Tiger Sisters - Give me 24mins, and I'll teach you how to conquer constant rejection to win (by AI CEO David Shim)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Have you ever wondered what it takes to sell your company for $200 million? In this episode, we talked to David Schim, who sold his company to Snapchat for $200 million. He is the former CEO of Foursquare, and now he is the current founder and CEO of Reed AI, his latest startup. He takes us behind the scenes and shares with us all of his failures and his learnings along the way that we can apply today. Welcome back to Season 3. of Tiger Sisters. I'm Gene and I'm Sheree. And where are the Tiger Sisters?

Starting point is 00:00:48 This is a amazing season. Yeah, really special. I just have to say really special, really different than what we've been doing so far in a good way because we're bringing in all these new voices of people who are just beyond. Like once you see these, you're going to learn so much from all of our guests this season. It's a new format where Gene and I go in, we went to. a conference called conference. And we interviewed all these incredible entrepreneurs, these leaders, and we really got to see on the inside and got to learn from them and technically bringing in

Starting point is 00:01:24 a third voice, which in reading the comments, a lot of you guys were really interested in hearing another perspective. And so this format will be a little bit different and we hope you really enjoy it. Yeah. So we're going to, the next thing is we're going to roll the interview and then stick around because then Sheree and I have an entire debrief. kind of like case studies in business school a little bit, where we talk about the main takeaways that we have and just sort of related to our lives and how we can apply it and how you can apply it to. And feel free to jump to our takeaways at the end. If you want to listen to those first, you can also listen to those first and then come back to the interview, kind of

Starting point is 00:01:59 however you want to take it and however you want to enjoy the learnings. Please remember to like, comment, and subscribe. And if you're listening to this episode on Apple Podcast or Spotify, please give us a five-star rating. Those ratings only take a few seconds to do, and it really means a lot to us. And so the interview starts right after this break. Hey, guys, quick break to let you know that we now have merch on sisters matcha.com. We have sweatshirts and t-shirts that we designed yourselves. Go check it out. And please rate us five stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. These ratings are so important

Starting point is 00:02:33 for the distribution and survival of Tiger Sisters podcast. Thank you for your support. So, David, why don't you introduce yourself first? Yeah. My name is David Schim. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Read AI. We're a productivity AI company. And what we do is we take meetings and we take notes. So on your Zoom call, you'll see Read AI on your call. We'll create a summary, action items, key questions.

Starting point is 00:02:55 But what we're really focused in around is productivity AI. So meetings are the starting point. But what we've done is we've introduced summaries for emails, for Slack messages, for teams messages. And we're bringing all of those together so that we can go in and give you a single report that really highlights what you're doing across all channels versus just focusing on meetings. Amazing. Okay, David, what podcast are you listening to these days?

Starting point is 00:03:21 One of my favorite podcasts is my first million. So they talk about hustling, startup life, but they've started to expand into things like, what do you do when you have an exit? What do you do when you want to find a new job? And if you don't have money to invest in startups, you're investing your time. So what are the 10 startups to go work at that will make you a million? So it's not just about like the first million, but it's about understanding the startup space. And I think they really come from a different perspective where they're grinding versus it's

Starting point is 00:03:48 someone from the top down that they've already had the exit or they've had huge exits. Yeah. Do you have you like applied any lessons? I did buy a stock that they just highlighted where they said this is not an efficient stock recommendation. Oh, this is interesting. So that's one thing I applied. But they have more kind of day-to-day kind of advice.

Starting point is 00:04:07 Like, hey, just go out and ask someone a question. Reach out to people versus being afraid to reach out. No one's going to care that you reached out to them. They're probably going to forget. So it doesn't really matter if you sent down the email or you send out a call or something like that. Yeah. Oh, that's so smart. That's something that like I'm always trying to push myself to do more.

Starting point is 00:04:23 It's just not be embarrassed and just like do the outreach. And like, what is it that? It's like failure training. Have you ever heard of that? Oh, yeah. Do you do that a lot? I used to sell newspapers door to door. Really?

Starting point is 00:04:38 Where it's like you deliver them. But if you have a house that's on your route that doesn't have a newspaper subscription, you'd go and knock on the door. This is the old days. Yeah. And so you try to sell it and you get rejected all the time. Or I used to be at a fraternity and we try to recruit people. And so the recruitment process was recruiting but also taking rejection where it's like, oh, I chose this different house that I got started to go to. And then if you're a founder, I think rejection comes in pretty common where you have to go find new customers. You have to find product market fit.

Starting point is 00:05:05 And you won't find product market fit until you get rejected a dozen times or more. And so was the newspaper newsboy? Was that your first job? That was my first job. My mom hated that job because she had to drive me on Sundays because I used to be really scrawny. So it was also your mom's job. It was my mom's job too. I was really scurrying so I can ride a bike.

Starting point is 00:05:28 Oh, really? I can ride the bike with the newspapers and Sunday papers on the back trailer. So my mom had to drive me. She was really enabling you to like have a job. She was, she was kind of forcing me a little bit. Wait, so how old were you then? I was probably like 12. Oh, 11 or 12?

Starting point is 00:05:43 Yeah, that's pretty young. Yeah, but it was kind of like, I think it's part of it is culturally like ever since I was six or seven, I'd go to my mom's store on the weekends. We'd go Costco shopping. Yeah. And she'd like, hey, go find these items, put him in the cart. We'd put them in the cart. Then we would go to her deli and then I would stock the things in the deli and she'd

Starting point is 00:06:01 teach me like, okay, take that Coke can and spin it to the labels in the front so it's not on the back. So I just started to learn these things over time. And that was really kind of what got me into startups, what got me into just doing things. It's not that hard. Yeah. This is really easy. Right.

Starting point is 00:06:15 So it's kind of like, I mean, since you were five or six years old, you've been like working. I mean, I don't know, quotes or no quotes. Like you've been working. So it's like a part of your nature almost. 100%. It's like normal. You're like, yeah, I should just be working. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:06:28 It's good and bad where someone asks, what's your hobby? I say I love to work. Yeah. And they're like, do you like to do anything else? And I have to think about it for a minute. I'm like, like movies, I guess. Yeah. Okay. As a kid, were you a rule breaker or a rule follower? As a kid, I was a definite rule breaker. And so this is in the old days where computers were in the library and there's maybe two in a school. I used to go in and print things out and then I would sell them.

Starting point is 00:06:58 What? And they would start yelling at me. It's like, you can't print those out. That costs 50 cents per page to print out. Wait, but what were you selling that you print it out? I created these desert storm carts. This is when like, way back when there's Desert Storm and it was really popular tops had a trading card set so I just hand drew them and then I put them on paper and then I printed them out and I cut them out and then I wrapped them in like plastic wax paper and I put candy in there and then I sold those for like two bucks a bob yeah or a buck a pop maybe wait so how old were you oh this was like elementary school like six seven eight amazing margin yeah great margins no cost really just my time my time was cheap wait elementary school oh yeah wow so you always meant that was

Starting point is 00:07:37 was like your first business. Yeah, but I think it's also with first generation too and second generation. It's like my parents' college degree, but they were, they had a hustle when they came here. My dad was a car salesman, didn't speak great English, but he started to learn the English very well and selling cars to everybody. He did really well. My mom, deli, grocery store, et cetera, so she had to pick up the language. But they were, they were college educated. But really, they were able to provide because a lot of it is like, you just cry. Like even if you don't make that much money, If you put more hours into it, you still make more money than you would if you put less. And so that's kind of the mentality I grew up with.

Starting point is 00:08:11 So did your business ever get regulated? I did. I got shut down a couple times as a desert storm card salesperson. So that was a good. But then I switched over to like I had candy. So I started candy. So I did candy and you sell it in the school. So those are always kind of fun too because it just teaches you like, okay, I buy this for this much.

Starting point is 00:08:32 I saw it for this much. And I made a little bit of money and rinse and repeat. Yeah, amazing. So you've always been an entrepreneur, basically. For the most part, I would say entrepreneur, more I find like opportunities that come up, but I think this is with a lot of entrepreneurs. If you just say, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to go after something, I'm going to find an idea. I'm going to do it. Yeah, that's sort of work sometimes. But what I found is when I started my company placed, which is location analytics, the problem that I saw was like, hey, no one's actually talking about where people are in the

Starting point is 00:09:01 physical world when they have their smart phone. And so I said, hey, what if I could actually get that data, take that raw data and convert it into a store visit? And nobody else was working on that surprise. I was like, okay, maybe I'll do this. And I started to build that out. And we got to measuring a few billion dollars in advertising on an annual basis when we sold a snap. Oh, wow. Okay. So now it also makes so much more sense to me. Now that I know you grew up in the deli, you grew up, like, stocking the shelves. Like, you were like all about the foot traffic that now that I know why you started Flake. It makes so much more sense. It's like part of your like DNA. 100%. That's so cool.

Starting point is 00:09:36 Okay, well, what about now? Are you a rule breaker or a rule follower? Still, I would say rule breaker within the laws. So as an adult, I have to follow the rules a little bit more. But it is important to break the rules. And one was the rules that we broke like at Reed was, hey, everyone does meetings. Everyone should be invited to the meetings. And it's a good use of time. And what we said was, you know what, video conferencing? when you have 20 people on the call is not a good use of time. And so we went in and we said, can we figure out if people are paying attention in the meeting or not paying attention in the meeting? And we call that engagement. So I could talk about how great my startup is. But if you're an investor and you're like, I've heard this pitch 50 times. You get distracted. Well, if you put it into something

Starting point is 00:10:18 like a large language model, it would go and say, fantastic meeting, you should absolutely invest. But if you looked at everyone's reaction on the call, it would say, that's not a good use of time. So the rule breaking there is kind of going in and saying, not everyone should be on the call. it's not a good use of time. And a bad meaning is actually good if you can actually recognize it's a bad meaning because it says have fewer of those meetings. One of the things that you would change. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:10:40 Or even like catch it in time and like turn it around. Exactly. In real time where it's like being able to say, hey, the sales, I'm selling you something and you're not interested. You're not interested. So I can move on to the next feature or the next use case to go and say, hey, maybe this is going to work for you. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:10:56 Oh, my God. Amazing. Okay, so now, and then how old are you? I'm 44. 44. Okay, so I can ask you this question. So, David, I'm 35 now. Okay.

Starting point is 00:11:07 My sister's 29. What advice would you give to your 35 or 29-year-old self? I would say throw yourself in your work. And a lot of people say work-life balance. I actually don't believe in that if you want to be a founder. If you want to build something great, you have to make major sacrifices. If you look at cross history with leaders, with warriors, with scientists, it was all about going in and saying, I'm going to throw everything that I have at this problem, and I'm going to build something.

Starting point is 00:11:37 I'm going to build something that's meaningful for me, meaningful for the people around me, or the entire world. But you have to throw yourself into it. You've never heard of like, hey, I did 9 to 5 and I created Google. I did 9 to 5 and I created Snapchat. Those things don't happen. 9 to 5, I created nuclear energy. Like those things are not things that actually happen. And it's fine to have that balance in your life.

Starting point is 00:11:55 But if you're going to go in and really like you two are doing building a company from the ground up, going after really new market, trying to get people to understand the value proposition, I'd say throw yourself and do it as much as you can because you're only going to regret it if you didn't do it versus like, oh, maybe I'll spend a little bit more time and four more years on this, but I'll do 95 versus like, I figured out if this is going to work or not very quickly. Yeah. I feel like that's what like people ask me. They're like, oh, like, what were you up to this week?

Starting point is 00:12:21 Like, where are you doing? And I'm like, I was just working. Like, I work every single day. I work every single weekend. And I freaking love it. Like, I'm like, I'm like, like, when I'm not working, I'm like, oh, I want to go back and like work on this one thing. Like, I want to like, yeah. So it's, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:12:36 It's like you're in like a different state almost. 100%. Right? Where you're like in the flow state kind of all the time when you're really passionate about what you're building. You're like and when you're like, the world needs this. Like I need to like bring it to more people. 100%. And when you deliver that too, and you see people actually respond to what your vision is,

Starting point is 00:12:55 that feels better than almost anything else in the world. Yeah. Yeah. This is kind of like, this is an off-script question. But I feel like one thing that me personally, I always have considered myself to be very weak in. And I think you are very good at is like sales generally. And I don't mean like selling like one-to-one, but almost like selling your ideas, like representing yourself. like, you know, the concept of like sales in general.

Starting point is 00:13:23 Like what is your like philosophy or your approach to that? It's to forget very quickly. So when I, when I pitch you something or I talk to you about something and it doesn't work, that's okay. Like, hey, I put it into my brain to say that angle didn't work, that approach didn't work, that pitch didn't work. That's okay. Now I'm going to iterate against that.

Starting point is 00:13:42 Or I might try the same thing again, but I think I just presented it in the wrong way. But I'll do it over and over again. Because if you let like one rejection or one like, a couple of rejection say, oh, this idea is horrible. I'm never going to do it. That's going to be a wasted opportunity because it's more about what do you learn from that? And then how do you leverage that to actually adjust your pitch to find that right approach?

Starting point is 00:14:03 Because from a selling perspective, I can tell you with placed, we sold for Snapchat to about 200 million. And I got rejected in the series. A, B, we almost raised a C, but a lot of rejection in between there. And everyone had questions like, this is never going to work. What if Google does this? What if Microsoft does this? Hey, no one's going to give you location permissions.

Starting point is 00:14:23 And every single one of those, I checked it into my head to say, okay, I need to answer that question. I need to address this. And it starts to almost become a feature map for you to go in and say, okay, these are the things that people are concerned about. How do I address those? And then when you're able to come back and say, hey, that is not a problem. Here's one, two, three reasons why we're able to solve it. That becomes huge.

Starting point is 00:14:40 I think the same thing came with Reed where there's Zoom companion AI. There's Microsoft co-pilot. There's Google Gemini. All of those solutions are great. And people would come up to us and say, like, what are you going to do when they come out with this product? And what do they do when they do for meetings? I can tell you, we are 10x higher than we've ever been on Microsoft in the last year since co-pilot's been introduced. And so the idea there is like, they'll take what their experiences are, but you need to show them that it's different.

Starting point is 00:15:06 And now the conversation is really shifted to say, oh, how are you growing so fast? This is really incredible. Like, we see the vision that you're talking about from an Omni-Channel perspective. You're like, it's actually better to have a competitor because I'm not the one doing all the marketing anymore. I could just be like, oh, yeah, it's like co-pilot, but better. Absolutely. We have XYZ features. No, and that's what people don't get about competition.

Starting point is 00:15:26 It's not always competition. It's actually better to have, like, more people in your area sometimes. No, I think you're absolutely right, especially when it comes to AI. Because if you think about AI five years ago, people would get scared. It's like, oh, it's the robots. They're going to take over. Your jobs are going to disappear. All these bad things are going to happen.

Starting point is 00:15:42 In reality, Google, Microsoft, Open AI, everyone started to talk about what the benefits are. And people are like, oh, this is. This is fantastic. Like, I've got teachers that reach out to us now and say, like, hey, I want to use this further my class. This is my use case. I'm like, that's fantastic. I didn't have that use case in mind, but you're using this to actually make your work life

Starting point is 00:15:59 balance a little bit better, but also spend more time with the kids because now you're able to use technology to free up your time. Yeah. That's amazing. Okay. So I feel like your philosophy is kind of like iteration, basically. It's like you see every like sales conversation as like a way to iterate and then like build up your pitch to be better and more durable.

Starting point is 00:16:23 But then what about like sometimes I feel like if I'm going into a conversation, like I feel like it's kind of like high stakes. Do you ever feel that way or you're just like, I don't know, what if a conversation feels more high stakes to you? How do you approach it differently or what do you do? I used to do this a lot growing up. I overthink things a lot.

Starting point is 00:16:43 Yeah. Like I'm like, what happens here? I played out the scenarios, etc. up. But then once you're in the weeds and you're so focusing on something, I just go in and say, okay, what am I in this meeting for? What's this presentation about? Let me go deliver it. And I try not to overanalyze it beyond the moment. And I want to communicate what my focus is like, hey, this is my product. This is what we do? This is the value proposition. But I don't want to be like, what if they don't like it? What if they react this way? Because it'll throw you off. And a great

Starting point is 00:17:08 example was with Imron when I met him, the first time I met him, Snapchat reached out to me and said, like, hey, can you come out to New York, meet with Imron Khan, Chief Strategy Officer. He wants to understand your product. Never heard of him. We want to send your product a little bit better. I was like, great. I would love a partnership because we want to measure your advertising to store visits when I was in place. So I met with Amron and he's like asking me these questions. I'm like, oh, cool guy. He's asking me a lot of questions, smart. And then I started to get to the end of the conversation. He's like, so if you could do anything with Snapchat, what would it be? And I said, I want to measure your advertising

Starting point is 00:17:44 to store visits. He's like, no, you could do whatever you want with Snapchat, like big picture vision. And this is where I might have been a little bit wrong, but I think the outcome was good. I was like, no, I want to measure ads to store visits and I'm going to make Snap be a direct response channel. And his response was like, okay. And I left. I was like, that's the worst response possible. Come a couple quarters later, Snapchat acquired place. I asked him wrong. He's like, that's the worst answer. He got from all the companies that I talked with. But it does highlight, like, if you're building something great, it doesn't matter how that interaction is if you're delivering against a specific use case, it doesn't matter how your pitches

Starting point is 00:18:18 if you're solving that problem. Yeah. Okay. And it kind of like it helps because you're like, you know what, even if an interaction feels like incredibly like high stakes, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is high stakes. Like there's always like other information that people are pulling in. Exactly. And there's other, if you're pitching someone from a startup, there's other VCs. So even if you make a mistake on one, there are others. They get pitched so often. They'll forget who, and this is not an insult to anyone he's doing it, but they'll forget who you are. So your first pitch doesn't go, well, the second pitch might be better and they might have forgotten completely what that first pitch was or what you're talking about because they're constantly getting pitch. So I would say,

Starting point is 00:18:54 just let it wash off me because rejection is the key because no one ever gets it right on the first shot every single time. Yeah, you're just like the first time you're David Schim. Now you're like, I'm Dave Schim. Hi, it's me. That's why I have a long hair and beard now because like Phenora is the first time. You're like I'm Dave S. Last time. Okay, cool. Okay, Dave, what is a hot take or belief that you have that you think no one else believes in your industry? Meeting notes are going to be a commodity. So I believe that meeting notes are the first way people understand the value of AI.

Starting point is 00:19:28 You're on a call. You don't have to take notes. Immediately valuable. Oh, you can summarize it even better. I can forward that to somebody else. I don't have to do email recap to the people that are on the call. But that's really level one of AI. That's the age of the assistant.

Starting point is 00:19:43 I think where we're going towards is past the age of the agent. And the AI agent is like an employee. It's going to go in and take all the reports that you created and summarize it and say, hey, here's the status report. And maybe here's a PowerPoint deck that talks about what we did. But where we're going to is optimization. And AI is going to be about optimization and outcomes. And it's really like ad tech in a lot of ways where it's advertising.

Starting point is 00:20:06 It's going in and saying, you've got all this data around ad exposures, conversions on the ad tech side, when it's interactions like meetings, messages, calls, emails, et cetera, all those things combined, if you treat them all as a silo, that's not, you can't optimize, but if you bring them all together, you can start to go in and optimize your day. You can say, hey, 12 clients have just complained about this product feature. Do you want me to create a PRD so that we can send it to the product manager? Oh, wow.

Starting point is 00:20:33 So that's an outcome. Okay, that is a great example. So then, Read AI today is an agent, but is moving towards. being an optimizer. It's like an agent with elements of optimizers. How would you describe it? So we've done the assistant very well. We are doing the agent today, bringing it all together. The optimization is coming now. And the first glance will be our Chrome extension where we're able to go in and actually summarize your emails. That's assistant. Senior employees actually going to go in and say, hey, let me insert a Zoom meeting. Let me insert a Slack message

Starting point is 00:21:05 in the actual thread to give you contextual relevance on the status of a project. And then the actual optimization is going to be the auto-complete, which will come out later this year, where as you type the email, someone asks you a question, what's the status on this project? We'll automatically fill that in. Even though the email itself doesn't have it the answer, we can pull in from your meetings, your messages, and your other emails. Oh, cool. I want that. I want that bad. Okay.

Starting point is 00:21:31 You were previously CEO of Foursquare. And then also I know you've just generally done a lot of public speaking. So what is, what's a good public speaking, like tip or media training tip that you would share? I try not to practice an hour or two before the actual presentation or the speech. The reason why is you're putting too much information in your head. I like to think that you process it in the background when you're dreaming, when you're thinking about it, when you're stressing about it. Like those are all points where you're actually processing the speech, the presentation.

Starting point is 00:22:05 So do the prep work, do the outline, do the run through to make sure on time. But right before the speech, don't go in and like try to over add things. Don't try to make adjustments. Let the response kind of come from you naturally and organically. And I think people appreciate that. I just had a presentation last week where I just went up and I totally changed the presentation in terms of how I presented because I looked at the audience and the previous presenter, there was about 75% we're looking at their phones.

Starting point is 00:22:34 So I was like, okay, I got to spice this up. Otherwise, everyone's going to look at their phones. So I was like, hey, my name is David. Thanks for having you. And it was totally out of the ordinary for me to do. But it's like you're responding to that in the moment because I wasn't thinking about, remember point one? When you say point one, say this line and say this joke. It's just more about let me respond to the moment.

Starting point is 00:22:50 Let me respond to the audience. But is it like you can only do that because you did the preparation and you like knew the tenets of what you wanted to say in general? In general, yes. In general, how to know the tenets on what to say. And the thing I would say that really helped me from speaking and public speaking and the reaction stuff is as a startup founder, there are a lot of conferences. And when you go to those conferences, they always have slots for startups or different ideas or pitches. I probably did maybe 100 to 200 different presentations for startup events, competitions, et cetera. And when you start to do that, it starts to become second nature.

Starting point is 00:23:26 Wow. So you've gotten your reps in. That's why you're so good. Yeah. No, seriously. Like, I feel like it's, you can just tell when someone's like very like naturally like a good speaker, but it's, you built it up over time. Yes. If you saw me early days, it was bad.

Starting point is 00:23:42 I spoke in front of like four people or five people at times at a conference because it was in a very good conference. But then you can do whatever you want. That's the great part. It's like, oh, there's four people here. What's the worst that can happen? I'm just going to go all out. Yeah. I love that.

Starting point is 00:23:55 Okay. So what are you most excited about for conference or what's like the most valuable like aspect of it so far? It's 100% the people. The level and caliber of people that come to this event that participate in this event is huge. Of course, it's incredible. And if you go to a conference, the way that you can tell if the content is good or not is how many laptops are open, how many people are on their phone. And when you look out in the audience at the conference, you see that people are engaged. They're listening to the speaker.

Starting point is 00:24:24 They're raising their hands where they want to ask a question. And I think that's incredible. And then everyone at the events that we have at the conference or that we joined at the conference, they've been incredibly friendly. Everyone's there to just get to know each other, to make connections. And no one's really kind of trying to sell you anything. No one's trying to promote something. They're just trying to meet new folks.

Starting point is 00:24:43 Yeah, yeah. I was even surprised that in the sessions, like everyone is at the session. I feel like most conferences people, like ditched sessions. 100%. So it just goes to the level of quality. 100%. Thanks, David. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:24:55 Appreciate it. Wow. Wow. Wow. What a great conversation. I'm blown away. So good. But before we get to the takeaways, please remember to like, comment, and subscribe. And if you're listening to this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please give us a five-star rating. We'll be right back and then we'll dive right in to our key takeaways. Hey everyone, quick break to share something special, Sisters Macha. We've launched limited batches of ceremonial grade, single estate, single cultivar,

Starting point is 00:25:28 macha, straight from the family farm Shri worked on in Japan. It's pure, authentic, and crafted with intention. Head to sisters matcha.com to grab yours before it sells out. Make matcha your daily ritual for lasting energy and focus. And we're back. We're back. Um, okay, back to my wow. Wow. Um, yeah, I thought overall it was such an engaging conversation. learned so much. I think I'm in love. There's like just so many things to talk about.

Starting point is 00:26:00 But I think a good place to start would be more talking about. I love how David went into his background. And that question that we asked him about, you know, what was your first childhood job and all that stuff? It actually came up totally organically. Yeah, very natural. But all of that I thought was very informative in understanding who he is today and how he has achieved so many, so much success.

Starting point is 00:26:24 Yeah. And I think also just like hearing his like childhood stories about how he was such a hustler in like elementary school, helping his mom with his like family's deli growing up. Like it also like derives like a lot of like sympathy, empathy. I don't know what it is, but like I love him and I love his story. And you just really want to root for him as an entrepreneur because of like how much hard work, sweat equity he's been putting in. But he doesn't even consider it that. Like it's so much a part of his DNA. Well, I was really impressed by his story about how he basically started his own business when he was six years old with drawing those little cards and then wrapping them up and selling them. Like amazing margins because pretty much like almost negligible, de minimis like input costs. Yeah. And he's just like my hourly cost was not that much at that time.

Starting point is 00:27:13 It reminds me of when you had an NFT business. Not business, but Shari actually made a bunch of NFTs back when it was like all the race. in 2021. It was not a rug pull. It was very legitimate. It was a utility NFT. But yeah, it's like the hustling, trying things out. Yeah. And she sold them and people bought them. Yeah. People actually bought them. Yeah. They were pieces of art. So it's kind of what he was selling. Like art, but like tradable. But it's just like it actually it begs the question. Sometimes people are like, oh, are entrepreneurs born or made or like are, you know, really successful people born or made. This one I'm almost like, dang. He was born. He was kind of born. He was born. He was born ready. But also, I think a lot of it, he saw his parents, especially

Starting point is 00:27:56 how he was saying, like, he worked in his mom's deli. Like, he would take the Coke can and then, like, turn it. So the labels would face front. Like, he kind of had that upbringing to be like, I don't know what it's called. It's just like an entrepreneurial mindset. Like a doer, a doer, hustler mentality. He's not afraid of hard work. And he doesn't even see it as hard work, I would say. Yeah. It seems like what is, you know, when people ask, like, what is work? for you that is what does work for others that is play for you like i can see that really being david's like it reminds me of one of the things he said that really resonated with me is he said when people

Starting point is 00:28:32 respond to what your vision is it's the best feeling in the world yeah so i could see that even have like even having been true for him when he was six years old when he was making those stormtrooper cards or whatever they're called no desert storm desert storm sorry not my generation but he was like drawing those cards selling them people bought them like people were responsible responding to his vision. And he probably felt really excited by that. Yeah. Even when he got regulated by the librarian. I mean, even goes to show, I think a lot of times I get questions that people ask me, either friends or people in comments. They're just like, where do you start? How do you start? And the answer is you just start. Like, you don't, like, I don't have all the answers. I don't know. You do a

Starting point is 00:29:14 little bit of research. And like, the quicker you can minimize the time to start and like how you start is just like, just, by doing. Some people ask me, like, how'd you make a podcast? I'm like, you just kind of start. And the first few ones you do are questionable in terms of quality, but you just got to learn. Yeah, and you use the resources available to you. And those resources might be the library printer and your hand drawings. Exactly. One of my favorite points that David made was that you have to forget quickly. I think that is just so applicable to the professional world, to the personal world. If you want to be happy, you should let go and forget quickly. He also specifically talked about getting a lot of reps in when he was pitching his startup.

Starting point is 00:29:59 I think he said something along the lines. It's like 100 to 200 times you're practicing, you're pitching. And of course, of those times when you're first starting out, you're going to get rejected. But you have to forget those rejections. Remember what they said so then you can fine tune your pitch or whatever you're saying, like your proposal and make it better for the next time. Yeah, I liked how he approached it almost as like these are, he made it almost lower stakes for himself by being like, no matter what, I'll get a learning from this.

Starting point is 00:30:30 And these are lower stakes because this is an opportunity for me to get another point of feedback and to almost add one more piece of input into my feature roadmap. He basically said that. He was like, all the questions that I got that I stumbled on, those are very important. turned into what was akin to a feature roadmap of like what I needed to build out or like what I needed to consider or like they were helping me by pointing out my blind spots or like what are the questions I need to answer because like if three people are asking this question like I need to answer it for the next time I actually have a close friend of mine was is building a startup and he and his

Starting point is 00:31:08 team weren't raising money yet but they were just talking to a bunch of VCs I think he said he talked to like 30 VCs they're not fundraising just to get a you know, a pulse check, a heat check on like how people are feeling about it. And he said that stakes were low because they're not raising right now. Yeah. But he took the initiative to like go talk to all these VCs. And every single time they ask a question, he would write it down. So the next time he would pitch, it's the same thing David did. Like the next time he would pitch, it would be like answered and addressed so that when he did start raising money and they just closed their like seed funding. Yeah. It's tight. You know, the argument is tight because they've already done the upfront work.

Starting point is 00:31:44 Yeah, this is a great insight and very applicable. I'm going to start doing that for sisters worldwide. Oh, you will? Yeah, just like having conversations and kind of seeing like what the perception and reception of what we're doing is in market because it is kind of like a newer concept business format. It's a newer company format. And it's a newer like revenue model that is not really, you know, it's not commonly. We're like, we're Mr. Beast.

Starting point is 00:32:11 And people are like, huh? You know what? honestly, it's so much better to have doubt from other people and a lot of questions, because then it's exactly like what we need to address for the next time. Yeah, I guess it's more useful ultimately to have questions and to have like people doubt you and ask these insightful questions as opposed to just getting back nothing. Then you kind of like really did waste your time. Then you're just practicing talking.

Starting point is 00:32:38 That's all. I mean, also it's part of an entrepreneur's like resilience that when you're, you're just going to you do receive pushback and doubt that you're like so strong and you believe in what you're doing that you're like, oh, I just need to take this input and refine and not completely crash out and be like, what am I doing? These like VCs are questioning. You know what I mean? It's just like it's all of those things combined to make a, I think a strong entrepreneur. Yeah. I think that's also why like historically, I don't know if we've ever talked about this. I feel like so many of our friends who are really good at having these conversations used to be in debate. Because they're usually.

Starting point is 00:33:13 to having to like react to being questioned to having their argument or their statements questioned. Yeah. And like you just built up a resilience of being able to like respond without crashing out, basically. Yeah. Without like freezing in the moment. Or taking it personally. And yeah, I think.

Starting point is 00:33:29 Because they literally did it when it was a game. Yeah. It was like a competition in high school or whatever for them. So the stakes were, I guess they were high, but they were low. Yeah. Relatively. I mean, the people I know in my life, my friends, coworkers, the best. speakers are the ones who have done some sort of debate or like junior model Congress type of

Starting point is 00:33:49 stuff in high school or whatever or middle school. I wish I had done that. I would think if I had, I would have, right now, I'd probably be more poised to debate on like the idea, debate on ideas and also not take things too personally. It's not an attack on me or my characters and attack on the idea. But sometimes I take things really personally. I'm working on it. Yeah, to the point. I really loved how David put it, the specific words that he said, where he said, just let it wash off you. And I like that because it's so visual and it's so like visceral. Yeah. Whereas like if you get all of this like inbound, I guess like doubt, which can feel like an attack on your idea, which, you know, especially if the idea is your baby can feel very personal, even when it's not, just let it wash off you.

Starting point is 00:34:38 Like it's so like you can visualize it and like have it happen. Yeah. I feel like it's more helpful that way. Yeah. That it's tied to a physical activity. You know what I think about actually? In terms of visualization, because one of my old bosses used to say something similar. Is it Albert?

Starting point is 00:34:54 No, it was actually Eric. Oh, Eric. Eric Wallenbacher. Something he used to say that I think about constantly, he says water off a duck's back. Same concept. Yeah. Let it wash off of you. He said not only the like, you know, negative feedback about whatever your idea is, but even positive feedback that you're getting.

Starting point is 00:35:13 He said they should affect you both the same way, which is, you know, crazy to think about at first glance. But I kind of really like it. He's just like, you don't want to react too high to the highs and you don't want to react too low to the lows. Yeah, he is a very like, he's all about like equilibrium and zen. Like all of Sherey's bosses, like I've only met a couple of them, but she talks about them so much that I feel like they're my friends too. Even though like they don't know me at all and I don't know them personally at all either. But I'm like, oh, my good friend, Eric Wollebacher. Yes, but it's same concept.

Starting point is 00:35:45 Water off a duck's back, let it wash off you. Something that I used to say is Dilmo, D-I-L-M-O, do it, learn, move on. It sounds odd, but I do, I try to think about this often. Moving on is really hard. Did you make this up? I did. Oh. I did.

Starting point is 00:36:04 She's been saying it for so long that I thought she, like, got it from a workbook or something. Yeah, I thought it was like some sort of framework that they taught at LinkedIn. I made this up. Do, I mean, obviously, I don't own the concept, but like, I made up this acronym. Guys, she's been trying to make Dilmo happen for seven years. It's actually been since 2021. I actually made a TikTok about it. Everyone's like, what?

Starting point is 00:36:24 I mean, they like the concept. It sounds weird, but Dilmo. I like it. Move on. Yeah. Dilmo, guys. Dilmo. Just Dilmo.

Starting point is 00:36:31 Just Dilmo. And then the last thing, well, actually, it's like that's not a little. One other thing that I really love that David said that made me feel like he's so low ego is that When he was like pitching to VCs, he was just like, you'll be forgotten, which is like really refreshing. And obviously no one wants to be forgotten. But in the idea that like you're pitching to so many companies that like, you know, they're talking to so many other people every single day. Like you will be forgotten. The stakes are pretty low. Yeah. Or it's more so like the details of what you're saying will be forgotten. Maybe not you as a person will be like a race from their memory.

Starting point is 00:37:06 But like exactly what you're pitching. It's not going to like stay with them for forever, especially if they decided to pass on you. So his point is that don't feel embarrassed to go back to the same person who passed on you once and be like, hey, like, let me talk you again. Like I heard what you said. I applied it and this is where we are today, blah, blah, blah. So don't be afraid to have that second conversation. I kind of had mentioned it once before in the context of like applying to the same

Starting point is 00:37:33 company again and again. Yeah. And how by the time I finally got my first job at Goldman Sachs, I had already been rejected. twice when I had applied for internships in 2008. Previous years. In 2009 during the Great Recession. But yeah, so don't worry about it. I mean, if you had let that stop you, then you wouldn't have applied.

Starting point is 00:37:55 You've been like Goldman Sachs hates me. Yeah. I have no shot, which is obviously not the case because then you end up getting a job. Right. Because, yeah, they did forget me, honestly. Like, probably the people that interviewed me never even interviewed me again. It was a whole new set of people who interviewed me. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:38:10 So I literally was forgotten. but for the better. Yeah, that's great. Is this where you want to pitch or saying where it can be good to be forgotten? It could be good to be forgotten. I thought that could be, like she was rejected twice from Goldman Sachs and then she got a job. You know what I mean? A sensational headline.

Starting point is 00:38:27 Yeah. But, yeah. She was rejected from Wall Street twice. Yeah, Wall Street rejected her twice. Then she got in the third time. Watch what happens now. She has the podcast now. That's what happens.

Starting point is 00:38:40 I also liked when we kind of advance the conversation to asking him about what if a conversation feels more high stakes. Because I think that is a different situation where it's harder to go in and really enact all of these pieces of advice where you're saying, oh, just let it wash off you. Don't worry. You can come back again and they'll forget. And I liked how his advice was a little bit different in this instance where he said, David said, just worry about that moment. Don't worry about what their reaction is going to be because that's almost too many things to be holding in your head at the same time. Just worry about getting your, about communicating what you came to say and making sure that communication is clear and getting that information through to them.

Starting point is 00:39:32 Yeah. And I think, I mean, the last part of that story. or that anecdote is that like at the end of the conversation he thought he had like a flub like he messed up but then honestly what he had said before all of that was he was felt so good about and the idea was sure and he felt very confident in you know that idea what he came to say that didn't really matter in the end where he like might have made a misstep in like the last part of the conversation yeah and then it also goes back to ultimately his product and his idea were sound yeah ultimately the product stood for itself and spoke for itself in a lot of ways, even though

Starting point is 00:40:11 his answer to like the big question that Imran asked him that was not good, admittedly. Like Imran even told him later, that was the worst answer. I thought that was funny. I thought that's so funny. God, I love him, both Imran and David. Yeah. That is also very Imran to just be like, yeah, your answer was terrible. It was the worst one I ever got.

Starting point is 00:40:31 One other topic that we talked about that I think is not commonly spoken about is why competition can be a good thing for your business. I love that. Especially if you are working in a line of business that is more novel or isn't as commonly understood. Right. I think, I mean, the part of the conversation was that, like, is competition a bad thing is, like, the crux of it?

Starting point is 00:40:58 Because I think everyone generally assumes that having a lot of competition is bad. And I like how you and David talked about like turning it on its head. What are the moments where it can be beneficial for you and or your company? Right. For him, he was saying, you know, Microsoft co-pilot is a common competitor that people keep asking them about. He said that after Microsoft copilot was released, they increased 10 times for read AI. And that's actually something that I had also seen personally through work.

Starting point is 00:41:28 working in augmented reality and AI over the last, you know, seven years. Yeah. Just 50 patents in AI guys. Over 50. Over 50. Sorry. Just over 50 patents. But it was just something, one of the things that I spent a long time doing was building

Starting point is 00:41:45 up the augmented reality advertising platform at Snapchat. And it started back when it was so novel. We were the first ones to do it. Everything was manual. So every time someone made an ad, you had to basically, one, explain to them what it is, two, show it to them. Three, demonstrate why it was efficacious. And then four, actually sell them on why they should spend their money on it. And so everyone was really concerned about when TikTok actually came out with their same platform selling AR advertising. But to me,

Starting point is 00:42:17 it was helpful because then we weren't the only example. Yeah. Right? Like TikTok was also going to these same companies to Coca-Cola, to Pizza Hut, to whoever, and trying to sell them on the same idea. So we didn't have to do all of the work every single time to do the education. So it kind of like helped cut out the first one or two steps for us. Yeah, product education, like I mean, something we learned in my like product launch class is like the hardest thing is like educating and or changing the behaviors or mindset of people, of your users or your customers. It's really difficult. So then if you have competitors in the space as well who are doing it for you, basically, with you for you.

Starting point is 00:43:00 It really cuts down the work that you have to do. I actually see this with sisters matcha as well. Could you imagine? I mean, like, matcha, I mean, for the world, I think it's still people are learning what it is. But like for the markets that like we're in, like the girlies who love matcha already. Well, Starbucks recently came out with match drinks. Well, they that are sugar-free. Yes, that are different from their original ones.

Starting point is 00:43:26 But like now Starbucks is doing it. Like basically every cafe in like California, New York. Like probably. Not every cafe. Not every. I would say. In L.A. And NYC.

Starting point is 00:43:37 Yeah. I would say less than 50% still. But many of them now have matcha drinks. Yeah. So that like. Which is so helpful for us because we don't have to then explain to everyone what is matcha. Mm-hmm.

Starting point is 00:43:49 Because they'll be like, oh, I've seen this before. Or like I've at least heard of it before. I think people still don't quite understand the health benefits. But if people are already drinking it, it's like a different battle. Well, the part that is not helpful is that cafes, the macha that they're serving is much, much lower quality than the matcha that we're serving. So a lot of times, or more times often than not, the match experience that people are having is way worse than what they would get for sisters matcha.

Starting point is 00:44:17 That's true. So people try it once and they don't like it because they're like, ew, it's kind of bitter. It's kind of, it's like overly grassy. It's kind of grainy. And those are just horrible machines. So then we have to like re-educate in a way so that we're like, that is not the that you're going to get through us.

Starting point is 00:44:37 Like that is not the macha that we're used to having. That is like the Starbucks macha. Don't drink it. That's like the, what is that really bad salmon? Not bad salmon, but the salmon that they feed to the fishes to the dogs in Alaska. Chum salmon, Coho salmon. It's, uh, oh no, it's called dog. I think it's called dog salmon.

Starting point is 00:44:59 Dog salmon? I think there's an official labor. But that's like the vast majority of people who are trying matcha in the United States. That's a really gross comparison. Are trying that salmon versus like king salmon or like what you would get in a restaurant. Ah, I see. I see. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:45:14 I mean, a lot of the times it's like, um, you know, they're using like baking match, which is like lower quality or like cooking match, match for cooking, um, in drinks. because it comes in bulk and it's cheaper, it's not as good as the good stuff with sisters macho. So another example. Yeah. So pros and cons of having competitors in the space. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:45:37 I mean, I think it also applies to our broader business that includes Tiger Sisters in our podcast as well because I am very curious to once I start having these conversations with VCs as to what their perception of like the viability of this type of business is. I just don't know what they think so far. One way to find out. Yeah. Get pitching, girl. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:02 Thank you guys so much for tuning in to this special episode of Tiger Sisters. Please stay tuned. We have many more interviews and takeaways coming up soon. Like, comment, subscribe, and don't forget to rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts and also Spotify. It makes a huge difference. It really does for just five seconds of your time. Thanks so much. time. Bye. Bye.

Tiger Sisters - Give me 24mins, and I'll teach you how to conquer constant rejection to win (by AI CEO David Shim)

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