The Founder Warning: Startups Are As Toxic As Cigarettes

Andrew Lacy has been called crazy twice. In 2008, every top VC told him to stop building iPhone games and return to Nokia. He didn't listen. Tapulous became an early App Store powerhouse and was eventually acquired by Disney. Later, investors told him whole-body MRIs were a bad idea. He ignored them again. Today, his company Prenuvo (formerly Prouvo) has scanned over 150,000 people to catch cancer early.

This episode explores the reality behind the wins: the bad bets, the hubris, and the weight of carrying a company when no one believes in you. Andrew discusses leaving a law career spent defending tobacco companies, losing three years to a failed startup in France, and the personal health scare that led him to launch Prenuvo.

We also dive into the emotional toll of entrepreneurship, from the "mask" leaders wear to why Andrew believes startups should carry a warning label like cigarettes. If you’ve ever bet on yourself or wondered if the grind is worth it, this conversation is for you.

Chapters:

00:00 Cold open: The most transformational ideas sound ludicrous.
02:30 Childhood in Melbourne: Detention and a life-changing librarian.
06:45 Leaving law: Defending tobacco and mining disasters.
10:30 McKinsey, Stanford, and stalling in Spain.
20:30 Building Tapulous: Pitching games before the App Store existed.
27:50 The Disney acquisition: Why it wasn't a "Cinderella story."
30:00 Hubris in Paris: Facing failure and himself.
36:30 The right KPI for founders: Asking the hard questions.
39:00 The scan that changed everything: A flight to Canada.
46:50 The state of US healthcare: Wealth vs. access.
51:55 The real cost of Prenuvo: Numbness and loneliness.
58:40 Why coaching works: Overcoming the urge to skip it.
1:00:15 Lightning round: Superpowers, Elon Musk, and advice for the next generation.

#TheCostOfSuccess #Prenuvo #FounderHealth #Biohacking #StartupTruths #EarlyDetection #MentalFortitude

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

What ultimately kind of like turned you off from law? The most transformational idea you've ever heard also sounds a bit ludicrous when you hear it.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

What was it like to be pitching like the first iPhone game before the apps?

SPEAKER_00 0:14

I just felt like I would be more unhappy the closer I was to the environment that I really wanted to be in.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

God knows it's not. In this country, if you're rich, you're fine. If you're poor, you're screwed. Let's just call it the way it is. Welcome back to Morgun Filtered, folks. My guest today has been told that he's been crazy multiple times. The first time was in 2008 when every top VC on Sandhill Road told him he should stop wasting his time building games for iPhone and go build Pnokia and BlackBerry instead. He didn't listen, and Topulus became one of the most in popular gaming companies, building one of the most popular games ever to hit the iPhone in its early days. Disney eventually bought the company and he went on to build other companies. The second time, decades later, it was when every healthcare investor told them whole body MRIs were a bad idea. He hasn't listened then either. And today Prenuvo, the company that he started, has scanned over 150,000 people and is trying to do something that matters to almost every family I know, including mine. Catch cancer early before it's too late. This is a conversation about reinvention, about mortality, and about the cost of entrepreneurship. About a guy who told me on record that what he wants to do is prove an entire industry wrong. This is Morg Unfiltered, and this is Andrew Lacey. Andrew, welcome to the show, man. It's uh amazing to see you again after so much time.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

It's great to be here. I don't know how I feel about being characterized as a messy middle. I actually cleaned out my room before this uh I was messy until about 10 minutes ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Well, you know, it's uh, you know, we all we all go through our moments. Some of us are more organized than ever. For me, it's like still a work in progress, to be honest. They always tell me like the background of my podcast has to be more organized, and I just never get that far. So I always have a ton of stuff laying there. But, you know, kind of like looking at your career arc, you've done a lot of really interesting things and across a lot of interesting domains and different industries. And so one of the things I always love, you know, when when I explore kind of the career arc of people that are on the show is trying to understand where all this came from, right? So obviously you've got like the Aussie accent, right? You you you talk about this quite openly in other interviews. And um, I think you even like I think you even have like an X handle or something that alludes to that fact. So tell us a little bit more, take us back to the beginning growing up in in Australia. I think you grew up in Melbourne, right? If I'm not mistaken, was it Melbourne? Yeah, Melbourne. Tell us tell us a little bit about that time, you know, your child, what was your childhood like? What were your parents like? You know, kind of where what did they expect from you? So take us a little bit way back.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Well, it's it's yeah, sure. So I mean I look, I grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne, which is this big sort of five million person city in Australia. Okay, is obviously a very big country, but it's very concentrated around the coast where you know you actually rain you get rainfall every once in a while. So uh, you know, I grew up I I went to uh a public primary school, I went to a public high school. I remember when I was uh sort of in in primary school, I always sort of like wanted to explore new things and um I I just was a guy that just had a lot of questions. Uh in fact, the first time I ever got detention at primary school was uh, you know, we had a teacher that was uh this sort of chain smoking, pretty unpleasant person. Uh, but she brought a video camera into the class. And uh, you know, and this was not a little camcorder, this was like a big shoulder-mounted thing. And I saw all the dials and whistles moving around as they were recording the the thing, and I just had to ask so many why questions. Why is it doing this? Why is what's it doing, you know, that I ended up getting detention because she got completely sick of me. Uh at one point I engineered a a silly project where I um sort of uh uh in recruited a whole bunch of people to dig a hole in the ground that inevitably was going to lead to China. I I don't know if that's a it works the same in America, but apparently China was on the other side of the world from Australia, which of course is not geographically true either. But so I embarked on this very large engineering project, unbeknownst to many of the teachers, to to sort of like dig this hole and uh eventually got caught and was also put in detention then as well. Um and then when I went to high school, I I uh I went to this public high school, it's a very much a trade school. In fact, you know, the we of course had like history and maths and English, but you know, outside of that it was um woodwork, uh metalwork, automotive, um uh textiles, which was like sort of sewing, and home economics, which was uh sort of basically cooking, although largely was just kids throwing food at each other. Um so you know, I was I guess like destined to just sort of explore a lot of things and maybe work in the trades one day. And uh anyhow I just had a very pivotal moment where a librarian at this school uh took me aside and said, you know, she thought that I should be somewhere else. Um and she encouraged me to sit this sort of entrance exam for this gifted sort of public school in Melbourne, and I did, and and that really changed the trajectory of my life. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

And and like, you know, when you think of where your trajectory ended up going compared to, you know, what the expectation of your parents were like. So many people are very heavily, I think all of us are to some extent are very heavily influenced by by our parents, right? For better or for worse, right? In terms of their expectations and their values and what they expect from us and what they'd like us to do. How how did what you end up doing, how much of that was shaped by you know life at home and and the relationship with your parents?

SPEAKER_00 5:49

I think very little, to be honest. And I don't mean it in a um and it's not to sort of say anything negative about my parents. I think my parents were also my father was an accountant, my mother's a primary school teacher. Right. Um, and I think probably the biggest gift that my mother gave me was she she taught me how to read before I went to school. Right. Um and I and I believe to this day that that sort of helped sort of set me up on a trajectory where I ended up studying law, you know, um, outside of high school. Um but my parents were very supportive, but also, you know, I had two siblings and my mother was working and um, you know, we were sort of left to our own devices for for a long period of time. So it wasn't like these days, certainly not Silicon Valley or I live in LA where there's a lot of helicopter parenting going on. I definitely wasn't, you know, I I I didn't have a parent that was hovering over me. We spent a lot of time in the garden or playing around the neighborhood and just sort of like learning through doing.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Why why law and economics, right? That's I think what you ended up studying in in the University of Melbourne. Why that direction?

SPEAKER_00 6:50

In Australia, it's kind of the way university works is a little bit different. So you sit a sort of standardized exam like an SAT, and then based on your score, you can go and study whatever you want as long as you met sort of the threshold for that particular course. And so I just got a very high score, and uh which meant I could more or less study anything. And I I just thought the law would be sort of intellectually very interesting. Um, I didn't last very long, but um but uh you know, and I'm happy to dive into why, but I think it's uh it's it was just sort of something that I felt like would educate my, you know, would exercise my brain to a great degree, and that was for sure true.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

What what ultimately kind of like turned you off from law? Why did you go, why did you end up going in a completely different direction?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yeah, I mean there were really two things. The first was of course, when you first start out in law, you basically don't have any control over what you do. So you're you know, you get assigned projects. And I had this horrendous mix of projects I was assigned to. I ended up helping some partners uh settle mesothelioma cases. So these are people that had asbestos uh in their lungs, basically. Um I worked on a case for the gun lobby. I helped a law firm defend a large mining company that had had some accident in Indonesia and killed like a hundred people. Um you were defending the company or you were Well I wasn't let's be clear, I wasn't doing very much other than just sort of like shuffling the paper. But sure, sure. But I was on that team and uh and then there was one where I we were defending a tobacco company against a claimant um uh and we sort of like won that case because the claimant died. So, you know, so I had this horrendous sort of introduction, and I'm and I'm like, do I really want to be, is this what I want to be doing with my life? That was sort of the first thing. And then the second thing, even within those cases, a thing I found really strange was we were spending a lot of time researching our understanding of like what was the law 15 years ago when the facts in this case sort of happened. So it just felt like a very backward-looking um way, a backward-looking career. It wasn't even like what's the law today? You know, I was doing litigation. It was like what was happening, you know, well in the past. And that just didn't feel like building anything. It felt like just adjudicating stuff, and that didn't sit very well with me.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Aaron Powell How much do you feel like when you look at the nature of those cases and the kind of companies you were defending, even if your role, as you say, was relatively minor, how how much of that do you think was affected by your own sense of right and wrong and your own your own sense of values, if at all?

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Aaron Powell I mean, for sure, uh uh some part of it. I mean, it didn't feel good to go home, you know, and or to go talk to friends after work and they ask you what you're working on and you sort of talk about these things. It's not something you really wanted to bring up, to be honest. Um but then at the same time, I always had this, I think, real desire and sort of thread through my entire career that I really enjoyed problem solving and fixing and sort of sorting out answers to problems. And even the law, you know, I may have objected to the cases that we were on, but it was very much this problem solving exercise. You know, how do how are we gonna construct an argument here that is gonna be compelling in court? Of course. And, you know, I think uh entrepreneurship is very similar. I mean it's problem solving every day of the week.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Yeah, absolutely. And so from there, it's interesting because like, you know, so you decide, okay, you're you're you're you're definitely the law was not your thing. And then it's kind of like you you went in a completely different direction. You ended up at McKinsey, you did a brief stint in like two other organizations, one of which was Amazon, and then you go back to McKinsey. What walk us a little bit about walk us through that art? What what happened there? Because it's like you you go to McKinsey, then you go to this other thing, then you go to Amazon. Amazon's like four months, and then you go back to McKinsey. So what what what happened there?

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Yeah, I mean, I should say, by the way, uh, you know, I so I worked at all these law firms, but um, when you finish law school, there's a certain um there's like this recruiting window that all the law firms use. It's two weeks. And you know, everyone sort of aligns their interviews, and then on the Monday you get sort of a call by a bunch of law firms offering you jobs, and you have two days to accept those jobs, otherwise they go to someone else. It's a kind of an organized system. Um and I was pretty good at what I did, and I definitely had a certain level of arrogance about just how good I was. So I I took my last last year of law school off and traveled around the world and sort of backpacked. Right. And so I came back with this hair that was down my um sort of back and this sort of long beard. And I sort of walked straight into this recruiting process thinking, well, how I look shouldn't matter. You know, like I was really good at what I did, fantastic grades. I graduated with honors, you know, like I should be getting multiple offers here. Yeah. And that Monday morning came around and like no one called me. Wow. And uh and it just so happened that McKinsey, who were interested in recruiting law students, had decided to sort of align their recruiting with um the sort of this sort of law school recruiting process. Right. So um the only person that called me on that Monday morning was McKinsey. Oh my god. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Saying um They were not turned off by the long hair and the scruff and the scruffy look?

SPEAKER_00 11:49

They they were not well, I I mean, I I I I love my time at McKinsey, by the way, but like there was a few times where I I would show up at work and there were like a pair of scissors on my desk that someone had like simply left there. Yeah, exactly. Uh but you know, I think that was I put that down to Aussie humor more than anything else. Um but uh no, it was so I sort of uh was not happy in the law, but it actually was sort of helpful. My sort of slight little arrogance in sort of showing up to these meetings looking like a hippie um sort of actually encouraged the right career change for me. Interesting. Um and then and then I, you know, and then I got into McKinsey, and for those that don't know, McKinsey is this global consulting company. Yeah. And there every three months you basically thrust into a new industry and you're asked, you know, you sit down with clients and you're trying to solve like the most important business problems for them and working directly with senior leadership and you know, presenting to the board. Yeah. So it was, I mean, it was such such a tremendous education. Uh and for me, I really it was so stimulating because again, like back to what got me going was asking all these why questions and just trying to understand stuff as much as possible. And here it was like this is a problem-solving, rich environment, and every three months a whole new industry.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Um, so for I worked on that for a couple of years, and then I went to business school in in Stanford. And in fact, my time at Amazon was was an internship. So that was an internship, and I went back to McKinsey because McKinsey was paying for my MBA. Ah, of course. Of course. So overall, I ended up doing five years there. I learned so much, it was so incredible. But towards the end, got so frustrated because you know, the end product was a essentially a presentation to the board about what a company should do. Right. But never you never really, half the time they didn't do it, or they, you know, you know, and and at the time I was thinking, wow, you know, why aren't they doing why are they not implementing this wonderful strategy that we have designed for them without fully understanding until I got into my own business building, just how I think how insignificant the strategy setting part is of like building and sort of growing companies.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

So so you go to McKinsey, you learn a ton. I mean, it's an amazing environment. I worked in strategy consulting after business school as well. I I get it. I hated it personally, but I learned a lot. And I agree with you. It's like all the frameworks, the way to dissect and break down a business, understanding the cost drivers, like it, it's it's a very good experience. And I always tell people if you have the chance, it's worth doing for a couple of years. You you spent a good number of years there, got a lot out of it. But you know, the the question that I think is very interesting is you then go to Stanford, right? This isn't just any MBA program. This is Stanford GSB in you know, the the heart of Silicon Valley, where you have so many people building businesses and and going in and building the future. What was going inside your head, knowing that on the one hand, you're, you know, McKinsey's paying for your MBA, so you have to go back there. And then on the other hand, you're surrounded by all these super bite people who are building the future. What was going on in your head during that time?

SPEAKER_00 14:51

I mean, I was tremendously conflicted. Um, I really sort of got the bug. And and I don't know if this is true for people that come from other parts of America to a place like Silicon Valley, but definitely come from Australia, you know. Like I was using the web like anyone else, sort of in the late 90s, but I just never really understood that these were they were like real companies. Yeah, you know, we you just didn't have a concept of this. I remember the first time I went down El Camino Real and um and and Yahoo had their office on El Camino at that at that point. That was a small office, but like I was just like fascinated by the fact that there's a building here with the word Yahoo on the side, and there's presumably hundreds of people working at this company.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Um so it was really new to me and and uh really opened my eyes. But I couldn't, you know, I did also didn't want to be shouldering this uh business school debt for like so many years. So so actually I um I uh I decided that if I'm gonna go back to McKinsey for a couple years, I'm gonna do it in a different environment. So I actually called the uh Kali office of McKinsey in Colombia and said, you know, can I come and serve my time down in Colombia?

SPEAKER_01 15:58

I love the term. Serve your time.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Okay, that's an interesting way of putting it.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

So you so you went to Colombia with McKinsey?

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Well, they said it was meant to go back for two years. That was sort of the deal. And they said, We're happy to have you, but the deal in Colombia is three years. And I'm like, that doesn't work for me. Yeah, like no way. So so then I called the Madrid office of McKinsey in Spain, and uh, because I spoke a little bit of Spanish at this point in time, and I said, How about um me coming to your office? And and and they were like, Okay. Um I didn't realize at the time, but no one really asked to go to the Spanish office of McKinsey because it was like well known as like one of the two worst offices um uh you know for quality of life. Yeah. Um, so so I ended up serving those two years in um in Madrid and and also Lisbon, Portugal, and had a really had a wonderful experience.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Um what were you what were you trying to get there? What what were you chasing when you went to Madrid? Or let me ref let me rethink that question. Was it chasing and serving the time, as you said, or was it kind of like fleeing the space that you really wanted to be in because you couldn't be there the way you wanted to?

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah, it was sort of like an avoidance in some ways. I I just felt like I would be more unhappy the closer I was to the environment that I really wanted to be in. Interesting. I I presume this is sort of a normal human reaction. It's probably not a very evolved reaction, but like that was sort of my answer was hey, uh if I if I can't be doing the thing that I really think I want to do, then hey, how can I have a tremendous life experience? Interesting. Um, and of course, knowing that I was gonna leave more or less on my second year anniversary, it was also a very freeing time for me at McKinsey. I mean, a lot when you're working at McKinsey, there's this constant fear they're gonna fire you. That's it's sort of an up or out policy. Yeah. So if you're not approving, you're you're getting out. Um but I knew they wouldn't fire me in under two years. So you're like, okay, go ahead and fire me. I'll I'll take that severance. So I just, you know, I was I was I sort of approached the whole thing in a very different way. Um, you know, they they often use these like reverse psychology, like if you were on a particularly hard study, uh they'd they'd be like, well, you know, you don't have to be on the study. Yeah. You know, we we can always get you taken off it. And and the expected answer that 99% of consultants would give is like, oh no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Let me work, you know, let me crunch for seven days a week. And my answer was like, yeah, sure, this is a horrible study. Give me another one.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Yeah, and that, you know, and so I I did my time in consulting in Spain as well. Oh, really? Yeah. After business school, I went to Spain and it was the same reason as you. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I interviewed with a bunch of startups and I had so much freaking business school debt, I was like, shit, I have to work this off. And my compromise was to go to go work for a strategy consulting firm that was a tech strategy consulting firm. Although, to be honest, they were still doing the same bullshit slides and like data analysis. So they were just positioned differently. But but I did the same. I did my time. And it and as soon as I got the chance, you know, when the dot-com bubble burst, and these guys were like 90% of their clients were uh were tech companies uh and mobile companies, and they said, Who would like to leave and be part of the first layouts? I was like jumping up and down, be like, give me that package, you know, I'm out of here. So uh but but you know, Spain, totally different market, very different industry, very different way of working, right? The Spaniards are different. What were you like, what were one or two of your of your biggest takeaways from that experience from kind of like a well work and culture perspective?

SPEAKER_00 19:28

I sort of felt sorry for the Spanish because I think they had this wonderful lifestyle where you had this sort of siesta in the middle of the day for like three hours and then you would work until 10 p.m. or something. And these poor McKinsey people at least, you know, the siesta had gone away, but you were still working until 10 p.m. every day. Except myself. I had I found an apartment that was 200 meters from the office, so I was the only one that actually did a siesta every once in a while. Um, but no, it's it I mean it's a really hard-working culture, those guys. I I don't know how they do it. Um, and uh and you know, there's actually a lot of people from my time at that McKinsey office in Madrid that moved to the US afterwards, been very successful entrepreneurs because those guys persevere.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yeah, they have a work ethic. I mean, they work very, very long hours. I remember that as well. I mean, we did some projects where it was like three weeks, 18, 20 hour days.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

It was and they were on this whole like way before Google, they were on the onto the whole like you can eat, we're gonna serve you breakfast, lunch, and dinner at work.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Yeah, it's just top us. So yeah. So okay, so let's fast forward a bit. Um, you finally do your time, right? The handcuffs are off, you're able to leave, you find yourself back in Silicon Valley, uh, I think around 2008. Yeah. Why, why tapulous? Why, why gaming?

SPEAKER_00 20:44

So I came back um really excited to get into actually just get into tech at that time, I would say. Like I the path I had in my mind was I would go and work at sort of a Google or something or a Salesforce for a couple of years, kind of get to understand, you know, build a bit of a network, get to understand the space a bit more, and then go and build my own company. And so I came back and um it wasn't too hard, you know, I had a decent network from Stanford, so it wasn't too hard to get interviews with all these companies. But they kind of took like one look at my resume, which had, you know, had McKinsey, law school, and an MBA. And these are three things that were completely not valuable. Oh man, that's a kiss of death though. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, uh at that time, and I didn't get anywhere. And I was feeling a bit despondent actually at the time. And uh and you know, I just ran into I I I I asked a friend of mine who's at a VC firm, hey, can I just hang out at your office and just sort of like imbibe a little bit of the culture of Silicon Valley, uh see these companies come and pitch. And through him, I was introduced to a guy, Bart Deckram, who was uh to look at mobile. So um so I connected with Bart over a beer, and we you know, we started to look into the mobile space and uh I just thought it was a really interesting opportunity and um and Funnily enough, you know, Bart to his credit, I mean, he didn't uh he was actually a former law um graduate as well, who had who had built it a couple of companies before. He didn't have the same hangups as like the Googles and the Salesforces did. Right. So uh we we joined forces. That's cool.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

And so you you you launch, you know, well, you you start building Tapulus, and then you go out and you start pitching to VCs. Tell us about that experience, because there's a story in and of itself there. What was it like to be pitching like the first iPhone game before the App Store? Pretty deflating.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

If you know I mean I I remember it and it's so funny how um I was I was actually talking to a VC about this yesterday. VCs are really good, I think. Like your average VC becomes quite good just through patent recognition, telling a good company from a bad company. Right. You know, if you can think of like the air, you know, the distribution of company startups as like a normal distribution. So telling the the the fat good part of that distribution from the fat bad part of the distribution is not too difficult. But those tails, the tales of this distribution sort of like present the same way. So like the most transformational idea you've ever heard also sounds a bit ludicrous when you hear it. Yeah. Um, and so here were we saying, hey, you know, like we saw that this 16-year-old girl in France had like hacked into the iPhone and had put an app on so that they could change the background, and other people had like take that hack and built other apps. This is something really interesting and new here. To the average VC, they're like, this is a mobile platform that's like one has 1% market share, if that you know, there are apps we get that that maybe is kind of interesting, but you should be building for like Nokia and BlackBerry. Um and and we were turned away by some of the biggest, you know, VC firms who six months later started, you know, made big announcements like they were sort of like um these sort of like prescient gurus, you know, uh, you know, launching iPhone focused VC funds.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

You know, while six months earlier telling us that we were crazy, thinking that the iPhone was going to be something. So I there I think VCs tend to be late to the party to very transformative things. And and that was my experience. So we got a motley crew of uh you know angels that funded us. Um and and uh you know, we're off to the races at that point.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Now, so you so you launch, you know, this game, and it becomes like, I think if I remember well, you were like one of the top, or the if not the top, downloaded game on on iPhone, right? It's it's it ends up being like a monster success. And it ends up being, I remember playing this game, right? It's like it was like one of these holy shit moments for me. Um, although, you know, I was in another gaming company, Glue Mobile, you may remember Glue, yeah, and and there, you know, the management made the mistake of not wanting to pivot to iPhone. They're like, no, we're actually gonna continue to do job and brew games, and the rest of us on the European team. Oh, but you guys had some VC investors in your city. We did, we had Apex, and they were like, no, you know, we have got a great relationship with carriers, we don't want to, you know, jeopardize that. Let's stick to doing what we're doing. And like me and Christian Sigastrel and a bunch of people are like, dude, iPhone's gonna be huge. Like, what are you guys freaking thinking? Long story short, you know, Christian, all those guys left. I left, you know, I joined GetCar, which ended up being one of the early app stores. And I think you went, we ended up hosting your the uh the Android version of your game. Um so this game blows up. When did you realize you were on to something and and what went through your head Bart's head?

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Well, actually, we we have to go back a little bit before then because you know we saw all this underground activity and people were building these apps, so we reached out to all these folks that were building the apps and we bought all these apps. Right. So we ended up buying like 50 or 60 apps, many of which didn't go anywhere. But um, at some point, like someone from ATT got in touch with us and we learned that those apps that we owned would were driving like 25% of the entire network traffic in um on ATT's network in the US because ATT was the only carrier that had iPhone back then. Right, exactly. Yeah, they were the exclusive carrier. And then speaking about app stores, so there was one app sort of like app that was the app that you would install the other apps from. It's called installer.app. Right. And I found the guy who was doing this thing. I never met him in person, but I knew he lived on a houseboat in Canada. So I sort of imagined this sort of like Molson drinking um sort of like Canadian with a moose head on his side of his boat or something. Anyhow, we we're like and the installer app had like these release notes on the front page. So we said, well, how about we do like a top apps list here rather than these release notes? Right. Um, and you know what, you can pick what those apps are as long as like three of the top five of my apps. Um and so we sort of did this deal, it cost a couple hundred, a couple thousand dollars a month, I think. And and we basically owned distribution on the iPhone before the app store opened.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

That's crazy. I didn't know that actually. That's that's insane. So you guys saw the potential on having like a listing service for apps, kind of like promoting apps, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

Yeah, and then um, and then uh so Tap Tap Revenge, which was this first game we had, was one of the apps that we acquired. Of course. Um wow. I did not know that either.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

I thought you guys had developed that game.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

No, we it was one of it it was it was developed by a guy called Nate Drew up in Seattle. Um super nice guy. And we um and then back then we were sort of just looking at this landscape. Facebook wasn't focused on mobile, like no one was focused on mobile. We're like, what are we gonna build here? Why don't we build a social network for mobile? Why don't we build, you know, like a sort of uh uh like a Yelp for mobile? Right. So we we just went through all these categories um and we started to build. Now, of course, everyone paid attention shortly thereafter, so that a lot of those things didn't go anywhere. But at the time, really could any business model was possible because no one else focused on it.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Yeah. And so, you know, fast forwarding a couple of years, 2010, big news, Disney acquires you guys. Like from the outside, it seems a little bit from a like a Cinderella story, right? That's like the big exit. You guys are one of one of the first studios to get acquired. Everybody looked at that as kind of a validation of the space to some extent. But, you know, from from other things that I've read, you know, across the web and other interviews that that I came across while doing the research for this episode today, there's like you didn't necessarily see this as a Cinderella story, if I understand that correctly.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

I wouldn't say that. And I think time has sort of changed my perspective a bit. But at the time, um I had I I didn't want to sell. Right. Um, my partner Bot did. And I understand and respect the reasons why, because he had been involved in two other companies that had been pretty hyped. Um and, you know, and then they struggled. And we were a company that was pretty hyped. Right. And, you know, this opportunity to sell came about at the sort of, I would say, like peak hype. Right. Um, so I you know, I I think at the time I was a little upset that we didn't continue to see through that wave a bit more. But I'm a little bit more upset with myself in some ways because I well, uh, you know, after Disney acquired us, I spent a lot of time traveling to Europe um to manage some of their uh studios that they had over there. And actually met my wife, who was living in Paris at the time. So I moved when after I left Disney, I moved to Paris. So I sort of basically exiled myself to another, you know, to Europe where where I was very far away from everything that was going on. And you know, what we did with Tapulus in the Mo was sort of like the first um act of mobile, and there were still like several other acts to follow that I probably could have played a much bigger part in, but uh, you know, never did. I was sort of off doing other things.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Yeah, I mean the flip side is you met your wife, right? So Yeah. No, it was it was a good margin. Um since it's a public podcast, we're not gonna ask which one is more important because that's very obvious. So but so okay, so you so you you moved to Paris, you meet your wife, uh, and then at some point, you know, there's there's there's the decision to leave Disney and and kind of become an entrepreneur again. What what triggered that and what happened?

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Yeah, so I um actually it I was in Paris at the time and I really wanted to learn how to code. I felt like this was the one part I could ask as many why questions in the world to learn about marketing and product and accounting and things like this, but code was sort of always a little bit um, you know, like uh mystical. So I actually hired uh, you know, I hired someone to teach me a bit how to code. And of course, because I'm a very applied person, um I looked up in six months' time and we were kind of building another company over there. Oh and uh and I didn't put a lot of thought into what that company was because after having had the exit, I was pretty convinced that I was shit hot, you know, that any was gonna like turn into gold. Right. Um yeah, and all of our successes had everything to do with us and our brilliant mines and had nothing to do with the fact that we were also kind of lucky and that we picked this sort of like pivotal moment where a new platform was emerging.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Um, so I worked on this sort of uh vertical natural language search idea, sort of like a Siri or Alexa, but you know, well before their time. And uh did very little sort of market testing, did very little sort of um just thinking through whether this was a space that made any sense. Um and I slogged for almost three years on that uh with a small team over there. Uh we exited the company, so we sort of um, but it wasn't a huge exit. Uh and it and it just sort of forced me to sort of I guess like face my own jubrus a little bit um and realized that actually maybe I'm not as uh you know uh incredible as I thought I was. And maybe I could do, you know, yeah, I could build something, but like being thoughtful about the space and you know the business model and everything actually turns out to be quite important.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

I mean, what was what when you look at that moment, and I think a a lot of entrepreneurs go through that. I I went through that moment at post-Google. Um, you know, which became one of the chapters in my book, and it was the realization I was not as omniscient as I thought I was was was incredibly painful, um, but very timely, sadly. What what was what were your biggest learnings from that period?

SPEAKER_00 32:21

Well, you know, by the so I so I when things weren't going well, I also I guess like showed up not in not in a great way, you know, to those around me, you know, including my girlfriend at the time, it's now my wife, you know, like it my success or failure wasn't just about me, you know, like I I would go through a laundry list of things that were external to me, you know, or external to the idea. Oh, it was because we were in France and you know, no one is very uh, you know, you can't build a company in France. And my employees, they're love to finish work at 5 p.m. on a Friday, and if the website breaks, then like you can't get in touch with them, and they're not sort of as invested as the Americans, and just all all these sorts of like excuses, frankly, um for the fact that it was just a bad idea. And uh and that was kind of that was hard, you know, very stressful. And uh, you know, I both put on a lot of weight and lost a lot of weight and my health suffered and uh everything sort of working through, I guess, the the first of all, the realization it wasn't going anywhere. Yeah, and and that was sort of the hardest bit actually, to be honest. Then exiting it was not so complicated after that. Um Yeah, it's tough.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Yeah. What was what was the reason ultimately for the exit? I mean, did you was it simply you found a buyer or would or were you prompted to actually find a buyer? No, because I I mean I put a lot of my own money into this.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

I mean, that's how excited you know, that's how um uh again, that's that my hubris was telling me, well, why would I want to have other investors? This thing is gonna I'm if I'm gonna print gold here, why wouldn't I just you know own the whole thing? Um so I would say that was the the main stress was well, how do I get like you know, worst case, how do I get my money back? Right. Um and uh and you know, so we were sort of acquired, I guess is sort of the right, you know. So I basically I went somewhere who hired us mainly for me, uh, to become sort of a chief product officer of a yeah, that was LaBara, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:17

So you sell you sell it to LaBara. Again, I guess you do, you know, your time there post-acquisition. Um, and then you know, we we move on to the chapter of kind of getting back to San Francisco and and Nazareth, right? What what tell us a little bit about that chapter, why that company, why that direction, what was it like to get back to the rally?

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Yeah, when I came back, actually um the only thing I really knew was I wanted to work in health, actually. Um but I had decided if there was one thing I was gonna learn from my uh horrendous three-year adventure at at that company in France was that I pro I know a decent amount about building companies. I think it's too much to ask that I also come up with the idea. Right. So I decided I made this very conscious decision that I'm not gonna build another company where the idea is just coming gaping from my brain onto some sort of napkin in a Starbucks, you know, the typical quintessential sort of like startup story. You know, if I'm gonna tell that story, I'm gonna make it up. And then we're gonna we're gonna like uh but it that so I just reached out to all of my friends and said, hey, you know, I think I've learned some stuff here. Um I I really want to apply myself for a problem that matters. I'm particularly interested in health, uh, but you know, open to other things too. Uh reach out if you have people that have problems that they think the answer which could be interesting from from a company building point of view. And I met so many people.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Yeah, I bet.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

And I started to appreciate that there are tons of problems in the world. And there are tons of people out there that really intimately understand those problems, but don't understand how to get to a solution.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Um, so I I uh you know, started working on a few things. I I was introduced to a uh a group of people in Australia that had an Alzheimer's diagnostic test where you take a photo of someone's eye um and you can sort of get a signal for amyloid. I thought that was really interesting, but but you know, for various reasons, things don't work out. Like I can't come to terms with the people or whatever it is. In that case, I couldn't license the IP. Um I had a couple of uh uh relapses where I started something that was an idea of mine, and I sort of had to catch myself two or three months in and say, oh, hang on a sec. You know, I want to stop this and leave it for like three months. And if it's still in my brain in three months' time, then maybe I come back to it.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

And I'll do you how do you make that decision, Andrew? Because I I I I read that about you as well when I was doing the research. I thought it was very interesting. So many people, like once they go down the road of committing to something, like you hear so many kind of like pundits and gurus and investors telling you, yeah, like once you commit, you got to commit. But you actually did that. I remember, I don't remember where I saw it, but you were going down this road for about three months, and all of a sudden you're like, nope, pull the plug, done. How did you figure out that you know you had to pull the plug?

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Why did you pull the plug? I mean, it was helpful that three years of just of I mean, I'd seen the consequences firsthand of um making the wrong decision. So I I you know, even when I was in in the early days just meeting people and sort of exploring ideas, I s my sort of rule was I wouldn't spend any like too much time with any one idea. Right. So, you know, if someone introduced me to a team, I might spend three, four, five days with them, and then I was done. And I told myself I'm not gonna think about this again, you know, until I've seen some other ideas. And I sort of like trusted maybe the sun my subconscious brain to like resurface something that might be particularly sort of interesting. And if it wasn't resurfacing, then it wasn't the right thing. Um so I I sort of I I I sort of my internal KPI at the time, by the way, was really like how many ideas did I explore, you know, that someone had introduced me to. Right. So um, because one of the hardest things and I think one of the traps that people have when they want to be an entrepreneur but they don't quite know what to do yet, is they sort of measure the success of a day based on did I start a company's day? And I think that's like the wrong metric. I think the right metric is did I explore? Interesting. You know, to use a dating analogy, it's not like that if if you want to meet someone that is worthy of spending the rest of your life with, your KPI can't be did I meet someone I want to marry today? It's like how many people did I meet today? You know, right. Sort of I I was pretty good at like sticking to that. And I think that was really helpful.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

Was there a particular flag with this three-month project where you're like, you saw something, you're like, nope, got to get out of this?

SPEAKER_00 38:28

Uh not really, but I was much more open to just asking V V C friends, like, what do you think about this? And not being offended or not naturally doing what entrepreneurs do, which is sort of defend the thing. Just like listen and calibrate because ultimately those are the guys that have to put money into the company. Of course. Um so, anyhow, we you know, I was exploring all these things. Azarus was a company I I started, I sort of co-founded with a friend, but I never worked on. Um, I just I just joined the board. Right. And I was working on something else when uh someone told me about this guy who was doing these whole body scans up in Vancouver, Canada. And yeah, I had I was fascinated by this because I felt like I had been abusing my body for like the in basically my entire career when you think about it, because law was like pretty tough. Yeah McKinsey is a tough sort of like place where you grind a lot. Startups, you're grinding a lot. So all of these careers are careers where you're basically investing your vitality today in order to realize something in the future, whether that's changed the world or have a big payday or whatever it is, right? And I think this a lot of people can probably relate to this. Yeah. And um, I I by the way, I don't judge. So I actually think that's the the world has advanced because of people that have made those trade-offs. I just felt like the sort of like the older I got, the more I wanted to make that trade-off with some level of information. When I heard about this guy, I thought I'm gonna go do one of these exams. So I flopped to Canada um and did it did the exam. And you sat down with a radiologist afterwards and went through my results. And you know, I had really worked hard to injure my body, the the way I sort of my lifestyle had been for those 20 years earlier. But I was in fascinated to learn that I was just generally healthy on the inside. Wow. Um what was the feeling when you walked out of the clinic that day? Well, by the way, the feeling walking in was I was super anxious. Sure. I felt like this was my big reckoning. You're like, holy shit. I went out with my wife for dinner the night before. I'm like, just so you know, we're gonna go missionless data tonight because from tomorrow it's gonna be, you know, like hospitals and you know, uh, it's gonna be very sad and lots of surgeries and things like this because my life for sure is gonna change after I do this thing.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

So you went in thinking you had cancer or something.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

Well, I went in thinking I gotta like, given the way I've lived my life, I gotta have something. You know, I gotta have something serious. Right. Um But no, I I sort of like left that clinic feeling this great peace of mind. Went back to San Francisco, intent on doing my other company, and I just couldn't shake this feeling of peace of mind. Uh it was a weirdest thing, really hard to explain. I uh it's sort of like um it's gonna sound weird, but I always remember walking down the street and just feeling so proud that I knew what was going on with my body, and everyone I was crossing in that street had no idea. And I would just tell myself, you don't know anything, you don't know anything, you don't know anything, I know something. And I and I couldn't shake it, so I went back to his clinic for six months and I sat there and I met another 150 patients that went through. And I saw people, some people were told they had cancer. I remember one woman, she felt weird the morning of the scan, and she was actually having a stroke. She liked we we sent her to the hospital. Uh and and some other people like me had wear and tear, but like nothing crazy. And every single one of those people that did this scan, even the people that got quote unquote sort of like bad news, um, they were just so grateful to have for the first time in their lives complete clarity about what was going on with their bodies. And then they would get up and they would hug this guy, the sort of radiologist. And I remember thinking to myself, I never hugged anyone, you know, any medical professional in my entire life. I never had such a profound experience. And here were like all these people hugging the person. I just really felt like there was something so important here, and that what what what I had witnessed was something that the world really needed to have. And so I switched gears and focused on, you know, that was the beginning of Pranova. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Interesting. And obviously, your co-founder, this radiologist, this doctor, yeah, he had a very personal reason for doing this.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

Yeah, he'd had a uh very a very close family friend um uh pass away quite young uh from colon cancer and had three young children. So uh he you know, he had been experimenting with the use of MRI and how, you know, how we can detect cancer with it, another disease in and and just through word of mouth, his practice had built and people were flying in to come and get these scans.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

And the name Prenuvo came from something related to this person, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:53

Yeah, her name was Renu, so that was part of the name, the sort of uh name of the company. Wow, that's that's powerful. That's powerful. Yeah. Well, and and by the way, it's sort of it's one of the amazing things about working on at the companies. It's so mission-driven. And uh I mean I I really wanted to work in healthcare to help people, but I never fully it was more of an intellectual sort of observation. It wasn't sort of an emotional connection. But now when you see these people and you know, I get messages every day from people whose lives that we saved, I mean it's just incredible. You know, I probably have I'm an Australian, so I'm like programmed never to cry, you know. But like those moments have definitely come during this company when you sort of meet people and you hear their stories and um and uh you know start bowling out, bowling, you just start weeping, you know.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

Yeah, no, it's like you know, it's it's look, I I can relate to look directly to your story, and you know, I've I've followed you on LinkedIn for the the past couple of years as as Purdue has grown. And uh, you know, I lost two family members to cancer last year. Um, my uncle and my aunt. They were much older in age, fortunately, so they'd had very, very complete lives. Um But they, one of them, I think, died from uh pancreatic cancer, the other one from breast cancer. Uh eight years ago, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, uh, was able to get through it, but you know, had had uh had to have both her breasts removed. And the radiology scarred her so badly that she has trouble breathing. And she, she, her quality of life after the operation, even though she recovered, the quality of her life has just every time I see her, it's downhill, downhill, downhill. And it's it's horrible because it's like death by a thousand cuts. You know, it's like people don't realize that even when you survive cancer, the after effects are so brutal because of the chemo or the radio or whatever. And so I, you know, I've lived through this personally. I'm like touch wood. I I think, you know, I thank God every day that uh I thank God every day she's she's still there. But yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

No, a lot of people don't, I think a lot of people don't realize this. And I and I would even say even my own basic understanding of cancer back in the day, I sort of just figured there's all these like wonderful treatments and they you know, and you can survive them, and you sort of think, well, you just got to get through chemo and that's it. You know, if you if you if you sort of beat it you and beat the cancer, it's all done. But you know, we even look at I mean, we look at the brain of someone that's had chemo, you know, you can tell that they've had chemotherapy. You know, they're like systemic uh changes. So, you know, you really want to catch these things before you need to have these systemic sort of treatments.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Yeah, it's it's uh, you know, I was at a conference last year, I think I sent you a text message. Uh, you know, I was at the the Miami Business Forum and I was listening to a guy on stage, you know, who was uh like very, very top guy, had run multiple companies, incredibly successful, went in for one of your scans, and the same day they told him he had like three like stage four tumors, and they were like, you need to get on a plane, like forget, cancel all your plans, all your meetings. You need to get on a plane today and get surgery and go to, I think it was Dallas or somewhere in Texas. And the guy was on stage talking about this, and he's like, that scan saved my life. Right, and so it's yeah, this stuff is very real, man. I think I don't, you know, people don't understand kind of the impact of life-saving technologies and uh and and you know, also, you know, you've you've talked about a lot on your LinkedIn post, you know, how broken the healthcare system is here. I, you know, I lived in, I've lived in 11 countries. I just moved here from Santiago, Chile. I've been absolutely horrified by how bad the U.S. healthcare system is, by how broken it is, by the profitability that you have along the value chain that is that is creating. Well, I did an MRI the other day at uh Mount Sinai uh hospital here. They told me I was supposed to pay 750 bucks as a you know patient payment or pay my deductible, so I paid the 750, and then I get a bill like three weeks later for two and a half thousand dollars because they charge my insurance five grand for the MRI. Yeah. And and you know, I'm I'm a well-educated, battle-hardened entrepreneur like you. So of course I fight these things and I went, you know, I and I and I've kind of gone after them. Most people don't. Most people, most people, you know, they take loans, they mortgage their house, they do whatever. And it's like it's really heartbreaking to see that, man. So I I I love what you guys do. And you know, that was that was one of the reasons I really would wanted to have you on the show.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

So uh Well, I mean, I do want to say there's kind of there's a couple of things that really get me fired up. The first was, you know, when we tried to raise money initially for this company, um, we were turned down also by everyone. Um, every VC firm either has, you know, they either have their own doctors, you know, that they'll go and ask, or they have a doctor on their investment committees, and they were telling us what a bad idea it was. And it just it just felt kind of like mobile all over again. You know, I'd seen something that was probably like across hundreds of people, you could see viscerally that it was like sort of had such a positive impact. And these doctors were literally telling these patients that they were stupid for getting the scan. Um, and and then the second so so you know, when you know, when these investors said no, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna interpret that as I'm not in the fat part of the distribution here. Like we're either this is either the dumbest thing ever, and I'm willing to, you know, or it's like transformational. And I've personally seen how transformational it was. So that was, you know, that was sort of like a uh put me in in sort of like battlefield mode, I guess. And and then the second thing is I I get so angry at doctors who speak out against these scans who do not even bother to understand about them. They don't understand, you know, oftentimes they won't realize it's MRI-based technology versus CT. They don't bother to understand that how MRI has evolved since studies that were conducted 20 years ago. It's very disingenuous, and I don't quite understand what's behind it, other than I think doctors like lawyers, to be honest, get somehow get a certain amount of glee out of just reminding us how we're all more stupid than them.

SPEAKER_01 48:48

You know, I I uh as somebody who works with, you know, uh executives and and and CEOs, you know, one of the things that I see, and I think maybe this is to what you're alluding to, Andrew, is um, you know, people need a certain amount of significance in their life. And the more educated they are and the smarter they think they are, and the more experience they think they have, the more that kind of like significance or kind of like the other way of looking at it is a hyper-achiever saboteur, is they they, you know, their significance comes from believing that they're smarter than everybody else. And and sometimes that's the case. Sometimes it's just ignorance or arrogance, and sometimes it's a combination of multiple different things. But I I share that frustration with you. I you see it all the time. And and now with artificial intelligence, you know, as a consumer, the amount of self-diagnosis that I do, I double check everything these people tell me.

unknown 49:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

Because part of it is like I've stopped trusting the system. I can't trust the system because they've been wrong so many times. And because so much of it is profit-driven, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:45

Well, that's really what happened. And by the way, that's how the company's grown so fast. I remember in the very early days, someone would post on an Instagram or something, hey, you know, I did a premium scan, found a kidney cancer, saved my life. A bunch of doctors would chip in and they'd be like, Wow, how did you know that cancer was gonna kill you? It was gonna stay there forever. You don't know, you could have if you know that biopsy could have killed you or something like this. And I remember when you know five years ago when people said this, we were like, Well, what do we do? Should we insert ourselves in this conversation on these threads? Today, when a doctor raises similar objections, everyone else piles in and just says, Oh, you guys just want us to, you know, get sick or you make more money the more chemo you're giving us, and da da da all so the level of trust that people have in the health system has just could be completely eroded. And frankly, the desire um and willingness of people to like go seek their own insights, whether that's like diagnosing themselves on AI or it's you know, or a combination of that plus going to get blood testing or get imaging. I mean, the the market is completely different five years later.

SPEAKER_02 50:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:47

Um, and I think you know, the writing's on the wall. And uh and and I hope and believe that the health system will adjust.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

Um I agree with you. I I agree with you. I hope so too. I I do I'm very optimistic that AI is gonna usher in a new era of healthcare that is gonna hopefully make healthcare a lot more accessible to everybody because God knows it's not. In this country, if you're rich, you're fine. If you're poor, you're screwed. Let's just call it the way it is. Yeah. And I think the other thing is you talk about this a lot in your posts as well, and I 100% agree with you. Uh, it's moving to, you know, preventable right healthcare instead of the sick care system that we have. But before we wind down, you know, as you know, this podcast is all about, you know, the the messy middle. And and so, you know, winding down, I know that, and you've definitely had a number of these moments, you've you've shared some of these very openly. When you look at some of the messy middle moments, when you look at some of the darkest moments, and and obviously, you know, pronoun as a startup, you've been doing the seven years, you've had your own moments there. What do you think has been the most challenging or darkest moments so far at Pranuvo? And you know, the follow-up to that is how do you get through this as an entrepreneur?

SPEAKER_00 51:54

Ah, I mean, one observation I have to be honest, this is probably it's gonna sound like a dodge, but I, you know, it is kind of real. Um I think that you know, when you've been doing it for as long as I have, you become like emotionally numb a little bit to the highs and the lows, uh you know, both definitely in a professional context and also in a personal context. So, you know, I'm constantly uh get into arguments with my wife when you know we're staying in a great hotel, let's say, and she's like, it's amazing, it's incredible. And I'm like, yeah, it's okay. And you know, or something goes wrong, or you know, we're staying in a bad hotel. She's like oh man, it's the worst thing in the world, you know, it's gonna ruin our vacation. I'm like, yeah, it's okay. And you know, in the company, in instead of a company context as well, it I it I I found it a lot harder. I really have to like encourage myself, because it's important, to like celebrate the wins. Because in my mind, you know, like I've seen the win, you know, like a great day turn into the worst day ever the next day. So I've just seen these ups and downs all the time that I can't get fully depressed by the downs because I know tomorrow can be great, but I also can't get fully jazzed about the ups because I know tomorrow might be horrible. So I think that's I'm sure there's like some psychological condition I'm describing that I probably am, you know, Chat GBT would diagnose me with.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

I'll I'll run this, I'll run the I'll run the transcript through through my LLMs anyway, so I'll tell you after the show.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

I'm like a bit nervous with like the like the extreme version of this is like being a psychopath or something.

SPEAKER_01 53:28

I don't think I'm a psychopath, but no, but I I think it's it's it's real it's very interesting what you say because you know I I've I I did my research, you know, before we got on the show today. So I I know you've been through some challenging times. I'm I'm I'm not gonna go there. But but you know, I think I think one of the things that that you find as an entrepreneur, and you know, I've I've been in the entrepreneurial game a long time as well, you know, uh in different industries, different contexts, is is our ability to stay calm and to have an even keel, I think is is is is a conscious leadership choice, which our companies need. And I think you recognize that, right? I uh when you become you when you have as much freaking gray hair as we do, right? In your case, white, you're going on blonde or whatever you want to call it, you uh, you know, you you you you do force yourself not to get too excited and and and also not to get too down. I think you know the the question I would ask you before we we go to our lightning round of questions and wrap up is how much is Prenovo's mission? How much is what you do, how effective is that in staying this even keel, particularly when moments get dark and difficult?

SPEAKER_00 54:36

Yeah, no, it's I mean that's obviously really helpful. Uh also to be honest, just I just really want to prove this industry wrong. Like I think it's such a cool I mean I I love saving lives. I think it's so meaningful, you know, meeting people that want to take me out for dinner or me and my wife out for dinner because we've had a positive impact or something. So awesome. But at the same time, I mean we have a real opportunity to transform like the biggest industry in the world. And I I think that's the sort of thing that a lot of entrepreneurs would get excited about. Um and for me, uh, you know, I just can't wait for that moment um to, you know, when we look back and just think, hey, the way we were doing this thing was so barbaric. Um and if we're part of that solution, I mean that's kind of like that for me would be I don't think I could do another company after that.

SPEAKER_01 55:20

You don't think so?

SPEAKER_00 55:21

No, I don't think so. Because I just think I would always be looking for something that had the same meaning and I just don't think I could find it.

SPEAKER_01 55:26

Is it that or is there a is there like is there I mean what's the emotional cost to building a company like Prenevo?

SPEAKER_00 55:33

I think well, emotional and physical, I think it's I think just entrepreneurship is a is it's a really difficult endeavor, to be honest. I often joke that I think um I I mean no one's ever done the study, but I'd be willing to bet that you know like the sort of amount of smoking causes a certain amount of harm, and that's why we have sort of a message telling you, you know, on the cigarette packets that smoking kills. I actually think entrepreneurship should have a similar warning.

SPEAKER_02 55:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:59

Um I mean we all know people that have like, you know, they've they've like passed a lot earlier than they should have because they put their you know 100% of themselves into something. Um is a huge emotional and a huge physical cost.

SPEAKER_02 56:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:13

There is. I mean, for sure. It's um it's it yeah, there's a huge emotional cost for sure. Uh, you know, one of the things that I most commonly see with founders, you know, I think I've worked with like 50, 60 founders the last eight years. And um last week here in Miami, we do something every month which is called the founder's dinner. And I bring together like eight or ten, you know, top people building cutting edge companies, you know, good people, humble people. I try and stay away from the assholes and the arrogant types, which we have plenty in in Miami. And the thing that always comes up, you know, um, is the loneliness of being a founder. You know, that that that theme is just comes up over and over. And and it has, you know, obviously being married and being well married, happily married, helps enormously. Um, but you know, even then, there are there are just things that you can't always tell the spouse, and there's things you can't tell the board members, and you you feel like you shoulder a lot of that. And I remember one of the entrepreneurs at the end of the dinner was like, that's one this has been one of the first dinners where I felt like I was not the only one in the room carrying this, and I could actually share some of it with others who go through the same journey. So um Yeah, no, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00 57:19

That's been my experience.

SPEAKER_01 57:20

I don't I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 57:20

I mean, I have a YPO forum that I spent yeah, obviously meet with every month. I have a personal coach that sort of coaches me. I think these are really important because you need to have a sort of like safe outlet for um, you know, where the people that you're gonna speak to understand sort of the unique challenges. But but for sure, I mean you you have to show up a certain way to the company that doesn't necessarily reflect maybe how you're feeling on the inside. And and that becomes even more important. Our company is now 700 people.

SPEAKER_01 57:50

So are you 700 already? Yeah. So it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 57:53

That's and so you know, when you have 10 people around a table, you know, like you don't lose a lot of context. So you really can't sort of just show up and say, Oh, you know, we gotta fix this thing, or like, you know, we're gonna run out of money if we don't do X. So, you know, when you get 700 people, like it's a little bit different. You sort of showing up, you're now employed or paid to be sort of, you know, for your leadership skills, not for your executional skills.

SPEAKER_01 58:16

Um You mentioned that you you had a coach, and you know, it's it's funny because I I just spent five years building a leadership development company in Latin America and coaching a lot of Latin American founders and leaders, and there's so much pushback in Latin America on coaching. There's just like culturally, people feel like they're broken, people feel like they have a problem. And then I, you know, when I go to Silicon Valley or New York, like everybody has a coach. And so I'm not surprised that you have one. Why did you get a coach? And at what point did you think getting a coach was a good idea?

SPEAKER_00 58:42

Well, I think it was encouraged by one of my VCs, to be honest. So I don't want to take all the credit. Uh my first, my Series A VC was uh a VC for Felisus. Oh yeah. Oh, those guys are awesome. Yeah. And they had they basically took they added 1% on top of their investment, which when you invest lots of money, that's a meaningful sum of money, and and they allocate that for coaching. Really? Um yeah. And so Wow, that is really forward thinking. And so, you know, at the time I'm like, I'm not gonna waste something that's been given to me, so let's get into it. And then they connect me with the coach and I I haven't looked back. And I've then recommended coaching for other members of my executive team. I think it's there's it's just rarely it, you know, to be clear, ever almost every time I do coaching, I'm like, oh man, do I really want to do coaching this time? You know, like I got so much other stuff to do. And then every single time over multiple sessions over many years, you know, after the coaching session is done, I was like, oh man, that was like the most important meeting today. You know, it's kind of like a preneuro scan.

SPEAKER_01 59:47

What what what makes it so important? Like it where does it where does it help you so much?

SPEAKER_00 59:52

I actually use it a lot to um uh basically role-play uh difficult conversations or moments. So, you know, I will do it before I do an offsite with my executives or before I'm doing my performance conversations. I mean, I think I have a natural tendency to be uh a little bit sort of passive aggressive. And so it gives me an opportunity to show up in a better way for the rest of the team.

unknown 1:00:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:15

Cool. Well, Andrew, look, uh, we're gonna go to our lightning round of questions because I know we are well past the hour, and I'm sure you have things to do uh uh given how busy you are. So three quick questions, three quick answers, then we'll wrap up. Um, but this has been amazing, and I and I really appreciate you you know being so open and sharing this story because your story is awesome. And uh and I feel like I got a lot out of it that I didn't find online, which is cool too. Um first quick question. If you um had one superpower, what would you choose? What superpower would you choose if you could have one superpower?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:45

Oh, uh I mean, like yourself, I just love travel, been to like a hundred different countries. So if I could snap my finger and teleport to another country and you know, spend a day there and stamp my fingers and come back, that's what I would do.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:57

That would be awesome. That would be very cool. You're the first one who's told me that. That's a very cool uh superpower. Uh second question. If you could have dinner with anyone imaginable, alive or dead, who would you choose? Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

Um, please didn't prepare me for these questions in advance.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:14

It's just a quick answer. It's just a quick answer. And there's no right or wrong. This one is you can't not be politically correct on this one. Well, actually, you could not be politically correct. It really depends on the choice.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:23

So I'm I'm gonna be honest, I never actually have met Musk. I would love to hang out with him. I think he's uh obviously got a lot of edges to him that people don't like, but I think his brain and sort of different ventures he's worked on, I think is just very inspirational. So I'd like to hang with him.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:40

Yeah, I read his bio. He's a fascinating character. And last but not least, if you could give one piece of advice to someone, maybe a young person, maybe the next entrepreneur, maybe the next Musk or the next you who's trying to find a career that gives them meaning and purpose, what would you tell them?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

Well, I would say optimize for that. I think a lot of people get into entrepreneurship because they think they're gonna make money. And I and I think like staying in consulting would have had a higher expected value for me than like becoming an entrepreneur. You know, becoming an entrepreneur requires a lot of luck and resilience. And a lot of people, the stories you hear about people dropping out of college and starting Facebook, I mean, they exist, but they're like one in a million. Um you better find purpose and meaning because uh I don't think entrepreneurship is a get rich crick sort of like scheme in in any way. No, it's definitely not cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:27

Well, listen, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for your honesty. Thanks for sharing all your stories. Thanks for opening up, thanks for the work that you do, man. It's like, you know, I I get to talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, but not a lot of them are directly impacting and saving people's lives the way you guys are with Brunovo. And, you know, you've got 150,000 plus scans, you know, worked with celebrities and from every kind of person imaginable across the walks of life. I've seen the results of your work firsthand. Uh, it's amazing. I wish you every success. I hope everybody is able to do this scan in the next couple of years. I hope the insurance companies at some point will pay for these scans. So keep doing what you're doing, you know, stay stay true to the purpose, stay true to the fight. Um, and I'm I'm looking forward to see where this takes you. Folks, you know, if uh if this episode has resonated with you, um, you know, if you enjoyed it, if you got something out of it, if you now are gonna run off and do one of these scans, I think please do if you can. Uh, make sure to leave us, you know, uh a like, a comment, subscribe to the channel. We will see you on the next episode. Andrew, thank you once again for being a purpose driven founder. It means a lot, man. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you.