John Hu: How I Built A $40M Business With 30 Employees l Trailblazers Podcast Episode 44

0:00Erica Wenger: Today on the show, I am so excited to be joined by John Hu. John is the co-founder and CEO of Stan, one of the fastest growing platforms in the creator economy. What started as a solution to his own frustration with monetizing content has grown into a platform that helps tens of thousands of creators turn their knowledge, audiences, and personal brands into real businesses. Raised by a single mother who balanced a demanding career, entrepreneurship, and community leadership, John developed an early appreciation for hard work, calculated risk-taking, and self-reliance. Before starting Stan, he began his career at Goldman and sacks, but his path eventually led him into the creator world, where he saw a massive opportunity to give everyday entrepreneurs access to the same tools and opportunities that were once reserved for a select few.

0:38Erica Wenger: Today, Stan supports more than 90 ,000 creator entrepreneurs and has facilitated over$600 million in sales on the platform. John has also become known for building in public, openly sharing both his wins and challenges of entrepreneurship with his audience. Whether he's talking about startups, AI, or surfing, a passion that has shaped much of his leadership philosophy, John brings a unique perspective on building companies, navigating uncertainty and creating opportunities for others. Let's welcome John. Thank you so much. And I will say surfing is my entire personality. So that's really funny that the team included that in the bio.

1:09Erica Wenger: That's so good. Has surfing always been the thing? Or is it more of just like a new we're like an LA startup. So we got to do like the thing. Yeah, I am a meme of an LA tech bro. But no, truly surfing. Actually, I grew up in North Carolina landlocked. So I never grew up surfing. But when I eventually moved out to California, post New York and post banking, I remember a good friend took me out and I always tell people that surfing for me was love at first sight you never forget that first wave like the feeling of that you feel like a feather yet somehow simultaneously you're like flowing and flying and I think you chase that high the rest of your life yeah it's the best so I grew up in Manhattan Beach if you know it yeah I sit there all the time El Porto El Porto so do you go to that little surf shack where they have food and you can like rent kayaks and surfboards yeah okay that's like my home okay so it's the best um and I absolutely love it.

1:53Erica Wenger: I'm curious, like, what's your philosophy with like surfing in the workplace? Like, you know, I joked about Patagonia, but like his whole thing was let my people go surfing. Tell me what's like, how do you think about it? Do people go surfing in the morning? Do you guys do like surfing off sites? Yeah. So we have an incredible office right on Venice beach, probably like five blocks away from one of my favorite local breaks, which is Venice breakwater. I promise I'll make this helpful for every business owner, how they think about succeeding in their business. But the team always jokes that they always know the mornings I go surfing because there's just a bunch of wet footprints from the elevator into the office because it's me walking with my wetsuit and then my surfboard to go shower in the office in the mornings.

2:28Essentially, I mean, you've mentioned Patagonia now a couple of times. I really look up to what Yvonne did with that business. The mission of Stan is to empower anyone to make a living working for themselves. And maybe we're naive in this, but we really want to prove that you can build a business that both does good and does well, which I've learned over time as the business has scaled to 40 million plus in revenue and hopefully hundreds of millions plus soon is that it's exceptionally difficult to actually do the two at the same time because they're actually two different value sets at times.

2:55Point being to all of that is I think we're very intentional about how we work, which is you have SF tech saying like 996, if not like 997 right now, which to be clear, I do think some version of that is very, very true and we play the same. But I think we also still recognize at the end of the day, we're not machines yet. We are human beings. And so I'm always super cool with the team going surfing whenever they want to or taking time off whenever they want to, assuming that we're playing at the top 1 % high performance level. And so Yvonne's kind of methodology around let my people go surfing is very much the one that we try to embody.

3:28I myself take a month off every year to go like surf through Bali and do deep work and creative work then. And we like to make sure that the team models that as well.

3:36Erica Wenger: I love that. I mean, so much of this like race for great talent at the best startups is like letting them be them. Like I think, you know, you hear a lot in like the venture worlds that you can do a lot more with a lot less. And instead of having 100 person teams building your app, you can do it with five. And so let's say that is true. You want to keep those five people and you want to keep them happy because they know so much information about your company. And so I love that you're prioritizing the people as well. And to be clear, I don't want to sound like LA woo woo or soft in this. For example, we hit 30 million revenue with 30 people.

4:08And this was way before the whole AI thing, you need less teams and less people. The reason why we were able to do that is because we only hire exceptional talent. Like you, this model breaks down at scale. If you're not hiring a plus talent and if you're not curating your team consistently, where you can trust that your teams can take that time off if they are responsible adults with high integrity and exceptional and also very hungry and growth mindset, but it only works in that way. You can't just, you know, live this idealistic life where everyone can take as much vacation as possible unless people are putting food on the table.

4:37So I will make that really clear caveat where I think we've learned through a lot of trial and error that over time as you hire more people and you don't have as much control over the culture and the quality bar, there are oftentimes people that can take advantage of that that aren't fit for your culture that is high performance that allows you to then go spend a month in Bali. So.

4:55Erica Wenger: A hundred percent. I think that's such an important caveat because a lot of people like listen to this and they think, well, then why is my company letting me go do that? Well, you have to be outputting an insane amount and have very high trust. Talk to me about like, what are the other stuff that you guys like do well? So obviously you guys are making a bunch of money and you're building an exciting business and we'll get into all of that. But other than like a great culture, are there other things that you're prioritizing that make you do well? As I'm kind of leading the witness here, but something that I see is you're helping a lot of creators completely support themselves, like economic mobility for the creator class, if you will, which I think is sick.

5:27Erica Wenger: How do you think about doing well beyond just great culture and like high trust and letting people go do the surfing thing? How do you think about other ways of doing well? So I think in general, if anyone wants to be successful in life, they have to really think first principles, which is once again, a meme of Silicon Valley tech culture, but I say that very intentionally here, which is all of these things that you're saying around great culture, great outcomes, great revenue. There's actually a singular input that drives all of that. The thing that we do best, and if we ever stop doing best, all of these other things will fall apart is specifically our care and love for the mission, which we define as our North Star value, which is creator first or entrepreneur first or founder first.

6:03What we do better than anyone else in our space is we deeply, deeply care about our customer. And I will give you the example, the tangible business school case study of when I started Stan, it first started just as a quote unquote Lincoln bio, a Shopify for content creators. I started that in my dorm room in grad school at business school at Stanford, where they will tell you time and time again, first mover advantage is super important. But when I started this business, there were a hundred other Lincoln bios. There were multiple private equity backed businesses in the space, right? Had raised hundreds of millions of dollars that we were competing with.

6:35And so you ask yourself, like, why today has Stan succeeded when the others have pretty much flatlined or struggled or gone under? Very kindly, I'll tell you, there's two main reasons. One is we just cared so much fucking more than anyone else, right? I still live, breathe, and bleed this creator entrepreneur experience. We deeply feel the pain of it. We, like, so much of the team are some of the most successful creators out there. So we understand this mission. We understand this journey so much better than anyone else. And also, we're not just serving customers. We're serving our friends. And so that passion bleeds into everything.

7:06And that passion bleeds into making sure that your product is actually the simplest and easiest to use. It's most intuitive, right? Because you're not using clunky software built by some like corporate nine to five person who's privately backed who doesn't give a shit about you. But it also bleeds into the marketing of like speaking the language, being in the zeitgeist.

7:20Erica Wenger: You know it better than anyone. Exactly. And then you think about that. That trickles down into making more revenue, having a great culture because things are succeeding. People are winning. And so there's so many standards that are actually built upon this core first principle that we do better than anyone else. And if we ever stop doing that, then we will lose, which is being deeply creator and founder first. One thing I've learned talking to GPs on the show and in my own experience as a GP, your back office is a signal. How fast you close deals, how clean the LP experience is, how your K1s land, investors notice all of it.

7:50Erica Wenger: The more buttoned up you are, the more likely they are to give you more money in the future. That's why I want to talk about Sidecar. Sidecar is the SPV platform built for fund managers who want institutional quality execution without hiring a full back office team. They'll review your deal within hours, handle full secondary transaction support, and give you transparent pricing up front. No platform carry. Also, your LP relationships stay private, which is super important. It is not a marketplace. If you're running a professional fund, your infrastructure should look like it. Sidecar makes that possible without the overhead.

8:20Erica Wenger: Check them out at sidecar.io slash partners slash trailblazers. So this brings up a really interesting question. You have, you know, let's call it over 200 ,000 followers on TikTok. You have a$40 million ARR business, not 30. I saw the recent updates. Are you more of a creator or founder? How do you think about it? I define myself as a creator entrepreneur. And so when I think about the most successful people in their class across any spectrum, I often think about it from the artist to the entrepreneur spectrum. I tell the team about this all the time. And so on the one side, you have the artist who is an artist to their own chikrin.

8:53So let's use a Vincent van Gogh or an Amy Winehouse who may or may not see commercial success in their lifetime, but are deeply talented, deeply creative. And then on the other side of the spectrum, you have someone who's incredibly left-brained. So let's call it a Bezos or an Elon Musk, right? So very much to an entrepreneur in that way. I often find that the people who are most successful nowadays commercially, generally in terms of their consistency and repeatability, is going to be someone like a Taylor Swift, who, yes, is deeply creative, clearly in tune emotionally, with her audience, but also people don't give her enough credit.

9:24She's a fucking killer. Like the way she showed up for that tour, how thoughtful she is in her marketing. She's so good at what she does. She showed up every single day to execute. And so I would kind of define myself as a class of this newfound generation of creator entrepreneurs who, yes, have all the left-brained mechanisms to build and scale a business, but also see business as their art, as their way to express themselves, as their way to make an impact in the world. And so that's how I personally defied myself.

9:49Erica Wenger: I love that. Entrepreneurship is deeply creative. Creativity means bringing something from nothing. And that is the definition of entrepreneurship. So I'm right there with you. One thing that's interesting about your comment about Bezos and Musk is that, and we'll even throw Zuckerberg in there, is that they're all very well known. They're all very famous. And they have this public facing persona for whatever you want. Elon Musk has his quirks, deeply technical, deeply like 997 culture. Again, I'll call it quirky. But he has this public facing persona. And a lot of the best founders of our time now, whether you want to call it building in public, whether you want to call it, you know, sharing their ideas with the world, they have a presence that people know about.

10:29Erica Wenger: What's your take on like the future of the next great founders needing that public presence? And you're someone who builds in public. You're someone who has been building alongside, you know, your customers, which is amazing. But I find a lot of the best founders, even when they're not building for the creator economy, do have that public profile. So what's your take on what the future of the best founders are going to be? Well, the reality is, is no one can buy from you or support you if they don't know you exist. And people nowadays are like, oh my God, you need to build a personal brand as if this new novel thing.

10:57Personal brand has been the thing since the time of Jesus or since the time of any famous person back in time, right? It's not a novel concept. It's just been rebranded by the gurus. At the end of the day, when you think about someone like Elon or Bezos, Elon over time has been incredibly intentional over time about curating his reputation and scaling it through buying an entire media platform. But at the end of the day, there are so many different reasons why a founder should potentially build their personal brand. But I will say once again, people are too focused on the vanity of it, of like the outputs of the follower count, the reputation, all that kind of stuff.

11:29You have to recognize that someone like Steve Jobs or Elon or Bezos, they never started out trying to build a personal brand. They had the inputs of building something incredible and great. And so I would really, really push founders to focus on creating something of genuine value for society and then trusting the process on that. But of course, at the same time, ideally, if you have the time and resources and energy, and also you skew towards this kind of personality, you should also ideally be maximizing the distribution of that input, right? So that's where you, that's just basically building a great business is how can I build a great product?

11:59And then how can I build a great marketing distribution engine that maximizes the impressions and the quality of impressions of that input? And so that in this case, in this new age world, where AI is basically commodifying everything, when you think about what has value, It's those things that are most scarce. And I would argue that one of the things that will become more and more scarce over time is durable quality human connection, which when you think about what is a personal brand at scale, it's just durable quality human connection at scale. Once again, I would use Jesus or Muhammad as a great example of that or Gandhi.

12:26Right. Personal brand has always been here, always will be as long as we as humans exist.

12:30Erica Wenger: Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think that's such a great way to think about it. What's what's your take on the future of the creator economy? So you're an interesting person to ask this to because you guys are using a lot of like AI generated content. when we'll get into what you guys are building now, which is really exciting. There is a strong technology-driven piece to a lot of the future of content creation. But then you talk about the importance of human connection and authentic human connection. And so I'd love to get your take on what percentage is human, what percentage is AI, how do we do this whole AI play in a way that is deeply authentic.

12:58Erica Wenger: Talk to me a little bit about your philosophy there. Sure. So first I would say, I don't really think about the creator economy. To me, it's just the entrepreneurial economy. The creator economy was just the first subset of all entrepreneurs recognizing that, hey, we now have this equalizing medium in which I can put my face in front of millions of people completely for free. And this is the new age form of distribution. So that's kind of how I think about the space evolving in general is now it's not just the creative economy, it's just like everyone's economy to build a business for themselves, which is really sick.

13:25But in terms of how AI changes that, I would actually make a very polarizing argument today, which is almost all the content you consume at this point is AI generated. It's actually just a spectrum of how AI is involved. As in, you ask any content creator that you follow, I would guarantee you 95 % of them use at least Chatty or Claude in some version of their process, in some version of helping them script, at least being a thought partner, helping the researcher in some form. Now, the degree of expertise at which they're using AI to maximize their output and their distribution is varied, of course.

13:57And so what I see happening over time, cynically, is that we will get a massive amount of AI slop into the market. and it will inflate supply. But my understanding is that the algorithms are incentivized, so the TikToks, the social medias of the world, are incentivized, of course, to continue to only serve us quality content. So we can assume that there will be some sort of bottleneck and some sort of tastemaking on the quality that we end up consuming. But I think the people that will be most successful are the ones who maximize figuring out how to take their humanity and distill that down into the most resonant points.

14:30So in the same way that Disney has Mickey Mouse or some sort of IP, You need to recognize what you as a human being, you need to have your IP and what part of your IP resonates the most with the market or your audience. And then you use AI. In the same way before I would scale a team, like I pay for a content team that is costing millions of dollars a year in the same way that Gary Vee does or Stephen Bartlett does or the Hormozies do. In that process, in the same way that I've scaled a team to scale my content, you would just look for AI to scale your output as well. And so how I think about AI and content creators and human beings come together is just how do you actually use AI to amplify your superpowers as opposed to replace you?

15:05Because there will be AI slop out there, but the way that we will win against the AI slop is very much so by leaning into what we have that they don't, which is our deep humanity, our soul, what have you. And so I see AI in all of these different ways amplifying your distribution of that.

15:18Erica Wenger: Totally. Make you move faster and better. I'd love to get your take on what you think AI is going to be most helpful for. Is it generative AI content? Is it analytics on what's actually going well? Is it new ideas? Is it other accounts that you should be collaborating with? I'd love to get your take on the power of AI and where you think it's going to be most effective because I will say I'm someone where I look at my content and I'm like, oh, this random video popped off. I don't really know why. I mean, I could give you a gut answer, but probably a lot more effective if that transcript is uploaded into AI.

15:49Erica Wenger: Maybe my facial expressions are analyzed, right? So I'm curious, where do you see AI having the most potential to help content creators? I would say all of the above. And let me give you some really specific examples. So we're building this new AI agent called Stanley. He's basically an AI million-dollar content team in your pocket. And the reason why we've done this is because we've just, having worked with all the top-created entrepreneurs and built these workflows ourselves with teams, we understand these workflows deeply of how do you successfully scale a personal brand. And so with Stanley, this initial beta core, they've seen an initial increase of 50 % engagement in just their first month.

16:20The reason why is a bunch of fold, because AI is a superpower in whatever direction you channel it. So for example, every morning, I wake up with a daily brief from my AI agent, Stanley, where he texts me all the top performing posts in my niche from accounts that I follow on my watch list that are competitive creators that are in my niche or formats that are outperforming that are viral that I should repurpose specifically in my unique voice. And so if you wake up with that every morning, it's kind of a superpower because you're already seeing validated data from the market of, hey, John, this is a 20X outperformer that matches exactly the Trailblazers podcast and specifically the themes you talk about.

16:52this is your lens. But then beyond that, you're thinking, okay, that's the quality of the idea, which is a large piece of whether or not a piece of content performs. But then the other side of this business for us as media businesses is to maximize our distribution, aka our output. And so what Stanley's doing from there is after I sign off on an idea, he can either take all of my favorite photos that he knows he has because he has access to my photo album and make a carousel for me to sign off on. Just in the same way my current team puts that together. Now Stanley does that for us. I sign off on the copy and it can output that.

17:20In the same way now he's also auto editing people's videos. So he's probably 80 % as strong as my team right now, my human team at cutting our talking head videos. So now he's actually, I just have to literally set up my phone, talk about what I want to talk about, which is either an idea sourced by me or not, or Stanley. And then Stanley edits that, writes the caption for me, I sent off it and he goes out and publishes and schedules it. And so I say all of the above because AI can be used across the entire creative stack. And what people should be thinking about doing is where do I disproportionately skew.

17:49So am I a really good editor? Am I a really good script writer? And I would have AI specifically be your thought partner in that lane because that is your best piece. And then everything else in that process, like I assume you don't love editing stuff yourself.

18:01Erica Wenger: I don't edit stuff myself. Exactly. Because it's not part of your creative stack that you should be doing. Stanley, aka some sort of AI agent should be doing that work for you. Totally. So this is the thing that I struggle a lot with with marketing and go to market. I'd love your take. I think to be successful, I know to be successful, you have to be different to stand out. So as an example, way early on, Brex had a bunch of billboard ads all over SF. And that was like, whoa, a startup having billboard ads, that's crazy. And that really stood out because it was, you know, on the 235 or whatever, when you're going into the city, then everyone does billboard ads.

18:34Erica Wenger: And I went to SF last weekend, there were billboard ads of every single AI startup. So now it's like, okay, that's pretty, you know, saturated, we got to find something else. And then, you know, I saw yesterday, there was someone who had like a plane flying in the sky with her. And again, I'm simplifying it. But this idea that like with marketing, you stand out when you have the novel insight and then it gets saturated. And then you stand out with the novel insight, it gets saturated. And so like, what's your take? I think AI can learn a lot of what's working, what's already kind of saturated.

18:57But this idea of like completely net

19:00Erica Wenger: new marketing ideas that maybe you haven't thought of, a lot of the times it does have to come from other humans. So I'd love your take on like, how can you stand out when, let's say, maybe everyone is doing like a dancing TikTok. And you're like, well, maybe I should do a singing TikTok. Like, What is the alternative that will make people pay attention versus doing what the crowd is doing? Yeah. I think what you're speaking towards is our human ability to create novel insights and create novel approaches and therefore command attention. And I would say time immemorial this has been the case for any go-to-market channel.

19:30So paid ads in the early days of Facebook, there was a ton of alpha. And then we saw that channel absolutely collapse from a CAC perspective with the Caspers of the world going under. Although I would argue it still doesn't take away from the total value of the channel. like paid ads is still obviously a helpful channel billboards are still obviously to some degree a helpful channel in terms of how i think about finding the novel insights while also still maximizing the success of your business this is exactly where ai comes in which is once you've your job as a founder and entrepreneur scale business i believe is to find the novel insight and then systematically reproduce that into a channel that performs for you so that you can go off and find the next novel insight and i think until agi has a total omnipresent view of the world and a data model of the entire world and all these ways to create net new things.

20:11I think our jobs in this world of AI is to number one, find the novel insight to validate it and then use AI and teams to effectively replace ourselves from all of that and productize that and systematize that channel so that we can go off and find the novel insight. But I think that is the fun that we would ideally unlock given this world of AI.

20:28Erica Wenger: And giving you that time back to figure out what that novel insight is. I think that's absolutely right. Let's talk about the messy middle of building an audience. You've got your newsletter in one tool, your podcast in another, your website hosted somewhere else entirely and your community is scattered across multiple apps. You have to pay for four different subscriptions and then they still take a cut of your earnings. Does that sound familiar? Beehive has just fixed this with their latest update. It's one platform where your newsletter, your podcast, your website, your paid subscriptions, and now your community can all live together.

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21:31Erica Wenger: I used to be a compulsive note taker. Every single meeting, I'd be half listening and half scribbling and still leaving with gaps on next steps, details that were shared, and more. But Granola completely changed that for me. It's an AI-powered notepad for meetings, and it's connected to every single call on my calendar. Before each call, it shows me a well-researched brief so I know who I'm meeting with and the full context going in. During the call, I jot down whatever stands out, maybe it's a keyword or a decision I make, and Granola handles the rest. It'll transcribe in the background on the call and then turns my rough notes into clean, structured takeaways the second we hang up.

22:04Erica Wenger: There's also no bots joining calls. It just works in the background. I use Granola for several things. If I finish a meeting with a potential investor in my fund, I'll ask Granola, what could I have done better to get my point across? If I'm meeting with a founder I like, I'll ask Granola to point out any major green flags or maybe red flags I may not have already caught. For people with a lot of due meetings and decisions that require endless context, Granola is a game changer. Actually, we're running Granola on today's episode, so you can read the full show notes at granola.ai slash trailblazers.

22:32Erica Wenger: New users get three months completely free. That's granola.ai slash trailblazers. I want to talk a little bit more about Stan and those early days. And specifically, I heard that when you got started, you cold emailed Stephen Bartlett a million times. Yeah. And you finally got him to invest in your company. Tell me more about that story. If there's anything I know how to do is I know how to rip the phones off the wall. I actually, my job before Stanford Business School, I was at Norris Venture Burners on the growth equity team. And in that sense, we went after very profitable growing companies.

23:01And when you know growth equity in that sense, in that stage of private equity, I was a 24-year-old kid trying to convince a 40-year-old founder entrepreneur who was doing$100 million in EBITDA to take our money. Like, what value does he have? What value do I have that I could give him? And like, what does our money mean? And so I got really good at sending dozens of cold emails and just like being super hungry to get after it. I say all that to say, I think I've learned the value of a cold email when well written to the right person can really genuinely change someone's life. And so I've learned the value of persistence through this, where I was always very intentional about thinking about, okay, in terms of how we scale stand, what is the most effective distribution channel?

23:38We've already established now, and it's been obvious now for years to the market, that creators are the new TV channels is how I describe it to the team. And so when I think about our audience of entrepreneurs, so, you know, the folks like me who grew up consuming certain forms of content, Diary of a CEO, Stephen Bartlett is one of the top podcasts that we all kind of consume. In the same way, the Hormozies and Gary Vee, who are all investors as well, who came in this round as well, are kind of the, they have the ownership over this particular audience demographic. And so I was always very excited about bringing them in in some capacity.

24:08Of course, one has to build a business that's interesting enough for them to want to invest and pay attention to you in the first place. And so, yes, I sent them many emails over years to try to get their attention, and I got no response, as one rightfully should because I don't have a great business yet. but it was this last year actually i knew it was time to like pour fuel on the fire we clearly had something where we knew we were helping truly so many people truly affect their life outcomes and we also had a business that was working on top of that from a profitable unique economics perspective and so in that sense it's like okay now it's time to pour fuel on the fire and so to get into steven just so everyone knows like how many outreaches one should think about doing for something that they're serious about i probably tried 10 different angles i probably sent over 25 messages over the course of three months.

24:49And you will never guess how I got in because it's not an obvious one. Basically, I started first with the typical cold emails to him and anyone else I could find in his network. Specifically, I found his manager. I found his agent. I emailed them. I also went through his partnerships team because I was thinking, okay, maybe I can position this as, hey, we'll sponsor your podcast. I talked to the partnerships team, got stoned a couple of times. They just had too much interest. And then I also did one other thing, which is I found his VC fund website. And you, as someone who owns a VC fund, I'm not sure if you have an interest form on your website.

25:22Erica Wenger: We do. But I would say for most people, that thing never gets checked, right? It's just like, it's just a waste. We have agents checking it now, by the way. So that's the use case today. So before it was like, having been a VC before, I remember submitting a form and being like, wow, I'm such an idiot. Like I'm going to do this, even though I know no one is ever going to get back to me. In fact, no one ever got back to me until actually Christmas Eve of two years ago. I got an email, a mass email that said, hi, thank you for submitting your company in this form. We actually lost all the submissions.

25:52Could you actually resubmit if you're still interested? And I was Christmas Eve day and I was with my mom and, you know, as you're supposed to quote unquote take time off, but here I am plugged into email and like thinking and obsessing about my business. and so it's always those moments where you're like i just got to push a little bit more and i remember really not wanting to do it but i was like i'm just gonna do it and i pushed myself through and i submitted a form and two days later the day after christmas i could finally get a message back from steven on linkedin which was one of the 15 different platforms i hit him up on and he said john i just got in your business i'm obsessed with it shoot me a number at this whatsapp and so the story there is basically you got to hustle for years to get someone's attention you never know which shot's going to land but you got to take the shots and i'm very grateful for steven Gary, the Hormozies, all the creator entrepreneurs who have trusted us to be on the cap table and want to build this mission with us.

26:38But yeah, it all starts with like, you got to fucking hustle.

26:41Erica Wenger: I love it. And you know, for better or worse, Christmas Eve, you might have to like whip up that laptop, shoot an email over, you know, it's not ideal. That's really helpful. I want to talk a little bit about your mom. Because you brought her up briefly. And I think, you know, children of single moms are built different. I'm one as well. What did she want for you and for your career? Was she ever did you ever have expectations around what you should do? I mean, just looking at your resume, we've got Stanford MBA, we got Goldman, we got growth equity. I mean, we've got like all of the traditional check marks of like a very, very successful, ambitious person.

27:11Erica Wenger: And then you start doing creator stuff. You want to start your own business. You know, I'll speak for myself. Single parents are like a lot of the times they're like, no, no, no, no. Like you got to go do more. You got to go build. You got to do the things that I thought you were going to do. Talk to me a little bit about like what she wanted for you and maybe her reaction when you told her that you were going going to start creating videos and starting companies. I mean, that's definitely a little bit different than what your resume suggests. Yeah. So I'll tell you a funny story about my Asian immigrant mom reacting to me dropping out of Stanford business school and how that went in terms of becoming a TikTok creator.

27:41So I remember telling my mom, basically, you're into Stanford that, hey, mom, I'm going to drop out and try to start a business for myself. And if you know anything about Asian American immigrants, the holy grail of Asian American immigrants is getting a grad school degree and specifically getting a grad school degree at Stanford. This was like, I remember getting a call from the Dean of Admissions before I got in, letting me know that I got in. And I still remember sitting in my bedroom, like truly tearing up because it wasn't just about me. It was about all of the sacrifice my mom had put in to even get me to this point that I could like deliver her that success.

28:13It was so deeply meaningful. It still is to this day. And so of course she was really confused, bewildered and upset that I was going to drop out of Stanford Business School because to her, like, you know, John, you need to get a grad school degree to be of like a safe, secure position. Whereas I'm coming from the lens of like, no, mom, actually being a Stanford dropout is kind of like you get to have your cake and eat it too. You get the stamp of approval, but also you get the cool factor of being a dropout. She obviously doesn't understand that at all, but specifically in that she's really upset at me for a while and just really confused understandably.

28:45And then a couple of weeks later, she actually texts me out of the blue. And she's like, you know, John, I actually, I think I understand why you're doing this because I realized it's the same thing as when I was trying to get out of China myself, where after the cultural revolution, because none of us had gotten to go to school, I finally got to go to university and worked so hard for that. And all my peers who also got in university to work so hard for that. But there was something about me that I wasn't, that wasn't enough. Like she worked on top of that to get to a foreign exchange program where she actually got to do her PhD in Milan in Italy, where most of her peers were just satisfied with having gotten to go to college in the first place.

29:18And she realized that that for her was actually the same for me of like, I had worked so hard to get to Stanford business school, but that actually wasn't fully what I wanted. There was actually something a little bit more. And so she was like, I think I understand that in the same way that I had this desire and drive to get out of the country and actually, you know, build a life for us outside of China here in the States for us. You have the same thing now with building your own business. And for the first time in my life, truly as an Asian kid, I was like, holy shit, mom, I think you understand me.

29:43And it was really beautiful until a year later, actually. It was early June, out of nowhere. I'm deep in the muck of building a business, burning a ton of cash, not sure if we're gonna make payroll, super stressed. You know, the first year of a business, it's awful.

29:58Erica Wenger: First three years, honestly, are hard. It's a grind. Out of nowhere, I just get this random drive-by shooting a text message from my mom where she's like, John, today would have been your Stanford graduation. You stole this from me. I can't believe you would ever do this for me. Like, I'm so deeply disappointed in you. And she meant it with all the love possible, right? But it's like such an Asian mom thing to, you know, have like - Tough love. Tough love, right? I was like, mom, what the fuck? Like, I'm trying so hard right now to survive. And you're just - You're just pouring more alcohol. Just like absolute drive-by.

30:30But I say all that to say, at the end of the day, our parents just want what's best for us. And for us to be safe and secure in their definition of that. At the end of the day, I think the irony that I feel nowadays is that my mom sees how hard I'm working now. And how hard I'm hustling when I FaceTime her. And she's like, John, you look so tired or John, it pains me to work this hard. And it's funny. I laughed to myself and I'm like, mom, who the fuck do you think gave me this work ethic? Right? Like you modeled this, like you were such a tough, resilient woman. You raised me alone in the South with no connections.

30:59Like, can you imagine moving to a country and speaking the language kind of, but not having a single connection, having a kid to raise? Like she hustled in her nine to five. She's mechanical engineer, like only woman on her shop floor of, of men. She's been at the same company on for 40 years, crushing it. She's still working at 74. full-time for her badass mom super badass you know did a ton of stuff in the community own her own little small business on ebay that was a dropshipping business before that was ever a quote-unquote thing all that to be said is um i'm very lucky i would say almost entirely everything that i have is probably because of her because of the value she gave me and what she role modeled um so yeah it's it's funny it's like that the relationship we all have with our parents which is um we have so much to to thank with them but also like they can just be like kind of annoying.

31:45So I was like, mom, truly what? I'm trying to do my thing. Like, let me do my thing. So I love it.

31:49Erica Wenger: I love it. The tough love gets you far, though. I've been thinking about this a lot. And I think the boundaries and the nose and the intensity, it's also that you become the adult you are today. Because what would be the reverse, right? Is that you're just kind of don't go after your dreams and you don't work that hard. She would hate that. She would hate that even more than hating that you didn't graduate from Stanford. That's amazing. How old were you when you guys came over here from China? I was six months old. Yeah. Wow. Brave. And where in the South did she settle? So we spent our first five years in Kentucky, which was actually really fantastic.

32:20If anyone's from the Midwest, you know how deeply kind most people are in the Midwest.

32:24Erica Wenger: And how did she even find Kentucky? Like from China to Kentucky. I mean, that's a bit of a unique setup. Yeah, so she worked at a company called Ingersoll Rand. So they moved her first plant there, and then they eventually shut that plant down. And that's when we moved to North Carolina. And we moved to just north of Charlotte, North Carolina, which is, I would call, like upper middle class suburbs, where really no one looked like us. And we were definitely in a very different wealth demographic than most people. They were, you know, living on the lake relatively wealthy. And so people during that era where I spent the next 20 years of my life or next 15 years of my life weren't the nicest to us.

32:54And, you know, that shapes who you are and who you become and all that kind of stuff. So I'm grateful for it in the long term.

32:59Erica Wenger: Yeah. What did you want to be when you were that age? When you were growing up in North Carolina, you have this mom who's hustling so hard. You look different from everyone around you, but you can see wealth because, like you said, nice houses on the lake. What were you thinking you wanted to be when you grew up? Dude, I just wanted to be like accepted and happy. I just like wanted to not be bullied at the end of the day, right? When you're a kid. And so that that does shape you as a human being, right? When you're already an Asian American in this society, you're told this model minority myth of like, hey, you have to do X and Y things to be accepted.

33:26And so then you have that on top of the Asian American pressures to just perform. And so it was always, it was always driven to me that I should be as successful as possible in my career for the sake of like validation or acceptance. And of course, So then you get to those points and you realize that none of that's true and all that kind of stuff. And you work through that and you go to great therapy and you do psychedelics. You're like, wait, everything's a lie. I should just do what I actually want to fucking do. But yeah, when you're a kid, I think so many of us are told if you do certain things, then you'll finally be happy in life.

33:50Or like you'll finally get to put food on the table. You'll finally be therefore loved in all these ways. And I think I very much was a victim of that experience as well. But I'm very grateful for it now.

33:59Erica Wenger: How do you feel about yourself now? I mean, as someone who's deeply ambitious, you have big shoes to fill with this company. You've taken on a lot of responsibility. You have a massive following. How do you identify your self-worth? How do you think about what you want out of your life?

34:19Thank you for helping me reflect in this moment.

34:21Erica Wenger: Yeah, take your time. I think my fully honest answer right now in this very moment, and this will change with different seasons of life, is I think I'm optimizing for two things. One is I'm optimizing for being personally happy and fulfilled. and two it's i think it's 49 51 uh the second piece the latter is being deeply proud of what we've done as in the mission and true like i am working so hard right now the team and i are working so fucking hard right now because we are so hell-bent on truly building something that genuinely helps millions of people pursue this path because we're so passionate about what this experience can give to people not only the financial security but also the sense of self-agency and confidence in a time when I think society deeply needs this.

35:03The systems are breaking at the seams. And so I can't wait to look back on being like, holy shit, this new product, Stanley We built, fundamentally blew people's minds. I love, right now we're in exclusive beta with folks, I love being on a call with someone and they go, holy shit, this is actually really good. You can see the magic moment. I love doing that. I want us to build something that truly is that exceptional. Truly, people look back and that company, Stan, fundamentally lifted the success curve of the entrepreneur. Like they did a good thing. And ideally they did in a way that proves that you can actually do good and do well in this, you know, modern day system of capitalism.

35:35Like I really want us to do that. And I think that's probably my priority. And in that, ideally, I would also be a happy whole human being, which of course there are certain time constraints on entrepreneurship, which prevent you from doing that fully. But I think that's, I think that's what drives me at this point. It's, it's, it's very much so not the things that I thought as a middle school would actually make me happy, healthy, whole, which is some version of like fame, money, success. those things like truly I've learned are such demons on the other side like they they don't interest me in fact oftentimes many of those things are actually detriments to me succeeding in the mission or me being personally happy so they're distractions a lot of the time yes well

36:11Erica Wenger: also you also the luxury of have found some financial success some sort of fame or whatever skill you want to refer to that you can now look back in hindsight and go oh I still have the same things I still have the same struggles what are the things that do bring you joy and bring you happiness? You know, obviously surfing, we know surfing. I just lit up. Yeah. Duh. I'm like, nothing makes you smile bigger than surfing. Yeah. We just lit up. I love it. But what else brings you happiness? I mean, when you think about that second bucket, right, you're obviously working very hard, but outside of that, what brings you happiness?

36:38My loved ones, my like friends and family. I'm very lucky to have really great loved ones in my life who don't give a shit about what I do in my day job. Just like shit on me and roast me all the same. Like, like we are just like the friends that we are. Um, so that and traveling with them and mostly surf trips with them. And then I'll be honest, I just love a slow morning. I love a fucking slow day where you're not plugged in. You're not racing in this AI psychosis of like, oh, I got to build, build, build, build, build. And you're just being a human being and you enjoy expressing like whatever it is that you want to do that day.

37:08And I think my fight to actually be more successful in my business right now is actually to create more of that space. So those are the two things that come to mind.

37:15Erica Wenger: And I think for high achievers, you can think that the more productive you are, the more output what you have, the better it is for your business. But actually those, you know, slow mornings, maybe you read a book, maybe you get to have a really long conversation with someone or just let yourself think that actually can be the game changing decision for your business. And it's hard to, I mean, I'm speaking to myself, like sometimes very hard to let that go, that desire to just crank, crank, crank, and not let yourself relax. Yeah. About two years ago, actually, we hit a plateau in a natural way that any business will struggle to scale at some point.

37:43And I took it really hard, really personally, because I defined my self-worth by how well the company was growing and we had always been kind of this rocket ship. And in that moment, I did what I think any entrepreneur naturally do is they double down, they buckle down even harder. And I worked even harder. The problem, of course, at that moment was I didn't realize at the time that what I needed to do was not do the same things. I needed to evolve my identity and do new things as not just a founder, but a CEO of a company that scales a business. And in that moment, the counterintuitive realization that I wish I had had at that time is if I had just let go and like fucked off to Bali for a month and just like thought about the business and gotten space from the business rather than so stressfully working inside the business, I could have just like in one surf session paddled out, had an insight, had a breakthrough that would have gotten us to so much more success, so much faster than me grinding and being in deep pain for way too many months that I actually didn't need to be.

38:35Erica Wenger: So how do you zoom out when things are really intense and you feel like you're hitting a wall other than surfing? What are the ways that you can zoom out and really get that 360 of what you need to do next? I force myself or I ask my team to kick me off Slack in email. And then I force myself to take a day off because I've often found that the times where you feel that most amount of stress is oftentimes actually, despite how much you want to stay plugged in because you feel the fight or flight, that's actually the moment you want to most zoom out and plug out. The 2026 primaries are taking shape.

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39:30Erica Wenger: It's a completely new asset class and honestly, one of the more interesting ways to have skin in the game on what you're already watching closely. Download the Kelshi app, that's K-A-L-S-H-I, and use code TRAILBLAZERS to get$10 when you trade$10. or go to calshi.com slash r slash trailblazers to accept this$20 offer. With Calshi, you can trade on anything. 18 plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices, values and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see calshi.com slash regulatory.

40:02Erica Wenger: Okay, so a quick experiment. Think about the last long message you typed. Could be a Slack thread, a prompt and declawed. Maybe it's a detailed email. It probably took you 10 minutes, maybe even 20 to to get it right? Now imagine you just said it out loud instead. That is the whole pitch for Whisperflow. Whisperflow is voice to text that actually works in every app on every device. You speak naturally and it outputs clean formatted text that's ready to send. No setup, no integrations, no fixing weird transcription errors. And it works across Gmail, Slack, NoShane, Claude, iMessage, wherever you type.

40:32Erica Wenger: And unlike the built-in dictation on your phone, Whisperflow removes all filler words, mid-sentence corrections and jargon. What I personally love about it too is that it perfectly matches my style. So I often type in all lowercase letters, so it'll type like that. I also say things like LMK, which means let me know in shorthand, and it'll auto-adjust it from let me know to LMK. Like many of you, I also do a lot of brain dumping into LLMs. So instead of typing it all out, I actually just speak my windy train of thought into Whisperflow, which is infinitely faster than trying to get my fingers to keep up with the pace of my thoughts.

41:04Erica Wenger: If you do any serious writing or just send a lot of messages and emails, using Whisperflow is a no-brainer. Get one whole month of Whisperflow Pro completely free at ref.whisperflow.ai. You guys have helped so many creators on your platform. $600 million in payouts is no joke. What's the single biggest creator payout you've had so far? And tell me that story. Dude, so many cool stories. So many different random niches. It's so cool how many different people have different interests that we get to serve. I'll tell you one of my favorite stories recently of someone we've gotten to support. Her name is Sarah Pearl.

41:36She lives here in New York City. She's a badass and she will be, listen to her name now because I promise you she will be even more successful in the future. Sarah Pearl, her original handle is Hot High Priestess. Millions of followers on TikTok. I met her during the tail end of COVID when I first started Stan. And I met her specific on a Zoom call as she was running back from her junior year college classes. She was doing spirituality and tarot. And she was looking to monetize. She probably had a million followers at that point. She was very naturally gifted in making content. and yeah dude she was literally a junior in college and over the course of the next two or three years I saw her crush her first million dollars she's now compounding that much much more quickly she's made millions of dollars now specifically in the niche of spirituality and tarot and then also now on top of that has has built her own app that's called Stella I think it's going to be really fantastic over time too it's like basically a co-star but personalized via AI and like a journaling medium through which you can really hopefully make really positive change in your own life.

42:32Point being is why I love Stan so much is whether it's Sarah's story, or it's like Stone Fredrickson's story, who at 18 also made 100K his first two months, or it's Eddie Abbey, who at 65 has made 2 million pounds doing fitness for seniors. Like there's so many random niches that we get to support. What I love about what we get to do is what we know is despite how much society right now and social media is telling us how fucked up the world is, because it is, there's still this little pocket of hope in the world. It's the little standpreneur ecosystem. It's this little hope, like this shining light through the cracks of the American dream still exists.

43:09And that if you do have passion, you have work ethic, and you're willing to actually put in that work, you can still make it. I deeply believe that to be true. And stand's customers exist as a proof point for that.

43:19Erica Wenger: That's beautiful. I also think this idea of being so deeply authentic and being able to monetize your most authentic self is so powerful. I mean, so many people squeeze themselves into being like a teacher or being a doctor or being a firefighter, whatever the thing is. And those are all incredible jobs. But sometimes you're doing it because you think you should and because it's stable and because you knew about it growing up. But being able to make an insane amount of money teaching exercise to seniors, I mean, that is probably that person's deepest, deepest passion or spirituality and tarot.

43:47And, you know, these are such unique, you know, passions and hobbies.

43:52Erica Wenger: What a fulfilling way to live life too, right? Like not all money is the same. If you can make money in a way that is deeply bringing you meaning what a beautiful gift to give to people you know i think that's amazing well i could keep asking you questions all day but we are gonna get to our lightning round okay our trailblazers trade-offs uh let me know what comes to mind first okay that's it book in hand or podcast in years uh i'm laughing because i'll do the two at the same time sometimes it's really like tech founder optimist optimizer i'm really embarrassed over admitting that we're talking like one and a half.

44:26I used to be like a 2x podcast guy. I'm now like a one and a half, 1.75x guy on top of also consuming literature at the same time. But if I were to be healthy, I would say - That's terrifying.

44:35Erica Wenger: No, I'm actually scared for you. Okay. So you're like sitting on your couch and you have a podcast in your ears and then you have a book on you. I mean, are you like walking? Are you working out? Like, how are you? I'm very confused. When is the situation when you need to be really optimizing that much? I'm trying to maximize content consumption and ingestion and learning therefore in the limited amount of times that I have. But I would say I also, to be clear, split them up when I'm driving a one and a half exit podcast, when I actually have some space and one practice I'm trying to do better of is shutting off all my electronics and just reading a book before bed.

45:06So I'm also doing that. But there are times when I'm definitely trying to consume content from an audio perspective and also visually at the same time.

45:15Erica Wenger: I'm sorry for you. I would encourage you to do 10 minutes and then 10 minutes. I'm just saying. That's how most people do it. It does work. But you know what? Be you. I support you. Hire slow or fire fast? Both. You can't have a great culture without both. I think a lot about the Japanese practice of cultivating a bonsai tree when it comes to talent and keeping organization healthy. Every single day, you're actually supposed to clip a bonsai and so the same way that you need to be ruthless and you need to be very straightforward with your team around hey this is a high performing sports team like these are the standards these are also the standards that are evolving because we're a growing company with growing and changing needs but very much so you want to hire slow although when you have a strong gut instinct after you've hired a ton i think you can hire a little bit faster and you can take bets on people but you definitely got to fire fast you got to let go of people fast which is really hard to do especially if you're a people pleaser when you start because it's not just about your organization's success from your own selfish perspective, it's more important.

46:11It's that person's bringing down the rest of your team. And I don't fuck with people who bring down the rest of my team because my team puts in the work. Yeah.

46:18Erica Wenger: What's a sign for you that someone's got to go? Oh, dude, bad attitude. A can versus a can't do attitude. It's so clear. I love this. I think it's a Henry Ford quote. It's those who believe they can and those who believe that they can't are both right. And so for founders, you better fucking make sure you're working with the former because the latter will absolutely tank your business. Because what I've found is like, a single bad person or a bad egg will spoil the whole lot. And so anyone with a bad attitude, immediately out. Like, no, I don't fuck with you. Totally. For two reasons. One, big mission.

46:49Erica Wenger: You got a lot to do. And the other, like, your energy is very positive. You know, I think a lot of cultures are actually the embodiment of the founder a lot of the time. And so it's also just like a culture clash because of you. You know, I think that's a lot of it. Ten small wins or one big moonshot? The younger version of me said one big moonshot. I realize now that you need 10 small wins to actually build to that one shot. Love it. Being early or being right? Can I always just get both? Have the alpha every time? No. Unfortunately, that's not it. That's not how this game works, but it's hypothetical.

47:19Erica Wenger: So, you know, I'm not holding you to it. Yeah. I mean, once again, the younger version of me, be early. Fucking go for it. The more mature version of me is be right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it goes to your point about like first mover advantage, thinking that like Lincoln bio stuff wasn't going to work, you know, but yet you were able to get it to go. What's the best teacher, a mentor or a mistake? A mistake. I'm so grateful for the mentors I have and they share their mistakes with me so that I can ideally go around that curve. But for example, like hiring, you can read all the advice you want about hiring and people can all tell you how hard hiring is.

47:48But you can't really get better at hiring until you just get wrecked a bunch of times.

47:52Erica Wenger: Yeah. Learn from experience. Who is a mentor that stands out to you that has helped you along your journey? Can I give two shout outs? Yeah. One is Michael Ovitz, the founder of CAA. I've been very lucky. He's been an angel investor in business since day one. Dude's a killer. Dude still is a killer. He's taught me so much about client service. It's something that I always had a practice for having started in banking. But CA completely flipped the model of Hollywood from like, you know, the talent serves the agency to now the agency serves the talent. That's how we treat all of our clients here at Stan.

48:22I give every single team member at Stan a copy of Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Goddara. Classic. Bright yellow book. Bright yellow book. For those who don't know, it was one of the most successful restaurants in the world. It was number one for a while. they just did absurd things for their clients. So for example, there was one client who was eating and said, Oh, I got to go soon because, you know, my car meters running out. And so they said, no, sir, like, where's your car park? We'll actually go fill the meter for you. Point being is, is Michael's taught me a lot about that, as well as how to pair that with a killer sense of competition.

48:54And then the second one I'll give a shout is a more recent mentor, Eamon Al-Abdulla. He's my CEO coach, you'll see him online on Twitter, what have you, he works with a lot of other top entrepreneurs. He's taught me a lot about how to think about a business as a flywheel. And so the key learning for everyone here, if you don't get to work with Eamon, is as the CEO of the founder, you should be thinking about your business in the sense of what is my next bottleneck that I need to unblock to keep unlocking my flywheel to spend more and more and more. So very grateful to Eamon.

49:18Erica Wenger: That's amazing. Yeah, it's hard to find a great coach. And I think when you do, it changes your life and you have to hold on to them for dear life. So here's a problem I hear constantly from operators. The data exists. The answers are somewhere in there. But getting to them, actually pulling a useful insight without bugging the data team or learning SQL takes way too long or just does not happen. Hex solves that. Hex is an AI analytics platform where anyone on your team can ask data questions in plain English and get real answers backed by your actual business context. No SQL required. And the best part is that Hex shows you exactly how its data agents think.

49:53Erica Wenger: So you can see where the logic comes from and trust the output. The more your team uses it, the smarter it gets. From seed stage founders running lean to larger orgs dealing with serious data complexity, Hex is built to scale with you. It's game changing for people like me who want to understand what's going on under the hood, but we are not the data experts. It's funny too, because I feel like every time I look over my operator friend's shoulders, whether they're in product or marketing or ops, they often have a Hex dashboard pulled up. It's a great tool. Trailblazers listeners get an exclusive 30-day free trial at hex.ai slash trailblazers.

50:23Erica Wenger: Is the future of AI abundance or chaos? It is wherever we steer it, truly. I think we're in a very dystopian place right now where I think society lacks a vision for what an abundant version and a healthy, positive version of AI could be. I think the onus is on people like you and me and those listening to figure out what that is. Because if we let the, let's call it the current tech elite do what they're doing, I don't think they're thinking enough about the outcomes on a long-term scale. I think they're optimizing for their metric, which is profit and power. and I think we all need to be much more intentional about how can we actually make this an awesome thing where of course we have an abundance of profit but also an abundance of happiness because otherwise I actually feel pretty cynical at times about where all this will head.

51:04Erica Wenger: Yeah for me it's a lot about meaning and fulfillment and how do we find that you know when a lot of jobs are being overrun. What I will also say is I think we focus a lot like you said on the tech elite the business leaders that are you know all the classics we you and I know the anthropics the open AIs the perplexities but actually the media has a lot of influence And so I think that that's also something that's so special about being a creator or working in media in any way. That changes the narrative sometimes even more than the actual businesses themselves. 100%. Killer product or loyal niche audience?

51:33Killer product.

51:34Erica Wenger: Okay, tell me more. At the end of the day, a killer product will always find its audience. And the thing that is most scalable in a business is the product, right? If you have product-led growth, you have something that will continue to scale with you not even needing to be there. VC or bootstrapping? Depends on the business. If you're building something very capital intensive, let's say a network effects based business or let's say a data center, then you probably need capital unless you're Elon Musk. And even then, he's still very intentional about raising for a good reason. But I would argue that most people nowadays, I would say 95 % plus of businesses probably should be bootstrapped.

52:05Erica Wenger: Why did you decide to raise venture instead of have a really lucrative lifestyle business? Well, we've only ever raised that$5 million seed round. And we were super profitable since then. And so having come from the practice of growth equity, it was always strange to me watching founders go public where they put their blood, sweat, and tears in a business and they own like 7%. It's kind of wild to me. Like what? There's some charts that show that you can like, you know, exit at Series D and exit at C to make the same amount of money. Yeah, right. Because they just get so diluted. Yeah, and that's very strange to me.

52:35But of course, maybe they're optimizing for a different intention. And so the nominal amount of money I took on at Seed doesn't really affect how I run the business too much, but it also provides a healthy guardrail where Forerunner Ventures was our lead investor, Yuri Kim specifically. Very great relationship with her. She helps hold me accountable. And I think having a board to some degree is a very healthy practice for a business as long as the founder kind of understands the balance between the two and when they should have the conviction versus not and how to leverage a board in the right ways for a business.

53:06But yeah, I feel like I've gotten the best of both worlds. I've gotten the institutional capital, the wisdom, the network, and the accountability, but also still maintain control of the business and made sure that it's our vision.

53:16Erica Wenger: And doing it your way. I think that there's a lot of ways that the media and tech in general will push you to raise and you've been very authentically yourself through this, which is awesome. Never post on social media again or never fundraise another dollar again. Sort of feeds into the last question a little bit too. Well, I would definitely want to have the ability to post on social media over fundraise because if you think about it, what is fundraising? It's just a proxy for cash in the door. But actually people, for some reason glamorize raising VC funding as if it's like the end-all be-all.

53:47No, it's like when you raise money, then you actually got to build a real business. The easiest way to build a real business is not by raising capital. The easiest way to build a real business is by building a real business, by marketing, aka through your social media channels, and therefore always having cash in the door and being able to find customers. So I think the former very much so allows you to always do the latter. The latter does not necessarily allow you to do the former.

54:07Erica Wenger: Is AI overhyped or underhyped? Short term, a little bit overhyped, but long term, massively underhyped. And what are you most excited for in the next year or two? I'm honestly really excited about what we're going to do with Stanley. Like he's really going to change the game for so many people. I think he'll unlock the 90 % of people who've always wanted to start posting content, but don't know how to get started. Don't know what a good idea looks like. Don't definitely don't want to edit a video. Like Stanley's going to do all that. It's going to be really sick. I always think about that, like iceberg analogy, where like 1 % of people create like, you know, 10 % of people, or I guess let's call it 9 % of people are the ones who just comment.

54:41Erica Wenger: And then there's a huge 90 % that just consume. They don't actually engage in any way. It's like, what does it look like to move down that stack? I think it's very exciting. John, thanks for being here. I really appreciate it. This was awesome. Thanks so much for listening to the Trailblazers podcast. If you found this conversation viable, please follow along on socials, share with a friend, leave a review, all the things. Most of all, please subscribe to our channel. It helps more Contrained Builders find us and supports the work we're doing here. To learn more about what we're doing, you can visit trailblazerspod.com or my venture capital firm parkrangerscap.com or just follow along on socials at Erica underscore Wenger.

55:14Erica Wenger: Until next time, keep trailblazing.