Natalie Nagele: CEO of Wildbit

The truth that nobody wants to listen to when these founders exit and they're finally allowed to talk is none of them make a billion dollars. Like a handful of them make a billion dollars. By the time most of these companies take the VC and sell it, they haven't paid themselves well all the way up to it, right? Then they take this vc, they dilute everything that they own and they sell it. And everybody gets paid first and they get paid last. And at the end, they're all starting new businesses, not just because they've got a bug, but because they didn't really make that much. It's an important thing to realize is if you're chasing the billion, because going to make a billion, that's a really risky endeavor. You can grow a really successful business where your team makes a bunch of money and you as a founder make a bunch of money by just being profitable.

Welcome to the Crazy Wisdom podcast. Today is a very special interview I did with Natalie Nagel, the CEO and co founder of Wildbit. Wildbit has been doing remote work since 2001 and right after this interview I did with her, I helped had her on for a panel that I did at Amazon AWS in New York about burnout and stress. And I do have a copy of that if you are interested of that. I haven't published it, but it is on YouTube. You can look for AWS Startups, Stress and Burnout with Stuart Alsop, Crazy Wisdom or Natalie Nagle. Any of those search terms will bring it up. And I really enjoyed this interview. I really hope you guys enjoy it. I really respect Natalie. She has a really clear way of doing business, is very clear in her personality and clear in what she says. And she offers a great amount of value if you are looking to build a startup that is remote. Also, something else has been coming up in recent podcasts and what I'm realizing is that I have a bias. My bias is that I believe that there are experts and I believe that what those experts is important to listen to in their specialty. But I also believe that no one is an expert in life. All of us are trying to figure it out. We don't know what our individual situations are leading us to. We don't know where we're going. Many of us have different ideas about what we're going on. And so I am asking these questions of people on my show, which are big questions, difficult questions, ethical questions, and when I ask these questions, I'm not expecting the person to answer them as an expert. I'm expecting them to give their what their experiences have led them to believe. And I don't necessarily take what they say as truth. And I don't think you should either. And I don't think my guests should either. So I'm going to start making this much more clear in each of these episodes is that I am not an expert. Some of my guests might be experts, but I'm asking them questions about things that they are not experts on. And you, as the listener, should also adopt what many practitioners call beginner's mind. I aim to do each of one of these episodes in a place of beginner's mind. I don't always succeed in that. I am now going to start asking my guests to do the same thing. And I also ask you to do the same thing. So just recognizing that we don't know the truth, we may think we know the truth. We are in constant investigation and inquiry into what the truth is. That is the goal of my show is to essentially investigate into what the truth is. What are we dealing with? What is happening right now? All these people make predictions of the future and make historical claims of what happened in the past. I'm just trying to figure out what's going on right now. So I invite you to join me in doing that. I really hope that you found value in this show. I'm really enjoying creating it and I'm trying to learn my biases. If you see that I have a bias and I'm not aware of that bias, please let me know. Yeah, and I do want to invite any startup founders who are looking to build a distributed team to come join an online course I'm doing with Anders Jones, the CEO of Facet Wealth. If you want more information on that course, you can subscribe to my blog@stuartalsop.substack.com I'll be including more information on how you can apply. Anders is the CEO of Facet wealth, and he raised $40 million in a series A. And we're going to be trying to give insights into what you, as a startup founder, can do in order to raise money for your distributed team. He's right at the hypergrowth scale. So he's raised a lot of money and now he's putting fuel on the fire to essentially grow his company. So he also has information on what it's like to raise a seed and a Series A. So you're in that Z or you're considering going into that zone. I highly recommend checking it out. You can find more information by subscribing to my blog@stuartalsop.substack.com I hope you enjoy this episode. Please let me know what you think. Have a great day.