Aaron White. Beyond the Exit: Sustaining the Serial Builder's Drive

Written By Anastasia Koroleva

Episode - 14

Aaron White. Beyond the Exit: Sustaining the Serial Builder's Drive

 
 
 

Aaron White: For two decades, he's turned tech visions into companies worth hundreds of millions. Briefly a VC, Aaron discovered his true joy lies in creating alongside remarkable talents, not just funding them.

Aaron shares with us battle-earned, practical, and actionable advice on how to continue building businesses after a successful exit, overcome imposter syndrome and founder’s trauma, and align your investing with your unique personality traits.

Aaron White and Anastasia Koroleva unpack the fascinating interplay of art and obsession within entrepreneurship.

They share practical insights about the artistic nature of entrepreneurial ventures, the role of obsession in driving success, and the challenge of maintaining a strong sense of identity even after achieving success.

Aaron and Anastasia delve deep into the concept of entrepreneurship being akin to longevity and transition.

They unfold the compelling insights about the joys, struggles, and beauty of entrepreneurship, viewed essentially as an infinite game where the primary motivation lies in the joy of creation itself.

Tune in and prepare to see entrepreneurship through an entirely new lens.

What We Discussed:

00:00:00: Introduction and Background of Aaron White

00:01:36: Fascination and New Ventures of Aaron

00:02:04: Aaron's First Startup Venture

00:03:07: The Desire to Succeed at all costs

00:04:31: Transition From Self-Proving to Healthier Motivation

00:05:09: Comparison between Self-Proving Desire and Desire for Financial Freedom

00:06:16: The Joy of Building and Contributing

00:07:59: The Transition in Ambitions from Selfish Reasons to Being Helpful to Others

00:08:46: The Challenge of Separating Personal Identity from the Business

00:11:25: The Experience of a Satisfying Business Exit

00:12:36: The Identity Crisis occurring Post-Business Exit

00:17:27: Growth Mindset and Learning Process in Handling Identity Crisis

00:19:50: Inspiring Others by Holding them to High Standards

00:21:00: Willing to take on any role

00:21:48: Aligning family with personal passions

00:22:10: Parents as entrepreneurial inspiration

00:22:56: Supportive spouse

00:23:50: Avoiding spoiling children due to success

00:25:23: Parents' aspiration for their children

00:30:28: Blogging & sharing their entrepreneurial journey

00:32:01: Overcoming imposter syndrome

 

00:33:21: Choosing to become a VC

00:38:49: The difficulty of saying no to entrepreneurs

00:41:16: Thoughts on Angel Investing

00:45:59: Perspectives on Wealth

00:50:43: Discussions about Personal Life

00:51:57: Balancing Ambition and Happiness

00:55:50: Choosing People to Spend Time With

00:59:03: Overcoming Trauma and Moving Forward

01:01:12: Anticipating Billion Dollar Companies

01:02:16: Handling Emotional Exhaustion

01:07:12: Cultivating Ambitions and Clarity

01:09:20: Exploring Personal Purpose

01:11:39: Importance of Post-Exit Healing

01:14:57: Embracing Post-Exit Opportunities

01:16:48: Considering Healing Timespans

01:17:57: Overcoming Fears and Mistakes

01:20:27: Balancing obsession and health

01:21:40: Identifying the next big thing

01:23:19: Giving permission to experiment, learn, and eventually succeed

01:25:36: Importance of product building vs business model

01:28:41: Maintaining personal health and family whilst pursuing business ventures

01:28:51: How to be remembered

  • Aaron White: [00:00:00 - 00:00:05]

    I had two companies exit at the same time, like literally within two weeks of each other. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:05 - 00:00:32]

    Aaron White. For two decades, he's turned tech visions into companies worth hundreds of millions. Briefly, we see Aaron discovered his true joy lies in creating alongside remarkable talents, not just funding them. Aaron shares with us battle earned practical and actionable advice on how to continue building businesses after a successful exit. How to overcome imposter syndrome, Founder’s trauma and align your investing with your unique personality traits. 


    Aaron White: [00:00:33 - 00:00:59]

    The best way to inspire others is to hold them to a higher standard that they didn't know they could achieve, but they can achieve. Think back to the best folks you've ever worked with. And if you just had to work on a team of 10 to 20 of those people, how amazing would that be? And most people go, oh, yeah, that'd be killer. That's all I want to do. It's like, do that. The scale of what I'm contemplating next is just entirely different than anything I've done before. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:05 - 00:01:09]

    Hi, Aaron. Thank you so much for joining me today. 


    Aaron White: [00:01:09 - 00:01:10]

    Yeah, thank you for having me. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:10 - 00:01:36]

    I find you absolutely fascinating in so many different ways, and I really hope we'll be able to touch upon at least some of these things today. But one of the reasons I was so eager to talk to you today about your post exit journey is because you've had so many exits and your first one was years ago. So you are one of those people who have had a chance to process this experience and hopefully share those lessons with us. 


    Aaron White: [00:01:36 - 00:02:04]

    Yes, lots of lessons learned, I think, along the way, probably more still that I haven't fully processed. But yeah, I think my first exit, and I'm trying to remember the exact date, but I think it was around 2012 or so. That was an edtech company that we started. We raised venture capital funds for. We were trying to make textbooks cheap or even free for college students because why are you paying $300 for something in the bookstore that, you know, you can learn everything online? 


    Aaron White: [00:02:04 - 00:03:35]

    And of course, the Internet has only gotten better since then. And that was a really interesting one because it was my first venture backed startup that I had worked on as a founder. I had done startups without capital before, and those are a different affair. And I would do others like that, but that was the first venture one, and the exit for that one was highly educational because not to ramble, but I could explore whichever piece of this we find interesting. We built a lot of great product, but we didn't get the traction that we were hoping for. Students were just resistant or uninterested in engaging with online text at the volume the business would have needed to succeed or we were unable to generate that interest. It's probably more correct. And the exit process for that was very interesting because we did run a process. We found a bunch of suitors and in the 11th hour and 59th minute, we had two deals that we were going to take. One of them would have made me a millionaire before my thirty s and the other one did not. And the one that did not happen, the deal we were all hoping for got scuttled literally just before final signing. And that was just a lesson in something I had heard over and over again, which is no deal is done until it's done. And all that build up of oh, it's just going to be so great, so great turned out not to be the case. And that's fine. That's life and entrepreneurship. I've come to grips with that now. But it was very painful at the time because you get your hopes up. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:40 - 00:03:48]

    Do you think that disappointment was part of the reason that you kept going? Because you were still hungry, you still didn't get what you were hoping for? 


    Aaron White: [00:03:48 - 00:04:04]

    Oh yeah. I think I have an unhealthy need to prove myself on some dimension. I don't know why. And I'm sure with lots of folks you talk to, childhood unmet needs to let people know that I'm smart or whatever kind of focused into my professional. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:04:04 - 00:04:07]

    Oh yeah, blaming the parents is always the best part, right? 


    Aaron White: [00:04:07 - 00:04:31]

    My parents did a great job raising me, but for whatever reason, I had this one chip on my shoulder and that didn't go away. I hadn't made the tech success that I wanted. I had a lot of energy and ideas still in me. And even now, twelve years later, I still have that feeling. Even after more exits, material exits, life changing events, I still want to build and show people what I can do. 


    Aaron White: [00:04:31 - 00:05:00]

    I think it comes from a much healthier place now. But yeah, that left a huge chip on my shoulder and I was determined not to leave the game until I had a success. And that chip got so bad at some point I was living in my office during the pandemic, underneath the conference room table on an air mattress, trying to keep a business alive, even though I was broke and my partner moved in with her parents for a while. Just that burning need to succeed at all costs. Yes, that was very real. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:05:01 - 00:05:09]

    So would you say that your desire to prove yourself was stronger than your desire for financial freedom or greed? 


    Aaron White: [00:05:09 - 00:05:38]

    Yeah, I think that the finances to me, while awesome and I appreciate what you can do with money. But that was secondary in a lot of ways. I mean, almost clearly, because I still have stuff I want to do, and I'm not in a place where the finances would meaningfully change my life in the same way that it did previously. I just really wanted to show people what I could do and I think show myself. So that has been the drive more than the economics the entire time. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:05:39 - 00:05:47]

    How do you differentiate between this desire to prove yourself and actually your love for the game and just the fact that you enjoy doing business? 


    Aaron White: [00:05:47 - 00:06:16]

    Yeah, I think good news is those are very compatible things. They don't have to be, or they can stray into not being compatible. I think if you're chasing fame to prove yourself, that's sort of a different thing. But I know that the scorecard for business is happy customers, right? And the next level up from that is happy customers with sustainable structure to your business and unit economics. 


    Aaron White: [00:06:16 - 00:06:51]

    And if you can make those things work, then you can keep playing this infinite game of doing new things that are bolder, or more interesting, or cooler, or help more folks. So those have aligned for me because the need to prove myself, the scorecard by which I measure is how much do people enjoy what I've built, right? And I do love building. I mean, I've been fascinated with Legos and software since I was a small child. So this is a pretty obvious continuation, I think, of childhood hobbies. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:06:51 - 00:07:04]

    Listening to you, it seems that you're driven much more by the desire to contribute and be sure that you're contributing in a measurable way rather than proven yourself. 


    Aaron White: [00:07:04 - 00:07:06]

    Maybe I'm judging myself too harshly here. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:07:07 - 00:07:59]

    I think so, actually. But it's fascinating because I see that quite a lot, that very successful founders tend to think that all their ambition comes from the wrong place, not necessarily realizing that over time that motivation changes dramatically as they grow less selfish and contribution becomes the real driver. But they still repeat the same story to themselves. Oh, I'm striving to prove myself, or even for more freedom, which if you ask deeper questions, people realize that it's not actually the case. They have all the freedom in the world and they're just addicted to being useful, to being helpful to others, which is so beautiful. But we keep beating ourselves up, that we are very selfish and doing it for selfish reasons. 


    Aaron White: [00:07:59 - 00:08:46]

    I appreciate that perspective a lot. And there are those exercises that I know founders are asked to do, or anybody's asked to do. It's just a healthy exercise. Like if you had all the money in the world, what would you do to spend with your time? And the answer has always been the same for me. I just build more stuff that's probably I should forgive myself a little bit here because that is what I want to do with my time, make things that people like using. Okay, great. So it doesn't matter one way or another. I think the reason it's easy to beat oneself up over that pursuit of contributing is that in order to do so, this is not to self-aggrandize. I mean, it's caused a lot of pain in my life for my friends and family and partner, but it does require burning the candle at both ends at times. 


    Aaron White: [00:08:46 - 00:09:24]

    Right. Entrepreneurship is a very emotionally consuming, time consuming pursuit that can really burn you and your loved ones if you're not careful about those boundaries. And the crazy thing is, I don't think those boundaries are anything obvious if you haven't tried it, like truly. Sometimes it just feels like you don't have a choice. You have to just keep going in those moments. It does feel selfish because of how hard it is now. So that's probably where I get confused about my deeper motivations. But yeah, no, I think there's a lot of truth to that. I'm still building. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:09:24 - 00:09:26]

    You're a serial builder, aren't you? 


    Aaron White: [00:09:26 - 00:10:19]

    Yeah. And actually it's funny because that's how a number of the companies got started. Just pure love of building with no commercial agenda. My longtime friend Chris O'Donnell, he's doing a new startup called Day AI. He used to be the chief product officer at HubSpot. We met in high school. He and I would just get together on the weekends and build things just to see what we could do. And the test would be on Monday if anybody found them useful. And that actually led to several real businesses. That led to a micro outcome selling a piece of JavaScript error tracking software to crashlytics. That led to the construction of price intelligently, which has been a big arc in my life, both in terms of interest and economic outcome, just from building and seeing if people liked it. So, yeah, it's a fun feeling. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:10:19 - 00:10:26]

    So it sounds like you're one of very few lucky people who is doing exactly what they love doing and gets rewarded for it. 


    Aaron White: [00:10:26 - 00:11:09]

    Yeah, I hope that this ability or opportunity is far more common in the world than people realize. It may not be, but I do feel very lucky. I liked to believe as a teen and beyond that, if you were really good at something, you could find a way, whatever you were interested in, you could get good at. And if you're good at something you could find a way to provide value to the world, be rewarded enough for it. Whether it was software construction or being an amazing juggler, I think that's probably true, but the distribution is not that even the world has only so many slots for top jugglers versus software constructors. But I do feel very lucky that my interests and abilities kind of match the opportunities. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:11:09 - 00:11:14]

    So you mentioned the first exit was not quite satisfying because your expectations were different. 


    Aaron White: [00:11:14 - 00:11:16]

    No. No deals done till it's done. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:11:16 - 00:11:26]

    So when the properly satisfying exit actually happened in your life, and what did it feel like? Why was it satisfying? 


    Aaron White: [00:11:27 - 00:12:36]

    This is very interesting. And lucky for me, I had two companies exit at the same time, which, like, literally within two weeks of each other. And I have never been more awestruck than sort of back to back those weeks leading up to it. So the first company I just mentioned was this company, price, intelligently, that we bootstrapped from nothing, also back around 2011, and that sold at the very beginning of 2022 to a London company called paddle. And that was a 200 million dollar deal, and we had no outside investors, it was just us kind of principals. So that was life changing. And then the other startup I'd been working on, blissfully, we started that as a software company about 2017 and sold that to vendor also at the very beginning of 2022. And I became CTO and head of product engineering and design for the last two years there and grew. The company raised $150,000,000 series B. So lots of fun stuff to talk about afterwards, but those two exits happening at the same time. 


    Aaron White: [00:12:36 - 00:15:27]

    I went from broke and kind of living in an office and working out of a basement, wondering if I was going to be a wash up, which is an unfair characterization, but that was plaguing me in my head as well, to suddenly millions in my bank account. And I remember just how surreal it was. It just felt utterly fantastical. Like it really, truly wasn't real. And then when I finally realized that I had access to this money and I could do things with it, it felt criminal. It felt. I remember we bought this house in Miami, and the first week or two my wife stayed in it. We kept thinking, like, is someone going to come in here and kick us out? There's no way we're allowed to do this. This doesn't make any sense. So it was very surreal, and that was a really kind of fun set of feelings to work through. None of it felt threatening. I mean, there was some anxiety in there, obviously, because, like, oh, God, easy come, easy go. What could happen but then the other stuff that started setting in a little bit, and this happened after the failed exits as well. There's a little bit of an identity crisis that happens because you've been wrapped up in your business, your team, your decisions, your whole Persona is intertwined with the business. And I think a lot of founders, to get traction in any way, shape or form, whether it's with customers or hiring, you really have to put yourself out there. You have to infuse yourself with this thing to be successful. And of course, the more you do that, if you're not the most emotionally mature person in the world, when that identity of your business and your organization and your team start getting separated from you, there's a deep sense of not just loss, but just kind of like, am I, do I matter? Does the world need me anymore? What is the point of me that's been a hard one to grapple with success or failure? That's just always been true. And even over the last couple of months, I've set out to do yet another new thing, leaving behind my role as CTO at vendor. There's also an identity crisis and death in there. I worked so hard for so long with such great people that separating from that too, still feels like the same thing all over again. And I have not learned how to navigate that emotionally. I think I'm not sort of entering into, like, there's no self destruction here, there's no going out and partying or sitting depressed in my bedroom. But, yeah, I feel like a new person who's untethered, and it makes you feel a little naked. Honestly, that's hard. I think that's the more unexpected thing, even though I can see it coming from a mile away each time I switch projects. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:15:27 - 00:15:35]

    What did you find for yourself that helps you through this identity crisis to find yourself again? 


    Aaron White: [00:15:35 - 00:16:55]

    Well, number one, having a really supportive partner goes a long way, because she'll remind me that here's what you're capable of. People come to you for advice in these things. You're not untethered and useless, and we're not going to put you in a box and ship you into some dark closet somewhere. I think beyond that, it's being a lifelong learner for me has been really helpful because I know that taking a period of time to decompress and just learn novel things, new things that I have not tried to learn before, is very grounding in the, oh, this is how the process works. You get to learn new things, you get to find new things to solve, you get to build new things for others. And it's okay if you're not actively constructing with a team and customers and all that. This is the precursor to all that is kind of relearning and reengaging with new things. For me now, that's AI, but it used to be cloud infrastructure, it used to be the web, et cetera. So that helps me navigate it. But it's still tough. It's still tough not having an identity and going out there and saying, I am CEO or CTO of X. That is me. I don't have that right now. So it's just, hey, I'm some tech guy in Miami who likes to read and blather about AI. That's fine for now. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:16:56 - 00:17:26]

    So if I were to summarize what you said, basically, you think that having a mindset of this being a process and you learning through the process, having this kind of growth mindset, if you like, combined with the fact that you give yourself permission to just take some time to learn how to deal with this, this is probably what you're saying in terms of your formula for success in this identity crisis. 


    AaronWhite: [00:17:27 - 00:18:22]

    Growth mindset is big because it says that you are not a thing. You are someone that moves through and learns and does, and so that it's kind of like being a shark. Keep moving and you'll feel better, right. So whether that's some new adventure challenge, fitness challenge, or learning challenge, those things have made me feel like, oh, okay, I am still navigating the world and becoming better and hopefully improving it around me. And then I try to take time off. I truly do. Normally, I've been lucky enough to say to myself, I'm going to set a year aside between projects. I think I make it about six weeks before the next thing starts in some capacity, because I'll just find something that I just get fully absorbed into and start working on it. And I try to allow myself that you don't have to be obsessed with something, but if you do, just explore it for as long as it feels good, and then at some point, if you drop it, learn something different, and if you keep going, maybe there's something there. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:18:22 - 00:18:28]

    Would you say that you have an obsessive personality and you look for your next obsession all the time? 


    Aaron White: [00:18:28 - 00:19:27]

    I think that's right, yeah. I tend to go very deep on the things that I latch onto. It's like one of those things where it's like everybody will tell you have a schedule, right? Have a routine. It's good for your health, it's good for your sleep. And I try, I really do. And then eventually, when I find something that I do get obsessed with, I allow myself permission to say, you know what? I'm setting that aside for a couple of weeks right now. We're going to go deep on this thing. So that's one form of obsession, and that's that builder's obsession where you get in flow state and just you wake up knowing exactly what you want to do and you have the ability to go do it and you just go do it. I don't let anything interfere with that because that's a hard thing sometimes to come in contact with. And outside of that, I obsess over details on just about everything. And I'm giving all sorts of people unhelpful feedback on their websites, their product, or whatever. And maybe that's annoying, but I think that's also part of that eye of looking at how the world could be better and trying to elevate it to be so. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:27 - 00:19:32]

    Yeah. Plus you care more than anybody else. That's also part of it. 


    Aaron White: [00:19:32 - 00:19:33]

    Maybe. Yeah. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:33 - 00:19:34]

    It's your creation. 


    Aaron White: [00:19:35 - 00:19:39]

    Yeah. Those are fun when you've got total control. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:39 - 00:19:50]

    So would you say that you were successful at helping the closest people to you align with that vision and that personality of yours? 


    Aaron White: [00:19:50 - 00:21:00]

    I would like to think that I was able to create some strong cultures, especially among early product development and engineering in particular. I think that the best way to inspire others is to hold them to a higher standard that they didn't know they could achieve, but they can achieve. Right? Because that's just inspiring for everybody. You see someone's potential, you help them realize it. They raise their ambitions. Others see that it's possible and they can do that. And I've had the good fortune of working with some incredibly talented people. Some who knew they were talented, but didn't know how talented they were. Others that didn't know, but were clearly very talented and just need to be coaxed out of their shell. That is so amazing. That just feels so good. I mean, almost better than you give something to some customer and they say that's great, and then they pay you for it and you realize that, like, oh, wow, you know, we've, we've done something meaningful here, but building with others who are raising their ambitions together, so frigging cool. And I think one way to do that is by really leading from the front. So I'm a very hands on leader with things. 


    AaronWhite: [00:21:00 - 00:21:48]

    If it's customer support, I will jump in there and do customer support. If it's sales, I will jump in there and do sales. If it's building, I will jump in there and build. If there's an incident and the servers are burning, I will jump in there and try to help debug. And fortunately, as I've hired better and better people, I become less and less the expert on those things. And others teach me things, which is wonderful. But being willing to get in there, I think, is what helps people feel like we're all in this and rowing together. And then a clearer vision aligns everybody, right? So being able to take something complicated or messy and articulate a simpler framing that is both true, but easy to remember and thus easy to apply, I think that's a really critical part to business vision, product vision, and company culture. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:21:48 - 00:21:59]

    Right. What about your family? Did you manage to align your family members with your personality and passions and the way you do yours? 


    Aaron White: [00:22:00 - 00:22:08]

    I have a very small family, so it's a very easy question to answer, in a way, because I have my parents, my brother and my wife, and we have a cat. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:22:08 - 00:22:09]

    It's not that small. 


    Aaron White: [00:22:10 - 00:22:56]

    Maybe not that small, but my parents were. They were entrepreneurs themselves. They started a commercial space planning and interior design business, and I would go to their office after school and play on computers, and that's kind of how I got my start. And they would talk business at dinner. So I got to see that it was okay to be passionate about building things. And building things didn't just include products like tables or design plans, but the business itself is something you could build. My parents and I were very aligned about going out and doing new things. And when I almost dropped out of college, they were supportive. I ended up staying, but they were like, hey, if you want to go for it, I think you'll do great. Interestingly, as I get older, they seem to be slightly more risk averse. 


    Aaron White: [00:22:56 - 00:23:49]

    They're like, oh, no, don't leave your thing. It'd be the last thing you ever do. I'm like, I don't think so. All evidence to the contrary, but, oh, well. And then my wife is very entrepreneurial in her own way. She moved here from South Africa when she was 14 years old. She became a professional dancer with no network here and kind of really made a nice go of it and has then switched into technology herself, now into writing. She has never, ever held me back on my ambitions. She's fueled them, and that is awesome. Doesn't mean it doesn't cause problems. I think we're aligned directionally, but in practice, when I'm yet another Friday night working late into the evening. That's obviously a little challenging, but she's never made me feel guilty for wanting to throw myself at something. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:23:50 - 00:24:01]

    Talking about your parents, what do you think they did to avoid you being a spoiled brat? Because being successful entrepreneurs themselves, I'm sure they thought about it. 


    Aaron White: [00:24:01 - 00:25:23]

    They must have. I would say that's a good question. That's a very good question, because I remember as a child my friends saying, oh, your parents are kind of well off, and at least in the area we lived in, I'm sure they would describe themselves as middle class, and I don't remember ever feeling that, because they did a good job of making sure that I had to earn things, which probably is a little bit why my self worth is tied into what I'm able to do. But it wasn't every toy that you want, you're going to have to do chores and do these things, and then you can get your allowance and you can use your money to spend on things. So there was a lot of holding me to agency and not just handing me things, which was great. What they did, never shy away from handing me, was better education. So if I wanted a book, I would get the book. When I begged to go to summer school, which is a weird thing to say, they paid for me to go to summer school. When I begged to go to a better high school than the one I was in, they coughed up not unsubstantial dollars that I'm sure was financially straining for them and including college as well. So they knew what to hold back on, and they knew what not to hold back on. And I think that's a really important lesson. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:25:23 - 00:25:26]

    Do you feel they wanted you to be an entrepreneur? 


    Aaron White: [00:25:26 - 00:26:33]

    That is a good question. I don't know that they wanted me to be an entrepreneur. Specifically. My interests as a kid were very much science. Subatomic particles, galaxies, everything in between. And they would indulge my desire to learn there. Same with computers. So I don't think they wanted me to be an entrepreneur necessarily. They did encourage me to be a maker. My father and I, a lot of our activities together, and my mother, they were artists, right? So we would draw together, we would make little foam core doll houses and architectures together. We would do projects to make things together. Also, again, I think to educate me on creativity and agency and expression. And that led to ultimately finding my way to entrepreneurship, because I just liked the hardest challenges I could find. And there's a lot of very hard intellectual challenges, but even harder to coordinate technology and people and market for whatever reason. I got obsessed with that mid college and just never looked back. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:26:33 - 00:26:36]

    Would you say entrepreneurship is a form of art? 


    Aaron White: [00:26:36 - 00:28:04]

    Absolutely, yeah. The two obvious artistic pieces and the thing that all artists also have. So artists make things to delight people, right? Or to make them feel something. If I want to get more general, right, great. Well, that's what product makers do as well, right? There's something you want to see in the world and you want to make it and you want others to go, wow, that makes sense. This is useful, right? Second, entrepreneurs are narrators and storytellers. Like, the only way to attract people and capital and customers and press and whatever it is, is to be really good at crafting the story about an optimism for a better world in micro and macro. It doesn't matter. Storytelling is an art form, right. And it's a very interesting one that combines logic and emotion and imagery. And then you've got pure grit. Like, I think that Churchill quote is the one that keeps coming back to me every time. Like, if you're going through hell, keep. Like there's so many times trying to close a candidate, trying to get funding, trying to get that big customer over the line, trying to thread the needle on finances, that you just need pure grit. And I don't know if that's a creative expression, but I do know that most great artists, whether they're musicians or painters or authors, all have these stories about persevering when all they felt like doing was giving up, and that made all the difference in the end. So, yeah, I do think it's an artistic expression. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:28:04 - 00:28:19]

    But from what I know about you, your perseverance comes from this obsession that probably makes your entrepreneurial activities feel less like work and more like channeling your creativity. 


    Aaron White: [00:28:19 - 00:30:04]

    In the best cases, yes, that's true. But then in some other cases, I think it's like you just don't stop and there's no good reason. It's not because, you know that chart around capability versus challenge, and there's that flow section, well, that's great. When you're in flow, wonderful. And if you're out of flow because it's too easy, cool, you raise your ambitions. 

    But when something is really hard and you don't feel capable of doing it, as long as I know it's not impossible, I can just grind it out. And I don't know where that comes from specifically. I can't tell you that that's necessarily this desire to make. But somehow early on, I learned that you had to do that, and I can't not do that. And that kind of makes all the difference, because there are those gaps. You don't have to be that way. I think co founders in a lot of ways help each other navigate those troughs. And it's like, listen, if you don't feel effective right now, I know you're struggling. I'm here with you. Like, you go take a break, do this other thing, I'll do something we can control and then kind of balance each other out. 

    But, yeah, for whatever reason, there are those times when I'm not sure it's pure creative drive to make. It's literally just, I can't not do it and I just have to power through it. The closest thing I have to that is I ran a marathon once, and I remember how painful. I didn't really train nearly as enough. I was doing it barefoot for weird reasons, but it was just so painful. And I kept just saying, like, this too shall pass, and grinding it out even though I was not enjoying it. My ego had died 5 miles back. I don't know why I just kept. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:30:04 - 00:30:13]

    Yeah, so it's a combination of being pulled by your creativity and I guess being able to push yourself at the same time when needed. 


    Aaron White: [00:30:13 - 00:30:20]

    And probably because there's hope on the other side that, look, if you get through this, the fun stuff will come back around. Right? 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:30:20 - 00:30:24]

    Pushing yourself because you believe in what's waiting for you. 


    Aaron White: [00:30:25 - 00:30:28]

    I'm sure you've had as many of these push and pull moments, if not more. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:30:28 - 00:30:47]

    Absolutely. I can so much relate to it. So you've been writing this amazing blog called Singularity VC, and I've been a fan for years. We talked about it earlier. So would you say that blog helped you keep stability through your exits? 


    Aaron White: [00:30:47 - 00:32:01]

    Yes, I think so. So writing, I think, is just one of the greatest things that people can do. And if you can take the time to put something out there, edit it, make it useful to others, that's a microform of product, right? A company is a product, a product is a product, and a well written article is also a product. And I think it's really helpful for not just others, but ultimately clarifying your own thoughts. When I'm struggling with something, writing about it can be a very useful thing for me and me alone. Obviously, diaries and journals exist, but this is like, I do like to do it publicly so I can get a little bit of benefit, not just to myself, but to others. So that has been helpful. And one thing that I've focused on with folks is the storytelling element. I think some of my more popular articles that I've written for others have to do around how to craft a venture narrative, right? Whether you're raising money or not doesn't really matter. But how do you tell a narrative that really paints this? Wow, if this works, this could be big. How do you communicate that to others? That is something I'm obsessed with because I think more and more tech is weirdly becoming easier and easier. 


    Aaron White: [00:32:01 - 00:32:51]

    Actually. Chat GPG great. You can show up to that thing and learn almost anything about anything at this point. Fantastic. The stuff that truly differentiates companies and always has is how strong of a narrative can you put out there that others can absorb and repeat to their peers? That's how some of the biggest companies get built. It's just very simple. Uber, taxi on demand for mobile. It's like some of these things are just so obvious, but getting good at that storytelling has been very helpful for me and I think helpful for others. And so each of those articles is, in its own way, a tiny little story. And now I'm dabbling with video too, because I think the world has moved increasingly into this kind of multimedia. But I will still write before producing something because I really want to make sure that I have something substantive that's exciting to learn about. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:32:52 - 00:33:21]

    So why are you doing that? In addition to achieving clarity for yourself, like now you are doing more video. Do you feel that you need to create your own kind of audience and it would be helpful for your future businesses? I'll explain to you. Why I'm asking you is because I have this mission to try to help some of my favorite super successful exited founders to speak more about what it is they're doing. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:33:21 - 00:33:41]

    I've noticed that some people learn the lesson of humility a bit too much like they succeed, and then the next thing they do, they keep very quiet about. So I was hoping you will help me inspire them to think differently and share what they're doing with the world a bit more generously. 


    Aaron White: [00:33:41 - 00:35:56]

    Yeah. Okay, well, so I am one of those people, which is part of the reason I'm doing this. There's a number of reasons. Number one, the more you tell your story, the better your story gets. The more you will attract teammates that want to work with you, the more you build a brand for partnerships or investors, and the easier it'll be for customers to find you as well. And I think, again, the more that tech becomes commodity, in a way, the only differentiator is great story. And so it's really worth putting yourself out there to hone the craft and you can't get better at storytelling by yourself. That's just not how it works. You have to test it on others. And you can test it one on one, or you can test it one on 1000, right, one on 1000 you'll learn a lot more quickly. But it's scary. And I think there's the normal reasons. It's scary, humility and shyness. For me, it actually comes from impostor syndrome. Like, deep down, if I put myself out there and I'm a little bit wrong, people who are far more intelligent on this topic will find me and shame me publicly and I will feel stupid, and then my whole world will collapse. Right. And that's just not true. It's like. It's the Dunning Kruger effect. It's like, look, if you're an entrepreneur, you probably know quite a bit about your domain, more than probably the average. And so you not putting your thoughts out there is actually worse for the world. You're holding back on hard won lessons that fewer people than you have. Please share them. People want to hear. And yes, you'll always be wrong on something, and there will always be critics, but that's been true for you as an entrepreneur. You've had that struggle with customers and investors and trying to recruit. What's different about putting yourself out there like this? I think if you can get past that impostor syndrome. Syndrome and realize that you truly do know these things, you will be so much better for it. Now I'm telling you this, and still feeling that internally, even with a smile on my face, even putting whatever of myself online, it's still deep inside of me. And I think just the way to break it is to form the habit. I think it's just practice. That's all it is. But you know more than you think and get over yourself and help others. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:35:56 - 00:36:12]

    Absolutely. I absolutely love it because people get very surprised when they hear that they may be selfish by not, in a way, self promoting. Right. It feels counterintuitive, but it's so true. If you just look at it from a different perspective. 


    Aaron White: [00:36:12 - 00:37:23]

    I don't remember, I saw some clip of a woman saying exactly this. It's selfish not to share. And that was the maybe it was a TED talk. That was the key. Oh, yeah, got it. Now I can't unsee it. You're right. There are people younger or newer in the field than I am that want to learn this stuff. There are people that might want to work on what I'm working on. If only they could hear about it. People might want to purchase it people might want to follow along. Why am I holding it back? And I think what's really inspiring for me is on X, there's so many indie entrepreneurs that I follow. If you put a product out there, you might just see me show up and follow you. Because I'm just like, I know how hard it is to put something out there. And people who are public about not just the thing they've built, but the process by which they're building it, talking about their struggles, some of which I know the answers to, why shouldn't I follow them and support them putting themselves out there? They inspire me. Maybe one in 100 times. I can be helpful back. That's so cool. So I get inspired by all sorts of newcomers to their respective opportunities. They can do it. Why can't I? Right? We can all kind of get better together. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:37:23 - 00:37:30]

    So this brings me to my question about why did you decide a while back to become a VC? 


    Aaron White: [00:37:30 - 00:38:17]

    Several reasons. Not all of them good, right? I think the good reasons were I loved product builders so much that the idea that I could just meet with them all day, every day, and learn new things about solar, about infrastructure, about this particular workflow for this type of business, this new sales technique, whatever, was just like catnip. Like, who wouldn't want to learn everything about everything and the job delivered on that. It is a fire hose. Like, people will come to your firm and to you, and they will assume you're an expert on something. And I'm like, no, I know nothing. And I'm so excited to be here. Right. Which maybe isn't the right sales message if they're expecting.  


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:38:17 - 00:38:18]

    Imposter syndrome again. 


    Aaron White: [00:38:21 - 00:38:49]

    That is awesome. I think the bad reasons, and I was young enough at the time that I thought when I got started with it, that these were okay reasons, was there's a little bit of a prestige factor, maybe less so these days, oddly, but there was a prestige factor for me. And then you can make a lot of money, which is great. You can also make a lot of money as an entrepreneur. But the idea that I could just be sort of like, I think having that opportunity, all I knew I had to try it, even if it ended up not being for me. 


    Aaron White: [00:38:49 - 00:41:16]

    And I do a lot of angel investing now, which is great. And it scratches some of that itch that I get to meet smart people, hear about them, and then participate in a very kind of lightweight way. The crushing part for me when I was doing it professionally was you meet people who are throwing their whole self and their whole life at this one opportunity. And the thing they're talking to you about getting is more fuel for their fire. And 99.9% of the time, you say no. And I found that really soul crushing because I have been on that side of the table. I know how hard it is to get where they are. I know that even if one firm is not right, some other firm might be, or maybe they're not appropriate for this type of capital. But saying no is really challenging when you know someone's putting their whole self into it, because it's not just like critiquing something. It's saying, like, I don't want to be associated with you in this way. 

    At least that's what it felt like to me. The other challenging part, I think, is it can be very emotional for entrepreneurs. It was for me on the other end when I got no's, when I was early in, you know, my. My career. And so in those moments, you never know who is going to be open to constructive feedback. Even though you're saying no and say, this might help you for the next investor. It might help with your product or your business, and who is going to be so deeply offended that they're going to try to fight you to convince you that it is a good opportunity, which is never a good idea if you have to push on an investor like that. They're probably not the right investor for you. Right. The ones that you want to work with kind of will pull you along because you told such a strong narrative. Narrative matters, so it's very hard to tell people no. And it's harder still when trying to give constructive criticism is not. Oddly, it's not the best course of action. So if you've ever wondered why you don't get feedback from a VC, the good ones will really suck it up and give it to you. But know that they're risking a lot of emotional conversations with folks because they never know which type of conversation they're going to find themselves in. In the end, I found it not nearly as satisfying enough as just doing my own thing and kind of just building with people. I think the number one thing I missed was building with others on a singular mission. VC is kind of more a lonely sport where each person, each investor is kind of finding things. Maybe you're bouncing ideas off each other, but ultimately you're operating independently. I much prefer operating with a team. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:16 - 00:41:19]

    What's your relationship with angel investing? 


    Aaron White: [00:41:20 - 00:42:40]

    It's a tough one for me a little bit, because I know that if I really started turning my Sauron's eye to doing it really well. I'm going to be a world class angel investor. I would be doing very different things than I'm doing right now because in a lot of ways I know better, right? But because it's my money, because the checks are smaller, it's easier for me to say, you know what, I don't have to think through all the eventualities of this thing. Like, if you told a good story and I think you're a good entrepreneur, that's enough. I don't need to think about market dynamics and exit opportunities and all this sort of stuff. So it's a lot easier and emotionally rewarding for me to engage with. Where it gets challenging for me is there's a lot of things that your portfolio of entrepreneurs that you're working with, or you could provide help for them, and there's just not enough time in the day to do your own thing and help others. And so that's a trade off that doesn't feel very comfortable. So at the moment, I'm trying to keep it sparing, trying to keep it for folks kind of already in my network, just so that I already have a relationship with them in some way. And that makes it a little bit easier for me to engage with and not feel bad as though it was someone I didn't know. And I'm getting involved, the pressure is on to help more, but I don't want that to be my primary responsibility. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:42:40 - 00:42:59]

    It sounds like through trial and error, you figured out what feels satisfying or fulfilling for you and what doesn't. And it's very satisfying and fulfilling for you to build things with the people you admire. While it's not quite as satisfying to invest or advise. 


    Aaron White: [00:43:00 - 00:43:59]

    That’s right. I can advise at scale through better storytelling and more blog posts. That's my preferred way. And I think it's other lessons you learn as you get older is like, it's okay to set expectations with people even if they're not what they want to hear. And my best example is Dharmesh Shah, the founder of HubSpot, who's angel invested in a couple of my opportunities. When he put money in, he's like, hey, team, just so you know, I'm putting an angel check in, but don't expect any help from me. I'm very busy and I prefer to focus on what I'm building. And I was like, this is fantastic. We have a clear contract now for how I should think about this. And even despite that, he's still helpful at very critical moments. But don't let his portfolio know that. I have tried now to start setting those expectations with people I'll work with. Here's the kind of the space, and if that's not for you, that's great, but at least we're clearer on it. So I don't feel bad afterwards because managing my emotional energy here allows me to help you, but also keep focused on what I want to be spending the 90 plus percent of my time doing. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:43:59 - 00:44:36]

    I've done quite a bit of angel investing after I had my first exit, and the reason I stopped doing it was that I actually realized that this is how I was solving my identity crisis. What I really wanted to do is some kind of label, angel investing, and I actually considered also a VC label but didn't quite go there. And when I was honest with myself and figured it out, that's when I said, you know what, no, that's not going to work. I wonder if you can relate to that because you did mention that identity was a big thing for you. Did you want to continue being this part of this ecosystem as I did? 


    Aaron White: [00:44:36 - 00:45:42]

    Totally. You had a very clear insight about yourself very quickly, it sounds like, which is great. I think here I've seen enough people put on their profiles, entrepreneur, investor, and I'm just like, I don't think I need that badge. I mean, I know that it is easy to keep participating in the ecosystem of technology and feeling important if you can write checks to people, but I also have seen enough other folks go down that path that I knew it was more of like a plugging a hole in your soul through this new honorific that I knew it wasn't going to work for me. So I have tried not to make it my identity blog name.To the contrary, I think it's just a very cool domain name, but it's something that I know can be catnip for exited founders is to just kind of like, well, now it's time to wear that hat and stay involved this way and there's some prestige associated with it. But I'm glad I already had the investing experience because it already taught me a lot about what it would be like to do that full time. And so I knew not to go too deep into. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:45:42 - 00:45:59]

    Brilliant. I know you mentioned that money has never really been a driver, but I still want to dig in that direction a little bit. In terms of your relationships with financial freedom and how you see money as something that enables you to do things you want to do. 


    Aaron White: [00:45:59 - 00:49:11]

    There's step functions to wealth. I think that's something that I've learned over the years. Like, I remember when I graduated from college and I had my first full time paying job, and I was earning enough that when I went to the grocery store, I didn't have to think about grocery store prices, right? I wasn't buying crazy things. But when you're in college and scrapping stuff together, it's like, sometimes it'd be like, okay, I got $20 to get me through the week. How am I going to make this work, right? And then with a full time job, I was like, oh, I don't have to think about this. That is now a step function improvement in my life. I feel that I have always kind of known that money was a thing to enable me to do other things, not something that I had to be kind of, like, slavishly earning and squirreling away that there's always greater opportunities. And so when I was saying that I would take time off between things, I mean, practically speaking, that means I've set aside a year's worth of savings to live a very austere life while I learn to do something new or build something or talk to people and figure out the next thing. So it has been an enabling force for me, even in small amounts, long before exits. That just requires living below your means, being a minimalist, being more passionate about building things than travel, whatever your situation is with the exits, I'd be lying if I didn't say a huge anxiety monkey jumped off my back. I remember thinking that, oh, I'm in my 40s now, and if I'm not successful, I'm going to be washed up. And then how am I going to have a family and a house and a happy retirement and all that? And I'd never thought about those things before, but the age kind of started catching up to me where it's like, well, listen, you've been rolling the dice on entrepreneurship now for a couple of decades. Maybe you need to change strategy here. That went away, thank God, because I like building so much that if I had succumbed to those kind of internal fears or pressures, real or not, it would have redirected me to be someone that I'm not. So the exits happened at the right time. They're definitely a huge enabling force. I don't have to make short term trade offs. I can focus on the long term far more frequently. When you're in your 20s, if you're trying to scrap together funds to be an entrepreneur, maybe you're taking different consulting gigs. Sometimes you got to take the opportunities that are in front of you and some of them are good and some of them won't be. And now I really don't have to do anything that doesn't align with my passions, my interest, my compass, whatever it is. So that is hugely enabling. And even now, though, I still find though, that there's this paradox of not just the exit, but entrepreneurship, where it's like, look, your company might be flush with investment, but you still have to manage every dollar very carefully. And so I still have this weird thing where I will over focus on optimizing some small things even though I don't necessarily need to, but it still can be helpful. So I think it's about for me. I can now make sure that while I might get caught up in that, I'm never sacrificing macro long term opportunities for anything short term. That's been a much easier thing to navigate as I've gotten older and had a few wins. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:49:11 - 00:49:16]

    So do you use this strategy in your wealth management? 


    Aaron White: [00:49:17 - 00:50:42]

    Yeah, in my wealth management, that makes it sound like a really deliberate, systematic thing. I've got holdings in a lot of index funds and that's real easy because I don't have to think about that. And admittedly now I have an advisor as well, and so he's driving a lot of that. I have my gambling account, which know log into Robinhood on Monday and see what fun things happen in the market that week. And that keeps me from doing anything stupid with the bulk, my, my dry powder. And then I have a lot reserved for angel investing, being an LP in venture funds and my own thing. And that's just sitting there ready to go. And I know that because I've got now a foundation that I don't have to think about. It's on autopilot and frankly, will be okay no matter what. There's nothing that can happen to me that's going to make it so I'm living in my office again. It allows me to look at that other pile of dry powder and say, what can I do with this? How much of a stone I carve off for this opportunity and go for it? That's really exciting. So I like to separate it into a honey pot for my impulses, dry powder for the things I want to do to make the world a different, hopefully better place, and then the stability stuff that I just don't think about because that's never what I've been focused on and much more of a growth mindset. Keep going. 


    AaronWhite: [00:50:43 - 00:50:50]

    But it's nice to remove all this anxiety and think, well, worse comes to worse, we can keep living and eating and kids can go to college and all that. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:50:50 - 00:50:54]

    So it does sound like a very well thought through wealth management system. 


    Aaron White: [00:50:54 - 00:51:06]

    Great. Okay, yeah. If that's well thought through, fantastic. If you got into the nitty gritty of which funds, which returns, which horizons, I'd be like, I don't know. But I know myself enough to know that separating it out into those three buckets, that was the big unlock. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:51:06 - 00:51:39]

    The reason I think it's very well thought through is because it's aligned with who you are and with your understanding of what's fulfilling for you, what's not right. Because you are allowing yourself the freedom of supporting your creative initiative, however impulsive they are. But at the same time, you have the wisdom to understand that you need to remove all this anxiety about money so your mind can be free to create and chase that meaningful contribution that is so important for you. 


    Aaron White: [00:51:39 - 00:51:40]

    Yes, absolutely. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:51:40 - 00:51:57]

    So that brings us to my favorite question about fulfillment. So if you were to score your life from zero to ten in terms of the level of fulfillment you feel at this moment in your life, what would it be? 


    Aaron White: [00:51:57 - 00:52:20]

    Probably rate myself higher this month that I've had more time to decompress and travel over the last couple of weeks. I'm going to put it maybe at like a six or a seven, which may sound low to others, but also because I'm not unhappy. I'm actually quite happy. But there's a couple of big things ahead of me that I still want to do. My wife and I are trying to start a family. 


    Aaron White: [00:52:20 - 00:53:34]

    I'm very excited about that. I think that's going to be very fulfilling and challenging and sleepless. And then I already know the next business I want to build, and I know how big and interesting it could be if I'm successful at that. The scale of what I'm contemplating next is just entirely different than anything I've done before. I've been trying to make big swings historically, but I think that you don't know how big the swings are until you've raised your ambitions and seen what's possible. And now I'm contemplating even bigger swings. And I think with my maturity, my impostor syndrome fading away, my network being what it is, the scale of the idea, and some capital, that combination of resources is just. I want to see what I can do with it. And maybe I won't be more fulfilled on the other end of that. If it's successful, maybe it'll be the same level now, but I can't help but think there's something a little bit more around the corner, really push myself and see what I can make and what kind of challenges I can get through. So I'm rating it much higher than I would have ever rated it historically. But I'm leaving myself wiggle room for deeper fulfillment on the sort of family vector and the kind of like, career defining opportunity. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:53:34 - 00:53:56]

    It sounds like the size of your ambition lowers the level of your fulfillment. Because you're basically saying it's six to seven. Because I have this huge ambition for a new family and I have this huge ambition for the next business. So it sounds like, okay, if you had those things, you would be in nine or ten. It makes me feel maybe you don't fully appreciate where you are already. 


    Aaron White: [00:53:56 - 00:55:04]

    That could be true, but I think the fear, I'll tell you. Actually, I'm glad this is turning into a bit of a psychological viva section here, because you're not wrong. I can peek through my head with helpful prompts like this. If I were to tell you that today it's a ten, right? In my mind, for whatever reason, healthy or unhealthy, probably unhealthy, that says to me, like, no need to do more, right? And if I don't have a need to do more, then I'm stagnating. And if I'm stagnating, I'm decaying. And if I'm decaying, I'm dead. And so not leaving upside to want to go grab feels like death to me. Now, that's a pretty polarizing swing. And the reality is, and I think this is what you're saying, but I have not internalized this yet. I'm 42 soon. 43. Like, there's still lessons to learn. Fulfillment is not the same as ambition, right? Like, those things can be separate. They aren't for me. Yet I can see how it would be. There's no reason saying ten is incompatible with wanting to do more. But at my current level of maturity, they're still a little bit conflated. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:55:05 - 00:55:48]

    Yeah, because it sounds like you could think about it quite differently in your case, because you could say, thankfully, by now, I know exactly what brings me fulfillment and what doesn't. Right? Investing, activity doesn't, but building does. And it means that I'm so fulfilled already, because I can just keep doing these things better and better and better. Right? You suddenly may feel more fulfillment. Also, it sounds like with respect to the family, you have quite a lot of anxiety or worry that you may not quite be as successful as you were in other endeavors. Right. Which is not normal because you have no idea. 


    Aaron White: [00:55:50 - 00:56:32]

    I've got no priors to judge it against. It's one of those things where it's just a lot of unknowns coming at you all at once. And I think as entrepreneurs, you deal with unknowns, but ultimately the motion is to try to learn and take control of the things you can and increasingly expand the sphere of control. And with this, it's kind of like there's the before times and the after times. And the after times are very different, my understanding. So it does cause me anxiety. But I think your insight about fulfillment and how it should fuel and be a stabilizer while still allowing the ceiling to be as high as you want it to be, I would love to internalize that. I think that's going to take a few more years before that fight. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:56:32 - 00:56:36]

    I'm very happy if this idea was helpful. 


    Aaron White: [00:56:36 - 00:56:44]

    Very helpful. Very helpful. Hard, easy to hear and go, oh, that's correct. I think it's going to be harder to make a part of me. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:56:44 - 00:57:02]

    You keep mentioning the importance of people around you, and I get it that it's extremely important for you to have the right kind of team when you're building products. But can you talk to me about your personal life? How do you choose people you spend time with? And how intentional are you about it? 


    Aaron White: [00:57:02 - 00:59:03]

    Very intentional. The broken approach that I've had, just to acknowledge it before I say it, is that I remember this being very true for me in my twenty s and early 30s, less so now, but very true to a degree. It's still quite true, is I couldn't be friends with people that I could not envision working with in some way. Like if I couldn't envision sitting down and making a podcast with you or writing an article with you or building a product with you or doing something together to make, if I couldn't figure out what that would look like, I would move on. And so I would kind of cultivate my friend circle to be filled with folks that I would be thrilled to do something with if ever the opportunity arose. Right. And that's really helpful because it kind of allowed me to have things in common both sort of spiritually and pragmatically with individuals, which is a great basis for a friendship. It's a little narrowing. Right? It's not great. There's lots of amazing people. Most people are amazing in their own way, and it may not align to the things that I'm interested in. And so it's kind of like it closes some of those doors. But I recall cultivating positively my friend circle. And I've also kind of deliberately evolved my friend circle by graduating away and moving on from folks. 

    Some, it's unintentional. I'm just busy and I'm a bad at following up in certain cases. So I don't want anybody listening to think that they've been called. But there have been times where I have deliberately evolved my friend circle, and I know what I enjoy doing, and it's not sitting around watching the football game and drinking a beer. I can't do that. I start freaking out. It does not feel like a good use of my time. And so I've been very intentional with it. And my guess is my parents talking about business at the dinner table, kind of conflating, like social and work at the same time is kind of the foundation for that. But yes, been very intentional over the years. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [00:59:03 - 00:59:42]

    By now, I've met dozens of entrepreneurs who appear to be serial builders to me, like you are. But they seem to be stuck after a life changing exit because they have this trauma of how stressful it is to manage people, to worry about your business and they simply do not want to go there. And they get stuck in this deep unhappiness because they, on the one hand, know that they need to keep building because that's who they are. At the same time, this trauma stops them. I wonder if you have any good advice on how to overcome that. 


    Aaron White: [00:59:42 - 01:01:12]

    That is such a real phenomenon. I was actually just having that conversation with someone yesterday, but I probably have that conversation once a week with successful people kind of want to do something again. But the people part is the hardest part. Even active CEOs of companies will confide that to people in their trust circle. It's very real. People are very challenging in all the best and worst ways. I think the thing that, the advice that I have is think back to the best folks you've ever worked with. Right? And if you just had to work on a team of ten to 20 of those people, how amazing would that be? And most people go, oh, yeah, that'd be killer. That's all I want to do. It's like, do that because now you're a better judge of talent. You're better at attracting high quality talent, discerning it, enabling people to really flex their muscles. You can do that when you start, you don't know what you don't know when you're building a business. Maybe you know how to hire for one role type, because that's the thing you know, for me, that was engineering. I don't hire engineers because I'm an engineer, but salespeople, marketers support. Like, what do I know? But you learn those things as you go, and so you start to become a better judge of those folks, and your network gets better. I think in this case, the grass is greener, right? Like, yes, people will always be hard, but you know so much more than when you built your last team up that you can be way more intentional about it. 


    Aaron White: [01:01:12 - 01:02:16]

    And lucky for all of us, I think the world's just very different right now. I think Sam Alvin said this. He thinks it'll be a billion dollar company soon with just one person. I don't know about just one person, but I can tell you that I think you can get to, like, 100 million ARR with like, ten to 20 people. Right? I think that's actually possible because the tech has gotten so much better. Obviously, you still need a strong idea and strong pull from customers. But those two factors, the fact that you know how to hire better and enable people better, and you already have a network, means that your starting basis for your team will be so much higher quality than ever before, and that you probably need fewer people these days than if it were ten years ago, like when you started the last thing. That should inspire some confidence. But the phenomenon is very real. I see a lot of people very upset about it. And yeah, it's tough because nobody wants to disappoint anybody else. Nobody wants to let someone down and say, hey, I'm letting you down, or the team's letting you down, or, I made a bad hire. This is not the right place for you. I'm sorry I convinced you to join this opportunity. 


    Aaron White: [01:02:16 - 01:02:33]

    It's actually a bad mismatch for you. All those conversations are just deeply painful. So the emotional exhaustion is real. I think the more you mature internally, too, probably helps. I don't have any good advice for that. Clearly still got a lot of growth ahead of me, but there's a lot of hesitancy in folks to do the next thing for that, the team. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:33 - 01:03:46]

    But this is brilliant. Thank you. I love your advice. Very practical. Besides the trauma of dealing with employees and partners, also the idea of how stressful building a business is is obviously another fear. And we talked about it. I love that post you made a few years ago when you looked back at how your weight related to the stress you had during different periods in your life. And I remember there was this really cool chart which showed basically your weight would go up when you were building a business. Then it would go down when you had a period of rest, and then it would go up when you had to raise money from vcs, and then it would go down. And I thought it was so beautiful because it clearly shows how our body absorbs all this stress and that the price we pay for building a business is also clearly our health, not to mention our mental health. So again, I would love you to talk a bit more about that aspect and how you managed to overcome the fear of additional stress when you made the decision to go ahead and build yet another business. 


    Aaron White: [01:03:46 - 01:07:12]

    I need to do an update to that post because I've got more years of data on it and it keeps holding true. Like high stress times. Your body eats the stress just as much as your mind does, and as you get older, that gets riskier and riskier. In a way, the stress really worries me. I think maybe it's helpful then I feel a little bit more stressed not doing anything because that motivates me to do something, which is, in a weird way, a stress reducer for me. Taking action always reduces stress on some level. Maybe not in total, but it does feel better. I think the way in which I'm managing stress go forward is I have a couple of things that make things easier for me. Some are lessons anybody can learn, some are specific, like I have had some windfalls now, which means that the things that stress me out around the house, I don't have to worry about. We have someone come and clean the house, we can do meal prep if we want to, eating out or having order in is not a problem. So I'm not stressing about trying to plan grocery trips and this and that and cleaning and doing laundry and all this. I can kind of set a bunch of stuff aside and if a business folds, I'll be okay. That does remove a lot of stress. So that's nice. And that's a post exited luxury. I think the things that I can control that have gotten better with age one is the know thyself. Like knowing what I'm good at, what my zone of genius is, is very helpful. Because while I still need to be good judge of quality for other things in the business, I know that the more I can hand off to others, especially if it's their zone of genius to focus on mine, the better we all are. And so I've learned to let go more. The thing that I won't let go on is speed of iteration. Because it's okay if you don't do as good of a job as I might dream I would have done with infinite time. But if you and I are iterating really fast, even something that's not quite right, we can make predictably better. So that's the one thing I won't give up on. But other than that, I'm getting much better at handling my toys to others. Right? That reduces a lot of stress. And then that post is really interesting because I think that mind body connection works both ways, right? Like, yes, absolutely. When I am stressed out by the business's challenge, people challenge, fundraising challenge, customer challenge, Runway challenge, my weight goes up, my sleep goes down, and my skin color goes gray, and all these bad things happen. But I found out in 2019, I'd always dabbled with running and rock climbing and things like that. But in 2019, I started lifting heavy weights. I'd never done that before, and it reversed the direction. It's like the more I got myself in shape, the more I wanted to eat healthy. The more I ate healthy and worked out, the better I slept. And the better I slept, the better I did at work, because I just wasn't waking up in a fog. I had a longer fuse, I wasn't losing my temper. And so now a non negotiable for me is carving out time in the workday to get those workouts in. Because as much as that hour and a half seems that day, like it's going to be the thing that changes the trajectory of the business, it usually isn't. But if I start getting unhealthy, that will change the trajectory of the business. I would say finding some sort of workout that is really appealing to you, whether it's biking, running, lifting, whatever that is, a lever you have that goes in the other way, which I didn't find out until much later. 


    Aaron White: [01:07:12 - 01:07:29]

    I found the negative side. Now I found the positive side. So there are just some spread your toys around, remove things from your life that you can, and then learn that improving your health actually improves your well being, which improves your ability to be more ambitious and do cooler things. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:07:29 - 01:08:06]

    You've mentioned a big ambition a few times now, and I have to say that for me, one of the huge aha. Moments in my life was when I realized that the bigger my ambition is, the less stress I feel, because I suddenly don't care about those small things, like what you mentioned before. They become so small, comparing to my big ambition, my purpose, that I just don't care and I don't stress anymore. For me, it was very paradoxical, because I thought the bigger the dream, the more scared I would be. But it's the opposite, actually. 


    Aaron White: [01:08:06 - 01:09:15]

    I love that because I think a bigger ambition in a lot of ways results from a clearer vision. In a way. Like saying I want to be $20 richer is definitionally clear, but it's not practically clear. Saying you want to start a company to build self driving cars and have it deployed in every major city, that's incredibly ambitious, and it's huge. And it's also clear, oddly, and you're right, it burns away a lot of those micro things. And so when you get caught up, if you're trying to save $20, you might get caught up in how you're spending $0.05 here and there. You're trying to build a self driving, international self driving car company. You're not going to get caught up in those small things. You realize that spending any ounce of energy on that is a massive waste compared to these bigger levers you could go find and pull. And so I think maybe then what I'm hearing from you is it gives you more clarity, it allows you to not sweat the details, which both those things reduce anxiety. I love it. I mean, great, everybody raise your ambitions. You'll feel healthier. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:09:15 - 01:09:20]

    Do you have a sense of purpose and what your relationship with this word is? 


    Aaron White: [01:09:20 - 01:11:39]

    I've definitely done those exercises over the years. The icky guys. What is my life's purpose? I think I'm getting a clearer vision, maybe. I think one reason my blog is called singularity VC. If you're familiar with the idea of the singularity, it's just Ray Kurzweil, he said that technology has been on this exponential curve and we're coming up on the point at which it's going to be impossible to predict what happens afterwards. Right? I have always been obsessed with tech, even before I was working with it, because I would read a ton of Sci-Fi science fiction. I just could not read enough. And science fiction is very ambitious, right? Like, Star Trek is a great one. What if we had a society where we'd removed famine and suffering and all this, and we could explore the stars? What would that be like? I think that humans as a species and our societies right now, I don't think we have most folks have any idea how much incredible change is coming in the next decade or two here. I think there's an immense amount. And everything from cheap energy, AI, robotics, advances in medicine. This world is not going to look the same a couple of decades from now. The future is not evenly distributed, like it's not going to be everywhere. All at once. But the things that we're hearing about in the news today, some of those titles are sensational and some aren't. I think my purpose is to really help pull parts of that future forward and just show people exactly how powerful the primitives that we have are and how bigger we could possibly raise our ambitions together if we can take care of those things. I would love a Star Trek future. That's what I'm hoping for. I think it's going to be pretty bumpy along the way, but I'm starting to see my purpose is in kind of showing people that what they think of as science fiction is about to become pragmatic reality. And that's just so fun. It's like being a magician, right? Like, here's the, like, ha ha. That's not. No, no, it is. Check it out. Apple Vision Pro came out last week, and that's like one of those moments for a lot of people. It's like the device has its challenges, but if you hadn't put your head inside VR until you put that thing on, that was your first entry into it. It should be mind blowing because, like, wait, we could do like, that's incredible. There's so much more of that coming. So that's exciting. And I think that's starting to help me get a better sense of purpose. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:11:39 - 01:11:50]

    But it's interesting. It sounds like you are attaching that sense of purpose more to singularity VC blog than to your future businesses or current businesses. 


    Aaron White: [01:11:50 - 01:11:52]

    No, those things, they'll line up. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:11:52 - 01:12:01]

    So you also want to be part of that future, not just through storytelling, but through actually creating. No, through hands and brains. 


    Aaron White: [01:12:01 - 01:12:22]

    Is it Alan Kay? Like, the best way to predict the future is to make it. I want to make it. I think I can predict which way it's heading, but I think it'll be even more satisfying not just to have written like, hey, folks, I think we're heading this way, but like, hey, folks, look what I just did. How cool is this? What can we do with this now? I think that's way more satisfying. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:12:22 - 01:12:24]

    So tell me about your typical day. 


    Aaron White: [01:12:24 - 01:14:49]

    Right now with the post exit hat on. My typical day is amazing because I have not ever had a day where I could just sleep and wake up when my body woke up versus alarms or anxiety waking me up. So typical day these days is I'll wake up somewhere between eight and ten. No pressure to pick a time in there. It doesn't really matter. My wife and I love coffee. We do a little walk. There's an island nearby that we walk around. It's about a two and a half mile loop, depending on how we do it. We say hi to our favorite coffee shop along the way there. 

    And then I'll settle in to do a bunch of research and just learn about what I'm up to. And so on one screen, I've got just a ton of notes and links that I'm trying to read and learn and remembering that, hey, I can read academic papers, hey, I can play with unfinished open source projects. So really actively engaging. And on the other screen, I've got my sort of vision mission statement for the next thing that I'm building, and I'm constantly adding and amending to this narrative around what's the change I'm about to bring into the world that will take me to about 02:00 p.m. When I've forgotten that I haven't eaten lunch. And then we'll sit down and eat, and then I'll go to the gym for a couple of hours, which is great. I get to get all the mobility I want in all the lifting, all the hot tub or sauna afterwards, which has just been so fantastic. And then I'll come home. I might read and work a little bit more, and then my wife will hang out together. We might play a board game. I might play games online with friends. Maybe we travel out to dinner, settle in, and read in bed. Science fiction for me, usually, and then repeat the next day. So it's pretty easy going right now. I know that once the next thing kicks in, I'm at risk of waking up every morning at 07:00 a.m. Because I cannot wait to be at my computer 15 minutes later without even putting street clothes on. Just maybe I'm in my pajamas, just furiously working, and then maybe that continues till eight or nine at night. So I'm trying to hold that off until I've established this kind of healthier cadence with my weightlifting and eating so that when this finally comes around, it's from a much healthier base than I've done historically. So the days are easy and full of learning right now, which is awesome. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:14:49 - 01:14:52]

    So your last exit was in April 22, wasn't it? 


    Aaron White: [01:14:52 - 01:14:57]

    I think both of them technically concluded in February of 22. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:14:57 - 01:15:08]

    So basically, for two years now, you have essentially given yourself permission to heal, to rebalance, to learn more things. Actually, next big thing. 


    Aaron White: [01:15:08 - 01:16:12]

    One of those exits was very much into an active company where I took over technology and product, and there's no relaxing when you're operating a growing business. Six months after that acquisition, I helped raise 150,000,000. We grew the team from a combined 150 on up through a doubling. That is a very intense period for a company. So for the first year and a half at least, there was no relaxing. Some things I could take care of, which was nice, but I was still very much in it. I would say over the last couple of months now, this has been the actual true post exit period where I'm truly between things and I have a lot of kind of material concerns taken care of. Now is this time of healing and it truly is kind of like healing. Honestly, it's like fixing every broken thing about, oh, I didn't realize I was duct taped together here and here and here. This routine that I've just described to you. It's only a couple of months old, but it's pretty great. But it's only a couple of months. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:16:12 - 01:16:38]

    It sounds perfect for the healing period. I always try to encourage people to take their time and heal because I think a lot of what we see when people rush into the next business just to be disappointed and give up very quickly comes from the fact that they did not allow themselves to heal properly. Do you have any idea how long you think you'll want to keep doing that? 


    Aaron White: [01:16:38 - 01:16:48]

    That is a great question. That's a really great question. And some of the smartest investors I've ever worked with have said the same thing. Like, you must take this period of healing. It's kind of critical. 


    Aaron White: [01:16:48 - 01:17:57]

    To not do it is to kid yourself. In my head, I was hoping for three months. My friends were advising for at least six months. And practically speaking, if I'm not careful, it's going to turn into about only two months. So I am trying my best to hold back at really going all in too soon on the next thing. I think in practice it's going to end up being like, again, three ish months or so. But I wouldn't be surprised if that was the wrong number. I wouldn't be surprised if it truly took six months to fully kind of detach and cleanse yourself from this need to be doing something. I remember this happens every time I'm between things. It's like those first couple of weeks, I should be doing nothing. Like truly, what is there to do? There should be nothing going on. But for whatever reason, anybody who sends me any email about meeting up to talk about anything, I'm just like those. The first two weeks after I told people I was like, moving on from one thing and didn't know what the next thing was I had more meetings that week than I've had in a long time. And that was me filling the void of like, well, I don't have business meetings inside the company, so I must need meetings outside the company. 


    Aaron White: [01:17:57 - 01:18:06]

    I'm past that now, thank God. But yeah, I don't know. I'd be curious. In your experience, is it three months? Is it six months? Is it a year? I mean, it probably depends on the trauma a little bit. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:18:06 - 01:19:56]

    I think it does depend on the trauma. Like for example, you seem to have very good idea how to overcome the most typical traumas dealing with people. The stress, the fear, a fear of failure, the fear that you will not succeed again. Because all these things we need to process and be comfortable with before we go forward. I did make every possible mistake a post Exeter founder can do. And one of them was that after my second exit, I didn't just start a new business right away, I started two more businesses thinking that now I knew everything and I was so cool and it will be so easy and nobody told me. What happens to our motivation a few years after our exit? It doesn't happen right away. It actually takes a little bit of time and I just completely lost motivation. So I ended up closing two businesses despite the fact that I had found product market fit. And I should not have closed them from purely pragmatic or financial standpoints. I mean, I sold them, but I sold them more like team and assets, not a proper exit. And I took time off and I think I should have done it earlier and not sacrificing businesses I really liked. So it's personal, but I would always encourage people to take as much time as possible to heal. And especially if you are about to start a family that's by itself the biggest venture you'll ever start. Probably, yeah. Your wife will need a lot of your support. You'll move together to a completely different type of relationship. So I wouldn't rush. Especially given that you already had a few companies and sold them. 


    Aaron White: [01:19:56 - 01:20:27]

    Yeah, there's wisdom in here. My hope is that I can find a better balance to go forward by knowing how to attract stronger talent and hand my toys over to them and do more, in a way, by doing less. Right. Like being a better steward of the vision and the culture can have a lot more leverage than getting your hands dirty necessarily. We'll see. I mean, it's open ended right now. There's no immediate pressure. So there's time. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:20:27 - 01:20:51]

    I don't know if balance is a realistic ambition for obsessive serial builders. But taking some time off to restore your health and your relationships and everything else you need to restore is not a bad idea. Before you get obsessed again and start spending your time, your health, your focus on the next one. 


    Aaron White: [01:20:51 - 01:21:40]

    Framing that my wife gave me, and I'm not a sports person, but it stuck with me, she says, I think your folks you work with, you strike me a lot like professional athletes. Just like the level of involvement and stress and physicality and being going all in on a business. It can be very physical. We talked about before, they also have off seasons where they're doing recovery and some lightweight training for a little while. And there's this kind of natural flow to it. And so knowing there are seasons to this that doesn't have to be. You don't have to be continuously grinding and growing. You can take these periods of health and restoration. That's probably a healthier way to approach this. And just allowing yourself that, like, no, this is part of it. This up and down is part of it. It's okay to have a serrated period. It doesn't mean you're worthless. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:21:40 - 01:21:52]

    All these insecurities, aside from the whole healing part of it, how will you know intellectually that this is your next big thing when you come across it? 


    Aaron White: [01:21:52 - 01:23:19]

    It's a combination of things for me. One, like I said, I've given myself permission to learn, and the next phase is giving myself permission again, which I don't need to, but articulating it, that it's time to experiment. Let's build some things. And I've gotten much better at not being attached to any one thing. But I mentioned that I would get together with friends and build something every weekend. The critical thing for me there is it's okay to get obsessed and build something, and it's okay to shut it down. I'm very comfortable with that motion. You call it failure and being comfortable with failure, but I just think you're taking shots. Some shots land, some don't. When something is at a combination of maybe like three things, this is when I get really excited. The first thing is I am obsessed with building it. That's a great sign. And I think that's just like for me. I happen to have, I hope, the right judgment. That when I'm obsessed with building something, it's not just because I'm in it for some esoteric reason. 

    It's because it's got some broader opportunity. Two, when I tell others about it, they get very excited about it. That means the narrative is infectious, not just the product construction right. That something about what I'm telling them is resonating, and they go, oh, wow. And then third is when the rubber hits the road, and a would be customer is playing with it and saying, this is great. 


    Aaron White: [01:23:19 - 01:23:55]

    I need more of this. And when you feel that, that's when the lightning truly hits, because it means that I can build this, I enjoy it, I can attract people to it and tell a good story to sell it, and it actually seems to work. So those three things for me are the aha moment. But in order to get there, you've got to give yourself permission to play with things, to tell people about things that might fail and to show things to people that you might not pursue. And so building that comfort with all three. But when those three things land, that's how I know it's the right thing. And that's when the health starts taking the downturn, if you're not careful, because it also means that I'll be working on it, like, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:23:55 - 01:24:52]

    But I actually love it how this approach would satisfy your most important needs in a way. Because if you look at what you just said from a different perspective, you're basically looking for something you really, really care about. Right? You really love doing. You want this process of being in the flow naturally. Then you want absolute clarity as to what it is. Because without that clarity, you wouldn't be able to do good enough storytelling for somebody else to get excited about. Right. So clarity is the second thing, and then the last thing is that need for contribution, which we keep talking about, and you tend to call it proving yourself. But to me, it feels really more like you really want to matter, contribute, and do something really good for others. So when these things come together, I can actually see how everything will work. Right? 


    Aaron White: [01:24:52 - 01:24:52]

    Yeah. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:24:52 - 01:24:53]

    That's beautiful. 


    Aaron White: [01:24:53 - 01:25:32]

    Yeah, it's great when it happens. And I think, for me, at least, I can feel it viscerally. I know when I'm faking interest in something. I've scuttled enough projects to know when I am deeply interested in something. I've shown people enough lemons to know when they're deeply interested in something, and I've told enough stories to know when I finally have a good one. Right? So I'm grateful that I've had a bunch of things that went nowhere, because it shows you the dynamic range between uninteresting on one of those dimensions to compelling. And you kind of know when you see it, but you really feel it, and that's such a good intersection. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:25:32 - 01:25:36]

    So for me. An interesting observation is that you never mentioned a business model as part of it. 


    Aaron White: [01:25:36 - 01:26:53]

    That doesn't excite me. I mean, there are elements to what I'm kind of noodling with and playing with that the business model is actually exciting when I think about it, but it's not the number one thing that gets me going. And I have seen this enough, that people will get excited about a particular business model or fixated on particular version of their product, or a problem that they think is more widespread than it actually is. And that creates a very unhealthy tunnel vision. Because if the market doesn't want that thing, or the market's not going to support that business model, then all of your hopes and dreams are anchored into something that's increasingly incorrect. But it's harder to move away from it because you are attached to it. Right? Whereas something that if you find pull from the market on anything, it's almost like the rest of that be damn, just pursue that because it will pull greatness out of you and trust yourself that you'll be smart enough to find a business model that supports it, some of which are prosaic, some of which are really interesting. But it's not the thing I start with. And there are folks that do that, and I think that's awesome. They see a market opportunity that's more structural that they're pursuing. For me, it's always been about new product experience, not some sort of arbitrage of inefficiencies, which is still very useful to the world, but not where I kind of get excited about. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:26:53 - 01:27:27]

    Well, I'm not surprised because your motivation generally comes from building a product. So you wouldn't get excited about the business model for somebody else. Their motivation comes from desire to make money this way, whether it's because they like the money making game or they just sort of want money for whatever reason. So in both cases, people are focusing on what will motivate them sustainably for long enough for this business to succeed. And in your case, it's building amazing products with amazing team. 


    Aaron White: [01:27:27 - 01:28:13]

    Yeah, and money will follow that. And I think, of course, you have to be mindful of it all along the way. And so it's not that I'm blind to the structure of how a company spends and earns its money, or the outcomes and they're structured and how that impacts your own personal windfall or your investors windfall, your team's windfall. Great. I've got all that locked and loaded in my head regardless. But it's not the thing that's going to launch me into something and sustain me. That's a second tier concern for me, in a way. If you're doing something awesome and the market likes it, then the rest is probably solvable different. If you're a CFO coming in, you should be excited about the models and what you can do with it. That's a very different type of person than I am, I think. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:28:13 - 01:28:41]

    Yeah. And the fact that you're so experienced and mature as an entrepreneur gives you that confidence that money will come. Because when you look at people who are just starting businesses, they don't have that confidence to say, oh, I'll be creating an amazing product. People want. Money will flow, right? They can't. They don't know for sure. And I love it that you do, that you'll be immensely successful in the next business, I'm sure, when you find it. 


    Aaron White: [01:28:41 - 01:28:51]

    As long as it's a lot of fun and a bunch of really smart people choose to work with me and I keep good health for myself and my family, it'll be a win no matter what. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:28:51 - 01:29:03]

    You keep an eye on that weight change. Right. Aaron, this has been absolutely amazing. And I have just one last question. How do you want to be remembered? 


    Aaron White: [01:29:05 - 01:29:16]

    That is a great question. As someone who is always excited about what they were doing and about what others were doing, and if that's how I'm remembered, I will feel really good about myself. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:29:16 - 01:29:34]

    Beautiful. Aaron, I wish you the best luck with your family, with your health, with your healing process, and with your next business. And I'm very, very grateful for this interview. You gave me so many golden nuggets and so much inspiration for my audience. I just can't wait to release it. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:29:34 - 01:29:35]

    Thank you. 


    Aaron White: [01:29:35 - 01:29:41]

    Well, thanks so much. Such a fun conversation. And I think I got some psychological work done here, too, which has been very helpful. 


    Anastasia Koroleva: [01:29:41 - 01:29:46]

    I'm very happy. I'm very happy. All right, I'll talk to you soon, I'm sure. Okay, bye. 


    Aaron White: [01:29:47 - 01:29:47]

    Take care.


 
Anastasia Koroleva
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