Zach Yadegari: Selling Cal Ai for millions at 18-years-old

So, a year and a half ago, you were on this podcast. You were making a million dollars per month at 17 years old. Now, a year and a half later, where are you at? >> As an 18-year-old, I sold my company, Cali, to My Fitness Pal. >> What was your revenue when you guys sold? >> We had just finished 2025, having done $30 million in that year. >> $30 million a year. So, how much did you guys sell for? >> I can't reveal that. >> Okay. Okay. But people can do the math. Uh, if you're in the software world, $30 million ARR. >> That That's what we did in 2025. That was the revenue for the year. You you guys probably touched close to 50 recently. Yeah. >> In January we did 5.7 million in revenue. >> So the run rate was over 50. Wow. >> Yeah. The ARR currently is about 50 million. >> People can probably do the math on what the multiple might be there for the company. But didn't So My Fitness Pal was probably your biggest competitor. >> Yeah. >> And they decided to acquire Did they reach out to you guys or why did you guys decide to sell? >> It was a little bit of a back and forth actually. We were talking to them for a while just because we're so close in the space and we built up the relationship over time and then decided it just made sense to that combining the companies and resources would help us make the biggest impact because we are really mission driven as a company. We want to help the greatest number of people as possible and we thought that that was the best way to do so on both sides. It made sense. >> Okay. So you guys are like joining forces. Are you still going to work together on like are you still going to be working on Cali or have you decided to leave? What's your plan? >> So Cali and my fitness pal are going to remain separate apps >> and I am currently helping the company. I want this to be a really smooth transition. I'm still working at Cali and I want to make sure that it's going to endure and the brand is going to really last very long >> even past me being there. But I definitely am always, you know, I'm always coming up with tons of new ideas. So I I am definitely gonna start something new in in time. >> So you have a transition period basically. >> Yeah. >> Can you talk about was it a cash deal, stock deal, anything like that or no? >> Yeah, I don't think we could reveal I don't think I could reveal. >> Okay. Okay, it's fair. >> I will say they bought 100% of the company. >> Okay. So they bought 100% of the company. >> They own it now. >> Okay. Great. So it's not like a partnership joint venture. They own 100%. >> They own Cali. >> Okay. Wow. That is so cool, dude. Are you gonna stay in school? >> I'm definitely gonna drop out, honestly. Like, not even because of the acquisition. Yeah, I think I was going to drop out after the first year anyway, >> but yeah, I'm definitely feeling it. Like, I want to I really want to just swing big in the world. And I think college is limiting me a little bit. >> I mean, you were making a million dollars per month, then you decided to still go to college. >> I mean, when I went to college, it was we were making $3 million a month at that point. >> That's crazy. Why did you go to college in the first place? >> Dude, honestly, just for the social life. Like that was really the main thing. And I think it's like it was good. I don't regret it at all because it was either go to college, make friends, hang out with them, have a cool social life, or I didn't really know what I would do. I would either still live with my parents or maybe move to a big city by myself, not know that many people, maybe a couple entrepreneurs there, but not really have a social circle outside of that. What I've done now, if I leave school, I'm going to still have a good group of friends to hang out with and other entrepreneurs that I've met in Miami over the time. So, I'll have a good group. So, you feel like you did get like a social circle out of college? Like that was definitely a benefit? >> Yeah, definitely a few like honestly not like a big one like not a full friend group, but there are a few key people that I really enjoy spending time with and I'm going to continue to. >> It's a I mean it's a really crucial time like most people are open-minded. I think when you get past 25 closer to 30 people are much more like they're less relationship based and they're more like who they've been with for a long time. So, you're building a tribe really early and that's when people are really openminded. So, I do think that makes a lot of sense to go to college for that reason. Yeah. And you met a few smart people that you could probably do business with for the rest of your life. >> I definitely met some smart people. Honestly, >> I don't know. I haven't really thought about it from the business perspective, but I guess there are like a couple that I could see in the future once they're like out of college. But right now, no one's too entrepreneurial, I would say. >> Okay. So, everyone's just more just like friends for fun. Yeah. Okay. >> But like good friends. Like I know long term like they're all going to do great things. >> I think that was the right move. You got in, had fun, met your people, but now on to bigger and better things, I suppose. >> Okay. So, I am very curious because you guys were only doing maybe like right at a million a month when we were first talking. >> Yeah. >> Now you're doing you were doing way over $3 million a month a year later. Yeah. >> I would love to know what the difference was between what got you to a million dollar a month and then what you've done in that time to grow past that cuz I know it was all about UGC. That was like all you guys were doing. >> Um, and that was very very popular, but I know you guys have expanded into a few other distribution channels. So, what were you how were you able to grow Cali? two or three million dollars per month. >> That's a great question. So, initially when we spoke, yeah, it was all influencers that were just posting and that was driving all of the growth. That got us pretty consistently to like 2 million a month, I would say. >> And then by that point, all of the influencers in the fitness space, all the big ones at least, we pretty much worked with. And a lot of these fitness influencers share the same audiences. So, it was a smaller bang for the buck working with more fitness influencers. So, we decided to broaden the horizon a little bit. We started working with influencers that weren't necessarily fitness related and that worked pretty well. But then more than that, actually the channel that was a huge unlock for us was really just running performance ads, performance marketing, Tik Tok ads, Instagram ads, Facebook ads. >> That's just unlocked a whole new channel of growth that has taken us to in January we did $5.7 million of revenue. paid ads is so important to like track your conversion rate, train your pixel, make sure like all these different people are clicking different ads and converting. Was there anything you did for attribution to like I know it's hard, but did you figure anything out? Yeah, so there's one thing actually that it's a little bit of sauce for the viewers here. Not many people know about this, but you can actually create custom product pages for apps on the app store. And for each custom product page, you're able to see the amount of revenue that that page by itself generated. Within Facebook, they actually let you upload custom product pages as the link that the ad takes the user to. >> So, you're able to see directly how much revenue that each ad that's connected to the custom product page made based on the people that went directly from the ad like click the link to go download. And so that allows you to have like clear data, no You know that you at least made that amount. Often times you have to increase it by about 30%. Because many people will see the ad, won't click download, but they'll go out of Instagram, go to the app store, and type in your app name by themselves. So you have to account for that. But that's how to know like, okay, you're making at least this amount and have very clear data. And that will work early on very well. But when you have a lot of ads then you can't like it's hard to manage so many custom product pages. >> Are you trying to test copy on those product pages or it's literally just conversion for like ad to landing page ad to landing page? >> Well, this is mostly for knowing like okay let's say you've run influencers for let's say you started with influencer marketing and so now you're running paid ads. >> If you if you run paid ads by itself then you know like okay this is my only channel so any revenue is from that. You know, if your revenue is more than whatever you spent on paid ads that day, then your paid ads were profitable. Let's say you're running influencers and paid ads, and your influencers is at a pretty big scale, you can't attribute all your revenue to um one or the other. So, that's when it's tricky like, okay, how much of the revenue today was from influencer spend versus paid ad spend? And that's where if you put all your paid ads under a custom product page, you could see like, okay, this amount was >> Gotcha. So you're splitting like if people search Cali organically, they're going to hit the main page. Yeah. But then you're making a subpage that you're going to link directly for all paid traffic. Yes. So you can see the direct link conversions. Correct. And separate that. >> Wow. I did not know that. >> Yeah. That's really helpful. >> Very handy. If you're building a software or a web app, you should use to set up your subscriptions. makes it extremely easy to install our payment infrastructure into your app. All you need to do is create an account, go to your dashboard, copy this prompt, and put it into cursor or cloud code, and your payments are set up instantly. lets you accept payments in over 194 countries. We also handle all of your authorization, so your customers can manage their subscriptions with ease. Not only that, but WP payments also allows for payins and payouts. So, if you're creating a marketplace where your customers make money on your platform and need to deposit money into their bank account, you can use to set this up inside of your app. There are thousands of companies that are using for their payments and platforms like Sideshift, Micro One, and Ohana are using to power their platform. So to set up your payments infrastructure for your software, just go to wap.com/sell and start your online business today. So you were just doing influencers in the fitness space for the first million dollars, maybe $2 million, but you probably hit a ceiling pretty quickly. And then you said you broadened out your influencer pool. What was it like doing an influencer deal with Mr. Beast? >> Oh, that was great. That was really fun. flow to Greenville, North Carolina to meet him and shoot it with him. I was even in the video which was sick >> and it was good. It was like cool seeing behind the scenes. >> How much did that cost? >> That was half a million dollars. >> So, you paid half a million dollars to sponsor Mr. Beast video. >> Yeah. But the craziest thing is we we could have gotten it for completely free if we wanted to. >> How? >> They never invoiced us. >> Oh, really? >> Never. And like a few months later after I realized like wait they haven't asked us to pay I like reached out to Jimmy to tell them like hey your team forgot to send the invoice and so we got it all settled but yeah like if we wanted to we could have just never paired >> that that was a really cool one cuz you actually got to go down there in person and beat in the ad. >> Yeah. >> What was the thought process behind that? Well, honestly, they just like apparently always invite the brands that sponsor them to like go see the shoot. And then when I was there, someone just suggested, "Oh, should we do a take with Zach in it?" >> And so I was like, "Hell yeah, I'm down. That's awesome." I honestly did not expect them to use it, but they did, which was sick. >> I mean, I think it's a pretty interesting story. You're like 18 years old and you own the app that's promoting a video. Like that just made it really engaging. >> Yeah. >> How did you guys Because that video was a fitness video. >> Like that did that just line up well? Did they approach you? Did you come up with that concept together? How did that come out? >> So, they initially did on the main channel, it was this guy. He was maybe 200 something pounds. His name was M. And he couldn't leave the gym until he lost a certain number of pounds. >> Mhm. >> Maybe 100 pounds. >> And then at the end of the challenge, she would win some prize pool, some money. That was one of their most viral videos on their main channel. And so, they were going to make a behind the scenes. And we got word from one of my friends who actually is on the beast team that they were making that and he made the connection. He suggested the idea. Shout out Nesh. Very cool guy. He made that happen. >> Okay. So, he had the awareness that they were working on this concept and then you had a relationship with him so he just reached out to you. >> Yeah. >> Very good friend right there. >> Yeah. >> Did it convert well? >> I'd say the ad was slightly unprofitable just off of conversions from the ad. Mhm. >> However, afterwards, it gave us so much brand authority and we were able to say like, "Yeah, we worked with Mr. Beast. A ton of people saw it and so it helped us sign many new deals going forward, which overall like probably made it a profitable deal." So, front end it didn't convert at a profitable like rorowaz, but back end you had a lot of social credit, built authority, and more brands were willing to work with you or other creators were more comfortable working with you in the future, right? >> You probably get better deals. >> Yeah. >> Interesting. Did were you able to track attribution at all or was it just very difficult with those types of things. >> We had like a few ways to model it out. We looked at the clicks in the description and then we like applied a multiple to that like okay maybe one out of 10 people are actually clicking the link in the description. Promo codes maybe like one out of eight people use promo codes. Just looked at the spike of like okay the day it was posted how many views did it get? What was the spike in revenue versus an average day? So like a lot of different ways to look at it. And then we kind of like if all of those sources pointed to a similar number, we're like, "Okay, that's probably the number." >> I remember last time we were talking about attribution being a problem. Did you ever find a better way to fix it? >> It's honestly the hardest thing, >> especially like even running performance ads, that's supposed to be better attribution, but because of Apple's privacy rules, that's super hard as well. >> And so, you really just need people on the team that are really gritty and able to like really separate the noise like, okay, this is what a normal day is like. Looking at the spikes is a big thing. Doing incrementality tests, which is kind of like not running it, not running a certain channel, turning it off for a few days, turning it on, seeing what the differences, that kind of stuff to figure it out. But it's hard. Yeah, it's very hard. There's no like tool that actually can like cover all the different channels, all the different touch points. So, it's just more subjective than anything. >> Yeah, very difficult. >> Okay. So, then you said So, Mr. Beast was probably your biggest one you worked with. So, you were going into like more female influencers. your guys' app is beautiful because it's such a big market. Like everyone eats food, everyone needs to track their calories. Um, when you got into ads, I'm curious, A, did you work with an agency or did you do it internally? Did you hire internally? And B, uh, the creative process, were you using the influencers and the UGC content and then you had usage rights and were able to run those as ads or were you getting content shot as ads? >> Very good question. So, initially when we started paid ads, we were focused on influencer marketing. So, we were like, "Okay, we don't want to leave this channel completely untapped." So, we hired an agency to run it for us. But honestly, as soon as I started doing research, I've never been a fan of agencies. I just never believe like, okay, they're never going to care as much as someone that's actually on the team living, breathing, talking to everyone on a day-to-day basis. So, I always knew we would move away, but as soon as I started doing research, I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is actually horrible how we'd been running things." And so, I started running it myself. then brought in someone else to do it. We like went through a few people but then finally got a really solid team in place to run the ads and it took a while and like we lost we spent a lot of money on it. >> So okay so you worked with an agency at first >> at first >> and then it wasn't really performing well basically >> we were just capped out like we couldn't pass 5K a day and spend. >> Oh you just maxed out how much you could spend. Were you trying to be profitable immed on the first month? Yeah, we were trying to be profitable immediately because we're always like cash constraint because we're a bootstrapped company. >> Gotcha. And so what was I forget what was your price point? >> $30 a year. >> A year. Yeah. >> Okay. So you're trying to make trying to run ads 20 bucks make 30 bucks, >> right? >> Did you know your churn like what was the likelihood of someone renew 30 year long subscription on year two? >> I don't think I could share exactly what it is, but I'd say the average for the industry is about 30%. >> Would churn >> for health and fitness apps >> for annual. Yeah, for annual subscriptions. And that's because these apps they require a lot of disciplines. They're like naturally have churn. >> That makes sense. >> 30% retention, not churn. So% leave. >> Okay. Interesting. >> Yeah. So that's helpful for the modeling when you're doing paid ads, but you wanted to be profitable on the first year obviously. Okay. So you were running these ads with the agency. What was the problem? >> So it was honestly how they set up the campaign structures that was a big thing. Campaign structures are one of those things where it's more of an art than a science, but you have to there are good ways to do it. And then there are ways that like really over complicate it and then just like mess everything up like cuz there's so many settings in Facebook ads for example that you could toggle and people think certain things are important but really like you want to keep it simple. You want to set up your campaign structures in a very simple way. And creative is key. Creative is the whole strategy. You just set it up once and then it's all about the creatives. And you asked like do we use influencers or what for the strategy? >> Mhm. >> And for that initially we used influencers that was the biggest thing but then very quickly we realized that okay these influencer videos they work really well for short form organic reach but the ad placement wasn't strong enough. We've always optimized for subtle ads in the influencer videos so that they don't brick the engagement. >> Mh. >> And so it was really when we started to build out an in-house creator team or not really like fulltime in-house but affiliate model of creators that would make videos exclusively to be run as ads that we really saw good performance and scaled. >> Interesting. I want to get really specific and ad will nerd out if that's all right. What was the campaign structure like? Were you running CBO campaigns? What was the problem that they were doing? What did they overindex on? This is gonna be a really nerdy part, but >> Okay. No, I don't want to say if you got into it. Yeah. Yeah. >> Um, >> keep it simple. Just high level structure. >> I'd say high level what we do is we will mainly have one campaign that's our scale campaign >> and then one that's testing. That's like a pretty common strategy. >> That's what we do. >> And I believe in our scaling campaign it is actually CBO. >> Mhm. And then do you are you doing any sort of interest group targeting lookalike audiences? >> Yeah, we don't do any of that. Okay. We really believe that the algorithm is just so good at this point that you target with creative. So even if you want to do retargeting like showing an ad to someone who already saw a previous ad >> instead of tweaking any settings on Facebook saying like okay only show this to someone that saw this ad just in the creative we'll say you've probably seen our ads before. This is XYZ and that works. >> Interesting. So you have the brand awareness and you're knowing that they are already aware of what you are and this is really just more of like aformational or objection handling ad. >> Yeah, I would say so. And that's something we're trying to get better at to be honest. Like we're trying to get better at the objection handling >> but generally like it really is an art form. You don't know like which ads are top of funnel and which are like the ones that are converting. And so you'll see a really high customer acquisition cost for one, >> but then if you turn it and and a really low for another ad set, but if you turn off that first ad set, you'll think, "Oh, it's unprofitable. Let's turn it off." Maybe it jumps up the cost customer acquisition cost on another one because they were seeing this these ads first and those were the ones that were funneling into the second ad group. >> Yeah. And then once you calculate in like your organic content or the UGC stuff, like did they see that first then they see an ad then they get a retargeting ad. you have frequency of how much they see each ad if they see the same ad multiple times. >> A good media buyer, that's like what their skill set is. It's not necessarily about setting up the ads, >> but I'm very interested to see how you guys kind of evolved. So, what was the main conversion? Like, were you guys just doing straight up $30 conversions as the main >> optimization for the pixel? >> We've actually optimized always for starting a trial. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Interesting. But then you track the amount of people who convert obviously. Well, on the back end, but not really for Facebook's sake because Apple, it really only allows you to send high quality data in the first 24 hours of getting any signal. >> And since we have a 3-day free trial, if we send it 3 days later, it's no longer going to be like reached by Facebook that it's going the algorithm will learn too slow. So, we just model out, okay, we know that this is the average conversion rate. So, if it's this cost per star trial, it's probably profitable. >> Interesting. Okay. And then were last nerdy question. Were there any other tools you were using outside of just you this is all on Instagram and Facebook I assume? >> Yes, primarily. >> Were there any other tools you were using for tracking upsell anything along the lines or just meta manager the pixel and well we of course used an MMP. We used apps flyier. You have to really use one for apps and that's supposed to be like the best thing for attribution >> and it's supposed to give you clear data but it never really does. There's a ton of drop off. So, one of the guys in our team, he's like always modeling out his predictions of like how much he thinks we actually made from certain things. >> Gotcha. Okay. And then I guess the last thing I want to do, creative is everything for paid ads. >> What was the difference between your UGC and your influencer content formats versus your paid ads content formats? >> So, the influencer videos, the reason they didn't work is because it would be like a 3 second clip using the app in a 30 secondond video. It would be like my morning routine. Okay. Face mask, breakfast, scan food, go to the gym, go on a run, >> and we would be a small part and it would work, but like >> that got us maybe to 10K a day and spend. We couldn't really scale more, maybe 15. Then once we started making actual videos where the whole the whole video is dedicated to, okay, this is an app I've been using recently where it lets me track my calories super easily throughout my day. All I do is take a picture. It's like directly selling the app and directly straight to the point like 5 seconds and less of like even the whole length of the video. Those really started doing well and that's how we broke like we got I think we're doing like 40k a day. So the influencers that had a following they would make more like story based content going through their day where the app was like a subtly part of it >> and since people cared about the person they were more likely to follow the story and since the app was subtle they actually were like oh that looked cool let me try it. you didn't need to like sell the app. But in paid ads, you think it's because it says like paid promotion, like people like are aware that it's an ad and they're just like they just want the direct information. >> I don't think it's necessarily that because Instagram even now like they kind of hide the paper. Very subtle. Yeah, >> it takes like a few seconds before the like download button pops up. So like the hook can make them think it's organic. I think it's really the fact that it's just directly selling and the f the algorithms are good at knowing who to target. And so, like, if you could go to your ideal customer that already has the need for your product, you don't really need to do much selling. You kind could kind of just be like, "Here's the solution to your problem. They're going to buy it." So, I think that's what's really going on. >> Yeah, that makes sense. So, you just got more direct response ads that were just more structured and here's the app. Here's the benefit. If you have this problem, this is the solution. Basically, just very formulaic direct response copyrightiting >> kind of. I would say most of our videos actually aren't even people talking the creatives that are winning. is more of like it it demonstrates what that does because it's very visual in a few seconds but it's mostly like maybe being at the gym flexing with music then scanning food something maybe like a caption like how I'm how I cut down like this many pounds in a month or how I'm cutting for the summer just like a a hook and then just showing that. >> Were you involved in the creative process like directing what was being made? >> We kind of left it up to the creators. >> Mhm. And so we have an affiliate program that lets any creator make videos for us and then they just get a percentage of the revenue. And so we have some creators making a lot of money. >> How do you how do you manage the affiliate program? What tool do you use? >> We use tribe. >> Tribe. And then do you have like a community that you're running this in to communicate with them? Are you >> inry WhatsApp for that? >> WhatsApp. Just a WhatsApp group. Where were you spending most of your time? Like what area of the business? >> So it's shifted a lot. >> Yeah. But honestly recently and this has been really good for scaling it's been in talent like managing the team setting the vision hiring >> early on and when we last spoke >> pretty much everything all the growth was like carried on the backs of the founders we were doing everything and like our developers even we were just trying to arbitrage use geographical arbitrage to get like one 1k a month developers that live in India and like no wonder the quality of work wasn't that good. As soon as we started investing in real talent, that's when like the company just started growing on its own. I didn't even need to do or say anything and people are coming up with actually good ideas that like actually move the needle on the company. So bringing on certain people to the team has been crucial. And that's where in the last few months, most recently, I've spent most of my time is just finding these guys that will bring on new ideas that we haven't had before, experience from other companies. And that's all been super impactful. >> How big was the team when you sold? >> More than 30 people. It's it's about 30 people that are kind of running the app and marketing and design team. And then we have another team of virtual assistants. That's like another good amount of people. >> That's so 30 full-time basically. >> Yeah. The virtual assistants are full-time too, but they are um contractors. >> They are contractors. Yeah. >> Okay. >> But you got to 30. Did you get to the point where you were kind of removed from the business? >> I got to the point where I could step away. >> Mhm. >> And the business is going to keep growing itself. Like there are smart people in every area that I trust to make decisions dayto-day >> which is a really cool thing to have and a really special thing to have built. But I definitely honestly there was a period where right when I started college I kind of stepped away for a month and I noticed like morale was down. um the numbers started going down or like stagnating a little bit and then I came back and they started doing good again and I just realized the power of just having like someone that's setting the vision and constantly reminding people like what we're actually doing this for, what are the goals, bringing people together like that's super overlooked and actually extremely important. >> It's a later stage problem, but it's absolutely the most important part once you have some sort of product market fit and you're growing. Absolutely. If you were talking to another app founder and you had to tell them everything you've learned through paid ads like and very quickly like how would you recommend other app founders to approach running paid ads? I would say that if you have friends that are founders, you should talk to them about it. Maybe you should watch content like this podcast is a great resource. I would go back and watch that whole section we just discussed. Definitely gave away a lot of sauce on that. It's difficult to get started because it's a very comp complex tool and there aren't many guides and also the alpha of like okay the strategies you actually want to use are constantly changing. The algorithm on Facebook is constantly changing. 5 years ago lookalike audiences were the entire name of the game. Now it's all about creative and properly setting up the accounts from the start and looking at frequencies of everything like you were mentioning. And so you should learn I believe 80% like it's kind of the prito principle actually learn the 20% that accounts for 80%. And so talk to people look at content online. There's a lot of free content and you have to experiment too. So you're going to have to spend money like maybe $50 to $100 a day on just running ads to experiment and learn kind of how these structures work. But if you could learn the 20% that accounts for 80%, you know, enough to hire someone that actually knows all of his and can run it for you, run it for the whole company. So that's the route I would generally take is learning enough to make a good hire. >> Okay. Interesting. Yeah, I think that there it's really just like how you need a lot of creatives because they the way they play into each other. It's hard to like understand, but you have to do it like iteration >> and Andromeda is so good at serving these ads to people and they're finding combinations of like if I show them this ad first then this ad second, they buy. >> And so it's hard to like read that just from the numbers, but you know it's happening. >> Yeah. And >> you say Andromeda. >> Yeah. >> What's is that a company? >> That's the name of the newest update of the Facebook meta. I didn't know the algorithm. It's called the Andromeda update. Interesting. >> First you started with UGC and influencers in the fitness space. Then you brought it out to the big creators, female influencers, Mr. Beast, you name it. As big as you could get. Then you uh tried meta ads with an agency. They were just using those influencers videos that just putting them in the ad library wasn't very effective. You turn the ads inhouse went a little bit more direct response. So instead of less subtle, a little more about the app itself, and that's how you were able to scale as the pixel learned, you made more creatives, and that got you to 3 million a month. You also had an affiliate program. Well, that's what got us to 5.7 million a month. >> Okay. Even better. >> Yeah. >> So, that's all you needed to do really was just crack paid ads and then have an affiliate program. >> Yeah. The combination was definitely huge. But like paid ads alone wouldn't have gotten us there. Like having first of all the influencers like that definitely accounts for a few million every month. >> And that didn't stop. >> Yeah. That it didn't just die down. We're still doing that. But then on top of that, now we have paid ads that's doing really well and a few other channels that are smart that like altogether the mix is good and now we have renewals coming in since we're a year later. >> We have the fact that we were so big with influencers before running paid ads certainly helped us because we already had the awareness and now we're doing like kind of direct response targeting for our ads. So people that have seen us all over social media finally it's like okay time to buy. And so like all these factors played together and definitely helped. >> I say that all the time. The best way to get your ads to perform better is to invest more in organic brand awareness and more ads. Like you're building up like millions and millions of eyeballs and goodwill and that can just be more like brand awareness and like brand building and then paid ads where you liquidate, right? >> Yeah. Get the actual sale and you just go straight for like the kill shot with people who are warmed up. >> Yeah. >> So they play in together really well. But it's just incredible you guys were able to scale to 5.7 million a month with really just those two dynamics working. >> Yeah. >> So I'm assuming my fitness pal saw upside and opportunity. I guess I really want to know like how you because you kind when you sell a company I'm imagining did you have to like sell it like did you have to say hey these are opportunities where I think you guys can take it from here or was it just like a no-brainer combo since they were the biggest player in the space? >> It made a lot of sense to combine forces. >> Mhm. I'd say we we do have different core audiences. We also do have overlap and where the overlap is is where we were going head-tohead and competing and we have a shared goal. The shared goal is just help as many people as possible become healthier, lose weight or gain weight, whatever their fitness goal is. And so coming together was the best way to achieve that. >> Mhm. >> Everything made sense. >> That's really cool, bro. The fact that you've How long has it been from the day you started to selling it? So the day it would it's been about a year and a half since launch to sale which is really cool. >> A year and a half zero to 30 million in ARR. >> I mean yeah at this point I guess we're at like 50 million in ARR. >> Uh do you have upside and you said you sold 100%. Did you do you have upside in future growth? >> Not I I don't have any equity. >> I would like to get in the actual what you how you're seeing the world develop like you're choosing to sell now. I don't know how strategic or intentional that is with like the uncertainty in the world, but like do you still think that starting an app is like a good idea right now? >> Oh, 100%. It's the best time ever to build. It's becoming easier and easier even if you don't know how to code. I mean, if you asked me the first time we did the podcast, these Vibe coding platforms, which were starting to come out, >> were really bad. >> Now, they're actually great. Like Ror, I've been playing around a little bit with that. It's actually a great platform. There are a couple others, too. And so, it's so easy to just build put something up. My friend actually that I went to high school with, he built an app on Ror. It's called Wrestle AI or Fight AI. He released two and it's now doing $30,000 a month. And he's also just like a normal kid in college, just very very hardworking, didn't know how to code, learned how to market on TikTok organically, and now he's killing it. Like how do you feel like college kids should like do they think they should get a job or do you think that this is like actually like a really realistic path for a lot of college kids? >> Yeah, I think they have to decide if entrepreneurship is for them. I think the hardest part about it is there's so much uncertainty. >> Like so much of the time you just have no idea what you're doing. Even now, I'd say when I started when I was at zero, I had no idea. I was completely uncertain. Okay, how do I get from zero to one? How do I get from zero dollars a month to 10K a month? No idea how to do it. I was like just throwing at the wall. Nothing was sticking. Then I learned and now I could do that again. Like at this point where I am, sure, I learned how to build a company to the scale of Cali where now we're doing 50 million in ARR, but how do I build a company that's going to go from that to $100 million a year? And that's really where the uncertainty is now. And so there's always uncertainty you're dealing with. You just have to learn to live with that. And kind of the job unsec insecurity, all that. You just have to learn to deal with it. And so if you want what comes with it more than the pain of the uncertainty, it's worth it. Otherwise, maybe you should get a normal job. When you were in uncertain times or stuff wasn't working and you were like mentally probably like like I guess like going through like a hard you don't know what to do moment. Was there anything any practice or any sort of like mindset that you've adopted that's helped you getting through gotten through that and to like push through when you're going through a hard moment? I think the best thing has always been that I've had really good co-founders that are super aligned and like-minded. And so anytime that I'm feeling like uncertain about things and like they're always great to talk through whatever we're dealing with at the company and we usually always assess like okay what's the maximum downside of this or what's even the maximum upside and then we come to like okay so you know we're going to make the best decision with what we know but even if we up like we're in this together and like we'll just we'll figure out a way to make it out. I absolutely agree with having a business partner, especially if you're trying to build like a real company and not just like a cash flowing 10K a month business. >> Were you intentional with your co-founder choices? Like how did you guys like was everyone a different role? Like what were the roles that people played? >> Yes. So very complimentary which was great. One of my co-founders, Henry Langmack, he's the CTO and we met together at coding camp when we were 10 years old. So that was awesome. We like knew each other for a while. had built a lot of small projects together and Cali was really the one that took off. Blake Anderson, another co-founder, who was mostly, I'd say, a pretty hands-on advisor slash he put some money in with us in the beginning and he was super helpful for the go-to market strategies from his previous apps that he's built. He like advised us on how to really run influencer marketing was the biggest thing and really helped with the product design early on. And then Jake Castillo who's our CMOCO who ultimately helped put all the systems in place to scale like our influencer marketing strategies and everything super effectively keeping everything super organized. So all these skill sets super complimentary and together we were able to build this together. >> And you were CEO. >> Yeah. >> Beautiful. Interesting. So you had the CTO, COO and the person running the marketing operations. Then you were really the vision. >> Well, I would say so the marketing operation. So Blake was like not directly running them. He gave the strategy for >> the advice and then Jake. >> Yeah. And then yeah, it was mostly me and Jake and then eventually mostly Jake running influencers. >> Amazing. I think that's something that really a lot of people should understand like you have to you cannot just do it with a friend that has the same skill set as you. It's like if you're going to partners are extremely important. It's what broke me through my first million dollars was just bringing on a partner who actually knew how to operate and organize where I could just be ideas and marketing. I mean, that's very, very important. But if you work with your friend in college, it's fun to get off the ground, but you're going to have problems if you're just friends and you have the exact same skill set. >> Yeah. Like someone needs to be like a organized operator, someone needs to be a creative marketer, someone needs to be a technical builder at the end of the day. >> Yeah, that is a hard thing. And I've gone through that with a lot of people even now like I'm talking to people and you know we like have an idea that we both really like. Like maybe he comes up with it and he shares it or I come up with it. I share it and then the thought is like okay like I like this person and he thinks this idea is good too. Is it worth doing together? >> But then I realize like wow we have so many overlapping skill sets. I just don't even know what we would split up. And so I think if you have a friend like that and you're just trying to get started, the best thing is probably to >> work alongside each other. It's very good to be supporting each other and like building together, but it doesn't necessarily need to be on the same thing. >> So build your own apps just in the same room and like support each other with what you're learning. >> I would say that's a good idea. Or you could do it together, but you should define who's going to do what. Like maybe one person takes more of a lead on building it, the other takes more of a lead on marketing, but there could still be more overlap. But I think that having an area of decision- making and an area I like to call the areas of genius, the zones of genius are important because you need someone who's like the final decision maker on tech like what programming language are we going to write in? >> What do we what tech stacks should we use and someone that's making the final decision on okay, what channel should we spend our marketing money on? Otherwise, you could have a lot of back and forth which I think just slows things down and can really kill companies. >> Yeah. And so it's like really defining you're going to make decisions on marketing. I'm going to make decisions on technical stuff. We're going to talk about it and make sure everyone is aware of why we're making the decisions, but at the end of the day, if we disagree, this is we're going to go for my opinion. Jeff Bezos had a good line like I disagree, but I commit like like if you can get to that point. >> Yeah. >> That would be like that's a really good way to show mutual respect, but you need to define that very early partner that. >> Very cool. Okay. So, I guess I I do want to go into this with because it's so fascinating that you're like 18, 19 years old and you went to college. If a college kid wants to start an app, how do you think they should approach it? >> I think building in cloud code right now is the best way to create a high quality, like the highest quality. >> The vibe coding tools, if you have no experience, are still good enough to like make an app that's making tens of thousands a month, >> but they're not as good. So, ideally, you would go with the best thing, but if you don't want to or can't, then vibe coding is fine. You have to come up with an idea that you know that you'll be able to actually market it. I wouldn't really build anything that I had no idea from the jump like, okay, I could build this, but then what am I going to do with it after? That's kind of a strategy with everything that I worked on. I always knew from the start, as soon as I launched, what marketing strategies I would take. And I mean, you got to come up with a good idea. I've always found that solving a problem in my own life works pretty well. But you could also just talk to more people and there's there are just so many ways to come up with ideas. How do you know if something will work from marketing? Were you did you see other people doing a strategy that was in a different industry and you're like, "Oh, this idea that could like that format of content could work for this." Were you actually going out and creating content before building the app and seeing if it would get views? Like >> what Drake, what would your philosophy be on proving that you can get customers before you build an app? >> Definitely. Sometimes it is that I see a format working for another app or another product and I think like, okay, if that works for this, it could definitely work for me. I mean, at this point, I've definitely seen a lot. So I know I've built the intuition of okay this will probably convert well with performance ads this will probably convert well with influencers and there are some principles that distinguish the two. I think ultimately performance ads like running on Tik Tok Facebook will always take you the furthest. This is assuming it's a like subscription model or pay upfront. If it's something like a social media platform this advice would be completely different. like social apps, your growth strategies have to be like very unique for each one. But if you're running a model where you're just trying to make money from each user, then typically the performance ad platforms just because they have the most number of users on them will be able to take you the farthest. >> However, they may not be the most profitable. You may have a higher ROI on a different channel. And so nearly anything can work for performance ads, but you have to decide like is there something a different channel I should take maybe first. So maybe that's influencers, maybe that's UGC content. Like if you have no money at all to start it, I would just make videos yourself. Like that's the lowest cost way. And it's one of those things where one out of 10 videos maybe goes viral and that like makes you $1,000. I think if you're just starting out really truly like being self-aware of like, okay, I'm going to create this app that solves this problem and it's going to solve this problem for this person in this market. These people in this market hang out on this platform, so therefore I need to figure out how to make content for these people on this platform. Research the formats that work. If you're completely broke, make that yourself, >> right? >> Prove it. If you get some revenue, dump that into another UGC creator to give you more leverage. And then >> figure that out. Figure that out. Then ads will take you from a million to 5 million or from or 10k to 100k depending on the scale of your app, >> right? >> Was there any thought process of like the visual aspect of Cali >> of like making the ads easy to like understand quickly? >> 100%. >> On the app, I mean we put Cali the name on the top of every page. >> We actually have two versions. A version for regular people to use when they download it and then a version for creators. And the creator version says Cali big on every page. It makes it look like they have like a perfect streak of like using the app for like 30 days in a row or whatever it is. So we just make it look really pretty and optimized and like great for an ad. >> So basically you're saying is like you have an influencer, you know they're going to record their phone. Yeah. And so you made a second version of the app with huge Cal AI logo. So if someone were watching the ad, they'd be like, "What app is that?" C. >> Exactly. >> Wow. And then you even did like the streak. So like it >> looks like whoever is recording is like an active pack. >> Dude, that's so smart. I did not know that. It's like the McDonald's or Burger King ads where they have like the perfect looking hamburger, you know? Yeah. They like sprayed it and Yeah. And it's like really bright. It's not edible, but in the ad that's what they're doing. So it's very similar. >> That's advertising. >> Yeah, dude. That's smart. And so I guess this is a really weird question, but do you think that a kid that's like marketing focused or like a business student that's creative has more of an advantage or do you think that the developer that's technical using Cloud Code would have more of an advantage if it's just a one person head-to-head dude battle? 100% the creative person at this point because building an app is so easy. It's about having taste of like, okay, I could build this app, but how do I actually design it? So, it's a very simple and intuitive design. And then, how do I make it go viral? How do I get users? >> If you had a perfect app, but the worst marketing, you would get no downloads. If you had the worst app, but amazing marketing, you would still get downloads and you would make some money from those people even though it's probably like very small conversion rate. So, marketing beats just building. I would agree. I think that being able to see the opportunity and communicate the value and then the more you understand a market or a problem space, the better your solution will be where if you're just a developer that knows how to build these things, you're going to really struggle with >> understanding that customer's problem. So, I think the creators that have an audience have a huge advantage right now. Yeah. >> Is it going to make hyper niche tools that really solve their people's problems? Are you recommending other people to go to college right now? >> Because you have probably friends in high school still. You have a younger brother. >> Yeah. >> Honestly, it took me a little bit to realize this. Like I did go to college for the social life. If I didn't, it would have been more of like a leap of faith, but I've realized I actually there's so many entrepreneurs that are young like me that I've been hanging out with. Like I just came from Miami to New York and I've been hit up by like five people that they're all in New York and they want to do dinners and like I don't even have enough days. I'm here to see all of them. So like there are enough like-minded people where I wouldn't be completely on my own and isolated if I didn't build a friend group in college. So it's not necessary. It might take a little bit to build up that group if you don't go to college. But in terms of like educational value, it's good if you want to be maybe a doctor or a lawyer, but if you want to build software, be an entrepreneur, definitely not needed from a like education. >> Did you go to business school? I actually was initially enrolled in the business school and then I switched out of that >> to what? >> I switched to the arts and sciences school, but I'm undecided as my major. >> Did you go to business classes? >> I took one one business class. >> If you were talking to a college like president and you were in charge of like what the curriculum should be or how they could adjust to be more well suited to the modern way of life, how would you recommend colleges fix their curriculum to give people your age better experience? I would say there are a few things that I would immediately change. So, first of all, most college curriculums are just not applicable. Maybe they would have been 10 years ago, but the world moves so fast and the curriculum doesn't update as fast. So, you leave college and then you're you're out of date. So, I think always making sure like there should be a guy that's dedicated to just okay, what are the latest tools? Let's integrate that into the curriculum. like a CIO, a chief innovation officer of the college. >> And they should do this in high schools and middle schools too, I believe. >> And so like bringing claude code into the classroom and teaching people how to use it. I also think teaching people how to solve problems from first principles rather than memorization like memorization I think should be completely removed. I think it's useless. Why would you ever need to like memorization I don't think even is something you could really teach? Like maybe it's a skill a little bit, but in the real world, you don't need to memorize all these random facts. You could just have Google out or a notepad with facts. It's more important to learn how to use the information to actually solve different things. So there should be a greater emphasis on the solving rather than memorizing the solutions. >> And I would also say that AI should be just heavily heavily integrated in like everything pretty much. But that goes into the CIO part. >> Yeah. My philosophy I would say is like I was in college. I was starting a business. I was in business school because I wanted to start a business, but like I was just feeling like when are we actually going to do the thing? There's always just vocabulary, quizzes, equations, and I'm like, okay, this is I can see how this could be useful to know, but I was so frustrated of like, let me just start a business. >> So, I feel like if they just like encourage people to build an app in one class and then try to get customers, right? Or if there's like a mark like a content class where you have to make content as like your grade. >> Yeah. Yeah. That would be perfect. Yeah. >> Yeah. Like you should and actually I will say so I had kind of a special class in at Miami. So the entrepreneurship class I took there was a professor he only was teach taught for one semester unfortunately but he was amazing. He actually sold his company and he walked away with over $100 million from it in secondaries. He actually didn't sell but he sold secondaries $und00 million personally which is incredible. and he took the approach of okay everyone like >> we're going to actually come up with an idea here and we're going to create an MVP and then you guys are going to register your company legally and we're going to do a pitch at the end of the class. So he was taking that approach. >> Not I don't think any other teacher is really taking that because he was a successful entrepreneur. He like thinks the same way as us but unfortunately he's not teaching anywhere because the school system's just like >> He probably got ousted for that you know >> again either I just like they're too strict bro. >> Yeah. politically they like aren't they're so riskaverse that they don't want someone that's going to push the norm >> but that's directly hurting the kids. I do think they're in a position where they could genuinely help a lot of people if they just got past that. >> Yeah. Like I would love to teach for like you know >> I I want to be a teacher like >> that strict about who can teach so many rules. >> It's very interesting. But I do think that that is a great segue into you are probably the most credible person your age that's using the most modern tools that's actually in the field learning the best way to build apps, market them, position them, everything. you now sell it. You've done the end process. I think you're very qualified to be teaching people and colleges charge 15 to $20,000 a semester to learn information that's 10 years old. But I'm curious what your thoughts are on what happened when you decided to teach people how to build apps. >> Yeah. So, very briefly, we had the app mafia and that was like a fun time. So, me and a few of my friends who are also entrepreneurs right before I started college. So, in August, we all got this mansion in Miami together. We were filming content. It was so chaotic, dude. So chaotic. We were filming content all day. We were just spending crazy amounts of money on the dumbest things. And we did launch a course that taught people how to build apps for about 3 days until we made it completely free so that anyone can use it and and watch it. And it's still live right now. And people are always messaging us like, "Thank you for the content." But yeah, there was like a longer vision, but essentially what we were trying to do there was the idea kind of kept shifting and there was a lot of just misalignment with like everyone's lives were at a little bit of a different point. So pretty quickly just like that environment. It just became chaotic and so it eventually like broke off and we're all friends now but we did split up and stopped really making content on that. But it was interesting for time. We got a lot of controversy and hate. I was a very big fan of what you guys were doing. I think you guys did bring together like a really cool team like >> the Twitter guys, incredible success, really good at marketing as well, really good at app design as well, like UX onboarding. You guys very like pretty much pioneered the UGC space, you and Blake. And you guys have a very successful like scaling system. And then Hunter was very good at building like viral loops and organic PLG. And so you guys had like like your course is extremely valuable. like I watched almost all of it and I'm like this is like the most upto-date exactly what you need to do, what's working, what's not course I've ever seen. So I was so so impressed with that and very happy you did that cuz I think knowledge is the one thing in the world that's proven to help people's lives. Yeah. >> And so I think what you guys were doing was like a net positive thing into the world. But I definitely think that like chaotic energy probably internally of why are we doing this wasn't probably very clear. I always thought you guys were going to try to like educate kids and then invest in their companies to make it like a private equity play. >> Yeah, there were so many ideas. That was one of them. I mean, the whole goal was just helping people, empowering more people, helping them >> and educating. And we we did a lot of that. Like so many people have said that the course specifically has allowed them to reach a 10K a month business, which is beautiful. And the fact that we're just letting them have it completely for free is great. >> And so really happy about that. Super net positive. But we did. So we had a community 2 attached to it which we charged for. >> We made a few hundred thousand dollars from that and then we spent it in like a month which was just wild. Like we did a lot of stuff with content that we had to throw out. We went to some clubs, a bunch of just random payments. I mean the house was expensive. We had a private chef. A lot that was going on and so it wasn't super sustainable. I understand why you charge for the course to fund like the thought process. You charge for the course to fund media to grow your personal brands and get more people to know who you are so you can help more people. >> Yeah. >> And so you have you can't just make content for free. Like it costs money to have a videographer and editor. You're also running these businesses. Like it's a separate entity and you need cash flow to be able to sustain that. >> I'm imagining you guys just are also running businesses. So you kind of spread yourself a little thin. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. None of us could really like go fulltime and commit to it, which is what it would have required if we wanted to turn into like a big thing. It also would have been like a long time horizon to do so. >> Yeah. I just I don't think that people should look at it as like some cash grab like you guys already had money. It's just trying to make a sustainable ecosystem on its own on the side that was rooted in trying to help people. >> Yeah. And we had a bigger vision which was to basically build a platform that was kind of like Shopify for apps. >> I'd suppose that was like the north star >> of the company at the time. And it shifted a lot. like it shifted from okay we just want to educate to this to this to this to getting there and so like by that point it was the fact we all were running our companies on the side so we couldn't put the necessary time and resources that it would have taken to get there we probably would have wanted to raise money build out a really good team get some like San Francisco engineers in there and so it wasn't like the best setup >> would you have done anything differently >> not really like the grand scheme of things probably not maybe some like minor things but nothing that really like comes to mind I think you know it's good to I had so many learnings from the experience which are great. >> I mean you guys are super young so I you guys you try something. I think that's what most people should take from that like you should be trying stuff. If it doesn't work out like totally own it and you guys owned it so I think that it was a fun moment on the timeline at the end of the day. >> Yeah. No. Yeah. I I think that the only thing that maybe if we redid it I would have approached differently is like we purposefully wanted to be super controversial. So, we painted ourselves as like these just internet money gurus. >> Mhm. >> And that was controversial and like it worked. It took over the timeline. But I also think for what we were trying to go for was probably unnecessary to be honest. Like Twitter wasn't We didn't need like the Twitter people stirring up the pot. >> Uhhuh. Cuz a lot of them already kind of knew who you guys were and knew you were legit and if they just knew there was a thing I bet they would have bought. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So I think uh if I can give you some constructive criticism here in the education space, lead with value first. >> Oh yeah. >> Like for at least a month or two and then do the controversial stuff to get awareness out. I think we went straight into the controversy and it was just like people were very confused. >> But overall, dude, I don't think you did anything wrong. I think you actually helped a lot of people. I think building a course is amazing. 90% of people would never share anything that they are doing. It's like you will get fired. like someone that was working at X went on a podcast >> and then he was gone the next day clipped >> like so it's like I don't think people understand how cutthroat and intense it is and you guys just made an entire video course showing your app every thought process and everything and so I do just really want to re like that is a very amazing thing to do for the world and very helpful and now it's free for everybody if they >> yeah I mean honestly the big thought process was like I just when I was a kid I've always dreamed of doing this but I had no idea how no idea how to start I was just had the uncertainty that I was saying earlier. And so like this, we really built it for our younger selves to like help them get along faster. >> And it's like it probably took you months to shoot that. It was like 60 plus videos, you know, like >> we were supposed to do it in months. We kept procrastinating and we like had to record it. We like crammed it into like a couple of days. >> Yeah. It's not No. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the actual shooting absolutely. That's funny. Okay. So I These are all like This is all very interesting to me. Like you have probably been the most entertaining person to watch in this make money online world because you're such like a unique character. Like you're running up an app. You had a Lamborghini driving it to high school. Was that cool? >> It is. It is cool. Apparently I've heard from people that I'm like apparently known for just driving in circles around the parking lot, which is not true. It's just hard to find parking spaces. But I guess the cars fixed out >> just with the top down just so people see you. Yeah. Yeah. How was college? >> It's Miami. Of course I have another top down. >> That's probably just fitting right in there. Yeah. How was college with that? Like that's to me I'm just genuinely interested. Like what's it like to have a Lamborghini in college? >> Dude, honestly so interesting. >> Mhm. >> Like in first semester we threw so many crazy parties and this was like part of what we did with ATM and part of where all the money went. >> We threw these crazy house parties and like all of the freshmen would come. It was so much fun. Such great memories. And I feel like I got all of the partying I needed for like all my years of college just like in that short period. So like that's why I'm kind of like not worried about dropping out cuz I just had such a short such a fun time just packed into a really short duration which was great. I think you did it right, dude. Like you got it in, you went there. You met the right people. You had the experience. You maxed it out. You speed ran it basically. >> And then you probably burnt yourself out of that and you're like, "All right, back to the mission." >> Yeah. >> And now look at you. You sold Cali. Do you have any plans for what's to come in the future? >> I have a lot of ideas. Nothing that I'm like actively ready to talk about. >> Okay. I I do think that this is a good time for you probably like reset. Think about it because I'm sure you're trying to go for a big one after this. Yeah. >> Yeah. The next one would probably be shooting for a billion. >> I think that's very possible, dude. If I can invest in you, I would invest in you as a person. Just whatever venture you have would. >> Thank you. >> I wonder if that'll ever be a thing. Yeah. I mean there was like you know believe for a second was that >> Yeah. I think that was more like influencer like >> it turned into that. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting though. Is there anything else that you think that we should go into? I I think we everything I've observed these are all the things all the questions I've had cuz I've been paying attention to what you've been doing. I respect you a lot. I think you're an amazing and talented person and you do good in the world. So anything else you think that we should cover? Is anything about the Cali journey I didn't ask about that you think would be interesting? >> I mean nothing immediately that comes to mind to be honest. I'll ask like if I have like a few more random questions that aren't related just to see if this is something that you think about. Okay. Do have you done any sort of like this is going to sound woo woo but like spirituality visualization manifestation like do you have any sort of belief system there? Because it's not common for an 18-year-old to find success so quickly. And so I'm imagining that you've had some sort of like default belief system instilled in you to make you believe you can do this to go through uncertainty and actually set a goal and make it real. It's a very good question. Very interesting. So, I know a lot of people like these gurus online, these millionaires, a lot of them talk about like meditation and journaling. >> And what's actually funny and interesting is I did that. >> Mhm. >> A few months before starting Cali, I was journaling. I was journaling every night. I was trying to meditate. Never really got into a group, but I was like actively like meditating like maybe weekly. And then I stopped all of that. And then a couple months later, I started Cali, not doing any of that. and it was really successful. So like I don't think that that kind of like morning routine type stuff ever really had an impact. I would say though there are a couple of things that like mods I kept repeating over and over in my head throughout the journey that 100% took it way faster than it should have been versus speed for everything. Every thing we did speed was the key. Speed Speed was key. every employee I would always tell them like on the first call with them like speed is our number one motto here. It's our number one core value. We need everything to move extremely quickly. You should never be the bottleneck for anything. If you are that's going to be an issue. I would always be super clear about that. And if I'm on a call with someone and they're like, "Yeah, we're just waiting on we're waiting on this guy to we're waiting on Frank. Frank, there's no one at the company named Frank, but we're waiting on Frank to do this before we could move forward." I'm like, "Okay, why are we waiting? Let's get Frank in the call right now. get him in. Frank, why isn't this done? He's like, Frank, do it right now. He doesn't on the call. And then we launch it. So, like constantly just identifying like what are the bottlenecks? Why are things not moving as fast as possible? How can we move things faster? And immediately addressing them, not waiting. That was the biggest one. I think that's the most crucial thing to get us there. And then self-belief. Extremely important for sure. I think this one is something you kind of have to like find your why deep down. I've always, maybe it's like the small wins from my childhood, but pretty much anything I've set my mind to, I've always accomplished. So like there was a hackathon I did when I was like 12 years old and I was like the youngest one there with one of my friends from school as well from elementary school and we won the hackathon against like high schoolers and older and that was like sick for us. And I guess those small wins made me just have this immense self-belief from a young age that I really could do anything. And so that's stuck with me. I think you have to dig deep to find that. But I think like even if you don't have proof, you should you should just prove to yourself like kind of the motto or a belief that I've had is I can always execute. So if someone gives me a road map, if I don't have a road map, that's one thing. But if someone shows me like, okay, this is how something's done, I believe I could always take that and always execute it. like it may take time but eventually I'll get it flawlessly like everyone says Cali it's a great design that wasn't an accident like I just until it was the qu the standard of excellence that I demanded of myself and of our team I wouldn't stop iterating on it more more and more we have to make it better better better and so extremely high standards super super important I have so many thoughts there I would just say the self-belief thing so unbelievably true I've interview a lot of kids like young your age that have success been successful and that is the one consistency like there's just like they 100% believed that what they were going to do was going to work and they just did it. Is there any advice you'd have to someone who doesn't have that like cuz I had it too when I was very young like I delusional I'm going to be a millionaire like I just like felt it to my belief that was me and I sounded like an arrogant kid in high school >> but I'm always curious like how do you people that might not have that how would you recommend they what practice could they instill it? I mean, Tony Robbins, I believe, says something along the lines of words become thoughts, thoughts become beliefs. >> And so, I think just changing how you speak. There was actually one time, I remember this very distinctly. I was in the car with my mom. I was super young, maybe like nine. And I was just talking to her, like saying whatever a nine-year-old would say. And then I said like, "Mom, if I'm rich, can I do this?" I was like, "Actually, mom, when I'm rich, I'm going to do this." And so like I always like would instill like through my language like I'm going to make it. >> It was never a question. And like even in my head I was like like but what if I don't like I of course had doubts but like I would kind of always try to like push those thoughts to the side. I'm no I'm doing it. I'm doing it. >> So you have you have a statement in present tense like I am I'm a millionaire or when I'm a millionaire like it's like 100% the way >> like it's going down like definite for the future. And even if you might not believe that and feel that right away, you're actively using those words. So then it's instilled in you. So your subconscious now feels that way. >> That's my exact screen saver. What you think you become, what you feel, you attract, what you imagine you create. >> Amazing. >> So I 100% think that's like the single most important thing to understand is speaking as if something's already happening or a guarantee that it will happen. >> Yeah. >> Very interesting to hear you align with that. Then you also you have a personal brand on YouTube. Why do you make content on YouTube? >> Yeah, dude. My YouTube is interesting. I mean, I don't really edit my videos at all, most of them. I've tried some where I edit like vlogs, but to be honest, I like the raw format better where I kind of just rant for like 10, 20 minutes in front of the camera. I just want to document my journey, my thoughts kind of on a more day-to-day basis of like what's it realistically like in the eyes of a founder on the day-to-day for people that are trying to get to a place I am to learn from to kind of see my thought process and I teach a lot of that I give a lot of value on them but I also just show like the realness of the uncertainty of building a company and show them like you're not in this alone like even at these big numbers like it still feels like the ship is sinking every day And that's just part of the game. And it it also will be super cool to look back on in like a few decades after I have other companies and stories and successes under my belt that I'll be able to show the whole comeup journey and prove like anyone could do this. I'm not some genius. Like anyone can do this. >> Yeah. I love how you just sit down and talk and then like 10 minutes in you're like, "Yeah, I don't really know what else I'm going to think about or what I'm going to talk about. I'm not going to cut." There's like a 20 second pause and then you're like, "Oh, oh, there you go." Yeah, >> but it does like honestly it's probably really refreshing nowadays and like this overedited stuff feels manufactured and makes it harder to trust. >> So, it's just cool to see like you're streamlining your consciousness >> into YouTube and it will be cool to watch when you uh when you grow up. Um it's so funny to say when you grow up. >> All right. Well, this was fascinating. I do really appreciate you coming on. We're shooting this literally the day before you announced this and so we'll have this out tomorrow, >> dude. Tomorrow I'm actually like I don't know how it's going to go. The goal is that we're gonna take over Twitter. We also have like a bunch of just normal like magazines and articles are going to come out on it like some the day of some like a week later throughout the week. So, it's going to be it's going to be interesting. But yeah, it's like the perfect time with all the attention on me to like do something. So, I've been thinking about if there's like something special to do. >> All right, guys. If you are an app founder, you're wanting to start a business and you want to learn from someone who knows what they're doing, undoubtedly go follow Zach. Where can they find you? You can find me on X. You could look up Zack_Yatagari on X. Or you can go on my YouTube also. My name Zach Yadagari. All right, brother. Well, thanks again. Huge congratulations. I think this is like pretty iconic. So excited to see where you go in the future, bro. >> Thank you, man. Firero.