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01:14:02 · Kosta, Fabian, Sam
[01:14:02] S0: story. What... Going back to like Gabe's response to you guys, you know, there there is truth in what he says about why why Palo Alto? [01:14:09] S6: We we really like the proximity to Stanford. So there's a lot of amazing AI researchers there thinking about building companies. SF is more like the the place where everybody sort of converts to anyway. So it's really hard to distinguish yourself from all the other events that are going on in SF. Whilst if you're in Palo Alto, you can attract all the Stanford people with an amazing mansion that you have, and then you can just host a a lot of events there. Yeah. We hosted over a 100 people for events over. We had 75 people that lived with us in the last couple of months. So... Yeah. It was really like an intense community, and we wanted to be like that. So... Yeah. It was actually an advantage to not be sort of in the pressure cook off as well. [01:14:49] S1: Yeah. Yeah. How are you you kind of mentioned it a little bit, but how are you guys specifically, like, activating the community? Do you guys put checks into to to this? Do you intro them to to, you know, VCs and all this kind of stuff? Like, how does it work?
01:14:49 · Sam, Fabian
[01:14:49] S1: Yeah. Yeah. How are you you kind of mentioned it a little bit, but how are you guys specifically, like, activating the community? Do you guys put checks into to to this? Do you intro them to to, you know, VCs and all this kind of stuff? Like, how does it work? [01:15:03] S6: I mean, like, that that is basically what it eventually turned into to some extent. But the core purpose of the community is to really have aligned incentives to just build companies. Right? Like, we we don't want to have half of the people there as investors trying to prey on, like, young potential founders, which is what usually happens in these communities. Right? But we just wanted it to be a space where we can, like, really ideate freely without pressure, without like investors' expectations so much. Mhmm. And so, yeah, it turned out that we would like... We also port each other massively. Like we got a lot of people in just based on references. So we didn't do like an official application thing. We didn't post anything on social media for a bunch of reasons. But... So basically, that's that's what the community is now turning to. So people invest into each other. Of course, there's a lot of, like, VCs that are interested to open doors. But also actually the founders are really supportive with each other. Like everybody's going through the same kind of problems with hiring, with finding customers, with finding right angles to pitch projects, to go from pilot to actual proper converted long term contracts.
01:16:06 · Kosta
[01:16:06] S0: Tell us a little bit about why this is so important for the community because, you know, I imagine, you know, especially like how more founding teams are getting predominantly technical based. I'd say we're seeing like an increase in terms of like, you can now have two co founders that are just like inherently technical. Maybe previously it would be a technical co founder and then an individual who maybe is more socially adverse typically than a technical individual. But you know, are probably technical founders out there who may be shyer than most, who may not know where to go, who may not know how to get their name out there. I think the role that you guys are playing in that is connecting them with the right people, giving them a safe environment to innovate and be comfortable and bring the best ideas out. Talk to us a little bit about why this is so important to the ecosystem.
01:16:48 · Fabian
[01:16:48] S6: Yeah. For sure. I mean, like, we we ourselves are building companies. So like the... Our primary interest also was to get the most exciting talent in there to potentially cofound with or to hire. So we really had aligned incentives to just build the best community possible. And like now we stopped doing that. Like, it's not a thing anymore. Like, that... That's been like sort of our effort for the last couple of months. And now what we're what we're setting our minds to is just building our companies and scaling them. So... But... Yeah. For for sure, it's really important to get a mixture of different talent and different backgrounds. I I think this is also drawing back to the to the point on CDTM. I think that's also what makes CDTM so great. So that you have 25 people from all sorts of courses from these two universities. Yeah. And all of them have amazing grades and have always like overachieved in some capacity. But then you throw them into this pressure cooker program where you just form bonds. And by living together in a house with like 15 people in like, I don't know, seven or eight bedrooms, like you always share, like there's there's a lot of pressure. Correct? Like... And this this leads to forming bonds and having having like deep human relationships. Right? It's not like I think you can turn any... Like, of course, early startup ideation can be turned into a program, into to some capacity that feels like you can consume it. But in the end, it's like you too, right? Like you turn into some something like a proper love relationship, right? Like you need to you need to be constructive together. You're really really close all the time. And that's like much more of a human experience. So being able to live together, to have that chat experience over over several months that really helped to to form these bonds amongst like all sorts of people with different backgrounds.
01:18:29 · Kosta, Sam, Fabian
[01:18:29] S0: Yeah. Think we're quite happy. Even dressed the same. [01:18:31] S1: Yeah. Yeah. I think we're quite happy that we don't live together cause we literally... [01:18:34] S0: I would kill this guy. I'm sure I'd piss him off as well. [01:18:38] S1: Let's let's talk about Munich and Germany and the ecosystem there and and the difference between there and Palo Alto. What what what are the main differences that you're seeing? Because you're literally at the coalface of that kind of like, you know, comparison, I guess. [01:18:52] S6: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, the... I think the... I I don't wanna, like, politicize the the [01:18:58] S1: And I like
01:18:58 · Sam, Fabian, Kosta
[01:18:58] S1: And I like [01:18:59] S6: US and so on. Yeah. I think there's a lot of tension going around it. But I think, like, one core difference was definitely that in Munich nobody was willing to just give us money without strings attached. Right? Like the the European investors that we talked to early on always wanted to have some clause to have preliminary access rights and things like that. I think which also makes sense in an economy where there's just like much less money flowing around. Yeah. And at the same time, the optimism that you have in SF, I think now with the Anthropic IPO, there's like over 5,000 people that are getting 65,000,000 on average. Like, the the amount of people that can cash out and I think like seeing that on a daily basis, of course, leads to people being more optimistic. So I I guess there's a little bit of a different spirit. In in Europe, I think there's... And in Munich, there's an outstanding talent base. There's so many smart people. A lot of them are working towards European sovereignty now and like all sorts of spaces. I think that's an amazing amazing place to be at. So I miss Munich a lot now now being in Palo Alto. I guess there's a lot of pros and cons, but both places are amazing. [01:20:05] S0: Maybe last one before we wrap up. What is the one thing that you're getting excited about for the future? What's something that you're, yeah, you're buzzing to start?