← Founder's Story
Founder's Story
He Built a $130M Company That Changes How You Sound | Ep. 399 with Shawn Zhang CTO and Co-Founder of Sanas
00:38:39
Daniel Robbins sits down with Shawn Zhang, CTO and co-founder of Sanas, to unpack the real human problem behind “accent translation.” Shawn shares how COVID made college feel pointless without people, how a friend working in a Nicaragua call center was punished for his accent, and how that moment became the spark to build Sanas. They also talk backlash, founder pressure, unknown unknowns, Silicon Valley energy, and what happens when a startup goes from zero to $62M in revenue in two years.
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- [00:00]
A
I discovered a problem that was very real. You should not need to change your accent for you to succeed in a job that you wish to do. People should be evaluated based off their work ethic, their talent, their intellect, not the accent.
- [00:14]
B
This is genius level. How was it for you when you think about going from 0 to 100 million?
- [00:19]
A
AI is an empowerment tool. Everyone can be a so called 10x engineer. The things that we want to continue to provide value and impact for people across the world. You see nothing yet foreign.
- [00:38]
B
So, Sean, something I've been thinking about lately is the future of intelligence and education. Now that AI is basically doing like everyone's homework, everyone's paper writing. I've talked to a bunch of college students lately and they've all told me that they're using AI to do a lot of the work. So it got me thinking, like, is there still value not just in going, going to college in the future, but going to Ivy League schools like Stanford where you went to?
- [01:06]
A
Makes sense. I'm probably going to answer that question just from my own experience. So I started saunas when I was a second year student at Stanford, right. And our incorporation date is April 2020. And that 2020 date, that's a really infamous date, right? And that was when they had sent all the students back home, right? All of the classes were remote. And I'll tell you, like, that event was probably the inspiration point for me to start thinking to do more of my life, right? Because when they had sent all the students back home, I was super disengaged. I was disillusioned with college because I personally thought that all the classes and homework, that is a very small portion of the college experience. When you go to college, you're hoping to meet all their peers, you're hoping to be in a very special stage of your life where you're surrounded by people of a similar stage of life that are super passionate about exploring different things. And when Covid had hit and everyone was remote and you were taking zoom classes where everyone had their screens off, it was no longer worth the college experience, right? All the intelligence and all the material that you can't learn, you can find it on the Internet, right? So what is the benefit of actually going to a college campus is because you are in person, you are able to interact, you're able to meet other people. And so for me, that is the main benefit of college is that you're an 18 year old, you don't quite know what you want to do with life. You just graduated high school a Lot of people say they know what they're doing with their lives. I think it's very hard for that to be the case for most people. And so when you're in college, you're at a place where it's intellectual Disneyland. You can do anything you want. You should explore everything you want and you should meet people who are also teaching you what you want to do. And so I know there's like a mean now that people can go to college just to meet co founders. I think that's partially true. I think you go to college to meet people and from there you figure out what you want to do and what are you ultimately good at and what you want to continue to pursue.
- [03:16]
B
Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'm 42 and I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. Yeah, it's like, it's like building, it's like building up your, your social abilities. You, you get to college. I like that idea. Like you, you build up, you meet people. Maybe it used to be it was kind of the joke. It was like you go to college and you want to be an entrepreneur. Why even go to college if you've ever watched this show? You know, I travel constantly. And here's something nobody warns you about. The Internet you have at home is not the Internet you get on the road. I'll be in another country trying to get on a site we use for media interviews and it's blocked. Or I want to unwind at the end of the day and my favorite shows won't load because of where I am. The Internet isn't nearly as open as we think it is. That's why I started using ProtonVPN. It lets me change my virtual location so I can get to the sites and the content I need no matter where I am. And, and just as importantly, it keeps what I'm doing online private, which matters when you're on hotel and airport wi fi as much as I am. Here's why I trust Proton. They have a strict no logs policy that's independently verified. It's open source so anyone can inspect how it actually works. And it's backed by a foundation focused on protecting users, not selling your data behind the scenes. You get a huge server network and fast connections. And in over 145 countries, it's easy to get started. Right now ProtonVPN is offering our listeners 70% off a two year plan. When you go to protonvpn.com founder that's P R O T O N V P N COM slash founder for 70% off your two year plan. Maybe, though, it's the best place to find the co founders to get started. So when you were there, there's so many problems that somebody could solve. I almost feel like the great thing about where we're at in life is, is you have the ability now to solve a lot of problems, but you almost get stuck into. There's so many problems that you could solve. Which one do you figure out? How did you hone in and say, this is the problem I want to solve?
- [05:28]
A
I think, I think a lot of people aspire to be entrepreneurs in the first place, right? But I think the first thing to do when you're building a business or you wanted to be an entrepreneur is that you have to identify a true problem. You do not want to build a cool solution, a cool technology, and then figure out how to sell that. Like, I think that's a recipe for disaster and failure. But if you could truly identify a need and a problem, no matter what technology you have, you have a business. As long as you have a problem, you have a business, right? And, and for me, again with COVID I was doing all different things. I was doing different hackathons, I was working on all sorts of weekend projects. And I think I was also in that mode where it was like, pivot hell. Just see, like, does this seem cool? Does this seem to work? But what really stuck with me and what ultimately became Sonus is that I discovered a problem that was very real. And I'm happy to tell you more about that problem. And it came from, again, the people that I met at college, interestingly enough. So when I had met Raul, I. I mean, we were friends and were classmates and partially again because of COVID and also for his own personal situation, he went back to Nicaragua to be physically present with his family and he wanted to physically support them. And he also got a job local there because he wanted to help financially support them. And he got a job as a call center agent. And I was catching up with him. I was like, hey man, how's life? How's the new job? And just very casual conversations. And he told me how much he hated his job. And I was not surprised because I know customer service, you need like a tough skin to do that job. But what I was surprised was that he told me he hated his job because so many customers would complain to him about his accent and he would look at his job report and see all these complaints on accent that people Will get frustrated increasingly in these all cross of all these conversations. And he was leading to lower job performance and lower job pay. And he dreaded going to work every day, eight hours a day, speaking to different customers who would then complain about him about his accent. And that's how, as college students, we got exposed to the customer experience industry. And. And we learned that you would even have recruiters that would filter candidates based off how thick the accent was. And as college students, we thought that was really unfair, that people should be evaluated based off their work ethic, their talent, their intellect. You should not need to change your accent for you to succeed in a job that you wish to do right. And so when I got to learn about my friend's story, my friend's experience in that industry, that's how we came up with the idea about building the first accent translation product to translate accents. And for me, that was a real problem. That was a problem that was experienced by all these different employees, employers, and customers. And I think for us to learn from my friend's story and learn from other people's story, that that was a genuine problem. And even back then, like, accent translation was not a product. That was not a thing. That was like science fiction. But for us, we identified that problem. It was a need that was very real, and people were willing to pay money if such a thing was invented. And that was why we sparked and we had the inspiration, like, let's build that. Let's make that a thing. And that's my inspiration. You identify a real problem that people feel the pain for, and because they feel the pain, they're willing to pay the money. And that's how we got started with Sanus.
- [09:01]
B
Man. Never said better. I first heard about bitcoin back in 2017, and honestly, I was so curious. But every time I looked into it, I hit the same wall. I didn't understand how to actually buy it, where to start, whether I was doing it right. So I just held off for years. I look at what bitcoin has become since then. It's grown into something so much bigger than what it was when I first heard about it. What I've learned is that the hard part for most people was, was never the idea. It was getting started. If you've been curious about bitcoin but haven't made the jump yet, Cash app makes it easy. You can set up automatic purchases with zero fees or buy larger amounts, also with zero fees. Start small or go bigger. It's designed to be simple. Either way, that's the part I wish I had back then, a way in that didn't make me feel like I needed to figure everything out first. For a limited time, new customers can get $10 added to their balance. Just use code CASH APP10 when you sign up. And don't forget this part. Send at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner. Bitcoin services provided by Block Inc. Brand for additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures at Cash App slash legal podcast. If you have the pain people are willing to pay to get out of that pain, that's like, that's like sales one on one, right? Like, yeah, go towards the pain. Because something that's emotionally good, people don't really want to pay much. But if pain, everyone wants to move away from pain. There were some critics that I've seen that were saying some negative things around erasing people, which I think I, I don't see it. But what, what came to mind? How was that for you as a founder? When you're solving a massive problem, you know people who it's positively impacting. Yet of course there's always going to be critics.
- [11:03]
A
Yeah, definitely. I remember that period of life where we were like semi Twitter trending and it was like, yeah, Silicon Valley startup is whitewashing people's voices. And we did experience a good amount of backlash. I even had different acquaintances that would text me like, hey, why are you doing this? Are, are you building this right? And we did experience all those critics. And I mean those are comments that every founder would take some pause thinking and reflecting about. But I think as many as of comments that we got of those, we also got comments from people that were super inspired by the work that we did. We got emails, messages of people that were like crying that like, hey, when I learned about your company and the message that you were trying to portray, I was shedding tears because I'm an immigrant. I've been in the US for 10 years and I have felt that I have not been able to be where I am, be where I want to be because I think my accent is holding me back, that I think that I am not being hired for certain jobs or I'm being discriminated about it. And it's those messages that I received from those folks. It's again the stories from my friend, the original inspiration from the, from the stories of the different contact centers from the employees and the employers that for me, like we have a real problem, we have a real issue that we want to be able to help. And how can we bridge communication so that people can feel more connected and have conversations that there was able to understand one another better. So for us, it's, it's, it's again to identify who are we building it for. Right. And listen to their testimonies, listen to their stories and we want to be able to provide value to them. And I think with all the negative feedback and even being like semi trending, at least between me and my co founders, we were thinking at the very least we're bringing this accent discrimination topic to light. Because previously I really think it was under the radar. But again, from my experiences of what I was seeing firsthand from my friend and my loved ones, it was very real and we were happy to expose it. And we were even more happy to be able to build a solution that I think helps solves it and bridges people together. So that was, that was, that was my perspective.
- [13:13]
B
Yeah, I've seen this with my wife because she has an accent and spent 20 years trying to curve that accent because there, there are a lot of prejudging. I mean it could even be your name if you're applying for something. I used to see this with her. So I think it's hard to appreciate something if it doesn't, if it doesn't directly impact you and you haven't experienced it, it's also hard to appreciate it. So I'm going to read something to you and I want to understand, you know, how what comes to mind. Raising $121 million, zero to $62 million in revenue in two years, going on to surpass $130 million over a million users.
- [13:59]
A
I feel extremely blessed and motivated is probably what I think. When I first started the company, I did not think we would get as far as we are now. And for me, I feel incredibly grateful for those early believers, for those customers that took that first chance with us and those first prototypes that worked or didn't work. And for me, I feel incredible determination to continue to prove to those like you are, we are just getting started. You are not seeing, you see nothing yet. The things that we are building, the things that we want to continue to provide value and impact for people across the world. We're just getting started. And so it's, it's, I, I feel incredibly happy with the momentum we have and I'm here to continue to carry for that momentum and continue to build solutions for the people we talk to.
- [14:50]
B
A lot of people. And I. We get pitched all a lot of. Of companies and I have to say, it's rare that we see something unique where I'm like, wow, this is. This is genius level, because I can totally. I didn't even know it was possible. And, and I could see the massive problem that you're solving. And I was like, I. I'm very impressed. I'm very impressed when you, when you start to go to the rocket ship and. And you're cruising at lightning speed, it can be sometimes challenging to maintain that. I know you said just now that you have incredible things that are coming up later, but how do you. What's the secret sauce for you to continue maintaining this success?
- [15:30]
A
Yeah. I think the first thing is determination. You always gotta be pushing something uphill, right? You always have to not give up. You always have to have that almost aggressive push of like, this is our march, we gotta keep on going. Right? So that drive, that drive also needs to always have more and more momentum. I think the second thing for me is that especially because I'm admittedly a pretty young entrepreneur, is to also expose what you're doing. Right. I often wish that sometimes Sanus was not the first startup that I did, because if I had another startup under my belt, I could have avoided a few mistakes, right? And Sonos could be even further along in its journey and its growth. But I'm very lucky that I was surrounded by many mentors and many people that believed in us and people that when we did make mistakes, were there to help catch us and guide us in resolving those mistakes. So I think the first thing you have to do is be able to open up, make communication there. And I think the scariest thing for any entrepreneur is unknown unknowns. If you know what you don't know, at least you have the path to figure out how to figure that out and solve that. But what you don't know, what you don't know, those are the dark places where you don't know if you're moving in an unoptimal path or if you're doing something incredibly wrong. Right? And the only way you expose those unknown unknowns is that you expose to other folks around you what you're doing.
- [17:01]
B
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- [18:10]
A
And I think that's the place of an entrepreneurial vow where we need to learn. And for me, where I continue to learn and grow myself, is how do I expose my problems and have other people provide their perspectives to help me figure out how to, how to solve them and even identify those problems in the first place?
- [18:25]
B
What's an unknown that you wish you had known that you think would place the company at a, at some sort of a higher success than what it is now makes sense.
- [18:35]
A
I think the first thing would be the fundamentals of a business. So I came from college, right? And I came from doing research in AI under AI laboratories. But the difference between a AI lab at a university and an industrial company is very different. Where in an AI lab you're able to move with a lot of freedom and you're able to do things a little bit more messily because you're able to try to express creativity and just move very fast and try different ideas and you can even do that in a very unorganized manner. But when you're in a industry, you need to establish flywheels, right? How can you build repeatable processes that compound and build off of one another? How do you build teams and structures that are able to work from one another and not have silos? How do you invest in data collection, processing, ingestion? How do you invest in evaluations and benchmarking to monitor your progress? And then how do you communicate with customers, to be able to deploy to those customers, build that customer empathy and make sure that you are building in the right way? And so all of those things you don't learn in college. So I think that's where, like what is the value of college education? These are things that you will never be exposed to in college and you will Only be, you only learn that in the real world, building and perhaps making those mistakes yourself. But it's those pillars of industry that I think are incredibly important. And those are things that you have to build fundamentally from the ground up. They don't happen overnight and if they do, you're probably building them the wrong way as well.
- [20:10]
B
Do you think you're breaking generational stigmas?
- [20:14]
A
Maybe a little bit in that I think we try to build a company very flat. Right. And part of that is that no one in the room by default has a louder voice. Right. I can disagree with another engineer, that engineer can disagree with a more senior engineer and both of those guys and girls can disagree with me. Right. The reason being is that we're here to solve the same problem and we're here to disagree and commit. Right? And I think that's a very famous phrase and I think a lot of people kind of fixate on that commit part. But the important part of that phrase, that disagreement, is that first half, and for me it's almost the more important half. You need to get your thoughts out there. You need to be able to disagree with one another and by doing so you have all the data points to make the most informed decision and hopefully then is the most optimal path forward.
- [21:07]
B
So, you know, like older generations always say that younger generations are lazy. I mean, obviously you're not lazy and what you're doing is, is, you know, much higher success than most. So do you think that Gen Z, I'm guessing your Gen Z would be if you titled it an age generation?
- [21:26]
A
That's right.
- [21:27]
B
Do you think that Gen Z are not lazy and that maybe they just, just like anything, a younger generation just thinks differently than older generations?
- [21:38]
A
I, I, I think so. At least that's what I see among my peers. And I think there's always different subsets of people in every population and generation. But especially in this age of like AI and the startup landscape, I actually think the generation is hungrier than ever. Everyone is wanting to do build their own startup. There's something in the water and everyone's feeling a bit restless and maybe it's, maybe it's because Gen Z has shorter attention spans that they want to build new things. They want to not take that conventional white collar job. I think we're maybe more hard coded to be like let's build new things that are flashy and very cool. But sometimes that's where innovation comes from. It comes from thinking a little bit outside the box, thinking a little bit in the second path. And I Think that's where we can get a lot of energy and we get very inspired. And so I get inspired by my peers all the time and I'm surrounded by people with a lot of drive and they continue to push me as well. So I think the generation is, I mean, we're also just getting started is my take.
- [22:44]
B
I like that you could have the new generational tagline, we're just getting started. We have a son who's 22 and I gotta say, he's really motivated by like mission and purpose, where when I was his age I was just driven by making money. Like, I didn't even, I don't even know if I knew what a mission even was. I was just like, I need to make money because I need to survive. And he's like, I only want to work at a job that get, you know, that serves the same mission and purpose where I would take any job. I was doing terrible jobs when I was in my 20s because I just needed to make money. So I, I really love, I love the ideas of mission and purpose and things. I think that's, I think your generation will be happier long term as adults, hopefully with a different mindset. Although I don't know about social media's impact on mental health, so that scares me. How do you feel about that? What do you think about the impacts of mental health? Sorry? With social media, AI and on mental health and people in their 20s, I
- [23:50]
A
would say it can be very challenging. And even in the landscape of startups, you'll see startups post their success stories, right? Like these stories of failure, of pivots and mistakes, people don't like to highlight those. Right? So I think sometimes you can be disillusioned. You're on Twitter, you're on X and you see everyone raising, launching and, and exciting and hyping each other up. It can be disillusioned. And so I would say, like, it's good to take a break from social media and also ground yourselves and the people around you. Like, do seek those real world interactions because I think it's in those pockets of conversation where you'll be able to figure out, okay, what do I want to do with my life or what do I need to improve? Right? These unknown unknowns that I talked about earlier, there's no way it would have, I would have expose them and solve them if I just brought them up to the Internet, right? It had to come from my peers and my advisors and mentors and it had to be me being very vulnerable and honest and for them to be vulnerable and honest with me as well. And I think social media, you can be a little bit artificial. I'm hoping with technology you're actually able to bridge people closer together. And even with sonnets and our ethos is how can we communicate more clearly and build bridges and break down communication barriers. And actually our technology is hoping that people can connect with one another and facilitate communication and understanding. So that's my take is technology is great, but I want technology to also be able to open up those opportunities for humans to interact with other humans more and not just work on, just be faced by AI, voice assistants or based off the screen and all of that. I wanted to be able to open up more communication among people.
- [25:33]
B
More people need to build companies now that are human to human, not just AI to human. I was at an event in San Francisco, an AI event recently, and the energy was amazing. And I, I was thinking like, wow, if, if I was going to move somewhere, I feel like the Bay Area, Palo Alto, San Francisco might have the best energy when it comes to AI and being around people that are also building in the sense. What are you seeing in terms of, in terms of this, like is if I want to raise money and I'm building something, do you think there's a massive benefit? Because I've heard this debate before around being in Silicon Valley.
- [26:16]
A
Yeah, no, definitely. Because I think here in Silicon Valley that's where you're having the conversations. Forget about the fundraising, right? Forget about the, the angel investors on Sandhill Road or in Silicon Valley. Like it's more about the people. You're having those conversations. You're being exposed to the ecosystem and you're learning about what are the problems that are out there and how are people thinking about fixing and solving those problems. When I talked about mentorship, right, Unknown unknowns, again, these are not going to be conversations you have on the Internet. It comes with genuine organic interaction. And when you're in Silicon Valley, you're surrounded by entrepreneurs and like minded people, peers. You're there because you want to be able to have real human connection. You want to be able to tell me like, these are the problems that I'm facing in my startup or in my life or in my career. And I would love to have advice. How are you solving them? How are you going about and navigating life yourself? So it's not about the fundraising in my take, it's about the people and it is about being exposed to like minded people with that same mindset and that same drive that Pushes you forward along with it.
- [27:23]
B
So in my experience, as you go through different milestones of revenue, it changes who you are or who you have to be because you have, like, more employees, more responsibilities, different things change. Maybe sometimes less responsibilities because you need to focus on certain things as you maybe grow and scale you, your management teams. How was it for you? When you think about going from 0 to 50 million and then 50 million to a hundred million?
- [27:53]
A
Yeah, when I think about the entrepreneurship journey, I kind of. I'm going to liken it as an analogy, like rock climbing. That sounds a little bit Silicon Valley esque as well. But when you're doing, like rock climbing in the very beginning, you're kind of just looking at the wall and you're kind of thinking about, how do I climb it? You're kind of thinking about all these different possibilities in your mind, and you're just having fun imagining doing it. And when you first climb on that wall, I mean, you look down, it's like one foot off the ground, you fall off, there's no problem, right? You don't get hurt at all. But then when you start to climb, eventually you look down, you're like, wow, I'm pretty high up. It could hurt to fall from here. You are more responsibility. There's more things on your shoulders. And so I have felt that for sure, right. I have felt in the beginning where you're pivoting, you're just learning, you're exploring, you're also exploring about yourself as well. But then when the company really starts to take off like that rocket ship, you do get that added pressure. And I think that's where. Why do people rock climb in the first place is for the fun of the game, right? That pressure, that thrill is why you do so in the first place. And I think as an entrepreneur, you kind of need that, that mentality in your blood as well. And for me, I love it. I embrace it. I get to wake up to continue to solve hard problems and figure out fun solutions to them. And so going from 0 to 50 million, I think that's when you are figuring yourself out. You're figuring out how to build a brand, right? You're figuring out, this is a solution. This is my market, these are my customers. I'm thinking about how do I make sure that I'm able to build something that is relevant and actually solves those pains that the customers have. And past that 50 million mark, you're thinking about, okay, as a company, I am able to. I have, I've already figured out that product market fit. At that point, you probably have already validated and tested that. Now, two is how do I maintain that brand and be a premium brand that everyone is able to associate with? And two is how do you compound on what you're already good at? I think you should always play to your strengths and figure out how your strengths are able to compound amongst one another. And then thinking about how do you branch out, how do you spread your wings so that you're again appealing to those same customers that you have, you're able to go deeper with them, but you're also able to expand your audience and you're able to touch more lives of people and able to provide even more impact across the world. And I think that's also a similar phase about where we are as Sonus as a company. So our inspiration and our start was in the customer service industry, in contact centers. Right. And we continue to love doing very well in our business and helping and serving those customers. But also along our journey is that when we had built our solutions and our technology, it was not just about contact centers or about customer service, it was about communication. It was about how can people ever, if you're ever in a situation where like, I just wish I could follow the conversation a little bit easier. I wish I could understand a little bit easier. We are thinking about how do you make that synonymous with Sonus? And so although we started in the CX industry, we have also now been building a platform for ourselves and being integrated across everywhere where speech lives, whether that's in the telephone network or that's on your phone or in your headphones and headset. That's where Sonos is coming alive. And so we have also branched from being just an accent translation company in the first stage to also being a multi stage, multi product solution company and platform. And I think that's where as a company you first find, you learn how to walk and then you start to sprint and figure out who do you want to build and who are you building next and where do you want the company to go?
- [31:24]
B
When you think about. Because you are the cto, correct?
- [31:29]
A
That's right.
- [31:29]
B
And there's a lot of talk now around replacement of CTO or technical people. Could be co founder, could be developers with AI, Claude, code, such and such. What do you see as an actual cto? Where are we at right now with AI and where do you think we'll be in the near future in terms of being able to leverage the development side of AI and being able to replace somebody who is normally doing that?
- [32:00]
A
Yeah, that's a great question. And I think AI is an empowerment tool, right? It's able to allow an individual to be able to build more, prototype more and explore more. So in that case, it is a big game changer that everyone can be a so called 10x engineer. But again, that engineer, you actually need to be even more creative and you need to be have even more discipline. Because even if you vibe coded or you hand code it like whatever you deliver is actually you're owning that you are signing your name off of that delivery. And so when I think about AI, I think taste matters even more, design matters even more, craftsmanship matters more. The way that you own and drive something, it becomes even more necessary and a differentiator. You know, even when I think about AI, I know that there's a narrative in the market like, hey, people don't need junior engineers anymore. And I think I'm very lucky that I guess as a Gen Z entrepreneur, I'm surrounded by other engineers of a similar age group. And actually we see so called junior engineers and senior engineers working very closely, collaboratively, even horizontally. And the reason being is that junior engineers are able to help prototype even faster. You're able to explore these ideas and see like, hey, path one, two and three, how does each path grow and where does each path take us? And the senior engineers are able to guide us and be like, okay, we see that this is an opportunity and there's merit to exploring this path which we have vibe coded and prototyped. But how do we make sure that it's not just vibe coded and breaks the production, how to make sure that performance reliability is able to, it matters even more so now. And I think that's where AI is taking us. That's where AI is improving productivity. It should actually bring junior and senior people closer together. It should bring empowerment to more people and people are able to have more agency and more ownership that you never have to pass something along to another team. It's like, hey, can you help me build this tool? You're actually able to have the agency yourself to build that tool. And because you have the context of why you need to build that tool in the first place, you're even more empowered to do so. Whether you're a junior or a senior engineer, you're able to do that. And so that's how I see it. Like, I think with AI, people matter even more. And you have to figure out getting the right people about the right people on the right buses and having the right bus Drivers and yeah, that's my perspective.
- [34:22]
B
I used to develop like way back in the day. I only went to college for computer science. Dropped out year two. It was like year 1.5. And I've been vibe coding recently. The biggest problem that I found is when I look at other people's stuff, who they send me, because there's like a group of us and everyone I meet who's vibe coding, our stuff looks exactly the same.
- [34:44]
A
Sure.
- [34:45]
B
Like the back end looks the same. The front end, like, it's structurally I can tell, like, oh, you vibe coded this. So I've had to go back and like tell it completely revamp it so people cannot tell that it's been vibe coded. I was reading this article a few days ago about how a few hundred employees at OpenAI sold their shares last year. The lowest person made $11 million. The average was like 30 million or something. And I was just like, I was so blown away. Like, you don't have to be an entrepreneur and grind to become rich. I think it used to be it was very hard to get rich as an employee for the most part, unless you're like early on Amazon or early on Google. Nowadays though, there is a high potential, depending on where you work, where you could substantially make a lot of money as an employee. And I find that to be, I find that to be amazing because I don't think most people are really built out to build a company in the long run.
- [35:50]
A
Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's anything too new in that. I think you identified it was the OpenAI shares that made those guys rich. Right. So I think it's very true. Like salary and a cash salary, they make you comfortable. It doesn't make you rich. It's always based off those shares and equities that appreciate. And I think there's a very famous quote from Sheryl Sandberg is like, when you identify that you're on a rocket ship, it doesn't matter what seat you are, you're on get on that rocket ship. So I think that's similar where. And that's why, honestly, a lot of startups are actually recruiting ex co founders, ex founder, ex entrepreneurs is because you want to get people like minded into that group. You want to maintain a very strong culture and individuals are able to join you on that rocket ship. You're hoping that rocket ship flies even higher. And I think that remains even true today. And AI has accelerated that landscape likely. And yeah, I think identify the rocket ship. It doesn't matter where you're sitting, get on that rocket ship and go.
- [36:50]
B
I like it. I need to get back to San Francisco. I hadn't been to San Francisco in over 10 years. I'm just saying San Francisco, I know you're more in the Bay Area, I guess, but I hadn't been there in a while. I was shocked. It was like cleaner. It was nicer. Last time I was there I had a really bad experience and this time I had a great experience and I had so many friends in the area and they're like, you got to come up here and just see the energy. And I, I think if you are in a billboard company, you are in a great place because every AI company is now renting billboards, which I thought was pretty hilarious. I love that. I just, you know, I wonder obviously how many of those companies will, will still exist in the year or two years. But the fact that there's just so much action and people could get in, they don't. I, I just, I really, really love the fact that you can go there. You don't have to be the founder. You could also be the employee and ride the rocket ship and take the risk and if, you know, and the reward could be major and if it doesn't, you just move to the next. But Sean, this has been great. Genius idea, like I was saying, genius idea of what you've done. Obviously, you know, it, it solved the problem and people are using it and loving it. And I've just firsthand seen how, you know, my, like I said, my wife needed something like this, you know, many 20 years ago when she was very self conscious around her accent and how she talked and, and how people, you know, reacted to that. But man, I'm super inspired by Gen Z. You have inspired me about people in their 20s that I think the world is going to be a better place because of you.
- [38:34]
A
That means a lot. Thank you so much, Daniel and thanks
- [38:37]
B
for joining us today.
- [38:38]
A
Thank you. All right.