you’ve taken a completely different strategy than most entrepreneurs I think this will create a new era in entrepreneurship the world is run by these 20th century Services Giants and for whatever reason venture capitalist Silicon Valley the technology industry is not counterposing against them if you’re getting ready to start your company if you’re the CEO of an existing Company If you’re looking at scaling I want you to hear what France has to say because it will have you pause on what you’re doing and look at your company and your vision and your plan in a completely different way do you have a a company culture where the resolve the commitment to the mission is so high that if everyone had to enter Ramen mode if you couldn’t pay them and they just had to go on the equity and you were just giving them stock the stock that you would otherwise give investers how many people at your team would stay
[00:01:00] welcome to moonshots we’re about to dive into an extraordinary conversation with Francis Pedraza he is the CEO of invisible Technologies invisible has gone from near zero Revenue to almost $300 million in just four years an extraordinary growth and francis’s customers none other than open AI the top Banks uh door Dash extraordinary companies that are using invisible to help scale their processes if you’re at the beginning of your journey and you want a mechanism to operationalize use AI use automation invisible is a company for you but what we’re going to be discussing here is francis’s philosophy as a Founder CEO the decisions he made on where to raise capital and not raise Capital how to hire amazing people and make them Partners this is a master class on a different way of being an entrepreneur and succeeding in the process at an extraordinary speed please
[00:02:00] take notes listen up excited for you to use these approaches in your moonshots all right let’s dive into Francis Pedraza the CEO of invisible Technologies everybody Welcome to moonshots I’m here with a friend now for the last 15 years Francis pza Francis good to see you buddy Peter thanks for taking the time yeah we’re in for a conversation around uh a different level of Entrepreneurship um I think a master class in a being a moonshot entrepreneur and if you’re getting ready to start your company if you’re the CEO of an existing Company If you’re looking at scaling I want you to hear what Francis has to say because it will have you pause on what you’re doing and look at your company and your vision and your plan in a completely different way now Francis I hope I’m not over promising here but uh you know I love what you’re doing and and you’ve taken a completely
[00:03:00] different strategy than most entrepreneurs and perhaps it has to do with your background as a philosopher I’m going to call you not a philosopher king but a philosopher entrepreneur uh let’s kick it off first with uh uh with at the top level what is invisible and then I want to dive into how it’s different how your philosophy of building this moonshot company is different than most everybody else out there and the lessons you’ve learned cuz um they’re worth writing down if you’re taking notes during this podcast so kick it off tell us about what invisible is invisible is operations as a service uh so we make it easy for for companies uh to delegate Core Business processes that they use to run their business and the biggest company in the world uh that does this is Accenture um they have almost a million people Peter they’re a third the size of the US military which is the biggest organization on the planet um wow and they do $63 billion of
[00:04:02] annual revenue and the industry is called business process Outsourcing BPO business process Outsourcing and Accenture is not a a technology company they do not run all of their operations on a single platform um and they bill by the hour so their incentive is to to Bill as many hours as possible without getting fired um and and so they’re the Blockbuster that we’re trying to Netflix they’re the locked Martin that we’re trying to SpaceX and there’s a three-prong disruption um the first is uh pricing we do results based or value based pricing wherever we can so uh I’ll tell you some examples you know insurance company came to us was our f one of our first big clients and they said hey can you run our claims processing can you run underwriting checks it was price per claim process price per check passed um then door Dash came to us during the pandemic and had said hey can you digitize every restaurant menu in the United States and help us launch in Germany and Japan it was a price per menu digitized um and
[00:05:01] open AI came to us the beginning of 2022 saying hey you know um we have swallowed the entire internet um but GPT is hallucinating how do we improve quality and uh we came up with ways of hiring phds and Masters to train GPT to do that and it was a price per um conversation train and and there’s uh that alignment of incentives means that better faster and cheaper is good it’s in everybody interest it’s a win-win um and that creates the uh the alignment with the client and the alignment with technology itself and then the second prong of disruption is technology so reusable processes are our reusable Rockets um so uh SpaceX was able to disrupt Lockheed Martin because uh Lockheed Martin was billing you know uh Cost Plus and so their incentive was to just build NASA and the Air Force a ton of hours and SpaceX said what if we charge for for the launch um itself and price per
[00:06:02] launch results based pricing and they were they that had to vertically integrate and I just toured you know in La they have 38 Hangar bays and they’re actually manufacturing Starships in in Los Angeles um and that approach uh you know gave them a series of technological advantages um we have built a similar thing we call it our digital assembly line so you got to imagine Henry Ford about a hundred years ago was thinking about how to do production um to make the first automotives um and and that um that is the same approach we’re doing for knowledge work uh so we break down our clients processes into steps like Legos and we’ve integrated 300 third-party Ai and automation um tools into a process Builder um so when we take our clients’s processes and we break them into these steps um we can you know we can automate as much of those processes as possible with all the tools that are out there we have our own
[00:07:00] Ai and automation team but you can’t automate every single step in a process um to do complex work you got to be able to plug in humans to do the stuff computer still can’t do so we have over 3,000 people now in over 100 countries around the world including phds and Masters that we can plug in to do the remaining steps and that allows us to deliver an endtoend solution U that is like Ops as a service and that’s the technology advantage and then the final Advantage Peter is culture um that’s the third third prong of the disruption which is that we’re 70% owned by our team um and so at in our company culture we don’t act like employees uh we act like partners and we call each other partners and at the end of every month we’re looking at the income statement the balance sheet the cash flows everyone is you know able to ask each other what’s the strategy you know what’s the ROI how do we do better and that creates a kind of sense of urgency about how to how to move the needle uh uh on the stock price how to how to to make the company better all the time and
[00:08:01] that that sense of camaraderie is often missing in in you know Mega corporations so um you know it’s a rebel alliance culture versus the Galactic Empire of like 20th century services companies I I love it and it’s it it’s been extraordinary growth right he started the company in 2015 is that correct that’s right I’ve known you for a bit of time and it wasn’t really I mean you iterated a little bit and it’s been you hit a formula that’s been extraordinarly successful when did you hit that stride you think yeah um well one of the things I I one of the reasons I trust you so much Peter is that you know your loyalty saw me through my first business failure I started a company right out of college you were an adviser to it it was called Everest um and we had half a million people download it it was an iPhone app to help people Achieve Personal goals Apple featured it a lot it was a beautiful pure software product but it didn’t have you know a a business model that was profitable and so the company
[00:09:01] ultimately failed and I learned a lesson and then I started invisible and the first version of invisible there was a ton of clients and they were willing to pay us a lot but we weren’t able to supply that demand efficiently and so that version failed and I had to we had to evolve through that and then we built the first version of the digital assembly line um we relaunched uh you know in 2017 with that and then we had our first small businesses as clients and we got our first mediumsized businesses as clients we got our first Enterprise contract in January 2020 with door Dash and and then um you know at that point uh you know I was uh uh I don’t know how old I was at the time maybe 30 years old right um so I’d been through a decade of pain you know uh of the you know I called it the journey through hell it really is a test of faith and and then since then since January 2020 uh We Grew From A 1 mil run rate to about a 3 mil run rate that year We Grew From a 3 mil run rate to about a 10 mil run rate the following year we
[00:10:00] grew from that to a 25 mil run rate the following year then a 100 Mil run rate the end of last year and we’re shooting for 200 by June next month and by the end of the year we could be at 300 so that is epic it is it is kind of uh deeply humbling and to see first of all it’s several things right um I I personally and I don’t think anyone at the company would say you know we did this through you know our own genius and our own strength I I think that that’s the sort of Hu and arrogance that uh gets you punished right um but but certainly there was a ton of perseverance um and uh team building and and uh and great values that went into it um it was also the when you have a strong strategic thesis that you’ve worked out you know in writing and you’ve you’ve asked the smartest Minds you know to tear it apart and you know all the ways in which it might not be true but you still take a big bet it’s incredible to see when you’re right how right you can be and how how that plays
[00:11:01] out and then there is this element of luck um which is uh which which is kind of miraculous like some of our biggest clients came to us through seemingly random circumstances there was one story where you know I went through a breakup I was staying in a friend’s with a friend and in in their in his guest room and then the next person he ended up listening to me on Zoom calls and investing and then the next person who stayed in that guest room was a product manager at Ai and they became a client so those those things nobody can take credit for they’re miraculous um but then what do you do with the luck you know are you are you prepared uh are you prepared for it I first of all I I think any entrepreneur listening to this is saying wow I mean that is epic growth I mean you hit your stride uh in the 2020 and this last four years has been extraordinary and I want to break it down um I want to talk about what invisible does because it’s an amazing
[00:12:00] asset for companies out there but I think the the lessons that you can teach are are really what I want to deliver to this community here um a lot of them so let’s let’s begin with uh number one capitalizing company you have a different philosophy on raising money I mean most you know listen I’m in the Venture Capital business through bold and exponential Ventures and I have raised a ton of money but my experience in a lot of the big companies that I’ve gone out to raise money for is I raise Capital raise Capital raise capital and I end up with you know singled digigit percent of the company I started and owned 100% of and it’s it’s brutal at the end of that there’s one exception with one company that I just you know I maintained 100% And I built it based upon Revenue it’s like sold sold for and then built based
[00:13:00] upon the revenue I had can you talk about your philosophy on on raising capital and what you’ve done with invisible we call our philosophy the sovereignty game and it’s the Venture game versus the sovereignty game so the Venture game which most people in Silicon Valley are familiar with is you raise a a series a then a series B then a series C and you try to IPO or sell the company in five to 8 years and um and with all that Capital you try to grow as fast as possible you’re losing money to grow and take market share and it’s a winner take all strategy and your favorite website is techcrunch.com and you’re you’re and the company culture is very caffeinated right it’s like how do we do this as quickly as possible um and you’re you’re shooting for this big exit um and you know that if you don’t raise the next round you might actually go bust because the it’s a loss making company so it’s very fragile you you you really need to to to kind of you know get very lucky uh you’re you’re you’re
[00:14:00] dependent on Capital markets to to agree with you um and you pretty quickly lose control of your board um because these people writing big checks are taking board seats and so usually by the series A or B you no longer have real control of your company that’s the Venture game the sovereignty game is raise as little Capital as possible to get to profitability at scale we call that escape velocity and escape velocity has different levels so level negative one you’re losing money you’re burning money um zero is Break Even uh one is you’re making money but not enough money to really optimally reinvest in the company level two is you’re making enough money to optimally reinvest in the company and it’s compounding and growing level three is you’re generating Capital but not enough to allocate meaningfully and level four is you actually are now generating enough Capital to allocate you’re a capital allocator and you’re compounding um and the time Horizon is very long in the the sovereignty game you’re shooting for 20 plus years and um
[00:15:00] and and so because you you’ve done it capital efficiently in our case we with $6 million in 6 years we got to an $1 million Revenue run rate generating a million dollars of profit and after that we were able to just use that profit to keep growing the business and we’re now at 25% eida margins so we’re shooting for you know uh at least a 60 million eida exit run rate for the year if not higher so that that means that we’re you know and next year we hit our targets we’ll generate over 100 million of eidas so we’re we’re making a lot of uh profit per month um and that allows us to fuel innovation in the business to reinvest in the business to start new companies uh to invest in companies and someday it allow us to buy companies and that’s what what capital allocators do there’s eight buckets in in capital allocation you can either keep the cash on balance sheet as insurance for a rainy day you can pay off any debt that you’ve raised you can reinvest in your business you can start new businesses you can invest
[00:16:00] in businesses you can buy businesses you can do BuyBacks or dividends and those are the eight buckets um and uh and so the sovereignty game ends up with um a uh very different exit mechanism so there’s five ways Equity turns into money Equity turns into money through an IPO through an m&a through a dividend through a buyback or through a secondary the first two are associated with the Venture game IPO and m&a sell the company or IPO the company um the other three are associated with the sovereignty game uh either buy back stock the company’s buying back stock from shareholders this is what SpaceX is doing right right or or secondary find new investors that want to own shares in the company and you’re facilitating a transaction so one of your shareholders is selling to a new shareholder um and so it’s just you know transfer of wealth between shareholders and then the third is dividend the company’s generating profits and dividends some of it back to shareholders now it’s interesting
[00:17:00] capitalism would be less efficient with any one of the five mechanisms um but cap shareholder capitalism would break without dividends like you know it’s becomes illogical to have shareholder capitalism if there’s not some mechanism of taking profits and distributing them to shareholders that’s what makes companies that that’s what gives them their intrinsic value their intrinsic Financial value and so um we are uh building for for that sort of uh an outcome we’ve already done we raised 8 million of primary we’ve done 20 million of buyback so far um we uh are about to do another 15 of BuyBacks and we’re working on a $50 million secondary um and so over time that’s our scorecard for realized returns and we’re going to realize more and more returns through BuyBacks and secondaries and then probably you know over the next 5 to 15 years we might shrink the number of shares by 25 to 50% through BuyBacks and then at some point we’ll just dividend and and that will be the ultimate return
[00:18:00] for the company um but the unrealized return is the inherent value of the business over time and so in the sovereignty game you really have to think through defensibility of the business so your if your time Horizon is longer how do you know that the business is even going to be around in 10 years you need a moat and there’s a whole theory for how to how to build a moat around a company um uh and that’s the sovereignty game take me back to the beginning of this company you had exited Everest um it didn’t work out and uh you what was the Inception of of invisible and then how did you early capitalize it what was your what you did you dive back in to raise capital for and you you know 10-page business plan yeah necessity is the mother of invention I um you know had raised some Angel capital for Everest and you know um I I I was blessed with the generosity of these individuals but when you raise money from individuals it’s their money
[00:19:00] and so it it really hurts to lose it and so we had raised almost $3 million for for Everest and it was from people that I really admired like Peter teal Bono from youw invested um and and other great great individuals and and I I lost their money and I had to write them I had to write them a letter and say I’m sorry you know I tried my absolute best and the company failed and so when I started this company uh the second time around um I still was very much kind of brainwashed by um you know our sort of like peer pressure sort of the collective mindset the thing you do yeah so it’s the thing you do and the thing is that I’d gotten much better at fundraising and so my decks were better my my pitch was better um and people still didn’t want to invest and I and it was not because they didn’t want to invest in me because my first company failed that was not an issue we were able to raise Angel money again pretty quickly um but um it was because it was a services company uh and so I ended up realizing that um there
[00:20:00] was a a belief um a dogmatic belief in my opinion um that that the institutional investors the venture capitalist had that you could not build a true technology company that was a services company and uh what they wanted to invest in was uh SAS was software as a service um because software companies uh that just sell software they have almost like 92% margins very high margins and they’re very scalable and so the Assumption was this would be a low margin business it would not be scalable um and and you wouldn’t be able to build uh a moat around it um and so as a result I I I I had to take that feedback really seriously Peter and the act of fundraising was actually helpful in getting that feedback from smart people um and I had to think first of all if I’m going to if they’re going to if the capital markets are going to disagree with me how do I fund the business um and uh and and then uh why do I think
[00:21:00] I’m right um and and and and then if I am right then I’m really right because it’s not just Accenture it’s McKenzie Bane BCG ernston young KPMG deoe PWC um wpp Omnicom publist the world is run by these 20th century Services Giants and for whatever reason venture capitalist Silicon Valley the technology industry is not counterposing against them there there there’s no Rebel iance against that Galactic Empire there’s no they’re not being disrupted Silicon Valley is just mass-producing tools there’s an app for everything so why isn’t everything perfect yet and and and invisible whole idea was customers don’t really want to buy more software they don’t really want to you know figure out how to use more Tools in their business they just want operations to run it’s complex they want someone else to do that for them they want someone else to like run all these apps Stitch them all together and and deliver the outcome and so uh I had to
[00:22:03] you know get really confident that I was right and then I had to solve that okay well now what do I do how do I finance it and that’s when the backward planning began where it’s like okay how much money do I need to get to profitability because once I’m profitable I don’t need anyone else’s money and that’s when I was like okay $6 million all right that’s something I can work with um and so that’s probably something I’m not going to raise all at once I’m probably going to raise it one check at a time and I’m going to go to Angel Investors and I’m going to you know tell them the the story and maybe I’m going to find a few contrarian institutional investors and get lucky and we were able to find those people about h a little more than half of our money came from angels and then the rest came from some seed stage investors how much did you bring in at that point uh and it was not all at once uh so there was like an initial 500k and then there was um another uh about 500K from angels and then there was uh 3
[00:23:00] million that came from some seed investors uh and then um and then the the then there was a a weird Million Dollar Round that half of it came from insiders and half from Outsiders and then there was a final million at the very end um over over a span of years but the other way that I raised money Peter was actually I raised money for my own team what not actually uh through the them investing and writing a check but because I gave them My Equity um I created a partnership and we created a partner pay model with different tiers and tier one would you know uh would get a certain amount of equity every year and tier two would get a certain amount of equity and and tier three would get a certain amount Equity Etc and I convinced everyone who joined the company to take a huge discount to whatever their market rate was so you know if they were previously making $200,000 a year I got people to to to take even you know 50 or 70k a year in order to to Value the equity now this
[00:24:01] was an instant filter the vast majority of people were not interested in taking a huge bet on the equity um but when I explained it to some people they’re like wow this is very very generous if this works this Equity is going to be worth millions and today it is and those people are happy they did the trade um and so there was a period of time when um you know uh I was pay like basically everyone was was in full ramen noodle mode we were paying each other like $1,000 a month you know that was the that was the average salary of an invisible partner um but even to this day when we’re paying closer and closer to Market Equity is still the biggest portion of compensation our philosophy is there’s cash uh you know uh your your salary for for short-term alignment uh bonuses and performance Milestone pay for um medium-term you know every six months we do a big bonus round um and then there’s Equity that’s the real wealth building exercise of the company do you think this structure can work for
[00:25:00] any company out there um software services medical educational uh is this something that can I mean it seems like you’re aligning interest in an extraordinary fashion um and and people are thereby doing what they think is is best for the company everybody’s everybody has a say in its success in any company in which uh the alpha is coming from labor not Capital then this model can and should work and will be deployed and and someone will disrupt that industry then the question is you know uh how many H H how many situations is it purely about capital and not about Labor and while I’m sure there are some I think labor is becoming more important not less important and the Assumption has been that actually it’s Capital that should own most of the stock in the company and labor should maybe own 10 or 20% of the business and
[00:26:00] capital should own 80% right um and and my my realization over time was wait a second you know my partners are the best investors I have because they are the people in the business thinking about how to upgrade the business um and they’re yet they’re thinking like shareholders they’re they’re reading and we did these Finance 101 classes where you’re like teach everyone here’s how an income statement Works here’s how a balance sheet Works here’s how cash flow works but it forced to be really transparent and and actually it created a kind of internal accountability where it’s like you know I had to I had to answer tough questions what’s our you know 12-month plan what’s our long-term plan you know what how are we going to fix these problems in the business model and it created that sort of internal culture and we call it a um an owner operator or an ownership culture um we call each other partners not not not employees and I think that work pretty much any any Services business certainly but then you know why why aren’t most Venture back businesses like this and I
[00:27:00] think the assumption is well you know it the software is doing most of the work the people are kind of Commodities what really matters is having the capital to scale it um but actually like uh I think most of the time it’s because the board um uh doesn’t want to share the pie and and and and this is where you know you know me I’m a capitalist I I sound a little bit like uh you know I’m not right now but um I think it’s possible to be both a revolutionary and a good fiduciary um and and and and it’s through this alignment of incentives around um around Equity value creation everybody want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that’s very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love company is called Fountain life and it’s a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented Physicians you know most of us don’t actually know what’s going on inside our body we’re all optimists until that day when you have a pain in your side you go to the
[00:28:01] physician or the emergency room and they say listen I’m sorry to tell you this but you have this stage three or four going on and you know it didn’t start that morning it probably was a problem that’s been going on for some time but because we never look we don’t find out so what we built at Fountain life was the world’s most advanced diagnostic Centers we have four across the us today and we’re building 20 around the world the these centers give you a full body MRI a brain a brain vasculature an AI enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque dexa scan a Grail blood cancer test a full executive blood workup it’s the most advanced workup you’ll ever receive 150 gigabyt of data that then go to our AIS and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning when it’s solvable you’re going to find out eventually might as well find out when you can take action Fountain life also has an entire side of Therapeutics we
[00:29:02] look around the world for the most Advanced Therapeutics that can add 10 20 healthy years to your life and we provide them to you at our centers so if this is of interest to you please go and check it out go to Fountain life.com Peter when Tony and I wrote Our New York Times bestsell life force we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain life membership if you go to Fountain life.com Peter will put you to the top of the list really it’s something that is um for me one of the most important things I offer my entire family the CEOs of my companies my friends it’s a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans go to fountainlife decomp it’s one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners all right let’s go back to our episode at every entrepreneur at at early stages during an entrepreneurial
[00:30:00] Journey an entrepreneur is going to have to figure out how much money they’re going to raise and there is this tendency to say listen I’m going to raise more than I think I need because I want the cushion I want the money in case things turn down or things don’t work out um how do you think about that um you know I think one of the most important things is living long enough to live forever it’s how it’s like getting to getting to profitability as soon as you can and then being able to have control over your own fate um but I know of companies I’ve been in inside of of Ventures where it’s like you know we we need 20 million but let’s re let’s raise 40 just to have the extra cushion um you didn’t fall into that trap no uh Sun Su said don’t worry about Victory remove the possibility of defeat and then afterwards look for victory and we we used to talk about bunker mode
[00:31:00] sometimes people call it cockroach mode like uh you know can do you have a a company culture where the resolve the commitment to the mission is so high that um you know if um if anyone if everyone had to enter Ramen mode if you couldn’t pay them and they just had to go on the equity and you were just giving them stock the stock that you would otherwise give investors um you know how many people at your team would stay um how many people would would would would keep going and keep working towards the mission in the early days that was 100% of our company um today it’s less than 100% uh maybe it’s only 10 or 20% of our company it’s an abnormally large percentage of our company um that still has that company culture um but uh I think that the um the uh the capital scarcity is a form of forcing you to become efficient right like when you when you can’t solve
[00:32:01] problems by hiring people and you can’t solve problems by throwing money at the problem you actually have to innovate your way through the problem and um and so you end up changing your relationship to the adversity or the scarcity that is the capital scarcity and and the the um you end up increasing productivity per person right uh it goes up and up and up and up and it might start really slowly you might not even see that it’s happening but over time you look look back and you realize wow you know like we thought we needed so much Capital but we didn’t because we ended up solving all these problems along the way and having these bright ideas we wouldn’t have had those bright ideas if our backs weren’t up against a wall so to speak um and and uh and this is something they teach in martial arts and also in a lot of philosophical traditions to sort of love your enemy you know um because you’re you’re being your enemy is teaching you and the enemy here is
[00:33:01] capital scarcity you’re like oh I don’t have enough money um and you can be in this very negative mindset about it but actually can be the greatest gift um to your creative process at the company talk to me a second I’m going to go into hiring and the type of employees but before we get there talk about span of control and and empowering individual employees to solve problems versus uh have you know large organizational structures and span of control and and such so I I ended up realizing my span was larger than I thought it was um the traditional span of control is like you don’t want to exceed 12 um you don’t want you don’t want to have 12 people working for you uh anything more than that is like unmanageable um and actually The Sweet Spot is usually uh 3 to seven um and anything above seven is like danger zone and anything above 12 is impossible something’s wrong um uh but if you have less than three people working for you then there’s not enough and in the creation of a hierarchy this
[00:34:01] this this sort of creates some some rules of thumb um those rules of thumb are true um if you’re operating in what I call an army mindset if you’re operating in a special forces mindset um you know you can you can sort of do these uh very strange um dances um so for example uh we hired a CEO Ben uh he started about 18 months ago and at one point he had a span of control of 17 and I was cool with it um because I felt like he he was such a a capable manager that he was actually able to empower that many people um there was a medium-term strategy to to um hire some key people that would have that are actually now condensing the span of control so his span of control is rationalizing now but for
[00:35:00] this Sprint this particular period of time he was capable and it was necessary to do that um and and why was it why was it possible it was possible because I had a dotted line to most of those people and I was co-managing and I was helping him manage it and we also were able to surround ourselves with the right advisers and board members that were helping him and there there were enough veterans in the business that they was able to sort of upgrade the new people we were hiring pretty fast and so it it held together um and so I think that in an army mindset you kind of look for um a job description with clear check boxes and you’re done you’re done when you’re done checking those boxes but in more of a special Force’s mindset um everyone is capable of doing more than they think they can uh and the the combinations the ways that which in which you can combine people um it’s much more like soccer than baseball
[00:36:01] right it’s much more fluid um and and and you can only move into that fluidity when everyone is really committed to Excellence and everyone is in an open-minded State um but I just think that that I want to go someplace different with this because I I I think the kind of company you’ve been building is one in which so backing up a second uh going to a company like Lockheed I remember reading about um Lockheed Skunk Works and and the way it worked the level of agility was such that in the center of the um the massive hanger when they were building the uh the their aircraft they had a single blueprint and anyone could go and make a change to that blueprint they were empowered to do that but they had to write their name next to the change in other words as long as they were they felt were clear and responsible they didn’t have to go through layers of approvals to go and and make that that edit so how do you
[00:37:01] create a culture in which um because you’ve got owner partners that and people care deeply about it that um that there isn’t uh layers of red tape uh to encourage people to optimize and solve right because when you have so much structure and you have all these approval processes you crush in organizations uh agility do you agree with that I totally agree with that uh one is just shifting the emphasis from sins of omission um to sins of commission to sins of omission right so you’re you’re less going to get punished for making mistakes and you’re more going to get punished for not doing stuff and so so one one way to see if a company is becoming more political which we have to fight against right now is uh people are afraid of um putting their name on things you talked about you know putting your name on the blue print but even putting your name on an email and writing an email and saying for example
[00:38:01] I woke up this morning um somebody on the team said um you know uh who’s he said we don’t have a day one mindset on this part of our sales team um and there and he listed out a whole bunch of problems and he had escalated it um and and he could have you know uh by causing a stink you know maybe you’re you’re you’re putting yourself at risk maybe you’re putting your job at risk we we really don’t punish that we reward that that’s somebody who’s taking ownership and responsibility and uh and and and calling calling out a problem um so uh I think we just generally reward people who take on more responsibility and who are willing to identify problems and not just identify problems but suggest Solutions and give the solutions a try even when the solutions don’t work I’d rather have that uh person who’s taking risks running things than the person who’s not taking risks and it’s the person who’s not saying stuff who’s
[00:39:01] quiet who doesn’t put their neck out there that’s the person who’s like basically bureaucratic and political and and and and probably just a follower yeah hiring people how do you hire people how do you find them uh you you said you have 3,000 individuals now as part of the team that’s that’s crazy it’s crazy it’s amazing um how do you talk about culture and hiring and and what your thoughts are what have you learned there yeah we’ve learned a lot of things the structure of the organization is we have um uh Partners at the top and they have equity in the business we started the year with about 120 Partners we’re going to end the year with nearly 300 so you know we’re we’re more than doubling head count this year which is very scary um in in the sense that it’s a test of the culture if the veterans can bring in the new people um and and then there’s uh Specialists um the Specialists are Partners in training and they they
[00:40:01] haven’t made partner yet they don’t have Equity yet but they’re they’re working on both the partners and the Specialists are building the company uh and then the agents are are doing the work for the clients um uh on the digital assembly line uh and that could be Advanced AI training work it could be building spreadsheets it could be running insurance claims it could be any form of work that our clients need um and these are contractors um and they’re in over 100 countries around the world and the ability to scalably hire people train them manage them route you know they can sort of set up their shift schedule and then our system will automatically route them work that they’re qualified to do uh and we create an interface for them to do it and we we we have a quality system to check the work and then they get paid in their local currency um some of them get paid in Bitcoin um and that um uh and so those are the contractors amazingly even in the contractor you know uh uh you even in the agent Workforce that we have the the company’s
[00:41:01] the partnership’s values have spread down um and and and so um I’d say actually a lot of our agents have that partner ethos even though they’re not partner yet and a lot of them dream of becoming a partner someday and we try to create paths for them upwards um the uh you know we’ll be at probably over 5,000 by the end of the year Peter just to give you a sense of how the organization is growing quickly when you count the agents um uh but um the the partners are are the ones I really watch and and one of the key Evolutions that I’m thinking about now is um in the early days it was possible for a new partner to earn more than 1% of invisible now um you know if we hit our targets over the next five years 1% of invisible we would be worth a$ hundred million and so um people are chasing basis points um and you have people that are you know shooting to earn 10 basis points because they believe that’ll be worth $10 million in
[00:42:01] five years it’s life-changing amount of money um I I worried that that would change the shareholder investor you know invest owner operator the investor operator culture that we have um so far it’s holding uh and I’m I’m every time I meet a new partner I’m thinking in the back of my mind does this person think like an entrepreneur do they take risks can they understand how one puzzle piece uh of the tactics they’re working on in a day-to-day business uh day-to-day basis fit into the overall strategic puzzle of the business uh do they understand the strategy um and so far I’m I’m incredibly like blown away and and I think the secret has been Peter we built a hiring team as if it was its own separate business so if invisible is operations as a service our hiring team is hiring as a service and you know this the head of hiring Mark gray is this
[00:43:02] half Turkish half Irish guy who lives in Copenhagen he married a Danish lady and he had been a scaleup head of hiring and we gave him an opportunity to say hey come here you’ll be our head of hiring but instead of just running a cost center um we’re going to treat you like you’re a CEO and we’re going to give you an actual path to become a CEO of your own business um and your first client will be invisible and uh invisible um needs a hiring Factory that can produce higher and higher quantity and higher and higher quality of all these types of people we need to do everything from hiring Engineers to hiring Executives to hiring managers to hiring agents who do work for clients that are operational and and we need to do all of that that is a full agency effectively that we need to build and and so the only way to do it is through incredible amounts of Automation and Innovation and and you need to have your small team not think like they’re a small part of a big thing
[00:44:02] but think like they’re a big part of a small thing can you do it and he want he was up for the mission was the most entrepreneurial person we we we interviewed I turned down five other candidates because I knew that a good head of hiring is a good hire that makes good hires it’s like an extra good hire and a bad head of hiring is like a bad hire that makes bad hires and you tank your culture so when we hired Mark gray it really was a huge piece of Leverage for the company um last year we had over 100,000 people apply we only hired a th000 and and so that’s like 1% and our cost per hiring an agent was only $87 and our cost for hiring a partner was about $150 and we were able to do that because they automated so much of the outbound and of the full uh in our applicant tracking system Greenhouse they automated like every single process in Greenhouse um and they used a bunch of psyche vals to like basically you know uh use data from all the interviews that we were getting and and and and and
[00:45:00] use that to accelerate the process my friend you have opened up a thousand conversational doors here in just in this last two minutes I mean so first of all youve built a a completely um virtualized organization with individuals in how many countries over 100 uh can’t it was 96 when we were at abundance 360 and it’s over 100 now amazing amazing and and we’ll come back to your nomadic lifestyle in in a little bit because you’re circumnavigating the globe on a constant basis uh but at the same time what you just said was turning what was a cost center into a potential significant profit Center and you’re looking at iterating on that over and over again I mean you have this tree structure of what invisible can you describe your vision of where invisible is going in terms of the the baby companies that you’re spawning in the process yes uh so uh well let’s just complete the story with Mark and then we’ll go to the demo I want to give at abundance 360 um so uh so he’s starting
[00:46:03] zero hiring uh we own zero hiring.com we’re getting ready to launch um and he I met this guy um uh about a year ago uh this guy named Sam Gibson uh who was a British guy and he had built and sold an RPO company a recruitment process Outsourcing company and um and he had made about uh you know he he’d made he made meaningful you know uh return on that business but he was he was an entrepreneur that still felt like the industry should be disrupted so I introduced him to Mark gray and Mark hired him um and to to basically build our external Revenue so by the end of the year I think we’re going to do $3 million run rate from our hiring as a service business from external clients so um invisible is no longer the only client of Mark and his team they have revenue and it’s our profitable um and so I’m pushing them to to scale that
[00:47:00] business because next year by the end of the year they could be at 10 million plus Revenue um and and then they should be able to grow at 100% plus growth rates for many years until they’re over 100 Mil run rate um and so the demo I want to give at abundance 360 um and uh you know I don’t know if we’ll be ready by next year but if not it’ll be the year after um I want to go on stage and take Sam alman’s you know thing that he talks about which I’ve been talking about for a decade too is the onep person unicorn you know could you have one person or a very very small team build a billion dooll business without having to hire a huge Finance team a huge sales team a huge operations team a huge marketing team a huge people team um and I would love to be able to build a business in an hour on stage and you know uh we can Source the idea from The Audience by the domain and then basically create you know delegate all the operations uh to Invisible uh and
[00:48:01] we’ll have hiring as a service run by zero uh and we have um uh a uh basically a Consulting business uh called ascendency that’s our McKenzie Bane BCG competitor so that’ll run all the strategy and the advisor program and shareholder relations we’re building a marketing and design agency called rad so rad will do all will be our marketing team and our design team and we have a few more that we’re incubating um you know uh eventually we’ll have sales as a service uh and finance as a service unlimited financial services will be the name of uh we just hired the CEO for that um and so uh and that’ll be our KPMG you know PWC deoe uh and ey competitor and so you’ll you’ll basically have all the functions of your business outsourced and you won’t need to hire anyone other than the core team generating the core IP that are truly as symetric nonlinear High leverage Founders and um I think this will create
[00:49:02] a new era in entrepreneurship because it will um it will change um you know the the idea of what it means to be on a team so right now the assumption is if you’re only on a team if you are a full-time W2 employee um but what if we hold this as our standard of Excellence as a vendor is when our clients forget that we’re not on their team when when when when when they we are so integrated in the uh in in their company and their processes when we’re so aware of their strategy and their goals and their okrs um when we’re able to add that kind of nonlinear value that they’re like yeah invisible is on the team like um you know that’s I think how Grace feels at open AI like she’s on the team um so uh that’s the that’s the that’s the goal is like what if the majority of your team members are actually vendors and you don’t even care it’s just
[00:50:00] osmotic um right now only 10% of work is outsourced by the end of the century I think it could be 50 to 90% it’s the speed the speed of innovation the speed of creation the speed of problem solving agility um if you were going to go back in time to the Francis I met 15 years ago uh your just getting started on Everest and give yourself the most you know distilled advice you could do what would that be oh you’re like back find me some time to think have you asked yourself this question like what would you give young Peter yeah you mess up the Multiverse like would you would consequence let me answer that question so um I think uh uh first of all young
[00:51:05] Peter went after medicine to make his parents happy versus what I wanted to do right early on uh which was space uh I I want to jokingly say you know buy apple and Amazon and Google early on when it’s but um I I think uh it was really focus on the core business and building something that is um uh profitable and generating value and and and create create something that’s real versus building Pie in the Sky um my early ventures in space were such you know insert hundred million here and work on something for a long time and and eventually build it versus start
[00:52:00] generating real business and revenue on day one and then build upon a profitable ongoing business I it’s one of the biggest challenges in in the space business the amount of capital required to get to a point where you’re actually able to achieve you know orbital velocity so to speak and that was a a very a very different so how do you balance that moonshot desire at the same time that you want to um build a real real business early right and that in that jux to positioning I for me I finally got clarity about um you need to get you know get to revenue early start a team that’s working together and generating capital and generating profits and then get a clear road map from there to your to your moonshot but don’t don’t start don’t start at at the full moonshot level yeah um for me that was an important important Insight how about how about you what was it what What fail your lessons what lessons
[00:53:00] would you bring back so I Mentor uh and invest in we start we started an investing program and we’ll get to that in a second Visionary Ventures is the name of our investment arm and as we’re starting to invest in other entrepreneurs and and I’m starting to Mentor younger entrepreneurs um I’m finding myself in the you know this strange position of giving advice but I still think of myself as a white belt and and you know as a as a beginner beginners and try I hope I never lose that you know you want to be in a beginner state of mind all the time to really perceive the world and learn the lessons that are all around us all the time um and then you know the Prem and like a good you know uh College essayist I’m going to challenge the premise of the question which is you know if I had even if I gave myself a almost like a I know Kung Fu Matrix download and I could somehow download all the things I’ve learned in the last 15 years that would kick off another branch in the Multiverse right it would cre be a parallel universe where that Francis would go off to do different things and
[00:54:00] there’s something beautiful about the adversities the tragedies the things that I thought were so were so terrible at the time like my first business failing right ah you know like I was really beat up about that but actually it was one of the best things that ever happened to me um and or us invisible failing to raise a series a because VC’s thought it could never become a scalable company that was also one of the best things that could have ever happened bu absolutely no no way that we’d be 70% own by the team and so you you sort of mess up the the C you know the butterfly in the Cocoon you know needs to struggle to to become the butterfly it’s it’s cliche but it’s true that being said I have three books that I recommend entrepreneurs read these are like our three business Bibles the first is Outsiders by Will Thorndike and he was the last investor in our company and he studied Berkshire hathway he studied seven other companies um General Dynamics Washington Post uh a
[00:55:00] company called tadine and and these are companies most people have never heard of and he the first page is a stock chart comparing their uh Collective performance to the S&P 500 over time and to the most famous CEO that everyone had heard of Jack Welsh in his performance over time and it’s just like a hands down no contest crushfest like they they absolutely crushed it and and he says the way they did it is they understood how to generate capital and increase Capital generation in their businesses over time and they understood how to allocate capital and he doesn’t call it the sovereignty game but basically most of the principles of what we’ve codified as the sovereignty game are in that book right um and so I think from reading that book and from our other experiences we’re trying to sort of extend it and write the sequel so to speak and and and that’s why we have more and more clarity on what the sovereignty game looks like but none of the businesses that he talks about in that book are technology companies and so you know when when when I was first introduced to to uh Mr
[00:56:00] Thorndike like that was the that was my pitch it’s like I want to build the first sovereignty game business in the technology industry you know um and so that’s the first book the second book is seven Powers by Hamilton Helmer um and this is a book about how to defend a business from competition and the Seven powers are scale economies uh Network effects switching cost cornered resources counter positioning process power and branding and uh a business could in theory develop all the powers but what really matters is which one you’re going to be able to get to first um and if you can phase into Power before your your competitors you have a barrier and he makes you very aware that like um we we usually talk about benefits like there’s so many benefits to using invisible but what actually matters is barriers which is why why can’t you know people solve that problem themselves or use some
[00:57:00] other company to solve that problem why do they need to use you why are you the only source of that supply and those barriers end up creating the Enterprise Value over time and he tells some great stories um and the Netflix Blockbuster story is one of the main ones that really stuck with me um and then the third is um uh innovator dilemma like by Clayton Christensen and um The innovator’s Dilemma is of the three books it’s actually the most subtle and nuanced of the books because the innovator’s Dilemma shows up in a whole bunch of different ways um and a really good example is actually Infinity so you you asked me earlier what does our corporate structure look like um uh our corporate structure is basically uh my P my sort of uh PhD thesis about how to solve the innovators dilemma um that is the challenge that we’re trying to solve as a company because we don’t want to lose the entrepreneurial magic and we don’t want to stop doing zero to one Innovation as we scale but scale is the enemy of
[00:58:00] innovation in most companies um and so you can understand how this works from a numbers perspective actually if by the end of the year we hit our targets and we do a you know we’re at a 250 to 300 mil run rate um and this these new businesses I I started an incubator called Infiniti last January and there there you know the the incubator is a business and there’s seven businesses in inside of it and each of them has CEOs and by the end of this year collectively they’re tracking for $10 million run rate but that’s only one you know that that is a that is like 3% of the overall group revenues or less um it’s just it’s such a small percentage of the overall Revenue seemingly it doesn’t matter but every year you play out the story this incredible Dynamic occurs so invisible growth rate because physics will slow down even though even if we continue
[00:59:00] growing at an incredible rate um because you know let’s just say next year we grow to 500 million of Revenue and the year after that we grow to 850 and the year after that we go to 1.2 uh the year after that we gr to 1.6 and 1.9 you know eventually you slow down your growth rate over time as long as you like last year we were at 300% this year 150 was the goal next year 100 is the goal then it becomes 80 and 70 and 60 and 50 and 40 and 30 as long as you stay above 25 you’re actually in legendary performance territory if you can maintain that over 20 years right that’s what Apple did Amazon did Berkshire did all the companies that you’ve heard of as legendary businesses they stayed at 25% plus compounding over decades and that’s why my favorite website is mathisfun.com compound interest calculator if you really play with the compound interest calculator it’s mind-blowing what 25% does over you know 20 years um but these new Infinity companies even though
[01:00:01] they’re only like 2% of our revenues this year you know next year they’re going to grow at over 100% And they’re going to stay at over 100% a lot longer as the big business matures and the growth rate slows down the small businesses will be able to stay at hyper growth super high growth rates and we be able to piggy back on the success of the big business which will lift the group average but the only way you can do that 0o to1 Innovation is you have to have separate um structures uh you have to put people in separate boxes you have to ring fence them and and create these um separate businesses with separate cap tables and so the way we’ve done it is the CEO of a new company inside of our uh inside of our incubator gets a path to owning 25% of that business the team the employee stock option pool has a path to 25% and we for the first 5 million into the business are getting 50% of the business and control over the business and we’re networking all these
[01:01:00] businesses together so there are airpods iPhone iPad MacBook it’s operations as a Service hiring as a service strategy as a service sales as a service finance as a service that’s that’s what we’re doing but that structure you know allows those that board that CEO that team to focus on growing that business uh without too much interference or distraction from this big company and it gives them the resources they need if we try to do that sort of innovation inside of the big company they would be crushed uh they would not get any time any attention any energy any money um and and what a waste you know what a missed opportunity um so when you’re dealing with you know too much opportunity there’s one solution which I think is the sort of uh amateur solution which is focus just pick one one of the many opportunities and just focus on that cuz it’s big enough but the real prve which Christensen gets at
[01:02:00] is set up separate businesses and each one of those businesses should focus um but but that actually allows you to achieve the meta goal of going after the entire opportunity did you see the movie Oppenheimer if you did did you know that besides building the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Labs that they spent billions on biod defense weapons the ability to accurately detect viruses and microbes by reading their RNA well a company called viome exclusively licensed the technology from Los alos labs to build a platform that can measure your microbiome and the RNA in your blood now viome has a product that I’ve personally used for years called full body intelligence which collects a few drops of your blood spit and stool and can tell you so much about your health they’ve tested over 700,000 individuals and used their AI models to deliver members critical health Health guidance like what foods you should eat what foods you shouldn’t eat as well as
[01:03:00] your supplements and probiotics your biological age and other deep Health insights and the results of the recommendations are nothing short of Stellar you know as reported in the American Journal of Lifestyle medicine after just 6 months of following vom’s recommendations members reported the following a 36% reduction in depression a 40% reduction in anxiety a 30% reduction in diabetes and and a 48% reduction in IBS listen I’ve been using viome for 3 years I know that my oral and gut health is one of my highest priorities best of all viome is Affordable which is part of my mission to democratize health if you want to join me on this journey go to vi.com Peter I’ve asked naine Jane a friend of mine who’s the founder and CEO of viome to give my listeners a special discount you’ll find it at vom.com Peter amazing um I I love that and and and it’s it’s
[01:04:00] true and and for a for a entrepreneur who is um uh itching to be creative and to generate it’s a way of M of of scratching that itch on on your on your part but having someone who’s absolutely focused uh on the success of that that Core Business uh I want to talk about your lifestyle uh Francis it’s uh it’s it’s pretty extraordinary um uh share share with folks you know what it’s like to be you’re you’re taking the role of founder and chairman and Ben has uh plumber has taken the role of CEO um was that easy to pull a CEO in but before that uh you know I’ll speak to you one moment you’re in Southeast Asia and next moment you’re in Europe now you’re up in Vancouver um do you own a home no uh I don’t I was living in New York and then I put all my stuff in storage and I became a nomad about a year ago um and
[01:05:01] I’m in a new city almost every week uh and I’m going where the business is uh which is everywhere um so there there are opportunities in all these places like there are so many great companies in Vancouver um Lululemon’s in Vancouver arct is in Vancouver slack is in Vancouver hoot is in Vancouver there’s some new unicorns here um and so uh if you if you come here and you get introduced to the right people uh and you host a dinner uh like we had a wonderful dinner on Sunday night with deep conversations I’ll never forget and I’m now I’m going to be friends to these people for hopefully for the rest of my life and and then I’ll keep coming back and over time a community forms and um we um we’ve been building these communities on WhatsApp we call them mafias so we have our Vancouver Mafia now uh we have our New York City mafia has like 300 people in it um and it’s like a private social Network we’ve built on WhatsApp um and we also have been adding our friends to you know
[01:06:01] business syndicates so we added all of our investor friends to our investor Syndicate and they share deals we add all our entrepreneur friends to our entrepreneur Syndicate we have a longevity Syndicate we have a AI Syndicate and these These are are networks that we’re building over time and it’s a way of creating uh culture when you have a fully remote company with no office um if you think about what it would have been like to build a business like this in the 1980s you know I would be you know probably on Wall Street or or something with an actual office and the way you know that you’re making progress is that you’re upgrading to an fancier and fancier office and you have more and more floors in the building and you can actually meet all the people and shake their hands um and the way I know this is real is I’m in buen Osiris and we have 111 people and I’ve never been to Buenos Iris before but all these people share our value share the mission I talk to them I hear their stories and that’s how I know it’s real it’s because I get dinner with them in person and not just on Zoom um and so
[01:07:03] uh yeah we’re we have uh Partners in all these places uh agents in all these places clients in all these places and then advisors and board members and friends and allies and all these places so I think of it as sort of like a global um you know uh remote workk um uh phenomenon this new new nomadic um you know lifestyle is possible and then um I’m also having fun adventures like uh um I uh I you know um went scuba diving in Costa Rica I invited my parents like you know if you don’t live anywhere uh the people that you love your friends your family they come to you uh and then you take your you know Mom and Dad scuba diving for the first time um or you know uh somebody uh one of our board members and one of our clients are big Mountaineers and they took me to go climb Mount reer a couple weekends ago so that was exciting so you can it’s it’s a challenging lifestyle um because every variable in your life is changing except
[01:08:00] for you so it forces you to get really deep into certain routines that you can take with you everywhere for me those are yoga and meditation and reading the classics reading books by dead people um and and I can do that anywhere even in an airport um and then uh in terms of bringing in B is CEO and then Ben is CEO of invisible and he’s doing a great job I’m I’m so delighted and he’s doing a better job than I would that’s why I hired him um and uh I think that you know these four roles get confused founder CEO president and chairman these are very different roles um the founder is often the the the the S sole of the business the cultural and creative um you know strategic Force um and Founders are usually kind of wild and and I’m certainly wild um and it’s actually tough for a Founder to be both a revolutionary and a fiduciary it’s a very there very different yin-yang you
[01:09:01] know parts and sometimes you know you you mature into it but usually you start as a revolutionary you become a fiduciary over time um the CEO is the person running the business and so I for years I was basically stuck in my apartment in New York grinding away um you know endless amounts of calls and emails and zoom calls and and meetings and uh and you’re you’re like a doctor that’s on call 2473 65 and and and because you’re building the business Brick by Brick and so your Monday meetings are like you know show me your okr show me your gank charts show me your budgets where are we at on this where are we at on that and and it’s it’s uh it’s the e in CEO that’s the hard part it’s execution right it’s it’s always executing then there’s the president the president is like on planes kissing babies um and and and building political alliances all around the world and those relationships can turn they started friendships and they can turn into all kinds of things they could become an adviser or a board member they could become a client they
[01:10:01] could become you could do a joint venture with them you can start a company with them they become co-founders you could hire them um they could you know you can invest in them there’s so many things you can do with these relationships but that’s what the president is doing is holding the social capital of the organization and the loyalty and the and continuing to orient people towards the long-term Vision the chairman is sort of on the Mountaintop so to speak and the chairman is focused on Capital allocation um big decisions like should we buy a company or should we raise money or or what have you um governance uh running boards and making sure there’s accountability it’s a very adult role being a chairman um you know holding people accountable to results you’re responsible for hiring and firing all the way up to the CEO level um and you’re responsible for incentives and pricing and compensation um and for the the the sequencing of the road map of the business and so you know in the beginning uh when you start a company
[01:11:00] and there’s only one person and you and your dog right you’re all four of those roles and you’re the janitor right like you’re you’re all those and then over time you sort of slowly unbundle and so you know maybe now we’re unbundling the CEO role we have uh sh brumand is CEO of infinity he’s doing a great job you know almost three decades of tech enabled Services executive and entrepreneurial experience at ABB in AR and other companies and then under him we have um seven or eight CEOs that are all amazing and a lot of these are early invisible people who’ve been with the company for you know uh in one case has been with me from the beginning but others you know six years or something and they’ve already earned their stock and invisible and now they want to do the zero to one Journey again and so so they’re they’re they’re there and then over time I’m probably going to hire more presidents because I don’t know if this lifestyle is sustainable forever I’m I’m young I’m turning 35 and and in two weeks um so I will you know I can do this for probably until I’m 40 but then at some point
[01:12:01] we’ll probably need to hire probably not just one president there might there might be 12 presidents that are super high trust High loyalty people that are doing this lifestyle um and then I’ll be chairman and then I’ll have to figure out how to escape out of that job um and it kind of is uh it is the art of um abstraction uh we we talk about this most people if you’re in an employee mindset you don’t want someone else to take your job but if you’re in an entrepreneurial mindset you’re actually trying to work yourself out of a job you do it once you do it 10 times you do it a 100 times you master it or you get as good as you can be at it if even if you’re working on your weakness and then you hire someone who’s going to do it better than you you train them you manage them and and then you’re abstracted and then you do another job but when you’re in that abstracted place for a short period of time you’re sitting in the void you don’t know what your job is anymore you’re you’re you’re staring staring at the ceiling that void place is actually where all the ideas come from and all the values
[01:13:00] created you’re then doing the zero to one thing of doing you know you created a new job for yourself and you’re doing it again and then you hire someone to do it you then you manage them and Abstract up and then you’re managing a whole bunch of people and you hire someone to manage them manage them and then you know then you’re managing managers and then you’re managing Executives and then you know then you’re trying to hire a chairman and there’s a there was a political um theorist in the last century you said The Sovereign governs in the state of exception huh so as long as you’re in a position to fire um which is something we don’t like talking about um it’s it’s it’s the brutal reality though of a hierarchy in business then you are in control of the structure and so I’ve been paying special attention to board governance and so we have four directors in theory you know a majority of them could fire me but these are people that are incredible people and they’re they’re so accomplished one of them was
[01:14:00] the head of corporate development for under Bill Gates and Steve Balmer for decades at Microsoft Charlie songhurst he’s my vice chairman and I’ve been on a call with him like every week for seven years and I trust him um and he you know and so you surround yourself with people that correct your blind spots and those are the people that you ultimately trust to put a sword to your neck if you’ve lost your mind and and and you’re doing the wrong wrong thing but that same accountability Works downwards as well so if I ever got to the point where we were hiring presidents and hiring chairman there would have to be the similar accountability and that’s sort of your way out and eventually hopefully you just have the title of human you know you’re just you’re just Peter or you’re just Francis and you dropped all the titles and um and and you’re judged for the value you brought to World your life the life of those that you touched um and and the dreams that you have going forward that’s it Francis you built an amazing company and I’m I’m so
[01:15:01] proud of you as a friend and uh and thank you for the time that you gave us on stage at abundance at the abundance Summit this year and I know we had a huge number of our our members interested in invisible as a potential uh platform to help them operationalize their lives efficiently um I want to go there for our last few minutes here uh if someone is thinking about well how do I use invisible to automate and to operationalize um what’s your advice to them how do they get started well everyone quotes you now Peter and calls invisible the easy button so most most businesses are hearing about all these advances in Ai and Automation and they struggle to figure out how to actually use that in their business so invisible is the easy button for figuring out how do I use automation how do I use AI how do I use you know sort of sci-fi operations the best best practices and operations in 2024 how do I use that to
[01:16:02] run this business or or how do I you know use it to create a new capability or create a massive efficiency um and usually I’m sure everyone in the audience is thinking about some specific problem right now in your business that you’re stuck on and you’re trying to solve and it’s coming up in meetings that’s the problem we want you to give us we want you to give us the hard problems and uh you can reach out sales invisible. um just send us an email or go to the website and and and you know can fill out a form and reach out um and we’re pretty reachable like you can reach out to me some folks reach out to me on LinkedIn uh and I try to check that inbox and respond um usually I’ll just say you know um email me I’m also accessible Francis invisible. oops I just gave out my email on a podcast what am I gonna do drown an email and you and you are and your team is amazing uh just you know really responsive I’m I’m of like you know there’s got to be a thousand AI agents that are actually your team instead of instead of the
[01:17:00] humans out there but uh you’re they come they come with a passion of help and service um and uh and and again if you don’t mind just rattle off the the clients that you’ve served over the last two or three years so people understand the scope and quality of of who you’re serving yeah uh well first you know the first big Enterprise contract we got was door Dash and then that turned into Uber GrubHub delivery hero bolt roie um walmart.com and then open AI Amazon Google Microsoft uh cohere AI 21 character AI perplexity um and uh and then you know now we’re working with uh some you know big names in the finance industry um some of which I can’t say they’re like tier one private Equity firms um and uh and and others that I can like we’ve done work with NASDAQ um and uh Arin vest and others so um it’s it’s been an incredible journey
[01:18:02] it’s just also the dawn of time you know for for for AI and Automation and and and for our business amazing amazing and uh again on uh on social uh they find you where find me on LinkedIn probably the best place Francis Pedraza FR an c i s p d r a Za or otherwise you know look out the window if you happen to be you know uh in Costa Rica or or in Indonesia or someplace in uh on climbing some Mountain you might find Francis there is you’re a virtualized uh probability function on planet Earth for the moment at least I’m like a ghost yeah we have 150 people in Katmandu and I’m going to Nepal for my first time this July so there you go like I’ll be anywhere oh incredible um thank you for the work that you do thank you for your friendship um thank you I’m honored I’m truly honored by our friendship um by your loyalty over time you know you saw me through not just one failure you know but like a long journey and you
[01:19:01] continued to believe in me and and that that’s I think is why so many entrepreneurs trust you thank you buddy [Music]