Sachin and Adam
00:10:49 · Adam, Sachin
[00:10:49] S0: think we would both have said venture capitalists. And I think this starts to portray the steps of, like, where we are here today. Yeah. So you ended up working at Airtree. Like, you met John through the podcast. Yep. Awesome dude. Super smart. And then I started my grad career at Deloitte in consulting. You also started in Deloitte, but you were a year ahead of me. And I was like, I thought consulting was the thing I wanted to do. And I think it's a really great starting job for, like, meeting people in different industries, but I didn't feel that deeply or personally aligned to it. And for me, it was about, like, I felt like venture capital working in startups was the thing. And so I was like, you're already there. I was starting to try and shift to there. But I think, like, [00:11:28] S1: if you looked at how we're spending our time, maybe for the last four or five years outside of work, it's always been talking to people in tech. It's always been reading, you know, newsletters of tech. Our podcast consumption has always been about people with tech. [00:11:39] S0: We also started angel investing. We started, like, a mini fund a few years ago with a friend to do to invest in tech companies. Like, yeah, literally everything we're reading and listening to was about tech.
00:11:39 · Adam, Sachin
[00:11:39] S0: We also started angel investing. We started, like, a mini fund a few years ago with a friend to do to invest in tech companies. Like, yeah, literally everything we're reading and listening to was about tech. [00:11:49] S1: Yeah. And so that... That's kind of the backdrop of, you know, before we made this move. Adam was to keep out going to venture capital. I was working in it. We're living together at a share house in Darlinghurst where if you go back and look at our episodes, a lot of them were filmed there. I remember one night we were sitting at the table. We never actually once ate dinner together in that share house that whole time, but of us was sitting at the table and we started to talk about, hey, like, would we do this podcast full time? And I remember that was the first point in the conversation, and the podcast full time never actually really interested us. Like, we kind
00:12:23 · Adam
[00:12:23] S0: of joked about it and, like, we never really taken it that seriously. I think we'd always talked about, like, we would love to do it full time to see what happened and almost like a gap year. Like, Tim Ferriss does this thing... Well, he did this thing that was, like, the personal NBA where he took a year off, Angel invested in companies, started to do podcasting, and he was like, I'm gonna put, like, a $100 into this. If it doesn't work, it's only $100, and I get a bunch of learnings. If it works, I might might might meet really cool people. I might start a new business, whatever. And so he talked about it in that fashion. But I think at the time, you were really keen to do that because you'd been at Airtree for a year and a half and you... Like, on your CV, great. Like, been at Deloitte at Airtree, had that experience. And I was like, I didn't feel as... Like, I'd achieved enough at that point. I'd done Deloitte for a bit, and there was the whole tech crash at the time. And I was like, I really wanna work in VC for a year or two before I go take off that year for an MBA. And so I started applying to a bunch of things, and I found this, like, almost dream job at the time working for a fund called Second Quarter Ventures. And I came second in that process. And that was, like, a bit of an existential moment because after that, I was, like, I was, like, really angry. I was like, fuck this. Like, do I keep keep on... Continue doing this? There's, like, no good jobs in the market. And I think I made a very rash decision to, like, I'm gonna move to The States. And that's where the paths almost went different ways.
00:13:45 · Sachin, Adam
[00:13:45] S1: Yeah. I think there was a lot of times in the last year where our paths could have gone in very different ways. So I've always talked about living in New York, and I would have moved there now if we weren't starting this company. You were, like, looking at opportunities in The US, in London. You know? There was very many, like, there was a... Very many situations in which we could have, like, spent the next five years completely apart, which is, like, the polar opposite of, like, what happened now. That was the thing. [00:14:09] S0: So when you were talking about potentially going to New York after Airtree, I was talking about going to The States to work for a VC. And we're like, okay. This is probably how we're gonna do it. We're sort of talking about doing the podcast full time, but we're like, it's gonna bring us apart. And it's like, do we want that now? And maybe we can do the podcast full time in five years time. But in five years time, we could be married. We could have children. That's really hard to take a year off. So it was this existential point of decision making.
00:14:09 · Adam, Sachin
[00:14:09] S0: So when you were talking about potentially going to New York after Airtree, I was talking about going to The States to work for a VC. And we're like, okay. This is probably how we're gonna do it. We're sort of talking about doing the podcast full time, but we're like, it's gonna bring us apart. And it's like, do we want that now? And maybe we can do the podcast full time in five years time. But in five years time, we could be married. We could have children. That's really hard to take a year off. So it was this existential point of decision making. [00:14:35] S1: Yeah. Like, it... It's a Bezos framework. It's like the regret minimization, like, way of looking at life. And, like the way I remember it is that we started having this conversation of like we're about to turn 25. This is realistically the last time where we will be able to go into something, live in the same place, go home and live with our parents so we can fund this thing and live around the world. Yeah. Like, this is realistic last time because let's say you went into venture, I moved to New York, we're back in Sydney in our early thirties or something like that. It becomes a lot harder.
00:14:35 · Sachin, Adam
[00:14:35] S1: Yeah. Like, it... It's a Bezos framework. It's like the regret minimization, like, way of looking at life. And, like the way I remember it is that we started having this conversation of like we're about to turn 25. This is realistically the last time where we will be able to go into something, live in the same place, go home and live with our parents so we can fund this thing and live around the world. Yeah. Like, this is realistic last time because let's say you went into venture, I moved to New York, we're back in Sydney in our early thirties or something like that. It becomes a lot harder. [00:15:12] S0: Yeah. And at that point, you'd crafted that argument and you really believed in it, but I didn't. I didn't at all. Because for me, it was still the thing like, I've only done, like, a year or two at Deloitte, and now I'm going off to take a year off to do podcasting. I was like, what is my future career? What am I doing? And so I wasn't bought into it all because it wasn't big enough. Like, I either... I wanted to go all in on the next thing I was doing. Like, I wanted to move to San Francisco and work hundred hour weeks for, like, the top VC or whatever. Just, like, do whatever I could. I think there was an insecurity driving me of, like, I hadn't done enough in my career at