00:03:51 · David Park
What I built was so cool that he was willing to wear it. I think ever since then, I've always been kind of interested in making products, provide value to people. I went to college. I actually dropped out of college. I was on a plane from Seattle to San Diego. I went to UC San Diego. I was on a plane, and there's a guy sitting next to me, and I saw he had Coinbase open. Coinbase is like how you trade crypto in America. And I realized he was probably pretty rich. So he was my captive prisoner for three hours. He couldn't leave. We were on a plane, I could just continually pitch him my startup idea. I think he was annoyed, but I think he recognized that I really cared about what I was building. So I think less than three days after the plane landed, we met up. He gave me a cashier's check, my first investment ever. And then I dropped out of college, and then I immediately went full time. And then my first business after was, it was a social media where I was in college. I would meet so many people, and they'd say, like, add me on Snapchat, or add me on Instagram, or here's my LinkedIn. So I... We made an app that, you click one button and then you get added on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, LinkedIn all at once. It didn't do well. I'd I'd... I didn't know how to, like, get customers at the time. I didn't know, like, network effects at the time. We also weren't building for our users. We we made a lot of poor decisions product wise. Then I made a dating app startup, which also failed. The dating app startup was actually pretty cool. It was like an AI dating app where you don't swipe at all. And we use machine learning to look at your face and your previous partners to see who you might be physically attracted to, and then look at your Facebook to see, like, your interests and then try to find people. And then we partnered with, restaurants in the city, and then set up your first date for you at a restaurant you both liked with the coupon. So was like a concierge service, and the local business has also loved it because they got free customers. They got these customers coming in from our dating app. But when I went to raise money, and then the VC actually, you know, I'm not gonna invest in your startup because we actually want them to stay on your dating app as long as possible.
00:05:41 · David Park, S0, S1, S6, S7, S8
If they find a boyfriend or girlfriend and they get happy, they're gonna delete the app, not renew their subscription, and you're not gonna have a billion dollar business. Honestly, was really sobering for me. I was still, what, like 19, 20 at the time. So when I heard that, I felt like I had just crossed the chasm into, like, the adult world of, like, venture. Ad[00:05:59] S0: This episode is brought to Ad[00:06:00] S1: you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Ad[00:06:28] S6: Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Ad[00:06:40] S7: Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Ad[00:06:43] S8: Sam's Club is the club for every holiday club. Guess who's joining the club this season? Walmart Plus. Yep. Sam's Club Plus membership now comes with Walmart Plus at no extra cost. Two memberships, one great price. Just a $120 a year can save you time and over $700. Wanna get in on a membership duo of the century? Visit sam'sclub.com. Come join us. Sam's Club.
00:06:43 · S8, S9, S10
Ad[00:06:43] S8: Sam's Club is the club for every holiday club. Guess who's joining the club this season? Walmart Plus. Yep. Sam's Club Plus membership now comes with Walmart Plus at no extra cost. Two memberships, one great price. Just a $120 a year can save you time and over $700. Wanna get in on a membership duo of the century? Visit sam'sclub.com. Come join us. Sam's Club. Ad[00:07:04] S9: Annual plan only auto renews TNC apply estimate based on average combined Walmart Plus and Sam's Club Plus savings among members of both for one plus year versus nonmember or club member pricing slash fees excludes membership fees. See Walmart Plus terms and Sam's Club terms for more info. Ad[00:07:15] S10: Brussels clean up nicely at Sweetgreen. Maple glazed, roasted, and edges perfectly caramelized. Sweetgreen's fall harvest is back on the menu, and the season's most overlooked little green vegetable is dressed to be devoured. You know what to do. Order on the Sweetgreen app.
00:07:33 · David Park
[00:07:33] S5: Capital, and, I was pretty disillusioned. And that I actually... We actually stopped working on that because that was just such a crazy sobering moment. You know, when I failed my first startup, it didn't feel good, but it didn't feel that bad because I was still a student in college. So I was like, this is what life's about. It was only when I started failing after I dropped out of college, that was when I really felt a lot of pressure, felt pretty bad. You know, I would see on Instagram my friends would be graduating. They'd have those fucking pictures with the the graduation gowns and the hats, and they'd be... And then I would be at home either living with my parents or working on some startup that wasn't really doing that well. And then fast forward a year, they'd have high paying jobs at Microsoft. And then I would still be... Same thing. I'd still be at home, still not doing well. And I think those failures really hurt a lot more because even though I want to say like, oh, don't... I try not to compare myself to people. I try to like be the best version of myself. You can't have full control over your mind. So it was a little hard to... You can always fail. You can fail at something you don't love, so you might as well fail at doing what you love. The valuable lesson for me, your gut instinct. It actually rarely provides me much value. The blueprint for like a billion dollar company, it's kind of ripped up and scattered among minds actions of the users that you're trying to build for. And like you have to be both egotistical enough to believe that you're... You can genuinely make a billion dollar company, which is like a wild statement, think. And then also humble enough to realize that you really don't know much and you have to continually talk to users. If you have ego, it could be strange at first. But I think once you like put that down, I think just your startup can blossom a lot better, I think. I was a literature major, so I really loved poetry in college, so I loved writing. And then my co founder was a computer science engineer. He eventually did his PhD in natural language processing, so writing and AI. We always wanted to kinda find some way that we could connect those two. We started Jenni AI when there was only GPT two. And I remember we were just playing with it, and there was one crazy generation that we got.
00:09:27 · David Park
The AI spit back, nothing is darker than a butthole. That's what the AI told me. And I thought that was so funny. I thought that was the funniest thing I've ever read that no human has ever said to me before. And then at the time, for some reason, I thought it was kind of profound as well. I'd be like, this is so crazy. The fact that an AI wrote this, we have to find some way to make a business out of this. And I really don't recommend anybody do this. We just got really lucky. In the beginning, Jenni AI, we could just make human writers 10% faster with GPT two, and that was the first to Jenni. So we bring in writers to our office, and then we time them with with AI, without AI. And we'd be like, okay. We got... We're aiming for 10% faster, 15% faster, 20% faster. And then GPT three came out, and then we realized, holy guacamole. This GPT three is actually, like, insane. It could actually give you text that's useful. And that's when we transitioned from an agency more to a SaaS. And we said, okay. We don't actually need human writers because g p three is so good. Then we became more of a general tool. So, like, anybody could use it. It was just like Microsoft Word, but you... AI first. And then we started removing features. It's a weird thing. As we've removed features, Jenni continually got better. And then as we kept ripping things out, our vision just got more clear. This is the thing that people come for. How can we make this our time to value? Can we make it so a user comes and gets their first autocomplete within the first five minutes? The way we got our first few customers, I would literally just cold call businesses. I would literally just talk to them, become their friends, and try to, like, figure out how could I deliver the product for them. And then the few users that came to us, we would talk to them, and then we would tweak our tool a little bit, and then we'd launch again, we'd tweak it and launch again. And then eventually, we realized we had a huge wave of users, they were all students. And we just made the decision then. Like, it seems like these researchers, these people in the academic field, like, they like Jenni. We we might as well keep building for these people that actually, like, get value from our tool. In the beginning, you care a lot about money because, obviously, you're a struggling founder.
00:11:21 · David Park, S0, S1, S6, S7, S8, S11
But really in the early stages, money doesn't matter at all, especially if you're trying to build, like, a big company. So, you know, if you can convince someone to talk to you about your product and try your product, and you give them, like, a month of free Ad[00:11:34] S0: This episode is brought to Ad[00:11:35] S1: you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a 75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Ad[00:12:03] S6: Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Ad[00:12:15] S7: Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Ad[00:12:18] S8: Sam's Club is the club for every holiday club. Guess who's joining the club this season? Walmart Plus. Yep. Sam's Club Plus membership now comes with Walmart Plus at no extra cost. Two memberships, one great price. Just a $120 Ad[00:12:31] S11: a year can Ad[00:12:31] S8: save you time and over $700. Wanna get in on the membership duo of the century? Visit sam'sclub.com. Come join us. Sam's Club.