The Exchanges

Q What does it take to do that? Is it rewarding them for pushing back? How does one create that as a founder today?

A Well, a couple things. For starters, one of the things we do is we don't have titles of the company. One thing I observed when I worked at LinkedIn was if a director said something and an associate was in the room, the director was always right, But the associate often was the one who was right, but just because the more senior person was the one who said something. The second thing is, is we interview just very, very aggressively for people who feel comfortable with debate. If you don't feel comfortable in conversations, this is not going to be a place for you. We rarely leave a meeting. In fact, I can't think of one where people left heated, but we debate things like all hell.

AI assessment note: “we don't have titles of the company... we interview just very, very aggressively”

Q Can I ask, sorry, I'm going to interrupt you. How did you get that through to them in a way that they would accept?

A I didn't get it through to them, and they didn't accept it. They were pissed as all hell. Yeah, we got into a big disagreement. I held my ground, they held their ground. And so I grew up in this small town, and I moved to Miami to go live with my grandparents. And my whole family was like, essentially, like, had cut me off, which was the right decision in hindsight, obviously. And so I spent the next three years working in a warehouse packing boxes. And then I woke up one day, and I was like, this doesn't work. This sucks. And so I was like, I need to figure out a way to make some money. I'd always been quite technical. So I started building websites. I built a recipe cookbook website. And I went from making like, I don't know, 1800 dollars a month to like 20,000 dollars a month in a matter of six months. And I took all of the money that I made from this website that I had and I just kept reinvesting it. And I started my first company. And so that was an ad tech business. Ran that business for about seven years and one day realized like my heart just wasn't in it. So we sold that company. But before we did, we spun out a few assets. One of them was called Bright, which I went to go focus on. And then another one was called Applovin, where my brother and my co-founder Adam Fergie went to go focus on.

AI assessment note: “I didn't get it through to them, and they didn't accept it.”

Q Tell me, final one, what do the next 10 years hold for you and for Curated? If we do this again in 2032, where will we be?

A We want to be the place you go to for all expert advice. Able to help as many experts as possible and monetize their passions. And hopefully it's not just helping you buy things, right? So we sold you a set of skis. And hopefully we're helping you plan your ski trip. We sold you baby stroller, baby crib, and we're helping you with sleep training for your, for your kid. We sold you a coffee maker, and we're teaching you how to make your first cup of coffee. The fact that we have live human in the loop means that you can do so many things that haven't been done in the past, and we're always thinking about ways we're going to unlock that.

AI assessment note: “We want to be the place you go to for all expert advice.”

Q Can I ask, what was that transition then to founding Curated? What was that aha moment?

A Curated had an interesting path. I had been at LinkedIn for four years. I had given them nine months notice that I was going to be leaving, and about a month into that, Microsoft acquires the company. I had this opportunity all of a sudden to work with a bunch of people that I had been working with the past couple years who said, I love LinkedIn. I've been here five years, 10 years. I love this company, but I'm not ready to go be part of Big Co. And so I had 10 people who I really, really respected, who was essentially become like my founding team, and the team knew that they wanted to work with each other before we actually even had an idea. And so then I went back to what was one of the most ambitious ideas that I never had, but that I candidly just thought was too hard to work on. And the idea is one that I think a lot of people have had before. When I'm trying to make a major decision, I wish that I could talk to somebody who knew a lot about that. Google has indexed all the world's published knowledge, but there is Somebody out there that I wish I could talk to when I'm trying to make a specific decision. And I often leverage my network to do this today. I call the people that I know, but I only know so many. And so we just went all in. And the idea, the aha moment, I guess you could say that I always reference is I'm from Florida. So didn't grow up skiing much or spending…

AI assessment note: “Curated had an interesting path. I had been at LinkedIn for four years.”

Q Can I ask, sorry, I'm going to interrupt you. How did you get that through to them in a way that they would accept?

A I didn't get it through to them, and they didn't accept it. They were pissed as all hell. Yeah, we got into a big disagreement. I held my ground, they held their ground. And so I grew up in this small town, and I moved to Miami to go live with my grandparents. And my whole family was like, essentially, like, had cut me off, which was the right decision in hindsight, obviously. And so I spent the next three years working in a warehouse packing boxes. And then I woke up one day, and I was like, this doesn't work. This sucks. And so I was like, I need to figure out a way to make some money. I'd always been quite technical. So I started building websites. I built a recipe cookbook website. And I went from making like, I don't know, 1800 dollars a month to like 20,000 dollars a month in a matter of six months. And I took all of the money that I made from this website that I had and I just kept reinvesting it. And I started my first company. And so that was an ad tech business. Ran that business for about seven years and one day realized like my heart just wasn't in it. So we sold that company. But before we did, we spun out a few assets. One of them was called Bright, which I went to go focus on. And then another one was called Applovin, where my brother and my co-founder Adam Fergie went to go focus on.

AI assessment note: “I didn't get it through to them, and they didn't accept it.”

Q You've had success before though, you know, with The prior companies. How do you think about your relationship to money today?

A It's gonna sound cliche, but I think the biggest relationship that I've, shift I've had with money is that I've realized it doesn't bring happiness. It empowers you to do a lot of really interesting, cool things, but everybody kind of goes, not everybody, but a lot of people go through life, and they're like, I have this goal, and then I have that goal, and then I have that goal, and then all you realize is my, my goal continues to go up, and that becomes a hamster wheel, and so what's more important is to actually find purpose. I love what I do, and I do it for the love of the game, and the love of building things, and I personally generate happiness, creating wealth for others than for myself. And that ends up being actually a really virtuous cycle because if you care about doing right by others and helping them out, then they help you out and it compounds really quickly. Money obviously like solves a lot of problems at the early onset, like financial stress sucks. But like once you've covered certain needs, like I don't have to worry about my house. I don't have to worry about my kid's school. I don't have to worry about like my ability to travel. It's diminishing returns really quickly.

AI assessment note: “shift I've had with money is that I've realized it doesn't bring happiness”

Q How do you feel about transparency? Should everyone in the team know how the company's doing?

A Yes, because, and so here's why. If you hired smart people, they're going to figure the shit out anyways. You can hide things from dumb people. Smart people are going to figure it out, so you might as well be straight up. I mean, because if I have a sense of urgency behind certain decisions, it's because, hey, here's how much cash we have left in bank. Here's where we're progressing towards numbers. If they understand we're doing well or we're doing poorly this month, this quarter, they have context on decision making. They're going to change their decisions accordingly. They're going to think about spending capital differently. And so I'm a really big believer in transparency. I think you can fool mediocre teams, but smart people always will figure your bullshit out.

AI assessment note: “Yes, because, and so here's why. If you hired smart people”

Q Have you made mistakes in hiring before? And how did those mistakes impact how you hire today?

A I've made a ton of mistakes hiring. The biggest mistake I've made in hiring is trying to convince people to join us. And I think it's that if I sell the dream and I convince you to come and inevitably the dream doesn't come true, you're going to be demoralized. You weren't really that bought in in the first place and you're not going to be that high of impact. That's probably been my biggest learning lesson. My second learning lesson, and I think that everybody builds this gut intuition over time is sometimes you just have to trust your gut. Where there's a few yellow flags about somebody, and just because they have an incredible pedigree, doesn't mean they're the right person for you. But I think that the first is probably more important than the second. The second is, and sometimes I'm wrong, by the way. Sometimes I've taken risks on people, and I've been like, ah, I'm not sure, and they actually end up being great. I do think there's a, I'm a really big believer in the, of hiring slow. Really making sure that this makes sense for both the person and for us. Because if it doesn't make sense for either, here's where things really go wrong. Especially at a startup, when you lose people, It really impacts the morale of the team. And you can lose a few people and it's okay. But if you start losing quite a few people, everyone starts to question themselves and like, is this busine…

AI assessment note: “I've made a ton of mistakes hiring. The biggest mistake I've made in hiring is”

Q then part of me is like, no, I want people to ideate and be like, hey, what about this? And they may not have thought about it that much, and they may not have data, but it might be great, actually. Do you want people to come with fully formed ideas, structured, data-oriented, or do you mind much more natural and organic, hey, what about this? We could do this.

A There's a time and place for both. The worst thing that you can do, in my opinion, is take somebody who comes in, and they're super excited when they join a company, they have all these big ideas, and they get shut down, and they're like, you know, you ask them 18 questions, Basically just shut it down and you make the path towards getting whatever they're thinking about to turn it into reality may vary long. On the flip side, an idea, an hour, people were just constantly meeting about ideas, but not actually executing on them is not good. And so I think that a way of solving for this, what we do is we have operating priorities as a business. We say these are the most important things for the company to solve. Here are the metrics that we're trying to move. Here's what we're trying to accomplish. When those ideas map to those initiatives, it makes it a much easier conversation because Typically, you could have a measurement of like, how much is this stuff going to actually move the needle? Like, does this actually matter? And then those ideas truly get ideated on. Either extreme is bad, not everybody, but people have been in companies where it's impossible to get anything through, and that sucks. And then they've also been on the flip side of companies where people are always thinking about stuff and never actually executing on it.

AI assessment note: “There's a time and place for both.”

Q I do want to ask, when you think to, like, the serial entrepreneurship, I had Joe Fernandez, a founder on the show before, and he said that serial entrepreneurship's overrated. Would you agree with that, having had many lessons in entrepreneurial endeavors before?

A I disagree. So a couple things. When I invest, I very much look at failed entrepreneurs. I think it's incredibly humbling. I think anybody who's, I think you go into building your first startup thinking, All the stuff that you read on the internet about how great it is and how easy it's going to be. And the reality is it's really tough. I think one of the benefits of being a serial entrepreneur, and it's very much a luxury, is you're given the benefit from an investor that you'll figure things out. So you can approach things with a much longer term mindset, right? I'm not worried about like, do I hit this number this month? I'm worried about like, am I on the right path towards the big outcome? That difference between being able to be long-term focused versus short-term focus is a huge, huge, huge advantage. I always tell Entrepreneurs, like, don't take this advice from me, because what I do as a repeat entrepreneur is different than what you're going to do from somebody who's just getting started, but I think, sir, entrepreneurship is a big advantage.

AI assessment note: “I disagree. So a couple things.”

Q How do you feel about transparency? Should everyone in the team know how the company's doing?

A Yes, because, and so here's why. If you hired smart people, they're going to figure the shit out anyways. You can hide things from dumb people. Smart people are going to figure it out, so you might as well be straight up. I mean, because if I have a sense of urgency behind certain decisions, it's because, hey, here's how much cash we have left in bank. Here's where we're progressing towards numbers. If they understand we're doing well or we're doing poorly this month, this quarter, they have context on decision making. They're going to change their decisions accordingly. They're going to think about spending capital differently. And so I'm a really big believer in transparency. I think you can fool mediocre teams, but smart people always will figure your bullshit out.

AI assessment note: “Yes, because, and so here's why. If you hired smart people”

Q when we think about the people we mentioned before, which is Leila and John on some of the cap table, I do just want to ask, you know, you've got this incredible perspective with the prior companies, with Curated, With angel investing, what are the core ways that you see founders fuck up fundraising today, and are there commonalities in how you most often advise your angel investments around fundraising?

A Yeah, I think that people over-index on valuations and not on finding the right partner, and I try to find the right balance of what's fair for my team and what's fair for the investors. I'm not a really big believer in running an auction process, right, and going and bidding everybody against each other. Historically, we've said, like, here's the price that we've Believe is fair, and that's just what we've gone with. I think where entrepreneurs get it wrong is they're very focused on who's going to pay them slightly more, but you're stuck with this person for the next five to seven years. And does that half a point or point of dilution justify not working with somebody you love? Because if they're actually a good investor, they should add substantially more value than that. Otherwise, it's just dumb money. And I think, especially in the early stages of a business, dumb money is just giving you a longer rope to hang yourself with versus Smart money and really strong investors will really call you out on your bullshit, push you on. Do you have a good business here and guide you in the right direction? And they're very, it can be hands on in a good way. I call my investors very often. It's not that they're reaching out to me and they want weekly check-ins and things like that. I'm constantly going to them. I'm seeing this problem. How have you seen this solved before? Can you int…

AI assessment note: “people over-index on valuations and not on finding the right partner”

Q How did you know when you had it? One, Two, I'm too intrigued. I know you, you're an analytical guy. How do you determine the ways that you could fuck it up?

A So it was a couple of things. So some were data driven and some were gut intuition driven. On the analytical side, it was just purely that our conversion rate was so high, right? When we connected somebody to an expert, they just converted at such a high rate. It was the fact that it increases conversion rates. It decreases return rates. So a big challenge in e-commerce is return logistics. Our return rate is between one and two percent, meaning people shipping the items back. So that's a huge benefit to us. And then the third is that from our second sale, we had consumers reaching out to us saying, I'd like to tip my expert. And so half of expert compensation is actually covered by the consumer via tips. When somebody goes and says, Hey, this is a nice thing in terms of ratings and reviews. That's one thing. Another thing is, is when 90% of consumers are going and tipping experts on the gut side, again, just observing these conversations that were happening. And one of the things that we saw was when you bring someone together or people together who have Equal passions. One party respects the other one, and one's actually looking for advice from the other. Just these, like, very magical things happen. Like, it's actually a very enjoyable experience, and so our experts love the work they do. Not to criticize Instacart or Uber, but if you think of a spectrum of, like, I work in …

AI assessment note: “some were data driven and some were gut intuition driven”

Q How did you know when you had it? One, Two, I'm too intrigued. I know you, you're an analytical guy. How do you determine the ways that you could fuck it up?

A So it was a couple of things. So some were data driven and some were gut intuition driven. On the analytical side, it was just purely that our conversion rate was so high, right? When we connected somebody to an expert, they just converted at such a high rate. It was the fact that it increases conversion rates. It decreases return rates. So a big challenge in e-commerce is return logistics. Our return rate is between one and two percent, meaning people shipping the items back. So that's a huge benefit to us. And then the third is that from our second sale, we had consumers reaching out to us saying, I'd like to tip my expert. And so half of expert compensation is actually covered by the consumer via tips. When somebody goes and says, Hey, this is a nice thing in terms of ratings and reviews. That's one thing. Another thing is, is when 90% of consumers are going and tipping experts on the gut side, again, just observing these conversations that were happening. And one of the things that we saw was when you bring someone together or people together who have Equal passions. One party respects the other one, and one's actually looking for advice from the other. Just these, like, very magical things happen. Like, it's actually a very enjoyable experience, and so our experts love the work they do. Not to criticize Instacart or Uber, but if you think of a spectrum of, like, I work in …

AI assessment note: “On the analytical side, it was just purely that our conversion rate was so high”

Q Can I ask, what was that transition then to founding Curated? What was that aha moment?

A Curated had an interesting path. I had been at LinkedIn for four years. I had given them nine months notice that I was going to be leaving, and about a month into that, Microsoft acquires the company. I had this opportunity all of a sudden to work with a bunch of people that I had been working with the past couple years who said, I love LinkedIn. I've been here five years, 10 years. I love this company, but I'm not ready to go be part of Big Co. And so I had 10 people who I really, really respected, who was essentially become like my founding team, and the team knew that they wanted to work with each other before we actually even had an idea. And so then I went back to what was one of the most ambitious ideas that I never had, but that I candidly just thought was too hard to work on. And the idea is one that I think a lot of people have had before. When I'm trying to make a major decision, I wish that I could talk to somebody who knew a lot about that. Google has indexed all the world's published knowledge, but there is Somebody out there that I wish I could talk to when I'm trying to make a specific decision. And I often leverage my network to do this today. I call the people that I know, but I only know so many. And so we just went all in. And the idea, the aha moment, I guess you could say that I always reference is I'm from Florida. So didn't grow up skiing much or spending…

AI assessment note: “And the idea, the aha moment, I guess you could say that I always reference”

Q I do want to ask, when you think to, like, the serial entrepreneurship, I had Joe Fernandez, a founder on the show before, and he said that serial entrepreneurship's overrated. Would you agree with that, having had many lessons in entrepreneurial endeavors before?

A I disagree. So a couple things. When I invest, I very much look at failed entrepreneurs. I think it's incredibly humbling. I think anybody who's, I think you go into building your first startup thinking, All the stuff that you read on the internet about how great it is and how easy it's going to be. And the reality is it's really tough. I think one of the benefits of being a serial entrepreneur, and it's very much a luxury, is you're given the benefit from an investor that you'll figure things out. So you can approach things with a much longer term mindset, right? I'm not worried about like, do I hit this number this month? I'm worried about like, am I on the right path towards the big outcome? That difference between being able to be long-term focused versus short-term focus is a huge, huge, huge advantage. I always tell Entrepreneurs, like, don't take this advice from me, because what I do as a repeat entrepreneur is different than what you're going to do from somebody who's just getting started, but I think, sir, entrepreneurship is a big advantage.

AI assessment note: “I disagree. So a couple things.”

Q Do you get worried by the state of secondaries today? I see companies stay, raise series Bs pre-going live, but the founder can take five to ten million bucks off the table.

A So one thing I'm super proud about is we've offered our team a few secondaries, and the take rate has been less than 10%. In one case, we didn't even have enough secondary demand to fill, to cover the legal fees. And I think strong companies and strong founders, and the people who work at those companies who believe in the companies, should want to keep their ownership. That's it. My thinking on this has evolved. Some life happens, and if you have a very long Journey. You need liquidity points. And I think as a company, for example, for us, I want to stay private as long as possible. So I want to create secondary opportunities. I don't want my team taking half of their equity off the table, but if they need by home or they're having a child or whatever it might be, I think it's a healthy thing for companies to be able to introduce some of that. But to your point, early companies found are taking ten million dollars off the table. Personally, I think it sends a lot of weird signals.

AI assessment note: “Personally, I think it sends a lot of weird signals.”

Q Would you say you're building a, what Parker Conrad says, a compound startup, one. And two, how do you determine between buy versus build? Bluntly, the joy of inventing in today is you can buy a lot. Why did you feel the need to build so much?

A We tried to buy wherever possible. The challenge for us is we have a very B to B approach in a B to C business. When you chat with somebody at curated, that expert has their own phone number. They have their own email address. That's the way you would think of like a B to B company selling SaaS software. Like all the tools that are out there where I chat with curated as a company, not I chat with Kelly or Jack who work at curated. And so all of the tooling was just going to be slightly off. One of the things we've come to terms with is if I stack a bunch of 90% solutions on top of each other, it gets really mediocre really quickly. It feels like I'm making just a small compromise with the first, but I'm actually making a lot of compromises. It really depends. Is this a nice to have or a must? There are certain things I have to get right. And for the things I have to get right, you should build them. And for the things that you need to get right, then it's a matter of like, if you have to build, then great, but otherwise absolutely buy. And we definitely went into this expecting it was going to take half of Time to build everything. The benefit is, if you've built everything, and you've built it the right way, then all of the toys play together really nicely, and you can do some really cool shit.

AI assessment note: “We tried to buy wherever possible. The challenge for us is”

Q People are often very good at selling themselves. They're very passionate in the interview. How do you really determine a missionary and a mercenary? What questions do you ask? What are the signals? What suggests true missionary?

A Missionary people ask a lot of questions about the business. They really want to understand it. I agree with you that people sell it well, but people often reveal their cards pretty quickly too on what actually matters to them. One of the things for us is our compensation model solves for a lot of this. I'm a very big believer that if you're going to go join a startup, you should be focused on equity. And so the people who are equity focused are already more missionary focused than the very much more cash oriented people. And I tell people, if you're trying to solve for cash on a risk adjusted basis, and you want stability in life, you should go to a FANG. Like VP at a FANG is the most sustainable way to make a considerable amount of wealth. Startups you should go to because you want to have a happy, right? And maybe, yeah, sure, there's upside. Maybe the thing works out. And if it does work out, you should be incredibly well. The compensation model solves for a lot of it.

AI assessment note: “Missionary people ask a lot of questions about the business. They really want to understand it.”

Q Do you not blame funding markets for that? You mentioned obviously you're an angel investing earlier. Do you not blame funding markets? I know I'm obviously a VC. I'm in every VC chat there is. When it's like, oh, they scaled to three million in ARR in six months. Wow. Everyone gets excited and rounds happen. Do you blame the VCs?

A No, not really. I mean, I think that, listen, the pendulum is in absolutely the core of the entrepreneur right now. Capital is super ubiquitous. People want to hit certain goals because they want to puff up their valuations even higher. I think different times call for different approaches. And so this advice is not timeless. There'll be times where it is completely irrelevant when I'm saying, but right now there is a lack of high quality entrepreneurs and there's an excess of capital. And so people, investors are trying to fund whatever they can. And so to the person that's trying to hit X goal, because they're trying to do six million dollars in ARR, In X period of time, so they can get some silly high round number. Good for them. I mean, I think that there's pros and cons to that model. I think it becomes really hard to build a high quality, sustainable business from it. And I think the most important thing here, raising capital does not equal success at all, right? Like it doesn't mean anything, actually. It just means you were able to convince some people to fund your business, but until you actually sell the business or you turn a profitable business, it's just capital being raised.

AI assessment note: “No, not really. I mean, I think that, listen, the pendulum is in”

Q Do you get worried by the state of secondaries today? I see companies stay, raise series Bs pre-going live, but the founder can take five to ten million bucks off the table.

A So one thing I'm super proud about is we've offered our team a few secondaries, and the take rate has been less than 10%. In one case, we didn't even have enough secondary demand to fill, to cover the legal fees. And I think strong companies and strong founders, and the people who work at those companies who believe in the companies, should want to keep their ownership. That's it. My thinking on this has evolved. Some life happens, and if you have a very long Journey. You need liquidity points. And I think as a company, for example, for us, I want to stay private as long as possible. So I want to create secondary opportunities. I don't want my team taking half of their equity off the table, but if they need by home or they're having a child or whatever it might be, I think it's a healthy thing for companies to be able to introduce some of that. But to your point, early companies found are taking ten million dollars off the table. Personally, I think it sends a lot of weird signals.

AI assessment note: “Personally, I think it sends a lot of weird signals.”

Q People are often very good at selling themselves. They're very passionate in the interview. How do you really determine a missionary and a mercenary? What questions do you ask? What are the signals? What suggests true missionary?

A Missionary people ask a lot of questions about the business. They really want to understand it. I agree with you that people sell it well, but people often reveal their cards pretty quickly too on what actually matters to them. One of the things for us is our compensation model solves for a lot of this. I'm a very big believer that if you're going to go join a startup, you should be focused on equity. And so the people who are equity focused are already more missionary focused than the very much more cash oriented people. And I tell people, if you're trying to solve for cash on a risk adjusted basis, and you want stability in life, you should go to a FANG. Like VP at a FANG is the most sustainable way to make a considerable amount of wealth. Startups you should go to because you want to have a happy, right? And maybe, yeah, sure, there's upside. Maybe the thing works out. And if it does work out, you should be incredibly well. The compensation model solves for a lot of it.

AI assessment note: “Missionary people ask a lot of questions about the business.”

Q On the comp model, sorry, but if I'm a startup founder and you're invested in me, how should I literally structure my comp model then, given what you've just said?

A Be incredibly generous with people on the equity side, right? There's nothing, in my opinion, that's more fucked up than when a company gets acquired and you find out that the team just owns such a small percentage of it. If your team are large equity holders in the business, your problems are now their problems. We've got to figure this thing out together. It's no longer just Eddie's problem, and it's hard, right? Because People talk about how competitive the market is and how people are churning a ton. I mean, I don't want to jinx myself. I think we've lost one person in the last 12 months, right? And we're a 135 people. I think over the course of the history of the company, we've lost less than I can count on my hand. And a large part of that is, is we don't hire personaries. We really make sure people are bought into what we're doing. I sure as hell don't try to sell them on the company. I'm like, let me talk to you about all the things you're going to run into and all the challenges. Isn't this going to be hard? At times it's going to suck. It's also going to be really fun, but it's only going to be fun if you really believe in what we're doing. If I'm starting a company, like lean in heavily into being generous with people on the equity front. Be thoughtful about conserving capital because things always take longer than you think.

AI assessment note: “Be incredibly generous with people on the equity side, right?”

Q Would you say you're building a, what Parker Conrad says, a compound startup, one. And two, how do you determine between buy versus build? Bluntly, the joy of inventing in today is you can buy a lot. Why did you feel the need to build so much?

A We tried to buy wherever possible. The challenge for us is we have a very B to B approach in a B to C business. When you chat with somebody at curated, that expert has their own phone number. They have their own email address. That's the way you would think of like a B to B company selling SaaS software. Like all the tools that are out there where I chat with curated as a company, not I chat with Kelly or Jack who work at curated. And so all of the tooling was just going to be slightly off. One of the things we've come to terms with is if I stack a bunch of 90% solutions on top of each other, it gets really mediocre really quickly. It feels like I'm making just a small compromise with the first, but I'm actually making a lot of compromises. It really depends. Is this a nice to have or a must? There are certain things I have to get right. And for the things I have to get right, you should build them. And for the things that you need to get right, then it's a matter of like, if you have to build, then great, but otherwise absolutely buy. And we definitely went into this expecting it was going to take half of Time to build everything. The benefit is, if you've built everything, and you've built it the right way, then all of the toys play together really nicely, and you can do some really cool shit.

AI assessment note: “if I stack a bunch of 90% solutions on top of each other, it gets really mediocre”

Q You've got two founders in my metaphorical startup. What does being generous with equity, like what does it actually look like?

A Well, irrespective of if I'm founding a company, I'm a really big believer in equal partnerships. I actually don't like the idea Have you made any mistakes when it comes to comp plans? It's a good question. I'm sure I've made mistakes. Yes, I'm sure, but I can't think of any of them right now. I mean, I think that we may have been slightly too conservative, but I'm a really big believer that startups aren't for everybody. And if you try to make them for everybody, it makes it for those who it's really good for. Not as good, if that makes any sense. You're like watering it down. I think in my past, I was very cash focused, and I learned that, like, people only cared about the next month's paycheck versus today. It's, I get people to really fundamentally care about the health of the business, and I just think that's better.

AI assessment note: “Have you made any mistakes when it comes to comp plans?”

Q You've got two founders in my metaphorical startup. What does being generous with equity, like what does it actually look like?

A Well, irrespective of if I'm founding a company, I'm a really big believer in equal partnerships. I actually don't like the idea Have you made any mistakes when it comes to comp plans? It's a good question. I'm sure I've made mistakes. Yes, I'm sure, but I can't think of any of them right now. I mean, I think that we may have been slightly too conservative, but I'm a really big believer that startups aren't for everybody. And if you try to make them for everybody, it makes it for those who it's really good for. Not as good, if that makes any sense. You're like watering it down. I think in my past, I was very cash focused, and I learned that, like, people only cared about the next month's paycheck versus today. It's, I get people to really fundamentally care about the health of the business, and I just think that's better.

AI assessment note: “I'm a really big believer in equal partnerships.”