I failed 22 times... then I built a $2.5B Company | Christina Cacioppo from Vanta
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The time my email is Christina at USB dot com, like the right side, that USB docs is way more powerful than the left side. And now you're giving that up. And so what are you? You're betting on the left side. You're betting on the left side and like why would you do that? And like what do you think will happen?

Feel like.

I don't, in fact, do you know what you kd. Perry in the world, liam, have common .

got nothing.

You're all on forms, self made women, and you are ahead of them.

Is that that?

Yes, you have the midwest modesty.

Yes, you're in good. Come .

from that. There are sort of made for the wrong time of people, yes, or jail .

time later. The last, that there was never on thirty under thirty. And deeply glad about that out.

Yeah, that turned out to be an antiseptic. You know, when I was thinking about this episode, the way I think about IT is like where you are today is where a lot of people want to be. You have a company that's working.

It's like a cool start up name is a cool office and go last valuation, I believe to point four, five billion, but who's counting today? You're at where a lot of people want to be. But if we rely the tape to me when I looked at your story, I think the through line for this is not counting yourself out.

Someone put that out there that might be true or might not be true, but the basics of IT is you you had a good job and you quit to try something new, to try to make IT on your own, which a lot of people want to do, but they don't take the leap. You took the leap and it's not like IT hit right away and you create advanced. You created this multibillion dollar company right off the bet. You did like thirty five things wrong, or three, five projects that went nowhere. And I love that because I spent eight years of my life being in my head against the wall with failure after failure after failure each time believing this is the time you know let's start where you have a good job yeah um you have the job of USB which I think you kind of .

hustle your way to stumble hold didn't .

like possible .

possible they announce that jobs like they do all their jobs on the internet and said, hey, fill out this form if you want this jobs under some links to your web presence and so I literally sent them three links to my web presence and didn't email anyone who knew them didn't, you know, turn out. I like knew people from school who did pull anything links. And IT was twitter, flickr through the era of this.

And I had started a design blog a couple months before, and I lived in brilliant because I wanted to be looking to inner who lived in brilliant. Those people seem up design blog. So I started one. Now is that. And they hired me, which would you.

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And I read something that was like the baby fred, or somebody at the U. S. B team was telling you, you should specializing cyp du. You should come a crypt.

O, V, C. Is that true? Kind of is actually of livings. So this was end of twenty twelve, had a lot of inks because this job was great.

They were great, you know, like, haven't you made IT and sort of like, good, but I don't like, I like IT again, what what's going on? And one of my hanging ups was, you know, what have I done? Why would anyone take my money? right? Who's going to take a check from me? Vers in my head of time. Mat caller, this um GPS no longer benchmark, but had this like a lust silicon rally career like linton for fence, you know, you like verse, my color, every would would choose my color. I A hundred of one hundred times.

which is maybe part partially a part sync me, but also may be hypolito ical .

think like, yeah but like also to anyway. And I basically said that the friend, he said two things, which a couple dogs out deeply and apple one was like, well, one, could you ve got I like, get over that.

And you can either get over that by sort of out hosting people and like kind of the figure till you make a strategy and you would like, look, i've seen ough with two years and for two years it's like you're you're not could so you solution, try that one? The other strategy is pick something, go deeper in IT and be the expert where no one else is. And in the fall of twenty twelve, I recommend you choose scripta really good advice on a bunch of dimensions. I didn't take IT.

but like because you really cried door, you are just like that's .

not me and just like I don't know, I want to be an investor OK even though it's great and is wonderful and them to hold these great attributes and like everyone else wants to be A C public to make things.

So you decided to go make things. Take me back to that decision.

Was that easy? no. Was .

everybody padding on the back?

What I didn't. What my plan was was i'd saved my bonus from the parlier, and I going like a finance as bonus, and I was going to live off of that long as I could. So like no job, but a bunch of structure, learn to code, learn to make products.

Hopefully something will come out of that. And very much pitched as that he was not pitched as I am going to start to start up. There was pitches. I am learning to teach myself to code because that's how I saw that and thought about IT. And like, yes, I wanted to start to start up, but i'd seen over the two years of U.

S, B, so many people start start up to start them and then get into them and then be like, and I want to work on this, but now I have people in office invested. Like, I can't stop but I think there was um I think people took that conservatism as, oh, you shouldn't be doing this and so specifically there was I mean, there was a bunch of like White who no one leaves USB who have the option of staying. Why would you do that? Or do you want to work at some other venture firm? Or, oh, you want to code, why don't you go to grad school? Stanford has a great graduate programme, beauty science.

Why didn't you go work for somebody else? Could clearly you don't know what you wanted do and then some amount of like of the tougher stuff, I think broke up. One person in particular that had been closed to, and who is very like this, the left side in the right side of every meal address the time.

My email is Christina at USB dotcom, like the right side, that USB docotor way more powerful than the left side. And now you're giving that up. And so what are you are betting on the left side? You're betting on the left side. And like, why would you do that? And like, what do you think will happen here?

So you have a good job. Yes, you quit. You hear the look. You took the right side of the email, which was the powerful part. You threw IT the way you're betting on the Christinia part of which there are many.

And your plan is not even to go start a company to earn out a code, and you're going to take your self code by going on online and learning how to go that way. And my understanding is that worked ah because I went in to your website. Well, you have this like list of projects .

and like I built all these .

things mostly went nowhere. There's something manic, but i'm going to cave, reinvent myself and learn this magic superpower. And i'm going to train in the mountains where nobody y's looking. And I going to .

come back stronger. May not felt that the time I knew was fused to feel that, like, I spent more than I like daily cash, I know, but like, I kinky that what I, A Better version of me would feel. But practically, I knew I was a person who benefits from structure and isn't always created at doing for myself.

So what I did was a friend of mine had just sold a company to ebay new york and open up this this big face in new york, actually, right across the street from the U. S. A.

office. And so I got up every day, and I got trust from my job, and I basically walk to the same place, but I went in a different door. And then I SAT with those engineers.

and they actually dressed up, by the way, because I I feel like there's psychologically .

something to actually dressing up like, yeah, yeah. And then I go and I going to show in the morning and i'd like, do my udacity tutorial or you try to understand geno job is script to the diversion degrees. And then I go home, you know, six P M or six P M.

And then often, like keep doing stuff, but basically was like tricking myself and do acting like I had a job so that I got up every day. I was there. But but you know, I was just doing the thing when.

And I do remember there was a time my family took a vacation that I went along with in january, and I came back tian and everyone was like, where were you last tweet? Like basically like why when tue at work and why are you tina and I would be going like how compatible for this? You like everything is pt o to me um but he was like also well, like, oh yeah, I got this like that that was kind of like a fun fun moment too yeah like .

that so you have this era, which is kind of like in the movie is the montage. It's they just festival through this party two minutes, even though in real life is two years. And you have this thing written on your site that I love this quote.

And I think in my research, this is my favorite thing I pulled for you, which was at the top of your site. IT says the function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that source. And this is from a book called the art of fear. Can you? I love that. Can you.

can you explain that? Yeah, and I deeply to have creative projects. And anything startups or businesses or your internet art is not like they're all creative projects.

One thing I learned that USB seeing seeing people bitch, but then like hearing the stories behind their big, you know, tumblr, twitter, force square, whatever, all the big successes of the era. Or when I worked in the U. S.

I was like, everyone is mark ochberg. Not actually like, but like, if you like, start of founders are people have an idea, and they go into their room and they build IT and everyone use of IT. And it's like the first or second thing they've done.

And like these are bigger, but those come all of my projects. So like that's the wait, you know, like kind of shoot. I'm like not to never work for me, so I am probably not one of them.

And U. S. He was just so helpful and distributed using that notion and being, like, look, some people, like a very small number of people can do that. And that's incredible. I wish I were them. Not most people actually try a bunch of stuff and eventual something might work, but it's like the best thing five and IT might be fifty five, but no one really talks about that because it's both. It's like painful and kind of not found know it's romantic actually kind of sack to a hungry y for two years, literally and metaphorical and it's so much nicer if you get so much of praise for so of being like the brilliant person, right? And that's the expectation to, I think I just had I like, yeah but like that discouraging so many people from starting you like .

a bunch of movies about love and then you like, this is what it's like, yeah, I will bump into a stranger, our papers, all on the floor, swap of paper. You will have to come find me, but i'm not in to him, but just pursue me anyway. Like if you have that notion that that how IT goes, you almost counter yourself out of other things that could have work otherwise.

If you watched the social network you like, that is how IT is brilliant, genius, is has a vision, does IT takes off. And then right example now at the radio, we actually, after I read this quote on my team, we started using this phrase is called bad art. So i'll hit up my team in the more so, hey, let's makes some bad art like intently, just almost lower the stakes.

Instead, we have to find the next big winner idea. This must make some bad today. yes. And the analogy, I again I said, imagine like a to hotel or motel, you doing something, you're going to place place you've never been before.

Maybe no boy's been when you turn on the tap, like it's muddy water at the beginning. You if you look at that and you're is like modified by IT is a disgusting you'd turn IT off right away and doing you bad relief. But if you know that actually that's the process that you sort of have this mode water of bad ideas and bad skills at the beginning, get IT out of your system, then suddenly the water search running clean. And I think that framework is is just very useful for anyone who is doing you to creative endeavors or start up such are a pretty creative endear.

too. Do you know the story about making pots? No, from the same book.

So and I think I go around the chapter, that quote was, but anyway, there's an art teacher and he said, okay, get our school pottery class. You have one assignment all semester. You have five weeks to make the perfect.

You can turn in as many pots as as you want, but I will judge them all in the highest grade. Go to the personal is the best pot, and student ones spends all semester crafting the perfect pot and handed in at the end. And student, too, makes two pots today. They're all go bad for a long time. But IT was, of course, this semester him then what are like three hundred pots and like, who gets .

Better grade course? I put this like that thing I did once in my company. There's a you've probably seem like the martial, a test like the cyst with kids and makes a good point, which is you give a bunch of supplies to a you break your team and adventure groups, groups of eight, four, five, and they get like sticks of spaghettis smell.

And there's something like may be a string and like two other things, like a piece of tape. And so the idea is, hey, you, an hour at the end of the hour, I will come around, I will measure whoever from the table top has the highest marshmallow so ever. Get build the biggest tower winds.

And what most people do, what my team did and everybody who does is the first time prety much is you immediately go into like the way we do most things in corporate life. So it's kind of like, okay, you're in charge. You do that, he sort of a segregation of duties.

You start trying to like plan, and then you, so you sketch a little bit, then you start building the tower, and at the very angle OK. Okay, almost time put the marshmallow on and the entire thing collapses, because even though the martial looks so small and like light a compared to spaghettis is way, way too heavy. And you don't realize that because you didn't like you like backloaded the possible failure, you the failure mode or or the sort of test of the of the idea you spend all your time kind of planning and architecture.

This brilliant, beautiful thing. And the the cool thing that they have shown in this is that when they do IT with kids versus adults, the kids right away either eat the marshmallow or put the marshmallow on right away and like, so it's too heavy, you have to have five speak to hold this thing up. They figure that i've right away.

They don't kind of save that to the end, trying to perfect IT. And that sort of iteration thing about testing the risk of assumption you is, is maybe important. That seems like for you, did you make that mistake of kind of like overanalyzing over planning at the beginning, but like not testing with customers less .

the very beginning? Because at the beginning I was just built that I built a book website. IT was like good reads for Better but I was actually worse, said, I notice you and but like IT was something for me um this confused everyone else, right?

Because they be like, well, you're what not what you doing without having a job and like a little a book club, say, and they like you going to have a amazon, no, I gongonk a be you the good reads and you like well with my friends, but like, no, you know, then they be like, what would you say you're doing? Know you like mostly battling javascript, rs, trying them and like, spend last time and stack overflow, you know anywhere. Is this a little cool, confusing thing? But the beginning I was just, I like, like when I would go visit a friends apartment, I always like done to the book shelf. You want to see IT on the bookshelf. I think it's like, okay, what if I can you get a bookout but he was like.

clearly this is not a business because I want .

IT IT I want and IT was a good IT wasn't, you know like you do the initial coding tutorials and you like or making whatever the other person wants to make, which is not what you want to make and like I actually wanted this thing and I like forced me to, oh, you know now I want like an animation when you shell ve the book so you you write and then you'd like learn about CS and animations, whatever IT is.

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And so so you start a building up for yourself. yes. Did you ever switch gears to? Okay, now not going to do the startup. Start up. I'm going to do the thing that might actually know, give me out of poverty, self poverty, basically.

So at that point I was very like, look, you know, to stop myself how to code and like, you know that good? no. But learning how do I do some of this is much harder than I should be. And a lot of its because our programing tools make us like hold everything in our heads and you have to teach yourself to think like a computer and like read through code, just like not our person and think like a computer. And once you have that, everything is easier, bit like why we are typing on computers. And so I kind of gotten this like, uh, if we can make our programme environment Better, you can like more they will just make more sense and more people will like learn to code and so you don't actually into that personal problem also the like, you know, live in the future and build back, you know, what were all that all the start of probe device?

I'm curious about that.

What start of trope device actually helped you? I think the build something you want is a bit of a red hearing IT works in some cases, but you're also very limited to your experience. It's kind of like when they tell writers, right, what you know and the new like, you know, it's like a fourteen year old who had a term life and like they just don't know that much. And so like what are going to write about. And so my version of that is like, look, if there is something personally meaningful by all means .

go for that's .

totally but like second best is like find someone else with the problem and deeply understand them. Uh, I think there's a very the shut your eyes, imagine in the future what that look like, build that. I like this make sense in retrospect CT. I think in the moment, it's pretty hard to generate reasonable start of today during that. But if I can tell you a story about the end, that would of IT that that but it's .

but it's a retrograde. So what was the actual in the moment way that you stumbled into this idea? venta?

That now seems obvious, as all great ideas do s once they exist. Now there's you guys and competitors or trying to do the same thing. But that was kind of a novel idea, and IT was a new part of the market at least. What was the insight for that?

The insight was wanted to start a security company that started serving startups. There seemed to like security was a huge market, but no one has really focused on start up and sort of the new security tools. And I think like why and like windows is become a ninety quite million but like go from zero time to like ninety quilling dollar market .

science in .

precise terms yeah that's official exactly.

But White security is like, you know, when I have been talking to her twenty minutes now you don't strike me somebody who's like, I wake up every morning and I was thinking about security during that year off. what? Why did you even think about security to be?

IT seemed really interesting. IT seemed like this kind of competitive cat mouse saying where they, uh, with attacker is whether is a kind of real dashboard, right? I mean, one of the things i've i've been, I guess I know, but I didn't really know, like a very competitive, should have played more sport as a kid didn't h through them to have an outlet for a lot of that other do to grove rate.

And I think honestly, when I was that job box, I worked with this product security team and they were great. They were super fun and they were really good educators and and they're hosted, you know, seminar and things that just like they wanted you to fix something, but they'd come over and sit next year and explained why IT was important and how and all the in way, they were just great. And so in coming with search of ideas, there was a bit of like, well, this actually seems like a deep enough, interesting enough space that if I work in in for years, it'll be lots of things. And if I can't come up with anything and end up burning, you know, eighteen months of my life learning about security on the internet.

good, but worse yeah rather .

you're going to look back and be like, okay, worst case, nothing comes out of this but like, you know, i'll feel as good as I will well.

not me so you you took the year or multiple years off to teach two years ah but then you go to drop x yeah so you go back to getting a job yeah so I feel like we like there's a part of the story that's like I era finally I found IT .

don't know finally found drop acks OK now I can code, but i've never had a real job. I've never worked at a company, never worked with people. Also, my my like friend who are kind of getting promoted and like I can mean like a clear from employable like this seems bad.

And I was really frustrated IT, because, again, I like, I wouldn't tell people I wanted to start up to come out that, but like I did. But I also at the time was like, nothing I worked on should be I start up. So yes.

what was that story you told yourself? So you you spent the two years you bet on yourself? Yes, which sounds amazing, is a great t shirt bet on yourself? yeah.

But the reality of I do IT for, I told I did IT for eight years, yes, and I was the real enough to keep going. yeah. But also, objectively, IT was bad.

And I should have, I had to tell myself certain stories in order to either keep going or to, like, just maintain a self, a sense of confidence. Yes, beyond that, because the evidence was telling me you suck. Yeah, yeah. And I just couldn't tell myself you suck, because then I definitely suck. Yeah, what were you saying when the evidence kind of said you suck?

This is very silly. I had this lake survey. I would fill out a google for I D.

Fill up for myself every sunday or every weekend. What are you working on? How do you feel about IT? What are you going to like? What are your next school?

What do you even didn't move forward myself?

I was like a personal accountability, right? Asked a bun to question. They were all useless. The only question that I am mattering was what would make you stop working on what you're working on right now.

And to your point, check out my present self always thinks I should kick going for my pencil, sometimes thinks currents should stop, right? And there is actually like looking at those answers and being like two months ago, I should said I should stop if I got to the the point of and now I don't actually think I have countervAiling evidence. I just have stubborness shoot .

p and so that's how you are stopping this project. And you when we send you some questions ahead of this to try to understand what what you think is important, to talk about what you think is insightful, you said something that I really resonate with, which is managing your own mind, managing your own psychology is one of those important things yes. Um how does one do that and what's like, how would you teach that to somebody else? Or how would you talk about that to somebody else?

I think hard, hard to do her to teach. Um I think what I try to tell people is figure out what like it's a personal and not personal sensitive but like personal like specific to you and figure out what makes you happy or centered whatever those things are and they do not give them up. And so for me for years there was like a you know running three or four times a week and exercise, sure, but if actually just like the mind clearing covers s kind of meditation like and and you know was like running for me, but like whatever for someone else and it's like whatever that thing is, do not give IT up. And I don't care how you busy you get, but if know what makes you feel like you and don't drop with those things.

know what things make you feel like you, which is kind of like you're talking about his habits and hobby.

Is that more I just like that feeling where you like, you're really like moving to the world and you like feel like you're at your best, you know like you're the best chinese version of yourselves. It's like what brings that .

on for you running .

is one on one reading, like not in any I mean, kind of an gant really. But I actually just because IT is something I have done since I was six years years old, right? And so like if I think of like hobby there, anything i've done through my life reading you actually one of the biggest through line. And so there's a part of that that just feels like .

me because I was looking you read like, I don't know.

thirty fifty books a year yeah but it's it's like anyone learn things and like bobb blab but actually just like IT is .

centering when I was running a company. And by the way, mind was not two, four or five billion dollar company. I was like, I have no time to read.

You kidding me. There's problems. Everyone running a problems. And do do you just replace T, V with reading or something?

Yeah like actually .

never told me that you are like extremely quick with reading. He's like he would take a bus to work and read the and read the whole book. Yeah.

he said more and he was like, two .

and from cover to cover.

I can actually still take a bus to work part of IT so I can just sit there and like you bus .

to work yeah because I might .

take a car just going to exit in the back of my laptop, at email, you know and in a bus like I take this go bus, I look up on that something like really gone wrong. And so I just forces need to like sit there and half twenty minutes between home and work. And I like the most.

like no people like obtain cold plages. Yes, I think the more hard core version is take a sometimes to lord, it's like how you can endure a eighteen minute bus, right?

Like bad five years three, my bus five.

And I used to take the thirty eight and thirty eight is like an actual zoo. It's like anything .

can I said.

okay so um so benching psychology, you said, figure out what makes you feel like you most of you and make sure you stick with those things, keep doing those things little kind of keep you you centers with IT what about venezia psychology when IT comes to self belt, when IT comes to getting down on yourself because I spent two years, I didn't really land where I wanted to land with IT. Did you have a conversation with yourself there or a story you told yourself in order?

Yeah, I was so annoy. I was, which is retrospect. I was like being so pretentious.

Like life was good, you know, again, like the the bad nut, like my worst case outcome was becoming a product manager. Drop x hide of drop box power, like my life, totally great. And again, I knew I was like five percent aware of that, ten percent. But that was not the live feeling.

Do you use negotiation terms like that just regularly? Ly.

that's some kind of xi, now, now, now I ve always felt .

that if .

you build a great .

soila company, internal intercompany should be a dolly Normal person. But outside you should have that like ten percent crazy yeah IT just gives you like actually a two x evaluation and just like creating a oh my gosh, what actually put this list of ideas that you did. So i've looked back in Michael, and even when I went through eras where I tried something and I didn't work, a lot of the times I look back with the benefit of hindsight now.

And I think, oh, I was just sort of an media about IT. Had I actually either stuck with IT or done IT differently or pivoted market, that actually was a good idea curis. Do you feel that way? But I need the projects you worked .

up like they are art projects. And I say that would deep love but like they're not .

businesses and the voice is system for biologists yeah that doesn't like this.

That was like a deep black of any commercials in nearly everything on that list, which I think is part of why van ta has had commercials like victim from the very beginning because i'd made that mistake so many times.

What about now? So if you if you weren't doing this, or in general, like when you Operate a business, you see a bunch of pain points, blind spots, maybe like parts of the market that are unaddressed.

If somebody y's listen to this right now, and they are looking for inspiration or ideas that, you know, Spark thoughts in their head about stuff that think I go do, where would you look? What would you recommend people think about? What problems .

do you think needs solving? But yeah, I think so, so much of what I think about that's not kind of directly invented. The warehouse is something around like running A B to be sess or being in A B to be sess business for get running at just being in a there's like so met like someone please fix to go to market tooling stack.

There's nine thousand tools and none and it's like you, Jerry, get them together in the roof, gold bird machine and the marble to all of in the floor like anyone want to be to be sad. Just like fix that, go full stack on all that. But for people who don't want me to be, says, which they are hopeful. Ly, many. I think the ross of advances came out of. I mean, I of course like, I know I like to going in, but of course I really like IT, but that was pick something you want to learn about and just go talk to anyone you can about, like what their days are like, what their problems are like, just like what's going on, and kind of try to develop a mental model in this face.

The story I heard about venta, which sometimes we bake up these .

retrospect story.

you to you true, drop out. You work on this thing called paper, which was this, remember, like seeing paper at the time was like this idea of this, a collaboration tool.

And you go to to go.

yeah drop up this gool up if you go to launch IT. And it's like here, we don't have so can't really launch your customers can't use IT. And you were like, suck what I need to know really what that was and you were like, so how do we get that? And you started asking questions to try to understand, like, what is this thing that blocked us here? If IT blocked us, maybe IT blocked other people.

The drop out had a security team that was going to be able to try to solve these problems. But like the average started doesn't yes. And the next part of the story that I liked was even though you had just spent two years learning to code and built thirty five projects and code to them up and shift them out there, whatever you didn't write code for this issue, or like, i'm going to test this idea with an excel spread sheet only, and you went to one or two starts, I think, why he starts that you thought might need.

And you were like, hey, if I did this free, would that be valuable? And I goa, sure. Can you how much of that is true? true.

So here's the deal. I made most of my money from a newsletter business. He was called the hostel, and there was a daily news letter, the millions of the ribs.

And that was the greatest business on earth. The problem with IT was that I had caused a forty employees, and only three of them were actually doing any writing. The other employees were growing the newsletter, building up the tech for the platform and selling ads.

And honestly, IT was a huge pain in the by today's episode is brought you by bee. Have they are a platform that is built exactly for this. If you want to grow your news letter, if you want to monitor the news letter, they do all of the stuff that I had to hire dozens of employees to do. So check out out behaved that com. That's B E E H I I V dot com.

The stylist part is all the drop locks have happened. There was no light bub. I was like, not smart enough of a bub over my head at the end wish so, but he was just like, learned about the whole process, learned what I would take and then, like, basically ran screaming from the room because they just sounded awful.

Especially trying to launch and even figure out if we have product market fit to the idea of like we're going to go two years of work to then see if your product market fit. You're like bad, bad. Like how do I find reality faster? Came back to IT later.

Did this for a thing and anything honest? Like because it's thirty five things on the list. Like kind of the point really okay, I can write you so much shot job like I can.

Could the thing or code a first version of the thing? That's not the hard part. The hard part is builds. Anyone want my thing at the end. And so like how much of the validation can you from load there?

So I think a lot of people hear that. And like here, you should talk to customers. You should validate people want this, make something people want. I don't have any idea how to actually do.

So what is the quick dirty recipe for how you actually go? how? How do you talk to? What do you really ask them? How do you make sure you are not getting these false positive just by being like eager bever and there like, yeah that would be maybe I be interested and you're like they totally loved IT .

yeah so on the false positives, anything that is not can you do this for me now tomorrow, next week is a no and people are really kind and they want na be kind and so they don't think like, rarely do they say no but a lot of I go maybe next corner like, I don't need this my friend.

my you, my friend.

totally hard, knows I think on who to talk to I mean, like, we started with, like anyone who would talk to us and then IT is like, and that's what ended up being coworkers, former coworkers. Because you had like some like, but I don't know you know what to think about this topic.

You come a naive person and so i'll like give you a half an hour sort of thing and then just fan out from there at the end when there, like, well, do ask them, do you have anybody else and they have these people and like, say, as follow with customizing music. Good forward. You know, like, make IT easy for them and just keep going out. Yeah, think that's important.

Make IT easy for them. Yes, to do the thing they said they wanted do. Oh yes.

they follow up and be like things so much for remember me like I would love to talk to your friend who eric, who's that this like here's what i'm working on. Like just like assume like write them .

they forward exactly. Yeah so you um have ever read this thing called the mom test? Yes, do you to try to that? Ah that was helpful to me what was I don't actually remember what was in the book, only one line which was they can tell you about the solution, but they can tell you about the problems. So all your questions need to be first about the problem and then at the end, if you want asked him about the about your solution great, but just assume they don't really know what the solution .

needs to look yeah I think true. Try to avoid yes, no questions. IT is harder than that sounds. And there's a bunch of kind of user research tips, tricks of light. If somebody wants pronounce something, go with their, otherwise they're going to go break exactly.

exactly what I think I do that. And so is like a problem because this kind of a no IT all move. And then he makes them feel like their mind goes over there. Exactly, I being stupid and I say something .

stupid like you just like want them to like stream of conscious ness that you basically.

yeah exactly beauty, good hustle stories. Perhaps ta kind of got the fly will going because you know starts don't kind of like like explode right away necessarily. Yeah and i've seen you're like A R chart, which looks like a .

beautiful happy but .

if you zoom in, it's like, well, that was a year. It's like pretty kind of small. And then then I started to accelerate. Was there anything you did that you felt was interesting, unique um that kind of it's .

so funny looking back office companies but I didn't know the world out out at the time, right? I was like emAiling when he founded for feedback and legitimately did want their feedback kind of to this, but he was like half a leg. Okay, i'm going to spend you know sixty seventy percent of the call talking about the problem and how you're solving in. And then the ambulation I am building a thing which you'd like to hear about IT, but he was like, totally called upon, you know.

I just like, didn't know that word, that that ball rolling, what happened after that?

Honestly, the early strategy was like just to do and try everything and then see what works.

So what did work that .

outbound worked? There was a word of mouth. We try actually really hard in the early days to basically build this core response in like founder slack channels or V, C slag channels, where someone said sock to when someone else would savanna, and you wanted the thing of.

and how do do you like build the .

brand and people's mind? Yeah, and that was great for a while. And then a bunch knock came to other ways to get talked to that association.

like compliance, that of too .

much up. Yeah, I joke with people like we make software, but like we also make a bill board. And we're equally known for both very equally as the burn, what else podcast advertising really worked in a solly works, but like, really worked in the early days. Dh, I D, I was totally wrong.

and that's what happened. Somebody on your team pitches.

I was like, I want to go on twit this week, start ups or something. And I like, ruled by and to fine, whatever go totally where he was. Totally right.

Area is like this mythical figure to me. Now I ve only ever heard great area stories and so I don't want to hear and if anybody has a bad or idea how that did turn through, don't tell me please. No I A couple other of your controversial or maybe just less um consensus opinions.

I've seen you write this somewhere on the internet. You tell me if you stably these and why consistency is overrated. This on your website.

Oh, people, a lot of this i'm just like joking with myself because I say contact me through these four ways that are all totally different names of them like it's like my yeah it's just like minor self awareness thing that I think people think is meant to be a brand fila statement. To actually think of the broadfoot statement no, probably not. I think they just stop me consistently is actually underrated .

yeah i'm going to say you strike with somebody who's consistency first yeah um it's bad. It's bad when the goal post move. I don't know you're saying you think this .

or the other people. I think I want to be right. Know if your goal post keep moving and hard to have .

find happiness and like you're always like.

I mean, I mean, it's about a lot forms of life, but like to start founders just because it's like you want to start a company, you want to hire some people, you want to the seed round, you want to get to like a million and err. But the end by time you get there, actually I want to get to ten yeah yeah. That is like always something you are chasing.

And I think that is generally seen as a recipe for unhappy, right? Like why can't you be happy in the moment you've did this thing prior you thought was great? Like I can you think it's great? And I think that can be due in some cases, but I actually think so.

I think that the trick is slash downside is if you're like only happier when you hit goal post and then you're moving them like you will never be happy. Pictures like the work of the matter. And it's a lot of things are more sustainable when you like the work, especially when you have a lot of work to do.

My formula is progress equals happiness, which is that no matter where you are sort like the y intercept doesn't matter, the slope matters and so whether you're at if you don't feel a sense of progress in your life, you will feel unhappy and then you will feel even worse. You feel guilty for feeling unhappy yeah because like I guess I do have all these good things in my life, but I still will feel this way. I'm just fundamentally broken inside.

I'll never be when actuality. It's just a sense of progress. I even Better a sense of progress in the direction that you have set out intentionally that you care about yeah um and I think that in that sense, moving the goal post is great because you're saying I would like to continue making progress. I enjoy progress so much. Why would I stop my progress that stops my happiness and that is a different way of looking at IT.

Do you remember deep cut ten, twelve years ago, just who the founder of live at the time now? So koa, what a black post .

psychology IT was like.

basically like wire founders, always happy. And she's like, especially when your company was good, like this. And I was a line up into the right.

And like because of you zoom, you know, get why access getting higher? Like what is this? Because of you zoom in on the graph IT doesn't look like a, you know forty five degree angle IT looks like a roller coaster that is going slightly higher, great.

But it's like the roller coaster along the way. And like you know, again, even when you zoom out and you've got to slowly forty five degree line, the downs hurt time. Yes.

it's the peak to trough that that that you feel you don't really even recognized that you've gotten higher progresses this time. You also another one which is high, high standards are bad. You think that in generally you you think people don't say this, but they imply IT in different ways that you don't have such standards. H is what where that's come up for you or .

you felt that I think a lot of vanity stuff and I think within the company and know the partners are folks outside. And I mean, some of the feedback we get that like I kind of I don't appreciate more than anything else is like people care.

People respond suber quickly, like, you know, we getting something might have gone wrong, but the person really, really hard to fix IT, right? And I think those things definitely don't happen, but everywhere by accidents, not like I had. Hopeful ly, a smaller role in IT. But I think when people join, there's a little bit of like, oh, the bar is here at enter like kind of scary did I do no replace like what's going on?

What's an example that where would somebody feel that?

Uh, a couple places. But I guess in go to market, our expectation, the quote on a ten men on that their way off industry, the way higher. And I think if you just have one, just hear some the in a vacuum there sort of like is what like, why would I? Why would I sign up for that? Then they joined. And it's like oxyde surrounded by people who are like into what they do, getting Better every day, want to get Better every day, care a lot. And that's what of environment can be like, really infectious.

of course. Do you ever read this league production document for mister beast? You would take like that. You see that gone around like a few weeks ago.

I know you. So like, rather on the .

same time that found a more out there that way. What is IT exactly and like like I think yes but what what um part of a law to mr. Beest, like the internal docking route for his production team, leaked a big part like we've gotten to know him and become uh pretty friendly with with Jimmy over time and it's just stunt like the number one thing, you you go home out with you, me for a couple days.

You walk away and you're like, oh, what that what that means what people say we Steve jobs, you have this reality distortion field and it's and literally he his companies based like a tiny town in north CarOlina, ina, so like he gets people to move there. And then when you're there, you're in his bubble. And in his bubble the expectations of what work is about, what success is about, what we're able to do about, the timelines we do them on, about what that means when something says no, not possible. And he's like like one of things like push past the no, he's like, you know, you have to be able to push past the no, you don't always have to get IT to be yes.

But like if you just come back and you said, ah you know we asked for the permit and they said is going to take six months and he like that can be the end of the story and that we saw that on every little thing like, for example, we wanted to play baseball the next day I was midnight and somebody was saying, all man, I can't wait tell tomorrow I I just want to play and he goes, well, I do have to wait like midnight me what you can do like i'm sure there's a gym a around here somewhere let's go, let's go find one and well, yeah, they're going to be locked midnight like schools arent going to be open. Call the athletics structures res, because they just call, call all of them right now. In the account, you will take us twenty minutes and offer any of thousand bugs have to come open.

And like part of IT was like, he just throw money every problem. But actually, not to throw money at IT is, yes, everybody else would immediately just default to like this is not possible, not feasible, not to be able where's his default assumption on any given thing is like why not of course, you could do that. It's just a matter of deciding if we wanted IT will do IT.

If we don't, we want. And if you just see that time after time after time having now with them on big things like, you know, the videos that they're going to do a shoot, but the small things, and this is a different gear, say, oh, your gear is like, my structure only goes to six, just goes to nine. Okay, i'm going to hang out with you. I now need to decide like how i'm going to get to eight or nine because otherwise all dispeace sticking out.

This will be the right place totally. And I think there's um I mean, I think also if you like experience, you're like, you know what, i'm go to sex wholly reasonable decision like not that you know arguably we be a Better decision in case like totally fine but the like there might be there might be a nine um for any given thing. I think of a helpful mindset.

You also raise a bunch money late so you didn't raise early on. You got to ten million in err before you went raise your series a i'm not so curious as to why you did that because i'm guessing the answer is pretty simple, which is like we didn't necessary need IT. We stay focused on selling the product that was working but more so when you want to go do IT. What was that experience like this?

Yeah it's great. IT was really funny. So people VS and temperature o broadly like knew we were doing well because kind of the slide channel chatter like get get to come up, but they said they didn't know how well. And so there was one pitch meeting over there .

and you kept IT locally, right? Yes.

kept IT loki on purpose because basically we were like, we have this great idea. Everyone else thinks the kind of like spell what we're working on think, you know, has case and to do the things on your feet.

And I would rather they not know, because then somebody y's onna start knocking soft copy, anyway, very small, very good at his job, like go in page and start walking through the slides and I get to the era rem chart that you ten at the end of IT basically and his judge us drove and he he's like clearly speechless and he's looking at IT and he's like I that you are at like two and a half um and you know I know that that was you know ten and I like keep going and at the end sort like were like not like we missed IT. We're not going to do this like try to introduce you to someone else but like you know was fine like other people. But he was this kind of interesting picture experience and then basically going to mating with another VC is very good to his job. And he's like, you know what thought you were at nine point four because i'd like taking your twitter .

chart and backed out and .

even the point and like counted the pic for I got into the .

proportion because I SHE said tens of this is ten. Ah this is a year ago. Get two .

point eight. He had basically done that and was also great. It's so good in your job. So fun.

Is that you going with or no no, you're great.

But I think actually IT was till the golf post stuff and know got a telebras but IT was a moment where I took a like a week and was like, no, I am gonna tell this story and what we've done and like i'm deeply proud of you and I want to told you that and now I feel overwhelmingly proud of IT right um and like here's how the pizzas fit together. Here's how they will fit together and I believe IT and so that was just then I became like, I saw kind of heat fundraising. But IT was talking about something I believed in just fun.

Eric told me that he thinks you're created negotiating you so funny, you said that surprising to you. But he he was not, he was not wishing wash you about. He like she's incredibly negotiating one of the best I ever bit around ask how or why he does IT. So no pressure yeah no.

It's like really surprising. I think if i'm confident i'm actually confident in IT and then we'll just stand and like not blame, not sword of play in chicken wouldn't need the marshmallow. It's like I got IT like let me know when you want these terms.

I'm happy to sit here and weight and actually truly unlike happy to thr r and weight at that point. So I think it's just a lot of that. I believe that I want play well.

Thank you for doing this. This has been amazing where people you don't find, you find van.

yeah com A N A 点 com。 Any help with anything security or compliance related? Who would love to help you?

Thank thank you so much.

I feel like.

Roles, travel, never looking back.