Oleg Stavitsky, Endel

Hey, I'm Dale Luddington, News Editor at TechCrunch, and you're joining us on Found, the podcast where we talk to different founders every week. I'm here with my co-host and my ambient noise generation entity, human. Here comes Treble, Jordan Krug, pleasure to be with you. You like that? Well, I don't know, I guess so. I was once told by a man that I find very smart, that he was told by someone he finds very smart, that upon is the ultimate sign of genius, right? This sounds familiar. You said it, dude. Okay, anyway, carry on. This week, we have a great company, a very interesting perspective, I think, to, from a founder, from a tech founder, we're joined by Oleg Stowitsky, who is CEO and co-founder at Endel. Endel is a company that, get ready for this, because there's a lot to wrap your head around. They specialize in creating technology with personalized sound environments that are designed to reduce stress, increase focus, or improve your sleep. So, targeted emotional outcomes, mental health outcomes, using personally designed sounds. It sounded like a lot, and I mean, it was a lot, right, Jordan? We got into it. What did you think? Yeah, I mean, I would say you got into it. I can't, I can't lie to our audience, like I just don't know that I understand really, like not that I'm not capable of understanding, but that I don't know that I buy into all this. I mean, I do think that sometimes, very rarely, I'm looking for like, focused music, so that's nice. But yeah, it all felt like it was taking itself too seriously. Well, I think that's a risk that all of these companies run when they approach a thing like this. Back to it on the episode, also, it's like a Deluxe, and mood altering substances, right? And they fall into a similar kind of trap or category of like, you have to essentially pass this first hurdle of convincing people that you're not just like some kind of Fufu new age thing. And then you have to convince them that like not only that, but we're the ones who figured out the best way to do it, or to do this effectively, or to do it at scale, or to do it properly, right? I did like that he talked about being really convicted and like making choices for the user. I think that that's like a pat, like a slippery slope, right? We talked a lot about how he was like, no, this is how the app is going to look like we're going to choose the inputs that you give us that determine what you listen to. It's not like plug and play. It's not super customizable beyond what we've built it to be and like, it is what it is. Take it or leave it. And I think that founders can wander down the path of like more toggles, more features, more this more that and kind of end up with like a soup of nothingness as a result. So I did like that. I think what was really interesting to me was that him and his co-founders come from this very different background whereby they were essentially an artist collective. And then we're creating these sort of technical experiments, but with like a artistic grounding or creative grounding. And this one just struck as something that seemed to actually work in a way that made sense for venture scale and venture backing. Absolutely. Not traditional founders at all, right? I often think of us as a founder collective. I mean, an artist collective, don't you? Yeah, I mean, just me and you, you mean. Just me and you and I. And I. And Grace. I mean, the founder podcast is in a way an artist collective. Yeah. I mean, we talked about it too on a previous episode about like, you know, having salons and sitting around and discussing just kind of like art and inspiration. That's basically what we do. I mean, I can't take that term seriously either. So that's kind of why I brought it up sarcastically, but then you kind of went with it. So now I don't know where to go from here. Maybe we should just go to the episode. What do you think? What's kind of the episode and what listeners decide. Cool. And then listeners, when you do decide, guess what? Give us a call and leave us a message about your decision at 510-936-1618. What do you think about artists' collectives? What do you think about Jordan's close-minded approach to the world in general? Sure. Sure. I'm close-minded about a lot, but I'm open to you guys. I want to hear what you have to say. Hey, O'Lake, thanks for joining us today. Sure. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah. It's great to be chatting to you about Endel and about your experience as a founder. So can you just start off by giving us and our listeners kind of a high-level overview of what Endel is and what the company does? For sure. When I'm asked about what Endel is, I usually say, this is a technology that was built to help you focus, relax, and sleep. That's it. Now, the way we do that is a little bit more complicated than that. The way we do it is we procedurally generate a sound scape in real time on the spot, on the device, personalized to you based on a number of inputs that we collect about the user. So we collect information like the time of day, the weather, your location, your movement, your heart rate, we plug all of this data into our algorithm and it creates a sound scape in real time personalized to you. That's what we do. That's super cool. So I have a few questions about that right off the bat. Like, does it ever surprise you with what it comes up with or do you kind of know generally, what the sounds are going to be like or whatever, or is there ever a time where the soundscape it produces is like, wow, I did not expect that to come out of the algorithm we created. There's a lot of surprises that come out of it during the production process, especially when we're working with some artists and I'm sure we're going to be touching on that a little bit going forward, but the end result actually should not surprise you because you know, when we're talking, a NANDL is a functional tool, right, like at the end of the day, you go to NANDL to achieve a certain cognitive state. And especially when we're talking about concentration and focus, there should be no surprises. Yeah, you don't want anything that's like jarring, right, because it's going to achieve the opposite effect, right? Exactly. What are the inputs again, like, what is it learning about me when I ask it for a soundscape? Like, what is it taking from me? It's taking in your location, the weather, your heart rate, and your movement currently. And we're working on adding some new inputs as well. Ooh, do you want to tease some of those? It sounded like that was like the secret sauce, like these new inputs. You made a little, the viewers can't see this, but it'll like smile in a conspiratorial manner. Hmm. Very secretive smile. Very evil genius. No, nothing creepy, nothing creepy, but like, I can give you one example is we're working on calendar input, right, so that we can personalize the soundscape and proactively suggest the soundscape based on, you know, how your day is looking like, or how you day when, like, imagine coming back home and you had like 10 meetings and you just spend an hour in traffic, our algorithm goes like, okay, here's where you need to be hearing right now. That sounds wonderful, actually, based on some heavy meeting days I've had, I would appreciate that. Yeah. Right. Darryl, is it ever like heavy metal? Is it ever just like, you need to be screamed at, like, you just need like, like, scream o, because I feel like sometimes that's what I need after a 10 meeting day. Well, actually, you know, I mean, all of our soundscapes currently are ambient soundscapes. And like, we, we started with ambient just simply because, you know, like, you cannot possibly hate ambient. It's like the most neutral thing ever, right, like, like, spa music. Well, I don't really like that comparison. Yeah, because ambient is more, I would say, neutral, you know, it's, spa music has this very weird new age connotations that I'm trying to avoid. Whales squealing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Going into techno, like, we, you know, we recently did this techno soundscape as well. So we are going into different genres now, like we're opening that door. So, Oleg, I had this startup idea, which you're totally able to steal if you want. It's up for grabs. And if not you, then dibs to the listeners. But the idea was like, if you're ever, you know, when you're like walking down the street and you're listening to a song, and it just like hits you, right? Like the weather's perfect. The street you're walking down is perfect. Like the lyrics, the music, like it all just like comes together in a wonderful moment. So you like drop that, right? And then anyone else on the app, when they were in those exact circumstances, like summer, 10 a.m., same weather, whatever, it'd be like Jordan dropped this song for you, like get in that headspace. So there'd just be like these little song drops all over the world of like the time, place, the weather and all these different factors that come together. So go ahead, Oleg. Just run with it. It's like an incidental geocache that is musical in nature, but it sounds like it would probably require like full monitoring of your biometrics or whatever, to truly replicate and then. And like insane amount of scale, and then like there's also no way to monetize it. And then also it costs an extraordinary amount because of the music licensing, so zero point zero, three percent or whatever, like it's like two people, but I mean, it's very passive. Totally. Totally venture backable. Yeah. No, I think that I could walk into Sequoia right now and they'd be like, listen, you're going to grow like wildfire. But I mean, that does lead to a question of kind of like, how did, like all like, how did you come up with this to begin with and how did you say like, this is something that I think works at the kind of scale where we need to make it like a true text start up and develop it that way. I'm a huge ambient music nerd, and you can say, like I'm a huge Brianino fan, like I used to work listening to Brianino's music for airports and discrete music all the time. And then I just had this idea, okay, but yeah, but like the joke is that I have like a record player. He's a confinial and it's just I got tired of like turning, turning, dude, dude, I just was really knowing. I recently like, we tried again vinyl and I was like, wait a minute, I have to go manually. Yeah. It's just not going to continue playing, rather you're like, oh god damn. Absolutely. Yeah. But it's like, it's very short, you know, like this, like one side is like only like 40 minutes. I know. But like back in the day, they used to watch TV and they had like four channels and commercials were like seven minutes long. And if they didn't like what they were watching, like they had to hate it bad enough to get up and like, click, click manually, like I'm just saying we're generally getting lazier. And I think that's a fact. I don't think that there's any argument. That is very true. Yeah, like that is very true. And then I was like, okay, but what if, you know, this thing was just a perpetual ambient soundscape. And that has everything to do with Brianino's ideas of self evolving and perpetually evolving compositions, like he's been talking about this since forever. Basically, I was like, okay, I want to build this. And I also want this to be functional. I want this to help people achieve a certain cognitive state. And then we started digging into the neuroscience of how sound affects our cognitive state. And I found this Russian physicist who wrote a book called The Physics and Anatomy of Music. And I like vividly remember having a call with him. And I said, look, can you help us design this thing? Like what's the neuroscience behind that? And the first thing he said was, it has to be personalized. Like it cannot be one song, one track, one playlist for any situation. Like it needs to be personalized. And that's when we started digging into personalization and, you know, what affects your cognitive state, like, and things like this. Cool. Yeah, I mean, you see the YouTube channels or whatever, right? Like you see, like, coffee shop music for grainy days or the ones, and they're very popular, very popular, right? But they're not as many as there are. And I suppose you can go find one to try to suit your taste. Like it doesn't, that still escapes that level of personalization of like this is like specifically made for you is not present in any of those things, right? Or even in Spotify playlist or whatever, anything like that, right? So the true carrot is that real personalization, right? For sure. Like, you know, I'm not blind to the fact that there's tons of alternatives free and semi-free to this, right? Like there's tons of those YouTube videos. There's a lot of playlists and like, obviously, part of the motivation to build this when I was looking at like the growth of those playlists, right? Like the consumption of those functional playlists just tripled over the last few years. So people are consuming their content as crazy, and what I like to say is basically essentially what people are doing is they're self-medicating with sound, you know, because the world is so crazy, like we live in this crazy world right now, and people are turning to sound because it's the easiest way to control your environment. Like you just put your headphones on, you play some music, and immediately your environment has changed. So people are trying to control their environment by playing, you know, various playlists. And here's us coming in and saying, "Hey, there's a better way of doing this." You know, there is a scientifically engineered personalized version of what you're listening to right now, and that's handled. Yeah. And it can maximize the efficacy of what you're trying to do. And that, I mean, that's very appealing even because, you know, I only recently realized there was sort of like the effect that it has on my affect, right? Like music generally, like I think for a long time, my musical tastes have really evolved. I would say in the past couple of years, and maybe that's just kind of a general social trend as we've seen stuff like the pandemic and whatever, applying pressure and stress. But like, I remember growing up, I always like sort of like sad indie music, like just like, you know, singer-songwriters and acoustic guitar and- And just despair. Just despair, right? Pretty low-key stuff, right? And it was only like very recently that I was like, "Wait a minute, I think this is making me really sad also." So, you know, maybe I should change that input if I want a different output, right? And I don't think I'm unique. I think it's just like there's a general trend towards that and towards the realization of that. As other factors seem more and more out of our control, this one is at least, you know, becomes more and more obviously in control, right? But I don't know if you saw that in kind of your work developing this app. Well, yeah. The way I'm thinking about it is like sometimes you want to be sad, like you want to feel those feelings, right? But like, you know, what we're saying with Endel, it's just, it's a new format. It's a new format. Like, you want to listen to a specific song or an album, you go and listen to that and we're never going to, we're not trying to compete with that. Actually, but what we're saying is, you see, when you're trying to achieve a certain cognitive state, there's a better way of doing this. And it needs to be personalized and needs to be adaptive to you. And that's what we're building, or we're never, never, ever trying to compete with, you know, the actual music. And even with the stuff that we're doing right now lately, you know, we realized that there needs to be a human being behind us. There always needs to be a human being behind the algorithm. So that's why we're working with all of those artists and, you know, one of the co-founders of Endel is a new classical composer in the first place. So like, there was always a human being behind the algorithm in our case. How much control does a user have, right? Like, so you have these inputs that are like, they're period, right? But then can I go in and be like, okay, you know that I had 12 meetings today. You know that I was in two hours of traffic. You know it's raining. But I also like just got dumped. Can I go in and just like put a sad face and just be like, I still want an ambient and I still want to fall asleep. But like, I kind of want to feel a little sad as I fall asleep, you know, like, can you, yeah, how much is manual? Currently zero manual input into the product. Currently we're like, trust us. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing that you often hear about product development in general, right? Like users think they know what they want, but they often don't have no idea or they know adjacent to what they want, but not quite what they want, right? And it's impossible to give them choices because once you do, you're like, okay, well, here's three. And they're like, why aren't there enough choices? And then you go, and they're like, I can't decide, you know, it's like impossible to figure out like what the right number is. Like I mean, if you look at the app right now, it's very, very minimalistic. It's like this black and white thing. It has this procedure in January that visuals. It's basically, but at the end of the day, it's like a four button app, which is say, hey, I want to focus now or I want to sleep now. And that's it. And then it's just like we designed it like this when I want to turn this into like this massive setting space where you're like, yeah, I want to sleep, but I want it to be a little bit more upbeat. And you know what? I actually add a little bit of an EDM to that like, no, you trust us. And it's this mysterious black and white artistic thing. It's almost like an art object. And I'm actually, I mean, a lot of work went into that in a way we're designing Endel. And it's very different from everything else out there. And sometimes we're even hurting ourselves. I would say with this because we're very particular on how it looks. And it looks weird and minimalistic and different from everything else, but we want it like this. And we want it to feel weird and really bit of a little bit mysterious. So like having like 10 settings in there, it's not what we want to be. So all like we just met. So I just want to, I'm going to grain of salt, what I'm about to say with that because I don't know you at all, but you do seem like a very particular person. Like you know exactly what you want something to be. And like, that is how it shall be. And I'm curious like how you, maybe I'm wrong on that. So tell me if I am. But how do you get user feedback? How do you think about like making sure you have other people's perspectives in and around you and your team? Or do you not? First thing to know, there's like six co-founders actually in Endel. It's just me. It's a collective of people. There's the art director, he's a co-founder and he's a contemporary artist. And then there's this Dimitri who is the new classical composer who is our sound designer and a composer. And also a co-founder. So there are six of us. And we're this artistic collective that we will see ourselves. Like we're not a typical tech startup founder, so I would say. And that's one thing. And we've had like, we've had some really hard time, you know, implementing data into our product development process because like when we started having like a data team and the data team comes and they're like, well guys, like we appreciate their artistic approach. But like what you're doing here is just does not resonate with a lot of people. And we're like, oh shit, like, and especially like, we made a mistake hiring a data team. Yeah, you're like, go away. But so what we're trying to do right now is, and this is not our first project. Like before that, we've been doing kids apps actually. We did this company called Bubble, the UBL, which was a series of digital art for kids apps. Also very abstract, also not to average kids apps like no funny characters, no, nothing like almost like Kandinsky paintings that came to life. And we were also very particular about that. And then so we transitioned into Andal, the six of us, you know, we sold that company and then we had an exit and then we transitioned to Andal and we started this as an art project essentially. But then we saw some initial traction and we were like, holy shit, like this is an art project that is starting into a business and then we went through text art music, acceleration program and that further accelerated our growth and like next thing, you know, like Amazon is investing in you. So we're like, it's going on. And so I cannot say that we completely ignore data, so we're trying to be data informed, not data driven, if they make sense. Yeah. You know, we appreciate data and we appreciate external input, but we're also very particular and we're saying no to a lot of stuff, even though on paper it makes sense for us to, you know, like turn Andal into this colorful sunset type of an app and just stop being this minimalistic like a white thing, but it's just who we are. And, you know, we've been the launch partner for Apple Watch Series 5 and we've been working like directly with Apple marketing department because we were featured on Apple.com. And they were like, they called us and they were like, hey, appreciate the design, like very beautiful, black and white, love it. But it's like considering our design of Apple.com, we're like, will you consider adding some color to that? And we're like, no, it's going to be black and white, sorry. Nice. And they're like, cool, okay, had to ask, you know, we respect that, like had to ask. So yeah, it's just who we are. If you're listening to found you're probably already super interested in startups and the overall startup ecosystem. So we've got a great deal for you. We're going to offer you 50% off, either a one year or a two year subscription to extra crunch. Extra crunch is tech crunch is premium product offering. And when you go there, you'll get deep dive interviews of some of the top founders in the industry. You'll get market maps on specific verticals than some of the most exciting areas of growth in startup land. You'll also get surveys of some of the top VCs in different areas, including different geographies. So you can subscribe to extra crunch at extra crunch dot com, that's probably the easiest way. Or if you're already on tech crunch, follow the links for extra crunch and you'll get a prompt to subscribe and then just enter that code that's found, the name of this podcast during checkout. And you'll get 50% off on either a one year or a two year subscription. I've seen huge businesses build by people who really do not care about what they're building. They're like, look, the market needs this, like the research says that we need that. And so we've a bit tested like 100 icons and that icon clicks past and that's screenshot, like in that text, like this is what we should be having. So this is the product and it's completely data driven. And I respect that. I just like, I wish I was able to do that, honestly. I wish I had a little bit of that. But it's just like, it's just not how I'm wired, I'm like, but no, I feel it needs to be this, actually, and that's what we're doing, like, yeah. If everybody did the former, like, it's not, it doesn't work, right? It's not sustainable for everyone to do the former anyway, right? So like the fact that there are even some people like you doing the latter is awesome and it lifts up the whole ecosystem, right? Because then you get some of that back into the more sort of mainstream approaches and hopefully the cycle comes around again, right? And people start valuing more sort of like the artistic, the human aspects and things. But I knew that you'd worked on the kids stuff before, but I didn't know that the whole thing was sort of from this artist collective approach, right? I assume there was more of a balance of technologists or traditional sort of startup founders. So but it's interesting that you then found your way. Like you said to Amazon as a, as a funder and then also to tech stars too, right? Like you went through tech stars. And what was that like? Was there a lot of, was there conflict in that experience too since you had this sort of nontraditional background going into more traditional acceleration? No, we were like very lucky because we went to tech stars music in LA and Bob Maas, who runs tech stars music, he was in Berlin and I applied almost by accident actually. I was applying for something else and I'd like so abandoned like click that banner and the application process was literally like three lines like, what are you doing? Why is this important? And you know, to have a product to show and I was like, yes, yes, yes. And then I get an email from Bob saying, hey, I'm going to be in Berlin like, do you want to do it? You were like, Oh, I thought I was just answering a survey and it was the application for it. Yeah. And I go in and then Bob just looks at the product and because like we're so particular like this prototype was like very, very, very polished and he was like, this is interesting. You guys are weird, but this is interesting. So we started going through the almost unwillingly going through this application process and then he called me and he's like, come to LA. So the six of us went to LA and it was the best thing ever really seriously. It was so helpful. I've seen so many acceleration programs doing nothing for entrepreneurs, but that was like completely opposite because like the amount of relevant people that I've met, like I went to LA like knowing just having like a couple of friends there three months later, you know, I know people from like, you know, the head of customer experience had some of us ended up investing in us, you know, Amazon ended up investing in us three months later. And we're like, so that's tech starts music specifically for you. You mentioned the partnerships too and you have some really big name partnerships, right? Like with grimes and just name one, but like, how did those come about? Was that also to the thing? Because there's a lot of LA introductions I imagine for the artists or how did you get your first-cut artist deals? Well, I mean, I'm still in touch with some of the people I met through the program, even though that happened in 2018, but grimes specifically actually, it was just so like, from the very beginning, we were like, okay, we build this algorithm and the way this algorithm works is we create this library of stamps, tiny little sounds, right? And then the algorithm basically picks the right stamps from the library, depending on what the inputs are, like splice them together, overlays them with some post-processing effects and that process is just happening in real time and it sort of drops certain stamps brings in new stamps, depending on, you know, what your heart rate is, for example. And we were always like, okay, but what would happen if we were to take stamps from another artist and feed those stamps into the algorithm? What would that be? And so we've always had that idea, but we were just building our own thing. And then, just, you know, grimes basically approached us and she was like, hey, I'm a fan, I'm a user, I'm using an end-of-the-slip. So why don't we do something together? We're like, great, we have a project for you, and to AI Lullaby I was born and AI Lullaby turned into this massive success with like the New York Times music cover story and everything and we were like, what is going on? That is now part of our strategy, basically, a big part of our strategy, like collaborating with artists on this personalized three old time soundscapes, like turning their music, their work into functional soundscapes. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you got plastic man as well and Alan Watts, I think, is the other big major partner. How did it feel, though, to get an email or whatever text, whatever you got from grimes being like, yo, handwritten poster. Yeah, I'm a massive fan of yours and I want to work with you. I would be like, sh*t in my pants. Did you sh*t your pants? I did not, sorry. What did you do, though? We were like, cool, yeah, let's do it. I mean, grimes, it's, grimes is great, let's do it. I mean, honestly, at this point, because there was just already so much magic happening with Endel, we honestly, and you know, I mean, this was my first company, right, and not even my second company, but this is the first time I'm seeing a business growing like this. And at some point, there's just so much stuff going on that you don't even have the time to process the things that are happening with you. And just the way my brain works is just happens retrospectively, like I would just be going, you know, on the street, and then suddenly, I would just realize what exactly is happening, like we're working, holy sh*t, like we're working with grimes, and Amazon is investing. And this company, like there's hundreds of thousands of people that are using us daily, and you're like, you would start crying. It's not so you see individually, right? It's only an aggregate. It's only in those few times when you get to actually step back and you're like, oh, wait, like, piecemeal, we've built this huge thing, and it's actually reaching far and wide, right? Like, you've partnerships, we didn't even talk about your integrations yet, but like the partnership with ANA, or like the automotive stuff, like that is another question I have is just kind of, because you talked about being very specific and intentional with the design of the app and the app experience, right? But then you have these more sort of like space inhabiting or like vehicle integrations or whatever. So at what point does it become less important for you to have that UI, touchpoint, that user interface, relationship with the user, and more be like, well, we're the technology powering how these other companies want to sort of deliver this, right? Like, because how do you think about those when you start getting into those kinds of partnerships? So it was there from day one, actually, the whole beauty approach, and all of those partnerships were there from day one. But again, the way they are envisioned and the way we're doing all of these collaborations, it's always very obvious for the end user that this is an Andal experience they're interacting with. We're never white labeling our technology to a third party. And the reason that B2B strategy was there from day one has everything to do with the big vision for Andal, because Andal is envisioned as this ever present always on soundscape that is always there with you, right? Like, that's how I'm, that is my dream. My dream is you wake up, you press play, and that soundscape starts playing, and it just follows you everywhere. Like, you're in the car, it adapts to the traffic situation. You're at work, and it adapts to the amount of people around you, the amount of conversations happening around you, the schedule that you have for this day, that you get back home, and it's like, obviously, prepares you for your sleep session and stuff like that. So I really want sound to follow you everywhere that you go. So in that sense, all of those B2B collaborations they were there from day one. I mean, that sounds very appealing, actually. Like, especially because I think now about sort of manual interaction, again, it's not a perfect equivalent, because like you said, you don't think you're competing necessarily with traditional music. But like, when you're using that, and I think a lot of people, you know, especially when they're working from home, or even at the office, you know, using headphones or whatever, like, try to kind of like soundtrack their day. But there's often times where you're just like, oh, I can't, I need to focus. So I need to stop this now, or I need like, there's times when the experience isn't perfect. And you have to kind of manually intervene. But your vision is like, no, this is truly continuous. And it will kind of adapt to those needs as they arise. Yes, the M game for me. Like, currently, you know, you have to go into the app or whatever, like you start handling your Alexa, and you proactively say, hey, I want to focus right now. The end game for me is you don't have to do that. You just, you know, again, as I said, you just press play. And because we understand so much about the context of your day, you know, like, I want, I like to say, like one of the few companies that collect all of their data about you, but not to serve you ads, but to actually make your life better. Yeah. Because we need to understand the context of your day. And yeah, the end game for me is just us adapting to whatever is happening in your life. Be it in a car, you know, at your home, a work. And, you know, I like to do that sometimes. I self, like, you know, I turn on transparency mode for my AirPods. And they just play and all at this very, very, like, barely audible level. And they just go about my day. And I call it like micro dozing on Nando, because it's always there. But like, you can barely hear that. And yeah, that's, that's how I'm thinking about handle. Cool. That was another thing I wanted to ask you, actually, because as we've been talking about this the whole time, I was thinking about kind of the recent trend in psychoactive, right? And there's a, there's a real kind of like return to like, oh, well, there's a, there's a place for psychoactive, especially used in minimal amounts are in micro dozing in terms of managing your, your mental health or your, your health generally, right? So how do you see end only in that context? You see it as kind of more similar to that, maybe than, than to traditional music? Or what do you think about it? That's, that's a good question. Even if you say, yes, you're not going to get medically regularly. Yeah. I think there's a higher bar than that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, I mean, for talking about like the general psychedelic view of the world that I have, yes. And though, and micro dozing on psychedelics is somewhat similar in the sense that you're, you're, you're, you're kind of using an external simulation to achieve a certain cognitive state and sort of be present and add a little bit of magic into your life. In that sense, yes, those things are similar. But yeah, I mean, no, actually now that I'm thinking about this, maybe, maybe they are similar, maybe they are part of like one world view that I have, you know, in, in my world, micro dozing on, on, on handle and micro dozing on psychedelics are similar tools to, to, to, to be present, you know, to, to feel a little bit of magic in your life. Yeah. No, I think there's a continuum of those. And, you know, perhaps like, yeah, actual substance, like psychoactive is, is like, maybe one extreme edge of that spectrum. But it seems like increasingly like we were talking about earlier, like people just want to be more intentional about inputs that they make use of in order to alter their state, right? And it's not about like, it's not like the old version, I guess, which was, which was more like, well, yeah, go and get smashed. Like, it's drunk or whatever, right? It's, it's something different, but it can involve a whole lot of different types of stimuli. And I think like the auditory one definitely makes sense, right? I mean, this is maybe a bit further afield that I think could require a bit more inquiry. But like, written word too, right? Like, I used to be, I have a reader, obviously, is like a master's degree, right? But like, now I'm, I fell off and then I was more focused on just news, news, news. And now I'm kind of trying to evolve that. And like, maybe I need some microfiction and like, how do I kind of deliver that in order to like achieve the desired sort of mental state, right? So I think there's, I think there's a whole spectrum of things that you can include in that category. I just think it's, it's fairly interesting to see it kind of evolve now and for people to provide it with good attention and focus, especially in the tech world. No, yeah. I mean, honestly, generally, I think we were living in a beautiful world. And I think, no, I have a very positive view of everything that's happening. I mean, not everything, but a lot of things that are happening to us. And I think, yeah, I think the work that we're doing with Andal and the stuff that's happening with psychedelics and just generally, a lot of the initiatives are going to get us into a good place. Like, that's, that's just generally how I'm feeling about the world that we live in. Back to your founder collective, like, have you always been very aligned kind of in your thinking about what the technology you're developing should do and what it should bring to the world or has there, because with, especially with such a large group, like, is, how do you have kind of disagreements and how about that too? Sounds like six people agreeing on something seems difficult. You know, all I can say is I'm just very, very lucky. I met those people about what, what I want to say, I've assembled them almost like, you know, Avengers, about 80 years ago, nine years ago, that happened around that, that kids apps project. And we just clicked. I don't know. It's just magic. You know, it just happens. And I know it's very, very rare. And I, I treasure it. And it's just, it just happened like this, that, you know, we, we, we just understand each other. And obviously, you know, we've been through all sorts of stuff by now. We've been through a situation, we've literally, literally had like no money at all, just scrapping by it. And we've been through an exit situation. Now we've been through a situation where we're working on this fast-growing company that has like some tier A investors investing in us. So, and we just, I don't know, we're like almost like a family, you know, it's just very rare. And I'm, I'm very much aware that it's just, yeah, we were just very lucky, I guess. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you're all aligned in terms of the incentives and motivations, which might be very different if you had like, although maybe you do have somebody like this, but if you had somebody who is much more traditionally like a, you know, growth hacking technologist or something that might introduce some friction. But you don't have anybody like that in the collective, is there one, is there one person who's like, this is the business person? Or is that, is that you? If you would just surprise, but actually I am the business person. Yeah. And I can, I can, I can wear a business hat. Like, look, I mean, I'm doing all of the fundraising, like, and I'm, yeah, I'm dealing with that part of things, but I'm just not letting that kind of, you know, take me away from this magic view of the world as well. And we, we have a chief data officer who's also a co-founder and who is also very, you know, numbers driven, but he also somehow balances that in his life. And yeah, we have a CTO who is obviously a very talented engineer. And he also somehow, you know, balances that very particular engineering view of the world and what we're doing. So, I don't know, we just, you know, all of us somehow have learned to listen to each other. And that is just very important. And have learned to, to just work as a collective because, you know, the ownership is split evenly across all six co-founders is just makes, just the dynamic of the group is, is very, very healthy. It sounds like you should like create a model for society to follow. Just like, let's, just, let's, right, right, a business book. And then we like, look, just do everything this way. It's going to work out. God, I wish. That's just like a new disability. Like I'm not sure of that. All right, all right. We won't put that on your shoulders, but let me deal with that in the first, okay? Yeah. But it's, I mean, I think we're just about on time, but it's been, it's been great talking to you. And I think it just talking to you has made me want to use the app even more. So I'm super excited about that. I can't wait to see Darryl's mood change as well. Yeah, I'm so much sad music. She'll be the best. You'll have to take, you'll have to sort of diary and you'll just have to like take your diary. Darryl smiled twice today. And it wasn't in ridicule of others. Yeah, exactly. I'll become a kinder, gentler person. Thanks to you, like, but thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Yeah, my life. Yeah, Jordan, yeah, let me know how it goes for Darryl. I will. I will. I'll reach out to you directly via postcard. Yeah, please. Thanks. All right. So that was our conversation with Olegg from Endel and Jordan. What did you think? Are you a believer? No, I, but, right, because we have recorded the intro before. So you already, I don't want to waffle at this point. You're like, what if I was like, oh, yeah, no, I get it. No, I like don't at all. But I applaud the bravery it takes to build a consumer facing app at this point. I also applaud the courage it takes to take on like a Spotify and Pandora and kind of the ecosystem at large. I think that there are people I know in my universe that would get a lot of value out of this app and this product. It's just not me. But yeah, that's kind of where I stand on Endel. Yeah, Olegg's great. I love the stick to itiveness of it. I like the approach where they had a very specific perspective on the design and received a lot of feedback that they should change it for more general market palatability and resisted those, those urges. And as a result, one like some pretty good industry plot it's in like awards like the Apple design order or whatever. So I would love to explore this more with you in our future episode, which is like, how do you decide like to thine own self be true and like follow your own North Star. But then also do be open to feedback. Because I feel like there are a lot of people who have been on our show who have remained convicted in what they believe in and they've gone for it and they've been rewarded. But I feel like outside influence is always good, right? Like you want to hear more from users and learn more from investors and learn from the ecosystem at large. So that's something I'd like to put on our thinking list slash to do this Darrell. Yeah, I will offer a suggestion that you should be opportunistic omnivore in your feedback. Collect it all, treat it all as opportunity, huddle it into your little burrow, and then you get to choose what you want. That's a nice starting place. That's also a harder of actual physical objects. So don't trust my advice. But that's a nice starting place. I mean, I definitely want to hear from people other than you. I feel like I pretty much know what you're thinking at any given moment. So yeah, let's get some other people involved. I'm going to be an opportunistic omnivore about it and I'm going to try to get more people in on that question. Yeah, and let us know. Send us feedback. Send us the email. All of us. Leave us a voicemail. 510-936-1618. How do you take feedback but also stay true to yourself or to each other on? Let us know. Found is hosted by myself TechCrunch News Editor Darrell, othering tin and TechCrunch Managing Editor, Jordan Crook. We are produced by a Shadkelkarni and edited by Grace Mendenhall. And Maggie Stamitz is our associate producer. TechCrunch's audio products are managed by a Henry Pick of it. Our guest this week was Oleg Stavitsky, co-founder and CEO at Endel. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast and on Twitter at twitter.com/found. You can also email us and found at TechCrunch.com. And you can call us and leave a voicemail at 510-936-1618. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.