Thread by @julien

1/ Timing is absolutely everything when you are working on a project. You alwwya try to time things right, but ultimately they aren't up to you.

Spotify's acquisition of Gimlet gives me an opportunity to discuss this, so here we go.

2/ in 2004, I started a podcast- it was in the first 5 in Canada and probably in the first 50 in the whole world. The name of it was In Over Your Head. It was the world's first hip hop podcast. Yes really.

3/ I thought, early on, "I got in on this at the right time!" and I was very excited. I thought I was going to her very successful doing this. For sure, I thought, I had gotten the timing right. But I was deeply wrong about that.

4/ because of the timing, my show was picked up by an early podcast network. I thought it was happening! But the scale wasn't there. The listeners weren't there yet. The ad tech wasn't there- and of course, because of that, neither were the advertisers.

5/ being first can feel really exciting. Note how every press release for every startup ever says they are the first truly X that does Y. If you try hard enough, you can be the first at anything.

But it turns out that doesn't matter. What matters is the size of the wave.

6/ you can't control the size of the wave because almost all of it is chance.

The wave started before you were there, in some far away place. It's been years that this wave has been building. The wind is just right. It's about to break. You're there. All that is just luck.

7/ so 15 years after I started podcasting, this acquisition happens because of outside forces. My podcast network could have been it - but not because they were good or bad, or because Gimlet is better, but because Spotify happens to need it strategically. You can't control that.

9/ what being on the wrong wave teaches you is how to time better next time, and also the unique lessons about a market that come from being in a wave at all.

@ Breather we are learning a ton about timing because we are right at the edge of the "flexible real estate" wave.

10/ I also think that the larger waves are, the slower they are to break. Commercial real estate is extra slow because it's been the same forever. So it's a wave that's easier to get on, so to speak, because it's so large.

11/ maybe the lesson of all this is that there is always another wave coming and that you just have to get out there regardless to learn and to try. The perfect wave will never come, and you'll always have you work harder than you want to to hit it.

12/ But man, if you have the timing right, a lot of other things can get fucked up and it can still go in your favor.