This episode of the My First Million podcast features a conversation with Zach, a 17-year-old entrepreneur who built a successful AI-powered calorie tracking app called CalAI. The hosts, Sam Parr and Shaan Puri, discuss Zach’s journey, the mechanics of his app, and the broader implications of AI in the consumer app space.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, AI, App Development, Calorie Tracking, Startup Growth, Youth Entrepreneurship
Introduction [00:00]
Sam Parr: By the way, it’s it’s it’s noon on a Monday. Where are you right now?
Shaan Puri: I actually skipped class to do this podcast.
Sam Parr: Let’s go. Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling.
The $20 Million High Schooler [00:23]
Shaan Puri: Okay, this kid right here on the screen is making $20 million as a high schooler. A high schooler that is making $20 million a year in revenue. That is absurd. Zach, welcome to the show, man. Uh, I think this is actually the “make everybody else feel bad” [episode]. When you find out that like a 17, 18-year-old kid is making $20 million in high school, I think a lot of people’s initial reaction is “wow,” and another group is like, “Oh man.”
Sam Parr: What, how much of that, uh, per year is profit, Zach?
Zach: It’s more than 30%.
Sam Parr: All right, so it’s impressive. Very good.
Shaan Puri: Ballin’. Um, we’re going to tell the story, figure out how it’s going on. Sam, do we need to address your, uh, your Letterman jacket? Are you just in the high school mood? What’s going on?
Sam Parr: Look, I found out that Zach was coming on, and I wanted to look the part. You know, like, what’s it, what’s that movie, Sean? Is it like, uh, Never Been Kissed where they pretended that they’re in high school?
Shaan Puri: Yeah. Or, uh, 21 Jump Street. That’s us.
Sam Parr: That, like, this is actually the second group of high schoolers that we spoke with over the last two weeks.
Shaan Puri: I’m Jonah Hill.
Getting to Know Zach [01:25]
Shaan Puri: All right, Zach, dude, uh, welcome to the show. You’ve you’ve listened to the podcast before, I understand?
Zach: Yeah, last two years.
Shaan Puri: You, would you say we maybe inspired you, slash were the sole cause of your success?
Zach: Yeah, I’d say this is the sole reason for any of it.
What is CalAI? [01:40]
Shaan Puri: All right, so let’s explain. What, uh, start with what your app does, because it’s like, what app is making $20 million for a high schooler? So, let’s explain. What is your app, and when did you start it? Let’s start with that.
Zach: So, CalAI is the app, and it lets you take a picture of any meal and get back the calories, proteins, fats, and carbs to track it. So, think any other calorie tracking app, but then heavy AI features involved.
Shaan Puri: Does it work really well? That sounds like a really hard thing. Like, you know, uh, you were literally 12 years old, or maybe 8 years old when Silicon Valley, the TV show, came out. And that was like the, the joke was like, “Is this a hot dog or not?” Now, the app says a lot more. Uh, you know, does that work really well, or is it like mostly right?
Zach: So, the scanning is about 90% accurate on average, which is really good when you look at the data for FDA nutrition labels. They can be up to 20% inaccurate. So, it’s actually really good there. But we only recommend that you use it, well, if you’re training for Mr. Olympia, let’s say, we don’t recommend you use our AI calorie tracker. You could use the food database, weigh your food on a scale.
The “MyFitnessPal” Comparison [02:53]
Sam Parr: Well, and the and the scale stuff, like I, I, you know, I’m, I’m a weirdo. I’ve actually used MyFitnessPal for probably five years, almost every day now. And what a lot of people don’t realize is when they eyeball their calories, they’re probably always off by like 30 or 40%. Have you tried tracking your food, Sean?
Shaan Puri: Yeah, actually, I think I came on this podcast a while back and I said this exact problem. I was like, “MyFitnessPal, it’s so slow and annoying to type in every single thing and estimate the weight of it.” So, okay, I’m eating this. How many grams of it? I don’t really know. I didn’t weigh it out. And then you get this calorie thing, but also they have like five entries for whatever, for, for chicken breast, even has like tons of chicken breast. You don’t know which one to pick. And I, I remember even saying, I think on this podcast, like, “I wish somebody just had it where you could just take a picture and computer vision would just know.” And I can’t wait for that to happen. And it sounds like it’s kind of happened. So, you started this how long ago?
Zach: 10 months ago.
Shaan Puri: 10 months. Okay, so 10 months ago. You started this as a 17-year-old. And can you just give us a sense of the, the growth? So, in, in 10 months, you started obviously with zero. First month, roughly, where were you at?
Zach: So, the first month, it was a little bit slow to pick up. We probably ended having done $30,000 in revenue. The second month, and that’s when we were testing the waters. Do people actually want a calorie tracking app? The hypothesis was that, yeah, it would make people’s lives easier. But we are almost hitting this interesting intersection between people are very hardcore with tracking their calories, weighing their food on a scale, needing the precision decimal point accuracy, and then on the other end of people that don’t track their calories at all. So, our hypothesis was that there was a middle ground, and that’s where we threw the capital to test, and it worked. So then the next month, which was June, we did our first six figures in a month.
The Team [05:13]
Shaan Puri: You’re saying “we.” Does he talk like every 16-year-old? You, you, that’s you’ve sounded like this, right, Sean?
Shaan Puri: He sounds more mature than us. So, you, you’re saying “we.” Is there a, uh, is there a “we”? Who’s the, who is it? Is it a royal “we”? Like, it’s just kind of me, and then did you start this with somebody?
Zach: Yes, I have three co-founders. So, to give you a breakdown, one is also in high school. He’s our CTO, Henry Langmack, a killer engineer.
Shaan Puri: Child technology officer, yes. Go, keep going.
Zach: Blake Anderson, who I think you guys actually did an episode about one of his apps, UMAX. So, he had found previously two other apps that had gotten a few million downloads. So, we partnered up.
Shaan Puri: How’d you guys meet each other? Because you’re not in the same high school. How’d you find these other young builders?
Zach: Yeah, so Henry and I met at a coding camp when we were both 10 years old. He lived in Long Island initially, but then he moved to New Jersey. So, we stayed in touch. Blake, I actually found on Twitter.
The Origin Story [06:01]
Shaan Puri: Gotcha. So, you guys get together, and who has the idea for the app?
Zach: So, it was a mix of Blake and myself. I was tracking my calories two years before starting CalAI on MyFitnessPal, or at least trying to. I was really skinny growing up, and I wanted to put on weight, put on muscle, honestly to impress girls in my high school. And it was super tedious, so I just gave up. But I knew there had to be a better solution. The coder in me, the engineer in me, knew that there must be an easier way. And the following two years, all of these AI models started being released. And so, after jumping into the app space and talking to Blake, who had a very similar path of these AI apps, we came to this idea.
The “Bear on a Bicycle” Phenomenon [08:33]
Shaan Puri: By the way, I’ve heard this now a couple of times from people who are like 18, and they’re like, “fearful that when they’re 22, suddenly their accomplishments are no longer cool.” And I just want to say, I get it. Makes total sense. It’s also total nonsense. And what I mean by that is not only is it still super impressive, but the real game is when you stop trying to impress people. And so, what actually happens is you graduate out of the “I need to impress people” phase, and the person who’s 17, 18, they’re still getting that high of, of being the impressive person. Oh, everybody’s kind of patting on the back. And actually, the, the, the only way to win the game is not to continuously be the youngest, best-looking, richest person, because you’ll never win that game of comparison. The only real way to win the game is to realize like, “Oh, I just need to be doing the things that are fun for me, and like the, the act of doing them is rewarding,” and not look for the rewards of impressing people, which is, obviously easier said than done. But that’s the real thing to focus on. And not like, “this feeling of I’m running on quicksand,” you know, because it’s I’m getting older. Oh no, or like, uh, I have to 10x my growth, even though I’m already at, you know, 24 million ARR. It’s like, sure, that’s all fine. I’m not against growth, but, um, somebody said this to us, actually, they said this while we were hanging out with Mr. Beast. They go, “Be very careful, because growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of a cancer cell.” And, um, so, you know, growth for growth’s sake is not, not, not where it’s at, and there’s, there’s more to the game than that. And he’s like, “I’ll leave you with that to kind of figure out what, what, what is the answer.” I’m not going to sort of try to tell you what I think is right, but I’ll point that out because I think for me, when I was young, and I know for a lot of ambitious people, it just seems like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. It’s the only thing, and it comes from a little bit of a, um, I don’t know, like a little bit of a place of anxiety, I think.
Zach: Right. Yes. And I’ve had this, a similar thought to this, where I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve thought, “Okay, once I find my success, and let’s say I’m quote-unquote financially free, will I even want to start something new? Or will I not care anymore and just want to find happiness elsewhere?” Maybe I have one of the tenants of happiness, which is I’m financially taken care of, but then I want to prioritize relationships and happiness in other aspects. So, I love, I’m always going to be making stuff. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll predict the future. Maybe, maybe you’ll take the foot off the gas and, uh, want relationships and a family and all that stuff. You are going to be creating stuff for a very, very long time.
Zach: Well, that is why I’m going to college. It’s almost to take my foot off the gas a little bit, build relationships, and then I want to drop out after a semester or two.
The “Scarcity” of College [10:11]
Shaan Puri: I mean, I think that’s really smart because you, you have your whole life to make money, but you really only have this four years to make lifelong friends, uh, from college. So, actually, the, the scarce thing is the, the friendships and that college experience, because that, there’s a window of time that expires. And so, do that because you still have 50 years to make money. Um, after that. What school are you going to go to?
Zach: If I got in, then Stanford is likely the top.
Shaan Puri: Surely we have listeners, this is going to reach a lot of people. Surely there are some, some people listening. Dean, I know you’re listening. Yadagari, Y-A-D-A-G-A-R-I. Yeah. You can find him on Twitter, DM him. Uh, actually, that’s, that’s what they should do. A real, if I’m a, if I’m at a college right now, I’m DMing this kid an acceptance letter. That’s how a college needs to hustle. I’m tired of these colleges sitting down there. Yeah, you’re going to get a DM, someone’s going to be like, “Sup.” You’re just going to get a DM from, uh, the Dean. Sup. Who, who’s your favorite, uh, who are your most inspirational follows on Twitter? Uh, I want to, I want to, basically, I find you so fascinating. I want to be inspired by the people you’re currently inspired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want your info diet. Who, uh, who do you inspired by and try to make it people who you think I won’t know.
Zach: Hmm. Okay. Who do I follow? I actually don’t usually use Twitter for people I’m inspired by.
The “Info Diet” [12:33]
Shaan Puri: That’s interesting. What, what’s your like main social network? What, what do you use when you’re bored? What do you open up?
Zach: It is Twitter. It is Twitter. That is my main social network. When I’m looking to be inspired, there are definitely a few people. David Goggins, for example, he just pumps me up. So, I have people like him that, you know, inspired by his mindset completely. I used to actually be in this phase where I was addicted to motivational content. I curated my TikTok for You page. I only liked motivational videos, and anytime I lost motivation, I would just scroll for five minutes, then get back into it. So, definitely those kinds of people. But it’s mainly those like Mr. Beast, Elon Musk, I follow both of those on Twitter. My own co-founder, Blake Anderson, who’s a few years ahead of me in life and knowledge, too. So, definitely learn a lot from him. Cliff Weitzman, he’s a recent friend of mine. I think one of you know him.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, yeah. We know Cliff.
Zach: Yeah, so he’s super inspiring to myself as well.
Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs [13:33]
Shaan Puri: That’s dope. Uh, okay, amazing. Sam, anything else? Is there, that’s, don’t ask me. Zach, is there anything else that you want to inspire me by? Like, you’re, you’re, you’re amazing. Like, uh, anything else that you want to tell us? Yeah, did we miss anything? I appreciate that. I mean, it’s always hard going on these podcasts. Like, it’s, it’s a whole full circle moment for me to come on here. Yeah, that’s interesting. Sam, would you be going on podcasts? Because like, you know, while you’re here, I’m like, “Oh, this is great content.” I’m excited, but then there’s like the fatherly part of me that’s like, “Shut up.” Dude, just shut up. Why are you on the podcast? You shouldn’t be saying any of this stuff, because you have such a good thing going, and, uh, you could always tell the story a little later. You don’t need to invite, you know, the other, uh, Zach Yadagaris of the world who are, you know, they can code, they can make TikToks, they got cool haircuts like you, and they’re just going to do the same thing, right? So like, why go on and, and, and spill your secrets, um, you know, why, why do that?
Zach: So, I’ve heard this before, that usually you know what it takes, or people usually know what it takes to be successful, but then they are looking for an easier way. They’re looking for something that is not as burdensome, not as hard, doesn’t require as much sacrifice. And I’ve been coding since I was seven. I mean, 18 now, that’s 11 years of coding. I’ve started totally science, and before that, I was tutoring kids in coding lessons for almost a decade of my life. I was in the entrepreneur game. And so I think that, yes, I can share all of this information publicly, but it’s only a select few who will actually work towards it and put in the amount of hours required to achieve the result, where I want to help those people. I think helping those people achieve the same success, especially if they were in a situation like mine where they maybe weren’t entirely sure where to go, but they knew there was a world out there where they could have massive impact at such a young age, even balancing school on the side. And so I completely support those people.
Final Thoughts [14:49]
Shaan Puri: You have, um, a trait that, uh, like, Sean and I’s good buddy, Jack Smith, is like the perfect embodiment of this trait. Um, but a lot of entrepreneurs are, which is your logical, which like a lot of times will be awkward on like day-to-day level. Like, for example, my friend Jack is like, he’s so, he’ll, he, he does things so differently from everyone because his way is actually better, but we’ve all done it in such a way for 100 plus years that we’re like, “Well, I don’t know, we just do it this way.” And so, like, for example, he didn’t name his daughter, uh, the first year because he was like, “I guess I have to get to know her before I can name her.” And I was like, “Yeah, that makes total sense.” It’s just like strange to think about. You have that type of energy. You know, you said, “Well, I’m worrying about grades so I can get a good job, or get into a good college, to get a good job, to make money. What if I just make money now?” Like, that’s a very, that that way of thinking is is amazing. And it’s really fun to be around people like you. And so, I want to hear your perspective on a few things, this fresh thinking on a few things. So, the first is, you have 15 employees. Do you have any employees who are in their 30s or 40s? And what’s it like having to go from being just you and your buddies in a room messing around to at 15 people, you’re actually running a real company?
Zach: So, yes, we do have employees that are in their 40s. And it’s difficult to be honest with you. It’s hard at times to to make them call you sir. Yeah, I do not make them call me sir. But it is difficult, especially when I have to fire someone that has kids, and it I do have imposter syndrome at times, which is something I try to not let hold me back ever. So even if I think a certain way, I don’t I still act how I know I should. I’m reading this great book right now called The Great CEO Within. I also keep it on my desk as a reminder, and it helps me lead. I try to be an inspiring leader that that helps people, that doesn’t lead by telling people what to do and just do it now. I try to inspire them to want to do the work.
Shaan Puri: Do your, does your staff, uh, general, are you guys a well-organized company, you think, or is it a shit show?
Zach: I think that we are pretty well-organized, and that’s mainly credited to our COO and the third co-founder I didn’t mention, Jake Castillo. He’s really good at organization.
Shaan Puri: So, one of the things we talked about was like, you know, why come and talk about this? And part of you was like, “Well, I want to inspire other people.” But we don’t want to inspire just a bunch of copycats. And so we asked you, we’re like, “Hey, what are some other ideas that if you weren’t doing this, you think somebody could go do right now?” So, how can the next you, how can the next high schooler get to where you’re at, $20 million a year in revenue as a 17, 18-year-old? So, what ideas do you have for us?
Zach: Sure. So, obviously, you know, you could teach a man to fish, or you could give a man a fish. Teaching is better. So, I have a few frameworks, which I think will help even more, but I also will give some ideas. Okay, go for it. So, how I usually look at these AI problems, or not AI problems, but creating something new in general, is that AI has enabled people to basically build on top of and innovate on any tool or company that exists right now. So, the calendar was innovated on, and now there are AI calendar tools like Motion, which help you organize and structure your day a lot easier, your assistant. There are note-taking tools, where people have always taken notes by hand, people have also recorded lectures, but now there are AI platforms like TurboLearn AI, where you can record your lecture, and then the AI will generate notes for you. Calorie tracking, there have always been calorie trackers, but now with AI, you can just take a picture of your food, and it will tell you the calories. So, I try to look at everything that doesn’t already use AI and think, “Can AI make this more efficient? Make this a better process?” And my perspective on coming up with new ideas is generally that I want to find something looking at it from marketing first principles is how I always think. So, almost going backwards, and I look for an aha moment that I could capture within some sort of experience, and then wrap a whole app around that. So, for CalAI, the aha moment is take a picture of your food, get the calories. And that’s great for marketing material. They come on, they do that, but then there’s a whole app around that that gets them to stay. There’s another app on the App Store right now called Fitness AI, and their ads recently have been around their AI body scanner, where you just take a picture of your body, and then it will tell you your body fat percentage and a ton of other useful information on your composition. So, that’s what draws people in, to that AI tool, which is the aha moment, and then there’s a whole fitness app around that you stay to track your workouts on that app. So, that’s the framework I generally like to use.
Shaan Puri: And so what, what do you think is, uh, so you’re saying, work backwards from the the magic moment where AI does a magic trick and you’re like, “Holy shit, that’s cool.” And then build a sticky, you know, for you guys, it’s take a picture, get the calories, and then you have the tracking and the charts and the other stuff that’s going to keep them, maybe the coaching tips or whatever, that’s going to keep them around in the long term. Cool, got it. And you’re the other thing you’re saying is, take any app that’s popular that we’ve already been doing, that’s and just say, “What’s the AI version of this?” Is that the, is that the brainstorming session you would do is basically like, “All right, Evernote, what’s the AI version of Evernote?” Or, um, Yes. You know, our buddy in our buddy, um, in San Francisco, me and Sam’s buddy, Siva, he had this company called Study Soup. And Study Soup was literally for college kids, they would have paid note-takers who would take great notes in a lecture, and then you have you basically have the slackers and you have the kids that were were on top of things. The kids on top of things were the supply side of the marketplace, they would give their notes, and the slackers would buy their notes. And so, “Oh, cool, I I don’t have to take notes in this class because I’m getting them done for me.” And you’re saying, you basically saying that TurboLearn has become an AI version of Study Soup, right? Where it’s like, someone records it and now you have uh you have you have well, well-taken AI notes for your for that class. Yeah, exactly. So, what are some examples? Yeah, so here’s an idea. I’ve actually seen something like this, or recently on Twitter, I saw something blow up, maybe it was a couple months ago, not so recent, where someone put a bunch of their journal entries into ChatGPT and then asked, “What are some insights you could give me to make my life better?” You and I both do that. Yeah, well, that’s great. So, I think there is the possibility, and I think this would be a great idea, to build a journal app, and these journal apps already exist. So, take an existing one, put your, and this is the spin. So, you could make it voice notes, you can make it typing, whatever, doesn’t matter. But the key feature, the aha moment, AI feature you implement, is that periodically, you will have these insights generated from the AI on how you can improve your life. Like, “Hey, on Monday and Tuesday, you hung out with Sally, and you had a bad day. Maybe Sally is the cause of your bad days.” Gotcha. Okay, I like that. Uh, so AI journal. Um, I feel like with, uh, the kind of younger generation, I feel like therapy is a lot more normalized. Therapy is cool, basically, whereas in my my generation and my parent, my parent’s generation was like, “Therapy equals you’re broken, you’re you have a problem.” And it was like, you know, more taboo. The whole the whole idea of Sopranos was a guy who goes to therapy and now his friends are going to murder him because he’s so soft. Yeah, exactly. And now I feel like with the younger generation, it’s almost like a a cool thing to do. I don’t know, maybe I’m speaking out my ass here, you tell me if I’m wrong. Uh, but it’s way more normalized. It’s not not a taboo thing, and in fact, probably being anti-therapy would be a little bit low status now at this point. Um, and I feel like, but the problem with therapy, of course, is that, um, it’s a a little bit of a loaded word and B, you know, who’s paying $100 a session for this stuff and stuff when you could have the AI therapist in your pocket. Whether they’re using your journal entries as the starting point, the magic moment, or or not. Uh, what do you think of that space? You think there’s something interesting there? I think AI therapists are something that a lot of people have spoken about, and I haven’t seen anyone do it great. There are definitely apps already where you could talk to people, these chatbots, but I think they’re all missing the feeling that you are actually being heard, that the feeling you would get talking to a real therapist. So, maybe it’s the verbal aspect that’s missing, and something like ChatGPT’s voice mode, integrating that can now actually make it a better session than just typing. But that is a good idea that uses the AI spin for sure. Gotcha. And what what are some other ideas you have? You have two more, it looks like you wrote on here, yeah? So, the first one is some kind of system or pipeline to convert an Android app or an iOS app to the other. And this is something that would greatly help startups. When we started CalAI, we built it on Swift. And that’s because Swift, usually you can make a much smoother user experience on iPhones. Using something like React Native, which can build to both iOS and Android, it’s more difficult because it’s not actually using the native components to make something that feels super polished on an iPhone. After building it, we had all of this demand for an Android app, and it was problematic. We had to take away from development time on the iOS app to build out the Android app, and we had to release it a few months after. It was it costed us thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars. And every time you build a feature, you have to build it twice. You have to build it on one and then on the other. Yes, every single time. So, it’s annoying. I think with all of these AI tools, there is definitely the possibility to build something that lets you upload the codebase to one native project, and then it will convert it to the other. Now, right now, I think AI can probably do 90% of the work, but there will need to be a tiny bit of human intervention, so maybe this would be best done as an agency that’s very AI-powered at the moment, but very soon, it’s going to be something where an AI agent can do it all for you. Yeah, that’s a really good idea. We used to use something, uh, I I had an app like years ago, roommates app, uh, roommate finding app, and we, what was it called, where we used something that turned a web app into an iPhone app? Um, I mean, there’s been a lot of tools like that. And they were horrible. Like, it was like, it was really bad, but they were huge companies. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because this is a problem, right? Like, you you have to maintain two different two different you have two every feature, you have to build twice. Every every platform has its own bugs, and you basically have to hire double the number of people because the Android guy focused on Android, the iOS guy focused on iOS, and so now you have more head count. And so you always want this thing that’s like, but you but you need, but still, you’re you’re right, like having it be native actually results in a better user experience, more stickiness, more revenue, etc. So, you if you try to do the web app thing and you just put a web app and you try to wrap it, it doesn’t work as well as doing a native app. And so, you’re right that basically AI coding is getting so good that you could do 70, 80, 90% of the code transfer just through AI, and then maybe you you you have you you do it as an agency or you have one person who’s who’s doing that last kind of the last mile to get it to work work well. Um, that’s cool. What about this remotely configurable onboarding flows? This sounds like to use a framework, you know, it’s a paper cut you have, right? So, one some of the best places to find startup ideas is you’re you’re trying to do a startup and in the process of trying to do it, you run into something that’s like, “God, I wish somebody had just built this.” And maybe you build it in-house or you just keep dealing with the pain, and that that’s a very good source for startup ideas. Yes, I have heard that piece of advice to work at a startup to come up with new ideas, and it’s 100% true. So, while working on CalAI, and then a few other apps before CalAI, while I was learning how the whole consumer app space works, every app, you have to build out the onboarding flow. Every popular app on the App Store has one. It generally will ask the questions that are either required to set up your account or simply to prime you for what’s coming, to explain something that’s going on in the app, or to ask you questions that set your mind in the right direction to maybe help you convert when they actually hit you hit you with a paywall. And there is no good solution right now to build these. Everyone has to do it custom in their own codebase. But someone could really easily make a system where anyone can swap out the questions, remotely do AB tests on these, which another problem here is that anytime you want to test out something new within your onboarding flow or within your app in general, you have to submit an update to the App Store, which could take a few days. So, building out a system where you can build out the whole onboarding survey questions and then also change what the screens are, see how that affects conversion rate, see how that affects completion rate, drop-off rate, remotely, would be huge. Are you, uh, the type of person that even though you have a full-time gig, you are experimenting on new ideas that are unrelated to CalAI? So, for the last few months, I kind of was. We were orienting ourselves as an app studio very briefly, and the idea behind that was that our real sauce was in our marketing, not in our app development. And so we could build a bunch of these other AI apps, spin them up, apply the same marketing, and blow them up really fast. But at the scale CalAI is and the rate it’s growing, we realized pretty quickly that it made more sense to stay full-time on CalAI because the same time it would take to build another app and scale it to six figures revenue, we could have added an additional seven figures in revenue to CalAI just because everything boosts each other. Increasing retention will increase LTV, and as we increase retention, we could increase a funnel, so 1+1 can equal 3 instead of 2. I think that is totally the right move. Is there anything, Zach, you know, Sean and I are parents, and there’s a lot of people who listen to this who are who are parents. Is there anything that you, you you seem traditionally, obviously you’re traditionally successful, but you also seem like, uh, you you’re very thoughtful. I think that like Yeah, well spoken and thoughtful. Yeah. Like you seem like you’d be a good son regardless of, uh, uh, regardless if if you who cares about this app, you know? Like you you you you’re you’re you have your shit together at a very young age, emotionally. What do you think that your parents did that set you up to have this success? Or do you think that, and this sounds like a douchey thing to say, were you just born, you know, interested into this stuff at a young age? You know, like there’s a lot of like self-directed people. I have four siblings. I am the second oldest. And from a young age, I was very wired to want freedom. And I think it be I think it comes from my siblings. If I wanted to buy something, my parents would have to buy something for all my siblings, so they wouldn’t do it. I would have to find the way to pay for it myself. That’s what made me start teaching coding lessons at such a young age to earn money. And related to that, I actually have a story that when I was 10 years old, I wanted to cook scrambled eggs by myself. I don’t know what it was, but I really wanted independence and freedom. So the independence to just cook myself breakfast. At 10, I could have burned the house down. So my mom didn’t let me. And I got so mad about this that she didn’t trust me to cook eggs on my own because she was taking care of my other siblings, getting them ready for school, that I actually ran away from my house. And I ran probably 15 minutes from my house to a local soccer field, and the police were called. I actually got picked up by them and brought back home. I was going to come home eventually, but you know, I did run away. And it’s really been the freedom that has been the driving force behind everything. The yearning for freedom. Well, but you have that now. Somewhat. I still feel confined, honestly, by being in high school. I haven’t dropped out, and I want to go to college just for the social life, not obviously to get a job. So I feel I’ve I always feel almost trapped in situations where the outcome is determinant on what someone else decides for me, not something that I can control for myself. And someone has to accept me into the college. If I let my grades drop in high school, then they could rescind me even if I get into the school. And I hate that, but right now, for the next year at least, I think I have to make that sacrifice. And then when I’m in college, I want to make a good group of friends, then drop out. That’s going to be free. You’re going to go. What’s your GPA right now? My GPA is a 4.0, and I do want to get. What did you get on the SATs? Yeah, yeah. So, I took the ACT, and I got a 34. Okay, so that’s like a, that’s like a, that’s two points away from, that’s like a 90, that’s a 99 percentile, 98 percentile. Okay, so you’re, you’re, you have it like neglected school. You got a 4.0, and you did get a 34. Totally. Doing this with school. I’m working hard in school. I’m not By the way, it’s it’s it’s noon on a Monday. Where, where Where are you right now? I actually skipped class to do this podcast. Let’s go. Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling. Are you at school right now, or are you home? No, I left school. I’m home right now. And you told your parents it’s because there’s this podcast that I want to go on and it’s going to be good for business. Yeah. Yeah. How many other people do you know that are like you? Like, is there a community of like 100 of you guys who are like high schoolers who actually build shit and want to do cool things? There’s not that many high schoolers, but there are people who are slightly older, 19, 20. I probably Sam, look at how he’s already got the mastermind hand pose. He already has the visionary hand hand position naturally, dude, straight out the box. I have a handful of people that I’m friends with, but not many. Definitely not. Do you guys have a club? Can you have a name? Yeah, like the Grubs? Yeah, yeah, it’s the Cool Kids Club. That’s It’s you guys are pretty cool. Uh, so it’s a good day. Always wanted to be in. Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be one of the I’ve always wanted to be part of that. Uh, if you are need another member, let me know. Um, have you considered just like moving to Palo Alto and like hanging out like, you know, in the movie, uh, The Social Network, Sean Parker gets to act like a college kid without going to college? Or you dead set on going to uh going that route? Well, over the summer, when things started taking off in June for CalAI, Henry and I decided, let’s go all in. We moved to San Francisco for the whole month of July. We lived in a hacker house, we worked out of a co-working office with people years older than us. So we lived the San Francisco startup life. It was very productive, but at the same time, pretty lonely. Although we could talk to some people, yeah, we made friends, we would get lunch with people. First of all, San Francisco is not the most fun city, but also just the fact that people were years older than us, always made it difficult to relate to them. Yeah, that makes sense. We had a, I have a friend that, uh, like he got accepted into some program where he went to college at the age of 14 or 15. And he was telling me, he was like, “Man, like, I wanted to like date girls and like, you know, do that normal shit.” And it was weird. I started fooling around with one girl, and I eventually had to break it with her that I was fill her in that I’m like, “I’m I’m 16.” Uh, and so like, I imagine like, it’s weird being in these situations where you’re like in these you’re just as mature as you’re more mature than a lot of 21-year-olds or a lot of like grown adults, but you’re in the situation where I do understand why you feel trapped. You’re in these weird spots at such a young age that like you literally couldn’t go and do some of the stuff in San Francisco that everyone else is doing because of your age. But it’s pretty amazing. Like, I hope you enjoy like the time, like, I mean, I think being 18 and experiencing what you’re doing, it’s like, this is like, you know, one out of a billion. This is like a really special thing. How much are you paying yourself? So, we haven’t paid ourselves anything. We are reinvesting it all, and that’s not to say that we won’t. We are, we do have profit every month. It is a difficult situation with the App Store because we get paid out two months after we earn the money. So our growth is so quick that the revenue we generated two months ago, we have to put it all in the marketing to keep growing faster and faster. I think in a few months, we may start having a surplus where we can’t spend it on growth even if we wanted to. Yeah, that’s great. Um, dude, this is awesome, man. Congratulations. And, uh, I’m excited to see what happens. Who who are like, who do you admire? Who are you who are you learning from and looking up to? Like, who’s who’s inspiring you, right? You just like, “Oh, Elon and Jeff Bezos, that’s what I that’s what I care about,” or are there other people that you’re more interested in, uh, personally? Like you said you used to listen to podcasts as inspiration. Who are some of those people that you like to listen to? Totally. So, I love your guys’s podcast. It’s I’m more inspired by people who are dead than people who are alive. And maybe that’s because I feel like there’s they’re not my competition anymore, or they are, but they’re not progressing anymore. So, I see exactly where they ended up. Psycho, love it. Yeah. I get it, you sick fuck. Yeah. Makes sense. They’re not my competition anymore. I’ve already finished them. Yeah. Yeah. You People like I think he’s going to kill us, Sam. Yeah. I think he just threatened us, low-key. Yeah. Okay, so you like learning from dead people. What does that mean? Books? What what how do you learn from dead people? I like audiobooks, but I don’t actually like reading physical books. I also like learning about them from podcasts. Which dead people? Also like founders. You like the David Senra’s podcast Founders? It’s one of my favorites. I do listen to that. There’s one I’ve listened to recently, How to Take Over the World, which goes into Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Let’s go. So, let me ask you a question. What what’s a thing that people your age are doing that seems weird to us, but it’s totally normal. So, like what’s a phenomenon that you’re like, “Yeah, kids love doing this. They spend all this time doing this, or they spend their money on this, or this is a new trend that seems to be weird to others, but we get it. It’s it’s normal for us.” Yeah. Is by the way, is wearing, uh, Ralph Lauren Ralph Lauren polo sweaters, is that a new trend that young people are doing? I think you’ve influenced Sam. Yeah. A great sweater. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead with, uh, what cool young people are doing. So, there’s something really interesting, a really interesting phenomenon I’ve seen recently. And it’s not a new software, it’s not a new social media platform. What it is is these little things you put on the back of your phone. It’s called an Octobuddy. It’s Octobuddy. And it has suction cups on it. So you could stick your phone to a wall, you could prop it up on your table, and watch videos is the purpose. I don’t think people actually, I’ve never seen someone actually use the suction cups how they’re designed to, but it’s a trend among all girls in my high school. I’ve over the last few months, I’ve just seen more and more people have it. Now everyone does. And it’s it’s fascinating. Something that So, it’s like a TV mount. You mount your, you can mount your phone to any any surface, basically. And what do you mean it’s not used how it’s supposed to be? Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be? Well, I think it’s more of something where now girls look at it like the color of their nails or having long nails on where girls get different colors and Oh, it became an accessory. a stylistic accessory status thing than actually function. Keep going. Tell me what young people like. Like whenever I meet a young guy, I’m like, “Tell me everything.” Yeah, this is great. Well, that’s the main thing that you wouldn’t typically notice. Are your friends drinking? Yes, definitely. It’s a big Are they like the party? Do you like Do you guys like to smoke weed? I’m someone who doesn’t do any drugs. I’m pretty against them, and I don’t drink either, but it’s, I mean, everyone around me is. So, drinking’s common. Very common, very, very. You also mentioned this, uh, this like TurboLearn thing. That sounds pretty awesome. What else is like, uh, what other, uh, who else is like you out there who’s who’s basically scaling up to millions in revenue just off of this kind of like AI TikTok type of model? So, there are a bunch of consumer apps that are coming out or have come out, and honestly, I think a lot of it is attributed to Blake and I speaking publicly about this, showing that it’s really possible in the app space. So, new apps like Quitter, which is an app designed to help men quit porn with all of these little social or like by having streaks, essentially, to gamify the whole experience. So, that’s a new one that just came out. You inspired these guys? I’m friends with the founder, and he was inspired to get into the app space by seeing CalAI really take off. He was with me in the early days. That’s cool. It’s got 5,000 5,000 reviews on on iPhone. That’s pretty good. Yeah, so they’re on track to make over a million dollars this year. I think consumer apps right now are like the new drop shipping. You know, uh, Sean has said this once where he was like, you know, Sean was like, “I’m a content creator.” You know, he’s got newsletters and Twitter and podcasts. But these TikTok guys, it’s as if, you know, I, uh, am really good at writing horses, but along comes Henry Ford, and it’s just it’s just the cars are no comparison, you know? I can’t there’s no way my horse and I are going to outrun, uh, even the the crappiest car. This is one of those moments that I’m having right now talking to you. Uh, so like for a long time, Sean and I are friends, we’ll do drop shipping, you know, our when we were 25, that was the thing is like create like a drop shipping site. And people still do things like that. Seeing what you’re doing with tech and influencers is so much better than Yeah. Like you even look, Mr. You even make Mr. Beast look old. You know what I mean? Like chocolate, like what? That’s crazy. Make it, you know what I mean? But but dude, people used to look at me and Sam when we were like, so we met when we were I was probably 24, 25 years old. We were the prodigies. And it was like, I don’t know, okay, that’s very generous. But What I mean is like it’d be like, if there was something on the on the fringe or the edge about either growth hacking or a clever way to make money, usually it was us who knew it and people would ask us about it. Like I remember having like the Atlantic, the publisher come to my office and they’re like, “newsletters.” And I’m like, “Yeah, like it’s a thing.” That’s old news now. These guys are so much better, and we are that person now. I’m going to go to his office and be like, “Just tell me everything.” It’s something that always happens. It’s going to happen to me, too. I know that every year I age, I am becoming exponentially less impressive, and there’s someone that’s going to come and be the next big thing, the growth hacker that is in the front of everything. I think it’s just about building momentum, and I’m pretty obsessed with this idea of making sure that everything I work on will 10x the previous thing, so that I’m always moving forward towards a bigger goal. You actually mentioned Mr. Beast. He’s actually someone who greatly inspires me. I love the podcast that you guys had with him. By the way, I’ve heard this now a couple times from people who are like 18, and they’re like, “fearful that when they’re 22, suddenly their accomplishments are no longer cool.” And I just want to say, I get it. It makes total sense. It’s also total nonsense. And what I mean by that is not only is it still super impressive, but the real game is when you stop trying to impress people. And so what actually happens is you graduate out of the “I need to impress people” phase, and the person who’s 17, 18, they’re still getting that high of being the impressive person. Oh, everybody’s kind of patting on the back. And actually, the the the only way to win the game is not to continuously be the youngest, best-looking, richest person, because you’ll never win that game of comparison. The only real way to win the game is to realize like, “Oh, I just need to be doing the things that are fun for me, and like the the act of doing them is rewarding,” and not look for the rewards of impressing people, which is, obviously easier said than done. But that’s the real thing to focus on. And not like, “this feeling of I’m running on quicksand,” you know, because it’s I’m getting older. Oh no, or like, uh, I have to 10x my growth, even though I’m already at, you know, 24 million ARR. It’s like, sure, that’s all fine. I’m not against growth, but, um, somebody said this to us, actually, they said this while we were hanging out with Mr. Beast. They go, “Be very careful, because growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of a cancer cell.” And, um, so, you know, growth for growth’s sake is not, not, not where it’s at, and there’s, there’s more to the game than that. And he’s like, “I’ll leave you with that to kind of figure out what, what, what is the answer.” I’m not going to sort of try to tell you what I think is right, but I’ll point that out because I think for me, when I was young, and I know for a lot of ambitious people, it just seems like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. It’s the only thing, and it comes from a little bit of a, um, I don’t know, like a little bit of a place of anxiety, I think. Right. Yes. And I’ve had this a similar thought to this where I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve thought, “Okay, once I find my success and let’s say I’m quote-unquote financially free, will I even want to start something new? Or will I not care anymore and just want to find happiness elsewhere?” Maybe I have one of the tenants of happiness, which is I’m financially taken care of, but then I want to prioritize relationships and happiness in other aspects. So, I love I’m always going to be making stuff. I’ll I’ll I’ll predict the future. Maybe maybe you’ll take the foot off the gas and, uh, want relationships and a family and all that stuff. You are going to be creating stuff for a very, very long time. Well, that is why I’m going to college. It’s almost to take my foot off the gas a little bit, build relationships, and then I want to drop out after a semester or two. I mean, I think that’s really smart because you you have your whole life to make money, but you really only have this four years to make lifelong friends, uh, from college. So, actually, the the scarce thing is the the friendships and that college experience, because that there’s a window of time that expires. And so, do that because you still have 50 years to make money, um, after that. What school are you going to go to? If I got in, then Stanford is likely the top. I surely we have listeners, this is going to reach a lot of people. Surely there are some some people listening. Dean, I know you’re listening. Yadagari, Y-A-D-A-G-A-R-I. Yeah. You can find him on Twitter, DM him. Uh, actually, that’s That’s what they should do. A real if if I’m a if I’m at a college right now, I’m DMing this kid an acceptance letter. That’s how a college needs to hustle. I’m tired of these colleges sitting down there. Yeah, you’re going to get a DM. You’re going to get someone’s going to be like, “Sup.” You’re just going to get a DM from uh the Dean. Sup. Who who’s your favorite uh who are your most inspirational follows on Twitter? Uh, I want to I want to basically, I find you so fascinating. I want to be inspired by the people you’re currently inspired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want your info diet. Who uh who do you inspired by and try to make it people who you think I won’t know. Hmm. Okay. Who do I follow? I actually don’t usually use Twitter for people I’m inspired by. That’s interesting. What what’s your like main social network? What what did you use when you’re bored? What do you open up? It is Twitter. It is Twitter. That is my main social network. When I’m looking to be inspired, there are definitely a few people. David Goggins, for example, he just pumps me up. So, I have people like him that, you know, inspired by his mindset completely. I used to actually be in this phase where I was addicted to motivational content. I curated my TikTok for You page. I only liked motivational videos, and anytime I lost motivation, I would just scroll for five minutes, then get back into it. So, definitely those kinds of people. But it’s mainly those like Mr. Beast, Elon Musk, I follow both of those on Twitter. My own co-founder, Blake Anderson, who’s a few years ahead of me in life and knowledge, too. So, definitely learn a lot from him. Cliff Weitzman, he’s a recent friend of mine. I think one of you know him. Yeah, yeah. We know Cliff. Yeah, so he’s super inspiring to myself as well. That’s dope. Uh, okay, amazing. Sam, anything else? Is there That’s don’t ask me. Zach, is there anything else that you want to inspire me by? Like you’re you’re you’re amazing. Like uh anything else that you want to tell us? Yeah, did we miss anything? I appreciate that. I mean, it’s always hard going on these podcasts. Like, it’s it’s a whole full circle moment for me to come on here. Yeah, that’s interesting. Sam, would you be going on podcasts? Because like, you know, while you’re here, I’m like, “Oh, this is great content.” I’m excited, but then there’s like the fatherly part of me that’s like, “Shut up.” Dude, just shut up. Why are you on the podcast? You shouldn’t be saying any of this stuff, because you have such a good thing going, and uh you could always tell the story a little later. You don’t need to invite, you know, the other uh Zach Yadagaris of the world who are, you know, they can code, they can make TikToks, they got cool haircuts like you, and they’re just going to do the same thing, right? So like, why go on and and and spill your secrets, um, you know, why why do that? So, I’ve heard this before that usually you know what it takes, or people usually know what it takes to be successful, but then they are looking for an easier way. They’re looking for something that is not as burdensome, not as hard, doesn’t require as much sacrifice. And I’ve been coding since I was seven. I mean, 18 now, that’s 11 years of coding. I’ve started totally science, and before that, I was tutoring kids in coding lessons for almost a decade of my life. I was in the entrepreneur game. And so I think that, yes, I can share all of this information publicly, but it’s only a select few who will actually work towards it and put in the amount of hours required to achieve the result, where I want to help those people. I think helping those people achieve the same success, especially if they were in a situation like mine where they maybe weren’t entirely sure where to go, but they knew there was a world out there where they could have massive impact at such a young age, even balancing school on the side. And so I completely support those people. You have um a trait that uh like Sean and I’s good buddy, Jack Smith, is like the perfect embodiment of this trait. Um, but a lot of entrepreneurs are, which is your logical, which like a lot of times will be awkward on like day-to-day level. Like, for example, my friend Jack is like, he’s so, he’ll, he he does things so differently from everyone because his way is actually better, but we’ve all done it in such a way for 100 plus years that we’re like, “Well, I don’t know, we just do it this way.” And so, like, for example, he didn’t name his daughter, uh, the first year because he was like, “I guess I have to get to know her before I can name her.” And I was like, “Yeah, that makes total sense.” It’s just like strange to think about. You have that type of energy. You know, you said, “Well, I’m worrying about grades so I can get a good job, or get into a good college, to get a good job, to make money. What if I just make money now?” Like, that’s a very, that that way of thinking is is amazing. And it’s really fun to be around people like you. And so, I want to hear your perspective on a few things, this fresh thinking on a few things. So, the first is, you have 15 employees. Do you have any employees who are in their 30s or 40s? And what’s it like having to go from being just you and your buddies in a room messing around to at 15 people, you’re actually running a real company? So, yes, we do have employees that are in their 40s. And it’s difficult to be honest with you. It’s hard at times to to make them call you sir. Yeah, I do not make them call me sir. But it is difficult, especially when I have to fire someone that has kids, and it I do have imposter syndrome at times, which is something I try to not let hold me back ever. So even if I think a certain way, I don’t I still act how I know I should. I’m reading this great book right now called The Great CEO Within. I also keep it on my desk as a reminder, and it helps me lead. I try to be an inspiring leader that that helps people, that doesn’t lead by telling people what to do and just do it now. I try to inspire them to want to do the work. Do your does your staff uh general are you guys a well-organized company, you think, or is it a shit show? I think that we are pretty well-organized, and that’s mainly credited to our COO and the third co-founder I didn’t mention, Jake Castillo. He’s really good at organization. So, one of the things we talked about was like, you know, why come and talk about this? And part of you was like, “Well, I want to inspire other people.” But we don’t want to inspire just a bunch of copycats. And so we asked you, we’re like, “Hey, what are some other ideas that if you weren’t doing this, you think somebody could go do right now?” So, how can the next you, how can the next high schooler get to where you’re at, $20 million a year in revenue as a 17, 18-year-old? So, what ideas do you have for us? Sure. So, obviously, you know, you could teach a man to fish, or you could give a man a fish. Teaching is better. So, I have a few frameworks, which I think will help even more, but I also will give some ideas. Okay, go for it. So, how I usually look at these AI problems, or not AI problems, but creating something new in general, is that AI has enabled people to basically build on top of and innovate on any tool or company that exists right now. So, the calendar was innovated on, and now there are AI calendar tools like Motion, which help you organize and structure your day a lot easier, your assistant. There are note-taking tools, where people have always taken notes by hand, people have also recorded lectures, but now there are AI platforms like TurboLearn AI, where you can record your lecture, and then the AI will generate notes for you. Calorie tracking, there have always been calorie trackers, but now with AI, you can just take a picture of your food, and it will tell you the calories. So, I try to look at everything that doesn’t already use AI and think, “Can AI make this more efficient? Make this a better process?” And my perspective on coming up with new ideas is generally that I want to find something looking at it from marketing first principles is how I always think. So, almost going backwards, and I look for an aha moment that I could capture within some sort of experience, and then wrap a whole app around that. So, for CalAI, the aha moment is take a picture of your food, get the calories. And that’s great for marketing material. They come on, they do that, but then there’s a whole app around that that gets them to stay. There’s another app on the App Store right now called Fitness AI, and their ads recently have been around their AI body scanner, where you just take a picture of your body, and then it will tell you your body fat percentage and a ton of other useful information on your composition. So, that’s what draws people in, to that AI tool, which is the aha moment, and then there’s a whole fitness app around that you stay to track your workouts on that app. So, that’s the framework I generally like to use. And so what, what do you think is, uh, so you’re saying, work backwards from the the magic moment where AI does a magic trick and you’re like, “Holy shit, that’s cool.” And then build a sticky, you know, for you guys, it’s take a picture, get the calories, and then you have the tracking and the charts and the other stuff that’s going to keep them, maybe the coaching tips or whatever, that’s going to keep them around in the long term. Cool, got it. And you’re the other thing you’re saying is, take any app that’s popular that we’ve already been doing, that’s and just say, “What’s the AI version of this?” Is that the, is that the brainstorming session you would do is basically like, “All right, Evernote, what’s the AI version of Evernote?” Or, um, Yes. You know, our buddy in our buddy, um, in San Francisco, me and Sam’s buddy, Siva, he had this company called Study Soup. And Study Soup was literally for college kids, they would have paid note-takers who would take great notes in a lecture, and then you have you basically have the slackers and you have the kids that were were on top of things. The kids on top of things were the supply side of the marketplace, they would give their notes, and the slackers would buy their notes. And so, “Oh, cool, I I don’t have to take notes in this class because I’m getting them done for me.” And you’re saying, you basically saying that TurboLearn has become an AI version of Study Soup, right? Where it’s like, someone records it and now you have uh you have you have well, well-taken AI notes for your for that class. Yeah, exactly. So, what are some examples? Yeah, so here’s an idea. I’ve actually seen something like this, or recently on Twitter, I saw something blow up, maybe it was a couple months ago, not so recent, where someone put a bunch of their journal entries into ChatGPT and then asked, “What are some insights you could give me to make my life better?” You and I both do that. Yeah, well, that’s great. So, I think there is the possibility, and I think this would be a great idea, to build a journal app, and these journal apps already exist. So, take an existing one, put your, and this is the spin. So, you could make it voice notes, you can make it typing, whatever, doesn’t matter. But the key feature, the aha moment, AI feature you implement, is that periodically, you will have these insights generated from the AI on how you can improve your life. Like, “Hey, on Monday and Tuesday, you hung out with Sally, and you had a bad day. Maybe Sally is the cause of your bad days.” Gotcha. Okay, I like that. Uh, so AI journal. Um, I feel like with, uh, the kind of younger generation, I feel like therapy is a lot more normalized. Therapy is cool, basically, whereas in my my generation and my parent, my parent’s generation was like, “Therapy equals you’re broken, you’re you have a problem.” And it was like, you know, more taboo. The whole the whole idea of Sopranos was a guy who goes to therapy and now his friends are going to murder him because he’s so soft. Yeah, exactly. And now I feel like with the younger generation, it’s almost like a a cool thing to do. I don’t know, maybe I’m speaking out my ass here, you tell me if I’m wrong. Uh, but it’s way more normalized. It’s not not a taboo thing, and in fact, probably being anti-therapy would be a little bit low status now at this point. Um, and I feel like, but the problem with therapy, of course, is that, um, it’s a a little bit of a loaded word and B, you know, who’s paying $100 a session for this stuff and stuff when you could have the AI therapist in your pocket. Whether they’re using your journal entries as the starting point, the magic moment, or or not. Uh, what do you think of that space? You think there’s something interesting there? I think AI therapists are something that a lot of people have spoken about, and I haven’t seen anyone do it great. There are definitely apps already where you could talk to people, these chatbots, but I think they’re all missing the feeling that you are actually being heard, that the feeling you would get talking to a real therapist. So, maybe it’s the verbal aspect that’s missing, and something like ChatGPT’s voice mode, integrating that can now actually make it a better session than just typing. But that is a good idea that uses the AI spin for sure. Gotcha. And what what are some other ideas you have? You have two more, it looks like you wrote on here, yeah? So, the first one is some kind of system or pipeline to convert an Android app or an iOS app to the other. And this is something that would greatly help startups. When we started CalAI, we built it on Swift. And that’s because Swift, usually you can make a much smoother user experience on iPhones. Using something like React Native, which can build to both iOS and Android, it’s more difficult because it’s not actually using the native components to make something that feels super polished on an iPhone. After building it, we had all of this demand for an Android app, and it was problematic. We had to take away from development time on the iOS app to build out the Android app, and we had to release it a few months after. It was it costed us thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars. And every time you build a feature, you have to build it twice. You have to build it on one and then on the other. Yes, every single time. So, it’s annoying. I think with all of these AI tools, there is definitely the possibility to build something that lets you upload the codebase to one native project, and then it will convert it to the other. Now, right now, I think AI can probably do 90% of the work, but there will need to be a tiny bit of human intervention, so maybe this would be best done as an agency that’s very AI-powered at the moment, but very soon, it’s going to be something where an AI agent can do it all for you. Yeah, that’s a really good idea. We used to use something, uh, I I had an app like years ago, roommates app, uh, roommate finding app, and we, what was it called, where we used something that turned a web app into an iPhone app? Um, I mean, there’s been a lot of tools like that. And they were horrible. Like, it was like, it was really bad, but they were huge companies. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because this is a problem, right? Like, you you have to maintain two different two different you have two every feature, you have to build twice. Every every platform has its own bugs, and you basically have to hire double the number of people because the Android guy focused on Android, the iOS guy focused on iOS, and so now you have more head count. And so you always want this thing that’s like, but you but you need, but still, you’re you’re right, like having it be native actually results in a better user experience, more stickiness, more revenue, etc. So, you if you try to do the web app thing and you just put a web app and you try to wrap it, it doesn’t work as well as doing a native app. And so, you’re right that basically AI coding is getting so good that you could do 70, 80, 90% of the code transfer just through AI, and then maybe you you you have you you do it as an agency or you have one person who’s who’s doing that last kind of the last mile to get it to work work well. Um, that’s cool. What about this remotely configurable onboarding flows? This sounds like to use a framework, you know, it’s a paper cut you have, right? So, one some of the best places to find startup ideas is you’re you’re trying to do a startup and in the process of trying to do it, you run into something that’s like, “God, I wish somebody had just built this.” And maybe you build it in-house or you just keep dealing with the pain, and that that’s a very good source for startup ideas. Yes, I have heard that piece of advice to work at a startup to come up with new ideas, and it’s 100% true. So, while working on CalAI, and then a few other apps before CalAI, while I was learning how the whole consumer app space works, every app, you have to build out the onboarding flow. Every popular app on the App Store has one. It generally will ask the questions that are either required to set up your account or simply to prime you for what’s coming, to explain something that’s going on in the app, or to ask you questions that set your mind in the right direction to maybe help you convert when they actually hit you hit you with a paywall. And there is no good solution right now to build these. Everyone has to do it custom in their own codebase. But someone could really easily make a system where anyone can swap out the questions, remotely do AB tests on these, which another problem here is that anytime you want to test out something new within your onboarding flow or within your app in general, you have to submit an update to the App Store, which could take a few days. So, building out a system where you can build out the whole onboarding survey questions and then also change what the screens are, see how that affects conversion rate, see how that affects completion rate, drop-off rate, remotely, would be huge. Are you, uh, the type of person that even though you have a full-time gig, you are experimenting on new ideas that are unrelated to CalAI? So, for the last few months, I kind of was. We were orienting ourselves as an app studio very briefly, and the idea behind that was that our real sauce was in our marketing, not in our app development. And so we could build a bunch of these other AI apps, spin them up, apply the same marketing, and blow them up really fast. But at the scale CalAI is and the rate it’s growing, we realized pretty quickly that it made more sense to stay full-time on CalAI because the same time it would take to build another app and scale it to six figures revenue, we could have added an additional seven figures in revenue to CalAI just because everything boosts each other. Increasing retention will increase LTV, and as we increase retention, we could increase a funnel, so 1+1 can equal 3 instead of 2. I think that is totally the right move. Is there anything, Zach, you know, Sean and I are parents, and there’s a lot of people who listen to this who are who are parents. Is there anything that you, you you seem traditionally, obviously you’re traditionally successful, but you also seem like, uh, you you’re very thoughtful. I think that like Yeah, well spoken and thoughtful. Yeah. Like you seem like you’d be a good son regardless of, uh, uh, regardless if if you who cares about this app, you know? Like you you you you’re you’re you have your shit together at a very young age, emotionally. What do you think that your parents did that set you up to have this success? Or do you think that, and this sounds like a douchey thing to say, were you just born, you know, interested into this stuff at a young age? You know, like there’s a lot of like self-directed people. I have four siblings. I am the second oldest. And from a young age, I was very wired to want freedom. And I think it be I think it comes from my siblings. If I wanted to buy something, my parents would have to buy something for all my siblings, so they wouldn’t do it. I would have to find the way to pay for it myself. That’s what made me start teaching coding lessons at such a young age to earn money. And related to that, I actually have a story that when I was 10 years old, I wanted to cook scrambled eggs by myself. I don’t know what it was, but I really wanted independence and freedom. So the independence to just cook myself breakfast. At 10, I could have burned the house down. So my mom didn’t let me. And I got so mad about this that she didn’t trust me to cook eggs on my own because she was taking care of my other siblings, getting them ready for school, that I actually ran away from my house. And I ran probably 15 minutes from my house to a local soccer field, and the police were called. I actually got picked up by them and brought back home. I was going to come home eventually, but you know, I did run away. And it’s really been the freedom that has been the driving force behind everything. The yearning for freedom. Well, but you have that now. Somewhat. I still feel confined, honestly, by being in high school. I haven’t dropped out, and I want to go to college just for the social life, not obviously to get a job. So I feel I’ve I always feel almost trapped in situations where the outcome is determinant on what someone else decides for me, not something that I can control for myself. And someone has to accept me into the college. If I let my grades drop in high school, then they could rescind me even if I get into the school. And I hate that, but right now, for the next year at least, I think I have to make that sacrifice. And then when I’m in college, I want to make a good group of friends, then drop out. That’s going to be free. You’re going to go. What’s your GPA right now? My GPA is a 4.0, and I do want to get. What did you get on the SATs? Yeah, yeah. So, I took the ACT, and I got a 34. Okay, so that’s like a, that’s like a, that’s two points away from, that’s like a 90, that’s a 99 percentile, 98 percentile. Okay, so you’re, you’re, you have it like neglected school. You got a 4.0, and you did get a 34. Totally. Doing this with school. I’m working hard in school. I’m not By the way, it’s it’s it’s noon on a Monday. Where, where Where are you right now? I actually skipped class to do this podcast. Let’s go. Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling. Are you at school right now, or are you home? No, I left school. I’m home right now. And you told your parents it’s because there’s this podcast that I want to go on and it’s going to be good for business. Yeah. Yeah. How many other people do you know that are like you? Like, is there a community of like 100 of you guys who are like high schoolers who actually build shit and want to do cool things? There’s not that many high schoolers, but there are people who are slightly older, 19, 20. I probably Sam, look at how he’s already got the mastermind hand pose. He already has the visionary hand hand position naturally, dude, straight out the box. I have a handful of people that I’m friends with, but not many. Definitely not. Do you guys have a club? Can you have a name? Yeah, like the Grubs? Yeah, yeah, it’s the Cool Kids Club. That’s It’s you guys are pretty cool. Uh, so it’s a good day. Always wanted to be in. Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be one of the I’ve always wanted to be part of that. Uh, if you are need another member, let me know. Um, have you considered just like moving to Palo Alto and like hanging out like, you know, in the movie, uh, The Social Network, Sean Parker gets to act like a college kid without going to college? Or you dead set on going to uh going that route? Well, over the summer, when things started taking off in June for CalAI, Henry and I decided, let’s go all in. We moved to San Francisco for the whole month of July. We lived in a hacker house, we worked out of a co-working office with people years older than us. So we lived the San Francisco startup life. It was very productive, but at the same time, pretty lonely. Although we could talk to some people, yeah, we made friends, we would get lunch with people. First of all, San Francisco is not the most fun city, but also just the fact that people were years older than us, always made it difficult to relate to them. Yeah, that makes sense. We had a, I have a friend that, uh, like he got accepted into some program where he went to college at the age of 14 or 15. And he was telling me, he was like, “Man, like, I wanted to like date girls and like, you know, do that normal shit.” And it was weird. I started fooling around with one girl, and I eventually had to break it with her that I was fill her in that I’m like, “I’m I’m 16.” Uh, and so like, I imagine like, it’s weird being in these situations where you’re like in these you’re just as mature as you’re more mature than a lot of 21-year-olds or a lot of like grown adults, but you’re in the situation where I do understand why you feel trapped. You’re in these weird spots at such a young age that like you literally couldn’t go and do some of the stuff in San Francisco that everyone else is doing because of your age. But it’s pretty amazing. Like, I hope you enjoy like the time, like, I mean, I think being 18 and experiencing what you’re doing, it’s like, this is like, you know, one out of a billion. This is like a really special thing. How much are you paying yourself? So, we haven’t paid ourselves anything. We are reinvesting it all, and that’s not to say that we won’t. We are, we do have profit every month. It is a difficult situation with the App Store because we get paid out two months after we earn the money. So our growth is so quick that the revenue we generated two months ago, we have to put it all in the marketing to keep growing faster and faster. I think in a few months, we may start having a surplus where we can’t spend it on growth even if we wanted to. Yeah, that’s great. Um, dude, this is awesome, man. Congratulations. And, uh, I’m excited to see what happens. Who who are like, who do you admire? Who are you who are you learning from and looking up to? Like, who’s who’s inspiring you, right? You just like, “Oh, Elon and Jeff Bezos, that’s what I that’s what I care about,” or are there other people that you’re more interested in, uh, personally? Like you said you used to listen to podcasts as inspiration. Who are some of those people that you like to listen to? Totally. So, I love your guys’s podcast. It’s I’m more inspired by people who are dead than people who are alive. And maybe that’s because I feel like there’s they’re not my competition anymore, or they are, but they’re not progressing anymore. So, I see exactly where they ended up. Psycho, love it. Yeah. I get it, you sick fuck. Yeah. Makes sense. They’re not my competition anymore. I’ve already finished them. Yeah. Yeah. You People like I think he’s going to kill us, Sam. Yeah. I think he just threatened us, low-key. Yeah. Okay, so you like learning from dead people. What does that mean? Books? What what how do you learn from dead people? I like audiobooks, but I don’t actually like reading physical books. I also like learning about them from podcasts. Which dead people? Also like founders. You like the David Senra’s podcast Founders? It’s one of my favorites. I do listen to that. There’s one I’ve listened to recently, How to Take Over the World, which goes into Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Let’s go. So, let me ask you a question. What what’s a thing that people your age are doing that seems weird to us, but it’s totally normal. So, like what’s a phenomenon that you’re like, “Yeah, kids love doing this. They spend all this time doing this, or they spend their money on this, or this is a new trend that seems to be weird to others, but we get it. It’s it’s normal for us.” Yeah. Is by the way, is wearing, uh, Ralph Lauren Ralph Lauren polo sweaters, is that a new trend that young people are doing? I think you’ve influenced Sam. Yeah. A great sweater. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead with, uh, what cool young people are doing. So, there’s something really interesting, a really interesting phenomenon I’ve seen recently. And it’s not a new software, it’s not a new social media platform. What it is is these little things you put on the back of your phone. It’s called an Octobuddy. It’s Octobuddy. And it has suction cups on it. So you could stick your phone to a wall, you could prop it up on your table, and watch videos is the purpose. I don’t think people actually, I’ve never seen someone actually use the suction cups how they’re designed to, but it’s a trend among all girls in my high school. I’ve over the last few months, I’ve just seen more and more people have it. Now everyone does. And it’s it’s fascinating. Something that So, it’s like a TV mount. You mount your, you can mount your phone to any any surface, basically. And what do you mean it’s not used how it’s supposed to be? Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be? Well, I think it’s more of something where now girls look at it like the color of their nails or having long nails on where girls get different colors and Oh, it became an accessory. a stylistic accessory status thing than actually function. Keep going. Tell me what young people like. Like whenever I meet a young guy, I’m like, “Tell me everything.” Yeah, this is great. Well, that’s the main thing that you wouldn’t typically notice. Are your friends drinking? Yes, definitely. It’s a big Are they like the party? Do you like Do you guys like to smoke weed? I’m someone who doesn’t do any drugs. I’m pretty against them, and I don’t drink either, but it’s, I mean, everyone around me is. So, drinking’s common. Very common, very, very. You also mentioned this, uh, this like TurboLearn thing. That sounds pretty awesome. What else is like, uh, what other, uh, who else is like you out there who’s who’s basically scaling up to millions in revenue just off of this kind of like AI TikTok type of model? So, there are a bunch of consumer apps that are coming out or have come out, and honestly, I think a lot of it is attributed to Blake and I speaking publicly about this, showing that it’s really possible in the app space. So, new apps like Quitter, which is an app designed to help men quit porn with all of these little social or like by having streaks, essentially, to gamify the whole experience. So, that’s a new one that just came out. You inspired these guys? I’m friends with the founder, and he was inspired to get into the app space by seeing CalAI really take off. He was with me in the early days. That’s cool. It’s got 5,000 5,000 reviews on on iPhone. That’s pretty good. Yeah, so they’re on track to make over a million dollars this year. I think consumer apps right now are like the new drop shipping. You know, uh, Sean has said this once where he was like, you know, Sean was like, “I’m a content creator.” You know, he’s got newsletters and Twitter and podcasts. But these TikTok guys, it’s as if, you know, I, uh, am really good at writing horses, but along comes Henry Ford, and it’s just it’s just the cars are no comparison, you know? I can’t there’s no way my horse and I are going to outrun, uh, even the the crappiest car. This is one of those moments that I’m having right now talking to you. Uh, so like for a long time, Sean and I are friends, we’ll do drop shipping, you know, our when we were 25, that was the thing is like create like a drop shipping site. And people still do things like that. Seeing what you’re doing with tech and influencers is so much better than Yeah. Like you even look, Mr. You even make Mr. Beast look old. You know what I mean? Like chocolate, like what? That’s crazy. Make it, you know what I mean? But but dude, people used to look at me and Sam when we were like, so we met when we were I was probably 24, 25 years old. We were the prodigies. And it was like, I don’t know, okay, that’s very generous. But What I mean is like it’d be like, if there was something on the on the fringe or the edge about either growth hacking or a clever way to make money, usually it was us who knew it and people would ask us about it. Like I remember having like the Atlantic, the publisher come to my office and they’re like, “newsletters.” And I’m like, “Yeah, like it’s a thing.” That’s old news now. These guys are so much better, and we are that person now. I’m going to go to his office and be like, “Just tell me everything.” It’s something that always happens. It’s going to happen to me, too. I know that every year I age, I am becoming exponentially less impressive, and there’s someone that’s going to come and be the next big thing, the growth hacker that is in the front of everything. I think it’s just about building momentum, and I’m pretty obsessed with this idea of making sure that everything I work on will 10x the previous thing, so that I’m always moving forward towards a bigger goal. You actually mentioned Mr. Beast. He’s actually someone who greatly inspires me. I love the podcast that you guys had with him. By the way, I’ve heard this now a couple times from people who are like 18, and they’re like, “fearful that when they’re 22, suddenly their accomplishments are no longer cool.” And I just want to say, I get it. It makes total sense. It’s also total nonsense. And what I mean by that is not only is it still super impressive, but the real game is when you stop trying to impress people. And so what actually happens is you graduate out of the “I need to impress people” phase, and the person who’s 17, 18, they’re still getting that high of being the impressive person. Oh, everybody’s kind of patting on the back. And actually, the the the only way to win the game is not to continuously be the youngest, best-looking, richest person, because you’ll never win that game of comparison. The only real way to win the game is to realize like, “Oh, I just need to be doing the things that are fun for me, and like the the act of doing them is rewarding,” and not look for the rewards of impressing people, which is, obviously easier said than done. But that’s the real thing to focus on. And not like, “this feeling of I’m running on quicksand,” you know, because it’s I’m getting older. Oh no, or like, uh, I have to 10x my growth, even though I’m already at, you know, 24 million ARR. It’s like, sure, that’s all fine. I’m not against growth, but, um, somebody said this to us, actually, they said this while we were hanging out with Mr. Beast. They go, “Be very careful, because growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of a cancer cell.” And, um, so, you know, growth for growth’s sake is not, not, not where it’s at, and there’s, there’s more to the game than that. And he’s like, “I’ll leave you with that to kind of figure out what, what, what is the answer.” I’m not going to sort of try to tell you what I think is right, but I’ll point that out because I think for me, when I was young, and I know for a lot of ambitious people, it just seems like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. It’s the only thing, and it comes from a little bit of a, um, I don’t know, like a little bit of a place of anxiety, I think. Right. Yes. And I’ve had this a similar thought to this where I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve thought, “Okay, once I find my success and let’s say I’m quote-unquote financially free, will I even want to start something new? Or will I not care anymore and just want to find happiness elsewhere?” Maybe I have one of the tenants of happiness, which is I’m financially taken care of, but then I want to prioritize relationships and happiness in other aspects. So, I love I’m always going to be making stuff. I’ll I’ll I’ll predict the future. Maybe maybe you’ll take the foot off the gas and, uh, want relationships and a family and all that stuff. You are going to be creating stuff for a very, very long time. Well, that is why I’m going to college. It’s almost to take my foot off the gas a little bit, build relationships, and then I want to drop out after a semester or two. I mean, I think that’s really smart because you you have your whole life to make money, but you really only have this four years to make lifelong friends, uh, from college. So, actually, the the scarce thing is the the friendships and that college experience, because that there’s a window of time that expires. And so, do that because you still have 50 years to make money, um, after that. What school are you going to go to? If I got in, then Stanford is likely the top. I surely we have listeners, this is going to reach a lot of people. Surely there are some some people listening. Dean, I know you’re listening. Yadagari, Y-A-D-A-G-A-R-I. Yeah. You can find him on Twitter, DM him. Uh, actually, that’s That’s what they should do. A real if if I’m a if I’m at a college right now, I’m DMing this kid an acceptance letter. That’s how a college needs to hustle. I’m tired of these colleges sitting down there. Yeah, you’re going to get a DM. You’re going to get someone’s going to be like, “Sup.” You’re just going to get a DM from uh the Dean. Sup. Who who’s your favorite uh who are your most inspirational follows on Twitter? Uh, I want to I want to basically, I find you so fascinating. I want to be inspired by the people you’re currently inspired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want your info diet. Who uh who do you inspired by and try to make it people who you think I won’t know. Hmm. Okay. Who do I follow? I actually don’t usually use Twitter for people I’m inspired by. That’s interesting. What what’s your like main social network? What what did you use when you’re bored? What do you open up? It is Twitter. It is Twitter. That is my main social network. When I’m looking to be inspired, there are definitely a few people. David Goggins, for example, he just pumps me up. So, I have people like him that, you know, inspired by his mindset completely. I used to actually be in this phase where I was addicted to motivational content. I curated my TikTok for You page. I only liked motivational videos, and anytime I lost motivation, I would just scroll for five minutes, then get back into it. So, definitely those kinds of people. But it’s mainly those like Mr. Beast, Elon Musk, I follow both of those on Twitter. My own co-founder, Blake Anderson, who’s a few years ahead of me in life and knowledge, too. So, definitely learn a lot from him. Cliff Weitzman, he’s a recent friend of mine. I think one of you know him. Yeah, yeah. We know Cliff. Yeah, so he’s super inspiring to myself as well. That’s dope. Uh, okay, amazing. Sam, anything else? Is there That’s don’t ask me. Zach, is there anything else that you want to inspire me by? Like you’re you’re you’re amazing. Like uh anything else that you want to tell us? Yeah, did we miss anything? I appreciate that. I mean, it’s always hard going on these podcasts. Like, it’s it’s a whole full circle moment for me to come on here. Yeah, that’s interesting. Sam, would you be going on podcasts? Because like, you know, while you’re here, I’m like, “Oh, this is great content.” I’m excited, but then there’s like the fatherly part of me that’s like, “Shut up.” Dude, just shut up. Why are you on the podcast? You shouldn’t be saying any of this stuff, because you have such a good thing going, and uh you could always tell the story a little later. You don’t need to invite, you know, the other uh Zach Yadagaris of the world who are, you know, they can code, they can make TikToks, they got cool haircuts like you, and they’re just going to do the same thing, right? So like, why go on and and and spill your secrets, um, you know, why why do that? So, I’ve heard this before that usually you know what it takes, or people usually know what it takes to be successful, but then they are looking for an easier way. They’re looking for something that is not as burdensome, not as hard, doesn’t require as much sacrifice. And I’ve been coding since I was seven. I mean, 18 now, that’s 11 years of coding. I’ve started totally science, and before that, I was tutoring kids in coding lessons for almost a decade of my life. I was in the entrepreneur game. And so I think that, yes, I can share all of this information publicly, but it’s only a select few who will actually work towards it and put in the amount of hours required to achieve the result, where I want to help those people. I think helping those people achieve the same success, especially if they were in a situation like mine where they maybe weren’t entirely sure where to go, but they knew there was a world out there where they could have massive impact at such a young age, even balancing school on the side. And so I completely support those people. You have um a trait that uh like Sean and I’s good buddy, Jack Smith, is like the perfect embodiment of this trait. Um, but a lot of entrepreneurs are, which is your logical, which like a lot of times will be awkward on like day-to-day level. Like, for example, my friend Jack is like, he’s so, he’ll, he he does things so differently from everyone because his way is actually better, but we’ve all done it in such a way for 100 plus years that we’re like, “Well, I don’t know, we just do it this way.” And so, like, for example, he didn’t name his daughter, uh, the first year because he was like, “I guess I have to get to know her before I can name her.” And I was like, “Yeah, that makes total sense.” It’s just like strange to think about. You have that type of energy. You know, you said, “Well, I’m worrying about grades so I can get a good job, or get into a good college, to get a good job, to make money. What if I just make money now?” Like, that’s a very, that that way of thinking is is amazing. And it’s really fun to be around people like you. And so, I want to hear your perspective on a few things, this fresh thinking on a few things. So, the first is, you have 15 employees. Do you have any employees who are in their 30s or 40s? And what’s it like having to go from being just you and your buddies in a room messing around to at 15 people, you’re actually running a real company? So, yes, we do have employees that are in their 40s. And it’s difficult to be honest with you. It’s hard at times to to make them call you sir. Yeah, I do not make them call me sir. But it is difficult, especially when I have to fire someone that has kids, and it I do have imposter syndrome at times, which is something I try to not let hold me back ever. So even if I think a certain way, I don’t I still act how I know I should. I’m reading this great book right now called The Great CEO Within. I also keep it on my desk as a reminder, and it helps me lead. I try to be an inspiring leader that that helps people, that doesn’t lead by telling people what to do and just do it now. I try to inspire them to want to do the work. Do your does your staff uh general are you guys a well-organized company, you think, or is it a shit show? I think that we are pretty well-organized, and that’s mainly credited to our COO and the third co-founder I didn’t mention, Jake Castillo. He’s really good at organization. So, one of the things we talked about was like, you know, why come and talk about this? And part of you was like, “Well, I want to inspire other people.” But we don’t want to inspire just a bunch of copycats. And so we asked you, we’re like, “Hey, what are some other ideas that if you weren’t doing this, you think somebody could go do right now?” So, how can the next you, how can the next high schooler get to where you’re at, $20 million a year in revenue as a 17, 18-year-old? So, what ideas do you have for us? Sure. So, obviously, you know, you could teach a man to fish, or you could give a man a fish. Teaching is better. So, I have a few frameworks, which I think will help even more, but I also will give some ideas. Okay, go for it. So, how I usually look at these AI problems, or not AI problems, but creating something new in general, is that AI has enabled people to basically build on top of and innovate on any tool or company that exists right now. So, the calendar was innovated on, and now there are AI calendar tools like Motion, which help you organize and structure your day a lot easier, your assistant. There are note-taking tools, where people have always taken notes by hand, people have also recorded lectures, but now there are AI platforms like TurboLearn AI, where you can record your lecture, and then the AI will generate notes for you. Calorie tracking, there have always been calorie trackers, but now with AI, you can just take a picture of your food, and it will tell you the calories. So, I try to look at everything that doesn’t already use AI and think, “Can AI make this more efficient? Make this a better process?” And my perspective on coming up with new ideas is generally that I want to find something looking at it from marketing first principles is how I always think. So, almost going backwards, and I look for an aha moment that I could capture within some sort of experience, and then wrap a whole app around that. So, for CalAI, the aha moment is take a picture of your food, get the calories. And that’s great for marketing material. They come on, they do that, but then there’s a whole app around that that gets them to stay. There’s another app on the App Store right now called Fitness AI, and their ads recently have been around their AI body scanner, where you just take a picture of your body, and then it will tell you your body fat percentage and a ton of other useful information on your composition. So, that’s what draws people in, to that AI tool, which is the aha moment, and then there’s a whole fitness app around that you stay to track your workouts on that app. So, that’s the framework I generally like to use. And so what, what do you think is, uh, so you’re saying, work backwards from the the magic moment where AI does a magic trick and you’re like, “Holy shit, that’s cool.” And then build a sticky, you know, for you guys, it’s take a picture, get the calories, and then you have the tracking and the charts and the other stuff that’s going to keep them, maybe the coaching tips or whatever, that’s going to keep them around in the long term. Cool, got it. And you’re the other thing you’re saying is, take any app that’s popular that we’ve already been doing, that’s and just say, “What’s the AI version of this?” Is that the, is that the brainstorming session you would do is basically like, “All right, Evernote, what’s the AI version of Evernote?” Or, um, Yes. You know, our buddy in our buddy, um, in San Francisco, me and Sam’s buddy, Siva, he had this company called Study Soup. And Study Soup was literally for college kids, they would have paid note-takers who would take great notes in a lecture, and then you have you basically have the slackers and you have the kids that were were on top of things. The kids on top of things were the supply side of the marketplace, they would give their notes, and the slackers would buy their notes. And so, “Oh, cool, I I don’t have to take notes in this class because I’m getting them done for me.” And you’re saying, you basically saying that TurboLearn has become an AI version of Study Soup, right? Where it’s like, someone records it and now you have uh you have you have well, well-taken AI notes for your for that class. Yeah, exactly. So, what are some examples? Yeah, so here’s an idea. I’ve actually seen something like this, or recently on Twitter, I saw something blow up, maybe it was a couple months ago, not so recent, where someone put a bunch of their journal entries into ChatGPT and then asked, “What are some insights you could give me to make my life better?” You and I both do that. Yeah, well, that’s great. So, I think there is the possibility, and I think this would be a great idea, to build a journal app, and these journal apps already exist. So, take an existing one, put your, and this is the spin. So, you could make it voice notes, you can make it typing, whatever, doesn’t matter. But the key feature, the aha moment, AI feature you implement, is that periodically, you will have these insights generated from the AI on how you can improve your life. Like, “Hey, on Monday and Tuesday, you hung out with Sally, and you had a bad day. Maybe Sally is the cause of your bad days.” Gotcha. Okay, I like that. Uh, so AI journal. Um, I feel like with, uh, the kind of younger generation, I feel like therapy is a lot more normalized. Therapy is cool, basically, whereas in my my generation and my parent, my parent’s generation was like, “Therapy equals you’re broken, you’re you have a problem.” And it was like, you know, more taboo. The whole the whole idea of Sopranos was a guy who goes to therapy and now his friends are going to murder him because he’s so soft. Yeah, exactly. And now I feel like with the younger generation, it’s almost like a a cool thing to do. I don’t know, maybe I’m speaking out my ass here, you tell me if I’m wrong. Uh, but it’s way more normalized. It’s not not a taboo thing, and in fact, probably being anti-therapy would be a little bit low status now at this point. Um, and I feel like, but the problem with therapy, of course, is that, um, it’s a a little bit of a loaded word and B, you know, who’s paying $100 a session for this stuff and stuff when you could have the AI therapist in your pocket. Whether they’re using your journal entries as the starting point, the magic moment, or or not. Uh, what do you think of that space? You think there’s something interesting there? I think AI therapists are something that a lot of people have spoken about, and I haven’t seen anyone do it great. There are definitely apps already where you could talk to people, these chatbots, but I think they’re all missing the feeling that you are actually being heard, that the feeling you would get talking to a real therapist. So, maybe it’s the verbal aspect that’s missing, and something like ChatGPT’s voice mode, integrating that can now actually make it a better session than just typing. But that is a good idea that uses the AI spin for sure. Gotcha. And what what are some other ideas you have? You have two more, it looks like you wrote on here, yeah? So, the first one is some kind of system or pipeline to convert an Android app or an iOS app to the other. And this is something that would greatly help startups. When we started CalAI, we built it on Swift. And that’s because Swift, usually you can make a much smoother user experience on iPhones. Using something like React Native, which can build to both iOS and Android, it’s more difficult because it’s not actually using the native components to make something that feels super polished on an iPhone. After building it, we had all of this demand for an Android app, and it was problematic. We had to take away from development time on the iOS app to build out the Android app, and we had to release it a few months after. It was it costed us thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars. And every time you build a feature, you have to build it twice. You have to build it on one and then on the other. Yes, every single time. So, it’s annoying. I think with all of these AI tools, there is definitely the possibility to build something that lets you upload the codebase to one native project, and then it will convert it to the other. Now, right now, I think AI can probably do 90% of the work, but there will need to be a tiny bit of human intervention, so maybe this would be best done as an agency that’s very AI-powered at the moment, but very soon, it’s going to be something where an AI agent can do it all for you. Yeah, that’s a really good idea. We used to use something, uh, I I had an app like years ago, roommates app, uh, roommate finding app, and we, what was it called, where we used something that turned a web app into an iPhone app? Um, I mean, there’s been a lot of tools like that. And they were horrible. Like, it was like, it was really bad, but they were huge companies. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because this is a problem, right? Like, you you have to maintain two different two different you have two every feature, you have to build twice. Every every platform has its own bugs, and you basically have to hire double the number of people because the Android guy focused on Android, the iOS guy focused on iOS, and so now you have more head count. And so you always want this thing that’s like, but you but you need, but still, you’re you’re right, like having it be native actually results in a better user experience, more stickiness, more revenue, etc. So, you if you try to do the web app thing and you just put a web app and you try to wrap it, it doesn’t work as well as doing a native app. And so, you’re right that basically AI coding is getting so good that you could do 70, 80, 90% of the code transfer just through AI, and then maybe you you you have you you do it as an agency or you have one person who’s who’s doing that last kind of the last mile to get it to work work well. Um, that’s cool. What about this remotely configurable onboarding flows? This sounds like to use a framework, you know, it’s a paper cut you have, right? So, one some of the best places to find startup ideas is you’re you’re trying to do a startup and in the process of trying to do it, you run into something that’s like, “God, I wish somebody had just built this.” And maybe you build it in-house or you just keep dealing with the pain, and that that’s a very good source for startup ideas. Yes, I have heard that piece of advice to work at a startup to come up with new ideas, and it’s 100% true. So, while working on CalAI, and then a few other apps before CalAI, while I was learning how the whole consumer app space works, every app, you have to build out the onboarding flow. Every popular app on the App Store has one. It generally will ask the questions that are either required to set up your account or simply to prime you for what’s coming, to explain something that’s going on in the app, or to ask you questions that set your mind in the right direction to maybe help you convert when they actually hit you hit you with a paywall. And there is no good solution right now to build these. Everyone has to do it custom in their own codebase. But someone could really easily make a system where anyone can swap out the questions, remotely do AB tests on these, which another problem here is that anytime you want to test out something new within your onboarding flow or within your app in general, you have to submit an update to the App Store, which could take a few days. So, building out a system where you can build out the whole onboarding survey questions and then also change what the screens are, see how that affects conversion rate, see how that affects completion rate, drop-off rate, remotely, would be huge. Are you, uh, the type of person that even though you have a full-time gig, you are experimenting on new ideas that are unrelated to CalAI? So, for the last few months, I kind of was. We were orienting ourselves as an app studio very briefly, and the idea behind that was that our real sauce was in our marketing, not in our app development. And so we could build a bunch of these other AI apps, spin them up, apply the same marketing, and blow them up really fast. But at the scale CalAI is and the rate it’s growing, we realized pretty quickly that it made more sense to stay full-time on CalAI because the same time it would take to build another app and scale it to six figures revenue, we could have added an additional seven figures in revenue to CalAI just because everything boosts each other. Increasing retention will increase LTV, and as we increase retention, we could increase a funnel, so 1+1 can equal 3 instead of 2. I think that is totally the right move. Is there anything, Zach, you know, Sean and I are parents, and there’s a lot of people who listen to this who are who are parents. Is there anything that you, you you seem traditionally, obviously you’re traditionally successful, but you also seem like, uh, you you’re very thoughtful. I think that like Yeah, well spoken and thoughtful. Yeah. Like you seem like you’d be a good son regardless of, uh, uh, regardless if if you who cares about this app, you know? Like you you you you’re you’re you have your shit together at a very young age, emotionally. What do you think that your parents did that set you up to have this success? Or do you think that, and this sounds like a douchey thing to say, were you just born, you know, interested into this stuff at a young age? You know, like there’s a lot of like self-directed people. I have four siblings. I am the second oldest. And from a young age, I was very wired to want freedom. And I think it be I think it comes from my siblings. If I wanted to buy something, my parents would have to buy something for all my siblings, so they wouldn’t do it. I would have to find the way to pay for it myself. That’s what made me start teaching coding lessons at such a young age to earn money. And related to that, I actually have a story that when I was 10 years old, I wanted to cook scrambled eggs by myself. I don’t know what it was, but I really wanted independence and freedom. So the independence to just cook myself breakfast. At 10, I could have burned the house down. So my mom didn’t let me. And I got so mad about this that she didn’t trust me to cook eggs on my own because she was taking care of my other siblings, getting them ready for school, that I actually ran away from my house. And I ran probably 15 minutes from my house to a local soccer field, and the police were called. I actually got picked up by them and brought back home. I was going to come home eventually, but you know, I did run away. And it’s really been the freedom that has been the driving force behind everything. The yearning for freedom. Well, but you have that now. Somewhat. I still feel confined, honestly, by being in high school. I haven’t dropped out, and I want to go to college just for the social life, not obviously to get a job. So I feel I’ve I always feel almost trapped in situations where the outcome is determinant on what someone else decides for me, not something that I can control for myself. And someone has to accept me into the college. If I let my grades drop in high school, then they could rescind me even if I get into the school. And I hate that, but right now, for the next year at least, I think I have to make that sacrifice. And then when I’m in college, I want to make a good group of friends, then drop out. That’s going to be free. You’re going to go. What’s your GPA right now? My GPA is a 4.0, and I do want to get. What did you get on the SATs? Yeah, yeah. So, I took the ACT, and I got a 34. Okay, so that’s like a, that’s like a, that’s two points away from, that’s like a 90, that’s a 99 percentile, 98 percentile. Okay, so you’re, you’re, you have it like neglected school. You got a 4.0, and you did get a 34. Totally. Doing this with school. I’m working hard in school. I’m not By the way, it’s it’s it’s noon on a Monday. Where, where Where are you right now? I actually skipped class to do this podcast. Let’s go. Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling. Are you at school right now, or are you home? No, I left school. I’m home right now. And you told your parents it’s because there’s this podcast that I want to go on and it’s going to be good for business. Yeah. Yeah. How many other people do you know that are like you? Like, is there a community of like 100 of you guys who are like high schoolers who actually build shit and want to do cool things? There’s not that many high schoolers, but there are people who are slightly older, 19, 20. I probably Sam, look at how he’s already got the mastermind hand pose. He already has the visionary hand hand position naturally, dude, straight out the box. I have a handful of people that I’m friends with, but not many. Definitely not. Do you guys have a club? Can you have a name? Yeah, like the Grubs? Yeah, yeah, it’s the Cool Kids Club. That’s It’s you guys are pretty cool. Uh, so it’s a good day. Always wanted to be in. Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be one of the I’ve always wanted to be part of that. Uh, if you are need another member, let me know. Um, have you considered just like moving to Palo Alto and like hanging out like, you know, in the movie, uh, The Social Network, Sean Parker gets to act like a college kid without going to college? Or you dead set on going to uh going that route? Well, over the summer, when things started taking off in June for CalAI, Henry and I decided, let’s go all in. We moved to San Francisco for the whole month of July. We lived in a hacker house, we worked out of a co-working office with people years older than us. So we lived the San Francisco startup life. It was very productive, but at the same time, pretty lonely. Although we could talk to some people, yeah, we made friends, we would get lunch with people. First of all, San Francisco is not the most fun city, but also just the fact that people were years older than us, always made it difficult to relate to them. Yeah, that makes sense. We had a, I have a friend that, uh, like he got accepted into some program where he went to college at the age of 14 or 15. And he was telling me, he was like, “Man, like, I wanted to like date girls and like, you know, do that normal shit.” And it was weird. I started fooling around with one girl, and I eventually had to break it with her that I was fill her in that I’m like, “I’m I’m 16.” Uh, and so like, I imagine like, it’s weird being in these situations where you’re like in these you’re just as mature as you’re more mature than a lot of 21-year-olds or a lot of like grown adults, but you’re in the situation where I do understand why you feel trapped. You’re in these weird spots at such a young age that like you literally couldn’t go and do some of the stuff in San Francisco that everyone else is doing because of your age. But it’s pretty amazing. Like, I hope you enjoy like the time, like, I mean, I think being 18 and experiencing what you’re doing, it’s like, this is like, you know, one out of a billion. This is like a really special thing. How much are you paying yourself? So, we haven’t paid ourselves anything. We are reinvesting it all, and that’s not to say that we won’t. We are, we do have profit every month. It is a difficult situation with the App Store because we get paid out two months after we earn the money. So our growth is so quick that the revenue we generated two months ago, we have to put it all in the marketing to keep growing faster and faster. I think in a few months, we may start having a surplus where we can’t spend it on growth even if we wanted to. Yeah, that’s great. Um, dude, this is awesome, man. Congratulations. And, uh, I’m excited to see what happens. Who who are like, who do you admire? Who are you who are you learning from and looking up to? Like, who’s who’s inspiring you, right? You just like, “Oh, Elon and Jeff Bezos, that’s what I that’s what I care about,” or are there other people that you’re more interested in, uh, personally? Like you said you used to listen to podcasts as inspiration. Who are some of those people that you like to listen to? Totally. So, I love your guys’s podcast. It’s I’m more inspired by people who are dead than people who are alive. And maybe that’s because I feel like there’s they’re not my competition anymore, or they are, but they’re not progressing anymore. So, I see exactly where they ended up. Psycho, love it. Yeah. I get it, you sick fuck. Yeah. Makes sense. They’re not my competition anymore. I’ve already finished them. Yeah. Yeah. You People like I think he’s going to kill us, Sam. Yeah. I think he just threatened us, low-key. Yeah. Okay, so you like learning from dead people. What does that mean? Books? What what how do you learn from dead people? I like audiobooks, but I don’t actually like reading physical books. I also like learning about them from podcasts. Which dead people? Also like founders. You like the David Senra’s podcast Founders? It’s one of my favorites. I do listen to that. There’s one I’ve listened to recently, How to Take Over the World, which goes into Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Let’s go. So, let me ask you a question. What what’s a thing that people your age are doing that seems weird to us, but it’s totally normal. So, like what’s a phenomenon that you’re like, “Yeah, kids love doing this. They spend all this time doing this, or they spend their money on this, or this is a new trend that seems to be weird to others, but we get it. It’s it’s normal for us.” Yeah. Is by the way, is wearing, uh, Ralph Lauren Ralph Lauren polo sweaters, is that a new trend that young people are doing? I think you’ve influenced Sam. Yeah. A great sweater. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead with, uh, what cool young people are doing. So, there’s something really interesting, a really interesting phenomenon I’ve seen recently. And it’s not a new software, it’s not a new social media platform. What it is is these little things you put on the back of your phone. It’s called an Octobuddy. It’s Octobuddy. And it has suction cups on it. So you could stick your phone to a wall, you could prop it up on your table, and watch videos is the purpose. I don’t think people actually, I’ve never seen someone actually use the suction cups how they’re designed to, but it’s a trend among all girls in my high school. I’ve over the last few months, I’ve just seen more and more people have it. Now everyone does. And it’s it’s fascinating. Something that So, it’s like a TV mount. You mount your, you can mount your phone to any any surface, basically. And what do you mean it’s not used how it’s supposed to be? Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be? Well, I think it’s more of something where now girls look at it like the color of their nails or having long nails on where girls get different colors and Oh, it became an accessory. a stylistic accessory status thing than actually function. Keep going. Tell me what young people like. Like whenever I meet a young guy, I’m like, “Tell me everything.” Yeah, this is great. Well, that’s the main thing that you wouldn’t typically notice. Are your friends drinking? Yes, definitely. It’s a big Are they like the party? Do you like Do you guys like to smoke weed? I’m someone who doesn’t do any drugs. I’m pretty against them, and I don’t drink either, but it’s, I mean, everyone around me is. So, drinking’s common. Very common, very, very. You also mentioned this, uh, this like TurboLearn thing. That sounds pretty awesome. What else is like, uh, what other, uh, who else is like you out there who’s who’s basically scaling up to millions in revenue just off of this kind of like AI TikTok type of model? So, there are a bunch of consumer apps that are coming out or have come out, and honestly, I think a lot of it is attributed to Blake and I speaking publicly about this, showing that it’s really possible in the app space. So, new apps like Quitter, which is an app designed to help men quit porn with all of these little social or like by having streaks, essentially, to gamify the whole experience. So, that’s a new one that just came out. You inspired these guys? I’m friends with the founder, and he was inspired to get into the app space by seeing CalAI really take off. He was with me in the early days. That’s cool. It’s got 5,000 5,000 reviews on on iPhone. That’s pretty good. Yeah, so they’re on track to make over a million dollars this year. I think consumer apps right now are like the new drop shipping. You know, uh, Sean has said this once where he was like, you know, Sean was like, “I’m a content creator.” You know, he’s got newsletters and Twitter and podcasts. But these TikTok guys, it’s as if, you know, I, uh, am really good at writing horses, but along comes Henry Ford, and it’s just it’s just the cars are no comparison, you know? I can’t there’s no way my horse and I are going to outrun, uh, even the the crappiest car. This is one of those moments that I’m having right now talking to you. Uh, so like for a long time, Sean and I are friends, we’ll do drop shipping, you know, our when we were 25, that was the thing is like create like a drop shipping site. And people still do things like that. Seeing what you’re doing with tech and influencers is so much better than Yeah. Like you even look, Mr. You even make Mr. Beast look old. You know what I mean? Like chocolate, like what? That’s crazy. Make it, you know what I mean? But but dude, people used to look at me and Sam when we were like, so we met when we were I was probably 24, 25 years old. We were the prodigies. And it was like, I don’t know, okay, that’s very generous. But What I mean is like it’d be like, if there was something on the on the fringe or the edge about either growth hacking or a clever way to make money, usually it was us who knew it and people would ask us about it. Like I remember having like the Atlantic, the publisher come to my office and they’re like, “newsletters.” And I’m like, “Yeah, like it’s a thing.” That’s old news now. These guys are so much better, and we are that person now. I’m going to go to his office and be like, “Just tell me everything.” It’s something that always happens. It’s going to happen to me, too. I know that every year I age, I am becoming exponentially less impressive, and there’s someone that’s going to come and be the next big thing, the growth hacker that is in the front of everything. I think it’s just about building momentum, and I’m pretty obsessed with this idea of making sure that everything I work on will 10x the previous thing, so that I’m always moving forward towards a bigger goal. You actually mentioned Mr. Beast. He’s actually someone who greatly inspires me. I love the podcast that you guys had with him. By the way, I’ve heard this now a couple times from people who are like 18, and they’re like, “fearful that when they’re 22, suddenly their accomplishments are no longer cool.” And I just want to say, I get it. It makes total sense. It’s also total nonsense. And what I mean by that is not only is it still super impressive, but the real game is when you stop trying to impress people. And so what actually happens is you graduate out of the “I need to impress people” phase, and the person who’s 17, 18, they’re still getting that high of being the impressive person. Oh, everybody’s kind of patting on the back. And actually, the the the only way to win the game is not to continuously be the youngest, best-looking, richest person, because you’ll never win that game of comparison. The only real way to win the game is to realize like, “Oh, I just need to be doing the things that are fun for me, and like the the act of doing them is rewarding,” and not look for the rewards of impressing people, which is, obviously easier said than done. But that’s the real thing to focus on. And not like, “this feeling of I’m running on quicksand,” you know, because it’s I’m getting older. Oh no, or like, uh, I have to 10x my growth, even though I’m already at, you know, 24 million ARR. It’s like, sure, that’s all fine. I’m not against growth, but, um, somebody said this to us, actually, they said this while we were hanging out with Mr. Beast. They go, “Be very careful, because growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of a cancer cell.” And, um, so, you know, growth for growth’s sake is not, not, not where it’s at, and there’s, there’s more to the game than that. And he’s like, “I’ll leave you with that to kind of figure out what, what, what is the answer.” I’m not going to sort of try to tell you what I think is right, but I’ll point that out because I think for me, when I was young, and I know for a lot of ambitious people, it just seems like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. It’s the only thing, and it comes from a little bit of a, um, I don’t know, like a little bit of a place of anxiety, I think. Right. Yes. And I’ve had this a similar thought to this where I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve thought, “Okay, once I find my success and let’s say I’m quote-unquote financially free, will I even want to start something new? Or will I not care anymore and just want to find happiness elsewhere?” Maybe I have one of the tenants of happiness, which is I’m financially taken care of, but then I want to prioritize relationships and happiness in other aspects. So, I love I’m always going to be making stuff. I’ll I’ll I’ll predict the future. Maybe maybe you’ll take the foot off the gas and, uh, want relationships and a family and all that stuff. You are going to be creating stuff for a very, very long time. Well, that is why I’m going to college. It’s almost to take my foot off the gas a little bit, build relationships, and then I want to drop out after a semester or two. I mean, I think that’s really smart because you you have your whole life to make money, but you really only have this four years to make lifelong friends, uh, from college. So, actually, the the scarce thing is the the friendships and that college experience, because that there’s a window of time that expires. And so, do that because you still have 50 years to make money, um, after that. What school are you going to go to? If I got in, then Stanford is likely the top. I surely we have listeners, this is going to reach a lot of people. Surely there are some some people listening. Dean, I know you’re listening. Yadagari, Y-A-D-A-G-A-R-I. Yeah. You can find him on Twitter, DM him. Uh, actually, that’s That’s what they should do. A real if if I’m a if I’m at a college right now, I’m DMing this kid an acceptance letter. That’s how a college needs to hustle. I’m tired of these colleges sitting down there. Yeah, you’re going to get a DM. You’re going to get someone’s going to be like, “Sup.” You’re just going to get a DM from uh the Dean. Sup. Who who’s your favorite uh who are your most inspirational follows on Twitter? Uh, I want to I want to basically, I find you so fascinating. I want to be inspired by the people you’re currently inspired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want your info diet. Who uh who do you inspired by and try to make it people who you think I won’t know. Hmm. Okay. Who do I follow? I actually don’t usually use Twitter for people I’m inspired by. That’s interesting. What what’s your like main social network? What what did you use when you’re bored? What do you open up? It is Twitter. It is Twitter. That is my main social network. When I’m looking to be inspired, there are definitely a few people. David Goggins, for example, he just pumps me up. So, I have people like him that, you know, inspired by his mindset completely. I used to actually be in this phase where I was addicted to motivational content. I curated my TikTok for You page. I only liked motivational videos, and anytime I lost motivation, I would just scroll for five minutes, then get back into it. So, definitely those kinds of people. But it’s mainly those like Mr. Beast, Elon Musk, I follow both of those on Twitter. My own co-founder, Blake Anderson, who’s a few years ahead of me in life and knowledge, too. So, definitely learn a lot from him. Cliff Weitzman, he’s a recent friend of mine. I think one of you know him. Yeah, yeah. We know Cliff. Yeah, so he’s super inspiring to myself as well. That’s dope. Uh, okay, amazing. Sam, anything else? Is there That’s don’t ask me. Zach, is there anything else that you want to inspire me by? Like you’re you’re you’re amazing. Like uh anything else that you want to tell us? Yeah, did we miss anything? I appreciate that. I mean, it’s always hard going on these podcasts. Like, it’s it’s a whole full circle moment for me to come on here. Yeah, that’s interesting. Sam, would you be going on podcasts? Because like, you know, while you’re here, I’m like, “Oh, this is great content.” I’m excited, but then there’s like the fatherly part of me that’s like, “Shut up.” Dude, just shut up. Why are you on the podcast? You shouldn’t be saying any of this stuff, because you have such a good thing going, and uh you could always tell the story a little later. You don’t need to invite, you know, the other uh Zach Yadagaris of the world who are, you know, they can code, they can make TikToks, they got cool haircuts like you, and they’re just going to do the same thing, right? So like, why go on and and and spill your secrets, um, you know, why why do that? So, I’ve heard this before that usually you know what it takes, or people usually know what it takes to be successful, but then they are looking for an easier way. They’re looking for something that is not as burdensome, not as hard, doesn’t require as much sacrifice. And I’ve been coding since I was seven. I mean, 18 now, that’s 11 years of coding. I’ve started totally science, and before that, I was tutoring kids in coding lessons for almost a decade of my life. I was in the entrepreneur game. And so I think that, yes, I can share all of this information publicly, but it’s only a select few who will actually work towards it and put in the amount of hours required to achieve the result, where I want to help those people. I think helping those people achieve the same success, especially if they were in a situation like mine where they maybe weren’t entirely sure where to go, but they knew there was a world out there where they could have massive impact at such a young age, even balancing school on the side. And so I completely support those people. You have um a trait that uh like Sean and I’s good buddy, Jack Smith, is like the perfect embodiment of this trait. Um, but a lot of entrepreneurs are, which is your logical, which like a lot of times will be awkward on like day-to-day level. Like, for example, my friend Jack is like, he’s so, he’ll, he he does things so differently from everyone because his way is actually better, but we’ve all done it in such a way for 100 plus years that we’re like, “Well, I don’t know, we just do it this way.” And so, like, for example, he didn’t name his daughter, uh, the first year because he was like, “I guess I have to get to know her before I can name her.” And I was like, “Yeah, that makes total sense.” It’s just like strange to think about. You have that type of energy. You know, you said, “Well, I’m worrying about grades so I can get a good job, or get into a good college, to get a good job, to make money. What if I just make money now?” Like, that’s a very, that that way of thinking is is amazing. And it’s really fun to be around people like you. And so, I want to hear your perspective on a few things, this fresh thinking on a few things. So, the first is, you have 15 employees. Do you have any employees who are in their 30s or 40s? And what’s it like having to go from being just you and your buddies in a room messing around to at 15 people, you’re actually running a real company? So, yes, we do have employees that are in their 40s. And it’s difficult to be honest with you. It’s hard at times to to make them call you sir. Yeah, I do not make them call me sir. But it is difficult, especially when I have to fire someone that has kids, and it I do have imposter syndrome at times, which is something I try to not let hold me back ever. So even if I think a certain way, I don’t I still act how I know I should. I’m reading this great book right now called The Great CEO Within. I also keep it on my desk as a reminder, and it helps me lead. I try to be an inspiring leader that that helps people, that doesn’t lead by telling people what to do and just do it now. I try to inspire them to want to do the work. Do your does your staff uh general are you guys a well-organized company, you think, or is it a shit show? I think that we are pretty well-organized, and that’s mainly credited to our COO and the third co-founder I didn’t mention, Jake Castillo. He’s really good at organization. So, one of the things we talked about was like, you know, why come and talk about this? And part of you was like, “Well, I want to inspire other people.” But we don’t want to inspire just a bunch of copycats. And so we asked you, we’re like, “Hey, what are some other ideas that if you weren’t doing this, you think somebody could go do right now?” So, how can the next you, how can the next high schooler get to where you’re at, $20 million a year in revenue as a 17, 18-year-old? So, what ideas do you have for us? Sure. So, obviously, you know, you could teach a man to fish, or you could give a man a fish. Teaching is better. So, I have a few frameworks, which I think will help even more, but I also will give some ideas. Okay, go for it. So, how I usually look at these AI problems, or not AI problems, but creating something new in general, is that AI has enabled people to basically build on top of and innovate on any tool or company that exists right now. So, the calendar was innovated on, and now there are AI calendar tools like Motion, which help you organize and structure your day a lot easier, your assistant. There are note-taking tools, where people have always taken notes by hand, people have also recorded lectures, but now there are AI platforms like TurboLearn AI, where you can record your lecture, and then the AI will generate notes for you. Calorie tracking, there have always been calorie trackers, but now with AI, you can just take a picture of your food, and it will tell you the calories. So, I try to look at everything that doesn’t already use AI and think, “Can AI make this more efficient? Make this a better process?” And my perspective on coming up with new ideas is generally that I want to find something looking at it from marketing first principles is how I always think. So, almost going backwards, and I look for an aha moment that I could capture within some sort of experience, and then wrap a whole app around that. So, for CalAI, the aha moment is take a picture of your food, get the calories. And that’s great for marketing material. They come on, they do that, but then there’s a whole app around that that gets them to stay. There’s another app on the App Store right now called Fitness AI, and their ads recently have been around their AI body scanner, where you just take a picture of your body, and then it will tell you your body fat percentage and a ton of other useful information on your composition. So, that’s what draws people in, to that AI tool, which is the aha moment, and then there’s a whole fitness app around that you stay to track your workouts on that app. So, that’s the framework I generally like to use. And so what, what do you think is, uh, so you’re saying, work backwards from the the magic moment where AI does a magic trick and you’re like, “Holy shit, that’s cool.” And then build a sticky, you know, for you guys, it’s take a picture, get the calories, and then you have the tracking and the charts and the other stuff that’s going to keep them, maybe the coaching tips or whatever, that’s going to keep them around in the long term. Cool, got it. And you’re the other thing you’re saying is, take any app that’s popular that we’ve already been doing, that’s and just say, “What’s the AI version of this?” Is that the, is that the brainstorming session you would do is basically like, “All right, Evernote, what’s the AI version of Evernote?” Or, um, Yes. You know, our buddy in our buddy, um, in San Francisco, me and Sam’s buddy, Siva, he had this company called Study Soup. And Study Soup was literally for college kids, they would have paid note-takers who would take great notes in a lecture, and then you have you basically have the slackers and you have the kids that were were on top of things. The kids on top of things were the supply side of the marketplace, they would give their notes, and the slackers would buy their notes. And so, “Oh, cool, I I don’t have to take notes in this class because I’m getting them done for me.” And you’re saying, you basically saying that TurboLearn has become an AI version of Study Soup, right? Where it’s like, someone records it and now you have uh you have you have well, well-taken AI notes for your for that class. Yeah, exactly. So, what are some examples? Yeah, so here’s an idea. I’ve actually seen something like this, or recently on Twitter, I saw something blow up, maybe it was a couple months ago, not so recent, where someone put a bunch of their journal entries into ChatGPT and then asked, “What are some insights you could give me to make my life better?” You and I both do that. Yeah, well, that’s great. So, I think there is the possibility, and I think this would be a great idea, to build a journal app, and these journal apps already exist. So, take an existing one, put your, and this is the spin. So, you could make it voice notes, you can make it typing, whatever, doesn’t matter. But the key feature, the aha moment, AI feature you implement, is that periodically, you will have these insights generated from the AI on how you can improve your life. Like, “Hey, on Monday and Tuesday, you hung out with Sally, and you had a bad day. Maybe Sally is the cause of your bad days.” Gotcha. Okay, I like that. Uh, so AI journal. Um, I feel like with, uh, the kind of younger generation, I feel like therapy is a lot more normalized. Therapy is cool, basically, whereas in my my generation and my parent, my parent’s generation was like, “Therapy equals you’re broken, you’re you have a problem.” And it was like, you know, more taboo. The whole the whole idea of Sopranos was a guy who goes to therapy and now his friends are going to murder him because he’s so soft. Yeah, exactly. And now I feel like with the younger generation, it’s almost like a a cool thing to do. I don’t know, maybe I’m speaking out my ass here, you tell me if I’m wrong. Uh, but it’s way more normalized. It’s not not a taboo thing, and in fact, probably being anti-therapy would be a little bit low status now at this point. Um, and I feel like, but the problem with therapy, of course, is that, um, it’s a a little bit of a loaded word and B, you know, who’s paying $100 a session for this stuff and stuff when you could have the AI therapist in your pocket. Whether they’re using your journal entries as the starting point, the magic moment, or or not. Uh, what do you think of that space? You think there’s something interesting there? I think AI therapists are something that a lot of people have spoken about, and I haven’t seen anyone do it great. There are definitely apps already where you could talk to people, these chatbots, but I think they’re all missing the feeling that you are actually being heard, that the feeling you would get talking to a real therapist. So, maybe it’s the verbal aspect that’s missing, and something like ChatGPT’s voice mode, integrating that can now actually make it a better session than just typing. But that is a good idea that uses the AI spin for sure. Gotcha. And what what are some other ideas you have? You have two more, it looks like you wrote on here, yeah? So, the first one is some kind of system or pipeline to convert an Android app or an iOS app to the other. And this is something that would greatly help startups. When we started CalAI, we built it on Swift. And that’s because Swift, usually you can make a much smoother user experience on iPhones. Using something like React Native, which can build to both iOS and Android, it’s more difficult because it’s not actually using the native components to make something that feels super polished on an iPhone. After building it, we had all of this demand for an Android app, and it was problematic. We had to take away from development time on the iOS app to build out the Android app, and we had to release it a few months after. It was it costed us thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars. And every time you build a feature, you have to build it twice. You have to build it on one and then on the other. Yes, every single time. So, it’s annoying. I think with all of these AI tools, there is definitely the possibility to build something that lets you upload the codebase to one native project, and then it will convert it to the other. Now, right now, I think AI can probably do 90% of the work, but there will need to be a tiny bit of human intervention, so maybe this would be best done as an agency that’s very AI-powered at the moment, but very soon, it’s going to be something where an AI agent can do it all for you. Yeah, that’s a really good idea. We used to use something, uh, I I had an app like years ago, roommates app, uh, roommate finding app, and we, what was it called, where we used something that turned a web app into an iPhone app? Um, I mean, there’s been a lot of tools like that. And they were horrible. Like, it was like, it was really bad, but they were huge companies. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because this is a problem, right? Like, you you have to maintain two different two different you have two every feature, you have to build twice. Every every platform has its own bugs, and you basically have to hire double the number of people because the Android guy focused on Android, the iOS guy focused on iOS, and so now you have more head count. And so you always want this thing that’s like, but you but you need, but still, you’re you’re right, like having it be native actually results in a better user experience, more stickiness, more revenue, etc. So, you if you try to do the web app thing and you just put a web app and you try to wrap it, it doesn’t work as well as doing a native app. And so, you’re right that basically AI coding is getting so good that you could do 70, 80, 90% of the code transfer just through AI, and then maybe you you you have you you do it as an agency or you have one person who’s who’s doing that last kind of the last mile to get it to work work well. Um, that’s cool. What about this remotely configurable onboarding flows? This sounds like to use a framework, you know, it’s a paper cut you have, right? So, one some of the best places to find startup ideas is you’re you’re trying to do a startup and in the process of trying to do it, you run into something that’s like, “God, I wish somebody had just built this.” And maybe you build it in-house or you just keep dealing with the pain, and that that’s a very good source for startup ideas. Yes, I have heard that piece of advice to work at a startup to come up with new ideas, and it’s 100% true. So, while working on CalAI, and then a few other apps before CalAI, while I was learning how the whole consumer app space works, every app, you have to build out the onboarding flow. Every popular app on the App Store has one. It generally will ask the questions that are either required to set up your account or simply to prime you for what’s coming, to explain something that’s going on in the app, or to ask you questions that set your mind in the right direction to maybe help you convert when they actually hit you hit you with a paywall. And there is no good solution right now to build these. Everyone has to do it custom in their own codebase. But someone could really easily make a system where anyone can swap out the questions, remotely do AB tests on these, which another problem here is that anytime you want to test out something new within your onboarding flow or within your app in general, you have to submit an update to the App Store, which could take a few days. So, building out a system where you can build out the whole onboarding survey questions and then also change what the screens are, see how that affects conversion rate, see how that affects completion rate, drop-off rate, remotely, would be huge. Are you, uh, the type of person that even though you have a full-time gig, you are experimenting on new ideas that are unrelated to CalAI? So, for the last few months, I kind of was. We were orienting ourselves as an app studio very briefly, and the idea behind that was that our real sauce was in our marketing, not in our app development. And so we could build a bunch of these other AI apps, spin them up, apply the same marketing, and blow them up really fast. But at the scale CalAI is and the rate it’s growing, we realized pretty quickly that it made more sense to stay full-time on CalAI because the same time it would take to build another app and scale it to six figures revenue, we could have added an additional seven figures in revenue to CalAI just because everything boosts each other. Increasing retention will increase LTV, and as we increase retention, we could increase a funnel, so 1+1 can equal 3 instead of 2. I think that is totally the right move. Is there anything, Zach, you know, Sean and I are parents, and there’s a lot of people who listen to this who are who are parents. Is there anything that you, you you seem traditionally, obviously you’re traditionally successful, but you also seem like, uh, you you’re very thoughtful. I think that like Yeah, well spoken and thoughtful. Yeah. Like you seem like you’d be a good son regardless of, uh, uh, regardless if if you who cares about this app, you know? Like you you you you’re you’re you have your shit together at a very young age, emotionally. What do you think that your parents did that set you up to have this success? Or do you think that, and this sounds like a douchey thing to say, were you just born, you know, interested into this stuff at a young age? You know, like there’s a lot of like self-directed people. I have four siblings. I am the second oldest. And from a young age, I was very wired to want freedom. And I think it be I think it comes from my siblings. If I wanted to buy something, my parents would have to buy something for all my siblings, so they wouldn’t do it. I would have to find the way to pay for it myself. That’s what made me start teaching coding lessons at such a young age to earn money. And related to that, I actually have a story that when I was 10 years old, I wanted to cook scrambled eggs by myself. I don’t know what it was, but I really wanted independence and freedom. So the independence to just cook myself breakfast. At 10, I could have burned the house down. So my mom didn’t let me. And I got so mad about this that she didn’t trust me to cook eggs on my own because she was taking care of my other siblings, getting them ready for school, that I actually ran away from my house. And I ran probably 15 minutes from my house to a local soccer field, and the police were called. I actually got picked up by them and brought back home. I was going to come home eventually, but you know, I did run away. And it’s really been the freedom that has been the driving force behind everything. The yearning for freedom. Well, but you have that now. Somewhat. I still feel confined, honestly, by being in high school. I haven’t dropped out, and I want to go to college just for the social life, not obviously to get a job. So I feel I’ve I always feel almost trapped in situations where the outcome is determinant on what someone else decides for me, not something that I can control for myself. And someone has to accept me into the college. If I let my grades drop in high school, then they could rescind me even if I get into the school. And I hate that, but right now, for the next year at least, I think I have to make that sacrifice. And then when I’m in college, I want to make a good group of friends, then drop out. That’s going to be free. You’re going to go. What’s your GPA right now? My GPA is a 4.0, and I do want to get. What did you get on the SATs? Yeah, yeah. So, I took the ACT, and I got a 34. Okay, so that’s like a, that’s like a, that’s two points away from, that’s like a 90, that’s a 99 percentile, 98 percentile. Okay, so you’re, you’re, you have it like neglected school. You got a 4.0, and you did get a 34. Totally. Doing this with school. I’m working hard in school. I’m not By the way, it’s it’s it’s noon on a Monday. Where, where Where are you right now? I actually skipped class to do this podcast. Let’s go. Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling. Are you at school right now, or are you home? No, I left school. I’m home right now. And you told your parents it’s because there’s this podcast that I want to go on and it’s going to be good for business. Yeah. Yeah. How many other people do you know that are like you? Like, is there a community of like 100 of you guys who are like high schoolers who actually build shit and want to do cool things? There’s not that many high schoolers, but there are people who are slightly older, 19, 20. I probably Sam, look at how he’s already got the mastermind hand pose. He already has the visionary hand hand position naturally, dude, straight out the box. I have a handful of people that I’m friends with, but not many. Definitely not. Do you guys have a club? Can you have a name? Yeah, like the Grubs? Yeah, yeah, it’s the Cool Kids Club. That’s It’s you guys are pretty cool. Uh, so it’s a good day. Always wanted to be in. Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be one of the I’ve always wanted to be part of that. Uh, if you are need another member, let me know. Um, have you considered just like moving to Palo Alto and like hanging out like, you know, in the movie, uh, The Social Network, Sean Parker gets to act like a college kid without going to college? Or you dead set on going to uh going that route? Well, over the summer, when things started taking off in June for CalAI, Henry and I decided, let’s go all in. We moved to San Francisco for the whole month of July. We lived in a hacker house, we worked out of a co-working office with people years older than us. So we lived the San Francisco startup life. It was very productive, but at the same time, pretty lonely. Although we could talk to some people, yeah, we made friends, we would get lunch with people. First of all, San Francisco is not the most fun city, but also just the fact that people were years older than us, always made it difficult to relate to them. Yeah, that makes sense. We had a, I have a friend that, uh, like he got accepted into some program where he went to college at the age of 14 or 15. And he was telling me, he was like, “Man, like, I wanted to like date girls and like, you know, do that normal shit.” And it was weird. I started fooling around with one girl, and I eventually had to break it with her that I was fill her in that I’m like, “I’m I’m 16.” Uh, and so like, I imagine like, it’s weird being in these situations where you’re like in these you’re just as mature as you’re more mature than a lot of 21-year-olds or a lot of like grown adults, but you’re in the situation where I do understand why you feel trapped. You’re in these weird spots at such a young age that like you literally couldn’t go and do some of the stuff in San Francisco that everyone else is doing because of your age. But it’s pretty amazing. Like, I hope you enjoy like the time, like, I mean, I think being 18 and experiencing what you’re doing, it’s like, this is like, you know, one out of a billion. This is like a really special thing. How much are you paying yourself? So, we haven’t paid ourselves anything. We are reinvesting it all, and that’s not to say that we won’t. We are, we do have profit every month. It is a difficult situation with the App Store because we get paid out two months after we earn the money. So our growth is so quick that the revenue we generated two months ago, we have to put it all in the marketing to keep growing faster and faster. I think in a few months, we may start having a surplus where we can’t spend it on growth even if we wanted to. Yeah, that’s great. Um, dude, this is awesome, man. Congratulations. And, uh, I’m excited to see what happens. Who who are like, who do you admire? Who are you who are you learning from and looking up to? Like, who’s who’s inspiring you, right? You just like, “Oh, Elon and Jeff Bezos, that’s what I that’s what I care about,” or are there other people that you’re more interested in, uh, personally? Like you said you used to listen to podcasts as inspiration. Who are some of those people that you like to listen to? Totally. So, I love your guys’s podcast. It’s I’m more inspired by people who are dead than people who are alive. And maybe that’s because I feel like there’s they’re not my competition anymore, or they are, but they’re not progressing anymore. So, I see exactly where they ended up. Psycho, love it. Yeah. I get it, you sick fuck. Yeah. Makes sense. They’re not my competition anymore. I’ve already finished them. Yeah. Yeah. You People like I think he’s going to kill us, Sam. Yeah. I think he just threatened us, low-key. Yeah. Okay, so you like learning from dead people. What does that mean? Books? What what how do you learn from dead people? I like audiobooks, but I don’t actually like reading physical books. I also like learning about them from podcasts. Which dead people? Also like founders. You like the David Senra’s podcast Founders? It’s one of my favorites. I do listen to that. There’s one I’ve listened to recently, How to Take Over the World, which goes into Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Let’s go. So, let me ask you a question. What what’s a thing that people your age are doing that seems weird to us, but it’s totally normal. So, like what’s a phenomenon that you’re like, “Yeah, kids love doing this. They spend all this time doing this, or they spend their money on this, or this is a new trend that seems to be weird to others, but we get it. It’s it’s normal for us.” Yeah. Is by the way, is wearing, uh, Ralph Lauren Ralph Lauren polo sweaters, is that a new trend that young people are doing? I think you’ve influenced Sam. Yeah. A great sweater. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead with, uh, what cool young people are doing. So, there’s something really interesting, a really interesting phenomenon I’ve seen recently. And it’s not a new software, it’s not a new social media platform. What it is is these little things you put on the back of your phone. It’s called an Octobuddy. It’s Octobuddy. And it has suction cups on it. So you could stick your phone to a wall, you could prop it up on your table, and watch videos is the purpose. I don’t think people actually, I’ve never seen someone actually use the suction cups how they’re designed to, but it’s a trend among all girls in my high school. I’ve over the last few months, I’ve just seen more and more people have it. Now everyone does. And it’s it’s fascinating. Something that So, it’s like a TV mount. You mount your, you can mount your phone to any any surface, basically. And what do you mean it’s not used how it’s supposed to be? Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be? Well, I think it’s more of something where now girls look at it like the color of their nails or having long nails on where girls get different colors and Oh, it became an accessory. a stylistic accessory status thing than actually function. Keep going. Tell me what young people like. Like whenever I meet a young guy, I’m like, “Tell me everything.” Yeah, this is great. Well, that’s the main thing that you wouldn’t typically notice. Are your friends drinking? Yes, definitely. It’s a big Are they like the party? Do you like Do you guys like to smoke weed? I’m someone who doesn’t do any drugs. I’m pretty against them, and I don’t drink either, but it’s, I mean, everyone around me is. So, drinking’s common. Very common, very, very. You also mentioned this, uh, this like TurboLearn thing. That sounds pretty awesome. What else is like, uh, what other, uh, who else is like you out there who’s who’s basically scaling up to millions in revenue just off of this kind of like AI TikTok type of model? So, there are a bunch of consumer apps that are coming out or have come out, and honestly, I think a lot of it is attributed to Blake and I speaking publicly about this, showing that it’s really possible in the app space. So, new apps like Quitter, which is an app designed to help men quit porn with all of these little social or like by having streaks, essentially, to gamify the whole experience. So, that’s a new one that just came out. You inspired these guys? I’m friends with the founder, and he was inspired to get into the app space by seeing CalAI really take off. He was with me in the early days. That’s cool. It’s got 5,000 5,000 reviews on on iPhone. That’s pretty good. Yeah, so they’re on track to make over a million dollars this year. I think consumer apps right now are like the new drop shipping. You know, uh, Sean has said this once where he was like, you know, Sean was like, “I’m a content creator.” You know, he’s got newsletters and Twitter and podcasts. But these TikTok guys, it’s as if, you know, I, uh, am really good at writing horses, but along comes Henry Ford, and it’s just it’s just the cars are no comparison, you know? I can’t there’s no way my horse and I are going to outrun, uh, even the the crappiest car. This is one of those moments that I’m having right now talking to you. Uh, so like for a long time, Sean and I are friends, we’ll do drop shipping, you know, our when we were 25, that was the thing is like create like a drop shipping site. And people still do things like that. Seeing what you’re doing with tech and influencers is so much better than Yeah. Like you even look, Mr. You even make Mr. Beast look old. You know what I mean? Like chocolate, like what? That’s crazy. Make it, you know what I mean? But but dude, people used to look at me and Sam when we were like, so we met when we were I was probably 24, 25 years old. We were the prodigies. And it was like, I don’t know, okay, that’s very generous. But What I mean is like it’d be like, if there was something on the on the fringe or the edge about either growth hacking or a clever way to make money, usually it was us who knew it and people would ask us about it. Like I remember having like the Atlantic, the publisher come to my office and they’re like, “newsletters.” And I’m like, “Yeah, like it’s a thing.” That’s old news now. These guys are so much better, and we are that person now. I’m going to go to his office and be like, “Just tell me everything.” It’s something that always happens. It’s going to happen to me, too. I know that every year I age, I am becoming exponentially less impressive, and there’s someone that’s going to come and be the next big thing, the growth hacker that is in the front of everything. I think it’s just about building momentum, and I’m pretty obsessed with this idea of making sure that everything I work on will 10x the previous thing, so that I’m always moving forward towards a bigger goal. You actually mentioned Mr. Beast. He’s actually someone who greatly inspires me. I love the podcast that you guys had with him. By the way, I’ve heard this now a couple times from people who are like 18, and they’re like, “fearful that when they’re 22, suddenly their accomplishments are no longer cool.” And I just want to say, I get it. It makes total sense. It’s also total nonsense. And what I mean by that is not only is it still super impressive, but the real game is when you stop trying to impress people. And so what actually happens is you graduate out of the “I need to impress people” phase, and the person who’s 17, 18, they’re still getting that high of being the impressive person. Oh, everybody’s kind of patting on the back. And actually, the the the only way to win the game is not to continuously be the youngest, best-looking, richest person, because you’ll never win that game of comparison. The only real way to win the game is to realize like, “Oh, I just need to be doing the things that are fun for me, and like the the act of doing them is rewarding,” and not look for the rewards of impressing people, which is, obviously easier said than done. But that’s the real thing to focus on. And not like, “this feeling of I’m running on quicksand,” you know, because it’s I’m getting older. Oh no, or like, uh, I have to 10x my growth, even though I’m already at, you know, 24 million ARR. It’s like, sure, that’s all fine. I’m not against growth, but, um, somebody said this to us, actually, they said this while we were hanging out with Mr. Beast. They go, “Be very careful, because growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of a cancer cell.” And, um, so, you know, growth for growth’s sake is not, not, not where it’s at, and there’s, there’s more to the game than that. And he’s like, “I’ll leave you with that to kind of figure out what, what, what is the answer.” I’m not going to sort of try to tell you what I think is right, but I’ll point that out because I think for me, when I was young, and I know for a lot of ambitious people, it just seems like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. It’s the only thing, and it comes from a little bit of a, um, I don’t know, like a little bit of a place of anxiety, I think. Right. Yes. And I’ve had this a similar thought to this where I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve thought, “Okay, once I find my success and let’s say I’m quote-unquote financially free, will I even want to start something new? Or will I not care anymore and just want to find happiness elsewhere?” Maybe I have one of the tenants of happiness, which is I’m financially taken care of, but then I want to prioritize relationships and happiness in other aspects. So, I love I’m always going to be making stuff. I’ll I’ll I’ll predict the future. Maybe maybe you’ll take the foot off the gas and, uh, want relationships and a family and all that stuff. You are going to be creating stuff for a very, very long time. Well, that is why I’m going to college. It’s almost to take my foot off the gas a little bit, build relationships, and then I want to drop out after a semester or two. I mean, I think that’s really smart because you you have your whole life to make money, but you really only have this four years to make lifelong friends, uh, from college. So, actually, the the scarce thing is the the friendships and that college experience, because that there’s a window of time that expires. And so, do that because you still have 50 years to make money, um, after that. What school are you going to go to? If I got in, then Stanford is likely the top. I surely we have listeners, this is going to reach a lot of people. Surely there are some some people listening. Dean, I know you’re listening. Yadagari, Y-A-D-A-G-A-R-I. Yeah. You can find him on Twitter, DM him. Uh, actually, that’s That’s what they should do. A real if if I’m a if I’m at a college right now, I’m DMing this kid an acceptance letter. That’s how a college needs to hustle. I’m tired of these colleges sitting down there. Yeah, you’re going to get a DM. You’re going to get someone’s going to be like, “Sup.” You’re just going to get a DM from uh the Dean. Sup. Who who’s your favorite uh who are your most inspirational follows on Twitter? Uh, I want to I want to basically, I find you so fascinating. I want to be inspired by the people you’re currently inspired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want your info diet. Who uh who do you inspired by and try to make it people who you think I won’t know. Hmm. Okay. Who do I follow? I actually don’t usually use Twitter for people I’m inspired by. That’s interesting. What what’s your like main social network? What what did you use when you’re bored? What do you open up? It is Twitter. It is Twitter. That is my main social network. When I’m looking to be inspired, there are definitely a few people. David Goggins, for example, he just pumps me up. So, I have people like him that, you know, inspired by his mindset completely. I used to actually be in this phase where I was addicted to motivational content. I curated my TikTok for You page. I only liked motivational videos, and anytime I lost motivation, I would just scroll for five minutes, then get back into it. So, definitely those kinds of people. But it’s mainly those like Mr. Beast, Elon Musk, I follow both of those on Twitter. My own co-founder, Blake Anderson, who’s a few years ahead of me in life and knowledge, too. So, definitely learn a lot from him. Cliff Weitzman, he’s a recent friend of mine. I think one of you know him. Yeah, yeah. We know Cliff. Yeah, so he’s super inspiring to myself as well. That’s dope. Uh, okay, amazing. Sam, anything else? Is there That’s don’t ask me. Zach, is there anything else that you want to inspire me by? Like you’re you’re you’re amazing. Like uh anything else that you want to tell us? Yeah, did we miss anything? I appreciate that. I mean, it’s always hard going on these podcasts. Like, it’s it’s a whole full circle moment for me to come on here. Yeah, that’s interesting. Sam, would you be going on podcasts? Because like, you know, while you’re here, I’m like, “Oh, this is great content.” I’m excited, but then there’s like the fatherly part of me that’s like, “Shut up.” Dude, just shut up. Why are you on the podcast? You shouldn’t be saying any of this stuff, because you have such a good thing going, and uh you could always tell the story a little later. You don’t need to invite, you know, the other uh Zach Yadagaris of the world who are, you know, they can code, they can make TikToks, they got cool haircuts like you, and they’re just going to do the same thing, right? So like, why go on and and and spill your secrets, um, you know, why why do that? So, I’ve heard this before that usually you know what it takes, or people usually know what it takes to be successful, but then they are looking for an easier way. They’re looking for something that is not as burdensome, not as hard, doesn’t require as much sacrifice. And I’ve been coding since I was seven. I mean, 18 now, that’s 11 years of coding. I’ve started totally science, and before that, I was tutoring kids in coding lessons for almost a decade of my life. I was in the entrepreneur game. And so I think that, yes, I can share all of this information publicly, but it’s only a select few who will actually work towards it and put in the amount of hours required to achieve the result, where I want to help those people. I think helping those people achieve the same success, especially if they were in a situation like mine where they maybe weren’t entirely sure where to go, but they knew there was a world out there where they could have massive impact at such a young age, even balancing school on the side. And so I completely support those people. You have um a trait that uh like Sean and I’s good buddy, Jack Smith, is like the perfect embodiment of this trait. Um, but a lot of entrepreneurs are, which is your logical, which like a lot of times will be awkward on like day-to-day level. Like, for example, my friend Jack is like, he’s so, he’ll, he he does things so differently from everyone because his way is actually better, but we’ve all done it in such a way for 100 plus years that we’re like, “Well, I don’t know, we just do it this way.” And so, like, for example, he didn’t name his daughter, uh, the first year because he was like, “I guess I have to get to know her before I can name her.” And I was like, “Yeah, that makes total sense.” It’s just like strange to think about. You have that type of energy. You know, you said, “Well, I’m worrying about grades so I can get a good job, or get into a good college, to get a good job, to make money. What if I just make money now?” Like, that’s a very, that that way of thinking is is amazing. And it’s really fun to be around people like you. And so, I want to hear your perspective on a few things, this fresh thinking on a few things. So, the first is, you have 15 employees. Do you have any employees who are in their 30s or 40s? And what’s it like having to go from being just you and your buddies in a room messing around to at 15 people, you’re actually running a real company? So, yes, we do have employees that are in their 40s. And it’s difficult to be honest with you. It’s hard at times to to make them call you sir. Yeah, I do not make them call me sir. But it is difficult, especially when I have to fire someone that has kids, and it I do have imposter syndrome at times, which is something I try to not let hold me back ever. So even if I think a certain way, I don’t I still act how I know I should. I’m reading this great book right now called The Great CEO Within. I also keep it on my desk as a reminder, and it helps me lead. I try to be an inspiring leader that that helps people, that doesn’t lead by telling people what to do and just do it now. I try to inspire them to want to do the work. Do your does your staff uh general are you guys a well-organized company, you think, or is it a shit show? I think that we are pretty well-organized, and that’s mainly credited to our COO and the third co-founder I didn’t mention, Jake Castillo. He’s really good at organization. So, one of the things we talked about was like, you know, why come and talk about this? And part of you was like, “Well, I want to inspire other people.” But we don’t want to inspire just a bunch of copycats. And so we asked you, we’re like, “Hey, what are some other ideas that if you weren’t doing this, you think somebody could go do right now?” So, how can the next you, how can the next high schooler get to where you’re at, $20 million a year in revenue as a 17, 18-year-old? So, what ideas do you have for us? Sure. So, obviously, you know, you could teach a man to fish, or you could give a man a fish. Teaching is better. So, I have a few frameworks, which I think will help even more, but I also will give some ideas. Okay, go for it. So, how I usually look at these AI problems, or not AI problems, but creating something new in general, is that AI has enabled people to basically build on top of and innovate on any tool or company that exists right now. So, the calendar was innovated on, and now there are AI calendar tools like Motion, which help you organize and structure your day a lot easier, your assistant. There are note-taking tools, where people have always taken notes by hand, people have also recorded lectures, but now there are AI platforms like TurboLearn AI, where you can record your lecture, and then the AI will generate notes for you. Calorie tracking, there have always been calorie trackers, but now with AI, you can just take a picture of your food, and it will tell you the calories. So, I try to look at everything that doesn’t already use AI and think, “Can AI make this more efficient? Make this a better process?” And my perspective on coming up with new ideas is generally that I want to find something looking at it from marketing first principles is how I always think. So, almost going backwards, and I look for an aha moment that I could capture within some sort of experience, and then wrap a whole app around that. So, for CalAI, the aha moment is take a picture of your food, get the calories. And that’s great for marketing material. They come on, they do that, but then there’s a whole app around that that gets them to stay. There’s another app on the App Store right now called Fitness AI, and their ads recently have been around their AI body scanner, where you just take a picture of your body, and then it will tell you your body fat percentage and a ton of other useful information on your composition. So, that’s what draws people in, to that AI tool, which is the aha moment, and then there’s a whole fitness app around that you stay to track your workouts on that app. So, that’s the framework I generally like to use. And so what, what do you think is, uh, so you’re saying, work backwards from the the magic moment where AI does a magic trick and you’re like, “Holy shit, that’s cool.” And then build a sticky, you know, for you guys, it’s take a picture, get the calories, and then you have the tracking and the charts and the other stuff that’s going to keep them, maybe the coaching tips or whatever, that’s going to keep them around in the long term. Cool, got it. And you’re the other thing you’re saying is, take any app that’s popular that we’ve already been doing, that’s and just say, “What’s the AI version of this?” Is that the, is that the brainstorming session you would do is basically like, “All right, Evernote, what’s the AI version of Evernote?” Or, um, Yes. You know, our buddy in our buddy, um, in San Francisco, me and Sam’s buddy, Siva, he had this company called Study Soup. And Study Soup was literally for college kids, they would have paid note-takers who would take great notes in a lecture, and then you have you basically have the slackers and you have the kids that were were on top of things. The kids on top of things were the supply side of the marketplace, they would give their notes, and the slackers would buy their notes. And so, “Oh, cool, I I don’t have to take notes in this class because I’m getting them done for me.” And you’re saying, you basically saying that TurboLearn has become an AI version of Study Soup, right? Where it’s like, someone records it and now you have uh you have you have well, well-taken AI notes for your for that class. Yeah, exactly. So, what are some examples? Yeah, so here’s an idea. I’ve actually seen something like this, or recently on Twitter, I saw something blow up, maybe it was a couple months ago, not so recent, where someone put a bunch of their journal entries into ChatGPT and then asked, “What are some insights you could give me to make my life better?” You and I both do that. Yeah, well, that’s great. So, I think there is the possibility, and I think this would be a great idea, to build a journal app, and these journal apps already exist. So, take an existing one, put your, and this is the spin. So, you could make it voice notes, you can make it typing, whatever, doesn’t matter. But the key feature, the aha moment, AI feature you implement, is that periodically, you will have these insights generated from the AI on how you can improve your life. Like, “Hey, on Monday and Tuesday, you hung out with Sally, and you had a bad day. Maybe Sally is the cause of your bad days.” Gotcha. Okay, I like that. Uh, so AI journal. Um, I feel like with, uh, the kind of younger generation, I feel like therapy is a lot more normalized. Therapy is cool, basically, whereas in my my generation and my parent, my parent’s generation was like, “Therapy equals you’re broken, you’re you have a problem.” And it was like, you know, more taboo. The whole the whole idea of Sopranos was a guy who goes to therapy and now his friends are going to murder him because he’s so soft. Yeah, exactly. And now I feel like with the younger generation, it’s almost like a a cool thing to do. I don’t know, maybe I’m speaking out my ass here, you tell me if I’m wrong. Uh, but it’s way more normalized. It’s not not a taboo thing, and in fact, probably being anti-therapy would be a little bit low status now at this point. Um, and I feel like, but the problem with therapy, of course, is that, um, it’s a a little bit of a loaded word and B, you know, who’s paying $100 a session for this stuff and stuff when you could have the AI therapist in your pocket. Whether they’re using your journal entries as the starting point, the magic moment, or or not. Uh, what do you think of that space? You think there’s something interesting there? I think AI therapists are something that a lot of people have spoken about, and I haven’t seen anyone do it great. There are definitely apps already where you could talk to people, these chatbots, but I think they’re all missing the feeling that you are actually being heard, that the feeling you would get talking to a real therapist. So, maybe it’s the verbal aspect that’s missing, and something like ChatGPT’s voice mode, integrating that can now actually make it a better session than just typing. But that is a good idea that uses the AI spin for sure. Gotcha. And what what are some other ideas you have? You have two more, it looks like you wrote on here, yeah? So, the first one is some kind of system or pipeline to convert an Android app or an iOS app to the other. And this is something that would greatly help startups. When we started CalAI, we built it on Swift. And that’s because Swift, usually you can make a much smoother user experience on iPhones. Using something like React Native, which can build to both iOS and Android, it’s more difficult because it’s not actually using the native components to make something that feels super polished on an iPhone. After building it, we had all of this demand for an Android app, and it was problematic. We had to take away from development time on the iOS app to build out the Android app, and we had to release it a few months after. It was it costed us thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars. And every time you build a feature, you have to build it twice. You have to build it on one and then on the other. Yes, every single time. So, it’s annoying. I think with all of these AI tools, there is definitely the possibility to build something that lets you upload the codebase to one native project, and then it will convert it to the other. Now, right now, I think AI can probably do 90% of the work, but there will need to be a tiny bit of human intervention, so maybe this would be best done as an agency that’s very AI-powered at the moment, but very soon, it’s going to be something where an AI agent can do it all for you. Yeah, that’s a really good idea. We used to use something, uh, I I had an app like years ago, roommates app, uh, roommate finding app, and we, what was it called, where we used something that turned a web app into an iPhone app? Um, I mean, there’s been a lot of tools like that. And they were horrible. Like, it was like, it was really bad, but they were huge companies. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because this is a problem, right? Like, you you have to maintain two different two different you have two every feature, you have to build twice. Every every platform has its own bugs, and you basically have to hire double the number of people because the Android guy focused on Android, the iOS guy focused on iOS, and so now you have more head count. And so you always want this thing that’s like, but you but you need, but still, you’re you’re right, like having it be native actually results in a better user experience, more stickiness, more revenue, etc. So, you if you try to do the web app thing and you just put a web app and you try to wrap it, it doesn’t work as well as doing a native app. And so, you’re right that basically AI coding is getting so good that you could do 70, 80, 90% of the code transfer just through AI, and then maybe you you you have you you do it as an agency or you have one person who’s who’s doing that last kind of the last mile to get it to work work well. Um, that’s cool. What about this remotely configurable onboarding flows? This sounds like to use a framework, you know, it’s a paper cut you have, right? So, one some of the best places to find startup ideas is you’re you’re trying to do a startup and in the process of trying to do it, you run into something that’s like, “God, I wish somebody had just built this.” And maybe you build it in-house or you just keep dealing with the pain, and that that’s a very good source for startup ideas. Yes, I have heard that piece of advice to work at a startup to come up with new ideas, and it’s 100% true. So, while working on CalAI, and then a few other apps before CalAI, while I was learning how the whole consumer app space works, every app, you have to build out the onboarding flow. Every popular app on the App Store has one. It generally will ask the questions that are either required to set up your account or simply to prime you for what’s coming, to explain something that’s going on in the app, or to ask you questions that set your mind in the right direction to maybe help you convert when they actually hit you hit you with a paywall. And there is no good solution right now to build these. Everyone has to do it custom in their own codebase. But someone could really easily make a system where anyone can swap out the questions, remotely do AB tests on these, which another problem here is that anytime you want to test out something new within your onboarding flow or within your app in general, you have to submit an update to the App Store, which could take a few days. So, building out a system where you can build out the whole onboarding survey questions and then also change what the screens are, see how that affects conversion rate, see how that affects completion rate, drop-off rate, remotely, would be huge. Are you, uh, the type of person that even though you have a full-time gig, you are experimenting on new ideas that are unrelated to CalAI? So, for the last few months, I kind of was. We were orienting ourselves as an app studio very briefly, and the idea behind that was that our real sauce was in our marketing, not in our app development. And so we could build a bunch of these other AI apps, spin them up, apply the same marketing, and blow them up really fast. But at the scale CalAI is and the rate it’s growing, we realized pretty quickly that it made more sense to stay full-time on CalAI because the same time it would take to build another app and scale it to six figures revenue, we could have added an additional seven figures in revenue to CalAI just because everything boosts each other. Increasing retention will increase LTV, and as we increase retention, we could increase a funnel, so 1+1 can equal 3 instead of 2. I think that is totally the right move. Is there anything, Zach, you know, Sean and I are parents, and there’s a lot of people who listen to this who are who are parents. Is there anything that you, you you seem traditionally, obviously you’re traditionally successful, but you also seem like, uh, you you’re very thoughtful. I think that like Yeah, well spoken and thoughtful. Yeah. Like you seem like you’d be a good son regardless of, uh, uh, regardless if if you who cares about this app, you know? Like you you you you’re you’re you have your shit together at a very young age, emotionally. What do you think that your parents did that set you up to have this success? Or do you think that, and this sounds like a douchey thing to say, were you just born, you know, interested into this stuff at a young age? You know, like there’s a lot of like self-directed people. I have four siblings. I am the second oldest. And from a young age, I was very wired to want freedom. And I think it be I think it comes from my siblings. If I wanted to buy something, my parents would have to buy something for all my siblings, so they wouldn’t do it. I would have to find the way to pay for it myself. That’s what made me start teaching coding lessons at such a young age to earn money. And related to that, I actually have a story that when I was 10 years old, I wanted to cook scrambled eggs by myself. I don’t know what it was, but I really wanted independence and freedom. So the independence to just cook myself breakfast. At 10, I could have burned the house down. So my mom didn’t let me. And I got so mad about this that she didn’t trust me to cook eggs on my own because she was taking care of my other siblings, getting them ready for school, that I actually ran away from my house. And I ran probably 15 minutes from my house to a local soccer field, and the police were called. I actually got picked up by them and brought back home. I was going to come home eventually, but you know, I did run away. And it’s really been the freedom that has been the driving force behind everything. The yearning for freedom. Well, but you have that now. Somewhat. I still feel confined, honestly, by being in high school. I haven’t dropped out, and I want to go to college just for the social life, not obviously to get a job. So I feel I’ve I always feel almost trapped in situations where the outcome is determinant on what someone else decides for me, not something that I can control for myself. And someone has to accept me into the college. If I let my grades drop in high school, then they could rescind me even if I get into the school. And I hate that, but right now, for the next year at least, I think I have to make that sacrifice. And then when I’m in college, I want to make a good group of friends, then drop out. That’s going to be free. You’re going to go. What’s your GPA right now? My GPA is a 4.0, and I do want to get. What did you get on the SATs? Yeah, yeah. So, I took the ACT, and I got a 34. Okay, so that’s like a, that’s like a, that’s two points away from, that’s like a 90, that’s a 99 percentile, 98 percentile. Okay, so you’re, you’re, you have it like neglected school. You got a 4.0, and you did get a 34. Totally. Doing this with school. I’m working hard in school. I’m not By the way, it’s it’s it’s noon on a Monday. Where, where Where are you right now? I actually skipped class to do this podcast. Let’s go. Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling. Are you at school right now, or are you home? No, I left school. I’m home right now. And you told your parents it’s because there’s this podcast that I want to go on and it’s going to be good for business. Yeah. Yeah. How many other people do you know that are like you? Like, is there a community of like 100 of you guys who are like high schoolers who actually build shit and want to do cool things? There’s not that many high schoolers, but there are people who are slightly older, 19, 20. I probably Sam, look at how he’s already got the mastermind hand pose. He already has the visionary hand hand position naturally, dude, straight out the box. I have a handful of people that I’m friends with, but not many. Definitely not. Do you guys have a club? Can you have a name? Yeah, like the Grubs? Yeah, yeah, it’s the Cool Kids Club. That’s It’s you guys are pretty cool. Uh, so it’s a good day. Always wanted to be in. Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be one of the I’ve always wanted to be part of that. Uh, if you are need another member, let me know. Um, have you considered just like moving to Palo Alto and like hanging out like, you know, in the movie, uh, The Social Network, Sean Parker gets to act like a college kid without going to college? Or you dead set on going to uh going that route? Well, over the summer, when things started taking off in June for CalAI, Henry and I decided, let’s go all in. We moved to San Francisco for the whole month of July. We lived in a hacker house, we worked out of a co-working office with people years older than us. So we lived the San Francisco startup life. It was very productive, but at the same time, pretty lonely. Although we could talk to some people, yeah, we made friends, we would get lunch with people. First of all, San Francisco is not the most fun city, but also just the fact that people were years older than us, always made it difficult to relate to them. Yeah, that makes sense. We had a, I have a friend that, uh, like he got accepted into some program where he went to college at the age of 14 or 15. And he was telling me, he was like, “Man, like, I wanted to like date girls and like, you know, do that normal shit.” And it was weird. I started fooling around with one girl, and I eventually had to break it with her that I was fill her in that I’m like, “I’m I’m 16.” Uh, and so like, I imagine like, it’s weird being in these situations where you’re like in these you’re just as mature as you’re more mature than a lot of 21-year-olds or a lot of like grown adults, but you’re in the situation where I do understand why you feel trapped. You’re in these weird spots at such a young age that like you literally couldn’t go and do some of the stuff in San Francisco that everyone else is doing because of your age. But it’s pretty amazing. Like, I hope you enjoy like the time, like, I mean, I think being 18 and experiencing what you’re doing, it’s like, this is like, you know, one out of a billion. This is like a really special thing. How much are you paying yourself? So, we haven’t paid ourselves anything. We are reinvesting it all, and that’s not to say that we won’t. We are, we do have profit every month. It is a difficult situation with the App Store because we get paid out two months after we earn the money. So our growth is so quick that the revenue we generated two months ago, we have to put it all in the marketing to keep growing faster and faster. I think in a few months, we may start having a surplus where we can’t spend it on growth even if we wanted to. Yeah, that’s great. Um, dude, this is awesome, man. Congratulations. And, uh, I’m excited to see what happens. Who who are like, who do you admire? Who are you who are you learning from and looking up to? Like, who’s who’s inspiring you, right? You just like, “Oh, Elon and Jeff Bezos, that’s what I that’s what I care about,” or are there other people that you’re more interested in, uh, personally? Like you said you used to listen to podcasts as inspiration. Who are some of those people that you like to listen to? Totally. So, I love your guys’s podcast. It’s I’m more inspired by people who are dead than people who are alive. And maybe that’s because I feel like there’s they’re not my competition anymore, or they are, but they’re not progressing anymore. So, I see exactly where they ended up. Psycho, love it. Yeah. I get it, you sick fuck. Yeah. Makes sense. They’re not my competition anymore. I’ve already finished them. Yeah. Yeah. You People like I think he’s going to kill us, Sam. Yeah. I think he just threatened us, low-key. Yeah. Okay, so you like learning from dead people. What does that mean? Books? What what how do you learn from dead people? I like audiobooks, but I don’t actually like reading physical books. I also like learning about them from podcasts. Which dead people? Also like founders. You like the David Senra’s podcast Founders? It’s one of my favorites. I do listen to that. There’s one I’ve listened to recently, How to Take Over the World, which goes into Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Let’s go. So, let me ask you a question. What what’s a thing that people your age are doing that seems weird to us, but it’s totally normal. So, like what’s a phenomenon that you’re like, “Yeah, kids love doing this. They spend all this time doing this, or they spend their money on this, or this is a new trend that seems to be weird to others, but we get it. It’s it’s normal for us.” Yeah. Is by the way, is wearing, uh, Ralph Lauren Ralph Lauren polo sweaters, is that a new trend that young people are doing? I think you’ve influenced Sam. Yeah. A great sweater. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead with, uh, what cool young people are doing. So, there’s something really interesting, a really interesting phenomenon I’ve seen recently. And it’s not a new software, it’s not a new social media platform. What it is is these little things you put on the back of your phone. It’s called an Octobuddy. It’s Octobuddy. And it has suction cups on it. So you could stick your phone to a wall, you could prop it up on your table, and watch videos is the purpose. I don’t think people actually, I’ve never seen someone actually use the suction cups how they’re designed to, but it’s a trend among all girls in my high school. I’ve over the last few months, I’ve just seen more and more people have it. Now everyone does. And it’s it’s fascinating. Something that So, it’s like a TV mount. You mount your, you can mount your phone to any any surface, basically. And what do you mean it’s not used how it’s supposed to be? Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be? Well, I think it’s more of something where now girls look at it like the color of their nails or having long nails on where girls get different colors and Oh, it became an accessory. a stylistic accessory status thing than actually function. Keep going. Tell me what young people like. Like whenever I meet a young guy, I’m like, “Tell me everything.” Yeah, this is great. Well, that’s the main thing that you wouldn’t typically notice. Are your friends drinking? Yes, definitely. It’s a big Are they like the party? Do you like Do you guys like to smoke weed? I’m someone who doesn’t do any drugs. I’m pretty against them, and I don’t drink either, but it’s, I mean, everyone around me is. So, drinking’s common. Very common, very, very. You also mentioned this, uh, this like TurboLearn thing. That sounds pretty awesome. What else is like, uh, what other, uh, who else is like you out there who’s who’s basically scaling up to millions in revenue just off of this kind of like AI TikTok type of model? So, there are a bunch of consumer apps that are coming out or have come out, and honestly, I think a lot of it is attributed to Blake and I speaking publicly about this, showing that it’s really possible in the app space. So, new apps like Quitter, which is an app designed to help men quit porn with all of these little social or like by having streaks, essentially, to gamify the whole experience. So, that’s a new one that just came out. You inspired these guys? I’m friends with the founder, and he was inspired to get into the app space by seeing CalAI really take off. He was with me in the early days. That’s cool. It’s got 5,000 5,000 reviews on on iPhone. That’s pretty good. Yeah, so they’re on track to make over a million dollars this year. I think consumer apps right now are like the new drop shipping. You know, uh, Sean has said this once where he was like, you know, Sean was like, “I’m a content creator.” You know, he’s got newsletters and Twitter and podcasts. But these TikTok guys, it’s as if, you know, I, uh, am really good at writing horses, but along comes Henry Ford, and it’s just it’s just the cars are no comparison, you know? I can’t there’s no way my horse and I are going to outrun, uh, even the the crappiest car. This is one of those moments that I’m having right now talking to you. Uh, so like for a long time, Sean and I are friends, we’ll do drop shipping, you know, our when we were 25, that was the thing is like create like a drop shipping site. And people still do things like that. Seeing what you’re doing with tech and influencers is so much better than Yeah. Like you even look, Mr. You even make Mr. Beast look old. You know what I mean? Like chocolate, like what? That’s crazy. Make it, you know what I mean? But but dude, people used to look at me and Sam when we were like, so we met when we were I was probably 24, 25 years old. We were the prodigies. And it was like, I don’t know, okay, that’s very generous. But What I mean is like it’d be like, if there was something on the on the fringe or the edge about either growth hacking or a clever way to make money, usually it was us who knew it and people would ask us about it. Like I remember having like the Atlantic, the publisher come to my office and they’re like, “newsletters.” And I’m like, “Yeah, like it’s a thing.” That’s old news now. These guys are so much better, and we are that person now. I’m going to go to his office and be like, “Just tell me everything.” It’s something that always happens. It’s going to happen to me, too. I know that every year I age, I am becoming exponentially less impressive, and there’s someone that’s going to come and be the next big thing, the growth hacker that is in the front of everything. I think it’s just about building momentum, and I’m pretty obsessed with this idea of making sure that everything I work on will 10x the previous thing, so that I’m always moving forward towards a bigger goal. You actually mentioned Mr. Beast. He’s actually someone who greatly inspires me. I love the podcast that you guys had with him. By the way, I’ve heard this now a couple times from people who are like 18, and they’re like, “fearful that when they’re 22, suddenly their accomplishments are no longer cool.” And I just want to say, I get it. It makes total sense. It’s also total nonsense. And what I mean by that is not only is it still super impressive, but the real game is when you stop trying to impress people. And so what actually happens is you graduate out of the “I need to impress people” phase, and the person who’s 17, 18, they’re still getting that high of being the impressive person. Oh, everybody’s kind of patting on the back. And actually, the the the only way to win the game is not to continuously be the youngest, best-looking, richest person, because you’ll never win that game of comparison. The only real way to win the game is to realize like, “Oh, I just need to be doing the things that are fun for me, and like the the act of doing them is rewarding,” and not look for the rewards of impressing people, which is, obviously easier said than done. But that’s the real thing to focus on. And not like, “this feeling of I’m running on quicksand,” you know, because it’s I’m getting older. Oh no, or like, uh, I have to 10x my growth, even though I’m already at, you know, 24 million ARR. It’s like, sure, that’s all fine. I’m not against growth, but, um, somebody said this to us, actually, they said this while we were hanging out with Mr. Beast. They go, “Be very careful, because growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of a cancer cell.” And, um, so, you know, growth for growth’s sake is not, not, not where it’s at, and there’s, there’s more to the game than that. And he’s like, “I’ll leave you with that to kind of figure out what, what, what is the answer.” I’m not going to sort of try to tell you what I think is right, but I’ll point that out because I think for me, when I was young, and I know for a lot of ambitious people, it just seems like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. It’s the only thing, and it comes from a little bit of a, um, I don’t know, like a little bit of a place of anxiety, I think. Right. Yes. And I’ve had this a similar thought to this where I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve thought, “Okay, once I find my success and let’s say I’m quote-unquote financially free, will I even want to start something new? Or will I not care anymore and just want to find happiness elsewhere?” Maybe I have one of the tenants of happiness, which is I’m financially taken care of, but then I want to prioritize relationships and happiness in other aspects. So, I love I’m always going to be making stuff. I’ll I’ll I’ll predict the future. Maybe maybe you’ll take the foot off the gas and, uh, want relationships and a family and all that stuff. You are going to be creating stuff for a very, very long time. Well, that is why I’m going to college. It’s almost to take my foot off the gas a little bit, build relationships, and then I want to drop out after a semester or two. I mean, I think that’s really smart because you you have your whole life to make money, but you really only have this four years to make lifelong friends, uh, from college. So, actually, the the scarce thing is the the friendships and that college experience, because that there’s a window of time that expires. And so, do that because you still have 50 years to make money, um, after that. What school are you going to go to? If I got in, then Stanford is likely the top. I surely we have listeners, this is going to reach a lot of people. Surely there are some some people listening. Dean, I know you’re listening. Yadagari, Y-A-D-A-G-A-R-I. Yeah. You can find him on Twitter, DM him. Uh, actually, that’s That’s what they should do. A real if if I’m a if I’m at a college right now, I’m DMing this kid an acceptance letter. That’s how a college needs to hustle. I’m tired of these colleges sitting down there. Yeah, you’re going to get a DM. You’re going to get someone’s going to be like, “Sup.” You’re just going to get a DM from uh the Dean. Sup. Who who’s your favorite uh who are your most inspirational follows on Twitter? Uh, I want to I want to basically, I find you so fascinating. I want to be inspired by the people you’re currently inspired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want your info diet. Who uh who do you inspired by and try to make it people who you think I won’t know. Hmm. Okay. Who do I follow? I actually don’t usually use Twitter for people I’m inspired by. That’s interesting. What what’s your like main social network? What what did you use when you’re bored? What do you open up? It is Twitter. It is Twitter. That is my main social network. When I’m looking to be inspired, there are definitely a few people. David Goggins, for example, he just pumps me up. So, I have people like him that, you know, inspired by his mindset completely. I used to actually be in this phase where I was addicted to motivational content. I curated my TikTok for You page. I only liked motivational videos, and anytime I lost motivation, I would just scroll for five minutes, then get back into it. So, definitely those kinds of people. But it’s mainly those like Mr. Beast, Elon Musk, I follow both of those on Twitter. My own co-founder, Blake Anderson, who’s a few years ahead of me in life and knowledge, too. So, definitely learn a lot from him. Cliff Weitzman, he’s a recent friend of mine. I think one of you know him. Yeah, yeah. We know Cliff. Yeah, so he’s super inspiring to myself as well. That’s dope. Uh, okay, amazing. Sam, anything else? Is there That’s don’t ask me. Zach, is there anything else that you want to inspire me by? Like you’re you’re you’re amazing. Like uh anything else that you want to tell us? Yeah, did we miss anything? I appreciate that. I mean, it’s always hard going on these podcasts. Like, it’s it’s a whole full circle moment for me to come on here. Yeah, that’s interesting. Sam, would you be going on podcasts? Because like, you know, while you’re here, I’m like, “Oh, this is great content.” I’m excited, but then there’s like the fatherly part of me that’s like, “Shut up.” Dude, just shut up. Why are you on the podcast? You shouldn’t be saying any of this stuff, because you have such a good thing going, and uh you could always tell the story a little later. You don’t need to invite, you know, the other uh Zach Yadagaris of the world who are, you know, they can code, they can make TikToks, they got cool haircuts like you, and they’re just going to do the same thing, right? So like, why go on and and and spill your secrets, um, you know, why why do that? So, I’ve heard this before that usually you know what it takes, or people usually know what it takes to be successful, but then they are looking for an easier way. They’re looking for something that is not as burdensome, not as hard, doesn’t require as much sacrifice. And I’ve been coding since I was seven. I mean, 18 now, that’s 11 years of coding. I’ve started totally science, and before that, I was tutoring kids in coding lessons for almost a decade of my life. I was in the entrepreneur game. And so I think that, yes, I can share all of this information publicly, but it’s only a select few who will actually work towards it and put in the amount of hours required to achieve the result, where I want to help those people. I think helping those people achieve the same success, especially if they were in a situation like mine where they maybe weren’t entirely sure where to go, but they knew there was a world out there where they could have massive impact at such a young age, even balancing school on the side. And so I completely support those people. You have um a trait that uh like Sean and I’s good buddy, Jack Smith, is like the perfect embodiment of this trait. Um, but a lot of entrepreneurs are, which is your logical, which like a lot of times will be awkward on like day-to-day level. Like, for example, my friend Jack is like, he’s so, he’ll, he he does things so differently from everyone because his way is actually better, but we’ve all done it in such a way for 100 plus years that we’re like, “Well, I don’t know, we just do it this way.” And so, like, for example, he didn’t name his daughter, uh, the first year because he was like, “I guess I have to get to know her before I can name her.” And I was like, “Yeah, that makes total sense.” It’s just like strange to think about. You have that type of energy. You know, you said, “Well, I’m worrying about grades so I can get a good job, or get into a good college, to get a good job, to make money. What if I just make money now?” Like, that’s a very, that that way of thinking is is amazing. And it’s really fun to be around people like you. And so, I want to hear your perspective on a few things, this fresh thinking on a few things. So, the first is, you have 15 employees. Do you have any employees who are in their 30s or 40s? And what’s it like having to go from being just you and your buddies in a room messing around to at 15 people, you’re actually running a real company? So, yes, we do have employees that are in their 40s. And it’s difficult to be honest with you. It’s hard at times to to make them call you sir. Yeah, I do not make them call me sir. But it is difficult, especially when I have to fire someone that has kids, and it I do have imposter syndrome at times, which is something I try to not let hold me back ever. So even if I think a certain way, I don’t I still act how I know I should. I’m reading this great book right now called The Great CEO Within. I also keep it on my desk as a reminder, and it helps me lead. I try to be an inspiring leader that that helps people, that doesn’t lead by telling people what to do and just do it now. I try to inspire them to want to do the work. Do your does your staff uh general are you guys a well-organized company, you think, or is it a shit show? I think that we are pretty well-organized, and that’s mainly credited to our COO and the third co-founder I didn’t mention, Jake Castillo. He’s really good at organization. So, one of the things we talked about was like, you know, why come and talk about this? And part of you was like, “Well, I want to inspire other people.” But we don’t want to inspire just a bunch of copycats. And so we asked you, we’re like, “Hey, what are some other ideas that if you weren’t doing this, you think somebody could go do right now?” So, how can the next you, how can the next high schooler get to where you’re at, $20 million a year in revenue as a 17, 18-year-old? So, what ideas do you have for us? Sure. So, obviously, you know, you could teach a man to fish, or you could give a man a fish. Teaching is better. So, I have a few frameworks, which I think will help even more, but I also will give some ideas. Okay, go for it. So, how I usually look at these AI problems, or not AI problems, but creating something new in general, is that AI has enabled people to basically build on top of and innovate on any tool or company that exists right now. So, the calendar was innovated on, and now there are AI calendar tools like Motion, which help you organize and structure your day a lot easier, your assistant. There are note-taking tools, where people have always taken notes by hand, people have also recorded lectures, but now there are AI platforms like TurboLearn AI, where you can record your lecture, and then the AI will generate notes for you. Calorie tracking, there have always been calorie trackers, but now with AI, you can just take a picture of your food, and it will tell you the calories. So, I try to look at everything that doesn’t already use AI and think, “Can AI make this more efficient? Make this a better process?” And my perspective on coming up with new ideas is generally that I want to find something looking at it from marketing first principles is how I always think. So, almost going backwards, and I look for an aha moment that I could capture within some sort of experience, and then wrap a whole app around that. So, for CalAI, the aha moment is take a picture of your food, get the calories. And that’s great for marketing material. They come on, they do that, but then there’s a whole app around that that gets them to stay. There’s another app on the App Store right now called Fitness AI, and their ads recently have been around their AI body scanner, where you just take a picture of your body, and then it will tell you your body fat percentage and a ton of other useful information on your composition. So, that’s what draws people in, to that AI tool, which is the aha moment, and then there’s a whole fitness app around that you stay to track your workouts on that app. So, that’s the framework I generally like to use. And so what, what do you think is, uh, so you’re saying, work backwards from the the magic moment where AI does a magic trick and you’re like, “Holy shit, that’s cool.” And then build a sticky, you know, for you guys, it’s take a picture, get the calories, and then you have the tracking and the charts and the other stuff that’s going to keep them, maybe the coaching tips or whatever, that’s going to keep them around in the long term. Cool, got it. And you’re the other thing you’re saying is, take any app that’s popular that we’ve already been doing, that’s and just say, “What’s the AI version of this?” Is that the, is that the brainstorming session you would do is basically like, “All right, Evernote, what’s the AI version of Evernote?” Or, um, Yes. You know, our buddy in our buddy, um, in San Francisco, me and Sam’s buddy, Siva, he had this company called Study Soup. And Study Soup was literally for college kids, they would have paid note-takers who would take great notes in a lecture, and then you have you basically have the slackers and you have the kids that were were on top of things. The kids on top of things were the supply side of the marketplace, they would give their notes, and the slackers would buy their notes. And so, “Oh, cool, I I don’t have to take notes in this class because I’m getting them done for me.” And you’re saying, you basically saying that TurboLearn has become an AI version of Study Soup, right? Where it’s like, someone records it and now you have uh you have you have well, well-taken AI notes for your for that class. Yeah, exactly. So, what are some examples? Yeah, so here’s an idea. I’ve actually seen something like this, or recently on Twitter, I saw something blow up, maybe it was a couple months ago, not so recent, where someone put a bunch of their journal entries into ChatGPT and then asked, “What are some insights you could give me to make my life better?” You and I both do that. Yeah, well, that’s great. So, I think there is the possibility, and I think this would be a great idea, to build a journal app, and these journal apps already exist. So, take an existing one, put your, and this is the spin. So, you could make it voice notes, you can make it typing, whatever, doesn’t matter. But the key feature, the aha moment, AI feature you implement, is that periodically, you will have these insights generated from the AI on how you can improve your life. Like, “Hey, on Monday and Tuesday, you hung out with Sally, and you had a bad day. Maybe Sally is the cause of your bad days.” Gotcha. Okay, I like that. Uh, so AI journal. Um, I feel like with, uh, the kind of younger generation, I feel like therapy is a lot more normalized. Therapy is cool, basically, whereas in my my generation and my parent, my parent’s generation was like, “Therapy equals you’re broken, you’re you have a problem.” And it was like, you know, more taboo. The whole the whole idea of Sopranos was a guy who goes to therapy and now his friends are going to murder him because he’s so soft. Yeah, exactly. And now I feel like with the younger generation, it’s almost like a a cool thing to do. I don’t know, maybe I’m speaking out my ass here, you tell me if I’m wrong. Uh, but it’s way more normalized. It’s not not a taboo thing, and in fact, probably being anti-therapy would be a little bit low status now at this point. Um, and I feel like, but the problem with therapy, of course, is that, um, it’s a a little bit of a loaded word and B, you know, who’s paying $100 a session for this stuff and stuff when you could have the AI therapist in your pocket. Whether they’re using your journal entries as the starting point, the magic moment, or or not. Uh, what do you think of that space? You think there’s something interesting there? I think AI therapists are something that a lot of people have spoken about, and I haven’t seen anyone do it great. There are definitely apps already where you could talk to people, these chatbots, but I think they’re all missing the feeling that you are actually being heard, that the feeling you would get talking to a real therapist. So, maybe it’s the verbal aspect that’s missing, and something like ChatGPT’s voice mode, integrating that can now actually make it a better session than just typing. But that is a good idea that uses the AI spin for sure. Gotcha. And what what are some other ideas you have? You have two more, it looks like you wrote on here, yeah? So, the first one is some kind of system or pipeline to convert an Android app or an iOS app to the other. And this is something that would greatly help startups. When we started CalAI, we built it on Swift. And that’s because Swift, usually you can make a much smoother user experience on iPhones. Using something like React Native, which can build to both iOS and Android, it’s more difficult because it’s not actually using the native components to make something that feels super polished on an iPhone. After building it, we had all of this demand for an Android app, and it was problematic. We had to take away from development time on the iOS app to build out the Android app, and we had to release it a few months after. It was it costed us thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars. And every time you build a feature, you have to build it twice. You have to build it on one and then on the other. Yes, every single time. So, it’s annoying. I think with all of these AI tools, there is definitely the possibility to build something that lets you upload the codebase to one native project, and then it will convert it to the other. Now, right now, I think AI can probably do 90% of the work, but there will need to be a tiny bit of human intervention, so maybe this would be best done as an agency that’s very AI-powered at the moment, but very soon, it’s going to be something where an AI agent can do it all for you. Yeah, that’s a really good idea. We used to use something, uh, I I had an app like years ago, roommates app, uh, roommate finding app, and we, what was it called, where we used something that turned a web app into an iPhone app? Um, I mean, there’s been a lot of tools like that. And they were horrible. Like, it was like, it was really bad, but they were huge companies. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because this is a problem, right? Like, you you have to maintain two different two different you have two every feature, you have to build twice. Every every platform has its own bugs, and you basically have to hire double the number of people because the Android guy focused on Android, the iOS guy focused on iOS, and so now you have more head count. And so you always want this thing that’s like, but you but you need, but still, you’re you’re right, like having it be native actually results in a better user experience, more stickiness, more revenue, etc. So, you if you try to do the web app thing and you just put a web app and you try to wrap it, it doesn’t work as well as doing a native app. And so, you’re right that basically AI coding is getting so good that you could do 70, 80, 90% of the code transfer just through AI, and then maybe you you you have you you do it as an agency or you have one person who’s who’s doing that last kind of the last mile to get it to work work well. Um, that’s cool. What about this remotely configurable onboarding flows? This sounds like to use a framework, you know, it’s a paper cut you have, right? So, one some of the best places to find startup ideas is you’re you’re trying to do a startup and in the process of trying to do it, you run into something that’s like, “God, I wish somebody had just built this.” And maybe you build it in-house or you just keep dealing with the pain, and that that’s a very good source for startup ideas. Yes, I have heard that piece of advice to work at a startup to come up with new ideas, and it’s 100% true. So, while working on CalAI, and then a few other apps before CalAI, while I was learning how the whole consumer app space works, every app, you have to build out the onboarding flow. Every popular app on the App Store has one. It generally will ask the questions that are either required to set up your account or simply to prime you for what’s coming, to explain something that’s going on in the app, or to ask you questions that set your mind in the right direction to maybe help you convert when they actually hit you hit you with a paywall. And there is no good solution right now to build these. Everyone has to do it custom in their own codebase. But someone could really easily make a system where anyone can swap out the questions, remotely do AB tests on these, which another problem here is that anytime you want to test out something new within your onboarding flow or within your app in general, you have to submit an update to the App Store, which could take a few days. So, building out a system where you can build out the whole onboarding survey questions and then also change what the screens are, see how that affects conversion rate, see how that affects completion rate, drop-off rate, remotely, would be huge. Are you, uh, the type of person that even though you have a full-time gig, you are experimenting on new ideas that are unrelated to CalAI? So, for the last few months, I kind of was. We were orienting ourselves as an app studio very briefly, and the idea behind that was that our real sauce was in our marketing, not in our app development. And so we could build a bunch of these other AI apps, spin them up, apply the same marketing, and blow them up really fast. But at the scale CalAI is and the rate it’s growing, we realized pretty quickly that it made more sense to stay full-time on CalAI because the same time it would take to build another app and scale it to six figures revenue, we could have added an additional seven figures in revenue to CalAI just because everything boosts each other. Increasing retention will increase LTV, and as we increase retention, we could increase a funnel, so 1+1 can equal 3 instead of 2. I think that is totally the right move. Is there anything, Zach, you know, Sean and I are parents, and there’s a lot of people who listen to this who are who are parents. Is there anything that you, you you seem traditionally, obviously you’re traditionally successful, but you also seem like, uh, you you’re very thoughtful. I think that like Yeah, well spoken and thoughtful. Yeah. Like you seem like you’d be a good son regardless of, uh, uh, regardless if if you who cares about this app, you know? Like you you you you’re you’re you have your shit together at a very young age, emotionally. What do you think that your parents did that set you up to have this success? Or do you think that, and this sounds like a douchey thing to say, were you just born, you know, interested into this stuff at a young age? You know, like there’s a lot of like self-directed people. I have four siblings. I am the second oldest. And from a young age, I was very wired to want freedom. And I think it be I think it comes from my siblings. If I wanted to buy something, my parents would have to buy something for all my siblings, so they wouldn’t do it. I would have to find the way to pay for it myself. That’s what made me start teaching coding lessons at such a young age to earn money. And related to that, I actually have a story that when I was 10 years old, I wanted to cook scrambled eggs by myself. I don’t know what it was, but I really wanted independence and freedom. So the independence to just cook myself breakfast. At 10, I could have burned the house down. So my mom didn’t let me. And I got so mad about this that she didn’t trust me to cook eggs on my own because she was taking care of my other siblings, getting them ready for school, that I actually ran away from my house. And I ran probably 15 minutes from my house to a local soccer field, and the police were called. I actually got picked up by them and brought back home. I was going to come home eventually, but you know, I did run away. And it’s really been the freedom that has been the driving force behind everything. The yearning for freedom. Well, but you have that now. Somewhat. I still feel confined, honestly, by being in high school. I haven’t dropped out, and I want to go to college just for the social life, not obviously to get a job. So I feel I’ve I always feel almost trapped in situations where the outcome is determinant on what someone else decides for me, not something that I can control for myself. And someone has to accept me into the college. If I let my grades drop in high school, then they could rescind me even if I get into the school. And I hate that, but right now, for the next year at least, I think I have to make that sacrifice. And then when I’m in college, I want to make a good group of friends, then drop out. That’s going to be free. You’re going to go. What’s your GPA right now? My GPA is a 4.0, and I do want to get. What did you get on the SATs? Yeah, yeah. So, I took the ACT, and I got a 34. Okay, so that’s like a, that’s like a, that’s two points away from, that’s like a 90, that’s a 99 percentile, 98 percentile. Okay, so you’re, you’re, you have it like neglected school. You got a 4.0, and you did get a 34. Totally. Doing this with school. I’m working hard in school. I’m not By the way, it’s it’s it’s noon on a Monday. Where, where Where are you right now? I actually skipped class to do this podcast. Let’s go. Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling. Are you at school right now, or are you home? No, I left school. I’m home right now. And you told your parents it’s because there’s this podcast that I want to go on and it’s going to be good for business. Yeah. Yeah. How many other people do you know that are like you? Like, is there a community of like 100 of you guys who are like high schoolers who actually build shit and want to do cool things? There’s not that many high schoolers, but there are people who are slightly older, 19, 20. I probably Sam, look at how he’s already got the mastermind hand pose. He already has the visionary hand hand position naturally, dude, straight out the box. I have a handful of people that I’m friends with, but not many. Definitely not. Do you guys have a club? Can you have a name? Yeah, like the Grubs? Yeah, yeah, it’s the Cool Kids Club. That’s It’s you guys are pretty cool. Uh, so it’s a good day. Always wanted to be in. Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be one of the I’ve always wanted to be part of that. Uh, if you are need another member, let me know. Um, have you considered just like moving to Palo Alto and like hanging out like, you know, in the movie, uh, The Social Network, Sean Parker gets to act like a college kid without going to college? Or you dead set on going to uh going that route? Well, over the summer, when things started taking off in June for CalAI, Henry and I decided, let’s go all in. We moved to San Francisco for the whole month of July. We lived in a hacker house, we worked out of a co-working office with people years older than us. So we lived the San Francisco startup life. It was very productive, but at the same time, pretty lonely. Although we could talk to some people, yeah, we made friends, we would get lunch with people. First of all, San Francisco is not the most fun city, but also just the fact that people were years older than us, always made it difficult to relate to them. Yeah, that makes sense. We had a, I have a friend that, uh, like he got accepted into some program where he went to college at the age of 14 or 15. And he was telling me, he was like, “Man, like, I wanted to like date girls and like, you know, do that normal shit.” And it was weird. I started fooling around with one girl, and I eventually had to break it with her that I was fill her in that I’m like, “I’m I’m 16.” Uh, and so like, I imagine like, it’s weird being in these situations where you’re like in these you’re just as mature as you’re more mature than a lot of 21-year-olds or a lot of like grown adults, but you’re in the situation where I do understand why you feel trapped. You’re in these weird spots at such a young age that like you literally couldn’t go and do some of the stuff in San Francisco that everyone else is doing because of your age. But it’s pretty amazing. Like, I hope you enjoy like the time, like, I mean, I think being 18 and experiencing what you’re doing, it’s like, this is like, you know, one out of a billion. This is like a really special thing. How much are you paying yourself? So, we haven’t paid ourselves anything. We are reinvesting it all, and that’s not to say that we won’t. We are, we do have profit every month. It is a difficult situation with the App Store because we get paid out two months after we earn the money. So our growth is so quick that the revenue we generated two months ago, we have to put it all in the marketing to keep growing faster and faster. I think in a few months, we may start having a surplus where we can’t spend it on growth even if we wanted to. Yeah, that’s great. Um, dude, this is awesome, man. Congratulations. And, uh, I’m excited to see what happens. Who who are like, who do you admire? Who are you who are you learning from and looking up to? Like, who’s who’s inspiring you, right? You just like, “Oh, Elon and Jeff Bezos, that’s what I that’s what I care about,” or are there other people that you’re more interested in, uh, personally? Like you said you used to listen to podcasts as inspiration. Who are some of those people that you like to listen to? Totally. So, I love your guys’s podcast. It’s I’m more inspired by people who are dead than people who are alive. And maybe that’s because I feel like there’s they’re not my competition anymore, or they are, but they’re not progressing anymore. So, I see exactly where they ended up. Psycho, love it. Yeah. I get it, you sick fuck. Yeah. Makes sense. They’re not my competition anymore. I’ve already finished them. Yeah. Yeah. You People like I think he’s going to kill us, Sam. Yeah. I think he just threatened us, low-key. Yeah. Okay, so you like learning from dead people. What does that mean? Books? What what how do you learn from dead people? I like audiobooks, but I don’t actually like reading physical books. I also like learning about them from podcasts. Which dead people? Also like founders. You like the David Senra’s podcast Founders? It’s one of my favorites. I do listen to that. There’s one I’ve listened to recently, How to Take Over the World, which goes into Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Let’s go. So, let me ask you a question. What what’s a thing that people your age are doing that seems weird to us, but it’s totally normal. So, like what’s a phenomenon that you’re like, “Yeah, kids love doing this. They spend all this time doing this, or they spend their money on this, or this is a new trend that seems to be weird to others, but we get it. It’s it’s normal for us.” Yeah. Is by the way, is wearing, uh, Ralph Lauren Ralph Lauren polo sweaters, is that a new trend that young people are doing? I think you’ve influenced Sam. Yeah. A great sweater. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead with, uh, what cool young people are doing. So, there’s something really interesting, a really interesting phenomenon I’ve seen recently. And it’s not a new software, it’s not a new social media platform. What it is is these little things you put on the back of your phone. It’s called an Octobuddy. It’s Octobuddy. And it has suction cups on it. So you could stick your phone to a wall, you could prop it up on your table, and watch videos is the purpose. I don’t think people actually, I’ve never seen someone actually use the suction cups how they’re designed to, but it’s a trend among all girls in my high school. I’ve over the last few months, I’ve just seen more and more people have it. Now everyone does. And it’s it’s fascinating. Something that So, it’s like a TV mount. You mount your, you can mount your phone to any any surface, basically. And what do you mean it’s not used how it’s supposed to be? Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be? Well, I think it’s more of something where now girls look at it like the color of their nails or having long nails on where girls get different colors and Oh, it became an accessory. a stylistic accessory status thing than actually function. Keep going. Tell me what young people like. Like whenever I meet a young guy, I’m like, “Tell me everything.” Yeah, this is great. Well, that’s the main thing that you wouldn’t typically notice. Are your friends drinking? Yes, definitely. It’s a big Are they like the party? Do you like Do you guys like to smoke weed? I’m someone who doesn’t do any drugs. I’m pretty against them, and I don’t drink either, but it’s, I mean, everyone around me is. So, drinking’s common. Very common, very, very. You also mentioned this, uh, this like TurboLearn thing. That sounds pretty awesome. What else is like, uh, what other, uh, who else is like you out there who’s who’s basically scaling up to millions in revenue just off of this kind of like AI TikTok type of model? So, there are a bunch of consumer apps that are coming out or have come out, and honestly, I think a lot of it is attributed to Blake and I speaking publicly about this, showing that it’s really possible in the app space. So, new apps like Quitter, which is an app designed to help men quit porn with all of these little social or like by having streaks, essentially, to gamify the whole experience. So, that’s a new one that just came out. You inspired these guys? I’m friends with the founder, and he was inspired to get into the app space by seeing CalAI really take off. He was with me in the early days. That’s cool. It’s got 5,000 5,000 reviews on on iPhone. That’s pretty good. Yeah, so they’re on track to make over a million dollars this year. I think consumer apps right now are like the new drop shipping. You know, uh, Sean has said this once where he was like, you know, Sean was like, “I’m a content creator.” You know, he’s got newsletters and Twitter and podcasts. But these TikTok guys, it’s as if, you know, I, uh, am really good at writing horses, but along comes Henry Ford, and it’s just it’s just the cars are no comparison, you know? I can’t there’s no way my horse and I are going to outrun, uh, even the the crappiest car. This is one of those moments that I’m having right now talking to you. Uh, so like for a long time, Sean and I are friends, we’ll do drop shipping, you know, our when we were 25, that was the thing is like create like a drop shipping site. And people still do things like that. Seeing what you’re doing with tech and influencers is so much better than Yeah. Like you even look, Mr. You even make Mr. Beast look old. You know what I mean? Like chocolate, like what? That’s crazy. Make it, you know what I mean? But but dude, people used to look at me and Sam when we were like, so we met when we were I was probably 24, 25 years old. We were the prodigies. And it was like, I don’t know, okay, that’s very generous. But What I mean is like it’d be like, if there was something on the on the fringe or the edge about either growth hacking or a clever way to make money, usually it was us who knew it and people would ask us about it. Like I remember having like the Atlantic, the publisher come to my office and they’re like, “newsletters.” And I’m like, “Yeah, like it’s a thing.” That’s old news now. These guys are so much better, and we are that person now. I’m going to go to his office and be like, “Just tell me everything.” It’s something that always happens. It’s going to happen to me, too. I know that every year I age, I am becoming exponentially less impressive, and there’s someone that’s going to come and be the next big thing, the growth hacker that is in the front of everything. I think it’s just about building momentum, and I’m pretty obsessed with this idea of making sure that everything I work on will 10x the previous thing, so that I’m always moving forward towards a bigger goal. You actually mentioned Mr. Beast. He’s actually someone who greatly inspires me. I love the podcast that you guys had with him. By the way, I’ve heard this now a couple times from people who are like 18, and they’re like, “fearful that when they’re 22, suddenly their accomplishments are no longer cool.” And I just want to say, I get it. It makes total sense. It’s also total nonsense. And what I mean by that is not only is it still super impressive, but the real game is when you stop trying to impress people. And so what actually happens is you graduate out of the “I need to impress people” phase, and the person who’s 17, 18, they’re still getting that high of being the impressive person. Oh, everybody’s kind of patting on the back. And actually, the the the only way to win the game is not to continuously be the youngest, best-looking, richest person, because you’ll never win that game of comparison. The only real way to win the game is to realize like, “Oh, I just need to be doing the things that are fun for me, and like the the act of doing them is rewarding,” and not look for the rewards of impressing people, which is, obviously easier said than done. But that’s the real thing to focus on. And not like, “this feeling of I’m running on quicksand,” you know, because it’s I’m getting older. Oh no, or like, uh, I have to 10x my growth, even though I’m already at, you know, 24 million ARR. It’s like, sure, that’s all fine. I’m not against growth, but, um, somebody said this to us, actually, they said this while we were hanging out with Mr. Beast. They go, “Be very careful, because growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of a cancer cell.” And, um, so, you know, growth for growth’s sake is not, not, not where it’s at, and there’s, there’s more to the game than that. And he’s like, “I’ll leave you with that to kind of figure out what, what, what is the answer.” I’m not going to sort of try to tell you what I think is right, but I’ll point that out because I think for me, when I was young, and I know for a lot of ambitious people, it just seems like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. It’s the only thing, and it comes from a little bit of a, um, I don’t know, like a little bit of a place of anxiety, I think. Right. Yes. And I’ve had this a similar thought to this where I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve thought, “Okay, once I find my success and let’s say I’m quote-unquote financially free, will I even want to start something new? Or will I not care anymore and just want to find happiness elsewhere?” Maybe I have one of the tenants of happiness, which is I’m financially taken care of, but then I want to prioritize relationships and happiness in other aspects. So, I love I’m always going to be making stuff. I’ll I’ll I’ll predict the future. Maybe maybe you’ll take the foot off the gas and, uh, want relationships and a family and all that stuff. You are going to be creating stuff for a very, very long time. Well, that is why I’m going to college. It’s almost to take my foot off the gas a little bit, build relationships, and then I want to drop out after a semester or two. I mean, I think that’s really smart because you you have your whole life to make money, but you really only have this four years to make lifelong friends, uh, from college. So, actually, the the scarce thing is the the friendships and that college experience, because that there’s a window of time that expires. And so, do that because you still have 50 years to make money, um, after that. What school are you going to go to? If I got in, then Stanford is likely the top. I surely we have listeners, this is going to reach a lot of people. Surely there are some some people listening. Dean, I know you’re listening. Yadagari, Y-A-D-A-G-A-R-I. Yeah. You can find him on Twitter, DM him. Uh, actually, that’s That’s what they should do. A real if if I’m a if I’m at a college right now, I’m DMing this kid an acceptance letter. That’s how a college needs to hustle. I’m tired of these colleges sitting down there. Yeah, you’re going to get a DM. You’re going to get someone’s going to be like, “Sup.” You’re just going to get a DM from uh the Dean. Sup. Who who’s your favorite uh who are your most inspirational follows on Twitter? Uh, I want to I want to basically, I find you so fascinating. I want to be inspired by the people you’re currently inspired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want your info diet. Who uh who do you inspired by and try to make it people who you think I won’t know. Hmm. Okay. Who do I follow? I actually don’t usually use Twitter for people I’m inspired by. That’s interesting. What what’s your like main social network? What what did you use when you’re bored? What do you open up? It is Twitter. It is Twitter. That is my main social network. When I’m looking to be inspired, there are definitely a few people. David Goggins, for example, he just pumps me up. So, I have people like him that, you know, inspired by his mindset completely. I used to actually be in this phase where I was addicted to motivational content. I curated my TikTok for You page. I only liked motivational videos, and anytime I lost motivation, I would just scroll for five minutes, then get back into it. So, definitely those kinds of people. But it’s mainly those like Mr. Beast, Elon Musk, I follow both of those on Twitter. My own co-founder, Blake Anderson, who’s a few years ahead of me in life and knowledge, too. So, definitely learn a lot from him. Cliff Weitzman, he’s a recent friend of mine. I think one of you know him. Yeah, yeah. We know Cliff. Yeah, so he’s super inspiring to myself as well. That’s dope. Uh, okay, amazing. Sam, anything else? Is there That’s don’t ask me. Zach, is there anything else that you want to inspire me by? Like you’re you’re you’re amazing. Like uh anything else that you want to tell us? Yeah, did we miss anything? I appreciate that. I mean, it’s always hard going on these podcasts. Like, it’s it’s a whole full circle moment for me to come on here. Yeah, that’s interesting. Sam, would you be going on podcasts? Because like, you know, while you’re here, I’m like, “Oh, this is great content.” I’m excited, but then there’s like the fatherly part of me that’s like, “Shut up.” Dude, just shut up. Why are you on the podcast? You shouldn’t be saying any of this stuff, because you have such a good thing going, and uh you could always tell the story a little later. You don’t need to invite, you know, the other uh Zach Yadagaris of the world who are, you know, they can code, they can make TikToks, they got cool haircuts like you, and they’re just going to do the same thing, right? So like, why go on and and and spill your secrets, um, you know, why why do that? So, I’ve heard this before that usually you know what it takes, or people usually know what it takes to be successful, but then they are looking for an easier way. They’re looking for something that is not as burdensome, not as hard, doesn’t require as much sacrifice. And I’ve been coding since I was seven. I mean, 18 now, that’s 11 years of coding. I’ve started totally science, and before that, I was tutoring kids in coding lessons for almost a decade of my life. I was in the entrepreneur game. And so I think that, yes, I can share all of this information publicly, but it’s only a select few who will actually work towards it and put in the amount of hours required to achieve the result, where I want to help those people. I think helping those people achieve the same success, especially if they were in a situation like mine where they maybe weren’t entirely sure where to go, but they knew there was a world out there where they could have massive impact at such a young age, even balancing school on the side. And so I completely support those people. You have um a trait that uh like Sean and I’s good buddy, Jack Smith, is like the perfect embodiment of this trait. Um, but a lot of entrepreneurs are, which is your logical, which like a lot of times will be awkward on like day-to-day level. Like, for example, my friend Jack is like, he’s so, he’ll, he he does things so differently from everyone because his way is actually better, but we’ve all done it in such a way for 100 plus years that we’re like, “Well, I don’t know, we just do it this way.” And so, like, for example, he didn’t name his daughter, uh, the first year because he was like, “I guess I have to get to know her before I can name her.” And I was like, “Yeah, that makes total sense.” It’s just like strange to think about. You have that type of energy. You know, you said, “Well, I’m worrying about grades so I can get a good job, or get into a good college, to get a good job, to make money. What if I just make money now?” Like, that’s a very, that that way of thinking is is amazing. And it’s really fun to be around people like you. And so, I want to hear your perspective on a few things, this fresh thinking on a few things. So, the first is, you have 15 employees. Do you have any employees who are in their 30s or 40s? And what’s it like having to go from being just you and your buddies in a room messing around to at 15 people, you’re actually running a real company? So, yes, we do have employees that are in their 40s. And it’s difficult to be honest with you. It’s hard at times to to make them call you sir. Yeah, I do not make them call me sir. But it is difficult, especially when I have to fire someone that has kids, and it I do have imposter syndrome at times, which is something I try to not let hold me back ever. So even if I think a certain way, I don’t I still act how I know I should. I’m reading this great book right now called The Great CEO Within. I also keep it on my desk as a reminder, and it helps me lead. I try to be an inspiring leader that that helps people, that doesn’t lead by telling people what to do and just do it now. I try to inspire them to want to do the work. Do your does your staff uh general are you guys a well-organized company, you think, or is it a shit show? I think that we are pretty well-organized, and that’s mainly credited to our COO and the third co-founder I didn’t mention, Jake Castillo. He’s really good at organization. So, one of the things we talked about was like, you know, why come and talk about this? And part of you was like, “Well, I want to inspire other people.” But we don’t want to inspire just a bunch of copycats. And so we asked you, we’re like, “Hey, what are some other ideas that if you weren’t doing this, you think somebody could go do right now?” So, how can the next you, how can the next high schooler get to where you’re at, $20 million a year in revenue as a 17, 18-year-old? So, what ideas do you have for us? Sure. So, obviously, you know, you could teach a man to fish, or you could give a man a fish. Teaching is better. So, I have a few frameworks, which I think will help even more, but I also will give some ideas. Okay, go for it. So, how I usually look at these AI problems, or not AI problems, but creating something new in general, is that AI has enabled people to basically build on top of and innovate on any tool or company that exists right now. So, the calendar was innovated on, and now there are AI calendar tools like Motion, which help you organize and structure your day a lot easier, your assistant. There are note-taking tools, where people have always taken notes by hand, people have also recorded lectures, but now there are AI platforms like TurboLearn AI, where you can record your lecture, and then the AI will generate notes for you. Calorie tracking, there have always been calorie trackers, but now with AI, you can just take a picture of your food, and it will tell you the calories. So, I try to look at everything that doesn’t already use AI and think, “Can AI make this more efficient? Make this a better process?” And my perspective on coming up with new ideas is generally that I want to find something looking at it from marketing first principles is how I always think. So, almost going backwards, and I look for an aha moment that I could capture within some sort of experience, and then wrap a whole app around that. So, for CalAI, the aha moment is take a picture of your food, get the calories. And that’s great for marketing material. They come on, they do that, but then there’s a whole app around that that gets them to stay. There’s another app on the App Store right now called Fitness AI, and their ads recently have been around their AI body scanner, where you just take a picture of your body, and then it will tell you your body fat percentage and a ton of other useful information on your composition. So, that’s what draws people in, to that AI tool, which is the aha moment, and then there’s a whole fitness app around that you stay to track your workouts on that app. So, that’s the framework I generally like to use. And so what, what do you think is, uh, so you’re saying, work backwards from the the magic moment where AI does a magic trick and you’re like, “Holy shit, that’s cool.” And then build a sticky, you know, for you guys, it’s take a picture, get the calories, and then you have the tracking and the charts and the other stuff that’s going to keep them, maybe the coaching tips or whatever, that’s going to keep them around in the long term. Cool, got it. And you’re the other thing you’re saying is, take any app that’s popular that we’ve already been doing, that’s and just say, “What’s the AI version of this?” Is that the, is that the brainstorming session you would do is basically like, “All right, Evernote, what’s the AI version of Evernote?” Or, um, Yes. You know, our buddy in our buddy, um, in San Francisco, me and Sam’s buddy, Siva, he had this company called Study Soup. And Study Soup was literally for college kids, they would have paid note-takers who would take great notes in a lecture, and then you have you basically have the slackers and you have the kids that were were on top of things. The kids on top of things were the supply side of the marketplace, they would give their notes, and the slackers would buy their notes. And so, “Oh, cool, I I don’t have to take notes in this class because I’m getting them done for me.” And you’re saying, you basically saying that TurboLearn has become an AI version of Study Soup, right? Where it’s like, someone records it and now you have uh you have you have well, well-taken AI notes for your for that class. Yeah, exactly. So, what are some examples? Yeah, so here’s an idea. I’ve actually seen something like this, or recently on Twitter, I saw something blow up, maybe it was a couple months ago, not so recent, where someone put a bunch of their journal entries into ChatGPT and then asked, “What are some insights you could give me to make my life better?” You and I both do that. Yeah, well, that’s great. So, I think there is the possibility, and I think this would be a great idea, to build a journal app, and these journal apps already exist. So, take an existing one, put your, and this is the spin. So, you could make it voice notes, you can make it typing, whatever, doesn’t matter. But the key feature, the aha moment, AI feature you implement, is that periodically, you will have these insights generated from the AI on how you can improve your life. Like, “Hey, on Monday and Tuesday, you hung out with Sally, and you had a bad day. Maybe Sally is the cause of your bad days.” Gotcha. Okay, I like that. Uh, so AI journal. Um, I feel like with, uh, the kind of younger generation, I feel like therapy is a lot more normalized. Therapy is cool, basically, whereas in my my generation and my parent, my parent’s generation was like, “Therapy equals you’re broken, you’re you have a problem.” And it was like, you know, more taboo. The whole the whole idea of Sopranos was a guy who goes to therapy and now his friends are going to murder him because he’s so soft. Yeah, exactly. And now I feel like with the younger generation, it’s almost like a a cool thing to do. I don’t know, maybe I’m speaking out my ass here, you tell me if I’m wrong. Uh, but it’s way more normalized. It’s not not a taboo thing, and in fact, probably being anti-therapy would be a little bit low status now at this point. Um, and I feel like, but the problem with therapy, of course, is that, um, it’s a a little bit of a loaded word and B, you know, who’s paying $100 a session for this stuff and stuff when you could have the AI therapist in your pocket. Whether they’re using your journal entries as the starting point, the magic moment, or or not. Uh, what do you think of that space? You think there’s something interesting there? I think AI therapists are something that a lot of people have spoken about, and I haven’t seen anyone do it great. There are definitely apps already where you could talk to people, these chatbots, but I think they’re all missing the feeling that you are actually being heard, that the feeling you would get talking to a real therapist. So, maybe it’s the verbal aspect that’s missing, and something like ChatGPT’s voice mode, integrating that can now actually make it a better session than just typing. But that is a good idea that uses the AI spin for sure. Gotcha. And what what are some other ideas you have? You have two more, it looks like you wrote on here, yeah? So, the first one is some kind of system or pipeline to convert an Android app or an iOS app to the other. And this is something that would greatly help startups. When we started CalAI, we built it on Swift. And that’s because Swift, usually you can make a much smoother user experience on iPhones. Using something like React Native, which can build to both iOS and Android, it’s more difficult because it’s not actually using the native components to make something that feels super polished on an iPhone. After building it, we had all of this demand for an Android app, and it was problematic. We had to take away from development time on the iOS app to build out the Android app, and we had to release it a few months after. It was it costed us thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars. And every time you build a feature, you have to build it twice. You have to build it on one and then on the other. Yes, every single time. So, it’s annoying. I think with all of these AI tools, there is definitely the possibility to build something that lets you upload the codebase to one native project, and then it will convert it to the other. Now, right now, I think AI can probably do 90% of the work, but there will need to be a tiny bit of human intervention, so maybe this would be best done as an agency that’s very AI-powered at the moment, but very soon, it’s going to be something where an AI agent can do it all for you. Yeah, that’s a really good idea. We used to use something, uh, I I had an app like years ago, roommates app, uh, roommate finding app, and we, what was it called, where we used something that turned a web app into an iPhone app? Um, I mean, there’s been a lot of tools like that. And they were horrible. Like, it was like, it was really bad, but they were huge companies. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because this is a problem, right? Like, you you have to maintain two different two different you have two every feature, you have to build twice. Every every platform has its own bugs, and you basically have to hire double the number of people because the Android guy focused on Android, the iOS guy focused on iOS, and so now you have more head count. And so you always want this thing that’s like, but you but you need, but still, you’re you’re right, like having it be native actually results in a better user experience, more stickiness, more revenue, etc. So, you if you try to do the web app thing and you just put a web app and you try to wrap it, it doesn’t work as well as doing a native app. And so, you’re right that basically AI coding is getting so good that you could do 70, 80, 90% of the code transfer just through AI, and then maybe you you you have you you do it as an agency or you have one person who’s who’s doing that last kind of the last mile to get it to work work well. Um, that’s cool. What about this remotely configurable onboarding flows? This sounds like to use a framework, you know, it’s a paper cut you have, right? So, one some of the best places to find startup ideas is you’re you’re trying to do a startup and in the process of trying to do it, you run into something that’s like, “God, I wish somebody had just built this.” And maybe you build it in-house or you just keep dealing with the pain, and that that’s a very good source for startup ideas. Yes, I have heard that piece of advice to work at a startup to come up with new ideas, and it’s 100% true. So, while working on CalAI, and then a few other apps before CalAI, while I was learning how the whole consumer app space works, every app, you have to build out the onboarding flow. Every popular app on the App Store has one. It generally will ask the questions that are either required to set up your account or simply to prime you for what’s coming, to explain something that’s going on in the app, or to ask you questions that set your mind in the right direction to maybe help you convert when they actually hit you hit you with a paywall. And there is no good solution right now to build these. Everyone has to do it custom in their own codebase. But someone could really easily make a system where anyone can swap out the questions, remotely do AB tests on these, which another problem here is that anytime you want to test out something new within your onboarding flow or within your app in general, you have to submit an update to the App Store, which could take a few days. So, building out a system where you can build out the whole onboarding survey questions and then also change what the screens are, see how that affects conversion rate, see how that affects completion rate, drop-off rate, remotely, would be huge. Are you, uh, the type of person that even though you have a full-time gig, you are experimenting on new ideas that are unrelated to CalAI? So, for the last few months, I kind of was. We were orienting ourselves as an app studio very briefly, and the idea behind that was that our real sauce was in our marketing, not in our app development. And so we could build a bunch of these other AI apps, spin them up, apply the same marketing, and blow them up really fast. But at the scale CalAI is and the rate it’s growing, we realized pretty quickly that it made more sense to stay full-time on CalAI because the same time it would take to build another app and scale it to six figures revenue, we could have added an additional seven figures in revenue to CalAI just because everything boosts each other. Increasing retention will increase LTV, and as we increase retention, we could increase a funnel, so 1+1 can equal 3 instead of 2. I think that is totally the right move. Is there anything, Zach, you know, Sean and I are parents, and there’s a lot of people who listen to this who are who are parents. Is there anything that you, you you seem traditionally, obviously you’re traditionally successful, but you also seem like, uh, you you’re very thoughtful. I think that like Yeah, well spoken and thoughtful. Yeah. Like you seem like you’d be a good son regardless of, uh, uh, regardless if if you who cares about this app, you know? Like you you you you’re you’re you have your shit together at a very young age, emotionally. What do you think that your parents did that set you up to have this success? Or do you think that, and this sounds like a douchey thing to say, were you just born, you know, interested into this stuff at a young age? You know, like there’s a lot of like self-directed people. I have four siblings. I am the second oldest. And from a young age, I was very wired to want freedom. And I think it be I think it comes from my siblings. If I wanted to buy something, my parents would have to buy something for all my siblings, so they wouldn’t do it. I would have to find the way to pay for it myself. That’s what made me start teaching coding lessons at such a young age to earn money. And related to that, I actually have a story that when I was 10 years old, I wanted to cook scrambled eggs by myself. I don’t know what it was, but I really wanted independence and freedom. So the independence to just cook myself breakfast. At 10, I could have burned the house down. So my mom didn’t let me. And I got so mad about this that she didn’t trust me to cook eggs on my own because she was taking care of my other siblings, getting them ready for school, that I actually ran away from my house. And I ran probably 15 minutes from my house to a local soccer field, and the police were called. I actually got picked up by them and brought back home. I was going to come home eventually, but you know, I did run away. And it’s really been the freedom that has been the driving force behind everything. The yearning for freedom. Well, but you have that now. Somewhat. I still feel confined, honestly, by being in high school. I haven’t dropped out, and I want to go to college just for the social life, not obviously to get a job. So I feel I’ve I always feel almost trapped in situations where the outcome is determinant on what someone else decides for me, not something that I can control for myself. And someone has to accept me into the college. If I let my grades drop in high school, then they could rescind me even if I get into the school. And I hate that, but right now, for the next year at least, I think I have to make that sacrifice. And then when I’m in college, I want to make a good group of friends, then drop out. That’s going to be free. You’re going to go. What’s your GPA right now? My GPA is a 4.0, and I do want to get. What did you get on the SATs? Yeah, yeah. So, I took the ACT, and I got a 34. Okay, so that’s like a, that’s like a, that’s two points away from, that’s like a 90, that’s a 99 percentile, 98 percentile. Okay, so you’re, you’re, you have it like neglected school. You got a 4.0, and you did get a 34. Totally. Doing this with school. I’m working hard in school. I’m not By the way, it’s it’s it’s noon on a Monday. Where, where Where are you right now? I actually skipped class to do this podcast. Let’s go. Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling. Are you at school right now, or are you home? No, I left school. I’m home right now. And you told your parents it’s because there’s this podcast that I want to go on and it’s going to be good for business. Yeah. Yeah. How many other people do you know that are like you? Like, is there a community of like 100 of you guys who are like high schoolers who actually build shit and want to do cool things? There’s not that many high schoolers, but there are people who are slightly older, 19, 20. I probably Sam, look at how he’s already got the mastermind hand pose. He already has the visionary hand hand position naturally, dude, straight out the box. I have a handful of people that I’m friends with, but not many. Definitely not. Do you guys have a club? Can you have a name? Yeah, like the Grubs? Yeah, yeah, it’s the Cool Kids Club. That’s It’s you guys are pretty cool. Uh, so it’s a good day. Always wanted to be in. Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be one of the I’ve always wanted to be part of that. Uh, if you are need another member, let me know. Um, have you considered just like moving to Palo Alto and like hanging out like, you know, in the movie, uh, The Social Network, Sean Parker gets to act like a college kid without going to college? Or you dead set on going to uh going that route? Well, over the summer, when things started taking off in June for CalAI, Henry and I decided, let’s go all in. We moved to San Francisco for the whole month of July. We lived in a hacker house, we worked out of a co-working office with people years older than us. So we lived the San Francisco startup life. It was very productive, but at the same time, pretty lonely. Although we could talk to some people, yeah, we made friends, we would get lunch with people. First of all, San Francisco is not the most fun city, but also just the fact that people were years older than us, always made it difficult to relate to them. Yeah, that makes sense. We had a, I have a friend that, uh, like he got accepted into some program where he went to college at the age of 14 or 15. And he was telling me, he was like, “Man, like, I wanted to like date girls and like, you know, do that normal shit.” And it was weird. I started fooling around with one girl, and I eventually had to break it with her that I was fill her in that I’m like, “I’m I’m 16.” Uh, and so like, I imagine like, it’s weird being in these situations where you’re like in these you’re just as mature as you’re more mature than a lot of 21-year-olds or a lot of like grown adults, but you’re in the situation where I do understand why you feel trapped. You’re in these weird spots at such a young age that like you literally couldn’t go and do some of the stuff in San Francisco that everyone else is doing because of your age. But it’s pretty amazing. Like, I hope you enjoy like the time, like, I mean, I think being 18 and experiencing what you’re doing, it’s like, this is like, you know, one out of a billion. This is like a really special thing. How much are you paying yourself? So, we haven’t paid ourselves anything. We are reinvesting it all, and that’s not to say that we won’t. We are, we do have profit every month. It is a difficult situation with the App Store because we get paid out two months after we earn the money. So our growth is so quick that the revenue we generated two months ago, we have to put it all in the marketing to keep growing faster and faster. I think in a few months, we may start having a surplus where we can’t spend it on growth even if we wanted to. Yeah, that’s great. Um, dude, this is awesome, man. Congratulations. And, uh, I’m excited to see what happens. Who who are like, who do you admire? Who are you who are you learning from and looking up to? Like, who’s who’s inspiring you, right? You just like, “Oh, Elon and Jeff Bezos, that’s what I that’s what I care about,” or are there other people that you’re more interested in, uh, personally? Like you said you used to listen to podcasts as inspiration. Who are some of those people that you like to listen to? Totally. So, I love your guys’s podcast. It’s I’m more inspired by people who are dead than people who are alive. And maybe that’s because I feel like there’s they’re not my competition anymore, or they are, but they’re not progressing anymore. So, I see exactly where they ended up. Psycho, love it. Yeah. I get it, you sick fuck. Yeah. Makes sense. They’re not my competition anymore. I’ve already finished them. Yeah. Yeah. You People like I think he’s going to kill us, Sam. Yeah.