The 22-Year-Old Dropout Revolutionizing Social Apps | EP 32
Description
In this episode of UNinvested, Sahil Seth interviews Alexandra Debow, an NYU dropout and Thiel Fellow, who has founded Swsh, a social photo-sharing app. Alexandra shares her journey through entrepreneurship, the ups and downs of building multiple apps, and her relentless drive to solve meaningful problems. This conversation dives deep into the challenges and successes of young entrepreneurs and the mindset needed to thrive in the tech world.
What we explore:
Alexandra's biggest failure and lessons learned from building five different apps
The motivation behind choosing entrepreneurship over a traditional career path
The importance of community and risk-taking in Alexandra's entrepreneurial journey
Advice for young entrepreneurs on taking risks and de-stigmatizing failure
The transition from early ideas to the successful launch of Swsh
Balancing social life and the entrepreneurial hustle
The role of mentors and networks in a startup's success
Strategies for cold outreach and building meaningful connections
The unique challenges and advantages of being a young entrepreneur
Where to find Uninvested:
Website: https://www.uninvested.org/
In this episode, we cover:
[00:00] Introduction to Alexandra Debow and her entrepreneurial background
[00:42] What drives Alexandra to be an entrepreneur
[01:16] The role of community and risk-taking in her journey
[01:57] Advice for young entrepreneurs and the importance of taking risks
[02:22] Embracing failure as a learning process
[02:53] The journey of building and pivoting through different apps
[04:26] Balancing social life and the startup grind
[04:50] The significance of product-market fit in a startup’s success
[05:50] Standing out in a crowded social media space
[08:50] The role of mentors and the impact of accelerators
[10:08] Effective strategies for cold outreach
[11:18] The value of persistence and resilience in entrepreneurship
[12:08] Balancing founder instincts with user feedback
[15:12] Examples of inspiring young entrepreneurs
[17:10] The importance of enjoying the entrepreneurial journey
[19:10] The impact of community and co-founders on startup success
A 39-year-old venture capitalist has been selected by Donald Trump to be his running mate for the 2024 US presidential election. And yes, to be more clear, JD Vance, the US senator of Ohio, started his early career as a tech venture capitalist investing in startups.
And remember, UNinvested is not a podcast about politics, but this news will play a huge role in the world of entrepreneurship, tech, and VC. So let's get into it.
[Intro Music]
After time in the US Marines and a tour of duty in Iraq, JD Vance graduated from Ohio State University and Yale Law School. 3 years post-graduation with some time in the corporate and judicial law world, Vance decided to work for Peter Thiel’s firm, Mithril Capital.
For those of you that don’t know, Peter Thiel is one of the most storied venture capitalists of our time. He also started his career as a law associate, but that only lasted about 7 months. Eventually, he became CEO of PayPal and facilitated its acquisition by ebay. Among other notable investments include a 10% stake in facebook for $500K as the first outside investor. Thiel has continued to be a long-term supporter of Vance, donating $15M to his campaign for senate.
Anyways back to JD Vance. Before we dive into his venture career, I do want to caveat that it is not anything as spectacular as Peter Thiel’s time, but it is nothing close to average.
At Mithril, Vance became more known for his best selling book, “Hillbilly Elegy, an autobiography of his life living in Middletown, Ohio. The book was so popular they eventually made a movie that was nominated for multiple awards.
After another short stint, Vance joined venture capital firm Revolution headed by Steve Case. There, Vance focused on investing in startups located in the midwest, following similar themes in his best selling book.
But again, Vance didn’t last very long. In under 2 years, putting us in the year 2020, he left the firm to found his own venture capital firm, Narya in Cincinnati Ohio. This time, Vance flexed his network he had built up among the tech elites, raising a $120M fund from, you guessed it, Peter Thiel and other notable investors like Marc Andreessen, founder of the VC firm a16Z, and Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google.
While founding a VC firm in itself is a huge accomplishment, there aren’t many newsworthy investments made by the fund. Vance’s only board seat for a company was at AppHarvest, an indoor farming startup which later filed bankruptcy (after Vance left). Narya is still active, they’ve invested in 19 startups since its inception with one as recent as June 2024 (ValueBase, a real estate assessment software startup).
Vance’s time in venture capital was short lived (6 years at 3 firms), but it is having significant impacts in the tech world.
In the past Silicon Valley has tended to lean more blue (and yes I am making a heavy generalization so don’t quote me on this), but tides seem to be shifting among tech moguls. Elon Musk pledged $45M a month to Trump and Vance, which equates to roughly $180M between now and the election. Marc Andressen and Ben Horowitz, founders of a16Z, one of the most successful VCs in the world, have declared similar financial support, citing that their political interests are in favor of “little tech”.
By little tech, they are alluding to startups whereas big tech are those notable FAANG companies. Many tech investors and founders are hoping that less regulation on technologies like AI will allow for more startups to flourish. Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator, the top startup accelerator, tweeted that rather than a few companies worth a trillion dollars (Google, Apple, etc.), there could be thousands of companies worth a billion.
The more regulation, the easier it becomes for giant incumbents (think FAANG companies) to remain in the driver's seat.
And it just so happens JD Vance is strongly skeptical of AI regulation, and believes big tech has gotten too powerful, hurting the little guys.
Vance has even cited that he believes in open sourcing AI, which in simpler terms means publicly releasing the code so anyone can use it for free and build upon it to create new technologies. If you’ve been following UNinvested, you’ll know this is a similar issue and one of the reasons Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, which is in fact not open sourcing their code, but keeping it to themselves.
Open sourcing code allows the little guys to take tech that took billions and billions to create, and make something on top of it. Mark Zuckerberg, like Elon Musk are both open sourcing their AIs
As you can see, the tech world will be paying a close eye to November.
In the meantime, I’m Sahil and thank you for listening to UNinvested. I'll be back for the next episode on every other Thursday at 6 pm.
Peace.
