Growing Daniel: Tech industry needs moral discernment — gambling apps and cheating tools aren't good quests

would encourage them to not make that decision. Well, the good news is that it does feel like Cle has pivoted to just B2B SAS I guess. So maybe maybe it's total victory victory for for honest sass. Uh I have one more I have one more steelman that I Daniel helmet. I should get the helmet out. Although I don't know.

Can you see us or is or can I can see you right now. Okay, good. So, John's going to throw on the the helmet. The helmet for the second helmet is the steel second steelman. Uh I was really I was really hoping it'd be a crusader helmet. Yeah.

So, this is the steelman helmet, which is which is for when you're steel manning a point. Um and so it's very hard to wear, but um as it should be. Yes. Uh heavy is the head that wears the steelman helmet.

So the second steel man is uh is while I agree with you that you should not mock the pope, you should not try and dunk on the pope. It's kind of rude. I I would say that potentially it is okay to uh critique the pope for uh trying to set regulatory frameworks around business.

And I would cite the the Wall Street Journal's postmortem uh like you obituary on the previous pope and kind of look back on some of the stuff that the pope had done that was uh maybe leaning too heavily into some of the environmentalist trends and maybe caused too much of a shift that actually sort of hurt the quality of life in Europe and America and uh and it was not it it wound up being incomp compatible with human flourishing.

And so the pope is maybe not always correct. And so there does need to be some level of dialogue between even Catholics and the Pope. John, did you just say the Pope isn't always correct? I'm saying I have the Steelman Hamlet on for a reason. Yeah, of course you could say that.

Of course that's a totally You don't even have to wear the helmet. It's a totally reasonable take. Of course, the pope's going to say things that are incorrect and especially I think on uh temporal issues on on political issues. Um the uh the Pope does not just raise supreme. We can't disagree with them.

Um I do I do think that if the pope makes a very like you know anodine and earnest post about how we should care about the things that we're building and the effect it has on people, uh then you shouldn't mock them. Yes.

I think I especially especially I mean if you're some you know lobby that's whatever but if if you're Mark and come on man. Um so I guess seeing it from him I was like that bothered me but no absolutely uh obviously I disagree uh with you know probably many things the pope believes on on political issues. Sure.

Uh we do have a question from the chat. Why is the pope above being mocked? I we touched on this but is it just is it just purely respect? Do you think all people should avoid mocking the pope or specifically Catholics, specifically religious people, specifically Americans? Is there any more nuance to who gets to mock?

It sounds like lobies maybe could mock the Pope if they're, you know, some sort of a non silly young growing Daniel. Young growing there's a young growing the future growing Daniel. Would would you have mocked the pope two years ago? Probably.

Um I think I think my my view is just is not to interrupt but I'm guessing you agree just like it it should be okay to expect like the technology industry broadly has so much power. It impacts our lives in so many different ways that people within the industry should criticize it.

People outside the industry should criticize it. We should we should expect that people understand the weight of their work even if it's not in defense tech or national security related etc.

Like the work impacts our lives and it impacts people that are outside the industry and to basically I don't even know I mean part part of this is like this was such a new meme format I was trying to clock like okay what does he actually mean by this? This is like this is like a he was so bad at applying it.

Did you watch the full interview, the GQ Sydney Sweeney interview?

It was very interesting because it was an interview for uh an event that GQ holds that's called men of the year and it and and it was an interview between two women and so I I I I think that they have like genericized the term but they stuck with giving an award for men of the year and then they give it to whoever or something something like it was very confusing branding for me.

Can't say man.

But then uh but then also like there was a very weird uh it felt like a little bit of a roar shock test actually watching the interview because when I actually went and watched the YouTube video, it feels like they're having a ton of fun with each other for like 10 minutes and then they do get into that one question that's kind of sharp sharply worded and she kind of dismisses and says like look I'm not Why would you even try to understand the source material, John?

It's just a meme. I I I get it. I don't know. No, that that was that was part of my like uh you know Mark Mark applied it in a bunch of different ways in a very short period of time, right? So it's he was he was a little trigger happy with it. I don't know. Oh well.

I think I think Mark got excited that he thought there was a new image that you could quote tweet someone with and it would just own them every time. and he wanted to go apply that in as many places as possible before the cool points ran out because of people like Mark applying it and and running down the cool clock.

So, he wanted to get as many of these out as possible and that's what he was trying to do and I don't think he understood the source material. Um, but he paid the price. Yeah, it was. It was definitely Anybody out there that was thinking about mocking the pope, I think, is gonna is going to at least think twice.

Yeah, the pope is like level 9,000. Have you been Have you been leveraging that prayer? We We covered We covered the prayer uh I I forget which church it's in exactly, but the prayer Star of the Sea. Yeah. Yeah. Have you leveraged that at all? Oh, I leverage that every week. Absolutely.

That seems like some some serious alpha that that should have become the current thing. There should have been lines at the door. It's insane that it's available uh for a 50 cent candle. Uh you can go and uh pray for St.

Carlo to intercede for you who is in heaven by the way hanging out with God and he will intercede on your behalf for your technical problems. Incredible. Incredible. Star of the Sea Parish, San Francisco, everyone. I could see VCs, you know, actually putting that in term sheets going forward. You need to take 50 cents.

Who's the patron state of of capital allocation if it's like I think I'm going into a down round. I think my I think my portfolio is about to tank. I need to pray. What do you think? What do you think tech is getting right right now? Anything? Oh, yeah. Uh oh. I think we're in a way better place. So, I don't know.

I came out here in 2018. Uh from then till 21 uh most of tech Twitter was crypto Twitter and that sucked. Um and so now we're actually building tools that are useful. Many AI tools are actually legitimately useful which is a radical change from when I was out here in those three four years.

Um so I think a lot of things are going really well in tech right now. Um, I think that uh AI will continue to creep into every crevice of uh our capital structures and our processes throughout society. Um, I think that's awesome. I think it's going to save people a bunch of time.

It's going to make people's lives much better. Um, so yeah. Uh, I think tech's doing really great overall right now. Why do you think there's so much darkness on the timeline? John and I were talking this morning. It feels like more more infighting than ever. Close.

It feels like it es and flows, but right now Yeah, it feels like there's a lot of infighting right now. Infighting like what? I mean, the you and Mark going at it was pretty much the the pinnacle of infighting, but it does feel like there's just generally been like a little bit more spices.

And from my perspective, it feels like it's because there are actually questions about like like is the is are we in a bubble? Is this about to pop? people are getting like sort of defensive like oh like maybe I shouldn't be uh e even if you're not like like oh I I I have my entire net worth in this one thing.

Uh there's even just like I don't want to look stupid for being overly promoting something that's about to sell off by 20% or 50% or something like that. And so it just feels like people are in a little bit more of a defensive posture online.

And I was wondering I don't know do you feel that or do or do you not feel that? I don't feel that.

The only thing that I feel is weird lately and it's in San Francisco and in tech is that uh it we attracted a lot of like kind of grifty signaly people and um there's like people messaging me about how to like you know establish their image in San Francisco and stuff. I'm like what are you talking about?

I'm like what are you doing? Like literally like if you like building things then come find some guys or whatever. come find some people that like building and talk to them and and if you vibe then you can work on something, right? Like I don't know. It's how it always was.

And so there's a lot of people that are like now moving in and trying to like, you know, get their head shots done like they're moving to LA and you don't have to do that. You don't have to do that, man. Yeah. Yeah.

I said earlier I think it won't be the top until you have founders doing pitching at demo day and chromearts and Rick Owens. When that happens, it's over. Sell sell everything. Uh I hope the top comes before the end. What is uh what is the correct way to launch a new startup today?

Is it a is it a is it a 90 second vibr? I feel like a lot of stuff played out, but like is there anything that you think is like actually the correct way to do it? Um I think first you should have a Twitter account with 175,000 followers. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Step for sure. post until you do that. Yeah, post constantly.

No, I uh I don't know. It's different for everyone. Like that's the thing is like I don't know. I always hate like startup advice because it's like literally everything is different. Like literally if it were automatable then it would be uh and so it's like what is your situation? Like I don't know.

Um but you got to figure out the way in which you're weird, you know, and uh and work on that. That's usually your uh your comparative advantage. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Just just the advice is like avoid the templates basically. Do you get any inbound do you get any inbound customer interest?

Like do any any any uh anybody ever put it together? The least monetized account with $179,000. I got one one customer shocking to me. Let's ring the we go. Hell yeah. customer from X. Congratulations on your one customer. I mean, that's probably it's great. It's one more than I thought I would get.

I uh we won't talk about my industry here, but I definitely work in an industry that is um a Twitter industry. Yeah. Um and so, uh I never expect I really should have built DevTools or something. I should have done something wrong. Um but, uh yeah, so my uh Twitter is not really uh related to my real life at all.

Um, but yeah, we did get one out of it. I think uh I I think at some point you could uh just just all the people asking you for advice uh you know on personal branding. Just say fine, I made I made a course. It's $10,000. I I the $10,000 course. The $10,000 course. It's effectively non-dilutive funding for the company.

Yeah, you can do it as a joke. I don't think that would be good for I don't think it would be good for the world. That's true. Wouldn't actually make it good. And I feel like I'm just ripping people off and I don't want moral discernment strikes again.

I am I am the most I am the least probably except no except Rune uh the least uh under monetized uh person on Twitter which is pretty amazing. I see people with 20,000 working hard so inspiring brother get out there. Um I will say we have an announcement uh from my real life.

Uh the council has met and we've decided We are hiring an engineer. Wow. Congratulations. So, uh, DM growing go on X the it's the everything app in case you forget which which app X is. Go and find growing Daniel and you can send him uh your uh LinkedIn or your uh your resume.

Um, if you want to live in San Francisco and you can pass an FBI background check, both those things have to happen. and you are a good engineer. Uh then you can come work with growing data. Every everyon poster was just qualified. It is never you are the most doxable person in the world.

Thank you for taking the time to come on. No, we will we protect this. We will protect we protected. We protected. Thank you guys so much. Very exciting role. Uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna message some people and say, "Hey, go go go go go join the moral discernment company of San Francisco. " I respect it on so much.

Like I don't even save like full names in my phone or anything. The first time the first time growing Daniel sends me his email for some reason. Uh, it's just his full full name in his email. Like just first name, middle name, last name. Like dude, you just If I could do it again, if I could do it again.

Thank you guys so much for having me. Great to see you. Great to see you. Great to talk to you. I love love love watching you build and and have fun on the internet and you know how to do it. We both we both come a long way. I think we uh we met up at very had a very LA meeting many years ago. Got together at Arowan.

There you go. I don't remember what we got but uh but uh it's been it's been fun uh to watch you you build and uh entertain us all. So I think fantastic. See you guys. See you. Goodbye. Let me tell you about some honest B2B software. Adio customer relationship magic.

Adio is the AI native CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level. You can get started for free. We have JD Ross from with coverage in the Restream of Openor. Co-founder of Open Door. We're back with Open Door Week here. How you doing, JD? Good to see you. All right, guys. What's happening?

Oh, wow. I love the effect. Sometimes it's uh it's a little bit of a jump scare getting you into the Ultra Dome from the Reream waiting room. You can see you're on display here. Uh, you got some news for us. What's What's up? I'd love to ring the gong. First, why don't you introduce yourself?

Why don't you give us a little bit of background? He says he likes one sound effects. Matt sound effect. You got an America. You got the bald eagle. Let's hit the bald eagle. Let's have some bald eagle. I'm in Texas. He's in Texas. There we go. How you doing? What are you working on these days? Yeah.

I I mean, I'm working on honest B2B software. I'm working on extremely honest software. Fantastic.

I I think uh you know you had Cass on yesterday by the way talking about the importance of having like a leader the right leader in a business you know he's he's really amazing um that is a hard business like open door is I think we like we had a core value called we eat basis points for breakfast and like a basis point is a 100th of a percent and so you were like fighting for each edge of a percent to cut off the cost to make the business good back in the day um he's obviously a better operator than I Uh, so I'm working in the opposite business now.

It's an insurance business where you have like 99% retention and 99% gross margins. Wow. Um, because I'm I'm lazy and I don't want to fight anymore. Uh, and it's all coverage.

And basically the background was a couple years ago, you know, I was talking to my my buddy Max who's my co-founder and I was like, look, in every company I've started or been in, we've had great like legal counsel. I've liked my tax council. My insurance guy and everyone else I know's insurance guy is kind of an idiot.

Like they don't really know what we do. They don't really know what is for our business. Yeah. And so we're like, we could probably do this better. Um let's just mess around for a bit and see what we can make happen. And it's now two years later.

We have uh well over 500 clients, 10 million revenue, profitable the whole way. There we go. That's great. what uh profitability not not not something you see we're going to hit the gong for profitability. Um real quick before we dive more into coverage I wanted to ask you about uh Open Door's new feature.

Uh Cass was talking about uh you know introducing uh returns to uh home buying. Uh I I think you could make the case that it would just increase overall sales velocity if people knew like hey I can buy this and if I don't like it I can return it.

But when you talk about eating basis points for breakfast like you know returns end up being like a huge like line item or expense for a lot of companies that sell uh physical goods. Um but what's your take?

My my view is you always want to have the right incentives in a business and returns is a good incentive in a business. Like if you know that you can be returned, you are going to keep your quality bar high. You're going to make sure that you are selling with integrity, that there's a true value in the product.

And if you can't return it, you can sell it. You're going to sell as cheap as you possibly can. This is lemon law. Lemon law in cars, right? It's like you you don't want to sell lemons because you you would be forced to buy the car back if there is a problem with it. Exactly. And the same thing for a house.

Right now, everyone's biggest fear when buying a house is, did I buy a lemon? Because it's every dollar I probably have. It's, you know, it's by like 8x the largest purchase I'm going to make in my life versus like a car or anything afterwards. Uh it's scary and you only do it a few times in your life.

And you're kind of trusting this person you met probably a month ago to as your adviser who's very incentivized to get the deal done. And so you want to be able to have that confidence point. And if you're like, "Hey, this is going to affect the bottom line. " Well, only if you're selling bad product.

Sell the right place. I had a friend who bought a house who had gets into it and like a year in discovers that like it has a bad foundation and I was like that sounds like a catastrophic loss of that house. Like of the house you want to have a bad issue. Exactly.

It's like if if the if the if the chimney on the top protects Okay. Just pick up the whole house, we'll fix a foundation. Fixing the roof feels way easier than the than the foundation. Yeah. Just just get under there. Yeah. Uh so so what what are what what are your clients actually looking for on the insurance side?

Uh I mean we have a variety of insuranceances here. Is it all one deal? Like uh does it get crazier as the as the companies get bigger and bigger and bigger?

um how we had we had an experience getting insurance for uh TVPN that I couldn't tell you how many times they would come back for a new signature and I was like I've signed I've signed for this insurance like six times now it's like oh there's another doc you missed you you didn't do this one doc and I'm like oh well didn't know this doc was coming in one dock put all the docs in one dock you didn't know about this doc or the last one or the last one or the last one I got to keep signing uh So yeah.

So I I think the way first of all the the hardest part of our business by far is just getting the first call because it's something no one wants to care about. Unless you're talking about our our insurance clients in construction where it's a huge deal for them. Uh most clients it's just like just get the first call.

Once we have that they're like oh wait this is much much better. It's like ramp before you know versus any expense management system you had in the past. No one was thinking about changing out the expense management system.

But then once you have a much better risk management system in our case now your entire life as sort of a CFO or you know GC gets a lot easier because this whole thing that you know is very important and are very afraid of but don't understand is taken care of.

And so our view is we replace the traditional broker with a tech platform. uh we pair them with an industry expert who's basically your fractional risk manager.

And instead of commissions, we try to align the incentives with a fee so that our job is to save them money instead of making them spend more money year-over-year. And those three things, the platform, the plan, and the team driving savings has generally worked really well.

And the types of insurance depends on who we're talking to, right? like for a restaurant and or a manufacturing company or like a next generation defense manufacturer, it's workers compensation. Typically, there's contractual risk.

Um, if you're talking about fintech, it's like cyber insurance and errors and omissions and things like that. Uh, for tech company, it's usually DNO and then benefits. And so, our job is just like build a point solution at each stage of this. Software has gotten so much easier to build than years ago, right?

AI makes it so you can just you can launch new features when you have the right foundation. It's not cracked and you don't have to return it a few years later. Uh when you have the right foundation as a business, you can build these things much easier now than you could in the past.

And our clients really like they get a lot of value from that. Yeah. Uh have you thought about buying existing insurance agencies? I've heard I've