No. What's up, everybody? This is Courtland from Andy hackers dot com and you're listening to the anti hackers podcast on this show. I talked to the founders of profitable Internet businesses, and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes. How did they get to where they are today? How did you make decisions at their companies and in their personal lives? And what exactly makes her presence is tick on? The goal here is always so that the rest of us could learn from their experiences. Go on to build our own successful Internet businesses. Today I have with me the impressively multi talented Daniel Basket. Danielle is an artist, a designer and engineer and an entrepreneur. She has built products for pretty much everybody, including NASA, Nickelodeon, Amazon aided us. Mozilla Salesforce, etcetera. Danielle, I'm excited. Have you on the show? Welcome. Thank you for having me. So that was part one of my interest in your heart. Person introduced. So I have two parts. Okay. The second part of the introduction is that you are the creator of a voice chat app called dial up. Yes, you are the founder of a conference swag company. Yes. Called Branded Fruit, you're the founder of a company called Peddler Pop Ups. You are the creator of inkwell helmets. It's that, uh, so on and so forth. And what's fascinating about this is you are running these companies all at the same time. Like these or not, this is not a succession of cos you're simultaneously running all these companies Parallel, entrepreneur. A parallel on. That's what you are. How many did I leave out? I think I named if I have a lot of small businesses. So I have, like, 23 distinct products that I sell on the Internet. 23? Yes. And how long have you been creating these? I've been creating businesses, I guess since two thousand eight. Well, yeah. 23 businesses. Yeah. I mean, that is It's slow. I mean, like, for what? Two thousand 23 2 8 to 2,011. It was just one. And then, I mean, I it's uneven in business since since two thousand eight, too. And I am nowhere near 23 active things, right? I mean, summer, just single Prada ducks, and they're not like in terrible or sora service, but Some are summer businesses, and I have, like, nine employees for for pretended fruit and yeah, okay, walk me through the mindset of somebody who chooses to toe live their life is way. Why run this money product simultaneously? I mean, it is It is problematic. I have a lot of ideas, and I, like, very restless. Unless I execute upon them like I just need to create them. And it's very easy to put a product on the Internet like create a landing page, take photos of something. Just put an idea out there. It's very easy. And I think most of my ideas were kind of accidental, like I just threw it on the Internet to see what would happen. And then people want that thing. And so it's a surprise, but I haven't had to shut any down. So what I do right now is a sort of toggle businesses on and off, or I work on what's most exciting to me at that time. So you've never had a job. You never actually worked a full time job. Somebody else. I've had weird jobs. Yeah, okay. I was I was a philosopher's assistant for five years but that was like twice a week. And then I also was a scenic painter for an opera house. Those are my job jobs and a set designer. But I always throughout that period of my life, I also also worked on my own businesses. So, no, I've never had, like, a 5 9 to 5 job on right now. You full time on your own businesses. Do they fully support you? Yes. What is it that drives you to create all these things and be an entrepreneur and work for yourself? Why not get a full time job? With all the skills that you have here, you could make a lot of money somewhere really weird. Like everything I've done. I've done contract jobs before. And then when I have that job, I think of a product that I can sell to the company. It's weird, like I'm just I am. I'm, like, deeply entrepreneurial. I'm trying Teo, look for things that people are searching for. And then I feel like I'm only one Well, that'll create the solution for this. Yeah, that's certainly a lot of things have created that I don't think anyone else would. Well, I accidentally created a tricycle rental service in New York when there was no way to just rent a cargo tricycle. So ended up finding. And the goal was to like, Have it be just a tricycle for me to sell my own helmets but realized like, Oh, actually, no one's doing tricycle rental. I could sell this to other people, and then people were actually looking for that thing, and strangers on the Internet contacted me. I love how in your mind and in the market is that nobody is doing tricycle rentals. Is that a real problem? Should people be doing tricycle rentals? Yeah, but there's a lot of So, yeah, I started peddler pop ups kind of because there there's a lot of pop up shops in New York, but super expensive, too, like rent out of space. And all these shops were reaching out to me. Tio Tio, bring my helmets there and I thought, Well, what if I you know, I could just kind of ride put my helmet in the bike lane where most of the cyclists are? I was actually walking around with a cart selling helmets in the street when Citi Bike launched and my neighbor was like, Hey, I have this, like, old cargo trick that's locked up in my basement. Do you want it? And I bought it from him. And then, yeah, you're just like sure, yeah. So I often tell Founders that one of the best ways to come up with ideas it's just start something, and in the course of running that thing, you will come up. Hopefully more ideas. It seems like that's what happened with your helmets leading to this tricycle business. So maybe the best place to start is at the very beginning of your story. Is your helmets business sort of The first of your many projects turned into businesses? Yeah. I mean, that was the first. That was the first business that, like within a few days of creating handpainted helmets, I immediately like set up a website and tried to sell them, mostly because people on the street asked me where I got that thing. So take me back to like, the origin of that. This is a two thousand eight. You're in college. There's, like, two thousand seven when I painted my first helmet. Yeah. Why did you paint a helmet? I didn't wear a helmet because I thought it was really dorky to wear a helmet. And I just hated all the helmet options. And then I forced myself to There were actually there, weren't likely in two thousand seven, they were just putting in bike lanes, and my comm unit was on a like on Bowery was a crowded street with lots of traffic, and I had some close calls with some cars, like, Okay, I should really wear a helmet. New York City? Yeah, New York City and I bought one, and I didn't like the way it looked, so I thought I'd be funny to camouflage it in a way. So I painted it to look like the sky, even though it's not really camouflage. I just painted it to look like clouds and just like a blue sky with clouds, and I varnished it, and the varnish had this illusion of the sun. And then I thought, Oh, I need a night time sky and a sunset sky. So I have like my helmets for different times of day, and this was just like a weird a weird project I had, but it wasn't like supposed to be a business. And then once I painted three, I thought like, Oh, I kind of want, like, 10 helmets like there's so many designs I could dio. But almost immediately when I went outside in the street, just at an intersection, cyclist would ask me, Oh, that's a really cool helmet and I My immediate response was, Do you want one? Teo and I would like, give them my email address and then eventually a sort of like very basic website with pictures and a PayPal link. This was kind of mean. There were so many e commerce options. So, you know, a lot of people who I would call makers tanker reversible who love to do things like paint helmets and build things. Not very many of them are entrepreneurial. Not very many of them on. Somebody asked, Where did you get that would say? Hey, let me make you one of these. Yeah? Where did that drive come from? Huh? I mean, it is It is problematic that I'm what when someone asks like, Oh, I want that too. I'm like, I can do that. I don't know. I mean, also like I it's as a 19 year old being able to sell artwork for I was charging when I first started charging, like 50 or $60 a helmet. This seem to like so much money to me and like would be a great income If you're able to make something and you find it fun and you're doing it anyway and someone wants something from you and you simultaneously have to pay rent, it's natural to just be an entrepreneur. I think, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Eso people are asking you on the street. Hey, I get these helmets. You are saying Yes, I said Yes. And then I think, like within, I created a very basic website so I could direct people to website. It was cool helmets dot org's. That was my first website name. It was kind of a joke website, but there were images. I made 12 helmets for myself and for some people in my college dorm. And then I had, like, a little gallery like like my first helmets for, like, people on my floor. They gave me like here in exchange for a moment. I thought I had a portfolio trade. Yeah, and then what I think was really exciting is one side. Once I put this online, I reached out to local bike blog's and they blogged about it, and strangers and other cities wanted the helmets for me, and this was fascinating. Like to be able to sell something I made to someone doesn't know me or like didn't run into me. It was just so cool. Like someone in Florida's like, I want flamingos on my helmet and I had this. It was so excited about strangers contacting me at that time. Yeah, so this point. Are you thinking, You know, you've got dollar signs in your eyes. You're going to grow this into some sort of massive helmet business went out. I think I was excited about the possibilities of designs on helmets more than I was motivated by money. I was like, Wow, there's thousands of designs I could make I didn't think so much about, like how that would equate to revenue immediately, but I was just thinking like, Wow, I want this idea to exist. No one's doing custom helmets. Cycling is getting more popular. This needs to exist, So I have a notebook where I just give myself deadlines and two random challenges. And I wrote like you need to you need to paint 100 helmets in the next year like not necessarily to sell them. They just need to exist in the world. But yeah, I mean simultaneously. I also, like, wasn't making that much money on the helmets because my pricing was awful. So how much did they cost? I was doing like custom. Probably people of people are like I can't afford. I'd be like, No problem. What can you pay? And I was just, like, so excited to sell my artwork. And I think this is a problem for for lots of painters, that's that they don't actually keep track of how much time they're spending painting, and they think like, Oh, this is a meditative thing for me and and like whatever you want to pay, I'm just glad my artworks out there So it's charging. I don't know sometimes ballpark around $50 for a helmet. When the helmet itself was costing me 20 I was making like, $30 on a painting that would sometimes take, like five hours or not a great view right plus lake, not charging the for shipping or like offering to deliver it in person because I wanted to meet the people buying the things and what I learned. I'm like, you know, after two years sudden increase my pricing. I mean, I'm still learning about that. Yeah, it's not. It's an art, not a science. Yeah. Okay, so your first foray into business, you don't charge enough. How does the helmet thing end? And how does an exciting begin? My next thing after the helmets was other bike related stuff. I created this system to mount of phone Teo City bike When bikeshare first emerged like there wasn't a wayto use GPS while on on the bike. So I created like, I need I need to come up with some company name and I landed on Trillo box because it sounded like, I don't know, it just sounded like an established. You had one of those thrilling trilobites like I use a troll a box. That was I think that was like my second company, where I was able to, like, sell things immediately to strangers on the internet. And I was sewing these leather cases. They were like, Are there like fake leather and had had, like, bungee cord. And I was leaving notes on City of Bikes to like Purchase one and people contacted me. But also people were searching for that thing anyway, which was really interesting. Like I could see that a lot. My Web traffic was just for people looking for, like smartphone on Citi bike and people Googling People were looking for a way to attach the phone to the city because the handle bars where, I guess I'll explain this. The handlebars for the bike shares bikeshare bikes lead were wide, and all phone mounts were cylindrical, so there's no way to attach all the existing. So it had to be a system with, like, this bungee cord that wraps around and this product didn't exist. And I thought I'd be useful because, like, no one knows where the you don't know if the doc is available. So you need to be looking at your phone. And there'd be all these people writing Citi bikes like stopped in the intersection and dislike messing up. How did you notice this problem yourself? Was it like you wanted to attach? You were a case to about it can. You couldn't. Yeah, like I wanted to see a lot of the docks were totally full. So you would like to know what you thought was You would want to see availability in real time. Otherwise I'd end up a dock and then I'd have to, like, pull up the phone and go to another dock. And people would like, honk at me because I'm, like, stuck in the bike lane. Like, why can't I just look at my phone while I'm on the bike? It doesn't make sense. I can't attach a phone to the spike and I could like Velcro it, But like I could also design a case for other people. Probably the oldest started advice in the book is Solve your own problems. You seem to consistently solve your own problems. Everybody's got problems. Why isn't everybody else is good at you, as you are at actually solving them at solving them or or solving them for other, Like getting other people to buy your solution. We'll vote because I Yeah, when you run into this, it's like number one. You're like, this is a problem and you recognize that it has some value. Then you saw it when you get people to use it. Ah, it's probably like I worked for many years in theater and film making props, and I had a ton of budget restraints and things I needed to, like, procure and produce within 24 hours. And so I got into this habit of making things really fast, as though there was a deadline when there wasn't and making things out of whatever was around me. With likes spending as little as possible just cause I wrecked on so many low budget short films, it's probably from that. But I also I mix like I get very excited about, like figuring out how to make something. How would you say make trill a box from from conception of what it's like? How did they buy the materials and how does it work? The first thing I did was I made a prototype of whatever I had. I think I put a nail in some wood and a rubber band and then moved it around the city and then, like another nail and then sealed my phone in with like a piece of clear plastic, which I had lying around like Okay, well, this is way too big. I need to make this out of some material so much a fabric store and saw this like, nice, like, fake leather stuff and got, like, a small amount of that. And I also needed, like, nice humming. I had a sewing machine anyway, so but I didn't spend much on it. And then I decided to sell them for 24 99 because that was, like a comparable price to the other to the other ones. But I ended up manufacturing them in Bangladesh later on. And what about the selling part of this? You said you were going from Citi bike to Citi bike. I was leaving. Yeah, I was going to crowded. I was going to crowded docks and I had printed a card that said, You can attach yur phone to yur bike goto chill a box dot com and I would leave them taped to the bike itself, which is, like kind of spam e a little bit real world space. Yeah, but like it's solving a useful problem. It wasn't like Come check out my comedy club that my band don't have too much fun. Me Okay, So you are this combination of this intense hacker slash hustler slash parallel preneurs. What you called it share. How did the trill a box thing work out? Ah, yeah. I actually got pretty overwhelmed with orders, and I was trying to figure out how to manufacture them, and I someone and I was in a co working space and someone in my car clean space. His cousin and Bangladesh had a small shoe factory and he was visiting. And he's like, Look, what if I brought a sample and like, we contest at making them? So I did a run of them in Bangladesh and then for the next year, just like, sold that. But I never really never remade them cause I got busy with other stuff. I had, like, my cloud storage sculpture company. One business interrupted by another business. Yeah, a lot of people have this issue where we start building something and we never actually finished building thing. You're, like, a whole step further than that. Where you start building something, you finish building it, but that you don't take it too like scale get interrupted at that face. Yeah, I'm trying, Tio. Well, I think the solution is to delegate to fire yourself from your own company and then delegate all those tasks to something else, which is something I've learned in the last two years. Like when you reach a point where you kind of understand how to run the business and you're really excited about working on your next idea. And just the day to day of your previous business is like, doesn't seem like it's dependent on your mind specifically, and you find someone really excited about that idea like you could hire someone if you have the revenue for it. And it's scary if you're used to doing projects all by yourself to, like, give up that much control. But you've already figured it out, and someone else might join and work on it and have their own ideas of how to do things better than you. And it's like a good experiment to try, and that would enable you to work on something else. Let's talk about some of these lessons that you've learned delegating something you've learned recently in the last couple of years. I'm curious what air some of the lessons that you've learned from your first fetuses. We talked about not charging enough. What else? Okay, here's like a very simple things like, make sure your forms work on your website. I've launched a few things and I didn't like check to see if, like all the different forms Airways, you can contact me on every single page is working and actually like missed out on 200 emails for my company from when I when I launched like helmets for your corporation like I will do a batch of 100 helmets I missed out on, like we're really great opportunities because I didn't check to see whether or not the Java script thing was like working and so very small details. I think something that is super important is Teo. Always launch your idea with the soup with an M V P. That doesn't We're not spending much money or time and all just to see what people want and showing your idea to just people you know before launching it and gauging reactions from that has been super helpful for choosing what to actually pursued. Because I once started, I wanted to start this, like huge platform for sourcing props throughout New York for art directors and spent like weeks working on this. But I never even went up to a prop shop and asked if they'd be interested in putting their inventory on this website and like what a waste of time. I also, like, ended up asking. Our directors are like set designers what you pay if you could, like, use this platform to search for, like a 19 twenties telephone, and I like, I don't know, like Craigslist is fine, and I like Goto prop shops and it's okay and I couldn't find and maybe that changes depending on, like what's going on that year. But like I, it's really important because I could have done other things with my time. It's important to immediately start asking like who your end user is or like who your customer is like if they would actually buy that thing, or even of time and money into building it. So you've been creating and selling physical goods in the real world for a long time. You've also got some digital businesses, APS and websites and stuff like that. We're going to get into those. But I'm curious about how the process of selling physical goods has changed over time. Is that gotten any easier since you first started back into that Totally mean? It's fairly easy to set up an e commerce website right now and to make it look beautiful. There's so many websites and templates and like it's easy to have good photography. And I was starting out with my business in two thousand eight. I had to, like, buy a digital camera and then I had to like a just like I do like, sharpen it and I'd like make it look like professional camera. And it's like just kind of easy to like seem like a large business online as in as in e commerce Company, it's also you can sell things directly through Instagram and other sorts of channels like Things could just go viral on Instagram. And as long as there's like, ah, checkout link, you don't need an elaborate Web site. You do like single page website. It's with checkout links. Do you know a lot of other people who you could describe, as I guess, using the same terms? You describe yourself as a parallel entrepreneur making these physical like competing with you, who are the other Daniel Basket. I don't I would love to meet if you're listening to this. I would love to meet people that are working on multiple businesses simultaneously because I and people are always told me not to do bus like I'll be advice. Lee got his toe like focus on one thing. But I know people working on lots of projects, but not multiple projects involving customers. Yeah, yeah, I do, too. I know a lot of people making stuff. They're just not like they're usually not that passionate. It's like if you're a singer. Most singers aren't that passionate about also marketing their music and distributing it to customers and selling it to the same with people that I know who are sort of physical makers, like most of you guys aren't actually selling stuff. Yeah, it is. I I try to encourage people to sell stuff, but I think it's like I mean, some people, my friends who are artists and make a lot of stuff. I often tell them to solve things. They're like No, like capitalism sucks. Ruin it and it's like not really, I guess that's an ideology that I mean you still there. Still participating in a capitalist world. Yeah, and it was not awful to charge. It's like, great to charge people for services and things that wouldn't be cool if you could just, like, pay people all the time for weird performances. Like if someone says a beautiful sentence like you could just tip them micro payment here, get me a gift. And it was solid. Yeah, I think. Well, I think often, people, Yeah, people get uncomfortable with charging with charging for something that they thought was a fun problem to solve, especially engineers that are used to getting paid to have a full time job. And so their side projects, they always consider side projects. They never consider that to be like a source of revenue. Like with me. I haven't had a full time job, so I'm like, What can I sell today? I wake up and look around me. What objects don't have. What can I sell today? And I think that if you're in a certain pressure, is tons of jobs available? There are tons of jobs available CZ for, like, painters and sculptors. So have to be like what limited resource is. Do I have. And how can I convert that into money? Second favorite, right? Yeah, it's cool. Looking of the, I guess, like the aesthetic differences between different types of people on Maker's eye was just sat Micro Compal couple weeks ago and everybody at Micro Compass kind of like an Andy hacker. They're usually developers who want to make some sort of software is a service business and sell that you're like a physical tinkerer and maker you've got, like, you know, this drive to the look around your house and sell things. Yeah, I think people in L. A is sucking my buddy Julian that they're really into e commerce in L. A. Like almost all the big stars coming out of L. A a r e commerce focused, I got a conference and Boise, Idaho, every year called Craft Plus Commerce and everybody there is a blogger. Yeah, I'll have, like, blog's about Amazon shopping, addictions and food and etcetera. And they're all different ways to sort of make money online. But like, people don't really cross over and the people sort of like don't they look down on the other groups, But there's kind of these invisible boundaries. People like, Well, that's not the real way to do it. So that's why it's like how you see yourself fitting into any of these groups or you're just sort of like a free floating person entity. Like, Do you look up to anybody and you inspired by anybody? Hear you? Is there anyone that you're trying to be rude or anything on Tio have done a list of things I wanted create a guess. Um, I'm very driven by ideas. Not not thinking about myself is a person that, like, has I'm just excited about ideas existing. So I'm don't think like I need to be a person with all these businesses right more. It's more like I want this thing to exist. Oh, I guess is a business. Sometimes it's not a project I'm really excited about. This is not I don't just do e commerce stuff, but like I'm I do a lot of exploration of abandoned buildings. I'm very interested in just exploring space is so I have, with lots of planning, have gone to interesting places that it's difficult for public to go to on. So I started this service called Last Tents, Tours where I actually like borrowed a matter port camera and so I could create a V R scans of places so people could access these abandoned spaces and get a tour of it. And I've been pitching this to cities to, like have me do historical documentation. But no one, like, really will pay me to do about this Really excited about this thing to exist, but sort of like, I don't know. I think I have. I have lots of hobbies and interests. And then I tried to think like, Okay, how do I turn this into some sort of product that will, like, support this hobby? Do you think that the business side of things ever sucks the joy out of any of your hobbies or projects? Oh, yeah, totally. I usedto love painting end after painting, I may have painted, I don't know, 5,000 helmets like a crazy. I don't know exactly how many helmets I've painted, lots of hours painting I've painted for, like, over 10,000 hours or something. I after four years I hated painting or like I had a complicated relationship with it. It was no LA. It was like work. It's like I was thinking like as I'm painting, It's just like my Monday an office job is painting, and I would not look forward to it by force myself to do it. And I liked coming up with new images. I was excited about the whole project and conceptual way like the possibilities are endless for helmets. When I stop let enjoying painting, I started researching ways to automate it, which I'm still working on and like partway there but that it's sort of like I stopped drawing and I stop sketching, drawing and like, kind of like lost my whole like, visual, our drive. So then, a year ago, I stopped painting helmets entirely, and then it sort of has come back. Right now I have an impulse to paint again. So I think you could totally get burnt out once you start getting paid for what you think. What what your creative hobby is when you start getting paid, you associate that with money. It's not fun anymore, and it's good to like quit it and then come back to it. Yeah, I guess that's the good part of never really fully shutting down your business. You can always come back to it. It's always there. You said that you are more passionate about ideas themselves. In any particular outcome. You're like, I need to be Daniel Baskin, owner of 50 Company, and it's just I don't I don't need to be. I need to Don't need to be the CEO of a startup even though I am Maybe that is maybe that explains why your ideas sort of interrupt each other. If you don't have a particular outcome you're going for and then you get a new idea excited to build, then why not switch and start working on this other idea? Totally. And I mean, that could be a problem, because I think if I were to stick with one thing, if I was like, I want to run with branded fruit and I want to, like, not on ly do branded fruit. If they got a new system for PLU codes and I want a lake, be Daniel, basket off the produce industry. I could do a lot with that, but like I'm not, I'm conflicted because I have all these other identities, I guess. Yeah, I mean, you're pretty close to Daniel, basket of the fruit and you came in here. I don't know what you say. You're having a fruit day. Yeah, I said today was a fruit day. That's why I'm late. Because I had a fruit assembly line. Okay. We're goingto they're all these. Yeah, we're going to get to that. Let's let's go like the middle of your history before we go to the phase of your life. When did you move to California? And why did you make that decision? Yeah, I moved three years ago. A little over three years ago. I was running out. I was running everything out of I was in this weird live work space above a bar in the East Village. Cool space. I lived with a neon sign maker and wed a wood shop in our kitchen. And it was great, but I ran out of space for all. Like my floor was just covered in boxes with helmets. I had clients come over which some of them were entertained by my place. But it was not that professional. So it was like looking for a new place to move to in New York. I didn't imagine living in California and my friends in San Francisco said like, Hey, we're like, actually going Teo, be leaving our apartment for three months. If you want to, like, come here for the winter, you can stay with us. You didn't, like, Stay out, Stay in our place. It's not like, Oh, what if I just, like, lived in San Francisco for three months among And then I moved on and I never left. Welcome to the club. Yeah, every single year, I think I've got two years left. I've been saying that for eight years. Yeah, and I was in New York for 10 years. I think it's difficult you could get kind of locked into living in a city when you're not aware that you might enjoy different place. So I think it's good to force yourself to just live somewhere else because you might like and moving agreement have been pulled the plug yet, But one day Yeah. Okay, So he moved from New York. You're living here with your friends. Did you start a new business once removed here? Yes, many of them. Within a few months of moving here, actually, like, I mean, this was just like one week business was like poking mongo craze, and I created a battery that looks like a pokey ball, which went viral on the Internet. And I sold lots of them and hired 25 people, and we had an assembly line and made them for, like, three weeks on. That was like E. Then I I only did this for a short amount of time, but I had my helmet business. I brought my tricycle. I brought one. I had three try schools in New York and just brought one over. I also was doing my my cloud storage units that were like these clouds you khun store things in. I started doing custom avocados when I moved here because the avocados where I could get better deals on avocados in San Francisco and more people are interested in all the photos here. I also did a lot of my companies. They're sort of Bay area jokes, too. Like I started selling sweaters for drones and walking through the idea behind sweaters for drones. Yeah, I made a sweater for my drone, just like one would have. Ah, dog sweater. And ah, have you knitted a sweater entered? No, it it seems like I net the sweater I wanted to spend is very little time as possible on this. So I found some knit socks and cut up the socks and reset them together and attacks him to your drone. And yeah, I mean, I made, like, a buttoned up and I attached it. Teo a drone. Ah, that was broken because I thought of the idea and I didn't even have a drone, but just put a message out into the world. Hey, can I borrow someone's drone? And someone gave me. They're, like, sort of broken drone. But this went viral on the Internet and island drone companies started sending with their drones for sweaters. Then I had a pilot drones with sweaters and I and I a soul. Yeah, I get enquiries about this a lot. I kind of don't sell them anymore, because I don't I don't think it's something anyone needs like I can't justify. I can't justify spending time on drone sweaters. There is actually a use case for it. If I wanted Teo if I wanted to work with companies, Tio Tio figure out like sleek ways to conserve drone battery life when that's cold weather outside cause batteries train faster. There could be, like, this stylish solution with, like, a heated drone sweater. But I haven't really I know carry that much about drones. So a lot of people are trying to start company using some of the ideas, and they're very serious about this. You're starting companies is basically jokes sometimes. I mean, that's yeah, it's fun for me. Like I love launching ideas and setting up landing pages like this is a hobbyist like set up landing pages for first stuff s o I launch. This is a joke. And then people thought it was serious, and then I thought no one would want to buy it, But people dio people, and this has happened for a few products, or I think everyone will hate this and they'll understand when I'm making fun of the Bay Area, But yet they want the thing. Okay, so my VC trading cards, which I sort of kept anonymous, but the sea trading cards? Yeah. Easy trading cards, sweater letters for drones. Why do people want these things? And like, I guess what I'm getting at is how do you make something go viral? What is What is the a sort of common thread between what makes something blow up? Is it because they're jokes? Are Is there something else that you're doing really get people interested in the things that you're building? Yeah. I mean, I think a percentage of the stuff that is ajoke gets media attention, and people want to be part of that joke. And they want to be part of the story that they're the person buying that thing, like this joke speaks to them. They are the recipient of the joke, and they wanted to. But often it's totally unexpected, like I put something online like the VC trading cards. Actually, we're super popular in Japan because there's both. Trading card culture is so strong there and similar, and there's also a sort of obsession with Silicon Valley there. And so I sold a lot. Teo people in Japan by didn't like realize that, but I don't know why people impulse purchase things. I don't understand it either, Like I'm not. I don't really buy things on the Internet. When I find something funny, I think like it's very easy to be on Twitter and you find something at 1 a.m. and you just I want that shit to me in three Days school. Yeah, I see fine manner that I just laugh and then click the next thing. Yeah, I don't buy it either. I saw there's a community in online think it's called a Cloud Appreciation Society, and it's a community of people who appreciate clouds. Oh, I'd love to, to learn more thinks they charge like 25 or 50 bucks for membership. And they got like 30,000 members. Is that what is The membership includes looking black like so prove thistle thing. People really love being part of special clubs. I think that's especially with I think, like a lot of brands have sort of this whole lifestyle, Like if you buy our shirt, you are now like a person that Khun Like is part of our whole instagram lifestyle. Had a whole box of any hacker starts right here. If you want one, you could be part of the crew. This is like this is interesting because it's maybe it's an under looked marketing tactic, at least in like the circles and I travel in. We're like being novel and funny and having personality. And just I'm not just doing something different than everybody else is doing can getyou media attention beyond just building something that's super useful. That's the thing, right? Like I mean, I like building useful things and Khun justify my jokes is useful, like the swag like sweat swag produce. Putting logo's on oranges and avocados is like seems really silly, but actually, like, kind of useful because there's a lot of waste when you get your digits pin understand your stress balls, and it's actually like solving a problem of, like, not wasting as much plastic if you want to, like, promote something. And it also solves this problem of like, Oh, nobody's taking pictures of the water bottle they get, But they'll take a picture of an orange because it's novel, So there's like some utility in it. I'd rather on ly make useful things. I just think of a lot of dumb jokes, and they are like, I mean, it's important for any If you have, like a useful product, it's so hard to get press about it. Journalists love weird, controversial, like funny stories, and so it's a challenge. If you do have a useful thing like, How do you spin a How do you spend a weird surrealist angle on it so that you get some sort of press has a new task manager that's making people 5% more productive? No wants to write a story on that to do list. Yeah, let's talk about Let's talk about your You're branded produce. Okay? Sure. Branded fruit is an energy company. What is this exactly? Who's buying it? How did you get the idea? Yeah, branded fruit. I started as the company custom avocados dot com, and I did this before I even had a website. My friend was having a barbecue and her company had recently been acquired. And I thought it be sort of funny if I brought swag from the new company name to the barbecue as though their life was like, now owned by their new company. Like your life has been acquired, your barbecue has been acquired. So I brought these avocados I made for avocados, and it's like left him on the table, and I noticed, like all these people are taking pictures of them and they were just looking at them, and they're fascinated, like, how did you do it and they were putting them on Instagram like, Oh, actually, this is like great marketing, like this company who didn't even buy these is now getting like mentions on Twitter. And so I thought Okay, well, I think I could probably turn this into a company and Celia's I set up and it took Oh, it took some time to actually, like I think this was in New York. I moved to San Francisco. I set it up, actually launched the idea for the stupid ideas hackathon, which is a great conference that happens once a year where your goal is to build something that is useless, which is a challenge. And I think Avocados Dhoni they're not useless. But I launched it there, and I people tweeted about it. And so companies actually saw this and I actually got in order with sales force. They wanted 500 avocados and back twice out of the blue cells for us. Make us five. They're like, Oh, this would be great for our Cinco de Mayo party for our team and they wanted 500 then other companies wanted smaller amounts, and I was fine. Some people like wanted them just as inside jokes. I did like a wedding proposal. Our marriage proposal on a serious of avocados. Let this person left throughout their apartment. And I did this for, like a year. I mean, just like, I don't know a few times a month by yourself. Yeah. How long does it take one person to carve its not cars? It's applied to the surface. You can't. Yeah. I mean, it's constantly getting faster because I'm using new technology. It was like I was doing a very slow process, going to the store and finding perfect avocado. That is the perfect level of unripe right bidness is like That takes time. But then I found farms and I had, like an avocado supplier, and I ended up expanding less. I did avocados for like, two years, and I thought, because in my spare time, I make landing pages and buy domain names. It's like, What about all fruit? Why not, like, why not carrots? Why not peppers? Why not pineapples? And I just bought the domain name branded for Dotcom because it's available and it's sort of like fake acquired custom avocados and your direction, and I think I did on Facebook, but it was sort of a joke, and the new direction of the company was, like all produce like brands on everything and sort of like a surrealist dystopian way, just like printed a bunch of brands like I put airbnb on like a piece of broccoli. And I made all these samples and put them on my site, and it ended up getting press in fast company Do I mean, this was my own fault? I did. I did tippet. I didn't tip it to them, but it got press and it made its way until, like, marketing are like promotional items. Trade publications, as this is the new like this is the newest swag. And I talked to people who had been in the industry for 20 years, and they're like, I've never seen Logo's on fruit before And it's to me. It's such like a an obvious idea, I guess. Like Yeah, it is. Yeah, this hasn't existed in, like, 20 years of weird promotional items on DSO cos I mean yeah, pretty large companies reaching out to me, and they want 1,000 oranges to give out for an event or five falls in oranges or avocados or Clementine's pineapples. I don't do bananas anymore, but at one point I did. So when you when you tip off fast company, you get some press. You expecting it to be about interest? You have a plan at that point for exactly what your case is going to look like. No, that's okay. I didn't say I wasn't a direct tip too fast company. Basically, there was an article about how we spill the swag industry was, and I just e mailed the journalist who wrote about it that this is why all swag should be avocados or something silly. But like I told her I was doing with Lake Waste Free Alternative to swag. And she wanted to help on the phone and learned Mohr and we had a long conversation about manufacturing and the wastefulness of swag like I've manufactured things in China before. So I know like if the logo is off center, they threw out the whole product, and it's like crazy how much stuff is wasted and how no one even cares about the thing like it's just incredible that so much time, so many labor hours going into things that no one wants. But we had this long conversation, and then she ended up writing an article about it. But I didn't know. I didn't know that it was going to be featured in fast company. So one day at 5:30 a.m. My phone starts ringing and someone who wants branded fruit like that's interesting. And then, like two minutes later, my phone rings again and I will check my I open up my email and I just have like in about I have, like, tons of requests. I mean, within the 1st 3 days, I had, like, 100 50 requests for fruit, and this is just you by yourself. At this point, I was yes, well, I was home and then my co founder for my voice chat app was on the couch at the time, and he observed this whole thing happen. And then the two of us sorted through all my e mails and set up in air table like organized everything, and I didn't even have like, my website. There was no way to purchase that. It was just a form, and I just switched everything to shop within a day switch everything to Shopify and change my photography and like, set up a nicer form and had a whole like way of tagging inbound orders and, like, set this whole thing up in a day, which I should have done in advance. But I didn't know. Well, that's crazy. You're actually getting paying. Customers are people who want to pay you for what you've built. Absolutely nothing besides the landing page I had I had done in some fruit, right? Not much, though. I mean, I had done probably under 1,500 pieces of fruit in my lifetime, which I guess is seems low. But yeah, like the whole branded fruit business was pretty new, and no one had ever purchased something from that domain name. They had purchased stuff from up custom avocados, but yeah, and I didn't spend like I mean, I set up the whole website in just an afternoon. I bought a bunch of fruit, put logos on it and used, like some of my earlier client work. That's what's amazing to me, because I know so many people who will work on something for like a year and not get a single paying customer Well right then. That's what you should test ideas without spending any time and money on them. Like to see, like, Bill make your thing better, as people are paying. I sort of freaked out when I first started getting so many orders. Sounds like there's no way I could make this much fruit like I don't have a van I don't have Where do I get my fruit wholesale? I had to figure this all out, and I was thinking like, Oh, maybe I should have an investor, and that was like, No way. I could just, like, charge people and then figure it out incrementally and do like what I can. And I guess if my first like five orders are not perfect, That's okay. At what point did you start hiring people on scaling up the operation? Within three days, I hired a full time assistant because my my inbox was just crazy, and I and I was also working on my other company. And so I didn't want to spend 100% my time on fruit. I also couldn't Brandel effort alone. And, yeah, a friend of mine really wanted Teo work on branded fruit she was excited about the business. I was like, Yeah, let's try it out like, yeah, come over and we'll sort of work on random stuff together and we'll see. And she yeah, she's been like my full time assistant for, like, guess over three months. Yeah, and that you've got what you wanted. You say you had work. There's a There's nine people working at the fruit factory today. Yeah, it's ruling. I mean, some days that's one person somedays it's three. It's depends on the order because we have to ship out same day. So describe the listeners this process of having a fruit factor theory in a studio having a fruit factory, and it's into some. It's an assembly line. I call it the Fruit Force. But for some free factory, it's an assembly line. I mean, it is imagine 2,000 oranges on a table and everyone's doing apart and the oranges air coming off the table into boxes. And there's someone like preparing all the boxes so that they have the right there package in the right way so they don't bruise in the mail. And like there's someone putting the perishable stickers, Everyone, it's like you divide everything into a micro task. I've done factories before in like, I learn each time like how to set up a system and and then try to make it fun. Like I I actually really interested in the social aspect of factories. Like what people are coming in today and what is their dynamic like? And do these people distract each other like, what is the conversation going to be about? And so I tried t try toe like, curate, make socially engineering, I guess. I mean, there's only so I mean, you can't really like things happen organically also, like Don't know. I feel some people during the factory and I haven't met them before. But yeah, people like I actually have actually of a wait list to work on my factory was goingto say there are a lot of fun. I know. Yeah, well, that's like my Yeah, and I kind of want to have a separate ticketed factory for all the people that are on the wait list and just start selling tickets. To fact, to work on an assembly line is like, weird as only the creator piece joke, but like, yeah, I mean, I basically haven't email list and then just will. If I need help for something, we'll just he blast everyone and see who's available. And I mean, it's a mix of who's available that day because I only do it last minute. I don't I can't plan in advance first for stuff like fruit. You gotta pay for it. Yeah. Okay, so I want to talk about your last company, the one you're most excited about. Dial up before that. I want to give listeners a snapshot of how well branded food is doing such a great OK, sharing some revenue numbers about Yeah, eso. So the fast company article launched mid December than it took me, like a week to set of heating up to charge people. So since since January 1st, I have sold $59,000 in fruit, but that includes shipping and stuff. That's not, but that's not the same, but I But I have transacted $59,000 through my shopify and just fruit alone in like bananas and oranges and avocados. That's long, which is crazy. It's a lot of fruit, but no longer bananas. No, bananas don't ship. Well, hey, I talked of. Ah, I talked to the director of the International Banana Association through my app, like we got connected in a in a way, and it's a shipping. Bananas is, like, very difficult. I have ideas for, like, how to improve banana shipping, but it's just easier to say no, no, no to that idea. And that's like the temperature changes and they're just bruise easily. And, yeah, let's talk about your app that connected you to this banana expert. What is dial up? Okay, dial up is a voice chat app that calls your phone a specific intervals like, Let's say, Tuesday at seven PM, your phone rings and it connects you with a random person in a specific line that you've signed up Tio. So, like if you and 10 friends want Teo, always stick, stay connected with each other through phone calls, it just calls you and connects you. And this could be, ah, a group of people with similar interests, like there's ah, we have a line for farming on my line. I mean, like a channel. But yeah, there's like a line for farming, and so people that are interested in, like ag attack will like on Sundays at 4 p.m. Like their phones will ring and they'll get connected and little be matched with. The random person will have a one on one. And you could do this with us with just one person. So you'd be like, mashed with you Always match with, um, or you could do it with, like, 300 people for your conference, or like 1,000 people, and continue, like having these meaningful conversations like pretty frequently. Is this another idea that came out of you solving one of your own problems? Literally. It's both, like my problems and Max, my co founders problems. So years ago, Max created this This art project called Colin the night that was a library of people discussing their dreams. And it would call people in the middle of the night between 2 a.m. and five am like it random days and they'd pick up. They'd be connected to a stranger. They discussed their dreams that would be recorded. And so there's a library and 5,000 people are on this. There's like a library of people talking about their dreams Are 5,000 people voluntarily signed up called between two and 5 a.m. And all over the world. But it wasn't just about dreams, and people would, like, talk about all these different things. And he showed me the archives. I was very interested in this. I've always been interested in, like, voice conversations. Kind of like from being a painter, like I actually can't at like when my when my day job was painting actually couldn't really spent much time on the Internet. So listen, plots of podcasts and I'd have people call me as a way to communicate with me because I couldn't, like, check Twitter. So I also have been making audio recordings for many years. But s o. I learned about this and like, kind of around the same time. I was getting a lot of emails from, like, entrepreneurs that wanted advice. And I thought that Okay, it's kind of like someone wants to talk to me for advice, but they kind of just wanted verbalize what's on their mind. And this is like this helpful therapy sort of thing. And what I noticed also, like with column a night that, like it's very therapeutic and people have all these realizations when they're just like talking to someone over the phone. And I thought, Okay, well, what if I connected all the people that are reaching out to me with each other so that, like an entrepreneur to talkto another entrepreneur and Max and I were discussing this and thought like, Okay, let's try it just with us in a small group of friends. And so we're all self employed. We're all calling each other. Then it sort of seemed like we were each other's bosses, and we created an app called your Boss. And it was like role play as a boss for strangers. And if you're self employed, freelancer moat. We worked on this for a few months, launched it, and the APP store, a few 100 people joined all over the world is interesting, like there are a lot of people on it that were not self employed or freelance. There were significant about people that were self employed and working on all these interesting projects like a shoemaker in England and like a set designer in Mumbai and all these people working on their thing, there are people that just had, like they had a full time job. They were just, like, really interested in talk and like having a having a conversation with someone. And then we had all these. These people say, like I want this, but I want to choose who I talk to you like I really liked the person I just met on the phone. How do I get reconnected? So then we decided to just be, ah, voice chat out. Not just for not just for people pretending the others boss, but for, like, any sort of interest or group of people you want to stay in touch with and, like, kind of It's relevant now because I have so many friends that are leaving Facebook and Twitter, and I'm just like, Oh, just join my dial up line and we can stay in touch because I otherwise I'll have no awareness of what's going. It'll just kind of like if I don't plan to, like, get lunch with you, I will never I will never know what's going on in your life, and it's really sad that I'd be dependent on Facebook or Twitter till, like, haven't having awareness of another person's like, Oh, join my dial up line and like I I will get connected to you over the phone at a specific interval, like you say thursday at 5 p.m. Connect me to the specific person, and then you calls them. Yeah, I mean, or what I do with my dialect line is I have it calls a random person, right? For so I can get connected to a random friend. Okay, You don't even know who it's going to be. And they don't even open call is going to come. Yeah, they don't know that if they're going to get called or not, but like it could be we could I could set up a one on one with someone and say that Yes. Every every once a month on a Thursday at 4 p.m. Our phones will ring and we'll have a conversation. Yeah, and there's also, like this prompt at the beginning of the conversation. But I like I make my promise weird. But like, there's props like, if you want to ask a specific question like, what do you up to you right now? Or like, Go look at the moon and tell me what's on your mind. I don't like you reading these promise to people. Is there a voice? Yeah, I've recorded for all of the lot all the lines we have that are like Die Ellipse lines, because when you join the app, there's like 12 different lines you could join. It's me and Max that recorded all the intros with different music that's like 32nd clips, and it's like for the further boss line. It's like this eighties synth music, and I'm like, When's your next deadline? And then people talk to each other and try to answer that question. There's a line where you just, like, talk about whether in nature and I ask questions about insects or it's like it's random stuff. But it is like having a very detailed question inspires whole conversation. So, out of all the things we talked about, this is the how we doing on time? Oh, I'm good. I'm just getting Ah, One of the calls was just triggered Broke. The app is calling me right now. It's the immersive. Does I signed up the immersive design some. It s so every Thursday at 5 15 pm the phone rings and I can see Yeah, I see the call coming in and some is called, I should have picked it up. Actually, it would be funny, and it was like reporting a podcast. So what happens if you don't pick it up? It's It's just they connected somebody else. Yes, they get connected to someone else. So if I don't pick up, it's like you'll still get a match. Yeah, So out of all the things we talked about, this is the only business we've covered so far. That's 100% pure AP. Everything else has had some sort of physical e commerce, physical good component to it. And your experience. What's what are some of the differences? House is different than building a physical products. Is it? Harder is and easier. Oh, I mean, it's so it's so nice. Like okay. Dealing with shipping physical things is like so limiting is still like how many people you could reach and like also, you're dealing with the forces of lost packages and like there's just so many issues with, like, the physical goods and this idea I'm very excited about. But it, like, works for thousands of people like every build it well, like thousands of people can use it and more. And it's also like, I mean, it's This is such a different project because this is like this is about human relationships and connections and stuff versus, like, decorative, whimsical things, which is most of the other stuff I've done. Yeah, I mean, it's it's totally different, like I'm doing. I'm doing you extra sign for this, and it's like a totally different I've had to, like, design things, a very different wake. So it's like, Oh, how my designing like people creating their username versus like how my designing, like a tapestry contraption thing for someone's wall is very different. I'm really excited about this idea. It's kind of awesome that if we're building this technology that all these people can use it, and it's like one project first this, like, make something, ship it out and it's gone. Remake. The things should be at school. Yeah, I was kind of a natural ending point. If you're doing physical goods where you've made all the things I'm going to make and now you have to order more or you could just not order more, you was with your digital out. This it's an evolving Yeah, the app is like this this, like, giant evolving thing. I said, Everyone, it never It will never die. Well, there's no end, right? I mean, there's constant. The more the more users you have, the more future requests there will be. The more possible the the the When your technology works, the more possible directions you can go in. And it's sort of like, Yeah, it's this, like massive sculpture, not a sculpture. It is. It is sort of like a sculpture. You're talking about these different directions and go and you're talking about. Okay, well, you've got your boss, which is for entrepreneurs. It's Caroline. Yeah, right. They've got lines you've got. I'm basically a great line for anything. You've got business users, you've got consumers. It's true. How do you make money from this? How do you like where you go is a business, right? I mean, we don't. So if it's if your lines under 20 this is like our basic pricing structure. If you're Linus under 20 people, it's free. And if it's over 20 people, you're going to pay like, $10 a month. And if it's over 100 people on your conference then it would be a different price. So this way, like we're not going to charge you if you want to connect your family and like a monthly call like that seems. But that's something that people are not used to paying for and also like I want. I want to like facility these conversations. But if it's like some meet up group that has a budget and like has over 20 people in it, then that will be a monthly payment. Sounds like you've got a naturally settled on being B to be charging businesses and letting consumer J no, I dont think like, I think, that some people would want to pay $10 a month for a large group, right? It's not necessarily a business. I think there's also all these features that will build later on. I mean, this is just the pricing structure we're doing for the next few months. Well, while we build out the lines feature, but like I think that there could be all these other features like more frequent calls and all these sort of like micro payments that people could D'oh yeah, Have you found that it's anymore? Difficult to grow and get pressed for digital app, which, which there are many millions compared to like, very unique, you know, branded free product are sweater drones. No, I'm not worried about this. It'll because I have, like, a bunch of tricks, Okay. I mean, I have, like, I think that I mean so if you're launching an app like focus on and I won't reveal what my stunts are, but, like, I have good stories about this up Ah, that'll release in the next few months. But focus on one very small detail, detail of the technology or creating. That's a good That's a really good story. You have a whole repertoire of tricks. Give us atleast like half of a trick trick this. Yeah. Okay, here's how I I've had a lot of success telling people about my act by pulling out a floppy disk which, unfortunately, didn't bring. But I have, like, tons of floppy disks that, like give people the link to sign up for the app and explain what it is. But it looks like a retro disc, actually, like for the immersive design summit, I left like a few 100 floppy disks lying around the whole conference that all looks like retro videogames and stuff. And some just looked like weird, safe, like save files. I made a whole spectrum of floppy disks like, what is this? And then they went to the website. Well, I'm planning on doing like a mass mailing of floppy disks. Kind of like a Well, I don't know anyone else's eyes in their app by mailing people stuff. Oh, yeah. People love artifacts and things I think people enjoy. And maybe I'm biased because I enjoy this. But I think people enjoy game elements tio to technology, right to signing up for something like it should be fun and exciting, as opposed to like, I would never wanna like purchase of Facebook ad to tell people about, like, connect with your friends. And then we're like spending like a dollar 13 per click. I never wantto like give Facebook money to get people to sign up for are up. But like if I am giving someone this like, interesting story like, I got a mysterious floppy disk in the mail and then it led me to this site where, like I wasn't sure if it was real or not, and then I read it and was like, Oh, actually, I do want this. I think like that's like That's a good way Teo, get people to sign up like also like it's I think it's super important to not take I I'm very worried, like, now that I have this app that I'll sound like a startup when I'm, like, Sign up for my AP like I tell friends, like, Run into an old friend I'm like, Are you on my Are you on my app yet? And I don't like this about myself. So I also I don't want to, like, take this idea too seriously. Even though I do, I don't want to come across a so I take it too seriously. So I think if it if it's playful in the way that I'm sharing it is is both like revealing what the product is. But it's also playful and like a game and also doesn't seem too much like a startup trying to disrupt how people communicate like that's a good way to market something, trying your hardest to not be like every other person in San Francisco. Yeah, our landing page is really weird you, Khun. See it? We have dial up dot com and it looks like a retro website. I'm going for like my like I think Craigslist is beautifully designed and I could I could make a landing page that has, like, the flat humans and like the three bullet points of icons and test, I mean, there's like a whole formula for like, being a startup. But like, this isn't that interesting to me because I think so much of it is noise, because there's just way too many start ups there. Do the same athletic and a lot of these air like work because it's like, Oh, you trust this format But I'd rather people think like, Oh, I don't know if this is like an art project or or a company, but it's very much a company, but like I think I don't want to. I don't want to come across like we're for a nap. You have this drive almost too, just, like, not fit in any particular box to not not be part of a group, which is really cool because it makes you so different, like that novelty makes you way more interesting to the press to users to customers. Yeah, and it's It's hard to do because I think when you're starting a company, there's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of like should I make? This decision is that I go that direction and you don't know. And I think part of being human is when you're uncertain, you just ask other people your copy of the people and you feel good about that. Yeah, it's cool. This app like eye when it was your boss connected to users all the time. So I had a phone conversation with someone in Norway and, like I, I could ask anyone. I was connected. Teo, like, Hey, what do you want this phone future for anything else in your life and like got tons of feedback? And because I'm able to, like, talk two people using the app, it's like Const. There's a constant like there's a constant connection to the end user for me. I think it's easy for a lot of companies to sort of build things in a vacuum, and they have this again. Here's the market, like I know about the market and then they have this hypothesis and they're like pretty sure it'll work, but they're not even talking to the person or, like, have an understanding like a personal understanding of who the through the end user is. So I think, like, I think that would also be motivating for me if I didn't if I didn't think like I was building anything that was valuable for anyone and then continued to stick with my hypothesis because I don't want to be wrong, like I would not enjoy that for Max and I. We we want Teo. We want to design, like the best way for people to have ah have, like, a meaningful conversation in the year 2,019 with the thing that they have on that much is their phone. So I think that's such a great hack to building valuable products. To be able to talk to people kind of using your product is a natural extension of building it. You kind of have to use it to talk to people who really yeah, like the other half of any hackers, is an online community, and it's the same thing, like whether or not I want to talk to people. I have two every day like they will let me know what they need to see in the product itself, even if I don't ask. Yes, so it's sort of an unfair advantage. Actually, we talked about focus a little bit earlier on and how hard it is to focus was actually on a call, a couple of friends and one of them she was asking, How do I focus? You know, I feel like I jump from feature to feature idea idea the two of us on the collar like we do the exact same thing. We have no idea it's difficult. I mean, I kind of always feel I always feel like I'm not productive and focused constantly. I mean, that's helpful to feel that way, because if I felt too comfortable, then I would like, not make new things. But yeah, I think like, I don't know, it's important to have a percentage of the time where calm things at whim and then another percentage of the time, like, do really boring stuff, repetitive Lee Lake, maybe, and just force yourself to I. I think it is important to allow yourself to explore distractions, and I think, like another thing that is important to Dio without losing focus is to like think about what your mission is and then align your decisions with the mission. Well, for a lot of my other companies, I had, I mean for my helmet company. Like I had this grand vision. Teo alter graphics on all helmets, and I ended up manufacturing my own moulds and made all these steps towards doing like, mass production of customized, unique designs. But I needed to spend more time on that. But what I was doing was I was just responding to the clients that we're ready to pay me there like I need five home. That's by Tuesday. Will you do it like Yes, because that is my job. I should be working on this company and like the filling orders when it would be in my best interest to ignore the immediate pile of cash and like work on the longer term vision, even though I wasn't getting paid and it's really difficult, Tio, it's I mean, it's easy to be swayed. Teo, be swayed for what you're working on by immediate positive outcomes, as opposed to like what you're large vision is and be better for you to reject, to reject a lot of things that bring you money or bring you some value. If they don't align with, like what you want the larger thing to be like two years from that point, what would you say is your mission for yourself As an entrepreneur, you talked earlier about how you really like making new ideas, eyes that what you want to deal with for the rest of your life, you wanna work on dial up and turn it into something huge. I do. I I do want to work on dialogue because dialup itself feels infinite to me. Like if it was just a single, I get I It was just a single product. Like if we were a simple, like SAS tool for scheduling phone calls, I would not want to work on that from for like many years, this feels infinite because, like just based on all the all the people that are joining and requesting new lines and their things I haven't thought of before and also like the technology, we have to connect people through phone calls like it feels like there's a many companies within the company, so I'm excited about it. I look for these, like fractal infinite ideas that I want to work. So I think this. But I definitely want to run this for the next few years. I think, like for like my light like a lifetime vision of mine. I don't doubt that I won't have more. Just based on based on what I know about myself from the last 30 years, I will probably continuously think of stuff. I think a challenge I face is that I have to, like, put things on the shelf, not act upon things immediately. Especially as like multiple companies of mine are scaling and require my attention. I can'tjust at whim on a Sunday, create any landing page because it could. People might want the thing for me and then might actually want. I know, and it's like I've learned my lesson enough times that like, Oh, I could launch something and people might want to buy it Even Mo of 1st 3 times It seems like luck and it seems magical. It's like OK, actually, probably shouldn't put myself in a position where I have to fulfill a bunch of orders from my dumb joke So I'm like I have to be more strict with myself, launching ideas or figure out howto hair people. Yeah, well, there are 30 40,000 people. Listen to this thing. Who themselves would love to have the magical ability of waiting isn't having people actually want them? What's your advice? After years of building business after business for people who want to learn to do what you do? Yeah, I think like it's who I think it's super important. Tio launch things when you don't think when you're kind of nervous about it and you don't think it's polished and maybe only a few people told you was a good idea. But like it's really important to just as simple as you can make it. Launch the thing and see whether or not you should kill it or continue to do it because there's a few projects Mind that I feel like I wasted did time on and and that's valuable time that you could be spending on lots of other things. But there's also things that if I had waited toe launch it, it would never have any reach. It would never have done anything, and I you know, just tried to launch things as quick as possible. Also, like you don't need. You don't necessarily need money and resources to do something, even if it's a huge idea. Like what version of the thing? How can you reduce that thing? Two very simple version, even if it's just collecting someone's email address like toe, actually know whether or not your idea is worth pursuing. And then how can you incrementally take steps to, like, make that thing riel and figure out if it's even worth it? It's great advice. Channel your inner, scrappy set prop designer to get an early yeah, pretend, but also like the set designer was working for she before she became a set designer, she worked at a Ford factory. And so the combination of like working for a set designer whose background is assembly line like It's like we would like, come back with a pile of trash to the studio. And then we had to, like formed assembly line and turn the trash into flowers. And like so it's like a good philosophy, too. Like pretend you're on an assembly line. I actually make yourself do the work, like even when you're making a landing page and you're like, I have to like, make sure there's a way Tio email me on every page was like, Ah, lot of the work I do is pretty is kind of boring when I'm actually like sitting down and doing it. But it's important to, like, do boring work, pretend you're on an assembly line. And also he's very limited. Resource is well enough to get you on, like an Andy Akers edema or in office hours or something, cause I would love to see actual people from the hackers community tried to interact with you in here. But Daniel, thank you so much for coming. Thank you. Thank you for having me. This was fun. Yeah, it's been a joy. Having you ever Where can listeners go to you? Find out more about you and the 23 things that you're working? Yup. You can go. Teo daniel baskin dot com Which is this? My name or you Khun, go. Teo, you go to dial up dot com and maybe I'll create a Maybe I'll create a line for the people listening to this pot gas. That way we can all connect with each other got when he had somebody. Random phone calls. I can't wait. Yeah, all right. Thank you so much, Tanya. Thank you. 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