Coffee Meets Bagel co-founder on building the 'anti-Tinder' and turning down Mark Cuban

30:02I mean, so many of our hours are wasted on unproductive, just busy work. And so what is that thing that really matters to the company, right? There's only a few things really that has enough leverage to make a big difference to the company. And so learning what those are and also just giving people more flexibility. when people are happy with the way they can work that fit into their lifestyle I believe and I see it there are so much more productive and so those differences yeah I've heard that by the way about efficiency it's like that saying if you want to get something done give it to a busy mom oh yeah because they totally they know how to juggle yeah so would you say looking back now than Arum that that assumption that you previously had you feel like it was incorrect?

30:52I totally completely incorrect and I am a huge fan of hiring working uh working moms and also even just for not not even full-time jobs only right part-time flexible jobs I think there's so much talents out there that we can leverage this is not about okay let's do nice things this is about actually let's produce better results and we got so much talent among working not working but generally females mom um uh pool that i think we can the companies can totally take advantage of yeah be more flexible let's talk more about the takeoff phase of coffee meets bagel can you walk us through how you got the business off the ground you mentioned that it started out with testing, with early users.

31:44You then had some folks who liked what you had done and reached out to you to see if you needed funding. How did it go from, you know, inception to development to then going really big with it? I think a lot of people, when they see companies, they think, oh, like it happened overnight. But, you know, that's not the full story. It happens over time. And so we weren't even thinking about fundraising until we started getting questions from our users like, hey, are you raising? I'm an angel investor, et cetera. And so that's when we thought, okay, this is a sign that perhaps maybe we should seek external funding to really build a team and grow this out.

32:24And so Dawn and I made a trip at that time to San Francisco. We met a bunch of investors here and was lucky enough to raise seed round. And so we moved out to San Francisco and that was really the beginning of I guess building a proper company yeah right I am so curious about the fundraising game and your journey as a woman in tech a fellow HBS alum who you might know is Tatcha founder Vicky Tsai she's previously stated that even though I went to Harvard Business School started off in finance had multiple acquisition offers within the first month of launching had a profitable business with brand awareness and a product and a CPG marketing background, I could not raise a dollar for the life of me.

33:11Now, Arum, you and your team have successfully raised over$20 million, so clearly this doesn't fully apply to you. But I wondered, could you relate to this at all, especially starting out? Yeah, yeah. And you know, what you have to realize is, especially the tradition of venture capital funding, there's sort of the herd mentality that happens. So at some point, maybe the consumer sector is like everything. That's where all the money is going. And then the next year, it's totally out of flavor. And so this is really not, first of all, knowing just this may not be about your business and yourself.

33:52It's really about sort of macro trend also and whatever they're having to prove and go through the firms themselves. And then the other thing is, this is a highly competitive process, right? You know, they're getting pitched hundreds of companies all the time. They don't have the time, really, to properly, like, vet out, especially the early-stage companies. And so what happens is a lot of VCs who are, of course, run by men, they tend to make unconsciously. I think, you know, I don't believe all these people are making consciously biased decisions. But unconsciously, if you don't have the time to really get to know a business and look at all the, especially when there's not much data, right, and you have to be pretty quick at making those, like, few investments that you make in a year, of course you're going to have bias towards things that seem familiar to you, founders who sort of talk and think like you.

34:50So of course, so it's not, I don't blame them. It's more just a systematic thing that's happening. And this is why we need more representation in the investing side of among females. And so, yeah, I can totally relate to that. And that's exactly how I felt too. And after my seed round, which actually was relatively quick, the fundraising was very difficult. And that's when I started really reaching out, okay, what kind of networks can I use? female networks. I mean, I think it's getting better by the day, right? We have more females investing and more female-focused also investment philosophy, et cetera.

35:29And so really leveraging those has been helpful. In 2024, PitchBook data shows that the share of venture funding by female founders actually hit its lowest level in five years, which was already, as you just pointed to, widely known to long be an issue. I mean, I've been covering this for so many years. I was going to ask what you think needs to be done to address this going forward. You've just kind of pointed to the need for more representation. Is there anything else that you think, short of getting more women in those chairs, that would be helpful to founders and female founders? I really don't want to put this all on male investors, because there are so many of them that are actually trying to make change, too.

36:17but it also because it also happens on our side too i think for me at least i can't speak for every other female when i'm actually pitching to male i have my own bias about okay pitching to older male and so i think unconsciously i also put myself sort of in a weaker position and so mentally i have to really prepare myself This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling? Smart move. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19 ,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with the personal price plan.

36:59Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Okay, like we are peer-to-peer. And the other thing that's really been game changing, sort of game changer for me is, and this is why I think, especially if you're minority pitching, this is, I always advise this, is you got to, because it takes a longer time for us to actually get their attention and for them to get it, you got to build that relationship. And one really important lesson I learned is you really don't want this to be a pitch.

37:37you really want this to be hey I'm building this thing what do you think let's give me some advice who should I talk to etc build that relationship and over time have them sort of feel vested and ask you okay like hey looks like it's about time that you raise some more funding I think that is such a much smoother way for minorities and especially females to raise versus like give me one hour of your time and then you make a pitch. Shipping, billing, admin, payroll, marketing. You're managing all the things. So why waste time sending important documents the old-fashioned way? Mail and ship when you want, how you want with Stamps.com.

38:21Print postage on demand 24-7 and schedule pickups from your office or home. Save up to 90 % with automated rate shopping. That's why over 1 million small businesses trust Stamps.com. Go to stamps.com and use code podcast to try stamps.com risk-free for 60 days. Arum, you've also said that Coffee Meets Bagel has been profitable since 2020 and highly profitable at that. We so often hear of tech firms that struggle to make money. What did it take to really get to this point? It's a strategic choice, I believe. And so for us, I had the advantage of, of course, being in the dating space. Our business model is somewhat proven.

39:01You know, we know people are willing to pay for if you look at the market. And so it was really a matter of when do we want to be profitable and how much. And that comes, it's a strategic choice because that potentially comes at the cost of growth. Right. And I think back in sort of early 2020s when the economy was better, et cetera, it was all about, okay, grow, grow, grow, grow. We don't care about margin. And then soon, in about 2020, when the economy started shifting, everybody sort of turned into like profit, profit, profit. Forget the growth. You have to be sustainable. And so it's really a choice that you make as a founder, how you want to grow your company.

39:51I think a lot of us assume, especially in the tech world, like you got to grow and not think about profit from the beginning. But that's a choice you make. Yes. I remember in 2020, early days of COVID, there was an open letter that went viral. Do you know what I'm talking about? From Sequoia Capital was telling all their portfolio companies, forget what we said before. Please make money because we're entering the winter for startups. Yeah, and I cannot tell you, Michelle, being unprofitable versus profitable is night and day difference on your psyche. And also just, you know, the things that you can do, the freedom it gives you.

40:38And so, again, it's a choice. Having been there unprofitable and profitable, it is a much better place to be. What do you mean by that? Because before you're profitable, you're in a survival mode, right? Because there is always a time bomb ticking. And I cannot tell you how many times I felt like, oh, my God, we're going to run out of money. And then, of course, like the, you know, you start thinking about all the worst case scenarios. And so to some extent, it could really push you. but in another way, it could make you make choices out of fear, which is not healthy, nor will you make the best choices.

41:18Whereas when you have this luxury of being profitable, there's nothing you have to do, right? Because you don't need external help, source of funding. So completely changes, I think, your state of mind. and even for investors, right, I think they can, humans are so smart, they can smell it. When you're desperate and you need something versus when you don't need it and you can always walk away, I think it's a night and day difference. Right. And when you say it was a choice to become profitable, are you referring to the fact that you were probably spending a lot to obviously chase growth at the time and there was a point where you decided to turn on that yeah yeah and it came you know it was a difficult choice right because um you know whether it's marketing or workforce you have like we had to i had to make conscious choice to reduce that and we had to make some personal changes cost reduction layoffs so it's not easy it was not easy going from growth mode to profit mode but I think it was I just knew knowing the macro situation as well as how I wanted to lead the company in a more sustainable way I just knew that it was the right thing to do at the right time.

42:51What have been some of the lowest moments there's so many peaks and valleys throughout a founder's journey, right? I imagine, obviously, like you just touched on, you know, the difficult decision to have to do cost reductions and restructurings. Have those been among some of the toughest decisions you've had to make? There's so many. There's so many. Oh, my God. Yeah, layoffs are always the hardest, but my first actually sort of existential crisis, I think, come to my mind. And this didn't have to do with layoff that I had to make. It actually had to do with massive resignation that happened that totally took me by surprise.

43:39So this was around like 2018, 2019, and the business was great. We're doubling every year and sort of like you're in like nothing is stopping us mode. And I've made some series of, in hindsight, not so great decisions that my employees were not happy with. And totally by surprise, a lot of them decided to leave the company. At the same time. Yeah. I've never had employee turnover until that point. And so it was a real eye-opening moment for me. And I really had to reflect, okay, what happened? Like, what have I done? And I thought we had the best culture. I thought I knew the employees, etc. And so I spoke to pretty much everybody at the company, like what happened, including people who were leaving.

44:34And what happened was because I sort of had this thing in my mind, like I want to do this. I rushed into making that decision and I thought I had the buy-ins of my team. they didn't agree but they sort of reluctantly went with it and it turned out you know a particular thing that we're sort of betting on didn't result in what we were hoping for and so they somewhat became demoralized and decided okay we're gonna leave so it was sort of series of things building up to that point and that was when I really had to reflect okay like one of my cultural values was fearless candor and like did I actually foster the right environment for people to be candid and so I worked with again leadership coaches really self-reflecting etc and that's when I actually brought this whole philosophy of what I absolutely it's like it's become a Bible at our company called five dysfunctions of a team, which is all about basing your entire culture on trust.

45:47And so that comes to my mind as somewhat of a turning point for my leadership sort of style, as well as, I guess, a low point in our company history. It sounds like that was a wake-up call for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a wake-up call. Do you mind my asking, and feel free to share as much as you're comfortable with, but what really was the specific decision that led to that, do you think? And how many employees was it that you ended up saying goodbye to at that point? So it was actually, I don't even remember at this point what exact feature it was, but it was about this feature. and I wanted to launch that like in Q4, post-Christmas slash New Year is our biggest season for dating industry because this is when everybody's like, okay, New Year, new me, I want to find a new relationship.

46:39And so I wanted to get this particular feature out and I thought it was like going to be amazing, of course. Rushed everybody into building this new thing. So people had to work overtime and you know basically do you know a lot of sort of bend over back to get this done and holidays yeah and um it didn't do what you with i thought it was gonna do it didn't take off the way that you yeah exactly exactly so then you feel like maybe people were like what was all that for we like you know busted our butts to make it happen yeah yeah didn't even exactly right yeah and it was really hard because over like a month period actually I think about maybe 15 % of our employees don't remember exactly how many people sort of trickled in over the course of like three to four weeks with resignation yeah and did they say it was over that a room specifically or was it you know maybe various things going on I'm sure it was you know not just that but maybe that was what sort of tipped people over and when I had exit interviews yeah basically a lot of it was centered around hey you know we didn't think this was the right thing to do and we didn't have the really the right opportunity to talk about this you just like kind of bulldoze over and made those decisions, et cetera.

48:10It's really refreshing to hear of, you know, a leader like you being so frank and honest about that. It sounds like you learned a lot from it and you're taking steps to make sure that it wouldn't happen again. When you say that you've looked at your company culture now and kind of dug deeper, does it mean that you want to provide opportunities now for your staff to be able to raise their hand and say, hey, look, I don't know if this is the right call here? Is that the kind of thing you mean? Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, thing I think I didn't realize is when a leader is asking you, okay, like, what do you guys think about this?

48:46Just asking that isn't going to have your team give you honest and candid response. And I think my naive assumption was, well, I asked you that and nobody said anything, so therefore it's fine. and so what we what we how we train our managers is what we call mining for conflicts and that is we really first of all generally I think people really have to trust each other and that's a heart that's that takes time to to be able to feel comfortable raising their you know candid opinion but also the manager has to so many times I think we feel like we have to rush to a decision but that actually ends up slowing things down because not everybody's fully bought in.

49:34And I'm not saying everybody has to agree, but there has to be, I agree to disagreement. So, and that happens when people have ample time and space to be able to say all the things that they want to say. And after that concluding, okay, I heard you, we consider pros and cons, et cetera, and we're still going with this direction but that you need to take time for that to take place yeah it sounds like that was actually a very valuable uh experience for you in the end oh absolutely yeah you've had a lot of clear takeaways that you can apply going forward yeah yeah i'm curious as well you know obviously you play in a very competitive market right online dating there are apps out there.

50:21How does Coffee Meets Bagel differentiate itself from other apps like the Bumbles or the hinges of the world? Yeah, it is a very competitive world. And one of the things I tell my employees is we have to know what our competitors are doing. But we don't obsess about our competitors. We obsess about our customers. And knowing who your customers are, your core audience I think is the first step to be able to differentiate because you cannot serve everyone out there. And the other thing that we found over time is that in particular in the U.S., we do very well among Asian Americans. And so strategically we decided, you know what, we're going to double down on servicing Asian American singles and we want to be the best dating app out there for Asian Americans looking for serious relationships.

51:16So you talk to a lot of them, why are you using coffee meets bagel that we can double down on? And for particularly Asian Americans, I think this is somewhat in their culture. They value efficiency. There are certain things also they value such as profession, education, basically similar values. And so it's funny, like one example of how we decided to service that customer base better is like when you look at our profile somebody described as oh a cmb's profile looks more like a resume and for some audience that's like that's a negative thing like i don't want to be on a dating app with a profile looking resume for a lot of our core audience who are busy and they want to get to the point and they know what they want this is a huge plus so we're sticking with that feature for example so you're making choices that are very unique to how to service your customers the best.

52:15One stat that really stands out about Coffee Meets Bagel is that it has seen this remarkable success within the Asian American community specifically. I believe this demographic makes up 40 % of users for you in the U.S.? Yeah. Why do you think that is? And how have you tried to continue to hone in on catering to this community while still making clear this is an app welcome for everybody? this is not even just for Asian Americans, but we see this among Asian daters in Asia, because we're very growing fast over there too. I think culturally, they really value serious relationship, like even at a pretty young age, like college, for example.

53:00And so our value prop of focusing on serious relationship and also making what they're looking for easy to filter, easy to see, etc. I think it's primary reason why we've done so well with this audience, not just in the US, but in Asia too. Right. And that's happened fairly organically, it sounds like. And speaking of Asia, it's been a really bright spot for you as well. You've said that the region has emerged as the biggest source of growth for the company. To what do you attribute that? And how are you investing to grow within Asia Pacific specifically now? Yeah, so when you look at the region, it's interesting.

53:41The population is younger, and online dating adoption is still significantly lower than the U.S., and so I think there's ample opportunities growing. The market itself is just growing more, and the other thing is if you look at regionally, who are the players? Tinder is still the biggest player in the market, and after that is Tantan, which is basically a local app that pretty much mimics Tinder. And so the most popular few apps tend to be very casual. So I believe there is a pent-up demand for a product that really caters to serious relationship. And that's why Coffee Meets Bagel value proposition has really resonated so much in that region.

54:29And so probably four or five years ago also, we started organically seeing tremendous growth coming from that region. And we decided, okay, we're going to invest. And we have now our headquarter in Singapore. We have about over 30 employees. And our CMO is also based in Singapore. We have a general manager there. And we plan to really invest in the region to be the number one serious dating app. And what we realized is, okay, this momentum is very important. Another dating tip is once a chat opens, how quickly you respond makes a huge difference in whether you're going to actually go on a date or not.

55:16So we've looked at chats that somebody actually responded within three hours of opening has a significantly better result than, let's say, There are two types of business owners, those who are busy and those who want to be busy. Toast is designed for both with tools to keep you humming and help turn grind into growth. That's how you turn busy into business. Toast built for busy. That's where people didn't respond either parties for 24 hours. So we wanted to create some sort of momentum for people to have excuse to talk or exchange number etc which is why we you have seven-day chat. What we learned in Asia is people need more time.

56:00They like to chat because in the U.S. it's like, okay, let's meet in person at this point. Like the sooner the better. There, they have to talk more. And so then we introduced auto extension. So as long as one person is talking, we're going to keep auto extending for another three days. Yeah. Well, talk about the roadmap for Coffee Meets Bagel going forward. In what direction do you really hope to grow in the next few years? I think you have a few goals that you're hoping to hit. Yeah. So our three-year goal is to become the number one dating app in A6, what we call A6, the six markets in Asia, as well as among Asian Americans in the US.

56:39And I think from product perspective, there's still a lot of challenges that singles will be happy to tell you about dating. And one of the big areas that we are thinking about is ghosting problem. Yeah, ghosting problem and also safety. So our product team is working very hard at some really innovative and creative features to help that, that you may sort of hear from us in a few months. Shipping, billing, admin, payroll, marketing. You're managing all the things. So why waste time sending important documents the old-fashioned way? Mail and ship when you want, how you want with Stamps.com. Print postage on demand 24-7 and schedule pickups from your office or home.

57:29Save up to 90 % with automated rate shopping. That's why over 1 million small businesses trust Stamps.com. Go to Stamps.com and use code PODCAST to try Stamps.com risk-free for 60 days. Oh, I see. Can you say any more about the ghosting problem? because that is actually a very big one that I hear a lot of my single friends talk about. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the ghosting problem, it's really funny because singles complain about ghosting problem, but they ghost all the time themselves. That's the thing. Because, you know, whatever, like you change your mind, et cetera. And especially men, when we sort of watch how they're using the app, because they don't hear back, they don't get liked back often enough, at least as often as women, they tend to play this numbers game, right?

58:20They like everybody, and then once they hear back, it's like, okay, let me now decide who I actually want to spend time talking about. So I think there's a variety of ways that we can solve this problem, whether it's upstream, you know, like, okay, we, I mean, one brute way to do this, like, we don't let you actually, you know, like as many people as you do. Or how can we actually educate people? I mean especially men because they tend to be the one initially initiating conversation make better conversation because I mean and education actually makes a huge difference number one initial text that we see is hi and when you say things like hi first of all a lot of people are just like I'm not even going to respond at this point like you are not putting any effort in but also it just makes it hard to respond well what's wrong with hi though just like what's wrong with hi i mean but what what else do you expect for the people out there you know sometimes hi is okay too no well okay so other person may not respond or like likely will say hi back and then it's like dead silence again so so i mean there are very little things that we can teach, educate singles.

59:40And that's the other thing that we believe at Coffee Meets Bagel, our job goes beyond introduction. Because in order for us to help people get into relationship, we must also educate our users healthy dating behaviors. So to that point, I've heard of some apps that try to integrate generative AI to help you craft a good opening line. Is that something that you guys are? I think AI has a huge place in terms of helping singles, not even just this specific problem, but of course making better matches, etc. Yeah, I think that's a very much of an opportunity area. Let's talk about Outlook for a second.

1:00:24Dating apps have famously struggled on Wall Street in recent years. Having said that, would you ever consider taking Coffee Meets Bagel public or have you felt pressure to? You know I've been very lucky with my investors in terms of not putting pressure in one way or the other and the way I think about but you know of course I took external funding so I think about how do I provide our investors with liquidity opportunities and now I think nowadays there's other ways whether it's secondary and other things to provide liquidity that I don't particularly think going public is the only way but I I think about it more in terms of in order for us to hit our goal, what is the resource we need?

1:01:07And does going public actually help us get there faster versus some other route? Yeah. Well, one potential exit that could have been really interesting was the time you appeared on Shark Tank. This was almost exactly 10 years ago. And at the time, Mark Cuban famously asked you and your sisters if you would accept$30 million for your business, which in theory would have been the largest offer in Shark Tank history. Without even blinking, Arum, you straight up just said no. What made you so sure? Because we saw how much opportunity there is and also what we can do to help singles. It was, I mean, it was just so early in the company history to actually say, okay, we're done here.

1:01:54And so I just didn't even have to think at that point that, you know, we have so much work cut out for us that we're not going to consider selling. I totally hear your point. But I also see the flip side where, you know, one might point out, well, this was at a time where it was really early on. You guys were making, I believe, hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue at that point compared to obviously tens of millions. So I guess looking back 10 years on, how do you reflect on that moment? You know, it's interesting when I talk to like first time, especially first time founders, I think they have this idea of, OK, there are like checklists of things you have to do.

1:02:36You go create something, you raise money, et cetera, et cetera. And often we think we have to do it all alone. I have to be the one to do it. But I've now seen different models, whether it's you partner with a strategic bigger company or you get an investor from Shark Tank, et cetera, that I do think at that point my thought was, okay, if I sell the company, that's it. But it could have just as well been, oh, I have this great investor now on board. Well, I guess it would be the owner on board who can actually help us fly, right? So I think you don't have to think about your business growing in just one particular way.

1:03:19I think there are a lot of ways that you can enlist help. I think it's a matter of like, do you want to retain control of your company or not? I am curious, did you ever run into Mark Cuban again or ever drop him a line to share how things were going? No, actually not. Maybe you should. Yeah. Yeah. Just to also continue that zoom out for a second, you have been at this for a while, 13 years to be exact. How do you keep going on days when, you know, maybe it feels just a bit too much or it may not feel like that shiny new dream anymore? Yeah, I think this is a lot, a big thing for founders who's been at it for a long time.

1:04:00uh what it comes down to me is energy management and this is a long journey right and you can't this it's not something like okay I'm gonna work really hard and like overwork and take a vacation and then come back it's just those you you'll burn out at that pace it's really about knowing when I assess, you know, what activities bring me more energy versus draining energy, where can I actually focus my time, right, on activities that really give me energy and therefore probably I'm better at, and delegating things that drains my energy, building a team around that, and really working at a pace that works for you.

1:04:47So, you know, a couple years ago, we actually implemented, for example, implemented four-day work week, flexible work environment. We have completely distributed workforce in the U.S. and Canada. And we have a hybrid model in Singapore. And I found that honestly, if I hadn't made those arrangements, I think I would have completely burned out. Then I probably wouldn't have been able to continue. But I'm able to do that because I'm pacing myself. And ultimately, I think this, just knowing that this is a long haul game and also knowing that this doesn't make you less productive actually gives you more power you know more power to go on and go through the low and tough moments and not break down etc and so it comes down to energy management for me that's a really great answer I think what are some of the specifics just to follow up on of things that you do to keep your energy up maybe on a day-to-day basis and some of the things that you might hand off to preserve that?

1:05:53Yeah, so I'm a product person. So I'm like, what gives me energy is like jamming with my team on product features, etc. And so at our team right now, among my executive members, I don't have a chief product officer. That's basically me because that's what gives me energy and I love and I'm good at it. But the example of something that drains me is, you know, not that I'm not metrics oriented person, I am, but having to deal with operational metrics and financials every day, that's just not my, something that gives me energy. So I have a really strategic and great CFO handling that. And I think auditing your calendar also on sort of, okay, what activity actually did give me joy versus not?

1:06:38Constantly just reassessing that. What's the best use of your time as well, right? The other thing is, you know, there are little things that I do that I think gives me burst of energy, which I think is really important. So for example, just getting up early when everybody's sleeping and doing a little journaling or having like a really refreshing hot cup of tea, things like that, sort of a ceremonial things that gives me joy. I think that, believe it or not, it's a small thing, but it makes a big difference. Definitely. Yeah. I think the morning routine is something I never tire of hearing of, right?

1:07:20Yeah, yeah. Well, Arum, what is the end game for you here? We kind of touched on this briefly. you spoke about the secondary market does that mean that you know if we were to sit here again in five to ten years would you want to have been acquired by then or you know what is the next step yeah again I think those are all means to an end which end being for now the three-year goal that we have. So I'm not attached to one particular path. In fact, I think that's kind of dangerous, like being attached to one path. I think, you know, allowing yourself to go with the flow and letting the opportunity arise, I think that's really how I want to approach.

1:08:10So for example, if there's a great strategic partner that we can partner with, who's going to enable us to get to that goal earlier, of course I will consider it. I don't have to be running this on my own, for example, so I'm not married to that. Well, this brings me to a segment we are calling What It Takes, where an audience member and fellow entrepreneur gets to ask for advice and hear more on what it takes to get where you are. Today, Sachin, an e-commerce entrepreneur from London, has another fundraising question that kind of ties into what we spoke about earlier. He asks, what is it like raising funds from investors as an Asian?

1:08:53Were there hurdles you had to overcome? And what was your early stage strategy? Yeah, I think we briefly touched on this. This is not even just about being Asian, but this is basically being a minority, right? You could be woman, Asian, or old, or, you know, in Silicon Valley, being old is being a minority too. And so early strategy, again, really knowing that you're going to have to do more convincing because your audience might not get you right away or audiences bias towards people who may not talk and look like you, building that relationship. and so just you know constantly keeping them in the loop asking for advice what do you think etc naturally gets them more vested in your business and you and so I think that really I mean that's really honestly how I raised seed round too right because they already knew the product and they were asking me hey do you guys need to raise money and so the relationship building I think is what I would recommend, especially for minority founders.

1:10:10Is there anything before you walk into that room, any rituals you like to do to kind of gear up for that mentally or anything like that? You know what? I don't even want to like to actually walk into that room per se anymore because that already puts the dynamic, again, going back to, you know, weaker or stronger position. going into, I found personally, if I go into the VC office and sort of whatever the room, even if you're not pitching or whatever, it kind of puts you in that weaker mentality again. And so I would rather, I mean, at some point you will have to do that, right? At some point you're going to have to like pitch to all the partners and stuff.

1:10:52But at the very beginning, in order for you to get there, meet at a coffee shop, keep it very casual, right? And so those dynamics actually make a big difference. Yeah. So kind of don't necessarily have to go to their turf so early on, especially if you feel like it puts you on uneven footing. Yeah, exactly. That's a good tip. All right. I'm going to do a quick rapid fire round with your room. Don't overthink it. Just say whatever comes to mind. Ready? What is your favorite way to unwind after a long day? Probably sauna. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. True or false. Does playing hard to get online actually work.

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