What we talked about
Adam Spector is a four time founder, CEO of Chore, early stage investor, and podcast host who believes execution beats strategy and focus compounds. In this conversation, Adam explains why founders lose momentum when they get buried in back office work and why delegating non core tasks is one of the fastest ways to buy back time, freedom, and clarity.
Show notes
Adam Spector has not played a video game in eight or nine years, not because he does not enjoy them, but because every hour spent on them is an hour not spent building. He works six days a week and has for about 15 years, considers it normal rather than extreme, and compares the capacity to an Olympian who has built up a specific kind of endurance. The clearer insight he offers, though, is the opposite: that for most founders and most businesses, staying small, focused, and profitable is not a failure of ambition, it may be the smarter and happier path.
What we covered
- The execution-versus-strategy lesson came from his time as a product manager at Twitter, where large team meetings consumed enormous amounts of time synchronizing everyone on 6-to-24-month plans. His view is that in any smaller, faster-moving company, the time spent writing strategy documents produces the feeling of progress without the reality, actually putting a product in front of customers and asking whether they will buy it is worth far more.
- The founding thesis for Chor is that back-office operations, HR, finance, compliance, equity, have been run essentially the same way since the East India Company: someone with a ledger tracking who worked how much and paying accordingly. Founders who handle this internally are spending time on something that does not advance the business, and it is the leading reason visionary founders lose focus and companies fail.
- Adam uses outsourcing analogies that remove the abstraction: no one builds their own power plant even though electricity is critical to their work. No one built their own podcasting software to record this conversation. The argument is that specialization is already the default for everything else, and back-office operations are the strange holdout where founders still think doing it themselves makes sense.
- He has a direct investment filter: when a non-technical founder pitches at Autopilot without a working demo, he declines on the spot. In his view, the barrier to building even a vibe-coded prototype of a product is now essentially zero, and if a founder has not done that, it is evidence they are not obsessed enough with the problem to be fundable. Obsession is the first criterion he looks for; creativity in pursuing the market is second.
- His counterintuitive advice for most founders: do not scale. Most businesses should stay small, with few or no employees, and optimize for the salary and lifestyle they want rather than for an exit. The moment a founder starts scaling because outside pressure tells them they should, they add complexity, lose the thing that made the business enjoyable, and often destroy it. Growth can equal death.
- On AI and defensibility: AI lowers the cost of building, which means new competitors appear faster, which means the moat matters more, not less. The answer is not to slow down, it is to execute faster, layer products, and capture market position before someone with the same AI tools copies what is working.
About Adam
Adam Spector is a four-time founder and the CEO of Chor, a back-office services company that handles HR, finance, compliance, and equity for startups. He is also a General Partner at the Autopilot Fund, host of the Entrepreneurial Excellence podcast with roughly 120 episodes recorded, and an early-stage investor focused on companies that help organizations operate better.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamspector2
- Website: https://www.hirechore.com
Episode 130 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the pre-Vered podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today we’re joined by Adam Spector. He’s a four-time founders, operator, and a prolific early stage investor. Adam is a founder and CEO of Chor, a company built to remove the back office admin tax so founders can stay focused on building.
He also hosts the entrepreneurial excellent podcast where he interviews multiple time founders about the decisions and actions that drive great outcomes. And as a general partner at the autopilot fund, he invests in early stage companies that helps organizations operate better. He has a clear eye on what makes founders and products defensible, especially in an AI shaped world. Adam’s personal thesis is simple and sharp. Execution.
beats strategy and focus compounds. Adams, welcome to the show.
Adam Spector (01:04) Federico, it is great to be here. Thank you for that very warm welcome. I’m not sure I can live up to all the things you said, but I will do my best.
Federico Ramallo (01:11) I am honored to have you here today and you’re very humble. So for people meeting you for the first time, what do you do?
Adam Spector (01:21) So what does Troy do or what do I do or both?
Federico Ramallo (01:24) Well, we can start with you and then we can talk about short, right?
Adam Spector (01:28) Yeah, so for me, look, as an individual, as you mentioned, like I feel like have many things I’m doing all at once on a regular basis. So my day to day is I’m the CEO and founder of Chor. Chor is a back office services company. We essentially run the HR, finance, compliance and equity for startups. The high level thesis being founders of any type of business should be focused on their core thing that they love the most.
And anything that distracts them from that hurts their overall business, right? It can be a tech company, but it could be everything to like, let’s pretend that there’s a pie company too. So let’s say you have a pie company and you love making baking pies, right? That’s all you love to do. But next thing you know, you’re hiring a team. You have to manage an office or a, you know, a storefront. You have to deal with paying taxes and benefits and all these other different issues that come up when you run a company. And suddenly what you were doing is you just wanted to
pies. And what you find yourself doing instead is running admin to keep the company running. And that is actually how most companies fail, is the founder who is the driving force and the visionary loses that focus because they are distracted by all the back-offs admin. So,
We can dig into more of that, yeah, so founder, spend a lot of my time on that. Do a decent amount of early stage investing. I have my own podcast, as you said, and maybe most important, I’m also the father of two wonderful young boys.
Federico Ramallo (02:52) Amazing, I think that in the world that we’re living, being able to have a complete family, being able to be present with our kids becomes much more important.
Adam Spector (03:02) Very much so. I would add, by the way, being present with your friends, too. It’s very easy to drop into things on a, be in a digital world and ignore the real life in-person meetings that are too infrequent in the post-COVID world that we live in, but more and more important in the AI world we’re entering.
Federico Ramallo (03:23) Right, right. mean, with social networks, how the synthetic work, you know, content we’re experiencing, you know, having personal relationships become much more important, I agree. ⁓ Yeah, and it’s not only important for the kids, it’s also important for the family, but it’s also important for the founder because you need that balance.
Adam Spector (03:37) Right.
Federico Ramallo (03:48) where I mean, it happens with my wife. mean, my wife is my co-founder and basically the way that I feel it is doesn’t matter what happens with the business, you know, we’re still together. Doesn’t matter what happens with the world. You know, we’re still together. We, have each other, right? And that gives you the peace of mind to go and chase the dreams, right?
Adam Spector (04:11) Yeah, and I think it’s really important for everybody to have that level of stability in their lives. And it’s really tough when people don’t have that base of stability at home or in their lives. Like, you obviously want to show up the best that you can at work every day, or at least I think that’s obvious, that you should show up the best you can at work every day. But if you are unhappy with life in different ways or if your living situation is really stressful…
it makes it very difficult to do other things at work or for your team that are critical. So solving for that is the first and most important thing. And then everything else falls into place.
Federico Ramallo (04:52) Right, right, because then you have the, you know, your support network, your core family together. And then when you reach success, which is more likely with that foundational support, then it feels better because you have somebody to share it with, right?
Adam Spector (05:09) Absolutely. I would hope to never be that rich billionaire who has no friends and no family, my family hates me. Like that sounds terrible to be that. you know, I would say like Elon Musk, who is no doubt in my mind, one of the world’s best entrepreneurs. And as an entrepreneur, we should look up to him in many ways.
I don’t get the impression that he is a happy individual. I don’t get the impression that his kids love him in any significant way. Many of them hate him, at least publicly what I’ve read. And many of his former spouses hate him as well.
Is that a life that I want? You know, you know, not no, but at the same time, like, he’s made a dent in the universe in a way that very few people ever have. So I could say there’s some benefit to that, but it’s a real trade-off, let’s put it that way. When you make such a dent in the universe in a positive way, you also sacrifice a lot. And certainly, Elon Musk has sacrificed a ton for the impact he’s made in the world.
Federico Ramallo (06:03) Yeah, mean, on every high performing role, know, people sacrifice the family, sacrifice the friends, you know. So I admire everything he accomplished, right. But I wouldn’t want that in my life. I wouldn’t want that, you know, lack of family, lack of foundational support. Right. So I’d rather aim for myself a little bit lower of, you know, a little bit more balance. Right.
Because I think that leads to a happier life,
Adam Spector (06:26) next week.
Totally, totally agree.
Federico Ramallo (06:30) Yeah, yeah. So you say execution is greater than strategy. When did you learn that lesson?
Adam Spector (06:38) Probably a combination of obviously the four different startups that I’ve done and my time at Twitter. So I worked at Twitter as a product manager and there were lots and lots of meetings about strategy, lots and lots of meetings about strategy and plan where we were going in the next 6, 12, 18, 24 months. And so much time wasted in these big team meetings that felt.
like they were draining, was just a bad, it was a terrible use of time to get everyone synchronized up and to make these big grand plans. And maybe you need to do that in a really big company. But my view is when you are a smaller company at a minimum, what matters far more is executing and moving quickly to execute. And that is.
a rare, that it’s much easier to do strategy works. If they’re like, I’m gonna write a document and we’ll discuss it. It feels like you’re making progress, but actually executing and making that progress and seeing, and putting that product into market and testing it. Are people buying my product? Are they excited by my product? All of that is far more powerful and valuable than any sort of strategy, especially because in the world we live in now, things are moving so fast.
whatever strategy you put in place for 12 months, like we can talk about AI and where I think it’s going, but like, if I have a strategy for what Shor is gonna look like in 12 to 18 months, I know it will be wrong because AI will have progressed so much faster probably than even I can imagine. So I just wanna execute every day well and just stay on the top of being as forward looking as possible and that’s it.
Federico Ramallo (08:16) Right, right. mean, coming from a bootstrap company, right, a small bootstrap company, I think that strategy has its place, right? I mean, you can, you want to set a vision for a company, you want to set a, and that vision should allow you to make decisions, right, throughout the execution. But then, after that, you know, the word,
the world is full of ideas, right? The only difference between those ideas and successful startups is execution, right?
Adam Spector (08:43) Yes, but I would argue that’s actually the difference between most successful people and people who fail to get further is there are lots of people who have ideas, right? Everyone listening to this might have ideas. And of course, the people listening to this are different than most people in general because obviously they want to improve themselves and think about what other people have done. There’s a lot of people who sit at home, they play video games all day, they are a little depressed about where they are in life because like, it’s unfair, I haven’t been able to progress and move forward and do these things.
But let’s be honest, the opportunity is there. And you’re making a proactive choice as an individual to either talk about how unfair the world is or go do something about it. Go take action. Go execute on something and build something. Build something interesting. Say, you know what? I’m going to get off my butt and start trying to build.
Let’s be clear, people look at my background in resume and say, oh, Adamson’s been so successful. I have, but I also feel like I have so much further to go. I haven’t played a video game in eight years. I love video games, they’re wonderful, they’re tons of fun. Play one in eight or nine years. I don’t have time. I’m too busy building and learning and growing myself and my team.
And there are too many other things that are worthwhile. I want to move forward with the world versus be a laid back participant who watches it pass me by.
Federico Ramallo (10:07) Right, right. mean my wife loves, she loves this idea of going to a cruise, right? And I cannot tolerate the idea, you know, because for me it’s, you get into a big boat and you become a passenger, not a participant, right? You’re just laying down there doing nothing, right? And getting pulled over from one place to another, right?
And it’s basically that idea of, you just become this passive element in the world, right? Of course it has its place, so I’m kind of, you know, opening up to the idea, but yeah.
Adam Spector (10:45) Yeah, look, if you want to really relax
and not have to think about anything, a cruise is probably a wonderful opportunity. But that’s that for a lot of but I actually really do think for a lot of people in the world, that is generally their mindset every single day is they essentially want to be a passenger on a cruise ship. And people like you and me want to be the captain of the cruise ship.
Federico Ramallo (10:49) Right.
Right.
Adam Spector (11:05) and make decisions about where it goes. There can only be so many captains, but the beautiful thing about at least the entrepreneurial world is everyone can be a captain. If they’re willing to work hard enough, they can be a captain of their own company or certainly of their own lives. But they have to make that choice proactively to take action and become the captain of their lives.
Federico Ramallo (11:29) It’s not a zero sum game, there are plenty of opportunities. Right? Right?
Adam Spector (11:31) No, everyone can win. There’s so many opportunities
in the world. Everyone can win. Everyone should win. I want a positive sum game where everyone in the world achieves the success that they expect of themselves. But no one’s giving you handouts. The world does not exist of handouts. You have to work hard for it. And if you’re willing to work hard, the opportunities will come.
Federico Ramallo (11:44) Right.
I completely agree. The other thing I’ve seen happening is you build something, whatever it is, and then people start criticizing.
I mean, it happens to Elon Musk, it happened to my company, it probably happened to your company as well, or to you, you know. And I find it interesting because it’s easy to criticize from outside doing nothing or having accomplished anything. It’s easy to criticize, right? But it’s hard to…
build whatever we build and whatever decisions we make, we make it with the limited information, limited resources and limited time that we have. And there’s a lot of trade-offs to make those decisions. So why you didn’t do it a little bit better or a little bit taller or a little bit under color or whatever it is. But we make those decisions, we can change them, but it’s in that movement.
on building and creating that we can make those changes.
Adam Spector (12:49) Correct. And once again, if you are someone who is not building, then it’s too easy to criticize, but you don’t know the pain that goes into the decisions that are being made and the reasons behind those decisions. So have a little compassion for the builders out there. Obviously, when you build a business and make the decisions about that business, you’re doing the best that you can for all of your stakeholders, your team, your shareholders, and of course, your customers.
And some of those decisions are ones that customers might not like, but you’re doing the best you can.
Federico Ramallo (13:17) Right, Yeah, and there’s way to give positive feedback to do better, right? Because sometimes there are things that as founders we don’t see that it’s an issue on our product, our website, or whatever it is, But there’s a way to provide it in a positive way rather than just criticizing.
Per se, right? So, tell us a little bit more about Chor. What problems were you seeing that made you start it?
Adam Spector (13:52) Yeah, I look, the problems that I saw are pretty simple. Going back to that pie example, this is across history, small businesses in the world, and frankly, big businesses have always had the same issue where they have, there are essentially three key parts to a business, a great product, let’s call it, you have wonderful, most delicious pies in the world.
You have an ability to market it. You know how to tell a story. You are able to get your local community excited or customers across the web excited, whatever it is, to buy your product. So you to be good at sales to some extent, right? Even if you have the best product and no one knows how to buy it, you won’t have a good business. But then you have this third part called running the business. And that third part has never been optimized.
most companies still run back office operations the same way they did 300 years ago, 400 years ago when the first modern corporation started, the East Indy tea company. And that was just some guy, almost really a guy with a ledger, be like, oh, you work this much, here’s your money. You work this much, here’s your money. That’s the same thing we do today. It’s more modern. We do it on a website. But it’s the same thing.
and it’s still an internal team doing that. And to me, that’s insane. We’ve come so far where you and I are able to do this podcast recording. We didn’t have to go build our own podcasting software or go in person to a podcast studio. We can do this all virtually because we’ve outsourced that work to Riverside to go build the podcast, to build a virtual podcasting studio. We paid them a fee for their technology.
Same thing with AWS. No one builds their own servers in their garage anymore. That’s what happened 25 years ago. No one does it anymore because AWS exists.
Another example, you and I don’t have our own personal power plants because power plants exist. We don’t need to generate power. Even though power is critical to us to be able to do our jobs, we need electricity to do our jobs. Yet, we don’t have to build our own power plants. The reason for all these is you’ve outsourced that work to experts. You said you were the expert, you can do better than I can, and at scale, you’re going to be better than I will ever be. I’ll pay you a little bit more. If you were a-
like a steel smelter or something, right? Where you’re using a huge amount of electricity. It might make sense to have your own power plant because you really need that to be so specialized and you can use it 100 % of the time that it makes sense to do it. But for most companies, you only need a small amount of power. You don’t need to build your own. For your own home, you don’t need a power plant. It’s the same thing with operations. You don’t need to hire a full-time person to run back office work.
But you also as a founder shouldn’t be doing it yourself because it’s not your core competency. It’s not what brings you joy and it’s not what will push the business forward. And so that is the whole thesis behind why this company exists.
Federico Ramallo (16:41) Right. Yeah, I I’ve seen that we have a lot of services, a lot of products and services that provide us a lot of base comfort, if you like. But you talk about electricity. It’s a complex problem to solve. And that allows us to build on top of that, to build and focus on higher hierarchy problems.
Adam Spector (17:03) Well, yes, and I would actually, it’s not actually complex to build electricity in some ways, actually. So I’d push back, I’d say, the world is more filled with, the world is all about specialization. You specialize in what you do better than other people. That is how you win. So even using it, maybe a more simple example. Maybe you like Coca-Cola. Well, like.
You could go make your own Coca-Cola. It would take a lot of time, energy. It probably wouldn’t taste the same, things like that. But you don’t because Coke has so perfected the formula of how to do it, how to produce it, how to get it to you in a low cost. It doesn’t make sense for you to spend time recreating Coca-Cola. And it’s no different for anything else. Everyone specializes in our ability to use tools that are specialized.
makes us able to do all the other things we enjoy more. So maybe a more specific example. You and I are doing this recording on a computer. You have a computer at your house, I have a computer at mine. We have computer monitors, we have microphones, cameras, all these things. You and I have not built any of these tools. And yet we are able to buy these tools for relatively speaking low cost. And that enables us to do things we enjoy more such as having this conversation on a podcast.
But we need the specialization of these computer companies and the electricity company and all these other folks to enable us to do what we do. And so my whole thesis is every company should be that specialized and therefore delegate all the other things that are not directly impacting their business. Same thing goes with back office operations. Why would you do that when you’re not building your own computer, you’re not making your own electricity, all those things?
Federico Ramallo (18:44) Right, right. Yeah, I think that the, you when I started, when I founded my own company, I didn’t know the level of complexity to run the back office system. Right, right. And it’s not, yeah. And the amount of time that it would take me has been, you know, more than I was expecting. And it’s been, you know, challenging.
Adam Spector (18:53) No one does, everyone thinks it’s easy and it’s not.
And what would you have done with that time,
if you had that time back, what would you have reinvested that time in otherwise? Where would you have spent it?
Federico Ramallo (19:10) Right, well, I I grew from small operations to a bigger operation where I could detach of the business, so of the operation of the business, and not only on the back office, but also on the daily operation of the business. So kind of answering your question, I could use the time on two things. One is I can take more creative or high risk endeavors because now,
the business, even if I fail, the business is working. So then I can use that to take higher chances, higher risks, right? Whether it’s creating something new or it’s, you you can do more creative jobs, right? And then the other one is focusing on the high value of a business, right? So all the, whatever,
whatever task is complex enough that nobody on my team can solve it, then I can solve it, right? And then those are the two big, things that you can do because now you have the time to do it.
Adam Spector (20:05) Correct. That is where everyone should be focused on doing the things that only you can do. This is just a general life story. Our company is called Chor because it’s about doing the chores to some extent. The thing is, another example I would give for people is I don’t like to do laundry.
I don’t think that’s a chore to me. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t think it provides value, but I need to have clean clothes, right? Like think I would be really hard to do business if everyone thought I was stinky all the time and my clothes were really dirty. So what do I do? Well, I take all my laundry to a wash and fold location near my house. So I outsource my laundry work to someone else. They are experts doing laundry.
Federico Ramallo (20:30) Right.
Adam Spector (20:48) Presumably, hope they love doing laundry and they get joy from it. And I pay them, I don’t, you know, I pay them money to go do that. But with that money, I’m getting time back to do the things that I love more. I get time back to spend it with my family. I get time back to build my business. And so to me, it is a very good ROI to spend money on someone else delegating away this task that I don’t enjoy, that I’m not good at, and it does not drive my life or my business forward.
Federico Ramallo (21:15) Right, right, you buy freedom.
Adam Spector (21:19) Yeah, absolutely. That is what money is for, in many cases, to buy you that freedom. And it gives me then the choices of what I want to do with my life. But be clear, I think everyone has those decisions to make. Too many people are penny-wise and pound-foolish. So they want to be really careful about spending their pennies, but they don’t look at the bigger picture. So the thesis being, you could save money by not-
Federico Ramallo (21:39) Right.
Adam Spector (21:42) I could save money by not outsourcing my laundry work, right? I would save cash, absolutely. But I then have to spend all that time doing the laundry, and it would make me unhappy.
It would not mean that I would have less time spending with my kids. I would have less time doing the work that I really enjoy and building my business. And so to me, yes, I’m spending that money there, but I’m reinvesting all that new time that I have into doing the stuff that will help me get to a bigger exit or make more money elsewhere. And too many people forget that point where you should let everyone specialize in what they do best so you can focus on what you do best.
This is an interconnected world we live in that leads to overall income pie growing. Restaurant, I mean, can get all these examples. I can cook at home or I can outsource it and get a restaurant to cook me food. Some people enjoy cooking, so it’s a great thing to do and it’s a great way to wind down for some people. But for other people, it’s really annoying. If they outsource their food getting made, they have more time for the other things that they enjoy.
And so once again, it’s all these just choices. And so my big push for all of your listeners is think deeply about where you’re spending time, what you don’t enjoy doing, and anything that you don’t enjoy doing, outsource it and delegate it. There’s someone else who will do it for a price that is lower than what your hourly rate should be.
Federico Ramallo (23:09) Right, right. And then you have more happiness in your life, you have more purpose, and now you can spend more time on what matters most to you.
Adam Spector (23:19) Yeah,
I mean, mean, sorry to keep beating a dead horse here, but like the thing I don’t want to look back in my life when I’m close to death and say, man, I’m so happy that I have an extra bit of extra cash. But I wasted you know, I how much time it takes to do my laundry every two weeks, let’s say probably, probably my laundry plus my kids laundry, I bet it would take me four or five hours. So I don’t know that’s five hours every, every two weeks, 10 hours a month.
Federico Ramallo (23:22) Hehehehe
Adam Spector (23:48) 12 months, 120 hours a year, times however many years I have in my life. Like, I don’t want to look back and be like, man, I’m really proud of all this time I spent doing laundry.
Federico Ramallo (23:59) Right.
Adam Spector (24:00) Like, there’s nothing to be proud of. Whereas, like, I could look back and say, man, I’m really proud of how I built my business into something big that can help pay for my children’s education. That’s more meaningful to me in much something that I’d be much more proud of than a little bit of extra cash, but missing the bigger picture about what I could invest in and make a lot more money on with that new time that I have.
Federico Ramallo (24:23) Right, right. being able to have the time means first understanding what is important to you and then delegating the rest.
Adam Spector (24:31) Correct. And everyone’s different. Some people love doing laundry, they find it very relaxing. So more power to you. But there are other things you don’t enjoy doing. And so once again, figure out what those things are and delegate it. Get it off your plate. Life, once again, is too short to spend any time doing things you don’t love. It’s not worth it. Number one, it’s not worth it. Number two, it won’t lead to the big outcomes you might hope for in your life.
You want to have a really successful quote unquote life. However you define success, you need to work hard at it. And the way you work hard at something is you put in a lot of time getting good at it, being well known in your space. And the way you have all that time is by delegating away the things that are a distraction.
Federico Ramallo (25:15) Right, right. I feel blessed of being tired of doing things that I love.
Adam Spector (25:21) That is a blessing, absolutely. Like, Federico, that is a huge blessing. Congratulations.
Federico Ramallo (25:22) Yes.
And, uh, you know, when, when I, when we, when me and my wife think about our time, we think that we have, live a privileged life because we have the freedom to make decisions, to use our time to, you know, to whatever we want to, to set it up. Right. Sometimes it means that I have to work harder, you know, some, some weeks or whatever, but I also.
have the time or the freedom to pick up my son to school and we can do ice cream together because that’s something that I enjoy doing with him. And is it cheaper to buy ice cream? Maybe, but it’s something that I enjoy doing with him. I train with him on, we’re preparing for a tournament this Saturday. I train with him in karate, and I…
and we go jogging and you know, it’s a lot of time that we spend on that, right? And I enjoy it, right? It’s good for us, right? For our health. And I find that it’s a privilege that I can have that time with him, right?
Adam Spector (26:31) Yeah, that’s a huge privilege. And that means you’ve set up your life in a way where, once again, those other tasks that you maybe don’t do your own laundry. So because you don’t do your own laundry, you can spend time with your son learning karate and being good at that together.
That’s a privilege. But it also means because you’ve set up your life the right way, you can afford to remove those things that are a chore. And as you move up the stack in life, there are more and more things that you can remove. mean, some people, I’m nowhere close to this person, but some people fly private jets. Why do they fly private jets? Because it removes the pain of flying commercial and having to go through security and all the other things that take a lot of time when you fly commercial.
That’s one last pain in their life. means they have, why do they do it? It means they get to whatever destination they want to get to faster. And it means they have more time to do those things they care about. It’s everyone’s life, every, I don’t care how much money you make, whether you’re flying private jets or you’re working minimum wage, everyone can make those trade-offs in life and make those decisions. And my one request would be,
Find things that, things you do not love, outsource and delegate them and do more of the thing that you love because that is what will lead to your ultimate happiness and success.
Federico Ramallo (27:43) Right, and it’s a reinforcement loop, right? I mean, when you’re doing something that gives you more happiness, then you know about the four hamburgers, right? The four hamburgers of happiness. Okay, so I can tell you that story because I think it’s interesting and it’s kind of on part of what we’re talking about. So you have four hamburgers, right? One hamburger is the one that you eat, you enjoy right now.
Adam Spector (27:54) No, no, no, don’t actually.
Thanks.
Federico Ramallo (28:10) right? That gives you a lot of immediate pleasure, right? But it’s bad for your health, right? I mean, if you eat that continuously, right? I mean, you can think of any fast food joint, right? It’s, it’s, it gives you immediate satisfaction, but it’s bad for your future health, right? So, you know, if you go to the extreme of that, then you get, you know, you get into into the drugs, right? It gives you immediate satisfaction, but you are sacrificing your future happiness.
Adam Spector (28:36) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (28:36) ⁓
Then you have the hamburger that it doesn’t taste really good, know, cardboard hamburger if you like, but it’s really good for your health, right? So you’re sacrificing your immediate satisfaction for future happiness, right? Because you’re going to have future happiness with that, right? Now, the third hamburger is let’s make a hamburger out of fat, right? It tastes cold fat, right? It tastes really, really bad.
Adam Spector (28:51) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (29:02) And it’s really bad for your health. So it’s neither good for you don’t get immediate satisfaction and it’s really bad for your health, for your future health. So it’s bad both ways. Now wouldn’t it be great if we find this ideal hamburger that you can eat, gives you immediate satisfaction, you can enjoy it now. But also it’s good for your health, so it also gives you future happiness.
Adam Spector (29:26) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (29:28) There’s something interesting that happens. If you’re doing something that gives you satisfaction right now, but also has a purpose, right? A purpose that is significant and important for you, then that satisfaction increases, right? And even if you don’t have satisfaction right now, sometimes you’re doing chores that are not the best, but…
Adam Spector (29:43) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (29:51) it works towards your future happiness, your purpose, then that pain diminishes, Or you can move forward, it doesn’t matter, right? Because the purpose is the one that gives you that happiness, right? But that relationship becomes important, right? So that’s the idea of hamburger, right?
So you can delegate those tasks that don’t give you either immediate satisfaction or purpose. So you can focus on your purpose and you can have more happiness in your life and that reinforce towards becoming more successful in life.
Adam Spector (30:27) Yep, absolutely. No, I love that. Love that explanation and it makes sense.
Federico Ramallo (30:33) Yes, yes, I’m glad that you like it. So tell us a bit about your podcast, entrepreneur, excellent podcast. You know, what what did you learn from that? go ahead. Yeah.
Adam Spector (30:35) Good hand, Mr.
Pretty simple.
learned what makes for great entrepreneurs. We’ve done about 120 or so episodes. And probably the key learning is the best entrepreneurs are the ones who are the most obsessed with their focus, their product, what they’re trying to build. They care deeply about outcomes. And they almost can’t sleep because they are just so focused on what they want to get out the door. So it’s just obsession. Obsession. To the detriment of other things, but obsession.
Federico Ramallo (31:12) Right.
Right, right, yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that makes a great entrepreneur. mean, when you’re talking about that, I relate it to myself and I feel, yeah. And then, you know, what we’re talking about is after you went to that extreme of obsession, then pulling it bit back so you can have more balance in your life. Because, you know, the way that I see, I used to think is, you know,
is running as fast as possible, right? Now I’m thinking more if it’s a marathon. So yeah, we want to run fast, but also we want to, know, balance the speed so, you know, we don’t burn ourselves out.
Adam Spector (31:57) Yeah, exactly. that’s, you do need to find balance. Although once again, a lot of the best entrepreneurs not only find, they balance for sure, but they find a different level of work.
or of a different gear than most people. So maybe an example would be, we just had the Olympics. In Olympians, you and I can go run a race or something, right? Like, I can run a race, they can run a race. But Olympians can do it for so much longer because there’s so much more practice at it. So to them, running it or skiing it or whatever analogy for the Winter Olympics you want to use.
their pace is so much different because they built up that muscle in ways that you and I sort of regular people don’t have. So an example in my case, I work basically six days a week and I have for probably 15 years. Most people think that’s crazy. They’re like, my gosh, that’s insane. like, that’s just normal. It feels weird when I don’t work six days a week. It feels odd to me. Am I an Olympian of working? Maybe.
Federico Ramallo (32:42) Bye.
You
Adam Spector (32:55) Maybe it’s also unhealthy, but it’s what it takes in my mind to be successful. And I built that muscle. So to me, it’s not abnormal. It’s actually the norm to work that hard.
Federico Ramallo (33:06) Right, mean, we just, what I’m trying to say with being a marathon is that we have to find that rhythm of pushing ourselves, but not too much. So we build up the training, and then we can keep it towards the long term, right?
Adam Spector (33:20) Great.
Federico Ramallo (33:20) Yeah, and what’s normal, what’s not normal, I don’t care what’s normal, it’s what’s normal to you, right? What pace can you sustain, right? If you go too fast faster than what you can, then you’re going to burn down, right? And that become counterproductive for the company, for yourself and for your family. So you have a big responsibility to keep that balance, right?
Adam Spector (33:41) Yep, exactly right.
Federico Ramallo (33:43) So I want to ask you little bit about the Autopilot Fund. What do you look like when you meet a founding team?
Adam Spector (33:51) One, level of obsession is most important. They’re obsessed with the idea of what they’re trying to build. Number two, is their dedication to that. Then number three is how creative do they seem with it. In other words, like,
to do something well, you almost have to be happy to figure out a million different solutions to the problem you’re going after. And how do you really target the market and how hard we really work to get that done? A lot of founders come in. I’ll give you an example. had a founder, founder pitched to me. They kind of got into my calendar because they were a friend of a friend. I don’t usually take sort of cold meetings anymore. They pitched me and they’re like, what do you think? Like, are you going to invest? And I was like, no.
I was like, basically, there are two non-technical founders, and they had a part-time technical founder who was part-time, so working full-time at that person’s job. And I was like, why haven’t you, you just talked to me for 30 minutes. I have not seen any product.
I haven’t seen what you’ve built. I haven’t seen anything. And we live in a world today where you should be able to vibe code, at minimum vibe code a great example of your product. Maybe not a full working version, but a vibe coded version of it. And if you were unable as a founder to figure out how to go build that yourself today, even if you’re non-technical, then there’s zero chance I would invest in you because you have to be willing to do that at this point to build something great. You maybe still need an engineer, maybe, that’s questionable.
by the way, but like, let’s pretend you need an engineer to maybe really make it great. You, most important though, you need to have the skills and willingness to make this a reality. once again, if you’re truly obsessed using this example still, if you’re truly obsessed with the founder, there is zero excuse that you don’t have a demo of your product that you’re already selling to customers and getting it out the door. Maybe you’re doing all the work in the backend with human labor and with services and people, fine.
Federico Ramallo (35:15) Right.
Adam Spector (35:40) But you should already have a, it takes no time to spin up a website in a basic product. And if you can’t figure that out, then you are not an obsessed founder.
Federico Ramallo (35:49) Right, right. mean the vaporware had a time. A few people were successful with that to raise funds, to find a few clients. You know, I remember that from the 2000s. That shows my age, It had a place, but at that time…
you really need a lot of initial investment to start building something, right? Building a website was really hard at the time, right? Now, as I said, we have so many tools available to go and build something, right? So yeah, that’s interesting.
Adam Spector (36:23) Yeah, so that’s what I’ve learned is you’ve got to build stuff now. Once again, going back to my point of strategy versus execution, execute. You have no excuse not to be moving quickly, building something, showing it, getting in front of customers. I don’t need to see a deck that you put together and hear why you’re two nice people that is not fund worthy, that is not investment worthy in any way.
Federico Ramallo (36:49) Right.
And why do you ask about whether AI increases or decreases defensibility?
Adam Spector (36:56) I think AI in many ways decreases defensibility because it’s so easy to build things. Now it’s so easy to compete at the same time for the people who know how to use AI intelligently. also increases your ability to move faster and therefore own a bit more of a market. And it is building product now is in building a moat is a little bit about, your long-term play to build up a,
to build up a suite of products and tools that work together for a low enough price that you are able to have a clear kind of outcome in solution that is defensible. But that means you have to build quickly, move fast, get the product out the door, and have it work well. And in the age of AI, there’s no excuse not to have all of those elements.
Federico Ramallo (37:27) Right.
Right, yeah. I thought it was more about that AI would allow you to build instead of buy, instead of getting a SaaS product.
Adam Spector (37:54) It does, but yeah, it does.
But I mean, there’s always been a world of build versus buy. And in fact, now it’s much more, I can build more things and buy fewer things has been the big change. But I don’t think that’s going to be the case for everything. There will still come a point where it doesn’t make sense to go buy or build your own back office operations. It might, if we stay really expensive at Chor for forever, it might make sense to build your own. But there’s also lots of the world where it doesn’t make sense to do that.
just outsource it, right? Just because AI exists doesn’t mean you don’t need servers and you can’t reproduce servers with AI or all these other, everything really. And so, but AI also makes it very easy. Like there’s these companies that are growing, know, a million dollars in new revenue every single month, like one million dollars in new ARR every month, month after month after month after month. That’s amazing. That means they hit on something amazing. However,
Federico Ramallo (38:45) Right.
Adam Spector (38:47) If it was that easy to come up with that idea, it would be that easy for someone to copy you and break you down. So you need to build some sort of defensibility as fast as possible, which is layering on new products and services.
Federico Ramallo (39:00) Right, and that’s where your comment about speed, execution becomes much more important than strategy, right? Yeah.
Yeah, what are your thoughts about founders that are looking the next unicorn versus founders that are looking more of a lifestyle, business, and everything in between, right? What are your thoughts about those type of goals?
Adam Spector (39:30) Both have a place, both have a place in the world. It depends what sort of founder you want to be and what kind of business you want to build. It’s really hard to build a successful business. Doesn’t matter what kind, like stop, period. It’s hard to build a business. It’s even harder to build a business that’s going to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s really, really, really hard to do that. And you have to get really lucky. No matter how hard you work, you still have to get really lucky to do that.
But you can maybe not build a company that’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars and build a company that pays you a really nice salary every year and gives you and provides for a great lifestyle. That is also a wonderful thing. You control your own destiny. You have this extra income stream, hugely valuable and something very much I think most people should focus on. Arguably most companies should go build something like that themselves.
Federico Ramallo (40:15) Interesting. Did you hear about the story about the fisherman and the American, right? Okay, I’ll tell you another story. Usually I’m the one interviewing and hearing stories, but now I’m sharing. So anyway, there is this American, it could be an executive, it doesn’t matter, but.
Adam Spector (40:21) No.
I love it.
Federico Ramallo (40:33) The story that I heard is an American. And he goes to a small town in Mexico. And there is this fisherman selling fish.
And the American says, well, but you could do so much more. You could get more boats, and then you could have employees, and then you could build this network of franchises. And you can scale the business. And the fisherman answered, well, yes, I could do that. But I’m making good enough money to bring food to my family. And then at noon, I wake up at 5 AM, but then
and then I can spend the rest of the day with my family. So for that fisherman, that was happiness, that was the goal. For the businessman, the American, he wanted more and eventually was unhappy. So.
Adam Spector (41:19) Mm-hmm.
And by the way, that’s
a great story and it’s exactly the right same going back to that example I gave with a pie shop owner, right? It’s a lot of people in business think their job is to scale their business and make it bigger. And it’s very hard to fight against that pressure. But the moment you start doing it, you start adding complexity and you lose the reason you did your business in the first place. And that leads to unhappiness and frankly, many cases leads to failure of that business.
Federico Ramallo (41:47) Right.
Adam Spector (41:52) So for a large majority of people, they should stay very small. They should be small enough that they don’t have to have essentially any employees or very few employees. And that’s all they should focus on.
Federico Ramallo (42:02) Wow, that’s very interesting hearing that from you because it’s a very deep insight.
Adam Spector (42:08) thank you. just
don’t. Growth in many cases equals the same is weird to say growth can equal sort of death of your company. Be know who you are, know what kind of business you really enjoy and what you want to and build that company for yourself. Don’t let investors don’t let bankers.
Don’t let the outside world tell you that you need to make your company really big to have validation about who you are or the value in life. If you built something that can pay your bills and you control your own destiny, that is glorious. And just stay with that. Unless you want to build to be big and like there’s an ego component to it and all these things, Like, chore is a good business. We’re not great. We’re a good business. And I do want to make it big and I have an ego for sure. And I know that about myself.
Federico Ramallo (42:42) Right.
Adam Spector (42:53) But it’s risky to play that game. Like we take more risks than we would because we’re playing that game. And that’s a trade off I’m willing to make, but most people shouldn’t take that trade off and make that trade off. And I don’t even know if it’s the right thing for me insure.
Federico Ramallo (43:07) Right, right. mean, we make those decisions. We move forward. there’s always these tribulations of, did I make the right decision? Should I recirculate? Yeah. Yes, yes. But having your north understanding what it’s.
Adam Spector (43:21) Well, you never know, and that’s always difficult, right? It’s easy to second guess.
Federico Ramallo (43:31) And I can share another story that is related to this is what is happiness, right? mean, happiness is walking towards a mountain that has personal significance for you. It doesn’t matter what the world thinks, right? And it’s not about getting to the mountain, getting to the top of the mountain. It’s about the walking towards the mountain, right?
Adam Spector (43:54) Mm-hmm. it’s
the journey is more important than the destination.
Federico Ramallo (43:58) Yes.
Yes. So even if you, you can, you can set goals for you and your company. and then you can work towards there. Right. and then you can achieve it and then you can say, okay, now, now that I’m here, I can set another mountain and keep moving forward. Right. and, and yeah, I mean, we always have this ego. want to do more. We want to, you know, have a bigger impact in the world. Right. But at the end of the day,
having this balance of all the things that matters to us, family, friends, business, and our time.
Adam Spector (44:30) Well, look, and you and I have that goal in life, maybe to push forward and move more. A lot of people don’t, and that’s super fine, too. Like, there is no judgment about which path is better. There are so many different paths for everybody. The only path that’s best is the one that makes you happiest and leads to your overall satisfaction with what you’ve done with this one precious life that you have.
Federico Ramallo (44:34) Brian.
Yes.
Right, right. And the thing that I learned through this is the ability to get feedback. I mean, when we train karate, we try to, and again, I’m obsessed about quality, I’m obsessed about a lot of things. We are obsessed on achieving the forms, right? The movements, right? And we always get constant correction from our sensei, right? Like you’re doing it wrong, you’re doing it wrong, you’re doing it wrong, right?
But having the humility to take that and keep improving towards this impossible goal that we’re never going to achieve perfection, right? There’s always something to do a little bit better, right? I think that’s the other part that becomes important in this entrepreneurial journey because that becomes rather than ego-driven, humility-driven towards a…
Adam Spector (45:22) Of
Federico Ramallo (45:44) a goal that is a perfection that we’re never going to achieve and knowing that and accepting that and moving forward.
Adam Spector (45:50) Yeah, so true, so true. Hard to accept that, but yeah, it’s true.
Federico Ramallo (45:54) Yes, yes. So we’re running out of time, but I truly appreciate you being here. Any final remarks before we wrap it up?
Adam Spector (46:01) None beyond, find your North Star, find what you enjoy, and then work hard at it. that’s, hard work is recognized across the globe. I don’t care what culture, country you live in, you name it. If you work hard, you will be recognized and you will achieve many of the goals and outcomes that you want in life because of your willingness and ability to work hard.
Federico Ramallo (46:23) Amazing. Adam, thank you very much for joining us today.
Adam Spector (46:28) Federico, it is a pleasure. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Hopefully this is valuable to your audience.
Federico Ramallo (46:34) I think so, yeah. I hope it’s going to inspire them.
Adam Spector (46:37) Episode 2.