SPEAKER_01
All right, all right. Emma, Emma Lawler. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
So you're a friend of the editor of the pod. We've actually never spoken. But she said, she said, Ari was like, you got to meet Emma.
She's like a dynamo. So I wanted to meet you. Yeah, tell me a little bit about who Emma is and what makes Emma really, really dynamo?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so I started my career as a product designer and was in San Francisco in what I would say was the peak of Web 2. So got to learn from really awesome engineers, product managers, designers at that time. Spent a lot of my early career at Fitbit and so was working on both physical and digital products there.
On iOS, Android and Web and then stayed through the IPO. So really saw this upward trajectory of what it looks like to be an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley at that time. And then started my first company called Moonlight.
And that was when people were leaving the Bay Area and New York to go live in like Mexico City or wherever and still have access to really high quality work. So that first company was enabling remote work for software engineers who still wanted to work with companies in the Bay Area and get paid to do that. After that, we sold Moonlight actually to a company called Pull Request in Austin and then was in New York at that time and went and worked at the SCIM leading product.
And so they were trying to apply the New York Times model of content monetization to their podcasts and newsletters and things like that. And then decided I wanted to go back to business school. So that's not the normal trajectory for entrepreneurs, but went to Chicago Booth for the past two years and got a ton of more formal traditional business training on the finance side of things.
And then also got to work in BC. So I worked at a BC firm called Chicago Ventures as an entrepreneur in residence and got to help invest in a bunch of companies and started my company that I'm working on now called Velvet. And then they funded that company.
So now I'm moving back to New York. We'll be working on Velvet full time with my co-founder and, yeah, very winding path, but have learned a ton about cross-platform consumer apps through all of those experiences.
SPEAKER_01
So you sold the business, you sold Moonlight to Pull Request. Can you talk a little bit about the M&A process and what you learned around how to sell a company?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I had no idea what I was doing. So we just went to our investors and they introduced us to a variety of people who might be interesting. And then we also went back to our first enterprise customers and things like that and pretty much ran a sales process, very similar to fundraising.
So just having as many calls as possible and then narrowing down a few prospects. And then the deal process was pretty quick. I mean, we were an early-stage company at that point.
So it was kind of like, do you want to do this or not? Like, do we want to keep running this business or raise more funding or do this deal? And so it was the peak of the pandemic when we did that and it was just the right outcome for us at that time. And then that company bought Moonlight, kept it running in the way that we had originally designed it and actually bought the platform. It wasn't an aqua hire situation.
So that was really attractive as well because we had just built this really strong community of software developers around the world. And they were living off of the platform.
SPEAKER_01
You're lucky that it was like the deal process went so smoothly. One of our portfolio companies, I was just speaking to the founder today and he had signed an LOI with a really well-known company to buy their company. And they had been talking for months.
Like, they had spent $50,000 to $100,000 on legal fees. And one day this aqua hire woke up and was like, you know what? I don't love this team. I thought after interviewing them and stuff like that and said, hey, we'll continue to do this deal, but it's going to be at 50% haircut to what the deal was.
And the founder had to sit there and be like, I don't know if I want to do this. Because if I take a 50% haircut, that really means the investors are taking 50% haircut. And at that point, I'm kind of just like, I'll just close this and start something else.
And you hear that time and time again where most deals flop, they don't end up happening. And you just got to assume that the transaction is going to fail. But it sounded like for you, you kind of just had this deal, you signed the deal, you did the paperwork, and all of a sudden it was done.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was pretty fluid. But I will say it's mostly just the tenacity of following through. I think at any point we could have decided it would have been easier to not do it.
But have you ever shut down a company?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I'm constantly shutting down companies.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it's like a really horrible process. Like shutting down a company is way worse than going through the motions to get acquired or raise more money. It's just a horrible process.
SPEAKER_01
Do you know Nikita Beer, the founder of Gas and TBH? So he sold TBH to Facebook, now Metta, and then basically the same app. It was literally the same. Like he basically sold it to Facebook.
It was this anonymous polling app. A lot of people know this story. Like worked there for four years.
Four-year vest over, he leaves, he launches something called Gas. It's literally like the same app. Sells it to Discord.
Oh my gosh. Incredible. And why I'm bringing him up is I remember chatting with him in, you know, it was probably like summer 2017 maybe, where he was going to shut down TBH, his company.
And I remember chatting with him and being like, hey, Nikita, like I thought you mentioned you had this other app, this anonymous polling app that you're going to launch. And he's like, yeah, I don't know how I'm going to launch it. And he was like calling me about how do you shut down a company or chatting with me about how to shut down a company.
And he ended up as like a Hail Mary launching TBH. And he ends up going viral and like tens of millions of people download it and ends up selling to Facebook like for tens of millions of dollars, like a couple months later. To your point, it's like the tenacity of like, sometimes you're at this point where you can either quit or double down.
And as founders, it's like so lonely.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, especially as like a solo entrepreneur. That's why I love having a co-founder because making those decisions on your own, it's just a lonely place to be in. And all you're doing is like continuing to work on it until you let it die.
And I think entrepreneurs hate that advice of like, it only exists for as long as you make it exist. And then like once you stop trying, it goes away. But in early stages, that's really what it is.
Nobody else is going to make it happen for you.
SPEAKER_01
I mean, business is fragile period, no matter how small you are, or if you're Google size, it's fragile. So for example, like three months ago with this whole AI wave, Google was like on red alert, code red, like our business is that, you know, could go to zero because of chat GBT in open AI. And their stock was getting like pounded.
It was like down like 40% or 45% in 12 months. And the narrative was just going against them. And it's kind of like one of those moments where it's like, okay, like do we embrace this? Do we brace AI or do we just like ignore it? And the point is even a trillion dollar company is fragile.
Let alone a seed stage start startup or pre seed startup with like force six months of runway. So it's very we're playing fragile games. And that's just the nature of it.
So like you do need to have pretty tough skin if you want to like be in the game in the arena. So you sold the company, then you went to the skim to do product design. Why did you do that? And what did you learn about newsletter businesses in that process?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, mostly I had just been like a long time reader of the skim. I was in New York. I wanted to be in person because I had spent three years remote and was feeling very ungrounded had never really worked with women either.
So the skim is like, I would guess 90% women and then two female co-founders. So that was mostly why I was attracted to it. And then I actually came on as a product manager and got to hire a team of designers and engineers to relaunch their mobile app subscription.
So that was just a cool opportunity to take their content business. Like it was a lot of journalists and media people working there and then bring in the first tech team and apply more of those mechanisms that I had learned at other tech companies. It was interesting being at a company with mostly women because I had never even worked with women before.
And then also a company with a lot of media and journalism people who think very differently than the tech world does. So all good lessons. I think I'm not meant to be in that role.
I like working in a really technical organization with a little more balance, but it was a good learning experience again.
SPEAKER_01
And how did you know you weren't meant for that role? Because I think a lot of people are working jobs that they're kind of like, yeah, I think I like it. I might like it. Like some days are good, some days are bad.
Like how do you know if something is the right fit or not?
SPEAKER_00
I think I just wasn't feeling activated there. Like I like being in a company where I can be super ambitious and pursue things that are hard and that where I feel like an entrepreneur. And it just didn't feel like that for me.
Like I think media in general, and this is definitely a stereotype, but it's more of like you go to work, you do your job, and then you go home unless you're like an investigative journalist or something like that. And so I was just looking for like a little more ambition and I wanted to be working really hard in my 20s and making things happen. And I just didn't feel that there.
SPEAKER_01
I actually met the two co founders of the skim in 2012, and they pitched me on investing. So this this was their seed round, I believe I passed, unfortunately, they remember why I passed I was like this is a really good idea makes total sense. But they were just like, yeah, we're going to get Oprah Winfrey and we're going to get all these people on board.
And I was like, you just graduated like how you like you're thinking so big and at the time, I had never met people who thought that big, honestly. At the time, I was like, what do you mean you're going to get Oprah Winfrey? You're just going to like call up Oprah Winfrey and she's just going to like. And then I remember seeing a New York Times article that says like Oprah Winfrey is now involved with the skim in 2013.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they were so good at getting influencers and like really impressive people involved from the very beginning. Like if you look at their real they've been on like every morning talk show possible. So they were amazing at that.
SPEAKER_01
What about them made them so good at that because that's such a key skill to know as an entrepreneur like if you're able to like make the impossible happen and bring celebrities creators press around you all the time like that just makes that turns building a start up from building a start up in hard mode to easy mode. Why do you think the founders of the skim were able to make that happen?
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think part of it and I wasn't on the team at this time, but part of it they were just super young. Like you said, I think they had worked at NBC for a couple of years as producers built up a really good network had already had like more of a community there. And then they were young enough to just be like, yeah, we can get Oprah.
Like we're just going to go do that. And then I think once you get a few of those really big personalities on board, it's kind of a flywheel effect. And I remember being a user closer to 2012.
And they were just the only ones talking in a very colloquial conversational voice to women, but talking about serious news. So I loved their newsletter, just because there was no the only other way to get that kind of content was watching cable news at that time. And so they had that background of cable news but then applied it to this new network.
And I think they would just stay up. They were like best friends, they would just stay up until three in the morning and write content every night. So they were just passionate about it and then had a way to attract a bunch of people to that same type of model.
And then now I think they have to figure out how to be a tech company, which is which is a different skillset for them, I think.
SPEAKER_01
Totally. I mean, I saw that firsthand, you know, I sold my last business to WeWork and WeWork was always trying to be a tech company. What was a real estate company.
So I always saw how did, you know, Adam Newman and team really try to bring people together to make it more of a tech company. And it's not easy. The short answer is it's not easy.
So that being said, like, you know, you're seeing companies like, you know, Morning Brew and companies like, you know, content businesses get great valuations. The problem I think with the skim has is that I'm just checking right now, but they've raised a bunch of money.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think that was that was because I believe Morning Brew didn't raise money, right? Or they raised like 500,000.
SPEAKER_01
A very, yeah, a small, very small amount of money and the skim I just checked has raised 28.4 million.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. So that's why they have to like really perform beyond that. Yeah. To find an acquisition. I think that's a business that should have been bootstrapped, to be honest.
Yeah. Because they're the way they make money is through ads, like they could just hire an entire ads team and become very wealthy off of that. And like even give employees equity and dividends and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01
If I'm the skim, what I'm doing now is like, I stopped selling advertising basically, and I just go, I'm going to go build products and partner with products. Yeah. Then we're going to own equity in these products where we're going to see venture size returns is going to be in these next generation products for women. And we're just going to use the skim for distribution,
SPEAKER_01
And that's like what I, that's what, that's what they should be doing.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. But it's really hard to run both a media business that's based on ads and eyeballs and a product company. And you have to have people who understand how to do both.
And I think that's what I was trying to get out before is that the type of person who builds product is a very different organization than writing content and monetizing with ads. So I think maybe New York, New York times is a good example. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
But it took them a long time. And I don't know how it's structured, but I would imagine like the people who make the New York Times games and stuff like that, like those products, like it's probably a separate division of the business. Yeah. So it's almost like the skim should create the skim studios and find a CEO for skim studios. Or the other idea is like you create the skim studios or you create studios and then you go to the skim and you say, Hey, I'm going to give you $20 million for your business.
And, but you're going to own 50% of, you know, skim studios and it's got it's funded and stuff like that. So there might, it's probably an interesting acquisition target for some people listening. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. Because it's a valuable audience, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
That's, that's, it's a very unique audience. I think that's what advertisers love about it. And I'm curious to see what happens with that kind of business with AI as well, because it's just so easy to create content like the content they grew off of.
You can almost automate that with AI now. So it'll be very interesting to see how you like take ownership and authorship for content moving forward in that kind of business.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. And the interesting thing is I just checked BuzzFeeds revenue, but 2022 they had $437 million of revenue. And their business is worth $85 million today.
It's publicly traded on the NASDAQ. So it's like, okay, if BuzzFeed is bringing in that kind of revenue, like what's the skim worth really worth? That's why I think that if you're starting a media business, bootstrap it. Yeah. And as long as you can, there's literally no excuse to start a media business in 2023 with venture capital, unless you're using venture capital to like scale something like a skim studios.
SPEAKER_00
Yes. If there's like a unique differentiated technology behind it, it's kind of like raising money for an e-commerce startup now and you're, you're like the physical product. I think it's very hard to justify because you're building on top of everybody else's technology.
And then that's the part that scales is the technology side of things.
SPEAKER_01
So before we get into what you're currently doing now with Velvet, you're in New York City. You seem to have your pulse on like the vibes and what things are going on in technology. What's keeping you up at night besides your own business around trends and ideas?
SPEAKER_00
Obviously, everyone is talking about AI and how it's going to disrupt things. And I think it's pretty hard to know both from like an investment perspective and a technology perspective what matters there. But for me, the biggest problem is like proof of personhood, like who posted this online.
Is it a real human? Can you trust it? And something interesting that came from the Web 3 world was this idea of transacting everywhere with wallets. And so I think there's something in between AI and Web 3 wallets that allow you to like put a stamp on every single thing that goes on the internet, whether it's content or a transaction or a photo of you or whatever it is. But I can't imagine we can move forward in a safe way without something like that, which just allows you to be like this fully online digital native representative of yourself.
SPEAKER_01
So you think there's going to be some blockchain based validator that basically checks if what someone is saying, posting is human verified basically?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don't think it has to be blockchain though. Like I think it's just there was a lot of invention that came out of the Web 3 world and I would go to these hackathons last summer quite a bit. And it was super cool to see how much invention was happening and everyone was just like forgetting all the rules from Web 2 and creating new things, which was super cool.
But I think what a lot of them have realized in the past six months, maybe just because funding has dried up and people are very anti-crypto, but you can do a lot of those things without blockchain. So I expect that some of the innovations that came from there, like wallets, like identity, like verified credentials, will just make its way into normal databases and already are.
SPEAKER_01
What other startups that you're seeing New York or could be anywhere, are you like, wow, those people, they've got a really good business or they're doing something right?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I would say I don't know how early they are, but like Versailles and Superbase, I think they're super impressive companies that saw something in the future and just created this entirely new tech stack and reality.
SPEAKER_01
Explain what those products are. Lechec pays for both of them and uses those products religiously. So I'd like both of those products.
What are they and why they interesting businesses?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so I'm probably going to botch these a little bit, but Versailles is basically helping you spin up servers anywhere. So you shouldn't have to like go to AWS and spin all of those up yourself and deal with all the infrastructure. So it helps you deal with a serverless infrastructure reality.
And then Superbase is like what we're building our entire back end on. And so it replaces a lot of the services that we would otherwise have to have a team of maybe five engineers to spin up. And like if you want to add on things like wallets, like authentication, anything like that, it's kind of just an integration that you turn on through Superbase.
So I think in the same way that cloud computing allowed solo entrepreneurs to pop up, the Versailles, Superbase, different things like that are allowing one engineer to run an entire very complicated system.
SPEAKER_01
It's the classic picks and shovels strategy. There's all these developers. It's a gold rush in a lot of ways.
People are building digital products all the time. How do you make it easier for them to do their jobs? Yeah. And something I do is whenever I see like a new trend, I just I stop and think I'm like, okay, what is the picks and shovels opportunity here? I think it's a question that a lot of us should ask ourselves.
So for example, like, with all that's happening with AI and automation, you know, a lot of people's minds are going to be like, oh, how do I create a legal, you know, chat GPT or for lawyers, or for doctors or thinking about consumer use cases, or these use cases that are really, really big ideas that you're either going big or going home. But I think sometimes the products with the least amount of risk are these picks and shovel businesses because you know that if you're mining for gold, if you're a miner and you're mining for gold, like, what tool do you need to help mine that gold efficiently? And that's your job.
SPEAKER_00
And I think it's a stamina game as well, because, like, I don't think anyone probably saw our cell and was like, Oh, this is a super exciting, maybe like really niche engineers. But most people were not like this is a super exciting thing that I want to exist. Whereas with consumer companies, I think it's easier to have that motivation, because it's like everyone you talk to your mom, your dad, your best friend, they like understand what you're building, and can explain it to their friends.
But with infrastructure businesses, you just have to know that it's the right thing and keep working on it. And like, he's been working on it for like, almost a decade, but it looks like it's been a three year success story. So I think that's really important to remember too is like, you just have to keep going.
And eventually it's going to become something really valuable.
SPEAKER_01
It honestly sucks to build those infrastructure businesses in some ways because you feel like an idiot for so long. Yeah. Then one day, like you start really hitting escape velocity. And you're like, Wow, I have these thousands of people who use this in their everyday life.
And it's so valuable, like they literally cannot mine gold without it. This is awesome. But it takes so much time to get there with these infrastructure businesses sometimes.
And it's not fun to like, meet someone or go out on a first date and be like, Yeah, I like run a, you know, Server company. It's way cooler to be like, I'm the co-founder of the skin. Yes, totally.
SPEAKER_00
Even though the valuation of those two companies is vastly different. Like, I think the things that people get excited about usually are not high value companies, because it's like, what's relevant now, not what's relevant in the future.
SPEAKER_01
What other, I mean, I'm loving this hot take stuff. Like, what other hot takes do you have that most people probably would disagree with you, but you know, you're on the right track with.
SPEAKER_00
Well, this is very unrelated. But I think remote work is a very contentious topic right now. Like my last company was evangelizing remote work.
And I was like, everybody should work remote. We never need to go to an office again. But I've spent most of my career as a remote worker at this point.
And I feel extremely ungrounded and community less. Like I have to work really hard to find those things. So I think we're going to have to invent something like either we're going back to offices at least a couple days a week, or there's going to have to be a lot of innovation and how we can engage with each other, especially for junior employees.
Like, the reason I have a technical background is because I worked in an office with other people and learned from them. And I just, I don't think I would have gotten that virtually, even with like zoom and everything we have today. But at the same time, I don't really want to go to an office from nine to five every single day.
So for me, the answer is living in a city and finding community that way. But I think we're going to have kind of a crisis. If people don't go back to an office at all or build a community outside of their house.
SPEAKER_01
And when you say build a community, you don't mean like a community of your team. You're talking about like you're finding community in other places, right?
SPEAKER_00
Well, it used to be that that was your community, like you made friends and met people at work. And so if you don't have that, or like what happens when education goes fully online and you don't even make friends in college. Like, I think that would be kind of scary to not have connections that you like engage with in person.
And maybe maybe I'm just going to be an old person at some point complaining about this, but I think that would be hard.
SPEAKER_01
Okay, here's what I hate about remote work. And here's what I hate about online education. It's very transactional.
Online education, it's like, okay, I'm going to go take this course. I'm just going to go consume these videos. And now I'm educated.
I'm remote work. I'm just going to log into Slack and and log into Trello or whatever and see all my to-dos that I have to do. And I'm just going to go and complete the tasks.
And what sucks about that is that the world, if the world is a more transactional place, I think the world becomes a worse place because that, you know, you go to the barista for your morning coffee and you're just like, give me the coffee.
SPEAKER_00
You don't really care. It's not about your phone. You go to the bottle and just do it on the app.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
So the transactional world is actually quite a scary place, like at its extreme. And we should be very, very careful of that. I think you're right that we need to be wary of it.
I also think that you can build a remote team with some elements of community. For example, like I run a remote team. We've got tons of team members.
We're constantly throwing like in-person events where people can come and hang out and just like the goal isn't even to like do any work. The goal is just hang out and meet each other in a cool place. Yeah. So for example, like we just did one in Toronto and we had a bunch of people come and it was just like, yeah, let's go and have some really great food and drink wine.
SPEAKER_00
How often do you bring the whole team together like that? And then like, what do you spend the time on when you're in person?
SPEAKER_01
So we do two major events per year where it's big team coming together. It might be a three-day thing or four-day thing. We did one, two big ones last year where we did one in Bali, Indonesia and one in Montreal, Canada.
And we just try to do really crazy stuff. So for example, like we literally, and I don't say this to be like a flex or anything like that, but like we found this like really crazy chateau outside Montreal, this like literally chateau. And I actually talked about it on my episode on the Where It Happens pod with my co-founder Theo Tabba and a few episodes ago.
But the idea is basically like, let's just bring people to places that are going to create memories. And like, I just like saw people like walking around and taking videos and like sharing it with their friends. And it was just, it was magical in a lot of ways.
So try to do that a couple of times a year. And then there's like teams kind of come together on a more regular basis. But we are remote and I don't, I personally don't want to go into the office.
Like I just, I don't, I don't want to. And I know like Elon Musk will say like, you know, I'm soft. Or whatever.
And I just think that for some people, remote work is the most productive form of work.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think I'm definitely more productive remote. Like I think back to the last time I was in an office full time was at Fitbit. And we had these really fancy downtown San Francisco offices and we would go in there and like honestly, half the day or more was I think social time thinking back compared to what remote work is where I'm like actually doing things for eight hours a day or close to it.
Or if I'm not, I'm still being super focused with my time. But I haven't seen remote work. I haven't been on a company at a company that's super productive at scale with remote work.
So I'm building a remote company also to be clear. Like I don't, I don't want to go to an office every day either.
SPEAKER_01
Shopify, from what I understand, is pretty remote. Like they're mostly a remote company. They started off in Ottawa, which is pretty random, all things considered.
And then they started like having an office in Toronto and Montreal and other places. But then they eventually just went remote. And I think what works from what I understand from them is they have teams.
Like for example, if you're on the payments team, it'll, it's remote, but everyone needs to work on EST. Yeah, that helps. So you could be in Charleston, but you could be in New York or Toronto or Montreal or anywhere along that EST.
Because I think the time zone thing also kills people in remote work. Yeah. It's soul sucking. Yes. Oh, like thinking about, oh my God, like I need to stay, I need to like get up for my dinner and like call Tokyo because I have a team member in Tokyo.
SPEAKER_00
Right. If you can't, I think if you can't have, you know, a schedule and a routine, that's really hard. Some people do really well with it, but my perspective is that people are more productive when they time block and have a specific period that they're focusing on something.
And even with like EST to PST is really hard. Like the three hours is almost harder than Europe because it feels like you're in the same place, but like someone's having dinner or going to bed when you're wrapping up your day. So I agree with the time zone thing.
SPEAKER_01
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Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, switching gears to your new, your new baby. Tell me about it and tell me about why you think it's going to be big.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so every company I've worked at, I focused on this place between acquisition and engineering. So like, how do you get someone into your product, activate them, get them to pay or do whatever you want and then retain them long term. And if you can't do that, you will fail as a company.
Like if you just have a leaky bucket that gets people in and then doesn't keep them or you can't identify them. There's just no value there and there's no revenue. And so we're building tools that creates the crossover between those two teams.
So no code acquisition on the front end. So giving growth teams the ability to spin up all of these growth pages and acquire people to apps in about 10 seconds or less. And then connecting that to the back end for engineering teams.
So engineering teams never want to touch onboarding like you have to beg engineers to work on it because it's the most important part of your tech stack. It allows people to authenticate into a system and then accept payment. And so we're creating an API to do that authorization and payment on the back end.
So it allows growth teams to experiment and do growth, but engineering to trust the system.
SPEAKER_01
How do you come up with an idea like this? Because to me this feels like, so I felt this pain by the way on a lot of projects that we work on. But I'm just curious like how do you go from I'm working at the skim to building this?
SPEAKER_00
I spent two years trying to figure out what this company would be. So it's not like it just came to be. I actually started more in the Web 3 space and I was really excited by wallet authentication.
So like I adopted a wallet started going to all these hackathons and was just amazed that my identity could travel around with me. So it's like one tap to create an account, one tap to pay, one tap to sign for a transaction. And that was just the most seamless amazing experience, but you couldn't use it anywhere.
Like other than buying NFTs, which I was in school, so I didn't have money to do that. So like even gas fees would like put me into debt. But that was a really amazing experience and it was this new design paradigm that I hadn't seen through all my years of rebuilding onboarding over and over again.
But then when I met my co-founder, we realized we could just do it on normal databases. So that's really where the inception came from.
SPEAKER_01
Another good framework for thinking about how to build these types of businesses is and you kind of mentioned it or alluded to it, which is you look at, you pick an industry, so the tech industry, and then you map out all the teams that they have. And then you look at how do I build a productized infrastructure business that could 50X or basically like bottle up this team in some sort of software solution.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, totally. And I think one that I don't want to do because I just don't like this part of the stack, but I think is pretty ripe for disruption is manual sales teams. Like for media companies, they go out and they sell an ad package to a company and then it's like this fully manual process to get them integrated with the product.
And in my opinion, it should just work like Google ads do. Like you have to have an entire engineering org who hates working on ads, building out this entire tech. But I think it's kind of like, it's not a fun problem to solve.
Nobody wants to work on ads.
SPEAKER_01
Cool. And Velvet, like how's it going? Did you raise venture for it? Tell us more.
SPEAKER_00
So I think this is maybe another hot take. A lot of early stage companies, I think, raise a million to $5 million and they hire like 20 people. And then you just run out of money before you get anywhere close to product market fit or creating value.
So we're just, it's just going to be the two of us until we feel like we have product market fit or some version of it or maybe one more engineer and trying to keep it super lean in the meantime. So our first product will be ready, hopefully in the next couple of weeks for adoption. Like we were talking about with infrastructure companies, it's just really high stakes.
Like if you mess up someone's user data one time, you never get to have a customer again. So it's a longer sales prep process, a longer development process. We're using SuperBase in Bercel, which is pretty cutting edge.
So there's just, we have to run into all the bugs ourselves before we can offer it to other people. But yeah, going well, always wish it was moving faster, but I think with infrastructure, it just, it takes years to get there.
SPEAKER_01
That's the other thing, you only need one to really work.
SPEAKER_01
Where could people find out more about you and Velvet?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, Velvet is velvet.cash and my website is emmalaller.com and all my socials are there, but happy to connect anytime.
SPEAKER_01
This has been wonderful. Thanks for coming.