Burning Out: Stanford cheating rings, fake assistants, and that perfect orange glow

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You know that part of the startup journey that no one talks about? Yeah. We're in it.

We are not here to tell you how we've already made it. We are in fact live from the trenches.

This is for everyone building their careers, breaking down and getting back up again. Every Tuesday we're going to be taking you behind the scenes. The meltdowns, the pivots and bringing on top mentors to unpack their gate kept business secrets.

And today we're diving into how a Stanford cheating ring and a stupid idea about a bluetooth smart tampon actually led us to starting a company together.

We're Phoebe and Sophia and this is the burnouts.

Do you remember when we first actually bonded because you were butt ass naked in the mirror in our dorm room.

Okay, so you're making me up. You're making me sound weird. I was fake tanning.

Sophia insists on fake tanning like literally every other week. And one time and it looks.

My God.

We had a final presentation and I swear she was.

Wait, but I mean Ronnie and like I actually naturally tan. I just don't want skin cancer.

One night I'm like deep in rem. I really value my sleep. But I hear literally out the corner of my ear her sing song voice which is very recognizable.

I was definitely too loud but I thought you were dead asleep. So I was like do do my tan.

So you open the door and Sophia is literally just butt ass naked in front of the mirror looking at herself like this. You look incredible.

Okay, I was definitely not doing that, but I will. Listen to me.

It is scar my retina and it will never ever go away. I'm closing My eyes right now. And unfortunately, I could see it. But that was the moment where I was like, okay, the ice has officially broken. And, like, I love this woman.

I was honestly so surprised by how chill I felt. Like, I just was like, oh, hey, Phoebe, I'm going to keep doing my thing. And I was like, this is actually crazy how comfortable I feel with this girl. Like, I'm usually never that person. Like, I'm like, wall super closed off. And I was like, you know, she's so fun and open.

It was really. It was really, really bonding. And we go deep about, like, things, like, because we both had had those high school boyfriends who broken up with both of our parents, had gone through divorces. It's interesting, though, because there's kind of a dichotomy because I'm the youngest, like, super extroverted person in my family. And I felt very competitive with my older sister, had been pre med at Stanford and, like, wanted to come to Stanford, get better grades than her, yada yada, versus, like, you're the oldest sister.

Yeah.

And you were very much, like, in your own lane. Like, I'm going to do pre law. I'm not here to socialize you. Well, we realized really quickly. We started hanging out with this group of guy friends. And, like, they're smart. They're really smart. Is a genius. But we realized very quickly, like, in these couple classes that are, like, notoriously hard at Stanford, they were getting, like, all just straight A's. Okay.

The thing is, like, everyone is smart at Stanford. It wasn't even that, like, we didn't think they were.

Is everyone smart at Stanford?

I didn't think that they were idiotic. That's what I mean.

Never, like, getting black. I never saw a laptop open. I'm like, I'm sorry.

I'm like, you're literally out and about in the midterm term is tomorrow.

And we uncovered there was this entire cheating ring at Stanford between, like, all the frats where people had the easiest classes. They had all the questions for each other. They had the textbooks annotated. They had essays from. I just need to time out.

The way I found out about the Stanford cheating ring is that we were all together and we were hanging out. And then everyone had their midterm dude that night who was in the CS class. And I just thought they were way too relaxed. Like, I just did not understand how was chilling tanning when I knew damn well he did not know a single thing for that class. And then he just had to sit down on his computer and just take the entire midterm for him. I was just flabbergasted. I was just so shocked that there was this whole sophisticated operation where he was sitting at all these people's computers taking their midterms for them and they were all getting 100% in the class.

I remember when I heard about this, I was like, I can't hear about this. I'm not here. I'm not here. I don't want to hear. I don't want to hear what you guys are doing. I don't want to know about this at all. Like, I was so, so paranoid about it. And then I realized that it went beyond like cheating. Like, they were doing internships for each other, they were writing recs for each other. Like, I'm not saying that we should have been cheating. Like, absolutely not. But what I am saying is like, I do wish that there was not to that degree, but some sort of a collaborative sense of like, let's work together on things. Because I feel like I went into Stanford with this like, single mentality of like, I'm going to succeed. Everyone else here is my competition. Like, I remember even seeing when I first saw you, I was like. Because I felt like, frankly competitive against you. Like, I felt like you were a threat to my ego. And I feel like in society we do that to a lot of women where it's like, this person is like, you know, a threat to you versus men. They're all friends with all the other successful men and they're dapping each other up and serving each other favors on the side because that's how the world works.

I think they were a super one way extreme where they literally did each other's homework for each other and took each other's tests. But I still admired that collaborative spirit of let's make sure that everyone is succeeding. Like, we're all friends. I want you to do well in your class. And I think that seeing how well they all jived and how much they cared about each other and how well they were doing as a result of that really made me realize if we want to be successful too, we don't need to cheat. But we, we should be studying together. Like we should be taking classes together. And I think I definitely did not realize that when I first got in. I thought I was getting in to do really well for myself by myself.

When did you realize that you wanted to take that collaborative spirit over here and work with me?

This is so random. But genuinely, it was when we had all gotten brunch together, us and all of our friends. And. And we were all on the way back to our dorms to get ready. There was a huge Sigma new party.

You never even told me this.

Wait, I genuinely am so dead ass. There was a huge Sigma new party at Stanford.

Like it's like 20 people in a.

Backyard Stanford for me. I was like, I need to go out. I need to be seen. So anyway, we all are going back from having brunch together and you were studying in the car on the way back to campus for your midterm and you decided, no, I'm not gonna go out. Like, I have a really important test tomorrow that I need to do well for. And I just remember thinking, how on earth is she so confident and self assured that she doesn't care about going out and being seen and becoming friends with these people or at least having these people think that she's cool? Because I think for me, I was not like that at all.

I was definitely shocked because you come off as like, people are scared of you. Like, you come off as very, very confident. So it's crazy to me that like underneath that, that you had like the same insecurities that all of us had, 100%.

I mean, I think that for me it was more so that was a projection in a way for me to not acknowledge the underlying insecurity because it was easier to act like I didn't care at all than to be like, oh, actually I really care about me.

I had guys come up to me and be like, could you maybe talk to Sophia for me? I'm a, I'm a fan. Literally. We had that girl who wrote her entire essay for a class on your life who came into our dorm room and follow you around.

That was.

Oh, you loved it. Oh, come on.

I did that. It was kind of fun.

You ate it.

It was kind of.

She came to her. I wouldn't say. I come out of my, my room, I'm like half awake. I have my little eye mask on. Oh my gosh. I had like, I lost it now. But I. My childhood blanket I used to sleep with every night come out. I got my like childhood blankie. I got my little eye mask open up. And there's a girl sitting there taking notes. She goes, ah, yes, you must be Phoebe. I'm here following around Mrs. Kiani for the next couple days for my thesis. I was like, what the hell?

Do you remember? I connected you, you with her over text.

I had to do a two hour interview.

She was like, I think that the way for me to really get to know you as a person is by getting to know Phoebe.

Because a two hour interview. Well, you told me I would like the things I couldn't tell her and stuff. Obviously going into time, like writing a.

Super long paper about me. I wanted to make sure it was glorious. This is a moment in time.

She followed you around for actually like two weeks.

That day that we were tweaking where I was fake tanning and you didn't want me to go into the presentation because you thought I looked crazy and she was there. I thought you were actually going to.

Because you're probably easy to find around campus since you look.

I looked like a highlighter.

She probably, she had no issue finding you. I just be on her bike. Boom. Over there. Ms. Sophia.

Okay, what about you? When did you realize that you wanted to collaborate with me?

When you want to talk about Kobe.

No, that's why you wanted to collaborate with me. Because I was lying. Because I was lying.

I think honestly, because I had so much insecurity and like such a desire to prove myself right. Stanford year, like I came in, I was like, I have so much privilege. I'm a Nepo baby. Like, I had so much insecurity around that. And I feel like it's so hard when you're like a freshman in college because you have no experience, you have nothing. Sophia has literally a fake assistant that had.

Had.

Oh. That she uses to.

I have a new name for him now. If Phoebe's exposing me and so many people are going to come out of the trenches being like, so there was a fake person that I was talking to. But basically, basically when I was at Stanford, I made myself a fake assistant because I wanted to be paid for work that I was doing. And I found it really awkward to ask for money myself. I was a 20 year old girl who people were reaching out to. I was paying my own tuition and so I needed my bills to be paid. So instead of asking myself, I made this fake fictional person named Kobe and I would loop him into my email, looping in Kobe. And it was actually one of my friends. I don't, I can't even take credit for this. One of my friends was the one who told me, I think you should create a fake assistant. Make sure it's a guy, by the way. And the first time I ever tried it, I thought it was crazy. I thought that they would see right through me. Remember, I was so paranoid. I introduced you. I had a real friend named Kobe.

And you told me if someone ever called me was like, hello, Kobe. You walked me through what I should say and everything.

I had a whole plan.

Like you.

I was pretending to be paranoid.

You need to have a real person.

I can't. I don't sound like Kobe. I sound. I sound like a girl.

There's a lot that you wanted me to pick up the phone and pretend to be Kobe then.

I mean, Kobe helped me a lot through college. And I definitely think anyone who is in an awkward position where they need to negotiate things should just pretend to have a fake assistant.

How does Kobe sign off emails? Is he like executive assistant?

Wait. Oh my God. This is so funny because I. I then looped him in and I started calling him my chief of staff.

What are you, the president? I know. I don't know.

But there was a few times I looped in.

Wait, so who were the other staff that he was the chief of?

There was nobody but me and Kobe. But Kobe's name was chief of staff because it sounded more rizzy. And I was paid more money when.

Kobe was my chief of staff than when did he really. When he was. When you had versus Chief of staff?

Yes. I think at a certain point though, I became a little more sophisticated and I realized kobemail.com does not seem legit. Assistant sophiakiani.com no one thought a thing.

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One of my mentors had told me super early on when I was in high school, biggest advice he had for me was buy your domain name. Like buy Sophia Kiani dot com. Use it for your portfolio. Use it for your professional email. And so I asked you, do you own phoebegates.com? you should own that. You need to make that. You need to own that.

Someone else owns it. And when you look it up, it's like random photos of me in this old like 35 year old dude.

Wait, what?

Yes.

Wait, I didn't even know that. And yes, wait, I looked it up yesterday. Someone is trying to extort you. I'm not joking. It literally says because the Gates family.

Had to have him take it down because I was a minor and we used to collage photos of our wedding invite together and stuff. Every look me up, this site would come up.

Didn't you buy Phoebe.Gates? you never know.

I actually should. Maybe after this. I mean, it's only what your domain is. Like $15 a year. You just do it online.

That's the thing. It's so cheap to buy your own domain.

You're going to have like an ad sponsor day and buy your own domain.com. this episode is brought to you by. We honestly should remember because when we wanted to take that class at Stanford, the Lean launch pad class, the one that's like super hard to get into, that you rejected. Yeah, you have to like apply and basically it's like every week, like work on a project. At the end you pitch it. Like, we're gonna call our idea Renaissance. We didn't have the idea, but we bought the domain.

We did. We bought Renaissance.com but it was misspelled with 2s. Obviously the normal one wasn't available.

It was like, it was like 5.99 a year. Literally.

So cheap. Yeah.

And so we went heads down for like three weeks. Do you remember the first idea that we had?

I mean, it was your idea because I was so stressed. We had a domain name.

Don't put it on me.

We had a domain name and everything and we did not have a company.

This is like our first big failure of many, many, many. But we were like, we're gonna create a Bluetooth tampon.

Phoebe was like, we're gonna create it.

No, I'm like all. I'm all in this because I'm like doing all this like repro health work. I'm like, also pre med.

Okay, wait. Genuinely, I just need to say I don't think it was that bad of an idea. Okay. Basically, it was a Bluetooth tampon. And what that means is when you're on your period, right, you're bleeding. But I hate getting a blood test. Right. Like, that's how you pitched it to me. You were like, who likes getting a blood test? What if you could tell if you're anemic because you knew I was extremely anemic. If you could tell you're anemic if your hormones are out of balance, all this stuff about yourself every single month. And then it's just an easier way to get instant insights instead of needing to go to the doctor. I thought you were a genius. I thought Phoebe was the real legit Elizabeth Holmes.

We were like, we're like, it's going to be so crazy. We're going to be the new Elizabeth Holmes.

I was like, let's start wearing black turtlenecks. Yeah.

It's horrible that that's the only female entrepreneur that's literally known, like, in the U.S. yeah. It's like one fraudulent turtleneck is not a genre. No, it is not a genre. So we had this whole grand idea. We go heads down for three weeks, we kind of go off the face of the earth, and everyone thought we were in love with each other, that we had, like, basically docked ourselves from social life because we had fallen in love with each other. You know, the three key things that you kind of need with a business we didn't have. So I don't think it's really a shocker that we also got flat out rejected from this class because we didn't know. They asked us some pretty key questions like, what problem does this solve? How would it make money? And what would it be?

I thought it was a good idea. I think what.

We couldn't answer those questions, but I couldn't loop and Colby. We couldn't loop and Colby in the moment, but it was because. Because we weren't flabbergasted.

We weren't the right people to do it. That's why a scientist. Yeah. They asked, do you have a biotech background?

Someone will do it and I think it'll be great. But for us, like, they also. That was. That was the fourth question that really. They really put the nail in the coffin with this one. Why are you the right person to do it?

Can you build it? Do you know anything about medicine? Zero.

So we get flat out rejected from that class. Which was honestly a really good reality check for us. Luckily, Stanford has the all access entrepreneurship class that anyone could get into. So we went to do. That is so not true.

We did apply. We did apply, but they let everyone in.

Babe, I. I thought it was a pass fail class.

They let everybody in, but we still. We had to fill out an application.

We did fill out a form. You're right.

Let me feel a little bit better about myself. It was. We told all our friends. I don't know what we were thinking. We told all our friends we were applying for Lean Launchpad with this idea. They all were like, oh, did you?

We're lucky you didn't put it on your LinkedIn, Ms. LinkedIn Influencer, did you?

No, of course. I'm not stupid. I don't even think I was LinkedIn influencer back then. I don't think I. I didn't know what LinkedIn was.

You were.

Really?

Because you had a LinkedIn hat. A LinkedIn hoodie.

Oh, my God.

I came back to the dorm one day and I was wearing the LinkedIn beanie. And the worst is that you really, like, were proud of it. And you.

I thought I looked really good.

You would tell everyone that you were a LinkedIn influencer.

We would be really embarrassed.

Be walking around campus. Strangers who clearly have never spoken to a woman in their life would be there and you'd be like, sophia, I'm actually a LinkedIn influencer.

Okay. To be fair, LinkedIn changed my life. It was so good for me professionally. I really wanted other people to know that they should also create links.

You should have had some sort of affiliate code because, man, oh, man, you could not get between our dorm room.

I did. I was part of their ambassador program, actually.

Oh, okay.

Do you remember when LinkedIn banned you? They banned you because they thought you were a fake spam account and came in, my G came through and he unbanned Phoebe's LinkedIn account.

So we get into the all access, like, class. We're still coming in with, you know, we had this crummy, crummy idea, which very quickly we did. You know, the key thing, which is asking ourselves those questions and then talking to actual, like, customers who would have used this. Other women. And all of our friends were like, I would never do this, like, unless it would just automatically work. Like, I'm not plugging this thing into a machine.

I think that they just didn't trust us because we didn't actually understand how it worked. We had this idea.

Yeah, that was a 4 flaw as well.

They asked, how is it? What does it look like? Like, how do I put it up there? Moment they started asking those questions, I.

Was like, I'm out.

I don't think I can do this for five years.

The Wire. Yeah. We had no way of figuring anything out.

Do you remember what our professor said? He said, to do an idea, you need to be willing to work on it for the next five to 10 years. To become an expert at anything, you need to spend 10,000 hours on it. The moment he said that, I was out. There was no way I was going to be talking about tampons for five years. Not me. I think we just really loved working together. It was just really fun because you would ask a. Then I would try to answer it, then you'd say, no, that makes no sense. And then I try to defend it. And then we would constructively come together and come up with this.

And it felt like we were Nancy Drew. I'd be like, this company's doing it.

We beat them. But I also realized we wanted to work together. We liked working together. We liked jamming. One thing, though, that I learned from the class that I think I've genuinely told thousands of people.

Your chart. Yes.

The fact you already knew is because of how often I say it. It was. It was life changing for me. He puts up this chart, and it's the ikigai chart. And it's a Japanese concept that says you need to work on something that you love, that you're good at, that the world needs, that you're going to be paid for. It's those four things. If you're at the intersection of all of those, you have found your perfect homeostasis, like your perfect special sauce of what you need to be doing with your life. I'm going through that chart going, no, no, no, no. We are not doing the smart tampon. I don't love this. I don't know. I don't think the world needs it. We definitely are not getting paid for this. And I think it was just a really helpful exercise because I think after that, regardless of whether or not you're starting a business, you. You need to be at the intersection of those four things. And also, I think it forced us to go back to the drawing board of, okay, we're excited about the idea of starting a company together. This is not the right idea. We've learned a lot of stuff. What can we do that does fulfill all these four buckets? Basically, me and Phoebe decided after the horrible Bluetooth tampon idea, we Went back to the drawing board and we started thinking about the intersection of AI and shopping and about how shopping hasn't fundamentally changed in the last decade or more. And that AI presented this opportunity to just change it and make it easier to find better deals, especially secondhand deals. And I think that's where we started talking about also sustainability and things that we cared about. Also from an activism perspective. Not even that, but you also sharing you grew up in this household where your dad inspired you and told you about how incredible it was that he was able to pursue his dreams and he did something that genuinely changed the world. And I think it was so beautiful to hear you talk about that and also about the fact that he failed, like multiple times. And I mean, that was really interesting. I'm curious, like, why you felt so comfortable sharing that stuff with me, though.

I shared everything with you. I think I just bore it all to you. But it's funny to hear you say that because I literally never remember my dad talking about the start of Microsoft. Like, I literally mostly just remember him talking about the foundation. I remember even when we wanted to start the company, him being like, are you sure you want to do this? Like, because both of my, my siblings were incredibly intelligent. Took very like, you know, typical career paths where there isn't. My brother is a genius, like three degrees in four years from UChicago. Like, my sister has two kids and a horseback riding career and is in residency. But there wasn't like this adverse risk of failure. And so I think my parents were actually really cautious when I was like, I want to take like, you know, I want to do, you know, Stanford, like abroad and kind of do this remotely finish up my degree and do the startup. They were very much to like, you need to finish your degree. You don't just get to like, drop out and do a company. Which is so funny because my dad literally did that. And that's like, the reason I'm able to go to Stanford, have my tuition paid is because of that.

I think I was first very skeptical of, there's no way I can start a company. I need to go be this perfect traditional immigrant older daughter and go have a stable career in law and go to Harvard Law School. I had my whole life planned out ahead of me. What you did share with me though, was that when he was first starting out with his friend, they worked on a traffic cone.

Yeah, no, not a traffic cone. Like a system to basically like, track traffic in Seattle to help with congestion. They made some money off of it, but they realized like it couldn't be a career or anything. And he also built like a class scheduler thing to help his school out. There were tons of things he tried that didn't work out. And in fact Microsoft, like for this first three years was like not successful.

A lot of times I think of things through the lens of there's no sunken cost. It's easy to look back and think we studied these different subjects, law, human biology that now don't really necessarily relate exactly to what we're working on when it comes to fashion tech. And I think it's also important for people to realize you can always change direction. Like you can always immediately decide to do something completely different than what you're doing at that current moment. There was a book that our professor told us to read called the Go Giver. So good, such a good book because his whole point was basically everyone at Stanford, us honestly included at that time, is a go getter. All they're thinking about is how can I get every single opportunity, how can I get everything that I want out of life, out of other people? It's very extractionary. And he said that the most successful people he had ever worked with, all of his students who went on to start incredible companies, to have incredible careers, they were all go givers. So they thought about what am I going to give to other people? What value am I adding to other people's lives? And people who focus on giving rather than getting and taking are the ones who are going to be the most successful. And I think that us thinking about our company and through the work that we were doing, through the lens of what is a problem that this is solving? How are we making people's lives easier? Helping them to shop smarter, helping them save money, helping them shop more sustainably.

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Really like the results that we're seeing. And this is not just true for business business, but any career you're in. It is just the result of habits. And I really think, like, some of the traction we're now seeing with our product is really just the result of our habits. It's the result of loving your work. Waking up early, working till damn late on this company because you love it. It's not work. Life balance. If this is your life and you really enjoy it, like, it has to be fun and you have to have the habits built around that. And controlling, being able to control, like the mammalian part of your brain that wants to stay in bed, that wants to do this, to actually be like, no, I don't want to eat, but I need to go eat lunch because I need to be productive this afternoon because I need to move this thing forward. And just those habits building up over time. And it's not even like, even if one thing doesn't change that week, it's over time. Those continued habits and kind of that escalation of you as a person of who can you be? Like, five years from now is huge. A habit that we had that I thought was so good at the beginning was just constant outreach and constant exception of rejection. Like we would. And we were trying to get like our first partnerships for Fiat. We would outreach. I kid you not. Like, literally, do you remember this? Like, we max out the LinkedIn credits and you were an influencer. You had to email them and they still wouldn't grant us more because we hit the limit.

I know Phoebe was finally happy that I'm a LinkedIn influencer because I did have a free premium account. So we were able to message a ton of people.

But we get people respond back, like, please leave me alone and never email me. We'd still respond again.

I know. I think that it was so important for us to just accept that you need to be okay getting no responses. Like just sending 100 outreach messages out there and then having no one respond, even if one person responds, that's better than nothing.

Not talking Tinder, we're talking for career stuff. No, but I even think it's applicable, like, if you're a designer and you're sending someone your work or you're doing something else.

It was also because we were so focused on what can we get from these companies? Because we were basically trying.

And that's what our outreach email said.

We want this.

We want this.

Exactly. And that was so. I mean, it makes me cringe when I look back on it, because it seems so obvious. But we were reaching out to these companies basically because we wanted to say, while someone is shopping, we want to pop up and show the cheaper used option. So we obviously reached out to these secondhand companies and we asked them, hey, can we have your data so that I sound like an idiot even saying it? Can we have your data so that when people are shopping, we can pop up and we can show them these used alternatives? Obviously, like, no one responded. We were. We were asking them for something. And instead our teacher really helped us to reframe the email around. No, no, no, no. What is the value that you're providing them? And we instead said, this is a free marketing vehicle for you. If you're able to partner with us on this, then we're going to get you in front of hundreds of additional people. We'll put it on our social media.

I really feel like the greatest lesson from this is like, vulnerability is not embarrassing. Yes, our cold email outreach template was awful at first, and it was a complete flop. But I've even connected with some of those people now, and they were like, good for you for reaching out in college. I think the biggest things that we learned is have that vulnerability. You just need to take shots on goal. Like, you just need to keep taking shots on goal. You need to outreach to hundreds of people, because that one person you outreach to might be the person that actually.

Do you remember that guy in our class? I swear to God, there was this guy in our class where every week this man is getting lunch with, like, Sam Altman. He's getting lunch with Mark Zuckerberg. Every single Silicon Valley titan is all up in this guy's DMs. And we were so confused. We're like, how on earth are you always getting coffee with these people? And he just said, I every single week send hundreds of outreach messages. I always try to get help from people. I always look for advice. And I think that that was really inspiring because he was also super straight up that he had messaged those people hundreds of times before, and they finally.

Came back one bit. And then he was able to say, I met with this person, da, da, and I'd love to get, you know, help from you on this, and I could provide this. And then I think the other big lesson was actually leading with what you're going to bring the person.

Exactly. And I think that also for. He just wasn't embarrassed. Like, I used to be so embarrassed to reach out to people to say, hey, I'm doing, blah, blah, blah. I think I could work with you. I could think I could help you, or I just want to learn from you. And I would be so embarrassed because if they didn't respond, which most times they didn't, I thought that. I don't know, I just thought I looked weird on my part. But in hearing him say no, I send hundreds of these every single week. I don't care if no one responds.

Because all that people see on the surface is that he's meeting up with all these people. They don't see the thousands of messages.

That have gone on Red. Yeah. He was such a hustler. And I think that people like that are so inspiring because you just need to see people who are willing to take that shot and that risk. There's this saying that's like, you can't be what you can't see. And I think that's part of why we're doing this. We are literally in the trenches right now. We're in the middle of figuring out our startup. We haven't even launched yet. But I think that's the point is we just want to be honest of, here's what we're learning as we go. We're flying by the seat of our pants. Stuff is still breaking.

Building the airplane while it's flying. I think the other thing is this is the podcast that we wish we had had.

I also feel like there's no playbook for building with your best friend. I think so much pop culture is really individualistic and focused around how can you.

Especially for women, too.

Especially for women. It's like, how can you make it in life? Instead of how can you and your team, you and people that you love and that you're working with, how can you guys make it together? Part of the reason I feel like I was constantly crashing out and burning out at Stanford is I was trying to do so much just by myself. When I was doing all my. My climate work and my. My pre law work, I always felt so overwhelmed because I didn't have someone to work with. Like, I didn't have someone to talk to. And I think that us also just sharing. It's hard, right? Me and Phoebe argue every day.

All the time.

All the time. But it's like, for us, that's we have just developed the ability to be super honest with each other and to have hard conversations. And I think there's not an avenue to be able to be super honest and frank with people about this is what it's like to build a company or this is what it's like to work with your friends at work. It's not always going to be perfect and fun.

Even the other day, I remember, like, when you were having a hard time. I'm like, how do I know when I should show up as your business partner and be like, come on, toughen up. Like, we got to do this thing. We need to go to this meeting. Like, we need to figure this thing out. Like, we just need to put on, you know, the strong face versus that other dichotomy of, like, I'm at the.

End of the day.

Like, you know, we're each other's best friends. Like, who do you hope will listen to this?

I mean, I hope it's the girl who's. She's sitting at home, she's crying, she hates her job. Her ex boyfriend just broke up with her. Like, she's just crashing out, and she just needs to hear that someone else is also struggling. Honestly, that someone else is struggling and that it can suck. It sucks. Your early 20s are so hard. But, like, we're here, other people are here, other people are also struggling, and we can all figure it out together.

Or the other girls who are starting companies were in their career who are killing it. I'm. I think I'm a little terrified of, like, also documenting our uncertainty, like, open sourcing. All that I'm a little nervous about because I think it gives a very open heart, you know, evaluation of where we're at.

Is your heart open right now? My heart is open.

My heart is open for you.

Oh, my God. What about for them?

Everyone was like, phoebe and Sophia are in love. Phoebe and Sophia are in love. When we, like, you know, just stay in our room for three weeks and worked on the smart tampon. Someone said that to Sophia. She's like, please, I'll never be with her. I was like, excuse me. Excuse me. Okay. Orange crayon. You are. Your hands look like a highlighter. Okay, So I don't want to hear from you.

Yes. I had finally broken up with Mr. Math textbook.

I was Sophia's ex. Boyfriend wrote a math textbook.

He's a genius.

And she used to brag about this.

Working as an engineer and s opera.

I have no issue with him writing a math textbook.

Engineers.

My issue with it is that you continue to brag about because I'm the.

One giving him the idea. I was trying to see on the scene. Scene. I was trying to meet the Stanford guys and people thought that we were dating. That kind of was blocking me. Do you understand?

You were. You were talking to a lot of guys.

Really?

Who? Who did you talk to? Because you talked to nobody.

There was not a single guy who came over to our dorm. To be clear.

Well, I think that's enough of me and Sophia bickering about her high school boyfriend.

And clearly we're cutting that.

Are not cutting that. It's making it straight the way through.

Next week, we're going to be bringing you guys the goat, the marketer of all marketers. If you can guess, leave a comment and we'll tell you if you're right. And then tune in every single Tuesday to see what else we learn.

Thank you for listening to the burnouts like comment, subscribe and sign up for the FIA.com waitlist for early access. We'll see you next Tuesday. Bye.

Bye.

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