Paul Truax — The Delusional Path to Success — Founder's Seat: Behind The Build

Transcript — Paul Truax on The Delusional Path to Success

Founder's Seat: Behind The Build, Season 1, Episode 1. Vivian Cermeno in

conversation with Paul Truax, founder of Cognify Learning Company.

*Lightly edited: single-word backchannel interjections removed and consecutive

turns by the same speaker merged for readability. Wording is otherwise verbatim,

including verbal filler. Timestamps refer to the published episode.*

Vivian (00:00) — Well thanks so much for joining us on the podcast, Paul. I'd love for you to kind of introduce yourself to the audience, let them know a little bit about you and who you are and what you're working on.

Paul (00:12) — Yeah, for sure. Well, yeah, really appreciate you having me on. You know, kind of listened to the episode that you have on already and I it's really great. But yeah, you know, so my name is Paul. I'm the CEO of Cognified Learning Company. We're an AI co-pilot for learning new things. And yeah, just very excited to be on here. You know, we're based in Austin, Texas. We have a small team, but we're doing big things out here in the active learning space. So yeah, really appreciate the... the appreciate the appreciation for our platform Vivian and excited to talk about it.

Vivian (00:41) — Yeah, awesome. Tell us a little bit about how you started Cognify.

Paul (00:49) — Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I was a tutor in college and then when I was in private equity, I was kind of doing it on the side. And, you know, for me, like the value of learning new things and then learning those things for the long term, it was never really of interest to me up until college. Like in high school, I never really cared about grades. I was like, you know, as long as I'm running cross country, running track, like I don't really... care I could coast by, you win some 70s and that'll be fine. But then I started getting denied by a lot of universities, which was not fun. And yeah, so after that, I got accepted by A by Texas A And so I went there, but they had a little, they sent me the acceptance letter, but then they sent a second letter with that. And that second letter basically said, hey, you're involved, you're admitted to the university. But we need you to come in for five weeks before the first semester and you need to take some summer courses because your grades absolutely suck. Like there's no reason objectively why we should. let you into this university. But there's something subjectively, there's something about, you know, whatever you're doing that, you we believe in what you can do, you just need to prove to us what we think you can do is what they said exactly. So that level of faith in me, when they could have easily said no, really kind of lit a fire in me to learn new things and perform well academically for them. And that's where I kind of fell in love with this whole concept of lifelong learning and learning things for the long term. yeah, I did, thankfully I did well academically. became a tutor and then had a great career at EY as an accountant and then did some private equity work. yeah, while I was doing, while I was tutoring on the side when I was in private equity, I was tutoring some UT students and I noticed that my attendance kept going up even though these AI models were around. They're free, they're always available, but my attendance was going up. So I was wondering why that was. So I asked them about that and turns out, you know, context is very important. And we see that a lot in the AI space today with context engineering. But basically the current AI models had no context of the course, how difficult the practice questions were, how the teacher structured the course and why. So I spoke with a member of our machine learning division at the private equity firm I was at. And together we kind of jotted up the basics of like what a course specific AI tutor would be. One that's not only good at chemistry or physics, but one that is actually good at the course. that you're currently taking. So we raised some capital off of that. That was the first iteration of Cognify as a tech company. And now we're expanding into the workforce. we've seen some great success in the higher education space. And now we're expanding into the workforce. I think the workforce, you're going to see 2.1 billion people getting re-skilled and up-skilled. You see a lot of people like Mark Zuckerberg and Lex Friedman saying that lifelong learning is the skill of the future. to be able to provide a learner-first application, we're very fortunate to be in the space, for sure. So that's kind of like the brief history of it.

Vivian (03:41) — Yeah, no, that's awesome. Tell me a little bit about why you decided to raise. Did you ever consider maybe just not raising at all?

Paul (03:50) — Yeah, well, I mean we were bootstrapped for a little bit, know, and we were, you know, we were thankfully in the situation I was at, like I had some extra cash to spend, you know, at least in the beginning, but I figured, you know, with raising capital is a decision. I mean, you are giving up some equity in the company or if you do, you're going to do like a leveraged capital as well. But I just think. If you have the right potential investors that can really grow with your business and help you and not just be a passive investor, if you have people that can be mentors to you and contribute some resources, then that's a good call. So once we found that fit, that was the number one thing for me was sure, we get the capital that we need to really take this, to... great lengths, especially in a highly competitive AI environment. Not only do we have the resources to now do that, but we also have these mentors that have skin in the game. That's huge for us. So once we found that fit, I was like, you know what, I'm comfortable giving equity in exchange for something like that.

Vivian (04:48) — That's awesome. When you think about the value that investors bring as mentors, what do those relationships look like for you?

Paul (04:59) — Yeah, yeah, first of all, yeah, that's a good question. And I think at the first and foremost, the people that join our team have to be personable. They have to be relatable and they have to have gone through something like they have to have gone through a path of difficulty to build something from zero to one. I really respect that. I have a great fondness for consultants, don't get me wrong, but I like to partner with people that have been through the wringer, so to speak. So in our relationship, I I like to meet up pretty consistently, honestly. I like to have bi-weekly meetups with our investors. We send out like a monthly newsletter and we kind of talk about that as well. So having a tight connection, I mean just got back from El Paso where some of our investors are and you we had a few drinks, we had dinner and it was just really great to always have that human connection and let them know what we're doing, taking feedback. So that's how that relationship is. It's more of a, it's a mentorship relationship. It's not like I'm gonna take your money and I'm gonna do whatever and I'll just report back every quarter. It's not like that. I want to meet up, I want to chat and I want to get your opinions. Absolutely.

Vivian (06:05) — Yeah, I think.

Paul (06:05) — If we're not going be friends, then let's not be in business, in my opinion. Yeah, we better be friends. We better be. We're hanging.

Vivian (06:09) — gonna be friends then please don't give me your money But I do think you're kind of right that it is important to have a good relationship with investors. I kind of agree that the ideal relationship is like a give and take. They don't know everything, but they can be really helpful and they provide a very different outlook and very different insight than you do when you're working day to day on your business versus their like macro level perspective on things.

Paul (06:37) — Yeah. yeah, for sure. How was it with you? I know obviously you've done a raise. How was the investor relationship with you? I'm just curious.

Vivian (06:46) — I would say that for us, the most important relationship was like with the lead investor. I think those are the people we got to know the best. And then, you know, we did meet other people and you do build relationships with them. But I do think it kind of depends on who the VC is and what kind of relationship they want to have. Like we had one VC who wanted to meet up biweekly and have basically like mini board meetings in preparation for, you know, like one day when we would have real board meetings. So they're a little bit like, they're a little bit play meetings. But I think that that's kind of like an important skill to build, right? Cause most, most founders, they're not necessarily coming from running, you know, C-suite level board meetings. And eventually, ideally you'd grow into that. So I definitely think it's kind of like an important routine to run. And then others, you know, they, they like, prefer jumping on calls. And then others prefer like meeting in person and kind of working on problems and kind of seeing what's happening in the business. So I think people do want to be involved or at least investors do want to be involved, but definitely at different levels. you know, some have more formal processes and less formal processes. I think for me personally, I also really like it when you kind of have an investor that's willing to come in and be a little bit more hands on, I think. I don't know, I think it's like the informality of the relationship, kind of like you, where like, it feels nice to feel like you have someone in your corner, rather than like, you know, they care, but it's out of distance, you know, I don't know.

Paul (08:25) — Yeah, yeah, this fair and honestly like some like there's this one. there's one mentor that we have who's he's in fintech. He's a fintech VC. And he was talking about he's like, the power of the warm intro is insane. Like, if you do if you do cold intros, then 99 % chance of VC or an angel investors gonna say no.

Vivian (08:39) — That's true.

Paul (08:46) — But if it's a warm intro, if you have some good relationships, then that warm intro can get you to your next level of capital raising. for us, that's what we did. I mean, we got one investor who was just kind of like a risk taker, and then everyone else kind of saw that, and it was more of like a warm intro there. So now we have six investors now aiming to bring on a few more, but all of those so far have just been warm intros. It's insane. The power of networking like that is crazy.

Vivian (09:10) — You know, for us, it was kind of the same. had like, I think two key people who basically were like, really liked us, really liked our idea, and was willing to basically pass along warm intros to people that they knew, like other other VCs, and then their their own VCs that they were associated with. And, and it's crazy how many doors can open and how easy it is to kind of get a meeting like next week, you know, people don't don't really flinch. They're not like, thanks for introing me, but I'm not going to follow up like they all do.

Paul (09:39) — Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Vivian (09:40) — Uh, which, which is kind of insane. Yeah. There, there is quite a power to the warm intro, but also I will say the, the other side of this that always feels a little bit crazy is like, this is going to sound really conspiracy theory, like, this is going to sound bad. Like, I don't know if I should say this, but it really feels like when people talk about the top 1 % or the top 0.1%, I think that's the moment where you're like,

Paul (09:54) — Let me put my tinfoil hat on real quick. Say it.

Vivian (10:09) — It feels like a real thing because how small the circle is that you can literally just have one person open a door and all the doors open and you're like, what do mean all the doors were open?

Paul (10:14) — No. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. And like, I'm telling you, it's the same thing. I mean, you get one person to take the risk and be like, yeah, sure, I'll do it. Like I'll invest in that. And all of sudden everybody looks, I mean, the first investor we ever had, first angel investor, was a while ago. He cut like, it was a $34,000 check. mean, it started us off, which was great, you know? But I remember we... I met him at a country club that he was a member of. And you know, I went in there and we sat down, I had some coffee and everything and I'm just pitching him. And it was in like this lounge, like this kind of like golf club lounge. And there was a few other people there just having drinks or whatever, like having brunch. And I'm just pitching him this idea with a slide deck and everything. And he's like, yeah, sure, I'm down. Yeah, let me know when you want the wire. And then we shook hands and then we walked out. And that day... He texted me, he said, I can't tell you the amount of people that came up to me, because they all know each other. The amount of people that came up to him was like, Mark, what the hell was that? Who is, like, did just invest in that kid? And he's like, yeah, yeah, this is what they do and everything. And lo and behold, like four other investors, within that group at that time became, four other people became angel investors in our company from that interaction. was insane.

Vivian (11:37) — yeah yeah yeah i think it's it's crazy how small this circle is and also i think how far trust and belief kind of go in this world like they all trust each other but like it's also belief in like you in your idea and as a person and i think that that when we talk about like investors as mentors it's kind of that too right they have to believe in you and you'd feel that

Paul (12:03) — No. Right.

Vivian (12:04) — Because if they don't, yeah, they're not gonna open the doors for you. They're not gonna give you those warm intros. I mean, obviously they've invested in you, so they believe in you to some extent. But I think to put their, maybe not next, but next out for you or go above and beyond, it's really them saying, I want you to succeed, I want the company to succeed, and I don't know about how you feel about Cognify, but I think for me, with my company, I... I wanted to see more than anything, you know? So I think you're so tied to like what you've built and you believe in it. You know, hopefully that passion comes through and other people see that vision with you.

Paul (12:47) — yeah, for sure, for sure. And like that's the power of also like track record. mean, you know, I know that like obviously the you and I like we're more like in a younger age, you know, whatever we're not like super, super, super seasoned, but everything we've done in our past, you know, from academics to, I would even throw sports in there or whatever, like extracurriculars, but like academics, you know, our life in corporate America, you know, things like that. You know, people sometimes like don't want to go the extra mile because there's no short-term benefit. Like, why would I stay up like 18 hours, you know, today just to figure out why there's a $1 variance on this tax form, for example. Like that's, that's how, that's what my experience was at EY. But doing that, sure, there may not be like a short-term benefit to that, but being able to build that reputation and expand that to people that are investing in you, that pays dividends. I mean, all that time that I spent. at EY looking at this tax reform and being like, what am I doing? Like I like what I'm doing, but this is so difficult. That all paid off when it came to us doing our own thing and getting some investment. So what you do on a day to day in your professional life, it'll pay dividends for sure. Like if not in the short term, then definitely in the long term. Like I just want to say that it's huge. Go the extra mile every day.

Vivian (13:59) — Yeah, I definitely agree with you. I think I have basically the same outlook on life, which is like, how can you push yourself? How can you grow just a little bit more and be a little bit more uncomfortable? This is random, but I feel like sometimes people wait to be ready or wait for something to happen for them to kind of step up. But I think the reality is like you step up first and then things happen.

Paul (14:27) — yeah, yeah, be proactive, not reactive for sure.

Vivian (14:33) — Yeah, and I don't think you'll always will feel like, this is going to work like you were saying, like, why am I going to do this? Like there is really no why and there is never really like a ready feeling. I think you just like do it and then it works out or it doesn't. But I think there's there's something valuable to be learned either way.

Paul (14:50) — Oh yeah, yeah for sure. Be a sponge. Learn as you go and work your ass off. If you're very curious and you work your ass off, it's a done deal. I mean, your success is an eventuality, my opinion.

Vivian (15:02) — Yeah. Okay, so I am going to jump into something that obviously I know, which is like you're working on this, this ad campaign. We've already kind of discussed like your intended reach for it. How I've never done like an influencer marketing campaign. I've always been curious about it. How are you approaching it? How do you think about it? Any pros and cons? Like basically teach me about the subject.

Paul (15:29) — Yeah, well, think, obviously, influencer marketing is a hit or miss. It's a hit or miss. We've had some marketing campaigns that just did not hit. I think obviously you learn through those failures and there have been some successes as well. This is actually working out really well. But I think for us, we want to have a very defined ICP, a very defined target audience in a very niche field. mean, there's something called the ink spot strategy, which is a military strategy that's been around for a few hundred years. the whole concept is to start off with very... If you see a map that is... is very bloody field. Like there's a lot of big competitors, a lot of big guys, and like we're a small guy right now, obviously. Just pick certain spots on that map. Just drop some ink on those maps. And those are like the niches that you'll focus on, and then those ink spots will get bigger over time, and then they'll eventually connect to where now you're a big dog on that map. So we're starting off with that ink spot strategy, putting little ink spots around the map. And that map for us, those spots are the people who are pro, you know, productivity, pro lifelong learning, and we see that through these influencers that we're targeting. So people that talk about, know, hey, here's my productivity setup with my desk. Here's a three hour like Pomodoro study with me. video, here's a productivity hack, things like that. Those are the people that we want to target and when we look at the followers of these people, one, their content has to be consistently in the productivity or life-alarm learning space. Not a one-off video, but that is where their following is. And their following turns out, like the people that we're partnering with, a lot of them have like 1.2 million followers, 3 million followers, sometimes 300,000 followers, 400,000, like they have pretty big followings. Being very, very niche in that regard is really great. also, so pro-productivity, pro-lifelong learning, we're very, very keen on that. But also being keen on the industries we want to go for. That's also a narrow point. I know eventually we want to be in every industry, we want everybody in every industry to use Cognifi. But at the start, we want to focus on the ones that have high learning curves. We're talking accounting, we're talking finance, we're talking, we'll throw consulting and healthcare in there as well. Those, you have a few months to mess up and be a novice, but after those few months, after those like maybe three to four months, you better start showing some promise in learning new knowledge and applying that knowledge in your work. And that's a very stressful position to be in. But yeah, think hitting those two marks, productivity, lifelong learning in the accounting, finance, healthcare spaces, that's where we're trying to go. So being very keen and looking at influencers who have large followings. And that is basically all they post. Because if all they post about is productivity stuff, then all those million followers that follow them are pro, pro, pro productivity. Absolutely. So that's kind what we go for.

Vivian (18:33) — Awesome. you, I guess, did you try more general campaigns and they kind of didn't work out? Or smaller influencers to save money and then they didn't work out either?

Paul (18:37) — Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was kind of weird and it sounds so stupid now and I guess this is the whole thing about like learning as you go because you want to look back on your previous self and be like, yeah, that was stupid. Because if you keep thinking that and that just means you've gotten smarter over time ideally. But yeah, I mean, sometimes we would pick influencers in what now seems like it was just vibes. Honestly, like just vibe picking influencers and it was it was so stupid. It was so stupid We got like maybe like a few people would sign up and we're like, well that money's down the down the tubes You know, and that's why you know, we got we got very we did a lot of research You we picked the right partners in a very niche field in very niche fields As part of our ink spot strategy again We plan to go more general as we grow but we want to be very niche in the beginning And I think another thing is you know on the pricing structure

Vivian (19:01) — Just fine, they seem fine.

Paul (19:29) — I mean, do not pay full price for a deal upfront. I think obviously you need to show some good faith. So send a sliver of it as upfront payment, but then do benchmarks. Like, hey, if we get like a thousand people, or maybe like every thousand people, we'll throw in like a bonus payment up until a certain cap. That is our current structure. Flat fee and then bonus payments up to a certain cap of people who sign up for the platform.

Vivian (19:56) — Okay, yeah, that actually makes sense. Obviously, you know, somebody's doing some work for you, especially if they already have followers, they have a platform, but then you do want to incentivize good content. You're not just like, make the worst video you've ever made and just post it on your platform and call it a day, right? You want to incentivize kind of like what you want to see, so that makes sense. Do you feel that the earlier stages were because you didn't understand your own ICP or just because you didn't understand like how to market yourself within that.

Paul (20:27) — I did not understand how to mark ourselves. Like I really didn't. I mean, for me, like I'm in...

Vivian (20:30) — Was it was it you doing it or so or like to had you hired someone at that point? Okay.

Paul (20:36) — It was just me, like at least like, I mean, it was me handling the partnerships with like influencers and things like that. And you know, we were even doing some, some advertising and like, I mean, this is again, when we were in the higher education field and we still are obviously, but this is when we were doing like heavy, like, you know, boots on the ground marketing, like at UT. So like we would do like, you know, partners with, with student influencers. We would do partnerships with like, you know,

Vivian (20:40) — for me.

Paul (21:00) — different apartments around the campus. But again, the influencers, it was a different demographic than we were going for. We were just vibing it, which is so stupid. And then the advertisements in the apartments, we didn't even specify what area of the apartments we wanted them to be in. we had those like, you know. kind of posts up in the first floor of the apartments, but they're like off in the corner somewhere. So it was like, we basically burned that cash. It was just, it was just not good. was not good. And going through that again, sounds stupid. And it was, was a dumb marketing, dumb marketing campaigns, but like it was a, was a lesson to be learned for sure.

Vivian (21:25) — Mmm. I think there's always so many small details when you launch anything, like a marketing campaign or product, really anything. But sometimes the things that look that should have been obvious is like almost hard to know everything that you should be looking out for until you make that mistake and then you're like, hmm, yeah, no, probably shouldn't have done that, you know? And it's so much easier when you have the structure the second time or third time.

Paul (22:01) — Yeah, I'm- for sure, for sure. mean, I mean you think about it Vivian like people that make like bad movies like you gotta think like the worst movie you've ever seen had like hundreds and hundreds of people behind it and like hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars and like great equipment and everything and it was still a bad movie. It was still a bad movie somehow. And you gotta think like there's a lot of details. There's a lot of details that if you overlook them then doesn't matter what you do like it chances are it'll be it'll be terrible. take taking your licks taking your you know getting some lessons along the way and then learn. how to refine and refine and refine. mean eventually you'll get it down.

Vivian (22:41) — yeah i always think about those commercials usually where people are like how did they not know like and it's always the commercials in particular and i always think like sometimes i'm like yeah i'll be honest that's pretty bad and then sometimes i'm like i can kind of see how like in a in a corporate space everybody's like yeah this looks good this looks good you know and then it just kind of moves along and like i think that sometimes people just don't speak up or if they do, you know, maybe maybe they're in the minority and people are like, no, it's going to be fine. And then it just moves through the process. And then, you know, obviously the consumers react super negatively, which is pretty funny.

Paul (23:19) — yeah, for sure.

Vivian (23:21) — Okay, so I think you have a co-founder,

Paul (23:27) — No, we did we did we have been honestly, I'm not gonna lie to you Vivian and we've had three co-founders Throughout this whole process, but currently like all of them all of them have left the company Yeah, I mean I can tell you like the quick story about that mean like there's there's two that started when we were kind of just doing like tutoring on the side like as I mentioned before like Cognify was like not a not a tech company was more of like a tutoring company But we wanted to raise capital to you know be in the EdTech space. knew that AI technology was going be very promising, so they didn't want to raise capital for that, and they wanted to kind of stay as a person-to-person. So that's where we departed. I bought them out. said, hey, you know what? I really think that I should go this way. So that's where we kind of departed. was very like, they're still really great friends of mine, which is nice. And then, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's solid.

Vivian (24:13) — That's awesome.

Paul (24:18) — So, but then after that, you know, we did bring in the CTO when we, when we became like a net tech company. Uh, and that was a great relationship, but you know, along the way in the beginning, like it was, we were sitting, we were hitting like, um, we were in a pretty rough spot, honestly. I mean, we, we had a great team. We were making great products. The sales cycle was kind of getting us a little bit. Um, you know, we didn't have the funding to last those sales cycles. So we had to go through some changes and during that change, you know, um, our, co-founder had gone through, uh, a little, you know, not a little, but like, like a family emergency at the time. and we were in the trenches for sure at this job and he was working a full-time job at the time so we decided to part ways. It was amicable, it was all totally fine, but yeah, was a tough path to be in for him at that time.

Vivian (25:03) — Was it hard to navigate those splits and what did that look like if you're willing to share?

Paul (25:08) — Yeah, mean, it of, felt like, it felt like a breakup in a way, like, you know, it's, yeah, it's weird. Yeah. Especially like when the two co-founders left, you know, when we were in the very beginning of the company, like still like a person to person tutoring company. Yeah. It's like you're breaking up with two people. That's, I don't know if that's weird to say, but, a little bit.

Vivian (25:25) — Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think a lot of people break up with two people at one time.

Paul (25:29) — Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So it was, was, it was, it's always very tough and you can start to see the writing on the wall a little bit. mean, going down this path, Vivian, like as you know, it's a very delusional path to go down. Very delusional. I mean, for years, you're going to potentially not see, I mean, usually you don't see any results. I mean, we see things like, like cursor or replet or something like that where like they create something and then in like two seconds they have like 300 million ARR with like an X. like 1000x growth rate or something like that. That's really great. And everybody would like to be that, but that's not the case for most people. Most people, it's years and years and years of being in the trenches, working all day, all night. And the only people that support you are yourself, your team, and your mom. And that's about it. So going through that is very grueling. So you can see the writing on the wall where like, you can kind of see your co-founder being like, Dude, I like what we're doing, but like the evidence is just not there, man. And like, I see you going like a thousand percent, no matter what. Like we just, we just lost a deal. Like there was a one time where we lost this deal that, you know, was, it was, was, it was a six figure deal. It was going to be very nice. It going to be great for us. And it was going to be like, kind of like our saving grace, if I'm going to be honest. And we had that deal and we had like three others and all of them fell through in one day, in one day, all of, all, all of them fell through. And that was really bad, but I, I didn't really. mind it, mean like let's learn from it but let's keep going and you can see that my co-founder was like dude I love that but like I it's this is insane at this point so that was a while ago but it was very tough to handle but you totally get it you totally get this is a very delusional path again if you're a reasonable person then it's it's it's not the path for you

Vivian (27:09) — you I say yeah, there are always moments where you're like, should I keep going? I think, yeah, I don't, I would never, I never felt like it was a delusion. It probably kind of was in some way. I just feel like you care so much about the product or the company or you're like tied so much to it that you like keep going regardless. there are definitely moments where you question if that's the right path, then you're right. It's so hard to be, you know, cursor or really the kind of company that sees instant growth. And I think it's pretty rare to have that. And it also isn't always as instant as people think, you know, because I don't want to say that people fudge dates, but there's more work that goes in before they become officially a company, right? The day you start a company or the day you get funding, the day, you know, whatever people start to see your name, it might feel like, okay, people start to see your name. And then like a few months later, you're this next hundred million billion dollar unicorn company. But the reality is like, no, you didn't just start three months ago. You know, I'm not going to say there's no companies that are instances of that, but the reality is like, there's always more work that went into it, you know, beforehand when it was just a few guys or some person just sitting there, you know, writing the code, thinking of the product. There's always more laid up before that.

Paul (28:44) — Oh yeah, for sure. like, I mean, you think about, you know, in our, in our own case right now, I mean, the whole, like the whole focus on critical thinking and lifelong learning and things like that, that is, you you have, you have the MIT study that came out about, you know, AI and the effects of cognitive decline and how we need to actively learn to counter that. I mean, all of these things are getting blown up in the mainstream right now, blown up. Like they're on every single AI news network, all over national news and things like that. And then here comes Cognify with this like learner first AI application. Some people think that it was just vibe coded. Like I just vibe coded it in like two seconds and came out with it. And that's not the case. I mean, we've been around, we've been a tech company for, well, we've been a company for like over two years, a tech company for about two. And we've gone through some terrible. terrible times. mean there's been times where our own staff forwent their salaries because they said you know we're running out of capital but I believe in this company we're in the trenches and there's no light at the end of the tunnel but we're gonna keep going we're gonna keep figuring out so don't pay us for like a month or a month and a half don't pay us let's just extend the runway as much as we can and survive. That was a very very dark time very dark time but now here we are and people think that we just came out of nowhere in like a week but that's not the case it was two years of just grinding and with no potential large large returns but now here we are it's just kind of it's kind of wild but people think that we just vibe-coded this in a day but it's not the case yeah I wish

Vivian (30:14) — Yeah, I wish. Yeah, I wish you could just do it in a day and then you just have a bunch of employees and it's all done. That's kind of cool just to you. How do you think about company morale, I think? You know, as the CEO, your job is for sure like to hire and to get funding, but also like to keep spirits up and also keep the direction and the vision of the company going, you know, when things when shit hits the fan, how do you frame that for people?

Paul (30:48) — Yeah, mean like I think first and foremost like a shepherd should smell like his sheep. I feel like that's a really great saying and you there's you have to be like a wartime you know leader I guess which means that like your team has to see that green dot on on slack at like you know 1 a.m. 2 a.m. like and I'm not doing that for like visual purposes that just who I am. because I believe in this so much that you know that needs that will be seen that will be seen by your team. And yeah, just you you're doing like very very like outlandish things. I mean like flying all over the country trying to meet with with these people and those people and go to these conferences, you know, getting your truck appraised to sell it if you need to to make sure that you have at least like if you did sell that then that would give you at least you know a month and a half to two months of of extra cash. I mean, that was a real, that's a real thing that happened. you know, I think showing that and letting your team know that they are heard, I don't want people who are yes men in this company. You have your thoughts. I believe in their expertise. So if I'm saying that we should do something and you don't think that that's the case, then bring it up. You know, I think Winston Churchill said in the depths of World War II, he said,

Vivian (31:56) — Hmm.

Paul (32:09) — The person who doesn't change their mind doesn't change anything. So I always want to make them feel heard. I always have one-on-ones. I don't care if it's a junior dev. I don't care if it's a janitor, like whoever it is. I want to hear like what you think about the product, what you think about where we're going. And just being able to motivate, I think is big. I mean, like one of the sayings I have for the team is, you know, our job is to turn the unlikely into the inevitable. And that right there is a very hard thing to do, but think about like visually think about if we did do this. Like, in a crazy situation. It seems impossible, but if we did, just for thought candy, if we did do it, what would that look like? Your family's life would change, your life would change, the world would change. That's kind of crazy. You start to get excited about that. You start to get really excited about that. So I think communicating that consistently, having them see you in the grind, in the absolute grind, late at night, early in the morning. And then spoke listening to each person individually and setting time aside to listen to them each individually. That's really great I mean I'll end the last thing real quick on that There's it there's a sign Vivian that there's an invisible sign that everybody has around their neck that says make me feel important and If you talk to people with that in mind Then everyone's gonna work their ass off for you for you in the company because you make them feel heard and you make them feel important because they are

Vivian (33:33) — Yeah, that's really interesting. I've always, I've never thought of it as like someone has a sign that says make me feel important. But I've always thought that everybody is kind of like underlying need is to feel seen, heard and kind of understood. And it's funny that I've always felt like you could disagree with someone. But if you understand where they're coming from, it actually goes pretty far. Despite being like, heard what you said, but still not gonna do it that way. These people just want to know that like, their judgment was taken into consideration because like you said, they are important and their expertise is important. And I kind of feel the same way although I will say you really like war examples. Are you like really into mystery?

Paul (34:13) — yeah, yeah. Yeah, I am. And I think like for me, like the reason why I like kind of more like, I guess like war, like military, like strategies and philosophies is because you got to think about the stakes, the stakes that these people had when they created these strategies or these tactics or like the the the situation that they were in when they said whatever they said when they said an amazing quote that then like, for example, Winston Churchill, he galvanized Great Britain to fight against the Nazis even when they're on their last, even when Great Britain was on its last leg. Things like that, the stakes were so high that in the corporate world or in the business world or startup world, there's tactics and there's this and there's that that are solely made for business. But if you look to the military and you look to war tactics, the stakes were so high that these tactics had to work. They had to work. And they did and I think that's where that's where so I take a lot of our strategy a lot of our inspiration from from from wartime Tactics as I do listen to corporate things that are made solely for corporate, you know business strategy, but like I think war strategy is pretty pretty

Vivian (35:25) — No, that's super interesting because I've always felt that business was a bit of a war, honestly. Especially startups, because the pressure is so much higher that I do feel there's a lot of parallels, but I am not this history buff, and I feel like you are, so think it's so funny to hear you bring in the quotes, but they're totally applicable, so.

Paul (35:29) — It is. Yeah. Yeah, think, yeah, it's, it's everything you've done has been, has been done before. People have failed at it and people have won from it. So you might as well learn from those people.

Vivian (35:52) — Yeah, no, I agree. Okay, well, I think that basically wraps up our time, but thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me and joining us on the podcast.

Paul (36:02) — Yeah, absolutely, baby. Looking forward to this coming out. And again, been a good fan of senior content and it's an honor to be on the show and I really appreciate you reaching out.

Vivian (36:11) — Yeah, absolutely. See you next time. Bye.

Paul (36:14) — All right, bye bye.