Dan Reich. After 4 Exits, I Have No Desire to Retire
Episode - 16
Dan Reich. After 4 Exits, I Have No Desire to Retire
Dan Reich has sold 4 successful companies so far, but he's far from finished. Retirement isn't in his plans anytime soon. What drives his relentless hunger, creativity and energy? How does he find such clear direction so quickly after each exit? In this episode, Dan offers an insightful look into his journey, sharing his practical wisdom in an honest and straightforward manner.
What We Discussed:
00:00:00: Introduction
00:01:17: Deep dive into Money and Happiness
00:01:45: Fulfillment Scale
00:02:43: Direction towards Success
00:03:17: Investment Decisions
00:03:27: Important Lessons
00:03:53: Advice for others
00:04:37: Importance of Introspection
00:05:20: Choosing People
00:05:39: Legacy
00:05:55: Post Exit Feelings
00:07:06: Serial Entrepreneurial Journey
00:09:57: Identifying the role of competitiveness and love for the game
00:12:01: Discussion on business growth and potential plans for future businesses
00:12:54: Future Planning
00:14:55: Building Customer Relationships
00:15:06: Entrepreneurial Parents
00:18:20: Financial Stability during Childhood
00:19:07: Investigating patterns between successful entrepreneurs and their backgrounds
00:22:10: Facing challenges, experiencing growth
00:22:46: Entrepreneurship and finding purpose
00:23:21: Post-Exit Reflections
00:24:04: Post-Exit Depression
00:26:08: Fulfilling moments and finding purpose in helping others
00:27:19: Importance of building companies with a good team
00:28:22: Defining personal purpose and future ambitions
00:31:44: Striking a balance between daily operations and serendipitous projects
00:32:28: Gap periods between businesses and finding next projects
00:34:20: Involvement in philanthropy and causes
00:36:07: The enduring impact of a personal and family history
00:38:29: Choosing philanthropic projects based on personal connection
00:39:46: Efficiency of impact vs personal connection in charitable giving
00:41:13: Personal leisure activities and family importance.
00:42:07: A Typical Day
00:43:48: The Hybrid Role and Venture Studio Concept
00:45:14: The 'Die With Zero' Concept and Personal Insights
00:47:42: Regret Minimization Framework and Ghosts of Potential
00:49:28: Self-Fulfillment and Entrepreneurship
00:51:03: Origins of Deeper Insights
00:53:10: Conclusion of The Interview
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Dan Reich: [00:00:00 - 00:00:02]
Chips on shoulders. Put chips in pockets.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:02 - 00:00:23]
Dan Reich. He has sold four successful companies, but he's far from finished. Retirement isn't in his plans anytime soon. What drives his relentless hunger, creativity and energy? How does he find such clear direction so quickly after each exit?
In this episode, Dan shares practical wisdom with us in an honest and straightforward manner.
Dan Reich: [00:00:23 - 00:01:03]
My siblings and cousins, its like lawyer, doctor, lawyer, doctor, nurse, accountant. And then as my uncle called me, the black sheep and independent thinker. You can do anything, but you can't do everything. You go from a mission with clarity, with purpose, with intensity to literally nothing. And that can be really sad and lonely and depressing.
You don't want to be 80, 90 years old at the end of your life and look back and think about the regrets you had. In fact, you want to minimize the regrets you had. And when you think about life through that lens, a lot of these decisions that we're faced with each day become incredibly clear and easy, very fast.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:10 - 00:01:17]
Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm very excited about talking to you. Did money make you happy?
Dan Reich: [00:01:17 - 00:01:41]
Money made me stress less about paying the bills. But money, no, money did not make me happy. What it didn't allow is more freedom to go pursue amazing experiences. Those things made me happy. But money in of itself is not happiness.
I know many people that have made much, much more money than me. They're very unhappy and I understand why.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:42 - 00:01:45]
So on the scale from zero to ten, how would you rate your level of fulfillment?
Dan Reich: [00:01:45 - 00:02:26]
On a scale of one to ten? My level of fulfillment right now is probably about seven or eight. And the reason is I'm very excited at the moment about building and investing in new companies with amazing people and taking ideas and turning them into hopefully something amazing, exciting and meaningful. The reason I'm probably like a seven, eight, and not a nine or ten is because I know that I haven't kind of perfected that model. I don't have all the answers and not having all the answers is kind of sometimes annoying, but keeps it fun and keeps the pursuit and game alive.
So that's where I'm at right now. I'll be a seven or eight.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:02:26 - 00:02:28]
Who do you want to be when you grow up?
Dan Reich: [00:02:28 - 00:02:39]
I'm going to cheat on this one. Matthew McConaughey gave a great speech about this, but I want to be the better version of myself. Like I want to chase the better version of myself that I'll hopefully be ten years from now.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:02:39 - 00:02:43]
Can you describe the direction you want to go to?
Dan Reich: [00:02:43 - 00:03:17]
The theme for me and direction that I'm pursuing is one that lets me work with amazing people, help make them successful, in turn, make our business and project successful, and then see them be able to go on and do bigger and greater things. If we do those things, then that's incredibly rewarding at an interpersonal level with those friends of mine, but also financially, there should be some financial reward because we will have done a good job. And being able to see those people go out into the world and do bigger, better things than even we did together is also pretty exciting.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:17 - 00:03:20]
Is angel investing a good financial decision?
Dan Reich: [00:03:21 - 00:03:26]
It has been so far. It's a hard game, but, you know, we'll see how it goes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:27 - 00:03:30]
So what are the most important lessons you've learned from your big exit?
Dan Reich: [00:03:30 - 00:03:53]
Perseverance is probably the most important quality and characteristic for an entrepreneur. There are no shortage of moments when I thought the companies would die. There are no shortage of moments when I thought the companies would not transact or exit, when I thought for sure they would happen. But we just had to persevere. And that perseverance let us build a great company.
It also let us ultimately sell the businesses.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:53 - 00:03:59]
For someone who just sold the company and thinking what to do next, what your advice would be?
Dan Reich: [00:03:59 - 00:04:37]
Take your time, but trust your instincts. It's really natural to sell a company and be faced with this idea that you can do anything and everything. You can do anything, but you can't do everything. And don't run away from your instincts and who you are just because you're in a position where suddenly infinite options are available to you. When you put yourself in that position, it's also very easy to fall into analysis paralysis and the paradox of choice.
So I would just say, in a paradoxical way, lean in, actually isolate, really listen to what you've done, what's exciting to you, and don't run away from it just because you can do whatever you want now.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:04:37 - 00:04:49]
So you mentioned that introspection is extremely important. So how would you suggest someone stimulates going into introspection for themselves if they don't do it naturally?
Dan Reich: [00:04:49 - 00:05:20]
Everybody's different. For me, I find introspection happens best actually through conversations with other people. Having those conversations lets me experience new light bulb moments and parts of the world, thoughts, ideas that might be harder to do on my own. Another would just be to read. I love to read, so I'll read a lot in search of new ideas.
But those two things combined are useful tools and have been for me to kind of think about what's important to me and where do I want to spend my time?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:05:20 - 00:05:24]
How do you choose the people you surround yourself with?
Dan Reich: [00:05:24 - 00:05:39]
A heuristic I like to use is, can I see myself working for this person? Would I want to work for this person? Do I think they're smarter than me? In a multitude of ways, because again, I try to be the dumbest person in the room.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:05:39 - 00:05:41]
Dan, how do you want to be remembered?
Dan Reich: [00:05:41 - 00:05:55]
I think the way I'd like to be remembered is as someone that helped make an impact on the lives of other people, and that impact has been a catalyst for their life and hopefully, as a result, the lives of many others.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:05:55 - 00:06:09]
So you had a number of exits? I believe four. And the first one was very early in your life when you were 22 and still in college. Can you tell me more about it, how, how it happened and how you felt at that moment?
Dan Reich: [00:06:09 - 00:07:06]
Yeah, sure. So in college, I started what became an events and marketing company with one of my closest friends in school. We studied engineering together. We actually started another company together. And we just realized towards the end of school that we didn't want to be in the events marketing business kind of full time.
I knew I wanted to get into technology. He knew he wanted to get into law. Ironically, we're both neither really in that past squarely anymore. But yeah, we decided we wanted to sell the company so we could go on and pursue other endeavors. So we privately sold that company and that was the first kind of exit, departure from the company we started in college.
The way it felt after was fine because we were already working on the next chapter of our lives with, you know, both law school and for me, working on another startup.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:07:06 - 00:07:10]
So you knew at the time already that you would go serial?
Dan Reich: [00:07:10 - 00:07:26]
Yeah, yeah. Even before that I had started a company. Actually, my first company I started that I did not sell that failed was in high school. So that was my real first company when I was, I think, a junior in high school.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:07:26 - 00:07:28]
Sounds like you were in natural.
Dan Reich: [00:07:28 - 00:07:33]
Yeah, I've been doing this my whole life. It's more like a game than anything. It's fun.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:07:33 - 00:07:37]
So which of the exits would you say was life changing for you?
Dan Reich: [00:07:37 - 00:08:40]
I mean, life changing. I think when you use that phrase, most people probably think about that phrase as monetary. Right. Life changing. You've made a bunch of money.
It changes your life. I think actually maybe the, I was building a company with two buddies from college called Spinback. We ended up merging that with a company called Buddy Media, which we then sold to Salesforce. That probably was the most at the time. Life changing because it proved that even at a young age, mid twenties, we can build a business and go toe to toe with some of the greatest companies in the world and win and be rewarded for it.
So that exit wasn't financially life changing, but it was life changing in the sense that it just gave me a new set of sense of confidence and almost kind of like getting a monkey off my back, proving that I could do this well, which then helped set the foundation for things I've done recently and things I'm continuing to do today.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:40 - 00:08:48]
So proving yourself was what you really wanted, that was your motivator or was it more financial?
Dan Reich: [00:08:48 - 00:09:57]
Yeah. I remember growing up reading about all these amazing entrepreneurs that built companies from scratch and took them public and or sold them for lots of money. And just that idea of going through that arc and that journey was intriguing to me. And to me at the time, it was less about the kind of pot of gold at the end of that journey. But really, can I actually experience that journey start to finish and prove to myself that I can go through all of those checkpoints and gates?
So after doing that the first time, that to me was very rewarding because it was like, oh, okay, I've just demystified for myself what this journey is, and I understand it now. It's very real, it's very practical. And now knowing that and getting that monkey off my back and proving that I can do that, now I'm going to punch up and see if I could do it a little bit bigger, better, faster, maybe in different domains. So again, to me, it was like, can I play the game and win, even at a relatively small scale? And having done that, now I know that I could.
And that, again, kind of set a good foundation for things I've done and I'm currently doing. Again.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:09:57 - 00:10:01]
Is competitiveness part of it or you really love the game?
Dan Reich: [00:10:01 - 00:11:40]
It's competitiveness with myself, I think when I was younger, I was naive to think that business was really about beating your competition, but I think it's really about winning for your customers. And when you think about it through that lens, you're constantly faced with questions, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity on how to best do that. And that really is an internal battle with yourself and with your team. I think many companies and entrepreneurs make the mistake of focusing too much on competition and maybe looking through the rearview mirror or copying other people and not enough time on the customer.
And when you think about it through that lens, it's also much more fun. Right? Like you have a white canvas, you get to be truly creative versus if you're focused on, quote, competition, I mean, what a soul sucking endeavor, because you're literally looking at other people all the time, day in and day out, trying to build your business strategy journey based on what other people are doing and what they think. To me, that's completely uninteresting. Again, more interesting is thinking about things with first principles, looking at the customers with fresh eyes and thinking, what new product, service or solution can I bring to the world that's new and different and fresh and interesting?
And yes, maybe sometimes it may look and feel like quote competition, but that's okay so long as you're approaching it with a fresh set of eyes. It's more fun that way. And for me, the journey is the prize. So it's important that it's fun. And to me, that's how you keep it fun and fresh.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:11:40 - 00:11:45]
So would you say creativity is something that you also love about this game?
Dan Reich: [00:11:45 - 00:12:01]
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. When I was little, I used to play with legos. I would build the thing out of the box with the instructions, and then shortly after I break it all, make my own, my own thing. A similar approach one can bring to building businesses. And certainly I do.
Dan Reich: [00:12:01 - 00:12:54]
It's for me, again, the journey is the prize. Like, I love the game. The game, to me, this is like, it's sport, it's art, it's science, it's math, it's all rolled up in one. And it's just amazing because it's not just the sport of one, it's also a team sport. So you get to work with, if you're lucky, incredibly smart people that you can learn from every day.
And that's another dimension that probably the most important that I lean to heavily, which is like, how do I find better people than me? How do I surround myself with people better than me that I can learn from? And again, if you do that, your working days are much more fun and energizing than if you're in some nine to five job that you hate, where you're like clocking in and clocking out. So for like, life reasons, I think building companies just are much more holistic and fun and energizing.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:12:54 - 00:13:02]
So you plan to keep building them and selling them, or at some point you want to just have a business that you will never sell. How are you thinking about it?
Dan Reich: [00:13:02 - 00:15:06]
I don't think about that too much. I try to think about what are businesses that I can build, that I can do a really great job by my customers that creates shareholder value and enterprise value that perhaps one day I could sell or perhaps one day I could take public, or perhaps neither and hold onto it. And I think, like, job one is to just build a great and healthy business that people love, people want to work with and for, if I do that, then I'll have options later, and I'll evaluate those options kind of later on down the road. When I was building, for example, Tula Skincare, which we ultimately sold to Procter and gamble in the earliest days, I didn't even know if we would survive or sell anything, any unit or any kind of quantum in sales, let alone would we have a really meaningful exit.
So by focusing on let's just not die, and, like, let's try to sell products and not die, like, let's start there. By starting there and being paranoid about surviving and not dying over and over and over and over again, you fast forward in time and you realize, wow, you've built a pretty meaningful company. And now you do have potentially an opportunity to sell the business to somebody else. And in that moment, we decided, yeah, it is a better decision to sell tools, skincare, to Procter and gamble for a whole host of reasons, certainly one of them being financial. But how amazing it is to think about starting, starting from nothing just a crazy idea.
Building something to real scale at time of exit, I think we were doing about 150 million in sales and now have one of the most iconic, at least in my mind, one of the most iconic companies in the world take stewardship over the thing you started to continue to roll it out globally, support it globally at a scale that I could I never even really thought about when we were building the company. Again, I thought about, let's just not die. Believe me, there were moments when I thought we would die. So, yeah, for me, it's like, again, journey is the prize. If you build something that's valuable and fun, then inevitably there should be options for you to evaluate.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:15:06 - 00:15:09]
Were your parents also entrepreneurial when you were growing up?
Dan Reich: [00:15:10 - 00:18:19]
So my father was, and still is, a real estate developer. So he's been building houses and apartment buildings his whole life. So there is a dimension of entrepreneurship there, for sure. But I would say even more than entrepreneurship is like, literally building, right? Watching a plot of land go from nothing, dirt, grass, into a residential development or apartment building, like that physical sense of zero to something that you could touch, feel, and see, that always stuck with me, I think, because, again, I grew up with it.
And same with my grandfather, my father's father, he came here from Europe after World War two. With nothing, couldn't speak really any English, and had built a farm delivering eggs. 5-6 o’clock in the morning from Southern New Jersey to New York City, a two hour drive each way, seven days a week. You know, that's as entrepreneurial and hustler mindset as you'll get. So in some ways, I suppose it's like in the family.
But, yeah, for me, when the Internet came along, I was just pretty excited about building on this new medium and frontier, because I always felt like, in a physical sense, with the house or store, you have a physical location that had, like, a bit of a local maximum of how many people could come and shop at that store or live within that community on the Internet. Like, that's a global, that's a global story, that's a global town hall or square. That, to me, was really exciting, which is also part of why even in college, I leaned in pretty heavily and studied engineering, technology, computer science, because I felt like if you had that understanding of technology, which is the underpinning of how the world works, then that would be a pretty good basis for building businesses in that new frontier. It's funny, because I remember when I was in college, freshman year, a friend of mine asked, whathat are you going to study a majoring?
And I said, I'm not, not sure. I have some ideas. What are you going to study in majoring? And he said, finance. And I said, why?
He said, because money is the way the world works. And I thought, well, actually, it's not the way the world works. Technology is really the way the world works. If you think about money today, money we experience is just ones and zeros that live on mainframe computers or throughout the world. You know, funny enough, also at the same time, every single one of my friends said that they wanted to study finance and not anything else.
They all wanted to get jobs on Wall street. They thought they'd be rich by getting a job on Wall street. We graduate and the financial collapse happens, and all then either lose their job or quit due to the circumstances. I think every single one of them, except one, have now, have now gone on to pursue. We can call them more entrepreneurial startup endeavors.
So for me, I've always felt that. But what's cool is I think increasingly in today's world, more and more people are feeling that as well, and leaning into this idea of entrepreneurship and company building.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:18:20 - 00:18:22]
Would you say you were financially comfortable as a child?
Dan Reich: [00:18:23 - 00:19:07]
Yeah, for sure. I grew up in, let's call it upper middle class. I wasn't homeless or sleeping on the streets. I didn't come from a broken family. I came from a very loving family that did everything they could for me and my two siblings.
I took advantage of that and decided to try to do something different and more. My family wanted me to be a doctor. I thought I wanted to be a doctor. It was like, you go be a doctor or a lawyer or accountant. I think literally like my siblings and cousins, it's like lawyer, doctor, lawyer, doctor, nurse, accountant.
And then, as my uncle called me, the black sheep, an independent thinker. But again, you know, for me, it's just fun.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:07 - 00:19:50]
The reason I was asking is because I actually noticed an interesting pattern that successful exited entrepreneurs who were not driven by money in their first business often come from very loving and financially comfortable environments. So I'm actually doing a project now, trying to find more people like that to see if it is actually a pattern, or I just happen to run into people like that. But you are a confirmation of that, which is very interesting, because that's not what people normally think. We think that lots of entrepreneurs come from very poor environments and they're trying to solve financial problems, but I don't think it's necessarily the case.
Dan Reich: [00:19:50 - 00:22:10]
I don't think so either. I think there's in my mind, what I've observed is there are at least two types of entrepreneurs in this conversation. So one is exactly what you described. It's like the immigrant story that came here with nothing, or the person that comes from a kind of broken family that has no choice but to win and thrive and survive.
Yeah, that's not me. And I'm fortunate that I grew up in a loving upper middle class household. But the other type that I would put myself in the bucket, I was like, because my family was did so much for me, and they were so loving and supportive of what I wanted to do and didn't shut things down all the time. I would say the majority of the time they were supportive and let me do these crazy ideas, like start a company in high school.
I think that gave me sort of freedom and latitude to go be curious and explore these ideas. I would say that was accelerated by my first job. Friend of a family, lived down the street, built his own IT and computer company, building computers, network servers, things like that. Also engineering background. So in high school, my first job was literally working on a basement floor by hand, assembling computers, installing them, fixing them, and then bringing them on site, and also installing them and fixing them.
Hundreds if not thousands of computers and servers. That was my job. And part of that job is he would take me to local Microsoft certified partner conferences as well as Intel channel partner conferences. And I was like, by far the youngest person at these events in that room, meeting with the engineers at Microsoft and the engineers at Intel, hearing about the latest and greatest products or chip form factors they'd be coming out with or new operating systems. Because for me, that was my business.
And that to me, at a very early age, accelerated this idea. Like, I can again, kind of go toe to toe with these people. They're my peers, even though I was, I don't know, a freshman in high school at the time. And so that also stuck with me, which is like, wow, here I am at a young age working with people much older and smarter than me. I can do this.
Dan Reich: [00:22:10 - 00:22:46]
What else? What else can I do? So I was really fortunate to have that experience early, and that just stuck with me early on. This idea of, like, why not me? Like, why can't I do that?
And the curious part of me always latched on to those opportunities to go see, can I do this again? Tula Skincare is a great example. I come from technology, engineering software, and here I was starting a woman's skincare company. Granted, I had some pieces around me to help make that a reality and people that certainly did. But, like, that idea of, like, could I do this was just super interesting.
Dan Reich: [00:22:46 - 00:23:20]
Like, I think I could. Let me try. And, and it's that question and driving force and factor that I think is required for any entrepreneur, whether you come from a broken household or the immigrant story or from a kind of loving and good foundation. So there's a good quote that I like, I forgot who said it on Twitter, but it's like chips on shoulders put chips in pockets, and how those chips get on your shoulders can manifest in many, many different ways.
We talked about two of them, but I'm sure there's at least a dozen more.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:23:21 - 00:23:31]
Okay, so if we go back to that moment when you had your big exit, when you sold to Salesforce and you were financially satisfied with it, how did that feel?
Dan Reich: [00:23:31 - 00:24:04]
It's a great question and one I've been having many discussions about. And it's going to sound ridiculous, but it was fun and exciting immediately and then a little bit sad thereafter. And I'll say this is like the world's tiniest violin. But many repeat founders or serial entrepreneurs or post exited founders experienced this, which is like, you've worked on something for so long, 24/7 this becomes your whole reason for being like that job, that mission. It's all consuming.
Dan Reich: [00:24:04 - 00:26:08]
And so after you exit that business, putting the financial rewards aside, you go from a mission with clarity, with purpose, with intensity, to literally nothing. And that can be really kind of sad and lonely and depressing. And you can only really experience this if you've gone through it before. And so in that moment after we exited been back in buddy media, and as a kind of mid twenties something year old with some money, I was, as some people would call me, fun employed, like I didn't really need to work at the time. I could kind of pick and choose where and how I wanted to spend my time.
But for about a year and a half, that was actually among the more depressing moments professionally in my life, because I felt lost and rudderless, like I had no mission, I had no real purpose, and I was so desperate for one. And in life, we know about, like, the Maslow hierarchy of needs. It's after you've satisfied some kind of critical necessities for one's life, you get into kind of these other bigger dimensions, which are like, what gives you fulfillment and purpose and passion after you've got food and a shelter over your head and root. And yeah, I was really wrestling with that. So that was the first moment when I realized that money is not everything.
You need kind of real fulfillment in one's life. The other dimension that helped me answer that question, also at an early age, is I've been volunteering as a member of national ski patrol for about 20 years, a little over 20 years, which is like, if you've never been skiing before, it's kind of like a paramedic on skis run into a tree, break an ankle, hip, leg, whatever. Like, people in red jackets with white crosses show up to help you and take down the mountain. So that's what I've been doing. And in those moments, or some of them, what you realize are like, people get up in the morning to go have a great morning of skiing, and maybe it's like, get lunch, and maybe they'll ski a little bit more, and then maybe they'll do opera ski, have a beer or two, hang out with friends and family, and, like, some of those people just don't make it through, through the day.
Dan Reich: [00:26:08 - 00:26:39]
And when you see that up close, you realize, wow, life is so short, and you have to make the most of it. And in those moments when kind of like, you're on the front lines, helping that person, that's more fulfilling and rewarding than anything you could be doing at work or with a startup. So that perspective helped me kind of figure out where I wanted to spend my time next. But, yeah, certainly I know many people that have sold companies and then are like, you know, I'm lost. I had no idea what I want to do with my life.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:26:39 - 00:26:48]
So it's basically helping other people, saving other people that helped you find your purpose after that?
Dan Reich: [00:26:48 - 00:27:19]
Yeah, I would say it just gave me perspective on, like, what mattered and what was important. What I realized is that the perspective on what mattered was ultimately people working with amazing people, helping people. And the best place to pursue that idea, at least in my mind, is to build a company. Because to do that successfully, you need to surround yourself with amazing people. And so that's just kind of like what I keep coming back to, which is, are there more businesses to build with amazing people?
Because again, it just makes the day to day more fun and rewarding.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:27:19 - 00:27:28]
Servicing your customers as a business is less important for you personally than surrounding yourself with the right team.
Dan Reich: [00:27:28 - 00:28:21]
Well, I think you need to do both. I don't think. I think it's impossible to service or acquire any customers unless you have a great team. So for me, it's like the priority of step one is team. And then when you have an amazing team, you can go out and kind of do anything.
I think about an example I used to share at troops, another company we started. I would tell people, think about the time when we went to the moon. We had no idea it was somebody or someone's decided we should go to that thing in the sky. They had no idea how. They had no team.
That was a mission and vision. And from there they got a bunch of smart people in the room. They gave them a bunch of resources and they're like, figure out how we're going to get there. And they made it happen. And I think that's kind of the point, which is if you have a mission and vision, you then need to assemble the team.
And once you do that, then together you can figure out how to get to that goal or serve the customer's need or sum the product or service.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:28:22 - 00:28:26]
That's beautiful. I love it. That's great. How would you define your purpose today?
Dan Reich: [00:28:26 - 00:29:31]
I'm still figuring it out, but if I had an answer today, like literally today, the way I'm spending my time and my purpose is to try to create more businesses, product services that people will love in the world and find excitement and enjoyment from those things, I've realized that there are people better than me still out there suited to run and operate companies day to day, maybe, but they probably never done it before, or they've never done it as a CEO or as part of a C suite or as part of a founding team, but like they're ready or want to be ready. So for me, I'm really excited about meeting those potential founders and potential operators, partnering with them and working with them to help build a company from scratch together and go through the zero to one stage, the one to ten time to exit our IPO, because I've seen that playbook before. So for me, I find a lot of at least today and subject to change. We'll see. I'm finding a lot of enjoyment running after those opportunities.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:29:31 - 00:29:51]
So many people I talk to after they exit, they take their time and they decide what it is they enjoy doing in the previous business and what it is they didn't enjoy doing doing in the previous business. So I assume you probably did that exercise as well, what it is you really want to do to keep doing in your businesses in the future.
Dan Reich: [00:29:51 - 00:31:44]
So the things that I love to do are identify amazing, amazing people that are talented and maybe haven't yet realized their full potential. But it's just sitting there. So I love to have conversations with people like that and see who's out there that maybe are ready to step up and work with them in that endeavor. That's one bucket I love. Another bucket I love is this future thinking ideation state, which is where is the world going?
What other opportunities exist, or products should exist or services should exist? And then with that in mind, think about what companies can be built around that idea. So that's perhaps the second bucket. The third is when it comes to kind of operating within this, these businesses, I love to drop in and out on mission critical projects that could be step function changes for the businesses. So whether it's building out a data strategy and technology strategy for a consumer brand that I, that I had, or whether it's a spike on recruiting a specific role, per the comments I just mentioned, or whether it's pursuing a unique partnership, those very ad hoc, bespoke but really important moments to me are fun and exciting.
The things that I like to do less, it's not that I'm not good at them, but I just, again, I think there's people better than me out there that should do them, are like the day to day operational rhythms and cadences of a company. For any great company to exist, one must have incredibly good, incredibly good discipline and operational cadences. There's a great book that I read, one of my favorites that Andy Grove wrote called high output management. And kind of the gist of the book is this operational rigor that he instilled in Intel which led them to be one of the greatest companies. And I know how important that is.
Dan Reich: [00:31:44 - 00:32:28]
I just don't love to do that. I much more prefer those random, serendipitous creative things that maybe no one's thinking about. That could be a really meaningful step change function for the business. So I know that if I'm in the business day to day, that's a little bit harder for me to go run at. And I also know that when you're in the business day to day, it's really hard sometimes to see the forest through the trees.
And by being a little bit removed for me personally, it's easier for me to see the bigger picture and to provide better judgment or guidance to teams and companies so we can get to where we want to go, go faster. So those are the things I like and don't like. Based on my experiences so far.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:32:28 - 00:32:34]
What is the longest time you took between businesses to just rest and not build anything?
Dan Reich: [00:32:34 - 00:34:20]
So after we sold Buddy media to Salesforce, I left. And it took me about a year and a half before I started Tula Skincare. I probably rested or didn't do anything for about a month. After a month I got incredibly antsy and I needed and wanted to do something again. So maybe a month and then the remainder of the time a little less than a year and a half was me and search for the next thing I wanted to work on.
And it took me about a year and a half to figure that out. And I had a bunch of almost starts and stops. I had different career change ideas, whether it be a full time investor or consultant or bank. Maybe I'd buy a cash flow business and maybe I'd start like a mom and pop shop. Like I went through the full range of exploration only to realize I needed to be doing what I was already doing my whole life.
So it just took me kind of a year and a half to figure that out. After I learned that the first time, the year we were selling Tula to Procter and gamble and troops, Salesforce. So my first company, we sold to Salesforce. And my second software company, we also sold to Salesforce, funny enough. But that year I knew I knew this already.
Like I knew I needed to be building or working on another company. So my partner and I invested in another beauty company, knowing that when the time was right and we were allowed to, we would lean in again and engage in building another company, not full time, but from afar. So that company is called Dibs Beauty, which is why it's up and running, I think. In fact, today we were just put on some top 50 up and coming brands in one of these lists. It's doing phenomenally well.
Dan Reich: [00:34:20 - 00:34:36]
The team is amazing. And again, it's really fun because I get enjoyment out of working with amazing people to build something when it was just a crazy idea that you can only kind of whisper, and now to see it in reality and come to life again, it never gets old. It's still just as fun as it was the first time.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:34:36 - 00:34:51]
We identified your desire to prove yourself, and then you love the game, and then you compete with yourself. Is there anything else we're missing in that secret sauce or your very personal sauce that keeps motivating you to do what you're doing?
Dan Reich: [00:34:51 - 00:36:07]
Yeah, absolutely. The other piece that I love, and was reminded about it this morning when my friend texted me, she had built a company and just sold it, and she's writing a book, and she asked if I could add a quote to be included, like on the book cover, on the insert, you know, these testimonials. And I was the first check into that company. And before we started working together, I don't think she had ever thought about potentially being an entrepreneur. But when she got that idea and came to me, I was the first to write her check and encourage her.
And as a result, she went on this amazing journey. And there's a handful of people that I've been lucky to work with, whether they be at Tula or troops that are now building their own company. So back to the question on, like, was the first exit life changing? I think, yeah, financial stuff is cool, but the more exciting things in my mind are the life changing moments that truly put you on a different trajectory and vector and path that is ultimately going to be more fun, rewarding, and fulfilling for you. So, at troops, there are maybe half a dozen people that work there for me that have now gone on to start their own companies, have raised rounds of venture capital, and are on their way.
Dan Reich: [00:36:07 - 00:37:12]
At Tula Skincare, there's also a handful of people that have started their own companies or have accelerated like crazy their career trajectory as a result of the work we did there together. And so this idea of, like, being a catalyst for other people's careers and other people's lives, to me, is probably the most fulfilling because in a selfish way as well, putting aside the fact that it's fun and amazing to see them. But if you do that job, well, it becomes a win win. You've just helped somebody accelerate their dreams and ambitions, but as a result of that, they've also helped you achieve your dreams and ambitions in a shorter timeline and become successful with your company. So this idea of, like, a rising tide with solid boats or one plus one equals three, whereas my co founder, Courtney Adibs, would say one plus one equals princess, this idea of knowing no upper bounds and having no glass ceiling and truly limitless possibilities for you and anyone is really a driving factor for all of this as well.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:37:12 - 00:37:33]
So you achieve that through helping your former employees and partners to achieve their full potential in a way, while you're together. And then later, when you go your separate ways, are you doing it in any other ways, like angel investing or mentoring or anything like that? Does it give you a similar level of fulfillment?
Dan Reich: [00:37:33 - 00:38:03]
Yeah, it does. So I am doing a bunch of angel investing as well, because, again, I was once that person, and some cases still am that person that looks for and needs some early capital to take an idea and try to make it reality. So, to me, that's really fun and rewarding and fulfilling. So, angel investing, I'm also leaning in pretty heavily now philanthropically into a whole host of causes. Education in particular, is what I'm passionate about healthcare and first response, emergency healthcare is another given, obviously, my experience with ski patrol. So, again, a theme for me is, like, if you're able to impact people's lives in a very intimate way, whether that be through philanthropy or through business, not only can you have a great impact on the world, but to get there, you must have a great impact on that person's life, and that is incredibly fulfilling and rewarding.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:38:29 - 00:38:31]
How do you choose your philanthropic projects?
Dan Reich: [00:38:31 - 00:39:46]
I choose the ones that are important to me and my family and that share the values that I grew up with. As I mentioned earlier, my grandfather, grandparents came here after World War Two. Holocaust survivors with nothing. They did not get to get a formal education because they had no choice but to survive. My grandfather took on a fake identity to fight on the russian front against the axis Nazis and Romanians.
My grandmother lived behind a wall to mother for two years, like Anne Frank. So to think about them coming over here with nothing and no education, which they were deprived of, to me, is important. So being able to contribute in education broadly is important. We see what's happening in the Middle East right now, polarizing conflict for some, not for me, like, very much pro Israel and pro people on that side of the fence. And so I'm leaning in heavily there right now to ensure continuity and survival for jewish people.
Emergency healthcare and first response. Again, I volunteer my time there, but also donated to organizations also playing a role there. And I imagine that list will get longer as time goes on. But those are the ones that I'm initially focused on.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:39:46 - 00:40:12]
I see. The reason I asked is because there are two schools of thoughts, if you like, in philanthropy. As I see it, some people focus on the cause they care about. Like, for example, it's what you just described, like Holocaust or support in Israel. But other people are thinking where my money can be used in the most efficient way to create the most outsized impact.
Right. So I was just trying to see which thinking you lean towards. And it sounds like you are much more into the first school of thought. Would you agree?
Dan Reich: [00:40:20 - 00:41:13]
I don't think about it that way. So, yeah, look. For sure, one way to think about it is how will my money make the most impact? And through that lens, one might think about scale reach. But consider this.
Like, imagine you make a really small impact on just one person's life. What if that person, as a result of that impact you make, becomes the next Martin Luther King? Like, what if that is true? And so for me, that's why it's just as important to focus on education and on youth and kids so that they have the best education opportunities possible. Because again, like, all it takes is one person to change the world in a really impactful way.
So I think both are important. Scale, reach, global impact today. But again, like, small can be really big, if not bigger than anything else anyone is doing right now.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:13 - 00:41:18]
So besides business, what other activities you find meaningful for you?
Dan Reich: [00:41:18 - 00:42:07]
So we touched on, you know, love to ski and snowboard coupled with the ski patrol. You know, I love to golf. I love to read, like, many of the obvious things that I imagine many other people, like, family is a big one. I think we talked about this earlier, but I had almost five year old and two and a half year old, and getting to see them grow up is pretty amazing. I think part of the silver lining with COVID is, truthfully, had it not been for COVID, I probably would have a much worse relationship with my kids because I would have been in the office Monday to Monday, 24/7 pretty much.
But due to COVID, I had to work from home. And that let me see my kids more and build a bigger relationship with them. So that's been really, also really amazing. And I'm trying to lean into that more than I thought I would, for sure.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:42:07 - 00:42:09]
How does your normal day look like?
Dan Reich: [00:42:09 - 00:42:41]
These days, it just depends on the day. So either I'm working from home, triaging emails, or doing kind of focus work where I'm in New York City taking a bunch of meetings, lunches, dinners, getting to see people, talking about new ideas or perspective opportunities, or traveling for new opportunities or traveling for some of the businesses I'm already working on. So I think it all depends. This is also something I'm figuring out is what should my schedule look like these days? I'll let you know what I figure out.
It's still a work in progress.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:42:42 - 00:42:47]
Do you know what you'd like to prioritize in your lifestyle?
Dan Reich: [00:42:48 - 00:43:48]
Yeah. The things I'm trying to prioritize now are trying to invest in and build fun and amazing companies with amazing people. More biased towards the building, a little bit less so on the investing, although I'm still doing a bunch of it. And I'd like to do that without, as we talked about, without being in the full time driver's seat, because I've done that my whole life and I'm enjoying more time spent kind of a little bit on the outside of the company, like not totally out. It's not like not doing anything.
I'm incredibly active. In fact, I'm staring at a bunch of different slack channels that are lit up for work I need to do. But I think I'm really enjoying that kind of hybrid role. That, by the way, I think has also been a gap in the marketplace. I think if you look at the marketplace more broadly, whether it's on the investing side with venture capital or private equity, or on the operating side as a founder, most investors are not value add and don't do anything.
Dan Reich: [00:43:48 - 00:44:24]
There's a handful of really great ones that are value add and help, but they're not in the company. And I think there's an opportunity to move it yet, like a degree further into the company, but not all the way in and kind of on the other side, a little bit out of the company to continue to maintain that fresh perspective and always be sure that you're not living, breathing in the weeds every day. And so that new hybrid role is one that I'm pretty excited about and have been leaning into. And some people, I think would call it like a venture studio. I'm taking a bit of a different approach with it, but that to me, has been really fun and rewarding so far.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:44:24 - 00:44:27]
That's what you plan on doing, or you already do that.
Dan Reich: [00:44:27 - 00:45:14]
So I'm already doing that right now. The working name for this idea of a company which may not be a company is called company Builders, companybuilders.com. And it's this idea that I can partner with other people like myself to incubate new companies. Today we've been focused primarily on consumer brands because I think there's a bit of a playbook we've developed that we can replicate. There is a set of unfair advantages that I think we've accumulated over the past few years, so we're excited to be able to bring those to bear again and again and again.
We'll see, at least for now. And that's where I'm currently spending my time at the moment. Again, subject to change. But for right now, I think it's a really fun place to point the arrows and shoot them.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:45:14 - 00:45:21]
One of the most talked about books in the post exit community is Die with zero. Have you read it?
Dan Reich: [00:45:21 - 00:45:24]
I haven't read it, but I am familiar with the concept.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:45:24 - 00:45:57]
So the basic idea is to structure your life around, you know, amazing experiences and adventures while you still can. And what I see again and again, and I see it in you as well, is that some people who are very creative and they identify as the serial builders and whose passion and mission and purpose are all about creativity and building more businesses do not necessarily buy into this idea very easily, and I'd love to hear your opinion about it.
Dan Reich: [00:45:57 - 00:47:42]
I agree with that concept. Look, life is not about material things and possessions and money only as someone that's got a taste of that, I can tell you it is not at all what it seems. What is exciting and kind of worthy of pursuit is exactly what you're talking about. It's experiences.
It's maximizing our time on earth with people we love and care about and spending time with them. And again, for me, the journey is the prize. Building businesses is not about the financial reward. It's great that if it works out, there can be a pot of gold there. But this act of going from nothing to something and making it reality and day in and day out problem deal with problem solving and critical thinking, having to be creative, like to me that's just really fun and fulfilling.
Certainly people in a position like that could go just as easily and golf all day or go skiing all day, which by the way, I love to do both of those things, but I don't know that I could do any one of those things kind of full time because it's not as stimulating or as rewarding as kind of being in the arena, going to battle and building these companies. I also believe that pursuit lets you live a longer life as well. You're sharper, you're more switched on, you're more engaged. I think the minute you kind of lose that engagement, you start to die, frankly. And again, I know what I love to do, and I know what I don't love to do.
I love this game, and for me, it's not work. And so, therefore, I'm excited to continue to lean into it and. And see where it goes. And I know for sure at some point it might change a little bit. I don't know how, but that's okay.
Dan Reich: [00:47:42 - 00:48:18]
Another way I think about this all, I think Jeff Bezos clarified this pretty well, which he calls the regret minimization framework, which is, you don't want to be 80, 90 years old at the end of your life and look back and think about the regrets you had in fact, you want to minimize the regrets you had. And when you think about life through that lens, a lot of these decisions that we're faced with each day become incredibly clear and easy very fast. Another example that I really liked was conveyed in a commencement speech by Denzel Washington. And I'm going to butcher this.
Dan Reich: [00:48:18 - 00:49:28]
But in that speech, he describes also the end of your life in a hospital, better room, and you've got all of these ghosts of potential hovering around you. The ghost saying you could have, should have been the best lawyer or actor, and you didn't, and they're screaming and angry at you. And again, it's a little bit like the previous example, the regret minimization framework. I think both of those ideas are true, which is you want to be able to look back in life and have no regrets that you've maximized potential in the areas that you wanted to maximize your potential. And far too many people do not do that soul searching, don't allow themselves to or too afraid to.
They get stuck on the societal treadmill, and they'll never get off. They go to school, they get good grades, they go to a better school, they get good grades, they get a job, they get a promotion, they get a house, they get a mortgage, they get a kids. And, you know, you're 40, 50, 60 years old, and you're like, where did my life go? So I think it's really important to be able to be introspective and ask those hard questions as early as you can and listen to them. Another kind of related anecdote that I think about a lot.
Dan Reich: [00:49:28 - 00:51:03]
An earlier company, we had an advisor, investor, who was out at asking me the same question, which is, what are you going to do next? Do you want to start a company? Do you want to work for one? And he shared with me what I thought at the time was the cheesiest, most ridiculous analogy I'd ever heard. And he goes, well, think about a lion in a zoo.
And my eyes start to roll. And he goes, a lion in a zoo gets fed every day through a cage. A lion in a jungle or safari has to eat what he kills. Which lion do you want to be? And again, my eyes are rolling.
I thought this was the most ridiculous and cheesy example I'd ever heard. But I found of myself thinking about it all day, the whole week. Years later, I still think about that. And when you think about it through that lens, what you realize is that we as human beings, we're not meant to be in a cage. We're not meant to clock in and clock out.
We're meant to go look more like the lion in the jungle, eat what you kill, be on the hunt. We can get into whole philosophical discussion about hunters versus farmers and gatherers, but point is, we're not certainly filled when we are widgets in a bigger cog in a wheel. And so I think it's important for all of us to try to think about what really drives us, that thinks about us less like cogs in a wheel at work and more like the kind of masters of our own universe or the hero of our own movie. And I think through that lens, I think everybody is capable of being an entrepreneur. We just have to give ourselves permission to search for what that means for us.
And again, for me, I was lucky to have some of those insights really, really early on and just held on to that and never let go.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:51:03 - 00:51:06]
Where did these insights come from?
Dan Reich: [00:51:06 - 00:51:10]
I think they were just an accumulation of experiences over the years.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:51:10 - 00:51:19]
You said it happened early on, and I was interested if it was a religious, there was a religious route or your parents were discussing things like that.
Dan Reich: [00:51:19 - 00:53:10]
I could think about four specific moments, four specific events in my life that culminated in this thinking. So the first we talked about is my parents. They did whatever they could to give me a great life. And they were supportive in all my crazy ideas and thoughts, most of them anyway, so that kind of lit a fire. The second is we talked about this.
My grandparents, Holocaust survivors, they came here with nothing. I think about the statistical odds of them surviving that it is insane that they survived. I should not be here. And I think about how 6 million people and their kids and grandkids could not pursue any of their dreams. Because of what happened, but I could and I better make the most of it.
And so those are pretty heavy chips on my shoulders. That's the second. 3rd, we also touched on, which is my first job. Being exposed to a profession, industry and career at a young age as a peer when I should not have even been in the room gave me confidence that I could kind of do this really anything. Fourth, actually, I'll say a high school teacher, specifically robotics class, in a similar way.
Again, I love technology, but the class was like, go build a firefighting robot. Robot. Just like, go figure it out. He like wasn't a traditional teacher. Just go play.
Basically go build legos and here's some tools. And again, that freedom to go from nothing to something and see it manifest also sparked an interest, at least more specifically in technology. But, you know, it's the themes of nothing is something is exciting and actually necessary because other people in my family could not have that experience. And by the way, even if they did, you know, these would be my experiences with ski patrol. Even if many of these people did have those experiences, you can't take them for granted because we don't know how much time we have on this thing called Earth and in life.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:53:10 - 00:53:17]
That's amazing. Dan, thank you so much. This was such a beautiful interview and thank you for very thoughtful answers.
Dan Reich: [00:53:17 - 00:53:19]
Yeah, thank you, Anastasia. He's great.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:53:19 - 00:53:20]
Thank you.
Dan Reich: [00:53:20 - 00:53:20]
Appreciate it. Awesome.
