Oprah Winfrey on the importance of connecting with the people you’re serving

💡 DAILY INSIGHT

Oprah Winfrey on the importance of connecting with the people you’re serving

In the clip below, Oprah explains that the reason her show worked was because she understood her audience and deeply appreciated her viewers as human beings.

She shares the following insight from a conversation with Whole Foods founder John Mackey:

“The people who you are serving and who you’re trying to sell to are as important… as your shareholders.”

And great service is really about helping people achieve their potential and constantly tying that back into the purpose of what you’re building:

“Everybody wants to fulfill the highest, truest expression of yourself as a human being… My understanding of that has allowed me to reach everyone…. I’m trying to bring little pieces of light into people’s lives… My job is not to be a talk show host or just to own a network. I am here to raise the level of consciousness, to connect people to ideas and stories so that they can see themselves and live better lives.”

This is a common refrain we hear from the best founders. Companies do better when they have a clear mission and a deep sense of purpose.

Full video: Stanford Graduate School of Business “Oprah Winfrey on Career, Life, and Leadership”

📥️ Founder Q&A

Q: Can you recommend a list of daily, weekly, and monthly check-in questions to help a pre-PMF startup with accountability and focus?

A: I really like Sam Altman’s advice that you shouldn’t focus on (or even track) absolute growth before PMF (product/market fit). Your goal is to build something that a small number of people really love, and he argues that retention and frequency of use are better metrics to track. I’d recommend building your check-in metrics around those. Retention is straightforward: group your users into 1-week cohorts and track how many are still using your product 30 days later (good explanation of cohort retention from Adam D’Angelo here). With respect to frequency of use, I’d recommend measuring your product’s Power User Curve (coined “L30” by Facebook’s growth team).

Ask your startup questions at the link below and I’ll do my best to answer one a day!

📰 NEWS

• Reddit priced its IPO on Wednesday at $34 a share, top of $31-34 range, valuing the social media company at about $6.5 billion (CNBC)

• Fed keeps rates at 5.25%-5.50% and suggests 3 cuts in 2024. S&P 500 +1% to new all-time high (CNBC)

• Justice Department to sue Apple for antitrust violations as soon as Thursday (Bloomberg)

• Neuralink’s first patient plays chess using brain implant (WSJ)