Speaker 1: 0:00

If you think you're going to get your startup right the first time you ever do it, I'm telling you now you're wrong.

Speaker 2: 0:20

So welcome to another episode of the accelerometer. So on this episode we have a special guest, Ikram. Ikram I know from back when I was working at Venmo almost 10 years ago. I was there in a crazy transitionary period, so during that time I think I met Ikram. It was kind of crazy story, Like I was walking around at the CMU job fair and Ikram was sitting there in a booth they only unmarked booth in this job fair and I walked past this booth and Ikram was just like you know, I'll give you $10. And I was like okay, sure, fine. And then he Venmo me $10 and I was like this shit is going to be real, Like this is awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Did you believe that was $10 for real, or were you like yeah, I believe that was $10.

Speaker 2: 1:15

At the very least, it told me $10.

Speaker 1: 1:17

And then what happened from there, like how did we?

Speaker 2: 1:18

end up. I think you want, like, this is the middle of the year and you're like, I got to get you work in a Venmo, so I did this part time work while I was at Venmo.

Speaker 3: 1:29

Oh right.

Speaker 1: 1:30

While you were in school.

Speaker 3: 1:31

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:32

Moonlighting.

Speaker 2: 1:33

Yeah, yeah, how's it been going? How have your 10 years been? Oh, it's been good.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Making more music now. Yeah, but that was a good run. It was fun working with you.

Speaker 2: 1:43

Yeah, likewise, that was kind of a crazy. Three months that I was at Venmo I got bought like twice while I was there.

Speaker 1: 1:51

Yeah, that was rare. That was a rare situation, I think, for a lot of startups To get bought twice in a row. Yeah, to go through two acquisitions. What was that like it was? The first one was intense, the second one was smoother.

Speaker 2: 2:06

I would say yeah, what was intense about it?

Speaker 1: 2:09

The first one we had to do because it was kind of like buzzer beater type situation because we had two weeks left of payroll. Yeah, no investors were willing to back kind of the future of the company. So our options were either shut it down, which we actually considered and told the team about, like you know, we have two weeks left. Doesn't look like we have a good outcome for all of us. Go find another job, so shut it down. Or hail Mary, find a company that wants to like sort of partner with us. And in the middle of that two weeks we met the team at Braintree, bill Reddy specifically, and actually on my birthday he signed an acquisition offer for us.

Speaker 2: 3:01

I had that feel for your birthday. It was interesting, crazy birthday present, right?

Speaker 1: 3:05

My parents were like where are you? I was like because they wanted to celebrate, but obviously I couldn't make that because we were doing this, so how?

Speaker 2: 3:13

about the end of that day. It definitely ruined my birthday, so I need to Didn't like end the day opening a few bottles of champagne.

Speaker 1: 3:23

It was an interesting stress reliever. But so the day after that we got to tell the team that things keep moving forward. From then on up it was an uphill kind of journey.

Speaker 2: 3:35

It was an uphill journey. After acquisition it was like now comes the work.

Speaker 1: 3:41

No, I think it was Things started going up. Well, things started going up.

Speaker 2: 3:45

Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1: 3:47

You can't say down. What do you say it's like things would come up and up? Yeah, it foomed. Things started moving.

Speaker 3: 3:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:57

And nothing really changed about Venmo. That's the crazy part about it. Venmo stayed basically the same for I don't know like 15 years and it's still pretty similar to what it used to be.

Speaker 2: 4:08

And it had what been like five years before the acquisition.

Speaker 1: 4:12

It had been about six years, six or seven years before.

Speaker 2: 4:17

That's a really long time to stay in the mindset, Sorry 2009 to 2014.

Speaker 1: 4:23

How did you keep going? How did we keep going? I think the key was working with friends. That was the If, my take away, if my one take away was just doing things like this, enjoying every. If you look at the day to day, it becomes very small compared to like.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Yeah, a long time it didn't feel like seven years, because every day was like a little party. Yeah, at least the way we did it that's what you said earlier in the prep of this talk it was like a family, right. Yeah, it had that feel.

Speaker 2: 4:59

It was casual.

Speaker 1: 5:02

And we were built on an island, New York City. I call it the Hidden Caribbean Island.

Speaker 2: 5:08

The Hidden Caribbean.

Speaker 1: 5:09

Little Africa, the Hidden Caribbean, little Africa when I've stayed for my whole life. Basically it just had that island feel to it, whereas all the other payment services didn't. Would you say Venmo has more of an island feel than the cash-off, the Swiss Twins alike. Or Zell or whatever. You come to Venmo for some fresh, there's your suit apps Like a Rum and Coca-Cola or a Magga Pinata. That's what we tried to model Venmo.

Speaker 2: 5:40

Yeah, I love that. It was somehow that and also Grinset. It was Grinset Party time.

Speaker 1: 5:45

I will say that somehow the team balanced each other out in that when some people were out and needed a break, someone else took the baton and was working the extra midnight owl. So it was not owl, I mean midnight owl.

Speaker 2: 6:00

You got to work that extra midnight owl. It hoots and you worked.

Speaker 1: 6:03

I'm an islander. My family's half Sri Lankan, half Moroccan.

Speaker 2: 6:08

I say the same thing I'm an islander. Yeah, I'm from Long Island. It hit me one day.

Speaker 1: 6:13

I was in a cab. The guy picked me up here and I was like man, my phone, I can only pay with my phone. He's like don't worry, man, we've got all the time in the world, we're islanders. He sat down, I gave him my phone, he charged it up, he waited with me for 10 minutes and he's like it's all, good, man, we take care of each other. We're on the island, you go to SF. It's almost like a Kind of like I don't know how would you describe it.

Speaker 1: 6:36

I don't know much about it. It's not island culture. Yeah, it's not island culture, but also.

Speaker 2: 6:39

New York is an island culture. It is but it is an island. It is kind of I don't know like you got. You made island culture in New York.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Yeah, I mean it's just, it has that feel you brought the island with you. There's Jamaican food all that good stuff.

Speaker 2: 6:53

It's the most diverse island.

Speaker 1: 6:54

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:55

Give it that.

Speaker 1: 6:56

Definitely.

Speaker 2: 6:58

So you'd say you focus a lot on culture at VanMau.

Speaker 1: 7:00

Yeah, culture and also taking a lot of chances. I feel like I think a lot of people so for every single person on the team, from the fifth employee to basically like 20, was a first time college grad and we had some like Cortina and I obviously had we'd worked at. The only thing we did was go from start up to start up.

Speaker 3: 7:25

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:27

So that helped kind of deal with the understanding that everything is uncertain at all times. But aside from that, everyone it was like a first time. It was like a first time. It was like a truck filled with a bunch of first timers.

Speaker 3: 7:42

Yeah, on an island.

Speaker 1: 7:45

That's basically what happened.

Speaker 3: 7:47

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:48

And I don't you know. I met so this is the most unusual thing the person that was responsible for the next seven people, who are all close friends now. I met him on the streets of New.

Speaker 2: 7:59

York. Literally, I was walking around, so you met him on the streets On the island.

Speaker 3: 8:03

It was like asking for money.

Speaker 1: 8:06

Instead of that I'll Venmau you. So I was wearing a Venmau tee and he's like, do you work at Venmau? I said yeah, and literally the next night, oh, he's like, yeah, whatever. We went out, yeah, and I was like, look, if you refer three you know anyone you refer will give you a stipend, like a you know a referral fee. It was 3K. Seven people came into my inbox the next day. We hired, we worked with all of them.

Speaker 3: 8:30

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:31

And that's how we met our team on the streets of this island.

Speaker 3: 8:33

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:35

So that's the thing about New York City. It has those serendipitous moments Like our island is over there, all met just by going. You know party hopping, so it can be done Like so a lot of people think that you have to be so serious and rigorous about building something, but I think you can combine both having a good time with your friends. You just make sure that every day you're having fun. You have to enjoy what you're doing. I mean you have to put in the work.

Speaker 2: 9:00

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:03

But if you walk into a place and you're like I don't want to be around these people, which is kind of how what it felt like when PayPal came around- yeah. And you know, and it becomes stiff, and it becomes like things that you get promised are people. You know people don't follow through on the things they're doing.

Speaker 3: 9:18

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:19

That's what the turnoff is. So spending time with people you love that's the biggest takeaway for me.

Speaker 2: 9:24

Oh, I love that. So you're doing something new, right.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Yeah, we are working on Jelly, jelly, jelly, jelly and this is actually on Jelly right now, if anyone's listening, but it's the idea. Is everything you say is published in real time for everyone to listen to it, based on your privacy settings, and can it cause a different flow of information in the world?

Speaker 2: 9:49

So what keeps you up at night?

Speaker 1: 9:52

Lots of things I would say. Whatever I'm working on is definitely in my subconscious. I generally dream about the things I'm doing and if I'm able to fall asleep which, no, it happens a lot.

Speaker 1: 10:11

but if I'm not able to fall asleep it's because I'm very excited about something and I just want to keep going until it gets done. There's two types of modes of creativity, I feel like for me. One is you know what you're doing, you just got to finish it and it's just hours. And then the other type is you lost it and you don't know anything about what you're doing, so you just have to just kind of like chill. So it depends on what mode I'm in. If I'm in the mode of like get it done, get it done and I'm excited about it, I'll just keep going. If it's super creative mode, where you feel a little lost and you're searching for something, you just kind of like just hang, I don't know, find ways to fall asleep, do some exercise, yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:56

Yeah, nozz worked at Venmo, too.

Speaker 1: 10:58

Nozz did nozz daily. Yeah, how was that? I mean, it was good. I feel like nozz was always on the lookout for what was next, which is a good. You know, it's a common thing for people that are ambitious about what they how they spend their time.

Speaker 2: 11:16

Are you on the lookout for people who are on the lookout for what's next?

Speaker 1: 11:19

I enjoy being around well, I don't it's a balance but I enjoy being around people that are lovingly on the lookout for themselves, and you know like.

Speaker 2: 11:30

You ever get people who are fully on the lookout.

Speaker 1: 11:33

Absolutely all the time it's very, it can be toxic.

Speaker 3: 11:37

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:38

I wouldn't say they're on the lookout, they're all on the look in. You're there on the lock, look in yeah and try to get a glimpse into what you're doing and then see how they can benefit from that as opposed to just being a very collaborative kind of mentality.

Speaker 1: 11:55

Yeah, does that make any sense? That makes a lot of sense. So I enjoy spending time with people that, not in a cocky manner, but like that, want to like, make hits. Yeah, we actually at Venmo we would do. We would compare every release to like or signify it to the release of a song, like if something's out of tune, it's not going to be a hit. And the thing is, it's very easy to spot something out of tune and a little thing that's out of tune will ruin the entire song because that's what, that's what you remember, that's like what the moment is. So viewing everything as a hit is how I kind of approach things, approach releases, yeah approach releases.

Speaker 1: 12:41

I think Apple does that a little bit.

Speaker 2: 12:43

Yeah, maybe to a fault, but that's a great way to explain it, like I've tried to explain this concept to people.

Speaker 1: 12:51

Yeah, think about it Like if we were listening to Joji today. Imagine like even one little note was out of tune. Yeah, that's the only thing we'd be talking about.

Speaker 3: 13:00

Yeah, so many hours You're building a startup.

Speaker 2: 13:03

You're building a hit machine.

Speaker 1: 13:04

Yeah, you got to make a hit, at least you got to think you're making a hit. Whether you're making a hit or not, at least you have to have the energy and excitement. For that's why a lot of I feel like people that are doing their own thing. They're very their personalities, are very energetics, sort of unique, quirky, and they often get into the not made for society box, but they're just trying to make hits.

Speaker 2: 13:28

So what do you want to hit?

Speaker 1: 13:30

Once you taste one hit, you want another one.

Speaker 3: 13:31

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:33

Not for the fame or the fortune, but more for the just what it feels like to have exhausted yourself.

Speaker 2: 13:39

Yeah, do you ever get in the sense like you're making too many hits that all sound the same?

Speaker 1: 13:48

No, I don't have that problem.

Speaker 3: 13:49

You got to find a new hit.

Speaker 1: 13:51

I feel like I'm a one hit wonder maybe, but you keep trying.

Speaker 2: 13:57

I feel like Venmo was not a one hit. Venmo was a one hit, different hits yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:02

I don't even know what it was really.

Speaker 2: 14:05

Venmo was a hit album.

Speaker 1: 14:08

That's funny, that's true. Well, if you look at the people that did things after Venmo, like you, you're making a hit right now. I feel like a lot of people that were in came through Venmo or have done a lot of interesting things.

Speaker 2: 14:23

It's actually really incredible Nars.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Daly was one. Then there was Grail by Julian, that sort of fashion company. Shreyawn did this Socratic and then now Maven Matt D became a Bitcoin man. Stalb is writing a book about Venmo. I feel like for me, watching the energy that keeps perpetuating from that is kind of crazy.

Speaker 2: 14:48

Yeah, are you in this book about Venmo? Has Stalb interviewed you for it?

Speaker 1: 14:54

I think, yeah, I mean we've talked a lot about it, but he's actually going to do his first reading on October 23rd. That's exciting.

Speaker 3: 15:02

So I'll say 24th, 24th.

Speaker 1: 15:05

I think the first thing he's going to talk about is the day we decided to pivot. This is an interesting story. We were Stalb, so one of our requirements in the early days was you have to be an engineer if you're joining the team, because you can't talk and not be able to build it, or you have to be able to back what you're saying up with actual outcomes. He learned how to code to join Venmo.

Speaker 1: 15:30

He was like oh, I use it all the time with my girlfriend, he's splitting things. The day he joined, we told him that Venmo doesn't have enough traction, so we're changing the company.

Speaker 2: 15:40

Oh, my God.

Speaker 1: 15:42

He took us out to lunch and he was like. He gave us this full presentation on why we can't be doing this. He spent three months learning how to code to work at Venmo. Now we're going to become like a vacuum cleaner sharing service. We were tossing around all kinds of ideas like share your appliances between your neighbors. The other one was like an e-book reader. One was like a four square competitor. He played a big role in actually keeping Venmo going.

Speaker 2: 16:14

Why did you want to pivot?

Speaker 1: 16:16

We had 5,000 users just using it like infrequently, yeah, which actually, now that I look back at, is actually not bad, because it's hard to get to 5,000.

Speaker 2: 16:26

How long did it take to get those 5,000 users?

Speaker 1: 16:28

That took about two years yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:30

Yeah, I remember the first company that I tried to start. I think you told me after a year I had 700 users and I that was the point where I was just like that this is hard.

Speaker 1: 16:42

And you were like yeah, that was Wiltsville.

Speaker 2: 16:44

Yeah, and you were like Matt, that's really good actually.

Speaker 1: 16:46

Yes, it is good. That's yeah. You can't understand. Yeah and yeah, how many jellies are we gonna have?

Speaker 3: 16:55

that's the question I'm asking myself now how many jellies do you have right?

Speaker 1: 16:58

now we have, so we probably have like 25 jellies right now.

Speaker 3: 17:02

That's really good.

Speaker 1: 17:03

You know it's what it's a couple weeks into it, but yeah. Every new jelly is, you get a week. Every time a new jelly joins jelly, they get a jelly jar, a jar of jelly. When did you move to New York? I moved to New York when I was 23 have you ever looked back? I look back briefly Philadelphia, yeah, but it you know, initially it was in Bob way.

Speaker 3: 17:28

Africa.

Speaker 1: 17:29

Yeah, but I look back. For a year I came here, worked at a white comedy. I was in the first white Combinator class of companies.

Speaker 2: 17:38

That's really cool.

Speaker 1: 17:40

It was called OMG pop, I'm in like with you. And they made the the. Eventually, the hit that came out of there was that game, draw something. It was like a Pictionary game you play with everybody. But that's where I learned that you have to be willing to experiment with everything possible at all times. And we made a competitor Twitter at once. We made a competitor to like that feedback Thing da da da. We just we were just playing around For a long time and then draw. Something happened and then Zing about them. But yeah, they were in the first white Combinator class in the early days of the scene and it was. It was amazing.

Speaker 3: 18:22

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:23

Yeah, now I'm like there's so many people doing tech, but back then it was like it was kind of like a desert.

Speaker 2: 18:30

So you're in a white Combinator company, the famously San Francisco coming is that moved to New York. We're doing that.

Speaker 1: 18:36

Yeah, so that was my only requirement in life I'm not leaving. Yeah, I mean I'll go or I will be where I want to be. Yeah, that's one of the reasons I think people make their own things because you want to control every, every aspect of your life?

Speaker 2: 18:50

Yeah, I actually employing people. If you have that mentality, you want to control every aspect of your life. How do you feel employing people?

Speaker 1: 18:56

How do you have to let them do the same thing?

Speaker 3: 18:59

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:00

Venmo and you may have noticed this was Flat in its structure. There's yeah, there was no real notion of who's the boss entirely and it was very chaotic at times.

Speaker 1: 19:09

Yeah, it was very, but I you know it's in some ways Maybe it's a miracle. It worked and I hope that that environment can be recreated. But we had no, we had a complete, flat, flat structure. Yeah, now everyone showed up to an office, but that because that was the thing to do, like no one was working from home all the time. But now it's different. But in this day and age I feel like freedom is the key.

Speaker 2: 19:35

So you give everybody that's working at jelly jelly complete freedom.

Speaker 1: 19:38

Yeah, either you want to do this or not. I learned a very interesting thing going back to the music. Yeah, when the Beatles were recording, they were very adamant about capturing the vocals when the singer wanted to sing. Same thing applies to code like if you're for, if you can put. I don't know if you, if you've noticed this, but forced code always feels flop, funky. Yeah, it doesn't feel like. It doesn't have the little details of what makes things. It has little latencies here or there. I, whatever you, can tell the difference between lazy code and like when the person is passionate about it.

Speaker 1: 20:11

So I don't want you to. I don't want you to write code on some jelly jelly.

Speaker 1: 20:15

If you're not into it, like yeah go do something else and if, until that person comes along, I'll keep doing it same thing with music, like it's more obvious in music, because if you hear some, if someone comes in and they sing on the mic and they're not into it, you know immediately like vocal performance is the the hardest thing to capture, because you have to make sure that that person is into it, otherwise it the soul song is failed. So same thing applies to engineering. If you're not into what you're engineering, it's not gonna go, it's not gonna have that feel.

Speaker 2: 20:48

I imagine the same thing applies to everything is sort of marketing to Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 20:54

Yeah, sales, sales. And you can tell when someone's bullshitting. Yeah, and in the startup in the early days, if you're bullshitting, you're not doing yourself any favors.

Speaker 2: 21:03

Yeah, I mean you get those emails from like the sales people are going, you know.

Speaker 1: 21:06

And I know when I'm bullshitting, like just pushing, and I'm like I'm not really into this what draws you to AI? The fact that it can make my life easier.

Speaker 2: 21:18

Yeah, yeah. What do you think about the doomers? I don't know, I don't, I've never heard of that the people who are afraid that AI is gonna take over the world.

Speaker 1: 21:28

Yeah, I mean you ever worry about that legitimate, legitimate, legitimate, legitimate Paranoia. Like yeah, I feel I've had that thought myself, but in some ways I'm kind of like Isn't that how everything is? Like there's always someone trying to take over the world. Yeah in fact, if you're starting a company, a lot of rhetoric that goes on in these early state. Like Zuckerberg, he's trying to take over the world.

Speaker 1: 21:51

Yeah that's you know. So I'm just playing, I'm just here, to what you know, I'm like, like I was saying earlier, diving in the ocean, just looking at all these different circumstances and, yeah, trying to make sense of it.

Speaker 2: 22:04

You're just a warrior in the startup world yeah, in some in AI world.

Speaker 1: 22:08

Yeah, I played around with some of the stuff. I'm also waiting for the right time where I feel like.

Speaker 2: 22:13

I mean, jelly jelly is an AI app, isn't it kind, yeah, kind of You're doing AI transcriptions.

Speaker 1: 22:19

We do, yeah, we do do that or summarizations summaries of when it's kind of eerie, what can happen?

Speaker 2: 22:24

Yeah, it's just crazy you feel like you need to be an AI expert to build an AI company.

Speaker 1: 22:32

No, yeah, no, I don't think so. I think I Feel like you just have to know how to work with, and then, you know, spend time with people where you Do a financial expert before you started down. No, zero, nothing, nothing, actually complete opposite.

Speaker 2: 22:52

Yeah, did you become a financial expert through?

Speaker 1: 22:56

I was the chief compliance officer for a while, which is also ludicrous, yeah, but I Learned a lot about it and I got I got very discouraged by a lot of things I saw. Yeah like what? Just people Knickling it, nicklin, diving each other, and how much money, how much pressure money can put on people and Friendships and just that that sort of thing, and I was like man. Not. Not what I was in it for.

Speaker 3: 23:24

Yeah, we are.

Speaker 1: 23:24

Our whole idea was for people to share money and, like you know, take care of each other. Actually, we used to have this thing, venmo. One of our principles down low is that Venmo meant I'll get. I'll get you back next time. So we actually didn't want you to use Venmo to Actually settle the bill case. Weird, right. If you go buy some nuts, here's three bucks for it.

Speaker 3: 23:44

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:45

Why can't we just find a way to Not have to go through these little back and forth? Yeah, when governments at large scale have have a mass, massive amounts of debt, yeah, and then friendships get ruined over money. It's crazy.

Speaker 2: 24:00

So what excites you for the future?

Speaker 1: 24:05

Just what just enjoy like living on the island.

Speaker 2: 24:09

Just more New York.

Speaker 1: 24:10

I just I just love, just interact it. I feel the social nature of life, just interact yeah people. That excites me about the future. Do you ever like being optimistic about people getting to? Like taking care of each other?

Speaker 2: 24:29

Do you ever like wonder or?

Speaker 1: 24:33

think about what you're going to be building in a year. Sometimes, yeah sometimes, I know what we. I feel like I have a. I always have some kind of. This is what I'm hoping to be at.

Speaker 3: 24:49

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:50

Like with Jelly Jelly, for example, I'm like, okay, it feels like it has a little potential. And now I'm thinking like how can we get it there?

Speaker 3: 24:59

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:00

And so if I look, If I fast forward a year from now, for me it's hit. It's hit a point where people are using it to connect with each other in a way that's kind of different.

Speaker 2: 25:14

Yeah, what's your ultimate dream for Jelly Jelly?

Speaker 1: 25:20

The ultimate dream for Jelly Jelly is to help people keep and capture beautiful stories in a very slow manner, in a slow-paced manner, not like Even though it's very fast.

Speaker 3: 25:35

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:35

The way it works, but like to enable people to take time talking to each other and getting to know each other.

Speaker 2: 25:42

Where do your ideas come from?

Speaker 1: 25:45

Talking to people like you, riffing, riffing all day long.

Speaker 2: 25:51

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:51

Seeing things, just putting Looking at things.

Speaker 2: 25:54

You ever think that they're like jam founders? And then there are like classical music founders, founders that play by like sheet music, and oh, that's an interesting question I feel like you're like a jam band founder, I'm full on improv jazz.

Speaker 1: 26:08

Give me the Give me the. Yeah, yeah, I think so yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:14

You ever have to, like you know, learn licks, licks, absolutely, yeah, yeah. What are some of your licks?

Speaker 1: 26:21

You gotta keep practicing. One lick for me is being able to get a dev environment set up. It's like if I have an idea, I should be able to build a prototype in 24 hours.

Speaker 3: 26:31

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:32

At all times, no matter what it is. Oh, I love that so.

Speaker 2: 26:36

Has your dev environment changed?

Speaker 1: 26:38

It's changed. Well, lately it's fucking me up a little bit because everyone's switching to this whole verse cell, next JS, all that.

Speaker 2: 26:45

A verse cell is so beautiful.

Speaker 1: 26:47

I have a good. I had a very good ten year set up. Dropbox was my always like, it was my sync, it was my server always. I think we did some stuff on that. Yeah, no version control, none of that, just live. Everything I made was live on a site PHP, yeah, and a little bit of JavaScript, some MySQL, and with that I was able to make the first version of Smalltalk, which became Jelly. That's suffice. And I had it to a point where as soon as I bought a domain, the site was deployed, everything was ready to go. Code was. Every line of code I wrote was live. So, but that took a lot of practice to get to that point, because you have to be able to. It's the same as Stevie Wonder Stevie Wonder can play anything I like this comparison.

Speaker 2: 27:41

I am the Stevie Wonder of startups.

Speaker 1: 27:44

Yeah, I'm not saying that I'm the, but I know that he has practiced. You practice all these things so you can forget about that, yeah, and then be free with your ideas. So there's a lot of practice and that's all. I encourage that for anything Like. If you think you're going to get your startup right the first time you ever do it, I'm telling you now you're wrong.

Speaker 3: 28:04

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:05

The best thing you can do is practice in as many places as you can, just on throwaway ideas, other people's ideas, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever. But you just got to keep practicing until you know eventually what. You'll start practicing on your own thing If that's what you want to do, and then it'll start to click yeah, but did you get it right the first time? Oh, definitely not, and do you feel like you're getting it right? You're still practicing.

Speaker 2: 28:28

No, I'm still screwing up all the time.

Speaker 1: 28:30

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:32

Every day, every day, something goes wrong. You need a good toolkit, yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:35

Same thing with fundraising. That's an art too.

Speaker 3: 28:38

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:39

That takes for me. I found, personally I'm phenomenal. I mean, I've practiced enough to get to that first seed round of funding, enough to get off the ground, but when it comes to like going from here to the next, I just I have no, I just can't.

Speaker 2: 28:55

You got to start like five or six more series C companies, right?

Speaker 1: 28:58

No, it's just it's like there's an art to that too. Yeah, I haven't really practiced that and I know that either I have to find someone that's really good at that. For example, someone like Bill Ready is someone that can come into something at this stage. You know, maybe you're from now into Jelly Jelly, for example.

Speaker 3: 29:16

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:17

And then get it to that next phase and I know where my limits are on that front. That's not me.

Speaker 2: 29:22

Yeah, are you still talking to Bill Ready?

Speaker 1: 29:25

I am yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:25

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:26

Great yeah, good friend. I'm a CEO of Pinterest now. Oh really, they're making a comeback. Okay, yeah hopefully you know what their plans are. I think their plans are to have AI as part of the whole photo experience and make it so that everything is interactable, like you can shop and do whatever you want.

Speaker 2: 29:49

Everything is becoming AI now.

Speaker 1: 29:51

Everything is. Yeah, some has some kind of AI infusion. You worry about that. No, I like it. I think it's great. I worry about the people that are going to get squashed in the middle and what's going to happen to them.

Speaker 3: 30:02

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:03

Like it's funny, when the pandemic hit, my parents stopped working because they ran a daycare, Montessori, and basically all their students stopped coming. So they shut it down. Yeah, because the rent was exorbitant. So, as a result, they stopped working. But they got a taste of that. But I feel like it's good for them that that happened now, as opposed to through some AI infusion. They were able to transition when everyone was transitioning.

Speaker 3: 30:30

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:31

And because we all went through the pandemic, we all got to take a break. But I feel like what's going to happen is, all of a sudden, a core group of people are going to get shocked by some news. Yeah, and it's going to be interesting. It's going to be sad, that I guarantee.

Speaker 3: 30:52

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:53

You're just like waiting in JPD five come out.

Speaker 1: 30:56

No, it's just going to happen across the board. People are going to like there's, that's the that we were talking. That's what's going to happen when people realize they can save money.

Speaker 3: 31:05

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:06

Having people in lots of roles Also. I feel like, as this more as more and more of this starts to happen, places like America will want less and less immigrants like me.

Speaker 3: 31:16

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:18

So you will start to see less and less diversity, more and more monotony. One of my favorite quotes is from the Dropbox founder All big things start small. I love that For simple. Even we started small.

Speaker 2: 31:30

Yeah, there must be some big things.

Speaker 1: 31:32

that started big like open AI no.

Speaker 2: 31:36

It started with like half a half or a few hundred million dollars. They were just like let's throw a few hundred million dollars in this.

Speaker 1: 31:44

I don't know. It's just two guys, though, like yeah Initially.

Speaker 2: 31:47

Yeah, but it was Sam Altman and at Modi, like the second, sam Altman was going to start something. Of course it was going to be big. Like CEO of Y Combinator for years.

Speaker 1: 31:56

I don't think they knew it was going to be as big as it became.

Speaker 2: 31:58

I think they wanted it to be that big.

Speaker 1: 32:00

They've dreamed, yeah, maybe.

Speaker 2: 32:02

Yeah, how do you feel about that as a founder? The second you make something that's public, that people use, like you get the brunt of their love and the brunt of their hate.

Speaker 1: 32:13

Yeah, I think that's. I think there are a certain group of people that just don't care, like I when I first got here age 13, or 12, between 12 and 13,. Now, if I look back at it, I was made fun of a lot just for little things I would do, but honestly, I was so oblivious to it I didn't even pay any attention. I had no idea that this was happening. So I think they're a group of like. I think actually the founders that, or the companies or the people that keep going, are completely oblivious to love or hate. In some weird ways. They're just kind of like well, I'm doing this, no matter what.

Speaker 1: 32:55

Doing their own thing, you're all kind of doing your own thing, and the ones that get caught up in the love and hate get stuck because they take it personally, yeah. So it's kind of you know, Imagine coming from Zimbabwe to America.

Speaker 3: 33:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 33:10

And with and I'll. That's why immigrants are a big part of my passion, you know, helping immigrants navigate the landscape, because when you come here, I feel fortunate that I was completely oblivious to everything.

Speaker 3: 33:27

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 33:28

But I had a lot of in my older. As I got older, I saw a lot of people that literally will say they have trauma from this, trauma from that. I would go to school. I come home, my parents are different from my friends. At school. I was bullied for eating with my doing this, eating my hands. I even I've heard stories like I hate when I started to hate my parents because they weren't speaking like white people or whatever. You know, if you're a certain type of immigrant, and I'm just like, yeah, and what is that crazy right?

Speaker 3: 33:56

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 33:57

A little oblivity is good. You're striking me as kind of oblivious Sometimes.

Speaker 2: 34:02

Yeah, it gets to me. It does Like it was one of the. It was one of the things that killed Wiltsville for me. What People saying negative things about the app Cause? Wiltsville was a product for my friends, so I built it for my friends and then my friends were using it and then anything went wrong in the product. They came to me and they were mad at me for it, and that was hard.

Speaker 1: 34:25

Oh yeah, See, that's amateur moves on your part. I hate to say it. You gotta be able to.

Speaker 2: 34:30

Built for your enemies.

Speaker 1: 34:32

Not even that. The first thing Cortina and I did this guy from Mashable, the founder of Pete Cashmere or whatever, literally like this is the most lackluster thing I've ever seen. It's like as if two people you know I don't even know what this guy was thinking Like we were just two kids.

Speaker 2: 34:48

Yeah, it was just a bad day.

Speaker 1: 34:50

And I read that and I was like this guy's, it didn't affect me at all.

Speaker 2: 34:54

Yeah. So, that's incredible. It's funny because at the same time, I feel like, as a founder, you gotta listen to everything. Everything. Everybody is using a rap as saying you gotta respond to it. This is actually a good lesson how to handle hate and love.

Speaker 1: 35:08

Love is always good. You can, an abundance of love.

Speaker 3: 35:11

But you know, sometimes too much love too.

Speaker 1: 35:13

if you're listening to, it can push you in the wrong direction, because you think everything's great and then you're like why is everyone love this devil and no one's using it?

Speaker 3: 35:20

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:22

So it's more about being kind of oblivious in some weird way and then, honest about, like ignoring emotional attachment.

Speaker 2: 35:32

I'm not saying don't be emotional, but it's like you gotta recognize your emotions and put them to the side.

Speaker 1: 35:37

Yeah, and it's in humans nature to sort of be to ride on top of people's insecurities. If you show any sign of insecurity to someone, they will use that to their advantage. That's why it's like because it makes them feel good, it's like because they have that same insecurity, so they will. They'll utilize your insecurity as a way to quell theirs.

Speaker 2: 36:05

So how did you learn this skill?

Speaker 1: 36:08

I just was oblivious man. I'm an Islander, I don't know.

Speaker 3: 36:11

I feel like, literally, I'm just an Islander.

Speaker 1: 36:14

Like it's grew over the Island life. I come from Zimbabwe, uganda. We're just.

Speaker 2: 36:18

it's like sunshine, it's like but you know, we don't see, we don't see all Islanders building companies.

Speaker 1: 36:24

Another thing that I don't think I would learn it, but it was partly due to the environment I grew up in my parents and all the people I was surrounded in in Africa, also known as, previously known as the Al-Qaeda Bilan, al-qaeda Bilan being the native name for Africa. Everyone there comes from a very rich sharing mentality, so that translates to being able to like there's a natural kind of support system in that regard, so people are very supportive of each other. Here. I don't see that as much. When I first came here, I didn't see that as much and I'm just like, yeah, but I had that foundation, so I was kind of like ignored any sort of bullying or whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 2: 37:11

I've noticed the startup community is very supportive.

Speaker 1: 37:14

For the most part, yeah.

Speaker 2: 37:16

It's like limited support-upness.

Speaker 1: 37:17

It is but once the thing that irks me a little bit, you have to get into some kind of circle or like white combinator. As much as I love white combinator, it is still it's police support-upness. Yeah, and it's almost sometimes. If you're not in white combinator, your chances of succeeding are lower. If you're going to an accelerator, for example, because white combinator has established that kind of thing and being in that group of people is, yeah, it's a nice thing to have, but it's not accessible to everybody.

Speaker 2: 37:56

So you want to make it accessible to everybody, if possible. What are you doing to make it accessible to everybody?

Speaker 1: 38:02

I try to give as much time of my time as possible to anything bigger, like whatever.

Speaker 2: 38:09

Anybody, anybody that crosses your path.

Speaker 1: 38:11

Anything. Yeah, I also advised homeless people if they're going to ask for money, they should, in return, offer a percentage of their company. Oh, that's pretty cool, Pretty crazy but like I was, because I was thinking the other day, we're all begging. If you're raising money, you're begging People pitching to investors all the time. That's just the same thing the guy on the street is doing, asking you for money.

Speaker 2: 38:40

You know it's crazy. When I went to my mother and I was like, mom, I'm starting a company, I'm going to have to raise money, she's like we don't ask for money Because she didn't want you to be a beggar, exactly. It took me a while to get rid of that mentality and be like I'm offering something to investors. That's the thing.

Speaker 1: 38:56

Imagine if every person on the street that asked you for a dollar gave you a percentage of their life. Because the reality is all these percentage points that have been given away, only a very small percentage of those percentages become some sort of ROI. Yeah, but at the same time you're not many percentages just get evaporated, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:17

I think this is a great note to end the podcast on. This is the one way, yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:23

Whether you have me as recurring guest or not, if you want something controversial. But thank you, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 39:29

Thank you so much for being on the Accelerometer. I would rate this as accelerating Great, great Thanks.