October 20, 2025 • 17 mins
Reflection AI Secures $2 Billion Funding, Valued at $8 Billion, Backed by Nvidia
Venture Capitalist Kevin Hartz Invests in Teenage Founders Amid Rising Entrepreneurial Trend
Why Working 996 Means You've Already Lost
#SpotifyStartup, #996WorkCulture, #ReflectionAI, #VentureCapital, #KevinHartz, #Nvidia, #TeenEntrepreneurs
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Innovation Pulse, your quick, no-nonsense update covering the latest in startups and
(00:09):
entrepreneurship news. First, we will cover the latest news. Reflection AI, backed by NVIDIA,
secures a $2 billion raise and Kevin Hart's invests in teenage founders amidst a tech industry shift.
After this, we will dive deep into the discussion on the pitfalls of the 996 work culture.
(00:30):
With insights from tech journalist Yakov Lasker, Reflection AI, backed by NVIDIA,
has recently raised $2 billion, valuing the startup at $8 billion. Founded in 2024 by
ex-DeepMind researchers Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglu, the company focuses on creating
(00:51):
AI-driven tools that automate software development. This niche represents a burgeoning frontier in
offering significant efficiency gains in coding and software engineering tasks.
The funding round attracted high-profile investors such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt
and Donald Trump Jr.'s private equity firm, 1789 Capital, alongside existing backers Lightspeed
(01:17):
and Sequoia. This investment reflects the ongoing enthusiasm in the AI sector, which saw a 38%
increase in global venture funding in the third quarter of 2025, reaching $97 billion.
With nearly half of this funding directed at AI initiatives, Reflection AI's innovative approach
(01:40):
sets it apart in a crowded market that includes competitors like OpenAI and DeepSeek. The company's
new valuation marks a substantial increase from its previous funding round, highlighting the growing
confidence in its potential to transform the software development landscape.
(02:01):
Kevin Hartz, a notable venture capitalist, has shown a keen interest in investing in
teenage founders through his firm, A Star Capital. Hartz's previous successful ventures
include co-founding Zoom and Eventbrite, both of which went public. His focus on young entrepreneurs
(02:21):
comes at a time when the dropout and build movement is gaining traction, inspired by tech icons like
Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. This trend is further encouraged by programs like Z-Fellows and
Y-Combinators' new initiative for student founders. One such startup, Aru, is an AI-powered
(02:41):
prediction engine co-founded by teenagers. This reflects a broader shift towards entrepreneurship
driven by rising education costs and a challenging job market. Programs like Z-Fellows,
offering $10,000 grants to young technical founders, are similar to the Thiel Fellowship,
but with a more active, profit-driven approach. Hartz believes that the current tech landscape,
(03:08):
especially with advancements in AI, offers vast opportunities for young innovators.
Approximately 20% of his recent investments are in teenage-led ventures,
up from 5% two years ago, highlighting his commitment to this promising demographic.
And now, pivot our discussion towards the main entrepreneurship topic.
(03:38):
Hey everyone, Donna here with Innovation Pulse, and today I've got Yakov Lasker joining me.
Tech journalist, former startup founder, and someone who's seen both the glamorous and
ugly sides of Silicon Valley culture. Yakov, welcome! Thanks for having me, Donna. So I want
to hit you with something right off the bat. I was scrolling Twitter last week and saw a founder
(04:01):
literally bragging that his team hadn't seen their families in three months. Like this was a flex,
and it had 15,000 likes. Oh no. And all I could think was, this guy's company is probably failing.
Wait, hold up. You're telling me that working yourself to death is actually a red flag?
Not just a red flag, it's a confession. When someone tells you they're doing Nangna 96,
(04:26):
that's 9am to 9pm, six days a week. They're basically admitting they don't have a better
strategy. Okay. This is fascinating because it completely flips the narrative. Let's dig in.
So, 996 culture started in China's tech scene, but it's everywhere now. And the pitch is seductive,
(04:46):
right? If you're not the smartest or the most connected, at least you can be the hardest working.
It's the meritocracy myth. Effort equals results. Exactly, but here's the thing, I learned the hard
way. I spent three years as a tech journalist working until midnight regularly. And you know who
I was keeping up with? Other people also working until midnight? Bingo. Meanwhile, the person who
(05:11):
wrote one brilliant essay that went viral. They probably worked on it for eight focused hours,
published it, and then it did the work for them while they slept. That essay might still be
driving traffic five years later. Oh, that's leverage. That's leverage. And this is where it
gets interesting. When I interviewed founders at Y Combinator a few years back, I started noticing
(05:35):
a pattern. The companies that eventually became unicorns. Their founders never bragged about
ours worked. What did they talk about? They talked about insights. Like Drew Houston from Dropbox
didn't say I outworked everyone. He said, I realized people were emailing files to themselves.
And that was ridiculous. That's a different game entirely. Okay, give me a concrete example of what
(06:01):
996 culture actually looks like when it's happening. All right, so I covered this fintech startup in
2022. The CEO, let's call him Marcus. He was legendary for being first in last out every single
day. He'd send emails at 2am and expect responses by 6am. Yikes. His engineers were burning out every
(06:24):
six months. But here's the kicker. Their product was just a slightly worse version of what three
competitors already offered. So Marcus compensated with speed, more features, more updates, more
meetings about the meetings, motion over progress. Exactly. Meanwhile, one of their competitors
had a team that worked normal hours, but had figured out one key insight. They realized small
(06:49):
business owners didn't need 50 features. They needed three features that worked flawlessly
and integrated with QuickBooks. And let me guess, the competitor won? The competitor got
acquired for $200 million. Marcus's company shut down 18 months later. I actually interviewed some
of his former employees, and one of them told me, we were so busy sprinting that we never looked up
(07:15):
to see if we were running in the right direction. That's brutal. But okay, let's play Devil's
Advocate for a second. Aren't there times when you do need to grind? Like, didn't Elon Musk famously
sleep on the Tesla factory floor? Oh, I'm glad you brought that up, because it's the perfect
example of how this story gets twisted. How so? Yes. Musk slept at the factory during what he
(07:37):
called production hell. But that was a specific crisis lasting a few weeks when they were trying
to hit Model 3 production targets. It wasn't the strategy. It was firefighting. Okay, so sprinting
during a crisis versus making it your entire identity. Right? And more importantly, Tesla's
actual competitive advantage wasn't Musk's hours. It was vertical integration, battery technology,
(08:03):
and software that legacy automakers couldn't match. The hours were about solving an execution
problem, not compensating for a lack of innovation. That's a crucial distinction. Here's another angle.
I want you to think about Instagram for a second. Okay, Instagram. When they sold to Facebook for a
billion dollars, you know how many employees they had? I'm guessing not many. 13. 13 people.
(08:29):
Meanwhile, there were probably a thousand startups at that time with 50 person teams
all working 996, trying to become the next social network. But Instagram had something those teams
didn't. They had the right product at the right time. And they had distribution leverage through
mobile first design when everyone else was still thinking desktop first. Kevin Systrom talks about
(08:53):
this. They didn't win by outworking competitors. They won by making photo sharing so simple that
grandmas and teenagers both got it immediately. This is making me think about my friend Sarah.
She runs a small consultancy. Oh, what kind? She does executive coaching. And she was grinding for
years taking every client saying yes to everything, working weekends, evenings, the whole thing.
(09:17):
Then last year she did something radical. What did she do? She raised her rates by 300%.
Cut her client load in half and created a recorded course for the clients who couldn't afford her one
on one time. Let me guess. She made more money. She made more money, worked 30 hours a week instead
of 65. And this is the key part. Her clients got better results because she wasn't exhausted all
(09:41):
the time. That's pricing leverage and productization. She stopped trading time for money. But let's
talk about why this is so hard to internalize. Because I think there's something psychological
happening here. Oh, absolutely. Status anxiety is a huge part of it. What do you mean? Okay.
Imagine you're a 24 year old founder. You didn't go to Stanford. Your parents aren't rich. You don't
(10:06):
have a network. What's the one thing you can control? Your effort. Exactly. And there's something
deeply satisfying about that. It feels fair. It feels like if you just try hard enough, you'll
make it. So you stay late, you tweet about grinding, you wear your exhaustion like a badge.
It's peacocking. It's peacocking. Look how serious I am. Look how much I care. But here's the trap.
(10:34):
Effort is not the same as value. I can spend 12 hours building a feature nobody wants,
or two hours talking to customers and learning what they actually need. And the second one is
infinitely more valuable. Right. But it doesn't feel as impressive when you're trying to prove
yourself. I remember covering this founder, brilliant woman, PhD in computer science.
(10:59):
And she told me her investors kept pushing her to show more hustle. And she was like,
I don't need to hustle. I need to think. Wait, that's amazing. What happened? She ended up
leaving that VC relationship and bootstrapping instead. Built a profitable SaaS company that
runs almost entirely automated now. She works maybe 20 hours a week. So she chose leverage over
(11:24):
theater. Exactly. And this is what people don't get. If you build something that only works when
you're suffering, you haven't built a business. You've built a treadmill that you can never get off.
Okay, so let's get practical for a second. If someone's listening to this and thinking,
okay, I'm currently in the grind. How do I find leverage? What are the actual types of
(11:46):
leverage we're talking about? Great question. So there are really three main types. First,
you've got capital leverage using money to multiply your effort. Like hiring or investing in tools.
Right. Second, you've got labor leverage, building a team or creating systems that work without you.
But the most powerful one, especially early on, is intellectual leverage. Which is what exactly?
(12:12):
It's code that runs while you sleep. It's content that keeps attracting customers years after you
published it. It's a brand that does your marketing for you. It's a product so good that customers
become your sales team. Give me an example of that last one. Okay. So look at Superhuman,
the email client. They launched with a wait list. But the genius move was making the onboarding so
(12:38):
good that people would literally tweet about it. They'd say, I just had my Superhuman onboarding
call and it changed my life. So their customers did the marketing. Exactly. That's product
leverage plus distribution leverage. Meanwhile, there are email startups spending millions on ads
and working around the clock. And they're not getting anywhere close to that kind of organic
(13:01):
growth. Because they're rowing the boat and Superhuman has a sale. Perfect analogy. And here's
something I think is underappreciated, leverage compounds, but ours don't. What do you mean?
If you write a great piece of code today, it keeps working tomorrow. If you build a strong
reputation, it opens doors for years. If you develop good taste in design, every product you
(13:26):
touch benefits. But if you work 12 hours today, tomorrow you start back at zero. There's no
accumulation. This is actually making me rethink something. I always thought the most successful
people were the ones willing to work the hardest. And some of them are. But the question is, work
hard at what? Because here's the counterintuitive truth. The best founders I've met do work incredibly
(13:51):
hard. But they're working hard at finding leverage, not just executing tasks. Give me an example.
Okay. So Patrick Collison from Stripe, he's known for being intensely focused, right? But you know
what he spends time on? Reading obscure economics papers, talking to experts in random fields,
(14:12):
thinking about the nature of progress itself. That doesn't sound like 996 culture. It's not.
It's deep work. It's intellectual exploration. And it results in insights like, hey, what if we
made it 10 times easier to accept payments online? That one insight created a $50 billion company.
(14:32):
So the work is happening, but it's a different kind of work. Exactly. It's the difference between
digging ditches with a shovel versus spending time designing an excavator. Both look like work,
but one has way more leverage. Oh, that's good. I'm stealing that. So let me ask you this, Donna.
If someone's listening right now and they're stuck in 996 mode, what's the first thing they
(14:57):
should do? I think they need to audit their time and ask, what would keep working if I stopped?
That's brutal, but fair. Right? Because if the answer is nothing, then you're not building leverage.
You're just being busy. And busy is not the same as productive. Here's what I tell people.
Spend one day a week, just one day, focused entirely on leverage. Don't check email.
(15:21):
Don't take meetings. Just work on something that compounds. Like what? Like learning a high value
skill. Building something that can scale. Creating content that lasts. Automating something you do
repeatedly. Talking to customers to find the one insight that changes everything. So you're trading
five days of execution for one day of multiplication. Exactly. And over time, that ratio shifts. The more
(15:47):
leverage you build, the less you need to grind. I know designers who spend three days a month
creating templates and those templates earn them six figures while they're traveling the world.
That's the dream, right? It's not even a dream. It's just understanding what game you're playing.
Are you playing the who can work longest game or the who can build the most leverage game?
(16:11):
All right. I want to end with this because I think it's the most important point. Hit me.
The next time you're tempted to brag about working late or to feel bad because you're not
grinding like everyone else, ask yourself, am I building something valuable or am I just building
a story about how hard I'm trying? That's the question. Because the most valuable companies
(16:32):
in the world weren't built by people working the longest hours. They were built by people who found
an unfair advantage and exploited it. And if you don't have an unfair advantage yet, your job isn't
to work harder. It's to go find one. Yacov Lasker, this was fantastic. Where can people follow your
work? I'm on Twitter, oh Yacov Lasker, and I write about this stuff in my newsletter, leverage points.
(16:56):
Perfect. All right, everyone. Next time someone tries to impress you with their 80 hour work week,
remember? They might just be advertising that they haven't found their leverage yet.
I'm Donna. This is Innovation Pulse and we'll catch you next time. Stay curious, folks.
(17:16):
We've delved into how reflection AI is making waves in the tech world with substantial investments
and a shift toward young entrepreneurship, as well as explored the importance of strategic
work over long hours in achieving true productivity. Don't forget to like, subscribe,
and share this episode with your friends and colleagues so they can also stay updated on the
(17:40):
latest news and gain powerful insights. Stay tuned for more updates.
Welcome to Innovation Pulse, your quick, no-nonsense update covering the latest in startups and
(00:09):
entrepreneurship news. First, we will cover the latest news. Reflection AI, backed by NVIDIA,
secures a $2 billion raise and Kevin Hart's invests in teenage founders amidst a tech industry shift.
After this, we will dive deep into the discussion on the pitfalls of the 996 work culture.
(00:30):
With insights from tech journalist Yakov Lasker, Reflection AI, backed by NVIDIA,
has recently raised $2 billion, valuing the startup at $8 billion. Founded in 2024 by
ex-DeepMind researchers Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglu, the company focuses on creating
(00:51):
AI-driven tools that automate software development. This niche represents a burgeoning frontier in
offering significant efficiency gains in coding and software engineering tasks.
The funding round attracted high-profile investors such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt
and Donald Trump Jr.'s private equity firm, 1789 Capital, alongside existing backers Lightspeed
(01:17):
and Sequoia. This investment reflects the ongoing enthusiasm in the AI sector, which saw a 38%
increase in global venture funding in the third quarter of 2025, reaching $97 billion.
With nearly half of this funding directed at AI initiatives, Reflection AI's innovative approach
(01:40):
sets it apart in a crowded market that includes competitors like OpenAI and DeepSeek. The company's
new valuation marks a substantial increase from its previous funding round, highlighting the growing
confidence in its potential to transform the software development landscape.
(02:01):
Kevin Hartz, a notable venture capitalist, has shown a keen interest in investing in
teenage founders through his firm, A Star Capital. Hartz's previous successful ventures
include co-founding Zoom and Eventbrite, both of which went public. His focus on young entrepreneurs
(02:21):
comes at a time when the dropout and build movement is gaining traction, inspired by tech icons like
Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. This trend is further encouraged by programs like Z-Fellows and
Y-Combinators' new initiative for student founders. One such startup, Aru, is an AI-powered
(02:41):
prediction engine co-founded by teenagers. This reflects a broader shift towards entrepreneurship
driven by rising education costs and a challenging job market. Programs like Z-Fellows,
offering $10,000 grants to young technical founders, are similar to the Thiel Fellowship,
but with a more active, profit-driven approach. Hartz believes that the current tech landscape,
(03:08):
especially with advancements in AI, offers vast opportunities for young innovators.
Approximately 20% of his recent investments are in teenage-led ventures,
up from 5% two years ago, highlighting his commitment to this promising demographic.
And now, pivot our discussion towards the main entrepreneurship topic.
(03:38):
Hey everyone, Donna here with Innovation Pulse, and today I've got Yakov Lasker joining me.
Tech journalist, former startup founder, and someone who's seen both the glamorous and
ugly sides of Silicon Valley culture. Yakov, welcome! Thanks for having me, Donna. So I want
to hit you with something right off the bat. I was scrolling Twitter last week and saw a founder
(04:01):
literally bragging that his team hadn't seen their families in three months. Like this was a flex,
and it had 15,000 likes. Oh no. And all I could think was, this guy's company is probably failing.
Wait, hold up. You're telling me that working yourself to death is actually a red flag?
Not just a red flag, it's a confession. When someone tells you they're doing Nangna 96,
(04:26):
that's 9am to 9pm, six days a week. They're basically admitting they don't have a better
strategy. Okay. This is fascinating because it completely flips the narrative. Let's dig in.
So, 996 culture started in China's tech scene, but it's everywhere now. And the pitch is seductive,
(04:46):
right? If you're not the smartest or the most connected, at least you can be the hardest working.
It's the meritocracy myth. Effort equals results. Exactly, but here's the thing, I learned the hard
way. I spent three years as a tech journalist working until midnight regularly. And you know who
I was keeping up with? Other people also working until midnight? Bingo. Meanwhile, the person who
(05:11):
wrote one brilliant essay that went viral. They probably worked on it for eight focused hours,
published it, and then it did the work for them while they slept. That essay might still be
driving traffic five years later. Oh, that's leverage. That's leverage. And this is where it
gets interesting. When I interviewed founders at Y Combinator a few years back, I started noticing
(05:35):
a pattern. The companies that eventually became unicorns. Their founders never bragged about
ours worked. What did they talk about? They talked about insights. Like Drew Houston from Dropbox
didn't say I outworked everyone. He said, I realized people were emailing files to themselves.
And that was ridiculous. That's a different game entirely. Okay, give me a concrete example of what
(06:01):
996 culture actually looks like when it's happening. All right, so I covered this fintech startup in
2022. The CEO, let's call him Marcus. He was legendary for being first in last out every single
day. He'd send emails at 2am and expect responses by 6am. Yikes. His engineers were burning out every
(06:24):
six months. But here's the kicker. Their product was just a slightly worse version of what three
competitors already offered. So Marcus compensated with speed, more features, more updates, more
meetings about the meetings, motion over progress. Exactly. Meanwhile, one of their competitors
had a team that worked normal hours, but had figured out one key insight. They realized small
(06:49):
business owners didn't need 50 features. They needed three features that worked flawlessly
and integrated with QuickBooks. And let me guess, the competitor won? The competitor got
acquired for $200 million. Marcus's company shut down 18 months later. I actually interviewed some
of his former employees, and one of them told me, we were so busy sprinting that we never looked up
(07:15):
to see if we were running in the right direction. That's brutal. But okay, let's play Devil's
Advocate for a second. Aren't there times when you do need to grind? Like, didn't Elon Musk famously
sleep on the Tesla factory floor? Oh, I'm glad you brought that up, because it's the perfect
example of how this story gets twisted. How so? Yes. Musk slept at the factory during what he
(07:37):
called production hell. But that was a specific crisis lasting a few weeks when they were trying
to hit Model 3 production targets. It wasn't the strategy. It was firefighting. Okay, so sprinting
during a crisis versus making it your entire identity. Right? And more importantly, Tesla's
actual competitive advantage wasn't Musk's hours. It was vertical integration, battery technology,
(08:03):
and software that legacy automakers couldn't match. The hours were about solving an execution
problem, not compensating for a lack of innovation. That's a crucial distinction. Here's another angle.
I want you to think about Instagram for a second. Okay, Instagram. When they sold to Facebook for a
billion dollars, you know how many employees they had? I'm guessing not many. 13. 13 people.
(08:29):
Meanwhile, there were probably a thousand startups at that time with 50 person teams
all working 996, trying to become the next social network. But Instagram had something those teams
didn't. They had the right product at the right time. And they had distribution leverage through
mobile first design when everyone else was still thinking desktop first. Kevin Systrom talks about
(08:53):
this. They didn't win by outworking competitors. They won by making photo sharing so simple that
grandmas and teenagers both got it immediately. This is making me think about my friend Sarah.
She runs a small consultancy. Oh, what kind? She does executive coaching. And she was grinding for
years taking every client saying yes to everything, working weekends, evenings, the whole thing.
(09:17):
Then last year she did something radical. What did she do? She raised her rates by 300%.
Cut her client load in half and created a recorded course for the clients who couldn't afford her one
on one time. Let me guess. She made more money. She made more money, worked 30 hours a week instead
of 65. And this is the key part. Her clients got better results because she wasn't exhausted all
(09:41):
the time. That's pricing leverage and productization. She stopped trading time for money. But let's
talk about why this is so hard to internalize. Because I think there's something psychological
happening here. Oh, absolutely. Status anxiety is a huge part of it. What do you mean? Okay.
Imagine you're a 24 year old founder. You didn't go to Stanford. Your parents aren't rich. You don't
(10:06):
have a network. What's the one thing you can control? Your effort. Exactly. And there's something
deeply satisfying about that. It feels fair. It feels like if you just try hard enough, you'll
make it. So you stay late, you tweet about grinding, you wear your exhaustion like a badge.
It's peacocking. It's peacocking. Look how serious I am. Look how much I care. But here's the trap.
(10:34):
Effort is not the same as value. I can spend 12 hours building a feature nobody wants,
or two hours talking to customers and learning what they actually need. And the second one is
infinitely more valuable. Right. But it doesn't feel as impressive when you're trying to prove
yourself. I remember covering this founder, brilliant woman, PhD in computer science.
(10:59):
And she told me her investors kept pushing her to show more hustle. And she was like,
I don't need to hustle. I need to think. Wait, that's amazing. What happened? She ended up
leaving that VC relationship and bootstrapping instead. Built a profitable SaaS company that
runs almost entirely automated now. She works maybe 20 hours a week. So she chose leverage over
(11:24):
theater. Exactly. And this is what people don't get. If you build something that only works when
you're suffering, you haven't built a business. You've built a treadmill that you can never get off.
Okay, so let's get practical for a second. If someone's listening to this and thinking,
okay, I'm currently in the grind. How do I find leverage? What are the actual types of
(11:46):
leverage we're talking about? Great question. So there are really three main types. First,
you've got capital leverage using money to multiply your effort. Like hiring or investing in tools.
Right. Second, you've got labor leverage, building a team or creating systems that work without you.
But the most powerful one, especially early on, is intellectual leverage. Which is what exactly?
(12:12):
It's code that runs while you sleep. It's content that keeps attracting customers years after you
published it. It's a brand that does your marketing for you. It's a product so good that customers
become your sales team. Give me an example of that last one. Okay. So look at Superhuman,
the email client. They launched with a wait list. But the genius move was making the onboarding so
(12:38):
good that people would literally tweet about it. They'd say, I just had my Superhuman onboarding
call and it changed my life. So their customers did the marketing. Exactly. That's product
leverage plus distribution leverage. Meanwhile, there are email startups spending millions on ads
and working around the clock. And they're not getting anywhere close to that kind of organic
(13:01):
growth. Because they're rowing the boat and Superhuman has a sale. Perfect analogy. And here's
something I think is underappreciated, leverage compounds, but ours don't. What do you mean?
If you write a great piece of code today, it keeps working tomorrow. If you build a strong
reputation, it opens doors for years. If you develop good taste in design, every product you
(13:26):
touch benefits. But if you work 12 hours today, tomorrow you start back at zero. There's no
accumulation. This is actually making me rethink something. I always thought the most successful
people were the ones willing to work the hardest. And some of them are. But the question is, work
hard at what? Because here's the counterintuitive truth. The best founders I've met do work incredibly
(13:51):
hard. But they're working hard at finding leverage, not just executing tasks. Give me an example.
Okay. So Patrick Collison from Stripe, he's known for being intensely focused, right? But you know
what he spends time on? Reading obscure economics papers, talking to experts in random fields,
(14:12):
thinking about the nature of progress itself. That doesn't sound like 996 culture. It's not.
It's deep work. It's intellectual exploration. And it results in insights like, hey, what if we
made it 10 times easier to accept payments online? That one insight created a $50 billion company.
(14:32):
So the work is happening, but it's a different kind of work. Exactly. It's the difference between
digging ditches with a shovel versus spending time designing an excavator. Both look like work,
but one has way more leverage. Oh, that's good. I'm stealing that. So let me ask you this, Donna.
If someone's listening right now and they're stuck in 996 mode, what's the first thing they
(14:57):
should do? I think they need to audit their time and ask, what would keep working if I stopped?
That's brutal, but fair. Right? Because if the answer is nothing, then you're not building leverage.
You're just being busy. And busy is not the same as productive. Here's what I tell people.
Spend one day a week, just one day, focused entirely on leverage. Don't check email.
(15:21):
Don't take meetings. Just work on something that compounds. Like what? Like learning a high value
skill. Building something that can scale. Creating content that lasts. Automating something you do
repeatedly. Talking to customers to find the one insight that changes everything. So you're trading
five days of execution for one day of multiplication. Exactly. And over time, that ratio shifts. The more
(15:47):
leverage you build, the less you need to grind. I know designers who spend three days a month
creating templates and those templates earn them six figures while they're traveling the world.
That's the dream, right? It's not even a dream. It's just understanding what game you're playing.
Are you playing the who can work longest game or the who can build the most leverage game?
(16:11):
All right. I want to end with this because I think it's the most important point. Hit me.
The next time you're tempted to brag about working late or to feel bad because you're not
grinding like everyone else, ask yourself, am I building something valuable or am I just building
a story about how hard I'm trying? That's the question. Because the most valuable companies
(16:32):
in the world weren't built by people working the longest hours. They were built by people who found
an unfair advantage and exploited it. And if you don't have an unfair advantage yet, your job isn't
to work harder. It's to go find one. Yacov Lasker, this was fantastic. Where can people follow your
work? I'm on Twitter, oh Yacov Lasker, and I write about this stuff in my newsletter, leverage points.
(16:56):
Perfect. All right, everyone. Next time someone tries to impress you with their 80 hour work week,
remember? They might just be advertising that they haven't found their leverage yet.
I'm Donna. This is Innovation Pulse and we'll catch you next time. Stay curious, folks.
(17:16):
We've delved into how reflection AI is making waves in the tech world with substantial investments
and a shift toward young entrepreneurship, as well as explored the importance of strategic
work over long hours in achieving true productivity. Don't forget to like, subscribe,
and share this episode with your friends and colleagues so they can also stay updated on the
(17:40):
latest news and gain powerful insights. Stay tuned for more updates.
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