we are back for another Founders Friday here on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stabbings In one episode we have in store for you today our guest, an incredible founder who have been lucky enough to have on the show before, but a long time ago, and recently he shared a lot about lifestyle diet, giving up alcohol. And I really don't think we've covered that enough on the 20 minute BC, and so I'm stoked to dive into that stay with the one and only Justin Con Found and CEO Atrium, the startup providing a full service corporate law firm that uses modern technology to give startups illegal experience that is fast, transparent and price predictable. To date, Justin has raised a was $75 million in funding from some of the best in the business for atrium, including Founder's Fund and recent horrors. First round general catalysts thrive, initialized and Maur. Prior to founding Atrium, Justin was a partner y Combinator,

the globally renowned accelerator and the birthplace of some of today's largest start ups. Before that, Justin was the co founder Twitch, the world's leading video platform and community for gamers, which was acquired by Amazon for $970 million. Reportedly, if that wasn't enough, Justin's also a prolific angel investor with investments in the lights of cruise automation, rippling, triple bite, Zenefits and Maur. But before we dive into the show's day, at the end of the day, your customers have to be at the center of everything you do, and that's why I am. Particle is just so crucial being your real time customer data platform or,

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But keep it provides automated bookkeeping support to businesses by using a powerful combination of skilled accountants alongside machine learning and artificial intelligence. So essentially 24 7 accounting and support alongside incredible insights presented through beautiful dashboards, unlimited reporting to transform your bookkeeping today with automation and join the 1000 kinds already on Bookkeeper. And you can find out more. Stay out, bookkeeper dot com That is quite enough for media. And so I come waits get in, stays absolute. With the one and only. Justin Con, co founder and CEO at Atrium. You have now arrived at your destination with Justin. It is such a pleasure to have you on the show. Once again. My friends say thank you so much for joining me. Stay. I'm very excited

for this one, Terry. Thanks for having me. I am excited

to be back. Well, that is very kind of you, but I do want to start saying maybe for those that missed our first upset, how did you make your way into the world of startups? And what was that founding moment for you with Atrium today?

Yeah, Well, it's been a long road. I think I started my first startup in 2000 for which was a non line calendar. Kind of like the Gmail equivalent sum a very similar to Google calendar. It's called Kiko. The only really notable things about that startup were. It was very early on in this online Web application world, and we got into y Combinator because of that, which kind of set me off of my start career kind of run through really quickly. But eventually that company failed and we desperately sold it on eBay. And then we ended up starting a new company called Justin TV, which was an attempt to make our own live reality show on the Internet. And that was also a terrible idea that mostly failed. But fortunately, we launch this show turned into a eventually a platform for anyone to broadcast their own live video and then, from there,

eventually pivoted that after a couple years to twitch, and so in 2014 you know, sold twitch to Amazon. I had actually started some other companies, including this company, called Exact at the time. That was kind of like an air running service, so that a handy in 2014. So it's kind of burned out of startups after about 10 years and decided to go join Y Combinator and be a partner at White Sea. After a couple years of investing in Y C startups, I decided being an investor full time wasn't really for me. And that's when my life I felt like I wasn't learning anything actually anymore. And so I decided I would go back to the thing that drove the most learning in my life, which was being a founder of a startup. I really liked that, because why I liked it in a way,

which is when you're the founder of starve. You are four, you learn things. Thing I forgot about that process is that when you're learning is actually most painful process, and one of you by that is it's mostly involved failing at things until you finally get it. And so, like the memory had kicked in about serves at that 10.17. That kind of forgot how painful they could be. But then I decided, start one and I concurrently have been thinking about ideas, and the idea that really resonated with me was became atrium, which was kind of came out of a conversation I had with a partner at a lot for a meddlesome Mancini. And I was just asking her, Why don't you guys who served the biggest technology companies in the world use any technology yourselves on so kind to start doing research found a lot of things that I thought were like broken about the legal market. We go industry that create incentives for the incumbents not to change. And so decide to start a trend because event and you know,

the quick Hi love Lonny Trim. We are a full stack corporate law firm for start ups. So a charm helps starts with the letter legal needs primarily in the U. S. And you're in Silicon Valley. We work mostly with hydro technology companies that are venture backed or itsy funded in San Francisco in the Bay Area and then and then all of us that started about two years ago in 2017. And then it's been two years of building this company

so far. No, I d absolute love that I'm just two entry day you said about the customers at the cell and this is totally off script and so very unfair of me. We've seen a lot of incredible high growth companies who primarily sell large swathes of the sales to hydro startups themselves. Be atyour air tables, be atyour zooms of the world, and PG wrote a phenomenal piece about why this is such a great business

and business model to

operate. I'm really interested. How do you think about actually when the majority of your customer base and customers are similar to you, high growth tech companies and shooting that really is a viable model over

long? Tough. That's a good question because you know, there is a question of Is this where we in the business cycle? And if there's a downturned or these companies go away, it's not cut costs. I think that when I was thinking about selling the building, a company that sold this startups that felt right to me because I've been in this start of community for a long time have the Y C connections and then other investor relationships. It's a valley. A trim itself has raised money from over 100 B. C's and Angel investors in Silicon Valley. So I felt like that would be a really good initial bootstrap to get access to a lot of different potential customers, which it was so kind of made sense for where I was in my career and obviously it was a really quick way to get out the gate. I do think that with legal specifically, it's one of those things that it's really, you know, use it in good times that use it in bad times.

That's part of what attracted me Actually to this industry is that I was a customer of clients of legal over my 15 year entrepreneurial investor career, and I've used kind of legal service is no matter what was happening, whether there was killed or bad or like, You know, no matter what you want to do in America and in business, you end up, it's a big transaction. Get out of paying attorney's whether it's, you know, selling your company or raising money or signing a major commercial contract. And so I felt like it was a pretty stable market, and that's why I feel fairly confident that this will exist in a downturn.

I wasn't legal's is quite like undertakers. No offense. You you always need them. But I do want to start there and discuss a couple of elements that you mentioned it. You said about what one point being kind of burnt out on start ups and then also the learning from being at the front line with floundering. So I am interested in discussing something we don't often discussed being mental health before we dive into maybe specific strategies around that, I'd love to start the background. Why did you maybe engage in this series of habits really based around self improvement? And you mentioned that burnt out

on startups. What does that really looked like? Is burnouts often use. But what does that really mean? Yeah, I think people are starting to talk about it, which is really great. When I was in my first section of my entrepreneurial career, the building just in TV and twitch, I remember that every summer I would want to quit and go get a job or do something else. And I was always distracted by other things, new ideas, you knows. We're all kind of escape fantasies in a way to the realization that while I'm in a lot of pain right now or I'm like, stressed out right now with the form of pain, and I need to get out of this situation. And so you're like thinking about new things with different things or whatever,

So that was like the first time, and I didn't really deal with it. Super good in that 10 year period, I think I, uh, mostly just white knuckled it through it. And then eventually, when I did get out with exits, I was like, Oh, my God, I'm never gonna do that again. And the time that why see, was nice, Because once he's very stable as an organization, it's a brand.

People want to go there, you know, you kind of like can't tuck it up. Really? And so the kind of mental burden was, like way off by comparison to start ups. And then, you know, when I got back in the atrium at first, you know, I was like, Okay, have 10 years of experience. Now I know what I'm doing. And after the first for the 1st 3 months, I was like,

Wow, I really figured it out. I know what I'm doing this time, unlike great. And then, of course, you know anyone who's starting a startup knows that reality kicked in, and three months after we started, I was stressed out again. I was stressed out for a variety of reasons. Some things were working really great. Something's needed improvement and were failing and There's always something in a start up that you can be stressed out and beat yourself up over. There's always gonna be good, is always gonna be bad. But after about six months of this life stressful period, I was like,

Oh my God, how my so stressed out again just as much as ever. Even though, you know, if this company doesn't work kind of objectively, I'm still fine. I could, like, go back and get my old job back Economically, I'm fine. Reputation. I'll probably be fine, but I had this big mental burden. And so my interest in self improvement and self growth really came from 15 months ago. Realizing that I needed Thio make a lot of improvements, I guess, and myself and in the company culture of atrium in order to create an environment where I would not feel stressed every day.

Can I pick up on one that was so interesting that he said about Y C and the success in the brilliant Surround you, then it's very difficult to kind of back up, as he said. Cast after such entrepreneurial success is that you had before, Why do you think you needed that security net when you already reputation the immensely respected financially, very stable. Why do you feel you felt that security that was important

to them? Oh, yes. I wouldn't say from an economic standpoint, a reputational That wasn't really the reason. I think it was more I needed something to do because I'm the kind of person who needs something to d'oh! You know, I'm the kind of person who have to re sold, which I remember that year it sold all these companies. I wasn't doing anything and I was just sitting at home and after six weeks of playing hearts Stone, I was like, Oh, my God, I gotta go do something for two tears. I think by sea was a good thing to do in the sense that I felt productive, like I was contributing to society. I felt like I was learning at first,

but it was also like all the burden of how we operate or what happens in the future of the organization was not sitting on my shoulders right. It was when I was a partnership, but to you know, it was kind of just going like by default. It's not like a start up in the same way that we're in a start up. Things are constantly changing and you don't know what's gonna happen next. And there's a lot of stress around what's gonna happen next and with y. C was a lot more established. It's got a lot of momentum. There's a system for howto bashes work and think that made it a lot less

stressful official in there. That's the real infrastructure around it, which, which makes it partly so incredible. I do want to touch on one element where we chant it before, because a lot of guests on the show said to me, I've got to read the school takes care of itself and you mentioned it before the episode. What were your big takeaways from reading? The school takes care of itself, really

kind of stayed with you. Yeah, the one that stayed with me a lot is that Bill Walsh was so successful. But then he just burned out, and it's almost like a cautionary tale, and that really resonated with me. You can be burned out no matter how successful you are, and you can be unhappy no matter how successful you are, and That's something that I have experienced a lot of times when you are early on in your career or even in the middle or even late stage of your career. You think if I just get to this other milestone X you know I have a $1,000,000,000 company, about $2 billion from the eye of a you know, or I get VP title and my job or whatever it is right. You think you'll finally be happy and, you know, kind of except unhappiness in the present. But the problem is that that's not like a sustainable strategy for actually achieving happiness. And if you're not happy,

you will not want to do what you're doing for an extended period of time. And I think that's actually very toxic in start ups, because in startups you are. A very important after is the founder, of course, and our CEO of your company. You are a very important component, and if you burn out, you're not doing yourself for your investor employees or your customers any favors you need to like retain your salts, and so you need to create a situation inside your company where you are going to be retained for a long time. I think that's actually your obligation. If you are good, which, you know, most

people think they are. Yeah, no, I d totally get you and being super transplanting a Justin and I have always actually attached kind of happiness outcomes being size of audience being how much money one has been size of fund and being blunt every time. I haven't been as happy as I thought I would be with that subsequent milestone. So I do want to talk about that because it relates to something that you said before, which is kind of attaching yourself to outcomes will only cause your own suffering. What do you really mean by this? And does this disregard maybe for attachment to outcome does I'll go against what we're always told about the mission and vision of having that Really, Northstar, stay with your company. Yeah, so it

sounds at surface level like a contradiction. I'll se Teoh area that I'm also similarly have always been driven by by these external outcomes and trying to achieve them. And so I think I had a very similar path to what you've experienced, the way I think about it? Is that basically the idea that you can drive lasting happiness for something that happens externally, like some sort of milestones, whether it's number, subscribers, amount of revenue, evaluation, exit those events are always fleeting, and just you re normalized them as the new normal once they occur. So, you know, when we sold Twitch or almost a $1,000,000,000 like I was very happy for one day, two days, even a week.

But after that I was just I remember, you know, kind of just went, Oh, yeah, that's a new normal And now I'm back here at that. My baseline. The way I think about it is, if you expect yourself to be, have lasting happiness driven by an outcome in the future. Two things. One. You won't actually change your baseline when you get it. But more importantly, Number two, you will accept unhappiness in your present,

and you'll kind of say, like that's normal And the problem with that is that will create an unsustainable situation for you, and I think that's the reason why you shouldn't do it. People think that it's contradictory to actually having a goal, which is not what I'm saying I think that as a start, if you wanna have a mission, you wanna have something that you're driving towards and trying to accomplish. But you should remember kind of hold these two concurrent thoughts in your mind, which are Yes, we have this goal. But at the same time, achieving the goal is something that first of all, is not 100% within your control because you are just one factor in one member of the team one part of the strategy. You're only a contributor to achieving that goal. You're not like the person who can control it 100%. And then the second thing is,

you know, remember that if you achieving that goal is not going to make you happy, you need to, like, basically be able to work towards it without actually wrapping up your entire ego and identity in accomplishing it, because that's really I don't think that's gonna make you any more effective. And I guess that was you know, that's kind of how I think about

it. I tell you, greedy about the ego element, and I actually got told by someone the other day they said, How you so enraptured with what you do that you've almost become the company and you're not a company, and you have to segregate yourself. How do you think about detachment from cell phone company and you are not your company's?

Yeah, I think it's really hard for entrepreneurs. I remember in the early days of Justin TV, I would see my friends posting on Facebook. They'd be like, Oh, I'm having fun I like. And this summer's especially going on vacations and I'd be sitting in our office programming. What am I doing with my life? The thing I told myself was, at least I'm an entrepreneur and I have my own company. They might be getting paid more and on a career directory and actually having fun. But at least I have my own company and you know, I'm an entrepreneur, and so my entire identity is wrapped up with my company and being an entrepreneur. And so the problem with that is that when things go badly, you feel badly about yourself.

You transpose those feelings that you have might have about what's happening your company onto yourself, and that's a recipe for being depressed, feeling super bad every day and ultimately burning out in quick, which doesn't serve the interest of your company. And so I think that's the way to get out of that. Well, I don't think I have all the answers, but some of the things that have worked for me are really focusing on your own mental health and well being. I have a timer on my phone every day. That actually reminds me Thio meditate on attachment specifically and to remind myself that if I achieve the thing that I want, I think I want actually, I'm not gonna actually be any happier whatever that goal is inside the company or even in my personal life. And so just trying to hold that thought and be present with it every day is one step that I've taken one very small step. It costs nothing, and it takes probably a minute every day to, like, remind

myself of that. Do you wantto ask? One thing is, when we chatted before you said about the analogy of a board game, especially to the attachment thinking analogy of the ball game for everyone listening, I thought it is a fascinating

one, sure, so people are like why and what's even the point. Then Justin like it. There's no point in having these goals, or if you don't like, really care about the goals, then what's the point of existing or having goals or doing anything? And the way I think about it is, I kind of think about like their goals in life for your company or as an operator or even your entire life as a ball playing a board game. You know, you can imagine a rainy Saturday afternoon. I'm saying rainy cause you're in London and I'm in San Francisco, so no rating and then playing a game, your friends come over. He plays breakout, this board game.

And when you're playing the game, if you're like me, you really engaged. You're paying attention. It's engaging your mind. You're like, How do I make a strategy that's gonna win? Talking about one of these fancy German war games, like settlers of Catan or something, not monopoly when you're really trying to engage, be engaged in winning and you want to win and you try your hardest. But then when you put away the game, you know the game's over and the next week. Do you remember or even care what happened? Not really. You know, you except it's in the past. It's actually not that big of a deal. And that's kind of how I think about how you should approach all of your goals and situations and circumstances are like

I couldn't agree more, and it's a very thoughtful perspectives to take. I guess my question to you is sometimes it takes a mental and personal journey to get back psychology in terms of external aids in it, as some suggest, therapists, I personally I'm

a big believer in

the power of therapy. You said before

that it was a lifesaver.

That's what you think. Therapy works so well. And maybe for someone contemplating therapy, what would you advise them, Justin? Yeah, so I think

that first started seeing a therapist seven years ago, something like that, when I was really stressed out about being a founder and I was feeling a lot of guilt. So I was like, finally broke down. I found someone and was very helpful to me, and I think what's really helpful is that you have someone who can. It's like a coach for dealing with what's going on and discovering more about yourself. I used to think that could learn everyth ourselves. And now I'm a huge proponent ofjust surrounding yourself with the best coaches and mental is possible because that's a way that could just, like, expedite and speed up your learning and your self improvement for three guys. The therapy. I think it's very cathartic toe. Have someone to talk to you. It's effectively a mechanism or construct that we've created in society to like, make you feel like you have someone you can talk Thio and you're not alone and that can be very cathartic.

I think when working through any sort of problem and you have. And so now today, you know I have therapist, I have CEO coach, actually to CEO coaches. I have different conscious leadership groups that I'm part of, and so from my perspective, you want to figure out who are those best mentors and coaches and people to talk Thio we can learn from and really surround yourself with them.

I'm so PC that about a conscious leadership that because this was this is one of the main things. I was super entry to ask you because another of the books ive been that super excited by It's the 15 commitments of conscious Leadership and listen to roll out of a gym and other companies were associating with, I guess my question to you learn that is what's required to roll it out. What are the core

principles? So you really wanna win? So within the organization's Justin Yeah, s o the 15 commitments Unconscious leadership is this book that I read maybe six months ago. I can't remember who recommended it to me, but it was Oh, I actually Steve up from Reddit recommended me this book and I read it and it just really resonated with the personal journey that I've been on the last year to be more self aware and improve myself. Take really more ownership for myself. This is kind of like the company Berkshire of that. Like, how do you bring those types of cultural values into your company? And so there's 15 commitments, which is alive. I think they're first ones are the most important, and then it kind of gets into the one of the wild hippie ones at the end of the book. But the 1st 3 really resonated with me very deeply. Out's going to those ones.

So the 1st 1 is radical responsibility. And I think that one was very easy for me as an entrepreneur, too. Colonel Eyes, because I've always been had this radical responsibility in a way, because you're an entrepreneur here, there's no one else coming to save. You. Have something about working on something bad about your company, right? You know what else to play, and so that really was true to me or resonated with me immediately. Number two Number three were more interesting because I think I learned a lot from reading them. The 2nd 1 was radical. Curiosity are basically having a curious mindset. And whenever a situation happens in a company,

whether it's good or bad but specially applies the things that might be perceived as negative, you approach that with the curious mindset of asking, you know, what is the universe teaching me at this moment? How can this event teach me something? And that's interesting because I found I've always been a reactive person. I've always been like a what's the problem? And then what's the solution? Type of person, which is served me really well in short term problem solving. But it hasn't really enabled me to learn at the meta level and really approach no problems in a more positive way. And so having this curious minds and adopting this curious mindset at work has helped me learn a lot more about maybe how I'm showing up to problems and how I might be contributing to certain situations, or at least one can I learn from from those situations that might be perceived of his negative. And then the last one that I'll talk about the women of three is the commitment to feel all of your emotions. And that was really interesting to me. Because I've been a person in my life,

was always run away from a negative emotions as a very enthusiastic personality type. I'm always chasing new ideas and, you know, which is why my career looks like it does with many startups. Many investments, but at the same time always run away from some of the emotions that under generally perceived it is negative things like sadness, field fear and trying to suppress those emotions for a bunch of things. You know, maybe it's drinking or just distracting yourself with Netflix or one of her. It is the interesting thing to me was this commitment and the book was like, You know, should bring these emotions to work and be able to name them and talk about you know, your emotions, air, just a signal. Do you feel anger or frustration to the form of anger?

That's just really a signal on what is it telling you? And by being able to say, Hey, I feel frustrated right now and then talk about Hey, why do I? Maybe I feel frustrated because I think the goals that was set out in the beginning aren't right. And when you present this plan, you know we're going down this path that, you know, we're just because of momentum and not because the right thing to Dio being able to name your emotions enables you to actually drive into the deeper issues for what might be triggering them in you. And so that was a really big revelation to me. Being able to use those skills that kind of talk about your emotions and bring them to work have enabled need to drive it deeper issues at work in a very short period of time. Actually, that book has made a big impact on me, and then they ate from culture, and we're kind of bringing in. Actually, later today we have the author of the book Diana Chairman, coming in for training for our team at Atrium and so really invested in Bring this culture to nature.

I absolutely love that kind of culture. Bring your whole self to work and just a really transparency. I guess the one question for me is I hate that we're crushing it mentality that we was here. I think I'm everyone does, actually. But my question is, in such a close knit society that we haven't attack ecosystem. Do you think you really can be as transparent? And you know what kind of fucked? We just lost our biggest customer and our head of sales just left because we live in a fundraising closest living the momentum based society. Do you think transparency is possible given the tight knit nature of the system? Yeah,

you know, that's really hard. And I think that what's important is that people who can take risks take risks publicly so that people can see that behavior and we move the Delker Mawr towards normalizing vulnerability. And so that's something that I try to model. What I can't even I can't advertise like super things that might be received in this super negative events. It's really tough to do in our society. And so I think another important thing is for people to form a group form connections people around them That could be where they can be really, truly vulnerable. You know, you might not be able to do it publicly like truly publicly, like broadcasting on Twitter A. We lost their head of sales like I feel like a super bugs. Maybe you can be great to be able. It's really great to be able to have a support network that you can talk to about it s I have done this recently, This other program called Leaders in Tech, which is a fellowship, basically where they add founders and entrepreneurs from different companies and they form various learning groups that are facilitated learning groups. Where there you are able to be very, very vulnerable about what is going on in your life and in your company. And I think that having some outlet for that to be truly vulnerable is really important for

me. I do agree. And especially terms of that collective group think and what that allows. I do want to move into my favorite, though, Justin being the quick fire round. So you know the drill Here. I see a short statement, and then you give me your immediate thoughts about 60 seconds or less. Are you ready

to roll? All right, let's do it.

Okay. So what be asked you continuously here that you wish people would not listen to? I

think people feel like they have to suffer in order to do a startup, and I actually just disagree with that. I don't think you have to suffer. You're gonna experience pain. Definitely. Things aren't always gonna go right. But you don't have to suffer. And I think the culture around, like, kind of monitoring yourself is I mean, I wish that I had examples when I was younger. That wasn't necessary, because that and now I'm not saying don't work hard. I think I'm saying you should probably be finding something that you wanna work on a lot of hours, and you probably should work really hard when you're young and you don't have very many skills. That's pretty much all you got going for you is the ability to work hard. So I'm not saying this has nothing do with working hard. But I think people have sex education that started to bomb a lot of suffering, and I don't think that has to be the case. What

can you do to enforce exercise routines? I followed you on snap. I follow you on Instagram exercises. Core of your life. What do you do today? Most? The routines.

That's a great one. I work out every day. And so the what's worked for me is, if you read this book called Atomic Habits by James Clear, it's pretty good book. The streak tracking mechanism has worked really well for me, so I have a streak app on my phone. It's called streaks, and every single day I've checked the checkout work out, and I just need to do it like do something, even if it's like 60 push ups. I just do one thing a day, and I think my lungs my streak has been going for 25 days now. Worked out. If I visit Ro be a bunch of different things from lifting Thio yoga to be getting on my rowing machine. But every day I want to do something. And now you know,

if I don't do it one day, I'm like, Well, I have that band in this 25 day streak I've invested in that's like, like, horrible to make soldiers get down and, like Dubai 60 push ups or whatever. So the streak Psychology, I think that's worth incredibly well for me. It's exercise that

I'm gonna down there, that one, for sure. Listen, I spoke to your co founder it which cabin before the show. And he said, Investing starting startups advising founders Ron Schleiff family soon. How the hell does he

balance it'll? You know, I think what I'm pretty good at is really focusing on what's in my zone of genius. Like the thing that I'm really the stuff I'm really good at and care about love doing it gives me energy and then delegating the rest. So I really tried to delegate everything that is not in my zone, a genius. So for me, what does that mean? Like at atrium, it's really focusing on our culture focusing on the business strategy. It's all the sales like function. So you know, selling whether it's fundraising, recruiting, maybe high profile clients, and that's pretty much it. And then I try to build a team that could support me.

Doing the rest of it and the same is true on everything else. I'm actually not really investing very much at all because I'm busy at Atrium. But actually my brother investing on behalf of our kind of like a con family office, you know, kind of just out be delegating. I guess that's a form of delegation and then advising founders, you know, it gives me energy to be able to like I've So my closest friendships are people who maybe we advise each other to be honest, like I get feedback from them and give them feedback, and we could talk about where they're at in their company. And so you know, it doesn't feel like work to me, just feels like friendship, and I guess that's how it kind of balance

some of these things. You mentioned the investing element that house angel investing in the past, maybe change the way you think about operating today with atrium. Yeah, I think it's actually been

good and bad. And I'll tell you they both The good is that I think I'm much more able to recognize that having invested about 100 cos it's much easier to recognize patterns for what may be a good idea and what might be a bad idea. I don't just mean it back Good, bad idea in the company strategy, but also in, like how you implement something within your company or organizational A or product feature, whatever. So it gives you a lot of context in terms of, like different business models and different business markets and dynamics of markets. So that's interesting. And that's useful. I think the bad actually is having an investor attitude. I think I approached Hmm with a little bit too much of an investor attitude in the beginning, which was a little bit too much like Hands off, like I'm just gonna build a team and the team is gonna do everything without, like, really myself getting in the weeds, and I think that could be bad in the very beginning, when really is important for the founder to be Maurine the weeds and have more of a handle on like that. The details

of what's happening, you know, I do agree with you that I do want to finish their own atrium itself. Such an exciting time that had but tell me what is the next five years look like for you and Fay Atrium? What's that exciting

road map? Yeah, so I mean, it's pretty simple. You know, we just want to continue to build the team of incredibly talented individuals, and I think we've done a good job so far. We're about 150 people in San Francisco hiring a lot of rules right now, But could you build the team, continue to serve the clients and better and better ways? I think there's a lot of details I could go into, but that's a lot of innovation on the operation side. It's a lot of innovation on the technology side, both in tools that the clients use themselves, but also our internal team uses and then continue to build the brand as the is one of these companies in Silicon Valley that's very invested in founders being successful, you know, I think I learned a lot from Y C there and I think we're kind of making progress on all those things.

We just need Thio execute on feeling pretty good about our prospects there. You know, for the first time we have an exact team that I really trusts, didn't have empathy for care about work well together and kind of reviving. And it's a great feeling because I think that all of the execution on all those things I kind of mentioned will flow from that. And at the same, I guess the last thing I'll say is I really am invested in the culture. And how do you build a conscious company where people take radical responsibility and they have a growth mindset? And so that's a B A behavior. I tried a model at work and I think that, you know, we're doing that and I'd like Thio build a company like that. That's a big company. I'll be very proud

of myself, Justin, I've wanted to do this one for a long time. Have I said that been following everything from the snaps to Twitter for many, many years and really wanted to do this after around one. So thank you so much for joining me again. Say, Justin.

Yeah, thanks for having me. This is fun.

Indeed. It was fantastic. And I want to say he's think he's just in what many of you donors that Justin's provided immense amounts of support and advice to me in my journey. And so I'm so grateful to that. Justin, if you'd like to see more from him, you can find him on Twitter at Justin Con. Likewise would be great. Welcome you behind the scenes here. You can do that on Instagram at h stabbings 1996 with two B's. I would love to see that, but before we leave each day at the end of the day, your customers have to be in the center of everything you do, and that's why I am. Particle is just so crucial being your real time customer data platform or, in other words, and particle is the fastest,

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