Peter Relan discusses his entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing that founder-market fit, technical ability, clarity of focus, and humility are crucial.
Peter Relan discusses his entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing that founder-market fit, technical ability, clarity of focus, and humility are crucial for startup success. He also shares insights from building companies like Discord and his current AI math tutor venture, MathGPT.
Know what you don't know. You may not understand it, but know there are things you don't know and be open to learning those. This is a learning journey. No entrepreneur can tell you that when they've started a business or a company that they really understand it all. Just know that there's stuff you don't know and really be open to learning it. [Music] All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the Deal Maker Show. So today we have a really amazing founder founder turned you know investor uh and and I think that we're going to be learning quite a bit when it comes to building scaling financing and all of the above. I mean he's done it very successfully. So first as a founder of a company that reached the finish line uh with a with a nice outcome and then you know he's now been involved as an investor and an early investor in in some incredible success stories such as Discord and and you
name it. I think that the conversation today is going to be quite inspiring. So, brace yourself for that. So, without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Peter Rayan. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you very much, Alandro. And I'm glad to be here. Honored to be here. You've had some fantastic uh founders and and venture capitalists and entrepreneurs here. So, it's a privilege to be here and I'm looking forward to this. Thanks. Well, Peter, I I want to I want to start with your um early days, right? because your early days are quite inspiring, obviously quite challenging, you know, when you were really facing them. Uh, but you literally were born with no name, you know, in your home. Uh, so give us a walk through memory lane because I'm sure that those early beginnings, I'm sure that they really shaped who you are today. Yeah, thanks for pointing that out. I mean, you know,
I didn't know that uh this was a thing until I really when I got naturalized in the US and they said where's your birth certificate and I produced it and I looked at it and I it literally said a boy has been born. Uh but like most birth certificates it does not it just had a birth date and parents name and I found out after you know discussing it a little bit that u I I got my name and Peter I was born in Delhi India by because I it was given to me when I first entered school. So we were in a refugee settlement. My parents are homeless refugees from Pakistan who came over to the India site and they were 17 and 14 at the time not married and literally in a refugee camp and uh they they spent 15 years in refugee camps and settlements. In the process they met they got married but it was poverty and my dad was a street cleaner. My mother was a seamstress who was not really he was just on
demand gig kind of work. Uh but they did one thing. I was the fourth child is we I was born at home. Uh they they just had a child didn't bother to to give it a name and then in that time period they slowly saved money living in poverty in very slumlike conditions and then saved enough for a great education for their children. So that whole journey that they went through uh I saw just a small piece of it but it has inspired me to focus on education throughout my life. Uh I got into that school, got the name Peter. It was a Catholic school. Uh and uh you know, they just said here, here's a good name, Peter Ren. And uh stuck and I um I I just fell in love with education and math and I did well in math. And then I made myself uh an immigrant to the US uh over time first coming to UCLA where I got a uh you know educ admission with a great SAT score and as soon as I got here I I became a math
tutor just to be able to help pay for the bills. So it's a story of literally poverty to where I am today. It's a miracle. That's no no no joke. Now in your case I mean you were talking about falling in love with math you know quite early uh problem solving. I guess obviously that that explains a lot of things, right? When you when we're thinking about your path, but in your case, you came to the US quite early. I mean, you came to do your uh undergrad at UCLA. Uh so, how were you able to really secure that spot, you know, to to the land of opportunity here in the US? Yeah, I I had applied to college in uh India, a very well-known college. It's called IIT. There's a lot of IIT grads here in the in the in the Bay Area, New York, everywhere. uh and it starts in July and I had simultaneous applied to University of California which starts in October. So I actually started IIT in India. It's
just that when I got accepted I I also said hey it was really on the back of my my education and my SAT scores. Uh I had some financial help from my brother that was huge because they needed to see some financial resources. So really just being good in college in school and getting the right scores to get into college as a student at 18. Most immigrants from India come when they finish their undergrad and they come for their uh grad school work. I was different and unusual but I took the risk uh just because I felt like the sooner I made it into a the land of opportunity the the the the you know the the story where immigrants can go from rags to riches etc. Uh, and most importantly because I was leaning towards STEM and technology anyway and I knew that California, Silicon Valley and and you know would be where I'd ultimately want to be. So it was very fortunate. Uh, but you had to work
hard to get into those kind of schools. Um, and I just, you know, was lucky as well. No kidding. Well, like as they say is preparation meets opportunity. Now in your case Peter what you did is you went you know to do um you know a little bit of uh work for other companies for other larger companies and one you know whether it was Huelet Pucker or a PC company. Now, one thing that you did is you went to Stanford and you got your your graduate degree there, but instead of like really starting your own thing, you decided to join Oracle and you did that for New Year, you know, the years of Mark Benov and all of that good stuff. you know why did you go into working for somebody else after being in a place like Stanford where you look around and you see the Google you know being born and you know it's just like insane. So why Oracle? That's a great point. Um you know when I got to Stanford uh
I uh there was in fact some of the classes we took in venture capital entrepreneurship uh lots of guest speakers were coming really good ones you know Sun Micros systemystems founder Scott McNeely and people from software industry they're all coming giving talks and you get this feeling that oh look I can start my own company the reality is that when we we're graduating you know it is still it takes a risk orientation ition, you know, like I I just hadn't done my own startup before. My cohort of people who were with me at Stanford were all interested in doing startups, but the number of people who actually created a startup, right? It it's not like the Stanford education is what makes you start a company. You look at so many founders today, they're not going to Stanford and then starting companies. They're not even finishing college and then they drop out and and start companies. So,
it's really important to know that yes, it's a great launching pad if you are ready. I just don't think that personally I had that passionate idea or that um just I'll just dive in and we'll figure out what we're going to do. And and in retrospect, I'm I'm fine with that. The reason being I do think if you're going to start a company, you should have a very passionate idea that you want to pursue because it's not easy. Entrepreneurship, you know, is I found out later is a real roller coaster ride. So it it is something that not only your environment like Stanford as a launching pad should be giving you preparedness for you internally have to be prepared to do a startup. And it just so happened that at that time when I graduated 1992, Netscape and the internet were happening and you know it just looked like everything was moving fast and of course you know I went to Oracle to join the
internet uh division and that gave me the plat the next the next time I I actually got that feeling I have these ideas to do startups was after that experience. So it was just a timing question but I'm a believer that you have to have the passion if you don't don't do it. So for you one of the things that you did is after spending you know about four years there at Oracle and there you were doing you know stuff around the internet division you decided to take the route which was I think the safest which is getting a glimpse you know of a startup first before you actually launch your own which I think is an amazing way of doing it. Now in this case it was whipban you know it was literally the years of craziness you know you had diapers you know going public you know with not much I mean crazy days right I guess how was that journey for you and and what needed to happen for you to be
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