I remember thinking I could go to the White House in jeans.
They told me no.
And I'm like,
oh god,
I don't own a suit.
I gotta get a suit.
I literally went out to the store and was like,
let me go buy a suit
because I'm gonna go to the White House.
All right, so with me
today is Daniel Kivatinos.
Daniel Kivatinos is a
successful second time YC founder
with his first company, Dr. Chrono,
having a nine figure exit,
which was a top 30 startup exit for YC.
Daniel put in the grind for 14 years
and raised millions of dollars.
And Daniel got into YC
again with his current company,
JustPaid.ai.
So JustPaid is a smart new
way to generate invoicing
to receive payments, sort of
think of it as an assistant
to help a company's finance team.
And with the
accounting shortage in the US,
JustPaid's work is
definitely solving a deep, deep pain.
JustPaid is solving a problem
that doesn't exactly jump out
at us in our everyday lives.
How did you get into
this unsexy space, Daniel?
Yeah, so I mean, just at a high level,
I started a company called
Dr. Chrono way back when.
And I saw the problem
there, but not just there.
I saw the problem in
other startups where,
you know, you hire
generally a finance team
and the finance team
helps with the company.
And this is just one
of those things where,
as you build a company and
as you become successful,
you start to generate
more and more revenue.
And as you generate
more and more revenue,
you tend to have to figure out ways to
collect that revenue.
And a lot of the time
you are just hiring people.
It's just a people
driven like industry today.
And, you know, it's kind
of like drivers of cars
and drivers of like rigs, you know,
today it's primarily people.
What is it gonna look
like in 10 years, right?
Are you gonna have just
people driving cars anymore?
The answer is probably maybe.
Like there might be like an approach
where some people are driving cars and
others are automated.
I kind of view the same thing with
accounts receivable.
AP, they call it AR and then
there's AP accounts payable.
So accounts receivable is every business
needs to generate revenue.
The thing is, it's just
a very painful process.
Like did this customer pay us?
Can we pay these bills?
Because an example is like, you know,
you're a broker of
something like servers or whatever.
You, you know, you're
basically leasing $100,000 worth
of servers, you know, getting
that server space for somebody
and that's a hundred thousand dollars.
So you have, you
basically lease it for a hundred K
but then this person
owes you a hundred K.
So you're kind of
figuring out like who owes what,
what, who, you know, it
gets really confusing.
So hire people to literally like,
I'd call it like bean
counting where you're literally
figuring out where's all
the money, who owes us what.
And then can we make
these payments over here
because we, you know, these people are like,
these people owe us hundreds of thousands
or millions of dollars.
Can we do this and that?
So generally it's a,
you know, as companies
are more successful, it's
very hard in the early days
to see this, but you
know, if you're generating
a hundred million dollars in revenue,
how do you think you're going to collect?
How does that revenue get collected?
Right? Like who generally is just people,
like making sure invoices go out and
people make payments.
And it's a people driven industry.
So, you know, I met
with my co-founder Analia
and my other co-founder Renee, you know,
prior to starting this company,
and we just kind of just
said, this is a problem.
It's a really specific
problem that every business
in the United States has at some level.
And it's huge.
And it's not just the United
States is across the globe,
but it's, you know, can you
impact and support businesses
as they scale and become more successful
and build something
meaningful in that way
that would be like fun to work on.
And I think Analia got
really passionate about this
and Renee got really passionate.
And I felt like it was a
really good space to go into.
It just, the market's not only big,
but it's also there's a need where
when you have like
people driven industries,
there tends to be
disruption down, you know,
down the road if the technology is there.
And AI is here and you know,
all this money is
going into AI right now.
It's just a really big industry.
So kind of a long winded
answer to your question.
Yeah.
How did you decide to like start there
after such a
successful exit with Dr. Crono?
You could have done pretty
much anything or nothing at all.
Like why did you decide to do just paid
and solve this problem?
It's a really good question.
I think, you know, when
you are an entrepreneur,
I think you have so
much time in life, right?
Like life is short.
And if you want to start businesses,
you have to do it fairly quickly
when you're like you have the energy.
And you know, we're all,
the way I look at it is
we're all going to die.
You know, we only have so much time
and like what impact and what,
what like legacy do you
want to leave out there
for people to think of you
and what you're working on?
And I think like,
just sitting around for
me doesn't sound appealing.
Honestly, it doesn't sound like what,
it doesn't sound like fun for me.
I think part of the journey
of just going and learning
and you know, becoming a
founder is a very, very,
as weird as it sounds, it's a better,
it's a better way to learn than,
than school.
Like I learned a lot in school, you know,
school was amazing.
I actually, the school I went to,
Stony Brook University was amazing,
but I love the journey of like learning.
And I think the
camaraderie of having a team
and having a mission, it's so impactful.
Like it really for me is almost like,
you have your family,
you know, that's there.
You have friends, but
then there's this mission
that you work on with a group of people
and you get really
smart people in a room.
Like amazing things can
happen that you could never expect.
Right?
It's amazing.
You look at the companies like SpaceX,
who would have thought that
would have been successful?
Yeah.
Nobody thought that was
going to be successful,
but you put really
smart people in a room,
you know, and they all feel
like they're on a mission.
You get this really amazing output
and that excites me.
And I'm like, that drives me a lot
where I can work on
something for 10, 15 years
because we have a mission
to do something important.
And the team is behind me and you know,
it's a lot of fun.
That's a part that
really like pulled me back in
very quickly.
And honestly, it's
finding the right people
that are passionate and
you feel like can do it.
You know, you don't
want to start a company.
And this is another thing with people
that you just are not
excited working with.
Right?
You want people that you believe in
and are smarter than
you that can like help you
get to the goal, whatever that goal is.
And you know, so picking
the right people to work with
is so important in the early days.
It's so critical.
And you know, in VCs
always think about this,
like what does the
founding team look like?
Right?
Like it's so important to a company
because that dynamic creates the value
from their energy in
the way that they're like
thinking about the business
and the way that they
play off of each other
and their expertise and their skillset.
How would you make your first hires?
Like if you were
starting another company today
or maybe even for Just Paid
since you relatively
recently began Just Paid,
how do you make sure you really have got
the right people in the right places
and that you're
screening for the right talent?
That's tough.
I think there's not a
single founder I know
that would say they've done it perfectly.
It's something that a lot
of people struggle with.
How do you do it?
I mean, you're never
gonna get it perfect.
You're never gonna like build a company.
It is a game of like sport
where you're kind of building the team
and the team is always changing.
So it may not be the same people
throughout the life of the company.
I mean, in different phases,
you hire for different people.
I think in the early phases,
like I was talking to
the founder of Mercury
and in the early days,
he just could get
whoever he could get, right?
Like whoever could believe in his vision,
like that's generally like what is true
is you try to find
people out like our believers,
but also people that are not negative
or they kind of pull you down
or they're like,
you get a sense and
everybody thinks it's all like IQ,
like building a company.
A lot of it is like EQ,
like emotional intelligence.
You wanna know, can I
work with this person?
Can they do something amazing?
And a lot of, again, like
investors look at it this way,
the most successful companies
or they may not be the
most smartest people.
They might just be the
people that are like committed
to the mission and get it
to from 0.0 to 0.8 billion,
where they're hugely successful.
So for me, I think look for people
that wanna work with
you in the early days
and look for people that
are not like mercenaries.
And what's a mercenary?
Somebody wants a $400,000 salary
and they want, you know,
RS use in your company
and they want security
and they wanna make sure the company has,
you know, whatever it is,
$700 million in the bank.
There are generally
mercenaries that are like that
and they're really good at what they do.
And you wanna hire people like that
because they're good at what they do.
But in the early days,
those are not the right
people for the company.
You want someone who kind of,
it's kind of like a
ragtag team, like Moneyball.
I don't know, everyone
who is like into startups
should look at the movie Moneyball.
Like just watch that movie
once and you'll understand.
Like you're gonna work
with imperfect people
that have personalities.
And the reality is even
when you get those mercenaries,
they're imperfect also.
And they have their own vision
of what the company is gonna be.
But in the early days
when you have a missionary,
they're like working for
whatever, 1 fifth of salary.
And they just don't care about the salary
because they really
wanna work on something
that they wanna work on.
And they like you and you like them
and you start like riffing off each other
and you start figuring out, okay,
this is the way the
company's gonna get built.
So like, I think that was one of my,
one of my, every
founder has some superpowers.
One of mine was like just getting people
to want to work with us.
That was a superpower
in the early days of,
I'd say just any company I work with,
it's like people
generally want to work around
really positive people.
And I would say I'm
generally a very positive person
and people like that.
They're like, I wanna work with you.
So a lot of them are missionaries
that are just, they wanna jump in,
they start to just try to do stuff.
And you see if it's a good working,
dynamic working with them.
How did you decide on your mission?
And like, how do you
like find a worthy mission
that like you and your team could like
work endlessly behind
and persevere, endure, have that grit?
Like, how did you pick that?
And how do you inspire like your team
and like potential talent to
like get behind that mission
and be like a missionary?
They probably, you probably
don't just encounter talent
in the wild who's like, I
want to change invoicing.
I wanna join a
company that changes the way
like finance departments
run, like from the get go.
You probably have to
do something more there.
How do you make that magic happen?
I mean, you really don't
know what the right idea is
in the early days.
Apple did not think about
the iPhone from day one.
They didn't think they were gonna become
and like this amazing
company with the iPhone.
Like that was not what
they were thinking about
when they started.
They were like, all
right, we're gonna try to sell
a small computer for a home.
And they had a really
rough version of this thing
where they had, they
can only make so many
and it just didn't work that well.
And, you know, it kind of was a,
it was a rough path for Apple.
They didn't get there overnight.
Like it wasn't easy.
They almost went bankrupt.
I don't know if you know that.
They were on the brink of bankruptcy
where Microsoft bailed
them out with a big like,
big amount of money.
Who knew Microsoft would do that, right?
Maybe it was because they
thought of it as like a monopoly.
And if there was only Microsoft, uh oh.
So let's give Apple some money
and then Apple out of nowhere
just kind of created
this amazing company.
So like, I think the
same thing with Nvidia,
they didn't think they were
gonna be what they became.
They just were thinking
about like just chips.
And, you know, it wasn't
about AI in the early days.
It was not an AI company.
So like you kind of, when
you're climbing a mountain,
you kind of have to
take each step every day.
And, you know, I mean, there's, you know,
you probably heard this,
people talk about like Kaizen.
Maybe you haven't.
Have you heard of that word?
I haven't.
It's doing one thing every day
to make an impact essentially.
It's at a high level.
Like it's, it's do one thing today
that'll make the company better.
And, you know, what is,
the question for me is like,
every day it's like, what is
gonna make the biggest impact
on the company?
And how do I get that
one thing done today
that'll help the team and the company?
I think a lot of the
companies that are out there
are built this way that
have like endured over time.
It's not like, like,
it's not like Netflix knew
that they were gonna be online streaming.
They knew, I don't know if
you know the history of Netflix,
but they just kind of, they
didn't even start with DVDs.
Like they had to get to this path.
They went down this
path and they're like,
DVDs are the answer.
Let's start shipping DVDs.
Okay, oh my God, let's try streaming.
Like they didn't see it from day one,
but it was like a process
of refinement over time.
And you would have never known that like,
for anyone who like knows
what VHS is and like video tapes,
not everyone knows,
but you know, Blockbuster
was their big competitor
where like they were both,
they both like had DVDs
and you could rent a DVD.
And Blockbuster was on
a path to crush Netflix.
I don't know if you know this,
like they were going to kill Netflix.
They had a CEO who was on a
mission to create streaming.
And by the luck of, by Netflix's luck,
like the CEO left Blockbuster
and then Blockbuster
immediately lost their way
and just said, we're gonna
just do the brick and mortar,
double down and just have DVDs and stores
because that's how we
make all of our money.
Like why would we do streaming?
Like what would...
And then suddenly
Netflix had their chance.
So it's like, there's this weird dynamic,
I heard one entrepreneur say this to me
and it stuck in my brain.
It's like 60% luck, 40% determination.
Like as crazy as that sounds.
From day one, I was just
like thinking about it.
I'm like, what's a
space that we could work in
for a long time?
And we had some crazy
ideas before this idea.
We had an idea to create like...
This idea like, and we
didn't go with this idea,
but like basically like death care,
completely different idea.
Yeah, throwing you off.
We were writing ideas now.
Death care was like a way to help people
that had like
disastrous loss in their life
create a better
experience for them in society
because people don't look
at that part of society much.
I mean, that was like the
broad idea of that idea.
And something about it
scared me where I was like,
I don't know, I don't know if the
market's big enough.
I don't know if
there's a real market there.
My co-founder was really passionate.
Vene, my one co-founder,
he was super passionate
about going into this field.
And I'm like, I wanted to do it,
but something was like
telling me, be careful.
Now, hindsight's
20-20, I could kick myself.
There may be like really
amazing startups doing this idea.
And there are a few that came
out of YC in the last batch.
I'm like, this is
literally our original idea.
And I'm like, it is, I don't
know if it's a good idea or not
because I never went that path.
So I'm going down this path and I'm like,
take it day by day and
let's see what kind of change
we can make in this industry
with like really
revolutionary technology.
Yeah, looking back in hindsight,
can you tell like why
it is that your instincts
were steering you away
from starting that company
about like end of life care?
And did I understand
correctly what it is towards it
for end of life care
or like managing death?
Like what exactly would it have been
if you're able to share?
I mean, I think it was
dealing with like trusts.
It was dealing with
like deeds and titles.
It was dealing with like
educate, mass education,
like figuring out a way to
have like a better experience
where people just have an
easy way to get it like started.
I, you know, right now
everyone in the world
basically has to like find
a lawyer, right, to do this.
When it comes to like picking an area
that is that you could stay
excited about for a long time,
like how do you know?
Like it's so hard to look ahead.
You worked on Dr.
Crono for 14 plus years.
Like how were you able to stay excited?
How did you know like,
oh, this is something
I can persevere, this is something I
could continue working
on until I get lucky,
until the opportunity comes.
Like how did you know that was the space?
And like how can other
founders who are looking
to start their first company know that
they can stay excited
about this thing?
I think it's, you may
not always be excited
about what you're working on.
Like there's days when
you just want to run away
and like hide.
But there are
industries where like you feel
like something's off for you.
And I'll give you an example for me
where things were like off.
Before I started Dr.
Crono with my co-founder,
in Dr. Crono, he wanted to
really start a gaming company.
And it just doesn't
excite me for some reason.
Like, and you have to like
go into like your lower level
trust systems.
This is very strange to talk about.
It's like, you get these
senses and a lot of people
ignore this, where you
kind of have to trust
whatever your body is telling you.
And like something about
gaming scares me because
I feel like it's a very transient thing.
And I'm trying to articulate what I mean.
And I love games and I
think people that build games,
it's amazing.
I think it's honestly a
great industry to be in,
but it's very,
it's an industry where
you either have a hit
or you don't.
And even if you have a hit,
the longevity of the
hit is like fleeting.
It may be a few years.
It might be five years.
It might be 10 years.
It might be one year.
It might be six months.
Like Pokemon Go.
Yeah.
Are people using it or is it gone?
Is it done?
Like, is it like a thing?
Like, is it out there?
Something about gaming
like is unsettling to me
when building a business.
And I don't like the reset.
Like we need to do another game.
Like this game didn't work, reset.
We need to do another game.
And it feels very much
like the movie industry,
which you're starting
from like zero essentially
to try to get people to
be excited about a movie.
And I feel like I want to de-risk.
And de-risk means compounding growth
on an existing product.
And like Zynga.
I don't know if Zynga is doing well
or if they're not doing well,
but they have like a pool of games,
you know, and it's like a book of
business, like gaming.
For me, I like
compounding companies in this sense.
Like I really like what Facebook did.
Again, social networks are,
they're similar to gaming.
You have to keep people's attention.
I like what like what
the banking industry did,
which is, I guess
these are things that like
are a part of your daily life.
And it kind of
integrates in in a way that like,
it's useful to you on a daily basis.
It's not something that may just,
you watch it and you're done.
You know, there's an
attention span to that.
So I'm like, how do
you layer in more value
every single day onto an existing product
that keeps people engaged and coming back
and you have to refine it like a lot.
But, you know, again,
the software industry,
what I mean, it is very
like fickle, you know,
good today, bad tomorrow, like, you know,
but gaming is even more brutal.
I'm like, I'd rather de-risk
and build like a B2B business
or a B2C business that isn't so fickle.
And I could be totally wrong.
I'm not in the gaming industry,
but this is the way I perceive it.
And I'm trusting my gut.
And that's something that, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I get it.
Is this connected to like your desire
to build lasting companies?
That perhaps like in the
movie or the gaming industry,
like having to
continually like come up with like,
you know, the hits, if you will,
like perhaps aren't
building something as like
with a stronger foundation
that could have like more lasting impact.
Is that perhaps a part
of why you feel that way?
Yeah, I would say so.
I mean, but I would also
say stability is better
than instability.
Like you want more revenue over time.
You want people to like,
I feel like with the gaming industry,
it's like, boom, you have success.
And then people just get bored.
They lose interest.
Like it's very, very,
something is unsettling to me
about that.
I like the longevity of a like business
that will continue compounding.
Like I don't know, maybe you can name a business,
but that you can think of one like.
Amazon comes to mind.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's like the way they like started
with like just a
retail, like online bookstore
and like how AWS has come from that.
Like so many different like services
and like how far they've spread.
Like that, like there was clear,
you know, expanding like potential there.
In hindsight, of course.
But with games, people are like, but with games perhaps, like in movies
and that kind of like
consume once content.
Oh, I'm tired of it.
Perhaps it's harder to build on top of
to create like more value in like an
ecosystem or a platform.
That's exactly right.
And I think Jeff Bezos like,
smart guy.
He was really smart.
Like he's thinking along the lines
of the way I'm thinking it's like,
he saw books as just a
conduit to more products.
You know, he's like,
I'm gonna start with books
cause everybody loves books.
They love bookstores.
I see the internet
scaling it like a rapid pace
and it's not gonna stop.
So the internet itself is like an engine
to keep going faster
and faster and faster.
But if books don't sell,
I built the product to
sell other products on it.
And I think that's a really
smart way to think about it
where it's not as
unsettling as the movie industry.
You know, there's these hit businesses,
there's some of the
tokens like crypto tokens,
like whatever, you know,
they have this like NFTs,
those sorts of things.
Not that those are bad,
none of that stuff is bad.
It's just for me as an entrepreneur,
I feel like I like
this long-term strategy
of one thing that we
could like continually refine.
Yeah.
Do you think that Jeff Bezos like knew
he was going to go
like past books one day?
Do you think like when
he started selling book,
like the first book online,
that was part of the game plan.
I'm starting with books today
and then I'm gonna sell so
much other stuff one day.
I think he was very clear that like books
were just the
beginning of something bigger.
I think his mindset was always that way,
which was this is not a one hit wonder.
It's not, you know,
we're just gonna sell books
and that's it.
His mind was very much racing like,
how do we get more users
to buy more stuff on here?
Because the internet's growing so fast.
Yeah.
We need to capture market and like
everybody will see it.
But I'm building the
platform, not really the items,
like other people were like, you know,
other people were putting
their inventory and whatnot,
you know, but I think he
saw the software itself
as the core thing to sell other stuff.
Yeah, okay.
What were the books for Dr. Crono?
The books for Dr. Crono.
What was that first little bit?
I mean, that company was
built differently than,
you know, I think what was
pure software from the beginning,
like I knew software could scale.
Like Amazon existed.
I saw Amazon success.
I'm like, for me, I just saw, you know,
medical records were
something that were not digitized.
It was just not a digitized thing.
So I'm like, that's our way in
because doctors are just using paper.
And this is back in 2007, 2008.
I had family members go to the doctor,
I'd go to the doctor and
they would just kind of
ruffle through like paper and be like,
when's your next tetanus shot?
And I'd be like, I don't know.
And I remember having this
conversation with the doctor
and he's like, I'll have to look it up.
And then he would
like, he ran over to like
a corner of a room,
he literally had files
and he would just
like ruffle through them.
And he'd be like, I don't really know,
but I'm just gonna
give you a tetanus shot.
Oh no. That sounds great.
Whatever, like, that sounds great.
And that was the experience I had.
And you know, my parents, same thing,
my brother, sister, same thing.
So I'm like, there's something there.
And I want to go that way
and we'll figure things out
as we go down that path.
And it was the paper
that really bothered me.
And it was the paper, you
know, it sounds crazy today,
but it was a paper
driven industry back then.
Like doctors would
just have piles of paper
and like you'd go to the doctor.
It still is that way today.
There's a lot of paper in
like the medical industry.
So you'll see it, but
it was like 100 fold
than what it is today.
Like it was bad.
Like everything was paper back then.
Yeah, well, moving
away from paper is great.
Saving trees, improving efficiency.
Like there's a lot of
companies that are still like working
to do that, like just
revolutionizing these
like unsexy problems,
automating a lot of things.
There's still a lot to be automated,
but it's getting better,
especially here in the US.
But in your journey with Dr. Chrono,
what was the closest
you came to giving up?
Like, you're like, fuck this, like,
I can't do this anymore.
Like, was there a point like that
or several points like that?
I mean, this goes for any startup.
And if any startup
founder says it's not true,
it's lying, I think
there's hard times in startups.
And I think every startup founder goes
to this psychological
warfare against themself.
And I think this is just what happens
where you ask yourself
like, what am I doing?
Why am I doing this?
Like, how do I continue on this path?
You know, I kind of, I view it like this.
Like it's very stressful,
but it's like, if you...
You're driving down like a highway at a
hundred miles an hour.
This is literally how I think about it.
And you have two friends who have said
that they could build wings onto the car.
And in about like one hour,
you're gonna fall off a cliff.
And your friends are climbing out there,
like putting the wings on,
and you're driving a
hundred miles an hour
towards this end of this cliff.
And that's the...
Do you believe your
friends can build the wings
or do you stop the car immediately?
And I think that's the psychological game
that every founder goes through.
Where they're like, can we do this?
And everybody is kind of
relying on everybody else
to like get the car to become a plane.
Yeah.
And there are startups
literally doing that right now.
But that cliff could be anything.
It could be bankruptcy.
It could be personal failure.
It could be, you don't have the money
to do something that you
need to, like a surgery.
I guess that's where
that stressor comes in.
Some people may not have as bad of
cliffs, maybe it's not.
But some people have disastrous,
my wife is gonna leave me.
It could be anything.
So there's...
So I think every
founder goes through this
momentous stress in their life.
I mean, I can tell you some hard times
that I personally went through,
had nothing to do with the company.
Sure.
Because you're doing this while
you're running the company, right?
So like the personal, like
there's not exactly a division
between like your personal
hard times and the company.
Like it's all sort of
one blurry mess, right?
Yeah. Love to hear about it.
Yeah, exactly.
That's the thing.
It's like you have to
like have a personal life.
You know, you have family members
and you have like all
these people in your life.
But this, for me, a dark time I would say
was one of my really close
friends was working with me.
Like super close, we
were really good friends
and he passed away, right?
And I'm like dealing with that stress.
And I'm like, this is horrible.
Like I'm like processing it.
And then I got a phone call like,
my dad has brain cancer.
And then I'm like, oh no, I
don't have like life savings.
How am I gonna help him, right?
And then I'm like helping my dad,
my friend passed away and my cat dies.
God. I don't know what happened,
but he was out and about
and my cat passes away.
So I'm like dealing
with all this like stress.
And I'm like, you have to
like still build a company
at the same time.
So it's like, and then
my dad passes away, right?
And I'm like dealing with
that building this company
and then my mom passes away.
And then my uncle passes
away all within a year.
Oh my God.
And I would say that was a rough time
because I was like, oh, I
was like, how do I do this?
Like, why am I doing this to myself?
Because I wasn't like wealthy.
I didn't have like, I
didn't have, you know,
I came from like small beginnings, right?
Like I didn't have wealth,
I didn't come from wealth.
So like, you wanna be
there for those people
like during those hard times,
like when they're
going through these moments
and it's like operating a business,
helping your family, not
having like much money.
I would say it's psychologically,
if I worked for Google,
it would have been easier.
I could have like, you
know, taken three months off,
whatever, five months off, right?
Google, I'm sure they take
care of employees for that.
So there's, there are
benefits to being an employee
that I think employees,
like they get these perks,
like whatever it is, like,
you know, someone's pregnant,
you get time off, like you
get that time off that you need.
When you're building a business,
you don't get that time off.
Like that's the reality
of building a business.
Like, and a lot of people
would just fold and crush
and like fall and be like, screw it,
I can't build it anymore.
So I think like going through that
psychological warfare,
what I'm talking about is like,
and there's other things like, you know,
I talked to hundreds
of founders and like,
I'm giving you what I went through.
Like every founder has like their thing
that they go through.
And I think it's, you know,
we went to Camp YC together.
I think, you know, a
lot of founders there
were really like talking
through a lot of the issues
that they were having.
And a lot of them had to do
just very different issues.
And I'm like, this is, you know,
building a company is not, it's easy.
In some senses, it's
really hard when personal life
is like also like battling for that time
and those resources in your life.
Yeah, I mean, like in a vacuum,
like starting a startup
sounds like a great idea,
but like when real life
comes at you and like, you know,
you have to take care of your own health
or your loved ones or, you know,
can't take the space you
need for yourself to like,
you know, recover from
grief or go through your grief.
Like that's the part, I don't think
anybody tells you about
before you start a company
that you really can't get that space.
You really like your
identity and the company's identity
sort of become merged in like a big way.
And like, you can't really step away.
Exactly, I mean, you could, but like,
most companies fail.
The reality is if you step
away, like for a long period,
it will just die.
Like, and you think, oh, it'll be fine.
It will, you lose that momentum.
People like look at you and
they see that like momentum loss.
Like, you know, sometimes they survive,
but I would say that
that's the more less normal.
So like every company is
a group of people, right?
Like every single
company is a group of people.
And it's like, they're all going through
their own personal
issues, but at the same time,
can you create a culture
that creates like greatness?
And like every year Apple
comes out with a new iPhone,
right, every year, they put this huge
pressure on themselves
to like reinvent what the
iPhone is and put it out there
and like show new software on the iPhone.
Sometimes like
creating cultures like that
where there's these like
pressure moments is really good
because then you're
striving towards that goal
to get whatever that is,
like to that goal, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So the founders who are about to give up,
who are like in that rut and are not sure
if they can keep going,
like what works for you
in like sticking with it?
What would you tell them to
like, to help them keep going?
I mean, there's a lot of
like thinking that goes into it,
but also a lot of emotions like,
I guess one of the things is like,
you're given this
opportunity, like don't fuck it up.
Like if you've gotten this far,
So close.
I mean, if you've gotten,
say you have $2 million
in revenue, whatever it is,
and then like you hit a bump in the road,
whatever, your husband is gonna leave you
because you're working on your startup.
Like I hate to say it,
that's like part of the reality.
And it's like, you could
quit and go take care of your
husband and like fix that relationship.
Or you could build the
business that has $2 million.
And these are like hard
things that actually happen
in real relationships
where like people are like,
damn, like I don't know,
I don't know what to do.
And it's like, you're
only given so many chances.
In my mind, like you live so long,
you live 80 years, 100 years,
like if you've gotten a
$2 million in revenue,
if you've gotten to $500,000 in revenue,
like do you want to peel
back and like give it up?
I mean, that's one piece of it.
And then the flip of the coin is like,
can you truly work for someone else?
Like, and this is for
some entrepreneurs out there.
I think some of them are so,
I met some
entrepreneurs who could not work
for other people at all, at all.
Like, and I think there's a
certain set of entrepreneurs
who can work for people
and there's a certain set
of entrepreneurs who can't.
You have to be really
realistic about that.
And like, if you cannot
work for other people,
don't give up.
Like it's just, the
reality is you have to keep going
down this path, right?
Like, and maybe your
relationship does fall apart.
Like I've been throwing this out there
because this is what literally happens.
Like, someone's husband is like,
hey, I'm not happy with all
the hours you're putting in.
This is like affecting our
relationship, wife, whatever.
So there's extreme moments
in like every person's life
where they're like
confronted over and over again.
Maybe you have like
one month in the bank of,
for the company or three months in the
bank for the company.
How do you get past that?
Like the reality is most
companies have these disastrous
moments where they're
like, I only have three months
of revenue left.
What the hell am I doing with my time?
And I do talk to
entrepreneurs like over the last month,
I spoke to one entrepreneur
who was in that situation.
And I'm like, I mean, I
asked them this question,
would you go work for Google?
That was the first thing I asked them.
And they said, no.
So I'm like, well, you got to
figure out a way out of this.
Then you have to like
work your way through this.
I mean, you heard about
like, burn your bridges, right?
Burn your boats.
Right.
Leave no option to return.
I mean, the reality is like,
if you don't have a life
savings and you, you know,
have nothing to lose,
you don't have a mortgage.
Those people are, you know, they have a
higher risk tolerance.
And for me, like when I
first started my first company,
I had, I intentionally
kept my life kind of simple.
But the reality is some
of my friends were like,
getting married.
Some of my friends were like
having like great families.
Some of my friends like
had a lot of life savings.
Like they had like, you
know, I'd be like, wow,
how did you save all that money?
I was like, yo, I worked for five years.
I'm like, man, what am I doing?
Like, what am I doing wrong?
Like I didn't save any money, you know?
And I'm like, oh my
God, I'm ruining my life.
Like, but whatever, like
this is the path I chose.
And I'm going to burn my
bridges and burn my boats.
Sorry, burn my boats.
And I'm going to go this path and like,
if I don't have a life savings, so be it.
Like, literally I'm like, if
I don't have a life savings
from the outcome of this,
but I'm going to work hard enough to try
to make that outcome
where I can have a
life savings from this.
Right?
So like, that's the
mindset you have to be in.
And it's, I don't know.
I also think anxiety is
like good for founders
as bad as it sounds.
I think it creates a
founder who's hyper alert
and thinking about the
business all of the time.
So like that stress,
it's not good to be in
that stress your whole time,
but it does create progress.
So like people like, you
know, work-life balance,
I mean, work-life balance
is great, but stress is good
because it creates,
it creates momentum when
you're using that stress
to like move the company forward.
Yeah, a sense of urgency from
the court is all of you will,
but not so much that you can't sleep.
Perhaps that there's a balance.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of
founders don't even sleep.
I mean, but you know, whatever it is.
There's a lot of, I mean, but this is me.
This is like advice for me.
It's not from other founders.
I'm just telling you like,
there's no like perfect map.
Every founder is different.
They operate very differently.
Like everybody
operates at a different level
and they build their
business in a different way
and their team works different than them.
And it's like, this is just
the way that I think about it.
Yeah, hopefully that--
Yeah, that does.
Absolutely.
You've mentioned having
a culture of greatness
in your team.
I've heard this from so
many different founders.
I have a great team.
We're always striving to be the best,
like building a culture of greatness.
Like what does that mean to you?
And how do you know if you have it?
I mean, honestly, you
could peel all of that away
and say like, do people
wanna use the product?
Like greatness is good at all,
but you need people to use the product.
Like that's number one.
But then there's like a
second order of magnitude,
which is like a wow
factor in the product itself.
Like, you know, teams and products,
I think the team creates the product,
but the product itself has to be the
result of a great team.
A great team is one
that works well together
with limited resources to get
extraordinary things done
in a small amount of time.
Like, right?
Like, you give in, here's,
I mean, what Sam Altman
did, like in the early days,
like AI, like no one's gonna use that.
Like, you know, he's gonna use that.
Like he started this
in like 2016, you know,
open AI and try to
figure out how to like create
an AI product for people.
They really didn't have
that many resources, right?
They really like, if it
didn't work, it would be dead.
But the team was savvy enough
and figured out a lot of ways
to get this thing off
the ground before it died.
Speaking of Sam Altman,
like you guys were like
the first health tech company like in YC,
which is crazy to think
about in the winter 11 batch.
So this was in the early days of YC.
How was that like?
How has YC changed?
Like how have things gone since then?
Yeah, actually, oddly,
like we were the first
healthcare company in YC.
There was another company called
Comprehend in our batch,
but we were like the first two real
healthcare companies
in Y Combinator.
And, you know, this is back in 2000,
I'll reverse a little
bit, but how we got into YC
and then I'll talk through like--
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A lot of founders out
there, I'm sure wanna know
like what the sauce
is, how to get into YC,
which is like a lower
acceptance rate than Harvard.
How do you manage that?
Let's start there.
I mean, the first time we got into YC,
the first time I got into Y Combinator,
I think it was, they were
not who they are today, right?
Like it wasn't this big
known brand like Harvard.
I think it's actually
a brand now, it's huge.
It's like everybody knows about Y
Combinator out there,
but this is like 2008, 2009, 2010,
kind of heard about them.
And part of it was the
articles online from Paul Graham,
the founder of Y Combinator.
So he wrote a bunch of
articles about entrepreneurship
and like how to build a startup.
And, you know, me and my
co-founder were in New York City
at the time and we
were renting two desks.
And my co-founder was very
passionate about Y Combinator.
And, you know, part of
what I spoke about before
is like, I'd say one of
my superpowers was like
just getting people to like listen to me,
at least for a few minutes.
I emailed the founder
of Y Combinator directly.
I said, "Hey, we're
building this company.
We have traction, it's game changer.
We would love to talk."
And he emailed me back and he said,
"No, I'm in California."
And, you know, for me, that wasn't a no.
Like, so I emailed him back and I said,
"Well, we're working out of this like
little accelerator."
It wasn't an accelerator,
it was like a little like
startup room and we'd love
for somebody to come here
and just like talk to us.
And what convinced
them to even take the time
is I told them that
there were a few startups
in this like little building.
It was three
companies like just sprinkled.
That was it, three companies.
So I made it seem bigger.
I don't know, maybe, I don't know,
I don't even know what
it was, but he said like,
"I will send Alexis Sohamian.
He's in the area,
he'll swing by the office
and he'll give all the startups a talk."
And, you know, Alexis
comes into the building,
founder of Reddit and he's, you know,
Reddit wasn't that big,
Reddit wasn't that big.
It wasn't like what it is today.
And, you know, he gave
us the other two startups
like a little pitch
talk and we had enough time
like Alexis kind of sat there
with us for probably an hour.
I just saw like, "Oh, these
two founders have no funding.
They've been working
on this for a few years.
They are actually
building something significant."
We built the first medical
record on the iPad in history
and we had users using the product
and he really got excited.
Like it was just, he
saw the passion in us
because whether Y
Combinator invest or not,
I felt like we were
gonna build the business.
Like it was gonna happen.
And he saw that, like he's like, "Okay."
And for me, I didn't know who,
I didn't know anything
about Y Combinator really,
except these articles, right?
So I'm like, okay.
And he's like, "You
could fly to California
and you can be a polygram."
And I'm like, "Okay, I'm
calculating my life savings."
And I had, it's like $35,000 in the bank,
my personal life savings.
And I'm like, "I'll have to pay for a
flight to California."
And I'm like, "That, my
burn rate will be, you know,
like my burn rate is
gonna go up a little bit."
And I'm like, "I don't
know if this is worth it,
but I'll take the risk."
Me and my co-founder spend
the money, we buy the tickets.
We first go to this
thing called startup school,
because it timed well.
There was this thing
called startup school
and it was really good.
I was like blown away.
I was like, "Oh my God,
there's other people like us."
Like I didn't talk to entrepreneurs.
We didn't talk to people.
There was no
entrepreneur community like that.
Like it was just a couple of people
like hanging out and
building weird companies.
And essentially people
thought we were jobless,
like jobs.
Those guys, they don't have a job.
What are these guys doing?
Like how did you know you weren't crazy
without like seeing other
people doing things like you?
It's just, this is
something you trust in your gut.
Like it's all gut based.
Like you self-reflect, right?
You look at where people are
and are they truly happy in life
and are they liking what they're doing?
I don't think
entrepreneurship is for everyone.
Right.
What they were doing wasn't for me.
It was like, go get a job,
work for a large company,
get a salary, find a
partner, get a mortgage.
I was running that through my head
but like that doesn't sound fun.
That's not you.
It sounds like a burden.
I'm like, I need to
have fun while I'm working.
Like I want to do
something that's impactful.
And I met all these
people at the startup school.
I'm like, oh my God, they're like me.
They're all like thinking the same way
and they want to like do something unique
and they're passionate.
They want to like build something.
And I'm like, this
investor seems like they're good.
Other investors I met
were, they didn't have that.
There were a few that I
thought were smart people
but they didn't have
this energy in this room
from all these passionate founders.
And then I'm like, we have to
like pitch this really well.
So I'm like, I talked to
my co-founder and I'm like,
hey, I really, let's
get them as an investor.
I kind of went all in and I'm like,
we're going to get them.
And I think my co-founder was really,
we worked well together in this way.
We locked ourselves in a
room for like 10 hours.
So we practiced a pitch
when we were going to
meet Paul Graham in person.
And we go to Y
Combinator or Mountain View,
the little building and walk in.
And there's a line of all
these terrified founders
like that are going to pitch this guy
to see if they can
get investment from him.
And we go into the room
and we kind of just went
into that pitch that we pitched 10 hours.
We just went straight
into it and it was rehearsed.
And well, first, and I
thought we didn't get them
as an investor
because they're like, okay,
thank you so much.
Next, it was like a casting call.
Oh my gosh.
You can leave the room now.
Like it was, thank you guys so much.
We'll be in touch.
Oh man, that's not what you want to hear.
Well, it's not our pitch.
It was a line of people.
Granted, this is how it was done.
It was like a line of
people coming in and out.
But I just was like, okay,
we'll go back to New York City
and we'll build it and
they won't be our investor.
That was just my
thinking that night, that day.
And that night, Paul
Graham calls us and says,
hey, you want in or are you in?
And me and my
co-founder are on the phone.
It's like 8 p.m., 9
p.m. and late at night.
And I'm like, yes.
I look at my
co-founder and he's like, yes.
I was making sure he was aligned with it
and we both said yes to it.
He's like, all right,
you're gonna come to California
for three months and we're gonna give you
a little bit of money
and we'll just put you
through our program.
And I'm like, that sounds great.
And then you were asking about partners
to get to your first question.
So Paul Graham, the founder of Y
Combinator back then
was very involved.
Jessica Livingston and Paul
Graham were hugely involved.
Paul Bucheit, hugely involved.
Gary Tan was just hired in.
Sam Altman was just hired in.
So those are the
partners that we worked with.
Those are the, that was the partners.
Those are the primary
people we went to for help
in the early days.
So we got into Y
Combinator and it felt like college
because it was just an energy of hope.
Like we're gonna do something big
and all work well together.
I remember, you know, Paul
Graham just would get his hands
dirty and help us with
everything, which was great.
So it was a really
unscalable way of doing it.
Doing things that don't scale,
don't putting right there, right?
Yeah, he was literally helping us
whenever we asked for help.
And back then they, you
could just book as much time
with Paul Graham as you could.
And I think we booked, I
don't know, like 50 hours.
Maybe not 50, like, but a
lot of time with Paul Graham
and he would just, we
would do this thing.
Like it was like a walk.
We would basically go for like a walk
around the Y Combinator area and just
like kind of just talk.
About the business and
kind of get his thoughts and,
you know, Sam Altman we
would talk to and then Gary.
We always went to Gary
for design questions.
I'd always like ask him about like,
what about, what do you think about this?
What are we doing there?
But, you know, they were pretty honest.
They were pretty
honest, but really, really,
thinking about them as
they were just so helpful
in any way possible
that it left a good taste.
And it just, it was just
always a good experience.
And like, they would just align with us.
Yeah, working with PG
directly must have been amazing.
Like having all that
space and time with him,
like he's such a legend.
And yeah, it sounds like
you guys got a lot out of YC.
First time around, will you
say the second time around,
you guys got a lot out of it as well?
Was, it was quite different,
I imagine, the second time.
Well, the first time
there wasn't really software.
Like there was a little bit of software.
So like when we did demo day,
it was literally in a room with people.
And then you have to run up to them
to get their business card.
So like, you know, the first time around
with Y Combinator, I remember just say,
I remember thinking, I'm gonna stay here
longer than any founder in this room
and get as many
business cards as, oh my gosh.
And I literally stayed
there till like, I don't know,
it was like 1 a, it was like 11 or 1 a.m.
It was really late.
And I'm just like, all
right, all the other founders
are gone, there's one investor left.
I'm gonna go talk to him.
And the guy, he did invest.
He's like, you're the last founder here.
I'm gonna invest.
And he did.
And I'm like, oh my God,
that's such strange reasoning,
but that's great.
That's crazy.
And that was like really, yeah.
So sometimes it's just last man standing.
But you know, I had a
stack of business cards
and you had to like go through them.
So you just like look
at this phone number
and you're gonna be like, all right,
I'm gonna call this guy tomorrow.
Talk about old school.
So that's old YC.
That was like, it
was, he would, you know,
the YC partners, you know, Jessica, Paul,
all the other partners
would convince the investors
to come to YC, sit in a room for,
it was like hours, hours of their time.
They had like heavy hitters like,
Hermont, you know.
I don't know if you, you know, Hermont
from General Catalyst.
He runs all of General Catalyst.
So he was there.
All these great
investors were just in this room,
like amazing people like Sequoia.
And they were just all sitting there
like looking at the
founders, pitch one by one.
So the stress level was
also higher, way higher.
In the sense like if
you say something wrong,
in a room full of these
people staring at you,
I just, the pressure was just intense.
I mean, you went through YC this time.
I don't know what you
thought about like the demo,
you know, Devo Day Online.
It's insane, the weight of the moment.
We were a COVID batch, winter 21.
So it was a little
different, but still like had to,
you know, perform
live and had to be ready.
And thankfully we had software.
We didn't have to deal with
any physical business cards.
So yeah, it's
definitely changed quite a bit
since winter 11.
Yeah.
I noticed that when you
talk about the hard times
in the startup journey,
you have such certainty
like in your like
destiny of like success.
Like how do you come about this mindset
where like you like, is it like a form
of manifestation you have?
Like what is it that
gives you such high conviction
that you are going to
persevere and succeed
in like what you set out to do?
I mean.
What's the energy source?
Like how do other founders
develop such high conviction
in themselves, like self
faith and like believing
in their destiny and
their amazing outcome
that they could create for themselves?
I mean, I just think
it's taking it day by day
and not overwhelming yourself.
Like how do I create the next Nvidia?
Like if you do that, you're like,
you're kind of
psychologically like wasted.
You're just like, it's not
a good mindset to say like,
I'm gonna build the next Nvidia.
Like if you run around
saying that to yourself,
you feel like a liar, right?
And it's what can I do today?
I'm gonna go back to this to
like make the company better
for tomorrow.
And like, it's a, I
view it as like creating,
like you ever see
those like beautiful swords
or like whatever it
is, like a beautiful car.
It's like these things
are not made in a day.
And the reality is like,
you have to like understand,
you have to take it day by day.
Like if you're thinking
you're gonna like create,
I don't know, like Tesla in a day,
it's like you're
gonna psych yourself out.
I think for me, it's just a process.
And you know, I have
my days where I'm like,
what am I doing?
But at the same time,
like what's the inverse?
Like what's on the other side of that?
Like go work for someone else?
Like, does that make sense?
Like, yeah, totally, totally.
I think that will
resonate with a lot of founders.
Like they don't see
themselves working for somebody else.
Right.
Especially the best ones.
I mean, it's one of
those things are, you know,
you're gonna die, I'm
gonna go back to this.
Like you're going to die.
Like we're all gonna like
not be here in a hundred years.
So like, there's also
different tolerance levels.
Like of, you know, if you have a family
and you have like six kids
and you have a really great
family and you have a
mortgage, like maybe don't do it.
Like there's moments
in your life where like
you gather like a family,
like that's a scenario where like
maybe don't do it.
Like I hate to say it.
It's like, it's the risk is really high.
Like the failure rate is really high.
Yeah.
But you know, if you are determined
and you feel
passionate, like, I don't know,
just not everyone in the
world is fortunate enough
to even be able to do what we're doing.
Like what you're doing,
Daniel, with your, you know,
your startup, like
you're really fortunate
like to be able to
build that, like look at it
from that perspective
sometimes where it sucks.
But like, you know,
other parts of the world,
they don't even have
this opportunity, you know?
So like why not try?
I don't know.
I know I'm totally on
the same page and like,
I call my parents like
every two or three weeks
and I like thank them
for immigrating to America.
They came as like a
Jewish refugees from Ukraine
and like, I'm like so
grateful, especially like
as I'm traveling and I see
like just how much we have here
in terms of
opportunity, but also like the way
that the culture here
nurtures entrepreneurship,
like individualism and
ambition and you know,
that it's incredible.
And I'm like so
grateful to be here in the US
and like also when it comes to timing,
like I started this
company like five years ago
when I was 20.
So like I have the luxury
of not having a wife and kids
and mortgages and huge bills.
So yeah, timing I think is huge.
Like how, what do you say
to the founders out there
that have a lot to
lose, have like a spouse
that's depending on
them, debt or mortgages,
kids like who really
don't know if they can afford
to take the risk, like,
and they want to do it,
but like how can they
pull off that balancing act?
Do you have any words
of inspiration for them
other than maybe don't?
It isn't for everybody.
I agree with you there,
but for those who have
the determination to do it anyways,
like what would you tell them?
I mean, it's risk versus reward.
Like if you work on this business,
you may not have a life savings.
You may work till you're 90.
Like if it fails, that's what I mean.
Worst case scenario.
Say you work on it 10 years,
say you're 45 and you
work on it and you're 55
and you don't have a life savings,
you're gonna work till you're 90.
And it's a risk versus reward game
for everyone involved, right?
Like, and I think
everybody's situation is different.
If you have a sick family member
and you need to support them,
it may not be a good time.
If you have like, you
know, really young kids
and like you just feel
like you don't have the time
and your guts telling
you don't have the time,
don't do it.
You know, it's funny, have you ever heard
of the musician Bonnie there?
I have not.
Okay.
He's just one of
these musicians out there.
He just came out with an album yesterday
and his very first album,
he locked himself in a cabin
in Wisconsin in the middle of nowhere
to create this first album.
And it was really, it
was a really good album.
But I'm like, he had
the time and the clearness
and the space to explore different ways
to like work on that music.
You know, if you start to collect things,
like I have two dogs now,
you know, I love my dogs.
But as you collect
responsibility in life,
like you may not have
the resources or the time
to build it.
And it's a really a question for you
if you want to take that leap.
And if your partner's not
on board, like, you know,
just be aware of like, they
have to be kind of on board
with it also, if they're
really not on board with it.
Maybe they're not the right partner.
Maybe that's a whole
other issue, but if you care
about them and you want to be with them
and they're like, you can't do this,
we're $20,000 in debt.
Like, you have to look at everything
and kind of figure out
like, when is the right time?
And for me, like when I
started my first company,
I was in a situation where
like I saved enough money.
I calculated like a two
year burn with zero income.
And I'm like, I will live
off $50,000 for two years.
So it's $25,000 a year.
I will live with roommates.
I will not go on vacations.
I will live in a small little place
and I will push as far as I can
until I'm on the brink
of bankruptcy personally.
And that was like my thought
process for the first company.
But I didn't have a wife.
I didn't have a partner.
I didn't have a car payment.
I didn't have a mortgage, right?
Like, so I was ready to take that plunge,
knowing that I may
come out of the other side
with no nothing, like nothing.
15 years later, 20 years
later, I knew that going in.
Yeah.
I've heard this story
from like a similar story
from other founders.
Like why do founders do this?
It like seems so
ludicrous, like outside looking in,
like why do founders make that decision?
Like what makes it worth it?
I think it's the, I mean, there's
different takes on it.
One is the positive spin is like,
you believe in the idea so much
and you wanna work on this
idea, like it's worth the risk
and you believe it's gonna work.
I mean, that's one way to think about it.
Another is they wanna get rich.
Like a lot of
founders don't talk about it,
but they just wanna become
really wealthy and that's okay.
Like that's a good reason to go into it.
If you think you
could work on it 10 years
and you're passionate about it.
Another is you have a lot of
dysfunctional founders
who can't get jobs in the world.
And then they realized
that they can create value
outside of the structures
of like large organizations.
So they start small and then they build
and build and build.
Yeah, Google is lost, right Daniel?
Yeah, I mean, Steve
Jobs, he couldn't get a job.
He would walk around barefoot.
I don't know if you know that and he
didn't take showers.
Yeah, I knew about the
barefoot and the no showers thing.
I didn't know he couldn't get a job,
but yeah, he was
quite good and agreeable.
I mean, that's not true.
He worked at Atari for a
little while, but like,
I don't know, maybe he
would've went down that other path.
Yeah, he could've gotten
sucked into like the Waz's path,
like working at HP and
like just being really happy
to tinker, but I think
he was quite disagreeable
by temperament and it's
hard to imagine somebody
with that kind of temperament,
like taking orders from anybody.
So I mean, there's
those types of people also
that look at orders, but like,
there's no right or wrong way to like
become an entrepreneur
also, I think that
there's really nice founders
and there's really
like determined founders
and then there's founders
who are really aggressive
and mean, like there's a spectrum.
I don't think that
there's one size fits all
and people kind of cram
like the one size fits all
founder mantra down
people's throats a lot of the time.
And you know, that's not exactly,
you can still build a really valuable,
enduring, massively successful business
without being like this one
founder that's successful.
So I'd love to talk about
like building a lasting company
because you've talked about
how like all companies die.
How do you make a
company that truly lasts
and how do you make sure,
how do you know that
you're working on something
that like is meaningful and worthwhile?
And then maybe we'll,
I'd love to connect that
with like your greater life purpose,
like the purpose that
you've selected for yourself
or has evolved or you
might see it intrinsically
as intrinsically evident.
I'd love to hear how those
connect, how you found those.
Tough one.
Again, like I said, it's like
60% luck, 40% determination.
I think that's a piece of it.
Like, why are you doing this?
Like, why start these companies for you?
Like what was your reason for doing this?
Like, and how did it
connect to like your meaning
like behind your place here on earth?
Asking the hard questions.
I mean, my reason for
starting this, like this company,
I think it was the energy of the people
and the idea and the space and, you know,
if we could build something
that can go into every business
in the world, that's exciting.
Like there's something there.
And that's like a big mission
that like really excites me.
Everybody like I'm working with,
everybody's learning
every day from each other.
I think that's really exciting.
Like also I'm learning a
lot from my co-founders
and they're learning a lot from me.
And we're all kind of like jelling and
there's this energy.
And I really like a
mission, like driven life.
Like if you don't have
a mission in your life,
like what are you gonna do?
Like, I don't know, I don't know.
And this is just like the way I operate.
I think, you know, my
wife talks about it.
She's like, you just do this.
And I'm like, I could just not do it.
And like go to a beach and enjoy life.
But that gets boring, like really fast.
Like it's not really what I wanna do.
Like I think being in
like the game of business
is really fun because you get to learn
and it's not a lose-lose situation.
It's like a win-win where
like a lot of people win.
Together it's so fun.
It's like really fun
when everybody's like
working well together and enjoying it.
And like you create business partnerships
and everybody like, there's a
lot of like really good parts
to building a business.
Everyone says like
building a startup is so horrible.
I'm like, is it though?
Like there's really hard jobs out there.
For sure.
There's really other hard jobs out there
that people like they suffer.
Like I don't know.
I look at like people
building like skyscrapers
and like those
construction workers out there day in
and day out.
I'm like building a
startup is a fun strategy.
It's like strategy.
It's like how do we take
all of the money we have
and make it like work for
us in a really positive way?
You know, when you look
at construction workers,
I'm like, that's a really
grueling, stressful job.
I'm like, thank God those
people opted into doing that
because it's a really
hard job and it's like,
it's a job I wouldn't want to do.
And I think that's another thing.
It's like you look at all
of these different paths
in your life and you're
like, do I want to do this?
No, do I want to do that?
No.
Would I be happy doing this?
Yes, but this has problems.
And then you kind of like
figure out for yourself.
I do think that the world
glorifies entrepreneurship.
It is not what people think.
You know this Daniel, you're in it.
It's not like all fun
and glitz and glory.
It's literally day in and day out,
like sitting in front of your computer
and doing phone calls
and like working with people.
And it's not an overnight success.
People get in their head
like, oh, a year from now,
this is going to be so
big and I'm going to have
all these users and they kind of,
they view it as like
almost like the new rock stars.
I'm like, it's not that.
It's a grind in its own way.
And it's like stressful in
its own way, but you know,
I guess the people that go
in with it, with that mindset,
like they're going to
fail because it's not
what they're expecting.
Like I kind of went into
it knowing like, you know,
it takes time and you have
to like put a lot of energy
into it and you have to
like figure things out.
Yeah, it's definitely
grind and it's definitely
not the romanticized
thing you see nowadays
and sort of become trendy,
especially for young people
to try to get into entrepreneurship.
But after like your first company,
like you could have become a huge VC.
You had like an
amazing exit, a lot of press,
a lot of attention.
Why did you come back
to the founder path?
Like what was it that drove you to that?
Like what, what compelled you to do so?
You could have done so
many different things.
You could have, you
know, become a beach bum
and septumimosas, right?
What pulled you this way?
I mean, I don't know
if a lot of people know
how VCs operate.
I mean, who knows maybe
down the road I would do that,
right?
But you know, being a
VC is very different
than being an entrepreneur.
I think, first of all,
like 90% of VC firms fail.
I don't know if people know that.
So being a VC is not safe.
Yeah, it's exactly like a startup.
So you're investing in
high risk companies as a VC.
And like you are trying to
figure out who are the best
companies to invest in.
You know, you're trying to pick the best.
You are de-risked in a way
because you have maybe 10
companies or 30 companies
or 200 companies or 500
companies that you invested in.
So your chances of success are higher.
You know, and they also get like,
I don't know if you
know what two and 20 is.
Do you know what that is?
I do not.
What is that?
That's the way that VCs operate.
They get 2% management fees every year.
So if they raise $100 million,
they get $2 million to
operate their VC firm.
And then they get
something called 20% carry,
which is basically any exit that happens,
they get 20% of the exit amount of equity
that they hold in that company.
I mean, honestly, like being a VC
sounds like a really great gig.
I don't think it's a bad gig.
I'm like, it's not a bad job.
I actually think it's a really fun job.
You get to talk to entrepreneurs.
I mean, for me, I just, I know,
I work with a lot of entrepreneurs
and I felt like it was just a really,
you get your hands,
you know, into a company
and you get to like
work with the team a lot.
VCs don't, you know?
I don't know if you know, like they just,
they don't, they just, they don't get--
They say they will, but they can't.
Yeah, I mean, if you have 50 companies,
100 companies, like
you can only do so much.
And it's just a way
that that's structured
like a lot of the time, right?
Like you can't, you can't
help all of your companies.
So I know that you do some investing
with your investor hat on,
how do you decide which
companies to invest in?
I mean, for me, it's at
the really early stage.
Like I wouldn't invest in
like a late stage company.
I think it's just founders.
Honestly, I talk to the
founder, I look at the idea.
I know the risk going into
it, it's really high risk.
So I would love it if
the companies work out,
but at the same time,
I know the founders are
hopefully like trying their best and
trying to make it work.
But at the same time,
it's not like I'm gonna
be angry if it fails.
So it's the same, startups are hard.
And it's like, if you're
gonna invest in startups,
your chances of success are very low.
Like maybe one, two,
three, four, 5% will make it.
So 95% of the money you
put in may not be there
that you put in.
But if one of those
companies has a big outcome,
then you're in a really,
you can make your money back.
With all the AI hype going on,
like how do investors and founders both,
if a startup worthy
problem should be approached
with AI or not, or like
more traditional route,
so like solving a problem.
Like how do we know if
there's a problem to be solved
with AI or not, when now
everyone seems to be wanting
to throw AI and chat GPT
wrappers at everything?
I mean, that's a whole nother debate
in like the strategy, I think.
I mean, if you look
at it, they're building
like nuclear power plants now to support
the new infrastructure.
Yeah, Google just
announced the other day, right?
Seven reactors.
Amazon, you name it, like all of these
different businesses
are doing that and
they're massive server farms
like another like are
being built out and it's,
I don't know what the
outcome of it's gonna be,
but I can tell you that
like everything that's software
driven will have some sort
of AI in it at some point.
And it's, you have to pick the winners,
but it's also like the internet, right?
Like when the internet first came out,
they didn't know who
was gonna be the winners.
So like Amazon was one amongst many.
People thought Amazon might fail,
people thought pets.com might succeed.
Like you don't really
know, but in the long run,
a company is a sports team, right?
So like you kind of
pick your sports teams
and you say, I believe in this company,
I'm gonna invest in this sports team
because they seem to
have the most energy,
you know, intelligence,
emotional intelligence.
Like they also have like stuff going on
and they seem like the right team.
So that's how people would invest.
So do you invest everything in AI?
The answer is no, there's
good businesses outside of AI.
Like clearly there's a lot of like areas
that people can go into.
I just think AI is
going to change the world
at a really fast rate.
So the opportunities there are unknown
and people get excited by
like the upside of unknown.
Yeah, I can see us diving
into this for a few hours.
This specific topic.
This is definitely a lot longer one,
perhaps another time.
But what I wanted to ask, life post exit,
you had like a huge,
hugely successful exit
with your first company.
Like how does the math
change, the dynamics change?
Like, did you take
some space for yourself
between companies?
Like how did your view
post exit on like your life,
your purpose, your work change?
I'm sure it can't be
the same as it was before.
I think, you know, I
took about a year off,
essentially, give or take.
But I was just really
trying to figure out
like what to do next.
Like you kind of,
you kind of just think
about different things,
different areas.
Like, you know, I
thought about VCs a lot,
like becoming a venture capitalist.
I thought about doing all
different types of startups,
maybe being an advisor,
maybe just being an angel investor.
Nobody has like a right like path per se,
but I would say like for me,
it was just taking
that year off was good.
I drove across country.
Nice. Twice.
Twice. Twice.
That sounds like fun.
Yeah, no, it was a lot of fun, honestly,
like just seeing the United States.
So I drove across every state
and kind of experienced
each state and just spent time.
Honestly, I spent time like catching up
with a lot of friends
also, which was really nice.
Like I think part of like the
downside of doing my startup
was I just didn't
have time for, you know,
spending time with
like people I cared about,
like friends from college,
like friends from high school,
like just family and all of that.
So it was a lot of catching up to do,
like just seeing like
how people are in life.
And, you know, I think that's
one thing founders should do
is just try not to disconnect too much
and try not to go too
deep in your startup
because you want your
friends to remember you.
You want your family to be like,
oh, you know, you want to like
keep that relationship there.
They say that on your death bed
and like people just
talk about the people
they wish they'd spent more time with.
I don't think they're like,
I wish I'd gotten 5
million more ARR, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's, you know,
every founder kind of has that dilemma.
It's like, oh, I could work this Friday.
Oh, but my friends
are going out, you know.
I opted to work on the
Friday, but I, after, you know,
once I took time off, I was
just spending time with friends
and just catching up
with a lot of people.
It's really nice because
I feel like I've rebonded
with a lot of people
that like from my past
and it's just, it's really important.
I think just for everybody,
because people in your life, Daniel,
I'm sure that like,
you don't have the time
to talk to right now, but
like, hopefully they'll,
you know, just keep in touch with them,
like reach out to the
people you care about.
Yeah.
I try, but you know,
we, you know how it is.
You're guilty if you don't talk to them,
but if you do talk to
them, you're guilty,
you're not spending
time with the company.
So it's like trade off both ways.
Right, right.
Do you think there's a
connection between trauma
and the founder path?
Is there
trauma in every founder's path?
I would say no, I would say no.
I would say some
people are really privileged
or they had really good lives.
Not everybody has trauma.
Every founder is so different.
Like you're gonna have like some people
that have like disastrous trauma
for them to start a company.
I know, we went to that camp YC together
and I'm like, everybody has trauma.
I'm like, I don't know
if that's exactly true.
I think some people
just genuinely just wanted
to start a company and
they had a really good life.
And they just see it
as like a path for them.
There's always like a flip case.
I think for me, part
of it was maybe trauma.
Like my parents didn't have much, right?
So like for me, I was
like, how do I make our lives
like a little more secure and safe?
And I saw what my parents
had and my parents spoke.
My dad worked for the
government, which was great.
So he had security,
but we always struggled
because it was like,
they don't pay that well
at the government, right?
So like, and he had three kids.
So he was always like
trying to figure out how to have
like enough to support all of his kids,
which he did a really good job.
He honestly like taught me
a lot, like just work hard.
He's like, just work hard.
That was the ethic that he left for me.
And I'm like, God, I'll work really hard.
You know, so part of the
reason why I worked so hard
on my startup is because of my father.
That's not quite trauma.
That's just like him
showing a way for me to like be,
but that, you know, but I also saw the
way that he suffered
by working for the government
because he didn't make a lot of money.
You know, the government's great.
They do provide benefits
and they do provide a lot
of like resources, but like
you don't get ahead ahead.
You know what I mean?
Working for like the mail, you know,
and the Nancy's
supposed to service or like
as an elevator mechanic
or like in the military,
you're not going to come out
and like have ultra wealth.
Right? So like, I saw that.
I'm like, oh, he
struggled his whole life,
but he was taken care of in a safe way.
I'm like, what if I go this path?
That's way less known.
Who knows what's there?
Like, and that's honestly one of the
reasons why I did it.
I'm like, who knows?
Like, what's this path?
Let me, let me look on this path
and see what I can accomplish.
And speaking to some great
coaches the last few years,
I've learned that the most,
one of the most valuable
things you can learn is not like
the facts or the
specific suggestions or advice.
It's actually the frameworks.
Are there any frameworks that your father
or Paul Graham imparted on
you that have been instrumental
in the success that
you've had that you could share
with young founders
early in their journey?
Yeah, there's a lot of like thinking,
a lot of different ideas like
around what I think there's,
I call them like axioms of like truth.
Like people get really
rattled by competitors.
Say you have a competitor
and a competitor raises,
I don't know, $400
million to your company
and they're a competitor to you.
That scares a lot of founders away.
And I think that's the wrong thinking is,
oh, our competitor has dot,
dot, dot, we're gonna die.
Like a lot of founders
get really rattled by that.
And I think like doing that
too often will like put you
in a psychological
space where like you will be
self-defeated.
Like, so like don't look at your
competitors as much as,
as others are looking
at their competitors.
I mean, an example is
like dig and Reddit,
like Reddit was the underdog,
dig was the cool, cool company.
Like, I don't know if you remember this,
they were like, they
had a lot of funding,
people would all go to dig,
it like would work really well.
And it just was awesome.
And they had a lot of
funding and like they had
the cool employees, you know,
they had everything going for them.
And then like, poof,
like it all fell apart
very quickly at dig.
Like somehow Reddit just
like would just keep going
and going and going and it just,
it built momentum in that company.
And then somehow they got
all the users like piling in
like using the company.
So like for me, like one of
the, one of the axioms is like,
you know, don't worry about competitors.
Like don't worry about competitors.
Another one is like,
try to be a good standing
with your co-founders.
You're a solo founder, Daniel, right?
No, I have a co-founder.
Oh, you have a, okay, I didn't know that.
You know, always try to
have like a good standing
with your co-founder.
And that means like, if
they want the button to be blue
and you know that this
is gonna like damage your
relationship, you really
care if the button's green.
Like fight the right battles.
Yeah.
You know, and I think a lot of people
fight the wrong battles.
And I'm like, you know,
I'm saying this for myself.
Like I need to do
this also on a, you know,
a weekly basis, a daily
basis to like just pick the right
battles to fight as
you build your company,
because your co-founder is in
it with you for the long haul.
Like make sure you're
taking care of them.
Like making sure them
feel like they're empowered.
Make sure they feel you're empowered.
Like with that empowerment, you really,
both can do really great
work without like bouncing
into each other, you know, every second.
And I mean, that's another, another tip.
I think, you know, if
you have a co-founder also,
maybe get executive
coaching, maybe go to like,
we went to Camp Y Combinator.
Next time you go bring your co-founder,
I don't know if they were there or that.
Oh, I told him it's
like required a tendency.
He said he's coming, he's excited.
This was our first time like me.
So he sent me in like
to test out the waters,
but it was such an amazing experience.
Yeah, the bonding with
your co-founder is essential.
But like, you know,
some of the best companies
like Apple and Google
did have executive coaches.
I don't know if you know that Twitter.
Yeah.
So like.
We have executive
coaches, my co-founder and I.
Awesome.
I mean, it's like being an
athlete, you have a coach.
It's like someone that's in
your corner who can help you.
I did want to talk a
little bit about, you know,
the school.
Because I went to Auburn University.
It's like a school, I think
there's like only one company
that went where the founders came.
I went through Y Combinator,
there were Auburn alumni before us.
And like going to
such like a small school
with not really much of an
entrepreneurship program,
fairly small relative to
some of the Ivy Leagues
of the world, I definitely
felt some imposter syndrome
going out there, like
trying to raise capital,
going through YC.
Like, did you feel that
having gone to Stony Brook?
I definitely think that there's like a,
a circle of people that have like,
I'd call it like magic fairy dust.
And I would say like,
if you went to Harvard,
you have this like big check of approval.
If you went to Stanford,
it's a big check of approval.
If you went to MIT, it's
a big check of approval.
So like, those are like some
of the best schools out there
that get a lot of love.
Signaling.
Yeah, signaling from
the investor community.
But like, I think the
entrepreneurial mindset,
and you know, having the
entrepreneurial mindset,
like it was not as
prominent when I went to school.
Again, like I'm dating
myself a little bit, but we,
you know, the schools now are changing.
I think they're all
changing where they're realizing,
oh, like students need to like figure out
how to maybe possibly
build their own business.
And we need to teach them that.
When I went to school,
that was not the case.
And it was like, how do
you educate the student
and get them to figure
out how to get a job?
Did I feel imposter syndrome?
The answer is no.
I think I always felt like,
it gave me an
advantage and a disadvantage
all at the same time.
Like I had the perspective and,
so I went to a state
school, Stony Brook University.
They basically, the tuition is minimal.
So I don't know if you know this,
like this school is funding,
like if you live in New York
and you go to the
school, they basically charge,
what is it, like, I
don't know, $6,000 a year.
So like, I was able to
come out of that school
with not as much debt as like people
that went to these like other schools.
Now, Auburn I hear is expensive.
I hear it's a really expensive school.
My brother was a professor
there actually for a while.
Oh, interesting.
But, you know, I think,
I think you should become
the advocate for your school.
Like because you went to I Combinator,
I think people just need to be educated.
In all schools that there is another path
becoming an entrepreneur,
like it's your responsibility
to go to Auburn, not to put
the pressure on you Daniel,
but it's like you kind of
were the first to go this path.
Like you need to teach other kids,
like there is another way,
like and it's not just going to work for,
you know, a large
corporation, there is another way
and you did it, like you're living it.
So I feel like,
I don't know, I do think it like,
if you go to one of those other schools,
you're loaded with debt, right?
So you're kind of at a disadvantage
and you feel entitled, like life is easy.
I went to Stanford.
I went to Stanford, life is
easy, but I have this debt,
but I deserve a good job
because I went to Stanford.
Like there's also that
mindset that comes out of those
schools sometimes, not all the time,
not everybody that comes
out of the schools like that,
but I think, you know,
the school I went to,
like most of the students struggled
and they didn't have
wealth and like they could pay
for the school and the
school like funded a lot of it.
If you get all these students educated,
I had a different advantage.
Like I didn't have all
of those student loans,
but it also gave me humble
beginnings to like actually
work hard to build the company.
You get a lot of these
like really, you know,
great graduate students that
come from these great schools
and they just fail because they don't
want to do the work.
Right?
You're given that
opportunity, don't fuck it up.
But you know, I do hear
that like a lot of investors
and the investor community, it's a
community is of like
pockets of people who went to
Harvard or pockets of people
who went to Stanford.
So like they trust
the founder more, right?
So you are at that
disadvantage where like you may have
like a firm, a VC firm that
like everyone went to Harvard
or MIT and you didn't go.
So why would they invest in you, Daniel?
Like why you versus
an MIT student, right?
Like because they went to
MIT, they know that the school
has a certain way of doing things.
It creates that trust system.
Sorry, go ahead.
I mean, did I ever
feel imposter syndrome?
Did you feel like you
were doing it on hard mode?
Like you, did you
feel like it was tougher?
Probably now just talking to you,
probably it was way harder.
Like because I didn't have that pedigree.
So there's probably some
questions of who I was.
So you have to maybe prove
yourself a little bit more.
What you were saying earlier
about like how universities
and schooling had traditionally been
designed to like create
great workers or employees.
Like do you, I've had like
a number of young aspiring
founders, some founders have already
started between like
17 and 20 years old,
they'll come to me and be like,
why should I even go to school?
I could just start the thing now.
What would you say to those founders?
I would say go to school.
I would say find a school
that's not gonna load you
full of debt.
Don't just go for the
degree, I think they call it like
collecting badges.
Like I went to Harvard, now I
got to go to work at Google.
I have these trophies.
You know, don't go to
school to get a trophy.
Like at the end of the day,
you're gonna meet your really
close friends in college and
you're gonna learn how to like
live on your own.
You're gonna experience the
world in a really good way.
I worry about people like
loading up on just debt.
That really concerns me
like when you trap a student.
You know, if you're gonna go
to school to become a doctor,
the amount of debt
that's loaded on you is a lot.
You better be sure
you're gonna become a doctor.
Yeah.
I know a lot of people
who don't wanna be doctors
and they come out of
school and they're like,
I just have the debt
now, I have no choice.
And they're really unhappy.
And I'm like, be really careful
because if you don't
even wanna do the job,
you went to school for like a, I love,
doctors are amazing.
It's like become a
medical professional, do like,
some people that wanna
do that, it's like good.
But when someone doesn't wanna do it,
and I see the defeat in
them from like all that debt,
it's crushing like on their soul and
like, it's not good.
But a 17 year old, I
would say just go to college
and you know, find really
good, fresh, smart friends.
Find the smartest people in that college,
become really good friends with them
and like have fun with people
and learn how to live on your own,
learn how to do your launch.
And then like, if you
wanna run a company,
do it while you're in school.
Learn, do it while
you're in school, like, right?
Like start your company
while you're in school.
Like I think Aaron from box, box.com,
he started his company in school
and like was building
it in school and like.
Yeah.
We started ours like when
my co-founder and I were 20,
like still like students
at Auburn, but I don't know.
I've met a few 18, 19 year olds
who are in their freshman year
or about to go into
college and they're like,
I know what I want.
I'm obsessed, I'm dedicated.
I want to do the startup life.
I refuse to accept that the default path,
just going through, you know,
the assembly line of education.
I've heard that before.
Like what would you say
to those young founders
who already know what they want
and perhaps could do
their laundry as well?
I couldn't have started my company
without the co-founder I found in school.
School isn't about the
education, it's about the network.
And it's like learning
who you can like work with
and like build things with and like
that network becomes a
lifelong network, honestly.
Like I talked to a lot
of people from college,
like I went to college,
have really good friends from college.
That network is a
really good support system
to like a sounding board.
Now that's why I'm
concerned like when people go
for the trophy name,
like I'm going to go to MIT,
just be prepared to pay that debt.
Like that's the problem
when you take a trophy name.
You know, Berkeley I hear has
a cheaper, you know, degree.
It's like, that's where I get scared
is where people are
like chasing trophies.
And I'm like, you're
not thinking straight,
like go there to get a network of people.
So like for me, I went
to Stony Brook University
and I capitalized like
crazy on the network.
And it wasn't, it was
just like me having fun,
finding my way, like I
would have never done
computer science if I
didn't go to Stony Brook.
Like I went to a school that was very
computer science heavy
and I was like, this is
cool, it's like challenging,
it's different.
So like you're going to
learn like all different
sorts of things.
But if someone is dead set
on starting a company, like,
okay, I mean, maybe try
school, like, I don't know,
you know, the two year
degrees, associate degrees,
like you could get associate degree.
I don't know, there's no
right or wrong answer there,
but I worry about kids who
don't even get that experience.
And you went to
college, Daniel, so you know,
it's like you met your co-founder there.
I met him in sixth grade actually.
Oh, sixth grade, okay, sixth grade.
It was school, it was still school.
It was still school.
It was like networks in
school, it's all the networking.
You get to learn how to
socialize, you know how to like
not piss people off.
Yeah, yeah, like I, you
know, this is an argument
that I gave when I was
speaking to one such founder.
Like I met a founder who dropped out
freshman year of college.
I met him when he was like 23, 24,
and I could feel like
the lack of socialization,
not having gone
through that rite of passage.
Perhaps I met a
particularly immature fellow,
but like, I think
there's something you learn
where like society like molds you into
being more acceptable
and more fluid or better
social chameleon, perhaps.
So yeah, I could see
that side of it also.
What about like with the
actual things you learned
from like your coursework,
like psychology and computer science,
did that help you become
more successful in life
and as a founder, or was
it more about the network
as like first place in terms of value?
I mean, I think the network
was the most important part.
And then, you know, of course the
schooling was important.
It helped, but I think the
network like was insurmountably
more important where you
just get a really good group
of people.
And this is the thing about Y Combinator,
you get that group of people when you
plug into that network,
they have a really smart community
of the most smartest people in the world,
like brainstorming.
Schools are that, like
you don't realize like,
if you go out and you
don't get into Y Combinator
and you don't go to
school, you're on your own
and there's no network to
like bounce ideas off of
and you're kind of struggling, you know.
I spoke to one founder super,
like one of the best founders
I ever met, guy's brilliant.
He went to Harvard.
He's like, I went there for the network.
Then he went to Y
Combinator, went there for the network.
Then he went to Google.
And he's like, I went to
Google for the network.
And it blew my mind.
He didn't go work.
He didn't do it for the money.
He's like, I need to
know who these people are
so I can learn from them.
And he's one of the
smartest founders I know.
Guys raised hundreds
of millions of dollars.
And I'm like, I didn't
think about Google that way.
He thought of it differently than me.
And I was like, that blew my mind.
I was like, interesting.
So like Google is in
itself like a network of people.
The Googler community is like another top
of smart people out there.
But can everyone be that way?
The answer is no.
Like if you quit college,
you don't even go to college.
You may not think of things that way.
You may just like be
sitting in your office alone
and just like hiding and not actually
showing people product.
You have to get out
there and show people product
like all day long.
Like you have to talk about it.
You have to demo it.
You have to basically
get feedback and iterate.
You don't go to college.
You don't socialize.
It worries me.
That's all.
I don't think it's true of everybody,
but like even Mark Zuckerberg,
he met his co-founders in college.
Like Larry and Sergey met their
co-founders in college.
Like Steve Jobs met his co-founder
because they live next to each other.
I mean, that's not quite a network,
but still it was like
they hung out together a lot.
Yeah, I think the five people
you surround yourself most,
like I think like the
networks you get into,
I think that's absolutely huge.
And I pushed my little
brother to really like get into
like a great school.
It's like trying to
capitalize on a good network.
I hadn't, I didn't, you know,
I didn't prioritize
education the way he did.
And I see him already
reaping the benefits.
Before wrapping up,
I wanted to ask like,
if there was like a wild
story you could share with us
that you maybe haven't
shared with anyone before,
that, you know, it
could be startup related.
It could just be life related.
Anything you could share that's like
really out of left field.
Trying to kind of have a crazy story.
I mean, I've been to
the White House like a--
Wow.
Yeah, that's a crazy one.
What was that all about?
Yeah, so I mean, in my first company,
we were really innovative.
We built the first API,
not the first, we
built one of the first APIs
in healthcare for medical records.
And the White House was super interested
in like what we were doing
and we were very innovative.
And, you know, the
White House invited us just
to just sit in a round table
with a bunch of other
people in the industry.
And it was Joe Biden.
So Joe Biden was there.
He was the vice president
and then Obama was the
president at the time.
But I remember thinking
like, how did I get here?
That's pretty cool.
Like little room and being like,
I don't know how I'm in
this room, but this is awesome.
I felt really grateful, but
at the same time I was like,
I was just trying to make a living.
I built some real innovative.
And now I'm in this room with
all these really smart people
that run the whole country.
And Joe Biden was super interesting.
He was very passionate about healthcare.
And, you know, I didn't
know this, but his son died.
And he was talking about how his son
couldn't get his medical records.
When his son was really ill,
he couldn't get his
medical records fast enough
between two different places.
So it caused a
passion in the medical side
that I didn't know
that about like, you know,
him, he became president now, you know,
now he's president at the time.
He was vice president of like, wow,
that was a big passion of his.
That's crazy.
That was a crazy story.
Like I remember thinking I
could go to the White House
in jeans.
They told me no.
And I'm like, oh God,
I don't know this dude.
I gotta get a suit.
I literally went out
to a store and was like,
let me go buy a suit
because I'm going to go the white.
That has gotta be the most
like Sparta founder thing.
It was required.
You gotta wear a suit
when you go in there.
I had no idea.
That's a bummer.
Just stroll into the
White House in some jeans.
They don't like that.
And they're like, I
remember writing an email like,
can I come with jeans?
Is that okay?
And they're like, no, please wear a suit.
I'm like, okay, I gotta
get, gotta go buy a suit.
That's incredible.
That's a great story.
That's a great dinner story for sure.
So you gotta talk to Joe about healthcare
and healthcare still seems
quite broken here in the US.
And you're quite the expert on the space
having spent more than
a decade working in it.
Is there anything that you
think we could do to fix it,
to perhaps make it more
affordable, more effective,
like for the average American?
From a tech lens, perhaps, if possible.
I mean, it's very complicated.
There's so many moving parts.
One is I do think
things are getting digitized,
which is meaning for the first time,
data is really moving
well between industries
and one hospital can
send data to another.
And it is a struggle still in that sense,
but I think insurance
companies, it's still a mess.
I am worried that the insurance rate,
and everybody has to pay
more every year in insurance,
it's going up at such a rapid pace.
I'm like, I don't think
it's sustainable forever.
The insurance companies are,
they raise their rates every
year by 15%, whatever it is.
I'm like, at some point, it's
gonna be all of your salary.
You can't raise people's
rates that fast forever.
They're gonna start to
not have health insurance.
So, how do you fix that?
I don't know.
I mean, there's so many different areas
to tackle with this.
I mean, I do think that
there's real opportunities
out there with AI, right?
And that means medical
billing is really complex.
Like, use some AI to fix some of that,
make it less complex.
Like, the human body is really complex.
Like, doctors only have
so much time with a person.
Use AI to like, figure
out how to help people.
You know, there are so
many different use cases,
like, you know, x-rays,
you have to have a
radiologist look at an x-ray.
Like, I do hear really
great things about like,
AI determining if
somebody can has cancer or not.
So, you know, instead
of having a radiologist
look at each of these like x-rays,
you can have it at
the fraction of a cost,
like AI just basically
giving you an answer in that.
Spoke to one founder,
and he's really passionate
about like, detecting cancer.
You do a cancer screening
every year for like $150.
He's like, I can figure this out.
So like, if you get people like that,
that can detect cancer for 150 bucks,
everybody would pay for that.
Like, you probably pay
for it for your parents.
You'd be like, hey, you're gonna go get
your cancer screening.
I'm paying for it, dad.
Like, you know, it's like,
like there's more empowerment.
So, some of it is technology
can help in some of those ways.
But, you know, I
think some of these areas
are really complex, like
the insurance company issue.
Like, they can't keep
raising their rates.
It's crazy.
If they keep doing it,
and everybody's income
level is like just going up
at like whatever 4%, 5%, 6%.
Yet if an insurance
company is raising their rate
by 15% a year, something's gonna happen.
At some point, I'm like,
oof, this is gonna be crazy.
Maybe new insurance
companies will compete.
I don't know.
I'd like make
everybody change everything.
But something's gotta change.
This trajectory definitely
doesn't seem sustainable.
Any suggestions you might
give to founders out there
trying to solve this problem?
Where to start, perhaps?
I don't know, honestly.
I'm like, it's such a, I'd
have to think about it way more,
but it's just one of
the, it's definitely an area
I'm like, oh, this is...
It's BHAG.
Yeah.
A area.
Yeah, it's really complex.
And I'm like, maybe
it's not a startup idea.
Maybe it's a bigger issue
across the United States.
Yeah, policy, perhaps.
Yeah, yeah, maybe
there's something there.
I'll give you an example.
I thought about using
what an NFT represents.
Can you use the NFT to create something
like a birth
certificate, death certificate,
or a marriage certificate,
and then an NFT can be
used across different states.
Right now, everything is kind of on
paper, similar idea.
And I'm like, it's kind of like,
you kind of have to find the right place
to get the certificate.
But I'm like, that type
of startup has to have
buy-in from the government.
If it doesn't, it just dies, right?
And I think this is one of those ones
where the government maybe has to help.
I don't know, I don't know.
I don't have an
answer, but it worries me.
A lot of people are going
without health insurance.
Now more people can't afford it.
Companies can only
tolerate so much expense.
So it's becoming a strange situation,
like longer and longer.
If you take a look at Uber or Brex,
at their beginnings,
they were breaking the rules
and asking for forgiveness later.
Are there really problems
that startups can't solve,
like where they can't
start off breaking the rules,
finding something
that's just so much better,
like evolutionarily, or revolutionarily,
not evolutionarily better,
where they could solve that,
like the birth
certificate problem, for example?
Or are there really
problems that are resolved,
reserved for
governments, like state actors?
Never say never.
I think maybe I'm just
not the right founder
for tackling those two
problems that I just brought up.
I'm giving you the tough ones that,
when I think about those, I'm like,
I don't know the answer,
and I don't even know how to even begin.
Those are challenging.
So I would say there
probably is a way to do it
where you can get traction.
And it's like what Elon
Musk did with rockets.
Yeah.
We thought that would be good for
governments forever.
Wait, what's that?
We thought that outer space
was a government undertaking for decades.
Yeah, exactly.
It was just, he somehow got buy-in,
somehow was able to have
regulation, embrace it,
and now he's just
shooting rockets up all the time.
That was really tough.
He figured it out for that industry.
I'm sure people can
figure out other industries,
how to make things different, et cetera.
Yeah, so there's
definitely probably a way
to work on that.
Nothing a startup can't solve
with enough determination, right?
Right people, they'll
figure something out.
They'll figure something out.
It's all about the people.
On that note, I think that might be
a good place to stop, Daniel.
It's been an absolute
pleasure having you.
Is there any parting
words you might share
to young founders out there that want to
achieve great things,
achieve tremendous
success the way you have,
and anything you might share with them
before you wrap it up?
I think
learn as much as
possible, first and foremost.
There's so many resources out there now
that I did not have when I started.
All of it is online.
Just continually read,
devour as much as possible.
I would actually talk to as many founders
in Silicon Valley,
they're very open to talking.
Just reach out to them
and say, "I'm a founder,
"I'd love to pick your brain."
Talk to them about
starting their company.
You'd be surprised at who you can get.
I think
be bold and just don't be
scared to talk to people also.
I think that that's a really good trait.
There you have it.
Thank you, Daniel.
Awesome.
Pleasure having you on.
Likewise.
Thank you so much, Daniel.