Why this YC-backed Startup Really Failed

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:04:23 Unknown What happens when your startup gets into the world's top accelerator but doesn't survive?

00:00:04:23 - 00:00:08:19 Unknown What do you do when you hit 50,000 users and it's still not enough?

00:00:08:19 - 00:00:15:07 Unknown What if you raised millions, but start to feel like it was all going in the wrong direction?

00:00:15:07 - 00:00:26:10 Unknown This is Robert, co-founder of Nook, a blue collar job marketplace built in Vietnam. He built something real, made an impact, raise big and had to walk away.

00:00:26:10 - 00:00:31:06 Unknown This is a story of how it started and how it fell apart.

00:00:31:06 - 00:00:34:18 Unknown My biggest regret was probably not pivoting sooner.

00:00:34:18 - 00:00:43:15 Unknown The biggest thing that kills startups is really not like running out of money. Like, it's easy to get money, it's hard to stay motivated. And that motivation has to come from inside.

00:00:43:15 - 00:00:48:11 Unknown Too often founders ground themselves to valuations too early.

00:00:48:11 - 00:00:51:22 Unknown This fancy big name investor wants to talk to me, lowly me?

00:00:51:22 - 00:00:58:02 Unknown And so you, like, prepare, you overprepare, and you're not actually getting what you should be doing, which is talk to your customers and like, writing code.

00:00:58:02 - 00:01:01:19 Unknown When you start to hire people for your own startup,

00:01:01:19 - 00:01:03:13 Unknown They're making a career bet on you.

00:01:03:13 - 00:01:05:17 Unknown And it gets really, really tough

00:01:05:17 - 00:01:06:06 Unknown Nothing

00:01:06:06 - 00:01:10:10 Unknown kill a startup more than like no traction. And so we were getting a lot of traction.

00:01:10:10 - 00:01:13:12 Unknown if you're seeing traction, you're seeing user growth. You're seeing revenue growth.

00:01:13:12 - 00:01:18:14 Unknown that was what caused us to feel like, wow, we're actually moving and we're doing stuff

00:01:18:14 - 00:01:25:13 Unknown There's no shame in failing. It's really admirable that you went out there and took a risk, but in that moment it doesn't feel like that at all.

00:01:25:13 - 00:01:28:02 Unknown It's your baby. And if someone calls your baby ugly,

00:01:28:02 - 00:01:30:23 Unknown You take it very personally because a startup is very personal.

00:01:30:23 - 00:01:36:10 Unknown What is one piece of advice that you would give to a founder who is struggling

00:01:36:10 - 00:01:39:18 Unknown The biggest piece of advice for people in that situation,

00:01:39:18 - 00:01:41:04 Unknown is to realize that...

00:01:41:04 - 00:01:45:17 Unknown Hmmm...

00:01:45:18 - 00:01:52:06 Unknown Robert, welcome to Founders in Motion. Thank you. I'm excited to be here today. I'm very excited for today.

00:01:52:06 - 00:01:55:15 Unknown Can you walk us through the early days of how it all started?

00:01:55:15 - 00:02:16:07 Unknown Yeah, of course. Thanks for the intro. It all started actually when I was still back in school. I was studying for my MBA halfway through my program at Expos, and I was trying to figure out what to do over the summer. I had known since getting into business school that building a startup in Vietnam would be a dream.

00:02:16:07 - 00:02:39:04 Unknown And I wasn't exactly sure what exactly I would build, who I would build it with, and more importantly, who I would build it for. Yeah. And what I realized was that, like, there's no better way to get started than to get started. And so I just dive right in. I love that told everyone in my section in my class like, hey, let's move to Vietnam.

00:02:39:04 - 00:03:03:11 Unknown Let's go and try to do something. And so the early days of no was really very much grounded in the Harvard Innovation Lab. We had joined this program over the fall and spring semester to try to iterate on a couple ideas in the summer time, instead of taking the internship, we would go out there and get funding from the Rock Summer fellows program, which was like an accelerator within the school.

00:03:03:17 - 00:03:30:23 Unknown They give you a small stipend to go and try to build something, you know? Yeah. I was so excited because my two closest friends decided to join me on this adventure. And the early days of nope was really very much like, hey, let's try to iterate on what sort of problems that existed in Vietnam. And that ranged from everything from eating to construction to building a CRM and then the whole gamut.

00:03:30:23 - 00:03:56:21 Unknown Right? Exactly. The whole gamut of like, potential problem space. And we landed on building out, actually, at first a copycat idea. We figured, like for the summertime, we could build home renovations, specifically stuff that we saw in the US like, at that time, it's called block renovation. And these startups in the US were taking off. They had raised tons of money.

00:03:56:21 - 00:04:25:03 Unknown We saw copycat clones in China, and we figured if we brought this exact same thing to Vietnam, we'd be successful. And so I sent my parents like, yo, I'm gonna go to Vietnam to go renovate bathrooms. And great conversation to happen. Your parents. These like, thought my parents like you're going to go work like they'll steal. So we decided to move to Vietnam to, like, work on this, like, copycat idea in, the, like, home renovation space.

00:04:25:03 - 00:04:45:11 Unknown And we would follow the same playbook in the US, which was like, start with the bathroom, the most complicated space, and then expand to the kitchen and then all parts of the home, because the rest of the home is, like less complicated. It's a lot cheaper to do. And then you have more like styles and designs, and we quickly realized that actually this was not going to work out.

00:04:45:13 - 00:05:04:02 Unknown This was like really, really difficult to do. Well. And in, Vietnam, like China, they actually built out houses with like partitions already in there. And it's definitely not like in the US where there was a lot of old builds. And then you have to go and renovate them. In Vietnam, a lot of things are still brand new.

00:05:04:03 - 00:05:25:15 Unknown And so for about a year, our idea, we just totally fell and we pivoted actually into something that we realized we had to build. We had to build a construction marketplace in order to build our home renovations. So like what that meant is that for my startup, originally, the idea was a copycat clone of stuff that was happening in the US.

00:05:25:17 - 00:05:45:16 Unknown We had modular home designs, not like Ikea. And once you actually did do those modular designs, actually, you realized the bathrooms and the number actually define the plumbing. Plumbing's really different. And when you look at the schematics of what the home builders have to do, it's actually not fully up to date. And so we had to do like way more work than we actually did.

00:05:45:16 - 00:06:14:22 Unknown But the underlying job marketplace, the team of people that we would call to go and actually execute the build out, those folks, we were like, wait, wow, they are working like a 380 K job, back breaking role. And and they're laid off at any moment. Why don't we do something for them instead? Yeah. And I think for context for anyone listening 180 K v and D is about 15 USD.

00:06:15:00 - 00:06:35:23 Unknown So very very little and super tough. They're traveling far. Yeah. From which mean city. They have to spend the night in the city to like, make sure that the construction job is done well and they get paid once a week. Oftentimes, the largest contractors are the ones that don't pay. And so you get into problems when the contractor was like, no, you don't show up to work today.

00:06:36:00 - 00:06:55:21 Unknown I don't think the quality was really good. I think we need to, you know, delay payments because our investors didn't come at long time. Decent suck for those workers. And we realized, like, actually, when our workers weren't working for us, they were taking on these other challenges. And realized that maybe we could do something here. We had a huge list of, workers ready.

00:06:55:23 - 00:07:24:11 Unknown Why not go and try and serve this market instead? Yeah. So, okay, a year end had this idea and had this amazing pivot. And then moving to Blue Collar Marketplace. How did you tackle that? Yeah. So at first we're like obviously we just need to move out. And he's a blue collar worker. Just code user app to understand how to level up their construction building skills, their painting skills, learning skills and many electrical skills.

00:07:24:15 - 00:07:49:23 Unknown We could do all these like, really cool things and upskill them using TikTok like short form video interfaces. Yeah. And of course, how naive we were. You didn't actually talk to the other customers. We didn't actually get to understand their pain points. And instead we built this app that no one really wanted. It was like, you know, your typical Crud app that had like a really great interface.

00:07:50:01 - 00:08:12:20 Unknown When you think about where vitamins people were actually finding jobs. It was through their network. Mr.. Referrals is through Facebook groups and interactions, even through resolve groups. When we realized that actually a lot of the workers were already using tools like social media or silo groups to find jobs, we could actually go to where they were and we started to buy up Facebook groups.

00:08:13:01 - 00:08:40:08 Unknown We started to buy our groups, and that's how we got our head start into this blue collar marketplace. Yeah. So speaking of getting your head start into this blue collar marketplace. So you hit some pretty big milestones quite early on with this blue collar job marketplace evolution. You've hit 50,000 users in very short amount of time. What do you think constitute to, being able to gain so much traction early on?

00:08:40:10 - 00:09:03:18 Unknown Yeah, I think it was just growth hacking. We realized that if we bought up those Facebook groups, we could quickly consolidate them together in order to have a bigger Facebook group. When we become admins of those groups, we were the ones that were approving or denying their like new job postings. And in fact, we would then be able to move those job postings from this bigger Facebook into our proprietary app.

00:09:03:21 - 00:09:20:06 Unknown But we actually realized that like maintaining that Facebook group was super important for us. Having that community of like workers and listening, having our ears to the ground on what was happening, I think that was a big part of it. But I think another big part of it was just like being able to realize, like, actually sometimes they're not looking for jobs.

00:09:20:06 - 00:09:42:16 Unknown They're looking to buy materials. They're looking to level up and skill up on certain parts of their jobs, or they're just looking for like a good place to eat nearby. Like, you start to learn, like, all of these different, like, intricacies into, like how they think, what they do. And we start to consolidate all those learnings together. And I think that was how we were able to quickly grow the active users on our platform.

00:09:42:16 - 00:10:07:05 Unknown And even though you got all these Facebook groups, all these other groups and a ton of your users, I guess, like what was some moments or some key points where you started to feel like, I like there might be something wrong here, or there might be something that is not going the past. Yeah. So I think a big part of it was really thinking through the business model and profitability.

00:10:07:07 - 00:10:28:22 Unknown I think I always figured like, hey, if we can grow this thing really quickly, we can figure out the monetization later. So we can get all those workers onto our platform. Then we would be able to have leverage when talking to the other side of the network. The demand side. And what we realized was that it was not as easy as that.

00:10:29:00 - 00:10:52:00 Unknown I think the culture, there's a lot of extra costs that we weren't like, considering, for example, when we were trying to get workers to show up to construction sites, many of them didn't even show up. We're like, what's going on? Oh yeah, I, I my uncle is feeling sick. I need to go back to the hometown or hey, sorry, my kid is sick today and I need to go back.

00:10:52:00 - 00:11:18:17 Unknown Like, there are excuses, excuses, excuses. Yeah. And I remember one time like, I was like, okay, well, let me just talk to them. Let's try to figure out what's going on. And it fell flat. You know, did not even want to talk to me. The guy hung up. And I was like, wow, this very different working culture. And you realize it's actually like, well, these construction workers like, they think that sometimes when something's too good to be true, it could be a scam.

00:11:18:17 - 00:11:40:02 Unknown It is something that they've never heard of. Like this. Like it's making service. Like there's all these extra things that we don't even consider. Like, even when I think about their understanding of the internet, it was no more than Facebook. And Zillow. And so being able to unpack all those different things, the supply side that we were working with was actually a group of like team leaders.

00:11:40:03 - 00:12:03:23 Unknown And so we started working with like one tech savvy person in the village who would brand up his cousins, his uncle and his neighbors to come to the big city and work. And then he would manage the payments and were like, great, let's create some like payment and management tools for this guy and all these extra hidden costs in dealing with businesses, because then he wants to cut that's a little bit more than the rest of his teammates.

00:12:04:03 - 00:12:35:11 Unknown The middleman wants this middleman and wants this. And so very soon we realized that we could keep on building what we wanted to build, but the margins were getting lower and lower. And so when I think about like, what ultimately led to our downfall is the number of hidden cost and profitability issues. I never thought that we'd work in a field that I had no expertise in, in a market I had no expertise in, in a language that I'm like only semi comfortable speaking and working in a professional setting in.

00:12:35:13 - 00:12:58:15 Unknown It was really hard, as honest as really, really tough. And so maybe that's when the first inkling was there. My biggest regret was probably not pivoting sooner. Although I look back on my time fondly because I know that we were able to make a huge difference and bring lots of jobs, upskill my team that I'm still super proud of and be able to have this amazing like adventure.

00:12:58:15 - 00:13:15:11 Unknown Like sometimes I think back and we have all the old phone numbers, we still get voicemails that are like, hey, like, where are you guys? Like, I still need a job. Guys, like, I still need help. Oh, thank you for doing this. Do you have more jobs for me? And when you see those customers message and you're like, wow, I let them down.

00:13:15:13 - 00:13:37:18 Unknown That sucks. I don't think you should think about it like that. I think it should think about the positive in terms of like what you have done throughout your time with look for them. And I think it's very similar, like I had a similar experience where like, I wanted to build a company over the summer and then I was expecting it to go very awesomely well, but it never really, truly happened like that.

00:13:37:18 - 00:13:58:00 Unknown And but one of the fondest memories I have is like meeting customers and them just being like, oh, I'm so glad you're building this. Like I've been struggling. Like I was like building something for physical therapy for people that suffer from Run nasty. And it was like, oh, like, I'm so glad someone's like thinking of us. Like thinking of building something that I've been struggling with for 20 years.

00:13:58:00 - 00:14:23:09 Unknown And that's always the most beautiful and fondest memory that you can think upon. And I wanted to touch on the investor side of things. So Nook was valued at $20 million. That's a huge valuation for Southeast Asia. And how early you guys were like Did the big number and the big value around it affects the way that you make decision early on?

00:14:23:12 - 00:14:48:13 Unknown No, I think that Too often founders ground themselves to valuations too early. Of course you don't want to have like too low a valuation so that in future rounds you don't have enough equity to stay motivated. But when you look at like what we learn in like the average like seed stage valuation, like you said, in Vietnam or Southeast Asia, it's pretty low.

00:14:48:13 - 00:15:11:21 Unknown It's probably closer like 4 or 5 million on average. And the top end of that market is maybe like 10 million at like the way that they like taught us to think about this is like, hey, you just get the money you need and just keep going on. And their advice to almost all the folks in the batch is to go out there and raise between 15 to 25 million and many startups, and we're able to do that.

00:15:11:21 - 00:15:27:16 Unknown We got right in the middle, like we just kind of randomly pick the number and you say like, hey, this is my valuation. Do you want in or out? I don't back this is my valuation. Yeah. Exactly. Like do you think the number is delivered? If it doesn't work, then just move down or move up it. There's too much interest.

00:15:27:16 - 00:15:48:21 Unknown But like, people overthink all these valuation things. And I think we have the same like approach with Vietnam. And we said like, oh no, we should start with the like average of 5 million. We probably wouldn't raise that 5 million, right. The thing is that like we raise a lot of our capital from US investors. And so we just picked a number and we just went with it and we didn't spend that much time fundraising.

00:15:48:23 - 00:16:07:19 Unknown Because when you're fundraising, investors are looking at you examining all parts of what you're doing and you're like, oh my God, like This fancy big name investor wants to talk to me, lowly me? Like that's amazing. And so you, like, prepare, you overprepare, and you're not actually getting what you should be doing, which is talk to your customers and like, writing code.

00:16:07:23 - 00:16:31:22 Unknown The reality is that a startup is really all about the basics, which is talking to customers, feel what they want and then building it. Yeah, for sure. And I think being on the other side of things, having those conversations is startups. It's the fundraising process can take a really long time and it really hinders your progress to build and continue, like expanding your customer base to talk to your customer more frequently.

00:16:31:22 - 00:17:06:02 Unknown And sometimes that can be the crux of the business, because you lose out on like months of runway, which sometimes can be very valuable, especially if you're a little bit cash constrained. I also wanted to touch on your mental state. So you mentioned that, like maybe after a couple while a pivoting and then not being super familiar with the construction space before it really took a toll on the team and yourself a little bit like, could you walk me through how were you feeling and how were you and your co-founder kind of having those tough conversations?

00:17:06:06 - 00:17:40:02 Unknown Do I so I remember actually we were feeling pretty low. The fall semester after we left business school. You see, Nathaniel and I, my old co-founder, we were trying to get this thing up and running and we didn't know how to make it work. One, we were still in like Covid lockdown and instead of being in Vietnam, we were stuck in Thailand or couldn't get our visa to the country to we couldn't actually go and talk to our customers there in another country.

00:17:40:02 - 00:17:59:17 Unknown They're in lockdown. No one wants to do anything like it was really tough. We were in total lockdown. That mental state at the very beginning. Forced me to be very aware of, like what external validation can do to you because then when we kind of like, like months later, it was like, wow, we feel great ever in science.

00:17:59:17 - 00:18:17:16 Unknown Like, wow, Robert, like Nathaniel, you guys are geniuses. Like, you guys are so smart. Are you guys doing all the stuff? And you quickly realize, like, actually like, hey, you know, it was like, we're always just doing our thing and stuff, like, what I see is really like, just that external validation, that made us feel more confident in what we were doing.

00:18:17:18 - 00:18:35:23 Unknown But otherwise we were always doing the same thing. Yeah. Think the other part of it is that, like, why she always says this, but it's like, you know, Nothing kill a startup more than like no traction. And so we were getting a lot of traction. But if you're seeing traction, you're seeing user growth. You're seeing revenue growth. It's like everyone's excited all of a sudden.

00:18:36:00 - 00:18:59:06 Unknown And I think that when we're getting user growth, market growth, that was really exciting for us. Yeah, that was what caused us to feel like, wow, we're actually moving and we're doing stuff and I feel that momentum. The biggest problem was when we were hitting that point where we're thinking through like our burn rate, profitability, everything that we were talking about earlier and we were like, wait, this doesn't make sense.

00:18:59:06 - 00:19:19:11 Unknown I don't know how to, like, fix this thing. And when things become like, I don't know how to fix this thing to a, oh, this is a really tough challenge, right? That's a different framing problem is when you have no idea where to start and challenges are like, I know exactly what to do. It's just really, really hard to do it.

00:19:19:12 - 00:19:45:09 Unknown That's why it really changed our mindset to like, okay, the doom and gloom, we're not on the right path. And me and my team had to really rethink things. And then I think the final nail in the coffin was money. You know, not, playing my tool man. Right? Oh, but he took a really long medical leave, and I think that, like, Final Piece was just, like, a lot, manage all at the same time, that there was no traction.

00:19:45:11 - 00:20:01:01 Unknown That's the biggest symptom to building a startup is all about doing it with the people. And if my co-founder was not able to be with me, I think that was a big part of it was like, oh, I don't want to do this alone. Actually, which is a big reason why I think why CEOs says, like, you need to founders in order to build stuff.

00:20:01:03 - 00:20:19:21 Unknown Buildings are super lonely, and that's probably the final piece of the mindset I wanted to share. Is that, like, you know, being able to find your community, your first and foremost community is your co-founder and your team. But I also made sure to like bringing other, like, founders. And we would meet up and we would like, do stuff together or like share tips and tricks.

00:20:19:21 - 00:20:41:17 Unknown So that's the other final piece of the mindset that I think about as well. Yeah, yeah, I and I think this resonates with so many founders out there, especially solo founders, because it can just get really overwhelming and very lonely when you can't share, share what your even thinking of, what you're dreaming of the business for anyone. And having that camaraderie is actually so important.

00:20:41:19 - 00:21:09:16 Unknown And What is one piece of advice that you would give to a founder who is struggling or is kind of in this stage where they don't know if they should pivot or if they should shut things down? I think that The biggest piece of advice for people in that situation, where they're not sure if they should shut down, keep going, is to realize that... if you keep pushing on what you're working on, you keep staying alive.

00:21:09:18 - 00:21:31:00 Unknown You act like a cockroach, right? Like you cannot get rid of you, but you're going to do something brave. Like, that's the thing is that like, The biggest thing that kills startups is really not like running out of money. Like, it's easy to get money, it's hard to stay motivated. And that motivation has to come from inside. If you want to pivot, if you want to stick with what you're working like, you know what's best for your business.

00:21:31:03 - 00:21:53:18 Unknown But It's easy to say, like, I've had enough. Like I miss my old corporate job. I miss being able to just think from 8 to 6 and not stressed out about everything that's going on. That's an easy path to go for it. But being a founder means that you're constantly thinking about all this different things. You're constantly thinking about how you come off, how you sell.

00:21:53:20 - 00:22:15:21 Unknown And it's one of the most rewarding things you can do. You are a founder because you love learning. You love being able to adapt to new problems and so dynamic. And there's a lot on your plate. Yeah, absolutely. But you're a founder because you really want to make a difference. And that when you're building startups, that's a way to learn.

00:22:16:02 - 00:22:38:23 Unknown That's the fast way for you to grow. And so no matter what you do afterward, it's like you're going to take those learnings. You can take that growth and you're going to apply it towards your next venture or back into the corporate world. And I think that ownership, that scrappy sauce for mindset that I've looked a bit over the past four years, I think that's probably like, you know, one of the biggest mindset shifts that I've had.

00:22:39:03 - 00:22:59:20 Unknown But the most rewarding thing, like you said earlier, is really the impact you're able to make. And that's from my customers, my team, and of course, everyone around me. And so that would be my one piece of advice is just, listening to yourself and just keep going. You know, what's best for you. And that mindset, your persistence.

00:22:59:22 - 00:23:21:13 Unknown It's what got you here in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so beautiful and definitely so true. Like, when you're a founder, you feel the highs very well, but you also feel very a lot of lows and sometimes the lows can get very overwhelming. I will also add that not everyone wants to be a founder and that's totally okay.

00:23:21:13 - 00:23:44:12 Unknown Like it's totally normal to want to go back to having a job because you don't have to think about it in the weekend and you can actually, like, have fun and live a carefree life. So I think it's it's really a personal choice. So after that, I decided to have another swing at the whole startup game. It's kind of like we said, being a founder is not for everyone, and that's okay for me.

00:23:44:12 - 00:24:10:02 Unknown I realized I love, I love being able to take on big challenges like this, and I found a new co-founder to deal with Oscar. He's amazing. What Reforge Labs does is we build performance marketing agents. So think of all the advertising that you see on TikTok base. But there's a marketer behind all of these ads, and they're not super excited to do all the heavy part of their job.

00:24:10:07 - 00:24:32:16 Unknown And that data heavy part of their job is something that I really good at doing. So we've decided to create a AI data analyst that can go and sift through all that performance and marketing data for that, so that that's like creative insights, creative research, data crunching of the reports. We do it all. That's super cool. And I just have to know.

00:24:32:16 - 00:24:59:09 Unknown So investors love founders that make them a lot of money. But so when you told investors you told Visy and you told everyone about your past failures and how you might have lost them a tad bit of money, how did they react? Oh, that's a great question. How do people react in the face of failure? They think like, One thing to know is that for VC, most startups do not make it.

00:24:59:11 - 00:25:19:10 Unknown In fact, it's almost built into the model where like, hey, you know, if, one of them hits a unicorn or a technical on or I guess, like a $4 trillion company, now it is. That's the goal. You really don't want your portfolio companies to just pass it and kind of return something. That's also not a win for them either.

00:25:19:15 - 00:25:51:11 Unknown And so I think that what's really works in about investor management is just being really clear and transparent with their communication. No one cares that you failed except yourself and the people that didn't have a ton of money to invest into you, but did anyways. That's really bad. Don't do that. You want sophisticated investors? Yeah. So I think that, you know, the biggest thing is just being able to have really great communication with your investors and keep them in the loop on what's happening so that you don't surprise anyone.

00:25:51:11 - 00:26:17:09 Unknown Yeah. And having that clear communication on like, okay, this is the status update. This is the monthly update. It's the quarterly update. Like, it doesn't surprise anyone at that point in time when you had to relay the story of how you built this great company, you spent two and a half, two years, three years building it, and it ultimately closed down to everyone, like, I guess, like, what was that process like, what did it just come out of the top of your tongue?

00:26:17:09 - 00:26:41:15 Unknown Or like, how did you mentally prepare yourself to deliver such a hard part of your story? Yeah, I think one of the hardest things was letting the team know, hey, we're probably not moving forward with this idea. Yeah, it's really hard. I'd tell your customers, hey, if we're no longer able to provide this service, those promises that we made, we're not going to be able to uphold them.

00:26:41:17 - 00:27:03:03 Unknown And I would say that that's way harder than communicating to investors or even to like your friends and family that like the big progress that you made is not going to pay off. Yeah. You have to realize that, like When you start to hire people for your own startup, we grew to like dozens of employees. They're making a career bet on you.

00:27:03:06 - 00:27:32:04 Unknown Yeah. When they put their entire career worth on you and what you hope to achieve. And it gets really, really tough because like or not, you shouldn't. Coworkers will look back and be like, what is it a random experience that you had? What are you doing for like a year or two? And I would say that like my co-founder Daniel, he talks a lot about how his dad ando's, letting patients know that they have cancer or they're not going to make it.

00:27:32:06 - 00:27:55:10 Unknown Yeah. And it always starts off with just like acknowledging recognize what's happened and then just going straight for like no beating around the bush. And yeah, that was the way that we decided to communicate with our team, with customers that, hey, this is what's happened. We're not going to try and sugarcoat it because no amount of flattery is going to change what's happening, but offer a way forward.

00:27:55:12 - 00:28:15:06 Unknown And so we focus on helping to get people the support they need, the advice they need, the recommendation referral they needed so that they can find their next job so that our customers can start to move forward and start to plan for an alternative. So that was really important for us to handle, and it was a really delicate situation.

00:28:15:06 - 00:28:36:00 Unknown There's no shame in failing. It's really admirable that you went out there and took a risk, but in that moment it doesn't feel like that at all. It doesn't feel like that at all. You take it very personally because a startup is very personal. And so I would say that you're right, It's your baby. And if someone calls your baby ugly, as much as you want to bring the scientific lens to, it's hard to divorce that.

00:28:36:00 - 00:29:02:22 Unknown Yeah. One final question. What's the number one piece of advice that really shape your founder journey? I think that the number one advice, there's so much good advice that I could give, but the number one advice I would say is to carefully pick your co-founders. I picked someone that did not have complementary skill sets, that did not have domain market expertise.

00:29:03:02 - 00:29:27:00 Unknown And like definitely he did not know he wanted to even be a founder. All those things made it tough. Yes, of course, but he was ultimately the right co-founder to join the team because Nathaniel was able to inspire me in moments of gloom and doom, be able to help me think through and strategize. And really, we were just people that got along.

00:29:27:00 - 00:29:48:08 Unknown And I think that goes a long way to figure out who is the right co-founder, because at the end of the day, the co-founder is going to be there with you, thick and thin. And now with my current startup and reforge labs with Oscar, like, he's such a great communicator, super empathetic, and we're both able to like, recognize, like, oh, this is starting to trigger the other person.

00:29:48:08 - 00:30:14:08 Unknown Or like, hey, actually, I need to cover for them because something is happening here and there. Your co-founder really shapes your experience. Whether that's success or failure. Co-Founder is always going to be there with you. Yeah, yeah. And I can totally I can totally relate to that, because I think one of the main reasons why I went at the startup I was trying to do over the summer didn't go so well because I was with the co-founding team that we just did not align at all.

00:30:14:08 - 00:30:40:19 Unknown We did not see anything eye to eye, and that is the most painful thing that could happen. But I just want to say like, thank you, Robert, for being just so open and candid about sharing about a story that did not have a super happy ending, because I think a lot of people just focus on success, focus on fundraising, focus on all the like you mentioned, external validations, but so much of the startup journey is how you overcome these very hard challenges.

00:30:40:19 - 00:31:00:20 Unknown And how do you push yourself forward and what you really learned from it. And I've learned so much from you today. I know a lot on this topic today. It was like you said, not on the success, the morale, the failure and personal growth side. And I have to say, like, you know, one of the biggest things about building startup is just building that emotional maturity.

00:31:00:23 - 00:31:12:23 Unknown Yeah. The person you spent all of your time with, it's going to be your team and having the right people, founder, the right team. All of that really makes that experience like ten times better or ten times worse. I think how you guys gel. So.

00:31:12:23 - 00:31:34:01 Unknown So that episode was slightly different. If you're interested in everything challenges, struggles and everything in between, do let us know. And if you have any of your own, you should drop down in the comments. I love to hear any of them. And if you're interested to hear more early stage founders stories, you can check them out here. And you should subscribe to the channel because it helps us deliver stories to people like you.

00:31:34:03 - 00:31:36:10 Unknown Okay, bye for now.

00:31:36:10 - 00:31:42:12 Unknown Hmmm...

00:31:47:04 - 00:31:51:19 Unknown Before we start, I want to thank Robert for giving us a super rare and vulnerable

00:31:51:19 - 00:31:54:21 Unknown look into what happens as start up and things fall apart.

00:32:21:14 - 00:32:30:00 Unknown I never thought that we'd work in a field that I had no expertise in, in a market I had no expertise in, in a language that I'm like only semi comfortable speaking

00:32:30:00 - 00:32:32:22 Unknown and working in a professional setting in.

00:32:33:00 - 00:32:33:23 Unknown It was really hard,