Finding a co-founder by CEO of Opal
Stephen Cobbe, co-founder and CEO at Opal talks about his journey with Opal, ups and downs and how to handle them. He also shares some recommendations on how to find a good co-founder and shares his personal experience in that field along with two great books.
Stephen's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scobbe/
Opal's website: https://opal.dev/
Two great books in question:
1. Never Split the Difference: https://www.amazon.com/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-Depended/dp/0062407805
2. The Founder's Dilemmas: https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Dilemmas-Anticipating-Foundation-Entrepreneurship/dp/0691158304
The course on reaching out to investors that Fundraising Radio's team is developing: https://bit.ly/FRpodcast101
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You're listening to the
expansion Chronicles and
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podcasts about expansion of
steps into the us.
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On this podcast, will talk about
the main mistakes, that Founders
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make, while trying to move from
their home turf and build
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divisions of their companies.
In the US, we try to explain how
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to avoid these pitfalls and what
tools can be helpful in this
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complicated process.
So if you are found your located
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outside of America and think of
growing your company in the
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states, these podcast is
definitely for you.
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So let's jump into the episode
and Today's a guest speaker, we
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have Steven Cobb co-founder and
CEO at old pal.
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And in this episode, we'll talk
about numerous things.
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One of which being how did
Stephen found a pile, and how
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did he stumble?
As he says upon this idea and
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what are his plans for their
series Aid?
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That they're raising right now.
So Steven A, let's kick it off
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by you, giving us some
background on yourself and on
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old pal.
Yeah, totally constantly.
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And thanks so much for having me
super happy to be here.
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Yeah.
So you know, I studied computer
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science and I was a developer at
Dropbox for several years and
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when I left Dropbox, I knew I
wanted to do a start-up and
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basically what you know, I ended
up connecting with my co-founder
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who is sort of a friend of a
friend and we basically took
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about a month to just sort of
found her date where he and I
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would spend a lot of time
together just like working out
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of a co-working space.
Doing a combination of like
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researching ideas and also kind
of like doing a lot of like
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value or values oriented
exercises like, for instance, we
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read, you know, a bunch of
books.
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Like, you know, the founders
dilemma or, you know, some of
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these other like negotiating
books and we had a lot of
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conversations about them, get a
sense of what was important to
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us and how we kind of just
gelled together and you know in
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parallel to reading His books
and learning sort of just about
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startups generally, we were also
like researching a bunch of
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start-up ideas and you know,
this was you know my co-founder
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Nasim.
He's he's awesome.
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He's a really start up oriented
person and so we had a really
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systematic way of trying to
figure out what we wanted to do.
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We basically like you know,
picked about 10, you know
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investors institutional firms in
angels that had like really
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really good performance over the
last like five years and
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basically Just looked at
everything they had funded on
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crunchbase the last six months.
And from there that's sort of
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like, you know, generated a lot
of like, ideas for us and one
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space that came up a lot was
like just software security.
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And so, we are sort of, you
know, go we were talking to a
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lot of people and someone
suggested that like, you know,
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we look at basically, you know,
SSH key management and you know
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this instantly triggered a lot
of like firsthand.
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And like Memories for from me
and the same, you know, the same
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used to work at mule soft.
I worked at Dropbox and we had
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both dealt with like a lot of
access management pain.
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And that Dropbox, we had a tool
for access management and that
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tool is pretty good but you
know, no one wanted to work on
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it.
It was like you know, constantly
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like under maintained and so it
felt like going into sort of the
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access management space based on
the fact that we had had
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first-hand pain with it based on
the fact that, you know, Dropbox
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had this internal To land that
was like sort of a good starting
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point from a product perspective
that was sort of how you know, I
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met my co-founder and ended up
in sort of the access management
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space.
Lovely.
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I love your approach of founder
dates, that sounds awesome.
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That sounds super interesting
and that sounds like a
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structured approach to learning
about the being a start-up
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founder.
That is really interesting, any
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advice to other startup Founders
here who are maybe just in the
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beginning of the journey who
maybe have not read as many
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books as you did.
Any advice there, any of your
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favorite books that he would
just like to recommend on the
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spot here?
Yeah, I mean so I think you know
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my biggest Piece of advice.
I mean, just a based on my own
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experience and so you know, it's
a data point of one but you
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know, so much of the last year
and a half for me has been much
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more of.
I'd say an emotional struggle
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than necessarily a technical
struggle, or like a product or
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business struggle.
Like, you know, those are all,
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you know, all those categories
of problems really hard, they're
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really important.
But you know, there's just so
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many ups and downs to doing a
startup that, you know, picking
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that, that person that not only
Has like a, you know, a
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complementary or reinforcing
skillset to you but also someone
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that is that you're like, very
emotionally on the same page
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with and you shall with well
interpersonally.
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I think it's incredibly
important you know as far as
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books.
Yeah.
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I mean I think that the founders
dilemma is honestly the one that
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that stands out the most.
To me that was just such a
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great, like, such a great
overview of all the sorts of Of
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like decision points that you're
likely to reach as a founder.
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And you know, the biggest one of
which is like, you know, are you
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sort of like control oriented or
value-oriented?
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Namely are you are you trying to
you know preserve as much
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control or startup as possible
or basically you know, in Rich
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the shareholders as much as
possible?
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And I really liked that sort of
Framing and yeah I thought that
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was just a really really great
overview.
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Never split the difference by
you know Chris Foss is kind of a
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classic, the classic negotiation
book.
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I thought that was good, you
know for just like everything
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from life to like just
leadership to, you know, sell it
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like sales.
Like you know, this idea of
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basically, you know, having a
very empathetic but firm
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approach to negotiating you know
where you you hope you know you
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You basically ensure that the
other person feels that you are
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hearing them and understand
them, but you also kind of like
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maintain your own stance, very.
Yeah, very, very firmly.
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I thought that was a very useful
book as well.
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We would title of the book is
that again, it's called Never
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split the difference.
It's by this.
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Like, this is a book that Elsa,
Naseem recommended to me.
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Yes, by this FBI, I think a
hostage negotiator and So, his
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sorts of negotiations were much
higher Stakes than most people.
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And so, he's got a very
interesting perspective but he
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takes you through all these
different scenarios.
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Whether you're negotiating with
your, you're like romantic
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partner, or your negotiating
with like a used car salesman,
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like so many of these different
interactions like require the
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same Foundation of like, you
know, the other person feeling
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hurt by you, you know, and how
important that is in
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negotiation.
I really like that a lot.
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Lovely for people who have
extremely short.
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We like, I do, I'll include
those books in the description
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of this episode, so check them
out.
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If you think it sounds
applicable to you, let's go back
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to talking about early, see
Founders, who are listening to
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this episode, right now,
Founders who just come up with
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ideas like you did with a pal,
they frequently struggle with
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the early stages.
Like, first year, two years
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especially with testing out /.
Billy old idea, I've seen both
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Founders who have just failed to
test it and just decide.
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That, you know, by default, it's
viable.
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And I'm going to put a year and
a half into development and then
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they just fail and sad.
So, in your case, how did you
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test out the viability of the
idea that you came up with, with
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your co-founder?
Yeah, that's a great question.
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So, our investor Greylock from
the very beginning was like,
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look, you need to find design
Partners to, basically iterate
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with as early as possible.
And so, we rushed out some, some
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mocks you.
I must say, we were funded kind
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of product, right?
And so we You know, we only had
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kind of a rough sense of the
product that we wanted to build
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the space.
We wanted to be in.
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So we rushed out basically not
designed mocks, I guess a UI, we
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built a UI and UI would know
back it and basically the idea
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was you know we started like
soliciting a lot of companies to
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basically give us a sense of
whether or not if this product
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were fully implemented, would
they want this?
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And you?
No, there's no substitute for
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just building the product, there
really isn't.
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Because initially, one thing
that we had is, we had a lot of,
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really big companies that were
interested, this in the set,
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like a theoretical level, like
they like, you know, it's a
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pretty low bar to agree to be
someone's like, design partner.
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And so we had a lot of companies
be our design Partners, but then
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when we finally like had built
it out which took, you know, it
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honestly took us probably about
eight nine months.
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A lot of it was a lot of it was
focused on.
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I mean, I probably three or four
of those months were spent on
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Discovery and then probably four
months spent on building.
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We hired two people.
And so there's, you know,
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between my co-founder and me and
the two people we hire there for
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developers.
It still took a while our
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products is like fairly complex
and and then what we had.
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What we had happened was we just
got a bunch of knows, you know,
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which was like, honestly, that
was the lowest point, was we
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have been?
Riding on the startup for, you
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know, ten months.
Now, nine months, we finally
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were in a position to get in
people's hands and when push
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came to shove, you know, it's
one thing to be someone's design
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partner.
It's another thing to like, you
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know, actually use the product
and so, I don't know.
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I don't know what we could have
done differently.
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I think we just I think we could
have built a product sooner and
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just run like the the sorts of
the sorts of like business
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relationships that have worked,
the best for us is where we
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have.
Company that is basically
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iterating with us.
And so they're interested enough
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where they have like, created a
list of like, features on a
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spreadsheet and every week, we
build, like, you know, a few of
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those features and then have
them test it out and then you
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know, see if they like it, see
if they don't like we're at that
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point.
Now, of course like, you know,
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we're doing that sort of
iteration on top of a foundation
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of, like a already built
existing product, but I'm
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looking at those relationships,
and those are so productive and
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they're so grounded in reality.
And so, basically, the sooner
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you can get to that mvp the
better and then you can find a
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couple customers that aren't
interested in a high level.
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But are interested in very
specific features.
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And one other thing I'll say, is
just the, you know, everyone's
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going to say this.
But buyers very important,
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right?
Our product has a lot of appeal
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for for compliance folks, but
you know, compliance budget is
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usually not as big as like Eng
budget.
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And as a result, you know,
compliance is clout is usually
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not as big as ngos and We would
have Champions on the compliance
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team that, you know, really
wanted to see our product
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adopted with the users.
And the people with the most
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budget, the Eng teams.
They're often pretty happy with
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their internal tools and so
making sure that you get the all
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the kind of stakeholders and
decision makers involved in the
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process was kind of a, that was
a lesson that we learned,
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because we made that mistake by
not involving engine enough,
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because compliance where the
sort of the Champions.
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Yeah.
Hmm.
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God it to be There, I didn't
understand quite a few words
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there.
So let's get back to the subject
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that I do personally understand
which is fundraising and let's
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talk about your the thing that
you mentioned earlier in this
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episode.
Which means I lost my voice
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there, which was that you raise
money pre products.
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How exactly did that happen?
How did you get to know that
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investor?
And why were they so eager to
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invest?
And my voice is gone.
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Yep, hang in there Constantine.
yeah, so I think we got lucky, I
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think, you know, I think my
co-founder and I are like a
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strong team and so you know,
part of the bat was on a team,
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the investor that invests in us
like is a partner Greylock that
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I actually knew from from school
and so that helped certainly
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there's a, you know, a personal
Foundation there but I think the
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overriding reason is, you know,
our Sir wanted and I we saw this
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from other investors to they
like want to bet on the space,
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you know like space first and
foremost I in some cases you
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know, at least in this case it
felt like the the access
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management space was a space,
that people a lot of investors.
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Like in a lot of people just
think is sort of broken and so
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placing a bet on the space first
and foremost and then about on
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the team and then, you know, in
sort of a almost as an
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afterthought or tertiary part of
it.
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This is, it would be the, we
came up with some like design
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marks and things like that for
the product and we interviewed
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probably like 50 companies.
And so we had a like, a pretty
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good idea of the product we
wanted to build, but it wasn't
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built at all.
So I would say we got lucky and
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it was like good timing and you
know there's like a personal
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connection the investor.
And but also just yeah, the the
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team, I think our team was
strong. 100% definitely think
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that investors first of all
investing the teams and then you
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know, hopefully Team Works in
the right space but might go
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both ways.
So let's talk about the round
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that you're raising right now
and specifically, what is the
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major difference between raising
your precede and series a, how
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from your personal perspective
right now?
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What are the major differences
there?
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Yeah, so I mean, the difference
between the seat and the series
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a so one thing is so much My, my
co-founder Naseem.
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Actually, he actually left the
company about six months ago and
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he basically like, you know, had
an amazing opportunity come up
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and kind of the cryptocurrency
space his brother, you know,
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created a coin that as you know,
are in a protocol is very very
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valuable.
And so he basically wanted to
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build a company on top of his
brothers protocol which is
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really cool.
So the big difference is that,
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you know, soon as He was the CEO
of for and basically you know,
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when we were fundraising during
the seed like he was the one
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pitching and so the biggest
difference for me personally is
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that, you know, I was, I've been
pitching, you know, the series a
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in terms of what investors are
looking for you know the
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emphasis you know I mean see it
is like you know really about
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like that team and that
potential and you know it might
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in our case it was pre product.
So obviously Revenue numbers
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weren't Kind of factored into
that decision whereas now I mean
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it's still I can't speak for I'm
no like expert on the space as a
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whole with the sense that I've
gotten you know, for the
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investor landscape in, you know
during series AIDS you know the
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emphasis is is a little bit more
on traction.
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Narrative is still a big part of
it, where what is the vision you
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have for the product is the team
strong who are the sorts of
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customers?
You've Closed.
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Yeah.
But you know but it's still also
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a bad on the space to and so I
think that the sorts of
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conversations are like our are a
lot more focused on, you know,
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go-to-market strategy and the
like underlying business
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metrics.
Whereas in the seed it's for us.
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It was just very, I was all very
hypothetical and much more on
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the product Vision itself.
Absolutely hmm and my voice is
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not coming back so just ignore
it.
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So let's talk about the
bitching.
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You said that you started
patient in your series a and
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advice for Founders who have
never pitched before and maybe
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their earlier on in the process.
Any advice there may be two
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fighting xiety or you know every
single founder who is who has
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their first page in front of a
real investor.
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That's going to be pretty scary.
So any advice there for them
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Yeah, it's a good question.
I mean, you know, of course, all
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the standard advice around, you
know, practicing a lot.
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I mean, it's your slide deck.
I think the slides are really
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important to just like straight
like anchoring and structuring
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your yours talking points.
And so really, you know,
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investing a lot of time and
making the pitch deck, really
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simple as simple as possible.
It's clear as possible.
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It's just a really high
Leverage.
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Investment of your time.
And so I think focusing on that
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the thing that was maybe more
specific to us.
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Is that basically you know our
product is it's a very technical
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access management product and
the space that we're in is
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there's a lot of competitors and
it's a really complex space as
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well.
And so I think for us the key
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challenge was you know we were
never going to come up with it
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like a shark tank pitch, you
know?
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We're like Like you could pitch
literally anyone on this and
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they would totally understand.
Oh, that's exactly the problem
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you're solving an access
management.
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Like that's not the sort of like
doubt that we wanted, we wanted
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to to like have some amount of
technical explanation in the
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00:17:53,300 --> 00:17:57,400
pitch so that the sort of
investors were pitching would
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feel like they appreciate what
we were doing.
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But we wouldn't go so into the
weeds that we would just totally
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lose them.
And so striking that balance for
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us was like, one of the core
challenges, I think of like,
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crafting the series a narrative,
Right?
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00:18:14,800 --> 00:18:18,700
So at this point, I think I just
have to ask this question about
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00:18:18,700 --> 00:18:21,100
old pal because you mentioned
that you have multiple other
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competitors.
And I had a question about the
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name of the company and
specifically the choice of the
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name of the company.
When I was looking you up on
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00:18:28,700 --> 00:18:32,400
crunchbase, I had to double
check with your LinkedIn to see
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the logo of your company to make
sure I'm clicking on the right
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of hell because there were like
15 of them.
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Literally evening.
Why did you choose the name?
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Oh pal.
What was the reasoning behind
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it?
Yeah, this is.
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Yeah, I did have a philosophy on
this obey.
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00:18:47,100 --> 00:18:48,600
Okay?
Yeah, yeah.
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So a lot of our competitors have
names that, you know, sound like
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some, you know, like geek
basically came up with the name
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and they're very, very sybers
sounding and I think a lot of
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security tools, you know, the
sort of like, you know,
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consumerization of sass.
That's like happened.
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You know where people People
started by using Facebook, and
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then they would go, you know,
use like their workplace
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software and that workplace
software was did not offer as
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good of a user experience.
And so that drove a lot of like,
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00:19:22,700 --> 00:19:26,000
you know, a lot of the things
that we learned in consumer Tech
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kind of came over to Enterprise
SAS, but I think security like
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has been, you know, kind of one
of the last holdouts of that.
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And a lot of security tools are
still like very clunky.
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And so we wanted a name that
like, you know, connoted like
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some Out of Elegance and also
you know, like just didn't want
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a name that sounded like too
much like a tech company.
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And so what I actually did which
is Sue random, you know, so I
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think a lot of a lot of the
words in English that sound
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really good are words that are
like derived from basically like
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00:20:00,300 --> 00:20:05,800
Latin and so I and like
specifically like French and so
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I basically pulled up a
Wikipedia page of like all the
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English words that were like had
a French Origin or Latin origin
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and just from that list just
like, you know, my co-founder
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and I picked like 10 that we
thought sounded nice and and and
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then kind of just filter down to
opal.
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But yeah there are some
definitely some like SEO
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challenges of like having a
pretty generic name and there
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being a lot of different like
Opals in a lot of different
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spaces.
So yeah, that's definitely a
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challenge but I've actually been
really happy with the name all
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00:20:39,200 --> 00:20:42,200
in all I like how its Sounds
like, simple.
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00:20:42,200 --> 00:20:43,700
It doesn't sound too much like a
tech company in.
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00:20:43,700 --> 00:20:48,800
It sounds like nice and elegant.
So, okay, fair enough, fair
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00:20:48,800 --> 00:20:52,200
enough.
I just my approach to create
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names is so different.
I just come up with a name.
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I Google it.
If there are too many of them
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was just like not he know what
that that's taken does taking.
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00:20:58,600 --> 00:21:04,700
I'm just gonna move on and see
what would mind from day one on
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00:21:04,700 --> 00:21:08,500
this note, let's move on to the
very last question of today's
367
00:21:08,500 --> 00:21:10,400
episode, which is a call to
action.
368
00:21:10,400 --> 00:21:12,800
So, Stephen Why would you want
to listen to do?
369
00:21:12,800 --> 00:21:17,400
As soon as the episode is over?
A set, one more time,
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00:21:17,400 --> 00:21:20,200
Constantine.
Once the episode is over.
371
00:21:20,200 --> 00:21:21,300
What do you want to listen to
do?
372
00:21:22,300 --> 00:21:27,300
Yeah, I think.
So, you know, I spent a lot of
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00:21:27,300 --> 00:21:33,000
time at a big company and, you
know, I have to say my life is
374
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:36,200
definitely more stressful as a
start-up founder.
375
00:21:36,200 --> 00:21:40,500
But you know, I definitely feel
a lot more fulfillment.
376
00:21:40,500 --> 00:21:44,100
I would say in general.
And so to the extent that like
377
00:21:44,100 --> 00:21:47,100
yeah, anyone's on the fence
about, you know, like taking the
378
00:21:47,100 --> 00:21:51,000
plunge like, you know, everyone
says this, but you'll never feel
379
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:53,500
ready to do it.
And so it's kind of I feel like
380
00:21:53,500 --> 00:21:56,500
for most of us, it has to be A
leap of faith that we just take
381
00:21:56,500 --> 00:21:59,600
and do it.
And I think one thing that
382
00:21:59,600 --> 00:22:02,800
really helps is just like, you
know identifying someone in your
383
00:22:02,800 --> 00:22:05,300
life that could be like a really
good co-founder.
384
00:22:05,300 --> 00:22:08,800
And I think that in the same way
that having a gym, buddy helps
385
00:22:08,800 --> 00:22:13,200
motivate you to go to the gym
like having a co-founder can
386
00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:16,900
really help make this like
really big life decision to go
387
00:22:16,900 --> 00:22:21,400
into startup World a lot easier.
So finding that person I guess
388
00:22:21,400 --> 00:22:26,500
would be the call to action for
those who Considering entering
389
00:22:26,500 --> 00:22:30,700
startup world and haven't yet.
Absolutely solo Founders.
390
00:22:30,700 --> 00:22:32,900
Very frequently are extremely
sad.
391
00:22:33,200 --> 00:22:36,400
So definitely go for it.
Even Founders who are doing
392
00:22:36,400 --> 00:22:40,300
great together.
Horrible stories have heard my
393
00:22:40,300 --> 00:22:42,200
ears.
So be careful there.
394
00:22:42,200 --> 00:22:44,200
Take your time.
You know think about it.
395
00:22:44,200 --> 00:22:48,300
Think about going through some
tough times and yeah, go for it
396
00:22:48,300 --> 00:22:50,300
then.
That's that's a very optimistic
397
00:22:50,300 --> 00:22:51,600
call to action.
I love it.
398
00:22:51,700 --> 00:22:53,400
Thank you for this.
They've been on this note.
399
00:22:53,900 --> 00:22:56,000
We're gonna rip it up.
Up my call to action is going to
400
00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:58,700
be extremely simple as usually
check out the description of
401
00:22:58,708 --> 00:23:00,500
this episode.
I'm going to include a bunch of
402
00:23:00,500 --> 00:23:02,300
links in there.
There's can be linked to.
403
00:23:02,300 --> 00:23:05,400
Oh pal of course, there's gonna
be linked to two books, that
404
00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:08,600
Stephen mentioned Founders,
dilemma and never split the
405
00:23:08,608 --> 00:23:10,900
difference.
So if you're curious about those
406
00:23:10,900 --> 00:23:13,300
definitely check it out.
And of course, there's going to
407
00:23:13,308 --> 00:23:17,700
be my Shameless personal
plug-in, which is the course
408
00:23:17,700 --> 00:23:20,600
that fundraising radio team is
developing right now.
409
00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:23,600
So if you're looking to
fundraise, if you're looking to
410
00:23:23,600 --> 00:23:26,600
start your company, Check out
the beginning of the the
411
00:23:26,600 --> 00:23:28,300
beginning, the description of
this episode.
412
00:23:28,600 --> 00:23:30,500
And as usually have a good day,