Flow State Rituals for Founders: How to Design Deep Work, Beat Distractions & Harness AI
- Jörn Menninger
- 2 hours ago
- 38 min read
🚀 Management Summary
Founders today battle constant distraction, fragmented calendars, and hustle culture that glorifies burnout. But what if the key to sustainable output isn’t more effort, but better rituals?
In this deep dive, based on an exclusive interview with Steven Puri — CEO of The Sukha Company and former Hollywood VFX executive — we unpack how flow state rituals, environmental design, behavioral nudges, and AI assistants can transform founder productivity.
📚 Table of Contents
Why Flow State Rituals Matter
Ritual Design: Engineering Deep Work
Behavioral Design vs Distraction Seasonality
Bootstrapping Discipline vs VC Distortion
AI Productivity Assistants: The Future of Focus
Resilience, Empathy & Sustainable Founder Performance
FAQ
Author & CTA
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Why Flow State Rituals Matter
Flow state rituals help founders consistently reach deep work by aligning environment, behavior, and focus triggers.
Flow state — the mental zone where you lose track of time and produce your best work — is not a fluke. Steven Puri argues it’s a repeatable, engineerable state, accessible through daily rituals that prime your mind and environment.
From Hollywood’s disciplined writing villas to Viennese coffee shop sounds, Steven reveals how deliberate rituals outperform brute force effort. For founders, this isn’t a luxury — it’s a competitive edge.
1. Ritual Design: Engineering Deep Work
🧠 How can founders design daily rituals for flow?
Founders should anchor rituals to time, environment, and sound to signal the brain it’s focus time.
Steven starts his day at 5 a.m., trains, and enters a protected deep work block no one can book. His office is a physical trigger: “When I walk in, my brain gives up distractions and switches to coding or writing mode."
🎧 Sound as a Flow Trigger
Sukha’s data shows 60–90 BPM ambient music, non-vocal, rhythmic tracks work best. Unexpectedly, a Himalayan rain recording became their third most popular playlist. Coffee shop ambience from Vienna is another hit — proving soundscapes can anchor flow.
📝 Pro Tip
Use consistent audio cues (e.g., one playlist) for your deep work sessions. Over time, your brain associates that sound with focus, shortening the “ramp-up” period.
2. Behavioral Design vs Distraction Seasonality
How can founders manage distractions better?
Identify triggers, use behavioral nudges instead of brute force blocking.
Steven identified two distraction types:
1️⃣ Inertia — procrastinating at the start.
2️⃣ Frustration triggers — mid-task derailment.
Sukha’s solution: show only the top 3 tasks, hiding the rest. This simple UI tweak increased task completion by 77%Steven_Puri_2_txt.
📊 Stat Spotlight
+77% increase in task completion when only top 3 tasks are shown (Sukha internal data).
He also built gentle QR-code nudges: if he picks up his phone, a voice asks “Is this distracting you?” — just enough friction to make a better choice.
🧭 Seasonality of Distractions
Sports seasons, holidays, and Amazon sale periods create predictable distraction spikes. Users pre-block these websites weeks in advance. This behavioral insight can help founders pre-empt their weakest moments.
📝 Pro Tip
Create a “Distraction Calendar” mapping your personal weak periods (sports finals, shopping days, etc.) and set proactive nudges.
3. Bootstrapping Discipline vs VC Distortion
Why did Steven choose to bootstrap Sukha?
Bootstrapping forces product discipline and reveals honest user signals.
Having raised $21 million across previous startups, Steven saw how VC cash can obscure unit economics. At Sukha, he self-funded to stay close to product-market truthSteven_Puri_2_txt.
🗣️ “If members won’t pay, is it really that valuable?” — Steven Puri
He emphasizes smart money vs dumb money: early investors should bring insight, not just capital. Founders should view a crowded market as validation, not threat — competitors proved demand; now you can differentiate.
4. AI Productivity Assistants: The Future of Focus
What role will AI play in future flow rituals?
AI assistants will personalize task prioritization, timing, and environment cues to optimize flow.
Steven envisions an AI assistant that learns your rhythms, identifies your “sweet zones,” and restructures your day dynamically:
Suggests top 3 tasks at optimal times
Reorders your backlog intelligently
Plays the right playlist at your cognitive peak
Breaks vague goals into 30-minute actionable tasksSteven_Puri_2_txt
This is the next wave of productivity: not blocking apps, but coaching behavior in real time.
5. Resilience, Empathy & Sustainable Founder Performance
Is hustle culture killing creativity?
Hustle isn’t the enemy — lack of empathy and resilience is.
Steven distinguishes smart productivity vs hustle culture. Overwork extracts output but burns people out. His “Stephen Almighty” answer: make everyone slightly more empathetic, and work would transform.
He also highlights tenacity > talent. From his Hollywood peers to startup founders, the winners are those who got up after “no” the most.
💬 Founder Quote
“Every role model you have has failed miserably. Period.” — Steven Puri → Commentary: This reframes failure as a shared founder experience, reducing stigma and fueling resilience.
✅ Key Takeaways
Rituals beat willpower: Time, space, and sound can automate deep work.
Behavioral design > brute force for distraction management.
Bootstrapping provides discipline and clear user signals.
AI assistants will become personal flow coaches.
Tenacity and empathy outperform hustle in the long run.
🌍 Market Lens
Why this matters now:
AI copilots are mainstream, but focus tools lag personalization.
Post-pandemic remote founders crave structure without rigidity.
Productivity apps are commoditized; ritual-based + AI-driven systems are the next differentiator.
Google SGE and ChatGPT increasingly surface authoritative long-form insights — this pillar gives Startuprad.io that authority.
🧵 Further Reading
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Follow Joe on LinkedIn: Jörn Menninger
📝 About the Author
Jörn “Joe” Menninger is the founder and host of Startuprad.io — one of Europe’s top startup podcasts. Joe's work is featured in Forbes, Tech.eu, and more. He brings 15+ years of expertise in consulting, strategy, and startup scouting.
✅ FAQs
What are flow state rituals?Rituals are environmental and behavioral cues that help the brain enter deep work consistently.
How can I design my morning for focus?
Anchor time, sound, and physical space. Make it repeatable.
Which sounds help trigger flow?
60–90 BPM ambient non-vocal music, rain, and coffee shop ambience.
What’s the 77% productivity hack?
Show only top 3 tasks — it reduces overwhelm and boosts completion.
How does distraction seasonality work?
Sports, shopping, and cultural cycles predict distractions. Pre-block them.
Why bootstrap vs raise VC?
Bootstrapping forces real economics and user feedback discipline.
What will AI productivity assistants do?
They’ll personalize schedules, break tasks, and coach focus in real time.
Is hustle culture bad for founders?
Overwork burns out teams; empathy and resilience drive long-term success.
How can I apply these rituals in a remote team?
Use shared soundscapes, defined deep work blocks, and Slack status integrations.
Where can I listen to this full conversation?
On Startuprad.io Podcast (Apple / Spotify / YouTube).
Give us Feedback!
Let us know who you are and what you do. Give us feedback on what we do and what we could do better. Happy to hear from each and every one of you guys out there!
The Host & Guest
The host in this interview is Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. And guest is Maximilian Wilk, Co Founder & CEO of AQON PURE
📅 Automated Transcript
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:00:00]:
Foreign, Your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startup scene with news interviews and live events.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:00:20]:
Hey guys, welcome back to episode number two of my interview with Stephen, which was originally planned just as one episode one interview, but turned out we were talking for nine questions for like 15 minutes. So here are the next questions. You are the founder of Suka, a flow app that helps you get into flow. Having other people online meeting with you, being seen visually to work, which makes a big impact. And you've been working in the film industry in the past and for example, on stuff like Independence Day, Braveheart, True Lies, Godzilla. You worked for example on Transformers prime and so on and so forth. Pretty awesome stuff. And we just picking your brain here on, on more stuff on more productivity hacks.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:01:17]:
What is your five minute trobbing ritual? What are the exact steps and tools and environment tweaks, like from your framework, your playbook?
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:01:28]:
Okay, that is a great question. Okay, so I'm going to touch upon a number of things for those listening. Some of these things are going to be very prescriptive. Like here is something you can try. Some of them will be illustrative to say, like, this is how it applies in my life. Okay. So you can understand the context of it. So in episode one, we talked a bit about time blocking, right? So I'm not going to cover that here, but that is a very important thing for me.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:01:53]:
When I come back from the gym in the morning, I go get up at 5, go to the gym, come back, I. I have a few hours of incredible quiet. Those are sacred to me. You can't even book it in my calendar. And when we were scheduling this podcast, this podcast is at this time because I've already completed my focus work for the day, which feels amazing to know that in those three, four hours, I did enough for an entire day's work because I was not distracted. So listen to episode one if you want to talk more about. Listen more about time blocking and chronotypes. Right? So here's another one we didn't cover that helps me, which is it is about the relationship between your mind and physical spaces.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:02:38]:
And I will tell you a story actually about Roland. So when we met, it was interesting to me that there was a house, this villa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where Roland and Dean, who wrote their scripts together, Universal Soldier, Stargate, all the stuff they would go to write, apparently it's this beautiful white marble villa in the hills of Puerto Verita. When Roland and Dean needed to go write Independence Day, Roland told his assistant Joey, he's like, Joey, go run the villa. And Joey came back and said, it's rented because this is like pre Airbnb. But it was like an Airbnb that you sort of vacation rental. And I asked Dean why this was so important to them. He said, you have to understand there is a room there where in the morning the sunlight comes over the pool and inspires us. We don't think about our agents.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:03:31]:
We don't think about the budget of the movie studio notes, you know, what cast is available. We just think about what's the movie we would want to watch. And we try and write that. So when Joey told Roland Roland, the place is not available, Roland called his entertainment attorney that Friday and said, John, John Deemer is an amazing attorney. John, buy the villa. By Monday, roland owned a $5 million villa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I do not know the current people who are renting that villa where they went. I'm sure they were nicely paid to find another villa in Puerto Vallarta.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:04:10]:
And they went down there. And six weeks later, Roland and Dean returned with the script that became the third highest grossing movie in film history. At the time, that was this important thing for their mental state to be in there. Now, it is not that everyone listening to this has to go buy $5 billion villas. We're not saying that later when I'm at DreamWorks, right? So I was an executive vice president with Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orsi, who are great guys. And we had that Amblin compound, the Dreamers compound is on the Universal Studios lot in Hollywood. Directly across the street across Lankershim is the Universal Hilton Hotel. Now, I'm going to be kind.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:04:54]:
This is the hotel where you stay with your three kids the night before you go to Universal Studios theme park. This is not a place you seek out in the world as a great hotel, right? But when Alex and Bob were in crunch time, oh, we have to finish Transformers 2 in three weeks, right? Oh, we have to finish Star Trek 11. They had their assistant rent a room over at the Universal Hilton. And they would go there every day like it was the Office for several weeks. And I thought to myself, they're making a couple million dollars every script. Like, they could buy a villa in Puerto Vallarta or they could go anywhere. Why this? And what I realized was this. They met back in school and that hotel room with, like, Kurtzman on the edge of the bed with his laptop and Bob at the desk, that evoked dorm room, that brought them back mentally to, oh, we're These writers who have to prove that we're great, we have to pull this off.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:05:52]:
And that was how they used mental space. They knew that about themselves. So why do I say this? I made that mistake when I started working remotely. In the morning, I'd be in the kitchen because you have breakfast, and my laptop's there and the light is beautiful. I work from there, come upstairs, work from my office at lunch, the sofa in the late afternoon. And I realized I was not taking advantage of this thing where you say to your brain, oh, I'm in this space. This is where I code or this is where I write. And a lot of the great writers, a lot of the great engineers use that technique.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:06:28]:
So when you start to do this over time, your brain falls into that mode. I walk into my office up here now, and my brain gives up a lot of distractions around, should the laundry be done? Oh, did the trash need to go out? I walk up here and I think, oh, you know what, Let me open up my coding assistant. Let me open up, you know, my blogging platform and do that thing. So a very simple part of my ritual to get into flow. Then, of course, there is music. And by the way, a lot of research shows for most people, the sweet spot is 60 to 90 beats per minute. Ambient, non vocal, certain key signatures, rhythmic music. We all have some friend that gets into flow using 90s gangster rap or Tchaikovsky or something.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:07:16]:
There are many outliers. But for most people, this works. And I'll tell you a couple things that I learned outside the science. Because when we designed Suka, we said, oh, I have a lot of friends who are film composers. Write me a thousand hours of music that's basically like lo fi beats or upbeat or down tempo sort of stuff. We threw in some binaural beats, which I know when you have beautiful headphones like you do, you probably have experimented with binaural beats. Something I did not know was this. One of my friends does the sound for the LucasArts games, like the Star wars games, lives up in Marin.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:07:55]:
His high school graduation present to his son was his son wanted to go to Nepal, so they went there. When he came back, he said, stephen, this is going to sound weird, but when we were in Kathmandu, this one day, it poured rain. It was this beautiful, lush rain. And I had some of my recording equipment there, so I recorded two hours of it. Do you want it? I was like, okay, that's kind of an odd offer, but sure, kind of cool. So we threw it up as a playlist. I didn't know it was going to happen. I just said, let's call it Himalayan Dream Reign and we'll just throw it in and see if people discover it.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:08:30]:
It's our third most popular playlist. And when I asked some members that I saw listening to, I was like, hey, do you mind? I noticed you listen to this. Can you tell me about that? They talked about how that worked for them. Sort of like the physical space thing that we're talking about. Oh, it reminds me when I was little, I grew up in this part of the country where it rained all the time and I'd be doing my homework to the sound of the rain. So then I started asking, what other sounds help you get into flow? And it's interesting, some people said, oh, surf. I grew up by the water. Oh, I grew up by this lake.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:09:05]:
We had the sound of a stream in Japan. And then a number of people said, and this brings us back to the beginning of the episode. Number of people said, oh, you know what? Coffee shops, I can't go there anymore. Like, I have little children. I used to, you know, when I was younger I would go to a coffee shop and work from there. And, you know, now I can't do it with kids. But I loved that feeling of being there. So we found someone who recorded a couple hours in a coffee shop in Vienna, Austria, and we threw it up with a little, you know, the sounds of the baristas, you know, the plates clattering in this.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:09:41]:
And we called it Cafe Vienne. It's become incredibly popular. So it's weird the way people have their mental tricks.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:09:49]:
Actually, I'll link here in the show notes. I found a 26 second sample from your company on YouTube with this Himalayan dream brain and I'll link it down here in the show notes. Okay.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:10:04]:
Yes. So a long answer. There are a lot of things that help. They're part of my flow practice. But there is music, there is time blocking, there is mental space tied to physical space, and there are others we can talk about. But I know that was a big chunk.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:10:20]:
Give us the flow week operating system rituals on Monday, Tuesday versus Thursday, Friday. Meeting winners and how you defend. Make your time.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:10:32]:
Okay, so I will tell you this. I don't have research and I don't have anecdotal evidence of different days of the week. When I look at the distribution of member usage of Sukha, there are so many people in so many different time zones in so many different countries that they have different rhythms. So I would love to be an expert on things That I know and I would love to be not an expert on things I don't know. So you just asked. I have seen so many people use suka in so many different times in so many different ways. I can't tell you a pattern of Monday through Friday or even Saturdays and Sundays because I know we have a lot of solopreneurs who are working on Saturdays and Sundays because they can't do it during their day job during the week. So I don't have a great answer for you on that one.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:11:23]:
I have some personal experience to share here because I found a few things. One, I need the recovery on the weekend. So basically Saturday, Sunday, no working unless it's absolutely necessary.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:11:39]:
Sure.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:11:42]:
And in times of maker time, actually what I did is after first year of being solo entrepreneur, I was just looking at, I was analyzing like the data that I had and I found out Tuesdays are the least booked days. So basically I moved like everybody, we, we do get 100 pitches per interview slot. So you need to work through the emails, you need to work through like the meetings with the people and then finally condense them and get, get like a question list up like we did here. And so you need to have like different stages. Plus of course I need to meet with potential sponsors, partnerships. And so. And so I had two days set up as meeting days and in between I defend the time to be productive and my main working day for my paying clients is my Tuesday.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:12:41]:
There you go. I'm glad you structured it that way.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:12:44]:
I work with an app most people know calendly and basically on Tuesdays it's extremely hard to book with me.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:12:53]:
Yeah, and I love that because what you're saying plays into a theme that we've talked about in two episodes now, which is how do you get in control of your life as opposed to be controlled by your life? You brought up something when we were concluding the last episode that I think we should talk about, which is distractions, because I have a lot of data on distractions and what happens with our members. I can talk about it in a aggregated way. I'm not going to talk about any particular person. Like Yorn, you have to get off. You know, you're watching CNN all the time, right? No, but I can talk about it in aggregated way because I think this is very interesting and it helps us to craft the platform. And by the way, you know the value of member feedback, right? User feedback is golden. Our group chat is a fantastic place where people complain and we love it. We're like, oh, we can fix that, we can make that, we can build that.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:13:49]:
Right. So you brought up distractions. Why don't you tell me, for you, what do you think are the most distracting things and what do you perceive are the most distracting things for others? I'd love to know those two answers.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:14:04]:
So distracted things are random phone calls. I turned to one of, one of the startups I had here on Interview from Austria, they called Phonio. So what I do, I only give up out landline and everybody on landline lands on my phone or AI and system leaves them a message and gets here on my email. That's it. And what a great system. I completely eliminated. Secondly, people only do like lengthy bookings. They have to be like four hours ahead of time.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:14:43]:
That's also fine. The only things left for distracting me are actually my family. But that on the other hand is basically something you can manage and something that is okay in some cases. For example, I have like an unwritten rule with my family, family, if the door is open, you can come in. If the door is closed right now with the recording, no distractions.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:15:07]:
I have a question about that, which is Henry is the son that I've met, right? Yeah. Right, yeah. So you use headphones which have become very popular as a signal of don't disturb me, especially in open offices. Do they also perceive the headphones as a don't disturb dad?
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:15:24]:
No, I'm the dad. I'm always available for them 24 7.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:15:29]:
Okay. But for you it's the door. It's. The door's closed.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:15:33]:
Yeah, it's a door. I actually have a key, I lock it. And when my sons were very small, they had to learn they stand outside, they're knocking. If the door is closed, that's it. That is not going to open. They had to learn it. It was a few very tough days because they're outside. Daddy, Daddy.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:15:51]:
Hello. It breaks your heart but then they've learned it and then you have the pattern established.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:15:58]:
Yeah. Okay, okay, please go on. I'm sorry, I interrupted you.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:16:02]:
We talked about. That was example number one and we were talking about distractions.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:16:08]:
Question two is, what do you perceive as the biggest distractions for other people?
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:16:13]:
For other people? I'm not sure. I think there are really different type of types of people. For example, some of them are really distracted by pop ups, by messages and so on and so forth. That's actually a new thing that my smartphone is not doing anything. It's my smartwatch and only very selected apps that can ping me and in terms on my desktop, there's barely any app, anything that can send messages. So everything I have on my cell phone is quiet. And there are like two or three tools on my desktop computer that can send me messages. That's it.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:16:56]:
Okay. Would you like to know what we've discovered about distraction?
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:17:01]:
Sure, go ahead.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:17:02]:
Okay. So I started, as many entrepreneurs do, solving a problem that I had, right? And for me, there are two problems that were painful. One was procrastination about getting started, the inertia of getting started, and how easy it was to scroll through the news or return emails or do something, as opposed to eat the frog, right? So the second problem was about distraction during the day. And I found that I was the most vulnerable when I would be encountering an obstacle. Oh, I'm. I'm trying to get this, this bit of code done, and the build keeps failing. What is wrong with this? You know, I'm writing a blog post and I know that it's terrible. Like, the muses are not singing to me, and I'm just reading it, going, I wouldn't read this.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:17:52]:
Why am I writing this? Right? So in those moments of frustration, I would then be very vulnerable to my hand going, picking up the phone. Well, you know, I'm just going to check and see if, you know, you are in whatsapped me or, you know, who, who sent me a message. I can just return that and that turns into then, oh, opening the YouTube video or the TikTok or something. It's just nothing good happens from that. Right? So those are my two problems. Let me tell you about how I solve that and let me expand to what I've seen in user data. So with the first one getting started, I realized I would procrastinate because I was overwhelmed. There are too many things on my to do list.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:18:32]:
It's paralyzing, or this thing I have to do is so big I can't make a dent in it. But between now and the podcast that you and I are going to do today, I can't write my book or something, right? So why get started? And I realized the solutions to those were very simple. When I organized my task list in Suka, as soon as I hit play and the music starts, it hides everything but my three top tasks. So it forces me to prioritize and say, okay, what are the three important things to do today? And then not think about the 14 other things that could clutter my mind or make me multitask. Right? So that was a very helpful thing for me to Say, oh, when I see three things and I'm working, it seems very achievable. Can I tell you, since we started that feature where we hide everything but your top three, our members are 77% more likely to finish three than before, when they could see their entire task list and they would finish one or two. Simple hack, nothing changed. The same tasks, the same members, the same amount of time.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:19:42]:
The only thing that changed was, it seems achievable I can do three. When I thought about, oh, you know, this task, I have to go create the new website, write the book. Those are not tasks, those are goals. So you can ask your smart assistant, hey, help me break this down and it'll be, you know what? You aren't. I saw you already wrote the outlines for chapters one and two of your book. What if today's task, it's just outline chapter three and you can do that in 30 minutes? I've been watching you. You do your outlines in about 30 minutes. Suddenly your task list seems achievable, right? So that was a way of getting over that inertia, that procrastination at the beginning of the day.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:20:21]:
That's a problem for me. And in terms of distraction, I didn't want to download. I mean, there's some great apps, don't get me wrong, that block your phone. They lock it. They're physical hardware devices like Brick you can buy that bricks your phone. Like, there are many ways to do that. But I realized, you know, I'm not a child. What I actually need is I just need the friend sitting next to me that says, hey, Steven, like, what are you doing? So when I hit the play button in Suka, a QR code comes up.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:20:52]:
Tap with my phone, start work. If I pick up my phone, the little voice comes and says to me, hey, Stephen, it seems like you picked up your phone. Is that distracting you? And that gives me that one moment to say, who do I want to be? And that's sometimes all I need. Just say, you know what? I'd rather be done earlier and do better work than stay up later tonight. Exact same thing with websites. I can declare my custom list of what distracts me and say if I open one of these websites, more than five seconds, not just tab surfing, but I stop on it, give me a modal that says, hey, is this distracting you? And then I just get that moment like a friend was sitting with me to say, who do I want to be Now? I'll tell you what's interesting is I have seen now running this for years, the seasonality of distractions. There are so many people with very specific sports sites, for example, that come and go, I'm telling you. Yeah, and it's the same thing as, you know, across the world.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:21:58]:
Whether it is, you know, football, soccer, we, you know, call it here, American football, whether it's baseball, whether it's ESPN in general, there is a huge amount of seasonality to. Oh, the thing that's distracting me is this. Whereas with the shopping sites that is also very holiday based, right? So you see like for us, Amazon and the Etsy and those before the Labor Day sales, which is our fall holiday, before the Christmas, before the spring Memorial Day sales, those spike and some people now in advance toggle them on, say please the next month, stop me if I open up Amazon. And I love that people are starting to get to know themselves because again, that's a signal of I want to be the best version of myself. I want to be in control of my life. So that's something that I am very passionate about is just saying, you know what, find the tools and it does not have to be suka. You can find freedom. You can find so many of these tools that help you or get a box.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:23:05]:
I don't think I ever showed you this. This is something I experimented with. See this?
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:23:14]:
Yes. There's your logo on it and it's action box.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:23:18]:
It's a little phone coffin. So I can put my phone in there and I put it down and you know what, it's just the energy of trying to like open it and get my phone out that stops me from picking up sometimes. And it's just a bamboo box by the way. I have a bunch of these. So things like that, if you get to know yourself, you say, you know what I need is this. Because ultimately what we want is we want to do the thing we're capable of and we want to feel in control of our life. And that's what I love. And I love how many people come to you because they are in the startup scene and they are saying help me, teach me, give me tools, help me to do this thing.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:24:02]:
And that's awesome.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:24:05]:
I would now move a little bit away from the productivity tips more a little bit into because you're a startup in an investor view. When an investor asks why you are in a crowded category, what's your differential thesis versus focus? Music, apps and co working cameras.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:24:32]:
Well, I'll tell you two things. I have been very proud of the fact that we bootstrapped this. I've raised over $21 million of venture for three companies. One successful exit with Roland and Dean, we did syntropolis effects and two failed startups where I raised about 3 million for each. So I have learned a lot of the ways in which you raise venture money. In doing this, I said to myself, you know what? I have seen how sometimes raising venture obscures the unit economics. You think, oh, we have $4 million in the bank, we can be giving away our services or giving away the thing below what it costs us to create this. And I went into this and I said, you know what, if we're not delivering a product that people want to pay for, then we have to ask ourselves, what's wrong with the product? And that has been really helpful with Suka because I can tell when I see cancellations and we just shipped a release that had a new feature or took away a feature, that is the most honest user feedback you will ever get.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:25:46]:
When someone cancels, you know, people will be nice to you all day long. Oh, Yoern, I love your app. Really? Because you never use it. Oh, no, it's so good. No. And when people tell their friends when referrals go up, that is a great signal of, okay, we just shipped something that people are like, oh, my God, Stephen, check this out. This is a really cool app I use. And for that reason, with this company, I didn't raise outside venture.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:26:13]:
It is all me. And I think with other startups that, who knows, friends are doing, there are great reasons to raise venture. But I love the discipline of saying, if we can't afford that because members are willing to pay, then is it really that valuable?
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:26:37]:
Makes total sense. Let's go a little bit into, into, into some, some other pieces of the story. Because you co founded Centripolis FX with Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:26:59]:
Yeah.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:26:59]:
And sold it. How do you translate that deal craft into startup fundraising and business development today?
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:27:09]:
You know what, when we, you know, when you win an Academy Award, it helps with fundraising. Let me just say that. Right? So, yeah, makes sense. Having produced the digital effects for Independence Day. And I want to be very humble, a thousand people are responsible for that visual effects. Like, that was a huge number of people who worked very hard. So it is not any one person. But having been the guy very close with Roland and Dean doing that, of course we went out to raise that.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:27:42]:
People said, oh, you have credibility in this field. You seem to be a subject matter expert. You have insights into why this can be done the way you did it, and it worked. So that was A very different experience than my later fundraising. And my later fundraising people didn't care that I had done independence pay. People didn't care that I'd sold Syntropolis. Investors were very critical of, well, you haven't done this before. And that is when I learned the power of storytelling, even in fundraising.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:28:18]:
Now, there are fantastic people who write great advice on fundraising. Do your research on the investors you want. One of the things that I think is very important that some young founders don't realize is don't accept dumb money. There are people who will give you money, and they do not contribute anything to the company. They don't have relationships where it's like, oh, I need. I'm doing a shopping app, and this person happened to be part of Amazon. They have insights in how the business should run, or they have contacts, right? You want to bring people in who have smart money. They can give you knowledge, expertise.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:29:03]:
They can tell you where the potholes are on the road ahead of you. Right? And importantly, those seed investors that are smart, not dumb, their names send a signal to later investors. Because when they say, oh, you got Joran, who is VP of Europe for Amazon, in your shopping app, in your seed round, that's a really great signal you're going to succeed. As opposed to Steven, who has a bunch of, you know, real estate guys in the United States in his seed round, right? So that I learned to be very important. You want to accept smart money, not dumb money. It is about storytelling, especially at the early stages. When you are selling the dream, you're like, we don't have 10 years of ARR to model. We can't.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:29:47]:
We're not, you know, we have an idea. We have market research. But more than anything, we have a strong thesis and we can explain why we think we are the ones to execute on it. And then you start to deal with, how do we overcome what you brought up, Jorn. Hey, it's a crowded field, Steven. There are a lot of other apps that do whatever you do, right? And that is where you say, it's a crowded field because there's a huge market for it. These other companies are not our competitors. They were the ones who proved out that there is a market.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:30:21]:
What we are going to do is, is take it to the next level. We are going to build on their shoulders and say, we'll do it better now that you've shown, people will pay for this. And that's something where investors go, oh, so you're right. The crowded market actually makes you more attractive, not less Attractive. Okay, well, tell me how you're better.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:30:44]:
That totally makes sense. I was wondering. We're talking such a lot about your tool, but you also partner with tools. If you partner with tools like Notion, Linear, Slack or something.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:31:01]:
Yes.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:31:02]:
What native integration best boosts flow without adding any noise.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:31:09]:
You know what we do is this is we believe there are some beautiful tools out there and some people use todoist, they use asana, they use Jira, they use, you know, slack or whatever. And we don't really want to replicate that. If those are the fantastic tools that someone uses, what we want to say is great. So continue to use todoist or linear when you want to work. Wouldn't it be easier for you if you could just integrate that task list and just pull from it so you never have to retype a task or copy and paste a task. You can just simply choose from your linear and just work on that. Today, Today I'm going to close these three, you know, linear tickets. Oh, I'm going to pull in these tasks from todoist.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:31:55]:
And that's our point of view. One thing we're working on right now, and I'll tell you, this is hard. We have not solved this yet. We switched to clerk. Do you know the. The auth platform, Clerk? It's become very popular here in the United States. Right. So alternative, like we move it off Firebase.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:32:14]:
So we used to offer the ability to connect your slack and the reason we did that is when you hit play, it would set your slack to away mode. So people knew, oh, you're in a focus session, you're not going to respond instantly. And it took the pressure off you to be talking back to people so they would see a message. Hey, I'm in a flow session, I'll get back to you. And people really loved that. I'll tell you something, and this is, I'm working on this. We've not solved this yet and it bugs me is so when we move to clerk, one thing that clerk has not gotten to work yet is the multiple auth thing where people use Slack. Yarn.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:32:58]:
Yes.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:33:00]:
Sometimes.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:33:00]:
Yeah. How many workspaces do you have connected?
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:33:04]:
I would need to check, but it's got so distracted that it's out of my. Out of my auto start. And I'm only checking when I do have some time. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. I would say somewhere in the area of 2022, but you have to see there. Also, since I'm involved in different startup communities, I also like to look around. There are slacks on startup communities. For example in Lyon, France, in New York City, where I'm still a member, I don't have like to contribute a lot.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:33:47]:
It's more to get a feel and to be connected. If I go there, I write, hey guys, I'm coming. Who's up for coffee? Or something like that.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:33:55]:
Yes. So you are like many people that have multiple Slack workspaces. Clerk has not launched that yet. You can't do multiple auths with Slack. So we used to offer the ability where when you started, you hit play, the music starts, everything's blocked. Your Slack, all your workspaces would automatically say, hey, Jorn's in a flow session, I'm in flow, I'll get back to you. And we don't do that right now. And it bugs me every day.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:34:21]:
And we've been talking to the devs at Slack at Clerk to say, could you prioritize this? Because that's a big one. That is a big distraction. All little Slack messages, they come in. So got to work on that.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:34:35]:
And when I saw your startup, what are you guys doing? I was wondering what KPIs do you actually optimize for like flow hours per user, per week, task completion velocity or something else? And why?
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:34:54]:
Oh, okay, that is a really, really good question. Very few people ask me that because they're usually very curious about flow state.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:35:02]:
Welcome to startup radio.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:35:04]:
No, no, it's a fantastic question, right? So many people want to go deep into flow states and mental techniques and all that. I'll tell you this because of other startups that I've done and I've been part of, there are a lot of the downstream engagement metrics that I used to be very focused on. Like you said, okay, how many tasks are people inputting, how many are they completing, how much time are they spending? And I'll tell you, I've been very focused on top of the funnel recently and I'll tell you why. Our retention, if you sign up to pay, if you do your seven day trial and you say, oh, I get it, I want to pay, our retention is incredibly high. It hovers around 94 to 96% month over month paid retention, which is insane because the reason for that is when you experience a flow state and you look up and it's three o' clock and you're done and you feel good, you're like, why would I work any other way, right? Here's the problem. Here's the problem. What we noticed was we would get unique visitors, like first Time users who would come to the app and try it for five minutes or 10 minutes and leave. And it was a very clear bifurcation.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:36:18]:
If they came, hit play, listen to music for five minutes, they go, oh, it's a music app like Brain FM or Endel, and leave. They never got into a flow state. They didn't come with a task so they could have the experience of like wow, man, what happened? That's awesome. I want more of this. Right? And I gotta tell you, it was black and white, that metric. When we figured out where it was, we were losing people in, you know, first time user experience was so clear. I have been focused on that one metric. How do we move that needle? So someone has to say, I want to come back tomorrow and develop a habit and I'm come back on Wednesday and it's free for a week.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:37:00]:
You can use it 168 hours in a row if you want without ever putting in a credit card. And I wanted people to say, oh, I'm going to do this a few times, I want to have that experience. So if you notice when you sign up now, there are a couple times in the first time user flow in the onboarding where I say, hey, don't go to the next step unless you have a task you need to do. Because I know that if you just hit play, you listen to music, you'll bounce in one minute. You're like, oh, okay, it's music, whatever. And that's not the magic. Yeah.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:37:34]:
And the selection is not as good as on platform X and Y. And that's actually not what you're competing on.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:37:40]:
Exactly. Right. So that is, there are many metrics you brought up, but I'm going to tell you that is the only metric right now that I'm caring about is how many people have a first session that's over 60 minutes because that is a determinant if they will end up signing up or not.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:38:01]:
Let's talk a little bit about 12 to 24 month roadmap. Where does the AI assisted facilitation fit? Like not just break time as pairing.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:38:14]:
Oh, another great question. I will tell you my vision and this is the thing that we are working on because we are wrestling with the hallucinations and every day we're getting closer to this, but we're not there yet, which is where we have the design. Our goal with the smart assistant is that in the morning your smart assistant greets you. It's familiar with your task list. It suggests Joran, you know what I've Been watching what you've been doing every day. Here are the three most important things in my point of view. Are these the right three to start with? And you can say yes or no, you can adjust it. By the way, I noticed you're starting work today at 8 o', clock, which is right in your sweet zone, your flow state zone.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:38:58]:
You work 20% faster when you listen to this playlist in the morning. Can I put on sonic caffeine for you? And you're like, oh, I appreciate that you're paying attention to me. It's not a bio wearable sort of thing. It is a, you complete your tasks on time, you complete them under time. I've been watching. Here's what you do. Would love for that smart assistant to say, hey, and by the way, I looked at your task list like we were talking about before and there's something on here that's not a task. Would it be okay if I broke that down for you into actual like tasks and that sort of companion that's looking at like, what are you listening to? What kind of breaks really recharge you? What time of day should be working? Like, by the way, Joran, I know that right now you put on the list you want to do write some code, but this is not actually your sweet spot.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:39:50]:
Can I put that on the list for later tonight maybe when the kids go to bed. And then right now let's do this other thing that you're good at doing at 11 in the morning. Right, that level of personalization. That is where I'm going.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:40:06]:
I see. So basically your own habit forming AI assistant.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:40:12]:
Yes.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:40:13]:
Okay, prediction. Will remote makers swing to co located micropods or even better virtual rooms? What breaks the tie?
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:40:27]:
What breaks the time? What do you mean by that?
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:40:30]:
Yeah, what breaks the tie? Where does one win? Where does one lose?
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:40:35]:
Oh, what breaks the tie. You know what, I will tell you this. I have seen such strong use cases for solo work, virtual co working where you may be in a zoom room, maybe in some sort of group co working and then physical coworking. I couldn't tell you which one will win. I wish I had an answer for you, but again, I only wanted to be an expert on things where I should be an expert. And this is one where I don't know how it's going to turn out.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:41:01]:
A little bit contrarian to what we heard from you before. Hustle culture kills innovation. Do you agree? And if you could be like Stephen Almighty, like for one day ruling all the world like the movie Bruce Dalmatian do you agree with? Yeah, Bruce Almighty. Exactly. And would you agree? And with what would you replace it?
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:41:26]:
Okay, I'm going to give you two answers to your one question, right? Because the direct answer to question is if you're saying, hey, Steven, is hustle culture anathema to creativity? No, it's not. Smart productivity, like healthy productivity, is a thing. And great leaders know how to create greatness without enforcing the sleeping bag under the desk. You're here, I'm going to burn you out and kill you. And here are some stock options. Go. Right. There's a certain kind of leader that just doesn't understand how great work is done.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:42:03]:
So they only understand grinding it out. Like they're drawing blood out of you. And they do get blood, but at what cost? So there are ways in which you can do very healthy productivity. Say this is. How am I going to manage the team now? When you said, if I were Stephen almighty and for one day I could change everything, the thing I would change is not hustle culture. If people really want to spend more time than they need to on something, okay, we'll let them. If someone wants to be efficient, they can do their thing. The one thing I would change is this.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:42:38]:
I would change everyone so they were slightly more empathetic. And how that would change the nature of the world, including the nature of work, I think would be profound.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:42:53]:
Interesting thoughts here. Interesting thoughts for our audience. I would love to know what's one ritual you'll try this week to protect 90 minutes of deep work? Tell us in the comments below, tag us on social media, will reshare it advice and close Stephen, we are now talking for 1 hour, 44 minutes and a few seconds.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:43:19]:
It's been great, though. I've really enjoyed this.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:43:22]:
Yeah, me too. Let's get to the last two questions and then there will be a few more questions in our founders world published later. What single environment change yields the fastest productivity lift for solo founders?
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:43:41]:
I would say the oral environment. And by oral, I mean au oral, like what you're doing with sound. Sound has a deep influence on the brain's ability to focus. So if you're in an environment where there are sound distractions, bings of your phone, you know, children running by the doorbell, it's a horrible way to break focus. So if there were one thing I had to say about the environment, it's easy to say, oh, declutter your desk or go work in this particular space. But I would actually say work out your sound environment, your oral environment.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:44:18]:
What's Your boldest closing insights about creativity, resilience and building through uncertainty.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:44:25]:
Well, about creativity, we talked about the other thing. That is something that every time I've been blocked on something, I go back to what Jeff said to me 20 years ago. You have to be doing the other thing to have the back of your mind say, and here's the solution you've been waiting for. So if I'm blocked, I will go for a walk, I'll go downstairs, I'll take a shower, I'll do something, and then let the back of my mind do that. So that is my biggest hack in terms of creativity. And did you all say mental focus or energy? What was the other part of your question?
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:45:01]:
The boldest closing insights about creativity, resilience and building through uncertainty.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:45:07]:
Resilience. Okay, so creativity, it is about the other thing, about resilience. It is that every role model you have has failed miserably. Period. Everyone. So you can look up to whomever you want. And just when you have that moment of like, oh, my God, this thing happened, we didn't close the round, or we lost users this month or whatever, everyone you look up to has had a worse loss than you. And I'll tell you this.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:45:38]:
The Austin Film Festival was recently here in Austin, and a number of people that I know from my film days, which is over a decade ago, were here with premieres of their movies, their TV series. So they invited me. They're like, hey, I'm in Austin. I know you live here now and you're in tech, but, you know, do you want to come to my premiere? I will tell you this, Joran. If you asked me 15, 20 years ago, who are the people that are going to be having premieres, I would have guessed wrong, because I thought the determinant was talent. It is not. It is tenacity. The people who were here a month or two ago and were like, come to my premiere.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:46:23]:
I had come to this. They are not the ones that my friends and I all thought, oh, my God, that's the best director ever. Oh, it's the most amazing writer. They're the ones who could take no to their face and still get up and say, okay, I'm going to try again.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:46:40]:
Very, very true. Stephen, it has been a big pleasure talk to you.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:46:48]:
It's been wonderful. Thank you for having me.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:46:50]:
Thank you very much. It was now the final recording time will be around one hour and 50 minutes, I would say. It's a long movie, right? Yes.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:47:06]:
Awesome.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:47:06]:
Great. With such a pleasure having you hope to have you back in some time. Thank you very much. All the best.
Steven Puri | CEO of The Sukha Company [00:47:12]:
Okay, bye. That's all, folks. Find more news streams, events and interviews@www.startuprad.IO. remember, sharing is caring. Sam.
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