Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Andrei Soroker, CEO of Fogbender, a team messaging support platform. Andre, thank you So, much for being on the show. I'm really excited to chat about your background, what you're working on at Fogbender, and overall just, just get into the weeds with some of the interesting stuff you've done in your career and what you're working on now.

So, thank you again for being on the show. And, and just to jump right into it, what were you doing before you started Fogbender?

Andrei: I was I was working at a company that acquired my previous comp, my previous startup.  

Julian: Yeah. . How, how was that experience? I, I don't think a lot of founders, or, or maybe they, that always on their agenda, like maybe it's a merger acquisition and IPO. What's the experience like going through the process of acquisition? First of all, was it a good experience?  

Andrei: You know, I mean, yeah, So, So, So,. There is like this world of middle of the road acquisitions there, there. Mm-hmm. , there's sort of like soft landings, right? Where you're not it's not, it's not a life changing, not, not a like not a retirement situation, but as a founder, So, you know, you, you, you eventually have to make a choice.

Like if it's not really Yeah. Happening, what do. . Yeah, So,. You know, I think everything considered it was, it was probably the best outcome that we could have. Knowing what we knew then, like I, I've made plenty of mistakes, but I think that yeah, it was, it was a good experience at the end of the day.

But you know, it's really hard to find these soft, like the stories basically. Mm-hmm. because they're generally not told. You hear stories of, you know crazy outcomes. Everyone's gonna kinda like, sings those songs, but, The, you also hear of these aqui hires, right? Where a team just gets absorbed.

And we did, you know, our, our acquisition was an actual, like we became a subsidiary So,. It wasn't, Yeah, it wasn't an asset deal. It was like a real acquisition. It wasn't very big. But I think it was a great experience. I'll never kind of make the same mistakes again. . Yeah. But, but by the way, I'm always happy to talk to founders who are.

Facing the reality of having to sell sometime maybe next year. The biggest mistake I made, I'll, I'll tell you, is I didn't start looking for a buyer soon enough, you know? Yeah. So,.  

Julian: What is that process? You know, when you kind of, you identify that you have to sell or, and you're looking for the right partner to right company to kind of absorb your company, and what is the process like kind of going out in those conversations? What is that? What is that like?  

Andrei: So,. Our, our situation was a little bit unique, So,. This was a product called same room.io. That that was our previous company. and we were an integrator. So,. We, we dealt with a lot of different products and we knew a lot of people. Like we knew people in Microsoft, at Slack, at Atlassian, So, So,.

We had a little bit of an unfair advantage in terms of already having some relationships forged just by virtue Yeah. Of being an integrator. But in general, you need some relationships. So, it's, as a founder, Before you're thinking about selling, while you're still kind of aiming for the stratosphere, it's always a good idea to meet people who might eventually buy you, even though you're not even thinking about it, because those, those connections might come in handy and those connections are never Like cor dev, they're never, they're never the folks who buy companies.

Yeah, they're apparatus, you know, they're not really they're not gonna be particularly passionate about you or anything that you're doing. They're just like trying to get you the least amount of money and to like close the deal. That's their job. What you gotta do is talk. , ideally, the founders of these companies that might eventually buy you or, or, or product people, VP of products, SVP of Product, EVP of product.

Those are the folks you want to know because they're the ones who d who tend to spearhead acquisitions. Yeah. What, Yeah, you make a list and then you just like, go down that list and you, you set up, you know, meetings and you try to see if you can make something happen.  

Julian: Yeah, Yeah. What, what are the different was the type of acquisition that you went through, was that the only option that, that you were considering or were, what are the different types of options that you can consider as, as as a company who's looking to be, to sell?

Andrei: Yeah. So, assuming you've raised some money you're always, you're prob and unless you're in a great position of having built a great company that somebody wants to buy for a billion dollars or something, or even a hundred million, you know, like, like a big amount of money.

If you're looking at a small acquisition, small acquisition. You know, it was then maybe single digit millions. Now maybe it's like very, very low, double digit, millions kind of thing. You're, you're basically looking at returning, potentially returning money to investors. You know and, and that's, that's a huge calculation.

So, like, we had multiple offers from companies that were like, Oh yeah, we, we'd love to like, get your team onboarded here. We're not gonna give any money to your investors, but here's. Fat incentive package for you, your co-founder and your team. And I was like, Thank you, but we took all this money.

We gotta return it. So, So, my, I was optimizing for returning cash to investors. Yeah, I think I was a mistake. I think actually that was a per, like a per, like from a personal growth perspective, it was clear my investors didn't need that. It, you know, it didn't make a difference, but it would've made a big difference for me to to maybe sell to a, maybe like a bigger company or, you know, more successful company and make more money as a result.

But, but I was very clear on like, I'm, I don't care what happens. Like we're gonna try to do yeah, the best that we can do by our team, but we're gonna absolutely maximize the return to our investors. Yeah. And, and I think that was in your retrospect, the mistake. Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah. What, what was it like joining another organization now as, as a team member and, and finding, you know, I'm assuming there's some kind of challenge with just like re redistributing, whether it's like responsibilities or relearning kind of a process or anything like that.

What was the experience on, you know, kind of having different responsibilities completely from, you know, founding and leading a company to having an agenda, you know that that's set for you.  

Andrei: Yeah. So, there's essentially, Like two, two two like parallel processes that are happening here. One is, it's, it's an enormous relief to not have to worry about payroll to, to not, you know, cuz I mean, again, as a founder of a company, maybe that isn't killing it.

You, you're like, Whoa, you're worried, right? Like, if, if, if you can raise, if it's difficult to raise money, if you're, you know, cash flow isn't quite there. You don't have to worry about it once you join a large company. It just, it's, there's money there, right? You have to understand that maybe not forever, like every company has issues, who knows?

But it's like this immediate relief of not having to be responsible for all these people's salaries. The other problem, of course, is that like you, you, you wanna protect these people, but you kind of no longer have the I think it's called air cover , to do So, because really you're at the mercy of your new bosses.

For us it was, it was quite difficult, you know, So, we stayed together as a team for a while and then they started pulling us apart. It was difficult. It was, it was you know, you get into like this big machine that really doesn't care about anything or any individual. In particular So, navigating, you know, you essentially go from like trying to build a product for your customers Yeah.

To trying to become a politician because the only way you, you, you win in a company, in a larger company as a mid-level manager is by being a good politician. And those skill sets are often. Essentially disjoint, like being a good politician often means you cannot build products. You can't talk to customers like, you know, And I think the best, the best founders are able to do both probably.

I would say that that's not me. Like I'm not a good politician. . Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. What, what is it was there any like, takeaways from being a part of a larger organization that, that you now maybe use in terms of whether it's structure, strategy, operationally that you use in, in your current startup that you know, was a benefit of that?

Andrei: Well, I, I think it was my first time working at a larger company and I think, again, as a new, as a founder again I'm probably. I can recognize, you know, I gotta sell now I gotta sell into the similar companies to the one where I used to work. It's very beneficial to understand what titles mean. It's beneficial to understand what the incentives are.

Mm-hmm. Having seen kind of the sausage, you know, factory from the inside, you can, you can extrapolate and try to understand like Whether someone is actually in a position to buy your stuff or not, that's probably the biggest benefit I would say. Yeah. Yeah. So, So, it is just less of a mystery to me.

Yeah. But I think a lot, you know, these larger companies, they differ quite a bit. And the older the company, the more layers of complexity you're gonna discover. Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah. What, what inspired you to, to then take the leap and, and start Fogbender it.  

Andrei: So,. Yeah. I never So, I never like intended to stop, you know, trying to build my, my, my big product that everybody's gonna love.

I think the acquisition was just a temporary kind of a, you know, it wasn't a setback, it was just an experience. But I, I, I mean, I think I stumbled upon. A, a, a problem, what I consider to be a pretty big problem while, while working at this company. And the problem is sort of a contin So,. I've been working in team messaging for almost 10 years now.

Like my first product was essentially you know, team messaging system very, that ended up being very similar to Slack. And, and I, I really believe in, in team based communication. Like I think it's a really wonderful medium. And I believe in team to team support So,. I think that the best, the best support between two companies that are you know, where you have a vendor and a customer selling something complicated, the best medium for Maximizing in information flow and information exchange.

And retention of knowledge is essentially through a shared channel, right. Where you, you're sharing a, a common, common space where both teams are able to churn because, you know, people leave on both sides, but they still retain all the information that that's happened. Mm-hmm. . And I ran into these issues while working at this larger company where I was on the buyer, I was on the cons, you know, customer side of things and I was really struggling to even know who the other users were on, on my own team, in my own company.

Yeah. Working like with this big vendor. And I wanted for there to be a system that was like available by default to the vendor where they can buy it. And I would have the ability then to receive support in a way that the rest of my colleagues you know, would that would, that would be visible to the rest of my colleagues.

So, it's a really simple want, but it's kind of a difficult. It's kind of hard to get Yeah. Yeah. And So, So, I started thinking about it pretty seriously, like in my, it was a three year stint at this company and, and in the last year I pretty much spent most of my mental capacity thinking about this problem and interviewing potential customers and, and, Yeah.

And then I was like, Yeah, let's, let's try to do this because I think there's something there. .  

Julian: Yeah, yeah, yeah. During the interview process, were there a couple guiding questions that like helped illuminate what the product should be?

Andrei: You know, I mean I've, I've had this, like, I've had this hunch for long, for a long time, that companies that use shared channels for customer support are Kind of re they're doing this reluctantly, you know, they, they go into it with the, with open. You know, it's, it's wonderful initially because you have such an incredible access, you know, to your customer, to your customer's team.

But once you start scaling it's pretty clear that. You know, turns into more of a liability than, than a bonus. Yeah. And you start, you start like taking this good thing and, and, and, you know, you're taking it away from people both your team and the customer's team. And I was trying to confirm that hypothesis, like, do you love using you know shared channels for customer support?

Yes. Do you hate using customer shared channels for customer support? Yes. You know when you see this like, Yes, I love it. I also hate it by the same person at the same time. Like, there's something there, you know, there's gotta be a problem. Mm-hmm. . And I just basically got like a bunch of these folks who are doing this to say, You, Yes, I hate it.

Yes, I love it. And I thought, let's, let's try to see if we can find a solution, So, that we can take the hate.  

Julian: Yeah. What, what's the solution then? Where did you find that, that you, you could create this, this platform or this, this technology that, that, you know, took the hate out of it? Yeah. What, what was the solution there?

Andrei: So, it's still evolving, but the basic my basic concept hasn't changed. It's still there. And it's. The idea is incredibly simple. You know, as a, as a user of, of a, of some sort of a B2B software, you've got access to a dashboard. Where you, you know, you can sign in with your account and you can see the rest of your teammates who also have accounts within the same environment.

What you don't have usually is a, a, a support environment where you can all talk together inside of the dashboard. So, think of it as like intercom, where the rest of your teammates are, are present. Do you know, it just doesn't exist unless you know about Fogbender That thing doesn't exist. Even if you really wanted it, you can't.

buy it You gotta come to us. There's no other option. And So, our initial product and our initial like implementation is that widget that you can just install and as long as you can you can tell Fogbender like, Hey, here, all these people signing into this environment, they all work at the same company.

Put them all in the same widget, So, they can talk to each other. So, if one of 'em. A question, then the rest of them would be able to get a notification and potentially respond. Yeah. So,. But what happened next was really surprising to me. And, and I'll, I dunno if I mentioned this, but same room. My previous product was a, it was an interoperability system for team messaging, So, like, You could sit and Skype and a Skype group, right?

Not, not dm, but group and talk to someone in IRC channel, right? Or talk to someone in a Slack channel or, or telegram group. So, we, it was an under the hood. We didn't, we didn't have a user interface. And So, we, we started getting, Requests from customers to integrate with, like, say Microsoft Teams because their customers are sitting in Microsoft teams.

They're not necessarily using a widget on their website. And we ended up build, started, we, we started building these integrations you know, So,. Yeah. There is this widget that our customer can, can put on their website similar to Intercom, but that widget actually has the same information as a dedicated m.

Teams channel that is run by the customer, right? So, they. They, they install, are bought into that channel. And then all of a sudden, like there's this connectivity between an internal system, Microsoft teams too, the support support environment. And then we have the same thing now for Slack, , So, unexpectedly.

We kind rebuilt same room, but with. Very, you know, kind of a, a much greater focus on support. Yeah. And we now have a system of record that sits in the middle and, and is capable, is actually recording everything. We have an interface now, So, So, So,. That's That's kind of been the evolution of this product.

Yeah. Yeah. Pretty interesting. It's pretty interesting to give back into the team interoperability world. I didn't, I didn't think I was gonna do that. Yeah.

Julian: Yeah. What are some things that that are some aspects about team messaging that we don't consider, that companies don't consider, that are, that you've seen that are extremely important in that some successful companies do well and others may, may not do well.

Andrei: You know I'm not sure that I, I have the, the answer to that question. I, I do think that in general I think in general, like the direction that team messaging took as, as a result of Slack's becoming Slack, becoming very successful in Slack is really conceptually a continuation of irc, you know, where you've got these huge channels, destinations, like they're, they've got people there, there's presence.

And then you know, they, they, they started to try to take that model and apply it to these large companies. I think that I think that that like direction is probably incorrect in general. because, because I think large channels is destinations, and you can see like, I think threads in Slack. Okay.

People use them, but if you think about it, they're kind of kind of crazy because they're unnamed. Right. Yeah. They're un they're, they're difficult to difficult slash impossible to, to navigate, right? Yeah. So, it's, it's, it's to me like that world of threading and Microsoft teams. Why did, why did Microsoft team, why does Microsoft Teams has, has.

Why is it built the way it's built? It's because Slack didn't have threads and Microsoft teams is like, Oh, well we're gonna do like, do just like Slack except for threads, So,. They basically took like that you, you're, you're essentially seeing these products existing the way they exist, not because.

That's like what the market wanted. But it's, it's because like some, a competitor didn't do this thing that they thought was necessary. But I think the reason for, for the ask for the threading was because Slack conceptually created these channels that are really, really difficult to it's hard to create new channels.

You know, they're not lightweight, they're not easy to deal with, they're not easy to maneuver around. So, and I could be wrong, but, but in my kind of version. Super functional team messaging is where it's basically like, it's like tx, right? Yeah. Where you just create these windows all over the place and they're lightweight and you can move 'em around and you're free to move messages between them.

And maybe, maybe it's, maybe it's Yeah. Yet to be proven. But that's basically what fog, the Fogbender ui. This is like the fourth time I'm building something like this. That's, that's kind of what, where aim, what it aims to do. I think that there is a lightweight, lighter weight messaging paradigm where rooms are lightweight.

They're not, they're not like these destinations. Yeah. Where it's easy to reply to messages. It's easy to. I almost think of it as, as almost like get right So, you have these branches and you potentially are rebasing on, you know on top of an existing branch. You're, you're, you're taking a, a bunch of commits and like introducing them to another context.

Like that's a really powerful I think metaphor that might work in, in team messaging. But of course we have to hide most of that complexity. And I think when you look at conventional and I think this is most applicable, In places where retaining context is very valuable, which is really, where is that, That's in customer support, right?

Because as a customer support agent, you're very likely to be dealing with 15 different customers at the same time. If you have to switch between like these heavy duty channels, right? So, you essentially have to visit each, You have to get up, like go outta the house, get into another house, like understand what's happening in the kitchen.

You know, it's a lot of work. But then you look at these conventional contact center solutions. They're all tiled solutions. They're, they're, they enable you to see multiple things at the same time. Yeah. They enable to retain context. Anyway, I'm kind of getting off topic probably a little bit, but your question was like, what, what are companies missing?

Well, I think they're missing like they're missing the. The tooling that makes team messaging less painful, you know? Yeah. More pleasurable to use kind of thing.  

Julian: Yeah. Well, I love the thought of behind the destination piece because I thinking about it as that that is the experience and, and you know, we use Slack like Slack Connect, where you connect, you know, companies between.

Slack channels and the idea, and that it's a beautiful idea in ways to communicate and connect, but like you, like the whole destination piece just resonates deeply because it's like I do have to re kind of introduce myself, reintegrate myself to that environment, to then understand and address whatever.

The next step or topic of choice is, And So, Yeah. Thinking about the, the time it takes to do that it, it is sort of a substantial commitment to revisit that destination So,. Yeah, I mean, I, I love, I love the analogy there and get up, get, get outta my house going to another house because that is the feeling that I get and that's the weight of that movement.

It's super fascinating to think about it more centralized in, in in what the Fogbender UI and, and what the technology's doing. What are some of the biggest risks that Fogbender faces today?  

Andrei: Well, the biggest, it's the same risk as any startup pre-product market fit startup faces. And that is that nobody wants your stuff. That's the only risk. Yeah, Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah.  

Andrei: There's really are no other risks, .  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Well, how do you go through that, that process? Are there any, are there any strategies you use or, or you know, are you just talking to customers every day and just trying to, you know, re reconfigure your, your product to be exactly what they need?

Andrei: Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I think my goal has been to find a model customer to Yeah. And, and for me to believe that that customer represents a pattern that we can replicate. And I, I think we've found that customer and that's, that's how we're trying to overcome the. Nobody wants your stuff.

Problem , You know, that's the biggest problem you have. Other problems. I mean, I think the, the, the another huge problem is like co-founders getting tired of doing the stuff that they're doing. Like that's, that could destroy a startup very easily. But these are these are human problems. These are not product problems.

They're certainly there, but you know I think the fundamentally like the biggest concern for any, any, any company that's trying to discover something new. Facing the reality that incredibly, it's incredibly likely that nobody wants the thing that you're building. Yeah. You know, then, and, and, and you're like, you know, if you've put a few years into it it becomes harder and harder to.

Turn on a dime and do something else. Eventually you, you run outta money. You know, it's yeah. It's, it's, it's a really, really difficult journey, but I think some people are kind of built to, to go through it. Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree there. If everything goes well, what's the long term vision for Fogbender?

Andrei: Yeah, I think So, So, basically I look at the customer support space, you know, and there's a lot companies in that space. There's like Zendesk and, and Intercom and front and. ServiceNow and, and Salesforce Service Cloud. And then there's like maybe 20 others that are big, right? And I have this theory, and I think, I don't think it's incorrect, that essentially all of 'em fundamentally focus on serving companies that sell to consumers, like that's where most of their engineering resources goes.

That's where most of their marketing goes. They really are optimizing for companies that have millions and millions of users because that's where the complexity is. If you think about it. You know, you've got lots of agents, they gotta. You gotta route these requests, you gotta, you know, have great analytics.

And they, because B2B companies don't have that many users, like their users pay a lot more money per account. These are orders of magnitude greater, like, you know deals, right? But So, So, all these, all these existing support solutions are ignoring the needs of these b2b. That might actually be really successful.

You know, maybe they only have 2000 accounts, but like, they're a public company. There's a lot of 'em like that. What I'd like to do, like my vision is to take a chunk out of every one of these support solutions that they don't even know about, which is their b2b like misplaced, misguided like, you know, B2B piece of the pie, and built something very specific for these B2B companies that.

Helps them take their you know, make their products better, make more money, because they, they, they essentially learn to excel at support. You know, today a lot of these companies, they just hire people, you know, humans really to just prop up the the needs of Yeah. Supporting the complexity that inevitably exists between the vendor and a customer, you know, when it's multiplied by a really complex product.

They just hire people, which is expensive. I mean, it's, it's It's just expense. It's just a lot of money. Yeah. And those people generally aren't engineers, So, they're not particularly knowledgeable about like the technologies that they're supporting. They're literally there to like know that somebody's about, maybe somebody stopped responding and they gotta like ring this loud bell and they gotta bring in the caval.

It's, it's a lot of money to do this and, and their end result isn't fantastic for either side. You know, I think the. The customer's team doesn't really get the best support. The vendor's team is spending a ton of money on, you know, like, like spooning out water from, from, from a situation So,. Yeah, I, I mean that's the end result.

And I don't know if it's a public company yet, or whether it's like a tiny little feature that, you know, kind of a feature level thing that people might find useful. Mm-hmm. , My, my dream is that I think it might be a public company. Yeah. If that slice is big enough and we're, we're able to find a hook into the market, right.

To yeah. Get these, these B2B companies to start switching. Yeah. That's part, Yeah.

Julian: Yeah. Love that. No, I love it and I love the honesty that you have. With the experience that you go through and, and how you're discovering not only the, the usability, but the efficacy and, and all the different important aspects of your product.

And it sounds like we've caught you mixed in that journey, which is always exciting to kind of uncover, you know, the thought process behind founders and how they're, you know, going through that, that journey. Because I think it, it, it, it a true, honest experience too. You know, when you're building a startup or you're having a product or service, You know, the different things you have to consider, but also the the, the I guess you know, not knowing the end result always but continuing to, to take the steps towards some, some greater understanding.

But yeah, no, I, I, I know we're coming outta time and, and I definitely want to ask my bonus question, one for selfish research, but also for my audience as well. And I always love to ask founders this because, you know, we come with a wealth of knowledge, but what books or people have influenced you the most?

Andrei: With books or people. That's a, that's a good, that's a good question. You know, I'm not a, I'm not a big reader of business books, but one business book I read a few years ago was, I think it was called The Matsushita Leadership, and I remember the exact, but, but this is the guy who founded whatev what became Panasonic.

And it follows his journey which is covers like most of the 20th century. He lived pretty long life. And it was actually kind of fascinating because So, this, this is obviously a Japanese man and you know, his, his company, which became Panasonic. This was years ago. So, So,. But, you know, obviously Japan went through war and, and as, as a loser, right?

Like as a, as a very difficult moment and kind of So,. I grew up, I actually grew up in Russia. I moved to the Bay Area when I was 13 but I still have some, some of my team members are there and I'm, you know, I, I identify as like Russian, right? I can't do anything about that. And now , like my, my country started in essentially like a completely aggressive illegal war.

Yeah. And, and I, I keep going back and I have to, like, my biggest challenge, my company has to survive however difficult it is for. Personally however, you know just, just debilitating this realization that all of a sudden. Like the reputation of my people are tarnished forever for the rest of my life, for the rest of my people's li my children's lives, you know, it's grandchildren's lives.

It, it's not recoverable. Right. As far as I'm concerned. And how do you survive? How do you sort of like, deal with that and, and, and I actually, going back to , going back to the Mutt So, sheets at leadership book you know well they dealt. And, and they sort of got over it and they merged through incredibly difficult times.

They merged on top eventually. So, obviously we're not like based in Russia. We're not, we're not building airplanes for the, for the Russian military, but, Just, just mentally, you know, that's, that's something that I found it just helpful. Like it was, it was a cool thing that I, I'd read and, and it's kind of helped me find my, my, my my compass, my bearing a little bit.

Yeah.  

Julian: Is there anything that he said in that book that, that you particularly, you know, use or remind yourself of? Whether it's like an inspirational quote or message or, or overall kind of feeling that was inspired by the Matsushita experience.  

Andrei: You know, it's, it's, it's a story of resilience you know, decades of resilience and just whatever the odds, figuring out a way to solve the problems that, that face this, this company.

Yeah. And then, you know, becoming one of the, like the, I think the biggest Japanese company ever, right? Like it's, it's not a, again, I read it probably eight years ago. So,. So,. It's not super fresh in my mind. Yeah, and I mean also it's not, it's not. That's not a business book, but Shires the, of the, the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a great book to to, to sort of see how large systems are built and destroyed and how, you know, horrible decisions can influence millions of people's lives.

Yeah, you know, Yeah. Again, I'm sorry to go into kind of like the dark, dark No, no. .  

Julian: I love the. No, I, I love the different perspective because I think there's just honesty in, in both sides of experiences and on, you know, business books get old after a while. They take maybe one concept and write a hundred, 200 pages about it.

Yeah, that can probably have been summarized in maybe one or two. But the. The Life Experience books just the way you can extrapolate messages or experiences and use 'em in your own life are, are So, much, I think can be So, much more substantial in, in how they affect you long term. You know, you can read, you know, the business book and maybe use it and day-to-day operations, but then forget about it once.

You know, kind of mature as a company, but the Life experience books you remember those messages and you remember those stories because they, they kind of hit viscerally So,. No, no, no So, No sorrys needed. No.  

Andrei: Yeah. But I think two more things I'd say in terms of, I mean, if you're just, you know, looking at starting a company, I think that the two So, So, Innovators Dilemma was a book that made a big was had a really big influence on me.

I. You know, you gotta take it with a little bit of a grain of salt, but it's very, it's, it's essentially a story of disruption. Right. And, and I mean, I, I think that maybe some of the examples that are, that are in the book are, I'm not sure that they'd survived the test of time, but fundamentally, it's an incredible, if you haven't thought about it before, it's a wonderful, easy read that explains how existing you know, sort of calcified systems give way to, to newer things, right?

Yeah. The other source of reading material has been really, that's really, really important to me is definitely Paul Graham's essays. You know, not all of them. And, and I mean, some of them are just not very good. But the ones that are good are, are incredible and they certainly help me. Understand early on kind of like what it, what it means to to found a company, to build something.

Yeah. Just try to build something that people want. Yeah, I mean, a great, great, great , So, source of wisdom for sure. Yeah.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Andrei, thank you So, much for being on the show. I'm So, excited to share this with the audience. I think your perspective is is definitely you know, unique. I think there's just a lot of breadth to your experience that you've had, and I appreciate you sharing, you know, the story about the murder merger and acquisition and, and the influence that it had and impact, but also how you think.

And continue to think about product and building product is fascinating. And also I think there's just a lot that, that we can take from it. So, thank you So, much for sharing your experience. I really hope you enjoyed your time and yeah, again, I, I thank you for being on the show, man.

Andrei: Thanks, Julian. I really appreciate it.  

Julian: Of course.

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