Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Ray Jang found product-market fit on a mountain top

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Ray Jang found product-market fit on a mountain top · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Welcome back to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:02
Now let's get ready for a wild 1.
0:05
Today we sit down with Ray Jiang, founder of Atria, a
0:08
platform that helps brands and agencies automate their Meta and
0:11
TikTok ad workflows. But this isn't just another ad
0:15
tech story. Ray takes us from existential
0:17
dread to mountain peaks, literally, where somewhere above
0:20
the clouds on the tallest summit of Southeast Asia, he had an
0:24
epiphany that would change everything.
0:26
We talk about his journey from a struggling gaming startup to
0:29
building one of the most respected ad platforms on the
0:32
market, ranked 15th out of 132 competitors in just 18 months.
0:38
No Co founder, three months of runway and a team willing to
0:41
code on New Year's Eve. We get into failure, resilience,
0:45
founder psychology, and the truth behind the startup mantra
0:48
Accelerate or die. This is the kind of founder
0:51
story you'll carry with you the next time you feel like giving
0:54
up. Let's go.
0:55
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Do you have a nickname? Some that I don't want the world
2:54
to know. Nice.
2:58
Yeah. You know, but yeah, I, I mainly
3:02
just go by Ray, you know, I have, I've gone by like JJ, you
3:09
know, like, yeah, I'm just RJ, yeah.
3:12
I love it. Yeah.
3:13
I I meant you because I I grew up with a Ray, but he was always
3:16
Ray. Ray or Little Ray?
3:18
No, no, no, Ray Ray. Ray Ray is one of my high school
3:21
friends used to like tease me. It's.
3:23
Like, oh, Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray, you got you got to be Ray, Ray.
3:27
Nice. Welcome to the show, Ray.
3:29
I appreciate you being here. Yeah, thanks for having me.
3:31
It's a big. Yeah, really excited about this
3:34
conversation. I did a bunch of research on
3:36
you. You've had a story career
3:38
already. You have an incredible product.
3:40
Start us with kind of an introduction to your, your, your
3:43
product, what you do and and describe it like I was five
3:47
years old. Yeah, imagine I was speaking to
3:50
a five year, well, five year, not even a fifth grader.
3:53
It's a yeah, it's a Atria. We make it super simple for
3:59
brands and agencies to automate their Meta and TikTok ad
4:05
workflows. And the outcome that we provide
4:08
is that by plugging in your ad accounts to our platform, we
4:13
give you insights to know how to go and create winning ads.
4:18
And we do it. We're doing that more end to
4:20
end, day by day. So we already do that for your
4:23
image ads and soon we're doing that for your video ads as well.
4:27
Amazing. And you've come a long way,
4:29
really, really fast. You launched in 2022, is that
4:31
correct? No.
4:33
So the company started in 2022 where we originally were a
4:38
gaming company, a gaming platform, and we weren't growing
4:42
fast enough as a company. So two years into it.
4:45
So we decided to do a hard pivot.
4:48
So Atria itself as a platform is about a year, year and a half
4:53
old. The the company history has been
4:56
maybe around 334 years, but Atria, the platform itself has
4:59
just been around for a year and a half.
5:01
Unbelievable. And you've made incredible
5:03
strides in that time. Traction, for whatever this is
5:06
worth, has you ranked as the 15th in a pool of competitors of
5:10
132 in 18 months. Now I want to talk about this
5:14
pivot one kind of what what was the intention going into Atria?
5:19
What did you want to do? When did you know you needed to
5:21
make a switch and how did you do it?
5:24
Yeah. So, you know, I think just just
5:26
for a bit of quick context, I used to work at TikTok.
5:29
I was a senior product manager there, and I really just love my
5:34
job there. I was just like being at the
5:36
forefront of how innovation works.
5:39
And you know, I thought there was something very romantic
5:42
about leaving TikTok to go follow my passions, right.
5:46
And I think I made the classic first time entrepreneur mistake
5:50
where it's like, Hey, I love I loved sports growing up.
5:53
You know, I'm going to build something related to sports or I
5:56
love music, you know, I'm going to do something related.
5:58
So I did that with games. I was a big gamer growing up.
6:02
You know, I really, it was like I played a lot of strategy game
6:06
and you know, I really learned like team like developments and
6:10
working with others. And Long story short, we were
6:14
growing that gaming platform, a solution in search of a problem.
6:19
And so I, I had this kind of aha moment where it was, it was
6:23
clear the future was looking bleak.
6:25
The runway was coming down and the existential dread got me to
6:30
wake up at like 5:00 AM in the morning with my heart pounding,
6:34
being like, what's going to be the future?
6:38
And I had this like epiphany while climbing a mountain where,
6:42
you know, my family, like, you know, I called my parents.
6:43
I was like, look, I'm we're deeply struggling here.
6:46
I like, just don't know what I'm going to do.
6:48
You know, I'm growing white hair.
6:49
I'm too young for this. Like what's going on?
6:51
And I remember climbing, I don't know where exactly in the
6:55
journey of that, you know, the hike.
6:57
So I was hiking up Mount Kinabalu.
6:59
Somewhere in that journey, it clicked where I was like, hey,
7:02
we're not growing fast enough as a company.
7:04
Why not build the growth machine that will help us never have to
7:09
experience this level of pain? So I went from solution in like,
7:13
so like a kind of a kiddish kind of like mind to search for a
7:18
solution, right? And then it, it turned it out
7:22
really being like pain driven, right?
7:24
I had this deep pain where I was like, Hey, I, I woke up and
7:28
wanted to be an entrepreneur. But actually the real problem
7:31
that I had was not less less so my product, but my go to market.
7:35
So the core insight there was what if you know the you know,
7:39
it looked like at this point, Shopify had solved the the
7:44
offline to online problem, but no one had truly solved.
7:48
Once I'm online, once I have a product, how do I get my voice
7:51
and message out there? So that's what that's really the
7:54
vision behind Atrius, to enable brands and agencies and you
7:58
know, entrepreneurs like myself to be able to put my advertising
8:02
and my voice out there, my story essentially in a effortless and
8:08
in a effective way as possible. Such an incredible story.
8:12
It's very cinematic. So I mean, you literally had a
8:16
mountaintop experience. Do you think that the the
8:18
Mountain influenced that decision in some way?
8:21
Yeah. So I think there's something
8:22
about being in very like elevated environments where
8:26
first of all, like something being in nature just inspires
8:29
you and just realize how many of your day-to-day Proms are not
8:35
real, right? So, you know, I think it's, I
8:39
think the the in in the creative act, I think letting go.
8:43
I almost even was at a point where I was really willing to
8:45
let go of like, you know, like I think the key thing I'm, what I
8:49
realized in that mountain is that I was so tied and like my
8:54
grip was so strong on making my past idea work no matter what,
9:01
completely blind and saying this must, I must force my will into
9:05
the world to make this happen. Where as well, because the, the,
9:09
the climb up was so challenging. I had process just letting go,
9:13
shaving off like, you know, the the ego, right?
9:16
And then in that process, I was also letting go that that idea
9:20
had to be a part of my identity. And.
9:23
Then I just got realization. Yeah, yeah, that's a really hard
9:27
thing in the beginning. Is that like if the idea feels
9:29
it's like I'm a failure, it you take it really to heart and that
9:33
feeling becomes very heavy, you know, and it sounds like you
9:36
really experienced that a lot, you know, and it's very, very
9:40
common is. And I love the way you said it,
9:42
like, you know, creating a a solution and trying to find a
9:45
problem. A lot of folks do that.
9:47
A lot of folks will spend years and lots of money, you know,
9:51
buried their head in the sand, not looking for a customer
9:54
because I think for most people, you know, it's this creative
9:58
process of like nurturing this thing and trying to grow it up.
10:01
Now, you did raise some money. It looks like in the beginning
10:04
you raised just shy of 1,000,000 bucks, right?
10:07
We raised that 2.1 yeah 2. .1 My mistake.
10:10
So 2.1 so you have people looking over your shoulder, they
10:14
definitely have a problem. They're like, Ray, what's going
10:16
on with with our cash? Now describe this moment.
10:20
So you're, you're you're walking up the mountain.
10:23
It's starting to peel away. I love that description.
10:26
And then you have this idea like, Hey, I need to, I got to
10:29
go to market. I need to solve my own problems.
10:31
Because it's almost an empathetic position of like, if
10:34
I'm feeling this all, everybody's feeling this.
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So what? What once that idea kind of
10:39
permeates what? How did that feel?
10:42
Yeah. So I think once that's a moment
10:47
landed, I, I ran down the market at the mountain.
10:52
Yeah, it really, it really had like a when when a moment like
10:56
that happens, it's just it, it, it really, it's almost like
11:00
sometimes the truth is staring you right in in front of your
11:03
face and you just can't. And so like there's something
11:06
beautiful about going out to the mountain and going beyond the
11:09
clouds and seeing really the bigger picture.
11:11
And that's kind of what happened.
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I was able to shift to your point from me being the failure
11:17
to the idea being the failure so I can detach.
11:20
Yeah. Between that two and really be
11:23
able to let it go. So once I let it go and I
11:26
realized this new direction I like once I shared it with the
11:31
team, because you got to, you got to realize, you know, my
11:33
team was also struggling with me throughout this journey.
11:38
And for me, what was so compelling, and I think the
11:40
reason why I was able to push through even through the darkest
11:43
days is that we had this period where we had worked towards this
11:47
idea for two, two years. And it, it towards that.
11:52
There was this three month period where we didn't know what
11:54
we're going to do next. That's why I, I, I kind of had
11:56
this like last hurrah being like, Hey, let me go hike this
12:00
challenging mountain to figure out what's next, right.
12:03
And when I came back and I told the team, Hey, this is going to
12:06
be our new direction, it just clicked for everyone, like
12:09
everyone just like, hey, this makes sense.
12:11
It's, it's worth, it's worth failing for in the pursuit of
12:14
because this is, this is something that we all felt.
12:18
And like you mentioned, we, we empathize with the problem first
12:21
hand. So we were in this like we had
12:24
about 3 months of runway left at that point.
12:26
And at that point it was kind of like a do or die.
12:29
What kind of moment? And I think that existential
12:31
dread really got us to work together.
12:34
So we worked from October to Jan, a January beta launch.
12:39
No one like it was it. Like I still remember in
12:42
Christmas, everyone was still working and this was like
12:45
optional. And then, you know, and then
12:48
even towards the day of the new year, right, like that very last
12:51
day, folks were still coding like I was when I was like the
12:55
repository, people were like shipping.
12:58
And I think that like, you know, it's, it's less that I was the
13:01
inspirational leader. I think I was more inspired by
13:04
my team, right? That that was really like, it's,
13:07
it's, it's interesting. My team saved me.
13:10
My team saved me to to help me give enough faith to go into the
13:14
next act. Incredible.
13:16
What's the name of this mountain?
13:18
It's called Mount Kinabalu. I believe it's the tallest
13:21
mountain in Southeast Asia. Yeah.
13:23
Unbelievable. I need to go to that mountain.
13:25
I feel like I'll come, you know, with the 10 commandments or
13:27
something. Yeah, you, you, you will
13:31
experience things because like, you know, in that track, not
13:35
it's like a 1 1/2 day like a track.
13:37
So you don't do it in like, you know, 6 a couple of hours and
13:41
like they wake you up at like 2:00 or 3:00 AM in the morning
13:44
to go see the sunrise, right? And so it's like very cinematic
13:50
like there. And it's just like so tired.
13:52
And you know, the other thing of what happened on that on the way
13:56
up is my dad's 60 plus, right? So, and, and he, he had hit
14:01
elevation sickness like more than like halfway towards the
14:05
top and he's vomiting the night before that go and see the
14:09
sunrise. But he mustered the strength to
14:13
go and be like, I'm not going to give up.
14:17
That was such an eye opener. Like that was the the moment
14:20
that I needed in that moment. I almost feel like it was like a
14:25
spiritual intervention to be like, my dad is vomiting at 60
14:30
and he's not giving up. How my able young body give up
14:34
at this moment, right? So that I was, there was so many
14:38
forces at play to give me that that that push to get us to the
14:41
next chapter. It's incredible and it's it's
14:45
just you on top of the mountain right There's you don't have a
14:48
Co founder. Yeah, so I've never, you know,
14:52
I've always had the desire for a Co founder, never found that
14:56
person. So, you know, I've, I'm very
14:58
much opposed to this idea that, hey, in order to get to an
15:02
accelerator, I need to go find a Co founder.
15:05
Right, Right. Like I think I, I, I like to
15:08
invert from like what what is the most likely reasons why
15:12
we're going to fail? And it seems like the top three
15:14
are you run out of money, right? You don't find part of market
15:18
fit and you have a Co founder conflict, right.
15:21
And I think I really wanted to eliminate all these reasons that
15:26
we could potentially die, right. So the third one has been
15:29
eliminated. Like, yeah, I'm, I'm the only
15:31
founder in this chain. Which is is great, but also it's
15:36
lonely, you know, I mean, Gino Wickman talks about the the best
15:39
Co founder relationships is you have a visionary and you have an
15:42
integrator. Do you feel like you're you wear
15:45
both hats? So I, I think I've been
15:47
extremely fortunate in this journey where that every key
15:52
juncture I had a integrator. Yeah.
15:56
It went when I was in my game, in in the gaming journey.
16:00
I had someone I would consider my right hand, right, who really
16:04
integrated was able to distill the vision into more of the
16:07
day-to-day. And I'm I'm experiencing this
16:11
also with this next act. So we we I've been fortunate
16:14
enough and I think the key advantage to not having a Co
16:19
founder is you're able to build an early team of mini Co
16:23
founders such that what ended up happening is that every So the
16:29
four that I decided to build the core team around all act as
16:34
partners in the company where I call them as Hey, you're my
16:37
partner, You're not my you're not my my employee or, you know,
16:41
I always say, hey, as a colleague or as a partner.
16:43
What do you think about this? Right.
16:45
So I mean, they don't. Yeah.
16:46
So it's like in that sense, like we've we've reduced the key man
16:51
risk that you get from Co founder leaving, but at the same
16:55
time we've been more anti fragile as a result of being
16:58
able to allocate more of their shares to a Co founding team.
17:02
Right. Yeah, yeah.
17:04
Amazing, So your breakneck pace working on a three month runway.
17:10
How did you get your first customer?
17:13
Yeah, so at that point, I, I, so once the the idea clicked, guess
17:18
what I did I, I went online and I was like, oh, like, how do I
17:23
figure this out? Like how do I actually go and
17:25
speak to the customers to figure out if this is really a thing?
17:29
So interestingly enough, at that very that that very moment, I
17:33
was about 24 hour ways from the short talk conference happening
17:38
in Barcelona. So I had I I very it's like, you
17:42
know, it's very like last minute.
17:44
I'm like, hey, hey team, I'm going to Barcelona tomorrow.
17:48
Like once he's like I'm gone. So I just booked a one way
17:52
ticket to Barcelona. I arrive, I remember landing
17:56
there, going around the booths asked me everyone and I'm an
18:01
entrepreneur. I'm thinking about doing this
18:03
new thing these are and getting a sea of rejections and nose,
18:08
obviously, because they're there to build relationships with
18:11
vendors, not some random, you know, Asian guy walking up to
18:14
them and just doing that. And then interestingly enough,
18:18
right after that, there was the growth and lead conference in
18:21
New York. So I was like, hey, team, I'm
18:24
not coming back to Singapore, I'm going to New York.
18:27
So I go to New York and I also like, you know, like, so every
18:31
day it was like, I would have to like, you know, it's like in, in
18:34
that like the pursuit of happiness kind of film.
18:36
Like you, you show up, you look very dandy.
18:38
You're like energetic. But like once you, when once
18:41
you're like open the door and go back home, I'll be like
18:43
completely exhausted. I would be falling asleep at
18:47
like 6:00 PM because I was like so drained from like, like
18:51
trying to figure out what is the like, you know, what is the
18:53
demand for this? So we, I had I, you know, I did
18:57
a lot of that and, you know, so, and then I also did a lot of
19:03
cold outreach on like 10. Yeah.
19:05
Way we found our first customer was we, we said, hey, look in
19:09
return of us building the software and you Co partnering
19:12
with us, we will give you this offer for free for the first
19:16
year. And so they were so the the and,
19:21
and interestingly enough, the moment we launched because we
19:23
were so we were so closely tied to the feedback of the people we
19:29
were speaking with in the first week.
19:32
Revenue just came in like we didn't have to struggle for
19:35
revenue and that's when I knew we're on to something.
19:39
Yeah. You know, so it is the the
19:41
person who actually uses the tool.
19:43
Are we talking about a marketing director?
19:45
Are we talking about a creative director like who ends up like
19:48
actually using the tool? So it, you know, marketing is a,
19:54
the, you know, there many, there are many titles in marketing and
19:58
you know, marketing is, is a complex department.
20:01
There's a lot of people. There's the brand marketers,
20:04
there's the performance marketers.
20:06
So the folks that we really addressed are mainly three
20:10
types. There is the performance
20:13
marketer, right? So typically they own
20:16
performance channels like Meta, Google, TikTok, right?
20:21
And then there are, you said they're called performance or
20:24
growth marketers. Then we have the folks that are
20:26
called media buyers, the people who are, you know, making, you
20:29
know, deciding the, you know, how much to spend right in, in
20:33
the, in these channels, they tend to be more data centric,
20:36
more technical, right? There's this new role called
20:40
creative strategist, right? So effectively, because now all
20:43
the creative is the biggest lever in terms of your
20:46
performance. So there are folks now who will
20:49
extrapolate the insights for and take the data, understand the
20:53
data and then generate great creatives out of it.
20:57
And so there this this new like kind of movement that is
21:01
happening called the creative strategist.
21:03
I'm so sympathetic to these folks.
21:06
Jobs, you know, creative strategist, performance
21:09
marketers, you know it. What they have is an
21:13
unbelievable task in front of them, which is they're expected
21:16
to know every platform, know all the tools, make the best
21:20
decisions, and then demonstrate hockey stick growth, You know,
21:25
early on, Like, what kind of feedback were you getting from
21:28
these folks? Did they have a hesitancy to say
21:30
like, oh, another platform, another dashboard?
21:33
I have to learn like what was important to them early on.
21:36
I think for, for them, they, it's, it's, it's exactly because
21:41
they have to, to be able to show performance so quickly.
21:46
They just really wanted to use a platform with great user
21:50
interface to be able to connect the dots quickly to, to know
21:54
what to do next, right. So that was, there was that one
21:58
piece. And then the second piece was
22:00
because the market is moving so quickly and they're all these
22:04
trends are hard to really it's it's hard for you to catch every
22:09
trend early on. You know, a lot of people wanted
22:12
capabilities to spy on what their competitors were doing.
22:16
Yeah. So it was, it was like to be
22:18
able to solve for both needs in a really user centric approach
22:24
in terms of our design and in terms of our speed and
22:27
capabilities that really gain the trust of of these marketers
22:33
very quickly. And so once we've, we've proved
22:36
that, hey, when we launched the first act that it was already so
22:40
much better in terms of the user experience compared to the tool
22:44
that they were using, the word of mouth started spreading very
22:47
quickly. Believable.
22:49
So early on you have design partners that are helping you
22:52
kind of set expectations and kind of desire what they want in
22:56
the app. You, you have revenue from day
23:00
one and you just start to build now.
23:01
I love this quote you had on your LinkedIn.
23:03
It, it said the, your, your startup mantra is accelerate or
23:08
die. So when you're thinking, when
23:12
you're thinking about acceleration like what is
23:15
demonstrating acceleration for you performance wise?
23:21
You you mean as a as a company or in the shoes of a customer?
23:25
You know, either obviously the revenue going up is, is what
23:29
we're all here for, but what are some of the other kind of like
23:33
performance indicators that you know, you're like, OK, we are
23:36
accelerating because we want to escape death.
23:39
What? What are the ones that you keep
23:41
an eye on on like a daily basis? You know, I, I think that like
23:46
for, for, for me, it's like the inputs are everything at a start
23:52
up. Like how you determine your
23:54
inputs will ultimately determine how, how your outputs can
24:00
actually truly accelerate. If your inputs are wrong, it
24:03
doesn't matter how quick, how quickly you ship, you're just
24:06
going to go towards the wrong direction, right?
24:09
So I think I think less about speed as a, as a founder,
24:15
interesting enough, I think it's sometimes more important to go
24:18
very slowly to have clarity in terms of where you want to go,
24:24
right? So that when you do put in the
24:26
the building blocks, those, those blocks that are stacked
24:30
together naturally help to build this compound growth or
24:35
acceleration that I was alluding to.
24:38
So I think for example, since Atria, we've never had an
24:43
employee attrition, right? So we've never had someone leave
24:46
the company in that sense. Every, every sort of knowledge
24:50
sharing inside the company accelerates because everyone is
24:54
so in tune with, with, with a lot of the sort of sharing that
24:59
I have in terms of vision and, and how to implement it because
25:02
that those learnings compound in terms of the revenue side.
25:06
Yeah, every sort of big sort of meaningful release that we do in
25:10
the in the company has helped to accelerate our revenue.
25:15
But it, it, it often means that we don't get it right on the
25:18
first act, right. I won't usually do at least I
25:22
know I've come to terms with knowing that.
25:24
Hey, we will usually not get it right on the first go, but by
25:27
the 3rd or 4th instance, we'll probably get there, right.
25:31
And so as I think we think about everything in terms of
25:34
flywheels, right, If we have an initiative, what is the flywheel
25:38
here such that the more that we do this, there is a cumulative
25:42
advantage that we built, right? And whether that it's in, in
25:44
terms of the team, in terms of the product, in terms of the
25:47
marketing, yeah. Amazing.
25:51
So accelerate or die now do you feel safe now?
25:57
Do you feel like we've? Got some I think startups.
26:05
Startups are defaulted. There is no reason why your
26:09
startup needs to exist. Yeah.
26:11
No one wakes up the next morning and says, hey Ray, I need your
26:16
startup, right? Most of our marketers will be
26:19
able to go about their lives without atrium.
26:22
That that is the truth. So start-ups are default dead.
26:26
Yeah. And every day they they need to
26:30
ship faster in terms of they need to provide more value than
26:34
the money that they like are burning or you know, some some
26:37
sort of equation such that they are inching more and more
26:42
towards a need that is so entrenched right that is so
26:46
important that they become less and less replaceable.
26:50
And so I think if you asked, if you already even asked me this
26:55
five years later and in a beautiful world where Etria is
26:58
thriving, I would still give you the same answer.
27:01
Because starves are that fragile right there.
27:05
They are. They're fragile by nature.
27:08
And so I think there was, I, I, I lit by the truth that, hey,
27:11
startups are dead by default. You got to accelerate or die.
27:15
And the only thing that you can control is your shipping
27:18
velocity. And so that's what we really
27:21
dedicate ourselves to is to ensure that the inputs are
27:23
right. And once we have clarity in
27:25
terms of what needs to be shipped, we ship it as fast as
27:28
possible. Yeah, Personal question for you.
27:31
I've never felt safe. I'm kind of interested in this
27:34
word and I think that's probably been kind of like a good
27:40
inoculation to working in start-ups, taking big risks
27:43
because if you never had a, a feeling of safety, then like
27:46
you're like, yeah, well, I mean this, this insecurity is my
27:49
playground anyway. How about you?
27:51
Have you ever felt safe? I think I'm, I'm just looking up
27:59
this quote. Yeah.
28:00
So I think like, there's this beautiful line that more
28:03
start-ups have died from indigestion than starvation.
28:09
What does that mean for you? Meaning like in, in, in, in the
28:13
sort of DC funded world, more companies have suffered from
28:18
feeling too safe with too much funding, with their bellies
28:22
bloated thinking, Hey, you know, we've, we've made it.
28:25
You know, we're we can really rest on our laurels.
28:28
Then companies like in a position like ours where we feel
28:32
paranoid, like, you know, the great bug, the only the paranoid
28:34
survive that paranoia. Paranoia gets you to
28:39
crystallizing what really matters, right?
28:42
And so I've, I've there, there have been blips in times during
28:48
this journey where momentarily I felt, hey, things are going
28:52
really well. But anytime that happens I
28:56
almost feel even more unsafe. I know to stuff it down.
29:01
Yeah, yeah. It's like I'm almost like this.
29:04
It's too good to be true. Something bad is about to come.
29:09
So in that way, I've entranced in my, in my mind, yeah, I'm
29:13
embedded in my mind that hey, like we always need to want like
29:18
a like a operate from a standpoint that we might die
29:23
tomorrow. Yeah, 100%.
29:26
And it sounds like that's a real driver for you.
29:28
And you're using a lot of other kind of techniques to help
29:31
balance that out. Because living in paranoia and
29:34
anxiety and insecurity is it can be exhausting, especially as a
29:38
founder and especially as a solo founder because you really rely
29:41
on your creativity aside from, you know, climbing mountains.
29:45
What do you do to kind of ballast those kind of extremes?
29:49
I mean, first of all, I think I, I am, yeah.
29:53
I, I, you know, I think even though I might not feel like I'm
29:56
coming from a point, a place of safety, I, I'm not led by
30:01
paranoia, I'm led by curiosity. Yeah, I'm, you know, I see the
30:06
world from a very curious lens. So, you know, I think as a, as a
30:10
founder, you know, they, they, they say it's like waking up and
30:13
being punched like 10 times in the face, but still deciding to
30:17
go and do it right. And I think the only way you
30:21
don't burn out from that is to always have a curious mind, to
30:24
always look things from an open, curious standpoint.
30:27
And I think in that sense, I find the journey so fulfilling,
30:33
even though, even though I, you know, I think I am not in my
30:37
comfort zone because I am, I think, and I think that's like
30:41
part of the DNA or in the blood of entrepreneurs.
30:44
It's like, I think, I think people associate safe and
30:48
comfort with good or positive. But I actually, you know, I
30:52
think I found that most of the time the best things that
30:56
happened in my life have been on the other side of pain or the
31:00
other side of a going out of my comfort zone.
31:03
So I think in that sense, I take it with less weight.
31:08
You know, I think I try and I almost try and see all of these
31:11
moments in a more neutral or learning kind of mindset rather
31:17
than trying to give it like valence of good or bad, right?
31:21
Is is, you know, I think, I think in that sense that helps
31:24
me, you know, be able to fry even when things get tough.
31:29
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defining together. Amazing.
32:51
I know you're multilingual. You're bouncing all over planet
32:54
Earth. How was kind of like
32:57
multiculturalism and just integrating all these different
33:01
places been impactful in the business?
33:04
Yeah. So, you know, my family is
33:06
Korean and then, so I grew up, I, I was born in Seoul in Korea.
33:12
And then I grew up in Hong Kong, so South of China.
33:16
And, and then roughly when I was 1718, I was in France for about
33:22
2-2 years, right? So I was doing a double degree
33:25
program. So I was in France.
33:26
So I, you know, was mostly surrounded by French people.
33:30
And then I went to New York to finish the rest of my undergrad.
33:34
And then I was in the valley. And then shortly after I lived
33:38
in Singapore as well, right? So I've kind of been all over
33:41
the world. And I also went to a
33:45
international high school. In my final two years, I was in
33:49
a school of about 250 students, so like a junior and senior
33:56
year, right? And in that 250 body, we had
34:00
about 100 nationalities. Wow.
34:04
So you can imagine in my door, I had someone from Finland, from
34:09
Canada, from the UK, and right across the hall I had someone
34:13
from Ghana, from like Swaziland, from Denmark.
34:17
It was such AII had since a very young age.
34:21
I've always been exposed to different cultures.
34:25
So for me, difference or I know I've always invited difference,
34:31
right? So and that that in in many ways
34:34
has helped our company culture. You know, I think 11 interesting
34:39
feedback that I got recently from from one of our colleagues
34:44
is, you know, she was saying, hey, you know, you're such an
34:47
interesting boss because in the past, I would only work with
34:53
folks who only wanted to share their own opinion as being true.
34:58
And if you did challenge it, you might be able to get away with
35:01
it once or twice, but sometimes it would become political.
35:05
But you're all kind of more you're interesting in the sense
35:07
is not only do you are you open to the challenges?
35:11
You almost invited you, you're you're you you dare me, you're
35:15
not you be like you provoke me to kind of get get it out right
35:19
so that I can also like so that I so Ray Ray can hear the other
35:23
side. And in that sense, I've always
35:24
found that, you know, sometimes there, there are two ideas that
35:29
feel seemingly opposite and both can be true, right.
35:33
And so I think in that sense, like, you know, in in my most
35:37
recent travels, like while building Atria, I was in 21
35:40
countries, right? Wow.
35:43
And, you know, I was at Jordan and one point, you know, in in
35:46
the Middle East, I was in South Africa for a friend's wedding.
35:49
I was in Croatia, Berlin, and nothing in, in that.
35:53
I was able to see that, hey, like they're all these like
35:56
paradigms that people are living in that are very different from
36:00
mine, but are all like sound and valid in their own ways, right?
36:04
And so, so I think that's, that's how like I really felt
36:08
like, OK, you know, you know, as as a company in terms of our
36:12
culture, right, And in terms of the way we produce and innovate,
36:16
we need to be able to have as many of these collision of
36:18
ideas. Love it.
36:20
Do you? Do you feel like a nomad?
36:23
Do you feel like a Singaporean? Do you feel like a New Yorker?
36:27
Like do you have like a a region that you call home?
36:31
I'm a global citizen of the Internet, truly, man.
36:35
Yeah, the the Internet is what binds, you know, like, yeah, I
36:39
feel like I've always felt like a little bit of an outsider in
36:42
Korea. I'm not Korean enough in Hong
36:44
Kong, I'm Hong enough in America, I'm not American enough
36:48
where I was obviously not Singaporean.
36:50
So like it, it was such a it's this bit.
36:53
It's, you know, I've always had this like outsider lens.
36:56
So I didn't, it's, it's really helped in that entrepreneur
36:59
journey. I don't really have imposter
37:01
syndrome, right? Because I've always had to be in
37:05
new environments, right? By being in new environments all
37:09
the time. You're habituated to ask that
37:12
very stupid question, right? That you, you think you might be
37:15
judged for. And I found that, hey, in the
37:17
journey, most people just don't really care, right?
37:19
As long as you you ask it in a nice and yeah, kind way.
37:23
It's cool you like the startup Anthony Bourdain.
37:30
Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I love Bourdain.
37:33
Yeah, he's he's he's a character.
37:34
Yeah. I mean, like, yes, for example,
37:36
one of my favorite episodes of Bourdain was when he was in
37:40
Beirut, Lebanon. And I think too, right, For
37:43
example. And yeah, yeah, yeah, he's
37:46
great. Do you have tips of kind of
37:48
acclimating yourself to new country?
37:52
I, I, it's, I found that so like one thing I often always do when
38:06
I go to a new country is I'll check out like the local sauna,
38:11
for example. Yeah, for me, that's how I kind
38:13
of get to see like what where the locals go right cool.
38:18
And then I think the other thing as well is I kind of revolve my
38:25
travels now or entering a new country, less around sightseeing
38:31
in terms of like here, the top ten place to go, but around
38:34
neighborhoods. So in, in, in, you know, really
38:38
getting to know a neighborhood, right?
38:40
And slowly seeping in the the environment we get to see, Hey,
38:45
where, where are all the like older people going to eat,
38:49
right? That's probably the place that
38:51
is like not up on Google Maps, but it's probably authentic,
38:55
right? And I think in that way, I
38:58
think, and, and what I love is I always try and start
39:02
conversations with the waiters and the restaurant owners.
39:06
I find that that's they they often have the secret keys to,
39:10
you know, really giving you the lens of like, what are the cool
39:15
spots? Because they're being customers
39:17
all the time. Yeah.
39:19
All right, you ready for the lightning round?
39:21
Yeah. OK, first up, why is the TikTok
39:25
algorithm so awesome? Well, that they know you better
39:31
than your your parents do, that's what.
39:35
Truly, does the world look better in rose colored glasses?
39:41
Yes, because all your red flags look like flags.
39:49
That's so funny, you're a major influencer on LinkedIn.
39:54
How? Like what is founder LED
39:56
marketing or personal branding? Like?
39:58
Mean for you or done for you? No, I mean, I mean, I'm, I'm a
40:02
small shop. I'm a small, you know, fish in a
40:04
big pond. And I think it's opened up a lot
40:09
of conversations with folks I never expected I could build a
40:16
relationship with. Cool.
40:19
If you had to build a company that did $1,000,000 in revenue
40:22
in 12 months, what company would you build right now?
40:26
I would help build a an analytics tool to see how brands
40:35
would appear on GPT. Analytics tool to see how brands
40:41
appear on GPT. How, how I, how yeah, how brands
40:44
as customers are appearing in terms the GBT results.
40:50
Are you seeing a big uptick in Atria referrals from the LLMS?
40:56
More and more I think what's interesting is I will hop on
41:00
demo calls with very big companies like public companies.
41:06
How do you do about Atria? And it's usually the bigger in
41:10
scale, the more they're likely to have come from GBT.
41:13
I know the, the power and influence of GPT is fascinating,
41:18
right, because I don't know if you've ever talked to somebody
41:20
else's GPT, it's totally different.
41:22
So like it changes to to match what you like.
41:26
So like the referral from those are is just a, a goldmine.
41:29
I mean, it's incredible. I mean.
41:32
I I I I've fallen in love with GBT.
41:38
I know put put back Scarlett Johansson's voice on it and you
41:41
know, I, I'm like. I know I I I can see that GPT
41:45
5's coming in August and I might be I'll probably like toggle
41:49
back to four O every now and again.
41:50
Just be like, hey, how are you doing?
41:52
Yeah, yeah, cool. You sell Atria for a billion
41:56
dollars today. What are you doing Monday
41:58
morning? Whoa, sell Atria for a billion
42:05
dollars? What do I do on Monday morning?
42:09
I don't know. I'll probably, I'll probably go.
42:13
I'm already probably thinking about my next idea.
42:15
Yeah, got to go back to that mountain.
42:20
Actually, yeah, Speaking of which, I would, I think the
42:24
first thing I would do is go, yeah, Ike High challenging
42:29
mountain. I think I want to go to
42:31
Dolomites next in northern Italy, yeah.
42:35
Love it, so cool. If you were entering college as
42:39
a freshman, what would you study right now?
42:43
I would study. Anything that will help me
42:46
really understand systems right, like a systems thinking.
42:50
So whether it's like a very interdisciplinary major, like in
42:55
at Stanford, they have something called symbolic systems, right?
42:58
Where there's enough entry into computer science, but also helps
43:03
you learn about like the nature of thinking about things.
43:06
I think because the world is moving so quickly, I think it's
43:11
less about being a great coder or being someone technical, but
43:15
being the person with the greatest ideas.
43:17
Right, it's system. System studies.
43:20
Would, would you think, bring you the best ideas?
43:23
Why is that? No.
43:24
No, so like at Stanford, they have this interdisciplinary
43:29
major called symbolic systems, where it's a bit, a bit of a
43:33
economics, it's a bit of computer science, a bit of
43:36
psychology, human computer interaction, where it really
43:39
makes you like a more well-rounded in terms of the way
43:43
you see things right and solve problems.
43:46
But I think because most, most colleges don't have that, I, you
43:49
know, I think as a, as an alternative, I would probably
43:53
study, yeah, computer science. I think knowing how AI works,
43:57
right, that in terms of the fundamental level is going to be
44:00
a very important skill set. 100% cool.
44:03
Is there ACEO or entrepreneur you admire or closely follow?
44:10
Yeah, so there there there is this I I recently listened to an
44:15
episode from the podcast Acquired right.
44:19
And I really, really admire Judith Faulkner.
44:23
Like she's so she built Epic Systems.
44:26
So Epic Systems, I think besides one instance has never lost a
44:33
customer. Wow.
44:35
And you know, they, they, they're, they're, they've been
44:37
around forever. Right.
44:39
So that to me really thinks, you know, it shows to me a, a, a a
44:44
founder who really has a customer first approach in terms
44:51
of the way she's built her platform and that she's clearly
44:57
never taken shortcuts in order to really build a valuable
45:02
system that builds A cumulative advantages for the customer as
45:08
well. Yeah.
45:08
Amazing GPT. Make sure you link that in the
45:11
show notes because I love acquired podcast.
45:13
It's like I got 6 hours to invest in this business.
45:17
Let's go. Yeah.
45:18
Great. And.
45:20
And, yeah. And and, you know, they're doing
45:22
so well and they haven't gone public because they don't need
45:25
to. They've been so profitable.
45:26
Yeah. Cool everywhere you've been.
45:30
If you could live in any place in any historical era, where and
45:34
when would that be? Anything but now and or the
45:37
future. Oh you know it's funny I asked
45:40
this to GPT recently. Nice.
45:43
If we asked this question and they and like I said, based on
45:46
everything you know about me, where would you place me?
45:49
And that I would probably do well in Berlin in the like the
45:57
Waymar period in Berlin. I don't know how I feel about
46:01
that. So it's like in the like early
46:03
nine, 1900s, I thought, well, that's kind of, you know, well.
46:08
I seem a little contentious, yeah.
46:10
Exactly. But you know, tell me about like
46:13
there was this like booming kind of like subculture of like
46:17
artists that were very experimental, very expressive
46:20
that, you know, that could like really try things and, you know,
46:23
there's a sense of feeling alive.
46:25
I think if I could choose, I would have loved to be alive.
46:32
What what during the lot like in 1990 four 1994 like a be like a
46:38
30 year old in 1994 when when the tech boom was about to
46:42
happen. Yeah, totally.
46:44
I love those conversations with the guys that have seen the
46:47
whole thing. Had a great podcast interview
46:50
with a gentleman that, you know, he started his career in Silicon
46:54
Valley in like the mid 80s and still going, you know, And so we
46:57
talked about that of like watching, you know, the birth of
47:00
compute, personal computing to the Internet, to the iPhone, to
47:04
cloud computing, to what we have AI now.
47:07
And I asked him, I was like, you know, what's the most exciting,
47:09
you know, era of that whole journey?
47:11
And he's like right now. Yeah, yeah.
47:14
And that's the thing. I, I, I used to feel like I
47:17
missed out on the greatest, like invention of our time, like, you
47:23
know, like in the Internet. But you know, I feel like I'm
47:26
just in in the right place at the right time. 100% man, I
47:29
really feel that too. You know, Berlin around there,
47:32
I'm sure there's, it wasn't all uniforms and marching, you know,
47:36
there was like absinthe stuff there was probably cool.
47:40
That's the crowd there they were speaking about.
47:42
It's not, you know, the, the, the uniform folks.
47:46
It was the the the underground like artist.
47:50
Culture. Yeah, that's so funny.
47:52
You get that response and you're like, excuse me, tell me more,
47:55
GP. And you're like, what are you
47:57
talking about? Yeah, right on, Ray.
48:00
It's been an amazing conversation.
48:02
What's the best place for people to connect with you online?
48:05
Yeah. So I, I, you know, I think
48:07
really, I want listeners to know that you might hit a wall where
48:16
it might, you know, give you a sense that you, you might want
48:20
to give up, but keep pushing through.
48:22
I think, I think one thing to really learn from, from, from my
48:27
story is that on the other side of that pain was all these like
48:33
these like blessings and and like events that truly blossomed
48:38
where the, the pain was, was just the, the, the breadcrumb to
48:42
lead you to better, better fields.
48:44
And so I think I do share tidbits of those stories on my
48:49
LinkedIn, right? So you can follow me there.
48:53
But otherwise, yeah, if, if you are thinking about growing your
48:56
brand in this AI first era, then, you know, go to try
49:01
atria.com. TRY atria.com to yeah, check out
49:06
our, our, our platform and we have a 7 day free trial. 100%
49:10
fantastic. Ray.
49:12
Are we going to do the YouTube segment?
49:16
No, not, not, not this moment. Yeah, yeah.
49:18
Come back to it. OK, So if you're listening, know
49:21
that we'll come back with some tips that Ray's got for for
49:23
founders and we'll put that on YouTube.
49:25
But otherwise, listeners, thanks for joining us.
49:28
Ray. This has been awesome.
49:28
Thank you so much. Yeah.
49:30
Thanks, Ryan. It was fun.
49:33
Hey founders, let me ask you this.
49:35
Are you building with AI or getting left behind by it?
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If you're serious about scaling smarter, faster and bolder, you
49:43
need to check out AI for founders.co.
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It's your go to resource for cutting through the noise and
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actually using AI to grow your startup.
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Each week, AI for Founders drops a sharp, no fluff newsletter,
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dives deep with expert guests on the podcast, and hosts monthly
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workshops where you can get your hands dirty with the real tools
50:05
and strategies. Whether you're precede or Series
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and beyond. Hit AI for founders.co to
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subscribe to the newsletter, tune into the podcast, and grab
50:24
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Build smarter, move faster, think bolder with AI for
50:32
Founders. Now back to the show.