Guest: Shoaib Makani, CEO of Motive
“When we fail,” says Shoaib Makani, “it is because we have not understood the customer problem deeply and allowed them to guide us.” This wisdom is hard-won: Motive’s first product, an app for fleet management of trucks, idled for four years before becoming a runaway success story. Emboldened by this, the CEO tried to make an orthogonal push into all kinds of freight, “guns blazing,” only to realize six months in that he had way overestimated Motive’s competitive advantage. Retreating from freight was “painful,” Shoaib recalls, but helped the company extend its existing lead in trucking — and may have saved the whole business.
In this episode — joined by special guest Ilya Fushman from Kleiner Perkins — Shoaib and Joubin discuss curiosity for the world, first impressions, reorienting yourself, electronic logging devices, directly connecting with customers, growing up as a CEO, waiting for the market, having a “low discount rate on the future,” the physical economy TAM, AI dash cams, and pricing in risk, and running out of runway.
In this episode, we cover:
Links:
#192 CTO and Co-Founder Discord, Stanislav Vishnevskiy: Ship It
#191 CEO and Co-Founder Intercom, Eoghan McCabe: Second Beginning
#190 Co-Founder Cost Plus Drugs, Mark Cuban: Mavs to Meds
#189 Co-Founder Watershed, Taylor Francis: Worthy Missions
#188 CEO and Co-Founder Synthesia, Victor Riparbelli w/ Josh Coyne: Gorilla in the Room
#187 President & COO of AG1, Kat Cole: Wings to Supplements
#186 COO Asana, Anne Raimondi: Recovering Perfectionist
#185 CEO and Founder Netskope, Sanjay Beri: The Trenches
#184 Former CEO and Co-Founder Sun, Scott McNealy: In the Piñata
#183 CEO and Co-Founder Harness, Jyoti Bansal: Three-Layered Cake
#182 CEO and Co-Founder Cribl, Clint Sharp: Finding Traction
#181 CEO Transcarent, Glen Tullman: Problem Solving
#180 CEO and Co-Founder Verkada, Filip Kaliszan: Outlier
#179 CEO and Co-Founder Zapier, Wade Foster: Missouri’s Connector
#178 Author of “Radical Candor,” Kim Scott: Uncommon Sense
#177 President and Co-Founder Anthropic, Daniela Amodei: AI Hurricane
#176 CEO MongoDB, Dev Ittycheria: Edge
#175 CEO Snowflake, Frank Slootman: Amped
#174 CEO and Co-Founder Ginkgo Bioworks, Jason Kelly: Life Finds a Way
#173 Author of “The Qualified Sales Leader,” John McMahon: The Five-Time CRO
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Commercial Edge: Unleash the Power of People
The emPOWERed Half Hour
NABOR® TALKS
U.S Property Podcast
Aligned Money Show
The Ramsey Show
Planet Money