Grain's Mike Adams: Transforming Remote Work with Conversation Intelligence

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, Born in Silicon Valley, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their success, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Villarreal, and here with us today we have Mike Adams, the founder and CEO of Grain. Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Adams: Hey, great to be here, Jake.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. So Mike, uh, a little bit about Mike. He's a three-time startup co-founder and recently transitioned from CEO to Chairman of Grain.com. Mike's experience is building SaaS and edtech companies, which he shares as a guest lecturer at Stanford GSB. He lives in Laguna Niguel in Southern California, has a wife with three kids and a new... So I, I, I, I love the fact that you're so close to where I am. I think you're the closest guest we've ever had. I'm in Laguna Beach, you're in Laguna Niguel.

Mike Adams: Yeah, I think you're just over the mountain from me.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, there's uh, there's a lot that happens between where you live and I live on a weekly basis from just a commute perspective. I get down to Dana Point. I go to different places. So, it's always good to have other founders nearby. Um, Mike, uh, before we kind of dive into to your background here, um, we'll talk a little bit about the companies you had prior to this company you're building and have been building for a while, Grain. But um, are you originally from Southern uh, Orange County?

Mike Adams: No. So, I'm originally from Utah, born just north of Salt Lake City, and then grew up south of Salt Lake City, and then after college, moved over to the Bay Area where I started my career and spent a decade. And then COVID hit, three kids, one bathroom meant we needed to find more space, and that was easier to do in SoCal and the weather's a little better down here. So, um, that means my company moved fully remote and, uh, we kind of planned to commute back to the Bay Area, keep the office open, and then the years dragged on and then just kind of went remote. But we don't have any family down here. Just, uh, kind of chasing the dream and, uh, the kids love it. My daughter plays soccer and it's able to compete with, you know, really talented girls and great coaches, and my, my son with baseball. And it's a, it's a, it's a good life and we, we like living here. We do miss some aspects of the Bay, but generally Orange County is a nice spot.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. And not too far from Utah, by the way, if you want to get back there. Just a nice flight back and you're there in an hour, a little over that, a little under that. Um, John Wayne Airport, uh, is just the greatest. So, yeah, makes it super easy. Uh, I just got back. I do a little skiing and, and I was in Whistler a couple weeks ago and I never got called off the mountain before for having frostbite. It was like negative 30 degrees. And uh you know, since then uh just been you know putting stuff on the face make sure it doesn't burn off. And it was pretty crazy times, but Utah is a great place. I love to ski there too and um always good to be mixing it up.

Uh in terms of you, let's talk about your companies. Um, we had a quick chat um, prior to jumping on the podcast here a while back. And some of the things that kind of stuck out to me were the fact that you've taken companies from ideas and built them out and actually have been acquired. Um you mentioned that uh WeWork was a company that acquired you and [I] just want to kind of take us back a little bit [to] kind of the inception of you, and then, and hit on a couple of the points of the startups you had prior to Grain and what that experience was like to be acquired. Um I think it's always fascinating for founders to know that you know, you think it's one thing but when you go through it maybe it's something different. So, um, kind of just walk us through the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey.

Mike Adams: Sure. So, for me, I think it all traces back to being the first-generation college graduate. So, I was super fortunate to be able to graduate from a great university, but then I had kind of no clue other than being a doctor or a lawyer or any of these like standard jobs. So, tried out, you know, the lawyer track, realized that was not what I wanted as I worked at a litigation consulting firm with my econ degree, and decided to skip law school. And then I met um my first co-founder just at a kind of party with a community that we're both a part of. And he had just left a company and, and uh they, they got acquired and wanted to start a new one. We, we started doing that together. No salary for a long time. My wife was fortunate to work at a venture capital firm so we were able to make it work. But um the, that was kind of the founding you know journey of getting into education. But it all, the story starts with wanting to solve the problem that I experienced which is this like really rough transition from the I would say uh education world into the working world. And um with Degreed the focus is on you know credentialing. And then my second company is called MissionU um and that was more on the actual skill development training. And so MissionU is the one that got acquired by WeWork in 2018.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: When you went through the acquisition, walk us through the playbook. How did that work and what was the experience like?

Mike Adams: Yeah, so it was pretty different than your regular acquisition, I would say. We actually, the acquisition ended up getting featured in the WeCrashed series on Apple TV. So if you uh watch that, it's on, it's in episode six. And you know, more or less what is portrayed there was what kind of happened, is um Rebekah Neumann wanted to you know, build her school and, and uh my co-founder is who she wanted to run it, and so that is kind of how it more or less played out. And I didn't end up actually wanting to join WeWork. Um in fact, Rebekah didn't really like me very much, so I wasn't even given an opportunity. So I uh I, I think my, her questions were about like you know, "what's your spirit energy" and stuff like that. And I don't think I played along well enough. Um and uh but I, it wasn't really the place for me. So I would say like the acquisition we went through was very atypical and I remember the day my co-founder called and was like "Wow, I just had you know dinner um with the CEO of WeWork and you know he wants to acquire us" and it all kind of happened from there.

But I would say like the more practical upshots and lessons was once you kind of allow yourself to go down the acquisition journey, it becomes very, very difficult to pump the brakes. It becomes like the, it almost kind of puts a standstill on the business. So WeWork ended up actually changing a lot of the terms, made it a lot less favorable compared to what they, we thought it was going to be. Um it, we were able to like get all of our students to like basically have free tuition. So that worked out well for, for what I cared about. Um, but by the time you kind of get to the end of it and, and, and they pulled, you know, what they pulled, like it, it uh there wasn't really a lot else we could do. There was just kind of like a lot of momentum and, and we kind of let ourselves get a little bit too uh, you know, married to, to that outcome.

And so then all of a sudden it changes. And I would say from an acquisition perspective, that happens almost every time. Um maybe not as much, you know, funny business as there was going on around, you know, with WeWork in, in, in general at the time. But um there's almost... you can never really count your, your eggs until they've hatched. You can never really assume that the deal is done until the money's in the bank or until the docs are signed. Um and so you have to kind of like continue to be your own independent thing like you were before, even though the, the promise of something seems really great. So like for us, they promised to put a Mission... we were an online, totally virtual school that had a little bit of an in-person component. So we, we were going to make every you know WeWork a Mission campus. So that to me was like "sweet, like we get to carry forward this vision, we get to carry forward this mission."

And then just along the way, you know, um in particular WeWork just had such a huge valuation that they were able to kind of, I I I actually call it like weaponizing it. I wrote a blog post about how um anything past, I think it was the Series D, basically like all of those valuations ended up underwater. And so like you know, Mission was way past there. So, um, but you, but they had this kind of clout from SoftBank and whatever as if, you know, all of this was, was gold and it was as good as cash in the bank. And, and you have to be really careful because that's not usually how it ends up panning out.

And you know, frankly, I was quite skeptical. And, and really if we were going to consider the acquisition, I wanted to kind of pivot the company into what became Grain, because we'd built uh software to manage all the content of our recorded sessions, our lectures, our admissions interviews. And so when the acquisition went through, I said, "You know what, I'm just going to be the founder CEO of this other SaaS company." And it worked out great. So like at the end of the day, like your future is kind of your own oyster. It's whatever you make it. Like nothing ever goes really to plan, but there's always opportunity as long as you're, you know, making, you know, you keep your eyes open. And so that's kind of how the, the whole thing played out.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, we got acquired too. This is, you know, 10 plus years ago. And the what you end up seeing initially and then as you were saying like the terms start to change a little bit and you're kind of halfway into the run of the business and also you know thinking about the future of what it's going to end up being. And um you know, yeah, when the money finally hits the bank you're like "yeah stoked, it's great." But you know, you, you almost get slow played a little bit in the negotiation until you finally just say "You know, I, just scratch that, you know, I'm okay with that not being part of the deal" and yeah, "Okay, we can push that aspect." And ultimately it's a great experience to go through. But um yeah, I I I agree with what you're saying and you had more clout in terms of who acquired your company. So, it's probably a little bit different experience, but uh glad to hear that it kind of worked out for you and you had a different path that you took and, and we'll talk about that uh as well.

Mike Adams: It wasn't like a financially, you know, I didn't really get anything out of the acquisition financially because we were such a young company. And, you know, for me it was all about, "Okay, if we're not going to deliver on this, you know, promise we made to students, let's make sure that we finish, you know, the job and get them jobs and, and make sure they don't pay the tuition." And that was, that ended up becoming my focus. So, it was like kind of like overnight this path that we were planning to take shifts and becomes something very different. And that's okay, you know, because I think at the end of the day, you know, there's always opportunity that you can parlay something. And I would say the perception of the acquisition of being acquired by WeWork is really, I would say, valuable. I could play that up and make it seem like it was this insane amazing outcome and I'm super, you know, loaded or whatever. But like that's not really me. That's not really what happened. And so, you know, my, my chips on my shoulder are about like making it happen with Grain and, and building that into the best company I can possibly be.

And so, um, yeah, the, uh, it has been interesting though. One other kind of note on that was the moment that MissionU was announced as being acquired, it was like there was a lot of upheaval amongst the education community because they were like, "This is this big bold bet on replacing college that's venture-backed." You know, he'd raised like $12 million and we'd only spent a couple million of it. We had the vast majority in the bank. It was pretty freshly raised. So, everyone was surprised that, you know, this outcome happened. But then the next week it was like as if the whole company never had existed. It went from being like "we're in the Today Show," you know, "people are writing about us all the time," Fast Company's you know um "Best Place," uh Fast Company's "Most Promising and Innovative Companies," to like "What was that thing?" And, and I, that was, that was an interesting contrast I didn't really expect because you work and you're building momentum and then as soon as the momentum stops it's kind of as if the whole thing didn't happen anymore to the world.

You know, I would say the reward that I continue to get is I just posted last week or two weeks ago on LinkedIn... I do this lecture at Stanford every year to teach about um, it's like a case study to the students there about disruptions in education. And so I posted on LinkedIn about, you know, the content that I share there. And so many of my students came back out of um, you know, the, the worlds that they live in now and, and talked about the positive impact that the program had, how it set them up on their job, how they, you know, it fundamentally changed the course of their life. And, and to me that's, you know, the, the meaningful reward of like why I did the work. So um, to the world the whole thing just kind of like died overnight. To the people who were part of it, you know, we, we carried that, that, that forward with us in, in a meaningful way. But it, but it was kind of like crazy to go so quickly from like "we're going to change the world" to like "oh, like that, we're doing something else now."

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Um everything starts with a vision, hopefully something that's going to function, work and grow and scale. But there's inspiration behind it. So I think I understand a little bit about the inspiration of Grain. But kind of walk us through the moment where you said, "I have a different path I'm going to take and this is what's inspiring me to try and build this thing now." What was that like for you?

Mike Adams: You know, the entrepreneurial journey is wild and sometimes I take it for granted that I've been doing this for 12 years. Um I feel a lot of confidence. I feel a lot of you know, I have a lot of relationships. I have, you know, some experiences under my belt. But I remember vividly how insecure and rattling it is when you're at the very beginning. It all seems so insurmountable. And after my first company, I, I remember distinctively talking to my wife saying, "I want to be the CEO. I want it to be like my baby." I have a belief that every company has one founder and multiple co-founders, but you only have one founder. And I was not the founder of my first company. And I was said, "You know, I think it's time for me to be the founder of the second company." And my wife distinctively was like, "No, you're not ready. You don't have an idea and you just want to do this for the sake of doing it." And I thought about it. I remember this dinner. We were in Potrero Hill in San Francisco where we lived at the time. And I was like, "You're totally right. This is just like kind of an ego-based thing of like what I want to do right now."

So I kind of recalibrated, ended up putting myself in some environments um doing research on what I wanted to do next. Met my co-founder of, of MissionU who was really the founder, and ended up being an amazing experience that was the genesis for what became Grain, the company where I was... the first company where I was the founder. Um because it's really difficult to come up with insights that you really feel confident could become a company. Starting a company for the sake of starting a company is almost always a bad idea. And I'm really glad I had a wiser wife than me who was like "Don't do that." Because by the time I was like, "This is the idea," it was a problem we had solved for ourselves at MissionU, the company that got acquired. And I knew that it was a trend of where the world was going because Zoom finally made remote um collaboration, education, etc., viable because there was a reliable audio video connection that didn't really exist before Zoom. They kind of fixed what WebEx and, and um Teams or, or... Teams wasn't really, didn't exist at the time, but Meet had never really solved.

So I kind of saw where that was going. I saw the opportunity that that unlocked from um being able to leverage the conversational data that was generated, and had a I would say pretty quick and easy transition from the act, from being the co-founder to the founder because I had the relationships, I had the idea and the insight, and then we were just kind of off to the races. But it really is a super nerve-wracking and confusing and difficult and insec- and, and, and, and insecure process that you kind of go through. But I do believe strongly that if you just put yourself out there and doing the work, maybe find the right partner until you're ready, like be the co-pilot. You, you put yourself in environments where you get the insights and you get the experience to where you can be ready to be the pilot. And um I'm glad that it all played out the way that it did. And I think Grain has been a lot more successful as a result of the prior experience I had to learn from, you know, two great co-founders I had before.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, you know, COVID changed the world in a lot of ways and remote technologies start- started to spring up everywhere. Um, some didn't make it, some did, and some carved out niches. What's the problem your platform solves and what, what's your sector you're focused in on where it's used most?

Mike Adams: The evolution of Grain has been wild. Like it's been quite the journey and it's in a very different but still the same you know original thesis and premise. It's just that I would say the main evolution has been from a horizontal, you know, almost Notion or Google Docs like "anybody can use this thing, very little opinions about who should use it," to over the last year in particular, we've learned that, you know, to turn the business into a, you know, to get it to profitability, which we're pretty close to now, and, and, and moving off of the reliance on, you know, future rounds and future venture capital, we really needed to be, you know, super specific and hone in on a specific person in a specific use case in, in what ended up being kind of an existing market, where the first several years it was all about "we're going to carve out our new market. We're going to be the new market." And at the end of the day, markets are what markets are, and you can shape those markets as a company, but that is exponentially harder to do.

Peter Thiel talks about this in Zero to One of, you know, "don't... competition is for losers" is what he says. It's very true as a like measurement of the, you know, unicorn-backed, you know, the unicorn outcome companies that tends to be an association. It's a good ambition, but the odds go down a lot when you're, when, when that's your only focus. And so we've recognized that um, the horizontal kind of massive you know growth path of, of being kind of all things for everybody just really left us with um a lot of challenges on, on building the product, on growing the product, on being able to message and position the product that honestly instantly go away as soon as you say "it's for these people and it solves this problem."

And so that's kind of been the, the evolution that, that I've been through I'd say over the last five plus years of Grain. And it was really the, I, I brought in a President um who's now the CEO. I, I handed over the reins to him in October, that helped I would say, he brought in fresh eyes several years in the business and, and a really strategic you know um mind. And that, that was kind of the catalyst to move from this like horizontal general world into the super specific. And, and it's paying off. It feels like the, the flywheel starts spinning a lot faster when you're building on a foundation that is, is specific and, and deliberate versus I would say ambitious but ambiguous.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. So what is the target now for your platform?

Mike Adams: So, our market um for, we'll say, conversational um data. That's really what the core insight was, was when you record these meetings now all of a sudden you have an asset that you didn't have if you were in person. And unless you, you record on your phone, which you probably won't do. And it's, and it's natural. It's organic. Like you barely even notice if it's being recorded and generally the content is super benign, right? Um there's been many different markets for that change in I would say the technical landscape of what's possible and, and, and the unlock that can kind of come from a new data set. But without a doubt, the momentum that was before Grain, um, started by a company called Gong. Um, they're like the biggest in the, in, in the sales space. Um, is, is really still where the, the momentum in the market is. And that, it's partially due to I would say the, the use case itself, but it's probably even more so to do with like budgets and, you know, ROI um justifications and pitches around being able to like close deals, save, you know, save deals, you know, train, train representatives. It's just so much more palatable with that sales use case.

So, we tried to avoid that for years. We were like, "We're broad, we're horizontal, we're actually more focused on like creating highlight clips from the content and sharing those." And people loved that approach. People love the product. And that's still what the product can do at its core. It's got this like amazing creator ability that we wouldn't have if we didn't have that starting point. And it actually ends up being a nice differentiator for the sales team. Um but that is ultimately what we realized, was that we would get into a company um through the, usually through the sales team, and then they, it spread across the company and then they'd graduate out and then move to like the kind of the enterprise version of the product, and then we just left with like not nearly the same level of leverage or opportunity or con-, or, or growth um when you lose that kind of sale, sales team at the center.

So it took us a while to realize that like when it came to this product and the bottoms-up adoption, that that sales use case was kind of at the beginning, middle and end. And all the other use cases that people have loved around our product are more kind of secondary when it comes to procurement, you know, ROI expansion, retention, etc. And so as we focused on sales, it's like every metric has gone massively better. It is a much more crowded market and so it's a little bit more challenging, but we have like a differentiated position in that we're bottoms up, we're self-serve. You can buy our product for you know, $19 a month for one person if you want without talking to anybody. Whereas like the kind of top end of the market is like a minimum of you know, really $10,000 in spend. And so there's a huge gap in the market for something that is pretty established and everybody wants. And we've, you know, our approach is to bring I would say the best version of that for the lowest price and the easiest adoption path and it's working really well.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I love that. Um, you know, we talked uh about the going to a freemium model and then looking to upgrade to, you know, more enterprise or more of a, a fee-based model. Um, what's the model today?

Mike Adams: Yeah, so the model today is primarily self-serve. So, you'll just sign up for the product, use the free version of it. I would say we're faux freemium if you want to get technical. So, um the technicals of that would be we have like a fixed number of recordings that you can use for free and then once you're out of those, you, you know, add a prescrip- a subscription seat. Um whereas a true freemium would be like you have x number of recordings a month into perpetuity, right? And so we have gone with kind of the faux freemium. I I think we probably would have been better off going with full freemium if I'm being, you know, frank. Um because the challenge is that, is that users can't think of like, "oh I'm gonna, I'm gonna establish a habit that I can rely on in the future." Instead it's like, "I can taste this thing but I can't really keep using it for free."

And, and freemium done well gets you into a habit loop, gets the new users into a habit loop completely on their own. And it's a high-velocity sale, which is why it works, because you're basically moving your cost of goods sold, the server cost, the transcription cost, the processing costs, and, and making those marketing costs by giving it away for free. And so the more you give away for free, I would say the, the greater your acquisition cost is for users you ultimately end up, you know, monetizing. And so, you know, we've been a little bit more, I would say, on the aggressive side of making it kind of a faux freemium, but I think psychologically it becomes a little bit more challenging to truly adopt the product when you know that you're going to have to pay for it after 20. Versus, "oh, I've just, I keep using this product so much that I've run out of allocation for this month, so I need, you know, uh I needed, I need a subscription to be able to um continue using it at the volume that I've like learned to lo- love and grow."

So, we're always playing around with it. So, I've said that that's the way we do it. We actually did have it as freemium. We moved it over to faux freemium. We might move it back to freemium. But like in general, the principle of freemium being not a growth strategy but a marketing strategy of moving those um, I would say the cost of, of acquisition, you know, from COGS up to um, up to, to, to CAC, has, has been great for us. Like we don't, we have a very, very lean marketing team because the product um is used and exposes new people to the product. Um it's, it's such an easy adoption path and then it can land, what's called "land and expand," where you you know, ideally get to our true Ideal Customer Profile which is a I would say kind of team of, of, of companies usually between 25 and 250 employees. So you have a sales team between kind of five and, and 25. And now we've gotten to a point where if, if one of those folks can, can adopt the product um self-serve, we usually do an "assist" motion where we'll reach out once they've reached usage thresholds. We'll guide and assist them. We'll, we'll make it easy to onboard the rest of their team. And now you're, you know, about 10x-ing your average contract value as soon as you go into that assist motion. But we didn't really have to do anything. We don't have direct sales. We, you know, have minimal marketing activity because the product itself is, and the fact that they can use it for free is what usually is typically what drives our user acquisition.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, you know, we had, when we had our first call and it was recorded uh using Grain. Uh it was instantaneously after we got off that call, I got an email from, I thought it was from you, it was from Grain or the automation of it. And it was not just a recording of our call, but it was also the video of our call as well as being able to click on portions of the call summarized. Well, it, it was, I, I think what you would want to see if you used a platform like this. And that was just on a conversation. It was not a sales call. It was just more interaction. Um I I could just see how much time it saves you having to think about "what was that call about two months ago and did we have a good conversation and what were the highlights of it" and being able to see that in real time was I thought it was really impressive. And look, we've had a lot of products that we've talked to the founders about and that was one that I was like, I could see this being used, you know, for our company, but for a lot of organizations. So, um, what you built is transparently a very good product. Um, and I think it should be looked at from anybody out there that's, you know, considering how do you engage your customers and how do you do customer support in a lot of different areas. Um, if you were to go back, um, you started the company, you've raised $20 million, but from really the beginning, uh, how would you have done things differently, if at all, or made any changes now that you are where you are today?

Mike Adams: Yeah, I have so many learnings. Um, but the main one is that I would have been a lot more deliberate about division of labor and responsibilities, um upfront in starting the company. So the thing I believe is an axiomatic truth that is just non-negotiable for anything I'm a part of um going forward is that as I talked about how there's a founder where there's one person who's ultimately yoked. It's their responsibility. It's usually their reputation. It's usually their idea. That person for product-led growth company has to be the Head of Product. No negotiating. And we had a uh, I would say, my, I I started the company with my brother, and he's really, really good at product and he had a great you know venture track success. He was the first employee at a company called Branch Metrics and he's super talented. But what ultimately happened is no matter how talented and smart he was, there's one person who's the ultimate decision maker and that's the CEO. That's the, you know, the, the, I would say the capital F Founder. And when there's a disambiguation between I would say that ultimate responsibility and then the execution of the core thing that you're building, that you're selling, that everything revolves around, it just creates communication friction, Mythical Man-Month, two pizza rule, whatever you want to call it, that makes it really challenging to overcome.

And so um we were able to work through that and get to a great place. And we actually, neither of us are the Head of Product now. There's the um new CEO that we recruited in. Um we made him the Head of Product and then I made him the CEO. So now that you know principle is, is aligned, and it's, it's just it's night and day. It totally shows because you're able to now rally, you know, around one point of view instead of building by committee or building by, you know, multiple perspectives no matter how well-intentioned, no matter how talented the people are. It's just, you really do, when you're a brand new company, especially a venture-backed company with you know unicorn ambitions, everything has to focus through a single point. And I didn't fully understand that at the beginning of Grain. And if I did, I think our you know, our trajectory would be quite a bit different. And that's ultimately on me, right? But that's, that's a lesson that I take, you know, going forward if I were to, you know, ever be the, the capital F Founder of a company again. And one that ultimately like as as I'm no longer the CEO um and I have the Head of Product who is the CEO, I I I recognize that my job is to enable and empower him to set the vision, enable empower, you know, him to have leverage, um so that the company can grow as fast as possible. Because that to me is how you know, the most successful companies are built and um something I definitely would do different if I were to do it again.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Thanks for sharing that. You know, as a, as a founder of a company, you know, part of it is the vision, but the other part of it, it's the control of wanting to build out something that's in your vision with your voice and executing in a market you think there's an opportunity. To bring in someone else to be the lead, to be that CEO. Um, you know, has its positives and negatives for you. Um what did you make, and why did you make the choice to bring in a CEO last year?

Mike Adams: Yeah, a lot of it for me is, is personal, right? And um I love the business. I love the company. I love our customers. I love our product. Um but I'm on the end of, you know, 12 straight years of just non-stop startup. My kids are getting a little bit older. And frankly, I just got fortunate that, you know, Jeff that we brought in through acquisition, we actually acquired his company um, I was an investor in his company. And I just, he was frankly so much better at the CEO job um than I was at the time. I think that how like "good" is, all relative to time as well, right? Like certain people can be really good in one season of basketball and then not so good in the next season, then come back and be great. A lot of it is context-based.

And when I just look at like kind of the way things have played out, um the majority of the company we've been rehiring as we've been kind of uh I would say reestablishing the foundation of the business has actually been nowhere near me. So, as you know, in South Orange County, there's not a lot of, you know, technical uh momentum, I guess you could say. Whereas in Utah, where Jeff is and where I'm from, um there's a really strong technical comm-, you know, tech community. And so, Silicon Slopes, and so as we made all these hires, we started making them in Utah. I started, I'm commuting there on a, on an airplane and I'm there a couple days a week. Um, and that's pulled back a little bit since I'm not CEO anymore. But um that ultimately just kind of felt like the natural evolution of the company and natural evolution of, of my life and, and, and my family, as, as the trust was so strong that it was like, you know, I I can take this thing that was fundamentally kind of like the culmination of my previous two companies and my entire career into this company and actually give that to someone else to run and have confidence that that's going to not only be done as well as I could do it, but actually better than I could do it at based on kind of where I'm at right now and how things have evolved.

And I do think that was fundamentally changed from COVID because we were, we had an office in San Francisco. We would all go in every day. It was like great for collaboration. We went fully remote. That introduced a lot of challenges. Um now we're going back to being a lot more in person, but it's not where I live and I'm not in a place with my, my, my, my life and family where I, where I, I can or want to, to move. And so that's just the way things have evolved. And I believe fundamentally that if you're able to be self-aware enough as a founder or as a leader of any kind about, and, and, and genuinely look at what's best for the organization and the people, um that is a superpower. And that's something that I was not good at early in my career. It was all about the "me, me" show. But as time has gone on, I've been able to realize like how I'm just, you know, one of the many, you know, kind of cogs in, in, in the part of, of this large organization that, yes, ultimately like kind of came out of my, my head and my network and, and, and, and mine and the founding team's original work, but it's, it's taken on a life of its own, and it is actually really cool and different to watch. And it's really satisfying in, in kind of a different way than the, you know, super high grip control that, um, I would say I normally would do and, and frankly, which is super necessary for the first several years of a company. You have to have that like dictatory, you know, vision and control because that's the only way to get it off the ground. But once it's off the ground, you know, there's a lot of options if you're, if you're open to them and you're, you kind of don't let your insecurity and ego get in the way like I would say I've, I've done many times in the past, but was fortunate not to do here.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, really cool to hear. I can't wait to see how that continues to go for you. You know, how do you approach leading a remote company as someone who is an outspoken critic of remote work or who has been a critic of that?

Mike Adams: So, I'll first caveat. So, I wrote a blog post or a LinkedIn post that ended up getting a couple million views where it started and it says, you know, uh uh I don't know, disclaimer or something, like "I lead a remote company and I, but I hate remote work." You know, [it] was a nice provocative statement that ended up, you know, uh, getting a lot of views. But really the reason I think it resonated with folks, this is about a year ago I wrote this, was because the truth that I shared in that post was that remote is not... is, as a startup leader, especially when you're trying to innovate, you're trying to move really, really fast, in person is everything. If you ask people who have really built things before, it is so much harder to do remote. It's just so much more organic and easy in the relationships and the trust and everything you're doing. I miss the taco truck is what I talk about. A lot of, you know, the taco truck that was downstairs from our San Francisco office that we just go and have lunch every day. And when you lose the taco truck, you lose a lot of things. And so for me, I, I was kind of stuck in these loops of the past of what was and yearning for and wishing, you know, what, uh wishing for things to come back. But like the world is not going to go back to the way that it was before. I'm not moving back to San Francisco. Neither is everybody else who moved away. People left. People have joined. And so we had to be really intentional and deliberate about the way that we overcame the disadvantages of being fully remote.

So the, my point of the blog post is just because it's beneficial to me as the leader um to be fully in person doesn't mean that that's best for everybody. So it doesn't mean it's best for the employee. So, where we've landed with Grain is that now I would say non-engineering and, and leadership are, are pretty much all in person or I'll commute there. But I'm really the only one that is commuting and I'm there, you know, pretty regularly. And that has fundamentally improved the equation. Um, from a year ago when I wrote that blog post, um, it was in January, this is that I started going and regularly commuting and, and it's, it's so much better. And so every team ultimately needs to kind of like make their own choices and structure their company in the own, their own ways. And it's going to be a reflection of the preferences of the, the founder and the leadership. But I do think that there is like kind of a middle ground between the old world where it had to be 100% in person. Frankly, I don't want that anymore either. Like it's, it's not optimal. Like you don't get the free thinking. You, I don't get as much time with my kids. Like I've been able to train for, you know, Ironmans and compete in these, you know, races that I wouldn't have been able to do if it weren't for um, if it weren't for the flexibility that comes with remote. So, it's all trade-offs, but you have to find that, you know, balance that works. And I would say the default being fully in person and the default being fully remote, neither of those is an option that I prefer. Some people do, but I think that that hybrid middle ground is something that most companies coming out of COVID have realized is actually the ideal balance, to have a few days a week in the office, etc.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's really interesting. I I I I like where you're coming from. Um, one word that you talked and just I want to touch back on is "balance." I think it's important to balance that hybrid, on-site, off-site, remote with your team, but it's also important to balance your personal life with the work and things you do outside of work. Talk a little bit about um the Ironman, the training, the experience, and what does that give you personally, but does that help you as a business leader as well?

Mike Adams: Yeah, for sure. So, I was sitting at a pool on my first vacation in a long time in, in Hawaii in tw- in, in February of 2020. And I looked down and I have a couple young kids and I, we didn't have our third kid yet. And I just had this big belly that I'd never seen before and I was like "that's got to go." And so startup life had taken its toll and I was like "I'm gonna you know assert some control" which Type A people tend to want to too. So, I went home. I signed up for a triathlon. Um, just a little sprint that takes about an hour. Um, I signed up for another one and I even signed up for the, a Half Ironman in Santa Cruz. And I was like, "all right, I'm going to do this. I'm serious now about this. I've never swam more than a, you know, lap, never really run, never really biked, but I was like, I want to figure this out because it's my means to like getting control of my health."

Um COVID hits, all the training goes, you know, I would say all of the races go out the door, but I stuck with my training and it became like what I called my "COVID cure." It was like the one thing I could control in a world completely out of my control. And I feel like that's a really critical thing for anybody who's dealing with a high stress environment, especially when you have a lot of pressure as a leader, is to have things that are productive and good for you, that are, you know, good for your mental health, good for your physical health, that you can have full control over. And making sure that you find time, because the upside was of, of not commuting was that I could, you know, go on swims and, and rides and bikes and be done by 8 in the morning, you know? And it's four years later, uh, two years ago, I I ended up completing a, you know, full, full Ironman in, in, in St. George, Utah. It ended up being the World Championship that they moved from Kona, Hawaii to, to St. George. And so I was able to compete with the best um you know, triathletes in the world, even as a relative newbie. And it was amazing.

And I took a break for a little bit afterwards. I kind of burned myself out, but it just, this bug started to come back. And um I'm training right now for, for another triathlon because I love it. And I found a community of people that are other Type A builders that also use this as their kind of stress relief. And it is a really, I would say, important part of my physical and mental health um regimen that is now like, I feel super, I don't know, just like a blob of goo if I don't get workouts in. Which is crazy because before that I went 10 years without basically working out other than like a random gym session, never going on runs. That type of thing.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Did you lose the belly?

Mike Adams: I lost the belly. Yeah. So, I mean, there's two things that will lose bellies. One is burning a lot of calories and the other is not consuming a lot of calories. And so, um I actually found that that the far more efficient path is to just consume less calories. And intermittent fasting is actually I feel like far more effective way of, of managing weight than spending hours and hours running and on bikes because they actually it makes you really hungry. So you end up actually eating a lot of calories and your deficit is a little bit harder to manage then if you can just train your body to be like okay with being a little bit hungry. So um it's tough to mix those two though, to do the intermittent fasting and the high-intensity training. And so, uh, you, I I kind of tend to, to swap between one or the other as, as the training becomes too much or the fasting, you know, kind of grows old.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Yeah. I know my doctor, you know, I had gained a few pounds, too, and my doctor was like, "Yeah, you got to, I think you got to lose about 10." I'm like, "Okay, great." He's like, "Do me a favor. Don't hit the gym five days a week and burn out. Uh, because you're going to lose 80% of your weight by your diet. So focus on eating these things and spend 20% time, you know, actively going to the gym or whatever you're going to do and it actually does work." Um, so anyway, little... the little things that people tell you that you don't think and you don't overcomplicate that usually typically work. Um, as we start to wrap up here, as you look out, um, you know, over the next five years, what do you, what's your conviction on that you think will be true that isn't true today?

Mike Adams: Yeah. So, I think we are in the next big platform shift. So, I've been on record and will go on record again and all the crypto people can come at me. Because I think, you know, blockchain is and all the crypto thing is just, I'm not into it, never been into it, never been a believer. It's not the revolution that was promised. And there's a lot of issues with it. And the challenge that I have is that they kind of hijacked web3 as being about like crypto and blockchain and whatever and something that like is not going to have a meaningful impact on the world from where I sit. You know, debate me all day long on theoretical, you know, things that don't make sense to me. Um, I understand it at a technical level, but like at a pragmatic level, but what really is web3 is this generative AI, you know, arrival that started really a little over a year ago with just the blowing up of ChatGPT. This is a fundamental shift in, in technology that is universal and that you can use it on anything you want. It's accessible. Anybody has access to not just ChatGPT but the API that powers it and the open-source models that now have been developed that are not proprietary to OpenAI, Microsoft.

And it is fundamentally changed our product Grain from our even our, our core value thesis. A year ago, it was about m- really making it easy to create highlights and time-lapse notes and do like creator work on top of your, your uh your transcripts and, and your videos and then generating outputs um that were usually like a 30 second video clip you can share in Slack. That is now like a tertiary benefit because the primary benefit of the product is that it just automates everything about your note-taking workflow. Like if you hired someone to do it and you can customize it and you can tailor it to be exactly what you want. And we're in like the bottom of the first inning of what's possible with this technical shift.

And so the way I've been kind of anchoring it is I feel like you know personal computing was one of the first huge platform shifts. And then you had you know the arrival of, of the web and the internet, and then you had mobile. And the fourth is in my view generative AI and these, and these large language models that are fundamentally changing I would say what's possible, possible to achieve with technology to augment workflows, to remove I would say m- mundane and monotonous tasks. And I would say over the next 5 years are increasingly going to feel and look a lot more like true intelligence, thought partnership, and, and, and, and I would say novel generative um uh idea generation that is just even more in its beginning stages than things that are starting to develop a little bit more around like summarization or, or taking meeting notes or very specific tasks that can be outsourced to this AI model.

Because just like my skepticism of that remains for blockchain, crypto, um I was super skeptical of all the over marketing and overhype of AI. And now all of a sudden overnight you're like, "No, this is actually here for real now and it's fundamentally changing the way that we do things. And the world's going to look a lot different when it comes to, you know, human interaction with technology in five years from now um than it does right now because of the power and the flexibility and the promise of, of this technology. Not to mention, you know, the next fundamental technologies that this is going to help us to get to faster."

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. That's a great point. And yeah, we're really bullish on AI, too. And we're seeing it in every sector of our client base that is using it and adopting it and integrating it with their own technology and platforms. And uh you know, just this morning I was looking at OpenAI and you know, in the last 12 months they've hired over 800 people and they're just on this like rocket ship of growth for the right reasons. Um they have customers, they have paying customers, they've raised lots of money, they're also making a lot of money, but they are innovating and um they're solving problems today for us. Then they're going to be solving problems uh I think for a long time for a lot of different companies and there's a lot of inspiration that's coming out too, where companies are popping up left and right that are carving out their little niches. So, we'll see what happens in the future, but I'm really excited to see what happens with Grain. And uh if anybody wants to find you or find Grain or try your product, where do they go?

Mike Adams: Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn mostly. So, I'm just Mike Adams on LinkedIn. If you search Mike Adams Grain, you'll find me. Um I'm on Twitter a little bit, but I've just found X, Twitter, to be less of the place where I like to throw my thoughts into the world lately. Um and then I'm actually starting a new podcast on, on generative AI. Haven't launched yet, but uh it'll be coming out in the next couple of months. We're just sitting down and talking with the smartest people I know, you know, the smartest technologists I know, talking to them about how they're leveraging and using generative AI. So, that's going to be called the Generative Podcast, but it's, it's not out yet. So, uh maybe the, by the time this is really released, uh we'll, we'll do that, but you could, you know, find that where all the podcasts are.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Very cool. Well, Mike, uh, I want to thank you so much for coming on and, uh, taking your time to spend with us today, as well as our listeners for listening. It means a lot to me and our company. And, uh, my, I'm your host, Jake Villarreal, signing off for now, but can't wait to catch up with you all on the next episode. Until then, Mike, community, take care.  

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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