Hey, everybody. It's our former co founder partner, Village Global, a network driven firm. And this is Metro stories, a podcast covering topics relating to tech business with world leading experts. Everybody welcome to another episode. Adventure stories by Village Global. I'm here today with two very special guests. Special co host Unusual Brawl. A news is Justin Cons, Chief of staff, which is you must be living the dream. And then I may have buried the lead, but we heard with Justin con guys. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Are you Justin? How would you like people to describe you?

Well, I used to spend a lot of time thinking about that. I used to think one of how are you going to be remembered and thought about? And I'm tryingto optimize the way people thought about me and my Wikipedia page. But I don't really care anymore. I realized that so however you think of me today, you know, you think of that guy's been an entrepreneur, has had some success, maybe was lucky. Maybe you think I'm really smart. It doesn't matter. In 10 2030 50 years, it'll fade away and you probably won't remember me at all. So that's OK. It's just

part of life.

It doesn't really matter that much.

I feel like you're on some Jim Carrey like wisdom. If you followed him carries like

Jim Carey as he turned from comedian Teoh Guru. Yes, comedian guru.

Another analogies may feel like you're really on a wisdom.

Yeah, I've been thinking a lot a lot more recently about what's really important in my life, and I think there's, um, probably generally applicable lessons there. But it's been a good journey for May so

far. Still on it. Jessica on serial entrepreneur, investor, co founder, CEO of Atrium, which were like lucky be investors compact. It's wisdom, wisdom kick any foundational texts or what would it sort of the moment where you started to think a lot more about this type of stuff? Well,

look out, back up. So started a bunch of companies people might know about them. Muslim failed Justin TV doesn t exact exact, and then one of them worked was called Twitch, and we end up selling that dams on 2014. And then I was a partner in y Combinator, where we met for a couple of years investing in startups. And then, more recently, about a year and 1/2 ago, almost two years now, I started a company called Atrium, which is effectively a vertical eyes, full stack, tech enabled law firm for start ups and through the process of starting Adri, um,

it was a It's been a very tumultuous rocket ship, which, you know many startups are ups and downs, oftentimes feels like there's more downs than ups. Very stressful. I thought this time we'll surely I have mastered the game of starting startups, but there's always something new to learn. So I found a very stressful about a year ago. I was like, Oh, my God, stress is really just a bad as it ever waas as much of a roller coaster as there ever was in any of the other startups. And I was looking for a way to deal with that inside, you know, myself. And so I really invested in thinking about one of the ways that I can build practices.

Actually, that sounds a little more intentional. The one I was I was I was desperately grasping on. It was like I was in a ocean and after a shipwreck, and I was like looking for a piece of wood to hold onto any sort of practice that would enable me to you at a little bit more calm into my life. And so that's kind of how I started thinking about this and eventually built out doing a set of practices. You know, we don't need to have talked about that before. We don't need to go too deep into them, but things like meditation and theme or intentional about trying to remove my attachments to outcomes. And I started doing those things regularly, and in the last six months it's really work for me. And, you know, it's not something necessarily that works 100% for everybody. But for me,

at this place in my life, I found it very important. And so that's That's why I started doing. And I like talking about it because, you know, I've been through a lot of ups and downs, but a lot of things that externally people would save, Man, that guy's very successful, you know, still coming for $1,000,000,000 whatever. But I've got to tell you that there's nothing that's affected my baseline happiness and well being in a lasting way. No amount of success is ever delivered that to me. Even though I you think it will write. You think, Oh,

if I just get over this next milestone, I'll feel good. But that never works has never worked for me anyways. And I've never heard of it actually working in a sustainable, long term way for anyone. And this this other stuff this is kind of turning inside and working on myself has actually delivered a vast improvement to my my own baselines. And that's why I'm so excited to talk about it with other people because it is something that I feel

like works. What is interesting balance because you are pursuing that everything we've been talking about. At the same time, you're also building this rock chip company, going from zero to how many employees atrium?

Well, a trim is, ah, 150 people

now, 15 year you two years. Why do that as well? Because if you wanted much more calm and peace of mind, you would you would not have a company right. What do you motivated by is because you don't work in more? You already been successful? What's why build Agent Bible, the company, a bill becoming, you know, everything.

That's a good question. Why do anything? Because everything is kind of pointless and will eventually fade away. But I think human beings are wired to want to build stuff, want to be creative, have creative outlets, build the their environment, whether it's organizationally or other ways. And I think that's part of kind of playing. The human game is that you want your wire to to do things, and that's not bad. I think that it's you just need to get perspective and remain and maintain perspective. And remember that even if you are successful at building something, it's not going achieve any sort of long term, lasting outcome for you on don't be too emotionally attached to it. Either way, I do think that I still continue to learn things.

Building Atrium. That's the reason I started another company. You know, it wasn't for really an economic outcome, because I think the marginal utility of greater and greater financial rewards is pretty low for people. The reason I wanted build a trim is because I felt like it was a great vehicle. Startups in general are great vehicle for your personal growth and development. To learn new skills, learn what it's like to lead bigger organizations. See if you can do it if you deserve to at all. That's not a foregone conclusion. So I felt that building a start up was a great way to put myself into that maximal learning situation and which it has done, and so that that's another great reason for me. Toe want starts are up

another piece, and you talked to me about a lot was mentorship. And how stars for a vehicle for that,

too. Yeah, definitely. I think that building an organization, something I mean, we'll start beginning. One of the things I'm most proud of in my career is not having successful companies, but it's kind of people who have worked with and invested in. I mean just invested in, like, economic financially just but invested my time into building relationship with who have gone on to build and do really great things. And selfishly, I think there's a set of them out there are thinking, you know, thank God for that guy, right? And they feel like they will really learned something from from me and that's a very unique and valuable feeling you know of great sense of pride in accomplishment. And so I think another reason to start atrium is really to build that type of vehicle where I feel like I can mental people who are in organization and help them on their careers to hopefully do things excellent things inside our company and

outside this wall. And did you feel that because you were playing with different different fund ideas, you were playing incubator U zero f? Did you feel that company was the best way for you

to do that kind of iterated through all the ideas? So I was thinking I should I sort of venture fund, But it didn't feel like very hands on for me. And I had just come from from running a venture fund or being a partner 11 And then I thought about Oh, should I incubate five companies and just become the chairman of each one and find that one? Yeah, exactly. I worked with these guys has come to call the Alto. It's a full staff pharmacy, kind of like the each room for pharmacy company doing pretty well raise about $75 million. So far. It's about 200 people. I met the co founders Matt, Jamie, and glad because they wanted to work on a start up and they were used to work for a friend of mine. They started working on a sort of outside of out of my house. I had this home office that I,

you know, just let other people use because I like to new ideas and like hearing about new ideas this back in 2015. And so I guess, has always been for four years, and out of these guys started this company. That's kind of a prescription delivery company in pharmacy. And I had helped them kind of in the initial set up phase, hiring a few of their early key employees and raising capital and really working through the strategic questions. And they got on to do pretty well. So I was like, Oh, maybe I should just do that four more times, five times concurrently. But, you know, I felt like whenever you do that,

you're never really You don't have to solve the problems yourself. You know you can let other. The other founders are really more on the hook for solving the day today. Problems the company and I felt like it wouldn't be as hands on as I wanted. So ultimately, I went all the way back toe full sort circle Teoh. What sort of company

do you see yourself as? Having life goals are bucket list of accomplishments. Er is that incompatible with the view of you being president and all that fades away eventually?

I think, actually, if you do invest in being present, it does fade away, having a goal. I think the goals become more like scorecard or something like that. But it doesn't really. You don't have this burning attachment between your ego and your goals. So, yeah, I have goals in terms of a trims impact and you know how big of a company I think it could be. And I'm very invested in getting there, actually, but I wouldn't say that it's the most important

thing, right? And for you personally, 20 years from now, when Adrian has been immense success, do you say, Oh, I'm just gonna do that again with some things on the Ellison. I just gonna be a politician that I don't like. How do you think about?

Well, I think having new experiences in trying new experiences is pretty great. A great vehicle for learning. Like I said, I really like to learn the things about new industries. And so you know, there, maybe 20 years from now of atrium is fortunate enough to be a great success. You know, I probably would be doing trying to do something interesting and learn about learning about something. I'm hopefully. I think a company can be a vehicle for your continual learning, not just 1 to 3 years in but 10 15 20 years in Look, a great companies like Amazon and

Facebook. I should have said 30 years for 40 years now, yeah, whenever the atrium journey in. Exactly.

So I think that's kind of the stage I would like to get to, because I do think that there's so much to learn from being able to have those tons of opportunities. And if you ever get the chance of lead a company that's, you know, 10 20 years in its successful and at a large company, I think that that's a huge blessing. You know, there's so many things you can learn from that experience

in a news. What would you say is Justin Superpower having worked with him so closely and what inspired you to join him in first place? His superpower, I think being able to think and frameworks starts with full, ambiguous problems and be able to take that and break that down to what? To prioritize. I won't let me to join him. Is was unique dual role. I was previously in management consulting, and naturally you're more risk averse. And with Justin, it was unclear role. Initially, I was 100 sure how involved at both the atrium, but he sort of jumped along for the ride. I think Mark Injury, Sanders Post.

When someone like famous comes calling, they're not gonna call you back if you say no right? What's what are two unique frameworks that you liked? It doesn't. I've learned a lot of tactical things around fundraising, which might get into later. But then also even anyone's responsibilities, right? You should be able tow, break them down and really like short list and always think through them. Yeah, Justin were Regent Atrium. As you were thinking about which company to start. You told the story of how you've been involuntary user of the legal system for quite some time when you were doing the idea maze of what you could start to say, Hey, I Justin have built up this audience and goodwill and this unfair advantage around helping startups. Can I should I build a company where start ups with customers and then evaluate different companies from there? What company did you almost start that there wasn't atrium?

Well, actually, there wasn't really any company that I you know, any other company I think that actually tried to figure out what this is the most research I've ever done on the startup idea ever with with Atrium. And I tried to figure out reasons not to build it, actually, and really, it came from my observation happened, stands meeting I had with a partner at a law firm, and I was asking her what he run your business in this way. You serve all these technology companies, the biggest technology companies, the world, But you don't really use very much tech yourself. And I came up with a set of hypothesis on why the industry was broken and ultimately I was trying to disprove that spent the next couple months talking all sorts of people, potential customers, investors,

other people at law firms. And I've tried to think of reasons and come up with reasons why this was not a good idea. And to be honest, I really couldn't come up with any. And I felt like it was such a big market that it was something that I really wanted Teoh try to tackle. Plus, I had been the customer, and I felt like I knew what customers really wanted. And then on top of that, it's like you said I had built up this goodwill in the start up ecosystem, so that was a natural place to start with you doing corporate transactional work for stark customers.

Yeah, there's unfair advantage brand in relationships, but how have you thought about the law? But you sort of redesigning the law firm from scratch and And how do you see the law firm evolving in the next 5

to 10 years? Yeah, I think there's just a lot of incentives and organizational DNA things that you could do differently, and that's the experiment of atrium. So at a traditional law firm, you know it's run very much like a partnership. These companies are very old there, 50 or even 100 years old. Their ships that move very slowly that grow very slowly and do not change very often. And all the partners have their own autonomy, which can be good in a lot of ways. But in some ways, you know, if you find a best practice for how to do something, it doesn't necessarily roll out to the rest of the partnership and the way that everyone does things at the same time. It's very much the case that you know, training and mentorship.

How do you train paralegals and new attorneys, and how do you mentor them and hold them accountable? That's all done in a very ad hoc way on a part. Buy part of businesses. No riel, corporate DNA, a within law firms around training. And so I felt like there were some things that you could do if you change the culture and incentives. So on the incentive side it's things like let's move things to quote upfront pricing and fixed subscription pricing, because that's gonna give us an incentive to figure out ways through technology or operational best practice is to lower cost over time, so that were incentivized to improve things over time, as opposed to traditional firms, which are all on hourly billing models. Where you have a incentive Teoh not improve over time At the other side is like creating a environment that's more like a startup company. It's more like a startup where there's more incentive to grow the enterprise value of it over time, as opposed to you.

Law firms that kind of take money off the table as much money off the table every year as possible. So there's very little incentive for reinvestment on the company culture side. I think there's a huge amount there, You know. Law firms are run by partners, and it's great if you are partner. But there's very little agency for anyone who's not a partner there, and all the partners are attorneys. So any sort of functional group, whether it's you know, God forbid engineering law firms that really have engineering, but you know, accounts, you know, operations, any of that stuff there's the decisions are not really made by the functional people,

so it's very hard to recruit like the best in class functional people and I That's something we wanted to change. Another aspect was the culture is really having a defined mission and company values. So law firms do not do that, really. But, you know, that will sound very familiar to start up companies. So this is some of the aspects, really. Just making sure that we empower people throughout the organization, not just at the top of the organization. You know, one of the things that I remember distinctly from the research period of atrium was talking to attorneys and these apartments, senior partners at firms. And they're like, Well,

people who are 30 35 you know, do not attorneys who are, you know, like basically 234 or even like five or six years in don't have enough experience. Yet Teoh really know what they're doing, basically, or know how to like to do things without supervision or make ultimately make decisions about the way work is done. And I've thought back to my own experience and I thought, you know, when I was 26 years old, I was running a multimillion dollar piano on my own. Start up and he just can't learn by doing, and so providing opportunities to younger people were hungry and entrepreneurial and want to see change in this industry is something that I think we can do that most others are not doing right now.

And this is resume out were talking earlier that 20 years from now you could be CEO of Atrium, still in in the way that I was on Facebook, you know, have been going multi decades with the same CEO. What would that world look like in terms of what is atrium looked like? It was the biggest version of the company.

Yeah, so I think that there's a There's a huge version of the company out there. I think it's gonna take a long, long time to get there. We may never get there. I often times feel like talking about multi decade journeys. You know, you should be so lucky. I don't I don't I don't know if we'll ever get there. I hope we do, and that's my goal. But I don't know, and I don't wanna be some Presumptions to say, Oh, this is what's gonna happen. But I do think that if you think about enterprises out there, they consume a massive amount of legal services,

hundreds of billions of dollars of legal and what's called legal is actually kind of a glom aeration of all of these different practice areas, from everything corporate, transactional, the i p to litigation all these different types of services. One of my friends, I remember Wrana. She was at a lawyer who just did law for airplane leases, just airplane leases for companies buying and selling air aircraft. And there's a huge amount of tax jurisdictional things, and it's very complicated, but it's just like, very, you know, something you would think is like a small subsection, right? And so what?

I think each room conduce Oh is build Combine traditionally all these different practices of law Onley compete on one axis subject matter expertise. So basically, if you are a aircraft leasing lawyer or aircraft transaction lawyer, you're gonna build a reputation over a decade or multiple decades because of your expertise. And that's how you get a reputation, and eventually your clients will further clients, etcetera. I think the core premise of each room is Can you combine that subject matter expertise with a few other things? Operational Best practice is a technology platform and a great sales and marketing go to market function and build something that is uniquely position. The market deliver services in a better, more efficient way that improves over time. And then can we apply that strategy in that like philosophy to all the different practices of law and eventually, maybe all the other professional business functions that serve enterprises and companies? And I think is that that's the biggest, biggest version of a dream. I really think of atrium like I think of Amazon,

which is, if you think of Amazon, it's not just one company. It's really like a conglomerate of thousands of companies, all of the different retail categories, all the way to, you know, different software services at the sell through AWS and even twitch and audible and kindle in Echo and Alexa, you know, and all these different things are run like their own small businesses, not small even, but you know their own large businesses, and I think that Amazon, what Amazon is is really it's a bland. It's a set of leadership principles. It's a management philosophy way of serving the customer,

and they apply that philosophy across all of these different businesses. And I think ultimately for a trim to live up to its potential and be successful, we have to do the same type of thing, which is really empowering leaders in our company. To build these professional business is in a different way.

Does that mean that the atrium for X will be Atria and same with the uber for at uber?

You know, it's hard to say. I think that when I remember Brian Chesky from Airbnb saying that the Airbnb of boats is gonna be Airbnb. Turns out there's not really any area. That's but you know, sometimes it's very easy to make ambitious conjectures in Day One, which may or may not play out. So I think that I only is trying to start the trim of acts of There's many right now you know this you gets go do it. I'm not necessarily going toe, you know, become a tax preparer tomorrow or

anything like that. What? What do you recommend in these atrium Frank's business models? What should entrepreneurs have is a core part of their thesis?

I think I think there's probably a lot more nuance and people think There's probably not like the best sweeping rules, I think often times in the earlier in the cycle for you know, X for why everybody is like thinks they can apply exactly the same things, something one company that's being successful can to the others. And I think that oftentimes that proves out not to be the case, because the dynamics of this whatever marketplace or industry, are often very specific to that industry. I think in general, you know, when you're starting one of these companies you wanna have, Ah, pretty broad strategic understanding of how the industry works. Probably some deep technical understanding of that industry from hopefully co founder has been in it when you wanna have the right balance between, like, not indexing too much and how the experts do it in that industry, but probably not overlook realer, having to relearn every industry,

industry a lesson, you know, oftentimes, I think tech people want to come into an industry and say, Well, these people no, no shit, I'm gonna I'm gonna just do it from first principles entirely. You know, I appreciate the gumption, and I've had a healthy dose of that. But I do think that you want Teoh and take the best of, like what's actually

working. But sometimes that works, right? Just throw out everything. Beginner's mind, I guess, not

think is very important. Have a beginner's mind, definitely. But I think that it's also important to actually listen to the people in the industry and really here beyond what there's they're saying, right, like there are Sometimes companies don't listen enough, I think, and end up reinventing a lot of the same things that already already existed.

Yeah, I wasn't that There should be sort of Ah, Wikipedia of like, you know, here all the companies in space have tried it. Here is what they learned from Yeah, that

would be a really good resource.

Bills have a startup community, and people built businesses of the space should add to it. Let's say we were all running a fund. That and it was the atrium for Ex fund. What might our thesis be or our requests for start ups or what would we be really exciting? Where do we think that model will work? Well, and where do we think it won't work?

Well, s so I think it works best for industries that have relatively high margins and high dollar revenues. And that's number one, you know. So I started coming, called exact, and it was in the space of home joy and handy. And that was very tough to make work because the dollar revenues and margin were really low in that space. And when you have a physical workforce and that's doing the work fundamentally, it's very hard for you to make your margins work and support a kind of expensive technical staff and and infrastructure. If there isn't like already a lot of fat in the business, I think it's also really important to identify a few. Core weighs a few core things that the incumbent customers really hate about the business in the industry, like things that they wish that would improve. Where there's structural reasons why the industry is not actually solving those problems. You know there's a lack of it. There's an incentive alignment problem, or a new entrant can come in and be counter position against the incumbents. I think you know, people don't think enough of about about that

to other things. Out at Andrews and Hearts recently had this post about manage marketplaces, and they talk a lot about the supply you're making. Ah, restricted supply more accessible. So that's one. And then two. I think there were boy thesis pretty good here, highly fragmented toe. There's no consolidated power you really running up against and a low MPs where people are more willing to try something out. Now, totally. How would you think about when I d have exploring? Is the atrium for recruiting in some fashion? I don't know which segment of the recurring stack to focus on, but what would you advise?

Eso? There's companies are eating around the edges of that triple bite is a great example. Trouble bite, sort by hard hangers was a partner of my commentator and then Teoh, former Justin TV employees, actually, who went on to start a chemical social cam. So they said, technical recruiting is done in a very broken way where people look at resumes primarily which are not a very good indicator of technical competence, and they felt like there should be primarily an aptitude test and then a matching program based on, you know, kind of the type of person that you need. They started really with engineers. But I actually think that process would work for other skill sets and positions as well. And you know, the kind of rethought the entire interview process with this beginner's mind, which I think was pretty interesting.

And if you think about the reason one of the ways go back to what I was saying, one of the ways that there, you know, kind of doing something differently that the incumbents are are not incentivized to do. Well. If using contingent recruiters outside of your company generally one of the things they want to do is send you as many candidates as possible, right? They're incentivized to waste your time as the interviewer with people aren't necessarily that good of a fit because there's no cost to them to do that with Triple Bite, they actually limit that the limited, um of companies a Senate candidate to because they want to create a high one of the core metrics is creating a high matching percentage right, like a high interview to offer percentage. And because they feel like they can optimize the, you know, Mac fit a batch of ah candidate and a company very well. It's actually becomes a negative experience. If they're,

you know, candidates are sent to too many companies and because there's like less acceptance is at the back and right. And so they kind of flip the incentive structure in a way. And I think that's really important. Might start to see a lot of these.

It's her business. Is it of like Seo in a box CMO in a box accounting about your CFO about? Do you think that there will be sort of a roll up almost like a McKinsey for startups that does all of these things? There? Is that atrium? Eventually?

Yeah, so I think that consulting is an interesting one because I'm startups don't buy consoling services generally right? They don't buy very mean consulting services. So I think the McKinsey or atrium of McKinsey would probably target enterprise customers. I've heard of a few things. You know, a few things. There's camera what's called. But there's one that does Vertical eyes like kind of piece meal work actually is a couple of one called concepts that was a Y C company that was also doing, like piecemeal work, that consultant, like things like power points and stuff like that they have it in a way that it's kind of like this virtualized workforce that's freelancer work for us behind the scenes. That's a abstract away with project managers. So I think that's that's, uh, that is happening, actually, yeah,

transition a little bit, one of things you said in a recent Why see talk is that their startups that fail because of bad management and startups that succeed but still have bad management said it consistently throughout my my time and why CEO And so what exactly separates bad managers? Good managers were one of the most common misconceptions.

Well, I think the problem in Silicon Valley generally is probably happens all over the every industry. But I see it most here because is the industry I'm in is that you have a lot of young people who start companies, which is great, and they get something off the ground and they find product market fit in and they get capital for it. Their company and they do all those things, having relatively little management experience often and they do them and they're successful not because of their management right there, successful because they were really good engineer product person who'd invented this thing and then get to a certain stage. And they get this opportunity to manage a company with a lot of people and have capital because of their you're finding product market fit right or their core skills, like engineering, maybe sales, whatever. And then it turns out, most management is a skill that you learn by getting, you know, learning by by doing and by getting coached and getting your 10,000 hours in. And,

you know, very few people are just natural, amazing managers. And so, of course, these people are like not good managers, right, because they want selected from a pool for being good managers, right? So it could be a mecca. Manifest itself in many different ways. Command from the like, kind of mundane, like you aren't doing them basic things like one on ones or helping people develop the skills they want, or even understanding what your employees want to develop in and helping them achieve their goals all the way through. You know, you're not delegating well, you know, setting goals well, because you're not used to doing those

things. If you had to boil down your startup crash course of management to just say five minutes order. The most important principles are lessons that you would apart.

The number One thing is, what got you here won't get you there, right? You need to learn to delegate. That's true for almost everybody. Most people become a manager because they were really strong. I see when you're really strong, I see you get a reputation for being really strong. I see because you do things, whatever it takes yourself, you're just willing to jump in there and do it yourself. Well, it turns out that's not a way to build. A scalable, well functioning team is to do everything yourself. So at a certain point, when you start managing a team,

you need to start delegating and holding people accountable that in a way that's empowering, right? Not just like cracking the whip or like you know, just e. I think it's really important to Teoh kind of realize that you need to take a step back and delegate and really figure out how to empower other people to do the work. That's like Number one Basics. Number two is just really looking up all the best practices and starting to implement those you know that is things like one on one goal setting performance reviews all the basic stuff. I'm not the world's best manager, either. I'm not an expert at that. You can read about it all online. There's lots of books, you know. That's probably the second thing that's important. And, you know,

I think the third thing that's probably an important realization I would say to people, is me this number zero, actually. Is that just It's all about the team you build? You know, people are the most important thing. People don't change that much, especially when they're not. They don't want Teoh. And so, you know, really, finding the right people from the outset is probably the number one thing you can do. Teoh be successful as a leader of a team, whether it's a small team or a large team, and so really spending the time to invest in finding the right people and empowering them is incredibly important.

How is that evaluation criteria for you changed over time with those executives that you do delegate

to? Yeah, so I think in terms of evaluating people, that's that's a really good question. I think one of the things I didn't realize even through the beginning of atrium as much was that there's a certain type of people that I like to work with, and everybody's different right. Everybody has different types of people like they like to work with, and it's not really a matter of right or wrong or who's like the right type of person higher. It's more matter of fit with you. And so, for example, for me, the type of people I really want to work with, people who are very much like take ownership and responsibility don't want me to. You helped them draft the plan or whatever, but really want me to, like,

provide my input at a very strategic level. They have, ah, high degree of ownership. This is the opportunity to own things. Holy is like a great opportunity for them, very low ego, kind of willing to do whatever it takes. And they really see my input as like on the strategic level as a coach and maybe complementary skill sets right, so some of things you know I'm good at I could help them with things like I'm good at sales I'm gonna recruiting, basically telling a narrative. So that's something that I can I can help with And the things I'm willing to trade off right? Are you know, you don't have to be the person who comes up with all the ideas yourself, right? Like the most creative person I'm willing to trade off experience,

right? Like, definitely willing to take opportunity flyers on my kind of high potential young people because, you know, you can't have everything right, like and so I think that at the outset I did not really realize as much. Like, I didn't have a specific archetype of person that I knew. I worked back best with. And now I've kind of identified that.

So get Tunas, a company building thing. Let's talk about fundraising. And you came out the gate and

raised 10 $1,000,000. That's right. 10.5

milling And you could have a bruise. Draft yourself. How do you think about sort of lean start up spot? Start up. Dispose your philosophy

there. Well, in this case, my goal was really Teoh. Get to the place where I was learning very fast and one of the reasons I liked atrium itself in these vocalized startups is because you know there's product market fit in a way. Which is to say that every founder in Silicon Valley is gonna pay for legal services one way or another. Legal services are something that you're going to have to use. It's a tax on every corporate transaction in America of any note. And so I felt like it would be relatively straightforward to start gangs and customers and really doing customer development and understanding how to make things better. And I had a good picture of how they make things better already in my mind and so, as opposed to, let's say, a social app where, you know, you kind of play around with ideas and you roll it out there and see if it works. You've been there and experimented and like nine times out of 10 it doesn't work. So you're in this,

like small team iteration on an idea for a very long for an indefinite amount of time, and I wanted to not be in that space, right, And I wanted to be in a place where, you know, I felt like as a fount. Second time third time founder four times under whatever it is I wanted. Teoh really take not market risk but execution risk, right? And so that's why I kind of picked this idea. And then once we had, the idea was like, Well, I know that as opposed to most are ups, you know, in this tarp, it's kind of like I know if I build it or I have a very good sense that if I build it, they will come. So I wanted to raise enough money to you support a team that I felt I could build a very good experience.

Is there a different kind of business where you would more recommended Lee and start up? Definitely. If you're

building like a social app, for example, Well, if you're building well, right well, which is like a social video Q and AM. You know, that's a cap that you just need four guys in a room to build and you know it might work. It might not work, but you could do that on very little capital. If you're building a cash flow business, there's a lot of like these director consumer businesses that are generating cash flow from day one. They don't need to raise that much money. You don't raise the money if you don't have to.

Definitely. Yeah. And so talk about how you architected that seed fund raise because I remember getting the call and say, Eric, I want you in It was one of one of the last people. But you you're thankful for your Of course you have very large. That's not

its. That's not the important part. I think that it's great to be part of the community of startups. One of the things I wanted to optimize for was having people around the table who were very helpful. And you've always been there for us.

Appreciate that. I like it. It's good to be involved. Talk about how you architect that round, because you have. You have a lot of stakeholders in that round, your very strategic about how you put around together, and I get that part most interesting. How you picked you picked your lead and you

thought about from Yeah, well, I think that the lead, in a way picked me in that, you know, I had this idea and I was vetting it, so I was talking to a lot of investors and friends and was like, you know, with this work, poke holes in it And I remember talking to Nico someone I had known through. I see Nico, Bonanza said. General Catalyst And I was telling him this in 2017. I was telling him about the startup idea and he way spent. It was 45 minute conversation schedule on Saturday. Came to me a four barrel in the mission, but we had a walking around for a couple hours talking about he's very excited about.

It was like coming for partner meeting on Monday. So I came in Boom. They gave me a term sheet and that was very convincing that it was like, I guess is it really is a real thing. So I talked to a few more people. I really respect in the industry, but ultimately these guys kind of gave me everything I wanted and they were very excited about it. I think General Callous have been very interested in these two vertical eyes, full stack businesses and so I wanted to fill the round with as many people as I felt like could be helpful assed possible so we raised money from 90 other investors, prominent angels and CEOs and seed funds. And also, venture funds in Silicon Valley

was strategic. Contradict 10 verse 5 15 or 20 years. How did you come up to that? Number?

10 million was it was basically double. What I felt like I needed to build is we had a plan and it was like, you know, spend spend five to get a certain level And so it was kind of like, this is a good buffer, But, you know, a lot of what we're doing with this early round startup was in terms of fundraising. It's kind of like the ninja move. You know, you can you can often would always say you would cut your own head off. Don't try the ninja moves because you can cut your own head off. And I definitely don't necessarily recommend to most startups that they dio and try to raise from 90 investors. I think it can actually be a giant pain in the ass for us. There was a reason to do it because we really wanted to be accepted into the Silicon Valley community and mind, you know, mind space and so we felt it was important from a branding perspective

this time around. So you've written guide on how to raise a seed round series A. We raised a serious be in this past summer. Where your main learnings from doing this past

round compared to previous ones. Yes. So in this in this past round with which was led by Andrew Chen and marked injuries and at injuries and, you know, it's very similar to actually a syriza and a lot of ways you have to g o.

But for you series, it was pre data, right?

Yeah, I was pretty. Data is a deck. Is the deck here? You know, we had a bunch of milestones. The first thing we did was like the pre work. We had a bunch of milestones We want to hit as proof points in the six months leading up to you. Our latest round. We spend a lot of time executing, gets those milestones, and I think we did a pretty good job of it. Those were things like product proof points and revenue and some things like that. And then that was the hard work. Really. And then after that, you know we did a lot of work on.

How do we present this narrative built? The funnel of investors went through the funnel, you know, did the whole process, and it was a normal kind of process. And luckily, you know, we found a partner who really believed in in us, and Andrew was a seed investor in us. And so you believed in us since the beginning, and I've always had tremendous men expect respect for for injuries and Horwitz. And so it was good to find a good partner there, you know, we took some of those learnings and he had from from the our process, you know, and we also helped think Atrium itself has done.

It's probably 70 80 price rounds now in the last year and 1/2. Something like that. We've seen a lot of dynamics around. How do you build a successful fundraising process? So we took some of those, and we turn them into this program we call Fundraising Concierge, which really helps starts quarterback their fundraising process for Syria's A's or B's. You know, I think there's it's there is really a playbook that, you know, if you assuming you do the pre war work to actually have a good company if you have a good company investable company, if you just run this playbook, you know it's gonna maximize your probability of success, and it really is. A science is like sale enterprise sales. I think when people outside of who have not done sales before I think about sales, it seems more of an art. But I think if you go inside and do a deep dive in anyone is running enterprise sales, it's actually quite a bit of a science, and that's always surprising to people.

I think, yeah, transitioning out a little bit. But continue the company, building things like one of things. You had a dream. It was done very well. Is think about content marketing brand, one of your yourself invaded superpowers, that you're a gifted height man. What has he been your philosophy of content marketing brand at

Atrium? Yeah, I mean the philosophy of content, marketing and branding. It's like cribbed directly from why sees playbook right? If you are helpful to the founder community, the entrepreneurship community, and put information out there for free that is helpful to people, then they will like you and you will build a great brand in that community. It's not rocket science, and I didn't even invent it. You know, I watch Paul run this playbook with things like started school and his essays for years. And that is what I liked doing myself when I was at Y C. Putting out content, whether was on Snapchat or block posts or whatever. I remember writing a guide Teoh how to sell your company.

After we sold Twitch. I was like, Someone should have this information for founders cause a very asymmetric process, Right? Corporate development teams are doing tons of deals and you as a founder, my never soldier company only once in your lifetime. And so I wrote this whole guide, how you should think about selling your company and put it up on medium or whatever. And I remember seeing people be like I used Justin's Guide to sell my company, you know? So that was such a good feeling. And, you know, we didn't economically make any economically, why cement get anything from that? But I know that we're by building goodwill in the world.

People like, Well, I would want him as an adviser or as an investor in my next company, right? And so we felt the same playbook. Could workaday trims or reading guides for how to raise your see ground on reserves Thursday from our own experiences, how to deal with various legal questions or issues that you might come up with? Putting that content out there, I think, is great for building goodwill on Brand the market.

Totally. You've also ran a bunch of stuff. I wrote my money crypto tech crypto post on the program, as you hope, people. Right, right, great things as well. You mentioned Snap. What did you learn from being a daily snap? And we know what you describe yourself. Snap star, snap star, snap start of the stars. What were the lessons? They I think they knew just how you guys got in touch. That is what lessons you took. It was experience like,

yeah, so a little context for people is basically in 2016 and then a little. In 2017 I was creating a lot snapshot content, mostly about entrepreneurship, on being a founder, and that was a really fun process. For me. It was mostly like to learn about Snapchat first. You know, I hadn't really done anything in the social side in a while, and I was. It was all the rage. I was late adopter to it, to be honest, and so I was trying to figure it out. So it's just create content out there and putting it putting out there was kind of a fun format, you know,

the short video clips was just talking about whatever subjects people would ask me, you know, sometimes fundraising, sometimes like, had a state balance all running company and do management basically how to hire first employees. And I just create fun, short clip content about it. And what one thing I learned is it's really there for these social media stars. It is a content treadmill, yet is a lot of work. You think these people are just out there getting brand deals and enjoying their lives. They are on a grind, and you got to do it every day and create this content. Every day of those, your audience starts disappearing, you know,

Snapshot, unfortunately, was not the best platform for influencers because discoveries very hard and so if you want to build yourself up I got to a certain point which pretty fun. Actually, I was like getting recognized. Remember? I went toe. I was in u A e v watching Formula One like in Abu Dhabi. I got recognized on the street and then that same triples in Singapore got recognized on the street there. And so there was a point where did get, you know, decently sized, but stopped growing. And so I was very frustrated cause I was like, how I grow my audience and snapshot just like doesn't care. They were not invested in helping people kind of grow.

And so that's where an instagram came along and kind of, like, clobbered them on the influencer side because I think they cared a lot more about, like, the influence or feedback. But that was this is like before instagram stories, So I didn't really hit a wall. And then then I gave up. I also started a gym. I was hit a wall and I started a trim, and I was like, I have something more interesting to do now. Yeah, but you're always

going hard core, Gary Allergic? I guess so. I think that

Yeah, I guess I was almost going Hardcore. Gary Gary Vaynerchuk. I like to think I have my own style.

Of course, it's interesting. I don't if you noticed, but I I cease. Um I've always seems imperialism in my car and yours, Justin. TV live streaming. Years later, I started wrapped a fan which was live streaming rap battles. And you've put a lot of content out there and build a brand out that I've started to do that. And I guess I'm I'm continuing to do that. I guess I'm wondering. Keep doing that. Should I become more like you in that way? Or would you tell me you know what? It worked for me, but not my night work for you might not be what

you want. No, I think you have a great brand out there and was very helpful people, and I would I actually do think it depends on what you want to do, right? I think if you investors though they underweight brand. You know, one of things. I think Andrew's and did very well and so did why, see, was really invest in branding and marketing content, marketing, right, putting content out there early on in a time when BC's were like, Why should we put out content where the gate keepers right? They weren't marketing at all. Turns out now everybody's marketing on Twitter,

whatever. But I think it's very important to build up a brand. I Usually when I talk about investing in startups anyways, I say there's three things that are very important. I can't remember if I put this out there before, but the three things Number one is is really a brand platform, right? Like, what do people do? You have some sort of unique deal flow because you have this unique platform, so it could be you know why I see which is almost like the HBs of Silicon Valley. Okay, what could be like, you know, the platform injuries since developed where they have his brand is like they provide all these services to you. They take in all the fees,

and they rolled him into these networks of services that help you scale your company. Or it could be something like Sasser, another investor. I really respect. Jason Lampkin has built this brand all around being the SAS guy, right? Turns out SAS is hugely over valued or valued by the market right now. So it's a good place to be in right the right time in the right place, right time. And so I think building and you need platform to get that proprietary deal flow is very important. As an investor, That's one of the kind of core things that you

have to do. Yeah, and my goals. I'm interested in investing and incubating and that there will be times in my career where I'm doing one more the other, but really things like what you've done or we keep boys. Donna, what other people have have done in that vein Help? Absolutely. I think it can't hurt zooming out a little bit in a news. I know you've helped Justin on on the investing stuff. How would you describe your investing philosophy? Your angel investing philosophy? We've just started.

Oh, yeah. Well, I don't necessarily think I'm that good of an investor,

remember? You told me. You told me this. Said Elmira. You said invest in your friends. I've lost all money doing it. But if I did it in the beginning, I would have made a lot of money. Momo Investor? Well, yes,

I invested my friends, my friends investing something that on best just because if I don't and they're successful, the fomer will literally kill me. You know, I could have invested in many, many multi decade corn companies if only I didn't listen to my intuition as much and just blindly invested in my friends and not really sure what the lesson is there, but yeah, I don't I don't know. I think, honestly, I don't think I'm negative. Investor. I think ive been riding this massive bull market. I think most people here in Silicon Valley have been I don't think there as genius is out. We might think either internally or externally, and people are very lucky to be in the right place at the right time. I do have some friends who I think are amazing investors,

you know, I think Sam all men, right, for example, I think is amazing, investor, But I don't find I don't believe that I have this, uh,

what makes a great what uniquely do you think?

Well, I think there's three things that go into being a good investor. That number one thing that was like having that platform right. Number two is being actually doing analysis and trying to understand where the world is gonna end up and being right about that, right? But I think there's a lot of work that people could do if they wanted, but they don't. And so you know that work is like, for example, just basic. One is like when you are confronted with a product and like go to start doing customer calls, seeing that the customers actually like it or not, a lot of people don't do that. I don't know. I've done that as an angel investor, very much so. Just doing toe work to understand.

Is this where the world's going or not? I think that's a really important thing, because usually you're investing in things where you do not you're not have direct well, usually maybe, but for myself, I'm investing a lot of things that I don't have like direct industry experience in, and so maybe I don't know what's right. What's gonna happen on the third thing, I think, is just the willingness to hustle the chase down deals and make people take your money. There's a lot of these really good investments are made off cycle like a lot of VCs and angel investors just, like hang their shingle and wait for people to come in and say, Oh, I'm raising my Siri's a And then you are the gatekeeper you're evaluating or whatever, but I think that the best investors they identify Hey, I want to invest in this company.

I don't care if it raising, but I'm just gonna call this guy every day and be hopeful until they take my money. You know, I heard this story actually don't even know where I heard it. But that CO two got to lead the rounded Snapchat it, you know, whatever sound under $800 million round or whatever, like the evaluation was like another 1,000,000 or something like that. Because one of the founders, like, basically flew Evan on P J is probably playing somewhere. And, you know, that's a form of hustle. I mean, that's kind of an extravagant one,

but like, you know, just doing whatever it takes to figure out how to get the deal. Even if that that person is in raising money that founders not raising money, I think that's a underweighted

skill set. I want to talk about a few people who have been very lunch on your career and asks either something that you think makes them uniquely special or something that you have uniquely taken from them. So maybe we're just not Sandwich. Let's start with Sam, Sam, so interesting because he hasn't built a $1,000,000,000 company before and yet is sort of has this exceptional, you know, investing track record and has been this force itself. The valley. What do you what do you to credit his superpower, too? Because it is not immediately obvious the way that it is for other people have built. Yeah,

I think Sam is a tremendous wall of confidence and a tremendous interest in new ideas. I think those things kind of combined to make him very curious. Pursuing like new companies and investing in new companies, ideas that are so big and so outside the box that people insulting value myself included, were like huh? But they turns out they can be amazing cos you know he's found some tremendous companies that would like he's expanded. Why see, in some ways, like in terms of companies, but also in terms of initiatives and non profits that you know, we would never have the ambition or even like understanding of ideas to, like, think about, you know, from sourcing things like Gingko Bio Works and and Righetti, the quantum computing company all the way to, you know, create open A. He's just like such a dynamic person who's interested in new ideas to such extreme level. Compared up with that level of confidence has been really incredible

to watch. Crazy question. Do you think he or someone else in technology could be president in the next 20 years?

Fortunately, I don't think that demographics in the United States support electing somebody from Tech. I don't think America wants a technocrat president. I think we got that in Obama and people are dissatisfied. So, you know, in Fort it is not a knock against Sam. I just don't think that, like that is where we're

headed as a country down. Where do you think I see goes in future? Does it is HBs prominent does just continue to expand and the X ray was taken. 1000 companies are what you are there more accelerators. Is there a Princeton, too? Because right now it's really just how do you think about?

I think I think I see expands both in breath and depth. So by breath, I mean more, more start ups Think the ambition is to fund more and more and more start ups concurrently and in different ways. And then I think there's this depth of, like, funding start ups and helping stops throughout the life cycle. And this is coming from the outside. You know, I'm not not there anymore. I'm NLP in the fund. A little bit small, small one. But outside of that, I don't know. So you know you have. That's Michael.

But, you know, I think they're there. I seem or more stuff on the Siri's, A program and the continuity program. And

that's that may fertilize the whole ventures

that exactly Maybe there would be no need for venture investors

ever. How about Michael? I was just gonna bring him up with something that makes him uniquely special or something immediately taken

from him. Yeah, So Michael Michael Seibel, CEO of I see one of my closest friends, also a board member at Atrium. I think Michael is really the purest person I know in terms of really wanting to help start ups and being kind of Mr Store apps. The way I put it is like when we were working together. Why see if all the companies failed after demo Deaf? I felt like he would not feel that he wasted his time. You know, the process of teaching companies really is is its own reward for Mike. Only think, and he will spend that consequently will spend like hours and hours and hours. You know, he'll camp out at why see the week before Demo Day and be there till 3 a.m. every day to help people prepare starts, prepare for the demo day pitch. You know he'll make himself available at all hours at any time for start ups.

And it's one of those things where, you know, when you see a founder with the right market fit right, founder market fit. It's like almost like he would pay to do that job. That's the type of passion you really want to see in people, and I think it really has that. And so he's helped so many stars all way from back when we were running Justin TV helping Airbnb, you know, navigate their first couple of years to, more recently being the CEO of Y C and then helping these hundreds and hundreds starts in the same way. I think Michael has that very unique passion for starts, and that's really a superpower. He also will tell you without pulling punches, but not in a negative way. Everything that you're doing wrong, you know, and a lot of people struggle to give that really candid

feed that. How about Paul Graham? But not the Paul Graham of another five or even 2009 but program of Day 2016 on Like a minute in most recent era.

I mean, I think that Paul Graham won the thing that's been consistent, that I really one of the things I really admire is that he was very principled. Giving is an extremely principal person in terms of like evil has the certain beliefs around, you know, start ups, for example. But even like you know, how you should think should run right? Like how he wants to live his life all the way to start ups, right? And start in the stars. When I could speak to that a little bit better. You know, he believes in how to start a startup and, like that union focus on these few core things. Talking customers programming iterating.

And that's really for in the core of why, see, right, it formed the core philosophy of why see how, like how you should start start. Actually, it's funny because I always believe that there's this one. Rates are starting to guys hacking in a room and talking to customers and going back and programming something and turns out in my opinion, now that there's many different ways to start companies, right, you can, like, look at even something like Beats beats audio, right? Like Who would have guessed that a wrapper on a music producer with started, $3 billion company that they entirely outsourced their product for,

You know, off. Like if you told that to look, that's completely the opposite of the UAE seaway, right? But there's many ways to skin a cat, is what I've learned. But what I like about PG is that he's always been like this is my philosophy on it, and this is I'm like, I've strongly held convictions and I think that's a very principle thing. How about Alexis Ohanian I think Alexis is a great you know, People say, if I think my superpower is like kind of the promotional side, I think Alexis is like much next level. You know he's a 10 x. Alexis's is very good at promoting things,

you know. He's always endless tirelessly. If you follow him on Twitter. Instagram is tirelessly promoting other startups, the founders that Initialize is invested in. He's very good at it, and I think that's pretty amazing in a very selfless way. But I think this, but it's amazing.

How about Emmett, your co founder? It twitch

M. It is very, very deeply analytical, and he's very deeply customer focused on. And I think that's amazing, like he is a very customer focused CEO, very product focused CEO, And I think he thinks deeply about product and customers and what customers really, really want in a way that most people in Silicon Valley don't the pivot to twitch, That's all. Am it, you know, And it was all Emmett talking to customers and really identify Hey, here are the core things that we gaming broadcasters want and that company wouldn't exist, you know. The company wouldn't have existed and when one a pivot in that way, if it wasn't,

wasn't for his deep customer inside sick. And so I think he's like, really, that's is that's really one of the super core superpowers. One comes to work. You know what something you've learned from that's one from market juicing. Interestingly, I think that there's a lot of meat markets like one of the smart people I've ever met. I think there's a lot of parallels between Andries and Atrium, actually, and that's one of the reasons why he was interested in it. What I liked about it is that they set out to rethink the venture firm, and in order to do that, they kind of came up with really one core hypothesis. I would say in this from the outsides of human, you have to ask him and Ben but like their core hypothesis,

I believe, was that marketing actually matters like all these guys were gatekeepers had the money, the venture funds, but they didn't like wanted to, you know, they were they were, like, kind of gatekeepers, and they're like, Well, people should find us. You should find, like, figure out a connection to us or whatever. And they were just like marketing actually matters we're going to market on, you know,

Social Media by the all the different things that did were forms of marketing, right? So it's everything from like writing block posts and Ben's book. That's like direct former marketing to the way they said It's some experience required, which is what they call, like all the GP Zarghami operators, tea or are entrepreneurs. That's effectively a form of marketing. Now, you could say is a better strategy for actually advising companies that might be, but the fact that talked about it so much as a form of marketing, right? And then there's like, the networks, like, We're gonna help you with all these services that we've scaled that scales and we approach it like a company.

But that's effectively a form of marketing, right, because it might help the companies. You know, that helps these companies, like the company's, tell each other. And they tell the company's founder, Tell me before I resigned from interesting like you have to raise money for surgeries and their networks are amazing, these scalable services that they have, and so I think that their core hypothesis really was. That venture could be much different business if you actually invest in marketing, and that has borne out right now, 10 years later, they just, I think,

hit their 10 year anniversary. They are one of the premier of phones in Silicon Valley that build very quickly, and I think that that that's something that I learned from from them. And I think that's something that is interesting that applies in many ways. To

Adrian. I totally want to end on a few grab bag questions. Maybe start with you've been his other value. For how long?

We started our first company in 2000 5

years, almost 15 years. How have you seen it evolve in the time that you've been here? And how do you expect it to evolve going forward? Will it continue to be the center of startups worldwide? Will that change?

Yeah, well, let me tell, say the network effect is very strong, and I think that Silicon Valley will continue to be the center of startups for a long time to come. That being said, I think the there's a bunch of things that this specific geographic area is doing very poorly. You don't need me to tell you read about online. But you know everything from housing and infrastructure is very bad here. And so there's a lot of incentive for people do create parts of their companies elsewhere. So, you know, at all toe, we just open Denver as a back office right for H Q to for all these different functions that are kind of cost prohibitive to put in San Francisco. And that's a very common story or in in Silicon Valley. So I think it's less and less become becoming the obvious trade off that this is the right, the best place for for a za founder.

However, I do believe that the network effect is strong enough that's gonna propel it for a long time. I don't think there's gonna be a Silicon Valley to I think, that that's just gonna be spread around the rest of the world. All these different companies are going to spread around the rest of the world or the rest of the United States in terms of how things have changed. The one thing that I think is really strongly changes that this industry has grown up and matured a lot. And so it has attracted a different profile of people. More people who are interested in developing their career, their graduate from school. They want a stable, career safe bet they're coming to Silicon Valley and they're not just working at stops are working at Facebook and Google. You know that's not good or bad, but I do think that when I got here, there were a lot of people were interested in working in technology because fuck it, it's something cool to Dio, you know,

they were interested in the technology for technology's sake and they were interested in experimenting with it. And there's a little bit less of that feeling here now, which maybe something lost. But I do think that there are other places where that that kind of engagement, I guess, or attitude manifest itself. You know, I think the crypto markets are one of them, and I think there will be others. Are you longer short distributed teams? I think that we have not yet seen. You know, I talked about this with Jason on the this week and starts. We have not yet seen the Decca Corn distributed companies, but I think we will, I think distributed is something that,

you know, we're just starting to get the technology to make it work really well. Like good video conferencing. Slack. All this stuff is kind of come up in the last five years. And so now we're going to start seeing the waves start upset, really executed, remote really well, and have become very successful with it, So we'll see. But yeah, I think it's coming,

period. Deal talks a lot about secrets. What's an important truth that very few people

agree with you on? Most people think about starting a company, and they get the opportunity started company because they really want to solve a specific problem in the world or, like bring a specific product or service to market. And they are like the line worker on that. They're either in, like, sales or engineering a product, and they just are really good at that thing. And the problem most founders have is flipping from that to being more of a manager and delegator building machine that builds a machine, right? I actually have the opposite problem, which is that we started a trim, you know, I've been successful before had a lot of resource is start. So I actually started by delegating first and kind of building the company without having been like the line worker myself. First on,

like product or engineering or sales, are obviously doing legal work or anything like that. And so I guess my kind of core belief is that you can start a company this way, but I think it it's like the jury's still out because each rooms still a startup. We

talked about how to evaluating talent in the context of execs, but I'm curious to talk more in the context of founders, especially discovering them before other people discover them. I've noticed a few times in your career you've bet on people before other people have bet on them. You incubated companies with them or you've invested with them and played a really close role. What is sort of the criteria or spark that you're looking for that encourages you to spend time with other people who haven't yet been stamped.

Yeah, I think there's two things are really important. Number one is having a growth mindset, says people who are always learning that people I've observed who are like the best you know Brian Chesky, Zehr drew from Dropbox. These guys are always out there learning whatever's about whatever is gonna come down the pipeline and Onda next in the next thing around the corner. And I was always impressed by that. You know that dedication, cause it's hard to like, always commit yourself to learning what's next. So growth mindset. I think it's really important. And the second thing is just the ability to run through walls and, like you're gonna experience a ton of pain and struggle and problems when you're founder and there's some people hit those things and I give up other people hit them and they get stronger. And so those people who have hit those problems and get stronger those are the people I want to invest

in. What sparked did you see in the news? Because a lot of people are out there trying Teoh to break in and have a role somewhere. Teoh. What a news has What did you see in him? Doesn't eso

a news? What I really liked is that he was very proactive about reaching out, saying, Hey, here's why you should hire me. Here's the type of things I can help you with. And I think that kind of pro activity is really important. And so that's kind of way Start would start working together. And then after, You know, what I've really appreciated is that he's dive into every project with, like, scum. Fear Out is the best and, like, really figured out. Do research have a comprehensive understanding,

Whether it's like, how do we do? Okay, ours Or how do you do team meeting or any of the kind of daily running a company thing? Or even how, How do I investigate and evaluate Angel investments? You know, very comprehensive growth mindset That's been really fun. I think that there is a ton of these types of rules out there. A lot of successful people looking to scale themselves through chief of staff, for someone to bounce ideas off of a creative partner. They're not that hard to find. Actually, I've had many friends reach out recently were like, How do I find somebody who can, you know, compartment within this way and yeah, if you look from there, there

and to close, perhaps so there are a lot of people Listen, this were founders who are in the thick of it right now in the grind and conserve intellectually understand that it will fade but have trouble getting their emotionally What advice or parting words might you might you leave them with?

Yeah, well, I mean the actionable advice, you know, meditating 40 minutes a day every day for a little while now. And I definitely recommend, you know, take some time to disconnect and Teoh interest fact. But my actual, you know, the rial. I guess my parting words are just, you know, nothing. Everything that you think is important. It doesn't really matter. And that's not that's not a scary thing.

That's not a bad thing. It's not a negative thing. It's build up these castles for like in your mind, about like, these are the things that are really gonna create satisfaction for me, whether it's bring a product to market or having a successful company or executing something successful, you're selling your company or whatever it is, and none of those things will ever build any lasting long term happiness. And even if you accomplish them and you build some great reputation on people, listen to you on a podcast. You know it's gonna fade eventually. And so the sooner you accept that, the happier you'll be. I wish someone had told me that 10 years ago. Cool,

Justin, Con co founder, CEO atrium on deck and token daily or very happy customers of atrium since the beginning. If your startup you're not using atrium, you need to start using atrium. Any last plugs for atrium in terms of what what

started should be thinking about. Just email us. Hello, Eddie Trim dot Co. Or there's fill out the form on the website and we are always on the lookout to help new startups.

This is a great episode. Thank you for what you guys do for the community. And thanks for coming. Thank you. If you're in early stage, entrepreneur, we'd love to hear from you.