The Voice AI Platform Powering a Billion Calls a Year

1. 0:00 – 3:06

   A Billion Voice AI Calls a Year

   1. GAGustaf Alströmer0:00

      [upbeat music] Today, I'm here with Nikhil and Jordan from Vapi. Um, thanks for coming. Uh, why don't we start with you guys telling us about Vapi? What are you guys building?

   2. JDJordan Dearsley0:12

      So Vapi is a platform for deploying voice agents. Uh, today we have about a billion calls served, uh, annually, and we work with folks like Amazon and Uber and Intuit helping to, uh, automate their phone calls.

   3. GAGustaf Alströmer0:25

      What would you say is the biggest misconception about voice AI right now?

   4. NGNikhil Gupta0:28

      Probably the fact that, um, people don't realize how hard it is-

   5. GAGustaf Alströmer0:33

      Mm-hmm

   6. NGNikhil Gupta0:33

      ... uh, to get a reproduction-

   7. GAGustaf Alströmer0:34

      Yeah

   8. NGNikhil Gupta0:34

      ... to a grade. Like all these businesses out there, um, they wanna resolve 100% of their calls, and it just takes so much effort. Um, what's hard, most people don't realize how to take their business processes and make them into agents. Um, making it into an agent that's a cohesive experience for our customers-

   9. GAGustaf Alströmer0:52

      Mm-hmm

   10. NGNikhil Gupta0:52

       ... that's low latency, again, at the cost that they need. It's following all the guardrails-

   11. GAGustaf Alströmer0:57

       Mm-hmm

   12. NGNikhil Gupta0:57

       ... that are relevant to them.

   13. GAGustaf Alströmer0:58

       Mm-hmm.

   14. NGNikhil Gupta0:59

       Uh, so the skill of voice agent building is just hard, and, and that's why we exist, to make the... make it easier for them.

   15. JDJordan Dearsley1:03

       Yeah. And, and I would say, like, voice as opposed to chat is a very unconstrained interface.

   16. NGNikhil Gupta1:09

       Yes.

   17. JDJordan Dearsley1:09

       You can say or do anything, and customers expect that it'll say or do anything back-

   18. NGNikhil Gupta1:13

       Yeah

   19. JDJordan Dearsley1:13

       ... on- once they, once they get how it works.

   20. NGNikhil Gupta1:14

       Yeah.

   21. JDJordan Dearsley1:14

       So there's a whole fundamental different set of challenges under extremely low latency-

   22. NGNikhil Gupta1:18

       High, low, low latency

   23. JDJordan Dearsley1:19

       ... uh, conditions.

   24. GAGustaf Alströmer1:20

       It takes a human 10 years to learn how to-

   25. JDJordan Dearsley1:22

       Yes

   26. GAGustaf Alströmer1:22

       ... speak properly, and you're supposed to do it out of the box.

   27. JDJordan Dearsley1:25

       And then on top of that, you're putting it in front of real customers.

   28. NGNikhil Gupta1:28

       Yeah.

   29. GAGustaf Alströmer1:28

       Yeah.

   30. JDJordan Dearsley1:28

       And so, uh, you, you, you better make sure it works. It's not an internal tool. It's not whatever. It's like, if we are down, like, your customers don't get help that day.
2. 3:06 – 6:49

   Betting on Better, Faster Models

   1. JDJordan Dearsley3:06

      you don't actually know.

   2. NGNikhil Gupta3:07

      Yeah. And we were trying to then, like, boil it down, like, to something irrefutable.

   3. GAGustaf Alströmer3:11

      Yeah.

   4. NGNikhil Gupta3:11

      Uh, and like, I think Jordan now has a good framework around it.

   5. GAGustaf Alströmer3:14

      Mm-hmm.

   6. NGNikhil Gupta3:14

      Like, what's something that, like, in 10 years just feels, like, inevitable?

   7. GAGustaf Alströmer3:19

      Yeah.

   8. JDJordan Dearsley3:19

      Mm-hmm.

   9. NGNikhil Gupta3:19

      Like, what is something... We don't know. We didn't know it was gonna be, like, next year or, like, this fast. Uh, but, like, if we kept on this path, in 10 years, can we claim that models are gonna get cheaper, faster, and better, and reach human performance?

   10. GAGustaf Alströmer3:36

       Mm-hmm.

   11. NGNikhil Gupta3:36

       Like, will, will it be fast enough at the intelligence, fast enough? It was like, "Well, yeah. What the hell?" Like, it's like-

   12. GAGustaf Alströmer3:42

       Yeah

   13. NGNikhil Gupta3:42

       ... it's just so obvious when you look at the graph that that's gonna happen. So we didn't know the exact timestamp, uh, but it was just a macro trend we could really, like, lean on. So that wa- that's what it, it became a ir- irreducible fact.

   14. GAGustaf Alströmer3:57

       It's almost like we, on the outside, got, like, some spot checks or, like, sometimes we heard a cloned voice model be like, of my voice, and be like-

   15. NGNikhil Gupta4:03

       [laughs]

   16. GAGustaf Alströmer4:04

       ... "Wow, it kinda works."

   17. NGNikhil Gupta4:04

       Yes.

   18. GAGustaf Alströmer4:04

       Like, they can, you can s- say something with my voice.

   19. NGNikhil Gupta4:07

       Yeah.

   20. JDJordan Dearsley4:08

       Yeah.

   21. GAGustaf Alströmer4:08

       And then in the background, you were building this big company that basically-

   22. NGNikhil Gupta4:10

       Yeah

   23. GAGustaf Alströmer4:10

       ... would be able to answer the phone with low la- latency.

   24. NGNikhil Gupta4:13

       Everywhere. Yes.

   25. GAGustaf Alströmer4:14

       Yeah.

   26. NGNikhil Gupta4:14

       Exactly.

   27. JDJordan Dearsley4:15

       It just wasn't, I think, very obvious to people that people would be talking to models. Like, this was before GPT-4o real time and all that stuff. But we had chained together transcription model, our trainings model, text-to-speech model together, and when you talk to it, it would, like, take 10 seconds to reply, and it was really shitty, and it would, like, sound like garbage, and it would interrupt you and all that. At the time, we thought it was just reducing latency, latency. If you could just reduce the latency, then we could do it. And so if, if you draw that line out of how latency is trending-

   28. GAGustaf Alströmer4:46

       Mm-hmm

   29. JDJordan Dearsley4:46

       ... per dollar, per, you know, uh, com- per, like, compute, um, it looked good. And so we were like, "Okay. Well, let's set a vector that's ambitious. Let's assume that everybody's gonna be talking to agents, and that'll be the default interface for everything."

   30. GAGustaf Alströmer4:57

       You guys have been on a long journey to PMF, and now you have it. Let's go back to sort of, like, the very beginning. You applied to YC with a very different company than you even did YC with, with.
3. 6:49 – 10:44

   Building a One-Click Zoom Button

   1. GAGustaf Alströmer6:49

      came out of, right?

   2. JDJordan Dearsley6:49

      Yeah.

   3. NGNikhil Gupta6:49

      Yeah.

   4. JDJordan Dearsley6:50

      Yeah, exactly. We were late to a lot of meetings 'cause we were booking a lot of customer interviews, and we realized this was a problem, and it was hard to join meetings, so we just solved this-

   5. GAGustaf Alströmer6:58

      'Cause you had to go to Google Calendar-

   6. JDJordan Dearsley6:59

      Yes

   7. GAGustaf Alströmer6:59

      ... uh, find the day, then open the link, then find the link, then click on the right link.

   8. JDJordan Dearsley7:04

      And then-

   9. NGNikhil Gupta7:05

      Which opens another webpage. Then you click to launch Zoom, which then opens, uh, finally the Zoom app, and then you click join into the meeting.

   10. GAGustaf Alströmer7:10

       So 10 clicks-

   11. NGNikhil Gupta7:11

       Something like that

   12. GAGustaf Alströmer7:12

       ... like 12 times a day.

   13. JDJordan Dearsley7:12

       And then, and then you, like, fiddle with your microphone and all of that stuff.

   14. GAGustaf Alströmer7:15

       Yes.

   15. NGNikhil Gupta7:15

       Yes.

   16. JDJordan Dearsley7:15

       And not to mention, about 30% of people, uh, were late to meetings.

   17. GAGustaf Alströmer7:20

       Hmm.

   18. JDJordan Dearsley7:21

       Uh, at least a minute or two late to their meetings. And so we found very, very, you know, strong product market fit with one user, which was you-

   19. GAGustaf Alströmer7:29

       [laughs]

   20. JDJordan Dearsley7:29

       ... uh, who paid-

   21. GAGustaf Alströmer7:30

       'Cause I had a lot of meetings during the day.

   22. JDJordan Dearsley7:31

       Yes, yeah, with your office hours and stuff. So, so it was about... I think you paid 20 bucks a month. Uh, I think we said it was 10 bucks, and then you were like, "No, it's gonna be 20 bucks a month," and then, then you paid us 20 bucks a month. And then you got your wife on it-

   23. GAGustaf Alströmer7:42

       Yeah

   24. JDJordan Dearsley7:43

       ... and then our MRR was 40.

   25. GAGustaf Alströmer7:44

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JDJordan Dearsley7:45

       Um, and then we did an internal Bookface launch, and then our MRR was, like, $100, and then it-

   27. NGNikhil Gupta7:52

       Well, then actually we launched on Bookface without integrating Stripe at all-

   28. JDJordan Dearsley7:55

       Yes

   29. NGNikhil Gupta7:55

       ... into the app. So because we just wanted to get it out-

   30. JDJordan Dearsley7:58

       Yeah
4. 10:44 – 14:07

   Walking Away From a Working Business

   1. GAGustaf Alströmer10:44

      it wasn't, uh... Was there anything that was, like, not as good with it? Or, like, why didn't it-- why didn't you stick to this idea? Like, Granola-

   2. JDJordan Dearsley10:50

      Yeah

   3. GAGustaf Alströmer10:50

      ... there's a bunch of companies now that basically do this, that you had-

   4. NGNikhil Gupta10:53

      They do it really well. I mean, there's like... I think we knew-

   5. JDJordan Dearsley10:56

      Mm-hmm.

   6. NGNikhil Gupta10:56

      I don't know if you'd add something here.

   7. JDJordan Dearsley10:58

      Mm-hmm.

   8. NGNikhil Gupta10:58

      But, like, to me, it always felt like we knew how to build a business in our company here. Michael, like, would really push us, like Michael Seibel on, um, "Hey, talk to your users. Like, where are they actually using your notes?" Because most people don't use notes.

   9. GAGustaf Alströmer11:10

      Mm-hmm.

   10. NGNikhil Gupta11:10

       And we talked to people, and they realized that, um, there was wealth managers, doc- like nurses, doctors, like they were getting a ton of value.

   11. GAGustaf Alströmer11:17

       Because they take notes anyway.

   12. NGNikhil Gupta11:18

       They took notes after every meeting, and they, they look at notes. So in services industry, you just care a lot about, like, notes.

   13. GAGustaf Alströmer11:24

       Yes.

   14. NGNikhil Gupta11:25

       And we knew we could build businesses there, but I think at this point we were just burnt out.

   15. JDJordan Dearsley11:29

       Yeah.

   16. NGNikhil Gupta11:29

       Um, I don't know.

   17. JDJordan Dearsley11:30

       Mostly.

   18. NGNikhil Gupta11:30

       Mostly burnt out.

   19. JDJordan Dearsley11:31

       And at this point, like, it's not like a bad business. Like, we were half a million revenue at the time.

   20. GAGustaf Alströmer11:35

       Yep.

   21. JDJordan Dearsley11:35

       Uh, we, we had 10,000 paying, like, users. Like, it was, it was great. But I think-

   22. GAGustaf Alströmer11:40

       And you're living in Toronto still.

   23. JDJordan Dearsley11:41

       Yeah, living in Toronto.

   24. GAGustaf Alströmer11:41

       'Cause you basically were here for the batch and then moved back to Toronto to stay there.

   25. JDJordan Dearsley11:44

       Yeah. And it basically became honestly like a lifestyle kind of setup, and we were kinda like taking it easy and, and not... We, we didn't treat it as like a, "Oh, man, this is a generational opportunity. This is our chance to build something huge." We just kept like throwing spaghetti at the wall, and I don't think we just had the ambition to-

   26. NGNikhil Gupta11:59

       That was basically it. I think it just felt like-

   27. JDJordan Dearsley12:01

       Yeah

   28. NGNikhil Gupta12:01

       ... like, is this gonna be the most important thing, one of the most important things in the next 10 years? Like-

   29. JDJordan Dearsley12:06

       And we were like, man, calendar app, like after four years of cal- like, like-

   30. GAGustaf Alströmer12:10

       This is basically end of '22, early '23.
5. 14:07 – 17:56

   Building an AI Therapist After a Breakup

   1. JDJordan Dearsley14:07

      Yeah.

   2. GAGustaf Alströmer14:07

      Smart. And then when did you build the therapy app? The... You built a voice AI therapy app that you would talk to.

   3. JDJordan Dearsley14:14

      Yeah.

   4. NGNikhil Gupta14:14

      Yeah.

   5. JDJordan Dearsley14:15

      Yeah. So we were pivoting, yeah, for roughly about three months-

   6. NGNikhil Gupta14:18

      Yes

   7. JDJordan Dearsley14:18

      ... I think. And then while Nikhil was away, uh, and, and I had just recently come out of a, a, a breakup a weekend, and I was just like super sad, so I just built this AI therapist, uh, to, to go on walks with every day.

   8. GAGustaf Alströmer14:29

      Yeah.

   9. JDJordan Dearsley14:29

      And I spent two hours a day walking with it, and then the rest of the day just like grinding on it to try to improve the latency and make it feel more natural. And I kinda just channeled that, uh, depression into obsession over like just trying to have this like human ex-

   10. GAGustaf Alströmer14:43

       Yeah

   11. JDJordan Dearsley14:43

       ... like why doesn't it sound and feel like a person? Like-

   12. GAGustaf Alströmer14:45

       Was it good at giving you advice?

   13. JDJordan Dearsley14:47

       Yes.

   14. GAGustaf Alströmer14:47

       Or, or listen to you?

   15. JDJordan Dearsley14:48

       Yeah. Yeah. I remember one time I was talking to GPT-4, uh, and I had this long dialogue about my feelings and stuff like that, and it, and it was like, "You, you, you notice like you always talk about your feelings in the third person. Are you trying to distance yourself from them?" And I was like, "What the fuck?"

   16. GAGustaf Alströmer15:02

       Wow.

   17. JDJordan Dearsley15:02

       "Did a model just like diagnose me [laughs] or something?"

   18. GAGustaf Alströmer15:05

       That's pretty good for being that early.

   19. JDJordan Dearsley15:07

       And I was like, okay, this isn't-- like this is like a unique moment that could not have happened over, over chat that has now happened over voice.

   20. GAGustaf Alströmer15:13

       Mm-hmm.

   21. JDJordan Dearsley15:13

       And so the longer that we kept toying with it, we found one guy, our friend, and also angel investor. His name's Mo.

   22. GAGustaf Alströmer15:20

       Mm-hmm.

   23. JDJordan Dearsley15:20

       Uh, he-- I gave it to him, and he would talk to it like literally every day-

   24. GAGustaf Alströmer15:23

       Mm-hmm

   25. JDJordan Dearsley15:23

       ... or like 12 times a day, just like spitballing ideas and stuff. So basically what we, we proved like product market fit for like ChatGPT voice mode that would later come in like two years.

   26. GAGustaf Alströmer15:33

       And what was the state of the models at the time when you were building this?

   27. JDJordan Dearsley15:36

       Really slow.

   28. GAGustaf Alströmer15:37

       Slow.

   29. JDJordan Dearsley15:37

       Super slow, super expensive.

   30. GAGustaf Alströmer15:39

       So the problem was it's expensive, and it's like the latency was not-
6. 17:56 – 21:10

   300 Slack Channels and No Marketing

   1. GAGustaf Alströmer17:56

      And then how'd it go from there? Like what happened the next six months?

   2. JDJordan Dearsley17:58

      People just came to us.

   3. GAGustaf Alströmer17:59

      Yeah.

   4. NGNikhil Gupta18:00

      Well, I remember also you, like, uh, I think this part is also really cool, uh, because you have the first customer-

   5. GAGustaf Alströmer18:06

      Yeah

   6. NGNikhil Gupta18:06

      ... but it's not quite PMF yet. I mean, no one knows about you, right?

   7. GAGustaf Alströmer18:09

      Yeah. Mm-hmm.

   8. NGNikhil Gupta18:09

      Uh, you have like a, a powder, dry powder. So Jordan, like I remember scraped every YC company.

   9. JDJordan Dearsley18:14

      Mm-hmm.

   10. NGNikhil Gupta18:14

       Like I don't know how he did that, but like he had an... He was in contact with everyone-

   11. JDJordan Dearsley18:18

       Mm-hmm

   12. NGNikhil Gupta18:18

       ... in YC who was building in voice.

   13. GAGustaf Alströmer18:20

       Yeah, there wasn't that many.

   14. NGNikhil Gupta18:21

       There wasn't that many. There was like 5, 10.

   15. JDJordan Dearsley18:22

       Yeah. And then as we started working with like a few more of them who had the same problem, and then three of them like died along the way just because like that's the nature of, of startups.

   16. GAGustaf Alströmer18:30

       Yeah.

   17. JDJordan Dearsley18:30

       It was mind-blowing.

   18. GAGustaf Alströmer18:31

       Yeah.

   19. JDJordan Dearsley18:31

       Just two years ago it was mind-blowing.

   20. GAGustaf Alströmer18:32

       Yeah, yeah.

   21. JDJordan Dearsley18:32

       People were like, " [gasps] You could... That just responded? Like is that a person?" As we started working with more and more like small startups, and honestly, it was like all over the place. So we had like agencies and like random people out in like Middle America and like r- you know, random tech companies. And so it was just a hodgepodge of like no focus. And so at, at one point it just grew and grew and grew to the point where we had about 300 Slack channels for support.

   22. GAGustaf Alströmer18:54

       Wow.

   23. JDJordan Dearsley18:55

       And not discriminated by like how much they were spending either.

   24. GAGustaf Alströmer18:59

       Just all of them.

   25. JDJordan Dearsley18:59

       Just give... And, and we would, within five minutes of someone giving us a request, we would ship the feature to production. And, and that's roughly... We, we, we did not do any marketing.

   26. GAGustaf Alströmer19:06

       Yeah.

   27. JDJordan Dearsley19:06

       We did not do any sales. We didn't do anything. We just built like, uh, a need that existed in the market.

   28. GAGustaf Alströmer19:11

       Yeah.

   29. JDJordan Dearsley19:11

       And, and again, this was aligned with our original conviction, right?

   30. GAGustaf Alströmer19:14

       Yeah.
7. 21:10 – 24:34

   Why One Founder Stopped Coding

   1. JDJordan Dearsley21:10

      But it was really hard-

   2. NGNikhil Gupta21:11

      Oh

   3. JDJordan Dearsley21:11

      ... because like up until this point, like the way that we determined the value that we were providing was always like what were we shipping.

   4. NGNikhil Gupta21:19

      Sure.

   5. JDJordan Dearsley21:19

      And to change my mindset from, okay, I'm building all the time, to like, I'm just like sending a bunch of cold emails-

   6. NGNikhil Gupta21:25

      Yeah

   7. JDJordan Dearsley21:25

      ... and making zero progress, like that was a really tough time. Just being really shit at something for so long-

   8. NGNikhil Gupta21:30

      Mm-hmm

   9. JDJordan Dearsley21:30

      ... and showing no progress.

   10. NGNikhil Gupta21:31

       Yeah.

   11. JDJordan Dearsley21:31

       But then eventually over time we started to master that, like, oh, somebody comes in and they're starting to spend money. Like I should email them and get on a call with them and present some options and send them a contract-

   12. NGNikhil Gupta21:40

       Yeah

   13. JDJordan Dearsley21:40

       ... and get that signed. So we started to build this like kinda motion of, uh, uh, building contracts. Um, and then eventually I, I couldn't ever crack like the outbound sale and like going out and like finding new customers. They always came to us.

   14. NGNikhil Gupta21:52

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JDJordan Dearsley21:52

       Uh, and so I ended up getting a sales advisor, and that was like instrumental in like just teaching me like proper sales process and-

   16. NGNikhil Gupta21:58

       Mm-hmm

   17. JDJordan Dearsley21:58

       ... like prospecting and like how to make sure that you qualify for pain and don't waste time on people who are gonna waste your time, uh, and how you present commercials in a nice way and, and all that. And what I'll add is like we didn't know this at the time.

   18. GAGustaf Alströmer22:10

       Yeah.

   19. JDJordan Dearsley22:11

       Now we do. Uh, this market is like the Milky Way. It is enormous. It's like there's about 3 trillion minutes annually that are business to consumer.

   20. GAGustaf Alströmer22:19

       How many, how many of them do you serve?

   21. JDJordan Dearsley22:21

       Uh, today we serve, uh, 0.0134%.

   22. GAGustaf Alströmer22:25

       Wow.

   23. JDJordan Dearsley22:26

       And what I'll say is like-

   24. GAGustaf Alströmer22:27

       And you're still a pretty large company, like by Y-

   25. JDJordan Dearsley22:29

       Yes

   26. GAGustaf Alströmer22:29

       ... by YC standards.

   27. JDJordan Dearsley22:30

       And what I will say is like some of the largest telecom sort of companies in the world have like sub 1% of that volume as well.

   28. GAGustaf Alströmer22:37

       Wow.

   29. JDJordan Dearsley22:37

       Um, like names that you would think of. And so it's like an impossibly difficult diffusion problem-

   30. GAGustaf Alströmer22:42

       Mm-hmm
8. 24:34 – 27:44

   Why the AI Labs Didn’t Replace Vapi

   1. GAGustaf Alströmer24:34

      and then they-

   2. JDJordan Dearsley24:34

      And then we're like, "Okay, cool. We'll, we'll set a reminder."

   3. GAGustaf Alströmer24:36

      Yeah.

   4. JDJordan Dearsley24:36

      Six months later they come back.

   5. GAGustaf Alströmer24:37

      Yeah.

   6. NGNikhil Gupta24:37

      Yeah.

   7. JDJordan Dearsley24:37

      Um, and, and I think Michael Seibel, we had a chat with him about this, and 'cause this came up, like, like I was like-

   8. NGNikhil Gupta24:42

      So many times.

   9. JDJordan Dearsley24:43

      Yeah

   10. GAGustaf Alströmer24:43

       Yeah

   11. JDJordan Dearsley24:43

       ... like this, this, like, dilemma of like, oh, the labs. And then we'd go out to fundraise and they'd be like, "Oh, the labs," and like, it was just like the constant FUD.

   12. GAGustaf Alströmer24:50

       Mm-hmm.

   13. JDJordan Dearsley24:50

       We're trying to hi- hire people, same thing.

   14. GAGustaf Alströmer24:51

       Yeah.

   15. JDJordan Dearsley24:51

       Um, and, and the way Michael framed it was super helpful. He was like, "There's two generational problems in AI. One is AGI, and the other is just, like, deploying AGI in the enterprise. Both are equally difficult-

   16. GAGustaf Alströmer25:03

       Mm-hmm

   17. JDJordan Dearsley25:03

       ... and all of the labs have their A players on that first problem-

   18. GAGustaf Alströmer25:06

       Yes

   19. JDJordan Dearsley25:06

       ... and their B players on the second problem. You have your A players on the second problem. So that's the advantage.

   20. GAGustaf Alströmer25:10

       It's a very good framing, and people underestimate how large this enterprise portion is and how s- how long it'll take.

   21. JDJordan Dearsley25:18

       Oh.

   22. GAGustaf Alströmer25:18

       Like, there is no way this will happen in five years or maybe even 10 years.

   23. JDJordan Dearsley25:21

       No.

   24. GAGustaf Alströmer25:21

       This will happen over, like-

   25. JDJordan Dearsley25:22

       20 years

   26. GAGustaf Alströmer25:22

       ... our generation, basically.

   27. NGNikhil Gupta25:23

       Yes, yes, yes.

   28. GAGustaf Alströmer25:25

       Yeah.

   29. NGNikhil Gupta25:25

       It'll take a long time.

   30. GAGustaf Alströmer25:26

       Yeah. Tell me about the company right now. Like, like, s- give me an update on where you guys are and, and sort of like where's the sight set on? Like, where are you gonna go next?
9. 27:44 – 32:19

   How They Handle Co-Founder Conflict

   1. GAGustaf Alströmer27:44

      Cofounders relationships are hard, and you guys seem to build a strong, really strong foundation-

   2. JDJordan Dearsley27:50

      Mm

   3. GAGustaf Alströmer27:50

      ... uh, from knowing you guys for a couple years. Like, can you just, like, practically how do you do it? Like, how do you interact with each other? People watching this might not know, but cofounder breakups is, like, top reason why these companies actually fall apart-

   4. JDJordan Dearsley28:02

      Mm

   5. GAGustaf Alströmer28:02

      ... uh, or die, because fo- cofounders aren't getting along.

   6. JDJordan Dearsley28:05

      Yeah.

   7. GAGustaf Alströmer28:05

      And what have you learned? Are there specific practical advice to give to people that are watching this running their own companies?

   8. JDJordan Dearsley28:10

      Uh, one, like, that is the most important thing, period. Like-

   9. GAGustaf Alströmer28:13

      Mm

   10. JDJordan Dearsley28:13

       ... full stop. Um, if that is not in well-functioning order, none of this other stuff matters. Uh, so me and Nikhil, uh, pretty early on we invested in getting, uh, coaches for this kinda stuff. So we got, uh, interpersonal dynamics coach that helped us, like, actually learn how to communicate with each other, uh, and work through the principles of, uh, what's called non-violent communication.

   11. GAGustaf Alströmer28:33

       Nice.

   12. JDJordan Dearsley28:34

       So there's a great little book on that. It's like our Bible we give to every employee when they show up.

   13. GAGustaf Alströmer28:38

       I have it.

   14. NGNikhil Gupta28:38

       Yeah.

   15. JDJordan Dearsley28:38

       Yeah.

   16. NGNikhil Gupta28:38

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   17. JDJordan Dearsley28:39

       It's incredible. It's... and it's, it's so simple. Um, and so through that we kind of built up the skills to be able to work really well together.

   18. GAGustaf Alströmer28:46

       What are some examples on how you practically do it?

   19. NGNikhil Gupta28:48

       So one sentence I think we both say often is like, "Can you understand me?" Because this often happens in discussions, at least I noticed with, like, other people who are not, uh, pilled on N- NVC, where you'll be arguing about something, but it's not quite, um... You don't know what you're arguing about even sometimes.

   20. GAGustaf Alströmer29:05

       Mm-hmm.

   21. NGNikhil Gupta29:05

       Or you're arguing, like, a completely different thing. You kinda keep moving along.

   22. GAGustaf Alströmer29:08

       Mm.

   23. NGNikhil Gupta29:08

       It's like, and then taking that moment to, like, if you're, if it feels like we're circling, like, can you just, like, pause and understand me-

   24. GAGustaf Alströmer29:14

       Mm-hmm

   25. NGNikhil Gupta29:14

       ... is a such a common thing in the company-

   26. GAGustaf Alströmer29:17

       Yeah

   27. NGNikhil Gupta29:17

       ... for us. Uh, I don't know what other examples come to you.

   28. JDJordan Dearsley29:20

       Yeah. And I guess, like, a bit, a bit more viscerally it's like-

   29. NGNikhil Gupta29:22

       Yeah

   30. JDJordan Dearsley29:22

       ... when we're talking and disagreeing, you can sort of feel, like, when things are getting elevated-

Episode duration: 32:19