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Y Combinator the world's top startup school
home to billion dollar companies like Airbnb
Stripe and Reddit
With more than
YC has launched some of the most
iconic tech companies of our time
It's still the dream for
early stage founders everywhere
The YC mantra builds into your system
has been extraordinarily crucial for me as
an individual and a founder myself
One of the people that interviewed us was
literally the founder of Google Photos
We learned quickly in YC is the best thing
is just always to launch
See who's actually interested in your product
before you just waste time
building out a whole pitch deck
trying to raise money
We applied with one idea they disliked it a lot
I mean the AI is just us
the AI is just me
they would give me thousands of URLs
and I would just like skim read them to
absolute blitz breakneck speed
what's one way that they can bring
the same level of intensity
speed and mindset into their startup
Ycombinator the world's top startup school
Stripe and Reddit with more than 4,000 startups funded
and over 600 billion in combined valuation
YC has launched some of the most iconic tech companies of our time
it's still the dream for early stage founders everywhere
so what does YC
know about building great companies that the rest of us don't
the YC mantra like builds into your system
has been extraordinarily crucial for me as like
an individual and like founder myself
yeah
one of the people that interviewed us was literally
the founder of Google Photos
we Learned quickly in YC is just the best thing
see who's actually like
interested in your product before you just waste time
like building out a whole pitch deck
we applied with one idea they disliked it a lot
they would give me thousands of euros
and I would just like skim read them to like absolute blitz breakneck
what's one way that they can bring the same level of intensity
quick thing before we get started
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subscribers in order to help more people build really great companies
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okay let's get into it
you were in Japan having the time of your life
and suddenly you get the interview call
from the No. 1 start of school in the world
y Combinator this was the moment that could mean quitting your job
and going all in on this wild
new path walk me through that interview
in that moment
the Vek and I have started a lot of stuff together and we did
I mean we met freshman year of Penn
that's like the origin story of things
after we graduated we went on our separate paths basically
and started doing our own things
um but I think
the desire to create and launch our own things was always there right
we had already done a few things during college and we enjoyed it
I think was my initial take
so when we were in Japan together
it just felt like you know
we were just vacationing and like for some reason
the time was just right you know
so like when I was in Japan
I was just fully on vacation mode and not
was not expecting like the interview
cause I think we applied
like 2 months before the actual interview happened
um and like they gave us like two day notice
so it's like immediately ending
vacation and going back into like
grind mode to prepare for the interview right
like there is still a very memorable Airbnb in Sapporo
which was where basically
hounded over a table working Pacific hours in Japan
just basically getting everything prepared for the interview
whilst working our normal jobs
so that was intense um
but it was a very fun and memorable time
and I think that will be an Airbnb we'll visit in the future as my
my my
I take yeah
I love that and so obviously
a lot of people want to get into YC
and the application process is in itself a beast
but the interview is also um
a big determinant factor so would you walk me through the interview
how did you feel did you think you nailed it
what was the initial emotional reaction coming out of it
I mean I don't think I know a single
interviewee that went through that interview and thought they
did well on it if I'm being realistic
cause like most of the people
at least like the 99% of folks that are going through
are relatively new founders
or like people who have not raised a ton of money
or like even if you're a second time founder
like you don't have as much experience as some of the folks that are
interviewing you know
like yeah
the guy who interviewed us
or one of the people that interviewed us was literally the founder of
Google Photos
you know oh
what about Dalton Spotify competitor
um yeah
also Michael Sybel sat in on the call yeah
Michael basically found a twitch amongst like other things as well um
but yeah I mean
you're basically being grilled by these people who
know a lot and are very good at what they do right
they're professional investors at the end of the day
so they ask some very tough questions essentially right
and as much as you can try to prepare I
I just feel like you're going to get exposed one way or another
and I mean that's what happened with our first idea right
so we applied with one idea
they disliked it a lot and I'll put it nicely
but they really liked our other ideas
and that is the other idea is actually what we've been working on to
since this day
basically um
but like long story short
turns out they were right about our old ideas
so I guess like yeah
professional investors right
yeah so I've heard the story a lot where you come into the interview
you present your ideas and typically your first idea doesn't land
but then you play around with it
and somehow they're happy with the subsequent 2
3 ideas and they say you should work on it so
so obviously the idea wasn't the selling point
what do you think made you two stand out during the process
I mean just from knowing each other for so long
um like when you get into the batch
one of the biggest things YC says is like
startups don't fail because of money
it's more so because of like co founder breakups
so I think from their perspective
seeing that John and I have known each other since freshman year
it's like seven years we've built work together
um like I've developed like a really good working relationship
I think that definitely made them very interested in um
putting us into the batch
the long story short is like
everyone has some sort of special connection
it's very rare to see like people that just like randomly met it
like yeah
I mean again
if you really build on the idea of like
co founder relationships are the most important thing at early stage
um then that is like
by far the biggest factor that I think YC like looks for
and part I think was part of the reason why like
our
relationship was able to drive past the fact that we had a bad idea
basically yeah
um no matter the amount of videos or podcast that YC um
publishes
what happens behind YC walls still feels a little bit elusive
so as someone that recently went through it
what really happens within the YC batch
that people don't really talk about
I feel like your answer is better than mine
not gonna lie haha
uh so I think like coming into the batch you know
I expected it would kind of be like
I like a summer boot camp where they're just teaching you about like
how to build a startup how to hire
um like all the early stage stuff
I think something that surprised me
that I really enjoyed was they would have um
weekly dinners where they pretty much put you in like
I think 100 to 200 people in the batch have dinners at the same time
and they invite over speakers to pretty much just talk to you
so I think like the favorite ones are obviously like when um
like Airbnb and Doordash founders came to like give their story
um but then they also had like an alumni
I guess
alumni panel where YC founders more closer to us in terms of like
how recent their batch were
um to like just talk to us
give us advice and I think that kind of like
teaching through hearing other people's experiences
was something that not everyone talks about
um
that I think was really for me the most beneficial part of being in YC
yeah I mean
just hearing founder stories in general
I think are pretty cool right
like yeah
I know some folks in our batch have already been
invited to some of these like
events and like have spoken
and I think it just kinda goes to show that
there's a lot of similar experiences across the board
which kinda leads into what
I thought was very interesting was the cohort system
in that like every company in YC is like in a little pod essentially
it's like a little YC right
so like I think there are like 10 groups
sorry 10 companies in our group basically
and every week we would meet to talk about problems and like
what our goals were
basically setting metrics and stuff to kind of push yourself
and I think it creates this like almost
it's kind of funny in a way that it's like
helpful because you're talking to other
people that are going through the same problems as you
but it's also like somewhat competitive at the same time
cause you'd be like oh
this company is doing X now and money or X
b and a R
maybe we should try something and try to push to get faster or get
to get to that number faster
you know um
but I mean these are these
these folks that were in my group are like
still my friends to this day
and I text them occasionally and they ask us questions about like hey
what do we do about hiring and what whatsoever
you know um
so it's it's
it's a nice little community
being built within the broader scope of YC as a whole
yeah that's super lovely
and it transitions really well to my next question in the sense that
so there's really it seems to be like three main pillars
with YC it's the network
it's the coaching and also the brand name recognition
if you had to delete two and keep one
which one mattered the most to you
yeah for me
definitely the network
I think it's just being surrounded by engineers who just want to
you know build from scratch um
just try to like build something phenomenal
I think really helped my growth in becoming a good engineer
like I feel like I was working for what 2 years before YC
and I feel like just during
during the batch just grinding building
talking with other people
like I grew so much more of an engineer than before um
but then also post batch like
you still have the network that you can reach out to
when it comes to coaching
during the batch that was very good
but it's also like you can't
coaching is only gonna happen during the batch
but like the network is gonna like last for the rest of your life yeah
I mean where else
can you find a whole bunch of people
who don't leave their house for a week
to code yeah
that was him I literally just discovered this a few hours ago
ridiculous hahaha um
I have a more contentious answer
I would say I think if if we weren't selling to be the if sorry
if we were selling b to B to other YC companies
then the network is like by far the most valuable thing possible
but I think given the nature of what we are working on
like a lot of the companies in YC's network
and like YC's network itself
do not lend very well to like the area that we're in
so I would actually say for me
like at this moment in time
the coaching would be the most important thing because I mean
we've talked about this interesting problem where like
I feel like pen entrepreneurship or like
college entrepreneurship teaches you really
strange things that don't actually help you become good at what you do
like yeah
I talk with people that are creating stuff all the time
and the No. 1 thing I think YC has like
reworked in my mind is like the sell before you build mentality
and I'm sure we'll talk more about this
like later on when we talked about like how we got our first customer
um but like just like the reworking
the reshaping of like
how the YC mantra like builds into your system is
has been extraordinarily crucial for me as like
an individual and like founder myself
yeah
like the one thing we Learned quickly in YC is just
the best thing is just always to launch
put yourself out there see sell before you build
see who's actually like interested in your product
before you just waste time
like building out a whole pitch deck
trying to raise money like building out a perfect MVP
yeah like pen has this problem
I think where they like try to make you think of like
oh what's your business model or yeah
what's your 7 slide deck of like your business idea
what's your pitch and stuff like that
like those are important when you're fundraising
you know it's somewhat like I
there's still contentious like arguments I can make there
but like if you're truly launching a startup
and you're not just launching
like a club project or something like that
like you need to figure out the pain point you're actually solving
and yeah what I keep telling people
is that the easiest way to figure out if you're solving a pain point
is if people pay for it and how quickly they're willing to pay for it
right like a common
like a mistake I made back in college because of like
how I was taught or like how I was thinking about like startups
was that I thought it would be a good idea to send out surveys and
like create waitlists and things like that to create like demand
you know but the realization I had was that like
the people filling out the surveys and stuff are
they might be interested you know
but like they are not necessarily doing it because
they want to buy the product
they might just be doing it because they're your friend
or they have heard of like
they just want to fill out a form or something
obviously there's still a chance that you could funnel and find like
the right customers out of there
but like it's night and day
when I ask someone to fill out a form asking like
how much are you willing to pay for me to book you a business class
flight using your points
versus them paying me $200 per seat
you know like
that is like a night and day juxtaposition of things
where the former doesn't give you actually any actual information
you might have fun numbers to look at but the latter suddenly is like
wow I have a customer paying me $600 for three people
how many of these customers are out there
what is my like market you know
like little things like
that was a very important thing to kind of realize the difference
if you're wasting time thinking about how you're gonna make money
or business modeling it
like I think you're focusing on the wrong problem
you know it's like
your goal at early stage is to grow as rapidly as possible
and get as many customers as possible
find PMF find PMF
you know like my goal is not to create a fun sexy slide deck
you know like people reach out to us and be like
can we invest and I'm like go away
I'm like working on customers right now hahaha
um oh
you're obviously the problem to have you know
just tell them to go away
come back later hahaha yeah
um and I'm curious if someone doesn't get into YC
what's one way that they can bring the same level of intensity
speed and mindset into their startup
I think from my guess like from what I would think about
like if we didn't have YC and we just like watch a bunch of videos
like I think the biggest takeaway I would tell anyone is just like
make sure you really think about like selling before you build
like really take that to heart
you know like
there are some crazy things you can accomplish with this notion
that save you so much time
it's like it blows my mind how simple the idea is
but like it works um yeah
what would you say yeah
that too and as well
I mean just finding a community of founders to be around
um'cause yeah just yeah
grinding with other people just gives you so much more motivation
yeah I mean
this is why we like have a hybrid environment
you know
I like seeing everyone together and it's like fun to work together and
like do stuff
you know um
you can only do so much remote communities
for example which is like
very ancillary or similar to like a in person work environment
um so obviously pros and cons
everything but I think having that community and just like
taking the real idea of like
making sure you're solving pain points and like
selling before you build or like very key notions
I think to give that YC intensity
you know oh
I also I think this might lead to another question
but doing things that don't scale with YC
yes really loves to sell um
more mantras yeah
I feel like if you're
I feel like a lot of people and like us included
like when you're starting out a startup
you feel like you have to do everything perfectly
or like
have to make sure the product is actually working 100% and all that
but now realizing a lot of it is just doing things manual
to actually provide a good experience to the customer um
and yeah that just like goes further along with PMF
cause I mean as long as they're paying
you know they want it more money you have
then you can like worry later about
you know hiring a team to actually like polish the product
yeah but yeah
biggest thing is just getting people to pay for what you're selling
yeah I love that really great tip
it's a advice and I also think it's like there
there's this saying where you're
you are the five people that you surround yourself with most
so it really speaks to
it's
being surrounded by the same level of intensity in building together
and creating together so you mentioned you pivoted a couple times um
walk me through one of those decisions and one
when did you know you had to make a change of direction
like we were trying to make
we were basically trying to figure out like
different angles to innovate affiliate marketing right
so what our original idea was
was basically uh
or one of the original ideas was basically trying to help uh
affiliate marketers get a better understanding of their affiliates
and like finding more affiliates and just like growing that pipeline
if affiliate marketers want more creators to market their product
it's like a flywheel they would use our software
now there was a company that kind of we feel LED us on
it was kind of a dragging their feet for like a month or two
they had they signed an NDA though
they gave us an NDA and they were like
oh we're so excited to build this like
affiliate relationship management tool with you
and then they completely ghosted us
I believe I followed up after like four or five times
and by the way we met in person to talk about it too
you know um
they still like my post on LinkedIn
it makes no sense um
but like the realization we had was like wow
we should have almost immediately realized that
the fact that they weren't paying for this
or like willing to get
go through legal processes or something like that
or not even like log in
like we were just kind of clinging onto hope at that point
cause we were just like scrambling to figure out something
um but I think it just goes again to the idea of like
making sure you're really solving a pain point that someone needs
because if you are
they will be willing to throw any amount of money at you for it
even if it doesn't work
I think a big lesson we Learned is that you should do paid pilots
like during this like Pip it on was explaining we were yeah
we were doing like free pilots
which we thought would help like actually understand if like the
my customer actually wants the product that we're selling
but it turns out that they did not really care
they were just either being nice or just thought it was like
a cool tool they could try out yeah um
yeah looking back
I think if getting to like
the point of how much are you willing to pay as fast as possible in
like the relationship
um yeah
I think it's like the biggest thing you should follow
mm hmm mm hmm
yeah and just to reset the room a little bit
what exactly is a Phil today and what problem are you solving
yeah um
so Phil is basically building AI compliance
for financial affiliate marketing
so we help companies
basically make sure that everything that they write about
is meeting credit card marketing guidelines
so a more specific example is like
we'll help a content creator
make sure that they're advertising the Chase
Sapphire Preferred or the Amex Gold correctly
because what could happen is that if they don't market it correctly
then the banks could be very angry at them and basically uh
they could take back the commissions
they get from getting people to sign up for cards
or they could kick them out of the programs
cause it's technically false advertising
and the banks do not like that haha
yeah yeah
and you mentioned the original idea was something similar
but a little bit different
so how did you know that this one
this particular angle was worth solving
first of all it was like a more specific problem that we could solve
yeah like with the whole affiliate relationship management
there's just with all the people we talk to
they realize there's just so many random
different problems that people have right
that we just can't tackle all of it at once but with compliance
we know like the No. 1 thing
like financial companies is
making sure that their affiliates
are actually saying the right things
following the guidelines um
and yeah I think just from like John with your experience
oh yeah we haven't talked about that
yeah like
John did have experience before with like compliance in the industry
so like that's how we first knew there was a pain point
yeah I mean
I have 43 credit cards like I
I do this stuff for fun you know
like I have been in the space for a bit of myself and long story short
I like over the years
I essentially noticed that there was a lot of like
difficulties with marketing credit cards
like I remember
I tried to become a affiliate myself
of one of the credit card programs back in like 2021
2022 and then they were like
oh here's like compliance stuff and I was like
you know I was in college
I didn't really care that much
and I was already making a good amount from like
referrals and like that what not what like by then um
but then I worked at another travel startup right before this
and that's where I launched the entire affiliate program there
and that's when I really started to understand like I
I like it it
I was basically putting together like six years of like
little things all together
and really understanding like
why the why things were the way they are
you know like
there are companies that require you to basically say miles
instead of points
I had noticed that I had no idea why that was the case
and now I understand why um
and I've noticed that like other credit cards will be
other companies will be like
our statement credits have to be advertised as up to
they can't be flat statement credits or flat numbers
you know um but yeah
I mean
this is kind of like a very interesting like angle approaching now
right because it's like
I'm not the customer I'm the one building this right
but the beauty was that
since I already kind of understood the pain points a little bit
I was kind of able to relate to the customers a little more easily
and that kind of helped us build the wedge into the space
because we came in with so much compliance experience
that help beat out all the other competitor
I think John is underselling himself
he is like the points guy at Penn
so this fits so well in turn
like what you've worked on
and what you've been a part of in the last few years yeah
um so we talked about the idea of paid pilots
how would you advise people to think about building with customers
and how do you get those first few believers and paid pilots
it was a bit of a combination of like our
my my background and like getting lucky
I would say like for some reason
one of our first customers just completely inbound it to us
to be honest
I have absolutely no idea like how they found out about us
like I'm still trying to figure
I haven't explicitly asked to this day
for some reason
we had a very clear website
even though it was very garbage and I
I threw it up on webflow after like a day
but the whole goal of that website was basically
specifically targeting that problem in niche right
um the other
like major first customer that came along was just from a conference
and the way you do this is you basically sign up for certain tickets
and certain like
for example you can sign up as like
a creator and get in for free versus as a company
and just like by doing that or just hanging around near the event
you can actually meet a lot of very important people
and I'm curious so
you work with pretty heavily
regulated industries and quite conservative consumer profile
when when did you deem the product was ready to kind of start
these paid pilot situation
product was never ready
talk about like that first customer
I think this actually leads out pretty well
basically
like we heard what the pain point was from one of these customers
right and we were like
hmm this seems to be the exact pain point I experienced at like
when I was doing compliance myself
you know
and it so turned out like I just know a lot about credit cards
so what we did was
we basically told them exactly what they wanted to hear
like we can basically solve all your compliance pain points
we we still do um
but what ended up happening was how did it go
like they were like oh
can you do this compliance scan for us
and we were like yeah
of course like it's working beautifully
you know we showed them some slides
you know I'm pretty good at making decks
I've done a little bit of consulting myself
you know and
I mean the AI is just us
the AI is just me you know
like like
literally
they would give me thousands of euros and I would just like
skim read them to like absolute blitz
breakneck speed
you know like
we had the AI like flagging stuff for us and like identifying issues
and it was like barely working
and it works very well at this point
you know like
it's obviously like fully in deployment and like
working for multiple customers
but the literal like first day
like days of this were just like me validating things manually
very little AI it was barely working
but after they got the results
they were like wow
this is amazing and I was like
AI worked great yeah
yeah it's
it's John Gpt you know
that's what we call it yeah
it was kind of like
those funny little things where there was no actual product
we did not build like we only built the front end right
there was little there was no actual like AI or anything
but it worked it solved the pain point
that's all that matters you know
and we just continuously kept on using John Gpt
aka me as like the validator of the VEC
like just kept on building the AI and like
kept on iterating and eventually got to the point where like
the AI was basically doing all of it
you know that that's where we needed to be
but right here's a
here's a here's the key thing
like the the theme
I guess like
we would never have stumbled into this path
unless we had known that somebody was going to pay for this right
and after I had done it like successfully for a month
yeah I was literally reading so much garbage for a month
they signed the contract and I was like okay
now it's like fully time to build um
so that was like the big turning point for us
I love the all the scrappy in for scrappy details of like um
trying to do things that don't scale um
very wise to you um
so okay
so that was the first customer
so I wanna talk first hire
so you guys made your first hires recently
what qualities and skill sets were you really looking for
so yeah on the engineering side
I mean being an early stage startup
especially in AI
like the No. 1 thing is just being able to figure things out
um like AI so knew that no one knows like the right way to do it
so just being able to experiment
iterate fast um
like take ownership of what you're doing
was really just the qualities we were looking for
um with engineering yeah
I mean to even build on that point
like even before like thinking about like qualities
we were like there's always this idea of like
when do you hire right
cause I think there's always this very common misconception that like
oh we have VC funding
we should go ahead and hire as quickly as possible
I don't think that's the case
and I again right
this is the YC coaching coming to play again
it's just like you should hire
when you're starting to miss your first customer demands
and when we were starting to onboard like first
second customer they were pretty big enterprises
you know
and like it's only the two of us and we were starting to struggle
right like
I think the first like red flag was when we actually
actually truly missed something
and I was like hmm
okay this is not good haha
um and it was like a very crucial moment of the contract
and the customer itself cause they were like
still evaluating us versus one of the like long term providers
um and like it was clear that we were doing a good job
but like there were a periods when we're like on off
on off
cause there's just like the two of us
you know um
but yeah I mean
when we missed that and we knew like
oh like we need to bring someone on to help
that is like where we start thinking about like qualities
you know like
can they drive something by themselves
um
do we need to constantly handhold them to tell them like what to do a
B C um
yeah yeah yeah
um yes
the when moment is also very important um
and figuring out when the hire is gonna be a catalyst for growth
so let's talk founder mistakes
what's been the most valuable lesson that you've Learned
that you wish someone had told you earlier
I think yeah
just not being a perfectionist
um I remember in the beginning of the batch we
we took too long to launch
cause I think we're just trying to like
craft like a perfect story and all that um
and I also like like you just heard with John's story
like trying to have the perfect product
um like in front of your customer
it sounds dirty by the way
like what we did but again
we solved their pain point
that was the key like they
they everyone's happy
you know that that's all that matters to us
like the fact that we had to work like hundred hour weeks to get it to
they were happy that's our problem
the most important thing is to understand that is like
money is everywhere there's a lot of funding available
um YC's money is already like a lot
like obviously it's like 5 hundred k like at
at minimum right now and you can do a lot with it basically
money is like food right that
that that's the thing
if you have too much of it
you'll eat all of it but if you have just enough
you'll treat it still like a scarce asset
actually this might contradict low key
but that's okay
I Learned is um
I realized I like
I was just spending too much trying to optimize cost when it comes to
like engineering
like trying to figure out like
what's the most efficient model I can use um
but then big lesson we Learned is just
just use like the best thing that's available
even if it's expensive because as long as you're delivering results
right more customers should come um
like with AI it keeps getting cheaper every year
so yeah yeah
try not to worry yeah
Australia's just worrying too much about profit
um we just be
should just be focused on revenue and growth
yeah yeah
I completely agree I think you should only take money
if money can really drive catalyst to growth
so I'm gonna read you a few company low slogans
and you can tell me if they're real or fake
and bonus points if you know the company okay
there's a couple that I think you guys should get
I hope so okay
don't live life without it
I don't even know if we have a slogan
I think it's fake yeah
I think that's fake that's inaccurate
that's Amex's slogan Amex bro
you should know this I gotta leave
you should know this I gotta leave
I gotta leave intelligence everywhere
for everyone I feel like this has to be real
but I'm not sure what company no
I'm I'm gonna say this one's fake
I think this is too too broad yes
this is fake
um move money at the speed of trust Venmo
no way right
no I was gonna say visa no
this is fake but it sounds real right
it does sound um
where knowledge begins oh yeah
this this one's real but I don't know where it's from
think about it what are the big companies he says
my hint is that they raised around in the last year
and they're a big AI company
that's that's all the AI company
that's all the yeah sorry
that didn't help at all what's your guess
is it open AI
perplexity
yes it is perplexity
make something people want never heard of that one
I believe that is YC
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