From reluctant founder to $2B valuation: The story of Persona | Rick Song (Co-founder and CEO)

Brett: [00:00:00] before you wrote the first line of code for a persona, what was going on the year before? 

Rick: working on Square Capital at that time, square Capital was kind of expanding into a multi-product kind of category I was working primarily on risk. So, Audrey Kim was my product counterpart at that time, so I'd worked closely with her doing a lot of things around kind of, building identity fraud risk products and also generalizing that across like all of the work at Square. 

So it was a mix of the same thing. I'd been on capital at that point, and also working on around like fraud and identity stuff for four years. It was an extension of that, but capital's growing like a weed at that time. So I, spanned out, worked on some other products. I did a brief kind of like trip to New York at that time, meeting some of the folks that were out there. 

But at the very end of it all actually, there wasn't any like, you know, spark before, kind of like, uh, you know, that led to persona. Charles, who's my co-founder and my roommate for up at that time, maybe three, four years, he'd been wanting to a start for a long time. A joke I always told folks is that a Dropbox on iPod them. So he didn't know the travesty that like the startup journey never ends, but Square had already iPod. I'd [00:01:00] already gone through like the trough of, disillusionment and understanding that, every startup is a success until it's just a failure or something in the public market's eyes. 

And then, maybe you'll correct the narrative. I think Square kind of did, but you know, it's kinda like that. So Charles is really pushing on this idea of we should do a startup together. He had, the YC DNA in him too with the Dropbox. So he was all about it. So he's the one who actually had pushed us, to be like, Hey, we should go like just do something. 

I'd been doing, like identity fraud related stuff for quite some time. A lot of orchestration stuff with all sorts of vendors. we used to joke at Square sometimes that hey, there's probably some company in this, none of us have the ego or the uh, ambition to make it, but I'm sure someone out there will build something really great in this space. 

And I was joking with him. I was like, yeah, at least we can do this. In the back of my mind, I was also thinking at the very least that way when I go back and get a job at Square, it won't be like I went off and did nothing for like, six, nine

months. I'd be like, oh, you know, I was exploring all the same work I was doing, still relevant to my job. 

So that was honestly a lot of the impetus, what had led over to persona. it was just an extension of a lot of the ideas that were already brewing for maybe four years, five years [00:02:00] at Square. Just observations on what we were seeing on some of the challenges within this space and otherwise. 

Brett: what was the bit that flipped for you two when you went from just chatting about it to saying, okay, we're gonna go start a company. 

Rick: Charles was gonna go off and do start with someone else. At that point, he was like fed up with me. I had been telling him for like a year, you know, being like, oh yeah, I'm gonna quit at some point, right? 

Dragging my feet I was really happy at Square, like I'd been there for so long. I even had a quip that I stole from someone else there, which is life's too short to try new things. I was kind of heels dug in and he was like, oh, I'm gonna go think about other startups, you know, thinking about doing something else. 

Got little worried about that, and I was like, oh, shoot. So at that point I was like, ah, why not? Let's take like a six months of BAB goal. We had this packed at that time. if it goes nowhere. we, you know, would join the company together. 'cause we'd always wanted to work together in some capacity. 

It was just a question of like, would it be a start versus at a company together? And, uh, my thought was like, oh, why not? You know, I've been here for so long, why not try this? I'm of the age in which, you know, you get outta your system and then I'll go back and be a corporate guy for the rest of my life. 

that's kinda what led to it. 

Brett: So why do you think such a reluctant [00:03:00] entrepreneur, why do you think it's worked thus far? what I always have been curious about your story is it's the opposite of Silicon Valley lore, 

Rick: Oh, I mean, that's the grand question, right? That's, if I could answer that. all my existential, my imposter syndrome, oh, that would be in an instant. I, I thought about it. I have some theories on it. my immediate quip is, it probably a half of the valley is backward rationalization where 

like, Oh.

yeah, this all makes sense. 

Then after, you know, of course this all makes, how could you not tell? Right? I mean, I've joked with some people right now that regardless of the outcome of ai, it's all gonna be completely obvious in five years. Right? Like, how could no, no one tell that, you know, this was all a sham or the greatest thing that we've ever seen. 

Right? And everyone's gonna be like, how could those people back then could not it was so obvious. I mean, at the end of the day, this is kind of where my, you know, all the rationalizations come to. I think it's a combination of, there's a motivation factor of like what continues to push you. 

And there's a lot of ways at it, right? And I've seen all sorts of founders of different motivations. The second I think is uh, in the categorization kind of, insight or like just, if you are like [00:04:00] everything else, then the market already is kinda like discovered. 

It's efficient. So at the end of the day, everyone, if you're trying to find edge of any form, it's are you different from everyone else, right? And if the market pulls too heavily on one way, you know, it flips the other. It's kinda like that, right? So like when the, Silicon Valley lures pushed so heavily in one direction, I can kind of see a second kind of rise up. On the motivation factor side, I think a. Big part is like I've seen like founders get motivated by something like just they have to see this vision come out to the world, right? Some sort of product vision. Um, I actually think uh, a very fine motivation is just a desire to build a company. 

I actually think some of the best companies out there is just like a desire of any company and just in relentless desire to build that uh, mine, I think at this point is a lot fueled by the sense of duty or just a fear of letting folks down. I mean, you know this better than anyone, right? there's a lot of folks at Persona now who I've known for a long time. 

persona is the one that are more unique traits of it is just the long tenure. A lot of folks that have been for a long time. So I think that's kept me really motivated, just like making sure it continues. So that's kept it locked in, but I don't think like the lore, anything, all that doesn't really matter as long [00:05:00] as you have that motivation aspect. 

And then I think the second one's like, can you bring some sort of unique insight and not, I think the unique insight I have is that reluctance is fundamentally tied

to a certain skepticism and cynicism. When you're skeptical of like, this thing doesn't automatically work in effect. I think that's a form of first principles in which you're almost by default asking like why is like what everyone else thinking wrong. 

And that I think continually allows you to find some form of edge in like, I oftentimes tell folks that uh, identities a very long like, kind of deep space. It's been around for a long time, so to find edge in it requires folks to really be able to constantly like, kind of peel back the layers and find something no one else is thinking about, however small that edge is. 

And I think that cynicism helped, that reluctance has helped us differentiate. That's where I've kind of wound up at now. 

Brett: So going back to, you and Charles starting this company, you doing it somewhat reluctantly. You decided that given you had so much experience building a bunch of this infrastructure from scratch at um, square, you kind of had an edge in that space. What exactly happened after you two said, okay, [00:06:00] we're gonna go start this company? 

How did you figure out what to start with? What the first version of the product would be. Did you spend much time thinking about how fractured and fragmented identity was? 

Rick: So we knew how fragmented it was. that for sure, we were very well aware of it. The MVP part was hard. We knew we wanted do something around identity and at that point it was a lot of like just setting small goals. The first goal we had was if anyone would pay us anything, we're a game, right? 

And I think the first customer of ours was paying us like $50 a month. It was like the small e-commerce shop, like $50 a month. We were like, we'll build, exactly what you want. a lot of what we do is like, we build something and then, I think sometimes if you just keep on iterating with MVPs, you just end up with this Frankenstein of a product. 

So the second half is like, okay, can we generalize? You know, once you get to, it's like, can we generalize, take a step back, not keep on selling and see is there like, some sort of common thread between these two? But, uh, we knew it had to be something identity related 'cause we thought, one, we understood the space fairly well.

We thought there was a lot of kind of ideas around like PII, the vision of persona never really changed because the [00:07:00] grand idea was pretty much. There is an opportunity to build a universal, kind of like identity platform slash network. And that doesn't really exist today, right? Because like in payments you have like Visa, MasterCard, it enables everyone kind of collaborate, enables every single merchant to benefit from, you know, like shared risk intelligence otherwise. 

And identity was super fragmented. Every business, every vendor, every technology was all fragmented. So we knew that end state. 

Brett: so before you even started writing the first line of Code, the long-term play was to build this consolidated end-to-end platform and identity as just a broad, squishy idea. 

Rick: yeah, I mean in the sense that we knew that is a big idea. Like it's one of those things in which you know, for us, like we weren't creating brand new industry. It was. I feel it's like, that's why there's so many competitors in this space too. It's such a crowded space because I think the idea behind it is just so obvious, right? 

Like I always tell whenever someone new joins, I never tell 'em like, oh, we have a, market risk, like just identity's not a market risk company. It's fundamentally really an execution risk [00:08:00] and it's a very high execution risk because the idea is just so obvious. to me it's like kind of online payments where you can argue how large is it. 

There's also a question there, but is it a utility? Isn't it valuable? I mean, I don't think anyone ever argued that, of course. Like being able to just transact online has to be valuable from day one. And uh, I think the idea of like a real identity 

is very similar in which. Yeah, wanting to know who someone is and like, is there a person behind it? 

That's just a very kind of tried and true idea. And then the second part of that is because the idea is big, if there is a way to consolidate and like, you know, build a large business I think a natural offshoot of that would be a large business. that in and of itself, we never really had a question about. 

So like how it was nebulous and fluffy, but we never kind of had to like steer away from that. The question then became like, how do you navigate, you know, these infinite paths to get there?

Brett: Why did it not keep you from starting the company? why did you not just say it's in some ways overfunded, there's too many competitors and thus it's uninteresting. 

Rick: I think the benefit of not having an expectation of success made that really possible. my thought at the time, a lot of it was, I'd rather do something I kind of understand than like just completely something [00:09:00] random and then afterwards go back and try to explain to everyone, you know, oh yeah, I learned a bunch of stuff about something that I'll never use again. 

And that's great. So that felt as if I was just continued deep in my understanding on something, that joke earlier, life's too short to try new things. I was like, Hey, I've done so long of like identity, why not continue understanding it but better? And the second half was just, we had so little expectation of getting anywhere. 

raising any capital at all, I think was like, Kind of cool. I can't believe that happened. And I think on every leg of the journey, even today, I'm very surprised of where we are. But I think that lack of expectation made it such that, you know, you can kind of continue along with it and continue to try to push on this space, continue to try to develop it. 

Brett: okay, so we took a little bit of detour, but you had the broad direction you were gonna go, and then the question was, where do we start? and you mentioned you started with this e-commerce company and just did whatever they wanted, where did the, company come from? Why did you care about going and building a widget for them? 

Like what, What's the whole backstory? 

Rick: we'd actually met y'all. We just got out of our YC interview at that time. I think we weren't planning to do YC regardless. we didn't wanna drive down constantly. 

[00:10:00] And at that time, you know, we were like, oh, I don't know. I don't even understand why exactly. We didn't wanna do, why see? But one of our good friends, I mean mutual friends, Nico, he actually wrote our entire application for us. And he submitted it, I gave some like, light feedback, like, Nick, I'm not doing it anyway, so just try it. 

Right? So I went down, we drove down that day, did the interviews, we're on our way back up. I think we stopped at a coffee shop. 'cause a friend of ours,

like, hey, one of my friends, he like runs a small e-commerce shop, they knew to kind of like age verification for the things they're selling, right? 

So we're like, cool, you know, put us in touch and we like chatted with them. And that's actually our first customer. Like, just at that coffee shop. I called the guy, he's like, you know, like, I'm only gonna pay like 50 bucks a month. And I'm like, I'll do anything like 50 bucks. That's more than zero. 

We're at zero right now, so I'll take that deal. 

Brett: so you had, not written any code at this point, 

Rick: We'd written some code because it felt bad to do nothing all day. So we'd ran a lot codeless to deploy. We had like the base of an app. We'd ran like a bunch of like just small MVPs and things like that. 

Brett: but void of talking to customers or anything, just building 

Rick: yeah. But like we knew, you know, as both [00:11:00] of us are engineers, we're like, there's just a, that like finite 

stuff Yeah. Like you have to deploy, you have to have like some database out there. You know, you gotta, like we had sign up, GCP, we knew kind of had some base of a deploy system, some testing at that time the joke was like, might as well, you know, every single day like build out a foundation that just does something. 

But I think this was like maybe a month two in which we were chatting with him and like one of our first goals was just if we can get any, cus if anyone's paying us anything, at least like we can go back and say we had one, you know, we had one person paying us. So, I think we stopped there and then at that point we kind of like really started revving and like started building something for him. 

Brett: what did you hear from that customer and what did it lead in terms of what you would build? 

Rick: So that was kind of interesting at that time. 'cause like what they needed was kind of like age verification. because like a lot of their uh, segment were, um, younger age, like 18 to 22 in which you have a thin credit profile, like database based verification would be tough.

the same time you're buying like, you know, something from e-commerce. I think one of the bigger challenges then is like, you know, the speed of it has to be fast. Like you can't just like, you know, like wait for a long time. So, a lot of folks with [00:12:00] submit, submit government IDs, A lot of law of government IDs, right. 

Uh, That would be submitted. So we were like, okay, let's take a look at the state of the art. A lot of the state of the art at that time was like getting a person to actually look at it. And, you know, that could take anywhere from like 30 minutes to an hour. So. That's kind of our first impetus for the first proc was like, let's just automate that. 

Like, let's see if that's actually possible. So that became kind of the impetus for our first, you know, core Pro, which is government Id like verification in a fully automated way. And that kind of led to another customer who was like interested in that technology but viewed it more so, uh, from a fraud prevention perspective where they're like, oh, I could collect government ID to do fraud prevention. 

And we started like introducing biometrics as a way to kind of help stop fraud as well. 'cause like comparing the phase to kind of government ID would be a double kind of like pseudo two factor kind of approach towards a physical identity verification. So that was kind like the evolution of like where the kind of platform evolve. 

But the benefit, one kind of crazy thing we had at that time was, I think as soon as we got that e-commerce shop, the position of the business was we will never get two customers who do the same [00:13:00] thing. And that I think was kind of really wild at that time. I. 

Brett: Why did you choose that? Right? Like the obvious conventional wisdom is you wanna narrow in on a customer profile and then. Focus on that customer profile for months or years, and then move on to the next customer profile. You obviously did the opposite. 

Rick: I think a lot about like these days, I mean a much more personal reason why I think that was the case was even at that point I don't think we had been, we've become fully convicted that like there was any business here. I almost feel as if I was, far past our series A before I really kind of realized, oh shoot, this might actually be somewhat of a real thing.

At that point I think I was always under this feeling of I don't think this is real and I just need to figure out why this actually is not a real thing. you know, it's like we're living in some fantasy land right now and like there's not a real like actually long-term business here. 

We're just gonna get far, somewhere and then we're gonna just hit a hard wall. So I think at that point, what I was really trying to prove to myself was like this idea that something universal that could actually go cross platform that's just a farce. Like it [00:14:00] doesn't exist. 'cause like a lot of identity prior to this is very verticalized. 

You have all sorts of businesses who are all like, you know, they all have this idea of we're gonna build this universal thing. But in reality it oftentimes just a vertical like, hey, we generally focus on fintechs and like some maybe payments in particular, we generally focus on this. So I had a very strong conviction like, they all probably are right. 

I just don't know why it's not possible yet. I was like, let's just get that outta the way. Find out that there actually isn't a business here, so we can stop wasting our time. You know? Uh, Vincent, the first person to join us, he like flown down, was living on our couch at that point, and I was like, Vincent, need to go back to Seattle. 

You need to go home. You know, like, I feel bad that you've like, come out here on this startup, so let's like spend these next three, four months and we'll figure out like why this is a terrible idea. There's nothing here. So, uh, yeah, we had this whole thing and like, even, you know, after a couple more folks joined, I think the first bit was all about like, is even possible close customers across in Berkeley? 

Can we figure out how to speak to each one of them? It was really kind of, it didn't make a lot of sense that times, but uh, I think a lot of it was driven by this idea of it's better [00:15:00] prove that this doesn't work sooner rather than, you know, continue to like uh, fool ourselves. 

Brett: what's the story behind the first five or 10 customers that came after it? And what was the actual product that you were selling? ' cause the first product was this quick um, government ID verification product that you sold to this e-commerce company? 

Yep. And then how did you end up with the next handful of customers and was it the exact same use case?

Rick: I was really no, same use case. Like, has to be different use cases and it had to be different industries. So we really pushed on that 

Brett: but it was all because you wanted to invalidate the idea as fast as possible, not because you thought it would be the most likely way to not become a verticalized niche player. 

Rick: So I said that a lot. Like that's what I said back then and I reflect on it a lot 'cause I, you know, these days you go through all sort of self-reflection of who you were six years ago. I think, like I said, that I was like, oh, like the only way we can actually prove that this is actually big business has to be that. 

when I think like, in self-reflect and like introspect, I think the real reason was more [00:16:00] because I really kind of wanna prove like that, you know, I don't know. I was like so scared of like just wasting everyone's time and like pretending as if there was something big here. ' cause yeah, I mean. 

The reason why I've intersected so much on that was like, I think the rational thing would be, Hey, we should do this. Like, and like first like talk grow, and then we'll figure out those problems later on. But I don't know, I mean, the early days was so much about like invalidating core, kind of like long-term problems as opposed to like just trying to get off the ground, which was kind of insane. 

But uh, that's why I say I think actually in, in truth it probably was driven by this personal feeling of, I don't know, I just didn't wanna like spend like four years on this, realize that there was like a dead end of a company and then like have to go tell all these people, I'm sorry I was wrong. And like I've been lying to all this time that there was this like grand vision and I understand this grand vision. 

Brett: So do you think that approach in those first few months is actually a good approach that other people who are starting companies should consider doing that? Even if you kind of did it for maybe the wrong reasons? Or do you think it was somewhat anomalous that it happened [00:17:00] to randomly work in this thing that you're trying to do at Persona? 

Rick: Every great business I think has an atypical path. All of 'em, every single one of 'em. 

There's something kind of like unique and I think about that. 'cause I think the core of it is that you just like, if you like start doing what everyone else is doing, there's just no, you know, there's no edge anymore. There's no opportunity. So I

think every business, like at the end of the day, there's something atypical about, I don't think many people go down this like. 

Heavy, kind of like invalidation path, but there's also like great business. I mean, one, I always uh, hear what was it I respected? Tremendous balance, rippling, like Parker Conrad's approach on rippling was the, we're gonna build like consolidation from day one. We're gonna build a massively ambitious platform from literally series A, not launch for multiple years. 

I have a good idea of exactly what we're building here. We're not gonna talk to anybody and then we're gonna unveil it and like really just go and like it's taken off. Right. And I think that's a crazy approach. A lot of people are all about like the lean MVP, 

whatever. I think like any kind of approach, if it's differentiated enough. So the second half is like, can other companies do it? And I think that's where the founder [00:18:00] personality probably comes into play because I think for many others, especially at Persona, when they hear that, like that was kinda our approach in the early days. 

It's not like, oh, that's insane. It actually when I've told some of my close friends about this outside of work, they're like, yeah, that sounds like something you would 

do. And I think that's kind of where it comes to is like most likely whatever approach that works your business, it'll probably sound like something you told your close friends. 

It'll be like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Exactly how you'd probably approach the 

problem or think about it. 

Brett: let's go back to the story of the next handful of customers. Like what did you build? How did you find them? 

Rick: one of our customers uh, we'd the first engineer who joined us, bill he'd attended one of the first round events and he was talking with a another company here. 

And, you know, he was like pitching like, Hey, we do identity verification. You know, and like, that's actually how he found the next one. I think. Uh, They

were within the uh, marketplace space, you know, uh, helping kind of, connect parents with sitters. And, you know, they needed to do some things around like fraud prevention, background checking. 

So that was actually how we discovered the next customer for us, which was, Hey, all right, well, you know, and then we kind of iterate on the platform. Adjusted kind of like the core, kind of like a 

Brett: To meet their [00:19:00] to meet their needs. Right. a lot of that became kind of later on, I mean, this continuous iteration of like, you know, we work with a uh, there's a crypto company in which like their core consideration really was about the global onboarding and streamlining kind of K-Y-C-A-M-L. 

Rick: So that was very different from both the age verification kind of fraud prevention approaches. So we kind of like had to adjust the platform kind of, uh, meet their needs too. and I mean, I love the customer where there was a FinTech customer and theirs was similar to the crypto one about K-Y-C-A-M-L, but like with kind of variations. 

They were much more US focused. And they had a demographic they were really trying to serve. So we partnered with them too. 

Brett: When you were talking to those customers and sort of effectively building a custom solution or maybe. Half of the solution. You were repurposing your existing infrastructure and half of it, I guess you were just spinning on the fly for them. when you were talking to them about being a customer and talking to 'em about the product, even if it didn't exist that you were building, was there a lot of pull from them? 

Like they were telling you they have a lot of pain, this is exactly the type of thing we need, [00:20:00] or like what was the reaction you were getting from those early customers? 

Rick: they were all small. I mean, one of the bigger challenges early on, we, you know, we all came from kind of like a tech industry, so we'd also met a lot of larger customers and we got a lot of nos. They were like, we're not gonna work with a seed stage startup on like managing personal information. 

There's just no way. Right? Like we are, you know. Borderline public, you know, there's no way. So we got a lot of nos back then. So at that time, working with lobbies early companies, I wouldn't say they had a burning problem, you

know, they're, they're a startup usually. Like a couple founders, a couple other folks working with them. 

They hadn't really had a team dedicated this, and we could definitely talk to 'em. It's like, Hey, we're just effectively an outsource identity arm for y'all. 

Brett: That's what you said to them. 

Rick: I mean, we didn't say exactly like that, but it's like, you know, we talked with 'em exactly how they should think about their problems and we're like, we can adjust our platform to meet that. 

Right? Like, we understand exactly what they give. Kind of really a the first salesperson who joined us, Dan who now does product here, he told me You were Challenger Salesing people before. They're, you know, but without reading the book. And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking [00:21:00] about, dude. 

I don't read. if you've ever read a challenger sale, I think that's what it is like we're really just trying to understand their problem and then proposing a solution and being like. If your game, that's the solution we'll deliver for you. And that's kind of like what got them kind of through it because they were looking for advice. 

I mean, identity is one of those spaces in which you're probably, if you're early, you're not gonna hire someone to focus on. Identity is just not within like your first 10 or even 20 hires, except for very specific spaces. Generally you're trying to find park market fit, just build out core product identity is kind of an auxiliary thing. 

And having someone both provide advice. 'cause you know, I understood a lot of the problems within the space at that time. Provide advice, be genuine, like, you know, honestly from a pricing perspective. Also just very generous pricing. And like building trust on delivering that solution. I think that I think resonate a lot. 

And like many of those customers, especially the ones who are still operating, they're still with us. 

Brett: were you concerned at the time that when you went up market, no one was interested?

Rick: throughout our series A, that was a major concern for me, right. Was just like, is it even realistic? Like that became the next, after I kind of had a settled on the [00:22:00] idea of it's probably possible to go horizontal and like try to go after many industries. 

Um, I think after about like 10 or 20 customers, we did this grand re-architecture 'cause we'd realized like everything had gone too, kind of, you know, uh, bespoke. So, uh, we created this whole versioning system of like our products. Like now 2.0. No, it's not an external thing, 

it's just internal. Like we have to refactor it all. 

But after that, like kind of refactor the next just constant concern for me was this myth of like, oh, we'd be able to like just level up and like, you know, this idea of we'll start small and get slightly bigger customers, slightly bigger and slightly bigger, that would probably die. So that became like just, we were constantly wondering about it and I think we were kind of able to get through it because even today, I mean you just never really stopped selling, right? 

Like for the largest customer, I mean, I'll be on a call at 9:00 PM tonight with a prospect. 'cause uh, I'm always wondering can we push that next kind of type of archetype of customer and someone's always kind of pushing towards can we grow up market? So, yeah, I mean we were able to kind of like, I guess, staircase our way up. 

But it was for a long time before I [00:23:00] realized, and even af once we started getting like later stage startups, we started wondering is it realistic to work with like public companies? Is it, you know, and I mean there's still a lot of uh, major industries, I don't think we've broken into still today. 

And I still wonder, is it possible. 

Brett: Were you worried that you were just creating a consulting shop for identity as opposed to an actual products company? 

Rick: No. Well, the reason why I say no is uh, at that time I didn't think so because I didn't really care if it was a consulting shop or not. I was like, eh, you know, if we get a customer, that'd be great. And the second one is how we were pricing them, was like, we're pricing a product. You know, that's why it was so unbelievably like a good deal is that, I mean, we were just the cheapest consulting shop and like the product itself, like as long as we had faith that we could like repurpose it, I wasn't too worried.

Like, it wasn't like we're just building a brand new solution every single time. It really did feel as if there was this organic evolution. And even as we're building things, we always, in the back our minds had an idea of, oh, I could see how we could like, you know, reconsolidate these two into a generalized kinda idea. 

So there was never really this idea. [00:24:00] The solutions were never so far apart. And because we had the vision that one day all these identity operations, all these identity verification methods, this whole identity platform will all sit together. It never fell as if we were like doing wasted work. 

Brett: When you think back to the first few dozen customers, did you continue to just take anybody who was interested in what you were doing, or at some point did you develop a point of view? 

Rick: So we had two types in which we probably would not work with. Identity is like a very census space. There's a lot of like regulatory, legal kind of pressures in it. Sometimes I think some of the asks were I'd probably say like, not kosher, probably not within our wheelhouse. 

So. I'll, I actually will never forget 'cause the first customer, I mean this might have been customer or potential customer number three or four, they were offering $5,000, which, you know, when you're working in the land of like 50 bucks, you're like, holy moly, 5,000. I won't say what their ask was, but the ask was weird. 

I was like, and I remember Tony Charles because we were at that time like, holy Cru, that's like, I mean, we'd be able to tell everyone a hundred x growth. Think about a hundred x growth month over month. I mean, we at this point, you [00:25:00] know, we're joking that we could, like, we'd be in Google and like a hundred x every single month. 

We had Google Scale in no time. Maybe, you know, 12 months. I don't know. I remember we were like putting in like a Google sheets pertaining how fast if we could just keep getting it. The next one's, you know, 500,000 just continue. But then we're, once we heard their ask we're like, this is really weird. 

And I'd feel, I wouldn't feel good doing this. It took some confidence to turn that down. I think what we had said was like, I mean, 5,000 still isn't enough to pay both of us, so, you know, this doesn't, it's not worth it, man. Like we shouldn't do this. And like we turn to each other and we're like, yeah, we're gonna not work on this one that you guys can probably find something else.

that was a test of character for us. We're pretty proud of like turning that one down. I know it's not a lot of money, but we were pretty proud of that. And I think later on that helped at least like set the foundation for once we got bigger as a company. There were a couple other really large opportunities where, and at this point it was actually meaningfully sized opportunities where we're like, this is weird. 

I don't think we should do it. So those were ones we always turned down. The second types were ones where It [00:26:00] strayed a little too far from like what we thought would sit in this unified identity platform. I don't know. Quite like Exactly. So it's like there were a couple things around, like more so like, what about this person versus who they are? 

We always knew like if there's an identity platform, but we should always focus on this core question of, are you who you say you are? And like, you know, with all that, like all these other additional things. But we knew that like the question that we didn't want to answer is you know, things about you, right? 

Like, are you know, credit worthy? Are you a background check? Like, because of my work a lot on Square capital, I knew. Pretty in depth that there's a hard separation between are you who you say you are versus, you know, like, hey, should you have access to something and all of that. So there were a lot of ask then, which really helped us narrow our scope and make sure that we didn't ever get into, you know, too wide of a vision. 

So whenever, if else, if someone's asking for, to say a background check, we'd be like, we're not background check provider. There's a lot of really, really great businesses doing that. But we answer the question of, are you who you say you are not? You know, should you have access? So that helps narrow the scope sometimes, 

Brett: So then at call it 15 or 20 customers, what was [00:27:00] the shape of the product at the time? 

Rick: We had a bunch of modules, which like a lot of like, just these modules and I think like we'd sometimes hard coded, especially for some customers, like, Hey, these modules sit together for this person's flow. Already. For some customers, we'd already built out some rule logic to be like, Hey, you know, like if it's, you know, if they had this configured for them versus this, we had a whole concept called a template, which is every single business had a template, which now like runs everything on our business.

Every single thing is a template now, but we had already built up this concept of a template. It would be the generalized idea of what specifications they have for all these modules and how they'd all orchestrate together. But we'd also had a lot of hardcoded stuff where it's like, I can't figure out exactly how to logic this 

right now. 

Or the logic engine that we first started with to do all the orchestration wasn't powerful enough to support them. So, you know, we'd be like, if it was this customer do this, and at 15, 20 we were pre, we realized this was like you on wieldy. So we kind of stopped, pulled back a bit on like continue hire on. 

beyond uh, Dan who, I mean honestly at this point, didn't really operate as a sales. He was like product [00:28:00] plus sales. Once we hit that, we were like, Hey, we really need to like rethink, recalibrate, re kind of do the platform at this point in time. 

Brett: were you just doing founder-led sales for those first few dozen customers? That was sort of part consultative, part sales as you 

Rick: yeah, absolutely. I mean, it would be Christie, our CO still with us today, but like, you know, she was the fifth or the third person to join us Christie, myself, Dan, Vince, like. I mean, honestly, the whole company kind of at that point, like almost everyone was on sales in some way, shape, or form. 

But yeah, I was for sure, 

Brett: at what point did you feel like we might have product market fit, and how do you define what product market fit is or was? 

Rick: that's the grand question. my sassy answer to that is product market fit is, does, is the, will the product be large enough for the you know, for your investor expectations of how large your product needs to be? Uh, And if that's the answer I wonder all the time, I don't know if I've ever really found pro market fit. 

I'm always, because, you know, you're always like, oh, is there real? Are you really gonna hit the size and expectations of, you know, what all your investors have? So, [00:29:00] and by the time you even get close to it, at that point, if you waited it long enough, your existing investors will, you know, push you to already go and like expand the vision anyways.

On those ends. I don't know, like really, it's like I knew, I would say around probably at towards the end of our Series A in which like, you know, we're about a hundred customers at that point. I knew there was a business here, I don't know if it's a venture scale business, but I was like, this is a business. 

Like, you know, and in all honesty, I don't think we ever wondered, could a business be built in this space? It's can you build a massively massive scale business? And that I think was uh, I probably am just starting to feel that that's possible now. Within the last year or so, I'm like, yeah, I think there actually is really, really something big here. 

But I mean, it took a long time. 

Brett: what changed? What did you see or what changed in your thinking that caused you to think that now there is a real path here. 

Rick: A couple of things. I mean, a lot of like the core risks had disappeared, right? I mean, you know, the stat we saw in share is like three of the top five largest companies in the world. It's like work with a persona and like now. I do believe, you know, we may not have figured out [00:30:00] all of our go-to market messaging, but I do feel there is a way in which persona can work for every single thing. 

Like my core two big risk was, is it possible to build something that universal, horizontal across many, many different use cases? And two, can you do it at scale and like what the largest companies find this to be valuable? Those two I really do believe are true now, and I think persona can support both of those. 

The second one is really like, I think this question of who is someone online has become more important than ever. If you believe that AI and agents are going to be so powerful online, and what you really can't differentiate is as a person like, you know, online anymore. 

I mean, there's nothing really stopping. I genuinely believe that like, within the next two, three years, you won't be able to differentiate human behavior from age agentic behavior. CAPTCHAs are already better solved at this point than uh, by ai. like zero shop models can already solve some of these. 

Like, oh, we're gonna randomize the challenges you're solving. They're so good at this. Right? You're watching like, you know, oh three, tackle the arc challenge better than humans at times. It's really quite incredible. I think what we're gonna

start [00:31:00] seeing the internet move towards in my belief is it's not a question of. 

Are you a human or a bot anymore? That's just an irrelevant question. The behavior, at least is not possible distinguished. It's really just gonna be if this is a bot who's accountable for this bot and who are you who's like in charge? I mean, all internet traffic, all activity, someone's accountable for it. 

Some human at the very tail end of it is the person who's like, this is my thing. And that has made me really feel as if this future in which like who online is gonna be really important. 'cause there's a, longer term existential question of how important is it to know who is someone online? 

Like there's this question in my, the back of my mind, like beyond these two, a far larger one, which is what if everything online, like maybe one day who are you, just doesn't matter. And now I'm watching AI and all that. I'm like, no actually. In fact it's the opposite. That's true. Which is who are you is the only question that matters probably. 

It doesn't mean that you should de anonymize the person, but you have to be able to trace something back to like, yeah, there's some human at the very, very tail end of this. 

Brett: Let's sort of go [00:32:00] back to kind of those first a hundred customers. What was going on with the pricing model over that period of time and were you worried that like at some point this sort of consultative sales or sales motion has to map towards an A CV that's not $500? 

Rick: of course. 

Brett: Because like there's a difference between somebody's finding value in the product and somebody willing to pay you for that value. 

And if ultimately a customer was worth 300 bucks to you, it'd be very hard to make a fantastic business out of that. 

Rick: so I think that we did get a couple of larger customers at this point. You know, ones who are paying maybe a couple tens of thousands a month. That had helped kind of, and that was somewhat random to be honest, in which, like, we just saw a customer in which they were like, oh shoot, this is great and we just need someone to do this.

They were still rather early stage, but like the prom for them had become so big and like the amount of modules that we built out, like they were, they just really found a click with the platform that time. So at some point, I actually, I don't remember exactly when, but I don't know why we were never really too worried about will someone pay enough for this? Um, [00:33:00] So that never really kind of had crossed our mind. I do think the consultative sale process that is, and I think will always be a worry for me because it's a really hard sales motion. And there's a question of like, can you scale out this sales motion? this goes to a, much broader kind of challenge, which is if you're trying to sell a platform, like inherently selling a platform means that your overall go-to market messaging becomes like really tricky. 

And in particular, it becomes hard to scale because like, it's no longer just, this is what we do, but instead we help solve this entire problem, then you have to help solution people to show how the platform can help solve that. That inherently means that you can't, like, train up as many salespeople. You can't like scale out a go to market team. 

There's just all sorts of complexities involved with that. That I think will always be a concern on like how large and how quickly can you grow. I don't know. I, I don't think, like, I've never really kind of had the thought of like, oh, you know, like that shouldn't be the way that we sell things. 

Brett: Maybe talk more about like some of the things you figured out in bringing a true platform that can do many different things to market versus, you know, a single point [00:34:00] solution. 

Rick: the first one I'll, I'll reiterate on is like the go to market motion for selling platforms is fundamentally different. One of my core beliefs now is that you pretty much have to do a bit of like founder engaged, like almost at all scales. You will, the founder will never be fully disconnected from sales because like understanding the, it's no longer like, here's the simple thing that solves this problem anymore. 

You always have to understand like a platform ATS core is solving not so much like, you know, a core problem statement, but rather entire suite of different problems, right? Like the value of a platform is that it's dynamic can solve many problems inherent within that becomes there is a solutioning nature to all of your sales process and the solutions people are looking for will probably continuously evolve.

So if you go towards the platform motion, I think that you will never really leave a founder engaged sales motion at any sort of scale. I mean, going back to rippling again, 'cause I, I can't, I think Parker's just incredible, at least as a, founder, he, forever engaged, right on sales. 

I mean, you look at this guy, like he is [00:35:00] consistently on Twitter on always, always, always trying to understand, what the buyer problems are and what business' problems are. So that's one. It's like I've become, you know, sometimes I. As a founder, especially as a technical founder, you're like, oh, maybe one day I can like stop being, you know, on the sales side of things. 

But now I'm like no, no. I think like if you're gonna build a platform business, you will never stop. It's very important to continually understand and like the problems evolve constantly. I mean, especially within our space right now with ai, with, you know, all sorts of new regulations with legalization, you are just always gonna be like in the process of like, understand problems, translate back into how the platform can solve it, add in the building blocks or you know, whatever kind of components, whatever you wanna call them in your platform to make sure you continue to meet the needs of like all the new things out there. 

And I think this has a really challenging translation to how do you scale out or go to market motion around this, because your top level messaging will be easy. The top level messaging will be like, I can solve all your problems around identity for example, using rippling again, it's like you're all in one hr, it, you know, finance solution. 

That gives you an all-in-one kind of messaging, but [00:36:00] once, like no buyer's buying all in one, right? Every buyer's buying something that's like targeted towards them that you're all in one can solve. And training folks to be able to always connect those two dots is really, really challenging. Not to mention the more powerful your platform, the more things you have to train salespeople on. 

So like you're almost constant on catch up. So enablement as a result becomes one of the most important things. Making sure that you can scale out how you kind of, teach out your sales team. And the second thing that uh, probably becomes even more important, like a lot of times if you have a PLG like single product motion, you can scale out sales and like post-sales, oftentimes you can figure out like a more scalable solution for it. 

Post-sales becomes just one of the most important thing for any sort of platform engaged solution. Because even if you're able to like connect the dots on like,

hey, here's how my solution translates over the implementation, the support model, all of that becomes so, so, so important. I think a lot of businesses, especially ones who have like, I mean one of the most complex platforms in my mind is the Palantir. 

Like their platform is just unbelievable. Can build anything you could possibly imagine. For them, like they have such an innovative like [00:37:00] go-to-market emotion in which they blended and like re-architect rethought truly from first principle's idea of what sales and post-sales is. They've really made that far more nuanced because I think the more complex your platform becomes, the more customized, the more your go-to market motion entirely will we differentiate probably from any other business out there. You won't be charting on like the same te you know, you will not engage on the same path. There's not really a tried and true motion you can copy anymore. Hiring people will suddenly become very different as well because if you hire, say if VP of sales from one place to another, they're gonna also have to learn about, hey, this is really different. 

Like, you have to hire VPs who are comfortable with, you know, flexibility and like evolving their existing conventional wisdom. A willingness to, kind of think things from first principles with you on what an entire go-to market motion looks like. So platform businesses, I think like, you know. 

All products aside, which I think has its own set of challenges. But I do think you can kind of map and like figure it out. Um, On the go-to-market side, I think it's gonna be super uh, it is hard to [00:38:00] overstate how differentiate your go-to-market motion probably will end up looking for any sort of platform business. 

And that becomes hard to explain to all sorts of people too. 

Brett: On this theme, I think, conventional Silicon Valley advice is sort of as you begin to scale, you wanna get out of the consulting and customizing business. So you sort of standardize the widgets that you're selling and you standardize the way that you sell them. over the last year or so, you've always had a highly consultative element. 

Into the business, but it feels like you are going in the other direction, which is you want to go as hard in this sort of consultative style of pre and post sales. Maybe talk about like how you landed on that.

Rick: There's a lot of, I would call like pseudo platform businesses. And when I say platform business, like I have to kind of like define that. I mean, to me a platform business is one which you have multiple products that are truly like independently used, ideally by many teams. 

Like, you know, um, you are just not like a single skew. I think like a lot of businesses are effectively single product with maybe a constellation of uh, features that are also being sold to and like that you can upsell, but like, it really is this [00:39:00] single kind of like, product, right? And generally this product can either be for multiple use cases or one use case, but you know, it's really kind of like the core product that you have. 

I think the difference of a platform business is really you're selling a whole suite of products to solve some ambiguous problems. Companies have. And you're mapping multiple products into solutions for every one of them. And the product mappings there probably will be pretty kinda like dynamic and ambiguous. 

And I think that kind of overall setup is really quite different. 

Brett: So what was the story behind your first one or two real enterprise customers? 

Rick: I mean, the good news for us, we didn't have to change much of our go-to-market motion. 'cause effectively what we were doing is enterprise sales for startups, which, you know, incredibly scalable. So, that didn't change too much. like we had a very large company engagement since the early days of like, oh, we'll build all sorts of things like in our DNA was, we'll build things for new deals as necessary. 

So there wasn't also this like cultural misalignment of, you know, if you go down a [00:40:00] platform trying to build a platform, you oftentimes, I think for product side you have to have a more re a culture that's more uh, comfortable with reactivity, right? So that, I think like culturally too, like for enterprise, oftentimes the big like shock I think for businesses in which like they're very heavily PLG into enterprise is suddenly your roadmap, all your planning, how you think about the product becomes a lot more reactive and oftentimes that creates all sorts of chaos. 

But we didn't have too much of that problem 'cause we're already

doing that for startups. The first enterprise deal for us depends on, you know, how you define enterprise. But I would say our first like large, you know, like multi, multi-billion dollar company that we're working for. That one I think was a $5,000 contract for a year. 

It was the smallest thing, but we were like, we just, you know, again, the insecurity of all like, gosh, we need to just get someone who's big. So we like built something completely custom for them. Charles actually built it completely custom plans 5,000 a year for it. And I think he spent a good couple of weeks. 

I mean, if you're talking to ROI that's as negative as I guess. 

Brett: why Did 

you choose 

to 

do 

Rick: that? 

We [00:41:00] had to get it. I mean, we were just like, you know, it's like this, like the staircasing of like, Hey, could we find, you know, could we get this next thing? Could we even do it? It was, we had no one, so we're like, Hey, yeah, of course we'll do it. 

We, we wanna just see if we can like actually close someone of that size and they would trust us. 'cause one of the other kind of like outstanding questions was, would anyone trust the company so small to deal with such sensitive information? 

Brett: What's the type of thing that was built for them? 

Rick: it was something for Japanese identity verification, 

Like. 

I mean, and there's, it's really crazy stuff for Japan.

Like, like, for example, all their ID cards these, they don't use a Gregorian calendar, right? So like we had to do a lot of custom work to make sure, even for like Japanese day parsing making sure that it respects Imperial Calendar there and all sorts of aspects. I think we also had built a module for them around you know, license plate verification, which isn't used anymore. 

It was like a very temporary thing, but I think that's how we got our foot in the door. It was like, you know, we're just like, yeah, well, we'll build a classifier for license plate detection you know, if you'll work with us. And I think that at least [00:42:00] create the relationship so that way we could continue to work with them on other projects as well. 

Brett: And so did it look like you, in whatever way got connected with this customer and you were just rooting around for anything that they couldn't find somewhere else that you could build for them? 

Rick: Honestly, yeah, as long as it was like even tangentially related to identity. Like, I mean, the license plate stuff was like effectively not related at all, but it was the same team. So we're like, oh, you know, it's good to be able to just work with them. And frankly, I think, I mean, we'd gone so many nos up until that point, I mean, you could stretch the imagination of what makes sense anymore as long as it was something technical that didn't require, you know, like 

too much I probably would've said yes to. 

Brett: Were you able to take that customer and turn them into a platform customer? 

Rick: Yeah, no, that was the other big unlock. 'cause I mean, they're one of our largest partners now. We continue to work with 'em today. 

Brett: how did you go from this Japanese license plate widget to them being a full persona platform customer? I. 

Rick: well, part of it was like after that they were, they came to us with more and more problems. And I think that's one of the core things of why, like The solution component becomes so important is either you push the [00:43:00] solution upfront, like early on in the process 

Brett: talk more about what you mean when you say solutioning upfront.

Rick: um, solution upfront, meaning like, helping them like craft out, Hey, this is all the problems we're gonna solve and this is how we're gonna solve it, right? 

Like, the same motion that I talked about from the earliest days of the startup in which, you know, we were like, what's your problem? This is how we propose to solve it. That's really fundamentally solutioning. You do that for all enterprise deals, right? Because like for enterprises, it's very rare that they're coming and saying like, I want this proc. 

Usually enterprise motion is more like, Hey, I have this problem. Who is some the person who's gonna help me solve this end-to-end? And now you come into this process like this is how we are going to solve it. And you're proposing effectively a custom process. 'cause for them, they want the whole process kind of like solved. 

They don't want just, you know, like, oh, we'll figure it out ourselves. that is kinda like the fundamental solution part. It's like we will explain, hey, these are all the parts of persona that we have and this is how we solve our problem. Here's some things we're missing, but we will commit to building that, you know, whether contractually or otherwise to help you get like this end-to-end thing done. 

That I think like for usually you're either gonna do that [00:44:00] whole process really upfront in which like, you know, for companies in which you line in larger contracts, earlier I mentioned Palantir. Palantir would be a business in which they do a lot of that upfront. You could also do that like kind of, on the post-sale side in which like you first get something small, prove out value, and then gradually work with them to continually solve more and more problems. 

We fall more in that motion in which like a lot of our long-term kind partnerships emerge over time through doing a really great job proving out value and then them coming and thinking of us hopefully increasingly as a thought partner in which we can help them continue to solve more problems that are like adjacent with overall space for 'em. 

Brett: It. It seems like one of the dreams in building a software business is if you can be your customer's trusted confidant in and around your space, and that they're constantly coming. When they think of a problem, they think of coming to you with that problem, and that's sort of how you get NRR. That's sort of top in class I think.

Rick: I think that's definitely the dream, but I think in practice, the hardest part of that is the connection back to uh, engineering and product and design, like the culture to support such a thing. 'cause like if a customer comes to you [00:45:00] and they're like, Hey, this is a burning problem. Effectively what that means is, yeah. 

The roadmap we had, I. Ignore that, that's gone, right? Predictability is out the window. So it requires a culture that really is comfortable with that reactivity. And a lot. That's why I think like a lot of businesses in which, if you start off with like a single pro motion, which it's like, oh, feature this, feature that and like every single quarter you have like a very clear idea of this is exactly what this quarter will look like and this is where we're gonna wind up. 

That I think is why it becomes difficult for them to become this trusted confidant. 'cause you're never gonna move fast enough to actually seize on an opportunity they have. Like if a customer has a burning problem, they're not going to wait a quarter for you to go and like roadmap and plan this out for them. 

So that ends up carrying this motion in which like simultaneously, if you're going into a deal, you have a huge opportunity, a huge enterprise deal, but won't match that. You know, whatever your cycle planning length is, everything kind of falls apart. 

Brett: And so what does that mean for how you run roadmap and engineering at Persona? 

Rick: I genuinely think almost every single thing that we build for one enterprise is almost always universally applicable. Maybe not to every single customer out there, but there is at [00:46:00] least. 

3, 5, 5 x the opportunity that one thing that we build benefits others. So I think that also helps a lot of folks kind of, uh, feel good about, 'cause it's like not, we're just building one-off solutions. More often than not, it's a generalizable thing that every single customer will benefit from, or at least like some subset who are solving some type of problem, right? 

If we build like some sort of fraud solution here, it's a really generalizable fraud solution oftentimes. The second I think that helps with it a bit is yeah, you have to know when to say no. Like, sometimes, you know, it's like we are just at capacity. And understanding that is important because, you know, at the end of

the day, knowing, I think a really core part of it's, you just have to know where the company's sentiment morale. 

Like, you know, state of it is because it is really tempting. If you're confidant for all these companies, their laundry list of things that they can come to you with is infinite. I mean, they, you know. They have an infinite number of problems, which is great because that's a lot of opportunity for you to continually have ideas for your roadmap and on what you can build. 

But yeah, I think like burnout, like making it such that the company cannot scale, like not support everyone becomes a real problem too. and there's a lot of finite problems on scaling too. Like, how many kind of a people you [00:47:00] can add because the platform gets ever increasingly complex onboarding, continually like without, you know, streamlining things and, you know, encapsulating things. 

I think we still had a lot of work, actually a persona to do on these ends, but we are trying to be thoughtful and invest in it. Like the onboarding becomes ever more complex too. Especially to learn about the entire platform and make it such that, I think one of the bigger challenge, especially on the product side, is can you enable folks to be productive and be able to like um, build things without having to understand everything else? 

And I think that's both an architectural challenge as well as a product design challenge. 

Brett: you've developed a very rare. Commercial sensibility as somebody that's super technical, starting a company for the first time, and As long as I can remember, you've been as interested and obsessed with go-to-market pricing and packaging product strategy as you are with building something that solves the needs of a customer. 

I'm interested in like, how did you develop those muscles? Like where did that come from? 

Was it something you were always curious about? Like you were the type of engineering manager that was curious about the whole [00:48:00] business and that allowed you to develop those sensibilities? 

Rick: I've now seen it emerge a second time for a whole different function, which I'll share too. But I think a lot of it was self-doubt because I don't think this is the thing I catch myself a lot on, and I think it's very natural for a lot of

founders to do it. But I definitely am not like well, I was gonna say, it's like I don't think I'm unique I definitely fell prey to this, which is, it's really easy for myself to be like, Hey, this is something I don't understand. 

And because I don't understand, it's probably not important. actually early, early on I didn't care much about sales. In fact, like I uh, I had told Dan you know, our sales product person this thing in which, you know, he was like, you really need, you know, like the most important thing for startup sales. 

He was like giving me advice at that time. I was like uh, and I have this whole perspective, which I, oh my gosh, I hate myself for saying this. I can't believe I thought this way. It's like one of those, like when you're 16 and you just can't believe how you thought. I think I had said something. 

I was like, if the product's good enough, people will buy it. 

Brett: But that's still a lot of founders say that. 

Rick: yeah, and I mean, I was saying that because I was like, I just don't need to learn about sales. Like, I was trying to like, I think at that time, the reason, like, in my head I [00:49:00] was saying it because I think I genuinely, part of me believed it, but the real reason I think I said that, and again, like, you know, the, maybe this is all fueled by self-doubt and some degree of like, self hatred or something, which is I think I said that because I didn't wanna learn about it. I felt as if like I've gone far enough in life, like on the technical side, like that's the secret of being, you know, like to me and like where I've gone to those things, I don't need to understand like, yeah, just 'cause I'm ignorant on it, it doesn't actually matter. 

That's probably what I was thinking at that time. honestly, after having said that, I kind of caught, I think whether, I don't remember exactly how, but I was like, am I just trying to be like intentionally ignorant to like not learn something just so I can like preserve my ego? And then, you know, I was like, oh, maybe. 

And that became actually a huge insecurity, which I think helped me. At least want to understand it better. And I still don't think I'm very good at it. You know, like just I haven't spent nearly enough years or time at it. But understand that I probably am actively trying to avoid it has now made me almost over adjust into like trying to be hyper attentive towards it. 

And that can help. And I mean, this is emerged again because there's a period in which like after, you know, this whole like understand commercialization the

business side of things, I had a period in which I was like, [00:50:00] I don't need to understand the financial, if the business is doing well enough, you know, the financials will prove themselves, right? 

Like, why do I need to understand? I mean, these days I check the markets all the time and try to understand how to think about valuing companies, understand about, you know, like, multiples and you know, like what's best in class and are all like, just how do investors think about things? But there was a real period in which I was like, that knowledge is pointless. 

Like, you know, if a business is doing well enough. The proof is in the pudding. And I think, actually there's a lot of businesses at my stage right now and founders who think the exact same thing. And they're like, why do you have to understand like the markets, why do you have to understand like investor dynamics? 

You need to focus on building a business and the business good enough will prove itself. And I think that's just insane. It's like, yeah, maybe you could get there, but why? Like, be proud of your ignorance or something. Like why aim to be ignorant? Um, but I mean, I, think that's crazy. 

'cause I think about that. I'm like, oh, the whole time I was always under this impression of, oh no, I'm past that. Like ever since the whole go to market thing, I don't need to, I don't fall prey to that anymore. And I caught myself doing that for honestly, probably multiple years in which I continue to think that way about like the financial side of things. 

And then you now I'm like trying to deeply understand that a little better. But that's probably, it was like catching 

[00:51:00] myself and realizing I was celebrating my ignorance. 

Brett: how did you learn about the commercial aspects of the business and develop sort of these sensibilities in a bunch of your. 

I find a lot of your most interesting thinking is around the commercial aspects of the business as opposed to the technical aspects of 

the business. 

Rick: thinking sometimes is pretty interesting.

Brett: I'm not technical enough to know, so 

Rick: No, 

Brett: bias 

Rick: I'm messing with you. I'm 

no, that's 

actually all Charles these days. I don't think, honestly, uh, these days actually as I've understood this stuff better, I've become a worse engineer, 

which kind of bothers me. But You're sales. I, Hey, I'm on. I haven't been doing that for a little bit. Got worse there 

Brett: Uh. 

Rick: Yeah, yeah, 

Yeah. No, Anna on our side. She's, She's a wizard. I mean, part of it's the in intent to learn, but other ones like just, I get a lot of reps now on like deals, right? And like, just obsessing over why we, like, why this didn't work. 

Honestly, I think it's actually the core of almost becoming. An expert on everything is to not oversimplify. I think like, you know, another thing I think that was very common within or just an observation I think about sometimes like so common within the valley for founders is this obsession with [00:52:00] frameworks. 

Like everyone loves, like new frameworks and new ways to think about things. And I think like frameworks as a way to like expand your thinking is very helpful. But more often than not, I find people using frameworks as a way to almost like constrict and like almost shortcut their thinking to be like, oh, of course. 

Well this framework says this, so you know, the details don't matter anymore. And I actually see this a lot amongst engineers too, in which you apply like these wide generalizations to not find the understanding of a detail. And I think to master anything the core of, it's not like reducing something down to these like overly generalized frameworks or axioms, but rather.

To understand the nuance of why this worked in this case, but not in this case. And you see this, I mean, for professional sports too. Like I watching like some of these interviews with folks like you find like the details that like professional athletes care about are usually so minute you're just like, that's insane that you like obsessed over that small thing to find a um, to find an edge. 

But I think that's honestly like the trick of it is like, for me, for like having been on so many deals, obsessing over why did we actually lose this and why was it that the thing we did [00:53:00] before did not work in this case? And I think if you continually think of things that way I don't know if you'll become good, but you'll find a lot of like unique insights. 

And those unique insights eventually will emerge into at least you were differentiated on it. 

Brett: so to sort of expand on this, when you poke at the way that you think about building this as a platform business versus a point solution business, like what is the origin of that Think. Where did you, how and where did you develop that way of thinking about the business? 

Rick: I mean, the first one was. This idea. I actually I think I told about this to you like very, very early on was all these companies that we would like just constantly celebrate. They're so small in comparison, you know, like these giants and you've actually, like, we think about that first chasm, but it's like, what about the second chasm in which like, very few are able to cross 

that one too. 

And that original thought emerged from it was actually a joke a bit self-deprecating of one, but I think when I was at Square at that time, I was joking with someone once that uh, 

have we ever thought that all of our work at Square is smaller than Microsoft Word? 

Like everything we've done, all of our efforts we're smaller than [00:54:00] Microsoft Word. Like 

something that. 

Brett: just smaller, I mean a spec.

Rick: A speck, right? Like, you know, like, and like Microsoft Word is just a speck in Microsoft's universe and it's like a speck of a speck. And I think at that time we were joking about like, you know, the sci-fi movies in which you realize, I think it was like Men in Black or something. 

You realize your entire universe is actually the locker for someone. Or I think there was something like that. that original thinking was original, like what led to this idea of we celebrate all these specs and like somehow we are not a. Observing that none of these specs have like become this grand thing and just we're all praying that one day we'll be able to become it, and we have no idea how, we just think it'll happen. 

So, it's almost like this idea. That's why I kind of, I think a lot of founders all say this of oh, you have to be first principles minded. Like, how can you be a first principle thinker? But to me a lot of it, if you translate in that another way, it's actually the avoidance of like generalized frameworks and like, just, you shouldn't, I mean, I think you should learn frameworks, but like the reliance on framework is really, I think the underlying of what actually is more important there. 

' cause first principles, I mean, everyone will say they're first principles thinker. It's a very, you know, [00:55:00] like of course I think with like no bias, but you know, then at the same time, oftentimes anyone who I hear is a first principle thinker. They're very into frameworks as well. And to me there's some sort of uh, inconsistency between the two there. 

Yeah, I mean on, on the, on that overall thought, I think a lot of it is like finding things that break the pattern. Things in which, like whenever someone says, oh course is the way to do things. Trying to find the counter example. Why is that just not the case? Another example I have, I can't remember who tweeted this, but I love this tweet so much. 

It was something about like great companies hire great people. The best companies can hire anyone. And when I read I was like, that is such a, you know, such a banger. It's so interesting because, you know, again, that's another like Silicon Valley line, which is you just have to hire the best people, right? 

But if you look at like the biggest and the best companies out there, it feels like they can just hire anyone in the world and they'll make them kind of successful. And I remember, you know, like the subsequent tweets was like, the best companies can turn any person into ROI positive where like, you know, like

great companies, you have to find someone who's like really good and like bamboozle them into like producing ROI for you. 

I mean, great companies, they [00:56:00] don't care who you are. You're gonna find value anywhere. But it's like lines like that in which it inverses the thinking or like just frameworks that break the rule. You know, everyone talks about great culture, but like there's companies that don't have great culture. 

And I'm not saying you should build one without that, but like, understanding the art of like building a great business oftentimes is. Everywhere. It's not like the set frameworks. It's like the combination of all these things that come together that create something really unique that all seem to just click and work together. 

Brett: It's funny, I was talking to a founder that we worked closely with last week and they were talking to somebody who's an incredibly well-known had a 10 year run as a president of a very well-known company and, you know, he was bringing him this problem where he is building as go-to market function and he is finding it hard to find the right sellers and the president, his take was like. 

The goal is that the system that you build is so good that you can hire anybody and make them a successful seller. And he's like, and I don't mean that like in a hyperbolic sense, like I have and believe that I could walk outside of this [00:57:00] building and if I found anybody outside that would work hard. I am confident in the system that I built. 

This company does two or 3 billion in recurring revenue that I could make them successful at our company. 

Rick: So 

I was talking with Zach, our VP of sales, about this. 'cause this was an interesting one. We have a, you know, a go to market kind of advisor who uh, he shared with us that he had a so he was the former CRO of like a massive, massive, like B2B company, right? Former CRO. And he said something about like how he had a 95% hit rate for being successful in hiring. 

You know, like the immediate impressions of, my God, this guy must have an unbelievable read on people. I was like, Quip, you know, we were joking, I was joking with Zach. I was like, alternatively they've created a system which anyone can work at. I mean, it could be either or, you don't know. I mean, you

just implicitly assume that, you know, the person like is just has a great eye, but they got, honestly, the more likely of the two is the opposite in which they've created a system in which probably they can make anyone successful within it or have reduced it down to such a degree in but I think of that a lot, which is like just the inversion concept in which usually it's actually like when everyone's like all [00:58:00] on something, the edge, the value probably is in the one thing that's the exact opposite of what everyone is kind of looking at. 

Brett: what does it actually look like as you're trying to learn and figure these things out? Is it mostly studying other companies? Is it finding people in these subdisciplines who actually have gen generative sort of original thinking or first principles thinking what are all the inputs to sort of the output being we're gonna build our platform in this way, or we're gonna do this versus that. 

Rick: You know, honestly, I think it's a, so it's not the latter. I'm notoriously bad at like finding a. Mentorship. I've tried many times. I mean, you always hear like these stories of like these great mentorship ones and stories of like, oh, they've helped develop each other for so many years. I'm just so bad at it. 

Like, I mean, it was a huge insecurity. When I was at school, I was like, and I, there was a period when I was like actively trying to reach out people, but I'm like a bad mentee and I don't know how to like, engage 'em so awkward and I couldn't figure out, you know, how to ask them. I feel as I'm wasting their time 

too, and I don't understand why they would wanna talk to me. 

So [00:59:00] I've never been good at that. Even today, like, you know, when I wanna go out and ask someone for advice, I'm terrible at going out there and asking. Like, unless like the question's very pointed, I know exactly what I want out of them. Like asking general feedback has not been effective, at least for me personally. 

I've seen a lot of people who are so good at that and I honestly think that many founders by nature tend to be folks who are better at that, but I'm not, and I've never been. It's more so the former and I think and like going out and like just 

trying to find the counter example, and I think a lot of that honestly is fueled by almost a, I like to tell folks I'm a kind contrarian, I'm pretty nice about it, but like, I like to prove there are people wrong in some way, shape, form, or find something in which like, it doesn't quite make sense exactly what they're saying. So, I mean, even the example earlier of like, you know, with about like hiring salespeople, it's like, it's oftentimes trying to find whatever that doesn't meet, kind of like what we're all, you know, what we're saying here, just to show that

like, whatever the problem is, it's more nuanced and more complex and there probably is a hidden variable that we're being overly generalized about. 

for companies, it'd be like, and whenever people are saying like, Hey, this is the strategy, [01:00:00] like finding something that's the exact opposite, whatever that may be, that does not match the pattern of the strategy everyone else is saying, you know, a product building or strategy or like roadmap or anything. 

It's like, can you find something, which it doesn't operate that way and it's still massively 

successful and 

or, you know, otherwise. 

Brett: be most people say, just focus on your customer and ignore the competition. I. I think that's another thing that you think is just immensely incorrect. 

Maybe you could talk a little bit about that. 

Rick: it's like honestly tied to this thing kind earlier of like, it just feels like intentional ignorance. I get like the perspective where it's like, oh, you know, then they're biased. You're thinking, but I mean, gosh, if you have to like bias, you know, like protect yourself from bias by like putting on blinders, that just seems insane. 

It's like I have to cover up my eyes so that way, you know, I can like actually have creative thought. That just seems bad, right? I don't know, it, it doesn't make too much sense to me. I think ' like competitor obsession is bad. I suspect where that advice originated from is probably it's really easy to be sucked into just being obsessed with what your competitors doing. Because you know, like there's the competitive [01:01:00] nature of building startups. Like there's this natural pool towards constantly watching everyone else. I mean, I kind of like could feel a subset of that too. 

Even like for non-com competitors, like you hear all this fundraising news, this company's growing faster than you and like no matter what, like this whole space is fueled by insecurity of some way, shape, or form. So I bet that original advice, like you obsessed too much on competitors, you'll just get sucked into a hole and never think about your company. But again, I think like you need a certain level of maturity and like in which you can just pull yourself out That for

the same of like not paying too much attention to, you know, other fundraising advice, but still learning about like, hey, this is the story they told that was kind of really effective. 

And trying to pull out things that you can learn from that for competitors I think is the same thing in which, in every single space, especially if it's competitive space, everyone's trying to solve this problem together. There is almost a pseudo collaborative kind of nature in which every single person at the end of the day, if you can pull back the idea that like it is a finite, you know, like kind of a zero sum thing. 

We're all trying to solve the same world problems out there. And in that sense, there is a kind of collaborative nature of it. Learning from others, I think it's important. To me, it'd be the equivalent of saying I don't read kind of like a, you know, I'm a uh, PhD who doesn't read other papers. I don't like to [01:02:00] understand. 

I like to rediscover calculus on my own, you know, Newton, that guy's, you know, poisoned my thoughts too much and now I can't think of, you know, non-Newtonian calculus. I think that just sounds insane. So I think like a lot more for every single company you're building on the shoulder of giants, it's just a question of like, can you learn the things that are important? 

And I think for competitors it's absolutely one of those things in which they're the ones who are the closest to your problem as well. And you should absolutely be looking at what prior artists or you know, the state of the art on their end. 

Brett: how do you actually action on that? Or what does it look like? To not be competitor obsessed, but to be competitor informed or aware of what they're doing. Like What does it actually look like for you as the CEO of the business? Maybe, you know, over the last six plus years. 

Rick: Well, so in the earliest, it's different in the earliest days to where it's at now, the earliest days. A lot of it frankly was just reading about everything on every single competitor just to understand like, are we doing something that someone else already has done? Right. I think it's honestly a little bit similar probably to I have a couple of close friends in academia, and it's kind of similar to the academic process in which. 

Just finding a problem that like some other person, some other [01:03:00] PhD hasn't done already is really hard in practice. So oftentimes for the PhD, the first whole bit of it is just understanding the state of the art, the, like the problem

space you're in to find something different that some no one else has really kind of tried to do already. 

So I think the earliest days it was that like trying to find every single approach as many of them as possible understand that hey, this one might have not worked for X, Y, or Z reasons whether timing or approach or team dynamics, who knows what. But just calling through as much of like the overall space as possible so you can at least develop a unique perspective. 

And uh, I think for a lot of stage founders, that part they don't like because. It's really disheartening because you realize quickly that it's hard to have unique ideas out there. Like almost every idea you've had, someone tried in some way, shape, or form, and your final, like, unique idea. Uh, again, mentioning academia as an example. 

Uh, one of my friend, uh, close friends had said pretty much like the final idea you end up with and academia ends up being like just minutely different from the last one. Like, It is so hard to push, especially for like popular [01:04:00] spaces like AI research. Like it's hard to come up with super novel ideas. Back in the day, I mean, these days you're in a whole golden age, but back in the day it was hard. 

So I think that's like in the early days, I think like these days it's a lot more just keeping informed on like, hey, this is like a cool thing someone's doing right now. And like. It's working to some degree, but there's maybe some challenges there and you know, is this something that we should either be looking at from partnering with them or, you know, building something and like that's competitive because we believe a different approach might be more effective. 

Would this be something that's effective within our market segment? And I think even looking at adjacent industries is really important. I oftentimes tell folks that a lot of our learnings these days is not from like, you know, just like identity verification companies from cybersecurity. Like cybersecurity has a long, long history of threat detection and like it's fundamentally and this bad actor kind of, you know, detection of bad actor game. 

There's a lot of philosophies there that I think a lot of folks in identity, the identity space oftentimes just doesn't look at and they think of it more as like an adjacent space that's not really tied to it. And I mean, I think it's a lot about that. It's just like keeping informed on like what's kind of [01:05:00] going on.

In a way, I would kind of almost give the analogy of like, it's the evolution from being a PhD student trying to write your thesis into becoming more of a professor in which like trying to master and just stay up to date of all the kind of new innovations happening. 

Brett: Do you have sort of higher order thoughts on what makes markets well set up for a startup to go after and has a chance to build a very large business versus markets that tend to be more challenging? is There a dominant strategy that allows a company to get outside of that stranglehold of, I guess it's competition or sort of something else? 

Rick: So honestly, I think tech as a whole, like just the startup market these days is so wildly competitive no matter what you pick anymore. Like, um, I thought a lot about like, why is technology so hard now? And like I do think, I mean, as someone who like kind of entered the tech space in like the, you know, the early 2010s to now technology is wildly competitive. 

And I think a couple things have changed things. The first of which is we're at the kind of tail end of the [01:06:00] smartphone, you know, innovation cycle of like, just amplify everything. There's some app for it all. Like everyone's tried everything. Second, there's so many more. Engineers now, like engineering used to be a scarce resource. 

I don't think that's the case anymore. Not to mention, I mean, AI's making everyone be even more capable than ever. Watching some of the junior engineers how fast they develop now, like engineers are so quick on developing. I feel as if there's engineers in which It took, you know, I've spent 10 years at it. 

I mean, in two, three years they're all already caught up to me. And I think that's just crazy of how fast, like people are growing now. So engineering I don't think is a scarce resource anymore. And I think the cloud has changed everything. I mean, back in the day, like capital became a huge constraint to prevent companies from emerging. 

Now, you know, as long as you have the cloud, you have the opportunity. I think some of that might be the thesis of first round. That's all happened now, right? So, these days I think every market's hard as, honestly my take, I think effectively building a start breaks down to one of three categories. And those three categories is either number one it's a brand new technology and you are going to just compete with every other company trying to figure out how to like, you [01:07:00] know, like.

You know, take advantage of this technology. I mean, AI was this, there was blockchain prior to that. And I mean, for ai, they are so, no matter how you look at an application of an agent, no matter how insane there is someone else also doing it, and they are just as eager, just as excited, working just as hard. 

I mean, I hear how hard some of these like AI companies are working now and it's crazy. I mean, they are. It is so, so, so competitive and you see all of them kind of going at it. We saw the same kind of emergency blockchains there with so much talent. The second kind of category I think that you have to go down Figma is my favorite example of this. 

It's a company in which you effectively compete against a giant that just it, it seems insane to compete against that giant to me. You know, it would be like saying, I'm gonna like redo Google Docs or like beat Microsoft Word at their own game. Right? And there are a couple of companies there that notions done 

that Figma has done that in which it's a huge upfront investment and you are gonna go on that journey and believe that with your under-resourced kind of product, you will be able to eventually take on something that has. 

Infinite more resources than you. And that's a really tough game. 'cause I think it's like, [01:08:00] usually those type products require like a four or five year kind of like heads down sabbatical kind of thing. And you'll go at it. I think the third category is the category we're in, which is a legacy space in which there's a bunch of competitors, so many competitors, everyone's still been at it for a long time and you will out execute. 

But the underlying theme for all of these, the execution has become more important than ever. And it's not so much about like idea discovery or like untapped market discovery anymore. It's just a question of pick your poison on how difficult you know it'll be. But I think every space now is really challenging. 

Brett: What does execution mean? 

I feel like it's a word that, just got out, executed. What does it mean? 

Rick: Honestly, I was gonna say it's just time investment plus like, uh, time investment ability of like, you know, quality of kind of output plus time investment. And generally now you need both. You need like, you know, quality ideas, quality kind of output of whatever form. And now I think it's just incredibly high time investment.

And like, I think time, like investment of time of how hard are you working in comparison to someone else is just real. Like you have to, like, if you're, you know, I, you [01:09:00] can, in the past I think there just weren't so many competitors in every single space. People oftentimes could over time shift and adapt to their own lane. 

But these days, I mean, you almost always have a borderline direct competitive one in which there's a very strong pressure in which you have to find out some way. Maybe your output of ideas is just consistently better than someone else. I think that's tough. Everyone's so talented. Now, there's again, no more scarcity of inputs anymore that it's usually more so like just time investment's hard. 

So I think almost every market is challenging now. And then at the end of the day, like even if you invest the same time, then it just becomes who has like consistently better, higher quality ideas at a faster clip and is more adaptive than you. 

Brett: Now that you're six plus years into this are there things that you haven't shared that you just think for other people, the engineering manager at Company X or company Y that's starting to build a company are just things that you figured out that might be worthy of them thinking about that might be useful in their journey and kind of going negative one-to-one. 

Rick: So I met with Kareem from Clay yesterday and we [01:10:00] both isolate on one thing. 'cause I actually asked him for some advice too. 'cause I think Kareem's journey is. Truly, Truly incredible. And like, you know, just to give a recap of it, clay, I mean, right before we were talking, like they didn't start off with the product they have now. 

And unlike for many other startups, they went through constant iteration, a lot of discovery before they finally like, just overnight found like the fit and it all worked out. But like even all the technology there, a lot of things they built plus like the cultural learnings and everything that took, I mean, six years plus probably to like lay the foundation there. 

And I'd asked Kareem at that point, like, how would you get through it? Like, that seems insane. I mean, I don't think I have the uh, the, I don't have the mental durability to last like that. And I think he shared something about, it's a lot about the journey itself. Like he's like, I just ask myself every year, am I still having a good time?

Do I still like doing this? Am I, the reason why I'm doing it is still why I'm doing it? And if I were to give advice on, it's like. Trying to think about, like, especially early on, it's so tempting to always think about like, oh, where's the destination gonna be? [01:11:00] What's the destination look like? And I oftentimes think people who are really obsessed on like the destination of things, they oftentimes really struggle the most as a founder. 

There's like a almost a weird aspect in which like a lot of founders uh, tend, I mean, not all, there's always exceptions to rule, but like one thing for a lot of founders is that they have a tendency in which maybe they're. I mean like A less planning oriented, that's not like always clear exactly where things are gonna wind. 

There might be a little bit of, you know, like a spontaneity to like the thinking of it all. I think that the reason why that someone exists is that folks who want to know what's next, it will be really hard. And like, and especially if you are always trying to plan out, I will do this and then this will, you know, this is what I'll gain from it and this is what's going to happen next. 

I mean, the star journey becomes so tough. I mean, that's why I'm so impressed by Kareem oftentimes. 'cause like I think those six years you're constantly wondering like, oh, this goes nowhere. Like, what am I gonna do next? you have to exhaust all those sauce and just not think about it. And some people are so maniacal about wanting a company, they can just ignore all of those. 

But for many, I think it's a very tempting thought of like, oh shoot, if this all fails, like, what's next? And like at [01:12:00] 60 years, what I, how am I gonna explain all that? That's hard. I think the way to get past that really has to be like, Understanding, like really taking the journey for what it is. That's what I've kind of found out of all this is for me, where I've derived a lot of the meaning of the journey is from all these folks who've I've had the opportunity to work with for so long, but also see their lives evolve as a result of this business. 

From seeing folks have multiple kids now from seeing folks get married, from seeing friendships emerge and like best friendships of like many years. Seeing all that and realizing that this business has been the vehicle to enable that has at least made this very fulfilling for me. 

And, you know, continues to feel like making me wanna protect and make this thing continue thing to create all these dynamics outside of work, frankly, that have become really meaningful to me.

Brett: Who's the person that's had the biggest outsized impact on the way that you built the company and left things, you know, imparted things on you that's sort of a big part of the way that you build the company. And I thought maybe I could, point you to somebody to talk about, because he doesn't get a lot of airtime, which is Charles who's been [01:13:00] kind of your co-conspirator and other half in this company. 

Maybe you could talk about him and kind of what's unique about him and what he's taught you or infused into the company. 

Rick: I think Charles is really the heart and soul of the business more so than I the thing about Charles, I think like beyond like being like an. Like Peter Natural, like, technical talent. And I mean, I really think even today, I think people underrate him and how technically like excellent he is. 

I mean, truly like, um, a person, you know, I think especially for engineers, they'll know is Evan Wallace over at Figma. Like that guy's an unnaturally good like engineer, like truly one of a kind. I think of Charles in a very, very similar class. I just think he's like, just not as public and his humility under like to such a degree almost will make it hard to ever, ever over rest. 

You know, like to overrate him, he's incredible in that. And, but I think I, I mean, look I've known the guy for so long, I don't know which part of it's, it's either he's not aware of how incredibly talented he is, which it could be. 

I mean, that's, you know, [01:14:00] he's, I think actually probably my understanding of Charles now is he doesn't care. He genuinely doesn't care about Like it is not about like how good he is. He doesn't care about what other people how to, how he stack ranks or compares to others. I think his great talent is actually, he just wants to do great things 'cause he enjoys doing things well and like there's such a purity of taste and like just wanting to build something great because of nothing else. 

No final thing. Just I want to be good at something and I'm, I, it means something to me. And I think that unleashes such a. Creativity and how he approaches prom fearlessness of like, whether he's right or wrong, he doesn't care about it. I'm guilty of all these things. I mean, I've shared so many of like just my own insecurities and reflections of how so many of my decisions despite me trying to rationalize and pretend as if it's something different. 

It's fundamentally driven by, you know, some, like much deeper insecurity or perspective on myself, especially as I reflect on, I'm sure it's happening even

today, Charles, I never feel that's really been the case. Like for him, whenever you realize something, it's purely off that intellectual understanding of it. 

And I mean, many people at persona [01:15:00] often say this, like, Charles has achieved a certain zen that, I mean, all of us aspire to towards you know, sometimes I think people think I'm very cynical, which frankly I am. charles for me, gives me that hope that like, its very purest form of like, if you're able to achieve and understand it all, like have that zen people fundamentally are good and unbelievably kind. 

He makes me feel that way all the time. I mean, he's one of my best friends. We've continue to talk every single day. I haven't gotten tired of the guy hope. I'm pretty sure he is tired of me. I'm not gonna, but he's too zen to 

No, 

No. Right. Like, you know, oh my gosh. 

And he deals a lot from me. 

you know, I'm trying to contain the multitude of my emotions and just, you know, like public. But yeah, I think he never understands just unbelievably how rare he is. And I think everyone feels that way about him. 

Brett: Great place to end. Thanks, Rick.