especially dress socks. I’m often gearing up to do something hard or with agency, and the feeling of new socks helps me feel like a million bucks and be at the top of my game.

• Color: Black Argyle

Shoes

Gym Shoes

OnCloud Cloudmonster. These are a staple. I have 16 pairs, two for each day of the week, two for travel, one for my weekly run. I number them accordingly with a sharpie in three places and organize my closet by number.

• Color: Black
• Size: 12
• Cost: $135 per pair
• Refresh Cycle: BiAnnually

Dress Boots

I wear dress boats with my work outfit. My preferred brand in Christian Louboutin Chelsea boots, black with red bottoms. I need rubber bottoms and no laces.

• Color: Black
• Size: (double check)
• Cost: $1500
• Refresh Cycle: 2 per year

Additional Shoes

I keep a few pairs of All Birds and a pair of Nikes to occasionally wear post run. This is if my feet are feeling kind of beat up, I want to give them a shoe with a different fit in order to change the pressure points.

EuroShoes

I keep a pair of shoes to wear on a boat, I think they are leather prada boatshoes.

• Color: Brown

Show Pieces

From time to time, I make appearances which require a high fashion level. I’ll go to Tom Ford to purchase something for an event. These pieces almost always are for a particular function. I don’t just “go shopping” for the sake of shopping. If I have an upcoming appearance that requires a new show piece, I go out and purchase something with intention. Examples:

• Tom Ford Purple Tux for an Roam !nvention Launch
• Black Leather outfit for events

Casual Wear

Like my fellow humans, I like lounge around and accumulate favorite t-shirts or pants which are extra comfortable. T-shirts are just accumulated, as gifts, or for some occasion like being in Athens or visiting a famous store. But sweatpants are bought intentionally from Gymshark.

• Sweats
• Pumper Pants
• Size: Medium
• Color: Black
• Cost: $56

Underwear

I wear Hanes boxer briefs.

Jacket

My Tom Ford leather jacket with ribbed shoulders just works. I love that jacket like Han Solo loves his brown leather jacket. I got the idea for it from Jensen Huang who I’ve seen wear the same jacket. I also have some branded hoodie sweatshirts I like from VCs and tech companies like Yext

EuroWear

I need boat type clothes to wear for my European summer holiday. I buy some matching shorts and pants from cheap brands I find on Instagram before I go over there. Then I throw them away when I get back, or just shed them behind as I leave Europe.

Travel

My wardrobe protocol makes traveling simple. If I need a showpiece, I will bring it. I usually don’t, so I just bring interchangeable gym outfits and work outfits with a few sweatgear. For Europe, I’ll bring my Eurowear.

Closet Organization

There are eight sections in my closet - summer, winter, fancy dress, casual (sweats), gym, uniform, dress shoes, and gym shoes. Summer and winter are rarely touched. Casual, gym, and uniform form the three main workstreams.

Annual Closet Purge

I purge my closet once a year in February, mercilessly removing all items I don’t use. Less is more. Eliminate the clutter to arrive at clarity.

I’ve built this wardrobe protocol over years and I realize it’s not for everyone. It can take the joy out of fashion. But it works for me, I love executing within it, and I feel like a million bucks when I don whatever threads I need to and transform myself with maximized aura into the alter ego for whatever I’m attacking.

My 996

My personal version of 996 that helped me found and lead a public company to a billion+ dollar IPO, all while being a dad, wanting to be in good physical health and leading another startup that is exploding right now. It is necessary for me to take discipline to the extreme. Especially working remotely. Here the daily non-negotiable routines I’ve developed to ensure I attack every day like a emporer:

• Wake up
• Weigh myself. I am 6'1 and aim to be under 175 each day. My body fat is currently about 12%. I try to cut to 10% for my birthday each year around my annual physical to “reset” everything to be as clean as possible.
• Put on gym clothes. This is a pyschological “cue” based trigger trick. It’s easy to put gym clothes on whether or not I am feeling motivated to work out. But once they’re on and I feel them fitting, I going to work out.
• Espresso. I fast until 2:00pm each day.
• Set timer for 30 minutes and read something hard. I try to challenge myself with something intellectual. I just finished The Road to Serfdom. I recently also read a guide to Newton’s Principe Mathematica. The point isn’t to make myself smarter through this acquired knowledge. It’s that reading actually stimulates my brain. I keep a pen and paper and come up with many of my best ideas while reading since the brain automatically makes analogical connections to whatever work I’m currently grappling with. Charlie Munger’s quote about “You can get smarter at getting smarter” lives rent free in my head.
• Weight Training for 60 minutes right after reading. This is 6 days a week. I lift heavy with a trainer. Chest and Back, Shoulders and Arms, Legs 2x a week. On the 7th day, I do a longer run - either 6 miles in 40 minutes or 8 miles in an hour.
• Work like hell. I have very few scheduled meetings. I have a daily standup with my core team where we just do everything, then it’s ad-hoc conversations to do the work that is necessary. The work is designing products and executing growth intiatives. It’s mainly IC work since I don’t really believe management is necessary anymore.
• I talk to people all day but I don’t do 1:1 scheduled meetings. They slow things down, they clog up calendars, they turn into therapy sessions, and generally I think most information with few exceptions should be with the team, not just one person. They are a tool for lazy managers.
• Around 2:00 is the first meal, it’s usually all protein. The ideal is a salmon filet and a bit of steak.
• Work like hell as an IC. We have worked to eliminate political theater at our company. It’s all ICs just doing work and making dispassionate decisions based on skill, data but above all taste. The only thing that matters is the product and success of customers.
• 5:30pm: 2nd workout, cardio. I have an assault bike, a Concept2 rower, and a treadmill. I rotate between the three with a 15 minute conditioning working. This gives me a tremendous energy boost for the rest of the day.
• Work like hell until 7:30
• Dinner and family time
• 9:30 back to work until usually 12 or midnight.
• I repeat this routine 6 days a week.
• I say no to most things, which is hugely liberating.
• I expect everyone to work extremely hard, but not as hard as me.
• I get 7 hours of sleep per night. Total blackout, cool room. I don’t track my sleep yet I just set up the conditions for good sleep and leave it to the gods to make it happen. I am not a great sleeper but oddly I have found that sometimes I am more creative on less sleep. I’ve found some of my best ideas and work come when I am sleep deprived.
• If I’m stuck on something, I’ll go for a walk or read. That always unlocks things.
• My kids come home at 3pm and I get to see them. 90% of time with them will be over by the time they are teens so working remotely lets me experience this important part of my life more fully.
• I rarely drink alcohol anymore. I’m not a teetotaler, it’s just not important at this point in my life and I have no time for extra activities. Cut.
• I don’t watch Netflix. Series are designed to rope you in and burn your time. Game of Thrones I think has like 100 episodes. That’s 100 hours of your life! You could practically learn a new language in that time.
• I keep a daily journal where I write a short to-do list as well any thoughts or insights I’m having for the day. I write in it throughout the day. Not just a single entry in the morning, it sort of is the real-time notes of my thoughts.
• I wear the same thing every day. I have 50 of the same shirt and 20 of the same pants and a bunch of the same socks. This makes everything interchangable and elimates decision fatigue when getting dressed. As I robotically get dressed, my mind is free to wander on other things.
• I have 8 pairs of the exact same shoe, coded for different days of the week. I rotate them by day, which keeps them fresher with a week-long recovery period. The 8th pair is for weekly run, a special fresh paid.
• Dining out takes a lot of time and gets old.
• I have increased my productivity by subtraction. I used to have an EA to schedule meetings, etc. Now I don’t even really do meetings and if I do, I just schedule them myself. Less is more.
• I respond to everything instantly or never. Inbox zero is irrelevant, but Calendar Zero is the ultimate ideal.
• Everyone sings the praises of creatine but it just makes me hold 2 extra pounds of water. I don’t feel any benefit from it.
• I don’t plan very much. I wake up and decide what I’m going to do that day. I don’t I’ve learned to act empirically in the moment instead of abstract rationality, making plans. Reading challenging material is really important but it’s not enough to live in the world of ideas. You have to take action in the real world. The scientific method is mankind’s greatest invention and I believe everything is possible, just not yet discovered. Experimentation beats ideation.
• I don’t judge or fault anyone for living their own life however they want. This is just how I chose to live mine at the current moment.

Cancel Your 1:1s

Experts advise young founders that it is proper management technique to hold a weekly meeting for an hour with each member of your direct staff. To do otherwise means you are irresponsible manager!

But it turns out that 1:1s simply saddle your organization with unnecessary cost in time, speed and alignment. First, consider that if you have ten direct reports, your calendar will be filled up with 10 hours of meetings per week just of 1:1 meetings! In a traditional 40 hour week, that’s 25% used. But that’s only part of the cost. I have found also that 1:1s tend to turn away from actual business content and veer toward politics and complaints about people. These conversations are almost never helpful.

Next, almost all content discussed in a 1:1 is better in a group setting, to bring others into the strategy and decision making of what is going on. Why isolate people? Bringing people together makes a more cohesive team.

Finally, on speed: If someone has something to tell you, if you have a scheduled 1:1 they may queue it up and wait to tell you then. This dramatically slows the company down! Everyone should be providing information in real-time, as it is necessary.

Jensen Huang doesn’t hold regular 1:1 meetings with his direct reports, neither do I, and neither should you.

If you need to talk to someone, just do it.

Mastering Dvorak Made Me 3% Faster

I spent the past 3 months rewiring 30 years of muscle memory: I switched from QWERTY to the Dvorak Keyboard. It’s way better. My WPM typing speed is up 3% and my hands don’t cramp anymore so I can go both faster AND longer.

Here’s how I did it. What follows is not for the faint hearted.

• I have never been a particularly fast or accurate typer. My fine motor dexterity is a weakness for me and my qwerty typing speed is about 75 words per minute.
• The biggest challenge is that the physical keys don’t match up to the keys on the screen as you type them. If you have a laptop and a desktop computer, I recommend you start with one or the other first and only. Your brain will just learn to type a certain form within that specific context.
• You can easily switch your default keyboard settings on any Mac or PC. Dvorak is a built in option. I don’t know about Linux, but I’m guessing it’s possible there as well.
• All the vowels - aoeui - are in the left center. And the most frequently used consonants dhtns are in the right middle. “e” is middle finder left, “t” is middle finger right.
• I recommend starting with your name. You’ll be able to learn that pretty fast and it’s satisfying to be able to type something.
• I keep a daily journal, which is fairy free form. I use it as sort of a workspace for everything on my mind - whether it’s a to do list, or a blueprint for a product idea.
• As I was at the beginning stage, my deal with myself was that I was going to write my daily journal in Dvorak, then switch back to qwerty so I didn’t tank my productivity for the day. I have some pretty childlike journal entries for a few weeks there.
• After about 14 days of journaling exclusively in Dvorak, I switched my laptop computer over completely. This was by far hardest period. I was tempted to switch back to qwerty constantly, but if I really needed to type in qwerty, I would get up and walk to my desktop computer. Adding this barrier gave me an out if I was feeling frustrated while ensuring I continued to push through when it was super hard.
• Y was the hardest letter for me to master. For some reason, this one just took me the longest to relearn how to type. It’s the only vowel not in the core left middle. And frustratingly it’s exactly one position over from original Y.
• Passwords were the hardest thing to master and came last. I often was locking myself out of my computer because I defiantly wasn’t revealing the keys on keystroke and for a long time had accuracy problems.
• My typing speeds on Dvorak are about 3% faster, 78 words per minute. This may seem like a small number, but it compounds serious! People think faster than they can speak, and they speak faster than they can type. This is, btw, one of the reasons I am very bullish on voice and voice powered interfaces.
• Due to the more efficient layout, the movement and strain on my hands is way, way less. Dvorak reduces motion by around 31% for english language typers. This is significant and I am able to type much more effortlessly.
• While I mastered Dvorak on desktop, I still use qwerty on my mobile phone.
• ps: I think doing seriously hard things like this which require total concentration to express yourself are good for your brain. Just like pushing your muscles to the limit induces hypertrophy, pushing your mind to the limit induces braingain. Other examples of this are learning a new language in a fully immersed environment or doing something like surfing through rough terrain. I believe this sort of concentrated learning is the perfect antidote to the endless scrolling slop warping our minds.

Announcing our 2026 Pricing Decrease…

We are pleased to announce that our final 2026 price will be just $19.50/month per active member, billed monthly. This represents a decrease vs. our previously announced 2026 price of $19.88. 2027 prices will be $20.88/month. Your first monthly bill reflecting the 2026 price will be in February for your usage in January.

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• Powerful new Lobby booking features (replaces Calendly)
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This is all in addition to our 52 other features releases, which included Theater Soundboard, Figma & GitHub on the Map, Screenshare Annotations, Dial-In, Magic Minutes Desktop, Game Room, Voice Messages, Mobile Live View & much, much more!

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Roam Makes Remote Work!

Sunday Night Executive Meetings

The following technique is for executives and founders, rank-and-file team members should absolutely not be expected to work Sundays.

I read Tim Cook held his exec meetings Sunday nights which made me chuckle because for 20 years I’ve done that too.

By the time Sunday night rolls around, most people - and especially C-suite execs - have their computers open anyway, working, getting ready for the week. Instead of the team firing off emails or chats to each other that night, I decided it would be better to have everyone together on a call (while at Yext). Today, it’s in Roam.

Sunday Night Executive Meetings have a number of advantages. First, it saves you half a day. If you wait until Monday morning, say from 9-12, you’ve used 5% of the whole week on your exec meeting. By doing it Sunday night, everyone can start Monday morning fresh with a clear idea of where to focus.

Next, it saves a whole deep work cycle for the next level down. Since each exec starts Monday with a clear idea of what to do, they use their time Monday morning to get their team going on the appropriate deep work. If execs were stuck in a meeting Monday morning, their own teams wouldn’t be able to get going until Monday afternoon.

Also, it’s good to have some open-ended time. I’ve always started at 8. We sometimes end at 9, sometimes at 10:30. There’s no “next meeting” that forces us to stop. We’re done when we’re done.

Bonus If you have operations in east Asia, the timing works well. Singapore, Tokyo, Shenzhen - they’re all well into Monday by the time your Sunday evening rolls around. If you wait until Monday morning, you’ve lost a whole day in Asia.

If Tim Cook still jumpstarts Apple each week with a Sunday night call, I strongly recommend founders of a new company do the same for as long as you possibly can.

Howard

Teddy Roosevelt & the 5 Minute Meeting

I was stunned when I read Teddy Roosevelt held meetings for just 5 minutes.

People lined up outside his office at the White House. TR granted their 5 minute audience, decisions were swiftly made, and he moved on to the next guest. Time was carefully managed down to the second, no exceptions.

One day I decided to try 5 minute meetings myself. I was visiting a Yext office in London with 120 people. I wanted to get a first hand sense of what was happening in the office. And, I figured that more than a few on my team wouldn’t mind an audience with the CEO. I spent 600 minutes meeting with everyone. I learned to open with a question, “what are you working on?” and then take notes to avoid overly strong eye contact, as people opened up more. I tried to get as specific as possible. Not: “I am working on process improvements”. Instead: “I fixed the lead gen flow that was accidentally sending new dupes away, catching an extra 178 leads last week”.

With 600 minutes, it was necessary to religiously manage the clock. Like TR, no exceptions. I had an assistant give a “warning knock” with 30 seconds left, and then abruptly open the door and introduce the next person right at 5 minutes.

If I was stunned to learn of TR’s 5 minute habit, I was even more stunned to experience first hand just how much you can get done in a 5 minute meeting. Having the constraint of short time forces the most principled discussions and decisions. I emerged from the day with a clear sense of everything going on, the strengths and weaknesses of the team, and was able to connect with everyone on the team directly. “Teddy Roosevelt Meetings” earned a permanent page in my management playbook.

There is awesome power in brevity.