2 am thoughts with Michelle

Young, Scrappy, and Hungry is Typedream’s podcast where our founders talk about the product, stuff they’ve learned along the way, the founder mindset, and things they think about as immigrant startup founders in Silicon Valley.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7q3VqmJzaektO35ms0jGS4

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2-a-m-thoughts/id1678220914?i=1000605098528

Full Transcript

Hi, I'm Michelle, one of the co-founders at Typedream. I'm one of those people whose thoughts come at around 02:00 A.M., and I would forget all about it the following morning. So this time, I thought I'd just record it, treat it as a personal journal, and share it in case others find it helpful.

Probably boring, but if you're interested, here it goes.

So, the thought that went on my mind today is how a lot of brands sell dreams and not the product itself. An example that I really like is Nike. If you think about it, other shoes sell for $50, but a pair of Nike shoes sell for $200, which is crazy if you think about it because an iPad costs $300. And the interesting part is that people don't even question the $200 price tag for a pair of Nike shoes.

So, how did Nike manage to do this? There is this really famous ad of Nike's from the 60s or 70s in which they showed an elderly running while wearing a pair of Nike shoes. And the message that they're trying to convey here is that if this elderly can do it, then you can also do it. They're trying to convince us to just start doing it because you can. Hence the famous slogan, "Just do it."

Another thing is that Nike sponsors the best and only the best athletes like Michael Jordan. Hence the famous Nike Air Jordan, LeBron James, and other famous athletes. So, the dream that they're trying to sell here is that if you want to be a really good athlete, a really good NBA player, then you've got to have a pair of Nike shoes.

So, I thought this was really interesting and that I want to do this with Typedream. And the dream that I want to sell with Typedream is that we help people get from zero to one, so nothing to something. And I feel like we're really well-positioned to do this for two reasons.

The first is because of the founders. Second, because of our current customer base. The founders, there are five of us. We all came from nothing. We were all immigrants. We didn't have any friends, no connections here in the US. But we managed to build Typedream, got into Y Combinator, and funded by other Silicon Valley investors as well.

In terms of our current customer base, Typedream is a really simple website builder. So, most of our customers use Typedream to simply jot down their ideas. They just move their ideas from their heads into something which is in the form of a website, add a form to collect leads or interest, and then they would share it to socials or to their community for other people to help validate their idea. So, yeah, the stories that they've been telling to their community is that Typedream helped them get from zero to something. Yeah, so that's basically it.

I want to do this by sharing my story building Typedream. I'm going to ask my co-founders to do this as well, to share their stories from their points of view. Also, I want to interview our customers to hopefully have them share their stories and how Typedream has played a role in it. I'm going to make it into a YouTube video podcast, and repurpose it to TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, blog, email, basically everything. Yeah, that's about it.

Thanks for listening. If you like this, please let me know so I can keep doing this. Good night. Bye!