Brad Menezes discusses Superblocks securing $60M in funding from top-tier investors like Kleiner Perkins, Greenoak, Spark, and Meritech.
Brad Menezes discusses Superblocks securing $60M in funding from top-tier investors like Kleiner Perkins, Greenoak, Spark, and Meritech. The raise was based on the company's AI-powered platform, Brad's track record, and strong references.
The number one thing I would say is no matter what happens in the journey of the business, there's always another move to be played and you have to make that move bold. And at every single juncture in the business, you have to basically make a bold bet. And there is always in every business a way to get to the next level. [Music] All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the dealmaker show. So today we have a really amazing founder. You know I think that after having done quite a bit of those episodes as you all know it takes quite a bit to get the uh you know the the the the thing pumping on my end and I got to tell you know with all the AI stuff you know that is going on all these no code platforms I mean I've been using them too. I'm quite familiar with them. I think that this one is quite a timely episode. you know, they are also just announced an incredible launch uh also a
additional round of financing that they're adding to the books there and it's quite the rocket ship. So, we're going to be talking about what how to think about co-founders, how to think about fundraising tool, obviously the the the the the lessons learned too when you you know either succeed or you learn, right? You know, that's the way to put it and then how to think about pivots as well as how to think about the wave of change in AI. So, I think that the episode today is going to be quite inspiring. And without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Brad Mineses. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Alejandro. Great to be here. So, originally born in Toronto, so give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you? Oh, well, I grew up in a suburb of Toronto in Canada and you know, my parents both uh both in it and uh you know, there was a I was actually quite
entrepreneurial growing up. I started a guitar strap business selling guitar straps. I was a guitar player, started an e-commerce business, but actually there was very few big-time entrepreneurs where I grew up. And so I would spend a ton of time reading about, you know, the entrepreneurs out in Silicon Valley. And so, uh, you know, my my my, uh, you know, where I actually met my co-founder was in high school physics class, believe it or not. And so we go back, you know, almost 20 years. So that whole problem solving, how how do you get that thing? because I mean obviously you went at it with engineering uh as as your as your as your degree but how do you really get into this whole problem solving type of uh type of approach and and and and way of thinking? Yeah. uh I mean I think you know when you go through mechanical engineering it's basically a it's almost like a physics major for
the applied world right and so the only way you solve problems is through first principles thinking and I think you know when you come into company building it is the same thing completely different domain but all the principles that you learn in physics or mechanical engineering of like what are the actual like things that are true and must be true and then what else is noise there's a ton of noise when you start a company there's a ton of noise even now with AI and so you have to always just go back to first principles thinking and I think that that comes from my uh my background in mechanical engineering and physics and you know that's what's got me into problem solving was you know starting with physics problems and and here we are today solving uh you know automation problems for enterprises and we'll talk about it in just a little bit. Now, one of the things that happened to is you
went at it with mechanical engineering, but you realized that the action that really got your your your blood flowing and pumping, you know, was not really on the mechanical side. So, how how do you realize that? Yeah, it's uh you know, when I started in in University of Toronto doing mechanical engineering, I was thinking, okay, I'm going to go build a company that's, you know, a mechanical company basically. And what I started seeing was all the startups were not in that. They were all in software. And so midway through my degree, I made a decision which is I'm going to go into the software industry because that's where people are starting companies and I need to find a way to get from Canada to Silicon Valley. So that was kind of the the goal. And because I was reading so much, you know, Techrunch, like all these different articles, like, you know, you don't know a lot of
entrepreneurs in Canada, that was kind of the first thing on my my mind as soon as I graduated and I could get a visa was how do I get to Silicon Valley? So, how did you find your ticket to Silicon Valley? Oh, it was uh it was painful. I mean, I think I I must have cold emailed like a hundred different companies and, you know, one of the companies I emailed was uh Yelp, um the you know, the restaurant reviews uh site and I actually ended up getting an interview at Yelp and uh they were looking for a product manager. They had just IPOed and they basically told me that look like uh after the interviews they told me that they really liked me but it actually was not a fit because I was too early in my career. And so I actually ended up emailing the head of product who had interviewed me and saying, "Hey, like would you be open for me being an intern and not a full-time? Um, and I'm pretty
confident that it'll work out and I'll convert to be your next full-time, but if not, I'll go back to Canada." and he actually took me up on that offer and so I joined um you know with the wrong background let's say mechanical engineering into a software product management position by becoming an intern even after I graduated and so that's how I got into Yelp um but then my career kind of uh went from there and there you made amazing relationships you know such as you know like getting a little bit closer to the founder of Yelp you know which was quite plugged in you know in the PayPal days. Yeah, I mean Jeremy the founder um became a very close mentor of mine and he's kind of I see him as like a product genius and his boss before before he started Yelp was Elon Musk actually. So you can imagine for me growing up you know reading these magazines to eventually you know working for for
Jeremy you know from the PayPal mafia um you know years later that was kind of a dream come true. So at what point do you realize to I want to maybe start something on my own and giving it that first taste of entrepreneurship? Yeah. Yeah. I mean you know I think after a couple years um into my career in product management I was kind of getting the feeling like okay I think I know how how this works. I think I can go do something on my own. Uh, but of course you need a co-founder. And I had been in touch with Ran, my co-founder. Um, I met him all the way back in physics class in high school actually. And so we were on the weekends jamming about different ideas, different companies we could start. And we actually did that for years. And then uh eventually I mentioned to Jeremy, the Yelp founder, I said, "Hey, like I want to start a company. Can you I want to be like you. Can can you help
me?" And he said, "Hey, sure. I'm actually gonna help you uh because you you've done great work for me in Yelp. And he introduced me to Sam Alman. And what ended up happening was Sam was running Y Combinator. This is back in about 2015. And Sam funded me and ran to do an ondemand healthcare startup back in 2015. So that was how you know from working at Yelp uh you know from going from Canada to working at Yelp to meeting Sam Alman uh which you know since then has become obviously one of the most famous people in our industry. Um that was kind of my journey to starting the first company. So let's talk about that first company because as they say you either succeed or you learn and it didn't it didn't unfold the way that you guys had hoped but obviously those lessons are serving you guys very well for this second go at it. Yeah. I mean I mean look like the first company what it was was on
demand healthcare company and so the idea was it was in the era of Uber right where push a button on your phone get a nurse practitioner to your home for urgent care. So that was the idea and what we learned the hard way was when you build a company when you build a startup you need to have some unfair advantage and actually we had an unfair disadvantage in that business which was we were two Canadians and we didn't know the first thing about the American health care system and the way the insurance industry worked which were critical pieces to running that business and so though we got funded we went into Y Combinator we got it off the ground we got some traction uh we weren't able to get the insurers on board, which meant a very small subset of the population was interested in our service. And because we weren't connected, because that wasn't an industry we had any fair advantage on,
we kind of weren't able to get the…