The Exchanges

Q Yeah, you guys are good with words. Um, but beyond X, where are you also capturing this attention? What's the strategy?

A X and LinkedIn are extremely small, and especially tech Twitter, uh, it's super small. What I've learned is, if you have a post, you're, if you're in tech Twitter, and you have a post that does over, say, 40,000 impressions, you've hit pretty much every relevant decision maker in tech. It's an extremely, extremely small world. Um, and realistically, if I go outside San Francisco, I walk around for 10 hours with a giant shirt that says Cluelly guy, uh, nobody's gonna recognize me. Maybe, like, a few, a handful of people will recognize me. Because this world, it's, it's super niche, and what, what feels like, man, Cooley's been on my timeline for the past two months, like, it's, it's all I can hear about. In reality, you walk outside, nobody's fucking heard of this. Because regular people are not on Twitter, LinkedIn, or ex-LinkedIn. Regular people are on, like, Instagram, TikTok. Uh, well, more, more, many, many more regular, many, many more people are on Instagram, TikTok than on ex-LinkedIn. And, uh, Every single big company is known by regular people. Um, and I think the two ways that you achieve, like, full consumer mindshare is you can either get the mindshare first, or you can have your product, um, funnel you into mindshare. I think we don't have the time to let our product grow that fast, that big, that, like, that big, that fast. But we do have the time to, um, go hyper…

AI assessment note: “we do have the time to, um, go hyperviral on IG TikTok.”

Q How do you manage that internally? Like, are you guys gonna create your own platform for managing, like, views, analytics? What metrics do you measure? How do you think about that against the virality, against the growth hacking? I mean, this is like a critical component to the business, so how do you, how do you manage it?

A Yeah, I mean, we have, like, what is shaping up to be our own internal CRM for managing all this stuff, and probably this will be, like, the first of its kind, like a CRM exclusively for managing creators, um, but it's, it's in-house right now, um, there's not too much overhead, because in reality, you don't have to manage the people, you have to manage the content that they, that they produce, and, um, you get paid for the content that you make, so, like, if you don't, if you're lazy, then you just don't get paid, and that's it. Um, There's not significant operational overhead, and we have the systems in place for this to scale to like, 2000 creators. Uh, so I'm, I'm, I'm pretty confident about this. Um, not sure, I think I might have.

AI assessment note: “we have, like, what is shaping up to be our own internal CRM”

Q Is the language still the same for that?

A Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is the ultimate cheating tool. Like this is a significant productivity unlocked to the point where it feels like cheating. And still, We are the tool that lets you use AI without anybody else knowing. We're still invisible to screen share. We still have all our undetectability features, and, um, this is like, uh, This is a societal change that we're, that we're promoting here. Um, everyone is going to feel like people using AI are cheating. Like, already, teachers are out there saying, like, yo, you can't use AI on your essays, you can't use AI on your assignments. They think it's cheating because it's, uh, in, in reality, like, leverages you to do so much more than what you previously could, and as a result, every assignment, exam, quiz, uh, structure is pretty much outdated, and, uh, as a result, oh, let's just ban it because it's cheating. Like, bro, like, like, obviously this is in the future. Uh, we all need to get like, get with the time and embrace it. And, um, I think cheat on everything is like a, it's, it's sort of a marketing stunt, but it's sort of real. This is how the world is going to look at it. And, um, it's inevitable. They will see us as the cheating tool until they don't, then we should just fucking embrace it and use, use it for the marketing benefits that it provides.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is the ultimate cheating tool.”

Q Okay. So what does that mean? How did you get to profitability so fast?

A I mean, we have like traditional SAS margins. Like when I started interview coder, it was like just me and Neil and we didn't have any employees and we didn't pay ourselves shits. Like the first dollar we made was a dollar profit, uh, traditional SAS margin. Like we, we have like, like fucking like what? One percent of costs. Um, go to, go to like the APIs that we use, and that's it. Like maybe some hosting, but it's an Electron app that runs locally, so it's not even like we pay for significant hosting fees there too. All we have to pay for is like the, the, the, the, the free backend cloud provider for our API and, and the actual APIs that we use. So it's, it's like, fucking like, like, like, like three cents per user. Um, so since, since day one, we've been profitable, and, uh, the growth has just been so fast. Like, InterviewCoder, before we hired anyone, hit, like, three mil ARR, and then, um, and then we started hiring people. So, like, of course, like, we have, like, fucking, like, three million dollars, like, like, like, any, we can hire 10 engineers and it'll still be profitable. So, like, like, like, as it stands, we are unable to hire faster Then we are making money and, um, we're, we're, we're paying a lot too.

AI assessment note: “we didn't have any employees and we didn't pay ourselves”

Q So what are you looking to improve upon as a CEO?

A I think I've been like thrust into a position of leadership and, and management over a lot of people, and, uh, it's pretty crazy. Like, this is such a stark difference from me just, like, hacking in a dorm room with, with Neil. Like, I don't really get to make the same engineering mistakes and just be like, ah, fuck it, like, sorry, I'll send a sorry email to our 20 users and just, uh, just, just, just redo the entire DB. Uh, I don't really get that anymore. Um, now I sort of have to, uh, be stricter with people, and like, that's, that's sort of like the framework that we always operated in, and I'm sort of the one that has to step up now and be like, hey, um, we gotta be more serious, and it's, it's hard for people to take that seriously when it's coming from me. I think, I think that this is probably the thing. Even, even at work, I'm like, I try to inspire people to think creatively about swinging big, taking huge risks, but I'm also the guy that has to step in when things get bad and like, hey, this is a shitty migration. We can't do this again. And I think it's been hard to different distinguish that with my, with the, with the employees. Um, and like sometimes being like serious CEO Roy mode and most of the time being like, let's, let's all think about crazy shit we can do.

AI assessment note: “now I sort of have to, uh, be stricter with people”

Q What are your general frameworks for fundraising? How do you think about it?

A Yeah, I think, um, On the founder front right now, I think if ever you're worried about like a down round or not, not being able to raise more in the future, like you're ever worried about, oh, I'm not going to raise as much this time so I can raise more next round. Like, like I, I, I think you're making the wrong decision right now. Revenue timelines are so compressed. If you don't believe that you yourself can get to a hundred mil ARR in the next year, then you should just, just don't fucking build a company cause you don't have the balls to do it. Uh, you need a swing big at every moment. Like you don't know where your company is going to be in three months. And if you are like meant to make it and your product is like good, Then you will be somewhere crazy in three months. And, uh, if you're ever worried about like, oh, the next round, like bro, like, like, like think about your current round. Think about your current company. You need more money right now. Just, uh, swing big. And I think on the investor front, there's nothing that pisses me off more than, um, when like some investor wants to talk to me, they send me an email like, yo, like I'm trying to talk. And then they fucking loop in their assistant to schedule some time. Like bro, these rounds are closing in like hours. Like it's not, it's not, you don't have two weeks to like schedule some time. If you want to talk…

AI assessment note: “You need a swing big at every moment.”