The Exchanges

Q And you use, like, a spare room in the house to start putting together a website. 1997, 98, like, this was a really hard challenge. First of all, most people didn't have access to the internet yet, and if they did, it was dial-up. Secondly, building a website, it's complicated. It was really hard to do. He knew how to do this?

A He figured it out. We'd been in this bookshop in Cardiff, and we saw this book called Doing Business on the Internet, and it was massive, and we bought it, we clubbed our money together, and we both just absolutely devoured it as if it was a holy script, and then were able to build the first version of the site, and it was still really, really clunky. We couldn't quite figure out how to get people to Input their credit cards, so if you wanted to order anything, you'd print off a sheet of paper and fill in your credit card details, and then fax it to us. Fortunately, we only got about one order every few days, and so.

AI assessment note: “He figured it out. We'd been in this bookshop in Cardiff”

Q All right. You have a big break, big break. It's a first break, which is you guys start to sell something called the shot glass chess set. So basically I'm imagining it's a chess set, but each piece is a shot glass. And this is something you guys came up with. You created this product, right?

A Yes. Yeah. We were dreaming up all sorts of weird and Wild ideas for new products. And, um, we were in a bar one night in Cardiff, and saw some tequilas lined up across the bar, tequila shots. And I think in our slightly drunken state, you know, I think I mentioned they look like pawns on a chessboard. And then it got into a conversation of how you could make chess more exciting, um, by making it a party game. So we called it the thinking person's drinking game. And, um, you could play with red wine against white wine. Whiskey against vodka if you're a little more hardcore, but every time you capture an opponent's piece, you have to drink their shot, and, uh, usually you don't remember who wins by the end of the game.

AI assessment note: “Yes. Yeah. We were dreaming up all sorts of weird and Wild ideas”

Q And again, it was a, a website that, where what, kids would like, create a pet, and then they would care for the pet? Like, just briefly explain how it worked.

A Yeah, so you would adopt your own pet monster, you'd give it a name, you'd customize it, it lived in its own room, so you could design what its environment was, and kids don't have an awful lot of, uh, Control over their, their world. They're told, you know, what to eat and when to go to school, and so to have their own space, their own online environment where they are in control was really exciting. And one of the key things we did in this world, ah, we talk about this idea of stealth education. So the core loop of the game was to look after your monster, but then you would go to the puzzle palace and do puzzles every day, learning maths of the world, how to tell the time. So parents liked it, and um, Definitely not overnight, but after a lot of tweaking and iterating, we, we got product market fit, and it just took off like a rocket.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, so you would adopt your own pet monster, you'd give it a name”

Q That voice, right, that calm, and that, that voice is so, it's like Andy Puttycomb's voice, but she was somebody who contacted you guys, right? She was, she got in touch with you in 2014 to say, hey, you need a community manager, right? Like, well, tell me the story, because she would become a turning point for you.

A Yeah, she, um, she applied for our community manager role, and Alex and I got on a, I think it was a Skype call with her, and, um, really liked her, and really liked her voice, and I think she offered to do some meditations, didn't she? She'd been a meditation teacher, and we felt her voice and her experience as a meditation teacher was going to be much more valuable than, than joining on the community team, and Tamara recorded these, and it suddenly made Meditation and developing a habit easier for people. You'd come back every day and hear a new story, a new lesson. There'd be an inspiring quote at the end. And, um, even though it was a huge amount of work to create all this unique content, it was a step change for the business.

AI assessment note: “she applied for our community manager role, and Alex and I got on”

Q And, and you guys have also done, uh, some, some partnerships and acquisitions. I mean, you, you acquired, uh, a company called Ripple Health Group. Um, tell me about what, uh, what that means. I mean, does, does Calm want to start, like, tapping into the healthcare system somehow?

A Yeah, we want to bring calm to as many people as possible. We launched a B to B division where companies pay for calm for their employees, and that's been a, a hugely successful part of the business, particularly, uh, at the start of COVID. And the next phase is, can we work, uh, in the healthcare system in, in the US? Could calm be provided to, um, insured patients to ensure that they live a more mindful life, that they get good sleep, That they're conscious of the, the food they eat, and the exercise they take, which the theory is, downstream will prevent more physical health issues, such as obesity, obesity, and diabetes, and others. So, um, last, uh, this is why we acquired Ripple, and, and the team that have such deep healthcare experience, and last year we signed a big deal with United Healthcare, um, to bring calm to, to many of Their population. So, this is a, a big part of, um, CALM's growth over the next few years.

AI assessment note: “this is why we acquired Ripple, and, and the team that have such deep healthcare”

Q And spike ball, even more, more niche than figure skating. What, um, Peter, what, what's your question for us today?

A Yeah, so, um, figure skating is obviously an international sport, and we see great potential for our brand to become an international brand. You know, we've, we've seen a lot of growth organically, uh, in the United States as people have become more and more aware of our product, and we have people right now that are spending quite a bit of money to ship our product to them internationally. We've sold products in, in 16 different countries, and those people are paying about the equivalent of the, the value of the product in the first place to ship it to them In, you know, Australia, or Canada, or the UK, or wherever. And so we think that there's this big opportunity if we were to tackle the international market. But we don't know if that's the right thing for us to be doing right now or not. Should we focus on rolling out more products? Or should we focus on trying to address this international market where a significant number of figure skaters exist?

AI assessment note: “Should we focus on rolling out more products? Or should we focus on trying”

Q region, North Carolina, and still a lot of furniture is made there. I'm looking at images of your work, and it's so cool, because the idea of African artistry and Scandinavian design, it seems like hard to imagine, but when you look at it, it makes perfect sense. You're like, oh my god, that's exactly what it is. How did this business start? Tell me a little bit about it.

A Oh, yeah, well, when I moved to Asheville and moved into my home, I didn't have any furniture. I was a bachelor, recently out of college, no furniture, and And I started looking around for pieces that were interesting, but couldn't find what I really wanted, so one day I decided to try my hand at making some end tables, and they were crude, but I fell in love with the process. So over the course of many months and weeks, I built out my 300 square foot garage, started making pieces, eventually made some jewelry that I listed on Etsy, and that started my Etsy journey. Over time, people started requesting larger and larger pieces, and that brings me to today, where we make large coffee tables, dining tables, and ship them all over the country.

AI assessment note: “one day I decided to try my hand at making some end tables”

Q so new. It was so niche. I mean, I'm sure a lot of people that you knew in Wisconsin were like, would say, oh, where can I buy it? And you would say, oh, we're selling it on the internet. And they'd say, the internet? You're selling it on the internet? Well, what about in stores? Did you, did you ever try and pursue that, that path at the time?

A We did. I mean, we were trying to get into the stores all the time, and then at the time, I thought that was our Our path to success was to get into retail because then we'd have all these eyeballs looking at the product and all these retail stores out there that would, you know, if they had 2000 stores and you supply them each with two units, you know, that's pretty high volume. And so that was really what I was focused on, but we really didn't have the margin in the product and most of the retailers wanted 50 points on the product and there just wasn't a way that we could Provide that. We were maybe making 30 points at most on the product at the time. So there's no way really to make it attractive to the retailer. Plus, the unit was quite large.

AI assessment note: “We did. I mean, we were trying to get into the stores all the time”

Q this experience you had. You took this class at the business school, and Scott Cook of Intuit, founder of Intuit, came to the class, and I don't know if that was a turning point for you, but if it, what, what was, what happened, you know, when you saw him and met him? Because I think it did, it was kind of a turning point for you as a student.

A Yeah, taking that class, it's called Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital. It's taught by Peter Wendell and Eric Schmidt. It's still taught today, I try to guest lecture. Uh, once a year. And that class was an absolute game changer for me. And, you know, Scott Cook was one of the guest lecturers and gave the whole case study on Intuit. And during the case study, I guess I, I asked a couple of questions in the, in the class about how they were capitalizing the business at the time or something like that. So we'd had an opportunity to engage a little bit. And after class, I talked to him and basically begged him for a job. And so he gave me an internship at, at Intuit. That really sort of changed my trajectory, because on a very small team of people, we were, you know, I think it was three or four of us, we made web apps at the time, actually for, you know, touchpad phones, not touchscreens or anything like that. But I learned that with a really small team, you could build software and deploy it all around the world. And so it sort of demystified a lot of the process of building stuff.

AI assessment note: “after class, I talked to him and basically begged him for a job.”

Q Alright, so sometime in 2012, you decide to move to Los Angeles to really build this business up. So, Basically, it is a, it's a test prep business, but you wanted to turn it into a software product?

A Yes. And so the, the primary reason was though the test prep kind of business model, the tutoring business model allowed us to get traction quickly and, you know, had real margins and we were able to get it to a certain scale. Um, we thought about how we could actually scale it beyond that. Like how do you scale a physical tutoring business to a 1002 thousand, really hard to do. So we're like, okay, we got to go software. Um, and so the reason we moved to LA was there's a small incubator in LA that essentially said, well, you know, we will write you a 25,000 dollar check. To go build the software around this. So instead of, you know, a giant tutoring business, we can actually have like a recurring subscription sort of software business. So that was the idea. The long story short was that did not work. Given who our customer was, you know, like a high performing student with, you know, parents that they want to figure out a way to get their students to get great scores. They didn't want to just pay for software. They wanted to look a, so a kid who got 2400 on the SAT in the eyes and sit their kid next to that kid and say, learn from this person. Um, and so even though the software we built Kind of had the same pieces that, um, the Excel sheet and the tutor did. People ended up preferring the tutor. So we realized that early on, ended up essentially dropping the software model en…

AI assessment note: “Yes. And so the, the primary reason was though the test prep kind of business”

Q right. You now had about a couple hundred people to deliver boxes to. And so tell me about that. Like, were you, did you, I don't know, like rent a U-Haul truck and drive to a bunch of different farms and then bring the stuff back to your apartment? Or did you like rent a space and start to like hand pack the boxes? Tell me about that first order.

A So that's almost exactly what I did. Um, I very quickly signed a lease on a small warehouse space in North Philly. I purchased two industrial refrigerators, I think from Costco, put it in the warehouse space. I was like, this is where I'm going to store at least the things that should be kept cold, like apples. So I had a warehouse space. I then went and drove to all these farms and started to pick up inventory to fulfill the 400 plus orders. Um, Three times a week, I'd go out, rent a U-Haul in the morning, drive out two and a half hours to the farms, spend the entire morning and afternoon collecting all the produce, drive back to the fulfillment center. And what I am doing is the first kind of 10 to 15 boxes, I packed on my own, and I actually delivered them myself. But I very quickly realized, while I could do the sourcing and those pieces, the fulfillment and the logistics was going to become impossible to do solo. So I put up initial job listings on Craigslist.

AI assessment note: “So that's almost exactly what I did. Um, I very quickly signed a lease”

Q Amazing. Um, and obviously there have been pivots throughout the time that you've been around. I mean, there were different models and different collaborations. Um, I mean, but, but essentially the, the core of the business remains the same, right? You, you basically can There are different tiers of subscriptions, and you can get a certain amount of clothing per month based on what your subscription is.

A Yeah, so the business started with a la carte rentals for special events. You can still very much do that, and that is a significant part of our business. And then we added subscription in 2016. Um, at the beginning was about giving people access to rotating closet, primarily for work and special occasions. Now it's really about casual everyday life. Including work and special occasions, but rental has become so much more normalized now that you would be shocked at the amount of customers who rent denim from us and who rent casual, you know, clothes to wear on the weekends. So I think we've reached a different point in the cycle from early adopters into more of a mainstream behavior.

AI assessment note: “the business started with a la carte rentals for special events... then we added subscription”

Q Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the year 2000, and Monica is ready to launch a new line of upscale and elegant cleaning products. And her first task? Finding someone to make them.

A So the guy who used to cut my hair had an Aveda salon, and I said, hey, Meg, I got this idea for putting stuff into bottles. I didn't tell him the concept. I said, who do you, do you know anyone? I mean, I didn't know anybody in this business. Do you know anyone who knows anything about putting liquids into bottles? And he goes, you know what? I got a, I cut the hair of a fragrance consultant. I'll, I'll call her and see if she can call you. Well, he did, and I met with her, and she said, here's what you got to do. And so she kind of walked me through the whole process. You know, you got to build a fragrance profile, which is not unlike a marketing profile. You know, who's your demographic? What's it supposed to do? What's, what, what are your big ideas, et cetera, et cetera. And then she said, you got to go find this manufacturer out west of town. Go find them. They'll help you too. So I go out there, it's called Boomerang, and it's a bunch of ex-employees from Uh, the Redmond hair care business. They, they pulled their ESOP funds after that company was sold and started a manual, a contract manufacturing facility.

AI assessment note: “So I go out there, it's called Boomerang, and it's a bunch of ex-employees”

Q Awesome. So tell me about the business. How'd you, how'd you start it? How'd you get into this?

A Yeah, it actually starts kind of sad. I was at my first year at Georgia, uh, University of Georgia. In 2016, my second semester, I was in a motor vehicle accident on my way home that left me paralyzed from the waist down. And in that moment, I, um, remember thinking, oh man, what is life going to be like? The doctor told me I had about a 99% chance that I would never walk again. And so being the realist that I am, I said, okay, am I gonna spend my entire life trying at one percent to walk again or continue my life despite this injury? And actually, during my time at Georgia, I was cooking for people at my freshman dorm on the weekends, and cooking was something that I was passionate about, that I've been exposed to since I was little, that brought a bunch of people in and said, wow, I've never had Korean food before, but I, I love this. And with that, I said, okay, I want to change my degree from this med school path that I was taking at Georgia to hospitality at Georgia State University.

AI assessment note: “cooking was something that I was passionate about... I want to change my degree”

Q Um, probably easily a billion dollar brand by that point. And, um, there were others, Athleta and other brands that were just growing. And, I mean, were you, you weren't really even competing with them at that point, right? I mean, you were just so small compared to them. Were you worried? Were you looking at those companies and just thinking, you know, we're always going to be small?

A I wasn't thinking we were always going to be small, but I wasn't overly focused on them either. I always looked at Lululemon as an inspiration and as the, you know, the company that made it ok for women to buy a hundred dollar pair of leggings. And I felt like they paved the way, and I'm, I'm grateful to them for that. You know, and there were, there were times when Lulu faltered, and there were times where Beyond grew. I remember when they had the whole, you know, sheer pant debacle. I don't know if you remember that, but that was a moment, because at the time, I think we were the number two brand carried on. Equinox. But Lulu was, you know, the lion's share of the space. We were a very distant number two. And the minute Lulu had to pull their product, my buyer from Equinox called and said, hey, we've got a situation. What do you have in black leggings? And I was like, we got you. And I shipped everything we had, and we sold through what we had. And so that was a moment for us to step up and Our product got a little bit more floor space, and we sold through when we performed, and so that, you know, in turn gave us more floor space in the future.

AI assessment note: “I wasn't thinking we were always going to be small, but I wasn't overly focused”

Q beginning was wholesale, right? To go and to basically sell to stores, which a lot of early brands, um, kind of bulk at, certainly now, because obviously you've got to sell at a discount, and then you don't always have control over how they are sold In the stores. But that was a strategy that you guys pursued from the get go. Can you talk a little bit about why?

A So I'm a huge fan of wholesale, and I've always looked at this as a way of reinforcing your brand. I think of wholesale as marketing that you get paid for. So anytime somebody goes into a yoga studio and sees your product, they're discovering you. You know, we had a really diverse distribution network too, which I think was one of the things that we did really well. So we sold to, you know, the mom and pop yoga studios and the boutique fitness places. We sold to regular boutiques that weren't fitness-based. We were on the cool websites like Revolve and Shopbop. And when people would see our products at all of these different places, it was brand validation and reinforcement.

AI assessment note: “I think of wholesale as marketing that you get paid for.”

Q Thank you. Congrats on that. Okay, and before I forget, what is your question for us today?

A Okay, so we just launched our Better Bag Bag opener, which I showed you, um, which is a brand new product that we think is our best product yet. It solves a problem for a lot of people, and it has applications beyond PET. It's easily demonstrable on video. However, we do have limited resources for marketing. Um, in the past, we've tried to do everything at once, and I think that resulted in kind of like a little bit of everything was a lot of nothing. We didn't get results. So this time around, we'd like to focus on One platform to get the word out about Better Bag. So our question is, if you had to choose just one platform to get the word out about a revolutionary new product, what would it be?

AI assessment note: “our question is, if you had to choose just one platform”

Q And so how did, how did that, like, what, what do you remember about conversations that led one or both of you to say, why don't we join forces and do something together?

A I remember us having two seminal conversations about this. We met at a bar, and I said, I think we should do something, and it should be about restaurants, and it should be called Eater. And I said we should call it Eater because, one is, it sounds a little bit like Gawker, and two is, Eater is the most dressed-down way of thinking about people who go to restaurants. They're not foodies, they're not gourmets, they're not connoisseurs, they're just eaters. And I said, we should do this, this blog and, you know, we'll post about restaurants and, um, we'll both do it. And Locke was much farther along in terms of his understanding of digital media than I was at the time. And of course, in part because he was already at Gawker and he just generally was way more in the scene and already had a feel for it. And he also was writing at that time a newsletter called Curbed about street level, neighborhood level real estate in the city. And he took to this idea of, of restaurants and he said, well, let's, we can, the easiest thing to do is to launch it off of Curbed and we'll make it eater.curbed.com. And that's how, that was the first place that Eater launched was a sub, a sub domain of Curbed. And we sort of mapped, sketched it out and, Essentially drew up a wireframe for it, and we both contributed some ideas as to how it would function.

AI assessment note: “I remember us having two seminal conversations about this. We met at a bar”

Q And, um, Tell me a little bit about, about, you know, you as a, as a kid. I mean, did your parents speak to you in Korean? Was their culture, the culture of their birth country, um, something that they really was important for them to transmit to you growing up?

A Yes, so I still speak to them in Korean, even though my Korean has progressively gotten worse, but culturally, yeah, I mean, we were very much a Korean household, ate Korean food, a lot of their friends, therefore our childhood friends were Korean, and there was still a lot of sort of community, you know, amongst other Koreans who had immigrated around the same time in the Seattle area, so um, When I was young, we went back every summer, and we spent a good month to two months in Korea. I remember staying at my grandparents' house, and it just being so hot, and me hanging out with all my cousins. So, uh, Korean culture was still a big part of my upbringing.

AI assessment note: “Yes, so I still speak to them in Korean... culturally, yeah”

Q But when you contacted these companies that made things for, uh, you know, manufacturers and wholesalers, and you said, hey, we want to sell this to consumers, because I'm assuming that, you know, we're talking about, what, cardboard boxes, we're talking about plastic tubs. Did any of them, I'm, I'm imagining some of them were like, consumers, why would consumers want this?

A Yeah, they, they, they all were like that, and I'd say about half of them Really wanted their products to be sold on the retail level to consumers because they love their products, and they, nobody had any earthly idea what they did when they went to work every day, and this would give exposure to their beloved products. The other half of them were very worried about litigation and, and consumers hurting themselves on it, so, uh, it was, it was difficult to convince them to sell to us because, um, you know, it just never been done before. So it was a matter of comforting I mean, you know, we'd contact them a half dozen times before we'd finally, uh, get them to agree to sell to us. We're trying to, we're trying to buy from them. Uh, but then, you know, their experimentation was rewarded because we, in most cases, wound up being one of their biggest customers.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, they, they, they all were like that”

Q Mindy, how, how did you come up with this idea?

A I was a stay-at-home mom. I was able to stay home with my kids for a long time, um, and then when they were in their teens, I started to think about going back to work, and simultaneously, when I sent my first child off to college, I joined a Facebook parent group, and I saw all the things that the out-of-town families needed for their students, and I realized that, that we had an opportunity, um, To help. Um, I'm a social worker by training, and I just realized that it's very challenging to be far away from your kid, and we could make it much easier and more stress-free. So we launched in 2019, and this year we're, we expanded, and we're now on 11 campuses.

AI assessment note: “I joined a Facebook parent group, and I saw all the things that the out-of-town families needed”

Q All right. So also from what I gather, pretty soon after you guys started this business, you shifted from ash wood to maple wood. Why does that matter? Why is maple better than ash?

A Yeah, that was a huge move for us. That was kind of one of the early ways the stars aligned for us in the industry changed. Uh, you know, Barry Bonds made maple popular. He came in and started hitting with Maple, and he was, you know, hitting all his home runs, and then Maple became more and more popular, and people looked into it, and Maple's just a harder wood, and if you really You know, show people a player comes in, you could take a nail with a hammer and drive it right into an ash bat. You take that same nail and try to put it in a maple bat. It's going to bend the nail and you show a hitter that. And they're like, why wouldn't you use a harder bat? And so players started going to maple really quickly, uh, over ash. And then the emerald ash beetle, the ash borer beetle came in and kind of wiped out most of the ash in the, in the United States. So then it really forced everybody to Into Maple, and we had a really big head start on the Maple side, so that allowed us to gain market share pretty quickly.

AI assessment note: “Maple's just a harder wood, and if you really You know, show people”

Q Yeah. And I guess not, not that long after you got into some of those, those smaller stores in Connecticut, You had a pretty significant breakthrough with Whole Foods. Um, how did that happen?

A So in December, 2017, I was sampling a local Whole Foods beer manager, and they said, you should really go down to the Brooklyn store and meet the forager, who has, like, a bit more decision-making authority, and so the next day, I drove to Brooklyn, tracked down the forager, it turned out to be her last day, and she gave me, like, a few minutes of her time, and we sampled the beer. She said, this is incredible. Our customers would love this. She was like, you've got to go to regional next week, and so she made me an appointment for the following week with Chris and Justin at the Whole Foods regional office in New Jersey, and that meeting went well, and that was our biggest breakthrough, I'd say, early on, where they committed basically on the spot to a statewide launch in Connecticut.

AI assessment note: “I was sampling a local Whole Foods beer manager, and they said, you should really”

Q So Kate, how did you start this business?

A So this all really starts because my husband and I have been farming and ranching together for 11 years, and we've grown our farm and ranch called Kassad Family Farms, which is organic and regenerative. We've grown it from a three acre market farm doing CSAs and farmers markets, and so now we manage about 1400 acres. And as first generation farmer ranchers, I like to say we've learned not just how to grow food, but what it takes to save a farm. And in the same era of the past decade, I've been operating a custom hat business where I build custom western hats and fedoras, and it really just came down to, I thought I was building something for Habs Dad Hat Company, and I wanted to find hides that align with my ethos, how I source my food and how I live the rest of my life, and as soon as I started looking for regional hides, you know, regenerative hides, something that might have traceability, I realized it did not exist, and so that started this journey.

AI assessment note: “looking for regional hides... I realized it did not exist, and so that started this journey”

Q So tell me a little bit about some of the ideas that you, you started to think. I mean, you're doing consulting, but at what point did you start to think about, maybe I should look into starting my own thing?

A Yeah. You know, I was, I was working with a company called Alton Lane, um, which was doing made to measure menswear. And I started to realize, you know, that, that brought me like eye to eye with brands like Bonobos that were just starting at the time and looking at how they found one thing. And in their case, it was khaki, khaki pants that they did really well. And I bought them. I'm like, wow, they're delivering on it too. And I started to realize, wow, Warby Parker, Bonobos. Yes, they're making a product, but they're playing customer acquisition arbitrage. They are just trying to acquire a customer for a little bit less than they're making and scale that profitability. And they're playing in categories where they're competing with really, really big folks, but those folks are not nimble and they're probably not playing with a current deck of cards when it comes to the sort of digital media landscape. So I felt that, okay, I just need a product. That I can go compete with, with in a fragmented market with big players and win on customer acquisition arbitrage.

AI assessment note: “I felt that, okay, I just need a product. That I can go compete with”

Q You, you stepped away for about, I think about a year and a half, um, and came back As CEO in, in early 20, 22. Um, tell me the, the, the, the thinking behind it. I mean, when you had left, did you think it was temporary, or did you think that, uh, it was for good?

A I thought it was for good. We brought in Manish. I moved to Florida with my wife, followed her for her job. And I thought that was that. And then in December, late December, December, 28th of, um, 20, 21, Hugo passed away. And my feeling was the opposite of what I expected, which was more, this company is his, it's his legacy. Uh, I, I can't entrust that to someone else, regardless of how I felt about them. I felt deep responsibility to make sure that that legacy lived on, and, and so I had this strong urge or desire to jump in, and that, I don't want to speak for Manish, but, um, if I'm reading the room, it coincided with Manish's, uh, probably feeling very burnt out, uh, and he's a very positive Energetic person who was just feeling worn out. So I think we caught each other at just the right moment.

AI assessment note: “I thought it was for good. We brought in Manish.”

Q the end of 2011. There was massive rapid growth. You, you know, you saw it go public and, um, you know, I'm sure this is, you know, not fun to be reminded of, but still was and is not profitable. And, and so what did that mean? I mean, were you, did you feel like, I'm assuming you felt a charge to kind of get, get it to that place?

A More than a charge. Um, our, our fiscal year ends March 31st. I came back January 11th. Um, so that year ending March 31st, we burned a hundred and ninety-four million dollars, and if we had done that for the next 12 months, that would have been it. We're done. We're gone. So the immediate challenge is don't die. Just do everything possible to keep this thing alive and floating and, and looked at every, Angle to do that and got the unit economics in shape, got the supply chain fixed, brought on really great talent, brought on a fantastically talented CFO, brought discipline to the business, right-sized the team. There are a lot of those things that are difficult in the moment. They're not fun in the moment, but it was just survival mode. And, and we have really turned that around and gotten ourselves into Profitability and into cash flow generation, and, and now that's starting to compound.

AI assessment note: “More than a charge... So the immediate challenge is don't die.”

Q I guess you, you, you were a high school dropout. Not, not, I don't mean this as in a disparaging way, like, you know, to tar you with this brush, but you dropped out of high school, right?

A I did. My, uh, you know, we were coming up to the end of year exams in year 12, uh, what you would call the senior year of high school, I guess. And, uh, my dad died towards the end of the year, and I, I sort of, I have to admit, in looking back, I, I kind of used that as an excuse to just not finish all the exams. I just didn't see that they were going to be important to, to whatever it was I was going to do next. I wasn't going to go to university. I'd made that decision. So I didn't complete my year 12 exams, and after Christmas, I packed a bag and got on a plane, and there I was in Melbourne.

AI assessment note: “I did. My, uh, you know, we were coming up to the end”

Q know, and, and, because this is the beginnings of the, what would become the sort of the PC boom, the personal computer boom, and, and, and you would go on to work for, for DEC, a digital equipment corporation, which was a huge PC maker back in the day. Um, And, and that's, and I think you ended up staying there for, for several years, right, as a sales rep?

A Yeah, in 84, I think 83, DEC released their personal computer, and my job at the time was to find dealers in Melbourne to sell their personal computer. It's called the Rainbow. IBM and, uh, and Apple had released their machines, and, you know, the market was abuzz with this new thing, PCs. And I just couldn't find enough dealers to sell this thing. They're just, you know, we were not going to be able to get this product to market, so I approached a couple of my buddies at the office at DEC. And said, you know, we should do this ourselves. You know, let's find some money, beg, borrow, or steal, go to the bank, let's open a location of our own. So that's what we did. We, we, we started a business.

AI assessment note: “my job at the time was to find dealers in Melbourne to sell their personal computer”

Q Oni, tell us a little bit about how this came about. What, what were you doing, um, when you decided to, to create this game?

A So in 2019, I had my daughter, and so I was spending so much time with her to where all of my attention went to her, which meant that I was neglecting my husband, who I'd known since we were in college at like 19 or 20, right? So I started thinking of just a creative way for us to connect. I didn't have a lot of money for us to go out on this fancy dinner, so I just started creating cards on Microsoft Word. And we started asking each other questions. And from there, I was like, you know what, I could do this with my friends. And so that's when I decided to turn it into a conversation starter.

AI assessment note: “I started thinking of just a creative way for us to connect.”