#001: Prince Ghosh – Founder’s Guide To Making High-Stakes Decisions

The physical world came well before the digital world. Like the, the production line, the manufacturing of cars came well before the production of software and like the scalability of software. Software became a lot more scalable than the physical world, right? Like you would go from software that had one customer on it to 10 to 100 to 1,000 to 1 million to a billion. We saw with like social networks are like the greatest example of that. But the physical world never really scaled at the same capacity. And for me, factored quality is like the vendetta against that. That's like my way of trying to build the infrastructure that helps the physical world scale the same way that the digital world.

Prince Ghosh is the co-founder and CEO of Factor Quality, a digital quality control platform that helps more than 100 brands run quality control, testing, and compliance from anywhere in the world.

To date, Prince has raised over $7 million from Y Combinator, Amity Ventures, Vynyl Capital, Dynamo Ventures, Tariq Basu and 40+ leading supply chain technology and e-commerce founders. In this episode, we cover how to make high-stakes decisions as a founder, the importance of building a strong support system of peers, and why you should start trusting your gut instinct. Welcome to episode 1 of the Turning Pro Podcast with my co-host Adrian. Today we have Prince from Factored Quality joining us. Thanks for joining today, Prince.

Thanks for having me, guys.

We're going to jump right into it. Day of the day in the life of Prince. Monday morning, you wake up. What does a full day look like?

Yeah. I try and be an early riser, but I'm not in probably comparison. So usually I'm probably up around like 8, 8:30. Immediately check Slack or email, which I recently tried not to do as much because I find that it severely spikes anxiety in the morning. One of my friends recently got like the Whoop. It has like a new stress level tracker. I'm about to get one. And like actually track my stress levels. So I'll see like how much of an effect it actually has. But then for me, it's hop like right into calls for a couple of hours. We have a big team in Europe and in Hong Kong, or a big part of our team is in Europe and in Hong Kong. So usually it starts with calls with them in the morning. I'll break at some point, get a bagel. I live in FiDi, so there's a Bluespoon near me and like just got to go there, get my bagel every day, come back. On calls pretty much throughout the entirety of the day. These days I try and block out a couple of hours in the afternoon and just like really set that aside for like deep thought, like product development work. I've been spending a lot of time with our engineering team and on product stuff there. I'll call it at around like 6:30, 7:00 after spending time with folks in the US, take a break for a couple of hours and then back on at around like 10:00 or 11:00 for another 2 or 3 hours to pick it back up with our international teams and then begin. Already we're still A. Yeah.

What phase of the business are you in right now?

Yesterday when you started, it was very different from a stress level perspective, team perspective.

Where is it right now?

Yeah. So Factor Quality has raised a seed round. We raised $5.5 million about right about a year ago, a year and a couple months ago. And we were kind of just like on that path to growing, scaling, like marching towards a future Series A. Today we've worked with over 100 consumer goods brands across a bunch of different product categories, larger and larger logos every day. And a lot has definitely changed. I think one of the biggest things is like I heard from a lot of folks after you cross 10 people, that's like a big inflection point in a lot of businesses where whatever you as a founder would previously do implicitly prior to that, your team could just see and just kind of copy. After 10 people and we're now around 13, like 10 full-time, 3 part-time, things start to break. And especially when you run a remote team or like an international team and not everyone can see you, how you think about things, how you, you know, like the frameworks that you use to think through decisions, it doesn't— like things just stop scaling. And for a period of time, a couple of months ago, I just felt like everything was breaking for a little while. And one of the big things that I had to learn was like, okay, this is like, this is like serious time. Like we have real customers, we have real product, we have a real team. That depend on us to, you know, like that depend on me to, to be able to scale as well. And honestly, like, it's not the most glamorous, but that just candidly involves like a lot of documentation, a lot of process, a lot of framework in place, not for the sake of it. It's not like process just to implement process. It's process because it's the thing that actually scales. But that's kind of where we are right now.

I think would love to take a step back for those who don't know, maybe give a quick overview of what Factor Quality is. Yeah, what you guys do.

Yeah. So Factory Quality is a quality control compliance and testing platform for consumer goods brands. So the best way to think about it is like if you think about any of these brands around us, like we're in SoHo right now, right? You walk down the streets, you see any of these brands from like a footwear brand, an apparel brand, you know, a brand that makes watches, glasses, etc. All these brands are usually like based here in the US, but manufacturing internationally in China and Vietnam and India and all these different parts of the world. And most of these teams don't have folks on the ground in those different regions, but every time they manufacture goods or every time they import a container on a ship and bring it back to the US or imported anywhere else in the world, they have to run quality control testing or compliance on those goods. So like, you know, when you order something from Amazon and you get the item and it's broken, like we are in the business of avoiding that feeling like that is what we are building Factored Quality for, to try and fight against. But that's what we do. And the way we do it is we give brands a piece of software that helps them understand what compliance standards they need to hit, or it helps them really easily build these quality control checklists. And then on the back end, we have a global marketplace of like thousands of trained folks who are quality control inspectors who actually go down to these factory floors and are inspecting, overseeing the manufacturing and effectively being these brands' eyes and ears on the ground at their global supply chains on behalf of them.

So That's what we do.

Where did this idea come about?

Yeah.

What was the light bulb moment for you?

So winding it back, like, I'll take it back, I guess, 5 years or so. So out of college, I was an engineer by training. I like got my degrees in mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering. Thought I was going to go and be an aerospace engineer for the rest of my life. So I got a job at NASA out of college and I was working there as an aerospace engineer and ended up getting pulled into a supply chain project. So if you like kind of think about the world's, let's call it, more complex industries like aerospace and defense and medical devices, pharmaceuticals, quality is actually like enormously important. Like you literally can't fly certain things into space unless they hit certain compliance standards. And I ended up working on a project that was basically scraping our entire supply chain database, our ERP system, and trying to understand whether or not the manufacturers and suppliers we were working with were actually hitting their quality standards or not. And for me, this was just like this crazy thing of like, whoa, I like work at NASA. We probably pay like NetSuite $10 million a year to use their software for the ERP. And we're still like writing, you know, custom code to try and pull this information out. Led me down this path of like, why aren't our supply chain softwares more efficient, more intelligent? Why do they just store information? So I left NASA in 2019. I started a company called Workventure, just really building like a modern ERP, a more intelligent version. In that process, took it through Y Combinator, raised a small round of funding for it, and then met a team here out of New York in Brooklyn called Doris Dev. So Doris Dev was a product design, development, and supply chain management consulting firm agency model. They had worked with hundreds of consumer goods brands and the e-com space in New York to get their supply chains up and running, to help them source factories, and they would actually help them run quality control through this global network of quality control inspection partners that they had built up in different regions. So met them, ended up effectively like merging the two teams. And about 6 months later, we spun out Factor Quality to take the software component of what I had originally built, merge it with the actual service component of what the Doorstep team had built, and launched that into a completely new company. I love it.

It's because I know Justin and Lucas and the guys that were at Doorstep, and I've known them for years. And over months and months, as I talk with people, you get to know people better. You have more trust.

It's more casual.

I'm curious, like, especially a venture-backed company, whether YC, raising money, hiring a team, working with partners like Doris Oh, like that trust needs to get built so quickly. And so when you're new to meeting new people, new investors, new partners, like you have to make decisions to work with trusted partners so fast in a matter of days, sometimes weeks. Right. So I'm curious on your end, like, what is your criteria or like what, what flags are raised or flags aren't raised when you're meeting new people, sussing out whether you want to work with them for like a long-term partnership?

It's a really good question because I think it applies even to people you hire, right? Like, you know, if you go and make a hire for like a head of sales, a head of marketing, head of growth, head of ops, like this is someone who's in the trenches like day in, day out with you, you know? I think quite candidly, like the first step is not to sound super metaphysical or whatever, but like, I think you kind of have to like look inwards, quote unquote, and figure out like, what is it that you value about yourself, right? So understand like, what are the characteristics in myself that I value? And like, know that you're not perfect, right? And like, there's things that you may value that other people might not, or there's things that other people might value that you might not. But realize, like, I think you first need to realize, like, if I were to do the job, how would I do it? And what are the traits that I would bring to the job that make a lot of sense? And then you look at others and you say, okay, do they kind of fit within that framework? Like, do they have alignment? Do they seem like someone who has a similar sense of values. And I got this piece of advice from a coach once, which was really interesting, which is like, when especially looking to hire someone for like a senior role, a really great question to oftentimes ask is, who are the like other two people? Who are two more people that you would bring with you if you had the chance? And it kind of comes to this like network effect function where like, really good senior experienced people have other people that they know that they want to work with, that they would bring with them in a heartbeat. And like those people would come with them in a heartbeat. So for us, with like the Dorosev relationship, right, like we just realized there was so much overlap. I mean, you know, we all obviously were kind of in this broader e-com enablement community in New York, but there was just like so much overlap. Like we saw the brands that wanted to work with them. These are the brands that we wanted to work with too. And that's, I think, how I knew that like Okay, this is a relationship that like truly would be valuable. And it's like people showing up and actually doing the work, not just saying that, you know, they're good at what they do.

I want to dig a little deeper on the values piece. Would be curious to know how your personal values have evolved over time into your professional values and then the shift from when you were an employee to a founder, just how you think about relationships differently and also how that plays into hiring.

Yeah. NASA is like a great place. And it's funny, like I went to school in the Midwest and like when you go to— I went to Case Western Cleveland. When you go to school in the Midwest, like you usually go to like one of these bigger places, like a lot of people went to Procter Gamble and Unilever and like, you know, these big companies. A lot of folks went into the defense and aerospace sector and I was probably like a terrible employee in hindsight. I like, I'm pretty sure like most of the actual products that were assigned to me, I like knocked out in like a couple of days or a couple of weeks and then just like started wanting to do other things, including this like supply chain visibility project. And I remember like one of the big blockers for this ever becoming something bigger, like even just within NASA, was having to get approval just through like all the lines of bureaucracy and hierarchy. But that was actually like a very interesting learning lesson for me looking inwards of realizing like, okay, something I really value is speed. Like I value being able to like knock things out quickly, like continuously move forward and continuously push the envelope of saying like, this is the theoretical end state of where I want to be. I'm going to work as hard as I can to get there as soon as possible. And when I think about hiring now, like it's something I look at like with a lot of people in it. I'll maybe rephrase that to say I think velocity is like the more important word to describe it because You can run really fast but run in the wrong direction. I think it takes like maturity and experience to say, hey, what is the end direction we are working towards? And then say we're going to work towards moving there really fast. So like velocity, like agency is what some people call it. Like, I really like thinking in terms of like days and weeks, not like months and quarters and years. And I think as a startup, the only thing that you have on your side is the ability to move quickly. So if you let go of that sense of agency, that sense of velocity, like you're dead in the water is at least like my take. So it's something that I think ends up rippling out to the rest of the team as well.

I feel like the red tape is the reason people build companies for themselves. Like I, I laugh when you say this to me about how that is what you learned at NASA. I didn't make it to my corporate job like I was supposed to start in 12 hours before my first day. I told them I wasn't coming. They sent me a shipping label in the mail for me to give them back the computer. Never spoke to someone, and it kind of confirmed everything I thought about what the experience was going to be like. I think pushing the envelope when someone's like, oh, what's your 2-year plan? It's— to me, that's a red flag when someone asks that question. Like, I'm trying to figure out what's happening next week because you have to stay ahead of the curve. I think being able to push the limits to me is what just makes it interesting to be an entrepreneur versus working within the confines of like a larger corporate structure.

100%.

And curious, you can move at speed and with pace at multiple levels. Just like a video game, there's multiple levels to every game. A big part of the reason we were calling this podcast TBD, if we change the name, but Turn and Grow in the first place is that turn and grow, leveling up, it's moving to a different level with intention and with productivity. Some curious, at Factor Quality thus far, sure, you're moving with pace and intensity. It feels like we're sprinting for the past couple years, right? Or since you incorporated. But how have you leveled up or how have you driven that pace with intention? And were there any lightbulb moments where you were like, okay, I just moved to a new table, I just picked up the pace, or I just— name it, it's a podcast— I just turned pro in a sense.

Yeah. The way I almost think about it in my head is you can break down a business into kind of like its core components. And for us, that's really broken down into 3 main things. One is revenue. So everything like go-to-market, marketing, sales, growth. The second is product and engineering. So everything that happens with building the software that we're building. And then the third part is operations. So everything about executing on the end value, um, customer success, et cetera. And when I think about the business, I almost think about these things like flywheels, um, where the natural entropy of the world is to is that those flywheels will remain stagnant unless someone is actively pushing them to get them in motion. So the framework that I like continuously apply throughout the business is I step in, I start spinning a flywheel as like founder, as kind of, let's call it like point zero, right? Get the flywheel to a place where it's gaining momentum and it's like starting to spin on, on its own and then hire in someone who can take it to that next level, right? Because like, I think something that's been super critical for me to understand is also like, what are my limitations? Like, where do I need to know that, okay, Prince, it's like time to tap out and like time to bring someone in. I don't think anyone except the founder though can take those flywheels to be initial zero to one. And I think one of like the biggest lessons that I'm sure like we've all seen with like other founder friends and like just companies that we've seen in the ecosystem is when you try to hire in someone too early to take it to that next level, but you haven't figured it out yourself, the chance of them figuring out that 0-to-1 flywheel is like so close to none. I think sales is where like you see this almost all the time where like super technical founder comes in, starts to build something, has an idea, wants to hire in someone on the business side of things, right? Like hasn't done the sales motion themselves and it like 9 times out of 10 never works out because you need to like there's just something So pedagogically fundamental with like as a founder being able to figure out what is my go-to-market motion because it impacts the product you're building, it impacts just the way you think. And so I just like, I try and do that on revenue and then I do that on product engineering, then I do that on operations. And then you hire someone in and at times, like I said, the natural entropy is for this flywheel to like slow down. And as a founder, I almost see my job now as like for the ones that I see as slowing down, stepping back in to speed them back up, reset the pace. And then either hand them back off to the person that's leading those teams or like maybe we need to level up again and hire someone else to come in and take it to the next level.

So I think an analogy that I've used in my business that has seemed to make a ton of sense for me around this topic is the idea of not like bringing in resources to solve your problems, but bringing in resources to double down on solutions that you identify. I think one topic that resonates with me is around raising money.

Right?

So you have founders who like come up with a problem and like, I'm going to go raise a bunch of money and then try and solve the problem. Whereas I was always in the camp of bootstrap, be scrappy. Once you identify a solution to a problem, like double down on what's working. And I think that applies to hiring too. If you're the founder, I know delegation is so important and in order to scale you have to delegate, but you're always going to know your business better than anyone else in your business. And so to just hire someone and have the expectation that they can just like build out an entire business unit within the company and you have no foresight into like why or how, it seems to just be a recipe for failure. There is an element of taking a leap of faith and trusting someone, but at the end of the day, as you said, like the buck stops with you.

Yeah, I don't disagree at all. It, it, it's interesting. Like with the capital portion, it's something that obviously is like a big question in the ecosystem. And I think for the last couple of years, there have been a lot of companies that raised a lot and, you know, built a, built a solution in pursuit of a problem. Right. And I think like we're seeing the repercussions of that in the broader macro environment and like especially in early stage startups. That said, one thing that's been like interesting, I've thought a lot about is we've all now kind of been in this space of like e-commerce enablement for a while. And I think you come to realize, like, as you just spend longer and longer in a space, you start to see these unique insights. And every once in a while you come across someone like a name, like a company that comes to mind all the time is like what Parker Conrad did with Rippling of like being in that space of like HR for, you know, like almost a decade first with Zenefits and then, you know, after Zenefits and just like kind of sitting on this and Rippling, I'm pretty sure like they raised a lot of capital and were installed for like 2, 3 years before they went out and like actually ended up launching. And I think for a little while in the past, I used to discount the notion of like founder vision and just like that deep set of experience in the space. I think maybe like one exception to like the cat, like in general, I think capital constraints are a good thing. It forces you to be really clear about the business and the problem that you're solving. But I think one thing that's interesting is like if you are, if you find a founder that spent like a lot of time building in a space and like finding these unique secrets, I think there are worlds where like you really can trust that founder's vision and arm them with capital and say like, go and build until you're ready to really hit the ground running?

It takes— there's a piece of like reps and repetition. I think as an early founder, your first or second company as your own best practice, it's really good to challenge yourself to be scrappy. I think the best analogy is Adam Neumann.

Yeah.

Like he, he obviously what happened with WeWork, we don't have to go down the rabbit hole, but the fact that he kind of just raised $450 million, I think it was $450 million on like probably a back of a napkin because people know who he is. They know his ability to execute. They know how he can understand like insights. That's very different than like an early stage founder who is building a company for the first time, was able to convince one person to give them a couple million dollars and all of a sudden they're like, let's buy this, let's buy this, or let's hire this or spend money on this, but not really thinking through the implications of that. Because the other piece too is I think there's a misconception around, uh, valuations where people always think the more, the least amount of money you can raise and the most amount at a high valuation is always a good thing. But you're also not understanding all the time that that really just means expectation. You need to like grow into that valuation. If you're not able to do that, you end up just in a rat race that usually doesn't end well for most people.

Yeah, 100%.

When do you just want to get the BIA? Uh, if there's a Waveridge on, pop this one out. 10 minutes. So bad. They're probably going to knock on the door. No, they won't. Oh, they'll just leave it.

Talk about—

this is a revine.

Nothing we can do about that.

All good. All right, guys.

No, I keep you all. Had a question. Yeah, I don't— I kind of lost my—

yeah, I'm trying to remember.

I kind of lost my train of thought.

I think it was about like Caput. We would have a Caput constraints.

It's, I mean, and cut it if we have to.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll add it to what we have.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

I know.

I don't remember how I finished the thought. Yeah.

Something I want to talk to you about. We texted about this in Slack about this, but there's one thing for us to talk about, like moving with pace, moving with speed. Like that all sounds great. I'm tired as hell Friday night and then I have to go work the weekend, right? Which I don't want to do. Even if I'm ahead on everything, maybe I have to wait a couple hours on the weekend. And so there's— it's so different for us to talk about moving with speed. That's all well and good and you need to, but from what we've texted about, like, how are you not trying to slow down, but just like protect the core so that you can keep moving speed? Guys, end of the day, like, that's all you're about.

Yeah. I think burnout is like a super real thing and I've like definitely come through it. I don't think I know anyone who's not gone through it if it moves with intensity. I've always struggled with this notion of like work-life balance because like maybe there are people smarter than me out there and like who work more efficiently than me out there, but like to a certain extent what I've seen is like there's only 24 hours in the day and like you've got to sleep for at least like 6 of them. So out of the remaining 18 hours in a day, like I, it just feels like there's eternally a laundry list of more and more things to do. I think the biggest thing that I've like had to come to peace with and accept, I think it's really tough for a lot of founders who like historically have been high achievers who like are used to everything going really well or like being able to put in input of the work and see the output of things going well is I've learned to start looking at like fires that are burning within the company and get really good about figuring out, out of the 5 fires, which are the ones that are going to kill us tomorrow and which are the ones that like, yeah, are burning, but like can wait till the next day after that. Right. I think that's like one example. I think another example is like I— and I can tell you're the same way because I always get a message back from you on Slack within 30 seconds, which is like eternal emails, like constantly flagging your email inbox, your texts, your Slack messages, like, et cetera. At some point, unless you like draw the line, it becomes information overload. And like, there's times where like, I won't respond to an email for 4 or 5 days. And it just has become really important for me to like understand where that boundary is to say like, okay, like I just need to sleep, I need to rest, et cetera. The way I've like kind of fallen into a balance now is picking one day of either Saturday or Sunday and saying like, this is not going to be like at least a core workday. And then the second half of that is like, there's parts of work that I consider like really like mentally draining work. And it's like sometimes you just got to do it. Like there's no one else that's going to do it. And then there's things like this, right? Or like for me, I think I have a very creative element to my brain. So like doing UI/UX for our core product or like working on a new landing page, like that's something that falls into this bucket of like light work for me where like It is work, it's productive, it moves the needle forward on something, but it also like recharges me because it's something that like scratches an itch that I have in my brain. So I think figuring out what that is, plus giving myself just like some 4 days in the week, which is like time off for meetings, etc., like that is how I try and maintain some degree of balance.

Do you have any non-negotiables in your life that you've developed? I think as an example for me, when I was starting out on the founder journey, I always felt like everything needed to be done yesterday. And so I would drop everything and just do things, whether it was 2 PM on a Tuesday or 11 PM on a Saturday. I think now I've gotten in a better mind space to realize that there's always going to be things to do. To your one point around like being able to prioritize, but for me, like sleep and exercise have become non-negotiables. And I think that it takes discipline to do that because for the longest time I was anxious when I'm actually doing it because I'm thinking about is I'm not doing the thing that I've been worried about. But the realization I had is many successful people sleep and many successful people exercise and many successful people have hobbies that like they do and they don't care. So I'm curious to know, like, what are those things in your life that you just— you got to do it and there's no questions asked?

For me, I think it really falls down to two things. And at times, like, I'm definitely bad about these as well, but I try and at least maintain these. One is sleep and the second is food. Like what I realized is same thing as you, like sleep, unless like the nights that I don't get as much sleep, I just think a lot less cleanly the next day. Like I'm not on my game and there's too many things happening at too fast of a pace to not do that. So it's really kind of come into this, like I've almost had to like reconfigure my mindset to say like, look, this is like a necessity for me to perform at a top level for the next day. I started seeing a coach and like one of the things that we've really worked on is like recognizing that if I'm burned out, if my like gears aren't running smoothly, that will trickle down to the rest of the company and that will trickle down to the rest of the business, right? Like everything starts from the top and trickles down all the way. And if I'm constantly burned out, the team is going to constantly be burned out too and not look at peak performance. Really, the other big thing has been food. I've like gone, as I'm sure all of us have, like back and forth. And it's tough in New York with like You know, like if I, I talk about this all the time with friends, like especially in the tech space, if you wanted to, there's probably like a happy hour or like a dinner every single night that you could go to. Like you could probably go to 3. You could go to 3 like every single night. There's like more than enough to like never make a meal for yourself, like ever. But what I've realized is like there's such a strong correlation inside my body and my head for like I eat shitty food, like drink too much, like go to happy hour or whatever. I just feel like crap the next day. Like, you feel sluggish, you feel slow. And for me, like, those are the two things that I really try and, like, draw a line in the sand.

Do you follow a specific diet or is it kind of just one of those things where you know what you should be eating and you know what you shouldn't?

Yeah, I've gone through, like, endless phases of, like, diets, experimentation. Like, I've struggled with, like, health stuff as well, which is, like, gut challenges and, like, issues. For me, I think where it's really come down to is just like, simple whole foods is like really where it comes out to. Like ironically, like a Whole Foods opened up right by my apartment in Fidei and like I'll go there, I'll like get a piece of salmon and like I'll get veggies and like I'll bake that. And that's like, for me, that's almost like quote unquote comfort meal. Just like it's almost less things for my body to worry about and process in this world where there's 10,000 other things that like we are constantly worrying about and processing. It's just like keeping it simple is, I think, the biggest thing that's like—

I do the same thing. I've actually gotten— I go through phases with nutrition. I would say overall, like I was a former athlete, so health and wellness is a huge part of my life today. But for me, it's very simple. Like when I have a meal, it's a protein and a vegetable are like the two non-negotiables. I actually don't really eat that many carbs, especially when I'm cooking meals at home, but it's reducing decisions. I know there's like these things about different founders. I think it's Zuckerberg who wears like the same shirt every day. It's like one less decision he has to make. But for me, it's like I buy the same 4 or 5 proteins and the 4 or 5 vegetables and you just mix and match one with the other. It makes nutrition very easy.

I think it all comes down to like decision fatigue is like a very real, real thing. And as a founder and especially like you're in the CEO spot too, you are constantly making decisions like day in, day out. And there's like an upper bound or in like one's mind of how many decisions you can make. And it's something that like I haven't cracked yet with workouts. Like I was also like an athlete throughout, you know, high school and like early college. And I used to like love lifting and like going through all these different workouts. And at one point I stopped enjoying lifting because it was just yet another like set of decision frameworks that I had to make. And I find myself craving just like getting back into— I used to play tennis like throughout high school and like early college and like just getting back into a sport where like the rules of the game are made up by someone else. I can just show up and I can just do it. And it's something I need to like make a step on because like otherwise it's just yet another set of decisions that I want to make.

I love that you bring that up. So for me, my workout routine is always with trainers or classes. I always said that I want my job to be to show up and work hard, not have to plan exercises like doing a full body workout by yourself at the gym. It's like, how many sets am I doing?

What weight?

What two exercises are going together? I'm happy to pay a premium to just work hard because to your point, I have so many other decisions that I need to make, but I need to exercise. So there has to be like a middle ground. I would rather overspend on fitness than most categories of my life.

Yeah. And it makes a world of difference.

I think we're talking about like nutrition, fitness, sleep, all that, all that stuff is great. And I think one thing I've struggled with, which I'm curious to get your take on, is like the yo-yo of focus during the week on those three, be very strict with yourself, And then on weekends, this is something I used to do like weekends, like Sunday, have a drink or two and then all of a sudden I'm having a burger and I'm finishing up with pasta and then I go to bed at 11. And even a couple of years ago, like that was okay to do because that Monday morning you can't even figure it out, right? And even a couple of months ago, I remember distinctly I woke up on a Monday and I had a couple sales calls back to back to back and every single one end of the day I set follow-ups. And none of them close. And at a certain point, especially as a beta tester, I realized the stakes aren't like, oh, maybe we just don't work with this person. These are serious contract sizes. These are serious contracts and clients, and you can't just fuck this up, right? You can't just show up for those and hope they go well. So I'm curious on your end, especially when you're talking to— you've seen crazy logos, man. Some of the clients that you're working with, you can't be 50%. And so like, Walk me through your weekends as well, because you want to take time off and have a burger if you want, but you know that's going to affect your performance on Monday. No, you have to show up.

Yeah, it's, it's tough. Like, I don't know if there's a, if there's an easy solution for me. Like, being outside is such an important part of my life. And like, even throughout like the winter, I like, I live in Faidai and I love just like taking walks down Westside Highway. Like, that is like probably like one of my— the things that fall into the bucket of like non-negotiables also, to the extent of fitness. It's like, even if I can't get a workout in, I will at least do like a 2-3 mile walk down Westside Highway. And like oftentimes I'll have friends join me. But it's such a hard balance because I think conversely, like, being too regimented also ends up like causing a lot of fatigue. Like, it's hard to live that life of regiment because that's also like a set of decision-making frameworks that you have to abide by, right? Like you can't just have the burger, like drink a beer, like do whatever it is that you want to do. Like you set those boundaries in place. For me, I think it's like what I've kind of come to realize is even on the weekends, I try— if there's a time where like I'm really like letting go or like hanging out with friends or whatever, I try and contain it to at least a half of a day and say, like, look, if I'm going to do something on Saturday night, like, I'll be like a bit more, let's call it like productive, but I don't mean it in like the work sense. I mean, like get a workout in, like go grocery shopping, like do the other parts of my life that need to be done on Saturday morning. I think one of the things that you've just kind of got to accept, if you like want to have the responsibility of being a founder, being, you know, a CEO of a quickly growing company is you don't get to like necessarily do the full day vendor the way that, you know, you used to in college. Like, there are repercussions of it. I think also coming to just like acceptance with that within yourself is like a really big way to just like ease the suffering or like, you know, reduce the FOMO or whatever other feelings that come.

I think the mindset shift that I had was the concept of not living for Friday nights. So a huge thing that I see with a lot of my friends in the corporate world which, look, it's, it's a preference, but a lot of them love to close their laptop at 5 PM on a Friday and not have to think about anything until Monday morning at 9 AM. And I respect that because there's nothing wrong with that. But for me, I think I've learned to enjoy my professional life and just every aspect of it as a 7-day-a-week thing. But there's also benefits that, like, at 11 AM on a Tuesday, if for whatever reason I just can't be productive and I want to go to the gym, like, there's no boss inside the office who's gonna say, wait, where are you going? And so I find a way to just incorporate it in every day of my life. And I, I try not to look at Saturdays and Sundays as just drop everything, let everything go, and then Monday morning you have the scaries because it's like, I have to pick back up where I left off. So it's— I think it's continuously finding that balance between, um, having fun and not, but not really letting the day of the week be the dictator necessarily.

Yeah, I, I think where this all kind of roots down to is like if you want to do this for the long haul, like there's a lot of conversations that people have or like dissenting opinions that people have about like the importance of the why, like why you do the thing that you do. And maybe there's some people who are just like money is like the thing that they want or like, you know, equity or like whatever it is, right? Something like financial. There's— I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's just a different set of frameworks. What I found is I like have to find something that I love and you're not going to love the same thing always, right? And I found at different stages of Factored Flow to the company, there's different things that I've come to love. Initially, it was like, I just was like obsessed with this notion of building the product and solving that initial problem. Then I became obsessed and just like fell in love with the notion of like selling it, like, you know, winning larger and larger logos. For a period of time, like I fell in love with the process of company building and team building and like really like building a truly remarkable hiring process. And now it's like you just kind of play round robin with finding the thing that you love. But like, I think you have to find that because otherwise, like, it's just too hard to do. And like, sometimes that love is like the flexibility that the job offers of being able to say like, look, like I am tapped out at, you know, 3 PM on a Thursday. Like I need to take a break and then I'm going to pick this up at like 8 again tonight. So it's, I like, at least for me, I found that like finding the thing that I really love and care about deeply in the moment has been like the thing that keeps me going.

As you have gone through that process of like finding what you love, finding what you want to spend time on, we were talking about this right before, probably the hardest part of like building a company and scaling that company thus far has been, you know, childhood, college friends that I love dearly and I care deeply about and having them text you on a Saturday, right? Saying, hey man, let's get beers. Hey, let's go see this game. And coming to terms with the fact that I I love you. I care about you. I still want you in my life. But I've other priorities right now. And, but without losing that connection, I'm not good at it. I'm still working on it. And you've talked about this at length. And I'm curious to hear it once here, like, on that Saturday, Sunday morning, like, are you just hardlining? Hey, this is what I'm doing, you know, and outgrowing kind of those old relationships? Do you make time for those old relationships?

Yeah, I guess the funny part about it, and like we were talking about this now, is like I found a lot of my friends have ended up also jumping into the tech sphere and like living similar lives. And I think there's a world where like it actually is very comforting because it makes the sensation or like the feelings that we go through a lot more palpable and a lot less like foreign. I remember coming out of college, like, like I said, I went to school in the Midwest and Startups were not like the common thing where I went to school. Like it was a very alienating sort of life choice or path that I would make compared to most other people. And like it seemed ridiculous and like I felt a lot of shame about it for sure. I think for a while I like hid a lot of my startup life from folks who were not in the startup space. Part of it was because like I almost felt that shame of like, oh, they're not going to understand. It doesn't make sense. Part of it was like, oh, I haven't made it. And who am I to be preaching about why this is such a great life choice if it could all go belly up at some point? And I think the thing that's helped me most connect and maintain those relationships with people who aren't in the startup space is actually just bringing them on for the ride and really trying to be open with myself and then with them about the joys of the process. So I'll give you an example. I send a monthly investor update and then along with that I send a friends and family update. And I have a lot of my friends on that friends and family update.

Yeah, I think it just— I just, I added, I just added my best friend to our investor update list. He does like private wealth at a big bank, but he's always asking me questions like, I'm interested, I want to know what's going on. I text him, I go, you're going to get all the investor updates because there's no information in there that I wouldn't share with him anyways. So it's like fun for him to like see these things and actually get a glimpse into what we're doing with our life.

It's exactly right. I added my parents too, to like this friends and family update because it was it's like really funny, even my parents, right? Like they didn't always 100% understand like exactly the notion as I'm sure like a lot of startup founders go through. But I think just seeing the journey and like being like more transparent about that made it so much easier to have those conversations. I find it like the part that was always challenging was when I wouldn't see someone for like 6 months, a childhood friend for 6 months, there was all this stuff that was happening internally that we were doing, changes making that were being made. And you go to them and you say like, they're like, hey, what's been up? You're like, oh, I raised this round, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You feel almost like, oh, is it like, it's like overwhelming. But if you just include people along on the ride, I think it becomes a lot more palpable of like, oh, this is the thing that like Prince does every single day in, day out.

I have a question for you on a topic you just mentioned. If someone were to ask your parents, what does Prince do for a living? Would, how would that conversation go?

So I think now they would actually really get it. So like, I'll give some background. My mom was a teacher her entire life. She's now a vice principal and a curriculum supervisor at a charter school in New Jersey, which is where I grew up. And my dad, he was the chief operating officer of a large software services company. They worked with primarily financial services and insurance companies. So he had been kind of— my dad on his side had been in the technology space, albeit at a much larger company, companies like 4,000 people. Privately held. My mom was an educator, but my parents always had some degree of like entrepreneurial nature to them. And one of the big things, like I'm an immigrant, my family's, you know, we immigrated from India. One of the things that I think was like indoctrinated in me at a really young age was, look, we made, we took these risks to give you an opportunity at like the American dream, quote unquote, right? Like to go and build something of your own, start something of your own. And I don't know if this is fair or right or wrong, but at least the way I always took it was I almost felt like it was kind of a sense of responsibility to say if them taking that step function of risk to come to the US and like rebuild their lives was what they took, I have to take an equivalent step function of risk. Otherwise, like, it's all squandered. Like, why provide a better life for your kid unless your kid can also be situated to take that risk with a bit more of a safety net, which like I had the privilege of growing up with. And what my parents offered me. So they were always like quite encouraging and supportive. There weren't always times where they got it completely. And like, it took a lot to say like, hey, I'm not going back to like my, you know, aerospace engineering job at NASA and like I'm going to go and do this thing. But like I said, like along the way, just like involving them more and more in conversations, like just being more open and transparent helped them just understand and learn like what it is that we do for a long time. The funny joke, I'll say like one last thing that this is like the really funny thing. I was talking about this with like another friend recently. My mom, she says these like hilarious things that like for a while I just kind of not like, right off shit. Like she'll be like, are you making more money than you are taking in like from investors? And she's like, remember that like people have to do their work and like, you know, you can't just hire people and like not let them do their work. And at first it was just like, you know, I would write off these things like, oh, like, no, Mom, like the way that VC-backed companies work is like you raise a bunch of money and then like you go and scale. And now I'm like, damn, she's right. Like, I do have to make sure that we are like making more money than we are losing. And like some of these fundamentals, like, you know, they're, they're just true and they always will be.

Revenue seems to be the only number that parents care about.

It is true.

I sat my dad down. So I was at GoPop before I left to go full time at my company. And I brought my dad to New York, sat him down, walked him through a deck and a financial model of our company. I was like, here's how we're going to make money. Like, here's what it looks like. He's a doctor. He really always wants to understand. But to get him into the technical nuances of like the acute thing we're solving within the ecosystem, it's just kind of a slog to, to talk about. But when he calls me, like his way of showing that he cares, it's like, are you guys signing new customers? Are you, are you like driving more revenue to the business? Because as a parent, like, you want to know that there's money coming through the door because that's usually the thing that indicates the company is going to stay alive.

Yeah, it's funny because like now it's coming full circle, right? Like for a while, I think we in the venture space oftentimes were disillusioned by the excess amount of capital in the ecosystem and just say, you know what, like, you know, like all that matters right now is like logo expansion. Grab as many like logos as you can. Doesn't matter how you make money. Like gross margin doesn't matter. And like the world's changing like very quickly. Like, you know, making money matters. Like gross margins matter. Like, revenue, EBITDA, profit, like actually matters. So it all, it all comes full circle. But I feel thankful to at least like I think my parents really do get it and it's made life a lot easier, at least taking one stress off like my cognitive plate recently.

At, at Factor Quality right now, we're coming back to the origins of it. What was your initial why behind doing it? Also, what's your current one? Is it because you just love working with that specific customer set? Is it because some, you know, chip on your shoulder from childhood? Like, what is your why behind launching it?

Maybe this like kind of sounds, I guess, trite, but like, I think I had for a long, long time, for the better part of the last 5 years, I have been deeply obsessed with the problem space of the intersection of software and how the physical world operates. And now it's become like a really popular thing to like, you know, live at the intersection of bits and atoms. But like I said, my degrees, what I went to school for, I got degrees in mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering. And those are two disciplines that are effectively an explanation of like how the physical world works, how things move, how things fly. But I had always been obsessed with the software world and it was something that like I always knew I wanted to exist in this space. And Factor Quality, we operate in the digital supply chain space. And for me, that was like that, that tickled that itch in my brain of like, this is what I feel like I am truly fundamentally like meant to do. I think I will spend the rest of my life obsessing over this. Notion of the intersection of software and hardware, of the digital world and the physical world. And I think the thing specifically with, with Factor Quality that like always kind of obsessed me was this really fascinating thing of like the physical world came well before the digital world, like the, the production line, the manufacturing of cars came well before the production of software and like the scalability of software. But something happened over the course of the last 30 years where software became a lot more scalable than the physical world, than the physical world, right? Like you would go from software that had one customer on it to 10 to 100 to 1,000 to 1 million to 1 billion. We saw with like social networks are like the greatest example of that. But the physical world never really scaled at the same capacity. And for me, factored quality is like the vendetta against that. That's like my way of trying to build the infrastructure that helps the physical world scale the same way that the digital world has. But I think like on the day-to-day basis, that's kind of like, you know, the broader thing that like I think always will fascinate me and will always scratch that intellectual itch in my brain. But I think on the day-to-day, like the thing that I'm obsessed with at Factor Quality is the brands that we work with and the customer set that we work with. Like for me, it's like the truest form of like entrepreneurial nature. And it's really funny because like I think actually in we've now closed a couple of brands that have been on Shark Tank, and I'll tell my parents about it. Going back to the previous conversation, like, that's something that they can really understand, right? Even friends who are in the tech space, they watch Shark Tank and they're like, oh, like Bala Bangles. Like, oh, I saw Bala on Shark Tank, you know? Like, I know they're like, okay, yeah, like, we work with them. Like, that's, that's what I think I'm just like so deeply obsessed with is this notion of someone quitting their corporate day job that, you know, they don't love, like saying, I want to go and I want to build something. And us building the infrastructure to be able to help them find their first factory, source their first goods, launch their first purchase order, and then actually scale up their production over time.

I'd be curious. I'm going to ask maybe a contrarian question, but like, if Factored Quality fails, what's the reason for it?

If Factored Quality fails, the reason for it is we were not able to through software productize enough of the end-to-end operational experience in time. So like what I mean with that is fundamentally what Factor Quality does is it's almost like the definition of software as a service, something that historically used to be a service, which is quality control as a managed function. We're trying to turn into software, which is software as a service, right? Like the definition of SaaS. But within that there's a spectrum, right? Like, you know, the— in kind of VC world, the theoretical that everyone wants is something that's like a 99% pure software, bottoms-up adoption, go-to-market model business. Most of the world— I don't think I can name a single company that's exactly like that. Even, you know, the highest margin pure software businesses have customer success teams, have implementation teams. Like, it's not that. And operations plays a role, but there's effectively this delicate balance between what is software and what is operations. And for us, it's effectively a race against time and cash in our bank of being able to say how much of that, you know, 100% can we get to 80% software, 20% operations, 90% software, 10% operations. And that's the big question.

What is the groundbreaking like moment in this trajectory where you can just like remove a substantial part of the human capital in the business? I think the analogy to use so you understand where I'm going with this is the concept of like robots and warehouses on like Amazon where you have like people packing boxes, but now you can have like machines and AI and things of that nature. Like in your eyes, what is that inflection point where you're like, yep, this is, this is going to work?

Yeah, I'll maybe even give like a more direct analogy. I think a lot of people sometimes tend to forget this, but when Uber first started, the way it worked is you text your address and there would be the Uber operations team who would call up one of their taxicab partner companies and say, hey, go pick up people from whatever, 50th Street or like wherever you are, right? Like that would be the end-to-end process of, of how it worked. There was an operational like broker model. And for Uber, the really big scaling turning point was getting rid of that like operations broker-like model and turning it into a true double-sided marketplace of saying, okay, we have the flywheel going on the demand side, which is riders who want to be picked up from wherever you are. And then on the supply side, which is the actual like taxicabs who are now independently driving for Uber. And I think there's a very similar analogy for us, which is right now, like a lot of the human loop portion is around that, like figuring out, okay, which inspectors are in which parts of the world to be sent out to which factories. And we're in the process of going through and digitizing that more and more. But I think there will be an inflection point at some point right there where like it really— where the flywheel really starts to start— starts to spin on its own. And that's like what the definition of a marketplace is, right? Like self-sustaining, effectively spinning flywheels.

Yeah. We talked about the third— you were talking about this essentially, the idea of stack ranking priorities. What needs to happen tomorrow versus what can happen next week. It's funny because I have, um, I don't have it to be with that, literally just an Apple Notes thing. And there's just number 1 and then number 2, and I'm constantly trying to filter them. But in the number 2, I feel like I'm adding like 5 ideas per day. I'm like, oh, this would be cool. Photos should be cool. Oh, we should launch this. This would be a great customer experience. This should be a new feature. And half of it I will never see again. But what do you do with those, like, list of ideas that you're getting from customers that you're thinking about? How do you filter through that long list to say, hey, this should be a feature stat versus, you know what, this is cool, we could probably do this in a year?

I think it all comes down to frameworks of decision making. And so what I mean by that is it's easier to almost like talk about this in the concept of like a team because like let's take product development as like a concept, right? Like we've all gone through product development cycles in different places. When you do product development, especially in software, it's like part of broader team. Everyone wants a product idea builder, like different stakeholders that the sales team, they really want you to prioritize the product features that will help improve their top, their KPI, which is new logos through the door. The operations team really wants you to prioritize new product features that makes their life easier, which is like number of customers per operations person. And it becomes like a really messy situation. It's effectively what you're talking about, but like it becomes a very messy situation of figuring out what to actually prioritize. One of, I think, the smartest things that I've heard or seen here is arguing about what the thing is to prioritize is like a road to failure because you can argue forever and justify like with enough smart people, you can eternally justify why something should be number 1 or number 2. What you almost need to do is take a step back and build a framework for that prioritization. And for us, that means like effectively benchmarking product features around value for revenue and then engineering lift to build. And that's the framework that we use. So every single ticket that goes into a product roadmap gets benchmarked by one of those things. So the argument that you should have with your team is actually about the framework, not about the end result, because you— if you can agree upon the framework, then the end result is just the end outcome. And then whatever is in that number 1 on your list, that's constantly picked for you. Like, you almost shouldn't even argue about that. You should just do that. It's the framework of deciding what it is that's number 1 or number 2 you should spend a lot of time on. But I think that first takes figuring out what it is that you prioritize. So like, on a personal level, it might be like, um, things that advance business, you know, revenue-wise. Or you might be in a point of like trying to focus on saving costs. So you build a framework for prioritizing things that help you save costs, but it's like the input that you want to focus on, not the end output that, that you really want to spend time on.

I think cross-functional buy-in becomes so much more important with every incremental hire that you make. I remember this from my time at Gopuff. Like, one of the things that I think a lot of people don't know, like, I'd have younger kids who reach out who, like, want to get into BD or partnerships. 99% of your job is internal selling. Because at large companies everyone has their own internal KPIs. For you to convince them to like shift their thinking to help support something that you're trying to get done when it's not something that they're judged on by like their leadership, it's a very hard challenge to overcome. And I think part of that is like the CEO is giving each of your teams KPIs to make sure that each part of the business is moving forward, but also enabling them to like move off the path to support other orgs without them feeling like they're taking away from the job that they have to accomplish, which I think like being able to find that balance goes right into the idea of helping stack rank things because there's give and take and you know that like for me when I go to my product team, I'm like, you have to get this done. Like, I know that's not something I could go to them all the time with. So you have to like pick and choose your battles. And that's part of the decision-making process that I'm continuing to learn along the way.

100%. And I think this is where like the notion of culture also comes in. There's like two ways to build a really good end outcome. And I don't know if like one is better than the other, but like, I think these are the implications. You can build a team of mercenaries who all care about like the thing that they're responsible for, right? Like therefore KPI in its like individual players of one. And like a lot of the times those teams will get like a lot of really great stuff done and like there's some really great teams out there. That are just like absolute teams of killers, or you can build something that's like a lot more cohesive of a team, right? Like, I think the analogy that people oftentimes go back to is like basketball teams and like, you know, how at a basketball team, like putting 5 LeBron James on a team is a really bad idea. And like oftentimes, like we talk about, you know, a lot of the like U.S. men's Olympic teams and some of the failures that you see when you take a whole bunch of all-stars and you put them together because everyone cares about the single most individual thing. As opposed to a cohesive team that realizes that like sometimes you do need to deviate from the thing that's number one on your KPI list to support another member of your team. And it's worth it for the end outcome of the business as a whole. And that's why when I think setting goals like OKRs, KPIs, like whatever it is that you use, it's really important to also have them to keep that cross-functionality in mind and make sure that you're setting goals that don't misalign incentives for someone to say, hey, I'm not going to deviate from something another team needs because the only thing I care about is what I'm doing. It's a really tricky song and dance, but like, it is possible to get right. There are companies that have gotten it right, but it just takes a lot of thought to be able to nail it.

I want to go down a quick rabbit hole for a second. What have you learned about sales and how have you gotten better at sales?

You know that Midwit meme that's like the 50%? Like, you know, in a die bet, it's like the bell curve or whatever. I think when you first start out, you're like, wait, sales is just about like building something that's really useful and then finding people who need the thing that you're building. In the middle, you're like, sales is this hyper-complex thing that like you need to go training for it, blah, blah, blah. And then at the end, like the, you know, the wise man is like sales is about building something that solves a problem and then finding people that have that problem. And I think that's like the trajectory of life that like I've been through where like when you were— when I was first getting started, there was all this like this naivete of saying like, look, we're just going to build something that solves people's problems and then we're going to find them. And then for a while you start like feeling this need to like level up and like there's so much jargon, especially in the sales world of like KPIs and quotas and OT and like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then at the end it's like, just build something people really want and sell that and find the people who really want it. And I think that's like just going through that path. I think everyone kind of goes through some form of that path. I mean, like, of course there are processes, frameworks that are really important to doing it, but I think like the best sales are the ones that are like truly authentic, right? Or the ones where like you really get to the root of what is the problem that someone has there's other factors that are involved, which is like, do they have the budget to do it? Is this even the right person who has the decision to sign off? Like, and it's why a lot of the time, especially like B2B or enterprise, best product does not often win a market. Like sometimes it's the best go-to-market that wins, the best distribution, the best like sales teams, marketing teams that oftentimes win. So I think those are things that are important to keep in mind as well. But like it really boils down to those two things, like building something people want finding people who really, really want it. And like, when you put those together, I think that's what I'm ultimately—

I think simplification is something that was big for me. I think when I first started selling for my own company, you try to sound smart and like you said, you use all these jargon words and you sound sophisticated because you're talking to a big title at a big company. But what really resonates, what I find resonating, is just dumbing it down. Like, tell me, here's like the sphere in which I operate. Tell me how you do it today. Tell me, is there a pain point? What is that pain point? Here's our solution. Is there a way for the solution to fit into the problem instead of you just like pitching, you know, the entire time? I think the other learning for me was like letting the prospect talk, like hearing their story and then catering to what they're saying instead of just getting on a call and selling right away allows you to really understand them and them to really understand you because you actually listen to them and try to solve the problem that they have.

For sure. And I think there's like an element of that that actually ties back into something that you talked about earlier, Adrian, which is like, I think at the very beginning, when you're just getting off the ground and like in hindsight, I don't know if this is right or wrong and maybe it was what was needed to like succeed. Every sale felt like the end of the world. Like every single sale was like the entire, my entire life depends on it. Like I would come out of sales calls just like sweating and exhausted because like you have so much emotion that goes into each one of those. Like, it feels like the livelihood of the company is dependent on you and being able to, like, close that deal. But as you scale, one of the things that I think of, like, I've had to force myself to get better at and, you know, we brought on a head of revenue, Andrew, you know well, who's really pushed me to do this, is also say like, hey, it's okay to not close right after the first call. Like, that's not a no. We live to fight another day. Like, we will win this deal. And sometimes it's okay to even step away from deals and step away from customers. And that's the right thing to do by the business. But all learning process just with time.

It was funny, early days of Verbatim, even when we were freelancing before Verbatim, I would— our close rate was really great. I look back at emails, I was like, what did we do? And I remember being on the calls at the end, I'd be like, so you want to work together? And they'd say, yeah, let's, let me check budget. We get back and we're like, yeah, let's do it. And then I read too much Alex Hormozy, of course. And I was like, first call, second call, framework, closing, deals, follow-up email, proposal. And the close rate went way down. And I was talking to Tommy, who was here earlier, who we just started working together. And he reminded me of those early days, which has made me kind of revert to that. Of end of our first call, he was like, so you want to work together? I was like, yeah, let's do it.

Authenticity, it wins. Like, you almost treat these people like your friends. It doesn't have to be so— you're doing a transaction at the end of the day. I think everyone in the room knows that when it's happening. But there's also a breath of fresh air when you're not just— especially as a SaaS company, like brands are getting pitched every day by everyone. So like, how could you stick out a little bit different? Not necessarily from the product perspective, but from like a relatability perspective, because you have to remember when you partner with someone on anything within your business, there's like a relationship behind that. Like you communicate with these brands, these are people you have to deal with. So if I, as a brand owner, like if it's someone who's just a pain in my ass, like I just don't want to work with them. So I think relatability is so important beyond, like you said, the follow-up sales, 1, 2, 3, like doesn't always have to be like that.

Without doubt. And it's funny because I think they went through a cycle over COVID where people couldn't meet in person, right? So like all sales had to transform to be online and a lot of sales got a lot more efficient. So what I mean by that is like salespeople are expensive, like, and financially, if you look at a P&L, like salespeople are a big cost under OpEx, like it is really big. So what became really hot was like bottoms-up sales motions, right? Like don't need to speak to a salesperson, just sign up, grow. Like then you eliminate the customer success person, like that goes back to like that theoretical in VC world, like the most perfect business is the one that's 99% margin, like both gross margin and then also net as well. Like, and you don't need anyone involved in the business, the business that can stand by its own. And I actually like feel a lot of fear of that sort of world because, and I like, I don't think that's a world I want to live in because it turns out that like one, most businesses and most ideas and most valuable things for the world are not 99% margin, either gross or net. And that going back, like the best businesses that have historically lasted the longest have really been built on this notion of like owning a relationship with your customer. I was just like rereading this book, Fern Rate, by Andy Dunn, about like the founding story.

It's on the, it's on the shelf, right?

Like, like phenomenal book. And it just like went down this rabbit hole of like, you know, early e-commerce and D2C and like the big differentiating factor of like what D2C, what does it stand for? Like direct-to-consumer. Like it's the notion of owning the relationship with the ends of the end sale with your customer, which like historically hadn't happened. And like there's a lot going through the D2C ecosystem right now, but like I think there's something so valuable about that notion of saying, hey, B2B sales, D2C sales, like whatever it is, like all of that relationship with your end customer, like it all comes down to like authenticity, like knowing who's on the other side of the table and building something that's truly valuable to them.

Yeah, something that has really calmed me down when it comes to sales is that every one of us and our founder friends, biggest stressor is revenue, right? It's closing deals. That's why sales can sometimes be really stressful because you're like, I would like to close this revenue to show some growth to get here. It doesn't matter if you raise money or if it's trapped. And I think that's why I used to bring a lot of like anxiety to those calls and try to force it into a framework. But end of the day, every customer you close, even if you'd like to think you can handle everything, it's going to take a little of your time, hopefully not so much of your time incrementally, at least 10 minutes a week, maybe a few hours a week onboarding them, strategy calls, whatever it is. And something that really calmed me down and I think improved our sales pipeline and our process was that even if that didn't go through, that meant you can take that time, make a better product, and referrals are going to improve and you're going to get more customers anyway. And your current customers are going to retain. And so if you do that trade-off, The worst thing in the world is that you have better retention and more natural versus closing that deal. And like with each repetition of thinking that through or each deal that we've lost for some reason or whatever, that has really calmed me down afterwards where my first reaction is still like, oh shit, should have closed this, should have showed up. But the next step is, oh wait, we can just focus on retention and I should probably just be spending time on product.

Without doubt, like quality of revenue, I think matters a ton. I tweeted this the other day. There used to be a joke, like when I went through YC, where when you go through, when you get accepted into Y Combinator, you get $150K. And the joke was if we all took like $10K and used that to pay our rent for the 3 months and everyone bought the services of the startup to the right, we could all go from $0 to $140K in 3 months. And like, it's hilarious because like some element of that kind of does happen in a lot of YC batches. And like, you'll see this thing of like, oh, we're growing 20% like week over week. And you feel such immense pressure for that. But then like it's never sustainable and like 99% of the time it's like just really poor quality revenue. Like quality of revenue matters a lot and it's something that's hard to like wrap your head around. I was having this conversation with, with an investor recently and like I get it, but I think the reason why we all put so much pressure of ourselves on revenue, like especially if you're in the VC world, stems from— that's the thing that's like the most visible indicator, right? Like it's hard to— like we know that it is a lagging indicator. Revenue is a lagging indicator of having a good product, a good team, a good process. And the final thing that spits out is that invoice that you send on Stripe or wherever it is, right? But that's the only thing that the rest of the world can see unless they spend— someone spends a lot of time with your team, with your company, like inside your product development cycle. Which just not a lot of folks outside of your team will do. Even within your team, not a lot of folks will do, you know, sometimes. So it's just the easiest number to understand. But like it is, I think, really important for all of us to keep in mind it is a lagging indicator. It is a function of all these other inputs that go in.

How do you think about relationships with peers, other founders, conversations like this, seeking out mentors for advice? Versus just trusting your gut and doing the work and seeing if it works?

I've oscillated like wildly on both ends. Like I went through a period of time where I was like, no one's going to get what we're doing and I'm just going to like stick to my guns. I went through a time where I was like, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm going to seek advice from, you know, however many people I possibly can. And I've kind of found, as with like most things of life, the right answer is somewhere in the middle, which is initially I used to really struggle with this notion of like advice because I was like, I like, what is there to get advice on? You know what I mean? Like that was the big sort of question. And now as we've grown and like there's very tactical things, I've found different folks that I go to for advice about very specific things about team building, about company building, about culture building, about product, about go-to-market, like different folks for different subsets of the things that I think about. But even within that, I've stopped taking just like even from like trusted close advisors, like love them dearly and I trust them dearly. But I think it's really dangerous to take every piece of advice that's said as just like gospel that you have to listen to. I think it's a lot better to take as a data point, collect a few of those data points and then figure out what you think makes the most amount of sense for you and your business. But like, I just came back to this, like, I keep on coming back to this realization over and over again, which is no one's going to know your business the way you do. Like, no one is going to— even within your team, sometimes, like, people on the team will know parts of the business well, but as a founder, like, no one sees the entirety of the picture, the good, the great, the bad, and the ugly. Like, it's just not there. No one else has that perspective. And that's something that's uniquely positioned for a founder to be able to make the decisions appropriately. But that's why I think it's like dangerous just to listen to broad pieces of advice and take them wholeheartedly, but also to not listen to any advice at all.

I think that comes with repetition. You learn to recognize where your strengths are and where your weaknesses are. I think, you know, a quote for me that I love is make your A's, A pluses, and find someone else to do your C's for you. Yeah, I think it's like for me, doubling down on my strengths has always been my, my way of solving problems. And I know time and place when I need to look for advice, but I think it's being able to sift through the noise. If you go get 5 or 10 opinions and, and that's where you have to be a good decision maker, it's like, okay, I just got a bunch of opinions. Which one of those holds more weight versus me just blindly making a decision of letting everyone tell me what they think? Everyone always has an opinion. So it's identifying which one is the most valuable and that ultimately allows you to build.

Yeah, the really— I like had this realization epiphany and like as most epiphanies, it's like obvious in hindsight, but I realized one of, I think the really cool parts of building a venture-backed company, like, you know, there's things that are really tough with going down the VC and building, you know, venture-backed company expectations like we talked about from valuation, etc. But one of the cool things that I've come to realize is the same, like, venture economic principles that apply to VC funds, meaning out of 100 investments, like 90 of them can be terrible, 8 of them will be singles, and then like 2 of them you're going to like knock so far out of the park it returns the fund 100 times over. There's almost a similar principle that applies to decisions that you make inside a venture-backed company where like you can actually make a decent number of wrong decisions. I'm not saying you should, but like, you can make a decent number of wrong decisions. But as long as you make one or two ones that are hypercritical, as long as you get those right, like, it almost pays back for all the other wrong decisions. Um, it all kind of comes like full circle to one of the initial points that we talked about, which is like being able to like get fires that are burning and accept that it's okay that they're burning as long as like you knock out the fires that will truly kill you and then focus on the parts of the house that are like standing and standing up really, really well. Like all companies I've come to learn are like shit shows to a certain extent on the inside. Like there will always be parts of the business that don't feel good. It's, I think, really figuring out like what are we really good at, doubling down on that, and then over time trying to figure out like where else can we expand into.

How do you view the role of outside of your customers, outside of your team, outside of mentors? The role of peers and friends, of conversations like this. Because I know for a long time, I think building Verbatim, I thought it was like in the trenches. I was working from a desk in my room. I was like, I got to do this by myself. And then the minute that I started becoming friends with a lot of people in the ecosystem, I felt a lot less lonely. And then I actually started to have fun and do a better job because I was having this conversation with Faustin.

I think it all comes down to that like fun component of like, you got to find something you love. And like one of the things that I just like absolutely love, especially just like being in New York, because I think there's such a strong community here of folks who are in the e-com and e-com enablement space around here. Like I, I've always been like somewhat of, I guess, a history lover. And I think there's something like very— I'll call it almost like romantic in a sense of like New York was like the commerce capital of the world, like some of the world's oldest, you know, fashion companies, consumer goods companies were in New York and you see these trends throughout history from like the '80s to the '90s to the D2C revolution of like the early 2000s, the Bonobos of the world that was started in New York to the companies in the 2010s of like the Pelotons, the Oways, the Glossiers that were started here. I think what we're seeing, especially now in the 2020s, is the enablement-like layer of that where a lot of folks are building the infrastructure and the picks and shovels that help these brands succeed and thrive. I think there's such a vibrant ecosystem in New York and like a lot of us are just friends, like outside of just work. Like we like each other as human beings, as people, and it makes the job like a million times better, a thousand times less lonely. Like it, it really just like it— if I've— the last couple months have been like really hard at times, as you know, you said, like it's been a challenging macro environment, challenging inside the company at times. And I think the relationships that I've built with other folks and friends here that like get both halves, the human half as well as the work half, and see me as that whole person, like both a human but also like founder CEO, it's meant the world to me personally. Like, I don't think I would be able to have made it through this quarter if it wasn't for a lot of this relationship.

So I think vulnerability is a really important thing in that regard because when you're, when you're at the helm of something, you always want to act like everything's going great and everything's perfect. And part of that's ego and part of that's just like playing the game, you know, when it comes to raising money and whatnot. I think for me, being able to go to friends in the same space and just be like, dude, fuck, like, how do I fix this problem? Like, this isn't going well. It's a feeling for me that's great because you learn that you're not the only one that's going through something and there's other people solving problems. It's just about like finding your people. I think rigorously prioritizing how you spend your energy and using that as a way to like propel you forward rather than to like pull you back and slow you down.

Without doubt. We, you know, it's funny, we talked about this right before this, but like sometimes the most valuable thing is just like someone who can listen and just like listen and just truly understand, like not reply, not try and fix the problems. I think like one of the things that we all pride ourselves on, or I think we all have this like we can solve anything sort of mindset. And it's true. It's like it's our greatest asset, right? Like it's the reason why we can get our respective companies to this point. And you don't always want like a solution. Sometimes you just like really need a friend who can just like listen and truly understand. I think that's the biggest value that this ecosystem provides. Yeah.

I think the most fun of building for Maven thus far has been meeting people like you. Like I think we've met through LinkedIn DMs or something like that.

It's actually a great, it's a great story. Not to cut you off, but I want to tell them because I think you'll find it funny. So I, A couple of months ago, I was like, in real time, was sitting at my desk, like planning out, like making a content hire or like someone in the marketing world. And I opened LinkedIn and Adrian had requested me and I just clicked on his profile because I was curious. And it was like verbatim, like Content Engine. I was like, wait a minute, what? Like I clicked on it and I was like, this is so ironic, like that exact moment. So I just, I DM'd him immediately after he requested me. I was like, we need to talk. Like, I just need to, to understand what it is that you do because I'm trying to figure this out. This seems like a cool solution. And I mean, here we are a couple of months later now, like launching a podcast together.

Oh yeah. Like that's how it happens.

It's funny because on touching on that idea of like your— what you need to prioritize and what you don't in the priority list, somewhere in that list was like podcast with Ben Sharf, question mark. And it's funny how that actually came to the forefront because I think we both realized, you know, we had just met like, hey, this provided content value for our respective businesses and our ambition within those businesses. But at the same time, just a hell of a lot of fun and almost like a therapy angle to it too.

For sure. This feels like a therapy session. Like you've got to find ways to like have fun throughout the entire process. Like it's just way too hard unless you find something that you truly love and like find ways to have fun and meet good people along the way.

This has been awesome. I don't know if there's any closing thoughts here.

No, man, nothing on my end. Nothing on my end. This is great.

Awesome. Well, episode 1 done. Appreciate you. Appreciate you joining. I look forward to looking back in a couple of months for you to be like, wow, I was the first one to sit in that room with them.

Thank you for having me. This is great.

Awesome.

Well, ready?

These guys.