Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Pranav Buggana Founder at Toohla Inc Toohla is an app which individuals can use to check, reduce, and offset their carbon emissions. Pranav so exciting to chat with you. I was, we were discussing before the show how exciting I am about, you know, just the technology that's really helping users be a little bit more conscious and reward them on the conscious citizen that we make, you know, at home in our daily lives around just.

You know, being a little bit more carbon conscious wherever you stand in in, in regards to climate change, I don't think it's important. I think it's important to enable people and empower them to make just, you know, good decisions globally. And that's always exciting. I think that's fairly, you know, fairly welcomed idea.

But before we get into the technology and what you're building and how you're, how the build's going tell us a little bit about what you were doing before you started Toohla?

Pranav: Yeah, for sure. So I actually don't really have much of a background in, in climate science and, you know, carbon markets. I was working as a data scientist slash machine learning engineer at Civic Analytics, which is a SaaS startup, B2B SaaS startup based in Chicago.

And I was doing a lot of like machine learning modeling and stuff. So I worked. Like large media companies, like, they're like ad targeting strategies all the way to Yeah. I build a bunch of models for like leading political organizations across the country for understanding, you know, the voter base better and like having like personalized sort of, communications to like, reach out to those groups.

So, you know, a lot of analytics experience and tech experience. But my real like passion was sort of, Trying to like build tech that really makes the world a better place. And that's kind of how I stumbled upon carbon markets and climate work.  

Julian: Yeah. And so fascinating just with within the machine learning space and building those models do you have to, I'm like, how much data do you have to incorporate to, to actually get a model to start functioning?

How you either hypothesize it well or how you intend to, and, you know, what is involved in that modeling that, you know, kind of the regular non-technical user might not understand myself occluded in terms of, you know, how to structure things so that it actually. You get the result or the output that, that you're looking for?

Pranav: Yeah, so it's really interesting. I think the field has made a lot of great strides in the last decade or two decades. But like you said, the data is really important, I think like getting the data in the right format and like, the right place to rom the algorithms on it, that's like 90% of the battle.

Yeah. You know, in school you, you get all of these, you know, very catered examples of of problems. But in the real world, guess what? Data's messy. You know, people might enter like a bunch of typos for their name or, you know, their, like the state that they live in or something like that. You know, people change addresses a lot.

So if you're like modeling baseline geographic features, you may, your data may be already stale because people have moved. So, you know, just getting that data in a clean format, stripping out the data that's gonna increase the noise in the model, but also not doing it in a way that makes your data set biased.

You know, maybe certain demographic groups have noisy data disproportionately compared to others, due to various reasons. If you strip out that data in a biased way, then it'll bias her model. So just really thinking about the biases and in terms of the, how much data you need. Question, that's actually a very loaded question for.

Problems and different questions. You'll need like less data to get to a good conclusion, accurate conclusion, or other problems. Let's say, you know, self-driving cars, you need like millions and millions of data points Yeah. In order to do that. And it depends on the algorithm that you use. So, yeah, I guess the short answer is it.

Julian: What technology is it built in? Just outta curiosity in regards to like what languages do you commonly see? And if I'm a machine learning, either data scientist or a engineer what am I typically using to create my models or just like interpret data? Is it like SQL databases? Is it, you know, more involved in that?  

Pranav: Yeah, I think For at least the stack that we used. I can't speak to other folks' stacks. It was all like aws Redshift, s3. And then, you know, a lot of people use like no SQL databases, which I think it's a bit too technical to get into the difference between no SQL and relational databases.

But You know, I think Pi toge is like basically the like a python sort of package that really makes a lot of common machine learning workflows in dealing with large data sets in the code itself. It makes it a lot easier. So that's kind of the industry standard, but we were using more of like, like a proprietary stack, an API that cvis internally.

To make data science easier for data scientists. And so, yeah, that was based off of like AWS and primarily, yeah.  

Julian: So, yeah. Last question on this before I go to Toohla. How I guess what are the recent improvements to tech? Do you see a lot of recent improvements to technology? Cuz I feel like machine learning AI is becoming so popular.

There's a lot of, you know, like chat G P T just came out, obviously Mid Journey and all those alike recently came out to, to really interpret. Commands and then, you know, create what you're looking for. Is a lot of the technology advancing and like pre-packaged kind of I guess frameworks in a sense.

And how quickly is it evolving? Do you have a comment?  

Pranav: Oh, it's. It is evolving at a rapid clip, like, like literally last, the last couple years. You know, I was pretty skeptical of like AI solutions. People were like, oh, you know, AI's gonna automate a bunch of you know, repetitive like jobs, but also even like creative jobs, like yeah, designers or like people in sales or even like software engineers.

And I was like, nah, that's not gonna happen. And then chat G P T came out and I was like, wait, this might happen. . Yeah. It's like made, like, I thought this technology was like at least five years away but clearly it's not. I mean, I've fiddled around with ChatGPT a lot over the last few days and it is really good in like certain, like, narrower applications.

Like I, I've actually been using chat g p t to help me build out the backend for Toohla. And like, it's actually like, like you could get to the same answers with like stack overflow or like Googling, but like it will take you to the right thing, like a lot quicker. , so it really cool as like a supplemental tool.

Yeah. But yeah, and I think like in, in like generative ai, national language processing, image processing, I think the, like you mentioned, open source, right? The, I think there's gonna be a handful of very smart people with access to an unfair amount of data that are going to really dominate, actually building out the algorithms and tinkering under the plate to like produce a bunch of package.

I think those packages will be available to use for like a broader set of developers on like specific applications. And I think, you know, it's gonna be weirdly concentrated and democratized at the same time because yeah. You know, these tools are available, will be more widely available to use, but the people who are working on the tools will be an increasingly narrow set of people, so,  

Julian: Yeah. No. Does that impact any kind of bit of the technology at Toohla and obviously moving into Toohla, what inspired you to go in this direction in particular in terms of the technology that enables people to be rewarded for like consciously making, you know, better and better decisions in terms of a global scale?

Pranav: Yep, for sure. So I think like, so Toohla was basically like I came up with Toohla because I wished that this product existed for someone like me essentially I like my extended family and my parents and grandparents. They all live in India, right. And I live and work in the US and I was born in the us.

I treat it as my home and every year I have to fly basically to India to like visit all of my family. Yeah. And obviously flying is the worst thing that you can do at all for the climate. And I was thinking, you know, it really sucks that I have to sort of choose between like seeing my family and like living where I want and you know, minimizing my impact on the climate and the environment. And so then I like stumbled upon carbon markets and carbon credits where, you know, you can literally pay money that funds projects that removal or avoid carbon emissions in the. and I thought this is like a super powerful tool for me because there's certain things that I can compromise on in my life by like reducing emissions.

Like, you know, eating more vegetarian food and taking public transit, like I don't own a car, but when it comes to certain things there are no good alternatives to like flying. And yeah, that's something I'm not willing to give up in my life. Like a lot of people were just human. We can't just renounce everything in our life.

Right? Yeah. And so, let me look into carbon credits to offset my flakes. And there is not much transparency and like the UX is really bad for like buying carbon credits for individuals. Yeah. It's, to this day, tailored mainly towards businesses and Fun fact, you can't even buy and hold carbon credits if you're an individual.

You have to go through a bunch of K Y C, which requires you to be a business. So we want to take that, make it super interpretable and seamless for the user to solve a problem that they're facing, like me living with like, you know, guilt about carbon emissions and, you know, stress about the appendic deal that might be imposed on our world.

And I thought, Why not? Why? Why stop at carbon offsets and carbon credits? Why not provide like a framework and award for people to reduce their emissions? Reducing your emissions first and then offsetting the rest is like how to do a responsible net zero or carbon neutral strategy. And we wanted to make that easy for everybody.

Julian: Yeah. Well, describe carbon credits. Are those something that is, is given from the government or is that something that is privately given? Describe what those credits are and a little bit more of the mechanics of how you can distribute them.  

Pranav: Sure. Yeah. So, And its simplified. Level one carbon credit is basically the right to claim one ton of negative emissions.

Yeah. And negative emissions can take two sort of forms. It's like literally like sucking in carbon from the atmosphere and shooting it back into the earth. And, you know, avoided emissions is okay. Like let's say that, you know, the world continued business as usual. Right. If. Make some investment, which does a thing that prevents one ton of carbon dioxide being emitted in the future, then that's one negative emission as compared to the future.

Right? So basically happens is, you know, a bunch of people called project developers they'll do things like, you know, plant a bunch of trees in like a plot of land or you. Protective forest that otherwise would've been converted into palm oil plantations or, you know, you know, logged for paper furniture.

Right. So they'll do this and they'll earn and you know, they'll be a third party registry and auditor that will say like, okay, by protecting thiss forests or planting these number of trees, you are saving a thousand tons of CO2 from being emitted or removing a thousand tons of co2. And then they can sell that thousand tons as a carbon.

And then a company or an individual will buy those up and then claim them in order to offset their own emissions. So it's basically like funding negative carbon elsewhere in order to compensate for the emissions that you emit in your own life.  

Julian: Fascinating. So, so it's essentially the, some companies are purchasing these credits because maybe they're, maybe inherently they, they can't avoid these emissions and then it essentially, What is the benefit to that company in particular is, can they not build or do whatever that they're meaning to do if they don't have those credits built in are they kind of pretty much siloed to not being able to?

Pranav: Yeah, so the benefit for purchasing Offset rather than reducing value chain emissions for companies that, let's say, let's take, you know, an airline operator like United, right? , they, for them to basical. Go like true zero. They basically can't do that because the technology for like electric flight isn't there yet, right?

For them to actually like go to zero emissions, they'd have to like halt a bunch of operations, invest billions and billions of dollars in technology, wait for that to go through FAA approval, and then they would be able to reduce their emissions. So obviously that's not something they could do, but what they can do is they can use other avenues to reduce emissions more cheaply.

You know, for example, in developing countries, there's a huge threat of deforestation everywhere. And did you know that carbon emissions from what's called land use change represent approximately 24% of global total carbon emissions. And land use change basically means destroying natural ecosystems that absorb carbon manoli from the atmosphere.

When you do that, like deforestation or convert peatlands into palm oil plant, that basically reduces the amount of carbon that's captured in the future, which is, it has the effect of basically emitting carbon. Yeah. And so like we need to halt this in developing countries cuz they're at the most risk of like having deforestation and land use change.

And they're also the most impacted by the climate crisis themselves. Yeah. And so the companies can finance that in order to reduce their emissions, but they should also take steps to reduce their own value chain emissions as of course. Yeah. It's so,  

Julian: it's so fascinating the mechanics behind companies purchasing these credits, almost funding projects essentially to be able to Yeah.

You know, reduce carbon emissions. Is this, is there a better system for this? Or is this the best system we have right now? With what with the tools essentially that we have?  

Pranav: Yeah. I mean, I'm gonna be fully transparent and say that there are better systems than carbon offsets and carbon credit.

The only problem is they're like, Just not exi, they don't exist to the scale that we need them to exist. Yeah. So I'll give an example of a better system. That's the cap and trade system, which has actually been implemented in the European Union for the last couple decades or so that what the cap and trade system is, you know, the EU will say, okay, our goal is to reduce emissions by half by 2030.

I don't know the exact goal, but it's a popular goal. . So they'll say like, okay, in order to reach that goal every year, we need to reduce our total emissions across the EU by X amount, right? . And that basically means that there's a total carbon budget in the entire EU economy that you have to like follow, otherwise you're not hitting your emissions reduction goals, right?

. And so they'll say, okay, of this total carbon budget in the eu, we're gonna. That like X amount of emissions to each different company that forms the EU economy. Yeah. And so let's say that I have two companies let's say Starbucks and target, right? Starbucks and Target both have a carbon budget for 2023.

Let's say that Starbucks exceeds the carbon budget by 10 tons. So they've emitted 10 tons more than they. . But the other company undershoots it by 10 tons. So they've admitted 10 tons less, right? Yeah. So with the company that has undershot their target, they can sell those, that 10 ton surplus to the other company.

In order to like net balance out their emissions. So, yeah. Yeah. And if you go over your budget, you have to pay a huge tax. And so this has actually been proved in peer review research to actually reduce overall carbon emissions in the economy by a significant amount. And it's mandated and enforced by the government, whereas like carbon offsets aren't enforced by the government, they're purely enforced by nonprofits, and it's purely voluntary.

Like I as a company, I can pull out a. Carbon neutral by 2050 pled whenever I want, and I can down scope it whenever I want, but if there's a cap and trade system, I have to pay the tax if I like, don't reduce my emissions. But unfortunately, many countries and many sectors of the economies aren't in the cap and trade system.

And this is like a good tool to have in addition to all the other tools at our toolbox to fight.  

Julian: Yeah, I won't go into to questions about why we can't implement something like that. Cuz I think we go on a tangent of, you know, of politics and policy, which is a never ending debate. But talk to me a little bit more about Toohla, you know, how are you empowering kind of the everyday users to to make conscious decisions, to continue to kind of reward them on those decisions?

And also, What are the things you've had to learn as someone not coming from a climate change background or climate experience, climate, tech experience that, that were, I guess, maybe not difficult, but challenging as you're growing and scaling a company?  

Pranav: Yeah, so I think like in terms of what I have to learn, I think that's definitely related to what Toohla is offering.

I actually have gone through, Typical customer journey that I, I think a lot of our customers will follow, which is coming into it with no knowledge either than, you know, unless we do something big as a world where kind of screwed in the next few decades. You know, it's estimated that there will be approximately 1 billion climate refugees by 2050.

That's an estimate that comes from the un. So already, you know, there's a lot of political instability and like geographic instability cuz of refugees. But imagine what's gonna happen with 1 billion refugees, you know? Mind blowing, right? So the consequences are dire. It's easy to get caught up in like doom and gloom and say like, oh, you know, the world is gonna suck when by the time our kids are like of age, right?

But I think through all of that negative press coverage, there is like a glimmer of hope of like, these, there are specific actions that you can take to minimize your impact and like negative impact and maximize your positive. And I had to go through hours and hours of research on like carbon markets, on different data-driven, like, okay, what's the carbon footprint of shrimp versus beef?

It turns out the carbon footprint of shrimp is like actually way higher than that of beef. Profound. Really? Because a lot of like wild caught shrimp, u like it's caught through like deforesting, like mangroves and like coastal ecosystems, which absorb a lot of carbon. So all these kinds of things.

We want this info to be accessible to the. and for them to be able to easily incorporate and like optimize their choices for the climate without really having to do all this hours and hours of research themselves. Yeah. And so we've created like, we're building currently an app, which is like a gamified framework that distills a lot of this insight into, okay, if I eat a vegetarian meal I earn these many points, you know?

Yeah. Or if I take transit, I earn X amount of points. And you know, there's also gonna be a bunch of content where people can learn. Things themselves related to like climate friendly decisions and even carbon markets and all of that stuff. And so, you know, it basically like taking these feelings of like helplessness and doom and creating them into, and then turning them into feelings of optimism and agency by actually like, you know, using your smartphone To like track, like for example, like dual lingo or like Strava or something.

You can like track things, hit prs, like share your progress with friends. Like it's really meant to be a collaborative thing to like give people agency. Yeah. So that's kind of a little bit about the product that we're building so far.  

Julian: I love, I love that. And so it sounds like you, you're kind of quantifying the different decisions you have to make through research and seeing what those actually, you know, have in terms of the effect on carbon.

And then also creating a reward based system to continue people using. What, yes. Yeah. I guess my question is, you know, for anything that's very user input oriented, how do you make decisions around how much the user has to input versus how much you can automate through the technology that these devices have?

You know, like, you know, for me at least, I don't know if you've done this before, but I was on like MyFi plan app where I was like, yeah, trying to hit a personal, you know, goal for my fitness with the, and I had to record my meals and everything like that. It's a little, it's a little tax, you know, if you're not fully invested in it.

So, yeah. How do you kind of balance out how much user input is required versus how much you wanna automate in, during that process or during the building process?  

Pranav: Yeah, for sure. So I think, yeah, I think like, you, you do need to like strategically use like a ballpark approximations, like averages.

Yeah. That kinda. And really like interrogated and tested out with users in the field. So we're actually actively trying to recruit beta testers in order to like test our app and give feedback on it. You know, and I think, you know, for example, if you're trying to like, go and offset your meal, let's say that you have a steak or like you have some strip or something like that you know, and you can just basically pay a few bucks to like compensate for that effect through our app.

And it just takes a couple buttons. You. Basically select the type of food and it'll calculate what's the average portion size ballpark, and then convert that into a carbon footprint estimate, and automatically show you like how much you need to pay to like, buy enough carbon credits to compensate for that meal.

And so, you know, it's basically we're using the here is to go we want maximum two interactions, hopefully one interaction with like data entry for the. Obviously it's preferable to do it like in a fully automated way, like track everywhere you go, everything you buy. But that's not what we're about so far.

Cuz like, I think we, I don't think everyone is like in the current privacy climate, we wanna be very privacy forward and like, not sell anyone's data and not track too much data, give people ownership of what they want to share with us. So yeah,

Julian: it's so fascinating. And, Whether it's a good idea or not take it or leave it. But it'll be interesting to see, you know, the partnerships through, you know, companies like for instance, like Shake Shack are very much a positive or are looking to be net zero in terms of their carbon emissions. And they have a lot of, you know, food that, that they treat not only well in, in terms of the preparation of it, but also creating alternatives for people who, you know, wanna be a little bit more carbon friendly or want, you know, be very particular with their diet.

So, Hopefully that's in the roadmap for you. But I guess more personally as a solo founder you know, what are the I guess how do you go through the challenge of being a solo founder, not only making the decisions? Yeah. And are you building community around you and how do you, honestly, they mentally kind of sane during the building process because there's a lot of highs and lows and it's difficult not to be able to share.

Someone else what advice would you give, you know, for other solo founders out there in terms of go pushing through the challenge of building?  

Pranav: Yeah, for sure. I think you hit, it, hit the nail on the head that like, the hardest part about being a solo founder is that, you know, you don't have that team with you, like the emotional aspect.

You know, if there's like a crisis, you're basically taking everything on your shoulders and you don't have that person to sort of bounce ideas off of and hype you up and stuff like, So I would say like if you're a solo founder try to find, and, you know, there could be reasons why you're a solo founder.

Maybe you don't have an extensive network where you can like recruit someone who has all of the skills that are required to contribute and is also super passionate enough to like leave their whatever six figure Java fan cup need to come work at your startup, right? Or maybe you just want to keep more control of the vision of the business and you know, you want to do it yourself.

And I think a. Shops like YC or like VC funds, they'll say like, oh, you know, you just need to get a co-founder. Right? But I think that if you, if. Have solid unit economics. If you have great traction, if all the fundamentals of your business are good and the investors can smell the money, then I think that's gonna be something that they'll say, okay, we'll write you a check, but you should really find a co-founder.

Right? That's what they did. That's what YC did with Dropbox, right? So, stay the course. Always interrogate your assumptions on like, why do I, why am I doing this as a solo founder? And like, if the, if you have a clear answer to that in your head, then just keep doing what you're doing and don't, and. The noise.

And I would say like, the second thing is sur surround yourself with people who can play that co-founder role except don't come with the baggage of like them being a full co-founder from an equity perspective. Yeah. Where they're like super motivated and. Maybe instead of giving them like 3% equity, you give them 6% equity or something like that.

So they're like doubly incentivized to make the company work. So yeah, that, those are the two pieces of advice I, I have.  

Julian: Yeah. Love that. Love that. And tell us a little bit about the traction. So the products in beta, you have a lot of beta testers. How many testers do you have? And when's kind of your timeline to launching the full.

Pranav: Yeah, for sure. So, we still haven't finished the beta yet. We're like, we're still in the prototype phase, so we're going to do like, you know, a limited friends and family release for the prototype itself, where like, we'll probably have like a Wizard of Oz backend. A lot of stuff will be Flintstone.

But it'll basically just be like usability testing and like, you know, just sniffing for more bugs. And then once we iterate once or twice on. We're gonna aim for like a beta testing list of say hundred to 500 people. And then from then on we'll be launching the v MVP at target data's end January, mid-February, like that for the v MVP release.

And you know, we wanna push out the beta in the next two or two to three weeks. Incredible. Thank you. So that's kind of what it looks like so far.  

Julian: Next question I have. You know, and so, so excited to, to see that not only the beta is kind of up and running and it's getting close to being launched.

And if we're on the short list for that as an audience, as a guest as well, would love to be on the short list to test it out, but, What are some of the biggest challenges that Toohla faces getting? Not only or biggest challenges slash risk that Toohla faces today?

Pranav: Yeah. So I think some of the biggest challenges, obviously it comes with the territory of like, you know, first time founder and you know, cold starting a B2C app, you know?

Yeah. I like whenever I say like, oh, I'm working on a D to C mobile app, people are like, oh, really? Like, that's what you're doing. How come you're not doing, how come you're not doing like a B2B SE thing, which relies on some proprietary algorithm, you know, I'm like, Like, because, you know, this is what I'm doing.

Yeah. But so yeah the getting, pulling the initial set of users out of thin air and really iterating towards product market fit is, I'd say the biggest challenge that faces us. Another thing, like, another challenge is that the market for carbon credits is so opaque. It is actually quite a large market.

It, the voluntary carbon market was around two or 3 billion of transacted volume last. And it hit doubled last year, compared previous year. Wow. And it's expected to go all the way to 50 to a hundred billion by 2030 or 2050. One of those, I think a hundred billion by 2050. 50 by 2030. But a lot of that transaction volume is like not very frequent.

It's like two companies creating millions and millions of dollars of credits between them. Yeah, right. And like a bilateral. So for us, obviously, you know, we'd be lucky to have like a small fraction of that transaction volume in our initial startup thesis. So finding the mix of like high quality carbon credits from like reputable sources Yeah.

That we can buy and small quantities is like one of the biggest challenges I have. I have to like network my way into the whole thing by going to a bunch of conferences and reaching out to a bunch of people on LinkedIn. But we're, we finally are about to sign with like our first. So that side of the double-sided market problem is pretty much solved, and now we need to focus on demand generations.

Julian: Incredible. And how, in terms of go-to-market strategies and creating that demand what are some strategies that you're looking to deploy? And, you know, what's exciting and what are you kind of to have questions about as a initial launch?  

Pranav: Yeah. So for the initial launch, you know, we're trying to places and forums, digital and physical and networks where we believe a lot of our target segment hangs out. So for example, you know, subreddits for like public transit advocacy, I think they would love this solution because finally they can be like tangibly rewarded for like, using public transit in like an app.

And, you know, people who go to shop at re eis, you know, our plan is to actually literally go and hang out at Reis and be like, Hey, like, do you care about like, the environment that you're hiking in? Like, check out our solution is super easy, right? So just like meet them where they hang, push it out through these domains and try to get on podcasts where like there's a disproportionate audience of founders and startup Investors that love trying the latest technology and new solutions and are willing to be part of it.

So, you know, it's really an all of the above but targeted approach. Like, we're not trying to burn a bunch of money on like banner ads or anything like that. We're trying to really get that organic tech growing.  

Julian: I love that. I love that. And if everything goes on, what's the long-term vision for Toohla?

Pranav: Yeah, the long-term vision for Toohla is that First of all play a central role in moving the globe towards net zero future by 2050. And then another goal is I want Toohla to be like a household name in sustainability where if people see like the tool, certification, Toohla brand on it, they know that choice that they're making is a better choice for the environment and mainly for the climate.

I feel like I, like, I want people to turn to Toohla for a source of information on how they can minimize their negative impacts on the environment and get involved and really join this global movement of people working together for a better future.  

Julian: Yeah, it's incredible. So, j just to see, you know, not only the mc. The ability that companies have now to build technology, to empower people but also the creative reward system. I think, you know, there, there's so many companies out there that are now shifting to not only rewarding their user base, but also educating them. And it create a whole experience and community around, around these products, which, I think everyone's kind of craving for a little bit more connection with whatever they're using.

You know, I think it's like two sides of Coin, right? It's either like, so easy, I don't even think about, you know, using it. And it's so part of my day-to-day life. And then also the the more thoughtful choice of, you know, using technology and products and. It kind of, you know, communicates some kind of external image of myself, which is I think I think the right move for that.

A lot of companies are going into which I'm excited to see how it plays out. But always like to ask this. I know we're coming to the close to, to the episode here, but I always like to ask this question to founders, not only for my selfish research purposes, but also for my audience. What books or people have influenced you the most, whether it was early in your career or.

Pranav: Oh yeah, that's a great question. So, I would say that like in terms of books I've been reading almost I, at the Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen. I think for a lot of like D two C founders, like any founders whose business relies on network effects, yeah, it is a must read. Like he really goes into the mechanics of how to create network effects and he's done it himself before, which lends credibility to it.

And I've got a lot of key insights that I'm actually using in my go-to-market strategy from. . And in terms of sort of, books that I've had an influence on my life when I was a kid, I had I read this book the book by Dale Carnegie, How to win friends and influence people. So things about like listening, being a good conversationalist, and, you know, remembering people's names.

Like I've basically internalized that and I've literally seen it help my, you know, day-to-day interactions so much. So that's something that no, no matter how young you are, maybe you need to be a little older than 13. To understand it, but but yeah, that's a great book in general. Yeah. And then I was a huge fan of Hemingway back in the day in my teenage angsty Tays. So it's a little fiction.  

Julian: I love that. I love, you know, it's always good to hear the fiction not requests not referrals. The, that's suggested fiction rating because recommendations. Thank you. Because it's always, I think, insightful and on where I think a lot of founders need to spend time on to get away from the project, but also, and I think it impacts kind of how you view philosophically or even strategically sometimes how you approach kind of building and, and everything like that. But last little bit, is there anything I didn't ask you that I should?  

Pranav: You didn't ask me for the link to sign up for our beta, which is that was coming next t o, yeah, toohla.com/signup. That is t o o h.com/signup.  

Julian: Amazing. And then where else can we find you? What are your LinkedIns, what are your websites? What can we get involved and be supportive of the overall project?  

Pranav: Yeah, for sure. So the website is Toohla.com, T O O H L A . Com and yeah, and LinkedIn. You can check out the Toohla LinkedIn page. I haven't set up a Twitter account for the company yet. So it's just my personal Twitter for an up, but that's coming soon.

Julian: Amazing. Well, I'm excited to not only see kinda the progress where, you know, Toohla is gonna go and what it's gonna be, but also I'm excited to see that, you know, kind of where it's built and how it has an overall effect. So, Poff, thank you so much for being on the show and I hope you enjoyed yourself.

Pranav: Thanks, man. I really did.  

Julian: Awesome.  

Pranav: Yeah. Appreciate it.