 Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host Ahn Sakyun. We are onsite in Manhattan and New York City, New York. And we are going to be talking about all things entrepreneurship, all things ambition today. We're going to be talking about Kevin Siskar and all of his work. I'm really excited to be featuring you on the show. Thank you for having me. Well, glad to be back. I'm excited to be on for a second time. It's amazing. Yes, and we did a Skype the first time and now we're in New York, so we're actually able to do it in person, super pumped. Right here on the heart of Fifth Ave, Midtown. I love it. That's right, right near Central Park. It's exciting stuff that you're working on. Kevin is an investor with a portfolio of over 100 early stage tech companies. He's also, for six and a half years, been working with the Founder Institute in New York. He's now the managing director of the Founder Institute. He's a host of Ambition Today's podcast. And he's a venture partner with Albon Ventures and a co-founder of the New York City Innovation Collective. So there's a lot of entrepreneurship conversation we're going to be having. There's a lot of really aspiring founders and just people that are really motivational that we're going to be talking about and pumped to do that. And it was really great. Last time I was in New York, I came in and helped mentor for FI here. You did. Thank you for taking the time to do that. I appreciate it. You jumped in and mentored one of the sessions for the New York founders. It was awesome. And you had a diverse group. I really like the there's a lot. You guys are in a lot of cities. Yeah. Two hundred cities. Thousands of entrepreneurs have graduated and their companies are flourishing. And so OK, let's talk. I really like to talk about a big history synthesis of reality to start off the show. Let's do it. So OK, so we find ourselves as these human animals. And now we are stewards of Earth. And we are now hockey sticking up in population, or 7.7 billion of us. We haven't really grown up too much from kindergarten. But we're still doing exponential technology. I'm going to have a Dan Brown inferno situation real soon. Did you read that book? Yeah. OK. What do you think is the current state of humanity? Whoa. So I think it's an interesting time. I think that population is going insane. We have an information problem right now, clearly, with what is truth. And we went through this before when newspapers became big and the printing press blew up. But recent stats in 2010, 2 and 1 half billion people were online. As of Friday before Christmas, half of the world population is now online. 3.75 billion people. Yeah. So we've doubled the size of the internet in the last six or seven years. Mostly because people that didn't have access to broadband and dial up, they had flip phones. Those flip phones, then when they bought their next phone, it was smartphones. And that had internet access. And so all these people were coming online across the world. These $30 smartphones, the really cheap ones too, you can get online. Yeah, exactly. But now they have access to internet. The knowledge base, the collective learning base of civilization. Yeah. And so in New York and the US, we're across the street from Trump Tower right now. We have our own issues with what that means for democracy. And the government's been shut down for 30 days. It's having serious issues. It's causing real problems for the world. And then in other parts of the world, like Sri Lanka, you have issues where, I don't know if you saw last year, the Facebook posts where people on Facebook were slandering a restaurant in racist ways. And then people actually showed up at the front door and started smashing windows. And so all around the world, we're having very similar issues and problems with information and how it's handled. And I think that is probably the biggest, well, climate change is the biggest thing facing the world. Then from an information perspective, that's probably the biggest thing facing society as a whole and a problem we need to solve, I would think. Dang. So that's a really good point that the way that we're dealing with the data flows that we have are kind of like at the kindergarten level. We haven't really figured out how to handle it in the most efficiently possible. And I touched on climate change there. It's like, we're all sitting here wondering why no one is doing anything about it, but it really is sort of the same problem. No one knows what's true. No one really knows how to act on it, what the next steps are. It feels like the most true thing about it is that humans are affecting the climate by burning fossil fuels. That seems to be the most true thing. The oceans are acidifying. The parts of million of CO2 are increasing. So we can actually tell some things. Part of the ice sheets are melting. We can see some things. But and we can see really bad air quality in some of the major cities in India and China. Even California. California, I was out there in November. You guys had the wildfires. We did, yeah. Your air quality was worse than Beijing. It was. It was worse. I was there. It smelled horrible. It smelled like plastic. And those fires are a result of global warming. So it's affecting everywhere. Yeah. So my follow-up, and with the data thing, we have big, huge data silos. We don't have decentralization of data flows yet enabling us to best understand all of your biometrics, all of your data, make it relatable to you. Have you have ownership and get paid for it, maybe like a universal basic income. There's so many cool ways to explore that. So I'm curious, what do you think then are some of the best ways to collaborate geopolitically on data and climate? So sharing data with companies or with the government? How do we best move forward on climate and data geopolitically? How do you think we should do that? Oh, boy. I know. Solve our pressing challenges. Kevin, go. Yeah, let me go. I mean, I think there's political challenges that have to be solved there. You have right now in Washington, I was there over the weekend, you have people putting their personal agendas and re-election priorities in front of the will of the people and the overall health of humanity, right? And so when you have people doing that, it's corruption, right? That is the definition of corruption and it becomes really hard to solve these problems. The US pulled out of the Paris Accord. It's really messed up. So how do you solve it? I wish if I had the answer, I would be tweeting it constantly. I don't know that I have the answer. One of the things, the reason that I work in startups is I don't have all the answers and I know that. But I can work with amazing people that do have the answers. I can support them. And so by working with great founders that are maybe working in the political space or building software or things that can fix these problems, that's how I look to have an impact on the world. I feel like a major part of what you just said there is that we have to kind of grow up away from our own egocentric, greedy, corrupt habits and move towards a unity of all beings on this single tribe called Earth. And when we can transition to that, we can move away from some of the greed and some of the corruption. We can raise the baseline of living for everyone and prosper more collectively. I think that was a huge point. And then the next point, we can just transition directly into how entrepreneurs are saving the world. Because in many ways, they totally are. So you support entrepreneurs that have these big ideas on how to save the world. And this has been over 100 plus investments for you. This has also been a bunch of entrepreneurs that have been launched from the New York City chapter, a Founder Institute. And Founder Institute is this super ideal process of taking your idea product company and really launching it off at the end of how long's the period? It's about three and a half months. So three and a half month period. And then by you're getting some of the world's best mentors, you're getting some of the world's best processes of how to become an entrepreneur. And so tell us about how you're supporting the entrepreneurs and these are really good ideas. Yeah, sure. So at the basic level, we run Founder Institute. It's a three and a half month startup accelerator. We're actually kicking off the new cohort here in New York tonight. Hell yeah. We have mentors like David Rose to start in New York. Angels, we have the founder of Skip Hop coming. Just over 140 million. He's coming tomorrow night. So you get access to these really amazing entrepreneurs in New York that can come in once a week in the evening for dinner. Share their lessons. They'll pitch on their story on whatever that week's topic is. Those are invaluable. Yeah, 100%. Access to the network, especially in a city like New York, is amazing. And so you'll hear them present, show their stories. You'll pitch them, get feedback directly on your business, ask questions. Let me sort of all go out and have a few drinks together. That period is so funny. Because I remember being on the other side of the table when I was pitching. The number one thing, I think, for me was always being open to the feedback, no matter how harsh it was. That was the most important thing. Because people aren't going to soft put icing on everything. They're going to tell you an aggressive way sometimes how to change your plan. And so you've got to be really open to all different types of feedback, and then actually incorporating it, iterating on your project. And so that was really crucial. And then it was really strange sitting on the other side of the table where I was giving feedback. Because I was always trying to be kind, but also be serious about the changes they need to make. Sometimes if you're too kind, the point just gets missed. Exactly. That's right. But sometimes when you're super aggressive, they'll close off. So it's like a closed loop feedback system of mentors to entrepreneurs. And that seems to be one of the most crucial parts of Founder Institute. Yeah, I mean, it's great. And the best part is sometimes the mentors take a personal vested interest in these companies beyond just the Founder Institute sessions. So a lot of times they sign on to be direct advisors to these companies, formally stay with them, really work with them. So that's great, too. Yeah. And then besides the closed loop feedback systems with mentors, which I still think is just mind blowing, because that's what so many young entrepreneurs are missing is just their ability to be able to go and talk to three or five other somewhat successful entrepreneurs and just hear from them about what they can do better. Because if that was just more readily available, I think we would more easily have more entrepreneurs. So besides that, tell us about the other epicness that happens in this three and a half. Yeah, sure. So you're put in a working group, simulates a board of directors. Going to your point earlier, it's about some of the things about human psychology that's limiting everything, right? We're all, as humans, really bad at holding ourselves, but even to our own goals, right? And so the working group simulates a board of directors. You meet with them twice a week. And really their job is to hold you true to your own goals and keep you accountable, which is really hard as a founder, especially when you're maybe for the first time in your life breaking out from a structured, corporate, you have a boss employee relationship, to finally having to set an agenda for yourself and keep yourself accountable to it. Maybe you work from home and there's distractions in your home. And it's really hard to build that regimen and that routine. And so we help you sort of start to build those habits and foster that. You also have about 30 hours of curriculum assignments each week, and those are company building things, right? So those are things like, for the legal assignment, can you incorporate a C Corp in Delaware, right? And so all these things are very foundational. And by the time you leave the program, you actually have done the work for your company, not just learned how to. That's right. So you're actually helping them understand what are some good steps. And then they go and execute on these steps so that they can gain the actual experience points from the process and then really put that into there, literally put it into through epigenetic processing into themselves, and then add that to other people's lives by passing it along to other people. That way more and more people know how to incorporate businesses, they know how to actually put together business plans and go and pitch and raise money and sell a product to market, learn how to market it, learn how to manufacture things. And one of the interesting things on that point is we're not the company institute, we're the founder institute, right? And so more often than not, you see these people have these personal growth stories. And even if they don't hit it out of the park on their first company, they come, they do a second company, and really you can just see that they've grown, that they've learned, that they can just execute so much better in the months going forward. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That slow, that even after just three and a half months, just it's a day, it's a day to day, you gotta hustle, you gotta hustle, but then at the end, it seems like it breezed by and then you're so much more ready to tackle what you need to do moving forward. And we've added postgraduate programs now, so we have equity in this company as well, we see them succeed, they're in the family, so we help with fundraising, product, traction, and we help the founders for the life of the company, both here in New York and then also out of our headquarters in California. Yep, yep, that's so crucial is there's a continued process even after they fly out of the nest, you're still helping them with some currents of wind to help them fly. Now what percentage of the companies that you see are in like software, hardware, et cetera? Yeah, so we're industry agnostic, we will build whatever the founders wanna build, so I have food companies, drone companies, I just had my first biotech company that's doing, yeah, you'll probably like this, they're doing, they partnered with NASA because NASA has a patent commercialization program, so they got a carbon nanotube mesh capsule, and then one of the co-founders is from Wheel Cornell and he engineers on cells that basically will produce the enzymes to eliminate blood transfusions for fabric diseases, and so they're putting those cells in the NASA capsules, and so basically someone with a fabric disease could just get this injection and have that changed every six months versus going to the hospital every two weeks to take four hours of blood transfusions. Damn. So they're called Kepp cell biologics, and then we also have school and education and ed tech and Amazon automation scripts. We're industry agnostic, so we'll really help a founder build what is lies of the expertise at the crossroads of their own personal expertise and network. Yeah, and this is what really helps for, not only are you industry agnostic, which is huge, because then you can take on whoever you want, but it's also interesting to see and hear all of these different industries like you just listed, which are, not only does that build up a new sort of mentorship array that you guys get to have, it builds up, in those mentors, it's really important for them to also have a broad lens on the world as well so they can help mentor all the different companies that are coming in. It's really interesting, because there's a debate in venture capital right now. I guess not a debate, but there's competing strategies of do you build a niche accelerator, like do we build the retail accelerator, and we only have retail mentors, we only have retail companies, because we can then leverage more specifically for the founders, or do you build a generalist accelerator, which is kind of the way of the past, it's how founder institutes built, that's how tech stars, y-com monitors all built. Versus like Indie bio, which is specifically biotech. Right, and so one of the things we've done is we've really pushed for scale, we're in 200 cities, but what that's done is we have 10,000 mentors in our system around the world, and so we can tag those mentors by expertise and by geo, and then we can build software to automate those niches within our global network, right? So we're doing things a little bit differently, but we're really confident in the long game and what it comes to. Yeah, the tagging of the mentors is super important, and then just being able to pair mentors up with young aspiring entrepreneurs is super important. Yeah, the close of loop is that you create with automation software will be very interesting in the future that you built out 10,000 mentor network that's so interesting and so crucial across the world. There seems to be, I would say, a lack of entrepreneurship in high schools and even younger, because kids don't even really realize that they can pursue ideas, their imaginations, that they can actually go and execute them and start even businesses as simple as making websites at young ages and then distributing products or ideas through those websites. How old were you when you built your first website? I believe it was distributing collegiate clothing, so it was, I think, around 18, 19. Really? I think so. I built my first website in the fifth grade. See, that's badass. But it was like, back then, it was Geocities, right? Yeah. Which I think you would basically just template or build stuff out, I didn't code, right? But I think to your point, my podcast ambition today, I'm gonna interview a lot of entrepreneurs about their journey, right? And we always start with their childhood because I'm always trying to find the little steps that led to their success, right? And one of the things I found is- And that links in the bio for ambition today. Go and check it out. We'll be talking about it. Everywhere podcasts are found, check it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But seriously, so one of the things I found is the most successful entrepreneurs, most of them today had some sort of entrepreneurial influence in their childhood. Totally. And they may not have even realized it, but they had an uncle or a father or a mother or someone that encouraged these habits in them. And they didn't really realize it and then later in life, things just sort of match up in college when you're trying to figure it out. And they realized that, oh, wow, I fit in with that group of people and they're entrepreneurs and this is what they do. And so I would say it's really important. And we probably don't do enough of it in high school to spark that curiosity. Because even making this GeoCities website or even making you going into your Java coding class, this is not enough. This is the bare bones of what is needed. There's like a whole new way of teaching entrepreneurship to young people that is yet to be really discovered and implemented in scalable ways and with these closed loop mentor feedback systems and all this type of stuff that I think is gonna, the imagination of kids is so vivid and interesting. And so we gotta really enable that better. You know, you started talking about these influences that come in. I think another one of the crucial influences is anti conformist thinking. Yeah. When I looked out at the world, I was like, this is come on. Why is everyone and their mother doing nine to five work? I'm like, there's gotta be something else about life where we can get out of the cubicles and the rat race. I was like, I'm gonna do something that I love every single day and I don't give a shit if I'm porous fuck. I would rather be porous fuck and doing what I love than working for someone else hating my job. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And so that's, that was a big one. I think that's a big mantra of our generation though too, right? Yeah. There was a good BuzzFeed article a few weeks ago about burnout and why millennials think the way they do and why going to the post office and sending a letter is just so daunting. But like, and we will crave everything in like a one click app button, right? Really good article, it's called How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. It's a long read, but it's a really interesting read. It's a good one, yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's an interesting trend. We'll see what happens with that, you know? The baby boomers think that we're all entitled. We think the baby boomers got, you know, everything that they ever needed at upon graduation of high school. There was a really good SNL skit this weekend about called Millennial Millionaires and it was a game show where you could win everything that the baby boomers got upon graduating high school and millennials are spending 20 years to get, right? Like paying off their student loans and the ability to have enough savings to buy a house and we're also moving into these metropolises which is making it so that we don't really care so much about a house, we don't really care so much about a car, we just care about being close to the network effect. Yeah, yeah, I mean, our parents' generation, at least in the United States, depending on what you're watching this, everyone left the cities. For the suburbs. For the suburbs, right? 3,000 square foot houses. Yeah, I'm from Buffalo. The city was the wealthiest city at the turn of the century because the Erie Canal connecting New York to the Great Lakes and then, you know, the population went in half and we're now seeing resurgence over the last 10 years in places like Buffalo, Detroit and other cities around the country but a lot of people are moving back downtown and I think that's partially what's driving that. Yeah, it even goes as far as to see that McDonald's corporate headquarters went all the way out to suburbs of Chicago and then they recently were like, uh-uh, we're not getting any of the millennial and Gen Z talent anymore so they went and built a brand new headquarter in downtown Chicago in the West Loop and so that's the type of behavior that we're seeing from these major companies to stay relevant. What would you say are, let's try with three key principles of an entrepreneur mindset. Okay. I would say incredibly curious about really just anything and everything and constantly wanting to figure out how everything works, right? And digging in on those, following that curiosity. You have to maintain some focus and when you're building a company versus just experimenting, you have to make sure that curiosity keeps you on track but I think that's a hallmark. Being really scrappy and digging in, right? And so not sitting around and waiting for something to happen to enable the next thing but really just doubling down saying, you know, just making it work. Like I don't care if the front, you have a pretty website and on the back end there's no code and it's a pencil and paper and you running around, you know, with your AI is connecting and matching people, like just get it done, just figure out that there's a problem and that people are willing to pay for it to be solved, right? And then from there, you can start to build software to automate things, right? But the people that sit around and for a technical co-founder or oh, I just need money or just forget all that. You just need to get going. So, you know, curiosity, be scrappy as hell. You know, I would say to the network, you can't build a company on your own. You just can't, right? And so, the people that have good networks, they make meaningful relationships. At the end of the day, in order to be an entrepreneur, you have to have meaningful relationships. You cannot just burn people and walk all over them. And so, building up that network, taking the time to do that is instrumental in growing the, having a shot of starting a company and growing it. Mm, those are so good, I love it. Curiosity, so crucial. Understanding how everything in the world works, really trying to dig deep into getting how things work and then being scrappy, really focused and scrappy, being totally cool with living low SES in order to be able to succeed the last one's network. So, really understanding that your network's your net worth. You gotta go and parse the events that you go to and find the top five people at those events that have the highest cloud, that are building the future and go and introduce yourselves to them, provide them with value, ask them how you can help them, ask them about their lives and what they learned and their lessons, and then that will tie you closer into the loop of people that are actually building. And the other big advantage there is like, it's 2019, right? So, I have probably made more meaningful relationships on Twitter, just, you know, like everything you just said, but digitally, right? And then I meet those people in the real world, we become friends, like, you know. So, there's ways to do this, even if you're not in a New York or an SF, to connect and plug in. Totally. And that means when you do find that person on the internet, do not be scared to go and dig, search their name, follow with their email, name email, and try and find or DM them on Twitter, et cetera, or Instagram, wherever you're at, but reach out to them and provide them with that value. Reach out, that's something that so many of us hesitate on. Yeah, just go try to grab a coffee and, you know, at the worst case, you have some bad conversation, at the best case, you learn. You gotta ask some good questions. That's the thing is, gotta ask them good questions because then there's never a bad conversation. So, come prepared with your five or 10 questions that you wanna ask them about their life and what they built. Well, I'm gonna go back to curiosity, too, because I feel like really curious people have gotten good at asking the right questions. That's right. And people that aren't used to digging in ask the wrong question. Too general or too off to the right, or they lead the answer, right? And so, you have to sort of become a scientist with this curiosity and, yeah. Exactly, I'm trying to myself find out, like you said, we're testing hypothesis every time that I ask a question. I'm trying to not be too leading. I'm trying to, yeah, all this important stuff. Be emotionally intelligent and present with the EQ. Okay, a couple other thoughts. So, with the ambition today, how many episodes have you done over the last couple of years? So, we just hit episode 50. 50, dope. Yes, I know you're way ahead of me on this, but. But you do, you have two weeks. But I do them every, like, two weeks. This is our only fake we do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, just in episode 50. Cool. So, it's been two years, then? It's been almost three years, because I started August 2015, took a break off before my wedding for a few months, and then we really fired it back up in the last year, so. Love it. Yeah, basically interviewing successful entrepreneurs that have built, grown, and sold their companies, and then going through their life story, right? And trying to pick apart, like a scientist, the parts that are replicable for anyone else listening. Yeah. And a lot of what you mentioned earlier with the curiosity, scrappiness, and network actually is part of these stories of entrepreneurs that you get to hear. Yeah, I would say there's themes, right? And so, if you listen to two, three, four, five episodes, you'll start to see these themes arise. And then, the goal is ideally you could, I think everyone wants to see themselves in the hero's journey, right? And so, people start to think about how they can better those parts of their life as well, to be more effective for themselves. Yeah, yep, that's really crucial. Again, you're learning from the best, and you're implementing those skills into your life. That's something that we gotta hustle. You, we have the conscious choice every single day, is am I going to watch Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk give a talk, or am I going to watch a cat video? I have the conscious choice every day to pick. Or am I going to turn off the GaryVee videos and actually do some work? And actually can hustle. Yeah. Yeah, because we can get too trapped into the cycle of only watching and not executing. 100%. Yeah, yeah. I'm guilty of that myself. I mean, that's the other trap for the curious person is like, you feel like you always just need to keep learning. And at some point, it's like, man, you write every book in the library. Like, you know exactly what you're doing, you just need to go do it. Yeah, yeah. That's a good point is don't get trapped in too curious to the extent of which you don't actually build. Some people's, I've learned this, Kevin, and you might find this interesting. I've learned that some people actually care about just hanging out around the edge of knowledge, of like society's knowledge, and just like dealing with different people on the edge, but not really like, not really being an entrepreneur necessarily, but just helping all of the people along the scientific or business edges of the world. So I find that when I say, you gotta go execute, you gotta go execute, sometimes executing means having conversations with those people at the edge, but then how do you monetize that and sustain yourself, et cetera. Yeah, it depends on what your goals are, right? And so if you, I guess I'm talking from the aspect of if you wanna start a company. That's right. But you're right, there's other people there. And so I would urge everybody to figure out what their North Star, like if you had a personal mission statement, like what is that? And then figure out how you can start to align things in your life to you accomplishing that, right? My mission statement, I actually like formalized this in the last year is I want to help founders improve the lives of one billion people. I love it. And so I know that if I were to do something, I can have a little bit of an impact, but if I can help a bunch of people have an impact, I can then make my butterfly effect impact on the world. And so, yeah. There's, I think personally as well that there's, that's memetics. You're prioritizing the dissemination of ideas and businesses to the world rather than, I think genetics, which is a lot of people are stuck in the procreation, investing my time into only my kids and only my family. That has caused this in many ways to be at the end of this hockey stick of exponential technology and hockey stick of population without really growing up from kindergarten much. I think so. So I think- But I think if you do the former instead of the latter to your point, the long-term effects compound, right? So what I've seen is investing in other people helping them, all the stuff that you would normally fight for in that other scenario comes naturally. Absolutely, absolutely. Now, what would you say are some of the takeaways from the 100 plus companies you've invested into? That's a good question. I've actually been wanting to do a blog post on this and I haven't done it yet, so this might be a rough answer. Let's see the rough answer. What are the biggest takeaways? Biggest takeaways I would say are it's really hard for people to get and stay in a growth mindset. I think a lot of people have the vision. They don't, but then sometimes people get lost on the bridge between where they are and where they wanna go, right? And so it's really tricky, it can be really hard. It's kind of like fighting. And last time I think I was on, we talked about pushing a boulder up a hill and we got a little carried away with the boulder analogy, so we won't do it this time. But I think really staying focused, really playing long term, but really thinking how you could build a big globally scalable company. Because I think a lot of people, sometimes can get some money coming in and then they get lost in keeping that going, right? One of the analogies I like to draw is a more and more simple business that really anyone can understand, right? Whereas thinking like a snow plowing business, if you could drive one truck, you have 40 hours a week, you could do X number of driveways, right? The moment you do a second truck, you can then rinse and repeat that to a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and you could scale, right? But in order to do that, you have to, there's only so much time in a day, you have to spend less hours plowing, make less money for a little bit, build the business, not just the way that you sell your time to make money, right? And so one thing my advice would be after a hundred companies, make sure that you're not still selling your time. Make sure that you're actually building the business so it can scale and repeat and really grow long-term, yeah. That's a good piece of advice, Kevin. That's a really good one. That's a trap I've seen some people fall into, but yeah. So we get super caught up in doing the mundane at times. We hustle our ass off to do the first, it's almost like you get to first base in baseball. And then to get to second base, you gotta do something that requires you to do the scaling strategies unless so the same. You can't do the same run in the sense that you did to first base to second base. There's a different strategy to get to second base if you only got to a base hit, you know? And I think the interesting thing, the reality from a psychological perspective, and this goes to that BuzzFeed article I mentioned, the Millennial Burnout one, is we all like doing what we're really good at. And so that comes naturally and easy to us. And so we just fall into like repeating that and building the business in the same way. And so the problem is being an entrepreneur, you're constantly having to force yourself to the fringe and outer parts of your comfort zone. Always. To hit that next thing, to hit that next thing, hit that next thing. So you almost have to become, compared to anyone else in society, doing any other job, you have to sort of become this weirdo who's enjoying this like place of discomfort and always forcing yourself to grow in a little bit. And it's a hard position to keep yourself in, day in and day out. It requires a lot of physical health, I believe. Totally. It requires a lot of mental health. It requires a lot of daily processes and routine. And for me, it's a mindset that people can get themselves in versus just a job that they do. Damn, this is super wise advice. I love it. Bro, this is so good. This is so good. There's so many things there. You mentioned that mental and physical health are so crucial in this process. That's why meditation and exercise and eating healthy are super important, doing things like fasting, getting eight hours of sleep. All these crucial, crucial pieces to this puzzle. And then also, you mentioned just being at the brink of what you don't know how to do and constantly pushing at that brink. It's like the most satisfying thing is that deep instinct of being at, because you never wanna be doing things that are too easy and you never wanna be doing things that are so hard that you just keep failing all the time. So you gotta be right at that edge and working at that edge. It's a hugely important piece of advice. And I'm just so obsessed with the fact that you said this. I'm just trying to think of all of the entrepreneurs around the world that are just too focused on what they are super good at within their company, that they're not doing the innovation and research around what they could do next to help their businesses grow. And so I'm gonna take the snow plow analogy and I'm gonna bring it to a tech business now, right? And so I had a founder recently who, he was at 40 hours a week. He just could not get any more. And I said, you have to grow the team. And unfortunately, hiring someone, talking to people, writing out a process doc for whatever it is they're gonna do, right? Again, you have to take hours back from what you were doing to hire and fill that gap and then bring them up to speed. And so for probably a month and a half, two months, three months, you're doing less work than you're used to doing. The business is slowing, but if you can get it done, the effects are you get that time then back and now you've just doubled it, right? And so it could be painful to hire those first few employees and you could become a bottleneck because it's really easy to say, I know how to do it, I've done it 15 times. I'll just do it real quick versus teaching someone else to do it. And you fall in that trap and you could do that for months to a year or two. And reality is you should've just got help a while ago. And so my other advice after a hundred people is make sure you get help. Make sure, just find people that you enjoy spending time with and get them around you and you just need to jam out and work together and just keep pushing each other forward. Looking at myself in the mirror right now and thinking about all the ways that I am gonna be doing this editing for years. And it's so important to find the right people because you can do the training and then they can be gone and then that's a big time investment that you may have lost. So this is all super important. Okay, just some quickies on the way out. Quick questions that we like to ask our guests. What would you say is a core driving principle of yours? A core driving principle. So one of the reasons I came up with that mission statement, help founders improve the lives of a billion people is because I found myself doing all these things. I run Founder Institute, I then started the podcast, interview the mentors, the New York State Innovation Collective as a nonprofit of all the extraordinary incubators in New York. And part of the, I got to the point where I was like, well, I'm doing too much. But I needed to ask myself, does it all align, right? What can I cut that is not part of my life goals, right? And what can I keep? And so the mission statement for me is that, it's my North Star, it's what keeps me going. They all, in my opinion, help founders improve the lives of a billion people, either directly or indirectly. And so that's why those are sort of the core things that I believe in. Yeah. And then if you could rebuild civilization from scratch, how would you design it? Oh man, just like Epcot. I'm just kidding. But I am fascinated by, Epcot was Disney's vision for a futuristic city. It would be fascinating to get a plot of land and try to rebuild a society. I think that would be an amazing project for the back nine of my life after we make some money here and get some time on our hands to just relax and plan it. But it would be fascinating. I don't know what the answer would be. Obviously, from an emissions perspective, it's gotta be carbon neutral. I think we've seen that, we're just now starting to see things like how to build cities well, right? I think we messed up a lot in the 60s and the 70s. We built these military industrial complexes, right? My university campus is really windy down the main corridor. Turns out that was intentional by design because they wanted to be able to easily gas all the students if there was a riot because everyone was throwing protests in the 50s and 60s. And so these misaligned incentives have created these scenarios that bad design that the Barbican in London. So what we're seeing now is New York City is starting to figure things out. Like in the last five years, they added 1,000 miles of bike lanes, right? That have reduced the number of accidents, the parking protected. We're starting to see people move down the cities. I'm confident in the next 15 or 20 years of human design. The question is gonna be whether or not we can fix the mistakes we've already made. Do you think that we're in a simulation? Cue the red hot chili peppers. I don't know. And how would I ever know, right? Like if we're in the matrix, does it matter? Do I still play the game, right? Like I still wanna win the game. There's no way to unplug from the game. So yeah, I don't know. Keep leveling up. Yeah, keep leveling up and hope to God or whatever it is that when we pass on, there's something better. We'll hack the code, we'll figure it out soon, Kevin. How about last question is, what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world? Oh, the most beautiful thing in the world. And I think you asked me this before, so I wonder if I'm gonna give a different answer then. Then last time, I don't remember what I said last time. People evolve, yeah. So, let's hear it. Let's hear it, the most beautiful thing in the world. Maybe because you got me in that space, but I'm gonna go with life again. I think it's just a shot at, whether it's a simulation or not, it's a shot at something, at coming up with a mission statement, leaving your impact on the world. One of my favorite things that you talk about is all the people that lived before us, right? And how many people? 100 billion. 100 billion? 100 billion people, right? And someone in this generation probably didn't have built this building, but we're standing on these floors, 14 stories up and we're hanging out and we're existing and living off of subway systems and other generations built. And even though we pay for them, two dollars a ride, all this infrastructure is cumulative. And so, yeah, I mean, life, right? I mean, it allows us to do that as a society. And so, I would say life is obviously the most beautiful thing. I love it, I love it, Kevin. And super grateful for you and for all the people that have built everything that we have today. And thank you so much for coming onto the show and joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. This has been super fun. Looking forward to the next one and here's to the next 50 years. Yeah, yeah, we got this. I hope we got this civilization, we got this. Everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. We greatly appreciate it. Give us your thoughts in the comments below. We would also like you to check out some of Kevin's links and some of the work. You can check that out in the links below. Again, for founder and student and for ambition today. Also, go and build the future. Everyone, manifest your destiny into the world. Go and execute. We love you so much and keep supporting. Keep supporting great entrepreneurs and great organizations and support us so we can keep doing cool things like coming on site and talking to epic people like Kevin. Much love and we'll see you soon, everyone. Stay curious, everyone. Stay curious.