Todd Gagne

Super excited to bring you this episode today with Bill treveon. Bill has got a pretty interesting background, being inspired by a high school teacher to forming an entrepreneurship club in college to multiple startups to really finding like the perfect co founder to start his new company. As he moved out to Silicon Valley, I think this episode is just chock full of just nuggets and wisdom that you can kind of take and apply to your own startups. And I'm super excited to bring you this episode with Bill Cerulean. All right, well, I'm excited to have a conversation with Bill today. Bill is joining us from Silicon Valley. I've been known and kind of worked on and off with Bill probably the last six or seven years since he was in college. And I think he's got kind of an interesting story, talking about his journey from like, school mines, and then talking about doing some startups some time in China, as well as his own startup now. So I'm excited to have him on the podcast. So Bill, thanks for making the time.

Bill Trevillyan

Yeah, I'm happy to be here should be fun.

Todd Gagne

Yeah. Well, I hope so. So let's start with college. So you went to School of Mines? I probably met you somewhere in your sophomore year. And you were you were a student that generally had some interest in entrepreneurship, at least from my perspective, pretty early on. And so I'm kind of curious about like, how did you get that? Did you have that before you came to college? Did you have mentors, parents or other people that were kind of part of that. And then I think you got to the innovation club for entrepreneurs relatively early. And that was kind of your tribe, like you found some people there. And over time, you had some leadership? So maybe start with college and just kind of how that journey went?

Bill Trevillyan

Yeah, well, first of all, great question like, it didn't really start in college. Actually, it started in high school, where I basically got involved in a research project studying bacteria, or yesterday, an algae that was producing hydrocarbons. And we wanted to make a biofuel. And so I built a lab in my basement, we started, like, I started working on this and trying to see if I could produce biofuel. An idea was like, well, you make something that's going to help the world. Like, and that's what entrepreneurship is, at the end of the day, you try and build something that improves the world in some way makes an impact that you can also sell. And so I don't think I knew what the word entrepreneurship was at that point. But the point is, I was starting to explore like, well, let's, let's build something, let's get it out to the world. Let's help people. And, and so I basically spent a couple years doing that. And then I got to college. And well, I also didn't know what entrepreneurship was still then. But I was like, Hey, I'm gonna get a PhD in chemistry, I'm gonna get, like, go get a chemical engineering degree and found like, but I needed the club, I needed to join something. And another group of students on campus was starting this innovation club for entrepreneurs. And I was like, Well, this is a perfect place to get involved with, let me help found this club then. And so I started doing that with this group. And it took a long time to get functioning group that was actually had people like recurrently showing up. But we eventually got there over about a six month time period. And then I had my tribe at that point, and kept recruiting people. Yeah.

Todd Gagne

Well, I think it's pretty cool. And I think what was good from a campus perspective, is that fed into kind of the CEO business plan competition on campus, right. So that was just basically an annual competition. But you could always have kind of a forcing function where you had ideas, you could work them out, do the work beforehand, and then pitch and kind of that Shark Tank type of model. How many years did you do that? And did you feel like you got better over that time period?

Bill Trevillyan

Yeah, I probably competed in that competition, three or four times over the course of five years. And honestly, there's a handful of other business plan competitions I participated in during that time as well. And I did I started out very poor as a communicator, as a pitcher. And Darren Hardy, a friend of both of ours was giving me a hard time about it. He's like, Yeah, you're really bad at this. Like, he probably shouldn't be doing this. But then he will run and him as well as many other mentors like yourself, Todd, help give feedback. And as I would fail, I'll pitch and fail and do that over and over again. I learned I learned how to do it properly, because it is a science at the end of the day. And just like engineering, once you learn the formula, you can repeat it so Yeah,

Todd Gagne

You know, there's two things that I always, or at least one thing I can think of that I really appreciated about about you. Bill was, I think you always were looking for constructive criticism, meaning like, give me some feedback. And then you always made it better. And so I was reminded by that quote of Nelson Mandela said something like, I never lost I either one, or I learned something. And I think that does kind of embody the way you think about it is I mean, I think, obviously, externally, people would look at that and say that it's a failure, or whatever you did, but I think you took it and said, No, no, I'm dusting off the pant legs, I'm taking that and I'm going to, I'm not going to do that the same way, I'm going to get better at it. And so I do think that you're a model from that perspective, where, you know, it's like, it's just about learning and getting reps at it. And it is something that is a developed skill. It's not something that's either innate or not. So when you think about like product, and finance and sales kind of go to market stuff, like out of those, which was the easiest, and which was the hardest for you to kind of figure out because I think engineers have some tendencies to get some things really easy, because they're black and white. And then other things, I think that they're just more difficult to like, figure out and these business plan competitions. So where did you kind of fit in the scale of some of those?

Bill Trevillyan

Honestly, I was really good at product and finance. I guess I had an intuition into numbers. I mean, as any engineer goes into college, like, we think our skill set is only engineering, but really, it's it's quantitative reasoning, and breaking down problems, and that our system that are like systematic issues and trying to understand them at a higher level. And so in terms of like, product, like we like, it was kind of like natural to start thinking about like, Okay, this customer has a problem. Where's it stem from? Let's do a root problem analysis, and then try and think of like, what is the most economically efficient way to solve this? And then in terms of finance, like it's a lot of Excel sheets and keeping track of the numbers making sure that Yeah, it's like, put together your financial model, like, that's fun. Like, I'll do that on a Saturday. But yeah, but then the the sales was honestly hard I communicating your idea clearly to somebody and convincing them that it has merit is a very difficult skill, and one that I still have to get a lot better.

Todd Gagne

Let's get, you know, I think going back to your product piece of it, I think that early on, I think you and I had some conversations about like, I think you just have a propensity to be a product person, right? And so and I think part of that started with your curiosity or your like, first principles of let's start with the customer, what problem do you actually have, and then kind of extrapolate what the product is going to be? And so, you know, I think, I think as your time on at the campus kind of continued, I think you started to hone in, and that's where your kind of sweet spot was, I think, talk a little bit about home metrics, which I think was your last effort on campus. I mean, it really did have a feel of like a real business. And you had a team and, and, you know, there was a value proposition. And you know, some of the stuff with IoT was kind of interesting. So maybe talk a little bit about what that was. And then maybe some of the efforts were because I think that was probably the best product you kind of put together during your time on campus.

Bill Trevillyan

It certainly was. Well metric started when a good friend of mine who is a senior in college came to me, Kayla casas, her name she, she came to me, he was like, Okay, Bill, I have a business idea, I have a problem I really want to solve, like, I just walked home and found out that my my basement was flooded. Like, why? And in today's era, with all the technology we have, why, why am I surprised to come home to find my basement flooded? Like that shouldn't be a thing. And we're both chemical engineers at the time. So like, I mean, we knew how to design processes for a chemical plant to make sure that something like catastrophic doesn't occur, and that there's all these warning systems that end up making sure the damage is mitigated. And so like, she brought that idea to me was like, Hey, let's, let's start a business. And so we started down that path. And she didn't stay with the company long. She got a really nice high paying salary, and graduated. But I continued on with with her metrics, I competed in a couple business bank competitions, one a little bit of money and continue to refine the idea for a year until I found my co founder, Tim, Tim Ford. And he was a really good software engineer from the School of Mines. And so he was able to build out the software side of the product. I worked on the hardware side of the product and interviewed lots and lots of customers we probably interviewed over over 70 customers by the end of it. And so, we really understood the problem. We understood what a good solution was and we ended up building. We're still an inexperienced team. So it ended up taking longer to build out a product that we could release to the market. And in that time own plumbing had also released an identical product to ours. And so at that point, then we were like, Okay, maybe maybe we should shut this down. But it was a fantastic learning experience. And although many CEOs failure like, honestly, that that was kind of what kicked off my career in startups, truthfully, even even after the Entrepreneurship Club, because that was, that was the real deal. Like we were actually trying to raise money, we were actually building a product, we actually installed our product in people's homes and got to see them react to it and use it. And But although it was a failure, it was like more just a stepping stone. I've heard this statistic. And I don't know if it's actually accurate statistic. But like, it takes eight companies or eight failures before you get a successful company up and running as an entrepreneur. And I'm like, well, that's just, that's just one more checkmark. Yeah, I'm getting closer. Yeah, I'm getting close today. We'll keep going. We'll keep going.

Todd Gagne

Let's get you know, I think another thing that was kind of unique for you is you took a semester abroad in China. And so this was an immersion program. I know, I talked to you a little bit, you know, before you're gone, and we probably exchanged some stuff while you were there, and then came home. You know, it's not purely an entrepreneurial activity. But I do think like, You got to be, have some guts to kind of do something like that. I mean, in certainly the economic or the political climate today in China is different than when you went. But it was it was interesting, and I think you had some interesting insights. So maybe talk a little bit about what a semester abroad in China looks like where you're really supposed to be, you know, speaking Mandarin?

Bill Trevillyan

Well, yeah, it was the it was called the cet intensive language immersion program. And so to give some context, that means, like, I went to China, not knowing a single word Chinese, like I didn't even know how to say hello, and I got there. And then the first day they say, Okay, today's the last day, you're going to speak English, like, congratulations, now, you're going to speak Chinese for the rest of the time. You're here. I'm like, okay, they're joking, right? Like, they can't be serious. And no, they were completely serious. Like, we didn't speak any English at all for the rest of the time. And so that was a massive culture shock. And I went into the experience, kind of confident, I was like, Oh, I am good with handling handling ambiguity. But I quickly learned like that was that was a different experience. And honestly, it helped me grow, didn't necessarily handle it the best at times. I ended up going to McDonald's a few nights to handle the different fruit food and get adjusted. But it's still a good experience. Because, well, when you when you expose yourself to something that's really, really hard, it, it makes it look at yourself a little bit differently, makes you question your values, and really why you're doing what you're doing. And so as I went there, and was exposed to a new culture and exposed to a lot of stress, like, I couldn't speak English, I couldn't even express that I was stressed. Like, it helped me find like a new part of me, I guess I could rely on and trust. But

Todd Gagne

Yeah, it's interesting, you definitely got out of your comfort zone there. You shared a story about, you know, this is during some of the Hong Kong protests and stuff and you were talking about, you told me a story about talking to your parents about that. And then your phone networking, but I don't want to steal your thunder and tell the story. Because I think it's kind of interesting. And I think it's, you know, it's almost unbelievable in our culture. And but yet you and you had that perception perspective there. But maybe tell the story a little bit about it and put some context around it.

Bill Trevillyan

Yeah, I'll happily do so. Well, so to to give some more context. And I don't know if you've told her the full story, but the way it started, I went to a friend's room. So we were all staying in this like hotel hostel like dormitory, all these Americans and with their Chinese roommates who was like their mentor, and, and so like I went to go visit a friend in their apartment. And it started out with a person like I went into the room and we're talking that it started with one of the hotel staff coming in knocking on the door asking me why I'm in their room. And I was like, See, you're watching us in the cameras like what? Why? And then, I mean, we got them to go away. But then eventually, like he ended up having this conversation about like, really the Tiananmen Square protests and the protests in Hong Kong, I was asking all these questions, I was really, really curious to understand the political government or the political climate. And those are questions I was probably not supposed to be asking. Because immediately after my my phone froze and stopped working and didn't work properly for two, three days there, and but then it started working properly all of a sudden, and it's not like I did anything to like trigger it. And I don't actually know if it was the Chinese government, but is kind of just a questionable thing of going like, Okay, well, this is new. And it's a real culture shock. I mean, here in the United States, we're used to freedom. And we're also used to kind of speaking about China and the Chinese people in more like, oh, okay, they're, they're an evil country. And they're the enemy of the United States. But it's also not true. Like, we say, they're communists, they're actually an autocracy, we say they're evil is actually no, the people are great. Like, they have amazing ancient history and culture, that we have a lot to learn from on them for and but at the same time, then they have a different set of values around how they view, community and family. And so what seems like a lack of freedom to us also doesn't necessarily seem like a lack of freedom to them. And they think it's normal for to be listened on through for their phone and stuff. And so it was certainly a culture shock. And I take those experiences now going forward.

Todd Gagne

So to give you a better appreciation for coming back to the States

Bill Trevillyan

100%.

Todd Gagne

I can imagine that

Bill Trevillyan

We have it very good here in the US.

Todd Gagne

Sometimes we take it for granted, I think. Yeah, so coming back from China, though, and you know, finishing up your degree. Did you know at that point in time that you were going to probably not use your chemical engineering degree, did you know that you were going to go into this kind of startup world, and this was going to be your career. I mean, I would imagine, you know, as you get into your junior your senior years, like, that stuff's pretty interesting, right? It's the stuff that you've worked, you've slog through all the other stuff to get to that. And then all of a sudden, you're kind of thinking, maybe this isn't for me. And so I'm kind of curious, on where, like, where did you end up having that kind of epiphany that maybe startup land and, and being an entrepreneur was kind of what you're gonna do as a career, not just a stepping stone in college?

Bill Trevillyan

Great question. Yeah. I, so while I was in China, I was applying to the Goldwater Scholarship. It's a nationally national known scholarship for people in science to help fund their PhD, basically, and also get funding for their undergraduate education. And so I applied, I was like, Okay, I'm gonna go get a PhD in material science. This is I'm gonna go invent new materials and technologies, and then try and commercialize them. But it was during that application that I realized that I kind of learned and through that process of like, talking to various mentors, and evaluating different research projects that I learned, like, often the scientists aren't those who get to commercialize the technology and actually get it out to the world. And I wanted to be at that point. And so I was like, Well, okay, let's maybe debate not going to a PhD, finally, which was a really weird thing, because I had done all this work to get a PhD. And then I basically didn't throw that work down the drain, but like I chose to graduate, finish out my schooling and not pursue, it will not use use that education directly in my career.

Todd Gagne

I can imagine, I mean, I did the same thing, right. I didn't use my degree, basically, at all. And I did three startups for another school, and then went to concur. And so I do think that there's kind of, and I think people underestimate the education that you get from, from a kind of a scientific or engineering background and how it does apply. But it's not a one to one, right, I think it's not, I'm not using calculus in a sort of regarded, which is probably a good thing. Then you kind of finish up, and then you are interested in getting into the startup culture. And I think, you know, the next thing you end up doing is working for property meld, which is a local prop tech. Startup, they had raised some Series A, they were probably, I don't know, 2530 employees. And you you really join is kind of the first product manager, which I would think would be hard, right? Where it's like, it's a little bit of a startup chaos. And there's not like a, like a formal methodology yet. We're defining that. And then you come in as a new grad, that's trying, you know, with an engineering background, and you're working, you're sitting between the customer and engineering, and you're trying to play that role. So maybe talk a little bit about that transition. And you know, what went well, what didn't go well. What do you think your background kind of prepared you for?

Bill Trevillyan

Well, yeah, and I mean, Todd, as you know, you, you helped me get an internship there. And that internship, I spent basically four months doing customer discovery research, I was talking to customers putting together proposals for a new product and saying, like, Okay, here's, we've done all this research, we know the customer's pain is x, and therefore let's, let's go solve this in this way. And it was just a basically a research project over or four months, but what I learned through that process was like, Okay, I had some experience from home metrics, talking to customers. And so I applied that and did the same thing at property, Melbourne, really focused and honed the skill to the point that I could be a successful product manager, because I really, really, really understood the customer. And that's, that's what allowed me to get hired at property mount, and leverage that skill, even though I didn't have any of the other skills of a product manager. And so it ended up being like a great experience in the sense that like, I was a, I was an expert on the customer, I was able to bring insight to the team and help them understand, okay, this is the direction we need to go. And this is why because customers pain. At the same time, though I was some 2023 year old that was working with people five to 10 years older than I have, and helping give them direction trying to inspire them to work on certain features and certain parts of the product and basically trying to influence this, this team who was like, why are we listening to this kid like, then so it was it was definitely a difficult experience and is definitely out of my comfort zone, I was probably working 12 to 14 hour days, just trying to like read books, do research, make sure ever like my arguments are sound. And I could support everything, even if people push back. And but overall, it was an amazing experience. And I mean, David and Ray at property, Mel gave me the opportunity to really grow and learn how to do the job on the job, which I wouldn't say everyone lets you do that. Lets you get away with.

Todd Gagne

Yeah, I think you saw yourself a little bit short, though. I think, you know, you've talked a little bit about putting yourself out there, I think you do allude to, you're not afraid of hard work, I think that you every stop that you've ever been, you're not afraid of putting the time in. And so when you combine a passion for the customer, hard work and ability to continue to learn, you just kind of close that gap. And so I think there's a lot of similarities that can occur. Whereas like, I ended up doing a bunch of different jobs that I probably wasn't qualified to do. But it's like those ingredients of like, you know, a focus, the hard work, and then continuous like learning and whether it's like, you know, reading talking to customers, whatever it happens to be, it's just like, I'm going to figure this out, I do think is some of the entrepreneurial ingredients to be successful, because you're gonna hit roadblocks, you're gonna have all these issues. And if you just keep following that mythology and saying it's not about my ego, it's about the outcome, I think it does really work well. And I think you have started to develop that pretty early in your career.

Bill Trevillyan

Completely. Well, I mean, to your point, like, if you focus on the customer, and really focus on understanding their route pain, the pain that they don't even know how to verbally express, like, you, it's really, really hard to go wrong at that point. Because your assumptions are going to be founded, your assumptions are going to be somewhat accurate. And so then you can go test that and validate that and turn it around and say, okay, okay, we're mostly accurate here. And we're solving their problem, and they're happy with it. If you don't focus on the customer, then you're going to waste your time and spend resources and all these other things. And really, you can't make an impact. Even if you're a good product manager know what you're doing. If you don't focus on the customer like you You will fail naturally.

Todd Gagne

And you can't you can't be based on assumptions. Yeah, exactly. So then you move from Rapid City to Silicon Valley. And so I think in some of the discussions that we had had was, you know, I think you wanted to be around more entrepreneurs, you wanted to be around more people building startups and more of a culture of that. And so I'm kind of curious on other than kind of the the expense, probably sticker shock of moving out there. What were some of the elements of or the positive changes for you? I'm sure there was it just a culture of startups like how, you know, a lot of smart people running around talking about starting companies money, there's a lot of ingredients out there that I think make that place special.

Bill Trevillyan

It certainly is. So like, I when I moved out there I didn't know anybody out in the Bay Area. Really. I moved with a good friend. But the when I got there, like I mean, we didn't have friends out there like so. I was like okay, let's make some friends. So I went to a coffee shop blue bar. a coffee shop in Palo Alto. And in I chose that coffee shop, because that's what the internet said is like, oh, a lot of entrepreneurs go here. Okay, great. Let's try it. You go in, and then I'm just standing in there in line. And I hear two people in front of me talking about machine learning. Two people behind me are talking about, like, augmented reality, and then like, and I'm like, Okay, this is interesting. I think I'm in the right place. Like they're talking about technologies that I don't I'm not familiar with don't really understand. And then like, this is a good place to get really exposed to the opportunities out in the world. And then I go and sit down, over at a table. And then the person next to me goes, Oh, hey, what's your name? And I'm like, Oh, Hi, I'm Bill, like, good to meet you. Like, what do you do? And he's like, I'm working on like, solving aging and making sure that we don't age and I'm like, well, that's really cool. Like, I I'm in disbelief a little bit, but still, like this really interesting. conversation was started. And so in combination with that, and then just all the startups and all the meetups, all the VCs in the area, there's more research resources there than it can afford to use, honestly, that. And so it's a place that if you go, you can be surrounded by the right people who can teach you. And as somebody who still didn't have really a good sense of, of all the variables involved in creating a startup is like the perfect place where you go like, Oh, not aware of a lot of things. Like, let's quickly fill those gaps.

Todd Gagne

Yeah, that's good. That's a good overview. So then maybe talk a little bit about your next stop, which was encode technologies, quite a bit different than property melt maybe a little bit further down the maturity curve, right, they've gotten a series B funding, they were probably, you probably tell me over 200 employees, when you got there, they already had, you know, product management, and maybe some infrastructure and see your play playing more into that, you know, like, what was that like to go from, you know, your own thing to like property mode, which is 2530, you know, and working a lot of hours, probably with not a lot of structure to go into a larger organization in a technology space.

Bill Trevillyan

It was honestly a really interesting experience. So you talked about, like, maturity of the company. So yeah, they had a lot of funding, I think they were valued like $1.2 billion, or something, which I was like, wow, it's a unicorn, what does that even mean? But at the same time, then, like, I got in, I was the second product manager who is hired. And they didn't like the company didn't know what product management as a as, like a discipline. Discipline was, yeah. And, and so they didn't have any processes. And so my boss was like, okay, so we got to build a product organization. How do we do that? I'm like, well, here's some hypotheses, but pilot looking for you to guidance on this. But then, here's like, now we're a team, let's, let's, let's figure this out. And so we started to build out the foundations of a product management organization there. And we found a lot of struggles, because people didn't know what product was. And they were moving at an incredibly fast rate. And the short time that I was there, they hired 130 people. And like, people didn't know each other's names, it was a fully remote organization. And there is a lot of problems. Like I thought, I thought I had seen some fires at property mail, then learn to like deal with some issues. But the scale when you when you have a bunch of money, and people are really burning it quickly, like the fires are much larger, to the point that like, you question what you're doing at times are going like, are we doing this right? Like, how are we successful? But it's still a really good learning opportunity. First, going from like home metrics, where it's like, Okay, let's start a company to then property malware, it's like, okay, how do others do this? And then to encode where it's like, okay, what is scaling look like. And so now I've gotten a chance to kind of see early stage one to 10 employees to 30 to 50 employees, and also now 200 to 300 employees who are scaling really quickly with a lot of funding. And so now I feel like I have a good sense of like, what the set of problems are at each level. And I would recommend to anybody who's wants to be an entrepreneur, go, go follow that same path because it really exposes you to the broad range of skills, you're going to need in a broad range of talents that you're gonna have to recruit to your team to really get a company off the ground and keep it alive.

Todd Gagne

Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the things too, talking with entrepreneurs is like, you know, going into the workforce and working for somebody isn't betraying your kind of goals, I think you've got to kind of look at it and say, Does this further my toolkit of skills? And then can I bring that back. And sometimes you just gotta go, you know, be part of it. And it's kind of funny, like I, I went to concur. And I was kind of saying, I need to diversify my skill set, because I want to be go back and be an entrepreneur. And so what did the company do, they basically kept me busy for 20 years, moving me from job to job. And so you got to do sales, you got to do marketing. And we went from 40 employees to 12,000, in 19 years. And so and we went global, and we went public, and, you know, we had a lot of those experiences, but it was always this thing where like, I've got a checklist of skills that I need to get, and if the company is still giving me them, then you know, this is okay. And you know, they came in beneficial down the road. But it was just interesting, where you talk to some of them. And it's like, you can get some really good experience working for some of those companies and get some of the skill set you're looking for that will benefit your next startup, or the startup that you're gonna join.

Bill Trevillyan

I think it's necessary. I like mean, the the entrepreneurial world likes to praise and put these young entrepreneurs on a pedestal, who dropped out of college and start a company and grow it $2 billion. But that's really rare like that. And those people didn't do it, because they knew everything and knew what to do. They got some significant funding and some really important mentors who made a lot of the decisions. And but the reality is like, most likely, you're not going to get that lucky, you can't rely on luck. If you're really starting a company, you have to create your own luck. And so that means go work for some other companies build out a mentorship network where you can have people in sales, marketing, product engineering, leadership management, that you can go to and ask difficult questions and get truthful responses back and then later, when you do start your company, you can now go back to the same people and say, okay, hey, here's the problem we're dealing with, how do we go about solving it, you have more experience than I? And I need help? And then go from there?

Todd Gagne

Yeah, that's a great answer, Bill, I really do. I think that's, it's a creative process that over time you get better, and the network is really important. Which kind of brings me next to your next stop, which is the one that you're currently on. I mean, I think you've basically left a paying gig, which I'm sure it's scary. And then and so you know, you're now kind of in this AI space that we hear a ton about. It's a it feels like a little bit of a land rush, where like people are trying to use these large language models in a whole bunch of different verticals. And you are kicking off something and doing it with a partner. And so maybe start with just like picking out a founder like I mean, that's a pretty critical thing. And so, you know, how do you find somebody that you are willing to go shoulder and shoulder to this? Do you look for somebody that's complementary, do you look for, you know, how much of this opportunistic? Like, I think that's a pretty big one, especially when you think about a lot of the partners that have worked out, you're together for a long time, and under some pressure cooker type of situation?

Bill Trevillyan

Well, what is the saying that whoever you start a company with is, is more important than whoever you're married to? Be the legal binding, the contract that you signed with him at home is holds a little bit more weight. And while it's true. Yeah, and so when I when I got to California, like one of the main goals I had was like, well, I need I need a good like, I can't start a company alone, I really need to be able to build out a good co founding team. And so I was like, Okay, where do I find co founders? And so I did some research, I asked some people's like, hey, how do I go about this effectively? And honestly, I didn't, I didn't get good answers. No one really had an answer. Other than, like, go out and meet people. And so I tried a bunch of things. I started volunteering for a VC for an organization called Founder World where I organize meetup groups where just bring various entrepreneurs and tech people together to meet each other and cool ideas and conversations we had and I was hoping I'd get lucky meeting somebody there. Then I was like, Okay, well, okay, that's not working out. Great. I haven't met anyone who is good fit yet. Maybe I'm going about this wrong. So then I like started volunteering for Rhys Morgan. Other organizations like TechCrunch Disrupt, and met some great people there as well. But it still wasn't finding finding my community. I am getting like, honestly just lucky. I kept going back to the Blue Bottle coffee shop and sitting in there and meeting random people over and over again and it honestly took Two years of me going to that coffee shop. But before like, I basically bumped into my co founder where we were both sitting down next to each other. I was having a conversation with another person about leadership principles. And then he was like, Well, this sounds interesting. Like, can I join the conversation? Like, I have some opinions here. And its name is Raj, Raj Bansal, and well anyways, then we were like, oh, yeah, like, let's, let's talk, let's, let's keep having good conversations. So then, we kept going a couple of lunches with get together, got coffee, at some point, then started hanging out as friends and grew out a larger group of people were doing barbecues. Eventually, like, we decided to move in together. And in that led to him pulling me out of the house was like, Hey, let's go discuss business ideas. And then after we had a couple of discussions, we were like, Okay, we think we have something here. Like, we got a solid idea. Let's, let's work on it. And then we started we started working on.

Todd Gagne

That's pretty cool. I think what's cool about that is, is it's a process, not a decision, right? I mean, you have a decision at the end of it. But I think, you know, I think too many people basically make a snap decision to do it and do it with somebody, I think you had a slow burn to find. And maybe what you had in your head was maybe some criteria. So maybe talk about that, like you met a lot of people, why wasn't? What did they what were they missing, that Raj had?

Bill Trevillyan

That's a great question. So honestly, when you're when you're looking for a co founder, it's kind of like dating, like you. You're looking for somebody who's complimentary to you. So like, has a different skill set has maybe some similar interests, but like, as their own competencies, but at the same time, then like, somebody that shares the same values as you, so like, I care about technology, I care about making a positive impact on the world, I care about communication and being extremely open. And so when you're then kind of going doing dates with different people, basically, over a year long, you kind of get to learn what kind of character they have. And like, do they match your values? There's definitely been a handful of people that I almost started companies with over the last two years. And then like, kind of realized along the road, after a couple of weekends of working with him, I was like, okay, like, you made some questionable decisions on your character that I can't trust you on that like, and it comes down to do you feel like you can trust the person after a long enough, and at some point, you do have to pull the trigger. And so even then, it's still a bet. But if you've done your due diligence, gone on enough dates, basically, and tried to evaluate them, just like you evaluate a real life partner, like things are going to be better for you?

Todd Gagne

Well, it's good, I think that more people probably should put that much rigor into kind of the cultural values that you're trying to espouse. Because I think you're going to spend a lot of time with them. And so I think you were smart to do that. And I think it makes a good foundation. And I forget the statistic, you know, startups that are just with one founder don't get, they don't nearly make it nearly as much as a team. And so I think you got to share the workload, there's just so much there. And so I think finding somebody that matches your values is willing to work as hard as you are, that has the communication, you're looking for the same goals, I think is a huge win, but it just takes some time. And you like you said, you need to be selective?

Bill Trevillyan

Well, and you need to, like, plan for. Like, I mean, it's kind of like a game of statistics, you got to go meet 200 people, if you want to find the right one, if you think you're gonna meet 10 people and find the right person, you're probably not like, realistically, or at least you can choose somebody but may not be as good of a fit as it could be.

Todd Gagne

Yeah. So as I kind of alluded to, I'm not gonna give much about what you're doing. But you know, just talking about being in the AI space. It's a crowded space, there's a lot of attention. There's, I mean, you can't just you open any sort of tech news. And there's other applications that we never even thought about, what do you think the key to success is going to be in differentiating yourself in it? I mean, we've talked about the customer. And so, you know, really focusing on that, I think you're going to do that. But the question is, like, there's probably other people that are leveraging some of this technology and focusing on a business problem that's similar. How do you differentiate and how do you think you get to success in kind of this kind of crowded market?

Bill Trevillyan

That's a great question. I mean, as you said, it's a gold rush right now, like, we are in a new era, at the moment, like, knowledge in a weird way is becoming a commodity like, you can ask Chad GPT and these MLMs for anything, they'll give you. Maybe not a 100% accurate answer, but a real have the really good answer still. And so we've kind of see this occur. And we've been watching the front edge of technology and had no idea was going to come in, we were like, okay, yeah, this level of technology is still like two to five years out. And then also this year in like, we were caught off guard, but then it was just like, well, this is an opportunity, there's gonna be others like us. But we've prepared for the last five to seven years, studying entrepreneurship, trying to start companies like, it gives us an advantage over a lot of people, first of all, but even those that it doesn't give us an advantage over, like, then we were like, okay, so how do we succeed here, one, we got to move incredibly fast. And so let's work on this full time, we're not doing this part time, we're doing this full time. We're fully committed and working 12 hours a day or more on seven days a week. And so that's what we're doing. And so we predict there's going to be a lot of solutions out there. But companies don't succeed because you have a good idea. And they succeed, because you have the right team who can execute, build a product and sell the product. And those are the like the main main components. And so I have a great co founder who can build the product. And I've put in the work over the last seven years to figure out how we can sell the product and at least get help if we need, I don't know. And so we've already have a mentor network of probably about 15 people built out that we've been going to questions on trying to evaluate when to pivot and which direction to go. So that we can move as fast as possible. And so we're going to keep leveraging, I guess those principles are moving fast, being customer focused, and making sure that we have the right team members on the team to really be successful in this space. We're looking for an ML co founder right now, because we realize like, that's our weakness. And if we want to make sure that competitors don't have any chances of beating us, then let's let's add somebody to your team even more. But yeah, I can also speak to the idea a little bit like we're trying to build an AI coach to help people improve their communication skills. It is a crowded space, to some extent, there's handful of five or six competitors who are exist, they're two years ahead of us. They have anywhere from 150,000 to 7 million in funding, but the way we see it is like yeah, they they, they had a head start, but they also have more bureaucracy than us at the moment. And we can spend more time upfront doing really good customer validation and customer discovery, form some strong opinions on what the customer needs, and then use the technologies that have recently come out in the last eight weeks and move quicker than they can disrupt them, we've already been able to build prototypes that are honestly functioning better and providing more analysis than than their products. And so if if we can build a product that's 10x better and get it out here in the next few months. Like, let's do that. And let's let's challenge them.

Todd Gagne

Yeah, it's exciting. I got two more questions for you, Bill. One of them is, I kind of have this hypothesis that I think we talk about this as a seismic shift. And I agree, it's kind of like my generation, I didn't grow up on the internet, because it came along when I was in college, and then you're you grew up where basically the internet was there all the time. And then I see my kids that basically were mobile first, right? Like, they basically have a different way they, you know, the internet wasn't even a thing, it was just the mobile that was the big piece for them. And I almost kind of feel like you're gonna be like me, where it's like you're adopting some of this chat or some of these functions of the AI components of it, but there's probably another generation that it's integrated into everything they do. And so it's just interesting to see these kind of epoch shifts and how technology is and then like the population how they adopt it. And so I'm kind of curious if you agree with that, do you feel like it's that big of a shift? Do you feel like it'll change kind of a lot of our day to day when you look you know, 1015 years down the road?

Bill Trevillyan

Honestly, yeah, I do think it's a massive shift. And I'm to some extent worried I'm optimistic but worried. With chat GPT you have the ability to ask a question get an any answer that you want. How does a Bernoulli principle work? It's really complex chemical engineering topic. I asked chat GPT like how it works, explain it to a five year old had an incredibly good answer. Answer that was better than the five professors I asked to explain it. And, and so when we look to the this younger generation, I think it's going to be weird for them because I don't even know how to put myself in their shoes. I feel old already.

Todd Gagne

Welcome. Welcome. But yeah,

Bill Trevillyan

They, what I expect is they're going to have much different values, they're probably not going to value knowledge whatsoever. Because they can just get knowledge easily. What I can see them valuing is emotional intelligence, communication, the critical thinking skills, the and empathy, like the things that make us human, and that we are really, really good at. I think that that generation will undervaluing and building technologies, building lifestyles around, I could see a large group of people going more into a lot of the art forms going back to painting going back to piano playing music and piano. Just because, well, like we've had our scientific revolution in AI is fascinating. And I don't know, maybe I'm wrong on that. But we'll see.

Todd Gagne

We'll have to wait and see. Well, that's good. I mean, it's just interesting, where the interesting point, so I'm gonna wrap this up, though, Bill, I was in this all this podcast with what's the kindest thing somebody's ever done for you. I think it's a reminder of just, you know, it's about people. We don't get here alone. I mean, you and I've spent a lot of time over the years. But I do think like, it's always good to kind of have that kind of remembrance of kind of something that's important to you that maybe is the kindest thing. And so I don't know if you've got a story or something you want to share?

Bill Trevillyan

Yeah, I do. So I had a teacher, Mr. Lover, and back in high school, he was a biology teacher for our class. And I joined his biology club sophomore year, and he saw it was ambitious. And I wanted to work on things I didn't really know to put my energy, I would basically go to his lab and like, clean out his fish tank. Like, wow, no, this is cool. Like, I want opportunities, I want to work on stuff. And he did something that like, is changed the course of my life. He was like, you're smart, you have potential, along with other kids in this biology club, like, you all should start a research project, like and he is like, I'll fund it, I'll give you the resources. Just come to my class, whenever you want, have full access and pursue your career curiosity, like go work on stuff. At times is honestly, maybe you should did there might have been a liability there. Like if we didn't know what we're doing. But the point is that we still did it. We were learning lab techniques, like how to sterilize equipment, and honestly how to use microscopes and how to do research and what the research process was what the scientific method was. And he let me work in that lab for for three years donated equipment, I eventually moved that lab into my basement and continued my research there. Just because I needed more space. And without that opportunity. And without the like, without him pushing me to start really, really early. I would not be where I am today, because that triggered me to get my first internship in high school before, before college when people don't really get internships. And then in college, I was able to get an internship my freshman year, and that kind of dress triggered the next internship, the less next opportunity. And before I knew it, like my career was just a snowball spiraling faster than others. And it was it was because of him. He was like, Okay, I'm going to help support students. And I don't actually know if he really remembers me that well. I went back to see him and he was like, Oh, hi. Like, did you take my class?

Todd Gagne

Well, I mean, in some cases, that's good, right? Like he's doing it equally to everybody, right? You've just had an opportunity. And so that's pretty cool. You know, it's a cool story, Bill. I think the role of mentors, whether they know it or not in our lives, and there's these kind of like, just inflection points, and there's forks in the road, where people maybe give you the opportunity to do it. I think, not that you sell yourself short, but I do think that the difference between being smart, being hard working, billing, being just a learning machine, and willing to keep trying and putting yourself out there, puts you in a position to see succeed. And so I think they're, you know, just even listening to your story today about, you know, sitting in a coffee shop and meeting all these different people and volunteering here and doing that you're doing the hard work to create the opportunities that you want. And so I think you said something about, you know, luck comes to those that prepare, you didn't say that, but you said something very similar to it in this conversation. And I really agree, you have to put in the time and effort. And so I really appreciate this conversation. I think it's a lot. I mean, it's, it's cool to see the arc. I mean, you know, we just talked about the last seven years, I'm cool. It'd be really exciting to talk about what the next seven years look like, you know, down the road, because you've packed a lot in in a relatively short period of time. And I'm excited to hear kind of how this next startup goes and how you take advantage of the opportunities that are in front of you. So thanks again for taking the time.

Bill Trevillyan

Yeah, well, thank you, Todd.