Brothers Mike and Albert Lee talk about starting a company together, how they divided responsibilities (Mike as CEO, Albert handling product and design), and what it takes to trust your co-founder when you're bootstrapping everything from finance to the mobile app launch.
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So, had you guys worked together before?
No.
So what's the thought? I mean, your brother calls you up and says this crazy web—
You know, we've done homework together.
Yeah, okay.
Our mom's projects.
Yeah. Cleaning, mowing the lawn.
Yeah.
Right. So your brother calls you up and says, I think we might— I might have something here with this website. Do you want to, like, quit your job and come work with me?
What's the— Yeah. You know, it's funny because I always tell people that, you know, the way that you just phrased that, it sounds so You're so polite. You actually phrased it in the form of a question, which is not how it actually came through. It was basically like, I've decided that I'm going to do this, and I don't want to do it by myself, so you're going to do it with me. So you need to just talk to your wife and make sure that she knows that you're going to be doing this with me.
Big brother knows best.
Start together on Monday.
And did that— you were convinced immediately?
Yeah, I mean, I think we'd obviously been talking about the product for many years before that. So I was really familiar with what it was and some of the challenges ahead of us. So I think it was, from that standpoint, it was easy to kind of wrap your head around, like, okay, do I really want to work on this thing? Yeah. I think there was probably a little bit of apprehension about us being brothers and working together, but we've been really close for a lot of years.
I think it was really, really great to have a co-founder that you completely trust.
Right? Yeah.
That's one thing I know you guys are thinking about, you know, some of the dilemmas that you'll face as entrepreneurs. And look, it's not— it's definitely a hard road, right? There's a lot of things where it's really stressful. There were a lot of big decisions that we really struggled with. And it was so great to have a co-founder in the room with you that you could work through these problems with, that you respected, that you trusted. And, you know, being brothers, like, we never— there was never for a single second any doubt about misalignments, right? Like, we never fought over equity or pay or whatever. There was no worry, like, is this guy working hard enough or not? Like, we were really lucky that we had none of that. It was all about what is the best thing for the company. And, you know, so I think, like, you know, in retrospect, man, that was really, really valuable to have.
Yeah, it's really enviable. How do your responsibilities break down? Like, what were you— Al, you're the chief— the CTO? Was that right?
I actually run a couple different groups in the company— product, typical product management, analytics, design, and actually QA. But I think originally, when we first started out, the line was not so cleanly divided. One of the first things I actually came on board to do was to launch the mobile app.
So Mike was still doing a lot of development on the website.
And we ended up— and this is kind of an interesting story, too. We ended up hiring a guy to help us do mobile development. And we could only afford to pay him 2 days a week. So we were making just enough money to pay him 2 days a week. So he actually had another job that he worked at 3 days a week. And then for 2 days a week, he was working with me on building the iPhone app.
Wow.
And then we made a little bit more money. And we're like, can you work for us one more day? And then we got— Yeah, we're like 3 days a week. Our capacity increased by 50%. And so that was really where I was focused in the beginning. But I think it was a little bit of either one of us would just take whatever task was out there depending on who had bandwidth. I think we were lucky that—
In the beginning, you do everything, right?
Yeah. You take out the trash.
Yeah.
So I was doing all the finance stuff. And luckily, I had a little bit of a background in that. We were doing any really minor marketing or PR. I remember, I think I took the first interview for the company. It was with Florida Senior Living, which has a circulation of— a declining circulation, probably, which is kind of sad.
Probably not big to begin with.
Yeah, maybe 10,000 people. But we would just each do whatever was necessary in the beginning. But I think then it formalized, and Mike really became the CEO. of the business. And we started to bring other people in, in executive roles over time.
