784 Gyve Safavi: Co-Founder & CEO of SURI

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Let's go. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs.

0:46Kara Goldin:As we head into a new year, a lot of leaders are asking the same question. Do we have the right people in the right roles to get where we want to go next? If growing or strengthening your team is part of your 2026 plan, LinkedIn Jobs is built to help you do it smarter. LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant helps you find qualified candidates faster and with more confidence. So you're not just filling roles. You're building a team that lasts. In fact, LinkedIn hires are 30 % more likely to stay at least a year compared to the leading competitor. That kind of retention matters. And finding the right hire doesn't have to feel overwhelming.

1:29Kara Goldin:With LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant, you can skip the guesswork and jargon. It filters candidates based on your role's specific criteria and highlights top matches. So you're not wasting time digging through endless resumes. When you're running a business, you need a hiring process that's fast and focused. LinkedIn's AI assistant delivers 25 strong candidate suggestions each day, giving you the chance to invite the right people to apply and keep the process moving. It's a smarter, faster way to hire, and it's why I rely on LinkedIn Jobs. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden.

2:13Kara Goldin:then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Kara Golden to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show. I'm so excited to have our next guest with us here today. We have Gheve Safavi, who is the co-founder and CEO of an incredible brand that is about three years old. I just discovered it, though. It's called Suri, and it's an award-winning sustainable electric toothbrush brand transforming the oral care industry. I would imagine they're going to go beyond toothbrushes very, very soon, but this is where it is now.

3:02Kara Goldin:And wow, what an incredible, incredible product. So in a category long built on plastic and disposability and ways Suri sets out to do things differently. Their beautifully designed sonic toothbrush made with a sleek aluminum body and recycled plant-based heads has become the most highly rated sustainable brush on Trustpilot and a favorite among many, many consumers. So Gee founded Suri, co-founded I should say, Suri in 2022 alongside his co-founder, which I'm sure he'll get into that backstory. And after years in global brand management at P &G and leadership roles across AKQA and WPP, Gieve has grown up with the belief that anything was possible with enough focus.

3:58Kara Goldin:So I cannot even wait to hear more about this journey and as we were talking about earlier, how the dots have all connected. So Giv, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you here. Thank you so much for having me, Cara. I'm really genuinely excited to be here. So let's start with the product. I touched on it for a minute, but what is Suri and how did it all begin? So Suri stands for Sustainable Rituals. We started building actually during COVID and I'd done a fair bit of landscape research. And at the time, I was desperately looking for a co-founder because I knew if I was going to start a business, there are some really tough times and it gets quite hard and I needed to share that with somebody.

4:45And so I went for a walk in the park with my current co-founder, Mark, at the time, and I was desperately trying to convince him. And so I put together this huge deck with a huge landscape assessment and I was showing it to him on my phone. And sort of the first insight that kind of got both of us excited is that in electric toothbrushes, there are two brands in almost every developed market that holds 75 % share in the US, in most of Europe. And, you know, when you dig deeper and you look at toothbrushes in general, you find that none of them today are recyclable. And that was something that kind of, you know, both of us had had children just right around after COVID.

5:22And I think, you know, something clicks when you have a child for the first time, or at least it did for me which was you realize that like monetary success progress it really is all about like the next generation that comes uh and so we really wanted to start suri and this is why suri stands for sustainable rituals founded on uh a purpose uh and the thing is that toothbrushes aren't recyclable we throw out over five billion a year it's enough to circle the planet 15 to 16 times and nobody's talking about them they're like a a second or third to plastic straws and that got me thinking wow that means that every toothbrush i've owned since a child probably still exists somewhere in some landfill and so first as a first setting we decided that our goal was as a brand was to tackle that uh and to build the most sustainable electric toothbrush out there um you know but as we quickly realized um because we started doing consumer surveys was that um you You know, over, you know, we did about 5 ,000 consumer surveys using tools like SurveyMonkey.

6:31We didn't, both of us were unemployed at the time, so we didn't have a lot of money to spend on fancy tools. We just did simple surveys. There were so many things that came out from those surveys. And, you know, normally when somebody sees that two brands hold 75 % share in any market, they're like, cool, I'm not going after this. They must dominate in some way. And there's some barrier that I can never address. but I guess maybe we were determined I'd like to think but really maybe we were just not paying that much attention to the risk and we were just like totally risk you know ready at the time you know and so we just went for it but the research told us something really interesting one all these features that people started talking about about things they liked about toothbrushes or they didn't like one of them was gunk that builds up when you charge your toothbrush I don't know if if you've heard of that before, I don't know what the right word is, but there's this gunk that builds up constantly on the bottom of your toothbrush or when you're changing your heads.

7:21And people were just totally frustrated with that. They're like, that gunk is terrible. And so, you know, and another one was that like, my battery never lasts. I can never travel with this thing. I've got to bring the kitchen sink, the charger, this, that to take it. And I can never travel and take it with me. So there was a lot of like insights that we heard that were not being addressed by the current two brands in the market uh and actually you know it is it's almost like business 101 right listen to your customers and develop innovation around that we we took all those things and put them into our toothbrush so people said their brushes were loud and clunky we made a thin toothbrush with aluminum heads um we wanted to address the same sustainability angles as you mentioned um with recyclable plant-based heads so we are the first company to offer plant based so fully plant-based made from cornstarch and castor oil bristles that we recycle for free in the U.S.

8:11with prepaid mailers. So, and as well as in the UK where I'm currently based. Another thing was, you know, people for the gunk, we have a mirror mount, so you can push, put our brush neatly on the mirror, just like that. And then, you know, there's no constant charging and buildup. And then we have a stainless steel plate on the head. That was just some of the things that we put into our product. But, you know, and the list goes on. But I guess the ones that really stood out and made us really push forward full speed was that uh in our qualitative interviews where we were able to get you know one-on-one time with people the the that's where it really got interesting and it showed us we had a huge opportunity to go beyond sort of just product and sustainability but really build a brand that people loved and i'll just touch on that for a second um people told us you know the first thing i would do in an interview is say you know do you brush your teeth and electric toothbrush yes i do okay how many times a day use it twice a day um how much did you pay for it oh i paid 100 bucks uh do you travel with no it's too too big bulky okay what's the name of the brand and people will go i don't know it's that one that does this or this and i was like i'm sorry i don't know the brand what is it and so and they and a lot of people couldn't name the brands and so here i was thinking wow there are two brands that dominate but people just have a familiar loyalty to with them through familiarity where they see them on shelf and they buy it there is real there's no real brand affinity and so we knew then that like if we could build a brand that championed performance design and sustainability but ultimately laddered up to something they would love through listening to their feedback and designing that into innovation then we'd be on to something and so here we are three a little over three years.

9:57We're 40 people. We delivered over$30 million last year in sales in our second year, and we're profitable.

10:05Kara Goldin:This episode of The Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. As we head into a new year, a lot of leaders are asking the same question. Do we have the right people in the right roles to get where we want to go next? If growing or strengthening your team as part of your 2026 plan, LinkedIn Jobs is built to help you do it smarter. LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant helps you find qualified candidates faster and with more confidence. So you're not just filling roles, you're building a team that lasts. In fact, LinkedIn hires are 30 % more likely to stay at least a year compared to the leading competitor.

10:46Kara Goldin:That kind of retention matters. And finding the right hire doesn't have to feel overwhelming. With LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant, you can skip the guesswork and jargon. It filters candidates based on your roles, specific criteria, and highlights top matches. So you're not wasting time digging through endless resumes. When you're running a business, you need a hiring process that's fast and focused. LinkedIn's AI assistant delivers 25 strong candidate suggestions each day, giving you the chance to invite the right people to apply and keep the process moving. It's a smarter, faster way to hire, and it's why I rely on LinkedIn jobs.

11:30Kara Goldin:Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Kara Golden to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. So how long did it take you from the moment that you had this idea to actually getting a product on the market? So it took around two years, actually. And so that's the thing, like hardware is hard. And if you look at this sort of setting, we were, it was COVID. Our product is currently manufactured in China and in Asia, and we couldn't travel.

12:15And so we had to engage with factories over Zoom. And my co-founder likes to call me the most stubborn person in the world. I like to say I'm focused and determined, but it played out. We must have talked to over 25 factories and they all said no, I mean, except for the 26th one, right? And the reason was, is that when you look at, um well one we were we'd never done hardware before so they're thinking that's a risk we didn't have our own capital immediately available we didn't you know have some other source of capital they could identify and and three we were trying to do something completely different and innovation to a factory is efficiency it isn't making something different uh they they are going to try and do things incrementally better but with the same platform uh and we wanted to do something thin but powerful, which nobody has ever done a thin brush that has a powerful sonic movement in it.

13:09And so that was why we got so many rejections. And I think that's part of the reason why it took two years for us to get off the ground. But, you know, looking back now, I feel like we were relatively quick for the resources we had.

13:23Kara Goldin:How long did it take you to come up with the name Suri. I love it. And it's short and memorable, to your point. But how long did that take to make that happen? Oh, boy, I'd love to say that was short and sweet. But, you know, I think when you're at the early stages, I mean, now my co-founder and I look back and they're like, oh, you know, we could have come up with any name. We could have done that pretty quickly, that initial branding. We didn't have to sort of deliberate over for days. But the reality is when you're starting out everything is so important right and so we settled on some names and we were we had lists and we were going through it so it took it took well longer than it probably needed to be but i guess like the ultimate decider at the end was um trademark registries and so as we would start come up with names they would just constantly get killed it was like oh somebody's registered this and not really used it in and you know in the us it's it's great because like if you're not using it you can't block it but in europe it's a totally different game you can hold onto something for like five years and and not use it and so you're kind of like stuck not being able to use many things and also people can sort of say they're going to go into a category in five years and block it uh so it took a bit of time uh and then kind of when it hit we we thought you know we wanted something short had a longer meaning to it you know a bit of a story uh and so you know i think like most moments eureka moments with founders when something fits you just you You grab it and you don't let go and you keep going forward with it.

14:51Kara Goldin:So sustainability is at the core of Surrey's mission. How did you balance the sustainability and performance and design? I mean, the design is amazing. The colors that you've used are really, really unique as well. The feel of it, everything about it is just, there's a lot of thought behind it. And when you're creating the first Surrey brush, sometimes it's like, we've just got to get it out there. but it's obvious that you were very methodical about it. But were there certain things that you just would not accept, I guess, in the product? I mean, that's a great question. I would say that like one of this, I had this sort of like hypothesis that was you could no longer launch a minimal viable product in MVP.

15:38Like the world of MVP had passed. And so we spent a lot of time on our research for that reason. because I think, you know, today anybody can go on to, let's say, Alibaba, find a product, reskin it, rebrand it, and, you know, invest maybe 5k into branding and do relatively well. But as a result, the market has become so much more competitive in almost every category because of that. And so we knew that we needed to really invest in our first iteration to develop what we call, and I've probably stolen this from somewhere, as an MLP, minimal lovable product, because what we want it well with hardware you have you know software businesses are great because you can iterate continuously after you ship something hardware you're you're you're trying to iterate but you have to be at a stage where it's it's good enough that people are going to use it and then tell others about it and we were really fortunate early on that we you know we were pretty determined and and i think the factory that you know the i don't not that i think i definitely know that because i saw emails later on the the factory that did help us in the beginning was a bit sort of frustrated with all the things we were like so picky about the colors we wanted everything to be right uh but that really contributed to people really enjoying their first suri when they when they got it you know and really telling others about it and what we called the sort of fomo effect which is that when one person in a household bought it somebody else would see it and then the whole household ended up buying some so we yeah i think it's hard um to really try and get everything perfect at first.

17:12And so, you know, there are some things looking back, you know, maybe we could have gone faster on, but we really want, we were very deliberate from the packaging to the whole experience because we knew we were dealing with a category where brand love was so low, we had to really push through to really make that clear to our early customers. And actually, there's a site that we use called Trustpilot that people leave us reviews and we can't, you know, we can't take them down. we cannot do anything negative or positive they come up uh and we we have on slack a sort of integration with the api so we see all the reviews as they come in and anything that's negative we you know we're constantly looking at like how can we take that feedback in but we recently exported all of our reviews and put it into chat gpt and said like tell us some analysis about this and i guess you know the sort of silver lining is the number one word ranked of all words in all the reviews was love.

18:04And so we were pretty thrilled to see that. I mean, how often do people say, I love brushing my teeth, right? So it's worth it. The hard work is worth it.

18:14Kara Goldin:So you're in Surrey 2.0 now with your brush and it's generating a lot of excitement. How does this version vary from your first one that you did launch? so i mean it took us about uh well over um two and a half years till we launched our second version uh and uh both brushes on the outside look the same and that was intentional um because we didn't want to come out with a new version that was just for the sake of like selling a new product to people we wanted people who already had the older version to be like well i don't need this this looks very similar um but we did put a lot of effort into upgrading our platform on on the inside and so a lot of that feedback that went in that we got from customers from dentists um from you know i i guess everybody who was giving us feedback all the way up to my wife uh and my mother and my sister um which give a lot of feedback by the way but uh but another story on that and a lot of support and it wouldn't have been possible without them we we really tried to build that into our our innovation so what we have in our new brush is a stronger motor uh it has a subtle haptic notifications that help you essentially build better gum health by not brushing too hard uh some brushes have flashing lights and different things and things go off ours just cuts the power soft so that you know you're brushing too hard and and and it keeps you from damaging your gums.

19:43We also have our motor has a wider amplitude, which means that the bristles move wider and give it deeper, thorough clean. And we've improved all of our accessories from the ground up. So our UV case is sleeker, has a battery built in it. And we really just took our current 1.0, and these were the top things that everybody told us. dentists were like you need a pressure sensor we put it in there uh it wasn't easy because i think the the challenge that we have is when you try to drive design and size uh everything gets very tight uh and i guess like you know companies that have shown that really well are apple obviously like they are constantly re-engineering everything to find every millimeter of space but i would argue in hardware a lot of things like it just gets very hard and when you're early stage company you don't have the resources to do what Apple can do.

20:37But yeah, it's a huge upgrade.

20:40Kara Goldin:Definitely. So how many different color patterns do you have? And is there one that is kind of the runaway top seller? So we currently have five colors, and they're all a range of pastel. We have very unique nature-based names like Winter Fern, Sunset Bloom is our pink color. I mean, internally we all call it pink, blue, white, green. But we spend a lot of time trying to find colors that work together so that if somebody has a different color at home, it doesn't clash, but also are much more modern well-being focused. um we're launching a new color pretty soon um so in the new year um it's it's i but it's um can't say too much on that but uh but we spend a lot of time trying to find colors that that fit with people's bathrooms a big part of our brand is that we we wanted to create something that was design driven delivered great performance and sustainability but design was part of the enjoyment that it's slim it's enjoyable to hold and it fits the bathroom that you want to have Right.

21:52You know, not the and a lot of the products on the market today don't fit with the bathroom you have or want to have. You know, so you're kind of you've got this like, I don't know, space design thing that that you're kind of like hiding when guests come over. Right. So we wanted this to be prominent, that you would leave it out and feel, you know, proud to have it rather than ashamed. Definitely.

22:14Kara Goldin:So the design is the pull, right? People are like, oh, wow, this looks amazing. It looks cool. But there's a lot behind that, including the sustainability, including the brush head, lots of things around it. But how do you get that education to consumers in a way where they don't feel like you're lecturing them or telling them something that they don't need to know? Yeah, it's not easy. I would say, you know, we obviously have what we think we should say. And then we started DTC first and it's still about 70 percent of our sales, although retail is growing quite fast. we were able to because of that test a lot of stuff through ads landing pages and see what resonated with people better so in a way like we knew our feature set but the how that we would sell it was was validated through people buying our product but the there is a quite a lot of nuance right because people see a thin brush and they think well that's more of a weaker model and then they see our price point and they go whoa why is that comparable to the higher end ones and the reality is we spent a lot of time trying to put a powerful motor in a slim design um so we we need to communicate that in a way that uh is clear to customers you know ultimately the the main benefit of of this category is that it cleans your teeth really well electric dentists recommend electric toothbrushes because they perform way better than manual toothbrushes but that's table stakes and then what we try to then layer on top of that is that we've made a product that you're going to enjoy using which is is hard to communicate because people will think enjoy brushing your teeth that just sounds odd right so why would i enjoy brushing my teeth um but that i think that's part of the reason why we get these crazy reviews from customers where they're saying like i absolutely have this toothbrush man this is wild um because we we've paid attention to things like the the way it feels on your teeth that the sound we have like very little sound i was doing sound tests uh in the bathroom talking to my wife being like can you hear me all right great you know because when she was brushing with said brand i'm not going to say It was like a tractor and it was like, and I was like, what?

24:26And we just wouldn't have a conversation. So, or you can't even hear yourself think. So those features, um, I think have helped, uh, a lot.

24:35Kara Goldin:Yeah, definitely. What was the moment that you and your co-founder Mark knew that Suri was really taking off? Uh, you, I love, I always think that I always tell people who aren't founders that you should definitely give people feedback because people do want to hear it. Maybe the large companies don't necessarily have anyone there that's really going to look, but especially the founders. I mean, they thrive on the feedback, good and bad. But also, were there metrics that you said to yourself if we grow a certain amount or when we're profitable or like what was it that said, OK, Suri is going to make it?

25:25I mean, I vividly remember a couple of moments that I'm going to tell a story about when we were sitting in Hong Kong airport. But in terms of metrics, like I put high numbers in the chart and that's what we sold to our investors. And I kind of was like, yeah, you know, one in a million will hit these numbers. And I remember sitting with Mark in the beginning and he was like these numbers every month why did you make them so big like we're never going to hit these numbers you know he's like now we've just got a like a difficult road ahead for the next year and we just started to hit month one month two one three and he was like wow this is really good it's almost like you started your career in finance and i was like i did but you know uh and yeah and i i think it must have been like a year almost a year in and we were sitting in the airport on our way to see our manufacturers.

26:15And Mark was telling me, wow, this is great. Like things are going so well. You know, we just got this article in the newspaper. Things are just really starting to take off. And I turned to him and I was like, don't tell me the positives. Just tell me what needs improvement, you know, because that's what we need to focus on now. We need to get to the next level now. And I don't want to hear about the positive news. I just want to hear the things that need to be fixed. and he turns to me and goes so you want to run this company for five to ten years and you just want to focus on the negatives and i was like well when you put it that way it sounds terrible and he's like but that's what you're saying right like we're not celebrating the wins and i stopped and i and it was a moment where i was like he's right like i i'm you know maybe i'm superstitious maybe i don't know but i'm not celebrating the wins and i know because you know i previously worked at a venture company where I worked with early stage startups, there's a lot of times when it gets pretty dark, right?

27:07It is never smooth sailing at any startup. And so I have a lot of respect for anybody who takes on the challenge of building a company. But what I didn't know, and what Mark was telling me there was that if we don't celebrate the wins, we will not offset the sort of lows that come on the business. And so now we've pretty much institutionalized it on our team anytime you know there's a big win we celebrate we all go out for lunch whether it's even big or medium-sized win we're making an effort to really enjoy what we're doing and and i think i mean that's a big part of building culture but uh you know we just had our biggest november our biggest month ever last month and i can say we we did a lot of eating out and and celebrating those times but i think that's really important because there are times when you're really, you know, grinding, you know, everything at full speed and it's difficult.

28:00So yeah, I'd say that like a big thing for me was like, once we started to see we had traction, it was learning to celebrate the wins. And I'm proud that we as a company really do institutionalize that.

28:14Kara Goldin:So you are based in the UK. You launched in the UK, but you've also expanded quickly into the US. You and I were talking briefly about that. How did you make that decision, I guess, to launch your product? You're an American, but obviously living over there in the UK. But how did you make that decision to launch outside of just one country? Because that's a big decision that, you know, not just with the trademarks, as you were talking about, but probably different regulations, I would imagine, too. Two, there's a lot of different components and probably definitions of sustainability and things like that, that people just don't really think about.

29:04Kara Goldin:It's very complex. So can you share a little bit more about that? definitely definitely um it's something that i wouldn't be honest if i didn't say this most people told us not to do so uh at least this early on in our journey like we we started shipping to the u.s i want to say month three or four probably helped us make our numbers uh and uh and the reason was that we just turned on some ads and we said well let's see what happens and cross-border shipments were pretty easy back then uh and we just started getting orders and so like well as long as the ads people are buying them and the ads are there's a healthy return on ad spend we're going to keep doing this and so we had we had many people who passed on investment in rounds for us who said that oh well you know like it doesn't make sense you know going into another market so difficult uh you know products can go bad on shelf the sourcing can be difficult and i was just listening going products go bad on our product doesn't go bad on shelf you know our sourcing is still the same uh it was almost like and i think that's so to your question um we i think we were kind of we kind of just fell into it by people buying our product we got some press press mentions um and uh as a result we just started building towards it we said like well there's a common language the insights are different you know i like to think because i'm american i can sort of be that gut check on the team and say hey i don't think that makes sense You know, I don't think anybody's going to like that in the U.S.

30:28But I mean, we also do a lot more research because I'm just one of many opinions. And I think ultimately the biggest sort of, and this goes back to just general advice that I've received as a founder early on, you are seeking advice. You remember things that people tell you from like, whether it's over a coffee five years ago, because you really anchor on it. And you're like, and you also remember when you get the wrong advice, right? and so when you get the wrong advice you're like oh i shouldn't listen that person i knew it and so i was anchoring so heavily on potential investors we have a great set of investors now uh and and i was listening i was like what do you think of this what should i do and as i um you know as i started uh as i was trying to take it all in it just felt like too many things too much feedback and i i talked to one investor uh and and he said to me very blunt and direct like what do you care what i think and i was like excuse me well you have a great portfolio you've done really he's like he's like really like what do you care what i think and i was like he's like i'm not your consumer like uh like and i brush with a manual brush you know and he's like but either way i'm going to tell you what i think you're going to go off in direction build towards it like the best thing you can do is find out what your customers think and they will tell you whether or not they like it was a you know whether or not they buy it and so that's kind of what we've done so we we were like look we'll start small if people buy it in the u.s we will start We're selling more and we'll build towards it.

31:54And so I think that has been our strategy on expanding into other markets. And then the U.S. is quite a decent market to focus on. So we haven't gone beyond the U.S. right now. It's the U.K. and the U.S., but we still have a lot of low-hanging fruit and potential. But I think the thing that really resonated with me is that, you know, if consumers want it and they're giving you positive feedback, it's worth building towards.

32:18Kara Goldin:Yeah, definitely. So you had amazing experience before launching, deciding to launch with your co-founder Mark, and Mark did as well. Did you feel like this, that launching a company was way easier than it's been? I mean, when you look at all of the ins and outs, I know I've had many people who have worked in large companies or on the investment side, venture side of things, and then all of a sudden the buck is stopping with them and they're hitting all the challenges and having to deal with those. Um, how, I guess, how did you feel in, in this, that it's, it's a lot more difficult than maybe, uh, maybe you had envisioned even dealing with founders?

33:11I mean, it's definitely difficult. And I think founders have a spark where they just want to go for it. And I think it's just any age of founder, right? I don't think it has to be a young founder or an older founder. It hits you at a moment in time in your life. and it hit me um you know right around when our first daughter was born and i i had um it was covid and i had left my previous job and and i think um when you get that spark it's it's hard to stop you uh most founders are determined that's why many business founders will pivot until they find success because they are just determined on on on bringing their business to life um one of the things that i i don't think is talked about enough is uh founder differences uh my co-founder is very different than me uh and i'm you know i think that's a great thing now early on it was hard for us to work together like we're very different profiles uh we grew up in different places our parents are from different countries uh and just i guess values to sort of way of thinking is very different um and they say i think it's the number three reason why companies fall apart is early stage companies founders can't work together anymore um and so early on we discovered these differences uh and it must have been just at the end of uh like our uh covid because we were on zoom 24 7 it was almost like a portal in our house and i'd walk in the room with a sandwich and keep talking to him walk out and get a drink and and i and you know when you're not able to be in proximity with somebody you're constantly on zoom with them uh i think subtle tensions pick up.