Zachary Hamed - How using AI and design thinking made Clay the next generation rolodex!

people like land in SF and all of a sudden they're at like 18 different events. And that, like that, but that ethos is like a thing, right? Like that ethos is a sort of pay it forward mentality that again, you cannot productize. The minute you productize it, I think a lot of people like try to make this like a gamified sort of, it's like it loses all of its magic. It's, and so we're not trying to productize that. What we're trying to do is extend your memory. We're trying to just like enhance the sort of Dunbar's number to more than the 150 people you can think about.

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 underdog 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 a chip on their shoulder, and convert obstacles into opportunities. Buckle up as I'll be bringing some authentic founders, VCs, community builders, and content creators who 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 our awesome sponsor acquire.com. Selling a business is as tough as building a business. As someone who went through this process once, selling my own startup, I know the pain it takes to get to the end zone. This is where our sponsor 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 forever 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 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 to do sales and marketing, and in 6 months you triple your revenue. The reality isn't as simple. Situations may be different for every founder facing these crossroads, but too many times the story ends up being one of inaction and stagnation until the become business— 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/sharath and see for yourself if this is the right option for you. Now let's get into today's episode. Startups are built on relationships, and I can very much confidently say that what you're doing is a messy thing, meaning everyone struggles, everyone goes back and forth maintaining like you know the people you meet. You forget the context. It's a messy thing. As someone who's been in tech for a long time, I sometimes struggle a lot because I meet a lot of people. I'm a community builder. I go back and forth about the context and finding, and sometimes I screw up. It's a pretty open secret. To put an end to this misery, my next guest is building Clay, a one-stop shop to maintain your relationships and build thoughtful habits when it comes to people. Zach is a Harvard CS grad, Thiel Fellow. He's built a product team at Goldman Sachs, co-founded a dev tool startup, which I want to talk about, made it to Forbes 30 Under 30. I can go on and on and on and on about this guy. I love— one thing I love, really love about Zach is his design thinking and the way he incorporated everything into Clay. Clay has won so many awards, I can't list them all because there are so many. But without further ado, I want to just dive into the conversation and introduce the man himself. Zach, how are you feeling, man?

Feeling great. Happy Tuesday. Happy fall. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Especially, I think you're from New York, right? So I think, I assume it's more beautiful there.

It is. All the leaves are changing. This is my favorite time of year.

Yeah.

Just, yeah. It's a good time to reflect and get some work done.

I love the New York vibe, the hustle, the grind. I lived there for almost like 9 months at one point of my life. And man, it's hard. It's really hard to survive in New York.

It's true. It's true. I'm born in New York, so I never really left, but it is a It is definitely a tough place to be, for sure. I think it's— yeah.

Let's talk about New York. I do have a question about it, but you went to Harvard, which is kind of in Boston area. And so it feels like you never left the East Coast. You've been all over your life. So talk to me about Why New York when you decided to like jump into startups? You know, most of the people, founders, they moved to either Silicon Valley. Now Austin is an up-and-coming hub when it comes to startups. So talk to me about the New York startup scene and why you love New York so much.

Yeah, that's a great question. I am from New York originally, so part of it is definitely grounded in my, I think, familiarity with the city and And knowing people there, knowing just, I mean, you just, once you've lived somewhere for a while, you're just very comfortable with it. I did in college, and I recommend to like, you know, college students will come to me and be, you know, ask for mentorship or advice or stuff. I'll often advise people to, you know, do a summer in SF for sure. You know, you'll either love it or hate it. I think usually people fall in one of the two buckets. It's a great city. I loved— I did a summer there. I was interning at Jawbone, which was a hardware company back in 2012, 2013. And that they made those like speakers and then they went to like actually wearable like health stuff, like a competitor to Fitbit at the time. And I love— I mean, that was— they were like the hot company in SF at that point, like design-led. I was also like a Kleiner Perkins fellow. So I met a bunch of other Kleiner Perkins companies. Flipboard was coming up at that point, you know, a bunch of stuff like that. But SF is like totally infectious, has a great energy. I just, I think part of it was actually not being able to drive as a college student because I was from New York.

Oh.

I didn't have a license, so I couldn't drive. And so I was biking everywhere. And I was like, if I have to bike up a hill, another hill, like I'm going to lose my mind.

But is that, is that real thing that most New Yorkers don't have licenses?

If you grew up in New York, I think a lot of people, I mean, it's a very, it's a very, I mean, most, most New Yorkers don't even have a car. And so, yeah, no, it's like a real, I think the, it's been funny to see because a lot of, a lot of New York people have moved to SF and a lot of SF people have moved back to New York. I think the other, the real reason why is I think I felt a more of a diversity of opinion and of interests and of people in New York than I did in SF. And I love tech. I live and breathe, you know, startups. But it was really nice to have people and friends outside of tech. And, you know, you have like, you know, I worked in You know, at the intersection of finance and tech for a little bit. That was you know something that probably would only be possible in New York. And you know you meet lawyers, you meet people in media, you meet people in you know retail, you meet people in D to C. Like all of these companies that just don't you know exist in the same way in SF. I saw a tweet from I think it was Pavel. Asparuhov, who I know Delian really well, but his brother, and he was like the New York energy, like really seeps into how you think about startups because like you just like you get out of the train, you're just like walking fast. Yeah, people are like moving fast and you're like, you know, like you're working, the grind is there and like you're working long hours and then you go out and like you have it, you know, like it's like a more extreme version of everything. And that actually like does help with like company building, I think. But I see both sides of it. So, um, and my co-founder Matt is in SF, so I love visiting him. He loves it there. Um, so we, we get the best of both worlds, I think.

Yeah, best of both worlds. That's, that's a good strategic move right there. But

yeah,

no, I, I 100% agree. And one of the things, uh, when I started my career, uh, when I was like working in, in the US, the first job I got is in, in New York. And my God, it's like the city moves.

Yeah,

it's like you can't negotiate that. It's the default rule. You have to move. You have to move fast. You have to hop on the train. You know, I used to live near Princeton in New Jersey and I have to like take the train.

Metro-North.

Yeah, it's like that grind is so hard and people like, you know, take calls on the train. So I see what you're saying when it comes to, but never ever a founder mentioned that before is what I want to point it out, which is it really helps you build your company because everybody moves, right? Everybody wants to make it. So also I'm a big fan of Casey Neistat. I don't know if you have met him. Yeah, he's great. He's great. Lots of people in New York, right? So yeah, let's go back to the early days, right? You know, you were part of Harvard, graduated, and then you co-founded a company when you were a Thiel Fellow. So talk to me about the experience going to, you know, Thiel Foundation. Did you really like leave college to join, or did you graduate? Like, what's the scene?

I did graduate. I was just really young for my grade, so I was able to do both, which was just a timing thing. Most Thiel Fellows— it's changed a few times, but most Thiel Fellows at that time were just younger, so they did have to drop out. I was young for my grade, so I had— I was able to do it. It was a great experience. And that was— and that was part of the reason I wanted to be in SF, right? Because a lot of the community at that point was in SF. All of the mentors, all of the Past fellows, and I think that was really important. I think a few people then started branching off into New York. We had like a smaller community in New York, but it was definitely like more of an offshoot. But as part of that, I was working on a company called Bowery, which was a dev tools company, and it was in the early days of Docker. So Docker had just come out and I had met a few guys out in SF and other interns who, you know, we all had felt this pain point of setting up a dev environment being too difficult. And so Docker was this really transformative technology and we were like, oh, we're going to make like a great desktop experience, Mac, and then eventually cross-platform. desktop experience that, you know, sort of abstracted away the complexity of Docker, but then made it really easy. Like you see a project on GitHub, let me get it running. Like, and it's funny because that's still a problem today in a lot of ways. Yeah. But, you know, we learned a ton. But that's through that experience, I actually met my now co-founder, Matt. We were working in this coworking, like, like enterprise-focused, like space accelerator type thing in New York. And his company and my company were going through similar pain points. And we had very similar sort of outlooks on how to build companies. Matt's an immigrant, I'm first generation, like, I think we thought a lot about—

Nice.

We just aligned values in a lot of ways. And so that's how I met him.

Oh, that's nice. And you've been there for 1 year. What's the deal right there? Like, you know, what are the lessons you've learned building? You're a co-founder at Bowery and you went to Goldman.

Yeah.

Right after that. So the transition being a founder to again going to this behemoth, right? Building a product team right there. So talk to me about the transition, why you left.

Totally. So I basically, the company ended up moving on to being a part of DigitalOcean. I had a bunch of, again, learned a ton, was ready for like sort of a next chapter and just had sort of disagreements with various things. And so I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. And It was interesting because I did not think I would want to go into finance ever. That was like a— it was just like, that's like totally opposite of what I ever wanted to do. And I met— I just met through, I think, LinkedIn at the time, somebody who worked there. And I was like, oh, I just like learned more. I'm constantly just like, okay, let me just like see what's out there. Yeah. And what they were trying to do was really interesting. And the high level was they were trying to build a Bloomberg terminal competitor, really high level. So the Bloomberg, at the time, there was a company called Symphony that they had. It was like a chat app, like a Slack or Bloomberg chat competitor. And they had built that internally at Goldman and spun it out. And it was going, it was working really well. And so they were like, okay, if we have Bloomberg Chat, if we, you know, if we can separate out Bloomberg Chat from the Bloomberg terminal, what else can we do? Like, can we, can we, you know, we have a bunch of, you know, people don't know this, but Goldman has its own programming language. It has its own almost like internal GitHub type thing where like code is shared and like a lot of that is their differentiative— competitive differentiation. And a third of the company's engineers. So like, it's like, it's an engineering company in a lot of ways. And so I just like kept meeting more and more people on the team. I was just like, oh, I just want to like— and everybody was so smart and so nice, at least on this, like, and I think broadly at Goldman, but particularly on this team, they were just like the smartest and most friendly people that I had met. In in any company, and I was like, okay, this is like interesting now. Like like I definitely wanted to optimize more for people in this next stage, and I was like, these are the people that I like get along with probably the most. Anyway, fast forward, I joined. This was around the time that a lot of Goldman's like tech stuff, so they they were just spinning up what now is called Marcus, which is their like personal banking. So you can go and get a Marcus checking account. That's what powers Apple Card. That was like. One whole team that they were spinning up separately. We were doing that on the institutional side. So basically getting all of the research that Goldman puts out. Goldman publishes so much in-depth research about all these companies, publishing that, making that searchable, distributing that to our clients and making that available digitally, taking that research and then apply like building out basically. You know, think Yahoo Finance on steroids. That's the personal version, but it's like it's really like a Bloomberg terminal. So anything you want to chart, any amount of you know research that you want to do on on a company stock price going way back and like all the fundamental like analysis people do, we made that available. And then you want to like actually trade that. How do you do that digitally with Goldman? And like it's all it's all phone based, right? So moving a lot of this stuff to. A very well-designed SaaS application that we could sell for revenue. And then also, okay, well, most of our customers are also quantitative hedge funds who, they may want to use the app, but they may also want to consume it as an API. And so we ended up making this huge API platform that was— all of this does not— I mean, if you don't know finance, you don't really, but most companies don't offer this. It was a huge point of differentiation. And it was, you know, by the time I left, it was, you know, 2 people on a trading floor when I joined. And, you know, we didn't know what a product manager was. We didn't know what a designer was. We were, you know, doing all of this really like sort of scrappy. And then when I left, it was, you know, 200 people and growing and—

Wow.

Like a very different team. So yeah, I mean, it was a crazy growth experience and a crazy like learning opportunity and a lot of Goldman just like touches a lot of like New York tech actually as well. So you get this opportunity to be at the intersection of like, you know, they're leading a venture round in some company and then also, you know, they're thinking about, you know, investing in this fintech company or partnering with this fintech company. Like, how does that work? And so it was just a great time to be there. I learned a ton and I'm still like very close friends with a lot of the people that I work with there, which I think is a testament to the sort of people angle as well. Right.

I recently had— first of all, it seems like what you described itself is a startup. It doesn't look like you're part of a big, gigantic company. You have your own team and you're operating on your own, making decisions. It's kind of like your own— you're the CEO handling this team end to end. Yeah. I love that fact that because there is this impression that Goldman, you know, the other companies in New York, Wall Street, it's like they have this stigma that it's a corporate, you know, cog in the wheel type of thing. You go there, you end up like, you know, working forever. You don't learn.

Yeah.

So that's an interesting fact. Recently I found when I invited this awesome founder who's building a fintech startup, came out of stealth, Chris Halczek. He explained the same thing. He said, I learned a ton from Goldman and actually I'm implementing right now.

Yeah.

So my curiosity, when it comes to your experience at Goldman, what is something that you learned as a product leader there that you're doing right now as a co-founder at

Clay? That's a great question. Um, I would say I was very, you know, I had worked on my own startup. A lot of that was, you know, my previous company was in the dev tool space. So you're selling to developers, which is a very different market. And I very quickly, you know, I've been in professional environments. I've been in sort of important meetings, that's fine. But like, the first like sale you're making, like, like going in and being, being, first of all, all of the senior partners or, you know, people that are there, pretty much like to like each and every one is like very, very accomplished. You don't get to that level without being sort of very good at what you do. And for some people, that's, you know, they're an engineer, and then they like, built trading systems, or they built algorithms or whatever, that like, either generated a ton of revenue, or, you know, are used so much or whatever. And that's how they got to partner. For other people, they're like the best salesperson, right? And they like, they know they have relationships, and they're able to do that. And you don't really, you know, you don't see the VP level is like different. Like, it's like, you know, there's like a bajillion VPs. That's like the sort of like running joke. MD, managing director, and then partner are like very, very difficult to get to. And so watching them operate, particularly in these like sales meetings, right? And like you're like, everybody in the room is very intelligent. So that's like just a given. But the, the what do you, how do you prepare for a meeting? How do you organize your thoughts? How do you Tell a story with a deck. How do you, you know, make a request, you know, internally for resources? That's like less. I don't know that that's like a skill that you need to have, but in the process of doing that, you learn a ton about communication and about, I think, what drives people and how decisions are made. Right? Like a lot of stuff, particularly, you know, on the B to B side. B2C is a totally different animal. But on the B2B side, we sell to large organizations, we sell to people that are like individual Clay users and then bring it into their company. And I think a lot of like first-time B2B founders would be like, you know, oh, how do I, you know, how do I convince you? How do I, you know, what's the next step? Or you take this like very old-fashioned approach to sales of like, you know, let's like Grab dinner, or I need to like meet with you. And like yes, that's all like fine. But I think when you the the the the repeat founders or the repeat sort of like when you're in B2B for a while, what you start learning is that like these decisions are made. You know, you're not in the room when they're made. Somebody is you know putting their neck on the line to make a decision for you to buy your software, buy your whatever you're offering. Sometimes somebody's having a bad day. Sometimes there are like 85 processes you're not seeing to like get the sale done. Like there is so much that goes into like a, you know, call it $10,000, $100,000, million-dollar ACV deal that I think a lot of people just get, you know, when you're, when you're a startup founder, when you're just operating yourself, like you're making all these purchasing decisions yourself. You don't have to like ever worry about it. But being in the room and seeing how that happened at a very high level was like really informative. And I think it also affects how you think about interpersonal relationships, which is our whole business, but also how you think about communication, what to say and what not to say. Like a lot of that stuff, I think like really comes down to you just have to be under fire in a room and like be prepared to answer any question and be prepared to like— it is like a no, it's not the televised— we watch, I watch a lot of these like finance shows and I think it's like way overdramatized, but it is like you have to know your shit and you have to like be ready to answer questions. And you also have to do that in a way that doesn't— that takes into account all of the relationships and people in the room. And to do that on your feet and to be able to do that day after day, I think it's very— it's like a really hard one and hard-learned skill for a lot of people. So that's one that I apply pretty much daily.

Yeah, I just want to like kind of unpack some of the things you said. One of the things, um, it's interesting what you said is about communication, right, at the highest level. Uh, and the other thing I'm hearing is, you know, um, set of people with great skills coming together to work on one thing. Yep. And that brings the aspect of hiring, like hiring great people.

Totally. Yeah.

So that's one thing I want to touch about. But let's talk about like communication, right? Have you guys— do you guys back in the day followed like any frameworks? Do you want to share like, you know, how you've grown in terms in that particular aspect and become better? as more storyteller, better become better at communication through that experience. Is there a— is there like a— I wouldn't say it's a template, but this is something that I've been using and it's working for me, and I've become better at being more clear when it comes to communication, thought-wise as well as expression-wise.

That's a very good question. There are a few. This is off the top of my head, but there's a handful. The first is, I think, having a lot of when I had just joined, I have this visceral memory of I had put in I was doing a product roadmap and I had put in all of the, here are all the things that we need to get done the next quarter and sent it to my boss and his boss to get reviewed. And I got back and it was like, okay, this looks good, but I need a little bit more detail on some of these items. And so I'd sit down, put some more details on these items, and this was going to be presented at the whole divisions, whatever. So sent that in and then they were like, okay, this is good. But like, how are you actually going to do like these 2 things, whatever. And so then I like put more detail there. And so what, what started off as like an outline basically of an email turned into like a much longer email. And then eventually it was like, oh, we need this as a deck. And so I made a whole deck of like version of this. This is over the course of probably a handful of days. So it's not like, it's like, but this was like quick turn, right? It's like back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And I understood why it was happening, right? Because like, I'm giving this like 10,000-foot view. And then they were like, oh no, we need the like on the ground, like how are we going to actually accomplish this? Cool. Like I have all that data, but like I, you know, and so, you know, I have this like now like 10 to 15 slide deck. Here's all the data you need. Here's all of the examples of like user feedback that we had. Here's all the metrics that we're looking at that like tell us to do this. And then like the next email is like, okay, cool. Can you give me like a one-page summary? And I was like, the fuck? I just like started with the one-page summary. Like, what are we doing? And so like, it's that, like, it's funny because like AI now like does this, right? Like you can like summarize and like expand and contract and whatever.

Yeah.

And, and like I had like, but that is basically every version of a big company is like, people need various levels of fidelity and everybody's looking at different items and you need to be able to address all of those different constituencies. And after I had done that once, I was like, oh, I get it now. And basically thereafter I had, or at least was in my head, I was ready to produce all of those different levels of fidelity. And I think it's the same exact thing, by the way, the exact same process happens when you pitch investors for a startup, right? Like a VC, they like look at your high-level deck, you know, you don't want to have like a million slides in your deck. Then they're like, oh, can you like zoom in on this one? And it's like, well, I had that, but like you were never gonna read that if I did, if I sent you the deck. And so now I have to have an appendix slide or I need to have a data room, right? And so everybody's looking for both the high level, like what are the like 5 to 10 things you wanna communicate to people? And then, okay, now you need a mountain of supporting evidence, or, or at least, you know, I like to be prepared to have that evidence for when they have these like follow-up questions. So that's like one communication thing. And I have another one too, if you want. But like, that's like— Yeah, please. Like, yeah. And then the other one is like, it was an— it was another— we were preparing for a meeting. And I basically, I had, I had put together this, like, it was another, it was another sort of like, here's our product vision. And like, sort of like, Roadmap style deck, and we were we were pitching. This was like to like all of the like partners, and so we were like, here's like everything. Everybody's in the room, and one thing I forget who told me this, but it was basically thinking about who how really like putting yourself in the shoes of like every single person that is going to be like. In the room with you and under— and like now view going through your deck and reading through it through their lens. Put yourself in the shoe. Like it's, it goes far beyond like a dossier on the person, right? Because like I didn't know any of these people. They were like much more senior. They're like running the firm. But my boss's boss, which was like already a partner, they're like a partner. They're like, they, this is what they do every day. She sat down and she was like, okay, Here's this person, here's what they're doing, here's their problems, here's what they're thinking about right now. This person, here's their problems, here's what they're thinking about right now. And now go through this deck and identify the things that they're gonna have questions about, identify the things that they're gonna like be picking apart, right? And she like, she could identify it within, within seconds. She was like flipping through the deck. She was like, this is good, this is good, this is good. They're gonna, you know, Bob's gonna have a problem with this slide. Karen's gonna like ask about this, like here's whatever. Like, be ready for that. And I was like furiously taking notes. I was like, oh my God, whatever. But like, that is what they— like, the lens with which like senior leaders do that is like, that is the job. It's like synthesizing and understanding how people are going to perceive the things that you are presenting to them. And, you know, it's not like everybody's, you know, they're not— they were never— I think, and I think this is the difference between like a great large organization and then like a terrible large organization. A terrible large organization like raises those questions, Without any sort of, you know, it's just that's politics, right? Like the politics is like asking the questions and like putting up roadblocks. Exactly. That's bureaucracy. But places like, you know, I think Amazon, you hear this about early Amazon. You hear this about, I think a lot about Goldman is like, these are just smart people who are looking for reasons why this may not work. And they want to like stretch your thinking. And they're not going to say no, they're not going to put up roadblocks. Like it's like a move fast and like I wouldn't say break things, but move fast culture. But you need to have an understanding. Like, they want to make sure that you know your thing and that you've thought about this sufficiently. And so it's actually like a very intellectually honest culture where it's like, okay, let's think about this problem together. Here's my perspective. I'm not diminishing what you're doing, but here's a perspective that maybe you're not thinking about. Here's a thing that would help me. Whatever. Now go forth. Like, but, but you do a lot of that preparation, um, in a very compressed timeframe. It's not like we were like wasting tons of time on this. It makes it sound like we were just constantly making decks, but a lot of, you know, a lot of it was like, hey, here's— we, I mean, we were an internal startup. We were trying to get resources. There was no dedicated resourcing at all. As we started having more and more to prove, like, uh, feedback and like wins, then it became more of like, okay, now we'll just like, you know, you've earned the right to continue to do this. Yeah. But that's just like that level of preparation was never something. And that's why I think I was like, I was really raw coming in into that experience. And I think it stretched my thinking in ways that I didn't necessarily expect, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I think I love that. I think it also kind of boils down to having this 360-degree view of, you know, what you're doing.

Yeah.

And I don't know if you read MrBeast's leaked memo.

Yeah,

I think he, he mentioned something like similar, which is don't tell me what's working. Tell me what's not working.

Exactly.

That is like the, the whole picture. So that

100%,

you know, what's not working is actually is going to help move the needle because we're going to think, we're going to stretch our thinking, we're going to like, you know, find different ways to solve the same problem. Yeah. So it's, it's kind of great that

No, and when you're a leader like that, like, you, you're just constantly surrounded by sycophants who like want to just tell you what you want to hear. And like a lot of their— if you are a good leader like that, you're like, no, like cut through the bullshit. Like, what do I need to know? What do I need to hear to make me— because I don't want to be surprised by it in 2 months when this thing doesn't work out. Like, that's what people do constantly. So that's— yeah, that just goes to your point.

I love that. I love that. Uh, now going back to hiring, and you mentioned, and even Chris mentioned I think one thing he mentioned about Goldman is he experienced greatness.

Yeah,

the smartest people coming together in one room, like stretching and like kind of pushing the boundaries, doing things that were never done before. So in your experience, you went from a 2-person team to a 200-person team at Goldman. Yeah. So talk to me about spotting incredible talent.

Yeah,

that are smarter than you. How do you do that?

Okay. This is an awesome question. So I totally agree that I was lucky to work with like really incredible people. I think it's the thing that I was probably the most spoiled by, because I had never had a— everything else was me. You know, I was, I was like looking for you know, spotting talent, looking for talent, like as like an, as an equal, as a coworker, right? That's a very different thing than, or sorry, as a co-founder. That's, that's something that's very different when you're hiring people like for your team. It's something very different when you're hiring potentially in some cases, like somebody more senior than you. Like I was in interviews for people that were, you know, 2 levels above me and that I think is an important part of that hiring process, at least in a big company. Goldman is lucky because it gets great sort of like funnel traffic, right? Like everybody like is applying, like very smart people are applying there. And in fact, a lot of the people that would like, we would hire interns and the interns like now the interns that we had like are now like they've started their own companies and like, you know, we, I talk to them all the time. So like it's very funny to see that sort of like mafia grow. The process wasn't crazy, but again, so we had great sort of like funnel traffic. The recruiting, you have a recruiting team that's very lucky, right? So they're like doing that sort of top-level filter. But I actually take zero credit. The head of the engineering team and then my boss who now has his own startup and we're still very good friends. they were just remarkably good at spotting talent. And so by the time you got to a final round interview, I think our, our like, yes, like the number of people we said yes or no to, I don't know the exact numbers. It felt very much like almost like 50/50, 50/50 to like 75/25. Yes. Like it was like, like we got into that room and this person had already been vetted by a lot of other people. I'm not going to say that the recruiters like knew everything about the person, but they were definitely looking for cultural fit. They were definitely looking for like, you know, intellectual horsepower and like, you know, ability to like, it was, I don't know that the sort of like grab a beer mindset is the right one. I would call it like a stuck in an airport mindset, right? Like, is this a person that if I were stuck in an airport and I missed my flight with you, like that we could actually spend time and have like mutual, like common conversation for like 12 hours? And like pretty much everybody on that team, we were able to do that. And that did not mean hiring like very similar people. Like we hired somebody from, I think they were a designer at a publishing agency. We fired a few like people from startup, a lot of people from startups, but some like very random, like very random companies, very random locales. People would like, somebody moved from Australia, like, like it was, there was like a very random Like connections, and it was very much tied. The common thread was like very smart, very humble, and just work hard. And like that, and I think that is a uniting factor amongst other teams, but it was especially true for our team. And I attribute that all to my boss and the people, the other senior leaders that were there. Now, you know, fast forward to today. My co-founder Matt is like amazing at that as well. And I think I just, you know, not to say that I'm like terrible at this, but I think I have learned a ton from all of those people to say, here are the things to like look for. Here's how I just take a very, I think, optimistic view of people. And I think in hiring, that's tough, right? Like you can't always do that. Yeah. I think it's a good mindset to have. For sure, but there are a lot of people you're going to meet. There's a lot of candidates like for any role, and so you do need to at some point drill down into like here are the things, the specific things culturally, values-wise, work-wise that that we're looking for. And a lot of what we do today at Clay that I think solves for that in a way that we. Goldman was solving for that by like those many different filters at the top. You know, by the time that we got to somebody, they were pretty good. For us, it's like a work project. So I think like having a work project that you work with on, you know, work with someone on in a paid capacity allows you to see how they think. Because I think the biggest challenge for startups is like, what did this person do? I mean, even, you know, I'm saying I worked at Goldman, right? Like, what did I do like specifically versus what was my team? And if you find somebody that doesn't, uh, isn't honest about that or doesn't sort of— every big company, like, we hire people from, you know, Google, whatever, like, big companies, it's a team effort. And so, like, if you don't have somebody who can, like, actually distinguish that, or even if they are honest about it, but then they come to a startup and, like, they don't want to do that thing, or they don't, they don't know how to do that thing, or they had a whole team of people that at the company, at their previous company, they were doing that thing, like it's very hard to like disentangle that. And so the work project lets you do that. The work project says like, not only can you do the work, but also do we enjoy working together? And it's a two-sided thing. It's not just, you know, I like working with you, so I'm gonna hire you. It's that like, hey, do you even like our team and like what we're doing and the work that we're doing and whatever? Right. And that I think is a much more meaningful sort of process. And that was again, entirely by Matt, who had learned that, I think, at his previous company, which was a YC company, and like really taught that to me.

I love what you said about the criteria. Like, if you're stuck with this person at the airport, would you spend the next hours with them? I think that is a great filter. Like, it eliminates a lot of noise and clears up like the cream, the talent, or the top, you know, 1%, I would say. in any mention about A-players, because that's something that everybody wants to hire A-players, right? At Goldman, it looks like everybody's an A-player. So in your experience going through that multiple times, you know, through recruiting either with the help of your boss,

Yeah.

How you sought A-players versus B-players? What are the things that B players show that they are not A players?

I think there is an intensity. I think you're looking for like an intensity that isn't— I think, I think you can The problem with a lot of these heuristics is that they can eventually get to some sort of like almost like parody version of the thing that you're looking for. So if I'm looking for like an, you know, a 10x engineer, right? A lot of what people like, if I would bet, and I think a lot of people do have this like sort of bias where a 10x engineer is a guy. who is from a, like, you know, one of these technical schools and is like, you know, drinking Mountain Dew and is like, you know, has stickers on their laptop, whatever. I'm just going to paint some like very overdramatized thing. Right. And the reality is that like you cannot do that, right? Like that, that these people, like you need to in every role, in every sort of like thing that you're hiring for, you need to be able to identify The you know I think it's like a and and this this process happened differently both at happens differently at Clay than it does at Goldman. So I'm going to like separate those out. But the idea that like there are sort of diamonds in the rough, that there are people that you know may not there are all sorts of reasons why people don't. You know you might be having a bad day. You may have you may not like just interview well. Like like I don't want you know who interviews well like. big company engineers, 100%. They just like train for it. They do LeetCode and like, there's no amount of, there's no amount of like on-the-job like training that I can do to like differentiate those people. And so a lot of what you're looking for, or at least like, I think when you have an A player in front of you, there is some amount of intensity in their ability to think through problems. They will engage with that thing. A lot of, you know, product people, one question that I ask is just like, what's, what's like an app on your phone that like you've been using that you love recently that, um, I don't know about, right? Because like I used to, I used to leave that last part off and then people would be like Spotify. And I'd be like, you're not gonna like, okay, if you're gonna give me Spotify, you gotta give me some. Now I'm gonna, my next question is gonna be like, what about Spotify like really like amazes you? And if you're not like digging deep on like the airplane implementation of like Spotify and how like the audio doesn't cut out versus Apple Music, like that's the level of like— detail and like attention to like, it's not like the home screen is like, you know, like has, you know, videos now. Like that's not interesting. So when we would ask that question, some people would, you know, give the, you know, whatever answer, but some people would date, like my answer to that is around how, like, have you looked at like Google Maps versus Apple Maps and the level of detail on like the buildings and how like that differentiates and like, what is map making? Now let's talk about cartography for like 30 minutes. Like, that's a level of like, like just here's a weird interest that is coming through in that question that I never would've gotten if you're like, you know, I think B players would be like, I don't actually pay that much attention to that stuff. And I'm not saying, I'm not dictating what that is. And I think that's part of the, part of the challenge is you can't pattern match a lot of A players. You can't really pattern match on, right? Mm-hmm. Like you just, you feel that intensity. Where you feel that level of knowledge or passion about a particular thing, and then you sort of then tease that out and say, okay, if it, like, if you have that about the thing that you're actually working on, then you're gonna, you're gonna, like, you're gonna blow everybody out of the water. Mm-hmm. Um, and so A players have that for other things, and it may be, I don't really care what it is. Like, it may be, you know, the things that you're reading or, or, or consuming. Yeah. It may be the, like, things or side projects. A lot of, for engineers, it's like side projects, right? Like, I want to see—

Right.

What are you working on? What are you hacking on? Right? Like, because that's where most people, if they are a diamond in the rough, their outlet for that isn't work. Like, they're underserved by their work. And so then it's like, oh, I'm channeling all of that energy into this other thing. And so you're going to get that in the side project or in the thought, like the blog post that I wrote or whatever. Here's my, just my notes app. Here's like just a bunch of things. Song lyrics I've written out, like, cool, okay, like, now let's talk about that. But now I, like, I'm not pattern matching you on some, you know, dramatized version of the engineer that I have in my head.

I love the fact that it's so awesome. What a great answer. I love the fact that you can't templatize an A-player. Yeah, it, you know, I think the only thing you can kind of look for is the gut feeling, the presence, and I think the intensity. And going back to MrBeast's memo, I think he clearly says obsession, obsession, obsession, you know, having that ridiculous obsession for no reason.

Yeah, totally.

It's like out of your curiosity or like what you want to learn. I love that. Such a great answer. And everybody talks about A-players, but I think what you said is absolutely true. You can't like really put a pin and say this is exactly how an A-player should look like.

Exactly.

It goes different to different. Yeah. Let's talk about Clay. I think the first, I would say, I don't think it's a stupid question, but I think something right off the bat as an observation, why on earth you went with .earth domain when you can go with a million other things and you're doing AI too? So What's with the clay.earth?

Yeah,

what's, what's going on there?

The, uh, the main reason is that every other tool that we had ever used in this space was, um, you know, uh, you know, saleshub.tech, you know what I mean? Like, it's like that level of like cold and transactional. And a lot of what we were trying to do in the early days was Let's make this a— we have to reframe people's way of thinking on this. And so a lot of what we were trying to do, and it goes to the name Clay and then also the TLD, we also just couldn't get the .com, the .com was taken. But like that was like the level of— that was— we were trying to frame the problem as something that is more global, that is more personal, that is more soft skills versus like, I'm just, I'm a salesperson and I'm collecting business cards and I just want to email you in like, you know, a cold drip campaign. Like it's not a sales thing. And so a lot of what we're trying to do is like, let's, you know, all of our favorite, you know, why was the best calendar app in, you know, that I can ever remember called Sunrise, right? Like it was like, it's, it's like the framing around what it, what it makes you feel and how it anchors your brain towards like what to think about when you look at the product. So, the .earth was part of that, but it was more like we had, you know, 3 options and we chose, you know, earth versus— I forget what they were at this point, but yeah.

And why Clay? Why do you think Clay? I think I kind of have a sense about the word Clay.

Yeah, I think it's— I mean, we usually ask, we like asking people. Yeah, so yeah, what's your thought?

My thought is like, it's when you hear about something like clay, it's like it sticks together. The immediate thought that came is like, okay, it's going to be the glue that holds things together, right? Something like that. Yeah. So it's made out of obviously natural materials, and it gives me an impression that I want to build a relationships habit that is more natural and that is like kind of, you know, sticky. So is that what it is about?

100%. I, you know, part of it is that, part of it is like it's something that you can mold, you know, it hardens over time. Right. You know, it means a different thing to different people, but a lot of it was, yeah, like again, something naturalistic and sort of like earthy, you know, more organic, but that also, you know, Clay is made up of a bunch of different things. Like it, like it isn't just like, I don't know, like stone, right? Like it's like, it's like a, it's like a mashup of a bunch of different things. And I think people's relationships and networks are a mashup of a bunch of different things. And so there's a lot of elements to it, but yeah, that's, that's a lot of

it. And yeah, let's, let's go back to the initial days of Clay. So one of the questions I have for you is you started as in your career as a founder building a dev tool.

Yep.

Then you went to Goldman, which is finance. You were doing product there, and then you ended up building a consumer app, or like a, like a more personal, uh, more intangible, you know, uh, problem that you're solving. And so why consumer? And talk to me about like the transition, like once you left Goldman, what made you pursue this consumer-first approach, or why Clay?

Yeah, I mean, the honest answer is this is a thing that I and also my co-founder Matt, but I didn't know that at the time when I met him, had— we've both been obsessed with this for 10+ years, and this being You know, back in high school, I had a, I was using Highrise, which like is, it was a 37signals product that was made for like basically contact management CRM. And I was using that because I had a few people like mentors, advisors, other interns that I had met through internships. And I was just like, I want to find a way to, you know, keep up to date with them. You know, fast forward to college, I, a lot of that moved over from me to LinkedIn. And I was like, you know, connecting with people on LinkedIn. And for freshman year, a lot of my freshman and sophomore year were like, oh, I want to get to the 500+ connections, you know, so I was like connecting with people every whatever. And then junior, senior year, I remember distinctly a friend of mine emailed me and was like, you know, I saw that you're connected with so-and-so, like, can you intro me? And I was like, oh, I have no idea who this is. And it was because I had like added all these people or even, you know, not even to get to the 500+ connections, but people that I had met at a conference and never talked to again or whatever. And so this idea that like social networking and like that network is like the actual connect— the actual collection of people that, you know, was entirely broken, I think. And so then from there I was like, okay, this is not going to work. So I, you know, I moved over to Evernote and I was using Evernote and I was, you know, a note per person. Yeah. And I was like, whatever. And after I chatted with you, I would like put into the note, like whatever, you know, scan the business card maybe. And then some notes about our meeting. And I think a lot of people had that like similar sort of pain point. Right. I think a lot of people feel overwhelmed when you, when you start like looking. I also took like a social psychology class and like the crazy connection between like weak ties. Like it's not actually your, There's all sorts of research about Dunbar's number, and you can go into that. The 150 people you can remember, and da da da da. And whether or not that's right, and you know it might be larger than that now because we have online media. But the interesting part is that like you meet 3,500 people over the course of your 20-year career. You know, 55% of people have more than 500 plus connections on LinkedIn, and so you have these huge networks. And yet, it's not like you know I think people feel the stress to be like close to their like closest people and like I'm forgetting you know my best friend's birthday. That's like totally a part of it. But the weak ties and the people that are in your like distant circles, eighty-five percent of people get a job from somebody that they know and like that they consider like a weak tie. And so it's like this like it's not going to be the people that you. are closest to. It's having that sort of ever-breathing network that, like, I, in my opinion, this is going to like a little bit more of the personal side. You know, I think it's not about being transactional with those people. It's not about, you know, I have to, you know, you intro me to this person, so now I owe you an intro to this person. I think it's like a very organic thing. And Matt and I have been very lucky to benefit from people who have introed us to others, investors and internships and jobs. Everything is just referral, referral, referral. And it's just people paying it forward. And tech is best at this, right? When you go to SF, people are introing you. And I hear this all the time. People land in SF and all of a sudden they're at 18 different events. But that ethos is a thing, right? That ethos is a sort of pay-it-forward mentality that Again, you cannot productize the minute you productize it. I think a lot of people like try to make this like a gamified sort. It's like it loses all of its magic. It's and so we're not trying to productize that. What we're trying to do is extend your memory. We're trying to just like enhance the sort of Dunbar's number to more than the 150 people you can think about, and that is the that is the core problem. And the way that we do that is now you know. It's very hard to explain. I mean, we call it a home for your, for your people or your relationships. But, um, you know, we think that that extends— it's not— it depends on what you're anchored as. It might be a contacts app. You might think of it as a contacts app. We don't really think of that as a contacts app. Um, it might be sort of like a CRM if you're at— in a company. Um, right. We don't really think of it as CRM, but like it can do that. And then, um, you know, maybe the best word for it is like a Rolodex, right? Like it's like the, the thing that you would have on your desk when you were a professional. And you, you know, if you were in the 1970s or '80s, that would be your network. Your circle. Exactly. And that was everybody you knew. And so that we just lost that, right? Like we, we lost that when we, a lot of the magic of like letter writing, like, you know, it's not like email is like a magical experience, but like a lot of that like utility at least moved over to email when we made like a digital jump. And a lot of, a lot of great engineers and product people Have built amazing email apps. Like I think I remember like Mailbox that like you know acquired by Dropbox, Sparrow acquired by Google, Superhuman right? Like all of these things are like amazing because people spend so much time in email, and yet none of that attention has been paid to people and relationships. And yet your network graph is like more distributed than ever. It's in Twitter, it's in LinkedIn, it's in email, it's in. you know, business cards, it's on your desk. We have CEOs of like Fortune 500 companies who send us photos of their desk and it's just Post-it names of people. That's messy. And it's totally, it's crazy. So that's what we're trying to solve. And it's, you know, if we can, you know, our like overarching goal is increasing your conscientiousness. And it's not, that's, I think a lot of people feel really stressed about that. They feel like they're forgetting somebody's birthday. They feel like they're, You know, forgetting that, like, you know, you got an intro from somebody and you didn't respond. Like, a lot of that stuff happens. But all of those great meetings, all of these, you know, electric conversations you have with someone new and you're like, I want to be their best friend. Like, that's exactly what we want to capture and allow you to have more of. And so, that's our product, clay.harath. Yeah.

I love the narrative around this is an extension. We're not kind of productizing anything because I think, like you said, it loses the natural essence of what we do as humans. And I don't know, I just got an idea. I just want to drop it. Maybe you should do like a hardware product.

Yeah.

That's like a kind of like a pendant that sits somewhere on you. When you meet people, it listens to the conversation. It actually takes note about that person.

Yeah.

Instead of you going to like, you know, take manual note. And I think Nexus is kind of solving that a little bit, right? So talk to me about the evolution of Clay being the first version to where it is right now with Nexus using AI. And I love the demo. I saw the demo and it's like super magical. It's like it adds context. My biggest complaint I have with my messy relationships or the people I have in it is I forgot the context.

Yeah. Yeah.

Like I meet so many people, I kind of remember them, but I have to like, you know, go into the deep weeds. That is something that I feel you guys are solving. So talk to me about the AI evolution in this process.

Yeah. And I'll start with the hardware because I think, you know, that's like, we've thought a lot about it. Shout out to Stammy at Limitless who's doing some really interesting stuff. You know, there's, we, we think a lot about hardware and whether I think a lot of people are doing the pendant stuff. I think that's like a really interesting sort of extension. I think that will be a product in itself. But we do think about hardware and like, what are the other parts of like hardware or the other parts of like people meeting where hardware is like a real asset. So that's one part of it. The, on the AI side, AI, you know, we've, we, we were on like the, you know, the GPT-2 or 3, maybe 3.2 beta. And we've, we've been using it, you know, so, you know, we, it started with summarization. It started with, you know, very basic, you know, a lot of that sort of like contraction and expansion sort of stuff. It's been in our sort of like data pipeline for a very long time. So, We use it for a ton of different things. I think what we realized very quickly was that it allows you to do the thing. Our original goal was like an amazing chief of staff or an amazing EA who has the context and can sit across. We started with, go way back. I mean, our announcement blog post and announcement Sort of website was David Rockefeller's index cards, and so he had 100,000 index cards, and all of his relationships were encompassed there. And it was his; he had a team of three people, like going through those and like writing things down in notes and whatever. Right? We don't have that anymore, right? But AI can facilitate that. And so, what does it look like when you can? not only operate across like many, many, many different, you know, pieces of information, but also the point that you had, which is I have a different— everybody has a different way of thinking about people. And so some people are like, what is the— who is the person who I talked to 3 weeks ago that I met at the coffee shop, whatever, like that level of like abstract.

Mm-hmm.

All the way to, you know, so some people are like spatial. They're like, it's like, oh, it's the coffee shop. Some people are like temporal. It's like, here's— I remember it was winter. Some people it's like just like keywords and phrases, and some people are actually just great at this themselves and they don't need any tool. So like totally fine. But like everybody thinks about relationships differently. And so how do we jog your memory and help you sort of think about people at scale? And that's why we're particularly excited by AI and Nexus can do that. We're still in a few ways hamstrung by the technology, like the context windows aren't big enough, but Mm-hmm. Um, for, you know, we're getting to, we're just getting to that point where I can operate on thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of contacts and help you find the right person, but also do that sort of next jump, which is like, you know, and, and we did this and, uh, this works today. You can, you can try it. It's like, I'm traveling to a new city or I'm traveling to, you know, SF for 3 days. Like,

right.

Can you make me an itinerary? Who should I see? Like that, who should I see, is a really difficult thing for anybody, even a great EA or chief of staff to do. Yeah. Because it's like, what am I, what am I looking for? Like, what, what do I need right now? Who have I not seen in a while? Who has had a big, you know, change in their life? Um, who's gonna be around? Who's even in the city anymore? Like, so doing, piecing that all together is an incredibly difficult problem, but one that AI can actually solve. So having the reasoning layer now on top of every one of your relationships, what Everything that we've done to this point is like mapping and synthesizing and bringing information about all of your relationships. That next reasoning layer is going to be what we think is incredibly powerful. And that's why Nexus, you know, we rolled out, we're now in a sort of our 3rd or 4th version of it, um, and we're continually iterating on it. Um, but that's what we think is the big power of AI.

I think one more idea, fascinating, by the way. I think the way you guys use AI is so natural, I would say. It's like, it's not forced upon. Most of the products I see is like, you have to create these use cases for yourself to use AI.

Exactly.

Yours is more like, give me like 5 people,

you

know, I met in the last 3 months who's in AI, who's a co-founder. Like that level of detail is really, you know, kind of like very helpful. One other idea for you, I don't know if you thought about it. I think given you have so many contacts, In Clay, you know, I think about like 100 million contacts has been processed, if I'm not wrong. It would be awesome for— I would call it something like keep a tab or something like that, where if you haven't reached out to that person in the last 3 months, you just do a check-in. Hey, how's it going?

Yeah.

If he's into football, have you caught up week 5?

Yeah.

So, it's like so personal, which is something that requires a lot of effort and thought. I think AI can kind of draft these messages on an automatic basis without me initiating it. Is that— does that make sense? Like something that's like something that's so personal but doesn't feel robotic.

Yeah. And it's been doing. This is probably the heart, probably one of our more requested things and probably the thing that we find most difficult. And, and just here are a few reasons. The first is, um, uh, I mean, I've used literally every version of this product that has existed since 2010. So a few people have tried this, um, the, you know, the very early days. It, it was very, um, the people that did it best were in the early days of like the Twitter and Facebook API. Like when those were open, you could pull like interests. And so it would be like, hey, you like You follow the Yankees on Facebook and like, so does this person. So you should talk about the Yankees in your first meeting. Or they just posted this thing, they tweeted about this thing, they tweeted about this article, and you haven't talked to them in 3 months. You should like, you mentioned this, mentioned the tweet in the article. And I think the thing that we, you know, think a lot about, and this is design, but it's also brand and it's also like sort of like what we stand for. It's like, If you learn that I use Clay, I don't want your impression. I don't want you to judge anything that I send you and think that it is in some way lesser or less meaningful because I use Clay. And so that's why we today, I'm not saying that we will never do this, but today we don't, we don't draft anything on your behalf. We don't do any outbound. It is not a, uh, here is automating your relationships. We, we think like we very much do not want to do that. Interesting. Are there ways to do it in a way that's more natural? Can I tee up a few ideas? Can I show you all the information? And, you know, maybe, you know, a lot of these email apps are already doing the sort of email drafting part of this anyway. So like, maybe our sort of, you know, societal comfort with this will change because of AI being in the inbox and in text messages. And, you know, I'm on, you know, the next, I, you know, I have Apple Intelligence, like, it's doing this already. So like, Apple has jumped over this. Email apps have jumped over this. Maybe we will all just as a society be okay with people having first drafts presented to them. But I think it is, it's different when you are like reaching out, right? Like it's different when you ping me and you're like, hey, it's been a while. I saw your tweet about this thing. Let's catch up. I think it means, I think it's a different thing. I, at least personally, I'm going to switch out, take off my Clay hat for a second. When I know that somebody has a spreadsheet of people with a reminder that gets pinged, the minute I know you do that, people will tell me that, right? Because I've like, I, you know, I, I'm the co-founder of Clay. And then 3 months later I get the ping from them and I'm like, I mean, come on. Like, it's not like, it's a very like, and it's—

I see what you're saying.

And then I search and by the way, and then I search for their name and it's every quarter. It's just like 3 months, 3 months delay, 3 months delay, 3 months delay. And it's like, whoa, that's not. That doesn't feel good to me. It feels slightly icky. And so I think a lot of what we think about is this is us looking out for our users, and this is why we have amazing word of mouth, because people are okay telling other people they use Clay because it doesn't do those things. Once you sign up, you're gonna find out it doesn't, it doesn't, you know, it's not sending out emails on your behalf. So it's a really tricky thing. And not to say that you're not alone, like a lot of people want us to do that. Yeah. But that's why, that's our thinking at least for why we—

No, I think I'm going to take my word back. I see what you're saying and I would feel the same way.

Yeah.

But I think I really, the way or where I'm coming from is,

yeah,

you have to check in with your friends, right?

100%.

That is the thing I want to like kind of, how can we solve that? But I feel the solution is not the right one, which is we both agree. Now, I'll take my back foot. Maybe some— I really like what you said about like, hey, you haven't checked in with this person in the last few months. Here are some ideas, or here's what they're up to.

Exactly.

So that is something that's like a nudge to you is what you guys are doing. That is phenomenal. I feel that is more natural.

Totally. And that, you know, I wrote a blog post way back about like engineering serendipity. And That's what, again, like it's, it's how do I increase the surface area? Because when you, if I post a ton, right, I post a ton on Twitter and, or LinkedIn or whatever, and you see one of my posts and it resonates with you and you email me and you're like, hey, I love this post. Like, hey, we should catch up. Like that is an organic thing, fully organic, right? But that relies on me posting a ton. And so many people today don't do that. Like there's no opportunity Once you sort of fall out of touch, like you're not seeing them in the street, they've moved to a new city, they're not posting on Instagram or LinkedIn anymore, they're not doing, you know, they're not reaching out to you. So like, what, where is that serendipity? There's no, there's no opportunity for that anymore. And so that's a lot of what we think about is like, how do we, again, not engineering it artificially, but how do we introduce more opportunities for it, for that randomness, for that whatever. And so that's exactly what you're talking about. It's like, give me a reason, like tell me what's happening in their life because Mm-hmm. Otherwise, I have no sort of basis of knowing that myself.

Love that.

Yeah.

Last thing before we wrap up, I want to ask about one of the things I really admire about Clay is the design. It's so—

Thank you.

So clean, so minimalistic. It's like there is no clutter. It's like it talks to me when I go onto the website. So yeah, talk to me about the design thinking you've developed over the years. Oh man, so fascinating to see the evolution of Zach being in DevTool startup to, you know, Goldman.

Yeah,

to where you are. So

yeah,

how did you pick up? And by the way, amazing job getting those awards. Webby Awards is incredible.

Thank you.

Yeah, talk to me about that, the design thinking you apply to Clay every day.

Yeah, I mean, I— this is— I'll try to keep this short. So first of all, Again, I've built this product for myself. When you build things for yourself, you're not really applying a design eye. I accredit everything to Matt in the sort of like early version then and our team now for being able to not only think, you know, elevate the product and brand to where it is, but also to be able to execute on that in the product itself. Because there's a lot of surface area, there's a lot of Every day you have an opportunity to lower that bar, and they consistently keep it very elevated. So that's number one. Number two is, you know, I think that design, you know, we won the Webby Awards, which was like a very nice gesture, both the like judges who, you know, come from a lot of these like, you know, large tech companies, but then also the people's choice, which was, you know, our users saying like, this is, you know, better than I think we were up against like Notion and other, like, you know, like, you know, it was, it was, it was a great sort of combo of companies. So I think the challenge in designing, and I'm going to bucket us into this like productivity and work tools category, like the future of work, is that people have so many different workflows. And have so many different ways in which, you know, again, we're the added challenges that we're working with something that's sort of like mushy, like people in relationships, as opposed to like, you know, here's an email, like, you know, we're both defining a, in our, you know, parlance, a new category or a new system of record for your relationships, while at the same time, trying to ground it in something that you are familiar with, which is either a CRM or contacts app. While at the same time integrating into your existing workflows, which are your, you know, day-to-day outreach is going to be email, calendar, messaging apps. So there's a lot of surface area there. And I think one thing, you know, when we started, I would have actually described this more as like a notes app for people. And the note, you just watch how just like look at that microcosm of a space over the past 5 years, right? Like, you went from, you know, Evernote, like, I would have— it was like literally on the decline. Notion rolled out their Evernote importer. Then you have like Roam Research, like spun up and then like dropped back down. Then you have like Obsidian now, you have a bunch of other like the— then now like Evernote's actually like pretty good again. Like, like, so there's like so much— Ups and downs. And everybody, yeah. And then everybody is just, you know, I Love Bear, like there's a bunch of IA Writer, like all of these, I love all of these products. But that space alone is so interesting to watch because everybody, somebody will use IA Writer. I love IA Writer. I'm a daily IA Writer user. Um, like some people will use that and be like, I don't know what's going on. Like, I don't, I don't, like, it doesn't resonate with me. And then they'll go to Bear and they'll be like, Bear's exactly what I need. And like the differential between those 2 things is actually like not like crazy different, but things resonate with people. It's a very emotional attachment. And I like, I think about, and this is my, this is my sort of version of design. Like I think about the best design products that I've ever used. And for me, those are 2 bordering on 3 things. It's Sunrise, the calendar app. Pierre and the team there, like they, like unbelievable. I remember every animation. I remember every screen, the colors, like the bright orange. It made like work. Pleasurable. And like, that was like amazing. Sparrow, the email app, which I mentioned actually earlier, because it's just like, that app was snappy. It was bright. It was— it made email enjoyable to use. It had— it was, I think it was one of the first that had a quick reply. So it like dropped down and you could like type in the message. It was encouraging you to write shorter emails by doing that, like crazy product. And the fact that Google bought it and shut it down is like, I think like a war crime. And then the, and then, and then Mailbox, like Mailbox, like that, that was like the first app that did like swipe gestures and like, but like, again, like, and then the Dropbox, like taking that and changing it. So like, the idea that there are these, and I think that, I think the point at which we, we, for us, I think product market fit was people reaching out to us about with that same level of love, care, obsession, our users, our members reaching out to us and saying like, you've done this for me. And I was like, wow. Like, I think they even compared us to one of those apps. And I was like, that is truly like a— that like meant a ton. And I think you have this resurgence of apps that pay that same amount of attention to detail, Superhuman, Linear, Limitless. Oh man. Yeah. All of those things. But like, The those teams are much larger than than us, and it's very hard. I think what people maybe the just one thing that I think is overlooked is as a user of these products, you don't realize the amount of just cruft that you have to go through to get to something like that. The amount of engineering and design work that superhuman human had to go through to get to the product that they have today, or that linear. You know, it's not just Jira, right? Like they're doing real. innovative work. And, and then when you go in and, you know, your email like doesn't send, which has never happened to me on Superhuman, but like, you know, if the one minor bug, you're— the bold doesn't work and you reach out, you're like, this is like, you know, you're the— as a user, you're like, this is like ruining my day. But all of it is so complex and all of it is very like personalized and different. So I think I have a much more I would say empathic approach to product building and to company building. It's like people, every, every app on your dock today, every app on your phone was built by somebody who had a pain point, who built something, who's showing an amount of care for you. And I'm not saying that, you know, like these huge companies, you know, but somewhere in that org, somebody, one single person is, does care and is responsible for that thing. And so just showing just a level of working with them, just working with them and being collaborative and being like, okay, here's how I would improve it. Here's how I would like to, you know, here's my workflow and here's, you know, what I would like to see from it. I think it's just a really, you know, I think anybody listening who has built products for themselves and wants to take it to the next step, that's the next unlock is like, you're going to have a lot of people who have very specific workflows or very specific opinions about things. That's, that's the joy is working with people and integrating into their lives. Like you have, it's a— Clay's an app that, you know, a lot of people open daily, many times a day even. And it is helping, it is integrating and showing them people in their life that they care about, family members, friends, coworkers. And that's like not a, not a thing we take lightly. Like that's a real big responsibility for us. So

I think just to summarize your answer, it's design is being thoughtful and having that care, expressing that care and expressing a way to be empathized, you know, having that empathy towards that user. And I feel that is something that when you talked about those apps, that is a commonality which I find it. This has been an awesome conversation. I have so many other questions. I know we're on time, so, but we have to do like round 2. Probably.

Okay.

Uh, you know, but yeah, this has been awesome. Appreciate you, Zach, uh, for joining the show and super

fun,

you know, sharing, sharing all the knowledge, wisdom, and, you know, some of the things you mentioned, some of— so many takeaways when it comes to communication, hiring. It's been awesome. You know, any, any closing thoughts before we wrap up?

No, I appreciate, um, you've, you've had really great questions, um, and, uh, I appreciate all of the, uh, insights. I've listened to the pod For probably a few months. So I've seen a lot of great guests. So thank you for doing what you're doing, Derek. You had Derek on, Danny, just great people. So keep it up.

Yeah. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. And thanks for joining. That's all folks. Stay tuned for more awesome guests like Zach, more founders who's been killing it on the internet, just being themselves. But stay tuned. Cheers.