He Built a $130M Company That Changes How You Sound | Ep. 399 with Shawn Zhang CTO and Co-Founder of Sanas

0:00I discovered a problem that was very real. You should not need to change your accent for you to succeed in a job that you wish to do. People should be evaluated based off their work ethic, their talent, their intellect, not accent.

0:13Daniel Robbins:This is genius level. How was it for you when you think about going from zero to 100 million? AI is an empowerment tool. Everyone can be a so-called 10x engineer. The things that we want to continue to provide value and impact for people across the world, you see nothing yet.

0:37Daniel Robbins:so sean something i've been thinking about lately is the future of intelligence and education now that ai is basically doing like everyone's homework everyone's paper writing i've talked to a bunch of college students lately and they've all told me that they're using ai do a lot of the work. So it got me thinking, like, is there still value not just in going to college in the future, but going to Ivy League schools like Stanford, where you went to? Makes sense. I'm probably going to answer that question just from my own experience. So I started Saunus when I was a second year student at Stanford, right?

1:16And our incorporation date is April 2020. And that 2020 date. That's a really infamous date, right? And that was when they had sent all the students back home, right? All of the classes were remote. And I'll tell you, like, that event was probably the inspiration point for me to start thinking to do more of my life, right? Because when they had sent all the students back home, I was super disengaged. I was disillusioned with college because I personally thought that all the classes and homework, that is a very small portion of the college experience. When you go to college, you're hoping to meet all their peers.

2:01You're hoping to be in a very special stage of your life where you're surrounded by people of a similar stage of life that are super passionate about exploring different things. And when COVID had hit and everyone was remote and you were taking Zoom classes where everyone had their screens off, it was no longer worth the college experience, right? All the intelligence and all the material that you can't learn, you can find it on the internet, right? So what is the benefit of actually going to a college campus is because you are in person, you are able to interact, you're able to meet other people.

2:35And so for me, that is the main benefit of college is that you're an 18 year old, you don't quite know what you want to do with life. You just graduated high school. A lot of people say they know what they're doing with their lives. I think it's very hard for that to be the case for most people. And so when you're in college, you're at a place where it's intellectual Disneyland. You can do anything you want. You should explore everything you want. And you should meet people who are also teaching you what you want to do. And so I know there's like a meme now that people can go to college just to meet co-founders.

3:06I think that's partially true. I think you go to college to meet people. And from there, you figure out what you want to do and what are you ultimately good at and what you want to continue to pursue.

3:15Daniel Robbins:Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm 42 and I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. Yeah, it's like it's like building. It's like building up your social abilities. You get to college. I like that idea. Like you you build up, you meet people. Maybe it used to be it was kind of the joke was like you go to college and you want to be an entrepreneur. Why even go to college? If you've ever watched this show, you know, I travel constantly. And here's something nobody warned you about. The internet you have at home is not the internet you get on the road. I'll be in another country trying to get on a site we use for media interviews, and it's blocked.

3:52Daniel Robbins:Or I want to unwind at the end of the day, and my favorite shows won't load because of where I am. The internet isn't nearly as open as we think it is. That's why I started using ProtonVPN. It lets me change my virtual location so I can get to the sites and the content I need no matter where I am. And just as importantly, it keeps what I'm doing online private, which matters when you're on hotel and airport Wi-Fi as much as I am. Here's why I trust Proton. They have a strict no-logs policy that's independently verified. It's open source, so anyone can inspect how it actually works. And it's backed by a foundation focused on protecting users, not selling your data behind the scenes.

4:34Daniel Robbins:You get a huge server network and fast connections in over 145 countries. It's easy to get started. Right now, ProtonVPN is offering our listeners 70 % off a two-year plan when you go to ProtonVPN.com slash founder. That's P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P-N.com slash founder for 70 % off your two-year plan. Maybe though, it's the best place to find the co-founders to get started. So when you were there, there's so many problems that somebody could solve. I almost feel like the great thing about where we're at in life is, is you have the ability now to solve a lot of problems, but you almost get stuck into there's so many problems that you could solve.

5:20Daniel Robbins:Which one do you figure out? How did you hone in and say, this is the problem I want to solve? I think I think a lot of people aspire to be entrepreneurs in the first place. Right. But I think the first thing to do when you're building a business or you wanted to be an entrepreneur is that you have to identify a true problem. You do not want to build a cool solution, a cool technology and then figure out how to sell that. Like, I think that's a recipe for disaster and failure. But if you could truly identify a need and a problem, no matter what technology you have, you have a business. As long as you have a problem, you have a business.

5:57Right. and for me again with COVID I was doing all different things I was doing different hackathons I was working on all sorts of weekend projects and I think I was also in that mode where it was like pivot hell just see like does this seem cool does this seem to work but what really stuck with me and what ultimately became Saunus is that I discovered a problem that was very real and I'm happy to tell you more about that problem and it came from again the people that I met at college, interestingly enough. So when I had met Raul, I mean, we were friends and we were classmates. And partially, again, because of COVID and also for his own personal situation, he went back to Nicaragua to be physically present with his family.

6:43And he wanted to physically support them. And he also got a job local there because he wanted to help financially support them. And he got a job as a call center agent. And I was catching up with him. I was like, and just very casual conversations. And he told me how much he hated his job. And I was not surprised because I know customer service, you need like a tough skin to do that job. But what I was surprised was that he told me he hated his job because so many customers would complain to him about his accent. And he would look at his job report and see all these complaints on accent that people will get frustrated increasingly in these all across all of these all conversations.

7:25and he was leading to lower job performance and lower job pay. And he dreaded going to work every day, eight hours a day speaking to different customers who would then complain about him, about his accent. And that's how, as college students, we got exposed to the customer experience industry. And we learned that you would even have recruiters that would filter candidates based off how thick the accent was. And as college students, we thought that was really unfair, that people should be evaluated based off their work ethic, their talent, their intellect. You should not need to change your accent for you to succeed in a job that you wish to do.

8:03And so when I got to learn about my friend's story, my friend's experience in that industry, that's how we came up with the idea about building the first accent translation product to translate accents. And for me, that was a real problem. That was a problem that was experienced by all these different employees, employers, and customers. and I think for us to learn from my friend's story and learn from other people's story that that was a genuine problem and even back then like absent translation was not a product that was not a thing that was like science fiction but for us we identified that problem it was a need that was very real and people were willing to pay money if such a thing was invented and that was why we sparked and we had the inspiration like let's build that let's make that a thing and and that's my inspiration you identify a real problem that people are feel the pain for and because they feel the pain they're willing to pay the money and and that's how we got started with sonas man

9:01Daniel Robbins:never said better i first heard about bitcoin back in 2017 and honestly i was so curious but every time i looked into it i hit the same wall i didn't understand how to actually buy it where to start whether i was doing it right so i just held off for years and i look at what bitcoin has become since then it's grown into something so much bigger than what it was when i first heard about it what i've learned is that the hard part for most people was never the idea it was getting started if you've been curious about bitcoin but haven't made the jump yet cash app makes it easy you can set up automatic purchases with zero fees or buy larger amounts also with zero fees start small or go bigger it's designed to be simple either way that's the part i wish i had back then, a way in that didn't make me feel like I needed to figure everything out first.

9:54Daniel Robbins:For a limited time, new customers can get$10 added to their balance. Just use code cashapp10 when you sign up. And don't forget this part. Send at least$5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Cashapp is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cashapp's bank partner. Bitcoin services provided by Block Inc brand for additional information. See the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app slash legal slash podcast. If you have the pain, people are willing to pay to get out of that pain. That's like, that's like sales 101, right? Like, yeah, go towards the pain. Because something that's emotionally good, people don't really want to pay much.

10:38Daniel Robbins:But if pain, everyone wants to move away from pain. There were some critics that I've seen that were saying some negative things around erasing people, which I think I don't see it. But what what came to mind? How is that for you as a founder when you're solving a massive problem? You know, people who is positively impacting. Yet, of course, there's always going to be critics. Yeah, definitely. I remember that period of life where we were like semi Twitter trending. And it was like, yeah, Silicon Valley startup is whitewashing people's voices. And we did experience a good amount of backlash. I even had different acquaintances that would text me like, hey, why are you doing this?

11:17Are you ashamed building this? Right. And we did experience all those critics. And I mean, those are comments that every founder would take some pause thinking and reflecting about. But I think as many as of comments that we got of those, we also got comments from people that were super inspired by the work that we did. We got emails, messages of people that were like crying that like, hey, when I learned about your company and the message that you were trying to portray, I was shedding tears because I'm an immigrant. I've been in the U.S. for 10 years. And I have felt that I've not been able to be where I am, be where I want to be, because I think my accent is holding me back, that I think that I'm not being hired for certain jobs or I'm being discriminated about it.

12:04And it's those messages that I received from those folks. It's again, the stories from my friend, the original inspiration from the from the stories of the different contact centers from the employees and employers that for me like we have a real problem we have a real issue that we want to be able to help and how can we bridge communication so that people can feel more connected and have conversations that there was able to understand one another better so for us it's it's it's again to identify the what who are we building it for right and listen to their testimonies listen to their stories.

12:41And we want to be able to provide value to them. And I think with all the negative feedback, and even being like semi trending, at least between me and my co founders, we were thinking at the very least, we're bringing this accent discrimination topic to light. Because previously, I really think it was under the radar. But again, from my experiences of what I was seeing firsthand from my friend and my loved ones, it was very real. And we were happy to expose it. And we were even more happy to be able to build a solution that I think helps solves it and bridges people together. So that was, that was, that was my perspective.

13:12Daniel Robbins:I, I've seen this with my wife because she has an accent and spent 20 years trying to curve that accent because there, there are a lot of prejudging. I mean, it could even be your name. If you're applying for something, I used to see this with her. So I think it's, it's hard to appreciate something if it doesn't, if it doesn't directly impact you and you haven't experienced it, it's also hard to appreciate it. So I'm going to read something to you and I want to understand what comes to mind. Raising$121 million,$0 to$62 million in revenue in two years, going on to surpass$130 million over a million users.

13:58I feel extremely blessed and motivated is probably what I think. When I first started the company, I did not think we would get as far. as we are now. And for me, I feel incredibly grateful for those early believers, for those customers that took that first chance with us and those first prototypes that worked or didn't work. And for me, I feel incredible determination to continue to prove to those like, you are, we are just getting started. You are not seeing, you see nothing yet. The things that we are building, the things that we want to continue to provide value and impact for people across the world, we're just getting started.

14:38And so it's, it's, I feel incredibly happy with the momentum we have, and I'm here to continue to carry for that momentum and continue to build solutions for the people.

14:48Daniel Robbins:We talked to a lot of people and we get pitched a lot of, of companies. And I have to say, it's rare that we see something unique where I'm like, wow, this is, this is genius level because I can totally, I didn't even know it was possible. And I, and I could see the massive problem that you're solving. And I was like, I'm very impressed. I'm very impressed. When you when you start to go to the rocket ship and you're cruising at lightning speed, it can be sometimes challenging to maintain that. I know you said just now that you have incredible things that are coming up later. But how do you what's the secret sauce for you to continue maintaining this success?

15:29Yeah, I think the first thing is determination. You always got to be pushing something uphill, right? You always have to not give up. You always have to have that almost aggressive push of like, this is our march. We got to keep on going, right? So that drive also needs to always have more and more momentum. I think the second thing for me is that, especially because I'm admittedly a pretty young entrepreneur, is to also expose what you're doing, right? I often wish that sometimes Sonos was not the first startup that I did because if I had another startup under my belt, I could have avoided a few mistakes.

16:06Right. And Sonos could be even further along in its journey and its growth. But I'm very lucky that I was surrounded by many mentors and many people that believed in us and people that when we did make mistakes were there to help catch us and guide us in resolving those mistakes. So I think the first thing you have to do is be able to open up, make communication there. And I think the scariest thing for any entrepreneur is unknown unknowns. If you know what you don't know, at least you have the path to figure out how to figure that out and solve that. But what you don't know what you don't know, those are the dark places where you don't know if you're moving in an unoptimal path or if you're doing something incredibly wrong.

16:53Right. And the only way you expose those unknown unknowns that you expose to other folks around you, what you're doing.

17:01Daniel Robbins:This episode is brought to you by Schedule 35. And I'll be honest, this is a topic I was skeptical about for a long time. But the more I started researching psilocybin and hearing stories from entrepreneurs, creatives, athletes, everyday people, the more I realized this conversation is becoming impossible to ignore. What I like about Schedule 35 is they've made the experience intentional and approachable. Whether someone is microdosing for focus, creativity, clarity, or taking a more recreational dose to disconnect from the noise and reconnect with themselves, everything is precisely dosed so you actually know what you're taking.

17:36Daniel Robbins:They offer capsules, gummies, teas, and chocolates. Plus, every order comes with a beginner-friendly guide. Shipping is discreet and age-verified. And what's interesting is the science around psilocybin is growing fast. Researchers are studying its potential impact on things like anxiety, depression, focus, creativity, and overall mental well-being. If you want to learn more, go to schedule35.co and use code founders for 15 % off your first order. That's schedule35.co, code founders for 15 % off. And I think that's the place of an entrepreneur about where we need to learn. And for me, where I continue to learn and grow myself.

18:16It's how do I expose my problems and have other people provide their perspectives to help me figure out how to solve them and even identify those problems in the first place.

18:25Daniel Robbins:What's an unknown that you wish you had known that you think would place the company at some sort of a higher success than what it is now? Makes sense. I think the first thing would be the fundamentals of a business. So I came from college, right? And I came from doing research in AI under AI laboratories. But the difference between an AI lab at a university and an industrial company is very different. Where in an AI lab, you're able to move with a lot of freedom. And you're able to do things a little bit more messily. Because you're able to try to express creativity and just move very fast and try different ideas.

19:04And you can even do that in a very unorganized manner. But when you're in an industry, you need to establish flywheels, right? How can you build repeatable processes that compound and build off of one another? How do you build teams and structures that are able to work from one another and not have silos? How do you invest in data collection, processing, ingestion? How do you invest in evaluations and benchmarking to monitor your progress? And then how do you communicate with customers to be able to deploy to those customers, build that customer empathy, and make sure that you are building in the right way?

19:40And so all of those things you don't learn in college. So I think that's where like, what is the value of college education? These are things that you will never be exposed to in college. And you will only be you only learn that in the real world, building and perhaps making those mistakes yourself. But it's those pillars of industry that I think are incredibly important. And those are things that you have to build fundamentally from the ground up. They don't happen overnight. And if they do, you're probably building them the wrong way as well.

20:10Daniel Robbins:Do you think you're breaking generational stigmas? Maybe a little bit in that I think we try to build a company very flat. Right. And part of that is that no one in the room by default has a has a louder voice. Right. I can disagree with a another engineer. That engineer can disagree with a more senior engineer. And both of those guys and girls can disagree with me. Right. The reason being is that we're here to solve the same problem and we're here to disagree and commit. right and i think that's a very famous phrase and i think a lot of people kind of fixate on that commit part but the important part of that phrase that disagreement is that first half and for me it's almost the more important half you need to get your thoughts out there you need to be able to disagree with one another and by doing so you have all the data points to make the most informed decision and hopefully then is the most optimal path forward do you know like older generations always say that younger generations are lazy.

21:10Daniel Robbins:I mean, obviously you're not lazy and what you're doing is, is, uh, you know, much higher success than most. So do you think that Gen Z I'm guessing your Gen Z would be if you titled it an age generation, uh, do you think that Gen Z are not lazy and that maybe they just, just like anything, a younger generation just thinks differently than older generations? I think so. At least that's what I see among my peers. And I think there's always different subsets of people in every population and generation. But especially in this age of like AI and startup landscape, I actually think the generation is hungrier than ever.

21:57Everyone is wanting to build their own startup. There's something in the water. Everyone's feeling a bit restless. And maybe it's because Gen Z has shorter attention spans that they want to build new things. They want to not take that conventional white collar job. I think we're maybe more hard coded to be like, let's build new things that are flashy and very cool. But sometimes that's where innovation comes from. It comes from thinking a little bit outside the box, thinking a little bit in the second path. And I think that's where we can get a lot of energy and we get very inspired. And so I get inspired by my peers all the time.

22:33And I'm surrounded by people with a lot of drive and they continue to push me as well. So I think the generation is, I mean, we're also just getting started is my take.

22:43Daniel Robbins:I like that. You couldn't have the new generational tagline. We're just getting started. I have, we have a son who's 22 and I got to say, he's really motivated by like mission and purpose where when I was his age, I was just driven by making money. like I didn't even I don't even know if I knew what a mission even was I was just like I need to make money because I need to survive and he's like I only want to work at a job that get you know that serves the same mission and purpose where I would take any job I was doing terrible jobs when I was in my 20s because I just needed to make money so I I really love I love the ideas of mission and purpose and things.

23:26Daniel Robbins:I think that's, I think your generation will be happier long-term as adults, hopefully with a different mindset. Although I don't know about social media's impact on mental health, that scares me. How do you feel about that? What do you think about the impacts of mental health? Sorry, with social media AI and on mental health and people in their 20s? I would say it can be very challenging. and even in the landscape of startups, you'll see startups post their success stories, right? Like these stories of failure, of pivots and mistakes, people don't like to highlight those, right? So I think sometimes you can be disillusioned.