Why Billion-Dollar Companies Will Have 2 Employees w/ David Currant

David Currant

in my senior year of college in twenty ten I was at Boston College. we had BCVC, Boston College Venture Competition. And you know it was something that I decided to enter. I wasn't really expecting much. hundreds of kids applied as well. You know, everyone has a business idea usually in that age.

And the prize money was fifteen thousand dollars. I was like, my god, this is so much money, you know. well slowly first we got into the business competition. we got promoted through multiple stages of that competition, and before we knew it, we were in the finals, you know, against other 10 teams on the stage. It was super scary, but

we took first place. you know, so we we were we we got the fifteen thousand dollars. Actually we got like half of it because the government takes half of it in in in taxes, you know. And one of the most incredible things that happened and I and and I believe that happens to people who really try and build things is this kind of like incredible circumstances where

One of the judges came over to us, Greg Strakosh. he was the CEO and the founder of Tech Target. it's a publicly traded company on Nasdaq. And he told us, I love what you guys are building. I want to invest $250,000 in you before you guys get prize money. And I was like, what? This is just the PowerPoint, you know, we don't have anything. And

You know, to his credit, he was like, you are smart kids, you'll figure it out. yeah, so that's that's really how it started off. I was not planning on becoming an entrepreneur, I was not planning on starting my own company. But that amazing person changed changed my life, changed the way I, you know, perceived things, the way I the the my value system has changed completely, of course.

And I think I'm insanely grateful for for him for doing that for me, you know, like I was not expecting it from someone who I didn't know personally. It's like not my dad, not my not my you know, not anyone who is remotely, you know, supposed to be interested in my success. But what I learned to realize is that you know, many times specifically out of circumstances like that, it's not just a win for me, it's kinda like a win win.

Jeff Albaum

Right.

David Currant

Like that's that's what really entrepreneurship is about, at least in the States. It's about creating win-wins. You know, like people here believe that you can you know put two plus two and get 16, you know. And in the rest of the world it's not like that. So I was I'm very very grateful that started me off and then

I took that company into a and and we applied into Y Combinator, which is one of the most prestigious accelerators in the world. they get crazy, crazy amount of applications. It used to be just once a year that they would do a batch, then twice a year. Now I think they're doing four times a year. So if anyone is building a business in in in tech and they

really want the best possible guidance, I I definitely highly recommend Y Combinator. The the most unicorns have come out of of Y Combinator at this point. More than a hundred unicorns, you know, Airbnb, DoorDash, Webflow, there's there's many, many names that I would can continue naming and be really? Like Instacart, for example.

also a a Y C company. So yeah, we got accepted in twenty thirteen, summer twenty thirteen and in our batch we had only thirty four companies that got accepted, despite I think more than fifty thousand applications. So it's way below one percent acceptance rate. much harder to get in than getting into Harvard, you know, but at the same time, if you do get in, you definitely get

exposed to amazing network, amazing amount of investors and I think the most important part is that they you know you're not alone. when you're building something as an entrepreneur, you're usually building alone, right? and the best thing you can get at YC is that you see people who who started their companies four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, you know, it's it's much more helpful

than you know talk to someone who started 20 years ago. And so that ecosystem with both entrepreneurs and investors, that that was very, very helpful for me to learn how to build business and to learn how to you know read how how it all works, which is I think is pretty simple and and pretty difficult at the same time.

Jeff Albaum

Maybe it's it's simple, not easy.

David Currant

Exactly, exactly, exactly. I mean the principle of Y combinator, you know what's the main principle of why Y combinator? Which you say that and everyone's like, that makes sense. Of course that's how all businesses operate, right? They say make something that you know people will love. Make a product that people will love. That's all. That's all you need to do. You just need to make something that people will love. As simple as that.

Jeff Albaum

Yeah, much much easier said than done. And and also at this point you had just come out of university, right? So you were you were had never worked a a quote unquote job before like you'd never been an employee before.

David Currant

Right, right.

I have a little bit of a weird life. So I was working in the corporate world before before college. You know. I did work for two years you know as lead software engineer at the company called eighty six security, which is a cybersecurity company. and we were serving large clients like Federal Reserve.

Jeff Albaum

Okay. Okay.

David Currant

bank in Boston, like you know some other big ones. In any case that I did have a really good salary already by then and I really had a cushiony life already. I was getting amazing benefits from the company. and I decided that I still needed to get a degree and I did go to college and I was much older than most of my you know peers.

So it was fun. because I came I came there and I was like, my god, these kids are so awesome, they don't know what's waiting for them.

Jeff Albaum

Got it.

Mm.

How how do you think, because you mentioned that part of the benefits of YC was being surrounded by people who were a little bit ahead of you, right? Like they had built the company four years ago. As an entrepreneur, how do you balance to me it seems like this is intention, but maybe it's not true. How do you balance the idea that like you have to have such confidence in yourself because you're you're betting on yourself, right? And you're accepting people's money to to on you, right? It's all on your shoulders. At the same time, being humble and hum and have the humility to say,

I don't know everything and I'm gonna learn from people who have done it before. How do you balance the two?

David Currant

you know, the one thing I realized when I got into YC is that my biggest competitors are not like large companies or whatnot, it's my badge mates, you know. Because because everyone is so insanely talented. Their company is so insanely incredible. Like Doordash was literally in our batch summer twenty thirteen, you know. They're

They were called the Palo Alto Delivery initially, not DoorDash. I can tell you a little bit of a story about them later if you're curious, because it's pretty incredible how they became from a Palo Alto deliverer into this biggest DoorDash that everyone knows. but what I realized is everyone is very, very competitive. It's not like fuzzy, warm, kind of like, you know, let me cuddle you sort of thing. No one is gonna cuddle you.

You know, the business world is at the end of the day is very very very cold and competitive and you know if you don't find your strength you will you will drown pretty quickly. but at the same time it's also extremely inspiring, you know, to see, you know, thirty, forty, at this point I think they accept hundreds of companies who are all doing exceptionally well, right? Like they're all not all of them, but most of them.

Have figured something that the world actually needs. And they're all kids. They're all out of college. Not all again, most of them are out right out of college. And so you say to yourself, like, if these kids were able to figure it out, right? Like, come on, I should be able to figure it out, right? Like there's no time there to for for like regrets or humility there. You just like every every week

You need to show growth. How many percent did you guys grow last week? That's the what the first thing you're gonna hear from the partner on Monday, yeah you know, at YC kind of meeting. So yeah, I don't think there is time for emotions there. Everyone is just like that that's like that's why it's so important to have the right co founder, to have to be in the right mindset and

Be inspired by what others by by what others are doing. And of course, partners definitely help. So you have specific partners that are assigned to to you. Like we had Paul Bukite, the guy who created Gmail, was our you know partner. So he was you know it's pr it's pretty interesting to hear the the perspective from a person who has built Gmail. it definitely gives you kind of like some ideas of where to go.

So they definitely gonna go into guide you, but they're not gonna cuddle you, if that makes sense. And you have to find your own strength to you know to get where you need to get, which is I think usually the same thing in life, whether you're a father or you know, an entrepreneur or whatnot, if you don't find that strength, no one will find it for you.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

Hmm. So so after how how long does Y C last? Like how long is each cohort?

David Currant

It's pretty short, it's only three months long, the the the cohort. for these three months you have to

Jeff Albaum

And are you are you there physically? Is it like everyone in together in the same area?

David Currant

Yes, you have to be physically present in San Francisco Bay Area where this accelerator takes place. but it's not like you have to be every day. It's once a week you have to show up and they help you. They talk to you about like your progress. you you you have a group of peers who everyone kinda shares the progress. It's funny how you know humans are always motivated by what

Jeff Albaum

Okay.

David Currant

the immediate peers are doing. So it's very, very interesting to hear and see how other people, you know, are trying to find customers, what kind of things they they you know, what kind of hacky things they have done to attract more attention and to close more sales. At the end of the day, YC strongly, strongly encourages to maintain at least fifteen to twenty percent months over months growth.

And you know, if you just maintain fifteen percent months over months growth in two years, you will be literally, you know, a unicorn. It's that simple. You know, it's just not that yeah, yeah, exactly. So but but the one thing that they teach you is discipline. They teach you how to measure and how to make assumptions and how to be honest with yourself. Many entrepreneurs are just building for the sake of

Jeff Albaum

Again, simple, not easy.

David Currant

Building. I'm you know, like I love how it looks. I think you know my mom said to me that this product is very needed, you know, and and and and that doesn't work, you know. Like you you have to it doesn't matter whether you are like super technical and shy and don't want to talk to people, we still have to go and talk to your customers or potential customers, and you you still have to

Really, you know, like see if that product that you're building is going to resonate with that potential you know, customer that you're trying to sell it to. And the simplest way to know if it's resonating, i i the the simplest test is like are they going to pay you? You know, like everyone is gonna be supportive when you tell them, this is for free, you know, like no one wants to be a dick and you know, it's like, okay, your your free thing is is crap, you know.

But if you come to tell people it's like, Look, this is what I'm building, would you pay, I don't know, hundred dollars for it, ten dollars for it, you know? And if you don't get any yeses, you know you're not building something that the world needs. You know, that's simple.

Jeff Albaum

Right. Right. And so is that is that what you would tell an a young entrepreneur who comes to you today and says, you know, David, what do you think of my product? What do you think of this this business idea? Is that one of the first things you would ask?

David Currant

one of the first things I would ask is yes, like have you spoken and shown it to someone who is not you know, as I said, your mom. Have you gone to actual people who would be potentially using your product and have you received like very clear feedback? Even better, maybe this person has been already plugged into this, you know, industry or whatnot and knows exactly what kind of pain points exist in that specific industry.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

David Currant

I remember backing I remember backing myself because I'm also an investor. So I remember backing myself an entrepreneur who was working at a bank and his entire department was spending lots of time on reconciling the the expenses and for for the small businesses, you know. And

helping small businesses just understand what is the money being spent on and and and things of that nature. There was no AI yet. And that alone I remember for like Silicon Valley Bank was costing like six six billion dollars a year, just like this process of reconciliation, you know, because it was so manual. They had teams in India, and this person happened to know that this was a problem, right? Like if the bank is paying six billion dollars

A year, that's clearly six billion dollars a year at least problem that if you solve you can you can get this financial reward. Those are the best cases when you're plugged into some sort of pain, you know it from the inside, you live that pain, and now you come to solve that pain, right? So the first time when I always when when I talk to a person for the first time, I was like, Why are you doing this business? Why what is what is really like attracting you in this business other than money?

Right? Everyone wants to make money. Like when if someone tells you, like, my answer is I want to make more money. Not not good enough. Not gonna cut it, you know. Like everyone wants to make money in everything, you know. But why are you specifically you know passionate about solving this specific problem and why are you specifically equipped to to solve that?

Jeff Albaum

Right.

Hmm.

David Currant

So that's a big that's a big part of it. always try to you know address problems that exist in the world, not just you know

Reinvent not just invent something that you think yourself is great and then I mean it's great to invent, just test it, you know, and make sure that there is actual

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

So, so can I push back on that a little bit and ask you for your your point of view on something? Because I I hear what you're saying and and I agree with a lot of what you're saying. And I feel like it's a very tech way of describing the world, right? But on the other hand, like you kind of have the the opposite end of the spectrum, is probably like Apple, right? Who like built this crazy device called an iPhone that nobody knew that they wanted, right? And then everyone

David Currant

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Jeff Albaum

lost lost their minds and they love it, right? And so if you had gone to someone, like no one would have paid for an iPhone. So that's kind of one end of the end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is like, I don't know, maybe like a a an accountant comp an accountant firm, like a very cash flow heavy business that doesn't have a product per se, but it's their cash flows are amazing. And so you as an angel investor and an entrepreneur, you're constantly evaluating like different types of businesses. So I don't know, do you have a point of view on that?

David Currant

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so you know like what it reminds me, it's like this famous quote by Henry Ford, you know, like and I I might be misquoting it a little bit, but I think he said something like, you know, if I only ask people what they want, you know, like I would end up building not the cars but like better horses or something like, you know, like somet something to that extent. And I think that's what you're alluding to. And I you know, a hundred percent, especially in the you know, like

Jeff Albaum

Right, right.

David Currant

especially you know people who are able to see a little bit further in the future and whatnot. And I happen to count myself to you know one of these people like every entrepreneur does. But having said that, even when you have super futuristic, amazing ideas and whatnot, it's all allowed. All I'm saying is just test it with the real market. Don't just you know take your assumptions.

Jeff Albaum

Mm.

David Currant

And there are so many ways to test things before you like fully invest yourself in building, that it it's it's really you know a shame to just go and start building and spending lots and lots of energy, resources and time without getting any confirmation that the world is actually in need.

Something that you that you want to build. You know, these days like you don't have to make an entire car to start selling it. You can make a website with AI with images of the car and how it drives and all the parameters and all the explanations, you know, and just put a buttons like we're building this car, join the wait list. How many people are going to sign up for that wait list if you spend a thousand dollars? Okay, I'm not saying don't spend any money, spend a thousand dollars. Don't spend

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

David Currant

20 million dollars building the car, you know. It's much cheaper to build a marketing website, beautiful marketing website, that explains exactly what you want to build, you know, and and just see and spend much smaller amount on just marketing and seeing if there is you know traction there. Are people really going to be buying a car like that? Is there interest? So especially in the age of AI, we can definitely

Jeff Albaum

Right.

David Currant

pre test things way before fully rolling them out in in you know and spending so much resources on building them.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm. That makes sense. That makes sense. W what if you had to if if you were just graduating now in twenty twenty six and you had the same background, you had a software engineering degree, you had worked you had worked for two years in a cybersecurity company and you were getting out of university right now and you're looking around, what would you go do?

David Currant

You know, I have two kids and I'm thinking about what they will do. they're a little younger still. like they're probably gonna be graduating probably in like ten years. So I don't know like right now, but I'm telling them it's like the best thing you can do is build something of your own. You know, like I really, really don't believe and and maybe it it just happened because I'm a little biased because I've been, you know, my entire life an entrepreneur.

Jeff Albaum

Mm.

David Currant

But I really cannot imagine myself being a part like just a small part of someone else's big machine. you know, I can being so, so underpowered in what you can accomplish. You know, the reason the reason why we even have this structure as a society, I think, where we have huge companies and whatnot.

is because we just needed it to be an efficient kind of like unit, right? Like in order to build something you need like you needed huge factories with workers and infrastructure and all this. It's things are changing, you know, you I'm I'm pretty confident that in the next five to ten years we're going to see if not bil if not trillion dollar companies run by single like couple founders, but definitely billion dollar companies.

run by just like one or two people, right? and the reason for that is because the labor becomes cheap, the research is becoming cheap, development, building, everything is becoming so cheaper when you have AI and and automation and robotics that it's just I think there's no chance in the world that we will not be in a society in five to ten years where

You know, the main thing that is actually praised is the personal initiative, the personal you know, how much you apply yourself, how much are you really trying to understand how the world works, and it's just and just able to stitch together systems that already are functioning in one way or another, and you just find the proper value proposition in that. So I don't think that the huge companies is the

the future and hence I don't think that like trying to get your kid to believe like I finished university I'm just gonna go into a normal job. I don't think that's going to happen. I I always tell at least my kids, I don't know the rest of the world, but my kids I always tell them, you know, you gotta be prepared to be independent thinker. That's where the world is going to. and I I'm trying to give them every possible tool to be that, you know, an independent thinker.

'Cause I think an independent thinker are those who are gonna be building the biggest companies by themselves in the future.

Jeff Albaum

What are some examples of those skills that you're trying to give your kids? 'Cause you know, we we have a a fourteen month old. So I if I wanna if I wanna give our son some of these tools to be a better independent thinker, what what does that look like?

David Currant

Ha ha ha ha.

It starts with literally developing their ability to act independently, right? I've seen so many kids and so many parents who who love their I I was that kid, you know, my mom loved me to death, you know, like she's sh she always wanted to be there for me every single thing I do, support and and I love her for that, but it didn't make me an in an independent person.

Right, like I I try to get my kids to do breakfasts by themselves, you know, like maybe they cannot pack the lunch themselves yet, cannot like fully cook the lunch, but at least I cook the lunch and they can pack it. You know, it's already a step towards towards an independence. But the the the the thing that struck me the most is that I I saw a study some time ago about what makes the most successful kids.

and they you know examine those kids on different things. and and what and what that study found is that kids who know how to delay gratification the most are the kids who are the most successful in their lives. You know, like as if if a kid is able to not just eat this candy right away when you give them the candy at that moment

But they understand that if they don't eat it now, you know, tomorrow, they might get better results or something to that extent, you know. I think I think that's when that's when something changes in you. That's when you're able to think beyond just like an immediate short term gratification, which which we all want, right? As I said, like money. Everyone wants to make money. This is literally a synonymous of an immediate gratification. I get it, you want money, I get it, you want the candy.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

Hm.

David Currant

But what's your kinda like bigger accomplishments, right? Are you wanna be healthy, you wanna be like in the in good shape, you wanna be a better person, you know, like don't eat this candy before you go to sleep, you know. I again exaggeration, but I hope you understand where where it's going, you know.

Jeff Albaum

Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's a that's a very that's a very good point. That's a very good point. So how how did you end up like what was the thought process that made you want to start MX pilot? Because all of the things you're describing, I think you said you had three exits prior and you know, for all intents and purposes, you were you still are at the you know, the peak of your career. Like you haven't you're not you're not an old guy, you know, like you're you're you're kind of probably I would argue like the strongest position to be in, right? Because you you have so much real world experience, but you're

David Currant

Ha ha ha.

Yeah.

Jeff Albaum

You have so much runway left. So, like, I don't know, like how yeah, what was the thought process?

David Currant

just a quick correction. I had two successful exits and one complete failure, just for the record. You know, I don't wanna claim that all of things I've done were completely successful, it's not true. And I don't think most people have everything just success, at least that's what I keep on telling myself, to make myself feel better, you know. But for MX pilot is something that is literally

Jeff Albaum

Okay, okay.

David Currant

came as you said like from experience building companies for many years and and just seeing that you know everything you build, every single company you will build, there's one thing that you need, which is you need to make sure you always get customers, right? You need to make sure you always have leads, what do we call it, you know, to work with.

Maybe you're not going to be able to close this list at the beginning because you're still figuring out how everything works. But it's literally the blood of the system, right? Like if you don't have customers to interview, you don't have, and and I said that kind of before, like if you don't have customers to learn from, if you don't have any interest at all, even if you are not providing the exact thing that they need, you will never even be able to figure it out at all. And so

I was always like every single company I was building, I was thinking to myself, like the first thing is like how do you get more customers for that? Not even how do you build the product, but how do you get customers for that product I want to build? And you know, AI came around and I realized that now is the opportunity to build something that can actually create sustainably.

For every type of business it can we can create sustainably a large amount of interest, you know, constant amount of customers who come and want to to use your service. And the reason why it's possible is is because I've seen that being done time and again, consistently, repeatable processes that work and done by performance based marketing agencies.

You know, gone are the times when you were doing performance, when were you doing marketing without measuring any performance? you know, like less and less will you see like advertisement in newspapers and and things that are non-trackable. Like more and more, when you engage a marketing professional, they will try to understand exactly how much traffic they got you, how many how much of this traffic was converted into actual customers.

And you know I was lucky enough to work with professionals who showed me how they do things. like for example, you know, I can bring a few marketing agencies that we work with as examples. for example, you know there is an agency there called

spicy, digital, and they are doing optimizations for third party delivery restaurants. so they're optimized DoorDash, they optimize Uber Eats, they optimized Grab Hub for for restaurants. And it's not a magic. It's like every single day, every single time, very consistently they take an account that starts with like sixteen thousand dollars in orders and six months later you you can see it got to eighty thousand dollars. You know like

If it was just like once or twice or three times, but dude, they do it like ninety-eight percent of times, right? So clearly, clearly there is a very consistent way to advertise your business, specifically in this case restaurant on the third party delivery platforms that will consistently return more than what you invested, right? You just need to know what you're doing. You need to know.

Jeff Albaum

Wow.

Mm-hmm.

David Currant

that you know like the visual like they optimize three things they optimize the menu for you on the restaurant on on this platform they optimize the operations and they run actual marketing campaigns with keywords and whatnot on those platforms together these three things result in massive growth in orders. They're not the only ones, you know like we work with swell country these are specifically healthcare

I mean they they they help healthcare providers to get more customers, doctors, dentists, you know, people, professionals like that. Again, you can see time and again when they start working with a you know doctor office, suddenly within three months, you know, this these doctors' offices are booked, you know. So it's not it's not magic. if if someone keeps on doing it time and again and

Jeff Albaum

Mm.

David Currant

The only thing that you that that kind of like we need to realize is that it's all at attributable. You can actually understand how much revenue you can get from how much money that you put, as long as you follow certain process. And that is only possible to do with AI because in order to accomplish that you need to be very careful to attribute

the the results. Every single thing that you do in marketing needs to be attributed to you. If you run some campaign, it needs to be attributed to to you know to your effort. if you run a campaign on on Meta, if you run to a campaign on Google, doesn't matter where, you have to be very, very careful and very not lazy to every time also in parallel, run a process that calculates all of those things for you.

So as long as you do that, you will be able to generate good results. If you've done work in the industry, you know what works, you know what kind of things you know. and and that kind of pushed me to start MX Pilot because I wanted to create that marketing brain for everyone. I want to give that ability to every single small, medium-sized business to be executing just like you know the big companies are executing.

The big companies, they you know, they they have time and energy to really systematize their strategies and execute on those strategies and measure and whatnot. I wanna give that that marketing brain to smaller guys so that they would be able to run the same very predictive marketing campaigns without knowing that much about marketing, as long as they know their business. You know.

Jeff Albaum

Mm. Mm-hmm. So it's almost like a like an an A like an like an AI chief marketing officer.

David Currant

So that's that's all.

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. AI chief there there are many products that do tell you like yeah, we are AI Chief Marketing Officer. We have some extra special thoughts but and

High level you and that's exactly what it is.

Jeff Albaum

Man, that's awesome. So so what what was it about this? Was it the fact that like this felt like AI was just too big of an opportunity to not work on? Like what what what drew you to start this now?

David Currant

Yeah, timing is everything, right? timing is everything. And to be honest, I just started MX Pilot literally just a few months ago. And before that I was running a company that's called Mustard and it's still running. It's a very successful company, it's still growing very successfully. it's a company that connects more than a hundred and seventy thousand content creators with

thousands of local businesses in the US and you know it's it's so it was a hard decision for me to step down from that company. and when I went to investors and I told them like well you know I'm stepping down. I cannot not you know build MX pilot because now is the time and I was

pretty confident that they're gonna be pretty mad at me, you know, but the opposite happened. They said, David, we've never seen a a situation like that where a founder is starting a new company and not asking us to be on their cap table. You know, so so everyone understands that the timing is now. You know, everyone understands that if you don't be a a Y right now, you know that's yeah so definitely timing.

Jeff Albaum

What was what was your thought going into that meeting versus walking out?

David Currant

Well I I I have to say that I was shocked. I was definitely shocked. And again in a positive way. That that's what I love about entrepreneurship is that oftentimes you do get shocked negatively, but you also get to get be shocked very positively by how much trust people give you by you know, support and real

real kinda like friendships that you developed and partnerships that go a long way, you know. And yeah, definitely I I I was very stressed, especially because my wife was very unhappy. You know, she's like, finally we have you're working on something that's growing so well, you know, like why are we gonna why would you wanna switch to something else? So so yeah.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

I feel like that's a little bit of a theme in your life though, because you you you did that when you left the cybersecurity company, you're gonna I gotta go to college. And then it's like you're constantly looking for for a new challenge.

David Currant

Yeah.

You gotta you gotta you cannot stay in the comfort zone, right? If you wanna get anywhere in life. I that's my belief, right? you have to be challenging yourself. The only way progress happens in this in this life, at least from what I've seen, is through putting yourself in a place where you have to be challenged, right? and that then you become either then you either collapse or you become a better version of yourself.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

David Currant

Right. So thankfully always the circumstances and myself I was always in a place where I was able to figure things out and I realized that the only way for me to grow is to be putting myself out of the comfort zone. so yeah, I think you're you're on the money here. You have to

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

David Currant

In order to in order to have progress you have to challenge yourself.

Jeff Albaum

What what do you think drives you? Because as you said, okay, everyone everyone wants more money. Great. Fine. Put kind of put putting that aside. Is it the challenge of something new? Is it the the opportunity you see in AI? Like w when you when you zoom out and think of yourself, like what motivates you to get up every get out of bed every morning?

David Currant

You know, as always as a kid and

later growing I was always fascinated by logistics and by like how like big things really function. You know, like I always like look at the hotels like, my fucking God, like hotels there's there's like all these things that need to happen. You need to have the reservation in the right time. And you have to have a food and the beds. And like it always passed like when I was a little kid I played the farm and I was like would write down like this is how many eggs my chickens have laid, you know, and I draw these eggs and I would put another piece of paper

papers like now you know I deposited this like complex systems they're they're taking the life of their own is just for me I I don't know it's just like something I love love seeing happening

And with the eye is this there's been never better time to create these living organisms that are able to provide so much value because the only way this this grows is it provides value, right? Like if it doesn't provide that value, it collapses. So like the this this thrill of figuring out this massive puzzle of something that can be put together to become massively useful and complex in a way that

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

David Currant

you know, it continues living on its own and providing more and more value. I don't know, maybe it's a it's a weird answer, but it really gives me a kick like thinking like, my God, you know, like I was thinking about it and then we put all this effort and now it's a creature of its own. It has its own life. It has sales team, it has a development team, it it has like customers. People get upset at me. Like I always proud of you know making my own problems. Like when people are very upset at me, it's like thanks God I created all the problems

problems for myself. You know, all these people are now upset at me because I created this company and that helps them.

Jeff Albaum

That's my new favorite framing. I think I'm gonna use that for everything in my life. Next time someone's mad at me. Thel, thank God I've created the problems that now people are mad at me about.

David Currant

Yeah.

Jeff Albaum

Dude, that's amazing. That's so cool. What what are you looking for right now? Like if someone's listening to this and they're like, man, David's awesome. I want to help him or I'm I'm, you know, I want to get more involved or I want to learn more. Like, where would you send people? What are you looking for? What would be helpful for you right now?

David Currant

first of all, we're looking for brands who want to get free three thousand dollars in marketing spent on us. You know, literally we will give money to spend this for on Meta and Facebook for this brand to get more customers. and the reason why we're doing it is because we want to show this brand we can do it even better than what you do, but we will show it on our own time.

We will give you three thousand dollars and we will show you that our agents can run at least twenty percent more efficient than what you have done in the past. So if any of the listeners you have a a CPG brand or e-commerce brand, or your business is making already between one to to two million dollars annually.

And you would like to get extra three thousand dollars to to get even more traction, we would love to be part of that. would love to sponsor you and would love to show you what we can do. if you if someone is running a marketing agency and they want to start creating even more value for their customers, would for you know, like we would love to talk to those marketing agencies and and show them what we have done for some of the

other agencies. and in general if you're an entrepreneur and you just need help, you just wanna and want some some some help, I don't charge for that.

but I do take you know like a few entrepreneurs every few months to kind of like help and guide through their journey. I really believe like I have gotten so much help myself as an entrepreneur that I would not have been where I am. I mentioned a few names of people and organizations that really formed me, and I'm entirely like forever grateful to those individuals. I don't really necessarily have a you know a great way to always pay back, not every single company.

Exits and makes hundred access for investors. And unfortunately, I don't think you know, not that I don't think I know I have not you know been able to return all the favors that I have received, but at least I can help some you know people who are trying to figure it out. if you are a tech entrepreneur, if you're building a product, if you're an Austin,

You know, and you need some help or even you know even if you're not in Austin, I've done Y combinator, I've built multiple companies. I would love to help you. I cannot help everyone, so I'm gonna only take a few a few people. But I always I always always try to to to to help as much as I can. You know, I connect companies with funding resources, explain to them how the world works, give my opinion if it's helpful about like what can be done.

to improve marketing or improve the product because I've done it all. So yeah, these three types of individuals I would say, you know, brands who want to get extra money and and be convinced that you know

AI marketing agents is the way to go. They just tell them what to do, guide them but don't do all the routine work and continue getting extra revenue. marketing agencies and individual founders, entrepreneurs, ideally in tech, because I just that's what I specialize in.

Jeff Albaum

That's awesome. And what's the best way for them to reach out to you on X pilot's website?

David Currant

David at mxpilot.ai, very simple. Just email me and I'll get back to you. You can also find me on on on LinkedIn, David Corn.

Jeff Albaum

Awesome.

Well, David, thank you so much for

Amazing. And we'll link to everything in the in the show notes. David, thank you so much for being here and sharing your time and wisdom. I really appreciate you, man. And I'm looking forward to hanging out again in person sooner rather than later.

David Currant

Awesome chatting, Jeff. Good good being on this podcast and thank you so much.

Jeff Albaum

Thank you. We'll see everybody next time. Bye everybody.