the content here is for informational purposes only should not be taken as legal, business, tax or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A 16 Z fund. For more details, please see a 16 z dot com slash disclosures. Hey, I'm Andrew Chen from Injuries and Horwitz And today we have Justin Khan, who is one of our repeat entrepreneurs that we are very excited to be working with on Atrium. And so we're gonna talk a bunch about What is it like to be a repeat entrepreneur? I think we were just going through the list. There's, like five different companies on their Andi. You've learned a ton from every single one. And so we're gonna do a series of sort of compare and contrast across quite a number of topics. But as a very first step, I think would be awesome,

too. Have Justin talk about some of the companies that you've you know, you've been involved in, and I know the company you were running when we first met, where you're running around with a camera on your head, not actually even your 1st 1 There's one before that called Kiko. So when you talk about Kiko first,

sure, yes, I've been a Internet entrepreneur here for the last 14 years since 2005. Our very first company was called Kiko was kind of like Google Calendar. But it came out one month before Google Counter came out and wasn't really that good when I when I'm honest about it and so that company didn't work out super good. We ended up fire selling it on eBay after several failed acquisition attempts with the silver O'Malley players. And then, after we did that, we started another company. This one was even less well thought out than then. Kiko was actually, which was the idea was we would create our own live video reality TV show on the Internet. I do think that tapped into several things that were in the zeitgeist that actually have become popular now. But unfortunately, we as talent in our own show we're not very entertaining and not very popular. And so way launched this live streaming show we called a Justin TV because I was the only one in our four founders who was stupid enough to put the camera on his head and be like, I'll make myself the subject of this show. Right?

And you literally war. I remember you wore a backpack.

Yeah. So this was 2007. Yeah. So was pre iPhone, pre good cellular internet. So we had this computer in a backpack with, like, multiple cell contact cell phone modem connections, and we hooked it up to a camera. So there was a camera, this computer virtualized. The video was webcam, basically sent it over to the server. And then we had this very hacky way of streaming it out to the millions of people watching, actually, not millions hundreds. But,

you know, the people who were watching at home, they were following along. It was actually pretty fun. They could, you know, they could text. We put a number up there that would text me usually fairly offensive things, actually. But then eventually, we launched this show. People started coming because they were like, What is this guy doing? This is crazy. They were like, You're very boring.

I hate your show, but I want to create my own live video stream. So how are you doing it. And then the light bulb kind of went off and we said Let's create a live video platform and that became Justin TV the platform. And then after that, you know, we ran that for a couple of years, you know, condense it because a very long story. But we raise a bunch of money, ran for a couple of years, hit the nuclear winter of video startups where all the other video starts in Silicon Valley died. We were pretty scrappy and survived on, like a Roman budget eventually decided. We need to pivot to some new ideas, and from there we incubate a few ideas internally.

One of them was a video app called Social Cam, which we spun off and eventually sold the auto desk. And another one was, uh was a It was a sight that we, my co founder, really thought of, which was the idea was focused on Let's Focus on the video game video related video on our site on that became Twitch, which, you know, kind of grew and grew and grew. We eventually pivoted the entire company to twitch. My cofounder Emmett was the CEO of the company on eventually sold it to Amazon for $970 million in 2014 about five years ago. Along the way, start some other companies to start this company called exact, which is in the air and running slash home cleaning space. Kind of like a handy year home joy.

Um, we actually end up selling it to handy, which through an act of God, sold to Angie's list this year on and then, more recently, I've been a partner y Combinator for a couple of years and then incubate a few companies. One of those was this video Q and a app called Whale on Dhe. Then just fast forwarding all the way up till the present day decide. I want to really put all my eggs it back in one basket precariously thrown around basket. And so I decided to start a new company. That idea was atrium, which is technology enabled law firm for startups. Really trying to solve all the problems that I had is an entrepreneur when dealing with legal to make legal faster, more price, predictable, more transparent for me,

the business owner, you know, the business manager, and that's what we set out to do about two years ago. It's going pretty well with serving a bunch of startups here in Silicon Valley with with all of their needs, and it's been great.

But I'm sure we'll get to that. Yeah, well, you know, I think 11 place where I'm gonna start on this is Ah, a lot of the advantages of being a repeat entrepreneur are that, you know, the raise more money and there's more, you know, maybe easier to recruit talent. And there's, you know, there's all these advantages that kind of come along with that. One of the disadvantages I find ends up being that, you know, there's there's so many like distractions, right?

Like you could be. There's a 1,000,000 different things you could do. You know, there's a lot of things pulling at your attention. I'm really fascinated by you know, your movement from going from why C and an incubator where you could maybe kind of dip into a lot of little things versus kind of putting all your eggs in one basket and trying to, like, start a company like you to talk to us about that. That kind of decision?

Yeah, that's a great. That's a great question. So once you become successful in some way in Silicon Valley, whether that's you know, you've been executive at a company that's rocketship unicorn or you start a company, you know the world opens up right. People want you to be a VC. They want you thio, you know, work on projects with them. You can start any company that you want, which is great, right? But there's there's a paradox of choice, and focus can be a huge problem. I know for a lot of friends of Mine has been a swell as an investor as a partner.

Why commoner? There were some points I really like. You know, I loved helping early stage founders out and, like really working with them on the's problems That, like I felt like for 5 to 10% of them, was like life changing right, like me helping them out. You know what? I came up with some great idea or help him at a critical moment. That was life changing. But then there was a large majority of them that probably could have been listening to a YouTube video of me or this podcast and like get the same information, right? Yeah. And so I didn't feel like the feedback cycle was fast enough. Also,

as an investor on, I didn't really feel ultimately, like after the first couple years that I was continuing to learn and grow. And, you know, I'm still in my thirties. I was like, I need to do something where I'm gonna be forced to grow And really the, uh, number one vehicle for personal growth that I've ever experienced in my life has been startups s. So I went back to what I knew, and I really decided that in order to grow as a founder, you know, we had a pretty big outcome with Twitch. And, um,

I'd seen a lot of different things. In order to really grow to the next level, I would have to do something that potentially could be even bigger. And so I really felt like it deserved that. Deserve my full attention on DSO. That's that's kind of how I decided. I don't necessarily think is the right answer for everyone. Because when I didn't mention was that I had selective memory of the time, and I forgot just how painful starting a startup could be. And so for the first couple months of atrium, I was like, Oh, man, this is a dream I'm, like, finally leveled up.

I learned all these skills. I've like I've made it as a founder And then reality boom set in. And of course, there were nothing ever goes according to plan. There were Paynes. There were struggles and that was, you know, that's part of the journey. But then the good part is, of course, when you experience pain, that is a catalyst for learning. And so I really got what I wanted in the end which was forced to learn,

right? That's great. And and I know one of the big differences among some of the companies that you started in the past versus atrium and something that you've talked a lot about is you had this sort of succession of very like, consumer oriented start up, sort of like watching other people play video games like that says consumers is basically right. And so, you know, very interestingly, Atrium is a B to B thing. And why did you choose B to B? Was it just for novelty? Was it just to push yourself Or did you? You know, do you think that there's something different in mind that maybe takes advantage of some of your newfound skills? Yeah,

well, too, which I guess is really the It's like the ultimate consumption thing because it's your consuming, someone consuming video games. Really? Um, for me, I felt like, uh, maybe this isn't an analysis. I've done like retroactively, but I think I've had this discussion with a couple of people with multiple time founders. And when you're early stage founder, you know, when we started Kiko and then twitch, we sort of twitch. We were like Justin TV.

It was like we were 23 years old and we had no skills. You know, I never had a real full time job in my life. And even though we're programmers who are like a new college grad programmers, we were not good. Um, we're horrible managers who basically had nothing going for us when you have nothing going for for you except for your, like, willing to put in hard amount like long hours on a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Um, then you should focus on things that are like, where There's a lot of market risk because ideas withers market risk. You know, you can you can potentially windows right now as a someone who has, you know,

abilities and skills. I have learned skills over the last 14 years. Um, you want to focus much more on, like, execution risk things. And so I felt like B to B startups that Maura about execution risk. I felt like this legal market particularly, was already a big market, and you just have to figure out how to do it 10 times better. Yeah, right. And I felt like a road map for how to do that in my head. And so that's where Wife. I felt that this was a better use of time because, you know,

some of the consumer starts that I had incubated and played around with Post, which actually was really hard to find. Product market fit, right? Like I don't have any advantage and finding product market for with a consumer app more than the 22 year old dress

that you might have a decision. Yeah,

I probably have a disadvantage because I'm, like, already more set in my ways. I'm like less in tune with the culture. You know, I'm like, I don't know what the kids are doing. So, you know, with the Justin of today, invent the twitch of today like I don't think so. Right? I'm on old

guy now that's gaming. I wanna unpack this market risk. Execution risk, bones. That's obviously, you know, it's It's such an important distinction, you know, but very, very cloak we'll, you know, kind of in our understanding of it. What do you mean by market risk and sort of maybe new entrepreneurs can have an advantage in market and take tackling something with new market? How do you know if an idea has a lot of market risks? Sure,

that's great. So twitch and a trimmer. The perfect examples, right? Almost so twitch. It's like when we started when we pivoted Justin TV to Twist or even Justin. TV is a good example, but which is the best one? Probably when we pivot and Justin even twitch, nobody believed that there was This was a market right. No one believed no investors. Very few of our even internal employees like believe, and even this founders were skeptical. You, Amit, deserves the credit because he had believed but like a lot of the other co founders were skeptical on, like does this exist as a business?

And so the good part is that the competition there was very low right there weren't experienced entrepreneurs being like this is gonna be a huge business. We should compete. So really, it was, you know, the the entire thing was market risk and figure out. Do we have product market fit? How do we build product?

Because in that case, you're trying to be the first in the category. There's no substitutes, really. You're like, It's like, you know, you're watching someone else play street fighter at the arcade. That's like, That's the steps.

Exactly. You have a lottery ticket, right? Yeah, it's a lottery ticket. If you pivot a bunch of times and like listen to customers, you might be mine. More more lottery tickets. But your lottery tickets are just valuable as they experienced entrepreneurs. Lot of lottery tickets that he's buying. So he's a fool to play that game, and I don't think you see as many on experience. Entre is playing that same game, whereas with execution risk business is my lottery ticket now is way bigger than the guy who is like the 22 year old Justin. Right? So for four b to B started, I know.

Oh, how I can attract talent. I can hire a sales team. I can like raise capital. And so it's a lot more for something where it's, like, very established, that that's gonna be a business or some business is gonna be in there. It's like he's stupid to pull against May,

right, Right. Well, you know, and I always find it funny that in the consumer, you know, start a world that if you look at the last you know, kind of decade of hits if you were to tell people Oh, yeah, you know, the biggest hits are gonna be this app that lets you get in strangers cars, this app that lets you stay at someone you know you don't knows, like house. Uh, you know, an app where you swipe left and right in order to meet people on the Internet. And,

you know, an app that lets you watch other people play video games. You would be like That's the craziest like list of, you know, like a $1,000,000,000 company's ever heard. Yeah, and yet that that is like, actually, you know how Consumer Internet, actually, you know, the ecosystem unfolds. Yes.

It takes a lot of people who have nothing to lose to discover those ideas. Right, Right, right,

and so on. And so, you know, one of the things you one of the clear advantages in all of this is that, you know, let's talk about fundraising on the decision on whether or not to raise a bunch of money out of the gate versus doing the kind of, you know, Roman profitable, you know, cockroach thing, right? That's sort of like, you know, want one common contrast. And then obviously you had a very unique fundraising strategy as well. So maybe talk about that decision and then kind of how you how you ended up pursuing it.

Look, I'm not convinced that raising a ton of money out of the gate is the right strategy. You know, the Silicon Valley's later with dead bodies of these companies, you know, the juice, Eros and the Cools. And like all these companies that have raised a ton of money and then like they when you have a ton of money. You spend a ton of money right now. There's other companies, like the jet dot coms, that they made it work. So, you know, if I had not convinced it's the worst strategy ever. But I'm not convinced that the best. But for me personally,

you know where it's an execution risk business. I'm too rich to, like, fuck around with the like, you know? Okay, I'm gonna seem to do a seed round and like and just, like, take a long time, right? Like, for me, speed to market and execution was really important. And I felt also, like this market really supported and required because, you know,

it is the legal space there is. You saw a lot of value and making sure that the clients and the talent, the attorneys talent and on other legal providers like, think this company's gonna be around right. So that's that's very important on So, you know, this is a strategy I don't necessarily recommend to anyone who can raise a ton of money that this is the right strategy. It's just the strategy that we that we picked in terms of the tactics of, like, how we did around, especially Siri's. A. You know, my idea was because V. C's are kind of naturally adjacent Thio Legal right? Like,

for example, when you fund a company, they need someone to help them on the legal side. With all of the paperwork and the execution of that funding round, we felt like getting a lot of V. C's on her side would be a good tactic. And so we ended up going out and raising money for a C ground of, you know, over 90 different investors from all over Silicon Valley because I felt like it would be really good to have those investors on our side and recommending atrium as, ah, channel partner. And so that was our tactic there,

right? And I think it's something where, um uh, you know, to to your point, if something that you're working on is primarily execution, then that means that you know you can their their times and places where you could use money to solve it versus it seems like in a part of the market risk thing, is it just, you know, to your point, that sort of lets you buy more lottery tickets. But it may not accelerate the process of actually doing it right, and so that I think that sort of feels like one main difference. And then the other one is, you know, that just to build on what you're saying is that if you are in an industry where trustworthiness is really important, then being well capitalized this key in the same way you wouldn't you know,

if you're gonna you know, for example, um, you know, build a fin pack startup where you know you're gonna you're gonna ask consumers to trust their money with you. Exactly like you. You want to be legit, You want to be well capitalized. You wanna have, like, you know, superstrong executives and board members and investors. And that's a strategy. Kind of. That's a little bit kind of like self self perpetuating.

Yeah, that's a great example. You're gonna build like a new bank, right? Like an online or like a mobile first bank, which is I think some people are doing. Would you want to raise $1 million of $1 million seat around or $5 million? See, around over there is a $50 million serious, a out the gate. Obviously, if it's available to you, want more money? Because you know people need banks, right? It's just a matter of Can you do it better? Right?

That's a perfect example. And there's many others here in Silicon Valley. I think we've actually shifted Maur as the cycle has changed over the last 10 years, a tech cycle We shifted more to these execution wrist startups, and so you know, you've consequently seeing. I mean, it's a chicken and egg thing, really, What came first, But like you've seen these more Maur like bigger rounds that say that are supporting

the company. Well, I don't want one of my one of the partners here, Chris Dixon, has talked about the idea that, you know, if if you have a set of problems that has not been able to get solved and improved in, you know, the 20 years of the modern Internet, then maybe all the techniques that we pioneered in the last decade plus like being asset light and just throwing software and just share with quickly and being really lean like maybe those those techniques don't work for a reason. In Healthcare and Finn tack and legal service is in real estate and, like, you know, some set of those things, right? And so then very quickly you have to think, OK,

well, you know, if those techniques don't work, otherwise it would have someone would have tried it already would have sort of, you know, a little bit like, efficient market hypothesis would have kind of, like, happened already. Like maybe you need a funding foundational a different approach. And so I think I think that is actually one of the reasons why there's more of these, Like, wanna quote full stack start ups that are going after these really, really difficult areas because I get up. Otherwise

you wouldn't be able to do it. Yeah, we'll run the experiment right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right now, I think I think that's right. I think that's right. So, you know, one of the one of the fun topics One thing that I have Ah, tremendous amount of respect for you on is your very you know, Uh, you're always on the leading edge thinking about, you know, self improvement, how to sort of you know, your your own personal performance at work, You know,

at home, etcetera. Andi, obviously one of the big things about you know, running a company is that it is enormously stressful, right? And so talk to us about, like, you know, when you were first time entrepreneur, kind of Kiko Justin TV, you know, how did you think about managing the stress of running a company on DDE? What was your approach there and then and then let's talk about kind of like the new and improved Justin. Now, 10 years later,

yes, so in the early days and 10 years ago, I was not doing anything in terms of like improving myself. In fact, I think I used to think about ah, people's attributes, maybe not your skills so much in terms of like, you know, it's your skills of programming or stuff like that, but more of like you're you're after. It's like I don't have you ever played Dungeons Dragons, but it may create a character. Dungeons Dragons, you will, is a 20 sided die and you know your strength. It's like 14 your intelligence that you roll it six or whatever, and that's what you have.

You don't get can't change it. And so I felt like people's attributes were kind of like that. And, um, because I never worked on that very much self improvement stuff outside of, you know, like, yeah, I became a better program because of a program, you know, But I didn't work on things like make myself, I don't know, smarter right or harder working or like, awake more hours of the you know of the day, like alert more hours a day or anything like that. So I was very happened.

You know, Everything was kind of accidental, like we would, you know, I was not dealing with stress well at all. If there was a problem in the company, I would be very emotionally avoided to it before I would, like, drown my sorrows in, like, alcohol, right, which is not a very good coping mechanism at all. And so, uh, and then,

like, you know, in terms of even just down to like what we were like eating at launch owes, you know, we're talking about this earlier, but I would I would have liked pizza every day at lunch, suggested TV, and then I'd like, fall asleep like I'm going to like a carb

coma. Asked come in the afternoon like every day.

And so now, more recently, like with with Atrium. It's been a tremendous vehicle for my own personal discovery because, uh, experiences stress again. You know, I was like, Oh, my God, it's stressful again, This is crazy. What a wise It's a stressful. So I started looking for ways to deal with that. And, um, I really I mean,

if I had a number of things that started working for me after I started really exploring a number of things that start working for me starting last year, you know everything from a friend of mine recommended a daily gratitude journal. So I've just been doing that every day writing this gratitude journal. Five minute journal. You write down the three things every morning that you're grateful for, and that seems like a very simple thing and kind of hokey, actually, when I first heard about it, but what I realized was it helped re contextualize all the ups and downs, and you experience is an entrepreneur, especially, I mean, the downs really like throughout the day. They're not as big of a deal, because in the morning you're writing down like Well, I have this opportunity,

you know. I remember the day we came in and pitched. You guys here. I run my graduate journal. I get to pitch, You know, the Andrews and hallways. That's amazing, right? Even whatever happens, it's it's an incredible opportunity that puts me in the top point. Oh, a 1% of people in the world without opportunity, you know, So that that was, like,

pretty amazing. And then, you know, every day there's something like, if you really think about it, there's There's so many amazing things that happen to you as a human being, you know, here in Silicon Valley, even, just like actually, one thing I think in the morning, oftentimes is like the supply chain, the global supply chain, to deliver coffee from like around the world so that I can grind up fresh coffee and, like a pore over in my KMEX in the morning. That's amazing if you think about it.

Totally amazing. Yeah, right. So the gratitude journal really working for me? And then another

thing. Still eating pizza

for lunch every day? Yeah. So diet another thing. I stopped eating pizza, sir. Entirely. Well, I started eating a ketogenic diet, which is a high fat diet. But really, the reason for me is like I just don't get tired in the day anymore. And so that's been really helpful. In last year's experience, I did like some one meal a day days, you know, like four days a week. Someone is weird,

like Jack Dorsey diets kind of Jack Dorsey, light or whatever, but it's been good for me. You know, You had to do what your body feels like. It feels good. And so you know that some diet and exercise pretty religious about exercising, you know, try to do something every day during the work days. Um and then the little ass thing, That's what I was really big is meditation for me. Start off just with headspace. You know, I'm not the type of person that people you know assumed would be a heavy meditator over introspective or anything like that. But, um,

for me, just like starting off with headspace last year and then now I've been doing transcendental meditation, which is kind of what Ray Dahlia took talks about principles that's worked really well for me to just be more present during the day in my life. Pretty pretty amazing, Amazing profound effect.

I feel like your Twitter stream is part of your gratitude journal. Yeah, because I Because I read your Twitter stream and I'm like, Oh, this is like, very philosophical. You know, it's not like just pulling out like, Oh, here's here's a blurb from the latest s one. Yeah, you're like, you know, you're, like, sharing ways that that the startup community can, you know, to think, think about themselves by

the way I think about is like if you want something to be part of your identity, talk about it If you wanna learn something, teach it, You know, And I really believe that. So for me putting out you know what I've been doing on the mindfulness side and for myself to beam or emotionally kind of stable throughout the threat, the days and weeks and months as a starter founder that's been really valuable to me. So if I can spread that to other people, it's gonna help reinforce it as an identity for me. But it's also gonna hopefully help those people as well. You know one thing I've been working on a lot as well. The last thing I'll say is just working on realizing that your attachment out in the very early days of Justin TV and Kiko and all these companies had a huge ego attachment to the outcome of the company, right? My identity and the companies were, like, very intertwined. And more recently I realized that was the same at Atrium,

Actually, like again, I was like reading that same pattern, but it was like it's a very unhealthy pattern. So what I realized was I needed to start telling, reminding myself that no matter what happens with this company, I'm not gonna be any happier any less happy. In the long run, there might be a short burst of unhappiness with fails or happiness if it succeeds, like, you know, amazingly. But you know, you're not gonna get any happier, really. If you're relying on outside things,

external factors to drive your inner happiness, you will always be disappointed in the long run. And the funny thing is, I've actually run the experiment, not a Navy test, but a linear experiment on that because we had more more success over time. Like we start off, you know, really like paying ourselves finding with Kiko $7800 a month. But we only paid ourselves every other month on. So then we raise funding for Justin TV, and we were able to make it like a little salary. Then we became profitable. We made a lot Maura and then we sold, like one company that we saw a lot of companies, and so we like,

have ramped over time and after You know the basics in, you know, the basics of mad, alos hierarchy of needs were taking care of. You know, I felt like I go out to eat. That's on one of those models. Higher kidneys. After that basic thing I could afford to go out to eat. Yeah, none of it never mattered. You know, it never made me sustainably more happy. And so just remind yourself of that, trying to remove those attachments in her mind, it's easier said than done, but having that is like an active practice has been really important to me.

Let's talk about mentorship as part of that, right? So you know when you're building Kiko, Justin, TV, um, and your your first time entrepreneur. There's a lot of experience kind of, you know, experienced people who are kind of like couldn't go ahead of you in the thing. And so that's fantastic, because you can, you can learn a time. I would love to hear kind of, you know who you thought of as your kind of lifelong mentors, people that have helped you for a long time. And then the other problem that's super interesting is,

you know, Then you start atrium and you've had you've had some major sex successes behind you. And then in some ways, the number of people you can learn from is a much smaller pool and sort of like, how do you kind of curate your mentorship? Maybe. How has it changed? That's a broad, broad topic, but would love to hear.

Sure, Absolutely. So. Like the best part about Silicon Valley, in my opinion, is that there are people here who have done it before who are willing to help you. You know that we would never have made it here even day one without people who helped us what it was like economically bad, You know, waste of time. We weren't like that look like a hot prospect company. or anything, right? So those people Paul Graham, great example, Founder y Combinator Pabu, who is like a partner, one commoner but the inventor of Gmail inside of Google thes air People who invest in us very early on mentored us very early on and helped us out.

And that was pretty pretty amazing and really that that ethos perpetuates itself, you know, because then as a part of my commentary, even today as an entrepreneur, where you know, there's, like, lots of complete, conflicting competing interests for my time, I was makes for sure to spend a little bit of time mentoring other start ups because, you know, it's kind of like a pe of four thing, you know, you and you, you do the thing that people did for you when you were right, you were younger.

One of the really obvious sources of mentorship is actually your mentorship, right. And some of the folks that kind of came up with you at the same time. And, um, you know, ended up running really interesting cos on their own. Andi, I know they all live in to boast with you in San Francisco to talk to us about some of your friends that you that you consider your mattress.

Yeah, So you know, it's great to have friends. We're kind of doing the same path in a lot of ways, but there are one or two steps ahead of you, so it's still still the case. Obviously, Emmett, my co founder, is still running. Twitch. It's over 1000 people, you know. I think it's like 1500 people or something like that. My brother, who's, you know,

CEO of Cruise, co founder of Cruise, the self driving car company. And they're like, over 1000 people. And, like Steve found a read it, you know, they're like 400 something people or whatever. So you know, seeing what their problems are, you know, obviously the problems are always the same. Actually, the problems are always like I don't have the right alignment among my team, and I don't have the right executive team is usually some variation of those things.

But, you know, hearing it from from the horse's mouth is super helpful in terms of making decisions for me. Um and then, you know, even outside of Des Beaux, sometimes I venture in the soma and having some of, you know, kind of really Y c founders have really made it. You know, like Drew from Dropbox, for example. Just no one like How do they think about everything? All those things. Executive hiring, etcetera.

It's really helpful. Hopeful to me. So, luckily here in Silicon Valley have a lot of great resource is in the last thing I will, I'll shout out. Is this new executive coach Matt Macharia, who's like, Amazing! This guy is the guru. He's, you know, mentors a lot of different, fast growing start ups around here.

And I just talked to him like a 360 think Yes, yes, this guy,

Yeah, that's incredible. Highly recommend. Can't speak. He's like, changed my life. So I feel like he's an angel sent down from heaven to teach me. Finally, after 14 years, howto like manages system and I've learned a lot from him, So that's great. Those are kind of three sets, you know, executive coach, the pure mentors and then kind of early stage mentors that I had

back in the day. That's great. And and I know one of the topics that you must end up talking about often is that when you're building something that has a little bit more just execution risk. You know you have. You've raised some real money to kind of get started. A lot of it ends up being sort of like organizational complexity, company culture. I know this is the big, big, big area focus for you, and that's something that is very different when you're trying to build something for the long run versus when you're kind of just trying to find product market fit. And it's kind of like 10 people. And you're just like, Is this even gonna make it like, Let's not even work on this. So talk to us about kind of how your approach is changed on building the company in your leadership stuff.

That is a great question, because it's something I think a lot about, Um, so I had never thought before a couple months ago, and this may sound stupid in a way, but I never thought What is the kind of company that I want to show up the work at so 14 years later, finally thinking about it. But the real answer is like when you're a 22 year old, just starting her company. Where you're in Silicon Valley and you're thinking funding rounds and exits, you're always thinking, What's the next milestone? Like? How do I just claw my way desperately, however it whatever it takes, how do I get to that next milestone? It's do or die.

And for some, you know, oftentimes it is do or die. You don't have the luxury, often times of thinking about, like what kind of or you feel like you don't have the luxury of thinking about what kind of company you want to build culturally. And so I started a trim, actually, very much in the same way. Like, what are the metrics, milestones we want to hit? What's the next metrics milestone? What do we need to get for a serious B or a next round of funding? And so the problem with that was that a year in, I realized,

Oh, shoot, I need to like there are, like, a lot of things that I've neglected that are actually affecting our ability to execute the number one thing there was. What's what the culture gonna be. People didn't know. Like what? What's he like? You know, the lineman aspect of like, what are we building? What? What kind of company are we who are we want rebuilding and then with the culture? What? How we're being intentional about it.

So, you know, we did a lot to work on that ran through a collaborative values process over a year ago where we brought the whole company together, figure out what we care about. And then more recently, I've been thinking about after a lot of this self work in terms of making myself feel kind of consistently good every every day and, um, move my attachments, The outcome I've realized, you know, there's a set of principles that I want to implement at the company. On that I think that execution will flow from those things right. If we build a company that has high empathy for each other, where we have care for each other, where people are very collaborative, where we are,

you know, people feel like the locus of control, for what's happening is inside of them instead of outside of them. You know, things were happening through them, not to them. I think that all the execution will actually flow from that one of the things I never understood before, which I feel like I really understand now is that's saying that culture eat strategy, right? I felt like I had very good strategy with Atrium, but I forgot about culture in that first part of the company, and now I realized I've kind of realized how important it is. So you know, one of the things I'll say that we're doing is recently I read this book called 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, which is amazing book. But it's really about,

ah, certain building a certain type of company, what the office called conscious Company. But I would I would centered around, you know, that locus of control question like, Do you have radical responsibility for what's going on in your life in your company, regardless of who you are? And I read that book and I realized this is the type of company that I want to work at. You know, it's a company populated by team members who really believe in these sets of these principles. And so what kind of going through a process of trying to implement that at our company and really culture is one of the highest? It went from something that I didn't prioritize.

Thio my top priority. Yeah, well, and I think it's really interesting because it's you because you'd started Kiko like like out of school. Yeah, right. And so, unlike some folks who maybe, you know, they go and they work at Google or Facebook or something and then maybe have a template for the company culture they want to create. This is something that you kind of have to learn and adjust, right? Many, many kind of company in generations of various

companies that you've built. That's what we had never worked at a place with good culture or a culture right, because we had to have always worked at our own company. So we were just making it up as we went along. When you're not intentional about your culture or type of company want to be, then you make the culture ends up being the accidental collection of good and bad choices and like personality quirks and good bad behaviors that you're founding an executive. Teams propagate right and it's accidental, right? And oftentimes there's things that are not good behaviors. They get propagated culturally nomine times there, people justify it because they're like, Well, they conflate there. The correlation with causation right there, like because we, ah, you know,

are have behavior. What? Maybe we're like, we're like a low empathy company. Let's say that they don't call it that. They're just like we make decisions based on, like, meritocracy, right? And they're like, the best idea is gonna win. But then maybe that's like because that's that's the behavior that they propagated. But that might not be the real reason why they have actually been winning, right. I think a lot of companies in Silicon Valley kind of succeed despite their management, actually,

not because of it. And what I mean by that is like the idea was so good that a bunch of 25 year olds could run the company right, That core product mark. If it was so good, it was just a rocket ship and then people were just trying to hang on. Eventually, I think they do figure it out. But oftentimes in those early days, I think it's actually quite, you know, not intentional and oftentimes not that good.

You know, in our conversation today, we talked about all the things that you've changed, right? You've changed, you know, from consumer to be to be you've changed. You know how fast you fund raiser? You know, there's been a lot of different changes, you know? Is there anything that you feel like Like there's a core that you're like, Okay, there's this thread that I'm trying to do the same between all the companies Or is it just really like Iterating? Very, very quickly and you're

doing a lot that's different. I think that that court, if those of Iterating quickly, you know, that's like, Why, See, ethos? That's something that we really did carry ons in the very beginning. So speed was, you know, something that that's that's pretty important. I think that really being helpful in the community, not just your your startup, I mean, including your started, but also the community startups.

That's something that we learned Baber. We learned from, you know, early days of y C, and even like our community of friends were founders who all became successful, you know, helped each other out. And then now today you know it's an ethos overtake the atrium to really build a company that's, you know, kind of four startups by startups. That helps out these fast growing startups s O that ethos is probably something that's pretty similar, you know, kind of similar to like, what you guys have an injuries and right, which is, like,

if we can be the most helpful in terms of providing these networks of service is that is something that is going to, you know, kind of paid dividends for us. A brand, you know, that's something I believed personally. And then also Eddie trim throughout my entire career right now,

right? Yeah. I mean, as you know what? One of the things that's great about the Bay Area is that ends up being this very long running, relationship driven place where you meet people like I mean, we met, like, 10 plus years ago, right? And that's the kind of interesting thing where, um, there's many, many cases where you can work together, and so, you know, they're focusing on value creation as opposed to,

like, how am I gonna try toe position myself to let capture the most value? Like I think I think that, you know, like that that certainly runs like, I think it's one of the very special things about?

Absolutely. If I think about where we're at, you know where wall the people who saw in the early days, like 13 years ago, all these different founders, you know, these two person starts that won't even anything where they're at their company might not have succeeded. But they have, like, created some value here in Silicon Valley by being in that ecosystem, being helpful and then, you know, maybe becoming executive at someone else's company or became an investor, early stage investor at another company that really worked. And so there really is like the feeling of you. You kind of get out what you put into this community. That's what one of things I really love about

it. How do you think about the idea that you know, uh, when you're first getting started, your first time entrepreneur, there's low. There's kind of like low expectations, right, because you're like, Maybe this will work. Maybe this won't work. People's expectations of you are like kind of low to kind of like I don't know who knows. You know, Justin's off in San Francisco doing this thing's running around. The Cameron has had Andi. It's just kind of a fun thing. Um,

And then now several companies later. Because, you know, also, you've, you know, you've raised money and because you've done a lot etcetera, you know the expectations must be must be higher. Like, how do you think about how do you think about those expectations managing your own? You know your own expectations around that?

It's hell. Well, I always think that every entrepreneur's expectations for themselves are very exceedingly high. Right? If you're the type of person who was a PM or engineer at one of these fan companies and then you're like I'm gonna start a startup because they see other people doing it, then you're you're you don't think you don't go into it thinking I'm just gonna create, like, a whatever, something that's like a nice small business, right? You go in being like, I'm gonna raise Siri's a from Andrews in, and we're gonna be you know, this product that just goes theme next, Snapchat or whatever. And so I think that, like it's always a battle against your own,

like the kind of devil on your shoulder is telling you you're not good enough. You know, you're not doing well enough, you could be doing better. And I think the way that you win that battle is right By really internalizing and realizing that whatever happens, you're gonna be fine and you're probably gonna be the same. You're not gonna be happier or less happy, actually. And now most people do not actually successfully internalize that well, in my opinion, but it is true. I firmly believe it's true. And it's something that the sooner you start practicing that in your head, really, you know, feeling that and experiencing that in your in your yourself internally than the happier you'll be.

And that's not to say that a lot of people I come into contact with, like friends, even or people work from there like, Well, my drive like that need to win a doll. Costs is my edge, but I really don't believe I mean, maybe that's true for other people. But for me, I never found that to be the case. And it's like, No, it was just like the kind of unhappiness that was created around it that that would make it actually less sustainable for me to continue on because I was always you know you can't. Human beings don't wanna live in a high stress, high anxiety stay for too long. That's how you burn out,

right? So startups are not, I mean, contrary to popular belief, it's not a sprint. It's a marathon, right? There's these overnight successes. Twitch came out of nowhere eight years from incorporating. That company is selling it almost exactly eight years, right? So that is a long time. And in order just last a long time, you need to figure out a way that you're okay with what's going on. And what's going on is always gonna involve bad things, like write things,

you know, there's going to be good and there's gonna be bad. So if you don't figure out a way that you psychologically are okay with that, you're gonna give up. And if you give up, you're never gonna see it toe the ultimate potential that whatever your started, his kid could be.

All right, I'm gonna throw in kind of 2 to 2 last questions in here. One is, you know, what are you reading these days? Do you have any sort of recommendations podcast that you like kind of media consumption is kind of kind of a wayto learn yourself. You know, Andi, anything sort of especially super impactful over the last couple years that you wanna

You wanna reference? Yeah. It's this great eso reading a lot, actually, cause I deleted all the entertainment APS off my phone, including the browser, and I'd locked it so that I don't can install new app because

I was a total phone addict. That includes me. How do you lock? How do you lock

here? So you can lock installing new app. You can delete the app store and put a pass code lock on it. I gave my wife the Pascoe. She put in a passcode. I don't know what it is. So I can say is like a parental walk. It's a parental lock. I don't have control over my own phone anymore. But the consequence of that is I read a lot more books. Good. Ah, couple ones that have been particularly impactful to me. Number one is this book called The Untethered Soul s O. This book changed my life. It's really about The idea is that you are not the thing that you think you are. Most people go through life thinking.

They're the experiences that they've experienced, the thoughts that they have of the emotions that they have. But really, you're just the observer of these. These things that are happening. And by creating it's almost like you're watching a movie, right? Like a no movie that has all the five senses plus emotions for starts like a seven dimensional movie off. You know, the Justin life right? And I think that was a very important message to me to realize, like an internalized that, like actually these attachment, these things that I think will happen that will like dry happiness, like experiences or events or whatever will never actually Dr True Internal Happiness. So Amazing Book Antenna.

It'll highly recommended another book that I think may be a very much better leader. I was his book a Red called Leadership in Self Deception. Amazing Book. The book purpose of the book is really there's two ways to treat other people inside the box and outside the box, but really mean like, without empathy or with empathy, like treating them like a, you know, like an object or a person, right? And if you threw the idea of fundamental idea. But the book is if you treat people like on object that number one, they don't like it right. But the second thing is, if you treat people like objects were just there to fulfill something for you, right?

Like at work, It would be like Thio hit some number metric or whatever, do some job. The problem is that you will lie to yourself about when there's negative situations about what your role is. You'll self deceived. You'll say, Oh, this person is 100% at fault and I'm 0% of full and I found myself actually doing that. A lot of times I realized, you know, I felt like I was, you know, have a high degree of empathy and for other people. But I realized that was for people who I felt like. We're performing really good where my observation was like high performance. But I wasn't where my observation,

my feeling was that there wasn't high performance. I felt like I would slip into this like low empathy mode. And the problem is that when you're in that mode, you don't admit what are the things that I have done, what you know, Justin. What other things I have done to contribute to that situation. So examples could be put someone in the wrong job didn't give them clear enough quite here for success or failure. Didn't support them with the right resources, right? There's many reasons why I could have contributed to some situation failing. And I found that, like, I would lie to myself in the situation. So, you know, that was a really important book for May. Those were probably too. Once I really recommend

it's great. Um, we're doing a lot of podcast right now

listening to them. Yeah. Been listening in his entertainment. I listen to the podcast. Ivan. Listen, Thio, some of the Joe Rogan experience ice, and, um, that is probably the visit from me. It's like I just listen to one with Alex Honnold when he's talking about climbing. Yes, it was pretty interesting.

Um, I'm gonna ask you the time travel question. So if you were today and enlightened, repeat entrepreneur to go back, thio yourself when you know you're 22. 23. Just getting started doing this thing. Um you know what? What advice would you give

yourself when I'm just getting started, you know, Probably joined Facebook, but the new the real answer. I've actually, you know, I don't I don't really regret anything like economic choices or anything. I think I've had a tremendous opportunity. Yeah, tow, like build and discover these new things and build build companies. And I would trade it for anything. I think they think I could have done better. Or, like, learn. You know,

back then is, um you know, self improvement is a thing you should probably like work on that. Maybe that's number one second thing. Stop eating pizza at work. Stop eating pizza at work. Number three would be, uh, you should, you know, things take time. Don't be in such a You know, it's not like a one year wanted done like now you're a billionaire, you know, like, if you look at the let's say any sort of like,

the Amazon share prices are like market cap over time, right? It looks like even through, like, the last couple years. Looks like an exponential curve, right? And so, you know, if business had been like your you know, like, 15 which is a long time to be starting a company like, Oh, man, I made it. I'm done like I'm gonna retire like,

well, that, you know, the company would look a lot different, right? So, you know, things take time. And I have to constantly remind myself that I think humans, you know, here in Silicon Valley especially, But then human beings in general are wired to, like, always want them new, you know, look for the new thing.

What's new? What, like, what's your new thing? Something that everybody's asking about in Silicon Valley. They're always, you know, that's a question here, but the best entrepreneurs here, the ones who created lasting companies and lasting value. They stick with their thing for decades, you know? And that's that's what that's what impresses me most now. And I wish that I had kind of realized that, you know, before

awesome. Better late than never. Justin, Thank you for coming by. Yo.