Speaker 1: Everyone, Welcome to a brand new episode of Startups Still Say,
Speaker 1: hope you're all doing well. Today's episode I'm actually super
Speaker 1: excited about because of the first episode be doing it
Speaker 1: in person with our guests. And today's guest happens to
Speaker 1: be Lucas Josephi from widget Book. He happens to be
Speaker 1: someone whom I know for the last two years, someone
Speaker 1: whom I've admired for doing his startup at a very
Speaker 1: young age, took on a big risk and jumped in
Speaker 1: into the world of startups. So we'll be talking to
Speaker 1: Lucas today about his journey, what widget Book does, and
Speaker 1: some of the inputs that he can share with the
Speaker 1: world of startups. So Lucas, first of all, welcome to
Speaker 1: Startups Still Say.
Speaker 2: Thanks. I love for having me Anthony.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure, So Lucas, so let's get things kicked off.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know you for a couple of years now.
Speaker 1: For those of you who don't know about the Flutter community,
Speaker 1: Flutter is a technology or an open source framework from
Speaker 1: Google which I used to be part of. I'm still
Speaker 1: I am, and I ran into Lucas while we were
Speaker 1: collaborating on with both of our companies, and I happen
Speaker 1: to be here at a conference called flutter Con in Berlin.
Speaker 1: Lucas was kind enough to be part of this particular
Speaker 1: podcast and tell us about his journey. So, Lucas, I
Speaker 1: know you as the CEO of widget Book. I know
Speaker 1: you as this smart, exuberant CEO of a company, a
Speaker 1: guy who loves outdoors from all your adventures in California
Speaker 1: and here as well. And I know you'll like to
Speaker 1: party a bit as well. But other than that, I
Speaker 1: don't know anything else about you. So tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about yourself and maybe tell us about what
Speaker 1: led you to start visit book as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, happy, happy to share it. Thanks for the kind words.
Speaker 3: So, as you already said, I'm Lucas, co founder and
Speaker 3: CEO of ridget Book.
Speaker 2: I'm an entrepreneur and.
Speaker 3: I'm really curious and in general about a lot of things.
Speaker 3: I think that's curiosity and then led me into the
Speaker 3: part of on the part of entrepreneurship. Other than that
Speaker 3: I already mentioned, I really love to spend time outdoors
Speaker 3: away from the laptop as well. Helps me to relax
Speaker 3: and get a clear head. But to answer your question,
Speaker 3: how I am got in the world of startups. How
Speaker 3: I got through what I'm doing today is I was
Speaker 3: inspired and mainly by my by my uncle and so
Speaker 3: my ankle's not an entrepreneur, but he also took a
Speaker 3: big risk because he moved with his family away from Germany.
Speaker 3: So I'm originally from from Germany. My my uncle as well,
Speaker 3: and he moved to Canada and with his family. I
Speaker 3: think he was like his late twenties or early thirties,
Speaker 3: twenty or something years ago. And then just when I
Speaker 3: finished high school, I visited him in Canada and it
Speaker 3: was an amazing experience being abroad really for the first time.
Speaker 3: I spent a few weeks there, I had another internship
Speaker 3: and the first time away from home, away from the family,
Speaker 3: and so I could really see, okay, what kind of
Speaker 3: other life you could also live. And then when I
Speaker 3: started studying, and it was just very very quickly, Okay,
Speaker 3: entrepreneurship is the path I am I really.
Speaker 2: Like to go for. And so I actually have a
Speaker 2: business background.
Speaker 3: So I studied international business, so business with like German,
Speaker 3: English and French, so I had some languages with it
Speaker 3: as well, and I didn't particularly like my studies too much.
Speaker 3: It was it was good that you kind of learned
Speaker 3: how to sell yourself and how to talk, but I
Speaker 3: also wanted to at some point then have some real skills,
Speaker 3: and that's why on the side.
Speaker 2: I also learned how to code.
Speaker 3: I have to say, I'm not the best developer, so
Speaker 3: I can't get things to work. But I'm very happy
Speaker 3: that today have a team that does it a lot better.
Speaker 2: Than when I can.
Speaker 3: But very early in my studies, I founded the corporate startup,
Speaker 3: which basically was a company that came to the university
Speaker 3: and they had a challenge prepared for the students. So
Speaker 3: what they did is I think they brought like twenty
Speaker 3: people with twenty employees from that corporate, twenty students together
Speaker 3: in one room and you had teams of fours always
Speaker 3: two students and two people from the corporate and two
Speaker 3: days of solving the challenge. And my team did quite well,
Speaker 3: and I then gave a representation of what we did.
Speaker 3: The corporate liked it a lot, and we're like, hey, Lucas,
Speaker 3: would you like to help us on the project. I
Speaker 3: was like, sure, let's do it didn't have much to lose,
Speaker 3: and I was like eighteen nineteen years old. It actually
Speaker 3: became quite successful in that in the corporate, and I
Speaker 3: was very excited because we were supposed to get shares
Speaker 3: as well and first handed sales. At some point we
Speaker 3: had a webpap as well, and I was like curious.
Speaker 3: I was like, sure, I learned hard the code A
Speaker 3: bit can also build that WebP I suppose, and turned
Speaker 3: out to work really well. I hold that corporate, but
Speaker 3: unfortunately that corporate went into financial struggles which led to
Speaker 3: the CEO being the CEO being fired. New CEO came
Speaker 3: basically erased the entire board, and then it was decided
Speaker 3: that all innovation projects that don't exist for more than
Speaker 3: two years are going to be spinned into the company. Again,
Speaker 3: not a spin off that I and also the team
Speaker 3: was looking for, soa no shares. Instead, they offered me
Speaker 3: quite a good compensation for that for that young age,
Speaker 3: but I declined because I was like, no, I really
Speaker 3: want to do my own stuff at that age.
Speaker 2: And I then started to build web apps because I
Speaker 2: enjoyed doing it. And when I was at the startup,
Speaker 2: and then.
Speaker 3: I stumbled upon something that I like JavaScript developers, it
Speaker 3: must be familiar with it. Suppose the storybook tas one
Speaker 3: of the most popular packages in the JavaScript.
Speaker 2: Or React each system.
Speaker 3: And at some point I then met today my C
Speaker 3: my CTO and co found agains at basically the University
Speaker 3: incubator and immediately clicked with quite a good connection, and
Speaker 3: Yes told me about fluttery and YenS was super passionate
Speaker 3: about flattery, basically predicted its going to be the Future's
Speaker 3: gonna be huge, and I checked it out and I
Speaker 3: was like, Yin's yeah, copy right, sounds sounds really interesting.
Speaker 2: And then we started building Flutter apps.
Speaker 3: And as I told you, I'm not the best developer,
Speaker 3: so I always try to stick to the things I know.
Speaker 2: And there was no storybook for Flutter, so we first
Speaker 2: of all the build it just for ourselves.
Speaker 3: And then at some point some of our web development
Speaker 3: friends switched to Flutter as well, and they were like, hey,
Speaker 3: lucas we build a storybook for flatter.
Speaker 2: Can we share with us. We're like, sure, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Let's oversource it, and we immediately build a Discord server
Speaker 3: as well to support the few users that.
Speaker 2: We thought we're gonna we're gonna get.
Speaker 3: Pretty much overnight, people kept swarming in the server and
Speaker 3: we were like, oh, okay, it's something that not only we.
Speaker 2: Need, but that also other people are looking forward to
Speaker 2: to have.
Speaker 3: And then we started interviewing our discord server and asked them, Hey,
Speaker 3: how would.
Speaker 2: You like us to improve the product for you? And
Speaker 2: I immediately also had the idea of.
Speaker 3: Building something more than just this source package around it
Speaker 3: because storybook for everyone that is not familiar with it,
Speaker 3: it allows you to catalog all of your widgets from
Speaker 3: your website and my overview, it allows you basically to
Speaker 3: build your design system in code, and it's a great
Speaker 3: developer tool, but it's also only developer tool, so it
Speaker 3: doesn't allow any collaboration with designers product managers. Qtas is
Speaker 3: basically only for developers, and I was looking for something
Speaker 3: more holistically, and we interviewed the discord.
Speaker 2: Server for it and they were like, yeah, amazing, do it.
Speaker 3: And then around two years ago we decided to quit
Speaker 3: our job do it full time and.
Speaker 1: Here we are today, awesome Lucas, so glad I could
Speaker 1: understand the entire story behind widget book. I knew you
Speaker 1: were adventurous, Like I said, I mean amazing story. And
Speaker 1: I was also going to ask you about, I mean,
Speaker 1: how you found your co founder. You already answered that question.
Speaker 1: So it's for two years since you started, now, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two since you started.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean the open source package is something that we
Speaker 3: started around twenty twenty one already, but it wasn't full
Speaker 3: time then, so back then we were still doing other
Speaker 3: things on the side, and we then incorporated the company
Speaker 3: in twenty two.
Speaker 1: Great. So obviously you had a plan when you started
Speaker 1: widget book, when you quitated jobs and jumped into this.
Speaker 1: Has everything gone, asked per plan? Or how many times
Speaker 1: have you had to start and stop and start art again?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean everyone is saying startup, it's like a roller coaster,
Speaker 3: and I have to say, yeah, quite quite accurate. So
Speaker 3: a lot of times. But the question is always, let's say,
Speaker 3: how often you really have to throw anything away and
Speaker 3: start fully fun scratch And fortunately, to that extent we
Speaker 3: we didn't have to do it. But of course we
Speaker 3: had a lot of stuff that we tried that didn't work,
Speaker 3: but fortunately we had more stuff that that worked in
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm I'm still sitting here and it can
Speaker 2: talk to you about which book but two.
Speaker 3: In the end give you give you just uh some
Speaker 3: examples for for us, for example, we we thought that
Speaker 3: building the first paid version of widget books, so in
Speaker 3: the end you also in the end you need to
Speaker 3: have money to have food in your fridge and to
Speaker 3: pay our rent, and building just an over source package
Speaker 3: doesn't do the trick. And that's why for us it
Speaker 3: was quite clear, okay, we have to come up with
Speaker 3: a paid version of widget book. And what is quite
Speaker 3: obvious to do for us is I mean, I already
Speaker 3: told you you can build your own design system with
Speaker 3: widget book, and you can just host the widget book
Speaker 3: made accessible for everyone, so that also designers, create testers,
Speaker 3: product managers, everyone can look at it.
Speaker 2: And just hosting is something you can also easily do yourself.
Speaker 3: And that's why we thought initially, okay, it might take
Speaker 3: us quite long until we get the first revenue because
Speaker 3: you can just host it yourself. But we very quickly
Speaker 3: found out, okay, there are a lot of companies that
Speaker 3: are just interested in hosting, they just don't want to
Speaker 3: do it themselves. And that's why we were able to
Speaker 3: capture some revenue a lot sooner than we expected, and
Speaker 3: we were like, okay, great that to raise venture capital
Speaker 3: and scaly immediately, and we did manage to raise venture
Speaker 3: capital then quite quite soon basically to get to a
Speaker 3: state where our customers were really happy with the cloud.
Speaker 3: That then took a lot longer than we expected because
Speaker 3: Justice hosting it's nice, but the current product so basically
Speaker 3: now nearly two years in the future. Now the product
Speaker 3: is great. Now our customers are really happy with it,
Speaker 3: but it really took us some time to build the
Speaker 3: features that our customers were actually looking for. And that's
Speaker 3: why it's always kind of hard to predict. And so
Speaker 3: whenever you're building something that didn't exist before, it's quite
Speaker 3: difficult to predict how long will it take you to
Speaker 3: build it versus if you're just building just now in
Speaker 3: parenthesis here, if you're just building something that already just before,
Speaker 3: if you're building just another app, and then you might
Speaker 3: have the challenge of finding.
Speaker 2: A better business model.
Speaker 3: But for us, it was basically okay, the business model
Speaker 3: is quite straightforward and also quite straightforward and finding customers
Speaker 3: for it. It's really difficult to build it, and it
Speaker 3: took longer.
Speaker 2: Than expected for the Cloud awesome.
Speaker 1: So you've talked a little bit about you know, mentor
Speaker 1: funding so to speaks. I mean, what stage of the
Speaker 1: company are you in two years in I mean, did
Speaker 1: you have to bootstrap and start the company and you
Speaker 1: found funding along the way. I mean, you know, for
Speaker 1: those people who are listening to this, I mean, what
Speaker 1: sort of help do you need at all with any funding?
Speaker 1: Funding at all? Reading a stand right now.
Speaker 2: So what we did, and.
Speaker 3: That is something that is specific for the country that
Speaker 3: we started in, but I'm quite sure also exists in
Speaker 3: other countries.
Speaker 2: In Germany, we can get government brands if.
Speaker 3: You're if you're starting out as as a young entrepreneur,
Speaker 3: well for us, for example, in German it's called Germany,
Speaker 3: it's called the Exist Founders Grant, And basically you're writing
Speaker 3: a business plan for the idea that you're having, and
Speaker 3: then you're submitting it. It gets approved or rejected, and
Speaker 3: then you have enough money to fill your fridge and
Speaker 3: pay your rent.
Speaker 2: But it's of course not.
Speaker 3: Much money, so it doesn't get you any further than this.
Speaker 3: But the great thing is if you're young, you don't
Speaker 3: have much responsibilities. For me, for example, I didn't have children,
Speaker 3: I didn't have a wife, I didn't have a mortgage
Speaker 3: to pay, so it was it was good enough for me.
Speaker 3: And then we basically had one year time so we
Speaker 3: are three founders, and that grant allowed us to pay
Speaker 3: ourselves a small salary and also to buy a MacBooks
Speaker 3: with with with good performance to actually build a product
Speaker 3: in a in a good enough way.
Speaker 2: And that's how we started out. But as I said,
Speaker 2: might be different for other countries.
Speaker 1: Awesome, man. I'm also assuming you don't put too much
Speaker 1: in your fridge either, so you have a lot less
Speaker 1: to buy in your flesh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's true, even though i'm as as you know,
Speaker 3: I'm two meters tall or in a six feet six
Speaker 3: so I actually have to eat a lot.
Speaker 1: Awesome, So I know for a fact, Lucas, I mean
Speaker 1: in the last two years, I mean, you know, you've
Speaker 1: grown in confidence. Like you said, you know, you had
Speaker 1: some stops and starts, and yesterday in floodat On your
Speaker 1: presentation was a testament to your growth. You had three
Speaker 1: live customers on the stage with you to talk about
Speaker 1: how they're using bridget Book, the impact you had on
Speaker 1: you know, their app development journey. Can you tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the growth you growth path
Speaker 1: here on and what you're expecting to do before I
Speaker 1: say the end of this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, happy, happy to share it.
Speaker 3: So I mean, first of all, you talked about the
Speaker 3: presentation yesterday, and anyone here that is building their own tool,
Speaker 3: I can highly recommend when you're giving a presentation at
Speaker 3: some conference, bring customer literary stage. It gives not only
Speaker 3: you and your team a great confidence boost and quite
Speaker 3: a proud moment, but it also shows other potential customers
Speaker 3: in the audience that what you're building is quite legit.
Speaker 3: Because you, as a founder of course always biased and
Speaker 3: will always say, yeah, my product is great. I mean,
Speaker 3: no founder will ever go to stations with like, yeah,
Speaker 3: my product is ship don't don't use it. But when
Speaker 3: customers are saying it outside is they basically they're not
Speaker 3: paid to do so in the end they are paying
Speaker 3: you for for for the product that is.
Speaker 2: That is just more molegit. So quick tip here. But
Speaker 2: other than that, I already.
Speaker 3: Said that we have an open source package in the
Speaker 3: core and our source package really made it in the
Speaker 3: Flutter community. So our open source package is really popular.
Speaker 3: So we have a few thousand companies that are using
Speaker 3: the open source package to build their own design system,
Speaker 3: and these are from the range from startups to enterprises.
Speaker 3: Agencies do it as well. On every content the continent
Speaker 3: and Wichi book is is being used so not only
Speaker 3: in Europe, heavily in the US by big companies as well,
Speaker 3: also in Asia, even in Africa. Basically every everywhere in
Speaker 3: the world, whichibook is being used already in the over
Speaker 3: source packet and then on the cloud. We also have
Speaker 3: a lot of companies that already trust us there. And
Speaker 3: the amazing thing here is in the past, which a
Speaker 3: book was available in close beta, so you could sign
Speaker 3: up for the access to wigi balalk Cloud, but you
Speaker 3: had to answer eight questions and depending on how you
Speaker 3: answer those questions, you either were allowed to already get
Speaker 3: access to wigipook or not. And what Anthony mentioned, so
Speaker 3: yesterday on stage I also could proudly announce that Wigi
Speaker 3: book Cloud is now publicly generally available, so anyone can
Speaker 3: now just go to the website, sign up for the
Speaker 3: access to cloud and then sell on board and get
Speaker 3: the excess. I mean, of course we're also happy to
Speaker 3: help with democrats if you like, but no longer need it,
Speaker 3: and that's why we're we will definitely see a lot
Speaker 3: of growth now because a lot of companies that were not.
Speaker 2: Able to try which Cloud in the past no fund we.
Speaker 1: Can That is incredible. Yeah, I mean I could not
Speaker 1: agree with you more about the fact that I mean,
Speaker 1: you know you have a live customer testament on the stage.
Speaker 1: I mean nothing can beat that.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You can put all you want within double quotes on
Speaker 1: the website, but having them in front of your prospects
Speaker 1: in the audience and saying here are my happy customers. Uh,
Speaker 1: that is that is really nicely done. So great story locas.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously as a CEO, you continue to think
Speaker 1: about not just today, You've got to think about what's tomorrow,
Speaker 1: what's the next six months, what's the next two years,
Speaker 1: three years? So with that in mind, I mean, what
Speaker 1: keeps you up at night? I know you do a
Speaker 1: lot of outdoors to relax, or what what keeps you
Speaker 1: up at night to keep visiting book going?
Speaker 2: Pretty much? What what doesn't keep you up at night?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: So, in the end, as a as a CEO, you
Speaker 3: like not everything is It's just nice because if you're
Speaker 3: it's a regular employee, at some point at your day
Speaker 3: you go home and then you can kind of turn
Speaker 3: off your head, do something, do something else, and then
Speaker 3: just come back.
Speaker 2: To work and your your boss might tell you, Okay,
Speaker 2: these are the priorities. You can work on them.
Speaker 3: Fine, But if something doesn't work at Widget Book, ultimately
Speaker 3: it's it's my responsibility. So I can never escalate something
Speaker 3: to someone else. So I mean, the great thing is
Speaker 3: that I have I have amazing co founders and that
Speaker 3: have their own areas of responsibility. So for example, something
Speaker 3: is broken in the product, again, this doesn't come to
Speaker 3: me and it's like Lucas, you need to fix it.
Speaker 3: So that's something that's good where I have the ends
Speaker 3: on the on the on the technical side, or Julius
Speaker 3: with with finance and illegal but if there's issues with customers,
Speaker 3: with investors, those things that in the end could potentially
Speaker 3: kill the company, I would say unfortunately, but also fortunately
Speaker 3: my my responsibility. So I am in the end in UH,
Speaker 3: in charge and can can just not say if the
Speaker 3: if the house is burning, yeah I don't care.
Speaker 2: I just go home that that doesn't work. And then
Speaker 2: it's also a question of your or of your mindset.
Speaker 2: How much UH do you care about about the the product,
Speaker 2: the startup that you're building, how much are you caring
Speaker 2: about your team?
Speaker 3: And for me the past two years, I've basically done
Speaker 3: done nothing else than than than building widget Book.
Speaker 2: In the end, it's a huge time commitment that that
Speaker 2: I've been having. And the people that are.
Speaker 3: Working at the wigit Book also are really really close
Speaker 3: to me. So these other people I've seen more than
Speaker 3: anyone else in my in my life.
Speaker 2: And I really really really want to make this work.
Speaker 2: And fortunately we are. We're on a good path.
Speaker 3: But there have also been times where I've got a
Speaker 3: bit harder, and we also had to take difficult decisions
Speaker 3: that were just necessary for for the business. So we
Speaker 3: for example, also had to lay off employees where it
Speaker 3: didn't work.
Speaker 2: Culturely anymore.
Speaker 3: And Lisa, of course decisions that are necessary, but that
Speaker 3: are the decison that you don't want to take. You know,
Speaker 3: it's crucial for the business, but I would much rather
Speaker 3: have enjoyed, i don't know two to go for workout
Speaker 3: or to or to go outdoors than having to lay
Speaker 3: off an employee for example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So my next question was is going to build
Speaker 1: on something you said, which is culture? Right, as a
Speaker 1: super young entrepreneur and maybe with very little experience of
Speaker 1: building the company, where did you draw inspiration from? What
Speaker 1: sort of culture you wanted in the company? You know
Speaker 1: how to keep everybody's moral high. And like you said,
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's not a culture fit, I mean
Speaker 1: you got to identify that quickly and fix that they
Speaker 1: for it becomes a bigger problem. But I mean as
Speaker 1: a CEO, I mean, what sort of culture did you
Speaker 1: want to put together?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think here you you don't get an
Speaker 3: answer that that fits for for everyone. So I think
Speaker 3: you just have to be authentic as a person and
Speaker 3: in the end as a team. And so for for us,
Speaker 3: for example, I mentioned I have I have two more
Speaker 3: co founders, and I mentioned already is our CEO, and
Speaker 3: then we also get Julius, and Julius and I already
Speaker 3: know each other for what is it now, eight years,
Speaker 3: So we basically started studying together the first day and
Speaker 3: it immediately clicked. So we are very similar our personality wise.
Speaker 3: With the ends it also clicked very very easily. So
Speaker 3: we three get along really well. And for us it
Speaker 3: was pretty much easy to work together personality wise, and
Speaker 3: we were then just looking for people that are meeting
Speaker 3: the same energy, shared the same values, and it was
Speaker 3: something that was very important for us early on.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 3: A heck, and that might be an unpopular opinion, especially
Speaker 3: along a tech audience, but I really believe in having
Speaker 3: the team in office, especially in the early days, it
Speaker 3: just helps a lot. And for for us, for example,
Speaker 3: we after we reste our funding ground, which took the
Speaker 3: decision of moving with the company to another city, so
Speaker 3: we are we started in a smaller city in Germany,
Speaker 3: but then we moved with the company to build in
Speaker 3: and the main reason was it really allowed us to
Speaker 3: have the team on site because to to get the
Speaker 3: best talent in the flatter community, we decided to also
Speaker 3: hire from abroad and we brought together an amazing team and.
Speaker 2: Brilin was just more.
Speaker 3: Attractive there and then we had the chance to for
Speaker 3: having the team on board. And what also helped a
Speaker 3: lot is that we also hired people that we we
Speaker 3: knew before or that wemainly knew before.
Speaker 2: So by example, for.
Speaker 3: Example, we got Aura, who is a good developer expert
Speaker 3: for Flutter, has like twenty k follow us on Twitter,
Speaker 3: so really a popular in the community as well, and
Speaker 3: I knew her from a FATA conference, so I pretty
Speaker 3: much how Anthony and we are talking about the photo
Speaker 3: here right now. That's also I got to know Aura
Speaker 3: and if you know the people already from some experiences before,
Speaker 3: if you already had to beer with them, then you
Speaker 3: might know immediately okay that can work or or can't work.
Speaker 3: So that's why I would always suggest hiring people that
Speaker 3: you know from some experiences before, or at least had
Speaker 3: had recommendations from people that you know in trust, and
Speaker 3: then try to spend as much time as possible in
Speaker 3: person with these people, at least in the in the
Speaker 3: early days, and at some point if the company's case,
Speaker 3: of course go go even for remote but I think
Speaker 3: having at least sometime with them in the office definitely helps.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, Lucas. I mean, obviously you got to have
Speaker 1: your own personality and h you know, your your own
Speaker 1: stamp stamp on it that you are thinking. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, I mean you've you've also used kind
Speaker 1: of rule books so to speak, on taking some best
Speaker 1: practices and using some people have known well in the
Speaker 1: community and manly in one bone. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: a number of best practices so to speak.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the one thing that I that I'd also
Speaker 3: like to add is that especially if you're if you're
Speaker 3: a first time founder and you're raising munchie capital.
Speaker 2: I would really advise you to to not only go
Speaker 2: for for the for the vcs, for the funds, but
Speaker 2: also to the angel investors for your for your business
Speaker 2: that can that can just help you with their with
Speaker 2: their advice because these are experienced entrepreneurs, they really know
Speaker 2: how to do stuff and and then build a close
Speaker 2: relationship and with those investors. I mean when you select
Speaker 2: them for your business, you already believe they could add
Speaker 2: substantial value and you should of course challenge them before
Speaker 2: they invest because they will be your ound for some time.
Speaker 3: It's easy to it's difficult to get them out. That's
Speaker 3: why do your diligence there on the investors. But as
Speaker 3: long as you do it, they are there to help.
Speaker 3: After After the investors, you know you're they are even
Speaker 3: monetarily incentivized to help you, and that also helped is
Speaker 3: helping us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you bring up a great point, Lucas. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know we spoke about culture on your team. From
Speaker 1: my experience in the startup world, I mean, the culture
Speaker 1: is super important for your investor community as well. You know,
Speaker 1: if you have the wrong mindset with your investor community,
Speaker 1: that can totally derail your day. And your job as well,
Speaker 1: So that's a that's a super important point. And then
Speaker 1: so last question for you, Lucas, I mean you're I
Speaker 1: mean I already mentioned you're a young entrepreneur. You already
Speaker 1: have a given a bunch of not gets two people
Speaker 1: as advice. But if there's folks in college or anyone
Speaker 1: thinking of starting a company, anything else you'd like to
Speaker 1: add in terms of advice before they jump in to
Speaker 1: start a company, just do it.
Speaker 3: So I think there it also depends on their personality.
Speaker 3: So are there are people who are less or more
Speaker 3: likely to overthink? And in the past I definitely try
Speaker 3: to perfect things often and really try to always find
Speaker 3: the best solution for something that's definitely not the way
Speaker 3: to go. So unfortunately that changed and now I'm a
Speaker 3: lot more like you know, eighty twenty So always twenty
Speaker 3: percent effort can get eighty percent.
Speaker 2: Done. I mean, of course there are situations where it
Speaker 2: needs to be one hundred percent, but in the end,
Speaker 2: you just need to try.
Speaker 3: And in the end, if you fail with something, then
Speaker 3: try to fail rather quickly because then you can just
Speaker 3: stand up and try again. And the great thing is,
Speaker 3: if you're young, you already had that you don't have
Speaker 3: any responsibilities, So there's.
Speaker 2: Like there's no drawback in founding when you're young.
Speaker 3: So either it becomes successful and then you're already settled
Speaker 3: very early in your life, or you and now in
Speaker 3: parenthesis again you fail, but then you had a great experience. So,
Speaker 3: especially if you're optimizing for for learning at a young age,
Speaker 3: I think there's nothing else you can do to learn quicker,
Speaker 3: and especially if you're if you managed to raise fastal capital,
Speaker 3: you can learn from very experienced entrepreneurs then and also
Speaker 3: usually startup founders support each.
Speaker 2: Other a lot.
Speaker 3: So I'm super happy and great full that I have
Speaker 3: amazing other startup friends where we like very openly sharing everything.
Speaker 3: And of course in the end, you always have to
Speaker 3: keep in mind that it's a lot more likely to
Speaker 3: fail than to than to really succeed with it.
Speaker 2: So what then you just try again and uh And
Speaker 2: in the end, I believe, if you're young, just do it.
Speaker 1: That is so cool, Lucus. I mean, I I I
Speaker 1: have to say, I kind of guessed you were going
Speaker 1: to say just do it, just just knowing you, so
Speaker 1: I kind of preempted that that was coming. But what
Speaker 1: an awesome episode Lucas. Thanks so much for sharing all
Speaker 1: your insights today with the community here. It's startups, they'll say,
Speaker 1: I will always be sharing for widget book, and I'll
Speaker 1: be sure to give of everyone the details of widget
Speaker 1: books website how they can reach out to you. All
Speaker 1: of that, thanks so much for joining us, and for
Speaker 1: those of you listening, thanks so much for listening. Thank
Speaker 1: you
Speaker 2: M