Do You Need To Live In Silicon Valley To Start a Tech Company | Ep. 415 with Moe Seye Founder and CEO of 1099Workers

0:00We'll leave in the world where our parents and grandparents had to work for large companies that provided stability and security will no longer be the case. This is Moe, founder of 1099 Workers, the platform built for the independent workforce. He built his career inside one of the most iconic companies in the world. Now he's building the infrastructure for the millions who'll never work for one again. So those individuals also need to be assisted. And oftentimes their hands are tied. Realize that there were actually a true need here. And the more and more we dug into it and investigated, we start noticing that.

0:45There's a lot of debate around if you want to start a tech company, do you have to be in Silicon Valley? I know you were telling me earlier that you feel it's so important to at least spend some of your time living there. Why is that? I think Silicon Valley, it's such an interesting place. I feel like they live in the future. If you want to know what the future will look like in 5, 10 years, 15 years, living in Silicon Valley gives you a really good view of what that future is. And another part that I really enjoy, which is why I believe anyone in their 20s should spend some time there, is nothing seems impossible, right?

1:31You know, they said your network is your net worth, right? I believe in Silicon Valley, your network is everything, right? So being in the space where everyone wants to do the most impossible thing and truly believe that they can accomplish that is something that there are very few places in the world, I believe, that can give you an insight into that. So if you have the ability, I would strongly recommend it. Do you think it's one of the best places to raise money? A lot of people I know, they go there for the fundraise. They go there for the networking, VC networking, investor networking. In your experience, do you feel like is a game changer to go there?

2:21Or can you raise money not being in Silicon Valley? Yeah, I think over the last few years, right, there's been, you know, I wouldn't call it an exodus necessarily, you know, of companies just, you know, being, you know, being formed in other places, right? I mean, Tennessee now is becoming a huge hub. Atlanta, Georgia, right, you know, has a really massive now, you know, tech side, depending on the industry, right? I think if you're in tech, I would say more likely than not, I would want to be in Silicon Valley for a raise. Obviously, people like betting on things, especially tech-related. But I don't think you need to be in that space now, generally in that vicinity, in order to raise.

3:10The world is now mostly remote. And, you know, there are lots of places where, you know, tech company or startups are being formed and being, you know, uber successful. I was just at an event in San Francisco. Everyone is building an AI agent company. Yeah. And I'm like, how is there so many people building the same AI agent? It's the same thing, doing the same thing. Right. And then you have yourself, you're building something unique and you found a problem. do you think a lot of startups are going to fall into this trap where they're all solving the exact same problem and how many of them can survive?

3:44You know, I think there'll be a consolidation at some point, right? When I think back of the internet bubble, right, in the early, I was very young, but I've read stories. And, you know, there is a world in which, you know, 80 % of those companies won't survive. But I don't know that it necessarily matters, right? So for the sake of, you know, we're the future and humanity and what have you, I think it's part of the journey. So I believe a lot of these AI companies that are being born, by the way, I'm not claiming to be an expert by any means. You know, in AI, I'm learning. I'm always evolving every day.

4:20We're all learning. Yeah. There's a new update, right? I mean, it's moving at such a speed, you know, that I think is going to be at some point of consolidation. And I read an article this morning that AI companies are looking to purchase or acquire consulting firms. And there is a world in which in the coming years, the large consulting firms will be, you know, you'll have consultants in airplanes like we see today, right, that will be, you know, consulting companies on how to leverage AI. So I think there's a world in which there will be a massive consolidation of these AI companies, all of them that are popping up.

4:58But it's the right term. I think it's evolving, and there'll be some learnings. I'm sure there'll be a crash maybe at some point. And it will fizzle out the small guys, and some of the guys who are building something really big are going to excel and be successful. So as far as what we're building at 1099, we obviously are leveraging some of those. We're learning how to leverage the AI to power the infrastructure we're currently building. But it's one of those, right? I mean, I literally was on the plane messaging with our developers. It's like, we need to sit down. I need to make sure we're not being left behind, right?

5:37In regards to - That's the scary part. It's scary. So fast. So now someone can stand up a company. I'm hearing that there'll be more unicorn companies being born with one founder or one employee and that sort of thing. I believe the first company sold for over a billion dollars with one individual in it. And there'll be more and more of those companies. So hence why 1099 Workers was born. So there'll be a world in which you will have an entire generation of individuals that will leave college or may not even go to college. I'm not sure that it will be needed, right? And we'll never work for a large...

6:15I don't think they want to. Right? They don't want to. And I'm not sure that even the companies want them to, right? Yeah. Facebook and some of these companies are laying off 10 % of their staff this quarter, another 10 % next quarter. So we'll live in the world where the GM and the Fords of the 40s and 50s where our parents and grandparents had to work for large companies that provided stability and security and retirement will no longer be the case. I mean, we're living in a world where now we will be going the complete opposite of that, meaning all of us will be a company of one or two or three.

6:56But we'll build something really, really cool and build it really fast with AI and whatever else. But what we will miss is the infrastructure those large enterprises had provided. right so now how do we build that infrastructure to support the company of one right and that's what we're building i think they want to dance on tiktok they want to be content creators yeah i know so it's like everyone wanted to be an actor at some point and they they had to work as you know waiter now it's like everyone wants to be a content creator right but you need to also make money because content creator doesn't mean you're going to make money so then that became 1099 and flexibility it's almost as if all these technologies everything is kind of culminating to this point where this generation like 20s and below maybe in 30s right it fits perfect into what they want right so what's interesting as we're you know diving into the 1099 workers industry, we found that, you know, we're calling it 1099 workers.

8:05Some are calling it gig workers. Some are calling it being self-employed or some are calling it contractors, right? But that's something that's going back some time, right? So for example, you know, attorneys, most of us don't think of them as, you know, employee of one. Many of them are, right? Nurses, more and more nurses are, you know, we call them travel nurses or independent, right? So they want that flexibility. They want that freedom. And you have your realtors, right? You have your financial advisors, right? You have, yes, you have your influencers, you have your content creators, right?

8:41But obviously the content creator is a, you know, small piece of that entire population of, you know, you talked about 76 million Americans right now. So call it north of 70 million Americans are falling within this gig economy, this 99 workers' economy that we're talking about. And half of those individuals are full-time in whatever space that they're in. And that space could, again, very well be some of those white-collar enterprise individuals that we discussed. We talked about the layoffs that's happening in tech. Most of these individuals, I think, at least a good percentage of them, I don't believe will go back to corporate America.

9:22Right. Who's going to hire them? I think there's a mistrust too. Right. Exactly. And you don't want to go through the getting fired again. Getting fired again. So do your own thing. Control your debt. I've been there. And at some point you want to bet on yourself. I mean, a couple of years ago they were throwing all kinds of money at developers to be hired at Facebook, for example. And today you're laying them off because you've been replaced by by an agent. So I believe a good percentage of this population will actually will not go back to traditional employment. So yes, they're content creators, and some of them are extremely successful.

10:00Hopefully, Fando's story, obviously, is interviewing a few of those folks. But there's also the other half of that population that could be your plumbers, your landscapers. You need a lot of plumbers. We need a lot of plumbers. A lot of plumbers are here making. That's a good company to have. That's one industry that's not being replaced by AI anytime. Let's go back to Coca-Cola. Yeah. You were the W-2 employee at Coca-Cola. Correct. I imagine when you were working at Coca-Cola, you thought, I could do something more in life than work at Coca-Cola. Not to say working at Coca-Cola is a bad job.

10:37Right. But as an employee, did you think at that time, I want to do something more? I spent eight years there, close to eight years. And the first half, no. I mean, it was a dream, right? I mean, you know, I think for most of us back then, I'm a little older now, you know, you wanted that security, you wanted that stability, and you wanted that name, right? I mean, you want to wear, you know, the badge, right? I worked for Coca-Cola, right? I mean, that's the big thing, right? And most of the people that I work with, this is, again, going back almost, you know, I I mean, approaching 20 years now, are still there, right?

11:13So it's the good old American company, good story. I have a stable job. I'll retire there, right? And, you know, so when I joined Coca-Cola at, you know, 19, 20, right, while in school, I mean, it was a dream come true to work for a company like Vic, right? And the first half, you know, as you're finding yourself in the world and, you know, as somebody in their early 20s, you know, you want to just learn as much as you can, right? So the first half just wanted to make, work my way up the corporate ladder and spend us maybe retire there. You know, my parents was proud. I was proud. And then I wanted more, right?

11:53I think, you know, some of us have that entrepreneurial spirit that's within us, right? And I saw people who were there 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, and planning to retire there. I was like, I think I want more than this. I don't want to be there. Yeah. So I left that for eight years. And I remember turning my notice, and everybody was like, oh, my God, where are you going? So it was maybe 50 account managers. That's the biggest mistake here. How are you going to leave Coca-Cola? Where are you going? There's got a world outside of Coca-Cola. And to some degree, there wasn't. So it was a huge leap of faith.

12:29People don't leave companies like Coca-Cola, at least at some point. Obviously, a new generation now, they obviously don't want that. But yeah, so at the time, that was the ideal place you want to spend probably the remainder of your career. And I think for every founder, you know, there's just that itch that's there, right? No matter where you are, no matter what infrastructure, you know, what support, what financial, you know, level you make it up to, you always will wonder, right, whether and maybe have the itch to just do more. And that's what it was for me. How did your parents take it when you want to leave the job?

13:12parents were immigrants. They're like, you got to follow the path. You got to go to college. You become an employee and you save for retirement. And that was the path for both my parents. And I don't know, I guess I was considered a rebel to some degree, right? So, you know, because I'm an immigrant, I feel like being an immigrant, your first business venture is moving into another country. Right. Uh, I didn't speak English. Right. Uh, I've learned it. I could navigate. Right. So I learned it in school, but it wasn't my first language. Um, and, uh, you know, so taking that leap of faith of going to a completely new world with people that, you know, you don't know, um, you know, you don't speak the language.

14:04Right. I, and if you can make it through that, I believe, you know you just can't make it through anything which is why I believe uh that people should travel should should travel the world and see what that is right not just because a nice vacation and taking pictures uh or visiting a beach but just because it opens your eyes to a world that's so foreign but then you realize that you can do it right and and so for me I think that was you know maybe that wasn't necessarily going the opposite path or whether I should even go down. I was just figuring it out, right? But I knew that if I could make it here and make it and figure it out, that I'm going to keep betting on myself.

14:51I'm going to keep taking the chances and then hopefully it will pay off. What do you have to lose, right? Nothing. You start from zero. Back from zero. You can go back to zero. What are you going to do? Bring me back to zero? That's where I started. What's your favorite place to travel to? What's a place when you go, you're like, I feel the vibe so much that I could live here. Yeah. So I love Asia. So I've, you know, I've visited, you know, several countries in Asia. In Asia, I think my favorite place so far has been Vietnam. You know, I haven't been. I want to go. Yeah. So, you know, Thailand was really great.

15:27I just love the people, less the place, right? I've gone to some very nice places. Obviously, nice. You know, Europe is always a great place to visit, right? But the people of my experience of being in Southeast Asia has just been the best, and that makes the experience even more fulfilling and more enjoyable. I can relate. I need to get to Vietnam. Thailand, amazing. Like$2 food is incredible. Although it's too spicy for me, if I can be honest with you. like thailand and india right i can't eat the food okay it's very hard it it tastes amazing and i love it there all right but my stomach is very angry let's go to the problem you were solving so you went into an industry that you had no experience in before i think you have a different perspective when you grow up into something and you've been doing it for a long time you're kind of in a box when you come from the outside i think that's really when people say why can't you be doing this different because everyone in it is that's just how it is what was that moment for you Yeah.

16:30So I think coming from the, you know, you hit the nail on the head, right? Having a different perspective, right? Being, and sometimes, you know, even as an entrepreneur, it's really important to take that step back a bit, right? And when you are too close to something, you tend to miss, you tend to develop blind spots, blind spots, you know, over time. You know, so for me, you know, I just happened to be in a different space, but I kept seeing a need that existed. And as an entrepreneur, you know, leaving my tech job, right, had an infrastructure to support all of my needs, right, from a benefit standpoint, from, you know, health care, right?

17:10So from all the pieces, right, that we're used to when working for a large, you know, corporate America, there is a certain level of security that exists, right, for working. The financial piece, obviously, is one. But then there's the other infrastructure that exists to support you as an employee and make sure all your needs are met, you know, for the most part. But once you step away from that world, you tend to miss that. So now you're all on your own trying to figure out how do I build a business and make sure that it's successful. But then there are all the other pieces that are also missing.

17:46And that's how do I structure my company? Should it be an LLC, S-Corp or C-Corp? Do you even know what that means? Right. So how do I file taxes? Right. I'm no longer a W-2. How does that work? Right. So what about my retirement? What about my health care? What about all these pieces? Right. So, you know, obviously you can Google enough times and have singular solution. but we noticed that there was not an infrastructure to actually support it. And then you play back to where I started, right, and had to learn all of these things over time and make all the mistakes that are oftentimes costly. We wanted to bring that infrastructure and have a place that individuals can come in and have an infrastructure and a framework that can support them so they can focus on what they want to do and what they do best, right, which is building a company.

18:38Why do you think Sone hasn't really tackled 1099 workers? Why hasn't the problem been already solved? Yeah, that's a good question, right? I think, you know, the system has been designed to support small and mid-sized companies, right? So when you think of America and what make America super successful is, you know, the support of small businesses, right? And when we think of small businesses, we're thinking of the mom-and-pop shop with 10 employees, 20 employees, typically 50 or below, right? That's the majority of companies in America and the majority of the workforce work for that type of companies.

19:17So for years, for decades, that's the infrastructure we're built to support that. And what hasn't happened yet, and I believe it's going to catch on here, is now this new generation of kids who don't want what dad wants or what their parents wanted. right? Hence the reason why so many businesses in America are for sale, right? And the kids don't want it, right? There was a point where, you know, if you had a company, you want to leave it behind for your children. Yeah, you don't want to do that. So no one wants to do that. No one wants their parents. They want a podcast, right? They want to be an influencer.

19:56They want to pay their own way. Right? So they don't want dad's insurance company. Like, that's boring. I don't want that. Right? So, you know, so then all of a sudden, you know, the ecosystem wasn't really designed for that, right? So, and you asked, you know, why hasn't it built? And I think, you know, I think the question just goes deeper that nobody really, maybe the system doesn't really care about that one individual, right? You know, so, you know, everything we do has been designed for the enterprise. It's more lucrative, right? It's all of the boxes, right? But as an individual, why do I want to solve for just Mo, right?

20:31And we will take time, right? So we want to change that, Right. And we want to be, you know, the, the, the infrastructure that support a company of one, right. Not just the company of 50 or 100 or a thousand. Solopreneur. Solopreneur. I didn't think about attorneys, nurses. I didn't even think that there's all these people that are already functioning this way versus it all of a sudden being people that want to do it. Your CPA is one, right? I mean, you know, so your accountant is one, right? I think people too, it used to be, I want to open a business. I want to have 2000 employees. That was the dream.

21:05I want to raise$500 million. I want to have 1 ,000 employees. I think people realize that comes with a lot of sacrifices, issues. It's also 1.00 or 1 % where I ever even get too close to that, where it's like, what if I can have a business that has less headache, that I can function, makes money, and then gives me the freedom to do anything? Let's just say, hypothetically, AI takes over the world, machines. We don't have to work anymore. What would you do? because I think I'd want to be a DJ. But what would you do? I would be your hype man. So, you know, every DJ needs a hype man. So I'll be there with the mic, right?

21:42And I'll, you know, be, you know, getting the hype, the cry. Like that? All hyped up. No, on the serious note, we can switch. You be the DJ and I'll be the hype. We can go back and forth. Because I'm not sure if I'd be a good DJ, to be honest. So I think I actually might be a terrible guy. You know, yeah, you know, I think we can just, you know, bounce ideas. We'll feel it out. We'll feel it out. See how the crowd reacts. I'll take one of the third tables. You take the other one. We need to come up with a name. A DJ name. We can come up with that later. We'll talk. We don't have enough time. We need to ask AI.

22:12That's true. Come up with a DJ name. Probably we'll come up with a real good name. Moe Dan. Like come up with something. We're on to something. Because we have to go to Senegal. Sure we do. And we need to see the street name with Moe. That's right. It's the street name with Moe. Yeah. We got to go there. Maybe we can DJ there. You can do that. That'll be the first spot. Yeah. So when you go back and you look at the moment where you said to yourself, okay, I started business, I'm getting some success. I'm going to put the gas pedal. What was that moment like? I think what validated what we're doing, right?

22:42Because as entrepreneurs, we always, well, we tend to have, you know, crazy ideas, right? How we can conquer the world, right? Oh, my God. They sound great in our head. It sounds great. Yeah. How could no one ever thought of this? I'm the only one with this idea, right? I have a lot of those. Okay. And then they come out with it and I'm like, I thought of it. I thought of this. They never give me credit. You know, so all of, I mean, I would probably guess that most businesses have been thought about by someone at some point, right? What separates us is the one who takes action and the one who doesn't, right?

23:17And, you know, so, but for me, what, you know, what, you know, triggered, you know, that I believe we have something real special here is just realizing the need, right? So over the, you know, one of the companies that I owned, Manish Health, you know, we help small and mid-sized businesses with their employee benefit solution, healthcare, wellness, and what have you. And, you know, one of the, you know, the issues that kept coming up with, you know, for some of our clients were, you know, hey, I love that I can solve for my W2 employees, but what can you do for my 1099ers? Right. Okay. And it was interesting because these were oftentimes good-sized companies, maybe 1 ,000 or so employees, but they'll have a much larger population of contractors that works there.

24:11So every company that has 20 or 30 employees may have an equal amount of contractors or oftentimes much larger. right so we we realized that they were actually a true need here and the more and more we dug into it and investigated we start noticing that the gap was even wider than we expected right so these are just at the company's level right so when we think of um you know uh the the 1099 are the ones that we mentioned right we talked about the individual just one person right and oftentimes time, they actually are part of a much larger enterprise. We mentioned Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola may have, I think, maybe 100 ,000 employees now, right?

24:52But they may have tens of thousands of contractors that don't work for the company, right? But come into the building and they're responsible for other, right? Other, you know, tasks or whatnot within the enterprise, right? So those individuals also need to be assisted. And these companies want to provide some sort of solution, at least some infrastructure for them. And oftentimes their hands are tied, they can really do it. And I think that's where we'll come in. Listening to the customer. I think a lot of people have an idea because it's what they think. I think I want to solve this problem because, you know, I don't like how pizza is being made or whatever it is, but the customer doesn't care.

25:30And if your customer doesn't care, if you have no customer, if you're a customer of one, you're kind of screwed, right? Your business will never take off. So it's fascinating how you, you listen to the customer's needs, or even just, you saw a problem that your customer's existing when you're going to launch a new business, because that could make or break, right? You could do it too soon. You could do it too late. You obviously did it at the right time when you're going to shift from this business to this business, to this business. What is that moment? Like, how do you look at the landscape and say, this is the time?

26:03Great question. And it's interesting because we have, you know, we have within our organizations, you know, what we call a voice of the customer, right? It's literally the name VOC. I love VOC scores. Okay, great. Like a 95. Oh, are you? I don't know. Okay, all right. You're my customer, so you have to tell me. All right, I'll tell you when you're done. Yeah, so we go back after every single one of our clients. once they onboard, right? It's what we call them. They come on board, right? So we have these touch points, right? Where, you know, we have, you know, our team will meet with the client and, you know, ask a few questions, right?

26:44You know, call it a survey, right? But an in-person survey, right? We want to understand how we've done, how was the experience from the very start to the very end, right? And we also schedule touch points, right? Because your experience on boarding, right, we probably had those, you know, we all work with companies that did a great job until we signed on a dotted line, right? And survey levels just went down right after that, right? The check cleared, zero, you know, who cares? And so we have touch points on a quarterly basis with, you know, with our clients to understand what, you know, how was the initial rollout, right?