Jacob Peters - Co-Founder of Launch House

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today I am joined by Jacob Peters, the co founder of Launch House. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Jacob.

What up, Casey? Thanks for having me.

Of course, man. So I know we've been trying to make this happen for a while now and I'm looking forward to diving the story of not only yourself, but of Launch House and the other companies that you've been building. So, you know, to really, to kick things off, where did your entrepreneurial journey begin? Because I saw you went to the University of Virginia, shout out to uva. I'm actually from, yeah, from, from Virginia. So it's super cool to see. But where did this drive for entrepreneurship come from and where did the journey start?

Yes, it probably had to. I have to say it started with the home life. So growing up, you know, can't say I came from like that remarkable of a background. My mom was actually sick most of my entire childhood life. My father was in the military, so grew up in sort of like a proper single income, you know, military brat household. And my brother and I were sort of left to fend for ourselves in a lot of ways. And one of the things that kept us busy and occupied was that of LEGO building. So we, you know, had a big LEGO collection that we were like amassing as, you know, 8, 9, 10, 11 year olds and we built, basically became the teenagers that never really decided to grow out of that, that, that hobby. So in order to fund the, you know, expense of these like large LEGO creations that we were, we were starting, my brother and I basically got the idea to start an online LEGO resale business. So we discovered that there were a ton of arbitrages in the LEGO market. So you could go to garage sales and buy these like big, you know, 50 pound lots for $50 of kids secondhand collections and then resell the bricks for like 10 to 20x online. You could also do the same thing by buying like 20 to 30 of a set from Walmart or Target or any of the big box stores when they were on sale, parting out all the individual bricks and then selling them on like a, like a marketplace. So we got, yeah, so we got pretty into this, into this life. You know, we're doing close to six figures as teenagers just yet, just through our LEGO store. Yeah, and that was like, on the business side, the other aspect of the Lego, you know, endeavors was that of community, which has sort of been like the common thread throughout my life and career ever since. Because beyond the, you know, the financial arbitrage There were, we realized there was huge communities of adult LEGO enthusiasts, like hundreds of thousands of people. They call themselves AFOLs or a fools stands for never heard that before. Yeah, it is what it sounds like. It stands for adult fan of legos. Yeah, they host conventions all over the world. You know, people would build these massive like 10, 20, 30, 40,000 piece creations. And a lot of these folks were actually, you know, the ones probably buying the individual bricks that, you know, my brother and I were selling from, from the business. So we got highly involved in these, these online forums and this was like pre discord, you know, pre Telegram era. You used to have to like self host, you know, these forum instances. It was, you know, a pain in the ass to run and, and manage and we got, we got really involved in that.

Wow. So that was teenage years before it. Was that like during middle school, high school time frame or where did that start and when did that end?

Yeah, I guess it started middle school. It kind of still goes on to this day. Like, I don't even want to show you my closet. I've got like, you know, a few thousand dollars worth of Legos that I just got shipped to la. So, you know, I think Legos will always be a big special part of my life. So.

Yeah, very cool. When was the moment where you realized how important community building was, which led into all the endeavors that you've built up until today? You know, when was the, your mindset set on, hey, communities are important, they're going to be huge. We need to go build tools for this, but also build a community ourselves for people that are going to go out there and build communities in their own life. When was that mental shift and when did you discover that?

Well, I sort of alluded to the fact that I discovered the power of community at a very young age with these LEGO enthusiast forums. But you know, I got to say I didn't even realize I was building a valuable skill set, you know, until 10 years, 10 years later. And this was when I was living and working in Manhattan after graduating uva, so ended up getting involved in the New York City data science scene, which was my career path. So I was, I was kind of, you know, during the day working as a quant data scientist at a big bank and at nighttime I was moonlighting as this sort of like freelance, you know, data science guy that was just looking to upscale his machine learning abilities and I basically started accidentally building community again. So what began is just like me getting together with like three or four friends in coffee shops. In on weeknights after work to like, you know, read white papers and super nerdy stuff. We, you know, we eventually turn into a big community of, you know, a few hundred folks in a slack group, a newsletter and things sort of expanded from, from there. And next thing I know, co running a meetup chapter of like over 5,000 people. And overnight that took on a life of its own. So I became intimately familiar with all the pains of what it took to manage human beings at scale. And here I was a technologist without any good technology tools to make that easy or possible. And that sort of birthed the inspiration for my first ever, I guess, proper startup that we raised money for and built a team out for called Comsor. And the big vision there was let's create the operating system computer of like what Salesforce did for sales teams, but for community teams to help make it super easy to manage all your community member data in one place, all of your workflows and just get an understanding of like the pulse of what's, what's happening in your, in your community. But I think the defining moment for us when we realized that community was going to be huge. And this was before, you know, all the talking heads on Twitter were saying, hey, community building is like the marketing channel of the future. Like this was, this was like close to five years ago now at this point. But we had discovered that there were like thousands of communities just like mine in New York growing exponentially. So we found this Discord group of like Python developers in Germany and it had like 200, 300 members. I don't know the exact number. We joined it. We were like talking with the community builder and then we decided to start tracking in an airtable spreadsheet the growth of that community over time. And we noticed that like every week it was starting to double and then we double again and double again. It's just going exponential parabolic. And we started tracking like a few dozen of these, these groups different things for you know, developers or you know, various like professional industries. And we noticed that like the curves are just all going parabolic. And that's when we realized there was like a critical time window that like, hey, community is going to be the next big thing. And the Internet is like absolutely shifting from this all in one centralized, you know, social media dominated world to one where people are more inclined to want to speak behind closed doors in private, off large platform groups. And this was pre pandemic. So as soon as Covid hit and people could no longer find community IRL, you can guess where the parabolic growth curve went 10 times even more parabolic because basically digital community became a necessity rather than a nice to have. So that sort of, I guess some of the big inflection points that I'd seen as far as community building has undergone in the past few years.

Love that. So when it comes to launching comsor before launch House, and as you said, that being your first proper run at a startup, what was the journey like from launching that idea to being in coffee shops, to managing communities yourself, to then launching this tech platform. And I believe now you guys have raised over what, $68 million from different leading investors. What has that journey been like and what have you learned from not only raising that amount of money, but building a tech platform that's used by some of the biggest communities in the world?

Well, I think one of the craziest learnings is that like, you know, every three months I look back and I'm like, wow, three months ago I knew absolutely nothing. Like when we were first starting the company, I mean, you know, I'd be lying if I said like, you know, I didn't have a bit of an ego at that time, right? Like just young, unbridled amb, you know, hustling. But like, I thought I knew it all and you know, we knew exactly what we were doing. But you know, looking back, it's like the pace of learning has just been. Been ridiculous. So, you know, when we first started the company, I had just quit my job. We had gotten like our first $5,000 contract from a customer. My co founder had quit his job as well. And we thought like, you know, we were ready to go. This thing was going to print money. We were, you know, solving a really, you know, intense pain point for customers. And the revenue growth over the next nine months did not look parabolic, like the growth of communities. In fact, it looked like this. It was completely zero, completely flat. So we basically had no idea what we were really doing as far as finding product market fit, getting a product to market that actually worked, scaling it. We didn't really know how to do enterprise sales. We were kind of floundering. We didn't know how to pitch to investors. Uh, and at this point, like I'd, you know, effectively like used up most of my savings. Cause I'd only ever been working for a year and didn't have a job. Gave up my apartment. So was having to like phone in a favor from every single friend that I had pretty much in New York City. I mean, it got so bad to the point that, like, you know, I was meeting girls on, like, Hinge, and then they would be like, oh, my gosh, you don't have a apartment. Like, why don't you just come live with me for a few weeks since you're a starving, you know, entrepreneur. So I was really, like, scrappily hacking together my life and living situations because the business just wasn't working. But we believed in it so strongly, we applied to Y Combinator. We'd gotten rejected twice, so we actually got interviews. They flew us out there twice, and neither time we made the cut. So here we were with really no savings, no working product, no customers, basically no investors. And the only thing we had was a dream and a passion. And that was the first nine months of the business, right? So, you know, I guess it was, it was, it was really intense. But I would say, like, you know, the, the business would not be where it is today, nor would my, you know, I guess career be where it is in life, be where it is today if I hadn't gone through that period. Because it taught us, like, the ultimate amount of, you know, grit and sticking with it, right? Like, when you're starting a company, you're literally in a lifeboat, you know, in the middle of the ocean with no paddle. And, like, you know, it felt like we had negative 12 paddles, you know, in that scenario. But, you know, thankfully, we, we finally started to figure out the fundraising game. We got a few customers to start to commit to the product. You know, we had a working version, one prototype. And once that happened, you know, the dominoes began to fall and sort of the rest was history, accelerated by, by the pandemic, which effectively 1000x the size of our market overnight. Because every company realized that digital community was the only way they were going to stay competitive and engage their customers or attract customers in this new remote first world.

Absolutely. Speaking on companies building community, I love to hear about the not necessarily transition, but when did Launch House come along during this journey of building comsor and what was the process? Because I know we talked about it a bit at the A16Z event recently, just how it started off as just, you know, a bunch of friends figuring out, staying at this place. I'd love to hear from you. How did Launch House come about and how did the idea blossom over time to where it is today?

Well, the, the, the, the funny thing is, you know, like I said, we got rejected from YC twice at Comsor, and now we get to say we're one of their biggest misses. But I also get to say, hey, like, you know, if you can't, you know, join them, beat them. Right. So that's maybe one of the motivations for starting Launch House, right, is creating an accelerator 2.0. But no, in all, in all seriousness, you know, once comps had gotten to a certain, you know, size and state, you know, I effectively realized that, you know, my passion sort of lied mostly in like getting companies from 0 to 1 in that, that founding stage. And that's, you know, what prompted me to get together with the founders that were putting together the first launch house. So it wasn't even a launch house, it was just like a fun co living experiment. So this was the end of 2020. So right. You know, during the height of the, of the, of the pandemic, had gotten hooked up with a bunch of Internet friends that I'd never met in person. We'd only ever met online. One of them was this guy Michael, who's now my co founder and he also got this guy Brett, who's our third co founder, to come together and to live in this, in this house. And the idea was, was simple. Let's like, you know, take the magic of the hacker house and do it in Mexico, right? Because Mexico is one of the few, you know, places that was not, I guess like completely shut down because of the pandemic. And you know, the idea of like hacker houses, they've been around like since the inception of Silicon Valley, like Microsoft, Google, all these things, like started hacker houses in Palo Alto, like garages and stuff. So the model is tried and true, but what no one had ever really done before is personified the concept. So Casey, you know, like the hype house and like, you know, Jake Paul's team 10 all those things. So in LA, yeah, like there's all these influencer mansions that had been popping up over the past few years and they all had names and it was, you know, like people loved them. They were viral on TikTok. So we're like, why don't we take that same concept and apply it to the tech industry. So the Twitter account was made, the Instagram account was made, the brand identity was born. We called it Launch House. And this was on like day three of that hacker house with, with really truly no intention of turning it into anything more than just like a fun social media account for laughs, genuinely. And you can guess what happened, right? Things went viral. Yeah, yeah, they took on a life of their own because you know, the reality is what we were doing was so contrary to everyone else's. Lived experience that it created this like inherent polarization. Right. Like, you know, you, I don't know where you were. Maybe like in your New York or, you know, LA apartment. Quarantined.

Yeah.

Like, you know, yeah, there you go. You know, probably not seeing many human beings, but here we were in a mansion in paradise, broadcasting it on social media with like a crazy brand, you know, while everyone else was inside. It just, it was polarizing and people resonated with it. So the timing was perfect. If we did this today, it wouldn't have had as big of a social media splash because we really stood out. So that's effectively what happened. The next step was, okay, there's energy here. How do we harness this? And we came together as co founders and business partners by sort of triangulating our three skill sets. So my co founder, Brett, he comes from a design background. He's the one who created the brand. He came with Launch House, he started the Twitter account and he's very like social content native.

Yep.

My co founder Michael was the one who hustled to put the house together. Like he's a logistics guru. Like he was very early Uber and Airbnb, like just, you know, helped build out those, you know, big tech platforms from, from very early days into kind of what they are. Me, I came from the community background. Right. So I, you know, know have a good sixth sense for like what is sort of the perfect seed or primordial soup for a community that has the potential to scale into something that can last years and generations. So with sort of the brand design, content angle, plus the ops and logistics and then the community people aspect, it was effectively the perfect trifecta and formula for us to marry that energy together and turn Launch House into something more. So that's the founding story. I'll maybe pause there, but there's a lot more to dig into.

It's so cool to hear about that and just know that as you said, timing, timing is so important with everything and you can't predict that. But your guys timing was so sweet and on point. And I've been to a Launch House event before and you guys have not only built a phenomenal community, but just to see how it's built and scaled into many different types of communities is very interesting. And I'd love to know from you, when you think about Launch House in the future and the power of these different communities, whether that's venture house, hack house, design house, how do you guys think about that moving forward in terms of segmenting these Communities, building them each in parallel. Because I think that's fascinating when it comes to the potential of the different communities you guys can build, stemming from initially Launch House and then now these other three. So we'd love to hear about some of the expansion plans and how you guys think about the future of these different communities and again, building them out in parallel.

Yeah, so I mainly spend most of my time these days focused completely on our venture fund. So we have a new venture arm at Launch House where. Because obviously I guess Launch House, Quick TLDR is we're sort of like if you took a startup incubator like Y Combinator and match it up with the Stanford dorm room, you know, where entrepreneurial people are living together, like that's, that's basically the, the vibe. So we have mansions in la, New York City, soon to be San Francisco, where we host programs, kind of like an accelerator, except we don't take, you know, no mandatory equity. Take founders come in, they live, they work there, you know, they build their companies and we sort of help them, help them grow and get connected to the right, to the right investors. And that's like our founder program, it's the core program called, called Launch House. So we will then invest in a top subset of the companies that come out of every single batch. And that's primarily where I spend most of my time. So I don't want to comment too deeply on the rest of the business. My co founders run that. But I guess just one analogy that might resonate with how to think about Launch House is that we're almost building this new age university. If something like Harvard were started today, what would it look like? Okay, well obviously you need a college of entrepreneurship or a business school. That's Launch House. Right. What do great entrepreneurs need in order to, you know, build successful, enduring companies? Well, they need technical talent to help them create software. They need their first check investor. You know, they need designers to help them get a brand identity. They need marketers to go to market. So the idea is like, let's create the school of design, the school of, you know, engineering, you know, the college of this. So effectively any sort of role that a founder might need to hire for to their founding team, like we're trying to create building blocks within the ecosystem that they can pull from. So that's, that's the big idea with expanding, you know, the kind of size and scope of the, of the, of the community. And the big vision here though is really, you know, beyond like one analogy of a university, another way to Think about what we could be creating is almost like, you know, a Berkshire Hathaway esque holding company. Right. That starts to look like an ownership index of the early stage startup market. So the way most accelerators and venture capital funds are structured is such that, you know, the entire platform or back office and all the value add and support for founders and resources, it relies on 2% management fees from the fund size. Right. And then all the profits from the fund go to the pockets of the partners as carry. Right. They're the ones getting rich. So if you think about like what happened to the billion dollars that Y Combinator made off of Dropbox or Airbnb or Coinbase, where did that go? Well, it went to the pockets of the investment partners that were there at that time. Our model structure a little bit differently in the sense that all of our profits from the fund, or the majority of them, they actually flow back as income to our master balance sheet at Launch House so that we can then use it to reinvest into more companies later or more programs for founders, more resources, more value add so that we're not just constrained by our 2% management fees on the assets that we have under management in order to thrive. Rather like we can rely on our investment returns. So we're thinking really long term, how does this become an institution that our grandkids could be a part of? Right. So I guess another analogy is like a university endowment in a sense, Right. Where you're just constantly reinvesting back the proceeds to grow the pie for future generations.

I love that and I appreciate the, the way you broke that down when it comes to house capital. And as you said, that's where you spend majority of your time. How many companies have you guys invested in through the program? You know, since you guys launched now in 2020, it's been two years. How many investments have you made? And what does that process look like when it comes to these cohorts coming in? Do all of them get investments?

Do.

Just some of them. Would love to hear that from your perspective.

Yeah, so we, gosh, we've done so many. I've lost track now, but it's probably a little over 20 at this point, which is really exciting, a lot that we're really, really excited about. And the model is that we're trying to become like an anti accelerator. Right. So most accelerator programs and VCs, their vibe is please let us on the cap table and we promise we'll be valuable. They beg to invest and then promise they'll be valuable later. Our whole vibe is like, let's flip that on its head and be very valuable first. Right. And provide the value initially. And then as a thank you, we kind of gently asked to get on the cap table cable later. So Launch House founders, basically they come in, they get access to the community, our programs, our network. So we do a lot of proactive work to try to get them in front of kind of the best investors in our networks if they're fundraising ready so that they can help get their rounds kicked off and close. And then our model is to then co invest later once they have a lead secured effectively. And everybody that joins Launch House has like in the member agreement, they basically agree to this. So we kind of get first access as a thank you for providing the value. But yeah, we don't invest in everybody. It's pretty egalitarian even playing field. We basically say like, hey, we're going to give everybody the same access to resources, investor connects, we're going to give everyone the same platform more or less, by and large. And then it's up to you to execute, to go find the lead once we kind of serve it up for you on a golden platter.

Yeah, I mean, you guys are really flipping the script about what history has proved to be with these different accelerators. And I think it's not only cool to see, but it's revolutionary for founders that are maybe in high school right now thinking about starting a startup and they're in Louisiana and they want to come out to LA and get in front of these people. So very, very cool to see that. When it comes to, you know, how you think about not only investments you make, but as you're talking about the legacy of being able to get your grandchildren into this Launch House company, what are some of the hurdles that have come up up until this point that you guys have had to maneuver and what have you learned so far from building Launch House as you think about the future of this type of business model that you guys are running?

Well, here's the thing. I come from a technical software background, right? Like ignoring the Lego stuff for a second, like I'm a technologist. So I will say operating in the world of bits and software is so tremendously different than operating in the world of atoms and human emotions. Like, you know, we are running a primarily physical community, you know, and human beings are sort of all the, all the inputs, right? Like it is a relationship based business. Like we, you know, thrive or fail based on like the quality and the caliber of bonds that we are able to, you know, foster with people and between people, effectively. The vibes. Right. Like, we're literally creating an intangible thing. Right. It's a. It's. It's a feeling, you know, like, just like, you know, like, you know, religion or political party. These aren't things you can go out and touch or see or interact with on, like a software platform. Like, it's just. Yeah, it's a little voice that lives in the back of your head, you know, that gives you a positive or negative affiliation or association or, you know, it's a. It's an identity that we're trying to cultivate within. Within people and that, you know, has its own unique set of challenges. Right. So, yeah, just keeping people excited, engaged, and really bought into the vibes. I think that's, you know, the most. The most challenging aspect.

Absolutely. How do you think you guys have, you know, up until this point done that? Well, because, I mean, as a. As someone that's been to these events and has met so many awesome people through the one event I went to, you know, it's a very positive, exciting place to be coming from my perspective firsthand, and I'd love to. Again, I know you don't spend the majority of your time in this side of the business, but what do you think it is that you guys have done up until this point to create that? That if there's a founder out there that's looking to build community in their own world or their own life, could take away from this conversation.

I think the biggest thing is flip the script. As we establish we're doing something different than traditional VCs. Like, you know, the only way you create an enduring institution or a community is like, you flip the script and give people access to something unique that they don't, you know, otherwise have access to. I'll give you the most obvious, you know, example. It's literally in our name, right? We are Launch House. We run programs out of, like, lavish mansions. You know, if you think about the founder paradigm of the past, it was, you know, founders flying to Silicon Valley, driving to Sandhill road, pitching to VCs in, like, their massive, you know, beautiful, like, office buildings, right, that they invested tens of millions of dollars into. And it was like founders playing on investors home turf with Launch House. Like, we flipped the script and, you know, investors have to come to us. You know, they come to the founders and pitch to them on their home turf in this mansion that they're like, interloping in for the month or for however long the program Is so, you know, I think that's the parting words I'd leave anybody interested in community with is like, just like, you know, take whatever, you know, be an iconoclast, right? Like trash the cherished institutions, flip the script, do something completely different that others, you know, aren't, you know, aren't doing or serve them in a way that, you know, their existing communities aren't, aren't serving them. Right. This is why like startups are able to unseat incumbents. It's because they reimagine, you know, what like the user experience and the brand and the vibe, you know, in the process looks like for, for people and their problems. You know, I think it's the same thing. If you apply like a product, you know, mentality approach to community, you can find new ways to bring people together and flip the script and serve them differently.

Absolutely. Very, very well said. When it comes to. And then we talked about a little bit before, when it comes to your day to day and where you spend your time. Where do you spend your time day to day, I should say. And what excites you? You're looking at so many different companies you're investing into founders, what are some industries and maybe some companies, if you can talk about it, that you're excited about and super interested in and you know, just how do you allocate your time day to day because you guys have so much going on. And again, a lot of it is in, you know, irl, in real life that is different than just, you know, playing in the background on zoom everything and interacting and building a company remote. Right. So I would love to hear that perspective from you as it's a very unique lifestyle and company that you're, you are building.

Yeah. So being an investor is very different than being a founder. Right. Something that I've, you know, that I've realized is that like, you know, as a, as a founder, in order to be good, you kind of have to be like a little bit good at everything. Right. Like you have to be like, you know, decent at sales, decent at this decent ops. Like, you know, you have to be like polymathic in a sense. Right. But when it comes to being an investor, you know, similar. But the reality is like, because the industry is so competitive and capital so commoditized, you have to figure out where your really unique edge is. Right. So I've done a lot of soul searching recently, which is like, okay, if I'm going to be successful venture capitalist someday, what is my edge and how can I Double down and triple down on that edge and that strength. And for me, I firmly believe it's the people it's being able to pattern match. Okay. Based on my own experience as a founder, based on the thousands of founders I've been able to meet with one on one and study through launch house, can I pattern match the reality and the experiences that I'm hearing from this founder I'm talking to with who I know are the best of the best? Right. I think, look, there's multiple different dimensions you could evaluate a company on, right? It's a no brainer that they need to have some sort of traction and a market that has a lot of underlying macro waves that are just undeniably happening. But the reality is none of that matters if you don't see a founder as having that it factor and being able to grow into a leadership role where you know, they can command a room or a Zoom call like 400 people in five years, right? Because that's like the pace of growth that you know they're going to be growing and if they, they're going to build a multi billion dollar company on the VC treadmill. So you know, I spend a lot of time like figuring out, okay, like how can I continue to refine this people edge study people, be a student of body language. The other thing is, you know, I think not enough investors understand the context of history in the industry. Like, you know, I'm relatively young and new at this game. I'm 27, you know, I've only really been in proper Silicon Valley I guess you could say for five, for five years. So I've missed like a lifetime of cycles. So I've been spending like, you know, a ton of time and energy. I literally have a whole book right here of like different historical books on like, you know, how the Internet started. Like, let's see the history of venture capital, right? Like I have like four more on the other bookshelf over there. I won't go and grab them but like I'm basically trying to be a massive student of, you know, of history to understand like, you know, what are the, the different lessons and learnings and patterns from cycles that you know, I haven't seen personally but you know, that I might be missing that I could add to my, add to my, my, my repertoire. And as far as what keeps me, you know, excited, motivated and passionate. I mean it, it comes down to like, you know, just hearing people's stories. Like you know, at the end of the day like everyone comes from like such A unique, amazing place. Like, you know, I just. I just live for hearing founder stories. Like, I love asking the question, like, why are you. Like, you know, why were you basically born to build this company? You know, like, what, what, like 10 to 15. Just unique factors in your life all kind of added together to create the perfect storm or catalyst for you to be here. In the same way that, like, you know, Michael, Brett and I had kind of like, the perfect backgrounds, you know, for that faithful meeting in Mexico to start. Start Launch House. So I try to think about that, you know, did they have, like, the property primordial soup? And I. And I try to suss that out by hearing their story.

I love that last question before we wrap this up. You know, you guys closed your Series A last year with a 16Z, and I'm sure that was a super exciting process to get to that. To get to that point. And speaking about, you know, reading these books and learning about the past, you know, a 16Z, they're one of the best in the game. What have you learned through working with them firsthand that you can pass down to founders that may, you know, aren't in your position where you guys have, you know, have a Series a led by a 16Z? What have you learned from them? And what would you pass down from what you have learned from them and their whole team?

So here's the thing. I've raised money from probably close to 24 different institutional investors now across, you know, close to $100 million in two companies and, like, a venture fund. And I will tell you not to diss any of our other investors because they're all great in their own unique ways, but a 16Z is truly in a league of their own. I genuinely mean it. The hype is real, y'. All. The hype is real. And I'm not just like, I didn't get paid to say this, you know, but the reality is, like, you know, they are in a different class. And I think what, you know, what really makes them so is their. A few things. One is that their platform team, like, it really does feel. At least it's felt at times, like we have just extra tentacles and team members in our business because they have so many folks and different functions that are there for us, that can help us with different projects. The other thing is they have a great network, and they're always very proactive about connecting founders within the network. My co founder, Brett, I know, is on this email list with a bunch of other founders in the portfolio, and he said it's like the most helpful thing ever. So I guess as far as, like. Yeah, so as far as like a way, you know, to, I guess a learning or a takeaway for founders that are listening to this is that don't be afraid to, you know, just ask for help from other folks that are like one to two steps above you. Like, I probably am texting like 15, literally 15 different founder friends a day or investor friends about like, different things that I just, like, don't know or want, like a quick piece of feedback on. So, like, my, my feedback loop is like very high velocity, you know, and I definitely did not do that in like, my early founder career. And I think that, you know, being in the Async Z network, it's like kind of put that on. On steroids in a sense. So even if you don't have like an investor like that leading you around, like, you know, just finding. I mean, maybe, who knows? I guess this is why Launch Us exists and why people love it, right? It's because they have that network of founders. So we're kind of providing a similar service in a. In a sense. But I guess anything that you could do to increase the velocity of your feedback loop that you're getting from mentors and friends that have seen similar scenarios to what you're encountering, the greater chance you'll have at succeeding or figuring out your problem.

I love to hear that. I think that's a powerful point to end on. Last question before we do wrap up, Jacob, is if you were to go back in time and give your younger self a piece of advice, that teenage Jacob that's building and selling Legos, what would that advice be and why?

Oh, gosh. It's a great question. Man, I should have been prepared for this one. Let's see. You know, it's so strange because, like, I feel like life's worked out so, you know, perfectly and beautifully. You know, I wouldn't say I'd make any, like, sweeping sleeping changes, but, you know, I will say this. Relationships matter, right? Like, you can have. I used to be a data scientist. I used to be a quant. Like, you can have the best data in the world, right? Like the best stats, statistics, figures, like the best machine learning model to help you predict something, you know, but the reality is, like, if the person that, like, you're trying to, you know, break through with or like, get to change their mind or do something or make a decision, like, doesn't have a personal relationship with you, they're just going to immediately discard the data. Like, you know, human beings, they put, like, the personal, you know, glasses and lens on first before they look at any sort of supplementary information. So, you know, I think the advice I'd tell myself is like, just, you know, focus on building relationships first. And, you know, sometimes you just got to throw out your data and your principles out the window and focus on connecting with someone on a human level. Because, you know, I've certainly made that mistake probably one too many. One too many times.

Love to hear that. Well, Jacob, I just want to say it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show today. I've been looking forward to this for a while. So before I let you go, where's the best place for any founder watching or listening to learn more about Launch House, follow your journey, or get involved with community that you've built?

Yeah, follow me on Twitter or Instagram. My handles are the same. It's double underscore, cub, jcub, or launchhouse.com.

Love it. Well, thank you so much again, Jacob. It's been truly my pleasure and I'm looking forward to seeing you soon.