From Physics Dropout to the World's Largest AI Mobile App Builder

Making a mobile app cost like $40,000. That's the reason we only had like 9 million apps on the app store and billions of websites before AI. For people who haven't heard of ROR yet, what is it? Is the largest AI mobile app builder in the world.

Basically, it's the fastest way to get your app on the app store. Pokémon Go, Fortnite, FIFA, it can build games native apps and Swift. Not a lot of people were focusing entirely on mobile. Like Bolt added this feature too, but it sucked because they never built any mobile apps.

We built R max the first website that actually replaced Xcode. It does it all in the browser. Any kid on the wall can use basically and you were thinking about that. You saw like you like looked ahead and you saw that this was go to walk with Gabriel and he's like you'll have the hardest time raising this round because people like don't believe in it.

Anton OA the CEO of logo they kind of trying to acquire us which is insane. So Gabrielle Vasquez from A16Z, right? He said that your second round was going to be the hardest round you'd ever raise. Why?

And how did it happen? Yeah, so we were basically part of A6Z speedrun. After we raised like $3 million to win, we basically admitted ourselves into speedrun and uh it was the last LA batch with a demo day in San Francisco and um basically we're growing really fast. launched like an app that makes mobile apps which were later taking it down by the app store but and back then it was like number two worldwide in developer tools where we're like b basically beating everyone but there was also a lot of noise on Twitter among our competitors and uh when we basically presented at demo day basically the demo day presentation was really good and then uh right after that basically two days later like our like basically another app that builds mobile apps that was like really really hot at popular at the time launches and basically a lot of investors and at the same time lovable like sends an investor update saying that they're going to do mobile like it's like so the group chat things like Ror is cooked like two days ago after the demo day was a lot of high people DMing so we got into the group chat we got the buzz and then two days later disappeared it's like what and then I get go to a walk with Gabriel and he's like there's so much noise out there people don't really understand.

You're the literally the only like company in the space and everyone else is like uh basically and and not going to make it. But yeah, you you'll have the hardest time raising this round because people like don't believe in it and there's like Twitter and group chat and yeah, we didn't say group chat back then but it was it was the vibe. He was like just just focus just focus on on winning and just raise this round and everything is going to be great later. And uh I was like why did he say that?

It's like he believes in us so much and he was like one of the first people apart from like speedrun to believe in us from A6 and Z and uh I really grateful for for for him and to yeah basically Andrew Chen trucker and Tom from speedrun as well and all the all the team is amazing but basically after after that it was kind of like a really really long process but people really like expressing doubts were lovable and everything like that and uh we started getting term sheets but it was basically like growing really slowly like like the fundraiser were pulling up slowly and then suddenly like Anton DMs me for like the second time actually for the first time he actually DM'd me like back in November who's Anton again Anton OA the CEO of Lovable okay he actually DM' me like in November back in 2024 he was like what is the best technical stack to add mobile to lovable and they were like um I said like this is like the technical stack that like Martin used and We and I did too. " And then they never added it. " And so they kind of tried to acquire us, which is insane. And I posted on April, April, April Fool's joke.

" Uh, like like Lable just wanted to like acquire us. And then before that, other companies strateged, which we didn't disclose. So like I think we're going to be good. And then suddenly they turned like from like being absolutely non-interest to like being super interest.

And that's how I got more term sheets. That's how basically raised 50 million in the end. So kind of like the fact that they tried to acquire us after announcing mobile was the thing that kind of helped me close our round. Wow.

So if that didn't happen, I don't I wasn't sure that I wasn't sure that basically we would have closed it. Uh or it would have been a much like much different term. So it's all a lot of luck as well. So which is kind of crazy.

Daniel, hi. Hi. Hi Julian. Nice to see you.

Thank you for inviting me to your office. Yeah. I'm really excited to get into this. So many amazing questions.

You haven't done too many podcasts, right? No. No. This is actually my first one.

Oh my gosh. First one. This is amazing. So, you're gonna learn more about who Daniel is.

Let's start with the first question, which is for people who haven't heard of ROR yet. What is it? So, Ror is the largest AI mobile app builder in the world. Basically, it's the fastest way to get your app on the app store.

It one shots any app like Pokémon Go, Fortnite, uh, FIFA. It it can build games. You can build native apps in Swift and publish them to the app store, generate the screenshots in like really basically a few minutes, which was like really hard before. Um, yeah.

So, and we basically have no other companies that are doing it on the web. So, there's a lot of like desktop apps that do it, including Xcode. But, we basically built Roric Max, the first website that actually replaces Xcode. that does it all in the browser that anyone any kid in the world can use basically.

That's amazing. And you've been building since you were 11. How many companies have you started? I've actually started um five companies at this point.

This is the fifth. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. And tell me more about were the other companies in a similar niche field?

So my first company basically was an app to search movies by vibe. I I started as a 20-year-old student of uh Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. It's like bas basically the MIT of Russia like the the most hardcore physicist study there. And uh I dropped out basically to basically build apps.

And uh I had this like problem with my girlfriend on what to watch. And uh yeah, basically we wanted Netflix-like experience but for all movies in the world and uh somehow found ourselves in language models which was really early at the time was like 2018 and somehow like ended up using bird the first transform model to predict the next movie you're going to watch and scraping all the internet to actually predict like how romantic, smart, inspiring the movie is which is basically what ChbTi has done later. Wow. And uh yeah, I remember back in the day in Russia basically a lot of people were you like interested in machine learning that's not called AI but they were mostly doing like image genen and um not a lot of them were doing like natural language processor which started up pretty important and I remember uh basically this app grew to like 200,000 users and number two in the app store with like zero marketing were just students with no work experience and raised um like muddy out of nowhere in Russia which is really hard to do as well because there's no like Silicon Valley.

So basically that was like a pretty pretty interesting experience where then we basically learned about YC about like all the like product Silicon Valley advice from ACZ and Sequo and I fell in love with Twitter and started reading it a lot. So basically it was just since then it was been like an 8-year journey of coming here. Wow. And when I finally came, like it all manifested somehow.

That's awesome. You said you were building since 11. Like what did you start building? How did you start building?

How did you discover just like Yeah. So I was really big into Pokemon basically. I really always like Nintendo games like Fire Red and uh like Ruby, Subar, Emerald was like my favorites. And uh I used to hang out a lot lot of websites, but I didn't really like them.

I want to start my own like Pokemon forum. So basically I also observe my stepfather who is Indian by the way that's why my surname is Davan and he's like big Apple fan. So uh we would have like all the old Emacs and like Power Books at at home and I would watch how he uses all the like Dream Viva and like website building software and Photoshop for design. So I just learn by like watching and then I when I turned 11 I was just like I want to build my own stuff.

So I started designing stuff in Photoshop like building websites. And my first website like a Pokemon website. I found like co-founders have like 100 users. So it was really fun.

Yeah. Had a forum in PHP and Yeah. basically design, HTML, CSS. And how so how did growing up with two different cultures?

So your mom is Russian. Yeah. Russian Ukrainian. Ukrainian.

Yeah. So how did growing up with two different cultures, how is that like? It is a bit weird. Uh so I'm a vegetarian so like since birth uh because of again my family.

So in Russia it's not really celebrated. So yeah they like meat. Yeah. It's just like it's like a median eating country.

True. Yeah. So I was kind of like the white u the white crow if you could say right and u that that's probably like how it's been like. So got a lot of bullied in school and stuff like that.

So, which is a lot of like entrepreneurial motivations come from. And um yeah, I was just basically the smartest kid, but I was going to like sports school, which is like super random. So, I got in my like I got into soccer a lot. So, I got basically like trying to win and and and soccer a lot and then just trying to be smart at the same time.

And uh yeah, basically somehow I would always vibe with like normal people. they would always like learn how to like how do I like code basically I don't know why even though they were not like engineers uh and I I found that basically they are really really bad at using terminals like code editors so that's why I like understood the value of no code basically for the first time I think yeah and so walk me through where you grew up and how you got here yeah so I grew up in Moscow I was born in Moscow my family came from the don region basically of of Ukraine and uh yeah in '90s moved to Moscow um yeah my mom married an Indian guy as we know so I traveled a lot to India like 15 times for three months even studying like an Indian Russian embassy in in India which is like a stupid funny experience but yeah most of that basically made me uh like know English really good my sister also uh got really lucky and basically moved to England when I was like 14 and married a Canadian guy which is like made me travel to London a few times as well. So I kind of grew up in an like I'm a Russian person by nature but like I'm a current grew up in international English culture which is very rare for for Russian people. Yeah.

This is you have such a unique upbringing. Yeah. Like very unique. Wow.

And it made you really like who you are. I mean, you said like your your dad like really your stepdad really kind of inspire you saw who he was building. Wow. And then when did you move to San Francisco?

It was just over a year ago. Okay. So all of this happened in like just a like over a year ago. So I've basically had to travel 14 countries when basically uh Russia attacked Ukraine.

I was uh in Indonesia, Bali basically as we were doing a crypto company at this point and uh uh which we interviewed for YC4 and uh basically I was I was at the time basically I was like I'm not going back. uh finally I'm like moving out and since then basically traveled to 14 countries saw the world and uh yeah there were like a bunch of places where Russian immigrants hang out like Georgia uh where my cohound is from uh and uh yeah like a bunch of other cities including London and obviously everyone wanted eventually to move to SF but now it became hard because US visas for like nomads it's like terrible right I'm not going to talk about it to avoid problems with with yeah with immigration but yeah it's just American even like tourist visa for nomads it's hard so yeah I think the reason I didn't move to the earlier because I want really wanted to move like since I be feel in love with Twitter silic is that I basically never gave up and I like I'm not going to work I'm just going to start another company maybe I worked for like three months h actually one of those three months was actually with with our competitor for RORO. I worked for ANC from VIP code which is like a totally insane story and then we ended up competing. Oh my god, it's crazy.

Yeah. Wait, what was that insane story? Let's go into detail. Uh about like working for Aunt.

Yeah. Yeah. Basically, he was doing like a an app that basically hacked Instagram feed at the time and try to like make it more personalized and filtered. Yeah.

So, I built this app and learned about Expo actually uh while working for Ans. So, he gave me a full-time offer, but our crypto company took off where we did generative art marketplace, went to VC interview. " And then just started again my own company and and we ended up competing for an expo app builder. It's like, how cool is that?

It's like this Steve Jobs will always tell you like you can connect the dots on looking backwards. So, somehow like all of this connected. Yeah. you I mean it's like something you were it's it's awesome how things like this just connect.

I mean you just keep following like your passion. You have a guiding light and you just go it it's kind of like insane because our my story and my co-founder story is like basically the story of an entrepreneur who never gave up. So that's why we kind of started Shopify for apps because basically we are the people who just tried things until it it worked. So uh and refused to go to a job like unemployable people basically.

Yeah. I mean can you take me back to December 2024? You're in San Francisco. What was happening then?

So basically I started initially as ROR for web and uh yeah it it was three months before lovable launch as we saw this trend uh basically of nontechnical people using cursor paying for templates and like going viral on Twitter with stuff they've built and since we've tried always save money we're like really great at like using all this like tech stock like nextj super bay versel to like optimize and just build great software just teams of one or two people literally and uh um as this is like the best way to be cockroaches as like Paul Graham said. 5 was it was obvious that it's going to be basically really easy to build like web apps in the browser. So yeah, we built that first as a next JS editor and then basically lovable launch took off and I think NextJS was a really wrong bet. And then basically Levant came up with this genius idea.

Let's do expo, let's do mobile. We did mobile for all of our lives. We actually did an app together that was just uh viral Tik Tok with AI covers basically. And uh yeah, we develop our own like AI models for covers like you know this Spongebob singing stuff.

uh or um yeah, basically like the ability to change voice into an AI voice. So sing any song with your own voice uh with your own AI voice or like change it to some characters. It's just a fun entertainment app to uh yeah because we also like wanted to basically make an app that gives us like 10k MRR so we can like go and do some other projects later and like build a startup just like a complete refusal like going to work. So yeah.

Uh, wow. That's kind of like that's why I think we're the best people to build RO. It's the company that helps other people do the same. Yeah.

Really easily. Exactly. Yeah. And we we'll definitely get into more of those like success stories with like um younger people building.

Yeah. And then so to your question, basically I came to December 2024 to Founders Inc. to this cold start program because we were like rejected from VC for like the ninth time. like okay uh NGMI and I I basically came and I was like it was just basically like a program where okay maybe we'll invest at the end maybe not so it's just like a month uh during Christmas holidays just work really hard and if you succeed you succeed if you don't you don't and then basically uh we were working on trying to like bunch of stuff uh yeah I made like a really uh basically co-created like 21st deaf which is like a really viral component marketplace that went viral with lovable and bolt.

That's how and also by by basically following each other on Founders Inc. I grew my Twitter following to like two 2,000 followers and then basically when we were like ready to launch work for mobile and I was finally convinced that's the right thing to do which is like really hard to be convinced of because this is one of those types of ideas which is like so obvious in retrospect and that we are the best people to do it but it's really hard to convince yourself that it's going to be like really big market and uh yeah but you you might think that Web is like the big market and lovable has like 100 million AR. Yeah. But actually I think that most kids wants to build like want to build mobile apps.

Most entrepreneur wants to be on the app store especially like in all over the world. So that's why I think we're kind of building like a a more harder like a harder version of Lovable. That make sense? Yeah.

And uh yeah, that's why basically we're the only vip coding company that basically has people like George making money on our platform actually like actual entrepreneurs, not agencies or anything like that. Tell me more about Yeah. George's like story like or like any of your users kind of. Yeah.

Yeah. George story is like the most famous we tell. He was like the first uh person that um made money with Ror. And basically he found us through like a Tik Tok video where a girl said like you can build seven apps in a weekend.

He was like no way. And he was sitting in a classroom like strolling. Tik Tok is like okay this is insane. Yeah.

com and built an app and he was like okay this is insane. This works. Then he started researching like what is like work, how is like different with versus lovable and he's like actually understood that this is a thing you can actually publish to the app store and actually make money. So he learned about revenue like googling how to read revenue even though we didn't have any integration as agent was really bad at the moment but people like George still found us.

Uh it was like May 2025 I think already and it was uh right after I think we launched uh and grew to over a millionaire at this point. But I think the launch story is also really really fun. Yeah. That that we didn't talk about.

Let's talk about that. Yeah. The launch story. Yeah.

Yeah. So the launch story goes is basically we're like convinced we're running out of money. We're 15k in depth sleeping in my YC founder friends in 39 Fremont basically and a mattress. So it's like this classic story but I have like a really embarrassing photo.

It's not like a setup mattress. It's like it's a real Did you post about it on X? Uh no this is a really embarrassing picture. It's just like everything is just like all over the place and I'm sleeping.

It's just like and uh yeah, but um I think um basically it was like no hope and uh I was like no it. We're just going to launch. We think like uh Bolt and Rep was like thought that they're going to do it now. So I basically like um yeah I basically like worked on like finishing some stuff on on design and like adding a preview and then like on the same day of bold launches I was like I'm launching too and then we basically got only 100,000 views and one investor interested Matt Schumer I was like I really like the product I think it's better than bolt.

So basically I pitched him and then like like four days ago like Ror basically went viral and got like one million views because he posted about it because he really liked the product and 15 minutes after his post we basically raised $150,000 from uh uh Austin and then all of the other folks basically start pulling up. I got like Matteo Franchetti from my sleep like calling me out of nowhere on my phone. I didn't know how he got my number. It's just random people like calling me and uh it was just Twitter.

So that's how when I learned what is like the power of the group chat just like somehow people knew who I am uh and started talking to me like I'm like some kind of like I don't know celebrity but I'm not like just like uh yeah just just a product going viral and a really great product. Uh it felt like it happened almost overnight, but people don't understand like it's like so like the consistent amount of work you put you like you're ready for that moment. Yeah. Yeah.

And I I'm thankful that my co-founder Davan didn't listen to me and actually like put like three months of like work into like actually building work for mobile and just like yeah I'm just going to do it and like if So you didn't want to do it. Initially I was like I was like yeah like web is like so much bigger and like in retrospect it is much bigger but it does it didn't matter for us we are the best people to build for mobile this is the hardest problem to solve and we were too late for web so Michael was right the one was right but um at the at the point um yeah basically when I understood it was um I remember actually this program's advice that you have to build for like small market that no one cares about that actually is going to be big and grow over time. And then second, I actually observed my founder friend that I lived there uh an apartment. I was like he was using Expo for his app which is like web plus mobile.

I was like okay we can just do three platforms. So you capture the web and the mobile and that's how you get like bigger market. So that's what you realized. Okay.

It's like so even if the market is small, we're still going to get web because it's expos like okay, let's just do three. And u we ended up like focusing solely on mobile for for because that was like the hardest problem to build and that's that's why we actually are the largest DMO blood builder because the hardest and not a lot of people are doing it. Yeah, basically not a lot of people were focusing entirely on mobile like Bolt added this feature too but it sucked because they never built actually mobile apps. They never understood what is the problems with all the expo libraries that that you have to like install a really specific way.

Uh like there was like this thing that you have to learn right npx expo install just npm install basically and a library and there was like such so many small things like how to publish your app to the app store like Evan Bacon built this great tool npx test where basically I was the first one to like integrate it into like a live like sandbox in E2B just like introduced this like browser publishing flow to the app store which worked really really uh unstable but it was like the first basically way to publish your app through the browser. It's like now it's obvious that it's like the future, but somehow for web it's obvious, but for mobile there was not enough people thinking that's a great problem to solve. That's how it and you were thinking about that. You saw like you like looked ahead and you saw that this was Yeah.

Then we a little bit got distracted because we got a competitor VIP code app and uh they were like we are the mobile app to build mobile apps. It was like okay we're we're going to also do mobile apps for mobile like mobile apps to build mobile apps. So we got a compet competition with that even though I remember we talked with expert team and they like said that like apps probably not allowed and that's what ended up happening. So, but because we kind of talked about it and then we were web first, we were the only ones who actually survived uh all this app store thing deleting like the apps that that makes apps basically the mobile apps that makes mobile apps because we initially focused on the problem just like I want to build a mobile app, publish it to the app store, maybe add a website on the web.

There was no like fancy vibe coding which I hate the word. you hate the Yeah, I remember the first time I was like um cuz at first I was like oh yeah, ROR is like the like Vive coding but tell me why you don't like the word V coding. Uh so I remember in crypto basically there was like a similar word that that was called den. Basically it didn't mean really mean anything and also meant everything at the same time.

So people were just calling themselves dejening and uh what they really what meant was like some people think that they were just gambling. Some people think they were like tra trading. So they some people think that they were just early adopters of crypto but they were all like dun. So all these like vibe cutter people was like the same thing to me.

5 and you still it's not writing perfect code where you just hit accept because you're too lazy to read it. Then you hit accept like 12 times and then you finally like get get like the vibe and it's like somehow works and it's like okay this works. I'm just going to move on. This is vibe coding.

you don't read the code. Now what like everything that we do is kind of wipe coding. So we just like agents just do do everything like really fast uh really really professionally. So we don't really look at the code anymore.

8 is like amazing. So um yeah so like basically everything is vibe coding now. And then I think when people like founders of companies similar to Ror would call themselves like vibe coding companies, they actually meant that they didn't know who are their users. That's actually one of the lessons I also also learned with with one of my startups.

Tell me tell me um about the lesson again. Tell everyone about this. So basically this is a funny story. So we went to the VIC interview, the only VC interview that we got with this uh generative art NFT company that we were doing with my co-founder that we got the co-founder Alexi.

Um and basically they really liked us. really technical and they asked us one like we were actually pitching that we're like the Shopify for NFTs which is like this is like the theme is like there you know this is the company we should have been building right and uh but there's like who are your users and I was like I I remember like right before the interviews like reading this program so I was like you have to really be honest and tell how it is and in in the YC application I thought it's like uh basically we we initially thought it's for the artists and there was like a lot of like art block stuff. But then as as we learned about crypto space, there was a lot of like trading going on and uh it was just like mercenaries. So basically people who just want to make a quick buck.

That's what I told them which is not good. It meant that we had to pivot and I don't believe this idea any in this idea anymore. But I still thought it and I was I think that's I think that question like um basically got frozen in my head like who are your users because it's kind of like a simple question because like it it kind of determines everything. So when you say your users are vibe coders who are like who is the VIP coding why is it why is it doing that and let's talk so you had an article you talked you wrote about missionaries and what was the other one?

Mercenaries. Mercenaries. Tell me about that like for anyone who doesn't know what those differentiation is. Yeah.

So, uh a mercenary person is just a person who's motivated mo mostly by money and uh missionaries is like a person who has like a a mission like it it doesn't mean that he's like a charity. It it can also mean that basically he wants to make money and make an impact. And I think uh impact is important because it gives like meaning to to to you and also like a feeling of that you have achieved something and written yourself into history not just made money. So I think like people like Elon that want to go to space they're missionaries because they want like a history book saying like Elon is the person who brought her to Mars, right?

So yeah. So um yeah that's that's what basically the article was uh reflecting on my experience because I kind of like went back and forth. So I don't consider myself a mercenary but I did do a lot of like stuff to just to make money and uh I think like roles become similar as well and uh so I was reflecting like why I don't consider myself like a mercenary but I also um did did do like mercenary things at at some points and I think the reason is that basically it's like a choice and uh but it's important to be a missionary because even inspire spite of um the fact that you kind of don't focus on money, these are the people who usually produce outliers and that's like not obvious. So if you look at all the like basically biggest founder successes in the world, they all have like an a mission which is uh which is which doesn't make sense because it like uh if you think rationally, if you optimize for money at every point in time and you just think about like I want to make the company with the biggest valuation possible, it means you'll probably get it.

No. somehow like if you have meaning and you actually like what you're doing and are inspired then basically you'll make the most money. Yeah. Yeah.

Before this with the other podcast guest we were talking about like Peter Teal and he he's like he's very what is he a mission? Yeah. I I mean he he mostly talked about like basically how to win and like it's like basically his main idea is basically uh you should basically build monopolies and like try to avoid competition instead of like embracing it. Mhm.

I think that's really powerful idea that also like inspired um mechan to like just do for mobile because that's like kind of the space with no competition at this point especially like mobile was empty even though people try to compete with us but because they never actually shipped mobile apps to the app store didn't have like a lot of users they didn't know what it takes basically and didn't focus enough on this. Let's talk more about your co-founder Yvon. Like his story is would you say extraordinary? Yeah.

Tell me like who he is. His story is uh kind of insane. Yeah. So basically um he also was born in Moscow and um even though he's like Georgian and um basically he was going to school and he built himself an app while he was like 15.

It was uh an educational like basically app that basically helps you track your uh ratings and like become better at school. Uh kind of like Saturn, but it's basically like an electronic diary. uh which basically later grew to 2 million users when he was 17 years old like organically had crazy like yearly retention and then Moscow governments build their own app and started to compete with him and uh because they knew he was building because like some 70-year-old was like controlling like the biggest like educational app and in Moscow like every third Moscow kid was using it so they kind of like start blocking the API access to him And then he started like fighting them in a media war. And actually like I think when he added like a screen where every user would email the government and say uh please unblock uh this app like it would just get unblocked and uh that's how he won basically in the end.

Still none of us won kind of but like it was a it was it was a short-term win for sure. Yeah. Wow. And you said finding um Non was the most important hire, bigger than any round you raised.

Why? Yeah. I I I wouldn't call him a hire, like a partner, I think. Oh, yeah.

But I I I would just say that um having a great co-founder is really important and uh like Ben Horway always says that like every company needs like an entrepreneur and an innovator. I think Levan is definitely the innovator because um again we met like three years ago in San Francisco and crypto hackathon. The crypto also brought us into like we were just sitting at the table me my friend Yuri which I was sleeping in a mattress for Peter who was who is now building like the first actually global bank for businesses uh on crypto like Brex but on crypto for US businesses and all the world and Levan is like just this fateful table and uh yeah we instantly like vibe with Levan did some projects together including that app that I talked about. Yeah.

And uh yeah, it was it was obvious that basically he went he was just like I'm not going to like he his his thing was like basically like failed. So I was like I I will not go to work like as me. So I'll just go and live on proceeds from my app and like basically South America. I just like build AI agents because I think like after Chip was like this is the future.

So he's like I'm building AI agents. I'm just learning how to do stuff. I'm just like locked in all in which is like the energy the like the winning energy that you need to like win. So I feel like that and the fact that when he was building his first app he spent like literally seven years in React Native which is like the basis for expo right and uh basically made made ro the best like uh agent for apps when like models weren't there yet.

And then as models were improving basically work was improving with them which is also a thing he predicted. So it's all basically about having a great innovator on the team and um I don't consider myself like a great entrepreneur yet I'm just like good but yeah Lean is definitely like a one-ofa-kind innovator. So I was really lucky to like find him. That's amazing.

And so everyone said when AI tools for building apps came out anyone could build. regular moms, office workers, anyone. Was that right? I think I think no.

Like at the time when Lovable and Bold came out, it was not true for sure. Now I think it is true for sure. But I always ask the question like why do they need to build an app? So all of this narrative I really hate because it doesn't like expose like why are people using it?

So it's just like this idea that your mom will build an app and all this like personal software I think is actually for productivity. So personal software is like actually for people who want their own Jarvis you know it's not for people who who are like I don't know just um just just want to build up fun. there's no like fun for most people in doing that because again I grew up with like ordinary people that I don't know play soccer in school and like were just like watching movies and didn't care about coding or not really smart so I kind of knew that most people most consumer like I don't really care like coding they're like terminal coat code no this is not for me so even yeah it's obvious that yeah like when when when people said like uh like clot code was the way that people would build apps. So it was obvious that it was not going to be but also there were like startups like again VIP code and ABI that really tried to go after this idea that people like moms or like ordinary people would build software for themselves which I really didn't buy because I knew that most people just want to use software.

The the the people who want to build software mostly high agency people and entrepreneurs whether want to like be more productive or make a business. Um yeah I feel like starting with like app building is such a great way like it's such a great like if you don't know if you want to become an opport entrepreneur but you don't know what idea what to start I feel like maybe starting with an app everyone has an app idea and I also think that software is like the basically uh the best business in the world because it has the highest margin it's like very scalable you don't even know what is like the the limits to your market is like you could find your thous0 true funds. Basically, they pay you 10 bucks and it runs in the background while we sleep. You don't even have to do anything.

Uh you can literally uh like like if you compare it to like creating content, right? Like with with that, you have to like work every day. With an app, you just solve your own problem. You know that this app works if you were able to market it to find your own audience.

You're basically set for life and you can make more than people make in most of the countries in the world. So in Russia like the average salary is like in basically $300. I think in Moscow I think it's $1,000. So if you make an app that makes 2,000 you already beat it.

But wow. You're like you're like I don't need to work anymore. I'm good. Yeah.

Americans don't understand this, but for us it's just like wow. 2,000 bucks is like a lot. I go live a great life in Moscow and like not grave was just like okay. Yeah, imagine India or Indonesia.

Uh like you know this was Mark and Dre reposted this post like basically there was some Indonesian Tik Tok girl that made like $700. I saw that. I saw that. Yeah.

So it's just like it's all it's a global phenomena. It's going to be huge. And this like million-dollar TAM as like uh people like Anish from ACC talk about a lot is basically the same thing because um like it wasn't like really viable before because making a mobile app cost like $40,000. That's the reason we only had like 9 million apps on the app store and billions of websites before AI.

And now thanks to like tools like work is finally changing. And the thing is the only thing that's actually like blocking is Apple unfortunately. Really? Why?

I mean they kind of like don't like a lot of uh a lot of like AI generated apps on the app store. But we try to market as like the best place to build high quality apps. So if you saw Ror Max is like one of the attempts and we're having ro games and ro max app launch soon which is basically games. Yeah.

You can make games. Yeah. You can make Fortnite with multiplayer back end. Oh my god.

Yeah. You can make FIFA, you can make basically like uh Pokemon Go, uh all of these like um especially like after Fable 5, we just came out like a few days ago. It's it's it's pretty pretty insane. Um insane.

Yeah, look, I'm looking forward to this launch. Yeah, it's I think it's basically will be used like by a lot of kids who are just trying to build apps like we were when we were kids. And uh somehow 14y olds can now make $1,000. We even have like a competitor that is literally led by 14y olds.

So which is called 10x. I really like their team. Oh, I know. I mean basically when you're young I think you have a lot of energy.

Yeah. You don't have a lot of fear. So we learned that young people like George, he's like 18, Laurazakia Dari, who's also basically a big proponent of RO and um he's a friend of George and that's how I actually met him as an immigrant which is like this genius kid who's 19 years old basically made an app that made like uh close to like 100 million AR basically calorie tracking you know this right. Oh yeah.

So he was like it's cool while he was like a millionaire and this is all basically thanks to the app store because he solved his own problem calorie tracking. He was like basically a fitness uh I would say like fitness basically expert enthusiast. Yeah the u want to pick the right words here but yeah yeah I don't know if enthusiast I don't know if that's expert. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh but yeah, it's basically so calorie tracking was the thing after using chat GPT it was natural for him to basically like make stuff um wow with with AI um so by just taking a picture so I was like why can't I just track calories with a picture and uh I think that also what like Paul Graham talks a lot about that's just like live in the future I'm like the person in in in my friend groups like that read everything for Paul Graham I don't know have natural interest like how to pick good startup ideas like how to start a startup and uh you on LinkedIn you give really good recommendations. Thank you. Yeah.

Very good. Uh yeah. Um I I'll try more of those. I I feel like people Yeah.

people need more. Yeah. And and basically I think that I think what really struck me is that when he said basically live in the future and builds what's missing. So, I feel like when you're young, you naturally sometimes want things that are pretty important and you So, when you basically just want a wrestling app for yourself, you naturally find that you can market it by just DMing people on TikTok that you already watch.

That's what George George did. And that's why he's like making 30K a month now, which is uh three times more than most people make and and in the US, right, per month. Um Wow. So yeah, it's it's kind of crazy uh that like young people have this like new world before them thanks to AI which we didn't really have when we were growing.

We had to learn stuff. They don't even like to learn. They just build and just like it's all there's no like um uh there's no excuses anymore. You just you can only just grow and build.

And I think that's what really excites me about work is that we we can go to schools. We can basically be be like the the thing that the next generation uses. Awesome. And I want to you wrote something called the SF group chat that went viral in every group chat in San Francisco.

Tell me more about that. I feel like people want to hear this live. Yeah. Yeah.

So this is a there is a really nice essay. Again, as I was saying, we experienced like two uh wins of group chats. The first was like me out of nowhere becoming basically the hot thing in San Francisco and then I had to basically travel back to Bissi to basically work with my co-founder and then while I was like back there was like already a lot of competitors like Vcutab anything and Wabby and uh there was a lot of like hype around uh these uh startups and I think there still is and but it was all basically like fabricated because we saw on like metrics and like similar web that we're like actually the biggest but no one knows about it and then basically when we set up to raise money people would always ask what about these guys this I'm saying we're like the largest the ammo the first and the best on product wise and what I mean I I heard that like somebody's talking to like this other startup that's actually really good like have you actually seen their traction like they don't really care because they mostly care about what other people Think that's I think what pilgrim also wrote a lot. It's just like and unfortunately when you talk about investors basically they mostly care about what other investors think about you because they don't like apart from like the smart top 1% ones which are like the market movers in every financial market like crypto was like that there was always like whales that move the market and everyone is all follows.

So I think it's kind of like inventure it's the same. So if like some people heard that some like great tier one VC funds thinks that something is great then just going to follow that and then it it is it is funny because depending on like a tweet people who can like said that basically I'm in can like the next day pull out because they've heard something on Twitter or they've heard one little thing you know they hear one little thing and and and for you it's just like I have this email and it's like I'm in like just send me the email and then you next day you ping him and it's like okay he's just out. It's like that's why it's really important to move fast in Silicon Valley. But but it's but it's also like a nice phenomenon.

It's like why do people do that? So I started thinking about it and then yeah it's it's kind of like it was obvious that there's like there's this invisible thing called the group chat that actually rules when I read it. I thought there was an actual group chat like I want to be in this group chat. Yeah.

Yeah. I thought a lot of people thought about it. I FEEL LEFT OUT. YEAH.

I I I I kind of like implied it like on WhatsApp, but I think a lot of people quoted it was actually on Signal, yeah, I think it's just a combination. So there is a basically in every like venture fund or everything there's like a trusted circle of scouts and people they trust or like founders they backed there's always like chatter like who is like the next thing where we should back and then somehow because everything moves fast information can trust really fast. Whenever you say anything to anyone, if you're not careful, if you say anything like I don't know that exposes your startup in some like a bad way, it just like goes true. That's scary.

So if you notice that, it's kind of like funny how it works. But it also means that when somebody learns something great about your startup, it's just like everyone knows it and now they want to invest. So that's what happened with you. Yeah.

Thank goodness it was I I got two modes. So it's like okay this is probably a phenomena we should write about it. That's but but also it makes it makes people judge ideas by the by by the same thing. So they might think that you're like not good and not back you because they heard that some people thought this like this is not going to win.

this is not the biggest category and it's really sad because sometimes like our liar come and then kind of wins because despite everything else but it's also uh kind of funny and that was like a tribute to that and I think I remember like a quote tweet from my GPS CRV I think that was like I hate this essay because I think it's true and I hate that it's true and there's like you're just spitting true fact you're being real. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes I think like um in in Silicon Valley I'm not sure it's like good to be entirely like blunt and straightforward but because I'm Eastern European.

Yeah. I feel like I do that and make do it too. So it's just like blunt. It's true.

Yeah. I feel like Eastern Europe. Yeah. It's it's part of the culture.

Yeah. But I think we're like the nice Eastern Europe that like understood the self culture a lot. And uh in in actually in in Eastern Europe there's not a lot of stories like Ror because most most of uh basically people from our countries they're really talented technical. We had like our own Russian Silicon Valley kind of like Russian Google uh Russian AI even like Russian Facebook.

Uh is Yandex one of Yeah. Yeah. Yandex is had like GPT but then water everything basically broke it. But it doesn't matter.

It it basically means that um yeah people are like really technically talented. They're really great designers. They're really understand product especially consumer products because they're like kind of global and uh like yeah B2B has a lot of like relationships like uh it's it's not really transferable but like consumer is is transferable. That's why a lot of like consumer app people also from Eastern Europe as well.

And uh I feel like like understanding English culture, knowing English really well is the thing that we we are like good at. Uh and u like especially American culture and like San Francisco's culture and I feel like a lot of like our folks basically from Eastern Europe they don't kind of do it because uh they were not like brought up in a way. Um I also have a new upcoming essay about that. Oh, exciting.

This is just like it's basically called soft power versus hard power and why America won Russia. It's just like a provocative provocative tagline but it's basically about like that the fact that in Russia there is like zero trust and it means that people usually win with like hard power. So uh and in America it's really really mostly especially in California it's mostly like soft power. So just through media, through uh yeah, just just being like nice to everyone and building relationships and trusting everyone by default.

So in Russia you just have to be like either higher power or like you want like you have to be either close to like higher power close to higher power and that's how you get like money and stuff or if you try to build stuff and build soft power if you become too big especially now they come trust you people cut first some people don't trust you think you like stolen something or you got to like reach that or something or then or like the people in part just cut you so people like are really afraid of that and also Soviet Union history also doesn't help So they have like um so most people optimize instead of like for winning for like not losing because uh like it's really really important to like not lose safety and uh that's kind of like the win and in American in contrast people really really want to win. It's just like win is the most important thing. Interesting. Yeah.

Which is kind of funny. Yeah. You it's good. Yeah.

I also learned a lot of these pattern. I found a lot of these patterns in my in myself of like what what are these like why am I feeling this? Like yeah. Yeah.

Another essay you wrote arguing that in an AI world being fake will stop working that authenticity matters 100 times more. But hasn't fakess always worked in Silicon Valley? Yeah, I feel like fitness works everywhere, not in Silicon Valley, just because it's a shortcut and it actually gets you to think faster and sometimes you actually need a shortcut because the world is unfair. Sometimes you need a shortcut to move uh I don't know out out of whatever you are.

So, um it's okay to use shortcuts, I think, in a sense if you're trying to be ethical at the same point. But um I I think that uh it will it will stop working because being fake is u is really really easy with AI. So with AI everyone can can claim that they like understand everything like it's really really hard to distinguish a good engineer versus a bad engineer because now everything happens with AI. Uh same thing with like writing.

I remember when I wrote the the SF group chat, somebody in the comments literally literally posted is this AI or not and tag some bot and then the bot analyzes like 100% not AI. I was like wow I didn't know that such bot existed. Oh my gosh. But unfortunately or fortunately Wait, but it's nice.

It wasn't It wasn't AI. No, it was me. You So you wrote all of it. Yeah.

That was a really good read. Yeah. And there was like oh this means I'll read it. So people already do that and I wrote this essay about like basically being fake before the group chat and it didn't really go viral and when I showed it to a bunch of friends they were like nah I don't I don't know but then I I kind of like saw it like happening with my other vest that actually got viral the first essay like the group chat but it's like a person literally checked if it's like AI or not and said okay if it's not AI I will read it cuz then it's not slop.

That's crazy. Yeah. Oh my gosh. This is like okay this is this is definitely happening.

So probably it will happen with movies it will happen with games some there will be like handcrafted stuff like authentic stuff and there will be like just entertaining stuff like like dig like meta or you name the company after the metaverse. There will be like digital fake stuff that is just really engaging and most people like with porn like they just like like it and they'll just use it. But I think with a lot of uh other stuff they will be still like premium like I don't know handcraft stuff or like authentic stuff. So now people are actually going to be a lot more like gravitate a lot more to like non AI things and if they like there should be like labels it was basically both right.

So it doesn't mean they will not use AI things. I think when it's just it's just like it's just there would be separate segment of people who are not like using. Yeah. Wow.

You named your company after Ian Rance Howard Ror. Tell me more about that inspiration. Yeah, so the inspiration was basically uh based on a story of this person from the from the book who was basically an architect who has dropped out of a university and basically pursued his own vision and try to build skyscrapers while everyone was literally like building dark European classic buildings in New York. It's a fictional story, but it kind of like it is funny that it's similar to what work was.

Everyone was trying to build like web app builders, right? Or like vibe coding tools like cursor. And we were like, okay, mobile is the hardest thing like we should build like like let's call it skyscraper. Yes.

Really really hard. Skyscraper. Yeah. Yeah.

But then no one believed it. com. It's like four-letter domain name for like I think it was like around $20,000 which is like so cheap for like a four-letter do I mean that's a crazy expensive and we have a lot of people like saying oh this name is so hard to pronounce in English you can confuse it with work blah blah blah but I feel like it it is kind of unique now and people like really remember it's like kind of with Nike right people also say is it Nike or is it I always say Nika Nike in Russian we also say Nike Nike because it's Russian. Yeah.

But in in the US, I think people say Nike, but it doesn't matter because uh the product the product uh defines the brand and yeah, we have a great uh team that is building a great product. I'm really grateful for Yeah. You really you really care about your high like you really care about finding really good talent. Yeah.

This it's very important. Yeah. Yeah. uh especially like engineering I think we have like a great high bar because we have Levan and then it just went went from that okay and um I think it's also like important when you are we're basically we we grew to a million AR and raised $2 million as just two people initially right and then then we only added people and I think what we did as a hack is hire a bunch of contractors to test them out so we weren't actually two people, but then there were a bunch of contracts where are actually full-time.

So, we didn't like decrease our bar, but then we just hire like a bunch of people to help us and uh try to interview them full time that that way, which which kind of is a mess, but also it allowed us to move fast out of nowhere like achieve what we've achieved. Yeah. Wow. And now we have like 13 full-time employee, which is insane.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. And what's the bar for anyone who wants to like um work at RORO? like how how do you determine like oh the the barrier is basically we we just try to basically find people who already build great things.

So uh we found this company paper line that basically helped us basically build rock max and it was founded by two people Yenni Majerovski and uh yeah Max uh and basically he was b they just built the best desktop app uh to build swift apps as two unknown Russian people based in Bissi in uh Spain. So we just I just saw the LinkedIn launch. I just DM'd them instantly. " And they already in New York because we are kind of like a local success story.

Yeah. So uh yeah, got on a call with them and like a year a week later they were already in police with Leavon like like falling in love with each other and that's how basically we acquired their company. And the same thing happened with the founder of ASCLI. After we launched Rock Max, we gained 9 million views and doubled our AR in two weeks.

I I saw that. That was huge because I actually So I like I knew you before that mega. So I was like so happy for you guys. " Yeah.

Yeah, it it is it is it is it is growing super fast. like I really love it that rud basically wrote this best uh library for app store working with app store connect which allowed us to launch rock max publishing which is basically the way to automate your app store submission because ro can now generate screenshots scription everything for you for the app store. So yeah be because because he did that literally with like 10 agents in like a week like covering like I think around 2,000 API end points for app store connect. Uh he published it open source it got viral and then basically when we launched rock max it was like destiny I think.

So yeah all of this basically best talent it kind of flows to the best talent. So when you hire a great engineer, even if just one just like snowballs. So uh same thing with uh with marketing and everything. So Mhm.

but yeah, we're still like ex like I one particular challenge for me is just hiring in the US is like an immigrant is just to coming here and experience the group chat dynamics as well. But I feel like we're going to now we have like four people in the office and uh especially like hiring young people is a great hack because they have like high energy and when they work in growth they really really want to win and they understand the Tik Tok culture and like the everything like consumer. Uh yeah that's awesome. And another thing you said too is like if you're the underdog you have to hack the system.

Yeah. I think this is one of the questions if you're uh oh for the YC startup school the application for YC application. Yeah. They always asked like how do you hack the system?

How did you hack the system? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's really important to find like ways to really Yeah. It's all about like these shortcuts that I say like really important to not break the law or like or like do don't do anything bad. But yeah, shortcuts are great because they're a way to gain unfair advantage. And in an unfair world where a lot of people have a lot of unfair advantage, if you want to win, you have to like Yeah.

gain fair advantage somehow. Sometimes that means using short hacks and then like paying for them later because a short hack like a um basically uh a shortcut basically is is you'll pay for it later because it's a shortcut, you know, there's like tech de so for later you're just going to like like I did it to like save time but and then speed up. But how do you pay for it later? In what ways do you have to pay for it later?

Um I think it just fires back because so I think the best uh companies in the US and Sam Alvin talks about this a lot is just like built by people who are thinking long term and if you if you want to think long term if you want to win long term like on topic kind of now one opening up they focus on coding right the most important thing and then the other thing which just didn't matter because coding if you solve coding is kind of like agile at this point right so now they're worth more than an open and it was not obvious at the point, but it only requires like strategic long-term thinking. That's why I think a lot of missionaries win actually cuz they mercenaries they use like always think short term like how to get like Yes. quick wins like Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And sometimes you got to be in that mode too because if you're like I don't know if you're nowhere and then you want to get somewhere, you have to like do something quickly to to get out. But but then when you get to a point when you're like actually in a in a better like society where where where thinking long term is actually appreciative there's trust and where's this like I don't know protection of private property or something like that which we didn't have. Um I feel like um yeah thinking long term is great and when you do think long term you end up with much bigger wins and much healthier life and that's when you kind of like remove the shortcuts and when you don't think long term you always end up in this situation that's like that shortcut kind of like now says that yeah you basically did the shortcut then and now you're kind of paying it back but it's like whatever it is we needed to do Yeah.

Otherwise, like, how are you going to win? That's so true. Yeah. Well, actually, now I'm like reflecting like like I'm really proud of myself for like doing the shortcut with Shopify.

That was a shortcut, right? Doing the video for Shopify. Yeah, that was a shortcut. Yeah, yeah, it was.

I I don't think like when you do great work that goes viral, it's like a shortcut. I think shortcut is more of a like, you know, it's not going to work long term, but you have to do it anyway and get get somewhere and then quit. It didn't work long term, but it got me somewhere. That's true.

Yeah. What do you want work to look like in 5 years? Um, I think in five years we're going to be a multi-billion dollar company for sure and I think uh I'm excited mostly about because I think that's our story and that's the story of our users. But that's uh a long-term vision.

I'm not sure if it's going to be there in 5 years, but AI definitely allows it. And uh yeah, I think kind of like having sort of like built space but for for mobile apps is kind of like the idea like YC but for consumer. That's kind of the dream that I I wish I had when I was building consumer apps when I was 20. And uh yeah, it was it was basically impossible to like raise money for a consumer app or it's like if you raise you're kind of screwed because why did you raise VC funding for an app?

But there should be a way to like help people start more companies. And I feel like with venture there's like really really odds of success like less than 1%. So that's why you needed like a billion dollar outcome to actually get there. But with apps like the probability of success is like say 10% right.

So then you need there's uh to fund people you don't actually need like billion dollar outliers to like win you can have like 100 million and um you can also give cash loans to like fund profit cash generating like apps. So um yeah it's it's all exciting. I think this you need to build social lifts because that's how you social yeah you lift your yourself and other people out of poverty. Yeah, I remember I had this vivid memory when I was quitting my like physics university.

It was basically based under Moscow like in this town called Dog Prudiny and it's like a really poor Soviet town which they assembled like win the cold war and uh yeah put the most crack people there and basically the what I learned was like I living in a dorm because it was really long from Moscow to go there. So, and the dorm was like really really bad. And uh I was like I'm and I understood all of my peers are like geniuses. Most of them are like even smarter than me.

They won like international physics Olympiads compete with the US and China. They're living in poor conditions. is like why so many poor people or so many smart people are living like poor and their dream is those just go work for like Russian science which pays like $300 or $500 a month or move to like Europe ether UK or the US and then they get like a nice salary but it's like this is not how you basically win. So, I was I was just I remember I was sitting in McDonald's with my friends who are like software engineers and Yandex, Russian, Google.

And they were like dreaming like earning about like $2,000 a month or like 3,000. And and I was like I had an Android phone back then even though I grew up as an Apple fan, but it's a complicated story, but I had to buy myself a MacBook and an iPhone. And uh basically I I researched Google Play and it's like there's like a coloring app that makes like $20,000 a month and it's like a stupid app that was made by a person no smarter than us. What are we doing here?

And they were like no I don't believe we're going to win and yeah they just went and worked and I just like okay we're just going to build apps for sure. Wow. That was like the light bulb moment kind of. Yeah.

I think that's kind of the mission that I'm really excited about. Yeah. Well, I think for RORO, uh, we're going after small business owners right now. There's a lot of usage there and, um, there's a lot of like excitement about like building something for X like Expo, but for like Swift community and actually building Ror for Teams, but that's where we're Yeah, basically that's what we're going to announce later.

Okay. But I think I'm I'm personally really excited about this personal story because I think that's like vividly how the world is like changing now. And uh it's it's not happening instantly, but in the long term, this is the thing that's going to win. So if you think long term, you have to do it now.

Yeah. If you think in decades. Yeah. So So I I stopped doing shortcuts.

So Okay. At this point. Yeah. You've done enough shortcuts.

Yeah. But once you're if you're first starting out, it's good to have like think of those little shortcuts to make Yeah. I mean, not even shortcuts. You just try to build pet projects.

You pet projects. Okay. That's a good solve a problem for yourself. of building a game that you really like and then that gets you somewhere.

Uh yeah, I mean a shortcut I mean I also say that it's like a quick win. So uh I think with pet projects you don't really need to be a win. You can just do stuff because you like it. Then somehow it connects them.

If you don't just don't give up. Sometimes it takes eight years. I I like to post that uh I wrote I read in Andrew Chen's book this like takes on average it took like 10 years to get to a billion dollar valuation. I was like I'm on year eight like if you come from like Ror's initial like founding story is like probably like one half years but I counted like when I started and actually like if you think this is all the same kind of connected story.

Yeah that's really great advice for everyone to end this off. just think long term and just this is going to be like don't give up you like I mean you like you had so many roadblocks but you did not give up kept persisting and don't be like Russian people who don't believe like that they don't that they can't win and always ask yourself like what if you win it's like when when you think basically you're launching as repular people bowl people and then you're like um they're going to ship mobile soon it's pointless. It's like but what if we win? No, what happened?

You guys are winning. What What if we win? You guys are winning. Yeah.

Yeah. So, it's kind of crazy that Yeah. Just by asking this question, you kind of like change change your mindset a lot. And uh I say to this to this, it's so deeply rooted in you.

I have to say it to me every day like what if you win? What if you win? Yeah. What if Okay, that's so inspire.

I'm going to say that too. What if I win? What if what if I scale a really good podcast? Yeah.

And that gives you inspiration to like get going, right? Yeah. Cuz sometimes I'm nervous to say like I want to be the best at this cuz I'm like there's so many people like I I feel what if I win like what if Yeah. Well, a lot of a lot of people in DS say you got to win.

But I think when you say what if you win, you got to you get into this mood state. But yeah, actually for some reason I don't believe that I could win. But actually there is no reason to not believe it. You just try it.

And uh yeah, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I also can can tell like a quick story. Let's do it. I basically before doing this covers app with my friend Yuri that I lived with.

I I basically built this um when child gens like common J. It was basically a raycasti but for Chrome browser. basically a shortcut that lets you ask chips on any website and improve your grammar or basically if you're on stack or flow if you remember this website for like coding uh help you could ask like a coding question I remember vividly that we had this conversation with Yuri is like he he was like I'm using this only mostly for like fixing my English grammar and stuff so he went on to start like an like the like one of the largest like English learning app called fluently and I was like I'm only using this to like ask coding questions So, so if back then if back then I listened to myself and thought like okay maybe ch for coding could be interesting. Yeah.

Uh yeah I think um I think I think it would have been probably uh yeah just u starting in the space like around the cursor time but I I think to to do that you have to really like listen to yourself and that's like sometimes really hard just trust yourself. I think that's like the biggest trust. Sometimes some your subconscious kind of knows, you know, it makes all the decisions. It kind of knows uh the thing you're going to do before you're going to before you do it, but you kind of like articulate it.

So, you just do it. And that's I think that's I think what this connecting the dots advice from Jos because your subconscious knows and sometimes sometimes basically when you feel that something is not working out and you don't have the energy to get up, you don't want to quit. Sometimes it means like you have to just not give up. But then sometimes your it's your subconscious is saying it's like this situation is kind of not good for you.

You have to pick like you really but rationally you think it's like rational to continue but somehow your body is like bro this is not good. Something is here. Okay. Yeah.

Wow. And then you kind of like why am I depressed? Maybe I should just take meds. It's like maybe you just change like just trust yourself and just sometime you feel it about a person when you feel you need to immediately like fire them.

That's what I learned. So just like if you if you trust intuition on people it's really really hard if you think somebody something is wrong with the person just like okay this is this is something something is definitely wrong. Okay. And uh when hiring there's a lot of like mistakes like like that when you like don't trust yourself then it just like spirals out of control.

Yeah. Wow. You're really inspiring me to do to build an app, too. Cuz I'm always thinking like, what app would I build, but now I solve your own problem.

Yeah, I know. Because I'm learning French right now. I would build an app with like French learning. I'm so excited to try that.

Hopefully, I do. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much, Daniel. This is so great. And thank you.

Honored to be the first of podcaster interviewing you. So, this is amazing. Can't wait to release this. Thank you.

Yeah, I think you're a great interviewer and thank you. Yeah, and I I really um I really enjoy that. I basically also like found you online and DM'd you and can we talk about how that happened? Yeah.

Like you DM'd me about like Yeah. Yeah. That's how it works. I basically I was like searching for like talent that could like lead the next build space.

" Yeah. And uh I just DM people. That's what I kind of learned. Just see interesting people on Twitter or everywhere.

Just DM them. Just try to like Right. Come to that find like unspotted talent. That's because that's one of the short uh one of the hacks to win as an underdog.

Okay? Because all the like known talent is kind of like available. So you have to find like weird people that is like sometimes like our investor was like say why did you hire these people? Who are they?

But it's like somehow you're just like yeah you have a good eye for like Yeah. I I I'd like to think that. I'm not I'm not sure. Especially when when I don't trust myself.

I feel like this is like a bad trait, but I feel like uh I I feel like I have a good eye for like potential talent. Yeah. But then Yeah. It's also like there's another function just filtering.

I just have like sometimes I just really believe in like everyone and uh Yeah. Yeah. It's really good to inspire people, but sometimes just like not good for hiring as well. Yeah, true.

So, also like a great question.