The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:17:30 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:17:30] S0: some founders write memos. Right? Was I think you guys still do decks? [00:17:33] S1: Yeah. We... We've we've experimented. I think our series a was a memo. We've experimented with both. Honestly, I I do like the memo. But the first deck, what's so funny about it, this is more of an aside, but but we were looking at it like a couple months ago. It's like we were... I don't think either of us had ever like seed a fundraising deck before. So it was all like from first principles, like zero clue of like how it should look. And we had like our like next twenty four months plan. And like typically when you look at a founder deck, it's like in three months, we're gonna be at like a 100,000,000 of ARR and then we're gonna like take over, then we're gonna start in Europe and then like... And just like this world domination plan that's like very grandiose. We were like so insecure and just we're like, yeah, this probably won't work. So like first six months, like ideation and then like hire an engineer. And then like twelve months later, like launch our first product. And it was literally like by the end of two years, we projected like a 100 k of ARR or something like that, which like hilariously ended up being accurate. But just because we were so not confident, it's actually... It's so funny. We'll have to... At some point if we IPO, we'll release that deck alongside it and it'll give everyone a a good laugh. [00:18:39] S0: Feel like you can do now. Like, you've got enough runs on the board to share that now. Like
00:18:39 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:18:39] S0: Feel like you can do now. Like, you've got enough runs on the board to share that now. Like [00:18:43] S1: Yeah. Maybe maybe you're right. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Should. [00:18:46] S0: I mean, but tell me on the on the Kevin Ryan point, because like you said, he built MongoDB. I mean, he's also done Business Insider, I think, and a bunch of other stuff. So clearly, he could say he understood software. Right? And he still understands it. What did he see in both of you and your, I guess, your MVP Yeah. In viral product in 2019 that gave him confidence to give you 2,000,000?
00:19:05 · John Willett
[00:19:05] S1: I think Kevin probably recognized a bit about... I'm sure he'd followed what was happening at OpenAI and and Google and had probably had some preexisting thesis on on language models and where things were moving, and I'm sure that existed somewhere in his brain. And then he just loves first time founders. That's a big thing with him. Like, he, like, he loves a young talent and, like, giving them money and letting them and letting them kinda run wild. And, was... I don't know if I fully share that thesis, but it worked out incredibly well for us. And Kevin's rationale for that, my understanding is, you know, he was the CEO of DoubleClick, which was one of the early kind of Internet ads companies sold to Google and he ran it incredibly well. And he's like, dude, like, if DoubleClick was like my third company, I would not have been nearly as good because I wouldn't have been as paranoid. I wouldn't have been up all night thinking about it. I wouldn't have been just as much of a freak about it as I was. So he likes the first time founder, like no points on the board, leaving nothing to chance, which like to be fair definitely is our personality, so I see that. So I think for him, it was probably more the calculus of interesting market backdrop of language models. First time founders, I like them, and these guys pass some bar there of drive and whatever. And then probably the bare bones, like, worked in banking. They're gonna start something to attack banking. That's often a pretty successful or interesting idea. So if I had to guess, those were kind of the three legs of the stool.
00:20:24 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:20:24] S0: Well, I mean, was gonna ask like, maybe you can't answer this, like, were the terms? Because his 2,000,000 would be worth quite a bit now. Right? [00:20:30] S1: Yeah. I mean, maybe I won't comment specifically on the the valuation stuff. But, I mean, you know, it's definitely been successful investment for for Cabin. And he's he's... Originally, he wasn't on the board. It was one of his, kind of lieutenants, and and now he is on the board. He's awesome. He's he's one of our biggest kind of supporters, and and he's he's been a great champion for us. [00:20:47] S0: So you... You've alluded a few times to, like, the early years being really tough. I think the line Gabe said to me the other day is the first two years were pretty dinky. NPCs were, like, not interested in you at all till Kiep came along. Yeah. Take me inside that because now that seems like a perfect story. Right? Like, the dots connect in hindsight and what a rich... Rags to riches story. [00:21:08] S1: Yeah. Yeah. [00:21:08] S0: Now we're here. Like, what was it in those two years that I guess gave you both confidence to keep going?
00:21:14 · John Willett
[00:21:14] S1: Oh, that's a great question. Very little in terms of concrete data points. Like there was, especially the first like year and a half, like there was like essentially external information whatsoever that would like support the idea that we should be running a company. Like all... Like no interest from clients. So that was the... That was kind of the the status at the time. What kept us going... I mean, maybe maybe, you know, back to Kevin's point, there is a first time founder, like, kind of a je sais quoi of just like, oh, this is kinda cool. Like, it is kinda fun. Like, even, like, meeting Kevin. I was like, I never really met a billionaire before, and that's pretty pretty fun. And then, like, you know, I I remember there were times where, you know, we'd go meet with like Blair Efron from Centerview. And it's like, you know, if you grow up or, you know, if you're a young investment banker, like Blair Efron, it's like basically a celebrity. And so there are all these there are all these moments that at the time being like '23, '24, 20 '5 having come from, you know, the first couple years of our career in in banking where, like, my MDs wouldn't even really, like, talk to me. Like, there was no connectivity to, like... Or senior people or or more successful people. And so there were enough sort of just moments of... That were interesting and kind of fun, I think, to to keep us going. And and there was a feeling like, hey, we're learning a lot. Like, let's let's just keep learning a lot. I think going back, it would be really hard to do that again. But at the time it kind of just felt like, I mean, I won't pretend there weren't very dark days, but I think what kept us going was just a bit of a sense of like curiosity and fun in the small stuff of starting and running a company.
00:22:46 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:22:46] S0: So mean, obvious question is when did it start to click? Cause also at this point, there's two years, did you quit your job? Yeah, we quit our jobs. So you were full time. So you took the 2,000,000 and you were full time on roofing. [00:22:58] S1: We were full time. We were full time because you know, we could pay ourselves a salary and stuff. [00:23:01] S0: Right, of course.