The Billion-Dollar Business Model

Brandon (00:30) was announced at 1.2 billion dollar ⁓ venture round. They are well into unicorn land, but what makes them really exciting, ⁓ it makes, you know, hit him and his co-founder super exciting is the why behind what they do, what they do. and I know, you know, a lot of folks are familiar with Esusu, but I'll let Samir kind of break it down. But this specific session is called the Billion Dollar Business Model because they found a way to take

an outcome that is incredible for creating equity in the US and also making it really, really profitable. And it's a B2B to C model that, in my, in my opinion, is a masterclass on how to think about a business that's a win, win, win, win. So this might be a little bit of a different angle than Samir has been been used to. We're going to go underneath the surface and really dive into what it takes to create an incredible business model if you are looking to launch a business with Samir

And his co-founder Wemimo have done together. Samir, welcome to the Owner Mode Summit. Brandon, thanks for having me. Thrilled to be here. Big fan of what we're trying to accomplish here. Love it. So let's let's get into it. I I'd be remiss to not have you just kind of cover a little bit of the backstory behind Esusu and then focus specifically on the business model for Esusu. How does Esusu help customers? How does it make money? Yeah, absolutely, Brandon. So whenever we talk about Esusu, especially with a great group of such

such as this, want to take a trip down memory lane and talk about the why behind the company that dovetails into the company, our business model, our product and and so on and so forth. And Esusu really stems from my co-founder Wemimo and I's personal experiences. For me, I grew up in an immigrant family from New Delhi, India. And when we moved to the United States of America, we sort of thought we had made it, you know, come to America, everything's gonna be great. And sadly the world doesn't quite work that way. And we were met with a rude awakening when my father was mugged on his first day here.

we didn't really have a place for shelter. And that just set the tone for a lot of my childhood where I watched my parents work incredibly hard, but struggle to assimilate into our financial system. They specifically struggled with things like access to credit, you know, working paycheck to paycheck and get it integrated into our financial services. And the thought that I was left with was it shouldn't be so hard for people doing all the right things to get ahead. The promise of this country is you work hard, play by the rules, and you can get ahead. And that just wasn't a reality for my family. And ⁓

My co-founder had a similar set of experiences immigrating from Nigeria to Minneapolis. And he and his mom ended up taking out a 400% payday loan. And that's sort of how they started their journey in America. And so years later, we connected over those shared experiences and built Esusu on this idea that no matter where you come from, what you look like, or your financial identity, it should never determine where you end up in life. ⁓ like Brandon said, at the end of the day, we're still capitalists. And so we wanted to build a company that could have a remarkable impact in the world, but still build

something that could be market driven, scalable, and ultimately drive outcomes for as many people as possible. And so that led us to pioneer the idea that when people pay rent, they should build credit the same way that someone does when they pay a mortgage. And using that idea, we sort of went to market. That idea caught fire. And today we cover about five million rental units representing 12 million rentals across all 50 states in the United States. And that was just a starting point.

Since we started with rent reporting, we then layered on things like financial literacy and financial coaching. We layered on an eviction program, eviction prevention program. And most recently we launched flexible rent, which allows people to line their rent up with their paycheck. If I get paid every other week, instead of paying rent on the first of the month, now I can pay it every other week so that my cash flows actually work. And so what what Mimo and I and the rest of the team at Esusu are committed to is building tangible, scalable solutions for everyday Americans to live their financial best. And that's what

we've set out to do here. ⁓ you know, we started this company about 10 years ago. We're around 200 people, as Brandon mentioned, we've raised around $200 million in capital, valuing the company at $1.2 billion. The business model, though, that's really key is we actually sell to the landlord. So we partner with large scale owners and operators of real estate like Blackstone, related companies, et cetera. They kind of see the value because when their renters are financially stable, they're more likely to pay rent on time.

They're more likely to stay in those assets longer. They can attract better quality renters. All of those things drives their bottom line. And so we can create that ultimate win-win where owners make more money, renters are more financially stable. They build equity. They have opportunities to participate in the US economy, and society benefits because people are prospering. And so that's ultimately the business model we created here at Esusu. Love it. And one thing I love about the business model is it is so pure, I guess, for lack of a better word. ⁓ you all

went through some things coming up with your families that put you on a mission to change these things, but then created this win-win-win model for everyone involved. the first question is, how much did you change your initial thesis, if at all, right? Because we see a ton of pivoting happening with startups that's encouraged. You all seem pretty true to kind of what you set out to do from the beginning, but I'm curious to know how much adjusting happened along the way? man, there is not a single successful company

out there that was kind of a straight line path to the finish. So what I always tell founders is just get started. What you started with is not going to be what you end with. And that was very much the case for myself and Wemimo at Esusu. And so the idea that we actually started with was very different. It was a rotational savings product. Rotational savings is actually when groups of people come together, pool their money, and take turns of drafting this group pot to make big ticket purchases. In West Africa it's called SUSU. That's sort of one of the originations of Esusu. In India it's called chip fund or kitty.

And so both of our families did this thing and we had this brilliant idea that we would digitize it and go direct to consumer to sell it. And along the way, we learned a few things very quickly. Number one, direct to consumer is incredibly expensive and it is really hard, right? It's like, hey, Brandon, we just met. Can I have your social security number? Can I have your bank account? Most people are looking at us like I don't know you like that. I'm not giving you this information. Right. And so we learned that the only way for us to build trust was actually boots on the ground, in-person interactions.

Going to churches, going to community centers, sharing our stories, and that would resonate and people would give the app a shot, but it's not scalable. It's not venture backable, right? We're not gonna hit scale in that manner. And so that sort of led us to our first sort of key insight, which is we need a way to piggyback on existing trust, which is basically B2B to C. And so we then took that technology and started licensing it to nonprofits, community banks, CDFIs, and saying, Hey, you're trying to serve a demographic that we care about.

And you don't have the tools to do it. So why don't you use our technology to reach them? And that worked a little better, but we ran into two other problems. Number one, those institutions don't have a lot of money. So once again, we could scale more than with direct to consumer, but it wasn't going to be a billion dollar sort of outcome. Number two was that we were solving the wrong problem. Most of what Wemimo and I were doing was actually talking to our customers. We would text literally every single customer that ever signed up for app, got a phone call or a text from one of us. And what they told us over and over was, we love this product.

But we know we need to save money. And the real problem is that when we try to save, we hit a financial emergency and we don't have the funds to cover it and we don't have a place to go for cheap debt. And debt is the backbone of America. Right. If you want to talk about something like the racial wealth gap in America, 80% of that is driven by home ownership. What is home ownership? Cheap debt from FHA loans and VA loans. And so the history of the middle class in America is built on debt, yet there's 45 million Americans who are credit invisible who can't access debt.

And now they're going out there and borrowing at 400% interest, all these predatory terms. And that's actually a loss for them, but that's an even bigger loss for the United States because we're just throwing GDP away. And so how do we bring these people into the system and give them a shot to participate? Right. So that's what really shifted our orientation to how do we help people build credit? What do we do to help people build credit? And that's sort of what brought us to our business model of today, where we're like, okay, how do we find a way to

basically solve everyone's problem. It goes back to win-win-wins, right? Renters want to build credit, but underwriters need to underwrite risk. We can't just say, hey, Brandon's a good guy, underwrite him. We got to give them something where they can make a real risk assessment. And for us, what we realized is that was rent. Because by default, if you're a homeowner, you have good credit and you have savings. So you're okay. But if we focus on renters, we can really solve for people that are fundamentally underserved in our system. And we can use rental payments as a proxy for credit.

Right. At the end of the day, if you've paid your rent on time for 10 years, that means you're at pretty good credit risk. It's your largest monthly expense. It's consistent. If you move towards home ownership, it's not like you're going to stop paying your bill because you own it. That doesn't even make sense, right? Ultimately, rent is the most underwritable data point in our financial system, but we've never used it to underwrite a home loan in the history of this country. And so that's a long way-winded way of kind of walking through the journey, but ultimately realize, okay, we're going to take our lesson learned on the B2B side.

And we're gonna take our lesson learned from our ultimate customers and we're gonna combine the two. How do we reach people at scale, capture this data asset, and use it to give people an entry point into the system that's fair, that's equitable, and that lets them participate in the economy? Love that. And so listening to that story, one thing that really stands out to me is that you and your co-founder really got under the hood and got to know your customers, understood what their pain points were. So your pivots were driven by something that you knew was a pain point that really existed for them. That's number one.

But then I also want to kind of move into like the next progression, which is you are a venture backed company. I wonder, as you kind of ruled out different elements, because I heard you mention ⁓ you couldn't really scale some things into a billion dollar type of business model, right? And so how much of that was driven by your decision to go the venture backed route? Was ⁓ not going the venture backed route something that you considered at a certain point? Obviously, Nasir, who was one of the early believers, ⁓ is also joining us for the summit.

and we want to definitely get his take on on how he was able to to see the opportunity as you all were kind of figured out the business model. But the question is, when you were looking at choosing a specific pain point to focus on, size of that pain point was a big piece of it. How did you think about just the venture back versus ⁓ maybe bootstrapped or other routes as you were kind of getting started? Yeah, it's a it's a great question. And I'll be the first to say that I don't think venture is for every business. Right. So for anyone that's thinking about being an entrepreneur.

A venture is sort of what's glorified in the media, but venture capital, to be very clear, is a mortgage. There's a rate of return and you've got to pay that return off. Right. And so be careful what you're signing up for. That being said, for the right business, it's the best fuel to the fire. For us, we didn't really have too many other options, right? Because debt typically requires stronger business fundamentals. And we needed ventures so that we could build the technology and get the company to a point where we were earning the revenue.

To then be profitable or demonstrate enough revenue to have other options. So one, venture was really the best option for something that requires upfront investment before you see sort of a return on that investment. Number two, though, is that we did bootstrap. ⁓ after Wemimo and I quit our corporate jobs, we bootstrapped for 18 months. That was $100,000 in credit card debt. I couch surfed. Eventually I got one of my close friends to co-sign a lease with me in Harlem. There's two bedrooms. One was the big master bedroom, and the other was like a Harry Potter closet.

I lived in the Harry Potter closet and Airbnb beat out the larger bedroom. And that's how I covered rent and utilities and my health insurance. I was the guy who would save my Starbucks cups because when you go back with the Starbucks cups, it's only 50 cents. Right. So I needed coffee as an entrepreneur. I worked out of Blink Fitness in New York, which I think is now a different company. That's how long it's been. Right. So you do all the things you gotta do, but at some point you need to be able to sort of move past that phase and really invest in the business. And

Myself and Wemimo don't come from money. So it's not like we had a safety net for ourselves personally. Right. And so we needed to figure out a way to one, invest in the business to drive growth and two, to make it more stable because we just can't keep accruing debt forever. I had seven debtors calling my university. I went to NYU. They had sent me to collections. Right. And so we really needed to figure out a pain point to address that. And ⁓ and for venture, you know, it's funny because

We had the right signs, but I think Esusu is the greatest case for diversity and venture capital that's out there. And I don't say that because everyone we talked to was racist or any of the isms. I'd say that because they were missing the market. Right. We would talk to people and they would ask me questions like who cares about forty points on a credit card? How many people in this country live paycheck to paycheck? And for me, what I realized is like their thinking is that we are building a business for a small segment of the market. And what they're missing is that is the majority of this country.

50 to 75% of Americans are paycheck to paycheck. More people struggle with credit who don't, right? But most of the people in venture who are writing checks, their friends are lawyers, your bankers, your consultants. They talk about having perks at airlines, but that is not everyday Americans. And so I realized like that is a real mindset shift. And the reason people didn't see it is those weren't their lived experiences. And that's why it took us time to raise venture capital. Our first backers, people like Acumen Fund, Impact America, Nazirid Zeal.

Concrete roads now known as Westbound, Ashawn Mendy, Next Play Venture, Serena Ventures, all those folks understood the audience that we were trying to build for. And they understood that this wasn't a small market. This was a massive market. This was most of this country. And that is the miss. And that is what we had to convince these folks of. And so we had to bootstrap to get the data, the customers, the info, to then say, look, not only are we telling you this is a big market, but the data backs it up. So timing is everything. And so a lot of people would say,

Why wasn't anybody doing this before you all came along?

You know, it's a great question. I think there's a few things. I I won't say that we were the first person to think about building better financial tools for underserved communities. There's certainly been other companies that have done things around that arena. I think what we were able to do was ⁓ a couple of things, right? One was we really focused on credit. Right. That was our niche. And what happened around twenty fourteen is the definition of credit evolved from being something where you had to take debt to being something where you could use alternative data to build credit. Now let's talk about why.

Right. The reason that happened was for policymakers, that meant more of their constituents could participate in the economy. For the credit bureaus, they actually lose when people are credit invisible because you know what? They can't make money on their credit score. Right. So they actually are incentivized to do that. Right. So you had two big stakeholders who wanted to be able to score everyone in this country. Then you had landlords who were like, I want to get paid on time. And you had renters who were like, I'm sending most of my income to this landlord. What do I get for that? Right. So everyone was on board. So you had that shift sort of in incentives that allowed for this to be possible.

Then it was figuring out the business model, right? People had tried a lot of stuff like this in a B2C model. It's really hard in financial services, as we talked about. So we really tried to pioneer this B2B model by ins aligning the landlord and the renter. And then the third was we had to build a lot of really unsexy middleware, right? We had to actually connect with every single property management software, which is the accounting tools they use to process rent. So that way we could seamlessly take that data and report it to the bureaus. Otherwise, you're asking landlords to give you paper.

manual spreadsheets, all this garbage data, and all you're doing is cleaning data. And so we needed to build the infrastructure for data to flow into our system for then us to do our magic to transform it into the credit bureau's format, which is Metro Two, and ship it to Equifax, Experience, and TransUnion. Right. And so those are really the three things. Number one, the policy and mindset shift, number two, the business model. And then number three, building the middleware to actually make it seamless and pretty turnkey for our customers. Got it. And so let's talk about some of these unlocks because you when you when you went through your

Client roster. I mean, this is like the who's who. You just don't get in bed with Blackstone. It doesn't happen overnight. So as you reflect back to like your journey and some of those big unlocks at the enterprise level, maybe how those unlocks happened. Was it through, you know, maybe some of your investors? Give us like those early milestones that really changed the paradigm and kind of started the first domino that helped you all to become the incumbent in the space or kind of the the, you know, call it the player of choice in the space.

Yeah, Brandon, I gotta say it's still day zero at Esusu. We can't be, we're not the incumbent. Yeah, we gotta, we gotta take that Jeff Bezos mindset. Day zero always. But I I appreciate the the kind words. And ⁓ I'll I'll say a couple things about this. I think one thing that I'd just point out, particularly for this audience, is neither myself or we're me mo are technical. Right. We understand the lay of the land around engineering and and whatnot, but that's not our background. One thing that we both love though is selling business.

And so, you know, there's pros and cons to every founding team, but our superpower was always people, sales, and driving revenue. And so that's a little bit of what you see reflected in that B2B approach where like we've had a lot of tech debt over the years that we've had to address, but we're always outselling our technology. Right. And so just to say that founders of any background, whether you're technical, non-technical, somewhere in the middle, you can build a successful business. You don't need to follow the stereotype of a a technical guy and a product guy and a and a and a sales gal or whatever that looks like, right? ⁓

But for us, sales really comes down to a a couple of different things. I think in real estate, it's a super old school industry, right? Like these people have been working with each other for years. They know each other. It's a very word of mouth industry. So you that means you got to show up. You got to be at conferences, you got to be in person at events. You got to really put in this sort of sweat equity. And those first few events really suck because nobody knows you. Nobody wants to talk to you. And you're not really offering anything that valuable by comparison to a billion dollar transactions they're trying to close.

⁓ and so Wami Mo is a s is saying that ⁓ I'm sure the the the squire guys will love too, but you hang around a barbershop long enough, you're gonna get a haircut. Right. And that was sort of our our mindset with this whole thing where it's like we're gonna put in the reps, we're gonna put in the SWAT equity, we're gonna be in front of these people, we're gonna talk to them, and we're gonna be coachable. Right. So I'll give you an example of related companies. The vice chair there, Jeff Brodsky, was one of our earliest customers, and he really took a bet on us. But it took us nine months to set up that meeting.

Right. There's a guy at related, his name's Jamar. We got introduced to him. He kind of helped us out. We got in front of him and he pulled Jeff Brodsky into this meeting. And the first time we met with Jeff, he told us every single thing that sucked about our business and our business model. And I think a lot of founders in that moment would have been really upset and walked away and whatever. And we said, You know what, Jeff? You're right. So tell us what to do differently. And Jeff then whiteboarded all this stuff. And Wamibo and I went back and we just did it. Like

Every single thing Jeff asks us to do, he did it. He's You guys aren't SOC 2 type 2 certified. Related as a $50 billion company. We can't do business with you if you don't have those credentials. Great. We're a seven person company, but we're gonna get SOC 2 type 2 certified if we have to write the security binders ourselves. Right. All right. I need you to have more than one product because I can't sell a deal enterprise wide if there's only one solution. So what else are you gonna offer related? Great. We're gonna we're gonna launch a second product just for you, Jeff. Right. And then he's like, okay, my property managers have no time. You need to be on site. You need to talk to residents, you need to do TA meetings. Great.

You want me to go to Harlem where I live now, but like you want me to go to all your properties in Harlem and meet with renters and listen to them tell me about their radiator being broken and then talk to them about Esusu? Let's frickin' do it. Right. You just gotta put in that work. And what that did that was really important, Brandon, is it earned Jeff's respect. And so we did all the things. We got to SOC two, we did TA meetings, we we launched new products. And then when we were negotiating our master services agreement, someone on the team was like, Hey, we should negotiate these guys down.

We're related. We have the leverage. And Jeff said, no. These guys have done every single thing we asked of them. We're going to pay them what their contract is worth because they work harder than any of our other vendors. And that's how we landed that contract. It took a couple of years, but we had to put in that work. Right. And sometimes you're endowed with a network and a stakeholder and you just happen to have the relationship. But when you don't, I always say that that sweat equity can give you the credibility and the trust and the respect, even without that sort of stuff. Blackstone was four years of my life.

Two years of those was negotiating legal red lines back and forth. We did that ourselves, right? Because it was like all about winning those big deals. But now that we have related, we have Blackstone, we have Freddie Mac, we have Fannie Mae, we have KKR, we have these customers. Like I said at the beginning, real estate's an old school industry. I can walk into any sales conversation now and say, look at this roster, you can call any of them up. And they will answer the phone and they will say, you know, this product has added value for my renters, but these people will work for your business. And that is the type of reputation I want our team to have.

That's why I never want us to feel like then come back. We got to be hustling. We got to be hungry. Jeff Brodsky calls, he gets a response in 30 minutes. That's what's going to make us be better than everyone else out there. I love that. I love those stories, man. It's the shooting in the gym, right? You know, we had that kind of term where you just went through some of those thousands, thousand-shot sessions that you had to put in. And we see on the other side of that, they got Blackstone, right? And you're like, no, no, no, no, no. This is four years in the making. Here's a saucer's making that went into that.

But you also hit on something else I want to touch on. Before Esusu, correct me if I'm wrong, you were at LinkedIn running sales and strategy ops for a $500 million business in a Mia or so, right? Yep. Let's get into, and you mentioned that you and Win Mimo are sales folks. That's something that you can get done. Tell us a little bit around why you made the jump when you did, right? And what DNA did you bring with you?

That puts you in a position to believe that you can be really effective and successful as an entrepreneur when you already had, you were already winning, man. You already had a top company running a business, a bright future ahead. There was somewhere along the lines where that wasn't enough for you. Yeah, you know, it's that's a great question. And ⁓ there's a lot to ⁓ unpack there. And so one thing I'll g I'll give some major credit to LinkedIn.

Because I think when I was interviewing with companies, some companies looked at my entrepreneurial DNA as a weakness or sort of a a risk. And other companies looked at it as an asset. And LinkedIn very much looked at it like an asset. Right. So they were super inter and one time I had to reschedule an interview because I had something going on for my company and they were like, That's awesome. Rather than this person doesn't take this seriously. Right. And so I think one, it was the right employer where they sort of respected the entrepreneurial DNA. And I would argue that's one of the reasons why LinkedIn has been the company that it's been.

And so I never had to really hide that I had a other interests and whatnot. And so when I joined LinkedIn, it wasn't too much longer after that that when me when I started working on Esusu. And basically we did the classic corporate side hustle. Right. I'd work I killed myself for LinkedIn first and foremost. Like I always tell people, get your major right. If you're gonna start a company while working full time, never give your boss a reason to say you're distracted. Right. So I made sure that the the job was done. But then nights, weekends.

All that stuff, I would still come into the LinkedIn office. Well, Mimo would meet me there and we would work on Esusu. We'd use LinkedIn's shower. We'd eat their free snacks as we had no money. And we would just work on Esusu over and over. And what really ended up happening was it kind of came to a forced decision point. And that was because both things were sort of working enough. But to take it to the next level, I'd need a drop wand. And so it kind of came to a forced business turnover, right? With LinkedIn, I'd actually relocated to Ireland.

And was working on the AMIA business unit. And the next step for the company was to give me permanent citizenship to Ireland so that we're like permanent visa status so that I could actually continue to operate in like this capacity. And I was like, I really cannot ask LinkedIn to do something like that for me if my plan is in six months or 12 months or whatever to go jump and do this thing. Right. And at the same time, the biggest feedback we were getting from investors were we need full time founders. Like we had a product in the market.

We were getting customers, we were starting to see revenue. They're like, we need the founders to be full time before we put a dollar into this. And so we kind of hit that on both ends where it's like, this doesn't feel right to me on like a personal level to ask LinkedIn to go through all these hoops if I'm gonna leave. And on the business side, we can't raise money unless we're full time. So I was sort of forced into that decision point. But ultimately, what made the choice for me, and then even when we were bootstrapping the next 18 months and everything was tough was three things. I think number one was.

Whether or not investors believed in the product, the people did. Right. Like our customers, our clients were benefiting from it. I saw it every single day, right? We get emails, they would say, Thank you. This is so powerful. This is helping me. This is helping my family. So I was like, number one, whatever we're doing is working. Number two, I have the great pleasure of having an amazing work husband in Wemimo. And so no matter how great or how shitty every single day was, there was at least one other person that knew exactly what I was going through. And with that sort of infrastructure, you can do anything.

Right. And beyond Will Mimo, I obviously had my my wife, my other significant other and other people that sort of were in my corner. ⁓ and number three was basically I didn't want to have any regrets. Right. And I think Will Mimo and I realized at some point we were learning a lot in corporate America, we were making money, but our heart and soul was in building something that could actually impact our communities. And if we don't shoot that shot, are we gonna look back at eighty and regret it? And we both agreed that the answer was yes. And so those three things were sort of the driving force to to do this thing. But it's really was not easy.

Love it. So you and Wemimo, you know, you called him your your your other life co-pilot. Let's talk about that a little bit. You know, ⁓ it sounds like you both weren't technical, right? Back in the day, YC used to say you need to have a technical co-founder, right? And this was kind of like looked at if there was a lot of overlap between the two co-founders, right? You and him are both incredible at sales. And I've heard Wemimo speak. He's definitely up there. you know, I'd say up there with the best of ⁓ but then you had this element of

you know, as you mentioned, together kind of saying, we want to make impact, right? So how did you all think through you and him partnering? Why was he the right partner for you? And then as, you know, as Suzu has grown and scaled, how do you all divide responsibilities between each other? Yeah, I mean, ⁓ what Mimo is arguably the most important relationship I've ever had, with the exception of my

with my wife, right? Those two relationships to me are like the two speed dials, my two emergency contacts, et cetera, just to share like how much you put into it. And I would say just like a marriage, you got to put those reps into your co-founder relationship if you want it to be like the one that Wemimo and I have. And when we started, we got a ton of pushback because we were co-CEOs and people looked at that once again as a weakness. But for us, it was always a strength because we always put our relationship at the foundation of a susu.

And you asked why he was the right partner. I think number one, it comes down to values, right? Like we shared a set of values. We whatever you think of as those like hard work, not giving up, but then why we're doing what we're doing, the families we come from, the cultural background we had, we had enough alignment and values that that was a strong foundation. Right. And then number two, we all went, we both went all in. And what that does is it creates trust. And people ask, why does it work?

Like what happens when there's an argument? What happens when you disagree on something? The answer is we work through it because at the end of the day, I trust will me mo with my life. And I want to really emphasize that because anything that he says, I know that he has my personal best interest at heart and he has the company's best interest at heart. So whether or not I have a different point of view doesn't matter because I know where he's coming from is the right place. And that is the right foundation to work through things. And if he has a different point of view, I trust his gut. And if I have a point of view, we trust my gut and we work through it.

And as needed, we bring in expert opinions to validate one perspective or the other. But there's never been a point where we have a disagreement we can't work through. And it's because of that trust. That is the single most important thing. I really want to emphasize that because what happens if you don't have that trust is you wonder why. Right. Somebody says something and he's like, what's your motivation? Why do you want this? Why are you thinking this? Like that will kill your relationship and your business. And so I never have to second guess anything that Wemimo says.

And that's the foundation of what works. And ultimately, if we make a call and it's his call and it's wrong, we lost together. And if he makes a call and it's right, we won together. It doesn't matter. We disagree and commit, but we're all in on supporting each other's ideas. Terms of dividing and conquering, we have our strengths, right? You heard my background, sales strategy, operations. His is more corporate strategy and finance. So we play to our strengths. And whenever we have a strength, it's sort of looked at as a major where the other co CEO can input and have a perspective.

But ultimately we'll let the person with the more sort of expertise or pedigree drive. ⁓ and then for important decisions, we always make them together. The final thing I'll say about this that's really key is like all of us are human. We all have good days, we all have bad days. And so the redundancy of having a partner that's in the trenches with you can't be understated. Right. When he's having the worst day of his life, I'm there to pick up the slack. When I'm having the worst day of my life, he's there to pick up the slack. When I haven't slept for whatever reason,

Maybe he's more well rested. When I'm feeling pessimistic, he's feeling optim optimistic. When he's feeling pessimistic, I'm feeling optimistic. That infrastructure actually leads to a lot more stability and better decision making for Esusu as a whole. And being a founder is really freaking lonely and doing it with someone that you love, trust, and respect is one of those things that makes the journey 10X more rewarding. That's phenomenal. I virtual applause for for Samiro Amimo. I mean, it's kind of a a masterclass, so to speak, in terms of

How to think about that co-founder dynamic. And it sounds like people talk about, resumes and this and that. You're like, no, it's about this relationship and putting in the work at the end of the day to build that trust. And if you have someone you can trust, then navigating any problem, inevitable challenge coming your way is gonna be so much easier because you have that foundation that you've built that everything can kind of sit on top of, you know, and and calculate a risk. So I know I could talk to you all day, Samir.

but I also I know you got a new baby at at home. And so congratulations to Samir for welcoming a new baby into the world. Let's get into like these lessons, right? Because a lot of folks that are listening right now have good jobs like you at LinkedIn. They don't necessarily believe you can have purpose and money together. You have to choose one or the other. And they're struggling with risk and this idea of calculated risk. It's something that if you checked all the boxes, gone to the right schools, got that right job, it's not just you. A lot of times it's people around you who are looking at you and saying,

You're crazy giving us up. So, you know, looking back and kind of, you know, looking at folks that are kind of considering whether or not this is something that they have on their heart, but they don't necessarily feel the confidence or the resolve to really pursue. What perspective would you share with these folks? Thanks, Brendan. And appreciate the kind words my wife and I just welcome the newborn. So that's been a lot of fun. And this is actually my first quote unquote public event since then. So that just shows how highly I think of Gravy and and this community and what you all are doing here.

But ⁓ I could go on about this for a long time. As you can tell, I have a lot of ⁓ opinions about things, but ⁓ this is an important one because there's a myth in Silicon Valley that the best thing to do is drop out of school and go all in on your startup. And that is a luxury. That is a luxury, right? Those people come from families or backgrounds where they have a safety net where they know they have a backdrop. That may not be your situation.

You might not have grown up around money or wealth or with that infrastructure. You might have kids, you might have a dependent, you might have a sick parent, you might have any of those very real things in life that you can't be completely irresponsible. So we all know the blueprint of dropping out of Stanford or Harvard. What I'll give you is the blueprint if that's not your scenario. So let's talk about LinkedIn. I was working on Esusu for two and a half years at LinkedIn before we quit to focus on our job full-time. During that time, you got a plan. You

Got a plan. So what does that look like for me? Right. Number one, every paycheck I got, a part of that would go towards Esusu. So when you're getting income, figure out a way to divide your income. And the way that some people tell you, like 75% say 75% spending, 10% saving, 15% investment, your 15% investment is your startup. Right. So start taking that paycheck, put a little bit towards your startup and getting those reps in motion and make sure that you can see real traction in your business before you consider quitting. Then

Have real conversations with the people in your life that you need. Not everyone's gonna get it. Not everyone's gonna support you. Your parents probably won't because they just want you to be safe rather than take the big risk. But you got to live your life. You gotta live your dreams, right? So find the people that really you need in your corner. That might be your significant other, that might be a best friend, that might be a couple other entrepreneurs that you need and build that infrastructure. Make you get reps with those people so you have that emotional, social support. And then everyone else can think you're crazy. But as long as you have a couple people who believe in you, that's enough.

Right. Then you got to get really granular about the financial pieces. At LinkedIn, there was a program called Bravo. Bravo was basically a a points that were awarded to an employee when they go above and beyond. I collected Bravo points for years. Right. I had like hundreds of thousands of them. And then I converted them right before I left into like ten or fifteen thousand dollars of Amazon gift cards. And that was basically my new checking account. Right. Then LinkedIn had a perk where you can basically ⁓ you had a $2,000 fitness stipend.

So what I ended up doing was buying gym membership in advance. Right. So I paid for two years of gym membership in advance, a bunch of fitness classes and all of that. And then every morning once I quit, I would go into that gym at five AM. I would sit at that table, I would take the free coffee, I would work till seven AM, then I'd work out, and then I would shower. Right. So now I've got a place to work, got to work out, and I've got to shower. Three big things done with that purchase, right?

And then everyone needs to have their own mental sanity habits. For me, that was fitness. That's why I invested in that. Right. I need to go for a run or sweat or do something to work my body to be successful. Right. So those are a few examples of things that we did. I already talked about the Airbnb story, but you got to plan. If you don't come from a situation where you have that luxury, you got to set a goal for yourself. You got to plan and you got to execute. Right. But don't, don't there there is a way to do it. You just got to get really detailed. You got to get creative. You got to figure out those tricks and those hacks.

To get to a point where you can quit with the right safety net, the right personal infrastructure, and the right traction in your business to demonstrate that it's as good of an idea as you're gonna have. Love that. Last question for you. You have leveled up, my friend, and you've saved you you know, humble along the way, of course. ⁓ but in doing your work, you've gotten validation, right, through the most recent round you raised. You're the coveted unicorn and you're doing it with purpose. In doing that, your personal

Financial situation, security, level of security, or perceived security. And I'm I'm sure it'll never fully go away, the fear of being a first gen, you know, et cetera. But what are your thoughts on generational wealth now that you've kind of, you know, come, saw, conquered the first stage of escaping financial gravity to a degree. How do you think about things now? You have a new kid. What what is your kind of perspective on generational wealth at this point?

You know, Esusu's vision statement here is is to bridge the racial wealth gap. And I think of that in more ways than one, right? So on the on the company level, we're focused on sort of helping people build credit, get access to the American dream, whatever that looks like. But we also thought about that at the corporate level, right? And the biggest outside of home ownership, which works for most everyday people, the biggest driver of wealth over the past couple of decades has been startup companies and growth stage companies, the stock market.

Right. And one of the things that we were super intentional about is constructing our cap table. That's one of the reasons we're so excited to gravy on the cap table. Seventy percent of our cap table is minority or women led funds, many first-time funds. When we look at our employee base, 70% of those are people of color, immigrants, minorities, et cetera. And what that means is that when Esusu sort of continues to have exponential outcomes, there's a trickle down effect that impacts the broader economy. Right. If you think about how many Facebook millionaires or Google millionaires or Microsoft millionaires there were.

There were a lot. But that was a very homogenous group in very homogeneous cities. So what does it look like if we take that and those millionaires are spread across a more diverse set of communities? What does it look like if Esusu's fifth employee lives in Cleveland and has $10 million because we just IPO'd? And how do they then bet on people that look like them, invest in the local community and actually make trickle-down economics work for communities of color, low income communities, Appalachia to inner cities?

That is sort of the vision that we have for how we can drive change by putting points on the board from a capitalistic standpoint. So that's sort of the broader thing. For me personally, the thing that I've learned is like you gotta bet on yourself. Right. So Esusu is just to start, right? But one of the things that was really important for Wemimo and I is to pay it forward. We've been those broke founders that needed someone to write a two or five K check. So we've started making small angel investments in other founders. And our job is to make it as bullshit free as possible. We're betting on you.

Because we believe in you and an idea that you have. We're not here to ask you about your market size and this, that, and the other. We're in your corner. Right. And and really trying to also pay it forward in that way. And from a family standpoint, you know, I never want our kids to have to go through what my wife and I have had to go through necessarily. But at the same time, you know, you want them to learn values. And that's still something I'm figuring out. Brandon, you might be able to give me some tips and tricks on that and with your three kids, but you know, I think we want to find the right balance of

giving our kids opportunities earlier in life to create a future for themselves and at the same time making sure they understand resilience, hard work, grit, sacrifice, and actually are still able to connect regardless of where Esusu goes. Maybe Esusu will become a hundred billion dollar company. I'll put it out there, right? Our lives will look very different. But I still want our kids to have those fundamental values that shaped myself, that shaped Womimo, that shaped our wives, that have shaped our families. And so that's sort of the goal. How do we kind of thread those two needles? And for me,

We're gonna keep swinging. We're gonna keep making big bets. We're gonna change the way this wealth building infrastructure works with folks like Brandon. Hey, love love it. And that that's an incredible way to to end this conversation, which I could take on for hours and hours. First off, congrats on your success with Esusu. Congrats on what we talked about is the real work, which is being fruitful and multiplying ⁓ with the new baby. And we're excited because you know, you're you're bringing this track record of achievement and success, but I'm I'm hearing more hunger.

Than ever before, right? To to kind of continue to push. And that's what gets me really excited, forcing to be on the cap table. I appreciate the opportunity and always you showing up for what we're doing. So with that, audience, give Samir a virtual round of applause. Thank you for joining the Owner Mode Summit. And we'll we'll talk to you real soon. Thanks for having me, Brad. Good to see you all. All