WEBVTT
00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:20.199
I think today, because people have access to so many tools in terms of designing a logo and deck templates and example pitch decks and all these other resources, I do think the bar has risen, but it's really easy to over-invest in those areas and not focus on what matters, which is actually delivering a solution that solves a very sharp pain.
00:00:20.510 --> 00:00:25.399
Welcome to the Product Market Fit Show, brought to you by Mistral, a seed-stage firm based in Canada.
00:00:25.400 --> 00:00:26.679
I'm Pablo.
00:00:26.681 --> 00:00:27.800
I'm a founder turned VC.
00:00:27.940 --> 00:00:31.440
My goal is to help early-stage founders like you find product market fit.
00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:32.039
So welcome to the Product Market Fit Show.
00:00:36.130 --> 00:00:41.478
Today we have Jafar, the founder of Loopio and today the founder of Barley.
00:00:41.740 --> 00:00:46.399
Loopio was a software platform that helps enterprises respond to RFPs.
00:00:46.509 --> 00:00:49.320
The company is based in Toronto.
00:00:49.640 --> 00:00:52.478
They have about 300 employees and have raised over$200 million.
00:00:54.590 --> 00:01:04.280
Since then, Jafar has gone on to start Barley, which is a compensation management platform, and also based in Toronto and currently a seed-stage company.
00:01:04.439 --> 00:01:07.719
With that said, Jafar, it's a pleasure to have you here on the show.
00:01:08.700 --> 00:01:10.239
Thanks so much for having me, Pablo.
00:01:10.659 --> 00:01:17.000
The topic of today's episode is a bit different and it is how to start your second startup.
00:01:17.400 --> 00:01:32.159
Really, the idea here is for all repeat founders or potential repeat founders, existing founders that are thinking, okay, maybe one day I will start a second one, to really get a feel for what that's really like, what's real, what's easier about it, what's actually potentially harder about it, surprisingly.
00:01:32.280 --> 00:01:33.519
Hopefully, we achieve that today.
00:01:34.239 --> 00:01:38.799
Maybe for starters, Jafar, if you could go back to the early days of Loopio and just get some context out there.
00:01:38.859 --> 00:01:40.439
How did everything get started?
00:01:46.340 --> 00:01:54.069
Yeah, the context of Loopio is really interesting because the formation of that company really went back all the way to my undergrad days when I was at Queens.
00:01:54.070 --> 00:02:01.150
Zak, who's currently the CEO and one of my co-founders at Loopio, we were in the same orientation group together at school.
00:02:01.150 --> 00:02:07.510
Back when we were 18 years old, we would always talk about, hey, one day maybe we'll start a company together.
00:02:07.609 --> 00:02:11.789
When we started getting deeper into our careers, those conversations started resurfacing.
00:02:11.790 --> 00:02:21.550
I think the primary note, and I think the theme is the same for Barley and Loopio, is that we didn't have an idea to then start a company.
00:02:22.289 --> 00:02:31.750
It was, we want to be entrepreneurs, we want to start something, we want to be our own owners, and we want to tackle difficult problems.
00:02:31.789 --> 00:02:35.710
Zak and I came together in 2013, we started brainstorming different business ideas.
00:02:35.729 --> 00:02:39.909
It was literally anything from consumer products to B2B software.
00:02:39.911 --> 00:02:45.270
We just kept landing on this“really boring” space that was RFPs, and when…
00:02:54.870 --> 00:03:02.800
Just a question on that, there's this conception that forcing yourself down the path, the Paul Graham thing of you should just explore things, have fun, and then you want this idea to come organically.
00:03:02.800 --> 00:03:08.560
You seem to have gone in it a different way where you started off you want to be a founder and then you force yourself, let's say, to come up with ideas.
00:03:08.620 --> 00:03:11.879
It worked, certainly at Loopio and it seems to be working at Barley.
00:03:12.610 --> 00:03:21.389
You have any thoughts on that, why it's looked down upon or thinking that it should just– the idea should just come to you instead of being able to make it happen?
00:03:29.909 --> 00:03:42.949
I mean, I think a lot of people, quite frankly, when they're looking to start a company do force it in some ways, but the story is through forcing it, they're doing something, they're having a customer conversation and then they have this a-ha moment.
00:03:42.950 --> 00:03:47.550
It's like, oh, and then we stumbled upon this really interesting thing and I was really passionate about it.
00:03:47.550 --> 00:03:50.620
I think, at the end of the day, ideas are ideas.
00:03:50.621 --> 00:03:51.500
They’re all out there.
00:03:51.509 --> 00:03:54.340
I think everything's been thought of in some shape or form.
00:03:54.360 --> 00:04:01.460
It really comes down to where you see there to be an opportunity and what actually drives you to want to build something.
00:04:01.461 --> 00:04:11.740
I think for Zak and I, and I should include Matt in the conversation, we were three founders, but as I was getting to the story Zak and Matt actually knew each other really well and worked together and were super close.
00:04:14.319 --> 00:04:27.899
Then when we found this idea of RFPs, we were– it was actually something that Zak and Matt had already started working on and started building, but we kept– Zak and I kept it on the side because it was like, oh, I don't know if it makes sense to do this.
00:04:27.901 --> 00:04:33.699
Because we started working on it with Matt and then Zak sent Matt a message and it was like, hey, let's all come together.
00:04:33.701 --> 00:04:41.540
I mean, even when you think about traditional teams, you always think about, oh, usually everybody knows each other really well.
00:04:41.540 --> 00:04:43.379
I didn't know Matt at all.
00:04:43.420 --> 00:04:52.540
In some ways, you could say it was a gamble, but I also trusted Zak's perspective and the friendships that he has and the relationship he had with Matt.
00:04:52.540 --> 00:04:56.100
Somehow there was just a really good gut feel of us coming together.
00:04:59.240 --> 00:05:12.100
Just going back to your thing of forcing the idea was really interesting, as we were going through these different concepts, Zak, Matt and I have all seen the world of requests for proposals in different ways.
00:05:12.338 --> 00:05:18.579
I was an engineer and actually part of my job was issuing them to purchase engineering equipment from big mines.
00:05:18.581 --> 00:05:24.420
Zak was a sales engineer and was responding to them when it came to technical requirements.
00:05:24.420 --> 00:05:31.899
Then Matt as an engineering manager and then later VP of engineering, he was the subject matter expert.
00:05:31.901 --> 00:05:34.860
It was just– it was really cohesive from that standpoint.
00:05:34.860 --> 00:05:39.338
Then honestly, when looking up the market, it was so fragmented.
00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:42.509
There was a bunch of RFP solutions.
00:05:42.511 --> 00:05:45.149
It wasn't something no one has solved this before it was solved.
00:05:45.151 --> 00:05:45.750
It was solved.
00:05:45.750 --> 00:05:46.990
There was incumbent, legacy solutions.
00:05:47.610 --> 00:05:52.028
There was a ton of them and none of them were really that big.
00:05:52.170 --> 00:05:56.949
As you can imagine, any VC conversation we had early on was like, there's no fricking market here.
00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:11.639
Don't even bother, but as we started doing some early market research and talking to prospective customers, it was just clear to us the pain was so sharp and just we had this blind confidence that just no one else knew how to do this right.
00:06:16.399 --> 00:06:20.000
What was really Step 1 once you discovered that this was an opportunity you wanted to tackle?
00:06:20.588 --> 00:06:24.959
Yeah, so I was actually working full-time in management consulting in the US in Chicago.
00:06:25.180 --> 00:06:27.920
I just, at one point, knew this was the thing to do.
00:06:27.920 --> 00:06:30.240
I was the first to leave my job.
00:06:30.300 --> 00:06:31.079
I became the catalyst.
00:06:31.199 --> 00:06:40.040
The first thing was, since I was the non-technical person, so my background is in mechanical engineering, but I went to business school and worked in consulting.
00:06:40.040 --> 00:06:41.040
I did all the early selling.
00:06:41.040 --> 00:06:43.519
I was selling before we had anything.
00:06:43.521 --> 00:06:51.879
We started getting really great interest and traction and Zak and Matt were coding part-time as they were doing their full-time jobs and there was a trickle.
00:06:51.880 --> 00:06:55.959
Matt one day just quit and then he ended up coming full-time.
00:06:56.028 --> 00:06:59.560
Zak was like, holy crap, I guess I got to figure my stuff out.
00:07:05.540 --> 00:07:06.480
Then Zak ended up joining.
00:07:06.480 --> 00:07:13.240
As I mentioned, the initial reaction from a few VCs was that, hey, there may not necessarily be a market here.
00:07:13.240 --> 00:07:15.040
We didn't really need funding.
00:07:15.300 --> 00:07:20.120
We were in a certain different stage in our lives and Zak and Matt are both amazing developers.
00:07:20.120 --> 00:07:21.600
They were building the platform.
00:07:21.779 --> 00:07:22.639
It was 2014.
00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:25.959
It was a very different time, obviously, than we are today.
00:07:25.961 --> 00:07:38.959
We just came together every single day, built and we bootstrapped the company for the first four years or so and got to a few million in ARR, had 30 employees at that point in time.
00:07:38.961 --> 00:07:50.759
Through the traction and customers that we had in the market, some of our customers included Slack and DocuSign and Dropbox, actually a ton of VCs started to hear their own portfolio companies using the Loopio platform.
00:07:50.870 --> 00:07:55.800
That's when we started getting a ton of inbound interest.
00:07:55.800 --> 00:08:03.079
I think at one point we had more than 50 different VC conversations actively moving, then we just had one meeting in Boston with OpenView.
00:08:03.081 --> 00:08:04.120
We love that team so much.
00:08:04.269 --> 00:08:10.480
They came in with a term sheet and were like, let's do it.
00:08:10.480 --> 00:08:19.259
We then shifted from being bootstraps to a venture backed company and really put the pedal to the floor and continued to build and scale the team.
00:08:30.360 --> 00:08:40.980
That next stage worked– sometimes, one of the challenges of bootstrap companies is they're growing at a certain rate and there's this idea that, oh, if we only– if we raise money, we could lean into this, lean into that, and all of a sudden, growth would come out the other side.
00:08:41.200 --> 00:08:46.460
Sometimes that's the case and sometimes it's not, and you find out, actually, we just grow at whatever rate that was.
00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:48.178
Maybe it’s 50%, maybe it's a 100% per year.
00:08:48.179 --> 00:08:49.620
More money doesn't really lead to more growth.
00:08:49.620 --> 00:08:52.178
What happened in your case after that first round?
00:08:55.210 --> 00:09:02.600
I mean, I think that the biggest thing that helped us drive growth is Zak, Matt, and I became bottlenecks for the business.
00:09:02.600 --> 00:09:06.519
When we raised our series A with OpenView, we had zero VPs.
00:09:06.520 --> 00:09:11.200
I think we had maybe one director and a relatively junior director.
00:09:11.299 --> 00:09:18.320
It was really the three of us that were the executives and we were limiting the business from going any faster.
00:09:18.740 --> 00:09:27.678
Quite frankly, most of the initial time was really building out a senior leadership team and building out the pillars of the business to make it more scalable.
00:09:27.679 --> 00:09:39.240
I think that getting that injection of funding allowed us to not only further build our employer brand, but obviously have the capital to invest in those right people to bring on board with the company.
00:09:45.279 --> 00:09:46.840
I really think that helped us propel forward.
00:09:46.990 --> 00:09:52.600
I think if we didn't raise the money, we would've hit a bit of a wall and had some challenges.
00:09:53.440 --> 00:09:58.320
Because when you're bootstrapping, it's almost like– I think about a dolphin.
00:09:58.399 --> 00:10:08.080
You invest, so you're diving in and you're letting the money spend, but at some point you pause spending and you would need to watch the cash accumulate a little bit before you dive in again.
00:10:08.279 --> 00:10:10.960
This stop and go really hinders your ability to grow effectively.
00:10:10.961 --> 00:10:13.840
I think that the funding definitely helped us.
00:10:14.360 --> 00:10:18.480
All that said, we were still extremely capital efficient as a business.
00:10:24.428 --> 00:10:29.350
When did you start thinking about leaving Loopio and starting something new?
00:10:29.659 --> 00:10:38.269
Yeah, the idea never crossed my mind up until quite frankly COVID hit and we were all, all of a sudden, working from home.
00:10:38.270 --> 00:10:50.909
As you're sitting in your own thoughts at times and thinking about what excites you about coming to work every day, because even as a founder, you're still an employee at some point in time, you're still pursuing some form of a career.
00:10:50.910 --> 00:10:55.269
I actually had an executive coach that I worked with really closely.
00:10:55.270 --> 00:11:06.830
A lot of it was working on my leadership skills, how I can continue to inspire the team and just general development areas, but even through those conversations, I started exposing what gets me up and excited every single day.
00:11:06.909 --> 00:11:16.830
At that point I was seven years into my Loopio journey and I had a little bit of an edge and a recognition that the incubation of a company, that stage was something that was most exciting to me.
00:11:23.990 --> 00:11:26.269
I was still doing amazing work at Loopio.
00:11:26.308 --> 00:11:27.428
It was really engaging.
00:11:27.450 --> 00:11:29.149
At that point, I was chief revenue officer.
00:11:30.029 --> 00:11:36.428
I had really an amazing revenue team between marketing, revenue ops, sales and customer experience.
00:11:36.429 --> 00:11:43.830
What I found my day-to-day to be was enabling those leaders, but I wasn't really rolling up my sleeves.
00:11:43.831 --> 00:11:52.149
I was helping to guide them, but they were, quite frankly, extremely competent themselves to drive everything and very established leaders.
00:11:52.150 --> 00:11:55.919
I think that's the moment where I was thinking about starting something.
00:11:55.921 --> 00:11:59.480
I would want to prove to myself that I can do this more than once.
00:11:59.480 --> 00:12:06.120
The other thing that happened was– and I think a lot of companies, when it comes to founding them, start this way.
00:12:06.120 --> 00:12:09.279
I mentioned to you that for Loopio I was the catalyst.
00:12:09.280 --> 00:12:10.120
I quit my job.
00:12:14.779 --> 00:12:22.678
Then Matt came into the equation just a little bit later in terms of even coming together with Zak and I because I didn't know Matt.
00:12:22.879 --> 00:12:30.120
In my case with Barley, my really good friend Billy, who I've known for a super long time, we also went to undergrad together, was an experienced product leader.
00:12:30.320 --> 00:12:36.080
I mean, even right out of school, he was a producer at Electronic Arts on FIFA and Need for Speed.
00:12:36.279 --> 00:12:38.799
He's been in tech for his whole career.
00:12:38.808 --> 00:12:46.039
Actually, when I was at Loopio and we were raising, I would be calling him and asking him for advice because he had been through it as a founder himself.
00:12:46.041 --> 00:12:59.159
He actually was having a little bit of a career dilemma himself and was like, hey, I can go into product at a fang company as an example or I can give this entrepreneurship another go.
00:13:06.178 --> 00:13:09.320
The two of us had talked about building businesses.
00:13:09.639 --> 00:13:13.480
When I think about people I’d start companies with, it's Zak and Matt, and Billy.
00:13:13.480 --> 00:13:15.200
Those are the only people in my mind.
00:13:15.201 --> 00:13:19.279
The idea of building something with Billy, quite frankly, initially wasn't really possible.
00:13:19.299 --> 00:13:23.840
At least we didn't think it was possible because he's based in Vancouver.
00:13:24.470 --> 00:13:25.440
I'm based in Toronto.
00:13:25.580 --> 00:13:30.799
Pre-pandemic, both of us, our mindsets were very much you build a company in person.
00:13:30.830 --> 00:13:32.279
We were very office presence oriented.
00:13:32.519 --> 00:13:36.000
Loopio didn't have a work from home policy at all.
00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:38.840
It was everyone would come to the office every single day.
00:13:38.841 --> 00:13:47.080
I think that the shift to work from home really opened up that opportunity to explore the potential of collaborating across time zones.
00:13:47.081 --> 00:13:53.360
Then we just started exploring ideas and seeing what it would be like to build a business together.
00:14:00.620 --> 00:14:05.879
Although we'd known each other for so long, we went through the co-founding dating exercise from scratch.
00:14:06.320 --> 00:14:10.840
First round has a great 50 question co-founder dating format that you can use.
00:14:10.841 --> 00:14:20.639
We literally went through every single question and saw where our overlaps, where our interests are, what kind of company we want to build.
00:14:20.640 --> 00:14:28.039
That really opened things up, but quite frankly, I wasn't sure about this idea of leaving the startup that I'm building at Loopio.
00:14:28.041 --> 00:14:42.360
Having great executive coaches, I would say in some ways, not only are they great coaches, they could also become some form of therapists in some way, too, when you're going through these conversations, but I was really challenged by my executive coach.
00:14:42.360 --> 00:14:49.580
I should say coaches because at the point when I was making my decision, I was moving from one coach to another.
00:14:49.659 --> 00:14:57.679
I actually had an overlap where all of a sudden I had two different coaches with different perspectives talking through this big decision that I had lingering in my mind.
00:15:05.299 --> 00:15:06.879
Mechanically, how did you set that up?
00:15:06.880 --> 00:15:11.759
It's one thing to sell a company and then maybe you go through a golden handcuff period and then you're free to go.
00:15:11.760 --> 00:15:13.360
In your case, Loopio is still operating.
00:15:13.360 --> 00:15:15.799
How did you handle that transition?
00:15:18.200 --> 00:15:29.960
I think that the first thing for me was I wanted to make sure that, in leading a company, I wanted to first make sure that my co-founders were good and on board, two, that I was leaving on a high note.
00:15:29.961 --> 00:15:35.399
Never about running away from something that was necessarily not doing well.
00:15:35.400 --> 00:15:40.360
It would be stepping away from something and closing a chapter of something that I'm proud of.
00:15:40.360 --> 00:15:44.519
In the beginning of COVID, we actually got hit really hard as a business.
00:15:44.580 --> 00:15:46.159
Pipeline dried up, like many businesses.
00:15:46.160 --> 00:15:52.440
Then the mandate in the shift was how do we turn this around and evolve our strategy?
00:15:52.441 --> 00:16:07.480
Zak, Matt, and I, along with our senior leadership team, we put forth a whole new strategy for the business during COVID and we were on a mission to make sure that we would get through that initial hurdle and really make sure the business thrives.
00:16:11.379 --> 00:16:19.399
I'll fast forward to that in a little bit in terms of what ended up happening with that strategy, but the first thing for me was having a conversation with my co-founders.
00:16:19.400 --> 00:16:24.279
Zak, Matt, and I would do a co-founder retreat every once in a while.
00:16:24.280 --> 00:16:27.559
We ended up doing a virtual one and outlined a bunch of topics.
00:16:27.779 --> 00:16:31.039
Zak always does a great job of leading those kinds of initiatives.
00:16:31.080 --> 00:16:36.000
One of the topics was, what do we want to do in terms of at Loopio or beyond.
00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:42.600
We always ask ourselves questions like, what do we actually want to do long term personally?
00:16:42.919 --> 00:16:43.879
Are we still in it?
00:16:44.039 --> 00:16:44.519
Where's our head at?
00:16:44.799 --> 00:16:47.000
I think it’s a really healthy dialogue.
00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:54.120
When it got to that question of what do we want to do, I brought up that, hey, I'm thinking about starting something new from scratch.
00:16:59.299 --> 00:17:48.640
At the end of the day, it was extremely supportive and collaborative from both of them.
00:17:57.920 --> 00:18:02.029
There was also a question, actually, my executive coach asked me.
00:18:02.030 --> 00:18:03.868
I think this is a really tough one.
00:18:03.869 --> 00:18:10.868
He said to me it's a lot easier to start something than to finish something.
00:18:10.869 --> 00:18:18.230
I think this is something that is pretty prominent when you think about VCs of how long are you in it kind of thing.
00:18:18.410 --> 00:18:21.069
My reaction to that is what does it mean to finish something?
00:18:21.070 --> 00:18:23.150
Is finishing something doing a PE buyout?
00:18:23.151 --> 00:18:24.269
Is finishing something an IPO?
00:18:24.529 --> 00:18:31.470
Okay, so when you IPO, then don't you need to keep running the business and keep growing it?
00:18:31.471 --> 00:18:38.509
If you do a private equity deal, don't you need to keep driving the business forward so your PE sponsor can then flip the business or IPO it from there?
00:18:38.510 --> 00:18:41.630
When do your obligations as a founder start and end?
00:18:41.650 --> 00:18:44.190
I don't think there is really the idea of a finish.
00:18:44.579 --> 00:18:48.829
I think it's more when is the right time for you to do something else?
00:18:48.830 --> 00:18:55.250
I think as long as you're not necessarily running away from something but running towards something, I think that is an important consideration.
00:19:06.809 --> 00:19:07.608
I think that's totally right.
00:19:07.609 --> 00:19:14.368
There's countless examples of one person getting the company from A to B, another one from B to C, and another one from C to D.
00:19:14.450 --> 00:19:24.289
There's nothing wrong with it as long as there's milestones in between and it's not jumping ship like, oh, this thing's boring, I'm out, or this thing's not working, I'm out and you guys deal with it.
00:19:24.290 --> 00:19:25.368
I totally agree with that.
00:19:25.369 --> 00:19:27.970
Maybe fast forwarding a bit, you set it all up.
00:19:27.971 --> 00:19:30.730
One of the questions I have is around expectations versus reality.
00:19:30.950 --> 00:19:40.130
I think humans are just prone to this no matter what, but once you've dealt with it, and okay, this is actually happening, everybody's on board with it to one extent or another, so this is real.
00:19:45.640 --> 00:19:47.690
What are you thinking it's going to be like?
00:19:47.710 --> 00:19:52.009
Maybe just to back up a second, I started my first company was this tutoring services company.
00:19:52.089 --> 00:19:55.410
It helped me out, but it was a totally different beast from Gymtrack, a VC company.
00:19:55.411 --> 00:19:57.730
That was a five-year journey, many different iterations, learned a ton.
00:19:58.089 --> 00:20:05.849
When I came out of that and my Number 1 thing before being a VC was going to start another company, I had a lot of expectations about what that would be like.
00:20:05.851 --> 00:20:10.650
Just having learned so much about going from zero to one and all the mistakes I would make and all these sorts of things.
00:20:10.651 --> 00:20:13.329
Part of it was true and part of it is just imagination.
00:20:13.330 --> 00:20:15.490
Some things don't get that much easier sort of thing.
00:20:15.490 --> 00:20:19.450
It's like maybe writing a second book or producing a second movie.
00:20:19.451 --> 00:20:24.210
If you learned a lot, you have a lot of contacts, etc., etc., it’s still hard work.
00:20:24.211 --> 00:20:25.329
What was your mindset like?
00:20:25.608 --> 00:20:25.730
I'm curious.
00:20:25.930 --> 00:20:28.410
Which parts ultimately proved to be true and which parts did you under or overestimate?
00:20:38.358 --> 00:20:50.319
Yeah, I think what you end up overestimating is how the experiences that you've built in scaling your company are going to translate specifically on the zero to one phase.
00:20:50.320 --> 00:20:54.039
I think the zero to one phase is more art than science.
00:20:54.040 --> 00:21:02.039
I think it's really difficult to replicate the things you learned during that phase in your first startup and bringing that into your second startup.
00:21:02.040 --> 00:21:07.680
I think where my horsepower is really going to come in is in the growth stage of the business.
00:21:07.681 --> 00:21:17.118
I think that's the reality that sometimes gets neglected is the hardest part of starting a company is zero to one.
00:21:17.618 --> 00:21:19.440
Scaling it is actually more repeatable.
00:21:19.441 --> 00:21:20.319
There's more playbooks.
00:21:20.320 --> 00:21:36.539
There's more things that you've learned that you can apply in terms of the kind of people that you hire, in terms of executives, frameworks that you use for selling, even operationalizing your business, everything from bill subscription billing and board meetings, all that stuff.
00:21:41.220 --> 00:21:46.140
You can bring that, but the zero to one phase I think is unique in each journey.
00:21:46.200 --> 00:21:54.420
The only time that I think you can really get a real advantage is if you're building something in the same space that you were initially building it.
00:21:54.421 --> 00:22:07.049
I think when you look at, you mentioned writing a story or making a movie as an example, I think a lot of second-time founders will do what I consider a sequel.
00:22:07.050 --> 00:22:14.250
They would start a company, let's just use, I said subscription billing as an issue earlier, but let's say subscription billing.
00:22:14.250 --> 00:22:15.809
They'll start a subscription billing platform.
00:22:16.130 --> 00:22:17.289
They may exit that company.
00:22:17.470 --> 00:22:30.608
Then from there, they've learned so much in that space and the mistakes they made when they first formed that business, and then they'll start another subscription billing platform or something that's pretty close to what they did before.
00:22:31.108 --> 00:22:37.490
People that may have worked at companies and built a ton of domain expertise and then jump and doing a jumping off point.
00:22:37.490 --> 00:22:40.130
I think in my case, I'm not building a sequel.
00:22:40.131 --> 00:22:42.849
It's not another version of an RFP software that's competing with Loopio.
00:22:43.089 --> 00:22:44.569
It's a completely different space.
00:22:44.570 --> 00:22:51.329
I'm writing a whole new novel in a completely different category with different characters and different storyline.
00:22:51.330 --> 00:22:56.769
It is more difficult to do that from zero to one.
00:23:10.890 --> 00:23:13.500
What is it– from your perspective, what's the objective?
00:23:13.500 --> 00:23:23.140
What are you trying to accomplish in zero to one and what about that objective makes it so hard, so unique, so much more art than science?
00:23:24.329 --> 00:23:30.140
Yeah, I think the zero to one is first identifying that first MVP that you're going to be building.
00:23:30.259 --> 00:23:34.358
Many companies don't get that first MVP right.
00:23:34.740 --> 00:23:43.000
You end up having to shift your idea over time as you're doing more discovery and evolving the solution that you actually want to initially bring to market.
00:23:43.160 --> 00:23:45.630
You're trying to do it in the most capital efficient way possible.
00:23:45.631 --> 00:23:48.720
I'd say for Loopio, the pain point was extremely clear.
00:23:48.839 --> 00:23:56.720
It was, I need to find answers to questions easily because I'm responding to these questionnaires and RFPs.
00:23:57.230 --> 00:24:02.240
I need a better library and I need a better way to search that library.
00:24:02.240 --> 00:24:02.839
That was crystal clear.
00:24:03.079 --> 00:24:12.809
For some reason, there was no other solutions that were doing that library and search in a way that was really simple and modern, especially in 2014.
00:24:12.990 --> 00:24:17.650
I think a lot of the companies that were tackling that space even were on premise.
00:24:17.730 --> 00:24:22.990
Fast forward to the 2020s, this idea of moving to the cloud is no longer a thing.
00:24:23.309 --> 00:24:28.069
There's also a huge amount of injection of capital and many different ideas and companies that are...
00:24:36.769 --> 00:24:43.190
You just mentioned something that– this is what I really think, which is delivering meaningful value is no joke.
00:24:43.329 --> 00:24:44.230
We are in a competitive world.
00:24:44.230 --> 00:24:51.150
There's a lot of businesses, players building and thinking about a lot of things, like you said earlier, almost every idea's been thought of.
00:24:51.151 --> 00:25:03.789
Finding an idea that is real enough but also not being solved enough such that you can come in and ultimately build eight, nine figures of ARR in that space, that's no joke.
00:25:03.790 --> 00:25:13.509
I mention that because I remember, just off the cuff here, I was talking to a friend of mine who was first-time founder, had landed on this idea through real hard work, but ultimately some form of luck is always involved in this.
00:25:13.510 --> 00:25:14.470
It hit everything, right?
00:25:19.910 --> 00:25:20.630
It was a big market.