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Backstage Interview With Mitch Gordon

tell us a little bit about go overseas, what your product is, What it does. Sure, yeah, Just a step away from great Hoffman level at this point, but I'm uncomfortable with that. Go overseas. So you know where our brief pitch of what we are were based like a yelp trip advisor for programs abroad. Realist. Every program in the world with ratings and reviews that study abroad programs, volunteer abroad programs, internships, Gap year programs, adventure travel on. Our whole goal is to help people make more informed, educated decisions when they're choosing between programs. There's just a ton out there is. Anyone who searched for any of those programs is probably nodding along with me right now. Um, so our ideas toe get better information and help people make better choices and ultimately encourage more people toe go and participate in meaningful programs abroad because we think that makes a big difference. And how long have you been working on go overseas from, like the idea phase in the...

shower Till now I'll go with three years, okay? But we launched about a little over two years ago to be sure and tell me about that. That process. Like, you know, what was getting started process like for you? Yeah, it's always tough. I mean, we've activated and you have gone in ah, whole bunch of different directions and experimented in so many different ways. And that's been part of the stress and the joy of starting a company. So, you know, I mean, when you first started, I really believe in the Erik Reece lean startup model that we use that all the time. You know, build, learn, iterated Andi. We've made a lot of changes along the way, and that's been it's been a lot of fun. You know, there've been some ups and downs. There's days where you feel like it's just not gonna work. And thankfully, you know, I think we're transitioning from start up into real company mode, and that's that's a much better place today. Fantastic. Now, uh, part of why we have people like yourself on is we want to encourage our audience to pursue their dreams and take risks and try new things. But I'm wide open like it is not an easy path. 90% of the start ups in the Valley don't make it, um, and what's What's the worst day for you? What's the worst day then in during during your process like that? You know, we want people to be aware that it is not easy. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I'd say the worst day for us came when we were hit by a Google Out algorithm update out of nowhere last year. And we figured it out and, you know, got beyond. But I think this is the penguin update. Uh, yeah, questionable whether it was Pandora pain when Google. Hello. I'm happy to listen with. Sure, but we're not. We're not exactly sure. Either way, it affected our traffic a lot overnight. Thankfully, we had a great you no user base and community already anyway. And that helped us. But you know, when your traffic takes a big everyone relies on Google to some degree on. That was extremely stressful moment, and we weren't sure we would be able to continue. So there was. There was. Your business was going along. You were sort of climbing good progress. And then there was an update that Google did a technological update that, like, cut your traffic in what? Half our third overnight Yeah, something like that. And that sort of imperils the future of your business? Absolutely. And, you know, it's actually so many different ways a client's noticed. That's a problem on effects employee morale. When you're a small company with 10 people, which is which is what we are right now and great people, you're listening. So you know that affects employees were out of fix your morale, and you have to find a way to fight through that and keep people working hard. I know that we're gonna get through this and it's gonna be OK, but, you know, to your original point to Roger, players out there were thinking about doing it. I think it always takes longer than you think. It always takes longer than you think. Uh, the few exceptions out there, like the Instagram's, give people false hope that there is going. It's gonna be a quick turn around. You're gonna make a lot of money and be success overnight. The reality is that it takes 3 to 5 years for almost every successful business to really make it. Yeah, and let's talk about what? What does success mean? Because the the glitz and the glamour is are the instagram stories, the the YouTube's, the Facebooks, the you know Zuckerberg on that sort of thing. But the reality is that that's not really the case for most businesses. Like What's How do you think about what success is for your business? Yeah, it's It's a great question. I mean, every success is two things. I mean, first of all, you want to have the monetary success that's, you know, that's that's a big part of it, right? But for me, more important is getting up every day and really being passionate about what I'm doing, working with people that I really enjoy, feeling like I'm doing something creative and fun and interesting that makes a difference people's lives. So to me, it's some combination of that formula, and I'm a big believer in that of money and meaning. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's a more concise way to put it short. And I did, I think I think one thing I really believe strongly and is that if you're just doing it for the money, it's likely not to work. Yeah, you know, or the odds air more stacked against. You have to really love it cause you're gonna be doing it 1800 hours a week. And you have to love that. Yeah, And the go overseas thing is really make sense in terms of you, er life, experience and narrative, like living abroad was really, really important to you. Correct? Yeah. Maybe you can tell a little bit about how that informed your passion. And then your experience with that overseas market kind of informed the product that you eventually came up with. Absolutely. So for me, it's one of those examples where you make one choice in life and you have no idea how it's gonna have this domino effect on the rest of your life. And that happened to me. I studied abroad in Taiwan for your and then ended up starting my first company there and lived there for five years, and that company was reached to teach. Okay. Education based recruitment company, sir. In Asia. Uh, and and yet and so from there. And I was very involved in kind of the international ed education fields, which is really important to me, felt passionately about the global exchange and globalization, which is obviously affecting everyone. And the idea of meaningful travel. You know not not just going Thio Thio hang out at the beach for a week. Not there's anything wrong with that. I do that too, right? But if you're able to really interact with the local community through study abroad and volunteer programs and contribute Teoh a local community absolutely right, well, we learn from each other. I learned more from the countries I've been to that I think they've learned from a um so yeah, that's really important. And I think living that and immersing myself in that and then also having an entrepreneurial frame of mind was a good combination. I think if you're if you, you know, focus on a particular area and you are creative and have good ideas, it's a good it's a good mix. Hopefully, sure. And tell me about how you have educated yourself through the process of starting kind of multiple businesses. Um And what? You know how you keep your keep sharpening your skills on a kind of a daily basis. Such a tough question. Because to be honest, I probably don't dio good a job of that as I should. I mean, when you're just in it every day. Sometimes it's really, really hard to see the forest for the trees. But I think you have been reading a little bit lately about the transition from being a small 3 to 5 person team, then growing to attend to 20 person team. And I think there really is successful founders have a mental shift there where you have to yeah, find ways to continue to keep the company growing without you being involved in every sale and every little thing that happens in the company every day. And so that's something I'm really trying to dio professional development, reading things a lot, trying to keep myself reading, reading books and the new things that are coming out for online marketing. Things like that. A constant challenge. I'm I'm probably feeling at night. I try on a regular basis. Sure, let's talk about your team. So we're friends. A to a personal level outside of business. And, uh, that was little presumptuous, but But you over and over and talked about your team and how important they are to you. Um, how do you go about recruiting great people as a startup owner? Um, how do you go about retaining great people. Um, talk about that, Yeah. I mean, it's it's by far the most important thing, And my co founders, Andrew and, uh, and Tucker have been the company would not exist without them in the way that it does and are our key employees, not and Meghan. And people like that have just been amazing in our growth. It's hard to find good people, and we've had that's that didn't happen either. To me, the lessons that I've learned are that you have to find someone who really believes in what you're doing and then a Mayan As a founder, you should be so generous that it hurts. And by that I mean with equity. Um, and they really have to feel, I think that you genuinely care, because it's not a 9 to job, and if they treat it like a 9 to 5 job, that's not a good thing for the company. So you have toe reflexively also showed that that you care more than someone in 9 to 5 job would care about their employees. Sure, and so that's both on an equity basis, meaning they have shares and options in the in the company. Um what about what about in terms of, like, workload and ownership, like you talked about how removing yourself from the day to day decision making it is difficult. How do you think about that as ah, for your relationships with the individual employees? Yeah. I mean, the short answer is that I give people as much responsibility as they're willing to take on guy, recognize that for them that that can be stressful. Two, because they're given a lot more responsibility than they would have in another company on. So I think my job is to support them in every way that I can in a block and tackle from the little stuff so they can focus on what's really important in their job. And then also, I think they need to know. And I really believe and this is true in my case, definitely that I really care about their professional development and hopefully that that's our company for overseas for a very long time. But even if they leave that, they know that they're gonna have an ally and a supporter to me forever, right? Well, and that's, uh, sort of dovetails on a theme that reading Ben we're talking about, which is this. There are a variety of different ways to train yourself and to find opportunity and sort of one of the trade offs that you make Going to a startup, which I've done a couple times in my career now is you may not have the same pay rate that you would get going to a large, established company, but the opportunity to learn and grow and do things you otherwise wouldn't have The opportunity to you in the long term can outweigh the short term financial gains. I don't know that was actually phrased in the form of a question, but like, How do you think about that? What do you think about that? No, I completely agree. I mean, it might be taking a little bit of a step back salary less in the beginning at a start up, but it means that you'll move forward at a much more rapid pace in your career. I think that's exactly what you meant. I completely agree. Yeah, and so a personal story like I did that I was in New York working in advertising, producing TV commercials, and I saw that the Internet was rising rapidly and the TV world was kind of stagnated and flattening. And so I took a pay cut to go work at a online production, started building websites for brands and stuff, and I was I basically flamed out in a matter of months. It was not the right fit for me personally, and though I wasn't fired, it was pretty close. But during that during that four months. So I I roll out of this and I'm like, I took a pay cut. I failed. It was awful. During those four months, I gained an incredible amount of skills that allowed me to actually get to the West Coast for my next job, which happened to be Google. And then that has been a radical turn around for me. So I got very, very lucky. But if you don't, you know, I looked for a growth opportunity, a learning opportunity, and I paid for it, um, by taking a lower salary instead of going to school. And the end of that story is that you're sitting here now, right, running a company, and I start up in You know, I'm the luckiest guy I know that this literally create live my dreams. If I could just sit here and learn from great people and talk to great people like yourself and constantly, you know, grow my skills every day and help other people grow their skills. Do you have any questions from folks in the room for Mitch, who is in it every day? Yes. Is a little microphone action there? Um, so I have a startup. But how do you think about, uh, equity and your first employees? Great question. So I keep a general here, but I'm more than happy to talk off line to about about specifics. But, you know, my philosophy is be so generous that it hurts. So if I If I am putting together an equity package for someone, my initial instinct, then I'll push myself a little further because I think, you know, start ups. It's all a dream, right? It's on an idea. It's not really worth anything. We really get into cap tables and all this kind of stuff, but it's only if it really works. And so for me, I want my employees to have the exact same incentives and motivations that I do which is to create a big, successful company both on a personal level and monetary level. Right? And so I want those incentives to be alive. And to me, that means giving them a generous, equitable, Uh, even if that means to be taking a little bit of a hit, but creating a bigger pie that I think that's OK. It surprises me. Actually, people don't do that. Um, sorry. Yeah, I still question, um, look, how do your investors to take that? We're actually, and this is a top of we could weaken. Died in a little bit more. So we're more boots draft. Uh, e I was lucky to have had a first company before this, though, so I was able to invest myself and a little bit of friends and family. Um, so it's both a positive and a negative that we don't have toe the answer to investors. Um, yeah. And actually so if, uh, push on the feel free not to answer this question, but as so, the advice for folks may be breaking into start up as an employee as opposed to a founder. How should they think about negotiating for an equity package? I think this is an incredibly valuable, uh, piece of knowledge that a lot of people don't have is that they're entering the start up world like, How do you negotiate for an equity package versus the rest of it? Well, I think first of all, it's every employee's different, right? So it if an employee has a family and kids, then obviously salary, immediate salary, maybe more important. But in the situation you're presenting where someone wants more equity, I think every founder that hears from employees I'd prefer to go heavier on the equity and light around the salary. That should be a great thing that every founder wants to hear because it means that they believe in the idea, and they want to invest for the right reasons, their personal time. So I think if an employee wants to negotiate on that point and says that to a founder, that's a great starting point, and as long as they're being fair and reasonable, right, uh, with their request, and it's easy to find that stuff out from what the general market is doing, then hopefully the founder does the same thing in despair with that employee and So what you're saying is there is a trade off between potentially, uh, trade enough equity for a larger equity component. Ah, lower salary component to make sure that, um, the you know, it's a reasonable total package incentives and that if you go heavier and the equity essentially, you're playing a longer game. You have, ah, lot of belief that the company is gonna have a positive outcome down the road a little bit. Maybe more risk, potentially. Um, but, you know. So what's your what's your thought about salary negotiation for someone starting off? Yeah. I personally agree with everything. You just said that. I think that that's spot on. Um, I talked to a lot of founders, and sometimes I know that the equity conversation, both with between co founders and also between employees, can be contentious because, yeah, I mean, for obvious reasons, right? Yes. That's what you're there till midnight for Frank. That's one of the reasons why you know, I flamed out of my early start. It was like we weren't able to have that conversation in a productive way and love that was on me for not knowing how to have it. Well, It's amazing to me I have having gone through it a few times. I felt that way during my first start up to, but you realize quickly that it's not worth anything anyway. Right now, right? So let's quickly get past the all these hypotheticals of how much money you're gonna make in five years and talk about just just get it done, make it fair and move on actually building something special. So I think that's really the way to go, although I recognize that could be painful. If you can keep that in mind, that really doesn't make sense. And it's the right thing for everyone that can guide the conversation. Terrific. If you have any other piece of advice for either early stage company employees or founders, what would be big things I've been talking about a lot lately is be realistic with yourself about what your company can be worth, right? So I think that especially in the Bay Area, funding sometimes is the goal, rather than the method to get tobacco sure becomes the goal in and of itself. And I think that a lot of great companies are failing because they're raising too much money, right, Because if you raise too much money, then you have to hit the home run. There's not. There's another option for you. You need to hit a home run, whereas if you take less funding or no funding and bootstrap it along the way, then you can have a single or double. And that feels like a home run for a not for almost every entrepreneur, right? So I think I think it's really important to be honest with yourself about how big your market is it. It's easy to create a spreadsheet for an investor that shows you be creating a $1,000,000,000 company most of $100 million company. But the reality is that those type of companies air so few and far between their essentially ah handful of exits per year above the $100 billion tiny. But to me, there's this interesting gap in the market right now between you know, one and $20 million company where people were more realistic about that. That's really where they could be. That's really where they could fit. We'd see a lot more success is, rather than people raising a lot of money quickly and then spending it quickly and failing. And the thing is to once you raise money, you're gonna spend it, right? Yeah. I mean, you have the money in the bank account you're gonna hire quickly. And once you have that monthly run rate, you run through it really quickly. And if you can't maintain it, you can't meet the metrics than the company's really done. It's really hard to recover from running out of money. Sure. Um, the website is go overseas dot com overseas dot com. Uh, we'd love to hear from any about that. Who's watching and join our community? Feel free to reach out to us about any questions you have. Terrific. One of the things you talked about earlier was, uh, maybe that you haven't done quite enough studying of, ah, current trends in marketing. I'm going to say thank you for participating here. And I'm gonna bring an online marketing expert to the stage. And maybe you wanna hang out the onions. You benefit from the creative life community as well. Sounds great. What a great sideways. Thank you. Uh, Mr Gore And everybody thinks