Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their successes, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you'd be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal. I'm excited to have with us today Christian Byza, the founder of Learn.xyz that recently raised $3 million in seed funding. Christian, welcome to the show.
Christian Byza: Thanks for having me.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Awesome, great. So a little bit about, about Christian. He's the CEO and co-founder of Learn.xyz, where AI creates addictive learning experiences on any topic in any language. Think Duolingo and Wikipedia meet generative AI. Christian spent the last 10 years at LinkedIn and Adobe before starting Learn.xyz with his best friend last year. They're located in San Francisco and today have a team of seven. So Christian, before we dive in here, talk to us about the journey you took from Germany to Silicon Valley and what led you to come here.
Christian Byza: Yeah sure, I mean actually before I do that, just so for the people that stop right after this because I hear my language or my, my talking, my accent: it's Learn.xyz, not learning. So just for the record that people know out there what our product is. But yeah, how, how did I get here? I always like to tell the story of me being a teacher kid. My parents were teachers, my grandparents were teachers, and so something with education was always close at heart. And so the first company that I actually started with a few other people and friends in Germany like 13 years ago was an education business as well. So we like taught people about online marketing. And that grew into the largest conference in the world in this space. It's called OMR, so for people that are from Germany that know this, know this prob- really well, because it's today a big media company that does lots of things around the learning space. Um, but for me this was always kind of a side project. I always loved to work in tech, but then I had this passion also for education and events and so this was kind of combined.
And I worked for a startup in Germany that got acquired by Adobe. And then after the acquisition they offered me to say, "Hey, do you want to join the headquarter? Do you want to move to San Francisco?" And you know like, like many people that are excited about tech, that sounded almost too good to be true. And so my wife (our back then girlfriend, then wife) and I, we decided um to move to San Francisco. Yeah, 10 years ago. And that's how we got here. I got my green card, then switched to LinkedIn, and then eventually decided to like really do something by, by myself. And, but that's essentially the story of how we moved here and why I'm in San Francisco, not in Germany.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: LinkedIn is a company that's well known, most employees are on the platform. When you went to LinkedIn, what did you do when you got there, and what made you want to join LinkedIn?
Christian Byza: Yeah, it's funny, so actually when they messaged me first... so they messaged me on LinkedIn like most recruiters do, right. My initial instinct was that I don't want to work there because UX and amazing product is something that is really close to heart for me, and I never considered LinkedIn as a place (back then at least uh) where really good product is actually there. Which is funny, because it's a product-led company. And there's a lot of these design that they put into the product now, but back then if you Google like "how LinkedIn used to look like," it was like a really early thing. And so they, in the interview process, they actually showed me like vision mockups of where the product is going. And that actually was one of the main reasons why I said, "Okay, I see this big UX influence and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to get there."
And the other one was the topic that they hired me for. So they wanted to win the German market over. And for you know most people, that's probably not very obvious obvious, but like six, seven years ago, eight years ago, LinkedIn wasn't the social or prof-, professional social network of choice in that market. There was a local competitor that was leading by like miles, and the, the job was essentially to change that. And I'm a very competitive person and so I really liked this opportunity to like take over a market that is somewhat close to heart. And I always, always believed into like an open big social network effect. And, and so I was always confused why there is a social network that would only focus on one country, which doesn't make any sense. Especially these days where it's all about like global markets and you want to not only engage with people of your own uh you know, your, your own heritage, but with kind of everyone. And so that's what we did. We basically built a team to change a lot of things for that German market. We did this for other markets as well later, for, for India and China and Japan. And that was a really cool journey. And then down the line I did other things at LinkedIn as well, but the first few years were focused on that. And that opportunity was just really, really interesting, and so that's when, when and why I joined.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: And were you specifically on the go-to-market team, or what was your...
Christian Byza: No, product. In product management. So I've been a product manager pretty much all my life. I always, I, I wasn't aware that that job title existed, but since high school I was the, the product person. Um and yeah, so they essentially assembled these teams you know like 10 engineers, a product person, a designer. And as I mentioned, LinkedIn is a product-led company. And so you're, are kind of the owner of that country from a product perspective. And then we would work with go-to-market teams, marketing, there was country management from the sales perspective in the market.
But you know, just like a fun anecdote: like, Germans love birthdays for example. And I had to convince uh the, the people here in the US that this is so important. And then we collected everyone's birthday in Germany and that made sessions go like crazy because people suddenly had a daily use case to come to LinkedIn, because in the professional context birthdays are equally important as they are for you know, your mom and dad and aunt and uncle. And, and so those are the features that we did. We did like stuff around premium and birthdays. And we, we fixed a lot of sanitization problems, right. There is a different education system in, in, in Germany, like a dual education system that wasn't covered by the product because it was just focused.
Or actually my other favorite feature was that we supported umlaut search, you know the A U and U and O with the two dots on top. Um 12% of Germans have an umlaut in their last name. And so our search just wouldn't support like finding like Müller. Müller is like the most common name in Germany. Uh and so if your name was Christian Müller for example, you couldn't find yourself. And so people were like, "What is this for a platform? I can't even find myself!" One of the, the biggest wins actually of like that work that we, that we fixed that. And so those are the things that we did um uh yeah, just lots of, lots of like focus on detail to fix the product for that specific market.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I know a lot of leaders in startups and innovators, they have that, a product mindset. They can see an opportunity and they could build products around that to solve problems. Um it's key really I think for leadership's, leadership in a lot of startups. Um talk to us about your company today that you launched, uh Learn.xyz. When you say Duolingo and Wikipedia, those are two platforms that I use and that gets my attention. What is it that you're doing in that space and, and walk us through the problem you're looking to solve.
Christian Byza: Yeah, look it's, it's funny here, we had a little bit of a journey that we didn't start with this, right. Like most startups, they have an idea, they start tinkering around, and then eventually like some, some other opportunity arises. And to ex- or to answer your question, I have to first explain how we got there. Um but, but what I saw when I was looking at working at LinkedIn [was] that everyone was talking about web3 and crypto stuff, but no one really understood what they were talking about. And so since I had built a learning product for online marketing (so I was teaching people about digital marketing in the past), people actually came to me and said, "Hey Christian, you know how to explain things. Why don't you explain crypto and web3 to us and build a product?" And so this is what we actually initially started. We started to build a learning platform just specifically for that vertical learning space for crypto and, and web3. And then obviously this market wasn't as mainstream as we thought when we initially started this almost two years ago. Um we were successful and raised a little seed round, a pre-seed round, we raised a million dollars last January, so like almost two years ago now. And we started to build this product.
And then, and then all those things in crypto happen that happened, right. Like all the scam and the fraud. And also we didn't really like the users that we were building for, because they didn't really come to learn, they came mostly to get free crypto. And so that, that mindset didn't match with what we wanted to do. Um but then there were some users that actually really liked the product and they were also nice, and they said, "Hey, can we also learn other things?" And so we started to create courses on just random things that were out there. Like when, when ChatGPT launched, we created a course on "What is ChatGPT?", "What is a large language model?", "What is quantum computing?", "What are like you know, whatever question comes to mind." We basically wrote a course manually with our hands. We had a content writer, a designer that did all the UX design, the, the, the, the slides. And it was costing us probably like a thousand bucks per course. And we were putting about two courses out a week.
And that's where the problem basically started, where we're like, "How do we scale this, right? And how can we bring more content out?" And we thought, "What if we can create 10 courses a week?" And we started to build this, this tool (which is today the product), but like this tool to create content for us with AI. And we launched the first version of the tool as basically our first prototype to the team, and we typed in "Chinese New Year" um yeah, this year in January, so like 10 months ago. And the course that came out was just so good that we were like, "Holy... like sorry, but like this is not a tool, this is the product." And so at that moment we realized we don't, we don't have to have a content writer anymore, our content writer is there, AI.
So what if we package this up into something that you can you know, learn about pretty much everything you want with the power of AI? And then we started to bring this into a version that actually users can use it. Uh and in, in April we launched the first kind of closed beta, like a couple thousand people in it, like 10,000 users. And they created within 3 months more than 60,000 of these little Curiosities, how we call them. So we don't, we don't say we're a learning platform because it's not about upskilling you or, you know, teaching you how to use Photoshop, those kind of things like what Udemy and these like learning platforms do. It's really about casual education. Like general knowledge about you know, whatever happens in the world out there. Like as, as bad as obviously the things are that are happening right now in Israel and Gaza for example, there [are] a lot of things that people are curious about. "What is actually kibbutz?" or "What is the Gaza Strip?" or "What is the West Bank?" Those are terms that were like really trending in our product because people want to get those insights and want to have them explained.
And then we package this up in a way that it is actually fun. Uh it's, it's, we almost talk about a positive addiction to the product, where we you know, rather than going to Instagram or TikTok and just waste your time and you just doomscroll, you open Learn.xyz every day and then spend your time in a better way and you really feel good about that time that you spend. And that's basically our goal, we say always we're in the business of making you feel good about the time that you spend.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I can tell you that from firsthand experience, you know. Um I've got family, family members that spend a lot of time on their mob-, mobile apps and games and you know, hours go by and there's this guilt that they start to feel...
Christian Byza: Oh yeah, and honestly I mean I have this guilt still a couple of times a week, right. I mean just you know yesterday evening I really wanted to go to bed but then I got trapped into this YouTube Shorts kind of trap and like half an hour later I was like "Oh damn it, this is like another half an hour of sleep that I lost." And that's what we try to do, right? And I'm very much aware that we're not you know, we are not taking everyone away immediately, but at least there is an alternative. And they're millions of users out there that do feel this guilt and they're searching for alternatives. And those are the people that learn languages on Duolingo as you mentioned, right. Like people that spend time on Wikipedia, maybe Reddit, that want to use their time in a better way. And for them we want to have almost like a learning game, like a, like a social experience. And then you like connect with your friends, you see what they are learning, you get inspired. We, we put stuff into our social feed that inspires you to learn new things every day.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: How do you see this as kind of going forward from curiosities that we have as individuals trans-, transitioning to potential businesses or the corporate market? Because I personally believe that Learning and Development is in a lot of ways broken within companies. It's boring, it's monotonous, you have to sit down, do these online trainings or in person. And it may help you, it may not, but ultimately there is a lot of funds being spent yearly on trying to educate and train people within companies. In what way see your platform being able to position in that space? Or is that on the road map? What are your thoughts there?
Christian Byza: It's, it's funny that you touch on this because you're basically talking about our business plan here. Um so this is one of those things that were not clear for us initially when we started. Because we were thinking about this consumer pain point of spending your time in a better way. And then we launched this early prototype and companies came to us and said literally what you just mentioned, right? Like "corporate learning is boring, it's like bad content, it's all old, it's not personalized." And we uh took a lot of these calls with companies. We talked to like one big army, like a Western army, like a navy. Uh they have like 10,000 soldiers (I won't disclose which country), but talked to them. We talked to one of the big-, biggest tax consulting firms in the world, they have 400,000 employees. We talked to some cheese manufacturer, like all kinds of random companies that came to us, one university. And they all came with the same issue. They said, "Hey, we have all this content here. Can you create courses or Curiosities out of this content in your style? So it's fun, it's gamified, it's kind of short-lived, it's you know, engaging, almost addictive, rather than me sitting in front of my computer doing three other things and then also completing this learning path on my second monitor." Right, like that's what's happening with most cybersecurity, sexual harassment, corporate social responsibility... those kind of topics that you have to do. And I used to work at LinkedIn where I had to do these courses right, like they are just so dry!
And that's like what, why we think we were also able to build or raise money, because we want to build not just like a social network here, but we want to attack this corporate learning market. And is to say there's lots of budget that goes towards this, and the beauty is that we have such a better unit economic behind the scenes, right. Because we don't have a human that needs to write all of this content, we have AI that helps. And so we can create courses at a much lower rate compared to what you would pay otherwise. And I think I mentioned the a thousand dollars before right, like that you spend a thousand dollars per course, or we used to. Now when you create a course or a Curiosity on our platform, it costs us somewhere between three and five cents.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow.
Christian Byza: And if you think this for you know companies... they either have their content that they can ingest into our... we have like this desktop experience that we are building now where you upload your PDF document or you have a YouTube video or whatever it is, and then we use our models and our data pipeline to then create like these Curiosities from that specific content. And then these employers can push this to their employee base. And this is something that we are working on right now, which we will get to eventually. Um but yeah, really, really excited that that opportunity exists so that we don't have to sell ads for example. We have this manifest in the company that we don't want to sell ads in our product, because ads lead in my eyes to really bad product decisions. Because then the ad is always the important thing, like that, the click. I, I remember this from the LinkedIn days right, like the ads and the feed, they are so holy. And if people, if you build anything into the screen and distract from the ad, less people click on the ad and you make less money. And so you're not innovating. And so that's why we have this manifest where we say we never want to have ads in our product.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of ads. I know they have their place, but...
Christian Byza: And actually I, I like to buy ads to get new users, but I just don't want to have ads in my product.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I get you. Um when it comes to the, the courses you're talking about, maybe creating content that's something you can learn from. How long does it take? Say I'm a company or say I'm a person, I, I'm curious about you know a topic that's in the news today and I want to learn more about it. What do I do in your app, and how long does it take to create this quiz or this game or this learning?
Christian Byza: Yeah. So most of the times probably someone did this already. So when you type something in, in the typehead it shows up. I mean we launched this app now uh two and a half, three weeks ago, and we are at... actually I don't have that number in my head right now, I only have the download number, but it's like tens of thousands of courses that are in there. And I think we're probably like 70 or 80,000 uh of these little Curiosities. And so because every content exists already... we have, we categorize the content over 1,081 categories by AI. AI actually, it's like a Google model that can categorize content into categories. And, and so either it's instant right. You, you, you want to learn about I don't know, like Big Bang Theory or something, or "what is a black hole", or if you would type in any dinosaur name, probably someone did this with a, with their children already. So you can do that. Or you create a new Curiosity, and then it takes somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds. And, and then you have your personalized course on that topic that you desire to learn about.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: And how long are these courses? Like I think "course", I think of school of, "you know this is a six-month course or this is a 90-day course." Are they little snippets where you kind of go through it in 10 minutes, or...?
Christian Byza: Yeah, that's actually more, and that's why we, I mean we, we started talking about course here, and I try to actually not use that word. Because course or lesson sounds like work, right? Like learning inherently it's kind of a, is, is work. And it seems for most people at least something that they don't want to do. And so that's why we tried to mint this term "Curiosity" in the product, so you create Curiosity. It's the, it's the product for the curious. And who doesn't want to say "I'm curious", right? It's like a very positive word and trait actually. I love this word, even though I have still issues pronouncing it as a German. Like every time I say the word, I was like "cu-ri-os-i-ty", I need to concentrate. Anyways, um so, so the, the time it takes you to, to take one is like less than 5 minutes. But then AI recommends more things to do afterwards, and you can get into this repertoire. So let's say you learn about some French king, then it may recommend like some French castle. And then it like suddenly talks about cheese, and then French cuisine, and then you're in Bordeaux and learn about wine. And you know, you kind of go down this rabbit hole because AI continues to recommend other things to you to learn. And we try to push in existing courses that we already have from the database into these recommendations. You can just click and go, and go, and go, and go. And we see people taking very long rabbit holes and paths in the product.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I want to go back a little bit about the company itself. You launched this with your best friend, you went out and raised capital in a really tough time to raise money. What were some of the lessons you learned? How many times did you pitch? What did it take to close the deal?
Christian Byza: Yeah. Um, it's, it's kind of a... hopefully my lead investor doesn't hear this podcast, but I'm, I'm, I'm brutally honest here. So I think we talked to like, I mean actually I know the number, but it's like yeah, it's, it's close to 350 people I talked to in total as part of this, this round. And I remember when we talked to them initially, there was this kind of conversation. It was like, "Yeah, most startups that raise money, they have like a couple of calls," and, and then there was this statement of like, "Oh I don't understand why someone would need to talk to like 100 VCs to get money." And I was like, in my head, I, I was like, "I'm in like call number 237, I can't tell right now!"
Look, I mean I never raised money really before this. There was this little pre-seed round in the height of the crypto market. We had a pitch day, and afterwards we took like 10 cards and we raised a million dollars what we wanted, and so we were like, "Oh that's easy." But that wasn't really raising money back then, like a year ago or one and a half years ago. This time uh I, I had kind of the structured process of "I want this amount and who should I talk to?" And I, I think I, I talked to also many people that were just not the right fit from the get-go. But if you come and you have a somewhat of a good track record of what your history is, where you worked, almost every VC probably takes your call. Um if you know how to get the right person on the phone. And I think that's the first step I can probably like talking to for advice. So I, I heavily use LinkedIn. I, I would like identify VCs like partners in, in the firm and then would check who I have in common. Uh and usually you always have a couple of... I mean at least when you are connected in the ecosystem and I have like a lot of connections on LinkedIn, then you know always a couple of people that you have in common. So I would reach out to these people in common and say, "Hey I really want to talk to VC so and so name so and so. Do you mind making or how do, how well do you know this person?" And then they respond and then I say, "Would you mind on Tuesday making me an intro?" And so I would line up three, five, 10 intros on the same day depending how important that investor is. And then that, that investor would get tackled with basically 10 emails that day that say "You really should talk to Christian." And every single investor that was on this track basically like immediately thought, "Oh my God like I get 10 emails in one day to talk to this person! I should probably like better talk to this person." I, I probably made some people also upset, I'm sorry about this. But in the end my goal is to talk to some person and I better do everything I can and I hustle until I have this conversation with this partner. And, and so that's, that's one thing that I did.
Um the other one of course is, do you have a product and traction right? And we just, we launched this thing in, in this prototype version um, is, it was a closed beta, but you know tens of thousands of these Curiosities were created every week and people just liked this. They you know, they, they use the product, they see the direction. And so you have people that, that then say, "Okay I want to support this."
And then the last one is probably also that you have a lot of relationship[s] that you build right, you build equity with people over time. And when you can show... and for me, you know, I was part of this big conference that we grew to like a 400 people company. We bootstrapped that. And I worked at LinkedIn, which is obviously a very high regarded company when it comes to product in particular. And so I had that. My co-founder has an equally amazing resume. So we had this combination of the right team, probably the right time, right. Like we had the this whole Gen AI kind of trend. And then the traction. And of course hustle to really get there. And most... I, I mean we, we work out of this kind of coworking space here in the Mission in San Francisco actually next to OpenAI, which is always funny because they're just next door. And, and, and I see how other founders engage with VCs, right. Like I really enjoy telling the story and pitching. I mean as much as I enjoy talking to you, it's almost like a VC conversation in the way, right. Like they ask actually very similar questions. And I really enjoy this process of convincing other people. And then sometimes you win some, most of the times of course you lose. But I really enjoy this process. And I see the 25 other companies here that kind of give up very quickly, right. Like they pitch for two weeks, they, they don't get a check. I think it took us like probably three, four weeks until we found the, the first larger check. And then there's also this trickle effect right. Like once you have your lead investor and someone that puts like more than a million dollars in, then you have other investors that are more likely to give you money because someone else did the due diligence already. It's, I mean I, I would always want to work for, if I ever become a VC I would want to work for a company where you have that you know, like that, that, that, that decision power to go in as a first person rather than just follow along. It's, it's safer probably to follow along, but um yeah. That, those are maybe some of the points of why we were able to close this round. Um but yeah, it's been, it's been definitely [a] tough uh few months to, to get to this point, and makes us really proud that we were able to do it.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Yeah, they say proximity really helps when you're building a startup. Silicon Valley, Seattle, some of the bigger tech areas you know Austin, Col- different parts of New York. Um being so close to OpenAI um what's that like? For those that aren't in San Francisco and you know we read so much about ChatGPT and, and, and AI in general. And to be that close in proximity, do you guys ever sit down and grab lunches, do you kind of know them or...?
Christian Byza: Yeah we sometimes do. I mean we have like an account partner there, there's someone from the go-to-market team. I mean everyone I know from OpenAI is like smart. Like the smart people they come like they gathered is unbelievable actually. Um and their offices are beautiful. We've only been there once, they always usually come to us. Yesterday there was just one, someone over for lunch again. Um I mean how is it? I mean actually I didn't know that they were there until probably maybe six months ago or, or yeah, no, at the beginning of the year, like in March I realized that they are next door. Because there is no sign, you know. There is not like Google or Facebook or something where there is like a huge sign in front of the buildings and people drive there and do a selfie. As a matter of fact, even when you go into the lobby there is no OpenAI sign. When you go into the lobby the only logo you see is uh on the badge that you get when you get, you know you check in, you get these little paper badges and it says OpenAI. There's nothing. And it even became a bit more strange because now they have these cowboy um security guards standing in front of their office. So all day everywhere in front... Oh, so people can't see us right like...
But for, just to imagine this like, we are talking to each other here, and behind me is a glass wall and behind that is [a] window and behind that is a street, and on the other side of the street is OpenAI. So I'm standing like, like 30 feet away from maybe you know Sam Altman's office. I don't know actually where he's located, but it could be. And so um, it's, it's, it's just a little bit awkward that these people now stand there all the time. But we see Sam actually walking across the street sometimes because they have a second office just down the road and so they walk back and forth. But then now I, I read the news last week uh or last weekend that they just signed a new lease in Mission Bay, different part of San Francisco and they will move there. And it's a former Uber office building.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Oh wow.
Christian Byza: So they want to actually triple their size again. And it's, it's, it's crazy because the office that they just moved into here in, in the Mission in San Francisco, they, I think they invested like something like north of $20 million or something. I forgot what the exact number was, but I read about it, you can Google it. But they invested millions of dollars into their office buildout. And now again they, they're growing, they're growing so quickly that they need yet another business uh uh office and, and apparently they can triple their workforce there. So I always say like, if I, if I didn't do my own startup, that is the company that everyone should like think about working because it's probably you know will be one of the most important and biggest companies in the world. I mean even now is right, with the, with the visibility that they have. But it's, it's pretty remarkable.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well AI is, sounds like is very embedded into your platform. And you're at today about what is it, seven employees? Eight, something like that?
Christian Byza: Um seven.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: When you got your idea and then you went to market and started to hire people, how did you get people to join the company early stage? Maybe before you had funding, what did... was it your own network, did you go out in the market, how did you build?
Christian Byza: It's, it's hard, you know. Who wants to join a scrappy startup that has no traction yet or no product even, right? And so the, every hard, every start is hard. We did a few things. So we organized events very early on. Um we have this beautiful office with an outdoor space and so we started to like host people and got people excited that way. We, we uh hired people often on a contract first. So our first hire for example, coming, she's our designer, the one who's responsible for all the beautiful UX that we have. So we, we just hired her as a contractor because she came through a recommendation. And then she just really liked the work relationship on a contract base, and then that's kind of how we got to know each other and then that's how we hired her full time eventually.
We um, we mostly these events, like one big thing that we did for example was a hackathon right after GPT 3.5 was released. And there were like 250 engineers or so here in our office. We have this massive office from our investor right, it's like 30,000 square feet. So we have the ability to host massive events. And because we were the host, people knew us. And so people were like "what are you guys doing?" And, and, and then we were able to hire one engineer there.
Then we organized a talent fair. We basically came up with this c- like "become employee number one in San Francisco's next unicorn." We gathered basically all, all startups that we knew that were hiring here in our office. We had like I think 20 startups. Everyone had a booth like, really high quality booth, really nice. And then we basically blasted it out there right. Like every founder was basically talking about this event. And so 700 people signed up and came by in person. And so we hired another two people from that event. And so like step-by-step you do this.
Or I mean, and then there's serendipity. Is, I'm talking about the right thing at the right moment. Like unfortunately at LinkedIn there was a big layoff. Uh you may have seen this in the news. And so like two days ago I think this was announced. And I just made a post on LinkedIn and said, "Hey I'm so sorry for your loss all my colleagues" (not your loss, but like that you lost your job). "And if... but we are hiring across AI, machine learning, engineering. If you know anyone, please, please let us know." And then that post, I mean for, at least for me you know, I'm not like the most viral person on LinkedIn, but I got like 90,000 views on this post and like 600 likes. And just because at the right moment I talked about something that was really close to our, to a lot of people. And a lot of LinkedIn employees would comment for reach and would reshare. And those are the things that you just do.
And I think how we convince people is also how our job listings look like. Like we are not, don't have like a boring job listing that just you know is copied and pasted or created by ChatGPT. Take a lot of effort in making the job listing really stand out. If you go to careers.learn.xyz, you see this like, we have a lot of pictures of the team so you see the culture and you kind of get to know us before you even speak to us. We're very transparent about the process and like how we like to do things and how we bring you inside and what kind of exercise you get home. And so we just take a lot of pride in like making this maybe a little bit different and more creative than other people.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I think you have to work a little bit differently when you're building from the ground up. And sounds like you're doing all the things that are creative that we don't often hear about that companies go down. And I think that's really cool to, that you're sharing that so others can learn. And you know, we work with 100,000 engineers a year. And you know what we've seen in the market is you know on the downturns there's been companies that have had layoffs and layoffs, and they don't backfill, they've kind of been slow to do that. But they have brought people back in as contractors. And then you eventually get back to where you're hiring again and growing. And so I think that's a good approach. Uh you know during the, during COVID we had to pivot a little, little bit too. And we ended up um building a different model which was really for contractors to join startups. And it really was helpful for the, the startups that were looking to kind of conserve their cash, at the same time see the talent first. And it's been really helpful not just in the US but internationally, South America, Brazil, Argentina, different places. Um it's made it really fun to kind of make companies that were really US-based only, international, and, and kind of see that diversity grow within you know their culture.
Um as you look at your, your platform and your product going forward... I know you're a little bit younger in the process of building your company but really in a good position... um where do you see things going from here? What's your, what's kind of on the, on the near-term road map as you kind of get into the market more?
Christian Byza: Yeah. So I mean there's a few things. Obviously you want to grow the user base. But how do you grow the user base? We always have like "how do we get to a million users now from, from like the 10,000 that we have now?" And there's lots of features that go in hand with this, right? Like how do you make it more engaging? How do you build, build growth into the product so people invite others and get some incentives for that? Um and there's just a long road map of things that we test. A lot of things that we show to users. Right now I mean for us the first step was just to get the product out so that people can actually experience it. Um and, and now we're doing a lot of research. So we're building a lot of prototypes. And we have a very engaged audience of our users that really like the product. And so we, we have this ability to just write emails to them and say "hey do you want to have a call?" And we easily can get like 10, 20 calls on any topic that we want. Uh and then we test it with them and see what sticks, and then we build it. We ship it very fast. But as a startup you can move very quickly. And within like one or two weeks you push out new, very big features to, into the product. And so that's what we essentially do. On, on my end is sort of marketing and PR and finding ways you know, that's why we have a conversation also today. Because I like to just tell the story. And maybe you know we get a couple of signups through this conversation. And that leads again, again to other people talking about this product and, and, and, and you know just go from there. Um and see, see, see what sticks.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: You talked a little bit in the beginning of this conversation about digital marketing and being uh really in that field, in that area. How has digital marketing changed today? And what are the things that you feel are like maybe the top two or three things that other companies that are building platforms should be doing or thinking about?
Christian Byza: I mean, how did that change? So it's funny, I didn't create Google AdWords campaigns for example in probably almost 10 years now. Because I, I, I, I just didn't have to anymore um, after I moved to the US. And the limitations in tracking for example... what you can really optimize to... like what kind of email lists you were able to upload in the past and do all of these kind of almost fishy things in digital marketing. I'm very glad that all of these are not allowed anymore right? Like GDPR and these other European laws for data protection are really good that they are there because people were not doing the right things. But it, it's become much harder to now understand actually like, when you acquire traffic, how, like how does it perform? Where do [they] come from? Because Apple in particular really limits the ability to personally connect an ad with the person, which was possible before. So what can other people do? I mean in the end you need to have a really good tracking stack right. Like in your product where you can really understand what kind of part[s] as people do. And so you can understand what drop-offs are happening within the product. Um but uh yeah, I don't know if I can give you a way more specific answer there on, on what else changed.
I mean the other thing actually that comes to mind is you know, the variety of opportunities that you have. And like where do you focus your time, right? You can do these TikTok videos, and that's really challenging to grow as a brand. Um you can spend ads on so many different formats, on newsletter ads and, and YouTube influencers and whatever it is right. Like it, you just have to try and find that, that path that works for you and your specific need. And we are also still on the hunt right, like we're trying a lot of different things out. And one video we posted with this influencer together last week got like 300,000 plays on, on Instagram. So there are some, some things that work. But then you do something similar the next day and it doesn't work at all. So it's like super not predictable right?
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. As the leader of the company, you know, I think um business is not just a psychological game, but it's also some spirituality to it too. As a leader, how do you stay positive? You have good energy, I'm sure that translates to your employees, but what are some of the things that you use to, to keep yourself up when it comes to tough times, or keep the morale up with you and your team?
Christian Byza: I love that you asked this, because it's one of my things actually I like to talk about. And I uh tell other people my strategy. And you're, you're right. I have in, I'm very blessed that I'm always in a good mood. I, I never have a bad mood for some reason. So I'm really grateful and happy about this. So thank you my parents, whatever you did with your genetics, you did it right. But one thing that I really learned actually at uh at, at LinkedIn when we got acquired by Microsoft was from Satya Nadella. And Satya once said in some interview I read, some publicly right, like I, I had one meeting with him once, but like um, he said "No bad days." And ever since he said this "No bad days," I reflected on this.
And so how he explains this: like I don't know if you know, but like he had a son that was like very ill from, from birth. And he was supposed to be I think only like two or three years old or something. And then he made it, I think like, he passed away like last year, so he became like 16 or, or 18 or something. And so, so Satya told the story of how everything in business really doesn't matter. What matters is that you are healthy, your family's healthy, you have a happy relationship and friends. And so anything in work kind of should come second. And that also means that no matter how big the conflict is, especially as a CTO, as a CEO, you know you have this funnel of like actually that comes to you because you are the, the problem solver essentially. And so you see a lot of the issues because that's your job to fix these problems. But none of these really matter compared to your family and your happiness and your life and your health. And so that's why he said "I don't come to work ever with a bad mood."
And that's why for me it's like, no bad days. My co-founder actually heavily disagrees on this, more the kind of the grumpy German. But I 100% lived after this. And I actually, I lived after this even before I knew and could articulate it so well as, as Satya did. But ever since, I run around and tell people "No bad days." I should actually create t-shirts because like when you ask people it's like, "what do you think when you think about Christian?", and they always say, "Oh he always talks about no bad days." But it's just so true, right? Like if you're a leader and you come to work and you may [have] had a fight with your partner at home or your kids... like I mean my kids are small. I have two kids, one and five. And sometimes they don't sleep at night. And so I come to the office tired. But if I come to the office tired, my team may think "Oh, did we lose a partner? Like investor didn't buy the money? Like what's going [on]?" People kind of project all kinds of things into how, how, what they see in your leader. But if you constantly have this like smile in your face and you're always in a good mood (and again right, like other people may completely disagree and I totally respect this), but like for me this really works. Like this is how I kind of excite people to what we work on. This is how I bring people along. And some people may say "I cannot like look, work with this person who's always in a good mood." But that's just me. And I emphasize and double down on this even more. And ever since I heard this talk from Satya I'm even more happy about it because really "no bad days" is the thing to live after in my eyes.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well I love that and I, I really believe that energy from the leader kind of trickles down and impacts everyone. Um there's no better way to end on a note like that. So um I want to thank you so much uh Christian for joining today. If, so someone wants to hear more about you or about your company Learn.xyz, where do they find you? Where do they find the company?
Christian Byza: Yeah, you can just um go to any app store, Apple or, or Google, and uh, and, and download the app. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. Write a message to it because I don't connect with people that don't at least say what they want, so uh. Yeah, thank you so much for having me Jake.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. Well thanks so much for joining and thanks so much for the listeners that have listened. Uh means the world to us that you spent your time with us today. I look forward to catching up with you on the next episode. I'm Jake Aaron Villarreal and excited to move forward into the weekend, have a great day. Thanks a lot Christian. Bye.
Christian Byza: Thank you.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now. We can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.
This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market. And they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.
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