"Startups are a bad financial investment, but they're a great personal investment." It's not the advice you'd expect from someone who's failed at two startups and then landed senior roles at Facebook and Google.
Meet Mick Johnson, one of the first product managers on mobile for Facebook, who later worked on Google Maps for automotive before returning to Meta. But before his big tech success, he was grinding it out in Y Combinator when founders received just $6,000 and paid themselves $1,500 a month.
In this raw conversation, Johnson reveals why failure taught him more about his capabilities than any corporate role ever could, how he discovered resilience he didn't know he had, and the counterintuitive lessons that shaped his journey from failed founder to Meta executive.
Watch the full interview now on EO's YouTube channel! Below is the complete transcription of the interview. Minor edits have been made for clarity and readability.
Key Highlights:
"Startups are a bad financial investment, but they're a great personal investment. You will learn more about what you are truly capable of founding a startup than doing almost any other thing in the world, because you will put yourself out there into the world and the only thing standing between you and your dream is yourself."
"We knew we had product market fit when our servers went down and people tried to call us. Because they wanted our service to work. That was when we knew we had it."
"Many early stage founders will say, well, we're planning to just build it and we'll get referrals and people will like it and that's how we'll grow. But as an early-stage founder, often your product can be pretty good, but if you go to market is amazing, you will get enough signal to truly make it great."
"If you're an early stage founder, build something that's 10x better. You have to build something that really changes people's minds about the way to do something."
"We knew we had product market fit when our servers went down and people tried to call us. Because they wanted our service to work. That was when we knew we had it."
"Many early stage founders will say, well, we're planning to just build it and we'll get referrals and people will like it and that's how we'll grow. But as an early-stage founder, often your product can be pretty good, but if you go to market is amazing, you will get enough signal to truly make it great."
"If you're an early stage founder, build something that's 10x better. You have to build something that really changes people's minds about the way to do something."
From Australia to Silicon Valley: The Wanderlust Journey
What brought you from Australia to the Bay Area and eventually into the world of startups?
Mick Johnson: My name's Mick Johnson, and I've spent the last 16 years sort of moving between large tech companies and doing a couple of small startups along the way. I was one of the first product managers on mobile for Facebook. I went to Google and spent some time working on maps for automotive, and then I went back to Meta to work on Facebook again.
Australians have a little bit of wanderlust, right, we like to explore, we like to see the world. I've always liked travel, I've always liked exploring new things. I had a number of friends that had moved to the Bay Area and I was at a point in my life where it felt, OK, it's time for a change, time to try something new. And really when I first came, I just planned to be here for a couple of years, but I really grew to love the States, I really grew to love the Bay Area.
So I had a small startup called Gasbag, which was a way to find cheap gas around you when the iPhone App Store first came out, and then worked on location-based apps.
Australians have a little bit of wanderlust, right, we like to explore, we like to see the world. I've always liked travel, I've always liked exploring new things. I had a number of friends that had moved to the Bay Area and I was at a point in my life where it felt, OK, it's time for a change, time to try something new. And really when I first came, I just planned to be here for a couple of years, but I really grew to love the States, I really grew to love the Bay Area.
So I had a small startup called Gasbag, which was a way to find cheap gas around you when the iPhone App Store first came out, and then worked on location-based apps.
The Y Combinator Grind: Living on $1,500 a Month
What was it like being in Y Combinator during the early days when the funding was much smaller?
Mick Johnson: I would say the first startup that I did, my co-founder and I, we were sort of new to Silicon Valley, we were sort of new to some of that culture. We ended up becoming Y Combinator batches. We were actually there when going through YC meant you got something like $6,000 per founder. We were paying ourselves $1,500 a month or something, right, just trying to make ends meet, trying to make things work. We didn't really know how to raise money, we were just doing everything that we can without much of a map.
How did you know when you had found product-market fit?
Mick Johnson: We knew we had product market fit when our servers went down and people tried to call us. Because they wanted our service to work. That was when we knew we had it.
You call it sort of searching in the wilderness a little, you're trying to get to product market fit and you build thing A and no one really responds and build thing B and no one really responds. And when you finally build thing X, and it takes off, you will know, and it's hard to describe that feeling until you've had it.
You call it sort of searching in the wilderness a little, you're trying to get to product market fit and you build thing A and no one really responds and build thing B and no one really responds. And when you finally build thing X, and it takes off, you will know, and it's hard to describe that feeling until you've had it.
The Go-to-Market Reality Check
What's the biggest mistake you see founders make when transitioning from big tech companies to startups?
Mick Johnson: I often coach people who've gone from a large tech company to being founder of a startup, and they always forget, or deprioritize go to market, because if you work for Google or Facebook, and you have a new feature or a new idea, you can get it in front of billions of people. That's not hard.
Many early stage founders will say, well, we're planning to just build it and we'll get referrals and people will like it and that's how we'll grow. But as an early-stage founder, often your product can be pretty good, but if you go to market is amazing, you will get enough signal to truly make it great. And if you can't get people using your product, it doesn't matter.
And so this can be any combination of calling people on the phone, creating search ads, doing content marketing, doing referrals, doing whatever it takes to actually get sales and marketing working for your business.
Many early stage founders will say, well, we're planning to just build it and we'll get referrals and people will like it and that's how we'll grow. But as an early-stage founder, often your product can be pretty good, but if you go to market is amazing, you will get enough signal to truly make it great. And if you can't get people using your product, it doesn't matter.
And so this can be any combination of calling people on the phone, creating search ads, doing content marketing, doing referrals, doing whatever it takes to actually get sales and marketing working for your business.
The Great Personal Investment
Both of your startups didn't ultimately succeed. What did you learn from those experiences?
Mick Johnson: We built some really interesting things, but ultimately it didn't scale, it didn't succeed. I went to Google and spent some time working on maps for Automotive, and then I went back to Meta to work on Facebook again.
And so the main thing I learned from both of my startup ventures, I'll say, you know, startups are a bad financial investment, but they're a great personal investment. You will learn more about what you are truly capable of founding a startup than doing almost any other thing in the world, because you will put yourself out there into the world and the only thing standing between you and your dream is yourself. And for folks who are into self-development or self-learning or any form of inner learning, it's just one of the best things out there.
And so the main thing I learned from both of my startup ventures, I'll say, you know, startups are a bad financial investment, but they're a great personal investment. You will learn more about what you are truly capable of founding a startup than doing almost any other thing in the world, because you will put yourself out there into the world and the only thing standing between you and your dream is yourself. And for folks who are into self-development or self-learning or any form of inner learning, it's just one of the best things out there.
What did you realize when you went back to big tech after your startup experience?
Mick Johnson: When I went back from Facebook to doing a startup again, I realized how many things I took for granted. Particularly at small scale, small-scale startups. The amount of time that you have to spend on the basics, getting an office working, making sure that there's insurance, getting all the payroll pieces, nothing to do with the product, you take all of it for granted.
But the big attraction and the big draw in startups is how big your dreams can become. No matter which tech company you work in, you can have fairly big dreams. You can dream of touching billions of people with a product that you're deploying, but you're always going to be somewhat constrained by the code base that your team works with and the existing policy guidelines and so on. Whereas in a startup, you can choose to do whatever you want, really, whatever problem you want to, however you want to attack it.
But the big attraction and the big draw in startups is how big your dreams can become. No matter which tech company you work in, you can have fairly big dreams. You can dream of touching billions of people with a product that you're deploying, but you're always going to be somewhat constrained by the code base that your team works with and the existing policy guidelines and so on. Whereas in a startup, you can choose to do whatever you want, really, whatever problem you want to, however you want to attack it.
Building Something 10x Better
What advice do you have for early-stage founders about building products?
Mick Johnson: If you're an early stage founder, build something that's 10x better. A lot of the time, you will build a thing that's a little bit better and has a few new features or a thing that's a little bit nicer or easier to use, but you have to build something that really changes people's minds about the way to do something.
From Proving Yourself to Doing Great Work
How has your mindset evolved throughout your career journey?
Mick Johnson: As a young man, I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I felt like I had to prove myself to the world, I had to show that I was better than other people, I had to show that I could do these things. Of course the realization eventually, I'm really trying to prove myself to myself, and so it gave me a lot of drive, it gave me courage to go and do startups and take the less well trodden path and put myself into harder to succeed situations and sometimes come out the other side.
And then several stages along my journey, truly adopting responsibility for other people made me realize I don't need to prove myself to anyone else, I just actually have to do great work.
And then several stages along my journey, truly adopting responsibility for other people made me realize I don't need to prove myself to anyone else, I just actually have to do great work.
What did startups teach you about handling failure and rejection?
Mick Johnson: You know, for many folks, particularly in the Bay Area, if you work in tech or if you've done well academically, you're not really used to failure. You're pretty used to, if I study hard on subjects that I'm good at, I'm going to do reasonably well on this test or in this job or something like that.
But startups are ones where you might pitch an idea to 40 VCs and they will all give you polite maybes, and you will realize at the end of a month of knocking on every door you can that this is just not going to work out, and you have to decide, am I going to make one more phone call, am I going to send one more email? And I did sort of discover, yeah, I do believe in myself enough, I am going to do this.
And it was just that facing that sort of form of rejection which you can have either from investors who don't believe in you or in a product that hasn't found product market fit yet or you're trying to hire people to join your startup and you don't yet have enough credibility. I certainly discovered a resilience I didn't know I had.
But startups are ones where you might pitch an idea to 40 VCs and they will all give you polite maybes, and you will realize at the end of a month of knocking on every door you can that this is just not going to work out, and you have to decide, am I going to make one more phone call, am I going to send one more email? And I did sort of discover, yeah, I do believe in myself enough, I am going to do this.
And it was just that facing that sort of form of rejection which you can have either from investors who don't believe in you or in a product that hasn't found product market fit yet or you're trying to hire people to join your startup and you don't yet have enough credibility. I certainly discovered a resilience I didn't know I had.
Explore more