The Exchanges

Q Wayne, penultimate one. When I say success, who's the first person that comes to mind?

A I'm gonna say an obvious answer, but not for the reason why you think. I'm gonna say Warren Buffett, but not because of his wealth, but because of the way he defines success. So in work, he optimizes for a calendar that has very few committed meeting blocks, yet all the things he needs and wants to get done, they're done. So this means he has Full mastery over his own time. So I feel like that's really successful in terms of work and your schedule. The way he defines success at the end of life, not by wealth or anything materialistic, but by the number of people around you that care about you. So for me, business is really just a giant game that we're all playing together, and keeping that in mind really gives me perspective on what's really important.

AI assessment note: “I'm gonna say Warren Buffett, but not because of his wealth”

Q Absolutely, and completely understand what you mean by streamlining there, but before you said about the triangle of focus, so on the theme of streamlining, how should founders think about the triangle of focus and really implement it into their operations?

A Yeah, the triangle of focus, so on the three vertices, you have one that's cost, one that's speed, and then one that's quality, and you can only pick two, and so the question becomes, okay, which two do you pick, and it depends on the brand of entrepreneur. Some people might say, Okay, well, I'm going to raise a million dollars. I'm going to focus on quality and cost, and I want to spend as little money as possible, but I want to have the highest quality thing. But then what they give up is the speed. They can't get to market fast enough, right? So they're forever in R&D mode. What I believe my big bias is the two qualities you pick should be speed and quality, which means what you're giving up is the cost of it, which means it might be more expensive to produce higher quality things faster. Which to me is okay. So as an entrepreneur, I want to deliver the highest quality things in the fastest way to get market advantage, to delight our customers more, to make sure that we're the first person to do that, so that we're not labeled as also rants or copycats. But as an entrepreneur, that means that I need to raise enough capital that allows me to do that. So one of the biggest mistakes I hear is entrepreneurs raising so little capital. They're saying, I just need 50,000 dollars to do this, or I'm just going to raise You know, 75, 150,000 dollars, which gives very little room for e…

AI assessment note: “the two qualities you pick should be speed and quality”

Q Talk to me, career highlight for you and why? What was the kind of ultimate?

A The ultimate for me in career wasn't actually anything accomplished in career. It was what the foundation was built on. So, 10 years ago, a little over 10 years ago, I dropped out of UMass Amherst. It was a school I went to. I only applied to that school. After I was accepted to the Air Force, I decided I didn't want to go to the Air Force. So I applied to one school late, and I got in, and I ended up TAing or, or helping, uh, computer science classes. Decided not to do that because, you know, I'm there to learn. I'm not there to teach. So I, I switched, I switched that focuses. Then I left UMass Amherst to pursue a startup. My family didn't really understand that. Being an Asian family, it's all about academics and achievements in that area. And so for a very long time, I felt this huge chip on my shoulder. But 10 years after I dropped out last year, I got a call, and it was from the UMass Amherst Dean for Business. And he said, the Board of Trustees has nominated you to receive a PhD, a doctorate. I was flabbergasted. I didn't know what to say. So I accepted it. And then a couple months later, the chancellor called and said, hey, Wayne, uh, would you be our commencement speaker? And I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. How many are on the panel? And they said, uh, no, no, it's, it's just you. I'm like, oh, okay, sure. I'll happy to do it. I've never been to graduation before. I didn't…

AI assessment note: “the Board of Trustees has nominated you to receive a PhD”

Q We spoke about raising there and the runway available when you raise. I want to talk about now we've nailed the first year in operations. We've streamlined, we're focused founders. We're ready to go raise our seed round and we need a strategy You said before that you must avoid the boardroom. What do you mean by this? And why should founders be so clear on this?

A Yeah. So why should they avoid the boardroom? So, so think about it, right? You're a big hotshot VC running one hundred million dollar fund or billion dollar fund, and you're in the boardroom and you have meetings lined up. So you're lined up, you're nine 45. You have another one coming in at 1030. And so you're the entrepreneur and you get slotted at the 10 31. So what that means is that you're going to the boardroom, you're meeting this hotshot VC in his home territory. He's sitting there at the end of this really long, magnificent, expensive table, and you're on the other end, and your slide deck is going. What the experience of in the VC is they are basically pattern matching, and they're able to compare you to the presentation before and the presentation after you. So you're basically like a slideshow. For them. Yeah. You're sitting there, they're evaluating, they're writing it down. Whereas if you're able to get them out of the boardroom, and for instance, with us, we asked for two of the partners to go to Trident Cafe on Newberry Street in Boston. You know, great place. They have like these nice giant mega tater tots. Amazing spot. And the reason why was this allowed us to sit together equally in the professional playing field, equally, and we're able to, you know, discuss the food, discuss what their interests were. They were able to find out more about me as a Person a…

AI assessment note: “allowed us to sit together equally in the professional playing field”

Q Talk to me, career highlight for you and why? What was the kind of ultimate?

A The ultimate for me in career wasn't actually anything accomplished in career. It was what the foundation was built on. So, 10 years ago, a little over 10 years ago, I dropped out of UMass Amherst. It was a school I went to. I only applied to that school. After I was accepted to the Air Force, I decided I didn't want to go to the Air Force. So I applied to one school late, and I got in, and I ended up TAing or, or helping, uh, computer science classes. Decided not to do that because, you know, I'm there to learn. I'm not there to teach. So I, I switched, I switched that focuses. Then I left UMass Amherst to pursue a startup. My family didn't really understand that. Being an Asian family, it's all about academics and achievements in that area. And so for a very long time, I felt this huge chip on my shoulder. But 10 years after I dropped out last year, I got a call, and it was from the UMass Amherst Dean for Business. And he said, the Board of Trustees has nominated you to receive a PhD, a doctorate. I was flabbergasted. I didn't know what to say. So I accepted it. And then a couple months later, the chancellor called and said, hey, Wayne, uh, would you be our commencement speaker? And I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. How many are on the panel? And they said, uh, no, no, it's, it's just you. I'm like, oh, okay, sure. I'll happy to do it. I've never been to graduation before. I didn't…

AI assessment note: “The ultimate for me in career wasn't actually anything accomplished in career.”

Q more conventional and I hope more conventional wisdom to build remote first companies. There are other elements to which you have done very uniquely at Digit. So first is when we come to product, we chatted before and you said minimalism favors the designers. Can I ask, what did you mean by this and how does that play into how you think about kind of product building and product experience?

A Ever since Apple introduced iOS back in 2013, it feels like the software world has moved more and more towards minimalist design. And so that means like, you know, the more lines and shapes and colors and textures you can remove from the user experience, the better. And I don't think users really care about what is the trendiest design philosophy of the day. When I do the product experiences at Digit and different flows and different things to think about, I'm building product experiences that try to give the users the best experience with the least amount of thinking, the lowest cognitive load. So these result in being the most magical for them when we think about it from that frame. And so when I frame the product in that way, sometimes like being minimalism may work in that moment, but most often it does not. It tends towards maximalism. And for me, that's okay. It doesn't really matter if it's minimalism or maximalism. We ultimately care about building products that are intuitively easy to use, and so we use all kinds of design perspectives to do that. With Digits, no one has ever built full-color, visually immersive financial software, and we've done quite a lot of work on this, so I'm really excited to have more of our customers experience what we've built so far.

AI assessment note: “It doesn't really matter if it's minimalism or maximalism. We ultimately care about”

Q with him. He said, we've got a generation of product managers who are inherently focused on minimalizing the number of clicks that we do, and they spend hours and hours and hours procrastinating on taking it from four clicks to three clicks. Would you agree in terms of this generation of product designers? And I guess, how would you advise them with this kind of willingness towards maximalism in mind?

A Yeah, I mean, that's a very myopic view. I think of product design is like reducing amounts of steps. Sometimes the right answer is increasing amount of steps. Sometimes by reducing the number of clicks, the user may lose context. They might not know why. And so you're missing opportunities of delight. So being just focused on number of clicks, I think misses the point. We should be designing around the users and the humans that are using our tools, not just by the number of clicks that exist. And so, yeah, sometimes the answer for maximizing your experience might be reducing clicks. Other times, it may be probably more context. Maybe it's an additional screen. Maybe it's something else that, maybe it's an email that they get, or maybe something else, but just the dimension of reducing clicks, I don't think will result in the best user experience.

AI assessment note: “being just focused on number of clicks, I think misses the point.”

Q Yeah. No, listen, I'm totally with you. Such a special man. The other element that I wanted to ask is, you know, you stayed in stealth for quite a while. What are your thoughts on the benefits of stealth and the pros and cons and how you'd advise founders on whether to be stealth or not stealth?

A Yeah, we didn't really choose to be in stealth. Jeff and I, we just chose not to talk about the product until it was ready for customers. So we always advise companies to only do announcements when there's a rational reason for the company to, like, harness the resulting attention of the press. So if you're announcing something just to announce, just so you can see your name in the news, or in the ego boost, or to make your parents proud, or things like that, those are very easy quicksand to fall into for first-time founders, for instance. They think that's a sign of, like, achieving it. What really happens is you get a spike, and you really want to have the mechanisms in place for your company to Capture that spike or capture that interest. So in our case, the space is really complex. And so we're very product focused, as you can tell. So we took the time to build the product with the intense care, intense focus that we believe products should be. So now after two years of that intense development, and we can finally announce it, we are now at a point to announce it. And so we have earlier, in this case last week, and this ready for us to let companies grow broadly.

AI assessment note: “we always advise companies to only do announcements when there's a rational reason”

Q more conventional and I hope more conventional wisdom to build remote first companies. There are other elements to which you have done very uniquely at Digit. So first is when we come to product, we chatted before and you said minimalism favors the designers. Can I ask, what did you mean by this and how does that play into how you think about kind of product building and product experience?

A Ever since Apple introduced iOS back in 2013, it feels like the software world has moved more and more towards minimalist design. And so that means like, you know, the more lines and shapes and colors and textures you can remove from the user experience, the better. And I don't think users really care about what is the trendiest design philosophy of the day. When I do the product experiences at Digit and different flows and different things to think about, I'm building product experiences that try to give the users the best experience with the least amount of thinking, the lowest cognitive load. So these result in being the most magical for them when we think about it from that frame. And so when I frame the product in that way, sometimes like being minimalism may work in that moment, but most often it does not. It tends towards maximalism. And for me, that's okay. It doesn't really matter if it's minimalism or maximalism. We ultimately care about building products that are intuitively easy to use, and so we use all kinds of design perspectives to do that. With Digits, no one has ever built full-color, visually immersive financial software, and we've done quite a lot of work on this, so I'm really excited to have more of our customers experience what we've built so far.

AI assessment note: “I don't think users really care about what is the trendiest design philosophy”

Q with him. He said, we've got a generation of product managers who are inherently focused on minimalizing the number of clicks that we do, and they spend hours and hours and hours procrastinating on taking it from four clicks to three clicks. Would you agree in terms of this generation of product designers? And I guess, how would you advise them with this kind of willingness towards maximalism in mind?

A Yeah, I mean, that's a very myopic view. I think of product design is like reducing amounts of steps. Sometimes the right answer is increasing amount of steps. Sometimes by reducing the number of clicks, the user may lose context. They might not know why. And so you're missing opportunities of delight. So being just focused on number of clicks, I think misses the point. We should be designing around the users and the humans that are using our tools, not just by the number of clicks that exist. And so, yeah, sometimes the answer for maximizing your experience might be reducing clicks. Other times, it may be probably more context. Maybe it's an additional screen. Maybe it's something else that, maybe it's an email that they get, or maybe something else, but just the dimension of reducing clicks, I don't think will result in the best user experience.

AI assessment note: “that's a very myopic view. I think of product design is like reducing amounts”

Q Does it not mean that you have to raise a, if you focus so much on kind of being that first mover, does it not mean that you have to dilute yourself significantly and raise significantly more than the traditional seed?

A No, it doesn't mean that at all, actually. It just means that you need to raise whatever amount that's in your mind That you can say, Hey, if I raise this, I don't need to think about speed or quality. And that could change based on the industry you're in. So if you're in, you know, heavy industrial metals, you might need higher raises to talk about factories and workers and headcount, things like that. If you're in software, it might mean that, you know, you need to bring on better team. You can have, you know, forward a more senior person, you know, forward a design team, things that could make the user experience that much better. As an angel and as someone that, you know, has invested in a bunch, I would rather prefer writing a million dollar check to an entrepreneur and then having that person come to me the very next day and say, Wayne, thank you for the million dollar check yesterday. I've spent it all. However, I now have thirty million customers and six acquisition offers, right? That's on one extreme. What would be the worst for me is to hear, you know, six years from now, same entrepreneur comes back. Hey, Wayne, thanks for the million dollar check. I was able to make it last for six years. That to me is the worst type of entrepreneur because they, they're more focused on the money that they raise and preserving that. And they are about creating value than they are a…

AI assessment note: “No, it doesn't mean that at all, actually.”

Q We spoke about raising there and the runway available when you raise. I want to talk about now we've nailed the first year in operations. We've streamlined, we're focused founders. We're ready to go raise our seed round and we need a strategy You said before that you must avoid the boardroom. What do you mean by this? And why should founders be so clear on this?

A Yeah. So why should they avoid the boardroom? So, so think about it, right? You're a big hotshot VC running one hundred million dollar fund or billion dollar fund, and you're in the boardroom and you have meetings lined up. So you're lined up, you're nine 45. You have another one coming in at 1030. And so you're the entrepreneur and you get slotted at the 10 31. So what that means is that you're going to the boardroom, you're meeting this hotshot VC in his home territory. He's sitting there at the end of this really long, magnificent, expensive table, and you're on the other end, and your slide deck is going. What the experience of in the VC is they are basically pattern matching, and they're able to compare you to the presentation before and the presentation after you. So you're basically like a slideshow. For them. Yeah. You're sitting there, they're evaluating, they're writing it down. Whereas if you're able to get them out of the boardroom, and for instance, with us, we asked for two of the partners to go to Trident Cafe on Newberry Street in Boston. You know, great place. They have like these nice giant mega tater tots. Amazing spot. And the reason why was this allowed us to sit together equally in the professional playing field, equally, and we're able to, you know, discuss the food, discuss what their interests were. They were able to find out more about me as a Person a…

AI assessment note: “allowed us to sit together equally in the professional playing field”

Q Absolutely, and completely understand what you mean by streamlining there, but before you said about the triangle of focus, so on the theme of streamlining, how should founders think about the triangle of focus and really implement it into their operations?

A Yeah, the triangle of focus, so on the three vertices, you have one that's cost, one that's speed, and then one that's quality, and you can only pick two, and so the question becomes, okay, which two do you pick, and it depends on the brand of entrepreneur. Some people might say, Okay, well, I'm going to raise a million dollars. I'm going to focus on quality and cost, and I want to spend as little money as possible, but I want to have the highest quality thing. But then what they give up is the speed. They can't get to market fast enough, right? So they're forever in R&D mode. What I believe my big bias is the two qualities you pick should be speed and quality, which means what you're giving up is the cost of it, which means it might be more expensive to produce higher quality things faster. Which to me is okay. So as an entrepreneur, I want to deliver the highest quality things in the fastest way to get market advantage, to delight our customers more, to make sure that we're the first person to do that, so that we're not labeled as also rants or copycats. But as an entrepreneur, that means that I need to raise enough capital that allows me to do that. So one of the biggest mistakes I hear is entrepreneurs raising so little capital. They're saying, I just need 50,000 dollars to do this, or I'm just going to raise You know, 75, 150,000 dollars, which gives very little room for e…

AI assessment note: “What I believe my big bias is the two qualities you pick should be speed and quality”

Q I'm intrigued because I speak to a lot of founders who say they've spoken to a lot of VCs and they're taking their time. How do you put kind of rocket fuel up the decision of VCs and really kind of bring the round to a close?

A When I hear that from entrepreneurs, what I hear is they didn't position or pitch themselves right. They gave the VCs too much time. So again, to the whole theme of this, time kills all deals. The more time that VC has, the more A time that a potential vendor or partner has, the worse off you are, the less likelihood of a deal completion. To speed it up, the way I like to think about it, it's, you know, it's sort of like dating in a way, right? You can't be too clingy. You can't be too approachable. You can't be too desperate. And so a lot of founders, a lot of entrepreneurs, they approach it saying, you know, look at me, look at me, look at me. I want all your attention. You know, I'm so desperate. Whereas in the VC game, the best deal that they like to get into are the ones that are competitive. You know, they, they, they got into a deal that, you know, their competing VC firm or colleague in the industry couldn't get into. So the game that feeds it up really quickly is to create an environment where they are chasing you, where they are the ones trying to get you to give them time to meet with our partners, to negotiate the term sheet. And you have to create all these different things. So the signals you want to tell them are, you know, speaking to other great VCs, you're

AI assessment note: “create an environment where they are chasing you”

Q Does it not mean that you have to raise a, if you focus so much on kind of being that first mover, does it not mean that you have to dilute yourself significantly and raise significantly more than the traditional seed?

A No, it doesn't mean that at all, actually. It just means that you need to raise whatever amount that's in your mind That you can say, Hey, if I raise this, I don't need to think about speed or quality. And that could change based on the industry you're in. So if you're in, you know, heavy industrial metals, you might need higher raises to talk about factories and workers and headcount, things like that. If you're in software, it might mean that, you know, you need to bring on better team. You can have, you know, forward a more senior person, you know, forward a design team, things that could make the user experience that much better. As an angel and as someone that, you know, has invested in a bunch, I would rather prefer writing a million dollar check to an entrepreneur and then having that person come to me the very next day and say, Wayne, thank you for the million dollar check yesterday. I've spent it all. However, I now have thirty million customers and six acquisition offers, right? That's on one extreme. What would be the worst for me is to hear, you know, six years from now, same entrepreneur comes back. Hey, Wayne, thanks for the million dollar check. I was able to make it last for six years. That to me is the worst type of entrepreneur because they, they're more focused on the money that they raise and preserving that. And they are about creating value than they are a…

AI assessment note: “No, it doesn't mean that at all, actually.”

Q I'm intrigued because, uh, kind of getting to the partners themselves is often a topic of conversation with founders. Everyone always says about the warm intro. Uh, there's a variance of views on this. How do you feel about the warm intro? Is it necessary today? Can we do the cold email? How do you think about its necessities?

A The warm intro, it's been talked about in the industry a lot. In the VC industry or in the angel investor industry or entrepreneur industry, the warm intro is the currency that is needed in order to get some attention, right? It's an attention currency, but it's very lopsided. If you're a VC or an angel investor, prominent angel investor, and you're chasing a deal, you could probably get away with a cold email to an entrepreneur. And, you know, obviously the best way is someone that entrepreneur trusts and they will intro you in. But if you don't, you can still get away with that because you are, you know, a well-known VC or, or you're a prominent angel investor. But the inverse is not true. If you are an entrepreneur and some random entrepreneur and you're trying to get the VC's attention or angel investors attention, they're inundated, uh, with people doing the exact same thing. So their, their filter is who do I trust? That's referring to steel. And if you're a well-known entrepreneur, You probably wouldn't cold email in anyways, because by that point, you already know the game. You, you, you need to go through that filter to the warm intro, but I find that the, the exception that rule is the inverse of that, which is the, uh, angel investors and VCs can actually cold email out and people will respond more than, than entrepreneurs are trying to message the VCs.

AI assessment note: “the warm intro is the currency that is needed in order to get some attention”

Q What do you believe that most around you disbelieve?

A For me, it's the value of money. And I say that the value of time and money. Growing up and with my surroundings, I was being extremely, extremely poor. So I valued money and what that meant to me. Extremely highly. And now I'm on the other side of it, and I realize that time is actually the thing that I value the most now in youth, time, youth, and health. And where I had it in abundance before, when I was much younger, I discounted it. You don't know about air until you don't have it anymore. So in that sense, I didn't know about my youth, my health, all that kind of things until I'm getting older and older. I don't believe now that money or things Things should be valued as highly as they are in society. And right now, you know, splitting my time in LA, I see more drastically in this community over here.

AI assessment note: “I don't believe now that money or things Things should be valued as highly”

Q What do you believe that most around you disbelieve?

A For me, it's the value of money. And I say that the value of time and money. Growing up and with my surroundings, I was being extremely, extremely poor. So I valued money and what that meant to me. Extremely highly. And now I'm on the other side of it, and I realize that time is actually the thing that I value the most now in youth, time, youth, and health. And where I had it in abundance before, when I was much younger, I discounted it. You don't know about air until you don't have it anymore. So in that sense, I didn't know about my youth, my health, all that kind of things until I'm getting older and older. I don't believe now that money or things Things should be valued as highly as they are in society. And right now, you know, splitting my time in LA, I see more drastically in this community over here.

AI assessment note: “I don't believe now that money or things Things should be valued as highly”

Q I'm intrigued because, uh, kind of getting to the partners themselves is often a topic of conversation with founders. Everyone always says about the warm intro. Uh, there's a variance of views on this. How do you feel about the warm intro? Is it necessary today? Can we do the cold email? How do you think about its necessities?

A The warm intro, it's been talked about in the industry a lot. In the VC industry or in the angel investor industry or entrepreneur industry, the warm intro is the currency that is needed in order to get some attention, right? It's an attention currency, but it's very lopsided. If you're a VC or an angel investor, prominent angel investor, and you're chasing a deal, you could probably get away with a cold email to an entrepreneur. And, you know, obviously the best way is someone that entrepreneur trusts and they will intro you in. But if you don't, you can still get away with that because you are, you know, a well-known VC or, or you're a prominent angel investor. But the inverse is not true. If you are an entrepreneur and some random entrepreneur and you're trying to get the VC's attention or angel investors attention, they're inundated, uh, with people doing the exact same thing. So their, their filter is who do I trust? That's referring to steel. And if you're a well-known entrepreneur, You probably wouldn't cold email in anyways, because by that point, you already know the game. You, you, you need to go through that filter to the warm intro, but I find that the, the exception that rule is the inverse of that, which is the, uh, angel investors and VCs can actually cold email out and people will respond more than, than entrepreneurs are trying to message the VCs.

AI assessment note: “the warm intro is the currency that is needed in order to get some attention”

Q I I'm intrigued because I have Mike Dauber from Amplify on, and he said that time kills more companies than dollars. If you think about this with regards to kind of your previous statements, how does that kind of fit into your thesis and mindset?

A Oh yeah. I mean, that fits in. I, I, I 100% agree. There was this great, great quote where the key to success in startups is not to simply succeed. It's just to not die. And so that's, that's exactly the same thinking where that's why I optimized with the recruiters before, because if you drag out the building, the composition of your team, you're, you're incurring the burn every day, no matter what. So why don't you bring the team forward? So that way you have cost savings, right? Cause like the rent costs, if you have a rent cost of Five people in here, but you only have you and your co-founder. You still pay the same rent as if you have five people. So why don't you bring those five on board as well? It's a lot of, a lot of savings that way. Time to me is definitely the enemy of founders and startups. So anything you can do in the fastest way possible should promote more growth and more success.

AI assessment note: “Time to me is definitely the enemy of founders and startups.”

Q In terms of hiring that first recruiter, you said about focusing on culture there. Does kind of hire a recruiter not kind of dehumanize the process and make it more difficult for a cultural blend?

A Yeah. So that's, that is the trick. So the trick is if you hire a team really fast, is there the social bonding? Is there the social threading? Is there that culture there? Right? So that's one of the greatest challenges with this approach is now that the founders, it needs to focus on the culture, which they should do anyways. And so the majority of the time we spent when it comes to team composition was the team bonding element, because we knew that by putting together a team so quickly, very senior team so quickly, it was really important to build a trust, really important to build The relationship between the team members. So the way we did that was we go out a lot. So we do it over. So we do it socially over drinks or we go on ops, you know, retreats. We went to stow a bunch of different times and this really built a team, a cohesive team. And that was one of the driving points that allowed us to have the success that we did in such a short amount of time was because we front loaded the recruiting efforts. Early on, so that every day that went by, the root of these hires of these team members was compounded.

AI assessment note: “that's one of the greatest challenges with this approach is now that the founders”

Q I I'm intrigued because I have Mike Dauber from Amplify on, and he said that time kills more companies than dollars. If you think about this with regards to kind of your previous statements, how does that kind of fit into your thesis and mindset?

A Oh yeah. I mean, that fits in. I, I, I 100% agree. There was this great, great quote where the key to success in startups is not to simply succeed. It's just to not die. And so that's, that's exactly the same thinking where that's why I optimized with the recruiters before, because if you drag out the building, the composition of your team, you're, you're incurring the burn every day, no matter what. So why don't you bring the team forward? So that way you have cost savings, right? Cause like the rent costs, if you have a rent cost of Five people in here, but you only have you and your co-founder. You still pay the same rent as if you have five people. So why don't you bring those five on board as well? It's a lot of, a lot of savings that way. Time to me is definitely the enemy of founders and startups. So anything you can do in the fastest way possible should promote more growth and more success.

AI assessment note: “that fits in. I, I, I 100% agree.”

Q How do you do that? Is it by like tweeting great to see at Wayne today? Really enjoyed our chat. Is it that obvious?

A No, no. So one of the things is you, you never try, you never reveal who you're talking to, to the others, because VCs will always try to back channel each other. So you says entrepreneur raising, I believe you should never reveal while you're fundraising, who else you're fundraising from. That's only to your detriment. You can mention that you can allude to it, but you, you, you don't, you can just, you can tell them, Hey, I'm talking to other great VCs that, you know, talk to your VC right now. They're super interested in it. But for us, you know, we're trying to figure out who the best partner is at the table. But one of the things that entrepreneurs should definitely try to remember is You're not selling your idea to them. You need to get them to sell their dollars to you. VCs are in the business of trying to get their capital and their money accepted by great entrepreneurs. So you need to position yourself as a great entrepreneur, as a founder that can actually get stuff done. And the funny thing is the bar on that is actually not that high. If you really think about it, they're evaluating your idea first. So this is a great market opportunity. Okay, great. It is. The next thing is, can you do what you say you're able to do? Can you do that? Can you execute on it? And then the third one is, do you have great people around you that are supporting you? That's basically it. T…

AI assessment note: “No, no. So one of the things is you, you never try, you never reveal who you're talking to”

Q You said about kind of finding the right person there, and having that wow factor. We chatted before, and you discussed the delta of wow. So I have absolutely no idea what this means. So what is the delta of wow? And why is it so important?

A Yeah. So delta of wow. Great, great question. So this, this comes more into product and design and, uh, and, and founder perspective. So a really, really great way of just thinking about it is on one extreme side of the spectrum, you have like a problem, right? And the problem is you need to collect a name, an email address, and maybe a password as a signup form. Generally, you can visualize that in your head right now. Three, three fields. You've filled it a million times before. But now let's explode that a little bit. Now you need to collect the work email, the work phone number, the home address, the work address, social security number, maybe different payment methods, all these different fields, all these different data points that you need to collect from, from the person. That's where the breakdown occurs. So on the one side of the spectrum, you have the government contractors, and these government contractors, government workers, they create these forms, and these forms ask you for all this in one shot. So now that you've seen these The IRS is really great at these because they're built on forms, on forms, on forms, and what a delta wow comes into play when you realize in your particular industry what the baseline experience is. So baseline experience for government sites is actually really low because they, these government workers, government contractors, they're wor…

AI assessment note: “realize in your particular industry what the baseline experience is”

Q You said about kind of finding the right person there, and having that wow factor. We chatted before, and you discussed the delta of wow. So I have absolutely no idea what this means. So what is the delta of wow? And why is it so important?

A Yeah. So delta of wow. Great, great question. So this, this comes more into product and design and, uh, and, and founder perspective. So a really, really great way of just thinking about it is on one extreme side of the spectrum, you have like a problem, right? And the problem is you need to collect a name, an email address, and maybe a password as a signup form. Generally, you can visualize that in your head right now. Three, three fields. You've filled it a million times before. But now let's explode that a little bit. Now you need to collect the work email, the work phone number, the home address, the work address, social security number, maybe different payment methods, all these different fields, all these different data points that you need to collect from, from the person. That's where the breakdown occurs. So on the one side of the spectrum, you have the government contractors, and these government contractors, government workers, they create these forms, and these forms ask you for all this in one shot. So now that you've seen these The IRS is really great at these because they're built on forms, on forms, on forms, and what a delta wow comes into play when you realize in your particular industry what the baseline experience is. So baseline experience for government sites is actually really low because they, these government workers, government contractors, they're wor…

AI assessment note: “what a delta wow comes into play when you realize in your particular industry”

Q In terms of hiring that first recruiter, you said about focusing on culture there. Does kind of hire a recruiter not kind of dehumanize the process and make it more difficult for a cultural blend?

A Yeah. So that's, that is the trick. So the trick is if you hire a team really fast, is there the social bonding? Is there the social threading? Is there that culture there? Right? So that's one of the greatest challenges with this approach is now that the founders, it needs to focus on the culture, which they should do anyways. And so the majority of the time we spent when it comes to team composition was the team bonding element, because we knew that by putting together a team so quickly, very senior team so quickly, it was really important to build a trust, really important to build The relationship between the team members. So the way we did that was we go out a lot. So we do it over. So we do it socially over drinks or we go on ops, you know, retreats. We went to stow a bunch of different times and this really built a team, a cohesive team. And that was one of the driving points that allowed us to have the success that we did in such a short amount of time was because we front loaded the recruiting efforts. Early on, so that every day that went by, the root of these hires of these team members was compounded.

AI assessment note: “the majority of the time we spent when it comes to team composition was the team bonding”