Episode Description
If you are building something people want but still cannot grow it, this episode is for you. Kent talks with Michael Grinich, founder of WorkOS, about cold-emailing product managers, closing the feedback loop with real users, and why live demos beat polished decks.
They cover the missing step after "make something people want," how durable problem spaces survive market shifts (including auth for agents), and why storytelling is part of the product.
- (00:00) - Meet Michael Grinich
- (02:00) - Choosing the enterprise-ready niche
- (04:31) - Building for problems that are not yours
- (06:34) - Cold-emailing PMs who already shipped enterprise
- (10:44) - Questions that get past compliments
- (12:52) - Patience and durable problem spaces
- (15:57) - Beyond make something people want
- (20:25) - Auth for agents and MCP
- (23:57) - Talk to users, not just customers
- (28:42) - Live demos as tech marketing
- (31:39) - Test your story like Comedy Cellar material
- (39:10) - Monkey see, monkey do and Julia Child
- (43:03) - Homework: build GPT from scratch
- (46:10) - Where to follow Michael
Michael Grinich founded WorkOS to help software companies become enterprise-ready - SSO, directory sync, permissions, audit logging, and the rest of the stack that unlocks bigger customers. In this conversation, he and Kent dig into how that idea came from lived pain at a previous startup, and how he validated the market by cold-emailing and meeting PMs at companies like Dropbox, Slack, Asana, and Airtable.
A major theme is that "make something people want" is incomplete. Michael argues you also need an economic engine: who pays, why they pay continuously, and how the business model stays in harmony with the product. He ties that to picking durable problem spaces - WorkOS started in classic B2B auth, and the same foundation now matters even more for agents, MCP, and agent registration via auth.md.
They also get practical about product discovery. Talk to users, not only customers and dollar signs. Use live demos as the pinnacle of tech marketing. Treat small meetups like a Comedy Cellar set where you test material before the big stage. And when you show people how something works, you put yourself on the same side of the table - the Julia Child model of teaching by doing.
Michael's homework is concrete: spend an afternoon with Andrej Karpathy's "Let's build GPT from scratch" video so you understand the underpinnings of the systems you are building on.
Homework
- Watch Andrej Karpathy's "Let's build GPT from scratch" video (a few hours, one afternoon is enough).
- Hack along enough to rebuild a simple ChatGPT-like interface on top of a transformer you understand.
- Notice how that deeper mental model changes how you talk about agents, models, and product bets at work.
Resources
- Michael Grinich on X
- Michael on GitHub
- Michael on LinkedIn
- Michael on Bluesky
- WorkOS
- auth.md
- auth.md on GitHub
- WorkOS events on Luma
- Let's build GPT from scratch (Andrej Karpathy)
- The Mom Test
Guest: Michael Grinich
Host: Kent C. Dodds