Full Transcript

Darren [00:00:02]:
Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of One of one. I’m your host, Darren Gold, CEO of the Trium Group. My guests today are Jiajun Zhu or JZ and Dave Ferguson, the Co-Founders of Nuro, one of the world’s leading autonomous vehicle companies. JZ and Dave founded Nuro eight years ago after working together as senior engineers at Google’s self driving car project, now known as Waymo. Our conversation dives deep into the unique founder journey of starting and scaling a company. We touch on the childhood dreams that continue to drive their passions today, the importance of having a co founder during the emotional roller coaster of the startup journey, and their respective roles as fathers in their evolution as leaders. Please enjoy this wonderful conversation with JZ and Dave. JZ. Dave, it’s so good to be with you and so good to be with you in person. This is a first for me. So thank you so much for agreeing to do this.

Dave Ferguson [00:01:09]:
Yeah, thanks Darren. Great to be here.

Jiajun Zhu [00:01:11]:
Thanks for having us.

Darren [00:01:12]:
You’re very welcome. I’m interested. I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this question before. I’m interested. When you first met, where was it? What was the circumstance bring us into the start of this phenomenon known as JZ and Dave?

Jiajun Zhu [00:01:25]:
I think this was 2012, 2011. 2011. I was working at Google. I was one of the first small group of engineers who started what’s called Waymo. Today it’s a Google self driving car project. It was probably like around 10, 12 people. And we started 2009 and a couple years later Dave joined. It was still a very small team and I just remember that the team lead at that time was Chris Urmson. And he kept talking about Dave. This is this one guy that we really, really want to hire. And finally he managed to convince Dave to join us. And Dave’s desk is right next to me. So that’s how we met each other. And since then we’ve been sitting right next to each other for how many years now?

Dave Ferguson [00:02:17]:
Thirteen years.

Jiajun Zhu [00:02:18]:
Yeah. Except Covid, we were not sitting next to each other, but you know, for 13 years we’ve been sitting next to each other.

Darren [00:02:25]:
Okay, so Google self driving, you’re senior engineers there. At some point you decide to leave that and start this amazing company that you’re now both leading Neuro. When was that and what was the decision like to leave and start something?

Dave Ferguson [00:02:39]:
Yeah, so we left to start neuro mid 2016 and we’ve been talking about doing something together for a little while before that. And really we’re excited about the general field of robotics. Now rewind. This is over eight years ago, but we recognized that there was this really tremendous opportunity to go accelerate this positive future that we could build using robots to help improve our everyday life, do some of the things that we don’t love doing every day. And so we were very excited about going to do that together. And we thought about what are the options that we have to go realize this, could we do this inside Google? Like this was Google X at the time. There was a lot of cool stuff happening and eventually we realized that probably the best shot that we’d have to go actually realize this potential was to go start Neuro together. So that’s what we did.

Darren [00:03:28]:
Was it a hard decision?

Dave Ferguson [00:03:29]:
I’m interested in JZ’s, JZ’s answer here. For me it was a pretty tough decision. I was actually considering two different things at the time. And JZ will remember I was, I mean I’ve always been very passionate about climate and back then I was already hooked on this idea of what we call carbon removal today. Back then it was negative emissions. And so I was very excited about potentially doing something in that space, maybe even at Google X. And so I was tossing up do I do that or do I go build an incredible robotics company with JZ? And in the end Neuro won out thankfully. And eight years later, here we are.

Darren [00:04:02]:
JZ, what was it like for you?

Jiajun Zhu [00:04:04]:
It was not easy for sure. I think that the people that we work with at Google, at Waymo, were great people and we still have friends there even today after eight years. And it was pretty clear that we’re going to make pretty big impact by just staying there. For me I didn’t have like another thing that is going to save the world. Unlike Dave, for me this was really kind of a childhood dream since ever since teenager I was thinking about robots and to me I just have to do this. It was very clear to me that the machines are going to get really smart. The physical world are, our interactions with the physical world is going to be very different. 10, 15 years in the future and we’re seeing all these breakthroughs in AI, in compute and the sensors. We really believe that machines are going to get a lot smarter. And Waymo was very much focused on building self driving cars. So I thought that there are other things that we could do to really make machines more autonomous, smarter. And so creating a new robotics company is kind of my dream for a long time.

Darren [00:05:23]:
Yeah, I hear that a lot from founders.

Jiajun Zhu [00:05:25]:
Right.

Darren [00:05:25]:
This notion of I had some dream As a young child. And I just had to do it. And I think it does require that level of motivation and energy to create something out of nothing, which is what you’ve done. Take us to your childhood. I’d love to hear from both of you. But JZ, you mentioned it first. When was it? What was the age? Where were you? Tell us a little bit about that dream.

Jiajun Zhu [00:05:46]:
I grew up in Shanghai. I spent the first 22 years there. I spend many years in my childhood doing two things. I spent a lot of time learning art, painting, drawing, for seven years. And then as we became teenager, I started reading a lot of books about physics. I really loved physics and artificial intelligence. Even though the artificial intelligence back then was very different from today, I really loved it. And then I started also doing computer programming at an early stage, at an early age. So probably around like 12, 13 years old. I remember that I just locked myself in my bedroom during the summer break, for example. I would be there in my room for many hours every day reading these books, programming, thinking about the future. And I think, what if these machines can be as smart as human and they can do all of these things? I particularly, I was very excited about humanoid robots at that time. And I dreamed about robots doing, cooking, folding laundries, all of these things. And I think, you know, it was that time, it became very clear to me that this is something that I want to do in the future.

Darren [00:07:04]:
That’s amazing. And Dave, I know you were in a different part of the world. Yeah.

Dave Ferguson [00:07:08]:
So my path was probably a little bit less direct when I was a kid. I was more focused on climbing trees and getting into trouble, really, rather than engineering. For me, it wasn’t until I went to university at undergrad and I was in New Zealand. And in New Zealand, you tend to immediately specialize at university. So it’s sort of the British, the Commonwealth system. And so you have one year to take a lot of different courses and then figure out at the end of your first year what are you going to major in and spend effectively all your time on. And so I went pretty broad. And I was originally thinking I was going to be a lawyer. So I did all the law classes, I did physics, I did maths, I did computer science. And I did computer science mostly because one of my friends told me that he thought that I would find it really interesting programming and whatnot. I really had not had the sort of quintessential computer scientist background as a kid programming machine. So that first year at university, I fell in love with it. The Idea that we could equip some other agent with the ability, then it was very low level intelligence. But nonetheless, the intelligence to be able to make its own decisions and then go on and do things that we didn’t explicitly program, that we didn’t tell it to do was pretty wild and something that was incredibly exciting to me. And from that point on I was all in, pretty much on the computer science programming, robotics path.

Darren [00:08:28]:
And then there was a robotics competition. Is that right in your path?

Dave Ferguson [00:08:32]:
Yeah. Well, so after my undergrad I went to Carnegie Mellon for grad school. So I left New Zealand, came over to Pittsburgh. Very much the Disney world of robotics. So many amazing projects, so many amazing professors and everything going on there. And I got involved in the DARPA Urban Challenge. So this was the last of three DARPA funded competitions where they were trying to get industry plus academia to work together to come up with solutions for these grand challenges. And so in 2007 there was the DARPA Urban Challenge, which was effectively a mock race in urban environments by driverless vehicles. And so I was part of the Carnegie Mellon team then. It was an incredible experience. When I look back, there’s like a gap in my life of about a year and a half where I don’t have too many memories, which was a lot of time put into that effort. But that for me was really the catalyst for getting into self driving in particular and on road autonomy. And I got to do that with a lot of wonderful friends that have gone on to become seeds for a lot of the self driving efforts that are out there today in the world. There’s a little bit of a mafia from those days of engineers and who have now become entrepreneurs that are running and, or being pretty key roles in a lot of the different self driving efforts across the world.

Darren [00:09:50]:
Yeah. So here we are. I’m going back in time now, 2015, where you’ve made this decision to leave Google 2016 to create your own company. Bring us to that point in time. What was the idea then and how did you begin?

Jiajun Zhu [00:10:05]:
I think when we started we knew it was going to be a robotics company. We came up with the name Neuro because it’s a new robotics company, Neuro, Dave’s idea. And our mission is, I think our mission statement at that time was to accelerate the benefits of robotics so that more and more people in the world could benefit from robots saving time, saving life, all of these things. I think the first thing that we did is really spend the time thinking about what is that first robot that we want to Build. We had a few criterias, like it’s a robot that will touch everyone’s daily life. It’s not something that only live in factories or hospitals or research labs. It needs to be something that could interact with everyone because that’s just a lot more exciting. The second part is it needs to be something that we think we have a unique expertise or advantage that we could contribute to. I think the third one is there is some timeframe we want to work on, something that can be done within or can be built. A technology can be built within, say, three, five years. Not something that will take many decades to do. There are a bunch of these requirements. And we looked at many different robotics applications and verticals, even including like toys or pick and pack robots and things like that. And we ultimately decided that delivery robots are a great first application for us because they obviously could benefit everyone in their daily life. People spend a ton of time getting groceries, doing these, running these errands, buying things, spending a lot of time. It’s not safe to drive a 2 ton vehicle just to get a gallon of milk, for example. We think there’s a lot of things that can be done better if instead of moving people, you could move goods to people. And we also thought we could actually build a robot much, much faster, much quickly. If it only carries goods and it only travels 15 miles per hour only, it’s lightweight. There are a lot of assumptions about the product that we could build at that time and we think it’s a huge, huge market as well. It’s just moving goods. So we started a company and we decided that delivery robots was going to be the first thing that we do.

Darren [00:12:41]:
When was the first time you had a vehicle that you sat in and autonomously drove? Because I’ve had that opportunity to sit and it was an absolutely magical experience. So you start in 2016. When was that first time and what was it like?

Dave Ferguson [00:12:58]:
Well, as Jesse mentioned, we were focused on goods transportation. So the idea that we would create vehicles that wouldn’t necessarily transport people. But in order to do that development, we needed to test and collect data in sort of quote, unquote, normal, normal self driving vehicles where you could sit in them. And the very first year, so we started the company August 8, 2016, was the first day we opened the office and we had a Christmas challenge that year for the team, which was to do to autonomously drive a loop around the Airbnb that we were living in and working out of as a company that December. So effectively that was the point leading up to that where we were already doing some limited autonomous driving on public roads.

Darren [00:13:42]:
Wow. Wow. Yeah. And you’ve obviously had a number of milestones you’ve hit. How would you divide the eight years? Are there some sort of normal chapters that would describe the journey and how would you do that?

Jiajun Zhu [00:13:53]:
That’s a great question. I haven’t thought about this. In my mind I would probably just divide it into two parts. The first eight years and the last maybe two months. I think the first.

Dave Ferguson [00:14:05]:
Always looking forward.

Jiajun Zhu [00:14:06]:
I think the first eight years we grew from just the two of us in the Airbnb to like a 650 person team. We are running fully autonomous robots on public roads. We did that in three different states, California, Arizona and Texas. And we built three generations of robots from prototype to the second generation to the third generation which will go on road in about a month from now in Palo Alto, Mountain View and Houston. And we built the technology, build all the AI, design all the vehicle manufacturers, the first fleet of these vehicles. That was the first eight year and it took us eight years to do that. And the second, I would say the most recent couple months was when we decided that we are going to change and expand our business to be providing the self driving technologies for even broader applications. Not just goods transportation, but also people transportation, including both ride sharing service as well as personal vehicles. So now we think we’re at the point where we can enable more partners like automotive companies to create product that have advanced autonomous. Advanced autonomous driving capabilities. So obviously that’s a pretty big change from just good transportation and a more vertically integrated approach to a beyond goods transportation people plus goods and more of a technology provider approach.

Darren [00:15:47]:
Yeah. So if things go well, and I’m guessing they will for the two of you and for Neuro, what does the company look like and call it? The next three to five years. If you think ahead, what do you expect? What should people expect from you?

Dave Ferguson [00:16:01]:
Yeah, in the next three to five years we expect that we’ll have some pretty major partnerships on both the mobility side. So JZ mentioned building autonomy for ride sharing and delivery applications as well as on the personally owned vehicle side. And so I think what you can expect and what we hope to see in three to five years is that we will have Neuro autonomy technology on many thousands of vehicles that are operating in both the context of providing delivery and ride sharing services as well as some variant of Neuros technology available on personally owned vehicles.

Darren [00:16:39]:
Okay, looking forward to seeing that. And when we talk about these eight years or eight years plus Two months. It can seem very like the straight line. Right. And I know this has been far from a straight line. There have been zigs and zags and backwards and falls and peaks and so this is a tough journey, building a business. I know it’s been that way for you despite all your success. Walk us through. Like how, how has the journey been and what’s been your biggest challenge as co founders and leaders of this company?

Dave Ferguson [00:17:10]:
Yeah, I mean, it has been challenging for sure. And I was thinking about this leading up to this interview, Darren, because I knew you were going to ask us about some of the, the emotional journey that happened along with the externally visible one of the company. Starting a company and really living with it through many years is. It’s an unbelievable experience. It is incredibly difficult. And J.C. and I both have kids. I think the closest analogy I can share is it is a little bit like having a kid, but a kid that’s sick and you don’t know if that kid’s gonna be okay or not. But you feel this incredible responsibility towards it. You care so much about it, you deeply love this thing and you know that it’s not all under your control. And so it’s sort of sitting with that and trying to desperately get this, get this child to a really successful outcome, to a really healthy, happy place. And there’s a lot of up and downs along the way. So for us, we have been incredibly fortunate. We’ve had an amazing team throughout the last eight years. We’ve had incredible support from different investors and partners. But there’s also been a lot of challenges and in many ways we’ve been very unlucky at different times as well. And so I think for JZ and I, it has been a challenge and it’s been a very emotional journey, emotional roller coaster. And it’s often said that resilience is probably the most important characteristic of being a founder. I could not agree more. And I think that one of the other areas that we have been very fortunate is that thankfully the relationship that we’ve had together has only gotten stronger through all this. And before we started Neuro, we talked about this. The two of us had known each other for about five years. We’d worked together pretty closely, we’d sat next to each other for all of that time. We dealt with various challenges and really liked each other and I feel, knew each other pretty well. Looking back, we still probably had no business having the confidence to start a company together. Like just knowing how much that relationship and that friendship is going to get tested throughout this experience. It’s a really significant undertaking and it’s a lot to ask of another person and of yourself and the relationship that you have together. And so that is one of my. One of the things of which I’m most thankful for this entire journey.

Darren [00:19:28]:
Yeah, I’m guessing it would be hard to imagine having done this alone. Right. And this is actually one of the topics I wanted to get into for sure. Part of the reason why I asked you both to, to join me for this conversation. What is it about the two of you that has made this magic work? And. And I actually use that word intentionally. I know I used it in the context of being in one of your amazing cars, vehicles. But there is something magical that exists between the two of you, @ least in my experience. And what others will point to. What?

Jiajun Zhu [00:19:57]:
Well, I just want to echo what Dave said. This is way harder than what we expected, probably 100 times harder. If we knew it was this hard, we probably wouldn’t do this. I think having the co founder is perhaps the most important thing in my kind of experience in the last eight years because there were just so many moments when I felt that I have absolutely. I had no control of what’s going to happen next. And I think this is probably also one of the biggest kind of my personal growth area is I often had these moments where I project into the future and think about, okay, all of these things could get a lot worse and what am I going to do? And I think it was not possible for me to overcome these challenges if Dave was not there. I think things got really hard. For example, like two years ago where kind of after Covid the market really corrected itself and we had to do a lot of correction ourselves as well. For example, one thing that I think we didn’t foresee or maybe one mistake that I made was we over hired during the COVID period and everyone was hiring like crazy. It’s very competitive market, so we probably triple the size of the team in two years. And we had to correct that. And that was a very painful correction. It affects a lot of things. I think without Dave, without the team, I think it was really hard. I would probably give up in that situation. And there are many other examples like that when I’m having this like personal struggle thinking about the challenges that we’re dealing with and having Dave be right there so I can call him, I can have a chat with him, share this feeling and know that there’s someone who really understand you. I think that was super, super important. And I think Dave often played the role when I’m kind of having a great moment, he’s playing the cheerleader role and I think hopefully vice versa as well. I think that was really valuable. I would say that most of the time, 99% of the time we share very similar judgments in company, very large company strategic decisions or day to day operations. I think I have a pretty accurate model of what Dave’s going to say and he’s, he has a very accurate model of what I’m going to say. And if we come up with independent decisions, 99% of the time it’s the same. There’s 1% of the time we had disagreement, we had arguments, but we could always get to a agreement or a decision forward and that never affected our relationship.

Dave Ferguson [00:23:01]:
Yeah. So certainly plus one to that. Maybe the only other thing that I would add, Darren, is we’re very similar in many ways. And I think importantly from a value perspective, like how we see the world and what we’re trying to do and what we care about, I think there’s a very strong alignment, maybe to echo what JZ was saying. I think we have fairly different triggers, which is incredibly useful because we have this very strong correlation on what we care about and how we see the world and how we make decisions and also things like our expectation of excellence in ourselves and others and whatnot. But the things that really trigger us individually are quite different, which means that we do have the opportunity to be there for each other and to not both get triggered at the same time and have everything blow up. And that has proven, I think, very valuable for us over the last few years.

Darren [00:23:53]:
Okay, so I’m going to ask, what are those differences and triggers?

Dave Ferguson [00:23:57]:
So for me, let’s air it all, let’s get it all out. No one’s listening to this. Right. I’ve always had this very strong sense of fairness, Right. And not wanting, not wanting to see a situation where I feel like we are being taken advantage of or a partner is being taken advantage of and making sure that we’re really pushing to get to the quote unquote right outcome in terms of what is most fair, what’s sort of the optimal outcome here in terms of fairness across the board. And sometimes I can be fairly dogmatic about that. Right. And it can really bug me if I see something that is, that either doesn’t seem like it’s fair or an additional trigger that I have is one around efficiency. So if I see something that seems wasteful or we’re not doing something Quite right. Something is suboptimal and it feels mediocre in a certain way that, that will also really bug me. And so those are things that I’m sort of acutely aware of and things that, that I can potentially react to. And I think on JZ side those tend to not be as significant a trigger. And so he can see me and he can be like Dave, like I get it, I know what’s going on. I see you, I see the smoke coming out your here but hear me out and whatnot. And I think because we have such a great respect for each other, it enables us to be able to be that, that sort of calming down influence for each other. I’ll let JZ speak to his triggers.

Jiajun Zhu [00:25:23]:
I think my biggest trigger is my fear for disappointing people that could be the team, could be investors, could be partners. So like I would avoid doing anything that could potentially disappoint them. And obviously that is, I think that comes with a lot of advantage. I think people usually would say that I’m pretty empathetic and but I also think that deep down there is a fear living inside me and that’s not always positive energy. And I think that that energy shows up in cases when things are not going very well. I tend to show up as someone who is more worried as a leader. I would be problem solving all night, wake up 3am in the morning texting people go to meetings without bringing enough of positive energy. And I think that’s when Dave catches me making sure that I notice that and try to pull me back from too much projections in the future and more focused on what I can do right now at the moment.

Darren [00:26:43]:
Let’s talk a little bit about your leadership. You’re both leading this organization. JZ, you’re in the role of CEO. Dave, you’re in the role of President. I’d love to hear the difference between those two roles. How do you divide your responsibilities? And then I’d also like to dive into what your unique aspects are in terms of how you lead. But I’m going to have you do that differently. I’m going to have you talk about each other. But let’s start with like what is the difference in roles?

Jiajun Zhu [00:27:08]:
So we have different titles, but I would say that we operate like a co CEO. We pretty much make all the major decisions together and company strategy, taking investment, big product additions. I think these are all decisions that we make together. We do have a focus area. I think throughout the eight years and two months we pretty much always had our focus area. I Think I lean in more on the technology side and the kind of the people side of the business and Dave leaning more on the finance side, investment side, partnership side. So right now I think our division of responsibility is I focus a lot more on the technology and the product development, where Dave does more on the fundraising, regulatory partnership, things like that. Obviously we had a lot of overlap and then we rely on our leadership team a lot in managing the company day to day and these strategic additions, that’s kind of how we divide our roles and responsibilities today.

Darren [00:28:23]:
Dave, how would you describe JZ as a CEO?

Dave Ferguson [00:28:27]:
I think JZ is, he is incredibly empathetic. I think he’s someone that everyone loves. I think he’s always had this remarkably high integrity around what he cares about. I don’t think anyone over the entire or eight years at Neuro and even beyond that has ever questioned what JZ’s motives are. And I think that is such a powerful element to bring as a leader to a company because you immediately get the trust of everyone, at least at that level, that hey, we know that this person really is doing everything that they can to make this company succeed and to make this mission succeed. And if there’s ever a situation where it’s mission or company versus their personal gain, JZ, 100 times out of 100 is going to pick the mission and the company. And that is, that’s a remarkable characteristic to have as a leader. It’s also a remarkable one to have as a human being. Right. So I think people love JZ, as I do, and so just this remarkable person at the top of the company for starters, right around who they are and the nature of them as a human being, how he leads. He’s very strong on the technology side, so he understands things very deeply. He himself was an incredible engineer prior to Neuro and so not only understands the plight of an engineer and how to relate to everyone on our team, but also technically understands the details and so can go into the weeds and often does quite honestly to get in and provide input on how we doing things, what’s the right way for us to be operating. And I think that’s something that the engineers love. We have a number of amazing folks at Nura that have been with us for a long time, particularly on the engineering side. And I think it’s because they recognize that it’s not that common to have a leader that so deeply understands and respects the core technology. And that is probably one of the benefits of dorky engineers turned founders that we have. And so I Think that there’s this very strong technical acumen, this really incredible personality and integrity and cultural alignment that makes him someone that people really love working for. He’s also very hardworking. He has a, a tremendous bar in terms of expectations that he holds himself to and then also has that expectation of others. And as a result he’s been able to attract really amazing people who then have attracted other amazing people and have really. That has enabled the flywheel that has made Nuro the company that it’s been.

Darren [00:31:04]:
For those of you who are listening, you can’t see but JZ is blushing a little bit. JZ, anything you’d want to say about that?

Jiajun Zhu [00:31:09]:
That sounds like a much better version of me.

Darren [00:31:12]:
I am, I’m with Dave is.

Jiajun Zhu [00:31:14]:
I would say that everyone who has worked with Dave, I think they have this experience of pursuit of excellence that I think it could be really inspirational. I think Dave is incredibly intelligent, super smart. Even though that he’s trained as an engineer, he understands pretty much everything across the business very well and he could understand a topic deeper than anyone that I’ve worked with and very quickly. And he has this kind of raw intelligence in him to be able to dive into any topic. It could be, it could be strategy, it could be business, could be finance related, could be technology, could be many of these things. And he is just able to really level up the overall quality of thinking and the level of output. And I think that was absolutely amazing to watch. I think people really enjoy working with Dave because they feel like they, they got pushed really hard to do the best of their work across pretty much every function of the company and always. And also it’s very clear to people that Dave is very passionate about the mission of the company and there is a really great impact that we want to pursue and that shows up in Dave’s action in the words. So that’s the Dave that I see.

Dave Ferguson [00:32:47]:
Great to hear, Darren. You did turn this into a joint coaching session after all.

Darren [00:32:52]:
I can’t help myself. So you’re now eight plus years into this incredible journey and I imagine there are some people, maybe they don’t even know it, that might be founders someday. What’s the single piece of advice you would offer somebody thinking about founding a company or maybe in the midst of the journey that they’re in, if they.

Jiajun Zhu [00:33:12]:
Haven’T started yet, I would ask them to think through. Spend three more months thinking about it before you start. I just think that starting a company is way harder than anyone thinks. If they have already started a company. I would do everything that I can. To a friend who just started a company and then we are having a coffee chat, I would do everything that I can to encourage him or her to continue. Because I think not giving up is a big part of it. Being an entrepreneur. I think what’s much more important than seeing all the potential risks and challenges and then be prepared for that is just having that resilience and the courage to go through it and just knowing that you will get there. I had one of our first investors. He himself is a very successful entrepreneur. Every time that I chat with him, his advice is just, you will make it, you will get it done. The company will be successful. And I think having that in mind is very important. No matter what challenges come next, knowing that you have the team, you have the ability and kind of just that spirit to. To overcome it, I think that’s already 99% of what I need. That’s how I think about it.

Dave Ferguson [00:34:54]:
Yeah. I just add one thing to go along with that is when you’re starting out on the journey, knowing that it is going to be full of challenges. I think it’s so easy externally. Every time you look at a company or anyone individually, you see all of the success. You see what looks like a linear journey, when in reality it’s just not that way for any company. Jensen talks about how it’s unclear if he would redo it and do Nvidia again if he had the chance. And yet that’s. This is one of the most successful companies of all time. Right. So I think if you go into this situation expecting that there are going to be incredible ups and incredible highs and incredible lows, then I think you might be able to get yourself into a more emotionally resilient place so that you can handle it when they inevitably come, because they will come. Like, this will be hard. This will test you. There’s no path to building a successful company that I’ve ever heard of that didn’t involve a lot of challenges along the way. And I think the more you realize this is part of the journey and these are expected challenges, I think the less freaked out you get when they happen. And you’re like, oh, I didn’t. Like, did this ever happen to the Google guys? Right. And I think that’s probably part of the secret to Josie’s point, which is absolutely right. Keep going. You need to survive long enough to.

Jiajun Zhu [00:36:13]:
Succeed and also hire a really good coach.

Darren [00:36:21]:
Okay. I knew that was going to come back. So we’ve been talking a lot about you as Founders, but you’re more than that and part of your lives. Your parents and I’ve seen you be both exceptional fathers. So I was hoping you could bring to life that aspect of who you are. Oftentimes say that parenting is the, the best form of leadership training. What have you learned as being a parent and how do you manage this incredibly intense journey of being a founder with also taking care of a family?

Jiajun Zhu [00:36:53]:
So I have two grows. One just turned 12 yesterday and the other one is nine years old. So when we started the company, I basically had a one year old and a three year old and just watching them grow up is one of the most experience, most amazing experience that I have had. I think I was very lucky that my wife is super supportive. She actually works at the company as well. Since day one, we never talk about work at home. That’s the rule. She shares a lot of the parenting responsibilities. Sometimes I just couldn’t do all the pickups and drop offs and I think she’s been extremely supportive. And being a father of young children is really hard. But a lot of the experience, emotional experience that I had, I would say that were actually quite similar to the emotional experience that I had at the company. And I think ultimately it becomes really kind of a self noticing the thoughts that I’m having, how I show up as a parent, how my action really affects other people, in this case my children or just in general people around me. And ultimately what is my internal thoughts, right? Am I afraid, am I angry, am I worried, am I just feeling sad or disappointed? I think it’s very similar emotions as parent and as leader in the company. And I do think that my behavior and how I show up really matter. And I’m still improving every day and try to be a bad, try to be a better dad in moments that I’m with them. And I think children are just incredible. My daughters are absolutely amazing. I’m so grateful to be their dad. Watching Tom grow and being part of their life is just amazing, wonderful experience. Just like being a startup founder, watching the company grow. I think most people maybe watch from the outside would say, hey, being a startup founder, you have this huge sense of accomplishment. That’s definitely not how I feel about it day to day and but a dad, I kind of feel like I have a lot more sense of accomplishment watching two human being grow and become who they are today.

Dave Ferguson [00:39:25]:
Yeah, I very much see the parent role as like the OG coach or leader role. You know, you have this. I have a 10 year old and a 7 year old girl and a boy. And you’re constantly trying to figure out, like, what is the best way to try to impart knowledge or a lesson or coaching to them so that they can become, again, it’s very much future focused, so they can become incredibly happy, fulfilled people in the future. And I find myself having similar conversations with my daughter, as with some of our team sometimes, and with myself, to JZ’s point as well. And that’s actually been really neat. It’s been really lovely seeing how some of the lessons that we learn about managing our own emotions and how we show up and how we really effectively bring a message to someone so that they can receive it where they are and it can really actually be useful and not harmful, how that applies to the relationship that I have with the kids. So that part has been amazing. We got something out of this startup experience. JC beyond, beyond all the joy and pain of the company itself.

Darren [00:40:31]:
Yeah. All right, as we wrap here, I wanted to give you both an opportunity, if you have it, to add anything that we haven’t talked about, anything you’d want to make sure listeners hear from you, whether it’s something new or a summary of something maybe we’ve already talked about.

Jiajun Zhu [00:40:47]:
Well, I’m just incredibly excited about the future. I’m thinking about the next one to two years, what the company will look like, my family will look like. I’m really excited. And I think this is part of our coaching work in the past year or so is just knowing things will get tough sometimes. And I feel like where we are right now is we’ve made a lot of progress in the last year running the business, and I think the company is in a much, much better place than, say, a year ago. I’m very happy about where we are, but also knowing that there are going to be more challenges ahead of us. And I feel like I’m just more excited about kind of the state that we are in, not being anxious or afraid about more challenges coming at us in the future and knowing when that happens, we’ll figure it out, we’ll find a way. That’s kind of where I am right now, and I feel very grateful and excited at the same time.

Dave Ferguson [00:41:55]:
There’s a common refrain that the journey is the destination. And I think it’s common because, like, like most of that wisdom, it’s absolutely true. It’s also very hard to actually to live that. And I think I’ve noticed certainly in JZ and also in myself, a pretty significant growth in that respect. And we know now, we know like, what’s coming is going to mirror what. What has come before, and it’s going to be challenging, but certainly I feel more excited about being equipped emotionally to handle it in a much better way and really enjoy it. Can enjoy opportunities that we have like this one right now that you just don’t get. A lot of these experiences are almost unique to the role of founder. And looking at it through the lens of we get to do this as opposed to we have to do this is really. Is very powerful for helping unlock that the right energy and the right frame of mind and the right. The right emotional state to go take on some of these big, hairy challenges.

Darren [00:42:55]:
It’s been an absolute treat being with you. I want to thank you both for doing this. I believe this is the first time you’ve done a podcast together, so I feel deeply honored that you do this with me. And I’ve just thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. So thank you both.

Dave Ferguson [00:43:09]:
Thank you, Darren. Really enjoyed it.

Jiajun Zhu [00:43:10]:
Thank you.

Darren [00:43:11]:
Welcome. I trust you got a glimpse into the incredible character of JZ and Dave. I so admire their persistence, a trait so common and essential to successful founders. I look forward to being with you on the next episode of One of One. In the meantime, I hope you lead with courage, wisdom, and above all, with love. I trust you got a glimpse into the incredible character of JZ and Dave. I so admire their persistence, a trait so common and essential to successful founders. I look forward to being with you on the next episode of One of One. In the meantime, I hope you lead with courage, wisdom, and above all, with love.

One of One is produced by Erica Gerard and Podkit Productions. Music by John LaSala.