November 5, 2024 • 41 mins
Zach Yadegari joins the show to discuss his journey from self-taught coder to successful entrepreneur. He shares how he sold his first company, Totally Science, for $100k, his new venture, Cal AI, and the tactics they've used to scale to seven-figures per month in revenue. Balancing education with entrepreneurship, he emphasizes bootstrapping and rapid idea validation. He reflects on the challenges and costs of being a young founder, learning from failures, and understanding distribution.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
We take a pretty novel approach to influencermarketing.
We've been the fastest growing app in thehealth and fitness section of the App Store,
going from 0 to the 9th rated in 6 months.
This guy is Zach Yedegari.
He makes $1,000,000 a month at just 17 yearsold.
And last month, I had him at our studio andasked me to teach me everything he knows about
(00:20):
building viral companies and investing.
Zach, thanks for joining.
We're gonna delve really deep into the companyyou're building today, which is the one we're
here to talk about, Cal AI.
That company is generating, I think, now over a$1,000,000 in in monthly revenue.
But before we do, I think early context is isreally important here.
One of the companies you started in 2022 wasthis company called Totally Science.
(00:42):
So tell me more about that business.
Give me the full context and picture.
What was going on behind the scenes, and andhow did that business end up, getting acquired
for 6 figures?
So to paint the picture, this was right afterquarantine.
People were returning to schools.
Schools gave Chromebooks out to every studentto reduce contact.
(01:02):
Students obviously abuse this.
They started playing games during class.
However, I noticed that students would havemultiple tabs open.
They would have, like, 5 tabs, a different gameon each tab because all of these unblocked
games would be on these obscure websites andscattered all across the Internet.
So I saw the opportunity to aggregate all ofthese games into one site.
(01:25):
I called it Totally Science.
I built that in about a week after identifyingthe opportunity, shared it to a few friends in
my school.
It very quickly spread to everyone.
That made me realize, wow, this has somethingin the app space we call k factor growth.
So, basically, just word-of-mouth.
It spreads after one person sees it.
(01:46):
They will share it to 1 or more people, whichessentially leads to very quick growth.
So then I posted a video on TikTok, which got100,000 views.
The next video got 1,000,000 views, and veryquickly it started spreading all across the
country to different schools.
1 or 2 people per school would pick it up, thenit would quickly spread throughout the rest of
(02:09):
the school.
When you were building these apps, you'rebuilding them at a very young age.
I know when I first started to learn how tocode, I was, like, at that age, I was learning
how to code, like, some sort of flappy birdgame or something very basic and simplistic.
How did you learn how to code these morecomplicated like websites and games and build
those out at such a young age?
YouTube.
(02:30):
That's the answer.
I just binge watched YouTube videos all day.
And what were some of the processes that youwould do?
Is it just watching the videos and then youtake notes and and start practicing?
Or or, like, walk me through that process.
So I really got started in Unity, which isprogrammed in c sharp, or you program on the
game platform Unity with c sharp.
(02:51):
And there were a few channels in particular Iwould watch, one of which was Brackeys, which
had game tutorials.
And I would just watch his videos all day.
It was entertaining to me to watch him code andsimilar channels.
I didn't even follow along with the videos, butjust purely consuming so much content every
day.
I eventually started picking things up andlearned to implement the same type of game
(03:16):
mechanics myself.
And it started out with a lot of word-of-mouth.
Why did you call it Totally Science?
It seems like a interesting name to start thecompany.
Yeah.
So Totally Science was the name to bypass theschool blocking filters.
If I named it something like GamesHub, thatwould have been picked up and blocked
(03:36):
immediately.
So doing this, it was categorized aseducational.
Schools didn't detect it.
We also added a button on the keyboard.
If you hit the tilde key, it wouldautomatically redirect you from our website to
Google Classroom.
So if teachers were walking by, you couldquickly switch tabs.
And these small things really helped it stayunblocked in the classroom.
(04:01):
How did it feel when, I guess, you coded outthis website?
You're sitting in class.
Maybe there's, like, 20 people in theclassroom, and then you might see somebody else
who was a classmate on your site.
How did that feel?
And so that's really when I realized the magicmoment of why I love to do what I do.
Seeing someone else use something and enjoywhat I made, it's such a rewarding feeling, and
(04:25):
it inspires me to work harder every day.
I will go back though to the question about thegames that were made.
And I'll say most of the games on Totally Signswere not my own games.
We actually took all of these games from othersites and had these weird methods to scrape the
(04:46):
games, scrape the data, throw them on our site,which the legality of it all is questionable.
But I was a pretty young kid, and it all workedout.
Alright.
So you're growing out this, website.
You eventually get, 5,000,000 users prettyquickly.
How did it eventually get acquired?
(05:06):
Yep.
So after 2 years, I had so many new ideas ofwhat we could improve upon, what we could
build, how we could take this site to the nextlevel.
Cool Math Games.
That was the website that had been popularizeda decade before ours.
That was the go to unblocked games website.
Everyone knew about it.
(05:26):
I wanted to beat them.
I had gotten in contact with the CEO and spoketo him.
I knew what numbers they were doing, and Ididn't think it was too far off.
That in a few years, we would be able to beatthem.
So that was my mission.
That was my goal.
And in order to pursue this, or at around thesame time I was pursuing this, I was also
(05:47):
getting more closely into the startup world.
So I started networking with differentfounders.
There was this Y Combinator co founder matchingplatform that I would be reaching out to people
on.
And I hopped on this call with this one guy.
He was telling me he built this chat app.
It was kind of like Telegram.
It had a few 1,000,000 users and was making hima few $1,000 a month.
(06:10):
It's like, wow, that's really cool.
It sounds just like Totally Science's story.
Told me he found it in high school too.
So, wow, that's just like my story.
And then he told me his age.
This guy was 25 and that's all he had done.
He didn't go to college because he pursued thestream.
However, the website or his app had stagnated.
It did not go anywhere, and that scared me.
(06:32):
I did not wanna be like this guy not going tocollege and being a one hit wonder.
This kid who had so much potential in highschool who didn't go anywhere.
So I decided to burn the boats.
I didn't want to fall into the same pit.
I let go of that dream to beat cool math games,and I decided to look for the next product to
(06:59):
build.
That led me to reading a bunch of TechCruncharticles, and I saw Nikita Bier's app Gas,
which was just a rebrand of a previous app hebuilt, TBH.
I thought this was crazy.
For those who don't know, he built the same apptwice essentially, sold both of them for
(07:20):
1,000,000 of dollars, and this just made crazynews.
The fact that the same exact app just built ittwice.
And so I was inspired by that.
I wanted to get into the consumer app space.
I did more research.
I started reaching out to people on x, and Igot started building my first apps.
(07:40):
You want to be cool math games.
Why did you have such this ambition and driveto take on, like, a company of that size at
such a young age?
What are you running towards?
It really did feel like I was just up againstthis behemoth of a company when I was first
getting started.
However, actually connecting with the CEO on aphone call made me realize I'm not so different
(08:04):
than that company.
At the end of the day, they are just people,and people can be beat.
Before that, it seemed like they were this thisbeing that was this big company, no face
attached to it.
But now seeing something tangible, I realizedhow achievable the vision was.
(08:25):
I will say when I've sat down through thepodcast with either CEOs or executives or even
founders of massive companies, I used toglamorize it a lot more, the brand and and what
they've built.
And then I sit down with them, and then Irealize, yeah, you're right.
They're just people.
And I think if you put in enough time, work,and research, basically, anyone could figure
(08:47):
that out.
What was the acquisition process like?
How did, how did that go, and how did younegotiate a 6 figure deal that young?
When I decided to abandon ship, sell, and moveon to
the next thing, I listed the website onflippa.com and waited a few months.
I got a few offers weren't ones I liked.
(09:07):
Finally, I got a good offer or at leastsomething closer to what I was looking for.
It was probably probably just under $100,000,and then I sent him something.
I was doing some quick negotiations on text.
To be honest, I just wanted to sell quicklybecause I was so discouraged by the person I
(09:31):
spoke to on the phone.
So didn't even do as much negotiating as Iprobably should have, but I'm happy with what
happened.
I sent him a text saying, like, okay.
If we just add 10 k to this, we close rightnow.
After the sale, I sold off some of the extradomains that we had.
It landed at just about $100,000.
(09:52):
What do you think that tells you about theimportance of speed in in business deals and
business negotiations?
I really like speed in business.
That's honestly the core value that I alwayshold in mind for everything I'm doing.
I think moving quickly I mean, if I hadn'tmoved fast, I wouldn't have accomplished
anything that I've done today.
(10:14):
People like to wait for things.
People around me wanted to get into coding.
They always ask me, how did you start?
I just tell them, YouTube.
You could go watch YouTube right now and learn.
They tell me, well, okay.
I'll wait till I take a class in college on howto code.
And I think the fact that you don't have a fireunder you that is forcing you to move and move
(10:36):
quickly, that you're not moving with speed, youwill never make it everything that we do, like,
totally science.
The first version, we got up in a week.
There were other sites that came after us.
Maybe they had the same idea before, but we'respending a month to build it.
I don't know.
All I know is we were one of the first websitesthat got up.
Everything today in the consumer space, it is avery competitive landscape.
(11:01):
And if you don't move with speed, someone willbeat you.
I will say I have never met a founder that hasbeen successful that doesn't operate with
speed.
Like, even even 10, 20 years later, like, forexample, with Mark Cuban after he sold
broadcast.com, to Yahoo, even today, he stillresponds to emails super quickly.
(11:22):
I remember I sent him an email a year agoasking him to come on the show.
Within 30 to 40 minutes, he just replies, yes,let's do it.
I was like, okay, that's how you operate.
Instead of taking a ton of time to makedecisions and and figure out, like, oh, okay,
should I really do this?
Eliminate the mental bandwidth and just takeaction is one of the things I've learned.
(11:43):
I wanna transition here a little bit to thebusiness you're running today.
What is that app and and how does it work?
Kallai is an app where you take a picture ofyour food and it will estimate the calories,
proteins, carbs, and fat content of the meal.
How did you come up with the idea for for
the app?
So I was always pretty skinny growing up, and Istarted getting into working out a couple years
(12:09):
ago.
I wanted to build muscle, which requiresgaining weight, and so I was tracking my
calories with MyFitnessPal to bulk.
After 3 days, I quit.
Typing in every meal I ate into this app,weighing my food on a scale was not something I
was willing to do, and I knew there had to bean easier solution.
(12:32):
The idea was there for Cal AI at least a yearbefore it was possible.
But then finally, with AI models becoming soadvanced, they were finally to the point where
Cal AI was an idea that was feasible.
How have you been able to make that imagescanning recognition that accurate to the to
(12:55):
the point that you have so far?
There has been a lot of trial and error, a lotof experimentation, and we've landed on a
system that utilizes multiple different models.
I can't go too deep because there aredefinitely competitors listening to this right
now.
However, the pipeline that we go down willessentially gather as much context of the food
(13:19):
before passing into a final model to make theirestimate.
And from our testing, we yield about 90%accuracy if the image is taken at a natural
angle, and that beats the FDA's approved marginof error for nutrition labels.
The app that you have, you now do a 1,000,000 amonth.
(13:41):
In less than a 100 days, you grew your app to$300,000 a month in revenue.
How did you do that?
We take a pretty novel approach to influencermarketing.
We've been the fastest growing app in thehealth and fitness section of the App Store,
going from 0 to the 9th rated in 6 months.
It's really just the way that we work withinfluencers and how we have scaled those
(14:07):
systems.
Many people are able to achieve rapid growth inthe short term with influencers, but then they
can't figure out how to make it sustainable andscalable.
Have you been able to make it sustainable andscalable?
We have a few systems in place with influencermarketing.
I think there are many nuances that go into it.
However, to take it from the top, it reallystarts out being very scrappy.
(14:31):
It's a numbers game.
You have to do a lot of outreach in thebeginning.
You reply to 100 influencers.
Maybe if you get lucky, one will reply to you.
After you do it long enough, you'll startbuilding up your initial base of influencers,
and this will compound.
There's a network effect.
As you're working with more influencers, youhave credibility so that when you reach out to
other influencers, they're more likely torespond.
(14:52):
The influencers you have will refer will refermore influencers.
So you will be able to build up a big base.
But part of the way that this scales is bykeeping them on retainer with deal structures
that ensure profitability.
(15:12):
You essentially need to calculate what theaverage amount of views they get on a video and
then negotiate a CPM from those videos, whichyou need to predict.
The CPM is the cost per 1,000 views.
So you need to predict the cost per 1,000 viewsthat you will pay them assuming that they hit
(15:35):
their average view count in a video.
And then taking that number into account, youneed to ensure that your RPM, the revenue you
generate from those same 1,000 views, exceedsthe CPM.
This is pretty difficult because it's hard tomeasure the impact of an individual influencer
post.
There is no way to track where people arecoming from or if they have come from an
(16:00):
influencer post when you have multiple going onbecause you can't have the links within the
video live for people to click.
So that is actually something a problem we willbe tackling and helping people with, which we
could get into more later in this.
And how do you go about finding theseinfluencers that are success actually helpful
(16:23):
and successful to the growth and scaling of theapp?
For some apps, it's easier than others.
For Cal AI, it wasn't too hard to find healthand fitness influencers would work well for
health and fitness app.
For other apps, for example, a fashion app,finding influencers that will work well.
It may be trickier.
(16:43):
There are fashion influencers, but not as manyas there are health and fitness influencers.
So you have to be a little creative, and youcould find that creators that do get ready with
me content probably will convert pretty wellalso.
So it's a lot of testing.
Sometimes it's more obvious than others.
And you have 3 cofounders at Cal AI.
(17:03):
It's not just yourself.
Who are the cofounders, and and how did youmeet them?
It is Blake Anderson, Henry Langmach, and JakeCastillo.
Blake has founded UMAX and RIS GPT before CalAI.
While I was getting started in my app journey,I had reached out to a bunch of different app
(17:26):
founders.
He was one of them.
We hopped on a call.
And then a few months after that, we foundedCal AI together.
Before meeting Blake, Henry Langmack, he and Imet at a coding camp when we were 10 years old.
We stayed in touch.
He moved away.
And then we decided 1 summer, okay.
(17:48):
You know what?
Let's let's work on something together.
He's a much better programmer than I am, and Iwas always better at the business side.
So we decided if we team up, we could probablymake something happen here.
We built Grindclock together first.
This was last summer.
Grindclock was an app where someone like DavidGoggins can wake you up.
(18:11):
Any motivational speaker, you could select, andthey will wake you up by screaming at you,
whatever.
We built that.
It did okay.
Twenty k downloads in the 1st 14 days.
And then we built a few other apps followingthat.
Then, eventually, we teamed up also on Cal AI.
So that's Blake and Henry, how we all gotstarted together.
(18:32):
Did that app make money, or it's mainly justthe downloads?
So it did.
We were making and we still are making about$2,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
It we had just not figured out influencersystems or had not known how to scale them to
the point that we know today.
But I think the idea still has a lot ofpotential.
(18:54):
Given that you know how to scale them today, isthat something that you'd like to revisit?
We actually are revisiting it.
We're going to be launching an app calledlocked in in the next month.
That app will be a motivation app in whole.
So not just a motivational alarm clock, butalso motivational content that you could watch.
You're in
school now.
You're a high school student.
(19:14):
You have a nearly perfect GPA, which issomething I could not have done in high school
while also building out a business.
How have you been able to balance school butalso continue building out really successful
businesses?
So senior year, which is this year, is reallywhen things have started picking up with
(19:35):
business outside of school.
And this is the 1st year I'm prioritizingbusiness.
But prior years, I had been prioritizingschool.
Totally science was something where I wasbalancing better.
I would find the classes where I didn't need topay attention.
I would program during them, then I would,after getting my homework done, stay up late
coding.
(19:56):
This year, I've dropped a lot of classes thatare debatably important for life and for
getting into college.
And I prioritize the company over getting agood grade on a test.
Do you want to go to college?
It's a hard question.
I've thought about it a lot.
I've asked a lot of people, and my thoughtright now is I'm going to take a gap year.
(20:21):
If I get super depressed because my social lifesucks, then I'll probably go to college.
If things work out, if I'm able to find otheryoung entrepreneurs or even older people that I
could still relate to, then I think I'll stickit out and won't go to college.
I will say, I think if you have something thatyou're passionate about whether that be a
(20:42):
passion project, a business, whatever it mightbe, I think a gap year is something more people
should consider taking but not a lot of peopledo because of the external pressures whether
that be parents, friends put on you, as a highschool student.
But I definitely think it's something morepeople should explore.
You actually haven't raised any capital for thebusiness you're running today and most of the
(21:03):
businesses that you've ran.
Why so?
I feel like there's this misconception that tobuild a business to the scale that you have,
you have to raise, like, 1,000,000 of dollars,go out to Silicon Valley, get term sheets, but
you've built this all off the backs ofyourself.
Why so?
100%,
I think people definitely do feel that way,that they need capital in order to run a
(21:26):
business successfully.
And I think that takes away a lot of urgency.
If it's no longer your money that you'redealing with, then failure doesn't seem as
disastrous.
This is pretty much exclusively advice forconsumer.
I think you only need to raise capital if onlyat a certain scale, you will be able to
profitably run the company.
(21:48):
So that's something like Instagram, where onlyuntil you have millions of users can you serve
ads that generate enough revenue to sustaineverything.
For something like Cal AI, if it's not workingimmediately, it's probably never going to work.
And so you only need $1,000 to figure out ifthe idea is feasible.
(22:10):
I will say even when I started my company in inFebruary of this year, like you said, only
needed the $1,000 for, like, lawyer fees and tocreate up the LLC.
And then after that, I tried to hop on somesales calls with some founders to see if I
could sell what I was actually building, andsend a client within, within a week.
(22:30):
And it was like a small retainer at that time,much more than what we do now.
But it was like $2,500 and then I just usedthat money to then actually deliver the service
and made a profit from that.
So I think, yes, it's very different becauseit's more agency focused.
And I think with agencies, you can get paidupfront, whereas in other types of businesses,
you kind of have to build out the product firstand then see if it works.
(22:53):
But I do think you're right.
I think there are much easier ways to validateideas than going straight into raising capital.
Definitely.
A lot of people also they'll spend a yearbuilding something before validating, before
launching.
That's also something I strongly adviseagainst, and many other people say the same
thing because that could just be a yearcompletely wasted.
(23:15):
This goes back to speed.
You need to quickly get something out.
Once you get something out, then validate it.
It doesn't need to be good by any means.
The first prototype for Kaleyi, we developed in3 weeks, launched it, got feedback.
This is a book I think every founder shouldread.
It's called The $1,000,000 Weekend by NoahKagan.
The reason why is he basically teaches you howto validate ideas and get money and get revenue
(23:40):
for your business within 48 hours.
So he did a video with someone who wanted tobuild a golf agency.
The person wanted to help other, basically,rich people who play golf plan their entire
trip and get paid for that.
But he wanted to see, like, hey, does thisactually work?
Do people wanna pay for this?
So he just hopped on calls with his friends.
He said, hey, could you pay me $500?
(24:01):
I'll build this out later on, but this is justupfront payment.
And if you like it, we'll build this out.
He collected a few $1,000 in 2 days and wasable to end up building out that part of the
company.
But there's very easy ways to validate ideasthat I just think not a lot of people, really
think about early on.
Going back to Kaley Eye for a second, how didit feel when you reached a million in monthly
(24:26):
revenue at 17?
So this was a couple weeks ago.
It's interesting.
I heard my friend say this recently, and Ireally resonated.
My friend, Alex Slater, he said he actuallyjust reached maybe 50 k in monthly recurring
revenue on his consumer app.
And what he said was that he felt like he wasalways destined for this, that this was always
(24:50):
coming.
He had the vision so strongly.
So when he hit it, although it's an amazingmilestone, it doesn't feel that crazy because
in his mind, he hit it months ago.
We set out to hit 50,000 a month of recurringrevenue by the end of the summer.
So we completely exceeded our goals, myexpectations, and hitting a million.
(25:12):
It's almost surreal.
It feels like this whole thing is a video game.
Part of it is that we've reinvested everythingback into the company.
So I haven't seen any cash myself yet.
And because of this, it's like, okay.
It's just numbers on a screen.
I'm clicking some buttons.
It's like Minecraft Skyblock or any of theseother simulators where there's economies built
(25:36):
in.
So we'll see what happens.
I will say how you phrase it is pretty prettyaccurate.
I remember when we first hit, like, $10,000 inrevenue probably a month or 2 months into the
business, that was, like, the goal I had to do,like, 3 months in and we did it, like, a month
early.
And I remember looking at, like, our Stripedashboard and, like, oggled at the number for,
(25:56):
like, 3 seconds.
And I was just, like, okay.
Now how do we get to, like, 20,000?
And how do we get to, like, 50,000 a month?
Or whatever the number is.
And I think you fantasize a lot about it inyour mind about how can you actually build this
into fruition.
Then when it comes true, then you're just like,okay.
Well, what's the next milestone down the road?
(26:18):
And then you just stop thinking about what'scurrently there.
One of the things I've noticed from reallysuccessful founders and entrepreneurs and even
people in general is that the larger themission or the goal, the larger the sacrifice
is as well.
What's the most difficult thing you've had togo through as a founder, and and what have you
(26:39):
had to sacrifice?
I've definitely sacrificed a lot of family timeand time with my friends.
The entire summer, I spent it in San Franciscowith my cofounder, Henry.
Being a 17 year old living with my parents,this is the last year where I will live with my
(27:03):
family altogether so close.
And then I move out.
I go wherever I'm going, potentiallyCalifornia, and I will only see them less.
So I am always working locked in my room.
Last night, my friends all went out to dosomething I did not partake.
(27:24):
And these sacrifices are definitely necessaryto keep the business moving as fast as
possible, and it is something I've thoughtabout.
What am I optimizing for?
Should I be optimizing to have the mostbalanced life?
A good business, a good family, goodfriendships, or should I optimize for just
(27:45):
going all in on one, which I think ispotentially necessary if I want to excel to the
levels that my ambitions drive me to.
What are your ambitions?
To be up there with Elon Musk.
I really enjoy working with and and beingaround founders and people who have, in like,
(28:11):
incredibly high goals.
One of which is this guy named, Brett Adcockwho he runs a company called FigureNow, and
they've I think they're, like, a multibilliondollar company now.
But they're basically if you've ever seenTesla's, autonomous robot, I don't know if you
got to see the the demo.
He's building something similar to compete withElon.
(28:34):
And he previously built another company that hescaled and and sold.
I think people like that who are able to goagainst, like, for example, when it was in high
when you're in high school, it was goingagainst cool math games and now it's going to
try to reach the level of Elon Musk or whoeverit might be.
I think there has to be some level of acombination of delusion but also high ambition
(28:56):
and high work ethic because otherwise I thinkwithout those three components, I don't think
it's really possible to build something to thatscale.
Yeah.
I agree.
What do you think are some of the things thatyou've tried to scale with Cal AI or or just
things in the business that you tried thatdidn't work?
And what did
you learn from them?
(29:17):
So recently, I launched an app calledScreenshot.
The idea is, like, you're scrolling onInstagram.
You wanna know something your friend bought orthat an influencer is wearing.
So you screenshot that.
You upload it to the app, and then it will tellyou where to buy it.
Launching this app and then running a fewinfluencer promos for it quickly realized that
(29:39):
the intent to pay was not as high as the intentfor previous apps I'd built.
And so because of this, the influencer promoswere not profitable.
And I think the biggest learning is just howimportant it is to assess the immediate intent
(30:02):
of solving a problem to pay a few dollars for aproblem that you might have in a week, which is
okay.
In a week from now, you might find clothingthat you might want to know where to buy, but
not something that you immediately want to knowwhere to buy.
That is a framework that I think could be usedfor future ideas to help validate them more
(30:26):
quickly without shipping them and realizing.
I know a lot of VCs that now try to refrainfrom investing in consumer because they think
it's just so difficult to actually build acompany that can scale.
And there's, like, a whole graveyard ofcompanies now that try to start in consumer and
and failed.
And it's it's technically much easier, I think,to start a b to b company than try to get mass
(30:48):
adoption and scale for a consumer company.
What have you figured out about marketing andbuilding businesses and and making money that
others haven't or other consumer founders mightnot have?
Distribution 100% is where the advantage lieswithin everything that I'm doing within my
companies.
Everyone always says that the bottleneck fortheir company usually just is distribution when
(31:12):
it's a consumer company.
Finding developers that could build a goodproduct is pretty easy at this point if you're
willing to pay their costs.
However, distributing the app is difficult.
I've said recently on Twitter that I've nevermet a head of growth for a company that's
actually helping lead growth to any point thatis helpful.
(31:36):
Otherwise, they would go found their owncompanies.
But the way that we do things with influencermarketing, it's just allowed us to scale in 6
months what people usually can't do in 3 yearswhen launching apps.
Taking all of these learnings, we will actuallybe soon launching a platform, which will be
called Viral Tech.
(31:56):
And it will bring all of the internal toolsthat we've built out for influencer marketing
into one platform, which will allow people toachieve similar levels of growth.
Talk to me a little bit more about that b two bSaaS platform that you're building, Viral Tech.
Why build this type of platform instead ofcontinuing focusing on just building apps of
(32:17):
your own?
It's kind of the notion of don't sell or don'tgo chasing the gold.
Instead, sell the shovels during a gold rush.
There will be more and more people realizinghow to work with influencers pretty soon.
So we may as well just instead of keeping itsecret or continuing to reveal all of the
(32:39):
secrets and then help people basically achievethat success to the maximum scale and then be
the company behind it fueling everyone andallowing everyone to be as successful as
possible.
Who do you wanna help the most?
I think many early stage startups who want toget off the ground, indie hackers, and
(33:00):
potentially late stage companies as well whowant to run influencer marketing or find new
marketing channels at least profitably.
A lot of big companies, they do influencermarketing.
However, they mainly go for mass just massexposure online brand awareness campaigns,
which are very hard to measure and usuallyaren't profitable in the end for these brands.
(33:25):
But if they used similar tactics to the waysthat we've been doing for Cal AI and then just
increase the scale, they should findprofitability at the micro level and be able to
achieve massive results with the budgets thatthey have.
I have a couple of closing questions that I endevery interview with.
(33:46):
First off, what's your greatest failure, andwhat did you learn from it?
My greatest failure?
That's a good question.
At this point, I don't think I've had any greatfailures, and that scares me because I know
(34:06):
something is coming.
I know I have to hit rock bottom at some point.
And right now, I am currently buildingmomentum, essentially 10 x ing what I've done
the previous year, every year.
And I don't know how long this will last.
At some point, I do expect to completely bust.
(34:28):
But for now, things are moving in a good andpromising direction.
By the way, do the do the kids at school knowabout what you're building and how successful
it is?
Most do not.
Some have recently started to pick up a sensebecause some of my tweets, which have gone
viral.
Some students from school have found out aboutthem, but no one really knows
(34:53):
the full extent.
Why do you keep it quiet?
I try to be humble.
I try to stay grounded.
It's definitely something hard when you go tonetworking events and everyone's saying, wow.
This kid genius.
Everyone wants to talk to you.
But I don't really feel that way, like, I amsome genius.
I just think I'm working really hard.
(35:13):
I think I could be working a lot harder, andpart of it is not to boast intentionally.
Another part is that I just don't think it'swhat I want to speak about yet.
Like, at a certain point, the success will besomething I want everyone to know about.
But at the stage it's currently in, I don'tthink it's something that I want to necessarily
(35:34):
establish as, like, my one thing or my legacy.
I've been in meeting rooms and and conferenceswhere maybe somebody would bump into me or
somebody knew about the podcast and and whatwe've built and then would start telling other
people in the conference room or or networkingevent or whatever it might be.
And then people come up to me and they're like,oh, my god.
You've built this cool thing.
(35:55):
You've interviewed so many cool people.
And you're right.
It's, like, very similar.
I try not to talk about it too much.
And then I also realize I don't really like totalk about it a lot.
And I think I found out that I personally get alot more joy being, like, one of the dumber
people in a room and just being able to ask aton of questions and just understand how people
(36:19):
have done things that I haven't yet, thentrying to tell everybody everything that I've
been able to do.
It's just not not as fun.
Charlie Munger has a cool quote.
I I forget exactly how he words it, but I thinkhe says something along the lines of, it's a
lot more fun to learn about the things that youdon't know than tell everyone about the things
that you do.
And I think that really applies with some ofthe really smart people I've met.
(36:43):
Yeah.
I like that quote.
Couple last ones.
What's the worst piece of advice you've everreceived?
So many things.
Like, people saying, if you don't go
to college, you won't be successful.
I know so many people who didn't go to college.
They're unsuccessful.
And there's so many people who did go tocollege, and they are successful.
You have to go to college.
There are, like, people in my family, friends,relatives, whatever.
(37:04):
And any advice in general that is thatdefinitive, but specifically for this college
situation, I don't think is good advice.
It's horrible advice, in my opinion.
Most things are nuanced.
Most things, it's really depending on someone'scircumstance.
So I despise when people give black and whitepieces of advice.
(37:28):
What's one rule you live by that most peopledon't?
It's a good one.
I don't know if I would say this is a rule.
This could be some disorder that I have.
However, I suppose I try to stray away from thenorm so much sometimes.
(37:51):
I also do not want my life to be scripted orcontrolled.
Like, I so badly want to ensure that I havefree will, that I will intentionally do things
that go out of my way to just ensure to myselfthat I have free will.
For example, on the way here, getting off ofthe train, there were a few doors I could go
(38:13):
through.
And the nearest one is where most people gothrough.
They just go through in the nearest.
I intentionally went to the farthest storethinking, like, okay.
My life was scripted.
I would go through the nearest store.
So let me just make sure and reinstill in mymind that I have complete control and go to the
farthest store.
And that's what I did, and I make thesedecisions all day.
(38:35):
Like, okay.
If my life was scripted, I would probably walkthis way.
So let me walk this other way.
I don't know if this is good.
It could be something terrible, but it kindajust enforces my control over myself.
I guess, actually, going into control overmyself, I don't drink or do any drugs.
(38:55):
I know a lot of people in high school do, andmy friends all do.
They encourage me to, but I stay away from thatstuff.
I don't think it's bad to do, like, to drink alittle bit.
I don't think that's going to be reallyharmful, but I always stay away from that
because I don't want to lose control of myself.
(39:16):
So the biggest thing is just having control.
Yeah.
I personally don't like anything that canchange how I think or or who I am as a person.
I think substances can do that.
But what you mentioned around taking thefarthest door just because you could, It's a
really interesting way to think about life andsomething that now I'm gonna start thinking
(39:36):
about too.
Last question.
If I switch you over a phone and you couldcall, I guess, your 12, 13 year old self, would
you call?
And if so, what would you say?
Maybe I wouldn't call because I would be tooworried about the path it would set me on that
could potentially alter where I am today.
(39:57):
I think I'm on the right path, and so I don'tknow if I could have gotten here any other way.
I recorded a video when I was about 13 yearsold.
It said, I'm going to make a $1,000,000 in highschool.
That's what I said at 13 years old.
And I don't know if this was some manifestationexercise, but it happened now.
(40:17):
I mean, I'm making that number every singlemonth through through
my company.
So Did people think you're crazy when you madethat video?
I didn't tell anyone I posted it.
I think it got probably, like, 20 views at thetime, so no one really saw it or commented on
it.
However, now now it has a few 1,000 from peopleI've shared it to.
(40:39):
But it's just pretty crazy still that it didhappen.
I don't know if this is destiny or if I justgot lucky.
That's the kind of thing that makes me fearthat my life is being controlled, that I don't
have free will.
I don't know 99.99% of people that make a videolike that probably aren't going to achieve it.
(41:00):
But the fact that I did really makes mequestion, like, okay.
Do I have free will, or was this all destinedto happen?
Is everything I do destined to happen?
Is it all a part of a script?
And maybe that's what instills these thoughtsin my head.
I think that's a really great way to end it.
Well, first off, thanks, Zach, for taking thetime to join the show.
(41:21):
We'll have a link to Cal AI in the episodedescription down below.
And if you're new, Platform's Live by the timethis episode goes live, we'll have that there
as well.
But thanks for joining.
I enjoyed the convo.
Thank you.
This was fun.
Psst, I have a secret to tell you.
This show has been blowing up lately, and it'sonly gonna get bigger.
So if you wanna be along for the journey, hitthe subscribe button down below, and I'll
promise you that we'll keep bringing on betterand better guests every time to bring their
(41:45):
insights to you.
Thank you very much, and enjoy the episode.
We take a pretty novel approach to influencermarketing.
We've been the fastest growing app in thehealth and fitness section of the App Store,
going from 0 to the 9th rated in 6 months.
This guy is Zach Yedegari.
He makes $1,000,000 a month at just 17 yearsold.
And last month, I had him at our studio andasked me to teach me everything he knows about
(00:20):
building viral companies and investing.
Zach, thanks for joining.
We're gonna delve really deep into the companyyou're building today, which is the one we're
here to talk about, Cal AI.
That company is generating, I think, now over a$1,000,000 in in monthly revenue.
But before we do, I think early context is isreally important here.
One of the companies you started in 2022 wasthis company called Totally Science.
(00:42):
So tell me more about that business.
Give me the full context and picture.
What was going on behind the scenes, and andhow did that business end up, getting acquired
for 6 figures?
So to paint the picture, this was right afterquarantine.
People were returning to schools.
Schools gave Chromebooks out to every studentto reduce contact.
(01:02):
Students obviously abuse this.
They started playing games during class.
However, I noticed that students would havemultiple tabs open.
They would have, like, 5 tabs, a different gameon each tab because all of these unblocked
games would be on these obscure websites andscattered all across the Internet.
So I saw the opportunity to aggregate all ofthese games into one site.
(01:25):
I called it Totally Science.
I built that in about a week after identifyingthe opportunity, shared it to a few friends in
my school.
It very quickly spread to everyone.
That made me realize, wow, this has somethingin the app space we call k factor growth.
So, basically, just word-of-mouth.
It spreads after one person sees it.
(01:46):
They will share it to 1 or more people, whichessentially leads to very quick growth.
So then I posted a video on TikTok, which got100,000 views.
The next video got 1,000,000 views, and veryquickly it started spreading all across the
country to different schools.
1 or 2 people per school would pick it up, thenit would quickly spread throughout the rest of
(02:09):
the school.
When you were building these apps, you'rebuilding them at a very young age.
I know when I first started to learn how tocode, I was, like, at that age, I was learning
how to code, like, some sort of flappy birdgame or something very basic and simplistic.
How did you learn how to code these morecomplicated like websites and games and build
those out at such a young age?
YouTube.
(02:30):
That's the answer.
I just binge watched YouTube videos all day.
And what were some of the processes that youwould do?
Is it just watching the videos and then youtake notes and and start practicing?
Or or, like, walk me through that process.
So I really got started in Unity, which isprogrammed in c sharp, or you program on the
game platform Unity with c sharp.
(02:51):
And there were a few channels in particular Iwould watch, one of which was Brackeys, which
had game tutorials.
And I would just watch his videos all day.
It was entertaining to me to watch him code andsimilar channels.
I didn't even follow along with the videos, butjust purely consuming so much content every
day.
I eventually started picking things up andlearned to implement the same type of game
(03:16):
mechanics myself.
And it started out with a lot of word-of-mouth.
Why did you call it Totally Science?
It seems like a interesting name to start thecompany.
Yeah.
So Totally Science was the name to bypass theschool blocking filters.
If I named it something like GamesHub, thatwould have been picked up and blocked
(03:36):
immediately.
So doing this, it was categorized aseducational.
Schools didn't detect it.
We also added a button on the keyboard.
If you hit the tilde key, it wouldautomatically redirect you from our website to
Google Classroom.
So if teachers were walking by, you couldquickly switch tabs.
And these small things really helped it stayunblocked in the classroom.
(04:01):
How did it feel when, I guess, you coded outthis website?
You're sitting in class.
Maybe there's, like, 20 people in theclassroom, and then you might see somebody else
who was a classmate on your site.
How did that feel?
And so that's really when I realized the magicmoment of why I love to do what I do.
Seeing someone else use something and enjoywhat I made, it's such a rewarding feeling, and
(04:25):
it inspires me to work harder every day.
I will go back though to the question about thegames that were made.
And I'll say most of the games on Totally Signswere not my own games.
We actually took all of these games from othersites and had these weird methods to scrape the
(04:46):
games, scrape the data, throw them on our site,which the legality of it all is questionable.
But I was a pretty young kid, and it all workedout.
Alright.
So you're growing out this, website.
You eventually get, 5,000,000 users prettyquickly.
How did it eventually get acquired?
(05:06):
Yep.
So after 2 years, I had so many new ideas ofwhat we could improve upon, what we could
build, how we could take this site to the nextlevel.
Cool Math Games.
That was the website that had been popularizeda decade before ours.
That was the go to unblocked games website.
Everyone knew about it.
(05:26):
I wanted to beat them.
I had gotten in contact with the CEO and spoketo him.
I knew what numbers they were doing, and Ididn't think it was too far off.
That in a few years, we would be able to beatthem.
So that was my mission.
That was my goal.
And in order to pursue this, or at around thesame time I was pursuing this, I was also
(05:47):
getting more closely into the startup world.
So I started networking with differentfounders.
There was this Y Combinator co founder matchingplatform that I would be reaching out to people
on.
And I hopped on this call with this one guy.
He was telling me he built this chat app.
It was kind of like Telegram.
It had a few 1,000,000 users and was making hima few $1,000 a month.
(06:10):
It's like, wow, that's really cool.
It sounds just like Totally Science's story.
Told me he found it in high school too.
So, wow, that's just like my story.
And then he told me his age.
This guy was 25 and that's all he had done.
He didn't go to college because he pursued thestream.
However, the website or his app had stagnated.
It did not go anywhere, and that scared me.
(06:32):
I did not wanna be like this guy not going tocollege and being a one hit wonder.
This kid who had so much potential in highschool who didn't go anywhere.
So I decided to burn the boats.
I didn't want to fall into the same pit.
I let go of that dream to beat cool math games,and I decided to look for the next product to
(06:59):
build.
That led me to reading a bunch of TechCruncharticles, and I saw Nikita Bier's app Gas,
which was just a rebrand of a previous app hebuilt, TBH.
I thought this was crazy.
For those who don't know, he built the same apptwice essentially, sold both of them for
(07:20):
1,000,000 of dollars, and this just made crazynews.
The fact that the same exact app just built ittwice.
And so I was inspired by that.
I wanted to get into the consumer app space.
I did more research.
I started reaching out to people on x, and Igot started building my first apps.
(07:40):
You want to be cool math games.
Why did you have such this ambition and driveto take on, like, a company of that size at
such a young age?
What are you running towards?
It really did feel like I was just up againstthis behemoth of a company when I was first
getting started.
However, actually connecting with the CEO on aphone call made me realize I'm not so different
(08:04):
than that company.
At the end of the day, they are just people,and people can be beat.
Before that, it seemed like they were this thisbeing that was this big company, no face
attached to it.
But now seeing something tangible, I realizedhow achievable the vision was.
(08:25):
I will say when I've sat down through thepodcast with either CEOs or executives or even
founders of massive companies, I used toglamorize it a lot more, the brand and and what
they've built.
And then I sit down with them, and then Irealize, yeah, you're right.
They're just people.
And I think if you put in enough time, work,and research, basically, anyone could figure
(08:47):
that out.
What was the acquisition process like?
How did, how did that go, and how did younegotiate a 6 figure deal that young?
When I decided to abandon ship, sell, and moveon to
the next thing, I listed the website onflippa.com and waited a few months.
I got a few offers weren't ones I liked.
(09:07):
Finally, I got a good offer or at leastsomething closer to what I was looking for.
It was probably probably just under $100,000,and then I sent him something.
I was doing some quick negotiations on text.
To be honest, I just wanted to sell quicklybecause I was so discouraged by the person I
(09:31):
spoke to on the phone.
So didn't even do as much negotiating as Iprobably should have, but I'm happy with what
happened.
I sent him a text saying, like, okay.
If we just add 10 k to this, we close rightnow.
After the sale, I sold off some of the extradomains that we had.
It landed at just about $100,000.
(09:52):
What do you think that tells you about theimportance of speed in in business deals and
business negotiations?
I really like speed in business.
That's honestly the core value that I alwayshold in mind for everything I'm doing.
I think moving quickly I mean, if I hadn'tmoved fast, I wouldn't have accomplished
anything that I've done today.
(10:14):
People like to wait for things.
People around me wanted to get into coding.
They always ask me, how did you start?
I just tell them, YouTube.
You could go watch YouTube right now and learn.
They tell me, well, okay.
I'll wait till I take a class in college on howto code.
And I think the fact that you don't have a fireunder you that is forcing you to move and move
(10:36):
quickly, that you're not moving with speed, youwill never make it everything that we do, like,
totally science.
The first version, we got up in a week.
There were other sites that came after us.
Maybe they had the same idea before, but we'respending a month to build it.
I don't know.
All I know is we were one of the first websitesthat got up.
Everything today in the consumer space, it is avery competitive landscape.
(11:01):
And if you don't move with speed, someone willbeat you.
I will say I have never met a founder that hasbeen successful that doesn't operate with
speed.
Like, even even 10, 20 years later, like, forexample, with Mark Cuban after he sold
broadcast.com, to Yahoo, even today, he stillresponds to emails super quickly.
(11:22):
I remember I sent him an email a year agoasking him to come on the show.
Within 30 to 40 minutes, he just replies, yes,let's do it.
I was like, okay, that's how you operate.
Instead of taking a ton of time to makedecisions and and figure out, like, oh, okay,
should I really do this?
Eliminate the mental bandwidth and just takeaction is one of the things I've learned.
(11:43):
I wanna transition here a little bit to thebusiness you're running today.
What is that app and and how does it work?
Kallai is an app where you take a picture ofyour food and it will estimate the calories,
proteins, carbs, and fat content of the meal.
How did you come up with the idea for for
the app?
So I was always pretty skinny growing up, and Istarted getting into working out a couple years
(12:09):
ago.
I wanted to build muscle, which requiresgaining weight, and so I was tracking my
calories with MyFitnessPal to bulk.
After 3 days, I quit.
Typing in every meal I ate into this app,weighing my food on a scale was not something I
was willing to do, and I knew there had to bean easier solution.
(12:32):
The idea was there for Cal AI at least a yearbefore it was possible.
But then finally, with AI models becoming soadvanced, they were finally to the point where
Cal AI was an idea that was feasible.
How have you been able to make that imagescanning recognition that accurate to the to
(12:55):
the point that you have so far?
There has been a lot of trial and error, a lotof experimentation, and we've landed on a
system that utilizes multiple different models.
I can't go too deep because there aredefinitely competitors listening to this right
now.
However, the pipeline that we go down willessentially gather as much context of the food
(13:19):
before passing into a final model to make theirestimate.
And from our testing, we yield about 90%accuracy if the image is taken at a natural
angle, and that beats the FDA's approved marginof error for nutrition labels.
The app that you have, you now do a 1,000,000 amonth.
(13:41):
In less than a 100 days, you grew your app to$300,000 a month in revenue.
How did you do that?
We take a pretty novel approach to influencermarketing.
We've been the fastest growing app in thehealth and fitness section of the App Store,
going from 0 to the 9th rated in 6 months.
It's really just the way that we work withinfluencers and how we have scaled those
(14:07):
systems.
Many people are able to achieve rapid growth inthe short term with influencers, but then they
can't figure out how to make it sustainable andscalable.
Have you been able to make it sustainable andscalable?
We have a few systems in place with influencermarketing.
I think there are many nuances that go into it.
However, to take it from the top, it reallystarts out being very scrappy.
(14:31):
It's a numbers game.
You have to do a lot of outreach in thebeginning.
You reply to 100 influencers.
Maybe if you get lucky, one will reply to you.
After you do it long enough, you'll startbuilding up your initial base of influencers,
and this will compound.
There's a network effect.
As you're working with more influencers, youhave credibility so that when you reach out to
other influencers, they're more likely torespond.
(14:52):
The influencers you have will refer will refermore influencers.
So you will be able to build up a big base.
But part of the way that this scales is bykeeping them on retainer with deal structures
that ensure profitability.
(15:12):
You essentially need to calculate what theaverage amount of views they get on a video and
then negotiate a CPM from those videos, whichyou need to predict.
The CPM is the cost per 1,000 views.
So you need to predict the cost per 1,000 viewsthat you will pay them assuming that they hit
(15:35):
their average view count in a video.
And then taking that number into account, youneed to ensure that your RPM, the revenue you
generate from those same 1,000 views, exceedsthe CPM.
This is pretty difficult because it's hard tomeasure the impact of an individual influencer
post.
There is no way to track where people arecoming from or if they have come from an
(16:00):
influencer post when you have multiple going onbecause you can't have the links within the
video live for people to click.
So that is actually something a problem we willbe tackling and helping people with, which we
could get into more later in this.
And how do you go about finding theseinfluencers that are success actually helpful
(16:23):
and successful to the growth and scaling of theapp?
For some apps, it's easier than others.
For Cal AI, it wasn't too hard to find healthand fitness influencers would work well for
health and fitness app.
For other apps, for example, a fashion app,finding influencers that will work well.
It may be trickier.
(16:43):
There are fashion influencers, but not as manyas there are health and fitness influencers.
So you have to be a little creative, and youcould find that creators that do get ready with
me content probably will convert pretty wellalso.
So it's a lot of testing.
Sometimes it's more obvious than others.
And you have 3 cofounders at Cal AI.
(17:03):
It's not just yourself.
Who are the cofounders, and and how did youmeet them?
It is Blake Anderson, Henry Langmach, and JakeCastillo.
Blake has founded UMAX and RIS GPT before CalAI.
While I was getting started in my app journey,I had reached out to a bunch of different app
(17:26):
founders.
He was one of them.
We hopped on a call.
And then a few months after that, we foundedCal AI together.
Before meeting Blake, Henry Langmack, he and Imet at a coding camp when we were 10 years old.
We stayed in touch.
He moved away.
And then we decided 1 summer, okay.
(17:48):
You know what?
Let's let's work on something together.
He's a much better programmer than I am, and Iwas always better at the business side.
So we decided if we team up, we could probablymake something happen here.
We built Grindclock together first.
This was last summer.
Grindclock was an app where someone like DavidGoggins can wake you up.
(18:11):
Any motivational speaker, you could select, andthey will wake you up by screaming at you,
whatever.
We built that.
It did okay.
Twenty k downloads in the 1st 14 days.
And then we built a few other apps followingthat.
Then, eventually, we teamed up also on Cal AI.
So that's Blake and Henry, how we all gotstarted together.
(18:32):
Did that app make money, or it's mainly justthe downloads?
So it did.
We were making and we still are making about$2,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
It we had just not figured out influencersystems or had not known how to scale them to
the point that we know today.
But I think the idea still has a lot ofpotential.
(18:54):
Given that you know how to scale them today, isthat something that you'd like to revisit?
We actually are revisiting it.
We're going to be launching an app calledlocked in in the next month.
That app will be a motivation app in whole.
So not just a motivational alarm clock, butalso motivational content that you could watch.
You're in
school now.
You're a high school student.
(19:14):
You have a nearly perfect GPA, which issomething I could not have done in high school
while also building out a business.
How have you been able to balance school butalso continue building out really successful
businesses?
So senior year, which is this year, is reallywhen things have started picking up with
(19:35):
business outside of school.
And this is the 1st year I'm prioritizingbusiness.
But prior years, I had been prioritizingschool.
Totally science was something where I wasbalancing better.
I would find the classes where I didn't need topay attention.
I would program during them, then I would,after getting my homework done, stay up late
coding.
(19:56):
This year, I've dropped a lot of classes thatare debatably important for life and for
getting into college.
And I prioritize the company over getting agood grade on a test.
Do you want to go to college?
It's a hard question.
I've thought about it a lot.
I've asked a lot of people, and my thoughtright now is I'm going to take a gap year.
(20:21):
If I get super depressed because my social lifesucks, then I'll probably go to college.
If things work out, if I'm able to find otheryoung entrepreneurs or even older people that I
could still relate to, then I think I'll stickit out and won't go to college.
I will say, I think if you have something thatyou're passionate about whether that be a
(20:42):
passion project, a business, whatever it mightbe, I think a gap year is something more people
should consider taking but not a lot of peopledo because of the external pressures whether
that be parents, friends put on you, as a highschool student.
But I definitely think it's something morepeople should explore.
You actually haven't raised any capital for thebusiness you're running today and most of the
(21:03):
businesses that you've ran.
Why so?
I feel like there's this misconception that tobuild a business to the scale that you have,
you have to raise, like, 1,000,000 of dollars,go out to Silicon Valley, get term sheets, but
you've built this all off the backs ofyourself.
Why so?
100%,
I think people definitely do feel that way,that they need capital in order to run a
(21:26):
business successfully.
And I think that takes away a lot of urgency.
If it's no longer your money that you'redealing with, then failure doesn't seem as
disastrous.
This is pretty much exclusively advice forconsumer.
I think you only need to raise capital if onlyat a certain scale, you will be able to
profitably run the company.
(21:48):
So that's something like Instagram, where onlyuntil you have millions of users can you serve
ads that generate enough revenue to sustaineverything.
For something like Cal AI, if it's not workingimmediately, it's probably never going to work.
And so you only need $1,000 to figure out ifthe idea is feasible.
(22:10):
I will say even when I started my company in inFebruary of this year, like you said, only
needed the $1,000 for, like, lawyer fees and tocreate up the LLC.
And then after that, I tried to hop on somesales calls with some founders to see if I
could sell what I was actually building, andsend a client within, within a week.
(22:30):
And it was like a small retainer at that time,much more than what we do now.
But it was like $2,500 and then I just usedthat money to then actually deliver the service
and made a profit from that.
So I think, yes, it's very different becauseit's more agency focused.
And I think with agencies, you can get paidupfront, whereas in other types of businesses,
you kind of have to build out the product firstand then see if it works.
(22:53):
But I do think you're right.
I think there are much easier ways to validateideas than going straight into raising capital.
Definitely.
A lot of people also they'll spend a yearbuilding something before validating, before
launching.
That's also something I strongly adviseagainst, and many other people say the same
thing because that could just be a yearcompletely wasted.
(23:15):
This goes back to speed.
You need to quickly get something out.
Once you get something out, then validate it.
It doesn't need to be good by any means.
The first prototype for Kaleyi, we developed in3 weeks, launched it, got feedback.
This is a book I think every founder shouldread.
It's called The $1,000,000 Weekend by NoahKagan.
The reason why is he basically teaches you howto validate ideas and get money and get revenue
(23:40):
for your business within 48 hours.
So he did a video with someone who wanted tobuild a golf agency.
The person wanted to help other, basically,rich people who play golf plan their entire
trip and get paid for that.
But he wanted to see, like, hey, does thisactually work?
Do people wanna pay for this?
So he just hopped on calls with his friends.
He said, hey, could you pay me $500?
(24:01):
I'll build this out later on, but this is justupfront payment.
And if you like it, we'll build this out.
He collected a few $1,000 in 2 days and wasable to end up building out that part of the
company.
But there's very easy ways to validate ideasthat I just think not a lot of people, really
think about early on.
Going back to Kaley Eye for a second, how didit feel when you reached a million in monthly
(24:26):
revenue at 17?
So this was a couple weeks ago.
It's interesting.
I heard my friend say this recently, and Ireally resonated.
My friend, Alex Slater, he said he actuallyjust reached maybe 50 k in monthly recurring
revenue on his consumer app.
And what he said was that he felt like he wasalways destined for this, that this was always
(24:50):
coming.
He had the vision so strongly.
So when he hit it, although it's an amazingmilestone, it doesn't feel that crazy because
in his mind, he hit it months ago.
We set out to hit 50,000 a month of recurringrevenue by the end of the summer.
So we completely exceeded our goals, myexpectations, and hitting a million.
(25:12):
It's almost surreal.
It feels like this whole thing is a video game.
Part of it is that we've reinvested everythingback into the company.
So I haven't seen any cash myself yet.
And because of this, it's like, okay.
It's just numbers on a screen.
I'm clicking some buttons.
It's like Minecraft Skyblock or any of theseother simulators where there's economies built
(25:36):
in.
So we'll see what happens.
I will say how you phrase it is pretty prettyaccurate.
I remember when we first hit, like, $10,000 inrevenue probably a month or 2 months into the
business, that was, like, the goal I had to do,like, 3 months in and we did it, like, a month
early.
And I remember looking at, like, our Stripedashboard and, like, oggled at the number for,
(25:56):
like, 3 seconds.
And I was just, like, okay.
Now how do we get to, like, 20,000?
And how do we get to, like, 50,000 a month?
Or whatever the number is.
And I think you fantasize a lot about it inyour mind about how can you actually build this
into fruition.
Then when it comes true, then you're just like,okay.
Well, what's the next milestone down the road?
(26:18):
And then you just stop thinking about what'scurrently there.
One of the things I've noticed from reallysuccessful founders and entrepreneurs and even
people in general is that the larger themission or the goal, the larger the sacrifice
is as well.
What's the most difficult thing you've had togo through as a founder, and and what have you
(26:39):
had to sacrifice?
I've definitely sacrificed a lot of family timeand time with my friends.
The entire summer, I spent it in San Franciscowith my cofounder, Henry.
Being a 17 year old living with my parents,this is the last year where I will live with my
(27:03):
family altogether so close.
And then I move out.
I go wherever I'm going, potentiallyCalifornia, and I will only see them less.
So I am always working locked in my room.
Last night, my friends all went out to dosomething I did not partake.
(27:24):
And these sacrifices are definitely necessaryto keep the business moving as fast as
possible, and it is something I've thoughtabout.
What am I optimizing for?
Should I be optimizing to have the mostbalanced life?
A good business, a good family, goodfriendships, or should I optimize for just
(27:45):
going all in on one, which I think ispotentially necessary if I want to excel to the
levels that my ambitions drive me to.
What are your ambitions?
To be up there with Elon Musk.
I really enjoy working with and and beingaround founders and people who have, in like,
(28:11):
incredibly high goals.
One of which is this guy named, Brett Adcockwho he runs a company called FigureNow, and
they've I think they're, like, a multibilliondollar company now.
But they're basically if you've ever seenTesla's, autonomous robot, I don't know if you
got to see the the demo.
He's building something similar to compete withElon.
(28:34):
And he previously built another company that hescaled and and sold.
I think people like that who are able to goagainst, like, for example, when it was in high
when you're in high school, it was goingagainst cool math games and now it's going to
try to reach the level of Elon Musk or whoeverit might be.
I think there has to be some level of acombination of delusion but also high ambition
(28:56):
and high work ethic because otherwise I thinkwithout those three components, I don't think
it's really possible to build something to thatscale.
Yeah.
I agree.
What do you think are some of the things thatyou've tried to scale with Cal AI or or just
things in the business that you tried thatdidn't work?
And what did
you learn from them?
(29:17):
So recently, I launched an app calledScreenshot.
The idea is, like, you're scrolling onInstagram.
You wanna know something your friend bought orthat an influencer is wearing.
So you screenshot that.
You upload it to the app, and then it will tellyou where to buy it.
Launching this app and then running a fewinfluencer promos for it quickly realized that
(29:39):
the intent to pay was not as high as the intentfor previous apps I'd built.
And so because of this, the influencer promoswere not profitable.
And I think the biggest learning is just howimportant it is to assess the immediate intent
(30:02):
of solving a problem to pay a few dollars for aproblem that you might have in a week, which is
okay.
In a week from now, you might find clothingthat you might want to know where to buy, but
not something that you immediately want to knowwhere to buy.
That is a framework that I think could be usedfor future ideas to help validate them more
(30:26):
quickly without shipping them and realizing.
I know a lot of VCs that now try to refrainfrom investing in consumer because they think
it's just so difficult to actually build acompany that can scale.
And there's, like, a whole graveyard ofcompanies now that try to start in consumer and
and failed.
And it's it's technically much easier, I think,to start a b to b company than try to get mass
(30:48):
adoption and scale for a consumer company.
What have you figured out about marketing andbuilding businesses and and making money that
others haven't or other consumer founders mightnot have?
Distribution 100% is where the advantage lieswithin everything that I'm doing within my
companies.
Everyone always says that the bottleneck fortheir company usually just is distribution when
(31:12):
it's a consumer company.
Finding developers that could build a goodproduct is pretty easy at this point if you're
willing to pay their costs.
However, distributing the app is difficult.
I've said recently on Twitter that I've nevermet a head of growth for a company that's
actually helping lead growth to any point thatis helpful.
(31:36):
Otherwise, they would go found their owncompanies.
But the way that we do things with influencermarketing, it's just allowed us to scale in 6
months what people usually can't do in 3 yearswhen launching apps.
Taking all of these learnings, we will actuallybe soon launching a platform, which will be
called Viral Tech.
(31:56):
And it will bring all of the internal toolsthat we've built out for influencer marketing
into one platform, which will allow people toachieve similar levels of growth.
Talk to me a little bit more about that b two bSaaS platform that you're building, Viral Tech.
Why build this type of platform instead ofcontinuing focusing on just building apps of
(32:17):
your own?
It's kind of the notion of don't sell or don'tgo chasing the gold.
Instead, sell the shovels during a gold rush.
There will be more and more people realizinghow to work with influencers pretty soon.
So we may as well just instead of keeping itsecret or continuing to reveal all of the
(32:39):
secrets and then help people basically achievethat success to the maximum scale and then be
the company behind it fueling everyone andallowing everyone to be as successful as
possible.
Who do you wanna help the most?
I think many early stage startups who want toget off the ground, indie hackers, and
(33:00):
potentially late stage companies as well whowant to run influencer marketing or find new
marketing channels at least profitably.
A lot of big companies, they do influencermarketing.
However, they mainly go for mass just massexposure online brand awareness campaigns,
which are very hard to measure and usuallyaren't profitable in the end for these brands.
(33:25):
But if they used similar tactics to the waysthat we've been doing for Cal AI and then just
increase the scale, they should findprofitability at the micro level and be able to
achieve massive results with the budgets thatthey have.
I have a couple of closing questions that I endevery interview with.
(33:46):
First off, what's your greatest failure, andwhat did you learn from it?
My greatest failure?
That's a good question.
At this point, I don't think I've had any greatfailures, and that scares me because I know
(34:06):
something is coming.
I know I have to hit rock bottom at some point.
And right now, I am currently buildingmomentum, essentially 10 x ing what I've done
the previous year, every year.
And I don't know how long this will last.
At some point, I do expect to completely bust.
(34:28):
But for now, things are moving in a good andpromising direction.
By the way, do the do the kids at school knowabout what you're building and how successful
it is?
Most do not.
Some have recently started to pick up a sensebecause some of my tweets, which have gone
viral.
Some students from school have found out aboutthem, but no one really knows
(34:53):
the full extent.
Why do you keep it quiet?
I try to be humble.
I try to stay grounded.
It's definitely something hard when you go tonetworking events and everyone's saying, wow.
This kid genius.
Everyone wants to talk to you.
But I don't really feel that way, like, I amsome genius.
I just think I'm working really hard.
(35:13):
I think I could be working a lot harder, andpart of it is not to boast intentionally.
Another part is that I just don't think it'swhat I want to speak about yet.
Like, at a certain point, the success will besomething I want everyone to know about.
But at the stage it's currently in, I don'tthink it's something that I want to necessarily
(35:34):
establish as, like, my one thing or my legacy.
I've been in meeting rooms and and conferenceswhere maybe somebody would bump into me or
somebody knew about the podcast and and whatwe've built and then would start telling other
people in the conference room or or networkingevent or whatever it might be.
And then people come up to me and they're like,oh, my god.
You've built this cool thing.
(35:55):
You've interviewed so many cool people.
And you're right.
It's, like, very similar.
I try not to talk about it too much.
And then I also realize I don't really like totalk about it a lot.
And I think I found out that I personally get alot more joy being, like, one of the dumber
people in a room and just being able to ask aton of questions and just understand how people
(36:19):
have done things that I haven't yet, thentrying to tell everybody everything that I've
been able to do.
It's just not not as fun.
Charlie Munger has a cool quote.
I I forget exactly how he words it, but I thinkhe says something along the lines of, it's a
lot more fun to learn about the things that youdon't know than tell everyone about the things
that you do.
And I think that really applies with some ofthe really smart people I've met.
(36:43):
Yeah.
I like that quote.
Couple last ones.
What's the worst piece of advice you've everreceived?
So many things.
Like, people saying, if you don't go
to college, you won't be successful.
I know so many people who didn't go to college.
They're unsuccessful.
And there's so many people who did go tocollege, and they are successful.
You have to go to college.
There are, like, people in my family, friends,relatives, whatever.
(37:04):
And any advice in general that is thatdefinitive, but specifically for this college
situation, I don't think is good advice.
It's horrible advice, in my opinion.
Most things are nuanced.
Most things, it's really depending on someone'scircumstance.
So I despise when people give black and whitepieces of advice.
(37:28):
What's one rule you live by that most peopledon't?
It's a good one.
I don't know if I would say this is a rule.
This could be some disorder that I have.
However, I suppose I try to stray away from thenorm so much sometimes.
(37:51):
I also do not want my life to be scripted orcontrolled.
Like, I so badly want to ensure that I havefree will, that I will intentionally do things
that go out of my way to just ensure to myselfthat I have free will.
For example, on the way here, getting off ofthe train, there were a few doors I could go
(38:13):
through.
And the nearest one is where most people gothrough.
They just go through in the nearest.
I intentionally went to the farthest storethinking, like, okay.
My life was scripted.
I would go through the nearest store.
So let me just make sure and reinstill in mymind that I have complete control and go to the
farthest store.
And that's what I did, and I make thesedecisions all day.
(38:35):
Like, okay.
If my life was scripted, I would probably walkthis way.
So let me walk this other way.
I don't know if this is good.
It could be something terrible, but it kindajust enforces my control over myself.
I guess, actually, going into control overmyself, I don't drink or do any drugs.
(38:55):
I know a lot of people in high school do, andmy friends all do.
They encourage me to, but I stay away from thatstuff.
I don't think it's bad to do, like, to drink alittle bit.
I don't think that's going to be reallyharmful, but I always stay away from that
because I don't want to lose control of myself.
(39:16):
So the biggest thing is just having control.
Yeah.
I personally don't like anything that canchange how I think or or who I am as a person.
I think substances can do that.
But what you mentioned around taking thefarthest door just because you could, It's a
really interesting way to think about life andsomething that now I'm gonna start thinking
(39:36):
about too.
Last question.
If I switch you over a phone and you couldcall, I guess, your 12, 13 year old self, would
you call?
And if so, what would you say?
Maybe I wouldn't call because I would be tooworried about the path it would set me on that
could potentially alter where I am today.
(39:57):
I think I'm on the right path, and so I don'tknow if I could have gotten here any other way.
I recorded a video when I was about 13 yearsold.
It said, I'm going to make a $1,000,000 in highschool.
That's what I said at 13 years old.
And I don't know if this was some manifestationexercise, but it happened now.
(40:17):
I mean, I'm making that number every singlemonth through through
my company.
So Did people think you're crazy when you madethat video?
I didn't tell anyone I posted it.
I think it got probably, like, 20 views at thetime, so no one really saw it or commented on
it.
However, now now it has a few 1,000 from peopleI've shared it to.
(40:39):
But it's just pretty crazy still that it didhappen.
I don't know if this is destiny or if I justgot lucky.
That's the kind of thing that makes me fearthat my life is being controlled, that I don't
have free will.
I don't know 99.99% of people that make a videolike that probably aren't going to achieve it.
(41:00):
But the fact that I did really makes mequestion, like, okay.
Do I have free will, or was this all destinedto happen?
Is everything I do destined to happen?
Is it all a part of a script?
And maybe that's what instills these thoughtsin my head.
I think that's a really great way to end it.
Well, first off, thanks, Zach, for taking thetime to join the show.
(41:21):
We'll have a link to Cal AI in the episodedescription down below.
And if you're new, Platform's Live by the timethis episode goes live, we'll have that there
as well.
But thanks for joining.
I enjoyed the convo.
Thank you.
This was fun.
Psst, I have a secret to tell you.
This show has been blowing up lately, and it'sonly gonna get bigger.
So if you wanna be along for the journey, hitthe subscribe button down below, and I'll
promise you that we'll keep bringing on betterand better guests every time to bring their
(41:45):
insights to you.
Thank you very much, and enjoy the episode.
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