Venture Step

Dalton Anderson (00:01.262)
Welcome to Venture Step Podcasts, where we discuss entrepreneurship and true trends and the occasional book review. This week, we're going to be discussing some of my learnings from the startup school that's offered by Y Combinator. I have recently became acutely aware of how many weeks left I have and how long these things would probably take. And I want to make sure that I'm executing on the things I want to do in life. And I have

been keeping track of how many weeks left I have if I were to live until 90, which is a bit morbid, but it's not really necessarily I'm scared to pass away or if any spontaneous event happens and something were to bad to happen to me. It's not that it's more that you realize, Hey, you're not here forever. And whatever you have, whatever dream it is, whatever

thing you want, unless you're actively attacking it every day and making steady progress each week, the weeks will just flow by. And before you know it, the thing that you always dreamt of or the thing that you wanted and desired is no longer obtainable or if you do obtain it, it's for a fleeting moment. And that might be okay.

but that's if you get what you want. There's a lot of scenarios where people dream of things and they never get them because they don't pursue them or they don't execute. So I'm trying to prevent either of those things. And so I have 3,682 weeks left. I already said that, but that's if I lived to 90, which if you go with the median age for a male, I don't, in America, I don't live until 90.

So we'll see, we'll see how it all plays out. I'm a healthy guy. I like to run. I eat good. So we'll see. But basically this episode is not going to apply to everyone and all the listeners that listen to the show. But here's some of the key takeaways that you could have. If you were trying to analyze an offer from a startup, these are the things that you might want to think about and get on the other side of the perspective. And I talk about this all the time when I talk about these entrepreneurial books or

Dalton Anderson (02:28.866)
these executive books, even if you're not interested in pursuing those things, having that kind of information makes you a weapon. It gives you a different perspective. One, people will not be prepared for simply because they don't expect it. And two, it gives you insight on what they might think is important or if it might be a good idea. And so this episode, we're gonna be talking about ideas and how to

create ideas and debunking a couple myths that were talked about in the Y-commodator course, the startup. The startup school are otherwise known as SUS and about 50 % of Y-commodators applicants went to the startup school and then applied and then were accepted. Or the other way around, like people who were accepted that were applicants.

originally completed the startup school. So it gives you a good foundation of what Y Combinator or these other VC funds are looking for regarding a startup. And so that's gonna be the groundwork of the episode, but I just wanted to emphasize that, hey, it's not gonna necessarily apply to you and your day to day. like, wow, you know what? That really changes how I pour that milk into my cereal bowl. That kind of level of granularity is not gonna be applicable to this episode.

but I do hope you find it's interesting and it helps me as I am pursuing my goals. So eventually start a company and there's nothing better than working on it every week, which is something that I want to do. And in these episodes, if I don't have anything interesting or if I find the stuff that I learned was interesting, if I don't have anything interesting outside of this,

because it's called Venture Step. I'm supposed to be building stuff and I've more or less been exploring and.

Dalton Anderson (04:31.82)
speaking about recent events, but I want to start building consistently. And so these episodes, some of which will be geared towards what I'm building and what I'm doing. And you might find it cool, the journey of what's going on and how it's difficult. And there might be some stuff that I won't be able to share, but I'll be sharing a lot of it. Okay. So, and that's not a firm commitment, by the way, just, just throwing it out there, but let's get started. So the,

The agenda is some myths about founders. What kind of questions do you need to ask for yourself if you want to do a startup or just build stuff? Why a fang company? And if you're not familiar with fang, it'd be Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google. Why?

those companies might not be the best if you are trying to exit and do a startup. Although it could be counterintuitive because when you read the successful fundraising rounds or these things, you always see, wow, this person was ex-Google, this person was ex-Amazon, ex-Apple, Netflix, and so on. Those are the people who were successful.

but there's a lot of people that work in those companies that hate their lives. And I'll go in a little bit more detail later.

And what about a recipe to generating ideas, which I think will be applicable to not only people trying to create a startup, but also what if you have an idea? How should you vet your idea and what are ways to do that? And I think that the recipes that they offered and the steps they have prescribed are pretty good. And they're probably pretty good at it because they're Y Combinator. And I think they speak for themselves.

Dalton Anderson (06:36.302)
So this is their recipe and I'll go over that in a sec or not really, but later in the episode. And as I spoke about before, I'm not going to do this long host intro anymore. I'm just going to get to it. Although I've been speaking for six minutes and haven't gotten the episode. So I'm not sure how I got there, but we're going to get into it just a second. My name is Dalton Erson. I'm the host of interest at podcasts. And in this episode, we're going to be discussing my learnings from the first week of the startup school.

Okay, so the first section is what are some things that you should look for within a founder? And this is important as it is when you're starting a company or joining a company that is a startup. You want to try the best you can to deep dive on the founders. And one thing that you should look for is you should look for a couple things. One, if

that meets the recipe and we'll talk about the recipe later on in the episode. But the first thing that you should try to look for is resilience. That's a hard thing to measure. But if you could figure out or look through their digital footprint online and things that they discuss, a lot of times these people are willing to share the things that they're building because they're typically curious or outgoing or ambitious or whatever the character traits are. Maybe it's a combination of all of those combined.

they typically put stuff out on the internet and you could read about them. So if you go look up ex founder, you could see that they have something. They probably have a blog, they have some website, have a podcast, they have something on there and you could deep dive them and figure out what's going on. But one thing that was talked about in Y Combinator was that it wasn't about who was the most confident or

who had the most knowledge or the traits that you wouldn't be looking for, like lack of confidence or very soft spoken. Those folks could go on to become successful founders and they might have struggles. And an example they gave was these soft spoken founders were trying to provide a software to a biomedical company and they had concerns. Okay, this is enterprise sales.

Dalton Anderson (09:04.447)
and they're very soft spoken. I don't think they're going to be able to They were right for about a year, but they kept getting feedback. And so they went to these same companies over and over again. I think they went to them six times and kept improving the product and found a problem that they could provide a solution for that the biomedical companies were willing to purchase. And then they since to become, they since went on to become a successful multi-billion dollar company.

That's a good example of someone that you would think, okay, probably not the right fit because they're too soft spoken and they're not going to be aggressive on their, on their ambitious ideas and people are going to shoot them down and they're just going be like, okay. Or the other way around where you want someone who's confident, knows their expertise, knows how it's going and how the industry is and got all these connections.

That could seem like a good play. But one of the issues is when you start your own company, it's different when you're getting rejection from.

Dalton Anderson (10:17.09)
company you're working for versus a company that you're making. When you're getting rejection for a company that you're trying to build something for or sell something that is the company's problem. But if it's a company that you're building and you're the founder of, it's a, I wouldn't say it's personal, but people take it personal. Like it's personal. Like they feel like a failure and it affects them. And that was talked about in the Y Commodity Course is like,

Resilience is super important and it's hard to measure that and you could maybe talk about some motivations that you have, but yeah, you gotta have it. So that's something that you would need to look for with your founders. And the next is finding motivation. there's a couple different motivators. You have the motivation to get started. So for me, it might be, I wanna build cool stuff and then react.

consistently with exceptional people. That's a motivator or could be I want to make money. And there might be some negative thoughts about that with surrounding peers. Like, they're only in it for the money. Y Calamitor talks about it and says, hey, if you're in it for the money, that's fine. Like startups are a great way to make a lot of money very fast. But you could also lose everything as well.

So it's not guaranteed, but if you're willing to risk it, yeah, that's a good motivator to get started. And so there's a whole bunch of motivators where it's not just really just one thing. And it's one of these kind of conversations when you have with smart people and it's like, well, it depends. Okay, well, what about this situation? Well, it depends. And so there really is no right answer. It's just finding an answer that you are okay with and that would get you motivated to get started.

And so for me, I like to build stuff and I wanna interact consistently with exceptional people. And then there is the motivated to get started and then there's the motivator that keep going and that's a different situation. So once you get started, you realize that, wow, this is really tough. Like this is hard. Like this is way harder than I ever thought it would be. And this is consuming my whole life, everything. And I don't know.

Dalton Anderson (12:41.464)
how long I wanna do this for. And that's okay. You can sell, you can get absorbed, it can be a team acquisition, it could be a technology acquisition, it could be a strategic acquisition. There's chances to sell and then just manage an apartment or whatever you wanna do. But one thing that you do need to find if you're gonna go long term is why do you wanna keep doing this? And that's important and also,

It was spoke on later in the modules, but. You could find an idea that you don't find interesting versus an idea that you do find interesting. think eventually need to. Identify within yourself that you're OK with the problem and you find that problem interesting, the problem that you're trying to solve and fall in love with the process and the company. But the initial idea doesn't have to wow you or fully or.

you know, fool yourself full of excitement. You don't need that. You just need to get started and figure it out. And you can fall in love with the company later on. And a good point was made is, hey, no matter if it's a problem that you really love or a problem that you feel indifferent about, the work at the end of the day is going to be grueling and it's going to be the same. The same thing when you're running

this company is going to be the same processes and pretty much the similar things you'd be running at X company. And that's quite true. Like each company has accounting, each company has compliance issues, each company has regulation changes that creates opportunities. Each company has technology issues and the same is said for each sector as well. And so when you think about it, the difference is not as much as you would think.

The next thing is weighing the risks and rewards. And I think this is a good point about, okay, if you're willing to accept the worst case scenario, then you should accept. But if you're getting any sort of doubt against the worst case scenario, then this isn't for you. And they say that's okay. But if you do move forward and you're not okay with the worst case scenario,

Dalton Anderson (15:10.178)
They speak about having crippling anxiety on your decisions and you won't be able to move fast enough and eventually your company's gonna die and you'll lose everything anyways. So if you have that kind of hindrance, that mental hindrance on your decision making and your regret of making the decision to move forward with a startup, you will be bitter and you'll be filled with an anxiety. And they recommend not to do that because it doesn't sound fun.

But it was really funny because they're really comical when they're talking about it all. They're like, yeah, like you just have crippling anxiety and you're not going to be chill. You might start drinking, pick up, pick up the booze. And I was like, okay. And they're like, yeah, you're not going to be like a cool person to have a beer with or relax with. I no one's going to want to be around you. It's like they're really, they're really just joking about, huh? So

I thought that was hilarious when they were just messing about with the situations. They thought it was hilarious. And in a light-mannered way, not like, like who, like, look at those idiots. Not like that. But it was, it was funny where they made a, a difficult topic lighthearted. So I mean, the message was clear. Like, hey, if you're having doubts, do not do this. And so you could also account that for your life, right?

what kind of things do you wanna do that have costs and what's the worst case scenario? So if you wanted to say you're in high school, I mean, it's a really easy example. Say you're in high school and you wanna ask her on a date. The worst case scenario is she says no and maybe embarrass you in front of everybody. If you're cool with that, what I mean embarrass, like she might put it on social media like.

don't ask me out. I would never go out with him. Ew. Like something like that.

Dalton Anderson (17:15.788)
then are you okay with that? And if you're okay with that, then fine, shoot your shot, man. Shoot or shoot. And so that's what I'm talking about is if you have these ideas or you have an idea at work and you're like, wow, like this is such a good idea, then what's the worst case scenario? Okay, they don't accept it or they don't like that, I'm speaking up.

Okay, the worst case scenario is I realized that this isn't the right place for me and I have to go somewhere else, which might be sad, but I'd rather know that it's not the right place versus me not knowing. Like a good example was when I was pushing for a promotion for my wonderful contributions at my work, if it was deemed inappropriate or if it was deemed like

I was overstepping, then I probably could have gotten fired. Like not for that reason, that would be wrong, but that could have been one of the factors. Like, like he's young, like he he's pushing for things that he doesn't deserve. it all adds up and then it snowballs and then you lose, you lose political capital and then you are slowly retired and then let go. So that could happen. And

I was okay with it because you can just get another job. Like there's plenty of jobs out there. If people don't value you, then.

you can move on, but I will counterpoint that with, do you think they should value you? And you should ask that question as well. And that's of yourself. Like, do you provide enough value to where you feel you're undervalued? And many of you will say, yes, but is that true? Like, is that legitimately true that you provide so much value that the company would be hindered by your absence?

Dalton Anderson (19:21.312)
Is that true? I don't know. I don't know you. I could in the virtual world. Here I am. Here's me. But you know what I mean.

Okay, so the FANG dilemma, the FANG dilemma, man, I might run out of time here. The FANG dilemma is when you're hired at a FANG company, you're initially given a massive signing bonus that's vested over four years. And people spend majority of their salary because you're hanging out with these folks that are not wanting or desiring to be founders. So you're living a lifestyle of a manager or employee instead of keeping your personal.

Expenses low you have a higher burn rate and the trick is to Keep the employee spending enough of their salary and then keeping their savings under you know four to six X of what they could get if they vested and so people are spending so much money and they keep looking at their savings and they're looking at their vesting account and they're like well if I if I just stay four years, I'll be fully vested and then all that money's mine and then

you keep adding onto that. if you do well within six months, they'll add you another equity package. And then that vests over four years as well. And so before you know it, you're in four years and then you can level up to your next level and you become like level 14 or level 12 and you do, you do these quests and you level up and you get additional income, salary, bonus, and an equity package. That's massive that you can get.

bested over four years. And so the advice for FAN companies is to come with a idea of when you want to exit and then execute on that. And if you are not a founder, then not that if you're not a founder, like if you don't want to be a founder, like a FAN company is amazing, provides amazing economic opportunities for anyone at the company.

Dalton Anderson (21:31.426)
You can make a ton of money. You can become a multimillionaire at these companies. No problem. So why not? I would I would do it if if that's if that's what you want. I think that's as an awesome opportunity to provide a lot of value. You can extract a massive amount of value from these fan companies. And. Yeah, like that would be amazing. And then the other thing about fan companies is some founders come into this dilemma of, if I'm going to

If I'm going to become a founder and raise money, I need to be working on the most technical problems at the highest scale available. And that's out of Fang Company. And that may be true, but a lot of teams and a lot of people that are working at these companies aren't working on search engine optimization or some fair research group within Meta. They're working on repurposing the ad function screen or some settings in the admin portal or

something like that. They're not working on these highly technical problems. And if they are, good for them. But that's a small group. mean, out of the 50,000 plus employees, they might have 800 working on these crazy problems. So yeah, long story short, not very many of them. And then there's this myth of the perfect idea. I'm just waiting for the perfect idea. Like I want a great idea.

That is also a myth and a trick and a trap simply because well, you will never have the perfect idea. And a lot of people that are admitted into Y Combinator, I think around 50 percent, they pivot during their incubator phase. So. It is not uncommon to have an idea and then completely pivot out of it. So you don't need a perfect idea, you just need to get started.

And so there are a couple ideas that you should avoid. There is the tar pit. There is the solution or the problem for a solution or the solution for a problem. Solution for a problem. Yeah, solution for a problem. And then...

Dalton Anderson (23:48.32)
There is

Dalton Anderson (23:53.934)
it comes back to me, then I'll get back to you. But at the moment, I can recall two ideas at the moment that are bad. So the first one was the tar pit idea. And that's an idea that many people encounter and it seems easy to solve on the surface, but there's typically a reason why there is no solution. And the example they gave in Y Combinator was like a meetup app, like having trouble meeting up with friends and...

making friends, you know, or some app to help you plan out your events with your friends. There's many iterations of that and they get a host of people applying to Y Comedair with these ideas. And eventually someone will solve for them. Sometimes a tar pit idea is either impossible or close to impossible, or that it may seem obvious, the solution, but there's a fundamental reason why.

that solution has not been accepted in the marketplace. And then the next idea is a blanket out here, tar pit ideas. And then the next one was, solution for a problem. So a solution for a problem is creating a solution for a problem that people don't have or desire. So it might be a problem, but people aren't asking for it. Like it's not that important.

things that you have to do on the day to day that you're okay with doing and just some mild inconvenience. And then someone's like, I got this big thing. Like, come on, like take a look at it. Like this is gonna change your whole life. And then you're like, listen, that might be cool, but I'm cool with what I've got. And that is a problem because you're creating this solution for a problem that people aren't requesting.

instead of the problem for the solution. You're creating a solution for a problem that people don't really need.

Dalton Anderson (26:06.854)
So those are the two that I can recall. There's one more, I just can't recall off the top of my head at the moment, but that is unfortunate, but it is what it is. I don't have infinite memory. Okay, so the next one is generating and evaluating ideas. And so I'm gonna read off the agenda the recipe which they provided. So it's a recipe of questions you should ask yourself when you are.

having an evaluation. think this is really important for you if you are thinking about accepting an offer to a startup and or thinking about applying to a startup. This is a key question you should be or set of questions you should ask yourself and this is in the order of importance. Okay, so the recipe goes as the following and I'll try not to get the agenda in front of the camera.

Do you have a product founder or do you have a product that has a, or is the company a, my gosh, I'm getting all tongue twisted. Is the company have a founder product fit, market fit, product market fit, founder fit, whatever. So basically does the founder and the product fit together? And that means is the founder working in a space that they have expertise in?

or have insight that others will not. did they work in an area that they're trying to make their start up in? Or did they come from quantitative analytics and then go into...

Dalton Anderson (27:51.224)
healthcare for dogs or something, like something like that. Like, do they even have any expertise in what they're talking about? And if they don't, then you have to figure out like, how are they learning that? And if they need extensive expertise in that area, then you might have to cause some doubt on the execution of their plan. And this is after they got funding. So it might be a little bit better, but you should always look into that. How big is the market?

And this is a twofold question. So one is how big is the market now? How big is it going to be? So a good example would be Coinbase. If it's the question is how big is it going to be? Because Coinbase, the market for crypto currencies and trading and all this other stuff was quite small. It was about a million at the time they got funded. And it was clear that in the future that it would be something.

So Coinbase is a good bet. And then if you're looking at other things as, well, how big is the market now? And can this market support a startup? And their explanation of a big market would be over a billion. Within a billion dollars could support a startup and then they could kind of grow and figure out their next steps to get more revenue.

Next question, is this an acute problem? Is this a problem that is felt by everyone and is something that you or someone else has experienced? And some of these things kind of roll in with others, but is this a problem that people are facing? And if so, are people requesting it? And then if they're requesting it, why has no one built it?

And if you could figure out why people aren't building it, then that might help you. And this is something where you'd want to reach out to founders in that space or you'd want to reach out to companies in that space and figure out what's going on. If you're trying to analyze a startup and figure out if you want to work there, then you'd want to figure out, OK, like what's going on? Who are the competitors and how are they doing and what difference do they have versus the company that I potentially work for?

Dalton Anderson (30:18.616)
Do they have competition? So competition isn't necessarily bad. If you're going into a market that has no competition, there might be a reason why there is no competition. So competition isn't seen as a bad thing, but what is bad is if your competitors are especially entrenched. And what do I mean by entrenched? Like they might have some kind of legal or regulatory protections. They might have patents that are comp...

reduce your ability to compete. They might have regulatory protections, like I said earlier. And so those things would prevent you from, or if there's a high level of capital injection needed to get started, that would be entrenched. Like if you need a hundred billion dollars to get started, I mean, it's going to be hard. You know, you're not just whipping up foundries to start producing chips right away. So

The next thing is do you want this personally or do you know anyone who wants this? And so this might be a good example of when they had a veterinarian company that was founded that did well, it was basically Amazon for vets. And for veterinarians, they had to order their supplies on the phone or something like that and they had to call sales people, sales managers.

and order X products and they'd call someone else for something else. And so it was this whole decentralized repository of information that they had to query to get the supplies that they needed. And instead, they built a veterinarian Amazon and all the veterinarians go in there and they order their supplies, no problem. What happened there was that the

two brothers who were the founders of the company, and I don't remember the company's name or the founders, but the piece that was really important was they had a father that was a veterinarian. And so they would saw him purchase these supplies and

Dalton Anderson (32:32.115)
the supplies weren't purchased or the supplies were purchased over those time periods simply because

He had no other option. And that goes back to this acute problem thing is like, why aren't people doing it? Well, veterinarians aren't typically startups. Like they don't make startups. OK, so then why was no one doing it? Well, because no one knew about it, because veterinarians, I guess, keep to themselves, except the people who were in the same house as the veterinarians. They could see the problem. And so that's a good that's a good point is, you know, do you know anyone who really wants it?

or yourself. Did this only recently become possible or is recently or only recently possible? Wait, I have a typo there. It's really supposed to be, did this only really become possible or did this really only become necessary? And two folds there, but I mean, really the possible thing is like, okay, blockchain or

this AI process, this RPA that's associated with AI or these other technologies, that stuff wasn't possible 10 years ago. And so all these startups that are creating solutions for companies, that didn't exist.

What are the good proxies for this business? so one would be like Uber and Uber, you know, competitors launching in different parts of the world, like either in China or Latin America. Same thing. If you could find a proxy somewhere else that's doing well, then you could probably have a good bet that it would work well in your country or wherever you're living.

Dalton Anderson (34:27.392)
Is this business scalable? And so a lot of things are scalable as long as, I mean, software is easy, but some things that you have to be careful about is if it might be scalable, but limited through the input of labor. And if the labor is required to be highly technical, then it isn't scalable. Like you can't make an infinite amount of chips, computer chips, because there's just not enough labor for people to make the chips. So that's one thing that wouldn't be scalable.

Is this a good idea space? And so what is an idea space? An idea space is an, I would describe it as an industry or a sector within an industry. And when I say that, like it might be financial services and then within financial services, it might be insurance or you could call it finance and then insurance or within insurance, you might call it, okay, auto or homeowners. And so within that space, you could pivot to something else within insurance.

And that could be true with like trucking. Okay, like with trucking, they've got like problems with gas cards, they've got problems with transportation or finding drivers or training drivers, making sure drivers are licensed. So there's all sorts of problems within that one space that people could solve for, it's just finding the right space. And so what does a good space look like? Well, some things might be counterintuitive. The piece that would be good is

Boring, being in a boring space. The boring ideas are the ones that make the most money, because no one else is doing them. They're not working on rocket science or something crazy. They're doing some kind of AI, not AI, HR accounting program or something like that. They are competing against nobody. So pick a boring space. So I work in insurance, which is widely considered as boring. It has a lack of talent. The average age is

I think 39 and there isn't a lot of young people that are ambitious that want to be leaders in insurance. I'm not speaking for everybody, but I'm sure if you are in insurance, you're nodding your head what I'm saying because that is true. And so there's just a lack of talent in the industry because young people don't think insurance is interesting. And I had the same issue as well. When my mom was trying to convince me to work in insurance, she's like,

Dalton Anderson (36:53.656)
Don't listen to what everyone's saying. It actually is interesting. If you like data, Dalton, and if you like science, this is the right place. And it took her years to convince me that it was even remotely a good idea. yeah, so appreciate my mom for that. But it is a boring space, or what is considered a boring space. But things that are considered boring might not be boring to everybody. Okay, ideas that existing competitors have.

when you are

looking to start something, having someone to compete against that, you you have an existing competitor. The competition isn't necessarily bad, but you have to take a different approach than the competitor. And if you can do a little bit better or save a little bit more time or have this this different integration. And a good good example was Dropbox was there was a there was many existing competitors, about 20 or so before Dropbox started.

but the issue was you had to individually drop your files into these cloud platforms, Dropbox integrated into the operation systems of the computer and the operation system, the computer allowed you to drop many files all at once. And so, and auto-sync, which you didn't have to do or you didn't have to upload files anymore once you auto-sync. So it was a successful company while the others died.

The next one is emphasize the importance of product, founder, fit, and market size. So product, fit, was I discussed earlier, is very important and something that is integral to having a good chance. And working in those areas is important. And if you don't know, then you gotta figure it out. If you wanted to work in some industry that you don't have any knowledge about, you've gotta figure out.

Dalton Anderson (38:51.714)
the process and figure out what to do and get started and learn. Like there's an example about a truck company that they wanted. They had some original idea that was bashed out and poked holes through and they're like, okay, this idea sucks. Like we needed a new idea. We need to pivot. And then they pivoted to trucking, which I was talking about earlier, and they pivoted to gas cards and they didn't know anything about trucking.

And so what they did was they just drove to trucking stations and they just asked them like, Hey, like, us about trucking, which probably resulted in a crazy amount of rejection because they're tired and they're like, like people go to the truck stops and only to relax or, you know, go to sleep. They don't go to talk to random people about trucking. So, yeah. So if you don't know, figure out a way to know. And if you do know, then that's half the battle.

Okay. So then the co-founder conundrum. So it's difficult to find a co-founder, right? Like it's difficult to find someone that you trust that's technical enough or competent enough to found a company with and trustworthy and that you've known for a while or hopefully know in a meaningful manner that you're willing to trust them to basically sign your life together because you're in it and there's really no way out. And if you try to get out, it's very messy. It's like a marriage.

So you're married to this idea and this company and this execution of this process, but what does that even mean? And do you know how to find the right person? And so it's important to find a co-founder and the way that you could do that is ask people in college, if you're in college, people that you find interesting with, or you go to problems for or with, you go to those people for problems to help for solutions. Or you start.

joining these interest groups where people are interested in similar topics and discuss and debate ideas and provide insights and eventually open up about this whole idea of starting a company. Like, you know, it'd be crazy if somebody built X and then they might be like, yeah, let's do it. And then you're like, yeah, let's do it. Like, Jedi mind tricking somebody. Or you can use like a matching program, like Y Combinator has a co-founder matching program. So you could do it that way, but I don't, I don't know. I mean, there's some success from people

Dalton Anderson (41:16.3)
meeting people randomly, but if you're gonna do that, I'd probably live with them for a bit. Like if I didn't know them for years, I would be like, all right, like if you're serious about this, I'm moving in. Like I'm moving in for six months and we'll see. And if we like each other within three, then we can start building within three. And then if we don't get anything done or we get a lot done in three, let's quit our jobs or something and get funding or whatever. But.

You don't know until you know. So that's the whole story with Y Commodore. They're like, well, you could try all these things out. You could work on the startup. You could do all these things. But until you actually start it, you don't know. And that's true for a lot of things in life. You don't know that you're to get this promotion at your job. You don't know if the person you're going to ask out is going to accept you. You don't know if life is just going to pass you by or you don't know if this is your last day.

And so all you do know is that you can add more life to it. That's it. That's simple as that. Just add more life to the things you want and try to give less energy to the things that you don't want.

I think that's a fair way to end it. I hope that you enjoyed this episode, even though it was a little bit off topic for a lot of people. I hope that you found it interesting, because I will keep talking about it, because I need to use it, for my own knowledge, and two, this is the journey, and I am gonna start it, and I hope that.

It's not as brutal as it sounds, so we'll see, but it's gonna be tough. But anyways, I'll let you go. See ya. I hope that you have a good day, a good morning, a good afternoon, a good evening, wherever you are in this world. Thanks for listening, and I hope you listen in next week. See ya, bye.