Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Stop building. Do this first.

Transcript

Stop building. Do this first. · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Now, I know you love it, but your startup idea is probably
0:03
garbage. Not because you're dumb, but
0:05
it's because you're in love, and love makes you blind and love
0:08
makes you build a product that nobody wants.
0:11
If you cannot survive 10 uncomfortable customer
0:13
conversations, you do not deserve to write a single line
0:16
of code. Because validation is not vibes,
0:19
it's evidence. It bruises.
0:21
It's getting told no until your ego stops bleeding on your road
0:25
map. So if your idea fails, does that
0:27
mean you failed? Or does it finally mean you're
0:29
free to become who you said you wanted to be in the first place?
0:33
Welcome to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:36
Today, you'll learn how one founder built a system to help
0:38
you validate ideas faster, map your market, analyze real
0:42
customer interviews, and even assemble a pitch deck that's not
0:45
just a bedtime story for investors.
0:48
This is for. First time founders, serial idea
0:50
hoarders and anyone who's ever wasted months building a
0:53
brilliant product with 0 buyers. The mind behind this is Ohad
0:58
Shokid, the founder of Think Up Global.
1:00
His whole thing is turning the founder roller coaster into an
1:03
actual map. Problem, solution personas,
1:07
market sizing, competitors, interview analysis.
1:10
Go to market in the deck and here's a spicy founder use case.
1:14
Run 5 ideas through that process at once and let reality pick
1:17
your next company, not your dopamine.
1:19
If you want more stuff like this, go to aiforfounders.co and
1:23
get the newsletter. It's basically a weekly shipment
1:25
of build less, validate more for your brain.
1:28
It's also cheaper than learning these lessons the hard way.
1:31
Again, that's the newsletter at AI for founders.co.
1:34
And if you like the podcast, please leave a review like you
1:36
used to write Yelp reviews for your favorite coffee shop and
1:39
quick message for our sponsorkickcaster.com.
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That's kickcaster.com. Kickcaster by MO Burst.
2:15
There we go. Ohad, welcome to the show.
2:17
Thank you so much for joining me.
2:19
Thank you, Ryan. Thank you for hosting this.
2:22
Absolutely, my pleasure. And did I pronounce your name
2:24
correctly? Yeah, Yeah.
2:26
It's a hod. Yeah.
2:27
Ohad. Ohad.
2:28
OK, I was going Ohad. Yeah.
2:31
That's my Colorado accent shining through.
2:34
Then. Hot OK, fantastic.
2:37
I'm so excited to talk to you because truly you are a founders
2:42
founder, which is to say that like you're out here making it
2:46
easier in providing tools for founders to idiate projects and
2:51
then ultimately raise fund raise a round of financing through the
2:56
idea stage. Now that's probably a unjust
2:59
summary, but I'd love to get into it, so give us an overview
3:04
of think up dot global. Yeah, absolutely.
3:08
Yeah, I think you got it right. You know, it's, it's coming from
3:13
my own challenges and pains. I've been a founder and still am
3:17
a founder and coming out of my first start up, you know, I
3:22
experienced the same pains as my users.
3:26
It's about going through the validation phase, understanding
3:30
whether my idea resonates with the target audience.
3:34
I don't want to rush in and build stuff that nobody would
3:37
want, you know, like the same one combinator.
3:41
So it's all about helping founders navigate their journey,
3:45
the roller coaster, you know, the, the unknown, the
3:49
uncertainty, what to do next. And we're trying to to map it
3:54
out, you know, crowd. We crafted on methodology on the
3:58
proving best practices and we're trying to help them make the the
4:04
journey a bit easier, a bit faster, bit less stressful and
4:08
obviously more or less successful.
4:11
Percent. You know, the validation stage
4:13
is so critical and I think after you had a couple of wins or more
4:16
importantly, you've had a couple of losses, you realize how how
4:20
crucial that is. Because a lot of times you might
4:22
have a great idea, but like, are you the best person to bring it
4:25
forward? And is it the right time?
4:27
Is somebody going to pay for this right now?
4:29
So maybe being an expert in validation, how do you think
4:34
about validating a product? Well, you know, you have to get
4:39
out there. The easiest stuff to to start
4:42
with is, you know, Reddit subreddits, you know, just
4:46
reading through, browsing through, gathering information
4:49
about what your users talk about.
4:53
It's about going to communities to meet ups, reading
4:56
newsletters, reading research. And the most important thing is
5:01
to meet people, meet your potential customers.
5:04
And you have to be ready for those interviews and for those
5:07
meetings. Don't come on to prepared.
5:10
You know in advance what to ask, how to ask it.
5:14
Don't be biased. Try to be objective.
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There is a real fumble for how to ask those questions and how
5:22
do you analyze the answers later on?
5:25
And you have to build your own. You know, your book, your system
5:28
of records, your signals, weak and strong signals and
5:36
validation has to be built up one conversation and up on top
5:40
of other. And sometimes you have to, you
5:43
know, make some pivots, make some changes, understand that
5:48
there are signals that you have to watch for and double down on
5:51
those. So it's process and you have to
5:56
get out of your comfort zone and get some negative feedback.
6:00
You know, some people wouldn't be interesting for them.
6:04
You have to accept that. Yeah, You know, and I'd be
6:09
interested to hear if you have any frameworks or any kind of
6:11
like red flags. You know, buddy of mine, Josh
6:15
Firstos, he gave me some great advice once where he said when
6:17
he's validating a project, before he even determines if
6:20
he's going to work on it, he wants to see distribution on the
6:23
cap table to know he's got those customers, whether that's design
6:27
partners or his customers built in.
6:30
He wants to have IP as a Moat, you know, so he's got some kind
6:34
of IP that he can defend and, and then the other he's got
6:38
industry domain expertise and, and hopefully the founder has
6:43
all three of these. Usually a founder has some kind
6:45
of like industry expertise. Usually they're working towards
6:48
some kind of IP. The distribution seems to be a
6:51
tricky one because often times it's, it's hard to find, you
6:55
know, a Tam, you know, approach them in a way.
6:59
So I'd be curious if you have any kind of frameworks or any
7:02
kind of like just kind of like checkpoints for a founder to, to
7:07
cross off, so to speak, before they're going to consider a
7:10
project. Yeah, I think the the first
7:12
point you raised were red flags. So if I take for example an
7:18
event I've been a month ago in Vienna and for one of my
7:23
start-ups, which is in the smart transportation domain, we're
7:29
trying to to speak with autonomous vehicle
7:33
manufacturers. And I happened to meet a
7:38
representative of one of the vehicle manufacturers,
7:43
commercial autonomous manufacturers, vehicle
7:46
manufacturers. And he was scouting for
7:49
start-ups for new ideas. And when I talked to him about
7:54
what I thought could be a problem for them, which is
7:58
achieving more data, more external real time data from Rd.
8:03
sensors, I felt he didn't pick up the subject.
8:07
You know, he just kind of ignored it and, and, and went to
8:12
speak on other stuff. That was a, a clear flag for me
8:15
that it's not a problem for them.
8:18
It's not an issue. And he started talking about the
8:20
solutions that they have and it was clear it it's not a problem
8:25
for them. So I didn't see any point of,
8:28
you know, continuing the conversation in that path.
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And that was a big signal for me that there was no problem there.
8:36
Now in terms of distribution, lots of people like to use the
8:43
maybe it's a recently new playbook.
8:45
And that is building your audience and community in
8:49
advance. OK, when you start ideating, you
8:56
know, start posting on social about, you know, the, the, the
9:03
domain that the problems that you think your target audience
9:07
is facing and see if you get some feedback, people that are
9:14
that really like what you're talking about and it really
9:17
resonates with them. And try maybe even building a
9:21
community around the topic, around your target audience.
9:25
That's the best direct approach to your audience.
9:30
And then picking up the their problems and their needs.
9:35
That's a great playbook. Yeah, I'm, I'm obviously a big
9:40
fan of that myself. You know, that's, it's, it's a,
9:43
it's tough, it's tough to go out there and find an audience, you
9:46
know, but I, I feel like it's, it's a journey worth pursuing.
9:50
So Sync up has a start for free option, so I'm going to sign up
9:56
for think Up. What are my first steps on the
9:59
platform? And when you're thinking kind of
10:00
like speed to value what do, what do you want people to
10:03
accomplish in the first 5-10 minutes on the platform?
10:07
Yeah, great question. So after a short on boarding
10:12
process, you know, we ask you a few questions to understand
10:16
where exactly are you on your journey and how much prior
10:20
knowledge do you have? That is how we personalize the
10:23
journey. Some people are more
10:25
experienced, some people are less.
10:27
Some people just had the idea yesterday, some have been
10:30
working on it for the last six months.
10:32
So we're trying to understand where you are in your journey.
10:35
And then you know, the first thing is what's your idea?
10:38
Kind of a simple question, right?
10:40
What's your idea? We then break it down to the
10:43
problem and solution because ideally there always should be a
10:47
problem that you're trying to solve, a pain point for someone,
10:51
the problem, the solution. What industry are you at?
10:55
And once we go through with that, we present a few
10:59
suggestions for you, either market reports, either a few
11:04
potential competitors and who could be your end users, the
11:08
people that will buy your product.
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And from that, from that point on, you can dive into each of
11:17
the topics that you would like, either diving deep into the
11:21
personas, you know, mapping your personas, end users, decision
11:26
makers, the pain points, their needs, their aspirations.
11:30
Or you can go into market analysis, try to do some top
11:34
down market research, maybe some bottom up, how many potential
11:38
customers you're going to have, how much they will be willing to
11:41
pay. Or you can dive deeper into your
11:45
competitive landscape or your competitors direct, indirect.
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So, you know, this is, this is the first, you know, session
11:53
that we hope that you can can go through and and we'll provide
12:00
you some value, initial value. Amazing.
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So you're gathering all the information you're you're,
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you're basically brain dumping the ideas onto the platform and
12:10
then seeing like, well, who are my potential customers and what
12:14
attributes do they have truly, you know, then how big is that
12:17
potential market? And exactly you're kind of just
12:21
laying, laying it out. What would be the next phase?
12:25
What, what you have a map. We we've laid down all the
12:29
modules on the map that would make the journey much more, much
12:34
clearer. And all the information that we
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mentioned are poured into different modules to different
12:41
buckets, customer discovery, market analysis, competitive
12:45
analysis, customer research. And then you can use the map and
12:52
move from one module to another, one step to another step,
12:55
Complete each step. Each step has, you know, 5/10/15
12:59
items to complete. It depends on the step.
13:04
You will then be guided on where to find your potential
13:08
customers. You can go out, record the
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interviews, come back, upload it.
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The platform will help you analyse the interviews and you
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move on, you know, to go to market strategy, business model
13:24
building and then you would have the the full pitch deck.
13:28
Now it's not a 1015 minutes process.
13:31
It could take weeks some sometimes it could take months.
13:35
You know, it depends on your industry expertise, your
13:39
distribution reach. How is it it for you to to reach
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your potential customers? How much work are you willing to
13:48
put in? OK, it's not an easy process I
13:51
have to say, but very rewarding. Yeah, it shouldn't be.
13:57
You know, what I love about this is this is such a pain point for
14:03
for founders, largely because founders are idea people.
14:07
And the the problem with idea and the beautiful thing about
14:10
ideas is good ideas and bad ideas come from the same place.
14:13
So you really need to nurture each idea to a certain logical
14:18
conclusion before you move on, because then it's showing
14:21
respect for that idea process. And the muse will not grant you
14:26
the ideas without the process. So what's beautiful for this is
14:30
you there's a feature or in a plan.
14:32
The builder plan which is 69 bucks users per month, has
14:36
unlimited start-ups. Which is to say, this validation
14:39
process you're talking about can exist on the platform for
14:42
multiple ideas, which to me is, is absolutely brilliant because
14:47
what I've got is a spreadsheet and tabs at the bottom that have
14:51
all the different ideas on the tabs.
14:53
And then it's just an amalgamation of just
14:55
gobbledygook and notes as I'm trying to figure out like, Hey,
14:59
what's worth my time, You know, for, for me, it's like I, I put
15:04
guard rails in place that, you know, if it's not fun, it
15:07
doesn't make money and it's not a service, I won't even think
15:09
about it, you know, So I have to always check.
15:12
I have to get the ideas down. Start walking through some of my
15:15
own personal guard rails to make sure that I'm utilizing my time
15:19
because ultimately I only have so much time, you know, to
15:23
check. So like, this is a great
15:25
process, especially when, you know, you get hit with those
15:28
intoxicating ideas that might. Yeah, because.
15:35
And that's the best part, you know, the idea You're like, Oh
15:38
my gosh, this is so cool. And you got a place to put it,
15:42
you know, let it cook, like start walking through until it
15:44
gets to a place where you're like, you know what, I had 6
15:48
interviews and it's not ready yet.
15:51
But then you have your other idea.
15:53
So that this validation process, especially when you're in
15:56
between projects or let's say you're a recently exited
16:00
founder, you know, which is kind of a dark night of the soul for
16:04
a lot of us, which is like, oh man, I, I did the thing I set
16:07
out to do. What am I going to do now?
16:10
You know, this feels like a kind of structure that would be very
16:13
comforting in that kind of situation.
16:17
Yeah, absolutely. And I really like what you said,
16:20
Respect for the process. You have to have respect for the
16:24
process. Don't disregard it.
16:30
Don't look down to it. It's a process.
16:33
And as you said, we've got lots of ideas as entrepreneurs.
16:37
It's very romantic. It's our creation.
16:40
It's like our babies, you know, and we love all of them.
16:44
We fall in love in them. Sometimes, you know, people say,
16:47
don't fall in love with your solution, fall in love with the
16:50
problem. And, and that makes it easier.
16:54
You know, a product makes it easier for, for people like us,
16:57
for founders with multiple ideas to really put in the effort and
17:03
make a really thorough work and validation process for each of
17:07
them so we can get the right decision, not just intuitively
17:12
what we like, what brings us more joy.
17:15
Yeah, and it it's going to save you time and that's the most
17:18
precious thing because I've worked with a lot of founders.
17:22
A lot of times they're kind of first time founders.
17:24
Maybe they're dabbling on the side.
17:26
They got a side gig over here and they fall in love with the
17:30
idea process and they want to stick their head in the sand and
17:33
not talk to anybody because either they'll steal my idea or
17:38
they just they're they're too afraid to get negative feedback
17:42
because their personal identity is wrapped up in the success of
17:45
the idea. Absolutely.
17:47
So you have to get rid of that as soon as possible.
17:50
Like I think think up is is there to help you be like, hey
17:53
man, here's a mirror. Like if, if the idea isn't good,
17:56
it doesn't mean you're not good. But we need to figure out if
17:59
there's a problem with the idea. And it could just be timing.
18:02
It could be the most brilliant thing in the world.
18:04
It's just it's not ready yet. And you have to get that
18:07
information as fast as you can so you can iterate and change on
18:10
a very quick basis. Yeah.
18:13
And the important thing is, is to save you, you know, a
18:16
heartbreak and lots of stress later on the process and your
18:21
financial situation. If you go down a bad road for
18:25
six months or one year, you know, that's a lot of pain.
18:29
If we can save that in advance, that could be great.
18:35
Yeah, I mean, don't do what I did.
18:37
I spent 18 months to working on a a tool that just had no home.
18:44
The irony is, if I would have stuck it out six more months, it
18:47
would have been the most perfect tool during COVID of all time.
18:50
But. You live and learn, yeah?
18:52
Yeah, yeah. You make plans and then reality
18:57
it's yeah, you never that. Exactly.
18:59
OK. So I'm working through my ideas
19:01
and multiple projects through think up some of them.
19:04
I'm getting actually all the way to the finish line here through
19:07
the process and I'm getting this deck.
19:09
So I know that there's a financing option available
19:12
within the platform. How?
19:13
Where does that come into play? Yeah, once you've made, you
19:18
know, the validation and building your pitch deck, we
19:22
would be happy to see the process that you went through,
19:25
even with some pivots and iteration.
19:28
And the most important thing is how many people did you
19:31
interview? What are the kind of signals
19:33
that you got? How did you analyse them?
19:37
And obviously we want to see something unique about your
19:41
work, about your product, about your solution, maybe some
19:45
competitive advantage. You mentioned before IP, not all
19:49
entrepreneurs have an IP, but maybe they have another
19:52
competitive advantage like data, like network effects.
19:56
And you know, just to see that the market is big enough like
20:00
any other investor would want to see.
20:02
And once we see that you've done a great work and obviously the
20:08
team is also important, usually it's very important just to make
20:12
sure you know you can build your MVP.
20:15
That you know how to sell, OK. Signing a deal with an
20:20
enterprise customer is not something to be taken lightly.
20:23
It's very hard. So obviously we would like to
20:27
see the team has at least some of the skill set needed.
20:32
Some doesn't have a Co founder, a technical Co founder, They
20:34
don't know how to proceed, how to build a product.
20:38
And just lately, one of our customers asked me, can I raise
20:44
the funds? Will you invest before I have
20:46
the Co founder to build the machine learning algorithms?
20:50
I said, look, it's quite tricky. You're not an industry expert,
20:56
you don't have the industry background, you haven't done
20:59
sales yourselves and you lack, you know, the technical Co
21:02
founder. That's a lot of check box that
21:06
are unchecked. So we would rather see a more
21:11
holistic team and you know, once we have that conviction, we will
21:16
be happy, you know, to proceed with a safe of up to 100K, could
21:21
be 50K75K or 100K. It is safe, should be very
21:27
friendly, founder friendly. We don't take board seats.
21:31
We don't have veto rights. You know, we just here to
21:33
support them. Our main objective is to support
21:37
our founders and to build our product.
21:40
We use this vehicle, this tool, the investment tool, just, you
21:46
know, to, to help them, to support them once in a while.
21:50
We're not interested. It's not our main focus on being
21:54
an investor, just to help them and support them.
21:56
So it's very fond of friendly terms.
21:59
Cool. Yeah, up to 100,000 safe round
22:02
of investment and that so is that to say that the the
22:05
platform could be seen as like, hey man, this is a great way to
22:08
be introduced to founders on on the verge of something big.
22:12
But it is. So is that the business model
22:14
you're saying? It's not, rather it's really you
22:16
just want to create the platform for people to help see their
22:21
ideas? Yeah, yeah.
22:22
Yeah. Well, well, we want to be.
22:24
We're a SAS business, OK, And we want to support 100 of thousands
22:30
of entrepreneurs every year. We want to help them raise funds
22:34
from other investors and we don't want to be the investors
22:39
ourselves, not as the main core activity, OK?
22:45
We want to help them build their companies, maybe later on in the
22:49
process, the customer development phase, product
22:52
market fit. This is our main focus being the
22:55
SAS. Platform amazing.
22:59
I would love to kind of walk back a little bit.
23:01
It looks like you guys were founded in 2020 and talk about
23:05
the original vision where how this idea came around.
23:09
Where was this just a an offshoot of kind of your
23:12
validation process? How did the inception of the
23:15
idea come about? So about 8-9 years ago, I
23:18
started the company in the IoT domain and we had a big vision
23:23
of connecting billions of sensors and IoT devices and
23:27
smart things. But the vision was clear, but we
23:32
didn't know how to implement it. What what's going to be the use
23:35
case? Who's going to be the customers.
23:38
So we started researching all of the domains available, smart
23:43
homes, smart buildings, smart cities, smart transportation,
23:46
smart industry, cyber, everything.
23:50
And the process just took so long.
23:52
Even though we had some experience, all the all of the
23:55
experience and the resources every time to pick an industry,
24:00
a domain, research the problems, finding domain experts to
24:04
validate it with, it took so long.
24:08
Out of those challenges, I asked myself, why isn't there a
24:12
platform to help me move through so rapidly?
24:16
Let's build that for other founders.
24:18
So that is, you know, one of the things that started this idea
24:25
and the other thing, you know, funny enough, about 5 or 6 years
24:28
ago, before generative AI, for some reason, I had the vision
24:34
that at some point, instead of sitting in the Co working space
24:41
and just brainstorming and splitting out to to different
24:46
rooms to do our work, at one point in the future we will be
24:51
focused on brainstorming. And from that point on someone
24:55
else or something else would execute our ideas.
25:00
And when I told that to my partners 4-5 years ago, they
25:04
kind of laughed. You know, that's impossible.
25:09
So guess who's laughing now? I love it.
25:14
And I, I didn't know generative AI to to be honest, not exactly.
25:19
I heard that some computers generate images and art and
25:23
songs, but I didn't know the the details and, and now it's
25:28
happening and now it's happening.
25:29
So these were kind of the two thoughts the train to my mind
25:35
when building thing up. Doing it, I love it.
25:39
How did you go about financing the project from the beginning?
25:42
Did you raise a seed? Well, not yet.
25:46
We're we're kind of bootstrap. You can say we're bootstrap, but
25:51
you know, I've got some prior capital to investments that me
25:55
and my family have done decades ago.
25:59
So we're still building on that and using that capital to
26:04
finance our operation. Not a cheap one.
26:07
I have to say. It's a very big project complex.
26:11
It's AB to C, which most people try to shy away from, requires
26:18
lots of product designers, product managers, lots of
26:23
methodology managers and analytics.
26:28
You know, there's lots of analytics and BI to analyse user
26:32
behaviour and customer behaviour to improve the product.
26:36
And obviously marketing. You know B to C you can spend on
26:39
endless amounts of money on marketing, so not a cheap
26:45
project. Not a cheap project and you
26:48
you've managed to like wrangle a a really extensive team.
26:52
You know, I, I love how hands on the the product is for founders
26:56
because you're talking about the emotional journey and it, it it
27:00
is going to be excruciating just guaranteed.
27:04
It's very, very hard to to do what we do.
27:07
So having that extra human touch is seems necessary and also
27:11
seems just like a great compliment.
27:13
How did you go about arranging A-Team around the project early
27:17
on? I have to say, you know, at
27:19
least 50% of my team are women and I think that's an important
27:24
aspect. And we're trying to embed
27:28
emotional design and emotional support into the project Delight
27:35
and you know, gamification to make the journey and to make the
27:40
product as enjoyable as possible.
27:44
And I've had a few, you know, employees change, personnel
27:52
change. I've had some founders in the
27:54
beginning, not actually Co founders, more like partners or
27:59
founding team. Acto, chief of design, user
28:03
experience and not everything. We got along after a couple of
28:08
years, not between the team, not between me and them.
28:11
Not everyone had the same vision or had the same place for their
28:18
expertise. You know, when the company
28:20
grows. It wasn't clear at the
28:22
beginning. That was my mistake.
28:24
It wasn't clear at the beginning what's going to be the role for
28:28
each and every one of them three years into the future.
28:32
And that causes some chaos and mismatch.
28:36
And I also hired some marketing and support people before the
28:42
product was ready, which was too early.
28:46
And so we had to, we had lots of turn around of people
28:51
unfortunately. But now for the last 2-3 years,
28:56
leadership and team are very solid.
29:01
They work together. They love working together.
29:04
You see that on the weekends, in the evenings people are engaged
29:08
both professionally and personally and I think it's an
29:12
amazing that's the best signs that people like working
29:16
together. It's amazing.
29:18
And did you do anything to help incentivize that?
29:20
Did you set up like equity shares for founding members,
29:24
things like that? Yeah.
29:25
Absolutely. All team members get equity, get
29:28
options, vested options, absolutely.
29:32
But I think no. It could be a cliche, but the
29:36
the important things are independence.
29:40
Provide your your team with independence, independence
29:44
decision making. You have to support them on
29:48
their initiatives, on their goals, their ideas.
29:52
You have to delegate as much as possible.
29:55
Anything that they can do, I let them do it.
29:58
I don't interfere. I'm there to help them and
30:01
support them if they have an issue.
30:03
And I'm trying, you know, to put the spotlight on them.
30:07
The other one speaking in company meetings as much as
30:10
possible. They're bringing their ideas.
30:12
They lead the way as much as possible.
30:15
I'm trying to be the controller to set the vision, the strategy,
30:20
the finance and, and I have to also be transparent about
30:25
everything that's going on in the company as much as possible.
30:30
It's not like me and them, it's kind of us together.
30:33
This is what's going on in the company.
30:35
You're part of it. This is not my company with my
30:39
data and I would only provide data as far as I want.
30:43
No, try to be as transparent as I can.
30:46
So things are shared, decisions are shared.
30:49
I don't make all the calls. I let them make the calls as
30:54
much as possible and unless you know it's critical, then I veto
30:59
something. What that's I think as important
31:04
as option plant? Yeah, please.
31:07
Yeah. I love that.
31:10
Let's go back to that kind of emotional content for founders
31:14
and I'd love to hear kind of what's challenging for you.
31:17
So for me, you know, when I'm making sales, things are going
31:20
up. We got hockey stick projections.
31:22
Boy, I'm on top of the world. I, I've never felt better in my
31:26
life. And then when things start to go
31:27
bad, Oh my gosh, for me, I feel so alone.
31:31
I feel like everyone's smiling and I'm suffering in pain.
31:36
And so I have to, I have certain supports to, to have a, a
31:41
backstop for that loneliness. What about you?
31:44
What are what are some of the challenging emotions that you go
31:47
through as a founder? I couldn't put it better than
31:51
you, you know, you just said it exactly the way I feel it.
31:55
When you log into your dashboards, you see a new
31:58
customer, you're all glowing, everything is great, sun is
32:02
shining. When you have 2-3 days with less
32:06
volume, it's depressing. Now for me, the journey is not,
32:13
is not so much alone. I don't feel alone because I
32:16
keep consulting with my leadership and everything is,
32:21
you know, straight out there on the table and we we make the
32:24
calls together. They're not waiting for me to
32:26
make the call. So I don't feel it.
32:29
I'm doing all the heavy lifting. It's like you, I have Co
32:34
founders, you know, it's actually, it's practically and
32:38
you know, other than that you need some, maybe some friends,
32:43
your spouse, your wife, your husband.
32:46
But I think that the only people that really know what you're
32:50
going through are your leadership.
32:52
And you have to give good leadership and make it feel like
32:57
it's together. So they feel the same pains as
32:59
you where there are no customers that feel the same pains.
33:02
We're all in the same mood. That's my solution to this
33:08
roller coaster. Of that and you're working with
33:12
hundreds of founders, is there any unexpected pain points that
33:16
you you didn't foresee that seems to kind of thread them all
33:18
together? Well, I think, well, you know,
33:24
it's, it's the lack of knowledge for many of them.
33:26
It's, it's the blind spots. Yeah.
33:29
You know, when we're talking about validation, it could mean
33:32
one thing to you, the other thing to them, and they don't
33:36
really know all the hundreds of tasks that have to get, they
33:39
have to go through before approaching investors.
33:43
What does it mean to validate an idea?
33:45
So blind spots, that's the main thing, what they need to do.
33:49
They don't know everything. And you know, obviously they
33:55
don't go out to interview as much as needed.
33:58
That's, I think the two issues that we need to help them with
34:02
Love. It.
34:04
OK. So you had the initial idea, you
34:07
you found support, you found some validation through your
34:10
process, you decide to bootstrap it, you pull A-Team together,
34:14
you've got the product. How did you guys approach go to
34:17
market? So we do it through direct
34:22
marketing on one hand, you know, social media content, maybe
34:27
somewhere competitions and there are some affiliate marketing and
34:34
we'll use influencers and ambassadors.
34:39
These are the main direct and semi direct channels that we're
34:44
trying to lift up. And we're also trying to use
34:47
some other channels like start up communities to help them
34:52
spread the word in the future. Maybe some mentors working with
34:58
mentors as affiliates, as mentors on our platform, and I
35:04
think maybe partnering with some other entrepreneurship programs,
35:10
incubators, accelerators. And obviously the Holy Grail is
35:14
investors. If other investors endorse us
35:19
and mandate or at least recommend other founders to use
35:25
us, that's the Holy Grail. You bet.
35:29
Did you, did you have any success with ads, whether
35:32
Google, Meta, any kind of find any veins of gold?
35:37
The moment we started with, you know, Facebook, Instagram, and
35:41
we're making our first steps on Google and Tiktok.
35:48
So it's showing signs of early success, but you know with just
35:54
6-8 months into the process, it's hard to build all of the
35:58
platforms together at once when you have just one marketing
36:01
manager. You're just a start up, but I
36:04
think Meta is looking promising at the moment.
36:07
Yeah. 100% Well, it, it's a very compelling offer.
36:12
You know, especially folks that are maybe new, you know, cuz
36:15
it's like, oh man, there's a big carrot at the end of the road.
36:18
Like I have opportunity to have a fully fleshed out deck kind of
36:21
getting cosigned by other by peers to say like, yeah, we
36:25
think you're in a good spot. And then up to $100,000 in
36:28
investment capital, which can probably fill in a strategic gap
36:32
that they are missing, which is really cool.
36:35
Now with the, the folks that have been using your platform,
36:38
now what what are maybe their attributes?
36:41
Are they largely kind of folks that have kind of a side hustle
36:44
and they work in corporate America?
36:46
Is it new students, graduating students?
36:50
Is it you know, kind of the the serial founder that's got like
36:53
10 ideas, it just needs to get it down somewhere.
36:57
What are you seeing as far as like users on the platform?
37:00
Any first timers? And I think people above the age
37:05
of 4040 to 50, it's not a side hustle.
37:12
It's their main focus. And yeah, I don't think they
37:18
don't come from the the corporates.
37:21
I think they, they've left their job or, you know, something of
37:26
that sort and they're passionate.
37:28
It's their first project, they're fully committed into it,
37:32
they're learning, making some progress, and you know, we're
37:38
there to. Support them.
37:42
You know, you guys are in growth mode for sure it sounds like,
37:45
which is really cool and it that's my favorite mode to be
37:48
in. You know, as you're looking at
37:50
the product in the next 12 months, you know, it seems like
37:53
in a quarterly basis there's new tools and new opportunities that
37:57
are fingertips with all the AI stuff.
38:00
What are maybe some features that you're looking forward to
38:03
down the road? We'll be trying to add the
38:08
stages beyond building a beach deck.
38:12
That means fundraising, embedding fundraising into the
38:16
platform. First part is funding
38:18
preparation. How much money will you need?
38:21
What are you going to spend it on?
38:23
What are your next milestones? What are the best investors for
38:26
you? No questions like that.
38:29
Other comparables benchmark of companies like you that raised
38:33
recently, how do you value your company?
38:36
All of that fund preparation stuff.
38:39
And then fundraising, like I mean, CRM, put all your
38:43
potential investors inside, reach out, manage the
38:47
relationship, manage the process.
38:50
That is all the aspects of fundraising.
38:53
And there's also going to be later on the the customer
38:58
development phase, which means once you've build the the pitch
39:03
deck, you want to try to start building your MVP, maybe
39:06
incorporate your legal entity. And then you want to start
39:11
establishing your marketing plan with the marketing activities
39:16
that we mentioned earlier, the partnership plan and the sales
39:20
plan. We want to support all of that
39:23
in the future, maybe with some agentic help, you know, agents
39:29
to do some of the, the, the product stuff, some of the
39:34
marketing stuff, some of the sales stuff.
39:37
And also in the ideation phase, we want to add some agentic
39:42
capabilities of continuous market reports, alerts,
39:47
competitive new competitors introduced into the market, new
39:51
things that your competitors added.
39:54
The market always changes, you know, and we want to help you
39:59
keep up to date, being up to date.
40:03
So those are, you know, we've got lots of work to do and never
40:09
ends. It never ends.
40:11
OK, We're we're ready to enter the quantum round.
40:14
Are you ready? The quantum Oh, Oh my.
40:17
OK, Yeah, it's. The next level of hot, this is
40:21
what we're doing. OK, You're obviously very
40:27
bullish on startups and startup founders in general, which I
40:31
love. What is like maybe an overlooked
40:35
signal that you should kill a project?
40:37
What? What is the the one thing that
40:40
founders overlooked that is a dead giveaway that they should
40:43
stop and pivot to something else?
40:48
That's a difficult one. I can't say I, I practice what I
40:51
preach, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm fully bullish on my ideas.
40:58
So I think when there are strong competitors in the market and
41:07
you don't really see any anything unique about your idea
41:12
that you could add on to truly overcome your competitors, I
41:17
think that's a strong signal to to stop.
41:22
And you know, once you speak, I don't know to 5-10 people that
41:27
you appreciate as potential customers, you get no, no signal
41:33
from them about the problem or you present some prototype and
41:39
you don't see any excitement there.
41:43
I don't see any reason to to move on.
41:47
Yeah, yeah, that's a very important one.
41:50
That's also kind of part of my guardrails, you know, that I put
41:53
onto the ideas like can I be best in the world at this?
41:57
Because who wants to shoot for being middle of the road?
42:00
You know what I mean? It's like, I would love to
42:02
develop a new cola brand, but it's like, can I beat Coca-Cola?
42:06
No, you cannot. So that we'll leave that to
42:09
Pepsi. That's their challenge, you know
42:11
what I mean? But I, I love the idea of can I
42:14
be best in the world at this, you know, And if the answer is
42:18
no, it's like, OK, well, maybe then you can start looking at a
42:21
different way. But if the answer is yes, that's
42:23
usually strong signal that, like, man, there's a problem
42:25
here and nobody's really approaching it appropriately,
42:28
you know, which is. For example, for me for my first
42:32
start up, you know, in the smart cities domain, we have had lots
42:36
of kind of good and positive response and we've had some
42:44
POC's. We know cities wanted and
42:48
collaborated with us around PO CS.
42:51
But then there was no check. There was no check and nobody
42:58
bought. And it, it was 12 months, 24
43:01
months, after 2 1/2 years, my team came up to me and said,
43:05
look, there's not enough value here.
43:08
So we just, you know, pivoted to another thing.
43:14
I love that we're talking about distribution, having
43:17
distribution on the tech cap table.
43:19
I am a strong proponent and backer of founder LED marketing.
43:23
Why is it important to you? Why are you coming on these
43:25
podcasts? I think I want to bring out the
43:31
message out there to the world. People have to see me.
43:33
We, we have to build trust. You know, it's not just seeing a
43:38
message on Facebook and logging on and using the product.
43:41
People have to see, you know, who's behind the product, my
43:45
track record, my belief, making sure that I'm going to support
43:49
them and keep their back. And you know, also, you know,
43:55
speaking with you with, with, with smart people and
44:02
experienced, you know, experts in our domain, you know, makes
44:06
me think, makes me validate my idea.
44:09
And here you know other people's, you know your your
44:11
point of view about the process and what are the pains that you
44:15
see in the industry keeps me no sharper.
44:21
But cool, now you see a lot of business ideas, you know, and
44:25
this audience loves ideas. So what's a business idea or a
44:31
category of ideas that you see that could really be successful
44:35
if we're on a race to $1,000,000 run rate as fast as possible?
44:39
What's your $1,000,000 idea that you'd love to see someone bring
44:42
forward? Well, obviously I can't share
44:46
the, the ideas on our platform in terms of privacy, my personal
44:53
passion. And I think, you know, domains
44:57
like Wellness, things that I see outside Wellness, Wellness tech,
45:03
you start with the digital health, all the exams, all the
45:06
tests that we do and the, the monitoring around our body to
45:10
keep us healthier and prevent all sorts of illnesses.
45:18
You know, I also like space tech and neuroscience, but that's
45:24
more I think because of the AI. You know, we're all asking
45:28
ourselves what's going to be the next unicorns.
45:31
And I see the trend going to deep tech because maybe standard
45:38
software is doesn't have a distinctive and now a strong
45:43
enough mode. So people are moving a bit into
45:47
deep tech. And yeah, you know, I think
45:54
that's one of one of my bets. Like it?
45:58
Can I run an idea by you? Sure, absolutely.
46:02
All right, I end up doing a lot of these kind of video calls and
46:06
typically I'll put like a different browser over my face,
46:10
largely because I'm just tired of looking at my face.
46:12
So here's the idea. It'll be a glasses or a hat
46:16
product that actually projects an attractive face onto my face
46:21
so that when I'm interacting in the world, I have a different
46:24
experience. What do you think about?
46:26
That for your own face, OK. For my face.
46:31
Yeah, OK, I'll buy it. I'm.
46:34
Like if you'll make it, I'll buy it.
46:37
I'll love it. OK, If you were entering college
46:41
today, what would you study? Well, that's a difficult
46:45
question. I don't have any recommendation.
46:47
Your people ask me what do I recommend?
46:48
My kids? I don't want to disregard
46:53
university at all, that would be too extreme.
46:56
I think it's less important than it used to be.
47:01
So you could either go to science, as I mentioned, deep
47:05
tech, robotics, space thing like that, the life science, or you
47:12
could just, you know, have more fun, you know, arts, history,
47:16
philosophy and just, you know, try to pick up maybe some soft
47:22
skills. But if you don't go into dip
47:26
tech, it's, it's a difficult question.
47:30
You know, just, you know, go and create your own glasses or hat
47:34
and and just have a go at it. I love that we need more of
47:40
that, you know, go study the arts, learn some soft skills,
47:43
enjoy your find out what you love to do and then run at it.
47:48
Do it until it kills you. Who said that Bukowski?
47:52
Not true. Amazing.
47:55
Failure or a failure. Failure that you can share that
47:59
you learned a lot from. Failure.
48:04
That I learned a lot from. Yeah, my first.
48:06
Investment was accompanying the what?
48:09
A diagnostic industry. The founder came up to me and
48:12
said, look, I've got a few investors.
48:15
Everyone's wrong. They're bad.
48:17
You know, investors want to kill you.
48:20
Come with me, help me change the board, change the company.
48:24
And I was a bit naive. I joined him and then find out
48:28
the other way around. He was the, let's say the bad
48:31
guy and the other investors were more rational.
48:36
We had to remove him. So I'm not going to do that
48:40
again. Not going to take that story,
48:42
bite that story again. So he must have been a pretty.
48:46
Good salesman, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
48:49
Exactly. Yeah, cool.
48:53
Any favorite media? Whether?
48:55
It's book or podcast or movie or television series that you could
48:58
recommend to people. Check out music.
49:01
Yeah, yeah, you. Know I watched.
49:05
Apple TV last year I saw a silo. I like that series.
49:10
Yeah, there's a lady there. 10,000 people underground or
49:14
locked up, unable to get out and there's one woman that
49:20
eventually gets out and she's fine, she doesn't die and I'm
49:24
just waiting for the third season.
49:28
Can't wait for that. I'll check that out it sounds.
49:30
Claustrophobic though it might. Creep me out.
49:32
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. It is.
49:35
Nice. OK.
49:37
How do you use? LLMS in kind of your normal work
49:40
flows during the day everyday. Everyday, every.
49:45
Question every e-mail, polishing emails, researching, asking, you
49:51
know, the buying decision making, you know, buying a new
49:55
screen, a new laptop, getting some advice.
49:59
So about entrepreneurial best practices, about personas.
50:05
We're going to start embedding cloud into our processes.
50:11
We're turning the company kind of upside down for cloud, you
50:15
know, making the infrastructure available to to use a Figma and
50:21
GitHub and all of our tools through cloud and.
50:27
We're learning. All the time.
50:29
New tools, you know, notebook LM, using it for research, for
50:33
making slides, presentations. It's everywhere.
50:39
It's everywhere. Truly.
50:41
Hard. This has been absolutely
50:42
wonderful. I really appreciate you coming
50:44
on the program. Think Up is the company.
50:47
Think Up dot Global is the website.
50:50
What's the best place for people to connect with you personally
50:53
online? LinkedIn.
50:56
Yeah, I'm available. On LinkedIn, Yeah, yeah, drop me
50:59
a line. And then we can take it through
51:01
to to e-mail what's up, if it, if it, if it makes sense,
51:06
incredible I. Am really looking forward.
51:08
To using the platform, I'm gonna recommend it to my daughter
51:11
who's in university right now and has that entrepreneurial bug
51:15
and just to start to like really build the foundation early on of
51:19
like validating your ideas is the best thing you can possibly
51:22
do as fast as you can get to it. It's probably the most valuable
51:27
lesson to learn as an entrepreneur in my opinion.
51:31
So, well, thank you very much. Oh, it's absolutely.
51:34
My pleasure, I'll link. Up all the links to to
51:37
everything in the show notes below.
51:38
So if you're listening to this, just Scroll down below and
51:41
please do reach out. Oh ha, this has been wonderful.
51:44
Thank you yeah same for me. It's been wonderful.
51:47
Thank. You, Ryan, I appreciate it.
51:51
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