Why 90% of Founders Fail During Crisis: Pukar Hamal Saved 200 Jobs by Cutting 200

You don't know how tough you are until you get punched in the face a few times, you know? And that's, that becomes a real test for, uh, your ability to bounce back.

Welcome to Big Hitters. I'm Larry Weidel, and this show is for people who are done playing small. Each week we break down what it actually takes to win at a high level. The decisions, the discipline, the adjustments that separate those who almost do it from those who do it. No theory, no fluff, just straight talk from someone who spent 50 years building winners. If you're serious about momentum, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Hello everybody. We're talking to Pukkar Hamal. Hello, Pukkar.

Hey Larry, how's it going?

Great. And you've got your Knicks cap on. Why do you got your Knicks hat on?

Well, I've been through some, some bad Knicks seasons over the last, uh, 20, 30 years. And, uh, you know, They just went on an insane playoff and championship run. Unbelievable. And so I don't think I've taken his hat off, to be honest.

Pete, you know, that emphasizes what this podcast is all about and what everything I do is— people love winners. The world needs more winners. Winners, you know, there's just so many good things happen to ripple effect. And that's really dramatically obvious in that negative cesspool of political things that are happening in New York with you know, all kind of negativity coming out of there. But then all of a sudden the Knicks get on a run like this and everybody's happy. Everybody's infected with a positive vibe. I think it's going to show up in the economy, you know, which is good for the, for the mayor there because everything will be more taxes. But, you know, when you're feeling better, when you're feeling better, you do better. And so it's great you had the hat on today. And here, let's get into this thing. How does a guy who goes from— tell me how much of this is urban myth or how much of this is real. Did you really start in rural Nepal, grew up where there was no electricity? Is that really true?

That's true. That's true. I grew up in far western Nepal where we didn't have roads, we didn't have infrastructure, we didn't have running water, we didn't have electricity. We didn't even have cars or, you know, and I used to look at airplanes in the sky. It's 100% true. You know, where I grew up, there was no electricity, no running water. I grew up in the foothills of the Himalayas.

How do you go from that to building a $105 billion company trusted by OpenAI?

It's a long journey. You know, I've been on this planet, blessed to be on this planet for 34 years. Uh, been very lucky to have won the lottery ticket of ending up in the greatest country in the world, US, where, you know, you can do whatever you want with some heart and will and guts and risk-taking. And so, you know, I'm a refugee to this country, so I've been blessed. Grew up in New York City, you know, came out west to California to go to Stanford, and that's really where I learned about this whole field called entrepreneurship and technology. And, you know, one thing led to another. I started a couple of companies and I think America is the best place to bet on yourself, and I've had the good fortune to do that several times.

What are the highest highs that you reach going from, uh, growing up in Nepal, uh, with no electricity, and you come to the US and start a company, go to Stanford, start a company, and one or several companies. What are for you the highest highs, uh, that you reached?

I've reached some, some incredible highs. I think the, the highest highs obviously is, is the opportunity to work with incredible customers as an entrepreneur, as somebody that's building a company, building a business.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about ended up on the COVID of Forbes. Okay. You build a nerve center at Kathmandu. You built, you know, you've, you've been to the White House, I believe. Is that right?

I've been to the White House. I've had the good pleasure of being invited by the, by the president and first lady, sitting president and first lady.

That's a pretty Getting it high, high. What's it like for, you know, coming from your background and everything? Of course, you've been in New York, probably ruined you. You probably take everything for granted growing up in New York, but you long since forgot about growing up not having electricity. But, you know, the thing is that going to the White House or seeing your face on the COVID of Forbes, good gracious, what is that? People would want to know what that feels like.—

it feels good in the moment. It becomes a milestone, a mile marker of some— of sorts. But I think ultimately, you know, the focus quickly shifts back to, well, how do we go after the next milestone? How do we go after— get after, you know, delivering more for, again, for our customers, for our team, and really executing? I think, you know, all of the things that you mentioned there are accolades that people people dream about, but as somebody that has had the good fortune, good, good opportunity to really live it, you realize that they're, they're not, they're not the destination. They're, they're effectively byproducts of your march towards a destination.

Did you even dream of doing things like that? Did you think about things like that? Sometimes people will have that and they'll look back and they'll say, that was on my bucket list. That was on my checklist. You know, that I wanted to be there. I visualized, you know, the whole thing of Jim Carrey when he's a young, young kid in Canada. Canada, he writes a check to himself for $20 million, you know, for starring in a movie, and he puts it in his back pocket visualizing the future. Were these things— did you do a lot of visualization, or did you just have some ideas and work hard?

I'd be lying if I didn't say that I've dreamed of myself, you know, doing successful things and becoming successful. I think a great thing about this country is it allows any individual to dream. Anything that they want to dream, right? Nobody's putting a ceiling on their dreams. And, but certainly, you know, growing up in Queens, New York, and to working class parents, I certainly didn't think I would be able to achieve some of the things that I have at the sort of, you know, young age, relatively young age. I'm in San Francisco. So unfortunately how old I am, it, I'm what some people might call even at 34, a geriatric founder compared to some of the 19 and 20-year-old kids that are, that are in this town.

Yeah.

You know, running the show. But, you know, I've had the good fortune of being able to do that. I would say, you know, fundamentally always had this motto, which is, it's great to dream, but it's far better to execute. Uh, and you know, we, we, we live in, we live in, you know, the greatest times and the greatest place to execute.

Yeah. And you're not gonna go from, uh, New York City as an immigrant, uh, or to Stanford on dreams. You know, I'm dream, I'm, I got a big dream. I'm over here in Queens, come find me. So what did you do that got you into Stanford?

I went through the public school system. You know, I'm a public school kid. I wear my public school roots pretty proudly, even though, you know, I ended up at a, at a pretty prominent private institution for college. The things that, that I did was I learned very quickly. I think one of the greatest things about coming from a place like Nepal to here is you very quickly learn, even at a young age, that your hard work can very quickly result in good sort of output and success. I think one thing that's always a challenge in other places is you can work as hard as you want, but you're not going to make progress. Because here you can work really hard and guess what? You will actually make tangible progress. If you put down and work hard. And so I realized very young that, yeah, I didn't know English. I had to learn the English language. You know, I used to be bullied in elementary school and stuff like that, you know. And so I remember what my teachers taught me was, listen, if you just like work hard, do your homework and, you know, put in some extra credit, you can do well. I started becoming student of the month, you know, in the very few months after I came to the country. And then I just realized that if you just kept sort of like showing up and doing your work and doing the assignments and staying curious and staying humble and having that growth mindset that teachers would present you with opportunities. And I had the opportunity to, one of my teachers in high school who owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to, who recommended me to a research laboratory, a science research laboratory at Columbia University. And I was basically doing like advanced research at the age of 14, 15. 16, in high school. Yeah. Sort of as an apprentice to some prominent research scientists, really like the bleeding edge of biochemistry research. And so, you know, I had the opportunity to do that and that really opened my eyes to this whole world of universities and all that. And that's where I really learned about places like Stanford. 'Cause I wasn't learning about places like that and growing up in Queens. Yeah.

Well, God bless the teachers in Queens.

Yes.

Who, who reached out and took an in and did what teachers are supposed to do is inspire you, look for someone with a spark and give them that encouragement early on. You know, God bless them 'cause you hear so much about teachers being, you know, nincompoops. And you know, that's a tough call. It's a tough culture in New York City. I mean, I was in Governor's Island back when the Air Force and Army were, they took us, fortunately, Next year, they were going to take us over. We went to Fort Jay and we were going to have to go to school the next year in Brooklyn. Went over there and there were like 21-year-old high school students with switchblades smoking with a leather jacket out there on the curb. And I said, "No." Fortunately, my father got assigned. We went over to Italy and I escaped. But that's kind of a frightening environment to grow up in. I mean, just to keep your mind on business, what kind of things were going through your mind allowing you to stabilize yourself? And spend your time on the right things.

Well, I just realized that I needed to keep myself busy doing the right things, which was, you know, keeping myself busy in the books, keeping myself busy at Columbia University where I had this enormous internship opportunity to be an apprentice. And, you know, I was part of our varsity tennis team as well. And so, you know, I was trying to do as much as I can, you know, absorb and learn. You know, I've always been curious. Ever since I was young, I love reading and just learning about different figures in history and just how things worked and double-clicking on those things instead of other extracurriculars that folks fall into sometimes. That was how I stayed focused. And I knew there was a destination I wanted to get to, which was I didn't want to, you know, my parents worked really hard. You know, they worked, they had working class lives., you know, my dad worked restaurants, my mom was a nanny. You know, this is not the glamorous Wall Street life that I'm coming from, but I was well aware of that, right? I was well aware that, you know, there was a path to obviously improving your disposition in life. Where you started is not where you end up if you are willing to put in the effort. And so I wanted to have a better life than my parents, quite frankly, and I realized that there was a way to do that.

Well, it's a pressure cooker environment in New York, and you probably learned a lot of things about time management at an early age because just getting from Queens— when he said he went over to Columbia University, folks, that's not like going down to the corner drugstore or, you know, over 2 or 3 blocks over to Columbia. You know, how long was your commute from Queens over to Columbia?

I got really familiar with this commute. I used to take 3 trains. Okay. I remember this very vividly. I used to take the R train to the E train, the E train to 42nd Street Port Authority. Then I would jump on the A or C depending on which was running that day, cuz the trains would break down all the time. And if you took the A, it was the express. If you took the C, you were gonna make all the stops. And so, you know, and, and what's, what's funny is where I was working, it wasn't even Columbia University of Morningside Heights because that's where the main campus is. I was working at the medical center, which is way up in Washington Heights. You got to go an extra 30. So my commute was 90 minutes each way. I would get out of my, my high school classes would be done at around noon or 1. I would hop on the train. I would go take 90 minutes and go to Columbia University. And I basically worked there until 8, 9 PM doing the research work. And then I would come back home and I would do my homework after I got back home at around 10, 11 PM. I'd go to bed at around 1 or 2 and I'd do it all over again at 6, 7 a.m. Unbelievable.

And how old were you when this— you said 14 years old or something?

When I was doing this regularly, I was 15, 16 years old.

You know, the thing is, what was great about that is getting on, getting back on the trains at 8 or 9 o'clock at night. It is such a safe time in the subways, on the trains. You know, there's just no, no crime. All the bad people have gone to bed early. You know, their bedtime's around Your parents were probably out of their mind worrying about you.

It was interesting. You build a lot of character. You see a lot of things growing up. You got to be street smart. You got to be a little wise. And I used to see rats in my subway cars. I used to see people breakdancing, fights. I've seen more shows than you can imagine in my boxcar. So when people go to New York and they see all these performances on the cars, Trust me, I've seen them all through, through, through the years. What was great about all that is sometimes I would wish my neighbor was actually one of those New York City pizza rats instead of a real person, you know, because they were, they were less harmful.

So let's talk about this. So you get out, you build. What was your first biggest success, you know, or how did— how long did it take you to get on the on the compounding thing, because success in the beginning, it's— you can have overnight success, but while you're going through it, it seems like it's a nightmare. It's taking forever. But you had some pretty good success early on. How high did your company go? When we say a $105 million company trusted by OpenAI, how long did these things take?

SecurityPal is the second company I founded. It's the third startup I worked at. My first startup that I joined as an early employee on the team ended up getting acquired. The second one that I co-founded had a minor exit. This one I started back in March of 2020, and, you know, within a year it became pretty successful. I built this because it was a personal pain point that I felt at my previous company. So, I, you know, I became really fascinated by technology and how do you deploy technology within large companies. You know, those are some of the things that I, learned a lot about, you know, being steeped in Silicon Valley. And one of the things I quickly learned, some of the business challenges that a lot of companies are having as it relates to cybersecurity. And so, you know, I built a first version of the product and, you know, the first version of the product, Larry, was basically like just a couple of spreadsheets duct taped together with me staying up all night pretending to be, you know, an automation engine. And, uh, you know, I, I basically would stay up all night doing all this work for customers, and customers would think it's fully automated, but it wasn't fully automated because, you know, it was going to take me forever. It was going to cost a million dollars to get me to fully— to hire the engineers to automate it. So I would just do it all. And, and once I realized that companies were, were— thought it was automated, that it was magic, I was like, I might have something here, you know, because that was what I was really going for. Is I wanted to, I wanted to create a moment of delight for a customer, uh, you know, a wow moment for them where they're willing to pay for it. They see the value and, uh, and you know, we were able to scale pretty quickly. You know, we were one of the few handful of companies. Yeah, this isn't a major milestone anymore 'cause times have changed in some ways over the last 5, 6 years. But back then we were one of the first companies to go from $0 to $1 million in annual recurring revenue in a year.

$0 to $1 million annual recurring revenue. In a year. That's skyrocket growth.

You know, I had $30,000 of savings that I basically fully put into the company. Again, it's a great place to bet on yourself, right? Because no one's gonna stop you but yourself. You just have to be willing to, to, to, you know, execute, to stay up all night, to figure out, to wrestle with the problems.

And so how fast did the world find out what you were doing and the recognition started coming in? By the way, if you're still listening right now, you're different. You don't just consume content, you're actively looking for an edge. And that's who I built the Big Hitter community for. Not people chasing motivation, people chasing momentum. Not theory, proximity. Proximity to operators who are actually in the arena making real decisions and winning at a high level. Inside Big Hitter, you get conversations we don't have on the podcast, direct access to people who build what you're trying to build in a room that holds you to a higher standard every single week. This isn't a hype group. It's not networking for the sake of networking. It's where serious people go to sharpen their thinking and compress their timeline. If you're done just listening and you're ready to be in the room where it actually happens, head to joinbighitters.com or click the link in the show notes. The right room changes everything. I'll see you inside.

It was basically within a year our customers started talking about how amazing this thing is and, you know, we started getting referred into all these different companies and now we've got, you know, even back then we had several prominent $10 billion companies that were using us and then they started telling other enterprises and today, like, you know, we've got companies, we've got one of the largest health insurers in the country using our product. We've got one of the largest US-based airline. It's a top 3 airline. You probably fly their— fly in their jets around the country using our product. You know, we have obviously OpenAI and the likes, and we're serving just, you know, companies all across the world now from Japan to New Zealand, you know, Europe.

Well, talk about when did disaster strike? Would you say, you know, somewhere You know, you've got recognition. You've been to the White House, you've been on the COVID You've had some things go wrong along the way, haven't you?

100%. You don't know how tough you are until you get punched in the face a few times, you know? And that's— that becomes a real test for your ability to bounce back.

Some interview or something somewhere, it says that 18 months ago people had written you off. You dropped the CEO title, went back to sweeping floors, and that had to be an ego-challenging moment for you. Is that true?

I think I certainly, you know, I took a pay cut about '24. You know, there was a big SaaS crash that happened, right? So, right where we weren't sure that it was apocalypse. We were going from the zero interest rate era, ZIRP era, to, you know, the Fed was hiking rates again, which was leading to a lot of uncertainty in frontier capital markets, risk capital markets like venture capital and investors, which, you know, we're a venture-backed company in Silicon Valley. And, um, you know, we had to make some tough decisions. I've had to let go of, of, of over 200 people at one point. And it was the worst. I, I still say to this day is the worst day, uh, worst day on the job, letting go of that many people. Uh, but you know, but if I didn't, everybody would lose their jobs. That's, that's why, you know, it's a tough decision because there's no good choices. There's bad or worse. And, and so, um, still to, to this day, you know, having to let go of people because we wouldn't survive as a business. We were 8 to 9 months away from running out of money. Um, you know, investors are written us off. Uh, you know, there was no growth. Um, but we figured it out. We're still figuring it out right now, but you know, we're out of those depths of hell, if you will. And, uh, you know, we've now proven that we can be a profitable company. You know, we've printed profits. We've got tremendous customer momentum. We are reskilling and rebuilding our team. It turns out what we're building is enormously valuable for AI companies as they go to market. We were worried that AI was going to automate what we were going to do and render us obsolete, but it ended up working out that, like, you know, without us, it becomes really hard for the AI to be effective and scale distribution. And so the value that we provide at the expertise layer for AI and cybersecurity has ended up being really, really valuable. And so, but you know, this is the beauty of it, right? Like, my business heroes, Larry, are, you know, folks like Warren Buffett, folks like Jeff Bezos. And a lot of these people, what they say is, you know, Survival is like half the battle, you know. You gotta survive long enough. You know, you look at, you look at our, you know, you look at our president, right? Like, he's been written off for 40 years at different times. The ability to, to, to bounce back, bounce back ability is tremendous. And that's something that, you know, you, you have to test. But I would say one thing, there's no greater country to bounce back in than here. Because as bad as the downfall feels, that's how good the rise is again. And there's endless opportunity.

You need to tell as many people as you can in California that message, by the way. It's tough crowd here. Tough crowd. It's good to hear that voice coming out of San Francisco.

There's still a few, few sane people here.

Now, how many jobs did you save when you let 200 go?

I saved another 200 jobs, you know, and of course the, we've had people come and go since then. So many, many more jobs, right? Uh, than that. Um, but I think what I'm, what I'm proudest of is the fact that, you know, we've had, we have people that amongst our workforce here in the US as well as in the As well as Kathmandu, where we employ, uh, people, you know, for some people that work at our company, they're the sole breadwinner for a family of 6, 7 people.

Really?

You know, yeah. To be able to save jobs like that becomes really, really meaningful. Where they're the sole breadwinner working for a company, doing honest work, their family's proud of them. That means a lot.

Let's talk about this thing. You went in there. I mean, you were not prepared. I don't care what kind of education you get at Stanford. They don't prepare you to run a company and deal with things like this. And you had just gone through a deal where in a short period of time you got from a handful of people to where you had 400 or more people, right? That growth was pretty fast. And, you know, you were probably grateful to get every single one of them and probably handpick and hand-chose. So these are not just bums off the street. These are 200 really special people that you'd worked hard to get. First of all, how did you handle the explosion of people and getting people in place that fast? Again, when you go from where you're working overnight, duct taping spreadsheets together, doing all the work, where you get the idea this is something that could really scale, that's really valuable for companies, to where now I'm going to turn it into a business, then all of a sudden relatively short period of time, you're running, you got, you're up to 400 people. That's a big transition.

It's a big transition. And, and to be, to be honest, um, you know, I don't know how many times I would've done it right. And I don't know if I did it right the first time even, you know, the, the reality is the type of growth that we were dealing with, uh, you know, uh, post-pandemic and, and before the, before the SaaS crash, it was crazy. I mean, we, we were having dozens of new faces in the company seemingly every week. The ultimately, you know, you realize that you can't be involved in every decision. So you got to delegate and trust great people around you to do the best that they can. You know, one, one thing that I've learned is you can't expect somebody to be like you. Only you can be like you.

Right, right, right.

You got to find people. Hopefully you find people better than you at the thing that they're supposed to do. Then you figure out, okay, how do I empower this person to be the best version of themselves? And you got, you know, we gotta trust that. And so I've had the good fortune to work with, you know, our HR and people, people leader. She's incredible. She's, um, well into her age now. Um, she, I, I actually pulled her outta retirement, uh, to do this. She, she, uh, was living in California, but now she's out in, you know, Shenandoah Valley. And, you know, she, she knows all the rule books around hiring and everything like that, where to go. So tremendous skill and expertise and she's seen it all, you know, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, all the heydays and all the, you know, the best of times and the worst of times, if you will, through the decades. And so having somebody like that, super experienced, I don't think we put a— I think we underestimate the value of experience in our today. Day and age, because there's, there's something that comes with having lived through those different eras that becomes really valuable.

Tell me about it. I've been doing what I do for 50 years, 24/7, 365, and you do pick up a lot, a lot of stories and mileage. But, but you never reach the point where you've got it made.

You must have started when you were 10 years old. Larry, you must have started when you were 10 years old.

That's exactly right. But you know, the respect I have for you over the 200, getting up to 200 people. I'll tell you real quick, my oldest cousin who's no longer here is H. Edward Roberts, and he was the inventor of the Altair 8800 personal computer that the Homebrew, the San Francisco Homebrew Computer Club worked off of, and it's where Jobs and Wozniak got the idea. What Wozniak did was he put a, you know, he put the keyboard and the monitor and the computer together, made it one unit, whereas at that time the computer was out to the side. But, you know, the thing is, he sold, his company was out in Albuquerque. You know, he wanted to focus on you know, created the hardware, but his company grew up fast like yours. But the people problems just drove him out of the business. He basically gave the business, gave the whole thing away. You know, he had Gates and Paul Allen working downstairs, you know, on Microsoft, but he basically just sold out. You know, they were 19 and 20 years old, you know, doing Microsoft. And because that was a software engine for this little computer. And so, but the people problems drove him so nuts He just like, ah, I've gotta sell out.

People problems are unfortunately, uh, you know, one of the biggest time suck, uh, and, and, um, energy sucking activities that, that you end up dealing with. Um, and to be honest, somewhere along the way we forget that people work with each other. We forgot how to deal with each other. You know, once you work in a company, Something happens where you forget that everyone's a person and you start treating some people like, oh, they're management working for this big, bad, evil corporation. And somewhere along the way we've told these stories, but at the end of the day, it's all people trying to do the best for themselves. And whether it's a janitor mopping up the floor, making sure it's sparkling clean for the folks that are coming in, doing their job with dignity.

Your insight into companies, we've got to wrap this up, but I'm really interested in your insight into inside the big corporations, you know, the big companies. What would you share that you have learned about how these big companies work in the interaction that from the outside people would not, not believe? And maybe you wouldn't have believed it until you started working with them directly, you know, on a daily a daily basis?

There's a lot of good and bad. I think one thing that's really good about large companies is, you know, again, I think companies at the end of the day are a collection of people that come together for a shared mission, a shared goal to create value, right? For their shareholders, for their stakeholders. And what I've been surprised at building a business is how many people and companies are willing to help you if you try to help them. You know, sometimes people think like, oh, like nobody's going to give me a chance. Well, guess what? No. Companies have thousands of problems and they're just begging people to come to them, helping them solve the problems. And like, that's something that a lot of people don't understand. And if you have a little bit of agency and if you're willing to suffer through a handful of rejections, which happens, by the way, it's a normal course of business, then you might actually get a few shots on goal. It's all about you're going to swing, you're going to take some swings, you're going to miss them, but it's okay.

Not to get philosophical, but I think the thing that, I don't know if it's the way the corporations are set up, the individual ones, but the corporations that incent initiative and ideas and taking responsibility are the ones that are going to grow because a lot of, you just see it across the board in corporations, the people that are intimidated by their boss, they're working for somebody who's got some kind of psychosis or paranoia about losing their job. Job and being bypassed, and they don't want to step out of bounds. And like, if you go, you know, the assistant attends the staff meeting with their boss, you know, the boss said, now don't open your mouth in there, you know, don't make a fool out of me. You know, it's like they grow up in these intimidation thing rather than, you know, being incented to come up. Because I found some of the newest people, some of the people that are the freshest faces could have some of the best ideas.

Listen, good ideas can come from anywhere, but it takes a special company to recognize that. The companies that recognize that the best ideas can come from anywhere, I think, are going to be the ones that do the best. One thing that I've benefited from is, you know, Silicon Valley corporate culture is a little bit different from other places in that you really do have, you know, certainly you have a tremendously, I would say, a young population that skews younger. But you do have this mindset that anyone from any part of the organization could be transformative to the business. And we have applied that mindset here at our business as well, where anybody can tell me at any time if I'm wrong and like if I'm doing something that doesn't seem logically sound or correct for the business, that, you know, you should feel free to challenge those ideas. That's how we get to a better outcome for the business. But, you know, it needs to be done respectfully. And, you know, it needs to be done in a way that makes sense.

Absolutely. And I can tell, you know, the leaders that are confident in their own skin and not, you know, running around paranoid, you know, they've come— the people who've come from the ground up usually are pretty comfortable in their own skin. And they're most likely the ones who are able to take criticism, to take fresh ideas and all, because, again, great ideas don't care who has them. And great leaders don't care where the great ideas come from. You know, they're just— you know, the great ideas are focused on the main thing, which is, is growth and making something valuable that's going to last a long time. One last question, and I'm going to get a final word from you for this wrap up, this public part. People are listening to this and they're saying, you know, they're intrigued with what your business is. How big do their companies have to be before they would qualify for your services?

So we have this thing that we've defined called an ideal customer profile. So our ideal customer profile, or ICP, is really companies that are 500 to 1,000 people or larger. You know, these are businesses that have what we've defined as cybersecurity assurance challenges that they need to automate, you know, leveraging AI and expertise. And so, you know, when you're a business that's working with another business, there's a lot of data, there's a lot of information security concerns. You might be selling your product and the companies are not ready to buy your product unless you prove that you're secure. We help you prove that you're secure to your customers. We help you also, you know, get assurance from your vendors and your suppliers as well. So we sit at a critical nexus of the sort of transaction economy, the business-to-business transaction economy, where if you want to convince or prove that you're secure to your buyers, or if you want to seek proof of assurance from your suppliers, we help you automate that. And generally, that's a challenge that companies end up facing at scale when they hit about 500 to 1,000 people or larger. Some of our companies are hundreds of thousands of employees large, but the vast majority of them, I would say, fall in that 1,000 to 10,000 person range.

Yeah, and I can see why they'd be open to bringing you in for the solution, for us to say. Otherwise they have to say to their clients, trust me, we're safe. You know, we, we got a committee.

Well, there was a great president that said, you know, trust but verify. And I think we live in the era of Ronald Reagan. Right. And I think, you know, truer words have not been spoken. Like, we got it. We have to, you know, in any interaction, you trust. But you got to verify. And you can't just verify once, by the way, because that's not how it works. You got to verify continuously. You got to verify maybe every year, maybe every quarter, maybe every month, because it's a dynamic world that we're living in.

Fantastic. Well, let's wrap this thing up. The public part of this. What kind of takeaway would you like people to— for who stayed with us this far, what would you like them to take away that they could get from your story that would be helpful to them personally?

Well, listen, I've always felt that you can always sit there and ruminate and come up with a million ways why something might not work. You can sit there and complain about the millions of problems in the world, and you can lament it's because of this person or that person or that or that political party or whatever it is. But the, the great thing about, you know, this country that, and some of these special places that exist around the world, um, is in, in a few of these places, you can actually do something about it, which is you can roll up your sleeves and you can get to work. And I love the mindset, like you can have a positive outlook in the world, which is, hey, that problem exists. Now, am I going to let the problem happen to me or am I going to happen to the problem? You know, and, and so that's, that's something that I think I always internalize. Anytime I find myself getting down on an issue, some, oh, you know, a customer complains or we've got, we lost a customer or, you know, a team member is leaving and stuff like that. I always try to, you know, put that into perspective, which is great. Now what? How do we go about solving it? Once you shift your mindset towards solving it and resolving it, instead of just steeping in it, that's where you unlock your higher agencies as a human. And that's the type of thing that AI can't automate, actually. That agency is what makes us special, and our ability to connect disparate ideas and again, really apply a lot of thought, effort, network connections, and our ingenuity, that's what we need to bet on.

Fantastic. Uh, great, great insight, Pukar. Wish you nothing but the best. Look forward to seeing you down the road. Maybe we can do this thing again. Thanks so much.

Love it, Larry. Thank you so much.

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