Latest / Mork Unfiltered / From Farmboy to Founder
Transcript
- Patrick Mork: I just keep going along for the next 10 years, I'll beat you that billion in revenue. All I have to do is keep going. I've seen speed kill so many companies because people just go too fast. I have the controversial opinion that I think being middle class is the toughest. Life just doesn't work that way. You have to struggle, and struggle is part of the process. The best types of projects are the type that you could mess around with without fear if it breaks. When you ask for help, you also make the person helping you feel good about helping you. What people have to keep in mind is you don't get the resurrection without the What did that teach you about yourself? Welcome back to another episode of Mork Unfiltered, folks. And let me ask you a question right here. What do you do when your company is on the verge of dying, your bank account has gone negative, and you've already dropped out of college? Most people might just crumble and quit. Today's guest didn't. Matthew Vega Sans grew up on a small farm in Miami with chickens and goats. He and his twin brother Michael dropped out of Babson, built a startup that hit over 500 college campuses. Then watched it all nearly shrivel die during the pandemic. And that bank account was what meg negative 2800 from last I heard. Twelve months later, some twenty million dollars in the bank went on to raise over forty-eight million from Founders Fund, Costella Ventures, and Bill Ackman, made the Forbes thirty under thirty, exited successfully, and now at the at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, he's building another company, Gale, an AI platform serving hundreds of finance institutions. All across three continents. This is Mork Unfiltered, and this is the story of Matthew Vegasantz. Matthew, welcome to the show, man. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm glad I look twenty-eight. I just hit thirty. Seriously? Yeah, yeah. I just turned thirty. You just turned thirty. Okay. Well you know, you twenty eight, so I'm flattered. Thank you. I'll take it. I'll take it. ⁓ By the way, do you go by Matthew? Do you go by Matt? I either one. I'm a twin, so everybody calls me Matthew, Michael. I'm older brother Max. And most people call me ⁓ it's either Matthew or Mateo. Mateo liked the nickname. Gotcha. Gotcha. Mateo liked the nickname. Okay, well that's cool. Well listen, man, take us take us back a little bit to to kind of you know to the to the backcountry, right? Take us to take it back to to those early days in Miami, ⁓ Dade County. You know, you grew up on a small farm, chickens, goats, ponies, it's ever everything else. Your parents were from ⁓ Cuban, Puerto Rico, if I'm not if I'm not mistaken. What what ⁓ you know, growing up on our farm, you know, with immigrant parents, what what kind of environment did that kind of create for you? What kind of values did you get out of that when you were a kid? I th yeah, I mean I think I had I think I like I couldn't I don't know if I could've had a better childhood. I think ⁓ growing up on the farm one, we were growing up on the farm was really great because we spent so much time outside. And so we were forced to pay attention a lot to the real world. And I think I was very blessed because I grew up in that time where there were video games and computers starting to become a normal thing, but there was it still wasn't the main thing the way it is where kids are getting phones in as six year olds. And so I was able to grow up seeing what it was like being outside almost twenty four seven and then still having that influence of the digital age. And so I thought that was really great. I think one of the other things that was really important was Because I grew up on the small farm, it's not like I was around computers or anything like that. And so eventually, like if you look at what we're doing today, I think that played a major factor because if you grow up in one of these technology hubs like Boston or San Francisco or New York, you're so ingrained in that culture that you think everybody else is. And so you use certain buzzwords and you anticipate everybody around you is gonna ultimately end up understanding what you're saying. Being from again a small farm, immig my parents are immigrants. So they're not necessarily always the most in tune with what's going on with some of this AI stuff. A lot of that was really great because it's almost like I learned two different languages. I learned how to speak like a normal person. And then I also learned how to speak like a tech nerd. And I would say a lot of I think growing up in that environment was super, super helpful. And I think the other thing too was I saw my grandparent I saw my grandfather, my dad, my uncles, my brothers, my my cousins. We would build a lot of this stuff on the farm. If a fence broke, we'd go fix it. We wouldn't wait around for somebody else to do it. And so I think because of that, we just naturally developed ⁓ an unusually high bias for action. And that was something that was super helpful for us throughout our career. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's it's it's unusual. I mean, you know, a lot of people I talk to that I've interviewed, ⁓ came from an immigrant background. You're the first one that was that that grew up and was raised on a farm. So so that's new. And you know, what when you think about life on a farm, yeah. What what kind of values, you know, do do you were were instilled in you? I mean, you mentioned obviously this bias towards this bias towards action. Yeah. What are the what other values do you think you get from from growing up in that kind of an environment versus growing up in a city or, you know, growing up with parents who are like, you know, I don't know, lawyers or doctors or business people. I am one I think one of the things is also like being pretty resourceful. And so for instance, like if we had like we went to a restaurant and there was leftover food, a lot of people would just throw it away. Like we would bring it back for the animals because we always had big animals. I think the other thing too was always having to plan ahead. And so because of the farm and because Miami's in a pretty significant hurricane zone, we'd have to think about a lot like structures, where are we gonna put the animals? And you're planning this out six, seven, eight months a ahead just in case there's ever there ever is a hurricane. And so you always had to think about things way before it actually happened. I think the other thing too is you learn that ⁓ you learn that the best types of like the best p types of projects are the ones that ⁓ you could you could ⁓ the best types of projects are the type that you could mess around with without fear if it breaks. And I would say that's one of the things that my grandfather and my parents did a super great job of was they would give us old bikes and they would they wouldn't necessarily care if we broke them. They would as long as we were tinkering with them and we were trying stuff out, they gave us a lot of they gave us a lot of ways to express our creativity. And a lot of kids unfortunately don't have access to all those things that we had. They didn't have access to old trailers or old tractors or old bikes the way that we had in order to tinker around. And so I thought that it was something that was super helpful for us where they gave us that freedom to go out and be creative and and really make our own worlds. They would give us a bike and we would we would take like an old bike that you would see for for cyclists down the side the side of the street. We would try to convert that into a BMX bike. And then you might see you might see like a a just a normal golf cart. We might try to put bigger wheels on it to make it an off-road. And so those were things that a lot of parents might tell you not to do. My grandfather, my parents, they encouraged us to go out and tinker. And I think that was a big part of why we ended up the way we did. That's cool. I mean definitely, you know, that sense of curiosity and wonder and tinkering is something that is amazingly useful as an entrepreneur, right? You're always trying new things. You're always scraping by with like barely anything. You're always, you know, you're always tinkering and experimenting with with new with new ideas and new techniques and new processes or tools. Yeah. ⁓ one of the things that I read about you, which I thought was pretty cool, you know, is you you mentioned in another interview that your, you know, your parents always encourage you to Dream Bay. Yeah. And ⁓ at some point, if I remember correctly, you were like five nine, hundred and fifty pounds. You had like this dream of playing in the NBA or something like that Yeah. Your parents didn't shoot you shoot you down on that. So that was ⁓ that was really unusual to be so supportive, you know, this despite your obvious stature. Yeah, no, I'm still five nine, a hundred and fifty pounds. I think now I'm at one fifty two. but no, you know, I I think I think I think if I had to pin down if I had to pinpoint towards one of the things that my parents did really, really well was that they always let us dream big and I think one of the reasons why my parents didn't have an issue with it was because they saw how hard my brother and I would work. We went from despite being not the tallest people, we both had opportunities to go play college basketball and were recruited by a bunch of different places. We played on our travel team. We played on one of the top ⁓ top ranked national teams and everything. And so I think they they were okay with it because of the amount of work they saw. And I think that's one of the things that people don't realize is if our if we say we're chasing something. But our parents don't see us putting in the work, they would call us out on it and be like, Okay, you're you're clearly not serious about it. Therefore, that's where they would step in. But if they saw us putting in the work, they were perfectly fine with us dreaming big. And I think that was one of the things like I even think about it now. A lot of times people hear us say stuff like, We wanna build a company of a certain magnitude. And it sounds ludicrous, but to anybody that sees a way Mike when I work. To see anybody that sees the logic and the thought that Michael and I put behind the stuff that we say and the way we approach things, it makes a lot of sense. And so I think that's one of the things if I could, I'm not a parent, so maybe folks don't want to take my advice, but if there was one thing I would encourage parents to do is it's to let your kids dream big. And as long as they're putting in the work in order to dream big. Where did you, where did you learn that work hard ethic? I mean, you you and your brother are known for. working really hard, right? Where does where did that come from? I think for us it was just we saw what the results of great work was. And so I think if you look at us in if you look at us in certain things, like for for my height and my my basketball, I'm I'm I'm average height in normal world. I'm small in the court. And when I was in like sixth and seventh grade, I was a bench I was a bench warmer. And I really wanted to start and I'll never forget it w during the during the final ⁓ the NBA finals when Kobe was going up against the Celtics and the Magic and all of that, you would hear them talk about his work ethic consistently. And so my brother and I wanted to be like Kobe and we started going to the gym at five o'clock in the morning and working out ridiculous hours. And we just saw all of a sudden we started we started on our team on our on our school team. Then we started at some of the local leagues. Then we started on a travel team. Then we got recruited to go work for ⁓ to go play for a nationally ranked team. And so we started seeing just how if you worked incredibly hard, you'd ultimately unlock insane doors for yourself that you never that you never imagined. And for us, ⁓ we almost got addicted to to just to winning. It's like the once you become a winner, you want to go out and win more and win more. And it just so happens that working hard helps you win. And so I think that's what ultimately happened. The other thing too is we never see it as working hard. So for instance, like my brother and I now work ridiculous hours. Sometimes, like sometimes the hours are so insane. I'm embarrassed to tell people what time I get to do the office. And people can't fathom that we get there that early or that we spend that amount of time. And they think for us it's work. For me, it's not. I get in a bad mood that I have to sleep. I would like I have so much fun in what I do working, it's almost like play for me. And so I the way I compare it to everybody, it's like you say I'm working hard. I say it's like trying to ask a kid not to go to the park and play basketball for six hours on a Saturday. That's yeah. That's what it's like for me. I mean, obviously you're you have the benefit right of not having kids, as you said. Yeah, absolutely. That is a massive advantage. But I I think, you know, I don't know how much you've thought about this, you know, and obviously you you've now you've been a successful and exited entrepreneur, right? Which few people have, but What's the downside, Matthew, when so much of your life rests on what happens at work? I think yeah, I think that I mean, there's definitely there's a bunch of downsides to it. Like right now I like I mentioned I just turned thirty years old and I see people that I went to high school with and they're posting on social media about like they just had their kids and they're they're happily married and whatever. I'm thirty years old and I'm single and I don't have any kids and I see my my parents getting older. I see my siblings. I have six nephews and I see them getting older all the time. And I see the relationships they're forming. And I have to realize, hey, whenever the moment is that I have kids, they're gonna be little cousins. And that's not bad, but they're not gonna have the same relationship that all of these guys are having right now. And so I think that's obviously one. I think one of the other ones too is I missed out on a lot of big moments. Like one of the ones that makes me it always makes me the saddest is my sister got married. A few my sister got married back in 2017, around the time that we were starting the first business. And it always kills me to know that I missed her last week living at the house. That was the last week that all of us would have been living at the house. And I missed it. And so there's certainly big moments like that that ⁓ it's frustrating. And that was because of work. But I think everything has pros and cons. Funny enough, I went to lunch with a butt I went to lunch with a buddy of mine. I hadn't seen him in a few years on this past Monday. And he was kind of saying, like, man, I see you and your brother and I feel so behind. And I'm listening to you not talk now and I feel so behind. And I had to kind of check him. I was like, dude, you feel behind on maybe on the business side, but you have two beautiful kids, a beautiful wife, great family. Like, you're winning by all means. ⁓ I'm just going a completely different trajectory and that's fine. And so there's definitely pros and cons to it. ⁓ but I think that's like anything in life. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's interesting. It it it is a choice. Right. ⁓ and and we'll we'll come back to this because I have a a qu a question I'm dying to ask you about, you know, ⁓ post Lula when you guys sold Lula, but but you know, when you think of that, you know, that ambition that you and your brother have, right? It's like I remember when you guys decided to go to Babson and you you I think had this aspiration to be like, you know, a a bobby axle rod right kind of clone, right? A a Wall Street ⁓ finance broker. ⁓ what was it that pulled you off that path? I think it was the ⁓ It was one of those, so it's funny when we start Lula, the first like iteration of Lula in our dorm room, the the car sharing app, we never there was never a moment that was like, I'm not gonna be a Wall Street guy, I'm just gonna go do this. It was one of those things where the way it all ⁓ happened, like we had my brother had the idea for the app. We applied to a business competition and we don't hear anything from the business competition for like two months. And but we ended up getting in. During that two months, we had completely forgotten about it. And we had actually applied for all of our internships for that summer in New York to go work on Wall Street. And we actually got the internships. And when we end up getting into this competition, again, we weren't planning on doing it seriously, but we ended up going to the semifinals, we put together a booth, we make some t shirts, and we end up doing it. And when we're there, we're seeing the excitement that everybody has towards this idea. And they're telling us hey, when you guys build it, we want to use it, we want to use it. And we started looking, we're like, hey, It would actually be kind of sick in order to to go build this thing and bring it out into the real world. And my brother and I had always liked the idea of tech. The fact that you could you could if you learned how to code, if you learned how to build websites and stuff, you can take an idea and start to make money in a relatively short period of time. And my brother and I were pretty open from a young age. We wanted to be rich. And so we like kidding like one of the big re motivations for Wall Street was because I wanted to be rich like Bobby Axwood. I want to be a Puerto Rican. ⁓ I want be a Puerto Rican Bobby Axelrod, but when we shared when we went to Boston and we were around that tech community for the first time, we started seeing, hey, you can make some serious money on the technology side of things. And it's not like Wall Street where you kind of have to go up the ladder. It's if you make something that people really want right then and there, you can make a bunch of money and you can also have a lot of fun with it. Because we've always like because of our because of our youth, we always like to tinker, we always like to build. Like if you ever went into one of my into my childhood bedroom, you'd see notebooks and notebooks of different things I was trying to invent or I wanted to invent someday. And so when we had that idea, that's really what excited us was the fact that we were going to be able to live out our childhood dreams and be inventors. And then once we kind of went into it, it was one of those things where we just kept having so much fun with it. ⁓ and then fast forward 10 years later, that's still what keeps me going. It's I'm still having fun with it. I I get to live out my my childhood dream. I think of myself very much as an inventor. ⁓ if I I'll think about something, I'll make a drawing or a sketch on paper of what it's supposed to look like and then we go build it. What what was the motivation for I mean, 'cause a lot of people, especially in this country, right? ⁓ a lot of people want to be wealthy. A lot of people, you know, I mean, shit, I work in the design district in Miami. It's like you know, you we don't even have to say anything, right? It's like the cheapest car around the year is like a hundred thousand dollars. What what was the motivation for you and your brother to to be financially independent, to be wealthy? I think one of the things Yeah, I mean I think I ⁓ We grew up, I mean, we grew up in in a middle class family. And I think one of the things that happens with middle class is your dad and your family has a couple of really good years. And then especially we grew up around the global financial crisis. My dad was in real estate. You also have a couple of really bad years. And I have the I have the con I have the controversial opinion that I think being middle class is the toughest because typically if you're on the lower side of the spectrum, you get a lot of benefits. If you're on the higher end of the spectrum, you don't need the benefits. And the middle class You're you're tinkering, but you're struggling quite a bit. And so I think because of that, I saw the way that it stressed my parents out. I saw that. And my last year in high school, I got the my brother and I got a chance, we got scholarships to go to like the most expensive school in Miami. And when we showed up, we are we were sharing a car with our mom, and the ⁓ the kid next to me was rotating between a Lamborghini, ⁓ 9 11, and a Skyline GTR. The kids next to me also had crazy cars. And I would see that quality of life they were living. I was like, I want to give my parents that. My parents and my family and all of that deserve that as well. And so ever since that, we had it, we knew we wanted to be, we want to be wealthy. And growing up on the farm, there were also a couple of wealthy clients, and they would show up in these incredible cars. And I thought it was the coolest thing to have a 4 GT. And so I always wanted that life. Once I started seeing that the money was gonna be possible to go out and attain, ⁓ I mean, it's one of these things where. I I realize how blessed I am for what I'm about to say. I wish everybody from a young age didn't have to worry about money. I wish they got into a position where they didn't have to worry about money because then they'd be able to see how much of a tool money is. It'll have an impact on to have an impact on your community. And so once my brother and I started seeing like what it was like to have a little bit of money and once we made our own money, that's where I went from hey, I it's it's no longer about being rich, it's about having impact. And my my entire methodology now or my entire motto is now. Somebody's gonna make the money. Most people are wasteful with that money. I know I'm not gonna be wasteful with that money. So I wanna make as much of it as possible so I can have I can have an impact. Like one of the things that pisses me off is we're like 15 minutes from the Marlin Stadium. I think when they built that 15 years ago, they spent five hundred and fifty million dollars towards that thing. And they barely get four thousand people to fill it out. It pisses me off that this ⁓ city of Miami did not put that towards STEM programs to help all these kids. To get better education. It pisses me off ⁓ that we still have so many issues in the city. It pisses me off the way that like my brother did a thing where he audited himself the the the Dade County payrolls and he saw that people were getting overpaid by more than a hundred percent what their annual salaries are and stuff. And so once we started seeing, hey, there's so much misuse of capital out there in the world. If I can get it, then I can ultimately dictate it goes into the right things. That was another big motivating factor for me. And that's really where I'm at right now. I think Daniel Eck, the founder of Spotify, he's been known for telling people the importance of building for impact. And I think one of the one of the things that I realized over the last years is if you chase money, you're gonna end up miserable. If you chase happiness, you yeah, if you chase money, you're gonna end up miserable. If you chase happiness, you oftentimes end up miserable. If you chase impact, you often end up happy and with the money. So you might as well chase that. That's a great that's a really, really good point. And ⁓ I'm I'm glad you said that because I think so many young entrepreneurs and so many young people miss make that mistake. You know, they're like, I wanna, you know, I want the Lambo and I want the the house by the beach and I you know I wanna fly first class and yeah and then you know, one of the things that they realize is that because they're not chasing something bigger when it gets really, really freaking hard. Yeah. And it and you know that it does, yeah, they give up. Yeah. Right? Because they they just don't have like enough fuel in the tank. They don't have like a higher purpose for why they're doing what they're doing. And so they just fold and they go after the next big shiny idea that they think is gonna make them millions. Exactly. Right? And and that's of course exacerbated by social media. So it's it's fascinating that you say that. And that that's why I asked the question, because so many of the people I interview on this show have this driving need to be successful. And without exception, and you're you're not an exception either, every single person I've interviewed basically is driven by something bigger. Like they They all have like that insane drive that comes from somewhere in their childhood. And oftentimes it comes from seeing their parents struggle. Absolutely. I think one of the other things too is I think about it all time. Like, so I'm ⁓ I'm fairly I'm fairly religious. I grew up in a Catholic household, typical Latina Catholic mom, super religious. And I think and so I approach things a lot from like a sense of religion or spirituality. But I think also whether you're not whether you're religious or not, I think what I'm about to say could relate to a lot of people. I always say the best way you could thank somebody for the gift they give you is to put it to use. The worst, like the most disrespectful thing you can do is to be given a gift and not use it all. And so what I think about it is God gave me a certain set of gifts and it would be almost insulting to him if I didn't put those things to use. And it would be insulting to everybody who wishes they had these opportunities and I felt and felt like I wasted it. And so I almost feel like because I've been given so much. I almost owe it to God. I owe it to my family. And I owe it to the world to make the most of what these with these uses. I think about my grandfather. What would my grandfather have done if he had access to all of these different things? It's even a guy like Elon. Let's let's say that I obtain everything I want. And at one point I become a bigger hit than Elon. I will never consider myself the greatest founder of all time because I'll always ask myself, What would Elon have accomplished if he had an Elon to learn from? What would Sam Walton have accomplished if he had a Sam Walton to learn from and all of that? And so yeah, I think one of the biggest motivating factors for me is I've been given so much, I feel like it would be disrespectful to God, the universe, and society if I didn't make the most out of those gifts. That's a great point. That's I mean, that and that's a good way to think of it. I mean, when you when you you know, you touch on something that not a lot of entrepreneurs talk about. And I I wanted to kind of like, you know, scratch that itch for a second. You talked about you know, the importance of ⁓ faith or religion to some extent, right? And growing up in a Catholic household. When things get really hard, right? When things get really tough, that moment at Lula where you guys were selling the cars to pay staff, right? ⁓ yeah, I remember reading that. Yeah. ⁓ how much do you picture it's my wallpaper. I'm gonna show it really quick. Let me see his yeah, it's my wallpaper. It's me at the dealership getting ready to do it. Yeah. I mean, when things got to that point where you're getting ready to sell those cars to pay staff, what was the role of your faith, if any? What ⁓ h what how did it help you get through such a tough time to have that, you know, that that that faith, that conviction? Did that play a role? And if so, what did it play? Yeah, I think there in when there's been going when things have gone hard, there's always two things that keep me that keep me going. One is obviously my faith. And I the way I think about it is I think I The crew the the resurrection is greatest miracle of all time. And we all want, I think it's fair to say we all want our own moment where we have the resurrection. And but if you want the resurrection, but what people have to keep in mind is you don't get the resurrection without the crucifixion. You don't get the you don't get day three without day one. And so that was one of the things that we always kept going is hey, if you want that incredible moment of triumphancy, you need to go through that moment of hardship. I think one of the other things is. Again, with faith, my parents would always teach us, like faith the size well, people you always hear that quote, faith the size of a mustard sea can move mountains, and people get it confused 'cause they think it's just I have to have faith. Well, they always s forget to say with that quote is faith the size of a mustard sea can move mountains, but only if you bring the shovels. Faith is not asking faith is not asking God to do something for you, it's asking God to do something with you. And so for me it was always super important that when we were going through that moment, I was always shoveling. It was and When I was shoveling, it was always that thing in the back of my mind that, hey, if I shovel, God's gonna at some point appear with more shovels than I can ever imagine. So that's like the that's a Christian side of things that kept me going. I think from a logical perspective, I read a lot, a lot of books. If you walk into our our office, you'll see a bunch of history books, a lot of biographies. And I think one of the things that people don't realize is every great founder, every great formidable person throughout the course of history had these moments. And so when you have that perspective, do you go from feeling like you're an idiot for ha being in such a hard moment to realizing, hey, this is part of the journey. It's not unusual to have a moment like this where it almost seems like it's all over. It would be unusual to be successful without ever having this moment, too. And so that's why I think it's so important for people to read books and read history and study the game because It ultimately is gonna give you a certain level of confidence when you hear that Steve Jobs went through how Bezos went through how and all of that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's I it's part of the journey, right? And what I what I worry about sometimes with this younger kind of Instagram, TikTok generation is they all have this assumption that, you know, they have a cool idea and they work a little bit at it and they they they assume that it's all just gonna magically happen for them, right? 'Cause they're so smart or they're so gorgeous or or whatever. And life just doesn't work that way, right? You have to struggle and struggle is is part of the process. So so you start this company with your brother. You guys, I think, had the expectation of hitting like twenty-five campuses or something like the first year. You hit five hundred. ⁓ what did that validation feel like? It was it was surreal because yeah, for those listening, I told my mom the day before we launched, if we end up on twenty five campuses in year one, ⁓ I'll have considered it a success. And within like four or five months, we had members of more than five hundred campuses in all fifty states. And so we outgrew Yeah, we beat our expectations almost right away. in terms of usage. Now, I think that's where there was a lot of mixed emotions because we were growing so fast in terms of memberships and downloads and stuff like that. But that was where I started to r quickly realize that a lot of downloads and a lot of you know a lot of campuses campuses didn't necessarily turn ⁓ equate to a good business. And so it was super exciting, but it was also incredibly humbling. Because so many things were going wrong, we realized we quickly realized how little we were actually prepared for everything. And we had just dropped out of college. So it was super scary because there were so many things breaking left and right that you're constantly asking yourself every day, is today over? Is is today the last day, is today the last day? And so it was exciting, but it was also super scary because when you s go when you grow that quickly and without expecting it, you don't pr you're actually not prepared for anything at all. And so a lot of emotions going through that period of time. What was the hardest part of that kind of growth? And what I mean, if you had to go back and advise yourself, right? Back in those days where I think you were like what 21, 22. what would you tell yourself that you should have done differently when you're going through hypergrowth at that stage? I think one of the big things was I'd probably ask more for help from people. And so that was one of the things like I people don't realize, especially the younger generation, ⁓ People don't realize what a skill it is to actually ask for help. And so a lot of times people think I'm gonna be soft if I ask for help or it's gonna be a negative signal. And don't get me wrong. If you're asking for for little things like how to set up an email, Lord help you. Yeah. But if you're asking how to yeah, if you're asking You should be an entrepreneur. Yeah, exactly. If you're asking on how to negotiate a a a contract, your first six figure contract or something like that, there's no issues asking for help. I think I think earlier on we would have been way more open with people about asking for help. ⁓ and I didn't realize I didn't learn how to actually ask for help until probably three or four years in. I think one of the things that and when we would ask for help, I mean, our messages and stuff were so bad. I think one of the mistakes that we did, like I'll I'll use fundraising as an example. We would you ⁓ your as a founder, your initial thing is I need three million dollars. Let me go just send out a bunch of emails asking people for three million dollars. What you realize after a while is if whoever you're reaching out to for three million dollars. Is probably somebody relatively successful who has people asking them for stuff all day. And so a much better approach rather than asking them for that million dollars, it's almost like that saying, if you wanna, if you wanna go, if you want money, go ask for advice. And I think back then I would have probably approached it too. And we have a saying here at the company that's called that we always say push the car. If I see somebody on the side of the road asking for a ride, it sounds mean, but I'm probably not gonna stop. If I see them struggling and actually pushing the car, I'll be much more inclined to help. Because people want to help those who are helping themselves. And so I think if I had done I think that's probably something I would have done earlier on is I would have I would have been much more thoughtful about asking for help and I would have asked for help a lot more. Yeah, you know, I I made that mistake too, man. I remember I was working at Google ⁓ you know, back in twenty eleven or twenty twelve and somebody told me, Hey, you should really get an executive coach. And I was like, dude, what the hell, man? I'm like a director, man, I've got an MBA from a top school. I'm running one of the fastest growing teams at Google. I don't need a freaking coach. I don't need any help. And it wasn't until I got divorced and like my next startup completely fell flat on its face that I realized how smart that suggestion was. And I was, of course, much older than you at the time. And it was just kind of weird how like society conditions us, particularly as guys, to like just grind to white knuckle it, right? To grind it out and try and figure it out on our own, which if you think about it is actually the frickin' stupidest thing you you can do. If you if you ask for help, provided, you know, you're not asking for help for stupid things, like you said. You're just gonna accelerate your progress. And then the other thing that people always forget is when you when you ask for help, you also make the peoperson helping you feel good about helping you. Yeah. Right. So it's like a a double win. It's a double one. So you're growing this company, you guys hit five hundred campuses, you're growing like a weed, then all of a sudden March 2020 pandemic hits. Yeah. Campus is shut down. Your business. I mean, I went through something. So I was running a build I was running a startup in Chile, completely different business. We had exactly the same ha thing happen. Revenue goes to zero. Everybody goes home and we are just freaking screwed. ⁓ you've dropped out of college, man. You have no safety net. Your your bank account is solely underwater. Yeah. what went through your mind and how did you get through that? We ⁓ for my brother and I was almost like when you play a when like when you play a pickup basketball where you lose the game, but you feel like you learn you like you know enough about the opponent, you just want to run it back and you feel so confident you'll beat them. That was kind of what we felt like. We felt like we felt like did look to be quite frank, the business was was running on fumes before the pandemic. The pandemic's more of anything than a cute story. That business, because people were not people were not particularly excited about new shared mobility businesses because of Uber and Lyft and where they were at in that time, that business would have probably not had a happy ending, regardless. The co the COVID thing's more of a cute story than anything. It just has so happened. We got lucky that COVID was the final nail in the coffin. It wasn't Had we waited another six months, it would have probably been different story. But throughout that period of time, we had learned so much. We would always say, Hey, if we got the chance to run it back, we could almost we felt like we could almost guarantee success. And so from our perspective, that's the mindset we went into it with was hey, we want to run it back, we want to do something. And we had always felt like there was an opportunity with insurance. And so that was something that we had already been ideating. Like the moment March hits, my brother and I are already thinking, all right, we can use some of the Some of the stuff we built on the insurance side. And then what ends up happening is that summer, when we're trying to figure out what we're doing, we get a call from from some high net worth individuals here in Miami who we had tried to pitch that first business to and they passed, but I think they felt bad for us because they saw how hard we would work. And so they want you, they just wanted to throw us a lifeline. And so they said, Hey, we're working on this project with a US military. they're trying to launch a car sharing program on military bases in Germany, United States, and they need help with insurance. They need help like running all the background checks, administering the policies on every rental and then managing claims. Will you guys get on call with them? And then we were just at this point we were just trying to get jobs or we were trying to get like a customer or something. And so when they were start asking us questions, we're giving them the full playbook. Cause our thought process was, Hey, we're gonna we're gonna excite them so much, you're gonna offer us jobs, or you're gonna offer us a I don't know, be a contract for them or something. And so when we're on that call, they end it with how much would this cost? And my brother and I my brother's like $250,000. I was ready to say like $10,000. So I tell him, You're an idiot. You just cost us the deal. And it was like that scene out of War Dogs. And yeah, yeah. And so that all that all ends up happening and the other guy, the people on the other side of the phone don't bug. You're like, ⁓ that's it. If it was anything less, we'd be concerned. When can we get started? And that was when my brother and I that's when my brother and I learned the beauty of enterprise software sales and the margin profiles and everything that came together with that. So when we saw that, we were like, ⁓ man, there might be a business here, but we still needed money to actually build out that first version. So we saw Nextview Ventures had put something that they were still funding companies. And so my brother and I went and not only got that contract for this $250,000 a year. ⁓ We also got letters of intent from like nineteen, no, from twenty-four different businesses that were in the shared mobility space and could use these background check tools and all of that. And so we ended up getting, all in all, one one actual contract, 24 LOIs. And so we applied to this ⁓ to this accelerator program with Next Ventures. It was our first time when we do the interview for that accelerator, it's our first time after four years. pitching something else besides a car sharing app. Now we're pitching an insurance API platform and it's the worst pitch we've ever given in our lives. When our parents walk in, when our parents walk in, they see our faces after we got off the call and ⁓ they look at us, they're like, What's going on? And I remember responding, I was like, I think they think I'm mentally unstable because that pitch was so bad. And I was gonna send a message to apologize for how bad that pitch was and I said, You know what? We'll just leave it up to fate. And in like twenty-four or forty-eight hours, they ended up ⁓ offering to invest two hundred thousand comp two hundred thousand dollars. And I'll tell you how funny how times have changed in the last five years. We had probably five or six hundred thousand dollars in in contracts and and signed and we raised it like a one point seven five million ⁓ valuation. Imagine what you do that now as a company, you probably raise that ten or twenty million dollar valuation. But all that's to say that's how the whole thing happened. And then after that We had product market fit on that business from day one. And so we grew that from the first like year and a half, it's ⁓ there was so much to build. We couldn't really turn revenue on the way we wanted. So we in the first year and a half, we ended up with like one point five million AR. The next eighteen months, we end up we end up doing almost fifty million ARR in eighteen months. ⁓ And so yeah, super fast growing business there. With the with the company like on the verge of death and you guys have this pivot and miraculously you're all of a sudden in, you know, the enterprise insurance space. ⁓ that whole journey, ⁓ Matthew, I mean, what what what did that teach you about yourself? What did you learn about yourself that maybe you didn't know? I would say I was probably ⁓ I'd say probably a lot more adaptive than I would have ever imagined. ⁓ Because I didn't know anything about insurance. And all of a sudden I had to go out and learn how to structure a bunch of technologies for the insurance industry. ⁓ and then the other thing too was I was always pretty shy growing up. And I yeah, I was incredibly, incredibly shy growing up. And this time around, we went from two people to within 30 months being about 130 people. And so, and then all of a sudden we went from being two people with with little with no investors. So all of a sudden having these these powerhouse investors too. And so I had always thought of myself as like this relatively shy, quiet person. Like I wasn't necessarily great at speaking. I lot I had a lot of speech issues when I was younger and I had to go to speech therapy because I was trying to go from Spanish to English. And I think that was one of the things I found out was like I'm actually a relatively good storyteller. I may not be the smoothest talker. I may sometimes ramble on and stuff, but because I'm so passionate about stuff, it actually leads to relatively good storytelling. And so I would say those were probably two things I learned about myself was I'm much I'm much better at talking than I thought I was, which ultimately ended up being with me being a pretty good salesperson, which helps with recruiting and and fundraising. But I think the other thing too was I realized how quickly I could adapt and do things like context switch. And so even now, ⁓ there's risks that we're taking now with I'm taking not business, but me personally in my life now. There's risks with new opportunities that I'm taking. And back then I would have probably said, Hey, I'm not gonna take this opportunity 'cause I don't know anything about this market or or this or this world. Now I'm much more ⁓ now I'm much more open into j ⁓ diving into some of these opportunities 'cause I realized, hey, I'm pretty good at learning stuff really quick. And so I c I feel pretty confident about jumping into these new opportunities. I mean, in your own words, I think that there was there was w one interview where, you know, you you go you guys talked about the the rapid growth that you go you go through, right? And Lula kind of just like explodes and you go from like, you know, 20 people or something to like 130 people. Right. And all of a sudden you've got all these families depending on you. You have to basically, in your words, you talk about like, you know, ⁓ becoming an adult babysitter. Right. Yeah. ⁓ and I love that term. I mean, what what did what did you learn about leadership when all of a sudden you're responsible for that number of people and you have to lead people ⁓ across an organization? I learned I learned great leadership is proactive. And so I used to think about like Even little things like culture. I used to think like the whole thing of we're gonna put together our values and decide what type of culture you want, but I used to think that was like cheesy stuff. For context, anyone that's listening, my only job before that last one was I sold women's shoes at Nordstrom for like three months. And I s and then I worked on my family I worked on my family's harm y ⁓ on my family's farm just doing like the bitch work that needed to be done any any day. Somebody's gotta do it. Yeah. Yeah, somebody had to do it. But so all of that was like the first time I was ever a founder and a CEO. And that's one of the things too, like When you're a C when you're CEO and you're like twenty or thirty people, it's one of those things that people rush out like, ⁓ you're a CEO. Like you're just you're just you're just that hard ass on LinkedIn calling yourself a CEO. When all of a sudden you start a hundred plus people, that's where people really see you as a CEO and you have to carry yourself. And I think that was one of the things I realized was I was very reactive to things with that first time. I was very reactive to like I wanna go recruit somebody, you learn at that scale, you have to recruit their spouse too. You have to recruit their kids. I was very Reactive about that. You also learn, hey, like if somebody comes into the office, you're the CEO. They want to meet you. They don't know if they've ever they're going to ever meet you again. To them, they don't interact with the CEO. When you grow that fast, you still see yourself as the kid who just started a company out of his dorm room. So you don't see yourself a CEO. And so therefore, you don't realize how cool of a moment it is for them to take a picture with you so they can send back to their wife and their kids and stuff and say, Hey, I was a CEO. So a lot of times like that. I would come into the office and I would sometimes it wouldn't it's not that I would hide, but I would kind of go into a corner. I would I like I had an office back then and I would lock myself in a room. Now I work out with everybody on the team so they all have access to me. And so there is and so I'm very much more I'm very I'm now much more proactive in the way I engage the team. Much, much more proactive in the way I teach. I spend a lot, a lot of time teaching and coaching new team members. I have like anybody that wants to stay after hours, I'm here till late. If they want to stay after hours and have me listen to their sales calls, if they want to have me review their work, I'll do that. And so that was stuff where in the past I would only really review your work if I saw you doing a bad job where I heard stuff. Now I'm very much more proactive and doing stuff when things are going well. What what do you think? I mean, first of all, I think that's amazing, right? That that philosophy that you have around coaching and growing people, I think is remarkable. And I think so many founders don't think about that. All they think about is the business, the business, the business results. The revenue, the growth, the valuation, the fundraising, right? I and I think I I applaud you for that. I mean ⁓ what what do you think most people get wrong about what it takes to lead a company at that kind of pace and growth? Is it is it that? Is it investing in your people or is there something else? I think one of the things people get wrong is a lot time they hear about this whole thing of like, ⁓ I randomly went viral or I went randomly like I got lucky or it's I think one of the biggest myths in this world is that is that that type of I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that type of growth is is random. I don't think people realize that when you're growing that fast, it's actually from a lot of very conscious decisions. So if you look at a company like Ramp, Ramp went like zero to a billion in AR in five or six years. You don't hit that level of growth without it being a conscious effort. You look at something like Google. Google early on had some crazy growth numbers and so did Amazon. That was all very conscious decisions. Now they were just, they were bold enough to put together those very conscious plans. I think that's one of things that people don't realize when they hear the story of something like Lula. That was very conscious in terms of the revenue growth. Like we had like my brother and I are pretty good in terms of tra ⁓ planning out how we're gonna hit certain numbers and all of that. And even now with Gail, Gail's growing way faster than Lula. And so we're repeating it again. But I don't think people realize how much of that growth is a result of a lot of good, good planning. Now of course you have some exceptions like anthropic. They I think they I heard something they grew like eighty X in a quarter. There's no way you're gonna plan for that. There's one anthropic in the millions of years of mankind. I think with companies like us, that type of stuff is much more conscious than people think. Now, saying that, there's still a lot of unknowns that pop up. Like a lot of unknown like you really can't plan if you're a first time CEO that you're gonna have team members that are concerned they don't have enough insurance to drive you in their car. Like that is actually a concern. Like we got invited one time to dinner with a guy's wife and he wanted to drive us to dinner. He called me the day before to say, hey, do I need to increase my insurance limits on my car? Because you and Mike were going to be there. And so the there's a lot of things, yeah, there's a lot of things you can't prepare for, like the way people treat you the the first time you get ⁓ a certain certain HR violations, but the growth to to grow at that scale. It typically is a conscious effort and I don't think most people realize it. I think when they hear these crazy growth numbers, they think it's just random. Yeah. And when you think about your own leadership style, right? And when you're growing, you know, at that speed, right, given the level of experience you have, you don't necessarily know what you don't know. Yeah. Right. You don't necessarily know what are the skills that I now need that I don't have. How do you go about figuring that out? Like, do you have somebody that you talk to? Is it mentors? Is it board members? Is it advisors? Like how do you figure out what you don't know so that you can continue to develop as a better leader? Yeah, I think one of the benefits, like my brother and I were fortunate enough that the last business we started was it was backed by Founders Fund, COSLA, SoftBank, SOMO Capital, and all of that. And we were very fortunate that those guys came in this into this company as well. And it's funny because when you were mentioning the thing with the executive coaching, I've never had an executive coach. And I think one of the biggest misconceptions people hear when they when they hear, ⁓ you should go out out and get an executive coach is they think it even has to be that formal. One form of executive coach could just be surrounding yourselves with people who have accomplished what you wanted, who you can call to go out to dinner and talk some of this stuff over. And I think that's one of the things that we were really we were really blessed with. May I might have not had an executive coach, but I was very blessed that because of who we got as investors, I had access to learn from great founders like Sebas from Rapi, or I got to meet Eric and Kareem from Ramp and I went to dinners with them with ⁓ because of O'Neal from Soma Capital. And I think that was one of the things that Was really helpful. Like this guy Anil from Somo Capital, he's become a really close friend of ours. And one of the things that he did, which I he still does to this day, and I think it's the most brilliant thing, is he'll do these dinners at like nine or ten o'clock at night. So he knows at that time nobody could use the excuse of my kids' basketball game or I'm working or whatever. So he'll do dinners and he'll invite some of the up-and-coming founders and he'll invite some of the great founders. And so You get to meet these idols of yours. Like I'll never forget. I went to a dinner one time and I didn't really expect much. And when I show up, you had Sebas from Rappi, who for any Hispanic kid that's like inviting Travis Kalanick to dinner. And then you had the founders of Ramp, Eric and Karim there. And so I had nothing to contribute to that dinner, but just listening to those guys talk and just being in close proximity and listening to the way they thought about product, the way they thought about fundraising, you learn so much. And I'd say, That was one of the things that my brother and I did have and we continue to have is is a great network of people we can call. Now, one of the things that people when I say that, a lot of times it's like, ⁓ I come from this background. I'm never gonna be able to get those contacts. And that's BS. Like one of my other one of our other good friends, David Senra, the guy from the founders podcast, he has a great line. He always says, The reward for good work is more work. And when you just keep doing good work and good work, it starts to compound. And other people doing good work wanna meet you. And so that's like one of the so it's all it's great because the good work that you do not only compounds, but it's gonna ultimately open up the door for you to meet the people you should be meeting with or you wanna be meeting with. That's very true. That's very true. And success breeds success to exactly by decreased kind of snow low effect. I'll give you another funny story. I'll one I'm sorry to interrupt. I'll give you one funny anecdote too. When you're doing this stuff and it kind of goes like a lot of times the they if you're doing good work They might want to reach out to you because they want to invest. They might have ulterior motives. But a lot of times that these guys have, if these guys see you doing good work, a lot of times they'll reach out because they want to meet you and they want to learn from you. Like the funniest example I have is I'll never forget the first time I met, ⁓ I went I got the chance to meet Bill Ackman. Bill Ackman, funny enough, like we talk about wanting to be a ⁓ Puerto Rican Bobby Axeford. I want to be a Puerto Rican Bill Ackman. And dinner with dinner with him was the most insane thing because You go in there and you're like, okay, I'm gonna learn from Bill. Like this is the guy that I vitalize. I wanna be like him. And all of a sudden you go in there and you realize midway through he's not letting me ask a question. He's asking all the questions because he he's so obsessed. He's so obsessed with business. He's trying to learn from anybody. And so a lot of times you're able to make these relationships, not because you're gonna you're gonna ask them to invest or anything. Sometimes they wanna learn from you if they see you doing good work. And ⁓ But yeah, that's the funny Bill story. He's such a business, he's such a business, ⁓ I call him business athlete like Kobe. He's willing to learn from anybody. Yeah, he's amazing. Yeah. He's amazing. I saw I've seen some of several of his interviews. He was on Diary of a CEO at one point where he where he talks about losing four billion dollars in the world. Yeah, and he's such a good person too. Yeah. Like you see the persona online, so you expect him to be kind of like rigid and stuff. He's so awesome. ⁓ yeah, I can't say you're gonna Now for those people who don't know, ⁓ for those people listening to the podcast, I mean, ⁓ Bill Ackman. Very famous ⁓ you know, ⁓ billionaire investor, ⁓ the founder of of Pershing Square Capital, ⁓ you know, mate, amazing, amazing guy. So so you, you know, you exit Lula 2024, right? ⁓ you you raised, I think, nearly 50 million dollars, forks 30 under 30. By every by every external metric, you were pretty successful, you'd made it, right? But you know, one of the things I I often run into when I talk to, you know, post exited founders is all of a sudden there's this like massive loss of identity. Right, when you're going through that transition. Post exit from Lula, what did that actually feel like? What did you go through? What were you feeling after after the exit? Yeah, it was one of those things. I mean, it was a it was a lot of emotions. I had been doing that. The second manifestation of Lula I didn't for for three and a half, four years, but the overall journey for that was eight years. And so that that was my identity and it w it almost like I loved Lula like a child. I don't have kids, but I imagine that's what it feels like to love a child. And so I would have literally given my life up for that thing. And and so when I when it was no longer a part of me, it felt really weird. Like even the first couple of months introducing myself as a CEO of Gail, it felt really weird. And I think one of the things that happened was we ended up selling the business and it was the the the exit was fine, but it wasn't nearly as big as we as we as we would have liked it to be. And so I think there was always that sadness too of hey, maybe we sold too early. Maybe like we didn't live out the full potential. And I think you might see that a lot of times with founders, cause oftentimes by the time you get to an exit, you don't really need the money. You think you do, but you realize you don't. And so when you sell it, you're like, man, I could have kept what could this have been if I had kept it? And then you see oftentimes the g the acquirer's not doing a good job. That hurts even more, which in our case they didn't necessarily do a great job. And so you're always wondering like what could have been. I so there was a lot of mixed emotions, but one of the things going back to that to my comment earlier, like even the the pickup ball, like Michael and I still had that same mentality here of like, We might have we might have won in the eyes of the world, but we thought we should have had we should have thought we should have had a more dominant victory. We should have had a little bit more success or we should have kept playing a little bit longer. And then there I mean there are so many mixed emotions there. Even now looking back on it, it brings back a bunch of emotions because yeah, that was my baby for eight years. And ⁓ and so to disconnect from it was so weird. And like the first couple of times that I had to introduce myself as the CEO of Gale. There were so many mixed emotions there. I almost didn't like it. I would almost introduce myself as like, hey, I'm building Gail. It's not, hey, I'm the founder or co or CEO of Gale, because ⁓ I want like I held saying that for Lula in such high esteem. I mean, last question before we go to our our our quick lightning round of questions. ⁓ but now now Gail, right? You're you talked about about Gail, that's what you're in now. As a second time si you know, successfully exited founder, right? With that that exit behind you with Lula. What's what's different about how you're building and leading this time around? If you compare yourself to, you know, the previous journey with Lula, what what are you doing differently? How are you operating differently this time around? I think it's sound around very much more ⁓ I'm we're much more conscious about going at our at our own pace and and playing our own race. And so and I think also being proactive in things. And so for instance, like Well especially with younger some of the younger team members, it's very easy for them to see all these statistics of people saying we're the fastest to hit a hundred million ARR and do XYZ. And it's like my dad one time told me, 'cause again, we're basketball. So if you look at like Hawaii Leonard, I Hawaii Leonard wins his championship, ⁓ his first NBA finals at like twenty two years old. Jordan gets drafted at twenty two years old. Don't ever get my dad asked me one time because I was frustrated. My dad was like, You want to be Hawaii or you want to be Jordan? It's ⁓ it's all a matter of what type of game you're playing. Great question. And so I think we've approached it this time around much more like, hey, I've been enough I've been around tech long enough to know regardless of how fast you grow, regardless of what you accomplish, ninety-five percent of these companies are gonna be dead. And so the name of the game is like run your own race and then ⁓ and just build a good foundational business. And so I think that's one of the things we're doing this time around, where we ⁓ we're being much more proactive about doing things like setting the culture, being much more proactive about coaching, being much more proactive about the the having making sure we have the like good b ⁓ unit economics in the past, maybe would have said, hey, let's close the deal and we'll finish we'll figure out the unit economics after. This time it's around a little bit different. And what's funny is we're gonna beat all of Lula's metrics in terms from a growth perspective. And so it's funny because being proactive oftentimes or just having good fundamentals actually helps you get there much faster. It's funny the the way that I always compare it to people is there's a there's this scene in The movie cars. Lightning McQueen is racing the old car. And Lightning McQueen takes goes super fast out the gates. And so everybody thinks he's gonna win the race. And right as he's entering that last turn, he ends up crashing because he can't control himself. And so the other guy ends up winning just by going slower because he knows what the game already looks like. And I would say that's very much the approach we're taking right now. We're that old car that knows, hey, Your growth rate is irrelevant if you die at 200 million dollars. I can go at five miles an hour, you can go at a hundred million an hour. I mean, I you can go I can be at five miles an hour, you can get a hundred. If you crash at 200 mil ⁓ at 200 miles an hour, and but I just keep going along for the next 10 years, I'll beat you that billion in revenue. All I have to do is keep going. And so that's like the big difference now. I love that you said that, Matthew, because I think to everybody listening, there is a tendency, especially for first-time entrepreneurs or people who have not been entrepreneurs before. To think that it's all about speed. And, you know, the people that I work with, you know, I've been working with a with a co-founder out in Silicon Valley. They're building, you know, AI for developers. And you know, they just hit, you $500 million valuation, raised a $30 million round. And he would come to me in a session that we had together and he's like, we have to be shipping faster. We have to be shipping faster. And I and my question to him was like, Why? And he didn't really have an answer. He was like, Well, because our competition is shipping fast. I was like, Well, what does that customer actually want? Yeah. And he thought about it then for a and he's like, I'm not actually sure what the customer wants. And I was like, okay, well, figure out what the customer wants and then figure out if you have to ship faster. Right. So I love what you just said because it's just like I've seen speed kill so many companies because people just go too fast. And when you go too fast, you hire the wrong people, you don't focus on culture, you make bad decisions, you ship shitty product, right? And and nobody talks about this because of course, you know, a lot of the investors, I mean, you're just one of like 20 bets that they made, right? And they don't have time to kind of like get into the details of how you're running the business. But I love that you said that because I don't think enough founders think about that. I think that it's all about kind of like grinding and working harder, shipping faster and moving faster. And and that's actually a good insight from somebody who, you know, you've been around the block and you've you've succeeded. So you know what it takes. Cool. Well listen, to wrap up, we got three quick questions. We call this our lightning round. Same questions for every person that comes on the show. So question number one, quick one quick question, one quick answer. If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Read minds. Nice. Yeah. I've had that one come up before. People love that one. All right. Question number two. If you could have dinner with anyone in history, alive or dead, who would you choose? Jesus. Okay. ⁓ you're the second person that say that one too. I like that one. ⁓ and the third lightning and final lightning round question is what piece of advice would you give a young person who is trying to figure out how to build a career of meaning and purpose? Chase impact. If you if you chase money, you'll be miserable. If you chase happiness, you'll be miserable. If you chase impact, you'll get both and ⁓ and be happy. Awesome. Dude, Matthew, thank you so much. This has been a really, really great interview. I, you know, I really appreciated your stories, your honesty, your openness. ⁓ you know, from the guy who grew up on a farm, you know, wanting to be an NBA player to now, you know, two two time founder. ⁓ you know, I think what you built is remarkable. You know, the maturity, the way that you're going about it is absolutely the right one. You know, your humility and your openness to kind of recognize mistakes. ⁓ and you know, I I think ⁓ you know, building it, you know, we we didn't have time to go through the the relationship with your brother and how that's like to be building with your twin brother. I'd love to explore that in another episode. But ⁓ you know, it's it's it's really cool what you're doing. And I think, you know, you you hit it on the head, you know, focusing on leadership, focusing on impact, focusing on culture. That is something that far too many founders get wrong. Far too many people realize that much too late in their journey. ⁓ and so it's exciting to see what you guys have been able to do and how far you've taken it and now the learnings that you're applying in in in building Gale. So ⁓ thanks a lot, man. This has been really awesome. And where can people learn more about you or more about Gale? Man, ⁓ I'm po I post a lot on LinkedIn so they can follow me, Matthew they get his hands on LinkedIn or Twitter. I post my my my unfiltered thoughts there. The unfiltered thoughts. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Well thanks ⁓ thanks for being on the show again and ⁓ wish you and ⁓ your brother the best of luck and as part of the Endeavour family I'm sure I'll be running ⁓ running into you guys all the time at Endeavor events and ⁓ all that stuff. So it'll be a pleasure. It's been great having you, man. All right.