Happy one year of Found! To celebrate our anniversary, we welcomed back four founders whose stories really stuck with us since we talked to them. In what Jordan called a “founder smoothie”, we talked with Brie Code from TRU LUV who was on our second episode, Earl Cole from SMART Tire Company who was on the following episode, as well as Aditi Shekar from Zeta, and Jelani Memory from A Kids Company About who joined us a few months later. They talk about perspective shifts they’ve experienced in the past year, their different takes on fundraising, and how they stay true to their respective core missions.
Happy one year of Found! To celebrate our anniversary, we welcomed back four founders whose stories really stuck with us since we talked to them. In what Jordan called a “founder smoothie”, we talked with Brie Code from TRU LUV who was on our second episode, Earl Cole from SMART Tire Company who was on the following episode, as well as Aditi Shekar from Zeta, and Jelani Memory from A Kids Company About who joined us a few months later. They talk about perspective shifts they’ve experienced in the past year, their different takes on fundraising, and how they stay true to their respective core missions.
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Darrell Etherington 0:02
Hi and welcome to found I'm your host Darrell Etherington. I'm here with the also hosts to my host, Jordan crook, just Jordan crook. That's how you do simple here found this podcast from TechCrunch, where we tell you the stories behind the startups. And this is our one year anniversary effectively. So we wanted to do something unusual and bring you something cool and different and new, like show itself is so cool and different and new, probably especially as
Jordan Crook 0:30
it's a super fun show. This is an extra fun one. And that's why we had to pare back all the fun from the intro. So it's
Darrell Etherington 0:39
no fun. Jordan in the
Jordan Crook 0:41
fun for me. Intro we'll keep it calm. Because there's so much fun later on. We don't have overload.
Darrell Etherington 0:47
Yeah, exactly. And then I think you'll probably get a bonus, a little bit of bonus fun from Jordan, in the at the end of the episode, if you want to stick around. Yeah, but we brought back some founders or our favorite founders from past episodes. And we got them all to talk with us. Yes, we're still in there, but mostly with each other, which was very interesting, super fun for me to hear these founders talk to each other because we normally just talk to them from our lame non founder perspective, I suppose then this time, they all talk from their cool, mutual founder or respect perspective and kind of compare and contrast that experiences. Yeah. And it was good. It was a great time. They didn't have to use kid. No, exactly. They didn't have to talk down to you. The guests that we brought back were Jelani memory from a kid's company about recode. From true love rt t shugar. From zeta URL call from smart tire company. So basically, I mean, among our very first episodes,
Jordan Crook 1:49
yeah, they were early on for sure. Earl and Bri were super early on and super zeta and a kids company about came a little bit later. But all ones that we continue to reference, looking back, yes. And talk about a lot and ones that moved us and made us think in different ways. And you should definitely go listen to their episodes.
Darrell Etherington 2:10
Absolutely, absolutely should. And it's kind of like, you know, you might want to do that. First, I don't want to tell you how to live your life listener, but it might behoove you to go listen to those episodes first, if you're just joining us, and then come back
Jordan Crook 2:23
here away from this,
Darrell Etherington 2:25
but listen, but listen, just stay here, like
Jordan Crook 2:29
I'm encouraging, let's say not to do this.
Darrell Etherington 2:32
I'm just encouraging the proper it's like if you were gonna watch Star Wars from scratch, and you would say like, well, what's the what's the viewing order? Right?
Jordan Crook 2:39
It's the same time we've had this conversation actually. So
Darrell Etherington 2:42
if you I mean, again, it's your choice you want but if you want to, you can go listen to their episodes. Again, that's Jelani Bri, Arditti and Earl and then come back here and hear their conversation altogether or listen to their conversation altogether. And then go and hear their perspective then and compare and contrast. It is kind of fun to hear how much has changed. I mean, sometimes not so fun, right? Sometimes very sad things have happened to people. Yeah, in the intervening time, but definitely, like puts into perspective, like the founder journey, and takes away that sort of perception that there's a moment in time. And then it's kind of fix, right? Everybody talks all the time about how's learning, experiencing change, but this really like, shows you
Jordan Crook 3:22
what's it in like a perspective that is so clear the growth from these four people in the short time since we talked to them last. I mean, it couldn't have been more than a year. That's what you're saying. Right? Yeah. And, yeah, there have been a lot of lessons learned. And a lot of kind of perspective change just goes to show how fast things move when you're a founder. And if you're not like, paying attention if you don't stop and look around every once in a while. You know, Ferris Bueller's Day Off? That's right.
Darrell Etherington 3:48
I don't remember what the end of that is. But life will pass.
Jordan Crook 3:52
Yeah, it's yeah, I just missed it. That's right. Maybe we should just kick it off with these dudes.
Darrell Etherington 3:58
I think we shouldn't get them in here. Yeah. And I think I look forward to this again. So maybe this will be an ongoing sort of Time Capsule experience for folks.
Right, great to have everybody here. I mentioned this in the pre call, but we haven't tried this before. So it is we don't know what's gonna happen. It's good. It's gonna be great regardless, but could be a chaotic kind of gray.
Jordan Crook 4:27
It's like when you mix all of your favorite ingredients. It's like I love pizza. And I love ice cream. Like Yeah, we love all of these smoothies. Are you all together? Yeah.
Darrell Etherington 4:39
So to start off, can you all introduce yourself so listener can tell who's who.
Aditi Shekar 4:44
Hi, I'm Aditi and I'm the founder and CEO of zeta.
Earl Cole 4:46
Okay. My Name Is Earl Cole, and my company is a smart tire company.
Brie Code 4:53
Hi, I'm Brie and I'm the founder and CEO of true love.
Jelani Memory 4:57
Memory, and I'm the founder of
Darrell Etherington 4:58
the kids go I think what's Very interesting about this group is like nobody does anything even close to what anybody else does pretty much. I mean, maybe there's definitely some crossover. But I think one place we can all probably start is just in fundraising and investors. It's kind of like the whole way this whole thing works. Are there any updates there? Does anybody have any exciting things to share? Maybe new rounds raise? Or is there any? I know Odyssey you mentioned? Maybe you want to name and shame? Yeah.
Jordan Crook 5:27
Any, any shade to throw as well.
Aditi Shekar 5:32
I'm happy to share Yeah, we've raised a seed round in July of 2021, for about $3 million. So our fundraising process was actually pretty wild this time, because my dad actually passed away from COVID, very suddenly, smack in the middle of my fundraising process. It was one of the most insane experiences of my life. And I've been trying to talk about it more openly, just so other founders who go through grief and go through loss and bluntly, go through that stress and pressure have just another point of view and another experience to hear about and share.
Darrell Etherington 6:05
Wow, because it's so it's so all encompassing, and
Aditi Shekar 6:08
you can't hand it over to anyone else. It was a it was a tough moment, the sequence of events where we had an acquisition off for the fundraising process, and my dad passed away all at once. I was just like, I have no idea what's happening. But it's like that out of body experience, where you're just watching your life from afar and going, Oh, my God, what the heck just happened. One of my biggest lessons on fundraising is like time it you know, really create that feeling, drive the urgency do all of that. And we did it. And literally in the last half of the fundraising process, this suddenly happened. So what I chose to do, which may or may not have been the right thing, honestly, upon further reflection, I took three days off. And I just didn't talk to anybody. And I said to the team, like don't talk to me, I'm just useless. I went to the beach, I sat in Big Sur, on the beach for three days, hung out with my dad, and then sort of picked myself up and said, Okay, I'm gonna close this out. And I'm gonna figure out how to handle the rest of this throughout the earth. So it really helped me to create a little bit of that space to grieve without necessarily feeling like everything around me was falling apart. And my team was just incredible. Everybody, every single person stepped in, in ways that I didn't even imagine. So that worked, but I'm still grieving, and it was very sudden. So I think it helped in some ways that it was almost like a, something hits you, you stop, you respond to it, you take a break, and then you come back at it.
Jelani Memory 7:35
Well, I'd love to say, you know, oddity, thanks for sharing, like, Wow, what a harrowing experience to go through. And and I think you're right to share it as a founder, because we're just kind of supposed to be bulletproof and run through brick walls. And the reality is, is like, this is really hard and not hard and the cool like hustle porn way, but like hard, and maybe I don't want to do this anymore. Kind of hard. You know, I'm going through my own fundraising experience right now and feel like I'm a good counterpoint to your experience in a lot of ways where I try and do the least amount as possible for fundraising. I'm a builder, and I love building and making and so investors will like email me multiple times to go like, Hey, can you send me the deck? And I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. Like, it's next week cool. Like, I just, I, it's almost like I can't be bothered to because building the company is so damn important. Now, that being said, like, you know, you raise capital for a reason. And so you know, my last board meeting, I said, Hey, look, I promise I will spend more time actually investing in this fundraise so that we can actually wrap it up. And look, fundraising is fundraising, like it's not super fun. And there's yeses, and there's noes. And there's people who just drag it out. But I don't know. Kudos to you for just sticking it out, balancing it all. And then taking the time to really truly grieve afterwards.
Aditi Shekar 8:56
Yeah. And honestly, something that really helped me was an incredible number of founders reached out. I don't know, there's something so special about talking to other founders. Like if there's just like an immediate camaraderie and like an immediate amount of trust. It's like, Oh, my God, I know where you are. I feel you, I've been there. How can I help? And it's not the bullshit, how can I help right? But how can I help email for your investors? But like, Truly, truly, how can I help? So I'm actually really curious how's that worked out for you taking like a more casual approach in a
Jelani Memory 9:24
really interesting way. It works out pretty awesome and on all fronts, although I'll give you a couple of downsides but one of the ways that works awesome is it kind of seems like I don't need their money, which investors love by the way, they love feeling like oh my god, like he might not take my check. I should really get a hold of this guy. So they like that. The second is, is it lets me actually focus on the thing that I have fun with and I enjoy so I get to keep building in a lot of ways. Look, the downside is it just slows the process down right but in some ways I kind of go like all the same yeses. We're going to be the same. Yes. Isn't same nose we're gonna say nose too. based on the numbers, like I think companies live or die by their numbers, create all the FOMO, you want to, once they start kicking the tires are gonna look at your numbers and go, this is a fit or it's not a fit, right, based on the numbers that you have. So it's working out, I'm enjoying myself, you know, go talk to my board, and ask them how they feel about that.
Darrell Etherington 10:17
I just wanted to add like, URL, you guys, you had the we funder campaign, and you close that were like 1.3 million or something, right? Is that right?
Earl Cole 10:27
You know, my, my approach is very different. I choose not to talk to any VCs at all. And that does make them line up even more. There is that fear of missing out, but I wanted to democratize those systems, you know, the way I grew up, you know, I didn't know anything about investing in a company. I don't even know about anybody starting a company or being a founder or stocks or anything like that. And I learned that kind of later in life. And so when I learned about these new systems, these new platforms that we funder and, you know, I like that approach, I like people, just average Joe's has been able to put in 100 bucks, 200 bucks to put in their money as opposed to like, you know, yeah, eventually, you know, the 10 million 20 million gift from a VC is great. But I don't want to start off like that, you know, I feel like every person should have this opportunity to just get in on the ground floor of a company like this, and especially something as simple as tires. I mean, it's not a sexy product. But you know what it is on everything, when you think about it, tires are on everything, like from cars, to planes, to baby strollers, you know, everything has some kind of tire. And so it's a very relatable product. So I wanted to have it relate to this everyday person. So that's why I chose to go that route. And we're still doing the crowdfunding thing. I love, love, love, love making VCs, just wait. they'll email me, and I'll get back to them two weeks later. And they will say we're not interested. We don't want you to, like literally just treat them terrible. And is that good? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. You know, at some point, I'm going to need their money. But
Jordan Crook 12:07
they're gonna listen to this during the diligence man like,
Aditi Shekar 12:12
Mark are?
Earl Cole 12:13
Yeah, okay. You know, eventually we're gonna have to do a real fundraise. I think there's a $5 million limit on crowdfunding per year. So if anybody can raise $5 million a year to we're profitable, might not ever need VC, Miami, the goal will be great to not ever need VC money where I'm not controlled by anybody or I don't know, every every approach is different. I might say something different next month. You know, when someone says like, hey, Elon Musk wants to like Elon Musk wants to what? What he wants to buy, he needs to buy another
Jordan Crook 12:43
we're not going that route. Well, we're gonna do right now is we're gonna pivot because Bri? Well, it's a very different perspective, because Bri was had an investor that essentially like, was very influential in shaping perspective. Right. So that's a different vibe than like, I would like to avoid them forever.
Brie Code 13:01
Yeah, I would, I guess I would, I can't remember what I said last time.
Jordan Crook 13:07
We were like hypnotized.
Brie Code 13:08
So yeah, we've taken a different approach. When I started, I didn't know anything about business or anything about how to incorporate a company or build studio, but I knew what I wanted to do. And I called about 100 other studio heads that I'd met in the video game industry. What I do is not video games, but it's tangential. And I asked each of them, you know, how did you get a studio? How did you get started? And almost every single one of them told me, Don't talk to VCs, VCs are evil, stay away from that, what you want to do is get a publisher and here's how it works. So the publisher and undescribed, the most horrendous situations I could imagine, and levels of stress that I knew I could never tolerate. So I thought, oh, what's the species? Because that's how I work. And so then I looked into it. And I thought this actually fits with what I want to do. But also, as I started to talk to VCs, I noticed that most of them didn't understand what I was doing, and that they although it's supposed to be the thing for scaling and innovation, at least in the videogame industry, most VCs have investment theses and they're looking for companies that fit their thesis and for doing something that is so radically strange that no one's thought anything about anything like it, you don't fit. So my first investor was someone who I was bothering a lot because I wanted to know him because he'd run a studio, the closest to what mine was. And so I just kept messaging him and saying, you know, I need help, like, I don't know what I'm doing. And then I met him for lunch. I didn't know he was investing. And I told him more while we were at lunch and his eyes got really wide. They started asking me questions, and I realized he got it. He's the first person I spoke to that got it. So he had just joined or started an accelerator with some other people. And so I joined they didn't have sparked for me, but I was very pushy, and they made an additional spot. And then that got me to launch of an experimental product that proved part of what I saw the possibility for new model for technology completely. And then from there, I was, again, really choosy and pushy. So I just had met the, you know, many, many VCs, like you do during fundraising. And I just decided to be like, super honest and authentic, and get to know as quickly as possible with people that thought I was too weird. And you know that what I'm building doesn't fit in what they're looking for at all. And then I found one who said, he'd been looking for a company like ours for three years. And he's incredibly influential in our direction, and my understanding of my role and our technology and where we're going. And then he introduced me to some more people. And from there, I've just been really careful about who I bring in only people who understand what we're doing and want the same things. Because we're not building for profit, we're building for human benefit, but somehow using VC and capitalism to move in that direction. And so it's kind of these careful alliances and careful, like double bottom line type approaches, and I but I will only make a deal with someone if they're going to bring insight to the table and help me figure out what I'm doing. Yeah,
Darrell Etherington 16:15
I think I mean, probably based on my recollection of our conversation, Joanna, you couldn't relate to a lot of that.
Jelani Memory 16:22
Yeah, look, we a decade. And so where tons of investments got made, and a bunch of companies and a bunch of founders, and look at the pickle we're in, right, like, with every major tech company, I don't think that's a mistake. It's I don't know if you want to call it capitalism out of control, or whatever. But the incentives were aligned, they made a bunch of money and screwed a bunch of stuff up then. So I think a new generation of founders came along and sort of said, well, we don't actually want to destroy the Earth, because we like living here. And we like being a part of a functioning society, you know, and so is it, okay, if you invest in us, we'll make you probably some money, but we won't burn the whole thing down in the process. And like, that's good, right? Like, we should all be for that. But I feel like there was a generation that really like could care less, which it feels bonkers to me. But you know, looking at all the businesses collectively here between all of us, like, we're all trying to do something more than just like build the next Facebook or build the next snap. We're trying to do some genuine good in our own unique spaces. And that's, I don't know, that feels investable. Right.
Jordan Crook 17:40
So what's interesting, though, about that is like, every single one of you has a double bottom line, right in some way where you're like, benefiting humankind, as well as able to generate revenue or like build a successful business. And so the goal has to be like scale, because at scale, you have the greatest impact. But it's also the scale that seems to have fucked all of those major tech companies as well. Right. And so like, I think the question I asked to all of you is, like, how frequently? And how deeply are you thinking about safeguarding future you,
Aditi Shekar 18:13
I would actually argue, like what Earl was talking about earlier, is kind of compelling, right? Like, if you can find a way to maybe not your users, but like the general public to involve them in the investment of your own company, you can have a secondary group of stakeholders to be accountable to. So then it's not just about the bottom line, but it is, in fact about serving that group of stakeholders delivering on the product promises you made, and actually following through, you know, I think that's a compelling tactic. I agree with you, Jordan, I also unlike the Google founders wanted to do no evil, then what are you Google's doing a ton of evil? You know, wherever, whichever side you sit on that debate, I think it is a really valid question like, how do you we're all early stage founders. So it's easier to hold true to our visions and our missions, because we don't have as much pressure on us than some of the folks, you know, much later from us. So I think there's a couple of things like at one, I'm super excited about different types of corporate entity structures. Like I think the B Corp is super interesting. And I'd love to explore that angle a little bit more. I think getting our customers involved as our shareholders is another really interesting thing. We're seeing this a lot in consumer FinTech, Robin Hood, tried it, we'll set that aside, you know, we were seeing even acorns, try it as they were thinking about raising their spec. So I think there's a ton of potential to leverage them as shareholders and start to navigate that. And then the other thing is, I think you've got to set some really clear benchmarks like you got to have impact as part of your metrics across the board. Like one of the things that we just did is we launched a diversity manifesto. And we were like, We don't want to serve just white families. We want to serve the average American family. And that is everything from our cap table to our employee base to our users. And we hold ourselves accountable to that every quarter. It's a start. It's not perfect. by any means, please don't DM me about why that's a dumb idea. But it's us starting to, you know, try to put some guardrails there.
Jelani Memory 20:07
Yeah, I absolutely love that. And sharing so many of those same values. I just don't think these conversations were being had seven years ago, just not at all.
Darrell Etherington 20:17
They used to say like, we want to change the world, and then they would take for granted that that was for the better.
Jelani Memory 20:21
Yeah, what's the Steve Jobs quote, right? He wants to make a dent in the universe like, No, that is like, don't mess up our new car, right? Don't put a dent in anything like, but I think, again, we're out of that stage where where we are lionizing, these folks. And we're sort of going actually, maybe, maybe they're not my heroes anymore. Maybe I should have different heroes and look up different folks. And, you know, go back to an earlier part of what we were discussing, I think scale is a big problem for all of us, if we all have the privilege of reaching scale, all of those bad parts of our company will come out right and meaning like, the ways that we cut corners, and the ways that we sort of didn't depreciate certain parts of our business or focus on certain parts of our business. And I think what's required, and there's a couple businesses that I think do this is are principles at scale, right, actually having principles and sticking to them, you see that with a company like Patagonia actually think you see that with a company like Airbnb, where you go, they're actually sticking by their principles and putting their money where their mouth is in some pretty big ways. And then you see that go out the door with the metas are the Amazons or the Googles of the world, a lot of times where they go, Well, actually, we just like to make all the monies. And so I think this next tranche of founders, you know, us included, are hoping and wanting and trying to do something different. And the true test will be when we reach scale, right? When a handful of us become those mega unicorns, if indeed those exist 10 years from now, what kind of principles will we bring at scale?
Earl Cole 22:00
And I don't know why we work just came to mind. On how, you know, they were, and this is what's interesting how people can even mask this whole having great principles and consciousness, you know, I think their thing was elevate the world's consciousness. No. And they sold that. And you can say, like, okay, that them scaling so fast, and getting all the money change who they were in the principals of the company? Or was it already their agenda from the start? You know, to everyone's point with that, you know, I think there definitely is some type of shift going on to where people are starting to care again. But does that mean the VCs are gonna line up for that? Because do they care? I mean, we need them to care, because they control the most most of the money because we can, you know, be the most conscious founder out there and have a great idea. But for them, it's like, I don't care about changing the world, I care about owning the world. And that's how a lot of them think. And I'm just want to know, if this shift is happening with founders, will it happen within the VC space. So these dreams can come true together,
Brie Code 23:04
I think it's important to zoom out and look at natural cycle. And of course, when we first invented the internet, and first invented tech companies, the first of them were childish, or adolescent, and that we didn't really know how to apply systems thinking to we, you know, people who grew up without the internet, how much chance they have to learn systems thinking, and so not realizing the impacts of their actions and getting swept up in the energy of it like gods like, you know, getting swept up in any music scene when you're a teenager. And what we have now is to look at that and see, okay, where does that go next? Like, what is the little bit more adult version of what they're doing? And so that's how we kind of look at everything. We didn't go back to the drawing board, but we looked at like, Okay, what exists? what are best practices across the tech industry now? And what can we take? And what can we unfold into the next iteration of that, like, that's that adolescent version? And what's the adult version of that? So speaking about metrics, we call ours benefit metrics, and we don't measure any traditional metrics, we've looked at each one, and instead god of like, what's the one that's beneficial for humans that we can use instead? So for engagement, we don't measure engagement, but we measure what state of mind our technology brings people into. And for retention, we don't look at retention. But we look at like, what psychological development is happening, people using our technology, and then we look at collaborative flow that people are achieving collaboration together or not, and are they actually achieving the thing they wanted to achieve together and collaborative or collective mission? We call that, and those are the metrics we optimize for. And those are the metrics that we report to our board and to our investors. So far, that's worked for us and that's what our investors want. They see that the, you know, the current way of doing things is not going to work. And it's not going to work for many reasons for the way it's affecting people psychologically. Either way, it's affecting our planet. And so at least some of our investors believe that just like how tech companies kind of took over the stock market around 2000 dish companies that are focusing on what it's actually good for people in a real way, like not, not some extra piece of the company, but products that are actually really beneficial there, people are going to be the ones that are going to rise to the top and be the ones people use. And if there is a stock market, we'll be the ones that will be there.
Darrell Etherington 25:27
That makes tons of sense. And I think but one thing I was thinking about when we were talking about the prior question about like, impact at scale, and how it can change was with us specifically on what your company is doing. Like it feels like it has the greatest potential to become manipulative, right in a way that is perhaps can be turned to evil intent, or Ill do you think about that at all, ever, or whether you know, the manipulation can be turned to Ale or anything like that.
Brie Code 25:53
I think that it's has to be something that we think about every day. And in every decision that we're making, are we building those guardrails, but are we also building it right into what we're building in a way that it cannot be easily lifted and changed. So you know, our model for technology, we're building it, it invites states of mind that are humanistic, and pro social. But mostly, it's about not even inviting certain states of mind. That's a mischaracterization. It's about connecting people with their own values and our own agency by helping them not go into reactive or divisive states of mind, but staying true to where they actually feel unbelief. And having that moment of pause, where you can make choice and choose your action from who you actually are. And so the reason that I felt okay to begin developing this technology is I spent a summer reading every book I could find about the science of meditation, or magic or altruism, anything I could find related to what I wanted to do with technology. And I've read, I can't remember exactly where I read that about 10% of people tend to be altruistic and about 10% of people tend to be self interested in everyone else in the middle, you might be getting those exact percentages wrong. But the idea is, there's a cohort on either end that are one or the other, and everyone else in the middle, the vast majority of people prefer to be altruistic when they believe that this when I perceive that the system is fair. And so the more we can make systems fair, and the more we can help people connect to their own values, that I believe that outcome will be positive.
Aditi Shekar 27:27
Can I push on that a little? One thing that I worry about is us as a human race doesn't always make the best choices. And, you know, we continue to perpetuate things that we know are no good for us, you know, and speaking of Elon does, it makes sense for like, it wasn't until he came along and really sort of upgraded the brand around electric cars that they really took off. And that people really started to give a shit I don't know for electric cars. But part of me wonders if left to our own devices, as human beings we always make the better, more impactful choice. And sometimes the current state of consumer tech makes me think not. I'm being a little pessimistic today. Give me
Darrell Etherington 28:08
Hey, no journalists language, that's for sure we are
Jordan Crook 28:12
Yeah, this is how we tend to be whatever the self interested cohort is, or the jaded cohort is or whatever. I think that Bree makes a good caveat there, though, which is like, when we perceive systems are fair, like when I'm at the airport, we're all toast. Because nothing's fair about the airport. Well, that was an intense conversation about power corrupting, which feels like a lesson that we're all learning together, especially this next generation of founders, which is exciting. But let's just talk broadly, what is kind of the biggest lesson that you've all learned, since the last time that we talked,
Jelani Memory 28:50
you know, I feel uniquely cut out for this founder thing, because I just don't know if I'm employable, any other way to be honest. And so I take that for granted genuinely, and I love what I do. But we had an incredible year in 2020. And to be frank, like, 2021 just kicked our ass. We grew the team, we revenue, you know, burned, got to high revenue went down. Some products didn't click or work, a lot of big swings that we took just were just massive whiffs, you know, that was not how I wanted the year to go. But I was able to reflect on it and go, Okay, what did I do wrong? Was this my fault? And what can I change and do better this year? Right. And luckily, we had enough capital in the bank to make those decisions and pivot and try different things. And I think one of the things that I really embraced coming into this year was that some of my superpowers are massive weaknesses. And so I have a massive product superpower. I just love working on product. I can iterate I can move really fast. I can build lots of things that I think and genuinely we'll connect with customers. The problem is, is I can neglect marketing, I can neglect data I can neglect, you know, like team development, I can neglect a bunch of stuff in service of like, but isn't this cool? Like, isn't this coolest thing we built? Right? And so I had to sort of go, Okay, well, that thing needs to sort of be proportions based on these other tasks. I won't say I was pulled aside because I, I pulled a board member aside and I said, how do I be better at this and she just said, be the CEO. Like, you're the only one that's the CEO do the CEOs job first. And if you get to the other stuff, great, but she's like Jelani, you're spending a lot of time working on stuff. That's not the CEOs job, and she has, you're great at it, you're world class at it. It's just not your job. And there was a bit of an identity crisis for me to go, it's kind of why I made this job was so that I get to do this stuff. But I realized we're we're at a scale and we're moving at a pace where my team, my company needs things from me that in some ways, I never signed up to give it but I am totally responsible to provide for it. And so I had to grow up, you know, to breeze point I moved out of the adolescent phase and maybe moved into a little more of a grownup phase as a founder. I was like, what if I was like a good manager? What if I like empowered people to do good work? And what if I like got out of their way and unblocked them on tasks, and they just like, executed, and I did my job, it was like this revelation to me. And it seems to be going kind of, okay, kind of, well, you know, it's hard for our designers to keep me out of figma. So they just don't invite me to certain boards. You know, you'd have to fight to keep me out of an Excel spreadsheet. But I feel like I'm learning and I'm growing. I'm getting better for the simple fact that it's existential, right. Like, if I don't do this, well, I'll kill the company in the process. And I don't want to kill my baby. I love my baby. I love this company. Right. And so I think that's a big sort of reflect back from state of mind. Like, if you go listen to the last episode, I was probably like, Oh, we're gonna do all the things. Now. I'm like, we're gonna do some of the things. get around to it.
Aditi Shekar 32:11
A couple of learnings for me one, I connect so much with what you're saying Jelani, I was often an early employee before I became a founder. And so I was like, I've almost founded a company, which is a bullshit truth, you tell yourself. And I was like, how, you know, how hard can it be? And I started building and I was like, Oh, it's just a group of people like working on something we love, like, let's go. And then very quickly, I started to realize people were treating me differently. And I was like, what's going on? And my co founder finally was like, honestly, You're the fucking CEO, they're just a little nervous around you, or they're scared to tell you that that's a stupid freakin idea. And there's been like this life. I mean, there's a several year journey of really understanding that as a CEO, your job and the way people respond to you and react to you really changes, especially as your company starts to grow. And you have to change with it. Whereas I kept being like, we're transparent culture tells me I'm, I'm crazy, but no one's actually going to do that, you know, are very few people will truly will do that. And so that's been one big lesson for me is learning how to really own that role, and be it and not be annoyed. And then CEOs and days, and people won't just be direct with me and tell me what's going wrong or what's going right or whatnot. The other thing I'd say is, I think I've learned to think one of the best parts about being a founder is you really think about patterns about what Bree was talking about earlier, systems change, like, you really start to zoom out. And one of my favorite things is we spent so much time building building building, we're in the in the minutiae, as you said, of doing this work. But when you get to step back, one of my favorite parts about in fundraising is that you get to talk to all these investors who all they do is pattern spot, and they're constantly pattern spotting and spending time with them. And thinking about the company and the business. I actually just got off a call with investors that who I've known for several years, and the two of us were talking about our long term product roadmap. It's just a fun conversation. So learning to create space for that has been tremendous for our company direction and value. Whereas earlier, I was sort of like the product manager and the darkling, I think this is kind of interesting. I think that's kind of interesting. And that's the fact I'm like, No, that's a terrible path for us to go down. Because it doesn't make sense at the system's level. So I think those two things have been really tremendous for me. And then the last thing I'll throw out is one of the things I really don't love about entrepreneurs in like, the latest breed is their field to be a lot of career entrepreneurs. They're like, let me start a company raise a little money. Then I'll go start another company raised another money exit. And I'm like, I don't want to do that. And I realized that this last year, like I, you know, when we got these acquisition offers, I was like shit, I can make a shit ton of money here, and like, leave and be done with it. But I really love what we're building and I want to build this ship for life. Like that's dramatic, but I really want to build with this company, I really want to see this impact in life. And I think that was a really clear realization for me this year was, I don't want to sell the company, if I don't have to, if I can keep building this, and if I can keep proving out this thesis, I really want to do that.
Darrell Etherington 35:16
That's great. That sounds like a great clarifying moment. Because yeah, there's tons of people who just do that end up in that Puddle Jumping kind of mentality for the rest of your careers.
Aditi Shekar 35:24
I call it ibanking entrepreneurs, which is so unfair,
Jordan Crook 35:27
Darrell, and I talk about it to like a founder for the sake of being a founder. Yeah. You can like smell it a mile away.
Brie Code 35:34
I can't imagine anything more boring than figuring out a formula. And then just doing that same thing over and over again.
Darrell Etherington 35:39
sounds, it sounds hellish. Actually, when put that way? It's like there
Jordan Crook 35:43
are people that like it, I guess, whatever, like a result of it, maybe. But
Earl Cole 35:47
well, in our last conversation that I have, we didn't
Jordan Crook 35:51
focus almost at all on survivor. No, not at all. Well,
Earl Cole 35:55
I've been surviving, working with NASA. So we did talk about that. Yes. difficulties and challenges. It sounds cool. Yes, it's cool. But NASA is so slow with everything goes there, you know, they're gigantic, you know, when you're trying to grow a company, and you're a founder, and you know, you want to be nimble and quick, because that's we have to be when you're a startup, but you have to report to NASA. And it's like, hey, I need this answer. By tomorrow. They're like, All right, we'll get back to you in six weeks. Yes, that happened all the time. So this past year, I was learning how to better work with them, I would say they have their own needs and what they require. And you know, they could care less you know, how big our company gets, or how fast it grows, because they're doing stuff like sending robots to Mars and sending the first woman to the moon soon. So they got important things to do that this little bitty tiny tire company that they like, but I'm starting to understand, like, Okay, I see where we fit in the NASA universe were like way at the bottom. But the more cool stuff we started to do, like we started, I started to report more to them about our progress, because before it wasn't doing that as much, and they started to open up the floodgates a little bit more, it's sharing, and then getting back to a sooner and they're like, oh, and then they started writing about us, which is rare. Because you know, because NASA has this thing to where they are not supposed to favor any company. So they're very generic about everything, can't use their logo for this, you can't do that like, but then they started writing about us because they started actually being proud of the work that we're doing. And their motto is for all mankind, for all humankind, sorry, is for all humankind. So they truly believe that. And, you know, that's our focus with our company. Now even though it's tires been, you know, the more eco friendly, you know, tires on everything we're trying to, you know, do something good for the world. And we just started sharing more information with them. And they started to share back and actually starting to help us a bit more. So I guess I did learn that finding that happy medium on how to work with this gigantic organization. So yeah, so that's where I am now. I'm actually here at our lab here in Ohio because I live in Los Angeles, but I had to fly out here every month because the NASA facility we work with us out here. And I actually have a massive employee here at the lab today's law, I don't want to talk too loud.
Darrell Etherington 38:27
We just got to a good place.
Jordan Crook 38:30
I was gonna say to like your NASA is slow enough that they don't listen to your podcast. Yeah, they're so slow.
Earl Cole 38:38
They are they are very slow and mule. I'm not a first time founder. This is like my third company I founded and no did not exit or sell anything. But you know, they're all learnings. You know, they call them failures, but they're all just learning, like you'll be in I think we talked about this in the last in the last podcast, you know, all of the different companies without found it from different ideas that I might have had working with people, you know, you learn something to bring to the next company. And this you learn to breathe. And I kept doing that till I got to the point where I could work with somebody like a NASA and I have this knowledge base of the failures and the learnings from my other companies to where, you know, I don't even care what Title I have. Because you know, when you're the CEO, you're the janitor, you're the you know, the botanists, your, your whatever, you know, your company needs like I've had to do everything and your current founders now are probably a lot bigger than us. You have teams and they'll have seed rounds. We have not gotten to that point yet. So we have a team of four right now but you know what, it's a magical four it's like going to binge or for a bit different. I guess literally like we hired this guy that's like he had 43 years in between here and the guy like embedded like these crazy things that you know that you see every day but he believed in our vision and decided to work with us. So it was literally like hiring Captain America now. He's like powerful enough. It's like It's like A hiring Doctor Strange. Maybe the Silver Surfer for all you Oh, okay guys, like you'd like cosmic flowers. There you go. He's that good. It's like he's like a tire wizard. So it's like we have like the tire wizard works for our company. So we and we feel good about that. And that's how these are the things I'm learning. I'm not going over the places I'm thinking about. They're actually right there next year. And we just dawned on me that NASA
Darrell Etherington 40:27
it's good to learn how to deal with a really difficult stakeholder. I mean, that's a huge lesson, especially
Earl Cole 40:32
if you're NASA is not difficult. I mean, a wonderful, awesome, cautious
Jordan Crook 40:36
stakeholder on different timescale in a startup. Inspiring for all humankind, a different time scale.
Earl Cole 40:49
might actually be listening to this now. They do have
Jordan Crook 40:52
their motto then put a dent in the universe. Masses definitely listening. Yeah. Yes, we're all okay, Bree, why don't you bring us home with the biggest lesson you've learned, and you were one of our first episodes, so you've had plenty of time to learn a lot. So it's better be a good one.
Brie Code 41:11
We have learned a lot. At the beginning of the pandemic, we realized we had this AI that we were constructing to help with human growth and development. And I'm very familiar with post traumatic growth from a few things that have happened in my life. And the tendon befriend response, which is a cornerstone of our work as well as connected to post traumatic growth. So I felt at first like, Oh, should we be ramping up production on our product, like we have a huge audience we need to serve here, we understand something other people don't understand. But then I realized, like my team, they're mostly Junior, they've never faced any huge thing like this before. And the best way for us to get through the pandemic is to take what we have a very AI and start applying it to our team processes. So we stopped focusing on the product. And we focused on what is a way that we can really prove our AI to ourselves through our own growth and development. And that we need to be on that it was kind of a parallel realization that we need to be on that path to be able to pick this technology. I can't remember what I think that's Conway's Law, that the technology you create ends up being a mirror of your organizational structure. And so each of us on the team needs to be exploring our growth in order to create this technology. And also we have technology that can help people grow, even under a traumatic conditions. And so we did that. And we experimented. And we iterated, and it wasn't easy. And we've come to a place that is really beautiful. And in order. You know, I talked about how we're working in this capitalist framework to try to create something different. And so we have to move like from where we are to where we want to be by letting go different things at different times. And being strategic about how we make that transition. And to distribute power across our team, we also have to distribute responsibility. And so by taking our AI and kind of putting it in our team's hands, not for just our audience, but also for themselves, and then iterating, on all of these things together. Through the wisdom of our team we've arrived at, we realize that by accident, we arrived at the design for a new form of social media that the way that our team is working is the design that I was putting off until later because I wanted to make sure that I really understand our model so that we don't create unintended network effects that we don't start to go social until we understand our model. And so I realized that we had got the basics of it from our iterative work with ourselves. And so now we can start to test that with external audiences and build it into this product that we think will be a new way of kind of what grows out of the adult version that grows out of what we know of social media right now. But that was completely emergent. It wasn't something we planned. It was something that just occurred naturally and organically. And I find that extremely beautiful.
Darrell Etherington 44:05
That's awesome. Well, thank you very much all of you for Jaya. It's very nice talking to you. It was great catching up honestly. And we'll do it again. This we'll just have to have the cohort come back like these are
Jordan Crook 44:18
our favorites. Yeah, awesome. I love pizza ice cream smoothies are actually really good.
Darrell Etherington 44:28
founders, those two by myself, TechCrunch news editor Darrell Etherington and TechCrunch Managing Editor Jordan crook. Uncharted Power Kearney is our executive producer. We are produced by Maggie Stamets and edited by Cal Keller TechCrunch is audio products are managed by Henry pic of it. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and on twitter@twitter.com slash man. You can also email us at found@techcrunch.com You can call us and leave a voicemail at 510-936-1618 Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
Jordan Crook 45:05
How many entrepreneurs does it take to do a podcast?
Brie Code 45:10
My dog can identify that my dog can identify the end of a meeting by when everyone starts to say thank you and then he knows that that's then he's allowed to interrupt
Jordan Crook 45:21
Jetty can identify the beginning of a meeting and that's how he knows this time to play. Yeah.
Darrell Etherington 45:28
Hello and welcome to found I'm your host Darrell Etherington and with me is my co host, the co host, the host the other hosts my host. I'm not even making a joke, because it's very special episode.
Jordan Crook 45:39
This is a super special episode. My name is Jordan crook. I'm the host your host hostess is a brand that is not related to found.
Darrell Etherington 45:51
Hey, I'm Darrell Etherington. Welcome to found I'm here with the other hosts to my host
Jordan Crook 45:58
Jordan crook. Hello. That's right. So I host this brand.
Darrell Etherington 46:02
That is what we refer to ourselves as the whole house
Jordan Crook 46:10
waiting for me to come save you. She's not
Darrell Etherington 46:12
waiting for that, but it's not.
Jordan Crook 46:15
We're having fun Maggie
Transcribed by https://otter.ai