Full Transcript for Created By Humans: Trip Adler & His Dad

00:04:02.719 --> 00:04:16.399 But uh he was bit by the bug, and so between his uh junior and senior year, he uh went to work in New York City for Bank of America as an intern, and he hated it. 00:04:16.399 --> 00:04:18.959 It's one of the happiest things I've ever heard in my life. 00:04:18.959 --> 00:04:20.720 But then I said, What the hell are you gonna do? 00:04:20.720 --> 00:04:22.480 You're otherwise you're unemployable. 00:04:22.480 --> 00:04:26.079 And finally got bit by the entrepreneur bug. 00:04:26.399 --> 00:04:26.959 Yeah. 00:04:26.959 --> 00:04:34.480 So I was at Harvard and I saw a sign on the wall for the Harvard Entrepreneurial Contest, and I just had this idea. 00:04:34.480 --> 00:04:35.920 It was kind of like Uber. 00:04:35.920 --> 00:04:40.319 And I submitted the idea to the contest and ended up being a finalist, and that kind of just got me going. 00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:45.839 Was it a goal of yours back then to start a company, or was it literally just that was the moment when you saw the sign? 00:04:46.160 --> 00:04:47.839 No, I think it was percolating for a while. 00:04:47.839 --> 00:04:52.480 I mean, I was at Harvard in the same class as Mark Zuckerberg, and he launched Facebook in our class. 00:04:52.480 --> 00:04:53.839 So I watched his journey. 00:04:53.839 --> 00:04:57.920 I mean, to give you a sense, like my freshman roommate was Facebook user number four. 00:04:57.920 --> 00:05:00.399 He was like in the first group that got emailed about Facebook. 00:05:00.399 --> 00:05:02.720 So I watched, you know, Zuck building Facebook. 00:05:02.720 --> 00:05:06.959 And then, you know, maybe this sign for the Harvard Art Building contest was just sort of like the next signal. 00:05:06.959 --> 00:05:09.839 So I think it was like a lot of things kind of building on top of each other. 00:05:09.839 --> 00:05:11.199 And how'd you meet your co-founder? 00:05:11.199 --> 00:05:14.639 Yeah, so I had this idea, and then I was like, you know, I needed a co-founder. 00:05:14.639 --> 00:05:21.600 So I emailed the entire Harvard computer science list and just said, I have an idea for a company that's going to be bigger than Google, who wants to work together? 00:05:21.600 --> 00:05:24.639 And um, I actually got a ton of responses. 00:05:24.639 --> 00:05:26.399 I got like like 20 responses. 00:05:26.399 --> 00:05:31.839 But one of them, the person did just respond, but he responded with like a 20-page analysis of the idea. 00:05:31.839 --> 00:05:36.879 And that person was Jared Friedman, who became my co-founder, who's now uh partner at Y Combinator. 00:05:36.879 --> 00:05:39.040 And then we just started talking startups. 00:05:39.040 --> 00:05:45.839 And uh yeah, I remember we would meet up in like the Harvard dining halls like once or twice a week and just talk startups, and we just kind of got going working together. 00:05:46.160 --> 00:05:51.439 Did you get any responses that email, like kind of stop spamming me or any kind of interesting

responses? 00:05:52.399 --> 00:05:55.040 I remember there's a lot of interest. 00:05:55.040 --> 00:06:02.560 Like, yeah, I remember it being a very positive response, but Jared was the only one who like really sort of like took the ideas further and challenged the ideas. 00:06:02.560 --> 00:06:05.199 So we just started kind of like getting along on that level. 00:06:05.439 --> 00:06:08.399 Was this after Facebook had really started taking off? 00:06:08.399 --> 00:06:10.399 And so a lot of people started getting interest. 00:06:10.639 --> 00:06:16.240 It might have been related to Facebook because that had a lot of like buzz at Harvard at the time, especially in the whole computer science department. 00:06:16.240 --> 00:06:21.519 But yeah, so Mark launched that when we were sophomores, and then I sent that email out when I was a senior. 00:06:21.519 --> 00:06:22.800 So a couple of years later. 00:06:23.120 --> 00:06:29.040 And so you first had this idea that was kind of an Uber idea, and I know you went through a few different ideas, but tell me the story of the scribed idea. 00:06:29.279 --> 00:06:36.560 Yeah, so I met Jared, and then what Jared said to me was that, you know, he wanted to start a company, but he was only gonna do it if we applied to Y Combinator. 00:06:36.560 --> 00:06:40.160 And I was like, oh, well, I I looked it up and it described it as like a program. 00:06:40.160 --> 00:06:42.800 I was like, I was like, Jared, I don't want to start a company in a program. 00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:44.079 Like I just want to start a company. 00:06:44.079 --> 00:06:46.639 But he said he would only work with me if it did Y Combinator. 00:06:46.639 --> 00:06:49.199 So I was like, okay, fine, we'll apply to Y Combinator. 00:06:49.199 --> 00:06:53.519 So we applied in uh, let's see, that was spring of 2006. 00:06:53.519 --> 00:06:55.680 So this was the second year of Y Combinator. 00:06:55.680 --> 00:06:57.839 And we got invited out to interview with Paul Graham. 00:06:57.839 --> 00:06:59.839 And yeah, we we applied with our idea. 00:06:59.839 --> 00:07:03.040 It was kind of like this like, at this point, like a transportation super app. 00:07:03.040 --> 00:07:09.759 It was gonna be like a little bit of Uber and a little bit of like, you know, Google Maps for transportation, kind of all combined together. 00:07:09.759 --> 00:07:14.639 And we pitched the idea to Paul Graham, and then Paul's just like, yeah, that's a that's a really bad idea. 00:07:14.639 --> 00:07:16.000 Do you guys have any other ideas? 00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:21.759 And there's another idea that I came up with like a week before, which is basically to do like a Craigslist type of model, but for colleges. 00:07:21.759 --> 00:07:25.439 So we pitched that to PG, and PG's just said, that's an amazing idea. 00:07:25.439 --> 00:07:26.399 I'll fund that idea. 00:07:26.399 --> 00:07:27.839 So we basically just pivoted right then. 00:07:27.839 --> 00:07:32.079 We we called it Who List for Harvard University List, and we launched it at Harvard. 00:07:32.079 --> 00:07:34.399 We had like some moderate success, but nothing really. 00:07:34.399 --> 00:07:38.720 And then from there we just started pivoting and we just started trying like one idea after another. 00:07:38.720 --> 00:07:41.839 Probably spent like a year in just kind of like rapid pivot mode. 00:07:41.839 --> 00:07:44.959 Um, and then eventually landed on scribed, and then it kind of went from there. 00:07:45.279 --> 00:07:56.720 Trip and I had a series of discussions when he was at Harvard, and he kind of wanted to do a startup of some sort, and I don't think he really knew what it was going to be about. 00:07:56.720 --> 00:08:01.199 And while we were driving back and forth, we liked to surf on the coast. 00:08:01.199 --> 00:08:11.600 Uh we had a discussion about solving my own problem, which was to make medical communication more seamless and effortless. 00:08:11.600 --> 00:08:18.959 And he took another pivot to the idea that they would now allow people to share documents anywhere. 00:08:18.959 --> 00:08:23.439 And that became the heartbeat of Scrib then for a long time. 00:08:23.759 --> 00:08:23.920 Yeah. 00:08:23.920 --> 00:08:27.120 So the original tagline was put your docs online. 00:08:27.120 --> 00:08:32.480 Um, we would just allow anyone to take a PDF, a Word doc, a PowerPoint, upload it to the web. 00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:36.639 We would embed it in a web page using Flash, and then you know, we would get an audience for that. 00:08:36.639 --> 00:08:43.759 So people would land on it through SEO, or you know, we had a home page, people could like vote the top documents up and down, kind of like Reddit style. 00:08:43.759 --> 00:08:45.279 But yeah, that was the initial idea. 00:08:45.279 --> 00:08:48.320 Just take a document, upload it to the web, and let the world see it. 00:08:48.320 --> 00:08:51.759 You know, at the time like uh YouTube had launched, you know, shortly before then. 00:08:51.759 --> 00:08:54.000 I mean, it was launched and acquired by Google shortly before then. 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:59.840 That was we described it often as like YouTube for documents, just a way to like you know share your documents with the world. 00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:03.679 Um, so it had some like YouTube light growth dynamics, which I think helped it get started. 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:06.159 Scribed in his early days was in my living room. 00:09:06.159 --> 00:09:15.120 Trip and his buddies, you know, they would poach off our Wi-Fi, and there was never any coke in the refrigerator because they were drinking it like nonstop. 00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:19.440 And big challenge was supplying the troops with enough chips or whatever they were eating. 00:09:19.440 --> 00:09:20.960 They were where were they living? 00:09:20.960 --> 00:09:21.600 I don't even know. 00:09:21.600 --> 00:09:23.600 Like a trip was living at home at that time. 00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:24.879 Where was Jared?

00:09:24.879 --> 00:09:26.320 I don't know where they were living. 00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:30.960 It was uh quintessential, you know, young kids startup. 00:09:31.200 --> 00:09:33.440 And we had uh a really momentous launch. 00:09:33.440 --> 00:09:34.799 We got like a lot of traction. 00:09:34.799 --> 00:09:43.440 I mean, at the time, you know, like we had a probably one of the first good stories of like an app launching and just getting a lot of traction on day one because we just got a huge number of traffic coming in. 00:09:43.440 --> 00:09:51.919 And then that really quickly started a viral loop where like the traffic would come in, some of that would upload their own content, those uploaders would then bring in more traffic, and we got this viral loop going. 00:09:51.919 --> 00:09:56.080 So it was like pretty clear just from like this momentous start that we were on to something. 00:09:56.399 --> 00:10:00.399 So I remember that super clearly because we were in YC, the batch after you. 00:10:00.399 --> 00:10:07.519 We had just moved to the Y scraper, and I remember everyone's talking about you guys, about your crazy viral loop, about growth just absolutely taking off. 00:10:07.519 --> 00:10:12.639 And I remember going up to your apartment and you're, you know, I think you're showing me some graphs of like things that were really working. 00:10:12.639 --> 00:10:16.639 Tell me a little bit about kind of how it felt to have really hit this viral loop. 00:10:16.960 --> 00:10:19.120 Yeah, it was really like a life-changing moment, right? 00:10:19.120 --> 00:10:23.039 Because we went from having no investors want to talk to us. 00:10:23.039 --> 00:10:30.399 I mean, I remember we we got introduced to a bunch of the top VCs, like you know, Sequoia and all those guys, and no one would even like take a meeting with us, right? 00:10:30.399 --> 00:10:34.320 They're just like, oh, this this idea is not a very just not an interesting idea. 00:10:34.320 --> 00:10:42.080 And now all of a sudden, like, you know, I had my phone number on the website, and my phone was just like ringing every hour with like an investor trying to invest in the company. 00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:48.080 So it was a very like just big shift to go from like nobody caring about what you're doing to everyone caring about what you're doing. 00:10:48.080 --> 00:10:53.360 Um, and since we were young, I was only like, I don't know, 21 or 20 or 22 or something. 00:10:53.360 --> 00:10:54.080 I was pretty young. 00:10:54.080 --> 00:10:55.440 Like that's just a big change. 00:10:55.440 --> 00:10:56.960 So yeah, it was a big shift. 00:10:56.960 --> 00:11:02.000 And then from there, we were like raising millions of dollars, hiring a team and all that kind of stuff. 00:11:02.399 --> 00:11:07.919 Do you ever remember the first moment when you looked at the graphs and you just kind of knew that things were working, kind of like that holy shit moment? 00:11:07.919 --> 00:11:12.159 Was it right after launch, or or when was that moment that you could really see everything was working? 00:11:12.480 --> 00:11:23.120 Well, I think there was like there was a little bit of a moment before launch because like we noticed that we had like worked really hard to get a few like hundred documents on the site before we launched. 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:28.480 And we noticed that the average document was getting one visitor per day from Google. 00:11:28.480 --> 00:11:31.919 And we're just like, well, if we're already getting a hundred visitors a day, we haven't launched yet. 00:11:31.919 --> 00:11:34.960 What if we had like a million documents or a hundred million documents? 00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:39.919 Then when we launched, we just had so much traffic and attention that it just was pretty obvious it was working. 00:11:40.320 --> 00:11:42.799 Just looked like the entrepreneurial dream come true. 00:11:42.799 --> 00:11:50.080 You know, after about half a year, he was moving to an office in San Francisco, and these offices had all the kind of cool, funky things. 00:11:50.080 --> 00:12:03.440 You know, they were, you know, racing go-karts around the office building heads, zip lines and the crazy zety stuff that was going on among young 20-year-old startups in San Francisco at the time. 00:12:03.440 --> 00:12:11.440 And I just thought it looked like great fun, you know, and he was hitting it out of the park and having great fun while doing it, surrounded by good people. 00:12:11.440 --> 00:12:16.960 So I I was, if anything, jealous of uh trip's uh success. 00:12:16.960 --> 00:12:23.200 Not that I didn't I wish them all the great success in the world, but I just never had anything like that. 00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:35.919 Interestingly, eventually uh Hens came home the roost because uh those early years which were magical and a lot of fun eventually led to some difficult times after. 00:12:35.919 --> 00:12:39.200 So I I guess you always got to pay the piper in the end. 00:12:39.200 --> 00:12:48.480 No matter what your startup everyone in startup life is gonna face some hard times, even if it seems magical for part of your journey. 00:12:49.360 --> 00:12:52.720 I mean, eventually, you know, that first trick kind of stopped working. 00:12:52.720 --> 00:12:55.039 We had to reinvent the company multiple times. 00:12:55.600 --> 00:13:00.080 I remember when we were kind of struggling at Weebly and I wanted to get your advice. 00:13:00.080 --> 00:13:03.039 So we went to lunch and you're like, tell me what's going on, man. 00:13:03.039 --> 00:13:04.480 Seems like you know, things aren't going that well. 00:13:04.480 --> 00:13:09.360 And I broke it down for you, and you know, we were struggling with less gross than we were hoping for. 00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:12.799 And you told me, Well, dude, things aren't that bad. 00:13:12.799 --> 00:13:15.360 Like, let me tell you the story about this moment we went through. 00:13:15.360 --> 00:13:16.799 So I'd love to kind of break

into that. 00:13:16.799 --> 00:13:20.240 I remember you told me at one point revenue had kind of slowed. 00:13:20.240 --> 00:13:21.440 Kind of tell us that story. 00:13:21.440 --> 00:13:23.840 Tell the bad parts, the tough parts. 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:24.639 Yeah. 00:13:24.639 --> 00:13:26.960 We'll be right back. 00:13:31.759 --> 00:14:09.200 And now, back to the episode. 00:14:09.200 --> 00:14:15.519 You know, there's part in the middle where everyone kind of struggles a lot of times. 00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:16.399 Yeah. 00:14:16.399 --> 00:14:19.919 I think probably like the toughest moment for me. 00:14:19.919 --> 00:14:26.080 Um, so the first few years we had kind of really good, just sort of like organic growth, we had no trouble raising money and all that. 00:14:26.080 --> 00:14:29.039 We were in the press a lot, we had like a lot of attention what we're doing. 00:14:29.039 --> 00:14:36.080 And I think I was so much in that mode of launching new products that I thought like the answer to get to next level just was to launch something new. 00:14:36.080 --> 00:14:41.200 So we launched like a pretty new product under a new brand called Float. 00:14:41.200 --> 00:14:44.799 It was meant to be sort of like, you know, connected to Scrib, a little different. 00:14:44.799 --> 00:14:47.039 We put like way too much resources on it. 00:14:47.039 --> 00:14:48.480 We executed poorly. 00:14:48.480 --> 00:14:50.480 The product like totally flopped. 00:14:50.480 --> 00:14:53.679 That, you know, led to just like a morale crisis in the company. 00:14:53.679 --> 00:14:58.000 I remember like half a team quitting in like a pretty short period of time. 00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:05.120 It was like six months, like half the team turned over, which is you know very heartbreaking to see that many people that's crazy, quit your company a short period of time. 00:15:05.120 --> 00:15:08.000 So I think that was really tough, tough time. 00:15:08.240 --> 00:15:13.519 And so kind of you had this product launch that didn't go so well, you know, like half the company turned over. 00:15:13.519 --> 00:15:15.679 I mean, what what was that experience like? 00:15:15.679 --> 00:15:20.720 I, you know, I know for you know, as a CEO, a lot of times you feel like the whole company rests on your shoulders. 00:15:21.039 --> 00:15:21.200 Yeah. 00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:24.399 Well, I remember having this moment when everything was going really badly. 00:15:24.399 --> 00:15:27.360 And I was like, I was like looking around, I was like, well, this is a disaster. 00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:28.639 Like, who's gonna fix this? 00:15:28.639 --> 00:15:29.360 Who's in charge here? 00:15:29.360 --> 00:15:31.600 And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm I'm in charge. 00:15:31.600 --> 00:15:32.879 I need to fix this. 00:15:32.879 --> 00:15:37.759 And I think that was like a moment where I like I really kind of like toughened up and was like, okay, I gotta figure this out. 00:15:38.159 --> 00:15:42.399 Being a CEO is

not a fun, cushy job. 00:15:42.399 --> 00:15:47.840 It's you know, especially when you don't have anybody to kind of shoulder the cry on. 00:15:47.840 --> 00:15:52.320 I don't think Trip shared all the tough times with me. 00:15:52.320 --> 00:15:56.639 I think we tend to, me too, I protect my my own parents. 00:15:56.639 --> 00:16:02.240 And we all know that if you're gonna do a startup, there's gonna be a lot of tough times, a lot of suffering. 00:16:02.240 --> 00:16:05.759 But Trip and I, we did kind of consult each other a lot. 00:16:05.759 --> 00:16:10.720 He consulted with me a lot as I tried to counsel him through a difficult situation. 00:16:10.720 --> 00:16:15.679 Uh so Trip and I, we did talk about the challenges he was facing. 00:16:15.679 --> 00:16:18.480 And I hope I gave him some good advice along the way. 00:16:18.480 --> 00:16:21.519 If anything, you just need a shoulder to cry on sometime. 00:16:21.519 --> 00:16:23.759 And so I served that function a little bit. 00:16:23.759 --> 00:16:29.120 It is true, I think the higher you go, there's fewer shoulders available to you to cry on. 00:16:29.120 --> 00:16:32.159 And so at that point, he got he had his father. 00:16:32.639 --> 00:16:35.360 I mean, a lot of people go through that kind of thing and give up. 00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:37.440 And certainly it's intensely stressful. 00:16:37.440 --> 00:16:39.200 What do you think kind of got you through that? 00:16:39.200 --> 00:16:43.360 Uh, you know, that perspective of like, I'm gonna fix it versus, you know, I want to give up. 00:16:43.919 --> 00:16:46.000 I I don't I I I don't know. 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:48.240 I just think I'm I'm just kind of wired that way. 00:16:48.240 --> 00:16:50.879 I just don't really give up on really kind of anything. 00:16:50.879 --> 00:16:54.159 Um, I think I've been wired that way for like, you know, most of my life. 00:16:54.159 --> 00:17:00.080 Just I'm kind of wired to keep sticking with things and just really determined to stick things out and see them succeed. 00:17:00.080 --> 00:17:04.480 But I think the way we responded to that was we we just sort of like got back to the core business. 00:17:04.480 --> 00:17:07.920 We just started like focusing on the business model on profitability. 00:17:07.920 --> 00:17:11.680 And then we realized the subscription model was really like the best thing working for us. 00:17:11.680 --> 00:17:16.960 So that's when we started talking to book publishers and we pioneered the subscription model for books. 00:17:16.960 --> 00:17:22.319 And then we made it so you can for $99 a month, you can get unlimited books with your script membership. 00:17:22.319 --> 00:17:29.839 Um, and I think that was kind of like maybe the second major moment when the company was reinvented, which kind of took revenue and and profitability and took it as a business up to the next level. 00:17:29.839 --> 00:17:35.200 And subscriptions just sort of like took off very easily and um it just sort of grew organically over time. 00:17:35.519 --> 00:17:39.200 I remember talking to you around then too, and your growth was rapidly accelerating, you're growing the team. 00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:41.920 I mean, you know, I'd love to hear a little bit more about what that was like. 00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:45.839 Yeah, so I think like, you know, we got to a point, yeah, maybe around like 2015 or so. 00:17:45.839 --> 00:17:52.720 I think things were going pretty well in that we had, you know, we had this whole like organic growth funnel built out with the document side of the business. 00:17:52.720 --> 00:17:56.799 We had the subscription side built out with like having all these book deals. 00:17:56.799 --> 00:17:59.359 We kind of connected these two things together really well. 00:17:59.359 --> 00:18:08.799 So, you know, I think growth those years was probably growing like 50% per year or so, which is pretty good because we're at you know pretty big scale at that point, probably like pushing up 100 million of revenue. 00:18:08.799 --> 00:18:10.400 We tend to operate around break-even. 00:18:10.400 --> 00:18:17.839 We maybe we're like little profitable, maybe some years a little less profitable, but just do it around around breakeven is a good way to think about it. 00:18:17.839 --> 00:18:20.640 And yeah, we just kind of kept building the business at that point. 00:18:20.640 --> 00:18:22.480 It was probably like some of the easier years. 00:18:22.480 --> 00:18:27.839 We kept adding new books, we kept adding new content types, like launching things like audiobooks. 00:18:27.839 --> 00:18:31.839 Um, we started going directly to authors and building out an original content business. 00:18:31.839 --> 00:18:40.960 But overall, I think we did a pretty good job and you know, got the company above 200 million in revenue, highly profitable with kind of like steady growth curve behind it. 00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:50.240 You know, those years, I think a lot of the trouble those years was probably like putting in like a management layer in the company and you know, getting it kind of operating as a real kind of scale company. 00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:57.839 So made a lot of mistakes in terms of just like, you know, getting the right managers in place and getting the culture ready to operate at that kind of like higher level of scale. 00:18:58.160 --> 00:19:00.480 How did it feel to be back on the rocket ship personally? 00:19:00.480 --> 00:19:05.039 Like after you had a couple, you know, a tough couple of years and all of a sudden, you know, some people left, but you stuck around. 00:19:05.039 --> 00:19:07.359 Like what was that, you know, what's that feeling like? 00:19:07.599 --> 00:19:12.559 I mean, it felt good, but like the nature of my personality is I just move on to the next thing pretty quick, you know. 00:19:12.559 --> 00:19:15.680 As soon as like as soon as I get a win, I'm already on to building the next thing. 00:19:15.680 --> 00:19:21.839 So um, yeah, I

mean, it obviously feels great whenever you have a win, but like I, you know, I'm one of those people that's just always kind of pushing for the next level. 00:19:21.839 --> 00:19:26.720 And I I'm I'm always kind of, you know, as I work, I'm living in the future and trying to get to that next step. 00:19:27.039 --> 00:19:29.279 And yeah, you said it was 17 years all in. 00:19:29.279 --> 00:19:30.640 Uh 17 years at Scrib. 00:19:30.640 --> 00:19:32.720 Yeah, that was like half half my life at the time. 00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:33.599 17 years. 00:19:33.599 --> 00:19:40.000 I mean, I know for me personally, you know, 10 years felt like a long time, you know, and then I was ended up being at Weebly for 14 years all in. 00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:40.960 How did you know? 00:19:40.960 --> 00:19:44.240 I mean, where did you start thinking, like, you know, I may be ready to go do something else? 00:19:44.240 --> 00:19:45.839 Like, how did you decide to move on? 00:19:46.160 --> 00:19:55.279 Yeah, I mean, I think over time there's always this thought of like, well, I could start this idea, I could start, you know, I like, you know, I had a perfectly built up plan for Uber. 00:19:55.279 --> 00:19:56.640 I was just like five years too early. 00:19:56.640 --> 00:19:59.519 So there's a lot of a lot of good ideas I was always thinking about. 00:19:59.519 --> 00:20:03.920 But in general, I was always pretty excited about what we're doing at Scribd, and we're always working on new novel things. 00:20:03.920 --> 00:20:09.200 So it never, even though it was, you know, one job for 17 years, it really felt like a new job every few months. 00:20:09.200 --> 00:20:13.440 So I think it was overall just a really good, rewarding learning experience. 00:20:13.839 --> 00:20:16.400 So I think, you know, there's an interesting parallel. 00:20:16.400 --> 00:20:20.799 I think both you and your dad were at your companies for a really long time, over 17 years. 00:20:20.799 --> 00:20:25.839 Do you think there's any kind of parallels there with both you sticking through something for a really long time? 00:20:26.880 --> 00:20:30.880 Oh, I think we're both the kinds of people who like build things and stick things out. 00:20:30.880 --> 00:20:36.240 He's now started a total of three companies, one that went public, one that sold, one that's kind of still going. 00:20:36.240 --> 00:20:38.799 And yeah, I mean he's he sticks them out for a long, long period of time. 00:20:38.799 --> 00:20:40.000 So I I probably get it from him. 00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.960 So if you're wondering where I get it from, you should probably ask him because uh I probably got it from him. 00:20:45.359 --> 00:20:49.039 Well, I think he has, if I do say so, some of me in him. 00:20:49.039 --> 00:21:00.240 He's a pretty focused person and has the capacity to stay on task for a long period of time, you know, hammering away to win. 00:21:00.240 --> 00:21:03.279 I think he's clearly ambitious. 00:21:03.279 --> 00:21:09.839 He's quite reticent to show that ambition to the family, but it's clear as day that he is. 00:21:10.160 --> 00:21:12.160 I just go for things, I stick with it. 00:21:12.160 --> 00:21:13.519 I think I've been that way my whole life. 00:21:13.519 --> 00:21:14.880 I was like that with Scribd. 00:21:14.880 --> 00:21:17.440 I'm sure I'll be like that with my companies going forward. 00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:19.200 Yeah, I guess that's a good segue. 00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:20.640 You're starting a new company. 00:21:20.640 --> 00:21:22.400 Can you tell us about your new company? 00:21:22.720 --> 00:21:25.680 Yeah, so uh recently started Created by Humans. 00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:30.720 We are a startup that is aiming to solve how copyright and AI work together. 00:21:30.720 --> 00:21:32.880 Uh, you know, this has been a really complex issue. 00:21:32.880 --> 00:21:34.480 A lot of people are grappling with it. 00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:38.240 And, you know, we thought that we could we could jump in as a startup and help make a difference. 00:21:38.480 --> 00:21:39.920 So, how'd you come up with the idea? 00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:43.759 So, what we're doing is we are building a marketplace for AI rights. 00:21:43.759 --> 00:21:54.079 So, the way we can solve this copyright problem is we basically clear the rights for a large number of works and just make it really easy for AI companies to access the copyright works they need for AI purposes. 00:21:54.079 --> 00:21:56.400 And we're starting specifically with books here. 00:21:56.400 --> 00:21:59.200 We want to solve this for books, and then we're gonna expand other kinds of content. 00:21:59.200 --> 00:22:08.160 And Came up with the idea because I, you know, I had for my last company all these contacts in the book industry and the A industry, and I saw everybody, you know, suing each other and fighting. 00:22:08.160 --> 00:22:11.119 And uh I just really wanted to solve this problem. 00:22:11.119 --> 00:22:17.119 So uh, you know, we're we're building a marketplace and we're just trying to make AI licensing plug and play for everyone involved. 00:22:17.119 --> 00:22:22.400 So authors they sign up, they verify their identity just to make sure we know we're dealing with the real author. 00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:28.160 Um, they then select the books they want to license, they select the the different AI rights they want to license. 00:22:28.160 --> 00:22:32.000 Um, they sign a licensing agreement, which licenses the books to create it by humans. 00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:43.599 And then we can then in turn go out and strike deals where we we license these books out to AI companies and we just make it plug and play for AI companies where they can just sign up, get the data they need, pay for it real easily, and we get that money back to authors. 00:22:43.599 --> 00:22:45.279 We handle all the complexity around that. 00:22:45.279 --> 00:22:47.119 So yeah, I just felt like it's something I had to do. 00:22:47.119

--> 00:22:48.799 So I jumped in and uh been working on it. 00:22:48.799 --> 00:22:49.599 It's been going great. 00:22:49.759 --> 00:22:51.920 Yeah, tell us a little bit more how it's been going so far. 00:22:52.240 --> 00:22:56.880 Starting a new company as a second time founder is it's actually a pretty enjoyable experience. 00:22:56.880 --> 00:22:58.960 It's also just a lot easier to get started these days. 00:22:58.960 --> 00:23:06.319 There's just so much more infrastructure for getting a company going that, yeah, it got started about a year ago and just really kind of got going really fast. 00:23:06.319 --> 00:23:11.519 We've raised about $12 million to date, a team of about 10 full-time employees. 00:23:11.519 --> 00:23:17.119 We've got a live product with authors signing up and licensing their works, and that's growing really nicely. 00:23:17.119 --> 00:23:19.519 We've got a number of AI deals in the works. 00:23:19.519 --> 00:23:23.839 So yeah, we just have really great momentum and it's been just a great, great start and a fun experience. 00:23:24.079 --> 00:23:26.000 So you mentioned it's your, you know, the second time. 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:27.759 What's changed for you the second time around? 00:23:28.079 --> 00:23:35.519 Yeah, I mean, after 17 years, I just I I had this new vision and it was just like Scrib wasn't the place to do it anymore. 00:23:35.519 --> 00:23:39.839 And now I'm just doing it as a new company, and I think there's pros and cons doing it as a new company. 00:23:39.839 --> 00:23:47.119 You know, it's it's a little sad to not have you know have the scale of having like, you know, a billion annual users and and all that kind of stuff. 00:23:47.119 --> 00:23:49.359 But there's a lot of benefits of starting from scratch. 00:23:49.359 --> 00:23:55.039 I've been really enjoying having the clean slate and just, you know, having like the creative reset is really nice. 00:23:55.039 --> 00:24:01.680 Because when you're running one company for a long time, there's just a lot of constraints in place that are really kind of hard to let go of. 00:24:01.680 --> 00:24:05.440 And when you can start from scratch, I mean you just have a full blank sheet of paper to work with. 00:24:05.440 --> 00:24:08.559 And yeah, there's times to build something for a long time, there's times to start over. 00:24:08.880 --> 00:24:10.880 So, I mean, I can only speak from personal experience. 00:24:10.880 --> 00:24:13.039 You know, I know you kind of roll off one company. 00:24:13.039 --> 00:24:17.839 There's for sure this real decompression moment where you have to catch your breath and kind of recover in a lot of ways. 00:24:17.839 --> 00:24:19.200 How was that for you? 00:24:19.200 --> 00:24:24.480 And when did you know it was the right time for you to start another company, or did you just roll right into the second one? 00:24:24.799 --> 00:24:26.319 Yeah, I rolled pretty quickly. 00:24:26.319 --> 00:24:30.319 I was out of scribed and I just couldn't get this idea out of my head. 00:24:30.319 --> 00:24:31.440 So I went right into it. 00:24:31.440 --> 00:24:33.440 So I really took about two months off. 00:24:33.440 --> 00:24:35.920 And um, I think it was the right, it was the right call. 00:24:35.920 --> 00:24:38.960 You know, I mean, Paul Graham was really trying to get me to take a longer break. 00:24:38.960 --> 00:24:42.400 Um, but I was just uh I was just ready to go. 00:24:42.640 --> 00:24:43.519 That's awesome. 00:24:43.519 --> 00:24:47.279 So you said 17 years, you know, this might be the start of another 17-year journey. 00:24:47.279 --> 00:24:52.720 I mean, paint the picture for me if everything goes amazing in 17 years, what is created by humans look like? 00:24:53.119 --> 00:24:57.440 Well, uh, I hope that this whole issue of copyright and AI is is solved. 00:24:57.440 --> 00:25:02.240 I think that it won't be such a contentious issue, and I think we'll play a key role in in solving it. 00:25:02.240 --> 00:25:09.599 I mean, even bigger than that, I mean, our our mission is to protect and preserve human creativity in the AI era and make it thrive in the AI era. 00:25:09.599 --> 00:25:12.000 And I think like hopefully we're achieving that mission. 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:16.640 You know, I mean, there's like a lot of big questions with AI right now of like, you know, what are humans gonna do? 00:25:16.640 --> 00:25:17.920 Will humans be creative? 00:25:17.920 --> 00:25:19.839 Will AI just do all the creative work for us? 00:25:19.839 --> 00:25:22.319 And I mean, we we're kind of horrified by that future. 00:25:22.319 --> 00:25:29.200 We want to make sure that humans still are creating things and we want to create a business model that perpetuates human creativity. 00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:33.759 So I just I saw this huge problem and I felt like I was kind of the right person to solve it. 00:25:34.720 --> 00:25:47.599 You know, he's caught between tectonic plates here, you know, human creators making the essence of humanity, and AI bots just trying to suck it all up and trying to replace the humans. 00:25:47.599 --> 00:25:53.440 So uh it's a tectonic battle, and I hope he's the winner in it. 00:25:53.440 --> 00:26:05.119 But I have to admit, the forces that he's dealing with are as large as they get in the world today, and uh even we never talked ever really about how he was gonna succeed. 00:26:05.119 --> 00:26:07.839 He did that out of sheer ambition. 00:26:07.839 --> 00:26:10.160 So uh no one kicked his ass to do it. 00:26:10.160 --> 00:26:11.839 He just wanted to do it. 00:26:11.839 --> 00:26:13.200 I think he wanted to win. 00:26:18.720 --> 00:26:23.680 This podcast is brought to you by Leap Forward Ventures, an investor in early stage startups. 00:26:23.680 --> 00:26:32.160 If you like the show, the number one thing you'll want to do is sign up to get notified when we release new episodes that includes transcripts and key takeaways from each story. 00:26:32.160 --> 00:26:34.799 Head to leapforward.fm to sign up. 00:26:34.799 --> 00:26:39.039 I'd also love to hear your feedback on the episode and who you want to hear from next. 00:26:39.039 --> 00:26:44.880 Just shoot us a text at 415-915-3050 to get in touch. 00:26:44.880 --> 00:26:49.519 This episode was produced by Theo Balcomb and Kim Nederveen Pieterse. 00:26:49.519 --> 00:26:51.359 Craig Eley is our engineer. 00:26:51.359 --> 00:26:53.680 Reece Laudano made our cover art. 00:26:53.680 --> 00:26:56.960 Music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. 00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:00.319 I'm David Rusenko, and this is the Leap Forward Podcast. 00:27:00.319 --> 00:27:02.079 See you next episode.