Tim Milazzo Shares How He Turned Down an 8-Figure Offer, Then Lost Everything.

Guest: Tim Milazzo - Founder, Salt and Wisdom Consulting

Tim Milazzo shares his 8-year startup journey from Inc 5000 (#777) to losing everything. He raised $3.5M, grew revenue from $1M to $7M, turned down an 8-figure acquisition offer, and ultimately exited for nothing. Now he's writing "How Not to Founder" and sharing hard-won lessons about entrepreneurship, faith, and family.

Key Takeaways:

• Sell your idea before you build it - customer validation beats product development
• Revenue ≠ profit - cash flow management is critical
• VCs want traction, not ideas (unless you're a proven founder)
• Identity in Christ > identity in success
• The grind isn't worth sacrificing family
• Never slow down a solid acquisition offer to "shop around"
• Build an advisory squad - balance visionaries with executors

Connect with Tim:

• Website: saltandwisdom.com
• Email: tim@saltandwisdom.com
• LinkedIn: Active

Transcript

Rob Pene (00:01.09)

Alrighty. Well, for those of you that are listening, Tim Milazzo is a super cool dude. He, how not to founder caught my attention. But then I think just the whole connection with AI and using agentic models to connect this was pretty, pretty fun, but successful dude in the whole startup world. And he's got some ups and downs that I'm very, very, very curious about.

So with that, before we get started, if you were to reflect back to the last six and 12 months of your life and you were to turn that into a Netflix special, what would that movie be? And then what would kind of be a tentative name?

Tim Milazzo (00:46.186)

Well, thanks so much for having me on Rob. I've watched a fair amount of Netflix in the last 12 months with my kids. that would have to be part of the Netflix special is like watching K-pop demon hunters with my kids on Netflix, think. So, you know, I probably had more time with like family and kids in the last 12 months than like in all my years as a startup founder previously. So I was a startup founder for eight years, grinding, hustling,

Rob Pene (00:56.494)

Yes! Yes! Demon Hunter!

Tim Milazzo (01:17.002)

too worldly for my Christian upbringing and convictions to really jive with for long, but I did it. And I've been spending more time with my wife and kids and not missing a baseball game and like kind of getting back to the dad I should have been for all those years over this last year.

Rob Pene (01:36.782)

That's awesome. So you work really, really hard to afford the time for later to be open up and free. Now, during that grind, you guys are part of the Inc 500, right? So that was pretty prestigious. Yeah, take me back. What was the business? How did you start it? And then I know there are some interesting exit dynamics that makes the story even more.

cooler. So let's start from the beginning if that's cool.

Tim Milazzo (02:08.124)

Absolutely. Well, so I grew up outside of New York City in New Jersey. I got a business degree from Liberty University. So I chose to go to a faith based school. I wanted to learn about business. I also wanted to keep learning about Jesus. And I came back home to the New York City area. I got my first job in the city. I actually worked for Google in the advertising technology business that they have.

Rob Pene (02:17.548)

Love that school.

Tim Milazzo (02:33.704)

I started getting a little bit of a startup itch because I met like a lot of people that had worked at startups. And while it was amazing working for a super successful tech company, I wanted to see what startup life was like. So I went to a startup as an employee and little did I know that startup would be bought out less than a year later by Facebook.

Rob Pene (02:54.03)

Mmm.

Tim Milazzo (02:54.126)

And so now I had seen while I was at Google, had, we had acquired a startup into our division. And then now I start joined a startup and then I now had an exit as an employee, not as a founder. but like that startup itch continued to grow and I wanted to flex my, you know, kind of nascent business muscle to, to see if I could build my own business. And so it started with this itch to see if I could prove myself, and build a business.

And there was good and bad in that. think when somebody has a calling from God to serve like their customer base, like that's the ideal way to start.

It's probably not the ideal way to start to say like, want to prove myself. Like there's a bit of, there's a bit of ego built in there, right? Like there's a, there's a bit of, I want to, I want to be seen as a successful founder. If you're a son of God, you don't need to be seen as anything, but what he wants you to do. But I didn't, I didn't put those two and two together yet. So at 27 years old, New York city was making good money at the tech company, started having kids. had our first baby at home.

Rob Pene (03:39.79)

Yeah.

Rob Pene (03:46.317)

and.

Tim Milazzo (04:04.042)

but I was discontent in my identity and I was discontent in what I wanted to do. So there's, there's a little bit of a shaky foundation for you, but God was, God was opening doors for me anyway. And so where that led Rob, I ended up meeting another Christian dude in New York that also used to work for Google and he was a software engineer.

and we started chatting about business ideas. I had a lot of business ideas and I had one in particular that I really wanted to pursue. I wanted to build an online lender matching platform for real estate investors. So it was becoming so easy to find a loan online for people buying homes, but it wasn't becoming that easy for real estate investors to find capital for deals. And I thought,

here's something I can do. had some friends and extended family members who had been in real estate investment or real estate services. And I figured this is the idea. The idea is going to have so much value. I'm going to raise money. I'm going to be successful. I'm going to build this. I'm going to, you know, maybe we'll build a billion dollar startup, know, which you refer to as a unicorn. And, you know, I want to build a unicorn company.

It didn't end up working out so easily. We did figure out how to grow the company. It took me longer to figure out how to get product market fit and how to serve our customers and how to grow. It took longer than I expected it would. So our first couple of years were a grind because I was pouring my money in, not taking a salary from the company yet. Essentially poured my savings into the company.

Rob Pene (05:45.506)

Did you raise for that company to get it started or no bootstrap?

Tim Milazzo (05:49.342)

My own money went in first, and then we had angel investors who were former coworkers next. So we ended up raising less than a million, but like a pretty decently sized pre-seas round to hire some engineers and do some marketing. By the time we figured out how to grow the revenue, we were like three, four years in before we hit the first million in revenue, right? When I reached a million in revenue, I then...

raised another round of capital and that this time we raised two and a half million of funding. So three and a half million all told we had a we had a couple of competitors that raised a lot more money but we were keeping up with them or close to it on the revenue side. So over the next two years after raising that two and half million we grew from one million in revenue to seven million in revenue.

And that's what landed us on that Inc 5000 list. As a matter of fact, we were lucky number 777. Like if you go to Vegas, you want to hear that number all over. It's not, it wasn't as lucky as we would have hoped. About six, nine months after we got that spot in the Inc magazine, we were essentially like fighting to keep the company open. So,

Revenue is not profit. We were pushing hard on growing the company as fast as possible to keep up with competitors, to try to be the leader in the space. And I got caught in a cash crunch because for those two, three years leading up to we were at 7 million for a year, then it looked like we were gonna finish at more than 10 the next year.

Rob Pene (07:13.24)

Yeah.

Tim Milazzo (07:36.254)

My pipeline was growing, but the US economy changed. Interest rates spiked. And what happened was I had real estate investors increasingly coming to my portal to look for financing. And I didn't realize that some of them, and then many of them, and then most of them, they were getting turned down for financing from the other banks they already knew and had already tried. And they were coming to my platform as a backup option.

Rob Pene (07:41.774)

really sorry for it.

Rob Pene (08:04.556)

Turn it, yeah.

Tim Milazzo (08:05.942)

The closing timeline started stretching out from an average of 60 to 90 days. It stretched out to 120, stretched out to 150. Deals started slowing down. Interest rates kept picking up. And while my pipeline doubled, my conversion rate crashed through the floor and I realized it too late. So I had been pouring money into technology. I'd been pouring money into marketing. I had been growing the team. We now have 35 people across the country.

And we got caught in a cash crunch. Now there was a saving grace potential of we had a private equity company that wanted to buy the company for eight figures. And here I am finally feeling vindicated. I know how to build a company. I know how to grow it. I'm in the Inc 5000 magazine. Instead of taking the offer, we slowed down the process and hired an investment banker to see if we can get even better offers.

Rob Pene (08:43.617)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rob Pene (09:01.838)

Mmm.

Tim Milazzo (09:03.934)

And by the time we slowed down the process and now our conversion rate looks like it's actually dropping and now the revenue starts to slow down, we lost the first buyer.

Rob Pene (09:16.608)

Ouch.

Tim Milazzo (09:18.016)

So we keep going down the process. We have a backup buyer that's a family office in New York. That process takes a long time. They string us along and they don't close either.

Rob Pene (09:29.038)

no.

Tim Milazzo (09:30.654)

At this point, I had done a round or two of layoffs to try to slow down the cash burn. at this point, my co-founder and I, at the end of the company's life. So this is, this is an all like an eight year journey. we're talking about. We paused our own salaries, just like we had done in early first couple of years, a couple of times to keep it going while we were trying to get the business model right now. Here we are having to do that.

Rob Pene (09:45.622)

Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Milazzo (09:59.366)

Despite my name and face being, you know, an ink magazine here. I am having to pause my salary again eight years in And we got to a point where the company was broken. We had laid people off. We had lost their growth Now we had lost two buyers We did end up exiting the company but not for as much money as we had raised and my co-founder and I made Absolutely nothing

Rob Pene (10:23.746)

no. man. Now the magical question, if you were to do something different in retrospect, would it have been in the research part earlier or would it have been like later on maybe some tactical things?

Tim Milazzo (10:44.05)

there's so many. so that's, that's why I started writing like how not to founder is like try to unpack one lesson at a time, but there there's a lot like depending on the mindset of a, of a younger entrepreneur now or an earlier entrepreneur, forget age, just, you know, younger in the sense of have you done the whole venture thing yet? And like, are you, you know, on your first time founder journey? Like I was, there's a lot of misconceptions out there. Like the most successful.

Rob Pene (10:48.878)

Yeah.

Tim Milazzo (11:13.398)

startups are obviously going to get the most attention. There's a power law in startups, like the top 1 % of startups are going to get 80 % of the attention. And that makes you feel like, that's the normal journey, right? The top 1 % most famous startups, 99 % of companies, like, there's a grind there that you need to be ready for.

Rob Pene (11:27.655)

no.

Tim Milazzo (11:36.852)

Research, market research is great. You can't necessarily learn if a company is gonna be successful through research though. You do need to jump into the deep end at some point, but there's ways to do it with wisdom. And you wanna be aligned with your investors. You wanna understand what the risks are and share those right up front. So you and your investors are aligned if you're trying to raise investment. You definitely wanna be aligned with your co-founders and you both wanna understand the risks together or...

Rob Pene (11:45.006)

Good.

Tim Milazzo (12:05.328)

if you're solo, it can be a, it can be a harrowing journey. Like you might have a dark night of the soul that you have to deal with. You have to have some sort of squad that you rely on it, whether that's an advisory board, co-founder. Definitely. If you've got a spouse, you've got to be a hundred percent aligned with them, understand that there's a risk involved. So there's a lot that we could have done differently, but we survived so many of those mistakes, but it all finally caught up to us. And one of the big mistakes is.

Be careful burning cash, like be careful growing through burning cash. You can have the biggest ups that way, but you can also, it can come crumbling down.

Rob Pene (12:35.683)

Hey.

Rob Pene (12:42.946)

Yeah. Wow. If you were to... Now, you had other ideas, right? If you were to do it over with, would you go back to the older ideas or do you see something in the marketplace you're like, that's the opportunity, I would go there.

Tim Milazzo (13:00.598)

I think there are There's there's no limit to ways to make money, right? Like there's no limit to and it's and it's changing quickly, right? Like the jobs that we have today even if you're not a founder inventing something brand new that might work might not work just the normal jobs that people have in 21st century America

Like they weren't real jobs 100, 200 years ago. Like we're all like part of an economy that is changing. We're all part of a world that's changing. So it's hard to figure out what's going to work before you try. Some people are better at predicting the future than others, but like all of us are pretty bad at it overall, right? And so.

you there's going to be a Steve Jobs that can like see the future better than us. Fine. Like there's going to be a Mark Zuckerberg that just nails it and like goes to a billion, like in, you months, like fine. but for, for us mortals that are not like the unique unicorns, you go figure out what works by, by trying to sell it, not by trying to build it first. Right? So like, if you got a customer that says,

Rob Pene (14:09.447)

MMMM

Tim Milazzo (14:12.554)

Like a customer will pull a product out of your hands if they need it, if they really need it, if it's on their job, if it's on their to-do list, if it's something they really desperately want to accomplish, work on your sales pitch, like more than your products. Like you can, you can burn months and years building a product that nobody needs. And, and the ironic thing is people might've told you all along, great idea. I do that all the time. I have startup ideas all the time.

And I know if I ask people that want to be friendly and they want to root for me, they're going to tell me great idea. Ask them to pay for it. See what happens. See how the conversation changes.

Rob Pene (14:49.707)

Yeah!

that's good. So, hmm, okay, that's definitely a different man. Cause now you're saying if you have an idea, try to sell the idea first, see if you can get a customer to validate it that way before you even build it. So you're like casting the vision. Wow, okay. And it's that way.

Tim Milazzo (14:55.467)

Yeah.

Tim Milazzo (15:14.262)

It might change. mean, you might have the same direction, the product might be different.

Rob Pene (15:18.296)

Yeah. Yeah. And from my understanding, a lot that's what lot of people do when they pitch VCs, right? They put a deck together of an idea and they try to raise money for that idea versus I've got this product. It works. Do you want money? Right. Is there more people that just pitch ideas?

Tim Milazzo (15:38.592)

Pitching ideas is...

All but dead at this point. So you can do that if you have multiple successful exits in the rear view and people just want to throw money at successful people that like have a proven proven track record. Like honestly me with like one startup failure, I probably am going to have a better time pitching a VC than version of me 10 years ago that didn't know what was getting into even though I didn't make a billion dollars. I didn't make a hundred million dollars. I didn't make anything but

I'm probably just for having that fact that I have some operator experience. I'm probably gonna get a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt, but the only people that can raise on ideas at this point have that truly proven track record, or they have something that's like top 0.01 % unique and like, you know, there's some crazy story for why they have so much value already. For the rest of us, for the rest of us, for the 99 %

It could be valuable to pitch your idea to somebody because you're going to get an interesting piece of feedback, because they might match a pattern, because they might make a connection for you. But if you're pitching an idea, you're not going to get money. So what you do is you pitch asking for advice.

And you might get that advice. And if you pitch asking for advice, you might also get money at some point down the line. You ask for money right away. You don't get either. You get fake, you get fake feedback to, so that the meeting can end early from their side, because they know you're not ready. And like, now you look like the founder that doesn't know what they're doing.

Tim Milazzo (17:12.444)

If you, so like the bar is raising because it's too easy to build like tech. Most startups are like tech software. There's hardware too. There's bio bio is actually huge, but, like if you're doing something that's just a piece of software, it's too easy to have a piece of software now that they want to see it validated with traction, not just an idea or a prototype.

Rob Pene (17:33.89)

Yeah, now is traction more paying customers or can traction be like someone with experience endorsing not only the software but also where the software is gonna go.

Tim Milazzo (17:45.888)

would say traction has to be users of some sort. And usually that means revenue, but it doesn't have to like if you're B2B, maybe you're more likely to have revenue early. But if it's some consumer product, if it's a social, you know, product of some sort, and you just have crazy user growth, and you're not charging them anything yet, that can be okay. But traction is somebody actually trying to use your product in the real world and getting use out of it. And therefore it's growing.

Rob Pene (17:51.416)

Yep. Yeah.

Rob Pene (18:13.844)

Interesting. Okay, that's good. That's good. How did you during that eight year period reconcile the belief that you know, the Christian side of you, the spiritual and the hustle, the grind, because you had a family, right? And obviously, family is your first ministry, your first focus. That could be that could be tough, you know, how did you manage that?

Tim Milazzo (18:42.622)

I reckoned with this in multiple stages over time. So there are things that we got right right away. My co-founder and I both being believers in Christ and like praying for the business every week of its existence. That's something we got right right away.

Trying to be honest and fair to any employees and vendors and customers is something that we had from the beginning. So there were elements. But the hustle piece, the only staying at the hospital for our second child being born for like 18 hours and then trying to get back to work to save the company, like that's something that could be regretted. You know, we, had, I had a mix. I had a mix of

the success I wanted and the part of that being my identity and like my identity in Christ and there should be no mix. There can never be co-equal. Like that's an idol at that point when something is part of your identity. And so I needed to be, I actually needed the failure to humble me on like, no, God provides and he can provide in riches or, you know, or at zero.

Rob Pene (19:35.884)

Wow

Rob Pene (19:55.822)

Wow, that's good. That's good. The identity piece and the idol piece. I think that should be.

Tim Milazzo (20:00.884)

I didn't want to learn that way. I did not want to learn that way, let me tell you, but God knew that I had to.

Rob Pene (20:08.096)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was always on time. Showed up when he needed to be. Yeah. Now, are you gonna launch something or are you doing something? Are you gonna basically share your story? Does that itch to found something and birth another company surface at all?

Tim Milazzo (20:27.816)

It's coming back. Yeah. I would say, you know, I had to reckon with our failure for a bit and writing about it has helped and, you know, talking about it and some time and like doing exercise again and like some of the things that like are a good piece of the balanced lifestyle and like, you know, kind of trying to rebuild a little bit has helped.

I'm starting to get excited about startup ideas again. It's taken a year or two. The exit was almost two years ago at this point and I've been doing some consulting work along the way. So I hope to write more in the coming year than I did last year and writing last year helped, but I wasn't super consistent and I hope to write more consistently. yeah, I'm working through ideas. I want the ideas themselves.

Rob Pene (21:16.29)

Mmm.

Tim Milazzo (21:21.428)

to be at this point, like my desire is, hey, if I'm working on this, is the very fact that I'm doing the work worthwhile, whether or not I ever have some big exit, like whether or not it becomes a $50 million.

you know, business, is the work worth it? Is it redemptive? Does the story of the company communicate the character of God in some way? Because I've seen people do this in business and I admire that. And that's the direction I certainly hope to go.

Rob Pene (21:43.49)

BOOOOM

Rob Pene (21:47.831)

Yeah.

Rob Pene (21:56.78)

Yeah, I can feel it. Yeah, I feel it. As you're describing, I can definitely feel it. So I guess that was gonna be my next question, but it sounded like you just described your criteria for either the next project or the next person that you'll be working with.

Tim Milazzo (21:59.956)

Yeah.

Tim Milazzo (22:15.21)

Yes, on the project side, think, you there's some, you want something that resonates with like the talents that God's given you, like that's important.

Rob Pene (22:25.464)

Yes. Yeah.

Tim Milazzo (22:26.706)

It also has to be something the world needs, right? So like the apostle Paul was a tent maker. He wasn't making something the world didn't need. Like people needed tents and they needed like that shelter and like that's, that's a good thing. like, you know, tent makers today might be like a residential real estate investor, right? Like people need places to live and sleep and stay warm. Like, you know, so like it can be as simple as that if

that's what God's calling you to and that's what he's gifted you in. But for me, think it's trying to innovate. It's trying to think of new ideas, new things, and there's nothing wrong with being that residential real estate investor, but I don't think that's what I'm called to because I want to figure out new models.

I want to figure out new technologies that can bring value in a new way. So I know that's the way I'm wired. think figuring out the way I'm wired, but also looking at the world and saying what do people need? And that's just a business question too. What do customers need? What are they going to pay for? this, it's actually this flip side of the same idea from the beginning.

Rob Pene (23:32.93)

Yeah, AI, does AI play into your decision making at all?

Tim Milazzo (23:39.518)

Yeah, it shouldn't be ignored, especially for people that are, you know, trying to be innovators. I know that AI is going to be like the next great sea change of the way businesses operate. I've always been in like business to business services and business to business technology. I've never really run like a consumer company. So obviously for consumers, it's changed people's lives.

for better, for worse. There's a power and a danger in any new technology. That's always been true. But I think it's as big as the Industrial Revolution. I think it's as big as the onset of the internet. It will not be ignored by future generations. No matter what we who saw its birth think of it.

Right? Like people around the industrial revolution might've had all sorts of opinions about what types of jobs are good versus factory jobs. And, and there are, there's debates that need to be had about responsible use, good use, minimizing danger, minimizing risk. All those needs to be figured out, but the world's not going back. I mean, you're not putting that back in Pandora's box.

Rob Pene (24:51.554)

Yeah, boy, that's good. That's good advice, man. A good perspective to take too. Yeah, I assume that the same people that you had in your corner, your community as you're coming through your first company is kind of still there. Is there any like to bring in new people for the inner circle that has different experiences that you're interested in? Or do you just roll with your your your your what is it?

your circle of influence, I think that's what they call it. Yeah, how does that look? What's your community look like? Same or because it's a new time in your life, does it need to be different?

Tim Milazzo (25:33.812)

Yeah, well, I've actually moved now too. So we were outside of New York City and now my family and I live in central Florida outside of Orlando. And so, yeah, we have a different setting now. We have a different community. We have different locals and a different, know, kind of different, a little bit of a different culture down here. Yeah, so I definitely, I think...

Rob Pene (25:43.799)

Yeah.

Tim Milazzo (26:01.864)

Sometimes people are in your life for a season. Sometimes people are in your life for like a long haul. It's a good idea to always, you know, do right by people, but also like, you know, you certainly hope, I certainly hope to work with some of the same people more in the future, but they're on their own journey too, right? And so, you know, at this stage,

Working with people that I know I can trust and I know that have complimentary skill sets, like that's a great thing. And I've been able to develop some of those relationships, but I suspect God's gonna bring new people into the picture as well. And it's always up to Him to see where you're headed and who you're gonna be there with.

Rob Pene (26:47.542)

Yeah, what do you think is your strong suit? Like, what's your main thing that makes you different makes you take that like, yeah, I'm the master at this thing.

Tim Milazzo (26:56.438)

Well, come up, it's a blessing and a curse, but I come up with so many ideas. So I'm on that vision level of nine different ideas I could do this year and maybe two or three of them have legs or maybe the one that will have legs will be the next one I come up with. But then you need to stay kind of faithful to an idea long enough to see, is this worthwhile?

You don't want to go all in on something that's not worth going all in, but you can come up with ideas all day and there's not really that much value in ideas. The value is in execution and bringing something to the world that it needs. And you can't figure that out only thinking of ideas. So I can get stuck at that idea vision level if I'm not careful, but...

If I team up with people and we head in the same direction for a significant amount of time, I can also see opportunities that others may not see. So you have to realize that there's the upside and the downside of these types of skills.

Rob Pene (27:53.912)

Mmm.

Rob Pene (28:00.62)

Yeah, yeah. And I'm assuming you write about this on your newsletter and all that stuff, because I just signed up for it. I'm like, yeah, dude, this is some good stuff, man.

Tim Milazzo (28:11.082)

I'm trying to write more. Maybe you can hold me to that in the new year here that I write a little bit more consistently because I got, you know, post out every month or two for the last year. And yeah, I definitely come at it from that visionary mindset. And, you know, I think you want to have a team that balances each other out. Like there are other people that are a tenacity mindset, right? Like, Hey, hand me the ball. I'm going to keep going until I'm in the end zone.

You're gonna tackle me, I'm gonna get back up and I'm gonna keep going. But they might go in the wrong direction for too long if they don't work with people that can discern or they don't work with people that have a vision for what direction they're going. So I think you balance those things out, hopefully as a squad or like even if you're a solopreneur, like kind of you can build up your own.

personal advisory board, like advisory squad, like people you can check in with and let them know your thinking, let them know how it's going and let them speak into you.

Rob Pene (29:03.544)

Yeah.

Rob Pene (29:09.774)

Yeah, I love that. I was a, before the kids were born, when I was at grad school at Azusa, I had this thing I call my pocket gang. So there's people that knew me in baseball that I trusted. And there are people at church that didn't know anything about baseball. So I had them exclusive with one another. So yeah, I definitely resonate with that. My pocket gang. You stay in pocket. Yeah, that's cool, man. I appreciate the time, dude. If someone wants to find you,

Tim Milazzo (29:32.598)

That's good.

Rob Pene (29:38.894)

Where do they connect with you? I know LinkedIn. Do you have any other email or website?

Tim Milazzo (29:46.71)

Yeah, my main website is just like a simple one pager, but salt and wisdom.com. So salt and wisdom is like my consulting brand name. And Tim at salt and wisdom.com will get directly to me. And yeah, I'm active on LinkedIn. That's about the only social network I'm active on. Even then I'm a little wary, you know, being on social media too much, but yeah, salt and wisdom.com would definitely be a place where you could connect.

Rob Pene (30:11.79)

Yeah, go there guys, go there. And then I think on his website, you'll be able to sign up for the newsletter too. So let's say a lot of good information. And I'm definitely going to eat it all up because I'm starting that journey and just wrapping my head around all those things. And I'm grateful for the opportunity, but also like the technology that's helping me to learn all this stuff. You know, I mean, we wouldn't have been connected if it wasn't for Borty, which is, you know, AI crazy, man. It's crazy. Yeah, but this is great.

Tim Milazzo (30:18.326)

That's right.

Tim Milazzo (30:39.614)

Yeah, that's a fun connection. mean, there's gonna the world is gonna have some some more interesting AI stuff connecting people. And using AI to connect with people is a great use case versus AI to watch slop all day long.

Rob Pene (30:54.44)

yeah, versus connecting with AI. Yeah, yeah, people to people is better. Well, I appreciate you, man. Thank you for the time. This has been great. Yeah, we're definitely stay connected because I'm going to follow you and ping you on LinkedIn. Hey, your last post was some three months ago, bro. Yeah, we need it. Cool. Thanks, brother.

Tim Milazzo (30:57.429)

Yes.

Tim Milazzo (31:11.606)

Do it, call me out.

Tim Milazzo (31:16.704)

Thanks, Rob.