Digital Social Hour - Overcoming Depression, Asian Parenting and Best Pokemon of All Time | Eric Wei DSH #332

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

Eric Wei reveals his favorite Pokemon, what he learned at Ivy League College and his journey into entrepreneurship. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: My First Million: https://link.chtbl.com/MFM-AD Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's a really fun time to see people making money off their passions because that's where you have true happiness, man. Yeah. If we're being honest. When you're just working for money, it's usually not happiness. Where initially to be happy, you just need very basic things like shelter and food. And then it's like friendship. But eventually you get to like self-actualization. And as humans, we have this like really weird tendency where we adjust are happiness level depending on environment so wherever you guys are watching this show i would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe

it helps a lot with the algorithm it helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team truly means a lot thank you guys for supporting and here's the episode ladies and gentlemen very special guest today eric way of carrot how's it Pretty well, Sean. Thanks so much for inviting me on today. Absolutely. We had a fun dinner last night, dude. It was great catching up with you. I'm just happy. I know you were traveling in a town. I got a text from you like, hey man, dinner tonight. I'm on. Whenever you're free, I'll come down. Love it, dude. And that means a lot to me because I know you're running a big company and you're probably all over the place.

Trying my best. Making time for me. I feel special. Respect and appreciation is likewise. Let's start off light. We'll dive into some serious stuff later, but what's the best Pokemon of all time? I would have to go with Ditto. Ditto?

Yeah. First of all, just spiritually, I like that Ditto is very adaptable depending on the environment, the situation. It turns into what it needs to be in that given case. And also, I play a little bit of competitive Pokemon, too, these simulators online. Ditto's actually very, very good because you can equip it with an item that not only means that it copies exactly what the opposing Pokemon is, but that it's faster.

And so if you let an opponent's Pokemon set up and power itself up, you can just bring in a Ditto, it'll copy all of those changes, all of those stat boosts, and be faster and be able to take them out. Wow. I really, really like the Ditto vibe, the Ditto aesthetic. Yeah, I've never gotten that answer before, so I'm impressed.

Yeah, it's probably because most of the people you interview aren't giant Pokemon nerds in their basement, but that's me. It's usually like Pikachu, Charizard, Blastoise. No, that's too basic. That's the starters. That's the mascot, right? Ditto's got a little bit of spice.

What does competitive Pokemon look like? I didn't even know that was a thing. So Nintendo has an official Pokemon set of rules, but it's all focused on doubles. Like you have two Pokemon fighting against your other trainer who also has two Pokemon, but the thing is, in the games, no one ever really fights that much with doubles. It's usually singles. I really love this. A bunch of grassroots

Pokemon fanatics. It's not sanctioned by Nintendo. They came up with their own rule set for singles Pokemon battling, and they built their own software and website called Pokemon Showdown. It's all unofficial. It's all unsanctioned by Nintendo and there are probably thousands, millions of people who now

just go online and can play Pokemon and battle against each other picking these simulated teams without having to go through the games and train up their specific Pokemon. I see it as a great example of sometimes the originator might not build out the grassroots competitive scene,

but if the players like it, they'll go and figure it out themselves. That's so cool. So it's not like a specific game. It's like its own game. Yeah, it's like its own game with its own varied rules because no one really wants to go through the actual game and train their Pokemon to be perfect when you can just generate them and then you just get a focus on the strategic part of battling against each other wow yeah that's a ton of fun i play it way too much i'm gonna check it out that sounds

cool because you don't have to spend time leveling up to 99 and then doing exactly and i also do a remote it's called random pokemon battle so you get a completely random set they get a completely random set you don't know what you have initially until you see it. They don't know what you have either. So that is a little bit of a strategic. Oh, wow. It almost feels like a, like in chess, there's like the normal version, but then they have like blitz mode where you play for like five minutes.

So I'll get in like games here and there when I'm in the car. It's pretty fun. That's cool. I'm a big fan of chess. I play every day. Oh, wow. Yeah. I play five minute chess.

Yeah. I, uh, I feel like all the time I should have been learning chess. I played Pokemon. I mean, there's pros and cons to both, right? Yeah. One's an ancient game revered by millennia of masters and others, you know, cute Nintendo Japanese animal designs. Well, the biggest IP of all time. Yeah, it's kind of crazy, I think, for a long time. So as you know, my company focuses a lot on working with creators and businesses like yours who understand how to use content. For a long time, we'd always hear this common refrain

when we told investors and partners what we want to do. We'd be like, yeah, we think this is going to be a booming industry. We want to support them on the finances. They'd be like, well, I don't know. Can you really get big off doing content and building IP? And I'd be like, what are you talking about? Exactly. Look at Pokemon.

Look at Rihanna, who's Like exactly. Look at Pokemon. Like look at Rihanna, who's a billionaire, like a Taylor Swift, like people for hundreds of years have built brands through the power of media that end up becoming unicorns. And weirdly, a lot of folks in the tech industry, they don't value that the same way as they do as like a tech. Shout out to My First Million hosted on the HubSpot Podcast Network. It is one of my favorite shows. The hosts Sean and Sam have both sold their companies for over eight figures to Amazon and HubSpot. They have on guests like Mr. Beast, Rob Dyrdek, Alex Ramosi, and much, much more. They bring on some of the top guys in their space.

They'll help you brainstorm business ideas that you can start tomorrow. It's a very tactical podcast. A lot of advice and tips in there that you can utilize right away. I've literally seen almost every episode. It's a very tactical podcast, a lot of advice and tips in there that you can utilize right away. I've literally seen almost every episode. It's one of my favorite shows. They do it remotely, which is super impressive. In my opinion, most podcasts need to be done in person, but these two know how to make it happen. So check them out wherever you listen to podcasts. My first million. Like a platform, right? Like from a tech investor POV, obviously they really appreciate and care about companies like Facebook and DoorDash, but they until recently didn't really appreciate,

oh, like celebrities also can build six, seven, eight, nine figure brands. So I see Pokemon like, yeah, that's an example of IP. And now the next Pokemon I think is more likely to come from a kid in his basement, drawing designs and blowing up than it might necessarily have to come from a conglomerate. Yeah, I love to see where the creator economy is going, because at first they just relied on views for money. And now it's this branding.

I feel like that's the next stage, right? Mr. Beast with the chocolate bars, Logan Paul with Prime, a bunch of creators have their own brands. Yeah, it's like eventually you want to scale and kind of do your own thing. To be clear, I don't think the Pokemons of the world are going to go away. I always think you're going to have companies launching their brand and IP that's going to blow up. I'm just saying there could be more versions that are a little bit more grassroots.

Yeah. And now there's Pokemon creators that are making millions of Pokemon content. Oh, yeah. I watch a lot of them. I watched that one guy. What's his name? He opens up the Pokemon cards. Leon Hart.

Leon Hart. Yeah, Leon Hart. He's awesome and i think his story is really cool because like leon hart used to be a lawyer wow so many of us when we grow up we have a passion and our parents tell us oh that's like a fun hobby for you to do on the side after you go and get your real job presumably you know in law or finance or medicine or consulting or banking what have you and i I think Leonhard is an example of someone who went through that, was a lawyer, and now his life is focused on his passions because the

internet makes it possible for you to support yourself doing what you love and sharing that with others. Yeah, absolutely. It's a really fun time to see people making money off their passions because that's where you have true happiness, man, if we're being honest. When you're just working for money, it's usually not happiness. Yeah, I think it sort of comes down to Maslow's hierarchy of needs where initially to be happy,

you just need very basic things like shelter and food. And then it's like friendship. But eventually you get to self-actualization. And as humans, we have this really weird tendency where we adjust our happiness level depending on our environment. So what maybe your parents who come from a different background might be satisfied with, like my parents, obviously immigrants, they were very happy just getting to a place of economic stability. For me, it's because of their work.

Oh, actually I'm thinking about that next level. I am thinking about that self-actualization where it's not just, oh, like how do I literally support myself? It's because of their work that I generally can. It's much more about, oh, what do I actually want to do because I want to do it, not because I have to and I need to get the finances and income to support it. But I put that into the context where people often forget that it is a privilege to be able to think about work as something that personally fuels me and i think you only get to think of that when you've reached at least that minimum bar of oh i make enough to survive are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest we'll click the application link below in the

description of this video we are always looking for cool stories cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life click the application link below and here's the episode guys. Right. There is a certain threshold income wise you need to reach first. Yes. To come to realize. And I'm very aware of like the privilege I have from my parents working hard and the education they helped put me through that I get a focus on those things because yeah, sometimes I hear people be like, no, like work should a hundred percent be what you enjoy. And I'm like, well, there are a lot of people like my parents they didn't have that luxury right and i also hear and what i think is really cool there i've gone through my work now

to meet a lot of people like yourself like i remember for you like you've built your own businesses you really had a grind yeah like if i recall like you basically like in school had a decision and you're like yeah i need to do this to make money and that just is what ended up blowing up into its own thing i had to drop out to do it i couldn't there was no way i would have been able to do both because school is a full-time job how much of it came from a place of passion versus a place of i literally need to survive or you know both yeah so at first i would say money was the number one focus the first five years yep and now i'm i'm at that second stage where money matters but it's not the number one focus the first five years. And now I'm at that second stage where money matters, but it's not the number one thing. Exactly. Like for me, there's a similar version.

So today I co-founded and helped run a company. But before that, for five, six, seven years, I just worked corporate jobs because that was my version of, well, first I need to make money and build the confidence that I can live and survive. And yeah, so I think just a lot of people forget there's always that first part of the journey. You need to build that safety net and it could be doing something you don't like, which is most likely what you're going to do at first. Yeah. Yeah. And then once you're there, things start to get more fun, I think. Yeah, that's precisely right. Yeah. And I know you've gone through periods of that where, you know, you were depressed, you were doing stuff you didn't like, and you, you learned a lot from that, right?

Yeah. I think like, so life is always filled with stuff that you don't like that as hard and bad. In fact, I actually think it's by overcoming those things. That's how you get meaning in life, right? Or you did stories of like hairs who have like grown up with millions of dollars in their pocket and they haven't to do anything. And I'm not sure if they're happy because they haven't felt like they've accomplished something. You feel like you've learned and grown and grown and feel good about yourself when you've overcome something difficult. Now, the tricky thing is the type of difficulty. Is it difficulty that you feel like you had a hand in choosing? Yeah, I'm okay going through this type of because it's on my own

terms and I'm going to overcome it? Or do you feel like it's just pushed on you and you didn't have a choice and you're doing it and you're not even sure why? For a lot of my life, it was the latter where I internalized all these expectations around, hey, this is what a good life means, right? You want to go to Harvard, work these corporate jobs. And like, yeah, the difficulty there, it's essentially, as you implied, this corporate drudgery where you're just working for other people. And I think if you yourself helped decide

this is the type of work you want to do and you feel it's meaningful, then it's okay. But for me, I don't know why I was going through that. I was just like, I guess at the end of the day, I'm doing it all to make money, but then I have the money and it's just like, well, this sucks. And so that's why, you know, like four or five years ago,

I made a decision to try and do my own thing. And like the difficulty in some ways, it's even more on a day-to-day level. It's really uncertain what we're doing on a day-to-day basis, but existentially it feels better because it's a challenge that I've chosen myself on my own terms more. I love that. Was there anything impactful that you learned at Harvard that you still carry with you to this day?

Yeah. I remember my freshman year, part of the reason I also got really depressed was because I had given up, in my mind, most of my life in high school to try and get into Harvard. I didn't have friends. I didn't have friends i didn't have a social life all i did was just like stay at home and like study and grind tests right and getting to harvard the big realization i had was like oh my gosh there are like so many people here who have friends and have hobbies and spend time with each other and pursuing passions because they actually care about those passions instead of just doing so for this arbitrary mark and distinction. And so in a weird way, it's like you can end up at Harvard because you optimize the heck out of getting really good

test scores. Or you can end up at Harvard because guess what? You just followed a passion you really, really cared about and you were so good at it that even Harvard had to be like, okay, I recognize you. Both of those types of people end up there. I think it was me in the former camp meeting people in the latter camp where I was just like, huh, they're not miserable

and they're at the same place I am. Maybe I've been confusing the work to be done with how it reflects from a societal perspective. Like I've been too focused on the ladder and I should instead think about, Hey, maybe there are actual passions that I should pursue and it'll get me to the right place anyways. If I just follow them instead of just trying to grind. Yeah.

The tricky thing was, uh, you know, Sean, I didn't even know what those passions were. So I had to go through a lot of years of just figuring out what I even cared about. And how were you able to find that thing you cared about? I think the first thing for me was just to recognize that most of the things I thought I cared about were just coming from a place of insecurity and fear. Things that I did because I thought other people would find me cool. And if I removed that, I'm like, well, these aren't really things that I would want to do. I think learning to be aware of that was the first step. The second step was then like,

okay, now I should find things I like to do and not care what people think. And they're like a little bit of two separate steps, right? The first one is just being aware like, oh, this thing I thought I liked, actually, do I really like it? The second is let me actively go do things even if I think other people won't think highly of me. And if that first step came during Harvard, that second step actually came when I was already like 27 years old with like years of the corporate world. Because I had finally gone through enough of it to be like, yeah, you know what? Like no one knows what they're doing. This is not worth it. And I'm just going to do what I want, even if it doesn't work out and people think it's really dumb. And that's kind of what led to myself, my co-founder starting carrot. And I think the third thing that I'm

realizing right now is, Hey, you're aware that you have to figure out your own desires. You now are willing to do them independent of what other people think. I think the third thing that I'm personally going through right now is just the level of uncertainty. Working in a corporate job, worst case is like, okay, you got fired. You just go get another one.

Which is a lot of work, but it's kind of clear what you need to do. Doing my own thing with my co-founder, yeah, it's like we could be doing amazingly or this could all just not work. And it's very, very hard to say at this given point in time. Yeah, the startup world, that's something people don't talk about.

But mentally, it's very tough because there's no safety net. You have employees, you have families that are relying on you to provide income. and there's a lot on the line. Yeah. I think learning to grapple and deal with uncertainty. One of my friends, JT Barnett once said, as a creator, the key to success is your ability to take as many punches to the stomach as possible. Because like you put out content and like maybe it does well, maybe it doesn't. And the point he was making was you just have to keep doing it. I think that applies to entrepreneurship as well.

The effort that you put in is steadily increasing. But the outcomes of whether your effort is worth it, it's a step function. You might see nothing for a very long period of time, and then suddenly it works. But you've been grinding this whole time. That's something my co-founder told me. And so there's this mismatch where you're grinding linearly and you're just seeing nothing and you don't know where you are. It could be you're right just a little bit more or it could be, no, you're going to plateau for years more. And this was just not necessarily a good use of your time.

Yeah, and that's, I think, the uncertainty, the anxiety. And there's a balance, right? Because you can also experience stress and burnout. Totally. So you really don't know where you are on that map, like you said. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, there's only two reasons why companies fail. The first, of course, is you run out of money, which is obvious and basic. But the second that people don't often realize is the founders give up. And this actually happens in the venture-backed world

a fair portion of the time where the founders, they still have money and they're just like, you know, I have lost conviction of why I want to do this and I'm going to return it and just shut the company down because I think the opportunity cost is too high and I might figure something else out. And so I really think, first of all,

everyone makes their own decision, what is right for them. I really think it's almost a balance between the initial mission, why you started your company in the first place versus, as you said, the burnout and uncertainty that you face along the way, which is like, it's hard and it's a lot. Yeah. How did you choose your co-founders?

Because that's probably a big reason companies fail, bad partnerships, you don't trust each other. I think that the biggest determinant of your life is who you're spending the most time around, which is why, of course, the partner that you date in a relationship that you might end up marrying, you determine in your life. And if you're starting your own thing and you're working with a co-founder, it's the same. Arguably, I spend more time with my co-founder

than I do with my girlfriend. And so they are and should be of equal serious consideration. When I was thinking about doing a company, for me, it was very important to find the right co-founder that actually in a way came even first before this specific concept or idea and I approached it as I would approach dating which is you have to expose yourself to as much surface area and opportunity

as possible is this concept of making your own luck, right? Like ultimately, you don't know where you're going to meet that person. So you kind of just have to put yourself out there as much as possible, going to different events, like meeting different people, following up on every potential lead. So I ended up meeting my co-founder because, so I had made a career change. I used to be in banking consulting and I already could see the people that I'd meet there weren't necessarily the ones that I wanted to be more like. And I had done a project out in Silicon Valley and met people who I thought were like absolutely wacky and like super inspiring because they're so different from what I was used to. Like one of my very good friends and I met him like in 2015 out in Silicon Valley. He was like living out of his car, like working on so many random

ideas. And then one day he came to me and he's like, yeah, I convinced the co-founder of PayPal to like give me a million dollars. I was like, what? Wow. And he told me this whole story of how he like finessed this interaction, but it worked because at the day he's so believed in himself. And the best way to pitch what you're doing to someone else is to really believe in what you're doing and just do what comes naturally. And so I was like, I need to come out of Silicon Valley. That's why I moved from consulting and banking to technology. It's why I joined Facebook and Instagram. And

one of the engineers on one of the teams I was working on one day invited me like, hey, do you want to come to this board game event that I'm hosting? I was like, sure. Again, in this mode, you kind of want to say yes to everything. And I went there and my co-founder was just one of the guys there playing board games. And I really liked him.

He was going through a similar realization where he had also worked in a lot of really prestigious jobs. He was working at Goldman Sachs. He worked at Palantir. And he also was like, oh, maybe I want to do my own thing, which for him was start a venture fund. Or maybe I just want to run off to the woods and just go do pottery. Like Henry David Thoreau style. I was like, Oh, I love that independently minded spirit. Like this is also a guy who's figuring out what he wants to do with his life. And we just really became good friends for years before we really ended up deciding to do anything. That's cool. What are

the biggest differences between corporate America, which you worked in for five years and startup world? Do you notice a lot of big differences? Yeah, I think in corporate America, take Facebook as a great example. Mark Zuckerberg sits there and figures out the goals for his company. Like maybe it's increased revenue or maybe it's build new technology to help us win the metaverse or AI.

And then he essentially has a team of people who take those goals and break it down into five discrete chunks. Let's say the goal is increase revenue. Well, okay, what are the five ways we make revenue? It's like advertising revenue from Facebook versus Instagram versus WhatsApp or whatever. And he'll have another team go and break down each one of those segments into five more goals.

Let's look at revenue from Instagram. How do we break that up? Okay, here's the five different ad formats. And then you continue to have layers of people break down the goals into five more components until eventually it gets to you. And so in corporate America, you are a cog in a machine where there's been some broad goal and it's been broken down to formula. It's split into five, 10, 15, 25,

depending how many layers there are until it's gone to you. And now it's like, hey, Sean, accomplish your goal to hit this one metric because if you do and everyone else does that, it's going to hit this metric, which eventually ladders up to the actual goal. And there's so many levels of abstraction that it might be hard for you to see how your work directly contributes.

And it's also been broken off into these tiny chunks. Now, it's almost a truism that when a company gets big enough, you end up having to do this. People have tried to figure out other ways. In fact, Jeff Bezos, at one point, tried to have everybody focus on one goal. It didn't matter what your function was. It was figure out how the work you're doing directly contributes to company revenue. If you're working in customer service, it's like, well, my customer service means the customer is 10% more likely to buy from us again, which translates to revenue.

Or they're 15% less miserable, which translates to 5% more sales on the line. And he ended up dropping it because it was so much work for certain people in certain roles that are like 15 layers down to construct a math equation of here's how the work I'm doing like ladders up to this broader company goal. As opposed to when you're doing your own thing, especially in the early days, you don't have someone chunking up the goals for you and saying, this is your own little box. It's just like, cool, like go do whatever and figure it out. And then eventually as it grows, you actually weirdly have to become that system that breaks things into goals and gives it to other people. That's why a lot of people say doing your own thing is really different from managing other people because managing other people is the art of taking those goals and splitting it up and

apportioning it out. Yeah. It's a whole nother ball game once you're outsourcing the work, right? Yeah. Super hard. In terms of hiring employees, what stands out to you? Do you even look at the resume of the college experience or do you kind of get a feel in person? I think the first important piece of context is I am still learning how to get good at this because it's a new skill to hire people and know not only are they fantastic, but also is the company the right place for them? Because you can hire somebody fantastic, but if your company's goals and plans change and it doesn't work out, then it's not a good fit. And that wasn't even on them. That was on you as the company leader, which is especially hard because you might not know exactly what the

plans of your company are going to be. So the first context I'll say is this is something I'm still trying to figure out. The second piece of context, you very specifically asked about like, oh, like background, right? Like, okay, like I went to Harvard. Like, do I really care if the people that want to join also went to Harvard? I actually don't. I see it as, hey, there are so many metrics and markers in life that we care about because they might be reflective of certain virtues and attributes we're trying to capture. But number one, oftentimes you can game the system and get these markers and metrics without actually building those internal attributes and virtues. And number two, those internal values and attributes

that you think are the right fit that are most important for your company and job, maybe they're not. Maybe you're just actually selecting for the wrong ones. So both of those areas of uncertainty combined mean that if you're meeting someone and they're like, oh yeah, I went to Princeton like raised all this money and whatever. It's like, OK, like they might actually be a really good fit or they might not, because it's really easy to, as I said, manipulate your life to hit these things without actually building the virtues that people think they correspond to.

So for me, I don't actually focus on those. I try to focus much more on like, do you have, you know, there's X, Y, Z traits I'm looking for. Do you have them? That's a good point. Yeah. Cause you can manipulate, you could cheat on tests. You could have family alumni in those universities. You don't really know the backstory. You don't. And that goes to the first point I said, well, yeah, it might just be game. And the second one I was saying, the virtues and attributes you think you're selecting for might not be the right ones. Say someone like actually really did like from the bootstraps from nothing,

like made their way and graduate from Princeton or Harvard or whatever. Maybe it just means they're really, really good at grinding and like picking tests. It doesn't mean they could be good. Like, Hey, Sean, you brought them in.

You said like make content for me. It doesn't mean that set of virtues. Like, hey, Sean, you brought them in. You said, like, make content for me. It doesn't mean that set of virtues they've cultivated are even the right match. For sure. It's kind of both sides. It's like, is that actually even truly accurate of the virtues they've built up? And then, like, are the virtues that they have even the ones that you want? Exactly. Yeah, they say book smart and street smart.

And for me, street smart is like business experience. Yeah, totally. And I much rather prefer working with street smart personally. Nothing wrong with getting good grades. Yeah, it's just different things for different roles for different types of people. Yeah, exactly. So with the current economy all over the place and being in the fintech space, you see banks getting bailed out by the Fed right now. Is that worrying you at all? The market always goes through cycles where sometimes it's doing really well and sometimes it's not. And we were fortunate that the past few years for most of it,

things were doing really well, so well that inflation became an issue. And the Federal Reserve said, okay, everyone needs to chill. We're going to raise borrowing rates, which has helped to contribute to the economy in its current state where it's so much more expensive to borrow money that people don't have access to credit. That obviously slows down investment, slows down opportunities. Similarly, investors are like, well, I can just put my money in treasury bonds and get like 5% plus or whatever.

I don't necessarily want to go it, put it in more risky areas. I think anyone who's doing their business needs to reorient their thinking from growth at all costs to how do I survive? Yeah. And I think realistically, if you're doing a FinTech venture backed company, you should just assume that you're not going to be able to raise for years and adjust your plans accordingly. Right. So a lot of success, it seems like it's timing. Yeah, totally. A huge part of success in life is opportunity and luck and timing and how markets are going to do. Yeah, because you completed a Series B right before this, I guess, recession.

I don't know if they're calling it that. Yeah, totally. We were very fortunate on timing. And my co-founder and I don't pretend we knew what was going to happen. We just got lucky. And obviously, luck is preparation meets opportunity. We're also ready at the time. But so much of it, you just don't know. I remember

we were going through Y Combinator, which is an accelerator for a lot of startups, for us, but also companies like Airbnb and DoorDash and Stripe. And usually Y Combinator culminates in what they call a demo day, where startups go and raise. And it's supposed to be a big deal. Everyone's out there on stage. All the

investors are there. It's when the fundraising dynamics are most in your favor for you to go and raise right and we were in the winter 2020 batch meaning our demo day was going to be around like april 2020 i remember my co-founder and i we had gotten some investment interest even before demo day wow which is good and happens to a lot of companies and you make a decision do i engage with this now or do i wait until demo day to maximize the opportunity? And my co-founder and I were like, well, we really want to focus more on the business because we think we can get it to an even better place

before demo day. And besides, what could possibly change in the next month that would totally destroy investor interest? Obviously, **** happened. Demo day disappeared. In the span of one month, it went from people were like, yeah, I want to talk with you. I'm interested in investing to nobody wants to invest because let me put it this way. When the world is falling apart and you are literally afraid if you will survive, guess what? You reprioritize your interest. And then we're

coming along and be like, we want to help influencers with their finances. Is this really the most important thing? Probably not. And that's an example where timing actually hurt us. And so that's why I say like sometimes timing helps us. Sometimes it hurts us. And that's just the uncertainty you have to be willing to take whenever you decide to do your own thing. Yeah, man. Timing. Yeah. Who would have thought that would have ever happened to? Oh yeah. My co-founder, I remember it's like, if life were a sitcom, you would have that flashback where we were literally like, what could possibly change in the next month?

We should just hold off and wait until demo day. Wow. So you had to wait until ended to raise money. Well, we still raised, but it was a lot harder and I don't think the terms were as good. So, you know,

but like you just sort of, you hope that if you just last long enough, the ups and downs sort of balance out. It's like, So, you know, but like you just sort of, you hope that if you just last long enough, the ups and downs sort of balance out. It's like, yeah, right now markets are really, really bad, but Hey, as long as we can maintain the conviction and funds and last through it, we think that they'll eventually recover. Yeah. Has your end goal vision of the company changed from day one over time? The mission's always been the same. And that's to help creators run their businesses because it's easier than ever to make content, to distribute it and make money.

It's only now people are beginning to think of like, this is a business and everything involved in helping run that around your finances and managing it, that's what we care about. It goes back to another broader point I always think about. It's like, what defines a company? Is it the people? Well, guess what?

The people could change, right? People come and go. Even the founders sometimes depart. Is it the products? Well, companies pivot all the time. They might discontinue certain lines. They might launch new lines of products. For me, I think it's not the people or the products or the branding.

It's like the mission. If that stayed the same, that's ultimately what defines a company as the same continued company. Yeah, I love that. I see content creators as sort of the modern-day celebrity because it used to be movie stars, pro athletes. But now you're seeing with these content creators, they have a really engaged following. Because these movie stars, they'll advertise the same product as someone with a big YouTube, and they won't get the same results. I think people really resonate with these content creators, these influencers. Do you agree?

Yeah, I think what's really cool about being a creator is that it is actually an extremely broad term now that encompasses so many different models of how to make a living so when you think about creators or content-led companies they include people who are very much like celebrities like they're influencers they're very well known from the content that they put out there and they monetize via advertising or brand deals and many of them actually want to go into hollywood right but then you meet creators who are not even on camera and they're almost like content production companies and they have no interest in going to hollywood they just want to grow and scale like a faceless content enterprise yeah then you have creators who you know they're like a 42 year old woman who like knits in South Carolina,

she makes videos about knitting and it's enough to support her and have a stable living. And that's what she wants, to have something where she gets to do what she likes, share with others, and balance her work and life and have time to do the things she likes. The term creator across so many, the myriad of different platforms, Twitter, Twitch, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Substack, so many encompasses all these different types of people. So it's cool

because yes, you can try and be celebrity or it can be more business focused or more be an artist or just like, no, like this is how I make a living. And it includes all of it. I like to think, I believe that one day being able to make content and putting it out there to help you with your life and business will become so commonplace at the same way in 2023. No one's like, are you an internet company? It's just assumed.

Of course, obviously you're on the internet. It's just more like, what are you using the internet for? I think that one day it'll be the same about content. Like, yeah, no one's going to be like, oh, are you a creator?

It's like, well, yeah, sure, I make content, but there's like 50 different ways that I could be making and using it, and that becomes the more interesting question. Absolutely. I mean, you see even brands now going all in on content, like old iconic brands that we grew up using and watching. Oh, totally. Some of my favorites, like Wendy

on X, formerly known as Twitter, literally goes and roasts people, right? Or like Duolingo has turned its mascot into this like weirdly, amusingly creepy owl that will like stab you if you don't learn your languages. I saw that. Yeah. And we're now seeing the next wave of creators and entrepreneurs. It's all integrated from day one.

I have a friend, a few friends who run this company called Nectar. It's like a hard seltzer. It's a competitor with White Claw. I have a friend, a few friends who run this company called Nectar. It's like a hard seltzer. It's a competitor with White Claw. I've seen them. And they have a killer podcast and content. And a lot of people don't realize the podcast started as a way to advertise the drink because they couldn't run ads because it's alcohol. Wow. And so then it becomes this very interesting question. Is it a CPG drinks company that's become so effective at content brand marketing? Or how is it a group of creators and YouTube channel who happen to have their own product that they promote and monetize? Yeah, mine actually gets really blurred. Yeah, for sure.

And you've been able to crush the crop podcast speaking of podcasts, which episodes have been your favorite really resonated with you? Yeah, I mean, thank you so much. We started it partially, of course, for the brand because we interview a lot of creators and work with creators. Partially because, you know, for me, a big reason why I wanted to do my own thing was to tap more into the creative side of myself. And getting to make content, getting to have conversations with my friends and share it was very meaningful to me personally. I think for me, the conversations I enjoy the most are ones where

I get to walk away and be like, well, I've like really built a new friendship with this person. So like, I think a couple of really good examples. So there's an episode with a creator named Zoe Unlimited. And up until that podcast, I actually didn't know her that well. We had seen each other at a couple different events. In fact, part of the reason I asked you to be on the podcast, we were at an event where I went in to use the bathroom and somehow I forgot Sean to lock the door behind me.

And it's an individual room. She goes and opens the door and I'm like in the middle of doing my thing. She's like, oh. And I'm just like, oh, this is awkward because it's not like we don't know each other. We know each other loosely, but not well enough that you can walk into a friend using the bathroom and be'm like in the middle of doing my thing just like oh and i'm just like oh this is awkward because it's not like we don't know each other we know each other loosely oh but not well enough that like you can walk into a friend using the bathroom like haha that's funny it's not like oh this is weird so i came out i was like well okay the only way i see to address this awkwardness is to like let's become even better friends and i just went to her i was like so i have a podcast

do you want to come on the podcast oh he's like sure and we went into the pod and we're very good friends now because we really got to know each other better seen parts of you that no one else has seen this is true and so like in a way like i see that as you get to bring someone on a pod and not even just the content you get to like actually build a relationship and so and there are many many pods where like scumbag dad steven he there are so, many pods where like Scumbag Dad, Stephen Heat, there are so many where I feel like I've now gotten to know them much better. Even yourself, we've gotten to know each other better in the course of doing pods together than we would have otherwise. And so for me, those are always the best ones. And that's the beauty of pods, I think, that relationship building.

And now they're doing studies. Apparently, you need seven hours with someone to really, I guess, mentally connect with them. I love that. Yeah. So that's interesting. I had my own version of this growing up where I'd say, I have to see you in like two, three different contexts. Yeah.

But like, you know, you see a teacher because, you know, I'm just growing up and I'd see teachers all the time in school. And like, I don't think of them as necessarily full-fledged human three-dimensional people. I think it's teachers. But then when you run into them, like at the grocery store, then you're like, oh, and I think it ties to what you said. It's like seven hours. You need to see them in a variety of different contexts before you really get to know them more as a human being.

Were you that kid that went up to them in the grocery store or did you let them shop? Oh, I would like, I think it was very awkward. I'd just look at them but not look at them. And then just pretend I don't see them. And if they say something, I'd be like, oh, hello. I didn't recognize you there. I never had the balls to go up to them. Yeah.

It just felt so weird. Feel really, yeah, exactly. Very like a jar. Wait, you're not teaching right now? What the hell? Like who are you? And so I think the most fun thing is like when you meet a friend

and then you like run into them in like a totally different context or like a totally different set of mutuals. Yeah. And you're just like, oh, that's cool. Now we're actually getting to know each other more. Respect, yeah, respect.

Eric, it's been fun, man. Anything you want to close off with or promote? Say, Sean, thanks so much for hosting us. So for those of you who want to learn more,

you can find us on Instagram at TryKarat. That's T-R-Y-K-A-R-A-T. You can find my personal socials on Instagram at Eric Tway,

E-R-I-C-T-W-A-Y. And if you want to watch our podcast, we're on YouTube under Try Carrot Again, T-R-Y-K-A-R-A-T. Nice and simple. It's a great show, guys. Check it out. Thanks so much for coming on, Eric. Thanks for watching, guys, as always. See you next time.