Brian Anderson On Going From $125K In Debt To Raising $75 Million By Boosting E-Commerce Conversion Rates

Embarking on the entrepreneurial journey is like setting sail on an unpredictable sea, facing calm waters and tumultuous storms. In this exclusive interview with Brian Anderson, a seasoned founder with a track record of triumphs and lessons learned, we delve into the depths of his entrepreneurial ventures, from the quaint harbors of the Hamptons to the bustling tech scene of San Francisco.

Brian’s latest venture, Nacelle, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Perkins Cove Partner, High Alpha, Index Ventures, and Tiger Global Management.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Brian Anderson’s journey from a Hamptons harbor store to tech entrepreneurship reveals the unexpected origins of successful founders.
• PipeStack’s financial struggles taught Anderson the invaluable lesson that engineering skills can be a lifeline in challenging times.
• Leveraging secondary transactions and networking with entrepreneurs can create a ripple effect, attracting angel investments and institutional support.
• Pitching a bold vision to venture capitalists and staying ahead technologically are crucial for carving out a unique space in a competitive market.
• Rather than relying on artificial barriers to entry, prioritizing continuous innovation and staying six months ahead of competitors is the key to sustained success.
• Jeff Bezos’s concept of work-life harmony, embracing life’s challenges, and maintaining meaningful relationships fuel the energy needed for entrepreneurial resilience.
• Brian’s story serves as a compass for aspiring founders, offering wisdom and determination for navigating the unpredictable journey of entrepreneurship.

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About Brian Anderson:

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmakerr show so today but we have a really exciting founder a founder that has say you know done it a few times you know obviously sometimes with success other times you know great lessons learn and now he’s in a rocket ship. You know that he’s building so we’re gonna be talking about the incredible. You know strategy that he used when he came to fundraising and he you of the world when he was really looking. You know at the problem that he was going to be addressing later on. Ah, we’re going. We’re gonna be talking about building the team as well and also about the balance you know of really working and and and life and. And all of that stuff that typically people especially founders. Don’t don’t talk much because it tends to be all about work. But it’s all about energy you know because you’re not energy energized and there’s no health. You know there’s nothing so um, without farther ado let’s welcome our guest today. Brian Anderson: Anderson welcome to the show so originally born in California but grew up in in a very sexy place. You know the hamptons. So so tell us about life. You know how was life growing up.

Brian Anderson: Thanks for having me alejandro.

Brian Anderson: It was a strange contrast. So of course folks that visit the hamptons think it’s always like that year round. But when you live there. It’s actually not as as as glamorous. Um I grew up you know middle class and and but really, ah it was a lot of work. Um, in the winter. It’s dead and um maybe some of that’s changing now. But when I grew up you know I went to a public school and there were there were 86 kids in my graduating class and you know I I to to put some money in my pocket I worked at the local harbor store. Um, and that was sort of how I was raised. It was a very interesting contrast between what happened during the the winter where I lived versus what happened during the summer um you know, very different sort of lifestyles and the ebb and flow of that really set. Um I think a grounding for.

Alejandro Cremades: So then in in in your case, you know how is it like you know like growing up with with all of that The incredible wealth around you and and seeing that too I’m sure that that fueled the you know ambition, you know that you had as well.

Brian Anderson: My future.

Brian Anderson: I think that’s totally true I I um I learned very quickly that all right. You don’t have to physically work at the hardware store all day now that that’s a bad thing. But for me, um, you know I was able to realize early on. Oh. There’s a way for me to use my brain and my brain power to succeed and and you know achieve these goals that I had in life early on. So yeah, that that contrast was a good teacher. Um, the other thing that happened is I had an incredible math teacher and in the sixth grade. She actually had a special class where. You can build a website and track stocks in excel that was that was the class and so that in combination with um, you know what? I really learned ah in the summer months versus the winter months really I think was was grounding in fuel for a lot of my ambition early on.

Alejandro Cremades: So then in your case you end up at Babson you know one of the most known universities for entrepreneurship. So at what point do you make that choice. You know hey I really want to study this thing because I may be able to or I might do something you know of my own. So. What what was that the thought process like.

Brian Anderson: Well first of all, um, Babson was the only school I applied to I was either going to Babson or I wasn’t going to go to college and um I didn’t I didn’t necessarily shop around or anything I just realized that. The first year of Babson there’s a special class where you can actually start a business your first year with 30 of your classmates that’s kind of what sold me. Um I wanted to be an entrepreneur I wanted to build something I was passionate about you know several ideas at the time several of them were computer and internet related. And that that really gave me a grounding um really cemented this idea that it’s going to be hard work. It might be the most challenging thing you do. But if you want to start a company and you’re smart about the opportunity you pick and you’re smart about the way that you build it that this is actually something that you can do. Um, and that was one of the most important lessons that I learned at at Babson It’s also this energy where everyone wanted to do this. There was you didn’t go to babson unless you wanted to eventually in one form or another start your own business.

Alejandro Cremades: So then so then in this case, you know like the in in in for you. You started also to learn how to program you know I think that that there was kind of like the your location there where you were in the dorm. So. Why programming? you know what? what did you see in programming that perhaps you know you thought it could be useful to you.

Brian Anderson: Um, in in middle school I had a group of friends and we we built computers. In fact, the first business I ever is as a child. Um we would we would build and sell computers. You know to all of our parents and so I was always interesting computers I always like. To understand how they worked um and when I got to to Babson. Um I kind of came across this again because my sophomore year I ended up living in a dorm that was closer to our sister’s school called olin engineering um and it turns out that our. Cafeteria card could swipe into Olin the same way. It could swipe into our own cafeteria basin. The funny thing about my sophomore dorm is that it was actually like pretty far away from the lunch cafeteria and it’s Boston. It’s the middle of the winter kind of the last thing you want to do is take a trek all the way across campus. Ah, to go to to the cafeteria so it turned out walking over to olin I could swipe in it was a shorter walk and um, the folks that went to olin engineering were all extremely talented. They’re sort of small classes but really really smart talented individuals that attend that college. And um, after hanging out with them a little bit and having some lunches with them. They sort of started to encourage me to take you know some classes and some credits over at olin engineering and that really was the start of what inspired me to to start to write code and and and learn engineering. So I do have some credits there. But for the most part, the majority of my engineering skills were.

Brian Anderson: Were self-taught as ah as a you know sort of after school work. Um, once I took those classes.

Alejandro Cremades: So for you Obviously you know it was just a matter of time so tell us about how embarking into the first day rodeo. What did that look like because obviously it didn’t end the way that you had hope. But as they say you either succeed or you learn.

Brian Anderson: Yeah I actually had an idea at the time the world and and I think still is like a lot of the world. A lot of the internet’s really powered by wordpress and you know I was really fascinated by wordpress at the time I was writing a lot of Php which is what wordpress is built on but I thought there was potentially a. Ah, better way for the most part I was frustrated with the way. The data got delivered in wordpress. It kind of felt all like within 1 box and something about that didn’t feel right, especially around you know 20112012 when the. The advent of you know more powerful iphones were coming to market. This is a time when bourbon just turned into Instagram and and and these things were happening I thought wow if apps are going to be the new future of the world. How are we going to get content into these apps and what’s the web going to look like on on mobile devices over the next ten years so I started this company. It was called pipestack and it was a content management system and the whole point of it is that it worked with an api on the front end and that’s how you really, you would use your engineering skills to use that Api to kind of build into say your app. Um. Or you know your your mobile web experience. So I think today we would I didn’t have the terminology back then but today we would look back and we would say that was probably 1 of the first um headless cmses that that at least was conceived of.

Alejandro Cremades: Now for you in this case, the outcome you know left you in not a very good financial situation. So yeah.

Brian Anderson: Yeah I I couldn’t raise money? Um, no one wanted like no one really understood the value of why you wouldn’t have a front end which is fair. Um, and so I ended up using a credit card to fund a lot of my life and you know. 1 thing leads to another and all of a sudden I’m in about 100 $ $20000 of debt. So I actually had to close the company down and I had to figure out how to pay off that debt and cover the cost of living um at the time I was in San Francisco which you know was was not cheap. So I ended up doing some consulting work. Um I was basically working all day and all night for about six seven months um to pay down that debt and I was luckily able to get several jobs because ah you know San Francisco at that time was just booming in terms of tech startups and in terms of people wanting to get and build businesses online. So I was able to work really hard to dig myself out of that hole and you know proud to say I I still don’t have debts this day I’m careful with credit cards now. But um, that was something that I learned wow this skill that I picked up of engineering. You know if all goes to hell and everything goes wrong. Um I can really depend on it to ah to make sure that I’m okay.

Alejandro Cremades: So what was that segue you know that got you into na cell because I mean in the next row was saying really you know putting together an agency for software development you know type of work. So how did it you know transition into you getting started with nace.

Brian Anderson: Yeah, so so I realized oh wow this idea of consulting is a good way to make money match my skills and I met some other folks that had similar skill sets and yeah, we kind of banded together I also had a couple friends from college that. At the time had reached out to me and they said hey we’re kind of running this e-commerce agency thing. There’s this you know company called Shopify I don’t know if you’ve heard of it but you know it’s really booming and we could use your help and I said wow that looks really interesting I always love the idea of e-commerce. And 1 thing led to another I ended up joining them and I got really embedded into the shopify ecosystem. Ah, we were also doing work at the time for magento and big commerce eventually came into the picture. But ah as time went on I would say around. 17 a really big change. Maybe it was twenty Sixteen a really big change hit the market. So for the engineers that are listening. You know this was the advent of essentially jquery going away. You have something called react what this meant was you could build websites as if they were applications themselves and. Really what this meant is our merchants that were our clients were very interested in things they can do to speed up the website because they knew that the faster their website went the higher. Their conversion rates would be and that was a really important business metric for them. Um, and so we started to experiment with some of this new technology on the frontend.

Brian Anderson: Worked really well except for the fact that ah it was a nightmare not on the frontend but the backend we had to do an incredible amount of logic and build a significant amount of infrastructure for our clients just to keep these new things up and running. Ah. And at some point after like the fourth or fifth merchant of doing this where we weren’t profitable because we were spending so much money on the infrastructure we realized or you know hey that’s actually the bigger opportunity. What if we could actually build this infrastructure and sell it to other agencies so that they could build on top of it. And um, you know make these great experiences for their clients on the frontend.

Alejandro Cremades: So then so then how does 1 thing lead to the next and then of a sudden you are operating the cell I mean what what happened there.

Brian Anderson: Yeah, um I think you you learn really quick if you’ve ever done the consulting thing and also the startup thing that you can’t do both at the same time. Actually some people are able to do it and kudos to them that is very impressive because it’s I think both things take a lot of energy. Um I think it’s very hard to be split-brain about these things right? So I was trying to straddle both for a while and I got to the point where I said you know what enough’s enough. Let’s burn the ships behind us. Let’s let the agency business. Go I found homes for for all of my clients. Um, and I said. I’m just going to jump off this cliff and I don’t know what’s on the other side but I’m going to make the jump and I went for it and ah very quickly. You know obviously one of the primary things is well. There’s a lot of technology to build here. You know if I’m not really gaining a paycheck from my agency anymore. Um, what are the things I can do you know it’s not going to be profitable any time soon because we have to build a lot of things to make this right? Um, and so you know raising capital became a really natural next step. So I was able to kind of burn the ships behind us and and and and focus 100% on this new company and this new idea we had. And yeah I was fortunate enough to have some connections in the industry and meet some you know across my travels there I I was able to meet some really prominent people today. Some of your viewers might know them. Ah Andrew Beeckchi is the founder and Ceo of clao. Um, he was one of the first checks in.

Brian Anderson: Ah, Brian long was founder and Ceo of attentive and um, he was another check-in Steve Weiss was another one. He ran this company called Mutei which was one of the biggest media buyers in the shopify ecosystem eventually got bought by densu.

Brian Anderson: And another one that was very supportive of me but thought I was foolish for selling. The agency was actually os she O’connor and he’s the founder and Ceo of a company called recharge that’s doing very well so I had this great angel support. Oh had he really? he’s a great guy. Great guy.

Alejandro Cremades: And he’s been on the he’s been on the show too. He’s been on the show too. So yeah, yeah, yeah, so I guess for the for the people that are listening to to get the the na sell you know the business model How you guys make money. Well what does that look like.

Brian Anderson: Yeah, so we are a Saas company and historically we’ve charged a Saas subscription fee. Um, however, the vision was always to get into payments. We thought the big Innovation. We saw that shopify made. Was that ah they they charged a very very low Saas fee when a lot of their competitors were charging really high Saas fees. Um, and we realized that what shopify was doing was actually brilliant. They were worked out a deal with Stripe. And they were able to negotiate using their economies of scale to get the price of Stripe low for shopify and then they were able to charge their merchants The full rate transaction fee and make money on the spread and we realized oh my gosh. Every merchant is going to have to pay a transaction fee to make money on the transaction fee. Means you don’t then have to charge an excess amount to actually use the software that was the innovation of shopify and we were always intrigued by that idea so we always wanted to get into Transactions. So We recently released a checkout that let us do that. That was always the vision but initially. That was a lot to build a checkout and so we had to charge ah a sort of annual subscription to the service.

Alejandro Cremades: So then let’s go back to the to the way that you guys went about raising money because he was quite this strategy. So obviously you were mentioning some of those same incredible indian investors so walk us through that strategy because I know that you haven’t really shared this and there’s gonna be a first time that I’m sure it’s gonna. Really help you know a lot of the founders out there because so far you guys have been very successful on raising money 75000000 raised but walk us through how has it been the whole strategy and the whole experience of raising the money from the beginning all the way up until now.

Brian Anderson: Yeah, so I think um so I think the first thing that ah your listeners if they don’t already know if you’re going to decide to do ah a business that has a really big addressable market and you’re going to go for it. You’re going to build something that’s 10 x better than what’s already out there. You know these things don’t just happen with. A few hundred thousand dollars usually sometimes but usually that’s not the case. Ah the way the Vc model works is a really important thing to keep in mind when you go for this style of business and so ah, you know without getting in too much detail and I think probably most of your your followers will understand this. But. Vcs make money only when they hit a home run so you can’t hit a single or double those are okay, but what they’re after is the 1 company in their portfolio that’s going to go public and knock it out of the park and return the whole value of the fund. Um. That that is really what they’re searching for so a single or double these sort of base hit plays. They’re not as important. So if you’re going after a really big idea you want to use that to your advantage. The other thing that’s really important in the world in the world of raising from institutional is you need momentum and so the idea of. Getting momentum becomes almost this critical thing that you need to have but how do you have momentum when you don’t have any. It’s a bit of like this chicken the egg problem and I think this is not talked about nearly enough in the world I hope this maybe could spark a conversation amongst your your listeners. Ah.

Brian Anderson: Often as an entrepreneur you’re in a very unique position right? there there aren’t there aren’t that many entrepreneurs in the world I’m sure when you’re reading tech crunch and everything it seems like there’s you know millions of them. But the truth is there aren’t that many entrepreneurs in the world and so if you are an entrepreneur 1 of the best things you can do. Beyond just fundraising is network and reach out to other entrepreneurs literally send them a cold message right? Um I mean like if you want to reach out to me. You could you could you know, check out my Linkedin and send me a message I will respond I will do my best to respond. Um, it’s not just important for fundraising. It’s also important to have the right mentality and.

Brian Anderson: You can only you’re not going to read about that in a book. You’re not going to you know, go to graduate school and learn about that. You’re really only going to learn about that from the experiences that other entrepreneurs had and so connect and relate with some of those folks really early on. Maybe even before you start and I think that’s one of the best things you can do. What happened in in my world is I realized ah that there’s this thing called qsbs in the United States it’s it’s essentially a tax break. Um, and so if you are a later stage Ceo and you raise something like you know a series c series d or you know something close. This doesn’t always happen but at the time in the market. There was a lot of what’s called secondary transactions going on and this is the idea where an entrepreneur after you know, 12 years of of slugging it out. They’ll they’ll say hey look I want to take a little bit off the table and you know they’ll find some investors that actually buy their common shares. Um, in exchange for that they get peace of mind a little bit of peace of mind. Um, but also if they did it right? They’re able to execute something called qsbs which means if they take those dollars and they reinvest it in another company that has qsbs like another startup. Ah, they don’t actually have to pay the tax on that sale. It’s actually brilliant and it’s yeah, it’s actually this thing that just really sparks and encourages innovation and something that I really believe in um, and so what I realized is okay well of my friends who are entrepreneurs like who’s doing big routes. Um, and who’s doing later stage rounds and.

Brian Anderson: Can I ask them if they’re interested in in investing in the cell in a pre-sed round in an angel round. Um, and my surprise responses I got a lot of yeses and a big piece that fueled this were secondary transactions that were coming in. So I Really think for your listeners. If. They’re able to build a network with entrepreneurs not just early stage but also the later stage folks. It’s a really really really great move because these folks are often willing to say yeah look I took a little off the table. You know I can give you a little check when you get big names. You know, early in your round in your in your preseed round that naturally Sparks Momentum with other institutional vcs they will hear about it. They will hear about it and you’ll start to get them knocking on the door as opposed to you knocking on on their door.

Alejandro Cremades: And then what was the experience too of shifting from individuals to institutionals. You know what other strategies you know, did you learn about rallying you know institutionals.

Brian Anderson: When we started to get a little transaction I asked my angels um, hey who are the institutions that you would do business with again that was really important to me I didn’t want um I wanted it to be value at like real value. Add not just like Bs right like. I wanted this to be hey if um, you know a if we if we’re trying to close a large ah customer and the customer is unsure of our financial situation. Will you pick up the phone and talk to them and be like no these people are good. You’re in good hands. Um, that that was the kind of value ad I was looking for and what happens if. Your angel friends are clever which I’m sure they are ah they’ll start to make the introduction because it also they’re proud of it hey look I put this small amount money into this company. They’re doing these really great things. Let me tell you about it that is like you’re they’re doing the pitch for you before you even start on the first slide. Um, it creates this momentum and this energy and I’ll use the word buzz even though I don’t really like this word. Um people were talking about nacele in the venture community when we were doing our seed in our series a round before I had to really knock on any doors if you can get yourself into a situation like that by leveraging you know your angel network. I think um I think it’s ah it’s a really really great. Strategic move.

Alejandro Cremades: And now in terms of the vision too because vision is a really big one for for investors now. So if you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of Nasel is fully realized what does the world look like.

Brian Anderson: Um, ecommerce is one of those funny tech industries where there’s not a winner take all so I think most folks are familiar with shopify but shopify itself. Um, only has like 10% market share in SAndB in total so even in enterprise it’s much smaller than that. You would think a name that’s almost like a household name at this point you know like a Google they have something like what 70% market share 80% market share that they they probably try to keep that lower not higher. Um, but it is not a winner take all industry and there’s really. An argument to be said that there’s no strong network effects that happen in e-commerce and so part of my pitch is look ah, we’re carving out this special niche. We’re looking for merchants that are either venture backed and want the absolute best in terms of customer shopping experience or. Large retailers that are getting into digital. Um, they’re not going to go to the traditional incumbents because it wasn’t made for them. Um, and so I kind of just painted this sort of gray space in the market. It’s obviously a very very large market and I wasn’t shy about the vision too. Ah I didn’t I thought I’d get laughed out of more rooms but I didn’t um, in fact, and this is actually a first to the world. Ah I actually applied to y combinator and I had an interview and they actually didn’t move forward with us and their reason. Ah.

Brian Anderson: Is that they said well we don’t like your go-tomarke because you’re piggybacking on shopify merchants and we don’t think shopify is going to exist in 5 years so and go figure. Um I think that’s my other piece of advice like don’t be discouraged if even prominent angels or institutional firms say no. Um, first of all, they could say no for the wrong reason there’s a lot of politics at these firms. You don’t know where the fund is at um, people have different ideas. So yeah I think pitching the vision is really really important if you go back to this idea that a Vc wants that home run.

Brian Anderson: You have a big vision if you’re listening to this podcast like you probably have this big vision. Don’t um, don’t undermine it in any way, go for it. Don’t be be bold like Vcs know if you’re not bold in front of them. It’s going to be very hard for you to be bold leading a company and pushing a whole company forward right? so. Go for it pitch them on the big idea. Don’t hold back. Don’t do this thing where oh we’re going to do 1 thing and then this other thing silly just go for it and I think you’ll actually be surprised at how well the institutional financing world and venture capital response that.

Alejandro Cremades: Now let’s talk about here about the because we’re talking about the future but I want to talk about the past with a lens of reflection. So let’s say I was to put you into a time machine and I bring you back to the moment where you were coming out of Babson. You know, thinking that it was time to conquer the world as an entrepreneur and. Let’s say let’s say you were able then to have a chat with that younger Brian Anderson: and you were able to give that younger Brian Anderson: one piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now.

Brian Anderson: Yeah, um, there’s 1 thing that pops to mind right away. Um there in my opinion. There’s a misconception around differentiators and competitors. And this is all related to kind of this very common business concept of barriers to entry. So I think a lot of entrepreneurs have a good idea and then get discouraged because oh well someone else is already doing that in the marketplace or um, oh well, that’s too easy to copy. Okay, so so. To to kind of paint this picture. Let’s take the extreme opposite. Let’s take Spacex like a alon musk. Okay, so so obviously he has this massive barrier to entry. He’s like the only one that could land rockets right? like that. That’s this is a huge technical feat I’m sure there’s ton of patents around it I’m sure there’s like a lot of. Um, know how I mean that’s a serious barrier to entry for a startup and then here comes blue origin and they could land rockets too. Um, outside of brands ah barriers to entry. It’s very hard even if you have a patent. There is most likely other ways to do that thing that your patent doesn’t cover so I would go back to myself and shake myself silly a little bit and be like don’t try to dream up this grand master plan where you have all these ideas and these great barriers to entry. That’s really a fool’s task instead think about this idea.

Brian Anderson: Of how technology works. Um, it moves really fast and it’s much more important to find something that’s product market fit and then stay six months ahead of what everyone else is doing by constantly innovating and improving the product if you’re able to do that. That is the best barrier to entry you will ever get. In the startup world stay six months ahead of competition and keep innovating and use your venture capital dollars to continuously push the product and innovate. In fact I wouldn’t even have to go back to when I started I could go back 2 three years ago to the cell where you know. I felt like we were in a great position and I took my eye off the ball a little bit on product engineering and you know I think we lost some of some of the initial edge that we have now. Luckily we’ve got it back and it feels really good but don’t lose sight of this idea that technology moves really fast and your competitors are going to if you have a good idea they will copy. You. That’s not a bad thing. Okay, it’s okay, that’s great I’d love to be the blueprint for you know my competitor’s product roadmap but the key you have to continuously invest and continuously be innovative and continuously talk to customers. Continuously keep product market fit and stay six months ahead that is a much better strategy than trying to create this grand master plan with patents and all these barriers to entry that really could just fall apart tomorrow anyway.

Alejandro Cremades: So talking know lessons learned to tell us about balancing you know work and life because I know that’s important for you and and then also the way that people are missing out on and really being energized and finding their energy.

Brian Anderson: I think that’s what’s all about right to me life is especially this kind of life look if you are not extremely passionate about the problem you decide to pick. It’s highly unlikely, you’re going to make it. You have to be so so drawn to this. And it’s almost like you have to be willing to try this maybe like 3 4 5 times over and over again because it might not work the first time and that’s okay so number one like if you are passionate about an idea then your life becomes all about how do I get that. Energy to fuel to continuously fuel that passion right? So literally think of it as like gasoline going into your tank. Um and that tank can get filled in many different ways. Jeff Bezos presented this idea of work life harmony which is very different than work life balance. So one I think. Potential mistake that folks might make is they say look you know 40 hours of work sure that’s that’s like a normal work week. You know I’m an entrepreneur and I’m working really hard. So I’m going to do 50 hours of work 55 hours of work whatever pick your number. Um I fundamentally disagree with that why because maybe your brother in law calls you. And he’s having a really hard time with whatever situation. He’s in and you know what that week you’re going to have to talk to your brother-in-law and spend some time with him and just be a good a good friend and a good family member. Um, when you end that you’re going to feel really good and hopefully you help them out a little bit and in any ways you can even if it just means.

Brian Anderson: Picking up the phone and talking to them and listening to them that is going to fuel you and energize you for the really hard work that you have to do that’s coming up. Um I think that’s really important and and and the same is true on the other side you know imagine um. Calling a friend because you’re concerned about whatever it is that you’re concerned about in life but they’re under pressure from a performance review that didn’t go so well and they’re afraid of you know, maybe getting fired ah you know in the next couple weeks. Um, it’s going to be really hard to have a high quality conversation with that person. Um, at that time right? so. These things are interrelated and that’s why this idea of harmony and sort of understanding the natural ebb and flow of work life and non-work life and not trying to like set boundaries and boxes around them. Um, becomes really really important, not just for your startup culture and the rest of your team. But also for you as as the entrepreneur starting a business like you are going to have to go through and take some hits and take some punches and if you don’t have that work life harmony worked out I just think it’s going to be 10 times harder.

Alejandro Cremades: Now for the people that are listening that will love to reach out and say hi Brian Anderson: what is the best way for them to do so.

Brian Anderson: Um, I’m I’m an avid Linkedin I’m like kind of obsessed with Linkedin right now. Um the other social media stuff is not really my cup of tea I find it really inspiring I love that it’s a whole network built on people who are passionate about their work life and um. If. You’d like to reach out to me I will be as responsive as I possibly can on Linkedin.

Alejandro Cremades: : Amazing! Well Brian thank you so much for being on the deal maker show that it has been an on earth to have you with us today.

Brian Anderson: Likewise Alejandro thank you.

*****

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