00:09:21 · Paul Bragiel
[00:09:21] S4: I mean, like, you know, we just missed time certain things. Like, it was a very competitive game. Right? Like... And only one winner would happen. It wasn't like, you know, there'd be 10 winners in that space. Either one person won, a k Facebook, and everyone else died. Right? So... Yeah. While we did well, we had millions of users. We raised money, we had awesome engineers. Like, the team was great. It's just that we didn't win. And I learned a lot from that. I kinda got punched in the face a bit. But it was a good learning lesson, and I was able to take all those things and apply them to my third company. Yeah. I mean, failing sucked, right, after my first company doing so well. The reason it sucked, obviously, one, it sucked because I wanted to win. I'm a very competitive person. But then two, it sucked because, like, I had a whole team of people relying on me, right, to raise more money or whatever it is, right, to lead the company. And when I had to let go of people or when we didn't get money, like I remember there was days where I cried in the pillow. I'm like, fuck. I have to fail. I have to fire a bunch of people today or like, oh my god, how am going to pay the rent and the bills for the team next month. Right? So there was a lot of stressful times. But yeah, I mean, you get through it. Right? Like I said, what was really amazing is that while we did fail, like we had people that stuck away all the way till the end. Right? And we had actually a bunch of people that stayed there even after I ran out of money. For many months, they stayed there. Right? And so I love those people. Those people are part of my family nowadays. But, yeah, it was rough. It's admitting defeat in anything sucks, especially when you're very competitive person. But, you know, you you kind of sit down and you kind of let it breathe a bit and you kind of take back what you learned and you move forward. Right? You don't give up. You keep on pushing. This is important. When you're a founder, there's ways of losing your credibility. Right? And failing is not one way. Like failing happens. Right? We all fail. Right? The key thing is, one, how did you fail? Did you fail with honor? Did you fail with transparency? Right? Did you fail because you, you know, tried a million things and didn't work out. Right? Versus some people, they fail because like, they give up.
00:11:15 · Paul Bragiel
Or they fail and they kind of go quiet and disappear. Right? That's not honorable. Right? Like... But if you go out and say, I tried this, this, this, this, this, this. And okay, I didn't do this. Or like for us, like I know from my team, I said, we didn't pay ourselves salary for like almost six months. We did everything we could to save the company. All of our investors knew this. Right? And I was sending update every month. This is how much money is left. This is worth trying. This is... Like, please. Right? And like people know that, hey, these kids, they did everything they could. It didn't work out. Right? So we didn't get blamed for that. They're like, hey, these people are good people. And if they try something again, we want to back them. Right? And so for me, now that I'm an investor, I look at the same thing too. I know some of my companies are failing. Right now, there's companies failing. Right? And some, they disappear. You know what? Those guys will never get my money again. But some people are telling me, what's going on? They're trying to... Hey. Respect. I will potentially invest invest in your next company. Right? So... Yeah. It's really important to fail with honor, I guess you could say. Right? So... Yeah. Honestly, a lot of the companies we invested to, they're great founders, but they were not known founders. Right? A lot of times, you know, people start out from very humble beginnings. Right? So, yeah, let's say companies like Unity and Uber. Right? These are cases where I know the founders already. Right? So the founder of Uber, Travis, he was a friend of mine. And funny enough, when my second company was failing, his second company was failing. And he lived maybe like three or four blocks away from here in San Francisco. So every week or two, we get together, have a beer and say, fuck. This sucks. Right? And so we just became friends. Right? And then when he started his next company, which was Uber, he's like, hey, Paul. I need some help hiring engineers. And so at first, I joined as an advisor. Right? Because I didn't even sold my company yet. Right? So I came as an advisor and then later put some money in. But a lot of the best deals I got into is because I just knew the people. Right? I was friendly with them. Or a friend of a friend. Somebody's like, hey, you got to talk to Paul. He's an amazing investor.
00:13:08 · Paul Bragiel
So for me, we usually don't have to fight to get in a deal. We get invited to come in. Because also now, I've been doing this for thirteen years. We have a good reputation. We've been in tons of cool companies. People actually reach out to us and want our money. I very rarely have to like beg to get into a deal. If I'm begging to get in a deal, then maybe I'm doing something wrong. So yeah. Most of my best deals though were people that they were not famous or nobody wanted to give them money or very little people didn't. Was just one of the people who believed them first. Right? That's something that me and my brother take a lot of pride on. We like to be one of the first checks in. Right? So we like to be money in first and then other people come after us. It kind helps start the ball rolling. That's really important to us. I have not exited Uber fully. I've sold some along the way. So I sold some like a year before the IPO, like at a $50,000,000,000 valuation. I sold some, you know, throughout the pandemic kind of offloading to kind of diversify my portfolio. But I still own about 30 or 40% of the shares I had originally thirteen years ago. So also one thing that really big belief that me and my brother have is, like, we're super long term investors. If we like a company and we like the founders, we like the team, we stick with them as long as possible, even post IPO. Kinda touched on this earlier, but, like, some of things I see in the really best entrepreneurs, one, they're kind of very persistent and they don't give up. Right? Every company has hard times, so they they know how to push through. And then two, like, they're inspirational. And when I say inspiration, doesn't mean like, oh, they're great talking and they're gonna be like talking from a balcony. No. Some people inspire because they're a very good engineer and they're inspired by the awesome code they made. Right? And some person's very inspirational because they're able to go out there and raise money really well. Right? Or somebody's really inspirational because they're able to paint a very good vision and kinda make a good design. Right? So the key thing is the person is being inspirational because they think be able to go out there and attract other amazing people. Right?
00:14:57 · Paul Bragiel
And so I think if you have those two skills, hardworking, never giving up, and then inspirational, you put those together, it's a great foundation for an amazing entrepreneur. Everyone has an idea. Right? Have you ever had it happen where you think of an idea, and then like two weeks later, you hear somebody's building it. Right? So the world is kind of coming together on the same ideas. Like, not... That doesn't make it special. What makes it special is execution. The way you're building a company. Nobody wants your idea. You have to start building yourself. Right? No one's going to build the idea for you. You have to take ownership of your own ideas and own them and build them. So ideas don't matter. It's execution behind the idea that really matters. Bad executions. Sloppy. Behind schedule. Not hiring the right people the right thing. I can give you tons of examples of people who are bad execution. Yeah, mean good executions means like on time, regimented, right? Attention to detail. Be frugal. Hire people as needed, if at all. Put your head down and execute. And just get through the hard times, and then it'll become easier. Right? Also, when you start a company in a hard time, when it becomes an easy time, it's it's super easy. Right? But right now, it's also easier to hire people. It's easier to go out to get resources. So, yeah, just put your head down, execute, don't complain. Be very, very efficient with your money, and you'll be fine. Entrepreneurship is creating something out of nothing. Right? You're manifesting something with limited resources. You're bringing magic to the planet. Right? You're building something that you've always wanted to see exist, and you make that happen. That's a beautiful thing. To go out there, have an idea, and bring it to reality. It's a beautiful, beautiful skill. Yeah. I mean, I guess the key thing is, like, focus on humans. Right? So just always be curious about people. Right? I'd say be curious in general. Right? So what's cool about VC is, like, you're paid to learn new stuff. Right? Or you're paid to, like, invest alongside people who are going to create new industries or disrupt industries. Right? So stay curious, stay humble. And what I say by humble is like don't put yourself above people, just be nice to people. And I think everything else kind of comes afterwards.
00:16:49 · Paul Bragiel
But as long as you're you're kinda very curious and you're nice to people, and I'd say also hardworking, if you have two of those three, if not all three skill sets, you'll do pretty well. But, yeah, you have to listen. Have to understand. You have to, like, absorb information and process and, you know, kinda make decisions based upon that.
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