Letters of Intent

Pankaj Raval (00:00)
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Letters of Intent, where we explore how decisions get made before the outcomes become obvious.

Sahil (00:07)
And Pankaj and I like to say Letters of Intent is where he and I learn things. And today we're learning from someone we really respect and admire, Brendan Rogers. Today's conversation is about building, but not just the highlight reel. We're talking about what it actually takes to build, scale, exit, and then figure out what comes next.

Pankaj Raval (00:25)
Brendan co-founder of WAG, which scaled to a leading marketplace for pet services and went public on the NASDAQ. Before that, he built and exited a social platform acquired by IAC. And today he's a partner at 2am VC.

a prominent Indian VC but also operating here in the US, which he's going to tell us more about. So Brendan, welcome to Letters of Intent.

Brendan Rogers (00:44)
Thank you so much for having me guys. I really appreciate it. I'm really excited about this.

Sahil (00:47)
Let's do it, let's rock and roll. Let's start with something simple but not easy. You had an exit early in your career. What made you decide to stay in the game of entrepreneurship instead of stepping away?

Brendan Rogers (00:59)
that's a great great way to start off the pod. For me, I was an athlete and I loved being on teams and, I love the ups and downs and just like everybody having the same mission and, passionate about doing the same thing. So after the first company, it wasn't a, ridiculous outcome where I'm to go lay on the beach for the rest of my life, even though I probably wouldn't do

it just was enough to have more firepower to stay in the game. and also I was, you know, very young and I think at that time, this was 20, like going into 2014, like mobile apps were really taking off and, just like, so like Facebook went public, I think in like 2011, 2012 and like social was just like really, really taking

So it felt right to like continue to build and like, I wanted to, consistently build a legacy. I, I'm just like the type of person where like, even if I, you know, could be on an island for the rest of my life, like I probably wouldn't do that. So, that kind of just wanted to, as technology was just like growing super fast and, you know, coming off the momentum from the first business, it was like, just take a swing at the plate again.

Pankaj Raval (02:04)
So that's exciting. I mean, what was it about just taking that swing again? consider yourself like always an entrepreneur? Did you other things in your career? Or is this entrepreneurship is something just that came naturally to you?

Brendan Rogers (02:16)
So that's a really good question as well. I think for me, so I was an athlete, so that helped me like, be like working with people, being a leader, kind of showing up every single day with discipline to get better and better. So I thought that was like, I think that's just in my DNA. also when I grew up, I used to like sell stuff on Craigslist. I used to burn CDs and sell CDs.

I always liked transactions. like I would sell, like I'd go into my Rhode Island where I grew up and I asked my dad to be like, Hey, like, do you want any of this stuff? And he'd be like, no. And I would like, go put it all on Craigslist and he would take me to like the Walmart parking lot and we would like sell stuff. like, it was just, I had the bug. And then Like I was interested in just like computers. Like I enjoyed burning CDs going on.

Napster and Kazaa and all these places and doing all that. And I think I was, yeah, they may need to Google that one. But I like, I think I was one of the first guys in the neighborhood, or first kid in the neighborhood to have like DSL where like, I didn't have to like aggravate my parents to like get off the phone and stuff. like, I just was like into it. And then

Pankaj Raval (03:06)
Yes. For those Gen Z listeners, Gen Z listeners, you may need to clarify what that is.

Sahil (03:11)
Yeah.

Pankaj Raval (03:21)
Yeah, yeah,

Brendan Rogers (03:27)
I think also like with the movie, the social network, story about Facebook and like how young people are building businesses and they're very contrarian and like just corporate just didn't really sound, it sounded fun and interesting and adventure. I look at life as an adventure. So I think I like had like the right ingredients to make a really good dish. And then lastly, I surrounded myself with people that were also like kind of

ridiculously disciplined, but also like having that shameless, fearless mentality where it's like, why build someone else's dream when you can build yours? And that was like my kind of my core pillar. And, inside of me was like, if I'm going to do this thing called life, like I'm going to swing for like the fucking fences out here. And for me, starting a business and controlling my destiny and being the director of my own movie was like,

ridiculously attractive to me. So I really just wanted to live that life and go down that path. like, I'll leave it at like the one of the biggest fears that I had, kind of as I was figuring out like, okay, like you're gonna go get a suitcase and you're gonna show up to Palo Alto and figure this out. I never wanted to be the guy that like looked up at the ceiling when I'm like 50 and be like, fuck, I wish I did this. I wish I did that. I wanna have like zero regret.

So that's kind how it all started and like my mentality behind the urgency to go build a business

Pankaj Raval (04:50)
I love it, man. Actually, I this is, think, why we get along, Brendan, and I think we've connected over the years and I think we operate on, I think, on similar wavelengths because, it's funny, your story is very similar to mine, that I moved out to LA because I didn't want to wonder what if, because I moved out to LA at the bottom of the legal market in 2009 when there was no jobs for lawyers anywhere. And I said, I want to just figure this out. like you, and I think that is a hallmark of entrepreneurship.

I think I heard two things from you and I loved and I wanted to emphasize is that like, just making sure you try, making sure you take a swing at things when you can, and while you're young, because I feel like, it gets a little harder as you get older and you have other obligations, but that's a great time to try these things and take some risks on yourself. And sometimes, we're told to like, I'll get that job. I had a lot of pressure to go, work in corporate America, but I said, I wanted to do this on my own.

and, it's been the best decision of my life. But, I think if you're listening to this and talking about entrepreneurship, I think, Brendan said two important things. It's, the first one is also, selling. And I think that is so critical is you have to learn how to sell in anything you do in life. And I think you're so right, because like, just that idea of like selling stuff, in your neighborhood, like I remember I, I found some law books that were a teacher was giving away in law school. It was like outside their classroom. There was like probably

50 law books that they got as, now I think the statute of limitations has probably passed. So I think I can say this, but yeah, there was like maybe like 30 law books that were there. Each of them was more than a hundred dollars. And these were like sent by the own, by the publishers saying, because they want them to use the book in their class. My buddy, Robbie and I actually, he was on the podcast, got those books, we like carted them to the car, like seven trips because they're so heavy.

Sahil (06:06)
You

Pankaj Raval (06:26)
and then ended up putting it on eBay and selling them and made a few thousand bucks. So, you know, I think sparked, you know, that desire to like, okay, hey, how can I turn this into something is a critical element of an entrepreneur. I the story you shared.

Brendan Rogers (06:28)
That's awesome.

Sahil (06:38)
I do want to ask okay, you know, right now entrepreneurship is tied very heavily to tech. ⁓ Do you feel like to be a founder today, you need to have some kind of a technical background?

Brendan Rogers (06:38)
That's awesome.

Mm-hmm.

Man, you guys are coming out with the good questions. I'm not going to lie. ⁓ I think that, no, I think like just, I just was into tech and I, that's just what I gravitated towards. Like I have a really good buddy. co-founder now of 2MVC, he has one of his buddies that lives in Long Beach and he has a very successful acai and smoothie business. It's got like seven locations around Southern California and it's a, is it?

Pankaj Raval (06:54)
Yeah.

What's the name of it?

What's the name of that business? think I've been there. What is the name of it? Do remember?

Brendan Rogers (07:18)
Oh my god,

don't know the exact, I don't know the exact But, uh,

Pankaj Raval (07:23)
I remember there was an amazing

Asahi place in Long Beach when I used to live there. I'm wondering if the same, but anyways, yeah, I was just, I'd ask, yeah.

Sahil (07:29)
I'm a big fan

Brendan Rogers (07:29)
I'll

Sahil (07:30)
of us, I...

Brendan Rogers (07:30)
get up. name is the owner. name is Raj. I don't know his last name, but he's an unbelievable individual. So to answer your question, no, I don't think you need to be technical. in this example, this gentleman, an amazing human being has seven or eight smoothie shops, employs a bunch of people, makes people healthy. You know, having that, those values I think are really awesome and important.

But he's not a technical individual, but he's a very successful entrepreneur. do think though, every founder needs to, no matter what you're building, you need to be shameless, right? Like you need to have the ability to be like, you know what? I don't care about rejection. I'm going to be shameless and reach out to people. You need to have that in my opinion. So that could be running a t-shirt business or running open AI. You need to have those skillsets. And there's no wrong or right business to do.

And then in terms of like, like what Pankaj says, like you have to be extremely comfortable with the uncomfortable and having the ability to go and sell and learn. Like these are all things that I think like you can be guided, but you have to just go out in the, in the real world and, and get the rejection and become shameless and be uncomfortable or be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

And I think those kind of high level ingredients allow founders, like those are what I look for, but I think every founder should have that. And then also like, I think a lot of founders that invest in and that I've seen, technical or non-technical, like they are ridiculously passionate about what they're building and they are believing the

the pain point that they're trying to solve where like nothing is going to get in their way to solve that. then lastly, like the ability to also fail fast. Like, so Reid Hoffman says this thing, like you have to fail fast. Meaning like if it's, if the shit's not working, like go off of data, do whatever it takes to understand the data. But if it's just not working, maybe it's, if it's timing, whatever it is, move on and go do something

yeah, don't think long story, don't think short, I don't think you need to be technical, but those are some of the ingredients that I like look for in founders and like, I think those are key ingredients to build a business.

Pankaj Raval (09:34)
Yeah, so I want to press you a little bit on that question, because I think it's a great point and observation. We hear that a lot by a lot of VCs as well as like, hey, fail faster. Mark Zuckerberg said it. But, you know, I feel like that's such a hard decision to make as a founder. Right. When do you give up your baby? When do you give up this thing that you're delusional? Because I think like, I mean, maybe they're not contradictory, but like being maniacal delusional about ability to succeed.

is a key hallmark of a founder, but then how do you, when do you know when to drop that and say, you know what, this is probably not going to work and I need a pivot or I need to try something else. you know, because I think there is, there is an element of like the real value of persistence in state than being able to stay longer than other people. But I think it's, it's a tough call, you know, and I wanted to get your thoughts on, how you see that.

Brendan Rogers (10:22)
Yeah, I think like having the skill set of, being able to endure is, very powerful. And I don't know if there's an exact answer to this, but if for me, it's like, you know, when you're building a business, you want to obviously get customer feedback and you want to see how customers are enjoying the experience. like, if you're like tracking metrics around, like, if you have users or customers or

whatever it is, and those metrics are like declining over time. I think those are kind of just high level kind of points where you can be like, okay, like what's happening here? So like really looking into the data and realizing like it does this make does the unit economics make sense? Are people like churning at like high rates? Can I attract capital? does the actual like, business model makes sense. And I think it's one of those things where like,

you get to that conclusion and then you ask yourself like, you know, no one knows yourself better than, than you. Like, do I still want to be in this business? And I think a lot of founders get burnt out. so for me, I think if founders like, cannot raise capital and it's been X amount of time, if there is high churn, if there is people that are just like, like you're not getting people excited or people that actually want to use the product. I think those are just all indications of like,

maybe this is not the, the best way to build this business. And I think timing also has a lot to do with it too. I think like, if you look at some of these AI companies, if they were founded like seven or eight years ago, they probably wouldn't have kind of the traction they have now. So that's how I would look at it. it's a really interesting question because founders are so obsessed with their business where it is their baby and they're going to die on that Hill no matter what.

Pankaj Raval (11:59)
No.

Brendan Rogers (11:59)
I look more for the like the endurance of it all. I look forward to like, look, like, this isn't gonna work. but I'm gonna get back up. I'm gonna do something else. So yeah, I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer for But that's how I would look at

Pankaj Raval (12:11)
Yeah, I don't think there is.

Yeah, I think there is. And I just wanted to hear your thoughts and opinion, being a founder, now being a VC. But let's quickly just pivot to WAG because we want to hear that as kind of the inflection point of what you're doing now. tell us a little bit about was, what it is and how maybe that led you to your

Brendan Rogers (12:31)
Yeah. So, my background just, to lay it on the table is I don't have a traditional Silicon Valley kind of founder background, if you will. I, there is founders with my backgrounds that have been very, very successful, but I never went to like very, very good colleges. I never worked at like a fang company at first, or like, like I was kind of like, I showed up with a suitcase and had to like claw my way into these circles.

so with wag, so basically what was interesting in 2014, that's when kind of this Uber for X model like was really taking off. So you had companies like Instacart. You obviously had companies like Postmates, and then DoorDash started in 2014. and then you had kind of that habit creation already been created by the Ubers and the Lyfts of the world. so people were like,

used to like getting things like now and like solving kind of that friction in some of the people's daily lives. And what was interesting is as I was thinking about the next business was like, what is a sector where there's like, high LTV meaning like where are people spending a lot of their money and where are people spending their money like over time throughout their life and pets is a category where people spend a ton of money and

They have multiple pets throughout their lives, whether if it's dogs, cats, cats and dogs, fish, birds, whatever it is. and what was interesting was the, the way that people cared for their pet changed dramatically in my opinion, in the last 10 to 20 years, whereas, when my dad grew up, the dog was like in a dog house outside chain to a chain to a tree.

Pankaj Raval (14:05)
Mm-hmm.

Brendan Rogers (14:06)
They're

giving it like really shitty dog food. Now the bed, now the dog is like in your bed and you're like rubbing it. Like the dog is like literally in your bed. You're taking it on, like you're putting like really good food. ⁓ Yes. Like more. So the thought of like, okay, this is part of my family. My dog's my child. that was really interesting. Cause the kind of the, the care was changing. LTV was

Pankaj Raval (14:09)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you're sleeping on the floor. The dogs are gonna bed. Yeah, it's like yeah, the dogs take it over. Yeah

Brendan Rogers (14:32)
then also like in LA, I thought was ridiculously interesting because in LA, as you guys know, there's a lot of people that have like multiple jobs, especially if you're in the entertainment space. you have this excess of supply where people are like, well, okay, do I want to go sit in a car all day and be in traffic driving for Uber?

Do I want to go in and out and get aggravated at restaurants for delivery food? Or I can play with puppies and walk dogs, get exercise, get sun, be tan for my, my auditions, whatever it is. so it was like the perfect place from the supply side of LA. And then also in LA, as you guys know, there's crazy traffic. it gets really hot. So dogs are inside all day.

you want to stay out for drinks with your friend and you're like, shit, I got to go home and let my dog out. so that was something that made sense on the demand side. And then also a lot of people in LA, you know, they're maybe having like kids later on in life, but their first kind of touch point is like a dog or whatever it is. So it made sense on the supply side in the demand side and, the LTV side. And so it was like, okay, well.

If we can get inside the pet parent's heart and provide a service that had high frequency and hybrid tension, meaning like they're thinking about us on a couple of days a week thing, timeline. How else can we extend LTV and get into that wallet of where they're also allocating money, such as sitting in boarding, veterinarian Yeah. Like lifetime value of the customer. Yeah. So

Pankaj Raval (15:56)
So you mean LTV meaning what again? LTV is lifetime value of the

Brendan Rogers (16:02)
a, so getting inside like the wallet of the pet parents. So we thought if we can get inside the hearts, provide a repetitive dog walking service, get them obsessed with the product, and then we can extend lifetime value by, offering sitting and boarding or veterinarian health and stuff. So really being the button on your phone for your paw. that's what we did. And we basically launched a product. It was a very like,

manual experience for the first probably six to nine And then we built a lot of like automation around the tech piece. it was a very like brandable business from a marketing perspective, so people could hear about it. And then we raised capital around it. And then once we like really understood how to hire the walkers, how to market the product,

how to solve friction in that experience with lock boxes and transactions through the app. We were able to scale it to like New York and SF. And then once that happened, we were able to attract more capital. And then we were able to get into like thousands of zip codes and have hundreds of thousands of dog walkers and raise hundreds of millions of dollars. And yeah, eventually listed on the NASDAQ. So.

Pankaj Raval (17:10)
Amazing. Amazing.

Sahil (17:11)
Can you tell us how the process of scaling a business transformed you personally?

Brendan Rogers (17:16)
Yeah, I think like it gave me more confidence within myself, meaning like, it allowed me to understand that like, okay, if you can build a business that solves a lot of pain points for people, and you can take friction out of people's daily lives, these things are insanely scalable. And it allowed me to have confidence within myself where I'm like,

And the way I diligence businesses now, I would say like I'm not in the business of investing in a company that is only going to be live in Delhi and Mumbai. Like I want a business that touches 1.5 billion people. So I think having that experience allows me to have that unlock in my brain where I'm like, like any like that scale is possible. So if that makes sense.

Pankaj Raval (17:44)
Mm-hmm.

Sahil (17:55)
That does make sense. Yeah, I'm curious also about your, you worked on a business that scaled massively. We work that have the potential to scale and that have scaled on a large scale, but we also work with a lot of boring businesses that are primarily cash flowing. How do you look at the different types of businesses as an investor and as a partner in a VC now? Like you were just saying, you want to see something that's going to touch the lives of 1.5 billion people.

Pankaj Raval (17:56)
Absolutely.

Sahil (18:23)
the other kinds of businesses less interesting to you? Like if it doesn't have a tech component or massive scale, is that less interesting than what we would consider a boring business?

Brendan Rogers (18:34)
Well, what's interesting is I think the boring businesses actually make money in that like show really good healthy economics. I'm investing in half of this shit's Fugazi in the beginning. You're like, this is an idea and a thesis and maybe this is going to work and we're going to value this at $10 million. And like, I'm sure you're seeing these companies now in Silicon Valley that are, know, pre-product pre-launch valued at a hundred million dollars. It's nuts.

Pankaj Raval (18:53)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brendan Rogers (18:54)
I love those types of businesses, cashflow generating businesses. I have friends in LA that own washing machine companies that crush it. Those are great businesses. Raj with the Acai bowls, it's amazing. For me, I only look at companies that are going to be that billion to $10 billion valuation businesses. That's what I'm investing in. I'm investing of future deca-corns that can touch the lives of millions of people.

and a lot of my bets are probably the contrarian to some extent. I do think like, since my thesis is India, young exceptional Indian founders building for the future of India. I think as the young Indian founder or as the young Indians wallet size expands, where are they allocating those those dollars to?

And some of the money that's being allocated will be in like say DTC products and stuff like that, which I think there is a tech component, but it's not like, as technically kind of advances, like a, one of these like AI businesses or whatever the case may be. yeah, I don't like discourage these cashflow boring businesses. It's just, I'm excited about like potentially like AI or tech kind of making these like infiltrating these non-sexy.

industries and making them like putting it like potentially AI into these non-sexy businesses that can really scale and stuff like that.

Pankaj Raval (20:10)
Yeah. So actually with that said, talking India, let's talk about India. this is India is actually how, Sahil and I together. We both through organization called IndieCore that sends second generation Indians back to India to do volunteer service work. And, you know, that's how we met, became friends. I think why we have kind of a shared kind of perspective on the tell us like,

Sahil (20:18)
That's right.

Brendan Rogers (20:18)
you

Really?

Pankaj Raval (20:34)
Tell us about India. What are you seeing today? Why India, first of all? And what do you see as the future of this economy?

Brendan Rogers (20:43)
Yeah

A lot of founders knew what WAG was. So was kind of an easy way to kind of break the ice and talk to these individuals. but I saw a lot of founders like launch businesses with not that much capital and get traction, which I thought was like really interesting because like capital goes really far in India. and then it just like, I mean, when I first got to India, like I looked at India as like an adventure, like, you know, I love the concept of meditation and yoga and the whole.

Like, I feel like very at peace, even though it's very chaotic, I also feel very at peace. And it was just like an adventure. It was so cool. Like it was like, I'm on like a, like I've never seen a place like this. So I was just like inherently curious. I think that's another skill set to have as an entrepreneur is like really be curious. But I did more kind of macro kind of research.

on India and I was sharing on LinkedIn my like journey like going to India. And from a macro lens, I realized that half the population's under 27 and they're all digitized. And all of those individuals have mobile phones. And when they have, when they're like accessing, their mobile phone and they're on Instagram and they're on these other platforms.

They see what people are wearing, they're putting in their bodies, what they're doing, where they're traveling to. And this young population wants to be a part of that. And now in India, you have like this generation where the parents are not saying you have to be a doctor, an engineer, or whatever it is. Like go take risks, go travel, go do things, go build your dream. So right now.

in India from the Gen Z population, it's the largest population in the world, but it's like they're consuming and they're curious like none other. So I believe that that generation is going to fuel this country in the next 30 years, it's going to be a completely different country. And then from a top down approach, you have, I'm sure when you guys went, saw like UPI and at Hahr and even to the airports, they have like Digi Yatra and like, it's a very digitized

country and even like ONDC, they are implementing technology to really make just people's daily lives more frictionless. And then also like most people in India are technical and most people speak English, which I think is very interesting. And then also from like a liquidity standpoint, the IPO markets are heating way back up and like there's a huge like kind of

liquid market and then from like acquisitions and stuff like that. So it all made sense from like a macro thesis lens. then lastly, I would say that as I was writing about my time in India, I started getting founders that were ridiculously successful. GPS at these like really tier one funds, they would reach out to me be like, Hey, like when you come back to India, let me know let's meet up.

By the way, have you seen, like, are you angel investing here, blah, blah. So I started getting like deals and that's when the light bulb went off where I'm like, okay, well I have this GP at Sequoia reaching out to me, like asking me about angel deals and I'm interested in angel investing. And then I'm like, wait, hold on, maybe there's something here because to crack into these ecosystems are very So I kind of like was like, you know what,

going to start sourcing some companies here. I sourced a company called UltraHuman, which I did not invest because it was a yoga app at first and it was a ridiculous valuation, but the founder is an amazing person. It's basically the aura ring of India. It's a massive success now. Then the second company I sourced, which I ...

Pankaj Raval (24:03)
Mm.

Brendan Rogers (24:07)
did not invest, but my co-founder did. founders are amazing, but it was a company called Karana Cart, and it was two Stanford 19 year old dropouts. Herschel invested as the, in the first kind of pre-seed round, pre YC. And, that company's probably gonna go public at about $10 billion valuation in about five to six years. So like, that markup is like, you know, this company does about 5 billion in GMV. They've raised billions of dollars, two 19 year old kids.

Pankaj Raval (24:13)
Yeah.

Wow.

Sahil (24:25)
Wow.

Brendan Rogers (24:32)
but that allowed me to validate. Okay. I think I know the founder profile here. I, have access. I'm validating my consumption thesis. I'm validating my young founder thesis. I need to look more into this and I need to partner with somebody that can allow me to start the race, not at the start line, but like a few miles ahead.

by inheriting existing networks and folks and stuff like that. And clearly I'm not Indian. So it made sense. kind how it all started. So sorry for the long-winded answer, but yeah.

Pankaj Raval (25:04)
Yeah, that's

Sahil (25:04)
No,

Pankaj Raval (25:04)
definitely.

Sahil (25:04)
that is fascinating. So as you explore your thesis, how does AI play a role? Is it a threat is it an opportunity?

Brendan Rogers (25:13)
I think it's, I think it's an opportunity. I do think like, and in this could probably go on, we could slice this in a couple of different ways, but I think my overall thesis on AI is it's going to help a lot of businesses. it's transformed how people use technology today. I do think it is, it's not a threat. I think it helps businesses, but.

I think from a VC lens, I think we're in a massive funding bubble. I think that a lot of these companies are way overvalued. I don't know if revenue is being reported correctly. I think some of these businesses timing may be off so I think that from that lens, we're in a bubble for sure. But like, again, like I'm excited about investing in, I've invested in a few like,

interesting, really cool AI businesses. I think my thesis at my core is the consumption story in India. I still believe in traditional companies building for consumers in India. Whether that's in the food space, the clothing space, the fintech space, my core thesis.

Pankaj Raval (26:16)
I love it. I love it. So I know, Brendan, you have a limited time on your busy guys. So I think we want to go. We have a lot more questions, but maybe we can do a round two another time, because I think you have a lot of insight, a lot of wisdom to share about this whole process. So why don't we jump into the rapid fire and ask a few quick questions that you can answer with one or few words, go from there.

Brendan Rogers (26:22)
Yeah.

Sahil (26:32)
do it.

Let's do it, let's rock and roll. So you're just gonna say the first thing that comes to mind, Brendan, the most dangerous belief a founder can have.

Brendan Rogers (26:43)
Okay.

they've made it when they've raised a round of funding.

Sahil (26:48)
one signal you look for in a strong company.

Brendan Rogers (26:50)
Culture.

Sahil (26:50)
And finally, what does success mean to you today?

Brendan Rogers (26:54)
having peace within yourself.

Pankaj Raval (26:55)
Having peace within yourself, guys. Take a moment here to just recognize that. It's not about the paycheck. It's not about the exit number. It's about finding peace within yourself. And if you don't have not much else matters.

Sahil (27:09)
So the pathway to peace within yourself is venture capital, think is what we did. That is, think, what we can all agree on.

Pankaj Raval (27:13)
Exactly. That's the thing. I believe that's what he's saying. Yeah.

Brendan Rogers (27:17)
there

Pankaj Raval (27:19)
Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Self-awareness is one of the, I think under-discussed but extremely important elements to happiness and fulfillment in life is just being aware of what's going on.

Brendan Rogers (27:19)
is keep learning about yourself every day.

Sahil (27:31)
Brendan Pankaj kicks off our week. We have a weekly meeting and every week he starts us off with a meditation. So yeah.

Brendan Rogers (27:37)
I'm sure he does. That's amazing.

Pankaj Raval (27:37)
Yeah.

Brendan Rogers (27:39)
Let's go. That's how it should be. it's interesting all the being a founder and, being in this world, sometimes you can kind of lose yourself from like, kind of taking a pause and like going within and just like kind of slowing down and slowing the thoughts because sometimes slow is faster. And that's kind of what I've learned the hard way. But it's always good. I'm glad you guys do that.

Pankaj Raval (27:39)
Yes, yes. We do a, we do a five minute meditation.

Sahil (28:00)
Yeah.

Pankaj Raval (28:01)
Yeah, absolutely. So, so Brendan, this is incredibly, you know, thoughtful, insightful conversation. You know, we really appreciate you making the time. I know you're really busy and we've been trying to organize this for a while. So we appreciate you making time on your for this conversation. if you're all the listeners, we thank you guys so much for Brendan a couple questions is, if people want to get in touch with you, how do they get in touch with you? How do they find you online?

Brendan Rogers (28:01)
I need to implement that.

Pankaj Raval (28:22)
if you could share one kind of final thought you want to leave our listeners with.

Brendan Rogers (28:26)
and thank you so much guys for having me. I'm excited to come back for round two. as a, I'm on fun too and stuff and beyond. you can find me on LinkedIn. So Brendan Rogers, you can also email me at Brendan @ 2am VC.com. and I think like it's funny because I, when people go on podcasts and they're like, Oh, reach out to me on LinkedIn or whatever, like DM me on LinkedIn. will respond.

That's how I really was able to grow on LinkedIn was just like making sure that like I took time to like respond and also reach out to people. So please hit me up on LinkedIn. And I would say the last thing I'd leave, to founders is like, really enjoy the journey. Like every step of the journey is the journey. And it's not about when you start and it's not about when you stop. It's really like kind of the ups and downs through that.

through the start and the finish. So really enjoy the journey and celebrate the highs, celebrate the lows, but realize that if you keep putting one foot in front of the other, the lows don't last forever. And, the highs don't last forever. So just really enjoying the journey.

Pankaj Raval (29:21)
Absolutely. Absolutely. I love it. I love it, So we'll end with For our listeners, building isn't just about outcomes. It's about who you're becoming in the process. And thank you again for listening to Letters of Intent. We appreciate everyone's support. And if you guys have any questions, reach out. Please like, comment, share for more. And next time, keep on building and keep on growing.

Brendan Rogers (29:27)
the