Jared Yellin, Founder of 10X Incubator | Launching 10,000 Tech Companies In 10 Years

Welcome to success story the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scotty Cleary. The success story podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The HubSpot Podcast Network has incredible podcasts like the Gain Grow Retained podcast. Podcast is hosted by Jeff Brunsbach and Jay Nathan. Now Gain Grow and Retained is built to inspire SaaS and technology leaders who are facing the day-to-day challenges of scaling. Host Jeff and Jay share conversations about growing and scaling subscription businesses with a customer first approach. If any of these topics sound interesting to you, you're going to like the podcast creating more brand advocates, SaaS as a predominant model for business, customer success at scale or the challenges of integrating new tools with CSM. Some of these topics speak your interest. You're going to love the podcast. You're going to love Gain Grow Retained. Go check it out wherever you get your podcast. Remember Gain Grow Retained on the HubSpot Podcast Network. Jay is the co-founder of the 10X incubator. Jay is a seasoned entrepreneur. He built his first company into it from the ground up with $0 invested from VC. So he did it himself. He grew it to over 40,000 paying users from around the world after he grew that he eventually moved away from sin to it. Now he decided to scale and sell 10,000 tech companies in 10 years. He partnered with Grant Cardone to create the 10X incubator. The 10X incubator's purpose is to democratize the tech industry by creating an even playing field for all. We're going to get into how exactly he does that. So what do we go into? What we spoke about Jared's origin story, how he built his first company, how he found the right people, how he scaled it and some of the failures that he experienced, some of the money that he lost. And of course, all the lessons that he's learned the hard way that now he teaches entrepreneurs that they don't have to repeat those mistakes. We went into a few different things. We went into a little bit of mindset. So quality of life, success is an entrepreneur as a concept. And then we dove into some more tactical things. How to find the right ideas required to start a successful business, how to establish product market fit, how to establish the right business model, what a pink ocean strategy is and why the perfect business that he looks at when he's investing or mentoring an entrepreneur, why he looks for a pink ocean business. We spoke about business models. We spoke about founder focused investing. We spoke about finding your first 50 customers and then some other basically some awesome lessons from both all the tech companies that he's worked with as part of the 10x incubator, as well as all the lessons that he's learned over his time scaling his first company to over 40,000 users. So let's jump right into it. This is Jared Yellen. He is the co founder with Mr. Grant Cardone of the 10x incubator. Well, Scott, I'm fired up to be here. Thank you for this honor. Can't wait to share with you and your community. To me, it all started when I was 20 years old. I remember this day distinctly. I woke up and I realized eventually I'm going to be a dad and I knew it wasn't when I was 20. I don't know many young men that think about being a dad when they're 20, but the reason I was was I started to reflect on my childhood and my parents went through a really intense divorce when I was young. I'm sure there was plenty of more challenging and more difficult divorces than theirs, but it was it was darn intense. And if somebody were to ask me what's one word to define your childhood, I would have said loud like there was just nowhere to go for peace or serenity or anything. There was perpetual fighting, arguing, moving, and it was super intense. When I was 20, I was thinking to myself, I have to make a decision today that creates a better experience for my children in the future. And as I was thinking about what type of dad I wanted to be, there was this word that showed up for me, Scott, and that word was freedom. I'll never forget the moment I'm like, oh my gosh, that's that's my outcome. Like that's my non-negotiable and I could hit me hard and I'm like, well, what is freedom? And I started breaking it down to these 12 different categories of freedom from time to career to geographical to financial and it went really deep relational and I'm like, okay, this is amazing. I can only because heckly what I want for when I'm eventually a dad, but I don't know anyone that has this. There's not one person I've ever met that I can model that has what I have to have my non-negotiable for the time to become a father. And as I started thinking about that, I realized that if you want what no one else has, you have to do what most won't do. And for me, that was entrepreneurship. So fast forward to this very moment, 16 years later, I've committed to entrepreneurship and it produced that outcome. I have a beautiful little daughter whose five years older name is Taley and a little rock star son. His name is Ryker and he's two years old and I have that freedom career financial geographical and it's because I just went all in and immersed myself into entrepreneurship. So I've had a really good run in many ways. I've had some some big successes along the journey and I've also had some absolute beautiful challenges too. So 10 years ago, I launched a company called Synduant and just so everybody knows I'm what we call a non tech tech founder. That means there's not one engineering bone in my entire body. I know I don't have a marketing copy and I know how to sell the vision for Synduant though was to build a SaaS platform software as a service and specifically I wanted to build the simplest marketing software in the world that was pre populated with content for every major industry. So in my mind, that sounded awesome. Like I'm like, whoa, that will revolutionize the marketing industry democratize marketing, but I didn't really know where to begin. And I had the money, but I don't want to just like throw it at a concept. So I feared let me buy a little bit of time so I can get clear on what this will actually be. So I started selling myself as a copywriter. I knew really high profile people to give you a shot thought leaders in their industry and we did a performance deal where I would earn 30% of any new business that my campaigns would produce. And I made them millions of dollars. I've been surprised myself. It just really worked. And as a result, I made quite a bit of money, but more than the money, they told everybody about me. And within 14 months, those two clients became 400 clients. And I was running this massive digital and creative agency for thought leaders. We had a big office, we had a big team, an extraordinary culture. We were making a ton of money. But for me, it was a means to an end. I really want to launch that tech product. And in 2013, I had clarity of the product. And I remember that moment. I'm like, okay, let's do it. I'm clear. I know exactly what it needs to do. And I interviewed 12 different software development firms all throughout the US. And I ended up hiring one base that of Boston. I had a really good track record. And they said it would take 10 months and 750,000 dollars to build the minimum viable product. So I went all in on it. I funded it myself. I was so pumped. 10 months came. It was my moment to see what they've built. And they came to me in that meeting. And they said, Jared, we have some really good news for you. And that means they also have some really bad news for me. So I'm like, okay, what's the some good news? We'll start there. And they said, well, some good news is what we've built so far is really stable. I'm like, that's awesome. Congratulations. I'm like, now what's the some bad news? They said, well, the some bad news is we just completely miscalculated this. It's going to require another one and a half million dollars of development to finish it. So in that very moment, I became what we call a statistic because for non tech tech founders, that is the norm. Like that is the norm because you just don't know what you don't know. But for me, there was so much silver lining in that moment. And the silver lining was this one engineer on the team. His name is Monty. And before Monty was working with me, he lived in India. Now when he lived in India, he started his own software development firm and a little apartment that his entire family lived in. And that firm in three years went from that to 100 employees. And outside of being a wonderful and talented engineer, he is an absolutely extraordinary leader and mentor to engineers, which is why he was able to grow. In 2011, he sold that company because he wanted to move to the US with his wife and start a family here. And and he did he moved to the US. I guess where he was living on the end of my street or my original office was so he could have been anywhere but there. And we wouldn't have met because when he got here, he had no money, he had no car and he had no bike. So we had to walk to work. And when he walked out of his apartment building, my office building was literally right there. Like we just collided. So in 2014, I said, Monty, I'm ending my relationship with this vendor. I want to invite you to become my CTO. And he said, Jared, that would be a dream come true. And that was a defining moment because in that moment, I was able to do the right thing by syndicate and we started building our own tech team. We hired in the US. We hired a few people in Canada and then we hired 12 people in India that Monty previously worked with. And the thing with India, if you're in tech, if you can crack the code, you're an extraordinary shape because the talent is off the charts. The commitment is absolutely extraordinary. And obviously economically it works well. The only catch Scott was these were all contractors. And it's hard to retain contractors anywhere. But especially in India, because an India contractor income is not recognized by banks. So they just can't get loans for anything. And eventually they quit because they're going to want to buy a house or get a car and they literally can't get it. So I wanted to solve this. This was more than just my engineers. It's just like my India family. And I wanted to retain them because they were really good. So I went through a three year process to set up a company in India that I personally owned. And in 2017, I had it set up. I hired the team, the current team, and I doubled this team that month because it's just easier to recruit employees versus contractors. And that was my catalyst from that moment until today we have well over 40,000 active paying users on the platform. There's 40 people on our team now. We went remote about five years ago, but really exciting and the beautiful part of the story is what happened in 2020. So I'll close there and we can go deeper into. Yeah, dude, it's good. You don't need, you don't need my input, man. This is your story. And, and I actually, I actually love how this stuff tailed into what you're doing right now with 10x. Because most people at this point, they would have at least taken a couple months off, but you just jumped right into it. So walk me through, walk me through what's happening with 10x and why you're even doing what you're doing now because 40,000 subscribers users, that's enough to retire. Most people, you probably could have exited that multiple times over. So what's what's happening with into it now and why did you want to do something else? Yeah. So it was actually, it was April of 2020. I woke up one day and I realized I'm officially obsolete. It's into it. Like it was awesome. Right. That should be every entrepreneur's dream. Just, you know, it's like, become not needed. Right. So that was me. I just want to become obsolete, even even that story, like a lot. Yeah. So I, what I did was I realized I was obsolete, but I wasn't sure if my team realized I was obsolete. I still felt like they thought that they needed me. So I'm like, let me make a declaration right now. So that they, they recognize that they don't need me. So I set up a meeting on Zoom with my top four people that have been with me pretty much since the beginning. And when they got on to the Zoom, they were all there and I said, I have an offer you can't refuse. They were excited because I'm a maniac and I do crazy things and I've done things like this before. And I held up four stock certificates and they went nuts. They were like, oh my gosh. Like, what does it take for us to get this? And I'm like, that's the wrong question. Like, I've already assigned them to you. The right question is, what does it take for you to keep them? So I'm going to answer that question for you when it takes us for you to keep me obsolete. And as long as you do, like the moment we know that I'm officially obsolete your eyes, because I know I'm obsolete in my eyes, but I'm obviously in your eyes is when it fully vast. I did it. It took about 45 days and they just phased me out of everything, like from promotional, from biz dev relationship capital, they just phased me out at this point. I spent 10 minutes a month and it's really just to say hi to everybody. We have one big team meeting a month. I jump on. I say hi. This is like my original entrepreneurial family and then I let them run the show. And for the first time in a decade, I had a completely clean canvas. I have young children, as you know, very happily married. Our life is pretty set because Cindy, it has provided for us very well. And I was at this really unique moment where I realized, like, I can do anything right now. But what should I actually do? And I just felt this calling that this was my moonshot time. This was the time to do something that would shake the world up or I'd go down trying, but this was my moment. And as I was thinking that way, but what you can't force a moonshot, like, what is my moonshot, we all have a moonshot, what is my moonshot. And I realized my moonshot is to do what I just did with Cindy, but 10,000 more times by 2031. Now that's ridiculous. 10,000 of anything is absurd. But that's what a moonshot is, right? Like it should make you sweat. It should make you feel like in moments that you're like paralyzed and other moments later, you're like wildly enthusiastic. So that was my moonshot. So I called up money and I was still my CTO, it's into it and I said, money, I have something I'm going to do with or without you, but I would like you to do it with me. And what that is is I want to launch 10,000 tech companies in 10 years. Are you in? And as exact words were, I'm in because it's you, but Jared, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. So I said, okay, let me let me explain. We're going to launch a tech incubator, but this is going to be more than any other incubator or accelerator where typically you're getting a very small investment and then some mentorship and connections. That's awesome. That's just not what this is. This is a place for people to come with their ideas, their tech ideas, whether those ideas are written on a napkin or maybe they're in a pitch deck or maybe there's a minimum viable product or even a cash flowing tech company that has plateaued and they're going to come to us and pitch us on it. And when they pitch us on it, there's four criteria that we look for. The first is, is it the right person will be by that? Are there values aligned with our values? Are they the right person to even do this like to bring this solution to the world? The second is the right idea. So is the idea technologically viable within a realistic time frame because everything's viable, but is it like a realistic timeframe? Is that like a seven year thing or like a 90 to 120 day thing to at least our test in the market? And does this solve a big enough problem in the world? The third is the right market. So what we mean by that is this whole concept of red ocean and blue ocean. Red ocean means highly competitive and blue ocean means there's nothing in sight neither are positive though. The red ocean is very expensive because you're competing against a lot of noise and the blue ocean is very expensive because you're actually having to pay to educate the world on why they need this solution. We look for the pink ocean where there's there's someone or something doing this already. They're just not doing it optimally, but they've already taken the time to educate the world or the industry. And the fourth criteria is the right business model. Can we launch scale and begin to cash flow or go for an exit pretty quickly. So right person, right idea, right market, right business model. And if all of that is validated positively, we will co-found a company with this person will both take equity in the company. So our values are just completely aligned. And then we build the entire company at cost, software development, go to market sales, customer support, legal fundraising, financing, like we build companies, we don't build products. We build the entire company at cost at about 99% of the minimum viable product cost is in India at cost and a company that we own. So it's not like random people that were just like finding on upwork or five or like these are our employees that we've recruited from Amazon, Facebook and Uber and other big software development firms that have gone through our training. These are really qualified people on our team. So Monty said, Jar, we have to do this. So we opened up our portfolio in June of 2020. And over the past 15 plus months, we've had 8,500 people apply to work with the same number. It's a same number. So of the 8,500 about 5% had a chance to present their idea to us. So we saw something in their application that really pulled us and felt there was something there. And of the hundreds of people that had like a sharp tank moment with us where they pitched us, we've said yes to about 70 tech companies. Now it's actually more we had 22 more companies joined us in the past week. We might have been counting those because those have it really got into motion yet. But 70 companies in one year, here's what I want to make sure everyone hears we are not playing law of averages. This is not a game where we're like, if we launch enough, we'll get one or two winners and those one or two winners will make the whole thing worth it. When we're saying yes, it's because we see an opportunity to build skill and sell this company within a realistic time frame. We're saying no 99.5% of the time because we just don't see that when we're saying yes, we see a clear path forward. We're also extremely vertically integrated, which is one of the ways that we're able to build this foundation of predictability. We launched our angel investor network about a year ago, which has been really successful, very helpful to provide those seed investments into these companies. We launched our own crowdfunding platform, a revenue-based crowdfunding platform to test and validate ideas to ensure there's something there and even to pre-sell too. We launched this initiative called Young Entrepreneur Movement, which is our force for good. It's a curriculum for young people to go through where they learn how to become a tech entrepreneur when they finish, they have a path to pitch us. If it's a great idea and a right person and the right market and the right business model, we'll co-found with them. We have two 17-year-old founders now and a 19-year-old co-founder. It's working well, but here's where the story gets extra interesting. As we were growing and scaling, we were introduced to Grant Cardone. For those who don't know who Grant Cardone is, he runs almost a $3 billion real estate fund. I would say he's probably the influencer of the influencers because he actually has done it. He's very financially successful, but his following is tens of millions of people. He was on a TV show on Discovery Channel called The Undercover Billionaire, where they took four billionaires. They put them in random cities around the US. They stripped them of their identity completely in the game, a hundred bucks. They said, you have 90 days to turn this $100 into a million dollars. The other three failed and he succeeded. He didn't just succeed. That $100 became $5.5 million dollars in 90 days. He is an extraordinary promoter, go to marketer, business developer, salesman, and I've now learned human too. We were introduced to one another and he wanted to just understand who's this maniac around this 10,000 tech companies in 10 years. That's where everybody thinks he's crazy or he's onto something, but regardless, I get a lot of attention. He invited me to come out to the office just to meet with him. When I was going to the office, I wasn't going to do a deal. That wasn't even on my mind. What I was going to was to understand who is this man. I didn't know him personally. I know him the way that tens of millions of people know him by watching his content, going to his events. But why do his daughters have a sparkle in their eye when they look at their father? Why does his wife Elena look at him with such admiration? Why do people that I know that work with him on his team say that he's changed their life? Who is that? Because that's, I don't know. You wouldn't know unless you got close to him. So I went into this meeting and before we talked any business, we talked values. I think more than ever, value alignment is essential, especially if you're going to get married. And a business partnership is as real of a marriage as a personal marriage is. So we got talking about our values and things that we care about with regard to our children and freedom. And very quickly we realized there is definitely something here. Like this is one of those like catalytic relationships. Something here that's just going to shake up the world. And I said to him, like, Grant, what you've done in real estate is absolutely extraordinary. At the same time, it's cute. And he's like, cute. We have a $3 billion real estate fund. That's more than cute. I'm like, no, it's cute. I'm going to explain to you why when you have a million dollar cash flowing property in real estate, you have a million dollar cash flowing property in real estate. When you have a million dollar cash flowing tech company, you have a $25 million dollar value tech company. It's just, it's a different world. And what you've done in real estate, I don't know anyone that's done it, like it's extraordinary. But if you were to deploy some of that energy into tech with that limitless scale for both impact and economics, dude, like it's legend, like it's just legend. And I know what we do. Like there's no company in the world that can take a napkin literally like a napkin. There's no ketchup on the napkin that has an idea and contort and ideate around it and turn that into an actual product and get it funded and then build it. And then do the go to market and the branding and the storytelling and the customer's important. The sales, like no one can do that the way that we can do it. That I'm certain of. And I'm equally a certain that no one can promote the way that you can. And in that moment, he said, stop. He goes, do you see that chair sitting in right now, Jared? I said, yeah, he said that chair costs $100,000 per hour. Somebody wants to meet with me. We sell them a seat to sit at this table with me. It's $100,000 and it's their hour. They can do anything they can ask for personal advice. They can ask for a business advice. They can pitch me and they often come and pitch me. And I've never done a deal with anyone that paid $100,000 to sit in that chair to pitch me. The deals didn't make sense. And I know you didn't pay a hundred grand. And I know you're not pitching me. But what I'm going to do is put my hand down and I want to do a deal with you. I want to do this together. And in that moment, we shook hands and that was the birth of 10x incubator. I want to make sure everybody that's watching or listening to us understands what just happened. We are completely democratizing the tech industry. We're giving every day people an opportunity to become tech entrepreneurs because that's been my thesis for years. Everyone, regardless of age, regardless of skill, regardless of where you've come from, should step into the space of tech. If you see an inefficiency in the world, most likely the solution is some type of tech product. But if you don't give yourself the permission to think that way, because you're not smart enough, or you don't have that skill set or you've come from nothing, then guess what? The problem persists. Silicon Valley is cool and it's also really pretentious. It has this like barrier around it that only lets certain people in, graduating from top business schools, incredible resumes, connections. Most people have no shot to even step on the turf of the valley. What we're doing is making the valley everywhere. We have founders in Austria, we have founders in the UK, we have founders in New Zealand, we have founders in Canada, we have founders all throughout the country from small towns because there are no geographical boundaries to a freaking great idea. And what's happened is Silicon Valley is all over me now. Because of what I said before, he's crazy or he's on to something. He's crazy or he's on something, we just want to watch. Like if he's in a crash and burn, we want to watch. And if he's going to freaking blow up, we want to know so that we can buy the companies when they're ready to be bought. I share this because maybe right now you're listening to this because the universe had us collide. The same way the universe had me collide with money. Because if money moved anywhere other than my street, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Because I wouldn't matter. But he walked out his door and that's where my building was. Like we had to meet. Like it was just completely meant to be the same reason that you're listening to this right now. Because I know there's a tech idea inside. And I just want you to have the courage to present it to our team so that we can see if we can call founder company together. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode athletic greens. Now I'm super happy that I partnered with athletic greens because I literally use them every single day. Now I've known about athletic greens for a little bit only because I tried them about two years ago, way before they decided to sponsor the show. And I noticed that in winters when I didn't take athletic greens, I would get sick as a dog. When I did take athletic greens, I wouldn't get sick at all. So it turns out that when you take one scoop of athletic greens, you're taking an absorbing 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, whole food sourced, super foods, probiotics, and adaptogens. So this is incredible for your immune system and the special blend of all of these ingredient supports your gut health, your nervous system, your immune system, your energy, your recovery, your focus, your aging. Take it one scoop every single morning. It's lifestyle friendly, meaning whether or not you eat keto, paleo, vegan, dairy, if you're gluten free, it's going to fit that diet, which is important for me because sometimes I like to go a little bit low carb. If you're already taking a multivitamin, this can completely replace that. It's important to choose a high quality vitamin with ingredients that your body will actually absorb. Athletic greens definitely takes care of that. And it's way cheaper than actually getting all the different vitamins, supplements, ingredients if you're going to buy them separately. To make it easy, athletic greens is giving you a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athletic greens dot com slash success. That's right. That's a special URL they put together just for success story podcast listeners. Again, that is athletic greens dot com slash success to take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Awesome man. I love it. And I and I recognize all the things that you're fixing in startup land because there's so much broken in traditional Silicon Valley venture capital incubators because that law of averages that you said you're not playing is what everyone else is playing. And that's why people don't have a shot because I am a firm believer that if you are if you as a founder are the right person and my right person. I mean, you're willing to try things, you're willing to fail, you're willing to ideate iterate all of that stuff. Anybody can be a founder, anybody can make a product successful as long as they're willing to put in the effort, the grit, the perseverance and tenacity. Now, the issue with Silicon Valley is that they play the law of averages, right? So it's you will invest in 10 companies and they only expect one to hit because they'll make their 10 X or their 100 X or the 1000 X on that one unicorn. Everything else fails no problem, but that's not conducive to really unlocking what most entrepreneurs want, which is not a billion dollar IPO. It's just building something that they can call their own that can support them. And I think that I've said this before most people don't when they get into tech because of the way traditional Silicon Valley and tech and startup has been structured or positioned. They think that they should be aiming for the next Facebook, which is great. You can try that, but you don't have to do that. Most people don't even want to do that. And if they had that, they would be like stressed the hell out and they wouldn't want that. You can exit, you can build a, you know, 100,000 500,000 million dollar month of recurring revenue product and exit that at a great valuation and be set for life and not worry about another job. And you can set your family up, you can set your parents up, your kids up, like that can be enough. And I don't know what, you know, where you plan to take some of these companies. But still, if you have the environment where you would be okay partnering with somebody and exiting a company at a 10 or a 50 million dollar valuation, that already is going to be life changing money for a lot of people. So let's speak into that. So there's two things. And this stat I'm going to make up 98% of the people that are looking to raise money should be looking for a team because money will follow the right team. And you right now that you have an idea, you're like, I just need money. You definitely don't need money. Like you need the right team to build infrastructure and the money will follow. But to your point on where are we taking these companies? So one of the things that I do is exercise is with our team. And we have a huge team now hundreds of people through India, the US, where I'm setting up three new companies wanting to create Pakistan and Bangladesh. There's incredible town out there. I want to give people a chance they've never had before, like the most invigorating career path where we're combining the stability of employment with the upside of entrepreneurship. And that's what this is for our team. But I create unnecessary levels of sense of urgency unnecessary like radical layers of sense of urgency because what it does is it is it forces execution and forces action. I believe everybody, even the most disciplined people, they are conditioned to be complacent. So when you create an environment where urgency is just like the norm like in your hearts like always racing. It's like, oh my gosh, like time is ticking. Like it actually leads to better decision making. I'm happy to have anybody challenged me. I just know it works for our team. So here's what we do when we launch a product. There is an 18 month window from the day the minimum viable product goes live. There's an 18 month window into the world's going to add and we want to make sure that all of our hard work is going to lead to a check because why are we going to work so hard otherwise, right? Like, listen, yes, I am about impact. Money is not my main motivation, but I'm not putting an effort to not make money like that has to be there has to be there. 18 months to build enough valuation for the world comes to an end. So someone or something writes us a check. Now here's the reality outside of my insane level of urgency that I create with every company is we might say no to the check. Now we also know the world's not ending, but that way of operating it forces action. Most people will not just second guess something though like 19 guess something to make one decision in those 19 guesses we've made 19 decisions. And that is just a wedge that you just can't catch up. So the beauty of all as a grant and I spoke about this and I said this time I said, I have failed way more than I've succeeded, but no one never knows because I just keep on keeping on like that. I don't stop. So they don't even know like like, oh, that didn't work because like I already made another decision. And the next one works. So that just overshadowed the other that layer of urgency is what's so key for you as an entrepreneur because here's the reality. At 18 months, we're still a startup, but in 18 months and one day we might need to start building like a new layer of infrastructure. And what I know I don't want to do and won't do is hire 10,000 CEOs and 10,000 CEOs like that's not what this looks like, but guess what Amazon LinkedIn, Facebook, Zendesk, Zoho, those companies, they're never taking a napkin like ever that's just not the world they're in. They're not going to make the first book. They want to make the last book. So what I want to do is make the first book have an exit at the 18 month or the 24 month mark, whenever it makes sense, take the cash off the table and still retain 10 to 15% ownership in the company, but let them build the infrastructure. We still go on the ride. We still do biz dev. We promote like we do the things that they're never going to do as well as we're going to do for the individual company and they go for the multi hundred millions of billion dollar exit. So we still go on the ride, but now we can circulate the team back in to start working on some of the new napkins that get presented to us. That's the model. And for you, every one of you that have an idea that should be the outcome. Like none of you should be like, I'm going to build an X Amazon. Like you don't want to build an X Amazon. You want to build like 47 companies and Amazon buys like that's what you actually want that quality of life is off the breaking charts at a certain point. It is not as fun as it once was. We're here to make the first book, let them make the last book. We can go on the ride with them to make some of those last books. I'll tell you one thing too. You're you're talking about getting a major win for the founding team in the CEO, but sometimes and I've seen this quite often when I've worked with startups at later stages. The first thing they'll do is they'll take they'll get rid of the CEO or the founding team and just clean slate and then and then grow it from there. So I think that this is a smart way to do it. Now I want to unpack because you said you had four, you had four things. So right person right idea, right market, right business model. I want to dive into those for somebody who wants to start something they're going to be like, well, how do I become the right person. So how do we can also do right idea, right market, right business model. So how do you how do you make a great entrepreneur? What's the mindset you should be? So we actually have had a number of situations where when people are going through the process with us, their idea is like mediocre, but they're so right. And we still move forward because we know that we can make like with an extraordinary person, we can make a mediocre idea extraordinary. We've also at the opposite Scott where we've had these like freaking home run ideas, but like kind of mediocre people and we're like, I don't know how to make a mediocre person great like that. I don't know how to do. So they need to get there and then we can start having a conversation, but what we look forward to this and we've now done this now for enough time to know exactly what we need in our idea co founder. We need a voice for the company. We need someone that can handle the spotlight. Grant Cardone is an extraordinary promoter, like what he's able to do from a promotional perspective is like on day, zero, you're like on your seven, like from just like exposure and relationship. It's really it's it's it's just it's magical to see and I'm not that bad myself too. So the combination of us means that we're going to shine like the mood on you and you're going to have this like spotlight and you have to just handle it. Like you have to handle the fact that you're going to get tons of press, you're going to get invited to be on podcast that would never have reached out to you. You need to handle the meetings are going to be set up with your ideal candidates to structure joint ventures. You need a handle going to one of the events that we host and there's a thousand people or 10,000 people there and we decide last minute to call you up and you're pitching like you need to handle the spotlight. And if that makes you queasy, we might still work with you as long as you're willing to learn because that's a very important skill or we have to find somebody else to partner with you to be in that seat because what we can't do is follow ourselves like we can't shine the mood on ourselves. We have to shine on somebody else and this is everything like when we go and we fundraise like we're shining the spotlight on you. Like any of the investors they know grants evolve they know I'm involved but they want to know who's like who's the voice. And we want to make sure that we're putting in this effort to shine the spotlight get meetings that most likely would never happen for you on your own and if it would happen you have to have a lot more track record to make it happen. Immediately you just need to show up like you need to show up as someone that they feel that they can trust with their investment because they know they can trust us like they know that's not their issue. They just want to know that you can that's the key you have to handle the spot you have to want it. You have to be willing to learn the other thing too is like we have only of the 70 plus companies I want to say maybe three of them. The idea they came with is actually what we built and those were three like industry technologies so we really didn't know any better like these are things that like we've never experienced like we're building a software for the public adjusting industry. I didn't even know what that was like and now we're building a software for it. So I can't say that like the workflows right or wrong like but the person that we're building it with has been in the industry for 20 plus years and he's really successful in the industry so. Besides those like three business tech products that we just would not have enough knowledge truly influence besides like the user experience where we had a lot of say everything else has been an ideation process and some of them. What they came with is what we're building is so radically different that you couldn't even notice anymore so outside handling the spotlight it's opening your mind. So the fact that you might be right with your idea you might not be the same way that we might not be right or we might be like it's the same concept we have to I need. And we will not write one line of code until we are crystal clear on what is the minimum viable product and what is the economic model and if we're not clear on these we will not progress because that's where you start burning through capital software development firms they're going to start the moment you write them a check because they don't care. Like they don't care they don't care about lack of clarity makes them more money like they they they like people that aren't clear because as a result like they're going to keep on building and then over time like you're not clear so you're going to get clear one day and they're not clear the next and they're just Cody and Cody and Cody and all of a sudden. What you thought was going to be 750,000 dollars ends up being two years and two million dollars and then you have to scrap the whole part which is my story right so like that's the difference we're partners and one of the thing too. We have people that come to us and they try to compare like what we're doing to incubators because there's a lot of incubators out there and the other day I was talking to this young entrepreneur and he was like yeah I'm just deciding between what you're doing at 10x and and there's this FinTech incubator that that is interested in me to give it off. If I'm interested I'm like cool like what are they going to offer you and so they're going to offer me a little bit of money tell me validate the idea and a few connections and some mentorship over the six month experience working with them. I mean that's cool Mike I have a question on year six when you decide to sell your FinTech part of QuickBooks are they going to sit in the meeting to negotiate the deal and they're like no no it's just this six month experience Mike okay cool Mike and in year three when you realize like you have to kind of reengineer some of the software to scale like are they going to be sitting in those meetings. I'm going to be sitting in those meetings with you and deploying resources to like reengineer that software goes no Jared I told you it's just this six month thing I'm like here's a difference the word incubator is the wrong word for us like we're not an incubator it should be called 10x co-foundership because we're co-founders and we go from the day zero when we start until we sell that company like we are on that journey. So like when we need to like reengineer something because we we guest wrong collectively or we just need to in order to scale further or we got a great recommendation for like a new feature like that's us with you right when we're going to sell the company and 18 months or 24 months or in five years and we're going to negotiate the optimal outcome. We're in it like when you get sued because like someone's going to see it like it's just going to happen like we're in it like we're in it and that's a distinction to build a tech company on an island by yourself and think that a software development firm is going to be there to help with all these major guarantee milestones or that the incubator who's going to help you validate a concept is going to be there on the journey with you they're just not the only thing that will be on the journey with you is co-foundership so either you need to go out and build your own team which is very time consuming very expensive and I'm going to say very risky because you don't know what you don't know so you hire this this wonderful CTO who's a really good engineer but the dude can't or do that can't lead so you have just a really good engineer that can't build the team around them and there's no way you're going to reach your optimal potential. So that's the difference. It is co-foundership and that's the non-negotiable. No one can come to us with an idea and be a cake. You just build it for me and I'll run with it. That's not what we do. Like go go find an incubator go do a software development firm. We are co-founders in the trenches from day zero until we sell that thing. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode feedback loop. Now if you're a product person entrepreneur startup guy like me you have at some point in your career try to take a product to market you've tried to come up with a new idea and it's fell flat. It's ultimately failed 85 to 90% of all new products of all new startup ideas fail. Why is this basically it is really hard really expensive and really time consuming to validate product market fit with your potential consumers. Old-style market research is way too slow to complicated to time consuming for dynamic fast moving teams and want to build great stuff. But what if you could test out your idea your product with your target consumers whenever you want before you invest in the money time energy effort that it takes to actually develop a product. Well that's what startups all the way through to four to five hundred are using feedback loop for you get quality feedback from your target customers early and often feedback loop is the test before you invest product research platform. It has built in expert templates for concept testing user discovery prioritizing features on your roadmap and much more you can create your own test in minutes and get quality insights from your target consumers and hours. They set up a special link for everybody who's a success story podcast listener to test it out to try it go to go dot feedback loop dot com slash success you get three free tests that's go dot feedback loop dot com slash success you can try it out for free you get three free tests. So if you want your next product idea or feature to be a hit test before you invest build based on data not opinion and launch with confidence with feedback loop check it out right now. And also you know it's always better to have part of something as opposed to all of nothing right so do you find you get pushback on that from founders I'm just curious if they founders that are like like rookies like they don't know they haven't had enough bruises like we have right. I would do anything right now for someone to understand me I think about when I went down the path and I pivoted from agency to building the product I had a big team on the agency but there was no team on building the product was the software development firm. It was the darkest and loneliest time of my life I'm really health conscious like exceptionally like all organic foods and exercise and meditation and I didn't lose any of that during that time because that's my foundation but I was in a really dark place in my mind like it was so lonely I had no one I could go to I was writing six figure checks every month like I could never talk to my parents about it like I was like 26 years old like they would have been freaking out like I just started this new relationship who was now my wife but definitely want to bring her into the drama like who did I talk to and there wasn't like this like kind of like tech community that exists today like I even know where to go so I was just in this dark space I felt like I was being taken advantage but I wasn't exactly sure listen I don't want that for anyone that has an idea that's the one thing like the entire process is fun like there's positive pressure because like we're doing something with you that has never been number four right we're building your tech idea so there's positive pressure but there's never those like oh crap no it's like ever ever ever because like we're getting the needs with you like we help navigate it like what a bug shows up in the software because it's going to you don't even know about it because why do you need to know about it your co-founder has got it like we got it like we fixed the bug it's done like you don't even know that you know there's a bug you don't see the handle of spotlight how we do insulate our founders that that's what they're focused on just handle the spotlight create the opportunities with us handle the opportunities that we create for you and let's build scale and sell this company and actually the one thing that you are avoiding is the is the dark side of entrepreneurship all the all the mental health issues that come with founding a company that people don't expect unless they've done it before that that isolation is tough man that isolation is very tough you just spoke to it that's a great thing that you're taking away from founders because that's something that I don't think a lot of people know about if they never found a company before or is really discussed it's the it's the isolation loneliness the mental health issues that come with starting company on your own yeah it's dark yeah it's tech tech is even more like any entrepreneur is crazy like tech entrepreneurship is freaking crazy too much there's too many pieces as a non technical founder is too many pieces to keep track of okay let's keep going down this let's keep going down this this list okay so you have the right person that's what the right person is that's how you work with people right idea what's the right idea so it's technologically viable in a realistic time frame so what that means is we're not going to build a rocket ship like we're just not going to do it it takes too long it's too capital intensive what we look to do is have some product a minimum viable product that we can launch in 90 to 120 days from the first line of code so we're really intense about that and we don't see a path to get there the most will do is six months but after that we're guessing burning through money so it needs to be realistic time frame like we've been pitched on tech ideas that are awesome but require 150 people for three years until they're going to see the light of day like we just it's just that's just not our game like that's just not what we want to focus on and the next thing is is there a big enough problem to solve like there's a lot of problems in the world and some of them just have to be swept under the rug and just forget about it like you're not going to do tech company to solve that little piece of dust right so that's that those are the key things and part of this is exercises we have we have people that have ideas do product market fit exercises we have this exercise called problem stacking where you have to identify your ideal user and then you have to interview them to find out what are the problems that exist in their life and then see what what what should the problems are you solving are you solving problem number 74 on their list or are you solving problem one or two because like those are those are very different things we do all of these exercises with people have ideas, to help them get there and then once they're there and they present to us like we then are able to make a decision on that so that's that's how we define the right idea can you can you unpack the exercise that you do for product market fit for somebody's listening who who wants to figure out if they have PMAF yeah so it's actually this question here and it's really cool like people love it A lot of it has to do with defining your avatar. So like, who is the absolute ideal end user for this? And then once you define it, what makes them the ideal end user? So it's characteristics like one of their hobbies, one of their interests, one of their aspirations, one of their goals, one of their pains, there's all these questions. You actually write a story of your end user. Like you literally write the story above. And like, Bob is your absolute ideal user. And then you have to go out and find Bob's. Like people that represent that. And then you literally say, hey, Bob, I'm going to read a story. Tell me if you can identify with this. And you literally read the story that we just helped you create. And then you say, and now this is the product that I'm going to give you. And I want to see if your story changes. And then you literally look for the physiological changes and like the feeling of engagement. And we actually ask them to record these sessions. So that's how we do it. It's literally through storytelling. Amazing. OK. And then the next piece, actually, this is sort of bordering into it. So that's right idea. But that's also somewhat dovetailing into right market. So right market, you mentioned it before. It's not red ocean. It's not blue ocean. It's pink ocean. Yeah. And nobody's just expensive. Red ocean, like you're going to just have to outspend everybody else. And for anyone that's started before you, they have something that you don't have, which is a bigger budget. So that's expensive. And when there's no competition, that means the world might not even know it's a problem. So now you have to educate them on, hey, you have this problem. You have this problem. And that's just expensive. You're just spending a lot of time educating. So we like when someone else has done the education, but it's not this bloody ocean of just businesses fighting for territory. So we call it the pink ocean. That's us as the perfect ocean. And usually with this too, usually what makes it pink is that there's another dominant player that's in the space. And they have raised many rounds of capital. They have deep pockets, but they're kind of like the Titanic now. They can't innovate. They can't iterate. They're not agile. So we love that. Because we'll fill the white space that they're not filling, start to take some territory, at least get attention. And they have pockets to buy stuff. So those are usually pretty interesting, because we can kind of predict the exit just because we know there's someone there that can't. That's smart, very smart. And then the last piece is right business model. So is that like a recurring revenue product? Is that enterprise sales? Like what does right business model mean? So we will bet on non cash flowing tech companies, if the founders are pre-revenue or revenue. Well, they're all that. But we'll even bet on someone that has an idea that they can't monetize. One that's more of a data user play, like Twitch. Twitch for video streaming. They didn't make any money. So that became a fundraising game. They raised $39 million just to literally buy time. And then Amazon ended up buying them for $920 million. So we're not against that. It just requires a certain type of co-founder that we can really shine a spotlight on. They need to be able to sell and raise capital. Because that's what the game is. That they've literally just sell the vision, sell the vision. So if that's not the seal set of the person, we won't take on the deal. But we will take on deals that are SaaS-based. So we're curing revenue model-based enterprise-level sales things that we can cash though. So ideally, we want to become cash flow positive by day 90 post launch at the latest. And we really want to do it in the first month. And that sounds like crazy. Because there's companies that don't cash flow positive for years. Our costs are so low though. Like the operating expenses of running these companies are just so low that we don't need a lot to happen to become cash flow positive. And then when we're cash flow positive, we can really do it up round. Because most don't even get there. So that's where if we raise $250,000 of seed capital just to build the MVP and have some runway. And we get cash flow positive quickly. That gets everyone's attention. We then do it up round where we raise $5 million or whatever is relevant at a significantly greater valuation. So everybody's happy that we just went up in valuation so quickly. Now we have resources that just double down. And then we go for that exit on the 18th month. So that's like the trajectory of how this works. Gotcha. So this is how you grade the companies. And I'm also curious from a founder perspective, when should they go all in on the startup? Because maybe they don't have, well, actually I'll ask you, when should a founder go all in? Should they quit their job and work with you day one? Is just a side hustle thing until your cash flow positive? Are you cutting them a check so that they can quit their job or should they have six months of saving saved up? I'll give it up. We don't like when they quit. It creates unnecessary pressure. Like we actually have had a few founders where I said, if you don't find some way to make money, even if you're a strong mover, we have to pause. Because you are creating so much pressure while we're trying to build the product. And that's unnecessary pressure. Like I like this like false sense of pressure, which is the world's going to end in 18 months. We know that's not actually happening, but like that's a real pressure, which is like, I have kids and I can't put food on the table. Like I don't want that. But that's that you're now putting that on me and like where do you make that decision as a result of that? So I like when they have some, either they have their, they're not they can like live off of and they're good until we can cash for this. Or they tell us from the start that when we raise money, we need to incorporate salary, that's fine. It's like the surprises when they're like, oh, like I, by the way, I can't get enough money. Well, guess what? We didn't raise for you to get the tank, right? So it has to be open communication. I like when initially, like especially when we're building the product that this become nights and weekends for them. I think it's a really healthy thing. Let them just stay where they are, have that stability and then also on the nights and weekends where that's when they're doing business stuff. Like that's when we're setting up meetings. They're just happy to accommodate. That's when they're on their lunch break at work, like they're doing sales calls, like just find a way. It's not a long time. It's 90 to 120 days. We launch it, cashflow, then it's a different story. I just like, I've had multiple times where I'm like, listen, if you don't get a job, if you don't drive a Uber, I'm telling you we're putting a pause on this because I don't want to deal with your personal issues that you're bringing into this company. And we've done it, like I'm firm on that. Like if you can't put food on your table and you're relying on this to do it, this is not going to do it if you didn't tell us from the start that you needed to. So like we have to now go and raise more money, which is impossible because like we're in between these rounds so we didn't plan for it. We look so irresponsible. So I'm going to pause this like, let's not burn any investor money. Let's tell the investors where we're calibrating. People get a freaking job. And then when you get a job, you get a paycheck, then let's come back and start again. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot. Now the new year might have you thinking ahead to what you want out of your career. So when you think about your success story, what do you actually picture? Is it retiring early with a beautiful view of the skyline? Is it leaving a legacy with your name on it or maybe it's helping influence and change some of the world's most pressing issues? Whatever it is, writing your success story starts by working smart. Because when you work smart, your success story writes itself. A HubSpot CRM platform helps your marketing campaigns work harder and smarter. With intuitive visual workflows and bot builders, you can create scalable automated campaigns across email, social media, web and chat. So your customers hear your messages loud and clear. Are you tired of your content not adapting to mobile, making it difficult for your customers to absorb your message? A HubSpot CRM platform optimizes your content for multiple devices so that you can reach your customers wherever they are, which is just smart. Learn more about how you can transform your customer experience with a HubSpot CRM at HubSpot.com. Very smart, okay. And then the last thing that I wanted to pull out from you because you're working with all these early stage founders. So now you hit your MVP in, you said 90 days, which is 90 days, yeah. 90, okay, 90, 120. Now that is a viable product for the market. You're gonna start selling that right after 90, 120 days, okay. How do you get your first 50 customers with that product? Yeah, relationship capital. So we really get intentional. I don't like Mark Zuckerberg. So the last thing that I wanna do is get Mark Zuckerberg money. I'd rather have strategic relationships that I care about, get cash. So we get really intense with relationship capital. We do an exercise at every founder who's your power 100. These are your 100 ideal relationships. Some you know, some are one degree away. Some are many degrees away. Let's move the one degree isn't to the one of those you know. Let's move the many degrees to one degree. Like let's just keep on comping relationships relationships. We also do biz dev from day zero. Every company we launch a podcast with. Now they have a reason to go out and start building a relationship capital because they're inviting people onto their podcast. It's not a bait and switch. They are creating content that's gonna be really valuable for that person and for our co-founder. But then those are relationships that really care about what we're building together. Amazing, okay. I wanna ask some rapid fire. We've hit a ton of points. And I think we've really unpacked what you're doing and some just great lessons for entrepreneurs. So I wanna unpack some more rapid fire career questions from you that I deal with everybody. Before I pivot though, any other last thoughts, lessons, things to think about if you're an entrepreneur listening to this episode, what should I be thinking about tomorrow if I wanna get my idea and get in front of you or even just take my idea step further before I get in front of you? Get off the fence. That's it. I mean like to me, what frustrates me more than anything is what someone's like, I've been thinking about this for six years. I'm like, what have you been thinking about for six years? Sorry, what do you mean? Like, stop thinking. The majority of the greatest ideas in the world will end up in the graveyard with you. And I don't want that to happen. Like to me, I wanna be the one that is the first on the journey to hear that idea, like our company. I want you when you don't feel ready to pitch us. Like that's what I want. Because otherwise, you're not gonna pitch anyone. There's no one's gonna give you the time of day. Like there's no venture capital for me to be the time of day. There's no investor, there's no one. I was in a software development firm who just wants your money and that's not a need to be pitching your idea to. So that's what that's my, that's the one thing I'm gonna say is get off the fence right now and pitch your idea. Pitch it to us. It's a safe space. At the very least, you're gonna learn about what's not right in it. And at the most, you're gonna become a company with us and we're gonna co-found with you myself, rank our down to the entire 10XNGB team. Amazing. And then drop some socials, some websites. So you, 10XNGBator, where can they meet you online? Socials and then the websites that you don't have to get more at. Every platform, Jared Yellen, like I'm yelling at you just with no G. So J-A-R-B-D-Y-E-L-L-I-N. You go to JaredYellen.com. We produce a ton of content there. And head over 10 like the number 10XNGBator.com and get off the fence, smitch your idea. Can't wait to hear it, can't wait to potentially co-found with you at the very least. I can't wait to help you see what you don't see within your idea so that one of your next ideas is the one we move forward with. Awesome, man. Okay, so a couple of our fire questions. A biggest challenge that you've had in your career or personal life, how did you overcome it? So the biggest challenge I've had in my career was when I was pivoting from agency to software company, I ran a money because I didn't want to renew the agency clients. They were like year long contracts and I just fell out of integrity to renew when I knew I wasn't gonna do anymore. And I completely ran out of money. My accountant said, listen, you can't make payroll unless we need to have a big team. I'm like, what is somebody doing that can't make payroll? And he said, they fire people. I'm like, well, I can't do that. So I decided in 48 hours, I said, I'm going to create a four week bootcamp to teach small business owners how to build an annual marketing plan. And I didn't create anything. I just created a sales page for it. And in 72 hours from there, I had a thousand businesses pay $497. So I made 500 grand. And that literally just bought me time until I launched the product. And that was a really challenging moment as an entrepreneur. That's stressful, man. And that is super, those are those nights when you're like, as a solo entrepreneur, you're like, man, holy shit, who's gone to job. That's tough, that's tough. All right, what is one unpopular opinion you have about startups? My unpopular opinion about startups is, that's a great question. Well, I mean, goes down the path of tech. So I believe that software development firms should never touch a startup. I think that they're perfectly fine working with the Coca-Cola's and the Nike's in the world. I think that's the right place for them. But that's an unfavorable opinion for software development firms. I don't think they should touch them. I think that every time someone pitches them, they should just introduce them to us. We'll get there's some equity in the deal. And everybody's going to win because that startup is never going to pay their invoices. And now there's going to be accounts receivables for the software development firm. And then there's going to be a really frustrated fan that doesn't get what they want. So I think software development firms shouldn't be allowed to touch startups. Good. Pick one person in your life has probably been many who's had a huge impact on who you are, who is that person and what did they teach you? My kids, they are by far the most impactful people. I know that they're watching and listening to every single thing I do. And I've always been intentional, but I am hyper-intentional about who I am as a leader and as a human. Because I know that they're going to model quite a bit as all of us do. And I want to make sure what they're modeling is something that takes them way beyond that I've even gotten to in my office. But by far, they're the most impactful. Very good. A book or podcast that you've read over your life that you'd recommend people go check out. I think. What book? I've heard a lot of books. I guess I'm going to say Grand's 10x book. I had to really think that that's a book that it's simple. And I think it's simple yet. It has such valuable, digestible action steps that people can take. And I just encourage everybody to read it. That was before I partnered with him. I'm like, this is a book everybody should read. I'm like, this is a book everybody should read. Good. Very good. If you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing, what would it be? You got it. Like you just got it. Like, listen, I come across extremely confident and certain. And I know that. Every other second I'm living in doubt, like every human. And so that's one thing I'd say you got it. And I know I say that to myself in real time. But I would really say you got it. Like you got it. You can do this. And last question. What does success mean to you? Freedom. Absolutely freedom. And it's not just for me. It's for everybody that I have the blessing to touch. It's obviously my family. It's our team. It's our co-founders. It's our end users of our companies. It is freedom. I believe that we are at such a critical time right now that if you don't define what freedom is for you, it will be defined for you. And this is your time to really define that non-negotiable.