Isaac leans on two core values: asking the right questions and humility. Along with a good friend, he launched several companies. And several failed — until he launched SendGrid in 2009. After learning to hire up with strong CEOs, the company went public in 2018. Since then, he has gotten an Executive MBA, launched Joy Labs, and now is a few years into Memo, which launches with its first 200 users soon. He shares his stories of discovery of his passion through a nudge from his high school guidance counselor and all that he has learned along the way.
Guest: Isaac Saldana, CEO, Memo
Isaac Saldana is an impressive entrepreneur who co-founded SendGrid—a venture acquired for $3 billion in 2018. He is passionate about discussing some unique challenges he had to overcome in order to find success as an entrepreneur, and his advice for others who are dealing with the same issues. Born in the U.S. but raised in Mexico from a young age, Isaac possessed all the traits that could have made him a natural leader – intelligent, decisive, creative – but he struggled with shyness, introversion, and the complexities of self-promotion, which made building a personal brand an uphill battle. Isaac’s immigrant background also meant that he had to confront these challenges without a safety net. This led him to experience firsthand the common struggles faced by countless entrepreneurs and creatives: not knowing how to effectively showcase their talents, lacking the time and resources to navigate the intricacies of personal branding, and feeling that their natural personalities may not fit the mold of traditional influencers. Despite these challenges, Isaac excelled academically and was able to find success, but his story sheds light on an intriguing aspect of entrepreneurship—the current methods of personal branding don’t work for everyone, resulting in exceptional individuals like him remaining relatively unknown, even to this day. Now he’s determined to address this issue with his next venture and find a way to level the playing field for those facing similar struggles. By tackling the barriers of knowledge, time, resources, and natural charisma that often hinder self-promotion, his goal is to help entrepreneurs and creatives who truly deserve recognition navigate the obstacles of personal branding and empower them to leverage their unique talents and expertise.
Mentioned Links:
- Memo.com
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad
- Contact: Jon Bleicher, jon@prospectpr.com
About Creative Innovators Podcast
In the Creative Innovators podcast, innovators and creators share stories of how they create and reimagine.
In each episode, host and change agent Gigi Johnson interviews a different changemaker from a wide range of industries, including creative industries, software, education, sciences, and social innovation. The guests share their stories of how they became passionate about innovation and how they have transformed their businesses and communities.
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Https://creativeinnovatorspodcast.com
Transcript
Gigi Johnson
I'm so excited to have you on here. This show has been on. This is our third season and we've had all sorts of people from all sorts of walks of life and a lot of people have found their own way and some people have been given away. And it sounds like you have largely found your own way and built interesting spaces where spaces didn't necessarily exist.
Gigi Johnson
Can I have you start us out and talk about what you're doing now before I drag you back into history?
Isaac Saldana
Well, first, thank you for having me here and currently I'm the CEO of a company called Memo. Memo is about 15 people. We've been working at it for about three years, and we're about to launch with 200 people and about a month from now.
Gigi Johnson
Where are you guys located?
Isaac Saldana
We're remote, so we have the 15, 15 employees are all over the world.
Gigi Johnson
And where are you?
Isaac Saldana
I'm in Southern California at Irvine.
Gigi Johnson
Specifically Irvine. Excellent. I'm an Orange County kid from high school. So that's an overall territory that I'm used to. Other people go, Irvine, have I heard of Irvine? Other than the mascot, the nearby school is the anteaters, but I think it's still the anteaters. Yeah, so you are. So Memmo is a few years old and you've done a couple stretches of building things, but did you start out in Southern California?
Gigi Johnson
What's your kind of starting point?
Isaac Saldana
So I was born in the US and when I was around five we went to Mexico to live there. And so I came back when I was 14 and I went to high school in India, California. I then went to UC Riverside here in Southern California and moved back to the Palm Springs area where India is. And the last business I started was in 2008, prior to Memmo, the name of it was Sigrid.
Isaac Saldana
And I started in the Palm Springs area and then moved to Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, to continue there to join a program called Texas.
Gigi Johnson
So when you were 14 and came to Indio, California, where I have relatives, if you came to Indio, California, what would you want to be? Were you the type of guy who is taking apart computers or breaking things? Were you the one who was organizing other kids? Were you somebody who was trying 25 things at once, trying to figure stuff out?
Gigi Johnson
What was your kind of passion point?
Isaac Saldana
So when I got here, I did not know how to speak English. And so that was my main thing. It's like I want to be able to communicate with people. And I was good at school. I like math, but I played baseball, but I was in particularly interested in and anything in fact, my I went to my counselor my senior year trying to figure out what I wanted to do because it was time to go to college.
Isaac Saldana
And she recommended to go. She asked me a few questions and I told her I like math, and she said, Well, you should go into engineering. What kind of school are you interested in? And I'm like, Well, UC Riverside is the closest one. And then she said, Maybe you should go into computers. That's a thing right now. And so I wanted to do computer engineering.
Isaac Saldana
UC Riverside did not have computer engineering. It only had computer science. So I picked whatever had computer in it and ended up majoring in computer science.
Gigi Johnson
It is amazing how we make left and right turns in life right here. Look. Oh, you're good at math. You should do engineering, which I find lots of young people. You're good at math and science. You should do engineering. And then that sets them on their way. Right? So UC Riverside, after having had a multicultural upbringing, what was that like and did that study match?
Gigi Johnson
What made you happy?
Isaac Saldana
I . . . my first quarter. So they go by . . . by quarters and not by semesters. I, I was used to getting A's in high school. I did . . . I did relatively good in high school and I ended up getting a B-minus. And I tried so hard for that class and ended up getting lower grades after. But it was just my first time getting a a B-minus in college on a computer science class.
Isaac Saldana
And it made me realize how hard it was. And so I didn't like it then. But because I got a B-minus, I started looking into a lot of books and in-between quarters and somehow just became so passionate about to the point that now I don't get to code anymore. But when I have some free time, I try . . . I code because it's I just feel that I can get into into flow . . . into the flow state.
Isaac Saldana
That's how much I like it. And so fundamentally makes me happy to code. I wish I could code more, but I'm just not that good to go.
Gigi Johnson
So have you ever gone back to talk to that high school counselor?
Isaac Saldana
No, I have not. You should. Yeah, I should.
Gigi Johnson
You know, you recommended that I do this. So you were doing a double major in electrical engineering and computer science. If I understand the path correctly. And then life comes about, you graduate. And then what? What stares you in the face and, you know, did you . . . Again, you've been an entrepreneur, you've been a coder. Did you have an entrepreneurial bent when you were in school?
Gigi Johnson
Did anything beckon to you that sort of screamed entrepreneurship or risk taking or anything like that when you were in school?
Isaac Saldana
No. So up to that point, my family had always recommended to get a stable job and in go to school to get that stable job. And one of my friends, his name is Elmer Thomas, he introduced me to a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And and for whatever reason, that book just helped me think differently. And it wasn't just about this notion of studying hard, getting good grades so that I could get a stable job.
Isaac Saldana
I, I somehow life changing in the sense of how I thought about things. And I literally like the week after I started my first business with Elmer. So.
Gigi Johnson
So so for those who haven't read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And if you haven't read it, please read it. Give it to a friend. I tend to think of it as the two by two box that you can be an employee, you can then be a manager. But wealth really comes from owning a business and or owning a bunch of assets and businesses.
Gigi Johnson
And so we do spend and I say this as weeks, I'm just coming off a 22 years of teaching at UCLA. We do tend to talk a story of get a job to get do employment. And there's quite a few young people, especially who who are first generation college who I've worked with who once they get that story of rich dad, poor dad, suddenly go, Wait, wait, wait.
Gigi Johnson
I've been sold. A different story coming up in the here, right? I've been told to go to college and get a good job and work for a company. So you started your first job, your first company with Elmer. What was the first company?
Isaac Saldana
The first company. So this is back in 2003 and we were developers. We also this was before the cloud existed, so used to have to rent machines and put them in a data center. So we noticed that. And so we and at that time when you had a website, it was usually a five page static website, and each page cost on average about $1,000.
Isaac Saldana
So if you usually the average website had five pages, so you would pay about $5,000. We wanted to do essentially what WordPress was, where we would develop the websites for free through code and charge users $10 a month. And so I can talk about the challenges that we found there, but needless to say, it didn't work out.
Gigi Johnson
So this is what you did when you got out of college or this is well, you're still in college that you had this great idea.
Isaac Saldana
Oh, this is right after college. So I was the systems administrator for the electrical Engineering Department, and I was looking to move on. And so I moved on and had this business and also had a job. So I, I didn't go at it full time. I didn't have resources to do that.
Gigi Johnson
So, gosh, how to say this was Alma the right partner?
Isaac Saldana
Yeah, since I.
Gigi Johnson
Was going to listen to this, possibly.
Isaac Saldana
Yeah. So, I mean, I still talk to Elmer. Elmer just was a huge influence in my life and for multiple reasons. One first introducing me to Rich that that I wouldn't, I wouldn't be creating this if he had introduced me to that. But we created actually a multiple business together and we learned together. So we fell together. And because of those failures, if I did have those failures and I wouldn't have done SendGrid, which was my my last company.
Isaac Saldana
And so.
Gigi Johnson
So what was your guys's big learning from that? Fail?
Isaac Saldana
Yeah, so we had multiple learnings. So the first business we learned that we, we needed a good idea and the idea was pretty good. I think it was just too early and so we ran out of money and so we're like, okay, well we need an investment. And so the next idea we, we had a good idea, we had a good team and we raised money and we found and one of the things that I realized after that was that sometimes entrepreneurs don't know even to ask the right questions.
Isaac Saldana
And so having mentors around can help entrepreneurs, especially the ones start and just just ask what the right questions could be. And so we didn't know what we didn't know. And so this is what when we decided to apply to Techstars for SendGrid, which is Techstars for the ones that don't know, it's a and mentor driven accelerator. And, and what's great about it is that it's not a template based mentorship where everyone gets the same mentorship.
Isaac Saldana
You connect with mentors based on what your needs are. And so we were able to connect with the ones that we needed.
Gigi Johnson
So that teleported you guys to what?
Isaac Saldana
Denver Yeah, to Boulder.
Gigi Johnson
To Boulder. Were you in the same group as Alex White?
Isaac Saldana
Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He was a next six out. Yeah. So I.
Gigi Johnson
When I met him the year after that, when he had come out of Techstars, he was trying to grow. What then has become now a chunk of Pandora and he's doing other stuff. Yeah. So, but you can come in and do all sorts of things, so you can do music, you can do other things, you can be in various cohorts.
Gigi Johnson
What was your big learning from Techstars?
Isaac Saldana
Well, it was, it was that that we needed to be humble about what we knew and understand that we just didn't know everything. And and we saw failure just like business as usual. And that was just like learning as learning experiences. And so reacting to those learnings as fast as we could was our mindset. And so but I can tell just the whole process, daughters name things like how to price a SAS business, how to pitch a company, how to position a company.
Gigi Johnson
Let's back up even a step so not everyone knows what SendGrid is. Well, what was the original idea? Was it the same idea? And how did you validate that there was a real need there? I know that with your current business you're starting with your first 200. What was the proof of the pudding and how did you that get tested?
Isaac Saldana
I can tell you what the name and the pitch was initially and then what it what how it changed during Techstars. So the name of the company was S&P API dot com and it was time. Yeah. We submitted pile years and it was an email platform that would allow developers to filter out email, receive emails on their application so they didn't have to worry about all the logic.
Isaac Saldana
That was kind of how our pitch went. Obviously, no one remember to pitch and couldn't even pronounce or name, and we in the pitch and how it changed was that we changed the name to SendGrid. And so seeing read on on average 20% of emails sent by Web applications either were missing or they were caught by spam filters.
Isaac Saldana
So SendGrid was a cloud based service that allowed people to deliver the emails on their behalf. So the email deliverability problems and our other features like metrics. And so on average, eBay made a certain sound that if they didn't deliver 1% of their yearly email, they would lose $14 million. And now the average was 20 and so this was a big problem.
Isaac Saldana
We didn't know that. And so the way we validated this is I was CTO of a company before starting. This is after closing the companies that I had that I started with Elmer and prior to starting the same grid, I worked as a CTO in another in another company. And when we were delivering emails as CTO, I saw that these emails were ending up in spam filters.
Isaac Saldana
And so because I was a technical person in the company, I had to solve the problem and I tried a solution for months. And the solution was terrible. And because it was terrible, I just became passionate about the problem. And so when I had a decent solution after this company, even I continue working after this company owned that same problem, I went to a forum and ask and asked people, Is anyone having this problem?
Isaac Saldana
And to my surprise, people were having this problem and so much that someone was willing to pay for all of our servers as long as we provided that solution. And so that's how initially we got started.
Gigi Johnson
And what were the other ideas that you didn't move forward in? I mean, part of it were they're kind of sexier problems that came up where you thought, Oh, that could be it, or this could be bigger, or what were the the lures that were attracting you otherwise?
Isaac Saldana
Yeah. So we wanted to do all of these features for them so that the three co-founders of First and Greg were developers. And so we wanted to solve a lot of cool developer problems, like when you would send an email. We wanted to have apps that would put their content there. Like if, if people were sending real estate email through SendGrid, we would put an app where you could have like the latest MLS proper EAS, or if you wanted to put ads or if you wanted to put some A.I. stuff on the content of the email, we would just people would connect apps.
Isaac Saldana
And so we wanted to build that so much. But we did it because we found a pain point on email deliverability. And in this problem was 20% on average for every company. The email going missing was was a big missed opportunity.
Gigi Johnson
And sometimes the cleaning up part is more profitable than the sexy new revenue part. Or there might be more competition.
Isaac Saldana
Yeah. And so one of the things that that we got lucky with that same was that it wasn't just a technology company. A lot of it was support because sometimes we needed to contact Gmail sometimes and you contact all these providers and develop relationships with them, something that companies just couldn't afford to do. So having the combination of taking all the G and support for us was a big lucky break.
Gigi Johnson
So meanwhile you had parents who were going, you know, Isaac, we really wanted you to have a big company, safe job. What did they think of your spelunking through and trying different startups and trying to build things?
Isaac Saldana
Well, I, I had this advantage that I at that point, computer science was not to it's not that it's mainstream, but it wasn't as visible as it is now. Not that it's very visible, but it's more visible now than before. So not many people understood what I did. They just understood that I did something with computers to the point where, like if they had a virus in their computer, they would call me even though I did just.
Gigi Johnson
Me with my computer. Yeah. So I'm not sure most parents understand what in blue blazes their kids do. So I think that and most kids don't understand what their parents do either. So so at some point in time here you went and got your MBA at MIT. If I'm understanding the journey right, why, when and that's not a cheap price tag, how did that fit into your decision process?
Isaac Saldana
Actually, my MBA was after we went public.
Gigi Johnson
Oh, okay. Oh, that's even more interesting to me. So I was like, Yeah, I think that's even more interesting to me as to why then to do that, we'll come back to that then. So you went on the journey, then I'm taking sent SendGrid from a small startup going through Techstars. How big did you guys get before you IPO?
Isaac Saldana
We were about 500 people in about $100 million and yearly revenue.
Gigi Johnson
So you went through lotsa shifting sands of scalability fund needs doing rounds of money. Who is the superpower for the growth side of this? Did you build that shell around yourselves and with your team? Did you add people on? Was that a superpower you found? You had had a growth, had a growth where for you?
Isaac Saldana
Yeah, I think the superpower that we had was that humility was one of our values. And in fact, it's one of our values. That memo and early on, I so I was CEO of the company for the first three years. And in 2011 we brought in a CEO. In fact, I was very transparent to the board and I told the board, you know what board?
Isaac Saldana
I need a CEO because I don't know what I'm doing. And and the board was supportive and they understood and I was connecting with multiple CEOs. But one of the things that I noticed was that CEO and CEO is kind of close in so many CEOs that we're experience. The ones that I was looking for probably did not want to work for an inexperienced CEO.
Isaac Saldana
And and so I saw that. And so two years in, we swapped the role from CEO to CEO and oh my gosh, we've got great candidates and in 2011, we brought in a CEO. His name's Jeff Franklin, and oh my gosh, I and so one of the requirements for me was obviously someone that could help us grow the company.
Isaac Saldana
But the other one was to be a mentor to me because I was hungry for knowledge. I understood that I, I was an engineer and I didn't have a business background and so wanted to learn from someone. And so I learned from from Jim not only about how to run a company, but he was willing to mentor me.
Isaac Saldana
And in 2014, 20 or 2016, around there, we brought in another CEO. I sat on the board and this transition. So I also learned from the board perspective. And the second CEO or the third CEO was his name was Samir DeLuca. And and oh my gosh, I learned from Samir so much too. And so I feel so lucky in that sense.
Isaac Saldana
And Samir was the CEO that that took us public.
Gigi Johnson
So then, hi, I've already founded a company and took a public and now I'm here to get my MBA. So. So what was the and did you do an executive MBA program or a regular MBA program?
Isaac Saldana
It was an executive MBA.
Gigi Johnson
I love executive MBA programs because they're very much of a you're in the chairs with other people who have grown, launched and then everybody has I tend to call it the holes, the things that you never learn because you moved so fast or that you had other people doing, or you suddenly go, I need to know that. And I don't know that.
Gigi Johnson
So what was your sort of you love to grow, it sounds like. What was your growth option that you took when you were at MIT and why am I?
Isaac Saldana
T Yeah, so, so I was, I was thinking about what to do next. After SendGrid, we had gone public and I knew I was going to move on and I left when the company was getting acquired. But the way I thought about it was I asked multiple mentors, should I get an MBA or should I go ahead and create?
Isaac Saldana
And the company has since then told me, you should go create a new company. It's going to be an opportunity if you go get your MBA. And while you could be creating something else because it takes two years to do so, and the other half told me that I should and and so I was, oh, I didn't know how to think about it.
Isaac Saldana
But one thing that I notice on the answers, it was the harasser that told me to get an MBA, had an MBA, and so it was in. So I'm like, Whoa, they're telling me to get an MBA for a reason. Obviously they're biased, but they know something that maybe others don't know. And so I went ahead and and in applying for an MBA, I applied to my team and there was something about M.I.T. It was I mean, they were there's great schools for business.
Gigi Johnson
There are so many options.
Isaac Saldana
Yeah. Yeah. But it was it was something about the engineering background that for me was a little bit bias for that. And another thing was that I had relationships on the West Coast, but I didn't have any connections on the East Coast. And so making that connection was something important to me. And now having gone through that exercise in having gone through the program.
Isaac Saldana
But what I learned was that or what I got out of this was that I feel more confident on making decisions. Whereas before I didn't know. If I didn't know something, now I feel comfortable that I mean, I already went and got an MBA. I went and created a company that went public. There are many, many answers that we don't know, no matter how much we know we're going to get into things that that we've never seen before or that our mentors had not seen before.
Isaac Saldana
And for me, it was difficult before the MBA to commit to those decisions. And I'm now.
Gigi Johnson
And then you sprouted Joy Labs, which has an interesting description. Can you share why you sprouted joy Labs and what you're attempting to do with it?
Isaac Saldana
Yeah. So during the MIT program I saw so the average age on the program was like 40 something and one.
Gigi Johnson
So much younger than you. So much younger than you do.
Isaac Saldana
Yeah. And so a lot of these executives are like well-established deep guys, doctors, lawyers, CEOs. You have people with a lot of experience. The program has a one week program where everyone is supposed to create a company and you should see everyone's excitement, no matter their background, no matter their background, their salaries. Everyone was so excited about creating their own idea.
Isaac Saldana
Some crazy idea was related to their field. Sometimes it wasn't, but the excitement was always there, and I realized that many people don't create companies because they already rely on that salary that they have. They already have things that they need to take care of based on that. And so it's sometimes very difficult for them to go ahead and and pursue their dream.
Isaac Saldana
And we thought about creating Juul Labs to focus on these great managers to go ahead and pursue their dreams.
Gigi Johnson
And then you became the manager to pursue your dreams as well, Right? So so what can you share anything else that's percolating in Joy Labs?
Isaac Saldana
No, I think Joy Labs, when we start, we we spun out a few companies around four companies. The first one was Memo. And once I started working on this idea, I just fell in love. And that was the I mean, that's every day I wake up trying to solve a problem that man was trying to solve. And so for the past three years, I just every day been thinking about it and I don't have the mental energy to work on anything else.
Isaac Saldana
So we decided to just put Jade Labs on hold while I focus on unmanned full time.
Gigi Johnson
So Memo is still a bit under wraps. What can you share with us and why are you so excited and driven on the topic?
Isaac Saldana
Yeah, so, so the problem that we're trying to solve is that when when people have a mission, whatever it is, hopefully that mission is to make the world a little bit better is that they need to connect with new people. And this is a new is the key where people that they don't know because if they're in knew the people, then they wouldn't have to network or connect.
Isaac Saldana
And so but but it's very difficult to do it now because the option that they have is to go to a social networks. But social networks have transformed from being social networks to being social media platforms and in their purpose is to entertain people rather than to network and.
Gigi Johnson
Sell advertising to still subscriptions. They're not really to entertain people. Right. You're on that soapbox. But, you know, because if you go, LinkedIn is totally to sell their subscription models to h.r. Placement people and people are trying to sell their services and i can't tell what the heck lunch club is trying to sell, but, you know, you've got a few people in there who are trying to create these connected business.
Gigi Johnson
Sorry, it's one of my soapbox issue, so i'm appreciative of what you're, what you're working on. But it is an interesting question as to the, you know, what is the actual purpose of some of this new connective tissue. Yeah.
Isaac Saldana
And so, in fact, we use the term social network and social media interchangeably, like, but we're forgetting about the network aspect of these social things. And so and so what? But who get rewarded on these social media platforms are our elite content creators that have like this mass appeal. And and the reason is yes, so they can sell at space to businesses because they're they're the ones with the money.
Isaac Saldana
And so what everyone else has to do is to connect to connect with their intended audiences. They go to social networks to build their personal brand. But now building a personal brand on these social media platforms is like creating a start up. You need to have resources, you need to have time, you need to have knowledge. And not only not only that, but you need to have this media personality.
Isaac Saldana
This is in addition to the purpose that you already have, that mission that you already have. And so many of us run startups. And so having another staff on the site is just like it's impossible. And so many of us choose to stay silent because of just how social media works. We don't want to compete with celebrities or these elite content creators, and so we're at them.
Isaac Saldana
We're trying to solve that problem so that people can express their uniqueness and connect and network with people that are interesting, interested in hearing about them.
Gigi Johnson
I'm interested in hearing more when you can talk more about this, because it is an interesting question. I mean, I do repeated studies on the state of the recruitment market as some of the career work we've done, and I'm just been so baffled at all of the air that LinkedIn has sucked out of the room where there used to be a lot more competitors in that space.
Gigi Johnson
And it's really that the volume of conversation that's in that space around the look at me, I've just kind of this great conference mode is just taken all of that interactive air out. So it's sort of an interesting question about what what is the good fermentation juice? I don't know the good stuff that actually helps connect the dots together.
Isaac Saldana
Yeah. And not only Deputy's social because they've been like social media platforms, they're all about content, but they're also forgetting about the networking tools. And so what people need to do is take the people that are interacting on these social media platforms and and take them somewhere else, like discord or Patreon or somewhere where they can actually engage with them.
Isaac Saldana
Because most of the focus is on creating better tools to publish more content that it's for the lead content creators.
Gigi Johnson
And the average person's also creating less content, less social media content across all other platforms, other than take, you know, the video site, which is again a personality extravaganza.
Isaac Saldana
So in fact, Tik Tok, the they actually label themselves as a media platform and in what are every other social or the old social networks doing? They're copying Tik Tok. We saw that and we see it with YouTube, we see it with Instagram. And like everyone's trying to do that because again, they're they're becoming media platforms too, and they're forgetting about the people that they need to network.
Gigi Johnson
So you you're sure you're heading in the right direction? How many more right directions? You're a young person. How many more directions do you think you want to build into how you build a life? How do you want to be working on one project at a time? You created Joi Labs is kind of a buffet option. What is kind of your direction that you tell yourself?
Gigi Johnson
Is this journey going forward?
Isaac Saldana
Yeah, I try to do multiple things at once, enjoy labs and I felt that for me it's just one thing at a time. And right now I am going to continue with Memmo for the foreseeable future. I don't I don't think I can do anything else. Maybe I'll do something after Memmo. I probably will, but. But I would do one thing at a time.
Gigi Johnson
Have you sat quiet at all? I mean, it sounds like a little bit of a gap between things, but it sounds like you really are pushed to do the next.
Isaac Saldana
I, I think it's purpose. Like I, I found that what makes me feel that I make a difference in the world is creating companies and so it's a it's not that I see it as as this work or rest period it's more that that's what fundamentally makes me happy. I, I found purpose in life by doing this and, and instead of finding a new purpose, I just continue what has given me purpose for for a long time.
Isaac Saldana
And yeah.
Gigi Johnson
Being at somebody else's large company is not at all in your roadmap.
Isaac Saldana
It's not the way I not the way I see companies decide There are multiple ways of organizing companies such that you end up feeling this way. There was a, an organization that we saw at school called Nimble Organizations, Nimble Leadership that actually talk about this place. But there's only like three companies that are doing this well. And unfortunately, they're not in the tech space.
Isaac Saldana
And the technology space. So it may change in the future.
Gigi Johnson
So we've had a great conversation. Isaac, you have a very determined, focused and and insightful way of looking at opportunities, which is great. What haven't we talked about that you might want to mention?
Isaac Saldana
I'm one thing that I mentioned earlier was how many entrepreneurs don't don't encounter problems that no one has seen before. What has helped me is to establish values initially for a company. And so our values we think a lot about those. And they're complex to make decisions when we can't find an answer on Google or when our mentors have not heard about these things.
Isaac Saldana
And so we strongly entrepreneurs to think about that because they'll they'll meet them in many instances.
Gigi Johnson
Thank you for joining us. This has been a great conversation. Who would you like to reach out to you and how would you like them to reach out?
Isaac Saldana
I would want people to reach out to me at Memo when it launches and for.
Gigi Johnson
And they can go to the site now and ask to be on the early user list.
Isaac Saldana
Yeah. And they'll be there I mean will allow signups very soon hopefully by the end of the year. We're still testing this. But yeah, but my parents, my primary method of communication is Memo.
Gigi Johnson
Excellent. And Isaac, thank you for joining us and I am looking forward to your next not just your next adventure, but I can see that you've got a nice journey ahead of you, of bringing great solutions to the table. Thanks a lot.
Isaac Saldana
Thank you so much for having me. Great.