Mark: Forget your MBA. The most potent advice for a startup founder in 2024 might come from a 19th-century philosopher who famously declared God is dead. Sounds crazy, right? Well, today we’re arguing that Nietzsche is the ultimate mentor for anyone trying to build the future. Michelle: Okay, hold on. Nietzsche? The guy with the giant mustache and the reputation for being incredibly bleak? You're telling me he's a business guru? That feels like asking a shark for swimming lessons. Mark: That's exactly the reaction authors Dave Jilk and Brad Feld are counting on in their book, 'The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors.' What's fascinating is that Feld is a major venture capitalist, co-founder of Techstars, and he and Jilk have been business partners for nearly four decades. They're not academics in an ivory tower; they're in the trenches, and they see a direct line from Nietzsche's thinking to building revolutionary companies. Michelle: I have to admit, that context changes things. A VC co-opting a philosopher is one thing, but two long-time partners who have actually built and funded companies... that's different. So what's the connection? Where do they even start? Mark: They start with a radical idea: that the best entrepreneurs and the most disruptive philosophers are essentially playing the same game. They're both what Nietzsche called "free spirits." Michelle: "Free spirits." That sounds a little... floaty. Like something you'd see on a motivational poster. What does it actually mean in this context? Mark: It means they're not just improving an existing product by 10%. They're not just making a better mousetrap. They are fundamentally challenging the rules of the game. Nietzsche took a hammer to the foundations of Western morality and philosophy. A true disruptor, like the founder of Airbnb or Uber, does the same thing to their industry. They don't just compete; they create entirely new values and ways of operating. Michelle: Okay, so it’s about being a revolutionary, not just an operator. But that still feels very abstract. How does a founder, who's worried about burn rate and product-market fit, actually use that? Mark: This is where the book gets brilliant. It argues that every great entrepreneurial project is built on a theory of human nature. You have to understand why people do what they do. And the foreword, written by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, gives this incredible, slightly sinister example. Michelle: Oh, I'm ready for sinister. Let's hear it.

Mark: Hoffman talks about giving lectures to business school students for years. They're all obsessed with metrics: Customer Acquisition Cost, Lifetime Value... all the MBA jargon. And he stops them and says, those are just numbers. To get to those numbers, you have to understand what makes people tick. And then he drops the bomb. He says, "Investing in the consumer internet means investing in one or more of the seven deadly sins." Michelle: Wow. That is not what they teach you in Marketing 101. So he's saying successful tech companies are basically just catering to our worst impulses? Mark: Exactly. He asks them to think about it. What is Facebook? It's partly envy—seeing other people's curated lives. What is LinkedIn? It's pride, or maybe greed—showcasing your accomplishments to get ahead. What is Tinder? Lust, obviously. His point isn't to be cynical, but to be ruthlessly honest about human motivation. A spreadsheet can't tell you that. Philosophy, the study of human nature, can. Michelle: That's fascinating. It reframes the whole endeavor. You're not just building an app; you're building a delivery system for a fundamental human desire, even a "sinful" one. It’s about seeing the world as it is, not as we wish it were. Mark: Precisely. Nietzsche was all about that kind of clear-eyed, unsentimental analysis. He wanted to strip away the comforting illusions and see what was really driving humanity. The book argues that founders have to do the same. You can't build something truly disruptive based on a polite fiction of how people should behave. You have to build it based on how they do behave. Michelle: So the first step to being a Nietzschean entrepreneur is to become a better psychologist, to understand the messy, irrational, and sometimes dark parts of your customer. Mark: Yes. And to have the courage to build something based on that truth, even if it makes people uncomfortable. That's the core of the disruptor's mindset. It's a philosophical stance before it's a business plan. Michelle: I can see how that would be a powerful edge. But that kind of ruthless honesty must be incredibly difficult to maintain, especially when things go wrong. It's one thing to philosophize when you're on top, but what happens when your brilliant theory of human nature crashes into reality and you're facing ruin? Mark: That's the perfect question, because it leads us to the book's most uncomfortable, but maybe most important, idea: the power of hitting rock bottom.

Michelle: Ah, the "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" cliché. I'm a little skeptical of that one. Sometimes what doesn't kill you just leaves you with a limp and a lot of trauma. Mark: The book would agree with your skepticism, actually. It's not about simple resilience. It's about something deeper. They use this incredible Nietzsche quote: "Whence come the highest mountains? ... Out of the deepest must the highest come to its height." The idea isn't just that you survive the fall; it's that the fall itself is what makes the future height possible. Michelle: Okay, you're going to have to give me a story for that one. That sounds like something you tell yourself after you've succeeded to make the suffering seem meaningful. Mark: Fair enough. And the authors, Jilk and Feld, provide a deeply personal one. It's about their first company, Feld Technologies, back in 1988. They were just out of college, running a software company out of an office across from their fraternity house. Michelle: I'm picturing a classic startup scene. Pizza boxes, late nights, a lot of youthful confidence. Mark: Exactly. And for nine months, it was working. They were breaking even, things were fine. Then, at the end of January, the financial results came in. They had lost $10,000 in a single month. For a tiny, bootstrapped company, that was a death sentence. Michelle: Oh, that's that cold-sweat, pit-of-your-stomach moment. What went wrong? Mark: Everything. They dug in and found a total breakdown of discipline. Dave, one of the founders, was using developers on speculative future products instead of billable client work. Brad, the other founder, was selling computer hardware with almost no margin just to feel busy. And to top it all off, their most productive developer quit unexpectedly to focus on his studies. The whole thing was unraveling. Michelle: That is every founder's absolute nightmare. It's not one big external disaster; it's a death by a thousand internal cuts. So what did they do? Mark: They did something brutal. They walked into the office, fired every single employee, shut the office down, sold the furniture, and moved the entire business into their respective apartments. They went from being CEOs of a small company to just two guys working from home, surrounded by the wreckage of their ambition. Michelle: Wow. That's not just hitting bottom; that's digging a basement under the bottom. The humiliation must have been intense. Mark: It was. But here's the Nietzschean twist. That absolute low point, that moment of total failure, became the bedrock of their future success. It forced them to confront the fundamental flaws in how they were operating. They learned, in a way no business book could ever teach them, about cash flow, about focus, about what actually creates value versus what just feels like work. Michelle: So the pain wasn't just an obstacle to overcome; it was the lesson itself. The experience was inscribed into their DNA. Mark: Exactly. The book says that achieving great success often requires experiencing great pain first. It's in that moment of reassessment, when all your assumptions have been shattered, that you can build something new and truly strong. Feld Technologies recovered and became a success. That experience became a foundational story, a part of their company culture that guided them for years. It was their "deepest" point, and their future "height" grew directly out of it. Michelle: That makes so much sense. It’s not about romanticizing failure, but about recognizing its transformative power. It strips away the ego and forces you to focus on what is real and what works. But it seems like so much of this is about enduring pain and darkness. Is there any joy in Nietzsche's version of entrepreneurship?

Mark: That's the perfect question, because it leads to his most surprising and, I think, most hopeful idea about leadership. It comes from another quote: "The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play." Michelle: Wait, so maturity is about becoming more like a child? My whole life I've been told the opposite. 'Adulting' is about being serious, responsible, and putting away childish things. Mark: Nietzsche flips that completely. Think about a child who is deeply engrossed in a game. They're not just having fun; they are intensely, completely focused. There's a seriousness to their play that is pure and driven by internal passion, not by external obligation. Nietzsche argues that that is true maturity—to find that state of joyful, all-consuming focus in your work. Michelle: Honestly, most days at work feel like the opposite of play. They feel like a chore, a list of obligations. How does a leader even begin to cultivate that feeling for themselves, let alone for a whole team? Mark: The book tells the story of Sphero, and it's the perfect illustration. The founders, Ian and Adam, were in the Techstars accelerator program. And their initial idea was... a smartphone-controlled garage door opener. Michelle: That is the most sensible, uninspiring, 'adult' business idea I have ever heard. I'm already bored. Mark: So were the mentors at Techstars! They pushed them, challenged them to think bigger, to find something that actually excited them. So, they went back to the drawing board. And they came up with a new idea: a robotic ball you could control with your phone. Michelle: Okay, now that sounds like play. Mark: The energy shifted instantly. They weren't just solving a boring problem anymore; they were tackling a fun, difficult engineering challenge that they were genuinely passionate about. They were playing. They built this amazing little robotic ball, not entirely sure what the business model was, but they loved the work itself. Michelle: They were following the joy, not the market analysis. I love that. But how does that turn into a real business? Mark: This is the magic moment. They get into the Disney Accelerator program. And one day, the CEO of Disney at the time, Bob Iger, walks in. He's a mentor in the program. He shows them a picture on his phone from a movie that's still in production. It's a picture of a new droid, BB-8. And he looks at their robotic ball and asks a simple question: "Can you make this?" Michelle: No way. That's the kind of moment you only see in movies. So their 'play' put them in the exact right place at the exact right time to land a deal with Star Wars? Mark: Precisely. They licensed the technology, and the Sphero BB-8 became one of the best-selling toys in the world. The company exploded. And it all started because they abandoned a 'mature,' sensible idea for one that awakened their inner child. They reacquired the seriousness of play, and it led them to a success they never could have planned for in a spreadsheet. Michelle: That's incredible. It completely reframes what leadership should feel like. It’s not about the grim march of responsibility. It's about finding that core purpose, that 'why,' that makes the work feel like an essential, joyful game.

Mark: And that really ties all three ideas together. The entrepreneurial journey, through this Nietzschean lens, starts with a philosophical mindset to challenge the world and see it for what it is. That mindset is then forged and proven in the fire of necessary failure, where you hit bottom and learn the most profound lessons. And finally, it's sustained by a leader's ability to rediscover a sense of purposeful play, which is what attracts talent and unlocks true innovation. Michelle: It's a much more holistic and, frankly, more human view of entrepreneurship than we usually get. It’s not just about tactics and growth hacks. It’s about becoming a certain type of person. It really makes you ask yourself: Are you just running a business, or are you inventing new values? Are you avoiding failure, or are you learning from its depths? And most importantly, have you forgotten how to play? Mark: That's a powerful set of questions for anyone, founder or not. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Find us on our socials and tell us about a time when a failure turned into a victory, or when 'play' led to a breakthrough. We learn so much from your stories. Michelle: We really do. Your insights make this whole conversation richer. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.