A Founder Exit Inspired by Psychedelics

Today on “The Launch Hour” we are thrilled to feature Sisun Lee, Co-Founder and CEO of More Labs, a consumer goods company behind Morning Recovery. He takes us on the raw, unconventional journey of the start-up world, leaving the company as Founder, the origin of his inspirations and revelations, his new crypto business and more!

Prior to founding More Labs, Sisun worked as a product manager at Facebook, Uber, and Tesla.

Three messages for future founders from Sisun:

1. You need resilience.
2. It’s painful and hard.
3. Don’t just idolize successful Founders. Focus on who you are.

“Happiness is a mindset. So it became about what is a lifestyle I want that gives me the most energy?” – Sisun Lee

Learn more about Sisun and More Labs:
Who is Sisun Lee?
More Labs Website
More Labs Instagram

Want to learn more about the creators of "The Launch Hour?" Learn more or follow along with the full-stack Launch Pop team.

Email: hello@launchpop.io
https://linktr.ee/launchpop

*There is explicit language and content in this podcast episode. It is not meant to encourage or promote the use of explicit language or other materials. It is meant to help in telling an entirely authentic, truthful story.* 

Transcript

Jane: 0:16

You obviously were the first founder we worked with seven years ago. Ever. Was it seven

Sisun: 0:21

years ago? Yeah. Holy shit. Seven years, almost decades. Yeah. You have launched kids. Oh my God.

Eva: 0:33

And then you launched a couple kids. Yeah. Yeah. Okay,

Jane: 0:39

so basically like maybe you can just give us a background around yourself and then I think the most interesting part is I think everyone knows who you are and your company, like you were the person that created a category of hangover solutions. Do you know how many people came to us afterwards wanting to launch a hangover solution? Really how many Eva

Eva: 0:59

and how many say it's an original idea? Yeah,

Jane: 1:03

we had five founders a month come to us saying, we have a hangover solution. We wanna launch with you guys because of morning recovery. Eventually we stopped.

Sisun: 1:12

Did you start with any

Jane: 1:12

of them? We did take it on a couple of them, but then eventually we stopped because it was just a category we got bored with, to be honest. But then we wanna hear about your journey, your whole entire journey from, and we hope that you could be like super open and candid about it. Cuz I think like everyone has a podcast around like how you launched your company and how you grew it. But I think like for us, we wanna make sure that we can just be like besties with everyone and just.

Sisun: 1:37

I'll tell you the crazy stories, that's probably more fun. There's a lot of embezzlement. I got saved by the government. I went to DC court. I went to the port to prevent the ship from leaving cause they had our products. That's probably more fun. My conclusion is I hate startups by the way. Damn. Yeah. Every time I do a startup now my first thing is our goal is to get out of the startup mode as quickly as possible. Cuz this shit's miserable. Yeah.

Jane: 2:01

Sounds a lot like miserable beginnings of parenthood actually. It truly is at the beginning. Miserable. So

Sisun: 2:08

yeah I don't know. I wouldn't know. I haven't launched the kid yet. Yeah, maybe one day.

Eva: 2:13

Okay. Why don't you start with, let's be chronological here. Like you started morning. I'm

Sisun: 2:19

sorry, is this started? Is this a podcast right now? This is it, yes. Yeah, this is it. Very casual. Nice. Of course.

Eva: 2:29

It's real like you're drinking water, drinking macha here. What's, we just wanna hear what happened.

Jane: 2:35

Everyone knows Morning Recovery. It's like a banging hangover solution category. You grew it, you launched other products under it. Everyone looked to you as a category creator. You did a bunch of viral stuff as well, that worked really well, and you were like, Tesla PM that built this hangover solution and it was doing so well. Then you left and then it's really interesting to see that. Storyline because I don't think like this is the day and age where companies are so founder led, like it's like the founder story that gets the most amount of like clickthroughs and it's part of the brand story. And for you, you, that was a huge part of your brand story and then you left the company. So talk about that.

Sisun: 3:14

Yeah. It wasn't like Rainbow Sunshine and not leaving at the peak. More Labs had a pretty hard time during Covid. We. Had a whole pivot. We went from direct to consumer to retail. We were just like, okay, like the success model is obviously, Very distribution and marketing oriented. So we hired a bunch of people to lead retail to completely change our D n A and then we said, fuck, direct to consumer, let's go retail. Boom. Covid hits, retail shuts down. We're just like, oh, fuck Yeah. So that happened. So this was like 2020 early to 2021. That was pretty hard. We've over invested in retail we've, cuz there's a lot of upfront costs building the sales channels sales team. And then it didn't go well. So it was a lot of just like survival. And then towards the end of Covid we were finally able to raise 10 million. So that kind of gave us a lifeboat, but that was like a lot of reflection cuz obviously it was like really difficult times. I think when things are going extremely well, you don't really think about anything, right? Cuz it's like it's a rocket ship. You don't leave a rocket ship. But that was like after we got through that pain point, it just gave me some time to reflect. Cause I was like pretty burned out. And the conclusion for me was just like, why am I doing this in the first place? And as you guys recall, when you guys started Launch Pop, this was like a side project that became a thing. And so it was never deliberate. My goal in life was never to go build a beverage company. I'm sure you can say it's more than that cuz there's a brand, there's a lifestyle. I think there's phenomenal companies. Where the product itself is a beverage, but ultimately I went to Waloo. I studied engineering. I wanted to build technology companies or work on technology products, and so I knew that one day I would just go back to it and given that we just came out of this like shit storm and we were just able to raise series B, we're very close to it. We were pretty confident. I just figured like this is probably the best time to leave. Honestly, there's no best time. It always sucks, but. This is way better than if I were to leave before or even a couple months after. Yeah. So that's why I left. So in a very good note, we had a good c e o company was in like up Rise series B. They're doing really well. Like the company tripled its size. I'm still on the board member, but it's totally like off my hands. All the achievements are companies, but, and that's why I left. Yeah. It wasn't like we're like a mega success. Yeah. But stop there.

Jane: 5:27

It's like you talked about burning out. Like how did you have that thought in your head? I want to leave the, my company that I've built, that I'm the face. Ok. Like

Sisun: 5:37

how, what is this? Is this a PG podcast or is this rated R Cause? Cause the answer difference it def differs.

Eva: 5:44

Yeah. I'd rather it be rated r

Sisun: 5:49

pg. So true. So that was like, okay, I need to self-reflect. And then a bunch of my friends were like, you should take acid and self-reflect. So I remember taking a lot of dosage of acid, went to my rooftop and then ponder about my life and company. I'm joking.

Eva: 6:06

How much did you take that and then all like the dose here?

Sisun: 6:11

It was pretty strong. Yeah. And cuz it's very introspective, right? If you taken it before. So then I went from, what's the best way to help this company succeed? All the way down to these deeper level of questions like the first thing is to have the best leader. Then the question is like, how do I be the best leader to, am I the right leader? Why am I not the right leader? And then all the way down to ultimately to be the best leader, I have to be intrinsically aligned with my goals and passion and what I'm. And then it was just this conclusion that what's best for the companies is actually for me to leave, because ultimately we need a very sales and marketing driven leader. But I was much more on the analytical use my left brain, but there's a limit to that. For example, even when we were trying to do marketing, Tactically you can say things like, you can be really good at direct to consumer performance ads, and you can get pretty far by being very analytical. But at some point in order to go through that plateau, you have to start doing other nebulous things like brand marketing where no amount of data is actually gonna give you the right answer. Cause it's all about feeling. It's can you, evoke the right emotions and make people really create the. Brand and the thing that you're trying to build as a lifestyle. It's not only I'm not good at it, I'm just really bad at it because even then I keep thinking in numbers, right? And so question was like, can I change myself? And honestly it was like I can't, like this is literally how I think. Yeah, this is who I am. And this is a company needs somebody who can do this. A world class marketer and a world class sales guy, and. That's just not who I am. And I think if we didn't have a good replacement, of course, like it wouldn't have been easy, but we had like awesome people at the company who could do it. So it, the transition was way easier than perhaps it would've been otherwise. Yeah.

Jane: 7:59

That's so interesting cuz it's like everyone wants to start a company, but it's, yo, do you align with your company that you're building deep, deep down? You have to do some soul searching before you start? You do. Yeah. You really do. And. I don't think enough people do it. And then that's why you see a lot of burnout. People like not doing anything after five to six years.

Eva: 8:18

There's so many people who see an opportunity in the market and just see dollar size and they say, yeah, I wanna be the founder of this. But that's not why do it.

Sisun: 8:28

I've seen cases where people succeed. It's just like the ch I think there's a lot of different paths to financial success. Startup being one of them. It's just, frankly, it's. Probably the least like ri effective channel. But if you have so many people working on a startup, someone's gonna succeed. It's just like the odds are so against you that if you don't enjoy it, And you'd look at it from a pure mercenary mode. Dude, there's like better ways to make money. Yeah. Another

Eva: 8:53

analytical answer.

Sisun: 8:54

Yeah, sorry, I just, yeah,

Jane: 8:57

no, it's so important to know yourself too is I think so many young people start companies and they like don't truly know themselves, and then they start trying to figure out this company while they're trying to figure out themselves, and it just becomes this fucked up mess. Yeah, you're just confused about everything. Who are you versus who's the company? And then you just get lost amongst everything.

Sisun: 9:17

Yeah. But it's all great learning. I think no matter what the outcome would've been, obviously financial success, more the better, but it's probably the best learning ever. So if you're young and you're just like focused on growing and you start a company and it was for a bad reason and it didn't do well, I still think like the way I would think about it, like that was your. Harvard Business School education right there, and it's probably better than Harvard Business School. As long as you didn't waste your time and was lazy about it. Yeah.

Eva: 9:43

Oh yeah, for sure. Okay, so you tripped on a lot of acid and you got this crazy revolution and decision made to leave the company, and you were able to easily find a great leader to take on the CEO role. What did you do after.

Sisun: 10:03

Oh, right after I wanted to go travel, obviously covid, so most places like cities were closed down. The only places that were open were places that very low human density being Amazon Rainforest. So I just went to Amazon. That's the first thing I did. It's, it was a logical decision. It was like, okay, nobody goes. So it's open. And then I ended up spending some time in Colombia. Spent time in Costa Rica. That's when I got into surfing. Yeah, it was mostly just chilling. Amazon was fun because we had a tour guide, and unlike day three, we stumble across this village that had a shaman who is like their local priest equivalent, like spiritual priest. And then they were cooking something that I swear I saw in Vice Channel was Ayahuasca. So we're just like, is that Ayahuasca? Very casually? And he said, yes. And then so we asked, can we join? And then he agreed. So we changed our entire itinerary for the next three days to do it, which was also very profound. Yay.

Eva: 11:01

Tell me about it, because I hear about this. Like ritual all the time. You drink this thing, what does it taste like? What did you

Sisun: 11:10

do? So it's a whole ritual. It actually, it's like a 24 hour ritual. You can't actually drink right away. You have to fast for many hours. Yeah. So there's a very specific diet and it's still empty out your stomach. To be fair, I don't know exactly why you fast. It was very yolo. It was just impulse. Let's do it. So we just followed their guidelines. But during the ritual, you drink this thing, it's disgusting, and you just puke everywhere. You just purge everything out of your body and they say it's like this toxic or this negative evil, all these bad things that's leaving your body and then you go into this, not trans but hallucination period. And it's very short lived, but it feels very long. And so I think my best analogy cuz it's very hard to describe something to somebody that has never experienced it. The only analogy I have is taking an acid to me is like wearing glasses for the first time when you don't have a good eyesight. You're like, whoa, I'm seeing the world very clearly, and this is pretty sick. Waca is an alien coming to grab you by your arms, swinging you around the world so that you see these particular things that you're supposed to see that you couldn't see before, and you're like, oh, fuck wait. And I'm like, I'm too tired. And then he'll just swing you back to different place. And then after a while you're just like, fucking exhausted. But you're just like, whoa. That was like, Wow, that was intense.

Jane: 12:26

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. What were some of the biggest kind of insights that you got from that trip?

Sisun: 12:31

Mine was more of gratitude. Yeah. It wasn't more like visuals. It was more of a huge sense of gratitude. It's like I went there because I was pretty lost, like I wanted to travel, but it's like my identity for the last three years was so tied to more labs, and now that I'm not doing it and I'm un unemployed and I've never really taken a break, like other than a week or two, like throughout my entire career. And so that was like I think I was low key, like anxious, what I do with my life, but it's always like a sense of, dude, you're in the middle of a forest in a fucking pandemic with your best friends, tripping out, looking at stars. Shut the fuck up. You should be grateful. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that was like a very huge hit.

Eva: 13:11

Wow. Must have been amazing. Just like the feeling of a tidal wave of gratitude.

Sisun: 13:16

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's very profound. Something I would, I'm not sure if I could recommend it to everybody. It's one of those things where if somebody wanted to do it, I totally encourage them. Yeah.

Jane: 13:28

You could like have a whole podcast around like drugs and what it's done to a lot of like really smart people and the insights that we've gotten from it. Yeah. Okay, cool. So you did that and then what next? Did you start something? Where'd you go?

Sisun: 13:42

I kept traveling. Yeah. So spent some time in Costa Rica, all of this. And then after a while I did get bored. Traveling is not at least for me, it wasn't something that I felt like I could do for two year. So it's like fourth, fifth month mark. I'm just like, alright what do I wanna do with my life? And I think a good framework for me was, It was less about finding happiness. Cause I think happiness is just like a mindset and there's nothing in the world that's gonna make me so happy that I just wanna do this singularly. Some stuff is just it's fun, but there's gonna be boring and just not so fun days. So the question for me was more like, what is a lifestyle that I want that gives me the most energy? And by energy I mean there's type of activities that you do. Where you get more energy out of doing them, so you look forward to doing it. It's almost like when you're anticipating on a trip, you're like, oh, fuck me. I can't wait until that day comes. And then when you're on a trip, you're having a lot of good time. And then there's other types of energy where it's just like draining, right? You hate doing this and thinking about it makes you just not wanna wake up. I just wanted to do something because whatever I do, I knew I was gonna spend a lot of my time doing. And I'm talking about my career where it was just like maximal energy production. Sorry, this is all like data as well. And as I was like, all right, what is that thing? And then the thing was had less to do with the particular work. It was more about just being surrounded by these crazy ambitious, smart people. And then from there it was like, okay, what setting would allow me to be with them the most? And I just genuinely thought that whether it was me starting a company or joining a company was like the best medium made, which you can bring them together. And the more ambitious it was, the more crazy people you're gonna bring on. And so I was like, okay, like I don't really care. Particularly what that company is, although obviously I had strong opinions, like I didn't wanna do consumer product goods, I wanted do software, but it wasn't like I had a very specific opinion on this particular industry. It was more like let's just do something really ambitious and epic and as a way of doing so, whether it was mine or joining someone else, be surrounded by these crazy people that will also hopefully become my friends. Cuz I also wanted to blur the line between work and fun. Because that would probably make me most satisfied. So it was very, it wasn't like very specific, but it was like, okay, that's probably what I wanna do. So let's start exploring. Yeah. Yeah.

Jane: 15:57

I remember when we had lunch that one day and that was a big insight that you said. You were like, I just wanna do work with really smart people. In terms of the actual work, I don't really care what it is, but I just wanna surround myself with really smart people and that's yeah. Yeah. Even for us, the reason why we love working with founders is because they gave us energy to like launch businesses and stuff, and I think That's so cute. Totally.

Sisun: 16:22

Totally. I think smart, but also just like lumping in altogether, but smart, ambitious, but obviously good people. I've also, I have my shares of. Working with really smart butt assholes and I just initially, I had a tolerance for folks like that. It's just over time you're just like, fuck, startups are so long. I just have no patience to work with assholes. It's, I don't care how smart you are. So there's also a, just like a question of what type of people do I wanna work with and then doing my best to fit that criteria as well. Cause I'm sure it's it's mutual for them.

Jane: 16:51

And then you started two companies, correct?

Sisun: 16:53

I went to Korea and then I just started exploring cause I work with a bunch of different companies there. And then joined Hashed eventually, which is a large crypto VC as an entrepreneur in residence. And then started a, yeah, crypto tech company. I only started one company. The other one I think you're talking about Soju, which is like a liquor brand that's started by Danny who, one of my best friends, employee number one at More labs. I was obviously involved cuz we're so close. But that's not a company that I'm full-time. That's not, yeah, that's his company. Yeah. And then what's

Jane: 17:25

the, what's your company that you're working on right now?

Sisun: 17:27

Ramper, we've actually sold it as an ip. So now technically I am just figuring out what to do next. Although the company that bought it we're work, we're working with them just to help them with the IP transfer cetera. But when we began the idea was to build an infrastructure company that makes it easy for everybody else around the world to access crypto. So the big challenge for me when I joined Hesh was we would, I would get introductions to a bunch of their portfolio companies, and frankly, I had no idea what the fuck they were talking about. And I just felt a little bit stupid, like I was thinking, okay, like I did engineering, I worked in tech. I should understand this. But it was just so complicated and then it went on like that for many months. What is Defi? I don't get how wallets work. What the heck is crypto? I don't understand nft. Is this valuable? Is there interesting value? I don't get it. And there's so much noise and nobody, my conclusion was like, oh my God, nobody actually knows, which is like really fascinating. Is. But the other thing is I was too scared to admit that I didn't get anything. But if somebody like me had no idea how this worked and then is so high, then like a, like somebody like my mom, there's no way in hell they would do anything with crypto. And so for me the biggest insight was just like the bare is just too high. So I'm like more interested in just figuring out the user interface of making all of this make sense for an average user than anything particular in terms of the application of crypto. So we wanted to focus more on the infrastructure part of that, and then we had to pick a specific idea. Cause it's too abstract. The specific idea for us was, All these blockchain applications require you as a user to go through a bunch of hurdles in order to access it. So today you gave me a link to Riverside. It was just a url. I clicked it and I'm on here, and it just works. The way Crypto works is maybe there's a Riverside that's a blockchain version. You click it and then I have to log in with a wallet. And for somebody who doesn't know what a wallet is, you have to Google it and then you have to go download it. And there's 10 different wallets at. And then you have to download like a chrome, chrome browser extension, blah, blah, blah. Like you have to go to Coinbase, buy coins, come back, authenticate. And so we just wanted to remove all of those steps so that if you as a developer was building something like Riverside as a blockchain application, a user can simply click the link and just join. And it would still all run a decentralized blockchain, but as a user, they just didn't have to. Even understand what was going on. We thought that was probably where the world would go. We still think so, and I'm sure there's a lot of different paths that people are gonna work on. I'm not sure which one's gonna work and become the default, but that's a space that we were in and that's what we were offering. So we were in infrastructure company offering solutions to blockchain developers so that they can make it easy for their users to access stuff.

Eva: 20:11

Very cool.

Jane: 20:13

It's so funny cuz when we knew you, you were like meeting with TPA and just drinking at in town nightclub.

Eva: 20:19

Yeah. You're like, come to Vegas. Come to Vegas

Sisun: 20:25

by know. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. That's my time though.

Jane: 20:30

I know. It was really fun time. How did you such a different. Industry now. Was it easy for you to just find people in the new industry cuz you like dug so hard into CPG world, you like knew everyone, you now worked with everyone.

Sisun: 20:45

Yeah. It took more time than if I, if my, I stayed in tech, probably like finding a co-founder and hiring engineers just because like my network stopped and then I divert it into cpg. But the way I think about startup is it's so infinitely hard. That it just doesn't matter. The level of hardness is equal across the board. Like I don't think there's any startup you can do where you're just like, oh, that one was easier. Cause they're all like really fucking hard. So it was just hard regardless. Yeah.

Eva: 21:10

It's been seven years since you've entered the startup world, getting out of sf, what's like the top three things you always tell someone starting their own company.

Sisun: 21:19

I don't have three things readily available, but I'll just say it as I think about it. One is, Nobody knows what they're doing, so Yeah. It actually gives you a lot of hope. Yeah. Nobody knows what they're doing. Yeah.

Jane: 21:32

These answers are always so honest. That's what I love

Sisun: 21:35

about it. It's true. It's true. No one knows they're doing, and those who claim to are honestly delusional. Or they're lying to you, or they're just literally not pushing themselves hard enough to the realms of anything important which means anybody can do it. The only thing that matters is you have the resilience to just keep trying. I take encouragement by that because. If you think it takes a very specific type of d n A to be an entrepreneur, then there's nothing you can do, right? Yeah. I actually think it's very different than like being a top athlete, certain third of sports. I think you have to be genetically gifted. Otherwise, advantages is just too great. But I think being a founder's just like honestly, man, the rules of the games are so fucking unclear. That anybody can win as long as you have that mindset of resilience. The second thing is I think it's very painful and so you have to know why you're doing this. Like it's a choice. Cuz most successful startups are founded by people that have a lot of options, but it's not like you can't get a job at Google. So you go to a startup, like those days are over. You do a startup mostly because like you have all these great options and you're, eh, you know what, I'll do something even better. But it's really hard. I think you just have to evaluate what's the best for your career. And I think generally the narrative has always been, especially if you're coming from tech, that we idolize successful tech founders. And so I think we overemphasize on that and that's probably not like a good thing to over index on. So like now when I work on a company, The goal is to build Google, right? The goal is to become a behemoth that other startups look at and says like they're boomers. The goal is to not remain. The goal is not to remain a startup forever, which means like the default mode just sucks you. You need to get through it and not everybody can get through it, and it's just something you should just think about. I don't really have a third one. Those are probably just like two things that I would just be mindful of. Yeah.

Eva: 23:20

No, that's like very sad but motivating at the same time.

Sisun: 23:25

Yeah. It's so hard, but it's, like it's, but that's why people who do it are so passionate because it's like, it's so hard but you still choose to do it. The fuck, these are really passionate people, right? Yeah.

Jane: 23:36

Yeah, for sure. It's so crazy cause like people talk about like the amount of companies that have exited. It's just I wish we could count how many companies have like just failed. You just can't because no one really no one counts those businesses like they're not on.

Sisun: 23:50

I think that's why it's the, all these learnings from successful founders are dangerous because I almost think like it's poker, you could do your best, but based on the hands that you're given, the outcomes might vary because even in startup, I think there's a lot of luck and involvement like with timing that frankly, you might not just be able to control. And so it's very possible that if you have two founders and one is like intrinsically better across the board, I don't know, like any kind of competence or leadership. But like the lesser one could be far more successful if they get luckier on these other attributes. But you still do it regardless. You, I think you almost have to be like irrational to a point to do this. Because if you look at it and go purely from an objective of what are my odds and based on my time? Because obviously you're smart, you have a lot of option. Is this truly the best risk adjusted way to spend my time even considering impact. There's a lot of companies you can go with, massive impact. It's not like startup is the only way to make impact. In fact, I would argue default startups make no impact cuz you reach nobody and yet all of that goes out the door when you decide to start a company because you think you're gonna make it. And that level of ego is you need it. But it's also like very rational. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how long I can do it though. I can do it now because I don't have kids. I don't have family. Yeah.

Jane: 25:08

Honestly, it's like we even I talk about how like we never start launch pop at this point. Cause it's Yeah. During the first two years where we like, we're eating like seaweed off the fucking beach. Like we can't do that now.

Sisun: 25:20

Kids like

Eva: 25:22

no. We'll right now we always wanna like aim for Google. That's how you get on press and get the growth hypergrowth. That's how you get investors and whatnot. But maybe it's dangerous to all think that all companies need to go there to define success. And

Sisun: 25:40

Oh, totally. Totally. Yeah.

Eva: 25:42

Yeah, for sure. I don't think every company needs to go there to be successful. It doesn't have to all the time, and I really like hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. When you mentioned like happiness is a mindset, like that's that in itself. It's so important to talk about for Jayna and I, happiness isn't raising money. We actually declined it. Happiness was actually declining it.

Sisun: 26:07

Oh, actually, I thought about when you say three things for somebody's joining a company. A company, I think in hindsight, Having a pretty clear financial freedom threshold is important. Everybody's level of financial freedom is different, right? Maybe for some people it's like a million dollar. For many people it's probably closer to 10, 10 million, maybe even more, but it's ob obviously up to you and where you're, where you are at with your family, whatever. If there's a path towards clearing that minimum financial freedom goal, I think they just should first, because once you have that freedom to say no, your level of. Exploration will just be so much more unbounded. Like starting a company at a place where you're still requiring that income because you haven't reached that minimum threshold. And minimum threshold is more about like psychological thing, right? It doesn't mean if I have this, I never have to work ever again. It's just more, if I have it, can I actually truly fuck around for five years and be like, yeah, whatever. Once you have that, I think you think way bigger. Because if you don't have it, you're gonna subconsciously always think about your company in a way, oh my God. Like how do I exit? You can't think long term, but not everybody can clear it right away. But I think if you're close to it or there's a path to it, it's probably wiser to just get it done and then starting a company. But that's just something I'm reasoning in hindsight. Yeah,

Jane: 27:24

that's interesting. I feel like so many people when they think about startups, they like never think about their own like financial needs. That conver conversation around like your own financial needs and wants is like never really discussed about, so it's the realistic way. Yeah.

Sisun: 27:42

Like figure out if, yeah, totally. Totally. I think everybody has different minimum, like financial freedom, target. It's like for, maybe for somebody, it's just, okay, do I have a home? Okay, fuck it. Mortgage paid off. At least I have a place to sleep if everything goes to shit show. Okay, great. And do you have a path to clearing it? You should probably clear it. Before you take on this, cause like startup is almost like saying, I'm gonna take the most risky stock and put all my chips in there and hope for the best. If you hit a jackpot, yeah, of course you're gonna be great. But honestly, the chances are gonna be low.

Jane: 28:08

Yeah. Cuz when Eva and I started launch Pop, it was like, we literally had no responsibility. We had no mortgage. We each had broken up with our boyfriends. Like it was like nothing was tying us anywhere. And that's why we could like, like it was.

Sisun: 28:24

We had nothing. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's why I think financial freedom varies by people, especially by age. Yeah. Maybe if you're like due grad and you're just like, I have no debt for education. Yeah. Get great. Go for it. What's the worst thing that happens? You go crash at your parents' house. Yeah.

Jane: 28:37

So what are you working on right now with your friend? The back?

Sisun: 28:40

We don't know yet. Okay. We are exploring. I think he's. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Eva: 28:47

That's most important. Yeah.

Sisun: 28:50

Yeah, probably. Definitely something in tech. We've been tinkering a lot with the latest AI stuff, just because it's fascinating. Yeah. I don't know if that's what we're gonna do, but yeah, we've been playing around with it a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. I give myself like three more years. I'm like, this doesn't go jackpot. I'm like, fuck this. I'm gonna back to take road.

Jane: 29:08

Yeah. Wait, jackpot For you, is it 10 mil? What's your threshold?

Sisun: 29:13

No, it's definitely at least a hundred mil. Yeah, ok. Yeah. Alright. But we'll see. Yeah, but I'm like, it's like realistic about it. I just think I still have really high energy. I don't have any financial burdens and I saved a bunch of money from more labs and whatnot, and so it was just like, yeah, if not now, when. Yeah,

Jane: 29:35

it's so true. It's so true. I think about it too. It's, I wanna do something while I still have energy. That's like a big thing for me. Like I know I can feel my energy like dropping every year. It's like such a real thing after your thirties.

Sisun: 29:47

So Yeah, it's totally different. Yeah. Yeah. And there's like also this minimum of lifestyle. That you're just like, you'll never go back to, right? Yes. Everybody has their boundaries. I think the most valuable skill is the ability to tell good stories. Maybe this applies to all jobs in life, not just startups, but definitely. So as a startup entrepreneur, cause if you think about it, your job is to convince in investors to put their money in this vision that hasn't yet been executed. It's all forward looking and the only way you can project that forward looking vision is through your story, right? Whether you're verbally communicated or visually communicated right in writing, right? It doesn't matter. It's just basically your story. You're convincing this really exceptional talent to people to come join you, to build this thing that hasn't been built, and they're going to be joining and by taking a, probably a pay cut, but with the hopes that the stock that they own would be much more valuable. So everything is actually based on some future projections, not on actual reality. And whether, and so it all comes down to do they believe in that future projection and what are their probability like of getting there? And you have no other methods other than just convincing them with your story. And in fact, I think that's like the most important thing. No, I think for

Jane: 31:04

our next podcast, we should all drink or something.

Sisun: 31:08

Yeah. You have surgery right now.

Eva: 31:10

Do whatever you did CSUN promo.

Sisun: 31:14

Bramo promo. Crazy. We, yeah. There's some crazy, the fun thing with startup is, yeah, looking back, there's all these like crazy horror stories. Danny's going through some crazy shit right now too. Yeah.

Jane: 31:24

Why? What's happening with Soju

Sisun: 31:26

doing? I'm probably getting legal trouble, so I can't go through too much, but he's got a baseless lawsuit against him that's really hurting him. Yeah. And financially and personally, these. Oh yeah. Lawsuits, especially

Jane: 31:38

in the us I just feel like it's so intense

Sisun: 31:40

here. Yeah. It's completely baseless. The other side essentially wants money, and so it's just like a hassle. Yeah. So it's all these things where you think, you figure out your company, it's hard, and then all these like. Shit storms come out of nowhere.

Eva: 31:53

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Would you say who knew with more? Yeah. Yeah. What was the biggest shit storm with more labs for you?

Sisun: 32:01

Oh my God, there were so many covid killing our entire retail plan. Cuz you have to understand the context is like we let go a lot of our e-comm folks and we basically made this big stance that like, cuz remember like in 2018 or 2019, e-comm was a shit direct to consumer was a shit. Oh yeah. Everybody shitted on like retail brands or like going eCommerce. This is dumb. E-commerce is not gonna scale. We gotta be in retail because this is particularly like a drink like us, like it's, this is very impulse buy. And so we've like completely changed our company. All of our resources were allocated towards retail and taken out from e-comm and then we had this like board meeting and then this is like end of January of 2020. 2020, yeah. 2020. And we're like, alright, let's go. And then two months later, retail shuts down. We're just like, holy shit, what do we do? Do we go back to e-comm? Or do we just continue on? We made the decision to continue on because we just saw no, no path of scale for e-comm, and so even if we went back, maybe we would've some cash flow, but it was just like, in the long run, this is still not gonna work. So either we figured a shit out in Covid or we're just gonna die. The da. That was a shit storm. FTC suing us for marketing violation was a shit storm, largely because we actually followed all the regulations, but it was so undefined that if there's like a clear guidelines, we would've followed it. It's kinda like what Coinbase is going through now, which is you try to be a good player, but when there's no guideline, you have to work with your lawyers and just do the right thing. To this day, we spent over 2 million in legal and we still got in trouble, and then all these competitors did not get in trouble, so then, They would start making marketing claims that were in violation, but we couldn't, so like our ability to market was completely subsidized. And then the scary thing for me personally was FTC has a jurisdiction to go after individual members. And so my company was sued and if we lost, there's like a, it's not criminal, but there's like a financial penalty. But I was also liable personally, if we lost and the company bankrupted and he didn't have the money to pay, I had to pay. Outta my pocket, even though I knew that chances of us losing is really low. Cause we literally the best lawyers from day one to do the right thing. It's trying to operate under that anxiety, right? Which is, oh fuck, what if they take my money? And then the problem with what the government sees you is to be honest, you're at their mercy is number one. Number two is these things take so long. So our whole thing took two years until it, it got resolved. And so you have to learn how to I'm like very impatient. When there's a problem, I wanna go solve it. But this is the first time I faced like an existential crisis that I couldn't control. And so it's I don't know if this is gonna work or not. I don't know if this is gonna kill the company. I don't know if this is gonna take one year or five years, but I still have to just put it aside and operate and just make a mental barrier so that I can compartmentalize this and then not let it affect me in my company. But that's like easier set than done, right? Because every day you're just like, holy fuck, right? I had so many nights where I woke up sweating, right? Just weird dreams of people stealing my money. Cause it's literally what I was most afraid of. I had like certain plan, everybody has their financial plan. Money. And then the thought that the government could just take it away was like, and then I asked my lawyers, I'm just like, can I just give this to my mom right now? Can I like put it in crypto and just go, yolo, catch me if you can. And they're like, no. It's like you can't because like they'll backtrack it, right? I'm just like, you're literally telling me there's nothing I can do now. I won't get into like legal complications. I obviously did my best to protect myself at that time where I learned shit ton about. That's actually what I first learned about crypto by the way. My first use case of crypto was how do I detach myself from the government? This is not why I did, by the way, this is not why started, but that was the first time where I was just like, they every single US dollars. But they really can't track crypto anyways, that was like my first, because I was not interested in crypto at all until then. That was like the first time. I'm just like, wow. Maybe there's obviously a very niche use case, but I was like, maybe there's some value here of controlling your own financial assets. Yeah. And what a, I just wanna set the record straight. I didn't do that. I didn't do that. I don't wanna get sued by the US government. It's not fun. Getting sued by the US government is never fun.

Eva: 35:59

No, you can't hide. It's. They're ev they're tracking your every move.

Sisun: 36:04

Yeah. Yeah. But we didn't do anything wrong. Like of course we, we didn't pay for anything. No settlement. We dissolved the case like everything was good. The problem was actually it's, we actually, the duration of that campaign, because we have to hire lawyers to like interact with the right thing, it just costs so much money. And so for a startup, I think that in the first four years we spent over 2 million in legal, not like incorporation regular legal, but specifically to like FTC guidelines. Even to this state, the company has no idea what the actual guidelines are, so all we can do is be as conservative as we.

Eva: 36:38

That you need like a clap there. Just like dealing with that for two years. Not everyone even has a company for two years,

Sisun: 36:47

oh, that was scary because what? That actually happened right at the time when Covid hit too. And so we were like, we can't raise money, right? Because how, what are we gonna tell people? Hey, we completely shifted to retail, but retail tanked plus. The government sued us. Can you give us money? So we're just like, okay, we have to assume nobody will ever give us money and let's just get through this storm and be cashflow positive. And towards end you things start to turn around.

Eva: 37:12

Shifting your mindset in life to search for happiness. Be surrounded by smart people hate startups now to now doing another startup.

Sisun: 37:22

But the goal would be to leave the startup phase as soon as possible. Yeah. Yeah. It's really funny cause like when you meet a bunch of startup founders and people talk shit about how slow big companies are. Just oh my God, how I wish I could be like them. How I wish the thing was so big and powerful that I can just not do anything and just slow everybody down and politically and still crush you guys. That's what you want, right? Yeah.

Eva: 37:45

That's hilarious. Because so many people do a startup and then when they get into that phase, where're just hiring, minimum management, optimizing. Then they get bored, right? And then they are thinking about the next idea. And so interesting that like you actually crave that actually,

Sisun: 38:02

yeah. I would love to be bored and then have the optionality to leave and be like, okay, I made it. Yeah, that would that be amazing.

Jane: 38:08

You don't romanticize it anymore. You're so real about it. And I think that's so refreshing.

Sisun: 38:14

Cause yeah, I would look, there's like definitely upside with doing a startup because part of it is, it's less about the lifestyle but more about purpose. Cuz every day you're like, I'm up against this battle and like I have to work really hard and it just gives you this. Thing to do, and I think it's hard to do that if you do a nine to five job because frankly it's, yeah, you could work really hard, but it's just like everything from the payout to recognition to your purpose. It's just like you don't really want to do that, but as a startup founder, you're willing to go to war and like sleep. In the office if you need to. Hopefully you don't have to, but like those things come naturally to you because the incentive is so strong. So I think that's fun. Having that flexibility, especially from going from a regular corporation job where you're very limited to doing something where you could literally do anything is very refreshing. But I think a lot of the times people think too much on the positive attributes of being a startup founder and don't really think too hard on the negative things. Which is actually why I think a lot of the times startups are founded by like really young people cuz they actually haven't really experienced the luxury yet. So they're like, whatever, this is good. But I can imagine how hard it would be once you've like really made it to wanna go back down to doing it again. You're just like, fuck, I don't wanna do this again.

Eva: 39:29

It's definitely scary to go back there again. Okay, cool. There was a lot of good stuff in here, but yeah, we can just do it again for the sake of hanging out too, if you're not too busy, csun.

Sisun: 39:41

Yeah, sure. Sounds good. I hope you guys are well.