Guest: Mark Fields, former president & CEO of Ford Motor Company and chairperson at Planview

In 2005, Mark Fields was asked to run the Americas for the Ford Motor Company, a role he would serve in for 7 years, later becoming COO and then CEO. His wife and kids were used to relocating for Mark’s job, but had just put down roots in Florida. He told them that this time, they should stay put — he would commute between Florida and Detroit every week, and call home for an hour every night.

“I probably communicated more with [my wife] because we were apart, than if I was there,” Mark says. “Because if I was there, I'd come home for dinner, we'd spend a little bit of time together, I'd grunt at her, and then I'd go back to my emails, and ignore the kids. Whereas, by being away, I actually had really focused time every day to talk.”

Chapters:

• (01:01) - The auto business in ‘89
• (05:27) - The business now
• (08:47) - Ford vs. Trump
• (11:44) - Becoming a leader
• (17:35) - The next chapter
• (20:01) - Relocating the family
• (24:45) - Bring the kids to work
• (29:19) - “You have one life”
• (33:52) - Ego and purpose
• (42:06) - Retirement adrenaline
• (45:10) - Leading with passion
• (48:06) - Avoiding bankruptcy
• (52:55) - Grading Mark’s CEO years
• (55:12) - The board
• (58:32) - Electric vehicles
• (01:04:50) - 24 Hours of Le Mans
• (01:11:36) - Selling a $580,000 car

Mentioned in this episode: Harvard Business School, Ronald Reagan, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, CNBC, Volkswagen, American Icon, Donald Trump, Rutgers University, Mazda, Hertz, the Range Rover, Michigan University and Michigan Stadium, Mamoon Hamid, work/life balance, Mark McLaughlin and Palo Alto Networks, the Great Recession, GM, Chrysler, the North American International Auto Show, Bill Ford, Argo AI, Chariot, autonomous vehicles, Ford v Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari, the Ford GT, Jaguar Racing, and De Beers.

Links:

Connect with Mark

• LinkedIn

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Jack Conte, CEO & co-founder of Patreon

For many YouTube video creators, getting millions of views on your videos may seem like the goal. But when Jack Conte and his wife Nataly Dawn became YouTube stars through their band Pomplamoose, they didn’t automatically find gold at the end of the rainbow.

“You check your ad revenue and you make 48 bucks in ad revenue and you're like, ‘Oh my God, I'm worthless,’” Jack recalls. “And you check that dashboard every day ... and eventually you start to believe that you're worth $48 a month. That's a bad f**king feeling.”

That’s why in 2013, he co-founded the artist-funding platform Patreon, and discovered that there were a lot more creators like him out there. As of 2022, those creators have earned more than $3.5 billion from Patreon.

Chapters:

• (01:06) - Barriers to entry
• (03:04) - The creator economy
• (08:36) - Patreon’s mission
• (11:22) - Its name
• (13:12) - Talking to artists
• (17:26) - Detail obsession
• (24:07) - “Nobody has an answer”
• (27:17) - Playing empty rooms
• (31:09) - Success feels like failure
• (33:37) - “I’ll be happy when...”
• (39:26) - Type one vs type two joy
• (45:32) - Self-confidence
• (48:30) - Obsession, humility, and kindness
• (53:51) - Figuring out your sound
• (56:18) - “I’m f**king terrified”
• (01:00:33) - Pedals
• (01:04:04) - Starting Patreon
• (01:07:04) - Who Patreon is hiring

Mentioned in this episode: Jason Kilar, Spotify, YouTube, Pomplamoose, Google Docs, GoDaddy, LaCroix, James Freeman and Blue Bottle Coffee, Woody Allen, Medium, YCombinator, Apple and the App Store, MySpace, Matthew “The Oatmeal” Inman, AdSense, Home Depot, Skrillex and Fred Again, Matt Bunting, and Sam Yam.

Links:

Connect with Jack

• LinkedIn
• Read "I'm f**king terrified"
• Watch the "Pedals" music video

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Guest: Mark Pincus, founder & chairman of Zynga, and managing member & co-founder of Reinvent Capital

Before Zynga and Facebook made social gaming mainstream, the video game industry was “extreme on this being about art and crafting,” recalls Zynga founder Mark Pincus. He believes his winning instinct was the realization that games were “at least 50 percent science” — but it’s not enough to just have the instinct.

Mark says entrepreneurs like him have to quickly take multiple shots on the goal and “look for feedback loops that tell you your instinct is right ... you need to get to a minimum viable idea state and you need to find true signal around that idea state, that it’s right or wrong, and move on.”

Chapters:

• (01:40) - Rubbing sticks together
• (07:01) - Virtual businesses
• (12:10) - Pre-Zynga companies
• (13:51) - Setting the real intention
• (17:44) - Internet treasures
• (23:21) - Disrupting gaming
• (30:14) - The chip on Mark’s shoulder
• (33:19) - The end of Tribe
• (37:24) - Zynga Poker
• (42:59) - Explosive growth
• (46:57) - Making the virtual real
• (52:02) - The downturn
• (58:12) - Stepping aside (sort of)
• (01:01:50) - Back into the fire
• (01:08:45) - In the abyss
• (01:11:46) - What “grit” means to Mark

Mentioned in this episode: Dot Earth, Elon Musk and the Boring Company, Uber Eats and Dara Khosrowshahi, ChatGPT, Roblox, Madhappy, Reid Hoffman, Craigslist, Google, Napster and Sean Parker, the California Culinary Academy, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, Yahoo, John Doerr, Words with Friends, LinkedIn, Tribe.net, Supercell and Ilkka Paananen, FarmVille and Hay Day, Parker Conrad and Rippling, Bing Gordon, Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, the Game Developer’s Conference, CNET, Matt Cohler, Don Mattrick, Microsoft and the Xbox, Joe Biden, Jason Citron and Discord, Steve Jobs, Super Labs, Marcus Segal, Frank Gibeau, The Courage to Be Disliked, and Stewart Butterfield.

Links:

Connect with Mark

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm