Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome, Jake Tamarkin. Great to have you here and excited to chat with you today. To start out, I would love to hear more about your company, everyday life insurance.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Well, thanks, Jordan for chatting with me today, having me on, my co founder and I, Depali is her name. We started everyday life about five and a half years ago, actually. As a result, we're inspired by frustrating experiences each of us had individually buying life insurance for our families. In my case, in addition to it being frustrating, it was kind of humiliating because prior to then, I had spent my whole career in and around insurance, thought I knew a thing or two, and was really shocked at how far the life insurance buying process was from what I expected as a modern, empowered consumer.
It was. There's no transparency to what was going on. I had a really clear idea of what was the smart play for me in terms of what products and what kind of coverage. And the agents I was working with didn't really seem to grasp what I was, didn't have the financial sophistication even to really give me good advice about it. The underwriting was kind of a black box. The whole process was just, was not good. And, but for me, coming from an insurance background, that was embarrassing. I thought I understood our business. It turned out we were really doing a disservice to consumers. And I thought, gosh, if someone like me, an industry veteran, is kind of brought to their knees by this process, how do regular, everyday people fare? And when I started looking into it more closely, I realized they're not faring too well. In fact, life insurance is. The average working family is less likely to own life insurance now than a generation ago. And it's harder, unless you're like pretty wealthy, it's harder to buy life insurance now than it was for your parents. And in an era where technologies leveling the playing field for consumers in so many different ways, life insurance is turning into a luxury good. And I thought that was crazy and it upset me on so many levels. But also I thought there's a big business opportunity here. And so that's what set us off on our journey.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: That's fascinating. So I wanted to follow up on something that you said there that was really surprising to me, which is that it's harder to get life insurance today than it was for our parents. It's turning into a luxury good.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's what was so shocking to me.
Well, first, if you look at the numbers, if you look at ownership of life insurance, like now versus 50 years ago, and kind of stratify, like, draw a line in our society between households making more than 100,000 versus less. The people above that line are doing just fine. They use life insurance the same way they did 50 years ago. The people below that line, their ownership. Life insurance is less likely to be a part of their financial profile. They're less likely to own life insurance than they would have 50 years ago. And there's a number of factors for that that's driving it. One is how life insurance is sold. My grandfather was an immigrant to America and didn't know English when he came here. Didn't even have a high school education, but he was able to eventually get educated and learn English and get to the point where he could sell life insurance to his neighbors, who were also largely immigrants. And they, in those times, it was kind of a door to door thing, and he'd go around and collect the premium every week, you know, and it might be a nickel or a dime or a quarter. And life insurance, you know, worked pretty well for those folks. Starting in the late sixties, early 1970s, there was a spike in crime. Insurance companies didn't like the idea of having agents walking around with a pocket full of cash, and they moved away from that model. That model still exists some extent in the life insurance world, but it's not very common anymore. They basically moved away, and they've never really effectively replaced that with a. With a profitable approach for addressing that market. And you look at the agents who are around today, agents are, it's commission based selling, and it's just, it's so hard, the underwriting process. Life gets so complicated that I've talked to a ton of agents, and what I learned is it's just not profitable for them to serve small needs, small customers. So that's part of it. So agents just. There's no model for reaching that audience. And the agents that are around, it's not cost effective for them to serve that audience. So they're not targeting those people. And by the way, when I say those people, two thirds of our society lives below that line that I mentioned. We're talking like, over 80 million households.
They can't be prospected. You know, just from a customer acquisition perspective, it's just not profitable to serve that segment. That's part of it. There's more to the story. Another factor that I think is kind of a cautionary tale for technology innovators in any domain is that the industry's moved to take a lot of the friction out of the underwriting process. Right. And traditionally, I don't know if you've ever bought life insurance, but you may know in the past, it's not uncommon as part of the application process to have to take a medical exam, for example. And that's a huge piece of friction. Like, we're all busy people. Even if I wanted to get poked and prodded, it's hard to find the time. When I went to do it and I had to take an exam, it took me like literally months to actually make it happen. So as they've moved to eliminate that, they're replacing it with big data. But there's still a paucity of data available that really tells them, the underwriter, what they actually want to know. They want to know what kind of your genetic makeup, your lifestyle. They're trying to assess your mortality risk. So instead what they've done is reverse engineered. Like, they found a correlation, for example, between credit history and mortality. And credit history is really easy to obtain, right? Much easier than making someone go get a medical exam. All they need to do now is click a box on an online form and hit go. And 5 seconds later, their credit histories ingested into the underwriting engine, you know, so that's great. It's super convenient, but it's directionally a good mortality indicator, but it's also an affluence indicator, you know, and in America, there's a huge connection between wealth and health. So what are we really measuring here? We're just, we're just measuring affluence, really. And, yeah, if you're wealthier, you're more likely to have a good credit score and you're more likely to be a lower mortality risk. So that's great. You know, it's a super easy process now for those more affluent and healthier people, but for the two thirds of the economy who don't fit that, it's really problematic that we've just, by trying to streamline and automate the process, we're actually excluding people.
Because I just think too much, too much when we're designing these processes. I think we think too much about the happy path of the perfect case and not enough about the reality of american society. Most people are not affluent. Most people have some kind of health issues they're working on or whatever, and the products and processes aren't really designed for them. So you've got, I could keep going for a long time, but those are two examples of how, like, on the, both on the distribution side, it's harder. And then even if you actually find a product, it's going to be harder to get approved because the underwriting has been streamlined in a way that kind of makes it more exclusive.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So it sounds like this is a major issue, especially for people who arguably would need life insurance the most. Can you talk through why it's so important for those folks, especially those under the $100,000 line, to have life insurance? And what are they missing out on by effectively being excluded from this market?
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Well, it's important. It's not like, the kind of thing that everyone needs to have. It's the kind of product where not everyone needs it. But if you need it, it's very, very important. And when I say if you need it, what I mean is, you know, in the life insurance industry, they call it an insurable interest. In the case of life insurance, it's, do you have dependents? Are there people who are depending on you, whether it's your children, spouse, a cosigner on a loan? And it's not just the breadwinner in a family whose income we need to worry about. It's also, in many cases, there's a stay at home spouse who's providing a lot of services to that family. If something were to happen to that person, those services would need to be replaced, and that's obviously not cheap. So for especially family, this is especially important for families of more modest means because they're less likely to have relatives with resources who can step in and help them so they have fewer fallback options. And we saw this during the pandemic where there was a big, tragic spike in mortality, and that triggered a lot of interest from consumers and kind of reminded them, like, the worst can happen. And it raised a lot, reminded a lot of people, hey, we're not immortal. And I should really, you know, plan for my family's future here, because what can happen if you don't have adequate coverage? You know, it might mean the difference for your kids between being able to go to college and not, and not, and going to a competitive school versus a community college. And if you think about the kind of how that alters one's trajectory, that can have a significant economic impact on your children and their children, really, that's why it's so important. Pandemic kind of reminded people, brought it home for a lot of people, created a lot of more interest than there used to be because, let's face it, traditionally buying it's an optional insurance policy and kind of feels like eating your vegetables, and who likes to do that? But the people are now awakened to the need, but it's largely an unmet need. You'd be shocked at how many people we serve who will tell us they couldn't get a call back from a traditional agent and they didn't know where to start, couldn't get the help that they need to figure out. A fairly complicated landscape, you know, so.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Along those lines, can you walk me through, you know, maybe a memorable customer that, that you've had, that you've spoken with that has had these kind of challenges and how your product has sort of helped them walk through and get through those, those blockers and be able to get this incredibly important resource that they were previously unable to figure out.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely a few cases come to mind. There was this one, or fairly early on, there was this woman, Crystal, who, who was a single mom, working two jobs, had very little time to do this kind of thing, you know, and had no one in her support network to help her figure this stuff out. But she knew it was really important to. She had a daughter and she knew if something happened to her, her daughter was going to be, you know, up the creek without a paddle. There were no, there was no family around to help them and, you know, there's neighbors, but, you know, they're not going to raise your kid for you or pay for college or something. So, you know, she was really concerned, but she had a history of some health issues that made it very hard for her to take care of this, to get a. Find a policy she could qualify for on her own. And, you know, as I was telling you before, she was one of those people where the agents weren't calling her back. And it's a very complicated product landscape. Literally, there's like 700 life insurance companies in the US marketing thousands of products. It is really hard to figure out what's the right one for you and when you're going it alone and you've got some, the kinds of health issues that underwriters are concerned about, very, very hard to find a product that you'll get approved for. And, oh, by the way, all the insurance companies share information behind the scenes, so if you get declined at one, they know that. And so it's really, when you're trying to go for it on your own, you don't realize as you're applying to a lot of different places. In her case, she had built up like sort of a bad rap in the industry, if you will, in this centralized database because they could see that she was getting declined from a lot of places. So the way that we were able to help her is we've designed a method for people to evaluate their needs, find the right product for them, and apply and buy it, you know, all through our platform. It's kind of a self service model, but we also have people available if folks need help. But in her case, she was able to go to our website on her phone. Most of our sales actually happen this way.
This was the scenario. It's like 10:00 at night on a Tuesday. Her daughter's, you know, in bed. She's finally, you know, done for the day for work. She's got like 20 minutes to do her chores. And this is one of those items on her list. And she came to our website on her phone, answered a few basic questions. She knew off the top of her head. We pull in third party data from a variety of sources, and we've got an algorithm that is now, you know, informed by the millions of quotes we've delivered a, and thousands of customers we've served. And, you know, through machine learning and other tools, you know, we've been able to really take advantage of all that experience and data. We've gotten to look at the products that are available, help figure out. In Crystal's case, you know, we found a product that, where the underwriter, she would pay a little bit more because of her conditions, but, you know, they, their risk appetite aligned well with her situation, and she went through and got approved. And this was prior to that. She had a policy that was called accident only covered her if that was the only policy she could find anywhere, was one that would cover her in the case of an accident, if she died by accident. But, you know, most people die by other means. You really, this is such a morbid topic, but you really, all things being equal, would prefer to have what they call all cause coverage, you know, where you're just, you're trying to ensure your life. You don't want the claim to be messy and to get into debate about whether you died the right way or whatever. It's really not great to have accidental death insurance. And so that's all she could find on her own. But we found her a comprehensive policy in seconds on her phone she was able to apply for, and she bought it that night and wrote me an incredible email afterward that, I mean, you know how it is working at a startup.
It's really hard work, and I won't, I'm not afraid to, I'm not embarrassed to admit I actually cried when I read her email because it was so satisfying to see that we were able to build a process and a technology that was meant made a difference to her, you know, and in her email, she talked about how she was going to be able to rest easy that night for the first time in a long time. And that really made me feel good. And it's those kinds of experiences that are driving like, the great feedback we get from our customers. And in fact, we, if you. We're not the only people selling life insurance and not the only people selling it online. We are one of the few who focus on this market, but we have the highest customer review, like Google reviews of any online broker in life insurance. And I'm pretty sure it's because these people are so frustrated with the status quo that it really makes a bit of a difference. You know, they can feel the difference, put it that way.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Wow, that's pretty incredible. So it sounds like with this service, with this product that you've built out, you're able to take this incredibly underserved part of the market with these big stressful problems that have just not been able to find the kind of coverage that they need and especially people who really need it. Right. The single mom who's the sole source for her daughter and been able to help them where they otherwise would have been out of luck. She just had the accident insurance and it was too bad at that point, right?
[00:16:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, it's hard work, but it's very gratifying when you are able to make a difference, you know, for someone.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds incredible. And so you've been.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Sorry about that.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: No worries. I don't. Freaked out too lay down. Sorry about that. Yeah, that's pretty incredible. Just, I mean, what a phenomenal use of the data to be able to serve someone in that, in that sort of scenario and to be able to serve this part of the market that has been, it sounds like largely ignored, and you're obviously hearing the feedback from the market that you're doing something right.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm really excited about it because to the extent that other people are trying to serve the market, the only way they can really make it profitable is by basically padding their margins with low value products, if that makes sense. So to be able to help these people access, you know, the best products on the market, it really makes a difference in affordability and what, and getting them the coverage they really need. So it's, it's very gratifying. And, you know, we're basically a broker is how our business model works, you know, so we're just like one of those agents. The difference is that we built a technology that lowers the cost to serve so we can profitably serve this market without having to jam them with crappy product.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Absolutely. That's a great, that's a great point. I am curious, you know, what has been the biggest challenge that you faced entering this large, established, I think you mentioned 700 carriers of life insurance entering this market as a startup. Right. Essentially coming in brand new.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: Well, we weren't the first people to think of selling life insurance online. And a lot of other, there's been billions of dollars raised to do this by us and our competitors, mainly our competitors. But over the last, and I would say this is really, we've been working on this for five and a half years. The industry really, probably the first online brokers really started around ten to twelve years ago. And we were able to learn some of the lessons from their, you know, the lessons they learned the hard way. We were able to learn the easy way by observing what's going on with them. But over the last year or two, there's been a huge shakeout.
Billions of dollars in invested capital was invested in what are now insolvent online life insurance distributors. Prudential spent $3.5 billion buying a company that they now, three years ago that they just had to shut down completely. MassMutual just shut down. Their haven was their direct to consumer online health IQ was some ex Google guys who raised almost $400 million and they had to file chapter seven.
So we're not the first, and there's a lot of companies with a lot more capital who have gone down.
So to me, what that should tell you is that this is a really hard problem to solve. It's very tricky. And all these companies tried different ways. We were fortunate enough in a way because we didn't have and raise hundreds of millions of dollars that the while it would have been nice to have those resources. On the other hand, what a lot of those companies did was use that money to commit to a particular strategy, like buying an entire insurance company, for example. Several of them did that, which is very capital intensive. And once you're committed to that, it's kind of hard to pivot. You know, really hard to pivot. They got kind of another, another popular trend was to invest in. You know, there's still this idea that life insurance shoppers need to talk to a person, and some people definitely do, but plenty don't. And so a lot there was a trend to build up, like call centers, which is a huge fixed investment. You know, not just a facility, but all the people and the recruiting around it and just all the infrastructure required to build a big call center. So you've got a big fixed cost base. And then when the economy kind of wobbled a little bit, really around the pandemic, all of a sudden they had an unaffordable cost base. And besides, a business model that takes someone who's trying to buy online and you force them into a phone call, that's a lot of friction. Friction means lower conversion rate, which means higher acquisition costs, which means you can't serve this market anymore. So we were able to see these kind of fatal flaws in other models and avoid them. So we avoided the call center type approach with that huge fixed expense. We avoided being committed to just one product through our own, you know, insurance company. We avoided that pitfall, which took down a lot of companies, but we were to marry. We were able to marry. What was right about those models with the call center. The reason why they needed to get people on the phone partly was because there's no one size fits all product out there, and they needed an age human agent to make sure that you picked the right product for you. But that phone friction is horrible. What web shopper wants to get on a phone call? So we replaced the phone, got rid of the phone friction with an algorithm, basically, right, that does that product matching even better and without the biases that an agent might introduce. Then meanwhile, the other kind of model of the full stack insurance company type approach, their problem was that they basically only had one product, usually, and I just said life insurance, there is no one size fits all product. Every underwriter has their own risk appetite, their own idea of the type of business they're looking for. If you just have one product, you're going to have a very low conversion rate. And so then again, you get back to low conversion rate means high acquisition cost, means you have to move up market. So we learned from those hard lessons, those multi billions of dollars in tuition that the world paid to figure out how to sell life insurance online. And we were fortunate enough to be able to live through all of that and learn those lessons and apply it and then adapt. I mean, we've definitely pivoted.
The value proposition we have to consumers now is different from what we started with. We started thinking this was an affordability problem, and we had some clever tools to help people lower their cost. But we quickly learned more important than affordability is access. And in fact, the affordability problem was actually driven more by what was ultimately an access issue. And once we learned that and adapted. You know, we've been off to the races. So it's still. I can't say that we've. We're completely out of the woods. There's still more learnings to learn and apply. But at each success, yeah, we gain confidence that we're on the right path. So it's a long winded answer to your question about what the biggest challenge is. But the biggest challenge is that it's a competitive market. We're in a space where no one's really done this before. A lot of folks are trying to figure out how, and a lot of money's been burned along the way, so I think people appreciate the stakes. It's also a little bit harder to raise investment capital in the sector right now because it's not sexy. There's been a lot of failure, and there's some other shiny objects called, like, generative AI, for example, that are attracting a lot of interest. But it also extends beyond just a challenge with investor capital. It's also those failures have led a lot of insurance companies to rethink their assumptions about digital distribution, or I should say, reinforce their assumptions that life insurance has to be sold through a human agent. And so they're not investing in the kind of technology we need them to invest in in order to do business online. So while there's a world of thousands of life insurance products out there in the United States, the reality is there's fewer than two dozen that could be bought online.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Wow, that's striking statistics that you shared there. Two dozen out of over.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like maybe 1%.
It's nuts.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: And as you see more and more of the market becoming Gen X, millennials, eventually Gen Z. And if you're becoming baby boomers, the online distribution must become even more important as a channel for distribution.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the way I think about it, I think part of one of those assumptions that the first wave of online sellers had was that no one wanted to talk to an agent. Everyone wants just a self serve, do it yourself. I think that was not true. I have a mentor. One of our investors put it really well to me. He said, he's an insurance company CEO, a health insurance company. So they're dealing with consumers, and customer experience is important to them. And he said that the way he looks at it is he divides the world into three kinds of shoppers. The kind that want to do it on their own, the kind that want, like, someone riding shotgun with them through it, and then the kind that want someone else to just do it for them. And, you know, a web exclusive experience is really great for the people who want to do it on their own. It's also pretty good for, for people who want some help, but not for the whole transaction to get taken over. We can help them via chat, text, phone, whatever, just for on the spot support when they need it in the moment. And then, you know, the other model, the traditional distribution, covers the people who just want someone else to take care of it for them pretty well. So I think there will always be those three buckets, you know, even for Gen Z and whoever comes after that, there will always be those three buckets. But I do think I, and industry research shows that more and more people are more and more comfortable buying online. And I just, you know, I really challenge, I just find it hard to believe life insurance is somehow the one industry that can't be brought online. I just, I call B's on that. I remind, I'm reminded of a story about eBay. And, um, my dad, like 20 years ago, he bought a car on eBay. And I remember it was the first person I knew who bought a car on eBay. And I was looking into it a little bit and I read an article about how eBay didn't even start out with a, they did not intend to sell real cars. They were, they had a section for like matchbox car, you know, like toy cars. And people started putting real cars on there. And so then, but they had assumed no one's going to buy a cardinal on eBay, but they were wrong. And, you know, look, if people are going to buy cars on eBay, they'll buy life insurance online. So I just think that's, you know, a flawed assumption that's kind of self serving for a lot of incumbents, but in the short term, but in the long term, you know, they're going to need to embrace reality.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that as a, as a product person, that being willing to think outside the box, that being willing to challenge existing assumptions and ultimately the disruptor that you're talking about. Right. This industry says, hey, we have this model that's working, we're going to keep doing this model, being willing to learn from what you've seen, from what others have done and what has failed and really generate those new hypotheses. I love hearing about that. I think that it sounds like you guys have really earned your way not only running as lean as possible, but also just being willing to learn and challenge existing assumptions.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I love to. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say this whole process, just me personally, as an entrepreneur, I have learned more and grown more as a person than in any other professional endeavor I've had. And part of it is the humility of getting yourself and your ego and your ideas out of the way of the reality of what the data is actually telling you. Not easy to do, but vitally important.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Yeah. And being willing to go a different direction than, than a lot of the people who are sort of, you know, who have been there, who've raised a lot of money, being willing to do something different is key for those big successes. I'd love to hear changing gears a little bit about what some of the. Maybe the highest point that you've had over the past five years since you started the company.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: Highest point. Well, I'm, you know, with each. I guess I probably sort of suggested this before, but with each passing month, I would say the percentage of things we're doing right increases our assumptions about. I was mentioning how we initially thought this was mainly an affordability issue.
We were way off. So in the beginning, maybe 1% of what we were doing is right. And I don't know that we're at 99% now. I think there's still a lot more room for growth and improvement of our platform, but I don't think there's really one individual high. I would say that the roller coaster is kind of getting a little more predictable. Things are evening out. Things are, and that's very gratifying to see that we've built this conversion machine and it's working. And the data, our numbers just keep getting better and better as we get more data. Sort of a virtuous cycle type of thing happening. So I don't think it's like one peak, really. It's more just the gratification of the market, kind of reinforcing that we're heading in a positive direction.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: So it sounds like the rocket ship that's off course maybe 99% of the time, but continuously making little corrections and ultimately gets to the moon.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I know.
Back in the corporate world, I think we did not really iterate that much. It was more of like a waterfall type approach to developing new ideas and strategies and launching them. And I've learned that that is a very risky path to go down when you're trying to do something new. So I've learned that you've got to always be asking yourself, like, what is the least expensive way to learn this next insight to test this hypothesis, you know? And when I say expensive, it's not just dollars, it's reputation. However, you're going to pay it time, attention. I mean, that's another huge thing for entrepreneurs in general, is like, focus is so key. And, you know, whenever I hear someone saying, like, we have three focus areas, kind of like, you know what? My eyes can literally only focus on one thing if you, you really can't have three, you know, it's like the myth of multitasking. You know, you really, if you're going to do something well, you need to, like, focus on that thing. So anyway, that, you know, learning to embrace the focus and the iteration has been really important to our development.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. So, conversely, would love to hear about some of the most challenging moments, the most challenging moment that you've had over the course of the last five years.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Wow. Well, I mean, there's so many. I don't know where to start. But I will say that one that comes to mind was we were closing in a round of investment, took in a wire for $150,000 on Thursday, woke up Friday morning, and our bank was Silicon Valley bank, and they were gone, and all of our money was gone. And including all that new investor money that had been arriving over the week and $150,000 wire the day before.
Business hours before that was Friday morning and Monday was payroll. And I don't know if you know this, didn't learn it until that morning, but in the United States, if you miss your payroll, the officers of the company can be criminally liable as individuals. And so we had no money, and it's Friday afternoon. We've got to fund our payroll on Monday. Friday afternoon, we're not getting emails from our payroll provider saying, hey, we know you're going through an extraordinary situation and we're going to do what we can to help you. No, we were getting emails saying, if we don't, we need the money even sooner because there's so much risk to your situation. So you need to confirm this money by midday Monday, or else we're not going to be able to do business with you any longer. Which meant, or else, Jake, you're a criminal. Now.
That was nuts, you know, but we survived it. It all worked out in the end. What just what ended up happening. The FDIC seized Silicon Valley bank, and on Monday morning, they gave us access to enough of our funds to cover our payroll. So that's great. But the lesson I learned through there is like, not having no money didn't actually mean the startup was over. I mean, you would think about that with a company like, well, if you have no money, then you're sort of insolvent. It's game over. But I realized through that lesson that really, this isn't over till we say it's over. You know, where there's a will, there's a way. So that was one of the lessons along the way, as an entrepreneur, to stop relying on external validation. The validation comes from our customers and our business. And I knew we were as scary as that was. I knew we were getting great customer reviews. Our customers didn't know about that. They didn't care about that. They were still buying from us and giving us great reviews. If it was the opposite, I would be much more frightened if we had a huge bank account and our customers who were not buying and writing terrible reviews and trashing us, that's a. That's a scary. That's an existential threat. Your bank going under. As. As crazy as that sounds, you know, if you're. If you're still. If you still want this to work, you'll find a way. So that was. That was one challenge.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: So what. What, maybe at the time, felt like an existential threat, but you guys still have this viable business model. You still had customers that you were serving, and you had this evidence that you were serving, you know, again, unmet customer needs incredibly well. And so you knew that there was something that was there to keep you going, even if you had this thing that. How do you overcome that? At the time?
[00:34:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Even from prison, I could still run that company. Whereas the opposite. Flush with cash, but not creating any value for any customers, that's actually a much worse position to be in.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: Agreed. 100%.
Well, I'd love to ask. There's one question that we ask everyone at the end that I'd love to hear. If you went back 20 years and could give yourself any piece of advice, what would it be?
[00:35:20] Speaker B: Wow, 20 years. I wish I had started this earlier. You can tell that I've got a little bit of gray hair. I did not start this company right out of school. I mean, I don't regret how I've lived my life, but I think for a long time, you know, I mentioned, like, not seeking external validation. I think as a long time as a. As a person, I spent too much time measuring my worth through external validators, like my income and the brand name of the company I was working for and my cool title there. And, you know, I don't know, my awesome apartment or whatever. And if I wish I was less hung up on those things, because at the same time that that was happening and I was very successful in my career in the corporate world, I was still fundamentally unsettled. There was still something that was kind of bothering me and that kind of gave me an edge that wasn't a fun edge. And I didn't realize until I started my own company with my co founder until we started this company. That's what the edge was. I really wanted to be an entrepreneur. If I could do it all over again, I think I would have done that earlier.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: Thank you so much for sharing. Jake, this has been an absolute pleasure and really appreciate you having on. Having you on here.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: Thank you, Jordan. I appreciate the opportunity to share our story a little bit.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: Absolutely.
