How to Launch a Social App People Actually Use: Andrea’s Secrets from BeReal

Hi everybody, thanks Andre for being here as a guest in a new episode. Like, we met, I think, in San Francisco 2 years ago, more or less.

Yeah.

Like, you were traveling a lot around the world and now finally you also like moved here in SAP. Now we are basically neighbors and yeah, it's very cool to work here together. And we also have like Alessandra Aurora, as I was in the last episode. Do you want to start maybe introducing a little bit yourself?

Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me as a guest in this podcast. I'm a big fan of the Silicon Valley Fellowship. And yeah, like you said, we've been friends for the past couple of years. We met here in Silicon Valley. Remember, both of us were—

At the first Montgomery.

Yes, we work in the HQ of Montgomery. But yeah, Just a tiny bit about myself. I've been in the startup world for the past 6 years. I started in the electric scooter industry, then founded my own company, and then led growth, and I was part of the founding team at Buoyo. And that has been an incredible journey, and now I'm launching a new startup. So yeah, happy to be here, and yeah, nice to meet you, both of you.

Yeah, we're very happy to have you here today, so thank you. Um, yeah, we would like to start like from your studies and, and then what led you into the startup world.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I, um, went to university at Bocconi University where I graduated with an economics and management degree. And that university, everybody, 95% of my classmates, my friends, everybody went into the corporate world. Even my brothers, both of them are consultants. People went into investment banking, into other consultancy firms, and I felt like that was part of being of the herd, and I just wanted to be different. I thought that there was more to life than just that corporate life, so I got inspired by, let's say, the startup world in the US, and I decided to move to Los Angeles.

Because you also have like double citizenship, right?

Yeah, correct. So I'm lucky enough that even though I grew up in Italy and I grew up in Rome, my mom is from Santa Monica in Los Angeles. So I have dual citizenship, both the Italian one and the American one. So luckily enough, I was able to start working in the US with that passport.

In fact, then you moved to New York to work at an electric scooter company. And can you tell us a little bit more about that experience and why did you decide to leave the company and start something on your own?

Yeah, absolutely. So I decided to move to New York mainly because in Los Angeles, the first electric scooter sharing companies started popping out with Lime and Bird being the first companies. And I just saw the impact and the revolution that created in the city. And so I felt so inspired and felt so drawn into it that I wanted to be part of that revolution, and I wanted to bring all of the service all across the world. So I decided to join micromobility.com, before it was called Helbits, as an expansion manager. And I expanded the company more than 20 cities, so like in the East Coast, in Washington, D.C., Miami, and also in Europe, in Milan, in Italy predominantly. And that was my real first startup experience. It taught me about fundraising, it taught me about product development, about an engineering team, and dealing with all the, let's say, the life problems of a startup. And I got inspired to then launch my own startup there. And so with the skills that I acquired, I decided to put together a project and launch my first official tech startup.

And also, why did you actually start working right away after the bachelor? Because in Europe it's more common, right, to do the bachelor and the master, but here in the US the majority of the people just do the undergrad and then start working right away. What was the process?

Yeah, well, I think there were a couple of things. Both of my brothers did a master's degree. Commonly, like in Italy, people do a bachelor and then do a master. And that's the only way to really get a job in Italy, a respectable job in a top-tier firm. It's like a requirement to have a master's degree. And so I knew that in the US, nobody cares about a master's degree. So it's like a loophole to like start working without dealing with another 1 or 2 years wasting money for an education and doing like, let's say I did a bachelor's in economics, everybody was doing a master's in economics. management, and it's like kind of pointless to like study the same thing again just because of that degree. And so I just wanted to get real-hand experience. Also, my family went through a financial crisis, so like I really wanted to start working and owning my own life and my own money. So that was kind of the motivation that led me to start working right away and just start living this American dream. Where people just believe in the value that you bring more than your resume and your degrees.

Yeah, definitely.

Oh yeah, thank you very much. And like, that's extremely interesting. But after the experience, you've started your own venture, your own startup, Eat& Joy, and that's made gourmet lunches affordable. Where did that idea come from and how did you manage to develop it, given that was your first startup?

Yeah, absolutely. So the idea came from an existing service that I was literally using in New York, and I felt like that service that I was using was a genius product and felt like that it needed to be expanded into Europe. So I decided to essentially copycat an existing idea. and put together a product, raised some funds, and launched it in Italy, basically replicating the same business model, tweaking it a bit with a couple of local— for the local environment. And yeah, it was, let's say, a food subscription service that offered discounted meals to office workers. So the way it worked is that I partnered with a network of restaurants in the city of Milan, more than 300 restaurants, and each of them offered a meal of the day that was offered at $5 for the meal, €5 for every meal. And my users were able to obtain these €5 per meal thanks to the subscription that they were paying to the platform. And these meals were worth like $10, $15, so for them it was a huge

And did you have like any challenges that you had to face while you were growing this new startup with Enjoy?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the timing was terrible, to be honest. Even though I was able to successfully onboard more than 300 restaurants in Milan, the target market wasn't there because of COVID So COVID completely destroyed my target demographic of the office workers. People started working remotely, and so It was so hard for me. I kind of struggled for a year to grow my user base. Also, maybe because of inexperience, I was still young. I was 23 years old, 24, so I still didn't know the right distribution channels to grow my user base. But I would definitely say that COVID impacted the growth of the platform, and it created a lot of challenges, especially in Milan with all the lockdowns. and people not being able to get out of the house to pick up their meals. And so I kind of struggled for a year, and ultimately I decided to wind down the company, close it, because I knew that it wasn't going anywhere. I was burning through cash, and I wasn't able to raise more money. So ultimately I decided to close the company, unfortunately. But I still think it's a very useful service, and if there's anyone out there that wants to relaunch it. I think it could work very well right now that people are back in the offices.

Yeah, and also like this experience, even if like it didn't work out as expected because of COVID and everything, it was like very, very important for your next chapter, right?

Absolutely. Not only taught me like to be an entrepreneur, to have like a founder mindset, to really like learn about the hustle and learn deeper about the startup life. the values that you should be operating on. And it taught me also to be hungry, right? And with that hunger, I brought it onto the next project. So I was able to meet with the founder and CEO of Bereal, who at the time, there was only like a 2-3 people team. It was him, his co-founder, and another person. And they were very, very early on. I got introduced to him by an investor, who I was in touch with for my previous startup. And so even though, let's say, my startup failed, I was able to create a network of people in the industry that then referred me to a great opportunity, which was to lead growth at BeReal and expand BeReal all across the world. 'Cause at the time it was only known in Paris within the borders of France, but nobody knew about BeReal outside of that. So that was my goal when I got hired at BeReal, like to expand it all across the world.

You were like the first one, right?

Yeah, I was the first growth hire, the 5th employee of the company. So super early on, and it was just an incredible journey. It was challenging at first to really like create this network, make people download BeReal, have their friends download BeReal and use it altogether. But it really taught me like this Champions League experience of how to expand a startup and build a network and build a community.

Yeah, in fact, we're really interested about BeReal, and we were wondering, how did the idea of BeReal come out, and what was the initial inspiration for building such an amazing app?

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the CEO came up with the idea because he was working at GoPro, and when he was working at GoPro, in, I think, believe 2018, around that time, the influencer culture was at its peak. So GoPro would sponsor a lot of their athletes to promote the GoPro brand. But before 2018, it was like sponsoring only athletes. But let's say in 2018, it started sponsoring 50% influencers and 50% these insane athletes. And you could just see the cultural difference between a person who dedicates their life to this extreme sports and these influencers that feel like divas, and about GoPro giving more importance to the influencers than the actual athletes who perform the crazy stunts. And there I think he started rebelling against this culture and just started thinking a different way to be social online without all of the all of the, let's say, pursuits of fame online, but with the real meaning of connecting online with your true friends without any bragging or social dynamics that create toxicity. And in fact, he launched the app in December 2020, just with him and his friends, and it just started growing organically because friends started referring friends, And like that, in Paris, in France, it just started growing, and that's where other people started noticing it, and there it transformed as a business. He didn't start it as a business. He mainly started as a platform to connect authentically with his friends without any bragging involved, but really just sharing the moment, whatever you're up to. It's like if you're a personal WhatsApp group of friends, has a notification once a day and everybody has to send a notification. Hey guys, let's update each other. And there's no dynamics of who gets the most likes. It's just like, okay, you see a window into your friend's life in an authentic way without any bragging because you're not trying to get likes. There's no KPIs that you're running after.

Yeah, because usually you get a notification and maybe you're studying or maybe it's not a super exciting moment, right? While on Instagram, it's like, okay, you have all the filters in a crazy location, a super nice place, or even on LinkedIn, they're maybe just bragging about new achievements. Yeah,

absolutely. So for the people that don't know about BeReal, but I assume everybody, most of the people that listen to the podcast—

You did a good job.

Know about BeReal. Yeah, I mean, the penetration rate in, let's say, the Gen Zs was like 90% of Gen Z had the app. It's crazy, like, but yeah, BeReal is a social media app where you receive one notification a day and it tells you it's time to be real. So in that moment, you have to post a picture, and the picture is a picture with no filters that you have to post in order to see what your friends are posting. And it's just about sharing that authentic moment. Who cares what you're doing? Just share the moment and see what your friends are up to. And differently to Instagram where you keep this polished profile and you just wanna share that 1% of your day or 1% of that vacation that is the most beautiful snapshot of that timeframe, with BeReal, it's really about like, who cares about what type, like if it's the most beautiful, the ugliest one, just share, like just connect. And you could really see the The content as well was more wholesome. You would connect like in a more human level, let's say, rather than this social ladder of who's the most famous, who's the coolest, who goes to the best restaurants, the best holidays, etc.

And it was a crazy ride also in terms of like European growth, right? Because all the, I don't know, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook were like all American companies. Like this was The first one, right, started in Paris, in France, that was able to grow like so much. How do you think it was like possible? Like even for the money that they were able to raise from like Andreessen Horowitz, stuff like that. How do you think it was possible?

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, it's very rare for a social media app to grow to that level, to be European. All of them are based in Silicon Valley, like Twitter, Instagram. Snapchat is in Los Angeles, but yeah, most of them are like—

I'm from Stanford students.

Stanford students, right? There is still that like Silicon Valley culture inside. And yeah, I guess like the French are very good also in terms of being, yeah, let's say people that believe in a mission. And so they build projects not only based on like business oriented, but based on the mission. And it was truly around the mission, to be real. like to be more authentic online, but yeah, you still have the American culture fueling the success of it, because one of the early investors of BeReal, who was working at Kima Ventures, and then New Wave, they were the first investors, he acted as the bridge of connection with all of the American investors, so he started bragging to all of his American investors, saying like, how cool is this investment? I'm in, you guys are not. Do you have FOMO? So all of the American investors, the day after BeReal received the seed round from this French guy, the American investors started sending term sheets for a Series A right away, like the day after, just because they noticed the insane analytics around BeReal of retention and engagement. And so there, the American investors came in of Andreessen Horowitz, Horowitz, Accel, um, and DST. Um, and that kind of fueled like the more global, uh, expansion.

How much money like did you raise?

So yeah, the seed round was roughly around like a million. Uh, then the day after they received the million, they received a term sheet for $30 million, um, of Series A, and then we raised a Series B of $60 million. So roughly in total around $90 million. And yeah, $90 million over the course, obviously, of like 3, 4 years.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

And like on the day-to-day, like what were like your main priorities? Like how was your life? Because I remember very well that you were flying all around the world to expand the brand. Like if you can also like share maybe some tips, you've also been done like consulting for many other startups, right? that are very focused on growth. Like, if you can maybe like share what was like the magic sauce or like some playbook that—

Of course, also the key strategies that you use in order to make this growth. Okay,

now I'm gonna share the secret sauce that's gonna make any social media app grow to millions of users. But yeah, I mean, essentially it all starts with a great product, a product that people love, and then it's a matter of like fueling it and distributing it more. But yeah, the first thing that I did when I got into BeReal is analyze the data of the users. Luckily, we had a pretty big user base where we could analyze their behaviors inside of the app, and one thing that we really wanted to go after is this true user requirement. which is essentially a requirement of a user that performs the minimum amount of steps inside the app in order to have the highest retention. And what that means is that if you tell me like, okay, do only these 2 or 3 steps inside of the app for you to understand what the app is, then there we got you on the app. And at BeReal, it was a user that posted one picture so that they want to understand the double-sided camera, the no filters, a user that would have 5 friends so that they see a feed of people and they understand like all the friends' pictures, how it works, the real emojis. And of course having notifications on so that every day you receive that it's time to be real and you get that game. And so like that you come back the day after, you see your friends, you post. And with those 3 simple steps, users will be on the app 60% of the time after 30 days, and that's like god-tier metrics for the industry. And so with that in mind, that was the magic formula that we wanted every user to go after. And this is a different metric that investors are after. Investors are after more like daily active users, and that's just a user that posts one picture, so engaged users. But for the marketing side, we were just after true users. And in the beginning, the goal was only to launch in the US. And so really the mindset was just like the US is the only market. We proved that we cracked a bit Paris and France, but we really need to launch where all of the other players are. And so what we did is even though we received $30 million and we could like pay millions to influencers, we didn't want to grow that way. We wanted to grow from the bottom. And so we started replicating strategies similar to Facebook, similar to Bumble and Tinder, and literally benchmarking their playbooks and adapting it to ours. Yes. And essentially, started launching in college campuses in the US, um, where we would partner with student organizations, uh, promote, uh, their events, their fundraisers, and in exchange for the student organization and their members to become true users, we would pay this variable fee of $10, for example, only if they perform those actions. And the way we crack this playbook is by partnering with Fraternities and sororities. So it's like the social student organizations, the ones that throw the parties, and we would promote their parties. And so people, in order to get into the party, they would have to be a true user. And so there you have a group of highly social people, all friends with each other, for example, 200, 300 of them.

They're all developing data files.

All adding each other. And so the day after, they wake up after the party with that notification, it's time to BeReal, and all 300 would see their friends posting. And so that they would create, they would have this FOMO of not seeing the picture because on BeReal, in order to see the pictures, you have to post. And so people would then start posting. And like that, we threw, we sponsored more than like 4,000 student organizations. We literally acquired one by one more than 100,000 true users. Wow. Created the first layer of the foundation of our network to then start building more viral strategies. And there we could see like the network effects starting to populate. In fact, we have this Thanksgiving effect. In fact, we went from full force from like end of August until end of November when Thanksgiving happens, when all of the students go back home and then they start talking about BeReal to families, their friends back home, and you could start seeing all these small fires sparking all across the US. And that was pretty cool, um, to see.

Yeah, I remember that one point you had such much growth that then you had to catch up on like the engineering, right? Because there were like so many users.

Absolutely, yeah. And, uh, then fast forwarding, let's say, to March, April, uh, we started growing so virally also because we started implementing more viral strategies on digital channels like on TikTok. We started heavily investing our time in content creator partnerships, so investing in our organic channel on TikTok. And that's where like BeReal went from 100,000 true users to 1 million like in one month. And then obviously on Twitter as well, we did some strategies and the engineering team in France was not prepared for that kind of growth. So they literally told me, Andrea, Andrea, stop working, go on holiday for 2 months because like we need to like solve all of the fires in the server side. And so basically that's where we like, we slowed down our growth efforts a bit. But as like the engineering team was catching up and as we were hiring more engineering talent to help us solve those problems.

Especially trying to hire people from Silicon Valley, right? That maybe they had experience on scaling those kind of application with so many users, but in Europe it was not that easy.

Yeah, absolutely. One of the biggest challenges is to find the right talent in Europe that knew how to solve the same problems. And how many startups went from 100,000 users to 20 million users in one month, and all of these users continue using the app? And so you didn't— the people that knew how to solve that scaling of infrastructure problem were very few, but most of them were in the US, of course, with Twitter, Snapchat, and all the social media products. And so it took some time to adjust culturally to start acquiring talent in the US and focusing on efforts on hiring people based in the US.

And it was so difficult that I think that also the President Macron posted a video or something like that. Yeah,

that's a funny thing. So obviously because Buil is French, There's a lot of pride in obviously the French tech ecosystem on the government side. And so because BeReal became very successful, the government also took pride in like, okay, this is our French baby, and so we want to help BeReal. And so Macron did this selfie video to send to one of the engineers we were interviewing. That was very, very funny. to see that.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And obviously, like, there was a moment of the acquisition because when a startup goes really well, there is a point in which it interests also the acquisition from Voodoo, in the case of Viria. How did you deal with the situation and what was your role in this moment?

So yeah, yeah, I wasn't too much involved in the acquisition deal. Obviously, we were aware, everybody inside the company, the team was still very, very small. Like at max, we were like 60, 65 between Paris and the US. But yeah, also like the product in the end, after like fast forwarding in end of 2023, beginning of 2024, the goal was really like to continue growing BeReal. And obviously, if we couldn't continue growing, we had to sell because we couldn't raise money, and so we couldn't sustain the life of the company. Because

there was like no revenue, right?

There wasn't any revenue yet. Our servers were costing so much money. Like, basically all of the money was spent on servers. Like, compared to like the talent cost, it was like nothing. Marketing, it doesn't exist, basically. We didn't spend anything on marketing.

You're very efficient.

We were efficient. But yeah, I mean, on the server side, it was very costly because we had all these spikes in usage when people would receive the notification. And so with that in mind, we knew that the company was in a phase of like, okay, let's launch this feature. If it doesn't work, we need to start thinking about like finding a new home for BeReal, because BeReal, the product, is still very great. But as a business, obviously, if you're losing money, it doesn't work. We started testing out some monetization strategies. towards the end. And to be honest, we were going in the right direction, but I feel, yeah, we got this acquisition offer from Voodoo, and Voodoo is another French company, and it was a great home for BeReal, to be honest.

It was a huge acquisition, right? Like half a billion?

Yeah, half a billion euros. Yeah, it was a great acquisition. It happened in June of 2024. But yeah, BeReal definitely got a Uh, good home.

Yeah. And, and also it kind of like created these, uh, like not the PayPal Mafia, but, uh, this kind of group, right? Of even like your friends that even after BeReal were able to get, uh, super cool, uh, maybe job positions or like maybe starting other startups. That was also like very, very cool, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Like, I mean, uh, BeReal is an incredible brand. Like, uh, we really entered people's houses with the brand. Like parents knew about BeReal. Like the presidents of the United States posted a BeReal. So like, it was very well known, and obviously the quality of the talent was insanely high, is insanely high of the BeReal people. And so as the acquisition came out as news, we started receiving, everybody started receiving like 30 offers from other startups. And Even though, like, yeah, even for me personally, like, I started receiving all of these offers, it's just, I couldn't find a startup where I would feel connected with the mission, and for me, really working for a mission is something that truly motivates me, like, it didn't motivate me just to earn, like, 3 times as much more than what I was earning at BeReal, so I took my time before, like, deciding my next steps, and ultimately, I found to create my own mission and launch my own startups, But I have other friends. For example, my best friend, we worked together at BeReal and we did Bocconi together, Matthew Modaber. He's the CMO of Polymarket, a prediction betting platform that's been doing very successful and he's been crushing it there. He's been

really very popular during the last election.

Yeah, very popular during the last election because it was a platform where you could bet who would be the next president of the United States. And so you create all of these secondary markets around popular and cultural events that are happening. And yeah, he was really able to go viral on Twitter with the company. Yeah. And then I have other friends, obviously from the growth team. They started launching a new dating app, Hoppie, who's been doing very well in Spain, across Europe, and also here in the US. starting their expansion. But yeah, you can definitely see the BeReal mafia starting.

Yeah, it's an amazing group. And why then did you decide to create this startup, was move to San Francisco? Because you had so many options available.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I had options also to literally take a break and go on vacation for a year because even at BeReal, if it was super successful, it was very stressful. I gave my life. To it. Like, and that's the way you live a startup. Like, every day is a Monday, but you enjoy working. And like, even though it's the weekend, and yeah, you take some time off, but you're always thinking about like the startup and like cracking the promise that you have ahead. And so taking some time off, kind of, I was thinking about doing it, but I just like, I needed to wake up in the morning and be motivated that I was working towards a mission. And I knew that in the end, in Silicon Valley, I would always come like for a month, a month and a half throughout the year, weeks at a time, but I would never like live here. And I feel that as I was launching my new startup, it was the right time for me to do the move and be here, to be surrounded by incredibly talented people, other founders, and just the network of people, the right environment, not only in the investors, but really just the founders, that give you like small tips on the tools to use or examples of things that they've done wrong or that work well, it really has a multiplier effect. And also, I mean, it's a great place to live. Yeah. It's sunny, it's— the nature is beautiful, and it's just very, you know, that people here are building. So it really motivates you to build that generational company.

And you prefer like to build something new or a startup on your own or with, uh, with others, maybe with a team?

Yeah, I definitely think like a team is like— I love being working with the team. In fact, like right now I'm building my new startup with my co-founder.

What's about your new startup?

Yeah, my new startup, it's AI professional social network. It's essentially this new private space where users can share their professional story and the AI does the matchmaking. It's like a professional companion that does the matchmaking for job opportunities, connection recommendations, and career growth improvements. And so essentially you can tell all of this story almost like the story that I just told a bit during this podcast, but I don't have it publicly available on LinkedIn. And so by not having it there, I miss out on opportunities, but I don't really feel comfortable in sharing it on LinkedIn and just having it exposed there. And so the idea is for people to share more in depth about their professional experiences, talk about the twists and turns from one career step to the other. And like that, they can unlock more career opportunities because they're more well represented and they get matched with the right job opportunities and people can discover them because of those traits. And the platform, the AI does the matchmaking for you so that You still maintain all of the privacy around.

You don't have to maybe to search for new jobs. Is the AI that matches like your profile maybe with the job opportunities that are open?

Yeah, correct. So you can still search with a job, like the jobs that are out there, but there is this functionality where like you just get recommended the jobs that are perfectly made for you. So obviously the more you share about yourself, the more accurate that matchmaking and recommendation is. And the same goes with people, like we'll recommend you people that have shared similar experiences, that went through similar traumas or similar successes. And like that, you can create a deeper connection with people and connect with really like-minded people. Because right now, for example, on LinkedIn, if you see like the suggested people that you may want to connect with, you connect just based on that bullet point, on that branded experience. Yeah, the university or the company and That's it, right? You don't connect because at the university both of you did that thing, right? So that's kind of the idea. I'm still in the early phases of it. I just raised a pre-seed. Currently we're working on the product and should be launching in the next couple of weeks.

And how are you approaching this startup considering your experience also at BeReal? Are you doing something different or are you approaching the same way? Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. So right now at BeReal, I was able to build the suite of growth strategies and distribution strategies. So growing a network to 100,000 users, for me, like, I know how to do that. I know exactly the playbook and steps that I need to do. Right now I'm in the phase of building a valuable product for users. So it's still before launch, before growth. And so It is a different challenge, for example, to the challenges that I received at BeReal, because at BeReal the product was already made and it was already valuable and it was just for me to distribute it. But right now it's about finding the right mechanism, the right set of features that make users find a valuable product and build a valuable product for them to then obviously grow it. Yeah.

And like for doing the 0 to 1, of course, it's very important to have a like engineers, like product people. Of course, you are more into growth, like a business background. Do you have like maybe some recommendations to find a good co-founder, especially for people that are not technical and need an engineer?

Yeah, absolutely. So like, for example, even the way I found my co-founder, it took a very long time because even the hiring process like should take a long time because your co-founder, you're gonna spend the next 5 to 10 years together. So you need to bond not only on, yeah, you need to bond on the personal level, not only understand if he is able to do the job. But yeah, I mean, it's really about like putting yourself out there from day one and start planting all of these seeds in your network that then you see flower later on in your career. And so, for example, my co-founder, I met him through a mutual friend who was part of the Z Fellow program that you guys were part of.

Yeah, we also did it in, yeah, a couple of years ago.

Yeah, exactly. So for example, even they were like, okay, how do I know about the Z Fellowship? Because you guys did it. So then a guy reached out to me from that program, I became friends with him, and then after a couple of months he suggested to me that I should meet this other guy who's my co-founder. because he was building a startup studio for consumer Gen Z social viral apps. And then like that, I connected with my co-founder, and we just stayed in touch. I still wasn't discussing about launching the project together, but then as I was looking for a co-founder, I started reaching out, and yeah, reaching out to my network to see who would be down to do it.

Interested.

Mirror this mission together.

What is it like, the Z Fellows?

Sorry?

If you want to talk a little bit about what is the Z Fellows and what is like the idea?

Yeah, the Z Fellow is basically like a full immersion fellowship program where you come to Silicon Valley, you're backed by Corey Levy. He invests, I think, like a $10K ticket for you.

Yeah, with a safe.

Yeah, with a safe for a billion. So you can tell your friends that you have a billion-dollar company. And it's basically like this full immersion into Silicon Valley, uh, with mainly Gen Z people, um, founders who are building incredibly, uh, incredible products. Um, and it's a great way to be immersed in the culture, uh, of other founders. Um, and, um, yeah, you get connected with other people and they're gonna— they do like mentorship talks, um, in their network.

And now your co-founder is also here with you, right? Yeah, he's

here

working in person. Absolutely.

Yeah, I think working in person is the best thing ever, uh, just because it's not only about like, okay, I do my work and it's transactional. Like, you work with a person, like, it's like connecting in on the human level. Like, you really need to like, uh, to be working together to be productive and not just like do the job, right? Um, and, uh, obviously there are some jobs where I think working remotely is completely fine, but it will always be transactional. You will not be able to connect with people over a screen that much.

Having lunch now.

Yeah, having lunch. Like, now we're gonna grab a pizza all together with other friends. So it's just, it's a better way to, like, build things because maybe, okay, today is a Sunday, we're gonna have this lunch, we might have a conversation about work, but not that we have to have a boring conversation, but we'll have, like, an interesting conversation, talk about things that are happening. And that might inspire us for then the week to build something and have a different direction.

Even last weekend, I remember that we are hosting at the Gumri House, there's like 2 founders from Spain, and then they also connected very well with your co-founder that is also from Spain as well.

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great example. Like, they're building this AI-powered shopping assistant in a way, and there's like a similarity in the technologies that they use in terms of matchmaking, them obviously with clothes and we with people. So like having conversations like that, but also the fact that they were also Spanish, just like my co-founder, it felt good to feel that you're not alone. There's all the people like you here that share similar backgrounds and yeah, you can learn from.

Yeah, and given that you deal a lot with AI, How did you manage to become comfortable with that, given that you didn't have an engineering background? Although I think this is interesting because now you're working a lot with that.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's really about like search and research a lot in the beginning, like acquiring this knowledge, understanding the technical challenges, and you don't have to be an engineer to understand the processes on how the information gets shared, stored, or created. Obviously, to actually implement it, you do need those engineering skills, but I feel nowadays to have like a surface-level understanding on what you're building with AI, it's pretty straightforward. But yeah, in the beginning, it was really about like even BeReal, like it had nothing about AI, only, yeah, I think it didn't have any AI features. And so I really need to go back to learning in a way. But the best way to learn more than doing like a master's degree is just like reading Twitter, reading blog articles, maybe a book or two. And like that, you start developing greater knowledge around, yeah, the topic.

Yeah. And also I think it helps that you also collaborate and support other startups. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, during this transition phase between me leaving BeReal just after the acquisition and launching the new startup, I was still like, I still wanted to keep my brain working and not just go on vacation for like 3, 4 months. Like, I still wanted to like be productive and train my brain. And so I would, I started helping other startups and helping them grow their products. Uh, and by learning about their technologies, uh, that gave me a better understanding of the ecosystem as well. Um, so that definitely helped a lot as well.

Yeah, you have like maybe some recommendations of like people, uh, maybe to reach out on Twitter or like on the blog? For instance, like for growth, there is like Nikita Beer, right? That is kind of—

Yeah, definitely. Nikita Beer is a person you should definitely follow. Uh, and, um,

he recently did a podcast with Lenny. That was, uh, very—

that was very interesting. Yeah. Uh, well, I think, yeah, following, let's say, Nikita Beer, and there's also, uh, other incredibly, um, German talented entrepreneurs, um, uh, like Fabian Kumari, who launched the Pengu app. Um, like, they're incredibly talented team there in Germany and Berlin. Um, but yeah, there's a lot of people that or like these growth influencers that post viral strategies, how to hack the TikTok algorithm. And even though it's great to see all of this theory, like until you put it in practice, you can never like say that you know how to do it. And in the end, it's all about numbers game and an execution play. So you do really need to put the numbers. But yeah, following these people definitely helps to know the direction of what you have to do.

And maybe some tips that you want to give to young entrepreneurs if they want to launch their own business?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, even right now, right, for me, I think it's about the mindset and it's about like, okay, the risk is incredibly high, you can fail, but what's the worst that can happen if you fail? For example, okay, right now I have this BeReal experience, so I have some pedigree, and if I fall, I can always fall in a high-paid job.

And even for the fundraising, like, it helped a lot, right?

Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, my BeReal experience, like, basically helped me fundraise money. Like, my pedigree people respected it, and they said, yeah, we trust this person to grow the product. And like, I mean, it's not that they only trust me, I can actually grow the product, but even before, when I launched my first startup, like, I left a job that was paying me in the electric scooter company, and I thought, like, just the learnings that I have while being a founder, even though, for example, for my first startup, I was on a ramen sustainability, so I was barely making it, paying rent, and just, like, food, just the learnings in terms of like understanding product development, design, growth, legal partnerships, that's a master's degree by itself. And so after, in fact, after the company, I closed the company, before, even before meeting Brio, I had one week where I thought like, okay, I need to go back in working and like making money. And so what are the skills that I acquired? And I started opening these job positions where I knew, like, okay, I can do all of this. Like, I did it, like, with my startup, even though I didn't earn, but, like, I know how to do it. For example, like, the account management with restaurants, so I could work for Uber Eats and get a high-paid salary here in the US. So that's kind of the motivation. It's like, no matter where you fall, you fall in a very high place because of the learnings that you acquired. But obviously you've got to still put the motivation and getting that job and like, yeah, like after you fall, you need to like stand up again.

Would you suggest to make an experience before in a startup in order to understand the processes? Or do you suggest that are maybe other means to start your own startup without maybe doing experience in a company before? What do you suggest? What do you think is the most viable way? experience in order to maybe try to have an awareness of how to start a startup?

Yeah, absolutely. So I think both routes are good choices. It really depends on the person whether they already have in mind a clear direction of what they want to build. And so I'd say, okay, go for it, go and build, go and test it out, go and find all of the challenges and like just start that game. But otherwise, even like if you don't have an idea and you just want to acquire experience, join an early-stage startup. And I say that, for example, at BeReal, I— that's like, I joined at the start when they were super early, but that got me like the Champions League type of experience that then now I have forever. And I know the mindsets of a Champions League type of startup and the way that it should be run, compared to previously that I had more of a League 2 type of mindset in terms of how to run a startup, because I still didn't work inside of a San Francisco startup. So even though, uh, you're not a founder, but, um, you still, um, acquire a lot of learnings. But I think having a, a top-tier, uh, startup experience is, uh, uh, way better, especially in the beginning, uh, so that, you know, for example, the right tech stack to, to use, the management tools, the communication tools, like all that kind of small things. to make you then run the startup efficiently. But yeah.

And also the network, right? Because if you don't know how to do something, you are just a call away from getting the expert or like your friend that is— Yeah,

absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's just like you grow your personal brand from the brand of the company and the network of that company. And so it's a great way to like have a leap into the startup world. And it's something that, for example, even for my younger sister, she just finished university, I'm recommending her, like, go in an early-stage startup, like, work in an early-stage startup, find, like, something that you will find exciting and motivating and valuable to build, and you'll have incredible learnings to then maybe in the future launch your own one from the learnings that you have in that early-stage startup.

Yeah, thank you really, Andrea, for, for this conversation. And I, I hope that, of course, you inspired all the listeners, uh, today. And maybe if you want to add something, uh, uh, or if we missed something that we didn't ask you.

Yeah, no, I think maybe one recommendation for everyone. is to read the Bible of the startups and the one, the book that really gives you the right mindset and how to operate. And it's the book called Zero to One from Peter Thiel. Strongly recommend it. And I think it's at least a starting point for you to understand more or less how to generally think and how to run a startup, understand the right culture to have. when operating. In fact, I like to think that even when I wasn't working in Silicon Valley before, to have the Silicon Valley mentality outside of Silicon Valley, and that's why you can see the most successful startups that are outside still have that Silicon Valley mentality instilled inside of them. And I think that's a great pillar to start Your mindset. Yeah,

yeah,

yeah.

So you believe that maybe going to Silicon Valley, you change your mindset and how you approach for your work experiences?

100%, yes. I truly believe not only the US in general and the approach to business and problem solving is completely different, for example, to Europe, to Italy, where people just complain about the problems instead of like finding the solutions or be excited about finding the solutions, and here in Silicon Valley, people are just like proactive, they're positive, and they're not just complaining about things, and so that's, I think, generally the mindset to have in terms of like, yes, there are problems, but like after you mention the problem, mention also a potential solution. And even if that solution might not work, but then mention the second solution that could work. And that's a good way to have a mindset to never stop and never give up in a way.

Yeah, because of course when you want to create a startup, you need to think about what is missing or a solution for something, because it's that, that you can create something valuable. So of course, also what you did with BeReal, because it was something that was innovative and was going also against these social medias, maybe Instagram with all these filters. So really, you did a great, great job.

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I mean, in the beginning, you know, there's all of the investors saying like, ah, nobody will use BeReal. You can already take pictures without filters on Instagram. You can already send take one picture a day and just have your close friends, but it's just like thinking out of the box as well to create completely a new environment. People, let's say, in Silicon Valley believe in that, believe in these new philosophies, new missions that people can work on, and I think that's the right mindset, it's like not stopping to a problem, of course, like, understand if it's Unsolvable, but there will be a lot of hurdles in front of you, but you've got to just overcome every one and never stop.

Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. Like, it's extremely inspiring. And also because sometimes people want to start something, but they don't know where to start. So also having these tips is extremely enriching. And yes, so, you know, if you have any sites or links in which Maybe the listeners can like go to know more about you, about what you are doing now.

Yeah, people can reach out to me on Twitter and follow me there. I'm always happy to chat. And if people happen to be in Silicon Valley, feel free to reach out to me, to Eric. We're happy to grab a coffee and Yeah, introduce them to, to a network here, to the places where to go. Yeah.

Okay, so thank you very much. It was really nice to meet you and also you, Eric. See you soon when we will come there to Silicon Valley.

Yeah, thank you all. Thank you.

Thank you very much for the conversation. Have a nice day.

Bye.

You too. Bye.