Founder's Story - Campus Cutbacks to Conviction: The Inside Story of a Twenty‑Something Who Disrupted College Life | Ep 212 with Brian Le Founder of Need

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

 Brian Le, after engineering stints and an immigrant-family push toward a PhD, fell into entrepreneurship by accident—first by noticing Bird scooters on campus, then by solving students’ last-minute snack and supply crises with app-powered micro-convenience. A Y Combinator alum, Brian tells how COVID tested Need’s model, why blind ambition is a superpower in your twenties, and how he sees college (and AI) shaping the next generation of founders.Key Discussion PointsEngineering Roots → Accidental Startup: How Bird scooters at UCLA sparked a “Why not?” moment.YC Crash Course: The plunge from no-name founders into the world’s top accelerator—and why every twenty-something should consider it.Pandemic Pivot: When campus shutdowns zeroed out revenue, why doubling down on your mission becomes your strongest play.Pitching 101: The art of “selling” your startup: story-driven conviction and painting a vivid vision five-to-ten years out.College’s True Value: It isn’t just classes—it’s community, hands-on experiments, and leadership labs for budding founders.AI as a Tool, Not a Threat: Why aspiring entrepreneurs should harness AI to supercharge impact, not replace human ingenuity.Key TakeawaysIgnorance Is Bliss: Youthful “delulu” ambition fuels moonshot ventures that grizzled veterans second-guess.Sell the Vision: A great pitch isn’t a slide deck—it’s an emotional story backed by unwavering conviction.Embrace Crisis: A downturn isn’t a dead end—it’s a moment to build your foundation and outpace slow movers.College = Sandbox: Beyond tuition, campus life offers accelerators, orgs, and friendships that forge real-world entrepreneurs.Closing Thoughts Brian Le’s journey proves that true founders are often “accidental”—ignited by frustration, honed by trial, and scaled by audacious positivity. Whether you’re racing a scooter or racing a market, the college decade remains the ultimate launchpad for ventures that dare to deliver.Our Sponsors:* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome aboard the Turkish Airlines podcast channel. Are you ready for a new adventure? Mayor of our passengers, this is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard the inaugural episode of the widen your world podcast. Part of the Turkish Airlines series. What makes for a great vacation depends on who you ask. Are you looking to get away? Or bring everyone together?

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Today we have Brian Lay, Y Combinator alum. That's amazing, I gotta know about that. Founder and CEO of NEED. We're gonna dive into all things about is college even a thing anymore if you wanna be an entrepreneur? Is it useful? How about Y Combinator, is that even needed?

We're gonna hear from Brian today. But NEED is a company dedicated to providing innovative convenience stores for college students. What a problem you're solving, Brian. So let's go back. Why did you even think this was a thing? And what was the spark that made you say you want to be an entrepreneur? Yeah, definitely.

So I've had an engineering background growing up. My family was all electrical engineers. So ever since I was growing up, I always thought I was going to go all the way through grad school, PhD, and go into a career in either professorship or something deep in the technical field. That's what my immigrant family loves to push on all of us. And I think that's a great thing. And I think that taught me how to solve problems, you know?

And I think growing up, I felt very different from my family because I didn't really align with kind of following a path that wasn't really me. There was something off about it, you know? So kind of going off and doing my own thing, trailblazing, learning on my own, going on my own endeavors, that was far more attractive to me. But since I grew up not around that world, I never really understood how to kind of go about that. So I think I found my way into entrepreneurship, honestly by accident, and to the idea of convenience delivery was around the time when bird scooters launched at UCLA.

And so I kind of put two and two together and realized that there was a need for just, you know, random things like caffeine or energy drinks or just a quick sandwich. But it's often very inconvenient to go to the store. Even if a convenience store is on campus or down the street, you're busy studying and you're often late to class because you have to walk from your dorm or walk from your apartment all the way to campus. But when these bird scooters landed, it made it far easier to just, you know, be in the middle of something. Oh, realize that it's time to go to class.

You can get to class in just five minutes, or you just roll out of bed at 7.50 AM for an AM class, you're there right on time for your quiz. And so I think realizing that need where, say you're making dinner and you forget an ingredient, being able to use these micro mobile vehicles to get something relatively close by in a large campus population, high density, you're able to leverage these economies of scale on a very, like you think economy is a scale big, right? But you can apply that in such a small area and it becomes a very interesting problem because it's it's a small scale version of probably feels a lot more approachable.

And so that's how I felt or that's how I kind of broke into this honestly by accident because it wasn't something I even thought of as I was growing up but kind of I was attuned to with the engineering brain that I did grow up with. I think we hear a lot from people that they weren't like oh I want to be an entrepreneur I want to be a business owner like yourself they find something that they need to solve and they end up solving it and that's like the accidental entrepreneur. It seems like there is a need for need. Now I understand why you've probably named it need. I'm guessing that's why.

A lot of people, they have ideas. They think of something needs to be solved, but they never take action on it. So what do you think for you, gave you the motivation to say, okay, I'm gonna move forward with this. I'm actually gonna solve it. I think this comes with my kind of first experience with it,

at least to now. And I think having built up this technical experience and kind of playing around when I was in college with this idea of fast delivery and it being this cool factor, it was very, somehow it was very popular around, you know, the big social groups on campus, like Greek life or culture clubs or dance clubs. And I think a lot of, a lot to do with it was the fact that, you know, you often have

to pay to ride these scooters. But it's flipped in this scenario where as a student, you get paid to ride scooters, you get paid to have fun. And so I think this allured to it and kind of how it kind of reels people in, in that way is why it kind of brought me in and kind of lured my interest, if you will. So let's go back to why Combinator? I've never experienced it. I've heard some people that love it. I've heard other people's opinions on it. I'm not sure if they even were in it. I did just have an opinion about it.

And, you know, the founder, I love listening to them on their show though talking about a lot of great things. And a lot of amazing companies have come out of it. So how is the experience for you going through it? And do you see this as something that others need to do in order for to help them be successful, especially at, you know, a younger age, maybe someone in their 20s? Yeah, I think it's perfect for someone in their early to mid to late twenties, especially someone new to the idea of entrepreneurship. I will say for us, it was completely accidental.

I think we kind of didn't have a high bar to reach. And so we kind of saw Startup UCLA, which is UCLA's incubator program that happens over the summer. Very similar, but far smaller scale. When we just learned about Y Combinator off a YouTube video and it reeled us in because there was like all the big, like all the top startups that you hear about these days, like DoorDash, Reddit, Stripe, Airbnb, They're all from Y Combinator, Twitch as well. And it kind of reeled us in and we just thought, you know, we're young. Let's just, why not give it a shot?

And then one day we just get in an invite for an interview. We did our best to prepare. And somehow we stumbled upon the most famous startup accelerator in the world with, you know, top founders as group partners, as advisors to help us pitch to the top, the top investors of Silicon Valley. And I think just being thrust into that world of venture capital, into entrepreneurship, into something that felt venture capital, into entrepreneurship, into something that felt very legitimate

was very valuable for us as young founders. And I think like it's something I definitely recommend to anyone starting out or even anyone not familiar with the startup world and how to think about founding startups. That's where we got a lot of value from it. So can you teach me what is one or two ways, I've never personally raised money, but I would like to. So somebody like myself who's watching this and thinking, I wanna pitch, but there's so much noise about what to do, what not to do. So based on the learnings that you've had, you've had the experience of, like you said,

some of the best venture capitalists to some of the best entrepreneurs in the world. What is one or two things that you took away that other people can leverage and use in order to either give the best pitch, craft the best pitch, but in the end raise money. Yeah, for sure. It all comes down to the sales pitch. I think that's the best way to break it down. And I think that's a pretty different framework, especially coming from engineering. You're always thinking about problem solving. Now that is good, but I don't think that is what makes the entire pitch. A good pitch is you're selling, essentially what a pitch is, you're trying to sell a piece of your company to people who will back you and people who will support you and give you money to run.

And for that to happen, you need to sell them your company. And so that comes with being able to tell a story, to invoke emotion, to kind of put them in the frame, play out what their life is like, backing this company. And so I think that kind of involvement, that kind of emotional tie-in, especially in the beginning. And most importantly, I would say, is conviction in knowing how to do it and knowing how to call the shots. Not only now, but all the way to like five, 10 years from now. I think that's what carries an early pitch, just starting at a company.

So let's evoke some emotions. Let's go back, you know, five and a half or five years, five and a half years, almost five years ago that you went through that. Now you're on the second company that you have. Did you ever have a point where you're like, I just want to give up? Yeah, I think for us, it was a very interesting time because we were the

last batch before COVID hit. And as you know, when COVID hit and when the stay at home order went out, all of, all of the colleges that we had launched at for our company had shut down and they sent all their kids home. So our entire source of revenue, our entire business went down to zero. And for a time we had no idea what to do. We were in the middle of fundraising too. And so it almost was like, it was very easy to just give up.

But we had, we still had a lot of conviction in what the product could mean. And being able and a downturn like that is a perfect opportunity to capitalize and gain footing. I think for us, when we were running with the, um, with the company going into 20 pointing, especially as young founders, there's, there's a lot that we felt that we didn't know and a lot that we felt that we didn't know, and a lot that we felt that we needed to figure out to be able to call the shots well. And so the way I see the whole pandemic, as unfortunate as it is in terms for the business,

it was a unique opportunity because the world slowed down for us to catch up to our learning and to build out more the foundation of what became our technology. I guess there's a silver lining right? It's just can you find the silver lining versus the stress and pressure you know and the thought of everything just coming but you did it you know you did it and many people probably could not do that. We had a recent founder on who had exited for a billion. I had asked him if you, you know, knowing what you would know now that, that question that I'm sure you've heard, would you, you know,

what would you do differently? Where'd you do it? He said, if he knew what he knew now, he probably would have never had done the company because knowing all the crap that he was going to have to go through. So it's great when he started when he was young and he didn't have expectations about getting sued and all these things that were going to happen. And I found that very interesting. So how do you see it when it comes to founders like yourself who are early on in their maybe late 18, 19 or in their 20s who haven't really gone through a lot of things, who aren't discouraged by a lot of things

or traumatized by a lot of business stuff that they're just ready to go, they're super excited. How do you feel about that? No, I think that's a huge value to being young. And I think that gives more value to the saying bliss or ignorance is bliss. And I think just having that ambition and almost blind ambition is such a superpower at that age because it would allow you to go very far. And that's only because you don't know the things. And I think that's why you hear a lot of people in their late 20s and their early

30s into their 40s, think about the time of their 20s, like, Oh, I can never do that again, especially coming into these responsibilities. And like, even for me, when I imagine I would get to that point as well, which is why like me as still in my mid-20s, I think especially since this world still captivates me in such a way that gives me a lot of meaning and a lot of purpose and honestly a huge fuel for my passion. It drives me to continue taking these chances, even though I think on the surface it's just putting so much on the line. But I think for me, I look past that. I just see the opportunity at the end. I think one way to frame it is like it would be kind of stupid not to see the other side.

But I think that's where the saying comes, delulu is the salulu. And I think honestly, a lot of that mentality is how you even get past the hard times. Even when you're aware of when times get tough, just being delusional about the future that you envision is what I think would take you to success. And that's honestly what I'm banking on this second time around. I'm going to quote you on that. Being delulu is the way to go as an entrepreneur in their twenties. That, it makes total sense. If you talk to someone who's in their 20s or you talk to someone who might be in their 50s, sometimes the older they are they get very negative and it's hard not to get negative where someone who's younger they're very positive and their outlook is very

positive and so I'm enjoying being able to talk to you and I feel your positivity and the fact that you have so much motivation that it's very inspiring to other people at any age. So when you look at what success is going to mean to you in 10, 20 years from now, what do you see? Yeah, definitely. I think a huge thing for me is being able to build a community of people who can uplift each other by being positive.

I like how you mentioned this air of positivity, especially around young people. I think a lot of it does come with just that passion, that wanting to change the world. I feel like a lot of what we're seeing in today's world and how things are becoming more expensive and more unreachable. There's this, there's almost this hesitation, but still a very strong desire to make an impact in the world and make a huge difference. And so that's where I think on a much broader scale, what I'd like to do with my company here. Like, yes, we're providing convenience for college students, but for me, I think a lot more broadly, I want the, what the company is doing on many aspects is serving the community.

We're served, most simply we're serving our community of students, young people. our community of students, young people. We aim to hire an entire workforce of students who service these stores, providing these job opportunities that are not your standard service job, where it's all boring and you're on your feet all day. Now, funny enough, as a racer, as a meat racer, you would be on your feet all day, but you're going all around campus. You're seeing all your friends, you're riding scooters, and you're getting paid much more than you would if you were just doing work study, or you're working at a coffee shop, or busing at a restaurant. It's much more attractive. And I think on the broader scale, how we're approaching this on a franchisee model. We're not approach, at least starting out and for many years at a time. I'd like to focus our franchisee profile on new grads.

People who kind of have an itch having studied business or econ, communication, entrepreneurship, marketing, and have this itch to get their hands dirty on something real, something that can, that you can get involved in all kinds of aspects, like your finances, accounting, hiring and managing people, dealing with inventory. All of this with a brick and mortar store, I think is what people imagine as something real. And why, why I emphasize real is while say a drop shipping brand may seem attractive because of all the money you're raking in, the reality is it's so,

it's, it's so saturated and you're in front of your computer all day, just making assets for all your advertisements and just thinking about how you can differentiate yourself out of all the other people trying to drop ship as well. And there's not, and being in front of the screen like that, you can't compare that activity with just being on the ground and serving the community in front of you. And so I'm a big proponent of community. And I think a huge way that I want to kind of cultivate this community is to

invest in young people, just like how we bet in our, we bet on our young selves back in the day and how I still bet on myself as someone still young. Hey, that's noble. You know who your customer is and you also want to have, I mean, basically your customer could also be your best employees, which could also be your franchisee and bring it to other colleges. It's like creating its own economy in itself.

I'm curious about your take on the benefits of college when it comes to entrepreneurship. One of my favorite commencement speeches was Steve Jobs, which he didn't go to college, but he attended college. I personally dropped out and then I did go back much later on but I'm curious on your perspective Did it help did it not help is it needed? Do are these entrepreneurship courses even a benefit? That's a great question

And I will also say that I also dropped out for a time. I didn't go back much later It was only a two-year delay for me for a time. I didn't go back much later. It was only a two-year delay for me. But I think the value of college is, especially if you want to explore this world, it's not so much on the education. You can always read about entrepreneurship, starting a business, what's important. But you gain a lot more experience and a lot more nuance when you're actually on the ground getting your hands on it. One of the best things I've ever done for my personal growth was picking up a new language.

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Don't wait, protect your privacy, build your brand, and set up your business in just 10 clicks in 10 minutes. Visit NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash founders and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash founders. It's dirty. And so a lot of these opportunities that college provides with campus orgs, with entrepreneurship fraternities, with startup accelerators, I think that, especially if you want to go into this world, is more than enough value to go to college.

to college. And I think in this day and age when college is super expensive, it's finding or where you feel the most fit in the community of people. Because that, in my opinion, is the value of college, is finding your circle, finding who you are, what you value, finding similar people to you to cultivate those values, those perspectives and figure out who you are and how you want to change the world. So to sum it up I am a big supporter of college but not in the traditional way I would say. It is a large reason why I came back. Hey if it wasn't for college you wouldn't have the company So you're servicing. I mean I like that there's different ways you can benefit from something versus just saying getting an education

Right and what comes about you know from that education? So my final question is this AI We know you know I've read some stats AI, AI could take away a million jobs. I personally think maybe a billion people won't have a job in the future. We don't know, right? Someone like yourself, I know you're an entrepreneur right now, but I'm very curious about what do people in their twenties think about AI in general right now, but then also knowing that five, ten, twenty years down the line, our lives might be completely different. How do you look at that when it comes to how far

advancing AI is right now? Yeah, I think my opinion on AI is that it's a tool. I think it's hard to do an apples to apples comparison. I think what I, having not been from the eighties, I kind of imagine it to be like a graphing calculator or like a computer or a cell phone, how it impacted the world back then. I think there's some sort of equivalence there. And the reason why I bring that up is I see it more as a tool to uplift humanity, to uplift our abilities, and to allow us to

focus on things that will continue impacting the world versus something that would replace us. So I think the people who are doing the most interesting things with AI are the ones who kind of align with that as well. And not innovate on things that are aiming to replace people, but instead aiming to empower people. And I think that a lot of it has to do with my align with community and empowering the community. And that's how, at least the company that I'm founding is not an AI company,

but with the AI revolution that we're in the middle, I'm very much using AI to help further and more intelligently go about the business as a tool, as a consultant, as a learning, as a means to learn more quickly. That's how I see AI. Well, Brian, something I took away from this is I need to be more positive. I really like the way you think and I think sometimes we forget that over time that we need to remain positive, having a positive outlook, seeing good things can come, seeing all the things that you can do positively to impact people, community, all these things. So thank you for reminding me of that. If people want to get in touch with you, I know you have a crowdfunding campaign going

right now and people want to check that out. How can they do so? Yeah, so we have a crowdfunding campaign open at www.wefunder.com slash need N E E D and If people want to get in touch with me whether that's it just to ask any questions about my entrepreneurship journey Advice or anything to do with engineering they can reach me at BLE at need Westwood.com N E E D Westwood.com

Well, Brian, this has been great. I super appreciate it. Future unicorn founder right here. Don't forget about this when you when you hit that or when you hit the trillion dollar mark. Think back and say, I remember when I talked about it on Founder's Story because we're going to remember that. So Brian, thanks again for joining us today and congrats on the success so far. Thank you so much, Daniel. Running a business can be exhausting. Building your website shouldn't be.

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