Breaking Ground: Stories from Two First-Time Technical Founders | The Pair Program Ep24

Chris Zhu: 00:00:05

Welcome

Tim Winkler: 00:00:05

to the PAIR program from hatchpad, the podcast that gives you a front row seat to candid conversations with tech leaders from the startup world. I'm your host, Tim Winkler, the creator of Hatchpad,

Mike Gruen: 00:00:15

and I'm your other host, Mike Gruin.

Chris Zhu: 00:00:17

Join

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us

Tim Winkler: 00:00:17

each episode as we bring together. Two guests to dissect topics at the intersection of technology, startups, and career growth. What's up everyone? We are back for another episode of the Pair Program. I'm your host, Tim Winkler, accompanied by my co-host Mike Groin. Mike. are you all prepared for the holidays at this point? I know that you were slacking earlier saying that you're having a, a meltdown on, on shopping. Oh, no, no. We weren't

Mike Gruen: 00:00:49

having a meltdown. No. There was just a last minute little, like, hitch in the plan where now we're gonna have to go out to the mall on like, on the sounds. Yeah, exactly. But, uh, yeah, there was a last minute decision to, uh, to do a, like a white elephant gift exchange that we're ill-prepared force. Mm-hmm. So now we have to run out and get. Not a big deal. I'll just take a Yeah, yeah. But I just take

Colby Harvey: 00:01:08

fun shopping this time a year in general,

Tim Winkler: 00:01:12

the day before Christmas. That's wonderful. Um, cool. Well, let's, uh, let's get the listeners a, a heads up on today's episode. So on this episode, you know, it's a little bit of like a mini-series that we're calling like first time founders. Uh, and within this episode we're gonna be talking. First time startup founders, uh, who have previously worked for, you know, both big tech companies and startups as you know, as an employee, but now they are currently founders of their own startup. And, uh, you know, on this episode we want to, you know, get some insight into what their journey has looked like. Um, some, some lessons learned, some tips, and I'm sure some, some helpful info for those, uh, of our listeners that are entrepreneurial. And are thinking about taking that leap and starting up their own company. So we've got two awesome guests joining us today, both of which have worked in, in these large environments like Airbnb and Google, and then obviously our favorites, you know, small startup environment. So I'm confident they will bring some very insightful perspective to the discussion. Uh, Colby and Chris, thank you for spending time with us on the PAIR program.

Colby Harvey: 00:02:13

Thanks for having, thanks for having us. Awesome.

Tim Winkler: 00:02:15

Looking forward, man. So before we dive in, uh, we do like to kick things off of the fun segment called pair Me Up. Um, pair me up. Here's where we'll go around the room. We'll shout out a, a complimentary pairing. Mike, you always lead us off. Go ahead and do so. So,

Mike Gruen: 00:02:28

uh, as you know, I was slacking you this morning, uh, saying, uh, ooh, I totally forgot. Don't have a pairing. Uh, so my pairing is actually procrastination in deadlines. Uh, which, uh, for those, there's, there's, in my opinion, there's like two types of people. There's people who need deadlines to know when to start work. and deadlines know when to sort of wrap things up. There's people who will keep on working on something and working on something, and they need that deadline to know when to end it. For me, I need that deadline to know like, oh crap, I need to get started on that. It's gonna take me a couple hours or whatever. And so procrastination in deadlines, uh, basically my

Chris Zhu: 00:03:00

mo

Tim Winkler: 00:03:02

um, doesn't gimme a feel good about my co-host podcast.

Chris Zhu: 00:03:10

Procrastination. What was that? That. The deadline helps you with the procrastination or, or, or prevents you from it.

Mike Gruen: 00:03:16

It helps me know when to stop procrastinating and actually get, get to get into with things.

Colby Harvey: 00:03:21

It's like college all over again.

Mike Gruen: 00:03:24

pretty much. That's, uh, yeah.

Tim Winkler: 00:03:26

Yep. may. Maybe this conversation can help you out, Mike Um, we'll, we'll see. We'll see what comes of it, but, uh, Cool. I'll, I'll, uh, I'll be the food pairing. We usually always have at least one. Um, you know, so given the fact that we are recording right around the, the Christmas holiday, um, uh, I'm gonna give a little shout out. Old, old Saint Nick here and throw it out with the ice cold glass of milk and warm chocolate chip cookies. That's my pairing. Um, for me anyways, Christmas cookies are not really complete without like that classic. Chocolate chip cookie. Um, so, and it doesn't need to be too fancy. I'm just like original Nestle toll house cookie dough and uh, you know, pull 'em out the oven, pour that glass of milk. Boom. That's, that's the, that's the classic holiday pairing for me. So,

Colby Harvey: 00:04:14

are we gonna lactose free, are we doing oat

Tim Winkler: 00:04:16

milk? I'm going straight, I'm going price later for it, but, um, once, um, let's pass it along. Uh, Colby, how about a, a quick intro from you and tell us, uh, your. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, uh,

Colby Harvey: 00:04:38

my name is Colby Harvey. I'm the CEO and founder of a company called Rise. Um, when it comes to my pairing, I just, like I told you guys earlier, just did like a 14 hour drive between Austin and Arizona, so I'm the same. Um, road trips and podcasts. Nice. What kept me awake and it was what kept me going the entire time listening to information, so it's fun.

Tim Winkler: 00:04:59

Good. Aside from the, the Para program, uh, being, you know, one of your favorite, uh, podcasts, uh, what, uh, what's, what's another one you listen to? What's one that you'd recommend out to, to some of the listeners?

Colby Harvey: 00:05:11

Oh man. Putting me right on the spot. There we go. Um, So, um, I like to listen to, um, purpose, uh, what's called, um, purpose. I believe it was. By, oh, excuse me, on Purpose by Jay Sheti. That one's a really, really great broadcast. Cool. Um, and then outside of that I've been, I was listening to an audio book too, so it wasn't just podcast, so I listen to this really insane one about this guy with a huge, it was a whole thing, honestly. Felt like watching a movie, but a book. Wow.

Tim Winkler: 00:05:40

Nice. Yeah, we actually had good answer. We had one, had one, uh, we had a, a recording last week as, um, as well, and, and one of them brought up podcasts. You if you all listen to Serial before, like the uh, yeah. Yeah. It's a pretty, pretty good as well. That was back when like podcasts were just becoming a big thing too. Or, or just getting sound like a new trend,

Chris Zhu: 00:06:01

right? Yeah. Serial dude. Like this realtime investigative journalism. That one.

Tim Winkler: 00:06:05

Yep. Yep, that's right. Yep. Cool. Um, well let's kick it over to, uh, to you Chris. How about, uh, an intro and your pair? Yeah.

Chris Zhu: 00:06:14

Hey, um, so my name's Chris Sue. I am a co-founder and CTO of a company called Primary Health. Um, and yeah, my pairing, so I wanna, I think I, all my time preparing for this was like spent on trying to figure out what the hell I was gonna say for this This is like, caused me the amount of stress, you know. But, um, I came up last night, I thought, like, I was thinking like my, I think like the, where I excel the most, like where I'm happiest is like, A Saturday, a Saturday morning, like an early Saturday morning and no plans for the weekend. Mm-hmm. Like, I feel like that's when I'm like, at my most creative, that's when I feel like I can do whatever I want and I can like have the full two days of focus on just like getting something done. Mm-hmm. So I love that. That's, that's my pairing.

Tim Winkler: 00:07:02

That's great. That's nice. Do you have to be like real intentional of making sure like you have got nothing slotted because it seems like it. It's tough to, things pop up and you're just like, ah, I, man, I had no plans, but now I got this thing I gotta do. Well,

Chris Zhu: 00:07:17

that's not so hard for me. I don't, don't have, I don't plan baseline. But, um, even like, I find even like a one hour thing in the middle of the day, just like such a big mental mm-hmm. you know, knowing that I have like the full 48 hours, uh, completely free. That's, that's really. Yeah.

Tim Winkler: 00:07:34

That's great. Yeah, nothing

Mike Gruen: 00:07:36

like having a day off and then just like having like something you have to do at like 11 o'clock in the

Chris Zhu: 00:07:39

morning. Well, yeah. It's like, just the Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

Tim Winkler: 00:07:45

And this is actually something that you might come up, uh, on the discussion as well, but you know, I, when I started my company, You know, weekends weren't really a thing. Um, and then got it to a point where, you know, you, you, you wanna get back into like a consistent schedule. Like you, you acknowledge like the weekends I'm not working, I'm not doing anything. But, um, in, in certain parts of that entrepreneurial journey, it's like, Weekends didn't really exist. So, you know, I cherish those that time off when we get to a point where we can afford to take that time off. Right, right. Um, delegation

Colby Harvey: 00:08:17

yeah. Really helps if

Tim Winkler: 00:08:19

you can, if you can. Um, well cool, let's, let's dive into it. Um, like I mentioned, we're gonna, we're gonna be talking about first time founders here. Um, and as a, as a means to kind of save some. I did wanna start with, with both of our guests, kind of giving our listeners a little bit of context into how they got into this current seed as a founder. Um, so I'll start with you, Colby, um, maybe show a little bit more light, uh, on your journey, uh, up to your role as co-founder of Rise. And then we'll jump over to you, Chris, and then we will dive into some questions. Yeah. Cool. Uh,

Colby Harvey: 00:08:51

okay, I'll, I'll kick it off here. So, you know, on my journey to rise, I'm like, it's. It's interesting, I, I, you know, when you, when you start a company, um, most of the time you're starting a company cause it has some type of impact or meaning to you. Like, whatever the problem is, is kind of kinda close to home, you can see it. So, um, me personally, um, I guess a little bit more about my background, like, you know, prior to starting Rise I used to work at Google, uh, on the Google Cloud,

Tim Winkler: 00:09:15

working on billing

Colby Harvey: 00:09:17

platform, um, ensuring and like kinda writing all of our billing procedures, um, and ensuring that it was implemented, uh, across all of my. Support teams, uh, as well as like handling much more larger. Um, like billing modifications that need to happen for any, like, issues that came and like drove out all the way up to the, the technical, um, level to resolve on like a, on a code base base side. But, um, man, I used to, for me, like I used to work all through college, so like I had this kinda like hunger and drive just since I was young. Work like 12 American Express, you know, some of these big companies while I was in university while kinda shoring up, you know, the idea for my, my, my company. I figured this is gonna be the right time to do. So, you know, I, going back to myself when it comes to rise, I, you know, like I grew up in an aviation family, um, in some capacity. So I've always had a passion for the industry itself. And I always wanted a way to find a way to impact the industry without necessarily working directly for it. So I really fast forward throughout my university career. I intern at a at aircraft repair station, um, and really get a, create a hypothesis, a problem, um, and in this case it's, um, dangerous and slow, um, aircraft inspections, um, that cause the industry, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Um, and that's just like operational, like operational and intrinsic expense. and then like, well, revenue per mile. So I said, Hey, there's a way much better way to do this. Um, we have technology that's ready available, which in the aviation industry can be a little tough because they're a little slow to change. So like, luckily I came in, I feel like at the right time, at the right moment when the industry's like, Hey, we need to figure out ways to save more money. Cuz they very reason margin so. Know, I came up with, with Rise and I built a team around the, the constant idea of, and got them all excited about, you know, this is gonna change the industry. This is gonna make sure that you and I are waiting in the, you in the airport, just kinda kicking around some or whatever you can in the airport. Just like, wow, that's another maintenance here. So I, I wanted to find a way to be impactful with the company that I was, I built and, uh, built something really, really freaking cool at the same. I'm kind of okay that

Mike Gruen: 00:11:23

they're slow to change, by the way. Like, I don't need airplanes adopting bleeding edge technology.

Colby Harvey: 00:11:32

That's fair.

Tim Winkler: 00:11:36

what a bashes business idea, Mike.

Mike Gruen: 00:11:38

I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I'm okay with the fact that they're slow to change, that they're very deliberate and intentional in how they do it. Not that they don't change at all, to be clear. Um, and I think it's awesome that they, you know, as you, as you bring things. You're giving

Colby Harvey: 00:11:52

a lot of credit. Oh, really? I won't, I won't dive into that one too.

Mike Gruen: 00:11:57

Maybe it's a whole different podcast. Maybe I have a totally misunderstanding of how the aviation industry works, but, we'll, we'll, we'll table that.

Chris Zhu: 00:12:05

politics.

Tim Winkler: 00:12:07

No, I, I'm, uh, you know, just a couple of quick hits on, on Rise. So what's, you know, when did you start it? Uh, what year? And then, um, do you have co-founders and did you take in funding and, and the, the, the headcount size? Are you. Yeah. Yeah. So we

Colby Harvey: 00:12:21

started Rise, I guess since our first set of funding, like you, like December, 2018, call it January, 2019, and we've been working on it ever since. I have two co-founders that I brought in. Honestly, they were, uh, college, uh, friends of mine and engineering. So went on this journey together. I, and said, Hey, would you guys come and, you know, help me build this drone and help me build the software that's wearing aboard. Um, and so we, we have, we've been doing that since, you know, our inception and we've raised a date, uh, nearly 7 million. Um, we just closed out our series A, um, about at the end of October.

Tim Winkler: 00:13:00

And, and I'm sorry if I missed it. How many, how many employees, uh, how many team members do you have? We have about, we're about nine employees right now. Nine of you. Um, and you're based in Austin, but does the team all physically there or are they distributed? Yeah, you know,

Colby Harvey: 00:13:15

the team is kinda somewhat distributed. We do have like my hardware engineer and, and some software engineers that are based in Austin. Cause you know, we have a autonomous drone platform, so someone's gotta be there touch, so, so, So we do have some people over there so they can, they can go through and like, you know, push any change in code and just kind of test in real time. So, but, you know, world of Covid made everything remote, so we gotta kinda make due. Sure.

Tim Winkler: 00:13:42

And then my last question then we'll jump to Chris is, um, you know, you studied at, uh, asu, Arizona State, uh, where did you study? What was your.

Colby Harvey: 00:13:51

Yeah, so I initially studied computer science, so I did that for about two and a half years. I got to Calc three and I was like, okay, I'm done

Tim Winkler: 00:13:59

Um,

Colby Harvey: 00:14:00

and I, uh, yeah, no, that was, I realized that was not for me. I sat down in class, I heard professor talk, felt my face like, no. So I. I ended up switching to, um, aviation, uh, aviation management, which is luckily still in the school of engineering. So that was, that was great. So I got to really, like, I got to be with the pilots. I got to even like train like a pilot, um, which was really, really cool. Cool. And then management side.

Tim Winkler: 00:14:24

Nice. So it sounds like, you know, you, you built something within an industry that was close to your family, passionate about, studied, so that, that kind of all makes sense and adds. Um, we'll, we'll ask some more questions here in a second on, on that journey, but then let's jump to you, Chris, and, and, and give, give us your five minute kind of overview on, on your, uh, trip to Primary Health.

Chris Zhu: 00:14:48

Cool. Yeah, so I, um, let's see. I started, uh, I started at Facebook. I was there for about a year and, uh, I worked at Airbnb for about four years. And then, um, the whole time I was in like, well, I was a software engineer, like I was kind of. It's, I think, the most standard path a software engineer has. Like, I graduated from computer science, um, in ubc, and then I went down to the Bay Area to like start career there. Um, I've been writing code since I was like 16, I think. So that's always been like a big part of what, you know, uh, what I've done. Um, in 2020, uh, kind of at the, you know, when, when the Covid pandemic, you know, at the very peak. That's when we started our company actually. Um, it was just, uh, it was, you know, the, the stuff that we were working on was just, um, especially needed at that time. Like we work, we do a lot of, you know, our software today, powers. Um, so when we started, you know, we were kind of powering like a lot of, um, Covid testing initially. Mm-hmm. Um, but the software itself is kind of trying to bring healthcare outside of clinical settings. Um, and so for Covid, that was like, especially relevant. Um, and more and more we, you know, that's, I think we we're seeing that it's gonna be for a lot of other infectious diseases. Um, and a lot of other things that could just be done outside of like, uh, traditional clinical setting. Um, so, you know, for primary.health, we, we have about 200 employees today. Uh, we're based in San Francisco. Um, Let's see. It's been up. We haven't really raised any money, so I think that's caused some interesting, um, it's led some like interesting innovations in our organization, uh, because of the way we've had to scale kind of profitably, um, since the very beginning. Uh, yeah, that's, I mean, you know, where, where, where would you want me to take it from there?

Tim Winkler: 00:16:37

Well, first congrats, man. That's incredible. Um, yeah, that type of growth without taking in funding is, is super admirable. Um, what about, um, you know, the healthcare space, right? So you, you, it sounds like this was something that you, and you've got co-founders as well.

Chris Zhu: 00:16:50

Yep. Yeah, I have, I have one co-founder, um, who, uh, I work with basically every single day. Did

Tim Winkler: 00:16:57

you meet, uh, this co-founder at Airbnb or

Chris Zhu: 00:17:00

previous? Uh, no. We actually met starting this company, um, uh, initially when we started the company, it was a lot of. It was a lot of like working with governments kind of on a volunteer basis. Ok. Um, and so that's how we met initially. Um, it was just like a lot of pa you know, people trying to put their heads together to try to build something. Um, and then that eventually out spun down to this.

Tim Winkler: 00:17:23

And so, you know, kind of comparing this to Colby's story, you know, coming from, you know, an industry that he kind of grew up in and, and seems like was, was a, a part of something that he was really passionate. Is this space something that you would say that you've kind of been passionate about? Is there ties to, you know, friends and family within the, the healthcare, uh, industry that kind of wanted you to get involved in this space?

Chris Zhu: 00:17:46

I wouldn't say, I mean, my co-founder is more, has like a much more expansive like healthcare background. He's, he's always worked in healthcare. Um, I obviously came from like a consumer tech background, right? Mm-hmm. I think the most interesting thing that we're doing is like being able to power these things at scale. Like we've, we have something like 8 million users, right? And we're still trying to grow that. Um, we've done like over I think 15 million, uh, kind of overall service. So that's the part that I'm really excited about to just be able to see, like some of the stuff that we can do is just so much better, I think, than what has traditionally existed. Um, like being able to do, uh, testing fresh tis, for instance, without having to go into a clinic. Um, and eventually just making that available kind of in all college dorms. It was just something that you could just like pick up and, um, get tested for. Like, that's, that's really cool. And I think, um, you know, taking that idea to like diabetes screenings, uh, potentially cancer screenings, um, but you know, of infectious diseases, um, and empowering like these programs, it, it's something I'm passionate about, but I would say I have a, I, I didn't start with a background in it, right? Mm-hmm. So it's not something that, like the, the company kind of spun out from like a lot of work that we were doing already. Mm-hmm.

Tim Winkler: 00:19:01

So, you know, with that growth, that type of growth. Right. Um, when you started the business, did you have a, an idea in your mind of how big of, so, uh, of a, an operation that you wanted to grow? Or did you just go off demand and you're just like, let's just keep going?

Chris Zhu: 00:19:19

Like, yeah, I just kept growing. I mean, I think we could have grown a lot more than, you know, if we had been more intentional with it. Um, but the, um, I mean, it kept growing. Um, all of our hires had to be kind of, you know, in, in some sense, like we, we had to stay profitable. Right. Um, so I think if we maybe took on a, a lot more funding, we maybe could have grown like a lot faster. Mm-hmm. Um, but at the same time, like there's a discipline that, that your organization kind of builds, um, under those constraints that I, I'm pretty proud of today. Mm-hmm. So if you even. I mean, I run like our product side and our software side. Um, and within those orgs, like the amount we've been able to accomplish or I think it's more like the, the way we've innovated, right? Like the way we've built our tech stack is very different than what I've been used to at places like Airbnb where there was just like, we can hire at Airbnb, we can hire as much as we wanted, and like whatever project that was worth staffing. If it needed 10 engineers, that was no problem. If needed 20 engineers, that was no problem and all we had to do was prove. This is something that can eventually deliver value down the line. Um, and so like the way things were built was just, um, it was, I would say a lot more. Um, it was built in a way that it was kind of built for this, this world where like you can hire and more engineers and so you can put more things on the engineering team to build. What we tried to do is create a, like, you know, even our engineering award we created. We've created this platform in a way where like the, you know, our core engineering team, let's say is like 15 people. And I, I'm going way off on a tangent here. I just, that's alright. So it's what we do. Don't stop me at any time. that's, it's our core engineering team is like 15, 20 people, but the amount of people that have like contributed code to our product in some way is probably in like the seventies. Um, and so it's just like very distributed in a lot of ways. There's a lot of people that can like, contribute to areas. all across our organization, like all across our product. Mm-hmm. Um, and I think that's, that's, that's really cool. Yeah. I can go into more, but I, I don't wanna take us off on a complete tangent here.

Tim Winkler: 00:21:27

So I'm, I'm more like, uh, interested in, you know, so this is your first time doing this. Uh, you didn't, you know, you didn't, you know, get any, uh, assistance from, you know, any VCs, which oftentimes will put folks on like an advisory board and kind of help you, you know, with, with mentorship and like, Hey, this is what we've seen for other companies scaling like this clip. What did you do to kind of verify like, okay, it is okay, like, you know, we're looking at the, the p and l each quarter and it's like, we, we can kind of take this next wave of hiring because, you know, we've, we've gotten validation from a C F O or something. So like how are you kind of like keeping yourself in check or maybe your co-founder has started something in the past, but what, what, what, how did you align with like mentorship and advisors to. Give you that sense of like, oh, okay, this is, this is, we're doing this in a, in a pretty sustainable way.

Chris Zhu: 00:22:20

Yeah. I mean, a lot of the work that we do, our, our contracts are predictable. Like we, you know, we, we do, you know, we have a contract that has some amount of funds through some date, and so it's not, I don't think it's terribly difficult, right? Like we just have to understand where those are and that we hire against that. So overall, like that's kinda. You know, our, our, our, our, our pricing is very similar to like a standard, um, SaaS company. So we have like mm-hmm. kinda a monthly platform fee plus like variable per usage fees. Um, and typically like the, the what, what we like the monthly platform fee, kind of that predictable amount of revenue, um, that is the cost of running business for us and all the variable is kind of in, in some sense profit. Mm-hmm. So, so we try to hire up to that, wherever that, you know, that's kind of our bar for where we hire to. Okay. But it doesn't, obviously doesn't play out that cleanly, but at a, at a high level, that's how we think about it.

Tim Winkler: 00:23:15

I've got some other questions, but I, I want to jump back over to Colby for a second here. So I'm gonna ask you the same question, Colby. So, you know, it seems like you know, this has been about three years. Four, you now three or four, three to four years now, uh, with Rise, and you said right around nine nineish, nine inch head. Was is your growth strategy to um, kind of like, let's go lean and let's, you know, really, you know, get a couple of things in place before we take this to the next level? Or did you want to, you know, tell me a little bit more about how your strategy with your growth plan, cause it sounds like it's, it's a little bit different here than what we're seeing from primary.health. Yeah, yeah. Our growth

Colby Harvey: 00:23:52

plan was of different, so we have to remain really lean because our, we're not just like a pure software play. So we have a hardware, we have a drone that we've developed. that, you know, in, in that vein, like raising like VC capital is pretty difficult. Mm-hmm. uh, if you have anything that is in touch with hardware. So we had to ensure that that how we were moving was very lean. We were ensuring that we got the right customers in place at the right times. Um, so we can, you know, we can show that we are making, uh, progress even though like we were. R and d like driven in the business. So when you have that, it takes to release a new, like, to release an r and d product, it takes around like three to four years to do, um, before it ev actually ever goes into market. So, um, and that's, and that's kinda the clip that we were on. So we, we scaled pretty, you know, we tried to scale, um, and hire correctly, um, and hire to have the most effective people onboard the team that can actually. Innovate around something that's, I mean, the, the way that we do our, let's say our navigation stack, right? So again, there's our, our drone is, is pretty unique. Um, our system's pretty unique. Um, not really like particularly any, really any other drills that are on the market. Um, and it uses like a 3D LIDAR for navigation inside of, you know, um, you know, enclosed environment. And so it's, you know, I went with the approach to use that, that, that, that sensor. So we'd have the ability to have a system that's completely enclosed that doesn't require any extra infrastructure, like installations into our customers facilities. Um, that way kind of trying to drive down some of the, the costs or barrier to entry. Um, but when you do something like that, there's, there's not, there's a lot of code that's out there for, um, self-driving cars. Let's say that for example. So navigating like, kinda like a two dimensional, two dimensional space. Cause you, you're really moving in two directions. Um, we're in our case where you're, we're, we're moving in, like we're in three different a axis, so that makes it, that software didn't exist, so we had to develop and build that, which took time and resources. Um, which as you know, again, raising capital for a company that has a robotics component is, um, it, it can be slim, but you, you have to do it unless one of us is, you know, like a had a previous exit or, you know, a, a millionaire, um, which bushing none of us were that. Um, we had to be very, very effective on how we, we tried to scale. And so now that we're, um, we've closed this round, we're actually scaling out and, and growing the team a little bit more, but we're backstopping to to, to Chris's point, Chris's point is backstopping that based on the customer growth and the, um, and the revenue generation that we're, that we're receiving from our customers. Mm-hmm.

Tim Winkler: 00:26:28

would you say that the pandemic put a, a little bit of. Speed bump in your growth? Uh, did it help one way or the other? Did it, you know, cuz you saw it right before

Colby Harvey: 00:26:40

Yeah. That right that's funny question. Um, as horrible as the pandemic was, and it was, don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna take that lightly. It was really bad. But for us, it actually, it, it kind of helped because it, it took those. Eyes off of us, like in terms of like, like VC or anything like that. And like, and we couldn't actually really travel to our customers, so it kind of forced us to be more like product focused and tech, like, technology focused and not like throwing like a bunch of distractions, but like going on a customers facility to, you know, demo. We don't have a product that's ready. Right. So like in a sense it, it helped us, um, cause we did have some, some inve great investors that like really kinda helped see us through it. Um. But you know, overall, again, I'm not gonna understate the pandemic was a horrible thing that that happened to many, many people. But, um, that time that it did take us, I mean, I think, I gotta be honest, I think it did help like save our company in that, you know, in that sense, not making us move too quickly. Like,

Tim Winkler: 00:27:38

go ahead Mike. No, no. Go on. I was just gonna say like, you know, As far as like a entrepreneurial or startup experience prior to this, um, did, did you or your co-founder have have anything? Or were you just kind of jumping in, jumping in in the dark here, man? Uh,

Colby Harvey: 00:27:55

no. So like, I mean, kind of, so like while I was in like in college, like we, you know, ASU got a program called like Venture Devils that I was a part of and just trying to kind of get a clip of like, what's the beat for like startup. Cause they make talent number one in innovation a lot. Mm-hmm. you've never seen those commercials. But, you know, I, I went the program, I actually had the, you know, opportunity to sit in and, and work as an operator. I was like, kinda like the COO for a, a, a small company. Um, that was, that was starting, but I eventually left that kinda like helped grow, excuse me, grow my, um, uh, grow my passion for entrepreneurship and, um, and, and building something. But I mean, really kind of going into it, no there's a lot of mistakes that I made and as a person I'm gonna made a lot of mistakes. Um, there's a lot of things that I've learned from those mistakes now. Like whenever I, you know, either ize or wherever it would be, I'm like, and start a new, like, new venture. Like there's a, there's a lot of pitfalls that I know to avoid now. Mm-hmm. Cause I, I had to experience

Mike Gruen: 00:28:49

it. That actually leads me to the question I was gonna ask you, and this is gonna be for both of you, but since Colby, you're already talking, you mentioned it, like knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

Colby Harvey: 00:28:59

Oh man. Um, a lot of things Um, so just a, just a lot of things. There's, I mean, around like, you know, the research in the industry is great, but like, I would make them much more careful without who I, you know, allow, um, as advisors just to make sure like kind of really, really vet them. Um, cause there's a lot of people out there that, um, can see you wanna build something great and they just really wanna attach on. So you gotta be really, really cautious of that. Um, you know, really just like, Like, now that I have a network, it's a little different, but like really tapping on the network that I have built and I've created, um, and if not my own network, tapping on other people's networks, getting involved in different sort of communities, getting involved in different things and learning as much as possible. Um, uh, just and, you know, just. Prepare myself for weekends, overnights, and weekends. A lot of them. Cause you're gonna do it a lot, um, and you're gonna hate life for a while. But, um, it's just kinda the, the name of the game. But there's a, I mean, I, I don't wanna go on a huge, like, tangent list because there's a, there's quite a bit. But, um, I'll definitely say just be very, very, you know, careful who you kind of let in your circle, around your circle and make sure that you're, you're listening to people that have done it

Chris Zhu: 00:30:11

before. Read Mm-hmm. Chris, I'm curious.

Mike Gruen: 00:30:15

Uh, same question, you know, knowing what you know now,

Chris Zhu: 00:30:17

what would you do differently? Yeah, this isn't, I was thinking about it as col was answering. Uh, this isn't something I think about too much, honestly. Like, I think, you know, like I said, I, it's more about trade offs, right? I think if we raised, you know, obviously if we raised money earlier, we had hired more aggressively in the earlier days. We might be in a better, we might be in a different place today, whether it's better or worse. It's hard. It's hard to tell. Um, that's the thing that I, I, I guess, um, I. That's something I think through, right? Like that's something I, I, um, I like play back to try to figure out like is, you know, what the trade offs there are. But I, I wouldn't necessarily think that it's something like, it's not so much a regret as, as much as it's like helping me. you know, it helps us think through like what we should do in the future, I think. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike Gruen: 00:31:02

That's, I, I, I agree with that. I may think just whenever I think back on things, right, it's always about, like at the time with all the information I had at the time, I made the best decision I could like that I'm not gonna decision. Right. And that's really the

Chris Zhu: 00:31:13

best, most you can ask for.

Mike Gruen: 00:31:14

Exactly. Yeah. But yeah, now that I have more information and I look back, how do I apply this to like moving forward, I think is what you're sort of saying is like, so that next time I'm, how do I use what's happened and my new information for new things that are coming. To make differences.

Chris Zhu: 00:31:29

Cool. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, so I, I guess in that sense, yeah, I think that's something I think about a lot is like if we, if we, if we raise more, we're able to build kind of more in, um, intentionally without having to have everything that we did, um, drive revenue. Like I wonder where we'd be after two years of being able to do that. Mm-hmm.

Tim Winkler: 00:31:48

Your, your big tech experience, Chris, um, you know, what, what, from your, your, your past life with Airbnb and Facebook would you say were some of the most valuable things that carried over into, you know, uh, an entrepreneur? Uh, and, you know, you, one of the things you, you brought to, to my attention when we were just kind of doing our intro call was, you know, how like architectural decisions impact your, your team's growth and choosing everything from frameworks, languages, and, and the architecture. were those things that, that you would say like really impacted how you were like, this is how I'm gonna scale this team in, in, in, in a startup environment, or, I'm just using that as an example, but like what were some of those things that you say would, you would say really helped you and then maybe things that were like, I kind of wanna unlearn. Hmm.

Chris Zhu: 00:32:33

Interesting. I actually think I unlearned a lot of the architectural stuff that we were doing. Um, you know, at bigger tech firms, they just, they can move at a different, uh, pace. Mm-hmm. um, they don't need junior engineers leading full-blown projects. And in that world, like they can just do things slightly differently in terms of how they build stuff, where like, they can always assume that, for instance, everything that's being worked on will have at least two people working on it. Right. At least two people working on it. Um, that's not an assumption that we make. most things, most features, most projects have exa like exactly one engineer. And so like we kind of have to build a stack that's like tolerant of that. Um, it can handle these like single points of failures. Um, I'd say, so actually I would actually say the opposite. Like most of, most of the patterns that we're building off of here was stuff that I was doing. And like when I was like 17 building apps in college, or I guess high school at that time, it was all done in rails. Um, we still use that and a lot of the pattern. that we, we try to stick to, um, I think create an environment where like junior engineers have a space to learn fa, you know, build and then fail. Um, in the sense of like, you know, they ship something and it breaks mm-hmm. but it doesn't break everything. It just breaks their feature. And that gives them a place to like, okay, now they can then fix that. Go through the process of like releasing stuff that breaks, support it. Um, see how that feature evolves and changes over. and that just like is, is so accelerating for like ramping somebody up to software engineering. Cause I think at bigger tech firms, like you don't really get to experience that until like two years in that fall like life cycle. And we can get people through that life cycle, uh, in like the, their first three months. Wow. I think that's super important. Um, so, and then in terms of like what I've learned, I actually think that, um, if like these bigger tech firms, I mean Facebook and, and Airbnb, I actually think. You know, I, I know a lot of people leave saying that they're not, you know, it's hard to be entrepreneurial in those environments. Um, I think it's really like how much you're willing to put into it. Um, that was like a shift in my mindset. I would say maybe two years into my time at Airbnb was when I realized that like there actually was quite a bit of space to be like creative and, and fight for what you believed in there. Um, the company had like, you know, a war chest of funds, right? So they, they were like, you know, just with the money that they had in the bank, they were probably a bigger VC firm to be able to incubate like internal projects. Mm-hmm. Um, and they were much more generous about like giving that, even think about like that as like a fundraising environment being kind of the overall like company leadership as the fundraising environment. You know, they were much more generous in terms of like giving out funds, like allowing for hiring. So if. Were able to like find something that you believed in that actually was bringing value to the company. Um, you had basically all the processes were the same, right? Like you had to figure out an mvp, you had to convince people that this was valuable. You had to hire for it. Um, you had to grow the team. You had to figure out how to scale the team, um, lead the product, you know, lead this specific feature through like it's lifecycle and kind of grow it and scale it. So I, I think I learned a lot through that process. Yeah.

Mike Gruen: 00:35:42

With all the safety of doing it within the right. I mean, I, it

Chris Zhu: 00:35:45

sounds like Exactly. I mean, right, exactly. So probably you would say like, the upside isn't as good, but also the downside is way better. Right? Right. Like there's not really, you don't really, you know, there's not really a way of failing, uh, the same way that you could, you know, out, out in the world on your own. So, um, Did you

Tim Winkler: 00:36:04

start Primary Health while you were still an employee at Airbnb, or did you just pull the, pull the cord and just say, I'm going into this full flesh, or you'd

Mike Gruen: 00:36:13

rather not answer? I, I just

Colby Harvey: 00:36:15

No, no.

Chris Zhu: 00:36:17

There was transition.

Tim Winkler: 00:36:19

How much time were you burning on Airbnb's dime? This company? I say maybe, no,

Chris Zhu: 00:36:24

we, we pulled the board pretty quick, um, pretty quick. Um, so I, the only thing that I had to wait for was like a visa. Switch and, and then after that, you know, so I, I basically, that takes, that takes like mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so that was

Tim Winkler: 00:36:39

it. Colby, what about you? You know, I started, I'm a, I, I run a services business, right? So it's a little bit different. So I, I started as an independent consultant, built up a client base, you know, had enough of a, you know, of a revenue coming through to where I could justify hiring somebody. Um, what, what did you, you know, what was your kind of strategy going into this? Use your, your savings. Um, did you do some consulting while you're still trying to kind of build this thing out?

Colby Harvey: 00:37:06

Yeah, no, that's a, that's a good question. So when I uh, first, uh, answer student loans I, um, I increased some of my burden when I was like, while I was in university and kind of building this, building the platform and doing the product, I. You know, we were testing out like different, let's say different drones that we could use, will these work? And you know, very quickly found out that like, hey, anything d we can't really use because, you know, we wanna work with, we work for the US military mm-hmm. Um, so, but I to, to really finance myself, like I did student loan to buy some of these things at the time. I think in Matrice two 10 was like $10,000. I was like, mm-hmm. It was, it's pretty extensive, but like, luckily I was lucky enough to have, you know, while I was in university, I got to, and then I was able to apply the skills that I learned from, you know, my computer science classes and I got into like, infrastructure positions. So like, you know, for example, I worked at a company called Stratus that was like kinda like an offshoot of American. um, spurs that. So like, and I, and you know, I even went to Charles Schwa, so they actually even, they paid me pretty well for a 20 year old, I'll be honest. um, probably more than I should have gotten. Um, uh, no, I think it was just about right, but I, I took that money and I, I, I took that, my savings and like, uh, threw that into the company. Um, I felt my, you know, to self-finance in the beginning. Ultimately, like Yeah, I was, I was in Google as well. Uh, only with the only caveat to it. Like I didn't spend like a, like a long amount of time there. Like I, as soon as I like, you know, kind of got in, I was getting really like spun up. Like I got my first of investor funds mm-hmm. So it's like, um, and for me being. I'm not necessarily super risk averse. I am now, um, I'm a little bit more conscious of the, the risks that I'm taking mm-hmm. Um, but I just saw him like, Hey, I need to, in order for this to become something I need to, to jump full steam. So I, I, I

Chris Zhu: 00:39:04

ripped it pretty quickly to, to build rise. Mm-hmm.

Colby Harvey: 00:39:08

um, funding. Yeah, I remember that one. Yeah, we were, I was in San Francisco. I was talking about moving my team up cause they were in Arizona and I looked at San Francisco and like just kind of how much we raised it. I was like, yeah, let's take a stint in Arizona for a little

Chris Zhu: 00:39:23

bit.

Colby Harvey: 00:39:27

who was it worth it? So I'm

Mike Gruen: 00:39:29

curious. Go on. Go ahead Mike. I was just gonna say, I was curious about the, um, like one of the things that I know, I've worked with a number of founders and startups at different stages and, and outsourcing or going to the open source community, those types. like frequently come up. And I'm curious if either of you looked at like, I think like Colby, I could see like maybe tapping into the open source community for like, cuz there's a bunch of like drone hobbyists and maybe they could whatever or whatever. But I'm just curious if either one of you sort of looked at outsourcing or the open source community and sort of the decisions that went into that or not, or you know, avoiding it for whatever

Chris Zhu: 00:40:05

reason in those early stages? For sure. Yeah. In those early stages, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think we, we, I, that's not really something, I mean, right off the bat, just the way software is built these days, we get so much value from like, everything in the open source, right? Like we run on Linux servers, we build rails. We have, we use React for front. Like, it, it's in like, I think this is some somewhat underappreciated, the amount of value that like open source is created in the world. And, um, so other than sponsoring open source projects that we believe, Um, we don't really, yeah, we don't, it's not, it's not part of our hiring strategy. Right. Yeah.

Colby Harvey: 00:40:46

And I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll pop in here from my perspective, cause the, for me, it's, it's a little different. So we did use, there is a good amount of like opensourcing that we, we use, but again, since we work with the. The US military, we have to be careful about what we use. They don't really like a lot of open source, um, products. They want things to kind be like succinct and like unique to the company that's like developing out the platform. So there are definitely some things that we, that we kick touch. So we use, you know, we use for, for our drone. So, um, for flight control software, then we, we kinda build like a layer on top of that. So that's kinda like, you know, uniquely ours and I. Like buttons and simulations and like, you know, with our, let's say our end user platform, there's things that we can use that are open source, but we just very careful what touches what. Mm-hmm. Um, we went through a pretty rigorous audit process with, uh, this, with our new newest investment that came in because, you know, they, they're. Part of their book, their business is, you know, the, the d o d. So then to make sure that we, we had to pass, pass a study, we had to make sure that we didn't have really any Chinese compute components. We had to make sure that we went through and an audit of all of our packages that were installed on the system itself, just to ensure that, um, none of it was like, you know, just kind of opening, really available to like the, the, the market. Mm-hmm. Or the community.

Tim Winkler: 00:42:05

I've got some questions that they're actually probably gonna bake right into the five second scramble, so I, I might even just, just pitch 'em at that point. Um, and I know we're kind of coming up on our, on our time at, uh, so do want to make, make, um, this segue into the, the five five second scramble. Um, I guess we'll just kind of like, before we do that, you know, what is the, you know, I'll just ask, you know, uh, both of you, Chris, like what is the, what is the future, uh, at primary do health kinda look like in the next. You know, three years from now.

Chris Zhu: 00:42:38

Yeah. I, so I mean, the biggest, there's, there's, there's certain segments that we focus on a lot. We, we do a lot of things, but I'd say like the most exciting thing right now is like being able to, um, you know, I saw the statistic that I think there was something like 500 million, uh, doctors office visits last year, United States. Wow. But there was something like 13 billion, um, pharmacy visits. And if just like, if, if that's a place where like we can enable. More, uh, services to be delivered, like more treatments, um, more testing, then that just makes it so much more accessible, right? Mm-hmm. um, and people are there already, so in a big way, like that's where our software is kind of scaling the fastest here. Um, and a lot of the stuff that we try to bring together is just the complexity of healthcare. Like mm-hmm. different states, uh, different pharmacies, different pharmacies have different agreements with different provider. Um, and all of these can be kind of wrapped up, um, and, and done pretty cleanly through like the software that we built. So like all the telehealth, all the ordering, um, all the e-prescription, all of the stuff like our software today can do. Um, so at this point it's a matter of like make, building it in a way that can make it, um, more, more useful like a pharmacy. That's

Tim Winkler: 00:43:56

awesome. I, I would say firsthand somebody who's spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals this past year with, you know, my wife and I just had a, a, a child last week and it is, uh, it is a lot. And so anything that can help to streamline this, this industry, I mean, kudos to you. Keep, keep, keep it up, man. Um, Colby, and same with you. I mean, you're in a reg, pretty regulated industry yourself. Um, tell, tell us how, you know, rise kind of evolves over the next few years. Yeah,

Colby Harvey: 00:44:24

I, I, I think you, you, you're definitely right on the regulated front. Um, so I think how Rise evolved is that we become a lot more, like, closely connected with our regulatory bodies in the original, like aircraft manufacturers. There are some of the coolest things that I, I have a pipeline and a vision for. What I have for the product is actually working directly with an Air, a Boeing, and an emperor. Um, just so we can, you know, kind of do some joint development operations so we can make the product much more usable for our customer. And then taking those same or those same huge players, um, and actually. You know, uh, giving the drones and our artificial intelligence, like computer vision models that identify defects. And just as a clarification to you, like we, we look for like defects, like lightning strikes, strikes, bird strikes, the on the skin of airframe, um, and report it back down to our end user on the ground. It's, um, making sure that those algorithms are, you know, actually approved and that our system and our, our aias can actually do that work. So we can streamline this, you know, this industry Cause you guys haven't seen that there's a, this statistic like we're losing. You know, on average per year, you know, 12,000, um, qualified like amps are what they call airframe and power plants, mechanics. Um, and those are the people that are going from retirement or just kinda like switching industries. Cause they realized. Not safe. The industry kind of was. Um, and it's only being replaced by about 75, excuse me, about 5,000, um, new interns from like, um, from technical, uh, schools and, and things like that. So there's a huge deficit that we're really trying to augment the, the current workforce that we have and a meaningful, um, and a cost effective, um, and a time savings, uh, type of way for the, for the space.

Tim Winkler: 00:46:03

Cool. Awesome. Well, uh, wishing you both best of luck in, uh, in continuing on this journey and, um, we'll, we'll certainly be tracking it as well. Uh, but let's, let's, uh, go ahead and pivot to this next segment, uh, called the Five Second Scramble. So, again, I'll, I'll be asking you both a series of questions. Do your best to gimme your response within five seconds. Uh, a little bit of a rapid fire q and A style, some business, some personal Colby. I'm gonna start with you. Um, geez, explain Explain your product to me as if I were a five year old.

Colby Harvey: 00:46:39

We keep aircraft in the sky, but using cv, finding damages like birds strikes and lightning strikes and making sure they're fixed before you ever get on the plane.

Chris Zhu: 00:46:51

Good stuff.

Tim Winkler: 00:46:52

Who are

Colby Harvey: 00:46:53

your users? Our users are mps, like mechanics, people that, um, look for these damages on a regular basis.

Tim Winkler: 00:47:04

What type of engineer would thrive at Rise?

Colby Harvey: 00:47:09

Uh, robotics. A nerdy one. Someone who likes anime. What kinda nerds here? Um, big ones. Fire force. Just gonna plug that here. Um, and, you know, emotionally intelligent and guys

Chris Zhu: 00:47:23

and

Tim Winkler: 00:47:23

girls, what's your favorite aspect of the culture at. Um,

Colby Harvey: 00:47:29

everyone, it feels like a team. Like, it feels like we're, we're not just like building something to build it. Like we're wrapped around on culture. Like, Hey, we're gonna make, this is fucking cool. Excuse me, my language. Like, this is really cool and we wanna make this happen. So the culture is all like excitement, but at the same time it's around like growth in like, like a unit. Like we're working

Tim Winkler: 00:47:48

in this together. As a founder and leader with startup, you know, what would you say is the, the number one thing that keeps you up at. Oh God.

Colby Harvey: 00:47:58

Um, the only one

Chris Zhu: 00:48:01

um,

Colby Harvey: 00:48:02

speed of customer adoption, I guess. Um, and regulatory adoption speed as well.

Tim Winkler: 00:48:10

What is the fa your favorite country that you've ever traveled to? Well, I just came back

Colby Harvey: 00:48:16

from Spain, so that's pretty high on my list right now. Sweet.

Tim Winkler: 00:48:19

Spain's awesome. It's nice. Favorite dessert? Um, reveal it Cake. Favorite app on your phone? Uh,

Colby Harvey: 00:48:30

my Rocket Money app so I can make sure I'm not too much Um, favorite superhero. Ironman for sure. Cool. Something about a billion there. Paid worth philanthropist. That just like sounds awesome. It's funny cuz

Mike Gruen: 00:48:45

Batman is, the Playboy is a common one too. So common.

Tim Winkler: 00:48:49

Yeah. Cool. Chris, uh, let's jump over to you and then we'll, we'll wrap it up. So, um, what problems are, are you solving at Primary Health?

Chris Zhu: 00:48:59

Am I solving personally Um, I

Tim Winkler: 00:49:03

what? The company at large.

Chris Zhu: 00:49:05

Okay. Um, well, we try to bring healthcare outside of a traditional clinical setting. Who are your users today? A lot of governments. Um, a lot of schools, uh, some pharmacies. Community based organizations. Um, yeah,

Tim Winkler: 00:49:27

that's what type of engineers thrive at at Primary Health. I think, you know,

Chris Zhu: 00:49:36

engineers that are willing to take on ownership of what they're building. Nice. What's

Tim Winkler: 00:49:43

a trait that you value in your

Chris Zhu: 00:49:46

co-founder? How passionate he is about the space. Awesome. What's your

Tim Winkler: 00:49:53

favorite aspect of the culture there@primary.health?

Chris Zhu: 00:49:58

Um, the, the culture here, the trust that we put into our employees and our, our, our people.

Tim Winkler: 00:50:07

Favorite city in the US that

Chris Zhu: 00:50:10

you've traveled to. That I've traveled to. So I live in San Francisco, but I tech, I'm not from there and I still love it there. Like I, I, despite what everybody else has done, I guess, you know, but I, I still love it there. I still live there. Um, and technically, I guess I'm still, you know, I don't know if it counts. I, I grew up in Vancouver and I moved sf, so I, I traveled there, right?

Tim Winkler: 00:50:33

So sf we'll, we'll take it.

Chris Zhu: 00:50:34

Yeah. I think SF just needs some more, you know, victory points. They haven't done so well the past two years, so somebody's got problem. Next

Tim Winkler: 00:50:41

episode, we'll talk San San Francisco.

Chris Zhu: 00:50:47

Please tell

Tim Winkler: 00:50:48

much. Do we have, um, sun, sunrise or sunset? Uh, sunset. So, do you like your eggs fried or scrambled? Scrambled. Favorite

Chris Zhu: 00:51:00

Disney Charact. Oh my God. That's okay. I guess everything's a Disney character now, right? What is not a Disney

Colby Harvey: 00:51:08

character? It's not Disney

Tim Winkler: 00:51:11

Lion King, the sim. That's, that's strong. That's a strong answer. That's Um, cool. That's it guys. We're, we're, we're wrapping on that note. Um, thank you for spending time with us and, and shedding light on your journey and, and sharing that with our listeners. I think it's a really helpful tip, tidbits that came out of it. And, uh, appreciate you joining us on the PAIR program.

Chris Zhu: 00:51:34

Yeah, definitely to be here. Thank you so much for having us. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks guys. Yep.

Colby Harvey: 00:51:39

Thanks Paul.