Business ideas worth paying attention to

0:13All right. All right. Emma, Emma Lawler.

0:34Thank you for having me on. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. So, you're a friend of the editor of the pod. We've actually never spoken, but she said Ari was like, "You got to meet Emma. She's like a dynamo." And um so I wanted to meet you. We were going to just meet kind of for coffee or whatever, but I was like, "Let's just do it on the pod, and we'll just

0:58make a public conversation." Awesome. Sounds good. Yes, I I didn't meet her, but she was a producer for Indie Hackers, and I chatted with them a few weeks back. So, super excited to be here. Cool. So, yeah, tell me a little bit about who Emma is and and and what makes Emma really really dynamo,

1:21I guess. Um yeah, so I started my career as a product designer and uh was in San Francisco in what I would say was the peak of Web 2. So, got to learn from really awesome engineers, product managers, designers at that time. Spent a lot of my early career at Fitbit, and so um was working on both physical and digital products there on iOS, Android, and web, and then stayed through the IPO. So, really saw this upward trajectory of what it looks like to be an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley at that time. Um and then started my first company called Moonlight and and that was when people were leaving the Bay

2:01Area and New York to go live in like Mexico City or wherever and and still have access to really high quality work. So that first company was enabling remote work for software engineers who still wanted to work with companies in the Bay Area and get paid to do that. After that, I we sold Moonlight actually to a company called Pol request in

2:22Austin. That was a great experience as well. Learned a lot, mostly how to do it better in the future. And then was in New York at that time and went in worked at The Skimm leading product. And so they were trying to apply the New York Times model of content monetization to their podcasts and newsletters and things like that. And then decided I wanted to go back to business school. So that that's not the normal trajectory for entrepreneurs, but went to Chicago Booth for the past 2 years and got a ton of more formal traditional business

2:56training on the finance side of things. And then also got to work in VC. So I worked at a VC firm called Chicago Ventures as an entrepreneur in residence and got to help invest in a bunch of companies and started my company that I'm working on now called Velvet and then they funded that company. So now I'm moving back to New York, will be working on Velvet full time with my co-founder and yeah, very winding path, but have learned a ton about cross-platform consumer apps through all of those

3:26experiences. And you look young. So like I look younger than I am. I'm I'm 33. So I just went to business school later in life, which is also interesting hanging out with a bunch of like 28-year-olds who are trying to party and travel all the time. I mean, I was just judging based on like how you looked and also I'm just like can't put two and two together cuz you've done like eight things and I mean, uh so I kind of want to wind back a little bit. So, starting with Fitbit, like, you know, you you you join this company relatively early, it goes public, like, why did you leave? Why

4:04didn't you stay with the company? Yeah, so I joined Fitbit through an acquisition of a small startup called Fitstar. We were about 15 people at that time. Um and so, went from being in a very entrepreneurial environment to uh pre-IPO tech company that was about 2,000 people when I joined. So, that was a really big transition, but learned a ton through that process. Like, I think what you get out of later stage company is a bunch of really experienced people who have done this over and over again and know how to be professional technologists and scale something and

4:39have a full sales org and all of that. But, late-stage companies are probably not for me. Like, I like I like being in a very entrepreneurial role where I get to talk to end users, solve problems for them, make a really big impact. Um and so, I just had that entrepreneurial itch from very early on in my career. And and that first seeing that first acquisition, I saw those those founders' lives like really changed through that

5:04acquisition, as well. So, that's what led you to start Moonlight in your mid-20s. Um you raised funding for that or Yeah, so half of it was bootstrapped because my co-founder and I wanted to be digital nomads. So, we lived in like eight different cities outside the US, and then once we moved to New York, we raised VC from institutional VCs. So, it was half

5:29and half. And are you more of a bootstrap person? You said you were on Indie Hackers, which is more of a bootstrap community, or are you more in the camp of like raise venture, go big? How do you think about it? I Yeah, I'm good at being an Indie Hacker type entrepreneur, but I like having VC funding. Like, I think the scale that you can get with VC is very different. You have to have high conviction, convince a bunch of really smart people about it, and then do something fast. And like if it doesn't work, you get to move on to something else. Whereas with a bootstrap company,

6:04you don't get that kind of feedback. So it's like I think you make money faster, you can be personally wealthy faster, and and you you get to help people directly. Um but you don't get that opportunity for scale unless you work on it for like 15 years. So it's just a very different approach, I think. It doesn't stress you out that when you raise venture, it's kind of like even the best

6:28investors only have a small hit rate. Like it doesn't it doesn't stress you out that, you know, you are a lottery ticket in the game of lottery? It does stress me out, but I kind of like that stress. Like I think it makes me better to have a bunch of other people who also are depending on me for their outcome. Like investors, at least if they're institutional investors, they also have limited partners. And those are really the people they have to get returns for. So I think it's it's just like capitalism as at its core, where everyone succeeds if you innovate and make something people want. Um but it

7:04does have to be a 10x return. Like it can't just kind of be a business that you run forever. It needs to at some point return money to all these people that you you've taken money from very early on. That's the perfect answer that a VC wants to hear when they ask that question to a founder. They want they want the answer to be yes. It's stressful. I didn't get 8 hours of sleep last night. I want to drive returns for, you know, VCs and their LPs because I want to

7:35knock it out of the park. Yeah. Yeah, and that's that's something I didn't understand actually the first time I raised VC. Like I was very frustrated when I was in my 20s about the whole VC ecosystem because it felt unfair in a lot of ways. And so I think going to business school and working at a VC fund, I actually have a lot more empathy for the job of being a venture capitalist because it's very stressful for them as well. They're not just like sitting there writing checks. They have to identify problems, understand the future, take bets on the right people, and then like if they

8:10can't do that, they can't raise another fund, and then they don't have a job. So it's um I think it was helpful for me to be in the room and and be less scared of it and be like, oh, this is just economically how it works um if you want to be in the VC ecosystem

8:26at least. So you sold the business, you sold Moonlight to Pull Request. What was it? Can you talk a little bit about the M&A process and and what you learned around how to sell a company? Yeah, um I had no idea what I was doing. So we just went to our investors and um they introduced us to a variety of people who might be interesting and then we also went back to like our first enterprise customers and things like that and pretty much ran a sales process. Very similar to fundraising. So just having as many calls as possible

9:01and then narrowing down a few prospects. Um and then the deal process was pretty quick. I mean, we were an early stage company at that point. Um so it was kind of like, do you want to do this or not? Like do we want to keep running this business or raise more funding or do this deal? Um and so it was it was the peak of the pandemic when we did that and it was just the right outcome for us

9:22at that time. And then that company bought Moonlight, kept it running in the way that we had originally designed it and like actually bought the platform. It wasn't an acquire situation. So that was really attractive as well because we had just built this really strong community of software developers around the world and they were you know living off of the

9:44platform. So great experience overall and I think it's just like you have to try to get in an exit in most cases but if you try there's something out there that would be a good fit for all of your users that you've built over time. You're lucky that it was like the deal process went so smoothly. I you know one of our portfolio companies I was just speaking to the founder today and he he had signed an LOI with a really well known company to buy their company and they had been talking for months like the deal you know had spent 50 to 100,000 dollars in legal fees and one day

10:24this acquirer woke up and was like you know what like I don't love this team. I thought after like interviewing them and stuff like that and said like hey well we'll continue to do this deal but it's going to be at like a you know 50% haircut to to to what the the deal was and the founder had to sit there and be like I don't know if I want to do this cuz if if I take a 50% haircut that really means the investors are taking 50% haircut and at at that point I'm kind of just like I'll just close this and start something else and you hear that time

11:02and time again where you know most deals flop they don't end up happening and you just got to assume that like the transaction's going to fail but it sounded like for you you kind of just you had this deal you signed the deal you did the paperwork and all of a sudden you're like

11:19it it was done. Yeah it was pretty fluid but I will say it's mostly just the tenacity of following through. Like I think at any point we could have decided it would have been easier to not do it but if Have you ever shut down a company? Yeah, I'm constantly shutting down companies companies. really horrible process. Like shutting down a company is is way worse than like going through the motions to get acquired or raise more

11:46money. It's just a horrible process. Do you know uh Nikita Bier, the founder of Gas and TBH? Mhm. So, he he sold TBH to Facebook, now Meta, and he sold and then basically the same app. It was a literally the same Like he basically sold it to Facebook. Uh it was this anonymous polling app. A lot of people know the story. Like work there for 4 years. On day like, you know, a day late 4-year vest over, he leaves, he launches something called Gas. It's literally like the same

12:18app, sells it to Discord. Uh Oh my gosh. Incredible. And uh why I'm bringing him up is I remember chatting with him and you know, it was probably like summer 2017 maybe 2018 where he was going to shut down TBH, um his company. And I remember chatting with him and and being like, "Hey, Nikita, like, what about I thought you mentioned you had this other app, this anonymous polling app that you're going to launch." And he's like, "Yeah, I don't know how I'm

12:49going to launch it." And he ended So, he he was like calling me about how do you shut down a company or chatting with me about how to shut down a company. And he ended up as like a Hail Mary launching TBH. It ends up going viral and like tens of millions of people download it. And ends up selling to Facebook like for tens of millions of dollars like a couple months later. And it was really To your point, it's like the tenacity of like sometimes you're at this point where you can either quit um or double down. And as founders, it's

13:25like so lonely. Yeah, especially as like a solo entrepreneur. Try That's why I love having a co-founder because making those decisions on your own, it's just a lonely place to be in and you all you're doing is like continuing to work on it until you let it die. And I I think entrepreneurs hate that advice of like it it only exists for as long as you make it exist and then like once you stop trying it goes away, but in early stages that's really what it is. Nobody else is is going to make it happen for

13:55you. I mean, business is fragile, period. No matter how small you are or if you're Google size, it's fragile. So, for example, like 3 months ago with this whole AI wave, Google was like on red alert, code red. Like our business is that, you know, could go to zero because of chat GPT and open AI. And their stock was getting like pounded. It was like down like 40% or 45% uh

14:29you know, in 12 months. And the narrative was just going against them. And it's kind of like one of those moments where it's like, okay, like do we do we embrace this? Do we brace AI or do we just like ignore it? And even The point is even a trillion-dollar company is fragile, let alone a seed stage start startup or pre-seed startup with like two, four, six months of of runway. So, it's it's very We're

14:58playing with fragile games. And that's just the nature of it. So, you like you do need to have pretty tough skin if you want to like be in the game, in the arena. Yeah, and I think that's even true like at the you know, series C and beyond companies I've been at, the people are what makes such a difference. Like I don't I don't

15:17think that's obvious from the outside. It's like this giant corporation, but each team is made up of a mini CEO who's making something happen, moving it forward, getting it approved, hiring people. So, I think it's surprising how much could not happen just because of like corporate bloat, but I think I think you can be an entrepreneur in a very big

15:39company as well. You So, you sold the company, then you went to the Skimm to do product design. Why did you do that, and what did you learn about newsletter businesses in that process? Yeah, mostly I had just been like a long-time reader of the Skimm. I was in New York. I wanted to be in person cuz I had spent 3 years remote and was feeling very ungrounded. Had never really worked with women, either. So, the Skimm is like, I would guess 90% women and then two female co-founders. So, that was mostly why I was attracted to it, and then I actually came on as product manager

16:17and got to hire a team of designers and engineers to relaunch their mobile app subscription. So, that was just a cool opportunity to take their content business. Like, it was a lot of journalists and media people working there, and then bring in the first tech team and apply more of those mechanisms that I'd learned at other tech companies. So, I think it was it was interesting being at a company with mostly women cuz I'd never even worked with women before. And then also um a company with a lot of media and journalism people who think very

16:51differently than the tech world does. So, all good lessons. I think I'm I'm not meant to be in that role. I like working in a really technical organization with with a little more balance, but it was a good learning experience again. And how did you know you you were meant for that role? Cuz I think a lot of people are working jobs that they're

17:08kind of like, "Yeah, I think I like it. I might like it." Like, some days are good, some days are bad. Like, how do you know if something is the right fit or not? I think I just wasn't feeling activated there. Like I like being in a company where I can be super ambitious and pursue things that are hard and that where I feel like an entrepreneur. And

17:29it just didn't feel like that for me. Like I think media in general and this is definitely a stereo- stereotype, but it's more of like you go to work, you do your job, and then you go home unless you're like an investigative journalist or something like that. Um and so I I was just looking for like a little more ambition. And and I wanted to be working really hard in my 20s and making things happen and I just didn't feel that there. But it's it's a great organization. Like they've they've scaled this media company in a crazy way. Um I think it just it didn't feel

17:59right to me. I actually met the two co-founders of the Skimm in 2012 and they pitched me on investing. I heard. Um so this this was their seed round, I believe. Yep. I passed, unfortunately. And I passed because I remember why I passed. I was like, "This is a really good idea, makes total sense." But they were just like, "Yeah, we're going to get Oprah Winfrey or we're going to get all these people on board." And I was like, "You just graduated. Like how you like you're thinking so big?" And at the time, um I had never met people who thought that

18:33big, honestly. I heard. Um at the time, I was like, "What do you mean you're going to get Oprah Winfrey? You're just going to like call up Oprah Winfrey and she's just going to like" And then I remember and I just checked on my email. I remember seeing a New York Times article that says like Oprah Winfrey is now involved with the Skimm

18:51in 2013. Yeah, they were so good at getting influencers and like really impressive people involved from the very beginning. Like if you look at their reel, they've been on like every morning talk show possible. So they were amazing at that. What about them made them so good at that? Because that's such a key skill to know as an entrepreneur. Like if you're able to like make the impossible happen and bring celebrities, creators, press around you all the time, like that just makes that turns building a startup from building a startup in hard mode to easy mode. So, what do you think about the founders and the team, but I guess

19:27specifically the founders, why do you think the founders of the Skimm were able to make that happen? I mean, I think part of it, and I wasn't on the team at this time, but part of it they were just super young. Like you said, I think they had worked at NBC for a couple of years as producers, built up a really good network, had already had like more of a community there, and then they were young enough to just be like, "Yeah, we can get Oprah. Like we're just going to go do

19:51that." And then I think once you get a few of those really big personalities on board, it's kind of a flywheel effect. And I remember being a user closer to 2012. Um and they were just the only ones talking in a very colloquial, conversational voice to women, but talking about serious news. So, I loved their newsletter just cuz there was no The only other way to get that kind of content was watching cable news at that time. And so, they had that background of cable news, but then

20:23applied it to this new network. Um and I think they would just stay up. They were like best friends. They would just stay up until 3:00 in the morning and write content every night. So, they were just passionate about it and then had a way to attract a bunch of people to that same type of model. Um and then now I think they have to figure out how to be a tech company, which is which is

20:43a different skill set for them, I think. Totally. I mean, I saw that first hand, you know, I sold my last business to WeWork and WeWork was always trying to be a tech company, what what is a real estate company, so I always saw how did, you know, Adam Neumann and and team really try to bring people together to make it more of a

21:04tech company. And it it's not easy. The short answer is it's not easy. So that being said like, you know, you're seeing companies like The Morning, you know, Morning Brew and companies like, you know, content businesses get great valuations. The problem I think with The Skimm has is that I'm just checking right now, but

21:25they've raised a bunch of money. Yeah, I think that was that was cuz I believe Morning Brew didn't raise money, right? Or they raised like 500,000. A very yeah, small very small amount of money and and The Skimm I just checked has raised 28.4 million. Yeah. So that's where to like really perform beyond that.

21:45Yeah. To find an acquisition. So I think I think that's that's I I think that's a business that should have been bootstrapped to be honest because Oh, I agree. They they're the way they make money is is through ads. Like they could just hire an entire ads team and bring and become very wealthy off of that. And and like even give employees equity and dividends and stuff like

22:05that. If I'm The Skimm, what I'm doing now is like I'm actually building like I I remove the I stop selling advertising basically and I just go I'm going to go build products and partner with products. Yeah. And then we're going to own equity in in these products. Yeah. And then that's like basically the play is where we're going to see venture size returns is going to be in these next generation products for women and we're just going to use The Skimm for distribution and awareness and acquisition. And that's like what I that's what that's what they should be

22:41doing. Yeah, but it's really hard to run both a media business that's based on ads and eyeballs and a product company and you have to have people who understand how to do both. And I I think that's what I was trying to get out of before is that the type of person who builds product is a very different organization than

23:00writing content and monetizing with ads. So, I think I'm trying to think of a company that does both really well. Maybe maybe New York New York Times is a good example, but it took them a long time. And I don't know how it's structured, but I would imagine like the people who make the New York Times games and and stuff like that like those products like it's probably a separate division of the

23:21business. Yeah. Um so, it's almost like the Skimm should create the Skimm Studios and find a CEO for the Skimm Studios. Um or the other idea is like you create the Skimm Studios or you create studios and then you go to the Skimm and you say, "Hey, I'm going to give you $20 for your business and but you're going to own 50% of, you know, Skimm Studios and it's got it's funded and stuff like that." So, there might It's probably an interesting acquisition target for some

23:51people listening. Um Yeah. to cuz it's a valuable audience, right? Quick interruption from me. If you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you're getting any value, you need to come to YouTube and subscribe to the Where It Happens podcast YouTube channel. I promise you the experience is richer, more interesting. So, if if you're getting any value, just stop what you're doing, open up the YouTube app, go to the website, and press subscribe at Where It Happens on YouTube. And if you're watching this on YouTube and you haven't subscribed, what are you doing? Go go press subscribe. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of

24:36the show. Yeah, that's that's it's a very unique audience. I think that's what advertisers love about it. And I'm curious to see what happens with that kind of business with AI as well cuz it's just so easy to create content. Like the content they grew off of you can almost automate that with AI now. So, it'll be very interesting to see how you like take ownership and authorship for content moving forward in

25:01that kind of business. Yeah, the other interesting thing is I just checked BuzzFeed's revenue, but 2022 they had $437 million of revenue and their business is worth $85 million today. It's publicly traded on the NASDAQ. So, it's like, okay, BuzzFeed is bringing in that kind of revenue, like what's the Skimm worth really worth?

25:24Yep. That's why I think that if you're starting a media business, bootstrap it. Bootstrap it as long as you can. There's literally no excuse to start a media business in 2023 with venture capital, unless you're using venture capital to like scale something like a Skimm Studios. Yes. If there's like a technology a unique differentiated technology behind it, it's kind of like raising money for an e-commerce startup now and you're you're like the physical product. I think it's very hard to justify because you're building on top of everybody else's technology and then that that's the part that scales is the technology

26:00side of things. So, before we get into what you're currently doing now with Velvet, you're in New York City, you seem to have your pulse on like the vibes and what things are going on in technology. Um what are you seeing right now that are trends or ideas that you're kind of like, wow, like, you know, that's an interesting business

26:23there. That's an interesting trend. Like, what's what's keeping you up at night besides your own business around trends and ideas? Yeah, I mean, I think obviously everyone is talking about AI and how it's going to disrupt things and I think it's pretty hard to know both from like an investment perspective and a technology perspective what matters there, but for me the biggest problem is like proof of personhood. Like, who

26:49posted this online? Is it a real human? Can you trust it? And something interesting that came from the Web3 world was this idea of transacting every everywhere with wallets. And so, I think there's something in between AI and Web3 wallets that allow you to like put a stamp on every single thing that goes on the internet, whether it's content or a transaction or a photo of you or whatever it is. Um but I can't imagine we can move forward in a safe way without something like that. Which just allows you to be like this fully online digital native representative of

27:27yourself. So, you think there's going to be some blockchain-based validator that basically checks if what someone is saying, posting is human verified basically? Yeah, I don't think it has to be blockchain though. Like I think it's just there was a lot of invention that came out of the Web3 world. And I would go to these hackathons last summer quite a bit. And it was super cool to see how much invention was happening and everyone was just like forgetting all the rules from Web2 and creating new things, which was super cool. But I think what a lot of them have realized in the past 6 months, maybe just cuz funding have has dried up

28:06and people are very anti-crypto. Um but you can do a lot of those things without blockchain. So, I expect that some of the innovations that came from there, um like wallets, like identity, like verified credentials, will just make its way into normal databases and already are. What other startups that you're seeing New York or or could be anywhere are you like, "Wow, those people, they've got a really good business or they're doing something right." Um what are some like, uh you know, gems that you're seeing where you're you're kind of like tipping

28:40your hat to them? Yeah, I would say I don't know how early they are, but like Vercel and Supabase, I think they're super impressive companies that saw something in the future and just created this entirely new tech stack and reality. Explain what those products are. Where they check out pays for both of them and

29:01uses those products religiously. So, I like both of those products. What are they and why are they interesting businesses? Yeah, so um I'm probably going to botch these a little bit, but Vercel is basically helping you spin up servers anywhere. So, you shouldn't have to like go to AWS and spin all of those up yourself and deal with all the infrastructure. Um so, it helps you deal with a serverless infrastructure reality. And then Supabase is like what

29:30we're building our entire back end on. And so, it replaces a lot of the services that we would otherwise have to have a team of maybe five engineers to spin up. Um and like if you want to add on things like wallets, like authentication, um anything like that, it's kind of just an integration that you turn on through Supabase. So, I think in the same way that cloud computing allowed solo entrepreneurs to pop up, the Vercel Supabase um different things like that are allowing one engineer to run an

30:02entire very complicated system. It's the classic uh picks and shovels strategy. It's like, you know, there's all these developers, they it's a gold rush in a lot of ways. People are building digital products all the time. How do you make it easier for them to to do their jobs? Yeah. And it's always something I do um is whenever I see like a new trend, I just I stop and think. I'm like, okay, what is the picks and shovels opportunity here? I think it's a question that a lot of us should ask ourselves. So, for example, like with all that's happening with AI and automation, um you know, a lot of

30:41people's minds are going to be like, oh, how do I create a legal, you know, chat GPT or, you know, for for lawyers um, or for doctors or thinking about consumer use cases or these use cases that are really, really big ideas that could either, you know, you're you're either going big or going home, but I think sometimes the products with the least amount of risk are these picks and shovel businesses because you know that you just have what, you know, your job basically is like to figure out if you're mining for gold, if you're a miner and you're mining for gold, like what tool do you

31:15need to help mine that gold efficiently and that's your job. Yeah. And I think it's a stamina game as well because I don't think anyone probably saw Vercel and was like, oh, this is a super exciting maybe like really niche engineers, but most people were not like this is a super exciting thing that I want to exist. Whereas with consumer companies, I think it's easier to have that motivation cuz it's like everyone you talk to, your mom, your dad, your best friend, they like understand what you're building and can explain it to their friends. But with infrastructure businesses, you just have to know that it's the right thing

31:50Yes. working on it and like he's been working on it for like almost a decade, but it looks like it's been a three-year success story. So I think that's really important to remember too is like you just have to keep going and eventually it's going to become something really valuable. And honestly it sucks to build those infrastructure businesses in some ways because you feel like an idiot for so

32:10long. Yeah. And then one day like you start really hitting escape velocity and you're like, wow, I have these thousands of people who use this in their everyday life and it's so valuable like they literally cannot mine gold without it. This is awesome. And then you start you know, create you know, meetups are happening all across the world and there's Vercel and Superbase meetups and you get to show up there and they're like, oh my god, that's the founder of Superbase." But, it takes so much time to get there with these infrastructure businesses

32:42sometimes. And it's not fun to like meet someone or go on a first date and be like, "Yeah, I like running you know, infrastructure server company." It's way cooler to be like, "I'm the co-founder of the Skimm." Yes, totally. Even though the valuation of those two companies is vastly different. Like, I think the things that people get excited about usually are not high-value companies. Um because it's like, what's relevant now, not what's relevant in the

33:10future. What other I mean, I'm I'm loving this hot take stuff. Like, what other hot takes do you have that most people probably would disagree with you, but you you think that you know, you're on the right track with? Well, this is very unrelated, but I think remote work is a very contentious topic right now. Like, my last company was evangelizing remote work. And I was like, "Everybody should work remote. We

33:35never need to go to an office again." Um but, I've spent most of my career as a remote worker at this point, and I feel extremely ungrounded and community-less. Like, I have to work really hard to find those things. Um so, I think we're going to have to invent something. Like, either we're going back to offices at least a couple days a week, or there's going to have to be a lot of innovation in how we can engage with each other, especially for junior employees. Like, the reason I have a technical background is cuz I worked in an office with other people and learned from them. And I just I

34:08don't think I would have gotten that virtually, even with like Zoom and everything we have today. But, at the same time, I don't really want to go to an office from from 9:00 to 5:00 every single day. So, um for me, the answer is living in a city and finding community that way. Uh but, I think we're going to have kind of a crisis if people don't go back to an office at all, or build a community

34:32outside of their house. And when you say build a community, you don't mean like a community of your team. You're talking about like you're finding community in other places, right? Well, it used to be that that was your community. Like you made friends and met people at work. And so if you don't have that, or like what happens when education goes fully online, and you don't even make friends in college? Like I think that would be kind of scary to not have connections that you like engage with in person. And maybe I maybe I'm just going to be an old person at some point complaining about this,

35:05but I think that would be hard. Here's what I hate about remote work, and here's what I hate about online education. It's very transactional. Yep. Online education, it's like, okay, I'm going to go take this course. I'm going to just going to go consume these videos, and now I'm educated. I'm remote work. I'm just going to log into Slack, and and log into Trello, or whatever, and see all my to-do's that I have to do, and I'm just going to go

35:31and complete the task. Yep. And what what sucks about that is that the world if the world is a more transactional place, I think the world becomes a worse place. Mhm. Because that you know, you go to the barista for your morning coffee, and you're just like give me the coffee. You don't really care. It's not about like it on your phone. You go to and just do

35:53it on the app. Yeah. Yeah. So the the transactional world is actually quite a scary place like at its extreme. And we should be very, very careful of that. I think you're right that we we need to be wary of it. I also think that you can build a remote team with some elements of community. Like we we're for example, like I run a remote team. We've got tons

36:15of team members. We're constantly throwing like in-person events where people can come and hang out, and just like the goal isn't even to like do any work. The goal is just hang out, and meet each other in a cool place. Yeah. So, for example, like we just did one in in Toronto and we had a bunch of people come and it was just like, "Yeah, let's go and have some really great food and drink wine." And that was like the do you bring the whole team together like that and then like what do you

36:44spend the time on when you're in person? So, we do two major events per year where it's big team uh coming together. And again, that's like mostly like we might do like it might be a three-day thing or four-day thing. We did one a big one two big ones last year where we did one in Bali, Indonesia and one in Montreal, Canada and we just try to do really crazy stuff. So, for example, like we we'd literally and I I don't say this to be like a flex or or anything like that, but like we found this like really crazy chateau outside Montreal this like literally chateau and I actually talked

37:23about it on my episode on on the Where It Happens pod with my co-founder um Theo Tab a few episodes ago, but the idea is basically like let's just bring people to places that are going to create memories. And like I just like saw people like walking around and taking videos and like sharing it with their friends and it was just it was it was magical in a lot of ways. So, try to do that couple times a year and then there's like teams kind of come together on a more regular basis, but we are we're we are remote and I don't I personally don't want to go into the

37:55office. Like I just I can't I don't I don't want to. And I know like Elon Musk will say like, you know, I'm soft or whatever Yeah. and I just think that for some people remote work is the most productive form of work. Yeah, I think I'm definitely more productive remote. Like I think back to the last time I was in an office full-time was at Fitbit and we had these really fancy downtown San Francisco offices and we would go in there and like honestly half the day or more was

38:26I think social time. Thinking back compared to what remote work is where I'm like actually doing things for 8 hours a day or close to it. Or if I'm not, I'm still being super focused with my time. But I haven't seen remote work. I haven't been on a company at a company that's super productive at scale with remote work. So I'm building

38:46a remote company also to be clear. Like I don't I don't want to go to an office every day either. Shopify from what I understand is pretty remote. Mhm. Um like they're mostly remote company. They started off in Ottawa which pretty random all things considered. And then they started like having an office in Toronto and Montreal and other places. But then they eventually just went remote. I think what works from what I understand from them is they have teams. Like for example, if you're on the um payments team, it it'll it's remote but everyone needs to work on

39:21EST. Yeah, that helps. in Charleston but you could be in New York or Toronto or Montreal or anywhere along that EST because I think the that that the time zone thing also kills people in remote work. Like it it's soul sucking. Yes. Like thinking about oh my god like I need to stay I need to like get up get up for my dinner and like call Tokyo cuz

39:45I have a team member in Tokyo. Right. If you can't I think if you can't have you know, a schedule and a routine, that's really hard. Some people do really well with it but my perspective is that people are more productive when they time block and have a specific period that they're focusing on

40:01something. And even with like EST to PST is really hard. Like the 3 hours is almost harder than Europe because it feels like you're in the same place but like someone's having dinner or going to bed when you're wrapping up your day. So I agree with the time zone thing. All right, switching gears to your new your new baby,

40:22Velvet. Tell me Tell me about it. And tell me about why you think uh it's going to be big. Yeah, so every company I've worked at, I focused on this place between acquisition and engineering. So, like how do you get someone into your product, activate them, get them to pay or do whatever you want, and then retain

40:42them long term. And if you can't do that, you will fail as a company. Like if you just have a leaky bucket that gets people in and then doesn't keep them, or you can't identify them, um there's just no value there, and there's no revenue. And so, we're building tools that creates the crossover between those two teams. So,

41:02no-code acquisition on the front end. So, giving growth teams the ability to spin up all of these growth pages and acquire people to apps in about 10 seconds or less, and then connecting that to the back end for our engineering teams. So, engineering teams never want to touch onboarding. Like you have to beg engineers to work on it because it's it's the most important part of your

41:24tech stack. It allows people to authenticate into a system and then accept payment. And so, we're creating an API to do that authorization and payment on the back end. Um so, it allows growth teams to experiment and do growth, but engineering to trust the system. How do you come up with an idea like

41:44this? Cuz like to me, this feels like So, I I felt this pain, by the way, um on a lot of our projects that we work on. But I'm just curious, like how do you Like how do you How did you go from I'm working at the Skimm to building this? Yeah, I mean, all So, I've worked at a a lot of very consumery companies, but I've worked on the technology side of all of them. So, like how do you get people into your system and then keep them there? Um and it's a very technical problem always working directly with engineers who are building the infrastructure of

42:17the company. And most most companies like Airbnb, for example, has a platform team of hundreds who are focusing on this. So, you have to have a team that's building it out, um, but there's no kind of productized solution that connects all of these pieces and makes it work. There are a lot of authentication companies. So, like Clerk is one of them, Auth0, things like that. But, what you get on the front end and back end of that is not much. Like, they're just doing that one piece of the stack. And so, this is taking a more horizontal approach to that and and connecting all of the pieces. Um, but I I spent 2 years

42:55trying to figure out what this company would be. So, it it's not like it just came to be. Um, I actually started more in the Web3 space, and I was really excited by wallet authentication. So, like, I adopted a wallet, started going to all these hackathons, and was just amazed that my identity could travel around with me. So, it's like one tap to create an account, one tap to pay, one tap to sign for a transaction. And that was just the most seamless, amazing experience, but you couldn't use it anywhere. Like, other than buying NFTs, which I was in school, so I didn't have

43:28money to do that. So, like, even gas fees would like put me into debt. Um, but I that that was a really amazing experience, and it was this new design paradigm that I hadn't seen through all my years of rebuilding onboarding over and over again. Um, but then when I met my co-founder, we realized we could just do it on normal databases. That's really

43:48where the inception came from. Another good framework for thinking about how to build these types of businesses is, and you kind of mention it or allude to it, which is you look at you pick an industry, so the tech industry, and then you pick you you map out all the teams that they have, and then you look at how do I build a productized infrastructure business that could 50x or basically like bottle up these this team in some

44:16sort of software solution. Totally. Yeah, and I think um one that I don't want to do cuz I I just like don't like this part of the stack, but I think is pretty ripe for disruption is manual sales teams. Like for media companies, they go out and they sell an ad package to a company and then it's like this fully manual process

44:39to get them integrated with the product. And it in my opinion, it should just work like Google Ads do. But like you have to have an entire engineering org who hates working on ads building out this entire tech. Um but I think it's kind of like it's not a fun problem to solve. Nobody

44:54wants to work on ads. This Um cool. And and Velvet, like how's it going? Did you raise venture for it? Tell tell us more. Yeah, so I worked I was working at Chicago Ventures and so they funded the pre-seed round. So I have them and a couple of other institutionals and angels involved. Um so we've raised about a million dollars. It's just me

45:16and my co-founder. And we're trying to keep the team really lean. So I think I think this is maybe another hot take. A lot of early stage companies I think raise a million to five million dollars and they hire like 20 people. And then you just run out of money before you get anywhere close to product market fit or creating value. Um so we're just it's just going to be the two of us until we feel like we have product market fit or some version of it or maybe one more engineer and trying to keep it super lean in the meantime. So our first product will be ready

45:48hopefully in the next couple of weeks for adoption. But like we were talking about with infrastructure companies, it's just really high stakes. Like if you mess up someone's user data one time, you never we to have a customer again. So it's a longer sales process, a longer development process. We're using Superbase and Versel, which is pretty cutting edge. So, there's just we have to run into all the bugs ourselves

46:11before we can offer it to other people. But, yeah, going well. Always wish it was moving faster, but I think with infrastructure it just it takes years to get there. Um I got to head out in a couple minutes, but do you have any questions or question for me? Um yeah, I mean, you probably talked about this all day, but what's like the thing this week that you're excited

46:30about in the technology world? I'm I'm like a shiny object guy. So, like I I have like 10, you know, in any given day I'm excited about like 10 different things. Yeah. Um but you're catching me on a day where I'm really excited about this boring, but you know, we're having we're talking about

46:54quote-unquote boring products. Yeah. Um automation in general. And mapping out how you can automate businesses a lot better. Um one company I really really love is Zapier. Mhm. And that's one of those business that probably businesses that probably seemed like super lame for a while, but then like in the last, I don't know, probably like two years it's or two or two to three years with the no-code movement in 2020 and then now with um the AI movement in 2022, 2023, it just feels like Zapier has really become like core to the internet and and infrastructure and automation. So, I think uh I'm pretty just excited about

47:44where automation could lie and what you can do there, what are the different verticals there. Um and then we're always focused on community-based products and in that whole ecosystem. So, how do you think about automating, for example, the work of a community manager? How do you think about automating things for marketers or designers? Like, our team, like, we think about, you know, we have on our team, we have 10 you know, seven different types of designers, different engineers, web 3 engineers, AI engineers, like, SEO people, paid marketers, like, all these different people that you could think about how you can automate a lot of their work. And I just think that's just

48:27a really fun place to start thinking about, because people complain a little bit about I don't want all my all my work to be automated, cuz then what am I going to do? But, people would appreciate a lot of their like lame or type work to be automated. Right. If they can only be doing things that like a computer couldn't do for them,

48:50Yeah. would they be happier? Exactly. Yeah. There there will be problems with it, but I agree. Do you want your team to just be like, "Hey, make a new make a new app." And then it just like comes together. Yeah. That's kind of how it works. Like, we because we run a studio, you know, it's a holding company and we have a bunch of businesses in the studio, so we're it's sometimes I'll just come to work and I'll be like, "Hey, I have this idea for this like

49:17automation app. Who wants to build it?" And we'll just go and build it. Like, there's we're building like, you know, someone had an idea for a game. And an AI game. And you know, I was playing it this morning and it was like, "Wow, that's pretty cool." Um So, it is fun to What I What I like about what you're doing is you're very focused on a particular

49:39problem set. We're really We're not focused at a particular problem set. We have a We're focused on a on a thesis. Yeah. Community-based products outperform non-community-based products. Yeah. yeah. But, if you ever start a studio, it you could, you know, beware of focusing on too many things. Yeah, but that's I think that's what's really cool about automation and AI that like each of your people could be a micro-entrepreneur just like working by themselves and like trying to make one

50:08of these businesses work. So. That's the idea. You only need That's the other thing, you only need one to really work. Yeah, totally. Um like to do venture scale returns, especially if you're funding it yourself. Yep, yeah. Super cool. Well, thank you so much for the conversation today. No, this is cool. Um where could people

50:26find out more about you and Velvet? Yeah, Velvet is velvet.cash and my website is Emma Lawler.com and all my socials are there, but happy to connect anytime. This has been wonderful. Thanks for Thanks for coming. Awesome. Talk to you soon. Bye.