It's Surprising How Much Small Teams Can Get Done - Sam Chaudhary of ClassDojo

Well, I don't want to miss this story. Uh-huh. Oh, sly grin. Yeah, so little known fact: one of your first investors was Paul Graham of Y Combinator. Yeah, can you tell us about that meeting? What convinced PG to write you a check?

Yeah, it was hilarious. Yeah, so it was actually—it started at demo day, and I was lucky to be invited. So, we’d gone, we’d presented last, and we’d been told the whole time that, like, you know, the goal was to meet lots of people to get them to come by and, like, talk to you, right? And so a good way to do that is to have, like, good metrics, and we were lucky we had this good growth curve. But another way to get to do that is donuts.

And so I had a box of donuts, and I said at the end that, like, hey, they were over there; there’s a box on a table—like, goodbye. And so, hmm. And so, so the presentations finished, and we were kind of milling around. We ride our little stand thing, hoping that people would pop by. And who walks over but PG?

And he goes to Liam; he’s like, "Hey, I read there’s one of the metrics we showed. I think there’s an engagement metric. He’s like, 'I really like that, but the look of that—like, do you remember what that was?'" I don’t remember that. "When I'm sure I've got it in there, I think it was something about every three seconds."

"Oh, you're so rewarding feedback, maybe?" I did. "You remember?" And I do. "Yeah, no, I don’t actually remember. It’s in the pitch deck, something I’m sure you guys have it too."

"Yeah, yeah." And so he’s like, "I really like that metric. Can you show me, like, what the growth curve and that looks like?"

And then, like, I can't even imagine what was happening for Liam. He and I— we’d like read all of Peter's essays for ages, right? This is like a legendary person turning up and just, like, having a normal conversation with you. And so poor Liam was just like—come, like a holy—you know, it’s like, "Oh my god, like, my idol is here."

And I’m like, "Wow, I don’t have it to hand, but I can pull it or whatever." And PG is like, "Oh yeah, you could just open terminal and do it in there." Right? Makes it, like, base—like, starts coaching him through there.

And names, like, very—he’s amazing technology, very confident, right? When he’s like, "Oh yeah, I guess I’ll just do that," enter. "But it’s gonna take a while." And the donuts kind of bit us in the—you know, bit us in the ass.

"I guess, okay, I’ll just stand here and have a donut."

Okay, so you’ve got this, like, high-pressure, like, data extraction happening for Liam. And in the end, Liam’s like, "Looks like it’s better than this; I’ll just email it to you, like, straight after this."

And so Paul gives us his email address, and he’s like, "That sounds good." Moves away. And so we go home, like, breathlessly excited. I don’t remember, like, the rest of what happened at demo day, and we craft this email to PG or DM.

It’s like, "Hey, here’s the metric you want to look at, the growth curve, whatever." And we send it off—and, like, nothing—like crickets. And we’re like, "I guess he wasn’t like that interested; like, it was just polite." Right?

But being relentless with this stuff, two days later we DM again. And you know the numbers are small, so their growing rate— we’re like, "Look, it’s grown, Mike’s like 3X, 0.2." And again, like, no answer.

And we keep doing this for, like, I think the best part of a week—like, every day or two we’re just emailing, like, another chart, another. And then, sort of, from Liam’s email.

And then I get an email from Paul, like a week later, with a one-liner where he says, "It is customary to respond to offers of funding." And we’re like, "What does that mean, indeed?"

"Yes, yeah," and we’re like, "Yes, agree."

She won something else with that. And then we check out Liam as some kind of super juiced-up kind of Gmail inbox, whatever. And it’s like, it’s, like, in a spam folder somewhere.

It’s like, like, two days in PG is like, "Okay, I’m in." And, like, whatever; I’ll write you guys a check, and just come around, pick it up.

And we’re like, we, Ezek spammed PG for the best part of a week. After, and then, yeah, Liam biked to his house to pick up the check which...