He Lost Everything Twice…But Didn’t Stop Building - Rob LoCacsio - LivePerson - Episode #96

He says, "Well, you're fucked." I lost everything. Then I was in debt. I had nothing. I had $5,000 in my bank account and I had this couch.

The company went from a $900 million company to a $4 billion company in 12 months during COVID, and the company unfortunately has, like, since I left, it's lost 90% of its market cap. And I was losing the company I built. I knew all the energy I put into it and I knew it was in risk. That's why I fought very hard. That was the hardest thing because I wasn't yet prepared for that type of action.

They don't quit. Like, nobody can take your ideas. They can take your company. They can take a lot from you. They can take even your money, but they can't take your creativity, your ability to take that creativity and put it into reality, and your ability to build businesses. Nobody can take that from you. You know, that's the gift. You have that gift. The people watching have the gift. So, whatever happens in the world, nobody can take your gift. There's only one common thing we have is being born and being dead. And everything in between is your own individual little world. But the buried part is like when they bury you, you know, what's that day about?

Wow, David, with that introduction, it's like you're like the clapping or something. My mom would be proud.

Oh, I have a great affinity for your father who's an amazing entrepreneur and he's got this great poem that he gave me as a gift. Ithaca, which I've given, I've read it to employees. I've sent it out to employees. When I was leaving LivePerson, I sent that out as the goodbye. I'm like, this is what it's all about. So, yeah, your father is a gift. So, thank you.

Yeah, it's a simple question. It's about people. It's like, building a company is a team sport and hiring the best people at the right time is the hardest thing. And then, you know, I've gone through, like I said, three decades at one company. I saw also there are times where you need to replace people and upskill people and upskill yourself and that's hard. Now I'm in startup land. So I can tell you, like, it's really, you have to be very disciplined with building a core team. Very rarely does it happen on the first shot. It's like you get all 20 people in. You're going to have a few that you need to cycle in and out. But it's all about getting the right team. It's a people business. You know, it's an idea business driven by humans.

It's the same attribute that I've looked for my whole life which is skill and will. I have a quick story about it but I went public during the dot-com boom and then the entire industry was imploded and I was in the middle of that and I had to make a decision with my team to lay off about 90% of the entire employee base. So we went from like 180 people down to 40. And I remember sitting in a bar in New York City with two other guys, my CFO and my head of customer, three of us. And we made a list of everyone's names and we put two columns, skill and will. And I made three copies to each of them. And I said, "Don't let's not talk. Let's just spend the next couple minutes, half an hour, hour checking the box." And the people who stay would have to be in both categories. And that's where I learned about skill and will because a lot of times we let people in, we keep people who don't seem to have the full skill or don't have the will 100%. And when you're building a startup, those columns have to be 100%. And I find people who are not a good fit, the first thing they do is blame the environment, you know, oh, it's too hard here. Oh, it's too this. I'm under stress. I'm working too much. I don't know that it's confusing to me. Whatever it is, they always have a reason for not understanding why they're a misfit. And that's what they are. They're misfits. And so, you have to be disciplined. But it starts with skill. When I meet people, I talk to them. Do they have the skill and do they have the will to do this?

Well, I'll tell you, the skills is, it's two vectors for me. There's skills of like, let's say they're an engineer and you want them to do a certain thing. So you need to understand enough about the task at hand on the engineering side to be able to talk to them and understand what they've done in their past. That's one part of skill. The other part of skill which is really fascinating to me is when I'm in an interview, if I start generating ideas with this person, I'm literally in the interview where I love that. And that's where I find if it's like, right? So the best people you're working with is like I can sit with them and like my idea with their idea becomes a whole another idea which is bigger or better. And I'm like, so when I'm in an interview and all of a sudden I get that vibe, I'm like, wow. When I walk out of an interview and I said, wow, I've now got something in my head I had no idea about before I walked in that interview, I want to hire the person because they've connected the skill knowledge, right, the skill and their knowledge about a platform, a marketing effort, whatever it is, but they've opened my mind and they've opened my mind in an area I had no clue about and which I could think could exponentially open the business to being something quite larger than what I even envisioned. That's what I look for.

Thousand people. Yeah. 3,000.

There's, I used to tell this story at the company, but there's, you kind of know when something's wrong. Like when you're the founder, you kind of know there's something's wrong with the way I'm doing things and I'm not getting the results and we're not growing the way I think we should grow, you know? So whatever it is, there's usually a moment in time where you have to look in the mirror and take a hard look. And so when I've hit those times, I basically then, it's a lot of self-reflection and a lot of meeting with people and trying to understand what don't I know about what's going on. As in, I'll meet with people who have larger companies or things, right, who have been more successful or who have done things and I'm like trying to understand like, what am I missing? And then I had this formula for many years where you fire yourself on a Friday. Now this would be after like six months of really understanding. What it would do is it kick off a strategy meeting for myself. Like I'm kicking off strategic thinking about the business and where the business needs to go. But then I also think like what kind of CEO would run this business and what kind of leadership team would be needed. And a lot of times it looks very different than the way I did. So, one of the things I say is you got to fire yourself, which means you have to literally say, "I'm no longer the CEO of the business. I don't know these people." Like, I've been brought in by the board to figure this place out because it's not growing the way it should. And you basically, you have to release yourself that this is you, that the things you created are yours. You got to almost trick your mind to think like, I didn't create any of this. Because what happens is that you tend to hold on to the things you create. You tend to hold on to the people, the processes, the products because you're like the guy who you evolved it. You built, right? You got to let it go and then you have to go come back in with fresh eyes and then you have to make a real assessment. Then what I would do is I come in on a Monday and literally the first thing I do is run. Now, they didn't know it. I wouldn't announce anything. I'm not announcing any of this because I thought it'd be too weird. But I would run my leadership meeting differently. I change the structure of the leadership meeting so that now there's a change that they're aware of and then now I start working with the team on the strategy which I think the business should be and how would they connect with that strategy. So there's a lot that's going on with them and you at the same time and you have to kind of say, can I be the person to do it and then you have to say what do I need to do, skill and will, or skill, will to do it and do I want to do it because there were times in the company after where there were times I like, this is going to be hard. Like we did a replatforming back in like 2016 because I knew AI...

And I was like, and I knew, I literally sat there and I said, I think AI is going to be big, we have this great data set but we don't have the platform for it. Am I willing to go through a dark time, a very risky time, or should I cash out and leave? And I felt like I could do it, that the team could do it, that I could hire the right people. And we did it. We migrated everyone. We ended up doing it. Took three years to do it, but we did it. And I'm just saying like, you got to kind of decide, do you want to do it? Do you have the energy to do it? Are you the person to do it? And then do you have the team to do it? And that takes, by the way, in a company of LivePerson size, it would take somewhere around eight months or so for me to get to a place to make that decision. It was not a one-month decision. We were never under the gun. We were never defending our territory a lot of times because we were being proactive. So, I had some time to think because we were always an innovator in our space. If you're being attacked and your business is getting attacked and being eroded, then you've got to move at some speed. That's defensive, which is hard.

Yeah. Yeah. And ultimately, you know, I can tell you those times where we had these, I'd go to the board and I'd be like, we have a new plan and this is what I see. And, you know, I'd talk through what I think we have challenges with and holes in our people, areas that we need new people, why I have doubts about some of the people we have, and why I think some of the way, there's also a group of people I would move up. There was a group of people who really I felt connected to the vision and they could be moved up. The one thing I'm really proud about there was we bought a lot of companies and we kept the founders and there were times where I would bring a founder up and have that person, I would have them lead a product strategy. Like I had a guy, he was Israeli, Avi Kedem, and he's running now, he's CEO of a company now in Israel, but we bought his company which was a small company but then I brought him up to run product during the transformation and he drove the whole business. I put the whole business in his hands because he was ready for it and he, you know, at one point he was just a product guy on his own product line of this business we bought in the corner of Israel. But I could tell that guy, he had what it would take. So I moved him up into the scene. He became, he ended up in the leadership team and he ended up becoming, now he's CEO of his own company. So I'm proud of those moments, but there are people in the team sometimes that you can bring also forward to help.

I've had a coach since 2000, since the dot-com bust. I had the same coach up until three years ago and she retired. Picked up a new coach. Yeah. I picked up a new coach. So I had the same coach who followed me all the way through when I went public. And then, yeah, after I went public, it was very stressful and I needed someone to talk to and so I picked up this coach and we were together all the way through. I think so it's important to have someone who you can have, first of all, there's a lot of impromptu conversations we would have because something was happening in a day. There was some, we would do our planning at the beginning of the year and then review at the end of the year to kind of keep it all like, and then there's this, there's people I met through my journeys who, you know, had ideas and skills and built companies and they were just there for me and I would ask them to help me on certain things. And then, and actually the biggest part was recruiting, then I need to find a recruiter who I could partner with. I always found a recruiter I could partner with to help me bring in a new crew of people and that was really key to also, like, if you find a good recruiter, not like your recruiter trying to, but a real strategic one who wants to help you build your business, there's a lot you can do there because they're out kind of identifying those people you want to go after. Today it's a little bit easier anyway, we use LinkedIn and all that but I'm saying it's still good to have like someone who could evaluate people who could be in your corner, you know what I'm saying, because now you need to recruit and bring...

Yeah. It could be an independent one. I use search firms but I would find someone who understood what I was trying to do who had a network in my space that I was going, I would like, when we went into AI, I identified the, I wanted someone out of Alexa or I wanted someone out of Google Home. And I basically met with the heads of engineering for both companies and then other senior people. And then I ended up hiring a head of engineering out of Amazon. And then, but that recruiter helped me kind of look at the lay of the land. I could have done on my own but it's better to have someone there as I'm saying as a partner to understand like, because they're assessing a person for you also. And then obviously I would have one board member with me. I would take a board member in that area and then they would help me. So there's like three of us that would work on recruiting. So I'm just giving you, sorry, that's a very tactical thing but yeah, my different people help me. But you got to have a coach. Either get a coach or a religious figure, you know, whatever you want to do to be in your life, whether it's a priest or rabbi or whatever it is, you need something in your life to talk to and someone who can be there because I found it also, it's just wearing on the people who are in your life, the people who are your friends, your family and stuff, they just get tired of your conversation. Like, nobody wants to talk about your business with you 10,000 times.

Yeah. Yeah. Wife's like, enough is enough. Like, I got two people like you, you know, how much can you talk about a business when you come home? It's like, it's interesting to us, it's kind of not interesting to most people.

Yeah. Then I also lived through like financial crisis and COVID and like so I had these macro, I mean like I remember these macro events and then you had your business and strategy. Like so this is a very extraordinary time. It's one of the reasons I wanted to do startups because the pace of how you can bring your ideas to market is, I've never seen it. Like what we're producing on the code-wise and product-wise and with a very small team, like, you know, it would take what we've done in months, it would take, you know, a couple of years. And I'm not just saying that, it's true. And what's happening now is because, like, you know, take Claude, Claude Code, they're using their own AI, like, their tools get better now much. And so that's what's happening, you understand? Like, what's happening is they're using their tools, imagine what's going on there, and so their tools, then we're getting the benefit and then it's like a flywheel that's so extraordinary. With a small group of people, like my goal is with like 20 people I want to build a multi-billion dollar business which I think is possible. And yesterday we were wiring up, now that our new platform's coming up in a few weeks and now we're wiring up the operations and we're using Claude and Notion and some other technologies but we're wiring the whole business together with, like, I use this thing called a MAP which is a Massive Action Plan, it's the way you organize getting like the operations of a business and I've had this for many years. We can generate a MAP out of the operation, then we can look at the MAP and then we're looking at everything that's being done now, like all the engineering tasks, everything in Jira, how are they rolling up to MAPs, but also we can look at the code and actually go down a level below and say like, is the code at a level that should allow this task to be checked off. And then we're going to marketing. So all I'm saying is like, it's extraordinary and that's why I just say it's like, I'm thankful I'm not where I was at LivePerson in many ways or Salesforce or ServiceNow and all these companies because running a public company in this day and age with the amount of overhead and all the bureaucracy that goes with just running these companies of that size, by the way, because we were a pioneering SaaS company, but so our whole entire infrastructure is about SaaS and we're not trying to, AI natives here are AI first. That's, I don't tell my guys, hey, I didn't send a memo, you got to use AI. Like if I was at LivePerson, I'd send a memo, we got to use AI in our operation here. These guys do it on their own. These are young guys, young engineers, and they're just rocking. And so those companies are so susceptible right now to getting tagged because a company like ours can move at a pace, it's true, that I've never seen. I had to adjust my own mind of what can be done in a day. Sometimes things are being done in a day that I knew would take months in my, because I've done these tasks and it takes a week and it took a year in the past. So I can't explain it but David, it's, and if you're an entrepreneur, it's like this is a renaissance that's so exciting because I saw the dot-com and that laid the infrastructure for what we have today. We couldn't do without the dot-com but this is a whole other level of output and build that we can do.

Well, but it was the same thing during the dot-com. I mean, I even, I invented chat in '97 and then there was like, let's say, 50 companies who copied.

Right. Yeah. I had, oh my god. It was like crazy and I got public and survived. That was the only task during survival. And what'll happen here? You're going to see the same thing. It's the same thing because there was a lot of money going in, like we know the capital right now is extraordinary. Wild. And so you have like that and so what'll happen eventually is that there's going to be a survival of the fittest and that's going to come in two different ways. One is, you know, is your idea unique enough but the other part is can you execute it because it could be a very unique idea and you can't execute it or you don't have a very good idea but you could actually fuck it out of it. And so, you know, I do think you have to have something unique. That's why I don't believe in chatbots. Like the whole chatbot, like even what we were doing, the whole chatbot enterprise thing is you're asking for trouble. The reason is the IT groups in enterprise, I spent my whole life with these guys. They were dying to get rid of everybody.

You know, you were, every renewal they were like, "We can build a chat system. We can build a call center. We can build..." I mean, literally every renewal I would hear the same talk. We would laugh. We'd be like, "We got these guys. We set up a group that will, you know, we're going to keep you guys. We're going to sign this contract, but I want you to be aware we're going to build what you're built." They told us they could build everything you're building for like $50,000 and be up and running in the next year or whatever, you know, and we're going to have to get rid of you. And I'm like, we would be like, cool, let's just sign the contract because I'll be here next to sign. But these guys now, they have the models, the same models that everyone else has. They have, if they're even not that skilled, they can vibe code. So that's a huge problem. By the way, we show up so many times, even the small businesses, and they'll be like, "We got a guy who's vibe coding." And like I know a guy who's a CEO, he's vibe coding his own platform right now. It's crazy.

I so I understand but what I'm trying to say that empowers the enterprise, those IT guys to be engineers and the CIOs of these businesses are going to give these guys an opportunity. So what it's going to create is a disruption in buying because it'll just slow down buying. They're going to come up with things that are pretty good. These tools are getting better. They can use Claude Code and they can get pretty far and they may be able to get to as far as to replace you, you know, and that's where it's very dangerous right now. And so well I think what you're going to see is there's going to be some unique products but a lot of internal building and then there'll be those builds, whatever they're building has to connect with these unique tools beyond the models themselves.

I saw those dumb memos. Everyone put those memos out and they all went public. We got to start using, we're going to use AI. And I'm like, I've never had that conversation because the guys actually, they're native to it. They're young engineers. They're young marketers and that's all they know and they want to have an edge in the world. And the thing is I interview people from some of these companies, you know, I moved to Silicon Valley. I was from, you know, New York. I moved here so I could hire good talent. And I've interviewed people from some of these bigger companies like you can't hire them because they're not doing anything with the tools. They're not using, they're all like sampling and we mess with it, but they're not actually using it to run a business. So I just think there's going to be trouble there, you know, and that's why the stock market's like playing against SaaS right now because, no, it's not going to happen tomorrow. It'll take a couple years, but it's on its way, you know. And here's the thing, David, and maybe my company can produce it, I don't know. But like, we're all, if you're in AI, we're all after the golden ring which is what is the new interface for the enterprise. What is the new structure in which when we see it we go, ah, okay, you understand? Like when Google search came out it was like, okay, I've been waiting for that thing, you understand that, right? So some, it's the same old ugly SaaS interfaces, the same old web, it's just with a little AI plugged in but when that thing happens the race goes and now everyone's aligning to the new thing, the new paradigm.

Some CEO the other day pulled up, he vibe coded for his company, he showed me, he said, I'm not going to use Salesforce, I'm not, he showed me what he built, pulls it up, he's got his ICP list of customers, every one of the customers has been, deep research is being done behind the scene constantly on each one of the ABM, each one of the target customers that shows up in the, then he has another tab that creates content for every single one of the ABM customers based on the deep research which then actually pushes to, you know, the salesperson to push and he basically had this whole thing and I was like, holy shit, this is why, like, this is the future, you should just shut down your company and do this as the company because this is what everyone needs. But it's what you said where to him his view was, I don't need all the features of Salesforce or HubSpot or whatever and he's like, I just need, this is my set customers. This is my content. This is, that's all I literally need. I'm just going to build that.

So, I'm in the same boat. That's why I believe that the interfaces will be, they'll be all based on the individual and not any, I think the problem with SaaS is we did it too. We made a one-size-fits-all and suck it up.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't need to go into an interface anymore, you know.

Yeah. So I got Kid out, they both started at the same time about a little over a year ago, year and a half. One is a children's device to bring AI safely into the home for kids. We got that one out the door and it's a hardware device and software we got out the door in Christmas. Now I'm hiring a CEO for it because you really can't run two companies and I wanted to get it to a place. I also have young kids, so I really believe in the product. Like there's something good for the world there. And I want to get that out. And now I'm hiring someone who can scale it and run it because it's really hard to context switch. Although I ran a company that's like a thousand, really literally it's like almost a thousand times the size of what I have today. And so the two companies combined, but reality is, you know, you got to be focused. And so I'm very focused on URAI. We just launched, did a round of financing there a couple months ago. So I'm very focused in that area and then I'm finding someone to run the other one because I want them both to be successful and I want them to have someone who's every day on it because they're companies. They need, you know, they zig and they zag. And so majority of my time is on the URAI today and I'm just focused on recruiting right now. So I'm going to run that company.

Right. Yeah. And it's like, you know, kids and devices today, it's so bad and, you know, they're creating a world we all know, I don't need to, you know, talk about, like, there was Jonathan Haidt put his book out, The Anxious Generation, like between the physical device, the iPhone or Android devices and the content, social media and stuff, it's all like a marriage in hell. And like Jonathan Haidt, the guy who wrote that book last year, you know, a year and a half ago, when iPhone put a camera in, the suicide and depression in teenage kids went up like a hockey stick globally. And so they're creating, so things are being created with hardware devices and then married to social media and I'm taking pictures of myself and all that doing is creating bad things for our kids. And then the biggest thing is our kids are being assaulted with values with people, I don't want to, this is going to, I'm going to say something but I'm going to live with it. There are people out there on social media and they're not influencers. There's people just make content for a living and they're like borderline homeless and need to get clicks and stuff and they'll make content for you, they'll make content for anyone. They're...

Just like content and they need to make money doing this and they don't care what's in front of your kids. If they put that, you know, there's a cartoon and the head gets cut off and everyone's laughing and blood squirting and your kid because it touches their reptile brain and they love to look at that stuff. They don't care about kids. They don't have kids. They don't care about kids. They just got to pay the rent. And on the side here, our number one job as family, as parents, have only one job. We know they have many jobs, but the basic one is make sure your kids don't get hurt.

Don't get sick.

Right. The universally everything else is how you educate them and how you take them somewhere. But you don't want them to be hurt. And we're allowing people to hurt our children mentally. And that's why it drove me to say like, I'm gonna try this. I'm gonna get out there and put something in the world and see where it goes. And so that's really what and I got there. I fulfilled that part of my mission and I need someone to run it and grow it.

And you do you wonder on the other side who's creating the content who's thinking to themselves this is good content to create and put out there you know and and so anyway I love that I love that device

Some crazy some crazy stuff

Yeah. Yeah.

I you know I got lucky not lucky but I I went back to my original first vest investor at LivePerson which is Ed Sim from Boldstart and Ed

Okay. But Ed when Ed was like I was 20 some years old. I was like

Okay. Ed was like 20 some and he was working at a fund that he just got a job at and I was his first investment and he was my first investment. So we he was my first guy who led my first round of my $3 million.

And then I went public in 2000. Imagine this. Ed's first deal goes public. And he's on a public board. We both I was 33. He's like 30 whatever he is here. He's a little younger than me. And he was like and we're both on a we're running a public company and he's on a public board on his first shot first deal, you know. So like and he, you know, he came in at like I don't know 20 cents a share. We went out at eight bucks a share. So it was a win. And I I obviously I've always kept in touch with Ed. So So that was one part. And then there's a gentleman here in Naveen Chadra who runs you know Mayfield and Mayfield I met with I reached out to Mayfield because I saw that they want to have a like a lot of what he was talking about was agentic AI but about being based on human reflection like he he said something I saw an interview which said why we love AI so much it reflects humanity and so anyway I reached out to one of his guys and then I had a meeting with him and we met two or three times and I built I it was called Eternos where we were replicating people from right and he looked at it and he really and he liked it uh but he wanted me to do B2B he's like you know because he said you know can you make this into like a business offering I said I don't know yet you know anyway I was talking to Ed and Ed's like I'm in you know like it just I had one meeting with him and his guys I showed him he goes you know we're just going to bet on you and and uh I'm committed to growing something he could see I really you know I was very passionate about this and he said have you talked to anyone else I said I talked to Naveen he goes Oh, I just talked to Naveen two weeks ago. Like we want to do a deal together. We've never done a deal together. I literally was talking to him about we met. I said, "Really?" He goes, "Yeah." He goes, "Hang on a second." He goes, "I'll call you back." So like the next day at 6 a.m. in the morning, he calls me goes in. I talk to him. He's in. He'll split the round with me. We're going to do it. It's like I'm like, "Wow." So what the two of them what makes them really great guys is they're very CEO friendly and founder friendly

It's amazing

Like it's 28 years of work to be able to pick up the phone and do this because I know how hard it is to raise money, you know?

Yeah. And the two things they, you know, obviously if you have experience, they're relying on you've seen it like have seen a lot building something from I was sleeping on a couch two years to public to to what I did. So I I I'd seen a lot. And then the other thing is your ability to recruit. You have to be able to recruit like so they think okay you have a reputation you built something this you probably can recruit decent like good people really good great people. So they when you're dealing with a first-time founder even they'll have a lot more in the like you need them to you know you'll need them in the process to recruit a lot of times. I needed it like when I was starting LivePerson I I hired some really amazing people and I needed the venture guys to like vouch for me. I remember like they were closing deals for me and closing people because they're like this guy's young and well you what why did you invest him and and their talk track to these other people were like look we if you do this for me and I like obviously they believe in in you but if you do this and take the risk look if it doesn't work out for some reason we got a lot of portfolio companies like we could like I'll take but just you know take the risk with me because I believe in this guy and help us build this thing and you're the right person for it. So that's what I you know a lot of times it helps you know what I'm saying.

I mean I had so many over the years but you know the end of the journey for me was with an activist shareholder who then we gave board seats to and and the company was changed forever and that was not a planned event for me. So, you know, I had a whole other plan because when you're there that long and I had the successes and I was I was in the middle of the AI like I planned for it. Like imagine I planned for it and yet it was then I was facing a different set of circumstances that were beyond what I possibly could do in trying to run a company. It became very hard to run the company and the company unfortunately is like since I left it's lost 90% of its market cap and you know it's it's a company that's lost and I'm you know it is what it is like it's and God gives you a journey and there were a lot of bad things that happened in the end especially with people and I'm not the only one who went through an activist I got who was at we a couple of us got hit at the same time from Zenesk he lost his and I'm friends with

Oh, yeah.

The three of us were really changing the contact center world in in our different lanes and we're gone. And I know these guys and especially there's a thing you go through with it, you know, and you have to. So, it was different than I got a I had a big celebration. I exited the business and it was like a hard exit and I had to just deal with that. I was losing the company I built. I knew all the energy I put into it and I knew it was in risk. That's why I fought very hard against the activist.

And so that's that was the hardest thing because I wasn't yet prepared for that type of action because the company went from a $900 million company to a $4 billion company in 12 months during COVID and we were on a lot of radars of a lot of people. And what you find in life is a lot of people then want to show up and take a ride, a free ride on your work. And that's what it is. So you're a target and and if you don't know that, you got to know that. And you're if you're not prepared for it, you're going to learn a lesson. And it was a great lesson for me and I'm going to take that lesson and that'll never happen again. You know, I want to make sure that I can protect the company. But so that that was in the end the end was a very different ending for me than what you would expect. And it's happened to a lot of guys. Steve Jobs and there's a bunch of us that you know and you have these exits and and you they're not and then you have to go put your faith in God and believe that God is giving you a different journey. And I'm in a place right now where I have these two companies and I'll do more with these than anything I could have done over there. And that's a that's if like what if I was there just, you know, slogging out another deal in the enterprise against the winds and tides that we talked about. What if that was the case? I don't know what would be there. But I do know I have a fresh group of people and I have an opportunity to build something and and I can define things differently than I did in the past. I can have different definitions about what the success of a company is than what I was running.

How long between leaving the company and knowing you were going to start these companies?

Back you know in 1995 96 and they're bringing up memories about like how hard it was and how I was alone or how I had a I had one guy and we were built how it was all so I basically you know when I left I felt like everything through my life from the days at the beginning to building my person that God gives you a message and sometimes you got to just suck it up and you need to move forward and so I immediately moved forward I didn't take a break I'm probably

Like moved out to I move my family out to California within six months. I told I kept coming out here because I'm like and it felt good to me. Like I came here, you know, and I met with friends and I'm like, "This just feels like where I should be." And I told my wife, we I have three young kids. We pulled them out of school and we got a rented a place here and brought them here and then they we just settled in and then I started to I was in a WeWork and I started to work these businesses and started to get them up.

So I so there was no break for me. There was because I'll tell you the danger is and it's like I don't once again I'm not comparing myself to Steve Jobs when when he had his the thing with Apple and then he went to Pixar.

Right. And next he had the two companies. I often wonder like what he was feeling because I had these feelings that you know I think he can end up in a really bad place. I think he can end up like feeling down and I have young kids and so my children will never see me in that configuration. I'm not going to put my kids like what is their father about. They saw all this like they they they arrived on earth when I'm running a public company and what's happening around the world and then I get exited and there's they're seeing this every day. They're they're watching me and they were they saw what would happen. It was like a year and a half fighting the board into all this crap. They experienced all that. And so I feel that also for the sake of my family like they got to see that you like you don't quit. Like nobody can take your ideas. They can take your company. They can take a lot from you. They can take even your money but they can't take your creativity, your ability to take that creativity and put it into reality and your ability to build businesses. Nobody can take that from you, you know. And so that's the gift. You have that gift. The people watching have the gift. So whatever happens in the world, nobody can take your gift. God gave you that gift. And I talk about God because there's something out there. And if you don't believe in it, it's hard to run a company. You you get very depressed. Really depressed.

Yeah. Yeah. We should get you in there.

Yeah. Yeah. You know I when I started LivePerson in 95 I actually started a company before that out of college. So in graduated 90 and end of 90 I beginning in 91 I started a company a kiosk company. I I knew nothing about technology but I thought I saw some technology. I thought these kiosks and and I saw full motion video back in '91 which was not you can it wasn't available like it didn't exist. I know you can't believe that who's listening to this but it was only pictures and there was only like sometimes 15 colors to make a photo. It was crazy. Anyway, I saw a promotion video and I thought that could be applied to college campuses for kiosk. So I started this that the business. I put 50,000 on credit cards because I had these credit cards from college that you get out of college and I started the business and in 19 end of 95 the business went under and I lost everything and I then I was in debt, you know, to these credit card companies and I moved to New York City. I was in Baltimore and I I had nothing. I had $5,000 in my bank account and I had this couch and I decided to sublease like a 100 square feet from a guy who was making t-shirts down in Tribeca. It was a factory and he had an extra hundred square foot that he was subleasing for like I think it was like a um a couple hundred dollar a month maybe $200 a month I paid it had no shower so it was supposed to be an office and there's a bathroom outside and there was like four other of these types of little offices there that he was subleasing and um I don't think he I don't think he ever knew I was living there but I was living there and I decided to live there and and then And I would shower. I got a health club membership to shower so I could shower. And um and it was I remember November of 1995 I moved into Nine Desbrosses Street which is now a condo right outside the Holland Tunnel. And I remember I just remember this. It was cold. It was snowing. There was no heat on. I went to Kmart and got a pillow and a comforter and I slept on the couch and it was humbling and no one will ever know what that felt like. And even today I have flashbacks to it. It was just a very lonely, very surreal feel. And I would wake up and I didn't have an idea. I just started building websites because the web was happening and I knew the internet was going to be something. So I started to build websites and eventually it was interesting. I had a guy I had a friend who was really good friend and he said you're depressed you should go see this guy Dr. Frank Morio and I think he can help you and I met this guy Frank and and Frank's been he was such an important part of that part of my life but Frank was a therapist and you know met with me he didn't charge me he was doing a he was doing a favor for my friend and he would listen to my stories of my life and my childhood and all these things and how the company failed and I remember it was like four weeks I came I would go in the morning he had a couch he was upper east side little therapy you know office And and Frank says, "You know, Rob, you don't have to tell me anymore. I got it. I got it." I said, "Okay. What do we do next, Frank?" And he goes, he says, "Uh, well, you're fucked."

So I remember laughing now and I said and I remember going I remember being inside and going and thinking oh my god like I hit the end of the road like and he said he said I want to explain what's going on in your life and so I said okay he goes imagine you have a set of glasses on that are blurry and you were given to them at birth and you don't know that the world and how you're perceiving it is blurry. You think you're looking through glasses that make the world clear. And what you're doing is you're making a series of decisions in your life because you don't see clear against what you want to do in life. And I told him, I want to go public. I read a book when I was 14 years old about going public. I'm I said I want to go public. I want to run a I told him all my dreams. And he said, your goggles, your glasses are not clear to get you to your dreams. And that's where you're fucked. Because I can tell you, you're lucky cuz you're 20 some years old. I was 27 and you're sitting on this couch and you're not 57. But you could be 50. I have guys that come in here at 57. Same problem. And they don't know why they lost their family. They got this. They got they're drug addicts. Whatever it is, they end up on my couch, you know, famous, not famous. He had everybody with the same goggles. So, and he said to me, "If you're interested, we're going to remove them. We're going to get you a new set, but you're going to have to do things that you're not going to want to do. And you're not going to want to do them because they're going to be hard to do. You're going to have to change. And I'm going to tell you what to do. If you don't do it, I'm going to I'll fire you as a client if you want to take this journey, but I won't because I don't work with losers and I don't have the time and you're not paying me."

It was it was really like we're really good friends. Like we made But that very moment he just he was like, I've seen this before. I've had many friends send somebody like you on the couch and I and I've seen that. Yeah, you're going to change and you get off the couch, you don't do shit. And he said straight eyes like I don't have time. I got a big business here. You're not paying me and I don't work with losers. And I was like and I had nothing. So I said, Frank, I have nothing. You know, I'll do whatever you want me to do because at this point I'm kind of lost and I can't figure out where to go except I'm sleeping on the couch and I'm broke. So I don't know where to go from here. So that's what happened. And from there for about two years we worked together. And what he said to me is when you have anxiety or anger or a high emotion, call me. I would be in the middle of a meeting sometimes. I remember I was in the middle of the meeting. I was pissed off these guys. They were screwing me over. I went to the bathroom. I called Frank. These guys are screwing me over. They're not. And he says, "Tell me what's going on." Said, "Go back and do this." And I I go, "I don't want to do that." Like it's not what I think is the right thing to do. He goes, "Go back and do this." And I I remember this. I went back into this one meeting. I I followed what Frank told me to say. I relaxed. I didn't anger. I didn't take it personally and I won the contract. I like won a 100,000 contract and and I was like, "Holy shit." I was about to blow out the meeting and say, "You don't respect me." And and Frank, so anyway, it's a long it's a really long story, but those two years and he he did something else to me. He said, "I want you to volunteer." And I ended up going to a homeless shelter on Park Avenue, and there's there's a church there. I'll get it in a second. and and I would sleep in the homeless shelter like once a month and take care of people who were homeless and I would listen to these wonderful stories of people who just didn't have family or a net. They were just and they were I and they were but I would get to feed them and listen talk to them and I'd sleep there with them and I I remember I wake up in the morning and I would go back to my place and I'd go, "God, I'm so I'm lucky. I'm really lucky." Like a I can still help people. There are people who I was so I felt so sorry for myself but there were people who are more greater need than I could ever be. I still could go back to mom and dad. I didn't want to but I could have went back. I have a sister who had taken me and I had family but they didn't have family. I thought I I could help people. So he he had me do things to build muscle in different areas because I was just down you know I was I felt sorry for myself and whatever you know and then he taught me to change. And then one day, one day I remember I walked I came to his office. He said, "I don't want to see you anymore."

He said, "You're done. You did it." He said, he said, "You're on your own. You don't need me anymore." And continued forward. I literally went when I went public, I called him up before I went public. And I said, "Frank, I'm I'm I did it. I did it. I'm going public." And he said, "I knew you were going to do it." He goes, "I've been following you." And because it was in the news and stuff and was following you. I said, "I want to give you something." So, I gave him some equity. I said, "I want because I never paid him." And I said I said, "I just want to thank you because I I'm here because you go, "No, you did it on your own." Like, there's so many people. It had nothing to do with me. I helped you. But you did it on your own. But but he I went public and it was the thing that when I sat on the couch said, "I want to go public, Frank. That's my goal." And I got it. And it was only, you know, it was basically it was five years later, but he had followed the journey and two two years with him and then three without him. And then I was which is a great guy because he didn't try to take he wasn't trying to be a therapist. Yeah. He was just trying to get me out and get me to be the person I could be, you know.

That's a long one. Sorry.

Oh, it's there.

Was terrible at the time but when I look back it was it was very freeing and I was lucky and that couch will always remain in my life, you know. So,

And it doesn't By the way, it doesn't change there because now I'm back in startups. Like I have that same, you know, company comes from the Latin root corpus, right? Which means body. And so if you think of a company as a body and bodies have energy, right? They have, right? You're feeding them, right? There's think of it like that that those first formative years is all about energy. Like is your how much energy can you pour? And that's why it's it's tiring, it's debilitating, it's exciting, it's it's everything of emotion because you're being asked to put your energy into something on a level if you really want to make it that's pretty extraordinary. You know, it's it's like you've you've you've done it. You know, it it takes a lot out of you. You're tired. You're but and you wake up the next day and you're like, I'm going to put I'm going to put another ounce of it in.

Or when somebody tells me I can't do it, I'm putting two ounces in. when I when I'm they're gonna tell me I'm failing, I'm putting another and and that's just what it takes to win, you know, and and to take the journey. And and I I would say like there's a high bar like 90 something percent of startups fail because most people don't want to put the work in. It's just they don't want to do it. They want work life. They want this, they want that. They want everything to be perfect. It's an imperfect, unusually weird energy sucking thing. You know what I'm saying? So

It's all going to work out. Don't worry. Like it'll all work out as long as you just put in the work. Like it'll work out. Like so many times you're in your head about how it won't work out, you know, and how it could fail. And one way or another, it's going to work out. It worked out that I left LivePerson. It worked out that I was on a couch and lost all my money. It worked out that I found my wife. It worked out that, you know, I can go all around. I just I I I just think there's it it whatever it is like I read somewhere, you know, don't look for health over sickness. Don't look for wealth over poverty. Don't look for stability under it's just what it is. Like life is kind of what it is. And you're you've been given a task and a path and you've decided to take it whatever it is and it will work out. It may not feel good when it works out, but it will work out because in the end, you know, like all of this like when they there's only one common thing we have is being born and being dead and everything in between is your own individual world. But the the buried part is like when they bury you, you know, what's what's that day about? What's what is that all about for you? Like what what happened there? And I go back to Frank for a second. Frank and he has a book out. If you look at Frank Morio, he has a book where there's a woman who comes into his office and she's dying of cancer. And she's there because Frank's going to help her die with dignity. She and she tells her story. She was 70 years old or 65. She lived with her mother. She was in love with a man but never got married because her mother didn't like it. She never liked her. Her whole life was all about the things she didn't do. And Frank tells this story and he works with her and she dies and she writes a letter and the mother gives the letter to him after she dies and he opens up and says, "I want to thank you for the last months of my life for making me feel like I could live the life I wanted in these last months." And Frank says like, "You don't want to be there. Nobody wants to have that. He made her she got control of her death in the end. He he made her feel good about she controlled herself dying and wasn't a victim to it, but she the rest of her life was just a blur. And so in the end when you have that moment like you just got to look back and say like regardless the I did it. I didn't have like nobody has a mission of comfort. My mission statement is to be comfortable.

And my mission statement is to live the life I I'm supposed to live and be healthy and you know and but but you got to be at the end of the road with that thing. You know that thing.

You know what I'm for me David before we go. Can we something?

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I actually want to.

I wish I interviewed my dad on my podcast. I never did it.

I wish I would have interviewed him.

I think this is on here. So, okay. Let me see. Yeah, I brought it up here. Okay, let me let me read this. As you It's called Ithaca. As you set out for Ithaca, hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laestrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon. Don't be afraid of them. You'll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high. As long as rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Cyclops, wild Poseidon, you won't encounter them unless you bring them alongside inside your soul. Unless your soul sets them up in front of you. Hope your road is a long one. May there be summer mornings when what pleasure when with what pleasure what joy you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time. May you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things. Mother of pearl, coral, amber, and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind, as many sensual perfumes as you can. And may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars. Keep Ithaca always in your mind. Arriving there is what you're destined for. But don't hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years. So you're old by the time you reach the island. Wealthy with all you've gained on the way. Not expecting Ithaca to make you rich. Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey. Without her, you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give now. And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you. Wise as you have become, so full of experience. You'll have understood by then what Ithacas mean. It is a It is. It is. I haven't read it in a long time. It is so good. Acts you and you I haven't read that in a long time.