The Brothers Who Built EasyA From Nothing to 1.3 Million Users

24:17And you had to program in Java and try to move this little robot around the screen. And I just remember feeling like this is so impossibly difficult. And gradually learning like the syntax, all these tiny little things, which would mean that it wouldn't work. The barrier to entry was so high. You look at what anybody can do with chat GPT right now, even a couple years on, I mean, I mean, we're older now, but we're not particularly ancient. No, clearly not. You could actually go. You can go today and just build literally whatever you want. I think that is going... People still vastly underestimate the effects that this is going to have on civilization.

24:49Alex Chisnall:Yeah, and both of you, I think, really, really good points. And I think it looks like the great leveler. I want to chat to my girls about it and chat to another friend, Simon Squibb, who's been on the show a couple of times. And I said the opportunity for people to do just that, start their own business and and the barrier to entry is just non-existent right or it's very very small 100 um but when you started easy a how long could you guys afford to kind of go without needing to make any money from this well we had a bit of runway from savings yeah and we actually to extend runway we moved back in with our parents so we're very fortunate we're very fortunate that parents took us back in not necessarily what everybody wants to do i'm waiting for that to happen at some point literally yeah yeah and so yeah we we actually built the first version of eza from our childhood bedrooms yeah we coded it dom was more on the front end i was more on the back end we would just huddle together i remember sitting around the kitchen table at night building it and that was how we extended our runway and made sure that we could actually build this thing out what was felix yeah i mean oh he was in high school ah okay he was busy but you know doing something else yeah he would you know help out from time to time tell us you know this looks good that doesn't look good try it out try the app test it but obviously he was still in high school focusing on getting off it um but yeah i mean you know we we never we could have easily as well you know gone around and you know maybe you know raise some money for family and friends but for us we always wanted to start it ourselves we always wanted to say okay we built eza without any external help.

26:27It was in a completely different industry to what we had connections in. We didn't have any connections in tech, none in blockchain, none in AI. And we really actually came together and really built out all those connections and network ourselves. So for us, I think that was a big part of the EZA journey as well, was just starting it, us two brothers, and now growing it into what it's become. 1.3 million users yeah exactly and now being able to actually on board all of those additional people via going public and that's really sort of you know the first time people can actually sort of invest in easya because yeah this hasn't been possible the last couple years for and i really wanted to to do it ourselves and also you know i think sometimes when you raise money from family friends it can get awkward if it doesn't work out so that was a big motivator too not to

27:15Alex Chisnall:do that yeah just seeing that with a friend of mine at the moment yeah yeah it's what people normally do in the beginning but it can be very awkward you know and yeah family i guess it's a little bit better than friends yeah but still yeah it's just the awkward conversation and then you meet them again over christmas or different times of the year and yeah exactly my money back yeah a lot of people say that you're more careful with your own money than you are with other people's but for us it's actually the opposite way around we're way more careful with other people's money than with our own.

27:47And that's like how we've always treated this. And given like you said,

27:50Alex Chisnall:you didn't have connections, you know, in those spaces, how did you go about building your network? Because I think that's really interesting for people and something I'm trying to teach my girls as well. You know, if I had my time again, I wish I'd started way younger in building a network. Well, it started when Phil went to a conference in Amsterdam in 2022. Yeah, 22. Yeah, yeah. Not long ago. Yeah, yeah. And Phil met someone. I mean, you can tell the story. Yeah. I mean, I think this was coming out of COVID. I mean, we started EZA really during COVID. So networking then was a weird thing. Yeah, it was.

28:26Yeah. It's like, I think initially it was a lot of emailing and then calling. And then I'd say coming out of COVID was when we were really able to properly connect with people. I think COVID was such a fascinating time because if you already had that network, it was brilliant. And you could just skyrocket because actually it really gelled your network. But if you didn't have that yet, it was very, very, very difficult. So for us coming out of COVID, I remember I was building another sort of side piece of EZA, experimenting with it. And there was this Web3 conference, which was happening in Amsterdam.

29:03I said, hey, Dom, let's go. Let's go to Amsterdam. Let's go to this conference. It's one of the first ones that's happened after COVID. He said, okay, let's go check it out. And I remember we, well, we were at the conference and it just completely opened our eyes connecting with all of these other people. Dom headed out one day early. And I was like, no, no, no, I don't know. I just feel something here. I feel like I've got to stay for at least one or two more days. And we were on this, there was one of these events on the canal. And we were on this canal boat. I was just chatting with other people.

29:38When we got off this canal boat, I connected with this guy called Jonah. And he said, Phil, what are you doing? I told him, hey, we're building ECA. Here's what we're doing. And he said, you know what? It sounds like you've got an amazing set of users that you've built up. Obviously, it's smaller at the moment. But I can see something. Let's chat. And let's build something around this. He actually worked for one of the other big web3 companies and he was our first one of our first major customers actually so it was really that fortuitous like i was about to head out on a plane i think literally that evening or the day after just literally after that canal journey had bumped into jonan and that i would say was like looking back probably the turning point in eca really so that was like a real like a hard screw

30:25Alex Chisnall:just do it moment as i call it that change change the trajectory of from uh yeah from a growth standpoint that's when things just you know turned hockey stick yeah and that's what i love again like and before covid i was um one of the things i was doing with virgin startup was you know running a load of their events for them like all around the country and then this year i've got this event festival entrepreneurs at the nec in birmingham like 5 000 entrepreneurs And, you know, one of the things I always say, and I saw it at the small events I was doing with Virgin Startup, like 100, 150 people, but you can meet one person now.

31:00Alex Chisnall:And I've seen it so many times, and you've just articulated the same thing. You can meet one person now that literally is going to solve the problem or a problem that you have that can move things forward, right? And I think that's the key. When you're an entrepreneur, you need to be meeting people. You need to keep your eyes open. You need to be putting yourselves in those situations where you can actually have those fortuitous events. because the more things you go to, the more people you meet, the bigger your likelihood is you meet someone useful. Most people, to be frank, aren't very useful, but there are people who are very helpful, and you never know where you're going to see them.

31:30They could be in the coffee shop, or they could be at a conference. They could be anywhere. You're on a canal boat.

31:36Alex Chisnall:You're on a canal boat in Amsterdam. Interested to know, what do your parents think, or what did your parents think, you know, 2022 right through to today? How has that kind of changed? Well, I mean, I think in the beginning, of course, they weren't very happy that we left our jobs, as any parents would be. I remember my mum saying the same thing. You're leaving a job. Why are you doing that? How could you do that? What are you going to do instead? But I think, you know, over the sort of, I guess, subsequent year, when they started to see some progress, of course, in the first year, it was quite hard, having to, you know, just say there's no progress or, you know, think of ways to articulate progress, but, you know, they really know that there's no progress.

32:15and ultimately I think you just have to keep going and you just have to show them okay you know now things are starting to take off they can you know maybe see you're going to different places and you know you have all these different users and things that you're hosting and people that actually care about it maybe you know what you're doing suddenly gets picked up in the press and you know maybe you have you know different landmarks along the way where they start to see oh okay this is a real thing yeah but in the beginning yeah definitely uh wasn't wasn't easy and I think anyone who starts a company in the beginning has to go through that.

32:43And I think that's a big barrier to a lot of people starting their companies in the first place is, you know, what will my friends think? What my parents think? What will all these people, I think a lot of people peer pressure as well from their social circle in terms of starting something, especially if you leave a job in law, leave a job in finance, you always be just the guy who couldn't make it maybe, and you know, got burnt out, and then had to do his own thing. And I think if people aren't entrepreneurial minded, they don't see why you're doing it and they tend to you know like you were saying look on the negative side as opposed to the positive side and think oh okay this is great you know someone's starting their own thing but you know i think time just uh just you know obviously things take time and you have to keep on going and once you start making the progress then people start to see okay it's a

33:26Alex Chisnall:real thing so did anybody tell you like what the hell are you doing do you have any many of those or any of those people don't say it but you know that they're thinking you know they're thinking You know that they're thinking it. And it's one of the most torturous times because people won't say it, but in the way that they treat you, just, I mean, put yourself in the shoes of somebody who had this stellar career opportunity, who did amazingly at university and was always one of the best people. And then you see them and they've moved back in with their parents. They have zero revenue. They have no salary.

34:02they literally can't really they're not really doing anything at least on the outside yeah meanwhile you're looking at them from the outside you're like oh this dude no what is going on with him yeah i've got this amazing job he really fell off yeah yeah yeah what happens exactly like the nowadays would say he fell off yeah fell off yeah and the thing is that happens for a long time because you look in the newspapers and it's always overnight success this overnight success that it literally takes years of just grinding and having literally nothing to show for it it's like the worst thing yeah it's true because it really is sort of i guess in the public eyes you know zero to one right they yeah i guess you know your friends see you when you leave your job then you kind of you know do your own thing for a couple years and then things start to really take off and then they start to see you again they're like oh okay wow this suddenly just happened so they don't actually see all of those years along the way where you know you were doing flyering where you were doing sort of the door-to-door sales so to speak you know all of those you know rejections and those you had along the way but you kept on going and i think a big part

35:05Alex Chisnall:of it is just keeping on going and yeah and i guess with your story as well again correct me if i'm wrong but you know it's not the four-year success story either right it's what you were doing before with it absolutely yeah yeah definitely yeah yeah yeah what do you what do you kind of take from those times if you could take like one thing or a couple of things that um has really helped you in building EZA, each of you. For me, it comes back to your earlier question, taking risk. Okay, yeah. Taking as much risk as possible. I honestly don't think you can take enough risk in life. Like there's so many things, Jeff Bezos keeps on talking about how most people think that things are one-way doors.

35:41Most things are actually two-way doors. And there's very, very few one-way doors. I think looking back, it's the same thing. It's like being worried about, oh, if I launch the product too early or if I launch it too late, like it literally doesn't matter, just do it. And Brian Armstrong, as well, has this amazing saying. He's like, action produces information. That's absolutely true. You just need to do it. I think that's one of my biggest learnings. I just keep on saying, let's do more. Let's do more. Let's do more. Let's take more actions. And let's just produce more of that information.

36:09Alex Chisnall:Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. And I think as well, I think a lot of what holds people back is they're very concerned about what people think about them. And obviously, everyone wants to look good in the eyes of other people. I think if anyone's saying they don't, then it's probably not completely true. People still care, what does this person think, what they think, but it shouldn't be so much that it actually limits what you actually want to do. Everyone should ultimately still be themselves. You should still, if you want to start a company, not be afraid to do it because you're afraid that maybe in the next 6-12 months, your friends will think differently of you.

36:39If it's something you want to do, you should just go and do it. And there are a lot of people who, for example, get trapped in finance when they really wanted to maybe be a surfer or they really wanted to do their own company or just do something completely tangential, you know, maybe an astronaut, but they did finance and they did law because they thought that's what people wanted them to do. And then they never actually fulfilled their full potential in life. And I think it's always important to remember that you only get one life and you don't get rehearsals. You know, every day is, you know, the last day you're that age and you're getting older every day.

37:09And I think it's important just to realize like, no one really cares as much as you think about what you're doing as well. you know sometimes people get embarrassed about oh they said something wrong they did something wrong they posted something on social media they maybe shouldn't have but in reality no one actually cares like people will see it once worst thing and they'll think oh that's a bit weird and then they scroll on they get on with it with their lives like it doesn't it doesn't matter whereas the person who is at the center of it typically thinks oh god you know i posted that or like i've done this or someone saw me do that and now it's the end of the world like everyone's seen it yeah reality is no one's you know likely seen it and also no one no one even cares they're all too

37:46Alex Chisnall:fixated on themselves right it's true yeah exactly so i think once you get over that hurdle you then start to free yourself and really you know i guess get the wings to fly yeah and i think you know something you both said as well with that is that you know so many people um or 99 of people you know whatever the percentage is never take that step to actually do something but as you said if you actually take the action that gives you feedback that that gives you information and some of that feedback might be this isn't the right time right now this isn't the right idea at this time but at least you're getting some feedback right to be able to make decisions whereas if you actually just do nothing life gets made for you right it's true someone else's plan exactly and other people will hire you to make their dreams come true and i actually read a great quote on twitter the other day that said most people are afraid of protecting a reputation they don't have, which in many cases is true.

38:39Like we'll see a lot of people, even they come through, you know, the EZA community or people that we meet, like, I don't want to post them. So, you know, I don't want to post that on social media because people might think X or I don't want to, you know, start running a, you know, this account or, you know, doing this because people might think why. But actually in reality, no one even like, you know, no one knows who you are, you know, no one, like you don't even have a reputation yet. So you need to actually start building that up. And then only once you become super big, you know, you need to really worry about that.

39:05But in the beginning it's you know people are just so i guess hung up on taking the first step and i can understand why i mean in the beginning you know years ago we were we were like that too but you just have to realize like yeah the world's so big so many things are happening everyone's got their own lives people don't don't really care until you actually give them the reason to care

39:21Alex Chisnall:and that's a lot harder yeah yeah um tell me a little bit about um when you were starting out and the ideas around uh the business model that you had because you said you made everything free to start with what were your thoughts like initially on how we're going to monetize this um what's a time scale for doing that was there was there timelines in your mind then i think we did i mean actually stems down to one of the worst pieces of advice we ever got go on which was to make a five to ten year business plan yeah so from the very beginning we did have a very clear plan of exactly what we were going to do, broken down, cell by cell, column by column, row by row, with exactly how the business was going to go.

40:05So to your point and to answer your question, we knew exactly how the business was going to go, even before we even started it. We know, okay, cashflow is going to be like this, profitability, and we're going to invest this much. And then, okay, once users grow to this much and we start charging partners this much, that's how it's going to go. Of course, none of that ever happens. It's like five to 10 business plan never works. Never. You're just starting with an idea. I don't even know why some people say this. A lot of people, we've got advice from a lot of people. I think it's well-intentioned people, but people who are giving advice that honestly they should be giving.

40:35And they're in different roles. A lot of them weren't founders. Accountants, lawyers. Everything that they see is the companies that have been going now for 5, 10 years, even on the lower end. Most of these people are dealing with companies that have been around for decades. They've been looking at the spreadsheets of banks, and they know exactly how their businesses are going to go. So on the one hand, yes, we knew. On the other hand, we had literally no clue. And so we figured out that actually what we need to do is just, I mean, even I'd say it took us a long time to really internalize this properly, but that you just need to try stuff.

41:10So for us, if you actually look back on the App Store and you go back to when we first started EZ8, you'll see that we were just shipping like crazy. Most applications get updated once every week or two weeks. We were shipping multiple times per day. A day? Every single day. Yeah. And we did that over days, weeks, months, years, until eventually we found the model that worked and clicked. So it was just really a matter of iteration and action produces information. Eventually we found out, okay, this is what people really want. We did have a couple of core principles in mind. Like we don't want to charge users.

41:49Yeah. We want to scale this into something which benefits as many people as possible and can grow as fast as possible. But at the same time, it wasn't clear then how we would monetize. And so that's why maybe for longer than we would have wanted to, we weren't able to spend too much on any sort of user growth. But actually, later on, it made us extremely efficient. We knew how to grow by word of mouth. And ultimately, as well, I think it meant that we could. I mean, Dom likes to go to the gym. to use a gym metaphor we were able to to grow big but leanly rather than you know and it become

42:23Alex Chisnall:muscular rather than maybe growing growing big and fat yeah yeah yeah um has there been a cost to to what you've done not like monetarily but anything that you can aside from my gray hair

42:41well i mean i think i think when you're working hard and when you're traveling and when you're doing all these things, I think, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's, it's, it's definitely hard. And, you know, you don't sort of have that same social circle that you might otherwise, but on the flip side, you know, it's never really bothered us. I mean, we're, I guess we're always together, first of all. Yeah. And number two, when you focusing on something that's bigger than, you know, going to the pub on Friday, or, you know, going to watch movies, then, you know, makes it all worth it. Sometimes too much together.

43:13We literally had an event the other day, and the person was calling out he said Mr. and Mrs. Quark and they're like nah that can't be us well it's quite rare honestly I mean I think these days especially in recent history it's quite rare to see family businesses or you know two brothers two siblings working together in the olden days you know when our parents were younger and you know that generation it was pretty common right like you just finish school or you don't even go to school you just work for your parents right away or you know carry on what your dad was doing whereas now it's become a little bit less common i think people really kind of go off they want to do their own thing and so yeah when they see you know two quarks checking into the plane or two quarks checking into the hotel they sometimes think we're partners but we're actually just obviously brothers so yeah sometimes they think i'm his dad actually i didn't get that really

44:04Alex Chisnall:brilliant um

44:08Alex Chisnall:Billion users, is that the aim? Absolutely. Nothing less. Nothing less. Well, I mean, what we're building is really for everyone to use. Originally, it started off for students, started off for younger people who want to learn about technology, how to build their companies, etc. But now we're seeing AI is being used by everyone, right? AI is a tool that anyone can use for different applications. And ultimately, EZA is that app that allows people to get that sort of entry point into AI, into all these different technologies, which can benefit everyone. It's not just about students. It's not about people who just want to build websites, code, etc.

44:43It's really for people who want to actually do things in a more efficient manner, a faster manner, and just leverage their time. We've publicly disclosed only about 1 % of the technology that we've built. We are sitting on some of the most powerful technology that I think we've ever seen in the history of humanity. We have been working on this so hard over the past year, two years now. And so part of the GoPublic process as well, we'll be able to share more about what we're working on. And yeah, Billion Users is really just the start. I think that ultimately our products are going to be in the hands of every single person on the planet, both on the consumer side and then also on the business side.

45:21Alex Chisnall:what what do you expect again you don't have to answer this but what do you expect valuation wise um well that that is going to be in the public filings uh we'll be doing the pricing i think it should be in a couple of months okay a couple of months watch this space yeah absolutely so yeah things will be uh coming through most most things will be coming through in the public filings over the course of the next couple of months and then the valuation will be very last thing that gets priced um before we uh just wrap up and get to just a little quickfire around um what's been harder than each of you expected in building eza one thing maybe each of you it's probably been a lot of things that would be a lot right clearly not the coding well i think i think it goes back to what we're saying earlier you know just being able to keep going, even when you don't see the progress, being able to keep going, even when there aren't people always saying, Oh, I love what you do, you know, you're crushing it, because in the beginning, you're not crushing it.

46:22And people, you know, don't have anything to really congratulate you on, right, you just left your job, and you're just doing your own thing. So I think it's really about being self motivated. Luckily, Phil, and I both very self motivated, you know, we get up early every day, make sure we go to the gym for an hour and a half every day. And you know, have that regimen wherever we're traveling, even, you know, jet lag and all this sort of thing. And we just keep going. But I think for a lot of people, the reason why they stop going is because they get demotivated and they leave their job after three months.

46:50I know a lot of people from uni, from Blackstone, from other places I've worked who gave it a couple of months, half a year max. And then they ended up going back to a job because they just couldn't keep on going without having that sort of prestige in the public eyes, right? If you don't have that sort of label or that sort of big brand name attached to your name, right and introduce yourselves as hi you know i'm i'm dom i work at blackstone or i work at goldman then you know people sort of lose that very important part of them that made them sort of i guess what they are a lot of people associate themselves with their career with their title especially in big cities like london new york la etc so i think it's really just a matter of keeping on going and that was the hardest thing is just keeping on going even when other people didn't necessarily see what we were doing because there's nothing to show so i think yeah it's just keeping on going never giving up and you know not caring so much what other people think in the beginning because in the end they always come around and they always say oh you know congratulations you know you've been doing an amazing job over the last couple years uh really cool to see what you've been building but you know where where were they all along the other couple years absolutely

47:55Alex Chisnall:yeah yeah it is you know keeping on going when when uh when no one can see what you're doing and it's easy to kind of cut corners and and cheat maybe not put the work in right but uh exactly yeah it's like you know the athletes right they're always training when people aren't watching you only see that bit when they've actually stepped onto the stage and are ready to compete and that's really only you know 0.01 percent so people don't see those years and how they actually have to get there how they got recruited how they have to train you know all the early mornings late nights etc so yeah yeah yeah i mean i think on my end i think it's hard to answer because there are so many things that you learn along the way and i think there's this amazing saying that Socrates had, which was, which is, I know one thing, and that is that I do not know.

48:44I know that I don't know. And I think that's been a very, very important thing. It's one of the things where I just think it's so important to realize that these ideas, they don't come out fully formed. The product doesn't come out fully formed. And you just need to keep pushing and keep pushing stuff out there. And that's really the only way to actually learn anything. It's very different to things that you can just derive it's very different to mathematics it's not really a science yeah can't boil it down to any one particular thing that's going to work i mean part of the beauty of it it's also part of this massive frustration yeah you really don't know what is going to work there are some things that we did which we were absolutely certain were going to work had no impact whatsoever and some things where we were kind of just experimenting and ended

49:27Alex Chisnall:up being really really successful yeah yeah no and i've seen as you say there's no one way to do it you know through doing this for 10 years you know you speak to so many people have done it in every which way um where would you be today if it hadn't been successful in the first six months 12 months 24 months 36 months you know four years in on this journey what do you think do you think you would have gone back to your job do you think you would have started something else probably still be trying to make it work yeah absolutely that's the right answer i like it probably yeah honestly there was never a scenario where we were going to go back i thought you know the the only question would be if we hadn't left our jobs where would we be yeah but yeah having made that decision you know having crossed that so-called rubicon yeah we were never going back we had to we had to make this succeed yeah and you might have already given me the answer to this with answer dan but but which single thing action decision created the life that you're living now that was i guess a local local point um or where that really changed the trajectory of uca but ultimately if we hadn't had the experiences we had growing up yeah as well that wouldn't have i remember being in the school playground selling paper airplanes i had a special technique making that i sold for five pounds each that's an expensive inflation's gone up a lot but paper airplanes at five pounds back in the day that was like a lot that was a lot of lunch money or or tuck money that you could go to the local news agents and buy sweets with yeah so five pounds i mean it was a very good technique i will say that and that taught me just how you could if you had some special knowledge that nobody else knew and you were able to monetize and you can actually do it and so things like that in the playground i remember being at school we launched social network it was called campus banta i think maybe it's probably still on the way back machine somewhere there um really cool i remember then stumbling across the bitcoin white paper in 2013 bitcoin was a hundred dollars and i went home went into my parents basement started hooking together all these machines started learning about psu cpus gpus asics fbgas pretty much you name it i then remember when i was really fortunate to be at cambridge another engineering friend of mine came up to me and told me about smart contracts and he's like look there are these amazing new things and then told me about AI and we started building some of these early things.

51:56I actually built one of the first consumer applications of AI as well in creating an app that allowed blind people to basically see by using their camera and also created one of the first applications of generative AI and allowing students to use it for their work. And so I think it's kind of weird where you can't necessarily point it to one particular thing. It's like just looking at all those particular things in total kind of just it's just how the brain works like you get all of these mini experiences and mini successes your brain kind of just puts them together and it's like actually there's no way that i can just go down this route of the well-trodden route i've seen how doing something that was a little bit out of the box really worked and so for us again it was just like all these things and then it just replay they just replayed themselves over and over again so when we were 22 and we decided to leave it all and start eca it was kind of like you know don't look at each other and we just thought we're gonna do it screw it let's do it and you did it

52:55Alex Chisnall:thank you for that um i love it this is brilliant what a great story guys thank you so much for coming in by the way um thank you for having us yeah pleasure man um quick fire rounds um so whatever comes into your head short and snappy maybe we'll you know you give one answer and next question you can give the next answer who else feels like just a couple um what does the word entrepreneur mean to you i mean somebody who just starts on their own starts their own business what does a scale up mean to you scale up business company that's going from being a startup to being a growth business yeah um maybe both answer this one um who's an entrepreneur you admire like at the moment um and why would that be for me actually it's one of the guys who gave us our some of our first advice or rather non-advice guy called sam chowdhury uh founder of class dojo and he basically said look the way that you've got to think about this whole thing is you've got to really articulate the vision very very well and ultimately as well make it very clear that how special what you have is and there's only really one of you there are so many people out there like VCs who try to make themselves sound really special.

54:10Ultimately, you're the one building the business. You're the special one. And I think that was super empowering for us really early on.

54:16Alex Chisnall:How about you, Dom? An entrepreneur. Let's see. I think in my eyes, I think founder of Palantir, Alex Karp. I think he's been great at, you know, not only building Palantir and building a company that's actually really not consumer facing, but at the same time, being able to relate with the everyday consumer and making that into such a powerful consumer stock as opposed to some of the other companies which traditionally are more you know industrial security defense focused that really don't have that sort of persona so yeah i think he's uh he's a pretty interesting one um what about a book you've read or a book you might have gifted to um other people what's the best book you've read there are two that come to mind two nice number one is fountainhead Ayn Rand yeah absolutely uh and then number two would be Count of Monte Cristo okay I like that love those of those very good Dom books I uh I haven't actually read a book in many many years probably 20 years so wow since since school wow okay all those yeah okay so I uh so it's got to be old man and see you must be old man and see you're one of the books that we had to read in school right um i normally ask what's your superpower but i'm gonna ask you to to say about each other so phil what's dom's superpower and then dom what's phil super power no there's a couple oh what a generous brother so many where do we even start bodybuilder yeah man's physique um ability to go gray very quickly um no i think on a serious note it's uh it's really being able to to go through long periods of time where you don't see much success whatsoever i mean i think that's been really important for us both to be able to go through and a lot of people will have a co-founder who just gives up and who says actually you know what phil it's not really working out right now like we're not we haven't seen any success over the past three months six months 12 months let's just call it quits yeah and dom has also just been able to be there with me and actually build this out into something which obviously now today is incredibly successful and it's because we were able to stick it through those really hard times when most co-founders would just give up yeah yeah well like like you say with people giving up after six months or nine months and it's like that's not enough time to give something yeah true yeah what would you say about your rather well I was in good looks well yeah probably obvious probably I think why I think Phil is probably one of the smartest people technically that I've ever met in terms of you know obviously like from you know from Penn and from from all the different companies Goldman Blackstone you know there's so many smart people they met quite a few and also you know going to all these conferences speaking on stage with some of the you know the founders of Ethereum founders of you all these billion dollar AI companies.

57:19I think, yeah, there isn't really anyone who's technically as smart as Phil is on that front. Phil can learn new things probably faster than anyone I've met. Whole theorems, everything basically derived them from first principles. And obviously, Phil came first in Cambridge at law. So studying law as an undergrad, was one of the youngest people to pass the New York bar as well. But that's obviously law. At the same time, having that sort of mental versatility to actually do things technically like coding, build applications single-handedly on 24 hours. Well, I mean, we can't obviously reveal what we're working on.

58:07No. But sort of seriously powerful things. just you know obviously together with our team but you know really sort of taking lead on that independently i've never really seen anything like it so i think you know phil's definitely technically probably one of the smartest people of the current generation it's like well i'll say aside from me but i'm not technical actually so so yeah i was on the front end in the yeah i mean i think everyone can do you know basic stuff and people can learn how to be an engineer but really to actually be able to unlock that next level of understanding and actually really innovate that's really world-class intelligence exactly yeah yeah do you have anything like a photographic memory as well do you think or i'm not sure what exactly was i remember being in law school though and i know i'd come top and like i was the best student of this that my director of studies had ever seen and he called me and it was like phil i want to go through your paper scale i was like oh am i in trouble how on earth did you know this case and i was like well it was just in the textbook it was in one of the books and he was like no no no no but like nobody knows this so i don't know it's kind of just been one of those things that i've always just had i guess a gift for maybe i've got to thank i was gonna say oh yeah i was gonna say is it born with yeah yeah yes we need to thank our parents yeah and i mean superior intelligence yeah it's funny because last year we were at cambridge actually at cambridge university to um celebrate phil getting the leading alumni award and it's funny because most of leading alumni from Cambridge are, you know, in their 60s, 70s, you know, spent their whole lives in different medical fields, etc.

59:39You know, doing doing amazing stuff as well. But you know, just, you know, obviously much older, and you know, all pretty gray, or, you know, like me. But you know, Phil, Phil was the youngest one there. But you know, probably 3040 years. So, you know, I think, yeah, it's, it's pretty cool to see. what what do your parents do have interest well entrepreneurs themselves yeah yeah i was gonna say okay yeah they also used to be in uh finance yeah and art so yeah okay um a run over which is typical

1:00:12Alex Chisnall:so i apologize i don't know if you're into music but if you could each pick a song that reflects your journey thus far that's easy i've got i yeah most people struggle with it massively It's Remember the Name by Fort Minor. Okay. 10 % luck, 15 % pain, and 100 % reason to remember the name. Boom. Tom? I think for me, it's really don't stop believing. And I think that's the most important thing, as we've been saying throughout the whole interview. Just keep on going. Don't stop believing in yourself. Why you started. Doesn't matter what other people are saying. you know, even if they're not sort of, you know, cheering you along all the way, that's fine.

1:00:54You just keep on going. And eventually they will. So yeah, I think really, you know, a lot of life can actually be summed up by don't stop believing. It's not only entrepreneurial journey, whether you're working for that next promotion, or you're, you know, maybe just investing in stocks, or you believe in a particular company, and you're an investor, you just can't stop believing, because as soon as you stop believing, that's really when, you know, your whole life can really change course for the worst if you lose that belief in anything absolutely religion and work with everything

1:01:21Alex Chisnall:exactly yeah um and you're both pretty young to ask this question i guess compared to some of the people i've interviewed but how would you like to be remembered how would you like easy a to be remembered a bit a bit young for a legacy question but yeah hopefully there's nothing like thinking about that now maybe helping shape the future vision right oh i'm not so sure about being remembered for a particular thing, but I think that it would be beyond... Something we're working so hard towards is that our product will be in the hands of billions of people and that there won't be a single person on the planet who isn't using one of the products that comes out of EZA.

1:02:05From the first time that we saw somebody using our application in their hands just in the wild, it's the most amazing thing. I bet. And when I saw that, I was like, don't like this person's using eza wow and i think with what we've got working on what we'll be announcing over the course of the next coming weeks months and years i think that every single person on the planet who has a mobile phone and internet connection will use eza and so i'm not sure about what i want to be remembered for myself but i want our products to be in the hands of every single person on the planet to be making an impact in everybody's lives that's one hell

1:02:38Alex Chisnall:of a legacy to leave yeah yeah amazing um phil dom thank you so much for coming in and being guest on scrooge thank you alex very much for having us thank you