Lindy CEO Flo Crivello on building a remote-first AI startup with integrity at its core

out, which is the question is can he a pathological liar that's just going to continue to lie and scam? Yes. And is redemption possible? Yes. Uh, is redemption possible? So, let's go to Flo and get his take. How you doing? Good to have you back on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. No, redemption isn't possible.

When people show you who they are, believe them. Uh, no, there's plenty of very honest people like what are the odds that someone who's been lying compulsively and being been confronted about it for three years, like two or three years.

And like look, it's it's a special kind of person too who can do this thing to people who trust them, right? That you have a relationship with an employer, you know, and and I my understanding is that he basically has been averaging like getting fired once a month for the last three years.

Like it's a kind of person who can do that. So he could have learned his lesson like two years, three years ago. Yes. Like the first time he was called out and and and totally sure, totally. I I wasn't I wasn't tuning in. I did I didn't hear what he said. Yeah.

to to me the to me the argument of of sounds sounds like he has some situation that's bad but it's not a justification to go steal money from a bunch of Silicon Valley startups for years and years and years and years and use them as a piggy bank to solve his own problem.

So really quickly uh how long did he work with you? Two weeks. Two weeks. And what was the result of that? I mean I imagine you paid him for those two weeks of work. Did you get any good results? Uh I am literally out of a meeting like an hour ago. Well, the engineer described his impact as negative. Negative. Okay.

Well, because we we had to we had to on board him. Yeah. You had to onboard him. Yeah. Yeah. It's wasted our time and money. Has he apologized to you? Not yet. Okay. He said he would apologize to everyone else. He would go on an apology tour. We'll see if that actually pans out. Yeah.

My my big my big question is is somebody like this, you could have them working in your office as a full-time employee and they would probably still there's a good chance they would still keep doing this thing with people on LinkedIn that didn't see the whole Soha uh Soh Gate. We never we never compromise on ethics.

Like that's just a thing I don't [ __ ] with. Uh he's gonna apologize. Is he gonna give the money back? Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know because because stock is cheap. Yeah, that's a higher bar. If he wants to make a statement, that's what he would do 100%. Yeah, makes sense.

How do you prevent this in the future? How does Silicon Valley prevent this in the future? Obviously, the valley is built on trust. This is a violation of trust. There's been discussions about like maybe we need a Reddit for are we dating the same man? Are we employing the same software engineer?

Uh maybe we need an AI tool to you know check the GitHub commits and see that oh they're coming in at the same time every I was wondering if this could be done at the H level this employee has accepted why are they in two instances of of rippling that doesn't make any sense uh yeah how how are we solving this I I don't want to over rotate on it I think a large part of what makes Silicon Valley tick is its culture of of trust uh you know there's this whole game theory around like hawks and moves, you know, and it's it it turns out there is no stable equilibrium.

You're like in a constant state of of of shifting because if if everyone's a dove, then the the returns of being a hawk are very high. And vice versa, if everyone's a hawk, then you can have this like clicks of doves that that start emerging.

So I I'm really careful not to tip Silicon Valley towards this attractor state of like the hawk and like a lot of industries end up in this state of like low trust and I really don't want to do that. Like look, you're going to get screwed over ever so often. We had a good laugh. You know, the memes were amazing.

Like I Yeah, I hope I hope your your viral posts at least drove a bunch of new signups and maybe maybe he paid back a little bit by some customer I mean I I I completely agree like yes the handshake deal protocol is built on trust. Do some VCs violate it? Yes, every once in a while a team a term sheet falls through.

uh it's not the best thing that ever happens, but the alternative is so much overhead on everyone that it's probably worth taking the risk of, yeah, occasionally the handshake deal is going to fall through.

You're going to get screwed over every so often and it's not worth over privating on it and like looking over your shoulder your entire life. So, it sounds like he is he he's announced that he's taken a new role as a founding engineer at a single startup. He says he's not going to work at multiple companies.

It seems like the jig, even if he even if he is a pathological liar and continues to lie, like people like his his SEO is terrible now. Like it will forever like be like very easy when you go to Google search for the person that you're hiring. He's like, "Oh, that's a different Sohan Periq.

There's a lot of there's a lot of people change his name and it's going to be really complicated for him to get away with this longer. " My question is like if uh we were we were kind of saying like the Sohare dev shop makes much more sense here. Um does that make sense to you?

Like if he was saying, "Hey, I've been working at all these different startups. Um I'm starting a developer shop and yes, you can hire me, but I'm a contractor. " Uh why why are dev shops bad for startups? Why would this not work for him?

Um, I actually think for him the real move is to start a course on how to crack coding interviews because he's really good and he's incredible. He's he's actually incredible, right? So, he can actually make lemonade here like he should do that and he can make a lot of money.

It's very highly was that in the cold email strategy was like he had a very dialed in cold email approach where he would be, you know, he'd be like say something nice and really clearly he researched the company, the product I love building.

The funny thing is in his message he said he said I'm pissed and I it's like about what what you are you pissed you're pissed you got busted and he kind of gave himself he was saying like oh yeah like I I'm going to put you know there there's going to be a great reversal here and he came on and was likeough the mainstream narrative is basically correct about me but maybe I'm sorry the the redemption of being like I'm going to prove everyone wrong by working at one company it's like you don't get you don't get you don't you don't get Yeah.

Yeah. We don't give a that's like a second the fourth place trophy. You worked at one company. That's funny. Um Yeah. I mean look, he's he's not sorry. He just got cut. Like is that's it. It's really simple. Um and and why do dev shops not work for startups?

I mean there's like I'm a nerd when it comes to like the the theory of the film because of my experience at Uber and so forth. There's a book that's called Managerial Dilemas that explains why dev shops don't work. Okay. It's it's fascinating. Yeah. But can you unpack it a little bit more?

Because Uber is interesting because didn't wasn't the very first version of Uber done by a dev shop and wasn't that part of the early early Uber lore that like the codebase was written in Spanish and so everyone at Uber had like the Spanish to English dictionary there which is hilarious because I'm pretty sure Google Translate existed at the time but they still had the dictionary for some reason.

It's like it's like amazing lore regardless of how real it is. Yeah, I think people add a little bit to it. This is the first time I hear about it. Uh but you know, like next time I hear about it, there's going to be a guy with like a sombrero in the office. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Travis was was in Tijana pulling random devs off the street. Yeah. They really really amp it up. The apocryphalenness of the story just needs to grow and grow and grow. It's a tall tale at this point.

The the reason why dev shops don't work is because there's like a complicated there's a complicated game theoretic argument which goes basically the reason why you employ people is because they know things you don't know.

And so there is a an information asymmetry which always makes it possible for someone to cheat because they can basically [ __ ] their like and and you see it with engineering all the time like ah this is so complicated you thought it'd be a day but actually it's going to be a month and you have no clue you have no way to verify and this is ineffable like the reason you hire them is because there is this information symmetry gap because otherwise might as well just do it yourself.

Um and so um basically it is in a way it is always possible to cheat which is why we are not [ __ ] around and hiring people who do cheat because there is no way you can always prevent them from cheating. If he doesn't cheat by doing this he'll cheat by doing something else. So there is always a way to cheat.

So you could say that to some extent not cheating is irrational. You can't cheat. You can get away with it. He's made millions. He's made so much money, right? Like you can cheat. You can get away with it. And so in a way you've got to solve for the equation where it's like I can't cheat. I can make a lot of money.

I can get away with it. Nothing is ever going to happen to me, but I'm not going to do it because of X. And you have to solve for X. That's your job as a founder. Like why would you act irrationally? And the way you do that thankfully um is you we have that that that bit that you can flip in our brains as a humans.

who have these uh tribal pro-social tendencies uh that are like I don't want to cheat because I like these people or because I'm I'm b into the mission which is why they always say every startup is like a religion like the mission culture really matter and the camaraderie really matter as a startup and that's what you lose when you have dev shops.

Well, yeah, that the to to be even more specific, the dev shop gives you a scope. They say, "It's gonna take me xyz time to do roughly this. " Or maybe they're on a retainer. And then if they come back to you the next day and they say, "Well, actually, it's going to take more time and it's going to be more money.

" Well, an employee is going to say, "Well, it's going to take more time maybe, but I'm not going to necessarily charge you astronomically more, right? I'm just a salaried team member. " And because they have that equity compensation as well, they're bought and and and hopefully bought into the mission.

It ends up working out. Um, thank you for jumping on. Give us the update on Lindy. Uh, I know you guys move quickly. It's been a couple months maybe. Uh, what's the latest? Uh, it's going well. We are currently grinding. Uh, to my point about dev shops, like we were at the office last night until like 10 p. m.

Like you don't get that from a dev shop. So, we're currently grinding. Uh, we're growing fast. We are making a big launch uh on August 4th. You got to come back on the show then. We've got some really really exciting stuff coming around. I'm I I couldn't be more excited. Amazing. Incredible.

Uh last last question on So, uh what should he do? What what should he do next? He should totally start a course and he should raise around Z. Start a course. Okay. We'll see. Maybe maybe he'll Yeah, that's a laugh track. Yeah, we've got we've got laugh tracks around here.

Um but yeah, it is it is the part of why the whole thing was so controversial is you like the average new CS grad, even from elite universities, is not having the easiest time in the job market. So, it's such it's such a you know, it's got to be disappointing for them.

But but clearly So has cracked the the entire flow, the interview code. Yeah. So does it really well. He's figured it out. So, he should he should monetize that. It is it is a monetizable skill. Interesting. Well, thanks for hopping on. This is fantastic. Good to get the other side. Thanks everyone. Enjoy the talk.

Cheers. Bye. Uh very interesting. Very interesting takeaway. Yeah, I love it. Uh anyone anything else we need to talk to you uh before the 4th of July? I hope you have a great Fourth of July everyone. Uh leave us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify and we will see you on Monday. Wild show. Wild all over the place.

It had range. A lot of fun though. Uh lot of fun. Nailed the current thing. Uh we will talk to you soon. Have a good an amazing Independence Day. We'll see you Monday. Bye.