Teaser_2021
Transcript
Greg Isenberg[00:00)]I'm Greg Isenberg and I build community. I'm the CEO of Late Checkout, an agency, a studio,
a fund where we build some of the most popular internet communities. I'm also an advisor to Reddit. Sahil Bloom[00:14)]I'm Sahil Bloom. I'm an investor, creator, entrepreneur, writer. I also gave up a grand slam on ESPN in 2012, and I am still waiting for it to land. What is The Room Where it Happens? The Room Where it Happens is the place where the insights are generated. This is the place where the conversations happen, where ideas are batted around, debated, fought over. This is where things actually get created,
where you start to have those seeds that are planted and where things are really built. That is the room. It's traditionally been closed. We're opening the door to it. We want you to be here with us as that happens. Greg Isenberg[00:52)]It's a place where we could have honest conversations about how hard startups are, what's interesting to us, how we can collaborate,
how we can build businesses together and what the next big thing is. That's what The Room Where it Happens is. Sahil Bloom[01:09)]If this podcast were available five years ago for me, I think I would've meaningfully accelerated the trajectory of my own life and my career. And part of that would've been the insights generated. The things I learned from actually listening to people. But the biggest part of it would've been the people I met. The relationships I built with other community members with the hosts, with the guests. That is what is the force multiplier for your career, those networks, how that compounds over time,
just as well as any financial investment. That is what I would've gotten out of it. Greg Isenberg[01:39)]I probably would've met my co-founder. I probably would've met my early teammates. I probably would've found community. I would be 25 times more informed and 50
times more wealthy. That would've just supercharged my career. Sahil Bloom[01:58)]Greg and I met in The Room Where it Happens. We met through the confluence of a bunch of chance events. We were in a group text thread together with a handful of friends and became as close as we are today because of that. It was The Room Where it Happens. All of these ideas were being generated and that was what sparked us, originally,
to start thinking about this and thinking about how we could scale this so that more of you could be a part of what we had experienced and what we had benefited from. Greg Isenberg[02:27)]The moment that changed my mind about business and opportunity was the first time I ever went to Silicon Valley. I was reading up about all these entrepreneurs, all these investors on places like TechCrunch. And I landed and I expected them to be incredibly great, so much different from you and I. And I started having conversations with them and I realized they weren't smarter than us. They might have had better connections, more money, gone to better schools,
but that was it. That was when I realized I could do anything. Sahil Bloom[03:03)]So a moment that changed my mind about all of this, about business, opportunity, everything, I got invited by a mentor to go to a fundraiser event. I was 24. I was fresh out of school, very green. And I went to this event. There were all these amazing people there, really impressive people that I was, frankly, quite intimidated by. And I was in these conversations with them and just very quickly realized that there was nothing different about them versus me, but they were in these rooms constantly. They were around different,
interesting people. They were having these conversations and that was what was making them different. They were able to generate these insights because they were in these room. And that was the moment I realized I had to just find a way to be in those rooms. Greg Isenberg[03:49)]The gap between what people think business is and what actually happens is what Scott Belsky calls the messy middle. Think of The Social Network, the movie. Mark Zuckerberg starts Facebook and then all of a sudden it's massive. It's this romantic idea that people have about startups and entrepreneurship. In reality, the messy middle, the time in between starting and the outcome is 99% of the process of business and startups and entrepreneurship. And I actually find that messy middle to be the most amount of fun. It's when you rise up, it's when you fall down,
it's when you zig and it's when you zag. Sahil Bloom[04:35)]So in my mind, the biggest gap between what people think business is versus what it really is, is that aspect of just crawling through the river of shit that exists between where you start and where you finish. It's like The Shawshank Redemption. You got to just go through that period. And to me, that's getting up every day and just getting punched in the gut over and over and over again, and being willing to get up and continue to push through and continue to work with your team, solicit feedback, work with others and just get through it. But that willingness to get punched in the face, to get knocked down and to get back up, no one talks about that. Everyone talks about the successes. You love the glamor you love when someone rings the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, when they IPO, they're billionaire,
it's great.[05:23)]No one talks about that middle time when you're just getting punched over and over and over again. What frustrates me most about the current state of podcasts is just that it's one sided. It all ends as soon as you finish the conversation during the interview. It's an interview, you talk to someone, you ask them questions and then it ends and that's it. That's all you get from them. And they might have said something amazing that intrigued you, that sparked your interest. You want to follow up, you want to dig deeper, but that's it. That's all you get and it's over. And so when I think about the opportunity that exists, it's changing that. Fundamentally flipping it on its head, making it a conversation, following up, digging deeper,
going further with all the insights. That's how we take this entire thing to a whole new level. Greg Isenberg[06:08)]I believe the current state of podcasting sucks. A few people have microphones and it's just not fair. What if you allowed a bunch of people to have microphones so they could connect, so they can collaborate so that they can build community. And that's what we're trying to do with The Room Where it Happens. Yes, we're in the room and we have some microphones, but we're also inviting you in. We want you to ask questions. We want to collaborate with you. We want to build businesses with you. And that's why I wanted to create a new, more modern way of podcasting. What am I most excited about with this show and community?
Sahil Bloom[06:46)]It has to be seeing the amazing things that come out of this community. It has to be seeing all of you going off and having these great experiences, having new insights that come from it, starting new things, failing, succeeding, all of that. And what it's going to create out in the world is what I'm most excited about. We get to sit here, have conversations. We get to hang out with friends, talk to some amazing guests, but the thing that's going to be best is when we see you take that and run with it 100
times over to create something much bigger than what we are doing here. Greg Isenberg[07:20)]Watching where you are today and where you're going to be tomorrow and where you're going to be a week from now, a month, a year, 10 years. We're in this for the long game. And what excites me about... I mean, the reason why I got into community was because I love seeing people progress, advance, do big things. And I know that being a part of The Room Where it Happens,
good things will happen to you. Sahil Bloom[07:47)]So how are we going to ensure this is different than everything else out there? Two ways. Number one, alcohol. We're going to get everyone really drunk with us and it's going to be fun and we're going to get them loose. Because they're not going to be having the same conversation they're having on to every single other podcast, because they're going to be sitting there drinking with us and it's going to be fun. So that's number one. Number two, we want to learn from you. We want to get better at this. We're in it for the long game. This isn't one episode, this isn't one season. We're going to be doing it. So when you're hearing things, if you want us to improve on stuff, if you have ideas, episodes, be a part of it with us, tell us, message us. You're in the Discord, be there with us, help us improve as we grow,
and we'll make sure that it is the best thing that we can possibly create. Greg Isenberg[08:28)]And you're going to keep us on us. You're going to be in our Discord. You're going to be in our community. And if anything feels not authentic, not great, we're in this together, and we want to make this as authentic as possible.