1
00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:03,600
Speaker 1: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child

2
00:00:03,680 --> 00:00:07,480
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador

3
00:00:07,720 --> 00:00:11,840
Speaker 1: accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with

4
00:00:11,920 --> 00:00:15,840
Speaker 1: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just

5
00:00:15,920 --> 00:00:19,680
Speaker 1: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President

6
00:00:19,720 --> 00:00:20,159
Speaker 1: Donald J.

7
00:00:20,239 --> 00:00:21,200
Speaker 2: Trump's leadership.

8
00:00:21,480 --> 00:00:25,079
Speaker 1: I'm Christy nom the United States Secretary of Homeland Security.

9
00:00:25,440 --> 00:00:29,200
Speaker 1: Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the

10
00:00:29,240 --> 00:00:33,080
Speaker 1: lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal

11
00:00:33,120 --> 00:00:36,920
Speaker 1: aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, your

12
00:00:37,040 --> 00:00:41,160
Speaker 1: next you will be fined nearly one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned,

13
00:00:41,479 --> 00:00:42,160
Speaker 1: and deported.

14
00:00:42,600 --> 00:00:43,800
Speaker 2: You will never return.

15
00:00:44,120 --> 00:00:47,120
Speaker 1: But if you register using our CBP home app and

16
00:00:47,240 --> 00:00:50,120
Speaker 1: leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.

17
00:00:50,479 --> 00:00:52,720
Speaker 2: Do what's right. Leave now.

18
00:00:53,040 --> 00:00:57,840
Speaker 1: Under President Trump, America's laws, border and families will be protected.

19
00:00:57,920 --> 00:01:00,000
Speaker 3: Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security.

20
00:01:00,600 --> 00:01:04,000
Speaker 4: All right, gosh, welcome back, e y l. We are

21
00:01:04,400 --> 00:01:05,400
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles.

22
00:01:06,040 --> 00:01:08,360
Speaker 3: An amazing LA time has been had.

23
00:01:08,240 --> 00:01:10,360
Speaker 4: Every time we come to LA, especially for Grammy Weekend.

24
00:01:10,440 --> 00:01:13,640
Speaker 4: It's always a motion picture event for sure.

25
00:01:14,080 --> 00:01:16,039
Speaker 5: To say the least man to say the least is

26
00:01:16,040 --> 00:01:18,360
Speaker 5: definitely most of the picture, and we're going out with

27
00:01:18,440 --> 00:01:19,319
Speaker 5: a bang.

28
00:01:20,040 --> 00:01:25,200
Speaker 4: It's not over yet, not over, yes, So this is interesting.

29
00:01:25,200 --> 00:01:26,520
Speaker 4: I think the first time that we met was with

30
00:01:26,600 --> 00:01:30,240
Speaker 4: Baron Davis briefly for his event, right yep, that was

31
00:01:30,480 --> 00:01:34,760
Speaker 4: all start Lake City and we want to panel together.

32
00:01:34,920 --> 00:01:36,640
Speaker 3: They were yeah, And.

33
00:01:37,160 --> 00:01:41,600
Speaker 6: Then we met in Davos and then we met.

34
00:01:43,440 --> 00:01:43,680
Speaker 3: You know what.

35
00:01:43,720 --> 00:01:45,200
Speaker 5: They were saying like, you got to meet this guy,

36
00:01:45,240 --> 00:01:46,880
Speaker 5: you got to meet this guy. And I'm looking like,

37
00:01:46,880 --> 00:01:49,960
Speaker 5: all right, who's the I'm like, oh right, we just

38
00:01:50,320 --> 00:01:53,240
Speaker 5: we know, Ryan, we just be We didn't trying to

39
00:01:53,240 --> 00:01:56,400
Speaker 5: make it happen for probably over a year. Yeah, but

40
00:01:56,560 --> 00:01:59,080
Speaker 5: like any other you know, when the time is supposed

41
00:01:59,120 --> 00:02:01,400
Speaker 5: to to come does and it happens in the right time.

42
00:02:01,600 --> 00:02:03,520
Speaker 3: Serious. So we ran into a Davos and it was

43
00:02:03,560 --> 00:02:05,400
Speaker 3: it was love and it was like, we.

44
00:02:05,480 --> 00:02:07,800
Speaker 5: Have to do it now the time.

45
00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:09,320
Speaker 7: Here we are two weeks later.

46
00:02:11,040 --> 00:02:16,120
Speaker 4: So Ryan Breslo is foundering and chairman of Bolt, which

47
00:02:16,200 --> 00:02:20,360
Speaker 4: is revolutionizing e commerce one click check out, you said

48
00:02:20,400 --> 00:02:21,520
Speaker 4: PayPal two point zero.

49
00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:23,320
Speaker 6: Yeah, you can look at it as.

50
00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:25,760
Speaker 8: That, right, Yeah, I think that's the easiest way to

51
00:02:25,800 --> 00:02:26,360
Speaker 8: describe it.

52
00:02:26,400 --> 00:02:29,280
Speaker 4: But you're serial entrepreneur. So you also started a company

53
00:02:29,320 --> 00:02:32,120
Speaker 4: called Love Yeah. Right, that's the newest vibe that you

54
00:02:32,200 --> 00:02:35,600
Speaker 4: got going on. Right, Yeah, that's a marketplace for alternative medicines.

55
00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:39,680
Speaker 8: It's a little different now. I think the last time

56
00:02:39,720 --> 00:02:43,120
Speaker 8: I told you about it, it was but it's actually

57
00:02:44,240 --> 00:02:44,960
Speaker 8: even crazier.

58
00:02:44,960 --> 00:02:45,200
Speaker 7: Idea.

59
00:02:45,240 --> 00:02:50,040
Speaker 8: I was trying to tell Troy at Davos and don't

60
00:02:50,080 --> 00:02:52,800
Speaker 8: tell me. Yeah, You're like, don't tell me, So I

61
00:02:52,880 --> 00:02:56,560
Speaker 8: didn't update you or correct. So it's different than that, all.

62
00:02:56,560 --> 00:02:59,600
Speaker 4: Right, So we'll get into it. And then you have Ego,

63
00:03:00,240 --> 00:03:03,360
Speaker 4: right yep. And that's the crypto savings app.

64
00:03:04,280 --> 00:03:09,080
Speaker 8: Yeah, Crypto savings app and making crypto easier for the

65
00:03:09,120 --> 00:03:10,600
Speaker 8: mainstream consumer.

66
00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:13,080
Speaker 3: Yeah. I feel like that's been your goal.

67
00:03:14,280 --> 00:03:17,200
Speaker 5: When I think about like the history of how you've

68
00:03:17,200 --> 00:03:20,040
Speaker 5: built everything, it started there, right, Like it was how

69
00:03:20,040 --> 00:03:22,359
Speaker 5: do I make things more efficient for the everyday person?

70
00:03:22,639 --> 00:03:24,960
Speaker 5: Even like the one click payment is how to make

71
00:03:24,960 --> 00:03:26,360
Speaker 5: things efficient for the everyday person?

72
00:03:26,480 --> 00:03:29,440
Speaker 8: Exactly? Yeah, how do you make things easy that currently

73
00:03:29,440 --> 00:03:30,320
Speaker 8: aren't easy?

74
00:03:30,639 --> 00:03:31,200
Speaker 3: Yeah?

75
00:03:31,280 --> 00:03:36,080
Speaker 8: And I just I felt that about online check out,

76
00:03:36,120 --> 00:03:40,760
Speaker 8: I felt that about crypto and so yeah, those and

77
00:03:40,840 --> 00:03:44,280
Speaker 8: now it's love, which is all about conscious shopping and

78
00:03:44,360 --> 00:03:46,600
Speaker 8: making that easier, which we'll talk more about, but yeah,

79
00:03:46,840 --> 00:03:47,880
Speaker 8: making things easier.

80
00:03:48,800 --> 00:03:52,240
Speaker 4: So Forbes last year twenty twenty three, they had you

81
00:03:52,240 --> 00:03:54,880
Speaker 4: had the seventh youngest billionaire in the world.

82
00:03:55,880 --> 00:03:59,160
Speaker 6: For Forbes said.

83
00:04:02,440 --> 00:04:03,320
Speaker 3: Those guys.

84
00:04:03,920 --> 00:04:06,720
Speaker 5: You know, it was also interesting if you ever, like,

85
00:04:06,720 --> 00:04:11,520
Speaker 5: like google yourself, which maybe you don't, when people had

86
00:04:11,600 --> 00:04:15,720
Speaker 5: like their birth date, their birthdate says twenty nine dash dirty,

87
00:04:16,760 --> 00:04:18,080
Speaker 5: so they're not really sure how old you are.

88
00:04:18,080 --> 00:04:18,440
Speaker 3: I guess.

89
00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:19,839
Speaker 7: Yeah.

90
00:04:19,920 --> 00:04:26,039
Speaker 8: There's all types of media press, a lot of things

91
00:04:26,040 --> 00:04:26,640
Speaker 8: that are said.

92
00:04:27,720 --> 00:04:30,520
Speaker 6: M Yeah.

93
00:04:30,680 --> 00:04:34,680
Speaker 8: You know, I got a lot of attention maybe eighteen

94
00:04:34,680 --> 00:04:37,800
Speaker 8: and twenty four months ago because I needed to make

95
00:04:37,920 --> 00:04:40,800
Speaker 8: Bolt and myself known to just get customers. So I

96
00:04:40,839 --> 00:04:43,880
Speaker 8: started doing more publicly, and then Forbes came out with that,

97
00:04:44,080 --> 00:04:46,200
Speaker 8: and there's a bunch of other and the stuff in

98
00:04:46,279 --> 00:04:49,440
Speaker 8: the press, and I realized that the press attention comes

99
00:04:49,440 --> 00:04:52,080
Speaker 8: with a lot of costs. So I've been trying to,

100
00:04:52,680 --> 00:04:55,520
Speaker 8: you know, stay more low profile these days. I'm not

101
00:04:55,880 --> 00:05:00,400
Speaker 8: going completely low profile, dude, you know, I.

102
00:05:00,360 --> 00:05:04,200
Speaker 4: Don't worry nobody's listening. All right, Well, first and foremost,

103
00:05:04,240 --> 00:05:05,080
Speaker 4: thank you for joining us.

104
00:05:05,080 --> 00:05:07,520
Speaker 7: Appreciate it and thanks for having me. It's an honor.

105
00:05:07,880 --> 00:05:10,039
Speaker 6: Yeah. So I think this is gonna be a dope conversation.

106
00:05:10,120 --> 00:05:11,560
Speaker 4: We want to talk about raising money, you want to

107
00:05:11,560 --> 00:05:14,680
Speaker 4: talk about business startups, want to talk about pivoting, all

108
00:05:14,720 --> 00:05:17,760
Speaker 4: of these things that we talk about as far as entrepreneurship,

109
00:05:17,880 --> 00:05:19,960
Speaker 4: and that's what the platform is based on. So we

110
00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:22,760
Speaker 4: actually just got finished watching one of your videos for

111
00:05:22,839 --> 00:05:24,960
Speaker 4: like twenty minutes and Studio told you about it. So

112
00:05:25,240 --> 00:05:27,039
Speaker 4: that actually gave me a lot of questions to ask

113
00:05:27,080 --> 00:05:28,640
Speaker 4: based off of that conversation.

114
00:05:29,080 --> 00:05:31,560
Speaker 5: And I think there's a part of the world of

115
00:05:31,640 --> 00:05:34,919
Speaker 5: business and entrepreneurship that people don't talk about, but I

116
00:05:34,960 --> 00:05:38,520
Speaker 5: love that you do. And that's the mindfulness, right and

117
00:05:38,839 --> 00:05:41,720
Speaker 5: the mental health of it, right, because there's a lot

118
00:05:41,800 --> 00:05:44,480
Speaker 5: that comes on number one, being a founder, but having

119
00:05:44,520 --> 00:05:47,760
Speaker 5: the risk to say I'm about to change the world yep,

120
00:05:47,839 --> 00:05:51,000
Speaker 5: and having that belief in yourself, but sometimes really lies

121
00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:52,960
Speaker 5: in that the people around you don't have a similar belief.

122
00:05:54,279 --> 00:05:54,520
Speaker 7: Yeah.

123
00:05:54,600 --> 00:05:58,440
Speaker 8: I mean, I think the world's greatest entrepreneurs had a

124
00:05:58,440 --> 00:06:01,360
Speaker 8: deep sense of purpose and I think a lot of

125
00:06:01,520 --> 00:06:05,479
Speaker 8: entrepreneurs do. And then as you get caught up in

126
00:06:05,600 --> 00:06:11,600
Speaker 8: business you start to lose that why, right, and it

127
00:06:11,720 --> 00:06:15,200
Speaker 8: can really suck the soul out of you to a

128
00:06:15,240 --> 00:06:17,440
Speaker 8: point where you're forgetting why you're doing what you're doing

129
00:06:17,480 --> 00:06:20,000
Speaker 8: in the first place. And so you kind of hit

130
00:06:20,040 --> 00:06:22,560
Speaker 8: a glass ceiling. And I think re anchoring in that

131
00:06:22,720 --> 00:06:26,440
Speaker 8: why and staying there as much as you can is

132
00:06:26,480 --> 00:06:30,520
Speaker 8: what leads to that continue success, continue reinventing of yourself,

133
00:06:30,560 --> 00:06:31,440
Speaker 8: as we talked about.

134
00:06:31,520 --> 00:06:33,720
Speaker 7: So yeah, so.

135
00:06:33,680 --> 00:06:36,080
Speaker 4: Let's get into today. So let's talk about bolt start there.

136
00:06:37,200 --> 00:06:41,440
Speaker 4: So what's the idea for both and what's the from

137
00:06:41,560 --> 00:06:46,680
Speaker 4: idea to execution to getting it unicorn status?

138
00:06:47,200 --> 00:06:53,680
Speaker 8: Yeah, so I started this. I was lucky again in Stanford,

139
00:06:53,760 --> 00:06:56,120
Speaker 8: grow up in Miami. I'll go through this a little background.

140
00:06:56,440 --> 00:06:59,599
Speaker 8: Start with Stanford Bitcoin Group in twenty thirteen, eight of

141
00:06:59,680 --> 00:07:01,200
Speaker 8: us on campus.

142
00:07:00,720 --> 00:07:02,400
Speaker 6: A bitcoin like investing group.

143
00:07:02,720 --> 00:07:07,440
Speaker 8: No, it's just like students doing research and projects around bitcoin.

144
00:07:07,480 --> 00:07:10,960
Speaker 8: We're writing papers, we had some professors. We'd get credits

145
00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:16,600
Speaker 8: for researching bitcoin and super cool. Most of the campus

146
00:07:16,640 --> 00:07:18,960
Speaker 8: didn't know what bitcoin was or eight of us in it.

147
00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:21,040
Speaker 8: A couple of years after it was hundreds and hundreds

148
00:07:21,040 --> 00:07:23,200
Speaker 8: of kids, but we were the first one to really

149
00:07:23,360 --> 00:07:28,200
Speaker 8: popularize bitcoin on campus, and I dropped out of school

150
00:07:28,240 --> 00:07:30,920
Speaker 8: to start something and looked kind of like a coinbase,

151
00:07:31,320 --> 00:07:33,480
Speaker 8: like make it easy to buy and sell and all that.

152
00:07:33,640 --> 00:07:38,080
Speaker 8: And I actually went around the country pitching banks on

153
00:07:38,920 --> 00:07:40,480
Speaker 8: why they should work with us, because we need a

154
00:07:40,520 --> 00:07:41,640
Speaker 8: bank to work with us.

155
00:07:42,360 --> 00:07:44,600
Speaker 7: And so did that Throughout a year.

156
00:07:44,760 --> 00:07:47,880
Speaker 8: We lost a couple banking bids to coin base because

157
00:07:47,880 --> 00:07:51,080
Speaker 8: they had the bigger vcs, they felt more trusted with them.

158
00:07:51,640 --> 00:07:53,040
Speaker 8: So I'm like, this is going to take me too

159
00:07:53,080 --> 00:07:56,640
Speaker 8: long to get banks behind me. And so I kind

160
00:07:56,680 --> 00:08:01,320
Speaker 8: of really have always wanted to build a better PayPal

161
00:08:01,920 --> 00:08:03,440
Speaker 8: am I gonna find if I do this, I can

162
00:08:03,480 --> 00:08:06,400
Speaker 8: integrate crypto with it later. And so I had this

163
00:08:06,520 --> 00:08:09,160
Speaker 8: idea of PayPal two point zero. I'd started some e

164
00:08:09,200 --> 00:08:12,080
Speaker 8: commerce sites in middle school and I'm like, the checkout

165
00:08:12,360 --> 00:08:15,720
Speaker 8: is really bad, and so I was like, why don't

166
00:08:15,720 --> 00:08:17,920
Speaker 8: we make a better version of this? And I could

167
00:08:18,280 --> 00:08:21,120
Speaker 8: talk more about how bolt works, but that's that's was

168
00:08:21,160 --> 00:08:21,840
Speaker 8: the inspiration.

169
00:08:22,640 --> 00:08:25,520
Speaker 5: Where did you Because this is early I know now

170
00:08:25,560 --> 00:08:26,640
Speaker 5: everybody bigcoin.

171
00:08:26,800 --> 00:08:29,400
Speaker 3: I mean, if you don't know what it is, it's

172
00:08:29,560 --> 00:08:30,800
Speaker 3: like where have you been?

173
00:08:30,840 --> 00:08:34,880
Speaker 5: But in twenty thirteen, it wasn't very commonly known I

174
00:08:35,080 --> 00:08:38,439
Speaker 5: kind of was introduced to it because of the music scene,

175
00:08:38,440 --> 00:08:39,959
Speaker 5: and it was like that was a way to get

176
00:08:40,080 --> 00:08:43,319
Speaker 5: music from sites that you know, it's almost like illegal

177
00:08:43,360 --> 00:08:45,400
Speaker 5: to get music, so you had to have a different

178
00:08:45,679 --> 00:08:48,320
Speaker 5: form of payment. How did you get introduced it and

179
00:08:48,360 --> 00:08:51,360
Speaker 5: then now bring it to Stanford to say this is

180
00:08:51,400 --> 00:08:52,960
Speaker 5: something that's going to take over the future.

181
00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:58,160
Speaker 8: Yeah, there was this professor whose name was Billagi Shrinovasan

182
00:08:58,760 --> 00:09:03,240
Speaker 8: who's kind of infamous in Silicon Valley, and so he's

183
00:09:03,280 --> 00:09:05,400
Speaker 8: teaching this startup engineering class.

184
00:09:05,440 --> 00:09:06,560
Speaker 7: So I'm very lucky.

185
00:09:06,920 --> 00:09:10,680
Speaker 4: He's the one that, like always he teaches classes and

186
00:09:10,720 --> 00:09:14,280
Speaker 4: then the kids that in his class pitched and then

187
00:09:14,280 --> 00:09:15,600
Speaker 4: he invests in the kids.

188
00:09:16,040 --> 00:09:18,760
Speaker 8: Yeah yeah, he like in the class, you work on

189
00:09:18,800 --> 00:09:25,920
Speaker 8: different projects and hackathons. He might invest, might not. I

190
00:09:26,040 --> 00:09:29,000
Speaker 8: wasn't a center around him investing. But I got very

191
00:09:29,080 --> 00:09:31,520
Speaker 8: lucky right place, right time. I was very blessed to

192
00:09:31,559 --> 00:09:36,920
Speaker 8: get into into great school. And and then there was

193
00:09:36,960 --> 00:09:41,240
Speaker 8: about eight of us who would do these hackathons. He'd

194
00:09:41,240 --> 00:09:45,600
Speaker 8: have twice a week hackathons because Blagie loved, like, you know,

195
00:09:45,840 --> 00:09:49,959
Speaker 8: young hackers building his crazy ideas. So he'd go and

196
00:09:49,960 --> 00:09:53,160
Speaker 8: we'd build his things. And there are about eight of

197
00:09:53,240 --> 00:09:55,880
Speaker 8: us who were consistently there to like five or six

198
00:09:55,920 --> 00:09:59,440
Speaker 8: in the morning and everyone else that went to bed,

199
00:10:00,040 --> 00:10:03,480
Speaker 8: and so we just started talking and we get a

200
00:10:03,520 --> 00:10:05,440
Speaker 8: lot of time with them. And then eventually the eight

201
00:10:05,480 --> 00:10:07,840
Speaker 8: of us were like, we should just form an official

202
00:10:07,880 --> 00:10:11,560
Speaker 8: club on campus, and this should be around bitcoin. So

203
00:10:11,559 --> 00:10:14,079
Speaker 8: we started Stanford Bitcoin Group. We got it bussed by

204
00:10:14,160 --> 00:10:18,920
Speaker 8: the university. We ended up getting like five credits a

205
00:10:19,240 --> 00:10:23,560
Speaker 8: quarter for doing research papers on it. So we got

206
00:10:23,559 --> 00:10:26,000
Speaker 8: out of some classes and just was able to focus

207
00:10:26,040 --> 00:10:29,480
Speaker 8: on bitcoin, and eventually I was like, this is all

208
00:10:29,520 --> 00:10:31,640
Speaker 8: I want to focus on. And then I ended up

209
00:10:31,840 --> 00:10:36,200
Speaker 8: doing the stereotypical dropout Stanford dropout.

210
00:10:36,320 --> 00:10:38,599
Speaker 7: So I'm the stereotyped to a t.

211
00:10:39,440 --> 00:10:42,200
Speaker 4: So when you start in a company, you have to

212
00:10:42,280 --> 00:10:44,840
Speaker 4: raise money, you have to like get some help. Like

213
00:10:44,880 --> 00:10:47,920
Speaker 4: what's the process of actually starting the company of you know,

214
00:10:48,600 --> 00:10:50,959
Speaker 4: from idea to actually get it up and running.

215
00:10:52,080 --> 00:10:55,800
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean there's a million ways to start a company.

216
00:10:56,160 --> 00:11:04,800
Speaker 8: For me, I I had like a first attempt at

217
00:11:04,840 --> 00:11:09,400
Speaker 8: starting a company and ended up complete disaster. I had

218
00:11:09,440 --> 00:11:12,960
Speaker 8: two other co founders. One was a close friend. One

219
00:11:13,080 --> 00:11:15,320
Speaker 8: was like this billionaire who got interested in what we

220
00:11:15,320 --> 00:11:19,480
Speaker 8: were doing, had all this money lined up because of

221
00:11:19,520 --> 00:11:22,800
Speaker 8: this person's name. That person ended up pulling out for

222
00:11:22,880 --> 00:11:26,240
Speaker 8: reasons I don't I never was able to uncover my

223
00:11:26,320 --> 00:11:29,920
Speaker 8: other co founders, like this is hopeless. I had already

224
00:11:30,000 --> 00:11:33,000
Speaker 8: dropped out of school, so so now I had no money,

225
00:11:33,640 --> 00:11:37,520
Speaker 8: I had no co founders, and but I'm dropped out,

226
00:11:37,880 --> 00:11:39,880
Speaker 8: and so now I look at them like that was

227
00:11:40,080 --> 00:11:43,400
Speaker 8: such a blessing because they weren't the right people to

228
00:11:43,480 --> 00:11:45,800
Speaker 8: do the business with. But at the time, I was like, man,

229
00:11:46,120 --> 00:11:48,920
Speaker 8: I'm super square, dropped out of school, got no money,

230
00:11:49,480 --> 00:11:52,080
Speaker 8: can't pay for rent. I mean, I don't have investors.

231
00:11:52,120 --> 00:11:57,280
Speaker 8: So you know, I built an MVP of an app

232
00:11:58,360 --> 00:12:02,600
Speaker 8: over several months, built it my I then had enough

233
00:12:02,640 --> 00:12:04,760
Speaker 8: momentum I got some users on the app. It was

234
00:12:04,800 --> 00:12:08,640
Speaker 8: a crypto app, kind of like a coinbase or some investors,

235
00:12:08,840 --> 00:12:12,439
Speaker 8: you know, took notice. I was pitching tons of investors.

236
00:12:12,440 --> 00:12:14,520
Speaker 8: I got a lot of nos, and then I refigured

237
00:12:14,520 --> 00:12:17,720
Speaker 8: out how to pitch, and so I got better. I

238
00:12:17,760 --> 00:12:21,840
Speaker 8: could talk for five hours on fundraising strategy. But you know,

239
00:12:21,880 --> 00:12:24,720
Speaker 8: I started to get some investors on board. Then you

240
00:12:24,800 --> 00:12:28,120
Speaker 8: start to hire engineers that are better than you and

241
00:12:28,160 --> 00:12:31,960
Speaker 8: then you know, you start to get customers.

242
00:12:32,720 --> 00:12:35,760
Speaker 7: You know, we went through some pivots. It was really messy.

243
00:12:36,440 --> 00:12:42,120
Speaker 8: It's just extreme perseverance. Sometimes the funding comes first, Sometimes

244
00:12:42,160 --> 00:12:47,520
Speaker 8: the talent comes first, Sometimes the customers come first. Both

245
00:12:47,640 --> 00:12:50,040
Speaker 8: early days were not pretty at all. I mean it

246
00:12:50,200 --> 00:12:52,560
Speaker 8: was trying a lot of different things.

247
00:12:53,120 --> 00:12:56,280
Speaker 5: So you are these things all self talk, right, because

248
00:12:56,360 --> 00:12:59,959
Speaker 5: I'm thinking, this is this young man with my.

249
00:13:00,920 --> 00:13:04,960
Speaker 3: Was coding in eighth grade, which is this like incredible?

250
00:13:05,600 --> 00:13:09,400
Speaker 5: But most times there's a difference, Right, There's a difference

251
00:13:09,400 --> 00:13:13,360
Speaker 5: between being the CEO of a company and being an

252
00:13:13,360 --> 00:13:16,480
Speaker 5: engineer or a coder and then somebody who actually actually

253
00:13:16,600 --> 00:13:18,480
Speaker 5: raised money for that company, right that picture.

254
00:13:18,559 --> 00:13:20,280
Speaker 3: So how were you learning those skills?

255
00:13:20,320 --> 00:13:23,640
Speaker 5: How you're developing them outside of just saying they told

256
00:13:23,720 --> 00:13:26,520
Speaker 5: me no, all right, I can't do that. Like what

257
00:13:26,559 --> 00:13:28,760
Speaker 5: was the strategies and when you were early on trying

258
00:13:28,800 --> 00:13:29,840
Speaker 5: to get this money from people.

259
00:13:31,000 --> 00:13:31,360
Speaker 7: Yeah.

260
00:13:31,400 --> 00:13:34,480
Speaker 8: Well, the first thing is I got started young in

261
00:13:34,559 --> 00:13:37,200
Speaker 8: terms of being able to talk to business people. I

262
00:13:37,240 --> 00:13:43,680
Speaker 8: started building websites, doing online marketing, found some customers in

263
00:13:43,800 --> 00:13:46,880
Speaker 8: Miami doing this in high school. So by the time

264
00:13:46,880 --> 00:13:50,280
Speaker 8: I got to college, I had some business experience.

265
00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:51,360
Speaker 7: Not in tech.

266
00:13:51,800 --> 00:13:55,720
Speaker 8: But you know, I had some experience when I started

267
00:13:55,760 --> 00:14:03,480
Speaker 8: raising money. I was doing everything wrong. And like, one

268
00:14:03,520 --> 00:14:05,840
Speaker 8: of the first rules that I say in my book

269
00:14:06,040 --> 00:14:11,320
Speaker 8: fundraising is, uh, don't say you're fundraising. As the second

270
00:14:11,360 --> 00:14:15,040
Speaker 8: you say that you're fundraising and you're on the clock,

271
00:14:15,760 --> 00:14:17,880
Speaker 8: meaning people are gonna be like, all right, well his

272
00:14:18,040 --> 00:14:22,280
Speaker 8: round should blow up and be over soon. Because if

273
00:14:22,280 --> 00:14:25,000
Speaker 8: this is a hot company, I'm gonna have a limited window.

274
00:14:25,520 --> 00:14:28,720
Speaker 8: So if in two weeks your round isn't done, people

275
00:14:28,760 --> 00:14:31,560
Speaker 8: are gonna be like, why aren't others investing? And so

276
00:14:31,640 --> 00:14:35,280
Speaker 8: they're gonna, you know, they're gonna walk away. And if

277
00:14:35,320 --> 00:14:38,160
Speaker 8: you build up a bunch of no's around your company

278
00:14:38,240 --> 00:14:42,560
Speaker 8: people are not investing, then that's you know, the network

279
00:14:42,600 --> 00:14:45,640
Speaker 8: becomes aware that all these people didn't invest, and you're

280
00:14:45,680 --> 00:14:49,080
Speaker 8: kind of screwed. So, you know, one of the first

281
00:14:49,160 --> 00:14:52,560
Speaker 8: lessons that I learned from a great mentor of mine,

282
00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:57,600
Speaker 8: his name is Michael Cartery, as this company play Co,

283
00:14:57,880 --> 00:15:02,240
Speaker 8: very successful gaming company. He was giving some talks on fundraising.

284
00:15:02,240 --> 00:15:05,320
Speaker 8: Again he taught me this concept, just don't say you're fundraising.

285
00:15:06,680 --> 00:15:10,360
Speaker 8: Just go build relationships first, go and meet investors and

286
00:15:10,440 --> 00:15:12,720
Speaker 8: get them excited about who you are as a person

287
00:15:13,440 --> 00:15:15,200
Speaker 8: and casually.

288
00:15:14,680 --> 00:15:16,760
Speaker 7: Get them excited about your idea.

289
00:15:18,120 --> 00:15:21,680
Speaker 8: Instead of going and saying I'm pitching you, which automatically

290
00:15:21,720 --> 00:15:23,960
Speaker 8: puts them on a pedestal versus you.

291
00:15:24,080 --> 00:15:25,560
Speaker 7: Right, you're not peers anymore.

292
00:15:26,280 --> 00:15:29,040
Speaker 8: Now they're on a pedestal, and so it sets the

293
00:15:29,120 --> 00:15:34,040
Speaker 8: dynamics incorrectly from the beginning. You're not building a relationship

294
00:15:34,080 --> 00:15:39,280
Speaker 8: and you can get this domino effect of nose which

295
00:15:39,360 --> 00:15:43,240
Speaker 8: could really screw you before you even begin. So I

296
00:15:43,320 --> 00:15:45,760
Speaker 8: did that in the beginning. I learned from those mistakes.

297
00:15:45,800 --> 00:15:49,120
Speaker 8: I had some great mentors who helped me reshape my

298
00:15:49,160 --> 00:15:50,280
Speaker 8: fundraising strategy.

299
00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:54,680
Speaker 4: So you said something, or say when you said, if

300
00:15:54,720 --> 00:15:57,240
Speaker 4: you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice,

301
00:15:57,320 --> 00:16:01,520
Speaker 4: asks for money, Yep, that's how I said it correctly. Yeah,

302
00:16:01,640 --> 00:16:02,960
Speaker 4: so can you elaborate on that.

303
00:16:03,280 --> 00:16:08,200
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's a pretty common adage in Silicon Valley and

304
00:16:08,240 --> 00:16:12,840
Speaker 8: so I certainly didn't invent that. But if you go

305
00:16:12,920 --> 00:16:15,760
Speaker 8: to someone and you say, hey, I want, you know,

306
00:16:15,920 --> 00:16:19,720
Speaker 8: to pitch you for funding, they're most likely going to

307
00:16:19,760 --> 00:16:22,360
Speaker 8: give you advice. It's going to say, hey, you know,

308
00:16:22,560 --> 00:16:24,240
Speaker 8: I'm not able to fund you right now, but how

309
00:16:24,280 --> 00:16:26,960
Speaker 8: about I give you some advice. Whereas if you go

310
00:16:27,080 --> 00:16:31,360
Speaker 8: to them and you show a genuine interest in their advice,

311
00:16:34,800 --> 00:16:39,720
Speaker 8: but also, potentially even more importantly, you really impress the

312
00:16:39,760 --> 00:16:43,800
Speaker 8: shit out of them with who you are. And that

313
00:16:43,840 --> 00:16:48,360
Speaker 8: person has money or is an investor, they are going

314
00:16:48,400 --> 00:16:50,360
Speaker 8: to organically want to invest in you.

315
00:16:51,920 --> 00:16:55,240
Speaker 4: So let's say I have a company and I'm trying

316
00:16:55,240 --> 00:16:57,880
Speaker 4: to raise money. I know a very wealthy guy. Instead

317
00:16:57,880 --> 00:16:59,800
Speaker 4: of saying, hey, do you want to you know, ham

318
00:17:00,080 --> 00:17:02,480
Speaker 4: I pitched to give me money to put my startup,

319
00:17:02,760 --> 00:17:05,200
Speaker 4: it'll say, you know, I have this idea, da da dad,

320
00:17:05,320 --> 00:17:09,360
Speaker 4: and I really respect your your opinion. Would you want

321
00:17:09,400 --> 00:17:10,520
Speaker 4: to just hear about it just to kind of give

322
00:17:10,560 --> 00:17:12,199
Speaker 4: me some feedback on it? And then you just do

323
00:17:12,240 --> 00:17:16,840
Speaker 4: a really great job presenting it. And then they're like, damn,

324
00:17:16,840 --> 00:17:19,000
Speaker 4: I got to be involved in this situation, but you're not.

325
00:17:19,400 --> 00:17:23,800
Speaker 4: You don't look like you're so eager to just only

326
00:17:23,800 --> 00:17:26,560
Speaker 4: get their money. You really genuinely want their advice. But

327
00:17:26,600 --> 00:17:29,439
Speaker 4: then by you not wanting to take their money, they

328
00:17:29,480 --> 00:17:30,600
Speaker 4: want to give you money even more.

329
00:17:31,200 --> 00:17:35,200
Speaker 8: Exactly, this approaches a win win makes it more comfortable

330
00:17:35,240 --> 00:17:39,400
Speaker 8: for them, right because they don't like saying no to you.

331
00:17:39,840 --> 00:17:43,720
Speaker 8: It makes it more comfortable for you, because if if

332
00:17:43,720 --> 00:17:46,159
Speaker 8: you're doing a good job, they're gonna want invest. If

333
00:17:46,160 --> 00:17:49,880
Speaker 8: you're talking to an investor whose job it is to invest,

334
00:17:49,960 --> 00:17:52,960
Speaker 8: who invests, they need you just as much as you

335
00:17:53,000 --> 00:17:55,840
Speaker 8: need them. So if you're sitting in front of them

336
00:17:56,480 --> 00:18:00,480
Speaker 8: and they're like, oh shit, this dude is going to

337
00:18:00,520 --> 00:18:04,639
Speaker 8: fucking kill it, they will proactively say how can I

338
00:18:04,640 --> 00:18:10,680
Speaker 8: get involved? And they're gonna be just as likely, if

339
00:18:10,720 --> 00:18:14,400
Speaker 8: not more likely, than if you came to them explicitly

340
00:18:14,440 --> 00:18:15,240
Speaker 8: trying to pitch.

341
00:18:16,600 --> 00:18:19,400
Speaker 5: How intentional are you about it? Before you even go

342
00:18:19,600 --> 00:18:24,480
Speaker 5: to get the advice? Are you strategically targeting the people

343
00:18:24,520 --> 00:18:25,880
Speaker 5: that you want to get the advice from?

344
00:18:25,880 --> 00:18:26,720
Speaker 3: Like, is there a list?

345
00:18:26,800 --> 00:18:29,520
Speaker 5: And it's like if I could meet or get in

346
00:18:29,600 --> 00:18:33,600
Speaker 5: front of this ten or twenty people this month, that's

347
00:18:33,600 --> 00:18:34,119
Speaker 5: my target.

348
00:18:34,119 --> 00:18:35,280
Speaker 3: Like, how did you go about it?

349
00:18:36,359 --> 00:18:40,240
Speaker 8: Well, in the beginning, you know, beggars can't be choosers, right,

350
00:18:40,359 --> 00:18:43,399
Speaker 8: so you kind of will try to get meetings with

351
00:18:43,440 --> 00:18:46,400
Speaker 8: anyone who has money, right. I mean, now you can

352
00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:49,720
Speaker 8: be as you go later, Sage, you could be a

353
00:18:49,720 --> 00:18:52,199
Speaker 8: little more picky, and you should be picking. I mean,

354
00:18:52,240 --> 00:18:54,520
Speaker 8: you should try to avoid putting sharks on your cap

355
00:18:54,560 --> 00:18:57,399
Speaker 8: table who are at odds with you or who are

356
00:18:57,960 --> 00:19:01,479
Speaker 8: very short term istic and they're going to create issues

357
00:19:01,520 --> 00:19:05,240
Speaker 8: for you. You should avoid those to the maximum extent possible.

358
00:19:06,040 --> 00:19:12,440
Speaker 8: But you know what I would do is I would

359
00:19:13,080 --> 00:19:15,960
Speaker 8: try to build my network in a very strategic way.

360
00:19:16,080 --> 00:19:21,600
Speaker 8: So I would host like happy hours or dinners. I'd

361
00:19:21,640 --> 00:19:24,000
Speaker 8: do this on a college budget. I mean I didn't

362
00:19:24,200 --> 00:19:27,679
Speaker 8: spend I spent minimal money on it. It's like a

363
00:19:27,680 --> 00:19:31,880
Speaker 8: couple hundred bucks that i'd throw together after a few

364
00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:35,040
Speaker 8: this VC would sponsor them, so they'd throw down three

365
00:19:35,040 --> 00:19:38,240
Speaker 8: four hundred bucks on these dinners right and be at

366
00:19:38,280 --> 00:19:40,439
Speaker 8: my place. Or you know, I didn't spend a lot

367
00:19:40,480 --> 00:19:43,080
Speaker 8: of money, and so I was building network. So first

368
00:19:43,080 --> 00:19:47,120
Speaker 8: step is build network. If people have interconnectivity to investors

369
00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:51,560
Speaker 8: and play the long game, build a relationship with these folks.

370
00:19:52,760 --> 00:19:53,359
Speaker 7: Casually.

371
00:19:53,760 --> 00:19:57,000
Speaker 8: Make sure all these people in your network are impressed

372
00:19:57,040 --> 00:20:01,560
Speaker 8: by you, right casually, and then at some point you

373
00:20:01,560 --> 00:20:03,720
Speaker 8: can make the asks where you can say, hey, I

374
00:20:03,760 --> 00:20:06,640
Speaker 8: know this person invests in your company. I think they

375
00:20:06,680 --> 00:20:08,800
Speaker 8: have this relevant experience of what I'm doing. Do you

376
00:20:08,880 --> 00:20:13,760
Speaker 8: mind making the intro? And so you do that with

377
00:20:14,040 --> 00:20:17,840
Speaker 8: you know, all founder friends people will raise money before.

378
00:20:17,680 --> 00:20:20,080
Speaker 8: You're trying to build this network to cultivate and then

379
00:20:20,119 --> 00:20:24,480
Speaker 8: eventually make the ask for the introductions. And you know

380
00:20:24,520 --> 00:20:27,320
Speaker 8: you're just doing this on repeat as much as possible.

381
00:20:29,480 --> 00:20:31,879
Speaker 4: So you said something also where it's like you always

382
00:20:31,920 --> 00:20:33,359
Speaker 4: want to avoid try and get a know.

383
00:20:34,119 --> 00:20:36,080
Speaker 7: Yes, you don't. You never want to get to know.

384
00:20:38,359 --> 00:20:41,720
Speaker 8: This is a little bit of the opposite advice that

385
00:20:41,800 --> 00:20:42,480
Speaker 8: some would give you.

386
00:20:42,520 --> 00:20:43,959
Speaker 7: Oh you want to get to know quickly.

387
00:20:44,040 --> 00:20:46,679
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's what I've heard. I need not I know

388
00:20:47,359 --> 00:20:48,720
Speaker 6: well because I come from sales.

389
00:20:48,760 --> 00:20:50,240
Speaker 4: So that's what I heard all the time, was like

390
00:20:51,359 --> 00:20:54,040
Speaker 4: a no is always one step quicker to a yes,

391
00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:56,240
Speaker 4: or get to the know early or stuff like that.

392
00:20:56,320 --> 00:20:59,000
Speaker 3: But so that's an interesting even it feels contradictory.

393
00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:01,919
Speaker 5: It's like it's because you go this is trial right,

394
00:21:01,960 --> 00:21:04,520
Speaker 5: like you're saying, it's because you've got nos.

395
00:21:04,880 --> 00:21:08,760
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly, nose spread.

396
00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:13,520
Speaker 8: So you know, investor community or the community you're raising

397
00:21:13,560 --> 00:21:17,159
Speaker 8: within is small, and so you don't want somebody to

398
00:21:17,200 --> 00:21:19,600
Speaker 8: go to someone you just pitched and that person say

399
00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:25,840
Speaker 8: be like I passed right you. Now, if you follow

400
00:21:25,880 --> 00:21:28,520
Speaker 8: this strategy, you may have had a meeting with that person.

401
00:21:28,560 --> 00:21:31,399
Speaker 8: It may not have went well, so they may not

402
00:21:31,480 --> 00:21:34,280
Speaker 8: have invested, but you were never pitching them, so they

403
00:21:34,800 --> 00:21:38,119
Speaker 8: don't have the ability to say I passed because you

404
00:21:38,160 --> 00:21:42,520
Speaker 8: never went to them officially asking them for money.

405
00:21:42,680 --> 00:21:45,160
Speaker 4: No, It's actually makes a lot of sense psychologically, because

406
00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:47,720
Speaker 4: like you said, it becomes a virus once one person

407
00:21:47,800 --> 00:21:50,760
Speaker 4: says no, and then another person acts. This person even

408
00:21:50,800 --> 00:21:53,240
Speaker 4: if they want to say yes, it's like, well why'd

409
00:21:53,280 --> 00:21:53,760
Speaker 4: you say no?

410
00:21:54,040 --> 00:21:54,240
Speaker 6: Right?

411
00:21:54,320 --> 00:21:55,520
Speaker 4: And then it's like, I don't want to be the

412
00:21:55,560 --> 00:21:58,159
Speaker 4: person that says yes and be an idiot when my

413
00:21:58,359 --> 00:22:01,120
Speaker 4: friend who I'm I have a high level of respect

414
00:22:01,119 --> 00:22:05,960
Speaker 4: for said no. So I'm more likely to lean towards

415
00:22:05,960 --> 00:22:10,440
Speaker 4: the no because that's just where the crowd is going exactly.

416
00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:13,240
Speaker 8: And so what you're trying to create is a crowd

417
00:22:13,280 --> 00:22:17,160
Speaker 8: momentum behind you. The hardest one to get the fall

418
00:22:17,240 --> 00:22:19,800
Speaker 8: is the first one, and you have to get this

419
00:22:19,920 --> 00:22:25,040
Speaker 8: person to fall just through your character and your pitch

420
00:22:25,760 --> 00:22:29,560
Speaker 8: and this strategy that I'm outlining, and then that one

421
00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:32,560
Speaker 8: will hopefully turn to two or three once you have

422
00:22:32,760 --> 00:22:36,760
Speaker 8: like three people is the magic number where three people

423
00:22:36,800 --> 00:22:40,160
Speaker 8: have now casually without you saying you're fundraising, have told

424
00:22:40,160 --> 00:22:43,360
Speaker 8: you they want to get behind you. Now you can

425
00:22:43,480 --> 00:22:46,919
Speaker 8: start a fundraising round with the wind that you're back,

426
00:22:47,800 --> 00:22:50,280
Speaker 8: because you could say. The way I like to sequence

427
00:22:50,320 --> 00:22:52,960
Speaker 8: it generally is, even when these people say I want

428
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:56,960
Speaker 8: to back you, I won't say, okay, how much? Here's

429
00:22:57,040 --> 00:23:01,359
Speaker 8: the docs you want to then take a step back

430
00:23:02,240 --> 00:23:05,359
Speaker 8: once again and say, okay, I'm honored. I'd love to

431
00:23:05,440 --> 00:23:07,720
Speaker 8: work with you. Let's do another meeting. I'd love to

432
00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:10,399
Speaker 8: get your advice on these other things. I'd love to

433
00:23:10,480 --> 00:23:13,800
Speaker 8: learn how you work with founders. I like to, you know,

434
00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:16,639
Speaker 8: have this discussion on what working together will look like.

435
00:23:16,880 --> 00:23:20,040
Speaker 8: I asked for references. Say hey, can I speak to

436
00:23:20,040 --> 00:23:21,480
Speaker 8: a couple other founders.

437
00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:21,760
Speaker 7: You've worked with?

438
00:23:22,880 --> 00:23:28,080
Speaker 8: So uh, you know, when someone expresses interest.

439
00:23:27,640 --> 00:23:32,040
Speaker 6: You don't just automatically jump and say hey, yeah, I'm ready.

440
00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:33,200
Speaker 7: Yeah exactly.

441
00:23:33,320 --> 00:23:33,480
Speaker 3: Yeah.

442
00:23:33,520 --> 00:23:35,760
Speaker 5: I think that probably feels like the biggest mistake that

443
00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:38,520
Speaker 5: most people make because you're in so much desperate not

444
00:23:38,560 --> 00:23:41,719
Speaker 5: desperate need, but you're in need of the funds, and

445
00:23:41,760 --> 00:23:45,480
Speaker 5: so once you feel it inklink of somebody who's interested,

446
00:23:45,520 --> 00:23:46,680
Speaker 5: it's like I gotta jump.

447
00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:48,840
Speaker 7: You got desperate. You can't.

448
00:23:48,920 --> 00:23:51,640
Speaker 8: You can't show the desperation even if you are. I've

449
00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:54,320
Speaker 8: been desperate many times in my career, even beyond us

450
00:23:54,320 --> 00:23:58,639
Speaker 8: our seed round, but you can never show it because

451
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:01,000
Speaker 8: this is what investors are.

452
00:24:01,680 --> 00:24:06,520
Speaker 7: Their job is to sniff out desperation. Ah right. They're

453
00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:07,760
Speaker 7: experts at this so.

454
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:09,360
Speaker 6: They can get the best deal possible.

455
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:11,360
Speaker 7: So they can get the best deal possible. Exactly.

456
00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:15,919
Speaker 8: So, no matter what desperate situation you're in, I mean,

457
00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:18,760
Speaker 8: you've got to come in with confidence. It's as simple

458
00:24:18,800 --> 00:24:20,920
Speaker 8: as that. I mean, most people won't give this advice,

459
00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:22,879
Speaker 8: but I mean it's just the truth.

460
00:24:23,800 --> 00:24:26,399
Speaker 5: You said something important, even like you want them to

461
00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:29,639
Speaker 5: be impressed by you. Now when you're speaking in that language,

462
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:32,760
Speaker 5: are you talking about impressed with your knowledge of obviously

463
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:36,360
Speaker 5: the business for sure, but the overall sector that you're in,

464
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:38,879
Speaker 5: or just as the character of the person.

465
00:24:40,480 --> 00:24:43,359
Speaker 8: Predominantly they're going to be investing in you, especially at

466
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:47,919
Speaker 8: the early stage. Yeah, most good investors, if they're really

467
00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:52,760
Speaker 8: impressed by person, as long as the idea is decent,

468
00:24:53,240 --> 00:24:55,440
Speaker 8: they'll bet on you because they'll bet on your ability

469
00:24:55,480 --> 00:25:01,360
Speaker 8: to pivot and evolve and come up with even better ideas.

470
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:03,520
Speaker 8: So first they've got to be impressed by you. Now,

471
00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:06,640
Speaker 8: the way you get them impressed by you is by

472
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:10,720
Speaker 8: how you speak about yourself and your company, and so

473
00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:15,800
Speaker 8: you have to have really good answers to questions that

474
00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:18,200
Speaker 8: they have about your company. You've had to have thought

475
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:21,240
Speaker 8: deeply about the company. You've had to have researched the space.

476
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:25,520
Speaker 8: When I talk about my business, I am able to

477
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 8: talk about the business extremely well. I'm able to go

478
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:32,120
Speaker 8: super meta in terms of talking about where the business

479
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:35,320
Speaker 8: fits from a macro lens, in terms of how it

480
00:25:35,440 --> 00:25:39,080
Speaker 8: plays into trends. I'm able to go very micro and

481
00:25:39,119 --> 00:25:41,560
Speaker 8: talk about exactly how the product is going to work.

482
00:25:42,320 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 8: I'm able to go horizontal and talk about competition and

483
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:52,400
Speaker 8: what this one's doing well, but what they're not doing well,

484
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:55,600
Speaker 8: and what this other one is doing well that you

485
00:25:55,680 --> 00:25:58,720
Speaker 8: want to integrate into this. And so I'm able to

486
00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 8: discuss I'm able to talk very intelligently about what I'm building.

487
00:26:06,320 --> 00:26:10,560
Speaker 8: And this is a reflection of how seriously you know

488
00:26:11,359 --> 00:26:13,360
Speaker 8: I mean, as a founder, I'm going to take my business.

489
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:19,480
Speaker 4: So this is insightful, not even if you're just raising money,

490
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:22,200
Speaker 4: but just in general, because like I said, if you're

491
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:24,600
Speaker 4: in sales, everybody's in sales in some capacity. If you're

492
00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:28,720
Speaker 4: in business, yep, So I mean like the deck. A

493
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:30,240
Speaker 4: lot of times people have on a deck, like how

494
00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:32,280
Speaker 4: much money looking to raise? Right, I'm looking to raise

495
00:26:32,320 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 4: ten million, twenty million? Is that the best way to

496
00:26:35,119 --> 00:26:35,560
Speaker 4: go about it?

497
00:26:37,320 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 8: Generally speaking, I say, for seed rounds, no deck, no

498
00:26:43,040 --> 00:26:44,160
Speaker 8: deck at all, no.

499
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:44,560
Speaker 7: Deck at all.

500
00:26:45,320 --> 00:26:52,399
Speaker 8: I've raised many of my rounds with no decks. Seed

501
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 8: rounds predominantly because if you haven't impressed the person enough

502
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:02,840
Speaker 8: on a relationship level and a conversational level with the business,

503
00:27:04,080 --> 00:27:06,199
Speaker 8: It's very rare that they're going to look at a

504
00:27:06,280 --> 00:27:11,280
Speaker 8: deck and be like, oh, I'm this deck is amazing,

505
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:14,920
Speaker 8: I now want to invest. They're really making a decision

506
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:20,560
Speaker 8: on your relationship. Maybe you have a deck that you

507
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:24,320
Speaker 8: go through with them in person. Right, Maybe you're talking

508
00:27:24,359 --> 00:27:28,119
Speaker 8: to someone who's a little more traditional really needs a deck. Fine,

509
00:27:28,760 --> 00:27:32,199
Speaker 8: you can give them a deck, but generally speaking, I

510
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:35,439
Speaker 8: like to avoid a deck. Now, everything I'm saying is

511
00:27:35,520 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 8: talking in terms of broad generalizations. Thousands of companies have

512
00:27:39,720 --> 00:27:42,840
Speaker 8: raised off decks for a seed round. I'm just talking

513
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:48,120
Speaker 8: about my methodology, which I also know thousands of founders

514
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:55,920
Speaker 8: have used UH and works far better than most methodologies

515
00:27:55,920 --> 00:28:02,320
Speaker 8: that I've heard. Now fundraising, there's the methodology. And then

516
00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 8: there's the luck aspect. Some people get lucky, and for me,

517
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:13,240
Speaker 8: I've never really got it just lucky. I've always followed

518
00:28:13,240 --> 00:28:16,879
Speaker 8: a process and the process has produced luck. I've had

519
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:21,760
Speaker 8: luck within the process, but I've never been one of

520
00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:24,239
Speaker 8: those founders where someone just showed up and was like,

521
00:28:24,280 --> 00:28:25,879
Speaker 8: I want to back you, or I had a really

522
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:28,960
Speaker 8: deep family relationship or something like that. I mean a

523
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:32,040
Speaker 8: lot of my rounds that I've raised were just speaking

524
00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 8: to tons and tons of people using this process over

525
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:40,120
Speaker 8: and over again to generate or effectively party rounds where

526
00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 8: it's no one single person leading the round, where it's

527
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 8: a bunch of people who get behind the round. Bolt

528
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:54,320
Speaker 8: I think necessitated me getting very process oriented at fundraising

529
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:58,720
Speaker 8: because in Silicon Valley there's a company that we're tangentially

530
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:03,240
Speaker 8: competitive to called Stripe, and all the big vcs are

531
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:07,880
Speaker 8: in them, which means they're conflicted out of us, and

532
00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 8: so I couldn't get the big names the Sequoia or

533
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 8: the andreasen Horowitz or Founder's Fund. I couldn't get them

534
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 8: to come into my company. And usually when these vcs,

535
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:26,320
Speaker 8: you know, a big name like that, comes in, they

536
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 8: take most of the round they put a big anchor check,

537
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:31,760
Speaker 8: and then it's the big vcs who provide most of

538
00:29:31,760 --> 00:29:35,720
Speaker 8: the capital. For me, it was a lot of up

539
00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 8: and coming firms, angel investors, successful entrepreneurs.

540
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:42,240
Speaker 7: I had to raise party.

541
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:45,360
Speaker 8: Rounds in the early days, and so I think that

542
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:48,480
Speaker 8: just made me more systematic and thoughtful.

543
00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 5: You talked about the competition, which is interesting because not

544
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:57,480
Speaker 5: only do you have to know your business in and out,

545
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:00,560
Speaker 5: but you have to kind of know this almost create

546
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:03,760
Speaker 5: a competitive mode to be in the space. So like

547
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:08,360
Speaker 5: you're you're doing this by yourself, right at this point,

548
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:10,800
Speaker 5: there's no partner with you, right, it's just you.

549
00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:16,600
Speaker 8: I had a early co founder who was with us

550
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 8: for about four years, so it was involved in this

551
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:22,480
Speaker 8: early fundraising. We sparred a lot on this and traded

552
00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:28,880
Speaker 8: notes and really played off each other super well. And

553
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:33,960
Speaker 8: then after they departed, then it was just me on

554
00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:38,480
Speaker 8: all of my other rounds. Since then, I was always

555
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:42,200
Speaker 8: leading the fundraise, so you know, that's why I have

556
00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:46,120
Speaker 8: a particular depth. And then I ended up writing a playbook.

557
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:47,959
Speaker 3: I wanted to get to that.

558
00:30:48,080 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 5: I wanted to get to that, but because I want

559
00:30:50,840 --> 00:30:54,600
Speaker 5: people to really understand the amount of time that goes

560
00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:57,840
Speaker 5: into this. The amount of sacrifice, it's insane, right, Like

561
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:03,960
Speaker 5: there's relationships, get sacrifice, friendships, all these sacrifices that no

562
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 5: one sees on the front end, but like you're actually

563
00:31:06,840 --> 00:31:09,280
Speaker 5: dealing with that on top of trying to create something

564
00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:10,920
Speaker 5: that again is going to be a game changer.

565
00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:15,640
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean everything I'm describing took in extraordinary amount

566
00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:21,240
Speaker 8: of time. I mean, you know, both seed around probably

567
00:31:21,320 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 8: span three years of doing small check after small check

568
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:28,400
Speaker 8: until we had enough traction to raise like an A

569
00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:32,880
Speaker 8: round which was a little bit bigger, and then our

570
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:34,400
Speaker 8: B and C and D round.

571
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:35,160
Speaker 7: We started to get.

572
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:38,240
Speaker 8: Institutional backers who would take big pieces of the round,

573
00:31:38,280 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 8: but in the beginning they were long drawn out or

574
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:45,360
Speaker 8: raising on safe which is this instrument called a simple

575
00:31:45,400 --> 00:31:50,520
Speaker 8: Agreement for future equity, few page agreements that we were

576
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:54,600
Speaker 8: raising money onto. And you know another thing that I

577
00:31:54,640 --> 00:31:57,240
Speaker 8: did is everyone gets consumed with round size.

578
00:31:57,280 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 7: What's the round size?

579
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:00,120
Speaker 3: For me?

580
00:32:00,840 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 8: I've always I've raised incrementally, so you know, for both

581
00:32:08,040 --> 00:32:11,360
Speaker 8: Initially I got a few. Once I started to realize

582
00:32:11,360 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 8: a strategy, I got a few people to lean in.

583
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:16,360
Speaker 8: You know, it was like, we're gonna raise a million

584
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 8: that filled up pretty quickly, and then you know, we're like, yeah,

585
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 8: might as well open another million, as more people became

586
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:26,680
Speaker 8: interested or raised another half a million and so.

587
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:27,280
Speaker 7: And then.

588
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:31,400
Speaker 8: When you say, oh, we're you know, we're actually going

589
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:34,360
Speaker 8: to raise two We've already raised one. I are fifty

590
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:42,320
Speaker 8: percent complete. Versus you know, starting around saying I'm raising

591
00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:45,800
Speaker 8: two million and I have none. I'd rather start around

592
00:32:45,800 --> 00:32:48,320
Speaker 8: and say, all right, I have a few people for leading.

593
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:50,360
Speaker 8: They're probably good for half a million, So we're gonna

594
00:32:50,440 --> 00:32:52,600
Speaker 8: raise a million or seven to fifty k. So the

595
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:55,040
Speaker 8: next person I go to, the round's almost done already

596
00:32:56,320 --> 00:32:58,400
Speaker 8: Versus how most founders saw it off of is there

597
00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:00,560
Speaker 8: go to someone and none of the round is done.

598
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:04,160
Speaker 8: If I'm going to talk to you about around, it's

599
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 8: going to be mostly done already before I'm like talking

600
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:12,720
Speaker 8: economics with you, even those people are forward leaning. I'm

601
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 8: gonna wait till a few others are forward leaning, and

602
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:16,880
Speaker 8: then I'm gonna say, hey, we're doing a million, but

603
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:19,880
Speaker 8: I've got about six or seven hundred already circled up.

604
00:33:20,240 --> 00:33:23,040
Speaker 8: You were one of my early conversations. I'm really excited

605
00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:27,320
Speaker 8: to have you involved. Let's talk about formalizing your investment.

606
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:31,960
Speaker 4: Good ratey so, and you've raised a lot of money

607
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:34,040
Speaker 4: just to put it in contact with people because you're

608
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:40,560
Speaker 4: speaking from first hand experience, right. So you talked about

609
00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:42,640
Speaker 4: the time, but can you like say, like how much

610
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:45,840
Speaker 4: time for a founder that's looking to what should they

611
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 4: expect they should expect to put two hours out of

612
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:49,560
Speaker 4: the day, they should expect to put.

613
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 6: Twelve hours out of the day. Like what's the.

614
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:53,640
Speaker 4: Realistic expectation as far as the time commitment for a

615
00:33:53,720 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 4: founder that is trying to raise money.

616
00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:59,400
Speaker 8: I mean, if you're trying to do it properly, it's

617
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 8: one hundred of your life.

618
00:34:02,280 --> 00:34:03,000
Speaker 3: That's the time for me.

619
00:34:03,640 --> 00:34:06,720
Speaker 7: That's the time commitment. You know.

620
00:34:07,120 --> 00:34:09,880
Speaker 8: And ideally you have a partner or a head of

621
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:14,200
Speaker 8: operations or a CTO that can hold over the fort.

622
00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 4: That's running the business, running the business, or you should

623
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 4: just be focused on You can't. You can't split your

624
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 4: time between running the business and raising money.

625
00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:20,960
Speaker 3: This is it.

626
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:21,879
Speaker 7: This is it.

627
00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:24,799
Speaker 8: I mean, once you get the hang of it and

628
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:28,719
Speaker 8: pass a critical threshold and you're cool to just take

629
00:34:28,760 --> 00:34:31,799
Speaker 8: some checks casually here and there. Once you're casual and

630
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:35,759
Speaker 8: you've you've already crossed the chasm. Great, but until that point,

631
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:38,120
Speaker 8: you're one hundred percent. Get someone else in your company,

632
00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:40,480
Speaker 8: give everyone a heads up that you're going to be

633
00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:43,719
Speaker 8: off the grid for a bit. Fundraising. This is all

634
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:47,200
Speaker 8: you're focused on, one hundred percent of the focus, and

635
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 8: you know, spend a couple hours a day on the

636
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:54,200
Speaker 8: business and so you know a lot of people get

637
00:34:55,080 --> 00:35:02,000
Speaker 8: nervous about fundraising purely because they're not focused on it.

638
00:35:03,440 --> 00:35:05,400
Speaker 8: So it's never going to happen because this is a

639
00:35:05,520 --> 00:35:09,600
Speaker 8: thing that requires such intense focus. Need to block off

640
00:35:09,719 --> 00:35:13,399
Speaker 8: everything else in your life spending on one hundred percent

641
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:15,600
Speaker 8: of your time on this thing. You need to go

642
00:35:15,680 --> 00:35:18,680
Speaker 8: read my book, which not something I did. This is

643
00:35:18,680 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 8: a labor of love.

644
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 6: What's a book.

645
00:35:20,239 --> 00:35:23,480
Speaker 8: It's called Fundraising by Ryan Breslo. Start off as a

646
00:35:23,520 --> 00:35:25,680
Speaker 8: playbook that I wrote a Google doc that I gave

647
00:35:25,719 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 8: to my friends.

648
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 7: This is a labor of love.

649
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 8: I had no time to write this book, but I

650
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:34,239
Speaker 8: made the time because founders needed this wisdom, because I

651
00:35:34,280 --> 00:35:37,440
Speaker 8: saw too many making the same mistakes over and over again.

652
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:42,040
Speaker 8: And so you need to memorize this book, follow it

653
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 8: to a t. You put your own style and flavor

654
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:49,920
Speaker 8: on it, of course, but really understand it and dedicate

655
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:51,400
Speaker 8: one hundred percent of your time to this.

656
00:35:52,320 --> 00:35:55,480
Speaker 5: So while you're doing the fundraising and you're one hundred

657
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:59,279
Speaker 5: percent dedicated to it, right before this is this when

658
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:03,959
Speaker 5: you're the Conscious Culture playbook, because you know that you're

659
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 5: not going to be there on a day to day

660
00:36:05,719 --> 00:36:07,919
Speaker 5: the way that you probably would be if you weren't

661
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:08,439
Speaker 5: trying to raise.

662
00:36:09,239 --> 00:36:12,480
Speaker 8: Yeah, so that came later for me, but I was

663
00:36:12,640 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 8: creating a playbook on culture. I like systems. Systems scale.

664
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:20,840
Speaker 8: If your team doesn't know how it's going to operate

665
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:24,400
Speaker 8: what it values, it's very hard to scale your company.

666
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:27,000
Speaker 8: And so I don't like repeating myself.

667
00:36:27,680 --> 00:36:28,279
Speaker 7: I like.

668
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:34,320
Speaker 8: I like methodology and formula as you can tell for

669
00:36:34,440 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 8: things that I know work.

670
00:36:35,640 --> 00:36:37,800
Speaker 7: And so I had a great CEO.

671
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 8: Coach's name is Matt Matari's got a great book, Machari

672
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 8: Method that everybody should read on ceoing. He gave me

673
00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:50,520
Speaker 8: his method, which was my Foundations of Conscious Culture, and

674
00:36:50,560 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 8: then I made it my own. I mean he taught

675
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:56,200
Speaker 8: it to me intensively for about three months, and then

676
00:36:56,480 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 8: over the next five years, I kept the document being like,

677
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:01,880
Speaker 8: this is what works, this is what doesn't work for me.

678
00:37:02,520 --> 00:37:06,360
Speaker 8: And so I created my own playbook and then I

679
00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:09,920
Speaker 8: ended up publishing that to the world on the conscious

680
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:12,719
Speaker 8: dot org, which we're doing we're going to relaunch. It's

681
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:19,000
Speaker 8: not where it needs to be right now. But and

682
00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:21,840
Speaker 8: this is the playbook we used to build and scale

683
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:25,200
Speaker 8: Bolt and the Conscious Culture came from more of a

684
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:31,560
Speaker 8: spiritual aspiration to bridge humanity with execution. This is this

685
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:34,160
Speaker 8: is the marriage that I really wanted to facilitate, and

686
00:37:34,200 --> 00:37:36,239
Speaker 8: I think Conscious Culture gets to that.

687
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:41,600
Speaker 4: So we talked about raising money, but just business infrastructure.

688
00:37:41,680 --> 00:37:44,040
Speaker 4: Something else that I heard you say that was pretty

689
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:49,279
Speaker 4: insightful as far as you got to be careful with partnerships, right,

690
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:54,480
Speaker 4: And a lot of businesses have partners you have a

691
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:57,279
Speaker 4: philosophy that's not always the best way to go about it, right.

692
00:37:58,280 --> 00:38:06,719
Speaker 8: Yeah. So there's the traditional advice on starting companies, find

693
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:07,520
Speaker 8: a co founder.

694
00:38:08,080 --> 00:38:09,400
Speaker 7: I give the opposite advice.

695
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:14,880
Speaker 8: I say, don't find the co founder unless you know

696
00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 8: you're ready to marry somebody. Because this is a marriage.

697
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:22,480
Speaker 8: This is even more significant in your marriage. You could

698
00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:25,080
Speaker 8: have this relation for the next thirty years, for the

699
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:28,920
Speaker 8: rest of your life. This is going to define the

700
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:33,719
Speaker 8: success of your business. It can also ruin your business.

701
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 8: It could ruin your life. This is the most important

702
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:45,160
Speaker 8: decision that you're making. For me, I prefer this concept

703
00:38:45,200 --> 00:38:51,440
Speaker 8: of a founding rule. So a founding CTO, a founding COO,

704
00:38:52,080 --> 00:38:56,239
Speaker 8: a founding head of operations where you've made some progress

705
00:38:56,400 --> 00:38:59,839
Speaker 8: enough to recruit someone exceptional to take a founding X role.

706
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:03,759
Speaker 8: It's different than co founder. A co founder implies a

707
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:06,680
Speaker 8: double digit percentage of your company that you're sharing with

708
00:39:06,719 --> 00:39:11,800
Speaker 8: that person. A founding role may be single digits and

709
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:15,120
Speaker 8: maybe mid single digits. It could be considerable percentage of

710
00:39:15,160 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 8: your company, but it at least lets you hedge your

711
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:23,560
Speaker 8: bets or not. It protects you because they're probably not

712
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:27,239
Speaker 8: on the board initially, they don't have voting control of

713
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 8: your company, so you can effectively they're fireable. They're on

714
00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:34,719
Speaker 8: a vesting schedule, which means if you fire them early,

715
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:38,839
Speaker 8: they don't get all their equity. And so I would

716
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:42,680
Speaker 8: highly recommend this strategy as the safest strategy. And you

717
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:47,480
Speaker 8: can always give that person more. Right, if you give

718
00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:49,120
Speaker 8: them five percent of your company, well you can always

719
00:39:49,160 --> 00:39:51,400
Speaker 8: raise it to ten and then to fifteen and twenty.

720
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:55,279
Speaker 8: But it's very hard to strip away take out a

721
00:39:55,320 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 8: co founder. They have rights, they could sue you. You've

722
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:01,319
Speaker 8: given a big chunk of the company. You may have

723
00:40:01,440 --> 00:40:06,799
Speaker 8: wrestled for voting control, So this is much safer path.

724
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:09,560
Speaker 5: Could you break down because even the vesting thing is

725
00:40:09,680 --> 00:40:12,880
Speaker 5: when I was. This episode is brought to you by

726
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:15,719
Speaker 5: P and C Bank. A lot of people think podcasts

727
00:40:15,719 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 5: about work are boring, and sure they definitely can be,

728
00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:22,720
Speaker 5: but understanding a professionals routine shows us how they achieve

729
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:27,000
Speaker 5: their success little by little, day after day. It's like

730
00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:29,880
Speaker 5: banking with P and C Bank. It might seem boring

731
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:32,720
Speaker 5: the safe plan and make calculated decisions with your bank,

732
00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:35,640
Speaker 5: but keeping your money boring is what helps you live

733
00:40:35,800 --> 00:40:39,799
Speaker 5: or more happily fulfilled life. P and C Bank Brilliantly

734
00:40:39,880 --> 00:40:44,440
Speaker 5: Boring since eighteen sixty five. Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty

735
00:40:44,480 --> 00:40:47,759
Speaker 5: five is a service mark of the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc.

736
00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:52,120
Speaker 5: P and C Bank National Association Member FDIC.

737
00:40:54,719 --> 00:40:55,359
Speaker 3: Erness What's Up?

738
00:40:55,440 --> 00:40:57,920
Speaker 5: You ever walk into a small business and everything just

739
00:40:58,080 --> 00:41:01,280
Speaker 5: works like the checkout is fast, the receipts of digital

740
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:04,760
Speaker 5: tipping is a breeze, and you're out the door before

741
00:41:04,760 --> 00:41:08,920
Speaker 5: the line even builds. Odds are they're using square? We

742
00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:11,640
Speaker 5: love supporting businesses that run on Square because it just

743
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:12,480
Speaker 5: feels seamless.

744
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:14,320
Speaker 3: Whether it's a local coffee.

745
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:16,720
Speaker 5: Shop, a vendor at a pop up market, or even

746
00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:19,759
Speaker 5: one of our merch partners, Square makes it easy for

747
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:23,320
Speaker 5: them to take payments, manage inventory, and run their business

748
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 5: with confidence, all from one simple system. If you're a

749
00:41:27,040 --> 00:41:30,200
Speaker 5: business owner or even just thinking about launching something soon,

750
00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:33,160
Speaker 5: Square is hands down one of the best tools out

751
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 5: there to help you start, run and grow. It's not

752
00:41:36,560 --> 00:41:39,759
Speaker 5: just about payments, it's about giving you time back so

753
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:42,479
Speaker 5: you can focus on what matters most ready. To see

754
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:46,240
Speaker 5: how Square can transform your business, visit Square dot com

755
00:41:46,280 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 5: backslash go backslash eyl to learn more that Square dot

756
00:41:51,160 --> 00:41:56,120
Speaker 5: com backslash, go backslash eyl. Don't wait, don't hesitate. Let's

757
00:41:56,120 --> 00:41:58,600
Speaker 5: Square handle the back end so you can keep pushing

758
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:00,680
Speaker 5: your vision forward.

759
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:05,359
Speaker 1: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child

760
00:42:05,440 --> 00:42:09,239
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador

761
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:13,600
Speaker 1: accused of murdering a Texas. Man of Venezuelan charged with

762
00:42:13,680 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 1: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just

763
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:21,440
Speaker 1: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President

764
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:21,920
Speaker 1: Donald J.

765
00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:22,960
Speaker 2: Trump's leadership.

766
00:42:23,239 --> 00:42:26,840
Speaker 1: I'm Christy nom the United States Secretary of Homeland Security.

767
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:30,960
Speaker 1: Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the

768
00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:34,840
Speaker 1: lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal

769
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:38,680
Speaker 1: aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, your

770
00:42:38,800 --> 00:42:42,080
Speaker 1: next you will be fined nearly one thousand dollars.

771
00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:45,560
Speaker 2: A day, imprisoned, and deported. You will never return.

772
00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:48,880
Speaker 1: But if you register using our CBP home app and

773
00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:51,880
Speaker 1: leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.

774
00:42:52,239 --> 00:42:54,440
Speaker 2: Do what's right. Leave now.

775
00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 1: Under President Trump, America's laws, border and families.

776
00:42:58,760 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 2: Will be protected.

777
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:01,200
Speaker 3: About the United States Department of.

778
00:43:01,200 --> 00:43:03,799
Speaker 5: Homeland Security here you talk about the I'm like, that's

779
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:08,000
Speaker 5: pretty brilliant, right, Like you offer equity low digits, maybe

780
00:43:08,040 --> 00:43:11,680
Speaker 5: it's anywhere between. Would you say anywhere between five, well,

781
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:13,640
Speaker 5: one to five percent, or would you even go higher?

782
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:18,799
Speaker 8: It entirely is dependent on the person, their experience, how

783
00:43:18,880 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 8: much they typically get paid, their role, how exceptional they are. Yeah,

784
00:43:23,440 --> 00:43:26,680
Speaker 8: but by vessel five is a range of it's meant

785
00:43:26,719 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 8: for an exceptional founding role.

786
00:43:29,560 --> 00:43:31,319
Speaker 5: Right, But they don't get the five. It has to

787
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:33,799
Speaker 5: be worked out where if they're there for a certain

788
00:43:33,800 --> 00:43:35,719
Speaker 5: amount of time, then it's earned, right.

789
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:38,680
Speaker 8: Yeah, standard is four years. Sometimes I do five years.

790
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 8: There's a one year cliff, meaning if they don't make

791
00:43:40,960 --> 00:43:42,560
Speaker 8: it to at least a year, they don't get anything.

792
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:45,960
Speaker 8: It's typically a very bad practice to fire them a

793
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 8: month eleven. If you fire them a month eleven, give

794
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:53,239
Speaker 8: them eleven months worth you sign off the paperwork. But

795
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:55,680
Speaker 8: if they don't make it past six months, they typically

796
00:43:55,719 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 8: don't deserve anything because they weren't a good enough fit.

797
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 8: But if it make it past six months, you know

798
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:05,560
Speaker 8: you should give them. You should even though you don't

799
00:44:05,600 --> 00:44:07,799
Speaker 8: have to until a year, should give them what they

800
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 8: earned proportionally. And then yeah, they earn, you know, they earn.

801
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:14,960
Speaker 8: Typically it's a monthly vest.

802
00:44:15,160 --> 00:44:18,479
Speaker 5: So do you find that I mean, obviously you're hiring

803
00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 5: these people because you see something in them, but do

804
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:23,759
Speaker 5: you see the return is that the dedication to the

805
00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:27,960
Speaker 5: company has changed because of the equity that can be

806
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:32,359
Speaker 5: gained if they potentially obviously outworked what they you saw

807
00:44:32,400 --> 00:44:35,400
Speaker 5: in them. But long term what this company can potentially.

808
00:44:35,040 --> 00:44:37,160
Speaker 7: Be Yeah, uh.

809
00:44:39,719 --> 00:44:43,719
Speaker 8: You, I mean I generally like to give people lower salary,

810
00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:47,960
Speaker 8: higher equity, make sure they're owners in this thing with me.

811
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 8: There's some exceptions to that rule, but you know you

812
00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:55,319
Speaker 8: want missionaries, not mercenaries. You want someone who's all in

813
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:59,840
Speaker 8: behind the purpose behind you, who believes you need believer

814
00:45:00,160 --> 00:45:02,759
Speaker 8: in order to build something from scratch. It's just too

815
00:45:02,800 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 8: hard to hire mercenaries who are just doing it to

816
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:10,239
Speaker 8: get paid. Building STARp is too hard someone who's just

817
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:12,120
Speaker 8: doing it to get paid, even if they're one of

818
00:45:12,120 --> 00:45:15,040
Speaker 8: your employees. It's just they're not going to put in

819
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:18,120
Speaker 8: the work required to help make you successful.

820
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:23,560
Speaker 4: So debt equity, that's an interesting term. What does that mean?

821
00:45:24,800 --> 00:45:27,279
Speaker 7: So dead dead?

822
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:31,200
Speaker 8: Yeah, debt equity is equity you've mismanaged, meaning you've given

823
00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:33,440
Speaker 8: it to somebody who is no longer.

824
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:34,400
Speaker 7: A value to your business.

825
00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:38,879
Speaker 8: And so if you pick the wrong co founder and

826
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:42,640
Speaker 8: they don't do anything when not all of their equity

827
00:45:42,719 --> 00:45:48,440
Speaker 8: is debt equity, debt equity will destroy your business. The

828
00:45:48,560 --> 00:45:51,040
Speaker 8: number one thing you need to be striving for is

829
00:45:51,120 --> 00:45:54,880
Speaker 8: fairness across the cap table that is directly tied to

830
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:56,280
Speaker 8: value in the business.

831
00:45:57,360 --> 00:45:57,719
Speaker 7: And so.

832
00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:05,160
Speaker 8: Fairness is a is a topic that is also rarely discussed,

833
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:07,120
Speaker 8: but it's a very important meaning. If you have an

834
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 8: a player who has this much equity and they're sitting

835
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:13,520
Speaker 8: next to a B player with the same amount of equity,

836
00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:18,920
Speaker 8: they're gonna be like demoralizing, demoralizing, they're not gonna work

837
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:21,839
Speaker 8: as hard. You want your A player to be all in,

838
00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:25,279
Speaker 8: and so they even if they don't have transparency into

839
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:29,399
Speaker 8: the cap table, people whisper and people talk, and they

840
00:46:29,440 --> 00:46:32,640
Speaker 8: share notes and they share their information, so they'll find out.

841
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:35,279
Speaker 8: You hope they don't find out, but you have to

842
00:46:35,320 --> 00:46:38,480
Speaker 8: expect that everyone will find out. And you have to

843
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 8: have a cap table even if you don't share it

844
00:46:40,280 --> 00:46:42,360
Speaker 8: with the team, which you shouldn't because it creates too

845
00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:46,759
Speaker 8: much controversy, but if it was to be shared, you

846
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:51,640
Speaker 8: can stand behind it. This sense of fairness is everything.

847
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:58,960
Speaker 8: There's a great sales adage which is feed your eagles,

848
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:02,920
Speaker 8: starve your turkeys, so your A players roll out the

849
00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:06,560
Speaker 8: red carpet. If you're A players, be very generous with

850
00:47:06,600 --> 00:47:08,719
Speaker 8: them and be players.

851
00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:11,080
Speaker 7: You got to get rid of them.

852
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:17,040
Speaker 8: You only you don't have the capacity at a startup

853
00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:22,000
Speaker 8: to have be players around. That's what other corporations are for, right,

854
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:24,960
Speaker 8: That's what those jobs are for. When you're trying to

855
00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:29,439
Speaker 8: build something from nothing, it is so hard it takes

856
00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:33,640
Speaker 8: such exceptional ability and effort that you're not in the

857
00:47:33,719 --> 00:47:37,319
Speaker 8: charity business of job creation. You can do that later

858
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:42,520
Speaker 8: on your thousands of people, but there's no charity seat

859
00:47:43,360 --> 00:47:47,480
Speaker 8: on your team when you're trying to create something out

860
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:47,920
Speaker 8: of nothing.

861
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:50,440
Speaker 6: That's a fact.

862
00:47:50,680 --> 00:47:55,400
Speaker 5: That's a big fact. You mentioned the cap table and

863
00:47:55,440 --> 00:47:59,319
Speaker 5: so kind of two fold question. How do you vet

864
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:01,239
Speaker 5: I mean early days and now how do you go

865
00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:03,479
Speaker 5: about vetting who belongs and whos?

866
00:48:03,520 --> 00:48:05,919
Speaker 3: How many people are going to be on the cap table?

867
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:08,920
Speaker 5: And then the other part is the board right because

868
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:11,760
Speaker 5: most people are not even familiar with what that process

869
00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:14,200
Speaker 5: is and how many people you should have. The different

870
00:48:14,239 --> 00:48:16,840
Speaker 5: roles of the board members give a little bit of

871
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:17,759
Speaker 5: information about that.

872
00:48:19,680 --> 00:48:25,919
Speaker 8: Board is the governing body of your company. It's where

873
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:29,680
Speaker 8: votes take place on important corporate decisions. Do we create

874
00:48:29,719 --> 00:48:32,240
Speaker 8: more option pool, do we prove this round of funding,

875
00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:36,480
Speaker 8: do we take on this new capital all? The board

876
00:48:36,480 --> 00:48:39,319
Speaker 8: makes those decisions how much budget do we spend every year?

877
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:42,719
Speaker 8: The board is very important from a governance standpoint, but

878
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:45,279
Speaker 8: if you set it up wrong could destroy your business.

879
00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:46,200
Speaker 7: So if you have the.

880
00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:49,319
Speaker 8: Wrong people on there who are out voting you as

881
00:48:49,320 --> 00:48:51,719
Speaker 8: a founder, don't have the context who aren't in the

882
00:48:51,760 --> 00:48:57,000
Speaker 8: trenches day in and day out, your business is screwed.

883
00:48:57,040 --> 00:48:57,479
Speaker 6: And so.

884
00:48:59,120 --> 00:49:00,920
Speaker 7: I believe in found under led boards.

885
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:04,520
Speaker 8: I believe that founders a lot of the great great

886
00:49:04,560 --> 00:49:09,640
Speaker 8: companies have, you know, initially founder led boards that eventually

887
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 8: have some diversification on it. But the simplest way to

888
00:49:13,520 --> 00:49:15,439
Speaker 8: set up a board is you as a founder. It's

889
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:19,480
Speaker 8: just you don't be putting anyone on your board. I

890
00:49:19,480 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 8: don't care how much of a hotshot they are, how

891
00:49:22,040 --> 00:49:25,440
Speaker 8: big their name is. There's no quicker way to destroy

892
00:49:25,480 --> 00:49:30,319
Speaker 8: your business than putting somebody with a pedigree on your

893
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:36,440
Speaker 8: board too early, because now that person has more gravitas

894
00:49:36,480 --> 00:49:42,280
Speaker 8: than you, and they have ego. Typically I'm making generalizations,

895
00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:46,120
Speaker 8: but I've seen this happen far too many times, and

896
00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:48,279
Speaker 8: so you've you got to keep things tight in the

897
00:49:48,320 --> 00:49:52,880
Speaker 8: beginning because you have a vision that is very hard

898
00:49:52,880 --> 00:49:56,520
Speaker 8: for others to see, and you've got to have ball

899
00:49:56,600 --> 00:50:00,760
Speaker 8: control to get this to a pretty substantial place before

900
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:02,680
Speaker 8: you start to mature.

901
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:06,880
Speaker 4: What about like taking money, Like a lot of times

902
00:50:06,920 --> 00:50:10,120
Speaker 4: people don't realize, like if you take money too early

903
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:12,360
Speaker 4: out of a company, it could it could ruin the company,

904
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:15,120
Speaker 4: right like, what's your advice for founders that, But it's

905
00:50:15,120 --> 00:50:16,840
Speaker 4: still difficult because you still have to eat and you

906
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:18,640
Speaker 4: still have to provide for yourself, or if you have

907
00:50:18,680 --> 00:50:20,319
Speaker 4: a family, you got to prove off for your family too.

908
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:21,399
Speaker 3: So how do you.

909
00:50:21,400 --> 00:50:24,360
Speaker 4: Balance that reinvesting money in the company to grow it,

910
00:50:24,400 --> 00:50:26,759
Speaker 4: but still kind of maintaining your life as well.

911
00:50:29,520 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 8: You as a founder, you're going to become an expert

912
00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:36,359
Speaker 8: at balancing and juggling and many things in your life.

913
00:50:38,440 --> 00:50:41,200
Speaker 8: I wish that someone taught me the importance of health

914
00:50:41,280 --> 00:50:43,400
Speaker 8: early on. I didn't know the first thing about health,

915
00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:52,080
Speaker 8: so I was you know, nowadays I focus deeply on health,

916
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:57,839
Speaker 8: family friendships, you know, my nonprofit work business I'm able

917
00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:01,799
Speaker 8: to balance. In the beginning, I had no balance. I mean,

918
00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 8: I was just abusing my body to just crank on

919
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:11,799
Speaker 8: the business. To some degree that that is necessary. And

920
00:51:11,760 --> 00:51:13,319
Speaker 8: on the other hand, if I were to go back

921
00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:15,480
Speaker 8: to my younger self, I would say focus on some

922
00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:22,560
Speaker 8: of these other things too. But generally speaking, yeah, to

923
00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:26,399
Speaker 8: get something, to create something from nothing, which we've all

924
00:51:26,440 --> 00:51:31,320
Speaker 8: done here, we know the sacrifice required. It's an extraordinary

925
00:51:31,480 --> 00:51:35,000
Speaker 8: level of sacrifice and there's really no way around that.

926
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:40,880
Speaker 3: Well, let's get to where we left off and dovels.

927
00:51:41,760 --> 00:51:45,879
Speaker 5: You were super excited and you were telling me about

928
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:48,600
Speaker 5: the one thing that the world needs. I told you love.

929
00:51:49,080 --> 00:51:53,640
Speaker 5: You're like exactly, and I was like, you like, when

930
00:51:53,680 --> 00:51:56,000
Speaker 5: you hear it, what do you think. I'm like, it's

931
00:51:56,040 --> 00:52:00,480
Speaker 5: the universal language. It's what gets everybody through part of

932
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:03,040
Speaker 5: their life. And you're like yeah, And then you were

933
00:52:03,040 --> 00:52:06,400
Speaker 5: about to go into this. I said, save it. We

934
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:08,680
Speaker 5: got to sit down and record it. So talk to

935
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:12,880
Speaker 5: us about love, its mission and how you got to

936
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 5: this point.

937
00:52:15,640 --> 00:52:24,320
Speaker 8: So I have been on my own spiritual journey, health, family,

938
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:31,320
Speaker 8: different communities that I'm involved in, and the last three years,

939
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:33,480
Speaker 8: I say that's become a bigger part of my life.

940
00:52:33,520 --> 00:52:38,680
Speaker 8: I call spirituality broadly. And what I've learned is that

941
00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:41,960
Speaker 8: there are a lot of problems we have in the

942
00:52:42,000 --> 00:52:48,799
Speaker 8: world today that the many of us are that our government,

943
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:54,560
Speaker 8: our society, our corporations are largely ignoring one hundred and

944
00:52:54,560 --> 00:52:59,120
Speaker 8: thirty million Americans are chronically ill. A massive chunk of

945
00:52:59,160 --> 00:53:01,840
Speaker 8: those to a more chronic illness. I think it's like

946
00:53:02,239 --> 00:53:05,440
Speaker 8: fifty million have four more, thirty million out five or more.

947
00:53:05,640 --> 00:53:07,759
Speaker 8: We're sicker than ever before. If you go and look

948
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:14,160
Speaker 8: at the charts around Crone's disease, Celiacs, autism, Parkinson's diabetes.

949
00:53:15,040 --> 00:53:17,480
Speaker 8: They're they're through the roof. It's one in thirty kids

950
00:53:17,520 --> 00:53:19,480
Speaker 8: are being born with autism these days. Used to be

951
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:23,080
Speaker 8: one in thirty thousand. On the flip side, our planet

952
00:53:23,280 --> 00:53:26,480
Speaker 8: is getting destroyed. Forty five trillion dollars I think I

953
00:53:26,520 --> 00:53:29,800
Speaker 8: saw stat recently. Forty five trillion dollars of our global

954
00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:34,839
Speaker 8: annual GDP is made in an unsustainable way, meaning it's

955
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:39,319
Speaker 8: extracted from nature. So you know what this wall is

956
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:41,759
Speaker 8: made out of, and that lamp and this microphone and

957
00:53:41,760 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 8: this table all came from nature. It came from somewhere

958
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:50,160
Speaker 8: that was once natural habitat with animals and insects and

959
00:53:50,239 --> 00:53:54,040
Speaker 8: all this gorgeous nature, and that was ripped apart to

960
00:53:54,560 --> 00:53:57,120
Speaker 8: put these things here. Our couch is everything right, and

961
00:53:57,200 --> 00:54:04,240
Speaker 8: so we're doing we're taking from the sure we're nature's

962
00:54:04,239 --> 00:54:07,840
Speaker 8: getting destroyed. We're using very harmful chemicals. And all of

963
00:54:07,840 --> 00:54:11,480
Speaker 8: our products, our soaps or shampoos or toothpaste or laundry

964
00:54:11,520 --> 00:54:16,520
Speaker 8: detergent or linens, the furniture, the toxins that are emitted

965
00:54:16,600 --> 00:54:19,640
Speaker 8: as fumes into our households were breathing in all day

966
00:54:19,719 --> 00:54:22,879
Speaker 8: or getting absorbed into our skin and our blood all day,

967
00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:29,080
Speaker 8: which is creating the sickness. So I became frankly petrified

968
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:35,640
Speaker 8: about where our planet is headache, and so I asked

969
00:54:35,680 --> 00:54:39,680
Speaker 8: the question. I was like, how do we solve these

970
00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:44,320
Speaker 8: gargantuan problems? And I realized that nothing is going to

971
00:54:44,440 --> 00:54:49,880
Speaker 8: change until a change where our money goes. Where money

972
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:54,640
Speaker 8: goes is where energy flows. So if they say you

973
00:54:54,760 --> 00:54:58,279
Speaker 8: vote once every four years for your president, well you're

974
00:54:58,360 --> 00:55:03,640
Speaker 8: voting every single day for what corporations you support and

975
00:55:03,719 --> 00:55:07,440
Speaker 8: what practices you support. So if you're trying to vote

976
00:55:07,560 --> 00:55:09,960
Speaker 8: good in politics, but every day you're buying things on

977
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:13,000
Speaker 8: Amazon that are made for chemicals that are bad for

978
00:55:13,040 --> 00:55:15,640
Speaker 8: your health, that are bad for the planet, that's destroying

979
00:55:15,640 --> 00:55:20,000
Speaker 8: the planet, that's eviscerating small businesses who try to innovate

980
00:55:20,040 --> 00:55:24,200
Speaker 8: and get ripped off, which is what's happening with most

981
00:55:24,239 --> 00:55:29,319
Speaker 8: of our dollars, horrible work conditions. We're voting for all

982
00:55:29,320 --> 00:55:32,040
Speaker 8: these things every single day, and so we wonder why

983
00:55:32,080 --> 00:55:34,520
Speaker 8: the world is in such a bad shape when we're

984
00:55:34,600 --> 00:55:37,960
Speaker 8: voting for these horrible things. We're voting for illness, destruction

985
00:55:38,120 --> 00:55:43,600
Speaker 8: of nature, horrible work conditions, and a visceration of small business.

986
00:55:43,680 --> 00:55:48,040
Speaker 8: We're voting for that every day when we shop, and

987
00:55:48,080 --> 00:55:53,040
Speaker 8: we wonder why these problems exist. So I had this

988
00:55:53,200 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 8: crazy idea of building an inverted Amazon or instead of

989
00:55:59,480 --> 00:56:05,239
Speaker 8: the it's the cheapest, lowest cost, you know, suppliers, it's not.

990
00:56:05,520 --> 00:56:07,160
Speaker 8: We're not gonna make it more expensive. We're going to

991
00:56:07,200 --> 00:56:10,680
Speaker 8: prioritize small businesses. Instead of ripping off the small businesses,

992
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:14,600
Speaker 8: We're going to prioritize small businesses. Instead of letting anything

993
00:56:14,640 --> 00:56:18,560
Speaker 8: on the store, We're gonna let only products that pass

994
00:56:18,640 --> 00:56:23,719
Speaker 8: our standards around uh chemicals, toxins. We're gonna do the

995
00:56:23,719 --> 00:56:26,400
Speaker 8: homework on behalf of consumers, and we're gonna look at

996
00:56:26,400 --> 00:56:31,440
Speaker 8: sustainability and so we're gonna hold high standards and build

997
00:56:31,480 --> 00:56:34,120
Speaker 8: a new everything store. We call it the clean green

998
00:56:34,200 --> 00:56:39,600
Speaker 8: Everything Store, which is love dot com. When you think

999
00:56:39,640 --> 00:56:43,680
Speaker 8: of the name love dot com, so or love meets commerce.

1000
00:56:45,560 --> 00:56:46,640
Speaker 7: And so this is.

1001
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:50,480
Speaker 8: The bridge that we're building. And I'm sorry if I'm

1002
00:56:50,520 --> 00:56:53,560
Speaker 8: talking a little too long on just finish for consumers,

1003
00:56:53,680 --> 00:56:55,719
Speaker 8: where today it's way too hard. Let's say you want

1004
00:56:55,719 --> 00:56:59,799
Speaker 8: to vote with your dollars and vote for better values. Well,

1005
00:56:59,840 --> 00:57:03,600
Speaker 8: if you're gonna search non toxic deodoran or sustainable furniture,

1006
00:57:03,920 --> 00:57:07,640
Speaker 8: it's too much work like Google search and find the brands,

1007
00:57:07,680 --> 00:57:13,000
Speaker 8: research the brand, separate site, separate shopping experiences, one stop shop.

1008
00:57:13,040 --> 00:57:15,640
Speaker 8: With love dot Com, you can search for anything and

1009
00:57:15,680 --> 00:57:18,360
Speaker 8: everything you find is passed a certain threshold of our

1010
00:57:18,400 --> 00:57:21,800
Speaker 8: Love standards and it's generally speaking, good for your body,

1011
00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:23,800
Speaker 8: good for a planet, good for small business.

1012
00:57:24,680 --> 00:57:27,560
Speaker 4: So it's all is there a name for that? Like

1013
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:29,040
Speaker 4: environmental friendly?

1014
00:57:29,400 --> 00:57:32,040
Speaker 6: Is it? What's the name? Like?

1015
00:57:32,040 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 8: Like, yeah, we're calling it the clean Green Everything Store.

1016
00:57:35,840 --> 00:57:41,120
Speaker 6: So anything in society that you want but done ethically.

1017
00:57:40,920 --> 00:57:44,880
Speaker 8: Yeah, made with love. All products that are made with

1018
00:57:44,960 --> 00:57:49,680
Speaker 8: love are made ethically. Now, not everything is perfect. We

1019
00:57:49,880 --> 00:57:53,000
Speaker 8: have a page that describes our standards. Not everything is

1020
00:57:53,040 --> 00:57:57,600
Speaker 8: perfectly sustainable or perfectly organic, but it has enough the

1021
00:57:57,760 --> 00:58:00,800
Speaker 8: businesses are trying hard enough where we say, all right,

1022
00:58:00,800 --> 00:58:03,520
Speaker 8: they're trying hard enough, They've done enough things where it's

1023
00:58:03,560 --> 00:58:05,600
Speaker 8: past our standards and they can make it on the

1024
00:58:05,640 --> 00:58:06,440
Speaker 8: Love marketplace.

1025
00:58:06,720 --> 00:58:11,680
Speaker 4: So this is like Amazon for companies that operate at

1026
00:58:11,680 --> 00:58:13,040
Speaker 4: the highest ethical.

1027
00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:18,880
Speaker 8: Level exactly exactly, and to give the ethical consumers the

1028
00:58:18,960 --> 00:58:22,800
Speaker 8: same shopping experience as Amazon, because right now they have

1029
00:58:22,840 --> 00:58:27,360
Speaker 8: to spend way too much time shopping, discovering, research. Now

1030
00:58:27,400 --> 00:58:30,080
Speaker 8: they have one place to go for everything they need

1031
00:58:30,120 --> 00:58:30,640
Speaker 8: to purchase.

1032
00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:33,280
Speaker 3: Focusing on small businesses specific.

1033
00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:37,440
Speaker 8: YEP, ninety five plus percent of the brands and products

1034
00:58:37,440 --> 00:58:40,720
Speaker 8: on our site are made by small businesses.

1035
00:58:40,800 --> 00:58:43,959
Speaker 6: And it's everything from clothing to groceries.

1036
00:58:44,520 --> 00:58:51,880
Speaker 8: Yeah, clothing, groceries, bedding, beauty, bath baby. We're adding we

1037
00:58:51,960 --> 00:58:54,840
Speaker 8: have over ten thousand skews on the site now. We

1038
00:58:54,920 --> 00:58:57,280
Speaker 8: want to be at thirty thousand by end of this month,

1039
00:58:58,160 --> 00:59:01,480
Speaker 8: sixty thousand by the following month. So we're sourcing products

1040
00:59:01,920 --> 00:59:07,560
Speaker 8: morning till night, and uh yeah, I'm super excited about it.

1041
00:59:08,080 --> 00:59:11,720
Speaker 5: I think the first thing we laughed about, I'm like,

1042
00:59:12,120 --> 00:59:13,960
Speaker 5: love dot you trademarked that.

1043
00:59:14,040 --> 00:59:15,800
Speaker 3: I'm like, how did you get love do? Nobody had that?

1044
00:59:16,280 --> 00:59:19,160
Speaker 5: And then I was like, okay, I first thought maybe

1045
00:59:19,200 --> 00:59:21,520
Speaker 5: you said you wanted to solve something in the world,

1046
00:59:21,920 --> 00:59:25,280
Speaker 5: and you said, what's the number one thing that affects

1047
00:59:25,320 --> 00:59:25,720
Speaker 5: our world?

1048
00:59:25,760 --> 00:59:28,200
Speaker 3: And we left there and I was when I left.

1049
00:59:28,000 --> 00:59:30,440
Speaker 5: I'm like, I must be talking about health, but the

1050
00:59:30,480 --> 00:59:32,920
Speaker 5: health of the environment, the health of the world really

1051
00:59:33,240 --> 00:59:36,400
Speaker 5: in a sense so you have both and you have

1052
00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:40,320
Speaker 5: love dot com. Is this now all the practices that

1053
00:59:40,360 --> 00:59:43,960
Speaker 5: you've learned, you're now implementing them in real time and

1054
00:59:44,640 --> 00:59:45,480
Speaker 5: I'm doing this again.

1055
00:59:45,600 --> 00:59:50,680
Speaker 8: I can do it again exactly because with both, we're

1056
00:59:50,680 --> 00:59:52,920
Speaker 8: giving every shop the Amazon.

1057
00:59:52,440 --> 00:59:53,520
Speaker 7: One click experience.

1058
00:59:54,520 --> 01:00:00,480
Speaker 8: So we have some great customers like Revolve, Fanatics, Asper

1059
01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:03,800
Speaker 8: Sacks off Fifth who. Now when you go in your shop,

1060
01:00:03,840 --> 01:00:08,440
Speaker 8: there you have this incredible one click Amazon one click experience.

1061
01:00:08,480 --> 01:00:11,400
Speaker 8: It's powered by bolts. So I've been spending the last

1062
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:15,000
Speaker 8: ten years building streamline and commerce experience.

1063
01:00:15,160 --> 01:00:17,520
Speaker 5: Who are your other clients because everything you just said,

1064
01:00:17,640 --> 01:00:19,600
Speaker 5: I've shopped in the last month, and I even have

1065
01:00:19,600 --> 01:00:21,080
Speaker 5: any idea.

1066
01:00:21,480 --> 01:00:25,040
Speaker 8: Well, see, it works in a this kind of magical

1067
01:00:25,080 --> 01:00:29,160
Speaker 8: way where we're not like a PayPal or an Apple

1068
01:00:29,200 --> 01:00:32,120
Speaker 8: pay or Google pay, where the button is front and center,

1069
01:00:32,200 --> 01:00:33,760
Speaker 8: it redirects you somewhere else.

1070
01:00:34,240 --> 01:00:35,480
Speaker 7: It's just native on the site.

1071
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:37,040
Speaker 8: So if you start typing in your email and we

1072
01:00:37,080 --> 01:00:39,520
Speaker 8: have your account, we'll be like, hey, you already have

1073
01:00:39,520 --> 01:00:41,880
Speaker 8: an account. Enter one time code sent your phone, You

1074
01:00:42,000 --> 01:00:45,240
Speaker 8: enter one time code, all of your information is preloaded.

1075
01:00:45,240 --> 01:00:46,160
Speaker 7: And then you click pay.

1076
01:00:47,800 --> 01:00:51,760
Speaker 8: And so the bolt as opposed to these other wallets

1077
01:00:52,760 --> 01:00:57,400
Speaker 8: is embedded and native to the merchant site. That's our

1078
01:00:57,680 --> 01:01:03,160
Speaker 8: unique innovation. And so yeah, we've got hundreds and hundreds

1079
01:01:03,200 --> 01:01:04,400
Speaker 8: of retailers.

1080
01:01:05,120 --> 01:01:05,640
Speaker 7: Both is.

1081
01:01:07,160 --> 01:01:09,600
Speaker 8: God willn't going to have a breakout year this year.

1082
01:01:09,680 --> 01:01:12,600
Speaker 8: We're signing major brands as the ones I've listed and

1083
01:01:12,640 --> 01:01:18,160
Speaker 8: many others, and we're just there's a domino effect of retailers.

1084
01:01:19,200 --> 01:01:24,000
Speaker 8: We've got eighty million shoppers on the network now, which

1085
01:01:24,040 --> 01:01:26,320
Speaker 8: is massive. You know, two years ago, I think it

1086
01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:29,720
Speaker 8: was like eleven or twelve million shoppers on our network.

1087
01:01:30,240 --> 01:01:33,600
Speaker 8: So the network is expanding rapidly. The goal with both

1088
01:01:33,720 --> 01:01:36,320
Speaker 8: is to build is to let everyone build their own

1089
01:01:36,720 --> 01:01:39,680
Speaker 8: have their own Amazon one click checkout experience where there's

1090
01:01:39,680 --> 01:01:43,120
Speaker 8: no different shopping from Reva to Casper to Amazon.

1091
01:01:44,320 --> 01:01:48,160
Speaker 5: So are you now splitting the time on the how

1092
01:01:48,200 --> 01:01:48,840
Speaker 5: are you balancing that?

1093
01:01:49,760 --> 01:01:50,720
Speaker 7: So I'm very lucky.

1094
01:01:50,760 --> 01:01:56,480
Speaker 8: I've got a CEO named Madu and a president named

1095
01:01:56,480 --> 01:02:01,640
Speaker 8: cal who are very senior executives at Amazon on uh

1096
01:02:01,800 --> 01:02:05,040
Speaker 8: think of them as like unhireable executives. Col is an

1097
01:02:05,080 --> 01:02:09,160
Speaker 8: SVP at Amazon, reported directly from Bezos to Bezos with

1098
01:02:09,320 --> 01:02:12,920
Speaker 8: CEO Drugstore dot Com and Besos on is board. Modu

1099
01:02:13,080 --> 01:02:17,880
Speaker 8: in all global logistics at Amazon, domestic and international. So

1100
01:02:18,400 --> 01:02:22,720
Speaker 8: their toughest business unit arguably that they put like their

1101
01:02:22,720 --> 01:02:27,479
Speaker 8: best executive into that was Maju, So Modu and Cal

1102
01:02:27,640 --> 01:02:32,040
Speaker 8: basically run circles around me at the higher stages of scaling.

1103
01:02:32,760 --> 01:02:36,560
Speaker 8: So I basically I'm chairman of both, but I'm not CEO,

1104
01:02:36,640 --> 01:02:38,960
Speaker 8: I'm not president. I'm not operating day to day. I

1105
01:02:39,080 --> 01:02:42,000
Speaker 8: check in with them regularly, we do board meetings, I

1106
01:02:42,000 --> 01:02:46,760
Speaker 8: get updates constantly, and I'm kind of actively overseeing as

1107
01:02:46,760 --> 01:02:50,880
Speaker 8: a chairman. Uh. And then Love, I'm the CEO, so

1108
01:02:50,960 --> 01:02:53,320
Speaker 8: I'm doing one on ones with the team every day.

1109
01:02:53,440 --> 01:02:57,280
Speaker 8: I'm running, you know, I'm spending you know, morning till

1110
01:02:57,400 --> 01:03:00,280
Speaker 8: night on. So Love is my main operational folk Gus.

1111
01:03:00,920 --> 01:03:04,959
Speaker 6: But a few questions, So, yeah, how did you trademark Love?

1112
01:03:05,520 --> 01:03:07,040
Speaker 6: Did you trade? Can you trademark Love?

1113
01:03:08,720 --> 01:03:14,920
Speaker 8: You can trademarket and certain classifications so we can use

1114
01:03:15,000 --> 01:03:18,920
Speaker 8: Love in certain capacities and more to comm as we're

1115
01:03:18,960 --> 01:03:23,800
Speaker 8: applying for it. But it's an interesting question, r can

1116
01:03:23,920 --> 01:03:28,120
Speaker 8: you actually trademark Love? We actually had some companies who

1117
01:03:28,160 --> 01:03:33,040
Speaker 8: were who were also named Love who tried to challenge

1118
01:03:33,120 --> 01:03:35,240
Speaker 8: us on this and say, oh you can't use love

1119
01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:38,200
Speaker 8: We're already using it. We worked out some settlements with

1120
01:03:38,240 --> 01:03:39,880
Speaker 8: them to say, hey, we won't use it in these

1121
01:03:39,920 --> 01:03:44,440
Speaker 8: categories for this amount of time. But it is an

1122
01:03:44,440 --> 01:03:50,480
Speaker 8: interesting question. Can you actually trademark Love? What matters to

1123
01:03:50,520 --> 01:03:54,400
Speaker 8: me is I had that Love dot com.

1124
01:03:53,200 --> 01:03:54,400
Speaker 6: So so you pay.

1125
01:03:54,480 --> 01:03:56,160
Speaker 7: You had to pay for that, though we had to

1126
01:03:56,160 --> 01:03:56,520
Speaker 7: pay off.

1127
01:03:59,360 --> 01:04:01,920
Speaker 6: I know that somebody had it already. Yeah.

1128
01:04:02,000 --> 01:04:03,720
Speaker 8: Yahoo had it.

1129
01:04:04,120 --> 01:04:06,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh man, Yeah, that's it.

1130
01:04:06,840 --> 01:04:08,520
Speaker 6: Was it an active site or they just was.

1131
01:04:09,040 --> 01:04:10,440
Speaker 7: No, they weren't using it.

1132
01:04:11,360 --> 01:04:15,280
Speaker 8: There was some old Yahoo email addresses where you could

1133
01:04:15,360 --> 01:04:18,840
Speaker 8: choose love as you're like, they had Yahoo and a

1134
01:04:18,920 --> 01:04:21,480
Speaker 8: million other bell South, all these options, right, you could

1135
01:04:21,520 --> 01:04:24,760
Speaker 8: choose love dot com as one of your options, as

1136
01:04:24,800 --> 01:04:29,600
Speaker 8: your extension. But they had mostly stopped using it, and

1137
01:04:29,640 --> 01:04:31,560
Speaker 8: so when I found out they owned it, I was like,

1138
01:04:33,160 --> 01:04:36,960
Speaker 8: this is good news and bad news. The good news

1139
01:04:37,040 --> 01:04:40,479
Speaker 8: is they're kind of I think they're run by this group,

1140
01:04:40,520 --> 01:04:45,600
Speaker 8: Apollo Group, and there's very financially minded folks, which means

1141
01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:49,160
Speaker 8: they're not planning on doing anything creative with it, right,

1142
01:04:49,560 --> 01:04:55,160
Speaker 8: It's just a private equity operation. So I was like,

1143
01:04:55,200 --> 01:04:57,800
Speaker 8: all right, well, there might actually be willing to sell it.

1144
01:04:57,840 --> 01:05:00,720
Speaker 8: They're just going to charge a high price. That's exactly

1145
01:05:00,760 --> 01:05:05,680
Speaker 8: what happened. That's a bad news exactly.

1146
01:05:06,840 --> 01:05:09,760
Speaker 6: So you built both up. What's bolt valuation now.

1147
01:05:10,760 --> 01:05:16,200
Speaker 7: Well, our last investor around was there, seriously round it

1148
01:05:16,240 --> 01:05:20,040
Speaker 7: was about two years ago, and that was an eleven

1149
01:05:20,080 --> 01:05:21,000
Speaker 7: billion valuation.

1150
01:05:21,440 --> 01:05:24,760
Speaker 6: So you built both up. Eleven billion valuation. That's up

1151
01:05:24,800 --> 01:05:25,280
Speaker 6: and running.

1152
01:05:25,600 --> 01:05:28,240
Speaker 4: You stepped away in the swords because you have management

1153
01:05:28,280 --> 01:05:30,960
Speaker 4: team that's running the company. You're not running it, and

1154
01:05:31,080 --> 01:05:35,520
Speaker 4: now you're focusing on love. Right, that's your new So

1155
01:05:38,160 --> 01:05:43,520
Speaker 4: what's the brain process of building something that's you know,

1156
01:05:43,800 --> 01:05:45,680
Speaker 4: very few people are going to reach that level of

1157
01:05:45,680 --> 01:05:49,240
Speaker 4: successful one company, right, and then now you have to

1158
01:05:49,280 --> 01:05:52,200
Speaker 4: go and start the process all over again. Right, it's

1159
01:05:52,240 --> 01:05:54,160
Speaker 4: a lot of work. Now you're kind of back to

1160
01:05:54,240 --> 01:05:56,400
Speaker 4: day one as far as not back to day one

1161
01:05:56,440 --> 01:05:58,160
Speaker 4: as far as resources, but back to theay one as

1162
01:05:58,160 --> 01:05:59,040
Speaker 4: far as doing the work.

1163
01:06:00,800 --> 01:06:01,880
Speaker 6: What's the thought.

1164
01:06:01,640 --> 01:06:05,560
Speaker 4: Process Because a lot of people would think, if I've

1165
01:06:05,560 --> 01:06:07,520
Speaker 4: reached that level of success, then I'll just ride it

1166
01:06:07,560 --> 01:06:09,840
Speaker 4: out until I sell the company or take a public

1167
01:06:09,880 --> 01:06:11,080
Speaker 4: corgeous whatever like you know.

1168
01:06:11,280 --> 01:06:14,680
Speaker 5: And can we add that, yeah, you're not even in

1169
01:06:15,120 --> 01:06:16,920
Speaker 5: I guess a prime of life yet, right, Like you're

1170
01:06:16,960 --> 01:06:21,400
Speaker 5: not thirty five yet. Like when most people reach millionaire

1171
01:06:21,400 --> 01:06:23,600
Speaker 5: status that they hit that it's around that time or

1172
01:06:23,600 --> 01:06:27,240
Speaker 5: they have the creative idea to do it, so it's again.

1173
01:06:28,920 --> 01:06:35,560
Speaker 8: Yeah, sometimes I wonder what got into me. It's a

1174
01:06:35,680 --> 01:06:38,880
Speaker 8: crazy idea that I just can't get out of my head,

1175
01:06:39,200 --> 01:06:43,240
Speaker 8: this idea for love dot com. And I say it

1176
01:06:43,280 --> 01:06:46,880
Speaker 8: was very blessed. The universe blessed me because this wasn't

1177
01:06:47,120 --> 01:06:51,400
Speaker 8: the plan. I was going to operate both till the

1178
01:06:51,520 --> 01:06:56,040
Speaker 8: end of time. And my COO was Madju. One of

1179
01:06:56,080 --> 01:07:00,520
Speaker 8: my biggest biggest hires was Modu as my COO andto

1180
01:07:01,920 --> 01:07:05,480
Speaker 8: but then more and more people I wanted to report

1181
01:07:05,520 --> 01:07:06,000
Speaker 8: into him.

1182
01:07:06,520 --> 01:07:07,480
Speaker 7: He was so good.

1183
01:07:08,240 --> 01:07:09,840
Speaker 8: I was just like, all right, well, you can take

1184
01:07:09,840 --> 01:07:13,280
Speaker 8: customer success all right, you can take engineering, all right,

1185
01:07:13,320 --> 01:07:17,480
Speaker 8: you can take finance all right, you can take legal

1186
01:07:17,640 --> 01:07:20,400
Speaker 8: all right. Well I kind of just want to have

1187
01:07:20,520 --> 01:07:24,800
Speaker 8: the whole company report into you because you're so much

1188
01:07:24,800 --> 01:07:29,160
Speaker 8: better at managing than I am. And then I was like,

1189
01:07:30,680 --> 01:07:34,360
Speaker 8: I'm like, Maji, you're basically running the company. I should

1190
01:07:34,440 --> 01:07:38,640
Speaker 8: just help empower you and unleash the beast because he's

1191
01:07:38,680 --> 01:07:42,720
Speaker 8: a beast and you step into CEO and I'll be

1192
01:07:42,840 --> 01:07:46,200
Speaker 8: chairman and I'll open doors for customers, I'll help with raises,

1193
01:07:46,280 --> 01:07:52,760
Speaker 8: I'll help, I'll help accelerate things, and I'm gonna go

1194
01:07:53,280 --> 01:07:56,760
Speaker 8: work on some other ideas at the same time. And

1195
01:07:56,800 --> 01:08:01,040
Speaker 8: then Modu hired cal And and then you know, now

1196
01:08:01,320 --> 01:08:06,000
Speaker 8: these guys are ripping, and so I got lucky, very

1197
01:08:06,120 --> 01:08:06,760
Speaker 8: very lucky.

1198
01:08:07,480 --> 01:08:08,680
Speaker 7: This wasn't the plan at all.

1199
01:08:10,440 --> 01:08:12,840
Speaker 6: So what about the crypto savings.

1200
01:08:13,360 --> 01:08:19,280
Speaker 8: Yeah, so Eco is a whole separate story. But I

1201
01:08:19,400 --> 01:08:24,439
Speaker 8: basically didn't want my crypto ideas around ease of use

1202
01:08:24,479 --> 01:08:29,160
Speaker 8: in crypto to go to have to wait or to die.

1203
01:08:30,160 --> 01:08:33,280
Speaker 8: So in parallel, I got some friends together and I said,

1204
01:08:33,360 --> 01:08:38,560
Speaker 8: let's do this thing. It was originally called Beam, and

1205
01:08:38,640 --> 01:08:43,679
Speaker 8: then we had this one of the founders of Uber,

1206
01:08:43,800 --> 01:08:46,799
Speaker 8: the original founder, Garrett Camp, was working on something called Eco,

1207
01:08:48,080 --> 01:08:53,360
Speaker 8: and we decided to join forces and he'd give us

1208
01:08:53,400 --> 01:08:55,479
Speaker 8: the brand, we'd give him some piece of what we

1209
01:08:55,479 --> 01:08:58,880
Speaker 8: were doing, so it became Eco. It's a much longer story,

1210
01:08:58,920 --> 01:09:01,439
Speaker 8: but it's run by one of my closest friends in

1211
01:09:01,479 --> 01:09:04,479
Speaker 8: the world named Andy Bromberg, who's a Stanford friend of mine,

1212
01:09:04,560 --> 01:09:08,680
Speaker 8: also in the Stanford Bitcoin group. So I ran it

1213
01:09:08,720 --> 01:09:11,160
Speaker 8: with a few other friends in the beginning. Andy then

1214
01:09:11,240 --> 01:09:15,240
Speaker 8: joined fears in took over a CEO. So there's about

1215
01:09:15,280 --> 01:09:17,599
Speaker 8: four or five. There's about five of us as co

1216
01:09:17,680 --> 01:09:21,519
Speaker 8: founders there. I originated it, but these guys get all

1217
01:09:21,560 --> 01:09:24,200
Speaker 8: the credit. I kind of got it going. It was

1218
01:09:24,880 --> 01:09:29,120
Speaker 8: a ton of work. And but yeah, they have a

1219
01:09:29,200 --> 01:09:33,479
Speaker 8: wallet called Beam. Beam is like Venmo, but on chain,

1220
01:09:33,880 --> 01:09:37,439
Speaker 8: so it's the easiest way to use crypto on the

1221
01:09:37,520 --> 01:09:41,840
Speaker 8: chain versus coinbase, which is off chain. And they have

1222
01:09:41,880 --> 01:09:46,639
Speaker 8: a currency called eco Currency, which is super cool. It's

1223
01:09:47,120 --> 01:09:51,040
Speaker 8: like a semi stable coin. There's a panel of economists

1224
01:09:51,280 --> 01:09:54,760
Speaker 8: who vote on the monetary policy, so it's kind of

1225
01:09:56,520 --> 01:10:01,000
Speaker 8: it's a decentralized governance around inflation of the coin and

1226
01:10:01,040 --> 01:10:04,559
Speaker 8: all of this. So it's an amazing project and I

1227
01:10:04,600 --> 01:10:07,080
Speaker 8: think is going to have some big years coming up.

1228
01:10:08,560 --> 01:10:11,160
Speaker 3: You started the Bitcoin Board in twenty thirteen.

1229
01:10:11,680 --> 01:10:15,600
Speaker 5: I wonder what your thoughts around the space as you

1230
01:10:15,680 --> 01:10:20,679
Speaker 5: watch you know, most recently the Bitcoin etf could pass,

1231
01:10:22,400 --> 01:10:26,120
Speaker 5: and that, you know, just the hype around it. Knowing

1232
01:10:26,160 --> 01:10:29,160
Speaker 5: that in twenty thirteen you are trying to convince people

1233
01:10:29,680 --> 01:10:31,479
Speaker 5: that this is the thing of the future. You're going

1234
01:10:31,520 --> 01:10:35,080
Speaker 5: to financial institutions. You're probably like, kid, get out of here.

1235
01:10:35,120 --> 01:10:37,760
Speaker 5: You know what I'm talking about, And now here we

1236
01:10:37,840 --> 01:10:41,920
Speaker 5: are regulation ETFs.

1237
01:10:42,360 --> 01:10:44,080
Speaker 3: What was going through your mind during that time?

1238
01:10:45,640 --> 01:10:49,280
Speaker 8: Well, in twenty thirteen, I remember we had a dinner

1239
01:10:50,600 --> 01:10:54,960
Speaker 8: and or maybe it's twenty fourteen, and a bunch of

1240
01:10:55,000 --> 01:10:58,439
Speaker 8: people asked, or I think bitcoin will be in a decade,

1241
01:10:58,600 --> 01:11:01,240
Speaker 8: and I said, And at the time it was maybe

1242
01:11:01,320 --> 01:11:03,960
Speaker 8: tens of dollars, and I said, I think it's going

1243
01:11:04,000 --> 01:11:07,240
Speaker 8: to be one hundred thousand dollars a coin. And it's

1244
01:11:07,320 --> 01:11:10,400
Speaker 8: kind of been tracking to that almost exactly to the decades.

1245
01:11:10,400 --> 01:11:12,759
Speaker 8: So it's not quite there yet, but it's getting pretty close.

1246
01:11:14,040 --> 01:11:17,560
Speaker 8: And so I mean, it's been an amazing journey. I

1247
01:11:17,640 --> 01:11:20,760
Speaker 8: think we saw in the beginning merchant adoption we thought

1248
01:11:20,840 --> 01:11:23,320
Speaker 8: was going to be the big thing. Then that didn't

1249
01:11:23,320 --> 01:11:26,280
Speaker 8: have a lot of volume. Then then there's a second

1250
01:11:26,320 --> 01:11:28,799
Speaker 8: way of merchant adoption. It started to get some volume.

1251
01:11:29,680 --> 01:11:30,599
Speaker 7: We now have.

1252
01:11:30,680 --> 01:11:37,840
Speaker 8: Obviously ordinals on bitcoin, we have THEEUM which is doing

1253
01:11:37,880 --> 01:11:41,679
Speaker 8: remarkably well, which provides all this new functionality on top

1254
01:11:41,720 --> 01:11:46,000
Speaker 8: of the chain. I think ETFs are huge because the

1255
01:11:46,120 --> 01:11:50,400
Speaker 8: number one value prop of bitcoin and crypto is being

1256
01:11:50,439 --> 01:11:53,479
Speaker 8: able to store it yourself. But the reality is not

1257
01:11:53,560 --> 01:11:58,960
Speaker 8: everybody wants to. So just to have a financially regulated

1258
01:12:01,479 --> 01:12:04,800
Speaker 8: security that you can buy that gives you exposure for

1259
01:12:04,960 --> 01:12:07,960
Speaker 8: a ninety percent of people who don't want to manage

1260
01:12:07,960 --> 01:12:13,160
Speaker 8: a wallet off chain or on chain is uh is massive.

1261
01:12:13,320 --> 01:12:15,519
Speaker 8: It's it's beyond massive.

1262
01:12:16,720 --> 01:12:19,240
Speaker 5: I can imagine how surreal it is, as you know,

1263
01:12:19,320 --> 01:12:21,640
Speaker 5: as somebody who was trying to build a wallet so

1264
01:12:21,680 --> 01:12:26,519
Speaker 5: that people could sympathize and have their crypto coin bitcoin

1265
01:12:26,840 --> 01:12:29,280
Speaker 5: store to now saying all right, well there's an ETF

1266
01:12:29,560 --> 01:12:29,960
Speaker 5: here you go.

1267
01:12:31,439 --> 01:12:34,240
Speaker 7: It's a dream come true. It's incredible.

1268
01:12:34,880 --> 01:12:39,479
Speaker 4: So so you also champion a four week, a four

1269
01:12:39,600 --> 01:12:40,519
Speaker 4: day work week.

1270
01:12:40,720 --> 01:12:43,200
Speaker 6: Right, yep, So talk about that.

1271
01:12:45,479 --> 01:12:49,559
Speaker 8: So what I realized is that we have a big

1272
01:12:50,600 --> 01:12:59,000
Speaker 8: problem in the typical workplace, which is that most of

1273
01:13:00,080 --> 01:13:03,479
Speaker 8: corporate America, at least what I've seen is that everyone

1274
01:13:03,560 --> 01:13:08,280
Speaker 8: is perpetually exhausted, and so they're work in five days

1275
01:13:08,280 --> 01:13:11,080
Speaker 8: a week. They're in a bunch of monotonous meetings of

1276
01:13:11,200 --> 01:13:14,840
Speaker 8: doing work. They're not even sure as important. They have

1277
01:13:14,880 --> 01:13:18,639
Speaker 8: to catch up on work on the weekends while they

1278
01:13:18,640 --> 01:13:22,439
Speaker 8: take care of their families, and you know, no one

1279
01:13:22,439 --> 01:13:23,439
Speaker 8: can ever catch up.

1280
01:13:25,400 --> 01:13:25,880
Speaker 7: And so.

1281
01:13:27,520 --> 01:13:30,440
Speaker 8: Forty work week is tied in with a few concepts,

1282
01:13:30,520 --> 01:13:34,360
Speaker 8: but the underpinning is that I've tried to figure out

1283
01:13:34,360 --> 01:13:38,080
Speaker 8: in my companies is how to eliminate what I call

1284
01:13:38,160 --> 01:13:42,600
Speaker 8: work theater. And this is a phrase that most of

1285
01:13:42,600 --> 01:13:44,880
Speaker 8: the things I talk about I've used from others. This

1286
01:13:44,920 --> 01:13:49,040
Speaker 8: is a phrase that I coined work theater. Most of

1287
01:13:49,080 --> 01:13:53,320
Speaker 8: the work that people do doesn't matter. I'd say ninety

1288
01:13:53,360 --> 01:13:58,759
Speaker 8: percent is work theater, meaning it's work that just looks

1289
01:13:59,040 --> 01:14:02,880
Speaker 8: good but doesn't actually accomplish anything.

1290
01:14:04,320 --> 01:14:04,599
Speaker 6: Right.

1291
01:14:04,640 --> 01:14:08,559
Speaker 8: And so people working so much, they're so exhausted, and

1292
01:14:08,560 --> 01:14:13,480
Speaker 8: they're getting nothing done for the company because they're consumed

1293
01:14:13,560 --> 01:14:18,160
Speaker 8: with red tape and bureaucracy. And so what I found

1294
01:14:18,280 --> 01:14:21,840
Speaker 8: is by shortening the work week and say no, you

1295
01:14:21,880 --> 01:14:25,040
Speaker 8: don't have five days to get everything done. You've got

1296
01:14:25,040 --> 01:14:28,759
Speaker 8: four days to get everything done. You can't schedule meetings

1297
01:14:28,760 --> 01:14:31,240
Speaker 8: Friday through Sunday. You need to expect people are going

1298
01:14:31,280 --> 01:14:33,559
Speaker 8: to be off these four days. You're going to be

1299
01:14:33,640 --> 01:14:39,719
Speaker 8: present focused. This I took from Twitter is not mine.

1300
01:14:39,720 --> 01:14:42,000
Speaker 8: It's called work like a lion, not like a cow.

1301
01:14:42,720 --> 01:14:42,880
Speaker 7: Right.

1302
01:14:43,000 --> 01:14:45,760
Speaker 8: I want my team to come in and work like lions.

1303
01:14:45,760 --> 01:14:50,120
Speaker 8: For four days as much as they can, and then

1304
01:14:50,160 --> 01:14:52,719
Speaker 8: I want them to go relax, be with their family,

1305
01:14:52,880 --> 01:14:57,200
Speaker 8: be with their friends, enjoy life, heal so that they

1306
01:14:57,240 --> 01:15:01,599
Speaker 8: can come and work like lions. I think as human beings,

1307
01:15:01,600 --> 01:15:05,080
Speaker 8: we're supposed to go hunt and then we're supposed to

1308
01:15:05,160 --> 01:15:09,400
Speaker 8: go relax. We spend too much time in this middle ground.

1309
01:15:10,000 --> 01:15:13,800
Speaker 8: So to me, I found much more productivity when we

1310
01:15:13,840 --> 01:15:18,840
Speaker 8: have these intense spurts of hunting and then were ever

1311
01:15:19,040 --> 01:15:21,519
Speaker 8: people have their own lives, So.

1312
01:15:21,520 --> 01:15:24,000
Speaker 6: All your employees work for four days?

1313
01:15:25,520 --> 01:15:26,080
Speaker 7: Yes and no?

1314
01:15:27,000 --> 01:15:27,520
Speaker 3: Uh.

1315
01:15:28,520 --> 01:15:32,719
Speaker 8: We try to adhere to it with love. With both,

1316
01:15:34,120 --> 01:15:37,920
Speaker 8: it's been experiments, so both has it rolled out, but

1317
01:15:38,000 --> 01:15:40,720
Speaker 8: both his later stage could maybe afford to do it

1318
01:15:40,760 --> 01:15:43,439
Speaker 8: a little bit more love. We're trying to do it,

1319
01:15:43,479 --> 01:15:45,960
Speaker 8: but we still end up working a lot of fridays.

1320
01:15:46,960 --> 01:15:49,680
Speaker 8: So I can't say fully that we're doing it with

1321
01:15:49,760 --> 01:15:53,679
Speaker 8: love right now, but we're trying. We're being mindful of it.

1322
01:15:53,479 --> 01:15:57,840
Speaker 6: And you champion remote work, right Yeah.

1323
01:15:57,560 --> 01:16:01,080
Speaker 8: All my companies are one hundred percent remote. I never

1324
01:16:01,120 --> 01:16:04,840
Speaker 8: want to go back to an office again, and that's

1325
01:16:04,880 --> 01:16:06,519
Speaker 8: just the personal choice that I made.

1326
01:16:07,439 --> 01:16:08,360
Speaker 7: And other hubs.

1327
01:16:09,439 --> 01:16:13,439
Speaker 8: So some folks, there's a cluster in San Francisco, or

1328
01:16:13,439 --> 01:16:15,760
Speaker 8: a cluster in New York or cluster in LA and

1329
01:16:15,800 --> 01:16:19,040
Speaker 8: they meet up. They may have shared workspaces. So there's

1330
01:16:19,080 --> 01:16:21,920
Speaker 8: certain clusters that like to come together into my various

1331
01:16:21,920 --> 01:16:25,240
Speaker 8: companies and work a prism. Another one of my companies

1332
01:16:25,240 --> 01:16:28,559
Speaker 8: has a bona fide office, but they have a pretty

1333
01:16:28,720 --> 01:16:31,479
Speaker 8: kind of hardcore sales culture and it fits them.

1334
01:16:31,560 --> 01:16:33,240
Speaker 7: So you know, I do.

1335
01:16:33,400 --> 01:16:35,839
Speaker 8: One of my companies does have a bona fide office,

1336
01:16:35,920 --> 01:16:40,000
Speaker 8: but it's not something that I'm that I'm married to

1337
01:16:40,120 --> 01:16:43,160
Speaker 8: at all, and I typically prefer remote.

1338
01:16:43,439 --> 01:16:46,120
Speaker 3: So you got both has eight hundred employees.

1339
01:16:47,800 --> 01:16:51,439
Speaker 7: No, both has gone down by quite a bit.

1340
01:16:51,760 --> 01:16:56,800
Speaker 8: We've just realized that with our narrow focus on going

1341
01:16:56,840 --> 01:17:00,719
Speaker 8: after the world's largest customers, we didn't need as many

1342
01:17:00,800 --> 01:17:06,200
Speaker 8: people and many headcounts. So we actually completely removed our

1343
01:17:06,240 --> 01:17:10,280
Speaker 8: focus on SMB just small, small and medium sized businesses

1344
01:17:11,040 --> 01:17:13,320
Speaker 8: to focus on big accounts. So we brought the company.

1345
01:17:13,360 --> 01:17:16,439
Speaker 8: Now it's below two hundred. How many you d love

1346
01:17:17,720 --> 01:17:18,960
Speaker 8: about fifteen.

1347
01:17:19,280 --> 01:17:22,200
Speaker 5: Right, And so you have that, but you also have

1348
01:17:22,280 --> 01:17:25,240
Speaker 5: the nonprofit work, yes, and I know that's very important

1349
01:17:25,240 --> 01:17:27,479
Speaker 5: to you talk about that.

1350
01:17:30,240 --> 01:17:33,479
Speaker 8: I believe that spiritually we're supposed to give at least

1351
01:17:33,560 --> 01:17:36,559
Speaker 8: ten percent, if not twenty percent, of what you make back.

1352
01:17:37,640 --> 01:17:40,080
Speaker 8: This is my fundamental belief. I believe if you don't

1353
01:17:40,120 --> 01:17:46,679
Speaker 8: do that, you're hurting yourself because you're gonna have you're

1354
01:17:46,680 --> 01:17:51,559
Speaker 8: creating karma. And so selfishly, I want to stay healthy,

1355
01:17:51,640 --> 01:17:52,679
Speaker 8: I want to stay safe.

1356
01:17:52,720 --> 01:17:53,200
Speaker 7: I want my.

1357
01:17:53,160 --> 01:17:59,000
Speaker 8: Businesses to be successful. So so I try to give

1358
01:17:59,080 --> 01:18:01,880
Speaker 8: back as much as I can because I know spiritually

1359
01:18:01,960 --> 01:18:07,240
Speaker 8: you have to. It's not a lot of people say, oh,

1360
01:18:07,240 --> 01:18:09,680
Speaker 8: we're going to wait until later in life, that's a

1361
01:18:09,720 --> 01:18:12,800
Speaker 8: proven thing to do. I don't believe in that at all.

1362
01:18:12,840 --> 01:18:15,240
Speaker 8: I think you have to always be giving back to

1363
01:18:15,280 --> 01:18:18,880
Speaker 8: the community. It has to become a muscle that becomes

1364
01:18:19,040 --> 01:18:25,360
Speaker 8: ingrained in you. So I have a few different impactulated initiatives.

1365
01:18:27,760 --> 01:18:33,960
Speaker 8: My most prominent nonprofit is called the Movement. So dance

1366
01:18:34,000 --> 01:18:37,480
Speaker 8: has completely changed my life. It was a healthy outlet

1367
01:18:38,760 --> 01:18:41,320
Speaker 8: for me that got me through many tough times in

1368
01:18:41,360 --> 01:18:46,200
Speaker 8: a very healthy way. And so I realized that dancing

1369
01:18:46,479 --> 01:18:49,840
Speaker 8: is one of the most scalable ways to spread happiness

1370
01:18:50,800 --> 01:18:53,240
Speaker 8: and mental health because all you.

1371
01:18:53,160 --> 01:18:54,519
Speaker 7: Need is a floor and a speaker.

1372
01:18:54,960 --> 01:18:56,519
Speaker 8: So if you're going to try to solve a mental

1373
01:18:56,520 --> 01:19:02,439
Speaker 8: health crisis at a homeless shelter, refugee camp, it's very difficult.

1374
01:19:02,520 --> 01:19:04,200
Speaker 8: You have to hire if you're gonna have to hire

1375
01:19:04,200 --> 01:19:06,760
Speaker 8: a psychiatrists, it's one on one or one hundred of

1376
01:19:06,760 --> 01:19:11,360
Speaker 8: dollars per hour. Other methodologies are not very scalable or

1377
01:19:11,479 --> 01:19:16,599
Speaker 8: very expensive. Dance you know, flour in a speaker, and

1378
01:19:16,680 --> 01:19:21,320
Speaker 8: so we started. We did some work with some homeless shelter,

1379
01:19:21,520 --> 01:19:27,200
Speaker 8: some disabled centers, after school programs, and then we realize

1380
01:19:27,240 --> 01:19:30,320
Speaker 8: that we can go do refugee camps where there's one

1381
01:19:30,400 --> 01:19:34,200
Speaker 8: hundreds of thousands of people who are suffering. So we've

1382
01:19:34,240 --> 01:19:37,640
Speaker 8: picked one of the largest in Africa called Biddy Biddy

1383
01:19:37,800 --> 01:19:41,120
Speaker 8: and two hundred and fifty thousand refugees in Uganda. Then

1384
01:19:41,120 --> 01:19:47,439
Speaker 8: a massive suicide crisis, a massive mental health crisis. I

1385
01:19:47,439 --> 01:19:49,880
Speaker 8: think it's something like thirty or forty percent of their

1386
01:19:49,920 --> 01:19:52,839
Speaker 8: residents is they are depressed. It's like a ten percent

1387
01:19:52,880 --> 01:19:55,240
Speaker 8: annual suicide right, don't quote me on that, but I

1388
01:19:55,280 --> 01:20:01,240
Speaker 8: mean it's those proportions and a lot of the folks

1389
01:20:01,240 --> 01:20:03,200
Speaker 8: that have nothing to live for, and so the goal

1390
01:20:03,240 --> 01:20:06,320
Speaker 8: is to give them something to live for. That is

1391
01:20:06,320 --> 01:20:09,280
Speaker 8: a force that we could afford. So we partnered with

1392
01:20:09,320 --> 01:20:13,040
Speaker 8: another nonprofit who created. This stage is like performance stage,

1393
01:20:14,000 --> 01:20:16,600
Speaker 8: and we do the programming, dance programming, and we have

1394
01:20:16,960 --> 01:20:19,960
Speaker 8: people coming say this is what they now live for.

1395
01:20:20,160 --> 01:20:23,000
Speaker 8: This has changed their life. They didn't take their life

1396
01:20:23,000 --> 01:20:27,320
Speaker 8: because of this. Emma is flourishing and we did almost nothing.

1397
01:20:28,160 --> 01:20:32,599
Speaker 8: We created some curriculum, we trained some people on the ground.

1398
01:20:33,240 --> 01:20:35,280
Speaker 8: We're not fishing for them. We don't hire people to

1399
01:20:35,320 --> 01:20:39,679
Speaker 8: go out and teach me. There's thousands of incredible dancers

1400
01:20:39,720 --> 01:20:43,719
Speaker 8: already as refugees. So we just put a little program

1401
01:20:43,800 --> 01:20:46,200
Speaker 8: together and they've taken the ball and they run with

1402
01:20:46,240 --> 01:20:48,599
Speaker 8: And now we go back every six months check in,

1403
01:20:49,120 --> 01:20:51,520
Speaker 8: help give them advice on how to manage the program.

1404
01:20:51,920 --> 01:20:54,960
Speaker 8: So now I want to scale this to shelters, homeless,

1405
01:20:55,000 --> 01:21:03,000
Speaker 8: refugee schools. This is my biggest passion for charity.

1406
01:21:03,880 --> 01:21:09,599
Speaker 4: Well, it was extremely insightful conversation for sure. Anything any

1407
01:21:09,680 --> 01:21:11,840
Speaker 4: last words you want to leave the audience.

1408
01:21:11,479 --> 01:21:18,759
Speaker 8: With, Well, once again, so honored to be here. Uh,

1409
01:21:18,960 --> 01:21:21,320
Speaker 8: so grateful that we're doing this. After giving our talk,

1410
01:21:21,400 --> 01:21:23,280
Speaker 8: I know we've we've all three of us have been

1411
01:21:23,280 --> 01:21:27,439
Speaker 8: through similar journeys. So you guys have built such an

1412
01:21:27,479 --> 01:21:33,479
Speaker 8: incredible platform that's lifting others up. Too many of us

1413
01:21:33,800 --> 01:21:37,360
Speaker 8: become successful. We don't share the secrets. We don't build

1414
01:21:37,360 --> 01:21:40,040
Speaker 8: the bridges. I know a lot of folks who want

1415
01:21:40,040 --> 01:21:43,280
Speaker 8: to burn the bridges to get to where they are, right,

1416
01:21:43,960 --> 01:21:47,400
Speaker 8: and so I think you guys are building tons of

1417
01:21:47,439 --> 01:21:51,720
Speaker 8: bridges and just excited to build some great bridges and

1418
01:21:51,840 --> 01:21:53,439
Speaker 8: share some great knowledge with you guys.

1419
01:21:53,760 --> 01:21:55,320
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. Appreciate appreciate it.

1420
01:21:55,400 --> 01:21:55,760
Speaker 6: Thank you.

1421
01:21:56,080 --> 01:21:58,120
Speaker 4: Like I said, it was extremely insightful. So thank you

1422
01:21:58,160 --> 01:22:00,480
Speaker 4: for taking the time out of your schedule. And you

1423
01:22:00,479 --> 01:22:03,760
Speaker 4: you got a lot going on, and I look forward to,

1424
01:22:03,880 --> 01:22:06,080
Speaker 4: you know, doing some other stuff, but you're in the future.

1425
01:22:06,280 --> 01:22:06,479
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1426
01:22:06,640 --> 01:22:09,360
Speaker 6: Likewise, all right, God, thank you for rocking us. We'll

1427
01:22:09,360 --> 01:22:10,040
Speaker 6: see you next week.

1428
01:22:10,240 --> 01:22:11,120
Speaker 3: Pete, please love.

1429
01:22:11,840 --> 01:22:15,519
Speaker 1: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child

1430
01:22:15,560 --> 01:22:19,360
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador

1431
01:22:19,600 --> 01:22:23,720
Speaker 1: accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with

1432
01:22:23,800 --> 01:22:27,680
Speaker 1: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just

1433
01:22:27,800 --> 01:22:31,559
Speaker 1: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President

1434
01:22:31,600 --> 01:22:32,040
Speaker 1: Donald J.

1435
01:22:32,120 --> 01:22:35,360
Speaker 2: Trump's leadership. I'm Christy Noman, the United States.

1436
01:22:35,200 --> 01:22:40,000
Speaker 1: Secretary of Homeland Security under President Trump. Attempted illegal border

1437
01:22:40,000 --> 01:22:43,559
Speaker 1: crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over

1438
01:22:43,640 --> 01:22:46,840
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you

1439
01:22:46,920 --> 01:22:50,759
Speaker 1: are here illegally, your next you will be fine nearly

1440
01:22:50,840 --> 01:22:54,000
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned, and deported.

1441
01:22:54,479 --> 01:22:55,679
Speaker 2: You will never return.

1442
01:22:56,000 --> 01:22:59,000
Speaker 1: But if you register using our CBP home app and

1443
01:22:59,080 --> 01:23:01,960
Speaker 1: leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.

1444
01:23:02,360 --> 01:23:04,559
Speaker 2: Do what's right, leave now.

1445
01:23:04,920 --> 01:23:09,679
Speaker 1: Under President Trump America's laws, border and families will be protected.

1446
01:23:09,800 --> 01:23:11,920
Speaker 3: Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security,