Mark Brooks
@ProlificWisdom · 3:32
Author Interview - "The Young Entrepreneurs" - Swish Goswami & Quinn Underwood
Welcome to the first of many new Prolific Wisdom interview conversations. As you prolific Wisdom has been around for several years and we're looking for the just the right format that would allow us to thoughtfully lee have an interview conversation with authors of new books covering business and wellness marketing and behavioral economics. Swell is helping us do that. And so welcome Swish and Quinn to the first in our new format of Prolific Wisdom interview conversations. You've written a very interesting book that I've not seen before
Swish Goswami
@swish · 3:45
Hey, Mark, thanks so much for the wonderful questions. You definitely nailed it. You know, I think we're trying to go for an audience for the book that is 15 to 25. That's kind of the age range we're going for. So individuals that are in high school or individual that are in college, whether it's doing their undergrad or their master's degree
Mark Brooks
@ProlificWisdom · 2:33
Another question for you I'd like to pose is you mentioned in the book the question that one should ask when building a business is why your solution hasn't been made already, which is a wonderfully simple question, which really gets into the point of innovation. We think about sustainable competitive advantage. You need to produce something that perhaps cannot quite so easily be copied and produced. And so that question recuts to the core of why hasn't it already been produced?
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Swish Goswami
@swish · 4:40
I think Alfred Lynch and Sequoia said this best that true innovation comes when you make something 20% better. And that's what we've tried to do. Even with Surf, they have been previous concepts out there that allow people to earn from their data, generate ads, brave browser, et cetera. What we decided to do is say, hey, all of these platforms that allow you to earn from your data are requiring you to take surveys or watch ads or click specific links on the internet
Mark Brooks
@ProlificWisdom · 2:25
Thank you. Swish yeah, that really helps. I think what you talk to is really encouraging youngsters, you know, 15 to 25 year old students to find themselves and find discipline and really focus on making something 20% better as a golden rule, rather than completely trying to do something that is 100% better. And I think that really takes the pressure off and is realistic. I think you're encouraging students to go through the exercise with the view to learning
Swish Goswami
@swish · 3:26
Mark? That's a great question. I mean, look, most of the examples that we draw upon let's take out Amazon, for example. But let's talk about airbnb. We talk a lot about airbnb, especially around, you know, the MVP and customer feedback sections. We try to pull screenshots up from their early, early days. We tried to pull references from the early days where the product wasn't what you expected is now after a billion dollar valuation
Mark Brooks
@ProlificWisdom · 1:41
As the leader of your company, you have to build it from scratch, and that can be quite a lonely process. So it is rather essential to build a community. So I think a question for you. You cover so much breadth in the book. What did you leave out? Is there anything that you left out that if you were to write another book, you'd want to continue?
Swish Goswami
@swish · 2:14
Again, when you asked a question about writing another book, I was like, oh, my God, because I can't even think about it. This one took about three and a half, four years to write. It was a fun process, but definitely an excruciating process
Mark Brooks
@ProlificWisdom · 2:22
So I really appreciate what you've done with it, and I must say you've done a lot in your relatively young years. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do in the next five to ten years. And also, Quinn, your startup, Autumn, I'm really looking forward to learning more about that start up. You have a mental health start up that uses AI