Taylor Offer - The Founder of Atrios on Reinventing How Companies Grow with AI

All right, welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today I am joined by none other than Taylor Offer, the founder of Atrios. Taylor, thanks so much for coming to the show, man. What's up? Thanks for having me. Of course. So, you know, I know we've been— we've talked about doing this for quite some time, man, and, you know, seeing your journey throughout the years of knowing you has been incredible to watch. And, you know, with the new company that you recently launched, I kind of want to start there because I think it's so foundational to who you are as a, as a founder and as an operator, uh, when it comes to Atrios and, you know, coming out of stealth mode, if you will, for those that may not know what it is that you've recently launched, let's start there. Then we'll dive into the, the great backstory, uh, to kick off the show.

Yeah. So super excited to be building Atrios, which I call my next 10-year journey. My last company I ran for 10 years before selling into a private equity firm. So I look at my life in 10-year blocks. So that company I ran from 21 years old to 32 years old. To 31 or 32. This company I plan to run from 30 to 41. So this is my next 10-year journey. Uh, simplest way to describe Ahrefs is there's companies who are willing to compensate you and your friends to hear feedback about their new products and to tell you what they're building, right? And then on the flip side, there's people who, like you or like me, who want to learn about these new products, want to share feedback, want to do all that, so you can get rewarded for that. So we are the platform that enables that to happen.

Absolutely. And I, when I first came across, when we spoke, you know, probably a couple months ago now, I, I think it's one of those conversations where I'm like, wow, if there's a founder that I could point to that should be building this, it's you. And I know you brought up countless examples in, in your past, you know, as, as a founder, um, you know, running Feetwear, you'll be making introductions to companies and they would turn out to be some of the biggest customers for these, you know, these companies that you're making referrals to. And, you know, I can look back on my journey and kind of point to introductions that maybe were very, informal, if you will, that I didn't have to have an easy way to track them by any means that turned out to be extremely beneficial for both parties. And I kind of want to take a step back and say, when did you start recognizing this throughout your entrepreneurial career? When, you know, informal introductions to friends and homies turned into much larger opportunities to not only put money in your pocket, but to kind of, you know, now looking back, find the pinpoint moments of say, wow, why isn't there a way to that, you know, this is built around software and productized in a sense. So would love to kind of take a step back and kind of look beyond where we are today, but where you kind of, have you started noticing these trends in your life?

[Speaker] You know, it's funny, when I started my first company, Feet Clothing, we did some of the earliest collaborations with a lot of the biggest influencers and celebrities in the world. And it was funny because I became friends with a lot of these people who had millions or tens or hundreds of millions of followers, and I would introduce them to brands. And they would do 6-figure or 7-figure deals together. And then the brand would say, hey, we want to give you a percent of this deal. And I was like, I just thought I was making an intro, like, well, you guys both have brands, you guys are being taken care of. They're like, no, no, we'll pay you to do more of this. I was like, oh, that's interesting. So I'd be introducing influencers or celebrities to brands. Then I started meeting all these brands and all these SaaS service providers started saying, hey, we want to meet all these brands you know. And I was like, cool, got you, of course. I started making a bunch of intros just very casually, right? Like to me, my, business mentality is it all comes back around and just like help first, figure it out second. So I offered a couple intros and I was like, yeah, I got you. I'll introduce you to this person, this person. And then some of these companies turned into companies that were worth hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, like unicorns. And they would tell me, they're like, hey, we have a 50-person sales team and 7 of our top customer, top 10 customers came from you. Like you're our best salesperson. And I was like, what do you mean? I just texted 10 friends. I don't know what you're talking about. They're like, no, no, we wanna pay you like a lot of money to do a lot more of this. So I started doing this for a lot of companies. Um, and it's really amazing what like, what the right tastemaker could do for a company, right? Like the right person can plug you into the right places and help blow up your company. And the right tastemaker can actually get the right feedback of saying like, hey, talk to this person. They said they're not going to sign up with you unless you do X, Y, and Z feature. You tell that to the company, they do the feature, boom, they take off, right? So there's so much intel, there's so much value to having these tastemakers. And I saw it because I helped build a lot of companies that became multi-billion dollar companies just through these introductions. And then the idea came up, oh, how can we do this at scale?

Yeah, no, I mean, it's such a— I mean, looking back, it's, you know, I love— I know I told you this when you first kind of gave me a glimpse of the product. I was like, why, you know, why hasn't something like this been done before? And I kind of want to take a step back to, you know, this first tenure journey that I know you've mentioned now, which is FEAT Clothing. You know, you started at 21 years old. You were very instrumental in the early days of working with creators and kind of finding that arbitrage of distribution and, that's very congruent and has showed up even prior to FEAT. What led you to starting FEAT? I remember hearing, going door-to-door fraternities and kind of selling t-shirts kind of opened up maybe the floodgates of thinking about clothing, but what led to really pursuing FEAT as a 10-year opportunity in your eyes in the early days of, I think, 2014, if I'm not mistaken?

Yeah, it's interesting. In my freshman year of college is when I learned the lesson of he who has distribution has all the power. Like, if you have the distribution, you could do absolutely anything. And I learned this by selling t-shirts to fraternities, right? Like, I, I realized that I knew all the fraternities on my campus and they— I joined a fraternity my freshman year and they had me buy a t-shirt for $15 and I was like, I don't have $15 and like, why is this t-shirt $15? But I, I had the distribution. So I talked to the fraternity leader and I said, hey, if I make this shirt for $14, will you buy it from me? He said, yes. I figured out how to make it for $5. I made a $10 margin on a couple hundred shirts. And I was like, okay, cool. I can go door to door to all the other fraternity leaders and do this at my school. Did that, started scaling. Then I was like, whoa, I could drive cross country, go door to door to every single— I drove from LA to Massachusetts and stopped at Arizona, Arizona State, UT Austin, LSU, Alabama, just went door to door. Getting the distribution saying, hey, however you're making your shirts for, I'll make them cheaper. So I was able to scale that business very well. Um, after that, I saw the power of distribution. Um, and this was around the time when Vine started taking off. And it's funny to think about 10 years ago, like, 10 years ago, influencer wasn't a word. And I had a really good job at LinkedIn. I was in this program called the Business Leadership Program. Like, I think they take 15 people per class out of like thousands of applicants. It was like one of the hardest programs to get in, a really good program. And I'm in this program working in tech at LinkedIn, like doing what I really want to do. And I watched this app Vine and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is a distribution channel. And people thought I was crazy at the time, but we had like, I started a clothing company called Feet Clothing and I was like, if I could distribute through these influencers, this arbitrage, I could scale this company massive. So I did that and we scaled very well with influencers. And then I found a new distribution channel, which was Meta ads at the time, like 2015 to 2020, like. The glory days, distribution was so cheap. It, my career arc or my life has kind of been obsessed with finding arbitrage and distribution channels because I'm a firm believer, like if you could distribute, you could do anything and distribution is everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, and I think it's, you hear that so much more now, especially, you know, rise of AI, software being democratized, the ability to build things is easier than ever. You know, and I think it's one thing to kind of hear, you know, VCs talk about distribution, distribution, but from the founder lens and like by living it and kind of seeing the arbitrage opportunities throughout your career arc, you know, what do you think about when it comes to the modern arbitrage opportunity? Hence why you're, you know, building what you're building. But when did this sort of new arbitrage become clear to you to then pursue it as an opportunity? Because I think that, you know, the beauty of arbitrage is seeing it early and actually executing on it. So for you, when it comes to, you know, finding tastemakers and kind of growing this new go-to-market playbook, when did this arbitrage, if you will, kind of become sort of on your radar and sort of start thinking about it as an opportunity?

Yeah, it's really interesting. So when I was working at LinkedIn, the job I mentioned, the first job after school, I was in this program called the Business Leadership Program, and there's different paths to go in it. And the path I went down was into the sales org. So I became what's called an SDR, a sales development representative. And this was LinkedIn 2015, 2016. I was a 21 or 22-year-old fresh out of college. Yeah. And my job was to make 100 cold calls a day.

That's what I did.

I just called. And it's crazy to think about 10 years ago, the fastest growing and best tech companies, the way they grew their revenue was hire 22-year-olds fresh outta college who didn't use the product, didn't know the product that well. To cold call and try to sell to people they don't know. Like, that's archaic today, but that was 10 years ago, how the fastest companies grew, which is crazy. So, as I'm watching the distribution channels, especially for these SaaS companies, like, that model really hasn't changed. And yes, with AI, like, things are changing, right? Like, people, they went from cold calling to cold emails. And now, like, the hot thing that people are trying to do is what are called AI SDRs. So it's like just sending mass spam at scale. And to me, like, it's pretty inevitable that's a race to zero. It's what happened to our phone calls where no one's going to answer your phone if it's a random number. Like, that's already happening to email, right? So these SaaS companies, these massive companies have raised tons of money or have massive sales orgs, but they don't know how to get that first meeting. That's the most challenging part. So when I saw this, I was like, this is the opportunity here. Um, and funny enough, Dee Murthy, who's actually a mutual friend, um, of both of ours. This was after I had sold Feed and I was kind of thinking about what I wanted to do next. And we were just kind of kicking up ideas and he really, he's like, dude, create a company out of this. Like, this is what you're good at. This is where the future's going. And I remember it so well because I went to D and I'm like, dude, I don't know what to do next. Blah, blah, blah. He's like, nope, do this. This is perfect for you. Do it. And, um, yeah, a year later, here we are.

That, I mean, that is so great to hear. And, you know, one thing that I, I love talking about that what I define as like white space in a founder's journey where whether it's after an acquisition or you're kind of pivoting, whatever it may be, of like that timeframe of deciding what should I go do, why should I go do it? I'm curious, how long was that timeframe? You know, and I, and I wanna talk about that, you know, after the 10-year journey of Feed selling to private equity, you're at this place where you could, you could have gone in many different directions. How long was that timeframe of pondering what to do next? And also too, as a founder, like what did that, timeframe feel like, you know, your head was down for 10+ years on a singular opportunity to then have the freedom to kind of look outwards and say, hey, where's the market now? What do I want to bring to the table? I want to dive in there in terms of what I define as that white space in a founder journey.

Yeah, you know, it's a weird space because like it's hard for anyone to have any compassion for it because they're like, you just exited. But you're like, you know, over the past 10 years you built your life around checking Slack notifications almost like automatically or Shopify notifications or emails and you've managed and you have teams of dozens or even like close to 100 people, like you're so used to being so important and have so many people calling you, having notifications. Like for me, my first thing was like, I was phantom checking my phone and like, it's a weird feeling getting logged out of your Slack or logged out of your company email that you've, that's been your identity. Right. So yeah, that was a challenging time. I found myself keep checking my phone and I'm like, I just needed that dopamine. So I actually, I got rid of my phone for a while. I got a flip phone, um, and started using a flip phone just to try to reset my brain and really think. Became obsessed with AI and where the, the puck was moving and where the world was going with AI. And I saw this really big wave and I thought, hmm, you know, how am I going to get in on this wave in some way? Because a lot is changing here. So I spent probably 6 months like playing around with ideas, talking to a lot of VCs I knew, talking to a lot of smart founders I knew. Kicking around a lot of ideas. I even kicked around the idea of like, what would it like to be to go take a role at Anthropic or an OpenAI and like actually take a job somewhere and learn from the inside how a lot of these organizations work and learn, you know, where the puck is going. Funny enough, back to Dee, as we both know, and you'll laugh at this because you know him. When I told him, I was like, I don't know what to do. Like, I'm playing with these company ideas. Like, I might get a job. Like, I'm talking to my friend at OpenAI or Anthropic about getting a role there. And Dee just looked at me, he goes like, no one's gonna fucking hire you. And if they fucking hire you, you'd be the worst employee ever. And you would hate it. Like, you're an entrepreneur.

Don't do that. We love Dee. Yeah.

So just super direct. And that was really powerful. I was like, yeah, fuck, you're right. But yeah, you know, idea hunting is challenging, right? Like oftentimes as a founder, your business is your identity. And yeah. You know, I think every founder has this idea of selling their company and that's like kind of the pinnacle and the happiness. The day you kind of, you go through that process, like sometimes it's not that happy, right? Like some of the happiest times are like when you're trying to figure it out late nights with the team and working and grinding. Um, cause it's, it's a weird feeling to have that identity stripped from you.

Yeah. I know that, um, you know, we've, we've talked about this over many years of just like kind of the work and the doing. And, you know, we have lots of mutual friends like Dee where it's like you see these people that we can all maybe aspire to follow or take advice from, and it's the ability to continue to be in the game and to spend time on things that actually challenge you, that you can actually continue to build is, you know, one of the core things that I've learned over the last, you know, 500 interviews or so is you talk to so many great people and there's no, you know, without as cliché as it is, is the destination of arriving is usually never what you expect it to be, and it always creates this next opportunity of, you know, thought or business or challenge, whatever it may be. I do want to spend time on that for a brief moment though. The day you sold to private equity, walk me through that day, emotions, thinking. I mean, I have lots of friends that, you know, have maybe have gone through acquisitions and they all kind of tell it differently, but I think there's a lot of, um, just similarities of feeling and emotion. I'm curious what that day was like for you, considering it was this 10-year chapter of your life that, as you mentioned, so many founders, which I'm sure many listening to this episode today, are thinking about that moment and what they expect it to be like versus maybe what it actually is. And I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

Yeah, it's a weird moment, right? Like, you're— at least for me, my business was my identity. Like, I had— I still have feet tattooed on my body, right? Like this is the only tattoo I have and it says feet, uh, on my body. So, you know, for many people, like I was the feet guy for many years, right? Like so many people have me saved in their phone as like Taylor Feet Guy or Taylor Feet, right? Like that was my full identity. So I think it's a big thing for entrepreneurs is especially entrepreneurs who start their company in their 20s and run their companies in their 20s, like especially before you come into your own identity for who you are as a person. You are able to use the business as your identity, which I did, right? So when that layer got removed, when, you know, the feeling— and it's a, like I said, it's such a weird feeling to get removed from the Slack and email that you check obsessively for 10 years. And when you remove that layer, you kind of feel— or at least I felt kind of naked and vulnerable. I was like, whoa, this was the shield I always was. Like, this was every conversation with anyone. When they asked me, how are you doing? Or what you do. Like, every conversation instantly turned into me telling them on why they should buy something from Feet and how Feet's so awesome. Go get a hoodie, go check it out, feetliving.com, blah, blah, blah. Like, I had this talk track, right? Like, no matter what, whenever I met someone, that was my talk track, that was my thing. And then, um, it becomes interesting because what are you without that, right? Um, and for me, I was very overleveraged on the part of me that was that. So that actually prompted like a couple-year soul-searching journey of like, who am I without this company? Which is really powerful, but really scary and challenging.

I appreciate you sharing that for sure. And I want to spend some time on, you know, different chapters of a business of bootstrapping venture capital. I've loved reading, you know, prior to you coming public about Atrios around A16z. I know you were building in stealth. This is a business that, you know, you went through A16z Speedrun and Feet Clothing is a much different path of a business. What's been your personal founder experience of going through an accelerator like A16z Speedrun and how did that opportunity come up and what led you to kind of going into that accelerator and really using it to your advantage?

Yeah, so I mean, A16z is one of the world's most world-class organizations and this accelerator, like, blew me away beyond anything I could ever imagine, right? So Feet, we bootstrapped to get it off the ground. We raised a little capital, like a couple hundred thousand dollars and then scaled pretty well, raised about a million bucks. So with less than a couple million bucks, we were able to take Feet to over $10 million in revenue. So like we were able to scale with like not a traditional venture model, not from traditional VCs, mostly amazing angels that I'm very lucky to work with. And they were extremely helpful, obviously. Um, but that, you know, it was more of a bootstrap style business with Feet. With Atrios and what we're doing here, like to start with a16z and to go through this program is like, it's as a founder with 10 years of experience, like I was coming into the program thinking like, oh, like I'm going to know a lot of this, like almost like it's like, oh, it's like almost. I don't know, going back and taking classes I already took in college, right? Like, oh yeah, it'll be a good refresher on things, but I know most of this. I got into that program and I'm like, holy shit, I know fucking nothing, which is awesome, right? It's awesome if you're open to learning, right? And you have a growth mindset. But the amount I've learned in this program about how to build a venture scale company and the people I've met and the mindset shifts, I'm like, I mean, it's the ultimate. I highly encourage anybody. Who's thinking about starting a startup, I talk to a lot of people who are like, oh, I want to bootstrap on this or that. I want to give up dilution. I want to keep my equity. It's like, no, dude, like what you get for the value is so much more value than the potential equity. Like if you could get into an A16Z or a Y Combinator or any of these types of programs, like I think you should actively be applying for them because they are game-changing.

Yeah. And nothing will beat the, the in-person of what you can experience there. But I want to try to take out maybe some key points of kind of what it is you were kind of getting at here of like, what were some of the biggest takeaways for you? You know, you walk in there, you have this 10 years under your belt, and you're like, hey, you know, this will be good, but I didn't expect it to be this great. What were maybe some core takeaways from that accelerator that maybe founders could learn from just by listening to this podcast today?

I mean, first of all, like, I— so I was 32 when I started the program, um, and there's a lot of kids fresh out of college, and I thought, I'm like, I'm fast, I'm scrappy, I'm doing stuff, the fast scrappy way, watching some of these kids, like they are so fucking cracked. Oh my God. Like I thought I was cracked. So I'm like, I know how to use Claude. I can live code. And they're like, oh, that's sick. We have 10 Claude bots going 24/7. I'm like, what? You have to show me this, right? So, um, I think there's something really special, especially when you're building about this, like youthful, I don't want to call it naivety, but, um, the lack of scars, which enables you to push really fast and also just like this, um, youthful optimism in a way where it's like you really think the world is extremely malleable. So like just the people alone in my cohort, how fast they move, how smart they are, especially in this new wave that I think is led by a lot of the younger generation. So that was amazing. The 16Z team, right, so they have like a 25 or 30 person team I think only supporting speedrun. So There's people like Macy who helps with business development and like she can help you get in contact with anyone you want to talk to. There's amazing recruiters like these two guys, Jordan and Tom and Bella on the people side who are like, I've hired 7 of my first 10 employees from the A16z recruiting team. Wow. My partner Troy, who's just seen a million businesses and can help guide me in a lot of these things. Farid, who did a lot of PLG growth at Slack, who understands product more than anything. Sam Shank, the CEO at Hotel Tonight, like he's in there helping me with my product. Andrew Chen, who literally wrote the book on marketplaces, is like helping me talk about my marketplace. Um, yeah, so it's just the most amazing team of A16Z team that supports you, but then also all the talent around you. It's like you get lifted, right? You get lifted to the level of your peers and the kids in this program are so fucking smart and just cracked.

Yeah, it's so great to hear. And for people that may not know the, uh, or be familiar with how accelerators work, maybe kind of walk through like how long is an accelerator, how long was this program? And then if I'm not mistaken, there's this demo day at the end where you actually have the opportunity to pitch to investors. Um, you know, for if there's founders out there that are like wanting to apply to something like this, you know, I'll, I'll definitely link 'em down below. But I'm curious to know after the accelerator, sort of, you know, let's your company, you're kind of on your own, not in this accelerator, like cohort of a group. in person. What happened after the accelerator? Is it you go live, you come out of stealth mode, or, um, what can kind of maybe founders expect after the, an accelerator like A16z Speedrun?

Yeah, so Accelerator like A16z Speedrun, it's a 12-week program. At the end of it, you have a demo day where you get on stage and there's 1,000 investors in an auditorium and you get to go up and do the classic like 2-minute pitch on your company, right? And then investors essentially get to click a button if they want to talk to you or not. Um, which is really powerful for fundraising, right? Like if you have more demand of people wanting to invest in you, then supply of money you can give them, just basic economics, you're in a good spot, right? So that's a very powerful value out of an accelerator. But then post accelerator, like I almost call this like an MBA for startups. Um, because these are like all, a lot of my really close friends now are all people from this batch, right? So you have this really good community of people who are going through the same thing as you. Trying to figure out the same thing. Um, so the community is amazing. Um, yeah, and the A16Z team, they're, they're all there, they're all helpful, they're all incentivized for me to win, right? So they all want to be involved in the business. Um, so yeah, it was a great experience. It really jump-started our company.

Yeah. And, uh, just to kind of get into some of the, um, like working dynamics of how Atrio, you know, actually works and how maybe even founders and companies that are listening could kind of take advantage of a product like you've built. You know, when you came out of self-made, I know I was excited to kind of learn more about what you were building and even to especially talk about it today. You know, when it comes to the marketplace dynamic, I'm curious, companies that are, you know, the B2B side of things and then the well-connected tastemaker founders, if you will, um, what came first? And I'd love to kind of dive into the nuances of how companies and individuals actually operate on platform for people that, A, may be interested in, B, just want to understand it at a you know, at the level of tangibility where they say, hey, like, this is interesting, but how do I actually, you know, benefit from this?

Yep. So two-sided marketplace, right? You have companies on one side who want to talk to people who could be their potential customers, and then tastemakers on the other side who are their potential customers or know people who are their potential customers. So the way it works as a tastemaker, so someone like me, someone like you, anybody listening to this podcast right now is a tastemaker. You should go to atreos.com. Atrios.com. Remember, I'm the guy that talks about distribution channel. I'm gonna use every single distribution channel I have right now. Go to atrios.com and sign up as a tastemaker. What will happen then is you'll see a bunch of companies that we work with, and you could choose which companies you like and want to A, get paid to hear about, or B, want to introduce your friends and get paid and pay your friend to hear about them. So the simplest way to put it is what I talked about earlier. There's all these companies that want the feedback from the tastemakers, from the people they're building for, and they want to just talk to them. They want to learn, hey, would you use my product? Why or why not? And if you won't use it, okay, if we built X, Y, and Z for you, would you use it then? Yes or no, right? So we're helping this feedback layer. And the cool thing about that is there's tastemakers like me or you, whoever, who get incentivized to actually make these introductions. Like, companies will pay a lot of money, and it makes sense, right? Like, they're spending this money in other places. It's better they would rather pay you than pay LinkedIn for a LinkedIn ad or pay a billboard or do these other things. So, I mean, I could speak from personal experience. Like, I've personally made almost $1 million from introductions in the past 10 years. Like, well, I'm telling you, I'm proof there's money to be made here. There's an insane amount of money to be made here. Um, and then on the company side, like, they're getting a ton of value because they have the me's of the world who could just text their friends who are CEOs of large companies and say, hey, you got to talk to this company, they're awesome, go check it out.

Yeah, no, it's, you know, I believe when I, when you first showed me the product as well, and, and I think that's what, um, it gets me excited. And I believe people that are listening here, it's like hearing it and then seeing the requests or opportunities where you can make introductions is just incredible. And I want to kind of dive into founder learning, you know, from launch. What have you learned from your own tastemakers or people that are maybe, um, you know, on team or friends, whoever it may be, peers, around your product itself when it comes to kind of taking that own advice of hearing from the people that are not the, you know, ads or whatever it may be, but the people that are maybe on platform itself?

Yeah, there's a really good line. I forget who says it, but there's a line that I really try to live by, and it's, uh, the team that sees reality the clearest wins. So like, I think oftentimes, especially as founders, you want to see things the way you want to see them. But you have to see things as reality because if you don't see things as reality, right?

Yeah.

So the reality I saw that I didn't want to see is no matter how much money you're offering people, people are, it's tastemakers. They're either busy or lazy. And more often than not, they're both. So even if you're offering people thousands of dollars just to write one single text message, to their friend and say, hey, you should check out this company for this reason and they'll pay you X. They're not going to do it if it's any friction at all. Um, which is great, right? Because that has enabled us to build a product that is so frictionless and easy, right? So like doing things like using AI where it's just, hey, one click, here's why you should send the intro. Here's the message you send. Click this button, opens your iMessage, push send to make $1,000. Boom. Right? Like somebody will do that very easily. Another really interesting thing that I learned that it was really funny for me to learn is people value money differently depending how they get it. And the best way to explain that is like we, so we started, we pay tastemakers for doing all these things, right? And we pay them on average like thousands of dollars. We have some tastemakers that make tens of thousands or like close to hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? Yeah. Just for writing a couple introductions. In like 5 minutes of time, you can make thousands of dollars, which is crazy. But when you pay someone, let's call it, we would pay people $7,000, right? And we pay them ACH to their bank account. Like a week later, they hit us up being like, I never got paid. And they'll be like, yep, here's the confirmation. They wouldn't even see it. Right. They didn't even know $7,000 hit their account. When I paid someone $700 via Venmo, they were like, holy shit, I'm the richest person ever. I have $700 in my Venmo account.

Right.

So it's interesting to see like the value of money in different places, like $1,000 in your bank account versus $1,000 in your Venmo versus $1,000 credit for a first-class flight and you're getting a first-class flight. Like they're all $1,000 or even like, yeah, easier example, like a $500. If you pay someone $500 in their ACH bank account, like more often than not, our tastemakers don't really feel it. If you pay someone $500 in Apple Pay and they could use that whenever, like they really are like, holy shit, that's a lot. If you give someone a pair of AirPod Maxes, They're like, holy shit, I just wrote this interim finance guy a pair of Air Maxes. That's so sick. So there's different values to $500. And, um, that's a big thing I'm thinking about and trying to actually move away from like ACH payments and doing everything like via Venmo or Apple Pay for payouts, just because you feel so much richer when you have $1,000 in Venmo versus in your bank account.

Yeah, it's so real. And it's, that's so, I'm so glad you brought that up. Cause even like, you know, if, if we go out to a dinner with a group of friends and one person pays the tab and everyone's Venmoing them, it's like, Oh yeah, I got my $1,500 in my Venmo. Like, that's just, that's fun money now, just sitting in my Venmo account.

So I think it's like, it's the best feeling.

Oh man, that's such a great concept. And I think it also goes back to, um, I remember hearing on another interview you did around, uh, just in terms of not only demand, but where things show up, you know, early in your career, I remember reading how you were just blown away by how a candy bar could be sold for 25 cents one place and a dollar elsewhere. And I think the same, you know, goes to this concept of where money shows up and what it means to different people. Um, I'm curious for you outside of something like, you know, Venmo or Apple Pay, but other aspects of like early on in your career where that's showed up for you in terms of, you know, winning a deal in person versus doing 4 follow-ups over email and then winning the deal in terms of like how that may feel different in different contexts of where things show up in life, if there's any examples there.

Wait, so let me understand the direct question.

Um, how things feel differently when you do things differently, or more so meaning like in different contexts, you know, a candy bar at a gas station versus a vending machine at a basketball game, like in different specific area of things can feel different or cost more, or you can get more bang for the buck in a sense. I'm curious to know where that's showed up for you, or maybe some examples outside of Atrios and what we've just discussed? If there's no examples, no worries. I'm just curious if you've seen anything historically that is a maybe fun story there.

I think the simplest example is the cup of coffee example, right? So like, let's just use an example of, um, me buying one Ethereum for $3,000 and seeing the fee on it is like $300 or whatever, 10% or $200. And I'm like, okay, whatever. It's a couple hundred bucks, but I'm getting an ETH. but it's only a couple hundred bucks versus, and I'm like, oh, that doesn't matter. It's a couple hundred bucks versus if I'm getting coffee at the frat and it's like $12 for 2 coffees and they get it for me. I'm like, holy shit, that's so nice of you. You got me a $6 coffee, right? The value of $6 there versus anywhere else is very different. Um, so I think there's things that have higher leverage or higher value, even though it's the same dollar amount back to the idea of. I mean, there's a thing that's broke my brain since forever is like, I just remember going to a can— like the grocery store and you could buy 4 at the time, you could buy like 4 Snickers bars for a dollar. They were 25 cents each. Then I like walk outside and there's a vending machine like a block away and it was a dollar for a Snickers. And I'm like, why would anyone spend a dollar on a Snickers? Are you going to for this price? And it just breaks my brain. Um, yeah. So yeah, I think the value, I think my biggest takeaway from that is like people have an emotional value towards money. And it's more about the emotional, like people often think more about the emotional than logical. Um, I think you were mentioning on like closing a deal in person versus not or things like that. Like there's an interesting effect called the IKEA effect. I don't know if you've heard about this at all, but essentially it's like if you build your own furniture or you build your own thing with IKEA, like you value it a lot higher. Um, and I think that's the same for things like, you know, if you get something for free, you probably don't value it so high, but if you earn something, you value it a lot higher.

Yeah, I love that. I, I wanna spend the next 10 minutes or so as we sort of get towards the end here of just modern AI tools and how you and your team think about running your organization on the inside of, you know, from, from going through a, a cohort like 816Z and kind of seeing those cracked engineers having the 10 Claude bots and all of these conversations that are happening around go-to-market and small lean teams. What's your founder mentality around tools you use and maybe like, how has that changed? Um, from of course the days of running Feed of, you know, it's a much different era and product of course, but curious to know your current sort of internal stack, what's really important to you and the team. Um, kind of your sentiment on, you know, early stage company building in this level where you are.

I think my first and my biggest mentality is like, always having a beginner's mindset. And the reason I think I care so much about having a beginner's mindset is when I started in e-commerce in 2013, it was like, right, the way you did an e-commerce store is essentially you'd set up a WordPress store. I had to teach myself HTML, CSS, JavaScript, be able to like actually figure out how to code a website, right? Like I would take a WordPress, I'd figure out how to put my payment process together. I spent a lot of my time developing a website and like managing the servers and the website. It was very challenging, right? Then around that time Shopify came out and I remember actually I went, it was one of the Chubbies founders was like, I was showing my whole WordPress setup and like I was so proud because I spent so much time like understanding, you know, front end and code. And he was like, bro, just get on Shopify. I was like, what are you talking about? And I saw Shopify and I was like, whoa, like I don't have to know any of this shit. Like I I got all the coding and all the, you know, everything I just taught myself.

Don't need it at all.

Shopify, one click, done. Right. Um, but still like 2014, 2015, 2016 is like, I would see all these big companies and they were like on legacy WordPress systems. Like, yeah, we're not gonna switch. And I just watched them get absolutely cooked, right? Yeah. For not switching over. Right. Like even before Klaviyo, which is one of, was the biggest email, um, sending platforms, like people would like code their own emails and use these servers. And I was like, if you're not using the new thing, you got absolutely cooked. And it's funny because I've had to catch myself many times when I find myself doing something and then someone on my team is like, why don't you just have Claude do this? I'm like, whoa. And I was like, fuck, you're right. Like, gotta have Claude do this, right?

Yeah.

So it's funny, like some of the people on the team, they call me Unk. Cause like, I guess I'm old now cause I'm 32, but you got to use all the tools. Like if you're not, especially the speeds go, like I saw, it's funny because 10 years ago when I started my e-commerce company, like I was the guy, I was the youngin that, you know, that left all the unks behind because I was like, social media is the new wave. I'm working with influencers. Like we're posting stories on Snapchat stories and getting distribution through these models that you hadn't even thought about. We're using the tools, blah, blah, blah. And I was able to like scale really fast and kick all these older companies' asses, right?

Yeah.

Now I find myself of like, I can't get caught in the old company way, right? So, um, I think there's a lot of narrative on use your cloud for all these things. And like, I think it's a lot of people like saying they use it for things just to make other people feel bad about not what they're doing. Like, that's not my, not my approach. I don't think I don't want to preach that gospel. What I do want to preach is like, whenever you're doing anything, like really just think twice around, like, is there a way I could automate this and make it flow even better? Um, with your workflows. And I think what you'll realize pretty quickly is like, it's humbling, right? Cause you have to say like, yeah, I'm actually like, I thought I was so special because I was the only one that could have an eye for design and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, Claude could just like literally type my website in and make my designs better.

Yeah.

Or like, I thought I'm special cuz like I'm the only one that can come up with email marketing campaigns and it's my special unique voice. And I'm like, ah, A/B testing, Claude, better, right? So I would just really challenge people to be like, be humble enough to know that like the tools could do a lot of stuff better than you.

Yeah, no, very well said. And I, I just made the jump to Claude probably a week and a half ago. Has that been for you and the team, like the go-to, um, AI platform for the team or what's your personal viewpoint on that?

Yeah, so I was a, I was an OpenAI purist and I was one of the last holdouts on using ChatGPT. And then when I started vibe coding and using Cursor, I started using Claude for that. And I started realizing like I wanted everything in one because now it's like, it's cool. Like I'm pushing code. Cool. Like I'm able to actually make changes to our site and I'm able to code, which is something that I normally would not have done with these tools.

I'm able to do it.

Right. So, um, I use Claude for most things. Um, Granola is a great one for most of my meetings too. Um, I use that as like my second brain. I use Whisperflow. I actually don't type anymore.

Like, I've been the biggest whisper— like, I think the last 40 weeks or something, that's been my biggest recommendation to other founders and friends. And I think they've built something wonderful. So I'd love to hear that.

Archaic, so I don't do that anymore. Um, yeah, I think those are most of the ones. Claude Code, I think a big thing is like, for people, I'm lucky because I studied like a little bit of computer science undergrad and I've built websites and done things, so I understand code enough to not be scared of it. But you really don't have to know much, like, to start building on Cursor. And the beautiful thing with these tools is like, you can just ask it questions. So if you ever find yourself stuck, like, even if, I think I challenge everyone here, like, go download Cursor. And go try to figure out how to make it work. And whenever you get stuck, just say, hey Claude, I'm stuck, what do I do? Right?

Yeah.

It's amazing. Like you could just keep, you can ask why a million times and you can get to wherever you want to go to if you just keep asking why.

Yeah, it really is incredible. I want to talk about the next, you know, couple questions before we wrap up here, Taylor. When it comes to Atrius, you know, coming out of South, launching the company, what excites you the most around what you're building in terms of now and into the future of the new product, new company, and most importantly, as you said at the beginning of this, this interview, like your next 10-year journey. Um, how do you think about that now? What excites you the most?

Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing that excites me the most is like how AI has just wiped the playing field, right? And I think like what's happened is when the whole— as an entrepreneur, you dream of these opportunities, right? Like I always put myself— because I was not alive in the late '90s, early 2000s of the first tech boom. I'm like, I wish I could have been living that, right? And this is that moment right now for me. And like, I am at the perfect— I could not have asked for a better time for this to happen. Um, so I feel so blessed to be able to build in this time. And what I'm most excited about is like the way companies are distributing, right? Every company, the most important piece of a company is sales, right? Like, companies do not survive without sales. Sales is the lifeline, the blood, the heart, the soul of the business. If you don't have revenue, you're fucked. You cannot win without revenue and you can't get revenue without distribution. And we're seeing distribution change drastically, right? Like this is such a beautiful time. So what's exciting for me is like to do two things. Number one, become the best distribution channel for all these companies and be the best way these companies reach their prospective customers at scale. And on the flip side is to reward tastemakers, people like myself, like the community builders, people like yourself, people that build community, people that are active and like keeping relationships and people just like are in the know and doing it for the love of the game and for their heart, like those people should get rewarded. And I want to reward these people for all the value they create. So it's a double win helping companies reach their leads and being the next like distribution channel for these companies that works at scale. But on the flip side, like rewarding good people. Who are like, want to bring together humans, right?

Yeah. Very well said. And I know you spoke on it briefly earlier, but before we wrap up here, you know, the types of companies that this is most beneficial to, and if you're a founder listening to this and you think your company may be a good fit, what are, A, the types of companies that, you know, can utilize Atreos? And then B, where's the best place for founders as well as, you know, these tastemakers to learn more and not only apply and get set up, but to kind of take that next step to see if it's something that they could test with overall?

Yep. I'll answer first about the distribution. Atrios.com. Go to Atrios.com and you can click sign up there. So if anyone's interested in signing up as a tastemaker and getting rewarded for sharing these insights and learning about these companies, or if a company's willing to sign up or wanting to sign up and reach your leads, like Atrios.com. You could always email me as well, taylor@atrios.com. Pretty, pretty easy to find my email. Um, I think your question is what types of companies and people are best in terms of companies. It's any company that wants to reach prospective customers, which I think is like every company. We work best with B2B companies is what the, where we're at right now. So, you know, we work with some massive companies that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars and, you know, we work with a lot of multi-billion dollar companies who are wanting to get hundreds of meetings from us a month and wanting to really scale. We work with smaller stage companies that are at the seed step level or the pre-seed level saying like, hey, we don't exactly know who our ICP is. We think we want to sell a tool to this types of, these types of people. Can you connect us with these people and we can help learn and figure it out? So companies up and down the spectrum, anyone wants to talk to prospective customers at scale and potentially turn them into customers. Um, tastemakers, the best tastemakers are people who just know people and people who are the next and people who are already being the people that people go to, right? So like the cool thing is you come to hrs.com, you share a couple questions and you're like a little bit of data on yourself. And then from there we'll show you like, hey, Casey Adams, you can make $250,000. Here's the companies that you can make it for. Here are the people you can make intros to. Do you want to do this? Do you want to talk to these companies? Do you want to do this, this, and this? Make money. If not, that's all good too.

Love it. Well, no, I, um, I appreciate it so much, Taylor. And, you know, I gotta say, as someone who's known you for quite some time now, it's amazing to kind of see this come to life. And, you know, when I see founders that are just building something that's so core to who they are, it gets me excited. So I'm excited to follow along the journey. We'll have to do a part 2 in the next year or 2 and kind of, you know, circle back on where we are, because it's— I know we're just kind of getting launched the last couple months here, and it's, it's really exciting to see. So congrats on everything, and thank you so much for, for taking the time. And I'll be sure to link everything down below.

Thank you. And yeah, same thing, it's been fun to watch you grow since, since I feel like you were probably 15 years old. You're probably like 19.

Yeah, literally.

Yeah, man, your, your poise, your confidence, the way you hold yourself and carry yourself, and watching the cool things you built, it's been very inspiring to me. So I appreciate you for, um, being a role model, even though I'm a lot older than you, but being able to walk the walk and talk the talk, dude. It's been really cool to watch you grow and watch you build stuff.

I appreciate that a lot. Seriously, thank you, man.

Sweet. All