hello. Welcome to another episode of the Hillary podcast, where we look back at the stories of the start, the early beginnings and past projects of current founders to uncover insights that you can apply to your business. Today I am Brandon Hanadarko, and on this episode, I'm very excited to be joined by Pap Walls, who is a good friend of the show, and the founder at Star Story, a website for users to learn about the similar humble beginnings of other founders before this pact founded Delight a Saas platform to simplify the wholesale orders between businesses and suppliers through delights, customizable order forms that business owners could fill out without having Kalugin. In this episode patent, I discussed the fuzzy definition of product validation indicators that tell you that you should pursue your side project full time, and the 24 hours started Challenge a fully lives from event that Pat Ran that had almost 200 founders launch a project in 24 hours. Sit tight, getting a quick ready and thank you for listening. This podcast absurd wouldn't have been possible without the help of our friends over at a KT in the platform that connects founders and startups with marketing students for three month internships.

No matter what kind of business you're running, there's a big chance that you need a hand with marketing and sales a k t. And provide the cheap solution for that. For only $299 you get a three month partnership for interns and virtual assistants. The best part of it all is that they're offering a $50 discount for all of fail early subscribers. Redeem this now at fail ary dot com slash get slash Arcadium. Once again, that's fail. Ary dot com slash get slash Arcadium Hello and welcome to another episode of the Hillary Podcast, your one stop shop for failed ventures and failed projects. But more importantly, the lessons you can learn from them. My next guest was previously at the Lloyd, and he worked a bunch of roles, you know, in the San Francisco Bay Area in New York City. As a software engineer before founding Starter Story, I'm very, very excited to have pat walls on the podcast. Hello,

Pat. How are you doing? I'm good, man. Thanks for having me on. It's an honor.

Yeah, Thank you. So much for being here. You know, you're doing so many big things right now. You know, you did. You don't need wordpress. You're doing, you know, the 24 hour startup. You did start a story, but I'd love to just, you know, scale back and take it from the beginning. We did our research on our end. And you know what we have is that Please,

please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here. But we have that you graduated UCSB 2013 with a degree in economics like that's your You know, that's the beginnings that we have of you. Yeah. And then you went on post grad to work at Deloitte. Could you tell us about that? You know, like, how did you go from? I guess it seems like an easy transition. But how did you go from a degree in, you know, economics and accounting to Lloyd. Like what drew you to, like, you know,

attack. What do you You work like responsibly and like s one filings and like, you know, it says on your lengthen that you're like the sole person responsible for filing B s one for, like, a high profile like company I p O you know what dreams attack? What got you into there? And Yeah. Could you tell us you know anything about the Lord that you

took away? Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, for anyone out there listening. Deloitte is, ah, accounting firm. So when I graduated from college, I decided that I wanted to be an accountant, which was not the wrong decision. I don't have any regrets for it, but it's not what I'm doing now. And my story is just some of the background that you mentioned already is It's a lot of different stuff, and I think that's because we can get into the details of all that and how that journey went. But I think the underlying thing for me is that I just never really knew what I wanted to do. And I kept trying different things.

So even before I graduated from college, I went to community college at, didn't do very well in high school, and I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, an English major. And then I moved to accounting. And then, you know, I kind of moved into tag. And after that, I moved into coding. For me, the story more high level is like I was always just trying to figure out what I want to do it if anyone out there is listening that maybe is moving around careers or just doesn't really know what they want to do. That's kind of where

I was at the time. Sure, sure. And I guess, Yeah, like, you know, you talk about you wanting to be a lawyer. How did this, like, spill over into you wanting to, you know, work impact. Yeah, Well,

the thing is, you know, I look back and I realized that is always what I wanted to dio. But it never felt like realistic that I could, you know, products or write code. And like, if I look back to when I was like in my teens and I was so into tech like apple computers, and I was really, like a tech nerd like that, and I just love that kind of stuff, but I just never like maybe just like my family growing up, they're not really in that kind of industry and like that, it took me a while that actually get into attack and get into even a founder roll. It took over 10 years to get there, So, yeah,

I mean, I started just like, Oh, well, I got a drop at a law firm, and maybe I could be a lawyer. That sounds like, you know, a critic. I just never knew what I wanted to do. Was one of those people like like you'd ask? What do you want to do when you grow up past? Obviously. Like being a baseball player. Whatever. When I was,

you know, eight years old, it's like, I don't know what I want to dio. And that was kind of the reason why I jumped around so

much. Uh, yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, just taking it chronologically. You go from an associate role at Deloitte. You worked there for about a year, and then in 2014 you move on to becoming a solutions architect at an a plan. I guess I'm just curious about this, you know, transition. You know, you graduate of USC CSB with, like, economics and accounting,

and then you go on to moving into, like, more of a technical role, like doing, you know, agile software development. You know, I'm just curious. Like, did you ever see yourself? I guess becoming like a coder. Like, did you ever see yourself becoming like an engineer? How did you get into? You know, engineering?

Because, like the next few roles that you have are, like all you know, software engineers at, like, companies and, like San Francisco companies in New York. So I'm just curious. How did you move from the industry of, you know, law and accounting towards, like, engineering?

Yeah. No, that's a great question. So what I was doing accounting I went and worked for Yeah, like you said, one of the big accounting firms. I have even last a year there because it was way too corporate, and I just like, I knew right away that it wasn't for me. So I got out of that as quickly as I could. And luckily, I kind of knew that I wanted to do startups, which is why I chose toe Do accounting after college is like a good job working for one of those Big four firms. And so I chose to go to San Francisco because I thought maybe one day I could like maybe I could join a start up or just get into the industry, whether it was getting in through accounting or whatever. That was kind in the back of my head the whole time. So once I got to the accounting firm,

then I was like, OK, I hate this, but I still want to get into start up somehow because I was doing accounting for start ups as a consultant at the accounting firm. So luckily, I got a job at it. Enterprise Tech start up called Anna Plan, and it was mawr of, ah, technical role, like accounting is pretty technical, but this was a little bit closer to engineering. Sure, there's more in the software implementation side than like an accounting and spreadsheets kind of thing. So I got there. That was an amazing experience,

working for a startup. First time I got to do that, which, if anyone, it has that opportunity that's listening to progress. I like that. That was a great way to get in there. And then after about a year and 1/2 there again, this is like the constant theme is like I felt I wanted the next challenge. I wanted to get more technical and I wanted to learn how to code because I was doing some sort of kind of coding stuff there, or maybe more like database stuff. But I was like, OK, well, I really enjoy this work. I think maybe take it the next step further and become a coder.

So at that point, I did a coding boot camp, and that was in 2016 or late 2015 or something like that. And then I became a software engineer and all that again, Yeah, it was kind of like in the back of my head is like, OK, if I could learn to code, then gives me one step closer to starting a company someday. So does that give you kind of like a sense of how that kind of journey

happened? No. No. Yeah, absolutely. That was a great you know, that was a great, great, like, chronological journey into, like what you're thinking at the time.

Well, I was never really like thinking that in hindsight, that's how it looks. But always looking for the next best

like the from the next step, right? Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, post coding boot camp I guess you know, you take jobs as, like, engineer at companies in, like San Cisco and like another company in like, New York, and then you go on to find starter story. But, you know,

in between this, like engineer Ole, you have, like, another start up there like I love to uncover as we like going deeper into the podcast, but call delight. And that was, like, you know, the start of the like, I guess you, like, didn't really work out. You know, it failed, and then you got a lot of learning out of it.

But I love to just, you know, scale back like before. We just, like, go into that, like, in high inside. It looks like you always wanted to be a founder. But I guess you know, you have this, like, impressive track record of working in industry, you know, with, you know,

working out like one of the big four law firms working at a start up and then just like moving up your way into, like, just becoming a software engineer, I guess what made you really make the switch from industry to start ups, You know, like, what was it like you tell you say that like you didn't really like working in Deloitte or like you didn't like working in like the Big Four law firm. Like, I guess I'm just curious as to what, like, made you make the switch from, you know, industry and toe like, more of like, you know, you being your own boss, like, just like you finding a startup.

Yes. This great question, I think for me has been kind of like I said earlier, is always looking for the next challenge. So, like at one point, the next challenge for me was to learn how to code. Sure. Then once I learned how to code and became comfortable with that and confident that I was like, OK, I'm not sure I want to be a engineer working for a company for the rest of you know, the next 30 years. I don't want to be an engineer. I don't have an engineering career. I want to take these skills and eventually with the goal of being on to work for myself and build my own thing, cause I think I get a lot of value out of yeah, building my own thing that's,

you know, owned by myself and not it's gonna sound pretentious, but I don't want toe do what? Work at first, You know, when I first got into the corporate world and working for companies is, like, so exciting to be at the start up and to build this thing. But then you do it once or twice or three times in your life. Well, I want to build this thing, but build it for myself. I don't want to fulfill someone else's dream. I want to fulfill my own dream, my own dreams, too, you know, build my own business and built and have impact as a founder. So

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. You know, that's like a great segue way into your first start up, like you building your own product. So this was a delight. Am I pronouncing

that? Correct? Yeah. Delight.

Yeah. So, you know, I love to play this game with founders, but, you know, if you had to explain what delight did to, like a 10 year old,

what would you say? Yeah, yeah, it is a very question. So pretend that you are ice cream manufacturer like you make ice cream. You're the most your regional ice cream maker. So you make a lot of ice cream. You don't sell it directly to the consumer. You sell it to all the ice cream stores across California. So most of time, your sales are handled through email. So the store emails you are, you email the store and they say, Can I buy 14 jugs of ice cream, vanilla and, you know, five drugs of chocolate ice cream. So this was a way for the manufacturer to send that ice cream store. Ah, form where they could fill it out and pay right there and then order their ice cream without having to have an email back and forth. That was the idea

behind it. Yeah. I love how you, you know, like, allude to the 10 year old by, like, talking about, like, selling ice cream. Very, very good. But I assume, you know, this was, like, for,

like, more wholesale, like, just anything you were selling enough like there's a provider. Sure. Sure, sure. Yeah. And, you know, I guess I'm just, like, curious to, like, uncover, You know,

like, what? Really, really made you like Bill Delight. You know what was the problem that you guys were solving. And I guess, Yeah, why Delight Is your first start up?

Yeah. So this is right after the well, maybe six months after the coding boot camp. And I was working against a full time software engineer, and I get that same like, that theme is like, Okay, well, I'm a software engineer now, and I work nine toe four PM like, really chill hours. And I had a roommate of the time who is an entrepreneur, and he's like, I have this idea because he ran his own manufacturer like he was an ice cream manufacturing ice cream, but for pet food. And he is like, I have this idea.

I was like, Oh, perfect. Let's build a startup. And that was like, pretty much it. It was his idea because he had, like, a business experience there. And for me, I was like, Well, I'm only working 9 to 4. So a nice of weekends. Let's just build this thing and then see what comes

out of it. Yeah, absolutely. For me.

I wanted to build it like I was looking for something. I wanted to build something and maybe In the meantime, I was building like, little small side projects for myself and, you know, code projects and stuff like that. But once I saw the opportunity to work with my friend and build something just jumped on it right

away. Yeah, absolutely. That's like a great segue way into this next topic that I have. But, you know, you say that you work like 94 you know, like you alluded to how b two B customers also recommended for which was like your primary like target. So, you know, as working on delight and working as like a software engineer, you had to like constantly, you know, take breaks from worker like you have to, like, find excuses to get out of work so that you could go to a coffee shop and take some sort of like sales. Call our phone call honestly,

like, first of all, like lots of lots of respect to the hustle, you know, like that's incredibly incredibly tough, till it's like constantly find excuses to get out of work. But, you know, I guess what are your thoughts here about working full time as well as running your own startup? that, like, kind of had traction. You know, you eventually I get had to, like, Shut down,

Dylan. You know, if you had to go back and choose again, how would you decide between this high potential company that you and your roommate or starting and, you know, a full time job that gives you some sort

of security? Yeah, Well, when we first decided to make this software, we didn't anticipate the sales side of it. So we built it nights of weekends, and it was, like, the best time ever because, you know, we just thought we would build it, and we would just immediately get customers because, you know, we thought we had a validated idea because my roommate was needed the product, and we didn't anticipate once we actually launched it, that nobody cared about it, like,

you know, what he joined. We had to go manually, do sales, which, like you said meant I had to jump on into demos in the middle of work. So I had to leave work and then go to a coffee shop and take the demo call. You know, half the time they don't show up to the call and we didn't anticipate that. So that was more of a like Okay, well, crap already built this. We can't just, like stop. Now, let's at least try. And then that was where everything started to fall apart and fail.

Sure, Yeah, absolutely. I'm just curious, you know, Did it ever like cross your mind as you guys were building delight to go out in, like, validate that this was like something that people need it Because I think at least from, like, the framing of the contact, it seemed like this was a project that your room it more so than anyone else. Like your room. It really needed this product. So, you know, I guess like I'm trying to get into, like,

the reasons of, like, you guys have to shut delight down. But, you know, it seems more so to me like a you know, a product looking for a problem versus vice versa.

Yeah, Yeah, it was more of a cool idea than it waas a need tohave. And the thing is no, we didn't validate it properly, but we did run it by customers who are like, Yeah, we want this. We need this. But The reality is they will get into that a little bit later. Is that they didn't need it enough. Sure, and they didn't need it enough to set it up. Today they will do this eventually. And then we had customers doing air quotes right now, but they weren't actually using the product. That was a big lesson for me.

Is that look at usage? Are people actually using your product like customers? How many customers you have doesn't matter. It matters if they're actually using it. So

yeah, absolutely. It's like, you know, people who like they say It's like a cool thing to have. But like it's not really like a big priority or like necessity for them where, you know, changes their workflow entirely. Absolutely absolute. Thank you for being vulnerable. And I guess, you know, I'm just curious about, you know, delight in general, just like framing the context you guys applied to y Combinator. Could you tell us a little bit

more about that? Yeah. So I've been rejected from y Combinator two times. Now I've had two interviews. They're both for a new product that I was working on recently. Trigger that I'm still working on and then also for delight. So I think when I first started, when we first built delight, I was This is before a starter story, obviously. So I didn't know about this kind of like community. Valerie Teoh. I didn't know about Valerie or really anything. So all I knew was why? See? And I was an SS, and that's a trendy thing.

So we just I thought that maybe we could gettinto Why? See? And that would be the way that we quit our jobs, cause Y C is gonna give you something like $150,000 then you can work full time. So that was the goal for us is like Okay, well, this is really hard for us to do this with our full time jobs. We all have full time jobs, So we're like, OK, if we can get into why, See, maybe we can do this and we can pivot and we can, like, really put go all in on it. The process for getting in the way I see is you submitted application and then you get an interview,

but they sometimes do this video interview thing. So we didn't get like an on site interview, But we got a video interview, which is, like, about 10 minutes long. And when we did that, you know why? Says they're so smart And they just immediately see the problem that you're having as a business. Which waas How much are people using it? And like in the 10 minute interview, we had he basically just, like, opened us all up to the fact that he made basically us admit to the fact that people aren't actually using it. And then we got rejected. So they say,

like, Oh, I mean, you know, many companies apply to why, seasonally 15,000 like we've seen this business. And they probably seen that business 102 103 100 times. Apply that idea. Something around that idea. So

they know. Yeah, absolutely. You know, Lee, wing off that right? Do you have any takes around? I guess. You know, being someone who repeatedly applied toe. I see you have any takes around the y c process, you know, like today and you know, San Francisco. It's like a almost like a badge of honor. Where, like,

people brand there cos you know on linked in with, like, Oh, yeah, Where this company Why see Winter 20 or something? Do you have you know, any thoughts on? I guess I'm just like, you know, it be like definitely, you know, life altering for, you know, like, do I see Because you could, like,

quit the full time job. But I guess you know, with starter story now And like I'm assuming it's, like, fully bootstrap or, you know, like you guys didn't like, Do I see Is there any you know, takes that you have being like a Y c applicant Don't like What would you say about why I say, you know, like, is it something that's like, Yeah, I guess that's the question. I'm trying to get out. Yeah,

I have a lot of thoughts on it, and I'm not going to sit here and say that if why, see, offered me, You know, right now to go in there, program that I wouldn't do it because I do think that it's super valuable for the connections that you're making, the stuff that you'll learn because of the partners and alumni and all that and the money is nice too. But What I think about it is that you don't need it, and you don't need to rely on it. So just because I got rejected from what I see that first time and then also recently has never stopped me from trudging on the bootstrapped path. Or, you know, going through it doesn't mean that I'm gonna go immediately, look for fundraising, because why, see,

doesn't work. I'm more interested in it for the network. And also, like you said, like the badge of honor, that is something that you know can really help. Whether the reason why people put on their linked in profiles and on their email signature is it makes them look

more legit. Yeah, it's like validation.

Yeah, validations that might lead to more investors, more customers, partnerships or whatever. Yeah, I think all that's what was going to say. Not lost my train of thought.

You say something about, like, watching and you don't have to, like, rely

on y C, Yeah, don't rely on it and then say after I was something Really something really is inspirational, but that I forgot

we'll try to like, you know, pull it out of you. Seen, seen eso within that mantra, you continue trudging forward to delight like, you know, despite what I see. And I guess I'm just curious, you know, today with, like the B two b space being very, very nuanced. Do you believe that? Like there's space for delight to existed? It is the problem that, I guess,

you know, validated, invalid like that, a problem that you guys were building out delight for. Is it like, solved? Like Do you think there's like space for delight to exist today? You know, with the learning that you have taken from Gillette?

Yeah, yeah, 100% just from all the businesses I've seen, going through starter story and just being generally more knowledgeable about market and all that kind of stuff. And like especially one thing I see recently is a lot of these no code tools like there's a lot of these platforms that help you build what we were trying to build a delight. So maybe it's a little bit more abstracted away, then, for a specific market like we were targeting. These kinds of tools and no code tools are really trendy right now and also doing really, really well I can't speak to specific competitors or specific people are doing exactly what we're doing. But I do think that just beat it, be in general and commerce like we're doing, like, wholesale kind of thing and seeing how big Shopify has become and and all that. I think that there's a massive opportunity there. We just didn't execute properly, and I think we might have been too early and also gave up too quickly.

Absolutely. Look, I don't want to put you on the spot here, but like, you know, being a founder in the vertical for like a year, I'd love you know your thoughts about the vertical in general, You know, because I think a lot of takes around today like that. B two B sales are very, very new Answer. Like, you know, they're selling toe the thing around like, Oh, you're selling. People still are like your you to be is,

like, similar to be to see, in a way, I guess I'd love your thoughts around, you know, building a start up and like be to be what you guys expected what you took out of it. Like what you got wrong? What? You got right.

Are you asking how it compares from B to B two

b two C? Sure. Yeah. I don't mean to be too big, but like this, anything you took out of the like to be this piece space today

that like, Yeah, well, why I think is especially your bootstrapped, I think. And then also, my experience with how to make money online is that it's a lot easier to make money from other businesses than it is to make money from consumers. So ah, business is I just think from my perspective, sometimes, like I don't spend any money on Netflix or any of these subscriptions super G. But when it comes to my business, I spend money on you know, lots of stuff because, you know, number one like it can take time away that I can spend on more important things to grow the business. And the number two is also for tax reasons,

like all your expenses is a business are basically, you know, can subtract the tax rate away from that makes you less probable. So you pay less taxes and yeah, I would say that that's kind of some of the main reasons that businesses air just willing to spend money to make money. And then a lot of businesses air, also backed by capital and businesses that have capital or have raised money are even way more willing to spend money. If you think about, just think about employees like how much businesses pay for certain employees, like the average salary in San Francisco is maybe like, let's say it's $120,000 for engineer, something that that means that businesses paying $10,000 a month for that one employee to do, you know one role or whatever they dio. If your software costs, you know, $100 a month,

that's 1% of the cost of one person salary. Whereas if you say hey, you know, will you pay $10 a month for my new Netflix competitors? Er, most you're gonna say no, that makes

no. Yeah, absolutely. Look at that. That's yeah, that's a great comparison, you know? And I guess Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'd love to just, like, pull a toddler like I hope isn't, like, not too big of attention, but, you know,

going two words like back to delight, right? You kind of mentioned it and like the previous question that you're answering. But like, I'd love to just unlock, you know, like your takeaways, Like your personal take of you know, what led to delayed

failure. I think the 1st 1 is just meet, you know, first start up very naive. Thought that we would build something and customers would just come. So we just built it and then didn't get any customers like we were so naive and like you look back and you just like you laugh yourself because we had no plan to get customers. We just thought that we would build something cool and people would come. So that's the 1st 1 The next thing was co founders not being a lines, you know, we all have full time jobs, and it was really exciting the beginning to build something. But when the Times got tough, me and my co founders weren't as aligned. And, you know, like for example, one of my co founders or me,

something big came up at work like our full time jobs. Then, like, delight really took a back seat. And then, you know, when you see your co founder working on it, not at all. Or I'm not working on it at all in the co founders working on it a lot that can lead to some serious animosity. Or just like basically, just everything falls apart at that point. Because you feel like the person that you started this company with isn't there anymore or just less involved. I mean, there's a lot of market reasons to why it failed, which I kinda already touched on. But for personal reasons and stuff, that is, like, pretty preventable. I think those are a couple big ones.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, just like taking it chronologically. Post delight. I'm assuming, like you went back. Or like, I hope is that right? But like you went back to software and you worked in the company's in, like the Bay Area and in New York. And then from there, you know, you move into in a star of number two, in starters, 30.

I guess I'd love for you to just like, you know, take me through your journey like, what was your thought process around, you know, post the life and then going into, like, back the industry and then you know, two years in industry, a little bit over two years and industry and then back to

start ups. Yeah, No, I think that's kind of the big inflection point for me Is that when delight ended, we cut it off. Hard to. I think it was like, pretty soon after the White Sea rejection were like, OK, we don't know if we're gonna We just don't have the will to take this idea. And I was kind of over the idea at that point, too, because that's another. Another thing maybe we'll talk about is that I didn't have passion for the idea my roommate did, and it was more for him. So I lost interest in the topic as well. So at that point,

I kind of reevaluated things and said, Okay, well, I love the process of building delight, even the hard times. And like I caught the what I call like the start of Bug, where I knew I wanted to do it again, and I want to do it again soon. I just need to take a step back and keep experimenting, trying things, and maybe find another co founder or find a new idea and just keep working on stuff. So it was at that point where I was not happy with the job that I had, like, my full time job, for like, reasons are important.

But so that and then I moved to New York City and got another full time software engineering job and again, going back to the theme of, like, not always wanting more challenges. I like pretty quickly got back into the idea of starting another business. But this time, no one wanted to start a business with me. Not that I was really asking a lot of people, but I was like, All right, well, if I can't find any co founders, I was gonna do this myself. And that's the moment that I thought. Okay, Well,

delighted and work. Maybe I could do something smaller and something that can actually work with my full time job. So my full time job, like I said earlier, had to jump out for meetings and all that kind of crap. But I wanted something that I work on nights and weekends, and it doesn't interfere with my performance at my full time job. And, you know, I had no problem with working the hours. I was so eager to start something that I wanted something that could work with both. So I started learning Maura about content, marketing and blocking. And I had no idea how any of that worked at the time. And I heard that you could make money online that way. And I also had come across India hackers.

At that point, they were just brand new. And their whole website is about developers who are making money on side projects or on their own, you know, bootstrapped businesses. So I started reading a lot of interviews there, and I was like, All right, well, I think doing something with a blawg or content marketing will be the next thing. I'll try it. I'm just gonna try to learn everything about it and see what comes out of it. So at that point, maybe I'm like, three months into my new full time job and already kind of got the hang of things there. So now I'm,

like, fully going in on building a block. But I still didn't know what I wanted to build it about because I was researching affiliate marketing. How to make money through affiliate links. Which, looking back issue? No, I know a lot more than I did then, but I thought I could start a website about a random niche. And this is somebody advice that these affiliate marketing gurus will tell you about is, like started blogged about outdoor activities and then linked to products that, you know, like coats and backpacks. And you'll make all this money So they are going to do that. And my niche is gonna be for, like,

pets, like people that have dogs and cats. Even I don't have a dog scattering. So I started building this content marketing website about pets, and I got, like, three weeks in and I was like, All right, I have no interest in this topic and I started losing interest again. It's like, common thing from you. Just keep trying stuff and it all always fails. But then I had a moment and it collect. I was like, All right, well,

I could do this content marketing thing, but let's do it about a topic that I'm actually passion about. So I scrapped the pets thing, and I made it about entrepreneurship because obviously I'm a huge fan of that. And I love that kind of content. And I thought that be, like, amazing way to like number one just learned about this whole blogging thing and then also meet people learn about a new possible ideas. So I just built it as a way, maybe like as a vehicle to find another project or like, just learn more. And that's how started story started. Say, I was long?

No. Absolutely. And then, you know, you said about you were doing this also as like a side project, you know, comparative to delight. Work yet to hop out of, like, work where this one you're like, you want it to be something where you could work nights and weekends. I guess I'm just curious about the tangent. What other lessons? You know, that you took from delights. Shut down. That you brought over to start a story. Like what? Tangible insights that you got

from delight. Yeah, I think the biggest thing from delight was realizing that no one actually used the product. So the biggest thing for me from starter stories that people were actually reading it and enjoying it and subscribing to it and all that stuff without any work from me. I mean I mean, I was obviously working in trying to promote it, but it was the kind of thing where people were sharing it with their friends and excited to read the article. So it was like that that validation was definitely like I want Yeah, that And then also the thing that just came to mind is that start small, so delight and why see, and all that stuff it was just too big for me at the time, like I was too naive. And it was too ambitious, to be honest, and that made a great learning experience in and of itself. But I thought, Okay,

let's scale it back. Let's do something small. I start really small blawg. I guess it kind of humbled me a little bit to realize that maybe I can't start a massive unicorn kind of start up like why? See, is looking for. But I can start something really small. I have the skills to code and build websites. So that was a big kind of take away from delight

as well. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, like from hearing you talk about it. It seems like more so than not you were excited about, you know, building entrepreneurial content versus building things for, you know, be to be that you had no interest in at all versus, like, your roommate. Exactly. Yes. So, you know, it's kind of apparent in the name,

but Star Authority is, you know, it's currently a site for users to learn about, you know, businesses. And, like, started people are like building. And, you know, you guys have about, like, 70 interviews that you're publishing a month and like you've rolled up things for, like, tools for potential businesses to use and, like,

user memberships for, like, exclusive content. How that I guess, you know, I'm just curious. And, like, I just want to unlock here. How did you get from, you know, people just sharing it. And like, you guys were like a site about people sharing things about their pets. How did you go from that to, you know,

started story full time and, you know, sourcing 70 interviews a month and, you know, user membership and, like, tools for potential founders. Yeah, I'd love to. Just, like, talk about like, how you guys grew And how

you guys like, blew up? Yeah, yeah, us. It's great. So started Starter story. And if you jump back where After that failed pets, Block started started story. And the hardest thing to do is to find people to interview, right, So no one wants to be featured on your website. That doesn't exist yet. So I have a friend who's an entrepreneur, my roommate. I reached out to him and I said, Hey,

can I interview you about your business? And I just gonna call you on the phone and I'm gonna ask these questions and then I'll transcribe it and turned into a interview. And that was my first interview on the site about his pet products business. And then I had another friend and I had a friend of a friend. And then before you know it, I had, like, 10 interviews on the website, and no one was reading the website, and I know I mentioned that it like it gained popularity quickly, but it wasn't an overnight thing. I was just excited to have the website being built and have these interviews, and I was learning a lot just by talking to founders and building a website. You just learned so much doing it, and how do you promote the website and how do you get people to read it and that kind of thing? So it was just a really slow process to get those 1st 10 interviews or something like that,

and I think it probably took it. Probably took 3 to 4 months like we do 70 interviews a month now, but it took me like, three or four months to get 10 interviews and build the website design it and all that stuff. So I was just working on that nights and weekends and really enjoying the process, building something just, you know, something I love to do is, or any founders or people listening love to do to is to build something. So I was loving that. And then about four months in, we started getting a little like so the first month we had, like maybe 1000 people visit the website total, and that was because I was spending the link all over Facebook and read it and doing anything I could to read it. But then the next month we had, like 4000 people visit the website,

Maybe 2000 can. Robert. It was really small, but every month it grew a little bit. And then on the fourth month, we had the first reddit post to go viral. So I post a Tokyo story and I put it on to read it. And then it, like, got like, 400 of votes. And the guy who owned the business was like, I'm getting all this business and I was looking at, as I'm getting all this traffic had, like, 100 people on my website at that given time.

And then I think the month after that I had like a viral hacker news post where, like, 40,000 people visited my website in one day. And just cause this story was still awesome that we did the interview and feel like it was a really cool business, and that's how it kind of took off. And then from there it was like, All right, I'm just gonna keep interviewing more founders. And now it almost interviewed over 1000 founders. Now, so that's the story, not weaken, jump more and dive more into the details

there. But yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I see this question earlier because, you know, I kind of wanted to do, like, kind of this cool thing where, like, I ask you a question earlier and I asked you a question today that's more relevant. That's but like the same question. But, you know, you talked about like, working on Star Story alongside your full time job,

and now it is like it's become your full time job. And I guess, you know, just like the juxtapose that between you in delight and like being software engineer at the San Francisco company, you know, when do you know when to like do it full time? I know like it's always like you have to take a big bet, but what were the signs for you that you're like, Oh, you know, I could probably do started, started full time instead of just like doing this, like only on nights and weekends.

Yeah, so that's a great question. The first thing I would say is while I'm working on Starter Story, which I did work on it for a year before I quit my full time job. So we're going apartment for a year is like every single day is like a mental challenge to like. For me, at least, it was like a mental challenge to be like I cannot wait till I don't have full time jobs so I can work on this full time. It's like every day was me just wanting to get my revenue up higher and grow it and all that stuff and, like maybe some people listening are going through something similar where, like dreading their full time job so much and they just want, like, quit right now. That's how I felt almost every day. But I think it's a good thing because the full time job really helps you prioritize your time. And it also is a good indicator that this is really what you want to do is if you are going to spend your nights and weekends working on something else and you continue to do that for months then and you don't it doesn't like, fizzle out like most of my previous projects,

then that's probably a good sign, and you just keep working and you'll get there cause it just takes time, Yeah, and to answer your question about life, but my full time job sir. Well, is a longer story of I did this thing called a 24 hour start up there I put on Twitter That I was going to build a product in 24 hours is a totally random idea. And this is before the 24 hour started challenge, which is another thing. I did it myself, and I was like having a launcher product in 24 hours. I know how to code and build a product, and I kind of know a little bit about product hunts. And this whole launching thing, I was like, I'm gonna do it and you can watch me.

I'm gonna stream it on twitch. So I did that and then it, like, kind of went viral on Twitter, where it got retweeted by some Peter levels. And some, like prominent people in the maker, start up space on Twitter. So then I did. It was on a weekend. I saw my full time job at the time and, like, 10,000 people, watch me do it. And it was like this crazy experience where I felt like I was famous on Twitter for a little bit. So it was literally the day after that After that happened and I successfully launched it and it did really well on prime time,

it went like number one for the day and number one on hacker news and that kind of thing. So I felt this is this is a ridiculous that thing, But I felt so confident that I could, like, build start ups, that I just quit my job on the spot after that. Whoa. But I had already had a starter story at the time. It was making money, and I had a plan to quit my job in six months, given my runway and all that stuff. But then this happened, and I was like, I'm just gonna do it now instead of in six months.

Yeah, yeah, I love you know, that was like, a great painting, because, like, I had a whole a bit about it here that we were going to talk about. Yeah, sure. You know, I love to just get into that, you know, like, if it is, like, relevant towards,

like in the journey, like, you know, quitting your job, like, straight up after, you know, 24 hours after that goes viral, sir. You know, I'd love to talk about you know what you built and like moving forward, you know, like the 24 hour started challenge.

Yeah, the 24 hour start Challenge. The best part about that was everyone who watched it was, like, inspired to build their own products because they saw me doing it firsthand. Or they saw that it was possible to do something that seems like it should take months to do it in 24 hours. So I had a lot of people telling me like, Oh, you know, I'm so inspired by this I'm gonna do it. And a lot of people started streaming themselves to, so that was always the kind of motive behind a 24 hour start up. For me, it was not about building products that are gonna be successful is about, like, experimenting and showing people that stop thinking so much about what you want to do and just do it. And this is an example of how you can easily just do it.

So we did the 25 start up. I quit my job at that point. And then again saying that I want inspire more people to do that. So we built me and to people who are also into streaming and had also done 24 hours start up kind of stuff we launched like online hackathon for a 24 hour startups. So people had seen me do a 24 start up. And then Bussi said, I want everyone to do 24 hours, start up in one day and everyone's gonna stream on the same day and we're gonna have cash prizes and we're gonna do like it was kind of like a e sports thing, almost where we had, like, a 1,000,000 live stream. And we had yet the main cash prizes, like, ah, $1000. Then we had another 25 or $3500 in cash prizes.

So we got like sponsors for it, and all that stuff was just really fun experience. And I think 500 people signed up to do it, and then a few people like dropped out. But I think like 250 people streamed on that day as part of the event. They felt very big at the time, and it was a very inspiring time for me and for a lot of people

to No, no. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I would definitely like from an outside perspective, like, say, it was very big. You know, this, like whole event, like this whole 20 fire event was like, sponsored by, you know, people bear metrics. You know,

Hacker, noon India hackers, etcetera. And I'm just curious, you know, like from this, like, 24 hours, startups like what was, like, the craziest thing people built, you know, And like, I hate the, you know, I don't want to ask,

like, two questions here, but you know where the founders now are, Like, where the people were the 250 people that participate in the challenge. Like doing

now? Yeah, that's a great question. So I can't speak to any specific app because I always forget, but there's like, Well, first, you can go to the website 24 hour startup dot com. 24 h r startup dot com are just searched. 24 started on Google and you get to see the list of I think it's over 100 that actually launched like a working product. And just from like talking to people I know a bunch of cases where people made money and there was like three or four scenarios where someone actually sold their business. I'm sure it wasn't for, like, a big amount of money, but, you know, they had,

like, a cool idea, and then they just sold it someone else. So there's a lot of stuff like that. And then I think there is a lot of ideas. I came out of it that eventually got Biltmore and turned into, like, real products that people continue to work on after. And it just kind of helped them launch or get to launch. And then also, I mean, a big thing about the 24 r startup was I personally believe that it was a big launching pad for me, your hand for my co founders and also for a lot of people that were involved, like especially some people that really took it seriously and like used it as a way to get more people to know about their like someone comes to mind is Steph Smith. I don't know if you know her, but she learned to code during it was her first project.

She did not a code, but she's like I'm just gonna learn how to code Or like, she knew the very basics. I'm just gonna get on stream and people are gonna help me. And I think that that was like, yeah, if she launched a start up out of that in 24 hours, even though it was something, you know, fairly basic. But she did it. And I think that a lot of people see something like that, and they're like, Okay, Wow, this this person is legit.

And I think she got some nice recognition or whatever you wanna call it out of that. And I noticed a lot of other people. It was a nice launching pad to get their name out or just to get themselves out there. And we love it more like comfortable in their skin, like getting in front of a live stream and putting your face in front of the world that anyone can see and like sitting there figuring out how to code is like most people would be freaked out to design. That was one of the reasons why a lot of people dropped out or didn't want to do it is because it's like, really really putting yourself out there. So and I personally think that if you do something like that, like the mount that you level up is like, just being so far vulnerable like that is just, like, bigger than any kind of startup that comes out of it. Like from a personal development perspective. That was the biggest thing

in my eyes. No. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and yeah, I'd love to just, you know, take this chronologically, like, moving forward from, like, 24 hours. Start up. So, you know, I'm still,

like in ah, like, post. You know, the success of 24 hour is just like, OK, yeah, I'm done. You know, I'm just doing this full time, but I feel like it's like, great great great validation. So, you know, you quit your job in New York, and then you did start a story full time,

and I guess I'd love to just talk about, you know, you bring it up like a good amount, but what are your thoughts here about, Like, you know, Vier ality. And I guess can you like, you know, find a common threat about which of your post have gone viral? How much do you have? You know, any stories about you putting in, like, a lot of time into this one piece of, like,

content that, like, didn't end up going viral versus, you know, someone piece content you wrote, like on a women like it went viral. I guess you don't like what I'm trying to get out here is like, I think a lot of I rally, like working on fail ary and like, this is like a very, very meta conversation that I really like, but, like, you know, working on, you know,

content. I think like lots of it is, like, kind of lucky. Like you have pieces of content and, you know, you get lucky with, like, these guys, like, just blow up, But there's, like, piece of content, you know, that.

Like you work really hard and like, don't I guess what are your thoughts on that? You know, like being someone who has gone viral a good number of times with your stuff, you know, how do you replicate that? And like, would you say it's like, more so just getting lucky? Or would you say you've done things to, you know, insure your Vier ality.

In a way, yeah, that's a great question. And yeah, I'm guessing you've seen similar things that Hillary. But yeah, there's times when I spent, you know, a lot of time and I thought it was a sure bet that you know this story or this idea or this block post or whatever. It was gonna be really popular, and then no one cared. And then there's times when, for example, when we had the front page of Hacker News that first time where I never like is one of the most highly voted hacker news posts in history. Maybe of that year, and I just had no idea it was gonna happen. So I always have it like a checklist of things that I do.

And I try to build systems in place that can, like, enable those things from happening. But it feels like it's 100% luck when it does happen, and especially when it happens big by is really big. It's always luck.

Yeah, sure, sure, Yeah, I guess you know, just, like, say, going from that into, like, the next thing that I want to talk about here. But just like what are your lofty visions here for, like, star story. You know, what's your 10 x future? Like anything you know you're working on that?

You I think people like our would be excited about and like, you know, with, like, this whole notion of, like, luck being like either on your side are not on your side. Are you, you know, anxious about the future.

In a way, yeah. I think as founders were always anxious about the future, this is some common thing that I always here's founders talk about when I talk to them personally. People would talk about it in the open because it's very vulnerable. But you feel like your business is gonna fall apart tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. And all your customers are gonna leave, and Google is going toe. Put some penalty on your website and no traffic is gonna come to the website anymore. And all your downloads are going to stop whatever. So definitely anxiety. Always, which is probably the reason why I work so hard and why, you know, it's probably the reason why most ambitious people do what they do.

But as faras visions for starters story, it just feels like Sometimes you feel like there's no more businesses to interview. There's no more good stories to get. But you have to look at the big picture and say, OK, well, there's, you know, 100 million businesses in the world, and I've only interviewed and talked to 1000 of them and telling stories about your business is never gonna get old, and it's never gonna be not interesting anymore. So I really do you think this guy's a limit for starters story and for, you know, any kind of publication, like Valerie or for anyone else? And I do think that there is no winner take all,

like all of us are gonna be really successful and there'll be more to come, and it will only become bigger than it already is now. Yeah. Three goal for starters, story and podcast, too, as well. So like, it's just keep growing and keep interviewing businesses. And you know, that site grows every month in terms of traffic and email list and all that, and then also I'm working on a new product like a software product called Pigeon, where it's a CRM built in Gino. So for businesses that do a lot of email work and want to automate more there e mail, working back and forth on building that, too.

So a starter story plus pigeon, I'm hoping to just keep working on that. And like I said earlier, I can ever expect what to go viral. So I've kind of my mentality is just kind of changed. That's I'm just gonna work on one thing. And the consistency is the key. I think for any business, I don't think it really does matter what idea you pick as long as you work on it consistently. Which is what I want to do for both started story and pigeon.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, and like the final like thing that I love to touch on, like from that conversation or like the discussion that we just had was like, you know, this is also a very, very meta conversation, but you know, at failure, you know, at started story, we're always like asking finders for, you know, insights about failure in touch about success, and really just like unlocking like the vulnerability and like making them really, really like public about their story.

And like, I think this is something that like you really, really embody where you know you're down to 24 hour. Just stream yourself like building a company are building a product, You know, I guess. What's your thoughts here around publicity's e, you know, being vulnerable because I think a lot of people would, you know, given the choice, they would more so, like, hide their failures or hide the things that, like got them to where they are. What value do you find about like being public about your stuff?

That's best question that I ever got on a podcast. It's really the embodiment of starter stories. So for any listeners that haven't seen started story, you have to share how much revenue you're making to be on the front page. So there is a level vulnerability there that I think is the most amazing part makes for the most amazing founders and for the most successful founders. Ah, lot of people want to share their story on starter story on don't let them know about that. They have to say what the revenue is, and then they don't want to say it. And while I do think you know, there are reasons why people won't do that. They have investors or whatever. I do think that not being able to be vulnerable and honest is a reason why some people won't ever get over that hump of not necessarily being successful. But being ableto own their failures and overcome them because I was never always like this. I think I can always be better at this. And this is something that I learned from. I think Andy hackers just in general and then Peter Levels is a big inspiration for this.

Just being honest and transparent is if you could just own it like my business. A. Your business isn't doing that well, if you can own it and be honest about it and tell people about that rather than holding it back Best of moment where you will overcome it because you can identify the pain point for yourself, which is we don't have enough customers. We don't have enough revenue. We don't have enough growth. If you can be honest about that, then you will figure out the solution to that faster or just figure it out period. Whereas I think other people won't figure that out because maybe it's that they're living a lie for along with the truth is always better. You know, they talk the talk, but they don't walk. The walk is that kind of thing. And I really do think that if you can just be honest and own it, that people see you and you just become more successful just for that reason itself.

Yeah, absolutely well, And I do think that is also a big reason why Starter Story was successful is that I shared when we made $3 in the first month. It was the first dollar I made online really by myself. And I tweeted about that and I roast like a whole block post about it. And I wrote a whole block post about my 1000 people visiting my website like, so excited because this is better than zero right? And then every month, when that goes up, or when you learn something new or you fail in some way, you just write about that. Share your story, talk about it openly. That's what attracted a lot of people to my story and a lot of people, too. Starter story and in general,

and in some ways it's a marketing tactic or a technique, to be honest and like, I think some of the best companies in the world you see that as well, Like Elon Musk is a good example. So for me, it was like just to be so honest about it, like, was like, I'm not hiding anything, so I don't have to think about hiding anything, and I'll have to think about impressing people. I'm just gonna say how it is and not in focus on working and making things

better. Yeah, well, absolutely. You said this is like the best question that you asked with lots of lots of foundries. Really, really love this next question. So I hope this guy comes in contention with, like, the best course, and you have never asked. But, you know, just going into this mantra of giving like founders who are, you know, in the trenches, whether there started to be going good,

whether it started to be going really, really bad, like advice. I love you know, to ask you kind of an intrinsic question where it's like if you like Pat today, you know Pat 2020 had to talk. Teoh, you know, Pat, circa 2015 2016 Working on delight, right? You know, like in the trenches, like, super like, unmotivated. What would you say if

I were to give myself advice?

Yeah, earlier if you had to give, You know, any founder in your shoes, You know, you whether it be going good, whether it be going bad but like you, like, you know, in the lowest point of delight, Like, what would you say to yourself?

I think I would say just to have a brilliant this one, unfortunately, but I think that one of the hardest things as an entrepreneur is impatience, for me at least, is like it's never enough. It's never growing fast enough, and it's never happening fast enough, you know, like whether it was when I had my full time job, but I wanted to be working on things full time, always just been very impatience. But throughout the years, I think I've learned a lot about patients and actually seeing how progress happens. And if you work on something every day, progress is guaranteed to happen. I cannot think of us any entrepreneur person, whether it's business or sports or whatever.

That works hard every day and doesn't make progress, whether that's revenue going up or whatever you wanna have. So when you're in it, when I look to the next two years or whatever, I can't see progress because my brain doesn't work that way. Like I think, like, you know, my business is is not gonna move up. It's going to stay in the same or it's gonna get worse. But if I just continue to work every day and it always goes up, it's not. You know, it's not amazing every day or every month, but progress always leads to improvement. So I think that my advice would be just be patient And don't think too much about those kinds of things. Just work and just get stuff done and focus on the most important thing that can improve the business or yourself or whatever. And you do that enough times over enough days or months or years and then you'll have everything you want,

huh? Yeah, absolutely. You know, you have been giving people like, good advice. Is there anything this is like? You're moving? Not to, like, plug anything you'd like, You know, 24 hours started 24 hr startup dot com. You know, we've already mentioned that, but, you know,

anywhere we can find you, you know, on the web, on social media, anything you'd like to plug about started story

in the future. Yeah. Starter story is starting story dot com or just search starter story on Google or search my name. Defied my twitter, should come up pat walls, and then that has links to also pigeon the crm I'm working on. And then I'll just tweet about like you confined my block on their on my YouTube channel. All of it is like communists, all weird and crazy. It still don't know what I'm doing, but yeah, just search my name on Google. And that's probably the best place to start,

sir. Yeah, absolutely, Pat, you know, Thank you so much. You know, you've been going me, Gregory advice. And, you know, if anyone is down to, you know, started like a pet business or like a pet website, please definitely reach out the pad. I know he'd definitely appreciate that. Thank you so much for your time. Fat. I had a lot of fun recording this. Yeah, Thank

you so much. All right. Thank you. It was awesome.

That was another episode of the Hillary podcast. We have a bunch of these coming around, so stick around. Thank you again for listening. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Philly podcast. I've been Brandon Honda Co. And once more, I'd like to thank our friends over at Arcadium for making this episode possible. If you think you could benefit from a hand in marketing and sales, make sure to check out their tool, which connects businesses with marketing students for three month internships. Redeem your $50 discount just for being a Hillary podcast listener at Philly dot com slash gif slash Arcadium. That's Hillary dot com slash VIP slash kedia.