Welcome to Billion Dollar Startup, where we bring you visionaries and disruptors who have started scaled, sold, or invested in a billion dollar startup, also known as a unicorn. We also feature tech founders who are building the next billion dollar startup. Billion Dollar Startup is a unique podcast sponsored by Dragon X Capital, the venture capital firm that concentrates on seed and early stage tech companies with the X Factor.

Today on the show, Dan Interviews Sge Kaar, the founder and c e o of stay tuned, the company that provides tools to help e-commerce merchants grow on the Shopify platform with a combination of equity and debt, stay tuned, acquires, rolls up and builds Shopify software and apps. The company has raised 25 million in capital from top tier institutional investors. Surge is also an active investor and advisor to startups via his Angel network and fund Sixth Man Ventures. With a background in media and business development at companies like Google, Sony Music, and Morgan Stanley Sege is sure to provide valuable insights on growing a successful startup.

Dan Lok:
Welcome back to Billion Dollar Startup. This is Dan Locke, managing partner of Dragon X Capital. Today I’m super excited to bring you the c e o of one of our active portfolio companies and co-founder and c e o of stay tuned search. Welcome to the show.

Serge Kassardijan:
Thank you. It’s, uh, awesome being on here. Uh, excited to do this.

Dan Lok:
Well, I have so many questions, but first I think maybe just share with our audience a little bit about your background, your story and, and where you grew up.

Serge Kassardijan:
Yeah. So, um, I was actually born in Beirut, Lebanon, um, in the kind of during the war, the Le Lebanese Civil War. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, which was, um, an interesting experience. Uh, we, uh, we immigrated to the us um, in the mid eighties around, uh, 1986. Um, my, um, my dad, um, is an entrepreneur. My mom comes from a family of entrepreneurs, and, um, we, uh, su settled down in, uh, Southern California in Los Angeles. Um, lived in Los Angeles for, um, until I went to college. Uh, ended up going to, uh, Stanford, um, studied, um, mechanical engineering and math, um, at Stanford. Um, and then after Stanford, um, worked at Morgan Stanley in investment banking, um, and then worked at Ave Big Venture Capital fund, um, in southern California, la um, since then, uh, I, sorry, sorry. Venture Capital Fund in Palo Alto, uh, <laugh>, I confused the Californias.
And then, um, went to Harvard Business School. Um, and then after HB s um, did a bunch of different things. Initially started in the music industry. Um, oh, wow. Worked at Sony Music. I was, um, working on the initial licensing deals in 2009 with, um, Spotify and the other music streaming services. Hmm. Um, which was a very cool experience. The music industry was like dying, and then obviously it, um, it grew back up, um, <laugh> and, uh, we, we did a lot of those initial licensing deals, which are a combination of equity and advances. Um, we did one with u2. We structured something called Vivo at the time. Mm-hmm. So that was a lot of fun. Um, in 2000 and, um, uh, 10 I joined Google, um, initially was to helping launch, uh, Google Wallet, which was, um, our mobile payments platform. It was one of the first FinTech mobile payments platforms. Um, and then I joined the Google Play team, uh, which was Android Marketplace at the time. Um, we ended up, uh, growing the app store to much larger. We were just at the early stages. Um, I was wor managing the developer ecosystem primarily around, um, sports, news, entertainment, media, that, that whole world, how, how

Dan Lok:
Big, how big of a division was. Like you must grew it to like,

Serge Kassardijan:
I would, um, tens of billions. Tens of billions. Yeah.

Dan Lok:
Tens of billions of dollars.

Serge Kassardijan:
Yeah. So amazing. Uh, you know, Google Play and Android are massive. Um, so did that, um, for eight years and then decided that I wanted to start companies and investing companies and advice companies. You know, I was getting close to my, uh, my forties at the time, and, um, just was hungry to do more. Um, Google was an awesome place to work, but I had an itch to, uh, build and grow companies. Um, I’ve since then, um, uh, advised startups invested, done a bunch of different things, but, um, I think what the, for today, I, I started a company called Stay Tuned. Um, stay Tuned is a e-commerce software suite across Shopify. And it, we’ve been working on this for the last couple of years, have an unbelievable team around it. Um, my, uh, uh, thesis around Shopify is primarily that Shopify is, uh, uh, cannibalizing all other, uh, direct e-commerce platforms.
So if you look at Magenta, you look at Demandware, you look at, um, all these traditional, um, e-commerce, ecommerces, commerce mm-hmm. <affirmative>, BigCommerce, Shopify’s taking share, Shopify’s launching headless. Shopify is launching all sorts of different, um, tools and capabilities, um, that makes it possible for any size merchant to, to, um, to, uh, to launch a business. Uh, I also realized Amazon is growing as well. Um, and there will be a software suite around Amazon, and this was largely going to be a duopoly between Shopify and Amazon. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So what we quickly, um, me and our founding team, which, um, you know, uh, Randy Jimenez, who is, uh, co-founder and c t o, um, super experienced, c t o, multiple venture back outcomes, which at single platform physio and, um, oie. Um, we also have, um, a woman, uh, named Laurel [inaudible], who helped us start the company. She was an early product manager at Wary Parker and worked on multiple Shopify brands. Great corp dev person who comes to us from, uh, uh, constellation Software. It’s a big software roll up. So we had this team

Dan Lok:
From, from Toronto.

Serge Kassardijan:
From Toronto, yeah.

Dan Lok:
From Toronto, man. Yes,

Serge Kassardijan:
Exactly. <laugh>, you got, we actually have quite a few Canadians. I think we have three Canadians. Cool. Who, uh, so we put together this team to kind of go out and build and create the largest, uh, Shopify software suite. We like to say that we want to be like the Adobe or, um, uh, Salesforce of Shopify, where every merchant who is building an e-commerce brand can come to stay tuned and use our tools to drive growth of their, of their brand. Hmm. So that’s kind of led us there. Um, Shopify is a big app store, very similar to Google. We had a lot of really strong expertise in understanding the ecosystem. We’ve been using debt to make acquisitions and, uh, grow our software stack. So it’s been, um, it’s

Dan Lok:
Been, well, there’s so many things I want wanna dive into. Yeah. First

Serge Kassardijan:
Of all, so that’s the story.

Dan Lok:
<laugh>, it, it seems your background, like with Harvard, a business school with Stanford, like working at Google, working at Sony, it, it seems to me that, that it’s almost like all, all those experiences, like all those life experiences is kind of leading you to something like this. Like everything that you’ve learned in the past working at the big company and now to this at a time, what inspire you to, to start even stay two? Like what, how did you get the idea?

Serge Kassardijan:
It’s funny, like we, um, we started doing something completely different. So me, me and Randy were working on something completely different, and somehow ended up in the Shopify ecosystem, and we kind of looked left and right, and we were like, well, we can build one app, or we can have a suite of apps. And then there was a lot of, uh, familiarities. So when you think about companies and startups, everyone talks about product market fit. Yes. Which is very important. But the most understated thing is, um, founder, uh, market fit. And, um, as a founder, if it’s a market that you’re familiar with, or they’re a familiarities and you’re son matter expert around something, um, you, you excel. Um, for what we are doing, there was a very clear founder market fit. Um, I understood app stores, my other founders understand e-commerce and building SaaS, and, um, those things came together.
Yeah. Um, I think if you look at everything that’s happening in the world, everything is built on an app ecosystem, right? Yes. There are apps on Airbnb, there are apps on Shopify, there are apps on Google, there are apps on Apple, there are blockchain, all apps built on top of blockchain, right? Everything is app ecosystem, if you’re thinking about it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, so I’ve found the most profitable app ecosystem in the world right now. Um, Shopify had the lowest rev shares. Um, for example, Shopify only charges, charges 0% of a rev share on their apps for anyone generating less than a million dollars and 15% for anyone generating over a million dollars. Mm. Uh, apple and Google charged 30% Facebook charges 45%. Correct. So, super profitable. Shopify’s is still growing 20% year over year. Um,

Dan Lok:
If I remember correctly, didn’t also shop, did Shopify start in Canada as well?

Serge Kassardijan:
It did, yeah. So Shopify, so the story behind Shopify is they basically, uh, Toby, the founder of Shopify, wanted to build a snowboard shop. Yes. And, um, I actually loved a snowboard too. I was, uh, <laugh>, it’s, uh, goes in our family. Me and my brother

Dan Lok:
Whi Whistler, man, you know it

Serge Kassardijan:
<laugh>. Yeah, there you go. <laugh>. Um, but Shopify, um, was, um, wanted to build a snowboard shop. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that snowboard shop, uh, sorry. Toby wanted to build a snowboard shop. He didn’t know how to get a shop up. And so he built his own tooling. And when he ended up building his own tooling, he realize this could potentially be a really great way to get, um, people who are starting their own businesses, um, an ability to sell goods. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, so if you look at Shopify’s ethos, it’s not specifically around e-commerce, it’s around entrepreneurs building businesses and growing businesses. Yes. And so that’s what they do. That’s what, um, you know, that’s what we are specialized in, right. We’re entrepreneurs, we work with founders. So our, we’re very aligned, right. We want people to build businesses and sell them to us and build on our software suite. Shopify is all about entrepreneurship. Um, their, their focus is empowering entrepreneurs, which, you know, you ask why we are, you’re in the space. I love entrepreneurship. I’m immersed myself in and around the entrepreneur community. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and, um, that culture and that mindset is something that is really, really, really compelling to me.

Dan Lok:
I, I, I think search, I think what in impress, you know, me and Ivan the most when we talk, uh, first of all with your, your track record, obviously, right. What you’ve done in the past, your team, amazing team. Right. Uh, but most importantly, I think it’s a little different. Cuz usually when we invest a SaaS company, we invest in a, whatever, a platform, a, a, a product. Right. In this case, stay tuned is more like a business model, right. With the acquisition model, which is very different. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about that. Like, what’s your strategy for growth and, and what’s your vision for the company?

Serge Kassardijan:
Yeah. So, um, a lot of companies when they start, they’re trying to solve a problem. Yes. Um, and that’s actually the best way to solve, find a pain point. Yes. Solve a problem. Yes. And then go from there. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, we weren’t, uh, necessarily trying to solve the problem. Um, and I know that sounds very con Yeah. Different, not intuitive. Yes. Non-intuitive. That’s the right way. Um, we saw an opportunity that we wanted to take, uh, take advantage of her is the wrong word, but we saw an opportunity that we wanted to jump into. So for us it was less a problem and more, um, an opportunity. Hmm. And, um, what we’ve noticed is that, um, there is a time right now where this ecosystem is growing so quickly that we could potentially build a bunch of tools and apps around, around a specific opportunity rather than going in and solving, um, a problem.
And we, um, you know, that’s different. Um, most VCs look to invest in a hero product. Yes. Um, we have multiple hero products, right. People say, Hey, you don’t have a hero product. I’m like, well, actually we got one of the biggest event ticketing and businesses on Shopify mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we have a massive offers business. We have a ma massive size chart, one of the leading size chart. Like if you think about where e-commerce is going and if it’s all moving onto Shopify and Amazon in the future mm-hmm. <affirmative>, well, we’re basically gonna win some really compelling categories. Yes. And we’ll have multiple hero products. Um, our, the other aspect of what our hero products look like are, we think of it as our people, our process, our integration, our resources are our product. Right. Our ability to integrate and build a suite outta something that, you know, an entrepreneur has built into a larger suite, that’s our product. And, um, and then it goes full circle. So what are we solving for, for these brands? We’re helping them drive revenue. So as much as that’s not a problem, it’s a need. And we solve needs for these brands

Dan Lok:
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So the, the merchants that are, that are using the apps, you are able to go back to them. And as you grow that portfolio of, of, of users, you can always go back to them when you make an acquisition, you can say, Hey, here’s another tool that can help you sell more, get more customers and generate more revenue. Is that the idea?

Serge Kassardijan:
Exactly. Exactly. So what’s happened, um, there has been a, a big seismic shift inside of like e-commerce world, um, Facebook ads, and a lot of ads are not working as well. And the reason for that is, um, apple Institution Institute, I D F A, yes. Google’s got some version of theirs. And, um, targeting customers has become a lot more expensive and a lot less effective. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So what that means is, when a customer needs to go to your site, um, they want to be able to, uh, the brands wanna make sure that they’re converting right. So, or spending more and make sure that they’re retained. So we, we tend to say, Hey, we’re focused on conversion a o v and retention. And the reason why those three things are so important to us is we realized it’s much more expensive for a brand to bring someone onto their site. So the importance of retention a O V and conversion is higher than ever, um, um, than, you know, previously. Right. Because, you know, we, we like to capitalize on specific trends that are in the market. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and this was a very clear trend and there was a very clear opportunity for us

Dan Lok:
There. So let me see if I understand this correctly. So basically because cost of coin customers is getting higher and higher, right? So now every single visitor that goes to the e-comm site, they need to maximize, right? They need to maximize the conversion. They, they maximize the average card value, they wanna make sure they come back again. And within that, it’s not even a, it, it is not a problem, but it’s a must-have because if if they don’t, they’re losing money.

Serge Kassardijan:
Exactly. They need this. Right. And so that’s the types of apps that we’re targeting, right? We have a size chart, right. We have an offer upsell app, right. We have a box bundle or, um, these are all things that drive, uh, conversion drive, uh, a O v mm-hmm. <affirmative> driver retention. Well,

Dan Lok:
This is also, this is also kind of like, you know, the go rush, right? Where you, a lot of people going there, like going online, entrepreneurs starting a business, they’re mining gold, but stay tuned. In this case, we, we are the shuffle sellers. Right? Exactly. We sell them the shovel to get the gold.

Serge Kassardijan:
Exactly. Exactly. And look, um, it’s a really good place to be because software is super high margin. Of course. And so, so, and because software is so high margin, we can use debt to make the acquisitions and find these products that already have product market fit. So there’s a little bit of financial engineering going on as well, right? Correct. We, we pick out debt to acquire these businesses mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and then we use that debt to, um, to like, to, to buy the businesses. Then we’ll use our people to grow the businesses.

Dan Lok:
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, I, I’m curious because is this fascinating with something like this is because of your background? And that’s another thing. I was so, so impressed, like with, with, when I, when we talk that you are not just a founder because your VC experience, you understand finance, understand how VC works, which most founders do not understand how that world works. You kind of, you understand both world, right? So, yeah.

Serge Kassardijan:
And look, ultimately I’m an entrepreneur that wants to like, I like to, I like to make money. I like business. Of course. Um, I, I like, as much as I love great products, my focus is maximizing returns. Yes. Um, and look, I’ve have an mba, I’ve worked in business, um, even though I was an engineer in, uh, in the past, this is a, a financial opportunity right now with these assets that we’re buying. And we’ve assembled an incredible product and engineering team around it so that we can grow it.

Dan Lok:
So for, so for our audience, this is for their clarity. Uh, the acquisition model is fascinating. I’m curious why you choose, cuz clearly you have the background. You, you have the team to build something from scratch and just sell some apps, but you chose the acquisition route to buy them and then coming and then then bring them into the kind of the, the umbrella. Uh, maybe improve on upon them and then to just add value. Like why you chose that model. Is it because it it grows much faster

Serge Kassardijan:
Right now? It’s the most efficient thing to do to grow. Yes. Uh, we wanna build our own apps as well. Um, our means to getting applications. Um, it can be anything, right? Like we want, we’re trying to build a software suite. If we need to do that via acquisitions, we can do that with, if we can You do that with rebuilding apps we purchased, we can do that. If we wanna build our own apps, we can do that. We have 27,000 merchants Yes. Um, that are using our software. That’s a treasure chest of data. Yes. But that’s also a bunch of merchants who can buy other software, whether they’re it’s software that we incubate Yes. Or software that, uh, we acquire and bring it in

Dan Lok:
Mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And it pretty much, it reduces the risk drastically because you’ve got the merchants as you grow, they could grow the 30, 40, 50,000 and you know, any product you bring to them that you generate X amount of revenue and you kind of work that in the acquisition costs and doesn’t matter, use debt or whatever it might be. It’s like a, it’s a, it’s, it’s a very surefire thing. Let’s let put it this way.

Serge Kassardijan:
Right. A hundred percent.

Dan Lok:
Yeah. And share with me what are some of the challenges that you faced, like growing the business and, and just building stay tuned. I’m sure there’s a lot of stories, right?

Serge Kassardijan:
Oh, yeah. I mean, you can <laugh>, there’s, uh, you know, the biggest challenge is you take on a product that’s not built by yourself. Mm. And you have to figure out how to make it fit with an entire group of new people and a team. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So there’s, there’s a lot of technical debt that goes on. There is a lot of, um, learning the product and learning the features. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, the last, I’d say the other thing is there’s just been a lot of uncertainty in the market recently. Um, rates are going up. All the things that are happening in the market makes it a little bit more challenging to navigate and forecast. Mm-hmm. You can manage that, right. We’re professionals. But the technical debt in what you hear, it tends to be a little bit more challenging from time to

Dan Lok:
Time. Yeah. And maybe there’s some hidden problem to code, who knows, right? Yeah,

Serge Kassardijan:
Exactly. Right. We ask all of our developers to who build to put unit testing in so we can test the code. We ask them to, um, upgrade the software to the most recent versions of the software. So there’s a bunch of things that we try to do. Hmm. Um, other than that we run into all the same issues that other startups run into from hiring to, uh, churn from time to time to, you know, we we’re a startup just like everyone else.

Dan Lok:
Hmm. And then, uh, how do you view just like the, the, the future of commerce? What do you see? Like where, because the, I think the industry has shifted quite a bit in the last few years. Like what do you see?

Serge Kassardijan:
Um, I think the biggest thing I see is, I mean, pretty much what, like what I was saying on the off offset, you’ve got these two massive companies that are only getting bigger Shopify and Amazon Yeah. Are eating all of commerce. Um,

Dan Lok:
Kinda like the, the, the, the peckman.

Serge Kassardijan:
Exactly. Like there’s, there’s, if you wanna go direct, you go Shopify, whether you’re Glossier Yes. You just announce that they’re in Shopify or whether you’re a small brand. Yeah. Um, and then if you wanna have a non-direct strategy or wanna have some component of a marketplace, you go to Amazon. Amazon,

Dan Lok:
That’s it. So

Serge Kassardijan:
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, and that’s just becoming more and more like persistent across the world. Yeah. Across the world. So that that will just continue to grow and get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Dan Lok:
I see that. And then, so outdo two, of course, Shopify, that’s the, the, the big whale we kind of chose to, it just reminds me kind of the big whale, and then you got the little fish attach to the big whale and, and kind of riding the wave Right. Until we become big whale ourselves

Serge Kassardijan:
And Exactly. And look, they’re, when Shopify’s strategic, um, uh, direction is to go get enterprises and go increase market share and Correct, correct. Uh, in internationally, you follow those trends and you buy tools around those trends. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, I absolutely think we’ll be in the Amazon ecosystem too, and we’ll follow the trends. Right now, Shopify just feels a little bit more familiar for us because, um, it’s a very, very, uh, open app store. Correct. And it’s very conducive for building.

Dan Lok:
Yes. And how, with stay tuned, how, how do you guys now, uh, attract customers, attract users and we retain them?

Serge Kassardijan:
So we do a lot of marketing tactics. We use, um, customer service almost as a sales channel or cross-selling, or across our merchants. Oh, interesting. Um, we’ll, we’re in the process of bringing on a, um, an enterprise salesperson who would go to some of the larger, so just like any startup, I would say. So we do everything from enterprise sales to, um, using marketing and customer services as, uh, as a customer acquisition tool. Um, and yeah, that’s, um,

Dan Lok:
With the, with the merchants that you have, are they mostly like small business right now and you kind of wanna expand to enterprise or like everything of them or in

Serge Kassardijan:
Enterprise? They’re, yeah, they’re everything. We have everything from small to enterprise. What’s the cool thing about, they’re all over the world. It’s a very, you know, we have, you know, we have people in Asia and Europe and Africa and all over. It’s like, it’s super, super cool. It’s super, and like what I said in the offset, like I come from a very international background. I’m Yes, I’m Armenian by descent. Yes. And I’m, uh, born in Lebanon. So for me, this like international, uh, perspective is a very, very cool thing.

Dan Lok:
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, and how do you stay ahead of the curve, like with all the changes that’s happening?

Serge Kassardijan:
Um, you stay in the developer communities or Shopify, slack channels, slack, Shopify, Facebook groups, Shopify communities always stay in those channels, in those communities. So that would be like the, the, that’s the most important way to do it. Um, and then just stay up to date, you know, Shopify does Shopify Unite. Um, you know, we’re, you know, conferences like, you know, shops, uh, uh, what was it? Um, shop Talk, uh, money 2020. All of these conferences are the ones that you’d want to be in and around. Um, and yeah, we’re, we have a presence of these things.

Dan Lok:
And in some way, I think just the existing merchants, they, we, we could get so much feedback from them and say, Hey, what, what else do they need? Right. From the data, uh, from there, it’s, it’s great building customer base, but also building future customers, and they will tell us what, what they need. It’s like, it’s a good old find out what they want to give it to them. Right.

Serge Kassardijan:
Exactly. Exactly. A hundred percent.

Dan Lok:
That makes sense. What’s your vision for the company? Like, say in the next like three years?

Serge Kassardijan:
I mean, I’d say we, we want to build the Adobe or Salesforce for e-commerce. Um, you know, worth tens of billions of dollars. Um, we run very, um, uh, profitably. Obviously we invest in our growth and that will shift back and forth like any startup. But I think, um, if we decide we want to go public in the future, um, there is a, this is a type of profile company that would do very well, high margin enterprise SaaS company. Um, and, uh, yeah, I think we want to get this thing as big as possible, but I, I think there is no, uh, Adobe sales force oracle of com e-commerce right now. Correct. Um, I wanna have the biggest merchant base in the world of, um, of, uh, of e-commerce brands and, um, build the largest suite that sits on top of them.

Dan Lok:
Uh, what are some of the, the key milestones, accomplishments that, uh, that stay tuned has accomplished?

Serge Kassardijan:
Um, a r r I won’t share the exact number, but yes. Uh, we, we were way ahead of what we thought we were gonna be at this time. Mm-hmm. Um, we’ve done, um, you know, more acquisitions than we thought we were going to do. Mm-hmm. Um, so I think those are the two, um, two things. Um, the main metric we actually look at is, um, it’s the twofold, the, the number of brands and the amount the brands are using across all of our software. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,

Dan Lok:
Could you share maybe just a growth from the first year, second year, third year, roughly?

Serge Kassardijan:
Yes. We’re, we’re doing about 40% year over year.

Dan Lok:
Amazing. And we, we, and stay tuned started when,

Serge Kassardijan:
Well, so we started around 2019. Um, we moved into this space in 2021 after. Got it. No, startups are not linear paths. They’re always, uh, up and down and left and right. But we started building one thing and we decided we wanted to have more. So, but, um, this strategy really started in, um, the middle of 2021. Uh, the company started in 2019,

Dan Lok:
And last time, I think we would, we talked to you share with me that, uh, going to New Year, you wanna do way more acquisitions, more, more aggressive in terms of acquisitions, right? Yeah. What, what’s your target?

Serge Kassardijan:
Yeah. So we wanna get bigger. Yes. Uh, we wanna do more. Um, right now we, each acquisition progressively gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, we want to continue to get bigger. Um, we have some very exciting financing news, including you guys. Yes. Of course. We’ll be making, I don’t know when this comes out, whether or not we’ve been, we would’ve announced it or not at that point, but, um, that will enable us to be, um, uh, a, a very big player in the space mm-hmm. <affirmative> and have a, a large balance sheet to go after these acquisitions.

Dan Lok:
Yes. And I know you are also securing some, some, some venture debt, right?

Serge Kassardijan:
Yep. Yep. We, our existing, um, our existing debt is with W T I and we have, we have a network of amazing, um, amazing lenders that we can, can go to.

Dan Lok:
Amazing. I mean, looking forward to it. Looking forward to, it’s for sure. Uh, search. Let’s say for our founders, what advice you have for them if they’re listening, they are just building their tech, they’re building the startup. Uh, what advice would you have? Like, for, for anyone that’s also on the same path?

Serge Kassardijan:
When I started with this company, I was like, so sure, okay, this is gonna be the, like, no, this is the path. This is what I need to do. Every startup story is completely different. <laugh>, every, every founder’s a completely different personality. Um, and the path is not linear. Mm-hmm. Um, there are pivots, there are changes in people, there are changes in products, there are changes in customers. It’s all very, very hard, but it is not a linear path. It’s constantly changing. Mm-hmm. Um, I was very used to kind of like a linear path my entire career. Like moving up, up. Yes. And it’s a complete zigzag. And, um, the zigzag can be stressful, but you also wanna enjoy the zigzag.

Dan Lok:
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then with, with your team, like what, what, what are, what are they, like how, how big is the team right now?

Serge Kassardijan:
Right now we either 26 people, but we have, um, we’ll probably when this comes out, we’ll probably be north of 30.

Dan Lok:
Perfect. Perfect. If you wanna final a little bit more about stay tuned, what’s the best way, uh,

Serge Kassardijan:
Stay tuned. Dot digital is the website. Stay tuned. And you’ll see all of our social

Dan Lok:
D right?

Serge Kassardijan:
Uh, yeah. Stay tuned. Like all one word. And then d i dot d i g i digital g a l.

Dan Lok:
That’s perfect. Well, thank you sir. Thank for being on the show. Uh, look forward to, to hearing more good news when this comes out. I mean, by that time, I know next year is gonna be very, very exciting year. Right. For stay tuned. So, um, thank you for being here. I appreciate it.

Serge Kassardijan:
Very, very, very glad to be on. Thank you.

Dan Lok:
Thank you.

We appreciate you joining us for this episode of Billion Dollars Startup. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit dragon x.com for more resources based on today’s topic, as well as for access to previous episodes. That’s dragon x.com. Thank you for listening.