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Interviews with world-class startup founders about their unique paths to uncover tactical insights they've learned about how to fundraise, grow, validate, hire, scale, and lead teams while building your startup.
Get full access to detailed takeaways on each episode, additional case studies, and more at join.foundingjourney.com
Whenever someone tells me they're they're trying to, like, self improve, I'll tell them go start a company.
Michael Houck:That's Darren Langevardi. He sold his first AI startup after only 8 months and He's raised 1,000,000 from Keith or Bey to let you clone yourself or anyone else for that matter after getting inspired by wanting to talk to an AI version of his grandfather. He told me how he impressed Keith and how he found the right cofounder and also what the only differentiator for software is in the age of AI. This is Dara Lajevardian's founding journey.
Michael Houck:Dara, what's up, man? Thanks for coming on the pod.
Dara Ladjevardian:Michael, thanks for having me.
Michael Houck:Yep. I guess, how do I know this is the real you? First of all,
Dara Ladjevardian:I don't know this isn't your clone. You don't. Could be my clone. Actually, you do know because the the video technology is not quite past the uncanny valley, but one day, you may not know.
Michael Houck:Future podcast. Next time you come back, it has to be the clone. That's the deal. I'll
Dara Ladjevardian:send my clone. I'll send the clone.
Michael Houck:Okay. But for real, I think let's go back to the sort of very, very beginning, way before clones were probably even on your radar, beginning of your sort of entrepreneurship journey. I wanna talk about your grandfather. Right? So big inspiration for you, he was an entrepreneur, I think, back in Iran.
Michael Houck:Tell me tell me about that and how that sort of has inspired you to go down this path.
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. So my grandfather was a huge businessman in Iran before the revolution. Some even called him, like, the Rockefeller of Iran. He had oil businesses, textile businesses, detergent businesses. And growing up, I would always hear about him from different family members, and he was around.
Dara Ladjevardian:He was just pretty old, and I unfortunately never learned Farsi, which, my parents want me to learn and I'm gonna learn one day. But so he he was always someone I looked up to. I studied physics and computer science in college because I was obsessed with comic books in high school, and I I really wanted to recreate Jarvis. I got I I was reading Iron Man comics, and I wanted to recreate Jarvis, so I catered my entire major around being able to do this one day. And then after college, I worked at a company called C3AI for a couple years and left to start my first company.
Dara Ladjevardian:And starting your first company is really hard, as I'm sure many people can relate to, especially as a solo founder. It really whenever someone tells me they're they're trying to, like, self improve, I'll tell them go start a company because it is, it makes you kind of confront your core and your weaknesses and your vulnerabilities. And at that time, I was kind of grappling with, like, who I was and how how I wanted to build the business and what kind of business I wanted to run and what does it even mean to be an entrepreneur. And a memoir about my grandfather came out, and I read that book. And it talked about his life, but I think the main emphasis of the book was his principles and the things that really made him someone that was, different from the rest, someone that was successful in the long term.
Dara Ladjevardian:And something that I noticed about him was his integrity, you know, that he was known for just doing good business with good people and treating people right, and that ended up paying off in the long term. And so I was thinking, you know, I I would love to be able to get my grandfather's advice on what I was doing. And he had had a stroke 2 years prior, so I couldn't ask him directly. And it's different than just reading a book because I wanted to apply, you know, what would he do in my situation. And so at the time, was using LLMs in my first start up Friday and kinda built a v one version of a clone of my grandfather and use it for advice.
Dara Ladjevardian:And I, you know, send it to my dad, send it to my family, and that was obviously, like, a really, really cool experience that has led me to where I am today.
Michael Houck:Yeah. I think there's a lot that I wanna dig into there, especially how you kinda come full circle and he's become the inspiration, a big part of the inspiration, at least, for Delphi. But let's go back first to C3 because I think you and I both sort of have this experience in what I like to call it the last generation, the previous generation of AI and machine learning back when it's called machine learning, right? Like all these logistic regressions and XGBoost and all this stuff that now everyone's like, Oh, LLMs and Transformers. And so my question for you would just be, when you first saw Transformers were going to be a thing, like the transform paper came out, later GPT 3 came out, Did the light bulb sort of immediately go off for you that, like, this was your new calling and and your new mission?
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Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. At c three, I was working on old NLP in infrastructures, like spaCy, bag of words. So when I first saw an LOM, it blew my mind. And this was in the time when everyone was obsessed with crypto, and I was like, guys, do you not see, like, what is happening? You you project this out a couple iterations.
Dara Ladjevardian:Like, every knowledge based job is based on language. So it really kind of freaked me out and kinda started building little side projects and tools, and that's when I left c three and decided to figure out what was there.
Michael Houck:Yeah. I guess, like, did you have sort of a plan in mind to take advantage of this inflection point, or was it just like, let me just throw myself into this and kinda see where the journey takes me?
Dara Ladjevardian:So I actually was leaving c 3 with a cofounder. We were we were gonna use LMs to build some, like, space anomaly detection software for for rocket ships. And he decided to go into crypto. I decided I didn't wanna pursue that idea alone, so then I was just like blank slate. What can I build to just get myself off the ground?
Dara Ladjevardian:And I was ordering something on Amazon, and I was like, damn. This UI is so complex. Like, why do I have to click all these things? I wish I could just text the phone number what I want, and it would buy it for me. And that's built the prototype for Friday, which allows you to buy anything with a text.
Dara Ladjevardian:It went kind of viral on Twitter, and I decided, okay. I'll just work on this for the next however many months and see what happens. Yeah. I think
Michael Houck:I saw that when it went viral originally. I thought it was cool. Made a lot of sense. But you you sold it super fast. Right?
Michael Houck:It was just, like, what, 6 months, maybe? A little more than 6 months?
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. It was 8 months, and there were a couple things. I think one, I learned that if you're going to replace a habit like shopping, it being 5 x better is not enough, or 10 x better. Like, Amazon is so ingrained in our online habits that if you're gonna try to build a competitor to shopping, it needs to be something, like, entirely new. I I don't even know what that thing is.
Dara Ladjevardian:I don't know if that thing actually exists. So that's something I learned. We did kind of find traction in the parent space. So parents were using Friday to order things like groceries or toilet paper or paper towels because they're so busy around the house. I kinda came to the conclusion that I don't wanna be a solo founder.
Dara Ladjevardian:It's a lonely journey, and I wanna work on something that I'm super passionate about and not just some random idea I stumbled into. So as soon as I got the acquisition offer, I was like, this is great. Like, I I now I need to know, like, I wanna find a cofounder, and I wanna work on something that makes me super passionate.
Michael Houck:When you were like, tell me about the acquisition process. Was that you know, did you just was easy to find sort of common ground and a price that made sense for you, or or how did that work?
Dara Ladjevardian:So it wasn't like a life changing acquisition. I there was, one person who had kept in touch with me since the launch, and he had offered to acquire the business, but he wanted me to go work there. So I was like, you know what? This is a fine acquisition price, but I don't really wanna go work anywhere. So I put the I put Friday on micro acquire, which I think is now acquire.com for the for the same price, and got an offer, just asset acquisition and sold it.
Dara Ladjevardian:Wow.
Michael Houck:Okay. Super simple. You basically got inspired to get the deal that you wanted.
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. Seriously. I was like, okay. I'm just gonna do this.
Michael Houck:Well, that's cool, man. Congrats. After that, so I think after that, you you actually did go work somewhere, though. You went to work at OpenStore. Right?
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. So I'm a big Tony Robbins guy. And, like, Tony Robbins has this decision making process where you write the outcome. And then for all your options, you kind of put a probability of what will get you to that outcome. And so for open store, I wasn't necessarily that interested in ecommerce, but I was super interested in learning from Keith.
Dara Ladjevardian:And I knew that Keith would attract the kind of people that I would wanna cofound with, you know, people who take their work very seriously and take their craft very seriously. And so I decided, hey. I'm gonna go to Miami, learn from Keith, find a cofounder, and that's what happened.
Michael Houck:So you knew that eventually you would go back and you'd be a founder again. You'd start something new. Just you had to find the right person to do it with first.
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. Yep.
Michael Houck:How did you know who that person was when you found it? What were you looking for?
Dara Ladjevardian:To be honest, I I I wasn't trying to force it. Like, I think having a cofounder is, like, having a partner that you get married to. I mean, you never wanna force a relationship. So it kinda happened organically because Sam, he joined OpenStore, and we kinda we were kinda rivals in the beginning. And then one weekend, we decided to just take a a flight to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, which is not a very touristy city.
Dara Ladjevardian:So I think Sam Ullman has a blog out there that if you really wanna test a cofounder relationship, go do, like, a high stakes travel trip with them. And I think Sam and I just found a lot of common ground and and commonality. And then, we we started a book club together at Open Store, and that's where we decided to build a clone of Tony Fadell so that we could get his feedback on the discussion around his book, Build, which is one of my favorite start up books now.
Michael Houck:Great book. Yeah. On my on my list of of, like, top 20 or so, books for founders for sure.
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. It's great.
Michael Houck:Okay. So I guess you guys are now down the road. You've been cofounders for for a while at this point. It was the right call. No grass is always greener sort of realizations there.
Michael Houck:You guys are a good pair?
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. It was definitely the right call. I think, our values are aligned, which I think is super, super important for startups. Kinda like the same thing you said about my grandpa, like, the the the principles that you live your life by. I think those are aligned.
Dara Ladjevardian:We complement each other in really good ways. I like to move super fast, and he is more patient and detail oriented. So, like, I'm driving the ship, and he's making sure the ship isn't sinking, which is good.
Michael Houck:Yeah. That's it's important to have that complimentary skill set, but also shared values. I think the third thing that I always think about is, like, sort of different goals in terms of, like, personal aspirations. Right? There can only be 1 CEO.
Michael Houck:Right? So if one person is, like, I'm gonna be the COO or the CTO, other person would be the CEO. It it works a lot better when when that's sort of understood.
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. And Sam was an infra engineer at OpenStore, and I was a product engineer. So he was already kind of, like, a technologist thinking about infrastructure, and I was thinking about product and customers. So it kinda aligned well there.
Michael Houck:I guess going from solo founder to having a cofounder, anything that's been sort of slower or harder just by the nature of having to sort of be more collaborative and get alignment on decisions, things like that?
Dara Ladjevardian:I think it took a while for us to get a stride of our relationship and, you know, how we how we balance work. I was coding for the 1st year. Now I don't code at all. So it took a while, but I think it's very natural. I mean, it's it's always great to have someone to bounce ideas off of.
Dara Ladjevardian:As a founder, you can become very tunnel visioned and obsessed with your own vision of the product and the customers. And I think I'm a little delusional sometimes, and Sam is a very much a realist, so he's able to keep me grounded on Earth. Which I you know, I think being delusional as a founder is almost necessary because you're you're trying to do something insane, but you do need a little bit of grounding.
Michael Houck:Yeah. I completely agree. It's good to have that that yin and yang, that that pull on both sides. I guess, I don't have the numbers to back this up, but sort of anecdotally, I think I see more founders do the opposite of what you did. They go from having co founders of maybe their first company and then do the solo founder thing later.
Michael Houck:Do you think that's true? And if so, why do you think it is, and why do you do the opposite?
Dara Ladjevardian:I would imagine that majority of people who've done that, the first startup didn't work out, and most startups don't work out because of cofounder conflicts. So I think, there's a book called loonshots, and there's a concept called the false fail. And that means you experience something, and you say, oh, that was wrong, so I'm gonna try something else. And I think the thing that was potential that is wrong for a lot of these cases is the value alignment isn't there. It's not that having a cofounder is wrong.
Dara Ladjevardian:It's that you are marrying someone, and you should treat your cofounder with the same level of, meticulousness that you would finding a partner that you're gonna marry.
Michael Houck:Yeah. That makes a lot of sense, that concept of the false fail. That's interesting. Do you think that having a cofounder is more necessary or more valuable if you're building a venture backed company, or do you think it's the same for for Bootstrap versus VC?
Dara Ladjevardian:I see a lot of Bootstrap founders do it solo, and it's definitely easier Bootstrap. I think where a cofounder really comes in handy is if you're doing something that doesn't exist. And it's not just like a technological risk, but also a marketing risk. Because then you really need to spend time on, like, product marketing. How do you communicate this value prop to the customer?
Dara Ladjevardian:We're we're talking about an entirely new way of consuming medium and communicating with other people. So that definitely could not have done this alone because so much thought is needed on the product marketing side. And it's not just, you know, building a b two b SaaS tool where the problem is very defined, and you can just build that at home. You don't even need to hire anyone.
Michael Houck:That's a really good point. I think that the space that you guys are in, in particular with Delphi, there's been crazy growth. And especially as LMs have, you know, people got more comfortable with them. And you've seen that sort of on multiple sides of the of the market. Right?
Michael Houck:I think you guys are sort of the I mean, I see you guys sort of as like the antithesis of the sort of like AI girlfriend, character AI type apps. Right? You guys sort of are maybe taking a more serious lens to parasocial relationships with AIs. How do you see yourself in relation to them? And I think, how do you see the marketing challenge in relation to them too?
Dara Ladjevardian:Sure. I mean, when we started, we started based on the problem, access to expertise. People want personalized advice. 1 on 1 mentorship is proven to improve your ability to learn by 2 standard deviations. On the other side, you have people trying to scale themselves.
Dara Ladjevardian:They write content to scale themselves, or they hire teams and train those teams in their way of thinking to scale themselves. There's almost two sides, like, trying to reach each other each other, but there's a gap. So we think of Delphi as a solution to that, and we think of AI as a tool that enables that solution. And I think just talking about it that way is very different than, you know, AI girlfriend. Notice AI is in the word, AI girlfriend or AI companions, character AI, talk to these characters.
Dara Ladjevardian:I think character AI is great for entertainment, where we try to think about in a world where we can enable 1 on 1 advice from anyone, for that to work, privacy laws are probably gonna catch up to us, so we can't do it without people's permissions. We need to make having a clone something that's actually useful to people. It can't just be, you know, this novelty tool you create a chatbot people talk to. There it has to be more around that. It has to be, like, a full on end to end product.
Michael Houck:I guess, where does that market go? Right? Like, where what's the what's the future of these clones as as we see, you know, foundation models move towards becoming more move towards enabling agents, right, and more proactive behaviors rather than just being reactive in, like, a chat window. How do you see you guys' role, to take advantage of that changing?
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. I mean, there there's many different ways I can describe the different end states of Delphi, and so I'll walk you through a couple. One is kind of verticalizing the human access stack. And so what I mean by that is we're all constrained by time. And so your clone is kind of your your personal website, the inbound, the people to learn about you and, you know, maybe pay for your knowledge, maybe just get insights.
Dara Ladjevardian:And on your side, you can prioritize who's actually worth talking to. So it's lead qualification. It's making you money. It's saving you time. On the next level, I do think that our attention spans are getting worse with things like TikTok and Reels.
Dara Ladjevardian:Reading a 400 page book to learn something or sitting through a 40 hour course is likely going to become less and less likely. And so the promise of a clone is it is that next iteration of a book or a course where this expert can teach you something in a personalized way that's relevant to your own goals, keep you accountable at the cadence that works for you. The last thing, which is I think is way further out, is the next version of of LinkedIn. Because with LinkedIn, you can just find people based on their brands and their schools, their companies. There's no way to find people based on their thoughts and their expertise and and their mind, and I think that's really how we connect.
Dara Ladjevardian:That's how you find cofounders. That's how you find mentors. That's how you find partners. It's the the mental alignment.
Michael Houck:Yeah. I totally agree. If you want deeper and like real and authentic relationships with people, you know, it's not just about what club were you a part of or what frat were you in in college. It's, you know, do you guys share values? Do you see the world in similar ways or complimentary ways at least?
Michael Houck:That sounds like a really, really big vision and ambitious vision. I guess, was that what you pitched to Founders Fund when you guys were raising?
Dara Ladjevardian:It's funny because we we started with this idea, and then we kind of pivoted to just, like, learning, learning from historical figures and philosophers and, you know, personalized advice. And then we came back to our initial idea once we realized, like, we got 3 cease and desist from people we cloned without their permission. This is only gonna get worse. We need to make cloning useful for people, and that's where our original idea of, you know, cloning to scale expertise, but, eventually, you have all the clones in the world, and that allows you to find anyone based on any need you want in your life.
Michael Houck:How did you communicate that in, like, a we just communicated it to me in a concise way, but, like, how do you translate that into a pitch setting, into a deck that that maybe got someone like Keith, who probably, you know, sees a ton of AI companies, pitch him? How do you guys stand out?
Dara Ladjevardian:I think the thing that really resonated with Keith is we read books, we watch YouTube videos, we listen to podcasts, we follow people on Twitter. There's obviously a desire to learn. The self help book industry is $12,000,000,000. Online courses are 80 to a $100,000,000,000. But if you look at completion rate, it's very low.
Dara Ladjevardian:People are paying, but they're not finishing the courses. And so there is a missing tool to be able to learn from someone in a way that's personalized to you and keeps you accountable and actually grows with you. And it's funny because Keith has talked about this idea of, like, a goals app in on many different podcasts. I don't think he was thinking about it in the same terms as clones, but I think that's what really resonated with him. And from the, like, the classic founders fund mentality, you bet on things that many people may not agree with.
Dara Ladjevardian:Most people don't like the ed tech space or the learning space. And I think that's a false fail because just because there haven't been any enormous outcomes doesn't mean that it's a it's a bad space. It's a very hard space to build in because education requires motivation, understanding psychology, getting people interested in what you're doing. So it's it's hard.
Michael Houck:Yeah. I think education is one of those markets that it's sort of it's easy to get investors excited about what you're doing because it's a it's a very noble sort of goal to go after that market and educate people in a in a better way. But it is hard to scale. It is hard to get the outcome that you want. So I guess, how do you see the product evolving to capture that?
Michael Houck:Because right now, you guys are working with people who have big audiences and who can help get the word out about Delphi. But obviously, if you wanna reach venture scale, you probably need to start going to not just these big creators. So how are you thinking about that? Is there gonna be some true marketplace component in the long run? Like, what does that look like?
Dara Ladjevardian:I would say, actually, we have a pretty good distribution of customers. We have big creators, but we also have, like, a bunch of niche experts with smaller communities. We have small business owners using Delphi to scale themselves to customers or employees. And all of our growth has been pretty organic and word-of-mouth. I think that we're starting to build some really great case studies on the benefits of having a clone.
Dara Ladjevardian:And once we have those I'm actually reading this book right now, Crossing the Chasm.
Michael Houck:I don't know
Dara Ladjevardian:if you've read it. Yep. Love it. But it talks about how you know, do you have the early adopters who are like, yeah. Cloning.
Dara Ladjevardian:I'm gonna try that out. And then you have the early majority that are like, I'm not gonna try cloning until I see the true benefit. And so I think getting those case studies up and running and then building out the marketplace and consumer platform where it's also a place where you can reach more people versus just satisfy your current audience, I think will be very important.
Michael Houck:I guess in that vein then, what do you feel like you and the team need to do to reach the next round of funding? Like, what's the next big milestone for the company?
Dara Ladjevardian:So I I think the number one thing that's, aside from new features, is does the clone sound like the person? And can it guide someone towards value? I think there is an infinite slope in trying to recreate the human mind in code, and so that's gonna continually be the most important part of our product. And it it is with customers. It is with consumers.
Dara Ladjevardian:Does this sound like a unique person? That's not like generic AI, but it sound like a a person that you would talk to on the street. The second thing is clone productivity. So not relying too much on consumer intent, but clones being able to intelligently follow-up with people and check-in on them and keep them accountable. And consumers are much more likely to pay for guidance than just information when they buy a book or a course they're paying for an outcome.
Dara Ladjevardian:So I think the clone productivity adds a lot there. And then the third thing is the consumer platform, creating a place where you can go and set your goals and be recommended the best people to help you with those goals. Maybe building an ad network on top of that where if you're talking to a sleep coach, the sleep coach could recommend a melatonin brand. And it it is an ad, but it's actually relevant to your goals. So those are some of the things I'm thinking about right now.
Michael Houck:That's smart. That's a smart a smart addition to the ad network, that'd be that'd be a huge revenue driver for you guys. One thing you mentioned that I I wanna go deeper on is is is growth. Right? So you mentioned you guys haven't really done any paid marketing yet.
Michael Houck:It's all PLG. Why sort of the firm focus on this? Is that an opinionated stance, or is that just because you guys haven't had time to set up paid channels yet?
Dara Ladjevardian:Opinionated stance, and that's because there's a lot of shiny object syndrome right now in AI. And so you could market Delphi and be, like, clone yourself, and people will try it, and then they'll probably churn because they're they're just trying it and you see AI enthusiasts versus, you know, if we get someone who's super happy with the product and they present it to their audience and they tell people about it, then it's organically growing, and it's growing through a sense of adding value to the customer. So if it if it's not adding value to the customer, it's not gonna grow. And so it makes it more difficult for us in the short term. But in the long term, I think it sets sets us up for success because our growth is purely based on, does Delphi add value to our customers?
Michael Houck:Do you think that that sort of the silver bullet for PLG is just as like a as like a mechanism, right, as a motion? It's just let's add as much value to our customer as possible, and that's the North Star? Or do you think there are, like, best practices around doing good PLG versus bad PLG, that you can you can share?
Dara Ladjevardian:When I say we haven't spent a lot of money on marketing, I still post a lot on Twitter and post on LinkedIn, and those are are very good channels. You know, we have to get our name out there somehow, but we've seen the most success with finding a central node in an audience we wanna capture, making him super happy, him or her super happy, and then leveraging his happiness to get us more customers. And they're more than happy to help us with that because we've worked on making them help happy. It's a very it's a very slow approach, but I think especially with what we're doing where it's so people focused, it's gonna pay off in the long term.
Michael Houck:Do you think speaking of the long term, do you think that you can reach, like, true venture scale and have a venture scale outcome just based on a PLG motion? Or do you think that eventually you'll need to layer in some of these other channels?
Dara Ladjevardian:I think we could. I mean, if you think about it, we this creator led distribution, every creator with over a 100000 followers that post their clone is getting us more distribution. And they're incentivized to bring people to their clone because maybe they're getting money or they're getting data, engagement, emails, numbers, and it helps us out as well. So I think thinking about how we can incentivize creators to share their clone. Well, they will share their clone if it's making them happy.
Dara Ladjevardian:And there's a lot of reasons creators get happy. They get happy because of expressions of gratitude and following count usage, money, analytics. So there's a bunch of different reasons why someone might be happy and wanna share Delphi.
Michael Houck:Do you think there's any world? Like, you you seem pretty firm on the PLG is the is the is the way, and I I don't disagree with you. But I'm saying is there any world where you would wanna do, like, a paid channel and add that into the mix and kind of add fuel to the fire and use some of those venture dollars and put it
Dara Ladjevardian:Sure. I mean, we we're lightly testing paid channels, not in, like, a big way just to kind of see, you know, what's the opportunity here. I think pre series a, I'd rather just focus on PLG and organic growth. Because once we get to critical mass, then I think it's gonna grow on autopilot, and then we can explore paid marketing channels to see what works. We've seen conferences work really well.
Dara Ladjevardian:And so a customer will invite us to a conference where we get to tell the Delphi story. We meet a lot of people through there. There's, like, social proof. But, obviously, conferences at a certain point, you reach everyone that it goes to those conferences. So you gotta constantly think about, you know, new markets and new people.
Michael Houck:That makes a lot of sense. Conferences are would be definitely a good a good channel for for a product like what you guys have built. Okay. So things in AI space are moving so, so fast, so, so quickly. Right?
Michael Houck:I think, you know, traditionally, there's this sort of happy medium between move fast and break things versus product quality. I think we're actually seeing, I think, more of a shift towards product quality and brand and, like, high design, opinionated design that I've seen in, you know, my years in the startup world. Are you seeing that as something you guys are thinking about? And what's your opinion there?
Dara Ladjevardian:Well, I think for us, there's two reasons. This is definitely a case for us. 1, because when you're building a platform that promises to clone people and they're gonna give you their private data, their name, their likeness, their identity, and you're gonna represent them in front of their audience, the bar for quality is so high. There is no room for error or else people are never gonna trust you or talk to you again if you make them look bad in front of their audience. So we really care about quality.
Dara Ladjevardian:We care about brand because I don't think AI itself is a brand. I think people talk about AI, but that that's not a brand. It doesn't tell a story. I also think that AI makes the barrier to creating a product so low that the only true differentiation, besides working on something unique, is taste and brand and, you know, how people feel. Because the rest, you know, you could if catchy beauty gets to a point, you could say, create a cloning app that allows people to upload data and create a clone of them.
Dara Ladjevardian:Then the thing it's the thing it's gonna miss is, like, the nuance of what we learn from our customers and how we can build that experience that's super intuitive.
Michael Houck:Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you've seen those videos of people who are using v zero and Cursor and Replit to basically just, you know, spin up simple but functional products in, you know, under an hour in a lot of cases. You guys have this interesting relationship with creators. And do do you see the importance of creators in a world where, you know, there's no technical moats or at least software is commoditized to some degree? Do you see the role of creators being more important as that playing into the strategy and the approach you guys are taking?
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. The way I think about it is when there is abundance, it usually leads to higher demand for the thing that's scarce. And so if AI is generating content infinitely, I think people will value humans and human experiences more. And a a small example, which I don't know if I'm right about making this analogy, but Wikipedia pretty much documents all of human history, all of human knowledge. Yet we still read books.
Dara Ladjevardian:We listen to podcasts. We watch YouTube videos. We don't have to do those things, but we place value in curation and experience that actually comes from a human.
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Michael Houck:Yeah. It's an interesting perspective. I hadn't really compared them to Wikipedia before, but that makes sense. It's, like, it's actually less efficient to go watch some YouTube video for an hour than just go read a few Wikipedia pages on the topic in, you know, 5 minutes or 10 minutes or or something like that. But we still we still do it.
Michael Houck:We still do it. In a world where that's true, how do you see the role of a founder evolving? So I think, you know, in the past few years, we've seen startups bring on creators as sort of a cofounder, sometimes like pseudo cofounders, but sometimes actual cofounders. Do you do you see that changing? Do you see the the nature of what it takes and the priorities you should have as a founder changing?
Dara Ladjevardian:I have one follow-up question for answering. When you say founder because I think there's gonna continue to be a a big split between founders of bootstrapped or, you know, comfortable monthly SaaS companies and founders of visionary big companies. I think there's there's gonna continue to be a very, very big difference between those 2. So is there a specific one you're talking about? Yeah.
Michael Houck:That's a great a great call out. I actually wrote about that in in my newsletter pretty recently where I think there's gonna be this sort of Cambrian explosion on the low end of these, like, Bootstrap founders where, you know, these AI tools have enabled smaller markets to be valid. They've enabled more people to dive in and create software. And so there's going to be all these new smaller software companies that pop up. But for this question, I was talking about the other side, which is like, if you wanna build a generational company, if you wanna build a movement, if you wanna build a religion behind your your startup and your new company, I feel like the importance of an audience probably probably goes up.
Michael Houck:Right?
Dara Ladjevardian:I think it does, but I don't think when I started, I had an audience. I think what led us and me to starting to get traction was consistency. You know, a lot of people will this might be a hot take. I think that, you know, a lot of founders maybe come into YC or just their own companies with a visionary idea, and then they pivot pretty early on because they're not seeing that it's working, and so they change to something else. And there were so many times where we probably should have pivoted.
Dara Ladjevardian:Like, Delphi was not working for a while. And and I think this goes back to the false fail where some now that software is so easy to build, the big ideas are just gonna take a lot longer to prove out because they require more thought and a lot more time, and I think it took a while for creators and coaches to trust us as a company. I mean, when you're a new company, people don't really trust something, especially if it's a new product.
Michael Houck:Yeah. You don't have the social proof and the credibility and the the stamps of approval from people they know and they see working with you and, that's just not there. Yeah. You mentioned you guys were sort of, it wasn't working at first, right? And you were thinking about maybe pivoting.
Michael Houck:How did you make that decision? Because I think it's easy to get discouraged. It's easy, especially when you're getting feedback that maybe what you're doing is not working or the path isn't the right path to just say, All right, there's another idea, there's something else I can pursue. What gave you the conviction to kind of keep going?
Dara Ladjevardian:I think stubbornness, potentially, and a and a little bit of ego. You know, I found value both as a consumer in in Delphi, you know, talking into clones, learning from clones. And as a creator, like, my clone being available for people to talk to and learn about Delphi, and I don't think I'm that unique. There are other people who would benefit from this in the short term, and I really do believe that in the idea I told you about books and courses being desired. So it's just something I really believed, and I also just came to the conclusion that I'd rather fail following my own intuition than following someone else's advice.
Dara Ladjevardian:Because, once you kind of accept that I don't plan to fail. Like, we're we're doing well. But once you kind of accept that, it's like when you make a mistake based on following your intuition, your intuition gets better versus if you make a mistake following someone else's advice, all you learned is that they were wrong that day. Your intuition doesn't actually get better. And so I I want my intuition to be great.
Dara Ladjevardian:I want my intuition because that that is the unique thing that we all have. I love that. Yeah.
Michael Houck:I think that was that's really big learning for me on my sort of own entrepreneurial and and founder journey is trusting your instinct, honing your instinct, and sort of building up that sense of your your gut intuition is actually probably one of the most important and valuable things you can have with a founder and then honing that the right way. Definitely.
Dara Ladjevardian:Definitely.
Michael Houck:One other thing that I'm I get from you kind of throughout this conversation is sort of a just a strong sense of passion. I think even more so than a lot of other founders that I've that that I meet and sort of the mission behind Delphi, why you're doing it. Do you think that all founders should prioritize projects and and companies and ideas that they're passionate about? Or do you think that it can be more transactional and kinda still work?
Dara Ladjevardian:I think I'm really privileged, to be honest, to work on something that I get value from and I think is really cool. Obviously, that's the best case scenario. I think it's rare, which is why, like, I know I'm privileged. And I one of the reasons I work super hard is that I know that it's very unique and rare to be able to work on something not just sexy, but also useful. And with a team that you like, with investors that you like, so I I definitely don't take that lightly.
Michael Houck:How do you think about that for a venture backed company that you have this, like, passion to change the world behind versus just a bootstrap company like like Friday was?
Dara Ladjevardian:I think you gotta know what your outcomes are. If you're here to make money or to learn like, Friday, my goal was honestly to learn. I didn't think Friday was gonna be a huge public company. I was just like, I'm gonna figure out what I can do and figure out what I don't know, and it was it was very painful. And, you know, as as a Goggins fan, I I think pain and suffering can be a good thing.
Dara Ladjevardian:So I sought the pain and suffering, and I think my threshold for pain and suffering is now higher because of it. And now when I think of what I'm doing with Delphi, like, this is probably gonna be working on for the next 10 or so years. And it's for the cofounder that I get along with very well, and it's it's for the mission that I'm excited to. I work 7 days a week, and that wouldn't be possible if I was just building, like, buy anything with a text, like, Friday.
Michael Houck:Yeah. You get to day 845, and all of a sudden, if the passion is not there, you're like, well, I'm tired today. You know? It's good when the founder has that. It's like necessary maybe when the founder has that.
Michael Houck:But how do you distill that down into either a set of core values for the company or mission statement that also can motivate the people and attract the right people to come work with and and for you?
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. I mean, in hiring, I'm very upfront. I usually tell people, like, it's probably gonna be the most challenging job you've ever worked, and it weeds out people. Like, I had a tweet where we said we we work 6 days a week, sometimes 7, and no one asked questions about it. And I got a lot of hate, but, you know, you would you attract the people that are like yourself.
Dara Ladjevardian:And there's, one of my favorite movies, remember the titans, he there's a line he says where he's like, attitude reflects leadership. And I think that you have to act how you believe, and you don't always even need to say anything. It's just more your actions speak for themselves.
Michael Houck:The way that I've internalized that through my own life is sort of by interacting with various mentors at various stages of my career. Right? Getting my first big tech job, having a mentor there, becoming a founder, raising venture money, having these sort of different people who you can interact with and sort of tell you about what's behind the curve, what's around the corner. Right. Super helpful.
Michael Houck:I know that's been something you've had to focus on as well. Why do you see that being so important for maybe young people or specifically for founders in in the way that they can they can distill that down for themselves?
Dara Ladjevardian:I think, 1, when you hear something from someone, it almost adds a sense of relief. Because whether it's validating your opinions or just providing perspective like I said, we're mimetic creatures. So when someone else says something, especially someone who has achieved our version of success, it almost adds a sense of peace in a way. And I know that's kinda how I felt when I was talking to my grandpa's clone the first time. I mean, you're just reading a book.
Dara Ladjevardian:You're kinda on your own figuring it out in your own mind, and it's the same thing being a solo founder and why having a cofounder is great because there's that back and forth and that sense of, you know, relief and peace and, am I insane? Am I a little crazy, or am I onto something? So I think mentorship the best form of mentorship shouldn't be decision automating. It should be decision augmenting. It enables perspective and relief and allows you to make that decision on your own.
Dara Ladjevardian:Do you
Michael Houck:think mentors become, like, more or less, or does it not change, in terms of their importance as you become more successful as you as a founder, as your company grows?
Dara Ladjevardian:I think the human experience is always the most premium. And so even, like, if you have a clone that's abundant, it'll make time with you that much more rare. I don't see clones as things that will replace humans, but rather clones give humans the scale of AI. And if you're lucky enough to get that in person meeting, that will always be preferred. But, otherwise, this provides access where there previously was none.
Michael Houck:I guess, as you've sort of worked closely with Keith, right, first at OpenStore and then after he led the investment into Delphi, what what have you learned from him? He's such a contrarian thinker, interesting guy. What what has he brought to to you personally?
Dara Ladjevardian:He really is a true contrarian thinker, and I think he's taught me to think in power laws really well. You know? And and and one example of that is just majority of startups are gonna fail. So are you gonna show up at some SF Tech happy hour where someone gives a speech about, like, product advice and you're gonna listen to that advice that everyone else is listening to? Is that is that gonna lead you to being the 0.1% successful?
Dara Ladjevardian:Maybe. Probably not. So it's a healthy filter on the advice that I listen to. Something else that Keith one one of the values at OpenStore that I didn't really understand at first, but it's become more and more apparent is inputs over outputs, and it's based on this book called The Score Takes Care of Itself. And the idea is you just do the right work, that will lead to the outputs versus trying to micromanage the outputs themselves.
Dara Ladjevardian:And that's that's his investing philosophy too. When he evaluates founders, he looks at, you know, the inputs of what the founders have done in the past. You know, did they start something? Did they work super hard? Did they do anything weird?
Dara Ladjevardian:And that's usually reflective of the outputs that you'll get.
Michael Houck:That yeah. I love that book. The lesson there is is so true, which is, you know, don't try to win the game. Try to do the right things and you will win. I guess, you know, when you bring on a high profile, sort of well known, like, name brand investor like Keith and and like Founders Fund, you know, we went through the same thing when we had Andrew from Andreessen lead our series a.
Michael Houck:It changes how people think about the company, right? Especially because in your case, Keith would probably normally lead later stage deals, larger deals, but he got involved with you guys super early. Has that changed how people have looked at you guys and how do you how do you think about that?
Dara Ladjevardian:I think in the beginning, it was actually really annoying because we would get customers or potential hires whose true intention was actually wanted to intro to Founders Fund or Keith, And happened so many times, and it it was just really, really annoying. But it did give that stamp of approval for, you know, some hires, some customers, some vendors. But after a while, like, no one really cares, I think. If anything, it makes the expectation higher for for the next round of funding. So there are pros and cons, but definitely gonna regret it.
Dara Ladjevardian:You know, it's it's been great working with Key. Awesome working with Founders Fund. Really enjoyed it.
Michael Houck:What you mentioned what what how you positioned the company to him and how the company stood out to him, but you also mentioned that he sort of evaluates founders first. Right? So what do you think about you specifically made you an attractive founder, for him to back?
Dara Ladjevardian:Well, I think it was both me and Sam. Sam was going to berries every single day, and, you know, Keith loves berries. And we were both kind of overachievers at Delphi. Like, we would work on weekends. I I think I worked every single weekend while at open store, and we started the book club.
Dara Ladjevardian:And we, you know, we talked about our learnings and applying the advice. So I think he saw those inputs of hard work, high intensity with berries, and curiosity for learning, and that's maybe what made him think we would be a good investment.
Michael Houck:So that's the secret is, is just go to Barry's in Miami and and and there you go.
Dara Ladjevardian:And a few other things and a few other things, but that's one of the things.
Michael Houck:Cool. You also have Balaji on board. He was our first investor. Super interesting guy. Any advice to other founders on sort of how to get these, like, well known, well respected angels involved early?
Michael Houck:Because I think that can help you get the rest of the round, you know, closed pretty quickly when when someone like that comes on board as an angel.
Dara Ladjevardian:I actually think for people like Balaji who are so busy, they usually base their decision on who's leading the round. So there are smaller angels where they can come first, but with Balaji, he actually tweeted about our idea a couple years ago, and I sent him the tweet. I'm like, hey. We're doing this. And Keith and founder is fun.
Dara Ladjevardian:He's sitting around, and he's like, sure. I'm in. And it's super easy.
Michael Houck:That is as easy as it gets right there. Our journey was probably abnormal because we we had him come in first and helped us sort of close the rest of the round, but makes more sense that it would be would be that. I think, you know, you guys fundraising in a super hot market, right? Like AI has been over the last year or 2, and people sort of think that this is equal, right? They think it's super easy.
Michael Houck:You tag AI on your deck and all of a sudden people start writing you checks, right? I think, you know, those tailwinds certainly help, but it doesn't guarantee you're gonna get funded. Did you guys run into any challenges while you're fundraising?
Dara Ladjevardian:I think an interesting data point is almost all the major people who've invested in Delphi, I have preexisting relationships with. And in a world of, you know, abundant founders, the most important thing is trust because there are a lot of grifters out there. And, you know, I worked my ass off at Open Source, so Keith kinda built that trust in me that way. I had met Shaheen from Lux Capital before, and so he got to know me, and he he invested. Ann Lee Skates, who was at a 16 z, and and she reached out to us when we first started the company, we'd kept in contact for about a year, had lunch, and she recently invested.
Dara Ladjevardian:A lot of our customers, Brendon Burchard, Cody Sanchez, Matthew Hussey, who invested invested after getting to know the team and being customers of the product. So I think that I don't know if this is good advice because a lot of people tell me that I shouldn't do fundraising this way, but I like to build relationships with people that I might think about raising from where other people might say, oh, you have to play hard to get and ignore them and not pay them any time. I've seen the cons of not doing that because some VCs just wanna talk to you to suck information from you, and that's it. So you've gotta be more selective of who you give that time to, but I think it makes the long term better when you have that solid relationship.
Michael Houck:Yeah. I totally agree. I think especially, you know, these days, even in AI, you know, relative to a few years ago, the Zirp era, it's more relationship driven, it's more trust driven. Investors are always looking to derisk where they deploy their capital into, and having that layer of trust built before you even ask them for money really, really helps with that process.
Dara Ladjevardian:Definitely. Though, again, I I think a lot of people would disagree.
Michael Houck:Well, that's okay. It work it it can work the only way for sure. But before you started Delphi, before you and Sam started Delphi, you had already, you know, had Friday get acquired. Did you know for Delphi that it was gonna be a venture back business early on you were gonna need to fundraise, or was it more so kinda let's see what problem we find and we'll make that decision?
Dara Ladjevardian:I knew. I knew because I'd started to I I had tried to start Delphi before starting or, like, while working on Friday. I created that clone of my grandpa. I created a little MVP called Helix and, you know, did posted on Twitter and almost started that, but it was too expensive at the time. Way too expensive.
Dara Ladjevardian:I was losing so much money. And so I put that aside and, you know, at OpenStore, I was following all these researchers on Twitter and just noted noticed paper after paper and things getting cheaper and cheaper, and I was like, it actually might be possible to build Helix into a big company now. Decided to change the name, but I knew that whatever I do next, I I didn't wanna switch around anymore. Just wanted to work on something for the next 10 years.
Michael Houck:What are the lessons that you took from Friday? Because you mentioned earlier, like, you wanted to learn. Right? That was your whole goal with Friday, was you wanted to learn. What were the lessons?
Michael Houck:What did it teach you that maybe would have tripped you up with Delphi if you hadn't sort of learned them first?
Dara Ladjevardian:I learned besides the 2 that I mentioned, you know, work on something that's passionate and find a cofounder. I think that the other 2 big things, one is focus. Like, know exactly what you're working on. It's, you know, fail to plan and plan to fail. Plan it out.
Dara Ladjevardian:Like, plan out a couple steps ahead in 10 years from now. Tony Fadell talks about this in build where when you have a product launch, write the, the press release of the product launch that you wanna have, and, you know, write the future that you wanna have. Write write the company that you wanna build. So I think planning is super important. And then the second thing is just how to deal with hardship, and it's it's supposed to be hard.
Dara Ladjevardian:And with Friday, I think that I ended up in, like, a pit where I was just like, what do I even do here? I I don't even know what to do next. And I thought that was wrong, but it's it's a part of the journey. So I think, you know, the 1st year of Delphi had a lot of those pits, but, you know, kept pushing through, kept iterating. It's all about consistency and survival.
Dara Ladjevardian:And if you can deal with the downs and survive, then you're gonna head to a good place.
Michael Houck:Cool. Yeah. I like that. We talked about how, you know, there's these different sides of building relationships through AI. You guys are kind of on one side of that, and you've done a really good job of it.
Michael Houck:I think traditional advice would sort of say to go for your niche right away, focus on that niche. But in some cases, especially with new and rapidly emerging markets like you guys are in, it actually seems to make sense where maybe you want to cast a wider net and let the market tell you where you're being pulled. Is that something that you guys have found to be true? Do you think it's universally true? What what are your thoughts on that?
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. I think big, small, big is is great, especially when you're doing something new because you don't know what you don't know. We've learned a lot by seeing how people think about Delphi, how they use the product. I would actually say we're still a little bit wide. Like, our ICP is knowledge based professionals, which could include consultants, include CEOs of knowledge based businesses, coaches, experts, content creators, course creators, influencers.
Dara Ladjevardian:But, we've we've narrowed it down to that. So, yeah, I think big, small, big is is definitely useful.
Michael Houck:And for anyone who's, not familiar, can you explain big, small, big?
Dara Ladjevardian:Yeah. It's it's casting a wide net and, you know, seeing what is the right group that can lead you to the full market. Because ordering is obviously very important. I think I read a story about, you know, how Pinterest found some, like, design community at a conference, and they were the right initial group. And with Instagram, it was, like, these artsy photographers.
Dara Ladjevardian:And so for us, we found, like, these niche expert course creators who have these conferences, and they host these masterminds, and they're the early adopters that lead to the rest of the market. And another another decision for being wide in general is I think AI is very good at being horizontal. If you just build a cloning tool for fitness coaches, it's gonna really suck to change your architecture. And you the the architecture you wanna build is a is a tool that can capture how you think and direct that in a certain direction versus, you know, just scaling fitness expertise.
Michael Houck:I mean, it sounds like it's time for me to make a Houk clone. That's that's what I'm hearing here. That's that's fine.
Dara Ladjevardian:Yes. Yeah. I was emailing you about your product. I could just be talking to your clone.
Michael Houck:Yeah. Cool, man. Well, hey, we have some rapid fire sort of, like, outro questions that we'd like to do. Are you up for that? Sure.
Michael Houck:Yeah. Let's do it. Okay. So first one, name one investor who other founders should take capital from.
Dara Ladjevardian:Ann Lee Skates. I think that he is a first principle banker, similar to Keith, but he's earlier in her career than Keith, and he's very founder friendly. I like her just because she she's able to break something down and really understand it versus, you know, some VCs will just copy paste. She's able to bring something from the ground up, which is definitely useful for category creating companies.
Michael Houck:Yeah. Anne is brilliant. Really good partner. Glad you guys have her involved. What's one thing that you would change just about the startup world?
Dara Ladjevardian:That's a good question. I wish there were less VCs because there's so much great talent that I want to hire, and they're convinced into starting companies because maybe they went to a good school or they worked at another company. They're literally convinced into starting a company. And I doing a startup for the sake of doing a startup or being convinced in doing a startup cannot be, like, the right way to start a company. So I think there's just an abundance of VCs, and there just shouldn't be an abundance of VCs.
Michael Houck:Well, hopefully, the market will, I guess, correct. And, and the returns that they get will force their LPs to maybe look elsewhere.
Dara Ladjevardian:Yep.
Michael Houck:What's one piece of advice you have your best piece of advice for a first time founder?
Dara Ladjevardian:Oh, that's a hard one. Do some work on yourself before starting. Like, figure out what triggers you, what you care about, because then you have a compass. When the hard situations hit, you need a compass to get out of them. So I did a lot of work on myself, did a lot of, like, journaling and thinking about what I care about.
Dara Ladjevardian:So and that that has paid off for sure.
Michael Houck:Wow. Yeah. I mean, that's that's a deep one, but it's so true. That definitely benefited me when we went through the hard times at Launch House. Having that sort of internal compass was really important.
Michael Houck:Yep. Love that, man. Okay. Last one. This is a this is a Peter Thielism.
Michael Houck:What's something that you believe that most people disagree with you about?
Dara Ladjevardian:I don't think brand names matter for hiring. You know, good schools know, so so many VCs, like, hire someone from Google or hire someone from Harvard or Stanford. And I've just found that I it doesn't matter. And in some cases, it potentially is worse.
Michael Houck:Yeah. I think, I have a firm policy at this point in my career, not hiring MBAs too early in a company's trajectory. So I'm one with you on that one. Cool. Well, Dara, thanks so much for coming on, man.
Michael Houck:This was great. Thanks for coming on the pod. I know people can go to delphi.ai for the company, but where can people find you?
Dara Ladjevardian:Dara Laje, d a r a l a d j e, on Twitter. Apologies if I have any tweets that offend you. I try not to do that anymore, but it may come out every once in a while.
Michael Houck:No. We we want more tweets that
Michael Houck:are that that offend people. Go for it, man. Alright.
Dara Ladjevardian:I'll I'll think about what else I can say.
Michael Houck:Cool, man.
Michael Houck:Well,
Michael Houck:good to have you on. Talk soon. Thanks, Michael. Great chat.
Michael Houck:Thanks for listening. I write up my main takeaways from every conversation and make them available to all of our members at foundingjourney.com, along with a bunch of other perks and more content. If you found this conversation valuable, subscribe to Founding Journey on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or whatever your favorite podcast app is. I post a new episode every Thursday. Also, consider leaving us a rating or a review.
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Michael Houck:us. See you next time.