How a 19 Year Old Is Democratizing Startup Investing and Giving Every Founder a Fighting Chance

SPEAKER_02 1:01

This is an Undiscovered Legacy Production and prod member of Pod Nation Media Network.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

It's honestly, this is gonna be kind of harsh. Entrepreneurship is raw persistence, and some people don't have it in them to do that. Some people will get told no and then accept it. You have to be the type of person that is told no and then is told, you know what? Now I'm even more motivated to get a yes. And that is how you know if you're an entrepreneur, because you are born an entrepreneur. And then from that, you can decide to execute on it or not. How do you know if you're a born entrepreneur? It's simple. When you are told no, how does that make you feel? Does that make you feel like, you know what, I want to prove you wrong now? Or does it make you feel like, oh, I shouldn't have asked them in the first place? Now the and the way you answer that question will determine if you're fit for it or if you should say, okay, it's not for me, and just get a job.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Are you ready to unlock your entrepreneur potential? Are you ready to break free from all the barriers holding you back? Then you've come to the right place. Welcome to the Undiscovered Entrepreneur! Your first step of getting across the start line. Let's get across that start line together. Right here, right now, of the Undiscovered Entrepreneur. Salutation School Believers, and we're here again with another Amazing Entrepreneur. Today we're here with Emily. Hey Emily, how's it going?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

I'm doing great.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Oh, Remedy. Thank you so much for being on the Undiscovered Entrepreneur. Get across the start line. Super appreciate you coming on and kind of taking the time to talk to us today.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Thanks. It's my pleasure. I'm glad I'm glad you guys haven't had me on.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

All right, awesome. So before I go any further, I kind of have a kind of a semi-serious question to ask you. Okay, you ready?

SPEAKER_00 2:53

All right.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

All right, here we go. Are you a scoop believer?

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Of course I am. Come on. That's a rough question.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

All right. Thanks for being a scuba believer, Ellie. Appreciate you. That's amazing. So what we're going to do here right at the top is just kind of get an idea of who you are, what your entrepreneur adventure is, and how you got across the start line in your entrepreneur adventure.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Oh, wow. All right. So how far do we want to go back? Um, so around, all right, let's start from the beginning. So around three years ago, I was sitting on my bed and I was scrolling on TikTok, as I'm guessing most of the users who are listening to this have done in the past. And I came across this video of this man in the UAE. And he was talking about how 16 of his businesses failed before he succeeded, right? See, I always had the idea and the I always wanted to explore entrepreneurship. And it never really, I thought it was this thing where you just started and it worked, right? You go to you go to a job, you at the end of the week you get paid. And this is the thing that it clicked. It told it I understood that it's not entrepreneurship isn't a game about succeeding, it's a it's a game about failing so many times that not achieving success is is absurd. It's ridiculous to not achieve success through so many failures, right? And as he was saying, he failed 16 businesses that didn't make a dime until he finally found the right one. And now he's a multi-billionaire and he lives in the UAE, private jets, etc. etc. And I I jumped right out of my bed and I got in front of my laptop and I said, okay, I gotta do something. So um I basically I started dabbling in AI, like everyone was doing at like a few people were at the time, and I came across lovable and cursor. Lovable wasn't too big at the time, mostly with cursor. And with my pre-experience in web development, I was able to basically launch uh web development, AI, CRM, and meta-ads agency. We called it WebNixL. And I basically set up the entire end-to-end flow where one of our employees would basically fill out a form after cold calling, which is when you pick up a phone and just start calling random businesses and you tell them, okay, this is what we can offer for you. And I they would fill out a form, and a day later they would get the website link shipped directly to their mail. They would get the link to provide the client with for the Stripe invoice. I would take my cut, the uh the salesman would also get their cut, and that's it, end-to-end. And thanks to the streamlining of the process, we were able to scale to eventually 12, uh 20 employees on our sales team. We were doing pretty good, frankly. And well, as AI was developing, I realized that you know, this isn't gonna last forever. People are gonna eventually figure out what was happening, right? However, the the sales team constantly was bringing up a constant bottleneck in their sales outreach. It was well, some someone would call hang up the phone and we'd never know what they were doing. It would just be hi, blah, blah, blah. My name is this and that. They hang up the phone. So I would I I was also seeing on social media these these big AI rappers, and I wanted to dabble in it because I had some free time. So I built this uh internal tool called Prospector. Now, Prospector was an AI cold calling trainer, and what it would let our employees do were two things. Number one, they would practice their cold calling with an AI, and number two, they were able to upload their voice recordings of their previous calls, figure out what was wrong, and practice with the AI. Now, it was always it was only meant to be an internal tool, however, the team loved it so much that I said that they can manage to convince me to try to bring it to market. So I I did. And well, it turns out that cold calling and bringing an actual um mobile app, which is consumer-facing, to market are very expensive and not the easiest thing to do, right? Um, I got quoted at around 30,000 and I was like, whoa, okay, fine. So I tried another place, and it turns out that that's the um that's the that's the median. We would so we were trying to bring it to market, and like I said, it turns out it's very expensive. So um I knew it wasn't fit for venture dollars, right? VCs want to see uh a couple million ARR for their investment to even make sense, right? And I always knew that this this venture would only um wouldn't last forever and it would be, you know, everything, everything goes well, maybe uh$200,000 a year. Like, okay, so I turned to crowdfunding, and boy, was I in for a surprise. Crowdfunding, they I mean, basically, it's so boring that the only people on it are VCs and angels. Like, like I said, um, it isn't fit for venture dollars, so they naturally they all told me, sorry, you can't come on our platform. And I said, Wow, this is extremely broken. Crowdfunding is supposed to be for new entrepreneurs, you know. Uh, that's the way I saw it, younger new entrepreneurs, those who don't have experience, those who don't have a fancy um resume, who want to source from the crowd, people who believe, okay, fine, this is a problem I have, let me fund the solution. I believe in the solution, right? Um, everyone's that's I believe crowdfunding is for people who are who basically say, give me a chance. I want to prove everyone wrong. And that is what a majority of Gen Z are like we crave. If you look at the numbers, there's around 90% of Gen Z wants to start a company. And I'm not making this up on the top of my head. You could act, I hope the listeners actually look this up. Um, it's a recent study, so now I'm basically on a mission to destroy these companies because they're doing it wrong. That's not what crowdfunding was made for. That's not why it was legalized. It wasn't meant to be a playground for VCs, it was meant for people like me and you, and it was made for where where um anyone has a chance, and that's the way I see it. There's an uh an overwhelming amount of new entrepreneurs since since around COVID-19. I like to say this all the time. We are the most entrepreneurial generation. I mean, I don't know, I don't know if these terms you you might know, but I don't know if you're familiar with StockX. So StockX is basically where it used to be a very big thing. It was basically where you would buy uh Nike shoes when they would release, and then you'd resell them on this platform. And it was basically like a day trading platform where instead of day trading current a security, you would day trade the shoes you would have. And due to that, uh you didn't have to be 18, or you you you there wasn't an age requirement for this sort of trading, and it's exploded. I mean, it was, I don't know about now, but it's it was huge because Gen Z is the most risk-taking generation. You go you go from stock X to day trading, then crypto boomed. Now we're in the middle of the explosion of prediction markets early 2024, which is around uh one and a half years ago, the entire market cap of prediction markets was around$100 million a year. I'm gonna ask you a question. How much do you think it's at as of beginning of 2026?

SPEAKER_02 10:01

I'm gonna say 500 million.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Take one more guess and then I'll tell you.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

100 billion. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

All right, no, let's not get too crazy, but okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

Sorry, I'm running out of numbers here. Go ahead. What is it?

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Yeah, it's it's it's eight to sixteen billion dollars.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Okay, nice.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

So that is a significant jump from 100 million to eight to sixteen. So it's pretty drastic, and it's just it's just we really are the most risk-taking generation, and I I'm it's crazy. It really is, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

Yeah, you know, I'm gonna unpack a little bit because you actually covered a lot here that really kind of made my brain kind of fizzle a little bit and and want to kind of dig into this a little bit more. First of all, I love the fact that you just jumped and did it. One of the hardest things about starting any kind of business is to actually get started. I call that getting across the start line in our entrepreneur adventure. It's the hardest thing we can do is to get started. I love that you just hopped right out of bed and just started looking things up and started making things happen for yourself. And in each step that you took, you you found a problem and filled it. You found a problem and filled it. And until you got to the point where you're at now about the crowdfunding and kind of figuring out that problem. And you're right, too, because I I I don't know how much research you've done. I mean, my first entrepreneur adventure, I wanted to be a karaoke DJ and a music DJ, but I had no equipment, no money, or anything. So I tried to start a crown fund and it completely bombed because I didn't for number one, I didn't really know what I was doing, to be completely honest with you at the very beginning. But nobody would even look at me. And I think I only got a couple hundred dollars from my mom, and that was about it. Yeah, that's what moms do to make you feel better. So having some kind of way to be able to learn how to properly crowdfund and it be easy to do and figure out what those problems could be are are very beneficial for anybody that can look into that. And I love that you took something that you had that that saved the cold calling thing is what I'm getting at here. It's like, okay, now I used to be a car salesman too. If I had that kind of training tool to help me learn how to do cold calls, because cold calling and car sales, believe it or not, is huge. And being able to do that properly and be able to make that appointment for this person to come in to buy a car from you, I mean that that would be beneficial for any salesman, not just cars, but for any other kind of salesman for that matter, too. And I love how you took that and turned it into something that everybody can use or anybody can use. So that was awesome. I want to ask you kind of a semi-personal. How old how old are you, Ellie? I'd like you to guess. Oh I hate the age guessing game. 23.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Wow, I that that that that's a that's a high score. I've never gotten that high.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

Oh, I'm 19. You're 19. Okay. Yep. I don't know. But that's that's the thing I love too, is young entrepreneurs because they have that drive, they have that ability, the energy to be able to go out and do something. And they have, just like you were saying earlier, they have the time now where they can actually fail and not have to worry so much about now. See, if I just started now and I'm failing now, I'm going like, well, you know what? I'm 50. Uh-oh, you know, I'm running out of time. But I love hearing about young entrepreneurs. I had one entrepreneur, he was 14 years old. His name is KJ. And at the time he was doing uh NFTs when those were big. But he was doing that, but he was also traveling around the world speaking to other kids about how he got started and his story and that kind of trying to inspire other young kids too. So I love that. That's awesome. Tell me a little bit more about the crowdfunding, and and now you're at this point in the crowdfunding, where are you in that in that particular aspect as far as helping people crowdfund?

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Yeah, so I just went straight to the to the root issue. I broke it down into a couple of components, and the way I see it is crowdfunding is just boring, right? When you post a campaign, why would somebody deliberately go out of their way to scroll on these new on these crowdfunding platforms? See the way it works is I'm gonna I'm gonna paint a picture for you. It's a feed, you get a square box, which is the logo and the title, and that's all you get. And then you just get a feed of those. So you are quite literally judging a book by its cover. You get to judge the company by the colors of their logo. If their logos are colorful enough, press it, and then congratulations. Now you have to read a pitch deck. I don't want to do that. VCs don't even like doing that. They actually look at the title, not even the logo sometimes, and it's boring next. Nobody likes reading, right? And we basically said, Well, that's why, right? That's why the only people on these platforms are VCs, and that's why these platforms don't allow me on it, because the thing with the thing about the way it works is you're scrolling, you press if you see a pitch you don't like and you just finished reading 15 slides, all of a sudden you you're bored. You don't want to open that, you don't want to open that app anymore. Now you close it, you got a notification, you close it, and that's it. That's not how this app these apps make money. Now I said, wait a minute, I go through how many videos every day on TikTok. When I see one that's bad, do I close the app or do I just scroll? Right? You scroll. So why don't I implement that same form of distribution into crowdfunding and make it actually fun, right? Put the fun into crowdfunding, make it interesting, make it cool, make it actually human, not just your chat GPT prompt, just your chat GPT text, make me a business plan and just put that. That's like no one likes to read that, right? So we're actually making it more human, more real, making it more of a personal connection where you go, you upload your your basically your entrepreneurial journey and your journey in building your product. Some people like to call it building in public. You could Google that online. There are plenty of videos, it's called building in public, and um basically uh let you upload those videos while explaining what your product does. And retail investors, that being me, you, or anyone in the audience, can scroll like you would do on TikTok. Uh, you get to keep up with the company, so that'd be like following. Let's say you don't trust it right away, so you could keep up with it, and then uh you see it more and more often, build more of a connection, say, okay, fine, you know what? I really relate to this problem, I'm gonna fund the solution. I asked 15 of my friends, 14 of them said they would use a product like this. This guy speaks well, so I know he'll be able to bring it to market properly. Product's good, founder, entrepreneur is good, I'm gonna put some money where my mouth is. And that's basically what fish tank is. We we want to democratize it because currently the only pla the only people you're actually getting money from are mostly VCs. And well, it it unless you have a VC ready company and you have a resume and Stanford and uh all these all these crazy places are written down onto it, you're getting you you have no luck. And it it that does not that should not decide if you could have if if you should have the capital to build a company. And I mean, it makes no sense, and that's that's what we're democratizing.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Fantastic. That's great. I love this idea that you have for for finding new companies and that kind of thing, and this new way of crowdfunding that would be a lot more fun to deal with because I know that I I could get more involved with anything if I just you know, oh no, oh hey, this is great. I could use one of these. What's this about? You know, it's so much easier to find and just endlessly scrolling all the different, like you said, it's like a just like a business plan or anything like it gets boring because it's just a bunch of text and that kind of thing, and maybe a picture or two every once in a while. I love this idea. Tell me, I mean you've been doing this for a little while, but what do you think stops most entrepreneurs from getting started? I mean, what what's that one thing you think that stops new entrepreneurs from getting started?

SPEAKER_01 17:57

It's it's honestly this is gonna be kind of harsh. Entrepreneurship is raw persistence, and some people don't have it in them to do that. Some people will get told no and then accept it. You have to be the type of person that is told no and then is told, you know what, now I'm even more motivated to get a yes. And that is how you know if you're an entrepreneur, because you you are born an entrepreneur, and then from from that you can decide to execute on it or not. How do you know if you're a born entrepreneur? It's simple. When you are told no, how does that make you feel? Does that make you feel like, you know what, I want to prove you wrong now, or does it make you feel like, oh, I shouldn't have asked them in the first place? Now, the and the way you answer that question will determine if you're fit for it or if you should say, Okay, it's not for me, and just get a job. I mean, there's nothing wrong with working with working a job. But that that's my personal opinion because, like I said before, um, and like the the the main thing that motivated me to start was this man telling me that he failed 16 times. That means he started a company, he got the legal process done, he bought the domain name, he set up the email addresses, he hired the employees, or he he he spent at least a couple of months on it, failed and then retried it and it failed 16 times without making a penny. And now he's a billionaire. But he did that 16. I I I honestly I wish I could speak to this man, ask him how long it took him. Like it's it's insane. Um how long does this get how long did it take him?

SPEAKER_02 19:32

I would definitely just re- I would definitely just reach out to him and say, or just drop him a DM or something and say, hey, I saw your stuff, let's let's talk. I'd love to hear more about your story. I love I love the raw persistence idea. And that's so, so true because what you do with the information that you're given to is what makes you who you are. So if you take that information and you say and you you hear that no or that or that fail or whatever it is that you hear, and you stop, you throw your hands up in the air and say, okay, that's it, I'm done. That is what I call a true failure. Right. But the kind of failure that we look for is that failure where, okay, this bad thing happened, but what did I learn out of that bad thing? What can I take? What information can I take over into my next adventure so I don't make that same mistake twice? And it's that much better the next time I try. But you have to have the raw persistence to keep failing and learning, failing and learning and failing and learning. Yeah, it's tough. It could it could be really, really tough. There, you could become, there's times where you might be financially strapped. There's times where you're going to be stressed. But these are the these are the things that we have to go through to be the successful entrepreneur at the end of the day. These are the struggles that we must go through. These are the hurdles, what I call hurdles of stop that we go through to become the success we are at the end of the day. So I really appreciate your raw persistence and keep and keep doing what you're doing, dude. You're doing awesome and I love it. I want to I want to see more of that from you, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, especially learning from uh learning from your mistakes. So something I personally adopted was every time I get on a call, whether it's to a VC, a friend who I'm explaining my idea to, I basically say, okay, now we're done this call before I hang up. Name one thing I did that could be improved. So that's whether my voice was too squeaky, I had a voice cracked, I have a bad haircut, or the entire structure, or I rambled, or I repeated something, and then I'll actually go back and practice. And that is the thing is you want to fail fast. You want to know if you made a mistake, you want to know as fast, you want to know it's a mistake as fast as possible. And you don't have to fail your whole company, you could just practice your pitching, but don't do it. You could do it to friends, however, it's much better if you do it to someone who doesn't like you, honestly. Because they'll give you the raw feedback. That that that it it it don't ask your mom if she likes your idea because you won't you won't get the honest truth. And I really um you have to really appreciate criticism because I have the story, and it's something I love bias. You're going on a date with a girl, and you have this shirt, this really, really ugly shirt, but you don't know it's ugly. And it's this turquoise, ugly, very ugly shirt. And you ask a friend, hey, does the shirt look nice? And he tells you, Yeah, it's beautiful. He doesn't want to hurt your feelings. You show up on the date, it goes wrong. Why? The shirt was ugly. Now you have another friend who says, Yo, that shirt is hideous, horrible. You're gonna get rejected, she's gonna slap you for all even. Okay. You change your shirt, you have a successful night, everything goes great. One hurt your feelings, one didn't. But at the end of the day, who provided more valuable input? The answer would be the person who told you that it's an ugly shirt, even though it might hurt your feelings. So um that's another key element. You have to be able to handle. Criticism and not only handle it, you have to appreciate it and you have to ask for it everywhere you go. Because it's better that in practice someone tells you it's an ugly shirt than when you show up on a date she tells you it's an ugly shirt. Once again, I'm keeping up with the uh metaphor, but that that that's that's that's what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

No, that's awesome. There's actually a book called The Mom Test. I don't know if you've heard of that or not, but um it actually goes directly into that, that exact thing that you're talking about. And ScrewBelievers, if you listen back to a couple episodes uh on my business conversations with Pi, we actually go dive deep into the mom test and how to test your product and different ways to test your product before spending a lot of money and time on it. So uh listen back to that. But I'm really glad you brought that up.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

I love that you're bringing up that problem, by the way. That's is something that we are actually aiming to fix. Now throwing up a landing page and asking users to sign up if they like the idea, it doesn't really mean much, right? I believe that the truth the best way to figure out if your product has market fit would be you tell people about it and you ask them if you truly believe if people are willing to fund your solution, you found a real problem. And that's a fact. Now, if you got it from a VC, that means you might have fixed a problem for him. You know, you don't know if it's a real problem. Now, if if if 200 people, just just 200 people have given you let's keep it, let's keep it very low,$50. That shows that 50 people that that shows that those amount of people not only believe not only have your problem and want to find your solution, they they believe in it so much that they're willing to open up their wallet, put some money and and invest into your company. And not only that, especially with the the mom test, we actually we actually have a part of the app which we call the community. And it's basically where um you could up where you upload kind of like like Twitter. However, we have these um categorize it into problems, questions, learn from me, criticize me. So those these are things. So let's say I have a problem. So right now I have a problem with marketing. My I know uh all um I keep getting press um uh visits to my website, but they never convert. Now I want this is a problem I've had, and now someone, an entrepreneur who had a similar issue who learnt by being burned, could say, Hey, I had that exact problem instead of failing. Here's exactly what I did to fix that problem, or here's what I learned. And now you could take that and say, Oh, okay, maybe it's because uh the page loads too long, or because of this, or because of that. And you could actually it it basically be a school of of knowledge for entrepreneurs because entrepreneurship, in my opinion, this might be controversial, but it's the one thing that you can't really learn from someone. You can't learn because being an entrepreneur means telling people they're wrong. So you can't really learn those types of those things if you understand where I'm getting at. But um, yeah, and then there's obviously the criticize me, which is basically here's my idea. I want you to basically destroy it. I'm building this, I want you to destroy every single piece. Because honestly, I'd rather someone tell me it's a horrible idea, no one would ever use it, versus me spending six months and then hearing that from the users, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:15

Yeah, no, that's cool. Uh, people will validate your product with dollars. That's clear and simple. If they're willing to part with hard-earned dollars for your product, that is validation. There's also ways. Now, I'm I'm just gonna throw an example of my own here that you can actually make a website, drive traffic to that website, and get the analytics of how many people actually hit that buy button. Now, when they hit that buy button, they're gonna it's gonna say sold out or something like that. But you got you you got the information that you needed off of that by how many people actually hit that button as compared to how many people actually got to the website. Then you can start adjusting things, color palettes, timing, like you said, anything like that to see how many more people hit that that buy button. And then when you got enough people hit that button, then you launch. Then you do an actual launch, and now you know you have a validated product or you have a validation of that people are gonna buy what they're what they're clicking on there because they've people you've already had people clicking on it. I heard another story where this company, I can't remember it off the top of my head, but they bought a like a Lowe's uniform off of Amazon, and then they had their product and they snuck into and snuck into Lowe's and put the their product like on the shelf and then saw how many people actually picked it up and went to the counter to buy it, even though when they were scanned the fake scan code, nobody knew what the heck was going on, but you know, whatever. But they got the information that they needed that people would actually pick it up and buy it. So there are ways of being able to validate your product and not even really even have a product yet. It's just to see if people are willing to press that buy button. So kind of keep that in mind too. Having a community of people around you is gonna be so important to help you learn what you don't know yet. There's gonna be parts in the business that that there's gonna be holes there that you're not sure of how to do it. And you got to have somebody say, hey, you know, I've had this happen, just like you said, I've had this happen to me. What do you think? What is your experience with this? So I love the the fact that you are working on a community, have a community, and have a way for them to communicate with each other so we can get that validation information so we can all move on with our entrepreneur adventure. And I love having what I call the pre-mortem, which is before you know what's the worst thing that can happen when I put this thing out. Let's think about that first. And that's when you're going into tear my idea apart. And that's what I call a pre-mortem. So you can figure out what's wrong first and then build it and then go from there. So you make some great points there.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Yeah. Um yeah, no, I totally agree with you on the like putting your product out there. Now, it's a great thing to do, however, the one problem I see with that is you're blind because if no one picks up your product, you don't know why. Like you could bring your product to Lowe's, hang it up, and if no one touches it, you don't know why. Maybe it's the design is ugly. Maybe they maybe you just didn't get the right clients to came. Maybe there's nothing wrong with your product, it's just the wrong people showed up to the store that day. Now, if you see no one picks it up and every the design was flawless, it's just the wrong customers, and you say, Oh, okay, fine, I gotta change the design now because it's probably the design, and I've made now you made it worse. So that is a problem, right? That back to the problem that I had before with the cold calling. You never know what you're doing wrong because sometimes let's say you have a flawless uh pitch, however, it's just the wrong the wrong person you're pitching, and you'll say, Okay, fine, I gotta make it better now. I gotta change something, and you change it, and then you make it worse, and then you just keep changing. You never know what the what the actual issue is. Is it the person? Is it the product? Is it the idea? Is it the quality of the shirt? Is it is it in the wrong aisle? Maybe maybe maybe no one likes Lowe's anymore, or maybe it's the price. There's so many different things that you that you might change, and you might be changing the wrong thing, you might be changing the one thing that's actually good, and that's why I think the the true value is in criticism. So let's say let's say you put the shirt up there, and then you'll go up to the person and say, Hey, why didn't you buy that shirt? Now, I don't know how comfortable you feel doing that. I know I wouldn't, but that's exactly why I I were I built this feature, which is basically just destroy me. Everyone's too nice on social media, literally destroy the product. And and yeah, fish tank isn't a crowdfunding platform, it's it's an entrepreneur uh platform, it's a platform for whether you're uh an entrepreneur who's building something or an entrepreneur who wants to invest into a company, it it falls under the same category, in my head at least. And that's fish tank.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

All right, that's awesome. I love this. And I love I love the idea of fish tank. I we're gonna do I want to get into that a little bit more here in just a second. But what I'd like to know here, and this is one of my favorite questions to ask all entrepreneurs, new and old, but did you have a pitfall or problem that you're proud of? Do you have a time where it's like, you know, this horrible, horrible thing happened to me, but I'm so glad that happened to me that way because this wonderful thing happened at the end of that. Do you have anything like that happened to you?

SPEAKER_01 31:24

I got plenty. Oh, okay. Give me one. I I would like to say something that's similar to that, um, which is something that I really thought was a negative, and it turned out to be the biggest strength. So um, when I was building Fish Tank, I didn't do too much diligence on these crowdfunding platforms. And it I was basically the idea was I was gonna build the TikTok aspect, and then I was gonna get back to it later and iterate and make it more looking more professional. Now I left that there and I just I couldn't come up with a better idea. And I was like, man, this is gonna look so unprofessional, the TikTok aspect. And now that I've been doing more speaking and more thinking on it and meditating on it, I'm like, wow, this is actually the most different, and the uh it's actually the best part about this app because there's so many crowdfunding platforms, this is the main differentiator. We let you upload your regular content, and I didn't like that at the beginning because I was like, well, it's not professional. And then I realized, wait a minute, I'm not going for professional, I'm going for regular people, right? Crowdfunding, crowd, social. We're making it social funding instead of just crowdfunding. And and that that is the thing that I was actually like quite stressed about. Actually, I was like, wow, how do I make it professional, but not TikTok, but not TikTok? And it has to look different than everyone else because I I'm going for the for the but no, I mean, it's it's it's yeah, don't be scared to be different. That's that's the that's the point.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

No, it makes perfect sense too. I've definitely dug into my weirdness to be who I am. I mean, obviously, I do the Scooby-Doo laugh. It's just become part of me and who I am, but it it makes me me. If anybody sees anything that's Scooby-Doo, they're gonna think, well, first they're gonna think it's Scooby-Doo, but the next thing in their heads probably, oh, there's that guy that laughs like Scooby-Doo who runs a business, blah, blah, blah. But it makes me who I am. But I so I I kind of use my weirdness as part of my emergency. And it's the same thing you should do too. Make it you, make it a part of you, make your business you. Because that's what people are looking for, especially nowadays, too. I'm not knocking AI or AI work or anything like that. But what people are really kind of hungry for right now is realism, things that are real. And what there, you're welcome. Yes. And the thing is, yes, so what people are now realizing, they want to see more real people do real things. They want to see the flaws, they want to see the hiccups, they want to know that it's not perfect because then they'll know for sure it's not an just AI slop that's being put out there, right? So it's okay. It's okay to be be kind of a little fidgety. It's okay to throw in a few ums and odds out there. You're human, you're not an AI, it makes you who you are. So this that's why I think I really like fish tank so much, because it kind of it kind of breathes more life into the realism and into who we are as humans, more than putting out an AI out there. Now, granted, I do use AI, I do use AI videos for my stuff, some of my stuff. It's more of a time saver more than anything else for you. But I'm I'm real, I'm here, people. But yeah, thank you so much for that. I really appreciate you kind of letting people know that the way we're doing things is the way it should be. We're human. We need to be human, we're gonna do human things, and that's who we are.

SPEAKER_01 34:44

Yeah, I know back onto what you were saying about the AI, um, AI, just everything, AI, this, AI, that. I have this meme. It's not a real meme, it's something I've I see in my head. I've never actually got around to actually make it, but it's basically here's how it goes. You know, uh Gmail recently added a feature where you could AI your email and then it makes it more professional. So envision this. It's someone sending an email, paste it into chat GPT, make this longer, sends it in, sends it to the email, and then the recipient takes it, copy-pastes it into chat GPT, make this shorter, and it gives it the same exact thing that the guy would have initially sent. And it's it really, it's like it's like something I saw myself doing. I was like, I was literally like pressing the AI button onto the emails that I was sending, and then I would receive one and I would put it to Chat GPT and say shorten this, and I was like, wait a minute, what what this makes no sense, right? But why don't I just send the regular email? I'm sure the guys do the other guys doing the same thing. No one wants to read a whole email like this, and it's and it's and it's just true. People people are tired and fed up of the whole fakeness and realism is what everyone craves. And people who use AI to run their business won't be successful. People who use it as a tool, now those are if it's easy, anyone can do it. If anyone can do it, anyone can make money. And if anyone can make money, well, money's useless, so you might as well not even do it. Um, that's something I I I live by, and it's it's it's true. If if it's easy and anyone can do it, then anyone, then everyone will do it. So um, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

Yeah, I love that. Um I'm gonna try to make that short for you. I I want I I kind of see that in my head too, because it's so true. It is so so true. Somebody that said that too, said that in my mind, when I hear, you know, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Uh, Jim Henson, who's the creator of the Muppets, he went through hell to get the shots that he had. But there was a reason why he was the genius, he was the man he was, it's because he did the hard stuff. But he always said if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. So we'd let's do the hard stuff, and it turns out even better. And we can we could take that aspect into just about anything we do in our entrepreneur adventure. Yeah, it's hard, but look at what you're gonna get on the other side of it if you get through it all, right? So that's awesome. Thank you so much for that story. I love it. So, what I'd like to know here is if you ran into a brand new entrepreneur or just getting started in their entrepreneur adventure, say you like online, or you know, you walked into them in a coffee shop or whatever, what what good solid piece of advice would you give them? What first step would you have them take?

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Honestly, I would ask him one question. What are you what's the number one fear or the one number one thing you're scared of happening in your business? Or uh I'm scared that if I launch too early, I might fail people might not like it, or whatever it is. And I'd say, whatever that thing is that you're scared of doing it, do it right now. Because you just have to do it fast. Because if it doesn't work, you want it to not work as fast as possible so you could reiterate or figure out that it's a failing business model and try something else. Because it really is being an entrepreneur is a game of failing and failing as fast as possible and get getting as much knowledge from that failure to move on to the next one. And it's just a game of persistence and speed and fail fast if it's gonna fail, right? If it's a bad idea, it's better that you figure out it's a bad idea and today over working on it for six months and then figuring out it's bad then, because then congratulations, you failed and it took you six months to do it. That's where most people mess up, right? Like I said before, the guy that had 16 failed businesses, if he spent a year on the meet, I highly doubt I mean 16 years, I highly doubt he has enough um enough uh uh ramen noodles to last him that long in his basement. So um, yeah, whatever you're scared of doing or whatever you think, like, oh, if that happens, I might fail, and then do that right now. Because if it fails, congratulations, you know it failed. Also, another thing is you have to know the difference between I'm gonna I gotta be careful the way I the way I I I phrase this, but you have to you have to know the difference between no thinking everyone else is wrong and um you have to you have to have a balance and at the same time it's not a balance of you're wrong, and at the same time, tell me everything you think about it, right? Tell me if I'm wrong. Okay, why are why am I wrong? Okay, but you're you're wrong. I'm not wrong, but tell me why you think I'm wrong. And it makes no sense if you're looking at uh if you look at it uh uh in a logical standpoint, but that really is what it is, because you have to believe that no, you don't know what you want. But at the same time, if the person doesn't like your product, you have no you have no customers. So if it was so obvious, someone else would have done it. You look at Steve Jobs, perfect example. He was all he was obsessed with his customers and the design, but at the same time, when someone said what when they would when people told him this doesn't appeal to people, he said, No, you're wrong. But then that same day he would go to the to to the the to the prospect customers and say, What what do you dislike about this? But you just say you just finished saying that you don't care if they dislike it. Yeah, well, it it involves a bit of like um of of it's it's two different sides that you have to play at the same time. And that is something that I got confused, and that is something that if you get them mixed up or you don't play it correctly will will will and will lead to very like will lead to failure because you have to at the same time, if one person says, I don't like your product, you can't say, okay, fine, you're right, I'm done. However, if ever if a bunch of people say it's a bad product, you can't say, I'm right, you're wrong, don't listen to their feedback. No, you have to say, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep building this. However, what do you think is wrong so I can iterate? And then you don't go to one person because one person is not a hundred people, you go to uh as many people as possible and you say, Okay, what is wrong? And you take the sum of that and then you put it into your product and then you enhance. And that is that is one of the most confusing and complicated and and difficult things to actually wrap your mind around because it doesn't make sense if you're just speaking logically, because they are they they go against each other.

SPEAKER_02 40:56

Nothing nothing that we do as entrepreneurs is logical. I'm just gonna put that up right up front. There's nothing logical about what we do, but that's what makes it fun. That's what makes it what it is. That's what makes it exciting because it's not always logical what we do. But to get that information, you have, even though there's two sides of that same coin, we have to look at it both ways. And sometimes the question isn't as, you know, sometimes the question is more important or or as important as the answer that we get from that question. Because we got to ask the right questions. If we're asking the wrong questions, we're gonna get the wrong answers and not be able to iterate the way we need. So it's important to understand what the question is, to be able to get the answer that we need for the information so we can do the iterations, so we can understand that the iterations we're looking for is going toward the right direction. So I love that idea. And thank you for sharing that with me. Do you happen to know the acronym for FAIL? Actually, I don't. That's okay. A lot of people don't. First attempt in learning, because that's exactly what we're doing. This is something, especially when we're first getting started. We've never done this before, so we have room for failure. So it's your first attempt at failing. We're gonna fail over and over again until we get to the right time, the right thing, but it's your first attempt at doing that. So always remember that it's your first attempt. Give yourself some grace to fail because it's part of the process. If you're failing, you're an entrepreneur. Congratulations. It's part of what we're supposed to do, it's what makes us who we are, as humans, as entrepreneurs, and anything else like that.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Yep. But it's just it's it's in in a lot of ways, it's you have to basically take everything you learned up to this point and forget it. Because a lot of things in life teach you that if you failed, not look, you failed this exam, you have to retake it. There's no like you you failed, okay. That's bad. No, no, no. Failure is it it's it isn't binary. It could be good, bad, it could be all right, it could be nothing. It's not like you failed, good, you failed bad. It's there's so many different possible things that could come from it that uh like I failed to bring my cold calling app to market. I failed that because I couldn't raise the capital, etc. etc. I probably could have, but it was never, it was never such a big thing, right? I always knew it was gonna be a smaller little side project, but that led me to what I'm doing right now, and this is something that is huge. The possibilities of what I'm doing at fish tank is it's massive. There's the the audience is huge, right? Um you the listeners are all entrepreneurs. They're the entrepreneurial, uh, the entrepreneurs, uh the amount of entrepreneurs uh uh is it's growing exponentially. So that you have you have to is there's a lot of things that you think you know that are totally wrong. And it's just it's very confusing at sometimes because you'll learn something like the day before you'll say, Oh wow, okay, fine. So this is what it means. And then the next day you'll come up with a complete opposite opposite answering it, and they're both right. They're both right. So you have to understand that nothing's binary, sometimes listen to the obsess over the customer, and sometimes he's wrong. So and sometimes it's both of them at the same time. So it's is just there's always always there's always there's always some there's always something else that you'll learn tomorrow. And it's nothing that you some some of these things can be taught, and then a lot of these things cannot be taught. The only way to learn is by falling off your bicycle, getting up, getting back on that bike, and trying again. And that's that's that's that's what it is.

SPEAKER_02 44:28

That's right. We wouldn't be walking right now if we gave up after the first step in falling, right? We we'd all be scooting around on something.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

That's a great, that's a great example, honestly. I never I'm gonna use that.

SPEAKER_02 44:39

Yeah, you can use it. It's free. I won't even copyright it. Okay. So what I like to do, I have this tradition with all my guests. In the next six months, where do you see you, your and your your company, where do you see fish tank from here, and then six months from now, where do you see fish tank going?

SPEAKER_01 44:54

Ooh. All right, okay. So I see it as the platform. Where basically the entrepreneurial hub, the hub for anyone who is starting, who just got off of their bed watching a TikTok video, uh, seeing how um this guy uh failed 16 companies all the way to someone like you who's been doing it for I don't even know how many years you've been doing how many years you've been an entrepreneur, but and and kind of this this place where everyone disagrees with each other and learns from each other and it's um you're wrong, this is exactly wrong, and where you say thank you for criticizing me, not wow, you're so mean. Um, this place where you you have liter literally just an idea that you came up with, and that you get destroyed on the idea, figure out if it's good, uh raise capital on the idea, find co-founders for that idea, build that idea, fund that idea, scale that idea, and basically where you take uh literally like a spark and you turn that into a unicorn, a billion-dollar company, all in one place without yeah, that that that is the that's the vision.

SPEAKER_02 46:07

Awesome. Do you have any users right now of of fish tank?

SPEAKER_01 46:11

So as of right now, we're still in a pre-beta stage.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 46:14

Yeah, and because of um compliance, so it's a compliance nightmare to um yeah, basically be able to uh operate under Reg CF, which is the crowdfunding regulations. Um so as of right now, we have something called our pre-beta, which is basically where I mean, I'm sure you've asked yourself this question how are we beating the chicken and egg problem, right? Because there is a chicken and egg problem. You show up on the platform, there are no videos, you close the app, the guy posts seasonal views, includes his account. So what we're doing is we're basically allowing uh entrepreneurs to get on, share their pitches, and once we launch, which is very soon, once we launch, they will basically have the they'll have the advantage. And also we have the community open right now, which is basically where you can just share your idea, say okay, this is what I'm doing, destroy me. And it's basically just like Twitter, except we do not accept here's what XYZ artists did today. No, we don't care about that. We can't we are strictly a hub for learning and for destroy me on this. I want to know every single flaw. You your your profile picture is bad, change it. Great. Now I know to change it. Maybe that maybe that's literally anything, anything that is that could use improvements, you'll you'll know about you'll know about it.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

Fantastic. So do you think you'll be up and running in six months? Oh, for sure. Okay. So here's what I like to do with you, Ellie, if I could. And six months, I want to follow up with you in another interview, just like this one. I'm gonna see how your company's doing. I want to see I want to see it running. I want to see it up and running. Okay, I want to see some user accounts and all that good stuff. So is that okay with you? Oh, for sure. All right, because now you're not just accountable to me, you're accountable to all my school believers out there. We want to see some action, okay? All right, all right, Ellie. This is uh that you this is your time to shine. This is a time uh where you just kind of advertise yourself, let us know how we get a hold of you and all that good stuff, okay? Ready, set, oh all right.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

So uh Ellie Buzaglo, um, that's my name. I know that sounded a little bit reversed. I I heard it myself. Um, so you could check out our website, fishtank.vc. VC is for venture capital and for vibe capital. And you could email us at hi at fishtank.vc or my personal email, which is elli at fishtank.vc. Fishtank F-I-S-H-T-A-N-K dot VC.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

All right, and if you uh want to get hold of any of that information, if you're driving, walking the dog, whatever it is, I'll have it for you in the show notes so you can just click on that and it'll go right to where we need to be, okay? Ellie, this has been a fantastic interview. I'm really excited to see where fish tank goes and to see how it goes because it's really something kind of close to my heart, too, since I had a I had a crowdfund that failed on me. So I'm really excited to see this one work out. Thank you so much for being on the Undiscovered Entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_01 49:14

All right. I'm expecting to see you on our pre-beta list.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

All right. I might actually stop in there. We'll talk. Don't go anywhere after the show. Okay, I want to talk to you.

SPEAKER_01 49:23

All right, okay.

SPEAKER_02 49:24

All right, all right, Scooby Leavers. Make sure you stay tuned for the wrap-up. Okay, everybody. Thank you. Bye-bye. Okay, everybody, thank you, bye bye. All right, Scooby Leavers, that was Ellie. Hey, uh, right after we finished recording, I got to talking with Ellie a little bit off the camera, and I found out this was his very first podcast. So, congratulations, Ellie, on such an amazing talk and just did a great, great job of getting out there, getting across the start line, and being on a podcast and getting your name out there. So very, very good. And choosing my platform of all things to be the first one. So thank you so much. But even though he was brand new in the podcast and it being his first podcast, he still came up with two very, very powerful points that I'm going to share with you right now. The only question that reveals if you're truly an entrepreneur is how you respond to no. If being told no makes you more motivated to get a yes, then you were born to be an entrepreneur. If it makes you wish you've never asked, there is no shame in that truth. But you must be honest with yourself about how you feel when you get that no. Either you feel motivated, like, okay, you said no now, I'm gonna see what it takes to become a yes. Or I'm sorry I asked, I don't want to go any further with this. That's what makes you an entrepreneur, is how you answer that specific question. So, how do you feel, school believers, when you hear no? Failure is not the opposite of success, it is the actual path to success. The man who failed 16 businesses before becoming a billionaire did succeed in spite of his failures. He succeeded because of them, and the only true failure is stopping before the lessons reveal themselves. As entrepreneurs, we are going to fail. It's inevitable, it's gonna be how things are for us. But it's what we do with those failures, is what makes us entrepreneurs. Do we use the failures as stepping stones into something amazing, into the thing that we need to really be into, or do we throw our hands up in the air and say we weren't meant for this? Like it wasn't meant for us to be. Once again, how we answer that question is what's gonna tell you if you're actually a true entrepreneur or not. And with that, I want to say thank you very much, Google Levers, for another great episode. I have actually been seeing an uptick on downloads, so I just want to say thank you very much. If you could, I know I don't ask this very often, but if you could please give me a five-star review, maybe put a review in there for me somewhere in the Spotifys or the app or whatever. I would truly, truly appreciate it. That way, all the new entrepreneurs out there in this world could find this podcast and we can help some new school believers. All right, everybody, thank you so much. Bye-bye. And there you have it, future entrepreneurs. We've taken a vital step on the journey across the star line. Remember, every great business begins with a single idea and the courage to pursue it. And you've already shown that courage just by being here today. That's a wrap up this episode of the Undiscovered Entrepreneur Get Across the Start Line. I want you to reflect on the path you have to recognize the four hurdles of stock. Is it a poster syndrome holding you back? Is it perfectionism failure or fear? Identifying which one affects you the most is the key to unlocking your momentum. But here's the real secret: the hurdles are not in the way, they are the way. Every time you clear one, you're building the exact strength you need for your journey ahead. Until our next episode, keep pushing, keep dreaming, and keep jumping over those hurdles. This is Coob, your guide across the start line. Remember, your future is waiting. I can, I am, I will, and I'm doing it today.