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 Julian Rodriguez, founder and CEO of Momento AI. Julian, welcome to the show.
Julian Rodriguez: Hey, Jake. Thank you so much for having me. This is great.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, thanks for joining us today. Um, just a little bit more about Julian. He's a serial entrepreneur who's built a disruptive VC-backed tech startup in the B2B food service space, then founded and led a super PAC to level the digital playing field against disinformation in politics. Today, he leads a company called Momento AI, which helps people make AI clones of themselves, and we'll get into the details of how that works and other areas they're focused in on. So, I guess before we dive in here, Julian, uh, where are you calling in from today?
Julian Rodriguez: I'm in New York right now.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Very cool. I lived in New York. Love that town. New York City specifically is where I lived. Um, are you in the city or in one of the boroughs?
Julian Rodriguez: Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. Is there any other place?
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah, I'm in New York.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's cool. It's funny because when you live there but you're not from there, you have these conversations that happen about, you know, "Well, I'm from Jersey," or "I'm from the Bronx" or different parts and to to the outsider doesn't really matter that much. But, you know, when you're living in the city, you understand there's, you know, there's some differences and you got, you know, skyscrapers and all sorts of different uh cultural activities that happen all the time, which I love. Um, are you originally from there?
Julian Rodriguez: Uh, so I'm from Long Island originally. Um, so right very close, maybe like 40 minutes out from the city.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Okay. Very cool. Well, thanks for joining here. Um, in terms of you, um, give us a little background of you, kind of your younger years. You know, did you, you know, have paper routes, lemonade stands? Like talk to us a little bit more about your entrepreneurial DNA.
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah. So, you know, to be honest, um I've had a chance to to to sort of revisit this and think about it a bunch. Um really this was just a case of my father uh being an entrepreneur and sort of growing up and seeing him um and sort of I think the freedom and happiness that it brought him and how it brought the family together because my mom was also involved in the business as well. It was um it was a a sort of a taxi service based around uh the local supermarket. So, I guess there were there were a lot of um mothers that did like, you know, especially in the ethnic community, you know, my my parents are Latino. Uh they did, you know, sort of big uh call them compras, right? Big um uh shops, right? Uh big purchases. And they needed help bringing those back to uh the house while most likely the husband was at work or something like that. And so my dad organized uh a fleet of cars to originally help with that. And then it became word of mouth and it became sort of like the taxi, the de facto taxi service of the whole region.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow. Um that's really cool. Sometimes you know it's not um always what you go out and study but you just kind of look at your, the models that raise you, your parents, your siblings, mentors, and you end up falling into that um line of work, whatever that happens to be. But entrepreneurialism is, is great. It sounds like you had a good model to, to kind of follow. Um, what uh what kind of led you to really starting your first company and did you, was that out of school or um how do you go from point A to point B raise capital and and launch your first company?
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah. No, it was much later. Um, I was fortunate that, uh, early on in my career, I, uh, started working for sort of a startup agency that kind of did everything. Um, they were focused on e-commerce. And so I, you know, I did computer science in school. Um, but I never really liked programming. Um, and so when I landed at this agency, I sort of, I was a junior dev, junior Rails, uh, Ruby on Rails dev. And um it just was not, I didn't really see myself as that useful sort of consistently behind the keyboard and there were so many other things to do at the agency: design, product management, right, uh even a little bit of sales. And um you know I got sort of a front row seat to, to sort of that, right? Like how, how sort of a very small team can sort of leverage a lot of positions to, to, to engage with customers and make revenue and whatnot.
Uh and that ultimately did lead me to the concept of product management. This must have been like 2015, '16 where I think product management was sort of being defined outside of Silicon Valley, right? And it was now sort of spreading and uh I had a, I was very fortunate that I was one of the early team members of a Silicon Valley startup focused on product management, like the educational side. Um so kind of like they grew out of General Assembly and it was a laser focus on product management and I was their second hire here in New York City.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow.
Julian Rodriguez: And uh, yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, seeing that from the ground up, right? We had, we had full autonomy here in New York simply because, you know, they were focused in Silicon Valley and they were doing very well. Um, and you know, the founder couldn't be back and forth between two places. So, they kind of just gave me um and the, the other guy on the team sort of like carte blanche, right, to, to figure it out and really make it work. And the audience in New York was very different than Silicon Valley. We were dealing with finance professionals, right? You know, some, some big tech people, but most of it were finance professionals. And so, he really relied on our ability to sort of just figure it out. Uh, and of course, I'd share docs and and all the structural things uh involved in a startup.
And that kind of just opened my eyes, right? That I was like, "Okay, well, you know, I I saw I saw my my dad and my mom work with, you know, marble notebooks and beepers, right? But like, how does that, you know, transition into the modern day, right?" And that's sort of where I think I saw it firsthand. And, and I, I, I learned a ton. Uh I was there for a short amount of time, but I think that in that short amount of time, I was able to see everything that, you know, I I thought could equip me to do my own thing. And it was pretty much right out of there, you know, um being in the middle of all these sort of product professionals and and, and, and finance professionals in general that uh just put all that together, right? That's where I learned how to do financial models, right? It was from a dude that worked at UBS that I met there. Um and I met a couple VCs. And uh it just all came together. And um you know the, we were in a WeWork and on the weekend right after one of the classes uh that we organized, they were having a hackathon, unrelated hackathon for like a separate group. And it was just kind of in that buzz. We just sat at a table and it was um me and two other guys and uh yeah, it was like "Okay well you know let's put this on the board, see what sticks." And it just kept growing and it I, we just got super serious about it and uh we left our jobs and and did it.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: Very a very young, I I think a very young person thing to do, right?
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Risk it all. It's better to go young and learn and grow and you can start over quickly versus wait too long and then, you know, you're later in life and it's much more to lose, higher risk. So, I like that experience uh in that time frame. Um talk about the company Momento here. We're gonna get right into it and what it is that inspired you to create it, but also I want to talk about the, the, the pivot that you had to make as well. Because you kind of, like many companies, they start with a thesis and idea and a product and they go to market and they had to adjust, make some changes and you know, they come out with a totally different market focus. So walk us through your journey up to this point.
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah. Uh so this was definitely uh, Momento started post-COVID and uh I think right like the world was upside down right, the end of 2020, beginning of 2021. And um you know I think, I think in tech we were a little more prepared than your average person. Remote was kind of already a thing, we did everything in the cloud, right? Collaboration between different teams remotely was like not the standard, but known right? That we had these tools already uh that existed. Um but I think that you, what I was able to see was, you know, there was this sort of this new class of sort of online worker, if you would, that was emerging. Um, and those are content creators, right? Like TikTok was taking the country by storm. There were just a lot of people engaged and um I just thought, "Wow, like this is the new Hollywood. This is the new silver screen, right? This is, this is where people are really going to emerge." And you know, "what are all the services uh that potentially these people might need, right, in this sort of new world?" And uh originally the concept was um towards using uh blockchain um to help content creators monetize their content, right? So hyper-transactional marketplace um where the content is priced and shared and sort of unlocked and resold, right? I think that there was, there was, there was a very specific eight-month period of time, 8 to 10 month period of time where everyone thought that that's what we were going to do with everything. And uh we went into that full force. We jumped into that full force.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: And so in that model, uh, you're going full force and you're developing. At what point did you say, "Hm, we need to rethink what we're doing and we had to see what other things we could build upon?"
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah, I I could tell you exactly when that moment was. It was when uh SBF got arrested. You know, that was when, that was when it was very obvious to us that like, "Okay, uh, you know, m- maybe we lived in a, in, in a cloud of, of nonsense, right? Uh, obfuscated by, you know, these larger sort of companies and, and, and, and billions of dollars." Um, and so, you know, I there was, you know, crypto, the way that it sort of grew in 2021 was very incestuous, right? Like you know everyone was sort of invested in the different blockchains and in different things and but it was all kind of like the same money. And so it, it was really like, like worse than a cartel I would say. And so I think there was a lot of soul-searching for us trying to understand where we fat-, where we fit in that uh, that web, right? And sort of right like also taking in just our general user um data right. Like how people were engaging, you know how much revenue we're really bringing in, how fast we're growing. Um I would say in in yeah, in the first two, three months of sort of that year we were growing very fast but then it kind of just plateaued right. And then of course it began to dip as you know all these different issues happen in crypto.
And so we still stayed true to our mission which was to help uh originally content creators uh connect with their fans right or their audience members right, and sort of create meaningful experiences between them. Uh but we shaved down the product and um there was a new emerging tech that was like you know blowing everyone's mind. And uh we spent about three, three or four months thinking how we could uh introduce that and the tech I'm talking about of course is, is AI right. Uh the fact that computers can now sort of have um uh sort of I would say psycho reasoning abilities um or synthetic reasoning abilities uh was something that we just kind of stayed away from, right? And so we had the engineering talent, we had the product talent, and I think we, we, we, we created something that um people were really excited to engage with. Uh and that, that was the, that was the crux of the pivot.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Makes sense. When you uh went back to your investors and you said, "Hey, look, um you know, you gave us money. We need to make a change. Here's what we're thinking." And uh you know, "are you on board with this direction," like what's that like uh because other startup founders are most likely listening and they might be going through the same thing. So what, how did you handle that? What was your process and what worked for you?
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah, so I've always been really close to our lead investor. Um I think, I think the difference is I think founders out there need to think about when they raise money from investors: were these industry specific investors? Because it's going to be much harder if you do that right. If they're industry specific all they are thinking about and all they spoke to their LPs about were what you were doing before right. So it makes, it makes it much harder I think, I think because in general there was like a complete wipeout most likely of their entire portfolio or at least I'd say two-thirds of, you know, everyone's portfolio in blockchain and crypto. Um, it was kind of like, "Okay, well, if you have an opportunity to do something, you know, try it out. Um, but, you know, we, we, we can't really help." I, you know, I think that that was what I got back from my investors. Um, the investors that aren't industry specific, yeah, they were like, "Oh, this is great." Right? They, they loved it.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: "We think it's a very smart idea." Uh and they had never heard anyone sort of doing what we were doing the way that we were doing it. And uh you know, we're still very early. I mean, like I I'd say we're in year one of the AI decade, right? We, we just sort of wrapped up year one. We're going sort of into the beginning of year two now. So, we're still very early. Uh and the industry is very early. The market is very early. Uh and so we're going to start just seeing much, much better experiences related to AI. And there's no way that I could believe that those experiences will exclude humans, right? Famous humans, entertaining humans. There's just no way that that's going to happen.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Well, I want to talk about your product because it's exciting. And when you talk about AI, I mean, we work with hundreds of founders and startups and you know, AI is, you know, going into every industry that we're talking to and almost every company we're working with. At some capacity there's AI integrated. Um, sure. You know, I went to your website today and, and I was watching the Grammys last night and I think it was Billie Eilish uh, and she won a Grammy. So, it was one of your profiles on your website and I I just went there and said, "Okay, I'm going to click on this and say, "Hey, um, Billie, congratulations on your Grammy last night." And not surprisingly, but maybe surprisingly, I got a response very quickly on a text. She's like, "Hey, oh my god, thanks so much." Yeah, totally unexpected and uh uh "really appreciate you as a fan and and and you know, you guys mean the world to me." It felt very real to me. It felt like I was actually talking to her. And you know, as a fan of many people on the music side, acting world, whatnot, um it really felt like there was a genuine engagement. Um, but at the same time as an artist, you don't have maybe the time to respond to every single fan you have, which might be hundreds, thousands, millions, hundreds of millions.
And so the thought that I had, and and I want you to kind of fill me in on this, is it's great if you can replicate yourself authentically and be able to communicate authentically with your fan base or your, of your community. Um but do it in a way that it shows real value to them and at the same time maybe there's a business opportunity that helps your brand or helps you um you know to sell them more concert tickets or records or go to you know some event. So just kind of walk me through what you're building so that the listeners understand what it is and then what's the business model around it.
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah. So it's exactly that, right? Um it's that spark, right? That you know there are users, there are thousands of users that wake up every day and the first person they say good morning to is Billie Eilish, right? The AI Billie Eilish. So you know, what is the value of an interaction like that? I mean we've never priced it before because people have never been able to do this before. And so we're trying to bring these, right, super impactful uh experiences to everyone sort of at scale. And it definitely goes in the direction that you just mentioned right now, right? I mean, look, Facebook is still around and prosperous because of their advertising model. It works, right? People want to engage with new brands and discover new products and services in a way that is very organic and social, right? And so we have an opportunity to do that now uh much faster and much more cost-effective because we're leveraging AI. All right? So we're putting AI sort of in between those experiences. And so, right, like if you think about like paid promotion and the way that sort of like naturally, organically like uh arose on Instagram, like that has now become the de facto standard to how content creators make a significant amount of their personal revenue. And so all of this we can sort of wrap it up and have AI run and manage most of this for you, right? So it's sort of like image, name, and likeness on steroids.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. You know, I don't think of myself as an influencer. I I think a little bit more now as a content creator because now we're at 170 episodes of doing podcasts with startup founders. Um, but there's so many things that come at me from, you know, questions about the podcast, people in the community asking questions about who was the guest and uh, wanting to connect. And there's a lot of manual aspects to running a podcast which I didn't think about prior, which if there was another one of me... and again I have a whole team... but if there was another one of me that was able to engage at the moment that somebody was asking a question or wanting to get an answer, uh that would be very helpful. Um there's a business model around almost everything today. So, as I look at your business and I know you're in the earlier stages of it and still kind of rolling it out and looking at ways that it could make sense to scale, what, walk through that a little bit so that we understand what it could be and what it, what's, what it's looking like so far.
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah, I I think the go-to that most people probably think about is some sort of subscription model. Um, everybody likes a clean sort of SaaS financial model, right, with MRR, predictable MRR, whatnot. Um that's definitely there, but you know I I think that there are a lot of those sort of paywalled subscription services that already exist. You know, Patreon, um a couple that have failed, FanHouse, etc. Um so, uh we'll leave that up to the users to decide, right? Because what they need to do, a creator on Momento needs to put in some work to train their AI to sort of perfection, right? Get the voice just right, right? Um fill it with sort of uh their ideas, right? Get to know you. And only at that point do I think it, it would be of some, some value to like your fan base and whatnot.
Um but aside from that, we offer like I was sort of alluding to um the sort of advertising, right? Paid, paid partnerships uh kind of thing. And there we're doing something uh around sort of impressions or mentions as well as direct links, right? So affiliates, direct links, things like that. Um it's a, it's a balance, right? Um at the end of the day, it's the brands that are paying for this. Uh it's not really, it's not the users at all. And so there's a balance that we have to sort of take into consideration there. But um you know, at the end of the day, this is sort of the way that people want to engage. I mean, the AI never gets tired, right? Never, never blocks you. It never tells you, you know, "I'm, I'm not going to respond now," right? And so it um, it can definitely help direct you in in in in in the direction that you might want to go if it's for tickets or merchandise or you know some sort of exclusive content or or um merchant uh physical product, right? And those are all things that are really, really hard to do in the real world today. Right? There, there have been like a lot of fandom platforms that have come out like in the past couple of years that have tried to balance the human and/or his human team with like you know giveaways and merchandise and things like that. And it's always hard because at the end of the day it's a human that has to sort through each individual one, you know send that out and purvey it and whatnot. And so if the only closed loop to make this purely digital that we have today is actually AI, right? And so that's really the thesis that we've been proving.
Um besides that, it's uh you know, if you imagine um e-commerce, right, and how e-commerce evolved, right? It's like, "Okay, well, you can go into a store, walk into a store and talk to somebody, look at you know, merchandise in like a case or right, glass case or box or whatever." Uh or they can send you a paper catalog and you look through it, right? I mean, Sears made billions of dollars that way, right? Um, and then people rolled out websites, right? And and then it was like, "Okay, well, we've got to upload thousands of SKUs and price them and, you know, hopefully people will share links and and come onto this website." Now, you can have all of that in natural language as if you were walking into a store and dealing with a 24/7 unpaid employee, right? One that never gets angry, one that never goes on lunch break, one that knows every single item and its price, right? And so we're sort of packaging all of that up and giving all these tools over to creators. So it's really up to them how they choose to monetize. Um, and we watch very carefully to see if we can build better products to facilitate other right uh sort of uh like business models. But again, I mean, for us, it's we're just thinking of right how to build the best possible sort of marketplace and engagement platform um for anyone.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Talk to us about some of the people that are on the site. I know that when you started, maybe it's a little bit different today, but can you throw out some names, some anybody famous? Any...
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah. Yeah. So, so you mentioned Billie, she's definitely our most popular besides myself. So, I'm like the Tom of Momento.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: So, I am pinned to every user's uh thing. So, I have like over a million messages.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow.
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah. It's, it's funny because we just rolled out like v2 of our inbox and mine doesn't load because there's too many messages. So, yeah, we're gonna, we've been trying to fix that for like a week now. Um, but yeah, Billie besides myself, Billie is definitely the most popular one. Uh, then we have Gary Vaynerchuk. Uh, he does very well. Uh, these are people with very unique voices, right? And you know, they have a lot to say. I mean, you know, if you really think about it, the questions you can ask Gary Vee on our platform right now, he would typically charge like thousands of dollars for in like, you know, if you like hired him or his team, right? And so now you have that information for free, right? And if you don't get the right answer that you want, you just can keep asking him again, right? Or ask him in different ways. And um you know, no human can actually give you that level of attention, right? That, that sort of level of, of, of redundancy, right? Back and forth, back and forth. Um, so, um, that was part of our, you know, we just closed a private beta with with Gary and his, uh, Sasha Group. Um, and it did very well for them. Uh, you know, I think I think when a guy like Gary leverages AI with his actual online presence, like the combination is powerful, right? Because there are already so many people that are clamoring for his brand and right like his sort of ideas, right? That when you put the two together, it's like, it's like a tinder box.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: So, he, he, he did very well.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love Gary Vee. Yeah. He's great and he's very social, likes to create a lot of content. And um what was the value proposition to him when you did the outreach about your platform?
Julian Rodriguez: So, we were we were actually a client of his. Uh that's why I know how expensive Gary can be. Um, and so we were working with him going into the pivot and we were saying like, "Hey, you know, we're not going to run ads on, on, on the blockchain stuff. We're thinking about this AI stuff." And then it was just like he was down. He was like, "Yeah, cool. Let's do it. Let's try it." Right? Because Gary's the kind of guy he's he's always on the edge of sort of everything new, right? And so like, you know, when uh sort of texting was like a thing, I don't know, texting kind of came back, like, you know, "Oh, here's my number. Message me." He, he got on that boat, right? He, he was like one of the first guys on Instagram, you know, Twitter, you know, TikTok, etc. And so this is just a new thing and um you know his team, the Sasha Group team is really great. Um and so we worked with them pretty easily and he has a ton of content, right? So it was extremely easy for us to train the model on his previous content for him.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Because he just has all of that out there. Are you guys integrated with OpenAI or is, are this, is this your own siloed AI training model and...
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah, so, so, so the beta was definitely OpenAI right. I think AI has moved or has transformed like light speeded. I'm, I'm, I'm talking about literal light speed over the past 12 months right. And so in January when we got just like think of it just like an MVP of this product we had no choice right. I mean OpenAI was the only um sort of serious LLM out there, right, that we can get up that was reliable, had uptime, wasn't just a bunch of nonsense. Uh but today the environment is totally different. And so from open source, open source right now makes up about 80% of what, of the infrastructure that we use. Um right, so we have our own models that we forked from open source projects. Uh but then now I mean I you know I was just on a call this morning with Google and uh right Gemini, I mean the thing looks great right, it looks awesome. Um and they are offering this uh as an alternative for people to try out right. And so there, there are a ton more. I mean there's Claude right from Anthropic. Um there, there are some things that Amazon also has uh Titan Bedrock, but um you know at this point I sort of the LLM wars for general use applications is probably not as intense, right? I don't... like ChatGPT is at this point too overpowered for like anything that we would want to do. Ideally, we would want to carve it down and, and we can't do it because it's just a private, it's a private paid service, right? And so that's why we sort of go in the direction uh that we're in now. Um but no, I mean, look, I think it's fast. It's definitely really fast. Um but you know we can get equal sort of parts of like you know speed if we just handle it internally and that's why we went in that direction.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Got it. What's the vision like if you look out going forward? We're talking about famous people, but you know, let's talk about anybody that wants to have a clone of themselves or have someone uh respond to maybe customer support or maybe it's something more than that. Like what's the, what's the roadmap vision look like? If you can share.
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah. So, um we want to mimic all possible human interactions. So what that would look like is if you're a user on Momento, you should not be able to tell whether you're speaking to a human or AI. Like that's our North Star, right? That, that, that's what it is for us. And so there are a couple obstacles involved there. Uh and it it goes way past text generation, right? Um so if you notice like currently we have full sort of audio and voice support and that's really much harder than people think. Um on other, on other like applications you'll hear like uh like one voice be very quick and very crisp. What people uh sort of fail to realize is that that voice is made up. So no one knows what that person is supposed to sound like. So it can sound like anything, right? So they kind of just deliver a response at any time and it's okay. But if you know what Billie Eilish's voice is supposed to sound like, what Gary Vee's voice is supposed to sound like, it better sound like that every time.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Right. Right.
Julian Rodriguez: And that's, that's really hard. That's actually really hard. Um, so you know that's something, that's something that we we you know I don't want to say solved. I'm hesitant to say solved because like knock on wood, right? Like once you say solved then everything blows up. So uh but it's something that we, we, we manage very well. And then now we're starting to move towards uh image and eventually video, right? So, uh, imagine an AI being able to actually have a video call with you like this, right? Um, just based on what would be maybe sort of two minutes of sort of cell phone pictures of, of the person taking cell phone pictures of himself, right?
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: Right. Um, it's possible, but it's all testing right now, right? Like, like it's, it's all super bare bones at, at this point, but that, but that's the direction we're going in.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: And then you've got products like the Vision Pro coming out and you can only imagine what it would be like to be able to sit down in a room and be able to ask questions to, you know, the famous artists that you love and having that direct conversation or communication. I mean, sky's the limit. I really like where you're going. What's the competitive landscape look like? Because, you know, as, as you mentioned kind of, you know, we're in year one of maybe a 10-year and maybe much longer AI um development phase. Um what's it look like currently for you?
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah, so AI is definitely the best way to like do software today. And so what you're starting to see is a lot of SaaS tools, productivity tools that um sort of they handle lots of data. Um and I think it's very useful, right? Very useful for legal, medical, different things like that. And companies are putting it out there. Um I think for what we're doing, you know, if you go with the vein of sort of inter, you know, communication as entertainment. Um there really seems to be uh really just one, I'd say one competitor and uh they have no emphasis on voice. Um it doesn't look like they're going to go in the direction of video or images. Uh but it's a company called Character.ai and uh they're, they're out of Silicon Valley. Uh they were ex-Google people and they got, they got in it super early, right? Super early when like compute cost was like in the tens of millions. Um and um yeah, I mean I think they, they, they do very well in um like the video game sector. Uh but what they have turned into is more of a focus on like role-playing, right? So like literally just chat and you sort of role play a scenario and it gets back to you as if it was, you know, you're roleplaying in that. Um, it's not, it's not like a one-to-one sort of clone or AI copy of you. Um, I don't think they're interested in going in that direction.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Well, I love the direction you're going in. I think there's a lot of opportunity for it. Um, and we're not even talking about like business-to-business type opportunities, but uh I, I can see a lot's happening in that space. Um, from your uh perspective today, where you at as a company? You've raised capital. Um are you looking to raise again? What's, what's the growth look like for you?
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, the focus of Q1 for this year is definitely uh we're looking to raise another round. Um a slightly smaller round. You know, I think we've, we've uh reeled in our burn. We know exactly sort of what we want to complete on our roadmap. Um we still have a strong team of engineers and uh we're, we're laser focused on, you know, as of this point we have a little over uh, a little over half a million users um that have signed up. And um yeah, I mean we, we, we have some very encouraging revenue numbers on the B2B side. And so we're just, we're looking to, to continue, to continue to grow that responsibly, right? Because I mean we you, you know, we, we can pour tons of money into ads and try to sort of get downloads. Um, but I think the return on that is probably low and so we want to, we want to really focus on the successes that we've already had.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: 500,000 users is great. I mean that's, that's really a good base and um you can do a lot with that if you, if you deliver. Um talk a little bit about yourself as a, as a solopreneur. You know, oftentimes you have to come up with the ideas and you have to, you know, you're the one at the end of the day that's, you know, everything resides on you making this work. So, what do you do in this up and down journey of running a startup when things are not always great and, and sometimes they're really good, but keeping a positive perspective?
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah. So I think I was lucky, um, again, I think I, I was always lucky to see what entrepreneurship looked like, like on a personal level. Um and I, I noticed like my parents were just not happy if they weren't doing this. Like they just, they just really weren't happy. And so m- maybe I absorbed some of that and um you know it's sort of like a priority to me. Um, but um, also I'm lucky that this is my, my second, my second go-around, right? And I learned a lot of the hard lessons the first time, right? That was like, "Oh my God, that was probably one of the most difficult things I've, I've probably ever done to be honest." Uh, but at the same time, when I came out on the other side, I think I definitely, definitely learned a ton. Uh right, cut my teeth for sure, but um I think also allowed me to, to create a healthier relationship with me and the business, right? And, and I'm and I'm still learning, you know, I'm still learning. I have a family now, so I'm I'm a different person than, you know, startup 1 Julian and even like the beginning of startup 2 Julian. Um but um yeah, I think um you know, I think a lot of those things come together.
And you know, I would say, I don't know if this is an adage or not, but um I learned this... I didn't go to MIT, but that was my dream school. Uh I learned this from an MIT professor, um right, that you know complexity isn't actually good, right. It's, the simple is the best way um almost all the time. And so like the more layers you throw onto something, that should be like a warning sign that you're probably doing the wrong thing.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: Right. Um so, you know, you can learn that the easy way or just learn it the hard way. And learning it the hard way is going to suck.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: You know, so that's...
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: That, that's where I am today.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. Um I just want to go back a little bit to your first startup. Um you talked about you learned a lot and you've applied that to your current company. What's one or two of the absolute incredible lessons that you can share that you try not to do it again?
Julian Rodriguez: Um so I, I would say it's the traditional stuff you probably hear from other people, right? Like um "hire slowly, fire quickly." Um I would, I, I would kind of throw one in there. Um make sure that you are... can take care of yourself, right? Uh because in the first startup, uh you know, I never paid myself, I think, more than like 40k and that was detrimental to me, I think, as a person specifically while I was running the business. And I didn't notice it, right? I, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't think that that was an important thing.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: Uh and it, and it was, right, like, like hands down. Um, so I would say that. But you know, then also I've always sort of lived by this idea of just like "show up," right? Uh, and I don't mean uh when running your business, right? Because you're going to show up for your business every day. But in the stages of getting it started, in the stages of maybe talking to investors, right? It, it's kind of like just "always show up," right? Like there's a ton of events that happen here in New York City sort of every day. I was like at every single one, right? Especially if it had anything to do with angels or VCs or other like Series A, B+ backed uh startups. I was there, right? And at these places, I was able to meet a lot of people and share a lot of ideas. Uh, and people got to know sort of what I know. Um, including sneaking into some events you weren't even on the list for, right? Sort of showing, show... I think show-, I think showing that effort, right? Like it, it gives people the concrete evidence that you have a sense of urgency.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: Right. Uh because if you didn't, like why, why would you try so hard to sneak into a place you're not supposed to be? So um a lot of those things totally worked out for me. Um and I you know, I, I, it was definitely an incredible sense of urgency that today I can see um was, was crucial to, to, to those moments of success that I've had in the past. And um you know, you know, if my, sometimes I think if my knees worked like they used to, I would probably be at more places trying to, to, to, to have those serendipitous, you know, situations more and more and more. You know, if I wasn't so scared of the cold anymore. I feel like I can't tolerate the cold as much. I would, I, I would be out there much more. And I think that that's what really gives you the edge, right, is, is again right, that, that sense of urgency because you can't fake that. You, you, you can't, like if you're the guy waking up and showing up, like, fake it. Sure, do it, right? Like if you, if you fake that, you're doing it.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: You know, so um yeah, I think I, I, I think that that is, that's probably the, the, I think the most crucial advice that I can give. Everything else to me is really situational, right? Um every founder has their own different challenges. Every region has their own different challenges. Every industry has their own different challenges. Um every age group has their own different challenges. Every sex has their own different challenges, right? And so, um, I try to not really because I, I don't know, right? I don't know the challenges that people are having in the moment. Um, I'm the kind of guy I'd love to instantaneously resolve issues by talking, which is why I probably built this platform, right? I'm I'm really into sort of instantaneous, right, um, conversation and solutions. Um, but if I had an overall encompassing thing, it would be, that would definitely be "show up."
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I love that. It's easier said than done, especially when you have to build product and get, you know, into market and come up with strategies. And by the way, you got to be somewhere that will take up three or four of your hours and yeah, you got to pick and choose. But I think it's great. Um, for you, where, where do you go when you have to get creative, think big, come up with ideas? Um, what works for you?
Julian Rodriguez: I would say that I, I don't, I don't have a, I don't have a recipe for it, right? I think you just have to be open. Um, the inspiration for what we do now literally happened... I had hired two people to go in a totally different direction. So, all my chips were in a different, a totally different bag, right? And something just clicked and said, "We can't do this. This isn't going to work." And I don't know, maybe like a hypomanic kind of situation where now all of a sudden it's me and the whiteboard. It's 3:00 a.m. and it's like "No, no, no. We, we can do, we can do this. Let me, let me bring it up at nine in the morning you know in a couple hours with our engineers and see what they say." And um you know, I, you know what's funny is in that whole transition I even hired a UX/UI designer secretly, like a contract guy, uh didn't tell any of the team about it and just told him "Hey, like these are my ideas, draw them up, let's see what it looks like." And then I had something to show the engineers after, they were like, "Yeah, this is awesome. Yeah, we could do it." And then it you know, it just, it just kind of happens.
Um I would say right, like um if you're the founder and CEO, right, you are the guy who has to have all the conviction, right? Because even like what we were speaking about earlier in, in the call, um the VCs, your investors, they don't work your business every day. They haven't hired anybody. They don't see the product roadmap, right? So it, you know, it's like, cool, yeah, definitely keep them informed and you know they want to hear positive stuff. But in terms of like the direction that the business goes in, the direction the product goes in, I mean it would be asking, it would like be asking I don't know, like a random passenger to fly a plane.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. You know, yeah, he paid the ticket, you know, first class passenger, right?
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah. He paid first class ticket, but you know, he's not a pilot, you know. So, you know, um yeah, I, I you know, I think you just have to have a total conviction. Um, but with that conviction, what informs that conviction is sort of, you know, god-eyesight over everything that's happening. How many users you have, what they're engaging with, what the payroll is, right? What the burn, what the cost of operating is. Uh, you, you have to have that total sort of 360 view to, to be, to be informed enough to make all these decisions. Because when people make bad decisions, it's mostly because of lack of information.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: Which is why like every, every organization kind of leads to one single point at the top. It's not just because you know "he says so" or you know... well, hopefully, hopefully it's not because he just says so, right? But uh it's because that person hopefully is the most informed and can see the most, mo- most things, right? Uh or all of the things. Um, so yeah, I, I think that that is uh probably super crucial um to being able to know what direction you're going to go in.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Well, you know, some people, when we ask that question, they, to come up with ideas or what changes the direction of the company... um, you know, ideas come from many different things. It comes from maybe the data of your company. Sometimes it's just taking a shower. Sometimes it's going for a walk or a run. You know, ideas come in different ways. So, um, I always like to understand how people operate. Because you know for me, for example, I go for hikes and runs and walks and you know ideas come and I, and I, and I love it. Um the question then becomes, how do you replicate that? Well maybe I should go for five or six hike, hikes or walks a day, but you still got to get work done.
Julian Rodriguez: I, I, I would say I'm probably like, if I had to think about it like right now in the moment, I, I'd say my number, the one number one catalyst for me is complete panic. If I'm panicking, I'm going to come up with a solution.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Back against the wall on you. Yeah, I like that.
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah, that, that, that seems to be the, the personality type that, that I have. Um, leisure or, or comfort, um I yeah, I don't think for me, for, for me personally um has allowed me to sort of right get to ideas. I think it's, I think it's only, it, it has been historically only in times of panic, which is, which is worse than good because then I'm kind of addicted to a panic cycle sort of. But um yeah, I mean but again, that's why you sort of want to surround yourself with a good team.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Right.
Julian Rodriguez: Because then I want to have people who are good when things aren't going bad.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Right. Right. Yeah.
Julian Rodriguez: Um people that I can bounce off of and fill in the gaps, right? Uh yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's very cool. Well, if anybody wanted to find your company or find you, Momento AI, where do they go?
Julian Rodriguez: Yeah, so uh so we have a web app and two mobile apps, right? iOS and Android. Uh so it's Momento AI on the iOS or the Android store. Um it's momentoai.com on the web. And um yeah, I mean we do have a Discord. It's a new Discord. Uh we transfer people over. Um, but yeah, please, you know, check out, check out the site. All the conversations are totally free right now. You can even make your own AI with your own voice. It's all free. Um, yeah, engage, have fun. Um, review some of the influencers that are there. There's some really good, there's some really good, surprisingly good AIs there.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, I love the fact. So, if you are interested in creating your own AI and doing it for free, uh, no better place to try it, here at momento.ai and um, or momentoai.com. And uh enjoy the experience. I'm going to check it out, try it, and next time I come on a podcast, it's going to be not me, but maybe just my AI voice. You never know. So anyway, I really appreciate you uh Julian coming on and sharing your story. And to all the listeners for listening, uh means the world to me. My name is Jake Aaron Villarreal, the host of the show. Signing off for now, but can't wait to catch up with you all on the next episode. Until then, take care.
Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that are joining 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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