Generated Transcript

[00:00:15] David Hornik
Hello and welcome to VentureCast. I’m David Hornik from August Capital and.

[00:00:20] Howard Hartenbaum
This is Howard Hartenbaum from August Capital.

[00:00:22] David Hornik
And this is, this is fairly exciting, Howard, because it’s a first. It is a first. We have, we. Well, we’ve had Jeff Clavier appear on this show on a couple of occasions, but nobody could understand him. Right. But nobody could understand him because of that damn French accent, first of all. And second of all, it was because he insisted on being on. Right. So this is the first time we’ve actually ever asked someone to join us on the show.

[00:00:44] Howard Hartenbaum
And Jeff knew he was coming and had preparation time to do so.

[00:00:48] David Hornik
That’s true. And it still didn’t help him. So I mean, you know, but anyway, so, so Howard and I were just hanging out with these guys who we’re about to introduce. And, and we, and we said, oh, we’re gonna record Venture Cast afterwards. You guys want to be on the show? And they had no idea what they were in for. So anyway, no, no. Howard just gave me Jason and Connor’s cards because he’s like, no, no, you.

[00:01:12] Howard Hartenbaum
You, you might not remember their names.

[00:01:15] David Hornik
I do. Although actually last names will be helpful. So, so, so Jason Corwin and Connor Lee are here with us. They are. They have just started a company called Telfi. T E L L F I. And, and they’re with the current class at Y Combinator.

[00:01:35] Howard Hartenbaum
So, so first we’ll give them 30 seconds to describe their company, then we’ll beat them up.

[00:01:39] David Hornik
Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. This is like elevator pitch exercise. I’m gonna, I’m. I leave on Sunday to go. Go teach entrepreneurship. And the first thing that I’m teaching back east is, is the elevator pitch and then the executive summary and then PowerPoint or whatever. So here you go. So we’re going to start with the elevator pitch.

[00:01:59] Howard Hartenbaum
Alright.

[00:01:59] Connor Lee
Hi, I’m Connor Lee from Telfi. Telfi allows anyone to set up a complete phone system in just three minutes. We take bulky, complex systems and make them easy and accessible to larger audiences. Anyone from freelancers to a company of 50 or 100 people. We doubled our growth in the last couple days. Doubled our user base.

[00:02:18] David Hornik
So they’re up to four from two. This is a Y Combinator trick, by the way. That’s not true.

[00:02:26] Howard Hartenbaum
We have 1 million percent growth.

[00:02:28] David Hornik
That’s not really true. Exactly. It’s infinite growth. Before we had zero and now we have something. Now I’ve learned this, I’ve learned this in Y Combinator because you guys are just getting started. Of course, you start with relatively small numbers and then they compound. So you just have to pick the period of time over which they’re compounding. And you can come up with some spectacular either multiple or percentage. Which is not to say that you guys don’t have growth. Cause you have a couple thousand customers or a couple thousand minutes sold. I don’t know what your measure is, but whatever. More than 1,000 customers in a couple weeks.

[00:03:03] Howard Hartenbaum
And would these be paying customers or the other kind of customers?

[00:03:07] David Hornik
Oh, Howard, give them time. This is a survey. See, look at that. They have paying customers. Howard, when was the last time you were pitched by a company that had paying customers?

[00:03:17] Howard Hartenbaum
Just last hour, because they were pitching.

[00:03:19] David Hornik
Okay, but before then?

[00:03:22] Howard Hartenbaum
That was a few weeks ago.

[00:03:23] David Hornik
All right, so in a few weeks you’ve had these guys.

[00:03:26] Howard Hartenbaum
Yep. And you always, at the end of your pitch, you need to give the directive, which is go to telefi.com and you too can set up your account.

[00:03:36] David Hornik
Exactly. You can get a number. But I really didn’t want to bring you in here to shamelessly pitch your business as much as that’s the only reason you don’t consider wasting your time as fabulous as it is. And we are believers, we talk a lot about Y Combinator on this show, don’t we? Sort of disproportionate. Maybe it’s not disproportionate. Maybe it’s proportionate. That’s just how powerful and important Y Combinator is.

[00:04:05] Howard Hartenbaum
So I had an interesting discussion with somebody at a Y Combinator at a lunch this week where he was arguing that, you know, there’s Andy Ratcliffe up at benchmark claims there’s 10 interesting, substantial companies per year that are venture backed, that are gaining traction. And because of program like Y Combinator, which identify excellent entrepreneurs, they give them some training, they give them some money, they put them in a pathway to get follow on financing and more people to help work them out. That number is going to go up and maybe it will start being 15 or 20. And just to play devil’s advocate, I took the other thing and I said, no, I think it’s now going to be five, because now you have more companies. So there’s more being funded and it makes it more difficult for somebody, one of those companies in the same space to get ahead. And became quite a lively discussion because.

[00:04:55] David Hornik
All right, so you guys, what do you think? How many class. How many companies in your class of people at Y Combinator? We’re in the realm of 40.

[00:05:03] Speaker D
I don’t think it’s a public number right now, but, yeah, in the 40s, more than 40.

[00:05:08] Howard Hartenbaum
Is that 40 per quarter?

[00:05:09] David Hornik
This is. Yeah. However, whatever. Class. Twice a year.

[00:05:11] Speaker D
Twice a year.

[00:05:13] David Hornik
So something like 40 companies. So that means there’d be 80 total Y Combinator companies in a year. And how many. If you were to say, including yourselves, how many of this class do you think, like, oh, I could. You know, because they pitch. You guys just had the session where you pitched each other. Yeah, we pitch ourselves. And then you. And then you pick out. And then you have to pick, like, oh, these are the two I put money in, right? Yeah. Did you have. How hard was that to figure out which two you’d put money in?

[00:05:42] Connor Lee
It’s been pretty hard. We’ve actually heard from.

[00:05:45] David Hornik
From.

[00:05:45] Connor Lee
We heard that this year, usually there’s like a couple stand. Just like one or two standouts in the past year. And I think as the Y Combinator reputation has grown and grown and grown, and it’s been attracting more talented entrepreneurs, that there isn’t as much of a. Of a breakdown between the one or two ones in the class that are clearly standouts, like companies like Airbnb.

[00:06:05] Howard Hartenbaum
Are you allowed to vote for your own. What’s that?

[00:06:08] Connor Lee
No, not allowed to vote for.

[00:06:09] Speaker D
At least we didn’t some people.

[00:06:11] David Hornik
It’s like high school elections. I would never vote for myself. What are you, an idiot? Of course you vote for. This is an intelligence test.

[00:06:18] Howard Hartenbaum
You think Obama voted for Bush if no one.

[00:06:20] David Hornik
Right, Exactly. If no one specifically stated that you couldn’t vote for yourself, you had to.

[00:06:26] Howard Hartenbaum
Could you imagine that? Didn’t you lose by one vote?

[00:06:28] David Hornik
It’d be terrible. It’s sad.

[00:06:30] Speaker D
I think it’s interesting, though, like, you find yourselves in the class of 40 plus, you find yourself routinely hanging out with the same people or at least around the same people. So you know a lot more about their business than you do other people. So you know their insider stats and you know everything, so it’s a lot easier to make a difference.

[00:06:43] David Hornik
And so does that make you more skeptical about those or more psychic? Without naming names, did you list the people who you hang out with more or did you not list the people you hang out with more?

[00:06:56] Speaker D
There was one in particular.

[00:06:59] Howard Hartenbaum
One that’s.

[00:07:00] Connor Lee
Still one that’s out there that I thought were just amazing.

[00:07:03] David Hornik
And these are guys, but these. I mean, these are the people you’re hanging out with, right?

[00:07:07] Speaker D
Yeah, we know their business model.

[00:07:09] David Hornik
And you said, yep, I believe it. I’m a buyer. Okay, Howard, remember to ask them afterwards.

[00:07:14] Howard Hartenbaum
We won’t let them out without that information.

[00:07:17] David Hornik
Let’s just create some white noise while we get the answer. You can just lit mouth it to us. This is good radio, by the way. If I were listening to Venture cast right now, I think that was. You know, thank goodness that David makes loud noises that are annoying as. While I’m jogging at the hour, it will be 2 o’ clock exactly. You get a soundboard here that would. Yeah, exactly. So we’re gonna have, you know, cat squealing and maybe Howard could just make those noises.

[00:07:45] Howard Hartenbaum
I can do a chicken.

[00:07:47] Speaker D
We need to hear this.

[00:07:49] David Hornik
Be sure to do that. Today’s not chicken day when you feel so inclined.

[00:07:55] Howard Hartenbaum
Did I tell you we’re gonna get chickens at my house?

[00:07:57] David Hornik
No, please. Seriously.

[00:07:59] Howard Hartenbaum
My kids want to have fresh eggs for breakfast, but they don’t know. What do you do when you buy the little chicks and one of them turns into a rooster? I said, that’s easy. You kill it. And they’re like, well, who’s gonna do that? I said, well, I guess I am.

[00:08:11] David Hornik
What you said, is one of you gonna do it? No. Well, then who’s that leave?

[00:08:15] Howard Hartenbaum
I think it’ll be one of those projects where you, like, spend a few hundred dollars and make the chicken coop and all this, and you buy the little birds and they kind of grow up, and then like six months later, it smells like shit and you got to get rid of them.

[00:08:27] David Hornik
I guess we’ll find out.

[00:08:28] Speaker D
I’ve had a friend with that. You have to watch for snakes. They will come after them.

[00:08:32] David Hornik
They sneak in and they will come after them. Yeah, Cool.

[00:08:34] Howard Hartenbaum
I like snakes.

[00:08:36] Speaker D
Will love that, too.

[00:08:37] David Hornik
Do you know you should talk to Ben Narrison has chickens.

[00:08:40] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s because he’s too cheap to buy eggs.

[00:08:41] David Hornik
Exactly. Exactly. I hope you’re listening to this Ben. Ben of Triple Point Capital. Do you guys. If you need a ven. If you need a good angel investor, Ben’s your guy. And he can give you fresh eggs just a bonus. And yet still, Howard refuses to make his chicken sound.

[00:09:00] Howard Hartenbaum
Anyway.

[00:09:01] David Hornik
All right, so how did you guys. First of all, how did you know each other? Like, did you know each other in advance of this process and.

[00:09:08] Speaker D
Yeah, we met at an event. When I first moved to San Francisco, I had a startup, Connor had a startup. We met at a Lean Startup event and kind of started BSing about telephony and said, hey, I’m using telephony, you’re using telephony. And at the time, we’re actually using competitors. And it was a little Bit of a battle as to, like, who’s better, which one?

[00:09:26] David Hornik
Who’s better? Like, which was the better platform to build on or which of us was smarter to choose the platform we chose. Or.

[00:09:34] Speaker D
Well, I never try and strong arm Karner because he’s taller than me.

[00:09:37] Howard Hartenbaum
So it was David strong arms me.

[00:09:40] David Hornik
All the time because I know that if you go for the tall guy’s knees, boom.

[00:09:45] Speaker D
I’m writing notes right now, right.

[00:09:47] David Hornik
They fall.

[00:09:47] Speaker D
It’s which platform was better. And we just started kind of debating, which turned into a spreadsheet of us comparing. Like, we were kind of, like, colluding against these guys. Like, like, all right, we’ll get you.

[00:09:59] David Hornik
So that started. So basically you. You did tele. Telephony. Nerd dumb.

[00:10:04] Speaker D
Yeah.

[00:10:04] David Hornik
Shared that. And then what? And what.

[00:10:06] Howard Hartenbaum
How long did it take before you guys decided you should do something together?

[00:10:09] Connor Lee
I think couple months, six months or more, where you’re working on projects and kind of help each other out.

[00:10:15] Speaker D
We were eating burritos.

[00:10:16] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:10:17] Speaker D
And we said, we need to buy this domain. I think a lot of startups start like, that.

[00:10:21] David Hornik
Which. Which domain was that?

[00:10:23] Speaker D
Awesome idea. It was actually hosted. Viviette.

[00:10:25] Connor Lee
Yeah.

[00:10:26] David Hornik
All right. And it was available.

[00:10:30] Speaker D
Yeah, we’ll sell it to you.

[00:10:33] David Hornik
It’s so rare that you go, oh, we just pick up that domain and then you look for it and it’s available. Unless it’s like, schmuck, whatever, then, oh, I could buy that. I just don’t know how to spell it. So then you guys got started, and then you said, gee, maybe what we should do is do Y Combinator.

[00:10:52] Speaker D
We talked to a bunch of friends Connor had a bunch of friends with, not before. And they’re just like, you know what? You guys should take a look at Y Combinator. There’s a real value in the network, and it’s not even so much people viewing it as the money. I think Paul Graham goes out publicly and is like, all right, you guys can afford ramen on this. And that’s about it. It’s more about kind of the network and the community. You get around it. And they kind of sold us from that.

[00:11:10] David Hornik
So it’s interesting, though, because you just said that Connor already was friends with a bunch of guys from Y Combinator. So in theory, what you just described was being part of the network. Right. Like, doesn’t let us in.

[00:11:21] Speaker D
We weren’t the mafia yet.

[00:11:22] David Hornik
That. Right. So they would be friendly, but they wouldn’t share the handshake or whatever else. So this is about. This is about the Handshake. This is about. I’m just trying to understand being able.

[00:11:34] Howard Hartenbaum
To put YC on your website.

[00:11:36] Speaker D
No, it’s not so much that. It’s kind of funny because you notice this whole thing how YC companies. I don’t know how they find one another. You go to a bar and you’ll see a group of people off to the side, and they’ll just know each other from yc, kind of. Or they’ll have this common bond. It’s one of this. This thing that just gets created kind of like, oh, you’re in yc. I was in yc. Remember that one dinner when they talked about this and you just start chatting and stand for business? Yeah, it’s like geek alumni.

[00:12:00] David Hornik
Yeah. Yeah. A geeky fraternity. Because I have to say that, you know, I just can’t envision a single. A fraternity in which Paul Graham would be a member. Like, can you picture that fraternity? Like, well, maybe that’s why I see. But like, can you imagine going to a campus go, well, who’s. What’s Paul pledging? No, that’s. That’s. I don’t. I just don’t see it. All right, so you guys get. So you. So you apply. You do the thing and the application process. You sort of put in a one pager or something. But it’s really about spending, what, 10 minutes with Paul on the phone or something? I mean, he’s. He says he’s got it down to a very specific. Like, in a short period of time, you can figure out who might be qualified. And then.

[00:12:41] Speaker D
Yeah.

[00:12:41] Connor Lee
Well, I think what we realized, talking to a bunch of other companies that are guys that gone through it before, was that, like, Y Combinator is always about. It’s about the people, and it’s also about, like, what have you done? And so JS and I, you know, kind of started working on a project kind of for yc, but also kind of for fun, because, you know, you have to have project that you’ve worked on together. And one of our projects, we actually. We were doing telephony stuff, and there was the elections. We’re like, well, I used to work in Oakland, and I was like, well, no one had done anything on the Oakland mayoral risk, which was like this Ranked choice poll. And so we decided to build an app. We built it in, like a day that pulled like 30,000 voters in Oakland. And I was like, oh, this is really cool.

[00:13:24] Howard Hartenbaum
This is great.

[00:13:24] Connor Lee
You know, we mapped it. We put this website with, you know, maps of the locations of the votes, returns across the board. It’s really cool. And then after the elections were done, the results came in. We beat out all the national firms.

[00:13:35] David Hornik
For predicting the outcome.

[00:13:36] Connor Lee
For predicting the outcome. Yeah. Because we had this huge sample size, and we were. So it ended up being really.

[00:13:41] Howard Hartenbaum
But they beat you on revenue.

[00:13:44] David Hornik
So that was part of your application process. Or rather, you guys viewed this as part of your application process. Like, let’s do something to demonstrate that we can get something done. That’s cool. And check it out, because, I mean, it’s interesting. I have kids. I have kids who are now getting ready to apply for college, and it feels like, you know, they need to have been doing that. Like, where’s your. Where’s your field? Poll of Oakland? Right. You know, I’m sorry, you can’t go to college because what did you do? Well, I played Xbox or whatever. Oh, yeah.

[00:14:13] Speaker D
I think it’s when I remember when I was in high school, like, growing up, and my parents like, you gotta join clubs. You gotta volunteer. I’m like, why? It needs to go on your application for college. And that’s kind of like what it is. It’s like, how do you have something on there that says, like, we work well together and we do something that’s just strong and powerful?

[00:14:30] Howard Hartenbaum
Did you join clubs?

[00:14:32] Speaker D
Yeah.

[00:14:32] Howard Hartenbaum
Did you do volunteering?

[00:14:35] Speaker D
Sadly, yeah, I did.

[00:14:36] David Hornik
I.

[00:14:36] Speaker D
Sadly on the volunteering.

[00:14:38] David Hornik
Wow.

[00:14:38] Speaker D
That was.

[00:14:39] Howard Hartenbaum
And were your parents right? Did that matter? Was that the thing that got you into college, where you wanted to go?

[00:14:44] Speaker D
To tell the truth, I wish I knew. Same with yc. Like, you wish you knew what they looked at you and said, I like those guys, and I want them here.

[00:14:51] Howard Hartenbaum
So basically, you think your parents were lying to you?

[00:14:53] Speaker D
I don’t know.

[00:14:54] Howard Hartenbaum
What’s your mom’s phone number I want to give her?

[00:14:56] David Hornik
What’s her telephone number? What’s her telephone number? We can call her up. Of course. She’ll immediately send us the voicemail.

[00:15:03] Speaker D
Also, they do send in customer support, though. That’s the. Remember that person you chatted to yesterday that needed help with something? That was me.

[00:15:10] David Hornik
That was my mother. That was you.

[00:15:12] Speaker D
My mom.

[00:15:13] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. All right, so you go, you. So then. But there is an interview process, right? Like, there’s a first. Yeah, first, like a phone interview. And then do you have to do it in person at any point?

[00:15:21] Speaker D
So they refined it. The first time they actually see your face and, like, say, like, that whole moment of, like, what’s this person look like? Is your video that you submit along with the application.

[00:15:29] David Hornik
Oh, there’s A video now. Yeah. Look at that.

[00:15:33] Howard Hartenbaum
Faster that way.

[00:15:33] David Hornik
Yeah, totally.

[00:15:35] Speaker D
Yeah. You get a sense.

[00:15:36] David Hornik
Well, video, like, you know, this is a Bill Trenchard doing. Doing his. His startup on staffing. And it’s like, well, you need to do. Got to have a video interview.

[00:15:45] Howard Hartenbaum
There’s a company I saw pitched me a few months ago called Ovia. Ovia, which does an awesome video interview process where you set it up and you send it out, and then the candidate, they do a whole thing to test to make sure the video is working and the sound’s working. When that’s all confirmed, it goes, okay, here’s your first question. And then they put the question on the screen, and then they say, you now have 10 seconds to think about it. Then the recording will start. You cannot stop this. This video. And you’ve got 60 seconds to talk. And then it cuts off, and again the question hits, and you’re like, I’ve got 10 seconds. I’ve got to start talking. It’s like you’re sitting in front of somebody and you can’t get out of it. And I think it’s a wonderful product.

[00:16:21] David Hornik
There’s actually a Y Combinator company that. From the last class that was solving this problem, doing video interviews. And I apologize to your Y Combinator brethren that I’m not remembering the company name. But anyway, all right, maybe. In fact, I bet you anything Paul uses the. Anyway, you submit a video, they then look at you, they blah, blah, blah. And then at some point in the future, they’ve limited it down to a set of people who they actually speak with in person.

[00:16:48] Speaker D
Yeah, it’s a quick process, which is awesome. I mean, it’s one of these things, like, it’s long enough that you forget that you submitted it and you’re not worrying anymore, but it’s short enough that it’s, like, right around the corner. And you find out immediately.

[00:16:59] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:16:59] Speaker D
And then from there, we go to the Skype interview, which was. Was it 20 minutes?

[00:17:03] Connor Lee
Yeah, just a few minutes.

[00:17:04] Howard Hartenbaum
10, 15 minutes. Yeah.

[00:17:07] David Hornik
And it’s just Paul. Or is it Paul and Jessica? Or is it Paul, Jessica, and Harge does the video? I think.

[00:17:14] Connor Lee
I’m not sure if it’s.

[00:17:15] David Hornik
Yeah. You don’t know if everybody gets the same thing.

[00:17:17] Speaker D
Yeah, no, it. It varies. And even in the interview process, I think that was one of the funnies. Everyone gets in. They’re like, well, who interviewed you? Who was there? And it does change up quite a bit.

[00:17:26] David Hornik
Yeah, well, it’s. It’s a lot. There’s a lot More volume these days. Yeah.

[00:17:30] Howard Hartenbaum
Do we have any idea how many companies they’re evaluating for their class of 40?

[00:17:35] David Hornik
Do we?

[00:17:36] Speaker D
No, no, we’re kind of interested.

[00:17:38] Howard Hartenbaum
It could be 41 or it could be 4,000.

[00:17:40] David Hornik
No, it’s definitely not 40.

[00:17:41] Speaker D
This isn’t a play, customers.

[00:17:44] David Hornik
It’s a ton, but. What? But I don’t know.

[00:17:46] Speaker D
What.

[00:17:46] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah. Is it 10% or 30? I don’t know.

[00:17:48] David Hornik
Paul, I’m sure you listen to VentureCast. Be sure to let us know.

[00:17:51] Howard Hartenbaum
If you give us a number, David will buy you a nice YC T shirt.

[00:17:56] David Hornik
Oh, I’ll design it.

[00:17:57] Speaker D
We’re kind of wondering, do you guys.

[00:17:58] David Hornik
Have YC T shirts on? Do they? Oh, good, because I didn’t. I’ve never seen them.

[00:18:02] Howard Hartenbaum
Haven’t you ever walked into a bar and seen like eight guys in the corner all talking to each other wearing YC T shirts? And they can’t figure how they find each other?

[00:18:09] David Hornik
I thought it was the tattoo.

[00:18:11] Speaker D
If you apply, you can get one.

[00:18:12] David Hornik
Well, you get one if you apply. Who else can accept it?

[00:18:15] Speaker D
Oh, I’m saying you guys can apply.

[00:18:17] Howard Hartenbaum
You know, our product is going to be a new radio program.

[00:18:21] David Hornik
Yeah. What would we. You’d have to build it. Howard, you went to mit. I don’t know anything.

[00:18:25] Howard Hartenbaum
We got your brother to build it. He went to mit.

[00:18:27] David Hornik
That’s true. And he actually use double ecs. At least you could. You could. You could test the ergonomics of it.

[00:18:33] Howard Hartenbaum
We should have a. We should have a project one day where we sit down for an hour and try and come up with what our YC idea would be.

[00:18:39] David Hornik
All right, we could apply. We could pretend to be someone else and apply.

[00:18:43] Speaker D
You guys should reverse pitch. That’s awesome.

[00:18:46] David Hornik
We’re ready. We got. We. We’re good.

[00:18:49] Howard Hartenbaum
Let’s just steal some great pitch. Some entrepreneur told us last week.

[00:18:51] David Hornik
Now, well, that’s cheating. Surely we can come up with something.

[00:18:57] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, but. But set would be some entrepreneur and say, see, those bastards stole our idea.

[00:19:02] David Hornik
And we have proof because here they are. They’re building it. Yeah, that would be bad.

[00:19:07] Howard Hartenbaum
All right, let’s.

[00:19:08] David Hornik
We should just be vcs.

[00:19:09] Howard Hartenbaum
We’ll fight it.

[00:19:10] David Hornik
But what if we get rejected? They’ll be sad. We could do. And actually, we could. This would be awesome. Like, we could. We could create pseudonyms and do this whole thing and then we can. And you guys would hit like, say you’re friends with us. Oh, totally. So. And we could say we’re friends with the we pay guys or something. We could pick a Sort of random set who could vouch for us and claim that we’re real people.

[00:19:31] Speaker D
How would you do the video?

[00:19:32] Howard Hartenbaum
We’ll do it. Let’s put black paper over it.

[00:19:35] David Hornik
Totally hire people to be our. To be our. I could pay off, right? I could write it. I can write the script. That’s no problem.

[00:19:43] Howard Hartenbaum
You could just make it up on the fly.

[00:19:45] David Hornik
Do you think we could do. Oh. Oh, this is a video interview. Yeah. Oh, man, that’s a. That’s an interesting one. We could win. I think that with a beard. You could wear a beard and I’ll shave. I’ll take off glasses. And then, you know, we’ll do something. I could shave my head. We could envy. Like, we sit back two far.

[00:20:05] Howard Hartenbaum
And then you have Paul going, look at that. We’ve got two bald old guys pitching for my combinator.

[00:20:11] David Hornik
Yeah, maybe they could be. Yeah, that’s true. We might have to go with baseball caps, hoodies. We could wear hoodies. We could be like the. You know, like the. The guy on. No, what’s the stupid. Sir. You know, the chat roulette. I could be the chat roulette singing guy. That’d be sweet. Would you. We could sing all our answers. Or all our answers could be in haiku. I’m sort of obsessed with haikus at the moment.

[00:20:36] Howard Hartenbaum
My favorite haiku is by Robin Williams. Red Sand Between My Toes, A Summer Vacation in Outer Space.

[00:20:43] David Hornik
That’s it. Here’s the one. Here’s the one that my son had recently. I think someone had put it online. It was, I see you driving around town with the girl I love, and I say, haiku. Now that’s a good haiku. So then my son, who has a indie rock blog, then proceeded to write a. He says that it has nothing to do with that haiku. Someone else had done a haiku review, and so he reviewed a new album in all haikus.

[00:21:14] Speaker D
I think that’s awesome.

[00:21:15] David Hornik
Which was cool. So I’m teaching this class next couple of weeks, and the final project is that you get a term sheet and you have to give me comments on the term sheet. So you have to mark up the term sheet. Whatever. And basically what I said last year was, you could do whatever you want. You could give me a music video or you could give me whatever. And so a couple people did. Gave me a music video, rewrote a song, and they. And one of them was awesome. Completely amazing. So this year I’m gonna try and figure out if I can convince someone to make it haikus. If you could comment on the term sheet in a meaningful way in all haikus. That’d be awesome.

[00:21:50] Howard Hartenbaum
We do that with every entrepreneur that comes in, though. They just don’t get it.

[00:21:54] David Hornik
They just think that we speak oddly. It’s really hard, actually to count syllables in real time. It is really hard to count syllables in real time. See, that’s what I’m saying. All right, so you. So you join yc. You join yc, you’ve got the beginnings of an idea, and then basically they say, go.

[00:22:17] Howard Hartenbaum
No, they give you money in the. They say go.

[00:22:18] David Hornik
Yeah, but they give you enough money to buy cabbage soup or whatever, and then they say go. Is that it?

[00:22:24] Connor Lee
Yeah, they encourage you to actually start working on if your idea isn’t already built. Some people come in with ideas that are like, they’re functioning. Some people have companies that are making money and they send you in and say, ycu’s starting. They let you know about a month in advance. They’re like, do as much as you can before then. Trust them. Us.

[00:22:44] Howard Hartenbaum
Trust us.

[00:22:44] Connor Lee
You’re going to need the time. And of course, later, you’re always like, God, I wish we.

[00:22:48] Speaker D
What was I doing those weekends in December?

[00:22:51] Connor Lee
You’re like, yeah, but. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, YC starts. You start going to dinners. Then things get really, really crazy from.

[00:22:59] David Hornik
There, as opposed to the sort of crazy before that. And so what, you know, like, my understanding is that some of the value of YC is that Paul brings and speakers. Does he ever teach, like, the master class on SQL or does he, like, do you have any of that stuff? Or is it really about getting together and building a community of support and stuff? But you’re really on your own building a business.

[00:23:26] Speaker D
Yeah, I think the finish there that you’re really on your own building a business is about. Right. And I think it’s why kind of people shy away from the term incubator, which YC isn’t, because it’s really what you put into it, is what you’re getting out of it. Because they’re not saying, come sit down here, we’re going to look over your shoulder and you’re going to work on a product and we’re going to make sure you’re working on it. You actually have to subscribe to what’s called office hours that they hold and kind of say, I want to meet with you and I have something to talk to you about. Well, there might be. You might say, hey, teach me about SQL. Teach me about programming language. But I don’t see Much value unless your company’s doing that.

[00:23:56] Howard Hartenbaum
But more often it’s a question like, should I go with angels or go with VCs? Or what’s.

[00:24:01] Speaker D
Towards the end? It can get to that at the beginning, a lot of it’s just strategy. It’s kind of like, how should we approach this idea? What are some things we could do?

[00:24:08] Howard Hartenbaum
Get more customers.

[00:24:11] Speaker D
Growth is huge. And I think it’s one of the big things that a lot of people miss is that launch early, focus on.

[00:24:16] Howard Hartenbaum
One thing, and do it well. I could do this.

[00:24:18] Speaker D
Yeah. Like Canada, for example, for us was when we launched. We didn’t guess that Canada would have been one of the first things we should have gone after. Then the request for Canada came in, and we’re like, all right, Telfly, ca. Let’s do it.

[00:24:29] David Hornik
That’s right. I mean, you know, who’s betting on the Canadians? Until you find out that they’re all out there going, we need this product. Yeah.

[00:24:36] Speaker D
And that’s exactly it. And you don’t learn that until you launch. That’s one of the things that it’s just kind of like, get in there, get what you need to get done. Get a product that works and something that someone’s going to be kind of seeking and launch it.

[00:24:47] Connor Lee
I think Paul’s favorite question to ask is, are you launching yet? Are you ready to launch?

[00:24:53] David Hornik
That’s how he adds value, comes up. And so have you launched? Yes, we have. Okay.

[00:25:00] Howard Hartenbaum
We think we have it tough with five or 10 or 15 companies. He’s got like a hundred.

[00:25:05] David Hornik
Yeah. I bet at this point he has more than that. Right? Well, this is the biggest class he’s ever had.

[00:25:10] Speaker D
I believe so.

[00:25:10] David Hornik
Yeah. But I bet she has more than.

[00:25:11] Howard Hartenbaum
100 that probably harass him on a regular basis asking questions.

[00:25:16] David Hornik
I just heard that Mr. McClure has invested in 100 companies as well.

[00:25:19] Howard Hartenbaum
Now 105.

[00:25:20] David Hornik
Now 105. Yeah. Might be hundred companies. So, I mean, I just sent him.

[00:25:25] Howard Hartenbaum
A good one yesterday.

[00:25:26] David Hornik
Did you?

[00:25:27] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:25:27] David Hornik
Look at you. You’re like a source. You’re the source.

[00:25:30] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s called Voomote.

[00:25:33] David Hornik
Are you supposed to say that over to everybody?

[00:25:35] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s you take your iPhone and you download a piece of software and you plug it in this little holder and it becomes your universal remote control.

[00:25:42] David Hornik
But there have been a bunch of those.

[00:25:43] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s awesome. The user experience.

[00:25:45] David Hornik
So this one’s awesome. That’s your. That’s your difference.

[00:25:48] Howard Hartenbaum
They’re launching in three weeks. They’re awesome. I have one at home.

[00:25:51] David Hornik
I assume they’re not in stealth. And you haven’t just destroyed them.

[00:25:54] Howard Hartenbaum
They’re not in stealth. No. They’ve got orders for tens of thousands of units. They’re getting ready to stock shelves.

[00:26:00] Speaker D
Do they do anything neat with the iPhone in particular, though?

[00:26:02] Howard Hartenbaum
The. Just like the way you pick rooms or pick. You know, it automatically figures out what TVs you have and you can set it all up in room. You can say, okay, turn on the stereo and everything comes on at the same time.

[00:26:13] Speaker D
Or can you shuffle a station, though, by shaking the iPhone? Do they use neat features of it?

[00:26:19] Howard Hartenbaum
I don’t know. You should try it. You can download that.

[00:26:21] Speaker D
I have an Android.

[00:26:22] David Hornik
Oh, my God. Someone is insisting on calling. Oh, no, this is someone new. Who are these people who are so desperate?

[00:26:29] Howard Hartenbaum
Let me tell you, if you had Telphi, you wouldn’t have to worry about that because it would automatically be forwarding.

[00:26:34] David Hornik
To one of your remote assistant.

[00:26:36] Howard Hartenbaum
One of your people.

[00:26:37] David Hornik
Be one of my kids. Hello, David. Hornets. No, he’s not available. He’s never home.

[00:26:45] Connor Lee
You should just let people pitch your kids.

[00:26:47] David Hornik
They should. I think my son Noah, actually would be pretty good. A little ruthless maybe, but I think he. I think he would do a fine job.

[00:26:55] Howard Hartenbaum
My daughter writes for TechCrunch sometimes and she writes these articles. I’m like, you got to be meaner.

[00:27:02] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:27:05] Howard Hartenbaum
Arrington will teach you. You got to be meaner.

[00:27:07] David Hornik
Did you see his article today on Dig?

[00:27:09] Howard Hartenbaum
I saw that he wrote one, but I didn’t read it.

[00:27:11] David Hornik
Basically went and looked at Kevin Rose’s profile to see how many times Kevin had done anything on Dig in the last month and then basically said, even Kevin’s not using Digg, which is just like, ouch. Yeah, it’s ouch. Because even. Because it’s not any way an indication of anything. Right. There could be 20 million actives and whatever else, but, you know, ouch. Ouch. Yeah. Anyway. But on the other hand, Mick, is that good journalism or. I don’t know.

[00:27:38] Howard Hartenbaum
I think it’s interesting.

[00:27:39] David Hornik
It is interesting. That’s like, I read it, I went.

[00:27:41] Howard Hartenbaum
And said, oh, therefore, I think it’s good journalism. It may be irrelevant, but it’s interesting.

[00:27:46] David Hornik
Mike’s still doing his thing. I mean, you know, he sold the company and was like, oh, well, we’ll see whether he. See what happens with. With TechCrunch. And I don’t know. So at YC, is there, you know, getting written up in TechCrunch, I assume, is a. Is considered a valuable thing. Is there a process to that like, gee, hey, Paul, tell, tell, hey, Paul.

[00:28:07] Howard Hartenbaum
Tell Howard’s daughter to write an article.

[00:28:11] Connor Lee
No, it’s great. We, we were lucky enough to get an article in TechCrunch when we launched and, and we. It was great. It was great for us. It was, you know, overall, drove a lot of traffic. And I feel like when you’re early stage company that, you know, getting on TechCrunch is great, great.

[00:28:29] David Hornik
All good. Anything, any, any little bit of tension is valuable. And I mean, they have a ton of. They have a big audience. They’re a ton of people. I was reading something interesting, actually. So apparently TechCrunch installed Facebook for their comment system.

[00:28:44] Speaker D
Oh, yes.

[00:28:45] David Hornik
And then. And, and it was argued. And I, I won’t say who by whom it was argued, but I think there was someone who had a particular interest in disgust. The system that was removed, but it was argued that because you have to Facebook connect to comment, that it means that people are basically have to say who they are. And so that the comments have gotten really boring because all the trolls have gone away. Right. You can’t like say, telfi, what a piece of shit. I could use my, you know, iPhone to do that with my cousin and whatever.

[00:29:16] Speaker D
Although we must say they installed it two days after we launched.

[00:29:22] David Hornik
Anymore.

[00:29:24] Howard Hartenbaum
I don’t comment anymore on tech grudge.

[00:29:26] David Hornik
Yeah, right. Howard. Howard used to be vociferous and now he has nothing to say. It’s very curious. No, it’s interesting, right? I mean, is it. Is, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Like, is it a good thing to have this, like, lively debate? Even though some of the time it’s with Giant.

[00:29:40] Howard Hartenbaum
I think it’s interesting to have those Giant anonymous assholes on there that you can, that you can just look at and laugh and just say, oh, it’s the founder of the company is trying to defend himself and pretend he’s anonymous. You can make up whatever you want. It’s fun. It’s much less fun now.

[00:29:56] David Hornik
Yeah, well, my favorite was when There was like three articles over a period of time written about WePay and WePay had done something else and someone wrote some incredibly nasty thing. And then Rich Aberman was one of the founders of WePay commented on this comment, and because he had real. He caring a lot about these comments on the articles, it seemed that it was the same guy who had ripped on him in the first article and ripped on him in the second. So he said, you know, when we launched, you said, you’re a piece of jerk. Then when, you know, we. When we did such and such, he said, blah. He said, I can only imagine what you’re going to say upon our ipo. That’s good. That’s good use of social media right there. Love it. What else you got, Howard?

[00:30:45] Howard Hartenbaum
What else I got?

[00:30:46] David Hornik
You guys have any questions, any comments, anything you want to talk about? We talk about everything.

[00:30:50] Howard Hartenbaum
I want to know when I’m getting my iPad2.

[00:30:53] David Hornik
You ordered it online, didn’t you?

[00:30:55] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:30:55] David Hornik
No. We’re all screwed. I ordered it online, and I’m not getting it.

[00:30:58] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s, like, five weeks now.

[00:30:59] Speaker D
Do you order the COVID I don’t want a cover.

[00:31:01] David Hornik
I just want. What do you mean? The cover’s the coolest thing.

[00:31:04] Howard Hartenbaum
The COVID is, like, plastic, and it’s expensive.

[00:31:06] David Hornik
No, I bought the black leather one magnet with a. Yeah, it’s got 40 magnets or something.

[00:31:12] Howard Hartenbaum
Seriously, stealing yours when it comes in the mail.

[00:31:14] David Hornik
Then I saw the first iPad2 in the wild just today. Guy walking out of Kagetsu. You must have come too late. We had lunch. Howard and I had lunch today in Kaigetsu. Not together, but I was having lunch with another one of my partners and someone. And then Howard.

[00:31:31] Howard Hartenbaum
They didn’t invite me?

[00:31:32] David Hornik
No, please. So not inviting you. And so there were, like. There were three of us in Kagetsu who figured we should just. We should have an account.

[00:31:40] Howard Hartenbaum
I think so. And get a discount. A free piece of sushi every time.

[00:31:42] David Hornik
We’ll get nothing. We’ll get nothing. Although that’s. Wait a minute.

[00:31:45] Howard Hartenbaum
I get free sushi every time I go.

[00:31:46] David Hornik
You do? Not you. That’s ridiculous. This is bigotry. Just because you speak Japanese, I’m gonna study Japanese.

[00:31:55] Howard Hartenbaum
What I do is I say, I’d like to order some more udi and put it on my partner’s bill.

[00:32:02] Speaker D
One more drink on his tab.

[00:32:04] David Hornik
That’s genius, Howard. Except for the part where you’re paying my bill.

[00:32:07] Howard Hartenbaum
Oh, yeah, I forgot. Anyway, tell me about your iPad. Two in the wild.

[00:32:11] David Hornik
No, I mean, that was. I just. It was.

[00:32:12] Howard Hartenbaum
So you hit him and you mugged him and you tried to grab it.

[00:32:14] David Hornik
It was interesting. He was walking by. Oh, it wasn’t. I lied. It was not at Kagetsu. It was this morning at Joni’s Cafe, where I have breakfast. Have you been to Joni’s? No.

[00:32:24] Speaker D
Is that down here?

[00:32:24] David Hornik
California Ave. Oh, yeah. You got to write Y combinators down.

[00:32:27] Howard Hartenbaum
Joni’s tends to be crowded, though.

[00:32:29] David Hornik
It’s gotten crowded. But they’re building a new space. I know. I’ve been ever since I’ve been mayor. It’s like super popular. Wouldn’t you want to go where I’m mayor? Of course.

[00:32:39] Speaker D
You know, that’s given in a while a mayor there.

[00:32:43] Howard Hartenbaum
Do you have breakfast?

[00:32:44] David Hornik
Are you saying, like the world has passed me by and I’m still living it? That was such a. Your. You. Hey, listen up, old man. Nobody gives a shit about you being here.

[00:32:54] Speaker D
I mean, if you get a discount, by the way.

[00:32:55] David Hornik
Oh, that’s just so sad.

[00:32:57] Howard Hartenbaum
So basically you just said that the Foursquare is dead because I can’t believe it. Being mayor.

[00:33:02] Speaker D
No, they’re doing some new stuff.

[00:33:04] David Hornik
Jason just called me old.

[00:33:08] Howard Hartenbaum
You can take off that wig now.

[00:33:10] David Hornik
I can’t believe it. I had. Actually, it was one of your. You guys, it’s YC that. That. That treats me like the old man. I just was. I was talking with. I was talking with another. With another YC company the other day, and they were. And we were chatting with something and there were categories of age. Categories, whatever. And so he made some comment, you know. Well, you know. Yeah. So when so. And so does this, then. Then we mark to them because they’re in the blah, blah. And when, you know, so if you were coming to the site, we’d put you in the 50 to whatever. And I was like, seriously? I’ve never been called 50 before. That was.

[00:33:48] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, but you got to remember when somebody’s like in their 20s, everybody who’s over 35 is like, 50.

[00:33:53] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:33:54] Howard Hartenbaum
In their mind.

[00:33:54] David Hornik
I gotta say, that was a little brutal. You guys don’t think I’m 50, do you? No. All right, good, because. Come on. Come on.

[00:34:01] Speaker D
That might be pushing it, Howard.

[00:34:03] David Hornik
Maybe.

[00:34:06] Howard Hartenbaum
I had my birthday this week. I turned 50, 45, so I’m halfway to 50.

[00:34:09] David Hornik
That’s true. Happy birthday. Howard, did you bring in your own doughnuts or were they brought for you?

[00:34:14] Howard Hartenbaum
Kirsten brought in a dozen donuts for me.

[00:34:17] David Hornik
And how many of those did you eat?

[00:34:18] Howard Hartenbaum
Only two.

[00:34:19] David Hornik
Wow, that’s. That’s super controlled for Howard. Howard has a metabolism that you can’t even imagine. Oh, so you guys still. This is the other thing. Doesn’t Y Combinator do like group meal? Do they still do that with those, like giant buckets of beans? Yeah. Oh, the face. Your face is. I’m not gonna say who’s face, but the face is revealing that this is perhaps not the tastiest of meals.

[00:34:38] Connor Lee
There is an in n out nearby.

[00:34:43] Speaker D
I do know the closest food nearby.

[00:34:45] David Hornik
So do you guys actually go to this group dinner because it’s a social thing. So it’s a good social thing, but the food, not so much.

[00:34:51] Speaker D
It’s not about the food.

[00:34:53] David Hornik
I know. All right, so here. I got to say this bucket of beans, like, here’s the thing.

[00:34:57] Connor Lee
And rice.

[00:34:58] David Hornik
Yes. Yeah. No, so. So Paul’s totally missing the point here. Right. Because I tell you what, I can. I. For the next class of Y Combinator, I can guarantee great food for every group meal. All you have to do is let me make them sponsored by a venture firm. Every Monday. It’s Monday, Right. Or whatever. Tuesday. Every Tuesday.

[00:35:18] Howard Hartenbaum
Have a different venture from some venture firm.

[00:35:21] David Hornik
Yeah. And they’ll send. And you just. All Paul would have to do is let, like, one venture guy come to your come to thing. And. And if you bring in the food, that food be like the best food they ever ate. Because it would be competitive. People would compete.

[00:35:34] Howard Hartenbaum
We would bring K getsu sushi.

[00:35:37] David Hornik
This is. I mean, I’m telling you, if he’s. And because right now it’s an expense for him. But this could be like he profit center. It could be a profit center. He could get a good bottle of wine. You guys would get better food. What do you think? Is this. Is it worth it to discuss, like, proprietary things at these dinners, or you just chat?

[00:35:54] Speaker D
Yeah, it’s very much off the record, which is. I think one of the cool things about the dinner every week is some.

[00:35:58] David Hornik
Does someone speak or is it just a. Yeah. Oh, there’s a.

[00:36:01] Speaker D
So we’ll have weekly speakers and they’re. You let them know it’s off the record. So comfort level at the dinners.

[00:36:07] David Hornik
So you could totally have a VC come in. It wouldn’t like. It wouldn’t be something that would interfere with the con of conversation. Whatever. You just say it’s off the record. And then VC comes in. They pay for your dinner. What do you think?

[00:36:17] Connor Lee
Yeah, Potentially you’re like, yeah.

[00:36:19] David Hornik
Do you think this would interfere in any way with the dinner? That’s why you could say to the.

[00:36:23] Howard Hartenbaum
VC is we want to be perfectly clear, this is just a competition to see which VC firm gives us the best meal.

[00:36:28] David Hornik
No, no, but the only question. Right. Yes, that’s totally true.

[00:36:31] Howard Hartenbaum
You can’t say shit during the whole meeting. So bring the food and be quiet.

[00:36:34] David Hornik
This is the right. This is the question, though. I mean, this could really test the outer limits, which is to say that, in fact, you can’t even come. You just. We just will attribute it to your firm.

[00:36:46] Howard Hartenbaum
We promised to put your logo on the door.

[00:36:48] David Hornik
But we will put up your logo and we will say that this food was provided by August Capital. But you can’t even come that. Actually, that’s a winner right there. Do you think VCs would do that? Do you think they’d be so pathetic that they would, like, do that? Give. Give food without any attribute, with, like, minimal attribution?

[00:37:09] Howard Hartenbaum
Some would totally. I’ll bring the napkins.

[00:37:14] David Hornik
This would be an interesting test. Like, I.

[00:37:16] Howard Hartenbaum
We’re in for napkins and paper.

[00:37:17] David Hornik
No, for worth. For what it’s worth, this was our idea. I feel like, at a minimum, we should be allowed to come if we’re going to pay for dinner. Or you can attribute the beans and rice to us. Those are your choices.

[00:37:32] Speaker D
Sponsor food. Mustard brought to you by.

[00:37:36] David Hornik
As long as you have August Capital on the mustard jar, that would be fine, don’t you think?

[00:37:42] Howard Hartenbaum
What you do is you have. You have, like, a crab. All these crabs. Everybody’s gotta eat with their hands. And you make them wear August Capital bibs. So they’re all looking. This would become totally competitive, which would be why it would be so funny.

[00:37:57] David Hornik
So good.

[00:37:58] Howard Hartenbaum
Like, then you’d have, like, pastry hats that say sequoia across the top, and it would be like, this funny stuff.

[00:38:03] David Hornik
Welcome to the benchmark Sunday bar.

[00:38:09] Howard Hartenbaum
You’d have beautiful waitresses carrying the beer.

[00:38:12] David Hornik
Out wearing, you know, and waiters. Howard, there are some women at Y Combinator.

[00:38:17] Howard Hartenbaum
What’s your point?

[00:38:18] David Hornik
Or, you know, straight. You make such assumptions. You’re.

[00:38:23] Howard Hartenbaum
I said servers. You heard something else? We can play this back and see, but the battery’s probably dying.

[00:38:32] David Hornik
Are we still recording?

[00:38:33] Howard Hartenbaum
We’ve had this happen before where we’re. We’re doing this and we’re, like, 40 minutes into it, and, like, the batteries have died on minute five, and we’re just like, well, that was a good one.

[00:38:41] David Hornik
I know. But the saddest part is nobody cared. Like, they listened. Like, that’s the best. That’s the best venture cast ever. What else? What else should we talk about?

[00:38:51] Howard Hartenbaum
I think we had enough.

[00:38:52] David Hornik
Do you guys have any. Shown any shares in Facebook? Have you bought any shares on the secondary market? I haven’t, no. Really? Because you’re, like, the only guys in all of Silicon Valley. I haven’t bought shares. Facebook. We discussed over email this morning the possibility of buying. What, $2.2 million? No, 2.2 million shares. Somewhere in the 60 to $65 billion range. Wow. What do you think? Should we do that?

[00:39:23] Connor Lee
Yes.

[00:39:24] David Hornik
Yes.

[00:39:26] Howard Hartenbaum
That would look like a coin toss to Me? What about you?

[00:39:28] David Hornik
Yeah, you. Yeah. I don’t know.

[00:39:32] Howard Hartenbaum
It is the most interesting company out there.

[00:39:34] Speaker D
I heard of a company named Telfi.

[00:39:36] David Hornik
Telfi, Exactly. We probably wouldn’t cost the same.

[00:39:41] Speaker D
Much better deal.

[00:39:42] David Hornik
Yeah, we wouldn’t have to put in 60, 70 million dollars to buy an eighth of a percent or whatever.

[00:39:50] Connor Lee
Although we do have the same investors as Facebook.

[00:39:53] David Hornik
I know you guys already took the DST money. Good. Is that what it’s called? Start Fund.

[00:40:01] Speaker D
Yeah, it’s a new fund.

[00:40:02] David Hornik
Start Fund. Brought to you by DSD and Ron Conway. But these crabs were brought to you by August Capital. Who cares about $150,000 when you could have this fantastic caviar bar from Pepper Crabs. August Capital.

[00:40:22] Howard Hartenbaum
It would be funny, the competition that would come out.

[00:40:24] David Hornik
We could bring in, like, an awesome chef and do a food demo. That would be awesome. We could crush that. We could crush the other venture bringing in awesome food.

[00:40:39] Howard Hartenbaum
You weren’t there, David. But we did. Paul Bragiel did a little event up north of the city where he rented this, like, farmhouse and this. This property and invited up all these entrepreneurs and some VCs and stuff. And I don’t know if I told you this, but August Capital sponsored the wine tasting. And we.

[00:40:59] David Hornik
Oh, good to know. How much does that cost?

[00:41:01] Howard Hartenbaum
That was like 1500 bucks or something. But we sent up, we got a guy from a local winery to come up with four different types of wines where the bottles had all been blinded. And we had all these tasting cups and mixers and all this type of stuff. And the competition, we’re like 20, 20 minutes into it, and I look next to me, and the guy next to me is so drunk, he’s drinking out of the spit bucket. He was just like, oh, my God.

[00:41:31] David Hornik
I’m fairly certain he’s not going to remember that I sponsored the wine testing. And to the degree that he does, perhaps that’s not so good.

[00:41:38] Howard Hartenbaum
So, anyway, that was kind of the idea. We were halfway into it, drinking out of the spit bucket, and he drank literally, like, another bottle of wine out of the bottom of this bucket. And then he passed it out.

[00:41:50] David Hornik
That’s really gross, I gotta say.

[00:41:52] Howard Hartenbaum
No names used.

[00:41:56] David Hornik
Oh, man. We could do August Capital tattoos. We’ll fund you, but you have to get an August Capital tattoo on your forehead. Unfortunately, that would be. You know, there’s like an inverse relationship between the intellect of you and the likelihood you’d do that. Or.

[00:42:12] Howard Hartenbaum
I don’t know.

[00:42:13] Connor Lee
There is a Mexican food restaurant in San Francisco that used to give you free Lunch once a week. If you got a tattoo, it’s a little guy with a sombrero on a piece of corn, kind of surfing it.

[00:42:22] Howard Hartenbaum
And so there was homeless people for blocks with tattoos all over their body.

[00:42:26] David Hornik
That would be a good investment actually for them, right? Go get the tattoo. How much would that cost you?

[00:42:31] Connor Lee
A couple hundred probably.

[00:42:32] David Hornik
So that might not be such a good investment.

[00:42:34] Speaker D
Rev share.

[00:42:35] David Hornik
They can do the work prison style. But by the way, actually, how would that be for. For charity? You say, listen up, here’s what I’m gonna do for you guys. I’m gonna get you a tattoo. But the good news for you is that every two weeks you get a free burrito. So it’s like the gift that keeps on giving. You can teach a man to fish, you could give a man a tattoo or you can teach him to fish or something.

[00:42:57] Howard Hartenbaum
So if you’ve never, if you’ve never pitched David and I before, basically this is what it’s like. We sit down, you give us the 30 seconds and then we talk for a while. And this is all a matter of getting to know you and decide if you’re fun to hang out with. And then we kind of decide after we make you pitch our partners.

[00:43:15] David Hornik
I was gonna say, well tell me. Then you gotta tell these guys, like, are we in, are we out? I mean, you know, it’s like gladiator style. One, two.

[00:43:24] Howard Hartenbaum
Are we gonna do it?

[00:43:26] David Hornik
We could do it, except its radio.

[00:43:27] Speaker D
You couldn’t even see our smile.

[00:43:30] David Hornik
Somehow it turns out, it turns out by the way that there’s that, that in the voice inflection changes with the smile. And it’s because of a brain reaction. The way your brain responds then. So did you hear that on npr? It’s super interesting.

[00:43:45] Connor Lee
They used to, in high school, I did telemarketing. And they’re like smile when you talk to people. And they’re like, someone stand up and smile when you talk to people. Because they can hear, hear it into the phone.

[00:43:54] David Hornik
It turns out it’s true. And the thing that was the most interesting was they said that they had done a test where there was an article about a mass murder or something and they’d have people read it normally and then they’d have people read it smiling. And then they’d play the two recordings. And the recording of someone smiling, reading it sounded psychotic. Because it’s right. It was another great murder. Whatever. It just apparently sounded so off putting. And there’s no reason, you know, you’re not. Look, all you’re hearing Is the exact same article read by the same person. It’s pretty interesting. So you did telemarketing. That’s pretty good. I mean, telemarketing is getting.

[00:44:33] Howard Hartenbaum
You were dialing for dollars.

[00:44:35] Connor Lee
Yeah.

[00:44:35] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s awesome. You’re smiling.

[00:44:37] David Hornik
It was.

[00:44:38] Connor Lee
It wasn’t the best product, actually. I didn’t last the whole summer because I kind of. I think we were selling debit cards to people to help them increase their credit. It ended up being a scam.

[00:44:49] David Hornik
But.

[00:44:49] Connor Lee
But there’s this whole thing where they’re like, well, you know, give me $1,000 if you sign up. I did it for a month or two, made a little bit of money and learned some good marketing skills.

[00:44:57] David Hornik
Yeah, good marketing skills. That’s hard. I was at a. I tweeted about this. I was at a. At a. The University Ventures Fund has this big conference for college students who are interested in the venture business business. And it’s. And it is. And it’s in Salt Lake City, and there are lots of folks who are involved who are Mormon. And one of the speakers was Mormon. And he was talking. He was the founder of a very successful company. He said, look, I got a lot of training in sales because I went on mission and I had, you know, and I had to go door to door selling something every day. And it was an incredible experience selling.

[00:45:35] Howard Hartenbaum
Something that not many people.

[00:45:36] David Hornik
Well, that he was, you know, it was. It was. Right. He was saying, like, look, it was a tough sell. I was in. I think he was in Japan or whatever.

[00:45:42] Howard Hartenbaum
When I lived in Japan, they would come to my door about once a month, usually in, you know, wearing the same kind of dark suits and ties, and they look exhausted. And I often would just say, you guys want to come and have a glass of ice water? Oh, yes, please, guys.

[00:45:56] David Hornik
Right?

[00:45:56] Howard Hartenbaum
No, they’re young kids and they were. They were, you know, carrying books with them.

[00:46:00] David Hornik
But it’s tough. I mean, that’s hardcore, right? I mean, doing things where you, you know, where you learn. I was a shoe salesman in high school. I saw Tom McCann shoes, and I was about shoes selling and. And we were paid on commission. And man, you know what? I sold a lot of shoes. Now, I don’t remember what I said, and I probably. Someone probably should have listened.

[00:46:19] Howard Hartenbaum
You have such beautiful, sweet smelling feet.

[00:46:24] David Hornik
It was probably more about the pleather, the, you know, incredible pleather and the matching. Matching handkerchief, hand purse and whatever. But it’s good training. It’s good training to have to, like, explain something like that. You guys have how many Minutes? Do you guys have to tell about your business? Coming up? Two minutes.

[00:46:42] Speaker D
Ten seconds.

[00:46:43] David Hornik
Two minutes and ten seconds. You have to convince a room full of investors that what you guys are doing at Telfi is compelling enough that they come find you to learn more. Yeah, right? That’s it. 2 minutes and 10 seconds. And if you at the end of the 2 minutes and 10 seconds, nobody comes up to you, then, you know, like, you’re not gonna. You’re not gonna raise more money from that. And if a bunch of people come up to you, then you get to have a much longer conversation. Right?

[00:47:06] Connor Lee
Yeah.

[00:47:07] David Hornik
That sounds like. That sounds like. Like dialing for dollars to me. Yeah.

[00:47:12] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:47:13] David Hornik
High stakes poker, I guess.

[00:47:15] Connor Lee
Totally.

[00:47:16] David Hornik
That’s cool. Well, it’s awesome.

[00:47:20] Howard Hartenbaum
Thank you for being our spontaneous guests.

[00:47:23] David Hornik
Yes. Jason and Connor from Telfi. No, it was awesome.

[00:47:27] Connor Lee
It was great.

[00:47:28] Howard Hartenbaum
I saw your graph of growth with Canada. Now you’re gonna see growth from the venture cast.

[00:47:35] Speaker D
Yeah.

[00:47:38] Howard Hartenbaum
Mary says we’re done.

[00:47:39] David Hornik
Yeah, Mary, my assistant just gave me a look and I. When I looked at her, like, what? She said, it’s four. Like. Oh, but wait, Howard, we forgot last two. I think we might have remembered last time. But we. But we’re supposed to suck up to someone.

[00:47:52] Howard Hartenbaum
Wasn’t this a whole suck up thing?

[00:47:53] David Hornik
Oh, so we should just suck up to Jason and Connor? Is that it? Telfi?

[00:47:58] Howard Hartenbaum
Why not?

[00:47:59] David Hornik
All right.

[00:47:59] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s a great product. It’s a great product.

[00:48:02] David Hornik
No, these guys are being super smart about how they’re looking at their product and taking customer feedback and being super iterative.

[00:48:10] Howard Hartenbaum
And it’s the best one in YC because, you know, you saw all 40, and this is the one you picked for VentureCast.

[00:48:15] David Hornik
I did pick. Look, you know, we can’t. We can’t be alienating other folks. Let’s just buy them some really good crab dinners and we love everyone. Howard. No, we really appreciate you guys. It’s been fun. So thank you. Thanks much.

[00:48:29] Speaker D
Thank you.

[00:48:30] David Hornik
So this is David Hornik from August.

[00:48:33] Howard Hartenbaum
Capital and Howard Hartenbaum from August Capital.

[00:48:36] David Hornik
And have a lovely day.