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.
00:12:31 · S8, S9, S12
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00:13:18 · David Park
[00:13:18] S5: Or two months free. That's no problem at all. You know, I see some founders, they're a little arrogant and they say, I'm not gonna give anyone my product for free, like... But the lifeblood of any startup, just building, I think, is just knowing what to build. If you continually talk to users, you start to kind of understand where you need to go and your, like, gut instincts get a lot faster. Your product sense gets a lot Some tips I would have is prioritize talking to users more than anything else, more than money. Sometimes you have to ask uncomfortable questions too. When you have a user on the phone with you, it can be really rare. Like, in the early stages when you only have 10 users and one of them gets on the phone with you, you don't know when the next one's gonna get on the phone with you. So you wanna really ask... You don't wanna just fluff yourself up and be like, what's your favorite thing about my product? You know? And like, that doesn't really give you any information. It's just gonna make you feel slightly better. If you have the end goal on-site, you need to ask what does your current workflow look like? What's the biggest pain point that you currently have? And then when it's actually applicable, don't ask about the good things about your startup, ask about the bad things. Because users will... They'll always try to be polite. Some of them will straight up lie to you, and some of them will just be polite and not even realize they're lying to you. So you have to ask... You have to judge a lot based upon their actions. I think you just have to go and you just have to talk to users and then you have to put yourself in uncomfortable situations and slowly you'll start to feel a start to feel a pocket a little bit and just become more comfortable over time. When you're an early stage startup, you have nothing going for you. You will take any call. I remember when I was really struggling, I would even respond to those spammy LinkedIn messages I would get, where they're clearly just messaging a thousand people, but I would even respond to them because I just needed anything. I needed I needed anything because we were struggling so much. And I remember one time I got invited to a podcast.
00:15:07 · David Park
Very, few people listened to this podcast, and I think out of the listeners, one out of the very small pool of listeners happened to be a scout for Jason Calacanis. And then the even crazier luck was they sent me an email saying, hey. We wanna meet with you. Possible investment. I didn't see the first email. I ignored the first email. So that that that was really unlucky, and then they actually decided to send another email. I responded to the second email. They decided to put a 100 k. I remember when I first got it, I went to my grand... Grandpa's house, and then, you know, we were like, holy... You know? I mean, we were just swearing in Korean, just like, 100 k out. I remember I took a screenshot. I've never seen that much money in my life. I took a screenshot of it, and I just stared at it all the time, and it was so crazy. Immediately after the 100 k, when he invested in me, my startup was not doing super well. We kind of had a little bit of growth, but it wasn't... It was like we made $2,000 month one, 2,200 month two, 2,300, 2,005, like very small growth. Like, it was, like, almost negligible. I almost didn't trust myself with the money, because I was a young founder. I was kind of unsure of my own decision. So immediately, my cofounder and I, we booked a flight to Malaysia, Southeast Asia, because everything in Malaysia is one fourth of the price. And just like we predicted, we were still young founders. We were making amateur decisions. It took us another year and a half to two years to finally grow. Like, were stuck at 2,000 ish MRR for one and a half, two years. If I didn't go to Malaysia, we would have died before. And then it was a one and a half, two years of just continual failure. And I remember the craziest story ever. I got invited to something called KSGC, K Startup Grand Challenge. And if you get top 10, you get... Make a lot of... You you win some money as well as competition. So I went to Korea. We were really low on money, and I was able to get a VC to invest $250,000. It was pretty much a done deal, but then I also... There's this girl I really liked. I really like this girl, and I had a meeting the next day with this VC that he was gonna invest in us. And then just because I was dumb, I was like, it's okay. I can just, you know, stay out late. I I stayed up really late with her. I came back.