About the Episode

Today, we’re kicking off a new long-term segment, called Track Zach — my buddy Zach Marshall just founded a company called Conterra, and is about 3 months into the journey. I plan to have a conversation with him every 3 months or so to get a real-time, much more honest, interesting look at startup life. Zach, now in his second career after the Navy SEALs, is setting his considerable will against a new challenge — starting a venture-backed company to fix today’s outdated, broken system for hiring private security around the world. Enjoy the ride!

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Additional resources to help enrich your experience below:

Topics Covered: 

• What drives someone to become a Navy SEAL
• What is private security?
• Conterra: the private security marketplace
• How Conterra is going to revolutionize a $50 billion dollar industry labor marketplace for private security industry
• The current state of Conterra and where it’s going

Favorite Quotes:

• “In the military you have to learn things extremely fast and not just to pass a test, now you are responsible for these things. For example a skydiver in charge of a civilian drop in a stadium is coordinating all sorts of things and he has 10,000, maybe 5,000 jumps. Meanwhile I had to do the same thing in the service and I had around 65 jumps.” – Zach

• “In the military you’re just given this massive amount of responsibility so you have to actually pay attention to every detail. Attention to detail is one of those phrases said thousands and thousands of times in the spec ops community and it really is true.” – Zach

Additional Resources:

• Conterra
• Email Zach: [email protected]
• Eric Jorgenson Newsletter
• Eric Jorgenson Leverage Course 

Additional Episodes If You Enjoyed:

• Andrew Wilkinson: Investing vs. Operating, De-risking Leverage, and The Best Part About Business
• Nick Huber: How to Leverage Twitter, an Abundance Mindset, and A Love of Chaos
• Andrew Finn of WaitButWhy: How To Acquire A Free Company And Knowing When To Eat A Shitburger 

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