S4 • EP 4 From a Bedroom Podcast to Building a Fintech Company with Elias Wambugu

Speaker A: Let's talk about the cost of building also, because it's so important to talk about building, but there's also a cost. Ideas are cheap. You could have an idea, but it's going to cost you some money. If you don't have the resources to move your idea forward, you're going to really struggle.

Speaker B: So I found some cool loopholes of workarounds. I'll give some of the tools that I use, that I pay for, and then some alternatives. So does it mean you can't build while having a job? Because, again, we've been building this while we had jobs. I quit my job 2025. You can do both. I think it boils down to your priorities and how hungry you are making it fit. Fit your lifestyle. Um,

Speaker A: All right, welcome to gwp. This is an exciting episode. It is, yeah. It's. It's such an exciting episode. With me is Elias, Elias Wambugu, man. We've been working together for a long time, and some of you know that I was working at Bloomberg and that was my job before, but now we're fully focused on building the growing world platform GWP also. And how GWP started is, you know, started in my bedroom back in New Jersey. And all we wanted to do was provide information to help. Excuse me. Provide information to help young adults to be able to build wealth. And that's really how GWP started in m. My bedroom. And I talked to my friend. His name is Jomar. He is a sound engineer. When I told him, you know, I wanted to do this thing and provide information for people to be able to build wealth, and I want to do it in the form of a podcast. He was like, well, I'm an audio engineer and we can make this happen. So he gave me a list of items to buy. I bought the microphone, but the, uh, interface and all this stuff. And he came over to my house, installed everything, and we recorded. And that was episode one of gwp. In fact, that day, we didn't plan to record. We were just testing this thing out. And he's like, all right, let's just do it. Let's just talk and see how it goes. And we finished, and I was like, I think this is episode one. So we put it out, and we've just continued to put things out. And so what year was that? This was, I want to say, 2022.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: So kind of, um, coming out, actually 2021, because we were coming out of COVID you know, and so, yeah, that. And we've Been. We've been building since. And, you know, that led to me eventually moving to San Francisco. And when I moved to San Francisco, that's where I met Elias. And so, Elias, this is a great segue to introduce yourself and tell the people that listen to GWP a little bit about yourself.

Speaker B: Yeah, funny story. I'm, uh, also from New Jersey as well.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And right around 2021, I was actually coming to California for college. So I came to Marin in 2021, August. And then 2022, I didn't want to go back to New Jersey for the summer because of college and all that. And so I decided to get an apartment here in San Francisco, where is where I met Pop in this exact building. And he was telling me about his financial platform that he, um. Not financial wealth, the podcast that he has. And I was like, dude, you need a website for this. You need a way for people to come back and re listen to the episodes not just on Spotify or Instagram and YouTube, but like a dedicated home base. And so we started planning ideas for this new podcast website and working with Joe Mara as well and things like that. So this was around four years ago.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, and then from there, I graduated college. I was doing a bunch of work with Twitter and PayPal, so that was a lot of fun. And as all of this is going on, he's telling me about this idea of gwp, gwp, gwp. And I'm telling him, you know, we can turn this idea into reality. So we started jokingly started talking about it, then we started planning it, and then somehow we started building it, and we brought in another developer who I miraculously found on Twitter. I posted, I was like, hey, we need a developer. And within a couple hours, we found Rohit.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, and it's been four years since then.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been. It's. It's been amazing. But I think we can take it a step back, right? To. To before we even land on this. So you're right. I. I had the thought. I said, man, you know, I have the podcast. The podcast is growing. People are listening to it in a bunch of different countries, really thankful for that. But then I started to wonder. I was like, you know, we're bringing in the traffic, and the traffic basically goes to these, you know, big platforms like Spotify and YouTube and so on. And so I had this idea thinking, you know, why not build something so that the traffic actually comes to us, right. So that we're not redirecting the traffic to someone else. And that's where we started talking about gwp. And, you know, you and Jomar, you guys built the, the website, which is gwp, that today it's still live.

Speaker B: I think we can show up a video on, uh, we can show a screenshot of it.

Speaker A: For sure.

Speaker B: For sure.

Speaker A: Yeah, we're. We're going to show you guys that. So. So that's the first thing we built. And then over time, as we continue to do the podcast, I started to ask myself, I said, you know, we provide people with all this information so they can be able to build wealth, which is great, but something is broken. There's a gap. Right, because you give people the information, then what? Uh, they need a platform to be able to take action on the information that you're providing them. And so, you know, I started to think, and I started to do some research, and what I came across was that people are using things like Mint. At the time, Mint was still there, number one. Right. People using Mint to. As a dashboard to see where the money is and so on, but it doesn't really give them any intelligence. Right. And I'm working at Bloomberg and I'm seeing the kind of tools that institutional managers have access to, and I'm thinking we can build something for the 32 million professionals that this kind of platform is not available to. And so I started to think about that and, you know, we had many conversations about it, and we had late night sessions. Yeah. Midnight sessions, whiteboards and so on. And the idea kind of died for a little bit after, after those discussions. But what I was doing in the background was I started talking to designers because I kind of. I realized that we can, you know, we. We've talked about the idea, but now it's a matter of we need to kind of see it and be able to build on top of it. And so I found this designer using upwork in Ukraine, and she designed kind of the, you know, the most basic version of this thing for us. And it helped to visualize the idea. And that was a starting point. And then you came back in and started to build, you know, connecting what the designer had built to actual back ends and so on. So tell us about how that came about. You know, kind of what was the experience like building from. From that standpoint?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the other important piece I'd like to talk to as well as I fit the demographics of users that, you know, had a good enough job but didn't know what to do with their financial platform. And so or financial well being. And I realized I can't be the only 20, 20 year old, 21 year old that has, you know, software engineering job. There has to be others out there. And so how do you cater to such a wide range? You know, one demographic of users needs this set of tools. The older generation needs asset wealth management. And so I think the interesting piece that you and I both bring is you are experienced with like the higher end clientele. I'm more of like I'm just starting my life and my career, but I need help building my financials now. So I think we're solving both problems from like different ends. Yeah, um, now moving into actually developing, uh, I think even as we were developing, I feel like I had this like long term goal where I knew eventually this is just the mvp. This is just like something to show a proof of concept. And we would kind of go back to the drawing board and not restart, but like readjust what we have. And we'll get into that later. But back to his point, Ukraine designer did an amazing job. Like high fidelity designs, over 30 different pages. Like so much that we had an entire application from start to finish. And so I realized I need help. I can't do this on my own. This is like a full on platform. And so that's when um, we brought on Rohit. And kind of my role was to make sure everything was going smoothly from the designs to connecting plaid. And um, I think that was a big missing piece or piece that took forever to get right was how do we safely connect people's financials? That doesn't feel intrusive at all. Because the other part is like I want to fix my finances, but people don't want to talk about their finances. So how do you collect all of these different pieces that you need to help fix wealth without it feeling intrusive in a very friendly way. Um, and so we spent a lot of time on the onboarding process like these set of questions that allow us to create a snapshot of this user's finance. And from this we developed the GWP score. And this score is almost like your credit score, but it captures more than the credit score. It sometimes can factor things like your credit, but the credit score doesn't factor in your assets, you know, your debt and all these other things. And so with the GDP score, as you use the platform, as you hit your goals, your score goes up. And this score then allows advisors to help you and give a better insight into your financial situation. Anything that I miss on that.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's, that's the. No, that's pretty good. I like how you introduced the GWP score. Right. So again, one of the reasons we started to build the platform is I felt like there was a gap. Right. So if you're getting the information to be able to build wealth, how do you determine whether you're building wealth or if you're not building?

Speaker B: So subjective. Everyone has different priorities.

Speaker A: Exactly. Right. And, and so from my perspective, working with institutional managers at Bloomberg, for example, how do you know if a portfolio manager is good? You just look at the performance, right? You just look at the performance of that portfolio manager, or you look at the portfolio attribution of that portfolio manager to be able to understand that it's not that this guy is selecting great stocks or this guy is just picking the right, um, sectors to, to allocate into. There are specific things you can look at, right. There are other ratios like in, in, you know, speaking of institutional investors, you can look at the Jensen ratios and, you know, alpha and all of these kind of sophisticated metrics to be able to tell if someone is actually doing well with managing the portfolio. So then I start to ask myself, I'm like, what are young adults doing? The people that listen to my podcasts, like, how are they able to tell whether they're building wealth or if they're not building wealth?

Speaker B: I can answer that. We're not.

Speaker A: Exactly. And even for myself, right. I started to ask myself this question. And so eventually I had the opportunity to go meet with a financial advisor at Schwab, you know, with me. Asking these questions led me to that, that path because I was like, I need to be able to answer if I'm. Am I, am I okay?

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Where are my peers? Like, am I lagging behind my peers or am I on track to be able to retire at 45, like the way I want to? And so this led me to a financial advisor at Schwab. And before I could even speak to the financial advisor at Schwab, I needed to have a minimum of 25,000 in my bank account. Thank God I hit that minimum. And I had this first meeting with this, with this advisor. But what I quickly realized was the advisor didn't really help me answer that question. Really. The advisor did a great job understanding my goals and what I wanted to do and what I wanted to do in the near term and in the long term. And so we came up with a plan. Then I was still with the question of how do I tell if I'm even building wealth. I mean, the guy is giving me a plan, which is great, but how do I know if that plan is helping me build wealth or if it's not? And so this concept of a score, because again, working at Bloomberg, it all comes back to the data. So I was like, we need data. We need to attach data to the decisions that we're making for our money, for the decisions that we're making for our wealth to be able to see. Are, uh, those decisions translating into better performance or is it, um, help making us underperform? And so we came up with this GWP score idea where the score is modeled like the credit score to your point, 0 to 50. The higher the score, the better financial position you're in. And so we developed this score and right now we're talking to statisticians, we're talking to quant models. And, and so if you're listening to the podcast and you're a quant or you're a statistician and you love numbers, please, we want to talk to you. We're showing these people the number and basically stress testing the number and, and, and not just that number, but kind of our idea of how young adults are able to get the institutional level intelligence that a portfolio manager would have to be able to, to be able to build their wealth. And so that's, that's where we're, um, at. That's where we are now. And you know, it's, it's, it's an exciting time. So Elias, we've, we've been building for a while and you know, now I, I feel like we have something that we want to get out there so that young adults can be able to use to close that gap. Where is our product now? What are we doing right now?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think before we even get to that, we should talk about where GDP was and how we transition.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Uh, so for the longest time, we've been talking about consumer, consumer and how do we solve, you know, an individual's financial, um, piece. And some conversations that we had was, I would like to be able to open up a app and ask it, can I make this purchase? Let's say I'm at McDonald's or I'm, um, looking to buy a car impulsively. Right. A lot of the times it boils down to, should I make this purchase? And if you're the only person asking yourself, you're more than likely going to say yes because, you know, discipline and all that. And so what if there's a way you could ask a third party that was either smarter than you or had a better idea of how you spend things, things like that, to answer those questions. And so we started to integrate AI into the platform that we had. And so, you know, you, as an individual, you can ask it, you know, how many times did I pay for gas in the last month? And it's able to answer all those types of, like, insights that you would have to dig through your statement and figure out. But then that's not a really sustainable model. Like, we can't really make money off of that. And that's why a lot of budgeting apps don't do well is like, most people are not going to pay for a budgeting app. So how does a budgeting app make money? And so we kind of had to go back to the drawing board and pivot and see, okay, who else can we cater to that can bring in those consumers? And so Pop being working in the financial sector, he talked to advisors, and they kept saying pretty much the same thing. It's that initial meeting, that initial meeting, that initial meeting. And then beyond that initial meeting, how do you ensure that the person is acting out their advisory plan? And so it's a lot of the advisor having to follow up with the consumer. And sometimes I can even put off the person who's doing the meeting. Um, I had. My roommate had a. Have a similar experience where he kind of felt like they were too much, and so he just didn't get any financial help. Yeah, right. So that can turn people away. And so how do you build the trust, but also make sure that first meeting is effective? And so we realized we already have the onboarding process. Instead of showing that to the consumer, why don't we go to financial firms and say, hey, you have an onboarding process that is broken. Let us help you fix that. And so we actually just got off of a meeting with one. Right. Literally right now. And it's going to give us more insights. But did you want to touch on anything?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's, uh, that's a great point. Yeah. So anytime you're building something, and if you're an avid listener of this podcast, we've talked to so many founders on this podcast, and, and something that you would learn when you're building is most times the idea that you start with isn't what you actually end with. Right. Things continue to change and so on. And so maybe the premise on which you started building could change over time. You know, a typical example is Facebook was kind of built for students at Harvard to be able to communicate with each other. And then over time, it just morphed into something else. And so from our perspective, you know, we, I just wanted to help the people that listen to this podcast to be able to build wealth. That's all I wanted to do. And that's, that's still, uh, what we're trying to do. And anytime you start building, it's really important that you get off, uh, from the back of the computer and get out there and talk to people and figure out, is what I'm, um, building even needed? Do people need this? Does this solve a real problem? Is there a need out there? Is that bottleneck? Is there a pain point? Find out.

Speaker B: And so I think we realized with that, that official MVP that we made that there may not necessarily be a need. And that's when we started to pivot.

Speaker A: Exactly right. So we started to show people, and I remember I showed to a couple people that listened to the podcast, and one person said, well, I don't need something like this. Like, I intuitively, which I thought was crazy. They were like, I intuitive, intuitively know my spending. Like, I, I, I know how to track it in my mind. I was like, okay, sure, big guy. Yeah. I was like, all right, you know, and, and so, and I love this person so much to know that. Uh, but I was like, you intuitively track how much you spend. Really, you have a lot of money. How do you track all of that anyway? And, and so I was like, man, this is tough. So continue to show more people and gathering feedback and so on. And, you know, the, the main thing that kept coming back was this. There's just too many things that does something similar. And there's no ROI for the people building it also. And so it's hard for investors to, to buy in and invest into it and so on. And so we just kept talking to people and we realized we had to pivot from, from the, from the initial idea. So initially it was going to be a bidoo m. The model, or the business model is going to be from business to consumer, right? Where, you know, people like you that are listening to the podcast will integrate your bank accounts. You get the intelligence that you're looking for, like the decision intelligence, right? Should I buy this couch? Should I not buy this couch? Those kind of things. The, our AI is able to help you with that, make those decisions. Those decisions are captured into your GWP score, which is the algorithm that we've built with the help of these statisticians and quants that we've been talking to with that those decisions rolls up into the score and then you're able to see based on the decisions that you're making, whether you're increasing your savings rate, whether you're you know, increasing your income efficiency, whether you're increasing your allocation. Right. Optimizing your allocation to make sure you're not overexposed and so on, all of that gets rolled into the score. Right. And then you're able to kind of track if you're building wealth or if you're not building wealth. But then we realized that that model was not going to work.

Speaker B: Right. I also think the dashboard was too. It almost felt like it was meant for advisors. Like the data is important, like all that info is important but the average consumer doesn't care on a day to day what their savings rate is.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: They're not going to care whether they've lost two points on your gwp. But the advisor might see this data as beneficial.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So carry on.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so yeah, so the reason the advisors actually come into the picture is because one of remember I mentioned I went to go see an advisor at ah, Charles Schwab and I needed this threshold in my bank account just to be able to see the advisor. But I started to think, I was like, well if mindlessness of GWP podcast can get access to advisors, that's a way to actually help them to be able to build wealth. So why not make that possible? Like allow and make it possible for mindlessness to be able to get access to these advisors that have been gatekept for people that have a certain amount of wealth. And so then we started talking to these advisors and then we realized, wow, okay, the advisors have a whole different problem which is they're spending so much time to onboard their clients that they don't have enough time to speak to them. M what, what the industry calls the mass affluent which is people that are making at least 75k 200k plus. Right. These people are, they have some money. Right. Because at the end of the year they're probably, they probably, if they're saving, they probably have either from $10,000 up saved which if optimized the right way they could build wealth. Right.

Speaker B: Generates income. Yeah.

Speaker A: And so now we started talking to advisors and helping uh, advisors kind of optimize their workflow and you know, making them more efficient with the idea that we can give them time back so that in the future they can actually be talking to some of the people that listen to our ah, podcast.

Speaker B: I Also think it, it gives them the opportunity to talk to more people. Right. So instead of having to prep and we were talking to um, the advisor, he was saying he, you know, searches on LinkedIn for this person's profile and all these different things. Things that in today's age, AI can do for you, right? AI can browse the web, it can look up information, so why not offload a lot of these tasks that are time consuming like you're saying to this platform. So now the platform is bringing the advisors an roi, Right. They're immediately getting their time back, but they're also getting more customers as well.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: In the process. So it's like a win win. And now we're not having to chase for consumers because the firms themselves have consumers. Right. And so they're bringing us more customers to the app for the. Validating the idea.

Speaker A: Exactly, yes. And the other aspect of it also is if you're, if you're listening to the podcast and you're saying, man, well I'm listening to gwp, my wealth is not there. I know my credit score is only a 500, so my GWP score is probably gonna be a little low. Don't lose hope. We have something for you as well. Here's the thing. If your GWP score is, let's say a, ah, 550, okay, you're not ready to talk to an advisor yet, but you're, you're building, you're, you're in the process of building and we can tell you some of the things to improve in order to be able to then get in front of an advisor, to be able to get this level of institutional intelligence that's being gated from you. So some of the things that we'll tell you is what can you do with your savings rate? Right. Maybe you're saving only 5 to 11% currently and that's keeping you back from reaching your financial goals. Right. And so what we can do for you there is kind of give you that institutional level intelligence to say maybe if you increase your savings rate by, you know, 25%, which is a lot, but if you increase your savings rate by a certain X percent, you in six months could increase your GWP score by X and be able to unlock the ability to be able to talk to an advisor, which could be really helpful for you when you're looking to build wealth or reach a certain goal.

Speaker B: I think we're also trying to remove the stigma like with having a bad credit score because that's also Another piece is people don't talk about their finances. M and so furthermore, Gen Z in general doesn't talk about their problems. Why would they talk about their financial problems, let alone their credit score. And so there's almost like a shame factor when your score isn't what society says it should be. And mhm. I think with the GWP score we're trying to almost take that away, take that back. And so we also have a community side that we're building out when we have users where if someone with a GDP score of 850 is giving financial advice, they're more than likely going to be speaking truthfully versus somebody that's like, hey, I made a million dollars in you know, two months. But their score is 400. So it brings a level of transparency. So you, as a consumer you can also see what other people are doing to change and grow wealth and things like that. And it's not just a by yourself battle. We want to give people as much resources and tools to build wealth. And I think an important piece is community. You can have all this data and all these things, but you want to see what your peers who may be in the same job as you and all these things are doing. And so you may not see their precise financial situation, but you can get an idea of what they're doing and how they're doing to get there. And I think that level of transparency is also really important in building wealth.

Speaker A: Really, really important. And it also brings back the aspect of the platform where people can see a, ah, benchmark where the psr. Because when you're, when you're building, right. It's important to be able to know

Speaker B: what's like an anxiety. You want to know how you're doing.

Speaker A: Yeah. You want to know how you're doing versus your peers also. Right. So if you're, if you're moving in the right direction, you're going to be able to track that. And if you're not also you should be able to track that as well.

Speaker B: Uh, I think another, and we've talked about this is um, the accountability, accountability pieces. We can give people as many budgeting tools and all these things, but to change someone's financial situation, it's a mindset, you have to change their mindset. And so how do you start to break down some of the ideas? Like for example, you need $25,000 to build wealth. That is not true. Yes, that's one way to build wealth, but it's not, not the only way.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So how do we break down some of these, um, hardcore truths that they've believed in and all that.

Speaker A: Yeah. And even on our call with the advisor today, one of the things he mentioned is it's so hard for him as the advisor to be prepared for the first meeting because sometimes clients are either embarrassed m. By where they are financially.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: And so they don't openly share that information and so on. And, and those are the things that we're trying to help people solve.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Because, you know, you shouldn't be embarrassed, especially when you're going to go meet, for example, a doctor that's going to help you solve the problem that you have. If you're embarrassed to share that problem with a doctor, they're not going to help you. You know, a problem shared is half solved. Right. So if you're not sharing that problem with the financial advisor, they're not going to be able to help you. And what we're betting on is we're believing that with the GWP score, the advisor gets an idea of where you are without even openly. Right. Sharing or without openly sharing some of the things that you're embarrassed about. Right. And it starts the conversation. We also help you with prepping for that meeting with the advisor. So if you're intimidated and you're not sure what to ask and you know how to approach the meeting, we use our AI to help you prepare for that meeting. So not only are we helping the advisor prepare for the meeting, but on the other side, while also helping you to be efficient when you're in that meeting.

Speaker B: It's all about boosting your confidence, really. Like, like boosting your awareness and making you feel more ready and okay with your finances. And I know people that don't open their bank account at all an entire month and they just, they're just yoloing. And I'm m. Like, what in the world?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. But I think an important piece to all of this is this didn't happen, um, by you and I just talking. We went out and talked to people. We, we, we put it out there. And I'm even finding, even in the stuff that I'm doing outside of gwp, there's an important balance between building and giving it out. And sometimes I feel like people are stuck building. They never get it out. And so all of this feedback that we've gotten was in, I want to say, the last two to three weeks.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so if we just continued building, we wouldn't know where to go.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I think that is also another important piece is like listening to your audience and.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And that's a great segue for the next thing that I wanted to get into. So the more I talk to founders, they tell me building is the easiest part. But see, if you're listening, you, you would say, no, I think that's the hardest part. No, actually, and I agree, building is the easiest part. The hard part is actually getting it out m the distribution. Like, these days, it's so easy to build.

Speaker B: That's true. Yeah.

Speaker A: The secret sauce now becomes the distribution, your ability to be able to get what you build out there. And so if you're listening to this podcast, maybe you're an entrepreneur, maybe you're, you know, you have some ambitions to open your own business one day and so on. Here's my advice for you. If you can be building your distribution right now, you should absolutely focus on that. So you might say, papa, you, what do you mean by distribution? What is that? Okay, here's an example. So you're listening to GWP podcast, right? This is our medium of distribution. We're distributing what we're building by talking to you right now while you're listening to this conversation. This is our form of distribution. The next part of the distribution is actually getting you onto the platform that we've built so you can test it out, come back to us and say, hey, Papa, you know, if you changed XYZ about this platform, I would use it. Or, hey, if the platform can actually do X, I would actually pay for it. Right?

Speaker C: The first meeting shouldn't start with questions. It should start with strategy. With the growing wealth, platform advisors simply send one link. Clients get their own wealth score across protection, momentum, and efficiency. Before you even say hello, you receive a full intelligence brief with top conversation priorities and a suggested opening line. Gwp start with strategy.

Speaker A: That's. That's where the distribution starts. And so if you're an entrepreneur or wherever you are in your journey to build wealth and you're listening to this and you're looking to build something, I encourage you start thinking about how you're going to distribute, what you're going to build. You might be really good with content creation. That's awesome. That's a distribution platform, right? You can use that for distribution. You might be really funny and you make really funny videos and get people to laugh and engage. That's awesome. Use that. Whatever gifts that God has given you on this earth, you are supposed to use it for a particular purpose. And that purpose might change from time to time. And when that purpose Changes know when to reapply that gift. And so for us right now, when we started gwp, in the beginning, we're just interviewing people and sharing people's stories. Right now, we're in the build phase. And what we're using GWP for is articulating what we're building and sharing the stories of what we're learning with what we're building with you in the hope that you will find interest in what we're providing and engage with our platform, give us the feedback and help us continue to build this thing so that you can build wealth. I truly believe I want to help God's people build wealth. Right? You deserve to build wealth. Like when I was. When I talk to people in my communities, what I tell them is, you know, when I read the Bible, it's not a lot of people that I read about, and the Bible says they were an employee for 25 years. XYZ. And I'm not saying there's something wrong with being an employee, but I think we're built to own. Right? God has given us dominion to own and have authority in the spaces that we're in. And so if you're lucky enough to work for an amazing firm, my advice to you is learn fast. Learn as much as possible. Build that network, and if you can move on to build something, you should do it. We're transitioning into a time m where AI is taking over a lot of jobs. And I strongly believe a lot of the jobs that are being taken are never going to be replaced again. And so, you know, the people like Elon Musk and Andrew Yang are, you know, they're talking about the universal basic income and all of this kind of stuff, and it might be needed down the line, mostly because we transform so much in the way we live and work that not everyone can potentially have a job. And so if you're in a position to be able to build right now, my advice to you on this episode today is yes. The answer is yes. Pray about it and go and execute.

Speaker B: I love that. But before you can even get to building, I feel like a lot of people, and this is just from an engineering side, are like, what do I build?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Um, and I tell almost everybody, start with the problems that you have or listen to the problems that people have. Sometimes they may not be your own problem. I'll give two examples. We'll start with gwp. Gwp. POP realized people have a. There's a financial literacy problem. How that problem is going to be solved. He had no idea, but he realized that's a problem, right? So you take that problem, it's like a seed, and you start to ask people, hey, do you have this problem? Do you have this problem? Oh, these two people have the same problem, but these three people have a different problem. Okay, maybe this problem is greater. So you start asking people about this problem, this problem. Then you start to see there's a common theme and a common set of problems that can be solved. Right? And so for us, it started with there's not really cool or great budgeting tools that work with financial advisors. Um, there's not really a community side to financial literacy. And a lot of the times these platforms are either B to consumer or B to the financial advisor. So we realized a lot of these problems. So we're finding a product market fit in this little gap. And so that's one example. Another example, I run a company called astrocollab and I was juggling notion Google Drive Linear Slack and I was paying around $200 per member on my team. So you're talking almost 500 dol. As a small business owner that just started, that is not sustainable at all. I can't be the only problem person that has this problem. So I start asking other small creators and business owners, hey, how much are you paying for the tools that you use? And it's around the same price. And so I'm like, this is a problem. Yeah, I have the tool sets to build a Google Drive alternative, all these things. So I started building it out from May up until January of this year. I've just been building and building and building. But I realized I wasn't talking to consumers. I wasn't going out there. And so from November of last year, I was talking to people about this problem and I realized I'm actually solving a different kind of problem. So I go back to the drawing board. But if we're not giving the things that we're building to people to validate, we're just going to be in the workshop building and you're going to be the last person and somebody else has built your idea right. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't still build it. Right? Like we realized there are other competitors in the space that is doing the same thing that we're doing. That doesn't mean we're going to stop building gwp. That just means that our idea is validated and it's working. And so there is room for us to fit because they don't have all the customers Right. So go out there, talk to people. I think that's the most important thing. If you're trying to build for developers, go to developer events. If you're trying to build for creatives, go where the creatives are. Go where your consumers are. Um, for me, I found a lot of videographers were on Reddit, so I started posting on Reddit and I got a bunch of users from there. And so find whatever works and then, like, hone in on that. So that's all I have to say to that.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. You couldn't have said that better. Let's talk about the cost of building also, because I think it's, you know, it's so important to talk about building, but there's also a cost that it comes with. So you did mention at one point we're looking for help, because obviously you're the technical guy building this thing, but you can build it alone. And so you needed to get help. And we offered equity for the help that we were, we were trying to get, but obviously that wasn't enough. And so we had to pay. We had to pay up. And that was a cost that we accumulated. The tools that we're using to build are not cheap. Those are. There's a cost, right? Getting to use those APIs and, you know, integrations and all of that. There's a cost. The platforms that we want to use, there's a cost, right? And so we want to build faster. You need to pay for that AI, you need to pay for the tokens. There's a cost. So how do you kind of manage that cost? Right. In my perspective, I've been bootstrapping and using my own savings to be able to push these projects forward. But in your perspective, how do you manage that cost?

Speaker B: I have always said this. I am a broke college developer, uh, even though I'm not in college. But I like to say that I have that mindset because, like you said, it's expensive. And I can't pay for all these tools because I'm not a startup. So I found some cool loopholes to workarounds. So I'll give some of the tools that I use that I pay for and then some alternatives. So for cursor, you obviously have to pay for cursor. That's your IDE Vs code or whatever you use. There are extensions, um, that you can install. So I use something called client, and client is completely free. So once I hit my cursor limit, I go right over to client and I start building with that. So now I have a completely free workspace that I can use to build infinite amount of projects. But, um, you got to host it and all these other things. Vercel is completely free. Uh, the reason we pay for Vercel is because we have multiple people working on our team and they needed access to Vercel. However, I haven't paid for Vercel personally for any startup that I have created since 2018 and I have a lot of projects on there. Vercel has a generous free tier. Um, there's this argument of, you know, renting from a server versus serverless whatever, uh, is the best free option. Go with it. If a platform offers a free server, use that. If a platform offers free serverless hosting, use that. Um, database. Neon is completely free. I used to use PlanetScale, no longer free. Um, I love Neon. I will always back them. You can use things like Supabase as well. Prisma also has their own db, uh, Figma's free as well. Um, so I think finding whatever tool you want to use, add that into Google Alternative and you will find hundreds upon hundreds. Even Photoshop, if you go to photopea.com that's a Photoshop alternative. And so you'll learn to find alternatives. But there are things that you kind of have to pay for like Claude, Google Workspace, Linear and things like that.

Speaker A: So. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but yeah, if you have any questions on tools that I use, I have my Twitter, I post all the tools that I use there and then you guys can ask questions and things like that.

Speaker A: So absolutely, yeah. And you know, one thing I al always say also is ideas are cheap.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So you could have an idea, but it's going to cost you some money to move that idea from zero to one. And so that makes it even more important that when you're listening to this podcast, you think about building wealth. Because if you don't have the resources to move your idea forward, you're going to really struggle. Right. And I think we're in the universe right now where it's kind of hard to get to raise money.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Like VCs and things like that are. They're not just going to write you a check because you have an idea, you're going to need some special power to be able to make that happen. And so to some extent you need to move that idea forward on your own, especially to the point where you get that validation and then you get your first few paying customers. And so for us right now, like in the near term, like my, my biggest Goal right now is to get at least 50 paying customers. That's all I'm trying to get right now, at least 50 paying customers. And for the advisors that we're talking to to be able to sign at least three advisor pilots, which is advisors that would use our product and provide it for their clients, uh, within their practice. And so once you're able to get that then I think speaking to investors and trying to raise money becomes a little easier because people always going to ask you, you know, what's your mrr, what's your ARR and how many people are paying for this and what is your arpu and all these, you know, metrics that they want to know. And it's hard to answer those questions when you don't have any paying customers. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't build. Also, right. When you're in the build phase and when you're talking to people, the best thing you could do is talk to people, get in front of them. If you could get, if you could get them to become design partners. Absolutely. Have them on board because that's going to help you tremendously. For example, that advisor we spoke to today, man A ah, wealth of knowledge this man gave us. Right. It's so much knowledge. And even some of the advisors we've

Speaker B: spoke to, that's just one person.

Speaker A: And that's just one person. The other advisors and professionals that we've been speaking to in this space, you'd be amazed how much insight you can gather from these people. And the insight that you gather can shape your product roadmap in so many ways that if you're sitting behind a computer and thinking by yourself, you're just not going to unlock that.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think two things as I've, as we're talking about this, I realized the things that have led us to where we are is consistency.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and uh, the idea that closed mouths don't get fed. I think a lot of people give up before they validate their idea. Um, because they didn't realize how much of a time commitment. Right. And so to your point of investing into your business, you are investing two things depending on the business model. Your money and your time. Um, more so your time because you have to dedicate, if you have a full time job, you know, whether you're doing it outside of that. Right. If a family, that may not be possible. How do you, how do you do that? Right. And so consistency and that doesn't look like you working on it every day and things like that it's more. So whatever progress you, you are, whatever work you're doing, it's some sort of progress, whether that is talking to one person a week or two people a week. Right. And so pushing yourself to move your idea forward in any capacity, whether that is going to AI and mocking up a UI design or, you know, talking to a person. So I think consistency is like, I think is better than even having an idea in the resources, because if you're not consistent, you're not going to build the product.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: No, I agree. I think the consistency is, is important. And I. The, the other piece of it is the speed.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, you, you need to be fast because there, it's so easy to build now.

Speaker B: The game has changed before. It was never about speed.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Nowadays. Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah. And, and your idea, you need to be able to validate it very fast. Right. Uh, you need to be able to get it out there and figure out if this is the right thing to build. And if it's not, you need to move on very quickly. And so the speed is really, really important. But that's where the consistency piece comes in also. But, you know, consistency is a little tricky, right, because you, you don't want to mistake movement for progress. That's, that's very, very, that's very, very tricky because you could be making a lot of movements and you, you look like you're busy, but nothing is really happening. And that kills so many startups, that kills so many ideas. So you want to be really careful about that. And also, you know, your, your urgency sometimes depends on where you are in life. For me, for example, like, I feel like there's a fire behind me. Like, man, I just had my first son, right? I'm. I quit Bloomberg to build this thing full time, and I'm focused on building this thing full time.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so I'm breathing it, I'm living it, I'm thinking it. You know, um, when I get off from the back of the computer and get out there to talk to founders, what I'm actually trying to do is trying to figure out what's the rate at which the space that. The window of opportunity that we have to get our product out there, where is that window? And the more I talk to people, I realized that window is so slim, actually. So that I don't want to say gives me any anxiety, because I truly believe Bible says, be anxious about nothing, but with everything, prayer and supplication. But it also tells you that you should be diligent. Right. So you have to be diligent, but, uh, at the same time, don't be anxious. So. And it's a delicate balance. So when I'm looking at my son, I'm like, brother, you. You got to be behind that computer. You got to be pushing this thing out.

Speaker B: You got to be making.

Speaker A: Yeah. You got to be making the right progress. Not just progress, but the right progress.

Speaker B: And I think that's why a lot of VCs and investors want people who don't have a job, because it shows that they're hungry.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that they're devoted to this. It doesn't mean you can't build while having a job, because again, we've been building this while we had jobs. Yeah, I quit my job 2025. And he just left this, um, to do full time. But you can do both. I think it boils down to your priorities and how hungry you are, making it fit your lifestyle. Um, but move forward.

Speaker A: Yeah. No, I mean, this week I was talking to a founder at an event and at the Speedrun Cafe event, and he said they, they had a call with YC and the, ah, whoever was on the call asked them, are you guys full time? And he said yes. The co founder said no. The call ended. He's like, the person just got off the call. There was nothing was. Said he thought the network was, Was messing up, but no, the moment he said they're not full time, boom. Um, the guy just dropped the call.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's ruthless out here.

Speaker A: Just drop the call. Not even wasting the time. Drop the call. So that's something, Something to think about. Um, you know, that doesn't mean you have to quit your job to go build.

Speaker B: I would say don't do that.

Speaker A: The approach that I use, and a lot of founders were me to do this, but I was kind of doing it anyway. But the approach that I used was keeping the job and then building at the same time. What I realized is you can only do that as long as the job allows you to do it, because you get to a point where what you're building, for example, GWP was growing. And so they started raising these questions about asking questions, you know, conflict of interest and so on. And at that point, you have to make that decision for yourself. And so something to think about there. Alias. This has been a great episode. I think this is going to be one of many.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, if you're, if you're, if you're listening to this episode and if you want to hear more from Elias and myself and what we're building and the progress we're making with gwp. Drop a, uh, comment, uh, drop a comment, you know, questions and so on. We really want to interact with you guys. We want to have you be part of what we're building. And so there's a newsletter that I've created that I post in the description of all of the podcasts on YouTube or wherever you're listening to, you can find a newsletter. Sign up to the newsletter. We want to be in touch. We want to hear from you, we want to get your feedback. We don't want to just talk to financial advisors and, you know, institutional, um, users. Uh, we want to talk to you as well. We want to hear what you're looking for, what are the pain points that you have in your finances and what do you want to see. And yeah, be a part of what we're building and let's build this future together. So, super excited to continue to bring you more layers. Any final departing words?

Speaker B: I think, uh, on topic of as we build this platform, uh, something that I want to be is more transparent on the engineering side. And so there'll be an engineering blog as well as a build series. I don't know if it'll be. The video series will be on this channel, but there will be a series where we, you know, show you guys the investor meetings that we have. If we're raising money, we'll give you insights into that, the decisions that we make engineering wise. Um, that way you guys can be a part of that process even more. So.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And if you're wondering, I mean, we're raising money right now. Yeah, we're at a point where, you know, we need to scale faster. We need to bring on some data scientists to kind of validate the, the scorings that we're coming up with. Could use an additional engineer also for development and so on. So, yeah, we're hiring and, um, we're. We're raising money to be able to expand the team and, and, you know, get this product into as many hands as possible. So we definitely want to hear from you if everything we've shared sounds interesting to you. If you're an investor, would love to have five minutes to, to discuss. And if you are just an angel who wants to invest into our product and our ideas and our dreams here. Come on, let's do it. You know, we, we have the fire. We, you know, the, the experience. Bloomberg definitely gave me the analytical framework that I need to be able to build this and support Alias in building this the podcast has given us the audience to build this, and my own life Transitions has set us up to build with fire in our belly. We're not going to stop building. You know, we're going to continue to build. The product might morph and, you know, change into different things, but the idea still lives. We want to help people to be able to build wealth. Those 32 million professionals that are not getting access to that institutional level intelligence that portfolio managers that are using Bloomberg and tools like that get access to, we want to help you get access to those kind of tools. And right now, that's what we're focused on. So join us on this journey, and let's do it together.

Speaker B: Thanks. Yeah. You guys can find my socials in the description. Cheers.

Speaker A: Peace.