How to Navigate the Founder Journey and Build Momentum | Julian Weisser | Glasp Talk #41
This is the forty-first session of Glasp Talk!
Glasp Talk delves deep into intimate interviews with luminaries from various fields, unraveling their genuine emotions, experiences, and the stories behind them.
Today's guest is Julian Weisser, a dynamic entrepreneur, investor, and mentor passionate about empowering founders and building impactful startups. Julian is the CEO and co-founder of ODF, a unique program that has helped launch over a thousand startups, raising more than $2 billion. He is also the creator of the Texts with Founders newsletter, where he shares actionable advice for entrepreneurs navigating their startup journeys. As an angel investor, Julian has backed over 150 innovative companies, including Levels, Astroforge, and MagicSchool.
In this interview, Julian shares his journey, from co-founding ODF to shaping the future of entrepreneurship. He discusses the critical role of timing, experience, and the spirit of service in building successful startups. Julian offers practical insights on co-founder relationships, fundraising strategies, and the power of momentum in overcoming challenges. He also explores how emerging technologies like AI reshape the startup landscape and the skills founders will need to thrive in the years ahead. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned founder, this session is packed with invaluable lessons and inspiration.
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Transcripts
Glasp: Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Gras talk today we are very excited to have Julian Wisa with us. So, Julan is a dynamic entrepreneur, enter investor, and mentor passionate about a passion for empowering Founders and building impactful startups. He is a CEO and a co-founder of ODFs where he has helped launch over a thousand startups that collectively raised over $2 billion. As a creator of the text with founder newsletter, Julian shares insights and strategies with the entrepreneurial Community Helping Founders navigate their Journeys with actionable advice. He's also an angel investor having packed over 150 Innovative companies like Levels, AstroForge, and MagicSchool. And with a background in growth and product management, Jan brings a of experience to the table. Today, we will dive into Julian's Journey, his experiences with ODF, and his vision for the future of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Thank you for joining us today Julian.
Julian: Thank you to both for having me. I'm so excited.
Glasp: Thank you. So first of all you are the CEO and co-fund of ODF. Could you tell us, you know, what ODF is to the audience uh who don't know ODF yet?
Julian: Yeah. So, ODF exists to help more people explore starting companies. We don't believe that most people should start companies. Most people shouldn't start companies, but we do feel that far too few great people are starting them today. And if we can help more of those great people explore starting companies and end up making a decision one way or another that's a very positive thing for the world. Ultimately we hope that some people who participate in ODF decide that starting a startup isn't for them or isn't for them right now, but then some of the other people who participated realize that this is the perfect thing for them to be doing. And this is just a great thing for them to spend the next 10 to 15 years of their life on. And what we do with ODF is we bring people together who are at that exploratory stage, bring them all together so that they can then learn from each other and learn from people who are just a few steps ahead of them. And through that, we help them essentially find what I like to describe as the missing pieces. The missing pieces are kind of who might I start my company with, what might we build, who might the initial customers be, sort of all of these things that I think are the precursor to actually starting a company. You kind of have to know what you're going to be building and who you're going to be building it with. So that's kind of the goal of ODF is to bring people together who are at the stage of figuring that out. Some people ultimately figure it out, some people realize that starting a company isn't right for them at the moment. And both of those goals or both of those sorts of ways that you can end up after participating at ODF are really excellent because you're gaining conviction and whichever direction you decide is right for you.
Glasp: I see. Yeah, I tell you I went to ODF 9 cohort 9. That was I think two, three years ago and I met a great Founders. At the time I appreciate the community and all the dedicated work you support from the ODF team. And but I there I like recently you changed the program like because at the time I went to ODF 9, the program was about three months or so and now I think you changed the style, I think, format, right? And you, it's now more like int intensive two week and and so on. And could you tell us a little bit about history and the coh and, things you learned and so forth?
Julian: Definitely. So, you know, ODF has been around now for almost six years, it might even be six, our sixth anniversary now that I think about it, 2019. So, you know, we've been around for almost six years. We've tried a lot of different formats over the years. We started in person in San Francisco and people loved it the goal was to bring, again together people who are at a similar stage of trying to figure it out. And then of course the pandemic happened and instead of us trying to just do a sort of Band-Aid or a duct tape solution where we were thinking about, hey can we do some virtual thing as kind of a stop Gap measure before we switched back to in person, we wanted to make an Earnest effort towards building something that could be longstanding in digital. So we went digital with the pandemic but with the intention that we could try and be digital after the pandemic as well. Well, and to a large part, we were successful there. We did have a digital Community after the pandemic and all of that. But we ended up realizing that, a year after the pandemic was over people were just having such a strong pull to come back to in-person as well. So while the digital component was strong, it made a lot of sense to reintroduce that in-person experience which was so powerful in the very early days of ODF. And so we launched it as a one-we what we call an onboarding week to the community. And that's in person in San Francisco. People come from all over the world, you know, I would say about half the people who participate are based in San Francisco. The other half, roughly speaking, uh half of that half come from, you know, outside the United States. The other half comes from inside the United States, different parts of America, you know, Austin, Texas, Los Angeles, New York City. And they come here because they want to explore building a startup with other people at the same stage them being in San Francisco. And then, you know, again just figuring out what's next. So we have that onboarding week, which is intensively in person. We suggest that people should try to clear their calendars for that time. And then after that onboarding week, we have the digital Community, and we have ongoing events. But that week is meant to be a forcing function for making a lot of progress on the figuring-it-out stage.
Glasp: I see. Yeah, it's yeah that makes sense. And then, I have some friends who went to the recent cohort and they say they are so satisfied. And then they make a friend. And, yeah that's a, yeah I hear great things about the recent cohort.
Julian: Yeah, awesome.
Glasp: And yeah, I was curious. I'm not a member of ODF but so I think, for ODF, many people want to join. So, you get many applications, right? Then so, how do you choose people to join the community? And what is the most important factor or thing to join the community?
Julian: That's a great question. And you're right, it is very selective. I think it's somewhere around two or three per of people who apply get an offer and join the community. So, so very selective. And we look at things a little bit differently than uh maybe an accelerator or someone like that does. So, you know, accelerators, they're typical, they want you to have co-founders usually, right? They want you to have a product usually. And the reason they're doing this is because they're typically going to invest in your company, right? And they want your company to grow, grow, grow, grow. So that once you grow and you do well during the accelerator, you end up coming out of the accelerator having a demo day in fundraising, right? The fundraising is really important because that is a follow-up investment into the companies that these accelerators have backed. So that's good for them. It's good for the companies because they need more Capital to continue to grow, that sort of thing. With us, we don't look at, you know, whether or not you have a co-founder. If you have a co-founder that might actually be a reason to not do ODF. There are plenty of reasons to do ODF, but the more things that you have in the sort of missing pieces column checked off, the more likely it is that you might not get as much benefit from ODF. So for instance, if you already know who you're starting your company with, you already know, you know where, uh who you're IAL customers are, you already know sort of how you're going to think about charging them or making money, you're already in San Francisco, like the more things that you have figured out, the less likely it is that you're a fit for us, right? Because what we're trying to do is bring people together at this very specific stage. So to answer your question very specifically, we look at about three things. The top ones are timing, experience, and then the Spirit of Service. Now timing is really important. Are you six months uh away from leaving your job? Well, we're really looking for people who are about three months away from leaving their job or less and they already have maybe left their job. You know, I would say uh about half the people in any given cohort have already left their job, probably as much as uh two-thirds have left their job already, and they're actively exploring starting a company. The other third or one-half, are people who are hopefully going to be leaving their job if things work out the way that they hope they'll leave their job in the next couple of months. Again, if you're six months to a year out, it's not a really good fit. The other side of the spectrum is if you've already got a co-founder, you've already raised a million dollars. Well then you're probably too far along, right? So there are people who are too early for us and there are people who are too far along. And we focus on that. And so the timing is really important because if you don't have the timing right, then that person is not going to necessarily be able to be at the stage where they can benefit from each other quite as much, right? So timing. Experience is really interesting, right? Because we're not just looking at whether or not people have startup experience or whether or not they have engineering experience. We're looking at sort of what could help them be a good founder. And, you know, depending on somebody's age, depending on where they're coming from, the things that they have that might point towards them being a good founder could be different, right? So, you know, somebody could have worked in Tech in Silicon Valley for 12 years, but they've mostly worked at big companies. And they don't seem like they're going to take the risks necessary and be comfortable with the risks necessary to start a company, right? Well, maybe they're not a good fit. Well maybe they're somebody who's been in tech for for 10 years, but they've been at mostly smaller sort of growth-stage companies, right? And they've kind of bounced around from a few. And now, they have some experience of maybe tinkering with side projects and that sort of thing, right? I would say that probably the worst sign, you know, I'm speaking openly here, the worst sign is when you see somebody who's been working at a Fang-type company for many years, and they have no history of working on any side projects. That's a really bad sign because if they don't have any side projects that they can point to and they've been working in tech for that long, do you think that they're going to quit their job and go and pursue something when they could have had some time to pursue a side project that maybe could have led to a startup in the past? If they've exhibited no history of that, it's not a particularly promising sign. On the other end of the spectrum, there are these people who are very young, right? And they could be phenomenal, uh but we have to look at sort of what they've accomplished relative to their age. And then the last question or the last variable out of the three timing experiences, and then Spirit of service, which is frankly, is this person going to be a good Community member, right? Do they want to contribute to the community? Do they think about more like will they help other people or are they just trying to get as much value as possible, right? So that's the three main things that we look at. And, you know, it's it's pretty clear uh sometimes when you talk to someone whether or not their Spirit of service is not a match, right? Or whether or not their timing isn't a match. And we try to essentially avoid making these interview calls happen if we know that somebody is a year away from starting their company, we just, we just send them an email and say, "Hey, thank you for your interest, but if you're truly a year away from starting a company or leaving your job, you really should talk to us maybe six months or nine months from now."
Glasp: I see. Yeah, that makes sense. And has those three things pet changed over time? Because when you started, I think, you know, let's say OD if one, I think Founders you guys, you know, just uh invited, you know, your friends maybe people and then there's no like a qualification call or meeting. But over time maybe there are some oh miss, how to say, how miss, yeah, some mistakes or something. I think, yeah.
Julian: For sure. I think that the thing that we've made mistakes on in the past, and I think it's always a Learning Journey, is this hope uh that somebody will leave their sort of high-paying, well-compensated job when they don't have much data might support that happening, right? I think that often one of our mistakes, if we make them, is that we're too optimistic about somebody finding the missing pieces and quitting their job and starting a company. And this usually happens with people who are more senior and who have been in Tech and their com, their existing companies for quite some time. So I'd say that's the first sort of mistake that we often get is that we kind of, we're on the side of this person's amazing Community fit and they have a lot of really great experience. And they're telling us, they're swearing to us that they're going to quit and start a company in the next three months, but there's just this little bit of Kernel of Doubt, right, on our hands. And that it usually ends up being the case, right? It's it's wishful thinking on our part and their part uh that they're going to end up starting a company. And then on the other side of it, I think that sometimes we don't do quite enough to make sure that someone is going to move fast enough. I think that looking at the speed at which somebody executes uh whatever it is that they're doing is important. So understanding that I think is one area that we've learned to ask different types of questions for.
Glasp: I see. Yeah, going back to the three important things to join the community, mention timing, experience, and spirit of service. I think that Spirit of Service is pretty difficult to judge. Oh yeah, this person is, you know, give our mind or not take our mind. So you know what kind of things you see or do you have any process, you know, to filter like that kind of people? Because when AF, you know, app in the, you know, community. So I can say yeah, I can contribute to the community, but later on, after joining, so yeah, he doesn't contribute at all. So how, yeah how do you see it?
Julian: Yeah, you know, I think that there's sort of, if you think about kind of a filter, right? Some people just make it immediately obvious when you talk to them that frankly, they're jerks. And that they're not going to actually do anything very good. And usually, you can kind of eliminate the worst people without accidentally letting them into a community, right? So I would say that anybody that we've avoided most of the errors around this. And in terms of, you know, the people who do get in, I don't ever have any concerns about the people uh being like really bad community members. We don't, we don't have that issue. The main thing is these people are kind of obvious and usually they don't realize how obvious they are. There's like a lack of self-awareness there. And the other thing is you can ask a few questions that just kind of give people the opportunity to share how they think about this. And if they can't articulate any sort of good thoughts around Community, around contributing to other things, then they probably haven't given it enough consideration or it doesn't come naturally enough to them. This doesn't mean that they might not be able to develop that over time, but it does sort of give you a sign that, unless they dedicate more time to developing this, you can't expect much from them. So usually it's the easiest question. I think the hardest question to assess is the timeline because people are very optimistic about when they're going to quit their jobs, right? And I think the easiest one is the Spirit of Service. The hardest one is timing. And then the experience is also quite easy relative to relative to timing, for sure.
Glasp: I see. Yeah, thank you. And, you know, I think you have seen thousand, over thousand of Founders, right, so far through on, oh sorry, through ODF, or your personal, you know, investment as so. And have you found any interesting projects of Founders so far? Do you have any, do you remember some oh memorable Founders or some, yeah, what kind, what kind would be most interesting to hear about in terms of maybe found a, let's say uh personality or traits? And this aspect I think each personality or trait, or impact, impact wise.
Julian: Yeah, it's really hard because there are so many amazing people in this community to think of like very specific people. I think that maybe I can talk a little bit about various attributes that I think are really incredible about various Founders. So I think that, in terms of bias towards action and sort of just moving very quickly, uh I think that Ryan Del at Primer is one of the best examples of that. I think that the way he reacts very quickly and is extremely responsive, he just unblocks the team and moves really quickly as a company. And I think that you need that to be building the complicated business that he's building. In terms of, in terms of building an incredible sort of internal organization in a very complex uh industry, I think that uh Grace, who is the founder of kin sui, uh which is a vocal biomarker company that actually could understand things like depression through listening to vocal biomarkers. They, I think that she's just done a phenomenal job of building a company culture that that that sort of has the patience to do sort of the long-term game of building a healthcare care company, but also the impatience that's necessary to be a successful startup. Let's see who else. I think that uh that Mike Shabbat from traba has just done an incredible job when it comes to uh leading by example with sort of the cultural values of traba. One of them that really stands out to me is this idea of Olympians uh mindset where they really think of themselves as a high-performing sports team. And you can just see how he carries himself and just the way that the company operates that the entire company is completely bought into this concept. And let's see who else. I think I think Selene Hollywood is just a fascinating uh founder and inspiring to me because she's a solo founder. She started her company, relatively young. And as a solo founder, you know, building in one of the most complicated industries. And I, I just find the way that she's built her executive team and hired people has just been remarkable. And I think she's one of the most, yeah, I think she's she's easily one of the most inspiring people I know. And the speed at which she moves. But I think that the thing that I find remarkable about her is how she's built, amongst other things, how she's built out such an incredible team as a solo founder.
Glasp: Thank you. Yeah. And do I think you have seen like, you know, like a many that kind of like successful Founders, at the same time, not like, you know, things don't always go, you know, as we expected, you know? Then some Founders don't, you know, are not successful at some point. But do you see any difference between them? Because, you know, from your article, like Founders and Momentum, and you said, you know, "most people think companies die because they run out of money, but the reality is they run out of Hope first. The moment is everything." So I quoted your your writing. In that sense, do you see the difference between all these people, are these traits, personalities, or common things I see in successful Founders and this are not something like that?
Julian: You know, I think that a lot of startups go through existential moments even when they're successful. So, you know, ultimately I think everybody deals with uh potential Calamity, potential collapse, uh death of the company, that sort of thing. And I think that it comes down to a couple of things, do you really truly care about what it is that you're working on? I think that a lot of people, you know, say, "Oh, passion is overrated," and, you know, "You can go and build any type of great business." And I think that there are largely two types of people. Some people want to build for a specific reason, they want to go and solve a very specific problem. And there are people who just really love to build. And I don't think there's, either of those is a bad type of founder. But I think that you need to understand what type of founder you are. Because if you're the type of founder who cares about building it for a specific thing, you know, in a specific area and solving a specific problem, well then if you end up getting tricked into being told by other people, "Oh, it doesn't matter what you build, just build a great business," you probably won't stick with it, you know, long enough to be successful. Because when something hard happens, you like, "I don't know, do I care about this that much? I care about that thing over there that I could be working on, which is something that I care about much more than whatever business I've happened to, you know, pivot around into." And then there are other people who just really love building great businesses. And I think that whatever they end up sort of finding that gets an edge or gains traction, those people will be motivated by. So I think it depends on sort of what, what it is that keeps you going. And then the other thing is I think you just need to have this sense of, "If you keep going, you can make it through." I think that a lot of this stuff is just punching through to the other side. And it's really hard. And don't get me wrong, it isn't easy or anything like that, and it's not painless. It's very painful. But ultimately I think that most of the time, most companies' deaths can be prevented. The problem is they couldn't have been prevented necessarily weeks before the companies died, but they might have been prevented months half a year, or a year before the company died. And, you know, by the time a company is, you know, a month or two from shutting down, you know, it's pretty much already dead, right? You know, you really need to, you really need to, as as you were saying when you were quoting that article Founders momentum, you know, the hopelessness is already set in by that point. And it's really hard to get back from hopelessness. So, you know, I think that as long as you can get to a place where you have a great support system, you believe in what you're doing, you want to keep going, and you believe that there is always another, another card to play or something like that, then you have a good chance of continuing to push through. Now, some companies will still fail. People work really hard and try their damnedest and they still don't succeed. So I'm not saying that every company that failed didn't, you know, didn't try hard enough or something like that. But I do think that the main reason companies die is because they lose hope.
Glasp: See, and I remember the eye-opening moment that, you know when I think, I remember you tweeted before about Founders and momentum, then oh, actually the fun fact is like, you know, the company doesn't die uh when they run out of money or something. And then I thought, "Oh, that's true." Even if you run out of money, if found us a PO and can do something, and we can Le the company and do something that, yeah, I still remember that.
Julian: Yes, thank you for sharing great inside for know things with us.
Glasp: Yeah. So at the same time, you said momentum is everything, right? Would you elaborate on that part? That is like a strong, you know, statement.
Julian: Yeah, yeah. So I truly believe that momentum is everything. And not all types of momentum are equal. I believe that customer momentum is the most important type of momentum. So customer momentum is the most important type of momentum for a very specific reason. Is that it transfers to other types of momentum. So think about it like this. If you have customer momentum, more people want to invest in your company, right? If you have customer momentum, you'll have people who want to join your company as teammates because they'll say, "Oh wow, that thing is going well, and people want to buy it," right? If you have customer momentum, you'll have more customers, right? Because they'll hear about it, they'll see that other people are buying it, and people want to get things that other people are getting because it looks like, you know, there is something worth getting, right? This is why you go to, I don't know, a farmers market or something, and some of the stalls have just a huge line, right? It's because the product is good, right? But it's also because there's a huge line, right? These are self, these are reinforcing uh things that are happening, right? So customer momentum transfers. Those other types of momentum don't transfer nearly as well. What do I mean by that? I was just telling you how the customer stuff could lead to investors and hires, right? New new teammates. Investor momentum does not transfer in that way. Sure, you can get some great investors and maybe that will cause you to have, you know, a couple of additional customers, right? Maybe they'll introduce you to some customers or something like that, but it's not as a direct align, right? Or if you have great investors, that might cause some people to want to join your company, but do you want those people to join your company if they're only joining because some famous investor invested in your company? It's a bad sign, right? Because they're not joining for the right reason. They're not joining for the mission. They're not joining because of the incredible customer love that you have. They're joining because some investor uh put their stamp of approval on it, right? The same thing with with customers, they hear about a fundraising announcement, and they download your product. Maybe they download it because, they say, "Oh, I had that problem, right? And I'm so glad that I saw this announcement because this solves a problem for me." Or they're just like, "I want to try this out because this is a hot company invested in by a hot, you know, fund," right? So ultimately the customer momentum transfers and the investor doesn't. And the teammates joining doesn't transfer that much either.
Glasp: Makes sense. And thank you for sharing that. And I think many Founders, we, you know, as a Founder we see many like like investment news. "Oh, we raised $5 million, $10 million from XYZ," like really top-tier Founders. And I think some Founders are, how to say, like distracted by them. "Oh, this is the light path," or something. And some people misunderstand that. But yeah, thank you for clarifying that. And do you have anything?
Julian: Yeah, I was just going to say that oftentimes people get hung up on fundraising, right? And they get hung up on, they get hung up on announcements and launches. I think the reason that people get hung up on fundraising and are so obsessed with it is that they like the validation of somebody who has invested in a successful company investing in them as well. Makes a lot of sense, right? "Oh wow, these people, they invested in Stripe. Oh wow, these people, they invested in Ram. Oh wow, these people invested in," you name it, right? Here's the problem though. When they invested in Ramp, they also invested in a bunch of other companies you've never heard of that have all con since gone on to fail, right? So that stamp of validation that you're seeking was stamped on many companies that are long dead. So don't take that stamp and consider that the Target or the goal. You only want to be the next Ramp or the next Stripe. Don't think about, you know, whether or not you raised money and it's from a cool investor who also invested in the great company because they invested in so many companies that went nowhere. You don't want to be that one. And I think that the companies that focus on who they raised money from and sort of optimizing for fundraising and spending all their time on that ultimately have a risk of just being one of those companies that, "Oh yeah, I raised from this great fund, but my company died."
Glasp: But that doesn't mean the startup shouldn't raise VC money, right?
Julian: I think there are two types of startups, one is fundable, and one is not fundable.
Glasp: Yeah, we should think about that. But after that, would you like to recommend, what are your thoughts on bootstrapping versus a VC or angel investment startup?
Julian: So my friend Heaton uh Heaton Shaw, he recently corrected me on Bootstrap. He says, "I don't like the word bootstrap, I like the term self-funded." So I'm gonna use self-funded instead of bootstrap, though I always used to say bootstrap, you know. I think that there's this interesting premise uh sort of in the statement that you made which was something along the lines of, "There are two types of companies, or there's, you know, there are fundable companies or not fundable companies." And I think that's true, but I think there's also sort of a level underneath that which is, "Is this company fundable? Yes. Do you want it to be fundable, or do you want to take funding," right? There are plenty of companies that are fundable companies that don't need to take funding necessarily, right? So maybe we should think a little bit more from the perspective of, "What's best for this business, and what's best for me," right? As sort of the founder. You can, you can go and raise money for a startup uh but has very different expectations, you know, in very different types of stakeholders than if you don't raise money. And I don't think that there's necessarily a good or a bad way of doing things, but I think ultimately you're making decisions that kind of inform the next few years of your life. And I think that oftentimes people don't necessarily give it as much thought before they make that commitment one way or another. So fundable or non-fundable, I think that it's very true. There are a lot of companies that aren't fundable, and they could become fundable. But, you know, they're starting, they're not necessarily fundable because they're too early or something like that.
Glasp: I see. But in that sense, two questions come up. One is like, what's your s on like a going to Startup accelerator in that sense. It's it's same as it's not different, like funding, getting funding. The startup gets funding, but at the same time, it's an accelerator. So they push you eventually to raise money. So in that sense, if let's say the founder knows, "Oh, we are a fundable company," but let's say F Founders eventually realize, "Oh, we shouldn't be funded," or something like that. That case happens sometimes. So but we, they already went to, let's say YC or know famous accelerator. So that they take the VC pass already. So in that they, how to say, they have a pressure. "Oh, once you raise VC money, you got to raise, keep raising, and keep growing." And kind of we, the founders need to, how to say, deal with that like a pressure. And then in that sense, how should…
Julian: Yeah. So I think this is not a big deal, to be quite honest, because I think it's a much bigger issue if you raise, let's call it a $3 million seed round, and then you realize that you do not want to go and raise follow-on funding. If you do something like YC, they invest in so many companies, right? And they invest at such a high ownership percentage relative to the amount of money that they invest. And they do that because they understand that a lot of these companies are not going to become, you know, huge successes. And that's fine. Like that's why they have the accelerator model. And I think this is a great thing. You know, I think I read something from PG recently where he said, "Look, we've baked it into our model that some people are going to go back to school after doing YC, and they're not going to end up starting their company," right? "Or they're not going to end up building a company that goes the distance." So, you know, he and YC have built this in. So they're not expecting every company to be a success. But if you're a VC and you're only investing as a lead investor in a couple of companies per year, well then you're hoping and expecting that those companies are going to try and go the distance versus investing in hundreds of companies per cohort like YC does. So I think out of anybody, YC is probably the most likely, uh at least from an ex, uh from like a VC standpoint, is they still are a VC. They have this fund bottle, but they're still a VC. They're the most likely to be supportive of somebody who only raises the 500 from Y, or 500k from YC, and then ultimately build something that, you know, is revenue-generating, is a profitable business, but doesn't necessarily go on to raise more funding because they don't have all of their chips, or, you know, 30% of their chips uh you know uh on that one startup compared to like your, or relative to like these VC funds that are much more concentrated with their Investments. So I don't think it's as bad for an accelerator. I think you're going to get as much pressure from an accelerator to take the VC route after the fact, if you realize that things have changed, than you would from a lead investor. And I do think that lead investors would encourage you to go and raise more money and to do follow-on funding because, you know, I think we just have to acknowledge that that's sort of the way that the incentive structure works. Most VCs who aren't super uh who haven't been in VC for many decades, have a reputation that they're still building. And they want to be able to report to investors, their investors, and LPs, that, the companies are doing well. One of the best ways of doing that is tell talking about the higher valuation that the company is raising. So you want to make sure that as a Founder that if you're not sure about whether or not you want to continue raising round after round you don't get in a position where the people that you're working with are expecting you to do that, and their success is essentially determined by whether or not you do that.
Glasp: And you mention a higher valuation. And I had that question too, you know. Some, you know, because Founders are like a competitive creature naturally, I think. So they try to rise at higher variation. It's what I see from other Founders sometimes. But, you know, when they raise higher at higher variation, then the next round it might go, they might need to go through like down and, and then. And some people like investors, and I think you, you know, warning warns that you shouldn't raise that too much High valuation. So do you have any advice on, or SS on like uh valuation like uh ly, you know, or any like tips and…
Julian: Yeah. You know, I was talking to a really smart investor friend, and they said, said, "I don't think I've ever seen a company that raises five on 25," meaning a $5 million round at a $25 million post-money valuation. "I don't ever think I've seen a company that's raised five on 25 for their first rounds do very well." And, you know, there's a couple of reasons for this, uh at least what what they were thinking. I'll try and represent their point of view on this. Which was, when you're raising, when you're raising $5 million and you don't have a product, you just have some co-founders, you're very likely to sort of increase your spend prematurely, build out a team because you have all this money. So why not use it? And ultimately you end up usually burning through the money in the same sort of speed that you would uh regardless of how much money that you had. So means you'll probably end up with 24 months of runway no matter how much money you have. And it's really hard to nail those first 24 months. Uh so you kind of run, you kind of run into a situation where you might end up with the same amount of traction that you would have gotten with a million dollars but having spent $5 million. So you haven't shown that you're very Capital efficient, which isn't a particularly great thing to show. And then I think that the big challenge is now you've gotten, you know, a million dollars worth of progress for $5 million. And now you're trying to get a valuation that's higher than your last valuation, which is $25 million, right? So really investors are going to want to see you raising at an up round, right, from the last round of financing. So you're kind of looking at needing to raise at a $50 million, $60 million, higher than that valuation. So it makes it hard to kind of, you know, get to a place where you can warrant that next valuation jump versus if you think about it, you're raising at, you know, an $8 million valuation, or $12 million valuation. Well, then you always have the opportunity to uh go to that sort of $25 million valuation for the next round. Or if you're making so much incredible progress after raising at 8 or 12 or 15, you might be able to just jump straight to raising at a $50 million valuation and doing a series A, right? And this is again assuming that you want to take the Venture path and build sort of an adventure trajectory startup, which you, I think, is a helpful discussion for people perhaps to hear. If that's the case though, you kind of do a couple of favors for yourself if you raise slightly less money and you raise at a slightly lower valuation. And that's again, you lower the bar for the next round. You give yourself the ability to completely knock it out of the park and skip around. So I know one company um recently that uh raised, you know, a pre-seed round, couple million bucks. And they were doing so well that they went out to go and raise, I believe it was somewhere around five or $6 million. But they were doing so well after raising that pre-seed and making progress that they ended up going straight to series A and raising, I think, at an $80 million valuation, right? And there's another, there's another VC that I love. I probably shouldn't mention them by name because I don't know how much they like to talk about this publicly. But, you know, they were telling me that, and they're one of the top VCs and and true seed investing uh in in the world. They told me that they think that the best thing you can do as uh a Founder if you're raising a true seed round, is raise anywhere from, you know, one to two, $2 million. But anything beyond that for a first round, unless of course in their outliers, like, you know, some of these really big LLM uh plays or AI plays, it might make sense to to raise more money. But they felt that this was sort of The Sweet Spot for like a true seed round. And uh where was I going with that? The, oh, they also, they often get sort of Founders thinking, "Are they just saying because they get a better valuation," right? Because the founders like, "Well if VCs say that, you know, are they just trying to do something good for them and not for me?" And the reality is, you know, I think that they're doing something that's generally uh good for the founder when they're suggesting anybody's suggesting to raise maybe slightly less uh and raise at a slightly lower valuation. Because ultimately that step up is very difficult to make unless things go well for you.
Glasp: But wouldn't you recommend, let's say the startup variation that lights fair value is let's say assuming a $50 million valuation? But if they shouldn't go too much higher, but you know, would you recommend going like a lower, lower than so that they can cross around the area faster? Like, "Oh, I think we can, we are okay with 30, $25 million." Let's say the value is 50-li, but go 25% discount then. But we want to cross. Does that make sense? Or we, they shouldn't…
Julian: Yeah. I think that the main thing that you should optimize for is terms and partners. And I don't mean terms in terms of valuation. I mean terms in terms of everything else. Like for instance, what's the, what's the board setup going to be like when you start to get into the, you know, 30 plus million do valuation? There might be a board component to this. Who's going to be on the board? What's the board structure going to be like, right? You know, all sorts of things that go beyond sort of the valuation that are worth considering. And then the other thing is like the partner, you know. Are these people reputable? Are these people who, you know, you would want to spend time with? There might be people who are very reputable or like are good in some way that you just don't hit it off with. And if you going to be spending the next 5 to 10 years with this person, and they're sort of a lead investor, that matters. So, you know, I don't think that the most important thing to focus on is valuation. I do think it's an important lever to consider, right? And the other thing is, you know, if you have multiple term sheets and multiple offers, and they have different valuations, this allows you to negotiate terms with various investors. And some investors might change their valuation if you have other terms that are maybe higher valuation than what they're offering if that means that they can, you know, win the investment.
Glasp: Thank you And is there anything that you talk about or share with founders during the cohort? I think you share about, you know, Founders and momentum, and those like tips and lessons, you know, to founders. But do you have anything else?
Julian: Yeah. We talk a lot about Co-founders because uh co-founders are such an important aspect of starting a company, you know? It's fine to not have a co-founder, but I think that the worst types of co-founders are the ones that you kind of get just because they happen to be the ones who are around versus they happen to be a good fit to work with you. So we call those types of co-founders "co-founders of convenience." And we think that they're dangerous because, you know, sometimes it's just better being alone than, and you know, uh sort of just having some kind of suboptimal match that you kind of just took because they happen to be the only person that you had in your network who was available at the time. And uh you know, there's all sorts of co-founder kind of like pitfalls and uh mistakes that could be made. And I think ultimately, you know, usually when you talk about sort of co-founders or uh "companies don't run out of uh money, they run out of Hope," and that's what causes them to fail. A huge part of what causes companies to fail is co-founder sort of disputes and challenges that cause people to run out of Hope. Because it's one thing for the business, the product, to not be working very well, right? And customers to not be liking it, or to be churning, or something like that. That sucks, but that's doable. But imagine that's happening, and also you and your co-founder are just hating each other and resent each other and uh are having a really hard time with your relationship. Now imagine the opposite is the case, and you have all this stuff happening with customers, and things aren't going well, and fundraising is not working, right? All this stuff is going wrong. But the co-founders still really love each other and still really care about each other and want to like help each other be their best versions of themselves. Well, that's ultimately the thing that takes a situation that might be hopeless if the co-founders were, you know, kind of like butting heads and and and disliking each other and ang with each other, and takes it and makes it a hopeful thing, right? Because now they're supporting each other uh through this tough time. And they have that optimism that together uh they could make something happen, right? So I think that that's important is the co-founder piece is probably, probably the most important thing, you know, outside of the market that you're building in.
Glasp: Yeah yeah. So related to that. So I think you have many co-funders through ODF, or you introduce many co-founders to founders. So do you see any common things in successful co-founders? Any signs? So, do you see any tips or common sense in co-founder relationships?
Julian: Yeah, for sure. I think that most co-founders, the obvious one is that they complement each other, right? They're not, they're not just overlapping skills. But I think the other thing is that often times the most successful co-founders are very clear and very aligned on who the CEO is. If you don't have that alignment early on, or there's a lot of ambiguity, and it doesn't seem like people are 100%, maybe 200% on board with who the CEO is, that's going to create all sorts of conflicts. So it's important that that that is something that people are very aligned on in the early days as co-founders. Another thing is we look a lot at sort of whether or not somebody is kind of coming up with the idea together as co-founders or whether or not they're bringing the idea and sort of recruiting co-founders to it. There's nothing particularly wrong with either of those, but it's worth mentioning that when somebody brings an idea to the relationship, and they're very dedicated, essentially recruiting a co-founder to work with them on a very specific thing, well that is tough if the thing doesn't work out because that might mean that the person who came with the idea is less in love uh and less open to moving off of the idea that isn't working. Versus if you come together and you say, "Hey, we have complimentary skill sets, we like being together, and we think that we, we would just enjoy working on something together. Let's co-create an idea together. Let's go explore an idea together." That is much more likely to be a success in the long run because there isn't, there isn't this sort of sense that we're, we're dedicated to a specific idea. Now obviously there are some incredible counterexamples to this, of course. Some of the best companies have been started by people who essentially had a really deep insight and recruited a co-founder. So I'm not saying that that's not the case, but I'm saying that when things get tough with the original idea, it's much easier for the co-founders to pivot and co-create the next idea together uh when they've kind of come into it with this level of openness about, you know, what it is that we should be, you know, what it is that we're working on. "We don't know. We're going to kind of figure it out together. And we're going to kind of see where whatever we end up pursuing is kind of a thing that we do together," right? Versus something where you're kind of, you're kind of getting into it from this perspective of, you know, one person being sort of the owner of the idea or the originator of the idea.
Glasp: Think yeah. And yeah, I think you already shared many things, lense about ODF. So where do you see ODF in like 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years, in the future?
Julian: Well, that's a good question, because I don't think that if you ever ask somebody where it's going to be in the next five years, it's going to change constantly. So I'll tell you where it is now, but you're going to have to check in with me in a year to see sort of where things go because a lot of the things that are changing how we operate are external factors, right? It's the external market, right? And I don't mean like other people building stuff in, you know, early-stage startups. I mean like the world, right? You know, we were a digital community for a long time, exclusively digital, because of the pmic. AI is going to change the way people build companies. So, you know, ultimately I think it's hard to be super prescriptive about what the future looks like. But I'll tell you a couple of things that I'm excited about. The first one is that I think that now more than ever, in the next couple of years, you're going to be able to do far more with less. And I think that is going to change the dynamics of how people think about who they're going to start their company with, whether or not they need to start a company with another person, or whether or not they can be solo, how they think about fundraising because "Do you need to fundraise for a lot of businesses anymore?" I think that when the cost of creating things continues to go down, you know, uh you you could argue that um servers, like, you know, moving to Cloud was a huge unlock, right, in terms of reducing costs. Well, what is essentially unlimited labor, right, uh like being now being now like, you know, almost too cheap to meter, right? With things like Cursor or Replit AI, these things are almost getting too cheap to meter. So you now have this uh scenario where the cost of actual labor to build these things is continuing to go down. So that means that you might not need to fundraise where you might have had to fundraise uh previously. So I think that a lot of things are going to change about company formation, fundraising structure, sort of how people spend their time. I think that the way that University happens, and the way young people sort of develop skills, is going to change significantly. So, you know, do I think that most uh sort of junior software engineers are going to have roles at startups anymore? I don't necessarily know. I think that you're going to have to do a whole lot more to get hired as an engineer at a startup. And you're going to probably end up by going through the process of learning outside of school and outside of, you know, college and all that. You'll probably end up building your things that make money. So maybe you won't even ever join a company as an engineer because you already have been so successful. So I think that like, to very concretely answer what you're saying, I think that in the next five years, we're going to see many of the people who do ODF fundamentally change how they think about structuring and building companies. And we're going to be evolving the way that we support them to match with that. And hopefully, we'll be really the ones who are helping them kind of figure that out and developing new models for building companies based on that. I think that part of that has to do with financing, how these things get financed. I think that financing still plays an important role, but I think it's going to be a changing role. And then ultimately, there's another aspect of this which is like how ODF kind of fits into the broad scheme of things, and you know what we're doing. You know, the company is called ODF. It's a little bit of a misnomer because what we're doing is we're building all of these sort of standalone communities and products that kind of fit together and that overlap in really powerful ways. So we have ODF, which we've talked about for the majority of this conversation, which is for people who are exploring starting a company in San Francisco, trying to find the missing pieces. Another thing that we do is a thing called Merge. And Merge is for people, usually people who are 13 to maybe 19 years old, who are looking for just a small amount of money, anywhere from $100 to $1,000, maybe even a little bit more than that, looking for a small amount of money to be able to be unblocked on working on a project that they're ambitious and passionate about. And the idea with Merge is that these aren't companies, these are projects where people are working on hardware or trying to develop something novel. And maybe some of these will become companies. But ultimately, we think about the things that we do with ODF and Merge as being sort of complimentary and alongside of each other. We also have another thing that we're working on you called Landing Club, which is helping people move from abroad to the United States to build startups. So, you know, when you look at all these things and put them all together, and you start to think about the future of ODF, not just ODF the program, but sort of that broader thing, the goal is to make things, which is both products and communities, for people who make things. And, you know, we think the way that things are made is going to change significantly in the next 5 to 10 years, just how it changed significantly in the last 10 years. So we want to continue to evolve alongside the way these things are changing the way we make things. And that's kind of like the thing that we're most excited about in the years ahead.
Glasp: Like, and also in that sense, you know, regarding the AI and the AI agent let's say especially. Do you think the future like startup Founders needs to have co-founders in that sense? Because, you know, let's say they can hire an AI agent, AI agent CTO, like a CEO, CBO, and so CH and so. Do you think, I'm curious about the importance of co-founders in the future of startups?
Julian: I think the funny thing to say, which is probably not accurate, uh but the funny thing to say is, "Why do you even need Founders?" if you, or, "Why do you need human Founders?" I think uh I think you could say, right? Like, "Do you even need them," right? Because because, you know, you could you could kind of make the argument that, "Oh, like all you need is electricity uh uh and compute," right? And therefore, you know, just somebody who has Capital can afford electricity and computing. So you're just sort of going and telling them, you're, everybody becomes a venture capitalist, right? Everybody becomes an investor. And they just tell the agents to come up with an idea for a business. Uh obviously that that's, that seems a little far-fetched, but maybe not. I do think that if you think about the perspective of co-founders, what do they provide? Sometimes it's a complementary skill set, but I think the main thing is that it's lonely to build a company, right? So some people might empathize with robots uh or with chatbots. And they might be able to get that level of support from them or a community like ODF. A lot of people who are solo founders have said that ODF and the community have been really helpful to them. But, you know, ultimately I think of it as, are they going to be replacing just the technical, or just the skill part of the co-founder relationship, or are they also going to be replacing the uh the emotional uh part of the co-founder relationship? And you, the answer is maybe. It's it's hard to say. But at the same time, a lot of people don't even have co-founders, and they're successful today. So, you know, I'm sure that some people will use AI instead of a co-founder. I'm sure that that's already happening. Though they probably, at least today, don't consider AI their co-founder, or AI isn't on the cap table, I should say. It's more of a tool that's being used instead of a co-founder. The same way that, you know, an AWS instance is being used instead of an actual literal server like in your closet.
Glasp: Yeah. Interesting perspective. And I think we want Julian's AI agent. You can out because, you know, I think you are helping many Founders. And then many Founders reaching out to you and you know, ask your help, and so on. And two questions. I'm curious, how do you manage, let's say you are helping many Founders, and how do you manage your time? Hing those messages? I think you receive hundreds of messages, I think, from, you know, various Founders from ear stage to data stage. And second, what's your motivation?
Julian: Yeah, help me, people. Why do you love walking with… So I think it depends on the type of founder uh or the type of sort of stage that they're at. I like helping people sort of in the figuring it out stage because I think there's something just amazing about sort of this idea that you're kind of at the cusp of a sort of transformative moment in your life, right? If you take a certain fork in the road, it'll completely change where you potentially end up, right? Or if you shift sort of the trajectory of where you're aiming by just a degree or two in a positive direction upwards, then, you know, in the near term, it doesn't look like you're changing where you're ending up. But you extrapolate out a few years, and that little shift in degrees at the beginning ends up having an outsized impact on where you end up in the long run, right? So I think there's just something magical about that moment, and something fulfilling about helping people sort of figure that out or make progress there that I just really love. I'm also kind of, I'm the type of person who enjoys being sort of like a mile wide and an inch deep when it comes to ideas, you know? I love to take various concepts or various things that I've experienced or heard and apply them to things that are not seemingly, at least superficially, relevant to each other. And the only way I can do that is by just vacuuming up information and knowledge, right, from all of these incredible people who are working on such a wide array of things. And the cool thing is they have a lot of specific things to each their business. Like Glasp, for instance, has very specific things to your business, right? But there also is this sort of horizontal layer of things that are very generalizable across businesses, right? So you get to learn about the business-specific things while helping with the generalizable things. And it's just an incredible exchange of knowledge. So I find that fulfilling. And then I think the other piece of it is, you know when people are a little bit further along, they have a company that's going, the thing that I really love is being there for people when they're having a really tough time. And the reason for that is because, like, I've had a lot of like tough times as a founder, and also just personally, like, I've had tough times. And I've always benefited from other people who helped me. And I always want to be the person who does that for other people. And especially if I could help them through something that I've already seen before, right? Or I've already seen other founders deal with before, because that means that they don't need to try and, you know, evaluate this from, know, without without prior data. I'm able to provide them with data from past sort of interactions with the problem, right? So that's fulfilling.
Glasp: And I believe you asked me a question before the question about personal motivation. Can you…
Julian: Yeah, how to handle and manage your time.
Glasp: Yeah, because you're messaging many Founders. I think…
Julian: Sure. So I think that it's interesting. I think with AI, uh there will be additional ways to, you know, help kind of like triage and, you know, give people support and all of that. A couple of things come to mind though. Often I have people who ask if they can meet with me. And it's usually uh from the perspective of getting feedback for fundraising. And, usually, they'll want to meet for 30 minutes, I would say, is sort of the default, right, whenever anybody schedules time. And, you know, I've usually found that the best way to do this is to not meet live when somebody has materials that they want me to review, but instead for them to send me the materials, and then I record a Loom video reacting to the materials. And I think that the reason that this is good is because I'm not with them, so therefore they're not steering me. I'm kind of doing a blind user test. And I'm also recording it so that they can reference that and go back to it over and over again. And then what we'll do is I'll send that video to them, that Loom video, and they'll be able to go in and uh add comments, and I'll be able to add comments. We'll be able to have a discussion back and forth. And, you know, it might actually end up taking me over a week of going back and forth on these Looms. It might end up taking me 30 minutes, right? Because I might spend 10 minutes on making the initial Loom and then all the back and forth. But ultimately, I think that that flow results in better quality feedback being logged, better discussion around the feedback, uh than one of these calls where the call ends up kind of just not going in the particularly productive and particularly productive direction direction. So trying to default to async is good. But I think another piece of this is creating materials that do the work for you, right? So that's, we were talking about AI, and can we have an agent, or we have some sort of, you know, chatbot or something like that that answers questions for you? Sure. But, you know, I already do that. My agent is just like URL, right? I just send people a URL about uh about like how to make a good pitch deck, or, how to think about investor inbound. Like so many people ask me, "Julian, like I have this investor, they just hit me up and they want to meet, but I'm not fundraising. What should I do?" Well, instead of repeating everything that I've written in this blog post, I just sent them the blog post because I spent a lot of time writing the blog post. But I've probably sent that to hundreds of people ever since I wrote it. And every time that I send it to somebody, they're like, "This is exactly what I was looking for." They don't need to get on a call with me at that point, right? So I think that part of it is creating artifacts that make it so that people can interface with me without interfacing with me live. And then if people want to interface with me, and I don't have artifacts, or it's something specialized, like again, reviewing their deck, then we can do it async. Again, I'm not one of these people who's like uh "async always" type of person or anything like that, but usually, I try and default to the method that I think is going to be most helpful for people. And I think the async Loom videos are the most helpful for Deck review, as an example. And I think sending somebody a thoughtfully written essay or blog post about a very tactical topic uh is much better than having try and riff through it, you know, on a 30-minute call when I've already documented it and written it down.
Glasp: That makes sense. And hope this interview is not you repeating the same thing. But hope not aspect.
Julian: You're keeping me on my toes. Okay, thank you.
Glasp: So yeah, uh two two more questions. And sorry, it's time is running out. But, one is like, do you have any, let's, you know, you gave us, you know, any advice, you know, gave Founders much advice. But would you add something else? Do you have any advice on founders you didn't talk about today? If you have any…
Julian: Yeah, sure. I think that there will be a lot of forces uh at play that kind of pull you sort of magnetically towards unproductive things, you know? There all be forces that try and pull you into an investor meeting before you're actually ready to fundraise. There will be forces that pull you towards the allure of, you know, talking to the press uh or trying to get press instead of, you know, actually launching your product and just getting it into a handful of users' hands, right? All these forces will kind of pull you towards things that seem productive but aren't directly productive. And as long as you can avoid those forces and focus on the customers and focus on uh building for those customers, you're going to be in a good spot. But those forces are incredibly powerful. So you'll have to continually ask yourself, "Am I letting those forces pull me off the path that I need to be on?" And if you find that you are getting pulled off the path, it's a good thing because most people aren't aware and never develop the awareness to acknowledge it, right? I'm not a master medic, or media by any means, right? But one thing that they teach everybody when it comes to meditation is that you're supposed to focus on the breath, or at least one month, one meditation you focus on the breath, right? And then as soon as you realize you've let your mind wander to something else, you don't say, "Damn it, mind, like you suck," like you say, "Okay, let's let's bring it back to the breath," right? And that's the same thing when it comes to getting distracted by all these forces that are pulling you in various directions as a Founder. You want to make sure that you're not beating yourself up for getting distracted, but you want to bring yourself back to the breath. Return to the breath. Return to the thing you need to focus on. And then move on.
Glasp: Thank you. And I just read your today's newsletter, all for young founders. You mentioned mentorship, funding, balancing studies, startup, and building a network. Those things can be obstacles or destructions.
Julian: Yeah, thank you. Yeah. I think specifically, I'll just talk about what you're referring to there. I think uh building networks, everybody's like, "How do I expand my network?" And I think that there are good ways and good reasons to expand your network. So for instance, I think when you're exploring starting a company, you don't want to start a company with just whatever random person happens to be available. You want to go and start a company with somebody who's a good fit for you, who wants to go and build the same type of business as you and work towards the same type of Ideal outcome, right? So expanding your network, or spending more time with people and trying to grow your network to find that person who's aligned with you, is a worthwhile opportunity, or a worthwhile sort of thing to allocate some time towards, right? That's why we build ODF. The goal here is to make it so that you can plug into a group of people who are at a similar stage as you and figure out what it is that you're going to do. The other type of building network though is not building a network in service of anything. It's just sort of vaguely building a network because you think it makes sense to have a network. And here's the thing about building that type of network. The way that you build a great network of awesome people is by building things that are awesome that cause people to be interested in you, right? And part of this is making people aware of the awesome thing. But there is this aspect of, when you build awesome things, they generally tend to become more known to people, right? Similar to how when you start to get customers, that also starts to get you more customers, right? Through referrals, or, you know, that analogy of the uh the long line at the farmers market causing more customers to come to that farmer's market tent, or to, you know, wait in line to go into that restaurant, right? So ultimately, if you do great things, then your network will be a result of that. Versus if you're just going around trying to add people on LinkedIn, huge waste of your time because you're not spending time making something that's great. And that's ultimately the thing that gets you respect, makes people want to send you great opportunities, all of that.
Glasp: Thank you for sage advice. Thank you. Yeah, that's great advice. And this is the last question. So since Glasp is a platform where people can share what they read, learning as the digital legacy, we going to ask you this question. So what legacy or impact do you want to leave behind for future generations?
Julian: That's a tough one. Not because, not because it's a tough question, but because it's just like a very kind of like emotional one. You know, I think that uh the first thing I would like people to maybe take away from the things that I do uh is that I try to do things based off of what I want to see in the world, um, not based off of what I think other people would think is cool. I try and do what I think is cool, because I think that ultimately if I like something, um, there will be other people who will like it too. And I have to be honest with myself, “Do I like it?” If I don’t like it, and I’m lying to myself and pretending I do, then that’s doing no one any good. But I hope that people look at what I’m doing and see that this is a person who’s working on stuff they care about, they believe in, and it gives them the encouragement to maybe not just try and do the thing that kind of looks externally cool, or they could explain to, you know, their relatives or something like that, but is the thing that’s kind of a representation of who they are and what they care about. So, I hope that people see that and maybe can take some inspiration from that. I hope that people see what we’re doing at ODF and realize that there are different ways to build communities and there are different ways to invest in startups. You don’t have to build another accelerator um to build something great for the world. I think ODF is great for the world. I’ll brag for a second and say that I think it’s a positive influence on not just technology but the world. I think that you can do things your way and have a really important impact. I think that uh I think that, you know, I have this publication that I run outside of ODF, um sort of a personal thing called “multitudes.” And, you know, I call it multitudes because I like this concept that we’re so much more, typically than kind of what we show to any one person in the world. I feel like sometimes we’re kind of like putting on different masks to sort of, fit a certain image that we want people to have of us um at any given point in our lives or in various aspects of our lives. And the reason I just started this publication, and the reason I started putting out the things that I put on multitudes, is because I decided that I didn’t want to, um, I didn’t want to have these different masks anymore. I wanted to just like be me and put that out there. Um, and I think that um sort of like figuring out ways to kind of represent the whole, um, the whole self is valuable because I think that that’s the unique thing and about each person, not some sort of kind of filtered down um diluted um fragment of the person that you think kind of like checks the boxes for other people, right? So, I think that hopefully people will look at that and see, “Okay, this is a person who isn’t trying to segment themselves, and maybe I don’t need to segment myself as much either.”
Glasp: Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you for the beautiful answers. I love that publication too. And we learn a lot from you. And yeah, and I’m personally grateful for ODF to exist. And since I met a lot of great founders and you. And I love the community. Thank you so much for joining today.
Julian: Of course. Thank you for having me. Thank you.
