How 2 Students raised $100k in 1 Week with crapy MVP

title: How 2 Students raised $100k in 1 Week with crapy MVP
author: Founders Podcast
publication: Founders Podcast
published: 2025-12-30T09:15:00
source_url: https://anchor.fm/s/10542bd40/podcast/play/111971629/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-11-1%2F413530053-44100-2-0b17fffffc8a8.mp3

word_count: 10449

Hello, Kazema and Omar. Welcome to the Founders Podcast. Pleasure to be here. We did. Great stuff, great stuff. Before we start, guys, do you have a favorite code, something that motivates you, inspires you you would like to share with our audience? Sure. So something that inspires me is our people that's beyond success and after the success, they are coming back to use that to leverage and inspire others. So people like Reid Hoffman or Naval or Avicant, that's the founded companies that achieve massive amounts of success in their own personal lives. And instead of retiring and using it for a life of hedonism or something like that, they are leveraging it into coming back and inspiring others, inspiring founders, and trying to push society into a better place and trying to be the change the ones in the world. And in my personal life, I'm really inspired by Buddhaism. And in that, there is the notion of Buddha Satva, the one that awakens our achievements in Irvana. And instead of just going up to the mountains and enjoying their own bliss, they are going back to the market, to the community, to relieve people from their suffering. And that's kind of like a desire to help others and not only focus on your own material success, is something that I'm really inspired by. I feel like a lot of people are looking at that angle of achieving this exit and not seeing that as just the starting point of really doing the reward. Yeah, doing something good. And that is very, very inspiring. Thanks for sharing that, Omar, because I see lots of founders nowadays who are majorly focused on quick exit. They just want to make quick bug and then go exit and do something else. There are very few founders who are trying to actually solve a real problem, which affects, which impacts a lot of lives in real world, right? So starting with that kind of mindset actually brings me to the place that okay, there are people right now in our world who are trying to do something good, right? So thanks for that. Thanks for sharing that. So let's take it to the next level then. Imagine you both are in a room of full of ambitious founders, right? Early age builders. You walk into the room, you have the mic, you have the spotlight on you. The catch here is actually nobody actually knows you. They look at you and they say, oh, look at these handsome guys. What are they doing on the stage? Why are they there? What are they going to talk about? So tell me, tell me about what will be your story to share with them so that these inspirational, these founders, early stage builders will stick with us for the rest of the hour. Yeah. So it all started kind of on a cold winter day, like today, riding outside, the wind is blowing here in Amsterdam. And I woke up in the morning and had a full day of uni work to do. And I was like, oh, but I keep running into that same problem, over and over and over again, which is and finding interesting content. And I want to save it and look into it later and digest it and kind of build out that second brain, that knowledge base that I can communicate with and that evolves similar to like my own brain does. And then in that moment, I was drinking a coffee and I was just like, I don't want to just study today anymore. I want to do stuff. And friend of mine recommended that day, as well as a blog post, a done manifesto. At the time, I was a little bit in a slump and I didn't quite know what to do and I really wanted to start building again, but I was lacking that motivation. And on that day, I sat down and I started coding. And I just was like, okay, no, I'm going to get this done. It's not going to be perfect. It's not the most sophisticated solution, but I'm going to get started. And I'm going to do one step at a time to create and not just think, but to actually start doing. And there was a very pivotal moment. And that's where the entire story of mine's actually started is by getting shit done and doing things. And now a couple of months later, we are here. We have raised money, we have an incredible team of people coming together and have contagious momentum of our community and surroundings of people who are passionate about what we're building and want to support us. And I just want to tell everyone to, who is in a similar situation, who has these ideas, who wants to start doing things, is to not just think about it, but to just sit down and get started. Because between thinking and doing this is huge difference. And that activation energy, I think sometimes we just need to do it and scrap the universe of the day or whatever plan we had. And sit down, write it then in that moment and start it, rather than just planning and just thinking about it, because then nothing actually gets down on paper. Yeah, yeah, execution is the problem. And as Elmar said that, now we're, now we can, is that the right name I'm pronouncing? I think I have seen one of his talks, might be the tech talks one, he always emphasizes on the execution part because we have seen multiple founders in our history who have done a very, very poor job when it comes to the product itself. But the idea and the execution was so good that they have become a trillion dollar company. I mean, have you actually seen the first version of Amazon, right? That website was like the Airbnb first version was like, you know, basic HTML and they were like literally copying the listing from Cragglist to the Airbnb. So that reminds me that execution is everything. So guys, I don't know that you don't want to share the numbers around how much you have raised or something like that. But what inspired me about your story is you have created a solution for a problem. And I want to talk about more about what problem you're solving there. But you created an MVP and based on that MVP, you have raised, let's say for a sake of the number, 100,000 pounds in UK, right? How long it took you to create that MVP? Well, for the very first MVP itself, it was one day and that was a pretty shitty one. Like, again, we're talking about that execution. So that was just kind of proving the point. And then in March, I basically locked myself up in the dorm room and started coding for about three weeks, three and a half weeks. And then we had an initial web version of the MVP. And that was kind of what carried us through the fundraising tool now. And obviously, in our own, the way we have been starting to build out our proper version and our next MVP iteratively. But the first product, yeah, it was initial few weeks of coding solar. Perfect. And that is, that is these kind of stories. These kind of underdog stories is what makes our podcast favorite for a lot of people because they want to learn how people are building things from bootstrapping and then going to, you know, navigating through this VC realm of VCs. So talk to me about the problem. What is the actual problem you guys trying to solve? Give me the crux of it. And I understand that you have faced it yourself. And there's a saying in a state, something like eat your own dog's food, something similar to that. I mean, we don't have it in Britain, but I have learned it because I've interviewed quite a lot of people from US. And the saying dedicates to a feeling or emotion that if you have faced the problem yourself, then it will help you to solve it for others also, right? Because you'll know the inside out of it. So talk to me about the problem. How did you came across this? What was the the moment where you had the piphany that, okay, this is what I'm going to work on for the rest of my, I don't know, next five years or 10 years. Yeah. So the problem itself is that we're living in a sea of information and we're drowning in it. We, each of us are getting so many different sparks of inspiration throughout the day as we are conversing as you listen to a podcast, as you read a book or even scroll LinkedIn or another social media. And once in a while, something sparks your curiosity. And you want to save that spark. It might be an idea, might be something that you want to follow up on. Each thing that kind of like fits the category of oh, that's interesting. I want to look into that later. And the problem is is that we are, we're drowning in this over information. And we don't take the time to really capture those moments and follow up on them. We just get inspired and then move to the next thing and to the next. And people have come up with all these kinds of suboptimal coping mechanisms to try to capture these moments. And we have noticed ourselves using them. And when we talked and asked around, we saw that so many of them are extremely universal. So please tell me if some of them might be familiar to you. So you're encouraging something really interesting. And the first thing you do, you take a screenshot. And then you're like, oh, I'm for sure going to go back into it. The only thing is that you have 10,000 other screenshots waiting in your phone, covering your space. And get it. More things that people are doing is writing themselves what's a message in the meme myself and I group. Having a million open tabs in their phone or computer. Just waiting for that one moment of inspiration that yeah, I will for sure go back to it. Others even remind themselves via email. There's so many coping mechanisms of trying to capture information so you can come back to it later. However, most of them are spreaded. They're not integrated to the rest of your system. They're not smart. So you just end up being lost. And that's a piece of forgotten curiosities. That is the major problem that we were facing in our own lives. And we saw that so many others are facing as well. And us just imagining a tool that can help you capture all these moments that can facilitate you going back to them following through engaging and being inspired by those things. The thought of making such thing and its societal impact and the impact of it on people's life that actually follow through on curiosities rather than just endlessly squarling or forgetting about them. That really motivated us and inspired us. And that's what fuels us to do what we're doing today. Awesome. And when you realize that this is the problem you wanted to learn, what did you do when it comes to research? Because obviously in today's world, we don't want to work on a problem which cannot get you paid or somebody doesn't want to pay money for it. Right? This is one of the Dalima founders face like, oh, this is a big problem. There's hundreds of threads on Reddit. There's hundreds of forums where everybody's talking about this problem. But the issue is, this problem is so small or it doesn't actually reflect the the intensity of the pain that people will pay for it. What did you do in terms of research to understand? Okay. Now we understand that this problem is huge enough that we can make a business out of it. What was the research path looked like? Yeah. So we took a Cosimo's web version and we gave it out to 100 people and tested it out and we made interviews with them and beyond these 100, we also talked with hundreds of others. It was a phase really. Yeah. Of a lot of research, I want to want to really understand the pain forms as well as making market research and seeing the different markets. Just look at the note-taking market, which what we're building is not a smart note-taker. It's much more than that. But it's looking at that market, what the attractions of notion and obsidian have managed to generate in the dispersonal knowledge management systems. You could really see that there's a willingness to pay four solutions that help you capture the stuff you care about, that help to manage your own information and knowledge. Because by the end of the day, those kind of tools save you time and they make you more either productive in your personal life or in your professional life. But also it's the kind of productivity that makes you feel more alive because this is like being able to manage and capture the stuff that you're really interested in. Those are the kind of stuff that fuels you. So beyond the, we just did personal interviews, MVP product testing and market research. We have come to the conclusion that there is a pretty significant market to go after and that's what we're doing. Perfect, perfect. I want to go deep down into that. How did you came up with the pricing? Because pricing is one of the biggest challenges founders like. Some founders will come to you or some mentors will come to you and say, okay, do not charge less because if you do, then people think that your service is not good enough. It doesn't have the quality. Some founders will come to you and say, okay, start with a freemium model so that people can understand how your service or product works and then potentially give them so much value, like Gary Vee talks about, like give free value as much as possible. And then based on that relationship, you start charging them. So there's lots of different opinions in this, in the founders space where you talk about the pricing. So talk to me about, have you started charging for your product yet or what stage it is right now? So currently we are not charging our customers. We're launching now into our community and really creating that movement there. Maybe one thing on the side, one thing you always say as well is a big mantra for us as well. We're not just building a product, but also philosophy and a movement because the end is all about people. And that goes into pricing and then making revenue from the business as well. And in the beginning now, we are really launching to our co-creators, as we call them, who are really the individuals that are, that there's thousands of true fans that we will work in close collaboration with that will be the evangelists of our brand and of our tool as well. And to them, we are providing it for free and creating really that relationship and putting time into that relationship as well. Because that's where we believe we can learn as well how to make the perfect product, how to make it most delightful it could be and of the most utility and value to all of these individuals. And then in regard to the grander pricing scheme, that will be very much as well a testing ground. We don't want to lock ourselves into one particular belief structure, especially as the world and businesses and AI and AI products. And general digital tools are changing so rapidly and over the next few years as well, I think the landscape will look completely different and we need to be more and more innovative in the way we can differentiate ourselves and the way we create value, but also generate value for ourselves as a company. And there it's really going to be a testing ground of, okay, let's see, let's make dedicated research groups into different pricing strategies. Let's segment the users and see what best works for our product and for our main customer base. So that's kind of our philosophy there, like very scientific, I mean, also from all of us. It's science based and we all come from science. So we really want to take that scientific mindset as well into the business world and seeing, okay, what numerically and analytically makes most sense. Indeed, indeed. And I want to touch the two different points you said that because when you are on a phone journey, there will be a lot of points where you will think of pivoting your product because I can share an example. We have engineers in our office and then we created this voice note taking app. Simple like, you know, you click a button, you talk to it and then it takes notes for you transcribing it. And we accidentally somehow increased the wavelength capturing capability of that app so much that even if you put that phone in a different room, let's say 30 feet away and you're here in this room and you're talking, it does transcribe it there because it catches you or wavelength because it starts doing that. And that product, instead of being a voice note transcribing product, it became a spy product. You go in a coffee shop and you start transcribing it and put it on your table and then you can actually hear the person who is sitting at the next corner of it. And we didn't thought that people would pay for it but, you know, pivoting. You need to pivot as for your customers' requirement, right? So that was a funny story. So yeah, we need to watch out when we're talking. Definitely, definitely. And also, you know, I want to appreciate Azimah that, you know, you guys come from science background and I want to understand about my listeners also because on the podcast, it creates this relationship with the founders when the listeners are listening to you if they know more about you, right? I'm eager to learn more about you both, you know, behind this innovative venture. Can you take us back to your roots and share your share with our listeners about your upbringing, childhood, how did your early experiences and childhood actually helped you to become the visionary entrepreneur? And were there any sort of, like, influence from your family or surrounding? You know, like the book we have already reached that poor dad. We always had this rich uncle or a friend's dad who was there who inspired us. Were there somebody like that in your childhood who inspired you to become an entrepreneur? Yeah, so going way back in time, I think one of my first gifts I got us from my parents, I don't know the exact age, but I think it was like two or three. And they gifted me, and Jeremy called it Gumi Hammer, like a rubber hammer, like a tool. And they didn't want to give me a toy tool, but a real one, but something that was suitable for, like, small child. And as a grew up more and more, and then also kind of like in primary school, so I really started to build stuff and do crafting and started making tree houses and designing new fishing tackle. And I spent like months designing a crossbow, which has an automated reloading mechanism, because I was really into that at that time. And obviously, way underqualified to really do that, because it was like eight, nine, ten. But I was always in that mentality of inventing things, of doing things, of putting things into action that were in my mind, to solve whatever problem was around me. And I'm really lucky that my parents fostered that as well and encouraged that. And both of my parents are also entrepreneurs, but that is an architect and has run his business, my entire life long. So I've seen him kind of work and being in that mentality of, okay, you cannot just rely on a salary, you are creating your own life and you're shaping your life and your company together. And there's one system in that. And my mother as well, she's in the art world has always also been an entrepreneur. So I've been really, I think, influenced from both my parents in that regard of just starting and doing things and not waiting for anything magically to happen to solve problems, but to just take it in the on-hands and do it. Consistent, yeah. Yeah. And then kind of this theme of being an inventor really went through my life and that always was in the back of my mind. It's like, actually, the thing I want to do is create beautiful solutions to problems that a lot of people have and create value for that. And then I, after high school, I really was a little bit lost of what I want to do as I think many people are. I wanted to take a gap here, but then there was COVID and all this mess in the world at that time. And I ended up studying theoretical mathematics and philosophy at Trinity in Dublin. And I chose that because I was like, okay, I don't know exactly what I want to do, but mathematics seems very useful and was somewhat good at it. And philosophy is, a little bit of a counterpart. Just mathematics would have been too dry. But philosophy gives it a little bit of a juiciness. For me, the rationale there was really to build a toolbox of thinking, the extremely analytical abstractness of mathematics and the precision, the proof, the logic. But then as well from the from the philosophy side point, it has the structure, but their ideas go much broader and you can really explore, you learn to argue, you learn to write, you learn to talk, you learn to think in other people's perspectives, because you can understand an argument and disagree with it, but still find it sounds because it's logical and really gaining, for me, nearly felt like going to the gym for my brain and studying these two subjects. And eventually I didn't like that anymore so much and I had the opportunity to work in tech for a while, which was an incredible opportunity. I was 21 years old and was recruited by Citrix, a Fortune 500 company and worked for a subsidiary there right. That was really, for me, the playing ground of the business world, of really getting started with the business I came in, talking with CEOs, talking with so many teams every day around the world to solve their problems. I stand them and implement the solution in their learning negotiations and all of that. And then after a while I was like, okay, I want to bring back that entrepreneurial side of me, that that that person who has had all of these side hustles on the side making different projects like at one point, actually in COVID-19, invented with a friend of mine together, a aerodynamic device for fried trains to make them just a little bit more aerodynamic and a patent and so on and so forth. And so this has always been a side of me of really making just stuff happen. And then following through and that really came in phases. And in order to facilitate it, again, I was, while I was working in Dublin, I was like, actually, I want to study again. I want to find more tools and more knowledge to integrate that so that I can really start building what I want to build. And then I decided to go and study neuroscience and AI here in Amsterdam, where they also met Omar who for the first few days of coming here. And that really was kind of the starting ground and as well for where we are now as a company as individuals. When I was studying here, neuroscience I really wanted to gain understanding of how our brains were because no, I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do in life except for creating stuff and making things and building. But I didn't know in what area. So I was like, okay, well, understanding the brain firstly fascinates me and no matter what we do in the world of business or science or what not. And then it has all to do with people. So if you understand our biological brain, our structure of how we think of how our knowledge is processed, how memory works, and all the molecular, cell biology that goes behind that, that is a good basis of understanding. And then the same was with the counterpart of AI understanding our synthetic brain that has over the last few years been more and more prominent and has always been something that fascinated me. I was like, hmm, if I can study the two of them and I can somehow combine them, that gives me a great starting point as a basis of knowledge and experience to build on top of that. And that's kind of the manifestation that happened that like two years into that degree, we ended up starting the company and was just doing it. And now we are a team of neuroscientists and technologists coming together to build kind of the perfect interface for humans to interact with their knowledge with their curiosities with all the pieces of content that they kind of want to work with and that are to interest to them and a value to them and they want to explore and connect and create from that. Whatever that creation is, if that's a book, if that's scientific research, if that's personal development, there's so many avenues, but it all comes from these sparks of curiosities that thinking back now in time as well, I was essentially just following my sparks of curiosity, if that was mathematics or philosophy or then working in tech or studying neuroscience and AI, it's following really the things that truly touch something in you and that where you're like, oh yes, I want to know more about that, I want to understand that. Curiosity is the is the birth of a lot of businesses, for sure. That's, you know, no doubt worry. What about you, Omar? What's your story? That's my story. Yeah, from Rihang age, I also had similar experiences, I would say less so with building, although I did love making jewelry, which I learned how to do when I was about six, I went to workshops and really made good materials as well. And really quickly, I collected this huge box of jewelry that I made and I decided to go and start selling them out in the street in the main boulevard. And I really enjoyed doing that. And I also went to one of my mom's, well, both of them are academics, but I went to the department of one of them and just did basically door to door sales of my jewelry at ridiculous pricing. I was just like this cute boys, seven year old, like a lot of people, and I made good jewelry as well. A lot of people bought it. And then I noticed at some point that a lot of people really want to support, but the pricing was a bit too high. So I started making like this much tinier stuff that didn't take much effort. So like is it kind of like, oh, you're a cute text that they could still support someone. And few years after that, I didn't see a lot of things with lemonade stand. Basically hustled half of my class into picking up lemon trees, lemons from trees in the city. And then we squeezed them all, made the lemonade stand, made quite a lot of money. So much that we could take all of our school year into sports day and fundraise the whole thing based on the lemonade juice selling. And yeah, also there it can kind of like your question about pricing reminded me that I've noticed that a lot of people don't want to drink this sweet stuff because they're like into sports. So we made like a just a small health shot with double the price and that was like a huge bang. Wow. Yeah, looking back over, I should have put all of the money into Bitcoin, not just working, but I was a kid. So it's forgivable. Yeah, throughout my life, I was really actually frustrated with the educational system. I love reading, I love exploring my curiosity. I was so passionate about learning, I spoke to him in the way. And I was really close actually to dropping out because of that reason, when all of a sudden I heard about this one program an MIT program that's called Meet, Needless Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow, which brings MIT faculty to teach entrepreneurship, computer science and leadership for excelling teenagers. I, by sheer chance, came across this program. I applied, I have like a really tough, you know, application rates and somehow I got in and that program completely changed my life. I was 14, 15 and into this mini existential crisis of what is the meaning of it all? Can you create something like a meaningful life? And I had a lot of climate exactly at the time as well. And a very first summer of that program, which lasts three years, we had to think of a startup idea in Sustainable One, build a whole team around it, a pitch deck to validate the whole thing with a business case. And then pitch it in front of Facebook executives that are used to funding a startup and so on. And I came up with this idea of a smart water meter device that is an add-on device that turns the old meter into a smart one. So you can reuse kind of like old meters and then check on the water consumption real time and save, but also save a lot of hours because you don't need to manually check it, it can just smartly send it away. I ended up winning that competition and that was a transformative moment in my life. All of a sudden I understood that I could help the world to the better through creating something, through decentralized entrepreneurial journey. And from that point onwards, I was like 15. I understood that all I need to do is to build a toolbox, to be one day in a position that I can create something with my own. And that's why I continue in that program after graduating. I also came back actually. I was offered to be an education. Educated. I had my own 40 students, which was really transformative as well, kind of like being from the other side of the classroom. Facilitated discussions and teaching. And also learning biology, which I'm really inspired by nature. And I feel like an innovation so much of the stuff that we can really understand deeply in and in creating is by understanding the inner logos, the inner logic of nature, which came up with all of the most brilliant solutions, including our brains, including everything that is alive. So that was kind of like my thought process. Then I moved to Amsterdam to study biology and neuroscience. Same thoughts in mind, in to take that and to combine it with technology. And then going on entrepreneurial journey. And when Cosimo came up with the mindset idea, I just knew that I have to go all in. I was working in the real estate sector at the time in sustainability in poverty tech, still in school, still in university. But it was like so grandiose, like seeing the potential of what we can create. And having the personal pain problem that we want to solve made me understand that this is the time. This is what I've been waiting for for the seven years to just go all in. And he really was all it. I remember the day in June when we met and we were like, okay, let's let's discuss this in more detail. Let's see how we can make this work. But our skills is what is our plan. And on the same day, we went to start a village here in Amsterdam and Science Park, where we are at right now. And we kind of talked to them, made some connections. Three days after that, we had our offices here in the program that the start a village offers. And from then on, it was just building and building and building. And yeah, man, like I've never seen anybody who goes so all in as you do. And couldn't do this without you. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad that you guys met and we have a very well known saying here in I think a couple of my guests also mentioned about it. Finding a partner is the most difficult part. And we have this saying like, I mean, you guys are very young. I don't know if you have any kids or not. But we have this saying that if you want to partner with somebody in a business, the easiest way to figure that out is ask yourself a question. Can you leave your children with this person for a week for babysitting? If the answer is yes, then you partner with them. If the answer is no, this is how we try to evaluate that if you want. But I'm glad that you guys are met. And I want to understand your journey after, you know, about the fundraising. How did that happen? Like when you did this MIT, MIT program, did you go through all the usual VC to VC pitching exercises? Or was there an event which you participated? How did that journey look like? Like, did you go with your small, rough MVP or what was going on there? Yeah, back in the MIT in the MIT program, yeah, we we we learned first hand from MIT faculty, the whole theory about entrepreneurship, fundraising, and so on. In teams, like pitching and competitions, really mimicking that whole dynamic. And that taught me a lot about making pitch decks, how to create a story, what to have in mind when going through these things. But now, few years later, while that experience was like, you know, theoretically enriching and also practically made us really bring ourselves and do the actual thing, I must say that's now like doing it like on on the real crash when it's, you know, that's our all of our like most of our savings on the line, our lives are intertwined with mindstash. And going out there when there's also real money on the line, there is so much more that just cannot be one cannot prepare for. And I think that definitely going through the MIT program not only inspired me, but also gave me the tools. But those tools were just the starting point of the actual journey. Because being a founder, we need to learn so many things on the fly, while things are burning, while we are running a hundred miles an hour, we need to all of a sudden understand the the intricacies of the deal terms and how to negotiate them, and how to do like market research in that specific sector that might be different than what we were trained on. There's there's so much that goes into it that one cannot really prepare for. I think MIT brought me as much as possible to get to that point. Indeed, indeed. And would you be able to give us a listener's sense of the size of the business where you are in terms of revenue number of customer size of the you don't have to share exact numbers. I understand that because it's public forum, but any approximation would be good. Yeah, so in terms of size of the business, we are only now launching to our community then MVP. And we're not asking for money for it. It is the one that is later on. In terms of the team itself, there is myself, there's Kozimo. Last month, we have onboarded our STTO, Bargav, who will be also stepping in slowly as a co-founder. And we have a designer and full sector developer and a couple more interns and people that are helping us out. So we are actually quite of a team at the moment, all really dedicated and fully focused on bringing that vision to life. And in terms of traction, we have our waiting lists or the joint movement, the people who want to be a part of this journey, who are inspired by what we are doing. So we have over a thousand of those. And also two weeks ago, we made our first event called the Curiosity Salon, which we shared not only what we're doing, but also why we're doing it, and shared some of our takes about the current situation of the world and our relationship to technology. How is often so suboptimal? How we want to inspire people to have a more intention, a more mindful relationship to our tools, especially now in the AI age in which those tools are quite different than what we are used to so far. And we are failed so far in the societal standpoint to have a healthy and reaching relationship with our technologies. I mean, look at the young generations this day. I mean, we are young. So I totally get your point because I interview quite a lot of graduates. We go to Oxford's time to time to talk about how the startups are going on and how you can recruit people. I had a very interesting interview with one of the graduates. We were trying to recruit in our company and I was trying to ask this person, the fundamentals of programming, because we were hiring for Python engineers, right? And this person was unable to even explain how the inheritance work, how the object oriented programming works, and what kind of fundamentals we had. I mean, I come from a seed++ background back in 2007, so that's like way back, right? But this person was trying to, you know, try trying to push the whole conversation towards, okay, whatever you need, just tell me what you want to build and I will build it with the help of AI. But that was not the question. The question was like, do you understand? Because AI could augment you as a human to create something. But if you don't understand the crux of what's happening under the bonnet of your car, and you're trying in a desert or a forest for that say, how are you going to make it run for a few more miles to even get some help, right? This is important. And then that, that works. I'm a little bit concerned about this going forward, because if we have engineers, graduates, minds who are going to run the whole world in next 50 years, who doesn't understand what's happening in the, underneath, it's going to be painful for some people, at least, right? Great stuff. So talk to me about the presentation that pitch you did when you got this investment. Was it more about you guys being at the right place, at the right time in front of right investors, or was it more about you being pitching for a while, you understood how the messaging needs to be done, and then you crafted it in such a well-former that nobody can resist to invest. Well, it was the ongoing outcome of us hustling, pitching to dozens and dozens of institutional VCs, angel investors. And of course, each pitch we're learning, and we think that transformative moment was when we started to address those pitches, it's like almost like a prep for the next one, rather than filling the weights of the very much so. Yeah, feeling like the weight of like, oh, we really need this ticket size, because we want to follow through on what we want to create. And we really need to get this meeting right, and the pitch right, and that's really stressful. And then we found ourselves not being as authentic as we can, and by the end of the day, we're so passionate about what we're doing. We believe not only the product and what we, it stands behind, but also in its potential in the market. And the best thing that we could do is translate our passion into authentic communication. And we could only do that once we kind of like lifted the anxiety of us. And in some of our meetings, I even started meeting by saying, I understand if that our current company is not within your investment thesis, but I would love to share what we're doing. And maybe later on, that's something that could be relevant. And that was one of the best meetings I ever had in terms of investment that started with that premise. So I think that that was really like a shift. And a lot of the success was with angels, which you know, it's that's quite a hassle, because you need to talk to one by one. And from the first touch point of phone call and meeting to showing the pitch deck into following up with the term sheets to expanding more about what we're doing and the research we've made in the data room, this is like an ongoing person process. And for each person separately. So it's a lot of hassle that goes into it. I think anyone that goes into fundraising and thinking, oh, I'm just going to talk to a couple of VCs. They will see my brilliant idea and they will throw mine at me. That's completely unrealistic. We are we are hustling at it. It's like that's a full-time job. And we have something like five others full-time jobs. And I have no idea how we are keeping all of them after the phone time. We are working approximately 90 to 100 hours a week, which is probably not sustainable for the long run, but for an initial kickstarting phase, that's what needed to be done. Definitely. It is, you're doing exactly what every successful entrepreneur or founder should be doing. So I'm glad that you shared your story. And just to go back on the point, we have a saying here in London that you have to collect nose from VCs. So every time you have a have a startup idea and you want to raise, start collecting nose. The average nose depends upon your location. That's what the whole premise comes from. So in London, you have to collect at least 42 nose before you get one yes for a second meeting. So if you go to any VCs and pitch them and they ask you how many nose you have collected, you might be able to say, oh, we have 30. So they say, okay, you're in a good path. But if you say, what do you mean, then they know that you're not aware of how the London investment works. Just a hint. Great stuff. So Cosmine over, it has been lovely speaking with you, learning about your journey and everything. Tell us more about the product. How if people want to learn about this product, what's the website, what's the URL or any app they can download from App Store, etc. And what users should expect from this product or service? Yeah. So I think the best place to find more information about MindStars is to simply go to the MindStars website, which is MindStars.app. And that is also a handle on all social on LinkedIn, it's just MindStars. And we post regular updates as well and kind of sharing the journey of what are we creating, how we're creating it and our belief values behind it. And we on the website, we also have a blog for people who want to get more engaged. And probably the best place to get started and to have access to the app as soon as possible is to join our movement, which is our wake list and our community of co-creators that we really, the people we're building the app for, but then we all are building it with them. And with them, we're releasing in kind of the end of the week, our first beta trials with the co-creators and really establishing in there that community feeling, being in direct contact with the users so that we can collect the feedback, but also can see, okay, what do they really want? What are their use cases? What are other things that they're using it for that we haven't thought of? Because I think we're going through hundreds, if not thousands of scenarios. But in the real world, it's always different. So if you want to get involved, if you want to be one of the first to have access to this new way of interacting with technology, that is probably the best place to start. And what you can expect is to be a part of a community, to find like-minded people in the digital, but as well in the physical space where you can connect about curiosities, about technology, about things that you're interested in. And this drive for learning and really also following your curiosities. But as well, you can expect to get the continuous updates of how we are shaping the product of our journey, of making it and involving them into the journey. Got it. Mindstash.app, right? Exactly, yeah. Cool, cool. A great start. Well, we have reached towards the end of our episode now. I've got a very quick six quick, far questions for you. At any stage, if you don't want to answer one of them, just give me a skip and then we can move to the next one. Is that okay? Yeah, sounds good. Sure. Great job. What are the top three strategies to generate more traction or more leads in 2025, 2026? I would say being authentic in the sense of people can smell and mile away AI Slop and you're repeating someone else's sentences. So I would say sharing through vulnerability, authenticity and with your own personal brand or just with your own face, that's something that really resonates with people. I would really go with that rather than the AI Slop that so many different companies are using right now. And I think there's going to, they're going to see a lot of backlash from it. Awesome. Any other two strategies? Two more, right. I would say the terms of also like the whole world of micro influencers, something that people already talked a couple of years back. And it seems to continuously work. I think that the idea behind it or white works is because people today are less and less trusting of like the big media and there are more and more looking to listen to specific voices that they're familiar with. Like these podcasts, for example, those are the kind of sources of information that people resonate with and actually listen to. And focusing and convincing micro influencers on the kind of like our mission and purpose and making them enthusiastic about it can really amplify one's message. So I would go with that over just paid advertisements and so on that will for sure burn your marketing budget pretty quickly. And when it comes to the third way, I would say which might not seem scalable, but two weeks ago we did our curiosity and we brought people together. We brought coders with scientists, with researchers, with students, with builders and they talked together about curiosity and about the tools we're creating. And these kind of engagement on the real world is something that people are so hungry for. And that's so many people wrote me afterwards as like how can I be more involved beyond the joint movement? How can I how can I help? And creating that sense of community and that sense of purpose around what you're building that could be in the physical world, but I think also looking at something that is more scalable, finding the digital counterparts of that. That is something that is going to be really transformational when it comes to growth in 2026. Indeed, indeed. Current agree more with you on that because this is this is what we have for our foreseeable future. These three strategies are not going anywhere else. This is in real life, finding micro voices for replacing the big giant medias and being authentic. Spongebob strategies. What book would you recommend to our audience and why? I think there are many. Do you have one specific? I really. We both are like, you know, we both love Richard Feynman so much. He's worth thinking. He's worth explaining science and enthusiasm around it is just brilliant. That would be for me. I don't know. I think there's I think Richard Feynman for sure. I think the four work week by Tim Ferris as well. That has really shaped the way I think about processes and efficiency and I love productivity and efficiency precisely. It really resonated with me and I've listened to the podcast as well. Maybe more than just a classic book recommendation. I would say for me the podcast has been really influential and for many years I've listened to basically all the episodes. The summer really knows by now because I keep quoting them. But yeah, for me it would be for me it would be that. Yeah, I would totally recommend you an episode on our show, you know, convert your awards into wealth with Aurora Winter. She's an amazing personality. She actually runs a million dollar messaging campaigns in US and it's huge. She basically teaches founder how to get your words out, get published into 10,000 media outlets across the world plus how to get investors. So that is what she does. If you mention that you come from after listening to her from Ash, she might be able to give you some discount. I'm not promoting her at all. But just I was driving and I was listening to the podcast and I listened to all of my podcasts myself and that podcast gives you so much value. So I'll definitely advise you to hear to that. What one attribute or characters to keep in your mind of a successful founder? Curiosity. Yeah, curiosity. Yeah, yeah. And great. I would say those were the two almost balancing factors because like curiosity that's the, we call it, in my situation, we ask ourselves a lot what is curiosity. And for us, it's that inner compass that resonates, that makes you excited about the sort of things in the outside world that resonate with who you are and who you want to be. And the curiosity of finding things out of asking what if we can do this thing instead of the other that playfulness. That is something that I feel every founder if they really have it at their core, that's something that is really will open up so many doors of thoughts and so on. And actually there, there's this program essay in which he finishes with don't ask, don't follow your passion, follow your curiosity. And I really recommend listening or reading rather this essay. And I think the other one, great. Of course, it's going to get tough. There's going to be stuff burning. It's going to be, you're going to be under-slapped. Often forget to eat. And the only thing that's going to keep you going is your own internal fire. And hopefully we have a cove under each other's fire that we can lift each other up. And I think that's great. I think it's going to be, it is like a characteristic that is undoubtedly the make it or break it. When challenges come and challenges will always come. I can promise you that. Exactly. You go down one value. You're like, ah, I'm walking downhill finally. And then it's like, nope, the next mountain you climb up to again. And like, I don't know, really, like a lot of possibly before we were reflecting a little bit about our journey so far of the last couple of months. And I really related back to an outer adventure. I did a couple of years ago where I walked across the Alps from Austria to Slovenia to Italy. And it was in winter time and it did its solo. And every day I would walk 30 to 40 kilometers and something like three or four peaks. And I did that over the course of a month. And after really the feeling like it's it's the same thing in the start of it's like, you go, you walk, you walk, you walk, you walk and it's like, okay, it's another peak. And it's just constant picking yourself up and I'm going back out there and just getting this stuff done. And not hiding behind thinking and inaction, but really constantly putting one foot in front of the other. Because the only way you're going to get to wherever you want to get to is by putting one foot in front of the other. And not by thinking you're not moving at all. Definitely, definitely. And I totally relate to that because people who are listening to us somewhere around 28% of them are into their nine to five and they want to get into their founders space. What they lack is the motivation and the consistency into their daily schedule to reach to the point where they're. Okay, moving on to the next one. What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit? Lines such. Even the scrappy web version, I was like, it was so useful for me, but I guess beyond that I think beyond that for me it would be notion. But as well, just a simple A4 piece of paper and a pen. That that for me can do wonders. And that do list or sketching out something quickly out of my mind creating connections. And then I would also say, Figma, I'm a very visual person. So being able to especially when thinking about concepts and seeing, okay, how do these things connect to each other? How can we create this in this strategy? I feel like for me sketching it out all in the digital realm makes it a lot easier and a lot faster rather than trying to just think about it or just write it in words. So yeah, I think those would be mine, but absolutely mine. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I don't know if this question actually is applicable to you guys or not because you're fairly new into this space and you have been working on this idea, you know, passionately. What's a new or a crazy business idea you would love to post you if you had time? Well, for me, that was also the reason of studying biology was something to do with like directly with nature in the sustainability realm. Something like there are so many crazy startups now that they're using like micro-risal fungi in order to support agricultural products and turns out that it can save so much water and save solutions and so on. That's something that I would be really passionate about. However, I don't see myself operating in that field in the next decade or two, but perhaps in parallel life. Yeah, and I would say for me, in a way that there's this curiosity in me to really explore the way we could reshape education and how we can use all of the tools we have nowadays, if that's AI, if that's the knowledge we have about how our brain works, the knowledge we have about how teaching works, and really like reinvent from scratch an educational system. I think again, this is not something I will do in the foreseeable future, but somewhere down the line with a lot more life experience as well and meeting a lot more people, this is something that is really like, I think we are at a time right now where there's so much potential opening up in so many spaces. But I think it's one of the most challenging questions because there's so much that could be done. I think I have the feeling every day that new ideas are coming popping in my mind of like, oh, that could be interesting and that could be another avenue to go down to. And I think we're in this time right now where there's, it opened up a possibility of ideas that were impossible only a few years ago. And I think that's why I'm so excited to be building with AI as well. And in general, in the time we're living in because we in so many paradigm shifts of things happening. And it's I think one of the most fruitful grounds to really drive innovation forward and to create meaningful and new solutions for this world. Indeed, indeed. And last but not least, what's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know? I think I think for me is I hold a fishing world record when I was when I was like I think 11 or 12 years old. And I used to be really into fishing and I obsession. And eventually I was like going after that fish species and got a world record and it still sounds by now. And I was like, I don't know, 12 or 13 years ago. To always a record is it like you captured a particular kind of fish or you capture like 100 fishes in one day? No, no, it's the it's the biggest kind by length and weight of a specific fish species in Austria. It only exists in a couple of alpine lakes. Okay. And it's very rare actually. And how big is the fish? Sorry. How big is the fish? I think I don't remember the exact numbers. I think it was eight and a half kilos or so. But it's a sweet water fish. And so at that time it was pretty big. I was super proud and then I looked it up online. I'm like, wait, actually, I broke the world record. So yeah, I think that's one fact that not a lot of people know about. Perfect. What about you, Elmer? Yeah, for me, I used to be completely obsessed about martial arts and specifically Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and MMA. And I used to compete in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. And maybe it's a story that illustrates kind of like the level of stubbornness that I'm bringing also to mindset is that I was in a state championship in the final. I was leading on points. My opponent was actually much better than me. I don't know how I gain more points. There were 30 seconds left to the end of the match. I could have won first place. And then he captures like a picture perfect choke on me. And I was so stubborn as even if as I like my consciousness started to slip away. I was still not ready to give up. And then a few seconds after I was walking up from being unconscious. And my coach is kind of like bringing there my legs over my head. And I was like, did I win? I was like, no, you could have. I would be like, so 20 more seconds, but you got choked on conscious. No, you didn't. So yeah, that's a fun fact. That's a fun fact. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, guys, for joining me and sharing your story and packing the last months and years of building this amazing business and some of the ups and downs along the way. If people want to check out your profiles or people are getting touched with you or my stash, what's the best way to do it? I mean, I would say either directly over LinkedIn, Cosimo Radler. If you search that or if you write my email at CosimoCOSIMO at minestash.app.com, that would be the best way to get in contact. Yeah, for me, LinkedIn, yeah, Omar, Sharon, goodbye. And I'll just look up the minestash website LinkedIn through that. You can find both of our contacts. And yeah, we'd love to talk to anyone who is inspired to either join the movement, become a co-creator. If anyone is interested in different forms of collaboration, investing, we're definitely open to all kinds of things. So yeah, looking forward to being in touch with people in your audience. We've listened to a couple of episodes and the staff that's here asking are really inspiring and I'm sure that the people who are part of your audience and listen to it are, you know, well, you know, the statistics, but not the builders, people who are led by curiosity. So I feel like they would be completely, they would for sure be resonant with what we're doing. So looking forward to being in touch with them. Definitely, definitely, definitely. Well, Cosimo and Omar, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your inspiring journey. And the impactful work you guys are doing, actually, with minestash. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on Founder's Park. All right. Thank you. Bye-bye. Ciao. Ciao.