From FAANG to Founder: Lessons from Two Startup Founders Who Left Big Tech | The Pair Program Ep21

Join us as our hosts, Tim and Mike, talk to startup leaders Tomas Reimers and Yasyf Mohamedali. Tomas and Yasyf have both transitioned out of working at FAANG companies into founding their own businesses. Tomas is currently a co-founder at Graphite, a code review platform designed for engineers. Yasyf is currently a co-founder at Sym, an automation tool for engineering security teams.

In this episode, we explore the journey of these technical leaders as they transitioned out of big tech into the role of startup founders.

They discuss:

• How their time at FAANG companies prepared them to found startups and how they transitioned into the startup world.
• Common mistakes that early founders make (and how to avoid them)
• How to build a culture of trust and transparency among employees of an early-stage startup
• And much more!

And much more!

Welcome to the Pair program from hatchpad, the podcast that gives you a

front row seat to candid conversations with tech leaders from the startup world.

I'm your host, Tim Winkler, the creator of Hatchpad, and I'm

your other host, Mike Gruin.

Join us each episode as we bring together two guests to dissect topics

at the intersection of technology, startups, and career growth.

So what's up everyone?

We are back for another episode of the Pair Program.

I'm your host, Tim Winkler, accompanied by my co-host Mike Gruin.

Mike, what's going on?

Not much.

I'm

doing all right.

How are you doing?

I'm good.

Good.

Are you excited that.

Elon Musk is now the owner of Twitter.

Excited

. Tim: Did you, uh, did you guys, um, did

like carrying the, carrying the sink into

the Yeah, I, I was there like a joke I missed there.

Why was he carrying a sink?

He basically said,

you can't help but let that sink in.

That was, uh, that was his, uh, that was his, that's

terrible.

That's, that's terrible.

I'm gonna be honest, I think I've only followed the memes of Elon buying Twitter.

I don't know if I'm actually up to date on the news.

That song to-do list later, it's totally

kinda converge.

You know, there's no one . Right,

right.

Um, cool.

Well, let's, um, let's give the listeners a quick heads up on today's episode.

So this is, uh, the second episode of a miniseries that we're calling,

you know, from Fang to Founder.

Um, within this episode, we're gonna be talking to, uh, startup founders who've

previously worked for, you know, big tech companies like Facebook or Square.

Getting some insight into, you know, what translates over into startup world

or, or what doesn't translate at all.

Um, so we've got two great guests join us today, both of which have

worked in numerous environments that span, you know, large and small.

Um, confident they'll bring some, some great insight

perspective to our discussion.

So Tomas Yas, thanks for spending time with us on the PAIR program.

Thanks for having us.

For sure.

All right, uh, so before we dive into the discussion, we do kick things

off the fun segment called Pair Me.

Here's where we're gonna go around the room.

Shout out a complimentary pairing.

Mike, you always tee us off.

So, uh, what, what do you got for us today?

So today

I'm going with, uh, software engineers and free swag, uh, cuz.

It's just what you do.

My entire wardrobe as people who watch the podcast know is based on free swag.

They

true.

I feel like companies are getting pretty creative with swag though.

Like, it's not, you know, they're, they're, they're trying

to stay modern with some of it.

Is there any like, uh, a piece of swag that you'd say is

like, I have a deck of cards.

Uh, pack of

cigarettes?

No, no.

Deck of cards.

, Tim: um,

ticket cards.

Uh, giant, like water bottle.

Um, like a good one, like.

Nice.

Like a Getty

type, like, nice, but like heavy duty, even bigger.

Um, I don't know.

I don't really care.

I just like the t-shirts and the, and the sweatshirts.

Like Yeah.

Everything else just ends up eventually going in the trash.

Yeah.

Where it's like, uh, I have a bunch of like a free swag and

then someone convinces me I should wear better clothing . But then

companies come up with better swag.

Mm-hmm.

. So it's like constant race , right?

Like Mike, how soft is that hat shirt?

I

mean, this shirt is nice.

It's very comfortable.

Yeah.

Um, I don't get to wear it on the podcast that often cuz usually

I'm just wearing it, you know?

Yeah.

We, we send every, every engineer that we place a swag pack, so they

always get a shirt and, uh, one of.

In-laws saw one in the wild at like a Wegman's and took a picture.

I was like, oh, that's awesome.

That's pretty cool.

The socks are nice too, although nobody gets to see them.

. Yasyf: Yeah.

Yeah.

Socks are cool.

Graphite flag in the wild yet.

Have I seen graphic swag in the wild?

Yeah, I have not.

I mean, I, it's still small enough that I know everyone at the company and so

I feel our best swag is employees only.

And you kind of, you know it when you see one of your coworkers.

Um, it'd weird was like, whoa, cool graphic swag.

Who are you?

Um, . Um, yeah, no, nothing.

Yeah, I, it's hard to stay on top of swag though.

We keep trying to think of like, what can we do that would be

creative and exciting for people?

Uhhuh , because I feel almost every item that you can do swag

about has been done at this point.

Mm-hmm.

, Yasyf: um, The magic eight

creative.

That one We did, we did.

Uh, so I mean we'll get into this, I'm sure We do code review and so we

did a magic eight ball for possible answers to code review of like, looks

good to me, like, uh, who's on call?

Things like that.

Works on my machine.

Yeah, exactly.

Works locally.

Um, it's, uh,

things like that, that's, Swag up actually.

We'll, we'll plug them.

We, we use them as a, as a vendor and they, they kind of crush

it in terms of like giving you ideas, uh, in different sectors.

So, um, cool, cool.

Well, uh, we, we aren't here to just talk swag today.

Um, we, we, we will get into our topic first.

All, I'll jump into my pairing.

So my pairing is gonna be kitchen renovations and takeout.

Uh, so my wife and I we're renovating our kitchen currently.

It's.

Pretty massive undertaking at this point.

Uh, tearing down some walls, new appliances, cabinets,

the whole, the whole deal.

Uh, and so like throughout this process, we've been one, we, we, we lived in

an Airbnb for a week during the demo.

Um, and now we're back in the house, but we're about two weeks away from the,

the kitchen actually being functional.

So, We've pretty much been living on GrubHub, uh, and takeout for the, for

the last 10 days, and we'll be for the next couple weeks, but I mean, it's not

a terrible thing, but you do eventually miss those, those home cooked meals.

Well, not the healthiest, uh, stint that I'm on, but uh,

yeah, I'll do kitchen renos

and takeout.

I'll be honest, I think there are a lot of software engineers that

probably also live on GrubHub who are not having their kitchen renovated.

true's a software engineers in GrubHub.

That's the other, uh, that's good one.

Cool.

Let's, uh, yeah, let's pass it to, uh, to our guest and, um, you know, get their

quick intro and, uh, and their, so, uh, uh, Tamas, why don't you kick it off?

Hi everyone.

My name's Tamas.

I'm one of the co-founders of Graphite Graphite's, a code review

company here based in New York.

Uh, my pairing for you all, I think is gonna be fall weather on hot apple cider.

Uh, we are having some beautiful, beautiful fall days right now, and I

am constantly going out and finding new hot apple cider joints, which is.

You gotta

pair that with a cinnamon donut.

That's my, that's

my on solid and maybe a splash of bourbon in the CI

bourbon.

That's 8:30 AM That's,

um, uh, good stuff.

Yeah, that's, that's solid man.

Um, uh,

Yasa, how about.

I've been on an ice cream kick recently.

I've been like trying all the different ice cream spots around San Francisco

and, um, my favorite flavor I've cried so far has been Saffron ice cream.

So I'm gonna go with saffron and ice cream.

Ooh, ooh.

It's interesting.

An unexpected one.

It was pretty good.

Yeah.

You just bypassed an intro.

It didn't, we don't need to hear the intro.

Just talk about Saffron ice cream.

That's great.

ice cream is obviously much more important.

. Um, but the less important part, uh, I'm ya I've been the founder

of a few different companies.

Um, most recently a company called sim.

Uh, we're building a automation tool for security engineering teams.

Nice.

Awesome.

Um,

yeah, so I'll, I'm gonna, uh, jump into, uh, our, our intro here.

So, like, as I mentioned, we're gonna be talking about from,

you know, Fang to founder.

And, uh, we strategically chose, you know, both of our guests kind

of given their diverse experience.

Um, I'm just gonna jump into this, uh, start with you first, uh, Tamas, if

you wanna maybe shed a little bit more light for our listeners on kinda like

your journey, uh, up to your current role as, as a founder of Graphite.

And what were some of those things that you, you know, as you're making that

transition from a larger environment like Facebook to Graphite, uh, and then we'll,

we'll, uh, dive into your experience, Yas.

Yeah.

Um, happy to.

So my name's Tamas, as I said before this as, so before Graphite as at

Facebook, I was there for three years.

I actually, I think I have a different path than a lot of star

founders if I actually love Facebook.

I guess now Meadow, although I, I never worked there while it was called that.

I, I had a great time there.

I originally went there, not at all expecting that I would enjoy it.

Um, I, I sort of was like, you know, I really need to go learn

how to do software engineering.

I think Facebook would be a wonderful place to have, have an internship.

I'll go there and then maybe one day do a startup, because I know

I was always interested in sort of like, what impact could you have?

And that was, Um, I went to Facebook.

I really loved it there.

I loved the people I worked with.

I loved the technology I worked on.

I loved the problems I gotta solve.

I worked on internal product infrastructure, so figuring out how

to accelerate product development, which is just a, a passionary of mine.

Um, I thought I was gonna stay there for a long time.

Honestly, I, I think that like, uh, within that first year, I, I remember

so distinctly when I joined the company, I put on my calendar like at

11 months, like, give notice 12 months.

Like, leave the company 13 months.

Why are you still here if you are?

Um, and I, and I just, I blew past all of those.

Um, and I remember when it happened.

I remember, uh, on.

Two year face anniversary, which is Facebook celebrates your, like,

one anniversary of the company.

Two year my manager wrote me a card being like, I did not think we would get here.

Like, I, I am so surprised that we have managed to keep you this long.

Um, I loved it there, but what ultimately pulled me out was, uh, Marilyn Gregg.

So I am one of three co-founders.

Uh, the three of us chose to start graphite March 6th of 20.

Um, awful timing.

We can talk about that at any point.

Um, it was about seven days before a global pandemic was declared.

Oh, wow.

Um, for those of you that, that don't know that, um, , I, uh, I remember

it was of, of all times to leave.

It was, it was definitely an interesting one.

Uh, uh, it was them that pulled me out.

So I think they, they were two close friends from college.

Greg and I had been sort of project partners in every class in, in school.

And so, uh, we programmed operating systems together, graphics together

that pick, pick compilers, functional programming, doesn't really matter.

Um, Merrill was a few years older than us, so he had gone through yc.

He had dropped out of Harvard to go through yc, uh, exit his company.

Came back to finish his degree.

And he was always more of a mentor figure.

So he, he was, uh, more plugged into venture and startups, uh,

just given that background.

And he was the one who sort of like taught Greg and I, the,

the ways, so to speak mm-hmm.

So he was like, oh, like this is how venture works, this is how startups work.

And so, uh, we, we had stayed close as, as we left college.

Moved to New York, uh, worked at various tech companies and I think

when they were like, yeah, we're gonna do a startup, I was like, this is,

this is not an opportunity I can miss.

This is, this is a story that, that I'm excited to be a part of.

And so I made the choice to leave.

Uh, and it, it was interesting.

I had known, for me, I think the journey was, I'd known I want to go to startup.

I went to Facebook.

I was like, well, maybe like, maybe I could see myself staying here for a while.

And then it, it was ultimately them that pulled me back out.

So

your other two co-founders, they didn't work at Facebook with

you, but you knew them through

college.

Exactly.

Right.

Okay.

So Greg, uh, graduated college, went to Airbnb.

Uh, he was on their infrastructure team for quite some time.

Uh, he read notifications there, which is very impressive.

He Wow.

Merrill, uh, after, after school, he, um, After.

So after his company got acquired, he went to Square for a hot second.

Uh, enjoyed it, eventually decided to finish his degree.

Um, went to Oscar in New York, following some old coworkers who he really liked.

And then after Oscar, he worked at a handful of startups here

while he, he, he wasn't as sure whether he was going to found again

versus just to be early in that.

Um, and honestly I think it took, uh, it took some convincing to be

like, yeah, this is, this is right time, right place, right team to, to

go and take the leap again, because it's definitely a scary thing.

Mm-hmm.

. Yasyf: Yeah.

You know, it's,

uh, you, you had alluded to this in our intro call, uh, a month

ago about, you know, when you know it's, it's the right time to leave.

Um, so you were at Facebook, you said, for about three years and mm-hmm.

, do you think that that timing was kind of dictated based on.

Um, you know, the, the startup idea had kind of like, you had finally felt like it

was, it was ready to, to make that leap, or, or you were just like, Hey, you know,

I've kind of put in my time at Facebook.

I'm, I'm, I'm, now I need to do something different.

Uh, was there like an in between space air, were you with Facebook up

until that very last day and first day that you just started graph?

I'll be totally honest.

I think that there's a real chance if those two hadn't started a

company, I'd still be at Facebook.

I, I quite enjoyed my time there.

I, I know they've gone through some tough times recently, but I, I really enjoyed

the people more than anything there.

My old team and I are still friends.

We still hang out.

Um, I, uh, I, I'll, I'll echo a piece of startup wisdom that I've

heard, which is that for an early stage startup, you're looking.

Some amount of, uh, idea team in market.

And I think that for us, what we had there was, I, I felt so strongly in the team

that I was willing to forgo the other two.

I was like, this team is going to do something exciting.

I wanna be a part of this.

Uh, the, the idea in market, I think that we had some, in retrospect, we

had some work to do there, but for me it was really the team that was like,

yeah, this, this makes it time to leave.

Mm-hmm.

cool.

Um, I, I think what's also interesting

about your journey is, you know, the, the

startup that you're, you're leading at graphite and the, and

the product that you're building.

This was, uh, you know, a lot of what, what inspired this was some of the

work that you're doing at Facebook.

Is that accurate?

Yeah,

yeah.

So, I mean, the, that's the story up until March, 2020.

So we leave March, 2020 and we start working on, uh, mobile release.

We had a theory that, you know, if you look at the biggest companies, you see

a whole lot of spend on things like qa.

And if you look at the smallest companies, you see none of it.

And there isn't really an incremental path.

It seems like at one point the switch flips and then people

start spending a lot here.

Mm-hmm.

. And that felt like a place where, you know, we can help

make higher quality software.

And so, uh, we started building it.

Back then the company was called screenplay.

Uh, I was fortunate enough to hire two of my old coworker.

Uh, what was really interesting was when they joined, uh, they felt something which

I had felt as well, which was, you know, we missed Facebook's internal tooling.

It's not quite like, I'm not gonna go ahead and say Facebook's internal

tooling is better than, uh, the tooling we have out here in the wild.

It's certainly different, but I think just the comparison got us to be much

more thoughtful around things like code review, where I think a lot of people

out, out in the wild, I'll say outside of the big company, uh, look at code review

and they're like, oh, GitHub does that.

So like, I, I think that's, I think that's all we.

And I think for us, coming from Facebook, we were like, you know, like

there's so much in this workflow that doesn't make sense, doesn't work for

us, could be iterated on, et cetera.

And so we started to, uh, we started to build this out internally ourselves.

We, we just built like scripts.

Eventually we built the web dashboard.

Uh, we had a cli, which was the first first version of graphite, so to speak.

Cool.

Um, it was, Then, uh, it was our old colleagues that eventually, I think a

lot of 'em had a similar experience.

They had been at Facebook, they'd seen different tooling.

They're like, Hey, how are people doing, like, adjusting to this?

A lot of our experience wasn't so unique.

Um, and we were like, oh, like we built a thing for this.

Does anyone want it?

And the the response we got was like, yes, absolutely.

Like I, I, I definitely need this.

What can we do?

And at the time we were working on a different company, right?

Uh, it same, same corporate entity, but different.

And we were like, oh, you know, we have like a different product.

Go use that one.

This is not, this is not meant for o other people to use it.

It was at the time, it was hard coded with our repo names,

hard coded with our user names.

The idea of isolation wasn't really there.

It was an internal tool.

Um, And, uh, we had enough people tell us like, no, no, no.

This is a thing.

We need that.

In August of 2021, we decided to be like, okay, let's do an experiment here.

Let's, let's just see what happens.

We'll take 20 people into a beta, uh, and we'll figure out how to make our, our very

JK system work with, work with, they did.

With whatever they had.

Um, what was crazy to me was who we one, how many people we got to sign up.

So we got like 38 very thoughtful responses being like, no, no, I,

I need to be a part of this beta.

Like I have been struggling with since I left.

Uh, primarily Facebook.

We started a Facebook alumni group, was where we made this posting.

Um, I, I think I can do, I think that better does exist.

Uh, I really want access to your tool because it, it looks like the right thing.

And so, uh, we got 38 of those, like email.

We were, or messages in general, we were like, fine, we were

planning for 20, we'll take 38.

Um, that was August.

That 38 grew to 60 some pretty naturally.

So it, we didn't try to grow the product at all in the early days.

We were just like, uh, so August happens, we get these 38.

I think by the end of it, we had pretty much decided that we were going to

pivot, but we had a lot of work to do before we could release this generally.

It grew to 68 pretty naturally.

These were just people who were like, yeah, my coworker saw

what I have and really wants it.

Can you add 'em?

And we're like, you know, like, fine.

Um, that'll be, November, we launched a public wait list.

We were expecting about 500 signups.

We posted on Hacker News.

Um, we ended up with about 3,500 signups overnight.

And I remember that day was super exciting.

We had hooked it up such, had our slack buzzed every time we got a signup.

And especially just by the evening, it was just like, and

we were like, what is happening?

This is so cool.

And, and that led us then, uh, that, that led us through a lot of growth until

the beginning of the year, uh, which is.

We were pretty sure this was the right direction.

By then, we had grown far past sort of Facebook.

That was, that was a wonderful initial cohort for us.

They, they shared a language.

The features that they wanted was clear.

A lot of them wanted the same exact features that we were used to.

Um, but eventually we learned to speak the language of Googlers and then people

who had been at Twitter, Uber, whatever.

Um, and then, uh, we kept growing.

So anyway, that, that's the short version.

Uh, we raised around of funding, uh, early, early this year from

Andreessen, we raised about 20 million.

Awesome.

Uh, we are working on making the product experience really, really phenomenal.

We're still behind a wait list because we really wanna make sure it's perfect or

before we release it, uh, generally, but we're hoping to do that sometime next.

That's cool that, um, you know, that experience that Facebook had also

allowed for this, almost like this product validation, uh, uh, as well.

So,

um, yeah, it's funny, I think it's the, the internal tool

at a big company to a startup is certainly a tried and true path.

And it makes it, it's, it's funny to tell this story now in retrospect because I

remember I went to Facebook to quote Learn Real Software engineering, and I think one

of the things I did learn was like, how, how can code review like be different?

Because I think a lot of people.

I'm very fortunate in the team we have now, as I said earlier,

we have about 15 people.

I think everyone here is very thoughtful around the process,

and we come from, we come from all sorts of different companies.

Uh, we come from Shopify and Mongo, Adobe, Google, um, and it's cool to, it's cool

to have a lot of people in the room who.

We, we do code review all the time, right?

Every day.

But what's funny is the conversations you'll hear in the office is

like, you haven't reviewed my pr.

And then it's like, how could the product make this easier to do, right?

Mm-hmm.

, like, it's a, it's a, it's a meta thoughtfulness to the process that

we're doing day in and day out of.

Like, oh, we had an incident.

How could we have caught that in code review?

Why didn't the product do that for me?

Um, and so it's this, it's this meta-analysis of engineering

as a discipline ultimate.

Hey, startup

Techies has this podcast inspired you to explore a new startup career opportunity.

Then make sure to check out my hatchpad.com/jobs to browse startups

by stage, tech stack and salary.

So Yas,

um, you know, you've, you've been a multi startup founder.

Um, however, your exposure in, in big tech environments, aside from, you

know, looked like a few internships with companies like Square and Facebook was,

is actually a little bit more minimal.

So I, I'd love to hear from your perspective on, you know, maybe why did

you elect to bypass a, a longer term journey with one of these bigger companies

and instead kind of jump into your own

thing.

Yeah, totally.

Can you guys hear me by the way?

Yeah, you're good.

It was, uh, struggling, technology, struggling a little bit.

Um, yeah.

You know, so I, I think I had, you know, actually.

Funnily enough, like pretty similar experiences, Tomas, in terms of like,

I actually really did enjoy my time at, at the bigger companies, um, during

the, the short stints I did there.

Um, and I think my motivation for leaving was pretty different.

So, you know, I spent time at, at Square and at Facebook and, and it was cool.

It was cool to see how productive people could be in an environment where there

was all this tooling built for them.

And that's one of the things I really love about graphing.

What Tomas and them are working on now is that they're, Democratizing

access to the, that amazing tooling that you normally only have

access to at a really big company.

Um, and so that was definitely an enjoyable experience.

I think for me the answer is a lot simpler.

I just like I'm not a very good employee and so I, as as anyone

who's worked with me, will attest to.

Um, and, and I just, it was very hard for me to be motivated.

Um, you know, I'm the kind of person where if I'm gonna work on something, I'm.

Like pour everything into it.

And it's very hard for me to be motivated by doing that, um, kind

of towards someone else's goals.

Um, and so for me it became almost like how do I recreate

some of those like, really amazing environments that experienced the

bigger companies, you know, at my own companies and my own teams.

I remember.

My, my first company, um, outta grad school was a healthcare

company, um, with a, with a friend who had worked at Google before.

And I remember the two of us were, were always trying to think like,

oh, like we did this at Google.

How can we bring that in?

Or, we did this at Square, we, let's try to do that.

Or like, this didn't work at Facebook.

How do we prevent that?

Um, and so I think it was.

Even just those few years of experience at the bigger company, seeing what

works and what doesn't work really inspired what we were bringing to kind

of the culture and, and the tools, uh, of our earlier stage companies.

Uh, but I think it was kinda like a, a trial and error process, right?

Because something kind of translate and some things don't.

And, and I wish there had been more, more tools like graphite around to kind of help

with that transition cuz we were kind of building all these things for scratch, uh,

as was every other startup we knew who.

people from a bigger company.

Mm-hmm.

, let's peel that back a little bit more.

So you're saying like some things that translate and some things that don't.

I think those are some of those things that I, I want to, uh,

I wanna dissect a little bit.

So what, off the top of your head, I mean, you, you talked a bit

about like some of those like.

Processes and tool access to those tooling processes and things.

But, uh, yeah.

So ya what, what are some of those things that you feel you felt like, you know,

translated over into startup world and then what are those things that maybe

like, you know, you'd want to drop?

Uh, so I think, I think I kind of split into two pieces,

like the, the tooling and the process on the tooling side.

I think almost everything we'd experienced at Facebook, at Square, at Google.

Would've been useful in a smaller environment, like a lot of the automation

and a lot of the, Hey, you could just push some code and it magically gets

everywhere it needs to be, and you don't have to worry about how that happens

and all the, like, you know, automations around like, Hey, you forgot to test this,

or, Hey, you should go find this person.

Go sign off on this.

Like a lot of that stuff around, whether it was code review or, or deployment

or anything else was super helpful.

and I think would've translated well to the earlier days of the company.

I think the trap we fell into there is it was really tempting to try to

go recreate and rebuild all of that because you know, our heads, it was

like, oh, the only productive, the only environment we know that's been

really productive is the environment with all of these different tools.

And so let's go like, you know, build a completely automated

ci cd process from day one.

Let's go build a bunch of like, you know, code review bots.

Go build a bunch of Slack bots.

, as it turns out, a lot of that stuff is a, like, not the most important thing

to be building when you have like three months of runway left and you're like

struggling to stay alive as a company and B, you know, and this is a motivation

for both, you know, sim and Graphite.

It, it's the same stuff everyone else is building at their early stage companies.

It kind of feels like a waste.

Mm-hmm.

. Um, so was kind of the, the tooling side and then, uh, on the, on

the, uh, kind of process side.

. I think two mistakes that early founders kind of make, uh, one is, oh, this, this

was such a great, you know, practice at, you know, insert big company here, so we

should do that as well right away here.

And I think one of the like big dangers of or such company when you

have this later stage experience is introducing like too much process, right?

So it was so tempting we started our first company to be like, okay, we gotta hire.

All these different people to lead these departments because, like square ahead,

ahead of each of these departments, right?

And like, we need a full HR process and, and like all, you know, all this stuff.

Um, and, and it really like, it, it makes it real easy to

kind of like play house, right?

Like you spend more time like, like doing things you think a

company should have than actually building your company in reality.

A pre-seed company is like a few people in a room, you know, doing everything

they can to make sure the company sees the light of day tomorrow and, and

there's no time to kind of play house.

But it's very tempting to do when you start borrowing these, these

processes from bigger companies.

So I think the, the good learning there was like, keep that stuff in mind, but

introduce it when appropriate, which is actually a pretty hard thing to gauge.

Um, and I'm sure you guys have seen this as well and.

The flip side of it is there's some really awesome things, uh, that would be amazing

to bring, but like you don't realize how intentionally some of these companies have

worked to build a culture supporting it.

Mm-hmm.

. So a great example I could think of is that Square, it's kind of like

email transparency process where like almost all the emails from the execs,

uh, would get like auto forwarded these different mailing lists.

Oh, interesting.

So you could, I dunno if we still do this, but it's really cool.

I was there at pre I p O.

If you were curious about like, what anyone high up at the company was

kind of spending their day on, you could literally go read their emails.

Um, and it was like, it was wild practice of kinda like radical

transparency, but it really helped people feel more connected in the loop.

And, and we seemed like an awesome idea.

Like everyone enjoyed it so much.

Uh, we tried doing that at Corona, my, my first company and when it

was a disaster because we realized.

You have to be very thoughtful about like, keeping your audience in mind

when you're writing those emails.

And you have to have a culture where there's just such high trust, right?

Uh, where you think that, and it turns out that like the people you

hired yesterday that you know, have never worked with you before, right?

Aren't exactly in that high trust mode from day one.

And so, It was one of those things that felt so effortless when you see it

working, but when you try to recreate it yourself, you realize, oh, this, this is

like a multi-year process to get there.

Yeah.

There's

certain things in like those early stages that just, you know, they

gotta be a little more discreet about.

Right.

Because you know, there's a level of.

Setting expectations and then there's like, you know, what's

really happening as well.

Um, you know, there could be certain things that, you know, people would

run for the hills if they, if they knew like, specifics on finances or something.

Right.

And it's like,

well, yeah, actually, I, I wanna push back on that a little bit

cause I think I, I'm, and I'm curious to get Tamas take on this too, but

I'm, I'm actually a really big fan of being as transparent as possible

with that stuff in the early days.

I find it actually does breed a lot of trust and like, you

know, if there's like secret.

Like dorky gives, people are gonna find them.

I'd rather be upfront about them.

So I think it's less about not being transparent about

some of those scary things.

Uh, more about, uh, what is the right way to present them so

that someone has all the context.

I think it's very easy to kind of like mention something ad hoc or kind

of like assuming everyone has shared context and the people hearing that

could like really misunderstand mm-hmm.

Right.

So like, using your example, like there could be something.

It's kind of scary what the finance is, but like, you know, kind of

scary to me is like we only have 12 months of a runway, right?

Yeah.

Runways must someone kinda scary and be like, oh my God, we're

gonna ride a money next week.

Right, right.

And so I think it more about like, Making sure we all have the right context when

you share that stuff as one example of things that like, you really have to

spend time building a culture around.

Sure.

And some of those things, like you kind of screen forward to, you know,

if you're coming to a startup, it's like, oh no, you kind of wanna be, you

know, aware that there's risk here.

Right there, there, there's might not be the most cush and comfortable from

a financial perspective otherwise, you know, you maybe be at Facebook or, um,

but, uh, but yeah, I, I, I do wanna.

Get, uh, uh, tomasa's input on this as well.

Yeah.

So Tomas, um, some, some of those things that you felt like you needed to kind

of unlearn, uh, coming from Facebook into, uh, into the startup world.

Well, first I'm gonna answer your transparency question, then I'm

gonna come, come back to that one.

So, transparency.

I think my 2 cents on this one is, I think in the early days, uh,

actually there's like very little on the facts, I think was scary.

I think like we, we made a good policy of open door from

the beginning of like, Yeah.

Like if you wanna understand anything we can legally share, we're happy

to the, like, one exception to that being like your coworkers salaries.

I, I don't think we can legally tell you.

Right.

Um, but like the rest of it, yeah.

We're happy to talk around sort of like how we think about the company,

how conversations with investors are going, what people are telling us.

The thing I felt we had to, um, learn to do in terms of communication transparency

was, uh, disagree productively because imagine working with your friends

on like, This is your baby, right?

Like this is, this is the project that all of you care more about

than anything else in your life.

And so, and like you're working in a high ambiguity space, and so you're gonna come

up with these tensions of like, well, like we could do X or we could do Y.

And to all of you, it feels like the most important decision that you can make.

I think one of the things that we've, uh, learned, which is for better or

for worse, is like, uh, a healthy level of apathy where we've learned, I

think like it used to be the case that every decision was the most important

decision we were about to make.

So every decision was so high stakes.

And these days there are a lot of decisions we make candidly, where

we're like, probably doesn't matter.

Like, yeah, like it, it'll affect something, but most

things are recoverable.

And so it's like, eh, like it's, it's fine.

Like, take a stab, we'll see what happens, and then we can move from there.

And, and learning to take things with that like, level of removed ness

or, or perhaps it's just wisdom has, has, uh, really changed some things.

Um, anyway, to answer your now original question of what have

I had to unlearn, you know, it's actually really funny to me.

And, uh, I think the, so when I joined Facebook, I joined a team of six.

That team grew to 30 with me.

Um, as I as sort of like the, the scope of the team grew,

what we were doing, grew on it.

Um, and.

That's a lot closer to our series A than it is our seed.

So our series A, we started with six people.

We're planning to grow to 39 by the end of next year.

Uh, we're now, if you've ever been in this space, we're, uh, as I said

earlier, we're at 15 people, we're just now starting to have this conversation,

like, how do we split into teams or pods?

Mm-hmm.

, which is a conversation I vividly remember having at Facebook.

And what's funny to me is like the.

In many ways, it feels easier to me if I had started here because I

clearly see the parallels of like, oh, this is how we did this at Facebook.

This is what might make sense of a startup, and this is what,

what doesn't make sense of a startup and what we should change.

The seed was entirely different.

The seed was this game of working and sort of we describe it as like hunting

through the fog of trying to figure out like, okay, do we have product

market fit the to building a team?

Or as Yas said, like finding new heads of whatever position

is not the relevant fit, right?

And so there was so much more to learn there and I think we

benefited immensely from the fact that Merrill had done that before.

So I think Greg and I both came from larger companies, uh, Facebook and.

We came in and we were like, yeah, of course we need to, as you also said,

like set up all of these processes because every productive company

I've had has had like productive whatever, uh, has had an automated ci.

And of course you need automated CI in order to find product market fit.

And I think that, um, when, when you've done it before, when you've

seen that, you're like, no, no, no.

That's not what matters.

Like let's

focus on finding users, like

give any shit about what we're doing and then we can

go ahead and set this all up.

And.

There's a, there's a part of me which reflects on that.

It's, it's nice though, because I've had the, I've had the advantage of

not having to think about this alone.

As I said, I hired two of my old coworkers, and so we regularly ask

sort of like, what, what's different?

Um, a few, a few beats, which keep coming up.

One is, I think, uh, the, everyone will agree with you

at an earlier stage company.

You learn more just like there you have to do it.

People used to ask me like, well, where does this space for like mentorship

or teaching happen at a startup?

And my truthful answer is, I would ask the same question of a big company, because

I feel at a big company, it's like we have this big project and we need someone

who's senior or staff in order to do it.

And so we have this pool of e fives and E six s that we'll pull from at a startup.

It's like, who's gonna do this big project?

And we're like, we only have you in the room, so you're gonna do the big

project and we're gonna throw everything.

We have to make sure that you can do this big project

because otherwise we're screwed.

Sorry.

Learning too, right?

Like at a startup, every new thing you take on, Necessarily sink or swim,

because if it's, if it's not like super crucial, you wouldn't be working on it.

Right.

Right.

Whereas a lot of things at bigger companies where it's like, yeah,

this would be great if we did this, but it's not gonna be

company ending if we mess it up.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

But I think it, it like it forces you to, to learn on a much deeper curve

because you literally don't have a choice.

It focus on

what's, you know, really actionable and important to

the, the company at large.

. Um, one of the traps we've seen, um, you know, with, with hiring for,

for instance, uh, and it's always an interesting pivot once you hit like the,

um, you know, say like that 15 to 30, uh, headcount, mark is, um, you know

this title of VP of engineering, right?

You usually think like, okay, there's the cto, uh, there's that next layers that VP.

When, when you really need a VP is, is oftentimes maybe l later on down the line.

Where what you really need in those earlier stages is somebody who's

actually really hands on and not this big inflated title that is, you

know, just kind of running the show.

Um, I, I've seen it as well where, um, you know, just because you were one

of like the OG hires, uh, that came.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you should still be like

that VP when that time's right.

You might not have those skills that translate to the company when

it's at that larger stage and that can be a tricky thing to navigate.

I don't know if you guys have have seen that before, but those are

some things that we've seen as an interesting like growth, growth hurdle.

Yeah, I believe that.

Go ahead ya.

I was gonna say,

as someone has spent the better part of last year hiring A V

P E, I probably have some thoughts on this . I think a couple things.

I think one that like echoing what Tama said earlier, this, this is another

one of those things where like it's so much easier the second time around.

Yeah.

Like there's all these things you realize like basic mistakes to, to avoid.

And I mean a lot of the time I spend now is like angel investing

and advising early founders.

And I feel like a lot of that time is just spent telling them

like, this thing doesn't matter.

This thing doesn't matter.

, right?

Like doesn't kind of learned apathy.

The, the way my team like describe it is, uh, make reversible decisions quickly.

So anything that's not like, uh, stuck in stone, just like do it

and fix it later kind of thing.

Um, now I think VP hiring is one of those, or that's not the case.

Uh, you, you really have to be very intentional about it.

I, I, I think at this point, from what I've seen there, I, I think there

very clearly is like a startup, V p e, like definition of a role, and

it's like a very good role to exist.

And I think like it's its own thing from like a VP at a bigger company.

I think you run into trouble when people say like, I need a V P

when they really just need, like for example, an engine manager.

Mm-hmm.

, right?

They're just like, I have too many reports.

They go hire a vp.

Mm-hmm.

. Or on the flip side, when when they actually do need a vp, they need like

a startup P and they just go find someone with the title of VP at a bigger

company and assume with's the same role.

Right.

So I think it's like there's some of these things where like there should probably

be a better title for the startup version.

But like startup VP actually is a thing these days I think now

and, and it's often people who are kind of like, you know, senior.

Managers, like directors at, uh, at bigger companies, maybe they have

like one line of managers under them, between them and the ics.

Right.

And, and I think again, like as startups, like that person I think

really just has two jobs, right?

One is like, Make sure we are like getting the absolute, most of the team we have,

and two is like, make sure we're growing that team as fast as we possibly can.

Right?

In the early days, that's gonna be the job of the founders, but at some point,

especially as a tech company, as your engineering team who starts scaling and

you're hiring a lot of ics, you know, c e can't be, you know, recruiting

from start to finish every engineer.

I think that's the point.

You're bringing v p in and you say like you are like, , I don't care.

You're not worried about the product.

Like your product is the engineering team.

Right.

What I care about is like maximal efficiency and like growing it

as fast as possible and getting creative on how to do that.

I think when you need to like outsource that part of your job, a

startup VP is a great person to hire.

Mm-hmm.

, you know, when it's more concerns around like, you know, management of individuals

or, or like, you know, thinking about the product or the roadmap or anything.

I think we'll often jump to that kind of VP hire, but I, but

I agree in those cases, Well, those might be the responsibility

of a VP at a bigger company.

It's, it's, it's the wrong hire to make at this

stage.

You know, this actually gets back to a thing, the a different question you

asked, which was, um, difference between startups and, uh, bigger companies.

One of the things which I always thought was interesting at bigger

companies was there was always a ladder.

Like there was always a runbook, right?

It's like, prob, this problem has emerged.

This is the how we solve it at this company.

Um, and so you, you, I think one of the things that you spend a lot of

time doing at an early stage company is you're like, this problem has emerged.

We don't know how to solve it.

Here are many ways we may solve it.

And then there's a question of, I joke about this with like, we have a community

slack of about 8,000 developers right now.

Uh, we get a lot of support questions in there, like, Hey, the

product doesn't do X, or I wanna do Y and we have this option of.

Do we move to a better system for 8,000 people?

Do we hire someone to do this?

Do we do whatever?

I think that VPs and e managers are, are a very similar thing.

Where at, at a big company, it's like we have a new org of a hundred or 200 people.

It needs a director.

We will not promote and or find a director.

Uh, you don't see that, uh, at a start, at a start if you kind of need to like

figure out what that is for yourself.

Uh, thing number two, which I think was very interesting, which is different is

that, uh, at least at Facebook, If you made a big enough fire, so for example,

like if you had enough people that didn't have a manager, there would literally be a

team spun up to solve this problem, right?

Like someone would eventually be like, there's scope and

impact in solving this problem.

I'm gonna go solve it.

And so it would just like emerge from some other part of the Oregon.

You wouldn't really know where it came from, but it would solve the problem.

That is not true to start up.

If you make a big enough fire, the house burns down.

That's just, that's how it works, right?

It's like fire burned.

And so I think learning how to, learning how to navigate, uh, that and being like,

oh wow, my decisions have, real impacts have been one of the bigger learnings of a

startup is like, I think at a big company you can be shielded from a lot of this.

If you can make a lot of poor decisions in other parts of the org

will sort of like carry the weight.

Uh, I think that has made incredibly evident you had a startup.

I like the, the notion of like a bigger company just by like scale

as like more like an efficient market.

Like anywhere you find alpha in like, you know, scope or impact

to be had someone dives in.

Whereas like a startup is like, you know, it's like six people sitting in a room.

It's not really enough to make an efficient market.

So like things, there's no one to fill those gaps and if they don't get handled,

like to months out of the company just

blows.

Thomas, you also brought up a point, uh, in our previous intro call of like,

you know, for folks that have maybe only worked in startups, it's tougher

for them to let go of, of ownership and, and be able to delegate, right?

Like, I think that's something that you pick up on in Facebook.

It's like you can got a lot of folks you can delegate to, but, um, for

owners or, or you know, tech leaders, tough to, to have that, you know,

you gotta have that trust to be able to say like, yeah, you're right.

This is time for you to take over this.

You know, it's funny, I think that there's a lot of, I

think in startup land there's a lot of hate towards big companies.

Perhaps it's just our own dna.

We, we actually really love people that used to work at big companies because

we think that there's a lot of good they bring to the table, some of them.

For us,

it's unnecessary hate because like if you're not spending all

your time dumping on big companies, how are you ever gonna hire people

who are thinking about going there?

so ends up being like, There's a strong incentive for like the

startup community in general to be like, no, no big company suck.

Don't go work there.

Come work for us.

Possibly.

Yeah.

But I think one of the, you, you're pointing out one of the, there

are a few things I've noticed from big companies that I like.

One of them is I, I think that people who have been in startups their entire

career have a strong aversion to process.

And as you also said, you should lazy load process.

But that does mean eventually it gets introduced.

And the, the startup folk, I think, uh, at least the people I've worked with

who have only been at startups are like, we should never have a process here.

Or if they do need to have a process, they don't know what it should look like.

One of the ones, which I think we think a lot about is like, what is

our North star for, um, oncall, right?

Or hiring or something like this.

These are company, if you've come from a big company, you hear this

and you're like, we have a wiki page about how to do that, right?

You've only a, you're like, I don't, we, you just kind of do what feels right.

And so the value process there is interesting.

Um, the second one I think is, so having that like North Star both in

like, what should we have for tooling?

What should we have for process?

What should we have for workflows?

What whatever you have.

. I think the other one, which I think is very interesting is I think at a big

company a lot of the time you've had a lot more time to be lot, uh, very thoughtful

about these processes and a startup.

It real, I I just common everything feels well, hair on fire all the time.

And so finding those people who have been like, no, no, no.

I've actually had a lot of time to be thoughtful around how we should architect

systems or how we should, uh, hire people or how we should do whatever is

really, really valuable and, and hard to find the space to do at a startup.

Totally agree.

I think, uh, I do take a

little bit of

exception with some of that.

Uh, we were talking about startup vp.

I finally get to talk cuz uh, we've been having some audio.

Um, I think this is the first time I've said anything since the pairing . Um,

Because I, I mean, I've spent most of my career in, uh, in, in startups, um, VP

of, you know, VP of engineering startups.

And what I've learned is the, I agree that a lot of people who've only spent their

time at startups struggle with process.

Um, I actually think that there's a lot of people who are in startups and look

at companies like Google and others, and they're like, well, that's what they do.

That's what we should be doing.

. And so they want to take these big company processes even though they've

never even worked at the big company and try to apply them at the small company.

Right.

And then similarly, um, you know, the ones, the people I've worked

with in startups for a long period of time, and I think this is where,

you know, getting back to what a startup VP of engineering looks like.

They've sort of, they've been at startups, they've been, they've

been there, they've known that.

So I came in, I come in with a playbook on what interviewing should look like at

this stage for, at the zero to five stage.

This is what our hiring kind of should look like in our interview process.

As we grow, we should have this type of process.

And I think that if you can find the right people with that

background, you're, you're great.

And I, and I agree that they're hard to find.

I'm not suggesting in any way that they have like a dime a dozen, but at

the same time, I, I don't know that.

Necessarily agree that it's a big company thing, small company thing.

I think there's just some people who have a very pragmatic approach to process

who see it as a tool and scale it.

And then there's others that like glom onto whatever, or,

you know, so, so I think you're totally, I think you're totally right.

I think I, no, no, I, I actually think you're like super right about this, but

I think where that comes from is you stay at a startup long enough to see the.

The impacts of your decisions.

So you make a decision, you make it wrong, you learn from it.

And I think if you've spent like even three months at a big company,

you osmosis a lot of that because the history's written down for you.

It's like, why do we interview this way?

Well, we tried these other ways.

This is how they failed for us.

And so you can learn from their mistakes as opposed to, I think the people at

startups have had to like learn from their own or, or stay there for long

enough to see the, see the value, right?

I

think it's kind of like, it's almost summed up, summed up in a way.

, the benefit of being at the bigger company is not necessarily seeing

exactly what their process is.

You can mimic it, but it's, it's seeing what good looks like.

So you know what that looks like when you achieve that, or what you

should aspire to at your own company.

Right?

Like, it's not necessarily Google does this and therefore we should

do it, but it's more like, oh, like when Google's shit was really

working, this is what it felt like.

Like that doesn't feel like, and we added this process here, so like

clearly this is not the right fit.

Mm-hmm.

And the other piece of that is, you know, like it's also to MA's point.

People have worked only at startups their whole life, like sometimes.

They don't see the value of those things.

They've never seen, you know, it's like they got, like, someone who's

never had a good manager will like be like, oh, like managers are useless.

You know, it's like they, they never benefit anyone.

You, you just haven't seen what good management can do.

Right.

So I think it's similar, like if you've never seen these things be functional,

it's very easy to just write it off and be like, yeah, big companies are all

horribly inefficient because like, I've never seen any process that works well.

Right.

So I think that there is some value in, in being able to see, oh,

actually like the right tool applied at the right time can be helpful.

Yas.

Have you, um, when you were, I guess, maybe weighing options

on, you know, working for a bigger company at one point, you know, what

were, what were the things that you were taking in, into consideration

in terms of comparing like Facebook versus, uh, Google or, or anything

in particular that jumped out to you?

Yeah, it's funny cuz this is a lesson I had to relearn in startup

land, but I think I had figured out big company line, which is like,

it's all about the people, right?

You can find interesting challenges and basically anything you work on, like

bigger companies have enough variance that like there's always like some

team that you're gonna find exciting or some subject area that's gonna be

interesting, something you need to learn.

Um, but I think, I mean, something I took for granted until I, I was one

who had to hire my entire team is like when you're going to big company, you

actually get to pick the people you're working with and know that before

you agree to work with them, which is like such an incredible like thing.

Now the lies to us and I live, it's like we hire someone and we think we know

what it's like to work with them, but don't want you to know until we start.

And so I think being able to really be picky about the people you choose to

work with and the team you challenge yourself with is, is all I was really

thinking about those bigger companies.

And it's all I would recommend anyone really focus on is like you have

the chance to be very picky, but these people like take advantage of.

And what about like the, um, the team that you wanted to work with?

Is it kind of what you're alluding to?

Like one of the, one of the, the founders that we had on previously on this topic

said that they were able to work on a very specific project that they knew was

gonna be applicable to the next startup.

They started, and so they wanted to get that specific exposure and that's why

they, you know, they elected to go down

a certain path.

I feel a little bit skeptical of that.

I mean, I guess there's like, you know, may, yeah, there's

definitely some world where.

You work on something specific and then you go spin out a company that

is exactly like that and you know, there's a few popular Silicon Valley,

you know, growth stage companies I can think of that are exactly that.

Mm-hmm.

. Um, but more often I think it's like what happened with, with Tomas and the graphite

team, where it's like they weren't working on the code review tools of Facebook, but

they got exposed to them and, and that kind of like inspired something, right?

Or, and lots of other companies, those, some process or some problem

they got exposed to at scale.

I'm not actually sure that the process of being very intentional, like I'm

gonna go work on exactly as teams, I wanna start a company sell Exactly.

This problem is actually that practical most of the time.

Like starting companies just aren't rarely that intentional . Mm-hmm.

Oh, I'm not.

Thank you.

I, I, I've said this before.

I'm always very skeptical of.

People I hear who are leaving a company are like, I know what I'm gonna do,

and we're not gonna have to pivot that.

That to me is like, uh, oh, cool.

You haven't done this before.

, um, like, uh, I,

I disaster.

It's like, like there's nothing more dangerous than a founder who's like

a little bit too emotionally attached to the thing that they haven't

actually proven anyone once, right?

Mm-hmm.

, it's like even more dangerous than like the build it and the

old come founder, cuz this one.

This founder will actively ignore signs from the market that this is like

not a thing she's spending time on.

And I think it's such a good way for like really smart

people to waste a lot of time.

You need, you need some level of that, right?

Of like the, the blind ambition or some, some level of willing to take a leap.

But I generally agree with you.

Blind obsession with a particular

direction.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

I think, and I mean, to be fair, like we definitely fell into this trap.

We were like, We were like, we've totally validated this idea.

I just remember Earl, I remember our scene stage pitch being

like, this is totally validated.

We don't need, like, we're good to go.

We understand it.

And I think our wiser investors were always like, Uhhuh, like definitely.

Um, and it, you kinda, you gotta see it as you play out of, I think.

I've come around to.

I think the only validation that matters is, is if you had Val, if you

had all the validation you want, you would already be making revenue after.

Right.

Anything short of that.

You don't have the validation, you're working towards it.

Right.

Although

you a really good point there, like I feel like the one caveat tell

us is when you're fundraising, you have to believe that like, This is the

hill to die on and you will die on it.

And this is the most brilliant idea ever, and you're the perfect team to build it.

I feel like it's one of those unspoken things where like if

you're a good founder, you always see, no, that's not strictly true.

If you're a good investor, you always know it's not strictly true.

You kinda have to play a game where both of you really believe it to get over the

line of like, you know, handing a few million dollars to like three people, you

know, , right.

Cool.

Uh, well, I do wanna, um, I do wanna kind of put a bow on it here and, and, uh,

transition us into this final segment cuz it's, uh, coming up on that hour.

So, um, let's go ahead and, uh, and, and make this pivot.

So we're, we're rolling out this new segment called Five Second Scramble.

Um, so

I'm going to ask each of you just a series of questions

and you give me your response within five seconds.

It's kinda like a rapid fire q and a.

Um, some will be business, some personal, um, I'm gonna start with you.

Ya.

So, uh, as a founder, leader of a startup, what is the

number one thing that you would

say that keeps you up at night?

There, there's a term for this.

I forget what it is.

Basically the idea that like, As CEO or as founder, it's always your job to look

over the next horizon of the company.

So every time you accomplish something as a company, well

everyone else is celebrating.

It's your job to say, okay, what's the next thing we have to do?

But like the result of that is you are always feeling like you're behind

because like you are the person who knows what has to come next.

And so it's this constant struggle where you never feel like you're

keeping up and you always feel like as a company you're behind.

And.

That I struggle with a lot because you kind of have to like live with that and

use the learnings from that while not like stressing everyone else out, you know?

And that's, I, that tension definitely keeps me up at night.

Cool.

What's the number one trait you look for in people when hiring to a startup?

Ooh.

I think if you had asked me that a few years ago, I would've said something

around like grit or hustle or like just.

, uh, whatever the opposite of like helplessness is, you know, like, like

they'll, they'll just solve the problem.

Um, I think if you were to ask me today, I would actually say like,

like, uh, kindness and a willing to invest in the people around you.

I think like the best you have hired are not 10 of 10

engineers who like really hustle.

Those people are great.

Best people I've hired are the ones who, you know, 10 x the entire

team every time they enter a room.

Um, those are the kind of people I wanna be hiring in the early

stage.

Cool.

I like.

What's more important to you?

Meaningful work or more

compensation?

Uh, I feel like that's, uh, I mean that if , if any of us cared about

conversation, we would not be doing the jobs we're doing right now.

So I think the answer to that one's pretty obvious.

uh, favorite country you've ever traveled to?

Ooh,

that's a really tricky one.

Um, I was in Malaysia recently and had some, like, like some of

the best street food in my life.

So I think Malaysia is the top currently, but if you ask me

that question next month, it'll

probably change Most disgusting food item you've ever eaten.

In Iceland, they have fermented whale and it's like

one of the national dishes.

And it's one of those things where everyone's like, oh, every

country has like some gross dish and like, or it seems gross and

you try it and it's not that bad.

But fermented whale is actually like truly terrible.

Sorry to any Icelandic whale that's barely sat on my stomach for like two

seconds before I came right back out.

still a little Frank's red hot on it and yeah, , um, good to go.

Favorite app on your.

Oh,

oh man.

I gotta open my phone and look.

I don't know, don't use my phone often enough now.

Um, I'm probably superhuman because it lets me feel a tiny bit less stressed

when I'm going through my emails, but, uh, I think it's a pretty weak answer.

I don't know.

. Tim: Um, cool.

All right, well let's jump over to you now, Toma.

We'll start with, uh, what problems are you solving at Graphite

Code Review for fast moving teams?

Who are your users?

Uh, any

developer?

What type of engineer thrives at graphite?

Uh, people who are looking to people who are thoughtful around

the developer workflow and, uh, looking to solve hard problems.

What's your favorite aspect of working

at Graph?

Oh God.

Uh, probably the people.

I, I love the team.

It's, uh, one of our teammates said it really well recently of it's very

rare to work at a company where you one know everyone and two like everyone.

Yeah, that's

the right answer.

What is, uh, the number one trait you look for in a co-founder?

Oh, good question.

Um, I think this, I think, uh, gosh.

I think some, some level of ambition here still.

I, I, it's, it's hard.

It's some, it's somewhere between ambition and like kind I would never

found with a non friend and then among my friends, I think it's ambition.

Yeah.

But the, like, the, the friendship is definitely the first, the first one.

Trust is probably the real answer to that.

Trust is a good one.

Um, yeah.

You think it's actually friendship or is it more like mutual respect?

For us, I think it's a form of trust.

It's the, it's the trust that you have that like extends past work, right?

Like I think there's something really powerful of.

You know, my co-founders and I maybe have a disagreement or

don't see eye to eye on something.

Mm-hmm.

and the fact that we can be like, you know, let's hang out as friends and like

put this and come back to this later.

Yep.

Uh, is the most critical thing.

Um, and it's, you can have that with people you have mutual respect with

who aren't necessarily your friends.

But there is some level of like, trust and willing to put it downness that's hard.

All this together no matter what.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're actually gonna run an episode on that cuz it's called

the co-founder connection.

Cause I think it's so interesting too, if you look at like companies that have

just one, like two co-founders and then some that have four or five, right?

Like is there more?

Yeah.

Disputes, uh, what, you know, what, what, uh, is more better,

um, favorite city in the us

Ooh, Boston where I grew.

You

prefer your eggs?

Terrible choice.

you, um, prefer your eggs fried or scrambled?

Fried, favorite

Disney character?

It's a good one.

Uh, I dunno if I have a good one right now.

Uh.

I'm like, I'm really struggling on this.

This is my favorite Disney character drawing from the, so, uh, Tarzan

was my favorite movie, so I'll give you that for the, how we'll take,

we'll take Tarzan Ya.

What's your favorite character,

though, or someone else?

I dunno.

While you're thinking, I, like,

I, I feel like the character I like the most of

all the movies is probably sim.

But if I had to be like, which movie did I actually see the most as a child?

It was Tarzan.

I used to watch that like every other day when I was three.

Yeah.

So , there's, there's

that.

Yaa, what's your

answer?

I think, um, Mr.

Potatohead from Toy Story, pretty

sounds like a pretty good life.

Yeah, I'm a big alad.

Ooh, Aladdin's not a bad one either.

Yeah, I can't, you know, I'm gonna change my answer to Aladdin.

I feel like, like Aladin, I'm always

getting, come on, join the, the la fan, fan party.

Yeah.

Um, I wanna end my earlier answer, but my favorite, uh, app on my phone.

So I recently been getting really into this new kind of second brain note

taking app called mem, and I strongly recommend everyone check it out.

It is really cool.

I don't know if you, if you gotta like, try to use Rome or any other kind of,

Note ticking apps, but mem is like finally the one I've been searching for for many,

many years and it has been life changing.

Sweet.

Wrote it down.

Cool.

I think, uh, I think that's everything.

Mike, did you, uh, have any other, uh, anything you wanted to say?

You got about two words in, uh, this, uh, episode, ? No,

it's been good.

It's, uh, my, my, I guess, um, for my next one will be podcasts and,

uh, and, and silence, uh, will be

my next . Yeah, that was, uh, this has been by far the,

um, the most interesting, uh, uh, recording as far as like the shuffle.

Well, folks.

Yeah.

Um, again, I, I

musical chairs.

Yeah.

. Um, well it's

interesting.

Thanks for, uh, thanks for joining us guys.

This has been really helpful.

Uh, super interesting stuff and uh, yeah, we're excited to push it live.

Sweet.

Alright.

Cheers guys.

Thanks for taking time.

Cheers.

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