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A podcast to disrupt common narratives and constructs to empower diverse communities. We provide inspirational content from entrepreneurs and leaders who are disrupting the status quo.
their familial
background, their economic status,
education, background and things
of that nature zip code born into.
So that's why
I think equity is a better way
to look at making the world
a better place, because then it takes into
context the backgrounds
in which people come from.
If you believe
we can change the narrative,
if you believe
we can change our communities,
if you believe we can change the outcomes,
then we can change the world.
I'm Rob Richardson.
Welcome to Disruption Now.
Welcome to this Russia Now.
I'm your host and moderator,
Rob Richardson.
With me is Joshua Gundu.
He is the CEO of Stealth Startup.
He's also had a lot of experience
with product management
and I believe is also an angel investor.
So many different hats.
He's he's Warren,
I believe you also worked with Tik-Tok.
So I think there's a lot of things
I'd say to our guest.
Yeah, to explore there was from
the Midwest moved his way out
and is now finding himself as a
as a as a Cali boy in L.A.
so which has been part of his
that that's helped build his network
and we're going to talk about that
and everything he's done there
and hopefully gain some type of advice
about what to do, what what
not to do and how we can learn as founders
and investors in the space.
How are you doing today, man?
I'm good. I'm good.
Thank you for having me on the show.
Always love to chat with folks
all across, you know, especially from
the Midwest as me being from Michigan.
Always good to connect with other folks
who have Midwest roots in the
in the ecosystem.
Absolutely.
Well, if you can everybody on this show,
please subscribe or subscribe
to us on YouTube that like button
and then also hit the subscribe button.
You can also
of course, on us on disruption. Now,
we love
to have conversations that are disruptive,
that disrupt
common narratives and constructs.
So I want you to feel comfortable
to be as controversial.
You usually are on on Twitter.
So I know you're not going
to have any problem with us, man.
No, exactly.
All right. So let's get right to it.
So you you had this statement on LinkedIn,
and I want to
I want to talk about this statement and
what it means to you and why you said it.
You said, I am for equity
because equity starts with everyone.
Why is that statement important for you
to put out and what does that mean to you?
Yeah,
I think it's the reason I say equity.
The reason I use the word equity
as often as I do, because people think
that like, it's like everything equal,
like equality, like 5050.
You get the sense, you get the chance.
The thing about equity is that everybody
doesn't start from the same place.
So to make things
more,
even across the board,
you have to think about the advantages
and disadvantages that people come from,
whether it's like
their familial background,
their economic status,
education, background and things
of that nature zip code born into.
So that's why
I think equity is a better way
to look at making the world
a better place, because then it takes into
context the backgrounds
in which people come from.
Yes, but something that I believe
one thing that sparked our conversation
and kind of got us talking on there
on Twitter,
you made a reference
and I'm not going to get it exactly right,
but you made a reference
that people often like to
romanticize, that they pull themselves up
by their bootstraps.
They came from this
struggling, hard background,
and people seem to be romanticized
with that.
Like, I've seen that.
But talk about why you see that
as an issue.
I know I do.
And how should we think about approaching
that in terms of a
a moment of self-awareness
with the ecosystem?
Yeah, The reason the first reason that I
see it as an issue,
because it usually comes from those
who did not have to grow up
in economic insecurity.
It comes from those who came from either
middle or upper middle, mainly
upper middle, especially in the tech
ecosystem backgrounds.
And they were like,
you know, you know, great hustle,
you know, coming from nothing,
things of that nature.
And I think they romanticize it because
they think, I missed out on something.
I could have had more more of that hustle,
more that grit.
Like, you know, like they like
they're jealous of poverty or something,
which is like always going to be jealous
of change.
Exactly.
Jealous about nothing like it was.
It's always weird for me
when those who didn't experience it
romanticize it, because those
who experience it do not romanticize it.
They talk about the very real things
that are when you grow up
in economic insecurity
or unstable environments,
that does a lot of damage
and it does more damage than it does good.
And I know that folks in our ecosystem
like to romanticize hustling
and all that kind of stuff, hustling
to get a like a an a
your AP world
class is fundamentally different
than having to hustle
to put food on the table.
Right.
And I think they look at equate
those two hustles,
but you can't equate the two houses
because their one is
an achievement in an accelerated course
and one is literally
just doing what you need to do to survive,
which also can take away the energy
you might have going to be able
to put into getting a good grade
in that class.
Yeah, I really think people
have struggled with this
because they struggle with
things being given to them and they feel
like they'll be looked down upon.
This is my perspective
of the privilege they have,
and this is not a singular privilege
I'm talking about because I believe
privilege lives on a spectrum, right?
There are multiple ways to have privilege
100%.
Right.
And that's what this conversation gets. So
divisive when I don't think it has to be
if people look at it.
But I understand why it does become that,
because the self identity of a person,
people like to believe
that they've done everything
without any help
because they romanticize with that.
And that,
I think, is utter bullshit, right?
Because we don't
we don't do anything by ourselves
and often is the system. Yes.
You have to work
like I'm not divorcing work from it.
But that to me is like common sense lack.
Of course you have to work like
and I think people overemphasized
how hard they worked to romanticize
about where they came from
because they don't like
seeing themselves as privileged.
But I heard this and
Arlan Arlyn,
I forgot Hamilton's name out of Hamilton.
Yes. Thank you.
So I don't know why I forgot that, but
she was on my show discussing privilege
and she's she really stated it
the best I've heard it stated.
She said privilege is just something
you have is not a bad thing, right?
It's only bad if you lack self-awareness
or you abuse it,
which is the problem, right?
Because people in this space are like,
I got here, I went to Stanford.
Why can't you all do that?
And I found a way to make it.
And they really under undervalue
the ecosystem that they grew up
in, the network that they had around them.
So I believe it goes to that.
I agree with that.
I think that's a really good way
to look at privilege.
And I know people
like for some reason don't
like to know that they were
given certain legs up that those did
not have because like like you said,
people like to assume that it diminishes
the work that they put in.
But I always believe that
opportunities and the way that people
like what successes
it's based off like the privileges
you were born into, the systems
that you were born into, as well
as the personal choices that you made.
And depending on who you are
and what you're doing,
all three of those can be weighted
differently.
Like, you know, on, you know, with Guy
RAZ, you always ask people,
is it luck or was it hard work that helped
you get to where you're you're at?
And I'm always most
into folks that realize that
luck and
privilege do have a material impact.
So who gets to even work in this ecosystem
in the first place?
Absolutely.
And privilege more than anything else.
Yes, you can, because you can persist
long enough if you have support.
I can think of so many examples.
But let's take Amazon, right?
Jeff Bezos didn't come from a nothing
background that neither did Bill Gates.
Neither did Steve Jobs. No.
All those folks
and lots of lots of support,
they got early access to the knowledge
and and you speak to this often
because we have a lot of people
that are trying to downplay
college like, well, look,
all these founders didn't
go to college like you're not Steve
Jobs, you're not Bill Gates.
If you have maybe if you were
if you if if right now your parents
gave you access to advance A.I.
knowledge ten years ago,
you probably do not need to go to college.
Right. Exactly.
Unless you're that person.
You do need to go to that. Right.
So I do think there
there is some perspective there.
What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think the thing about downplaying
college to me
is specifically in the tech
ecosystem is the anti institution
mantra that people tend to have Now
a lot of tech folks back
then, you know, when folks are coming out,
they're like,
we're the outsiders, We're like anti
this and say that.
But when you look at the backgrounds
of VC backed founders, operators
at hypergrowth companies, operators
at larger, larger venture firms
as well as big tech, you know,
they all have college backgrounds
and if they didn't go to one of the most
elite college, like the elite colleges,
the thing that people don't notice
is that a lot of them
went to very expensive
private schools for high school.
So like, hey, yeah, I did.
I skipped college.
But you also went to a high school
that cost $30,000 a year.
Yeah.
So it's that is the nuances
and the pattern matching that
I've personally seen, which is why
I'm like, yes, higher education is,
is if higher education didn't matter,
then you wouldn't see venture firms
as well as founders and intros
even being made say,
they studied here, they did this,
giving them some type of credibility
during an introduction
or during a conversation.
So as much as people like see,
especially in tech,
like to downplay,
like why go to college, why why would I
you know, go to go to college to
to get a degree?
And then in the in the ecosystem,
if you really pay attention,
that whole dropout narrative is actually
not as apparent as people want it to be.
Even in engineering specifically,
people talk about it from the lens
of founding a company or working
an engineer, and people did not know this.
There's a lot more functions that go into
running companies than being an engineer
or founding a company
or like being a founder.
And now we see bad because VC backed
founders usually have pedigree
on the education and academic education
and professional or one of the two.
So that's kind of my thing
with the college thing in tech
is just that they're anti establishment
and they're using
they're using the anti-establishment
political belief.
They have to push down and push away
the importance of institutions,
although these are the same people
who are sending those kids,
their kids, to these institutions.
Yeah, I actually think it's a more
it's it's more cynical for some
because I also think they're pushing
a narrative to people
to make them feel as if,
you know, they can be like them
if they embrace these
this kind of mentality and it
and it kind of it pushes to me
part of a political agenda.
What people want are rhetoric.
And for people to believe
that, you know, I too can do this,
I can be just like that person.
And not being realistic about what
how that person actually obtained that.
I'm a I'm a very I'm a I'm
a great believer in, you know, anything's
possible. Yes.
And overcoming barriers,
I have that belief fundamentally.
And while at the same time
I have to believe that
a lot of people that are pushing
the narratives of what they did,
they're not being honest.
No, they're not.
They're not telling you
their familial background.
They're not telling you
their household income.
They're not giving you
the context of who they knew.
Like, you know,
we talk about the common sense wins.
You know, Paul Graham from
see knew them when they were teenagers.
Exactly. Yeah.
You know, and they both went to it's
great schools and things of that nature.
I think they both jumped out of Harvard
and MIT.
But people focus on that versus like,
how did Paul Graham know
some teenagers in Scotland?
How did how
what networks were these kids in?
So it's like it's a I wish people were
more transparent about their backgrounds.
But I think, like you said earlier,
the more transparent people
are about their privileges,
the more they feel like that will take
away from the way people view their work.
Yep, I agree.
But look, I'm a person that like I didn't
grow up rich, but I had no poverty zero.
So we were middle class moving up
middle class later
and I ran for office for a brief stint.
And I remember some people tried to, to,
to, to kind of use that against me.
And the thing is, I'm like, I don't know.
I thought as black people, it's better.
Our goal was to not just focus on poverty,
but to get out.
Yeah, it's not.
And that's not it's
not to look down upon people
that didn't have to go through poverty
because my parents both get opportunity.
I'm not saying
they were better than anybody else,
but they got opportunity, worked hard
and were able to position,
you know, people after them, me
and their kids to be better off
like we have to get out of that,
Like we have to get out of that mentality
and I think it is prevalent.
Do you see that
and how do you challenge it if you do?
Yeah, I think for me,
I think that goes into like you know,
the the age old like
how black are you and people attributing
too much of blackness
to vulnerability,
economic insecurity, instability
and having to get it
by any means necessary, you know,
it would be greater.
It would be great
if people started like leaving that
and not assuming that you are less
or more part of the community
based on how much economic insecurity
or instability
did you experience growing up
or in your early adulthood?
Yeah, absolutely. I agree.
But let's let's let's go down this road
and challenge this a little bit.
Right? So
we talked
about privilege being on a spectrum.
And if I had to say,
if you are a VC funded,
you tend to be it's
not just that you had a great idea.
It's not that it's not just it's
it's really just it's really that actually
it's usually that you had a good network
and you were in a system
that gave you the opportunity to get this,
I believe, heart, you know, heart stop.
What advice do you give people that maybe,
you know, when you add the privilege
to a spectrum, you know, obviously,
if if people even if you're black, you
go to one of those rich high schools
and you go and you go to Stanford,
you probably going to be connected
in that system.
But let's say you're in the Midwest.
Let's say you went to a good school.
You know, you went to Michigan State,
I went to Universal, Cincinnati.
And you're starting
you're starting a business.
What advice do you give people
if they don't have that will say, the VC
infrastructure kind of going for them?
How should they go about this, this
this journey that is entrepreneurship?
Is the goal to
eventually raise or does that
is that not the what's the what's the the
that's actually a fair question.
So you want to build a scalable business
that is eventually venture back.
What like what advice would you give folks
not just to start a business,
Nothing wrong. That's a good thing
to like start a business,
figure out a way to make profit.
But building a scalable business
where you where you're using a technology,
an idea that you believe can scale,
how would you how would you advise a
a founder coming up?
Yeah.
So for me,
I think the way that I typically
give advice on
this one is you can de-risk two things.
You can either de-risk yourself
or de-risk the business
when it comes down to just generally
raising capital in general.
If you don't
come from that background,
I really recommend trying
to divest yourself as much as possible
because the metrics will always move.
That's
What do you mean by de-risk yourself?
The way about de-risking yourself
is one thing that I've seen
a lot of people do
is showcase their knowledge
in the most natural way
that it is to them.
So if you're someone who can write long
form,
write long form, if you're someone
that can write short form, get on Twitter.
If you're more audio in focus, create
a podcast, things of that nature.
So people showcasing
your genius will de-risk you because,
hey, maybe you didn't go to that school
or maybe you didn't go to that.
I love that.
That's a bar showcasing
your genius will de-risk you.
Yeah, that's good. Go ahead.
So that's kind of the thing that I
that I've seen work for.
A bunch of folks who are outside of
the ecosystem is like, Hey,
you might not have the company markers
or the education markers
that are typically VC backed,
but if you put your ideas out enough
to the world
in a in, the key thing here is in a format
that you can consistently do, you can't
just do it like one or two times.
You have to really put the reps in.
So then eventually people are listening,
reading or watching
and then like, okay, like this, this guy
or girl knows
exactly what they're talking about,
and then they start even really caring
about like where this person
went to school or what company
they work, that they know that,
this person
could have gone this or done this,
but they're in choose they may have,
you know, circumstances, where have you.
But that's the way that I've seen people
deal with themselves
quite a bit, is via the consent lens.
If you don't want to do
that, then I would recommend
on the work side, which
is another practical one, is to just look
to work at a company that you believe
will get acquired or go public.
That's a more nuanced one
because you want to then look at the job
opportunity as an investment opportunity,
like, okay, if you want to.
Like I worked at a company called Burner
some years ago, second phone number
for any use case
In my thinking, walking in there
when I was leading product there was that
I was like, okay, this company
could potentially get bought by a telco
or want to be like domain sites
like Squarespace or go daddy to power
another lever lever of communication
when someone's creating a business, right?
So that was the way
that I was looking at that.
And I think if people started
looking at the world of startups,
not from the lens of like,
okay, what are they going to pay me
and what's my equity, but more
so do you really see this company
working out in the future?
If you do, then great.
If you don't and it's just
getting your foot in the door also great.
But the way you really are going
to be de-risk yourself in this industry
outside of the education thing and outside
of working at like a large, big tech
company is really figuring out
what company do
you think get acquired, even if it doesn't
get acquired for a lot of cash.
Being a someone who worked at a place
that did
exit gives you a certain level
of social capital in the ecosystem.
So how do you go about making
that you've had that experience clearly?
How do you go about making that
that evaluation?
So the de-risking yourself, you've
talked about that in terms of essentially
leveraging your genius, which I feel like
you should do universally anyway.
But how do you evaluate a company
that you think
can actually have the potential to,
you know, to to actually have an exit?
Yeah.
I mean, for me, if I was someone
who was still like working
as an operator,
I personally be looking at companies.
This is my own personal thing.
Any company that I see that is being built
upon a current policy change
I think has a lot of a lot of potential.
Like one of them
I think is going to be big.
And if people see it, please jump on it
because I think it might be a thing.
There's a lot of decriminalization
and legalization around psychedelics.
Okay.
So I do see a world where there's
marketplaces and consumer brands
built around psychedelics,
similar like the marketplaces
that you might see for marijuana.
What they want is weed
maps, things of that nature.
We had Jewel out here with the
with the tobacco.
Unfortunately, that was a
and that was a different thing.
Know psychedelics are I mean, yeah.
So they already did in Oregon.
They're putting a bill up here
in California.
So it's like, where do you think
the puck is going around policy?
Because I think the biggest companies in
the future are going to be able to see
all these policy changes,
whether it's relaxing or adding new ones
and a lot of technology creation
and opportunity, financial opportunity.
We built upon those. So for me,
that's fascinating.
For most people, I think think of like,
what do you what are you seeing
and where do you think the puck is going
and see if you can find companies
that are building around.
Where do you think the puck is going?
I mean, I've heard that analogy actually
has someone on my show
talked about see where the puck is going,
But I didn't hear
it, which is interesting around policy,
which is a fascinating way
to kind of think about it.
Right, in terms
of where you think policy is going.
And and then because that's that is very,
very important, because that does make
that does make or break and it makes often
industries and opportunities,
which is interesting. Right?
Actually that's I didn't think about it
from that perspective And psychedelics
there's I didn't think about it from that
there's obviously still weed and how
and how drinks are going to be done within
we like I said, one of my show
that actually had where you can
essentially get high up a drink
without without getting a hangover
by using like marijuana,
which is fascinating. Right.
And the guy I have to look up,
I forgot his name right now, but he had a
his product
does that and he's in California
and a couple other places but
you don't get the hangover
and you and and you can use weed
you don't have any of the other health
side effects, but you still get
that kind of feeling of that high
that people kind of want to have.
So that's very interesting.
Like, I never thought of it like a
I never thought about it from a policy
point of view
in terms of the opportunities
I'm looking at that way.
It's a very unique way of looking at it.
It's actually part of the reason
why I'm in this strange world that I know
you've had. You've been a critic of it.
I talked to a little bit about it,
like Web3 Like what your and your
as a product person.
I can understand why you have it
because we're horrible at product design.
But do you see what do you see there?
If you don't have a thought in it,
you don't have to.
But in terms of like a policy opportunity,
in terms of that,
when it comes to the inherent
blockchain technology and not not
I think obviously trading nfts
as anything that that is dead.
But in terms of actually using the ledger
and blockchain as a policy,
do you see opportunity there?
And if not, you know, we can,
we can speak to that.
Yeah, I'm I'm not super like,
you know, I'm as you know, I'm not super
deep in the world of work being crypto,
but what I've gotten from
at least blockchain in the whole like,
you know, saving things on chain
and all that kind of stuff.
From what I've gotten from my own outside
looking in thing, it seems like there's
epic applications around HIPA compliance
and the world of health when it comes down
to data records, data storage and
leveraging that
data over time and knowing that this data
is the right data, things of that nature.
So I've heard that there's going to be
a bunch of applications
in the world of health.
Yeah, that's what I, that's
what I've heard, but I haven't
heard anything outside of that.
As you know, I'm not as deep. No,
they're not as deep.
So I don't have to spend a lot of time
there.
I would like to talk about your,
your, your,
your feelings about engineering
versus product design.
If you were advising a founder,
would you advise them to be better
at coding or better at design?
I think I know the answer,
but I'd like to hear definitely design.
Okay. Why?
Definitely design,
Because you'll be able to showcase
exactly what you're thinking to people.
And you wouldn't might make
you wouldn't have to pay for a designer.
So that's also a thing.
It's a money saving thing too.
But me, I don't have the deepest design
background
like I just do wireframes via or figma.
And then I illustrated, I make it
a clickable prototype via Marvel.
But yeah, I think, you know,
you see people like,
people learn how to code, learn
how to code, learn how to code.
I'm like, okay,
but if you can't show people
what you're actually trying to build,
whether it can work or not,
you can get
you can get so much more across the people
when they can see the thing
versus when you're abstractly
talking about the thing. Yes.
So I think I hope that more folks are
it doesn't have to be you have to be
the greatest designer in the world.
You just have to be able to show people
what you're talking about.
Yeah, I agree.
I agree. So we talk about startups.
What would you say startups?
What are the
what's the most normal reason for failure?
Because one of the things
we're going to talk about is people
talk about all the reasons for success.
But again, a lot of
it has to do with timing their networks.
Let's talk about failure.
What do you think
is the top reason for failure
of believing
that the market is bigger than it is
because you sold it
to some of your friends
and some of their companies
and some of their buddies?
Because, you know, a lot of our stuff, you
know, that's a that was a web3 problem.
Yeah. Yeah.
So it's like that's
that's the thing that I've seen a lot
like especially on the coasts.
People think because people bought up
you're thinking California about a thing
in New York that the same thing
will happen in the state of Michigan
or the same thing
will happen across the country
and tastes and preferences
and how people like to do things
and also the work that they do
and the style of work.
So many things.
People think the market is bigger
because the people
who are like them, like it.
But how many people like you are in the
in the in the US
and then the globe, one that comes to mind
for me all the time on the when it comes
on a consumer facing software is those
who are looking to build companies
around people that like move all the time
or traveling on flights all the time.
I'm like, how many flights
do you think the average American takes?
And the average American only lives
roughly 15, 12 to 15 miles away
from the city, one which their mother was
when they were born.
So building for
building for trends
that are very insular to the group
you identify with end up being the worst
consumer businesses that I've seen.
Which is very hard, though, right?
Because it's like,
So how do you get yourself
from being in the bubble,
from being external?
Like, is there any habits or things
that one can do to go beyond that?
I actually think you can you can
you can take your product that look
that is internal facing
and figure out a way to lose a solution
that is actually more consumer
facing and friendly.
If you get out of the bubble
and figure out how to focus.
But I found being doing that
simple thing is very hard, right?
Because people say, Yeah, so what do you
as a as a person experience in product?
What do you recommend? Are some
institutional
habits that a founder or an organization
could take to prevent them
from seeing the consumer bubble?
The first thing is knowing
what bubble you're in.
Like really?
I really being real
with the kind of bubble that you're in.
Like me, I live in L.A.
before here, I lived in D.C.
and also knowing that the people that
I come across are folks who are VC backed
founders, operators at Big Tech's VCs,
all that kind of stuff, and realizing how
small of a portion of the work
of the even the white collar workforce
that even is.
Yeah.
So I know being aware of the bubble
you're in and then seeking out
seeking out perspectives
outside of the bubble that you're in.
So for myself,
I listen to This American Life quite often
and they talk about things
that do are not attributed
to like tech ecosystem and VC backed this
and all that kind of stuff.
I also like to listen to business podcasts
that are not from the lens of software.
Like I listen to one about
pet food earlier today.
Okay,
I was listening to that.
It was like this fresh
pet pet food company
that was like born in six
and is still around now in 2023.
So for me, it's like knowing you're
knowing the bubble year and finding
whether it's podcasts,
I find content consumption
that is via podcasts or books.
The easiest way to open my mind.
That's the way that I always did it
when I was a kid, is is able to do that.
And then also leveraging the Internet
in the way of knowing
that, knowing the kind of people
you usually follow or usually listen to
and being willing to follow
or listen to someone
that is not a carbon copy of the people
that you typically download.
So that's I think those are the
those are the three things that I've done
which helped me
like reach outside of the bubble
that we're in because as you know,
it's super easy for us in our ecosystem
to stay in our bubble and not feel a need
to be outside our bubble.
And if our bubble rocks with it,
then everybody should.
But then you realize how small your bubble
actually is.
No, it's been a problem.
I saw that problem when I was in policy
and politics when I ran.
I mean, particularly,
you know, those who are in office.
This particularly, I can just say it
is more on the Democratic side
because I think the Republicans
tend to do this better
not not not necessarily complement,
but they tend to do it better
in terms of being able
to communicate a simple message,
Yeah, it is a company
because they're able to get shit done.
They are, as I'm understanding
what their people are saying.
And I found that
a lot of Democratic legislators,
you know, they make it very complicated.
And so one of my favorite books
with product design
you've probably read is insanely simple.
Have you read that book?
I have not read that,
but I've heard it's a good one.
It's a great one.
But there's a simple
there's a lot in there, he said.
Like it, you know, it's simplicity
is an all or nothing proposition.
Either everything is simple
or everything is complicated.
And the reason why is challenge.
It is challenging actually,
to keep making things simple,
because you have to
you have to keep coming back to that.
Like I've this is hard. It's really hard
and I've try to do it every day.
My business is it's very, very difficult.
Right.
And and I think, you know, so legislators
get into the mode where they
they they think that everybody
thinks around them like that.
They understand that.
They think people understand
what they're saying.
And most of the time they're just speaking
in Chinese to people like they have.
They're not living this life
that you live.
They have no idea
what the hell you're talking about.
You have to break it down at a simple,
like seventh grade level
that people can understand and repeat it
10,000 times.
Like, that's the only way you get it.
But I found business is the same way, and
I think some of that is going to help me.
That goes back to your point of
de-risking yourself and
you repeat a message over and over again.
It's knowing
like where your genius is finding that
make it as simple and just repeat it
over and over and over again.
Right?
And that's the but that is the
that is the hard part to do.
So I agree.
All right.
So I want to talk a little about
investing that I have a couple of round up
questions to it.
So investing,
what's the most important thing
you look for
when you invest in a business?
The most important thing I look for
is exposure to the problem space
that you're building in.
Now, this doesn't have to come
from a traditional job.
It does not have to come
from an educational experience,
but it can come from one of those two.
Or could it came, Hey, you're around
this kind of thing growing up.
You know, you
you helped out your your your uncle,
your aunt, your mom,
your brother, your sister with something.
It's just like, where did you get
the exposure to the problem space?
I don't want the exposure to the problem
space to come from
something that you read online.
This is something that I think
a lot of people tend to do
is like I like lived experience with it.
If you haven't had lived experience
with it, then I'm less so
gung ho for the solution that you came up
with because you never lived it.
So if you've lived it, then you have a
you have your more than likely
have a unique insight that cannot be found
from just reading a blog post
or a book or read, or listen to
a podcast about the problems in the world.
It's great when you've experienced
some of the problems in the world,
whether it's like you, you've seen them,
you volunteered in them.
So that's kind of the way I look at it.
Like what problem did you have?
What exposure to get to the problem space,
whether it's academic, an actual job
or growing up or volunteering.
There's a lot of ways to expose yourself
to problem spaces that are not typically,
this is my 9 to 5 job.
Got it?
No, it makes total sense. Makes sense. So.
All right,
what do what do founders get most wrong?
Most often you think
that VC backed founders?
Yes, sure.
Okay.
Founders in general,
people are building things in general,
believing that
capital raised
or not going to the capital.
Right.
Because I want this to be more applicable
than just people who raised money
believing, believing
too much in the solution and less
so in the problem that they're solving.
I think a lot of people who, you know,
you you probably seen in many
a time as well happened to myself.
Yes. How how tied
we can get to the solution
that we came up with versus being like,
okay, yeah,
this solution might not work,
but I'm more married.
So making sure that the problem gets
solved versus the solution I came with is
this is a solution
that solves the problem.
So you got to get tired.
You got to get very married to the problem
that you're looking to reduce versus
the solution that you came up with.
And I think it's hard for us to do that
because it's like,
okay, I launched my first thing.
We we were seeing some traction.
I feel like this should work.
I find this to work because people wrap
too much of their identities into the
the companies that they rob too much
of their identities into the company.
I think that's the problem, right?
So you can't make an IT
it's hard to make objective decisions
when you feel like the decisions you're
making are making decisions
about your own identity.
Yeah, And I've had a
a wakeup call with my identity
because you shouldn't tie your identity
to actually even what you do yet to tie
your identity to the values you have.
Those agree
that'll make your life a lot easier.
And I didn't realize that.
And I think when people realize that,
it makes it easier to move off of an idea
or a career path,
or when the athlete has to retire,
they realize like, my identity isn't this.
That's not who I am.
Exactly. I definitely agree with that.
So that's kind of how I look at it.
All right.
So how about investors?
What's the most important?
What do investors get wrong? Most often
believing that if they are
not the customer for their product,
then there's no customer for the product.
A lot of them do that.
A lot of folks are like,
I wouldn't use their my friends wouldn't
use it, my partner wouldn't use it,
my kids might not use it.
Then there's like not a market for it.
But that comes back to the insularity
of people's networks, right?
So I think that's the biggest thing
that investors get wrong, is like,
if I wouldn't buy it,
then who would buy it?
That's not true
because everyone is not usually,
which is why you need more equity
in an investment.
What's more, things would happen.
But we have a dominant perspective
that comes from a closed network
is not only a people only think white
male, they think that that's part of it,
but it's also a closed system
in terms of where they went to school,
who their network is.
So it becomes a very like a very,
really narrow view
of what innovation can look like
when we're serving
a very diverse population in this world,
more diverse than we ever have.
And there's so many underserved markets,
I believe, because of that 100%.
I definitely agree with you.
Yeah. Okay. All right.
A little bit. Talk about your career
a little bit.
So what's the name of your company
is Stealth Startup.
And I read something about it.
It's the it's like the intersection
of like software.
And so I think I can give you tell me.
So the company
we haven't released this publicly,
so I'll just still talk about it
in the abstract.
I'll just. Okay. okay. Here it is.
So the company is not really cause those
that are we're just working and stuff.
So the core of what we're looking to do
is looking to reduce the labor shortage
that we see in the trades.
Think HVAC, plumbing, electrician,
clean energy, things of that nature.
That's where I have to stop, though.
Okay, on like what we're doing.
But we will be people learn
more about it at the end of next month
when we're actually live.
Okay. All right.
That'll be very interesting
because there is a
and you know,
there's some I know people in unions
that would have a lot of apprentices.
They're probably be interested
in working with you on that, too.
Once you if you get that upsell
because it's you know
they have a lot of labor
shortages across the board period.
So that's very interesting. Okay.
All right.
So okay,
let's let's talk about some things
that you might have gone
through like personally.
So can you think of a time that you failed
and how you grew from that?
It can be in business, It can be personal.
It's high time that I failed.
I would say when I was trying to
when I first graduated from USC,
So I went to grad school at USC.
My first was to grad school at USC.
I was recruiting for full time
product jobs
and most of the opportunity
unfortunately was in S.F..
I did not want to move to SS,
so I was really
trying hard to get a full time product
job out here in L.A.
What ended up happening
is that unfortunately that didn't happen,
so I ended up having to take a product
manager internship post-grad,
making $12 an hour here in L.A.
Imagine $12 an hour for four
and a half months straight.
And in L.A.,
that's poverty level, top of poverty.
yes, it is. Yes, it is.
So that is that was one of the times
where I was like,
you're in my noodles every night.
Yeah, it was
it was like I was being too idealistic
about what I wanted my next steps
to be putting me in situations
I did not want to be in at that time.
Yes, it did. It definitely did that. But
I learned from that
and I learned what I did learn from that.
Is that wild? The wild?
These steps may have to change in ways
you don't want them to.
You can still hold the same angle.
Like I just I could still went to San
Francisco and then moved back down to L.A.
at some point.
But I think I had a certain level
of idealism about what my next step
should be, which ended up me like,
you know, not securing a full time product
job out here for the first four
and a half months when graduated
and taking that internship
for $12 an hour.
So that's that was a lesson
learned in a lot of ways.
okay, great.
All right.
How about this?
What is you have a committee of three
to advise you on life or business.
Who are these three
people and why am I would say
for a
more for my for my personal life,
I would say my partner,
she gives me a lot of
she's a good sounding board in that
in that way
I would say my other two that I go to
would be like my dad for sure,
because he's worked and worked in business
in a variety of ways.
And also,
you know, he came here when he was 18,
So he has a lot of experience
about just like life in general.
And then my last one,
I want to use someone outside of that
one person that I really do
admire, their counsel
and the way that they help me
navigate is Charles
Hodson from Precursor B.C.
He was one of our backers.
He's one of our larger backers
in our in my last company.
And he doesn't only give great advice
about how to navigate the VC ecosystem
that we're in, but he also gives good life
advice from a lens of a life lived.
So that's
that's the last person I would say like
if I had to go to folks
and like bring them, or if I brought them
three together,
one of them would be able to help navigate
the the,
the situation that I'm thinking about.
So those are my three.
Okay.
You speak of that.
You you had a quote you mentioned on
Twitter that you find it strange
that people believe that you can ever be
the same after you lose a parent. Yes.
I'm assuming this has happened to you
so what changes in a person do you think?
I guess it's all personal.
Like what changes and what
what is it that you reflect on in terms
of changing as a person
that changes you fundamentally?
I think
losing the
person, losing someone that knew
you more than anybody else is a very
transformative experience
in a lot of ways.
Unfortunately,
I have friends as well as myself,
both lost like mothers and fathers
and things of that nature.
I think that people
don't really know who they are
until they've gone through grief,
because grief because grief is a sadness
that you walk with all the time.
So that's kind of what what it is
in the ways that I've changed.
You know, I it's a sadness that you walk
with all the time.
Tell me about that.
What It's something like, you know,
it's on you and you don't ever know
when it's going to pop up.
So that's the thing about grief.
For those
who may have never experienced it,
you never know when it's going to pop up
or when it's going to hit you.
It's not always like,
you're breaking down, crying
kind of thing, but it can disrupt
some of the nicer moments when it does,
because then your mind shows off to
to that.
So for me, like,
I don't know fully how how I'll change.
It'll be a year next month.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
Here is the hardest. Thank you.
The first year is the hardest,
but from what I've heard from folks,
as time goes on, things get easier.
But I think it never goes away.
Yeah, I haven't lost my.
Thank God
I've lost my parents, unfortunately.
Yet it's a cycle of life
that you prefer to lose your parents.
Your parents lose you because that's
like I can tell you,
I've seen that because my sister died.
So you see, I see what?
Obviously,
I go through my pain too, for that.
But my parents, it's an unimaginable
level of grief that they've gone through.
Yeah.
So I think the thing that changes
the most, at least for me in the last
year, has really you reevaluate
what what kind of
connections you really want in your life.
Like, you know, we all have these
like some like loose ties.
You got friends.
This is where it really makes you, like,
think about, like, you know, if
if I, if you were to pass earlier than you
expected.
Are you spending time
with the people that you truly want to
or are you doing it out of obligation?
And I think one thing
that I definitely have
made myself really
not want to do is
I didn't want to do it previous,
but I really don't want to do it.
Now is spending time
with people out of obligation
and also those who don't pour into you
versus just take out of you.
And you realize that when you
because you lose the person
that would always pour into you
and you you miss that in
when you don't have that, you know,
you got to find the deficit
somewhere in the deficit, really,
you got to fill that deficit somewhere.
And the best way to do that is continuing
to surround yourself with people
who pour into you versus those who don't.
Because, you know, when a parent passes,
you can get off your frustrations
about people
not pouring into you, into them
and then they'll pour into you
when they're failing.
You're frustrated. You
no longer have that.
So you then really, really prioritize
those who pour in because you've lost
someone who did a lot of it.
That was deep.
I appreciate that.
Well, all right, final question.
This is not an easy one.
It what's an important truth you have that
very few people agree with you on
a lot of my tweets.
But you get choose what you know.
I'll probably have one
that you're thinking about.
I just thought about
I just thought about one of the things
that you just that you say.
It's like, let me let me know it.
Let me do it.
So the one I was the one
I was thinking about was how people
how men really underestimate
the importance of
who they end up
marrying in terms of their career.
Yes. See, I always get pushback on that,
and I figured that was one.
So I got that from men and women,
because I do think men,
especially upwardly mobile men.
And, you know, you're
you're really trying to have a good life,
have a good quality of life.
I think who men choose to partner with,
they should up the bar
because when you look at it,
it's like a lot of men's lives
get all disheveled and torn all about
and all that kind of stuff
because they chose a partner off a purely
sometimes either
physical attraction or convenience,
or they like, they cook, they clean,
they do the domestic stuff.
But like, those things are great.
But is this the same person
who can help build
the life that you're looking to build.
And every every woman is not equipped
for that.
Like the tweet, exactly the same tweet.
Was that like I was like
men who are upwardly mobile and educated
should not partner with women
who are financially insecure
and non ambitious
because it will be a more of a liability
to your life than an asset.
But the reason I get pushback on
that is because I do believe inherently
there are men and women
who believe that women
inherently are a value add to a man's life
no matter what.
I fundamentally do not believe that
that's something that I've
never truly believed,
even though people want you to believe it.
Like it depends on the type of woman
is not any woman, it's the type of woman.
And that type of woman
is not a blanket type of woman.
It's like the type of woman
that is best for you.
And that's the thing
that I was really pushing on for folks.
But people tend to push back on that
because they believe that
it's like devaluing the value of a woman.
It's not really doing that.
It's more saying, what type of woman
do you really value and making
sure that you look at it from that long
term game versus the short term thing.
Because you go scratch that itch, you go,
okay, cool.
I was with her for a little bit.
It's fine, it's cool.
But then see
all these other brothers and sisters
that you really like.
that would be that would be the move.
That would be the move.
But that's kind of the that's the main one
I've gotten pushback over the years
is because people believe that
obviously this is,
you know, imbalanced men, women thing.
But it's like for me,
I like men definitely should choose better
because too many men's lives
get derailed from not doing that.
Yeah, that's definitely controversial.
But hey, we're all about disruption.
So I look, I appreciate you coming on.
Josh is great to have you on.
It's going to be a great show.
Definitely look forward to keep it us
keep us in touch as your new venture.
You comes about. Definitely will.
We'll make sure we share
with the ecosystem.
Really appreciate
you coming on then. Yeah, of course.