How To Educate A Million Entrepreneurs Of All Shapes And Sizes? (feat. Day One Founders)

Because that's how to effectively help an entrepreneur. Yeah. Right? And by that I mean entrepreneurship is so dang hard and so unique to each person's journey. Yeah. Where you're coming from, the skills you have, the connections you have, the idea you're building, the industry you're building in, the emotional baggage you bring, that every entrepreneurial journey is completely unique.

Like-minded community. If you go back into a word cloud, we noticed this 50 applications into it 2 years ago and it continues to this day. Like-minded community and people that you can connect with and learn from and teach has always been the thread that cuts across everything. And if you think about how communities are formed, right, it's for the longest time been with some sort of like fenced-in, whether it's a sports team or a geography or a college you went to or a high school you went to. And the fact now that we have this globally distributed community where anybody who has an affinity towards building a certain thing in a certain space or helping a certain customer, and we're not putting in 9 layers of friction for you to get into it.

Yeah.

This is what's amazing.

At Day One, what I love and what I will continue to champion this publicly and privately is that there's a sense of potential in the air. You'll feel it even through Zoom and through, you know, virtual stuff that you feel like you're compelled to take action on your dreams. You know, even if it's a one step, even if it's not like a massive leap, but it's a one step. And that's sort of my favorite part. Hello everybody. Welcome to the Building Public Podcast. I am your host, KP, and today I am forced to do this interview. I'm just kidding. This is part of my contractual Obligation. Just kidding. You know, of course I'm joined by the incredible DO from Day One. Welcome to the show, Andrew and Rahul.

Thanks for having us, KP.

Thanks for having us.

So Rahul put on a collared shirt and like, you know, clearly like has done some work on the lighting and everything, which, you know, within Day One, if anyone's watching, you guys know how serious this is now, right? So the stakes are high. I can't mess this up. But for folks who don't know this bit of information, I actually now I'm working at Day One and I'm the program director at, I mean, at Day One for the Build Track, but Of course, I'm kind of double dipping and doing a lot of other things behind the scenes. So much other stuff. I'm really enjoying. Yeah. So folks, again, as maybe folks who may not know about you, I want to kind of give you a chance to introduce yourself. Give a 20, 30-second background of who you are, what brought you to starting Day One. And then I have my version of how I would describe you both. Yeah.

Sometimes I'm always keen to hear how other people say it. Yeah. Because, you know, the best advice is listen to your customers or your friends and your collaborators to see how they say What you do, and then just say that. So yeah, I'm trying to get out of the way. But what's up? I'm really pumped to be here. And so if you guys don't know me, I imagine a lot of you don't. I'm Andrew. You know, Rahul and I started Day One in actually the summer of 2020, which was the sort of first like peak of the pandemic. It really felt like we were a part of the group that was, you know, it's time to build, right? And it was a time when I looked around at all the, you know, everyone was tweeting about the amount of like entrepreneurial energy. That was happening. I was coming out of a venture studio, so that's my background. I broke into VC by joining a venture studio. I was on the team building the new ventures. And so that's my skillset is guiding entrepreneurs through the messy early to middle stages of starting startups, which is pretty darn relevant. But, you know, when 2020 rolled around, or at least as the pandemic was going and, you know, the impetus for leaving what was a great job at a venture studio to start something, go on this roller coaster, was to help more people, right? Democratize what happens inside of the venture world, inside of a venture studio, the tools, the community, the resources, the know-how, and 100x that, 1,000x that, give it to everybody. So that's me. That's the why. I mean, what else could I— do you want to know, like, where I grew up?

Like, save that to the director's edition, right? Like special edition.

But cool. Cool.

No, no, that was actually a great sort of You know, the surface area you covered was awesome because I wanted a little bit about your background, which you touched on, the Venture Studio. And then of course, what got you into it? Why did you start Day One? What about you, Rahul?

Awesome. Hey, KP, thanks. I'm Rahul, the other co-founder of Day One. I, I've always kind of viewed my career as like an adventure. Like, it's kind of like the next chapter doesn't have to always be connected to the chapter you just finished. So I started out as an oil and gas engineer, realized after 6 or 7 years didn't like that, went back and got a sports management degree, wanted to work in that for about a year or two, and then kind of life take me where it took me. And I ended up doing a 1-year service fellowship in rural India, building Ultimate Frisbee leagues for village and slum communities and adolescent kids and youth. That then, surprisingly, I guess, led me to an almost 10-year nonprofit fundraising career where I was setting up international NGOs, US fundraising offices. And so, you know, without any of the formal training or education or signals, I kind of became a social sector ED. Mm-hmm. And with a primary fundraising role, raised around $20 million in the process. And then, as I, I guess, typically do every 5 After 6 years, I wanted to try something new. And then that's kind of what brought me to the world of innovation. And so I kind of did what I did the first time when I left engineering and basically ended up crafting like an 18-month sabbatical where I never really knew what I was going to do more than 3 months down the road. I kept just getting into communities and volunteering and kind of offering my services, learning and being a sponge. It was in that timeframe where I met Andrew, and it was in that timeframe where I first got into Antler Venture Studio, which later on became one of our key investors. But my big learning and takeaway during that 18-month sabbatical is like I realized I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn't know what to do next. And I started talking to other people in these communities and very quickly found out, like, holy moly, like, there's a whole bunch of people like me who want to get into this. They just, they don't know what to do because it's not as linear and kind of prescriptive as anything else we've ever learned. And I had just met Andrew in that period, and very serendipitously, I was kind of figuring out what to do next, and I saw him do a LinkedIn post about the application for the first ever Day One Fellowship. And I think I was the 4th or 5th person to apply. I followed up with an email and a call and kind of 2 and a half years later, here we are.

Here we are. Wow. Wow. Wow. I did not know that you applied for Day One as a fellow and then you have, you know, that was a great entry point. So if, you know, if you've, if anybody who's here in the audience or anyone who's watching this or has, is listening to this, has ever applied to Day One, joined dayone.com, you will have seen Rahul's face because his face is plastered all over our website or email marketing at the bottom of, and he's one of the people that is always willing to go talk to customers, potential customers. And that's something I appreciated about Rahul is that he's not afraid of sort of, you know, rubber meeting the road moment where you really have to get into these awkward 15, 20-minute conversations with potential customers, which is part of our funnel anyway, right? Like the onboarding or what do you call that? Like curation. Part of the curation is like understanding, you know, who our customers are and getting them into our community. But I just really appreciated how, how much of do things don't scale that you you've chosen to do, Rahul, over the years. And a couple of people that I talked to, including Candice and a couple of my friends, really enjoyed having those conversations with you. So speaks to your humility, speaks to your willingness to connect with people and more. But so bringing us back to the way I would describe both of you, because, you know, as flash news folks, I'm kind of new to Day One, right? But I came from, you know, On Deck, and I've had several friends and several stints in edtech companies. And so I kind of know how the entrepreneurship companies have been. The 2 things that stuck out to me about both of you, and I'll share this publicly on air, is Andrew, you always like impressed on me a leader who's got such high EQ. And I said this many times to you and you think I'm gassing you up, but it's not because I'm saying this on air. I don't usually lie on air. Such high EQ and a willingness to listen, you know, and something that I think is a great quality personally. I try to do the same, emulate the same where I'm at least willing to listen. I would still push back and make my point. if I have a strong opinion on a certain thing, but I'm not willing to not give you the respect of listening. And I think you're very much like that. I love that about you because then it becomes a sparring thing, like 2 boxers or 2 people who are playing a sport as opposed to being like an offensive-defensive thing. You know what I mean? Yeah. Have you ever noticed this about yourself? I might—

Well, I like that. I appreciate you. You've even said it a little differently than I've heard you say it in the past because— and I think what you're getting at, the way I'll like take it up a level is That thing that I do, the reason why I do it is because that's how to effectively help an entrepreneur.

Yeah.

Right? And by that I mean entrepreneurship is so dang hard and so unique to each person's journey. Yeah. Where you're coming from, the skills you have, the connections you have, the idea you're building, the industry you're building in, the emotional baggage you bring, that every entrepreneurial journey is completely unique. And so to take I'm one of the people like you, like the 3 of us on this call, but of the people in the world, I'm at the top of people who advise lots of entrepreneurs. I've seen a lot of different journeys and I can tell you, and I've given a lot of advice, and believe me, it does get pretty common. Right. There's a few things that a lot of entrepreneurs mess up or need support on, but I'll tell you, the receiver is unique. And that means that to deliver that message, for them to get the value, for them to make the move that you kind of know they need to make. It's— I don't know if I'm conveying this well. I'm probably repeating myself. It's unique. It's its own thing. And so listening—

You have to meet them at where they are.

You have to meet them where they are, right? So you have to listen. You have to let them get it out there. In a lot of ways, this is like good education, right? You're not teaching. They're arriving at the conclusion.

Yes.

Right? And you're leading them to water and they're drinking. And so I find that like, that's how I'll coach somebody. That's how I'll just meet somebody. And it's really the only thing that's effective, right? Yeah. And so I'll bring that all the way back to day one, like our whole mission. I think a lot of— less about the mission, a lot of like how what we do is effective is to embody that and find ways to make that scale. Yeah, right.

I will like toss one more point on this and, you know, which is something that came up literally 2 hours ago in one of my conversations with one of our day one applicants, and which is a whole nother tangent. Everybody, by the way, everybody at day one is doing customer discovery, which blows my mind. This is not normal. Not at most startups is usually the founder or like they maybe one assigned person. Like Jake's doing it, our CMO, I'm doing it. Like, you know, Rahul's always doing it. Andrew, you're out. It's wild how many people on the team, but Pam is doing it, Emily's doing it. I'm going through the roster and we're all sort of soaking up and being a sponge to what people are thinking about, what people are saying about the need, what's missing, etc. And then bringing it, bringing it to like our Slack or all hands and stuff like that. And so the best way to build a 0-to-1 company is to talk to more customers, right? Paul Graham somewhere is like laughing, smiling, and being proud of us. All the time. And so that's another tangent we'll get to. But Rahul, so back to you. What I loved about getting to know you more and getting to spend more time with you is, you know, you have sort of this diverse backgrounds and experiences, almost like you've lived 4 or 5 lifetimes in one lifetime. And so it's awesome that we sort of subconsciously chose you to be in these customer-facing onboarding conversations because you could talk to practically anybody and make them feel home. There's a sense of belonging that you offer. What I felt when I had my first call with you, Rahul, and this is like when we were just feeling, you know, like the opportunity here, and I felt this guy gets me. And you spoke to me like 7 minutes and I'm like, that's wild. And you come from oil and gas, not my world. You come from like tech, LSU. Like, what are you talking about? Right? Like, something really crazy. But you somehow find a way to weave the threads and say, here's how we both are similar, KP.

Yeah.

And I know our fellows feel this when they talk to you because I—

You know, when my wife and I started dating, you start asking these questions, oh, what do you want to be remembered for? And for me, it's like, I just, I've always wanted to be able to understand somebody's journey and be able to share mine. Like, that's always been a goal of mine. I do want to say something about Andrew just before we— I think the thing about Andrew that makes him really unique is that he's very smart yet kind.

Yeah.

And I very intentionally use the word yet because any of us that have been around very, very smart people, it's kind of a crapshoot whether they're nice people or not. And I think the fact that Andrew's smart but also empathetic and kind is, I think, what allows him to kind of be who he is, not just internally on the team, but with other fellows and stuff.

That's lovely. Yeah, on point. You know, we're gassing you up, Andrew. You're spending us some mental money, right? We're all expecting campaigns tonight.

Who knows that the only reason I can show up like that all the time is because he's my sounding block for when I'm venting and mean.

And so to KP, like, there's an anecdote I want to share. So I did the oil and gas stuff for a while. I worked at a very large Fortune 100 company that is an enemy in a lot of people's eyes. And then I did nonprofit work, right?

Yeah, the opposite.

The narrative that people, you know, when they would meet me and talk to me and ask about my career, like it was just like almost flippantly, they'd be like, oh my God, you went from the evil empire to doing God's work. And I thought about that. And it's just, it's Andrew, everybody on this team knows that I really, what really upsets me is when people kind of take the lazy way out of just kind of putting labels on things. And I thought to myself, I was like, you know what, when I worked at those oil and gas companies, there were just some really nice people, like really regular down-to-earth nice people who happened to work there who did accounting or whatever, like they weren't about world domination.

Right.

And then in the social sector, you guys, everybody would be shocked at the size of some of the egos in that, right? And the fact that people would just immediately say you went from evil empire to God's work, and it was like, that is— that's not— that's not what it is. And so that's a macro kind of statement of like all the stuff I've experienced. And I think the one big takeaway that I've had, not just with me but with people I talk to, is like life is really just this journey of self-actualization. And allowing people to articulate that, share that, and ultimately, I don't want to say achieve it because that's, that's, that's a tall task, but at least take a step in that direction. And I think what feels really cool about entrepreneurship, not just to us and our fellows, but the people that we all talk to, is, is for the longest time, your livelihood was never going to be self-actualized. It was going to be through the lens of a company that gave you a paycheck. Right. So your identity was always going to be tied up into who you worked for and what they did.

Right.

And I think the beautiful thing about entrepreneurship, and I think what allows me to really enjoy these discovery calls, is, is when you get down to the crux of like why somebody wants to be an entrepreneur and what it means to them and how that fits into the puzzle of kind of their life, I think you're able to really unlock some meaningful conversations. And I think the fact that for the longest time and going forward, that's been a relatively important filter of the folks that come into the Day One community. I think that's what a lot— that's what's allowed our community to feel so tight-knit.

Right. You know, the focus on being tight-knit, being human, being authentic, you know, I think shines through our, you know, essence, in my view, both on social, on the website, through our public events, free events, and of course, you know, internally too, through our education tracks and everything. I want to bring us back to that comment that one of our fellows made this morning. I thought it was interesting. And she said, what I loved about day 1 was connection. I thought that was interesting because, you know, you hear about content. So I think about things like, you know, there's content top of the funnel, Either it's tweets, social media, like TikTok videos, whatever. But content almost is a commodity, right? On the internet, everybody's creating content. Like millions of people woke up today and created content on the internet. And so then you think about, okay, what else can you differentiate yourselves in? And then you think community, where there's strong community, where we're the kind of place that you want to come to if you want to feel belonged. If you feel like making some mistakes in your entrepreneurship path, talk to some of us here who've been in these shoes. So there's a big part of that. But even within community, there's like 7 communities a day that are popping up. And they're all kind of, at least on the landing page, claim the same thing. Right. But what I thought was surprising to me when I heard her say that was connection. And I thought, damn, that is not scalable. And that is— the internet can't help you with that. No amount of Google searches can make you feel connected, you know, feel part of your journey the way you feel assured and reassured. And I thought that was so cool that she mentioned it, you know, and I want to kind of bring it back to you guys because you— the obvious takeaway for me in the first week of being at Day One was how small And tighten it, it felt. And there was a sense of connection, you know, on the team, of course, but also with the fellows. Is this something that you give a lot of thought about? You know, you fuse this into what Day One is as a business?

Well, I'll just like build on what I was saying before, right? Which is I think it's the thing that's most effective is, well, the thing that I've personally found to be effective to help an entrepreneur, how might one product— how might we productize that? How might we build a scalable Way to deliver that? Well, you allow people to connect with each other, right? And you create the space and you create the— it's a little bit about like-minded people connecting, but we all know that that's really not just it, right? That's like a nice to have. That's like a surface layer.

Right.

Where people see I'm similar, but it's more about like really, you know, the best communities. I mean, the ones I remember the most were like the sports teams I was on, right? That was my journey growing up. And it's when you're in like the battle together, right? And when you go on and you do hard things together and then have fun together and then have an achievement together and have a loss together. And so that is how we've built community, where community is not just throwing people into Slack or Discord, right? Community is, one, the sum of the relationships made. Two, what kind of spaces allow those relationships? It's when people go to battle together, it's when they go to learn together, right? It's when they go to build tough things and share their things together. And so yeah, a lot of that is the Connections is what you feel. That's the way to describe it, right? But it's definitely the product design, the community design all the way down that enables that. So absolutely, that's definitely a testament to the thing we do working, these atomic units of community happening and it being effective for, for an entrepreneur so that, yeah, keep going on that. That's like our core thesis for why, how we do what we do.

Right. Rahul, what's your take on it?

Just extending that, I think the atomic unit piece is big. So much in the startup world, whether you know it Or you don't know it appears to be binary.

Yeah,

either you get the investment or you don't, or either you this or you that. And it's so result-focused, you know, not to

yeah

get too much into Nick Saban's philosophy, but like

yeah,

it's not about the scoreboard. It's not about the result. Actually, the atomic unit is every snap, every play. And so step there are so many wins that aren't celebrated in so many communities because they're not the result.

Yes,

and on this result-focused society that we have, especially in entrepreneurship and early-stage innovation, like. You know, it's binary and it's not 50/50. It's like 5/95. And so 95% of people just feel like failures. And so we don't use that word. We don't use success, failure. We don't even like give people a sense of what that is, right? Because it's going to be different for everybody. So we celebrate shipping something. We celebrate like putting your first user persona together, stuff that, you know, might not ever hit the top stage with the top lights, but within a community, within a core group of people, these are all wins that everybody celebrates. And so I think it's that level of transparency Transparency and kind of double-clicking in on what everybody is doing on a step-by-step basis that starts building some of these bonds, right?

Yeah, I want to comment on one thing. Like, I've noticed everybody wants fast results, right? So they join these communities, like, almost they're like window shopping, and they're like, they're going in, they're seeing, checking out the Slack, checking out the vibe, but then they're like, yeah, you know, I'm not getting the result that I want, they leave. But people like forget your results are like lagging indicators of your personal transformation, right? To your point earlier, Rahul, like, it's all about self-actualization. So if you're not making steady progress as an entrepreneur now who's suddenly more courageous and more brave to do a showcase now, suddenly who's more vulnerable to do a build in public, you know, on Twitter, socials. Unless you make those micro changes and achieve those atomic units of growth, you're never going to see this binary results that you're seeking. So no checking into Heartbeat or Slack or Discord can solve that, right? So I think one of the things that I loved being part of our community and just everybody around here is We tell the truth. We will say this on a customer discovery call or on a sales pitch. And I'm not afraid to take a no. And, you know, you know, you're this way too and say, this is maybe not the right place for you if you're looking for a quick fundraising path. Like if you just want the 4 intros to 8 VCs and just boom, like finish the round, this is not the place. You know, this is about 1%, small wins, atomic units of growth. And then we hope that you transform. Yeah. In a certain amount of time, but we just don't— nobody can tell you when, you know.

I say this all the time, that anybody who comes in with a primary focus on the outcome that they want for their company, statistically speaking, that company may or may not be around in 2 years, but you as an entrepreneur will be. And so like, I want to invest in the sustainable piece of this story.

Yeah.

Which is you, the entrepreneur. Yeah. And so the entrepreneur just waking up tomorrow more confident, better networked with better skills, healthy behaviors, like support systems. Like, it doesn't matter whether it's the company they bring or the idea they bring or something 5 or 6 or 10 years down the road. Like, that's the investment in yourself that you're making when you come to a date night.

Yeah, love it. So I'm going to bring us to an interesting sort of prompt that I've had. I saw this on Twitter the other day and I thought it was really interesting. So this is the sort of— I'm leading up to this big announcement we're going to talk about in a second. So stay tuned. But the premise is this came from YC Paul Graham's tweet, and he describes sort of the core essence of what what significant growth looks like is actually the answer to this simple question as an entrepreneur, which is what have you learned from customers talking to customers in the last year? Right. And I want to ask this as sort of the preamble to what we're going to talk about the next 15, 20 minutes. So Rahul and Andrew, what have you guys learned about Day One's customer that is true now that may not— that was new to you compared to a year ago?

You want to go first? You want me to jump in?

I'll go first with the macro. The macro, and I think Andrew tells the story really well. 2 years ago, both coming from the venture world, especially Andrew coming from the studio world, you know, we were saying no to 990 people out of 1,000. And so we initially built Day One for the people on the doorstep of venture, the people who kind of may or may not have been in that tech bubble, let's call it.

Right.

Primarily New York City based, you know, kind of what we learned though in that first year is that people then were referring their friends, their family, people from like like places outside of quote unquote tech hubs, right? People that didn't have the signal or the pedigree that would have even had them know what a venture studio was.

Right.

And I think that was our first big insight. Our first massive insight, which is what led to our kind of successful pre-seed, was this idea that like there's a hunger out there for people wanting to learn the basics of entrepreneurship and wanting to rub elbows and work alongside and with more experienced founders or whatever. So I think that widening of that aperture of like who really we're speaking to and who that message is resonating with,

right,

was really, I think, what set everything else in motion going forward.

Gotcha.

Andrew, you can take it.

Yeah.

No, that's huge. I mean, like you said, that was sort of like that was the transition, the jump from kind of the first version, the first hypothesis of day one to what we've become now, which is the school for entrepreneurs that doesn't pretend or speak solely to, right, that bubble. Right? We are building a brand that speaks to the watchers of Shark Tank, right? Yeah. Like, like all these different ways. And so more mainstream, more mainstream, right?

Just the tech Twitter audience, right? Yeah, we joke about that all the time.

I mean, we're probably speaking to you. It's funny, right? Like, like it's hard to reach that person. The way it happens has always happened was just word of mouth, right? Where everyone knows somebody who who's struggling with these things.

Yeah.

So I'd say underneath all that is kind of just a, like, deeper empathy for kind of the core— like, we call it the job to be done, right? It's not just the problem, it's not just the challenge that someone's facing, but like the core desire that everybody has. And it's not just belonging, right? Belonging's somewhere in the mix, right? That's like superhuman Super deeply human-based, right? Belonging. So community businesses always work well in that regard, right?

Right.

It really is actualization and success. And the way that happens for humans isn't just these outward-facing badges and stars that we get really used to going up the ladder in our corporate jobs. The corporate world is so structured, right? The entrepreneurial world is so unstructured that—

Wilderness, right?

That for you to feel actualized is to just like— I mean, I'm kind of repeating what Rahul said— see yourself make progress, right? And so we've started to build all those pieces. Seeing yourself make progress can look like having an answer to someone else's question and being like, oh, I'm not just the asker of all these questions. I know that. Right. To turn someone from somebody who thinks they're an asker to an answerer, which I kind of know is true at all times, right? Every single person coming into day 1 has the answer to someone else's question.

Yeah.

Right. That's the way the world works. You have latent insights and knowledge that someone else needs.

Right.

To bring those out, to bring those connections together, just shows people like, oh, I like belong here. Yes. Right. But I can do this. I know these things. Now I feel confident to go ask those questions. So it's just like this deep understanding and empathy for this entrepreneurial journey. Another reason I know that is because like I have it myself,

you

know, like 2 years into this, like 6 months into day 1, I was like, I am right with you to all of the fellows. I was like, we're not any further than you. Right. We haven't raised a round yet. We are bootstrapping ourselves. Like, like, I don't know why you trust me. I mean, I did some other stuff. We did some other stuff. We had a lot of mentors who were really good and smart. But now, 2 years in, I'm like in the messy middle with a lot of our fellows. But I can speak to some of their journey and just like empathize with, man, it's just like feeling confidence in that next step that you have to make and being able to put one foot forward. And so a long way to say it's like oddly— not oddly, I think we all get it right. It's just really personal, really, you know, about that actualization. And so, yeah.

So in terms of like the latest insights that you may have been analyzing, the both of you, right? Which I'm asking like sort of as an audience member in the community, like what has been some new stuff that you've discovered?

Yeah, yeah. Maybe I spent too much time talking about—

How has it parlayed into some kind of a change in the company?

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for teeing us up there. I probably spent too much time talking big picture, even on top of Rahul's, like the big insight, the core, the micro of it that we've been really learning in the last 6 months as As 2022 has unfolded, inflation and markets and things are not necessarily as optimistic as they were in 2021. We've realized that we've always known that to jump over the ledge and be an entrepreneur puts you in this really scary, fragile state. You know you're at the beginning of a long journey. You know it's going to suck, or at least have the ups and the downs. You're probably feeling much more cost sensitive than you were when you had a paycheck almost.

Yep.

Certainly. Right. And you don't know if in 3 months you're going to be on a tear and too busy to take anybody's calls or searching for a co-founder because you feel you can't do it. Like 3 months, 6 months, 9 months into the future, you don't know what the world looks like for yourself.

Right.

So we've kind of sat with those. I would, you know, if you asked me a year ago, I would have said those are true statements. I think we feel them now. And to that point, we've been talking to users. We've heard them say, you know, they're on the doorstep. They're on the doorstep to joining Day One and it's too expensive, right? They're on the doorstep to joining Day One and it's not flexible enough, right? And so we basically— this is— you teed us up for this, right? We've been making— we've made a huge shift in how we've structured not the core community and not the core experience, but the packaging of how Day One is, how we go to market and how you buy and consume and join Day One is now different. And we've added monthly memberships into the mix, which sounds very simple.

It makes it affordable now, right? Because

it's still $149

for

education. No, no, no, no long-term commitment, right? So that's the other side. So it's monthly memberships, which are no long-term commitment, and the cost now goes from a yearly cost to a monthly cost, right? So it's 10x the, you know, it's 1/10 the cost. If you stay for a whole year, it adds up, of course, but that means you've gotten value And we've delivered value and it's been an amazing relationship and that's what we want, right? So we want to align ourselves with our fellows in a much more like obvious way. And so we're lowering the cost through these monthly memberships. We're also offering another tier. We've, we've always offered Day One as this whole package. Yeah. And what we're doing for the first time is we're separating out the kind of the flagship programming that we've been running for 2 years, which has the live cohort-based courses. your build track, it has all the tracks that we've been running and creating a separate tier for our— that we're calling the community membership. Right. And this has access to the whole community. So everyone's in the community and has access to, you know, a certain series of live events that, you know, are specific for the community membership, has access to all the resources, all the perks that we have curated. And that's a lower price point. And that's a really good fit for somebody who's just kicking the tires. Right. Just kind of getting their toes wet, maybe into entrepreneurship as a whole. And you just want to see what it's like. can see what other people are doing. Maybe that's a perfect fit also for somebody who has more of an intrapreneurship job, right? Right. And they're just looking to soak in what happens in the startup world, even though you are just building what you're building, right? Or just doing what you're doing. And so that tier is now another, a whole nother level more affordable, you know, still monthly memberships, equally flexible. And so it feels like one small step for us, but like a big deal ultimately for how you consume these communities, right? And

so that specific tier actually gets me excited. And I know there's another person on this podcast who's just as excited. It's Rahul, loves that. He's been— I know he's been the champion for making sure everybody who ever applies or ever lands on the website gets a taste of our community. Those words have been uttered by him like 1,700 times by now. And so Rahul, I know this is like your question. How pumped are you about the community tier? Right. And why do you think it's such a great addition to what we already have?

I mean, there's— first of all, it's $49 a month with no long-term commitment. So that's $2 a day. Right. And we know that even in the toughest of times, people invest in education. People, anytime there's a learning opportunity, people will invest in themselves, which is amazing. Right. For $2 a day, it allows people to— I mean, there's so many use cases, right? People who are just kicking the tires, who want to get their feet wet, people who can't really visualize what the next 2 or 3 months will look like, and they can slowly kind of, you know, upgrade or whatever 1 or 2 months into it. People who have had life events happen where they can't feel like they can commit to 3 hours a week at a certain time. Right. Now we've given them an option to not just like put a hold on starting the journey. They can at least jump in, go to the website, click a button, be in by the evening, and at least start hearing other discussions and seeing what people are doing and building. And I think for somebody like my use case, and even KP, somebody like you 2 or 3 years ago, is like, I think the huge, huge opportunity here is like, because what we're selling is connection and people and like creative thoughts and ideas and kind of people's different takes on what the future can and should look like,

right?

There's a world where like people even years before wanting to even get into their entrepreneurial journey, right, find that as a very palatable price point and community

Right.

Like, you know, it's— I think the aperture is quite wide now for people in my life, right? I mean, those of us who have friends that after college went into the private sector, played that game very, very well in the corporate world, they're up in the C-suite at these amazing companies. Anytime we get together and have a drink or something, they're always talking about all the ideas that they have. There's a huge opportunity for folks like that to be in this tier and not feel like they're signing up to learn Or do any of that deeper stuff in our middle tier, but just kind of be part of a really cool community where they see how many other people are thinking about who's craving popcorn at 4 in the morning and how do we get it there as fast as possible. Like, this could be a cool place to see, is anyone working on that? And if the answer is no, maybe that's not a very important thing for people anymore.

Yeah, yeah. No, I love that. And I think for a long while, you know, as I talked to Emily and I talked to some of our other team members too, I felt a like there was an unspoken desire from our community to have this tier of like being the first step into day one, right? Because, you know, it's low stakes, not just from a price perspective, even from a time commitment to what you just said. And you get the sample taste of like a lot of the stuff that we do anyway, right? And you still like understand the vibe, you understand like build connections, you can still do the intros.ai, the connection stuff which we do. And so I think it's to me what it is, is like the other day somebody was asking how would I describe our Slack as we're making the transition? It's part of our customer some discovery conversations and I said, the way I would describe it, it's not fully there yet. The way I would describe it is it has the signs of being a private Quora, right? Where you ask a question, within 2 minutes someone's going to answer you or at least point you to the right direction, right? If someone's like asking a question about no-code, low-code, you know, I'm gonna say something about it. And like, so I think that level of curated, you know, answering and like guidance doesn't exist on the internet. Which is a free-for-all, like, you know, anybody can say anything and like sell you on stuff and that kind of thing.

And not to—

that's just Slack, by the way, but there's other parts too. Yeah.

Not to just go back to the community piece, but it's so important. I think it's worth sharing that even back in that summer of 2020, when Andrew put that website up and we got 200 inbound, from that day until now, you know, what is it, Andrew? More than 1,000 applicants, right? Maybe 1,500, something like that. Maybe even more. Like-minded community. If you go back into a word cloud, we noticed this 50 applications into it 2 years ago, and it continues to this day. Like-minded community and people that you can connect with and, and learn from and teach has always been the thread that cuts across everything. And if you think about how communities are formed, right, it's for the longest time been with some sort of like fenced in, whether it's a sports team or a geography or a college you went to or a high school you went to. And the fact now that we have this globally distributed community where anybody who has an affinity towards building a certain thing in a certain space are helping a certain customer and we're not putting in 9 layers of friction for you to get into it.

Yeah,

this is what's amazing. I mean, KP, you see it. We have on Luma, we have, you know, 15, 20 countries represented. We have people from all over the place. I think that's the really, really amazing thing that this kind of lower price point here is going to unlock for us.

Yeah, I love that. Seguing into another sort of fun prompt that I have, and this may— if it takes a minute or two, it's fine. I'll come back The question is, what's something an existing Day One customer or fellow taught you recently? Something that could be maybe as simple as making an intro for something, right? I'm like, I'm trying to put you in the—

Am I going to go over to Slack?

Yeah, because you guys are also fellows, quote unquote, right? You're honorary fellows of Day One. How have you found value at Day One?

Oh,

you didn't come prepared for this one, Rahul, right?

No, the problem is I have too many to pick from. So I'm actually trying to figure out how do I not take up the final 15 minutes. 15 minutes. So, I mean, look, what I learned from them is just inspiration. I think the patience, you know, I think, I think one of the things venture has done for better or worse is like that flavor of entrepreneurship has almost like eaten up entrepreneurship. And so all the things that we're taught as kids around patience and things taking time and putting in the work and the reps, like that's almost been all erased from the lexicon because of just the emphasis on speed in the venture world.

Scale.

And so speed and scale, like, and if it doesn't happen fast enough, then it's like it never happened, you know? Right. So I draw a ton of inspiration from our first 2 or 3 cohorts of fellows and the fact that they have now pivoted multiple times. They're still trucking through. Like, I mean, I don't want to get into naming names because there's just so many. I don't want anyone to feel left out, but there's been folks, there's one person in cohort 1, I spoke to her a couple, maybe a month or 2 ago. Her day job has gone better than she thought. She's gotten a promotion or two. She is still doing customer discovery.

Wow!

Think of the dedication that takes to two and a half years into it, and it's not like our call was like, "I'm still doing customer discovery." Right. She was energized by like every fifty calls she had. She learned something and then pivoted that next set of twenty conversations. And like to find somebody who was like unbelievably energized, not just about their like day job and all their promotions, but to be like, "I have." unlocked this joy in customer discovery that I didn't even know was possible. There's another Cohort 1 fellow that over time, I think she came to us with a startup. And now she's basically an operator at a fund herself. And a lot of those insights and what made her— she's actually told us the reason that part of why she got this job is because she was able to share with them what the trials and tribulations of a founder go through. Wow. And so that ability to have that vision. So this is just one example. I don't want to discount anyone who's been been kind of here for the last couple of cohorts. But all of that to tie into a bow is like just the determination and the stick-to-itiveness.

Grit.

And the commitment to the problem and the grit that so many of these people have shown where they haven't kind of hit those like binary rockstar things that we all celebrate. Right. Yeah, exactly. But they've actually found joy in the journey and they, to a person, there's half a dozen to a dozen of these in my head right now. Like they are stronger, more confident founders assets to the people that they're around. And like, yeah, that's what makes me feel really awesome. Yeah. About kind of what we've built.

Well, what an answer. Andrew, can you top that one? Can you match that one?

I can match it. I can match it.

Which is take a different direction. Yeah,

no, it's definitely a different direction. So I'm thinking about, we just did the showcase for this last, most recent cohort, right? And, you know, a dozen or so of the fellows who were at that stage where they were, you know, they're not, you know, some of them are definitely investible, frankly, right? But a lot of them are just in that messy middle. But this was one of the cohorts where the cohort was both too big and, you know, Day One has grown where I wasn't in the weeds with frankly all of them, right? I bet you. Almost every other cohort, this was the beginning of me kind of stepping out. And so I got to hear some of these folks pitch their ideas for the first time, and I was like, that's going to work. That is a great idea. And I'm like, if you don't do it, someone's going to do it. That's going to happen, right? And so I just feel inspired by just like the cool ideas, and I'm like, man, I wish I could like multiply myself. I'll often co-found with like half a dozen of these people because like, they're going to make it. I'll go be their number 2. Like, I felt the same way.

Just to attest to what you're saying, I was in the audience and Rahul was there too. And like, I was hyped up. Like, you know, my wife says that I'm already very hype. And this is like, this is another reason. Because Pam, I was joking with Pam that like, Pam, like, just, you didn't prepare me for this shit because this is like, they were dropping bombs. They were like, they had like 3-part acts. prepared. And God, it was so fun. And I remember feeling like, you remember, I don't know, maybe a year, 10 years ago when I went to Vanderbilt, I was in like hackathons and shit. At the end of the hackathon, it was like 45 minutes when everybody were getting on the stage and pitching was the most fun part, right? Because you're like seeing all the hard work come to life and like on the stage.

There's something really about— honestly, I think it's better than a demo day because I've been to demo days too. And I'm like, they don't get me going. Yeah, it's a little bit of like, it's Too closed. It's yeah put together.

Yeah, demo is yeah demo is have a little bit of exclusive vibe to them, and also it's like very well too much packaged. Like yeah, and you know there's things to say to get the investors.

There's no more service area to like think. Yeah, there's like work. I don't know. Then that's their point. Like like we're the fully finished product. So these pitches, these ideas just felt so much more like again it just like got me salivating to like bite into them because yeah

you know. So what I did after so I don't know if this is maybe. The day after or 2 days after, I went back and I have, I don't know, a Notion doc with 80 ideas always floating around. Every time I get an idea, I just document it because I want to get it out of my head. And I published, I shipped a new side project called podcastprompts.com because I was feeling guilty that I'm in company of these doers and people who have crazy-ass jobs, 9 to 5, really struggling situations and still finding a way to produce stuff. and ship stuff. And I'm here living, like working at Day One where like literally everything I do is a job, like part of our thing. I'm like, I can't get an excuse for this. I got to ship something. The other— so I just got to sort of color on that, which is at Day One, what I love and what I will continue to champion this publicly and privately is that there is a sense of potential in the air. You'll feel it even through Zoom and through virtual stuff that you feel like you're compelled to take action on your dreams. You know, even if it's a one step, even if it's not like a massive leap, but it's a one step. And that's sort of my favorite part. Rahul, it's you.

Yeah, no. And to follow what Andrew said. And so I shared with my thing, the 2, 2.5-year story arc. But I also want to share what Andrew said, like, because I spoke to so many of those fellows during the interviews 2 or 3 months ago.

Yeah.

You know, on a 15, 30-minute call, it took them 10 to 15 minutes sometimes to like kind of articulate their thing.

Right.

So for me, it's amazing to see that in literally 6 weeks, they go from taking 10 minutes to kind of explain what they're doing, to have a 3-minute tight, like a piece of content that they could go out and send out to investors, anybody, friends, family, whatever. So to see that amazing turnaround and tightening of what they're doing with laser focus in a 4 to 6 to 8 week period is amazing.

Yeah, love it. Awesome. For my last question for you both, actually, I'm going to cheat. I have 2 questions. One is co-founder question. I got to ask you this. A lot of folks that listen to my stuff are either solo founders or they're probably just like dating a co-founder. What is your advice to them? What are some things to look out for? What are some good traits to identify and how should they go about the process of discovering their co-founder?

I have 2 thoughts.

Yeah.

I mean, I think there's a lot of data points we can mine. One for me was you have to decide if you want one or not. Right. It's 90%, it's at least 50% a very personal decision to even make the effort to go find and go get a co-founder. Because it's like every relationship, it's not going to be like there's no 100%, no work fit. Right. At some point you're going to have to compromise a little, do something.

Right.

So you really just need to know if you want it, and therefore it's probably best if both of you know that you want it. So I knew I had that. I had done the soul search. searching to be like, I don't care if I'm giving up equity. I don't care if we're going to have fights down the road. I want to have a co-founder. That's the experience I want. And I just knew it. And then I think that helped a ton.

Awareness around what—

So figure out if you want it or not. If you're only halfway there, you're probably going to self-sabotage your whole search. Pursuit. Pursuit. Actually, I was so strongly opinionated about that one. I'll say that was my one thought.

That was a good one.

That is our— that

is your piece. Rahul, what do you think?

It's a marriage, so don't rush into it. One of the coolest things I got from Antler when I did it the first time was this founder spreadsheet. Andrew and I kind of— it talks about future scenarios. It's got 50, 60 questions in it. Would love to— I've shared it with some Day One fellows before. We can do it.

I'd love to include that in the show notes. Yeah.

And it was, you know, it takes 3, 4 hours for each of us to fill it out, and then you talk about it. And I think it's It's fantastic because it, one, gives you scenarios in the future that you probably wouldn't think about. And two, it forces you to talk about them. How would you deal with them? What are your hopes and dreams? And so I think tactically, that's a really important thing to do. But I think at the end of the day, you have to respect one another and you have to understand what the other brings to the table that you wouldn't be able to bring on your own. And I think if that piece isn't there, if it's almost too much of an overlap, There's inevitably going to be a power struggle. I think Andrew and I, in whatever way, whether it was known or unknown, I think complement one another so that there's not too many things— in fact, I can't really think of any things— where one of us has kind of raised our hand to do it and the other wishes they were doing it. I think we just both kind of have the same mindset. Mm-hmm. But I think with our backgrounds and where we come from and what we say we bring to the table, there isn't much area to fight about. I think that's really— I think that's very, very important because if it's too much overlap, that's where conflict can arise going forward.

Right. I love that. Awesome. So the last question is on the future of education. You know, I have to ask you this because you guys are in the edtech world and so am I, but much more so because you're pitching Day One and talking about Day One to a lot of investors and some of the non-fellows. What are some observations that you've had in the last, you know, maybe 3 months to 6 months period where you think education as a trend is evolving, like online education, the future of education?

Well, I don't know.

And you're not allowed to say day one. You're not allowed to say that the future is day one.

So I've been talking to a lot of folks who are actually in the edtech world. I have realized I'm now in the edtech world and I'm learning what I don't know about that whole ecosystem and like all these really smart people who understand like pedagogy behind all these different learning platforms. And so I've been going up this awesome learning curve. And one of the things that the smart people will talk a lot about is that Like, good learning, whether it's like for kids or adults or anything in between, is far less about the stuff, the whats, and the knowledge, and far more about 2 things. One is making it fun and playful so that people want it. And 2, making it, you know, actionable, making it so that the real learning is on the other side of doing something, right?

In terms of action, making it applicable.

Applicable, yeah. And really giving space for people to put things to work, into action, right? Because it's only when you try things out and learn how it really works for you or what it's like to do the thing, do you actually have learnings? So there's way more articulate ways to say that, but I think there's a lot of platforms popping up, a lot of them for kids in grade school. Basically, you could apply it to any subject at any age level, and I think there's a better way to teach than the current system. And just picking ours, we are talking about entrepreneurship and we're talking about, I mean, right now it's adults, but I would love to do this for high schoolers or for college kids. We're going to make it playful and we're going to make it actionable. Right. And so I think the whole world will get there.

I love it. And I have to toss this out there as a thought that just popped up. What would be fun is maybe next summer for us to explore day one boot camp or day one summer camp for high school kids, because, you know, there are a lot of them who want to be entrepreneurs. They're watching Gary Vee's content. They're watching, you know, Mark Cuban on Shark Tank and they want to to get their hands dirty, but, you know, they maybe they can get into YC, maybe they can get into some of these other more prestigious and a little bit like stiff institutions. I think that could be a fun experiment for us to learn from.

We might have to have them run the bootcamp. That's right. They're going to teach me a lot more than probably I'll be able to teach them.

But I think that would be fun, actually, you know, because it'll keep us honest about our pedagogy and like sort of our delivery of lectures or workshops because, you know, their attention span is so little. So we will learn a lot. Anyway, Rahul, back to you. What is the future of education in your words?

Just quickly, because we're almost at time. Lifelong learning, not time-boxed, because it'll be interwoven at whatever stage or phase of life that you're in. And then ultimately, if you look at automation and robots and all of that, it's going to be more around EQ, problem-solving skills, design thinking, crisis management. It's going to involve all the stuff that we're teaching at day 1. Again, not intended to be a PSA, but like— That's exactly right. Critical thinking, collaboration, Teamwork to kind of understand a problem and then figure out a way to solve it, which is ultimately the job of every entrepreneur. So that's what I think it's going to be. That's what I kind of think it is already today.

Right. Yeah, I think so too. I think it's already here. Anyway, thank you so much for your time here. It was a fun conversation. It was a blast chatting with you outside of the work setup. This could have been a Zoom call, but, you know, it's not. It's the podcast. I can't tell the difference though.

Anyway, thanks for having me. So appreciate it.

Looking forward to keeping in touch.

All right, absolutely.

See you in Slack. See you

in an hour.

All right, see ya. Thanks

a lot, KP. This was awesome. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Bye.