The “One-Man Startup” that landed Rover

I've landed a billion dollar company with literally nothing. It's not that complicated. We made the list of top 250 fastest growing companies on the Inc. 5000 list. I was born overseas, I'm an immigrant. I've built a couple of other startups. I failed at many of them in the process.

I think every entrepreneur ever, if you're honest with yourself, you are probably making mistakes all the time.

Entrepreneurship is all about taking a risk, right? I think that's a big problem in entrepreneurship, right? People overthink if you do things right. Like an MVP shouldn't take more than 30 to 90 days to build. Like, I, you know, at the time, like, I had nothing. I was a one person, you know, more or less like a one person company. We sent out a few emails or maybe a few hundred emails, and one of the emails ended up landing at Rover. At the time, I think, I think they just raised their series B and it was like the hottest unicorn in Seattle. And at the time, I literally had the landing page and I had a good landing page. And when I went to see Rover, they're like, oh my God, man, I love the text on your landing page. We had no team, like, literally, like I was the only person working at Thirsty Sprout. Here's a billion dollar company looking for outsourced engineers and I'm like, yeah, I can make this happen. Like, you know, like, it's not a problem. I. I feel like if I had to do it all over again, I would.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the ABCs for building the Future podcast. My name is Robert. We bring on entrepreneurs, researchers, people building the future, people doing big things with big stories to tell. Today we have on my friend David Sapanya, CEO, founder of thirstysprout. David, do you want to give a quick intro of yourself?

Sounds good, yeah. Hey, everyone, my name is David. I'm the founder of ThirstysProject Sprout. We are a technical recruiting and staffing company that is building some technology behind our name that will automate sourcing, recruiting and vetting of candidates and take the load off of all the recruiters out there. We made the list of 200, you know, top 250 fastest growing companies on the Inc 5000 list. I was born overseas. I'm a immigrant. I've built a couple of other startups. I failed at many of them in the process, actually. Still, I experiment probably a couple times a year to try something else on, you know, either on the side or with someone else. But yeah, all these lessons. Have you know, taught me what matters and, you know, building a venture. And I'm happy to share that with you today.

Super cool. Yeah. And you said it's number 247 on the Inc. 5000. Is that what you said?

Yes. That was 2024.

Sweet. So hopefully this year it's like inching even more, right?

Hopefully. Yeah. We're landing some big clients, so we'll see. We'll see. Last year was a little bit tough, but yeah, this year, hopefully things are going to pick back up. Yeah.

And I'm, I'm sure we were just talking right before we started pod, but like, I'm sure some of that velocity is from your very prolific content strategy on LinkedIn, which we'll get into in a sec. I'd love to talk about that a bit more. But digging into your journey, you mentioned, you know, you've been like a serial entrepreneur and also you're an immigrant. Where. Where are you from for the viewers? And then how did you even get into entrepreneurship next?

So I was born in a country called Georgia, which is in between Russia and Turkey. After that, I moved to Slovenia. I moved after Slovenia, I moved to the US And I've lived in a couple different places since then. Like, you know, Hawaii, Florida, Seattle. Right now I'm in Mexico. Actually. I've been here for past three years on and off. I met my wife here and we're expecting our second kid here. So the way I got into entrepreneurship, I think my life was always had so much ups and downs. I think the only way for me to, you know, feel excited is trying to solve a problem and trying to always, you know, get from point A to point B. I don't like status quo. I like to, you know, grow, learn, figure new things out and be an artist of my own life. Basically waking up every day and picking on what you want to work on on that wherever you are, doesn't matter. You know, it's like you dictate your schedule. Like, in a nutshell, that's it. You're not limited by geography. You're not limited by.

Yeah, yeah, cool. So freedom and to be the artist of your own life. That's. I really like that phrase, be the artist. That might be like the YouTube title or something like that, or on the thumbnail. That's really good. So talk to me a little bit about your, your ventures like before and some of the you you mentioned, you know, you went through a lot of failures and mistakes. Me too. I think every entrepreneur ever, like, if you're honest with Yourself, you are probably making mistakes all the time, right. So could you highlight some of the defining moments, slash mistakes and learnings that you've had in your career and how you got to this point in time where you decided, I'm going to go after this space around recruiting automation with Thirsty Scrap? I'm kind of curious about that.

Okay. Yeah. The first mistake I feel like I made was I listened to my parents and I got a job. No, just kidding.

So that's a good one, man.

I did that. That's a good one. Yeah. I think that set me back a few years, but it's. It was also something that allowed me to realize where I'm really unhappy, right. Like, which is like, you know, working in a job, very restricted doing one thing. But again, like, I'm not discouraging anyone from a job. Obviously. There's a lot of great entrepreneurs who have hailed from, you know, stripe, you know, Facebook, Google. I would say it's actually a great way to go. Just for me. Like I mentioned, like, earlier in the call, I think my life was kind of like always, like, up and down, always moving around, you know, escaped one war, this that, you know, in. In high school and college, I supported myself doing, actually kind of like, you

know, from high school. High school.

High school, yeah. If we go into details, actually, even in high school, we used to have parties. And, you know, those parties, we needed to sell alcohol. Alcohol. Or people needed alcohol, so we sold alcohol. So, I mean, you can. Yeah, you can keep that on the record. It's not too bad. I feel like who hasn't done that, you know, so. So, yeah, I mean, if you think about it, right, like, everyone kind of, you know, gets their start either, you know, they had a paper route back in the day, and then, you know, later down the road, I don't know, like, everyone entrepreneur has hustled to some levels and so did I. So in college, same thing. I mean, we used to promote nightclubs before we were 21. And so we're always just, like I said, striving for, you know, like, for. I don't know, for. For something that maybe was not the traditional way of going about things. Another thing was, like I said, I, you know, I wasn't legally able to. To work till I was like 20. So, you know, like, we did whatever we could to extra. To earn an extra dollar. Right. So. So the journey actually started way back in the day before, you know, like. Yeah, before college did get a job, I was fired from a couple of jobs. Actually, one of it was, you know, like, you know, maybe for performance reasons. I mean, performance in the sense of like, I was really not with the idea of like staying with the company. It was not something I was enjoying doing at the time. You know, other was like some other reasons. Like I got injured and like, I, same thing. Like, I was like, I can't do this job anymore. And things fell apart. And at some point, like, I, I, I decided to, you know, like, I actually, like, I, I did have one job that I really enjoyed. It was working for a company called Centurion. We were selling wireless modules. I was learning a lot there. The company was growing really fast at the time, at least for those times. We were the market leader in wireless module manufacturing. I learned a lot from our vice president of sales. You know, it was a great team. I, I really, you know, like, that's where I think I learned that you don't need a big team to have a really great business. And so we had a small team that sold these components all over us and north and South America and we were crushing it, right. And so that's why I kind of learned my lessons of how to run a strong sales team. And at some point that parlayed into, you know, a company called Data Micro that me and my friend kind of partnered up on along with a partner we had in China at the time that provided us with networking our routers that we sold all over in the US and Europe. And you know, I took the lessons from Centurion mostly at the time it was, you know, like outbound email, outbound, setting up outbound SDR teams. That's kind of like the, the, the move that has worked really well and it was just kind of starting up at that time. I think Salesforce was the first to adopt it and slowly everyone started copying it. At the time, Outbound still worked. I think our open rates were 50, 60, 80% sometimes. And yeah, we built like a solid business at the time doing, I don't know, $20 million in revenue. And yeah, for about three or four years, the business was doing quite well. At some point our main partner, which was Cisco, had changed up how the business is done in, in the space. They wanted to have, you know, Chinese serial numbers to stay in Asia and you know, serial numbers that are the product that they manufacture in Mexico. They wanted to go to us. And so long story short, they switched up the supply chain lines and things of that sort and had an effect on us. We didn't have as much inventory and the business started going down the hill. And that's when I started to figure out, like, well, what is next? Like, I want to work remote. I was at the time I was in Hawaii and I needed to figure something else to do. And so me and my buddy, we invested in a startup idea. I mean, together, mostly I invested, he was doing the work and we outsourced the product to a, you know, dev shop in India. And long story short, I lost about $100,000 in the process. And at the end, yeah, we didn't really have a product that really worked. Partially it was my buddy's, you know, you could say it was partially my buddy's fault because he was also new at this. Like, he wasn't, you know, like someone who had experience in building software products. You know, like he was fresh out of college, more or less, or maybe he had a couple of years of experience and I had no, you know, experience building software products also. And so long story short, that is what got me to want to start Thirsty Sprout. At some point I realized like, hey, you know what? Like, I think software is the future, but I don't really have a team I can trust. And if I don't have a team I can trust, the cost of, you know, wasting your money outsourcing projects to some sketchy dev shops is quite high. And I will give able to keep up with all the experiments I need to do. So that's when I, you know, decided, hey, you know what, like, I want to build my own team or I want to have a company that, you know, has top tier talent and can build cool products. And that's how Thirsty Sprout got started. And I mean, again, I do want to say at the idea or the, the initial idea was that we build a product studio. That's not exactly what we're doing now, but we made a few pivots along the way. I'm happy to share, like, why and how. Dive a little more into that if you'd like.

There's so many things, like, to dive into, but thanks for sharing and sharing some of the ups and downs. It sounds like you've really been through it, especially with starting your career, trying to figure out probably like, where can I get freedom? And then that fell into entrepreneurship. And it also is cool that you like, really hustled during high school days and stuff like that. Mark Cuban has a similar story, right, about like selling nightclubs, ticketing things. Just I think, yeah, you should look that up if you haven't already. So that's a common thread. So maybe your future is. Is in the bees, right?

You have to.

But that's record. That's super cool. You mentioned getting, you know, building up SDR teams and then that really gave you a lot of skills. And then you went into business with your friend and that didn't go well. And a big thing that I heard was you just both didn't have domain expertise. And then that led to, oh, we should be trying to find really capable, high trust people, like, build our own team. And then I'm guessing that led you to figure out other people had the same problem. And I'm guessing somewhere along the way you made pivots to solve that for other people. So tell me about those pivots. Every single one, in as much detail as you would like.

Yeah, so I mean, as I mentioned, like, you know, initially, I mean, we, we were trying to build a Groupon, not a clone, but like something similar to Groupon at the time when Groupon was the only player in town. Long story short, as you know, like, if you do things right, like an MVP shouldn't take more than 30 to 90 days to build. It took us like a year and it was still not really working. So. So that's when we, you know, like by that time, like, I think Living Social or I don't know what company popped up and so many other clones popped up, the business idea just kind of died off. And like I said, I was, you know, like, I just wasted, you know, like $100,000 and on my own time. And long story short, you know, that at some point, that's when I decided to start Thirsty Sprout. Initially, like, I wanted it to be a product studio, but again, evaluating what I know, which is, you know, I wasn't a product person at the time. I was the business development person. That still stands true. Long story short, you know, the. At some point, you know, one of my best friends right now, like, at the time, he wasn't my. My best friend. He was just like a really smart engineer and a tech leader who founded a couple of successful startups. Told me to focus on recruiting and staffing. It's much more scalable. Companies really need good engineers, and there's plenty of them in Eastern Europe and there's not enough of them in the U.S. and so, long story short, I took his advice. We sent out a few emails or maybe a few hundred emails, and, you know, one of the emails ended up landing at Rover. At the time, I think, I think they just raised their Series B and it was like the hottest unicorn in Seattle. And the email really resonated with the founder. He called me up or you know, wrote, you know, responded to my email. He said like, hey, come into the office, like, let's talk. I went in, we got our first big client and I realized that you know, like the, this is it. Like this makes a lot more sense. Like, you know, the, the biggest eye opener at the time was the fact that like we've got this, you know, we've built a team for Rover in Eastern Europe. Believe it or not, at the time, like we had no team. Like literally like I was the only person working at Thirsty Sprout. Here's a billion dollar company looking for outsourced engineers. And I'm like, yeah, I can make this happen. Like, you know, like it's not a problem. I got people in Eastern Europe technically. Like I found couple of through a partner and others, you know, directly. And one of those engineers that we found for Rover has worked with us up until like few months ago. Like so seven years. Right, like, and he was great. All the, any company that he's ever worked with, everyone loved. We've scaled teams underneath him and, but, but yeah, I mean that was it. Like I think entrepreneurship is all about taking a risk, right? Like I, you know, at the time, like I had nothing. I was a one person, you know, more or less like a one person company. I had a couple of small engagements with like one other engineer who was a friend of mine, but he was, he was junior who thought he could do senior stuff. So all our projects were like, I, I basically paid for some of our clients projects because it was, they were so underestimated by my buddy. Oh, got it. Yeah, it's like, yeah, we would quote out or you know, me and him would quote out something say for $20,000 and it ended up costing us, I don't know, like six months or eight months of our time. And you know, when we did the math, like maybe we made like $2 an hour. And so that, that, that's when I was like, you know what? Like I think the recruiting and staffing makes a lot more sense. Like, you know, the Rover team was extremely happy with the work that these guys were doing. And I mean these are, you know, like we're, we're making a good margin, you know, on these developers. Rover team was like extreme it as I mentioned. Like they were like, dude, you guys are, your guys are outworking our internal team by like 30. Like which is, and I mean, yeah, you talked about eye Opener. I was like well how is this billion dollar company like you know, doing what they're doing when we have like. And so that's when I was like, okay, like there's something here. Yeah, but at the time, you know, like, like I said like I was still learning like recruiting, staffing, all of this is, is new to me. Like I just, I'm a, I guess like I'm a very, you could say stub but also focus driven person. And I just, I, I thought you know, like this could work, this could give me the independence, the freedom that I want. And I just created like a long term vision. Like I, I looked at you know, thirsty sprout as like hey this is what I like I, I'm not starting this company as like something I want to sell. Like I want this to be something that lasts me a lifetime and then I'll take you know, depending on how big it grows, like whatever, you know, percentage of the revenue, I'll take it and I'll invest it into other companies. And that's kind of what I do today. Most of the investments that I, we have made, like they're mostly like internal investments into building our own now software product or, or two or maybe actually three. We're like experimenting with a couple different things but I've also invested in you know, some other, some of our friend startups and, and yeah that's, that's about it. That's.

Wait, that's super cool. Wait, the Rover story is crazy. You gotta tell me more about that. So you basically just sought advice from your friend who had some success finding product market fit for a couple startups. Smart guy. And he was like looking at recruiting. So you looked into it and then you just cold emailed tons of big companies and then Rover got back and then you had no product but then you had demand and then so you were, you went in fulfilled. What was that like, what was that fulfillment process like? Cause you're like, like you know early and this is like you're just starting Thursdays route, you hadn't done recruiting. How did you go find that Eastern Europe team? Like how did you do that? What, what like what in between.

I went to, I went back to the same buddy that told me to do recruiting. I'm like where do I find these developers? And, and so he's a, he's from Eastern Europe. I mean like he's Russian, I'm Eastern European. Like we're like I said like we're friends and he's like okay, you know what Like, I know a couple people and, and we, we just made it happen. And I think, like, you know, like, I, that that's a big problem in entrepreneurship, right? Like, people overthink things. And so at the time I literally had the landing page and I had a good landing page. I, I created my own landing page. And when I went to see Rover, they're like, oh my God, man, I love the text on your landing page. So the text and the images and stuff, I developed my own landing page. I use WordPress. But I wrote a nice copy. Like at the time I was starting, like, I, I was studying a little bit about how to write a decent copy. And when you talk about Linked or like, you know, writing content on, on LinkedIn, yes. English is not my first language. I'm horrible at it. It takes me a long time to write something, but now it's a lot easier with like AI. Like, I can put my thoughts down it, it helps me autocomplete it and stuff like that. So I have like, pretty good vision of how things should work. And I just, like I said, like, I figured how, you know, like all my life I had to figure how to make things work going from one school to another. Like at one point, like, I think from grade, from the third grade till about seventh grade, I didn't really have like a. In high school, I didn't have a textbook because like when I moved countries, I didn't speak the language of that country. So I would have to fly back to Georgia to finish my exams there. But I would go to class in Slovenia and sit there kind of like a dummy. But, but at the same, like, you know, like, same thing. Like, I always, in my mind, it was always like kind of like a survival mode in a sense of like, well, how do I just complete this? Like, how do I go from point A to point B? And so that's what like allows me. Like, to me, it's just exciting to do startup. Like, you know, when startup is trying to figure something out. Like, okay, like, tell me, like, maybe I can help you. It's not that complicated. Like, I've landed a billion dollar company with literally nothing. Like, like I had like nothing. Landing page.

Landing page. And the email copy must have been amazing as well, right? Because I mean, I've read a lot about copywriting and I'm curious, like, what how did you think about writing that original copy and the landing page? What did you think about to put yourself in the shoes of the target icp? Like, what was the back then I'm curious. And how has that evolved? Because obviously, like, so for the podcast viewers, David is pretty prolific on LinkedIn and he's had a few really viral posts that get like, million plus impressions. I'm really impressed with that. And then hearing that, yo, it's not even his first language is just, that's mind blowing to me. So take us through how you even thought about that original landing page design and copywriting. You know, it was a little while ago, but I'm curious about that. And then how have your skills evolved since.

So I, I, I appreciate good design that, you know, we mentioned. Like, I want to be an artist of my life. I think I have an artistic side to, you know, to, to what I do. Like, my father was an architect. I like good art. I mean, I have some stuff here in the back. Nothing too crazy. Yeah, but, but, but, but, yeah, I, so I, I kind of whipped up the landing page from like a theme and I, I mean, obviously it was like a modified. I, I was trying to learn it myself, how to do a little bit of development. I have taken classes on development. I, I graduated from like a coding school. It's not on my LinkedIn or anything like that, but I'm not like a coder. Like, I don't do much coding, but I have, again, same thing, like, passed a couple of, you know, you know, like, classes as well as, like, got a degree in IT or like, postgraduate stuff, but without going too much into detail. To answer your question about the, you know, the copy, it's the same principle. It's like I looked at what are others doing and what are they doing, you know, like, successfully and then also try to see, like, you know, where is, like, is there a gap where, you know, Thirsty Sprout could come in and focus on, more on, you know, authenticity, focus more on, you know, trying to be a little bit different from all the other ones. I don't know if that has, you know, worked, work really well or not. Like, a lot of people still think Thirsty Sprout is a restaurant. It's not like a place for software developers. Just the name itself is just sounds a little bit off, but there's some symbolism there. Like, we thought of Thirsty Sprout as a place where people are hungry for growth and they like to see startups grow. And so there's some symbolism there in the sense of, like, we're thirsty for growth and Sprout is like a startup that needs to grow. Right, right. And so, so, so that was kind of like the, the idea behind the name, and it still stands true today. I mean, that's, you know, like we created our backstory and we wrote truly how we feel about, you know, what we want to do, what we want to achieve. And it seemed, it seemed to have resonated with Rover at the time and as well as many other startups.

Like, literally went from. Your friend suggested go into recruiting. You just made a WordPress landing page, learned to dev a little bit to do copywriting. Not you didn't. English is not your native language. And then you landed Rover. Like, that's a pretty incredible story, David, that I think that really speaks to the tenacity and the determination that I hear from your journey. And so I saw, you know, you also work on other things like you mentioned, like you invest internally on projects and you also invest into other startups. And so, you know, you have this thing, Home Base, which is bringing AI founders together. Could, could you tell the audience a little bit about that? Like what started Home Base and your interest there?

So again, you know, yeah, let me tell you first, I guess about Homebase, it's just simply for now, it's a newsletter and a community where we share stories of other founders building cool products in the AI space as well as leaders of, you know, enterprise companies and what enterprises are doing with AI. I've built a couple of communities in the past. We had, I think about 6,000 people in our Facebook community for early stage startups that, you know, that we started back during the pandemic. The community solved a very specific problem that, and, but it grew really fast. And so it's an interesting lesson there. The, you know, yeah, before every, or, you know, every time YC is looking to accept new startups, they, you know, they put out a message that says like, dude, like some of you people, people sound like you have like a good business, but you can't pitch it. So if you can't pitch it in like a couple of sentences, like, we're not gonna read the whole thing, right? And so I created a community where people come in, they would post their pitch and if it doesn't make sense, they would get feedback from other founders and then in return they would also need to provide feedback to other founders in the community so that they could get answers to their pitch. Right? And dude, like, it blew up like within three months it had 6,000 members and they're super engaged. But the challenge there was that, you know, as soon as they would, you know, pitch and get their, you know, startup story or whatever out there, they would kind of disappear. It's like you know, like they need to figure like do all the other

things they gotta go.

But it's like it was very hard to sustain it because it was just like give, give, give. But like people would just, you know that there was a leaky bucket problem. I mean that bucket was super leaky, right, because like beyond the pitch, like there's not much that they can get from the group. So long story short, you know like I, I knew how to build community or like I, I know how to build communities a little bit and so I'm trying to do something similar here. Although I would say building a community a few years ago was much easier than now. So that's why we're you know, kind of taking the extra step and you know, working on few different things at homebase. So Homebase is going to have a newsletter with interviews with other found others sharing insights as well as techniques and strategies for how to build or implement AI products into your companies. You know, given the fact that I've been doing Thirsty Sprout for a long while. We're also adding other resources into the mix. Like we're going to give members access to a free investor database. We have over 40,000, so we're building a product out of that as well as like you know, discounts for you know, other startups products and so building a little white combinator startup school without like the Y combinator funding so to say. So we'll see. It's, it's taken obviously it's going to take a little bit longer but I, you know, like I said it's, it's, it's my way of you know, giving back to startups and then also kind of staying in the loop with those startups and you know, enterprises.

That's really cool. I gotta join this.

That's cool.

So everybody, you know if you Google home base we'll drop into the show notes too like sign up for home base. Lots of good resources as David's saying. One thing I wanted to double click on. You mentioned building community before was easier. Now it's harder. Yeah, say more about that.

I think, I think as the world gets more digital the you know, the competition for your attention is just, is getting a little bit out of control. Right. So like your ads cost more your, I mean like you know like you're like even think about like the media, right. Like people used to long love long form stuff. Now it's like tick tock, you know, short form. Like you know like I Mean, obviously people still appreciate, you know, long form stuff, but like, you know, I think the people's attention is kind of like slowly becoming kind of like a goldfish fish.

Yeah. That's commoditized, right? Attention's commoditized now.

Yeah. So it's like super hard, I think, to do communities because there's so many of them. And it's not just that there's so many of them. It's hard to do something that's innovative with communities. Right. So I think Covid was kind of like the final nail in the coffin where people were so like, you know, there are so many communities that they join and so many zoom meetings and stuff like that. Now they want to go back back to in person stuff. So if you're going to do a community, it has to have like an in person aspect to it. I feel like otherwise it's going to be very hard. Like something needs to bring them together and then that's going to carry over, you know, maybe like, you know, for next few months and keep the engagement going. Right. Like, at least that's what I've heard works. I do have something planned there. Like, like, you know, I, I live in Mexico here on a beautiful beach in, you know, Riviera Maya. So hopefully I'll be putting in an event here for, or, you know, founder someday. I don't know how, you know, how soon it's gonna.

Dude.

But, but hit me up.

That sounds fun.

But yeah, we'll see.

Like, that's cool.

Yeah, during the pandemic, it was awesome here. There's so many founders, so many really smart people. But like, now there's like, you know, the, everyone's being called back to the office and stuff like that. So it's, it got a little bit more quiet again. Like, that's also the reason why I'm doing the home base is because, you know, I, I want to be able to stay connected with, with the founders while not being like, in New York or San Francisco or Seattle. So.

Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah. And one of the things that I've come to realize in entrepreneurship as well is community building just generates a lot of serendipitous value for the community and for whoever's facilitating it.

So.

Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I've learned that, like, we're both in sidebar together. Right. That's how we met and sidebar are also. I'm thinking about what you said. Like, it's the in person stuff that builds the connections, that authenticity the genuine depth of connection that's really hard to replace online. And so they're doing events and stuff, they're trying to drive more of that. And funny enough, like, we met through sidebar and we're like, oh yeah, you're a founder, we should talk. And we got together. But I think you're. What I. What I also want to say is you're right about the whole attention spans are lower. So this is a good segue to talking about LinkedIn. So you're pretty prolific on LinkedIn.

What's your strategy there?

And you know, it's interesting because you're not a native English speaker, but you also mentioned you have this artistic side to you. And then, you know, I could see that definitely expressed through LinkedIn. And before we even recorded, you mentioned things around like going against the grain or being authentic. So talk to us a little bit about your. Because actually, I guess I'll preface and say what I've learned in entrepreneurship is I think in today's world, community building and content strategy, you just have to do that. Like cost of acquiring customers is so high when you just go for the paid ads route or like even guerrilla marketing. I've tried those. And so what I've come to realize is if you have a strong personal brand as a founder, your attack could go to zero or negative, right? Like, you see this with like Mr. Beast, like, think about him, right? Like he ships a video, it's evergreen, he's clicking, collecting ad money forever. And they click a video, they watch it and they go to the grocery store, they see his chocolate bar, they buy it, right? So it just serves as like, he's getting paid to make an ad, like negative cac. And so every founder, I've realized, like, that's a cheat code. And so in the past year I've started working on my own personal brand. So a few things there. Do you kind of agree with that thesis of, hey, personal brand is important, it can get to negative cac. And community building content strategy is important too in entrepreneurship in, in this age. That. That's my thinking. I'm curious about yours and then how you informed your content strategy.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, personal brand I think works. The thing is like, you know, like right now it's a hot topic. But honestly, like, you know, there's been LinkedIn influencers, like since 2010, like there was like, even when I started my first, you know, or like when I was doing my last company, like there was guys with like, like a hundred thousand followers. Like they would Just post like, random pictures of like, Mercedes Benz and like, not even their Mercedes Benz. Right. And so it's still like, that stuff has worked for forever, but now it's, it's like one of the last things that's working. And I would say, like, you should hurry up and do it because even that's going to get saturated and then even that's going to become super hard. And LinkedIn is one of the only places that allows you to kind of like, go viral with, like, pretty easily. I mean, like, you just need to speak your mind. Like, I think a lot of people, like, I see them posting very, like, generic content and it's like, okay, if you have a million followers and you post that content, I mean, it's not good, but some people will see it. But if, if you post it and you have no followers, then that's too generic for you to get any traction. So my advice there is like, you know, like, try, you know, like, you have to, like, you know, you have to be a little bit edgy to kind of like, get the attention. Yeah.

So, yeah, what, what's, what's some of your advice on standing out or being edgy?

So I think there's, you need to decide on a couple of things there. You can go wide, and if you go wide, you have to be even more edgy. Like, think about. Yeah, we talk about like, Mr. Beast, right? Like, how does he do it? Like, he figures out, like, what are some crazy commercials out out there and how do you make them crazier? Right? Like, and so it's the same thing, you know, like, it's the same thing here. It's like, okay, like, is someone giving AI advice? And so like, okay, like, you know, you look at them and you're like, you know, this guy's pretty smart. He went to a great university. Well, how do you compete with him? Like, you know, like, he has, like the. So the way you compete with him is like, you. Yeah. Help open people's mind up a little bit and thinking in a different direction. Right. What you don't want is like, you know, just agreeing with something that someone already owns. Like, you know, like, he, he's an AI influencer. And so, like, he already has that audience, so everyone agrees with him. Everyone likes his statuses. But, okay, think completely the other way. And so that's where the opportunity is. Right. Like, if you want to go wide right now, my suggestion is there's two things. Like, I have my own team, and so they help me with things. And so My, you know, my thinking is that because I have my own team and they help me with a few different things, I can afford to go wider and try to capture the attention using a couple other different techniques that I'm going to, you know, like implement in, in my development of the personal brand. Right. Like we're going to build an email newsletter. We have a community. I'm going to, you know, I'm, I'm going to probably help them, you know, spread my message in, in different communities. It's very hard to do that by yourself. So, yeah, I, I have a. Yeah, it's a lot of work. Yeah, it's a lot of work. I, I have like, I mean, when I say this, like, I, I do all this stuff myself and then when I see something working, then I, you know, I tell my team members, like, hey, like, this is working. Can, can you go and do this? Right?

Scale it up. Yeah.

And so, so, so that's how I operate there. But if I didn't have a team, then what I would do do is go pretty narrow, like pick a very specific problem. So for AI, I would pick AI and Health or AI and Fintech. Probably AI and Fintech is already busy. Right? But like, like you would just try to, you know, go, go as narrow as possible and try to expand from there. Right? For me, I decided to, like I said, and I could be wrong here. Like, I decided to go wide. Like, for example, you know, there's sometimes I do like, for a community I went wide and it, I'm, we're struggling a little bit, you know, like what keeps me, you know, like what keeps me going is that, is that most other communities are also struggling. So I'm like, yeah, like, you know what? Like I'm, you know, it's like, it's hard. Like, you know, I'm just gonna go for the numbers and then hopefully like in, in the process, I make a few champions. Like, what's interesting about my community is that a lot of people message me directly, but none of them freaking post in the damn general chat. Like, come on, man. Like, this is the question you. So he's like, I open up and there's like every day I have like a dozen of messages. I'm like, you could have posted this in the general chat.

Please just post it to all chat.

Come on, man. Oh, that's funny.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay, so learn, learn some good things from that is take a definitive stance, especially if you're smaller, if you're bigger, you can kind of post whatever and you'll get network effects because you've simply just gotten to that point. But if you're smaller, what other people do, try to compete with them a different way.

Way.

It's kind of like startup mode, right? Like, it's the same sort of principles that apply. Find some niche, start small, expand from there. That's, that's also interesting.

I'll.

I'll add in another note. So I've been posting on LinkedIn for a while and trying to discover like, my voice and stuff like that in writing. And when, when I started it was more about like, okay, let me just write things I'm interested in and see what people like and then just write newsletters and take the long form and then create short form from that. And then when I started this latest venture, Epistemic Me, it's very different than what I originally talk about. So I have kind of had to change my strategy. And then I started thinking about where does my ideal customer profile live. So actually for me it's like AI and longevity right now. So I've had to, I don't know actually if AI and longevity people are LinkedIn, but I think there's another community that I'm part of, Don't Die by Brian Johnson, which is Nate. And one of the things I've learned just by some of the pros at this, like Gary V. Alex Hormozi and stuff, whenever there's a nascent community, that's where you should go really hard at that nascent community. Especially if you think you have a strong hypothesis that your ICP is there because it's simply a numbers game. If, if it's a community that you think is going to grow, if there's only a thousand people there right now and you become prominent, then as it grows, you, you scroll with it. LinkedIn like TikTok. Oh, Twitter is a good example. It's really hard to grow on Twitter right now. It's so saturated. Oh, y. Yeah. I guess the question for you is LinkedIn where your ICP is and is that why you're like really gas pedaling there or are there other platforms you're focusing on too?

I would say LinkedIn is pretty much where my ICP is. I think the only challenge with, you know, my ICP for a lot of them, they, they check, check LinkedIn only when they need to switch their jobs. So that. But I mean, yeah, because, you know, like a lot of people are also annoyed by, you know, by, by LinkedIn, you know, clickbait stuff, blah, blah, blah. But Like, I. I can see. Like, I. Because I talked to some of these guys sometimes, and, you know, like, they've seen my post and they've even commented on them. They're like, man, like, every. Every time I log in, there's something that's gonna grab your attention and suck you in. And then you have to respond to that comment and add your thoughts. Right?

So.

So it's like, yeah, yeah. Every time they log in, the key is to get their attention. Attention.

Okay, I see. Get the attention, then get the interest.

Because they don't log in that often. Like, some of them, like, once they find a job, like, last thing they want to be on LinkedIn is like, you know, like, they have to do their job. Like, they don't. But when they do log in, like, you better, you know, like, that's. I think that's when, like, when does stuff go viral? It's not because all these engineer managers and engineers are just doing nothing. It's like, it goes viral when, like, stars align and, like, one day they all log in and, you know, like, some of them add a comment. Another day, another logs in. So there's a lot of stuff in the mix, but that's why you got to post consistently every day. And it's like, I realized, like, there's. It's really tricky. The best thing to do is post consistently, and I'll tell you why. I've taken the same post, and when I post it and I'm like, you know, a minute or two goes by and there's no action, sometimes I'll delete it. And some people say, do not do that. But I'm like, dude, like, this is a good post. Like, how is this getting zero. Action. Action. And I'll post the same post an hour later, and it has gone completely bonkers. Like, it went super viral, right? And so, like, yeah, yeah, it's. I think it's just about, like, I don't know. I mean, I don't. Like, I didn't design LinkedIn's algorithm, but if it lands at the right time, at the right place, boom, it's going viral. And, like, you kind of have a feeling for what's gonna go viral and what's not. I mean, occasionally there has been posts where I was like, oh, why is this not getting as much action as. I. Like, this is just as good of a post as the other one. But it is what it is. Like, I think when you. Because if you just sit there and you're like, oh, like, will this go viral? Will this go like, you're going to waste, you know, like, big chunk of your day. Right. But on the flip side, if you just kind of like make it, you know, like post it. Okay, no one saw it. That's fine. You know, I'll post pretty much the same thing a week later since no one saw it. Like, who cares?

So just get the reps in. That's really what it sounds like. Just keep getting the reps in. Show up.

Exactly. Yeah.

And this also speaks to like, the importance of, of owning your own audience. Right. Because in LinkedIn, you don't really own your own audience. It's just whenever they log in and see it. And this is also what I realized, so I'm like, oh, newsletter game, podcast game is the way. So then you start owning your own audience.

Yeah.

And then you build that trust and credibility over time. Yeah, so, so that's cool, like around LinkedIn content strategy and how that seems to generate you leads and that's part of your overall, overall engine. You, you mentioned one thing, and then I want to move into a different topic, but just to close that out. How do you know what's the feeling of, hey, I think this can go viral? Or, hey, I think this has strong potential? Like, what is that? If you broke it down?

Ah, that's tricky. I, I think, I mean, like, is

that the, is that the artistic side of you? That's like there's a gut feeling or something or.

No, I mean, like, so. Well, there's couple different ways, like, to, to figure that out. First of all, like, it is, is true, like, you can look at other people's posts and see what went viral, but there is just as much truth in seeing some posts that didn't go viral. And you're like, how did this not go viral? Let me add my thoughts to this. And it goes viral. Right. But this part of adding your thoughts can be quite tricky because you have to be like, you have to have enough experience where you say something that's worth listening to. Right. And so that's like, I don't think, you know, like, depending who you're targeting, like, there needs to be enough substance there where you're like, okay, like, this wasn't covered by the news. Like, you know, this has like, hook, you know, this. These are some things that other people, you know, spoke about that, you know, like, seem valid. And so we need to include this into the argument. And so you just like, combine a lot of good stuff together. But again, like, you need to, you need to know what you're doing to do this right? And so then you just hit ship and see, you know, see, see where lands. The, the only challenge is like I said, like some of the posts that have gotten viral that I have done, like it has, I'm not gonna lie, it has taken me like two hours to write up the post, including assistance from AI, cloud chat, gtp, like every, you know. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's still like I'm, I'm faster at it now. But like, I'll be honest, like the, the post, yeah, the post that have gone viral. Viral. I put in a lot of effort into them. Most.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's what I've learned is actually like it just follows power laws. Actually. Like I, I remember I had posted I think a couple hundred, maybe like 150 posts and then like one of them got more impressions than all of them. Yeah, that's. And I was like, oh, okay. Definitely follows power laws. And I like what you said, which is like if you're adding to something, a perspective, then your perspective must have substance, which means, means you must be some sort of thought leader. You must know your shit a bit, right? That's really important too because I think people could sniff that out pretty easily, especially if they're in the domain of expertise. Thanks for sharing about your content strategy, how you think about virality. Moving a little bit away from that back to some other entrepreneurial lessons. So you've spent years helping other companies like Rover Mailchimp build world class engineering teams. That's super cool. And so just tying that together with like another entrepreneurial lesson learned, like what are the most unconventional hiring insights you've learned? Like something that, you know, maybe goes against what most people assume about building high performing technology teams.

That's a, that's a tricky one because it's, you know, there's so much knowledge that's like unconventional but it's kind of conventional, you know, like for example, like not like you don't need fang engineers to build your product, right? Like, that's like I, I think you know, like mo most startups will like. Yeah, Like, I think that, that, that like that information is now going around like you don't need to spend six figures or like, you know, like pay someone few hundred thousand dollars to build your mvp. It's like, it's like one thing is like you need to figure out how to get from point A to point be. So in simple terms, doesn't matter who builds your mvp, you need to make sure it just functions and you ideally probably spend as little money as possible, right?

Yeah.

So that's like, you know, that's talking about mvp. Another thing I think, you know, like I keep getting these startups that ping me and they're all about trying to build an internal team. Like they want to own the employees start. But when you're an early stage company, I mean again like same thing as like an mvp, it doesn't matter if you're working with a partner who has access, who knows how to hire, which is super hard to do. Like it was super hard to grow thirsty sprout and you need to move fast. Just use, use the freaking contractors man. Like, and then figure out how to buy out those contractors. Like don't. Like we, there's been so many startups where you know, that we worked with where like the hyper focus on building their own internal team. Guess what? Like none of them are around. Like they had their FAANG engineers. None of them are around until you're series A. Like it doesn't matter. Like just try to figure out like how to find the product market fit. Like you should like and you know, something that fits your budget and someone that passes your test. Like, like you don't need to build like this amazing culture and like you know, buy a ping pong table in your office. Like, you know, like it's like

table foosball tables.

Yeah, yeah. Like this stuff like doesn't, like doesn't matter too much. Like you're almost like guaranteed that like people who start with you aren't going to end up with you. So it's going to actually cost you more to hire an employee than to work with like contractors. So that's like a one, you know, that is out there like, or another one. Like I said, like trying to hire FAANG engineers for your stuff are like, who cares? Like you need to find like, you know, like, like you're looking for product market fit. Most likely you're going to be rebuilding a lot of shit. And so like yes, you do need engine good engineers. Like like ideally, right. In most cases. Like especially like if you're, you know, if you're kind of like a C stage company, doesn't matter where they are. I mean it does matter. Like it helps if they're in the same room, but if not, like, you know, like you need to figure out how to build a startup that can work well in a remote setting. And my other advice is actually like oftentimes do not listen to VCs. We've been, we've been.

Tell me more, tell me more, I need to hear this.

Yeah, this, like, So I think VCs have figured out a way or like figured out the fact that like, hey, we're funding this startup so we're giving them money and then if they hire an outsourcing company that is outside of our network, that money is just like leaving for good. So why don't we fund another venture backed, you know, tech marketplace and tell these startups to hire from there even if it's a shit, you know, engineer, like whatever, at least the money stays circulating in our buckets. And then this, you know, this marketplace will grow. And so there's been so many cases where the startups will work. Like I won't name, you know, the specific marketplaces, but they'll work with someone in their network because that marketplace was funded by the same investor. But they're going to have someone that costs sometimes like double the money money and it's half as good as what you can get from like a good depth shop. There's, by the way, there's a lot of shitty dev shops, but there's also a lot of good dev shops or you know, marketplaces that do good work and they're not money hungry. Like, I mean, yeah, you know what I mean? Like to an extent. Right. And so, and, but like we like, we've had clients where they're like, dude, like your guy's good, I, we're overpaying for the other guy. But you know, these guys are funding us so like where our hands are kind of tied, like we can't tell them no, you know, so, so I, yeah, yeah, as a startup, like you have to just like go with the idea of like, hey, you know what, like we're gonna do it our way. Like that's why I started the company, I didn't start it here so that I can do your way. So if you can figure like figure out a relationship where you can put yourself in a position like that, I think you'll be good. But there's so many people who are like, oh, we raised VC money and, and it's all about raising money and not about building a startup. You know, like you're, you're, you're losing more and more control so that you can put like, hey, I got funded by AZ16 or like, you know, whatever. And those are the same investors that went back and you know, screw them like the moment they could. Right.

Like so, yeah, yeah, very interesting.

A couple different ideas. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Just, just to summarize, it sounds like early stage startups trying to find product market fit. Your advice is go fucking find product market fit. That's it. Like that's doesn't matter how, that's what you need to do. And actually when you were saying like you don't need the best fang engineer or whatever to define that, I started thinking about your story of like you literally had no code written and you sold the rover and then you figured and that, that's how you, that was your experiment, right? And you didn't need dev hours to experiment on whether or not that was an underserved need in the market. You just went out, wrote copy and cold outbound emailed that copy and then you got that was an experiment. That was a very cheap experiment and then you were able to validate the concept. That's actually something that I have also found and I have been also guilty of this, which is like maybe spending too much time polishing. There was a great quote, I won't do it justice. It's by Reid Hoffman, something like if you're not embarrassed by the product you put out, then you've shipped too late or something like that. Where the whole goal isn't getting the perfect thing out there. The whole goal is learning from the experiment as cheaply as possible to get the insights on what are the underserved needs and would people pay for a solution that I have for them. So I really like that lesson around. It's really just experimentation and especially in the early stage, pre seed or before series A, it's really just like, is this even going to work? That's what you're trying to figure out out so.

Exactly.

I like that, I like that.

Be, be pretty simple about it. It's like, hey, you know what, like this is what my hypothesis is. This is what my budget is. I need good developers. Doesn't matter if they're in house on outhouse, like if I can get them in house, that's great. If not, you know, I, I paid them well enough or they're going to respect this job. That's it. Like you. And, and yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and so that's it. Like you don't need to worry about the ping pong tables. Like so many people start building a startup and doing everything but building a startup. Like they're doing all the advice on like, you know what, you know what VCs tell them they should be doing, like how, you know how they need to focus on the culture. It's like, no, get People that can get done. Like, get other, you know, engineers who have that mindset. Like, you know, you need to, like, you need people who can get done, who pro, who, who deliver on the promises they make.

Oh, so that's actually an interesting one to, to hone in on more in the hiring process of like vetting great engineers. What are things to look out for? Like, how do you, how do you, you know, assess. This is a get shit done person, right? Like, has a bias towards action. Hey, if I put my dollars here, they're going to get results, they're going to be hungry. How do you assess that? That, that I think you'd be a good person to ask because I'm sure you've been through a lot of thinking here.

You know, I think the, the best way is to, you know, my personal advice is like, the best way is work on some kind of track trial period. Like that could be two weeks, four weeks and you know, figure out like, you know, how, how they work, how they problem solve. And if they give you excuses, if not, because like we've been burned ourselves. Like we talked to some engineers. Well spoken like technically super capable.

Yeah.

And when it comes to doing work, all of a sudden, like an excuse pop swap, like, oh, I need to do this or I, oh, I'll finish this tomorrow. Like, and sometimes that's visible right from the get go. Like you don't need to spend a lot of time so you don't want, like that's why you don't like over commit and say like, you know, like, oh, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll do, you know, like, you know, like we'll, we'll hire this guy, just give him an offer again, like, this is why I encourage startup founders. You know what, like, find good engineers, work with them for a year, see how they do and then h, you know, have some kind of agreement with like a contracting company, buy them out. Like, if it works, it works. You know, because a lot can be like, a lot will change over that year that you're building a startup. Like some will kind of drop off, maybe some will get a second job. All kinds of dirty stuff happens out there. Yeah.

Yeah, okay. I, I like that advice for early stage founders, which is trial run it because yeah, it's, it's more flexible working for an early stage startup than is like, let's go work at Google. I don't, I don't think Google or Facebook are going to give you like, hey, work for two weeks and then we'll convert you if you meet all this criteria. But I like, I like that advice and I've implemented some of that in the past and that's worked well. When I've deviated from that plan, it didn't work well actually when I was like, oh yeah, this person's so great. And then it's like, let's do it. And then it didn't work well and now we're kind of handcuffed together. And then it almost dilutes team culture and stuff too. So I think that's really good advice for early stage.

I would say that's, I mean there's obviously like the vetting and all the stuff that you can do, but that's kind of like almost table stakes and it's like at the end, like if you want to safeguard yourself, work with, you know, work with the person part time, for a month, for two months, like however long it takes for you to build that person.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Okay, so that's some good advice around. Hey, VCs might give you bad advice. Really check on that, see where their incentives lie. I like that like as a founder, if your VC is telling you hire from their other VC backed thing, I didn't quite think about it that way way. But yeah, you're right. Like that money stays with them so it's lower risk to them. It serves them, it doesn't quite serve the founder. Especially early stage where it's like you're trying to cheaply experiment to get to pmf. So that's really good advice. Do you have any other advice for early stage founders? Not that we're just on the topic.

I don't know, there's so much I usually, like I said I'm, you know, I think there's more specific advice to, to, to everyone and each, you know, startup that kind of goes out there. So I don't like to throw a blanket.

What about, what about, what about like finding a co founder? That's something that I, a lot of people ask me about and I'm, I'm curious.

Like I would use the same thing as what I, you know, like trial, try to work on something that doesn't lock you into contracts and see how it goes. Like something that we're, you know, like ideally like some money exchanges and so if you don't end up suing each other or fighting or like spending more time on arguing than building, then it's probably a good match. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, Yeah. I, I actually was just thinking about this a week ago or so. And I was like, co founder. Founder is kind of like dating, right? Like, you're going to be talking in person all the time. You want to make sure you're on the same page about things like finances or values. And so I, I like that litmus test. It's like, are you arguing most of the time or you build it most of the time? That's probably a good one. And then also the trial running, that's actually how I found my co founder for Epistemic Me was we just kind of like worked together for two months and then we committed like, okay, let's, let's make this real. This works out and we have a great complimentary skill set.

Yeah, yeah.

And cool.

Resolve arguments is so important too, right? Because you don't want to kill each other over like a small little thing, so.

Oh my gosh. So yeah, no, that's so true. And, and, and in the process, process of trial running it, hopefully you get to a point where there's tension and then you get to see how do you resolve that tension together. Like, is it, you know, does it go to shit or are you adults about it and could work through that tension? I think that's, that's a really good point too. Like, those are some of the more soft skill things that I think are really important that people don't think enough about. I'm non technical, I gotta find technical co founder or I'm technical, I gotta find a business co founder. But they don't quite think about it. Like from the, hey, are we building more than we're arguing? Is it effective? I think that's really like, you know, cuts, cuts to the truth of it. All Right, David, we have learned so much from your journey, from hustling in high school, selling nightclubs, to being an immigrant, not being able to work, not knowing English. And now, you know, you have a business that is working and in the middle of that was selling to Rover, a really big unicorn at the time, just off of copy. That's really impressive. I'd love to see that email at some point on the side. But the Round Out, Round out podcast, I always try to ask this just to help the audience understand your journey. If you had one hour with your younger self that was just starting, what are the top three things you would discuss?

One hour of myself, younger self this. It's a tricky one because, like, I had so little guidance at the time. I was kind of like figuring things on my own. I was, you know, I came to us by myself when I was like, or not by myself. My brother came here, here, and I followed him here. But I had to figure things out on my own since I was like 13 years old here in the US so a couple of things that I would definitely tell is like, find people you can mirror and mentors. Like, you know, surround yourself with mentors, but before we even go there, like, figure out, like, what your end goal is. I kind of did that with myself. Like, I remember, like, you know, I think you mentioned, like, if there's like, something that like, stood out. Like, I remember I had a fight with my brother and I told him, like, you know what? I'll be an entrepreneur. I don't know why I'm going to school, blah, blah, blah. So I think you, you definitely want to start with a goal in mind. Although I would put different kind of goal, so it's like, you know, whether it's monetary. So I would write those down. Writing those goals down is always important. I would journal and I would measure everything every day. I, I, I still do that. I mean, I don't, I try to stay as consistent as possible. I would throw down some, you know, you know, a plan of how I would achieve some things. I would achieve, achieve. And I would say, even more importantly, I would figure out, like, what is the mechanism to adjust my plan when things are not going the right way. Right. And so those are the few things I would do so that I could grow either my, in my career or startup or dating. I think I, I spend dating. I mean, everything, like, because, like, I spent a lot of time just kind of like, oh, you know, like, this will figure itself out. Like, I, I feel like if I had to do it all over again, I would do it 10 times faster. Right. Like, the achievements that I had. Yeah. Instead of just kind of cruising by, I would just be very kind of like, you know, detailed about.

More tactical. More tactical.

So.

Got it. Okay. So start with the end in mind. Be flexible and adjust the plan, but have a plan. Write down your goals and be consistent. I think those are really great pieces of advice for younger you, but then also for me and everybody listening to this too. So, David, thanks so much for hopping on the pod. I'll hit you up about home base. I'm kind of curious about that. And if you do throw some sort of founders thing in Mexico, definitely let me know. And thank you so much for hopping on the podcast. How can people find you folks listening to this?

LinkedIn is probably the best, but I also have Instagram and Facebook but yeah, LinkedIn in is probably the best option. And I'll get you my links and then you can add them up if whoever wants to connect. Yeah, we'll throw them, exchange ideas. I'm always here.

And if you're an early stage founder or you're running a tech company and you need awesome engineering talent, David is your guy. And we'll throw a link to Thirsty Sprout there if you're interested. So, David, thank you so much for hopping the pod. Happy Valentine's Day Day. I hope you have a great time with your partner. And congrats on the second one on the way, man.

Thank you.

That's really awesome.

Thanks, Robert. It was good talking to you. We'll talk later.