Episode 4: The New Startup Playbook: Media, AI, and Compound Products

When you first start a project or product, um, you're trying to figure out how to, how to move quickly in an unstructured way. Any strategy that you come up with, it's basically worthless.

I can actually see now how we can go from where we are to $500 million in ARR.

If you just raise your pre-seed and you sit down there and you're doing strategy for like 5 to 10 days, like that's, that's the dumbest thing you could do, right? You're just wasting your time.

Instead of having like 50 engineers per team, we can have like five because of AI. And the products that we're talking about is, it's not just like a simple little addition. It's like they're basically entire other companies.

I'm Louis. You are?

I'm Claudio.

I'm Mariano.

Yeah. We're the co-founders of Compi.

Compi. Great company.

That.

The best company.

What do we do? What does Compi do?

Remember that clip from, um, Austin Nasso?

Yes.

I, I, I always remember that moment. Just.

Maybe we can start with that story and then we can actually talk about what we do, [laughter] in layman terms.

If you want to bring it up again.

Yeah.

Yeah. I like it.

I think we do.

We can touch on it. So, couple, couple weeks ago, I think, I guess we had the whole team visiting New York. Uh, we went to a comedy show and, uh.

Couple months ago.

Couple months ago, went to a comedy show. Um, Austin Nasso, he's like a tech comedian. He was asking like, who here is a, I think a tech founder or an AI?

AI. Yeah. First he did like finance or something.

Yeah. Yeah.

Then there was too many finance people.

Too many finance people.

Who is in AI?

Any AI companies?

And can you, can you pick which brother immediately, you know, tried to say this guy over here? Which one would it have been out of YouTube? Obviously.

I think it's obviously [laughter].

Mr. He like volunteers this information that I'm the, the CEO of this AI company.

I start pointing at him emphatically and he gets picked.

Yeah. I just heard like some, someone screaming on the set like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This guy." I'm like, "What's going on?"

Yeah. Yeah.

But anyway, what we actually do is, I guess how you explain it. You got to redo.

We're an open source.

This is your chance to redeem.

This is your chance to redeem yourself.

We have the easiest way for companies to get SOC 2 compliant.

Amazing.

All right. That's the, that's the, the gist of it.

Yes. Yes.

I guess we could, well, I mean, to be honest, we're kind of moving away from focusing just on SOC 2.

Mhm.

Right. Yeah.

So, um, I guess are we an open-source, cloud security platform?

I mean, I guess that's honestly probably a good segue into one of the topics we want to dive into today, which is sort of like, hey, new, new year is about to start. I think what we have December 30th at the time of this recording. Um, so we're starting to think a lot about kind of where does the company go over the next couple of months. Um, yeah, obviously that includes, you know, there's a fundraise that we want to do. There's, uh, product, you know, investments they want to do. There's like media, go to market, all that stuff. So, we've been thinking a lot about, you know, kind of like where do we go? Like what does, what does the company evolve to? Um, both in terms of like the story as well as like, you know, the product itself. Um, so I mean, kind of what, what is, would love to for us to kind of like describe a little bit about some of the latest thinking there? We started off by, um, kind of like doing a lot more planning. So this first, I don't know, 11 months or how long has it been?

Oh man, I think we launched the product in April, right? So.

It's only been, it hasn't been that long. Eight months.

Eight months since we went live. We probably started working on it 10 months ago.

Yeah, we've been kind of like figuring it out on the way like the.

Right when you started.

Right? Like what.

I think it was a year ago for me. So December, um, was probably when I made like the, the open-source repo back in the day.

So I guess what was the idea initially? Like, I mean, obviously we joined you. I mean, you started, you started initially with the idea. We joined you kind of like, I guess in a sequence, um, spaced out by maybe like a month or two.

Um, I guess I'm curious to also understand kind of like what was the idea originally and how much has that changed to where we are today and then we can dive into 2026. Yeah, I mean, the idea was just to try and make getting compliant with these, you know, different cybersecurity frameworks easy and I think we still do that. I mean, we're very good at what the initial idea was, right? We have absolutely nailed the, the, the workflow from getting a founder from to go from A to B in what we do. Um, I would say that the core kind of like focus of what we're building still kind of aligns all around like cybersecurity frameworks. But I guess there is a good opportunity for us to really think about, okay, how would we expand into the whole kind of like cybersecurity market as a whole as opposed to just compliance. And I mean, it's a, it's a huge market, right? We spoke about it a lot. You know, we've, we've gone through this a, a fair amount. And if you can, if you can take away from the compliance side, you can, you can essentially build all of these like, um, products around it, right? So you can say, "All right, we fixed SOC 2, we fixed these different frameworks, and now we're going to focus on access management." It's all kind of boring, but there's definitely something around that space where it's interesting to me as a founder thinking about how we can go from, you know, serving a, I'd say $20 billion market compared to a $200 billion market.

And I think that's how we long-term go.

Yeah. I think from my perspective, we since, you know, I joined you guys and we started kind of working on this, I don't think the idea has changed that much. No.

I think we've been very consistent in just dominating with the original idea. And frankly, I think that's been one of the biggest surprises to me is how fast we found product market fit. Like there was a very clear problem, we solved it, the company immediately started working, we were selling, you know, $10,000 a year contracts, like really, really fast. Fast forward to the end of 2026, we're making multiple, you know, millions of dollars in annual recurring revenue. The product hasn't changed that much, but as we look into the year ahead,

2025, as we think into the year ahead, I think the question is sort of like, how big can this be? And, you know, now that we have a foot in the door with a lot of the customers that we have today, what else do they need that we can continue to almost like expand and and and further monetize? Um, to me, one of the biggest things that's almost like also thinking about our capitalization plan and hey, we're going to need to fundraise, right? So, we need to make this really attractive to investors. And one of the things that investors can ask is, how big can this be? What, what market are you really going after?

And there's different ways that that we can pitch this. There's, hey, this is purely a compliance play, or this is bigger than compliance. And obviously the bigger the market that you see or the opportunity, I think for, for an investor. Um, so I guess what, what, what can you, what can you tell us about some, almost like some of the latest thinking around, hey, here's how we're trying to position ourselves to be a really interesting opportunity not just for investors, but also to give ourselves a shot at building the biggest company that we possibly can. The more I think about it, the, if the goal is to make getting compliant with some framework like the end, like, you know, pain point that we want to solve for our customers. It, it gets interesting to me that by naturally moving into more of a generic cybersecurity space, you can actually solve the problems easier. So like one thing could be, um, say access management is a thing that you have to do to be compliant with these frameworks. Um, we don't specifically have like an access management, um, you know, functionality in Compi. We typically would say, okay, integrate with this and get the proof from, let's say, Google Workspace. But what if we built the access management inside Compi? Right? So you can, and if you can do that well, actually the process becomes easier. You just have one kind of like holistic, like app which controls everything or has access to, um, provision, you know, access to different apps to different software. Um, and then therefore that kind of like links back to getting compliant and it makes it easier, right? You don't have to integrate with different solutions, you don't have to have different things for it. So I think if you, if you take like the Rippling playbook where they've, you know, built this everything to do with like people, right? They will try and, they have built parts around it, the IT part, the payroll part, it all kind of like links back to running a, like making it easy to run a company.

So I think if we take that kind of playbook and and apply that to compliance and we kind of naturally go into cybersecurity anyway. They're problems that we have to solve to.

Make the compliance side of it the easiest and the best way of doing it. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Like you have to.

You essentially have to solve that problem to solve the problem of compliance.

Yeah, I think that makes sense.

Some of the other things we've been discussing is, uh, around, hey, there's already existing players in the compliance space. So one of the hardest things to do is to sort of displace the incumbents.

So if you go straight for, hey, we have a replacement product, it's a really hard pitch. But if you go saying like, hey, we have a product that maybe you don't already have a solution for. Go use this add-on. And once you use that add-on, you get exposed to the fact that we have an entire family of products that all talk to each other. They work really, really well. And then eventually they might actually churn with our compliance solution because they're already using the other family of products that we provided.

Yeah. I think also another interesting kind of point there is that.

Sure, we're, we're, we're kind of starting off with compliance, but the way that we're going about building it is we're kind of automating and questioning every single part.

Um, in the process. So we're saying like, you know, these competitors already have this platform and and this is how it works, but we actually are rethinking about, you know, some of these things are not necessary or they could be simplified. Um, so we're really taking action to just make it a lot simpler in the process and this is, this will also expand to other, um, kind of avenues that we're trying to go after, right, in terms of cybersecurity.

So that's kind of like our motto. So Mar, I know, I mean, I know you're kind of leading the charge on the engineering and product side and normally one of the sort of pushbacks that you get from investors, um, when you basically pitch them like, hey, we're actually going to solve, we're going to build the entire cybersecurity layer, let's say, or we're going to build a very compound startup is, you're getting distracted. Number one, you don't have the resources to go after such a big and ambitious, almost like complex product. I guess how are we approaching it and why, like, what would you say to an investor that's basically saying like, hey, you're getting distracted and you're taking on too much for, for, for the, for the amount of, you know, engineering resources that you have.

I would say that I don't think so because we're kind of taking it like piece by piece. We're starting off with a, you know, like a smaller segment of the market and kind of building for that and then scaling up slowly, um, like building up to that to those more complex requirements. But also like I mentioned, we're being very smart about what, which parts of that we actually build and and how we build it. So like, like I said, we question everything from, from the beginning. We're from fundamentals and we're like, you can actually make this a lot simpler, um, with a lot less requirements. So kind of like cutting scope.

Um, for each thing that we work on. So at the end of the day, I don't think it's going to become like a, like it's too much that we can handle because we're being strategic about it, how we go about it.

Yeah. And Louis, I know we, uh, you, you, we were having this conversation the other day around sort of like, what's possible to do today with AI? So right? So when some of these companies started, they did not have the tools that are available today and I think that that plays a big role in terms of like us taking a more ambitious project.

Yeah, we can be way more capital efficient, right? We can build more products, more, um, functionality, or even get rid of functionality, just, just make it better or automate more with a lot less people.

Can you imagine the, like the engineering team at one of our competitors? How big they would typically be? I mean, for something that we built in, I mean, all right, let's say we, we all started in January working on the product, we launched in April, it was in an okay place when we launched, you know, I look back at it now, I'm like, damn, like what the hell was that? You know, it's improved so much now, but I mean.

But what we launched between January and April.

Would have traditionally taken, you know, maybe a year to build.

At, you know, for, for three people. I mean, it was a crazy amount of effort, right? Um, but just by being smart about it, by using things like Cursor and, um, and, and, you know, like raw code, whatever we used at the time, it just made it so much quicker to build. Now we have a few pain points because of it, I guess, like we do have to go back and there's, there's definitely some things that we have to, um, you know, go and spend some time on, but I think the, the positives of using AI when we did to, you know, help build the platform, it outweighs the, the negatives. Okay, now we have to go and, you know, clean some bits of the codebase, make it a bit more efficient, you know, whatever. It got us where we needed to and we did it with three people at the time and we haven't grown significantly on the engineering side up until like recently, right? We haven't hired, we didn't really hire any engineers. We actually hired a salesperson before we had someone from outside come in and help with the engineering, right?

Yep. That's right.

That's kind of crazy. Most startups don't do that, by the way. Most, most investors want to see, okay, you're going to spend, you know, 40% of your Series A on product, on engineering. But the answer with Compi and the team that we built is, you don't need that, right? You do not need to spend 40% of a Series A round on engineering people. You can, you can do a lot more with a lot less now.

Okay, it's almost like you have like an incredible amount of leverage on the engineering side that you, with less people, you can actually build a very complex.

Product. And I would actually say that on the engineering part where you're saying like, now we have to go back and fix some things, like that still happens normally, even without AI.

Yeah.

People still build, you know, their MVPs or their initial product, uh, very hastily and you kind of don't know, you, you don't understand the requirements right at the time. So it, it's actually pretty much the same thing, except we did a lot more.

Yeah.

Um, because of AI, instead of less.

Yeah. Yeah. I think as we, as we think about 2026, I think we definitely are planning on obviously expanding the team and bringing in more resources, but I think the difference is we, whereas maybe with a team of like, say, let's say 10, 15, 20 engineers, you could only focus on one product. I think the reason we're now able to be so bold in saying like, hey, actually, we're going to build a whole suite of products is because of that leverage point. So yes, you might still have a big team, but we're building, you know, multiple products at the same time and and and we're basically challenging the notion of like, no, you have to be really focused. Actually, you don't, if you have insane amounts of leverage.

Yeah. Instead of having like 50 engineers per team, we can have like five.

Because everyone's super efficient, um, because of AI, right?

Yeah.

And yeah, the amount of products we can create with the same amount of people that a bigger company would have or legacy, um, is way more. I, I think you could argue that now you can basically hire two or three really good engineers that know how to use AI efficiently and basically, you know, put them in a room together and say, "Hey, you're now the, you're now in charge of building this product, which is going to be an add-on to Compi or whatever you're building and just saying, okay, now go with it. Spend two or three months on it. Come back with something." And that typically would have taken a huge amount of time in just even three years ago. Yeah. Right. You could, you'd have to hire a team of 20, 30 people to go out and could you imagine like how much time Rippling spent on.

First going from their their payroll system to their IT management system to the building their device agent, the all of their MDM stuff, the, um.

It's a huge amount, like the app is massive, right? And it covers so much, but I feel like you get two or three people now and just say, hey, look, go away, build this.

Yeah. And the parts that we're talking about, it's not just like a simple.

Little addition. It's like.

They're basically entire other companies that that you, you could sell by themselves.

Yeah.

But instead, we're just kind of doing it.

All in one package with Compi, where.

You know, you can get everything you need cybersecurity-wise in one place.

I love the idea of building like a, it's very cringy to call it a cloud, but almost like a product suite, right? Where you don't have to have 20 vendors to.

Get compliant, right? You can just have one thing.

You have everything that you need in one hub. And no, no one else satisfies that. And I think.

I think up until very recently.

It would have been crazy for a company to try and build something like that.

And some of them do, but but they raise billions of dollars to do it and they're repeat founders and they have some credibility. Like, but if you try to raise money for a compound startup and you're like, you know, first-time founder, whatever, like new team, you're going to get laughed out of the room.

Right? I know. You're crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like now it is actually possible to build a compound startup.

Yeah.

Because of AI.

And, and, you know what? I don't think I've seen as many teams starting to do it just yet. No.

Like I don't think they're thinking upward. They're thinking efficiency downward. It's basically like, oh, we'll just stay small instead of, we'll still scale.

But we'll also think about much bigger problems to solve.

Yeah.

And thinking back, I think some of the best products that, that I use personally is like, you know, Apple, right? It's like your, your watch works so well with your phone, with with your computer. Yeah. So you have these ecosystems that the experience is way better when things just are built for each other.

We need the Apple ring.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That would be the, the dream.

This kind of connects to Apple Health, right? It does. It's almost the same.

It, it connects well, but I mean, you would drop it immediately, right? If Apple released a very similar thing.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

You don't have to.

But why? It's because you know it's going to work better with within their ecosystem.

Yeah. Check your screen time.

We create an access management product, right? If you're using us already for.

You know, whatever it is you're using us for.

You're going to adopt it eventually. You're going to be like, "Okay, well, why would I go elsewhere if I have this?" Now, the only downside I can see is if someone is using a compound startup like Rippling and then they're using Compi and both offer the solution and you're like, "Damn, which one do I pick? Which one is the, um, one?" I think we may lose on that because Rippling is the HR and payroll system, right? So, you have to have multiple of the of these things. You don't just do access management, you also do, um, asset management, IT, um, you know, uh, like MDM, all of that stuff, the device management itself, not just access, you do everything.

So, I guess one of the things we've been obviously talking a lot about is, is as we think about 2026 is like, we're starting to come up with the strategy and, you know, we've been sort of for the first time almost like growing up, I think, as as founders. I think for for a long time, we've been operating in a very kind of like pre-product market fit way, right? You're, you're used to doing this, right? Because when you first start a, a project or a product, um, you're trying to figure out how to, how to move quickly in an unstructured way. Any strategy that you come up with, it's basically worthless. It's going to be thrown out the window in, in, in two weeks because you change your idea, you discover something new about the marketplace. Now, I think the game is changing, right? Where we figure out something that works.

It makes me think back on that time we spent like three days building the Gibli app. [laughter]

We spent so much time building Compi. We're like, you know what? Let's pivot to mobile B2C mobile apps instead. [laughter]

I was like, uh, when you said that, it just made me think back to that little office. Yeah. We were just trying whatever, seeing if we could kind of monetize something really quickly.

Yeah.

Gibli was all the rage. Studio Gibli for people that are listening, that is like a Japanese anime studio. Yeah.

And it was like AI images going around.

Yeah. There was this trend where [snorts] like people were generating images and sort of like anime style.

We saw it and we're like, okay, let's make an app.

Let's monetize very quickly. We can capture some revenue and then we can get back to work on the real thing. Um, we abandoned the idea very quickly, [laughter] but.

Could you imagine doing that now though with a team of like, you know, what we have right now? That'd be stupid. We'd be like, we'd look at each other and be like.

But when you're three people, you can, you can just.

Fun, like the serendipity of, of really the early days. Um, and now it's just a lot more focused. Um, but yeah, I think we've been busting our heads trying to figure out how to, how to actually.

You know, not just be reactive in real time, but like think ahead. Yeah. I think now we like actually have to come up with really long-term strategies and and work backwards from that.

Yeah.

Whereas before, like you mentioned, it's kind of all, it was purely vibes, right? Like every day or Yeah. Every day, we basically come up with a new decision that we have to do or, you know, pivoting strategy or but now it's kind of like all set. We're like, we know what we have to do. We, we're going to track everything and we're going to work towards those goals.

Okay. So, how are you approaching that? You know, as, as we as we sit down and we have a strategy meeting, like what's been our approach for, you know, kind of like actually drafting something that feels actionable that we can work towards. Um, yeah, I think first of all, like we're actually, we're having a lot more meetings, right? Which we didn't have to have before. What you're saying sounds so detailed. [laughter] Stop saying that, yeah, we don't have that many meetings. Okay, people out there, we do not have that many. One a day.

[ __ ] that even sounds worse. We went from zero meetings to to.

Two a week. Maybe two a week. Let's say that.

Okay.

All right.

Which is significantly more than none.

Wanted to get that on the on the on the record.

Yeah.

Um, so that's kind of helped us and we're blocking out time to.

To actually sit down and do some hard thinking because, you know, before it's just like, uh, let's see what sticks and just do that.

Mh.

But I think now we're actually, you know, thinking hard about.

I actually have a question for you, Claudio. Um, what did you expect from me with the goal tracking? Cuz I have a feeling that everyone would be like, Lewis might try. I feel like I'm the person who would be like was very likely to be the most opposed to it.

You know, like I, I hate the, um, I, I hate being organized. I like, I like being chaotic. I'm pretty terrible with, you know, the, the adult stuff, right? Like pretty ADHD. Just like I enjoy vibes. Honestly, I enjoyed building a company with, you know, basically based on our gut and vibing it kind of. Um, so I, I went into that meeting with like almost like a, like a hesitant, like outlook to it. I was like, h, got to plan stuff. I don't like planning that much. Like to think ahead maybe like a week, two months,

You know, three, three months most. I came out of that, by the way, just for everyone listening. Like, it, the craziest thing happened to me. I was like, "Oh shit." Like I saw the light and then 10 minutes of being in that room, I was like, "Okay, I can actually see now how we can go from where we are to $50 million million in ARR to $500 million in ARR. It's never been clearer."

But I think some people may take it too far. You might, you know, you might go to the extreme and like overplan, but.

It's really hard. I think what we've done, like at least what I tried to do yesterday and, and, you know, all of today is basically.

Middle ground it, try and get to a point where I can see, all right, for at least 2026, what, what is the goal towards the end of it?

Yeah.

But I, I, I guess you guys were probably like, uh, is he going to do it? Is he at, like, what did you think?

Well, I think, I think your reaction is probably appropriate because we've been, we've been conditioned.

To to move really fast and and sort of like break things and that's, that's kind of the default, right? So I think part of what feels unnatural to frankly all of us and even for me, it's like, it's not enjoyable to sit down and like think really hard.

I feel like you like it.

I probably like it more than you do, but [laughter] it's like, it's, it's my preference. Like I, I just want to sit down and open Cursor and hack all day, to be honest with you. Like that's why I enjoy.

Trying to get away from that mindset.

Because it's really hard work. It takes a lot of effort. I think it's annoying to think hard.

And it's unnatural. And we've been used to almost like writing that off as like, if you, if you just raise your pre-seed and you sit down there and you're doing strategy for like 5 to 10 days, like.

That's dumb.

That's that's the dumbest thing you could do, right? You're just wasting your time. You should be going out to the market, talking to people, shipping stuff, throwing spaghetti at the wall, see what sticks.

And I think for the first time, like that's not the right way to operate. So it's almost like we have to break old habits, create new habits. So I think you're still transitioning, right, in terms of like the new set of habits. So am I.

You can put it [laughter] that way. I'm like, I'm like self-fighting, you know. I'm like, I'm like half opposed to it and then half of me is like, you know what, it's kind of genius.

Yeah. In a way, it's kind of like adulting, you know, but like in startups, like you're like.

Yeah, but you know what? Now you actually enjoy. You're like, oh, it makes sense and now I see it. It was the same thing that happened when we had to like let go of certain things that, you know, we used to do ourselves. Like when you had to, you were doing sales initially, Louis.

And then at some point, you had to be like, you know what, I'm not the guy to do sales anymore because your time is better spent managing a sales team and recruiting and doing other strategic work and you had to kind of let go of that responsibility and that was hard. It's the only way that we would have gone from doing 250k, you know, every month in sales to what we're doing now. Yeah. Right. And.

I think at the time I was like, "Oh [ __ ] like I, what else am I going to do if I'm not doing the sales and I have no idea like, you know.

How to feel productive?"

Yeah. Like I just feel like I'm just sat there at my desk staring at, you know, spreadsheets, reports, um, trying to figure out ways of being like productive, but in a way, kind of seems like counterproductive, right? Like I'm trying specifically to find work for people at the time. So that I feel like it's been, what, like 3 months? Not even. It's not even been that long since I've really stopped doing sales. So when I put it that way, it sounds like stupid.

It does feel longer than that. It feels a lot.

I think. I don't know. But it feels like an eternity.

Feels like a long time. We needed to do it. Yeah.

So now I can kind of like get on board with the whole, let's think about what we're going to do in 2026 because as we go along, I find that, okay, sometimes I'm right about these things, sometimes I'm wrong. And then with the, the whole sales thing, I, I think that opened me up to being more like, okay, let's just be a bit more strategic. Let's try and grow up a little bit, but at the same time, do want to have fun. You have to build a cracked company.

Yeah. I don't think we've lost that edge, but I definitely think it's very uncomfortable to, you get used to doing one things, one one way and because we're, we're succeeding, that means there's a new, there's a new level and you need to learn how to play that level.

We have to figure out how to become friends with billionaires and, um, you know, actually become them.

I mean, that's probably a good segue to, uh, some of the other stuff that's been going on. Um, I know we talk about strategy and all that, but I think one of the biggest, um, sort of like shocks to the system at the company over the last like two weeks is the success of one of our accounts and how that's really kind of taken everything by storm. And I don't know if you guys want to talk about kind of like what, what account we're referring to. Uh.

I would love to. I'd like Mariano to explain to the audience who Henrik Johansson is.

Yeah, sure. So, we have this this new, uh, satirical VC from Europe, European.

Okay.

Uh, account, but it's fake, right? And basically.

Yeah.

It's fake.

Well, it's real now.

It's [laughter] real now.

We brought it to life. Sorry.

I can explain why, why that reaction was warranted. But so we kind of started off. We're like, "Oh, yeah. It'd be funny to do it." So we set up this fake account, some random like ChadGPT generated image of like an old dude with white hair.

Yeah.

Uh, you know, from like Finland or something. And he's kind of just talking about compliance. And I guess the whole point is that that people make fun of is that compliance in the, in Europe is very like complicated and it's too much and all the fines. And so we're kind of making fun of that, poking fun at that.

Overregulation. Overregulation in Europe.

Um, and people found it really funny and we.

Some people found it funny. There's a lot of haters too.

I feel like you're always going to get haters. No, but I think I think about 20 to 30% of people actually don't know that it's a joke.

Yeah. And they, they think he's, he's, he's a real person. And, and B, like he means those, those opinions.

But I think that's part of the genius that.

People can't tell that it, whether it's serious or not. So the people who know that it's not serious, they find it hilarious because they see people getting rage baited almost. Right.

It's my favorite part of that account. The rage bait is so good. It's why it's why it works. I'm just trying to find one of the.

When you're talking about some people that don't know and it's a joke. There was a, a pretty big guy on socials who replied to one of the tweets yesterday or the day before. I think he had like 2 million followers. You know, he's like a, a very well-known, actually, I'm not sure if he's well-known. Former state deputy of cybersecurity. I don't, I don't even know what that means. This guy has 1.1 million followers based out of Florida. Executive director of something. This guy literally replied to Henrik's tweet and he's like.

He ratioed him. He ratioed Henrik so hard. 18,000 likes, which kind of implies to me that 18,000 people also agreed with this guy.

Yeah. Yeah.

Versus the 600 likes of the original post. Um, he's like, "You literally created these laws to fine American companies. You draw more income from those fines than you do in income taxes from EU companies together. These are not real laws. They are naked instruments of financial theft." Yeah. So people clearly, some people clearly don't think it's a joke.

Yeah. But it goes to show how like people don't like that and we're hitting a nerve in a way.

And.

But that's what also makes it really funny.

So again, I think for context on the account, so this account has hit a nerve. We launched it, I think about 90 days ago. Right now, it's roughly around what, 36k followers on X, roughly.

Um, it's followed by some of the biggest names in tech. You know, Mark Andreessen, Palmer Luckey.

Um, I think there's there's a handful more, a lot of GPs in a16z.

Um, uh, Vitalik Buterin. Yeah.

You know, founder of Ethereum, levels.io.

There's a ton of big accounts.

I don't know. It's like, how many muses have we gotten?

Yeah, we've gone, we got reached out for media. Uh, Louis and I have gotten personal follows from a handful of billionaires who also follow that account and found the, the strategy, um, really clever. Uh, so it's been, it's been really kind of blowing up and has become actually a really big source for us. Um, on the on the go-to-market side, we've been actually drawing a lot of leads and attention to a very boring topic, which is compliance through humor and and satire, which, which has been honestly a home run for us.

Yeah. And recently, we, we decided to kind of double down on the Henrik account and decided to bring it to life. So, we actually have a whole kind of campaign to have, first of all, Henrik is now a real person.

Mhm.

Right. And, uh, so we found this like actor, um, super good, super professional, and he's going to create a masterclass of compliance. So he's basically going to do the same thing he's doing, but in a masterclass form. And I mean, I can't wait for it to, to be released, but I, I know it's going to be like, everyone's going to love it. People are waiting for it. So, what originally started as this like AI-generated image of this, you know, white guy from Finland, we actually, uh, our media team started like casting actors and we found a guy that looked kind of similarly and could nail the both the accent and the attitude and, and now we produced, you know, an entire masterclass that's coming out pretty soon. We're pretty excited about it. It's, it's hilarious. I think it's one of the best, um, best.

If someone wants to watch the, the teaser, it's out on X. Um, you can just go to Compi, um, account and, and watch it. I, I recommend you do. Or is it, is it the compliant VC account?

Compliant. Yeah, compliant VC. Add compliant VC on X.

Yeah.

Correct account. I'm a big fan of the actor that we hired as well. Teaser was just a small amount of what we're about to launch on that account, but I mean, he's very likeable. I think he's got like a certain personality. He nailed the.

Like the whole character. He's got it down to a tea and.

I feel like he's a cool guy. Like I, I want to hang out with the actor of.

Henrik Johansson. Seems like.

We should bring him on the pod at some point and like.

We should get him on and have him actually describe, you know, his process getting in character and what he thinks about it.

Yeah, that would be very experienced.

He, he had some ideas and I kind of wish you read the email now, cuz he had an idea for what actually he could do. Um, and he was like, you know, he could make his own podcast and actually get guests on. I think that could work.

Oh, interesting.

Like.

Yeah, that would be very interesting. I think one of the biggest questions for us is like, how do we double down? So clearly, we figured something out. We've done, we, we've doubled down a little bit, right? The masterclass has actually boosted the profile quite a bit.

And now the question is, how do you 10x that? How do you 100x the efforts and turn it into something bigger than life?

Yeah.

He could do it and you could get a lot of good personalities who would be very down to speak and argue with Henrik. Your handsome.

Yeah. We've also had thoughts of like taking, uh, the actor and having him be in character and take him to San Francisco.

Yeah.

And going around like different startups and him, you know, doing like little skits of, uh, I don't know, making.

Those will perform well. Yeah. Yeah. Not compliant or.

I wonder if we, if we kind of like ruin the account as we talk more about like the reality of it, like, cuz people, a lot of people who follow it know that he's obviously a satire account, but the more we talk about it, the more we give away, do we kill the idea of of Henrik? Does it come, does it almost become like a, and it's not interesting anymore because now we've given away the illusion of the possibility that he's not real? I'm trying to, for example, think of like an analog with, uh, if you have like a director of a show kind of explaining how the show was created, and then the actual show. Yeah. The takeaway from it, like usually not.

Yeah.

Because they're kind of like different audiences that watch the different.

Yeah.

Medias. And I guess if you're listening to us, then you probably already subscribe to the idea of like, hey, these guys are cool. They're creating an interesting.

Probably say they would say like, "Oh yeah, that's really smart and and it's funny." And they still find it funny and follow the account.

I can't believe they made a fake account. [ __ ] those guys. My favorite account is not real. God damn it. I mean, I, I love that account. It's the funniest thing on tech like social media in a long time.

I think I think for me at least, like one of the reasons that has been, um, I think one of the reasons it worked has to do with our personalities and the fact that like a lot of the way that we operate the company is because we're having fun in a way and I think I don't think enough people talk about that, but also the way we, we've created the culture that we created, our go-to-market strategy.

I think we, we do things that we find interesting.

Yeah. As opposed to just like the cookie-cutter, you know, the way that Amazon grows.

In Miami one time. [laughter]

Oh [ __ ] both these guys are [laughter] like, "Sir.

Cut."

No, we live. Yeah. Yeah.

I, I'd double down on it. I'd get two now.

Yeah.

[ __ ] it. It's been a great year. Why not?

I mean, they're not that expensive.

No, but but I do think, yeah, I mean, the more we're having fun, the more the more that we're, we're creating marketing that we would like to consume ourselves.

I would argue that a lot of people would say, in fact, we should get an actual Lambo and put Henrik's face on it.

And I think that'd be worth it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or him driving in the Lambo in the streets of like Italy or something.

We drive the Lambo. Okay. He's just face, his face is just on the side of it.

All right. Maybe not. See, not all of my ideas get to.

Yeah. Come to fruition. There's a lot of ideas.

Pick the best.

There's no bad ideas. There's no bad ideas. [laughter]

Wink.

Wow. Hear me out. Hear me out. Lambo.

A yacht. Miami.

I think.

Harrison.

Yeah.

Could be a fun day.

Yeah. I think, uh.

Bang a video.

I mean, 2026 GTM plan still in progress. I think we just got to get our heads together and figure out how do we dominate. But I think one of the philosophies that we're trying to approach is like absolute media domination. And, uh, hard to execute, but I think if we get that right, uh, we can definitely because I guess one of the problems we're trying to solve is, is, you know, there's, there's already incumbents in the space, right? And I think the way to win as a company is, we, we can't just copy their playbooks, we have to create new playbooks that are more efficient so we can grow faster than them to both catch up, number one, and number two, sort of like surpass, like their levels of growth.

I think the way that we're doing it is actually going to be more explosive than theirs. Like theirs is already kind of like, it's very linear.

Um, but with the way that we're approaching kind of like organic and social.

So, how are we approaching that's different? I guess if we, we can kind of unpack.

Some of that. I think we're just trying to generate as much content as possible, but quality, right? So, I mean, one of these things like the podcast that we're doing, like that's it's part of the strategy. Uh, sorry. I just wanted to say that I actually think the the main difference is, yeah, we want to put a good amount of media out there, but I think we also have to make it interesting. And one of the big things is compliance and cybersecurity overall is the most [ __ ] boring um like place to be in, right? Every single company. Could you imagine CrowdStrike doing something interesting? Nah. No.

It's it's the most boring industry. By I guess the marketing people there are like, you know, 45-year-old like guys, women. Just there's no interest in people working in these places. And I think we can be interesting enough to cause enough people to have eyes on us. And I think that is it can be a good thing, it can be a bad thing, but I think it probably, the good probably outweighs the bad if you can make enough noise in this space because there's so much money involved, right? There's it's it's a huge market. So, if you can just be, okay, maybe slightly controversial, maybe a bit modern with your marketing, with the um the kind of media you produce, even producing some media is is doing 99% more than than the rest of them, right?

Um, so, I think if you can be a bit like edgy with it, get some um like traction with like the compliant VC account. A lot of people, if if you could if you sent that account and said, "Hey, should we replicate this?" and you're working for a different company, let's say, I don't know, CrowdStrike or Microsoft, their marketing team is going to say, "Hell no, have you seen the reaction to that account?" Sometimes any risk, right? There's no.

And if they did try something like that based on the replies like yesterday to that tweet, they would they'd be like, "Okay, close the account. Let's never do that again." Bad idea.

But I think we can almost ride the wave of it. Like I personally don't care if some people are offended by the whole. I mean, I'm actually European, so I I get a free pass to to to mocking overregulation of Europe. But also, I think people people won't buy it if they if you're going to scare people away just based on that marketing, they were never going to be buyers in the first place. Like the relationship that we have with our customers is very close. People like us for who we are. And I think we take a huge portion of this space just by being interesting and different to everyone else. So sometimes we got to be a bit edgier.

Funnier. So what's everyone else doing that that that I think we find boring? Nothing. I mean, like no, no one else is doing.

But what's a default? Because I think one of the reasons it's working so well is because we're we're we're completely almost like counter-positioned to the way that other other companies in the space are are approaching their go-to-market.

Yeah. I mean, they they all do the same thing, right? Like they do paid ads, newsletters, podcasts. Well, no, they sponsor podcasts. Maybe they'll sponsor one of our podcasts. We'll say no.

We'll sponsor our own podcast. It's genius if you think about it. Um, what else? That's that's I mean, that's pretty much it. They all follow the same playbook.

Traditional media.

Traditional media.

Conferences, events, partnerships.

Yeah.

We we can do stuff like that. Dude, I I swear to God, the first time anyone suggests we do a webinar, I will crash out so [laughter] bad.

They will be fired. I swear to God. Right. It's not a joke.

I mean, could you imagine?

No.

What are we going to do a webinar for? Jesus.

Yeah. Yeah.

Actually, maybe it'd be a good idea. Maybe not. I don't know.

At some point, I don't know. But like, yeah, not right now.

Yeah. One of one of the reasons our our stuff has cut through the noise is because it's unexpected. It's not how you normally see a company like this market themselves.

Yeah.

We could do a webinar or we could sponsor the best nightclub in New York City for one night.

Your choice. [laughter]

And, you know, pick one.

Yeah.

We can put a Henrik Johansson menu.

Meet and greet Henry.

Um, at some like fancy bar in in I don't know, Midtown. Maybe we should do. I think one of the accounts that we really like is like RAMP.

I think they're doing very interesting marketing and very sim very similar to how we kind of think. So, we kind of vibe with that a lot and and we're kind of, you know, taking what they do well and trying to replicate it a little bit.

You know that we this is something that blew my mind the other day. The the compliant VC account on X is 90 days old in total. We have more followers than the Ramp brand account on that account, and they've been around for many, many years. So this is not a diss to Ramp, that what they do is great, but it that tells me that we are on to something astronomically. Like we're on the right path. Yeah. Right. Like there's no way, no doubt in my mind that this is the way forward with you know, our like GTM strategy as a whole. Media, be more interesting. But I can see a world where more and more companies try and do it. And I think there's some that have tried which didn't get PMF. Clearly, for example, they were very rage bailey. They were very um crazy with some of the media that they came out with. We can't go that far, but I mean, they they took it to, you know, new extremes, but they didn't have PMF. They've struggled to actually attain the market that they were in. They pivoted now, I think, to be more of like a notetaker like very recently. Um, you know, Roy was getting cooked on all of these different, he was on like TechCrunch, or they they basically tried to get him to say his company's ARR. He wouldn't. He refused to give out any numbers, which basically, you know, he he had no reason to, but I think they're getting cooked right now.

Yeah. Yeah. They've been quiet for.

Um, if you you can go that to that extreme, but if you don't have PMF, it means [ __ ] nothing anyway. Congratulations. You've got eyes on you and your product, but no one's buying it because no one needs it. Versus something like this where not as extreme, takes some of the lessons that they they they they did. I do truly believe that the more we do with media, it can't hurt, right? Even if it's a bit rage, maybe sometimes compliant VC, it's not, you know, completely related to Compi, it's it's somewhat related, I guess. But I still think that is better than doing it if you don't have PMF whatsoever. Yeah. Right. We we have proven you can make these like satirical accounts be interesting and as long as you have a good product, you'll be fine. Yeah. Everyone should do it. Everyone should do this kind of marketing if not.

Yeah. For me, I think it's it's it comes down to the efficiency of of that spend. The amount of money that we spent kind of running that account and producing some media around it. It's only a fraction of how much we spent on let's say like paid acquisition. So that just tells me like, hey, well, first of all, it's not easy to replicate, but if you do have an avenue to produce media of that quality with that level of engagement, it's just a way more efficient spend of your money. And when we look at, hey, we want to compete with the likes of you know, Fanta and other players in the space, we can't just compete with the same channels that they use because they have way more money. They have deeper pockets to actually completely run us out of business. And some of our newer competitors are doing that, right? So, you know, there's new new companies that are also doing what Compi does and they are just following the same old traditional.

So, you're always going to be behind, a couple steps behind. You're never going to actually catch up if if if your adversary, congratulations. You built the same thing and you're marketing the same thing. You're selling the same thing. There's always going to be a couple years behind difference.

There's no. If you want to win, you got to be more efficient. You got to figure out a shortcut. And I think for us, it's just been kind of like the creative uh go-to-market, the creative media strategies.

I think today we hit 400 customers. It's a big milestone. Um, and it's still interesting to me that we have a very small customer success team.

Yeah.

And again, goes back into some of the stuff that we built, the efficiencies of it. Kind of like we have a we have a very efficient marketing and and go-to-market um like motion in the works. We also have a very um like very efficient and very strategic way of actually making sure these customers get to success, right? So I think every every like staple of what we do is essentially always comes back to how efficient can you be. Like the engineering side of it.

Yeah.

We're the most efficient engineering team that I've ever worked with.

Sales and marketing. Uh, the amount of customers that we have for the amount of money that we've spent is crazy. Like I don't think people really understand when I say this to them, but the the incumbents in this space spend a huge amount of money to get their first 500 customers. I'm talking 10, 20, 30, $40 million, right? It's done nothing near that. So, just to get where we are with what we've done is is is with what money we've had, it's been crazy. I think any I guess like the whole AI space as a as a whole has enabled us to be to do that, right? We've been able to be efficient with engineering, with marketing, with media. Um, but I'll say something which is I think some of our some of the newer players in the space also started you know, kind of like riding the AI wave. Yeah. Yet still we have attained you know, a higher degree of efficiency. So I'm actually really curious more about like if we if we take a step out, like us as founders, right? Like as we entered Compi, like I guess there were things that made us better equipped to like approach this problem. So, I guess I'm just curious about kind of the origin of like what did we do, right? Number one, and number two is like where did that come from? Like is this something we picked up at like previous experiences? Like where were the ingredients that then led to us as we approached this opportunity to be actually be able to just, you know, hit a home run and continue to be more efficient.

I think we've always been pretty scrappy, right? So I think we all have that like scrappiness about us and it gives us like a huge advantage over like someone who went to MIT or Stanford and has never really had to figure it out on their own. I think we've all had to do that. We're also older than a lot of the people who are starting you know, these like cool little companies like the AI companies. There's so many people. I actually feel old for the first time ever recently. You see these kids on X who like 18 or 19 and like have just raised $42 million of a pre-seed and you're like, goddamn right.

I think the experience that we have and just the way we've had to do things in our lives, we've been scrappy. Back to any like any specific job or any situation or any project or anything that you that you thought, hey, the work that I did there actually I'm still using a lot of those principles and a lot of those or maybe a lot of the battle scars that I got from like this era actually made me a great founder today?

Good question.

Yeah.

I'll take that question. Uh, so I [laughter] think I think that um the biggest one in my head is is uh Leap AI, right? You and I were working on that. Lo was also there for a little bit. Um, God, starting on early, I mean, it was just very rough. Uh, I remember we had a good AI product. You were generating um images for people and that was like right when the AI kind of boom started, right? You I remember you had the phrase, the AI API for everything or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Um, sounds hard to market.

We pivoted [laughter] into workflows, right? Like workflows is the next big thing.

Yeah.

Um, and that was really hard. It was a really slow push. I think that experience of trying really hard for like two years, but also writing the initial AI wave from the beginning. So when the models were still crap, right, and we were trying to make it work with the bad models, um, and then, you know, newer models come out, the agents came out. So all that learning curve was, I think it was pivotal to like what we're bringing to Compi and like what we're doing right from the beginning. Now it's like, okay, well, first of all, the models are way better.

Mhm.

So we can actually build more efficiently. But we kind of learned a lot of uh from our mistakes from like Leap AI, for example. And that was like specifically an AI startup, right? Where where I don't think any other kind of like like the competitors have that experience because AI didn't really exist before or in in the way that we know it, right?

I used to joke with uh I was talking to an investor um NSF a couple couple months back and one of the things I used to joke about is like, hey, we are probably one of the very few people. We're probably amongst like the a team of like I don't know 10, 20, 30 people who know how to build uh, you know, AI workflows with this level of almost like expertise. Yeah. Um, I don't think that level of knowledge really exists in the workplace, you know, broadly speaking, because it's something brand new. Yet we are one of the very few teams who actually spent two years, you know, struggling to actually build systems. So we understand the rough edges, we understand where it fails. So bringing that into sort of Compi, I think it was very easy to sort of like conceptualize, yeah, we know exactly what's going to fail, let's do it right from the get-go.

Yeah. I think also at least on my end um I've worked at other startups, other companies, uh some smaller, some bigger where I've seen the processes internally, like how they work, pre AI, right? But I've learned a lot about what not to do, like how like what they did wrong. For example, like engineering processes, like they would only deploy once every two weeks or something. It was very slow, right? So I've learned a lot from other jobs as well where against some of these uh newer kids, right, starting their own startups, they they haven't really had any jobs before or been in a company and seen how it runs, whether they're successful or small or big.

I've always just been great. So [laughter]

Just just a smart guy.

Yeah.

Just just winning back to back.

Wail.

No struggles.

No struggles.

Honestly, life has been easy.

I think I think a lot of our approaches like obviously we have a specific like leadership style, the way we like run teams, like the kind of philosophy, the way the way we prioritize things. I know for example for me, I picked up a lot of my um kind of intuition around culture from my time at WeWork. Um, say what you want about their business model and the sort of mishaps on signing 10-year leases and all that crap, but um nonetheless, I think the culture and sort of almost like this like cultish way of like um bringing people in and making them believe in the mission um and creating a space that people really wanted to be part of and to the point like people were were really kind of pouring their hearts and souls into this company even though they weren't getting paid that much. It was really just all about, you know, equity and and and kind of growing this as big as it can be. So I think at least I picked up a lot of my chops from like, you know, my time working at WeWork and obviously that translates into what we do today, which if you're a new grad, uh, you're not going to have that experience. Um, can you think back to like any, you know, at least I got that from culture, but like is there anything around like sales leadership, um, I don't know, marketing, something else that you feel like.

You're going to hate this answer and I think listeners may also hate it, but I know how to run Compi right now and to get it to being a billion-dollar company because I love the TV show Silicon Valley. We crashed. I've seen all of the startup documentaries, all of the TV shows. [laughter] I was built for this.

Yeah. Yeah. We're aiming for.

All of my experience is is now coming from that. Everything else before this, it's not even on the same level.

No, but genuinely.

Genuinely, right? I think.

What are some habits that everything, every habit, every every job that I've had has been completely different level.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's like it's not even relevant to the conversation. Everything that I've done in the last year.

I don't think it has to be good. I think throw it away.

I think you can have negative examples where you can be like, I'm going to be the opposite of that guy.

Yeah.

Oh yeah. There's a lot of people that I've worked with who have been like that. I mean, I remember this the first ever job that I had. Um, I remember walking in on the first day and I was doing like it was like a help desk job, you know, like picking up the phone, answering people's questions about the software for this company.

Um, I'm still kind of friends with this guy, so I don't want to say too much, but anyway, he basically been working there for like 10 years already, and he was going to he still works there now, and it's 10 years later, and he will work there until he retires or dies. That that is it. And he will never move from that specific role. I think that moment when I realized that you can just get a job and stay in it for life, never doing that, never even experienced in a different like career, job, whatever, like even a position in that company. He stayed at the very same level.

That gave me a huge amount of motivation to basically never do that. Always be thinking of like what I could be doing next, growing to the next level, whatever. um up until the point of either, you know, running a team or running a company. I think that's kind of how we I don't know. It gave me some motivation back then. I was like, "Holy [ __ ] I never ever want to be that."

Yeah. Funny you say that because I think we've all had the same experience of working at companies that you see people that they they've been there for 10, 15 years and you're like, "How the hell like scary? I cannot see myself doing that."

Yeah. Yeah. I don't wish that upon my.

Maybe that's like the that's like the founder gene of like no. First of all, you want to keep leveling up, right? And you know that at those companies that people work for 10, 15 years, like you're not really going to level up as much as you would want to, as quick as you want. Um, so yeah, it's all about making like you were already making hops between companies and you're trying to work your way up.

So I guess that kind of led into the itch for what's the next level is to start your own basically.

Yeah. Basically doing not wanting to do that and watching all of the great startup documentaries out there.

Yeah. Yeah.

We crashed. I also worked at WeWork. If you think about it, [laughter]

I've seen the documentary.

I've seen the TV show.

Twice.

Yeah.

Big fan. Yeah. I mean, it sets the tone though. Unironically, I love the We Crashed is one of my favorite like documentaries or TV shows around startups. It's my favorite pastime to to watch these things about how how companies grow or succeed sometimes fail like WeWork and all of these other ones. But damn, the energy from it. I almost I almost while I was watching We Crashed, I felt like I was a part of WeWork in a lot of ways. Like it it drags you in.

The the whole series is.

It almost makes every time I watch it, I just want to go out and I just want to build something. And I'm like, "Fuck yeah, I want to just go and start a company and and and do this, this, and this." And uh, if I if I'm feeling down about building a company, I'm like, "Damn, like burning out." I'll go and watch We We Crashed or um any of those like TV shows and it gets me back in the mood. I just I'm like, "Yeah, [ __ ] yeah, it's 2 a.m. I want to go back to work right now."

Yeah.

I think one of the big one of the big like values for me work was like they it's like it's like it's not just a workplace. It's like you're it's it's a life, right? So you kind of come in here because you enjoy so much kind of being around these people and around this environment. And I think unironically that's one of the things that we've we've done really well at the company, which is even from from day one, like it was just the three of us locked in a tiny room. We were just having fun.

I mean, the first thing we did.

Like we had FIFA in the room.

No one knows about this.

Yeah. We got a Guitar Hero [laughter] in the little office that we had and we were like, you know, we worked for like 6 hours or something. Take like a quick 30-minute break.

Sometimes it went more than 30 minutes. Sometimes we play FIFA for 2 hours. [laughter]

Sometimes you guys will be playing and I would be coding and I'm like, I hate you guys.

But we needed you to. We.

Someone needed to be coding. Right.

If you think about it, we probably helped motivate you to get it done so you could also play FIFA.

I just wanted to go home. [laughter]

Like I'm trying to get home. No one else is coding. I got to do this.

Yeah.

[ __ ] Exposed. [laughter]

Well, that was the early days. Early days.

I mean, look, we had a we had a lot of fun.

Yeah.

It was fun.

It was cool. It was like a camaraderie, you know. How how do we keep that as we get bigger? It's one of the things that I'm like.

I I I kind of miss the the mind space, the that small room with the FIFA, with the the Guitar Hero, but also we'd stay there until 11:00 p.m. We'd be we'd get there at 8:00 a.m. 9:00 a.m.

You didn't feel it. It was just.

It was like it was just fun.

Um, and it was like one of the TV shows like the very early days of um, you know, Silicon Valley season one or whatever. Yeah, they were in a room hacking away. And really I I I saw someone comment on this on one of your posts about remote working and I think it's so true. By the way, people say um it's something basically people who don't who want to build a company and say no remote working, they just want to hang out with the boys.

Yeah.

That's pretty much it. You just want to hang out with the boys and have fun.

I think I think one of my goals right now is to actually figure out a way to extend that to all our employees. Like I want everyone to show up to work and feel the exact same way that that we felt those early days, which is like I [ __ ] love this place. It's going to be hard. It's going to be hard. It's hard. Um, it's probably one of the hardest things.

We'll try. I mean, I don't know that we'll succeed. We'll definitely try our best, but I think.

We already have like a, you know, a couch and a PS5 and TV.

Yeah. No, no one uses it. [laughter]

I think everyone's locked in to to play it, but.

Back in the day.

Yeah.

But back in the day, we would have just stayed later to make up for it.

Yeah.

So, we need to we need to go back to the let people let people play FIFA in the middle of the day. I don't care. As long as you know sales calls are happening, people are making money, we're shipping all of our features.

So, one of the things I was talking to a friend about is uh he was asking me like, "Hey, most of the time when starting a company, some of the common advice is like do not work with friends, don't work with family." Yet, I think we've broken both rules here at at Compi and it's actually worked out pretty great. So, I was sort of curious around like what you guys think had made that work. Like, you know, how would you what would you tell someone if they're telling you, "Hey, I'm planning on working my friend, but I have some like reservations around if I should do it or not."

I I think generic advice and I've read it so many times as well. Everyone says don't do it. Skillsue, maybe.

I don't know. I I think I think you're like pretty brutally honest with each other. I think that's what makes it kind of work. Like, you know, if if you're pissing me off, I'll say it. If you're piss If I'm pissing you off, you'll say it. Same with you. We're all pretty good at like being very honest.

We respect each other to the point where like even if we are pissing each other off, like we we allow ourselves to have some space or, you know, figure it out and we talk about it, right?

Yeah. I think you just have to be pretty open and I'm guessing most people would steer away from like the uncomfortable conversations that you have to have at times. You know, you have to. You have to set the boundaries. You have to make it clear like what you're doing. Um, still not I mean, look, 90% of the time and I still think this is probably it could happen at any point, right? That we could this could be ruined just by us falling out, right? Like if we had like a um let's say we had a big disagreement and I don't know, you you wanted to do something with the culture and I was like, I don't like that, and and we just can't be resolved, then it is it's risky, right? Like the friendship would be ruined if you know, let's say um I I'm trying to think of like a scenario where something could happen where you're like, "Okay.

I feel like we always come back around.

Like.

Yeah, you come back. Reasonable people.

And whenever there is something.

I don't think I don't think we take things personal. And I think that's actually a big part of it.

It's like we can have a bickering disagreement. We're like, "I hate your guts. You hate my guts." And then like, you know, an hour later, we shake it off, brush it off, and then we're back exactly where we were.

Quick game of FIFA.

Yeah. We're like, [laughter] you know what? You you were really annoying yesterday, but I'll forgive you today.

I I'd say to most people, don't do it. Cuz I mean, a lot of people I kind of agree with you. I I think most people wouldn't be able to.

I think we're definitely like a rare something positive.

Rare case.

Yeah.

And I don't even know how like it just worked out, but.

Maybe we got lucky. I don't know. But.

Well, we had worked together before, so I think we had some idea of what to expect. It wasn't completely out of the blue.

We've actually known Louis for like less than a year now. Or.

No, no, more than a year now. Year and a half, maybe almost two years.

Is that? It sounds crazy to me.

It sounds like a decade because the amount of experience experiences we've had together. We've traveled.

I don't know.

We went to Miami. We've been to like 10 or 15 places together.

Yeah. Remember when when Lewis joined Leap, like the first thing he did was come to Miami with us.

Yeah. Yeah.

That was fun.

We went to watch Messi.

And we went to the F1.

And he scored a crazy goal or multiple goals.

For Lewis.

No. [laughter]

Yeah. We should do it again.

We should. We should do it again.

We should do it again.

Yeah.

Yes. I would not be opposed.

Yeah. But honestly, at the same time, it's like I think what's made the company work. Like if if we if we weren't sort of just having fun again, that early days stuck in that little shoe box of of an office, just the boys having fun.

Yeah.

I don't think we would be where we are right now.

No, I don't think I don't think it would be.

I guess like we we all don't want it to end as well, cuz we have the fun times. Yeah.

So, you like you like take a step back and think like, okay, if I really drive this and if I really want to ruin it, then I can ruin it, but then you lose all the fun stuff as well. I don't want to um not chill and go to Miami every now and then, you know, just to relax or casino every now and then. We'll do it. It's fun, right? We've had a lot of good times together. So.

I think even even if you say, "Okay, you know, this guy's been an [ __ ] this week, then whatever." Yeah. You'll be okay next week.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Everyone will relax.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let's go to Cancun. Relax. Puerto Rico.

But you know what? I think I think that's the problem with most companies. Like they actually don't optimize for fun. And I think fun is what creates cohesion. And when you have cohesion, you can actually stick to the hardships.

We have a good balance of fun in work. For sure. For sure. It's not like we're only having fun.

But I think most companies are either like sterile about it or they just don't actually acknowledge the importance of that element, that ingredient. I think a lot of people take themselves way too seriously, especially people who have like a who are trying to prove a point like these, you know, Stanford kids that have raised some money and they are determined to be um, you know, a like the chances are you're not Mark Zuckerberg, right? They're trying to be that.

I I would hedge against it. You know, for most people, it's not going to happen. It's not going to work out.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, why not build like why not have fun and be half of a Mark Zuckerberg, right? Like most people should cry and go down that path, right? I think people get stuck in this rut of trying to be someone else or someone that they aren't and it forces them or almost like structures them to be boring and sterile, right? Because those people are unopinated, sterile, and boring.

But guess what? They're going to have a lot of fun because they've already made it. They became sterile and boring and fun at the end. Mark Zuckerberg at the when he started Facebook, it was the most unhinged [ __ ] incel in the world right now. [snorts] He's like, you know, and that's because he's been he he's now responsible for hundreds of thousands of people's like um, you know, he takes it very seriously. But back then he didn't.

So, fun guy. I don't know if you we would see him give a talk recently. Yes, but like two years ago, maybe you wouldn't hear about it. I don't think he was public about it, but I think I think I think he's lowkey chat to be honest. Yeah.

Yeah. But all right. I'm not saying like him like he his public persona two years ago was not this Chad guy. It was like, you know, the the sweaters, the [ __ ] terrible outfit standing on stage talking about whatever. Most people did not. Like people outside of tech didn't aspire to be Mark Zuckerberg, right? But then what I'm saying is he kind of like had that persona late on and it's kind of like changed now. So now he's become cool. Yeah. Becoming cool is okay again.

Well, I think it has to do with like also the culture. It's like I think we moved out of I mean, partly to be honest with you, for that reason. I just I don't feel like it fit my personality.

Yeah.

I feel like it was a little bit too sterile. Like everyone there is an academic. Like they're very kind of uptight about what they do and you come to New York and it's like it's a lot more alive. It's a lot more raw.

Sex in the City, baby. It's a great [ __ ] place to be.

I think it just has to do like where we grew up.

Yeah. I feel like a lot of the the like early founders that I've met are they they go too hard on the on trying to be someone else, trying to imitate the um it's almost like they're trying too hard. Like the people who are getting on Forbes 30 under 30 are the people who they're all of them are awful. I I can't imagine it, right? I cannot imagine being on that list. I will never be there. Like I don't have anything to prove by being on it. Like in fact, if if they asked me to be on it, I would say no.

Yeah.

Sounds terrible.

Yeah.

If you look at that list of people, I just think [ __ ] wow.

Yeah.

Boring.

Yeah.

I'd rather not.

It's like I just think kind of what's the point? It's like almost like self-congratulatory for no reason. It's like you just won the accolade because you. It's almost like you're trying to fill a void, you know, through some external attention. Like it's purely attention, validation of yourself through the public, I guess. Yeah.

I think we're very sure of ourselves, so we don't really care.

I mean, look, we're having we're having a good time. Yeah. We're enjoying kind of working with each other. Again, my point stands, which is like I think if we are having fun and we feel connected, we're more likely to push through like really hard things to do, which is like building a company is not easy.

But I also do think we we bring a lot of good energy to the company itself. Like like I think it propagates down to everyone else who's working there. They're like they feel the energy and they're like, "Oh yeah, this is this is cool and fun environment instead of just like a sterile." And I can actually say what I think without being uh canceled or or whatever. I think we keep it very very open. Yeah, we keep it filtered.

I mean, I think everyone that we've hired so far is is pretty on board with it. I was didn't expect it as much, but yeah, some some of them have grown into it, others were already like that. But regardless, I think we've created a good baseline.

I mean, I love it. I mean, every single person that we've we we have at Compi is cracked. I keep on saying, I think I've I think I've said it every episode, but like every single person in the company, [laughter] they're cool people, right? I like I like the people that I work with. I am excited to go to work. I'm excited to get into the office every morning.

10:00 a.m. this morning. So, sorry about that, guys.

A bit late. Um.

We cover enjoy getting into the office. I enjoy spending time with the people that I'm working with. I think everyone is smart. There's a lot of um there's a lot of characters that we have. And I think everyone is like very unique in their own way and and interesting. Like everyone's interesting.

Um.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like everyone has their own story and.

Yeah.

I think we should make like a videos of each person, each employee and.

Yeah.

Make stories around them.

All right. All right. So, I have I have questions for for for both of you. I guess the same question. Uh, two-part question. Number one is like, what's the thing you're looking forward to the most in the upcoming year? And what do you see it being the biggest challenge we'll have to face and solve in the upcoming year?

We're going to have to hire a [ __ ] ton of people.

Yeah. [laughter] It's going to be the hardest bit, right? I'm kind of excited about it. In my head, I see a room like, you know, in the Wolf of Wall Street when you have like all of these sales guys like, you know, picking up the phone, absolutely like chats, just like having a lot of fun. Um, I see that in one world. In the other world, I see it's going to take a lot of time and effort to hire the the best people.

Yeah. Recruiting.

And then also like it just changes, right? You go from 20 people to 100 people, like the the culture will shift a bit. That's something that we're going to have to figure out. It's going to be very hard to keep as is.

Um, [ __ ] Are we will we be will we be able to do this every day? I'm not sure, you know, not every day, but once a week. We're going to we're going to have to figure it out.

Yep.

It's going to be crazy.

But I'm kind of excited for it at the same time.

So, your answer is the same for both. Is the most exciting thing you're looking forward to?

Yeah, it's it's kind of the same. Scaling up.

Yep.

Vibe scaling.

Vibe scaling. Uh, how about you?

Um, yeah, I guess it's kind of very similar. Uh.

No. You can't copy the same.

I know. I'm I'm trying to think of my own version.

I went for [snorts] the easy one.

Yeah. [laughter]

I think what I'm most concerned about is just like scaling like my own team, I guess. Okay.

It's going to get very complex and complicated to distribute work. I think.

Okay.

I'm not a PM, right? So, it's very hard for me to.

It's your first time managing a team of this size, so it's like new stuff.

Exactly.

Hire a PM.

Yeah. Exactly. Might might have to hire a PM. I'm not looking forward to [laughter] to recruiting again.

Easy enough.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Recruiting was.

You're going to become a [clears throat] full-time recruiter for the most part.

That's what I said.

He's he's copying my answer in a different way. We're doing the same thing for different [laughter] teams.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, I'm not not looking forward to recruiting. I think. But what about what about scaling the product to handle 10 times more people?

I think that's not that bad.

But then I I was thinking about this. Let's say we go.

There's a lot of critical thinking, but.

Say we go to 4,000 customers. That means that there's going to be let's say there's an average of like 20 to 50 people per company. Device agent is going to be crazy.

Could be more.

Be a lot more, like 100,000 devices managed by.

He's going to be on call waking up in the middle of the night [laughter] multiple times a week.

Hopefully he is already.

Once I hire more people. They will be on call.

It's practice for becoming a parent, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

My my children of engineers [laughter] except they won't actually be waking you up in the middle of.

I'm excited about the new office. I can't wait. The new office is going to be fantastic.

Does that mean they call you daddy? [laughter]

Hey, he said it. I didn't say anything.

Um, yeah. I'm really excited to get the new office. I think it's going to be epic.

Yeah. What are you excited about the new office? Like I know we kind of have plenty of spaces, but like which part of the office is kind of like.

I think the spaces. I think like the creative ideas that we have. Like like remember the whenever someone walks in, we play like a song or something.

It's not going to last very long in practice. It sounds good.

Just rosary.

On paper, it sounds great. Yeah. Maybe just us three.

Um.

Katy Perry.

I think also also seeing like just a lot of people in the office is going to be kind of crazy.

Yeah.

It's going to feel unreal. You're going to be like, "Oh crap, there's like 50 people over there in their own little section, like all the sales people or something." You know, and you're like, "Wow."

Yeah.

You might not even know everyone.

It's mind-blowing how fast like it it changed.

It's going to get to the point where you don't know someone's name and you're like, "Wow." Like that's going to be interesting.

Who are you? I just met you. At what point did Adam Newman get the expensive alcohol in the office like every day?

I feel like it was very early.

Sweet. [laughter]

That's one of my favorite scenes. Uh, honestly, personally, I'm I'm really excited for the um.

Okay, first excited, then like terrified, which haven't thought about terrified one, but excited. Um, our media plan, I think, for next year. Um, been thinking a lot about it and definitely just like spinning up a lot of new initiatives. I think we're we're obviously there's a podcast now. We have we're in this new space. Obviously, we're going to keep upgrading the spaces, I think, as we go and just like leveling up the quality, having guests.

You just read that guy over there. He's now like, "Wow, love that guy." Trying to.

You're going to upgrade. [laughter]

To what we think about earlier.

There's nothing bad. There's nothing better than that.

He's he's going to help us out. We'll get some tips for for the new arrangement. Um, but also like spinning up other like types of media. So, like I think we want to do some stuff around like live streaming. Don't know what that is, but like, you know, TVPN of the East or we'll figure out a format that that kind of makes sense.

Um, that could be interesting.

That's a good. Are they not in.

Oh, they're they're they're in LA.

They're West Coast.

Oh, no way.

Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Or or SF? LA or SF? One of those. Um.

Either way, some live streaming stuff, some more hero content like what we did with Henrik. Just like really scaling that to the max. And uh, I know one of my uh ultimate goals is uh to almost like be one of the first startups to have our own documentary on Netflix. I think that'd be really cool. I don't know if that's a 2026 goal, but it'll happen eventually. But I think just overall media dominance um is a really exciting challenge. Just the terrifying stuff.

I definitely, I'm I'm gonna have to take the cheap, you know, way out here. I'm definitely not looking forward to recruiting. I just feel like recruiting is uh, all of us, it's just a lot of work, man.

Yeah. Find something that's not that. The amount of bad candidates you have to go to to find a good one. It's just. I also hate rejecting people. Like I'm I'm I'm I'm by nature an optimist. I like to see the best in people. And then you you're like, "Ah, you're like 80% there. I want to believe in you. You deserve a shot, but I'm not going to be the one to give it to you."

Right? So, it's kind of like a weird thing to do. Um, so sometimes you get people that are like completely lying about their experience or something true and then you're like, "Screw you."

Yeah. Like you can tell and you're like, "You wasted my time."

I mean, but I do think we are getting better. I think where we were as recruiters, you know, eight months ago to where we are right now, like I think we listen to the red flags a lot more.

Yeah. Even even even a whiff of something, you're just like immediately like, "Not worth not worth the risk that it turns out to be something."

Yeah. We train our guts to to pinpoint. But still, it's a lot of calls and I'm not looking forward to almost like the process of uh having to recruit a.

Like you said, I'd rather be incursor. I'd rather be incursor.

The good news for me is I feel like I hired someone great who's now going to be able to hire all of those sales people.

Yeah. But you we need more like leaders of different teams, right? So you still have to recruit those yourself.

Yeah. But at least it's less. You don't have to recruit like kind of the the ices underneath.

Yeah. I mean, I I would not want to hire, you know, 45 salespeople in a year for someone else.

Awful. Yeah. Yeah. Um, good luck to whoever whoever's going to do that.

To hire a hiring manager.

I'll tell you what else. I think I think I think it's all in being people problems, right? But there's obviously recruiting, but then then there's also like managing people and then people like performance issues or people crisis or just stuff like that that I think, you know, us founders have to step into all the time and kind of address and have the hard conversations. So more people means more hard conversations. So I think uh that's that's kind of in the horizon for us.

Say like the the culture as well. I mean, when we were free people, we could just be like, "Let's go for dinner." And do that like the same day, you know? Now, we have to like plan it a week in advance. We can still go for dinner.

Have to get like yes or nos from everybody, you know. You know, you want to take the team out. You want every you want everyone to have fun and also like like a lot of the culture that we had was like these, you know, um like very quick decisions where like, "Let's go and do this, let's go and do this."

Yeah. I'd love to be able to do that with the team and it's literally logistically impossible to like figure it out and you have to wait for everyone to like RSVP.

Are you are you coming or not? Yes or no? Let me know in the next 5 minutes. You know, [laughter]

We we could do that. Used to be able to do that. But um, we got to figure out like a.

I mean, there's going to be tears now, right? Of like for example, the dinners. Like we're not going to always take the entire company out every time.

Yeah. It's going to be like. No, I'm saying tears, [laughter] you know? like there's a war you got going to put.

Maybe us three go more frequently and then we invite the team and more parts of it. I don't know what but. Like are we going to turn into a company that just has we're going to turn into a company that just has like one annual Christmas dinner, you know? It's like we have a we have a meal.

Have you seen and it's mid also like no. We spend all the money in steakouses ourselves.

Never be mid, all right? Never. [snorts] Mid. It can't be mid. It's going to be Applebee's next year. [laughter]

Have you seen uh speaking, you know, for like Christmas parties and all that. Have you guys seen like the I think like Figure had like a great party like X AI. Have you have you seen like the the footage on that on X?

No. It's like I think they had like Dead Mouse like they had like robots on stage like everywhere. Dead Mouse 5.

Um, I feel like that's that's that's a good standard. I I I like to see that level of production.

It's too cold here. Right now, but people still go out. I've been out for New Year's in New York.

I feel like summer's going to be great. I'm looking forward to summer.

Summer. Yes.

See, that's the thing about New York. It's like because it has seasons, you actually look forward to the progression of time. In San Francisco, it's like a constant lull.

Yeah. For 12 months. Same exact weather. Yeah.

It's always fall. It's not It's not quite winter, but not not summer either. So, it's a little bit sad.

Yeah. Damn.

All right. Yeah. Very depressing.

In my opinion. Hot take.

Hot take. Yeah. I'm get cancelled for that.

It's a real take. All right. Everyone else is fake. It's a fall.

It's a fake take. I feel the same way about sushi. Everyone else is lying. It tastes like trash. [laughter]

It's not good. [snorts] That's fine. I don't care.

Should we go out for dinner?

Yes. Yes. Sounds [laughter] like a plan.

That was easy. Easy enough.

See, you could just do things. You could just do things. [ __ ]

Yeah. All right. GG, boys.

Is that the outro now? You going to say bye?