Andrew Rea - Why first-time founders should invest time and effort in building conviction!

I think you definitely can't expect yourself to have conviction in everything. I think everyone selects the things in life that they care about. And ideally, those are the things that you want to have more or less conviction on. So there's conviction in who am I, like my values, like what kind of values am I going to have as a person and just live my life on? If you're building it, like there's conviction in the values you want to build a company around. So I think in terms of being a founder, that the 2 areas people usually need to think about and care about is conviction in themselves as a founder. And then there's conviction in specifically like the company, the idea, like what you're going to pursue. I think they're, they're very related, but they're not quite the same thing.

Welcome to the Undefeated Underdogs podcast, where I unpack and narrate stories of ambitious people who turn obstacles into opportunities. My goal for this podcast is to create a platform to narrate stories and maybe play a small, teeny tiny role in inspiring you. I intend to highlight the underdog mentality and make authentic conversations with people who play the long game, take action with their chip on their shoulder, and convert obstacles into opportunities. Buckle up as I'll be bringing some authentic founders, VCs, and creators who've got underestimated their whole lives, and yet they beat all the odds to become insanely successful. Now today I want to tell you a little bit about the sponsor of this podcast, acquire.com. Selling a business is as tough as building a business. As someone who went through this whole process of selling my own startup, I know the pain it takes to get through the end zone. This is where Acquire shines. Imagine this: you're a founder who's built a solid SaaS product, acquired customers, and generating consistent monthly revenue. The problem is you're not growing for whatever reason— lack of focus, lack of skill, or just plain lack of interest— and you feel stuck. What should you do? The story I'd like to hear is that you buckle down, somehow reignited the fire, get past yourself and the clichés, and start working. On your business rather than just in the business. You start building an audience, move out of your comfort zone, do the sales, marketing, and in 6 months you've tripled your revenue. Well, the reality isn't as simple as that. Situations may be different for every founder facing these crossroads, but too many times the story ends up being one of the inaction or stagnation until the business becomes less valuable Or worse, worthless. If you find yourself here, or your story is likely headed down a similar road, I offer you a third option. Consider selling your business on acquire.com. Capitalizing on the value of your time is a smart move. Acquire.com is free to list, and they've helped hundreds of founders already. Go to try.acquire.com/shirath And see for yourself if this is the right option for you. All right. This episode is sponsored by Sunset. If you heard this podcast, you know, we, we not only cover success stories, but also unpack the failed ones. And building a startup is hard. Most startups fail. If you're a founder winding down your business, then you need to look into Sunset. These guys handle all the legal, tax, operational burdens when shutting down. Making sure founders and investors avoid penalties, reduce liabilities, and immediately move on to what's next. Their team has spent hundreds of VC-backed tech startups sell their assets, redistribute over $100 million in funds to top-tier investors. If you're interested in learning more, visit sunsethq.com to meet with a representative from their team. And make sure to mention Undefeated Underdogs Podcast to get $2,000 off of your dissolution. Okay, enough ads. Let's get back to today's episode. My next guest made rotisserie chicken more famous than the inventor of rotisserie chicken. If you ask me, Andrew Ray is the founder of TaxWire, which automates SaaS sales tax compliance across your financial stack. Previously, he played key roles and led growth at companies like On Deck, PartyRound. I think it's called Capital now. He also built and sold an EV company that made golf carts. I want to dive into that, definitely. He accidentally started TaxWire when he was doing fractional work. So that is— I'm kind of like in this mode of fractional gigs right now. So I want to definitely, you know, I'm interested in that and explore more there. But What I love about Andrew is his honest, authentic take on being a founder and building startups. He's always like very true, very kind of like, you know, transparent the way he portrays highs as well as lows. I appreciate that from Andrew. And Andrew Rae, welcome to the show. How are you feeling, man?

I'm good, man. Thank you for having me and for the kind words. I'll try to see if I can live up to it today.

No, right off the bat. No, absolutely. I think See, you're one of the folks, at least you're the On Deck alumni, I would say, where you speak from your heart. That's at least what I get when I read your tweets or like follow your posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, or read your posts on Substack. It's more like, here's my opinion. So, you know, if you want to learn it, learn it. Yeah. I love that. And I think I appreciate that level of, you know, transparency across. But man, where do I start? Like, we have so much to talk about. I have so many questions, but right off the bat, I want to talk about rotisserie chicken. Talk to me about it. Like, how did you go viral? What do you think?

Yeah.

Where did that inspiration come from? Who made you think about chicken when you're building startups? Like, that's— there's so disconnect. Like, talk to me about the whole thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I think for some context, because I'm assuming your audience probably has no— like, probably has no idea, like, what's going on here with, like, this whole chicken thing.

I doubt that because the post went viral. You got featured in, like, you know, big, big things.

Yeah, yeah. The internet has a short memory though. So, but yeah, we— the context on it. To take a step back is that, so this has been like an inside joke amongst like just people that are like close to me, like off the internet that just like generally know that I have a very like simplified diet. I'm a pretty disciplined routine-oriented person. I like fast, for instance. I don't eat dinner. I basically eat most of my calories at dinner. If I eat lunch, I eat a very small lunch and I tend to eat like very like 80% of the time I eat like very high protein. like very minimalistic diet. So like a lot of chicken, like maybe rice sometimes, like chicken and vegetables though is like, like a core staple of my diet. And if you live in really anywhere, but especially New York City, it's like not easy to get, like groceries are expensive here. Right. It's hard to just like, I, I'm busy, I work a ton, I don't have time to meal prep and so forth and so forth. And so when you're busy, don't wanna cook, don't wanna meal prep, but you want like a healthy source of chicken that's not gonna break the bank, you don't have a ton of options. And so what I have discovered is that through Costco or Whole Foods, like These places sell rotisserie chicken. It comes cooked. It's relatively affordable. It's like probably one of the most affordable, healthy sources of protein you can get in almost any grocery store in America, even around the world to some extent. And so it's just like, it's just this like thing that is like out there that you can, I can literally go walk a few blocks to Whole Foods right now and go buy like an entire chicken for like $8. And that's like at least 2 to 3 meals. And so it's, it's just this thing that like, I feel like is a total life hack if you're trying to save money and trying to be focused and trying to eat high protein. And so I like my, my Friend, I've it's been a joke because I would be at the office and literally just buy a chicken and come slice some of it up and eat that just the chicken for lunch or for dinner or whatever. And so my friends have like joked with me about this in the past, and I've long been like a I guess amongst them like a missionary for why chicken is like such a great dietary option.

Right.

And then I I had just had a conversation with a couple founder friends of mine actually the night before. So this I think I tweeted this on a Sunday.

Yeah.

The night before I had like seen them, we were talking, they were like telling me all this complicated stuff they were doing for meal prep. And I was like, yo, just like buy some chicken and like stop wasting your time on all this like overpriced, like stuff you're, you're spending way too much brainpower on. And so I, I like, I thought about that just kind of randomly the next day. And like, it was a very un— it wasn't a planned tweet. I like threw it, threw it together and like, it probably took me like 10 seconds, 10, 20 seconds to write. Like it was just pure stream of consciousness. And then I hit send and it's Sunday too. My thought was like, maybe 1,000 people will see that tweet. Mostly people that already know me and are in on the joke. Yeah. And then it just like went absolutely viral. I never, never expected that to happen. A lot of people got angry and I enjoy, I enjoy making people angry probably more than I should. And so I like, I definitely was, was in the back and forth of the discourse, but it's probably the most viral thing I've ever posted and is Kind of since become something of a meme. We ended up having a dinner at our offices where a bunch of people in New York Tech came and just had like eight. Literally, we got like fifty chickens and

just yeah yeah

yeah had them sprawled out there. So it's it's kind of become a bit of a meme the past couple months. But that that is uh but that's there's really no more to the story than that, man. I like I live a simple life. I like chicken. It's it's affordable. More people should know about it.

You're kind of like a like a messenger, right? Like that's what I think when when I replied to you and you replied back. You know, I'm just a messenger here. But the reason I want to ask that is 2 things, like people who are listening. One is, see, you just have to be very true to yourself. That's my takeaway from that. You know, the practices you do as a founder or the ones you preach or you recommend others, you just talk about that. You don't need to create viral content sitting 2 hours, 3 hours every week, like thinking about how to go viral. That's not, I think, the wrong way. That's the wrong way to do it. Just be yourself. And number 2 is I love the way you describe yourself being scrappy, right? Like, I am a scrappy founder and I appreciate— I love scrappy founders because, you know, we kind of, we don't dwell too much. We just move fast and the decisions we— the decision time we have is very less. So be true to yourself. The takeaways at least I got from that tweet is be true to yourself. You know, don't scheme virality. Virality comes to you when you just be yourself and just be scrappy, man. Like, you know, you don't have to overthink when you're early, at least like in the beginning days. So that's why I asked that question. But I also appreciate you kind of Uh, taking the tradition to the next level. I saw you tweet about like, you know, inviting your friends and founder friends the next day or two. You had like 50 chickens, like you're saying. That's insane.

Yeah. Well, that was, there was a little more planning to that piece of it, but like I said, it just, it became a bit of a meme where people would like tweet about chicken. It ended up on TV at one point. And so New York Tech Week was a few weeks after this, this initial tweet went viral. And, um, I kind of, I, I like, I was mostly just working all week, but I told my co-founder, you know, what would be hysterical is if we just had a bunch of people over to our offices and ate chicken. And then he was like, oh, that would be kind of funny. You should tweet that and just see if anybody would come. And so I did. And then a bunch of people wanted to come. And so, and then fortunately I have some friends at Rowe who sponsored a lot of events that week. And so they hit me up and were like, hey, I'm totally down to make this happen. And so we Costco Instacarted 50 chickens to our offices, lined them all up on a table and cut them up. I think we had like 50, 60, probably somewhere between 50 and 100 people that showed up that night and ate chicken. So it was a very, it was a very minimalistic, but fun evening.

I think chicken should be TaxWise's one of the benefits. Whoever joins, you know, TaxWise should get—

We will have a freezer stocked full of chicken. We promise you that. Freezer of chicken, chicken catered to the office every day. Yes. Yes, it's, uh, if you want anything else to eat, go work at Google. But if you, if you want to eat chicken, come work at TaxWire.

And, uh, so let's, you know, all with all seriousness, and, you know, it's so funny that that's the life of founder. Like, you just live in this moment and express yourself. Uh, but I have like a ton of, uh, like important things I want to talk to you about, especially from a founder mindset standpoint. The first thing that comes to me is You talk a lot about conviction and oftentimes what I hear or the narrative that goes on Twitter is that it is something that you should bond with as a founder. Like, you know, you know that you have conviction towards some things. Is that true in your opinion or do you think—

As in like conviction in like your ideas and yourself? Because conviction can be many different things.

Yeah, that's what I think. That's the clarity I want to like kind of bring to this question is like founders should have conviction on themselves that they will make it like no matter what, they'll just play the long game. You know, that is different from conviction on the idea. Do you think

totally,

totally is conviction as a skill? Like, is it a skill that is coachable or like kind of you can learn that skill and adapt?

I think That's a good question. I think conviction is this word that gets thrown around and it does mean different things to different people. I think to me, there's conviction in different, different topics. Like I don't have conviction in every single thing in my life or in every, every single thing in the world. Like you've got a lot of people, like you don't, if you asked me for my convictions on what the, I don't know, like who's going to win the Super Bowl like next year or like pick, pick your sporting event. The Olympics just happened. So like, I like don't, I'm not following most of that stuff. I have no clue. Yeah. So I think, I think you definitely can't expect yourself to have conviction in everything. I think everyone selects the things in life that they care about, and ideally those are the things that you want to have more or less conviction on. So there's conviction in, um, who am I, like my values, like what kind of values am I gonna have as a person and just live my life on? Mm-hmm. Um, if you're building a, like there's conviction in the values you wanna build your, build a company around. There's, there's con— and then there's like conviction in yourself. So I think in terms of being a founder, that the 2 areas people usually need to think about and care about is conviction in themselves as a founder. And then there's conviction in specifically like the company, the idea, like what you're going to pursue. And I think they're very related, but they're not quite the same thing. And I think for most people, you start with yourself, like believing in yourself, unless like some people do start off and they actually get pulled into some idea that they're obsessed with. Right. And then later, and like not necessarily like having this huge desire to be a founder, and then later they kind of build up conviction around like being an entrepreneur. But I think for probably more people than not, or at least a lot of people, it's more of they want to be an entrepreneur, they want to take that risk. And then, but then there's like, do you have the conviction in yourself? Are you just born with that conviction or do you earn it over time? And then similar questions with the idea. I think we have all these myths around just what a generic founder is supposed to be like and how much conviction they have in themselves and how much conviction they have in their ideas. And so I think what you're alluding to is that most I think most of our myths in tech just like mythologize these highly confident in themselves, like entrepreneurs, like have no self-doubt. They always have the best ideas. They are like, they've never doubted that they would like not succeed. And I think there's some truth to that because if you look around in the world, there are, there are definitely people that have like never doubted themselves or barely doubted themselves in their lives. And so I'm not disputing that that is not a thing that exists. What I will dispute is that like that is the, the only path to it. I think for myself, I did not grow up in a, I grew up like poor by American standards. It's like in a poor, small rural town, very religious community, like part of like very Rust Belt Midwestern America. My parents never went to college. I didn't come from money. I didn't grow up in success. I didn't know what a software engineer was till I was 20. I didn't know what Harvard was until I was like halfway through college. Like I didn't know what the, like if you had asked me what the Ivy League was at 19 years old, I would have had no clue. And so like, same, I didn't, so I didn't come from a lot of the traditional places that many people did. Right. So I wasn't bred around success. I didn't grow up watching people win and be very financially successful, successful in their career. And so I think when you come from that background, maybe you're an immigrant and you moved here, maybe you just came from a poor background. I don't know, maybe your parents sucked and you were the unsuccessful child of multiple siblings. I don't know. Everybody has their story, but some people I think are bred around enough success Or for whatever reason, they just see it and therefore believe in themselves so much. They have a ton of self-conviction and never struggle with that. And then I think for many of the rest of us, we don't have that. We don't start there. Yeah. And I certainly didn't start there. I had to build conviction in myself over time. I think there was a thread of like, there's some kind of belief. Like I thought I at least had hope maybe or something like that. But I think it's taken many years to believe in myself the way I think you do ultimately need to, to be a founder. But I don't think that happened overnight to me.

Mm-hmm.

For me. And I also don't, I transparently think it's something I still have to work on. I have to fight for my confidence and reinforce my confidence and reinforce that self-belief every single day. And so I think it's just a very personal journey with where you are at and how much belief you have in yourself and how you build that up over time. And then I think very similar for the company itself, I think you have to start with yourself because frankly, it doesn't matter how much conviction you have an idea, if you don't believe in yourself, it's going to be very hard to make that happen. So you have to work on that piece. And I think eventually it kind of ties into this, like building conviction in the company that you're working on itself. But, but I kind of, I view them as very related, but separate concepts.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think what I really appreciate, I think at least I can relate to you as an immigrant who moved here 10 years ago. I kind of share a similar story with you, which I I come from a place where ambition is not even a thing. Dreams are like just like this thing you see on movies. You should never have a dream. Get a degree, go to a steady job, get married, have 2 kids, buy a house, buy a small car. That's it. You're done for life. And that cycle repeats. And it is really hard to build conviction. Forget about conviction, it's really hard to build that you can believe in something and you can achieve that. That is like a mirage, right? Like it's never a thing. Yeah. But I feel to your point, what I kind of dub ourselves, the set of people like us, We are not champions, but we have a championship mindset. It's like there is MJs of the world who are born champions or LeBrons, like, who are— they're champions. They figure out at a very young age, they're surrounded by people. They were kind of like groomed in a way that they were kind of brainwashed that you are a champion by default.

Yeah.

And there are other sets of people like Steph Curry, who's an underdog. Like, even though he has some background, his dad is in NBA and all that, he's still underestimated his whole life. He kind of still fights the confidence. So there are a set of people who have this mindset of, hey, I want to become a champion. I'm not a champion. There is a self-awareness aspect of it, but also like, hey, I want to become that. So I think I want to dub ourselves like, you know, people with championship mindsets. And I think there is no right or wrong, but like you said, right? Totally. It's all

like, yeah, everyone has a different starting point. It's, it's everyone. You have to, you have to start where you're at. You can't make your, you can't pretend to be something you're not. Like, I think this is true. It's a good analogy. The one when you use someone like Steph who is less, probably less, I don't think people expected him like LeBron, Kobe. They came into the NBA and they kind of perceived as they would be like some of the greatest ever, and they went on to be some of the greatest ever, whereas Steph was, uh, was much more under, uh, I guess underestimated coming, coming out of college, um, and even leading up to college. And I think like similarly though, in like entrepreneurship, like you've got people like Bill Gates who grew up incredibly privileged, probably one of the most privileged people in America, both in terms of where he went to school, who his parents were, how wealthy they were. Like he grew up literally, if you go like study his childhood, he had a, I think it was on a regular basis, he would just be having dinner at his home with like heads of state, powerful executives, entrepreneurs. He was just surrounded by success. And so if you've come from that place, it's very obvious to you, or at least I believe for many people, you don't have as hard of a time building up the idea that you would be a person like that because you've just been surrounded by it. It almost becomes the expectation. Whereas if you don't come from that, it feels like such a How could I ever get there? And so I think you just have to know where you're at and then build from there. And I think, yeah, there's no one way to win, but you've just got to figure out where you're at and then figure out who you are, what you have in you, and then how to get to the next level. For me, working at On Deck Capital, places I've been at before, I was surrounded by people that I frankly thought were better than me and in many ways probably were better than me. But I also proved to myself that I could cut it around those people and in those environments. And I think to some extent, if you don't start out with this default insane amount of breeding and confidence, you have to somehow build your way up to that. Sure. And everyone's journey's gonna be different to that. But if you don't have it, don't try to— I'm not a huge fan of faking it. I'm a bigger fan of proving to yourself and then eventually the world that you do have it. And if you prove it to yourself, there's a good chance you can go prove it to the world. But you have to prove it to yourself. You're not going to fake that you believe in yourself if you don't actually believe in yourself.

Yeah, I was about to go there, proving yourself. I want to ask, like, when is that first time, you know, you said you grew up mostly in Midwestern, you know, culture of the US, and, you know, even like in early 20s, you don't know tech and, you know, startups. What was that first kind of breakthrough you did? Like, is it that EV company you built, or even going back to that?

Yeah.

What was those early days like where Andrew, Andrew from who lived till that point 20 years, will be different from the rest of his life? What was that transition?

I think, I think there's like a few different inflection points along the way. And so it probably the first really big one that would stand out is when I was, I was like, not to get too deep, but I was a very depressed teenager and like our family really, really struggled as a teenager. We were like quite, quite poor in that period of time. Um, and I was just generally also like a very unhappy teenager. So I was pretty depressed. I was also fairly overweight actually at like 13, 14. And so when I was 15, I lost like, I think in about a 6-month period, I lost something to the effect of like 60, 70 pounds. Whoa. In a very short period of time. And so like got, like started lifting weights, got more fit than I'd ever have been before in my life. Um, and in that part of the Midwest, there's a lot of like, just like obesity and just lack of healthiness. It's quite common, sadly. And so changing that when no one else did that for me, no one pushed me to do that, but I made that decision to change myself. Wow. And I think the thing I learned there is I view that as an inflection point in my life, is it was the first time I learned agency. I had the ability to go change something about myself, change something about my environment, and therefore get a different set of results based on that. And it had nothing to do with anybody else. It was just entirely my own decision and then my own like consistent discipline to do the work that got me the outcome that I wanted. Mm-hmm. And so that, and that was like a really big inflection point and it truly changed how I saw myself and how I saw the world and my ability to impact my life. 'Cause I, 'cause I think up until that point, I, I felt very out of control. And I think after that, I don't necessarily think I thought I had control, but it's like, okay, I can actually influence what happens to me. So if I could do that with this, maybe I could do that to other things. And so I, I think then if you fast forward, Um, like I, so, so from that point I started, I worked, started working around that same age as well. Like I was working initially like 40 hours and eventually like by the time I was really through most of high school, I worked 60 to 80 hours a week or more.

Wow.

And did school full-time. I was homeschooled, so I did school in the evenings oftentimes. And so I worked a ton. And the reason I did that is I did that because I wanted to go to college. My parents hadn't gone to college. In my head, I didn't know much about college, but I was like, okay, it seems like the only way to not be poor is I got to go to college of some kind. And so then it's like, okay, but, and my parents can't pay for this, so I have to do it. And so I, I was saved a lot of money for, for someone that young working like very low paying jobs. I, I saved a good amount of money doing that. I learned a lot of agency just like through that process. And then, then I, I do go to like a very shitty liberal arts school in Florida because I didn't know what I was doing, but I like got to a school and paid my way through school. And so like, I, I think you had, I had like that increasing agency. over time there. And then in school, I ended up meeting these entrepreneurs in the Midwest. They were building, it was essentially like a very niche braking system in the recreational vehicle industry. So think like a— Right. Literally like a camper is pulling a vehicle behind it. There is a very good chance that it's using their braking system. They like dominated this very niche market. Right. So I worked, I was interning for this family business. At this point, I've decided that I'm interested in entrepreneurship, but I Didn't really understand it. And so I'm just like kind of pulling on threads. I ended up there, I'm an intern, and they sell the business. It is a very good outcome for the founders of this business. And I had gotten to be close to the founders of that business. And 2 of them spun out and started a new company after that acquisition. That company was called Olympus. And they were actually going to go manufacture an entire like low-speed electric vehicle in the same industry, recreational vehicles, where they had been before. And so I didn't know what I was doing, but I was, they like basically, they basically brought me on as like their, their third co-founder. Oh. We raised some money and then that, so that, that's how I ended up like getting into something like, it was a weird startup cuz it was, it wasn't really a, it was still in the Midwest. Yeah. It wasn't a full-blown like venture-backed thing. We raised from like local rich individuals basically.

Right.

And the, in the business, the funny thing about it too is like it wasn't even really successful. Like it was a very hard business. We, I think we were, right. It, it all, we worked on it for a couple years, had some success and did sell it, but it, it was like we sold it mostly cuz we knew it wasn't a very good business. And so And we just didn't want to lose people's money. So it wasn't a success, but being at that business and being surrounded by people that were higher agency and trying to build something from scratch was intoxicating. And it did teach me a lot just about like, okay, the world is somewhat moldable. And it kind of gave me a taste for like, okay, I like this. And so, and also being from a still relatively uncredentialed background, generally I found that startups and people in that scene were more likely to give me a shot than I don't know, some investment bank on the East Coast. And so I went from there to a venture fund in the Midwest, but I was still in the Midwest. And I think I quickly realized there that the problem was like Midwestern tech is just like people play too small. And I wanted to be in a more ambitious part of tech. I wanted to be either in San Francisco or New York or someplace like that. And so I'd say the next big inflection was like On Deck really, which is a place that we both worked at. And On Deck, I joined as an early employee, like during COVID So the world was still locked down. But what I saw at On Deck is this company that was clearly taking off, growing fast. They had like just raised the seed round. They clearly had some kind of like inflection and they had a lot of talented people at the company and around it. And so my bet with On Deck was if I went there, proved myself, I could essentially like break my way into Silicon Valley, start building the network I needed to ultimately get to, like my goal was like, I wanted to start my own company. But I knew where I was at in the Midwest and like what I had, like where I was at then. Like I didn't really have the network or didn't have the resources. I wasn't around the kind of talent that I wanted to be. And so I made that jump even though On Deck was not as successful as I think many of us wanted to be. Like for those listening, they went from like $0 to $20 million in revenue. We raised a ton of money, like raised hundreds of millions of dollars, all this stuff. And then it kind of petered out. Yeah. But being there at that time around really talented people, I was able to build that network. I was able to work around like a lot of really, really talented people and improve myself to those people. And I'd say that was like the last, like really big one is that inflection point. I kind of had the first inflection point where I like start just like seeing my own agency. I have like kind of these like further inflections where I just, I kind of go off that and just like build my way up into realizing, okay, I like tech. I like this entrepreneurial thing. I wanna like start my own company. And then On Deck is really the moment where I feel like I kind of broke my way into the room of Silicon Valley per se, but also felt like I belonged there. 'Cause I think prior to On Deck, I doubted if I could cut it. It's like, okay, I can like work in Midwestern tech, but could I kind of cut it in San Francisco or New York? Yeah. And so I think after that, I no longer doubted that. And so I think like I would kind of count in terms of like both mindset and then opportunity. I think those were the points along the way that I Were big for me.

I think big takeaway right there is you should build your way up. You should take small bets, you know, do small things, and it compounds over time. I think, you know, we both have kind of similar stories in different ways. You know, I did the same thing. Like, you have to build little projects, you know, you build leverage, you build specific knowledge, you double down on that, double down on that, and you get opportunities. break them, then, you know, kind of like we're still not there yet. I can talk about you as well. You're still hungry. You're still kind of want to prove yourself as a founder. So it's so interesting because there's some kind of overlap between both of us and I'm so glad you're talking my language is what I'm telling.

Yeah. I mean, it's like definitely not made it. It's just like, but like the small wins that just You just like keep at it and things compound. If you just stick with things long enough, eventually something usually breaks your way.

Yeah. And that brings me to my next topic is about betting on people. And you recently posted about, you know, post on Regina, again, On Deck. The folks there took a bet on you. And that kind of one decision really changed everything. Like how Steve Jobs says, you can only look backwards and connect the dots. Now you look backwards, like you found your co-founder there, you met, you know, Partytown people there, like so many things that happened because of that one decision. Totally. So not even more of like a decision, but it's a bet that someone took on someone. So Talk to me about, again, the impact on betting on people and why should people take more bets on other folks?

Yeah, I mean, I can only speak to this as much as I've experienced it or maybe been on the other side of it. But I think that On Deck was definitely like a career-changing one for me. It's what broke me, as I said, into Silicon Valley. And I think like it helped me improve my own confidence. But yeah, I'd met Many, many. We have a ton, like I think like dozens of ex-OnDeck people have angel invested in my company now, including all of the founders of OnDeck, like Julie and David, Eric. They all angel invested. And so like that, that, that was just like big. Many, many people I just like met through it that like weren't like even directly a part of OnDeck, but just met during my time there have like been valuable in ways and just helpful and good people to know in ways I could never have expected, either as investors or just like friends of the company. So there's, there's a, there's that piece of it for sure. I met Steven there. Steven was head of engineering. at On Deck. And so he and I met there, we worked together. And so there's a good chance TaxWire and everything we're doing now doesn't happen with— probably at least doesn't happen the same way without On Deck. Right. I met Jordy and the PartyRound team when they were just starting out. And yeah, I later joined as head of growth. And so I think I can really tie a lot of things back there. And so I think definitely I would not be where I'm at without people, different people, many people. Taking bets on me along the way. I think Regina being one person who was the person who ultimately decided to hire me at On Deck. And so I wouldn't be here without her for sure. And so I think you just have to do the best you can and hope that people will take those bets on you and then make them kind of prove them right when they do. But even since then, our investors that invested in our company also bet on us. And so I think on the flip side, I think What I have tried to do is do my best to when you see someone who you believe is like like worth taking taking that bet on in whatever context, do your best to to pay it forward. I I think it like um like for example like I hired um someone on my team at On Deck at one point as an intern who I think had like less of a of an obvious resume than some. Like she she was pretty young. She was like nineteen. Her name is Vivian Meng. I think quite highly of her. And so she would've been successful with or without me, but she shot me this very impressive cold email when I was hiring an intern for my team at On Deck. And she was just less experienced, but she clearly could do good work. It was just obvious in how she wrote this email and all this other stuff. And so we took the bet on hiring her, and then she went on to just be exceptionally successful at On Deck. And then like later other places she's gone in her career. And so it's just like some, you, you never know. And so I think it's like you're always looking. I think it's good to always look out for people. And if nothing else, even just like, I try to occasionally when I can, when someone, a student or just another founder, whatever, someone like trying to break into startups, like if I think I can maybe help them and they just seem like they want it and they're, they're hungry and they're hustling, I do, I do my best to be, be helpful to people where I can be. And then sometimes hopefully, like, it's the nice thing too about like starting your own company is that you also start getting the chance to like hire people. Like we're recruiting for an open role right now. And like, I think, you know, it's like one of those things you go through, you're looking at like some people have more like established resumes and some people are more, a little bit more junior or like less proven. And so I think it's lucrative just in terms of like purely like if you can find someone early and take that bet, it is, it is. Good for you because you found this like key person who is not valued as much as the rest of the market. And that's valuable in building a company. But generally too, it's just like super fulfilling to see someone go succeed. And it's like, not just because of you, but it's like being able to just be a small part of their journey is like super rewarding. And I view it as like, I wouldn't be here without that. And so I think it's like one of the, one of the best things about Silicon Valley is there are a lot of people that try to pay it forward and try to help the next generation. Absolutely.

Yeah, totally. I think it's the, the Valley is made by people who pay it forward, like, period, right? Like, everybody is kind of connected. That's why it's still so impactful there. Like, when you go to SF, you see like these people help, trying to help you. Not all, not everybody's going to come forward, but I think that's why you have to like surround yourselves with people who take bets.

Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, I'm sure people have like— I would imagine people have helped you and taken bets on you over the course of your career as well.

Absolutely, 100%. I think, man, where should I start? I think this is for another discussion, but so many folks, they just responded. You know, like I said, I used to be on the other side where I used to cold DM. And once, one fun story, I cold DM'd Naval Ravikant when I was building this simple, stupid side project about him, and he responded. He responded, he's added a few comments. We ended up kind of working virtually and, you know, shipping that simple project. So again, going back to those, I feel my biggest takeaway for people who are on the other side, not people who are taking bets, is you have to Put yourself out and do things, multiple shots, take multiple shots, present yourself. And then people kind of recognize that, like, you know, in a sense, oh, he or she has like proof of work, he or she has like, you know, social network, and he or she has this insight. Let me kind of like take a bet, right? I think there are some set of people, again, the other side, but you have to pick and choose who you want to surround yourself with, or at least on Twitter, for example.

Sort of like—

It's all about like, you know, how you present yourself and how positive you want to be, you know, talk about your dreams transparently. And, you know, it's kind of like a thing. I don't know how to— am I explaining it right or wrong? But absolutely, you know, I would have not been here without People like Ryan who took a bet on me and hired me at Product Hunt, Naval Ravikant for that little cold email. I'm still like, I have the juice of, whoa, Naval replied. And I do have access to his DMs. That means, oh, whoa, there is a channel, right? So there is a jolt of things that come from taking shots and from people like them taking bets. But yeah, it's a serendipitous thing. And when you are on Twitter, you do these things and people react. And that's how I feel like you've kind of explained how you built Taxware as well. I want to talk about that transition. You know, you were at On Deck, you were at PartyRound, you took those lead growth roles. So one question before we go dive into like Taxwire. Talk to me about the, you know, as a founder, you have to do everything in the beginning, in the early stage, right? When it comes to growth, when a founder, he or she should especially target about growth, you know, there are like multiple things. You have to talk to customers, you have to, you know, build product distribution, so many things. Yeah. When is the right time to focus fully on growth in your opinion? Because you saw the highs, the hypergrowth phase at On Deck in, you know, so many things. So, uh, I'm curious to know your thoughts.

I mean, I don't think I'm, I'm an expert. Um, I think that, I think it's a trite thing to say because everyone knows this in startups, but product-market fit is kind of the thing that matters like the most at the end of the day. And so like No amount of like growth skills are gonna fix a lack of product market fit. But I do think you, you do always have to be thinking about distribution even when you're trying to get to product market fit. You need to be able to get enough, like in front of enough customers, get enough shots on goal, get people excited about enough about like what you're trying to do or about even just you to be able to have that chance. Right. And so I think that it is something you always have to think about. I think there's a danger in thinking about it too much. Like I think in the case of On Deck, I think On Deck was a complicated business. That was a product of its time. And not, I think because On Deck was actually a sum of like 20 or 30 other different, like individual communities and business lines and products. And like there was an investing fund. We had a lot going on. And, um, I think it's some of those—

There were special projects. We tried.

Yeah, we had so much going on. And so I think like part of the issue there is that like different parts of the business had more product market fit than the other parts of the business. And I think On Deck, as we scaled, we were, we had so much hype and we're so good at like growth and marketing, et cetera, that we can kind of make anything look like it had product market fit for 3 to 6 months. Doesn't necessarily mean it had like actual product market fit. And so I think even though pieces of On Deck had product market fit, the collective thing never had as much product market fit as it like sometimes could look like it had. And I think that was always an issue for us. And so, and like even just like being at the company while the numbers were all going up, it still felt like, okay. Like some of these things just never fully felt sustainable. And I think we were always wrestling with that and never found an answer to that at On Deck. I think at Capital, so originally Capital was called PartyRound. It kind of came out of the gate with like being a very marketing-first company. Like most people, many people to this day still know the company more for the marketing and the memes and all the stuff we did from like the drops, New York Tech Week, the drops. Yeah. And so I think the good side of that is that we had a ton of attention and we punched way above our weight in distribution. For how early we were as a company, the downside of that is we never we never really converted that into like a real like product business with like product market fit. I think we had the opportunity to do that. Like the actual product roadmap that we ultimately landed on is now like working actually for other companies in in that space, but we just didn't execute on it fully. So I think like just understanding that growth and marketing and attention is only one piece of the game, and it's not going to. Inherently make you successful, and a lot of times it can make you ignore the real systemic issues in your business. Like it was obvious that like that alone was not going to make us successful at Party Round slash Capital, even to some degree at On Deck. And so I think like it does. I think it can be dangerous to focus on it like too much early on. So I think in terms of like the lessons I at least took took from that and go into doing what I'm doing now is that it does matter a lot. I think I think for a first more or less first time founder. I think I probably think about distribution an above average amount, but I also don't think it's everything because I've seen— I actually think PartyRound and Capital specifically is an example of a company that almost did the reverse. We had a marketing plan before we fully knew what our product roadmap was. Right. And I think that's almost maybe the example where that goes too far in the other direction. And so I think for For this business, I think early on I just like, I didn't really think about marketing a ton. I think, but I think even as I was formulating, like, okay, as I was like validating the problem and like talking to customers and like doing, doing the things that, that I, that generally I'd imagine anyone that's like trying to build a B2B software company of some kind is doing. I was always trying to like, I think naturally I have like trained my brain to think about like, okay, like if in the back of my, in your mind, you're always calibrating like. You're starting small, you're starting with these customers, you're starting with maybe even this one customer, but you're thinking about, okay, how many more? If you're, say you're building something for one customer, but you're kind of thinking about, okay, could I get in front of 10 more people like this? Are there other people like this company? How would I get in front of them? Where are they at? As you're talking to them about the product you're thinking of building or are building or the pain that they have, you can also find signals in those conversations for Like, for example, if you're, if they bought another product in a similar space, or if they're, you're looking at replacing a current product they use, you can learn about like, where did they discover that product? Like, who do they ask when they're like looking to buy other products? Like, where do they spend time on the internet? Like who, like you can like learn these things by talking to people. And this is not marketing per se, but you're like, as you learn about the product you're trying to build and the pain and the problems that your customer has, you're also learning how to message, how to distribute to them. I don't really view them as separate pieces of the process. I view it as it's all kind of part of the same thing at the end of the day. And so I think I don't necessarily think you have to be doing tons of growth and marketing and whatever right away, but I do think you always want to be thinking of, okay, how would I go do distribution for this company in this problem space? Right. Whatever.

I think once you take care of your product and talking to customers, everything you do is kind of like a byproduct, right? On the side, it kind of snowballs itself. A little bit of you sharing your stories comes under marketing, building in public. There might be a growth idea when you launch. So it's all like kind of— I do see where you're going with that answer. One curious follow-up there before we talk about Taxwire. You've done many things at these 2 companies, you know, in growth roles. Do you see a pattern of unconventional growth that you learn to, or at least planning to adapt to use at Taxfire from your previous growth experiences?

It's a good question. I think like I try to just think from, I think I get from marketing, I think I get inspiration from a lot of things that definitely some of the things that I learned at those places. I think it's dangerous to try to over-replicate any, any one thing that like worked at a different company. 'Cause also too, like the market, things are always changing. Every business is, is different. So I think it's important to think from first principles and to draw inspiration even, even outside of like what it is you're, you're currently doing or have done before. Yeah. Um, but I think if anything did, if a couple of things have like, like, uh, that I've, I learned from those experiences that I am taking to now is that brand specifically, be it your personal brand or your company brand, or ideally they're kind of different sides of the same coin.

Yeah.

Is an unfair advantage if you have it. I think a lot of companies in B2B specifically don't, don't take brand very seriously. Um, but like, there's a good saying by an older marketing, marketing person who I, it might even be dead now. I forget the name, the name of the person, but it's essentially that, uh, If you have like brands get to play, if you have a brand, you get to play the game of capitalism on easy mode. And I think there's a lot of truth to that because it's like at Capital, I would go into partnership conversations with like bigger fintech companies that we were trying to do some kind of BD deal with. And they just like, we would get on the phone, like this happened with Stripe at one point. We got on the phone with Stripe and like we're this like tiny startup, seed stage startup, but Stripe It like was like really like the, the people there were really into, uh, like some of the marketing that we'd done. And so it's like we, we punched like the awareness that people had of us.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and the, like the way they resonant, resonated with who we were or who we purported ourselves to be was like punched far above like where we were at as the company. And there were like much bigger businesses that did not have that going on for them. And so when you have that going for you, both about your personal brand or the company brand, or just generally people Feeling like they have something of a relationship or an awareness of you, and generally like feeling positive towards you—that is a huge unfair advantage. And so I think relating that into what I'm doing now, I just like seeing that for just both like being myself on the internet and then generally like being involved in marketing for companies. When you pull that off and have that more like one-to-many relationship at scale, it is a complete unfair advantage. And so I think that that's probably something that I think about maybe more than some founders do, just because because I've been on the other side of seeing how. of a factor they can be.

Yeah, personal brands. I think it's an important thing in 2024. If you're a founder, you don't have a personal brand, it's kind of really hard to, you know, do business, whether you're building B2B, B2C. And there are like different factors. I'm not saying it's an absolute way to do it, but at least having a personal brand, talking about your lifestyle, just like how you talked about Rajshri Chicken, right? It's a thing. It's like Being transparent on the internet is going to help you build a company in a different way. 10, 20 years ago, that's not a thing at all. Like, who gives a fuck about what your opinions are? Right now, everybody's like, whoa, what is your diet? What is your gym schedule? What is your productivity stack? How do you think about solving a problem? This is not at all entirely— what are your habits? What books do you recommend? People are getting more into other people's lives in a positive way. Again, not in a stalking way, but I think you're absolutely true. I feel I can resonate with that. Having a personal brand is an indirect way of growing your own company. Yeah, I think that kind of brings me to the point of TaxFi. You left you know, capital party round, you did fractional work, you accidentally found this problem. So what happened there? And I read your blog, we will definitely point to people like, you know, you've kind of wanted to do like a bunch of things, not just this one. And the more specific question I have is, how did you find this is the right one? And you went on, picked on this one, the decision behind, okay, I have to fix, you know, B2B tax compliance versus the other things.

Yeah, yeah, you can do— I think most— I think there's like 2 different types of founders. There's people that are, they like are born obsessed with like their job. I don't know, they've like, if you've always been into coffee to like an extreme level, that you were always like, I'm going to start some kind of business around coffee, or at some point maybe you just fall in love with a very specific domain or problem or product or whatever, and like, I'm going to go do this thing. I think for many of us, it's like we could do a lot of things, and it's more of like we enjoying the game and the craft of building something and building a company. It doesn't necessarily have to be a specific thing. I think I more fall into that bucket. Where I could do a lot of things and be happy. But I do think you do have to have a sufficient level of aptitude for what it is you're working on. But to me, things that matter more is, do I find the domain sufficiently interesting? And for me, I am the kind of nerd that would read about payments on the weekend because I think how the core fundamentals of how our economy works and just how things, products, whatever in the world works is really interesting. And then two, I care a lot about who my customer is, and I think it's really important to like if you're gonna try to build a product and a business, you're ultimately you exist to serve a customer, and if you don't do that well, you will eventually cease to exist. And I think a lot about can I be obsessed with and just love this customer, love spending time with them, love serving them, love trying to like get inside their brains and understand how they think and like what like problems they have. And so forth. And so I think those things mattered to me a lot. And then I guess if there was like a third thing, I think winning matters. And so if you found something you're sufficiently interested in, if you found, I guess, a customer you love serving, I think the third thing is just like you need to win. And so it doesn't matter how passionate you are about something. If you're passionate about a topic and you're trying to build a company around it and you're losing, it does not feel good. If you have no momentum, it does not feel good. And so you're not going to be fulfilled doing that. And so I think momentum and winning matters a lot more than people give it credit for. And so I think when people start companies, they get really caught up in the idea, but working on an idea that you're really into that's not working is going to— you're going to be miserable. And so what I trended towards is I was pretty clear after I left capital that I wanted to start a company. I wasn't sure what though. I had really not been thinking about starting a company up until I left. And so I kind of spent a few months trying a few different things and like talking to a lot of customers and trying to figure out like what felt right for me. And I was actually working on something different, but with TaxWire, I had taken a fractional head of finance and ops role at a friend's company that I invested in. And I just ended up like dealing with sales tax compliance across multiple different states. So that company was a school lunch marketplace. Think like If you, if you're a K through 12 school or you have a parent that's in a child that's in a K through 12 school, like this basically replaces the school lunch cafeteria meal program and you just order or your child orders like food that day and it is delivered through the, through this marketplace. And so this company is doing extremely well. It's like the fastest growing school lunch program in America. Wow. And, but the reality is if you're running a business that like supplies food to, to kids for lunch. Across America, you have to comply with US sales and use tax laws in all of those different states. And so it's not like the IRS, like each state has their own rules for like what's taxable, what the rate is. And it literally goes from like the city to like the county, the city, the municipality, like state, they all have like different laws. And so it gets really complicated if you're like the person running this business, trying to figure out like,

Mm-hmm.

What the hell, how the hell am I supposed to collect taxes on all of these transactions across all of these different places in, in like 15 different states. I have to register there. Like, when do we, like, how do we accurately collect the taxes? And then I have to like file returns in these different places. And so it gets, it gets really complicated. And so that, uh, I, I was trying to solve that problem and I bought the, the current leading product in that market to try to solve this problem while I was at that company. And just, I kind of like fell into it, but then got very interested in the problem because it was like one of those things where it was like very obvious that Okay, I feel this problem. This company I'm at feels this problem. I'm talking to a few other friends and they've had similar issues with with the same problem. And and so it just kind of like it kind of happened. Like I was in a head state where I wanted to start a company, and and I I I think I found this at that at the right point in time. And it kind of the I guess the it just it just and it just like made sense. It was like one of those things. It was like extremely obvious that okay, a lot of companies are operating businesses where you sell. Software, e-commerce products, like whatever, all across the country, all across the world even. And so you were going to have to deal with taxes at some point in these different jurisdictions, and nobody has time to be an expert on those things. So it was just, it was very obvious that a very easy modern product needed to exist to automate and streamline all of that. And I didn't, none of the products I looked at using like did what I needed them to do. And so it was like right combination of like looking to start a company at that point in time, but also having very viscerally felt that this problem that I'm dealing with.

It reminds me from your answer about a couple of things. One is founders who take educated guesses and they build startups because, you know, they have like an insight, like you said, on the domain, a particular domain or an industry or like even like a problem. And they succeed because they're taking a shot with that educated guess. And there is this other set of founders who solve their own problems. problem. And I kind of love the transition you went from, hey, I love reading about payments. That's in a mode of like, hey, maybe I want to build something here too. Okay, I'm working at this thing. I found a problem. Let's go dive into deeper levels and then fix it. It's so kind of like interesting. I just want to point that out. And the other thing, I feel one of the— in other words, Andrew Kasteki from Acquire. interviewed him and I asked him, how did you find or decide to go on Acquire, like full on? And he said one of the questions he asked himself or suggests founders is that, ask yourself, will you spend the next 10 years solving this problem? If you have that answer is yes, and if you have that conviction, just go build it. It'll work it out. So I think in your, in your to your answer as well, it's kind of the same way, right? You want to be here because it's that passion blending into conviction. Uh, this one put there—

Actually though, actually, like, uh, and quick, I just realized I am back to back, so just quick heads up, I'll probably have to jump in like a couple minutes. Um, but, but I, I can, I can go over enough to like make sure we like find a good stopping point. But I actually have a different take though than Andrew did on, on the— from, uh, just like, should you— like the 10-year question, I got asked that a lot. I actually think I've written a post about this. Um, I don't I don't think that, I don't think that like for most entrepreneurs asking yourself, would I work on this for the next 10 years of my life? Is that helpful? Especially if your career has not even been like gone for 10 years. Like I'm 27. I've like, I was like not doing startups. I was not like having this career 10 years ago. So like my career is shorter than 10 years. How the hell do I know if I'm going to want to work on this for 10 years? I think for most people that, that like, That's true. That gets you into asking yourself all of these existential questions that are very hard to answer. And so I actually think the better thing to ask yourself is like, just, can I win at this? It's like, if you are the type of person that just loves, again, backs to like, I love this customer, I find this interesting. And I like generally love the craft of obsessing over a customer and like building products to solve their problem and building a team. Like, I love this stuff. Then I think what matters more is like, will this work or not? And so I think like, asking that 10-year question is completely useless. What I did instead is once I had sufficient conviction that, okay, I think I'm really into this, I think this might work, I put a date in the calendar and I think 60 days ahead and just didn't look up for those 60 days. I didn't think about working on something else. I didn't think about any other ideas. I just heads down worked on this. Before those 60 days were up, it was just very obvious that this was there was something to this. I thought it was going to work, at least to some extent. And so I was just like all in. And so I think for a lot of people, actually, that 10-year question is the wrong question to ask. Yeah, the better question is like, as long as it's met like a minimum threshold of like, I like this, the better question to ask is like, will this, like, will it work or not? Because if it doesn't matter if you work on it for 10 years, if it's not, if it's going to fail, it's kind of, that's kind of like a pointless question.

I think that's very interesting. I think first-time founders should ask, will this work or not? Second-time founders or successful founders who've done things before, they should ask like, hey, should I spend the next 3 years on this problem or not? That's a very interesting, you know, take. I would definitely— I see what the truth behind that question. I know we're on time, so let me ask you a couple of things. What I'm very curious, once you have a problem, the 60 days, It's done, you decided. Why didn't you go after applying for accelerators or like YC or any other things? Like, you know, there are like a million accelerators out there, Techstars and as such, versus like going after like, you know, hey, let me tap on my network and, you know, raise money. I'm just curious.

Yeah, I think, um, I think there are 2 quick reasons to that. I think that the generally one, like, I'm for the most part like, uh, I think accelerators really make you, unless like you already are working on a thing and you have a ton of conviction, it's just that you end up playing a lot of games to get into the accelerator and then to like try to get enough traction for demo day. And like, I think some of the accelerators just like lean into like playing the game of building a startup versus like focusing on what really matters for your specific business. Right. And so I think I just like was less, was a little bit skeptical of some of that. And then I think like I was confident enough in my network that I thought I could raise money without having to be in an accelerator when the time came. Right. And so I think those were the 2 main reasons. And then I do think one downside of places like YC, which I have a lot of respect for, is that it does really, really push you into this box where everyone's all kind of trying to do the same things. And while that's good in some ways, I think it can lead to just thinking the same way everyone else is thinking, which is not always the best thing for for your specific business. So I think I prized the freedom of trying to like keep things very first principles versus like doing whatever I felt like I needed to do once I got into an accelerator.

I think last thing, it almost feels, you wrote about this as well, like, you know, looking at boring problems. Curious to know your thoughts on Why should founders pay attention to boring problems? Even the startup you said before, it's so kind of— it goes over your head, like ordering food for your kid. That's not usual, right? So unusual. Even like the problem you're solving is so unusual. The problem exists, but it's so unusual to put a ribbon on it. So yeah, talk to me about like How one founder should approach looking at boarding problems?

Yeah, I think, um, I think it just depends on like who you are and different people can get excited by different things. Again, like I think it's mostly, are you focused on doing something that's a passion project that maybe you can make be a great business? Or are you focused on like, are you the kind of person that can be interested in a lot of things and generally just like wants to work on something that's going to win? And I think A lot of very sexy ideas also have a lot of competition and are generally a lot harder to make work too. And also a lot of what we decide is sexy is entirely based on what the people around us think is cool, interesting, and sexy. So if all you do is hang out with fintech payment nerds, you're probably actually going to have a social circle that thinks doing a payments business is really interesting versus if you're hanging around a ton of cool kids in Brooklyn who are into the next thing in culture, They're probably not going to be into your fintech startup. And so it's like, I think these things are all like very memetic to begin with. And so I think it just keep it first principled on like, what do you care about? Like, what do you want to do? Do you want to do something that's cool or do you want to do something that works, solves a problem and is going to be a real business? And if you want to do that, like there's a lot of like unsexy problems in the world that need to be solved. And so I think, I think if you're, if you're okay with like doing something like that, then I think it becomes less about like, is this sexy or not?

That's very interesting. And I know we are out of time, so Andrew, appreciate you joining. And I can't wait for TaxFi to get launched. I kind of got a sense that it's in stealth and, you know,

more to come,

more to come, more to come. And hopefully maybe around this episode goes live, we can like, you know, plug that. But any closing thoughts before we wrap up?

Not really, man. I appreciate you having me. Thanks for doing this and putting out so many good vibes. into the universe and yeah, excited about all the things you're up to as well.

Absolutely. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate the kind words. And that's it, folks. Andrew, I think we should do another one sometime because there is so much to unpack the post-launch of Taxfire and like the lessons from there. But yeah, folks, you know, we have awesome founders joining the show, you know, sharing their stories, the highs, lows, everything else in between. So stay tuned and cheers from the Sandbox.