Episode Transcript
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Thank you. Welcome
0:37
to another episode of the Prop G pod.
0:39
In today's episode, we finish our special three
0:41
part series covering the future of entrepreneurship. And
0:43
last week's episode, we answered your questions about
0:46
life after a startup exit and whether to
0:48
pursue an MBA. I
0:51
remember taking a long walk on the beach when I sold my company. I'm
0:55
like, okay, that's it. I'm done. And
0:58
I remember thinking, does it feel different? And
1:01
it wasn't that it was like a sensation or a high. It
1:04
was just a bit of a feeling of like an absence
1:07
of anxiety and a feeling, quite frankly, of
1:09
pride. It felt really good about the people
1:11
I'd worked with and it felt
1:13
good about myself. Will
1:16
an MBA make you a great entrepreneur? No. So
1:19
just divorce your kind of aspirations about being
1:21
an entrepreneur and say, do
1:23
I want the skills and the experience
1:25
that an MBA offers? And
1:28
then if you decide to be an entrepreneur, great. Today,
1:33
we will be featuring an episode from one
1:36
of our newer shows, First Time Founders with
1:38
Ed Elson every first Sunday of the month
1:40
at interviews, you guessed it, first time founders.
1:43
In the episode we share today, Ed speaks
1:45
with Tyler Denk, the co-founder and CEO of
1:47
Beehive, a newsletter publishing and monetization platform. They
1:50
discuss Tyler's background at Morning Brew, his thoughts
1:52
on selling secondary shares and dealing with the
1:54
death of one of their early employees. So
1:57
just a disclosure, I don't think my producers
1:59
know this. I'm an investor in BI, small
2:01
investor, not a big deal. I don't
2:03
think I've influenced the editorial program here
2:06
based on my own financial interest. But
2:08
guess what? I would absolutely do that.
2:10
The dog needs to eat and he likes that
2:13
expensive shit. You know that food that costs more
2:15
than what most families spend on a dinner
2:18
out at Red Lobster or
2:20
what's the other one? The onion one?
2:23
Wait, the green olive. That's right, the green olive. I used to
2:25
go to Sizzler. I used to go to Sizzler.
2:27
I don't have a lot of them. I've seen those commercials in Sizzlers in
2:29
the 90s, if you're old like me. I don't have
2:31
a lot of money. I don't have a lot
2:33
of time. Sizzler. Me and my friends
2:35
would be like, I don't have a lot of
2:38
class. I don't have a lot of taste. Sizzler.
2:42
True story. During the summer, one
2:44
year at UCLA, I gamified saving money. I
2:46
got to the point where I only spent
2:48
$77 a week on
2:51
everything including rent. My big treat was every
2:53
Sunday night, I would take a coupon from
2:56
the Daily Bruin and I would head down to Sizzler and
2:58
for $3.99, me and the rest of the crew team could
3:00
for $4 each do
3:02
all you can eat. We
3:04
would show up at five when it opened and
3:06
we would stay till nine and try and have
3:09
two or three enormous meals and basically eat for
3:11
the week. Anyways, good times. Good times. Anyways,
3:14
enjoy Ed's conversation with Tyler Dank. Scott,
3:17
you invested in our next founder. What
3:20
do you look for when you're investing in a startup?
3:23
Someone who's been able to attract really talented people.
3:25
I try to interview the whole management team. It's
3:28
more really looking for a
3:30
team of talented people who clearly get
3:33
along. I went on the
3:35
board and was an angel investor in a
3:37
company called Olapik, which was like a
3:40
visual image curation software platform.
3:43
It was three guys from Columbia and
3:45
they just could finish each other's sentences. One was a
3:47
tech person, one was the marketer, one was the CEO.
3:51
They're all very, very smart, very hardworking, got along
3:53
and I thought I just want to back this
3:55
team. It's really
3:57
when you're an early stage investor, you're really
3:59
not investing. The and A or resting and. Soundest
4:07
I met else. Online
4:10
newsletters have exploded in recent years
4:12
during a pandemic. we saw the
4:14
right substance, which became a home
4:16
for writers and creators who wanted
4:18
to monetize their work independently. Newsletters
4:20
are also a census. Our business,
4:23
Scott, considered our newsletter, No Mercy,
4:25
No Malice to be our flagship
4:27
product. We've invested significantly in the
4:29
South that we now have nearly
4:31
half a million subscribers interacting with
4:33
our contact every week. That's why
4:35
I'm excited to introduce. On next
4:37
guest Tyler Dank, she's an expert
4:39
in all things newsletters or to
4:42
leading growth and product And Morning
4:44
Through Toilet started a newsletter distribution
4:46
platform called Be Eyes in less
4:48
than two years behind amassed a
4:51
network of nearly fifteen thousand active
4:53
newsletters, fifty million readers and five
4:55
hundred million monthly impresses, and unlike
4:57
so many software platforms these days
4:59
to achieve profitability now he's looking
5:02
to take on the incumbents sub
5:04
stuck at the top of the.
5:06
Hit list Tyler, thanks for joining us,
5:08
They swam me happy to bear. The
5:11
story of Beehive really begins at Morning
5:13
Brew. Could you give us the rundown
5:15
of first? what. Morning. Brew actually
5:18
is and then also what you did
5:20
there and how that led to the
5:22
creation of this newsletter platform. Bee Hives?
5:24
Yeah for sure. So I joined Morning
5:26
Burrow Back and Twenty Seventeen as the
5:29
Sec employ in a very fine rove
5:31
ranging from growth in engineering and product
5:33
just doing anything we could possibly do
5:35
to scale the newsletter size. that sounds
5:38
a year. Pretty familiar with the whole
5:40
game of the able to scale your
5:42
audience expand the newsletter. My first project
5:44
was treating the Morning Brew Referral program
5:47
where. by incentivizing different readers you
5:49
can earn t shirt coffee mug
5:51
crew neck whatever that looks like
5:54
we realize that we are existing
5:56
audiences already natively sharing with classmates
5:58
friends family city to help further
6:01
incentivize them with rewards. One
6:03
thing led to another. I built that on contract.
6:05
Austin Reef asked me to come on full time,
6:07
and I came on and just built anything that
6:09
would help us grow. I guess
6:11
to take a step back and answer
6:13
your question, like, what is Morning Brew?
6:15
Morning Brew is a, or at the
6:17
time, was a daily newsletter Monday through
6:20
Friday that covered business news and finance,
6:22
kind of like Bloomberg, but more for
6:24
younger demographic, millennial, told in
6:26
the conversational voice and tone. I
6:28
joined it, went to about 50,000 people every
6:31
day, Monday through Friday. When I
6:33
left, it was seven days a week going
6:35
to three and a half million subscribers. And
6:38
then, so the team grew from, obviously, me as the second employee to
6:40
about 35, 40 people when
6:42
I left in 2020. Why
6:44
did you decide to join a daily
6:46
newsletter with 50,000 subscribers? What
6:50
led you there? Yeah, it sounds crazy now, right?
6:52
Yeah. Yeah, looking back, everyone's
6:54
like, oh, you were early on Morning Brew. That's
6:56
amazing. At the time, it was the furthest thing
6:58
from like a sure opportunity. There
7:01
was the two co-founders and a
7:03
writer in a closet-sized office in
7:05
the NYU campus dorm when
7:08
Austin, who is a friend from Baltimore, reached out
7:10
to me. I had $4 in my bank account. And
7:13
when he asked if I would be able to
7:15
build a referral program, I lied and said that
7:17
I could because I needed money and I built
7:19
it. And after building
7:21
that in the two to three weeks of
7:23
that, it was the first time that they
7:26
had a engineer, quote unquote, I'm self-taught, but
7:28
an engineer to help build something. And
7:30
of course, it's like a team that's growing. They had
7:33
a laundry list of things that they wanted to be
7:35
built, and I provided an opportunity. So I spent that
7:37
summer building a little bit of
7:39
everything from the website, the referral program, social
7:41
share icons where you could share the
7:44
individual stories on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. And
7:47
during that process, I had full access, like
7:49
you do in a startup, to everything from
7:51
the inbox, from user feedback to other
7:53
people talking about the product and seeing how the
7:56
team works from the inside out. saw
8:00
the rabid fan base that they had of
8:02
people emailing in daily, being like,
8:04
I can't start my day without reading Morning Brew.
8:06
I've shared it to my entire class. All
8:09
my co-workers are reading it. They're raving about it. And
8:12
it was kind of like that, like, aha moment
8:14
of they clearly struck a
8:16
chord and an opportunity in a market that
8:18
I think there's already a huge
8:20
market for business news from looking
8:23
at Bloomberg and all of the
8:25
other larger established publications. They
8:27
were doing it in a very fun, novel way. And it
8:30
clearly resonated. And then
8:32
seeing how passionate the team was, was
8:34
kind of like my two months on
8:36
trial experience of being like, I actually
8:38
think they're onto something massive here. And whether
8:40
they go into education or just being
8:42
one of the largest publications for millennials
8:44
to get business news, I felt both were
8:47
a pretty promising opportunity. So then in
8:50
around late 2021, you decide you're
8:52
going to start your own newsletter
8:54
platform, when things I
8:56
presume were going super well at Morning Brew.
8:59
Why did you do that? Yeah, so there
9:01
was a slight gap. I left Morning Brew
9:03
in 2020, right before they got acquired by
9:05
Business Insider. I didn't know that that acquisition
9:08
was happening. But through that experience
9:10
of three and a half years at Morning Brew, I
9:13
fortunately Morning Brew was like a huge
9:15
success. We were making a lot of
9:17
money. We had 40 people on the
9:19
team. We were like the go to
9:21
email newsletter. And I had built everything
9:23
from the referral program to the website
9:26
to our content management system, to an
9:28
ad management platform that our sales and
9:30
copywriting team would use to handle all
9:32
the different brand advertisements. So
9:34
more or less kind of built a platform
9:36
within the company that was internal for our
9:38
employees to use. And it worked really well.
9:40
It was kind of what made us
9:42
a well oiled machine to be able to operate at
9:44
the scale that we did. And at
9:47
that same time, the good thing about emails,
9:49
you can always receive replies from your readers
9:51
and get feedback. And there was
9:54
always feedback coming in daily of what referral
9:56
program do you use? It works really well.
9:58
How does your newsletter look so good? good
10:00
in all these different male clients. How are
10:02
you able to share your stories to different
10:04
social platforms and trying to work with the
10:06
developer and build something similar? There
10:09
was both an appetite for email newsletters
10:11
at large, and there was an appetite
10:13
for software that did what Morning Group
10:15
did well, which is make the
10:18
emails look great, make it easy on the
10:20
team, be able to integrate advertisements, being able
10:22
to integrate different growth tools and analytics to
10:24
understand who your audience is. Historically,
10:27
those were five or six different
10:29
platforms. Building something very
10:31
robust that worked well through trial and error
10:33
for three and a half years gave me
10:35
the opportunity of seeing what worked, what didn't,
10:37
and how can we make this applicable to
10:39
anyone with a newsletter. That was the
10:42
real moment of the more feedback and
10:44
input we got from readers. Our
10:47
readers weren't even necessarily newsletter operators, and there
10:49
was an appetite with them. I figured there
10:51
was some value in what I had built
10:53
internally with my team at Morning Group. Then
10:56
around the same time as you alluded to in the intro,
10:59
other companies like a sub-stack were raising money
11:01
at $650 million valuation plus, and
11:05
using their software, using what I had built
11:07
at Morning Group, I thought that what I
11:09
had built and the tactical boots on the
11:11
ground experience at Morning Group was a pretty
11:14
core competitive advantage. That's what
11:16
really led to wanting to launch a
11:18
company to white label a lot of
11:20
that. You basically went to a startup,
11:22
no experience, built a product for a
11:25
startup that took them to growth and success.
11:27
Then you were like, okay, I'm
11:29
going to just take this product that I built and
11:31
start selling it to other people. Is
11:34
that a fair characterization? If you were to take a
11:36
few steps back, you could probably summarize it like that.
11:39
Would Morning Group be upset
11:41
in any way that you
11:44
took your core differentiated
11:46
product that you'd built in-house, and then
11:49
started selling it to other
11:51
companies? Very loaded question. I
11:53
would say a few things. There was a
11:55
point in Morning Group where I had
11:58
pitched this idea actually to. build
12:00
this and white label it to other software
12:02
vendors. At the time,
12:04
they were already going through acquisition talks
12:06
with Business Insider and others. So it's
12:09
a curve ball to also pivot into
12:11
SaaS, like in the ninth inning of
12:13
acquisition talks. There's also
12:15
a lot of traditional media companies who
12:17
have attempted to get into software and
12:20
failed. I think Washington Post just shut
12:22
down their media or their tech division
12:24
relatively recently or their software platform. So
12:27
there's a lot of nightmare stories as to why you
12:29
don't want to divert away from something that's
12:31
working really well, which is their core
12:33
competency, I don't think necessarily was the
12:35
software and the product. That's a lot
12:37
of the operational things that made things
12:39
move the way that they did. But
12:41
I would argue Morning Brew's core value
12:43
prop was understanding their audience and creating
12:45
the best content for that audience. The
12:48
tech was behind the scenes, the underlying thing
12:50
that facilitated a lot of that to happen
12:52
at scale. Yeah, definitely. You've also mentioned Substack.
12:55
What was the key differentiator in your mind
12:57
when you decided, okay, I'm going to go
12:59
start my own competitor? Very directly, I thought
13:01
I could compete because at the time, when
13:03
signing up for their product, I wasn't overly
13:05
impressed and knowing what I had built that
13:07
Morning Brew, I actually thought our internal tech
13:10
had a lot more flexibility and customization
13:12
for our writers. I'd say the
13:14
other big difference is, I
13:17
think fundamentally they have a principle
13:19
around wanting to enable writers to
13:21
earn a living, the Patreon and
13:24
OnlyFans model of monetize your audience
13:26
directly. Charge a
13:28
subscription, which I subscribe
13:30
to several paid newsletters. I think they're
13:33
great, but I do think it's very
13:35
difficult to charge a premium subscription for
13:37
newsletters in a competitive media landscape where
13:39
there's HBO Max,
13:41
Netflix, all of
13:43
these other paid products. It's really hard to
13:45
deliver reliably a newsletter product that
13:47
warrants paying for. I
13:49
actually think that's a very small market where
13:52
my initial thought was,
13:55
in seeing what made Morning Brew
13:57
successful, in seeing the hustle axios.
14:00
all get acquired. They were all ad-based newsletters.
14:02
And I think actually the most difficult thing
14:04
that we did at Morning Brew was scale
14:06
a sales team that could really take the
14:08
data and understand who the audience is and
14:11
be able to sell that to premium
14:13
advertisers. And so that is what
14:15
we are building at Beyhive is one, just
14:17
facilitate make it so easy to create good
14:19
looking content where you can engage with your
14:21
readers and understand who they are. But if
14:23
you want to monetize rather than you having
14:25
to sell all of these D2C brands or
14:27
premium advertisers on why they should monetize and
14:30
advertise in your newsletter, we can
14:32
actually help facilitate that transaction and place premium
14:34
ads in these newsletters. So you have the
14:36
upside of monetizing without having the sales team
14:39
to do so. So where is the majority
14:41
of your revenue coming from? Our primary business
14:43
model is more of a traditional SaaS. So
14:45
we have the free plan to get started.
14:47
We have a $49 plan, a $99 plan,
14:50
which is a fraction of a lot of
14:52
the competitors in
14:55
the space. But that is like a traditional
14:58
if you were sending emails, I'm sure you're familiar with
15:00
No Mercy, No Malice. There is a
15:02
monthly fee associated with paying the software
15:04
vendor used to send those emails. That
15:07
is the majority of our revenue. I alluded
15:09
to the ad network as well, we take
15:11
a transactional cut on ads place. So in
15:14
place of you having to source your own
15:16
advertisements and pay commissions to a sales team,
15:19
and do all of that work, we facilitate
15:21
premium ad deals for you. And we take
15:23
a cut of that which varies. So that's
15:26
a second revenue stream. And then we also
15:28
have like some transactional like growth tactics built
15:30
into the product where you can recommend another newsletter
15:32
in the BI ecosystem, we take a 20% cut
15:34
off of like co registration
15:37
is essentially what it is. So
15:39
those are the three primary revenue
15:41
streams, we facilitate premium subscriptions
15:43
like sub sec, but we don't take
15:45
a transaction fee. So that's 100% revenue
15:48
to the content creator. I feel like
15:50
the big milestone that people
15:52
that founders like to talk about is one
15:54
mil in ARR. So when
15:56
did you hit that? And how longer
16:00
to take for you to hit that? And then finally, what
16:03
decisions did you make that
16:05
you think led to that milestone being achieved? There's a
16:07
lot there. I feel like I can kind of do
16:09
like a masterclass of like everything going on in my
16:11
head in terms of how I would, I mean, any,
16:14
I feel like any company that starts and can go
16:16
from zero to 1 million ARR in
16:18
a very competitive space has dozens of
16:20
growth tactics and things that they did
16:22
very intentionally to help reach that milestone
16:25
because the zero to one is by
16:27
far the hardest part, especially in a
16:29
hyper competitive industry like email in general.
16:32
So it took us 14 months ago from zero to
16:34
a million ARR. And there's probably
16:38
dozens of things I could attribute that to,
16:40
but a few that jump out is one,
16:43
our very first seed round,
16:45
which actually Scott is an investor
16:47
in, we strategically had a long
16:49
tail of strategic investors who have
16:51
newsletters who have media experience in
16:53
the hopes that being our early
16:55
adopters, kind of incentivizing them to
16:57
move their newsletter over. Again,
16:59
when you launch like your product is the worst that
17:01
will ever be day one. And when
17:03
there's much more mature platforms in market, you
17:05
kind of need like an extra incentive to
17:08
win over those early adopters. And so leading
17:10
on early relationships and investors is like one
17:12
kind of like growth hack to get that
17:14
initial cohort in the door. So
17:17
that helped. Two is, I
17:19
would say building in public has
17:21
been very powerful for us. I know it's cliche
17:23
and a lot of people do it. Some people
17:26
are like totally against sharing numbers and metrics. I'm
17:28
the opposite. Everything is an open book.
17:30
I share costs, I share revenue, I
17:32
share growth, I share the upsides, the
17:34
downsides, because one, I think people can
17:36
align with a person and a story
17:38
more than like a business and a
17:40
brand. And so I never intended
17:43
to really be the face of the brand, but
17:45
in being able to share and promote other newsletters
17:47
who are having success on the platform. And also
17:49
being very quick to respond to user feedback
17:51
and how we can make it better. I've kind
17:53
of become the face of the brand. And in
17:56
doing that, I have been
17:58
very vocal in how we're building. the
18:00
business because I actually think it
18:02
won its hardest shit. I think
18:04
that people actually resonate and are intrigued to learn
18:06
about how you go from zero to one,
18:08
and even how you hit scale, how we're prioritizing
18:11
engineering versus support, versus product,
18:13
versus growth, what's working and
18:15
what's not. So I've done
18:18
it through content and just being able to share the journey of
18:20
how we've been able to do that. Then
18:22
I'd say the last one is, we've
18:24
developed a reputation for shipping features very quickly.
18:27
I think a lot of that's actually born
18:29
out of the insecurity of being
18:31
a young company. When
18:33
we're in this space where our top
18:35
10 competitors are so much further, they've
18:37
been around for five, 10 plus years,
18:39
they have a much more robust feature
18:41
set. What I wanted to prove to
18:43
the market was, one, we
18:45
can ship really good product very quickly. What
18:48
that tells them is maybe we don't have
18:50
feature XYZ, but if you've
18:52
paid attention to our pace and velocity of
18:54
shipping, odds are we will get to XYZ
18:57
very quickly. So it buys you
18:59
a little bit of time of winning
19:01
people over with whatever features we do have.
19:03
If they grow frustrated that we don't have something,
19:06
earning their trust that we hear them, we know
19:08
what's important and that we can prioritize that. Yeah.
19:10
The building in public thing is so interesting. We've
19:12
had a lot of founders
19:14
on who've discussed this topic. Why
19:18
exactly is building in public
19:20
good for generating revenue versus
19:22
just getting followers? I actually
19:24
think if you were deciding between a
19:26
different software vendor and you're up in
19:28
the air between two or three, being
19:31
able to bet on trajectory and a person
19:33
that you think actually has your best interests
19:35
in heart and is trying
19:37
much harder to make this work and
19:39
succeed, and that you have their ear
19:42
directly to provide feedback, I actually think is
19:44
a pretty key selling point. Yeah. Whether it's
19:46
the most scalable selling point is TBD, but
19:48
I'm sure that there's plenty of people that
19:50
I've DM with over the days that view
19:53
it as competitive advantage to be able to say, here's three
19:55
things I think you can do better. I
19:57
have the track record of listening to them and
19:59
delivering. Those three things pretty quickly. her.
20:02
And then like Lassie when hit you when you
20:04
hit milestones, it opens up a lot of doors.
20:06
Reading: I don't have to share on Twitter and
20:08
linked in that we had three. Millionaire are for
20:11
Millionaire are fine. Millionaire are. but when I do.
20:13
I. Get dozens of warm leads from people
20:16
who are like have been following the journey.
20:18
I think I'm moving off platform max to
20:20
jump over to you or hey, can I
20:22
make an introduction to this investor this advertiser
20:25
this newsletter because I think they'd be a
20:27
perfect set and I think it's just like
20:29
maximizing your luck surface area. The more you
20:31
can share, the more hype that you can
20:34
build around the narrative that you're building on,
20:36
the more opportunities and doors that open of
20:38
people who either align with you and want
20:40
to help you succeed or at least system
20:43
with like the algorithms. And everything else
20:45
being of the surface. your success as
20:47
a broader opportunity to whether it's investment
20:49
is what you're going for or new
20:51
customers. It helps expand the opportunities there
20:53
if you're willing to disclose it. How
20:57
much of the company d own and
20:59
have you taken any off of the
21:02
table? I won't say or how much
21:04
I on but I have not taken
21:06
any off the table and I am.
21:08
What is your opinion on selling second
21:10
or says he approves disapprove. Would
21:13
you ever do it yourself? Yeah, I think
21:15
everything's like a big like. It depends on
21:17
the person and situation right? So if you
21:20
had his family if you need is a
21:22
larger house because he just had a kid
21:24
ah whatever. it is a dire circumstances in
21:26
life I think I think that they a
21:29
classic. Saying are saying within start
21:31
a quarter by paying yourself very little
21:33
as a sounder because you need to
21:35
focus all your time on a business.
21:37
And Mckinney, they have earned that salary.
21:39
And I completely disagree. Without like, I'd
21:41
rather I'm able to poor fourteen sixteen
21:43
hours a day into a start up
21:45
because I pay myself well enough that
21:47
I'm not stress financially to have to
21:49
worry about bills and other miscellaneous things
21:52
that distract your life. And so, by
21:54
giving myself a livable salary that I'm
21:56
okay with, I can focus on hundred
21:58
and ten percent on the business. Yeah
22:00
and I think I can be extended to
22:02
secondaries as well, right? Like if you are
22:04
a in a place in life where your
22:06
significant other and you have a kid and
22:08
you need a larger space and you don't
22:11
have the available liquidity, do that to be
22:13
able to sell secondary and and be have
22:15
to take care of your family so you
22:17
can focus on the business I think is
22:19
totally acceptable. I mean I have to go
22:21
for it to give an idea of equity
22:23
stake out to cofounders. we didn't split equally
22:25
but roughly and and we've done a seed
22:27
round and extension and then are serious day
22:30
so. Fairly diluted and and I'm also
22:32
someone who doesn't love the traditional like Raised
22:34
in a Razor be raised to see like
22:36
that's why you alluded to in the intro
22:38
like we were profitable for two months earlier
22:40
this year. Since raising our A, we've hired
22:43
a set time and are not profit when
22:45
a month a month basis by think we
22:47
should get pretty close to properly again in
22:49
two thousand twenty four in the goal is
22:51
to not raise again for a lot of
22:54
the reasons we kind of just mentioned right
22:56
like I am diluted. A good bet some
22:58
having to go founders and having two rounds
23:00
of funding. And I think we've
23:02
been able to run the company extremely lean.
23:04
We have people who are really good at
23:07
what they do in. the business itself is
23:09
pretty high margin so I don't see a
23:11
reason to continue to burn task just so
23:13
we can go to the series be I'd
23:15
rather build like a sustainable business. I can
23:17
eventually said the sweats and an optimized for
23:20
profits. To what stance is my
23:22
motivation you as you build this business
23:24
and do consider Beehive to be to
23:26
sing that will set you up financially
23:29
to the rest of your life. The
23:31
goal. Is for that answer to B
23:33
S rank. So five million A or
23:35
are right now like months twenty and
23:38
that doesn't include the other revenue streams.
23:40
So at about seven million dollar run
23:42
rate in under two years I feel
23:44
really good about our team who are
23:46
extremely talented, extremely hungry armed, run really
23:48
lean and the space I think is
23:51
pretty right to be disrupted. And so
23:53
I don't see any reason where if
23:55
mail chimp can get acquired for twelve
23:57
billion dollars I say our goal our
23:59
ambition is a much broader than the
24:01
software that they built when they got
24:03
acquired for twelve billion rough. And so
24:06
I do think this can be a
24:08
massive multi billion dollar business which I
24:10
think by most measures a success would
24:12
be financially set is that were to
24:14
happen. So that's like for serve the
24:16
goal and division of what we're looking
24:19
to build. Ah I'm I forsake my
24:21
as a motivator like. I remember
24:23
any younger stage in my life thinking people
24:25
always they were after an entrepreneur so the
24:27
company talking about like their users and talat
24:30
the new acquire like didn't set up their
24:32
users for success long term and like there's
24:34
always like kind of headaches after an acquisition
24:37
or that there can be and I always
24:39
see that as I to who cares you
24:41
can purchase walked away with one hundred million
24:43
dollars. you really give a shit and are
24:46
are seems a lot on that and make
24:48
the answers like yes because there's a lot
24:50
of users and people who really stuck their.
24:52
Neck out and helped us get to the
24:54
point that we are. Yeah, there's a lot
24:57
of users who put out with months of
24:59
our products being like a clear number ten
25:01
in the space for trusting that we would
25:03
figured out and build and actually proactively provide
25:05
a lot of feedback and so. Years
25:07
ago a very unique perspective in like
25:09
I want to do what's best for
25:12
our users and I've also in building
25:14
this you kind of forget. A
25:16
lot of these businesses. Our newsletter:
25:19
First businesses that are trusting us
25:21
as a twenty months company to
25:23
run their business to monetize to
25:25
be able to push conversions downstream,
25:27
and there's a lot of responsibility
25:29
in making sure that we do
25:32
that really well. I'm. Not
25:34
gonna borsig. You'd say that money isn't anything
25:36
that I care about. I for sure have
25:38
aspirations, would love to be financially free to
25:40
be able to support my family and those
25:42
that I care about. Ah, but there's a
25:44
lot of like mission and vision built into
25:46
that that was always there from the beginning,
25:49
but it actually becomes a bit more amplified
25:51
throughout the journey. I'd say to really look
25:53
after your users and make sure that their
25:55
best interests earnhardt. The
26:00
right movie. Superfund
26:14
a show comes from Mercury. Financial operations
26:17
are needlessly complex. Startups have to cobble
26:19
together a patchwork of tools to reconcile
26:21
transactions from different sources and struggled to
26:23
glean answers from platforms speak different languages.
26:26
Simplicity can transform your business operations. That's
26:28
when Mercury powers your financial worthless from
26:30
the bank account so you can pay
26:33
bills faster, stay in control of companies
26:35
manning, and speed up reconciliation apply in
26:37
minutes and mercury.com and to and over
26:40
one hundred thousand ambitious start of the
26:42
trust. Mercury Answers for Banking. And credit
26:44
cards that for the precision control
26:46
and focus any to transform the
26:49
financial worthless and perform at their
26:51
best. Mercury the art of simplified
26:53
finances apply and minutes and mercury.com
26:55
murders of financial technology company Not
26:57
a bad. Banking services provided by
26:59
Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank
27:02
and Trust members have to I
27:04
see. We're
27:14
back with first time sounders. One
27:17
of the biggest challenges you face.
27:19
Starting. A company as a sound yeah I
27:21
mean a lot it it. I remember like
27:24
when everyone always gives like the observer really
27:26
high and the lows or really wow and
27:28
they say like any we can be the
27:30
highest highs and lows slow and I always
27:32
like think like any our can be the
27:34
highest high and low a slow and at
27:36
hadn't. As someone who I was super optimistic
27:39
on joining the company Tarnished found an offer
27:41
and then the next hour have a massive
27:43
user say that they're turning from their platform
27:45
and moving over to us. and the swings
27:47
are wild and when you care as much.
27:49
As I do like, it's very my
27:51
sample find. Something I'm trying to work
27:53
on is trying to be a little
27:55
bit less. In L a little bit
27:57
more steady along the journey because there's a lot of.
28:00
Wang we would have are not
28:02
yet cofounders but first I'd say
28:04
employ are seat yo Andrew park
28:06
and was a good friend and
28:08
he ends up passing away about
28:10
eight months into the journey and
28:12
so see lot. He works with
28:14
us before we went full time
28:16
for like that summer in Twenty
28:18
twenty one and built the company
28:20
had our initial seed round. He
28:22
joined full time along with my
28:24
to cofounders and unexpectedly passed away
28:26
in may have Twenty Twenty tail.
28:29
And so as a company of I
28:31
think six people at the time he
28:34
was kind of like are X factor
28:36
He was like at Ten x engineer
28:38
out think Ten exactly does it does.
28:40
This is like incredible and. Just.
28:43
About the time that we were really
28:45
hitting product market said we had a
28:47
lot of big time users with high
28:49
expectations moving over and he was kind
28:51
of like the de facto guy to
28:53
Six Thing. Saw things as features out
28:55
on says like a small six person
28:58
can be losing arguably the most important
29:00
person the company. both like a persona
29:02
emotional level but also. The
29:04
technical competence and everything in between us.
29:06
I mean, it's hard to compare anything
29:09
as being like a more difficult experience
29:11
in the journey than losing probably the
29:13
most important person the company. also the
29:16
time really when. Startups are
29:18
so difficult. And. You know,
29:20
like of the metrics or nine ten startups
29:22
fail and was right around that time. in
29:24
like March April where we really hit struck
29:26
a chord in the market. We. Are
29:28
really starting to compound and scale and
29:31
it was like that oh shit like
29:33
I think we broke through the is
29:35
this even going work and get off
29:37
the grounds like this is off the
29:39
ground and working Now we just need
29:41
to execute and scale and everything. we
29:43
are pouring sixteen plus hours a day
29:45
until to have someone in your core
29:48
team your Ccl pass away one are
29:50
mostly and personally like devastating from everyone
29:52
that was stopped him on the team
29:54
myself included And man just for my
29:56
god it's hard to not complete the
29:58
business. In the personal. What it's
30:00
like, everything we worked so hard could
30:02
completely fall apart unexpectedly because of this.
30:06
And. Thought that was an extremely challenging
30:08
I'd say several months of shuffling
30:10
city I was trying to hire
30:12
seats yo try to regroup the
30:14
team when we are so small
30:16
and fragile. And. In
30:18
a way like not that there's and he pauses out of
30:20
that. But. To go through that
30:22
experience and be able to rebound the team
30:25
and really a line and execute and everyone
30:27
tennis step up their get done. What they
30:29
needed to get on has put a lot
30:31
of the other challenges into perspective. Can I.
30:34
Hope that nothing as it is ever as
30:36
terrible as that was and that makes the
30:38
other like dated a challenge is a little
30:40
bit more manageable. What Did
30:43
you? Do personally to
30:45
move. I. In
30:47
not. Pass. But how
30:49
does you motivate yourself personally in
30:52
the midst of I'm sure extreme
30:54
Greece and and how to do
30:56
as a company move past that
30:59
like what kind of. Tone:
31:02
Do you even strides with your employees
31:04
when something like that happens? He? I
31:06
feel like it's the classic like fight
31:08
or flight or like wartime peacetime. see
31:10
our were. Not that I wasn't already
31:12
giving it a one hundred ten percent
31:14
in cared way too much about this
31:16
business and was like giving it everything
31:18
I can put my way of dealing
31:20
with. It probably not the most healthy
31:22
in retrospect, but like I need to
31:24
work twice as hard to make sure
31:26
that we can get through this. And
31:30
also. Kind. Of toeing the
31:32
line between vulnerability and going through that
31:34
while also being like everything's going to
31:36
be okay. It really was a time
31:38
in the company where you're so young
31:40
you don't have like dependencies and everyone's
31:43
contact sharing like he was owning, missing
31:45
critical things to the business and outside
31:47
of the person on. Tragedy
31:49
that it was. It's like oh shit,
31:51
who knows how to do anything and
31:53
like the business itself going like people
31:56
are sending emails that next day. Accessing
31:58
X y Z A worked perfectly. No
32:00
one knows how X y Z actually
32:02
works in the company and so sick.
32:04
A very tactical like any for everything
32:06
and anything had to be done on
32:08
my toe. Founders are incredible Sound. Both.
32:11
Of them are engineers as well. They
32:13
were teaching themselves new languages that he
32:15
was owning just to get caught up
32:17
on everyone. was like working extremely hard
32:19
as I feel nights. When.
32:21
Your. Son. Or a C
32:24
Are you have to have this
32:26
almost delusional level of excitement and
32:28
enthusiasm for your business. You have
32:30
to turn it into the bill
32:32
and all of your entire existence.
32:35
And I can imagine when something like
32:37
that happens. It might
32:39
trigger feelings. Let the my true
32:42
feelings. That is what it. What
32:44
is this will fulfil. Did you
32:46
feel. That you had
32:48
to sort of. Take. A
32:50
step back and kind of reevaluate the things
32:52
that they were important to you. As a
32:54
as a seer, I think that probably would
32:56
have been the healthier way to do it.
32:58
I. Have browned out and
33:01
like. That's why it's difficult to talk
33:03
about because it was so sick of
33:05
very high stress, chaotic situation. Yeah, it
33:07
was also like my way of dealing
33:09
with it was delusional. like. That
33:11
is terrible. But I'm going to put
33:13
my head down and work harder than
33:15
I possibly can to push forward to
33:17
Dm every single person on linked in
33:19
who could be a Ctl to help
33:22
us to reach out our contacts to
33:24
email every single user who's having issues
33:26
explaining the situation that we're working on
33:28
it but my way was the unhealthy.
33:30
like just grind it out and get
33:32
it done and like we will see
33:34
the other side of this and then.
33:37
Asked like I went to the scene
33:39
or on a tearing everything from his
33:41
friends and family of how much he
33:43
like. I didn't know lot of this
33:45
at the time but how much he
33:47
had attempted to.other start ups in the
33:50
past and kind of sale but how
33:52
entrepreneurial he was and how passes he
33:54
was about the I've actually a is
33:56
a lot of. Passion.
33:58
And like motivation and me. In. Giving.
34:01
It a broader purpose beyond. just
34:03
like yes, there's building a
34:05
successful business and. I'm. Extremely
34:07
competitive. I want to build a market
34:09
defining business and like the money and
34:11
same and everything else. Like all of
34:13
the other extraneous things that you would
34:16
build a company for by his mom
34:18
owns part of the company and adding
34:20
that as like a motivating factor too
34:22
kind of do it for him in
34:24
a way is also something that is
34:26
very top mind. What's. One
34:29
piece of advice for you: A gift
34:31
to. Have a young entrepreneurs
34:33
the you think is worth knowing for
34:35
decided to start a company. Yeah
34:37
it's a difficult last right? I
34:40
guess know why you're doing it? Yeah,
34:42
it's there's not a purpose like there's
34:44
a lot of terrible things that happen
34:46
in a day to day week to
34:48
week basis that you really need to
34:50
have the drive and like an end
34:52
goal of like what is your why
34:54
of why you want to build something
34:56
and without that I think it's really
34:58
easy to get caught up in the
35:00
negatives. Are building a business distress. Saw
35:03
lack of work life balance the expectations.
35:05
From now I have forty people that
35:07
look to me for answers, look for
35:09
me, force providing for their family and
35:11
there's a lot of expectation to continue
35:14
to build a successful business that can
35:16
pay them and provide for their family
35:18
And so without having like a real
35:20
vision and drive and why for what
35:22
you're doing, it becomes a lot easier
35:24
to lose sight and lose focus I
35:27
believe and also just like what it
35:29
takes to build a successful business. Like
35:31
what am I more controversial? But I
35:33
don't think that controversial takes is that
35:35
it's a huge competitive advantage to be
35:37
a single founder and like it. I
35:39
didn't it take that? However, you like
35:42
that I have other friends who are
35:44
building businesses and they can't work on
35:46
Thursday nights because they have to go
35:48
out to dinner or they're taking their
35:50
kid to the park on Saturdays. and
35:52
like I don't have that his I'm
35:55
for him for better or worse. I
35:57
like. My top ten priorities are how
35:59
do I make this business better and
36:01
stronger and how can we position ourselves
36:03
to dominate in this market? And so
36:05
the short term and in the medium
36:07
term and maybe long term like. That's
36:10
the only thing I really care about.
36:12
And I do think that's like a
36:14
huge competitive advantage relative to other people
36:16
who have other extraneous situations and circumstances.
36:18
Do you think that you. Had.
36:21
Your your wise? Yeah, that. Is.
36:24
Find your Why? Have you found it? Yeah,
36:26
I mean. I also think it
36:28
there's a level like is I complain all
36:31
the time but how stressed I am and
36:33
how they're so much to do and none
36:35
of time in the day but again day
36:37
is really find my god I'm solving problems,
36:39
I'm working with really talented smart people that
36:41
I like to work with and we are
36:43
the underdogs in a very competitive industry. Were
36:45
doing really well and it is like a
36:47
fun thing to do and I think is
36:49
fundamentally taking a step back and like you
36:51
work for what fifty sixty seventy percent of
36:53
your waking hours. You might as well do
36:56
something you care about and that's fine as
36:58
enjoyable. And challenging and every day is
37:00
a challenge. So on a personal level
37:02
the why I continued to learn, continuing
37:04
to build and do something that I
37:06
care about. I am also extremely competitive
37:09
and so I take notes of everyone
37:11
who said no to us on the
37:13
investing sigh all the competitors who think
37:15
that they can run over us like
37:17
the list goes on as like different
37:20
small things that motivate me but be
37:22
soon the competitive and wanting to build
37:24
something that I think can be as
37:26
synonymous as like a. A mail chimp
37:28
or a Google at one point is like
37:30
something that I'm trying to build and it's
37:33
a big, audacious goal And that's what makes
37:35
it fun is kind of put your head
37:37
down and try to build it. Or.
37:39
And with is what is what's been
37:41
the best moments. In this journey.
37:44
Your. Highest Highest. Yeah it might not seem
37:46
like much but there was a time
37:48
when I think one of our second
37:50
or third engineers joined and we were
37:52
making two thousand dollars a month and
37:54
I think maybe and off ten months
37:56
ago to put in slack is like
37:58
our missing twenty thousand dollar. The mounted
38:00
like panic since I've been here but
38:02
they that level of ownership of I've
38:04
been here and I help build that.
38:06
am I? Seeing that from someone that
38:08
you hired and has worked really hard
38:10
was like really close like a parent
38:12
moment of like someone who you trusted
38:15
to do alive and he's built it
38:17
in cross It's but the fact that
38:19
he can light. Really resonate
38:21
with hey I've been working my ass off
38:23
in building something and like here's why I
38:25
can show for like we've ten next seven
38:27
years since I've been here and I feel
38:29
like this I am happy to be a
38:31
part of. That is like all I could
38:33
ask for as the founder and providing opportunities
38:35
for people to do meaningful work that they
38:37
care about. And so that was a moment
38:39
where Sat had me and makes breeding that
38:41
was like really awesome. I'll be able to
38:44
do that for other employees as resale and
38:46
really Mickey to that one feels like they're
38:48
part of something special in there. Actually contributing
38:50
is like. My top priority as a found this
38:52
Oh thank you so much for coming on time
38:54
or the says this is awesome fat per se
38:56
as me. This
39:01
episode was produced by Claire Miller and
39:03
engineered by Benjamin Spencer or executive producers.
39:05
Adjacent started and cancer didn't and True
39:08
Bars or technical director thank you for
39:10
listening to First on found his from
39:12
the Vox Media for of Network furnace
39:14
on Wednesday for office hours. Monday off
39:16
the most. Superficial
39:39
comes from. Mercury doesn't are to make
39:41
him a complex. So simple everything should
39:43
be and sank so that even the
39:45
smallest parts of a bigger purpose simplistic
39:48
and transfer your business operations. That's why
39:50
Mercury powers your financial workflows from the
39:52
bank account. So ambitious companies have the
39:54
buses and control and focus they need
39:57
to perform at their best. apply and
39:59
minutes. Admiral. the.com.
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