Dayo: Get Paid to Stay Off Social Media

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Welcome to the Business Gay podcast, where we talk about all things business, marketing and entrepreneurship. I’m your host, Calan Breckon, and on today’s episode, I have co-founder and CEO of Dayo, Corey Scholibo. Dayo is the first ever mental health company that pays people to stay off social media. Corey recently sold his last venture, Wile, a plant powered naturopathic wellness brand for perimenopause and midlife, where he served as co-founder, president and CEO. A seasoned entrepreneur, Corey is also the co-founder and former CMO of Repurpose, the leading brand for compostable Tupperware in retail, and has advised and worked with brands like Tiffany & Co, M.A.C. Cosmetics, Indiegogo, and Caboo. Corey likes to start businesses that help the environment, create visibility and markets for underserved and excluded demographics, and change human behavior for the better. I’m excited to chat with Corey about being a serial entrepreneur and his new venture, Dayo, so let’s jump in.

Hey, Corey, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

[00:01:48] Corey Scholibo: I’m great. How are you?

[00:01:49] Calan Breckon: I am very good, thank you.

[00:01:51] Corey Scholibo: I’m very excited to dive in because you are like a serial entrepreneurs. So I know you have Dale, your new startup.

[00:01:59] Calan Breckon: We’re going to dive into all of.

[00:02:00] Corey Scholibo: That a little bit later on, but first, I want to talk a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey and, like, what drives you to be a serial entrepreneur.

[00:02:09] Corey Scholibo: Well, thanks. First of all, thank you for having and thank you for having a podcast about gay people in business because nobody does this. And I’ve been trying to start a lot more queer focused organizations and groups within even my industry, and there just aren’t any. So just congratulations.

I think as I’ve done this more and more, I started to develop this narrative, which I think is true, that I kind of look for the thing behind the thing, like, what is really the root issue. I think I’m a problem solver, and if you get me in a room, I think what makes me a good business leader is, okay, you said this. You said this. I could figure this out. Let’s get to the thing behind the thing. Let’s cease ten steps ahead. And so, as I started to work in my twenties, I did a lot of things. I went to film school at USC. I worked in the entertainment industry for years. I worked with celebrities. I worked with big brands, kind of at the beginning of that entertainment marketing craze, like, when it was all about connecting brands with celebrities, I was right there for that, but a very hollow experience. Not really fulfilling in any way. Sell a lot more makeup or jewelry. Who cares? And so I left that career. One of my clients won an Oscar, and I kind of got to the thing that was like, okay, I did all the things I wanted to do in that career. And then I went to work at a magazine called the Advocate, which is an lgbt news magazine. I’m sure you know what it is. So I was there for their 40th anniversary. We rebranded it, and at the time, we were really focused on getting entertainment covers, because that’s what was really selling, and we were putting out two issues a month. Anyway, through all that, again, I was covering lgbt rights, and I really felt like that movement was speaking to me and was there for prop eight. I saw it go down, and then I kind of got this sense around 2008 about the green movement, and I was watching Adrian Grenier had a show, and I would say that NBC had a green peacock. It was all kind of new, like, oh, look, we’re thinking about this now. And I just had this profound feeling that our rights as queer people were not going to matter if we didn’t have a planet to live on. So, to me, the thing behind the thing at that point, and it was frustrating, we lost prop eight, and we worked really hard, and fighting for our rights is an up and down process, and it’s beautiful, and people should do it. But I was like, what’s the bigger thing? What’s the thing I need to do beyond this? What’s my calling? So we started a company called Repurpose, which is designed to my partner, and I started it in zero nine.

The idea was to get rid of plastic. Can we get rid of as much plastic out of consumers hands as possible? And we saw that consumers were able to go to a coffee shop in Los Angeles, potentially, and get a compostable coffee cup, let’s say. But when you went to the grocery store, you had to still buy Dixie Chinette or solo. So there wasn’t a brand based alternative, and that’s what I do. So we built the brand repurposed, and it took us a long time to convince people, not just consumers, but retailers. And now the categories essentially all moved in that direction, but we built the category from scratch, and it was very hard and very long.

So I was working on that for many years, and then I left that company to go be with my partner in Chicago. And then in that process, a friend of mine approached me, and they said, menopause is what I want to do. Menopause is the future. We need to solve this category. And another partner of mine came to me at the same time. They didn’t know each other. And then my friend, the actress Judy Greer, was also beginning to go through this process. So very wealthy, empowered white woman in Los Angeles getting Gaslitz being treated the same way I was hearing all these women being treated. And it was truly, obviously, I’m not a woman. So some of it was a bit of a. I mean, I knew a lot about feminism and misogyny, but because you can’t know anything about being gay without knowing misogyny, because, let’s face it, the root of all homophobia is misogyny. So I knew a little bit about it in that context, but it was really fascinating how little help there was, how bad it was, how little study there was. Like, it was just insane that they had just left. This woman who has all this money, all this power, all this agency, like, off their decks, like, we don’t care about her anymore. But at that moment, all of a sudden, Johnson and Johnson, Procter and Gamble, all these brands, all these investors were caring about her. They did know she was the future core customer. Johnson and Johnson calls her their future core customer because she’s aging up, but she’s going to live a long time. So the difference between her childbearing years and her death is huge. And there’s a lot of money to be made from her. So just from a purely capitalistic standpoint, that’s where they were coming from. But from our standpoint, from thing behind, the thing is, if we don’t empower 50% of the population for the second half, 50% of their life, how are we going to save democracy? How are we going to save the climate? So really, we’re talking about half of our warriors on the bench for these causes that I believed in, like the plastic movement and other things like democracy. So to me, that was okay, we got to get there. And then I sold that company. And now my obsession is the attention economy and the extractive and destructive nature of social media and what it’s doing to our democracy, what it’s doing to our climate. And so right now, for me, the thing behind the thing behind the thing is social media. And that’s really kind of what drives me. So I would say as a serial social entrepreneur, I’m always just trying to find the most impactful way that I can affect society because I believe there’s a role for entrepreneurs to do that. I’m not running a nonprofit, I’m not a politician. There are ways in which CPG changes dramatically. I believe CPG can really change the landscape of choice by driving different alternatives. And so that’s my role as sort of an activist.

[00:07:37] Calan Breckon: Okay, so would you say that the thing that really drives you as a serial entrepreneur is to create some sort of a lasting change in the world and move it towards the place you would like to see it in the future?

[00:07:50] Corey Scholibo: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would have made a lot more money if I’d done another coconut water or a chocolate bar. I mean, none of those are easy, mind you, but I. I never jumped on the trends. I never looked at a dataset and said, okay, it seems like Ashwagandha is where everything’s headed, so let’s build a company around the numbers. I was always like, what’s the driving mission? And then, for instance, when we did Weil, we went in agnostic for menopause and perimenopause. Should it be a wearable? Should it be a technology stack? Should it be a supplement? Should it be. We went in and we realized women want a natural alternative. So we built a naturopathic solution.

But the mission was help this woman. The delivery system is what we figure out as entrepreneurs.

But yes, I think that is how.

[00:08:36] Corey Scholibo: I think of it, an impact mission. And there’s many people, mostly females now, that now are giving away their multimillions of dollars or billions of dollars to create that social impact, because the heteronormative, cisgendered white men haven’t done it up until this point.

[00:08:53] Corey Scholibo: But it’s also still, you know, it’s frustrating. I’ve worked with two female founders now. I’ve never had a male co founder until now. And it’s hard to raise money. You know, it’s harder to raise money with women. It’s hard to raise money for women’s based businesses. It’s just the truth. And I think I haven’t had to experience it specifically just as queer, but I don’t know. I would be curious what other. Your other guests said about it, but I feel like it’s probably harder to raise money as a woman than as a queer. Man, if you’re still a man, but it’s still not easy.

[00:09:25] Calan Breckon: I don’t have the data around that. I will say I know data from start out down in the states, we get about 0.5% of all capital that’s been allocated out of. I think it was like two. What was it, like, 2 trillion or some insane amount? Over the past 20 years, we’ve gotten, like, 0.5%, which is less than women usually get around. I think their stats are about 2%. Um, and then people of color, and then women, people of color, they have all the different stats. We’re all very much on those low spectrums, but I couldn’t tell specifically whether it was male self identifying or female self identifying in that 0.5%. It was just kind of a blanket. The whole LGBTQ community as a whole roughly gets about this much. But that’s also if they are self identifying, because if you’re a man who’s white, you can go back in the closet into fundraising. They actually, you know, statistically say about 75% to 80% do do that when they’re fundraising, because they’re like, well, why wouldn’t I? That’s just like a leg up. Um, but then there’s some companies and businesses that can’t do that, and we also shouldn’t be needing to do that, and we need to start changing that narrative. And I think it’s starting now with the studies coming out by start out and other organizations. Um, but, you know, continuing on, continuing on, doing all the good stuff we need to do.

Um, I’m curious, what was it like navigating your first exit? Cause we have a lot of entrepreneurs here that maybe haven’t experienced that, and they’re curious about how to navigate that.

[00:10:51] Corey Scholibo: You know, um, my first exit, well, we’ve had little, you know, little. Little things here and there. Repurpose is still, you know, going strong. So it hasn’t exited Weil’s most recent exit. You know, it was a difficult time in the industry, so it was kind of driven by the industrial factors. It was obviously going to be more difficult to raise money in the future. The menopause space was definitely going to take a long time, kind of like the bioplastic space. And I think that we didn’t have the right capital structure to maintain a ten year trajectory of growing at 10% year over year. We had VC money. Serena Williams is my investor. We needed to grow. So I think the timing specifically lasts year. I think anyone who you talk to about business is going to tell you that last year was very different than any other year. So it was about finding a place for the mission. To be continued. And we did. We found an acquirer. For a while, in total, all of our retail was still alive, all of our d to c was still available, and everyone did okay. So I think that.

I don’t know how to describe it as what’s typical, but I would say that the process is pretty simple. I mean, do you have value?

What are your assets? What are your revenue streams? And can you make a case for the future for that business? And I think that’s salesmanship 101. So I don’t know if it’s specific to being queer, although I think we’re probably pretty good at selling things.

But it’s really like whatever the process is that you’re selling your customer, you’re selling your investor, and then therefore your acquisition. And I think if you aren’t selling your investors every day like you’re selling your customer every day, I think you’re doing a disservice. It will be very hard for you to sell, very hard for you to raise money. I think if you’re. When we think about being an entrepreneur, being a CEO all day long, it’s just about creating perception, doing interviews, making sure that you have constant reason to ring people’s bells and tell them about what you’re up to. My biggest thing that I see is people don’t touch base or they hear like, oh, it’s not for us, and just stop talking to that investor. Keep updating them, keep sending them your things, and then same thing. As soon as you have that going, start doing that with your acquirers. Who are you chatting with? What is your plan? It could be five years from now, but hey, go to a conference, get a card, get on LinkedIn, find a connection, keep updating them. Hey, you can even ask people, can I keep you updated on my business? And they’ll say, sure. So that’s the process, I think, you know, when you get into the week, it’s very stressful. It’s a lot of lawyers. It’s a lot of lawyers. Do you like lawyers? Because you’re going to have a lot of lawyers?

[00:13:24] Calan Breckon: Well, we got, we got a good. One at my current startup right now, we got a good one. So I’m very happy with that. I would ask, is there any, like, is there any specific something that, or, like wise words for entrepreneurs about an exit that you would be like, just pay attention to this, or make a note of this specific thing so that maybe they don’t screw themselves over or shoot themselves in the foot.

[00:13:49] Corey Scholibo: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things I like to say to entrepreneurs is don’t forget your lawyer. Again, back to lawyer, the lawyer who’s doing the deal for you. They also represent you. And so you have to think about yourself in this process. For instance, with supplements, which we just sold, there are like the FDA or the FTC can come in two years from now. And how are we protecting ourselves? Backlogging to when I was still involved in the business, what are the clawback measures? What are all the ways in which you are still technically. People think they sell, they sell, it’s over. It’s usually not that simple. In my case, it was clean. But a lot of people have buyouts. A lot of people have long term investment strategies that happen. A lot of people have downside, potential downside. So I would say the number one thing I think people get screwed over is why just need to get the business sold and sort of declassifying their own needs and advocate for yourself personally in that process. Make sure you get out of all your liabilities. Make sure all that’s covered would be, I think, my number one thing, and I don’t think people know that until they ask. And if you don’t have a great lawyer, they’re not going to say to you, this is what we could do for the company. But also, just so you know, it means you’re on the hook for 100 grand in case it goes south. Those are very clear conversations, and I think people think you just get sold and like, thank you, here’s a check and good luck. What a great day it is today. That’s not how it works for most people. So I would say that really dig into the details. You have no idea how many fingers and threads connect you legally to everything that that company did from the day it started. And you need to figure out how to make sure you’re protected. That would be my tip.

[00:15:24] Calan Breckon: Very, very good. Very wise advice on that. We’re going to pivot over into your new startup. We’re going to jump into Dayo. Can you explain a little bit about what that is?

[00:15:35] Corey Scholibo: Yeah, well, Dayo is a new AI empowered app that helps you limit your social media use. Our motto is scroll responsibly. The idea is that people are. Social media is the root cause of so many of our concerns right now. Suicidality in young girls is a 25%, and that’s not suicide ideation. That’s the second step of a four step plan. Making the plan is the second step. So they’re two steps in. That’s pretty fucking crazy. You see Mark Zuckerberg hauled up in front of Congress to apologize for dead teens. The surgeon general just announced that social media should come with medical warnings. Just like cigarettes. This is all coming down, right? So we were watching this, and to me, the attention economy is 100% extractive. You go on social media, they extract it. It’s all free. They extract data from you. They extract everything from you. You pay for it in so many ways, but the main way you pay for it is in your mental acuity, your memory, your focus, your attention. Your attention is a commodity, just like your labor. Like the ability to pick up a shovel, your ability to give them your brain is a commodity. And I think people are being unbelievably extracted at this point. We are building new oligarchs. We thought the oil barons of old, the railroad barons. That’s all over. It’s Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates. They are the new oligarch tycoons of our country. What are we going to do about it? We’re all addicted. We’ve all agreed that this is addictive technology. And everyone’s like, well, I don’t know, try to lock it up in a box, but that doesn’t work. Or I have this app that turns on these notifications, but I just hit ignore and keep working. And there’s a kind of malaise about it. Like it’s inescapable or inevitable. And that’s the thing behind the thing, right? Like, okay, that sounds like a challenge. How do we crack it? And so when we came at it, we thought, what if all of it is a stick model, right? Like, all of it is. It’s within your own willpower. Stop using it. Here’s an app that, you know, whatever that’s going to pop up and tell you to stop using it, or you’re going to get locked out of it, or whatever it is, or just shame you into it. Like, shouldn’t you be playing with your dog or your baby? That doesn’t work. I like to say, imagine there was heroin on every corner. And every corner you went to, someone offered you heroin, and then every corner in between those two corners, someone’s like, but don’t do any heroin, do less heroin. But there’s going to be heroin, like in 5ft or whatever. And in this scenario, you’re a heroin addict, you’re not going to succeed. You will not succeed with willpower, avoid, you know? So the same thing to me is true of social media. 80 something percent of people say they want to use less of it or get off of it. But we just, on our surveying, 68% of people said they’re addicted. Like, they will use the term addicted. And so what do we do about it? So we created the carrot model, literally. What if we paid you to stay off social media? And how that works is our app is totally free, but as you get into it, you earn points for every minute you are offline. Off social media. It monitors your social media use. It’s completely private because it uses Apple’s API.

But you will get points for every minute you stay off. And those points can then be redeemed in a marketplace of goods and services that you love. You reward yourself. So you saw your runner, you saw this watch, and these pair of Nikes in our store, you liked them. And then the app is saying, hey, getting offline. If you can get offline another 2 hours this week, you’re going to get 50% off these shoes or 40% off that watch. So you’re earning rewards. You’re working towards this thing that you want to motivate you to stop using it. And I do not believe there is anything more motivating than getting something tangible, physical. In addition, we’re talking about real money. You can earn $6 a day by staying offline. And then, b, you have. We based our model on the American Psychological association says 30 minutes a day is net positive. So you actually should use social media. We cannot say it’s completely bad. A, no one believes that. No one will buy it. Kids need it to interact. It’s here to stay. We’re not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And the American Psychological association would say, I should go online and see your dog and you should see my kid and all this stuff and then get off after 30 minutes. So we give you 30 minutes free and clear because we want to encourage you to use it responsibly. And then after that 30 minutes, you start to see your points ticking down. So you see fomo, basically, you’re watching money leave your account. And so that is the carrot model. Hey, it’s been 30 minutes. Should you stop? You wanted those nights. Okay, you keep going. It’s been 2 hours, you know, do you want to stop now? Hey, you didn’t have such a great day today. Do you want to watch some of this content and get some points back? Do you want, like, which are going to be psas for, like, the kids mental health foundation or mothers against media addiction or, you know, other things that we do in the future to earn that back? And so we’re constantly rewarding you and. And also kind of keeping that carrot away. Like, come on, you know, get towards the carrot. And that I haven’t seen before in its relation to social media. We’ve seen it with cigarettes, we’ve seen it with eating, we’ve seen it with other things. But imagine it’s like a cool, fun noom, basically, but for social media.

[00:20:39] Calan Breckon: Yeah, I I’m so fascinated. I’ve never seen this specific type of a model, especially the way that you described it, because I’ve had those apps, I’ve had those notifications on my phone where it’s just like, oh, you’ve used your time up for this? And it’s just like, ugh, ignore. Like, I need to go check this one thing, or I need to go do this one thing. And it’s just like, oh, it is what it is. But social media is literally the drain of all drains, and it really, truly does brain drain. I know if I’m on TikTok for any extended period of time, it’s like crack. Like, I cannot. I can’t put it down. And I’m like, I don’t need to be sitting and watching this and then, like, the evening will just disappear. And I’m like, oh. And I know, actually, if you’re familiar with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway and the Pivot podcast, they talk about this all the time.

[00:21:26] Corey Scholibo: And my first email was to Scott Galloway on LinkedIn.

[00:21:31] Calan Breckon: Yeah, definitely. He would love it. And Kara talks about how her kids all the time, they’re like, social media makes me feel bad. And they took it off their phones. And I completely understand, coming from the generation that I’m a millennial, coming from the generation that we were raised on it. I remember in high school, you know, grade 11/12, when Facebook first came around. Little did we know how that was going to completely change our lives and the way we work in the world.

But I personally don’t put a lot on social media anymore. I like to be the observer now, but not actively engage because, again, it’s like, it doesn’t really make me feel great, but I do like to see and keep up with friends or what people are doing or like, oh, hey, they’re going to the beach. Like, maybe I’ll message them next week to go to the beach or something like that.

[00:22:16] Corey Scholibo: And that’s fine. You should do that. Right? It’s like, after you did the beach message, why did you stay? Now you’re looking at some celebrities beach photos, and now you’re like, I don’t have the abs like them. And then you’re like, oh, I don’t have the clothes that this woman has. And then. And on and on and on. Like, why do we stay after that moment? And why? Because they designed it to hook you. I mean, infinite scroll, like, button. These are all unbelievably, psychologically powerful tools. They knew they were psychologically powerful. Everyone who invented them is, like, disavowed them. Like Oppenheimer and the bomb now, right? Like, the guy who invented infinite scroll, the guy, you know, the co founder of Twitter, they’re all on that social media documentary saying, I don’t let my kids use it. I basically created evil.

[00:22:56] Calan Breckon: The social dilemma.

[00:22:57] Corey Scholibo: The social dilemma. Yeah. And so, I mean, that’s a good one. But there’s a million. I mean, you can read the attention stolen focus is one of my favorite books on the subject matter. And they’re all clearly like, oh, fuck. Sorry. Sorry. I ruined society. So to me, I say, great, now what are you going to do about it? What are we going to do about it? What are going to be the solutions? And I think we’re coming up with a lot of really weird and impractical solutions. The guys who invented that, the Apple guys. I don’t know if you saw a bunch of guys from Apple left and created a lapel pin that projected your phone. Really interesting idea. Already done. Already filing for bankruptcy, selling to Samsung? Nobody wants a lapel pin that projects the phone into their hand. Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We have apps. We understand capitalism. We understand rewards based systems. United Airlines is worth. United Airlines Rewards program is worth more than the airline. Right? We know how this model works. So let’s reward people for doing good behavior instead of chastising them for doing bad behavior. This does not rocket science, but how do you build the system around it? How do you build the momentum? How do you get the buy in? This is our job.

[00:23:59] Calan Breckon: Yeah. So, speaking on what you talked about earlier, the thing behind the thing behind the thing. What led you initially to create Dayo, led you to this space.

[00:24:10] Corey Scholibo: Yeah. So I had been really thinking about it for a long time. And then my co founder, Patrick Triato, whos our COO and has built the tech and hes really, really brilliant engineer, had this idea as well. And we started talking about it and we just thought this is really, really ripe for disruption. And we both kind of found a fascination that each of us was falling into. He had just built a sustainable oral care company and I had just sold this supplement company. It was like, okay, what are we doing next? And so it really was the synthesis of Patrick and myself. And originally we thought, could we pay people back for the time they spend on social media with taking an altruistic viewpoint, like just almost being sort of, I don’t know, unalturistically capitalist. Right. Okay, fine. You want to participate in the system, maybe we at least get the companies, essentially give you some money back for the time you spent. But that felt hollow. And when we really got into it, it’s not just about getting you some compensation. It’s about actually trying to change some of the social behavior and to really call attention to the mental health aspects of this. And again, we’re free people and it’s capitalism. You can still choose to go back in. I’m not going to yell at you about it. We’re just giving you something if you want to choose a different path. So that’s kind of how it came about. It came through a few different iterations. We are just now finishing the beta testing and then we’re about to announce it wide and worldwide. We’re going to launch it really in Portland to start. We’re based in Portland, Oregon. So we’re going to have a lot of locality as well because we want to test out the features of you and I earned points. Let’s go to this coffee shop together. Like, how do we actually drive you to interactions? You’re going to get points for checking in at a national park. We don’t get any money for that. It’s just we want you to go to national parks, things like that. So how do we sort of drive some of that locality, that community, while being a mass brand? So we’ll do the Portland phase now and then will roll out more nationally after that. But it keeps iterating. Every day I think I find out a new way or we talk to a new psychologist or a new behavioralist and we’re like, oh, we got to change this. And so it’s just this fascinating tweak of coming to the best solution.

[00:26:12] Calan Breckon: I really like the idea of bringing it into the physical, not just with items and stuff like that, but physical locations, like going to a coffee shop or going to a park and going and doing those things. Because to me, watching the evolution of social media over the time of my life and seeing the generations now and how difficult it is for them to interact, even me as a millennial, how difficult it is sometimes to interact, how lonely we all are. I know that people talk a lot about, like, needing to get back together and get into community and do those things. I think that that could be a very powerful driver in that situation to getting people to go or putting on the, you know, little events in individual places, being like, hey, come here and go do this thing. Could be a really powerful driver for that because there’s also the reward behind it.

[00:27:00] Corey Scholibo: There’ll definitely be events, but, I mean, one of the things we’re going to have is challenges, too. So, like, you and I could challenge each other potentially to, like, achieve a goal this week and earn bonus points. Maybe that’s sponsored by Yeti. Maybe it’s just something the company does, and then we, you know, we earn something. So maybe we’re working towards getting a dinner together and we kind of do it together and we get to work towards something eventually. And obviously, this will also be used for parents, I think, to motivate their younger teens. I’m not going to sell it that way because teens don’t want a company that their mom made them sign up for. But if it’s cool and they’re on it and their parents are on it, then, hey, why don’t we all, like, I’m going to drop $50 into your account if you can do XYZ on social media.

So a lot of these things we still. I mean, there’s so many markets we could serve. We could be employee benefits, et cetera. But, you know, we’re going to stay laser focused. But there’s so many ways for us to interact. There’s a passive social element where I could see, you know, hey, who wants to get together? We’ve got these points. Let’s go redeem them there. But again, passive, not like, don’t. Don’t update me on your avocado toast. Let’s go eat an avocado toast together. That’s what I want to do, not see your avocado toast.

[00:28:08] Calan Breckon: Yeah, 100%. I have a rule when I go for, like, lunch or dinner or anything with friends that phones have to stay, like, in the pockets. And then if you absolutely have to bring your phone out, you are committing to paying for the meal for however many people are there.

[00:28:22] Corey Scholibo: That’s great.

[00:28:23] Calan Breckon: That is my.

[00:28:24] Corey Scholibo: I like that.

[00:28:25] Calan Breckon: Going out with dinner or anything like that for friends. Yeah. Because it’s. I’m in person, I need to engage with you, which is why I love podcasting so much.

[00:28:33] Calan Breckon: I enjoy one on one conversations that, like, feed the soul, and I think it’s becoming a lost art, specifically with, you know, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, because the pandemic is one thing, but just how we communicate as humans, it’s a lost art of being able to, you know, maintain eye contact, listen, actively listen for the sake of actually engaging with what they’re saying, not just to respond or say what you want to say. Waiting the conversation. Exactly.

[00:29:01] Corey Scholibo: Well, and we lost. I mean. I mean, we all know, but, like, now. But they’ve proven the reason why we’re so tired during the pandemic is because our eyes are trying to connect with your eyes, and our brains are doing it so actively that when we can’t, because you’re in this fucking screen, I can’t actually see you. Really? I’m not looking at your eyes. I don’t even know where your eyes are, really. It tires our brain out trying to do that. I hate Zoom. I mean, one of the things I loved about this company is my partner was in Portland. My whole last company was virtual, and I think it had some serious negative effects on what could have been. I like to come here every day. Our dogs play weak whiteboard with a physical marker. I mean, it sounds stupid to say, because, duh, that’s how startups are done, but not anymore. I mean, it’s not a Miro board and a Zoom call, and I don’t want to do that again. So I’m even. We’re even building the company in a realistically interactive way. Like, humanistically interactive way, as opposed to. Which should go without saying, but as opposed to how most people are building companies these days.

[00:30:00] Calan Breckon: Yeah, I do believe we are in a very different place. There’s, like, before the pandemic, after the pandemic. And we are in a very messy, different space now where big corporates or, like, establishments are finding it very difficult to learn what the new equilibrium is going to be. And the gift for new startups, they get to choose for themselves. Okay, what do we like? What do we not like? How much of a mix do we want to have in there? Because it’s part of life. We want people to experience and live life now, not work in order to live life, but, like, have it all mixed in together.

[00:30:35] Corey Scholibo: Well, and I think that the problems that I see with this remote work in a startup, and this would be my advice, I guess, is you have to. In my experience, you have to question your assumptions almost hourly, certainly daily. It doesn’t mean you make everyone crazy. It doesn’t mean you go back to your staff and change course every five minutes. That’s bad management. But you want to have at least the agility at an early stage to be like, I know we’ve been working on this, but, like, let’s cut bait on this, and I feel and move, and let’s restrategize. Or even more to the point, like, let’s re pressure test this verbally, right? Like, let’s go. Why are we doing this again? What are the like? Whereas I feel like virtually so much of it is more like a big corp, where it’s like, well, we plan to plan, and we’re working our plan, and we’ll check back in a month, and we’ll see how it’s doing, and let’s see it play out. And there’s reasons and logic to that as well. But we don’t have the kind of time usually. We don’t usually have the kind of money to be like, well, I don’t know. We blew 50 grand, and it didn’t really work. You probably should have caught that after about ten grand of spend. So that would be the thing that I think people don’t have a good handle on. And then you use slack and Zoom and all these other things. So we’re essentially back in social media. We’re not social, and so it’s sort of more of the same problem. It’s very easy to be passive. It’s very easy to be representational. Like, look what I did. It doesn’t really mean that we interacted.

There’s just so many drawbacks to it. The advantages are, especially as a startup. Hey, I want to work with you, Caitlin, and so you don’t live near me, and so. Okay, Johnson and Johnson may not take that, but I don’t give a shit. You can live wherever you want, and I’ll pay, and you’ll make a little bit less, maybe because you don’t want to move. You want to live in Topeka, and you don’t want to move to New York. Okay, fine. It’s all very flexible, so you can get the best talent, but it’s a totally different management style, and one that I think is a incredibly hard to master. I mean, I don’t have the skill sets for it. I’m an interpersonal manager for sure.

And so I don’t know, I just think it’s a liability, potentially, and I challenge people to at least think about having their co founders, key operating officers in the room at early stages, if you can, or the very least come spend a month here or something, whatever, you figure it out. But don’t discount that that in person is just unbelievably necessary to the alchemy of creating a good brand.

[00:32:52] Calan Breckon: Yeah, I believe there definitely needs to be a flow that has to be figured out for each individual and each individual company and what works best for all of them. What’s the timeline look like for Dayo?

[00:33:04] Corey Scholibo: Dayo Is beta testing. Almost done with beta testing? And then we will begin a smaller, I guess an alpha. I mean, whatever. Post beta, pre launches rollout here in Portland, testing it, getting some of our user bases up, and then we will be working on a national rollout. It’ll either be fall or early January. Also depends on who our partners are. We have certain celebrity partners we’re talking to and so on, and what the timing of that is. And then I think the election will have a lot to do with it, both from a fundraising perspective. I don’t know if you’ve ever raised in an election year before, but it’s not. It’s sometimes harder. People are very distracted by giving money to save democracy, especially nowadays. And then two, it’s either a huge advantage for us because people are so sick of talking about it. And I would have said before Kamala was announced, we had. I was like, maybe we launched before the election, and we ran a ton of ads about, you hate both these fucking people. And sorry, I cussed a lot, maybe I shouldn’t be, but you hate both these people.

I mean, I don’t hate Biden, but, like, you’re sick of all this crap, right? Get offline. We’re perfect for you. Now. People are really excited online on TikTok, like, the coconut and all that. So, like, I. They don’t want to get off tick tock. I don’t want to get off TikTok. I want to see more of these good vibes. So does that change our launch trajectory? I don’t know. So I think it’s some of those factors that are kind of beyond our control that are a part of our decision making. And then, like, you know, is the last piece of that build going to be ready on that date, you know, those kinds of things, but eminently.

[00:34:27] Calan Breckon: Okay, so it’s, it’s, it’s. It’s coming in. It’s coming in quick. Um, yeah. Kamala very excited about that. When I’m a Canadian, I was like, oh. Because we’re all watching from up here being like, oh, what’s going to happen to our border? Like, do we need to close it?

[00:34:43] Corey Scholibo: She’s not Canadian, but she lived in Canada for a while. Yeah.

[00:34:47] Calan Breckon: You know, I just like the young, fresh, like, it’s. It’s time. It’s time. Like, it’s. There’s been such a onslaught of support and so many good signals that I’ve just seen as an outsider being like, these are very positive signals that I’m looking forward to. And, like, the fact that like 20 million boomers have died since the last election and 40 million Gen Z have come into voting, you know, age. So I think we are going to see, and they’re also very excited about voting. It’s a very different generational thing going on and I think we’re going to see very interesting numbers come out when they start coming about.

[00:35:20] Corey Scholibo: And fundraising from a branding standpoint, like, this is what pent up demand in the market looks like. This is capitalism 101. There’s pent up demand. We wanted to believe in something. No one was giving us a product or service that we wanted and somebody dropped a product. And even if it isn’t the perfect product, we’re so fucking excited about it.

[00:35:37] Corey Scholibo: We’re all going to buy it, basically.

[00:35:38] Calan Breckon: a hundred percent. Exactly, exactly. And then in fundraising terms, never done it in the US. But also your elections and your fundraising in the US is very different. Canada, we have very strict laws here and it looks very differently here. So I don’t know if that would be comparable. But yeah, I hope and wish the best for you because I think we big time need this product on the market, making things happen. And Scott Galloway, give a shout out.

[00:36:07] Corey Scholibo: Yeah. And you can go to Dayo.Co and you can learn more about it and you can download it from the app store and give it a try. Today it is live. So I don’t know when this podcast will air, but certainly by the time it airs it will be available for you to download and give a try.

[00:36:23] Calan Breckon: And if people want to reach out to you specifically, could they reach out on LinkedIn or something, please?

[00:36:27] Corey Scholibo: I love getting inquiries from LinkedIn and I’m available.

[00:36:32] Calan Breckon: Awesome.

[00:36:32] Calan Breckon: I’ll make sure that all these links are in the show notes for you, so if you want to click and check all those out, you’ll have that. Thank you so much Corey, for being a guest. This has been absolutely fantastic.

[00:36:42] Corey Scholibo: Thank you for having me. Appreciate you doing it and look forward to listening to more of your episodes.

[00:36:46] Calan Breckon: Thanks for tuning in today. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, I would love a star rating from you. The business Gay podcast is written, produced and edited by me, Calan Breckon. That’s it for today. Peace, love, rainbows.