The high schooler making $20M a year

By the way, it's noon on a Monday. Where are you right now?

I actually skipped class to do this podcast.

What, how much of that, uh, per year is profit, Zach?

It's more than 30%.

All right. So it's very good.

Ballin'. Um, we're going to tell the story, figure out how it's going. Sam, do we need to address your, uh, your Letterman jacket? Are you just in the high school mood? What's going on?

Look, I found out that Zach was coming on and I wanted to look the part, you know, like what's it, what's that movie, Sean? It's like, uh, Never Been Kissed where they pretended that they're in high school or, uh, 21 Jump Street.

Yeah, that's us.

Look, this is actually the second group of high schoolers that we spoke with over the last two weeks.

I'm Jonah Hill. All right, Zach, dude, uh, welcome to the show. You've, you've listened to the podcast before, I understand.

Yeah. Last 2 years.

You, would you say we maybe inspired you slash were the sole cause of your success?

Yeah, I'd say this is the sole reason for any of it.

All right. So let's explain what, uh, start with what your app does. Cause it's like, what app is making $20 million for a high schooler? So let's explain what is your app? And when did you start it? Let's start with that.

So Cal AI is the app and it lets you take a picture of any meal and get back the calories, proteins, fats, and carbs to track it. So think any other calorie tracking app, but then heavy AI features involved.

Does it work really well? That sounds like a really hard thing. Like, you know, you were literally 12 years old or maybe 8 years old when Silicon Valley, the TV show, came out. And that was like the, the joke was like, is this a hot dog or not? Now the app says a lot more, you know, does that work really well or is it like mostly right?

So the scanning is about 90% accurate on average, which is really good when you look at the data for FDA nutrition labels, they can be up to 20% inaccurate. So it's actually really good there, but we only recommend that you use it. Well, if you're training for Mr. Olympia, let's say we don't recommend you use our AI calorie tracker. You could use the food database, weigh your food on a scale.

Well, and the, and the scale stuff, like, I, you know, I'm, I'm a weirdo. I've actually used MyFitnessPal for probably 5 years almost every day now. Yeah. And what a lot of people don't realize is when they eyeball their calories, they're probably always off by like 30 or 40%. Have you ever tried tracking your food, Sean?

Yeah, actually, I think I came on this podcast a while back and I said this exact problem. I was like, MyFitnessPal, it's so slow and annoying to type in every single thing and estimate the weight of it. So, okay, I'm eating this. How many grams of it? I don't really know. I didn't weigh it out. And then you get this calorie thing, but also they have like 5 entries for whatever, for, for chicken breast, even has like 100. You don't know which one to pick. And I remember even saying, I think on this podcast, like, I wish Somebody just had it where you could just take a picture and computer vision would just know. And I can't wait for that to happen. And it sounds like it's kind of happened. So you started this how long ago?

10 months ago.

10 months. Okay. So 10 months ago, you started this as a 17-year-old. And can you just give us a sense of the growth? So in, in 10 months, you started obviously with zero. First month, roughly where were you at?

So, okay, amazing. Yeah. I mean, you're saying we—

does he talk like every 16-year-old? You, you, that's— you sounded like this. Than us, right, Sean?

He sounds more mature than us. So you, you, you're saying we, is there a, uh, is there a we? Who's the, who is it? A royal we? Like, it's just kind of me. And then did you start this with somebody?

Yes, I have 3 co-founders. So to give you a breakdown, one is also in high school. He's our CTO, Henry Langmack, a killer engineer.

Child Technology Officer. Yes. Go, kid.

Blake Anderson. Who I think you guys actually did an episode about one of his apps, Umax. So he had founded previously two other apps that had gotten a few million downloads. So we partnered up.

How'd you guys meet each other? Because you're not in the same high school. How'd you find these other young builders?

Yeah, so Henry and I met at a coding camp when we were both 10 years old. He lived in Long Island initially, but then he moved to New Jersey. So we stayed in touch. Blake, I actually found on Twitter.

Gotcha. So you guys get together and who has the idea for the app?

So it was a mix of Blake and myself. I was tracking my calories 2 years before starting Calii on MyFitnessPal, or at least trying to. I was really skinny growing up and I wanted to put on weight, put on muscle, honestly, to impress girls in my high school. And It was super tedious, so I just gave up, but I knew there had to be a better solution. The coder in me, the engineer in me knew that there must be an easier way. And the following 2 years, all of these AI models started being released. And so after jumping into the app space and talking to Blake, who had a very similar path of these AI apps, we came to this idea.

And having a $20 million a year business is a lot cooler, I bet, than having muscles when it comes to impressing girls.

Which one works better?

Honestly, I thought that once— I always had this vision as a kid that I just need to be successful and all the girls will be on top of me all the time. But nothing really changed.

It's just dudes like us.

Yeah, exactly. You know, honestly, dude, having big muscles, it's also just only dudes admiring you.

So like, we're actually still not sure what gets the women to like you. We're still trying to figure that out. Can we pull up, you posted a video back when you were, how old was he in this video?

That was 3 years ago, I think.

3 years ago. So you're like, what, 14, 15 years old? The video is titled How I'm Going to Make $1 Million in High School. Pull this up because I want to get your reaction to this. It starts, by the way, it just starts with like—

Great video.

It's an amazing video. How many views does this video have?

I can't see from there. Like 8,000.

Okay, 7,000 views, 3 years ago you posted this. You only have 1,000 subscribers on YouTube. Uh, I say only, I mean, I just mean like this video is criminally underrated.

At the time, that's 20 subscribers when I posted this.

So you could play, you could play this. Uh, I don't know if the audio will come through.

I'm going to make $1 million before graduating high school, and this YouTube channel is going to document the whole process.

Here comes the best part. The mic. The alignment of the text and then watch the microwave.

What is $1 million? It's enough cash to give you a luxury lifestyle. It makes life more enjoyable and stress-free. It's every kid's dream.

Wow.

Director's cut. Making $1 million can be broken down. For example, if you're trying to make it in a year, it's just $80,000 a month or $20,000 a week. Or $3,000 a day. All I would need to do is sell 30 $100 items every single day.

Alright, you can pause it, Ari.

I'm really making it more simple than it seems.

I love this video. I love this video on so many levels, it's insane. I love that you're shooting your shot. You're calling your shot, I should say, right? This is Babe Ruth pointing at center field. Uh, so I love that you called your shot. I love that you were just having fun with it. Like you obviously weren't like super polished or like, uh, You know, going back and editing this to try to make it fancy. And I love that your mindset, you were like, I want to do this. And then you sort of broke it down into smaller, more digestible chunks, right? Because you can't just make the million dollars in a second. You're like, I need to make, you know, $20,000 a week. I need to make $3,000 a day to do that. I got to sell 30 $100 items. That seems achievable. What was, uh, can you just tell us what, why did you decide to make that video?

Well, from such a young age, And I'm not entirely sure where I could pinpoint this, but I've always wanted to make massive impact on the world. And usually that is parallel with having a lot of monetary success. And so my goal was always make $1 million while in high school. Part of that was because I was really stressed out about school. My parents were super strict about my grades. And social studies was the one class I hated. I hated that I had to memorize flashcards. And I vividly remember one night where I was sitting there trying to memorize these flashcards about explorers that came to the Americas. And I was so frustrated. I broke down the problem and realized that I'm studying to get a good grade. But why? Why do I want a good grade? To get into a good college so that I could get a good job. And make money and then live a happy life. So if I could skip all of those steps, it would remove the stress that I'm feeling right now. If I can make money right now, so I wouldn't need to worry about a job, I wouldn't need to be stressed. And then I set out the goal to do so.

You're, you're not wrong.

It's the intelligent man's procrastination. It's like, ah, should I study these 15 flashcards or make a million dollars? I think I'll make a million dollars instead.

Are your parents entrepreneurs or are they just, uh, normal?

The house was nice. That's a nice house.

So my parents have both been lawyers for their career, but then recently, 2 years ago, my dad left his job at a company to start a financial consulting firm. And I always worry people are going to think, oh, because he started a business, that's where all of this came from. But I was entrepreneurial and doing things long before he actually left his company to start his.

Do you, do you like give him tips sometimes?

I don't.

I should offer to angel invest in his company and be his mentor. All right. So you, um, Sam, any thoughts on that video before we move on from the video?

It's, it's the best, you know, Sean, we brought this up, um, maybe 6 months ago, uh, on the, on a podcast. I don't know if you remember that. And it was still like, is this kid like, is this a joke? Like, does he actually have it? And., you know, how like real is this? And we brought that up saying this is amazing if it turns out to be true. And it is true times 20. Uh, it's like absolutely amazing that you've been able to—

It's grown a lot. I think at that time it was like a, like million-dollar ARR app.

Yeah.

So I think you were probably at something like $80,000 a month.

Yeah.

Now how much revenue are you doing?

So, wow.

You're on a $24 million pace.

And what will the— your first 12 months of full business, what will the revenue be?

Full business, the revenue would have exceeded $10 million from launching in May to coming this month.

And is it entirely bootstrapped? Have you had any outside financing?

All bootstrapped.

Wow. And how many employees? I'm just going to like— I'm going to— I need to ask a bunch of questions so I understand all the info.

How many employees? Totally. Right now we have 15 employees full-time.

Wow. Okay.

That's amazing.

Wow.

That's a lot. So what, um, how did you get it to work? Okay. So you make an app, you're a coder, you started coding when you were 7 years old or something like that. So I believe that you could make an app. It seems like, uh, let's just do a quick summary on making the app. So how did you actually build this like thing? Are you basically taking a bunch of AI tools and then sort of, uh, Uh, I'm not saying like you're just like a wrapper, but like custom, uh, making custom building for this use case of tracking calories in an app. Can you just quickly describe making the app and how long that took you?

We—

you were able to take a picture of your food. It would tell you the calories. It would have the daily breakdown. That was it. One feature. And then after we saw that people liked it, we started adding more features. We had—

how many people did you have? Using it to determine that they like it?

We had, so this is important to note, we've grown all through influencer marketing, which is how we've achieved our rapid growth. And so after working with two influencers, having them post on their stories, talking about the app, that's when we had the initial feedback and saw that people actually liked it.

So let's go step by step. You make the app, app exists. Who are the first 10 people that see it? Family and friends? Is that where you started with or?

Family and friends. Although we just, disregarded anything from them because I always think it's biased.

Okay.

So you send it to them, they're kind of, they say, oh, it's great. You're like, all right, cool. But we don't really know. Next, what'd you do? What'd you do next?

So next we started contacting influencers, fitness influencers on Instagram and TikTok.

Did my DM get lost in the mail? Why did I, is this a, is this in my other inbox? What's going on?

Yeah, we'll need to get you on it. But we reached out and most people just don't respond. It took me over 2 weeks to get my first response from an influencer.

Give us a sense of the pitch. What's the, what's the DM say?

And which influencer, uh, took, what was your, who, who was it?

And where'd you get the money, right? So you're saying paid promo, but your kids, are you like, hey dad, can we get $5,000 to like seed money to try this? Like where'd the money come from to start?

By the way, Sam, that, that's now the third or fourth person that's come on this podcast who has that same origin story of I was in school, they blocked games on our school. I'm guessing you guys had like Chromebooks or something like that.

You know, very, very oddly, Sean, it was Val, my friend Val, who came on and said his, His son was doing that now. Well, they went to the same high school.

Oh, really? Saeed Balkhi was, said that that was his origin story too, was he, he wanted to find a way to play games while at school. And then because of that, learned all these different parts of coding and technology in order to make that happen. And that was their first taste of money. Um, but Jess Ma, same thing with gaming servers at school. So you had this, you figured out, all right, we have these school laptops, people want to play games, they're blocked. How'd you get around the block and, uh, and what was this thing called?

The website was called totallyscience.co and that's how it got categorized as educational. That was the main thing, but we also had all of these features on the website. For example, if you press the tilde key on the keyboard, it would redirect to Google Classroom. So if the teacher was coming, you could quickly hide it.

Oh, nice. Nice. That's crazy. Hey, how can you complain? This is science. Not only science, this is totally science. This is only science. All right. So you do that, that, that company, uh, you sell, you were making how much and you sold that for how much?

So this is like the first sign, uh, you know, to have a kid, to have your son from your parents' perspective do $60,000 in revenue and profit, you know, something like that when they're 14, that's like asking, you know, like, are you a drug dealer? What's going on? How are you doing this? Did that take convincing on your end to let them know what you were doing was totally legal? Like, at any point, your parents are lawyers. Were they like, are you breaking any laws, man? Are you, are you sure you're on top of all this?

I definitely got questioned about breaking laws by my dad a bunch of times. He actually made me put up a terms of service that said in all caps, you cannot use this while in school. This is only for breaks or at home. And my mom was always shocked every time I actually got a payout from Google. I think maybe it was that it didn't sound like a real business. Unblocked Games website. How could that make money? But I actually had money coming into my bank account that was under her name because I was too young to open one. And she was shocked every time.

Did you do anything cool with it? The money?

Well, not really. Honestly, I put all of it into Call AI when we launched it.

And it's a pretty cool thing.

The only thing actually that I've spent the money I've made on, and this was recent, was my 18th birthday party. I flew my friends out to Miami for a weekend trip from high school.

That's awesome. All right, sweet. So you, uh, you put the money into Kali AI, you got the money, you reach out to the influencers, you said 2 influencers start posting, and what are they posting? Is there some science to it? We just had, you know, Rob the Bank on talking about TikTok. As a distribution strategy about what makes great TikTok hooks and videos and how that game is being played. Do you know, Rob, and I guess how have you guys played that game of short-form content to grow your apps?

You pay them on CPM or how do you pay them?

That's wild. So you, um, is this thing pretty sticky and where do you want to take this? So great. You, you, you go viral, you get people to download. I'm assuming they hit some paywall in the app that says, keep track of all your calories, blah, blah, blah. Is it kind of one of these churn and burn games where it's pretty profitable for the first couple of months and then you lose people, or is it a sticky product?

So it's sticky for the power users. They definitely stay around and I mean, apps like MyFitnessPal, they're doing over $100 million a year. So I know we could get there.

You look at the reviews, Sean. So he has 65,000 reviews and it's a 4.8 out of 5. So this isn't like an arbitrage, like, or like a get-rich-quick thing. Like, people really love the product.

Yeah. What's the churn on these subscriptions?

Gotcha. Okay. But they're still using it presumably so that, you know, if they're using it, they'll, they'll stick with it. Wow. This is amazing. And so you want to take this to be kind of MyFitnessPal or you're like, hey, if somebody offered us, you know, a buttload of cash, like I guess what's your mindset? Because I'm so curious because if I was 18 years old, I don't know what the hell I'd be thinking. Like I have no, I even now if I'm 36 years old, I still don't know really know what the hell I'd be thinking in this position. What, what's the mindset of an 18-year-old? Because you got many hits in you, you know, this may not be the only one. The same way that you kind of did this, a similar thing in Totally Science versus this, but this just had a much bigger market, much more market potential. Um, you know, you might be able to do even more things, or is this something you want to do for a decade?

Yeah. And does it feel like you're still breaking the law? Like if you, if anyone, like if I don't mean that breaking the law, what I mean is like when you go $0 to $20 million in revenue in 8 months, there's some type of like giddiness of like, I can't believe like this is my life. I can't believe that this is allowed. I don't know. There's something, there's some type of like matrix breaking idea where you're like questioning. You're like, how is this possible? Do you still have that mentality or are you like, of course this is possible and this is just step one?

I definitely have the mentality of it feels surreal. I mean, it feels nuts. I mean, 18 years old and I'm making— the company is going to generate over $24 million this year. That's crazy. The fact that I'm on your podcast, My First Million, saying that, it's nuts. And a year ago, I wouldn't believe it. So I view this as a stepping stone. I want to build a company that touches the lives of billions of people, something as ubiquitous as the iPhone. And I think Kala AI If we shifted the idea where maybe it's nutrition tracking in general and we could link the photos of what you're eating to your health, that could be something that touches the lives of billions and that could be something I could spend a decade on, but I probably don't want to. Instead, I would want this to be something that sets me financially free where I don't need to think about money, where I'm not incentivized by generating revenue.. And so I can start another company that is purely motivated by impact and scale of impact, something that I'm passionate about and can spend a couple decades on.

Sam, I saw a post today from his partner, Blake. He posted something on, on, on Twitter today and he said, I guess he's working on something called 10X and it sounds like it's an app for, for learning. Like, oh, you can learn anything. You can learn AI skills. You can learn a language. You can learn whatever. Sounds like it's a learning tool, which is more in the direction of kind of good for the world, good for humanity, impact style, uh, thing that he's building. And so it sounds like he's kind of looking, you know, he started with like Umax, which was literally like probably the most superficial thing. It's like, how does my face look? And what, what can I do to make my face look better? Then it's Call AI. And now he's going into like, you know, a learning tool. It sounds like you might want to do the same. Was there something that trigger that in you? Like, did you watch like a movie or did you have like a conversation with a mentor when you were 12 years old? Like, what made you want to even— what made you think differently than the average high schooler who's hyper-focused on just their grades and, and, you know, just making friends or whatever, whatever's just in their little pond?

It's funny you say movie. The Social Network totally had a big impact on me. However, I did also feel this way before that. So that amplified it. That showed me it's possible. Through specifically software, which made me super motivated to learn coding even faster. But I have— I'm not sure the initial seed where it was planted.

What do you think the app is worth right now?

Right now, I think the app calculating its or taking its growth into account is close to $100 million.

In valuation, which means you are presumably worth in the ballpark of $30 million.

I think liquid and on paper is really different.

Oh, I know. But like, but you're totally right. But like 17, 18 years old, worth tens of millions of dollars, I think is like a fair ballpark. Would you agree?

I would agree.

Yeah. That's amazing, man. Congratulations. I'm really I'm really inspired by you. And I would say there's like a handful of people I've discovered that are kind of like you who are super young that are basically AI first. So you're all the tools you're building, you build with AI because why would you not? You like code them with AI. The app uses AI, the users get an AI type of experience. And, um, you figured out a growth channel that I think a bunch of old guys like us kind of suck at, because you have what I call the bear on a bicycle phenomenon. So my friend Chris Williamson said this to me. He goes, you basically want to stack two skills that usually don't go together and it creates something remarkable. So, you know, you see a bear. Wow. That's a bear.

Okay.

But I've seen bears. You see your, you see a bicycle. Okay. That's a bicycle, but you see a bear on a bicycle. Holy shit. Never seen that before. That's amazing. And for you, that's basically like, you know how to code, but a lot of kids know how to code. And it's this other piece that you also had, which was the knowledge of, and you even said it in your video, video editing and just making fun videos. Um, this kind of the TikTok knowledge and you combined how to make TikToks that will get views with how to make apps that work. And that is your bear on a bicycle thing. And so I'm pretty inspired because there's actually like a group of people who are just like you. And I would say right now is like a very golden window for that group of people to go build things like, and you know, hopefully people listening to this, hopefully there's You know, we trigger another 20 to 100 people just like you who hear this story and are like, you're their social network, right? They're going to hear this and they're going to start doing it. And that set of skills, I think, is very, very valuable for this moment in time.

I totally agree. And that's honestly why I'm super motivated to go on podcasts like these. I was super motivated by others before me that I've watched on podcasts. And so this is almost a full circle moment. For me to come on here.

Yeah, that's interesting. Sam, would you be going on podcasts? Because like, you know, while you're here, I'm like, oh, this is great content. I'm excited. But then there's like the fatherly part of me that's like, shut up, dude. Just shut up. Why are you on the podcast? You shouldn't be saying any of this stuff because you have such a good thing going. And you could always tell the story a little later. You don't need to invite, you know, the other Zach Yadagaris of the world who are You know, they can code, they can make TikToks, they got cool haircuts like you, and they're just going to do the same thing, right? So like, why go on and spill your secrets? You know, why do that?

So I've heard this before, that usually you know what it takes, or people usually know what it takes to be successful, but then they are looking for an easier way. They're looking for something that is not as burdensome, not as hard, doesn't require as much sacrifice. And I've been coding since I was 7. I'm 18 now. That's 11 years of coding. I've started Totally Science, and before that I was tutoring kids in coding lessons for almost a decade of my life. I was in the entrepreneur game. And so I think that, yes, I can share all of this information publicly, But it's only a select few who will actually work towards it and put in the amount of hours required to achieve the result where I want to help those people. I think helping those people achieve the same success, especially if they were in a situation like mine where they maybe weren't entirely sure where to go, but they knew there was a world out there where they could have massive impact at such a young age. Even balancing school on the side. And so I completely support those people.

You have a trait that, like, Sean and I's good buddy Jack Smith is like the perfect embodiment of this trait. But a lot of entrepreneurs are, which is you're logical, which like a lot of times will be awkward on like day-to-day level. Like, for example, my friend Jack is like, he's so— he does things so differently from everyone. Because his way is actually better. But we've all done it in such a way for 100+ years that we're like, well, I don't know, we just do it this way. And so like, for example, he didn't name his daughter the first year because he was like, I guess I have to get to know her before I can name her. And I was like, yeah, that makes total sense. It's just like strange to think about. You have that type of energy, you know? You said, well, I'm worrying about grades so I can get a good job or get into a good college and get a good job and make good money. What if I just make money now? Like, that's like very— that way of thinking is amazing. And it's really fun to be around people like you. And so I want to hear your perspective on a few things, this fresh thinking on a few things. The first is you have 15 employees. Do you have any employees who are in their 30s or 40s? And what's it like having to go from being just you and your buddies in a room messing around to at 15 people, you're actually running a real company?

So yes, we do have employees that are in their 40s. And it's difficult to be honest with you.

It's hard at times to make them call you sir.

Yeah, I do not make them call me sir, but it is difficult, especially when I have to fire someone that has kids. And it— I do have imposter syndrome at times, which is something I try to not let hold me back ever. So even if I think a certain way, I don't— I still act how I know I should. I'm reading this great book right now called The Great CEO Within. I also keep it on my desk as a reminder, and it helps me lead. I try to be an inspiring leader that, that helps people, that doesn't lead by telling people what to do and just do it now. I try to inspire them to want to do the work.

Do your— does your staff, uh, generally— are you guys a well-organized company, you think, or is it a shit show?

I think that we are pretty well organized, and that's mainly credited to our COO and the third co-founder I didn't mention, Jake Castillo. He's really good at organization.

So one of the things we talked about was like, you know, why come and talk about this? And part of you was like, well, I want to inspire other people. But we don't want to inspire just a bunch of copycats. And so we asked you, we were like, hey, what are some other ideas that if you weren't doing this, you think somebody could go do right now? So how can the next you, how can the next high schooler get to where you're at? $20 million a year in revenue as a 17, 18 year old. So what ideas do you have for us?

Sure. So obviously, you know, you could teach a man to fish or you could give a man a fish. Teaching is better. So I have a few frameworks, which I think will help even more, but I also will give some ideas.

Okay, go for it.

And so what do you think is, uh, so you're saying work backwards from the magic moment where AI does a magic trick and you're like, holy shit, that's cool. And then build a sticky, you know, for you guys, let's take a picture, get the calories, and then you have the tracking and the charts and the other stuff that's going to keep them, maybe the coaching tips or whatever, that's going to keep them around in the long term. Cool. Got it. And you're, the other thing you're saying is take any app that's popular that we've already been doing that and just say, what's the AI version of this? Is that the, is that the brainstorming session you would do is basically like, all right, Evernote, what's the AI version of Evernote? Or, um, yes. You know, our buddy in, our buddy, um, in San Francisco, I mean, Sam's buddy, Siava, he had this company called StudySoup. And StudySoup was literally for college kids. They would have paid note takers who would take great notes in a lecture. And then you had, you basically had the slackers and you had the kids that were, were on top of things. The kids on top of things were the supply side of the marketplace. They would give their notes and the slackers would buy their notes. And so, oh cool, I, I don't have to take notes in this class because I'm getting them done for me. And you're saying, you bet, you're basically saying that Turbolone has become an AI version of StudySoup, right? Where it's like someone records it and now you have, uh, you have, you have well, well taken AI notes for your, for that class.

Yeah, exactly.

So what are some examples?

Yeah. So here's an idea. I've actually seen something like this, or recently on Twitter, I saw something blow up. Maybe it was a couple months ago, not so recent, where someone put a bunch of their journal entries into ChatGPT and then asked, what are some insights you could give me to make my life better?

You got it. And they both do that.

Gotcha.

Okay.

I like that. Uh, so AI journal. Um, I feel like with, uh, the kind of younger generation, I feel like therapy is a lot more normalized. Therapy's cool, basically. Whereas in my generation and my parent, my parents' generation was like therapy equals you're broken. You're, you have a problem. And it was like, you know, more taboo.

The whole, the whole idea of Sopranos was a guy who goes to therapy and now his friends are going to murder him because he's so soft.

Yeah, exactly. And now I feel like with the younger generation, it's almost like, uh, a cool thing to do. I don't know, maybe I'm speaking out my ass here. You tell me if I'm wrong. Uh, but it's way more normalized. It's not, it's not a taboo thing. And in fact, probably being anti-therapy would be a little bit low status now at this point. Um, and I feel like, but the problem with therapy of course is that, um, it's A, a little bit of a loaded word and B, you know, who's paying $100 a session for this type of stuff? When you could have the AI therapist in your pocket, whether they're using your journal entries as the starting point, the magic moment, or, or not. Uh, what do you think of that space? Do you think there's something interesting there?

I think AI therapists are something that a lot of people have spoken about, and I haven't seen anyone do it great. There are definitely apps already where you could talk to people, chatbots, but I think they're all missing the feeling that you are actually being heard, that the feeling you would get talking to a real therapist. So maybe it's the verbal aspect that's missing and something like ChatGPT's voice mode, integrating that can now actually make it a better session than just typing. But that is a good idea that uses the AI spin for sure.

Gotcha. And what are some other ideas you have?

You have two more. It looks like you wrote on here.

Yeah. So the first one is some kind of system or pipeline to convert an Android app or an iOS app to the other. And this is something that would greatly help startups. When we started Cal AI, we built it on Swift, and that's because Swift, usually you could make a much smoother user experience on iPhones. Using something like React Native, which can build to both iOS and Android, it's more difficult because it's not actually using the native components to make something that feels super polished on an iPhone. After building it, we had all of this demand for an Android app and it was problematic. We had to take away from development time on the iOS app to build out the Android app, and we had to release it a few months after. It was, it costed us thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars.

And every time you build a feature, you have to build it twice. You have to build it on one and then on the other.

Yeah, that's a really good idea.

We used to use something, uh, I, I had an app like years ago, a roommates app, uh, a roommate finding app. And we, what was it called? Where we use something that turned a web app into an iPhone app.

I mean, there's been a lot of tools like that and they were horrible.

Like it was like, it was really bad, but they were huge companies.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause this is a problem, right? Like you, you have to maintain two different, two different apps. You have two, every feature you have to build twice. Every, every platform has its own bugs and you basically have to hire double the number of people because the Android guy focused on Android and the iOS guy focuses on iOS. And so now you have more headcount. And so you always want this thing that's like, But, but you need, but still you're, you're right. Like having it be native actually results in a better user experience, more stickiness, more revenue, et cetera. So you, if you try to do the web app thing and you just put a web app and you try to wrap it, it doesn't work as well as doing a native app. And so you're right that basically AI coding is getting so good that you could do 70, 80, 90% of the code transfer just through AI. And then maybe you, you, you have, you, you do it as an agency or you have one person who's, who's doing that last kind of the last mile to get it to work. Work, work well. Um, that's cool. What about this remotely configurable onboarding flows? This sounds like, to use a framework, you know, it's a paper cut you have, right? So one of, some of the best places to find startup ideas is you're, you're trying to do a startup and in the process of trying to do it, you run into something that's like, God, I wish somebody had just built this. And maybe you build it in-house or you just keep dealing with the pain. And that, that's a very good source for startup ideas.

Are you, uh, the type of person that even though you have a full-time gig, you are experimenting on new ideas that are unrelated to Cal AI?

I think that is totally the right move. Is there anything, Zach? You know, Sean and I are parents, and there's a lot of people who listen to this who are parents. Is there anything that you seem traditionally— obviously you're traditionally successful, but you also seem like you're very thoughtful.

I think you're well-spoken. Yeah. Thoughtful.

Like, you seem like you'd be a good son regardless of— thank you. Regardless of if you— who cares about this app? You know, like, you, you, you, you, you have your shit together at a very young age. Emotionally. What do you think that your parents did that set you up to have this success? Or do you think that— and this sounds like a douchey thing to say— were you just born, you know, interested into this stuff at a young age? You know, like, there's a lot of, like, self-directed people.

I have 4 siblings. I am the second oldest, and from a young age, I was very wired to want freedom. And I think it be— I think it comes from my siblings. If I wanted to buy something, my parents would have to buy something for all my siblings, so they wouldn't do it. I would have to find the way to pay for it myself. That's what made me start teaching coding lessons at such a young age to earn money. And related to that, I actually have a story that when I was 10 years old, I wanted to cook scrambled eggs by myself. I don't know what it was, but I really wanted independence and freedom. So the independence to just cook myself breakfast at 10, I could have burned the house down. So my mom didn't let me. And I got so mad about this that she didn't trust me to cook eggs on my own. Because she was taking care of my other siblings, getting them ready for school, that I actually ran away from my house. And I ran probably 15 minutes from my house to a local soccer field. And the police were called. I actually got picked up by them and brought back home. I was going to come home eventually, but, you know, I did run away and It's really been the freedom that has been the driving force behind everything. The yearning for freedom.

Well, but you have that now.

Somewhat. I still feel confined, honestly, by being in high school. I haven't dropped out and I want to go to college just for the social life, not obviously to get a job. So I feel— I always feel almost trapped in situations where the outcome is determinant on what someone else decides for me, not something that I can control for myself. And someone has to accept me into the college. If I let my grades drop in high school, then they could rescind me even if I get into the school. And I hate that. But right now, for the next year at least, I think I have to make that sacrifice. And then when I'm in college, I want to make a good group of friends, then drop out and be free.

You're going to go.

What's your GPA right now?

My GPA is a 4.0 and I do want to go.

And what did you get on the SATs?

Yeah. Yeah.

So I took the ACT and I got a 34.

Okay. So that's like, I think, right? Yeah. It's like a, that's 2 points away from per— that's like a 90, it's a 99th percentile. 98th percentile.

Okay, so you're, you're, you haven't like neglected school. You got a 4.0 and you didn't get an ACC.

Oh yeah, I'm doing this with school. I'm working hard in school. I'm not—

By the way, it's, it's, it's noon on a Monday. Where, where, where are you right now?

I actually skipped class to do this podcast.

Let's go! Woo! Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling.

Are you at school right now or are you home?

No, I left school. I'm home right now.

And you told your parents it's because there's this podcast that I want to go on and it's going to be good for business. Yeah.

How many other people do you know that are like you? Like, is there a community of like 100 of you guys who are like high schoolers who actually build shit and want to do cool things?

There's not that many high schoolers, but there are people who are slightly older, 19, 20.

I probably— Look at how he's already got the mastermind hand pose. He already has the visionary hand. Hand position naturally, dude, straight out the box.

I have a handful of people that I'm friends with, but not many.

Definitely not many. Do you guys have a club? Can you have a name?

Yeah.

Like the Grubs?

Yeah. Yeah. It's the Cool Kids Club.

That's it. It's, you guys are pretty cool. So that's a good name.

I've always wanted to be in.

Yeah. I've always wanted to be one of the, I've always wanted to be part of that. If you need another member, let me know. Have you considered just like moving to Palo Alto and like hanging out like, you know, in the movie The Social Network, Sean Parker gets to act like a college kid without going to college, or are you dead set on going to going that route?

Well, over the summer when things started taking off in June for Calii, Henry and I decided, let's go all in. We moved to San Francisco for the whole month of July. We lived in a hacker house. We worked out of a coworking office with people years older than us. So we lived the San Francisco startup life. It was very productive, but at the same time, pretty lonely. Although we could talk to some people. Yeah, we made friends. We would get lunch with people. First of all, San Francisco is not the most fun city, but also just the fact that people were years older than us always made it difficult to relate to them.

Yeah, that makes sense.

We had a— I have a friend that, uh, like, he got accepted into some program where he went to college at the age of 14 or 15, and he was telling me, he was like, man, like, I wanted to, like, date girls and, like, you know, do that normal shit. And it was weird. I started fooling around with one girl and I eventually had to break it with her that I was— fill her in that I'm like, I'm 16. And so like, I imagine like it's weird being in these situations where you're like in these— you're just as mature, you're more mature than a lot of 21-year-olds or a lot of like grown adults. But you're in this situation where I do understand why you feel trapped. You're in these weird spots at such a young age that like you literally couldn't go and do some of the stuff in San Francisco that everyone else is doing because of your age. But it's pretty amazing. Like, I hope you enjoy like the time. Like, I mean, I think being 18 and experiencing what you're doing, it's like this is like, you know, one out of a billion. This is like a really special thing. How much are you paying yourself?

So we haven't paid ourselves anything. We are reinvesting it all and That's not to say that we won't. We are, we do have profit every month. It is a difficult situation with the App Store because we get paid out 2 months after we earn the money. So our growth is so quick that the revenue we generated 2 months ago, we have to put it all in the marketing to keep growing faster and faster. I think in a few months we may start having a surplus where we can't spend it on growth even if we wanted to.

Yeah, that's great. Um, dude, this is awesome, man. Congratulations. And, uh, I'm excited to see what happens. Who, who are like, who do you admire? Who are you, who are you learning from and looking up to? Like, who's, who's inspiring you? Are you just like, oh, Elon and Jeff Bezos, that's what I, that's what I care about? Or are there other people that you're more interested in, uh, personally?

Like you said, you used to listen to podcasts as inspiration. Who are some of those people that you like to listen to?

Totally. So I love your guys' podcast. It's— I'm more inspired by people who are dead than people who are alive. And maybe that's because I feel like there's— they're not my competition anymore, or they are, but they're not progressing anymore. So I see exactly where they ended up.

Psycho. Love it.

Yeah, I get it. You sick fuck.

Makes sense. They're not my competition anymore. I've already finished them. Yeah.

People like—

I think he's gonna kill us, Sam.

I think he just threatened us, lowkey. Okay, so you like learning from dead people. What does that mean? Books? What do— how do you learn from dead people?

I like audiobooks, but I don't actually like reading physical books. I also like learning about them from podcasts.

Which dead people? Oh, so like Founders? You like the David Senra's podcast Founders? It's one of my favorites.

I do listen to that. There's one I've listened to recently, How to Take Over the World.

Oh yeah, boy band, let's go. So let me ask you a question. What, what's a thing that people your age are doing that seems weird to us, but it's totally normal. So like, what's a phenomenon that you're like, yeah, kids love doing this. They spend all this time doing this, or they spend their money on this, or this is a new trend that seems to be weird to others, but we get it. It's, it's normal for us.

Yeah. Is, by the way, is wearing, uh, Ralph Lauren, Ralph Lauren polo sweaters. Yeah. Is that a new trend that young people are doing?

I think you've influenced Sam.

Yeah, it's a great sweater.

Yeah.

Sorry, go ahead with what the cool young people are doing.

So there's something really interesting, a really interesting phenomenon I've seen recently, and it's not a new software, it's not a new social media platform. What it is, is these little things you put on the back of your phone. It's called an Octobuddy.

It's Octobuddy.

And it has suction cups on it, so you could stick your phone to a wall, you could prop it up on your table and watch your videos is the purpose. I don't think people actually— I've never seen someone actually use the suction cups how they're designed to, but it's a trend among all girls in my high school. I've, over the last few months, I've just seen more and more people have it. Now everyone does. And it's It's fascinating.

Something definitely— It's like a TV mount. You mount your— you can mount your phone to any surface, basically. What do you mean it's not used how it's supposed to be? Isn't that what it's supposed to be?

Well, I think it's more of something where now girls look at it like the color of their nails or having long nails on where girls get different colors and—

Oh, it became an accessory.

It's more of a stylistic accessory status thing than actually function.

Keep going. Tell me what young people like. Like whenever I meet a young guy, I'm like, tell me everything.

Well, that's the main thing that you wouldn't typically notice.

Are your friends drinking?

Yes, definitely.

It's because— Do you guys like to party? Do you guys like to smoke weed?

I'm someone who doesn't do any drugs. I'm pretty against them and I don't drink either. But it's— I mean, everyone around me is.

So drinking is common.

Very common. Very, very common.

You also mentioned this, this like TurboLearn thing. That sounds pretty awesome. What else is like a What other, uh, who else is like you out there who's basically scaling up to millions in revenue just off of this kind of like AI TikTok type of model?

So there are a bunch of consumer apps that are coming out or have come out. And honestly, I think a lot of it is attributed to Blake and I speaking publicly about this, showing that it's really possible in the app space. So new apps like Quitter, which is an app designed to help men quit porn with all of these little social or like by having streaks essentially to gamify the whole experience. So that's a new one that just came out.

You inspired these guys?

I'm friends with the founder and he was inspired to get into the app space by seeing Call AI really take off. He was with me in the early days.

That's cool. It's got 5,000 reviews on iPhone. That's pretty good.

Yeah, so they're on track to make over $1 million this year. I think consumer apps right now are like the new dropshipping.

You know, Sean said this once where he was like, you know, Sean was like, I'm a content creator. You know, he's got newsletters and Twitter and podcasts, but these TikTok guys, it's as if, you know, I am really good at riding horses, but along comes Henry Ford and it's just, it's just the cars are no comparison. You know, I can't— there's no way my horse and I are going to outrun even the crappiest car. This is one of those moments that I'm having right now talking to you. So like for a long time, Sean and I, our friends, will do dropshipping. You know, when we were 25, that was the thing is like create like a dropshipping site and people still do things like that. Seeing what you're doing with tech and influencers is so much better. Than, like, you even look, Mr., you even make MrBeast look old. You know what I mean? Like chocolate. Like what? That's crazy. You know what I mean?

But dude, people used to look at me and Sam when we were like, so we met when we were, I was probably 24, 25 years old.

We were the prodigies.

And it was like, I don't know, probably that's very generous. But what I mean is like, it'd be like if there was something on the, on the fringe or the edge about either growth hacking or a clever way to make money, usually it was us who knew it and people would ask us about it.

Like, I remember having, like, The Atlantic, the publisher, come to my office and they're like, newsletters? And I'm like, yeah, like, it's a thing. That's old news now. These guys are so much better. And we are that person now. I'm going to go to his office and be like, just tell me everything.

It's something that always happens. It's going to happen to me too. I know that every year I age, I am becoming exponentially less impressive. And there's someone that's going to come and be the next big thing, the growth hacker that is in the front of everything. I think it's just about building momentum, and I'm pretty obsessed with this idea of making sure that everything I work on will 10x the previous thing so that I'm always moving forward towards a bigger goal. You actually mentioned MrBeast. He's actually someone who greatly inspires me. I love the podcast that you guys had with him.

By the way, I've heard this now a couple times from people who are like 18 and they're like fearful that when they're 22, suddenly their accomplishments are no longer cool. And I just want to say, I get it. Makes total sense. It's also total nonsense. And what I mean by that is not only is it still super impressive, but the real game is when you stop trying to impress people. And so what actually happens is you graduate out of the, I need to impress people. Phase and the person who's 17, 18, they're still getting that high of, of being the impressive person. Oh, everybody's kind of patting on the back. And actually the, the, the only way to win the game is not to continuously be the youngest, best looking, richest person, because you'll never win that game of comparison. The only real way to win the game is to realize like, oh, I just need to be doing the things that are fun for me. And like the, the act of doing them is rewarding and not look for the rewards of impressing people, which is obviously easier said than done. But that's the real thing to focus on and not like this feeling of I'm running on quicksand, you know, because it's, I'm getting older.

Oh no.

Right. Yes. And I've had this, a similar thought to this where I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I've thought, okay, once I find my success and let's say I'm quote unquote financially free, will I even want to start something new? Or will I not care anymore and just want to find happiness elsewhere? Maybe I have one of the tenets of happiness, which is I'm financially taken care of. But then I want to prioritize relationships and happiness in other aspects.

So you're always going to be making stuff. I'll predict the future. Maybe, maybe you'll take the foot off the gas and want relationships and a family and all that stuff. You are going to be creating stuff for a very, very long time.

Well, that is why I'm going to college. It's almost to take my foot off the gas a little bit, build relationships, and then I want to drop out after a semester or two.

I mean, I think that's really smart because you have your whole life to make money, but you really only have this 4 years to make lifelong friends from college. So actually the scarce thing is the friendships and that college experience, because there's a window of time that expires. And so do that because you still have 50 years to make money after that.

What school do you want to go to?

If I got in, then Stanford. Is likely the top.

Surely we have listeners. This is going to reach a lot of people. Surely there are some people listening.

I know you're listening. Yadagari. Y-A-D-A-G-A-R-I. Yeah.

You can find him on Twitter. DM him. Uh, actually, that's, that's what they should do.

A real, if I'm a, if I'm at a college right now, I'm DMing this kid an acceptance letter. That's how a college needs to hustle. I'm tired of these colleges sitting on their ass.

Yeah, you're going to get BS. Someone's going to be like, Sup? You're just gonna get a DM from, uh, who's your favorite? Who are your most inspirational follows on Twitter? I want to, I want to basically, I find you so fascinated. I want to be inspired by the people you're inspired by. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want your info diet. Who, who do you inspired by? And try to make it people who you think I won't know.

Hmm. Okay. Who do I follow? I actually don't usually use Twitter for people. I'm just All right, bye.

That's interesting.

What's your like main social network? What do you use when you're bored? What do you open up?

It is Twitter. It is Twitter. That is my main social network. When I'm looking to be inspired, there are definitely a few people. David Goggins, for example, he just pumps me up. So I have people like him that, you know, inspired by his mindset completely. I used to actually be in this phase where I was addicted to motivational content, I curated my TikTok For You page. I only liked motivational videos, and anytime I lost motivation, I would just scroll for 5 minutes, then get back into it. So definitely those kinds of people, but it's mainly those like MrBeast, Elon Musk. I follow both of those on Twitter. My own co-founder, Blake Anderson, who's a few years ahead of me in life and knowledge too. So definitely learn a lot from him. Cliff Weitzman, he's a recent friend of mine. I think one of you know him.

Yeah. Yeah. We know Cliff.

Yeah. So he's super inspiring to myself as well.

That's dope. Uh, okay. Amazing. Sam, anything else?

Is there? That's— don't ask me, Zach. Is there anything else that you want to inspire me by? Like you're, you're, you're amazing. Like, Anything else that you want to tell us?

Yeah. Did we miss anything?

I appreciate that. I mean, it's always hard going on these podcasts. I— it's a whole full circle moment. And also it feels almost bad speaking about all of this. I try to stay humble, but then at the same time, I know you have to speak your way into the world. If I wasn't posting anything publicly, had a lot of debate over the personal brand, then I wouldn't have so many opportunities that I have had.

I, Sean, my, one of my best buddies, Val, I think Zach asked him out to lunch or something the other day, like the other day, and like was just asking him for advice on maybe coming on this podcast, but also business advice because Val's a great guy and really successful. And I thought it was funny because actually you remind me of Val a lot, Zach. But it was funny. Apparently Val's kids were like, were you hanging out with our friend Zach, like at lunch the other day? And he was like, yeah, but it was like a very, you know, oddly a business context. But anyway, Val called me and was like, this guy Zach is one of the most impressive people I've ever met. And Val is a very hard person to impress. He's pretty low-key. And so—

Well, one of the funny things is like you have this paradox because you, you want to keep your asset. Your asset is you're young and ignorance is bliss. You don't know how hard some things are. You don't know what's possible. You don't have a ceiling on anything because you don't know any better. Right. And that ignorance is a, is a real tool. The naivete, the beginner's mind. And so you want to keep that. And on the other side, you have this giant problem, which is that there's always kind of like this, um, I forgot what they call it, but there's this 3, 3 known thing, right? It's like, There's the things you know, you know, there's the things you know, you don't know. But then the real one that matters is the things you don't know that you don't know. And so talking to whatever smarter people, people who have played the game for 15, 20 years, they will help you surface that last one. And that last area of things you don't currently even know that you don't know, that's the thing you should be worried about. But how do you worry about it? You don't even know, you don't know where to look. But it's by talking to other smart people that that gets revealed to you. And so you have this paradox where you want to keep what you got as your big asset, your naivete, your beginner's mind, your, your, your, your useful ignorance. But at the same time, um, talk to some well-meaning people who are a little bit wiser to try to get, figure out like, you know, um, little, little, a little bit of a push in one direction or the other. They'll kind of nudge you and that little nudge can totally change your trajectory. Right. Cause like, I mean, just imagine. Hitting a golf ball and even just changing by 2 millimeters the angle that you hit that ball, it ends up in a totally different spot. And so you want to find those people who are your, your 2 millimeter people, the people that will just give you that slight angle adjustment in order to make it happen. I don't know how you do that exactly, the keep both of those, but that's what I would do if I was you. I'd try to find a way to keep both.

I totally agree. I have heard that, that it's much easier to learn from someone 10 steps ahead of you. Than 100 steps ahead of you. 100 steps, so much is missing, but 10, you can piece together. They can lift you up the extra steps and help you get from 0 to 10.

Yeah. And one other thing you're going to figure out is that, um, all successful people do not have equally valuable advice. So you will meet a lot of people who are successful or sound interesting. Um, but their advice is not great. And the hard part is figuring out how to parse it. And dis— like dissociate it slightly from the result because their result might be totally dependent on the context, luck. There's a whole bunch of different variables, uh, that will lead to that, or maybe just their understanding of your situation. And so trying to figure out how to parse advice is like an underrated skill.

And, and make sure that the people you take advice from, that they're actually happy and they're people, and they're, they're people you admire or who are happy for themselves and they're happy for you, you know? Yeah. Like you'd want their life.

It's a very good point.

All right. Well, on that point, let's call it a day. I think you gotta go back to school now.

Yeah. Lunch is over. Hey, thank you, Zach. You're the man. Anytime you wanna come on, please let us know.

Congrats, dude.

Thank you for having me.

And I'm gonna use the app.

So I'm gonna download your app right now.

Start tracking. Yeah. Thank you. And that's it. That's the pod.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.