Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their success, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you'd be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and here with us today we have Julian Torres, the co-founder and COO of a startup called Ontop. It's a company that's raised $35 million in funding and now operates in over 100 countries. He started off as a musician and transitioned into a business leader. It's a fascinating story. Can't wait to share it with you. Julian, welcome to the show.
Julian Torres Gomez: Jake, thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here and hopefully share some insightful stories and anecdotes that, that can help other entrepreneurs out there.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. Well, there's a lot to cover. You've done a lot, really from an early age. Uh originally from Colombia, you've got your bachelor's degree from University of Lo de los Andes [Universidad de los Andes], you lived in China for a year and traveled around Asia making money as an amateur musician. During the past 12 years you've built seven companies, you've raised over $40 million in venture capital funding, managed more than a thousand people in four continents, and have written two best-selling books published by Penguin Random House. So a lot going on there. And I, I missed something there which is: I acted along Chuck Norris. I acted in a movie with Chuck N...
Julian Torres Gomez: That's a pretty random thing to say but yeah it's an actual fact.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow! I don't think I've heard that one before. Uh, but that's great! Were you actually in the martial arts?
Julian Torres Gomez: It was just a, a commercial, a beer commercial in Colombia that well, they invested a lot of money in, so they hired Chuck Norris to be part of the, of the... And I was just called and casted for, like to be one of the, one of the main characters which was a group of friends just gambling in a casino. And then Chuck Norris came to save them when they got into trouble with some mobsters or something. So it was pretty random but I got to meet Chuck Norris, so that's awesome.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. Um well before we dive in here um, for the listeners where, where are you calling in from today?
Julian Torres Gomez: So today I'm calling in from my headquarters, Ontop headquarters, which are my home in Miami, Florida.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. And we talked about Colombia, you're originally from there. Um what was that journey like going from Colombia and then deciding to come to the US to, to really build companies?
Julian Torres Gomez: Yeah for sure, and it's sort of like a weird move because Ontop is a fully remote company, right? I could be working from anywhere in the world. So we were born and grew as a remote-first company where we were all operating out of our homes right. So the question is "why did you move to the US where it's more expensive, where it's more challenging maybe?" And with my, my co-founder, our, our thought process behind it was: if we want to build a global company and really make it big, we need to be playing in the big leagues. If we stay in Colombia there's a thriving ecosystem on startups and everything, but it's pretty limited right. Venture Capital money is pretty limited. It's just something that's starting to gain traction. Whereas in the US you have a fully developed ecosystem. The VCs are here.
We were part of Y Combinator of course, we did Y Combinator and the remote batch, so we weren't in San Francis-, San Francisco actually. So we did everything remote, but that sort of gave us a taste of what the US ecosystem was about. And when we set out to build Ontop, we wanted it to build, be a global company right. And we sort of felt with Santiago, my co-founder, that if we stayed in Colombia that, that was going to sort of limit our mindset. So we decided to move to Miami where there's this sort of intersection of cultures of both US people coming here I don't know, maybe because, because of the boom or the buzz around things such as crypto or different VC funds investing here, and then you have that intersection with Latin Americans moving here trying to make it out. So it's a pretty special combination and well, the city is growing and thriving on startups, so it was pretty, was a pretty thought-out decision. And turns out it was the best decision of our lives because that's one of the main reasons we attribute Ontop's success to.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. Talk a little bit about your upbringing. What was that like, and as an entrepreneurial background was there experiences that you had that kind of shaped you wanting to run your own companies at some point?
Julian Torres Gomez: Well I was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia. I have one older brother. I was raised by my two loving parents that were always pretty supportive of my crazy wanderings, if, if that's a way to put it. I'm not going to tell you that I was an entrepreneur since I was 10 years old maybe selling gummy bears at school, that, that... I wanted to be a singer. I'm a musician. So I wrote songs, I liked to play my guitar and just play in front of people. I started recording stuff and actually got a record deal out of a record company in Bogota with one of... with my first band. So I thought that that was going to be my life right. I actually told my parents "Listen, I, I think I'm not going to go to college and I'm, I'm not going to study anything because I'm going to make it out as a musician. I already have a record deal, here it is, let's go for it" right.
So without me knowing so, that, that was my first taste of entrepreneurship right. Because starting a band, recording songs and then getting them out on the radio is pretty, pretty similar to building an MVP, crafting it, crafting it out and then getting it to the hands of potential users. It's the same kind of hustle, it's the same kind of frustration, it's the same kind of feelings that you're going to go through of actually trying to get something from your mind so that hopefully there's product-to-market fit and people like your song right. So I've been able to connect the dots and really come to this realization years after, but my first go at entrepreneurship was being a musician. Of course that didn't work out or I wouldn't be able to, to be here with you today. But that first failure was really tough because once I failed at that, I was out in the wild without a base, right. Because I, I decided not to go to college, I didn't have a plan. So what the hell am I going to do with my life now, right?
That's when I decided to get into college, but start studying music. I said "okay, if this isn't going to work out, music is what I love, let's study music." Once I got to university and started studying music, I discovered that that if you love something very much and they make you do it, it can become your worst nightmare. So it eventually became my worst night-, I said "hey I hate this, I hate music school." So "let's just get it over with, let's switch, let's switch uh programs, let's start majoring in something else, something that's probably quick, fast, easy," and I said "okay let's study business, that's what everybody does." And that's what I did. I was always pretty disciplined and a good student and went into business just because I wanted to get that college thing out of the way. Alright, I didn't believe in college and studying. I honestly thought I was going to be one of those outliers that doesn't go to college as a dropout or whatever and then just makes it out. But then life has its ways of giving you that reality check right.
So did the business thing, graduated. Didn't believe in, in, in the business per se. I actually, in college I started two businesses. One because I wanted to meet people and travel. So I founded a travel agency. But honestly this wasn't because I was pursuing my entrepreneurial dream, it was because I needed money and I wanted to meet people and party. So I started a tourism company that took backpackers from different parts of the world into very interesting experiences around Colombia. And it actually started making money, but it was very time-consuming. So I had to choose, "Okay, should I do this or should I just graduate from college?" I said "okay no, let's graduate and do things the right way." Then along the way a friend told me "hey let's start a restaurant near, near our university, near campus, let's just start it out" and invested in that and worked trying to build a restaurant and failed at it.
So without me knowing, I was about to graduate and already had three big failures now, my rep right. And then I said "I don't know what I want to do with my life, I'm tired of doing crazy stuff, nothing working out, I, I, I don't know what I want to do. I want to go to the weirdest place in the world where no one knows me, no one, no one sees me and I can really just try to find myself," you know the cliche word. "Okay I'm going to go travel so I can find myself." That's what I did. So I chose China and I went to China for one year. Why? Because it, it was the weirdest place that I could think of. And of course at that point my parents told, told me "hey that idea is beautiful and everything, we support you, but there's no more money coming from us. So you, if you want to move to China you better find a way of supporting yourself in China."
So that, that's when I started to look for, I started looking for a job in Beijing and actually was lucky enough to get a job at an import-export company. They would give me an analyst job just crunching numbers, analyzing import-export data, but I got that first job that would pay for my rent. And, and you know, life works very, very in, very weird ways because actually being there in China doing that job, I got a call from a friend that was living in Beijing as well. Told me "hey, hey, turns out that I'm working as an artist, as a musician on weekends. I'm singing in weddings, corporate events. And the guitarist that I had got sick. I know you can play the guitar. Can you fill in for him this weekend?" I said "um I don't know I, I don't know." She told me "hey it's a thousand bucks per gig." "There's a what?! Okay." Turn out, turn out to the, the event. It was a Chinese wedding right. And during sound check I started checking sound and singing one of my songs. And my friend's manager wasn't, was hearing me play. She got to me and in mixing Chinese Mandarin and English she told me "hey do you sing? Can you sing? Do you want to work in this?" And I said "yeah I don't know." She told me "I, I have, I have gigs for you," and I gave her my number and she started calling me. I became part of her artist roster and I start- started touring the country in different corporate events and making more money per weekend than in a whole month's work at the other office, right.
So I had failed at music, but now music had found me and had found, found a way to feed me, pay for my rent and pay for my travel. So it was kind of amazing. And that whole chapter in, in China is what eventually led me to write the books I've written, two books full of stories such as the ones that I'm telling you. But anyways, that's how I ended up being an entrepreneur, a tech entrepreneur. It's sort of kind of, but I sort of like to say it I'm, I'm an entrepreneur with an artist's soul. And there's very, very similar things between writing a book, writing songs and starting companies. And I usually tend to approach my life as an entrepreneur with some kind of, kind of archery and craftsmanship and sort of magic behind creativity. And I love it honestly.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Well we'll get into your company that you've created, Ontop, before we do that, tell us a little bit about the company you started that was in Colombia that had quite frankly a lot of success, and you decided to, to move on and, and start Ontop. What was, what was that company? What were you doing, and, and, and how big did you build that up to?
Julian Torres Gomez: For sure. Just to add a little bit of context context because if I start telling the story about that company people will be weirded out "how does this guy, did this guy go from China singing songs to co-founding um a technology startup that did well and raised money?" Sounds like a cinder story right. So eventually when I was in China right, I went to Korea. Fell in love with a product that is called the intelligent toilet seats that want to, that clean your ass with a remote control. I said "hell, what the hell this is, this is my opportunity of being the Steve Jobs of toilets. So let's take one container of those things back to Colombia and let's start a business around intelligent toilet seats" right. It's a, it's a sort of like a Blue Ocean strategy, there's no comp- competition there. So I did that, asked for loans, investments and everything, brought the container back to Colombia. Turns out I rushed it and I bought the incorrect type of toilet, toilets. So I lost about 100 grand there in the most stupid way. And I was flat broke owing a lot of money. So I said "I'm in, like I'm in deep." I went back to live to my parents' house and they told me "hey, stop messing around man. Look for a serious job and just go on with your life. Enough about being a musician, a travel agent, uh whatever toilet seats. Just look for a real job."
So I looked for a real job right. And the first place that called me back with my CV was Boyden Global Executive Search, so a headhunting firm. And that's where I start to get into the sort of HR world and know a little bit about recruiting, hiring, blah blah blah. Turns out that after one year of doing that job it became very monotonous. I was doing interviews, candidate screening, everything related to that. I started sending out CVs and they called me from a startup incubator. I said "I don't know what the is a startup incubator, but they told me I can make double what I'm making, so I need to go there because I have debts to pay." So I went to the interview, told them everything I just told you about until this point. They told me "hey I think you're perfect for the job. We're looking for an entrepreneur in residence that can test out MVPs" (and I was like "what? what are MVPs?") "okay, that can test out business ideas right. And just try to go on a proof of concept to see if we fund them and we make them into startups, or like an incubator kind of of model." I said "okay, not sure I fully grasp that but okay." They hired me. Turns out even though I hated entrepreneurship at this point in my life because I had failed so much, I had just landed in my ideal job right. Because they gave me money, I could invent ideas and test them out right, doing MVPs all day long.
And one of those MVPs I called, I called it Fitpal. And Fitpal is an app where you can pay a single membership and go to thousands of gyms and fitness classes around Colombia and other Latin American countries. Sort of like a ClassPass for Latin America. Eventually it started to gain a lot of traction. I told my bosses "hey that this MVP it's exploding and people's signing up for it. I even have some revenue now." They told me "okay how much money would you need to, to get this off the ground?" I did my spreadsheets, business model whatever, 300K. They decided to fund the business with 300K initially and I told them "hey this is amazing. Can I please quit my job and be the founder of this? Like could I become your entrepreneur?" Told me "um maybe you're too young you're only 26 blah blah blah" and told me "hey I think, think I'm ready." They decided to give me the opportunity right. So that's how my previous company started. Started within an incubator, I got 300K, started building it out.
Along the way I met Santiago my current, current co-founder. He was working at Rappi. Rappi is like a DoorDash of Latin America, he was one of the first seven employees of that company. But he wanted to start something of his own. So he looked for me and he told me "hey I'm passionate about fitness, I love the gym, whatever you're starting something here. Would you share this with me and let's do it together?" And it's at that point um I had already spent a few months doing this by myself and I saw how lonely it was. That's one of the things I talk with entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs about: the value of having a co-founder. So I, I had suffered quite a bit and I said "hey yeah I really need someone that I can play pingpong with." And he came, came to the equation and we started working together. Things started working out pretty well. We gained traction and we ended up raising $3.5 million from very interesting investors. Building a network of 1,000 gyms, having over 15,000 clients. Signing also the most important companies because we also had a B2B arm that we sold to. Um we started signing up the like the most important companies, biggest companies in Colombia.
And eventually did that for five years. We did that for five years, became renowned in the eco- ecosystem and the Colombian ecosystem for being like, raised money, that had a valuable business model. That company still exists, it's profitable now, we're still sh-, we are still shareholders but it's run by someone else, external management. And it's still survives even after COVID. So that's pretty amazing and it's been one of the satisfactions of my life being able to build that. Because it then led me to writing the books, getting renown around the ecosystem, being able to come to the US with an O-1 visa right, extraordinary ability. And then getting my green card here. So it, it, it kind of all connects down to: every stupid thing I've done and every crazy story that I've told you so far is sort of what I put in my application for the O-1. And part of the argument is that I have this extraordinary ability to make happen, be, be it in music, books, h- starting companies or even being a speaker at events.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's amazing. Well a great follow, um a great foundation to, to, to kind of go from there to your current company, Ontop. So for the listeners out there that don't know what that company is and what you're doing, talk about that. What inspired you to start it and what problem is it solving?
Julian Torres Gomez: Okay, so we had that fitness company, very cool. We were doing everything. COVID came, things started to go sort of wobbly, costs were cut so our wage was cut in by, by half, both my co-founder and me. And in the end, end, we were not owners of the company because this big incubator was the owner of the company. So raising money for that company was going to be very hard if not impossible. And a lot of VCs told us "hey you're better off quitting and starting a new company of your own." So that idea started ringing about. In the lockdown, COVID lockdown, we said "okay what the hell is our next move?" When we started seeing what was out there, we saw four tailwinds: there's a rise of global talent, there's this new thing called of course remote work right, there's a worldwide adoption of this new thing called remote work, there's rising costs of health care and benefits and employment in the US right, and last but not least there are companies that are facing cash flow pressures and are looking for efficiencies in a lot of their processes.
So what's happening or what we started seeing is: there's a lot of talent in Latin America and in emerging economies that is qualified, speaks English and is now able, thanks to remote work, [to] offer their services to companies. So let's say I don't know, a developer in the Bay Area costs an average of $250,000 per year, you can get a equally h- qualified developer in Argentina or Colombia for $35,000 a year. So it's almost a 4X improvement or more, right. And that's when you start, when we start thinking "okay there's something to be made here. What if we started something to do with remote work that handled huge volumes of money and was in charge of the whole money movement, er, from country to country regarding hiring?" So once we started connecting those dots, what we decided is the market desperately needs a solution where you can hire, where companies can hire anyone in the world and get them paid just as if they were hiring and getting someone paid in their same town right. With that quick uh turnaround where you can just draft a contract, make sure it's compliant, and then when it comes to the time to run payroll you can just pay them as if you were paying them from bank account to bank account just as if you were in the same city. So that's where, where we decided "okay, more and more companies are looking to have globally distributed teams from the beginning." This has been, this has been happening for decades now, but the mentioned tailwinds accelerated this at an unprecedented level.
So what we essentially did is we abstracted the messiness of remote hiring and we placed payments and compliance behind a simple software as a service right. So we set out to build a closed loop network for payment and hiring for the global labor market that is humongous. Just in freelancer payments there's a 1.4... for trillion dollar industry, and growing. And freelancers include contractors and contracted workforce right. So what we did is "what if we layer international worker payments on top of a seamless payroll experience?" And that's why we decided to start Ontop. So Ontop is that layer of financial services, of money movements that happen um top of global payroll. So our solution is pretty simple: we help companies in developed economies hire and pay workers in emerging economies in a very simple, fast, cost effective and compliant way.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's incredible. You know, for the listeners out there that have ideas but don't have engineers that they work with or they're not a computer scientist themselves, sounds like you've had to build a lot. Um what was your process in finding the right people to help build what you've created?
Julian Torres Gomez: Yeah, for sure. So that's one very important piece, because the quality of the people that you manage to recruit at first will determine a bunch of stuff about your company. Not only your product, but also the culture and the future hires of your company. So really taking the time and diligence to know who you're letting into your company at first (and I'm not talking skill-wise, but rather attitude-wise, and rather honesty-wise) is the most important thing. What you want is brave-hearted people, good-hearted people that are going to just work as crazy and put their all in here right. I'm not a technical founder, my co-founder is not a technical founder. We don't know how to code, and that's okay. If you're out there and you want to start a technology company, you don't necessarily need to know how to code. You need to have common sense on how to build a product, and a product is not built just by lines of code. It's by understanding the dynamics between what the client needs and how you're able to provide that to them. It's understanding that people don't buy products or services, they buy better versions of themselves. So how are you going to make them feel better about themselves and help them with their pain point? So essentially at first of course we've had to build a lot of technology around it. We didn't build technology, we just discovered that there was a pain point. "Hey, I need to hire an engineer in Argentina or a salesperson in Peru, but I don't know what to do." And we would say "okay, don't worry, just fill in this form, tell me how, what you want to pay them, where that person is, give me the like the, what they make, and their main data, data points or the contact information right. And I'll turn that into a contract that is valid between you both. I can get it signed between you both. I will go to my research team and know what documents I have to ask from the Peruvian guy so that that hiring is compliant. And then after that you just give me the money. Company X, give me the money with a fee that I'm going to charge you, and I'll make sure that this person gets paid on time, and I'll worry about that." So no technology involved, we just understood the problem. They wanted to give us some information, then get everything signed, and then just give us the money and have the problem resolved because in the end our promise was "pay us, that's going to be a US local transfer, and we'll get that money dispersed anywhere in the world." And that's how it started.
And once you start getting to that and, and getting revenue, and of course once you get revenue you can start unlocking investment. And when you, once you start unlocking investment you can hire engineers that can turn that vision into a decent product. Well, things start turning up and then the only thing you need to worry about is, once you get enough money and whatever, is just do a very, very diligent recruiting process for that CTO or that technical person that will be leading your team. Because if you're not technical and you have someone that is not solid there, the moment they leave their... they leave you for another job or whatever, you're going to be left out hanging in the dark and you don't want them. You want that technical person to be as invested as yourself in the company and to have skin in the game. So that first, first hire, don't be shy about getting them stock options, compensating them well, like really putting them in, in the position where they are fighting the good fight with you. Be very diligent and take your time about bringing someone technical that has skin in the game and that is invested in the idea. Don't just bring anyone, someone to code or whatever because that's not about it. You're, you're sort of hiring the heart and soul of the company and you really need to make sure that they're well off in your company and part of the company.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Yeah, as a, as a company today you um have raised uh a fair amount of money, you have uh operation or you're basically helping companies in 100 countries. So there's a obviously a huge opportunity there. There's competition in the space too. What is it you do different that the competition doesn't do?
Julian Torres Gomez: For sure. We've raised $35 million so far. We were part of Y Combinator, we got selected to be part of Endeavor. We are actually one of the outliers of Endeavor, that means we're one of the top companies at Endeavor. So, so that has been really, really interesting for us. For those of you that don't know what Endeavor is, [it] is one of the biggest communities of entrepreneurs around the globe, possibly the second most renowned in the world after Y Combinator perhaps. And so that really set us up for success in, in different ways. But how we're addressing this differently than other competitor- competitors? Because there are a bunch of competitors and very good ones, we admire them a bunch. Is we have decided to invest a lot of our resources building financial services for remote workers right. So one of our main points is "okay, how, how do we not only provide companies with services regarding contracts and hiring people, but how do we add value to those workers? How do we give them financial tools that, where they can handle their remote work lifestyle, because it's going to keep happening, and they never leave our, our closed loop?" So we gave them a US dollar bank account. So we created an Ontop account where they can keep the money they make in US dollars. Because a lot of people in emerging economies don't want to have local currency, they want to have US dollars to hedge themselves against uh FX and devaluation. And we also gave them a card right, the Ontop card that they can use anywhere in the world without fees. And from that we have stemmed out a bunch of financial services that they can add to their life so that they, if they change jobs, they can go and easily say "hey you know what, don't hire me through Deel or Remote or whatever, hire me through Ontop. Why? Because they're giving me the best options and the best benefits." And that sort of has been our, our thesis.
So we've really developed outstanding, top in class, top in class financial services that no other competitor in the market can even begin to match up against us right. On the other side, well the hiring and the compliance and everything, that's pretty standard. Because if you're going to hire someone well there's just a bunch of things that you can do. And if... we're up to standard on, on that part. But really it's all about the endgame for the worker and how they're using their money, how they're thinking about their finances, how they're moving them, their money around the globe. And also one thing that we've done really well is build out for compliance right. So really get our licensing straight, really get our compliance team to be as robust as possible. Because out there in the market there's companies that have not taken this ser-, taken this seriously and they're facing lawsuits, they're facing money laundering investigations, they're... I mean payroll businesses are fraudsters' favorite mechanism to commit their crimes or money launderers to move money. So you really have to be careful there because you don't want to mess with the authorities when it comes to money. You really need to be careful. So we've set out to build a very, very strong solid foundation that can enable us to grow. A lot of competitors sadly have not done that and it will cost them down the way. Actually it's costing them right now.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, great point. As a company, how many countries are you operating in with the people you've hired and how many employees do you have today?
Julian Torres Gomez: So we are hiring people in more than 100 countries right. So if you think about our financial services aspect for remote workers, we have account holders in more than 109 countries. So we're truly one of the first global banks in the world if you want to say, say so. H- tens of thousands of people are being hired through Ontop per month, we're serving companies in all geographies around the globe, however the majority are in the US right. And we're h- trans-, hundreds of millions of dollars per year in, in payroll, which sets us up in the like the top batch of performance for this industry. Of course there's a bunch of room to grow. I told you the industry is about 1.4 trillion dollars in size, that's outrageous. And we're slowly gaining traction and momentum. Of course there's competitors out there that are just doing their thing, growing like crazy, but the market is so huge. The client base that we're targeting is really growing at a fast pace. Because we believe that it's not just about the big businesses in the world, it's about the small to medium-sized businesses that are being born right now and are growing right now that are going to determine how the next 10 to 15 years behave in terms of hiring and remote work.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. Um you know, as a leader of a company that's growing and scaling at a fast pace, it's not just about the strategy and leading the company. But there's you know, the me-, the mentality of being the leader. And mental health is something that I think is overlooked in a lot of ways, and also um needs some attention around how leaders can you know, take a break, or maybe they need some other alternative remedies to help them you know get through their day, their week, their month. Or maybe they're just going out of business and they're trying to figure out what they need to do to, to not make that happen. But you know, it's always good to have outside support. What's your, what's your thoughts on mental health uh in the business world, and, and from your perspective?
Julian Torres Gomez: You know there's a very American paradigm, paradigm about trying to work your ass off as hard as possible 24/7. And that's very dangerous. If I asked you to go ahead and go to your garage and get in your car and max your... put your car in neutral, max out the accelerator like to whatever it, it, it goes, and just put a brick there and let, leave it like that for 12 hours. You would tell me "Hell no, I'm going to blow the engine," right? Even if it's the best car. And even if you have a very good car, well you're going to tell me "I'm not going to do that, it's a very, very good car." So why do we expect to do the same or to do that with our own body right? Why do we pretend that we need to max it out and just press on the accelerator every day, seven days a week and not realize that that's going to blow our internal engine out? And then if you blow it well it's no, not good, it's, it's no use for you right? So I use that analogy to say there needs to be moments for everything. Resting and stopping is as important as just going for it.
Going to music, if I play a sound right now, one note in the piano constantly for you. Be, let's say the note A, and I just keep it pressed. After two minutes of hearing that you're going to be, you're going to be out of your mind. You, you'll want to kill me right. For that to become music, what is music really? Music is not just one single perfect note that goes and goes and goes and goes at, at the same level. It needs dynamics. It needs range. It needs silences right. So you go and play the sound, you stop. And that's what rhythm is. Rhythm is not constant sound, it's, it's going at it and just stopping and that's what makes you enjoy music. So in the same way, for entrepreneurship to evolve in the proper way, in the artistic and the enjoyable way, and most successful way, you need to be able to have moments where you really work hard nonstop and then just stop. Moments of silence, because that gives you that dynamic range that creates a work of art.
So I've devoted my whole career to combining both. How can I work in a very stoic way, disciplined way, where I have to go through voluntary suffering to be able to power through, and just be in a mindset where I can overcome any ob-, overcome any obstacle. And combine it with what I already know, and science knows, that works. That is when you're resting, when you're disconnected, that's where you are at your most creative. If you don't believe me ask Thomas Edison, he used to nap for 20 minutes in his laboratory or whatever because he knew that as soon as he woke up his mind would come with solutions that he couldn't come up with whenever he was fully engaged. Whenever you're just operating at one single frequency, there are things that you're going to miss out on. And that's just how the human brain works. So eventually for being super productive, super creative, the best thing you can do is get away from the problem and just be in silence for some time.
That's why I got into meditation. Meditation enables you to go and be silent for a while, quiet everything out. Just filter out everything, and then this, the solutions just start coming up. And it's counterintuitive because of the paradigm, right. The paradigm I, I guess is that, is that the correct way to say paradigm? Yeah. In English, paradigm. That I need to work as hard as I can for 24/7, not have life if I want to be successful. That's far from the truth. Yes you need to work hard, yes you need to put in effort. But you can't pretend to take the machine at its max for 24/7. You need to be able to identify when you have to stop. And that for me is what mental health is about when you're working at a startup, is knowing when enough is enough. And you need to fully disconnect yourself so that you can get your cortisol levels down again to base level and then just start operating from a place that's more open-minded, growth-minded right.
There's a law called the Yerkes-Dodson law, it's a bell curve right. That says that... and the y-axis, that's the level of arousal right. And sorry, level of arousal on the x-axis, and um, and then the other axis you're going to have your productivity level. So and so x-axis, the level of, of arousal right. So the more aroused you start becoming, at first the curve starts sloping up pretty fast and you become very productive, very productive. But at some point that just peaks, because from then on in the x-axis the more arousal you get starts to be counterproductive and the b-, the curve starts going down. So actually there's a level of arousal, and in this case arousal is stress right, that will make you very, very unproductive right. And, and everything will go to, you don't want to go there. And the, the, the tactic to not go there is to know when you need to draw the line, stop and reset back to, to a baseline. Because it's all about managing cortisol. If you're stressed, engaged and everything, you're sort of like filling up your cortisol, cortisol, cortisol until there's one moment where you, you're not even thinking straight. So you need to be able to reset back. And I always tell, as, as to entrepreneurs, find your methods of resetting back. If it's cold plunging for you, amazing. Sauna, amazing. If, if you want to run, go for it. If you want to play PlayStation, go for it. You want to play the guitar, whatever takes you, but find a way to reset. You, because it's a myth that you'll go on for days just going at it, going at it, going at it. You're either doing a very bad job or you're gonna be dead pretty soon. So I think that's, that's very important.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's amazing. What habits have changed for you since you started Ontop over the last three years or so?
Julian Torres Gomez: So it's been amazing. Since I started Ontop I haven't stopped meditating even one single day. So I've been meditating for 1,360 something days in a row. And I adopted... I, I used to get very stressed at my last company. And when I started Ontop, I started doing this ritual. Every morning 6:30 a.m. I sat down to meditate, just go ahead and do it for 15, 20 minutes. And in the end I just end up with a little prayer of my own. I thank, I thank life for everything I've got, and then I say I'm prepared. And my neighbors must think I'm, I'm crazy, but I open my eyes and say "Universe, I'm, I'm ready for whatever you might bring this day. I'm ready for it." And that single thing and just repeating that makes you ready for whatever is about to happen. Because you realize that most things in life don't affect you for what they are, but rather what you think about them. So once you stop feeling entitled that you should have things going your way, that you should deserve this, that, that shouldn't have happened, and once you think the universe is an open canvas full of random events that you are just reacting to, it becomes easier. Because it becomes less personal. And maybe that lost client doesn't hurt that much because you're not feeling it as a personal attack. Or that you're a piece of shit that couldn't build anything, and that you've always been this way, and since you were in high school you're a failure, and all this talk that your brain and mindset starts giving you. But you rather say, "Okay, this just happen, happens in life, in the universe things just happen because the universe is entropy and the universe tends to go to entropy. So I'm not taking it personally. The only thing I can't control is how I react to this. Let's just react to this and see what I can do. What's the next logical step?" Instead of blaming everything and everyone or being the victim. "How can I take control and just really take action on this?" And it really changes your perspective.
So meditate, gratitude. I know this is pretty mainstream, everyone is talking about this out there, but really reflect on what that means at a practical level. And you don't have to become a yogi, a meditator or whatever. You just have to find ways where you're not plugged into the Matrix all day long. And the Matrix I mean plugged into the game. And just zoom out a little bit and understand how ridiculous life is. Zoom out to the world. We're floating in the middle of space, they say it's infinite, no one knows where it ends or where it starts. In a blue ball that's floating there, powered by a bright star. And then you're worrying about this very, very simple stuff that is happening here. And you're not thinking, look at how unpredictable it is. And don't you stop for one second and thank the world, the universe that you're being able to run a company, have a job and do amazing things and work... worry about not selling enough or your marketing strategy not working, rather than "I don't know what I'm going to eat tomorrow" because there are people suffering like that. So it's a matter about perspective. And once you find your jam about how you can get yourself into that state, you'll be operating from a place of abundance and not from a place of scarcity. Which is where everyone operates on. Because they're hooked on Instagram seeing everything they lack, everything they don't have. Seeing how lame their life is compared to the post they are seeing. And of course if you're operating from that state of mindset, that's what you're going to get back, right?
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. Uh and I do believe that life happens for you, not to you. So what you're going through, um you have to look at the lessons that you can pull out of it when it's good and bad and then how you can um use that going forward. So I think perspective is the kind of the key word that I pulled out of what you just shared, which is: keep a perspective of where you're at in life, but also um you know what you're going through. Things aren't always as good as you think they are, they're not always as bad as you think they are either. So just keep a balanced perspective. And we hear this a lot from founders that... at least the ones that are really successful seems like they have a good perspective of what they're doing and just life in general. And they also are able to turn around pretty quick. When things go bad, they don't spend a lot of time when they lose that deal or the funding doesn't come through or they lose their co-founder or whatever it happens to be. They think about it, but they quickly are able to turn and move forward. And it's about continuing to progress. So those are um a lot of the things that we hear and sounds like you're right, right in line with the really successful founders. I'm going to ask you now three questions. Just three questions with three simple answers. I'll start here: where do you go to think big or to brainstorm?
Julian Torres Gomez: That's a very good question. I usually, when my mind's stuck and I need to really think out of the box, I go running. I've discovered running in the past two to three years and it really makes me think differently, it opens up possibilities. I've discovered that I even invent better songs when I'm running. So that's where creativity really ramps up.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. What advice have you gotten from another founder that's been priceless that you can share with other founders?
Julian Torres Gomez: He told me, one of, one founder of a renowned fintech in Latin America told me, "Hey, it's very cool to grow and everything, fast, and move fast and break things, right? Like Zuck says. But when you're dealing with fintech, this is 'go to jail'. So you don't want to move fast and go to jail. So take compliance seriously and do things correctly." And I think it's a pretty valuable lesson because in a hyper-growth business, there's money flowing in, things are working out pretty well, it's very easy to derail yourself and go through another route. Take FTX, take Binance, take... every, all these businesses have taken the wrong turn. They could have been beautiful, amazing, big, big businesses and then turned into frauds. So I think what that advice precisely meant and how it can apply to everyone is just keep your feet on the floor, on the ground, and no matter how much training, mayhem you have around you, know, know that there are ethical lines and legal lines that you should not cross. This is not a game. Starting a company might sound like fun and games and everything's trendy and "oh my God, I messed up, I made a mistake." But there are certain things that you need to take seriously. Even though it sounds as a game, you're changing lives here, you're doing serious stuff, you're affecting the people around you. So keep your feet on the, on the ground. Because it's, it's easy to lose yourself in the startup world and fairy tale land.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. What works for you in staying positive when the business is going through challenging times?
Julian Torres Gomez: Usually one thing that I do, and I discovered it with my co-founder: whenever we feel our d- darkest moment, that we don't feel this is not going to work out, that we're not doing, doing things correctly, that we know we don't know, that we, we're not, we're not talented, that we can't take this off the ground, or whatever excuse comes up in mind. Talking in public, giving podcasts or mentoring someone usually does the trick. When I hang up this call, podcast, I'm ready to go. You know, I already feel hyped up. I've been talking for one hour and in the end I'm talking to myself. And sorry about [the] listeners, I, I'm also talking to you but I'm not seeing you. But in the end this is an exercise with myself. And I'm trying to remind myself of what my life is, why am I doing this, and of all the advice that I've gotten through the years and, and putting it in practice. So one of the big resets is giving a, a podcast, a talk or a mentoring session can really put you in another place mentally where your confidence, confidence is returned to you.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. Yeah. Well as we wrap up here um, if someone wanted to find out about Ontop or wanted to connect with you Julian, where would they go?
Julian Torres Gomez: So for, for Ontop just go to getontop.com. If you want to get in touch with me, you can go to my LinkedIn page um, Julian Torres Gomez. Yeah, I'm sure you'll find me. And in Instagram it's @juliantorresgo or Julian Torres Go. Same for Twitter. Um and yeah, hope to hear from you. I'm pretty open about talking to everyone, I love helping out. And I really, really hope, I really hope you've enjoyed this episode about a little bit of my story. And know that you're not alone, you're not anything up, you're enough, you are good enough. It's a matter of doing things well, enjoying the ride and, and trying to operate from a place of abundance instead of from those h- silly little monologues that don't make sense that we usually tell ourselves about why do, why we not, why we don't deserve what we have or why we're not going to get it.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. I've really enjoyed this time with you and uh thanks for coming on our show and all the listeners that have spent their time listening as well. Means the world to, to me that you've spent it with us. Uh I'm Jake Aaron Villarreal and look forward to catching 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 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, but 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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