Touching the Heart Chapter 04
Simulant: Andy Mccune
Role: Founder
Company: Sublime
Guided by: Kristian Alexander Michail
Role: Founder
Company: Simulations
Context
I have a Question Andy. Do you believe in God?
Funnily enough, my dad was a Christian pastor growing up. I grew up in the church. My dad started five different churches and we had moved around 14 times by the age of 16. You go like one of two ways as a preacher's kid, you either are super deep in it or you rebel really hard. Both of my siblings stayed very much in the church and I rebelled really hard.
I ran really far away from it for years. And then when I was 25, I started really exploring spirituality and a lot of alternative things and what I found myself now at 29 are the exact same answers that my parents found. They all have different names and they're just in a different wrapper, but everything is the same and so the answer is ‘Yes,’ I do beleive in God. Now, is my god defined the same way that like my parents would define theirs? In some ways, yes. In some ways, no. But it's all one to me.
So you had some kind of re-birth in your twenties?
Yeah, I think so. It was a multi a multi year process. There wasn't like a specific moment that I would say that it happened, but I think I just got really curious in exploring the nature of reality and what it means to be human. The deeper I went into that, the more conviction built in me that God existed. It was bigger than what I I grew up believing. It was it was definitely a rebirth. 100%. I feel like a completely different person that I was at the beginning of this process. And that's in a four year timeframe. I had a lot of experience that I think contributed to this. And a lot of that came from really deep experiences of ego death and different things that I think stimulated the feeling of rebirth.
In your own words, how does your relationship with God tie into what you are building?
I believe we are all deeply creative humans. And I don't think that a lot of us actually express our creativity on the level that it exists within us. And for a lot of people, creativity really starts with that place of feeling inspired. Your output is a reflection of your inputs. I've developed my creative tastes throughout my whole life through so many different ways, but it's really my output that’s a reflection of the inputs that I’ve harnessed. I would say that creativity is divine in general.So with Cosmos, the startup I’ve begun, the goal is to build a platform that allows you to aggregate all of these inputs that are then reflected in the creative output. This is very important to me because when I'm in this flow of creating something new, for me that experience and state is channeling God, channeling source, channeling the light. And so to build a product that supports that process in such a fundamental way in the creative process is godly for me. Cosmos is about memorializing creativity. So the question is: how we build a platform that is an archive of human creativity? And we're very much at the beginning of the journey. Imagine what would it look like if we not only had an archive of all these works that have been created by humans throughout the history of time, but also having a memorial archive of the important creatives over the history of time as well.
Do you ever worry about creating another platform for false idoltary and infatuating over social icons?
Yeah, I think our product is inherently very different than a lot of these social platforms. Cosmos will always be about the work that you create and not about you as a person. That's something that’s been very intentional with our design. We've always built the product around the work. We don't show follower counts, either. There's a whole lot of other things that we've that we've done with the product to guide it in this way. So I'm not so worried about that.
Cool. So in your own words, who are you as a person then?
I'm Andy McCune. I’m 28 years old. I live in New York City. I’m a creative first and foremost, but I also happen to be a founder. I’ve been doing consumer software for as long as I can remember, but mostly focused on creative tools. My last company was called Unfold, which is a mobile graphic design tool that was acquired by Squarespace for $50M. My most recent project is called Cosmos which is a digital curation tool. So we're like a Pinterest, but for creatives. A platform for artists, designers, photographers, anyone with a high a high level of taste.
Welcome to your simulation.
Challenge
The challenge you choose to explore will determine the direction of your simulation. You get to choose. So what's on your heart right now? Where would a leap in consciousness would be most important to you?
So the whole the whole simulation will be focused specifically on this one problem?
It’s the place you start. We don't know where it'll end up either. It’s the source, the trigger or the first door that you'll open. Have faith that whatever door you choose now will take you exactly where you need to go. If it's not challenging to you it's not really that meaningful, and if it's not really that meaningful, the simulation won't be that potent, and then you'd waste an hour of your time. Choose wisely.
I would say one of the biggest challenges for me right now is just building out our team. This is where I'm spending the majority of my time right now and I think we can dig into that pretty deep.
Okay, great. Tell me more.
So we're still very much in the early stages of what we're building. Our team is ten. We're based in New York City. We have an office here, everyone is in person. At this stage of the company, every person that you add is so critical for the culture. You have this average bar of talent and if you add someone that's above that average bar, it lifts your average up and it pushes everyone forward. But if you hire below that bar, it's going to remove that average and pull everyone down. It's really important on a skill level that you're hiring someone that is going to push everyone else. From a cultural perspective, hiring is like selecting a family. I spend more time with my team than I do with any of my friends at this stage of the company. It's really, really important that you're selecting people who have a deep faith and have deep trust in the vision. But also having people who match all of the different aspects of the cultural DNA that will make them a good addition and that can ride the wave together.
There was a tweet from Andrew Wilkinson a few years ago that really stuck with me and he's like when you're hiring, you're looking for someone who has done exactly what you're looking for, at a similar company, at a similar stage, a similar size, but like just slightly bigger. Right. This really stuck with me. I think a lot of the poor hires that I've made or the hires that haven't worked out, have been because I was taking too much of a risk on someone.
And so it's a really interesting balance when trying trying to decide if this is the person that you are willing to take the risk on. You're trying to find someone that maybe has big company experience, but also has been early stage before. They don’t fully know what they're getting into, but they still have the wisdom. You're trying to find someone who's senior enough, but not too senior, too. There's so many different kinds of traits that you're trying to balance.
So, the challenge specifically in this case is what? Are you swamped with just a stream of people? Is it taking time away from you from building a product? What's the actual challenge weighing on you?
It's a whole process. Sourcing the right candidates, interviewing them, identifying the right folks and then trying to convince them to join you. I mean, the best people in the world have so many opportunities in front of them. And I think to really build what we're trying to build, that's the level of ambition that we have. We really need the best people in the world.
It’s a challenge to convince talent to come and join you. We're in a phase right now of having five roles open. It's so many conversations, and it's really energizing, but it's also tough. It's tough, because you're not only fighting to attract talent and convince them, but then you are also taking a really big risk on folks as well.
If that’s the challenge, who's the challenger? Is it a group of people is it a person? Is it the marketplace? Who's the person or group of people that's kind of pissing you off? Who is the entity that’s really making you sweat here? If you could stand outside of yourself for a second and ask who you are up against? Who is appearing as your opponent or the enemy? Who is the force that’s trying to knock you down. It might be yourself but I challenge you to look and see if it's anyone else out there first.
I would say the market to a degree. Every company is fighting for the same talent. And I've lost a lot of really amazing candidates to a lot of amazing companies. I have an incredible team right now, but the reason I need to build further than this is because I'm trying to help the product realize its full potential so it can exist well into the future. We're a venture backed company, we're burning cash right now. This product isn't financially successful yet. I need to get it to the point where it is that so that this can actually exist in perpetuity, right? So in order to do that, I need to hire the team. So I would say a secondary sort of challenger that is users in in the market who would adopt the product, not the talent market.
Let’s pause. There are a few challengers, which adds to the tension. There's the market that you're essentially trying to convert to become your customer. And then there's the talent you want to bring into the company and the companies scooping them up. I don’t want skip over the tension with other companies and how they make you feel about yourself in your pursuit of attracting top talent. So let’s have some fun here. If you could scream at the other companies who are stealing the best talent with either a compliment or a criticism, what would it be?
The first thing that comes from my gut is to feel that these other companies are better than me. There's a fear of mine that the reason why they're attracting the talent is because their company is either more innovative, more exciting or more successful. I think that’s why I would see them as a challenger, and that pull ups an insecurity for me. This is just a pattern of self criticism.
In two words, what would you label these other companies?
Fucking cool. It’s a compliment, not a criticism.
So this challenge makes you complimentary of them and critical of yourself?
Yeah, it's not criticism against them. They are awesome. I would I want to join them also you know? Not necessarily over what I'm building but like, I get top talent going there instead of us.
Great. So If they are a ‘fucking cool’ company, then what does that make you in the moment you feel that fear of losing talent to other players in the market? In two words, what would you label yourself as a response?
Not as cool. Not good enough.
How would you characterise someone that’s not as cool or not good enough?
I like the word inferior. I mean in those moments, it’s like I am an Inferior Visionary.
Good work. Thanks for the honesty.
I'm gonna refer to you as Inferior Visionary for the next stage of conversation, I can promise you by the end of it you'll have a choice where you want to go with it. Cool?
Cool.
Let's proceed.
Day to day, what are thoughts are you thinking to yourself as an Inferior Visionary? What’s the conversation in your head?
I'm saying that my vision for what we're building isn't big enough. That it's not distinct enough that it's not it's not vivid enough. I'm saying that I struggle as a leader because I'm not entirely capable of distilling my vision down and rallying the team around it. I'm saying that the reason why I'm not able to hire this talent is because because I'm an inferior visionary and because someone else's vision is better than mine, bigger than mine, more exciting than mine.
I would also say that there's an element of this that says that my vision actually is big enough but such a core part of being a visionary is being able to execute that vision and there's a part of me saying that I have not executed to the highest of my ability and that is part of what is making me inferior.
Okay, got it. What are you saying aloud to others or the world? These look may be statements, comments, opinions or spoken words that come from an Inferior Visionary’s mouth.
I'm saying that everything is great. I'm painting the picture that I want to believe. But let’s pause for a second. I'm really leaning into this Inferior Visionary character right now, but for me, this only the darkside. It’s the dark side of myself that I know is not actually true. I just want to articulate, that I'm down to go through this path and explore this, but this isn't the full picture. I've really disconnected myself from all of this recently.
I love that you paused. That's great intuition. Unless it wasn’t clear, this character is a fraction of your consciousness. We are simulating a character of your choosing. I can promise that you will get as much light as darkness by going through this process, but you’ll have to sit with the tension. By the end of it, it'll just be energy, opportunity and possibility to create from. I'm under no illusion that this is who you fully are. But this dialogue is the subconscious conversation we all have with ourselves. The intention is to make the unconscious, conscious. That’s the end reward. The world can be a lonely place, for visionaries in particular. Especially when you are trying to lead people to the promised land, and there is the fear of ‘who’s coming with me?’ Who does the visionary get to speak to in his most isolated moments? It’s either yourself, or God for the most part. So what we are doing here is giving space for tough conversation. It’s an opportunity for you to voice unspoken truths and get conscious about the character that you’ve been playing at times to cope with the challenge of your world.
Understood.